Guild Wars 2

Essentially Raids are 10+ player dungeons.

So how come there is such a disdain for Raids in this game while Dungeons are widely accepted?

I mean even the developers said they like their content to be spread throughout the world and that’s where people should be playing etc. And yet Dungeons are one of the most popular content in game.

Why are different standard applied to something that is essentially the same (just bigger)?

My guess would be that they are trying to make all shapes and sizes of guilds to work in the game. If you started implementing something with groups of that size it would guide people to only want to be in a big guild.

Yes I know about LFG site but some people don’t like to pub.

I think Anet decided against raids because of a couple of simple reasons:

1) No trinity. This may seem strange but one of the side effects of not have a real role division seems to mean also less tactical instances. A raid is about tactics basically and as we can see in current dungeons boss tactics are very limited. Also groups bigger than 5 would not have a real function. You’d basically be zerging mindlessly causing lag for each other.

2) This relates to the first point. But one of the reasons the trinity was taken out was to counter the endless LF1M need tank/healer that can be seen in some other MMOs. If you add raids for larger groups it might go against this idea. Even though you don’t need roles you do need enough people and in GW2 that’s just a clusterkitten waiting to happen. Why? Because pugging them would be horrible and you would need to be able to make groups of 8 or 10 within your guild which is often not an option depending on the server and playtime but also because it seems this game doesn’t really encourage guilds that much. The biggest problem here is the representing issue in my view and the general lack of cohesiveness that I’ve seen so far.

Of course this isn’t always the case but it seems that GW2 is built for either small groups (5 man), solo stuff or zerging events (or dragons) and wvw.

The dragon fights and wvw are what GW2 has to offer instead of raids. If that’s not enough for you, then what is it about raids that you like that GW2 doesn’t offer? Likely it will be about tactics in raids and group building. But these are two elements that GW2 is just not built for.

Gehenna.3625:

I think Anet decided against raids because of a couple of simple reasons:

1) No trinity. This may seem strange but one of the side effects of not have a real role division seems to mean also less tactical instances. A raid is about tactics basically and as we can see in current dungeons boss tactics are very limited. Also groups bigger than 5 would not have a real function. You’d basically be zerging mindlessly causing lag for each other.

2) This relates to the first point. But one of the reasons the trinity was taken out was to counter the endless LF1M need tank/healer that can be seen in some other MMOs. If you add raids for larger groups it might go against this idea. Even though you don’t need roles you do need enough people and in GW2 that’s just a clusterkitten waiting to happen. Why? Because pugging them would be horrible and you would need to be able to make groups of 8 or 10 within your guild which is often not an option depending on the server and playtime but also because it seems this game doesn’t really encourage guilds that much. The biggest problem here is the representing issue in my view and the general lack of cohesiveness that I’ve seen so far.

Of course this isn’t always the case but it seems that GW2 is built for either small groups (5 man), solo stuff or zerging events (or dragons) and wvw.

The dragon fights and wvw are what GW2 has to offer instead of raids. If that’s not enough for you, then what is it about raids that you like that GW2 doesn’t offer? Likely it will be about tactics in raids and group building. But these are two elements that GW2 is just not built for.

Well, OP’s point is why is there dungeon (5 men instance) but not raid (10+ men instance). Your points about raid are true but they also apply to dungeon. Most of dungeons, like you say about raid, doesn’t have roles and tactic. They are just 5 man mindless zerging. If so, why must we have to have 5 men but not 1,3 or 10?

Every MMO since EQ has done raiding for endgame. While GW2 seems to be in Limbo for endgame at least they have tried to forgo the same tired thing done by everyone else. The MMO scene really did need something different. I don’t think Anet has nailed it as of yet but at least it’s not the same of old raid raid raid.

I’m curious, what would raids accomplish that 5 mans could not? You don’t need 10 or 25 players to have coordinated group play and fights that require strategies.

Also, as large groups in WvW have proven, ressing is extremely powerful when there are a lot of players around to get you up on your feet quickly.

Dee Jay.2460:

Essentially Raids are 10+ player dungeons.

So how come there is such a disdain for Raids in this game while Dungeons are widely accepted?

I mean even the developers said they like they’re content to be spread throughout the world and that’s where people should be playing etc. And yet Dungeons are one of the most popular content in game.

Why are different standard applied to something that is essentially the same (just bigger)?

Because I have four actual friends (not just names on my contact list) that I can play with to complete dungeons. I don’t have 10+ people that I consider actual friends even playing this game, let alone being up for running a raid. And I prefer to play with actual friends. Herding the cats together to do a raid when they are nothing more than pseudo-acquaintances, is about as interesting to me as watching paint dry — paint that my two-year old just smeared across the front of my new 36" HD television, just to add in the necessary frustration that goes along with raiding with non-friends.

Oh yeah, and raids are no more difficult to accomplish than 5-man explorable mode dungeons. It’s the logistics of getting that many people together to accomplish something that adds an arbitrary multiplier to the perceived difficulty. Hmm, add more people into the mix just to make it tougher? What fun.

Yeah, so there ya go. Raids can die in a fire.

I like dungeons, but I would like to see them change to the following:

Dungeon Options:
Solo
2 Man
5 Man
8 Man
12 Man

Scale difficulty with population entering, but that would probably take a ton of work to implement, esp. with all the complaints that would probably crop up about certain pops being easier than others (Arah 5-man 10x harder than 12man, QQ!).

I think that with the way the skill system and individual prof balance is set up in GW2, 10+ raids would just be instanced zergs.
It would basically be double of everything in current dungeons, and since in this game we don’t really need to structure parties all that much, with 10+ people, there would be enough heals just getting spammed out as a consequence of combos, and no one would really have to be concerned with what they’re doing (just look at WvW zergs, or crowded events). In fact, I’m feeling like it would be even less organized than 5-people teams, because right now some people do have to be more support-based or tank-based, and with more players that would stop being much of an issue.

Pinch.4273:

I’m curious, what would raids accomplish that 5 mans could not? You don’t need 10 or 25 players to have coordinated group play and fights that require strategies.

Also, as large groups in WvW have proven, ressing is extremely powerful when there are a lot of players around to get you up on your feet quickly.

It’s true that you can do a lot more with 5 man Dungeons that we’re currently seeing.

The big thing that sets Raids apart from Dungeons is that you can build fights around the assumption that one of every class will be there.

With 5 man encounters you need to design a lot of leeway for “suboptimal” groups. You can’t have them require a certain ability or a specific profession because that would be unfair.

In Raids you can do just that. A 10 man fight also has a lot more variables and depth to it than any 5 man encounter could ever have.

That’s why Raid encounters tend to be much tougher and involving than your standard Dungeon fights. I mean look at some of those Fractal encounters. That’s probably as much depth as we can reasonably expect from a 5 man Dungeon. And I don’t really think that’s good enough.

The big thing that sets Raids apart from Dungeons is that you can build fights around the assumption that one of every class will be there.

I don’t think so. You’ll either bring what you have or you’ll bring the best professions for the dungeon. There is no shared gear drops like WoW, so there is no reason to bring one of every class.

With 5 man encounters you need to design a lot of leeway for “suboptimal” groups. You can have them require a certain ability or a specific profession because that would be unfair.

I don’t really think that’s true. There is a lot of overlap in profession capability, and I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say; “ok for this fight you need 2 interrupts”, or “you need boon removal every 15 seconds”. You’d be able to get things like that from a lot of parties.

In Raids you can do just that. A 10 man fight also has a lot more variables and depth to it than any 5 man encounter could ever have.

A 10 man can have more going on in it because there are 10 players, but from a single player’s perspective, there might be less going on than what could happen in a 5 man. The individual is not as important as the group when you add more people. GW2 is a game about personal skill, so I don’t think lessening the personal aspect would work well.

I raided hardcore 40/25mans in WoW for 8 years, and let me tell you, as easy as GW2 5 mans are, they certainly require more effort than doing my DPS rotation and not standing in fire ever did. Then again, I play a glass cannon thief, so I am playing one of the more fragile professions.

That’s why Raid encounters tend to be much tougher and involving than your standard Dungeon fights. I mean look at some of those Fractal encounters. That’s probably as much depth as we can reasonably expect from a 5 man Dungeon. And I don’t really think that’s good enough.

I could write up a 2 page outline for a 5 man fight that is more involved than any raid I’ve ever done.

Honestly, the hardest part about raiding was meeting gear checks and hoping other people didn’t screw up. I can count on one hand the number of times that figuring out a good strategy was the biggest thing making a raid fight hard.

I think we’ve only scratched the surface of what we can do in GW2.

/opinion

The current durations, effectiveness and CD’s of the skills that provide threat gain, aggro dump, and survivability in GW2 are balanced around small group play and challenges balanced around small groups. Increased challenge in a larger group would likely require re-balancing those skills. Unless skills were to be split into “raid” and normal PvE versions, the rebalanced skills would break smaller group or solo content every bit as much as raid gear made “normal” content trivial in a classic MMO.

And what would be the point if the 10man offered the same loot as the 5man? What are you getting for the added difficulty? You can’t make it give better loot because that’s not the type of game this is. It’s also making more content for fewer people as some don’t want/can’t find people to run 5mans successfully so they’re never going to get 10mans done.

Just don’t see the need as it will cause far more harm than good. It’s bad enough you need 10+ people to do some world event content in this game. Last thing we need is ‘raid’ content that only a very small portion of the playerbase would ever want or use.

First: The lack of any real trinity, aggro tables, and support skills would make 10+ dungeons utterly pointless, frustrating, and more chaotic with no real advantages.

Second: Getting 10+ players together steadily enough to run raids is tough for most people. My guild often has a tough time getting our core group of 5 on at any given time we want to do normal dungeons.

Third: The game is still nowhere near optimized enough for even MORE stuff on screen. While I get 40 fps in some dungeons, others will randomly drop me to 5 fps. Adding 5 more players and doubling the amount of enemies would make them impossible for me to do right now. Until they fix culling and make the game better optimized so that it runs the same across all areas of the game…no thank you. Especially since they’d likely have rewards that I’d want/need but unable to get.

Fourth: With the current way dungeons/content are designed, we have bosses that wipe out multiple members at a time, or possibly everyone. We have bosses that 1-hit you if you miss a dodge. Can you imagine just how much more nasty the encounters would have to be for them to even be challenging? Someone misses a dodge roll and your whole raid collapses. Yeah, that sounds so much fun. /sarcasm

Not to mention that in the current design, condition builds are screwed. You already can’t have more than 1 condition built team mate without hitting the cap. With 2 condi builds, you’ll be at cap the whole time. Double the amount of players and now what? LFG 8 Warriors: Have Mesmer and Guardian?

In reality I think there is a hatred by a certain very vocal minority of the game’s players for ANYTHING that looks like WOW.

Mounts… raids… new armor tiers… if it was in WOW they hate it rather it makes any sense in the game or represents an improvement on previous MMO’s or not.

There was one post where someone went ballistic because ANet added broom transformations… broom transformations with no speed boost and no other benefits of any kind were close enough to ‘mounts’ to cause one player to write a page long gripe to ANet, and he even had a few supporters.

I often wonder if this game is going to survive these forums. I have yet to see ANet add anything without someone complaining about it. Either its too close to WOW, or it violates some kind of blood oath ANet made, or it excludes someone because they don’t happen to like that particular type of game play.

I wish that people would just play the game and let ANet do their job and if they don’t like the results go play something else.

Because if they developed raids, the minute a raid is released, raiders will demand the gear rewards be significantly better than 5 man gear.

So in other words, raids are the antithesis of what Arenanet wants.

First they would need to add some kind of grouping system for more than 5 people.

Commander and squads don’t count…. that’s basically for zerg herding in WvW.

piitb.7635:

Because if they developed raids, the minute a raid is released, raiders will demand the gear rewards be significantly better than 5 man gear.

So in other words, raids are the antithesis of what Arenanet wants.

Perfectly stated. Essentially there is no motivation to make larger scale content without larger reward. Larger reward exiles part of the population who don’t have the guild base to participate. Imbalance ensues…

imo;

because when theres more than 5 players the combat starts to look like a big mess.

because of the special fx extravaganza, mostly.

just check some temple or champion fights… no so good with 20 people there. you dont even feel like playIng!

You don’t need a trinity for tactics, there’s no trinity in real life and there are loads of tactical situations.

I hope guild missions are just anetspeak for “scalable dungeons” That allow the whole guild to participate.

i suspect guild mission to be in the openworld.

i dont think itll be “dungeons”, because guildmates can already do “dungeons”,
its gonna be something else.

Blacklight.2871:

Dee Jay.2460:

Essentially Raids are 10+ player dungeons.

So how come there is such a disdain for Raids in this game while Dungeons are widely accepted?

I mean even the developers said they like they’re content to be spread throughout the world and that’s where people should be playing etc. And yet Dungeons are one of the most popular content in game.

Why are different standard applied to something that is essentially the same (just bigger)?

Because I have four actual friends (not just names on my contact list) that I can play with to complete dungeons. I don’t have 10+ people that I consider actual friends even playing this game, let alone being up for running a raid.

I have been playing MMOs since UO back in ’97 and have been doing cutting edge raiding since EQ went live and then when I moved to WoW. I have never had a single friend ever play MMOs. I dont see why you need RL friends to raid with. During the last 3 WoW expansions I was never even guilded and still cleared hardmode content. I dont see where people get this misconception that you need a guild or friends to do raids.

^ Because strangers will gladly tell others how big of a tool they are when they kitten up, while friends and guild members will say “It’s ok we’ll get it this time”.

Guys they are bringing raids soon be patient lol... Guild missions ring a bell?

Jezath.7395:

Guys they are bringing raids soon be patient lol… Guild missions ring a bell?

5 man raids? Pretty sure that’s a group.

nah im sure it will be more than 5 if its for a guild

Jezath.7395:

nah im sure it will be more than 5 if its for a guild

WvW is for guilds, open world 5 man crapfest, what makes you think this will be any different?

Anet are already walking a fine line between the WoW crowd and the “We hate WoW” crowd, besides that I have no faith in this company to actually bring something useful to the game without destroying something else in return.

If we can have more than 5 people, it will be pointless time waster “playing is fun” excuse, or 5 people only, guild perks allow for things like "free travel 1h 100k influence – 25% gold find + 25% MF + 25% run speed bonus for 1h, 250k influence.

Either way, this forum will explode with valid complaints.

There should be 100-man raids where it gets laggy as hell and everyone’s PCs display a blue screen after several seconds in.

Because it’s just as easy to do tactical instances without upping the player count. Current explorable dungeons have tactical encounters.

Basically all of the graveling burrow events in AC explorable for instance, You can’t just faceroll through those events. You need a plan, you need players to define roles for the event. You need to determine (often in the thick of combat) who needs to go where, defend what, ignore what, kill what, etc.

The fact that it’s very easy for certain class combinations doesn’t change the fact that, if you take on explorables with no previous experience, and without checking the wiki for a walkthrough, these are in fact challenging and tactical encounters on par with what’s avaliable in raids from other games.

Most importantly, that kind of play is workable in GW2 because of its nature as five man content. The vast majority of tactical decisions in GW2 often involve requiring splits, running devices or environmental weapons that prevent certain party members from actively fighting/supporting, and otherwise changing the combat meta from the norm of combat.

When you amp up the number of players, with the trinity-free system that GW2 uses, the tactical decisions in these sorts of events fly out the window. The sheer power designed directly in to most utility skills would end up trivializing content. Imagine a 20 person party. now look at the cooldown on skills like wall of reflection, shadow refuge, and time warp. Think about exactly how trivial it would be to do things like 100% uptime on timewarp, Chaining SR to have an infinite aggro-clearing bubble, or perma-walling. Extremely large player counts in instances would literally break the content.

Large player numbers work in the open world specifically because the groups are expected to be uncoordinated, and the fights are supposed to be a measure of aggregate personal skill rather than a test of teamwide tactical prowess. In scripted tactical instances it simply wouldn’t work without changing everything about the combat system unless you forcibly split the raid in to multiple teams, at which point why bother when you could have just make three new 5 man dungeons that are easier to get groups for?

Raid Boss 1: Destroyer Harpy Matriarch
Environment: Circular arena.. say, inside a volcano
Base Class: Ranger

Base attack does more damage the farther you are. If you are max range, you are killed in a few hits.
Ability 1: Every 30 seconds, she knocks players back to the wall and rapidly fires arrows similar to the rangers Rapid fire, keeping the long range deadly damage mentioned above on normal attacks.

The knockback cannot be avoided with anything like Stability.

Counter: Use abilities to reflect projectiles or nullify them and move as one unit. Examplss from a few classes:

Elementalist- Earth Attunement w/ Staff: Magnetic Aura (Group)
Guardian- Shield. Shield of Absorbtion. (Group)
Guardian- Skill. Wall of Reflection (Field)
Thief- Skill. Smoke Screen. (Field)
Warrior-Skill. Endure Pain. (May have to rely on others to survive)
Necromancer-Skill. Spectral Wall. (MAYBE. Havnt played necro)
Mesmer-Skill. Feedback. (Group)
Engineer-Shield. Magnetic Shield. (Field)

So on, so forth. Using leaps and teleportations could also work to advance forward to reduce damage from the harpy during this ability too. The 30 seconds, range of the knockback, ect can be adjusted.

Ability 2: Passive Fire Aura that burns folks in a xx range of harpy matriarch.

This ability is designed to deal slow, constant DOT. Healing with Ability 6 can keep this from killing you, but any excess damage could be deadly. Reapplya every 10 seconds.

Counters could be any cure condition (when close to death) but it will be quickly reapplied.

Ability 3: Summon Destroyers (5 total)

This ability is used at 70%/40%/10% HP of the Harpy Matriarch. This summons 5 Destroyers of random types in SET or RANDOM locations in the volcano. They can be champions and/or veterans and apply an aura the increases fire/burning damage on players. Stacks in intensity.

Counter: split the 5 into a group of 2 and 3 so your debuff from these dossnt rise too high and you burn to death from the matriarchs passive aura. A mix of veteran and champions will dictate the kill order. Could be the “hard” part of the fight if your raid force is knocked back by the matriarch and rapid fire ensues while dealing with these.

Reward could be similar to dungeons. A new token type, 30s in cash, and a “dragon” chest. More guild activities, community bonding, communication, ect.

A raid boss like this allows for dedicated (Needed) support roles without retraiting. Most classes can perform it for the raid too. Gives guilds the ability to run a dungeon like instance as a guild. If you are a all power, precision, crit dmg build, you can function here with skill while letting allies proect.

What you want is bigger party size for the minigames (instanced areas) thats all. Or new minigames which will require two party or a little more.

For me a raid is something which will need hundred of players and everywone will need to focus from support to dps, have a role and not only F1 the big NPC.

10 men? a raid? ha ha haha ahahahahahahahhaha…Altought you have temples, dragons, and map bosses, those are your raids, you dont require to schedule and will hold hands with who ever is next to you.

And having everyone not even repping the guild…no wonder why there is no guild specific content (thats for the people which mentioned guilds)

It’d be cool if Dungeons (Explorable) could be scaled based on how many players are involved.

• Scaling Example : 2 Player EXP Arah / 5 player EXP Arah / 8 Player EXP Arah / 12 Player EXP Arah
• Dungeon difficulty and rewards will scale based on the number of players. 12 Player EXP Arah will be the hardest (with more rewards), while 2 Player EXP Arah will be the easiest (with the least rewards).

Something like that would be pretty cool in my opinion. It’s not necessarily “Raids” but it’d give people/Guilds things to do in larger groups.

raid is ok. I actually hope they have raid in this game.

but what’s not ok is you advertised this game as no raid “or dev says they not going to have one and add in later”

But I hope they break that promise and add one …

My issue with Orrian events and dungeons are that they are simple zergs with no communication or cooperation (other than revives and combined DPS). Its very hard (jmpossible) to design tactical events/raids with unlimited numbers potentially participating.

Adding a raid event similar to what I posted above (say, without the token) just adds to the game. The reward proposed can be obtained in other, easier areas of the game so nothin g is unobtainable for those who do not want to participate in this raid.

i would just like to remind everybody that 12 mans in GW1 weren’t introduced until the game first expansion, factions with(Urgoz and Deep) I’m confident larger dungeons will be introduced in time if players want it

Larger raids would be interesting as long as they implemented a better lfg and anti griefing system. Also, for now they chose 5 man dungeons because the larger the group, the lesser the impact a single player can have. (i.e becomes a zerg)