Guild Wars 2

Telling from past experiences (Marionette, Scarlett & her legendary knight buddies), I very much doubt the majority of GW2 players would be able to play anything that deserves the monicker “raid”, be it old school EQ2 style or content like the GW1 elite areas. Still, when you browse the forum: How often do “casuals” complain about teh evil hardcorez farming chests etc. instead of completing events. That is the downside of open world content where you are not able to pick your team – it is not only a problem for better players who want to do harder content like Marionette, but for everyone who wants to accomplish some goal with likeminded individuals.

No 10-person raids. But no more open world nonsense either. Silverwastes and co. are nice for brain afk farming but they offer little engaging content. Huge open world boss fights are not “raids” as such, and while the game is going that way, i have to say it’s a pity.
I’d love to see interesting 5 man instances, hell yes.

Not many are going to raid if there isn’t some sort of Super ’You’re A Special Raiderflake Now’ heap of exclusive rewards for them to get by doing it, and then bam, content winds up gated not by willingness to participate, but by ability to synchronize playtime with XX other people that want to do the same thing at the same time as you.

If they didn’t throw exclusive rewards into it, I’d be fine with them throwing instanced raids out there for people that actually want the fun of the challenge to enjoy. Exclusive achievements would be fine, but exclusive gear skins should be downplayed as the major carrot.

I’m willing to bet that a huge percentage of interest in raiding would utterly evaporate if raids were implemented but didn’t offer any ’You’re Specialer Than The Other Players’ rewards though.

Thats a no brainer, nobody wants to spend hours organizing and breaking sweat to master something and not get rewarded appropriately for it. That goes with anything and not just raid. Thats why i find it hilarious that people demand that raid have subpar rewards, as if them brain afk farming in silverwaste should be just as if not more rewarding than an organized raid.

Aren’t the easy as kitten to acquire the exclusive carapace piece to brain dead afk farmers enough to sate you peoples desire?.

Lifestealer.4910:

Thats a no brainer, nobody wants to spend hours organizing and breaking sweat to master something and not get rewarded appropriately for it. That goes with anything and not just raid. Thats why i find it hilarious that people demand that raid have subpar rewards, as if them brain afk farming in silverwaste should be just as if not more rewarding than an organized raid.

GW2’s done a great job of making a lot of content, even huge group content, rather accessible to majorities of its playerbase. Why should they do a 180 on their entire design approach now, with no clear or apparent purpose to do so, because a minority of people with hours to waste struggling to put together and organize a raid would like to do that here, instead of practically every other MMO in existence?

You want an organized raid, go organize triple wurm and teq. Organize a guild puzzle. Organize something out in WvW. Heck, I’m in a guild that organizes spvp teams pretty much daily.

Terribly sorry if GW2 expects you to entertain yourself a bit more than some games, but the princess you’re looking for is in most of the other castles, actually. I’m not sure just what people expect will come of raiding here when we’ve already seen that GW2’s approach to instanced group content doesn’t lend well to the same elaboracies and tunings as in holy trinity games.

If you think for a moment that the dungeon runners wouldn’t almost immediately put raids on farm, you’re dizzy and should sit down. They can’t make us need tanks and healers more; we got none and nobody can be one in any real capacity. They could make a team of 10 split up to do different objectives at once, but if you think that wouldn’t turn into a one-trick pony almost immediately, you’re still dizzy and shouldn’t get back up yet.

They’d have to spend a lot of time and resources tweaking and tuning that content, and by its very nature it would have to be content designed specifically to exclude those that don’t have the social connections or, in having those, the synchronizable time to do such. Said content would need to be extremely difficult to pose any challenge at all to the hardcore dungeon and fractal goers, and that would exclude almost everybody.

Or they could make it easy enough for most anyone on any halfway reasonable build to complete it and voila, we’ve made more dungeons that simply require more people but don’t actually address any of the problems inherent to instanced content and GW2’s underpinning class and combat designs.

Dungeons don’t really work so well here. Its still an entirely valid tactic to zerg pretty much any boss. Hit it until you die, run back, hit it until you die, run back.

Raids? You’re practically unconscious if you think they’ve got magical solutions they haven’t implemented before when it comes to how to make dungeons or, in this case, raids Trinity-hard with no Trinity to rely on.

In the Trinity games, they can tune encounters very specifically and to high thresholds of skill requirement, because they can very easily predict what tanks, dps and healers can and ergo should be doing.

Here? Everyone’s DPS with variations of sucking at it. By dint of the very mechanics they’ve created and baked in, if they allow too many things like stuns, dazes, blinds and immobs to work on various bosses, the new meta will absolutely be stun teams, daze teams, blind chains and so on. So they make those things almost entirely to absolutely useless against bosses out of necessity, ‘cause if you think ’oh, they could just make fights require more conditions’, you’re flat out drunk.

No, they really couldn’t. Same with the ‘oh, they could make people need to bring more reflects’.

Yeah, they could, but it wouldn’t solve the current problem we see in dungeons. They designed their whole combat system in such a way as that anything even halfway resembling Trinity dungeons just doesn’t work, and can never really work as well as they’d clearly like it to, seeing as that they allegedly disbanded their dungeon team quite a while ago. And if it doesn’t resemble a Trinity dungeon, its probably going to be stupidly easy on account of pretty much everybody with a half-functional build needing to have a fighting chance at completing it.

Neither of those offer any solution at all. There is no door number three they’ve seen fit to invest much into there either, as even Fractals have been somewhat lobbed at those desiring a treadmill and will not likely ever be the centerpiece of their design concerns.

Heck, I’d be surprised if it doesn’t wind up increasingly neglected as time goes by.

They’re clearly not interested in making more dungeons. What on earth makes you or anyone think they’re going to be interest in making bigger-dungeons when dungeons proved to be such an untenable mess?

So what if people put raid on farm, everything is already put on farm. There is no content in this game that isn’t on farm mode. Saying after people mastered raid they would just farm it to use as a reason for not adding it is not really lets just say, good one.

Everybody is not a dps variation, only the pug community that still believes warriors are top dogs in dps believes that. If people had understand the real meta they would know that dps/support/control are used plenty in dungeon encounters. I mean if dps is everything, then the meta party comp would consist of 5 eles but we all know thats not true.

I agree though that the dungeons in this game, at least most of them are not well done. But that isn’t because of the meta, that is due to negligence from designing the dungeon and improving it. Many bosses are either buggy or are too easy. If Anet made bosses hard enough that people would need to interrupt attacks, CC and condi clear etc. The real meta comps would continue to do what they always do while the pug comps will be forced to adapt or fail. Suddenly people will understand that the combat system and class design are not as flawed as they think.

Anet has said they would implement raid but obviously i have no faith in them implementing it properly, since this is the only mmo company that design really fail bosses. Most of the world bosses are a joke, just look at shatterer, nobody is in any danger fighting him, same with pretty much every other world bosses outside of triple wurm. Also another issue with open world raid is its a nightmare to organize with guildies because there always randoms popping in to take a freebie ride etc.

I’d say Yes to Guild Raids, some content we can use to organise 10-25 members together where you get guild commendations/luck/gold/raid tokens for a new raid vendor?

Wouldn’t even be mad if they made it like the guild “World Event”, basicly research it before you can start it.

Lifestealer.4910:

So what if people put raid on farm, everything is already put on farm. There is no content in this game that isn’t on farm mode. Saying after people mastered raid they would just farm it to use as a reason for not adding it is not really lets just say, good one.

I’m saying they’d all go on farm in roughly 12 hours, because Anet cannot, in this environment of class structure and ability mechanics, make dungeons be all that remarkably compelling in the same or even comparable ways that Trinity games do.

Are there ways that they might? Perhaps. Is it worth the time, money and effort required when they would be on farm almost immediately if they weren’t so difficult that almost nobody could do them anyway?

Aetherpath called. Its so very, very lonely. It has no friends, nobody seems to like it and everybody with a comment seems to hate it.

Lifestealer.4910:

Everybody is not a dps variation, only the pug community that still believes warriors are top dogs in dps believes that. If people had understand the real meta they would know that dps/support/control are used plenty in dungeon encounters. I mean if dps is everything, then the meta party comp would consist of 5 eles but we all know thats not true.

DPS is everything. Support and control are secondary functions that, while important, aren’t buffed by Precision, Ferocity or Power, which are the stats of the Berserker set. There is no meta that is not the zerker meta. EVERYTHING is secondary to damage output.

Support and control get built right in to most things. Elementalists don’t do so much more damage than others that there’s much purpose in excluding other classes’ various support and control functions, but hey, Necromancer would like to say hello.

Your reference about warrior and ‘the pug community’ is irrelevant and hopelessly overdramatic though.

Lifestealer.4910:

I agree though that the dungeons in this game, at least most of them are not well done. But that isn’t because of the meta, that is due to negligence from designing the dungeon and improving it. Many bosses are either buggy or are too easy. If Anet made bosses hard enough that people would need to interrupt attacks, CC and condi clear etc. The real meta comps would continue to do what they always do while the pug comps will be forced to adapt or fail. Suddenly people will understand that the combat system and class design are not as flawed as they think.

I already addressed those ‘if only Anet would make us bring moar condi’ crap above and I’m not going to repeat myself. That’s an inherently flawed view that presumes the fixes to be simple handwaves. If they were simple handwaves, I’m quite certain Anet would have simply handwaved them in long ago.

There’s nothing wrong with the combat or the class systems – there’s EVERYTHING wrong with trying to take this combat system and these class designs and make Trinity-style dungeons work right.

Anet did a great job of getting rid of the holy trinity. They did not do a great job of figuring out how to make dungeons that complimented the existing systems, and I do not have one reason, let alone a good reason, to believe that they’re ever going to.

Dungeons seem like abandonware – they’re probably never going to be changed much from where they are now. I strongly suspect that making bigger-dungeons isn’t going to be high on their list of things to get right on.

Lifestealer.4910:

Anet has said they would implement raid but obviously i have no faith in them implementing it properly, since this is the only mmo company that design really fail bosses. Most of the world bosses are a joke, just look at shatterer, nobody is in any danger fighting him, same with pretty much every other world bosses outside of triple wurm. Also another issue with open world raid is its a nightmare to organize with guildies because there always randoms popping in to take a freebie ride etc.

I don’t pretend to know everything they’ve ever said about everything, though I have no recollection of seeing anything referenced about them saying they’d be implementing raids.

Now, to the bolded part. Clearly, a lot of people don’t have a functional problem with that, as those things get done and happen every day. Literally, every single day.

Why are you here if you basically want it to be a different game entirely, with a focus on instanced content that it never had and has moved away from where it did have it?

Why are you here if you find it to be ‘a nightmare’ to do content with a guild? I do an awful lot of world bosses myself, both with and without the company of assorted guildies. I don’t find myself in the grip of any nightmares for it. YMMV?

No, not personally – but larger group sizes would be nice, when my guild is doing open world events just so we can keep track of eachother.

(make it a commander ability)

What new complexity does 10 zerker-wearing DPS-mongers bring to the game that 5 doesn’t already deliver?

Yes.

This would be a big step forward for guild based content; however, I do not think raids larger than 10 would do well in GW2.

Wildstar is the perfect example of what happens when you design content for a very loud and annoying vocal minority.

no, not having to make schedules for a game is one of the reasons I love GW2. I don’t want to play instanced content with randoms and I don’t want the situation where people have to wait for their guildies to play content.

Personally, I’m not enthusiastic or hyped about the new expansion.
Why?
I’m the kind of player who likes difficult instanced content , be it 5 or 10 or 100 people.
I like knowing the people I play with and I like when I have to depend on them and that they have to depend on me.
I like risk and punishment for failure, and appropriate reward for success.
Can I expect such content in Heart Of The Thorns?
As I’ve mentioned before, I really haven’t touched the last two maps added to the game – for me they seem pointless. I don’t care about collectibles or events or storry for that matter (couldn’t care any less if we were fighting an elder dragon or giant flying unicorn).

Now, I’d love to see Raids ( Elite GW1 Missions – UW/FOW/DoA ) in GW2, but I doubt that’s going to happen given how they treat high level fractal people and the dungeon crowd.

It’s interesting to me, the people most engaged in this discussion on both sides seem to have a fair amount of raid experience ><

Windsagio.1340:

It’s interesting to me, the people most engaged in this discussion on both sides seem to have a fair amount of raid experience ><

That’s actually a good thing. Some people did the full raid life and got tired of it. Tired of the progression gear and attunement lockouts and scheduling around 25-40 people. They realize they don’t want it for GW2, because they feel it could damage or split the community without careful consideration.
Others miss that level of synergy and camaraderie with their guildmates when conquering a difficult encounter, and they wish to bring that experience to GW2, along with content recognized as ‘end-game’ by the broader MMO community.

I can certainly respect both sides of the debate. I would hope that GW2 devs could bring instanced raiding to a point where many players would be satisfied, and the idea of an “infinite dungeon” certainly appeals to me as possible raid content or a flexible group size dungeon.

spoj.9672:

The same arguement can be made for Triple Trouble, Tequatl and Silver Wastes. I forced myself to play those just to get a few achieves and exclusive rewards. I will never touch them again now that im done because they are just completely unfun and not worth the time. There is already exclusivity and inaccessibility in the game. I dont see why a new part which satisfies a rather neglected part of the community is suddenly so outrageous.

I’m at a loss. You are admitting that you find the closest activity that this game has to a raid to be “unfun and not worth the time,” but you’re asking for more stuff like that to be added to the game? You’re not being very convincing.

Rauderi.8706:

Some people did the full raid life and got tired of it. Tired of the progression gear and attunement lockouts and scheduling around 25-40 people.

That’s the least of it. Most of my raiding experience was in the 10-man category, and it had another set of problems altogether:

1. Maintaining a healthy bench so that the show can go on if Mr. Key Player happens to get in a car accident and break both arms (yes, that actually happened to my progression raiding group).
2. Soothing hurt feelings when someone has to sit out a week or two because the other 10 players who showed up have more experience and are more likely to enable the group to kill one more boss this week than they did the previous.
3. Having to break the news to that really nice guy who consistently shows up week in and week out that he’s being cut loose because his reflexes are just not up to par and he’s holding everyone else back.
4. Training up brand new players only to see them guild hop when they have progressed enough to have a shot at applying to a more progressed guild without being laughed out of voice chat.

I understand that some players want “challenging content.” That’s fine. There are plenty of games out there that are chock full of it. Pick one of those. Many of us are pretty happy with the level of challenge that this game provides.

Bernie.8674:

spoj.9672:

The same arguement can be made for Triple Trouble, Tequatl and Silver Wastes. I forced myself to play those just to get a few achieves and exclusive rewards. I will never touch them again now that im done because they are just completely unfun and not worth the time. There is already exclusivity and inaccessibility in the game. I dont see why a new part which satisfies a rather neglected part of the community is suddenly so outrageous.

I’m at a loss. You are admitting that you find the closest activity that this game has to a raid to be “unfun and not worth the time,” but you’re asking for more stuff like that to be added to the game? You’re not being very convincing.

I dont see how open world content where im forced to play with complete strangers is comparable to a raid or other instanced content where i have complete control over who is involved. Triple Trouble, Tequatle and Vinewrath are far from raids. They are just open world bosses. Although with a bit more of an organisation requirement. They are not worth the time due to how poor the rewards are compared to the time taken. And they are not fun because my individual contribution is essentially nothing when in a zerg.

And to clarify. I really dont care what anet calls it. I just want some new challenging instanced content. They can call it raids, dungeons, missions or elite zones. As long as its challenging, instanced and has good rewards then i will be happy.

Avster.1935:

Do you even play GW2? There is absolutely no gear trend mill in this game.

Oh, then the 1500 silk that I still need to gather in order to complete the ascended set for my main character must be all in my mind, as were the six months it took to even max my crafting as well as the other three months it took to craft the few pieces I do have. I’ll be sure to hop in and craft the remaining pieces now that I realize there’s no treadmill.

Since when did I ever state I want to be more powerful than you?

Right here:

EDIT: Maybe raids can have NORMAL mode and HARD mode, with better more exclusive rewards locked in HARD CORE mode. That way, the not so skillful players can still stroll through the normal mode, and those seeking challenge can do the hard mode and get rewarded appropriately. Everyone wins.

Or did you mean skins? It looks like maybe you did, judging from these statements:

That doesn’t show that I’m a better/skillful player. ANet even said in HoT announcement that there will be no gear grind involved. This is GW2 aka horizontal progression aka Skin Wars 2. Give me an exclusive skin or item that let’s others know of my feat.

Avster.1935:

I absolutely hate gear grinding. Let me state it in bold so you don’t get confused again.

There is NO power creep in GW2 in terms of gear grinding

If you think you’re going to get nine other people together on a regular basis to grind through raids for nothing more than the promise of a better skin, then you’re going to have to brace yourself for some disappointment.

Avster.1935:

Why in the world would I go to WoW? I never played it, I never will.

Then you really have no idea of the connotations inherent in asking for a raiding system with exclusive rewards. I hate to break it to you, but many of us have played WoW at one time or another, and our shared experience brings certain expectations of what a raid is and isn’t.

Avster.1935:

Let me help you out. The only legitimate rebuttal that you have is that it “takes up resources that could have been used elsewhere”. Fine, okay. I can also say that I don’t like all the jumping puzzle (hypothetical, I actually enjoy JP) that they put in the game, since only a handful of people do them. So why waste resource on making more of them? See what I did there? None of us have concrete facts or numbers to dictate whether the allocation of such resources is a waste of time or not.

I absolutely despise jumping puzzles myself, and I would have been happy to say so if someone had started a jumping puzzle poll on these forums. However, this poll was about raiding, so I stated my opinion on that. Yours may differ, and that’s OK. You’re probably not going to change my mind, and I doubt I’ll change yours. From the sound of it, you’re thinking of Elite Missions from GW1 when you say “raid.” Those are similar, but I wouldn’t call them raids.

spoj.9672:

I dont see how open world content where im forced to play with complete strangers is comparable to a raid or other instanced content where i have complete control over who is involved. Triple Trouble, Tequatle and Vinewrath are far from raids. They are just open world bosses. Although with a bit more of an organisation requirement. They are not worth the time due to how poor the rewards are compared to the time taken. And they are not fun because my individual contribution is essentially nothing when in a zerg.

And to clarify. I really dont care what anet calls it. I just want some new challenging instanced content. They can call it raids, dungeons, missions or elite zones. As long as its challenging, instanced and has good rewards then i will be happy.

And this is the problem, one of your base needs is excluding others. That’s gotta be a hard sell to anet, and that inherently puts you in opposition with the majority of players.

And, yes there are zero-sum (or near-zero sum) elements to this discussion, because instanced difficult content inevitably involves resources that aren’t used on other game elements.

Windsagio.1340:

And this is the problem, one of your base needs is excluding others. That’s gotta be a hard sell to anet, and that inherently puts you in opposition with the majority of players.

In a nutshell, this is what raiding brings to my mind: exclusivity. Over the five years I spent in WoW I grew to be more and more exclusive of others because the raid-heavy environment punished me for acting any other way. This is ultimately what drove me to quit that game. I love that I can hope into Sparkfly Fen at 7 pm, make a healthy contribution to the Teq fight, and come away feeling good about defeating him rather than feeling rage about wiping when Teq was at 1% HP because one guy spent the entire fight dead, causing the rest of us to pull his weight. There are plenty of important things to rage about in this world. A video game is not one of them. When a game goes from being a source of relaxation to being a source of stress it’s time to move on.

Windsagio.1340:

And, yes there are zero-sum (or near-zero sum) elements to this discussion, because instanced difficult content inevitably involves resources that aren’t used on other game elements.

Well said. Someone mentioned jumping puzzles earlier. Even though I don’t like those so much, I’m not as concerned about them because balancing a jumping puzzle takes an afternoon. Balancing a difficult fight, on the other hand, is a completely different world, especially with eight different professions in the mix. Current content leaves a great deal of room for forgiveness. There are optimal builds, but those are focused on killing bosses faster as opposed to killing them at all. If the balance is off currently a boss takes 10 seconds longer to kill than it should. No one cares. When the balance is off in a raid, players rage. Balancing a raid is a very time-consuming undertaking.

So fractals and dungeons werent worth putting in the game because they create exclusivity? I think a lot of players would have a problem with what you are implying. Even players who dont spend most of their game time in dungeons and fractals.

MMO’s require both forms of content. There are many groups of players. They all have different priorities. You cannot and should not lump them all in together. It causes hostility. Do you really want players like me suddenly going full elitist in your open world maps because i dont have anywhere else to satisfy my desire for efficiency? And dont say the games not for me as an excuse. I like the combat system, its different to any other game. And when the game was released it had dungeons and then a short while after it had fractals. The already supports instanced content and has made players like me invest in it longterm. Its a good move for anet to expand on something they started at release.

Also nothings truly challenging when its open world. Because you can just zerg it. They said they want to make truly challenging content in HoT. They are going to miss that mark completely if its all open world or all zergable. You need instances to limit the players options to complete something. Restricting the number of players is one of the best and easiest ways to maintain difficulty.

Fractals and dungeons both are substantially less exclusive than instanced raids, and that’s the basis of the problem.

Everything is sliding scale, and of course Arenanet wants to balance players needs, but instanced raids (it’s important to emphasize both parts) are pretty far down the slider as far as accessibility and exclusivity go.

Also, seriously, I shouldn’t have to note that not all content is ‘just zergable’ open world. You know the usual suspects :p

Windsagio.1340:

Fractals and dungeons both are substantially less exclusive than instanced raids, and that’s the basis of the problem.

Heres the big problem. You are coming into this thread with a predefined idea of what raids in GW2 should be. Who said anything about instanced raids being more exclusive than fractals?

This discussion was done to death in the Raid CDI. The devs explicitly told people to stop talking about predefined ideas of raids from other games and basing complaints off of them. And told people to come up with ideas on how raids could work in GW2.

And to be honest it would be good of you to do the same rather than just argueing against content because your current ideas of it arent what you desire. It would be much more constructive to give feedback on how instanced content could be implemented in a way which you can support. Rather than just flat out saying no because of your experiences in other completely different games.

spoj.9672:

Windsagio.1340:

Fractals and dungeons both are substantially less exclusive than instanced raids, and that’s the basis of the problem.

Heres the big problem. You are coming into this thread with a predefined idea of what raids in GW2 should be. Who said anything about instanced raids being more exclusive than fractals?

This discussion was done to death in the Raid CDI. The devs explicitly told people to stop talking about predefined ideas of raids from other games and basing complaints off of them. And told people to come up with ideas on how raids could work in GW2.

And to be honest it would be good of you to do the same rather than just argueing against content because your current ideas of it arent what you desire. It would be much more constructive to give feedback on how instanced content could be implemented in a way which you can support. Rather than just flat out saying no because of your experiences in other completely different games.

As someone who organized and led 10 and 25 man progression level raids for more than 5 years, I easily saw that the biggest barrier to entry revolved around simple logistics. There is no worse feeling than putting together a 25 player raid when 26 people – all of whom you consider your friend/guildmate show up. It creates an untenable situation in which you have to make a very hard decision that can hurt a real friendship.

Given that your primary stated desire is to play in a controlled environment, the obvious compromise would be scalable instanced raids. That is something I could easily get behind – raids (or at least short raid group sized instances) involving group sizes between 8 and 15 people sounds perfect to me.

That is the only real way I see to address the exclusivity issue.

spoj.9672:

Windsagio.1340:

Fractals and dungeons both are substantially less exclusive than instanced raids, and that’s the basis of the problem.

Heres the big problem. You are coming into this thread with a predefined idea of what raids in GW2 should be. Who said anything about instanced raids being more exclusive than fractals?

This discussion was done to death in the Raid CDI. The devs explicitly told people to stop talking about predefined ideas of raids from other games and basing complaints off of them. And told people to come up with ideas on how raids could work in GW2.

And to be honest it would be good of you to do the same rather than just argueing against content because your current ideas of it arent what you desire. It would be much more constructive to give feedback on how instanced content could be implemented in a way which you can support. Rather than just flat out saying no because of your experiences in other completely different games.

Blaeys hit it, but it’s pretty simple; it’s more exclusive because it takes more organization and coordination.

On your last para, I have several times, but to repeat:

1) Guild summonable private versions of world bosses. Personally not in love with this idea, but it’s a very nice compromise
2) A focus on extending single group hard content. I don’t think they’ll do more dungeons, but I’d love it if they did.
3) More complex open world encounters (note how this interacts well with #1).

Easy compromise that’s not as resource intensive and is more accessible.

I vote no.

Because it is going to be 10 people stacking on top of each other. Teq raids prove it. Dungeon is no better.

ANet needs to change PvE combat or else that happens.

Blaeys.3102:

spoj.9672:

Windsagio.1340:

Fractals and dungeons both are substantially less exclusive than instanced raids, and that’s the basis of the problem.

Heres the big problem. You are coming into this thread with a predefined idea of what raids in GW2 should be. Who said anything about instanced raids being more exclusive than fractals?

This discussion was done to death in the Raid CDI. The devs explicitly told people to stop talking about predefined ideas of raids from other games and basing complaints off of them. And told people to come up with ideas on how raids could work in GW2.

And to be honest it would be good of you to do the same rather than just argueing against content because your current ideas of it arent what you desire. It would be much more constructive to give feedback on how instanced content could be implemented in a way which you can support. Rather than just flat out saying no because of your experiences in other completely different games.

As someone who organized and led 10 and 25 man progression level raids for more than 5 years, I easily saw that the biggest barrier to entry revolved around simple logistics. There is no worse feeling than putting together a 25 player raid when 26 people – all of whom you consider your friend/guildmate show up. It creates an untenable situation in which you have to make a very hard decision that can hurt a real friendship.

Given that your primary stated desire is to play in a controlled environment, the obvious compromise would be scalable instanced raids. That is something I could easily get behind – raids (or at least short raid group sized instances) involving group sizes between 8 and 15 people sounds perfect to me.

That is the only real way I see to address the exclusivity issue.

Agreed. I did a lot of the top server wotlk progression back in the day, and when theres enough people, you run into that issue. We actually had people get hurt that we “couldn’t fit 20 people into our 10m” group because i had to lead 2 different progressions groups with a co leader cor both 10m and 25.

Scaleable would resolve that in a heartbeat. It wont stop the guy from dying in the fire 15 times but hey, thats what kind words and a pat on the back are for.

edgarallanpwn.8739:

Blaeys.3102:

spoj.9672:

Windsagio.1340:

Fractals and dungeons both are substantially less exclusive than instanced raids, and that’s the basis of the problem.

Heres the big problem. You are coming into this thread with a predefined idea of what raids in GW2 should be. Who said anything about instanced raids being more exclusive than fractals?

This discussion was done to death in the Raid CDI. The devs explicitly told people to stop talking about predefined ideas of raids from other games and basing complaints off of them. And told people to come up with ideas on how raids could work in GW2.

And to be honest it would be good of you to do the same rather than just argueing against content because your current ideas of it arent what you desire. It would be much more constructive to give feedback on how instanced content could be implemented in a way which you can support. Rather than just flat out saying no because of your experiences in other completely different games.

As someone who organized and led 10 and 25 man progression level raids for more than 5 years, I easily saw that the biggest barrier to entry revolved around simple logistics. There is no worse feeling than putting together a 25 player raid when 26 people – all of whom you consider your friend/guildmate show up. It creates an untenable situation in which you have to make a very hard decision that can hurt a real friendship.

Given that your primary stated desire is to play in a controlled environment, the obvious compromise would be scalable instanced raids. That is something I could easily get behind – raids (or at least short raid group sized instances) involving group sizes between 8 and 15 people sounds perfect to me.

That is the only real way I see to address the exclusivity issue.

Agreed. I did a lot of the top server wotlk progression back in the day, and when theres enough people, you run into that issue. We actually had people get hurt that we “couldn’t fit 20 people into our 10m” group because i had to lead 2 different progressions groups with a co leader cor both 10m and 25.

Scaleable would resolve that in a heartbeat. It wont stop the guy from dying in the fire 15 times but hey, thats what kind words and a pat on the back are for.

How about “B team”? My guild solved this problem by setting up the B team. This raid was for PvPers, alts, those who were not ready for A team yet and those (main characters) who did not made it that week into A team raid because it was full. Mains who would normaly be in A team but registered for raid too late had guaranteed spot in A team raid next week. And gues what… it worked perfectly.

It is all about people.

Astralporing.1957:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Oh look another gamer who fears raids being introduced because of no reason whatsoever besides difficult content that they can’t do. Nothing new here.

Way to build your whole sentence out of mostly incorrect assumptions. Also, way to show exactly the reason why i might not want that “different breed” of players with the same attitude in this game.

SkylightMoon.1980:

With a poll of 250 votes, 2/3rds say that yes.

Oh yeah, ~150 people said yes. Out of over million players, and at least several thousand active forum posters. Great majority you have here.

Also, you really should brush up your info about MMORPG demographics. Raiders are always a minority – even in raid-heavy games, which GW2 is not. It is not an accident – you can say, it’s by design. By design, because, after all, raids are specifically made to exclude average and below-average players – they wouldn’t be challenging otherwise. That already places them as a content for minority, and that minority gets smaller and smaller the more challenging you want them to be.

If someone from top 10% wants a challenge, they would expect that challenge to be for them, not for someone of lower skill/gear plateau. If someone from top 1% wants a challenge… you get the picture.

TL/DR: Raids are a small minority content. They are a small minority content, because the raid community wants it that way. Even if they later try to fudge the numbers trying o pretend that they are more important than they really are.

200-300 is a significant sample size. Go to a math class please. So by your logic, because only 10% of the playerbase uses the forums, our opinions are the minority? Thats not hte assumption Anet operates under lol. Because the forums or reddit are the only place you can get an idea of what the players want, since there are no in games polls.

Again, Raid like content has already received a significant liking from the community. Raid bosses like teq and the wurm received a very good response when released. The only prblems people had, revolved around their open world aspect.

SkylightMoon.1980:

Astralporing.1957:

SkylightMoon.1980:

Oh look another gamer who fears raids being introduced because of no reason whatsoever besides difficult content that they can’t do. Nothing new here.

Way to build your whole sentence out of mostly incorrect assumptions. Also, way to show exactly the reason why i might not want that “different breed” of players with the same attitude in this game.

SkylightMoon.1980:

With a poll of 250 votes, 2/3rds say that yes.

Oh yeah, ~150 people said yes. Out of over million players, and at least several thousand active forum posters. Great majority you have here.

Also, you really should brush up your info about MMORPG demographics. Raiders are always a minority – even in raid-heavy games, which GW2 is not. It is not an accident – you can say, it’s by design. By design, because, after all, raids are specifically made to exclude average and below-average players – they wouldn’t be challenging otherwise. That already places them as a content for minority, and that minority gets smaller and smaller the more challenging you want them to be.

If someone from top 10% wants a challenge, they would expect that challenge to be for them, not for someone of lower skill/gear plateau. If someone from top 1% wants a challenge… you get the picture.

TL/DR: Raids are a small minority content. They are a small minority content, because the raid community wants it that way. Even if they later try to fudge the numbers trying o pretend that they are more important than they really are.

200-300 is a significant sample size. Go to a math class please. So by your logic, because only 10% of the playerbase uses the forums, our opinions are the minority? Thats not hte assumption Anet operates under lol. Because the forums or reddit are the only place you can get an idea of what the players want, since there are no in games polls.

Again, Raid like content has already received a significant liking from the community. Raid bosses like teq and the wurm received a very good response when released. The only prblems people had, revolved around their open world aspect.

Bold mine.

No, really, really it’s not, especially in comparison to the player base.

Really though, denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, not staring the facts in the face doesn’t do you any good.

Nike.2631:

What new complexity does 10 zerker-wearing DPS-mongers bring to the game that 5 doesn’t already deliver?

You can split them to 2 parties of 5 people each that have to coordinate their efforts, kinda similiar to what we have with the wurm except you don’t need a kittenload of people and it’s instanced.

Bernie.8674:

I’m at a loss. You are admitting that you find the closest activity that this game has to a raid to be “unfun and not worth the time,” but you’re asking for more stuff like that to be added to the game? You’re not being very convincing.

Open world isn’t fun for some people. Being stuck with random strangers and relying on them doesn’t create friendly environment.

Astralporing.1957:

Oh yeah, ~150 people said yes. Out of over million players, and at least several thousand active forum posters. Great majority you have here.

By your logic, only ~100 people said no. So the rest will not mind. Also, if I get this calculations right, if the sample size is 300, the population is large enough (>1,000,000), we can compute the “95% confidence interval margin of error” according to this equations:

MOE = (1.96)sqrt[p(1-p)/n]

where the sample size is denoted by n and the proportion of people responding a certain way is p which altogether gives margin of error equal to 5.544%.

Windsagio.1340:

Bold mine.

No, really, really it’s not, especially in comparison to the player base.

Really though, denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, not staring the facts in the face doesn’t do you any good.

What counter statistics are you able to present except pulling out “I know better” card?

rotten.9753:

Windsagio.1340:

Bold mine.

No, really, really it’s not, especially in comparison to the player base.

Really though, denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, not staring the facts in the face doesn’t do you any good.

What counter statistics are you able to present except pulling out “I know better” card?

We can go back to LoTRO or Wildstar if you want, also some quotes have been put above in this thread.

Further, although it’s not evidence per se, the likely reason that Arenanet has quit supporting dungeons is most lkely because not enough people do them to support the cost of further development. It’s certainly not spite, despite what you read on the forums.

If anything I’m baffled how you guys can convince yourself that the majority (or even a significant minority) want this content and will do it. I’m presuming its a ‘well I want it and the people in my guild who I talk to about it want it, so everyone else must want it!’

Edit: It doesn’t hurt me what you guys tell me, and it doesn’t hurt me if you guys get your content (although I’d question the business sense HEAVILY in an environment when the trend in the genre is generally away from instanced raids and they’ve had success with their dynamic event/world boss system). I honestly think you’re setting yourselves up for anger and dissapointment by telling each other it’s popular and demanded.

Windsagio.1340:

We can go back to LoTRO or Wildstar if you want, also some quotes have been put above in this thread.

Further, although it’s not evidence per se, the likely reason that Arenanet has quit supporting dungeons is most lkely because not enough people do them to support the cost of further development. It’s certainly not spite, despite what you read on the forums.

If anything I’m baffled how you guys can convince yourself that the majority (or even a significant minority) want this content and will do it. I’m presuming its a ‘well I want it and the people in my guild who I talk to about it want it, so everyone else must want it!’

Edit: It doesn’t hurt me what you guys tell me, and it doesn’t hurt me if you guys get your content (although I’d question the business sense HEAVILY in an environment when the trend in the genre is generally away from instanced raids and they’ve had success with their dynamic event/world boss system). I honestly think you’re setting yourselves up for anger and dissapointment by telling each other it’s popular and demanded.

I don’t want to go back to other games, I want to see statistics concerning gw2 population. Your argumentation is as solid as everyone’s else as long as you don’t present valid arguments.

A lot of people ITT have wow raids before their eyes when they hear that word. Since gw2 is a game with significant differences in gameplay (lack of trinity would be a major point), we cannot draw results from other games. Furthermore, 10-man raids would be much less restricting than 25-man or even 40-man. Logistically, at least. What people want here is a challenging instanced content which could be targeted towards 10-man parties. Right now there’s no middle ground, it’s either instanced content for 5 man parties or open world content for 50+ players.

spoj.9672:

Windsagio.1340:

Fractals and dungeons both are substantially less exclusive than instanced raids, and that’s the basis of the problem.

Heres the big problem. You are coming into this thread with a predefined idea of what raids in GW2 should be. Who said anything about instanced raids being more exclusive than fractals?

All those people that said they wanted raids because current gw2 content (which includes fractals) is not challenging enough, perhaps?

rotten.9753:

Also, if I get this calculations right

You don’t. Fot it to work you’d need to pick a representative sample from the whole player population. This sample, however, is seriously skewed on at least 3 levels (wonder if you can guess what those 3 skews are), and as such is completely worthless, unless you can calculate those skews somehow (good luck with that).
Also, you completely missed my whole post beyond the first 3 sentences.

No to the idea of Frankenstein-ing a raid “arm” onto the dungeon “torso.”

In Guild Wars, we got new elite areas with increased party sizes.

(Urgoz’s Warren and The Deep)

Keep raids away from existing dungeons, and if anything create entirely new content for raids (that is created around the idea of having ten people).

Otherwise, you will notice that having 5 more players allows you to abuse the low level of pve difficulty that much more. (more blinds, more reflects, 0 challenge)

Astralporing.1957:

You don’t. Fot it to work you’d need to pick a representative sample from the whole player population. This sample, however, is seriously skewed on at least 3 levels (wonder if you can guess what those 3 skews are), and as such is completely worthless, unless you can calculate those skews somehow (good luck with that).

I’m well aware of the limitations of polls like that. Which brings another point, that is, you have no data to prove otherwise and your arguments are as valid as everyone’s else.

Also, you completely missed my whole post beyond the first 3 sentences.\

True, I shouldn’t have quoted your entire post. My bad.

rotten.9753:

Astralporing.1957:

You don’t. Fot it to work you’d need to pick a representative sample from the whole player population. This sample, however, is seriously skewed on at least 3 levels (wonder if you can guess what those 3 skews are), and as such is completely worthless, unless you can calculate those skews somehow (good luck with that).

I’m well aware of the limitations of polls like that. Which brings another point, that is, you have no data to prove otherwise and your arguments are as valid as everyone’s else.

Also, you completely missed my whole post beyond the first 3 sentences.\

True, I shouldn’t quoted your entire post. My bad.

No offense sir but any poll which does not make an effort to produce a representative sample is by definition invalid as a source of proof of any point. The burden is placed on the poll to prove its validity, not on those who question it. If this were not the case then one making the statement that 80% of the playerbase dislike raids because 4 of his five raid disliking friends answered no would be considered as valid as a more scientifically/statistically sound poll with a large sample size.

Astralporing.1957:

All those people that said they wanted raids because current gw2 content (which includes fractals) is not challenging enough, perhaps?

Maybe because fractals are only artificially challenging? Via scaling of stats and almost no mechanical changes than starting levels which are not exactly challenging.

Ashen.2907:

No offense, sir, but any poll which does not make an effort to produce a representative sample is by definition invalid as a source of proof of any point. The burden is placed on the poll to prove its validity, not on those who question it.

This.

Ashen.2907:

No offense sir but any poll which does not make an effort to produce a representative sample is by definition invalid as a source of proof of any point. The burden is placed on the poll to prove its validity, not on those who question it.

Then everyone should believe in a higher power because you cannot prove it doesn’t exist. As long as no one has any concrete data, this argumentations is moot.

Ashen.2907:

If this were not the case then one making the statement that 80% of the playerbase dislike raids because 4 of his five raid disliking friends answered no would be considered as valid as a more scientifically/statistically sound poll with a large sample size.

Sorry, but this is not the issue of the sample size but that those forums aren’t representative enough of general population. Which no one except maybe anet has any concrete data. So both sides can pull out numbers from their kitten s as much as they like.

rotten.9753:

Ashen.2907:

No offense sir but any poll which does not make an effort to produce a representative sample is by definition invalid as a source of proof of any point. The burden is placed on the poll to prove its validity, not on those who question it.

Then everyone should believe in a higher power because you cannot prove it doesn’t exist. As long as no one has any concrete data, this argumentations is moot.

Belief and proof are very different things. One does not need to believe in that whih can be proven, it just is.

If you are going to attempt to use math/statistics to prove the validity of something in the manner that you did, the burden is on you to show that your same is representative of the whole. If you cannot do so the your calculations are questionable at best.

Astralporing.1957:

spoj.9672:

Windsagio.1340:

Fractals and dungeons both are substantially less exclusive than instanced raids, and that’s the basis of the problem.

Heres the big problem. You are coming into this thread with a predefined idea of what raids in GW2 should be. Who said anything about instanced raids being more exclusive than fractals?

All those people that said they wanted raids because current gw2 content (which includes fractals) is not challenging enough, perhaps?

Ok so the only increase in exclusivity we are talking about is difficulty. That was not what i was referring to (as its minor and unavoidable even in open world content). Doesnt change the fact that raids can be made inclusive to suit other players desires (difficulty scales/story modes). So you really havent done what i said and pulled away from the predefined definitions of raids you have in your mind. Please try again and give constructive compromises.

rotten.9753:

Ashen.2907:

If this were not the case then one making the statement that 80% of the playerbase dislike raids because 4 of his five raid disliking friends answered no would be considered as valid as a more scientifically/statistically sound poll with a large sample size.

Sorry, but this is not the issue of the sample size but that those forums aren’t representative enough of general population. Which no one except maybe anet has any concrete data. So both sides can pull out numbers from their kitten s as much as they like.

Ok, lets change the example to the 500 people in his open world only loving guild. A sample size larger than anything I have seen on these forums. I bet that if I were to poll a thousand players who dont PvP about whether or not dev resources should be spent on that game mode the reponse would indicate that, “a majority of GW2 players want development on PvP stopped.”

Ashen.2907:

Belief and proof are very different things. One does not need to believe in that whih can be proven, it just is.

If you are going to attempt to use math/statistics to prove the validity of something in the manner that you did, the burden is on you to show that your same is representative of the whole. If you cannot do so the your calculations are questionable at best.

Em, I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m trying to say that neither side has more validity than the other since there’s no data available for us about that issue.