Guild Wars 2

Just yawn at the first guy that comes over to show you his new shinies like I do too, Ohoni. Smile and wink. We open world supporters had our time for nearly 3 years, and it was a funny ride at least for me up to this point. Now it´s raid time and we are in the backseat. You have to know when a battle if lost, and if raids are not the surefire success Anet hopes them to be, maybe it will be our time again.^^

Well, given how much a test of skill they’re supposed to be I’d hope things like rez orbs are disabled. Personally I think they should remove the repair anvil as well.
It made for a good joke.
But these folks asked for a truly brutal challenge, and it just wouldn’t be fair to steal that from them with such cheap things as rez orbs and easy access repairs.
No, punishment for not being as awesome as they think they are should cost them a trip elsewhere to repair.

I will use dire like always.

Torolan.5816:

Just yawn at the first guy that comes over to show you his new shinies like I do too, Ohoni. Smile and wink. We open world supporters had our time for nearly 3 years, and it was a funny ride at least for me up to this point. Now it´s raid time and we are in the backseat. You have to know when a battle if lost, and if raids are not the surefire success Anet hopes them to be, maybe it will be our time again.^^

You do realize anet is still developing open world stuff right? There will be more of the same Silverwastes farming you guys love so much and more.
You do realize Living Story is starting again after HoT releases right?

I guess the both of us know after a content drought of 10? months that Anet is incapable of doing both raids and open world all at once. Maybe we open worlders will get thrown a bone then and when, but the general direction where GW2 goes seems pretty clear to me.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Well, given how much a test of skill they’re supposed to be I’d hope things like rez orbs are disabled. Personally I think they should remove the repair anvil as well.
It made for a good joke.
But these folks asked for a truly brutal challenge, and it just wouldn’t be fair to steal that from them with such cheap things as rez orbs and easy access repairs.
No, punishment for not being as awesome as they think they are should cost them a trip elsewhere to repair.

Part of raiding is learning the fights. You can expect 40-50 wipes minimum for the first guilds to complete the content. Not having a repair anvil is just silly. Hard does not mean having to start over every 20 minutes while you are trying to learn the fight. That is just a useless time sync.

Res orbs on the other hand allow you to rotate people in and out of the fight and complete it when you should have failed. it may be a non-issue with enrage timers, but it is something that should be considered.

I hope so. I have about 50 of them that’s been in my storage for nearly 2-years.

Nah. Keep ’em to fuel the gem store.

I’m fine with it as long as there lots and lots of aoes. I can see it now. -watches as someone revives using an orb. Then they get hit by an aoe and are dead again- God would be so fun to watch.

My point being you have one health, can’t dodge, and walk slow. If your using them in a raid and the raid is actually difficult, well then your gonna probably die again before your even effective.

Torolan.5816:

I guess the both of us know after a content drought of 10? months that Anet is incapable of doing both raids and open world all at once. Maybe we open worlders will get thrown a bone then and when, but the general direction where GW2 goes seems pretty clear to me.

You realize they were working on the entire xpac (not just raids) …. I think its better to 100% focus on one thing (xpac in this case) than a 50/50 between xpac and LS…. if that is what you are asking for , that means you preferred low quality LS/open world crap and delayed release on HoT …. that sounds awful to me. I’m glad anet isn’t trying to do both at once…..

You open world lovers have had your content for years…. have some kind of patience.

Gaile Gray.6029:

It’s really up to the devs. If they express the desire to have a separate forum, we could do that for them. If they feel that Raid feedback can be included in an existing forum, we’ll go that route. In other words: TBD.

Fair enough! I’d be really surprised if it didn’t end up being the D&F forum, though, given that raids are the way forward for end-game PvE, but I guess we’ll see!

There is a major concern that I have with raids…

According to the Letter from the President : “They’ll be a big part of our live content strategy for Heart of Thorns.”

Ive raided in every single MMO out there. I hate raiding. I don’t find it fun. I find it boring, tedious, frustrating, angering, and a general overall displeasing feature of a game.

That being said, I don’t care if they lock rewards away, or if theyre exclusive. Do the content, get the rewards, I get that. What bothers me is when they lock away major portions of the story behind them.

ANet realized their mistake when they did that with Arah, and changed it (albeit, 3 years later almost). As a person who purchased the game, I should be able to complete all aspects of the story, living or otherwise, by myself. I should never have to rely on others to complete the story.

I know other MMORPGs do this, but ANet has constantly stated that they are bucking the trend of MMORPG play (i.e. the manifesto), so I don’t think its too much to ask of ANet to avoid it.

If raids are going to be a major part of living world content going forward, Im just concerned that the people who don’t like raiding like myself will just get forced into raiding, or quit. I like the game, and I enjoy the story, but I don’t want to be forced into doing something I hate just to see the story.

Did you hated the raid themselves or the fact that you need to grind one to get the gear needed for the next one?

I feel like everyone failed to think about how the enrage timer is tuned. They can set it at the dps of a nomad necro with a scepter, in which case everyone is fine, or they tune it to a staff ele against a large hitbox and we’re all kittened. The timer is there so a boss encounter is a “do you know what you’re doing?” instead of a “have you stacked enough damage mitigation to draw the fight on indefinitely until the boss dies because it doesn’t have healing skills”. You need to enter a fight and know: the mechanics, your class’ ability to contribute to the group, and have composed a group that synergises. You can’t tickle the boss and run around ressing players in SR after they die every 30secs, that is what it is limiting, nothing else. Challenging content (hopefully) isn’t a test of gear, but a test of knowledge and the ability to apply it in a given context. The enrage timer is testing this. Caveat: depends upon how it is tuned

Thaddeus.4891:

Did you hated the raid themselves or the fact that you need to grind one to get the gear needed for the next one?

I hate the overall principle behind raiding. Gaming companies seem to all think that more people = more challenge. Its more like more people = more frustration.

I get that people like it, and if they do, more power to them. I just think that they need to stop getting the idea to put the “personal” story (and the living story is “personal”, else why would the group call you boss?) should be locked behind group content.

They specifically said on the stream that the raids take place after the main LS and are only side stories that have no bearing on the main overall story arc.

So you shouldn’t have to worry.

Torolan.5816:

I guess the both of us know after a content drought of 10? months that Anet is incapable of doing both raids and open world all at once. Maybe we open worlders will get thrown a bone then and when, but the general direction where GW2 goes seems pretty clear to me.

I thought we were getting at least 4 more open world maps with new features and masteries. And new enemies and new allies. So I guess ANet can handle both.

And let’s be honest, over the past three years, open world PvE has had the most content updates. If anyone has any claim to getting more attention it’s the dungeon goers and WvWers.

Obvious answer on an obvious question.

Honestly, I’d rather see them useable. :P
Like Pukc said, if the Raid encounters are well designed it’d be hard to even use a res orb safely, and up until now there’s really no reason to even have them.

I’ve had a few sitting in my bank since launch,
I think one time I died intentionally just so I could use one and see what it’s like,
Otherwise it’s pretty much a waste of an item :P

I am for removing the anvil… And a short cooldown after exiting(say 5 minutes)

Having an anvil allows you to bang your head into a wall infinitely until the wall cracks. If there are waypoints inside of the raid and an anvil, it will be beaten within a few hours for the first ever try. Unless anet puts in place things to stop players from grinding their way to victory, players WILL grind their way to victory

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

I am for removing the anvil… And a short cooldown after exiting(say 5 minutes)

Having an anvil allows you to bang your head into a wall infinitely until the wall cracks. If there are waypoints inside of the raid and an anvil, it will be beaten within a few hours for the first ever try. Unless anet puts in place things to stop players from grinding their way to victory, players WILL grind their way to victory

I agree with this, though it’s kind of a different topic altogether. :P
But I’ve long been of the opinion that having repair anvils in dungeons make them far too easy to just brute force your way through. If there are no anvils there’s at least a “game over” clause somewhere.

Crystal Reid.2481:

They will be disabled.

Nice to hear!

I remember people cheesing high level fractals with them, which was kinda of lame.

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

I am for removing the anvil… And a short cooldown after exiting(say 5 minutes)

Having an anvil allows you to bang your head into a wall infinitely until the wall cracks. If there are waypoints inside of the raid and an anvil, it will be beaten within a few hours for the first ever try. Unless anet puts in place things to stop players from grinding their way to victory, players WILL grind their way to victory

Yes, yes, let’s make raids even more about putting up with annoyances. Only those with TRUE patience should be rewarded!

Will I be able to do raids if I don’t have HoT ?

no

/15schars

Kind of a stupid question ofc. you have to buy HoT to be able to raid.

Windsagio.1340:

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

I am for removing the anvil… And a short cooldown after exiting(say 5 minutes)

Having an anvil allows you to bang your head into a wall infinitely until the wall cracks. If there are waypoints inside of the raid and an anvil, it will be beaten within a few hours for the first ever try. Unless anet puts in place things to stop players from grinding their way to victory, players WILL grind their way to victory

Yes, yes, let’s make raids even more about putting up with annoyances. Only those with TRUE patience should be rewarded!

It’s not about annoyance,
It’s about forcing players to play properly and not just throw themselves at encounters for hours until they win.
Removing anvils puts a ‘lose’ condition on instances (All your armor is broken), which means if your party sucks, you will actually fail. Something that only happens now if your party runs out of patience.

Remember when you could actually lose at video games?
The concept of ‘game over’ is barely existent anymore

ReiCH.6273:

Hardly competes with full set of legendary armour, minis, other skins, titles, guild decos if you’re a pve’er though… fair is fair, they need as much love as the raiders

And if you’re into WvW .. well … tough luck huh?

WvW gives exclusive rewards through tournaments.
“Fair is fair” has to be considerate of the breadth of the content. There’s more PvE content in the game, and as such PvE offers more exclusive rewards. You can view this as being a matter of percents rather then of absolute values.
You could argue that the amount of content each particular sections of the game gets is unfair, but I think the amount of rewards relative to the amount of content each sections gets is fairly well balanced (though strictly speaking, WvW and PvP could use a bit more rewards).

Furthermore, you have to consider the relevancy of the rewards to the content type. Legendaries are, in essence, skins. They also have the ability to change stats. But why would PvP have any use for such a thing? Just give skins as rewards.
Things like that.

Basically, the concept of “fairness” you presented is too childish. It lacks nuance. “everyone gets one” doesn’t necessarily make things fair. There are the points I mention above, as well as things like the number of players doing a particular content type. PvP has less players, so would it actually be fair that it gets the same amount of rewards as PvE, which has many times more players? There are multiple perspective through which you have to evaluate “fairness”.

You also have to consider what affect it has on the game. Sometimes unfairness can enhance the game by creating psychological and social motivators. Sometimes you want to add a disproportionate amount of rewards to a piece of content in order to attract players to it, for example. Though that’s kind of getting outside of the scope of what we’re talking about here.

EnRohbi.2187:

Windsagio.1340:

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

I am for removing the anvil… And a short cooldown after exiting(say 5 minutes)

Having an anvil allows you to bang your head into a wall infinitely until the wall cracks. If there are waypoints inside of the raid and an anvil, it will be beaten within a few hours for the first ever try. Unless anet puts in place things to stop players from grinding their way to victory, players WILL grind their way to victory

Yes, yes, let’s make raids even more about putting up with annoyances. Only those with TRUE patience should be rewarded!

It’s not about annoyance,
It’s about forcing players to play properly and not just throw themselves at encounters for hours until they win.

Well, if you are assuming boss encounters will be done badly anough that it would have even been an option…

Crystal Reid.2481:

They will be disabled.

You should think twice about that. Fractals (wich i guess is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay easier then a raid), most of time makes you waste ress orbs. Why? you are STUNNED for 1-3 secs (not sure) after using the orb with crazy low hp. Result? wasted most of time. In raids with even more crazy aoe stuff, this will be waste anyway.

To be honest this is not clever from a business point of view (orb = money, and raids will waste most of them).

I rarely ever saw people using orbs in fractals, my friends n I run 50’s in about 40min average, have never needed orbs and we avoid doing things like letting ellen kiel die in the mai trin fight or doing underwater moss.
We will however stack the molten zerker to see if we can finish it faster than before:D

This could be interesting indeed, and we might need a designated rezzer for the first many runs:D (Super tanky thief perhaps?)

But yes, I would love the removal of the anvils as well, as others have said, it creates an actual “Game Over” situation, which frankly isn’t possible anywhere else.

Disabling res orbs is a necessary part of the HARDKORE!!!! image they want to present.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Crystal Reid.2481:

They will be disabled.

You should think twice about that. Fractals (wich i guess is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay easier then a raid), most of time makes you waste ress orbs. Why? you are STUNNED for 1-3 secs (not sure) after using the orb with crazy low hp. Result? wasted most of time. In raids with even more crazy aoe stuff, this will be waste anyway.

To be honest this is not clever from a business point of view (orb = money, and raids will waste most of them).

It is clever from a business point of view: they are advertising raids as hardcore, challenging, group content. Allowing the use of res orbs tarnishes that branding.

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Well, given how much a test of skill they’re supposed to be I’d hope things like rez orbs are disabled. Personally I think they should remove the repair anvil as well.
It made for a good joke.
But these folks asked for a truly brutal challenge, and it just wouldn’t be fair to steal that from them with such cheap things as rez orbs and easy access repairs.
No, punishment for not being as awesome as they think they are should cost them a trip elsewhere to repair.

A dev did posted in this thread the res orbs would be disabled.

But I completely agree about removing the repair anvil. They should also disable instant repair canisters too.

For a long time the elitists have complained about the game being too “easy” and “boring”.

I say give them what they want. Make raids as difficult as possible.

Aside from disabling res orbs and removing the anvil, take the death penalty from GW1 and add it to raids with no way to remove the penalty during the raid. If all players get a -60% death penalty, the raid fails and everyone is removed from the map. They would have to go repair their armor and start all over again.

Charrbeque.8729:

ScribeTheMad.7614:

Well, given how much a test of skill they’re supposed to be I’d hope things like rez orbs are disabled. Personally I think they should remove the repair anvil as well.
It made for a good joke.
But these folks asked for a truly brutal challenge, and it just wouldn’t be fair to steal that from them with such cheap things as rez orbs and easy access repairs.
No, punishment for not being as awesome as they think they are should cost them a trip elsewhere to repair.

A dev did posted in this thread the res orbs would be disabled.

But I completely agree about removing the repair anvil. They should also disable instant repair canisters too.

For a long time the elitists have complained about the game being too “easy” and “boring”.

I say give them what they want. Make raids as difficult as possible.

Aside from disabling res orbs and removing the anvil, take the death penalty from GW1 and add it to raids with no way to remove the penalty during the raid. If all players get a -60% death penalty, the raid fails and everyone is removed from the map. They would have to go repair their armor and start all over again.

The hate is strong in this one.

so many bads in this thread salty about raids they don’t think they’ll be able to complete

SkiTz.4590:

Torolan.5816:

I guess the both of us know after a content drought of 10? months that Anet is incapable of doing both raids and open world all at once. Maybe we open worlders will get thrown a bone then and when, but the general direction where GW2 goes seems pretty clear to me.

You realize they were working on the entire xpac (not just raids) …. I think its better to 100% focus on one thing (xpac in this case) than a 50/50 between xpac and LS…. if that is what you are asking for , that means you preferred low quality LS/open world crap and delayed release on HoT …. that sounds awful to me. I’m glad anet isn’t trying to do both at once…..

You open world lovers have had your content for years…. have some kind of patience.

It is not up to me to decide how Anet divides their budgets on their projects, but of course I, as everybody else, have my preferences. If open world event content like Marionette was not that much of a success for them, it´s only logical to look for a more promising source of income. I also already said that I don´t mind being on the backseat for now.

And not that we confuse something here:
LS2 was utter garbage in my eyes, that was already not the kind of content that I am looking for. From this step of adding new content, a HoT stand alone new open world to explore is a vast improvement already. Even raids are probably a step up from this mess.

Crystal Reid.2481:

They will be disabled.

Why bother selling them in gem stores?

Just remove them from the gemstore if you don’t want to sell them.

Will we be able to relogin to res/repair like in fractal during raid and selling spots in raid? Please dont allow this.

EnRohbi.2187:

Windsagio.1340:

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

I am for removing the anvil… And a short cooldown after exiting(say 5 minutes)

Having an anvil allows you to bang your head into a wall infinitely until the wall cracks. If there are waypoints inside of the raid and an anvil, it will be beaten within a few hours for the first ever try. Unless anet puts in place things to stop players from grinding their way to victory, players WILL grind their way to victory

Yes, yes, let’s make raids even more about putting up with annoyances. Only those with TRUE patience should be rewarded!

It’s not about annoyance,
It’s about forcing players to play properly and not just throw themselves at encounters for hours until they win.
Removing anvils puts a ‘lose’ condition on instances (All your armor is broken), which means if your party sucks, you will actually fail. Something that only happens now if your party runs out of patience.

Remember when you could actually lose at video games?
The concept of ‘game over’ is barely existent anymore

I believe from what’s been said they’ll be something the equivalent of a rage timer. Which means that the time it takes to kill something becomes important. People going back to repair will probably not work in the middle of an encounter anyway.

One thing I’ve noticed that is missing from GW2 vs GW1 is a fail state on dungeons or dungeon like missions.

In GW1, Underworld ad Fissure of Woe both required an entrance fee and they both had a fail state that would eject everyone and make you lose your entry fee (as well as the expensive consumables that were used later).

It would be interesting if raids required some kind of token or buff on everyone before they could enter – something that had a cost – and several ways to fail the mission and force a restart.

As mentioned above, with out some sort of attrition, the limiting factor becomes time and determination.

Reloging is one thing but what if you disconnect? And as for selling, ppl will do it no matter what even if raids will not be under LFG.

I don’t see what argument there is to be had, if you’re casual and don’t like raids that’s fine you don’t have to get legendary armor I don’t like to mindlessly grind or trading post flip or map complete but I have to do all of those if I want a legendary weapon. If you don’t want to learn the raids you aren’t going to get the armor, the day I can log in and get a gift of exploration just for completing lions arch is the day I’ll start taking these arguments seriously

Nike.2631:

Ohoni.6057:

and even if that does work out, it still requires the player to participate in the raid, which is something they probably have no interest in doing.

That ship has sailed, and it sailed long ago. I’m not big on participating in guilds made up of hundreds of people I’ve never taken a meal with, but that was the requirement to get guild merits and the weapon skins those buy. I’m not a huge PvP’er in this game but I had to do it to get the glorious medium armor coat (turns out I’m actually pretty good at it). I like Fractals well enough, but I haven’t done so many the RNG has dropped any of the weapon skins on me. I don’t have any of the luminescent armor despite having thousands of hours played. I still haven’t killed Liadri, but I understand that its a requirement to have the miniature and wear the title.

You either jump through specific hoops or you don’t. But hoops are well established as part of Gw2’s rewards system.

I find Neitzsche to be mostly a morose twit, but he did get one thing right – to truly want something is to want to take all the steps required to get it. Otherwise you’re just fantasizing about it. While I’m with you that alternative, proportionate methods of acquisition would be a huge plus, I just don’t see ANet adjusting course on something they’ve already done repeatedly in the past. On the other hand we’ve seen them respond to the irritating nature of the first round of weapon precursors by added a new means of acquisition, so maybe the same will eventually be done for the armor legendaries. Years from now, but eventually.

This is patently untrue. Guild merits are attainable even by small guilds over time. I know five people guilds that have unlocked all guild missions.

If it was implement I can actually see the slippery slope occurring too though. If all skins were obtainable I can see some players going “well the reaper title would go really well with this outfit/necromancer but I don’t want to get 60 ranks in pvp, it should be obtainable elsewhere” And then titles would be the next target.

People probably would ask for that, but it doesn’t mean that they would have to get it. Saying yes to one thing doesn’t mean that the developers would have to say yes to everything. Unless they decided that the majority of players would be happier with titles as purely cosmetic, rather than trophy-based, they wouldn’t have to actually implement that. They should be open to the idea either way though.

You’ve made yourself into a characture/fanatic on the far left/right of an issue that can’t be reasoned with/bargained with or engaged in any form of meaningful discussion for the most part.

Not really. I’ve taken what I believe to be a very reasonable stand on the issue, and have just stood firm through a number of very heated assaults. I don’t see anything ignoble about that. I am willing to bargain on the specifics, but there’s no point to bargaining on the basic principle that the rewards should be available through alternate means. I mean, how would that even work? The idea of a bargaining process is that one side gives up a little of what they want and the other side gives up a little of theirs, and you meet in the middle. If I were to, say, agree that raiders deserve to have unique access to certain skins, then I would be giving up 100% of my side, for zero gain. I am willing to bargain, but my core principles are the entire reason I’m in this discussion, so I can’t see how the bargain could involve handing those away.

To break down the various groups you feel I’ve somehow “lost,”
To break down every group of players you’ve basically prevented support from (who might otherwise have liked some of the ideas)
-PvP players, who would retain their leaderboards and ranks to denote status, and would gain access to a whole suite of new skins via PvPing, such as Fractal and Legendary armors,
-WvW players, who would still have easiest access to Mist Hero weapons, but would also gain the ability to earn dungeon, Fractal, world boss, Legenday, and other skins through WvW (ie, they would gain about ten times what they would be sharing, and losing nothing).
-Fractal players, see WvW.
-Veteran players would retain everything they’ve earned.
-Any player who has shown outstanding ability or done something impressive, many of which offer ZERO ingame rewards, so there’s no reason why the ones who did the various feats that do offer a specific reward are any better than those who have done even more epic feats that have no in-game official recognition to it.
-Players who like to show off , who cares?

I’ve really only lost one group, the group that wants unique items for unique content, and there’s really no way that I could have kept any of them, because my stance is diametrically opposed to theirs.

I’m not happy at your sadness. I have no emotional attachments to your feelings. This is a gaming forum, most ppl don’t care about how your “emotions”.

Given the statements you made, I don’t believe you are being honest, but say what you like.

You can keep making ridiculous assumptions of “most players are locked out of raids.. most players won’t do them, etc etc etc”….you don’t know what the majority of the players will do or don’t do. You don’t have ANY STATISTICS for this game because there are NONE when it comes to raids. It’s a “wait and see”, in terms of how raids will be in gw2.

I believe, based on the population this game has, that I am correct on this. Would you care to make a wager on the results? Six months from now, if the majority of the game’s population has not completed the raid enough times to earn a set of Legendary armor, would you agree to fight for them to open up those skins to other., non-raiding activities for that raid and all future raids? On the flipside of the bet, if the majority of players have done enough raiding to have earned their Legendary armor, then I will agree to never discuss broadening the rewards again.

You on the other hand have already set out to believe only 5-10% of the population will even attempt it.

I never said that. I said that it was likely that only 5-10% would actually complete the raid, at least in a non-nerfed form, and assuming that it’s difficult enough to satisfy the hardcore raider type players so that the forums/reddit aren’t flooded with “oh, the new raid is so baby-mode.” posts. Now, assuming those conditions, I would bet that most players would at least attempt the raid, to a point, but if it were frustratingly difficult they would stop bothering after a certain point, well short of what it would likely take to earn the Legendary armor.

You want rewards your way and only the way YOU FIND FUN. Anything else is junk and deserves to not receive unique rewards like WvW , PvP, dungs, raids, etc (basically you seem to find everything in this game unfun and you don’t want those modes getting exclusive items)

That’s a gross distortion of the points I’ve made. I am not asking for unique rewards for ANY content, even the stuff I prefer. I’m asking for ALL rewards to be made available through ALL content, so while it would diminish the few unique rewards that each of those gameplay types offers, they would also GAIN access to dozens of other types of rewards that are currently locked out fro those types of content.

Just yawn at the first guy that comes over to show you his new shinies like I do too, Ohoni. Smile and wink. We open world supporters had our time for nearly 3 years, and it was a funny ride at least for me up to this point. Now it´s raid time and we are in the backseat. You have to know when a battle if lost, and if raids are not the surefire success Anet hopes them to be, maybe it will be our time again.^^

I suppose. Has there been any talk about the next great “GW2” game, the one that will pick up where GW2 left off like Wildstar picked up after WoW? If raiding does take over the game’s high end, then we’ll all need something to play. I’ll really miss GW2 though, it’s the longest I’ve stuck with an MMO, specifically for the reasons that they now seem to hate.

I thought we were getting at least 4 more open world maps with new features and masteries. And new enemies and new allies. So I guess ANet can handle both.

I’m willing to forgive a lot out of them, but 4 maps really is pretty minimal for kitten expansion. If they can pump out another 3-4 over the first year then I’ll be satisfied, but four maps at launch really is a bad sign about how much work they can reasonably get done at once. How much more could they have accomplished had they not wasted time on raids?

And let’s be honest, over the past three years, open world PvE has had the most content updates. If anyone has any claim to getting more attention it’s the dungeon goers and WvWers.

Open world PvE has had the most update because it has deserved it, by virtue of having the most players. Dungeons did not see updates because very few GW2 players actually enjoy dungeons. WvW received few updates because relatively few GW2 players play WvW, and because with PvP content, the other players are your “content updates,” it’s new content every night, whereas PvE only changes when they add new things to the game. I’m not saying PvE hasn’t had a good run, I’m saying that it fully deserves a longer run.

If you don’t want to learn the raids you aren’t going to get the armor, the day I can log in and get a gift of exploration just for completing lions arch is the day I’ll start taking these arguments seriously

Nobody’s talking about offering ANY method for earning Legendary armor that would be as easy as exploring LA, but I am perfectly open to the idea of offering the Gift of Exploration through other game modes, in an effort that would be equivalent to map completion (such as earning it through dungeons by completing every dungeon path at least once, and accumulating several thousand dungeon tokens).

This is patently untrue. Guild merits are attainable even by small guilds over time. I know five people guilds that have unlocked all guild missions.

It’s even theoretically possible with a one-person guild, so long as you can rope other players into assisting you with the missions. They don’t have to be official guild members to do that.

Ohoni.6057:

I suppose. Has there been any talk about the next great “GW2” game, the one that will pick up where GW2 left off like Wildstar picked up after WoW? If raiding does take over the game’s high end, then we’ll all need something to play. I’ll really miss GW2 though, it’s the longest I’ve stuck with an MMO, specifically for the reasons that they now seem to hate.

I don´t know if you´re into Space MMOS, but Star Citizen sounds promising, although it is not done yet. Avoids the hardcore PvP of Eve online and looks fantastic. Bonus is that Chris Roberts is at the helmet of this one, the guy is the legend that made the classic Wing Commander. I was initially sceptic if this could really be done and you´ll need a top notch computer to play it in all its glory, but big gaming magazines tested the alpha modules again lately and they give thumbs up.

Nah, I’d dabble in spacey games, but I’d be looking for a true fantasy game, a GW2 without the raid-jocks and their fancy letter jackets.

Great! Finally content that is rewarding. Imho almost all content should be like this but it’s a good start.

So maybe Mike’s talk about B2P in fact did mean that is a road they are going into.

Hope we will see this in more content. Less gem-store items, more rewards ingame.

It increases the value of the item and it increases the fun of the content.

I do hope it are also some of the best looking rewards. Not that some very hard dungeon gives you some sword but you can buy a similar sword but with particals effects from the cash-shop.

“I’m interested in seeing if these rewards are actually end of raid chest RNG (like teq hoard) or will they be dropping in the raids from the mobs/bosses …. thoughts?
I just hope its not like frac skins RNG right now….”

If there are indeed multiple rewards per dungeon it could be a mix. Something that is rewarded for completing, something that can drop (with doable RNG) from the end-boss (no need for it to be a chest, those chest are a little strange anyway) and some can drop from mobs.

Ohoni.6057:

It allows people who want those rewards to earn them, even if they have no interest in Raids. Raids are, by their nature, exclusionary content that most players are not intended to complete. By locking these rewards behind raiding, it puts them off limits for large portions of the players, which is antithetical to GW2’s basic philosophy of inclusion. They’ve turned to the Dark Side.

Just ast 90 % of the rewards, and 95% of the best looking rewards are now locked behind a gold-grind.

Well then imho it’s good to also have some things directly locked behind specific content.

This is what GW2 missed and might be one of the biggest improvements coming with HoT.. at least if they will do this rewards for content, on many other places as well.

I did get some hope for this when Mike went on and on about B2P on the presentation, while I still have to see if they will indeed start behaving like B2P so far the future looks bright.