Guild Wars 2

Kevan.8912:

another question before: what is really stopping me from doing fractals? a huge, steamy heap of money and crafting ingredients to stack AR.
what will stop me from raids? with pretty good probability, still not having ascendeds + capped masteries.

I didn’t find Ascended Armor that expensive. Only thing was the idiotic time-gating.

I made a post on here a while ago about Fractals – it was due to Mawdrey being locked behind Fractals at the time. I didn’t want to run 5 Fractals because I had this idea in my head they were extremely hard.

I sucked it up and did them. And they were easy. It was more content I got to enjoy. I made it up to Fractal level 33 before stopping due to bordem.

You never had a reason to make your Ascended Armor before (Fractals didn’t motivate you, obviously) now you do. Now you have something to work towards.

Nothing is holding you back from doing Raids or making that Armor but yourself.

And because you are holding yourself back, you want to punish and hold back others.

That’s garbage.

The issue I have is not with what the OP is saying it’s with what ArenaNet said before revealing raids and how their words are totally different from how they implemented raids. Difficult content shouldn’t equate to wearing the best gear or excluding players based on gear grind. They should have made it so everyone was required to wear no better than green armor. That way, any level 80 could enter the raid but only those with a certain skill level would meet the player skill level needed to beat the raid. As it stands now, there are multiple gates required to do raids. There is a skill gate, a gear gate and a mastery gate. How is this any different from any raid ever implemented in a raid in any other game? The answer is simple. It’s no different.

If people that say they want raids to be difficult were telling the truth, their gear checks for entry to the raid would all be wearing green armor or less. Players, do the community a favor and require all your LFG team members to ping and wear un-transmuted green level gear for raids.

Iason Evan.3806:

The issue I have is not with what the OP is saying it’s with what ArenaNet said before revealing raids and how their words are totally different from how they implemented raids. Difficult content shouldn’t equate to wearing the best gear or excluding players based on gear grind. They should have made it so everyone was required to wear no better than green armor. That way, any level 80 could enter the raid but only those with a certain skill level would meet the player skill level needed to beat the raid. As it stands now, there are multiple gates required to do raids. There is a skill gate, a gear gate and a mastery gate. How is this any different from any raid ever implemented in a raid in any other game? The answer is simple. It’s no different.

If people that say they want raids to be difficult were telling the truth, their gear checks for entry to the raid would all be wearing green armor or less. Players, do the community a favor and require all your LFG team members to ping and wear un-transmuted green level gear for raids.

To my knowledge there is no check for gear when you enter the raid, you can enter in Whites.

nope. I don’t want to “work” towards anything, because it’s not the reason i bought the game years ago at launch.
I’d prefer fair challenge..with a bit of open world events and zergs in wvw.
not endgame fractals or raid with a gear/mastery requirement.

2%. tantrum. college and fastfood? a lot of OT.
It’s not “punishing” anybody, it’s what i like or dislike.
a part of the players don’t like “working” on crafting the best gear, because it’s not fun.

I already quitted a year ago or so, but when i read again the misleading advertisement about “horizontal progression” “we don’t do new tiers” and so on..here I am.

but don’t be afraid, vocal minority or not anet will follow raiders desires…but just like did with ascended, will say “there is it and it’s BiS, but if you close your eyes and think of ponies and unicorns,you may not need it”
there is no way they can cater opposite audiences.
I’m quite sure that a decent part of gw2vanilla owners won’t buy HoT, and another part of pre-sell is already mad at it after latest news…in the same time, a lot of “typical mmo” players will come in…and eventually gw2 will become another brick..another raiding wow-ish game.
good game!

Kevan.8912:

nope. I don’t want to “work” towards anything, because it’s not the reason i bought the game years ago at launch.

2%. tantrum. college and fastfood? a lot of OT.
It’s not punishing anybody, it’s what i like or dislike.
a part of the players don’t like “working” on crafting the best gear, because it’s not fun.

I already quitted a year ago or so, but when i read again the misleading advertisement about “horizontal progression” “we don’t do new tiers” and so on..here I am.

but don’t be afraid, vocal minority or not anet will follow raiders desires…but just like did with ascended, will say “there is it and it’s BiS, but if you close your eyes and think of ponies and unicorns,you may not need it”
there is no way they can cater opposite audiences.

You don’t need Legendary Armor to kill Tequalt for the 1 billionth time, Kevan.

And anyway, Legendary Armor is the same as Ascended Armor statswise.

Azumi.9572:

It is entitlement. You want the exact same thing as Y, without doing the hard work of X.

Exclusive content is a must.

HOW IS TAKING LONGER NOT DOING THE HARD WORK? it’s STILL going to be a long haul! It’s STILL going to take time, hard work and dedication. Difficulty should NOT be the gauge of ‘doing hard work’. that’s why it should take longer for a casual player to get the legendary set than a hard core player. They have to put more time and effort than a hard-core player does because they’re not as good, however it should still be POSSIBLE. How is that entitlement?

You’re arguing for exclusivity for exclusivity’s sake! you want to REMOVE the ability of players to get something THEY CAN ALREADY GET. Casuals CAN GET LEGENARY WEAPONS!

Azumi.9572:

Getting Legendary PvE Armor without doing Legendary PvE content is a joke.

YOU’RE STILL DOING THE FRIGGIN RAID. you’re still doing the legendary content. and in fact it’s going to take LONGER than a hard core player. that’s my suggestion. achievable is not the same thing as less hard work.

Azumi.9572:

Let me ask all you Casuals a question – and be honest:

What is really stopping you from doing the Raids? What reason do you have for not wanting to do that content?

because of the difficulty! because of the sheer exclusivity of it! if there was a difficulty option for more casual players, i’d totally jump right in. if there was an LFR feature in raids i’d totally do it! and especially if there was an option to take LONGER and put more work into getting a legendary for casual players i’d do the friggin raids.

As they stand, raids are extremely tough to even get a group of 10 people if you’re a casual player. the high difficulty of the raids will mean that people will actively be kicked out of groups for not being the 1% of hard-core players. It will arise to elitism like you yourself are showing. you’re actively denying the ability for players to not only access content, but to also gain the rewards they were always capable of gaining. and that is not acceptable.

Azumi.9572:

Kevan.8912:

nope. I don’t want to “work” towards anything, because it’s not the reason i bought the game years ago at launch.

2%. tantrum. college and fastfood? a lot of OT.
It’s not punishing anybody, it’s what i like or dislike.
a part of the players don’t like “working” on crafting the best gear, because it’s not fun.

I already quitted a year ago or so, but when i read again the misleading advertisement about “horizontal progression” “we don’t do new tiers” and so on..here I am.

but don’t be afraid, vocal minority or not anet will follow raiders desires…but just like did with ascended, will say “there is it and it’s BiS, but if you close your eyes and think of ponies and unicorns,you may not need it”
there is no way they can cater opposite audiences.

You don’t need Legendary Armor to kill Tequalt for the 1 billionth time, Kevan.

And anyway, Legendary Armor is the same as Ascended Armor statswise.

and again: you need ascended for fotm.
you need masteries and maybe full ascended to end the raid…and some other contents in jungle, some say.
It’s not whether vertical progression is slow, or easier if you grind the right way, or that you can skip ascended if you convince yourself that don t need it.

there is it, and it’s enough for me to go and play elsewhere.
it’s a matter of coherence with the reason they sold me the game.
and coherence with what anet say: first talk about difference gw2/other games,no tiers and no treadmill and no progression , then turns to: unlocking masteries and map zones, and raids (even the same name in wow and other games… a bit of effort to create a different name? nope.)AGAIN?
good luck, I’m done with that.

Everything that you could ever do in this game at any point in time will end up excluding someone. Halloween JP, tower of nightmares, arah explorable, even fractals 1-9 are content some people couldnt do. So its not like any of this is new.

It depends on how much “content” is being excluded from what % of the playerbase. If 50% of the HOT story dialogue is in raids and only 10% of players end up beating them, its bad. If 0% is in it and 90% beat it the first week, thats also bad.

Letting people do easier versions (aka lvl 1-9 fractals, or maybe even easier) for minimum rewards (like, >25% of what the hardest one gives) is the best idea ive seen in these threads. That way no one would miss out on any content, but theres a big incentive to do the hardest mode.

People will still go “OMGZ nubs can get my shiny skins whats teh point of having stuffz if other people has it!”, but really, who cares about that if the other 99% of the game is happy.

maddoctor.2738:

Iason Evan.3806:

The issue I have is not with what the OP is saying it’s with what ArenaNet said before revealing raids and how their words are totally different from how they implemented raids. Difficult content shouldn’t equate to wearing the best gear or excluding players based on gear grind. They should have made it so everyone was required to wear no better than green armor. That way, any level 80 could enter the raid but only those with a certain skill level would meet the player skill level needed to beat the raid. As it stands now, there are multiple gates required to do raids. There is a skill gate, a gear gate and a mastery gate. How is this any different from any raid ever implemented in a raid in any other game? The answer is simple. It’s no different.

If people that say they want raids to be difficult were telling the truth, their gear checks for entry to the raid would all be wearing green armor or less. Players, do the community a favor and require all your LFG team members to ping and wear un-transmuted green level gear for raids.

To my knowledge there is no check for gear when you enter the raid, you can enter in Whites.

Yep. There is no gear gate whatsoever. People will be beating it in exotics week one and I bet by week two they will be beating it in white gear or naked (though hopefully only a tiny % of people can do this or itl be wayyyy too easy of a fight)

I also havent heard about a mastery gate, but i might be mistaken there

some people will beat this specific raid in yellow gear and with 5 members total.
some other people will simply never beat it in their life.

can’t be helped, the world is different. Raid difficulty is fine atm.

Kidel.2057:

some people will beat this specific raid in yellow gear and with 5 members total.
some other people will simply never beat it in their life.

can’t be helped, the world is different. Raid difficulty is fine atm.

The issue is not with raid difficulty, but with the length of each raid.

The following reasoning is based on the assumption that Anet isn’t lying. Anet said that raid encounters are not puggable. That’s is, to kill the last few bosses, you need to be in a raid guild. A raid guild will raid regularly, or it wouldn’t be called a raid guild. At least, a member in a raid guild is expected to spend 4-5 nights on raiding every week, to remain active in the guild. Each night, he should start to raid at 7pm and stop at 1 or 2 am. He should keep doing this until the entire raid instance is on farm status for the guild. Therefore, you do have to spend at least 30 hours per week on raiding, and more hardcore raid guilds will require you to spend 50+ hours.

Therefore, raid encounters are never about skills, but are about who has the most free time for game play. Of course people who cannot pick up a bucket to feed a cow in game will not be able to do it, but many more do have the skills and are able to learn, but cannot commit 7 hours per night to gaming. When playing wow, I learned that a hardcore friend had to quit gaming entirely, because his doctor said that if he wouldn’t, he would become blind. So, even for people who can commit this much time, it is unhealthy to do so.

MyriadStars.5679:

The following reasoning is based on the assumption that Anet isn’t lying. Anet said that raid encounters are not puggable.

Raid encounters not puggable is the exact same as “requiring” ascended gear. They are both not requirements, there is no way to test if you are in a pug group, and there is no test if you have ascended either (no agony). What the devs are saying is that you need good gear and good organization.

The best gear tier stat-wise is Ascended, so they say you will need the best to succeed with the minimum amount of skill, anything less than full ascended will require some more personal skill (for obvious reasons).

Same thing with pugs. They said it won’t be puggable as the average pug group is not organized and doesn’t pay attention. If you end up in a pug group of pro-raiders that know their builds, know the mechanics and know how to communicate they will probably do the raid faster and easier than a guild team that consists of players who never ever tried to play together as an actual team and everyone uses their own builds.

People are really going overboard with what the devs are saying.

Vayne.8563:

paintpixie.7398:

laokoko.7403:

Lux Dominatoris.3941:

Give me concrete numbers for your examples. Links, statements, official responses. How do you know the hardcore community is 1%? Stop the parallels with WoW, even if they would copy paste the raids from there it would still be totally different since this game does not have a hard, forced trinity.

It was originally posted by a developer during wow 2.0. During the panda expansion, I believe it is stated again on an interview. You can also check wowwiki.

Before Wrath of the Lich King came out, less than one percent of the playerbase actually experienced Sunwell.

I was actually the 1 percent that done Sunwell but wasn’t able to finish. When the guild leader says they want to extend raiding time to do Sunwell I told them I wasn’t able to commit and was kick out of the guild. This left a trauma for me that I quit mmorpg for a while.

http://www.mmo-champion.com/content/2688-Other-Press-Tour-Interviews-A-Night-in-Mists-of-Pandaria-Blue-Posts-MoP-Screenshot

http://wow.gamepedia.com/Sunwell_Plateau

LOTRO pulling the plug of raiding. Because the raiding group is too small.

http://www.engadget.com/2014/07/03/turbine-raiders-make-up-the-smallest-player-group-in-lotro/#comments

Wildstar fail to deliver the game to a wider audience. They thought hardcore raiding is the answer. But it is totally wrong

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2qnhuj/only_03_of_wildstars_players_have_cleared_the/

I’m not certain about the other games, but LotRO I do know a little about. They stopped adding raids, and their numbers have dropped immensely. There are constant complaints by the community that there is nothing to do, no end game, etc. The entire player-base seems to be composed of people who spend all of their time twirling around at festivals (which are almost a constant occurrence there), instead of playing the actual game.
There is a significant enough PvP player-base there, but nobody acknowledged that either until they all moved to one server and basically crowded out the server.
This 1% thing that you’re trying to push, is utter nonsense.

There is nothing wrong with having content for people who like a challenge. It brings people to the game. It keeps people playing the game. Stop trying to exclude people who like to play differently than you do. That “1%” matters just as much as you do. Their money spends just as well.

And yet it was a Lotro dev who told us straight out that 10% of the population only ever raided. The same dev told us raiders account for 50% of forum posts.

Source: http://www.mmobomb.com/news/ex-lotro-dev-dishes-turbines-missteps/

That “10%” quote initially came from a community manager (who no longer works for Turbine). I’m not sure if it’s the same person. I’m not sure if he was also a developer. But I do know that he no longer works for the company, and caused quite a stir for saying it.

(Also, keep in mind that 10% is a pretty significant percentage…it’s not a majority, but you don’t want 10% of your players to leave, either…)

Here’s a thread which discusses it a bit, and goes into why even minority groups are important to a game:
http://lotrocommunity.com/forum/topic/3057-sapience-why-every-player-is-important/

Some speculation and drama about it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/lotro/comments/2a1l0j/why_might_sapience_turbine_lie_are_raiders_really/

Some more links on the history, drama, and the way people felt after he left Turbine:
https://madhaberdashers.wordpress.com/2014/07/13/well-why-arent-there-raiders-sapience/
http://www.containsmoderateperil.com/we-dont-need-you-anyway/
http://lotrocommunity.com/forum/topic/3108-sapience-leaves-lotro/?page=1

As a game developer (or any company for that matter…), you strive to attract everybody. EVERYBODY. Yes, even the 1%, the 10%, the 60%. You want as many %’s as you can pull in because the more types of people that play your game, the more money you can hope to make from it.

Edit: If you read one link, out of the slew of the ones I posted, read this one:

http://www.containsmoderateperil.com/we-dont-need-you-anyway/

It has the most relevance, I think, to this topic in general, and thus can best be applied to this game in particular.
Quoted from one of the comments on the above article:
“The absurdity of the Rick Heaton numbers was pointed out by many people in many ways. It was a terrible move from a customer relations standpoint as well. I think the final nail in the coffin for that argument was Turbine’s own actions two years later as they, after a mass exodus of players, began making group instances and are now releasing a new PVP map. If only Rick Heaton were still around to face the players as his ‘resource allocation criteria’ were contradicted by Turbine’s own development.”

maddoctor.2738:

MyriadStars.5679:

The following reasoning is based on the assumption that Anet isn’t lying. Anet said that raid encounters are not puggable.

Raid encounters not puggable is the exact same as “requiring” ascended gear. They are both not requirements, there is no way to test if you are in a pug group, and there is no test if you have ascended either (no agony). What the devs are saying is that you need good gear and good organization.

The best gear tier stat-wise is Ascended, so they say you will need the best to succeed with the minimum amount of skill, anything less than full ascended will require some more personal skill (for obvious reasons).

Same thing with pugs. They said it won’t be puggable as the average pug group is not organized and doesn’t pay attention. If you end up in a pug group of pro-raiders that know their builds, know the mechanics and know how to communicate they will probably do the raid faster and easier than a guild team that consists of players who never ever tried to play together as an actual team and everyone uses their own builds.

People are really going overboard with what the devs are saying.

Have you tried to pug raid instances in other games (LFR excluded)?

In WoW, there were people who managed to kill Arthas in wrath of lich king in pugs, but it is very rare. It is extremely difficult to find pro-raiders in pugs, because almost all of them have their raid guilds. In vanilla wow, I never heard of people pugging the last boss in MC/BWL/AQ.

Maybe the raids in GW2 will be puggable, but then this means the raids in GW2 are much easier than a raid in WoW, and Anet should never call it challenging content.

MyriadStars.5679:

Maybe the raids in GW2 will be puggable, but then this means the raids in GW2 are much easier than a raid in WoW, and Anet should never call it challenging content.

A pug group and a guild group have only one difference, one is made of random people and the other of people who’ve been together for some time. Guild groups that are not the best team players, that do not follow set builds and don’t know the mechanics are no different than a random pug group.

I’ve done raids in games with a guild group of mostly casual players. Yes we failed a lot, more than more organized teams, but you know what we had fun doing it, we weren’t “pro raiders”. I’ve never actually done raids in a full raid guild that does raids 24/7 or even 4 or 5 times a week, when I did raids we did them once a week and that’s it.

You are making it sound that in order to do a raid you need to be in a pro raiding guild that has some very strict rules and requires players to do raids 4-5 times a week but that’s not true. You can do raids (in any raid game) only trying once a week, filling spots with friends or even pugs. You will fail often, yes, but it’s not impossible.

paintpixie.7398:

Edit: If you read one link, out of the slew of the ones I posted, read this one:

http://www.containsmoderateperil.com/we-dont-need-you-anyway/

It has the most relevance, I think, to this topic in general, and thus can best be applied to this game in particular.

Just to make a point out of this with my arguments specifically, I’m not calling for raids to be completely eliminated or removed. In fact i’m trying to keep them in play because there are players who DO want to access the content. I don’t see how adding an easier difficulty with an LFR feature is taking away from the people doing the hardest difficulty. If it’s the difficulty of the gameplay, they still have it. if they want unique rewards, they can get unique skins. If they want there to be no legendary armour except for those that work to the hardest difficulty, that’s where i say tough luck, everyone should be able to get legendaries because they were available to the most casual of players before and it actively creates a situation where players won’t even want to participate in certain content.

Open the doors to everyone and let them choose whether they want to walk in or not, but no impactful gear like legendary gear should remain exclusive to only hard core players. Unique skins? fine. but let there be legendary armour pieces for casual players who want to get them and have them be dropped in lower difficulty options for players. make the easier raid difficulties puggable. include all players as much as possible, but don’t bar the gate for anyone who doesn’t raid 4-5 times a week.

Anet could surprise me, but so far I’m not convinced it will get so bad we’ll see players gear-locked from content or something like the rest of the MMOs out there.

I would like to comment though, if a person is paying for a game they should be able to play all of it. So, any argument that says a section of the player base can be excluded from content because “reasons” is going to be getting a song written about them at the Eolian amusingly similar to that written for Ambrose Jakis.

castlemanic.3198:

paintpixie.7398:

Edit: If you read one link, out of the slew of the ones I posted, read this one:

http://www.containsmoderateperil.com/we-dont-need-you-anyway/

It has the most relevance, I think, to this topic in general, and thus can best be applied to this game in particular.

Just to make a point out of this with my arguments specifically, I’m not calling for raids to be completely eliminated or removed. In fact i’m trying to keep them in play because there are players who DO want to access the content. I don’t see how adding an easier difficulty with an LFR feature is taking away from the people doing the hardest difficulty. If it’s the difficulty of the gameplay, they still have it. if they want unique rewards, they can get unique skins. If they want there to be no legendary armour except for those that work to the hardest difficulty, that’s where i say tough luck, everyone should be able to get legendaries because they were available to the most casual of players before and it actively creates a situation where players won’t even want to participate in certain content.

Open the doors to everyone and let them choose whether they want to walk in or not, but no impactful gear like legendary gear should remain exclusive to only hard core players. Unique skins? fine. but let there be legendary armour pieces for casual players who want to get them and have them be dropped in lower difficulty options for players. make the easier raid difficulties puggable. include all players as much as possible, but don’t bar the gate for anyone who doesn’t raid 4-5 times a week.

I agree with this 100%.
I think games should cater to as many different players as possible, should try to find a way to allow every player to do the content that they want to do. And exclude as few (ideally, none) players as possible in the process.
And I think we should wait until the content comes out before we judge Anet, because companies have always (to me) seemed to over-exaggerate the difficulty of content before it comes out.

As somebody who plays games almost entirely solo, and casually…I can still understand the desire of some players to have challenging content. I can also understand the desire that people have to not be excluded from content.
But I also like to have choices, because it’s a sign of success when a vast amount of different types of players can all find their niche in the same game. That’s the kind of game I want to play.

There is nothing wrong with PvE content that is too hard for some people. You have to remember that raids are not the end game for everyone. Essentially this:

1. Raids : Those who are into hardcore PvE
2. Fractals: Those who are looking for a slightly less intensive experience but still poses a challenge.
3. PvP: End game will be leagues
4. WvW: End game is within wvw.

The game has different “end games” for different people. Play whatever you enjoy.

That said though, people should have a chance to earn ALL possible level gear in whatever end game they like. Legendary armor needs to be available regardless of how someone plays. The difference should always be the skins available. For example, you might earn legendary armor in raids and that skin would be different than legendary armor earned through WvW.

If you just talk about apperance and skins…I think that players’ time and effort invested should be rewarded, as much as skills.

What is not good, and it has been told since the launch, is that ascended give AR and increased stats…same thing about legendaries.
If it was just a QoL or aesthetic “elitism”, nobody would whine.

maddoctor.2738:

MyriadStars.5679:

Maybe the raids in GW2 will be puggable, but then this means the raids in GW2 are much easier than a raid in WoW, and Anet should never call it challenging content.

A pug group and a guild group have only one difference, one is made of random people and the other of people who’ve been together for some time. Guild groups that are not the best team players, that do not follow set builds and don’t know the mechanics are no different than a random pug group.

I’ve done raids in games with a guild group of mostly casual players. Yes we failed a lot, more than more organized teams, but you know what we had fun doing it, we weren’t “pro raiders”. I’ve never actually done raids in a full raid guild that does raids 24/7 or even 4 or 5 times a week, when I did raids we did them once a week and that’s it.

You are making it sound that in order to do a raid you need to be in a pro raiding guild that has some very strict rules and requires players to do raids 4-5 times a week but that’s not true. You can do raids (in any raid game) only trying once a week, filling spots with friends or even pugs. You will fail often, yes, but it’s not impossible.

With respect, I think that you are being too optimistic. If each raid wing requires more than 10 hours to clear and resets on a weekly basis, then a guild that raids once a week will never see the second half of each raid wing. Even if in HOT, each raid wing requires 5-7 hours to clear so that you can indeed attempt it by doing a 5-7 hour raid once a week, which of the following two forms of content will you prefer?

1. A raid wing that requires 5-7 hours to clear. Your guild will do one raid a week. You start raiding from a particular time on a particular day of each week, and keep doing it for 6 hours straight without any major breaks. If you have to overwork on that day, or if you have to spend more time with your family on that day, you will not be able to raid in that week. If your doctor tells you that you should stop playing a game for 6 hours straight to avoid making your back pain or eye problem worse, then you will have to give up raiding completely. Unless you are very young, playing 6 hours straight regularly will likely create some health issues.

2. Each area of the raid is put into a separate instance. Right now Anet defines an area to be part of a wing with one boss and a few mini bosses. Thus, each area will require 45-90 minutes to clear, and the amount of skills required to clear it remains unchanged. You need to unlock these instances by clearing these areas one by one, but you are not required to do this within one week. After you unlock all these instances, you will no longer be required to do them in a certain order. With this, you can find a pug to do it whenever you know for sure that you have 45-90 minutes for game play. Your pug team may fail, but eventually you will likely find a pug in which everyone knows the fight. The content is equally challenging in terms of player skills.

Ayrilana.1396:

Pockets.3201:

Ayrilana.1396:

Players are not really being excluded in the sense that they can always learn the raids and get better. The raids are permanent content so that have as much time as they need.

Learning and time cannot fix every issue that may keep people from raiding.

True. They need to have a willingness to try and adapt.

And not have physical limitations that keep them from pulling off what they need to.

Azumi.9572:

Hyper Cutter.9376:

Azumi.9572:

98% of the game is built for casuals like you. 2% is now being diverted for other players.

You still got the majority of the pie. Silverwaste grinding isn’t going anywhere. World Boss farming isn’t going anywhere. You still have your casual content to sleep through.

I mean, it’s not like there’s 6 new sets of armor skins (as many as the entire rest of the expansion, I might add!) representing an entire new tier of armor locked behind raiding or anything.

You don’t need that armor if you are not going to do the hardest content in the game.

Neither do you – after all, if you do that content, it means you already have ascended-level gear.

Azumi.9572:

Sorry. You don’t get to play with this toy unless you put forth an effort.

The idea that you need to put an effort just to be allowed to play with a toy is just ridiculous. I sure hope you don’t have any children.

Sizer.3987:

maddoctor.2738:

To my knowledge there is no check for gear when you enter the raid, you can enter in Whites.

Yep. There is no gear gate whatsoever. People will be beating it in exotics week one and I bet by week two they will be beating it in white gear or naked (though hopefully only a tiny % of people can do this or itl be wayyyy too easy of a fight)

I also havent heard about a mastery gate, but i might be mistaken there

There’s no gate for entry, but there’s an enrage timer – if it’s tuned around people having full ascended dps, then yeah, maybeeeeeeeeeeee you will be able to do it with exotics (if you run full zerker, that is). Don’t expect to be able to do it in whites or with only 5 people, no matter how good you are.

And there’s no mastery gate, but devs said that without certain masteries unlocked on at least some players, finishing some fights will be almost impossible. Did you see for example that one boss they have shown as an example in the initial reveal? The one where you need to glide off the platform (basic level of gliding mastery track), find a column of rising air (requires a higher tier of the same track) and return back, or get oneshotted by an unavoidable attack? Now, imagine doing it while not having that higher tier of gliding track. Then tell me how it’s not a gate

maddoctor.2738:

The best gear tier stat-wise is Ascended, so they say you will need the best to succeed with the minimum amount of skill, anything less than full ascended will require some more personal skill (for obvious reasons).

They said “the top players in ascended”, so they already assume high level of personal skill. And there’s a point beyond which bigger skill will not increase dps anymore, so you’d better hope the enrage timer will have some massive leeway (but in that case, why use it at all?).

Pockets.3201:

Ayrilana.1396:

Pockets.3201:

Ayrilana.1396:

Players are not really being excluded in the sense that they can always learn the raids and get better. The raids are permanent content so that have as much time as they need.

Learning and time cannot fix every issue that may keep people from raiding.

True. They need to have a willingness to try and adapt.

And not have physical limitations that keep them from pulling off what they need to.

I have a mental issue that forbids me from getting on Voice Chat.

Is aNet supposed to accommodate my issue by not requiring high-level, fast, adaptable communication, thereby lowering the Raid difficulty and punishing others because of me?

I’m not an entitled child so I have no desire for that.

I see alot of confusing in some posts, Hardcore raiding is not the same Challenge Content/Raid.

Most ppl wont play it thats for sure, the same way that only a % of the player base do fractals or Dungeons or stand in LA dancing.

it needs to be something for everyone, players that have +-1h to play a day or couple of hours per week already have dungeons map completion and in the expansion fractals, that ofc doesnt mean they should stop working in content for those players, but for a player that has more than 3h a day to play there is nothing in game to do.

About the rewards you cant expect to get a better reward or same reward if you do “easy” and quick content against someone that does challenge content that takes more time.

Its the same thing that we have on World bosses tequalt and 3head wurm have better rewards because they take more time to kill/organize and becauce they are more challenging.

Azumi.9572:

Kevan.8912:

another question before: what is really stopping me from doing fractals? a huge, steamy heap of money and crafting ingredients to stack AR.
what will stop me from raids? with pretty good probability, still not having ascendeds + capped masteries.

I didn’t find Ascended Armor that expensive. Only thing was the idiotic time-gating.

I made a post on here a while ago about Fractals – it was due to Mawdrey being locked behind Fractals at the time. I didn’t want to run 5 Fractals because I had this idea in my head they were extremely hard.

I sucked it up and did them. And they were easy. It was more content I got to enjoy. I made it up to Fractal level 33 before stopping due to bordem.

You never had a reason to make your Ascended Armor before (Fractals didn’t motivate you, obviously) now you do. Now you have something to work towards.

Nothing is holding you back from doing Raids or making that Armor but yourself.

And because you are holding yourself back, you want to punish and hold back others.

That’s garbage.

The cost of ascended armor varies wildly on whether you were a cloth wearer, a leather wearer, or plate wearer.

The cost and required amount of bolts of damask makes a huge impact.

My mesmer’s full ascended armor cost around 470 gold to make. It’s much cheaper on non-cloth toons.

Zenith.7301:

Azumi.9572:

Kevan.8912:

another question before: what is really stopping me from doing fractals? a huge, steamy heap of money and crafting ingredients to stack AR.
what will stop me from raids? with pretty good probability, still not having ascendeds + capped masteries.

I didn’t find Ascended Armor that expensive. Only thing was the idiotic time-gating.

I made a post on here a while ago about Fractals – it was due to Mawdrey being locked behind Fractals at the time. I didn’t want to run 5 Fractals because I had this idea in my head they were extremely hard.

I sucked it up and did them. And they were easy. It was more content I got to enjoy. I made it up to Fractal level 33 before stopping due to bordem.

You never had a reason to make your Ascended Armor before (Fractals didn’t motivate you, obviously) now you do. Now you have something to work towards.

Nothing is holding you back from doing Raids or making that Armor but yourself.

And because you are holding yourself back, you want to punish and hold back others.

That’s garbage.

The cost of ascended armor varies wildly on whether you were a cloth wearer, a leather wearer, or plate wearer.

The cost and required amount of bolts of damask makes a huge impact.

My mesmer’s full ascended armor cost around 470 gold to make. It’s much cheaper on non-cloth toons.

Mine was cloth. I made all the Damask. Ran Dungeons, used Gold to buy Silk. Took maybe an hour to finish like 5 Dungeons (AC, CM, TA, CoF, CoE). All Pugged.

Like I said – only issue was the time-gate. Which was, is and always will be an idiotic mechanic in any game.

I’m not sure what purpose it serves other than punishing one set of players (Players who play a lot/have a lot of resources) for another set of players (Players who don’t play a lot/don’t have a lot of resources) to keep one set from outpacing the other.

Now we can see though, a lot of those people weren’t bothering making Ascended anyway.

And the only reason I even did it was because I was BORED with nothing else to do. Burnt out on World Bosses, PvP. I needed to try something new (Fractals) to give me a reason to keep playing.

I’ve never understood what the attraction is for exclusivity in either content or rewards.

Azumi.9572:

Zenith.7301:

Azumi.9572:

Kevan.8912:

another question before: what is really stopping me from doing fractals? a huge, steamy heap of money and crafting ingredients to stack AR.
what will stop me from raids? with pretty good probability, still not having ascendeds + capped masteries.

I didn’t find Ascended Armor that expensive. Only thing was the idiotic time-gating.

I made a post on here a while ago about Fractals – it was due to Mawdrey being locked behind Fractals at the time. I didn’t want to run 5 Fractals because I had this idea in my head they were extremely hard.

I sucked it up and did them. And they were easy. It was more content I got to enjoy. I made it up to Fractal level 33 before stopping due to bordem.

You never had a reason to make your Ascended Armor before (Fractals didn’t motivate you, obviously) now you do. Now you have something to work towards.

Nothing is holding you back from doing Raids or making that Armor but yourself.

And because you are holding yourself back, you want to punish and hold back others.

That’s garbage.

The cost of ascended armor varies wildly on whether you were a cloth wearer, a leather wearer, or plate wearer.

The cost and required amount of bolts of damask makes a huge impact.

My mesmer’s full ascended armor cost around 470 gold to make. It’s much cheaper on non-cloth toons.

Mine was cloth. I made all the Damask. Ran Dungeons, used Gold to buy Silk. Took maybe an hour to finish like 5 Dungeons (AC, CM, TA, CoF, CoE). All Pugged.

Like I said – only issue was the time-gate. Which was, is and always will be an idiotic mechanic in any game.

I’m not sure what purpose it serves other than punishing one set of players (Players who play a lot/have a lot of resources) for another set of players (Players who don’t play a lot/don’t have a lot of resources) to keep one set from outpacing the other.

Now we can see though, a lot of those people weren’t bothering making Ascended anyway.

And the only reason I even did it was because I was BORED with nothing else to do. Burnt out on World Bosses, PvP. I needed to try something new (Fractals) to give me a reason to keep playing.

I did it for fractals, although that’s an entirely different can of worms. Before my ascended set, when ascended armor didn’t exist, I made the +10 infusions for the rings and amulet, which amounts to about 250 gold.

So if I’m counting infusions and making the ascended armor, it runs to about 700 gold, and if I add the gold I also dumped on several weapons, it’s closer to 850 gold.

And now with their apparent raid design of punishing zerkers with high toughness mobs, it means I gotta dump all that gold in another set of sinister stats ascended armor and weapons for back up.

How much fun!

I think ascended was a terrible mistake and they should have stuck to exotics and merely tied cosmetics and rank emotes to raids.

seabhac.5346:

I’ve never understood what the attraction is for exclusivity in either content or rewards.

For rewards, particularly cosmetic rewards: kind of obvious.

For content: most (not all) people who want difficult content don’t want it because it excludes people. They want it because it provides a challenge for more experienced players. Unfortunately, due to variance in player experience, skill level and dedication to learning how the game works, this will require excluding some players.

Most people are not jerks, they just want content that will challenge and engage them.

Difficulty? Fine. Forced static raid groups/guilds or having to herd cats with randoms? No thanks. It’s great that lots of people enjoy the environment that comes with raiding groups, but I can’t stand it. It’s not something I’m going to put up with, and I doubt any success with randoms because of the lack of co-ordination. So as a skilled player who can handle difficult content, but who plays with more casual friends, I’m left out.

But that’s okay, people in their tight-knit raiding groups get their shinies and a ton of development time.

If what the Devs say is true then the raids will be relevant from the time HoT launches til it shuts down with no further power to be gained. They will provide the same challenge and opportunity to beat the bosses and collect the rewards. So, you may not be able to get all the rewards like some others, but those players will be getting nothing that makes their character more powerful than you can already do so right now at this very minute by never stepping into a raid.

If everything going forward is just cosmetics, minis, titles, guild hall trophies, and other fluff then it’s hardly fragmenting the playerbase vs the way other end games operate by having endless gear treadmills. Why would one need to quit the game over something you don’t have to do, doesn’t make your character any more powerful, and you can do at any point going forward in the future with no rush other than the phantom urgency you place on yourself to get it done at the same pace as everybody else (provided you purchase the expansion)?

Maybe you can only kill the first boss this year, because you don’t have time, need to get better, need to find a guild, etc. etc, whatever the issue may be. So, you say I’ll come back to this later and give it a go under better circumstances. It might be 2 years later, but you can do so and face the same challenge and collect the same rewards that aren’t outdated.

Pockets.3201:

It also tells some players that they can’t play the endgame, so they should find another game to play.

Raids aren’t end-game though… well it is part of end-game but it is not the be-all-end-all end-game. There is sPvP, tPvP, WvW, Dungeons, Fractals, all that open world stuff, progression crafting, and then after all of that there are Raids.

I will never set foot in a Raid – even if the armor was 20% better then exotics in WvW and gave a bonus to amulets in sPvP / tPvP – not because I lack the skill but because I don’t enjoy that kind of content (if you were guaranteed one piece you needed a run I would give it a try but it kitten well better be hard then, heh heh).

I don’t know that exclusion is good – ideally everyone should be able to play what they want – however it definitely isn’t bad. Telling people they should play a different game certainly isn’t; more MMOs should say “I’m sorry but if you are looking for ‘X’ go play a different game because that isn’t what this game is about” (see the bevy of new counter-cultural MMOs coming out like Camelot Unchained and Star Citizen).

Guild Wars 2 is as close to “do whatever the kitten you want” as you can get… just because a tiny slice of content isn’t tailored for everyone hardly necessitates a mass exodus… especially when Raids – like everything else in this game – merely offers QOL improvements (Ascended gear with on the fly changeable stats) rather then a power tier upgrade.

Schurge.5194:

Pockets.3201:

It also tells some players that they can’t play the endgame, so they should find another game to play.

Raids aren’t end-game though… well it is part of end-game but it is not the be-all-end-all end-game. There is sPvP, tPvP, WvW, Dungeons, Fractals, all that open world stuff, progression crafting, and then after all of that there are Raids.

I will never set foot in a Raid – even if the armor was 20% better then exotics in WvW and gave a bonus to amulets in sPvP / tPvP – not because I lack the skill but because I don’t enjoy that kind of content (if you were guaranteed one piece you needed a run I would give it a try but it kitten well better be hard then, heh heh).

I don’t know that exclusion is good – ideally everyone should be able to play what they want – however it definitely isn’t bad. Telling people they should play a different game certainly isn’t; more MMOs should say “I’m sorry but if you are looking for ‘X’ go play a different game because that isn’t what this game is about” (see the bevy of new counter-cultural MMOs coming out like Camelot Unchained and Star Citizen).

Guild Wars 2 is as close to “do whatever the kitten you want” as you can get… just because a tiny slice of content isn’t tailored for everyone hardly necessitates a mass exodus… especially when Raids – like everything else in this game – merely offers QOL improvements (Ascended gear with on the fly changeable stats) rather then a power tier upgrade.

Maybe?

I feel we’ve well moved past dungeons being counted as endgame, they’ve been kind of left behind, old and neglected at this point. We’ll see how much effort they put into keeping fractals from suffering the same fate.

On the other hand we do know that they plan on rolling out a good bit more raids, with story included, though I could be wrong on the latter. With their teams being focused on that I am concerned with how much there will be to do other than farm the new maps for us PvEers after a certain point. If you aren’t raiding anyway.

I can’t say much on the PvP front as I’ve never enjoyed such things so I try to say out of the way.

Zenith.7301:

Azumi.9572:

Zenith.7301:

Azumi.9572:

Kevan.8912:

another question before: what is really stopping me from doing fractals? a huge, steamy heap of money and crafting ingredients to stack AR.
what will stop me from raids? with pretty good probability, still not having ascendeds + capped masteries.

I didn’t find Ascended Armor that expensive. Only thing was the idiotic time-gating.

I made a post on here a while ago about Fractals – it was due to Mawdrey being locked behind Fractals at the time. I didn’t want to run 5 Fractals because I had this idea in my head they were extremely hard.

I sucked it up and did them. And they were easy. It was more content I got to enjoy. I made it up to Fractal level 33 before stopping due to bordem.

You never had a reason to make your Ascended Armor before (Fractals didn’t motivate you, obviously) now you do. Now you have something to work towards.

Nothing is holding you back from doing Raids or making that Armor but yourself.

And because you are holding yourself back, you want to punish and hold back others.

That’s garbage.

The cost of ascended armor varies wildly on whether you were a cloth wearer, a leather wearer, or plate wearer.

The cost and required amount of bolts of damask makes a huge impact.

My mesmer’s full ascended armor cost around 470 gold to make. It’s much cheaper on non-cloth toons.

Mine was cloth. I made all the Damask. Ran Dungeons, used Gold to buy Silk. Took maybe an hour to finish like 5 Dungeons (AC, CM, TA, CoF, CoE). All Pugged.

Like I said – only issue was the time-gate. Which was, is and always will be an idiotic mechanic in any game.

I’m not sure what purpose it serves other than punishing one set of players (Players who play a lot/have a lot of resources) for another set of players (Players who don’t play a lot/don’t have a lot of resources) to keep one set from outpacing the other.

Now we can see though, a lot of those people weren’t bothering making Ascended anyway.

And the only reason I even did it was because I was BORED with nothing else to do. Burnt out on World Bosses, PvP. I needed to try something new (Fractals) to give me a reason to keep playing.

I did it for fractals, although that’s an entirely different can of worms. Before my ascended set, when ascended armor didn’t exist, I made the +10 infusions for the rings and amulet, which amounts to about 250 gold.

So if I’m counting infusions and making the ascended armor, it runs to about 700 gold, and if I add the gold I also dumped on several weapons, it’s closer to 850 gold.

And now with their apparent raid design of punishing zerkers with high toughness mobs, it means I gotta dump all that gold in another set of sinister stats ascended armor and weapons for back up.

How much fun!

I think ascended was a terrible mistake and they should have stuck to exotics and merely tied cosmetics and rank emotes to raids.

They recently changed that. You can now switch your Ascended stats in the Mystic Forge.

You need the Insignia for the set you want, Globs of Ecto (5 I think) and a Mystic Forge item bought with Shards.

Does bring up an interesting point, though.

There is no way making different sets of Ascended is economically, or time viable. So if a Raid requires Celes. in one part, Berserker in another, Sinister in another, etc. then it’s not going to be completed in full Ascended.

The time-gate makes it so it’s simply not worth putting the effort into making 4+ different sets of gear.

And they can’t make you have the ability to change the stats on the fly, because that’s the calling card for Legendary Armor.

But then, now that I think about it – This makes Fractals come into play, since Ascended gear drops in there, and since you can Mystic forge to change stats – every piece that drops is usable for you.

Not bad.

Pockets.3201:

Schurge.5194:

Pockets.3201:

It also tells some players that they can’t play the endgame, so they should find another game to play.

Raids aren’t end-game though… well it is part of end-game but it is not the be-all-end-all end-game. There is sPvP, tPvP, WvW, Dungeons, Fractals, all that open world stuff, progression crafting, and then after all of that there are Raids.

I will never set foot in a Raid – even if the armor was 20% better then exotics in WvW and gave a bonus to amulets in sPvP / tPvP – not because I lack the skill but because I don’t enjoy that kind of content (if you were guaranteed one piece you needed a run I would give it a try but it kitten well better be hard then, heh heh).

I don’t know that exclusion is good – ideally everyone should be able to play what they want – however it definitely isn’t bad. Telling people they should play a different game certainly isn’t; more MMOs should say “I’m sorry but if you are looking for ‘X’ go play a different game because that isn’t what this game is about” (see the bevy of new counter-cultural MMOs coming out like Camelot Unchained and Star Citizen).

Guild Wars 2 is as close to “do whatever the kitten you want” as you can get… just because a tiny slice of content isn’t tailored for everyone hardly necessitates a mass exodus… especially when Raids – like everything else in this game – merely offers QOL improvements (Ascended gear with on the fly changeable stats) rather then a power tier upgrade.

Maybe?

I feel we’ve well moved past dungeons being counted as endgame, they’ve been kind of left behind, old and neglected at this point. We’ll see how much effort they put into keeping fractals from suffering the same fate.

On the other hand we do know that they plan on rolling out a good bit more raids, with story included, though I could be wrong on the latter. With their teams being focused on that I am concerned with how much there will be to do other than farm the new maps for us PvEers after a certain point. If you aren’t raiding anyway.

I can’t say much on the PvP front as I’ve never enjoyed such things so I try to say out of the way.

If you’re a Casual player, then you’ll have the same kind of end-game you’ve had since launch – World Bosses, Map/Event Farm, Karma Train, Low-Difficulty 80 Content (Dungeons, etc.) All Casual content geared toward Casual players.

Raids are different. They are geared toward another subset of players, but they are not exclusive. If a Casual player wants to play them, they can. Nothing stops a Guild of Casuals from Raiding.

And guess what? When you get bored of being a Casual player doing Casual content – Raids will be there for you.

Keep demanding they nerf it – and it won’t be.

Azumi.9572:

Zenith.7301:

Azumi.9572:

Zenith.7301:

Azumi.9572:

Kevan.8912:

another question before: what is really stopping me from doing fractals? a huge, steamy heap of money and crafting ingredients to stack AR.
what will stop me from raids? with pretty good probability, still not having ascendeds + capped masteries.

I didn’t find Ascended Armor that expensive. Only thing was the idiotic time-gating.

I made a post on here a while ago about Fractals – it was due to Mawdrey being locked behind Fractals at the time. I didn’t want to run 5 Fractals because I had this idea in my head they were extremely hard.

I sucked it up and did them. And they were easy. It was more content I got to enjoy. I made it up to Fractal level 33 before stopping due to bordem.

You never had a reason to make your Ascended Armor before (Fractals didn’t motivate you, obviously) now you do. Now you have something to work towards.

Nothing is holding you back from doing Raids or making that Armor but yourself.

And because you are holding yourself back, you want to punish and hold back others.

That’s garbage.

The cost of ascended armor varies wildly on whether you were a cloth wearer, a leather wearer, or plate wearer.

The cost and required amount of bolts of damask makes a huge impact.

My mesmer’s full ascended armor cost around 470 gold to make. It’s much cheaper on non-cloth toons.

Mine was cloth. I made all the Damask. Ran Dungeons, used Gold to buy Silk. Took maybe an hour to finish like 5 Dungeons (AC, CM, TA, CoF, CoE). All Pugged.

Like I said – only issue was the time-gate. Which was, is and always will be an idiotic mechanic in any game.

I’m not sure what purpose it serves other than punishing one set of players (Players who play a lot/have a lot of resources) for another set of players (Players who don’t play a lot/don’t have a lot of resources) to keep one set from outpacing the other.

Now we can see though, a lot of those people weren’t bothering making Ascended anyway.

And the only reason I even did it was because I was BORED with nothing else to do. Burnt out on World Bosses, PvP. I needed to try something new (Fractals) to give me a reason to keep playing.

I did it for fractals, although that’s an entirely different can of worms. Before my ascended set, when ascended armor didn’t exist, I made the +10 infusions for the rings and amulet, which amounts to about 250 gold.

So if I’m counting infusions and making the ascended armor, it runs to about 700 gold, and if I add the gold I also dumped on several weapons, it’s closer to 850 gold.

And now with their apparent raid design of punishing zerkers with high toughness mobs, it means I gotta dump all that gold in another set of sinister stats ascended armor and weapons for back up.

How much fun!

I think ascended was a terrible mistake and they should have stuck to exotics and merely tied cosmetics and rank emotes to raids.

They recently changed that. You can now switch your Ascended stats in the Mystic Forge.

You need the Insignia for the set you want, Globs of Ecto (5 I think) and a Mystic Forge item bought with Shards.

Does bring up an interesting point, though.

There is no way making different sets of Ascended is economically, or time viable. So if a Raid requires Celes. in one part, Berserker in another, Sinister in another, etc. then it’s not going to be completed in full Ascended.

The time-gate makes it so it’s simply not worth putting the effort into making 4+ different sets of gear.

And they can’t make you have the ability to change the stats on the fly, because that’s the calling card for Legendary Armor.

But then, now that I think about it – This makes Fractals come into play, since Ascended gear drops in there, and since you can Mystic forge to change stats – every piece that drops is usable for you.

Not bad.

But that’s not a solution, because changing stats on ascended items involves destroying the enhancements, particularly those 250 gold worth of +10 infusions on my rings and amulet, unless I dish out 20 bucks on the cash store for the extraction tool and then have to spend that money on gems again when I switch back.

Ascended is just a horrible inconvenience foisted upon the players as a new timesink.

And fractals are not a reliable source of ascended armor.

I’ve done fractal 50 and have 2 sets of ascended stuff off it for the months I’ve been playing it, and I have all fractal skins.

My friend who I do fractal 50 with every day, who has been doing fractals with me for the same time, only has the fractal warhorn and no ascended chests to speak for.

RNG is RNG and a terrible way to tell people “well, you have that way to gear up if you don’t want to grind gold”.

What’s more, on top of that low rng for the ascended chest, you can get a chest for the same armor slot several times without being able to complete your set.

Azumi.9572:

Pockets.3201:

Schurge.5194:

Pockets.3201:

It also tells some players that they can’t play the endgame, so they should find another game to play.

Raids aren’t end-game though… well it is part of end-game but it is not the be-all-end-all end-game. There is sPvP, tPvP, WvW, Dungeons, Fractals, all that open world stuff, progression crafting, and then after all of that there are Raids.

I will never set foot in a Raid – even if the armor was 20% better then exotics in WvW and gave a bonus to amulets in sPvP / tPvP – not because I lack the skill but because I don’t enjoy that kind of content (if you were guaranteed one piece you needed a run I would give it a try but it kitten well better be hard then, heh heh).

I don’t know that exclusion is good – ideally everyone should be able to play what they want – however it definitely isn’t bad. Telling people they should play a different game certainly isn’t; more MMOs should say “I’m sorry but if you are looking for ‘X’ go play a different game because that isn’t what this game is about” (see the bevy of new counter-cultural MMOs coming out like Camelot Unchained and Star Citizen).

Guild Wars 2 is as close to “do whatever the kitten you want” as you can get… just because a tiny slice of content isn’t tailored for everyone hardly necessitates a mass exodus… especially when Raids – like everything else in this game – merely offers QOL improvements (Ascended gear with on the fly changeable stats) rather then a power tier upgrade.

Maybe?

I feel we’ve well moved past dungeons being counted as endgame, they’ve been kind of left behind, old and neglected at this point. We’ll see how much effort they put into keeping fractals from suffering the same fate.

On the other hand we do know that they plan on rolling out a good bit more raids, with story included, though I could be wrong on the latter. With their teams being focused on that I am concerned with how much there will be to do other than farm the new maps for us PvEers after a certain point. If you aren’t raiding anyway.

I can’t say much on the PvP front as I’ve never enjoyed such things so I try to say out of the way.

If you’re a Casual player, then you’ll have the same kind of end-game you’ve had since launch – World Bosses, Map/Event Farm, Karma Train, Low-Difficulty 80 Content (Dungeons, etc.) All Casual content geared toward Casual players.

Raids are different. They are geared toward another subset of players, but they are not exclusive. If a Casual player wants to play them, they can. Nothing stops a Guild of Casuals from Raiding.

And guess what? When you get bored of being a Casual player doing Casual content – Raids will be there for you.

Keep demanding they nerf it – and it won’t be.

I haven’t actually demanded anything. Stop acting so paranoid about the vague possibility of raids being changed simply because some people aren’t happy with them.

Azumi.9572:

If you’re a Casual player, then you’ll have the same kind of end-game you’ve had since launch – World Bosses, Map/Event Farm, Karma Train, Low-Difficulty 80 Content (Dungeons, etc.) All Casual content geared toward Casual players.

Raids are different. They are geared toward another subset of players, but they are not exclusive. If a Casual player wants to play them, they can. Nothing stops a Guild of Casuals from Raiding.

And guess what? When you get bored of being a Casual player doing Casual content – Raids will be there for you.

Keep demanding they nerf it – and it won’t be.

Yes because if enough people demand it, it won´t happen. Like the added character slot to the basic edition did never happen, or the commander lamps were not reworked or…oh wait…

There’s nothing wrong with more exclusivity, as long as it doesn’t run the game into the ground. As it is, I imagine that a sizable chunk of end-game players don’t bother with fractals and barely bother with dungeons. There is enough end-game content in the form of open world play that you don’t need to be doing the instanced stuff to entertain yourself.

You can bet there will be people who feel like raids should bend to them because raids are a part of the expansion and “I paid for this.” But as long as there is enough else to entertain, most people will be ok with some difficulty.

Kevan.8912:

another question before: what is really stopping me from doing fractals? a huge, steamy heap of money and crafting ingredients to stack AR.
what will stop me from raids? with pretty good probability, still not having ascendeds + capped masteries.

you only need agony at lvl 10, from then on you already have a ring, so put 5 in that and you are safe till 20, and from 10 and beyond you get more rings, and a drop chance of ascended gear

Anyone have an estimate on how many players bailed out of the game because of the mere existence of the Aetherpath in the Twilight Arbor?

‘Cause we have “challenging content” right now a lot of people can’t complete. It maybe doesn’t see a lot of use, but I don’t think its driving people out of the game…

What can you get out of TA Aether, Nike? Cosmetic stuff and the usual garbage opened by randomly dropping key parts and not the best armor available in the game.

That dungeon does not even appear on my radar anymore after completing it, but raids on the other hand will stay so long a theme for me until I get legendary armor, which is probably even more time consuming and a chore for me than wipping early in the TA dungeon in the first attempts.

Casual players can be the plague of a game, they have the least time investment in the game and think they are owed the same reward as someone who plays the actual game.

I have seen what casual raiding has does to other games, nothing good, it just made everything boring after 2-3 weeks when everything is on farm status.

Its ok that there will some content for players that want a challenge cause so far it looks like they plan to nerf the Brink mobs into oblivion. If you want to raid, get better at the game, practice, don’t just expect to be given everything for free.

So where is my content? I’m not a casual or a hardcore. I’m that little sliver in between. I want a decent amount of challenge but I don’t want Nintendo Hard where I have to be absolutely perfect to survive or succeed. I want wiggle room to mess up but I don’t want so much room that I can be a total kitten, fall on my face, and still get rewarded. I want things I might not beat the first time or the fifth time and things I have to drag my butt through to finish but I don’t have 24/7 to devote to becoming ‘the best’ or to grind the best gear in the shortest amount of time or to use charts and numbers to figure out exact damage and tweak my build to exact specifics with complicated weapon switches and skills done in exact order to get max damage.

All I hear is WHINE WHINE WHINE YOU HAVE 98% OF THE GAME, GIVE US 2% like casuals and hardcores are the only types of players who exist. Well they’re not so where’s my %? Where’s the % for a player who regularly beat Teq when it was new and not a cake walk? For someone who hates agony and fractals? I was half hoping raids would appeal to both hardcore and skilled players, not just hardcore gear/skill/trait checks do it perfect or fail. That’s not fun. I’m fine with it existing, don’t think I’m saying to nerf it or change it, but tap dancing Tybalt, shut up about no content for hardcores.

My issue with raids is the precursor rewards being gated behind this content exclusively(don’t much care about the skins and minis or whatever). When Fractals were were first released so was Ascended equipment. But no one NEEDED to do fractals in order to gain the ascended gear.

Gating the best tier of armor behind one type of content is kind of stupid(no type of content is designed for every type of player there is). I’d also say the same thing here if, for example, the only way to gain legendary weapons were to keep completing dungeons over and over again.

Let the raid guilds keep their weapon skins and miniatures as prestige rewards. Maybe they can even gain some gold as reward for completing raids once a week. However do NOT gate the best tier of armor behind solely this content(if a precursor does drop here I don’t mind if it also dropped elsewhere but it shouldn’t be exclusive to this content).

Iason Evan.3806:

Difficult content shouldn’t equate to wearing the best gear or excluding players based on gear grind. They should have made it so everyone was required to wear no better than green armor.

Because that is totally possible and won’t backfire at all, as WildStar tried to prove. Right? Right?

It is possible to do that, yes. But there’s a few issues:

• It’s pointless. Exotic armor is an instant acquisition at lvl80 as any guildie who has been playing for a few months can just lob you over a full set of virtually any stat (not quite all of them, but most). Might as well balance for at least exotic armor (which they did, btw, according to their words).
• Balance ignoring stat numbers means you need to work with number-agnostic mechanics. For the most part, this means instant kills. See WildStar for why that is a bad idea.
• Are we just trying to make it possible to do in greens? Or should it also not be significantly more difficult. Because make no mistake, I bet it is possible in greens. See Fractal 50 solo bosses. Is it worlds easier in exotic gear? Sure. But how would you prevent that? Damage scales with stats, would you make the enemy die in 500 hits independent of damage dealt per hit to get around this?

Just make greens, exotics, ascended and legendary the same stats, and balance it all at once.
Leave the difference just in appearance, animations, skins.
Make raids so difficult for anyone that only the most skilled players can finish it..and reward them with rare skins.

So, THIS is no grind for BiS.
Pros have their reward, casuals can’t blame anyone than theirselves and lack of knowledge of game mechanics.
Problem solved.

Any other trick such as BiS/ grind is just a timesink.

Anybody can create a group of friends to go raid. You might not make it very far at first and it would probably be a lot slower progression than if you went with a group of experienced raiders, but it can be done. It’s not that raiding itself may exclude some people, it’s that the completion of them will.

Anyone can start a raid. Not everyone can finish it. But if you enjoy the journey more than the destination, it really doesn’t matter.

Rpgtabbycat.5869:

Anybody can create a group of friends to go raid. You might not make it very far at first and it would probably be a lot slower progression than if you went with a group of experienced raiders, but it can be done. It’s not that raiding itself may exclude some people, it’s that the completion of them will.

Anyone can start a raid. Not everyone can finish it. But if you enjoy the journey more than the destination, it really doesn’t matter.

True.

We gathered random players in front of the raid instance, on exotic-equipped beta chars, and we could do it.

• No ascended gear.
• No organization.
• No clue.
• No set-up (we just invited whoever said yes).

Sure it’s painful. Learning by doing. And? Hell of a lot of fun, plus it actually works.