Guild Wars 2

paragraphs? xD

tldr;

:)

Do you know why people call “wall of text”? Well the wall keeps people away.

Tldr

I find it interesting that they nerfed dungeon rewards to get people all playing the same content but didn’t introduce a system for raids that helped to teach the majority of players who aren’t skilled enough to do raids how to raid like the Fractals do by easing you into the content.

Raids should have difficulty levels. You don’t get the actual top shelf raid gear that the actual raid gives. For example Raid tier 1-4 could give access to a small chance at ascended gear and tier 5-9 could increase the chances for ascended gear a tad. Tier 10 could be the raid proper with access to materials for Legendary armor. The goal would be to teach unskilled players the mechanics so that they could do the Tier 10 raid proper.

That’s the whole reason for the dungeon nerf is that they wanted everyone in HoT, right? They wanted all the players in the same place doing the same instanced PvE content. So why not give players the tools to do so just like you did with Fractals?

It makes no sense. Everyone would be happy that way. Lesser skilled players could earn their Ascended gear as they play and also craft it, and in turn the raiding community would start seeing more and more people become “Raid Ready”.

I think we need 100 man raids where some trash both has 1 hit kills and will kill you in one hit if you hit them unless they go for their heavily telegraphed attack, but must be hit by 10 players within a 3 second window. Also the boss can only be harmed by certain crsytaline weapons. There was a legendary (not rarity tier but original definition) sword that was used to slay this particular raid boss in ancient times, but could only be manufactured by gods with very rare materials vastly harder than diamond and Deldrimoor steel. Not even Superman could break the stuff let’s put it that way. Anyway, the Pact discovers a long lost land where dwarves still thrive and have some connection to the human gods.

With Pact and Asura technology they build a factory (instanced dungeon like quest to unlock the raid where materials are needed) where dwarves and gods work machines to mass produce materials that’ll infuse your ascended or legendary weapons (so story wise you’re wielding a mass produced exaclibur). Since there are typically many reasons why there’s only one exalibur or whatever those conditions can be studied and emulated to enable mass production.

The raid would be in a very inaccessible place, so you’d need to fill a rocket ship (with a Charr steampunk flair) with 100 other players. I think 100 man raids sounds awesome! :D Especially if there’s some lore created around it even if it’s a sidestory.

You know you don’t have to raid right?

I’m not interested in raiding at all. The fact they’ve added a carrot of double gold and XP just to get people to play them is telling me that they know how bad/ill thought out they are.

Sure some people will love them, there will always be people happy with anything you do. Most of HoT has been a disappointment to me. At this point if ANet do another Xpac for GW2, I’ll probably not buy it unless it’s way more content at launch than HoT, and around half the price, but I’m getting off track here.

If you don’t like raids don’t do them. If you want to and don’t have the gear, welcome to raiding in every MMO ever.

BrotherBelial.3094:

You know you don’t have to raid right?

I’m not interested in raiding at all. The fact they’ve added a carrot of double gold and XP just to get people to play them is telling me that they know how bad/ill thought out they are.

Sure some people will love them, there will always be people happy with anything you do. Most of HoT has been a disappointment to me. At this point if ANet do another Xpac for GW2, I’ll probably not buy it unless it’s way more content at launch than HoT, and around half the price, but I’m getting off track here.

If you don’t like raids don’t do them. If you want to and don’t have the gear, welcome to raiding in every MMO ever.

Agreed. Raids are one of the areas they could have made ArenaNet flavor and decided to eschew the idea and make them like other games. It’s just hard content for hard content’s sake. I am cool with that as this game was really lacking difficult, instanced content. That being said, they should have utilized the same basic ideas they used with Fractals to teach people how to do it. More people would be inclined that way to do them.

If they were to look at their metrics later on and find that people weren’t doing the raids even after they introduced new ones, then they would realize that the content wasn’t all that compelling. Then they could relook at how they design them to make them more engaging. I’m trying to use keywords that only marketing types like to speak in so that they understand what I’m saying :P

Iason Evan.3806:

BrotherBelial.3094:

You know you don’t have to raid right?

I’m not interested in raiding at all. The fact they’ve added a carrot of double gold and XP just to get people to play them is telling me that they know how bad/ill thought out they are.

Sure some people will love them, there will always be people happy with anything you do. Most of HoT has been a disappointment to me. At this point if ANet do another Xpac for GW2, I’ll probably not buy it unless it’s way more content at launch than HoT, and around half the price, but I’m getting off track here.

If you don’t like raids don’t do them. If you want to and don’t have the gear, welcome to raiding in every MMO ever.

Agreed. Raids are one of the areas they could have made ArenaNet flavor and decided to eschew the idea and make them like other games. It’s just hard content for hard content’s sake. I am cool with that as this game was really lacking difficult, instanced content. That being said, they should have utilized the same basic ideas they used with Fractals to teach people how to do it. More people would be inclined that way to do them.

If they were to look at their metrics later on and find that people weren’t doing the raids even after they introduced new ones, then they would realize that the content wasn’t all that compelling. Then they could relook at how they design them to make them more engaging. I’m trying to use keywords that only marketing types like to speak in so that they understand what I’m saying :P

I agree. this could have been something great, but raids can only be one thing. Damage sponges with enrage timers. ANet could have done so much more. Yet they did the same old.

Regardless of what raids could have been or should or whatever academic discussion … if you ignore they are there because you don’t like them, it won’t affect the things you like about the game.

Iason Evan.3806:

I find it interesting that they nerfed dungeon rewards to get people all playing the same content but didn’t introduce a system for raids that helped to teach the majority of players who aren’t skilled enough to do raids how to raid like the Fractals do by easing you into the content.

Sure they did, it’s called Dungeons.

@Agemnon

I agree with you, there needs to be different Tiers, where the lower ones would ease people into the mechanics, and have lower rewards, and be somewhat easier. The higher you go the harder it gets, but the rewards pick up, ect.

Obtena.7952:

Regardless of what raids could have been or should or whatever academic discussion … if you ignore they are there because you don’t like them, it won’t affect the things you like about the game.

True. All of this stuff works together though. Why the dungeon nerf? Because they wanted everyone doing the same content. They are creating the illusion of population by trying to put everyone in the same place. So if raids aren’t for someone it doesn’t matter, because ArenaNet took away the impetus to do dungeons. So raids affect that.

They want people in raids and not dungeons but they didn’t design a system that teaches people how to raid like they did with the brilliant fractal system. Their design is, “Bash your head against the raid til you understand it.”

The flaw in that design is people who are raiders and are skilled enough to do the raid on day 1 won’t put up with that. That’s part of the OP’s complaint. The community and ArenaNet are gating the experience. With raid tiers, like Fractal Tiers, they could have alleviated that issue and people could learn how to do it and then everyone is happy.

People who don’t like raids period but like dungeons are screwed because ArenaNet killed loot in dungeons. I liked dungeons because I found them fun. I like raids too, but I think it was a poor idea to kill dungeons for raids. They are wholly separate things. It was also poor execution to implement raids exactly like every other dev has implemented them. They had a chance to teach their lesser skilled players how to do them and dungeons got killed off in the process.

I can’t see the post, there is a wall in the way.

But on a serious note, you don’t need ascended to do raids. The devs talk BS. Ive got away with exotic armour and weapons, with just the trinkets on Ascended.

Sometimes you just need a different approach. Against Lich in groups we’d actually fight I discovered the little skeletons damage you upon hitting, so my strategy was: 1.Do enough damage to secure gold 2.Dedicate myself to support afterwards (I was a staff guardian with access to full group heal and stability in the Labrynth) and some raid mechanics can draw from that.

Different raid tiers would be great, in some games if you beat it on easy mode it’ll say, “Congratulations! Now play for real.” while holding out the real ending for the hardest mode. In an MMO however where rewards are expected for easy mode you can get, say 30 flaxseeds or whatever but rewards improve until you reach the top with exclusive skins and legendary ingredients.

Obtena.7952:

Regardless of what raids could have been or should or whatever academic discussion … if you ignore they are there because you don’t like them, it won’t affect the things you like about the game.

Iason Evan.3806:

I find it interesting that they nerfed dungeon rewards to get people all playing the same content but didn’t introduce a system for raids that helped to teach the majority of players who aren’t skilled enough to do raids how to raid like the Fractals do by easing you into the content.

Sure they did, it’s called Dungeons.

But they killed the rewards from Dungeons. So new players will probably never do them past story mode, as people will probably get groups for them to unlock the PvP tracks.

But riddle me this, Raid’s are completely different to Dungeons. one is 5 the other 10 player content. also the fights in Raids are nothing like fights in Dungeons. You really can’t compare them.

Dungeons are basically same as fractals and same as raids. Just new name on same thing and very small adjustments on mechanics. What bothers me with this “spend half your life and learn to finish this new shiny raid” is how anet creates something and then abandons it for newer version, never bothering to update and fix the original.

Once completely new set of dungeons, called fractals, was added, original dungeons were left rotten. Once even newer version of same thing, raids, got added, fractals are thrown away same way. And then, at some point in the future, there will be new and shiny feature that takes all the development time anet has and replaces raids with something that is basically same thing. Again.

You don’t need ascended gear to raid. Just as gear check in Dungeons/Fractals, its also the players that do it in raids. Exotic is more than fine for raiding.

@verificus yeah totally. Ascended would be called “a requirement” only if the ui at the entrance of raid said “You don’t have ascended gear, you are not worthy”.
As for the introduction of raids, I am really not on the same page as you OP. I myself am a very casual player and I have also been introduced to what you call “online gaming” with the original GW. The fact is , you don’t have to raid, the legendary armor is not an increase in stats because it does not give better stats than ascended gear that was introduced like, correct me if I am wrong, 3 years ago. As a side not, you do realize you won’t be able to craft your legendary gear now because all raid wings have not yet been released.
If you fell put off due to the difficulty of raids, well wait for the raid experts to come up for the strategies and traits setup to later be able to complete them. It is not like if the released raid content will go away. And yes your skill as player will always triumph over gear stats simply because a skilled player who uses food with exotics will always be better than a meta dungeon stacking zerker wanabee, which was so easy to be since dungeon runs became so mindnumbing in the end

Verificus.4320:

You don’t need ascended gear to raid.

True, you don’t. But you’d still better have it if you hope to succed in raids.

Iason Evan.3806:

Obtena.7952:

Regardless of what raids could have been or should or whatever academic discussion … if you ignore they are there because you don’t like them, it won’t affect the things you like about the game.

True. All of this stuff works together though. Why the dungeon nerf? Because they wanted everyone doing the same content.

No, that’s why players think Anet nerfed dungeons. These things don’t work together; they are independent of each other. It’s simply convenient for you to say they do for your theory to work.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Obtena.7952:

Regardless of what raids could have been or should or whatever academic discussion … if you ignore they are there because you don’t like them, it won’t affect the things you like about the game.

Iason Evan.3806:

I find it interesting that they nerfed dungeon rewards to get people all playing the same content but didn’t introduce a system for raids that helped to teach the majority of players who aren’t skilled enough to do raids how to raid like the Fractals do by easing you into the content.

Sure they did, it’s called Dungeons.

But they killed the rewards from Dungeons. So new players will probably never do them past story mode, as people will probably get groups for them to unlock the PvP tracks.

But riddle me this, Raid’s are completely different to Dungeons. one is 5 the other 10 player content. also the fights in Raids are nothing like fights in Dungeons. You really can’t compare them.

I’m not comparing them, I’m simply saying that dungeons prepares you for what to expect in raids.

Obtena.7952:

Iason Evan.3806:

Obtena.7952:

Regardless of what raids could have been or should or whatever academic discussion … if you ignore they are there because you don’t like them, it won’t affect the things you like about the game.

True. All of this stuff works together though. Why the dungeon nerf? Because they wanted everyone doing the same content.

No, that’s why players think Anet nerfed dungeons. These things don’t work together; they are independent of each other. It’s simply convenient for you to say they do for your theory to work.

Ok then. If the dungeon nerf had not happened, would people be doing the new maps to make gold or doing the raids? Of corse not. Why put in all the effort when you could make 4 gold for sure running all 3 AC paths, vs wasting hours trying to do the raid. We all know the answer.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Obtena.7952:

Iason Evan.3806:

Obtena.7952:

Regardless of what raids could have been or should or whatever academic discussion … if you ignore they are there because you don’t like them, it won’t affect the things you like about the game.

True. All of this stuff works together though. Why the dungeon nerf? Because they wanted everyone doing the same content.

No, that’s why players think Anet nerfed dungeons. These things don’t work together; they are independent of each other. It’s simply convenient for you to say they do for your theory to work.

Ok then. If the dungeon nerf had not happened, would people be doing the new maps to make gold or doing the raids?

They would; people do new content because it’s fun and new to them, just as one example; there are lots of reasons to do the new content and none are related to making gold because running the new content isn’t the best way to make gold. I know this bursts your bubble but … dungeons aren’t the best way to make gold in the first place. Also, many people don’t play just to make gold anyhow. Shocker I know.

iriyabran.6218:

Pretty sure “taking everything we love about GW and making it better” wasn’t meant to be “put gear treadmill and gear check in the game and go against everything it ever stood for”. You’ll probably say there’s already gear check but the difference is gear check has always come from players but now it comes from Anet. And FoTM doesn’t count cause you can play plenty of levels without AR. People talk to me like I’m some peasant for not crafting full ascended armor and spending my money on what I actually like, as if parking alts in Malchor’s or running around Gendarran for soft wood is so heroic and fun. I farmed FoW sets for my GW characters because all I needed was my build and skill now it’s just my gear that matters. I farmed them because I wanted/liked them , not because they offered stat advantage. In fact that’s exactly the thing I loved about GW. It introduced me to online gaming and was precious to me because of it’s lack of lvl grind, gear grind and fetch quests but it’s become another “insert mmo here” title. I don’t even wanna call it Guild Wars 2 anymore. I know typing this doesn’t matter the people who cared about what GW was probably aren’t even at Anet anymore.
You could’ve made challenging raids without gear requirement. You could’ve put the player in a transformation while in raid or simply using the system you use for sPvP limit their stats but I guess it’s better to ramp up the ascended cost, nerf ascended drops, set gear requirement and wait for the gems to gold. I must be the one naive. I must be in the minority to think happy players would spend more money in your gem store willingly instead of being forced. I guess I have to go back and stand in empty outposts in GW since GW2 wants to cater to any other mmo community except it’s own. It was an inspired and unique game by ex blizzards, now it’s just another “appeal to the wow-ers” title. Laugh at me all you want I’ll probably won’t log in to see it. To you it’s just a game to me it’s soul crushing.. When you log in it’s not fun anymore, it’s just another workplace. Until (if ever) I find another game to fill the hollowness I guess I’ll spend my time watching guildies being rejected from raids cause they’re not full ascended and being rejected myself. Gl with raids to everyone else who enjoys being milked by the system and is extremely happy and lucky to not have all the memories I have from GW to drag them around in every other game they play.

First of all, if you don’t like Raids, simply don’t play. There are a ton of other things you can do in the game besides Raids.

Second, your “Gear Treadmill” isn’t as ridiculous as other MMOs out there. Depending on the amount of time you’ve played the game, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem having all the right gear you need to progress. The way to defeat the Raids aren’t set in stone, so there are tons of possibilities for you to experiment with what you have and make improvements as you go along if things don’t work out. If you are having trouble adjusting to the content, its fine. It always happens when introduced to something new. And to be clear, this is PVE End-Game content, not PVP. Its an entirely separate game you want to play. If you don’t like PVE, stay away from it.

Thirdly, if you are being rejected from playing content because your Guild or PUGs groups demands so much of you, then you are probably in a really bad guild and should avoid PUGs in the first place. Cause for this particular content, you are going to need friends who can communicate and coordinate during the encounters. PUGs are unreliable for the most part with the amount of actual difficulty you are being presented here. If your Guild rejects you because you suck or don’t have the gear,you can do a variety of things. Get the gear you need through Fractals, make the gear yourself with all the possible resources you currently have, or purchase it with gold. If you can’t do it, just work on it at your own pace. And besides, Exotic Gear still works, you may need to complement your armor with Ascended Trinkets and amulets to boost your required stats, and you can get those through Laurel Vendors mostly.
If you can’t do that, just leave the toxic guild. You don’t need them.

Fourthly, EVERY GAME nowadays wants to cater to as many people as possible. Its just how business works. If you want to sell a product, do everything you can to make as many people as possible want to purchase it. It won’t just cater to a minority, cause the minority can’t sustain a game like this. It need everyone on board for it to stay afloat. HoT did a fair amount of good with its release, and there is more to come. If you realized that you spent $60 or less (depending on sales events) on more than 3 years worth of content and updates that were free on the core game, than we can expect just as much if not more content within the year or 2 til the new expansion. Don’t expect EVERYTHING to appear on release. This isn’t a console release.

Fifthly, you aren’t being milked in this game. Everything is optional, you choose whether or not you spend more money on gems and such. And just to remind you, there is NO subscription fee. What other methods can Arenanet do to earn more money? Its your own decision to spend money on things you want for your account.

And look, I’m not saying everything is perfect. There is always a few problems to be had in games, but as far as Raids go, its only a problem for you because some bad players out there are making your experience worse for you. You don’t have to deal with them.
Just play with players who know how to have a good time. I really hope you do find them.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Obtena.7952:

Regardless of what raids could have been or should or whatever academic discussion … if you ignore they are there because you don’t like them, it won’t affect the things you like about the game.

Iason Evan.3806:

I find it interesting that they nerfed dungeon rewards to get people all playing the same content but didn’t introduce a system for raids that helped to teach the majority of players who aren’t skilled enough to do raids how to raid like the Fractals do by easing you into the content.

Sure they did, it’s called Dungeons.

But they killed the rewards from Dungeons. So new players will probably never do them past story mode, as people will probably get groups for them to unlock the PvP tracks.

But riddle me this, Raid’s are completely different to Dungeons. one is 5 the other 10 player content. also the fights in Raids are nothing like fights in Dungeons. You really can’t compare them.

You can still do Dungeons to get all the Armor Skins that you don’t have. At least , that now why I’m doing it.

Iason Evan.3806:

BrotherBelial.3094:

You know you don’t have to raid right?

I’m not interested in raiding at all. The fact they’ve added a carrot of double gold and XP just to get people to play them is telling me that they know how bad/ill thought out they are.

Sure some people will love them, there will always be people happy with anything you do. Most of HoT has been a disappointment to me. At this point if ANet do another Xpac for GW2, I’ll probably not buy it unless it’s way more content at launch than HoT, and around half the price, but I’m getting off track here.

If you don’t like raids don’t do them. If you want to and don’t have the gear, welcome to raiding in every MMO ever.

Agreed. Raids are one of the areas they could have made ArenaNet flavor and decided to eschew the idea and make them like other games. It’s just hard content for hard content’s sake. I am cool with that as this game was really lacking difficult, instanced content. That being said, they should have utilized the same basic ideas they used with Fractals to teach people how to do it. More people would be inclined that way to do them.

If they were to look at their metrics later on and find that people weren’t doing the raids even after they introduced new ones, then they would realize that the content wasn’t all that compelling. Then they could relook at how they design them to make them more engaging. I’m trying to use keywords that only marketing types like to speak in so that they understand what I’m saying :P

Well there is a simple way to learn to Raid. Its called “Trial and Error” or simply “Playing it” You don’t need a tutorial for this content.

I don’t even see the attraction in “The Raid” so i’m not concerned about what happens with it. Spending hours whittling down a health bar for rewards that will mostly likely be salvage? Nope. I just wish WvW wasn’t such a ghost town x.x

Obtena.7952:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Obtena.7952:

Iason Evan.3806:

Obtena.7952:

Regardless of what raids could have been or should or whatever academic discussion … if you ignore they are there because you don’t like them, it won’t affect the things you like about the game.

True. All of this stuff works together though. Why the dungeon nerf? Because they wanted everyone doing the same content.

No, that’s why players think Anet nerfed dungeons. These things don’t work together; they are independent of each other. It’s simply convenient for you to say they do for your theory to work.

Ok then. If the dungeon nerf had not happened, would people be doing the new maps to make gold or doing the raids?

They would; people do new content because it’s fun and new to them, just as one example; there are lots of reasons to do the new content and none are related to making gold because running the new content isn’t the best way to make gold. I know this bursts your bubble but … dungeons aren’t the best way to make gold in the first place. Also, many people don’t play just to make gold anyhow. Shocker I know.

Sure SW is probably the best place to make gold, but before that dungeons where, sure you had champ trains, but you knew how much you where making with dungeons, there was less rng in your total gold at the end of the day, also the tokens you had, you could turn in to weapons, that you could then throw into the forge that you could then sell on the TP. But I’m sure we have different opinions on this, same as we have with if HoT is fun or not, the only part of HoT I really like is the story, I’m not a big fan of the timed meta event maps. Once I’ve completed a TD meta, I’m never going back to HoT for anything other than story play throughs and a few HC to finish the elite specs.

“You need ascended gear to do raids”
“Do raids to get ascended gear”

Chicken and egg ArenaNet. Chicken and egg.

This is exactly why everyone is just farming a single fractal level atm. Because its the best way to get the ascended gear that you need instead of doing the content that is actually supposed to give you epic rewards like… ascended gear.

I’m confused by this mention of gear checks and gear treadmills.

Ascended gear was recommended in a blog post by one of the devs, but I just checked and it’s possible to enter without it. Of course it will be harder. But before launch they were talking about how dungeons would be incredibly hard group content that only the best players would be able to complete and getting enough tokens for a full set of dungeon armor would show you were one of the best (PvP skins were separate at the time). Less than a year in people were running them solo and/or naked because they found it much too easy in groups. And that was after some updates intended to make them harder.

I don’t know that raids will be that easy, but I’d be very surprised if they couldn’t be completed by people in exotics once players learn what to do.

I really don’t understand the bit about a gear treadmill though, since they haven’t introduced any new tiers since ascended. Unless you missed the part where legendary armor is exactly like legendary weapons, a fancier skin on normal ascended gear.

BrotherBelial.3094:

Obtena.7952:

BrotherBelial.3094:

Obtena.7952:

Iason Evan.3806:

Obtena.7952:

Regardless of what raids could have been or should or whatever academic discussion … if you ignore they are there because you don’t like them, it won’t affect the things you like about the game.

True. All of this stuff works together though. Why the dungeon nerf? Because they wanted everyone doing the same content.

No, that’s why players think Anet nerfed dungeons. These things don’t work together; they are independent of each other. It’s simply convenient for you to say they do for your theory to work.

Ok then. If the dungeon nerf had not happened, would people be doing the new maps to make gold or doing the raids?

They would; people do new content because it’s fun and new to them, just as one example; there are lots of reasons to do the new content and none are related to making gold because running the new content isn’t the best way to make gold. I know this bursts your bubble but … dungeons aren’t the best way to make gold in the first place. Also, many people don’t play just to make gold anyhow. Shocker I know.

Sure SW is probably the best place to make gold, but before that dungeons where, .

They weren’t but even if they were, it’s irrelevant to the argument that no one would play HoT if they didn’t nerf dungeon rewards. That’s just nonsense. In fact, that’s the irony of all this; people QQing that dungeon rewards got nerfed and now they have NO idea on how to make gold … they never DID.