Guild Wars 2

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Vayne.8563:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Vayne.8563:

I wouldn’t mind titles given to people who achieve hard content. But unique skins or the only way to get a specific class of armor…that I do mind. Raids are too hard to lock stuff like that behind.

Dungeons were hard too. This wing is already pugable. By the time legendary armor will be out pugs will speedclear wing 1 and will be comfortable in wing 2.

Dungeons were too hard? lol Okay then.

Check old threads in dungeon forum if you were not playing around release.

That’s not really a fair comparison … EVERY can be hard around release, even OW events. The point being made there is alternative approaches to obtaining gear, not easier or harder ones.

Coulter.2315:

You’ve described your idea of casual and you then describe what content you like (world bosses), those things are available to you, where is the problem?

I’m not sure where your “social engineering” bit comes in.

well, not exactly, i’ve been a part of hard core teams in the past, the more focused precision and strategy a team needs to have, the more hardcore it is. how can you be hardcore without precision and strategy ?

and to be clear, Social Engineering is a discipline in social science that refers to efforts to influence particular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale.

attitude, as in perception.

small 5 man strategic teams that focus on precision and speed is a particular attitude, this attitude has taken over most if not all 5 man type – pre-set non open world organized teams.

attitude, as in how they see the game. Some people get very upset when they lose, understandably because of the amount of work and focus they place on the game, others have a lot of fun laughing about it. That’s the difference between hardcore and casual.

also, i should say, i’m a hardcore casual, meaning, i am very much into precision and strategy, and I demand it …of myself, not of anyone else …..it matters not if we win or lose, I’m just superpug in game lol

Ricky.4706:

and to be clear, Social Engineering is a discipline in social science that refers to efforts to influence particular attitudes and social behaviors on a large scale.

Right, and now could you explain how this relates to GW2, because social engineering requires an engineer with a goal, I personally can find neither in context of “hardcore vs casual mindset.”

Don’t you think its just a natural occurance that 2 set of people will argue for their own benefit? Attributing a guiding hand to just natural or random events is not uncommon (just how do you think all those religions got started), but I would guard against jumping to “social engineering” conclusions with zero evidence or even motive.

People just argue their side automatically, no manipulation is required for this to take place (there is very little social engineering taking place to make your mother love you for example – unless you are just awful but she feels obligated, I hope for her case this isn’t true). Its good to be curious about things you’ve learned and try to find examples irl to bolster your understanding of the topic – I just don’t think this is the case here.

Vayne.8563:

Nah, they won’t advertise it.

A lot of games don’t post when they’re doing well for a very good reason.

Accepting for the sake of argument that Anet will not admit to either an increased player base or a decreased player base, then what evidence would sway you that the population is decreasing to levels that are harmful to the game’s continuation?

I’ll add that I’m a WvW’er and I’ve seem many in my Guild no longer log in to play — many players that I’ve played with for years. It’s a large, well run, well networked guild, so my observations are not being made in a vacuum.

Soon.5240:

Vayne.8563:

Nah, they won’t advertise it.

A lot of games don’t post when they’re doing well for a very good reason.

Accepting for the sake of argument that Anet will not admit to either an increased player base or a decreased player base, then what evidence would sway you that the population is decreasing to levels that are harmful to the game’s continuation?

I’ll add that I’m a WvW’er and I’ve seem many in my Guild no longer log in to play — many players that I’ve played with for years. It’s a large, well run, well networked guild, so my observations are not being made in a vacuum.

I think everyone knows the WvW population is down. But the PvP and PvE population is up, if nothing else due to free to play.

You don’t have to convince me that the WvW population is down. But I’d wager there are as many players now as there have been any time since launch. The proof will be down the road in about six months when we see how things stabilize after the expansion sales are factored out.

However, I’m generally going by things I see, like reddit traffic, number of times searched on google, stuff like Raptr, which puts GW 2 much higher in the rankings than it was before free to play, and the quarterly reports NcSoft gives to its stockholders.

On a more annecdotal note, my guild hasn’t really slacked off at all. We had over 100 people log in last week. About the same number we had last year at this time.

@Coulter – well consider what Vayne just stated …

“I think everyone knows the WvW population is down. But the PvP and PvE population is up, if nothing else due to free to play.”

that is no accident.

wvw, was changed…. people wanted it fixed, not changed. the new area could have been appended, but it replaced the borderland. which drove many people away.

It’s nothing about feelings or opinion, it’s obvious. Wvw had a heavy population, anet wanted pvp to be esport, wvw had lots of issues, naturally wvw’rs whom are also pvpr’s spend more time in spvp, because they don’t like the new borderlands and wvw is emptier and lost its edge….so now spvp has a bigger audience. there is a pattern there, of small teams in pvp, and small teams in dungeons, fractals…..and any other ‘limited’ size events…

somebody really really really wants elite strategy game play. it’s very obvious.

all i’m saying is they are going about it the wrong way, you can’t insist people just like each other and be elite. that’s just ….no. elite comes from seeing people in the same places many times doing the same thing you like doing. which comes from open world.

There was an article in Fortune at the time ANet announced the new ESports initiative. In it, they made statements that were something like, “Since Play for Free, monthly account logins have doubled.” and “Monthly account logins are now over 3 million.” Either Fortune was talking through its hat, or they got that data from ANet. So, Anet does reveal such data — just not all that often.

What those numbers might have become by now – three months into HoT – and what they mean for more regular logins I wouldn’t care to speculate about. Based on these forums, I’m seeing less activity on the boards I frequent. That could just be the lull between releases. I expect we’ll see more traffic, along with some outrage, come the 26th.

edit: http://fortune.com/tag/guild-wars-2/

dear anet, you want elite pvp, make a pvp enabled town in pve. you will go through a few months of chaos, eventually teams start forming to calm the chaos down and take revenge for the innocent souls that have fallen, or even form the big evil guild that wants to take over. bang, the natural evolution of rpg and pvp.

you want to fix wvw, first append the new area and bring back the old borderlands, don’t replace strategies everyone has built. then do a mega server on it, it’s not competitive, the fun is in the zerg there! heck, the fun is in the zerg everywhere!

next, the mega-server killed the rp community – which is historically the strongest esport spectators. this gives pvp and talking about it culture and community, and suddenly it’s not “finkle, vs quaggankiller” in pvp, it’s good vs evil from the fights that came out of the open pvp / rpg enabled area. no goals, just an area like southsun cove where players can get hit just like npcs. except teams / squads can’t hit each other -nudge nudge- – no special prizes, other than maybe certain skins to show you were there ( and lived to buy the t-shirt lol )

been there, done that…the first time it happend. it works.

edit – the currency in this open pve / pvp zone should be ears of the people you have fought and defeated! – a little diablo trivia there! -

Arena Net have not been playing to their strengths with Guild Wars 2, focusing on the elite crowd and e-sports has been a mistake. They should be nurturing the casual player and PvE side of the game as much as they can as that is where their bread and butter is.

Lets see what this year holds, hopefully they start making smart decisions when it comes to the direction of content development.

Aedelric.1287:

Arena Net have not been playing to their strengths with Guild Wars 2, focusing on the elite crowd and e-sports has been a mistake. They should be nurturing the casual player and PvE side of the game as much as they can as that is where their bread and butter is.

Lets see what this year holds, hopefully they start making smart decisions when it comes to the direction of content development.

Actually I think what you’re seeing is compensation for how it’s been. It really has been too easy. Being casual doesn’t mean you want no challenge at all, at least for a lot of us.

But, I think that they heard complaints about how easy the game was for a long long time and they compensated and now that they’re hearing the other complaints they’ll compensate again. Originally they said they couldn’t bring gliding to core tyria, it would be too much work and suddenly it’s here.

There’s a new Shatterer fight with new achievements. I think the development cycle is very long, so it looks like the game has taken a new direction. I expect that the direction will shift back again, soon enough.

Ricky.4706:

@Coulter – well consider what Vayne just stated …

“I think everyone knows the WvW population is down. But the PvP and PvE population is up, if nothing else due to free to play.”

that is no accident.

wvw, was changed…. people wanted it fixed, not changed. the new area could have been appended, but it replaced the borderland. which drove many people away.

It’s nothing about feelings or opinion, it’s obvious. Wvw had a heavy population, anet wanted pvp to be esport, wvw had lots of issues, naturally wvw’rs whom are also pvpr’s spend more time in spvp, because they don’t like the new borderlands and wvw is emptier and lost its edge….so now spvp has a bigger audience. there is a pattern there, of small teams in pvp, and small teams in dungeons, fractals…..and any other ‘limited’ size events…

somebody really really really wants elite strategy game play. it’s very obvious.

all i’m saying is they are going about it the wrong way, you can’t insist people just like each other and be elite. that’s just ….no. elite comes from seeing people in the same places many times doing the same thing you like doing. which comes from open world.

You need a tinfoil hat… Anet tried to make WvW better (they failed), the tried to make PvP better (structurally wise they succeed – no comment on balance), so yes the PvP base increased and WvW;s fell.

This was not a plan, they didn’t sit there going “mwahahaaha we’ll design giant eleborate maps with tons of time and effort and just pray to god they hate it!”

There is a logical razor best said; kittenup before conspiracy. (this will look so cute as kittenup)

Anet made a mistake with WvW and the demogaphics changed, if they deliberately wanted to destroy it can you thnk of cheaper ways? I can.

it’s obvious. ad-homs and spin doctoring won’t change that.

Ricky.4706:

it’s obvious. ad-homs and spin doctoring won’t change that.

So you think Anet set out to move people from WvW to PvP (reasonable thing for someone to want), they then thought the best way of doing this (this is where you start to look tinfoily) was to spend months making huge maps with new mechanics and depth, updating the way supply and capping works with extras like motor bikes, spend hours bigging up WvW with invited guilds and broadcasts, large meta events being rolled out, gave them their own betas to avoid bugs.

You think this was an efficient use of time to achieve their goal? Anet is a business. You seem to over look this… Such a waste of resources for nothing that wasn’t going to happen with Leagues anyway.

If you still believe it after that I stand by my tinfoil hat comment.

Interesting OP post. I basically feel the opposite of what you feel. I think the game is too casual and too RNG based now. And that this RNG has destroyed the heart and reasons for repeating content over and over. I agree on a common point though that in the end you are grinding for something that isn’t worth the time spent and is a boring and tedious process to grind.

@Coulter.2315 – lol….you are the one painting it to be evil and tinfoily haha – it’s called business and promoting new areas, marketing and generating interest, i even showed an alternative that i thought would be more effective.

if your imagination wasn’t getting the best of you, this conversation wouldn’t be as interesting, so thanks.

Vayne.8563:

Actually I think what you’re seeing is compensation for how it’s been. It really has been too easy. Being casual doesn’t mean you want no challenge at all, at least for a lot of us.

Thing is I never once mentioned about the difficulty of content, but rather it not being casual friendly and how things have moved away from what Guild Wars 2 was sold as. I do believe that being casual does not always go hand in hand with wanting easy content and for some perspective I myself am not entirely a casual player.

Event timers, boss timers, a daily that require you to complete specific objectives, unrealistic achievement requirements (10k drinks) that require you to give up a social life to obtain. These are only a handful of issues but there are more, the problem is more on the accessibility side of being casual friendly not really how difficult the content is. Not even the new guild hall system is friendly to casual guilds.

I do not believe it is a form of overcompensation by Arena Net but rather them trying to attract a different crowd than the game originally appealed to, as in the current focus with hardcore content, massive guilds and e-sports.

In the past 3 days i’ve spent several hours in Verdant Brink. Even though i have bought HoT at release, i’ve had so much more to do that i hadn’t played in the new zones. It was frustrating at first, due to the strange navigation and lack of gliding, yet after get the glinding and learning how to do things it went a lot easier. I’m enjoying that map, it is challenging, yes, but fun. I got 2 more mastery points, 4 hero challenges, doing several events and getting a lot of loot. I’m perfectly ok with people achieving stuff and getting rewards for it. The game is quite casual, yes it has that wierd requirements for some items, achievements and skins, but you can eventually get there. After spending several years in playing WoW i got tired of all of lvl up, gear up, lvl up gear up process. The HoT was supposed to be hareder than the core Tyria and it is, it is ok. They can fix some of the issues with the mega server, so that in any moment there are enough people to do the events with. But the things is if you want ascended gear, you can get it, it will take some time, yet you can do that ( and for those like me, who don’t wanna wait that much you can buy the components of the TP and get the gear quickly), same with making money, should’ve they nerfed the dungeon farm, maybe not, unless making other ways of generating proffit. The expansion is quite new, there bugs and issues and i know they are working on ways to resolve them, like the elite specc costing 400 HP ( which was insane).

Aedelric.1287:

Vayne.8563:

Actually I think what you’re seeing is compensation for how it’s been. It really has been too easy. Being casual doesn’t mean you want no challenge at all, at least for a lot of us.

Thing is I never once mentioned about the difficulty of content, but rather it not being casual friendly and how things have moved away from what Guild Wars 2 was sold as. I do believe that being casual does not always go hand in hand with wanting easy content and for some perspective I myself am not entirely a casual player.

Event timers, boss timers, a daily that require you to complete specific objectives, unrealistic achievement requirements (10k drinks) that require you to give up a social life to obtain. These are only a handful of issues but there are more, the problem is more on the accessibility side of being casual friendly not really how difficult the content is. Not even the new guild hall system is friendly to casual guilds.

I do not believe it is a form of overcompensation by Arena Net but rather them trying to attract a different crowd than the game originally appealed to, as in the current focus with hardcore content, massive guilds and e-sports.

I’m just not buying this. I’m not saying they’re not trying to attract harder core players to the game as well, but that doesn’t have to mean they’ve abandoned casuals. In six months we’ll have a better idea, when we see what changes are implemented and what new stuff comes along. Until then we’re both just guessing.

GW1 had raids. Being able to access all content without gating is casual friendly. Having a power cap is casual friendly. Having a gem store is casual friendly. 10k drinks is casual friendly if you must pull out that nonsense (GW1 had many many achievements like this).

Raids represents a fraction of the game content, and a fraction of the expansion released. Stop worrying about content that’s not targeted at yourself and enjoy the vast majority that is, and you will be happier. And incidentally, Casuals can enjoy raids too, a casual player may decide that he fancies joining in a guild raid one week. hardcore means having to commit to that same raid x nights a week for x hours or risk falling behind. – this is hardcore.

vesica tempestas.1563:

GW1 had raids. Being able to access all content without gating is casual friendly. Having a power cap is casual friendly. Having a gem store is casual friendly. 10k drinks is casual friendly if you must pull out that nonsense (GW1 had many many achievements like this).

Raids represents a fraction of the game content, and a fraction of the expansion released. Stop worrying about content that’s not targeted at yourself and enjoy the vast majority that is, and you will be happier. And incidentally, Casuals can enjoy raids too, a casual player may decide that he fancies joining in a guild raid one week. hardcore means having to commit to that same raid x nights a week for x hours or risk falling behind. – this is hardcore.

I don’t consider the elite content in Guild Wars 1 raids, and I don’t really think anyone else did either. Well, that’s not completely true. The Deep and Urgoz were probably raids. But nothing else was.

And I wouldn’t say other of those were casual in any way.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t consider the elite content in Guild Wars 1 raids, and I don’t really think anyone else did either. Well, that’s not completely true. The Deep and Urgoz were probably raids. But nothing else was.

And I wouldn’t say other of those were casual in any way.

Yes it was a way more hardcore friendly than casual friendly, a lot of stuff took way too much time, yet we all ( who played GW1) enjoyed the game. And here it is not like that. 10k drinks is too much, but it is for people with free time and lots of gold to invest in them, which in a way shifts the gold towards the poorer players, which is good. But noone has to do this type of achievements if they do not want to.

gungcho.7382:

Vayne.8563:

I don’t consider the elite content in Guild Wars 1 raids, and I don’t really think anyone else did either. Well, that’s not completely true. The Deep and Urgoz were probably raids. But nothing else was.

And I wouldn’t say other of those were casual in any way.

Yes it was a way more hardcore friendly than casual friendly, a lot of stuff took way too much time, yet we all ( who played GW1) enjoyed the game. And here it is not like that. 10k drinks is too much, but it is for people with free time and lots of gold to invest in them, which in a way shifts the gold towards the poorer players, which is good. But noone has to do this type of achievements if they do not want to.

10k drinks was ridiculous, but only because of the limited time. If you were doing the drunken title in Guild Wars 1, it was a crazy grind, and on top of that, you couldn’t just drink them straight down, you had to time it, so you took a drink just as the other one was wearing off. It was an insane process.

Not to mention map completion in Guild Wars 1, which wasn’t fun for a lot of people including me. Sitting there, pushing against the edge of areas try to unfog a tiny drop that I didn’t know I was missing…nope, not fun at all.

Both games had ridiculous grind for certain things. No one needs the shoulders to compete. It’s meant to be an end game item. Regardless, I still think 10k drinks was too much.

On the other hand the meta for the event was easy to get.

And you know, I didn’t prefer the elite content in Guild Wars 1 to what we have here. I didn’t love the underworld, or Urgoz, or DOA or Slavers. I did them all once. I did Sorrow’s Furnace and FOW a few times, but you know, they weren’t that much fun for me.

I find the new expansion experience more fun that those.

It’s just a matter of taste. I don’t think you could even say more people preferred those to these. We simply don’t know.

Yes it was crazy with the grinding, i did not enjoy map completion myself ( got about 80% of tyria ), neither drunkard or sweet tooth titles , but non the less the game as a whole was fun- good story, unique combat system. Now it is better, yet fun again! And that is the point.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

“Fun and entertainment” is not enough to keep people playing the same content in the same game for years.

Perhaps not for hardcores, but it is for me.

Vayne.8563:

vesica tempestas.1563:

GW1 had raids. Being able to access all content without gating is casual friendly. Having a power cap is casual friendly. Having a gem store is casual friendly. 10k drinks is casual friendly if you must pull out that nonsense (GW1 had many many achievements like this).

Raids represents a fraction of the game content, and a fraction of the expansion released. Stop worrying about content that’s not targeted at yourself and enjoy the vast majority that is, and you will be happier. And incidentally, Casuals can enjoy raids too, a casual player may decide that he fancies joining in a guild raid one week. hardcore means having to commit to that same raid x nights a week for x hours or risk falling behind. – this is hardcore.

I don’t consider the elite content in Guild Wars 1 raids, and I don’t really think anyone else did either. Well, that’s not completely true. The Deep and Urgoz were probably raids. But nothing else was.

And I wouldn’t say other of those were casual in any way.

The Deep, Urgoz, FoW and UW could all easily be considered raids. In some ways they were even less casual friendly than today’s Raids.

Why?
They were designed to take a long time – even if you were really good – so aside for speed clears -you were looking at a 1.5 to 2 hour stay even with a good party.
They were also very very unforgiving – much more than the current Raids are. How so?

If your entire party wiped – you were done – all progress lost and you were thrown outside the instance – you had to do it all over again – that’s not casual friendly – they were very much aimed at the hardcore.

Imagine how much unforgiving and hardcore the raid would be if you had to redo everything if you wiped at one boss.
Imagine dying at Sabetha and having to clear the ENTIRE raid – VG and Gors included only to get to attempt her again.

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

vesica tempestas.1563:

GW1 had raids. Being able to access all content without gating is casual friendly. Having a power cap is casual friendly. Having a gem store is casual friendly. 10k drinks is casual friendly if you must pull out that nonsense (GW1 had many many achievements like this).

Raids represents a fraction of the game content, and a fraction of the expansion released. Stop worrying about content that’s not targeted at yourself and enjoy the vast majority that is, and you will be happier. And incidentally, Casuals can enjoy raids too, a casual player may decide that he fancies joining in a guild raid one week. hardcore means having to commit to that same raid x nights a week for x hours or risk falling behind. – this is hardcore.

I don’t consider the elite content in Guild Wars 1 raids, and I don’t really think anyone else did either. Well, that’s not completely true. The Deep and Urgoz were probably raids. But nothing else was.

And I wouldn’t say other of those were casual in any way.

The Deep, Urgoz, FoW and UW could all easily be considered raids. In some ways they were even less casual friendly than today’s Raids.

Why?
They were designed to take a long time – even if you were really good – so aside for speed clears -you were looking at a 1.5 to 2 hour stay even with a good party.
They were also very very unforgiving – much more than the current Raids are. How so?

If your entire party wiped – you were done – all progress lost and you were thrown outside the instance – you had to do it all over again – that’s not casual friendly – they were very much aimed at the hardcore.

Imagine how much unforgiving and hardcore the raid would be if you had to redo everything if you wiped at one boss.
Imagine dying at Sabetha and having to clear the ENTIRE raid – VG and Gors included only to get to attempt her again.

The only real definition of PvE raids in any game I’ve played is content that requires a larger group of people than core content. Raids are named after raid groups, where you have more people in your party than you normally wood. For example, most parties in most games are 5 or 6 main and raids are 10 or 20 man.

Urgoz and The Deep are 12 man content. Everything else is just a long dungeon.

gungcho.7382:

Yes it was crazy with the grinding, i did not enjoy map completion myself ( got about 80% of tyria ), neither drunkard or sweet tooth titles , but non the less the game as a whole was fun- good story, unique combat system. Now it is better, yet fun again! And that is the point.

I enjoy the content in Guild Wars 2 as much as I enjoyed the content in Guild Wars 1, but I enjoyed them differently.

Guild Wars 1 wasn’t an MMO. It become more of a strategy game. I enjoyed making builds for heroes and trying to solo as much as I could, or two man stuff with my wife. The hero builds were the key to success. With good heroes, it almost didn’t matter what I did.

Guild Wars 2 is more based around an arcade sentiment than a strategy sentiment. Jumping puzzles are awesome for me. Nothing like that in Guild Wars 1. Underwater combat I enjoy too. I hated being pathed and not being able to jump around and explore things. And now gliding takes that even further.

This game is more action oriented and in many ways less strategic. I find in fun but a different kind of fun than Guild Wars 1.

And sometimes I think they go over board with the difficulty as far as the video game stuff goes. But I’m not even really sure how you can compare to games that are so different. Because they are.

Baseball and Football are both sports, but not everyone who likes one likes the other. I happen to like both though I like baseball more.

Vayne.8563:

I’m just not buying this.

You do not have to, it is just an opinion and it is not my job to convince you of anything. I do not buy into half of the insane opinions on this forum.

One thing is sure, it the last year Arena Net had a change in direction for Guild Wars 2 for whatever reason people come up with. I personally wish they would reassess what they are doing and why they are doing it.

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

vesica tempestas.1563:

GW1 had raids. Being able to access all content without gating is casual friendly. Having a power cap is casual friendly. Having a gem store is casual friendly. 10k drinks is casual friendly if you must pull out that nonsense (GW1 had many many achievements like this).

Raids represents a fraction of the game content, and a fraction of the expansion released. Stop worrying about content that’s not targeted at yourself and enjoy the vast majority that is, and you will be happier. And incidentally, Casuals can enjoy raids too, a casual player may decide that he fancies joining in a guild raid one week. hardcore means having to commit to that same raid x nights a week for x hours or risk falling behind. – this is hardcore.

I don’t consider the elite content in Guild Wars 1 raids, and I don’t really think anyone else did either. Well, that’s not completely true. The Deep and Urgoz were probably raids. But nothing else was.

And I wouldn’t say other of those were casual in any way.

The Deep, Urgoz, FoW and UW could all easily be considered raids. In some ways they were even less casual friendly than today’s Raids.

Why?
They were designed to take a long time – even if you were really good – so aside for speed clears -you were looking at a 1.5 to 2 hour stay even with a good party.
They were also very very unforgiving – much more than the current Raids are. How so?

If your entire party wiped – you were done – all progress lost and you were thrown outside the instance – you had to do it all over again – that’s not casual friendly – they were very much aimed at the hardcore.

Imagine how much unforgiving and hardcore the raid would be if you had to redo everything if you wiped at one boss.
Imagine dying at Sabetha and having to clear the ENTIRE raid – VG and Gors included only to get to attempt her again.

The only real definition of PvE raids in any game I’ve played is content that requires a larger group of people than core content. Raids are named after raid groups, where you have more people in your party than you normally wood. For example, most parties in most games are 5 or 6 main and raids are 10 or 20 man.

Urgoz and The Deep are 12 man content. Everything else is just a long dungeon.

Except there are mechanics that differentiate UW and FoW from your regular dungeon.
Remember the kick on wipe? That didn’t happen in dungeons.
Mobs were also much more dense, powerful and overall the area was much more difficult to complete.

You might not want to call them Raids because it doesn’t help your position – but for all intents and purposes GW1 had raid-like content that was even more unfriendly to casuals than GW2’s Raids are.

I was wondering, if Spirit Vale was 5-man content, but with the difficulty is already has, then there wouldn’t be any threads like this? In other words, is the problem with the GW2 raid, that it is called a Raid and it requires more people than the average dungeon, and not the actual mechanics / difficulty?

That’s what I get with the “GW1 elite zones weren’t Raids” comments. Talking about semantics, what is called a “raid”, and not about the actual subject, challenging content.

Some facts:
A) They took more time than the GW2 raid (aside from speed clears)
B) They were more unforgiving than the GW2 raid (wipe = you are kicked)
C) You couldn’t access them any time you wished (gated access, anyone remember how you got inside Deep/Urgoz at Factions release? That’s maybe the worst content gating in gaming history)

Discussing what a raid is, is completely irrelevant. Fact is GW1 elite zones were much harder for casuals than the GW2 raid. At least until they allowed you to get a 7 hero party when they became single player, but without that they were much harder on casual players than GW2 raids.

exactly, GW2 had large instances that were at the very least as difficult as the solitary raid in GW2, GW2 elite zones were also very difficult if you did not have the right hero’s and gear and skills.

GW2 is as casual friendly as GW1 was, and in fact due to deliberate design decisions and philosophy is far more casual friendly, so this melodramatic nonsense that changing GW2 to be more ‘hardcore’ is actually about players feeling entitled to complain about it, masked behind ‘hardcore’ and ‘casual’ conspiracy theories.

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

Harper.4173:

Vayne.8563:

vesica tempestas.1563:

GW1 had raids. Being able to access all content without gating is casual friendly. Having a power cap is casual friendly. Having a gem store is casual friendly. 10k drinks is casual friendly if you must pull out that nonsense (GW1 had many many achievements like this).

Raids represents a fraction of the game content, and a fraction of the expansion released. Stop worrying about content that’s not targeted at yourself and enjoy the vast majority that is, and you will be happier. And incidentally, Casuals can enjoy raids too, a casual player may decide that he fancies joining in a guild raid one week. hardcore means having to commit to that same raid x nights a week for x hours or risk falling behind. – this is hardcore.

I don’t consider the elite content in Guild Wars 1 raids, and I don’t really think anyone else did either. Well, that’s not completely true. The Deep and Urgoz were probably raids. But nothing else was.

And I wouldn’t say other of those were casual in any way.

The Deep, Urgoz, FoW and UW could all easily be considered raids. In some ways they were even less casual friendly than today’s Raids.

Why?
They were designed to take a long time – even if you were really good – so aside for speed clears -you were looking at a 1.5 to 2 hour stay even with a good party.
They were also very very unforgiving – much more than the current Raids are. How so?

If your entire party wiped – you were done – all progress lost and you were thrown outside the instance – you had to do it all over again – that’s not casual friendly – they were very much aimed at the hardcore.

Imagine how much unforgiving and hardcore the raid would be if you had to redo everything if you wiped at one boss.
Imagine dying at Sabetha and having to clear the ENTIRE raid – VG and Gors included only to get to attempt her again.

The only real definition of PvE raids in any game I’ve played is content that requires a larger group of people than core content. Raids are named after raid groups, where you have more people in your party than you normally wood. For example, most parties in most games are 5 or 6 main and raids are 10 or 20 man.

Urgoz and The Deep are 12 man content. Everything else is just a long dungeon.

Except there are mechanics that differentiate UW and FoW from your regular dungeon.
Remember the kick on wipe? That didn’t happen in dungeons.
Mobs were also much more dense, powerful and overall the area was much more difficult to complete.

You might not want to call them Raids because it doesn’t help your position – but for all intents and purposes GW1 had raid-like content that was even more unfriendly to casuals than GW2’s Raids are.

I don’t call them raids because raid has an existing definition and I’m using it. That’s what I do. It’s the occupational hazzard of being an editor. The definition of the raid I’m using fits raids in WoW, Rift and every game I’ve played where I raid. The exception in PvP raids in games like DAoC.

You can, of course accuse me of trying to bolster my argument by ignoring definition, but raids isn’t about hard or anything like that. You can have a hard dungeon and a hard raid. Raid is named for the type of group you’re in when you do it. In WoW it was called a raid squad. That’s when you have a larger group than you have for other content.

You may not LIKE that definition but that IS the definition. I don’t use definitions to win arguments. I use them to communicate. Unless you can show me somewhere where raid just means a hard instance, I’ll continue to use the definition all along.

And, Anet never called them raids either, they called the elite instances or elite content.

There is no “official” definition of a raid, there are just the precedents of what games have called Their Raids, I remember a day when WoW had 40 man raids, not 10, or 20, but 40. I will leave this here

“A raid is a type of mission in a video game in which a number of people attempt to defeat a boss monster or consecutive series of bosses. The term raid itself stems from the military definition of a sudden attack and/or seizure of some objective.”

Or
“A more substantial engagement involving a large organized group of players typically set in a dungeon and involving difficult bosses”

Have you seen the cost of the Commander’s armor recipes from Noxious Pods? It’s not casual friendly at all. A typical exotic set costs about 5-10 gold to make per piece.

Meanwhile it costs 20+ gold for a exotic level Commander’s armor stats recipe PER piece. That’s not even including the amount of materials to make the armor.

Recipe: Commander’s Exalted Boots
Recipe: Commander’s Emblazoned Boots
Recipe: Commander’s Draconic Pauldrons
Recipe: Commander’s Exalted Gloves
Recipe: Commander’s Emblazoned Pants
Recipe: Commander’s Exalted Mantle
Recipe: Commander’s Exalted Masque
Recipe: Commander’s Emblazoned Helm
Recipe: Commander’s Emblazoned Shoulders
Recipe: Commander’s Draconic Legs

There really needs to be be a better way to obtain Commander’s stats that doesn’t require farming Noxious Pods in Dragon’s Stand. I got lucky and obtained one recipe before, so I picked the Chestpiece for light armor (the most stats of any armor piece is the chestpiece).

The Wanderer’s armor recipe which also comes from Noxious pods is not nearly that high, about 1-2gold a piece.

If you have ascended armor it is much easier to just craft the insignia and then craft cheaper ascended stat armor (soldier’s/dire/etc) to switch it in the mystic forge using the Commander’s Intricate Gossamer Insignia which at least isn’t a random drop.

Trailblazer’s doesn’t have nearly the same problem as the recipes are below 1 gold each (likely because they come from Crystallized Supply Cache in Tangled Depths) ; Minstrel’s recipes are laughably cheap since they come from airship cargo & are not a wanted stat combination for PvEers.

The Commander’s weapon recipes don’t seem to have as large of a problem: the recipes cost anywhere from 1 to 10 gold.

Infusion.7149:

Have you seen the cost of the Commander’s armor recipes from Noxious Pods? It’s not casual friendly at all. A typical exotic set costs about 5-10 gold to make per piece.

Meanwhile it costs 20+ gold for a exotic level Commander’s armor stats recipe PER piece. That’s not even including the amount of materials to make the armor.

Recipe: Commander’s Exalted Boots
Recipe: Commander’s Emblazoned Boots
Recipe: Commander’s Draconic Pauldrons
Recipe: Commander’s Exalted Gloves
Recipe: Commander’s Emblazoned Pants
Recipe: Commander’s Exalted Mantle
Recipe: Commander’s Exalted Masque
Recipe: Commander’s Emblazoned Helm
Recipe: Commander’s Emblazoned Shoulders
Recipe: Commander’s Draconic Legs

There really needs to be be a better way to obtain Commander’s stats that doesn’t require farming Noxious Pods in Dragon’s Stand. I got lucky and obtained one recipe before, so I picked the Chestpiece for light armor (the most stats of any armor piece is the chestpiece).

The Wanderer’s armor recipe which also comes from Noxious pods is not nearly that high, about 1-2gold a piece.

If you have ascended armor it is much easier to just craft the insignia and then craft cheaper ascended stat armor (soldier’s/dire/etc) to switch it in the mystic forge using the Commander’s Intricate Gossamer Insignia which at least isn’t a random drop.

Trailblazer’s doesn’t have nearly the same problem as the recipes are below 1 gold each (likely because they come from Crystallized Supply Cache in Tangled Depths) ; Minstrel’s recipes are laughably cheap since they come from airship cargo & are not a wanted stat combination for PvEers.

The Commander’s weapon recipes don’t seem to have as large of a problem: the recipes cost anywhere from 1 to 10 gold.

Buy the recipe for Commander’s Exotic Insignia, convert an Ascended set to Commander’s Ascended set with the Exotic Insignias and Mystic Forge.

Coulter.2315:

Infusion.7149:

Have you seen the cost of the Commander’s armor recipes from Noxious Pods? It’s not casual friendly at all. A typical exotic set costs about 5-10 gold to make per piece.

Meanwhile it costs 20+ gold for a exotic level Commander’s armor stats recipe PER piece. That’s not even including the amount of materials to make the armor.

Recipe: Commander’s Exalted Boots
Recipe: Commander’s Emblazoned Boots
Recipe: Commander’s Draconic Pauldrons
Recipe: Commander’s Exalted Gloves
Recipe: Commander’s Emblazoned Pants
Recipe: Commander’s Exalted Mantle
Recipe: Commander’s Exalted Masque
Recipe: Commander’s Emblazoned Helm
Recipe: Commander’s Emblazoned Shoulders
Recipe: Commander’s Draconic Legs

There really needs to be be a better way to obtain Commander’s stats that doesn’t require farming Noxious Pods in Dragon’s Stand. I got lucky and obtained one recipe before, so I picked the Chestpiece for light armor (the most stats of any armor piece is the chestpiece).

The Wanderer’s armor recipe which also comes from Noxious pods is not nearly that high, about 1-2gold a piece.

If you have ascended armor it is much easier to just craft the insignia and then craft cheaper ascended stat armor (soldier’s/dire/etc) to switch it in the mystic forge using the Commander’s Intricate Gossamer Insignia which at least isn’t a random drop.

Trailblazer’s doesn’t have nearly the same problem as the recipes are below 1 gold each (likely because they come from Crystallized Supply Cache in Tangled Depths) ; Minstrel’s recipes are laughably cheap since they come from airship cargo & are not a wanted stat combination for PvEers.

The Commander’s weapon recipes don’t seem to have as large of a problem: the recipes cost anywhere from 1 to 10 gold.

Buy the recipe for Commander’s Exotic Insignia, convert an Ascended set to Commander’s Ascended set with the Exotic Insignias and Mystic Forge.

You missed the part where I wrote that you can convert via Mystic Forge.

Not everyone has ascended crafted before the ridiculous cost increase. I have ascended, but I’m not going to have multiple sets of it per character when I play mostly one or two characters.

i.e. Berserker/Assassin/ Marauder/Wanderer/Commander/Viper or other condi set

Just a simple question … if you are casual, why do you need Commander’s armor specifically?

Sure, it might not be casual friendly, I agree. But it’s not really a concern is it?

By the way, as a casual, raids don’t bother me at all. I could care less if I ever achieve the rewards they offer.

The only thing I think needs to change about raids is that there should be a lobby, so they don’t interfere with zone meta events (artificially inflating the population of the zone).

Obtena.7952:

Just a simple question … if you are casual, why do you need Commander’s armor specifically?

Sure, it might not be casual friendly, I agree. But it’s not really a concern is it?

Commander’s and Wanderer’s have added boon duration via concentration ; Commander’s has Precision instead of Vitality as a major stat. Without it, you won’t achieve 21% boon duration from armor + weapon. To put it into perspective, it is more boon duration than a Bountiful Sharpening Stone (10%) and on par with Fried Golden Dumpling (20% Boon duration).

A lot of WvWers play casually as in casual PvE. Very few WvWers have the sheer amount of gold as PvE-only people. GW2 used to have easy to obtain stats until ascended came around ; grind was for cosmetics. The bar has been raised higher with the massive increase in cost of Ascended armor ; Legendary armor added convenience but not more stats.

If you haven’t noticed, there is power creep with the 4 stat items. Marauder is slowly creeping in ; Viper’s / Trailblazer’s for condi builds (due to expertise).

Crusader and Marauder are the most fair in terms of obtaining their stats.

i agree with op here , i don’t know what changed that makes me hate the game now . maybe the new map layout .
in vanilla the grind seemed somewhat hidden behind casual gameplay now it feels sooo in your face .
i do understand you need content for people that play this game everyday to keep them interested and stuff .
maybe im not the type of target customer they are looking for i don’t know .
as a casual that play 2-3 times a week i feel now im not progresing in anything as everything is a long road that really seems neverending when you dont play as much .
pvp in this game never appeal me , same for world vs world .

for me a game is fun when you dont need a 3rd degree of research to get stuff done properly . dont get me wrong tho i was there before , maybe i gotten older and im annoyed by those things now hahaha.

i play games …. you know … just to pass some .. oh .. to few hours of free time i have now. vanilla used to be the perfect game for me .

BlaqueFyre.5678:

There is no “official” definition of a raid, there are just the precedents of what games have called Their Raids, I remember a day when WoW had 40 man raids, not 10, or 20, but 40. I will leave this here

“A raid is a type of mission in a video game in which a number of people attempt to defeat a boss monster or consecutive series of bosses. The term raid itself stems from the military definition of a sudden attack and/or seizure of some objective.”

Or
“A more substantial engagement involving a large organized group of players typically set in a dungeon and involving difficult bosses”

This.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

There is no “official” definition of a raid, there are just the precedents of what games have called Their Raids, I remember a day when WoW had 40 man raids, not 10, or 20, but 40. I will leave this here

“A raid is a type of mission in a video game in which a number of people attempt to defeat a boss monster or consecutive series of bosses. The term raid itself stems from the military definition of a sudden attack and/or seizure of some objective.”

Or
“A more substantial engagement involving a large organized group of players typically set in a dungeon and involving difficult bosses”

Okay so a dungeon is a raid by this definition.

Edit: I’ll go by what the developers call it. At no time did Anet call anything in Guild Wars 1 a raid. WoW has raids because it advertises raids.

When people asked for raids, they were asking for harder content but they were also asking for larger party size.

And even in Guild Wars 2, a raid requires entering a raid group, just like the other games I was playing. Again, The Deep and Urgoz definitely qualified as a raid, because you had more players.

Since there’s apparently no definition I have to go with the best one. And the best one comes from the company.

Hell in Guild Wars 1 right now you can do all the raids except Urgoz and the Deep with seven heroes. You can’t solo raids in any game I’ve played.

A raid is simply a dungeon that is aimed at 10+ players that tend to have more scope for complicated encounters,

vesica tempestas.1563:

A raid is simply a dungeon that is aimed at 10+ players that tend to have more scope for complicated encounters,

Sort of how I see it, which is why I say that the 12 main instances in GW 1 would have qualified but not the 8 man instances, since that was the party size for dungeons too.

i miss the Fort Aspenwood way of making big teams, very casual / pug friendly. You join a que, when 12 people were in que on each team, the game began, that area was always full….was great if you only had 1 hour to play, jump in que, you were in a big raid like skirmish. – it doesn’t have to be pvp, but i wish we had that type of que system for small party events.

it’s just not possible if you have 1 or even 2 hours to play, to spend 1 hour trying to put together a team, to do a 1 1/2 hour adventure, I mean…that should be an option for guilds …but there should be a que option for casual / pug players too.

and i have to say, the game is hard, but i’m enjoying it …as a pug. you do have to know your character / build and have good reflexes though, as you will travel the jungle alone looking for random fights …there are many of us actually -smile- I always see solo flyers. the hot npcs are mean, but that’s kind of fun …for me at least …even solo. I find myself flying into trees to take out groups of npcs like some ninja sniper lol….but i like that stuff! :p when i find good fights, i throw up my tag, and the event gets full pretty quick….if it doesn’t and I can’t do it solo….i float around looking for the next fight. but so far , I’ve done a champ solo….and a few events solo…so i dunno.

maybe the people who find it hard, need to spend some time capturing camps solo in wvw ….that will teach you useful skills for doing hot casually. nothing like getting swarmed by an enemy zerg of 30+ people, to teach you when to run lol. hot is ez in comparison!

Even the grindiest KMMORPGs are adapting to satisfy both the casuals and hardcores. You can play through the story of the latest TERA expansion without much effort, but the tougher hard mode dungeons will chew you up and spit you out if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.

Why has Guild Wars 2 abandoned its legions of loyal casuals?

Mike.7263:

Even the grindiest KMMORPGs are adapting to satisfy both the casuals and hardcores. You can play through the story of the latest TERA expansion without much effort, but the tougher hard mode dungeons will chew you up and spit you out if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.

Why has Guild Wars 2 abandoned its legions of loyal casuals?

Because GW2 is a game about the open world and not instances, it has always been like this. See, they introduced a single raid wing for the “hardcore” players and got all these complaints. Imagine what would’ve happened if they added dozens of hardcore dungeons in order to keep the open world easy-mode.

This game was always focused on the open world content, and that’s why they made HoT open world harder so it’s not only for the 1 spammers, f spammers and afkers, but rather offer at least a bit of challenge.

There are 2 choices here: offer far less open world content, and more instanced content to satisfy both the casuals and the hardcore players (as you say TERA did) or focus mostly on the Open World and have very tiny slices of hardcore instances. Of course that would mean the Open World would be harder to have something for all player styles.

I’d rather the second option, which means players might be excluded from some of the open world content because it’s too hard for them. But it’s much preferable than having zero content that offers a challenge, or make the game all about instances.

There is room for all kinds of content in an MMO.
So,Raids are perfectly fine,they were absolutely needed if you ask me.
For the reason that open world content can never be made really hard,
since it is supposed to be played by all kinds of players.
It can be made interesting,and that’s it.
So in order to build properly hard content you need the instances that are Raids.
But,overtuned and stupendously hard open world content is a big problem.

Dear fellow players that like “meaningful and engaging content”.
Raids and Fractals are that way—————>>>>.
Do you realize that players that want open world content to be more
relaxed,and like to explore on their own don’t even touch the new zones?
This is the first expansion of any MMO that I’ve ever bought where open world
content is not accessible to all the players of all skills and builds,and where I’m
playing the same old open world content in the old maps because of this.
If GW2 was released as HoT it would have the same fate as WS.
For some reason that I don’t understand Anet went on and made the new maps
unplayable for a large part of the players.
And I’m not talking about the META events,which are expected to be a bit harder,
and to require grouping.But a bit harder not,if you ain’t got a 60 man zerg you’ll fail hard,like it is in HoT.
Even some of the Hero Points and Mastery Points require grouping up in the new maps,and wtf is this if I may say.
Ofc,Anet knows this so now we get gliding in the old maps and revised old bosses.

Here’s a thought.
How about nerfing all the CC and Conditions that every lowlife HoT mob spams to death,and how about allowing players to have fun in the new maps,which btw
are beautifully made and it’s a shame only a portion of the player base is playing them.

And please don’t tell me “but Taxi” bs.
These maps should be teeming with players.
One HoT map full every now and then for a few months old expansion,and
3 years old maps packed with players.
And if it wasn’t for the crafting requirements,that can only be fulfilled in the
new maps even less players would play HoT.
HoT is Flop.
Take the meaningful content and shove it,inside the Raids I mean.

In my opinion raids are not a good idea in many ways. I suspect them and even the term “raid” were chosen to skim some players from the hordes of leaving WoW players.
The chaotic action based combat system of GW2 does not lend itself well to larger groups of people where it is often difficult to spot any tells in the myriad of effects. And no, I’m not asking for further visual nerfs, thank you very much.

Raids are a type of content not many people do get to experience, be it from not being in large guilds, having only exotic armors, playing unwanted classes or preferring to play with friends who “suck” according to elitists. Even the larger guilds I’m part of nearly never get any raids together.

Considering the limited resources for new content I consider raids to be a collossal waste of dev time. While it may be financially sound and really attract the most new players I certainly hope that the development focus will shift in the near future and stuff like raids will be abandoned for things most people can enjoy.

I do not mind some skins and shinies hidden behind raids. What I do mind is the functionality of legendary armors, being able to switch stats. Sure, give raiders a nice unique legendary armor, but also introduce others for PvE and PvP players which can be obtained in other ways.

One of the worst things for build diversity in GW2 is not being able to switch from a power to say a condi build because most people cannot really be expected to have two sets of ascended armors, especially not now.

Aenaos.8160:

Take the meaningful content and shove it,inside the Raids I mean.

Then next time instead of 4 maps and a raid they should add 2 maps, 1 raid and at least 4-5 more challenging instanced dungeons. You want them to add far less open world content and instead make the game instance-heavy, congratulations.