Guild Wars 2

As a guardian main, at first I didnt get the name, but after thinking about it, and seeing the spec mechanic, I changed my mind, Dragonhunter being an order among the guardians is both fitting and makes sense in the setting that we are taking the fight to the jungle, the jungle dragon’s lair. Also helps that a spec is not a class, and there will be other orders or specs for the guardian, being a dragonhunter is a choice.

Oh Gaile, that post there, that is what I expect as communication from the team to us, it contains both confirmation and a certain “time location”, without being too specific (in case timelines can’t be met) but without being too vague (so years can pass before said thing happens). No boulders at you for that, Gaile, but maybe flowers

What I would like to see, like, right now, is some preemptive damage control from ANet.
There is already in the heads of many members of the community, the idea, the doubt, about an expansion to be announced. So we have two possible scenarios, there will be an announcement about an expansion, or won’t. In the first case, then it’s okay to do nothing and let the hype run wild, but if there won’t be an expansion, then just saying after PAX, “we never hinted about releasing an expansion” won’t be enough to keep people civil about that topic. If there isn’t an announcement about an expansion, then that should be at least be hinted to us, so the community can manage their expectation in a better way, in comparison to previous similar cases. Let’s not have the NoSAB/NoDungeons interview again, tell us what won’t be announced before the announcement, it’s a smart thing to do, in my opinion.

This post will be mostly an echo from what we’ve read, but is my opinion, for what it’s worth.

I really like the music, the ambiance, the new zones, the overall setup of the story. It’s innovative, beautiful, and specially promising when you think about where this could lead us to.

I just think that the company should work on improving the delivery and the substance of this chapters. We are told that this should give us expansion-like content (yes, again with the same thing…) but it doesn’t feel like it, it feels like “events” (as we can see on other MMOs). If instead, every 4 chapters we knew that we will get a new skill (meaningful, please) for our classes, or a new weapon!, or at a “finale” which happens barely every year up until now, a new class/race, I think we could start talking about expansion-like content. I know that raids are on the table, and I can see that if we get them, raids should be part of the additions of this chapters too.

As a player, I want to feel that after following this long path of LS chapters, I’ve grown too, with the story. That I’ve come a long way from where I started. Because even if you emulate a TV show, I’m not here to watch a TV show, I’m here to play a game (to participate and grow with it), and progression is important, for my character and for the characters of the story.

Overall, if you could manage to include this important elements in the schedule of a year, and make us have less breaks (even if you as a team get breaks, is not clear to me why I have to have a break too, it’s supposed that if you are going to repeat holiday events, that’s a good way to take breaks while we play recycled content, yet this year, we missed two/one holiday events, Dragon Bash, and, potentially, SAB), people would be more excited with this releases. And you would appeal to more people, and not just PvE players or those interested in the story.

Other than that, I agree with the need of improvements on the writing, I don’t want to believe that the story is simplified down because it’s expected to appeal for a more younger audience (and I’m on my 20s).

I disagree with the OP.
Please, keep on delivering “gameplay storytelling” as good as this in the future. And I’m going to separate the gameplay storytelling from the written one here, I find that both visually and in the way of gameplay we can get a lot of information from what happens in the centaur camp, the subtlety of having to slay Nehkii with your own hands seconds after being telling her that things are going to be fine (as in, how Caithe is blind towards what is really happening up to that moment) and how after that, by doing the butchering, Caithe sells her soul for Faolain. That was a powerful gameplay storytelling.
Sadly, what I would like to have improved, is the written dialog part. As most have pointed out, the way we, as heroes, summarize what we just saw, was to say at least, poorly written. That would’ve been a perfect opportunity to introduce some role playing options in dialog, without having to fork the story path from there. Maybe I, as a player, agreed with Faolain, so what I saw was that we did the right thing, or maybe I’m just neutral to sylvari history, so I won’t have an opinion and just tell Jory what I saw (facts), or maybe I felt bad for what happened, like the OP, and I would say that Faolain is a monster, and that Caithe is dangerous. Instead, we just say something inaccurate that reflects some imposed personality for our character, that I personally am beginning to dislike a lot (since the little conversation with Canach some chapters before).
Some players have already stated how they feel pushed for having to “be friends” with destiny’s edge 2.0, as an imposed thing, what do you think that kind of players will think about having an imposed personality for their characters? I hope the writers can mind this situation better in future releases. The story is good, and improving every chapter, and the delivery method is getting better and better, specially with gameplay, I just hope that the written part keeps up with those improvements.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hi All,

We are building a new home for the CDI and once it is complete we will finish of the Raiding CDI and move on the GvG CDI.

Chris

I’m very glad to read this, I hope the suggestions we gave in the other thread about this proved to be useful.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Right now we’re sort of splitting out things you can “spend” between three different places: Your inventory, your bank, and your wallet.

At its core, we need to decide on one of these to compliment your inventory and call it good. As we’re continuing to introduce more items like the geodes and bandit “hello my name is” crests, this has obviously become even more of an issue

Ultimately, we either need to let you spend materials from your bank directly at vendors so you don’t need to keep them in your inventory (and then make geodes/crests materials) OR continue to make the wallet larger and larger. Or option #3 we haven’t considered yet you might think of in this suggestion forum!

Either way, we’re aware of the need and will address it “when it’s ready™”.

Here is my suggestion:

Don’t add them to the wallet, nor the bank, and take them away from the inventory.
Make a new tab on hero panel with a name related to “exploration”, where you could add the new regions (and or festivals, I wouldn’t mind festival “tokens” added to the wallet), in this tab we get the new regions listed, and to each we can get some flavor text, and all the related collectibles listed (like geodes, bandit badges, monster pieces, amber insects, skeleton keys, lockpicks, etc) similar to what we see on collections.

In addition to this, when you login into each region that is related to this, you’ll get small counters on the screen showing, with small icons, how many of those items you have (for example, on silverwastes, you get a small icon of bandit badges plus the number of those you have, an icon of skeleton keys with their number, and so on).

This way, the interface related to this, potentially growing list of different items, can be dynamic (we don’t really need that info on screen or on our inventory, or on the list of our wallet, when we are not in a place where we can spend them), yet we still have the option to look for them, outside of those maps, on our hero’s panel.

And to list possible problems of the first 2 options you mentioned:

• If they are added as materials for the bank, we will still have trouble keeping more than 250 of said items (which is fairly common), and we wouldn’t be able to see how many of those we have on a quick manner.
• Adding them to the wallet, will potentially make the list shown when you hover your mouse pointer over your “gold counter” too large and hard to read. Those things (geodes and bandit badges, or lockpicks and skeleton keys) are not really currencies but more like commodities we trade or use.

Are we getting an expansion?

Gaile Gray.6029:

Ok, I’m back. About Harry Potter…

I think that the whole basis for the presentation in this and other threads about communication has a few pillars. And it’s one of them that I’m thinking about. J. K. Rawlings wrote a series of well-loved books, and I am sure (although I didn’t follow it) that people gave feedback to her on every release, heck, probably every nuance of every release, and that they also provided suggestions for future books. It’s a natural thing: People were highly invested in the series, loved it a bunch, and wanted to know more, or to have input.

In that small sense — and yes, that’s only part of the communication question — I don’t think I’d want our team to communicate about the game’s direction. Like, “Yes, so in the future, all frogs will become sentient, treble in size, and take over Lion’s Arch, leading to the elimination of all non-amphibian races. Yep, yep, that’s where we’re heading with the story.” NOTE: This is NOT where the story is going. This is only a wildly-improbable scenario offered for purposes of… umm… providing a wildly-improbable scenario.

My question: Do you agree that it’s good to not share that sort of information, information related to the actual direction of the game saga as a whole?

If so, then my sense is that you want to know more about the nuts and bolts.

• “Are you looking at XXX new feature?”
• “Do you intend to improve ABC functionality?”
• “Is ### working as intended, or is it bugged, or will you incorporate player feedback to change it?”

Again, this is a small part of the discussion, but I wanted to make sure I was looking at that part accurately. I wondered if generally, no one is asking about the whole “Tell us where the story is going” bit.

I don’t think people really want that kind of spoilers, at least what I’ve seen, is that people want to know the direction of the game, as a game, not really the story by itself. When we ask about if there will be a new continent, or new race, we are not really asking for the story part of it, but rather to know if the game mechanics will see some changes, or if we will be able to expand on terms of exploration, or new items, etc. At least I can speak for myself when saying that, I love this “teaser” game with the story, is entertaining, what is sad though, is when the mechanics don’t follow that hype.
At this point, we expect things that can be perfected, to be perfected, and things that can be added, to be added. I don’t really know if in two years in the future I will still be playing (I hope so), so I don’t really want to wait for that point to know if, for instance, an expansion will be released or if SAB will be a permanent part of the game, even if I don’t demand those things now, It would be nice to know if in 6 months in the future, those things will be available. Or even, if there is a plan for that (since as a veteran MMO player, I know, things get delayed, and is not the end of the world.)

Gaile Gray.6029:

Blaeys.3102:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Blaeys.3102:

Simple request for everyone – once you finish writing your posts, go back and read it as if it were being written to you. If it includes snarky comments, any kind of name calling at all, condescending statements or anything else hateful, cut those lines out before you hit post.

They get in the way of the actual conversation and they’re going to end up getting the thread closed and leaving a bad impression of a potential raiding community with the developers. Neither is something anyone should desire.

This.
Please.
I read the forums every day, as does Chris. And he puts a lot of his own time into the CDIs. (He doesn’t know I’m writing this, but I’m writing this, you can be sure!)

My bullet list for today:

• The forums are a wonderful thing.
• The CDIs are a great thing—some of the best that the forums can offer.
• The people involved all have, I truly believe, the game’s bests interests at heart.
• I want, more importantly we want, the forums to be healthy, and a safe place for people to express themselves even when in complete, heartfelt disagreement with another forum member. Or even when you disagree with a GW2 Team member.
• The best way to accomplish that is to write, read, re-read, and then hit “submit.”
• And always, always keep in mind that when it comes to text, it’s far too easy to come off wrong, to be completely mistaken about the content or the tone of a comment.

If you read this, thanks.
If you act upon this, thank you even more.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled CDI, with this request:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Your top three priorities can be anything you like as long as they pertain to raiding.

Chris

A thought that might streamline the conversation -

Would it be technically possible/realistic to limit the number and size of posts during the first 48 hours of a CDI. So, for example, each player would be allowed one post of no more than 300 words in the first two days of the thread.

After 2 days, the thread could open up to longer posts and back and forth discussions – after everyone has had the chance to get their initial thoughts out – and limit alot of the knee jerk reactions and conversations heading off on tangents.

Just a thought. Dont want to derail the “3 ideas” discussion. If this post impedes that or you feel is in the wrong place or innappropriate, feel free to delete.

We’re looking at a different way to offer CDIs. Fully as welcoming of involvement, but perhaps with a few modifications to normal posts that will allow Chris and his team to more efficiently analyze player input.

This is going to take some time and research, but thanks for sharing your suggestions. I don’t think they derail the thread, because I’ve been reading it, and I can’t tell you how much I like bullet post lists and brief details. (And I don’t even work on this stuff, I’m just an observer. )

And as the man said…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Get your top three priorities in folks. We will be closing this thread on Monday and shortly after the GvG CDI will begin!

Chris

If you are looking for new ways of doing CDIs, I think I know one method that could work well.

On some indie development contests, you get to submit your entry, and people can vote (like/dislike), and also comment on it. If we could implement something similar, where we could submit our proposals, and people get to vote those that they find good (would potentially remove the redundancy of proposals), and comment on them (allow to have more focused discussion on each proposal without derailing the overall discussion).

This idea would require its own website, doing something like what Steam’s Greenlight does, or like Humble Bundle’s development contests do too. With this, we could browse over proposals under certain tasks (for example, one week Chris proposes an idea about…I don’t know…adding giant cats to the game, and give us some lineaments over what the proposals should be, and we have a week to submit.). That way proposals would be much easier to read (they will always follow the format), you get to read immediately any relevant comment on that particular proposal (under its comments section), and you get to know if people like or dislike the idea with the voting system.

Wolfey.3407:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Dos.7052:

Well English is not my first language and I typed all these from my phones.
So apology ahead if I typed funny language.(oh also appreciate my android auto-spell function :p)

Wow, I’m impressed. On your phone in a non-native language? Well done!

And I happen to feel that LB is not OP, but hey, that’s just me and I’m hardly the expert on the subject. I am willing to fall on my knees and pray to The Six, though, that we don’t see my weapon of choice tweaked too much, if at all!

<—- lifelong Ranger.

Our Queen has spoken.

Seriously though, quit trying to kitten us back to oblivion with all the nerfs.

-Short Bow to OP QQQQ anet nerfs it to hell
-Spirit Build to OP QQQQ anet nerfs it to hell
-Knock Back to OP QQQQ anet adds an animation

I say all the rangers of GW2 unite and start pointing out all the OP on Thieves and Warriors. Lets see how they feel if anet decided to start nerfing the kitten out of all of their stuff every patch. Maybe, that will make them shut up and be thankful they have had the attention they have had for so long.

<—— Life long Ranger as well. But not as cool as Gaile

Yeah…thanks, more nerfs to warrior…yay…. – . -

Well…after reading the thread, I realize that raids can be a controversial topic, specially for how diverse opinions are about it.
This are my priorities after reading this thread and playing the last LS update-

• Difficulty and Dynamism: After playing the last LS update, I realize that the mechanics for truly fast paced combat are there. I don’t know the specific design choices behind the mechanics of the crystal golems but I think that, overall, if we can get monsters with that kind of mechanics, but with twice as much ASPD (attacks per second) it could be very fun. Most of the time during those encounters I could just walk away from the very well telegraphed attacks those enemies do. I would like to have to predict as well as react, so I have to use my dodges more wisely, and truly feel the danger of a hard hitting blow from a massive beast/construct. This is for both boss and normal enemies inside raid instances.

• Instancing and Scaling: After reading the discussion in this thread and rethinking some of my ideas on the subject, I think that the best course of action would be to have instanced raids, on big maps, with a lot of things to do inside (a whole play session worth of content at least), meaning, no speedrun material (I don’t hate on speedrunners, but I think that content that can be speedran, is too easy to be considered challenging, and by speedrun I mean high fluctuations of time, so for a normal group it takes an hour, and for a specialized group 5 minutes?). Also the amount of players inside should be 15, or 3 groups. I think more than that would destroy the visual appeal of combat, would twist the mechanic difficulty of the content, and make the personal contribution to the encounters too disperse. So instanced 15 players raids. I would like to add, that content should be possible to complete with less people, this has to be the way players could “scale up” the difficulty, and I would very much like if they could be rewarded for doing so, like a gambit.

• Theme and Flavor: This is something that hasn’t been discussed a lot in this thread, but in my opinion, raids should bring some themes that don’t necessarily orbit around the Main Story lore. The world of Tyria is vast and full of wonders, and I think raids are a good opportunity to explore some lore passages that are not necessarily related to our Living Story, or the Main Story centered around dragons. I’m not saying that there shouldn’t be raids related to the main story though, I think there should, but also, I would like to explore some other aspects of the world, that let players build their own story too. And about flavor, this was discussed a bit, but to me, one of the mottoes of raids should be “classes matter”, I want my thief being able to do something unique, that my warrior can’t do inside the dungeon, aside from combat mechanics, like being able to pick locks, or my elementalist being able to channel magic, or react with elemental related puzzles, my engineer being able to operate machines and constructs, and tinker with traps and such.

Said that, I just will thank you Chris, Crystal and Gaile, for your patience during this particular CDI, since I felt the discussion became a bit dense, and it was sad reading some people inviting others to leave the thread.

Dalanor.5387:

Baltzenger.2467:

KngGilgamesh.3481:

snip

I agree, I forgot about transformations, but your ideas sound cool!
There is a lot of creative interactions that can happen with it.

Totally forgot about these! I second it.

And what about consumables? Not neccessary the ones that can be purchased in the open world.

I imagine that if we get raids with themes similar to what we see on the Open World, nearby consumables (those you can get from hearts, or that are relevant to the theme of the zone) could be used, or even new ones, that you have to craft for certain utility inside of raids.

KngGilgamesh.3481:

Why stop at bundles? Why not use transformations too? Tonics and the like (can be bought as a gold sink or given by npc during the raid).
It could be useful in multiple circumstances:
*1*There are a lot of mobs in a field that continuously gives them protection, regeneration and retribution. They don’t chase players and reflect projectiles.
Now players can try to knock them back one part at a time and then kill them. Or some or all players can turn into something that frightens the mobs (Ettins/Dragon Minnions/Wasps/Spiders) and make them run of a cliff or into an area where they can be more easily dealt with.
2 There is a heavily defended castle that the players need to assault. It has a lot of devastating siege equipment and other defenses at the gate (like the ascalonian fractal but more immense).
The players can employ their own siege, already placed in the field, which the defenders will often sally out to attack. They also have longer ranged bundles (like jormag fight) available to target towers which onagers (catapults) that are routinely do an attack like the mai trin cannon phase.
Or all or some of them can use tonics that they had bought to turn into enemy soldiers and infiltrate the door. They can avoid the fight entirely (and lose rewards from successful destruction of the towers and the gate) to quickly get to the boss. Alternatively only a small team infiltrates the area and they covertly sabotage the siege weapons and try to open the gate.
3 It opens up underwater quite a bit. It removes the problems of underwater class balance, gear requirements, utility selection etc. If everyone turns into the same thing (krait/shark/jellyfish etc) they will be equal in their effectiveness. Alternatively they can turn into different beings each of which serve a different role (CC kraits, Krait Shamans, etc).
Or hey, maybe we can turn into Largos.
4 Having one person turn into a giant/colossus/golem to fight a boss giant/colossus/golem that can only be reliably CCed by something as big as them. All the while the other players use turrets to heal the friendly being while hurting the boss and another group defends the turrets and another assaults the enemy turrets or helps keep mob off the transformed player. If the giant boss isn’t held in place he can make the player’s jobs harder by doing big aoe attacks and knockbacks.
We can have a giant robot deathmatch between a golem and the Destroyer of Worlds in SE story. The players should be able to switch the giant role if needed (it can have a cooldown and a limited duration) another person can turn into a giant when the other player reverts.
5 Transformations can also provide a unique way of travel in raids. Players can try to run a dangerous narrow part while under assault of CC and siege which can knock them off the passage and kill them (they return to the start of the passage). They also have to escort a dolyak (which can’t be CCed but will get hurt by the siege) through the path.
The players can then turn into a creature than can jump to previously not accessible platform to destroy the siege (shouldn’t be very well guarded and so can be done in the transformed form). The players may take care of all the siege before escorting the dolyak but will have to back track and it will take longer. Doing all this simultaneously would be more dangerous but faster. Ignoring the siege may be possible but very hard.

The tonics could be given right there by the NPC but I think having to buy a stockpile before the raid would be better. It would mean that players need to do more preparations and would have to learn when to use what tonic. They may be dropped as rewards at the end and by trash mobs. Rare chance to get unlimited versions.

I agree, I forgot about transformations, but your ideas sound cool!
There is a lot of creative interactions that can happen with it.

cesmode.4257:

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but curious what people think about environmental objects being used in raids(or any content for that matter..but specifically raids). For example you see a “rock” or a “piece of scrap metal”. When you run around the world you see these objects you can interact with..pick up a piece of rusty metal and swing it at something for …pitiful damage *. Always wondered why these were in the game if they were so weak.

In any case, what about using this feature in a raid. We see something similar in a Fractal where we need to pick up boulders or something to break a shield. Something similar and even expand upon it for a raid.

Thoughts?

This interests me too, a lot.

I think not just the random objects you can find on the floor should play a bigger part on raid instances, but also other kind of elements.

• Objects on the ground should go from random/not really useful to crucial for beating certain enemies. I would like to see skeletons on the floor from previous adventurers (fallen) and being able to pick up a sword, or an axe from the ground. Maybe find a legendary hero dead, and being able to pick up his sword/weapon. This also adds another layer to the idea of exploring a raid instance: heroes from the past also visited this places, you can learn from them.

• There should be some destructible objects too, like rocks, crates, walls, etc. Breaking the environment is also part of exploring, and having enemies break them, not just adds to the immersion, but also, let us interact better with the terrain: for example, getting behind a rock, that an enemy can destroy, modifying the terrain for the rest of the fight. Or having a rampaging beast charge at you, you take cover behind a wall, and make it pierce it and get stuck (assuming it has horns…) for a brief moment, allowing you to dps it down. There is tons of ways you can make the environment add to the fun and depth of combat, specially with how dynamic gw2 combat already is!

• Doors, locks, chests, keys: This are part of the classic RPGs, why we don’t have them on GW2? I would like to have to explore further, find a key (or take it from an enemy) in order to open a door. Or a chest. This could potentially add to a way of randomization that makes the mini-map relevant. How many times do we look at the map when inside a dungeon, other than for using a WP?

• Machinery and siege weapons: I think that siege weapons should be the base of fighting raid bosses. But in my opinion, they should work like the cannons we used to see on the long lost Raid on the Capricorn pvp map. I want to have to go and get cannon balls in order to use a cannon. Why? Just to annoy myself and others? No, because this can lead to interesting mechanics. For example, with limited ammo, having a great shot with a cannon matters. Or having to enter a high monster density zone in order to get the valuable ammunition necessary to damage a raid boss.
  In addition to this, I want to have more “trap interaction”. Obsidian Sanctum (in WvW) has a lot of this, but more often than not, we don’t even look at the traps and contraptions that exist there. There is some of this on some dungeons, but I think that it isn’t enough, if operating dungeon equipment (or being a dungeoneer) is relevant, this could lead to more build diversity. There is an optimum for combat, but does combat has to be the only role we can fulfill inside a raid/dungeon? Among others, like defending an npc, or holding a point, or resisting damage in order to reach something (look at the river of sand in front of prosperity, even if not that important, there is an achievement that ask you to survive long enough inside of it, and you have to change your build to do so!).

@Conski Deshan: Hey, about your idea of soft roles for professions, I couldn’t find your post to quote, but, what about Warriors being able to grab weapons found inside the instance? From random rusty weapons of fallen adventurers, to mythical weapons that you have to wield in order to progress?

Other than going back to the discussion about hardcore vs casual, or “what is fun”, or any of that, since Chris was pretty clear with the purpose of this activity. I think that, since it has been stated that the objective of the idea of Raids is challenging content, then we can just assume that, it has to serve both veteran and new players, in different ways. Challenging content requires practice, mastering, knowledge, this means that the activity should be fun both when you have mastered it (remain challenging) and also during the journey towards that goal, fun to learn, fun to practice. This in my opinion is the best approach to this system, because it also respects the philosophy of the game (a good example is how the leveling process can be seen in this way).

After reading the opinions of many users in this CDI, I think that I will too walk away from the idea of scaling, in favor of better balance and a more challenging experience.
Sadly, I never had the chance to play GW1, but I’m very interested in reading about how content similar to raids in that game, could be adapted to this game. I’m looking forward to read that.

PSX.9250:

Why is everyone so obsessed with having 3 of every armor class? OCD perhaps?

well, apart from that, also because you would get more value from your ascended gear that way, since for the other weights you can potentially use them on 3 classes, and heavy you can only use on 2. Not much, but adds to it.

And I think most people want more variety and like having new things to play with.
I personally think that engineer should’ve been a heavy class (with medium HP), and some other new class should be added to medium.

Please, let’s stay away from elitism in this thread.
More than a “sad truth”, that is trying to discredit other’s ideas just based on some assumption that “they are casuals, that don’t know what they want and won’t play the raids more than once”.
I can see where that comes from, but at the same time, this is not a democracy, this is just exposing ideas, it doesn’t necessarily means that if an idea gets “repeated” a lot, it has more weight or is better than one that was said just once.
Try to help by proposing and showing your perspective, not by complaining about others being part of the discussion.

As the ghost dissipate and run away onto the lake, some torches will light up, revealing the place a little bit more (it is very dark until that point) and the adventurers will see that some old siege that fell with pieces of the ruins is there. Particularly a ballista and some arrow carts (now this part is a blatant copy of what you can see on MH). In order to use this ballista, you need to get ammo, so there will be some baskets with ballista arrows around, and packs of arrows for the arrow carts. (Making it a resource will mean that not using it well, means you can fail the raid mission).
During this phase, she will be in rage mode, meaning that will seek to eat the players, and will move around pursuing the biggest offender, but won’t pay attention to the siege. As she walks, you will be instantly downed if you are caught under her path, so this means that there won’t be a set path for her movement, since it depends on the group attacking them, and also means that you will have to be constantly moving, so stacking or trying to stay behind a wall or rock won’t work here. I would also add some destructable objects around, that offer temporarily cover. In this phase, as her health drops from the attacks, she will try to swallow ghosts/players doing a cone attack, when she does this, ghosts will appear from the path of this cone, and she will eat them if players don’t kill them (so you need to prevent her from eating them, or eating players, as she will replenish her health with that).

If they manage to get her to the critical health, the final phase will start. In this phase, she will cry for help, and graveling borrows will appear randomly on the stage. Also, the stage will get smaller, as the rocky floor will be destroyed by this process. This has to have some degree of randomization, but you can also have some control over it. As the burrows appear, you have a chance to destroy them, if you do, the place where they appear won’t be destroyed, but if you don’t, after a lot of gravelings spawn from it, it will destroy the land where it appeared.
During this phase, the smaller creatures will jump onto her mother to protect her, doing something similar as the ghosts did during the first stage. But this time, as you hit her, and gravelings fall, you will have to deal with them too. Suddenly, a mechanic similar to the colossus rumblus will start, where you will have rocks falling from the ceiling. The ballista/arrow carts will still work during this stage, but you will have to make sure they don’t get destroyed along with the land they are on top, during the borrows part, also, as usual, keep monsters away from the siege operators.
If you get to the part where her skin is uncovered (after focusing damage on a single point), she will frenzy and run around stomping both players and gravelings, until it’s dead, and you can salvage the treasure of ascalon that so many ghosts were trying to protect, and that attracted her to that place.

Sorry for the long post, this is just an example

I picture a raid encounter like this (with a bit of storytelling):

A group of adventurers enter a (at this point, a known place on the game) dungeon, in this case, Ascalon Catacombs, where most heroes do missions (explorable paths), but rumors of an even lower level inside of the catacombs starts to spread, so this group tries to search for what is below the known paths of the catacombs, and they find a giant cave system beneath it, plagued with underground creatures that act like they are part of a hive mind (meaning, even if one alone doesn’t have such a smart AI, they work as groups, and the entire place reacts to what happen to the groups inside of it)

In this case, we have a swarm of gravelings, stronger than the ones we see on the normal paths of the dungeon, all commanded by a massive graveling known as The Broodmother. As they traverse the cave system, they have to beat smart packs of gravelings, that use the terrain in their favor. they call for reinforcements, or bigger creatures. As the adventurers reach the end of the cave system, they face the abyss in front of them, with a lake in the middle, where they can see a faint blueish glow in the distance. The waters of this lake are dark and filled with abyssal creatures, making extremely difficult to move by water, so they have to follow a path of rock that leads to the center of the lake, where they see the giant graveling.
Now this is the raid Boss, and with not just a huge health pool, it can wield some interesting mechanics, like summoning gravelings, spitting ghosts (which she eats, and have like parasites around its body). It moves quickly, and tries to follow the group, so stacking would make them just an easier target. In order to damage it, they have to destroy a ghostly layer of souls, which determines the first phase of the encounter. In this phase she (the graveling boss) will destroy parts of the island she is in, making the zone smaller the longer it takes you to beat her, she will shake off ghosts, that will blindly seek for anything near them to attack (be it other gravelings, or the adventurers), and they explode too, dealing damage and burning. In order to destroy part of the layer of ghosts on her, you have to focus your damage on a single part, because it will quickly regenerate (so you need to coordinate among the possible targets on her body, to do the most damage on a single point).
After you reach the layer of actual skin, she will do a loud howl, and all the ghost will vanish, as well as the smaller gravelings, this is phase 2.

So, if I get it…knowledge>skill>numbers. I’ve seen this kind of “boss encounter” on a franchise I’m a fan of: Monster Hunter.
In this game, you can face a mission either alone or with a group up to 4 players, it’s a game where, from the beginning you are taught how to read what is happening int he combat and being able to adapt to circumstances. Even after having the most difficult/rare/powerful set of gear, you can still die from the most basic of enemies, and at the same time, you can beat the most powerful enemy, completely naked, armed only with (well, a weapon, that’s needed, or some items to do damage) your knowledge of its AI, its attack patterns and so on.

The problem I see with this is that, playerbases on MMOs tend to be very quick to figure out enemy AIs, so the “knowledge” isn’t really something of a personal progress, but rather a community effort, that can be shared. After that all you need is the skill to be able to do what needs to be done during the encounter.
Since this is my concern, and I would like a lot of replayability on this system, I think we should add a new layer, over Knowledge, should be Adaptability. This determines the depth of the content, if you can memorize a set of actions that will 99% of the time let you win, players will complain that the content is just another farm.

Or, make poison heal you while on death shroud, also blasting on a poison field, give you a similar effect as blasting on a water field for the rest.

Yes, it’s about time.

Donari.5237:

Baltzenger, that could be interesting as long as it doesn’t turn into a straight up rep grind “do this many things for this specific guild/faction in order to get access to X rewards from that faction.” What about a tweak where a raid offers the choice of “mission style” for the three Orders, with different objectives and benefits for the raiders depending on which Order they choose to run the mission for?

That could work, as long as you can have a record of your progress for each of this factions, and they have long term goals for the players.
Good take on it, thanks!

wwwes.1398:

I’m just going to throw something out that I think might shake up the entire thread…. Super Adventure Box Raid.

<3
Something like that would make me very happy.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Iason Evan.3806:

I think a lot of the discussions so far have been really cookie cutter and not outside the box. I understand wanting to take raiding that you love and just plop it wholesale into GW2. Let’s brainstorm though.

• Make raiding gear uniform—when you start the raid you get to pick gear at a vendor from various stat selections—

• Players can side kick up to 80 in Raids so that anyone can do them at whatever level. The level cap in this game isn’t going anywhere so why do Raids need to be considered only playable by level 80 characters?

• Have Raids where groups of players fight each other at the end. If only one group is playing it defaults to NPCs.

• I’d like to see a Raid where players get to be the boss. If no player is available then it’s an NPC. You could have a gauntlet-style-defense-point-raid where a group of players are 5 different bosses sequentially fighting against another group of players trying to complete the Raid.

• Can we make Control classes mean something more in Raids? Support? Maybe doing DPS to a Raid Boss in a certain situation isn’t even possible. You have to do other things in order to bring the boss down.

Let’s spend a few pages of this CDI getting away from traditional notions of what Raids are and spend some time coming up with things that have never been done.

Yes can we please move away from the traditional tropes of raiding and discuss how to utilize the core mechanics of GW2 to create a new type of challenging co-operative instanced content.

We also don’t need to talk about levels or scaling for the time being.

And those that want to continue to chat with Crystal about progression then please do so.

Chris

Hey Chris, is my idea about integrating guilds with a competition around raids even feasible? I don’t know if people agree with it or not, but I’m curious to know if the guild system could handle something like that without much reworking.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/page/15#post4529264

Naetell.3815:

Ohoni.6057:

The whole idea of this CDI is to brainstorm about ideas to encourage people who have never been able to raid before to go inside a raid and experience it for themselves.

Look, if you want to figure out ways to make raids FUN for more people, that’s great. If you want to “encourage” people to raid by showing them how fun it is, then that’s fine. But if you try to “encourage” them to raid by bribing them with unique loot that they can’ get elsewhere, then no, full stop on that. Players should not have to be bribed into activities, they should do them because they want to do them, not because they’re being paid to do them. The rewards should be enough that it doesn’t feel like a waste of time, but never enough to draw people in from other activities.

Inclusion is a great attitude to have, but understand that some people just don’t like green eggs and ham, and never will, and you don’t want to make those people feel left out of getting cool skins just because they don’t enjoy raiding in any form, no matter how inclusive it may be.

So the idea of there being a ‘raider’ and ‘non-raider’ already is anathema to one of the goals. We should get raids to a point where everyone is either a ‘raider’ or ‘raider-to-be’.

Ok, fair enough. But what would you call “someone who enjoys large scale, pre-organized events in which you have to spend long periods of time engaged with a single large group through complex content,” verses “someone who doesn’t enjoy that sort of thing in any sense?” Personally I find “raider” and “non-raider” work pretty well. If your dream is to design a raid that everyone would enjoy, then I’m sorry, that just doesn’t take human nature into account. It’s like saying that you dream of inventing a chocolate cake that everyone would love, even people that hate chocolate.

You cannot create content for people that by default are not your target audience. It’s like this already in the game.
For example: I am not a PvP player. sPvP is really not my thing.
sPvP does have unique rewards, and I will never get them unless I go and play sPvP. I may not like sPvP much, or at all, so I can:
A) Suck it up and do it anyway. Maybe it’ll grow on me, or maybe I’ll hate every second of it. I don’t know.
B) Accept it and move on. There’s plenty of stuff to do that I do enjoy and that also gives unique rewards.

So really, saying raids shouldn’t have unique rewards because some players do not like raids, is kind of a weird thing to say. Let them have their rewards, just like the sPvP, WvW, dungeon, open world roamers, farmers, etc. already have.
If it’s not for you, it’s just not for you.
But it sounds to me your issue is more with other people than with the game structure of raids in general. That’s not something the devs can fix, ever. Only you can. MMO’s are social games. Other people will happen.

Raids can be a lot of fun. Making them more fun should always be paramount.

I agree with you on this.
Players adapt, I don’t think we should take the role of “defending the rights of the uninterested/less skilled/low leveled/less experienced players”. A fact about those groups is, they can change (and will, in most cases). People get better, people get interested.
A new gamemode that offers nothing new, or unique, and is there “just for those who are already interested on it”, won’t just not help the game grow, but will contribute to further divide the player base.

Your last sentence should be a motto carved in stone on the room where design happens. But applied to every aspect of the game.

On some related note:
About the discussion around “being able to do the content with less than the required people”. I don’t think we should assume that “people can challenge themselves if they want”, where in the game you get no reward at all for doing so.
Two years of the game running have to teach us that players will do and try to perfect the most efficient way of doing things, against challenging themselves by giving up efficiency. And this should be looked at for dungeons too. Dungeons get a lot more interesting, and imo, on the level of difficulty we seek, when you do them with less people than recommended.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

I wonder… will we get some dungeon rework too, with all the good suggestions here. I think it would be MUCH easier to try some of the suggested features in our current dungeons first, before we take a step up to raids.

Dungeons, especially explorable paths, should have been really challenging raid-like experiences, if I remember right. Cheap strategies like stacking and skipping made a lot of the content trivial though, if you know what you do.

My suggestion because of this: try to rethink combat on a smaller scale (dungeons) first and if it works well for 5man, it’s likely that it works well for 10-15 people as well.

I agree with you.
I would like to see some experimentation first being done around dungeons, also because I want that system to be further refined.
I really hope this gets some attention.

About being lvl 80 for raiding:

I think that if the game were about raiding from the beginning, it would be logical to want to see that kind of content be available at different stages (like dungeons) of the progression. But the reality of GW2 is that it isn’t about raiding, it doesn’t even have raids yet.
Following that, we can assume that the metagame would never be completely around the idea of raiding, unless some unlikely things happen, like adding a new tier of gear tied to raids. So we should see raids as purely endgame content, available for you to enjoy after you have completed the other aspects of the game.

On some other note

I’ve been thinking about something that could be interesting. It’s partially related to raids.
What if players were able to join NPC guilds? appart from the 5 guilds you can join from other players, having the chance to join fictional guilds, that would be tied to the idea of raids? On this guilds:

• There will be a competition between this various fictional guilds for renown.
• Weekly, the state of the competition will be resetted.
• Members of different guilds/factions could join for jolly cooperation during raids.
• There will be a personal progress on each guild, where you advance in ranks(and titles) as you complete and do more raids.
• This fictional guilds will grant benefits similar to existing guilds, but different in effects (for example, instead of magic find, they could give you…extra chance to get a certain mat out of kills)
• Weekly, there will be a list of tasks that you can complete for your guild, this could be translated into a Reward Track.
• Since we are a bit short on progression-related rewards (against cosmetics), this idea could add to the overall fun and bragging rights. Being a renown monster hunter from a certain guild should require a lot of time, and having done a lot of raids for that particular guild/faction.
• There could be a possibility that raid groups compete against each other inside a raid, this could be dynamic too, having the political state between raid guilds/factions change from one week to another.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Baltzenger.2467:

I have a question for you.
When designing our proposals, should we think of raiding as an endgame type of content, or a more horizontal type of content (available for all kinds of players)?

This is a good question. This is really more of a personal question and the answer is going to differ quite a bit between individuals.

If you want my personal take on this… Raiding for me is a type of end game content I like to partake in with a group of like minded individuals that requires us to master both our classes and the mechanics in the encounter. Nothing in an MMO is more exciting to me than killing a boss we have spent weeks and dozens (if not hundreds) of attempts mastering.

Remember this is just my personal opinion. There are going to be differing opinions in this thread. We want to hear all of them, and not discourage anyone from posting if they think we are going in a direction that is not for them.

So to get back to your question… Let’s assume that because raiding would be a very new type of content for the game that it’s possible for us to re-write the principles of the game that we have seen so far. So having said that where do you feel raiding falls (end game VS horizontal)?

Sorry I didn’t answer before…I had some medical problems (swallowed a piece of wire, very scary week for me)

In my opinion, after what has been said, raiding falls into what end game content is, against the idea of horizontal, and not because horizontal is bad, or that we should change the overall approach of the game, but because in order to make it interesting enough it should require certain experience, and also because the playerbase sometimes feel like there is not really that next level after you get to the point where you have already completed most PvE content.

And by the way, I very much agree with your personal take on what raiding should be, that’s what I expect out of this too.

(thanks for your attention!)

Crystal Reid.2481:

runeblade.7514:

Controversal Topics that I see around this thread.

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

• AI- What AI should be in place?

• Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be?

• Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be?

These are all really excellent questions! I would love to see some drilling down into these specifics with your proposals.

I have a question for you.
When designing our proposals, should we think of raiding as an endgame type of content, or a more horizontal type of content (available for all kinds of players)?

This is important to know, because scaling, difficulty, rewards and punishment are tied to this concept.
I have some ideas regarding scaling and difficulty, but those contradict some of the principles of the game that we have seen so far (like how every type of content is designed to be completed by both players with experience and players without), or how there are no gear gates to access content. And just to be clear, when I say endgame, I’m not just talking about being lvl 80, but also having a complete set of at least, exotic armor, weapons and trinkets, and having some knowledge of the mechanics of the game and the class you are playing. (for example, just autoattacking shouldn’t be sufficient to complete this kind of content)

Conski Deshan.2057:

Before I go into suggestions on how I would like raids implemented I wanted to post some links that may give people who have never done any form of raid a brief tutorial of traditional ones.

Those links? I’m instantly a fan of you.
I was just going to suggest the Log Horizon explanation of how a raid works.

Based on my liking of dotHack universe, and the descriptions of systems from LH, this is the base of what I suggest:

Overview
I don’t know what is the approach we want to give to Raids in the game, be it expanding on the idea of dungeons, or expanding on the idea of world bosses, or maybe both. But I see raids as an instance where a group of at least 20 players work together to reach a Boss at the end, beat it, and get the reward for doing so.

How to enter the Raid, and structure of the zone

• It should offer two modes: Mercenary and Guild mode
• In mercenary mode, you work for a NPC, and you can join the raid in mercenary mode through the LFG tool, which will pair you with other people, and scale the content properly.
• In Guild mode, your guild can start the instance of the raid, and everyone in your guild can enter it. The system should scale the content properly.
• A raid should require at least 16 players, and the maximum limit of participation, should be related to the amount of players that can be on the same map.
• The differences between mercenary and guild mode, should offer interesting options. The player should feel compelled to do both modes, not making guild mode easier, nor making mercenary mode more efficient. (or the opposite)

About the zone

• I picture raids taking place in dungeon like instances. Similar to a “tower of trials”, “eternal tower” or “tower of druaga”. Where you should explore various levels of the same dungeon, beat sub-bosses, in order to reach the final raid boss that guards the big chest of loot.
• The zones, large enough, could be designed to be completed on more than one play session. This means, the system should allow players to resume an instance, if the group has to leave.
  Smaller guilds could benefit from this, by doing raid content on a slower pace, but being able to complete it.
• I can’t stress enough how much I would like to see huge, complicated mazes, non linear, that encourage exploration, that are dangerous and that require preparation.

About the content, the difficulty and the rewards

Content

• Raids should feel like fractals, on a scale of world bosses, with less people involved.
• This is a good chance to shake the metagame. With features that changes common rules of the game, for example: “inside of the raid instance, you never leave combat”, this change alone would mean that being able to heal becomes valuable, because it speeds up the progression (you wouldn’t have to stop so often to wait for cooldowns of self healing skills in order to be able to keep advancing).
• I want to see hordes of monsters, with interesting mechanics, pairing it with terrain mechanics too: lava and water shouldn’t be the only terrain modifications we can experience.

Difficulty

• I want to see something different from “stack” or “zerg”. Content should encourage to organize small units among the group, to create intelligent formations for the correct usage of skills, etc.
• I would like to see some randomization included, some enemies could differ between sessions or instances, making it interesting each time you visit the raid.
• Numbers shouldn’t be a factor of difficulty. Of course, the instance should scale, but this shouldn’t mean that you wouldn’t want more players than a certain number, or less. Content should remain interesting and rewarding for different amounts of players.

Rewards

• This is the hard part. No RNG means devaluated rewards, RNG means we get only greens and blues. Reward tracks are a good way to fight against this problem. Imagine if a reward track was more specific, instead of just rewarding you for repeating content, you need to fulfill certain tasks (with options) in order to advance in the track. This will discourage skipping events/enemies, and will encourage exploration. Also, RNG can be a good thing, when it determines what you get, instead of “if you get”. Talking about valuable items, of course.
• Integrate rewards with other systems in the game. I want outfits, minis, finishers, dyes, skins, tokens, home instance upgrades, trophies, utility items, consumables, boosters, etc.

Azorius Arrester
You have the right to remain silent. Mostly because I tire of your excuses.

Yes please.
Allow us to, when hiding the head on the outfit, to show the equipment helm. And if we want to really show our face, we just have to hide both the outfit and the equipment helm.

John Corpening.9847:

Hello All,

There was quite a lot of discussion around the proposal of removing white swords from objectives in WvW. We understand there are concerns about how this change might work in practice or how player behavior may change as a result of it. We felt like the best way to understand fully the impact, and give players a chance to see for themselves how it directly changes the WvW experience is to let people try it and see what they think.

We have decided to run a special multi-week event in WvW where we’ll be changing some of the “rules” of WvW for a limited time. This event will feature two major rule changes while it is running: we are planning to remove white swords from objectives, and add points per kill in WvW to the over-all score for the duration of this event. We are currently targeting December for this event but will keep you posted when we have dates nailed down for certain. If this type of event is successful, we may look to do more events like this in the future where for short periods of time the rules of WvW are changed to different rules, scoring and scenarios to help both keep the game fresh, as well as to change up the experience and try new fun things for WvW.

We look forward to your feedback once the event begins, both on the temporary event only changes, as well as the concept of these special events in WvW.

Thanks,
John

Yes!
This is what I want!
Both for testing and as a recurring thing to keep WvW interesting!
You might even design a known pool of rules and make a system that randomizes it for each week.

Well done!

But be aware that the context being an experimental period of time might affect the results too. Just like tournament season 2 wasn’t a good representation of what WvW is during the rest of the year.

I have a wild guess, that doesn’t even convince myself, but who knows:

I see a pattern around the idea of blood

• Heritage (blood is heritage)
• an everyday item could mean an item of lower quality, easier to get, but then with many, you get power. Doesn’t blood get powerful when you upgrade it to the next tier?
• the clinking (of flasks?), the bloodshed, the being bloody and sore.
• Not particularly Zommoros favorite, but since it’s used on so many recipes and how important it is, maybe he does like it?

Maybe Lemark is a vampire, stealing blood from the poor merchants of Lion’s Arch.
My imagination went a bit wild with this.

Why is Zommoros referred as Zomorros in the story? is there an explanation for this?

It’s unbelievable how some people really think that you can judge an opinion by who emits it, rather than by its content.
ArenaNet can certainly know who is active and who isn’t, yet at the same time, if feedback were judged by this, it would be incredibly unethical.

Trolling should be dealt by Forum Moderation, not by marking the “worthy” and the “unworthy”. I see far more trolling from people that is active.

To me, this has more to do with discrediting posters instead of the opinions they emit.

There are bad ideas, and this.

I find some “White Knights” to be just on par with the so called trolls, but twice as annoying.

Mackanstein.2503:

John Smith.4610:

3.5-4 Story continues:
(2 days later)
Lemark sprinted down the alleyway, an endeavor likely to leave one examining refuse closer than generally preferable, but this wasn’t his first time. He slowed for a moment to glance behind him, merchants still chasing with guards closely behind them. He was surprised they hadn’t given up, they must be very sensitive about their heritage here, the item itself was a bit too everyday to inspire this kind of rage. “Two more blocks”, he thought to himself, double-checking the sealed, cylindrical case he carried. His attempted thievery had failed, for today, but he wasn’t going to lose what he had to the muddy waters of the bay.

So this clue refers to an item that is somehow linked to a heritage, not necessarily the item itself but the place where it’s held. It seems to either be sold or held/priced by merchants as they are really angry at Lemark, and Lemark apparently felt it was necessary to steal said item. There’s alleyways, blocks and a bay, I’m thinking city by the water. We don’t have a lot of them in Tyria, aside from LA but LA doesn’t have much of blocks, and is 90% destroyed anyway.

Are there any reflective items linking to Cantha in GW2? Lemark doesn’t have to be in Tyria, he could have taken a trip overseas in search of an item (and us players have an alternate way of getting it). He could be running in Kaineng City. It’s far-fetched though, and it could be argued that Kaineng doesn’t really have much of a bay.

Another thought is something relating to Wizard’s Fief or Rata Sum.

I think that by “2 more blocks”, he is referring to the 2 squares left on the Mystic Forge panel.

So Eldritch scroll, mystic coins and vials of powerful blood.

Sounds like a new weapon skin.

All in all, I think we are kind of mighty as a community.

Even if that means kicking and screaming when we don’t like something, we show the same enthusiasm when we do like something.

Now is time to calm down, and help them fix this in the best possible way.

BobbyT.7192:

Azhure.1857:

Continued negativity even after Gaile’s last few statements is depressing to me. Meh.
Gaile, try not to take any of …. this… home with you.

No one is trying to be mean to Gaile for the sake of it, a lot of people were just mad at the company and she was just the unfortunate shield for the blunt force of all this. It just a reality of PR, i’m sure a lot of people wish she didn’t have to take off of it, and talk to the developers directly.

Some are still made at Anet that something like this happen and that they need to build back up the trust that has been tarnished.
I for one don’t think something like this won’t happen again, unless they change how they communicate with the community.

this.
I was afraid that some other dear member of the team would have to defend this change, good thing the first answer we get after that, is about the solution.

What bothers me the most is how I felt this clouded cool things going on, like what John Smith is doing with the hunt for a new Mystic Forge recipe, which I recommend everyone giving a look at.

Azhure.1857:

Continued negativity even after Gaile’s last few statements is depressing to me. Meh.
Gaile, try not to take any of …. this… home with you.

I agree with you…
Even if I got mad about this, and still have some conflicting emotions regarding what happened, in the end, I don’t want to be angry with them.

I guess I’ll go back to the game now…

Thanks to you too Chris, as my first participation on a CDI, I quite enjoyed it, and I’m looking forward to join the next one too.

The future looks promising

lugnutusa.3157:

Kotaku is now reporting that Anet is planning to change in response to the outcry:

http://kotaku.com/guild-wars-2-players-angry-over-currency-exchange-chang-1649519173

Update: ArenaNet has responded with plans to update the Currency Exchange so players can use it as they wish. They offered the following statement:

“It’s clear that quite a lot of you would like to have greater flexibility in using the Currency Exchange. Our intention when we designed the new interface was to streamline large volume purchases, which make up the majority of transactions.

In light of your feedback, we will update the Currency Exchange so that you can decide how you want to use it. We will keep the new streamlined system and also offer a new “Custom” button on the panel that you can use to exchange any increment of gems or gold.

We anticipate rolling this out soon. Stay tuned!"

Where did kotaku get that answer?

If this is correct, I am “a bit” relieved, because I’ve seen some good things being done with this patch (like John’s initiative, or the changes on Skyhammer), that I really wanted to pay more attention. Won’t forget though.

Josh Davis.6015:

Zaxares.5419:

So, now that the Skyhammer changes have gone in (hammer now dodgable, floor break time increased, can’t break floors while in stealth), what are people’s opinions? Is it bearable, or even fun, now?

I’m interested in seeing these questions answered by those who have posted in this thread with a generally negative opinion, but have gone back and retried the map since yesterday’s changes.

In your opinion, are yesterday’s changes to Skyhammer generally positive? Are there other small tweaks like this (aside from removal of solo queue) that you feel would make the map a better experience for players – changes that wouldn’t drastically change the gameplay dynamic and aesthetic of the map?

I like the changes.
The flavor of the map remains there, but now there’s less focus on the hammer, which is good in my opinion.
The map has something that other maps lack: a lot of verticality. Which I find fun to play around with.

I do have one suggestion, but might conflict with the gameplay dynamic and the aesthetic of the map…
If the map is going to be out of the arena, then maybe we could add even more flavor to it? Maybe a sandstorm? Or maybe not, maybe you could use that concept for a new map. I just find it interesting and fun, and would like to see it on a pvp environment.

Good Job with the changes, well done.

nightwulf.1986:

Question people. Should we also be lobbying to reduce the amount of gems bought with cash? Why has there been no rage on that subject? Why have we remained complacent on that subject as well? Are there no parallels to be drawn here? Honest question. Where is the rage? Shouldn’t the cash to gems system be on par with the currency conversion system to remain fair and balanced? The more I think about it, the more I realize there are a lot of mental hurdles people have to clear to wrap their head around the logic behind their choices.

You are right in a sense.
We remained complacent about that subject, gem cards work like this, and we didn’t say anything.
I think we let them because we assumed that was in every way done with the intention of making you need more gems every time. We assumed that if you agree to pay with cash, then you would keep on doing it. But you are right, there is some unfairness there.

But that doesn’t mean this change is right, or that we shouldn’t complain now.

Also don’t be mistaken: the one you mention is a bad business practice, the change we talk about now is a shift in the model, in the past, you could agree not to buy those gem cards, because you had options ingame to acquire the same items, now, you have options, but worse options, that’s why we complain.

The only other option I would be satisfied with this change, is that from now on, they add ingame ways to acquire gemstore items.

The hexed outfit reward during this halloween is a good move.
If this is the intention, say so.

Ok, after sleeping over it, I have this:

Positive things

• Is good to see how we join together to express our collective opinion, at this point I think there is only one player defending this, both here and on reddit (the same person), but in general, we are together in this. I’m glad to see recurring names, people that I see on this forums trying to help, participating on CDIs, and giving positive feedback when asked. This shows that this is not mindless rage, this is we, making a stand here.
• The solution to the problem in question, is simple, and has been posted several times in this thread. I dare any PR agent to say that we are not being constructive, we are both, being constructive, and expressing how we feel about this. They have no excuse on that.

Negative things

• Were this just a bad design choice, I would understand that it can be solved by just giving feedback, but this isn’t. This involves other things.
• Even if this is fixed, to not abuse us, is hard to trust them not to try something like this in the future. You have broken something that is very hard to fix, at least for me.
• I don’t mean to sound exaggerated, or over-emotional, but like some others have said, Anet, you broke my heart with this…
• As sad as it is for me…I don’t even want to read a post from Gaile again, at this point, I just hope…no other member of the team I liked gets involved in this, because I suspect that you will be commanded to defend this, but I rather you didn’t. If you can’t fix it, don’t partake in the treason this means. Really don’t want to see Colin or someone like that coming here to tell us how their metrics made them make this change…no more disappointment please.

:(