Guild Wars 2

Serious.6940:

Actually raids are inaccessible because they are too tough. If your squad is anything less than the absolute best players you are going to hit that 8 minute time limit. Not having a proper team that play together regularly, or even not having every player on voice comms, just makes that much worse.

Raids were not designed for pugs typing into the chat box. They were not designed for the average GW2 player. They were designed for the top few percent.

To make raids more accessible anet need to nurf it.

Sorry, but raids are not that exclusively difficult. They are, without doubt, far harder than any PvE content in the game at the moment. But you do not need “the best players” to be able to clear it. You need players who know their classes well, and how the game’s combat mechanics work.

You don’t even need voice comms either. I’ve been in a “silent” VG group that got the kill fairly quickly.

Still broken :’(

There are two things I’d want to see with raid loot. Firstly, skins. They’re easy to include and can be an awesome “hey I did this” item. However, they shouldn’t just be standard skins; I’m talking legendary/quasi-legendary level. They need a “wow factor”. The other reward I’d like to see is an account bound non-consumable item which, whenever activated, will buff certain stats (e.g. Berserker’s Aura grants ++Power +Precision +Ferocity in addition to armour/weapon stats). At the end of the day, a skin is nice and all, but I want to be but through the ringer with these raids and struggle for ages and a skin just doesn’t cut it. Something which actually rewards players by helping their gameplay would be what’s required.

Associated Risks
Major risk 1; players without community ties won’t be able to access raids. It’s a valid concern however I should point out that raids shouldn’t be for those who already struggle with existing content. Yes it’s harsh but at the end of the day there needs to be something which separates the top end PvE players from the rest (or else they get bored and leave the game). Also, there are ways of forming your own community for content. The forums exist for a reason; player to player organisation is possible.

Major risk 2; It’ll be too hard for players. Good. Again, it sounds bad but raids exist to challenge, you can’t particularly complain about being challenged in an environment which is supposed to be a challenge.

Major risk 3; Your suggested reward of a buff item like that would make it unfair for players who don’t want to run that content. This is a valid point. The buffs would give a benefit to the more experienced, particularly as runs should be incredibly challenging and thus discourage the unprepared/casual players. Yet doesn’t a similar system already exist with ascended items? Yes, casual players can access ascended easier but we are talking about content for hard core players. It would be similar to the ascended system but more stratified.

Nota Bene: this post represents my opinion alone. I am not posting on behalf of the entire TTS community or leadership base.
Sorry for the long post but I guess I had a lot to say

Expected Challenges
For raiding, players should expect the hardest content possible. There should be harsh penalties for failing to achieve objectives such restarting the task at hand or a long term debuff which reduces damage output or movement speed. This can be seen in a similar vein to the mechanic currently at the Amber wurm of Triple Trouble with the need of 20 harpoon shots. However, it could be changed where if more than X harpoons do not hit the target then all the players in the area get killed (tequatl wave). Essentially what we are looking for here is a mechanic that punishes hard for minor mistakes, because in the end that’s what incredibly challenging content is.

There will of course be boss battles in raiding environments. However, these bosses should differ from current ones (except perhaps tequatl). They should have massive amounts of HP and should take >8 minutes to kill, even with a quality group. Their mechanics should change as the fight progresses and become harder and harder as the fight progresses through its stages. What should be absent is the existence of a “burn phase” which is similar to tequatl or tri-trouble, as in tequatl on a good map, burns are chained and some mechanics are skipped entirely (Whirlpools, anyone?).

There should also be a large floor plan which needs to be cleared which is filled with mobs that are difficult to kill. However, there should not be one strict path. What should set a raid apart is that each instance should be different from all the others. A labyrinth type zone where the layout is different each time is a good example of this. The mobs which need to be killed should change accordingly and should be rated champion or higher (except in cases where the group is required to split up).

Speaking of combat, something which makes the current fights far far easier is the ease at which one can waypoint and thus return to the fight after death. I propose that in raids, waypoints only exist at the very start and the rest requires players actually reviving each other. This is to further create a challenge whilst also actually penalising those who die instead of “waypoint to Brooloonoo and run back.”

There should also be spot challenges similar to guild puzzles which require players to complete something BESIDES combat as those can be ridiculously challenging yet still pertain to a raid environment.

Potential Mechanics
There are already existing mechanics in the current game which would be great to incorporate into a raiding environment. Tequatl would make a great boss (with slight changes) and Triple Trouble is exactly what many players are looking for in terms of required co-ordination. There have also been many new mechanics recently which are great for raiding (e.g. boss in dry top which is invulnerable whilst its minions are alive). I believe these can be integrated, slightly changed, and combined to create incredibly difficult encounters. Imagine fighting 2 bosses such as the shatterer and claw of jormag and having to kill them within a minute of each other, whilst they are constantly healed by something further.

I’m purposefully keeping this section short because I don’t want to suggest such mechanics, I want to solve them. Those who were in TTS (or any group which regularly kills tri-trouble) often talk about “the time when we didn’t kill wurm for X weeks”. What the players are looking for is a puzzle that takes us weeks or even a few months to finally solve. As a leader of one of these communities (and thus one if its strategicians) I don’t think it’s in my place to suggest much in this department. But I can say the direction lately has been good Anet, just combine them in ways we’d never imagine and it’ll be incredible.

Rewards AKA EPIC LOOTS

I’ll keep this short because at the end of the day, I enjoy tackling the challenges with fellow players more than the loot, but I would like something to show off for it. First things first, for raid specific loot, there should be no RNG. There is a problem when raid/boss specific drops are rarer than legendary weapons (I’d estimate the number of legendries to outnumber the number wurmslayer armour by over 100-1). What I would like is a guaranteed drop be it tokens or a crafting item of which you need 10 to do anything with.

Hi everyone, I’m Atlantino and I’m one of the leaders for TTS, like Light Guardian Jack. I figured that since whatever conclusion is reached in this CDI would affect myself, and those I play with, I should probably chip in so here we go. This will come in multiple parts because it’s pretty long. Sorry <3

Proposal Overview
The proposal is to integrate hard core raiding instances into the current game in which a group of players would enter to find incredibly challenging content. By this I don’t simply mean needing a large amount of DPS or a new stack spot. At the present moment the most complicated world boss, Triple Trouble, which somewhat resembles a raid, already includes this. To fill this vacuum new mechanics will need to be created in order to stimulate higher level players. These will be discussed later. This proposal will include a list of potential new game mechanics along with implementation strategies as well as the general functionality of raids. There will also be a slight mention of rewards near the end, but this will be kept to a minimum.

Goal of Proposal
Amongst players who have successfully completed the higher difficulty world bosses a large number of times there often begins to grow a sense of boredom. Tequatl was incredibly hard when first buffed yet now an organised map can easily accomplish it. Experienced tequatl killers can kill tequatl in under 4 minutes (defence not included) and TTS has started running “chaos teqs” where there is no setup and the kill is still achieved with more than 50% of the time left on the timer. Triple trouble is somewhat similar amongst the groups which have it on farm. I have heard many a player say something along the lines of “Remember when wurm was challenging? It’s getting boring now that we do it 95% of the time”. By implementing incredibly hard core/challenging content, there will be an activity specifically to cater towards those who excel in a co-ordinated PvE environment.

Proposal Functionality
This section will be split into multiple sections. The first will discuss the basics of a raiding environment. Then I will go into details as to the types of challenges a player should expect. I will then briefly suggest potential mechanics which could be included. Finally I will touch on rewards for completing such a difficult challenge.

Basics of a Raiding Environment
Raids themselves are somewhat similar to dungeons in that they allow a (relatively) small number of players to co-ordinate to achieve a common goal. However, they differ from dungeons in aspects such as difficulty and amount of players.
The first issue with raids would be “how to get the raid members into the raid instance”. There are two potential ways of solving this. Firstly, the commander squad mechanic could be utilised (it already has a cap) and thus the entire squad would be invited to the instance. A second option would be the instance spawner to be able to invite members in their party to the instance in a similar way to current “taxiing” methods work.

The next question would be the number of players allowed in a raid. Obviously this could drastically vary depending on the raid itself however I would set the range from a minimum of 20 to a maximum of a full 150. This would work in a similar vein to dungeons where they could be ran with less numbers although doing so would be far more difficult.

The person who initiated the raid should then be able to assign people with various set roles such as “commander” or “party leader” to enable further delegation of responsibility. It should be noted that anyone with a delegated role should not be subject to suppression over any chat (except whispering people not inside the raid) as this would hinder organisational efforts.

While I agree that dungeon rewards should be looked at, it seems that people have forgotten that GW2 was designed as a game with a vast, interactive, open world. When you complain that “spamming 1 in the open world gives better rewards” then perhaps you should consider that the game was intended to be played in the open world, so is it really surprising that dungeons have “worse loot”?

Can I grab an invite to the NA guild please? I need a brush up on all my dungeon paths. I have a thief and a guardian geared for dungeons. Thank you!

Hi all,
GregTech Industries is a fairly new, open PvE guild who accepts all players regardless of timezone and playstyle (Casual-Hardcore). We’re looking for players who are interested in dungeons (not super-speed runes) and world bosses, including tri-trouble, as well as having an interest in joining the social group of the guild.

I should stress that the guild itself has almost no association with PvP & WvW, asides from the occasional EotM. However, if that’s what your occasional interest is, that’s fine. Due to this we don’t have a world requirement, especially with all guild chapters across worlds now combined.

Here’s what we look for from our players:
1) Supportive of all other members and help them out.
2) Willing to interact with the others in the group.
3) Online at least once a week.
4) Have an understanding that sometimes people don’t agree, and respect others’ opinions.
5) Have TeamSpeak 3. All our harder worldboss raids are done on TS and a lot of our hangouts are there too.
6) A knowledge of/an eagerness to learn dungeon paths/tactics and strategies for advanced bosses, such as triple trouble.
7) The willingness and enthusiasm which will lead to us creating a vibrant international community.

Please note that GregTech Industries is based on NA servers, sorry EU people!

For an invite or more information, please contact:
Atlantino Senpai – Featherpillows.6750