Guild Wars 2

It’s a comfortable position to say “there is enough content” when you can choose between raids, fractals and dungeons.
For a player who is limited to dungeons and fractals the amount of content is way less.
That’s why I asked if he would say there is enough content for him to do without raids.

A raid player can still play fractals , dungeons and open world when raids would be deleted. So he would be in exactly the same situation as a “non raid teamplayer” is now.

No, raids don’t target the same audience as T1-T2 fractals and dungeons do.

Yes, I was complaining about the quantity of new instanced casual content.
Would you say there is enough content when all raids would get deleted?

Vinceman.4572:

Cool then, but that’s the “Easy mode raids” thread, you better should have posted in one of the dungeon rework threads or open a new one.

My initial comment was that the easymode debate doesn’t make any sense, because Anet doesn’t care about the “middleground” players anyway. Even if we all would agree on an easymode Anet won’t care.
It was not me who then brought up fractals as “middleground” and so on.

Vinceman.4572:

Why? – Because they abandoned them and choose fractals as their 5 man instanced content.

Y, and fractals have huge problems (which i have probably already meantioned: limited in length, in rewards, in structure. You can’t add in a “storymode fractal” or a fractal with completly different rewards (other tokens, exclusive skins). So the concept of fractals is limited. You could add a “fractal 2.0” with other unique rewards, “fractal 2.0 skins” and so on.
An aetherpath, as example, wouldn’t fit well into the existing fractal system. Or arah.

Feanor.2358:

Can it be played with a group? Yes, it can. Are there community events hosted in the open world? Yes, there are. So no, it’s not content for “singleplayers”.

The simple option to form a group is not the same as content made for groups.
Should be obvious. If open world would only allow 5 players to join a map, enemies are balanced to face 5 players and so on: yes. But that wouldn’t be open world anymore, right?

There is tequatl, there are guildmissions, there is triple trouble and so on. So why do we need raids? Why were there people running dungeons over and over again when there is open world content?
It’s a huge difference to be part of a zerg or to be part of a small group. A boss can be designed for 5 players. But I can’t ban other players from the map which join in and “help” fighting the boss and ruin our “teamexperience”. Everyone can run around solo on an open world map and “succeed”, do map exploration and so on. There is no need to form a group. There is no need to adjust your build to teamcomposition or change classes. There isn’t even a guarantee to end up on the same map with your guildmates, you might all be fighting tequatl on different maps – I can have the same “teamplay” in skyrim.

You expect frequent new content aimed at team players which isn’t designed to be repeated over and over again. Won’t happen. Waaaay to expensive to create. I can’t really think of any worse business model in the game dev sector. Nobody gives a feline that some players want this when they aren’t going to pay enough to cover the costs.

I asked for dungeonlike or fractallike content. That’s “content which isn’t designed to be repeated”?

I just said on the more casual end it doesn’t need to be “perfect” content. Two posts ago I even brought up an example which included 3 repetitions for casual players + more repitions in following years. You just can’t assume a casual player is repeating the same dungeon hundreds of times. That’s not going to happen and would be indeed one of the worst business models in the videogame sector.
It won’t work and even if it would: if a player doesn’t like the new content for whatever reason (setting, story, gamemechanics, style of enemies) he is stuck with 0 new content.
See HoT: 4 maps and many players don’t like TD. So a “3 map expansion”. If you include DS, which is also not loved by everyone.
It’s impossible to create content which is liked by everyone. Small amounts of content = highly specialised game catering to a small group of players =niche game.
HoT ignored, for example, open world “explorer” players which would prefer more and easy maps without huge zerg-events.
Or players which just want to jump into a map without a schedule.

You also might have noticed: GW2s LS is mostly content with low replay value, especially the story.

Costs is a matter of tools. Give a 12 year old the right tools and he creates a simple dungeon in two hours. Or just rebalance old content, for example lake dorik final storymission (CM mansions) could also be a new dungeonpath. Several story instances could be splitted up into “storymode” “teammode” and “hardmode”, adjust enemy stats and rewards and there you go.

TexZero.7910:

Still cannot fathom how you jump from an absence of content to we require easy mode raids. It’s just jumping the shark at that point.

Where did I ask for an easymode?

Some pages ago I wrote: “I’m not really a fan of an easymode. I’d prefer to see maybe 5-10 new dungeons each year instead.”

It’s understandable to ask for an easymode when there is a lack of casual team content.
I don’t agree on an easymode. It’s a “cheap and bad” solution. But I also think Anet doesn’t care enough about casual teams to implement content for this group of players – which is imho a mistake.

Vinceman.4572:

Well, such a player will play new content several times and then again be bored. So, what’s your plan against that problem?

Content.

As said before other games manage to release way more content than GW2 releases, so it is an Anets decision to release low amounts of content. Be it a direct decision to avoid spreading the playerbase, be it a indirect decision by high standards for bosses, animations, level design, voice acting, etc.

Casuals usually don’t run out of content. That’s more a hardcoreplayers problem.

Simple example:
4 times LS which keeps a player busy for a month: 4 months content.
10 dungeons which get repeated maybe 3 times: 30 weeks = 7,5 months.
So the year would be full. Add some events as wintersday, a break for vacations or whatever, …
In year 2 there are already 20 dungeons ingame. People still sometimes repeat old content. So there is maybe 1 month (or more) worth of old “year 1” content for the next 2-3 years until the content is “completly burned”.
Old content adds up.

For a new game it is difficult to provide enough content. An old game should have lots of content to offer. The majority of content GW2 offers for casual groups is very old, very little content has been added in those years in between. With maybe 5 dungeons each year GW2 would be in a much better shape. Instead players kept playing the same content without variation – and now the content is “burned”.
But I think I already described that some pages ago.

Feanor.2358:

And that’s their own choice. There’s hardly anyone to blame for it except themselves alone, is there? Certainly not the game devs, which have created excellent content I’ve been casually enjoying for the past one year. And please quit trying to portray a game which has no other content beside raids. It’s ridiculous.

Well, I am refering to casual teams and even my first post acknowledged that there is open world content which is pretty decent content for singleplayers.

Sure it is the choice of players to not play solo in open world and to favour teamcontent when they want to play a MMO. That’s why I recommended those players to buy another MMO in my first post in this topic.
For Anet it is a problem to loose too many players. They can’t just say “then just leave the game” (me) or “suck it up” (you).

Vinceman.4572:

If you are able to T4 you will at least get 4-8 raid bosses down easily.

I think we debated that topic in detail several pages ago. Summary: For many players fractals get boring before they reach T4. Those players still have “done” fractals, seen all maps and so on.
It’s comparable to a player which stops playing WvW before reaching max. rank and all achievements. He hasn’t done everything, still got bored.

TexZero.7910:

Oh i’ve read them and the general basis goes like such

I cant because time (false, you can you just choose not to)
I cant because it’s not guarenteed like dungeons (Also false, dungeons don’t guarantee success)
I cant because my class isn’t accepted (Yet again false, you’re attempting to join groups that do not want to risk it, instead of creating your own)
I cant because it’s too hard (Perspective here, of course it’s hard if all you ever do is T2 fractals, do the rest of the content before jumping to the end)

Then you should know that this has nothing to do with any of my posts.

Henry.5713:

Veteran PvE players needed content like raids.

There are quite a lot of veteran players playing since release (or even GW1 veterans) which play “casually” and will never enter raids. Sure, players move (slowly) towards more difficult content. If there is any. But most new content is open world and not really “training” players to become better players. There is a huge “difficulty gap” between raids and open world. In between are dungeons and fractals – which most veterans have done long ago. After a while of “open world only” your skill level might even decrease again.
Jumping over that difficulty gap into raids requires lots of dedication. By my experience do especially older gamers then just say “ok, it’s not meant for me, no biggie” and move on. Which is a problem when the game has not that much else to offer.

TexZero.7910:

If you find these too difficult then maybe just maybe, you should play more of the content that is designed to help you get good before saying you need an easy mode raid

I recommend reading at least some of the posts written in this topic before you babble nonsense. Ty.

maddoctor.2738:

Well find me a group of completely average players playing 5 bear bow rangers that can finish Arah P4 and we can see

The relevant part of his post was not the 5 bear bow rangers, that was just an example.
The relevant part:
“Yes anyone can put up their lfg but will it be successful, highly unlikely.”
For an average player it is easier to successfully pug a dungeon than a raid.

Even my guild managed to do arah 4. Yes, it is difficult. Some T2 fractals can be difficult, too.

maddoctor.2738:

He said you can do joke build runs in dungeons I say you can do joke build runs in Raids.

He said an average player can do the content even with “not so perfect” builds.
It was not about extremly skilled players doing funruns.

maddoctor.2738:

Having instanced content is important and positive for the game. Having too much instanced content isn’t.

I agree on this. But I don’t think 3 fractals can keep a guild busy for a whole year.
Ofc it doesn’t need to be only fractals (story, guildmissions, dungeons for example). It can be debated which amount of instanced content is enough, sure.

But currently it really raises the question why such a big percentage of new instanced content is raids which cater to a much smaller audience.
Usually games have lots of easier content and only a small amount addresses hardcoreplayers. Be it 5%, 10%, maybe even 20%. 3 new fractals, 4 raids. I think this clearly indicates anets focus on “hardcoreteams”, more casual friendly games would have had 5-10 dungeons/fractals for each raidwing.
I can only assume that this is because there are not many casual teamplayers left in GW2. By my interpretation this indicates an unhealthy status of the game (game has shrinked down to its hardcorecommunity).

maddoctor.2738:

That’s highly unlikely, especially at harder paths, unless those 5 bear bow rangers had some actual skill.
As for Raids there have been low man clears and for example a Guardian-only Vale Guardian kill.

His point was not that difficult to understand.
Dungeons require less specific builds, equip and less player skill and knowledge. So even a bad group with soldiers equip, crappy builds, very little knowledge about the path can do the content.
You can’t compare such a bad group to some of the highest skilled players in low man clears.

There’s a reason why lots of dungeon/fractals lfgs only say “P1” “anyone welcome” or “80” and don’t ask for any killproof or whatever. You can easily join or form such a group, there might be a staff guard or two plus some other strange builds – but in 90% you will succeed. The same does not work in raids.
It’s easy to pug dungeons/fractals, because the content is not that difficult. Raids require good players with good knowledge, builds and equip.

ButterPeanut.9746:

There’s no way they could do so with enough unique maps, encounters, etc. Also, the “casual group play” audience really doesn’t need 45 fractals worth of content to memorize. What if there are fewer players playing fractals when there are 45 of them because they are too overwhelming for the casual audience than if there were 15? Still worth it?

I don’t think casual content needs to be unique.
After a while players are done with the content a game has to offer. If nothing new is added the game is done for such a player. Casuals do repeat content, but not very often. So GW2 has maybe enough content for 1-2 years, but it’s not 2014 anymore. At this point the game has reached the same status as GW1 or Ultima Online. You did everything, the game is done and starts to become boring.
See the complaints about “content drought”. Adding nothing new is not going to fix the content drought.

You can bundle players with daily activities. See daily fractals.

maddoctor.2738:

Have you ever thought that this instanced content wasn’t as popular as you might believe, especially at that time when most dungeon runs where by people trying to do world best times or solo/duo the content?

I think maybe 80% of GW2s players are soloplayers, play exclusivly open world and story, don’t visit GW2 related website and are not really guild active, maybe in some chat advertising mass guilds or so.
But I think among players which care about instanced content is the majority on the casual end. And I think these (casual and hardcore) teamplayers are very healthy for a game. Bc that’s where guilds starts, websites, commanders for whatever and so on.
These groups “activate” some of the soloplayers, so that they become more active and participate themselfs. Comparable to guilds: there are always maybe 1-2 players which start activities “T4?”. These players cause guildactivities – if they become inactive other guildmembers become inactive too and guilds collapse. I think a MMO community works the same. Without commander in WvW: people leave. No commander on PVE map? People leave. A small guild group which decides to cap some towers in WvW or puts up some tags at TD meta? Suddenly active map.
I think its very important to have these groups. I also think instanced content is very important for groups. Sure, some tequatl guilds or tarir guilds exists. Two years ago my impression was that nearly all guilds were dungeon active. I rarely see chat advertisments without “doing dungeons and fractals”.

With group events, event chains and encounters with multiple bosses that require a good amount of players to split on them, having enough players is key.

I think having more than 1 open world map is the bigger problem here. But it is possible to motivate players to gather together and play at certain maps. See dailies.
I wouldn’t be too worried about a spreaded playerbase. There are enough options to bundle them together for activities.

Vinceman.4572:

That was not my intention. I just presented facts that apodicticly show you were using data horribly wrong and therefore cannot be used to keep up your argumentation seriously.

Context is relevant. Initially I ~ said casual team content gets played by more players than hardcorecontent. Someone disagreed without giving reasons. Now I could have just written “lol”, but I tried to be constructive and give at least some reasons.
Reasons are not proof. You are right that gwefficiencies data is not correct. It just indicates player behaviour, but it’s not correct data.
But when one side gives no reasons and the other side gives at least some crude reasons (raid players also did fractals; more casuals than hardcoreplayers in most games; gwefficiency)…yeah.
Sure, feel free to critize the data. But as I said: I agree. It’s far from precise data. The point the still stands until you are able to give better data which indicates the opposite.

You don’t get the difference, do you? That’s sad! T1 people show up in GW2efficiency because they will get it done even after hours but rather very easily in minutes.

I ~ said more people do easier teamcontent (fractals) than hardcorecontent (raids). You ~ said “but it’s easier”. So what? That’s what I said.

Bias in your interpretation of data.

Not really. I just said easier content gets played by a bigger amount of players. Raids also have achievements or legendary armour. I was only refering to “players playing the content” and not to “players who love the content and would play it even without rewards”.

Ok, then maybe you start to realize that this isn’t possible at all. Everyone with a little bit of knowledge in software programming knows that.

The same company was able to some years ago. I think this proves you wrong.
It’s a design decision. You can create high quality content which gets handpainted by the pope himself or cheap and fast content. Every 12 year old can create a first person shooter level in 2 hours if you give them right tools.

You have to make compromises. Anet is not in the position to create content slowly. Players have already complained in 2013 about lacking content. After the first LS didn’t delivered enough content players startet to beg for a (full) expansion (GW1 style). We got “half” an expansion.
Quality content is nice to have, sure. But did we really needed 4 huge meta event maps but no simple “exploration” maps? Is a new pvp ending screen for pvp, new heart of the mists, new LA, 2 new frog races, the 5ths trait system rework necessary? Is it clever to rework old fractals or wouldn’t it be better to add new ones instead? LS lake doric: the final story in CM could’ve also been a new dungeon path.
Sometimes you have to make compromises. The new open world maps already do so.
You can have some “perfect” content, but a single perfect map is not going to keep players busy for 10 years.

Vinceman.4572:

You weren’t standing up and fighting for your content in the past. The small community that wanted a challenge did so after years of asking. I don’t see your people here or elsewhere (reddit and so on).

Actually I asked since long ago ( a lot) for easier teamcontent (even my first post in the english forums is asking for it). Also for more difficult teamcontent. I think even a question by me got delivered to an interview with Anet. So there’s that. And many others did the same. But more casual players are not that active, they rather leave the game and play WoW or whatever instead.
I think for many years Anet had the idea that everyone should play open world content. But open world content can’t replace instanced content. It’s a difference if you heal your teammate up because he is low hp or if you spam your heals because some zerg-member might be low hp.
Imho this resulted in many players leaving the game. Playing with friends and family is a strong reason to play a game – or to leave it.
Triple trouble can’t replace raids and fireelemental is not going to replace easy teamcontent.

maddoctor.2738:

Some perspective is needed here and a valid comparison, the comparison is what we used to get versus what we get.

I’m not sure if 0 is a good comparision. A company shouldn’t be proud of “we release more content than zero content”.
I think Anet released 9 fractals in 2012. If they would have released a similar amount each year GW2 would be in a much better shape now.
They had the strange concept of temporary content back then (players already said at early LS1 that its going to “add nothing to the game”). Pre HoT there was also only SW, DT and karka isle. Not much open world content, too. So players burned through the old content, played it too often – the lack of content has built up over the years. A single new fractal doesn’t fix this. Actually that was the reason why many players asked for an expansion. In the hope of “lots of content” to solve this issue, after the LS wasn’t able to deliver enough content. Instead Anet released a small amount of high quality content, so not really what was needed. Half a year later people were already speaking of a content drought. Not only some rare hardcore players which rushed the content, even casuals complained. That should not happen. When nightfall hit I wasn’t done with factions. Too much content too fast.

Vinceman.4572:

No, you are overestimating those data.

I am not, ofc these data is bs. I even said so pretty early. Most very casual player are rarely using third party sites and probably don’t even know what an API key is.
We can all agree on “it’s common sense that casual content is played by more players than hardcorecontent”. Most raid players have also done dungeons or fractals, so its no surprise.
We can use stuff as GWefficiency to say “this indicates”. But its no proof.

Vinceman.4572:

1. Fractals are older than raids therefore it’s obvious that more people have come in touch with fracs than with raids.
2. Fractals have a different target audience.
3. Fractals – for example T1 – are easy to be completed. You can step into them, succeed and never set a foot into it again. I know and guided many of such players, no wonder it’s only 10% of all registered users that haven’t played fracs at least once.
4. Fractals are needed for several collections, for example many legendaries and even the raid armor. So, funny thing here: You have to do fracs successfully if you want to proceed. ^^

Can you explain what these 4. points have to do with “more players are playing casual teamcontent than hardcore-only teamcontent”.
1. yes, but most players which will ever get into raids have probably already done so.
2.)yes, that’s the point
3.)yes, that’s why I used as comparision level 41. I used the chart and level 1 comparision to describe that a wide variety has played fractals. Some very casual on low levels, some hundreds of times.The fractal curve is spreaded out across the whole playerbase, LI indicate that there is a small group which plays the content a lot.As you said: fractals target a difference audience. A wider audience. Raids are meant to be very specialised content, they are not meant to be played by everyone.
4.)so what? players play the content, so it gets played?

And again, this is what you still haven’t understood although some posters have already tried to explain to you:
Fractal development is in the best shape since their release in 2013. After “Fractured” there was 0 profound improvement to them. That has changed in the past (with HoT) and they are continuing to develop and release fractals on a regular time schedule now.

I have understood it. But I think i wrote like 200 times that 2 new fractals is not that much content. I wouldn’t be complaining if Anet would release a new fractal every month now.
I have asked if it would be ok to delete all raids. You claim fractal development is in a good shape, so all raids could be deleted right? You would happily be playing T4 fractals instead then and drown in content by the glorious fractal development of the past months and years.
Wasn’t it even you who said GW2 was in a bad shape before raids got released? What has changed since then? 2 new fractals and some reworks? Would this alone keep you playing, without raids?

Anet knows how many players log in daily etc.
But my point wasn’t that there are 10.532 active raid players instead of 20.000.
My point was that casual teamcontent as dungeon, fractals or similar would very likely target a much bigger audience than raids. Therefore it is also important to have easy teamcontent.

There are ofc very good reasons to have raids. I think, similar as teamplayers, that (hard)-coregamers are a very important part of the community. More knowledge about the game, can help casuals with guides, builds, advice or carry. Guildleaders etc. also tend to be on the more hardcore side. I think raids are needed. But I think easier teamcontent is also needed.

maddoctor.2738:

How can you even compare 40 Li to fractal level 40? Fractal level 40 is still easy mode Fractals, it’s something you do solo or maybe with one friend.

The context of the comparision was different. I was not comparing player skill.

I was comparing how many players do fractals and how many do raids. Someone who has reached level 40 fractals has done at least 40 succesfull fractal runs, very likely much more (low level dailies for example) and “explored all the content”. 40 LI are 40 succesfull raid runs. But feel free to pick a different number of LI which you think represent “has seen all raids and repeated some occasional”.
So I’d say 50% of the users of GWefficiency cared about fractals and enjoyed the content.
I took 40 LI as an indication for a raid player, this might indeed be too much. Is 7 LI a player who enjoys raids? 18? Pick a number of your choice. The amount of GWefficiency users with even only a single LI is much smaller than the amount of players which have reached level 40 fractals.
The huge difference gets even more obvious if you compare the charts. LI start late. Roughly 70% don’t have any LI. The amount of players which haven’t at least done a single fractal is 10%. The effort and skill needed is ofc not comparable. But this shows clearly that a much wider audience gets targeted by fractals. Which TexZero claimed to be “equal at best” to raids.

TL;DR: fractals target a wider audience than raids, as GWefficiency shows. Raids are still important to keep the hardcoreplayers busy. Fractals or similar content is also important to keep the casual masses playing.

maddoctor.2738:

5% of the GW2 efficiency players have over 145 LI that’s a most hardcore raider right there and not one who is simply raiding occasionally.

I was refering to 10% of GW2 efficiency players (50LI). But we can also take 15% (18 LI) or 20% (6 LI). It just gives you a rough estimation of the raid population, no exact data.
My approach was: when X% of GW2 efficiency are raiding, the real raiding population is half the size (because GW2 efficiency is more likely to be used by hardcoreplayers).
If it’s really half the size, less – or nearly identical with real numbers is uncertain. But it seems very reasonable to take these numbers as a maximum.
So: a maximum of 10% of the players are raiding. And probably 5% estimated when considering that hardcoreplayers are overrepresented on communitysites.

And finally it would be more interesting to compare content types with content types.
Like how many of the players are actively playing dungeons/fractals compared to Raids. All those would be far more interesting, and in some way valuable, pieces of data, if anyone has the time or the will to compile the data.

I meantioned that 50% of the efficiency users have reached level 41 fractals or more. 40 successfull fractal runs at least. Only 11% own 40 LI or more. This indicates a much bigger playerbase for fractals than in raids. Dungeons on the other hand seem to perfom not so great: 70% haven’t completed a single dungeon, 20% have completed 60 dungeons or more. A bit better than raids, but not that great.
I personally think low level fractals are much easier than dungeons so this might explain it a bit. It might also use the date from hobby dungeon explorer, which afaik starts counting after dungeon master was reached (people seem to have dungeontokens but no dungeonruns. But could also be caused by PVP/WvW.).

TexZero.7910:

I never asked for raid content, but im not against having it or playing it either. That’s where you and i diverge greatly.

Wrong. I am not against raids.

See:

I agree that content as raids are needed and healthy if done right.
But currently I’m under the impression that raids have replaced new fractals/dungeons or other similar content which adress a wider audience than raids – and I don’t think this is healthy for the game.

or

I prefer the GW1 way: an expansion with ~20 casual storymissions and two raids

TexZero.7910:

Another reason why, is simply put the game needed more things to challenge its playerbase. The same statement cannot reasonably be said for more casual content as that not only frequently gets added but never contains satisfying replay value, unlike raids which do.

Players repeated stuff as tarir or sw hundreds of times. Player also repeated dungeons or fractals.

Not only that they are still busy making and implementing new fractals for you to do (and i don’t just mean at t2 and below).

They added 2 new fractals in 4 years. Do you expect players to play exclusivly a single new fractal for two years? Even with once a week thats quite boring.
You haven’t answered if those 2 fractals would be enough content for you. Would you be ok when Anet would delete all raids from the game? You got new fractals, fractal reworks, enough content, raids are not needed?
I think raids are needed. And I think easier content is also needed.
Those two groups are actually in the same situation – with the huge difference that one group got raids and the other group got nothing. Both groups played the same content before HoT.

I’ll respectfully disagree about the size of your casual niche given that raids are successful, still retain players, and have exceeded the projections from anet themselves, which if to be believed puts them above the MMO average of 10% of active playerbase.
Meanwhile your demographic would have to be equal to that at best and yet there’s been 0 done for it meaning, it probably is substantially less and not worth the resources to develop for.

As said, there are usually more casual players than hardcore players. In every aspect of a game.
There is a reason why most games offer a story, for example. Afaik did Anet only say raids were more often played than expected and more than in other MMOs. Which could also be 0,05% of the players, depening on which games were used as comparision.
Judging by GWefficiency maybe 5% or less are raiding. Roughly 10% of the registered users could be considered active raid players, but the registered users are way more likely hardcoreplayers. So if every second hardcoreplayer is registered and every fourth casual, to make a guess, you would probably end up at 5%.
Afaik has GWefficiency roughly 100.000 users. Maybe that’s every player GW2 got and those numbers are very close to reality. My assumption would result in 400.000 GW2 players, which might be too much. Hard to tell. Anet is not going to give precise numbers.
You can also check dungeons, which seem to be very unpopular. Or fractals, which seem to be relativly popular, but 50% of the players are at level 41 or below.

TexZero.7910:

Right here is your problem, you cannot feasibly claim that the “average” casual (in your mind someone who invest less than 1hr a day) has seen everything and done everything this game has to offer them. To claim they have a lack of content is beyond absurd.

Have you done everything the game has to offer to you? Have you completed the WvW kill achievements? No? Why do you then want raid content? WvW kill achievement is pretty hardcore.
….

Maybe try to understand that players have different reasons to play a game. There are different groups, as for example players which are interested in teamcontent.

You can’t come up to such a player “butbutbut there is crab toss”.
No, there is no content out there. There is dungeons and fractals. And everyone has done them by now. Yes, a game can’t address everyone. That’s why I initially said that GW2 is for solo open world players and hardcore teamplayers. Casual teamplayers should buy another MMO – and that’s the reason why I have never recommended GW2 and actually discouraged people from buying GW2. Its a okayish single player game, but that’s not the reason people are interested in a MMO.

TexZero.7910:

You also have to consider just how small your niche is here. You want to
A) Develop easy contest
B) Develop content for people who will play less than 1hr sessions
C) Develop the above with replay value
D) Develop the above with significant rewards
E) and this one im willing to call an assumption Develop all of the above with some form of story

Can be summarized as easy teamcontent with replay value.

Idc about story and some of the content can take longer than 1 hour to finish.
That niche is very likely much bigger than the raid niche, there are usually way more casual players than hardcore players.
I wouldn’t be surprised if more players are still doing fractals than there are raid players. Despite the fact, that fractals are outdated content.

TexZero.7910:

I’m perfectly content with how the game is currently being run sans release cadences/balance patches.

You seem to run raids. I think for people which are more interested in raids or in open world GW2 is in a good shape. So we migth agree here.
The question is: would you think GW2 is in a bad shape if there wouldn’t be raids?
Then you would be in a similar position as more casual teams.

TexZero.7910:

While you don’t like this it’s not a knock on them, its a knock on your personal playstyle that really cannot stand failure and believes the entire game should cater to that. Ironically that is far more likely to lead to the death of the product than them adding content that has specific target audiences.

Then you haven’t read any of my past comments. I don’t think the entire games needs to cater to certain players. I asked for, as you put it “content that has specific target audiences”. I think I stated in like 50% of my posts here that raids are not meant for casual groups – and that’s ok.

Also to touch on your last point about content length….Weren’t you just saying that 1hr a day of learning to raid was too much for casuals and here you are asking for 1hr fractals ?

I think the difference is obvious. 1 hour a day is one hour a day. It requires constant spending of lots of time. 1 hour fractal is a one hour fractal. You can do such a fractal once a year if you want to. Even very casual players have some days each year where they are able or willing to spend more time on a videogame. But you can’t really do raids with “on 26.12.2017 we are going to do VG, who wants to join?. Next try is on 25.4.2018.” That’s not going to work.

Feanor.2358:

Why, is there a rule forbidding casual parties in the open world?

No. But there is no incentive to form a group, you even get punished for forming a team. Forming a team is effort. So it has to pay off. If it doesn’t people don’t form teams. There are not much groups looking for players for map completion. And that’s ok. Many players don’t like playing in teams (see all those requests for singleplayer modes for dungeons). Open world is a good way to adress these players.
But I think it is also important to have a community, players banding together. It helps at content (players helping each other and repeating content they wouldn’t usually repeat.), it keeps player active at content droughts (players log in because of friends, not because of the game) and keeps players at the game instead of leaving.
This gives Anet the chance to release new content. A player which has left the game and started to play another MMO is probably gone forever.

Groups/Communities usually start when people are “forced” to interact with each other. Afaik did a german community website started with tequatl and triple trouble. Guildmissions caused players to join guilds. So there is some group open world content, but you risk to annoy the “singleplayers”. As TexZero also said: content should have specific target audiences. People joined guilds to do dungeons. People interact and talk with each other while doing dungeons, they sometimes add each other to friendlists and join guilds. If you “force” players to form teams for open world content you will annoy the singleplayers. It’s better to have specific content for each group.

There is content which requires more interaction, for example I chat a lot when pugging aetherpath, it helps to succeed. Arah is similar. And I got a lot of positive feedback, people sent me gold in mail as thank you and so on. Content as this helps to generate groups. Other instanced content is only “hi” and “ty”. But even there are people more likely to get into contact than in open world. For a game it is imho healthy when people start to form groups/communities. It keeps players playing.
I might be wrong with this interpretation, its just a opinion. But afaik were there statements which indicated that GW2 has troubles to keep new players active (new player experience and at transforming F2P players). Which I see as partially caused by the lack of motivation by other players. A player which joins a guild while leveling is probably more likely to stay active than a solo player.

TexZero.7910:

How does someone who can barely do T2 fractals care about difficulty if they aren’t willing to challenge themselves in the first place. That’s literally the last thing that should be on their mind.

People who do T2 fractals don’t care about challenging content. These players don’t ask for new raids. I don’t know why you think so. These players care for easy content.
No easy content = they leave the game. GW2 = no easy content.
As explained, people have done dungeons and fractals long ago.
MMOs have to address specific audiences. but you categorize players completly wrong, there is not only casual and hardcore. Then all the hardcore players could play PVP, right? No need for raids.
There are WvW players, PVP players, open world players, instanced content players, singleplayers, teamplayers. And all these different groups exists as hardcoreplayers and also as casual players (and in between). In some content, as WvW and PVP it is possible to addres casual and hardcore at the same time. Raids don’t address T2 fractals players. They are made as challenging content for hardcoreplayers. That’s ok. But there is barely any other instanced teamcontent. And here we are again back on page 1 of this thread.

Except if they want to play as a team, interact skills and so on. At this point open world sucks. Except if Anet introduces 5-10 player open world maps – which then would be instanced content again.

I doubt 11111 content (otherwise also known as open world) is not trash tier content – but there are probably 90% of GW2s playerbase.
You have to compare such content to easier dungeons or fractals (which both have comparable fights, see volcanic fractal). The idea is to adress a similar audience as those easier content – and not the raid players.

Yes, higher quality content would ofc be better.

maddoctor.2738:

First, there IS content in between Raids and open world, and even the open world has encounters of various difficulty levels.

Open world doesn’t require any kind of teamwork. Actually it even punishes teams. Ever tried to explore a map as a team? You are much faster solo, you don’t have to wait for other teammates until they have finished their heart or stopped falling down from a vista. Open world is a very difference “teamexperience” as instanced content.
It’s like fighting with town guards in skyrim against a dragon.

We might get another Fractal before then.

So its three fractals in 2 years. That would require a casual team which does a single 15 min fractal every week to repeat each of those fractals ~30 times. Repeating the same fractal again and again is not fun for everyone.

That aside, and to stay on the topic of easy mode raids, do you honestly believe that if we get 12 new Fractals in the next expansion the requests for easy mode raids will stop?

No. But the amount of players asking for it would shrink + lacking content is a good reason to ask for an easymode. Access to raid exclusive rewards as the armour skin isn’t a good reason.

CptAurellian.9537:

So it’s all about instant gratification for trivial tasks. To quote some infamous words: SO SAD!

To quote some infamous words: wrong. Read it again.

TexZero.7910:

Your answer is Fractals. You just don’t like the answer. You’ve got 2 new fractals, one even includes a challenge mote with decent repeatable rewards for those people who want 5 man content.

So would you be ok with the removal of all raids? Because there are two new fractals which could keep you busy? I think two new fractals is not enough.

Fractals also have several serious problems. One of it is the length of the content, which is limited. You can’t really ad a 1 hour fractal into the existing fractal system.
Another issue are the rewards. Every fractal gives the same rewards, so why bother doing a new fractal when you can also do snowblind? Or if you can’t really use the tokens? So the replay value is zero.
I’m sure my casual guild which already struggles with T2 fractals is not going to do nightmare cm.

For example the aetherpath has a way more attractive reward structure than fractals. Gold, lootbags (ok, dredge fractal), dungeon tokens, guaranteed exo. Actually the exo is a bit much, a lower droprate would also be ok. The pre-HoT rewards were fine imho.

To give you a simple example what I’d like to see:
either a simple editor map (see the meantioned tool some pages ago, a 12 year old can create a map with it in an hour), or reused GW2 maps (existing dungeons, open world turned into instances (see core story arah pale-tree dream), or minidungeons).
Fill those maps up with some trashmobs, ideally stuff as in aetherpath. Add some existing bosses as kholer and adjust their stats. Maybe add some simple mechanics as “at each 25% he spawns adds” similar as volcano fractal.
This would teach players to make use of simple teamskills as stabi, condition removal, reflection etc. And it could easily have a good replay value, if trashmobs drop similar loot as in aetherpath or dredge fractal. You could even add a 1% chance from the final chest to get some old and ugly BL-Skin.
If you look at the volcano fractal: trashmobs, boss, boss. So maybe 4 rooms full of trashmobs, champ ettin from uncategorized, 4 rooms full of trashmobs, malrona which spawns at each 25% lots of small spiders which cause AOE conditions when they die. Final chest with rewards similar as pre-HoT aetherpath. You could also add a leather node after the bossfight.

I am not asking for super complex boss fights. I am also not asking for tarir-like rewards. GW2 has a wide variety of existing bosses (dungeons, open world) which could easily be used. And Anet could also add new aspects as spawning trashmobs at health percentages, or by adding a strong regeneration buff which needs to be outdpsed or removed every 20 seconds. That’s “strategic gameplay”. Casual can deal with it, they can ask or know someone who can give advice. Stuff as thaumanova is a problem, you either fall down or you don’t. You can’t really “buildwars” the boss to prevent platforms from disappearing. But you can buildwars bosses as kholer with stabi/reflec.

Miellyn: you might want to read that again, your response makes no sense. I was the whole time speaking about a lack of casual content, not about a lack of challenging content for highly organised teams. I never have said raids should target casual groups. I always said, even in the part you quoted, that raids are not meant for casual players.
And that’s ok. But the lack of casual content is not ok.

maddoctor.2738:

I’d love to see those 5 full soldier warriors using only auto attacks defeat Giganticus Lupicus, or any Arah boss for that matter.

That was more to describe the little amount of skill and/or builds required to do fractals and dungeons. You don’t need special builds, equipment or very skilled players.
I did arah the first time with some guildmates in ~2012/early 2013. We ran around ranged like headless chicken with some relativly tanky equipment. When someone was dead we tried to lure Lupi as far away as possible while someone revived him. Yes, we didn’t defeat him on the first try, but we succeeded on that evening.
Now you just need a single experienced player with WoR. There are even players which can solo him “legit”. Soloing a raidboss is probably a bit more difficult.
Fractals are different. You start on a low level and notice which skills might be helpful – and run them the next time on a slightly higher level. You can also keep playing T1 or T2 fractals – enjoy the content on the difficulty you prefer.

CptAurellian.9537:

You are wrong, plain and simple. Many (or most?) people obviously improve more or less slowly, step by step, in raids.

You missed the point. I was speaking about “succeeding”.
To summarize some of the stuff I wrote in this thread:
It is very painfull to fail at a boss. Most PUGs with 10 random builds would enter the first boss (VG) and fail hard. Then they decide the content is too difficult and stay away from raids. That’s ok. Raids are not meant for these players. GW2 also not, obviously.
What else is there for them to do? Low level fractals and dungeons?
These players have run dungeons and fractals for the same time as dungeon sc guilds. And they ran into the same problem as these guilds: lack of content. Anet added raids – which cater to the “hardcore dungeon players”, those “more casual players” got left behind.

Failing repeatedly at the same boss is no fun for most players. For someone who enjoys a challenge it might be. For someone who wants to “farm” the boss each week it might be ok to spend lots of time training the boss. For someone who plays 2 hours a week it’s problematic. How many hours of training does a bad player in a bad group (guildteam) need to succeed at the first boss? Some pages earlier I suggested 10 hours of training (which is probably extremly optimistic), for an “2 hours a week” player this is roughly a month of training. A month without doing nothing else than failing at a single boss.
This requires a pretty hardcore mindset. Most players don’t enjoy it. They also don’t plan to kill the boss each week. So after they killed him, they would maybe kill him a few more times – but not each week. Is it worth to spend a month of training to kill a boss maybe two times? I don’t think so. That’s a really hardcore mindset required here.

Most players are probably dying at like 95-90% boss hp, say “no chance to kill him” and leave the content. Which is ok. Raids were never meant for these players.
But what has GW2 to offer for these players? That’s the problem. And that’s why I say GW2 is in a terrible shape and should have way more casual teamcontent.

Currently (imho) the game is very splitted into an “open world community” and “raids”. That’s not healthy. There should be content in between as dungeons/fractals/teamquests. Some players enjoy these kinds of content optimize their equip and builds step by step and then maybe get into raids. “Improve by succeeding” instead of “improve by failing”. There should be a huge variety of content of different difficulties.
Similar as in GW1 where an expansion had ~20 "storydungeons"+"world maps"+quests+2 raids+hardmode for everything. A HoT with 20 new dungeons (even 10..) and we won’t be talking.

Currently most players have done fractals and dungeons. There is not much motivation to go back into that old content again and again. What has GW2 to offer for teamoriented players which are not raiding? Only old content from 2012/2013. Yes, some reworks, but that can’t replace new content. These players could go back to GW1 and enjoy similar dated content. For these players GW2 is in a terrible shape.
For hardcore teamplayers there are raids. For open world players there is open world.
For casual teamplayers easy teamcontent is required. If done right these content would also be attractive for raid players. Some of them are also doing fractals and dungeons.

Miellyn.6847:

2) And because easy content is boring we need to bring down raids to the same level? Maybe you should first ask all easy mode promoters how the easy mode should look like before demanding it or you will be disappointed if it ever comes.

I’m not really a fan of an easymode. I’d prefer to see maybe 5-10 new dungeons each year instead.

Anet has to make a decision which kind of content they want to deliver. No new easy teamcontent? Then casual groups should leave the game and Anet should also be honest about it.
But I also don’t think that a good implemented easymode would cause much troubles. Players also prefer T4 fractals over T1. I don’t know enough about raids to make a good suggestion. And actually I also don’t care enough about an easymode, because I’d prefer “easier content” instead of an easymode.

Miellyn.6847:

So dungeons and fractals are also not accessible because they have not guaranteed success? Or HoT meta events? Everything that can fail is not accessible?
What is stopping you from raiding? There are no entry barriers, they are more accessible than fractals.

You can enter dungeons and fractals with 5 fullsoldier, fullsigil warriors which are only using autoattack and succeed. The same is not possible in raids. The entry barrier is the much higher skill requirement + builds/equipment requirements. You can start fractals on a low level and slowly improve step by step – by “succeeding”. Low level fractals were easier than most dungeons btw. You can’t do the same in raids, there is no raid level which you can climb up step by step.

I can easily pick up 4 other random people without knowing anything about them (PUGs) and we can do a dungeon or fractal. Maybe not always, but most of the times. It takes more time, might be slow and painfull – but it works. For raids you have to be way more picky. Some player even claim that finding 10 people for raids is difficult. No, it’s not. There are hundreds of players idling around in LA and you could easily fill up a 10 people team. Finding 10 players which are able to raid is the problem. Not finding 10 players.

Miellyn.6847:

It doesn’t matter if it’s a new tier or the existing content. Why do we need more easy content if easy content is boring?

There are players which enjoy easier content. Not everyone searchs for challenging content in a videogame, some people just want to relax. Not everyone is able to do raids, some players are already struggling with dungeons or low level fractals.
Without easy content GW2 has nothing to offer for these players. I personally think these players are the majority btw. Usually there is only a small group which does the most difficult content, many players are very casual. I think the current focus on more difficult content is a bit wildstar like and I am not convinced that this is a good idea.
I prefer the GW1 way: an expansion with ~20 casual storymissions and two raids. Translated into GW2 and into GW2s slow release “speed”: maybe a raidwing each year and 5-10 dungeons/fractals.

I think there was and is a lot of qq. I also think that most casuals are not going to complain about lack of content or about lacking rewards for other game modes. Some casuals do use reddit/forums, but I think they are vastly underrepresented.
I am also not sure if players still care enough about GW2 to cause a kittenstorm. The game is quite old and maybe people just go on instead of wasting time with complaints.

Vinceman.4572:

These “quite a lot” were only doing dungeons because the gold reward was in a decent spot compared to hardcore map farmings (SW, Cursed Shore etc.). After the nerf, nobody ran them. Although it got reverted and the rewards for dungeon is fine or even better than before, still almost nobody is playing them which is sad.

I was not refering to “farmers” which will always farm the most rewarding content. I was refering to guilds, teams, friends which enjoy playing content together. But you are probably right here: those players have (mostly) left GW2 long ago, GW2 is not a game for casual teams. GW2 is either “hardcore teams” or “open world”.

Vinceman.4572:

Like Miellyn said, we got lots of more revamps and new fractals than before raids were introduced.

Would you be ok with Anet stopping releasing new raids and only making revamps for the next 4 years?
New content can’t be replaced by some reworks.
We got 2 new fractals since 2013. That’s not much. Imagine a single new raid wing – which is added in 2021.

Vinceman.4572:

The thing is, I can accept that, I relinquish. It doesn’t make the game worse for me or I feel inferior because it’s most likely that I will never even obtain one single piece

Just see all those conflicts about raids, easymode, raid rewards, legendary armour. These conflicts were fueled by Anet with their decision. Any manager (or parent) knows it. You can’t give half the team a pay rise for no reason and ignore the other half. You can’t give one child an icecream and let the others watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aee1WzDBPp4

Miellyn.6847:

We got more fractals[…]
It is also plain stupid that legendary weapons require mostly open world, but that seems fine because you play it right?

1) So GW2 has 3 fractals? 1 in 2012 and two new ones?
2)It took me months to do my second world completion this year. I play since release. A lot. I am (obviously) not playing GW2 for its open world content. I do play open world content, but that’s no reason for me to spend money on a game. It’s like watching a kittenty TV show, just out of boredom. I would be fine if Anet stops complety releasing open world content.
3)raids are not accessible. There is no “guaranteed success”, it’s similar as reaching a good PVP rank as requirement for legendary armour. Open world is “only farming”, there is some kind of “guaranteed success”. But y, imho should every modus got its own legendary backpack and armour. And maybe also weapons, idc.

maddoctor.2738:

I’m wondering now. Fractured was released in 2013 and for 2 full years there was no new instanced content added to the game at all. No dungeons, no fractals, no nothing. What type of content were you (and other people who dislike the open world) doing during those 2 years in this game?

Playing dungeons and fractals. After a while they got boring. Some went into raids, some went into WoW, some idle around and wait if the next expansion is adding content or no content as HoT again.

Vinceman.4572:

The difference is before HoT and raids the game was in an awful situation, awful than ever before. Content drought all the way. Many people left because there was no endgame content at all, not even non-challenging.
Raids were and still are a revitalising part of content and have made the game overall better, not worse because it’s an additional option to play – option, not must.

For many players the situation is still the same. Quite a lot of people were doing dungeons which are not able/willing/whatever to raid.
These players are left behind and the game is an even worse situation now.
I agree that content as raids are needed and healthy if done right.
But currently I’m under the impression that raids have replaced new fractals/dungeons or other similar content which adress a wider audience than raids – and I don’t think this is healthy for the game.
I also think that it’s plain stupid to release something like a legendary armour for raids without adding a legendary armour for WvW, PVP and open world at the same time.
And its even more stupid to make a big fuss about it and rub it into everyones face.
What should a WvW player think about such a decision?

Feanor.2358:

AFAIK GW1 sold expansions. That’s how it can work – you receive lots of new content by paying for it.

Well, HoT has not delivered 18 new dungeons and 15 open world maps.
How Anet earns money doesn’t matter. Earning 1 million by selling expansions or 1 million by selling stuff in the ingame shop has the same outcome.

Anets team is afaik currently at ~ 400 employees and bigger than ever.
I doubt that all these people are busy counting money. They get paid monthly and are developing games.

It’s not that GW2 is short on money and has to fire employees. 400 people developing a game should result in more content than…well, Idk 200? people at GW1 times.

Feanor.2358:

I’m a game developer myself, and I don’t see how this could work.

Care to explain why it did work in GW1 and not in GW2 anymore?
How the same company, just years earlier, smaller and with less money managed to release a single year after the last expansion another expansion with 18 dungeons, 124 quests, story, 15 (?) “world maps” plus small towns/outposts and new skins? After a year of ~ monthly balancing and bugfixing updates + expanding events as doubling the content of wintersday?

I don’t know how game devs are developing maps, but I do know how to CAD. If every geometry needs to be handmade it is a lot of effort. If you only need to “glue together” premade structures it gets easier.

For example see this PS2/gamecube map editor (no need to watch the whole video, beginning shows a bit of the editor, later only gameplay on the created map, skim through it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XJbfZaXtvs
That’s very crude, yes.
But as you can see the editor allows already a relativly nice map design. Everyone could easily put together such a map in a few hours. I played mostly TS2, but I think you were also able to place enemies for a story mode, gave them walking routes or place events which trigger in certain areas.
Timesplitters had afaik some different “grafic sets” as “bunker-style” “horror” etc.

A MMO could also have “grafic sets” as flamelegion, asura, undead. Developers could create a single new boss and implement it into such an editor. It can grow step by step, you can always add new enemies, bosses, objects, grafic sets, map structures etc. You don’t have to create a whole dungeon at once, you can create a single map piece. Some kind of modular design. It may not meet Anets quality standards, but I don’t see why it should be impossible.
Ofc setting up such an editor is a lot of work and I doubt its worth it for GW2. For GW3 maybe.
You could then even let players create their own dungeons.

I played a bit DDO some years ago (mostly the tutorial) and most/all quests were in very crude dungeons with very simplistic enemies. I’d guess they were either computer generated or with such an editor. Had…three? difficulties (easy, normal, hard). Flat open maps probably can’t be created with such an editor, but “fps like dungeon maps” should.

Feanor.2358:

And again, you’re confusing “content I haven’t done yet” with “the only content in the game”.

No. Imho were there less complaints about raids after the LS started.
If your focus is different and you are more interested in open world content GW2 has a lot to offer. So it really depends what kind of content you are interested in.

Feanor.2358:

And your comparison to “most other games” which aren’t MMOs is completely absurd.

I was refering to “Have facebook games really watered down gaming that much ?” and “1 hour a day”.
Most games require relativly little time, not only facebook games. Gaming is “watered down” since pong.

Feanor.2358:

With this time of experiencing the content, the developer can never make the money they spend on creating it.

As I said: I’m confident they could. It’s a decision to release bigger amounts of content or not. You can set up a game so it is easy to add lots of content or you can set it up to make it difficult. In GW1 it took Anet a year to release 18 new dungeons (+lots of other content at same time). That’s more content than a casual player can play through in the same time.
And even casuals (as my guild) do repeat content. But not hundreds of times. If there are 18 dungeons and you repeat everyone once thats content for 36 weeks. When you are done with it you can’t remember the first dungeon because of the big variety. If you repeat a single dungeon each week you burn it out way quicker.

Even GW2: they developed the whole game in….5 years? and added lots of fractals in the first year. So 8 dungeons and 14 fractals in 6 years? In the 4 years after 2013 we got two 2 fractals. I think it is a huge disadvantage to compare early game development (engine, whatever) to an existing game. But if we do and Anet would have kept up the release speed we would now have 5 new dungeons and 9 new fractals. In theory content development in “late game development” should be much faster than in early game development.

Y, GW2 mostly addresses open world players and since HoT also raidplayers. GW2 has an established playerbase, more casual groups have probably mostly left long ago.
It’s interesting to see the very different playerbase of GW2 compared to GW1 which had many small “family and friends” guilds.

TexZero.7910:

If 1 hr a day for a month is hardcore, then i have to question what in the other 23 hrs is so important that you still think your 1hr sacrifice means you should be in there with people who are willing to put in that time, when you aren’t.

Work, sleep, cooking and eating, household, children, friends, other hobbies/sport and so on.
At 1 hour a day people are probably doing their dailies everyday – and we are speaking about players in the 25k+ AP range.
And be asured that no one of my guildmates expects to become a member of DnT/qT or whatever. My whole point was that raids target the hardcore players, not the casual players. Raids are not fractals which you can play casually on T1/T2.

30hrs are btw. more time than most other games require in total.

But to repeat my question: Would you spend 100% of your ingame time for a whole month farming silverwastes to get access to an open world map for 1-2 days?

IndigoSundown.5419:

The solution is people being willing to accept that not all content may be for them. As long as people have the attitude that anything the developer makes has to be for them on their terms, they’re going to complain.

By my experience quite a lot accept it if there is something else to do.
Which was the problem I tried to describe. Raids are not too difficult: less difficult content is missing. If players would be busy they wouldn’t care (or care less) about raids.

@Feanor: Some of them didn’t really played much until we started to play weekly together in ~2015. I also don’t think playing 2,5 years together once a week qualifies as “much”. Don’t know how many hours we played together in 2017. 30? Maybe a bit more or less, dunno. Is that much?

Yes, easymode Raids won’t really help us. But it is possible to create the amounts of content needed – see GW1. I think it’s a matter of tools.
There are games which offer map editors to players in which you can use standardized map pieces and put together a map in a few hours. Some are relativly crude, some a bit more complex.
I am (obviously) not a game dev. Everyone else here probably not, too. But I see no reason why such a tool should be impossible to create for your own devs, when there are for example fsps as timesplitters offering these tools even to players.
Currently you are even able to create “guildhall-SAB-maps” in GW2 as a player.

In theory casual teamcontent doesn’t need to be very complex. GW2 has some quite interesting bosses as kholer which could be recycled. Kholer would be a good final boss for casual teamcontent because you can hardcounter him. For more difficult content this is a problem, but for casual content its perfect. You can either dodge him or make use of reflec, blocks and stabi. So you actually learn to make use of these effects. It doesn’t matter that much if the boss is too easy when you kill him with those effects, it’s casual content not a raid boss (or lupi…).
You could also reuse normal enemies, see uncategorized (ettin).
I don’t know how much work it actually is. But you can cut down a lot (cutscenes, voiceacting, new animations/bosses etc.).

But y, it’s not going to happen. GW2 is a very old game with a probably already relativly small community left. It’s not a good idea to change anything, let it run and don’t invest too much work into it anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if GW3 is in development since HoT.

Yes, we have exhausted the teamcontent. Not because we played so much. Because GW2 has barely teamcontent to offer. The volume of casual teamcontent available in GW2 in 2017 is roughly the same than in 2013. Some new story, two new fractals – minor amounts have been added in those 4 years. I think GW2 is in a very bad shape when it comes to casual teamcontent, and it never was in a good shape. The game feels as GW1 in 2012. 5 years since the last expansion. Well…the comparision is maybe not that bad, GW1 also had its “living story” with war in kryta and so on, which can maybe be compared to HoT-story.

TexZero.7910:

It isn’t hardcore. It is exactly a build and mindset problem. It’s not a time investment problem, again in less that 1hr a day for a month you could be raid ready. Personal skill…okay seems like a convenient excuse, why would someone who knows they’re bad decide to raid to begin with ?

1 hour a day is a very active player. I’ve got guildmates that play 1-2 hours a week. So your month would be 30 weeks for them (half a year).
I orginally spoke of a month of training if you are after 5-10 hours training able to kill a boss. A month were they would spend 100% of their ingame time training raids. Don’t do anything else than slamming their head against the same wall, without getting loot, making no progress on their account. Just for killing a single boss. Probably only once or twice. Not for “farming” raids weekly as active raidguilds.
Would you spend 100% of your ingame time for a whole month farming silverwastes to get access to an open world map for 1-2 days?

I say this, as a requirement, is pretty hardcore. Too hardcore for many players.
For an active raidplayer the math is completly different. He wants to kill the boss each week. He is usually better skilled, equipped, spends more time ingame and so on.
10 hours training? A weekend. Worth it if you want to kill the boss each week. Or if you are looking for a challenge and enjoy the training, instead of wanting to “explore”.
I am not saying that raids should change, don’t get me wrong. I think its healty to have some challenging endgame content. But it’s ridiculus to say raids are not hardcorecontent. They are meant to be challenging hardcore content.

My guild asked me about raids. Not because of loot or whatever. Because they noticed there is content and they thought we could do it, until I explained.
It’s the same as in 2012 when players entered dungeons. Dungeons were originally meant as challenging content, not as “teamcontent for everyone”. The lack of other teamcontent let player enter dungeons which should not have entered them. Which caused a lots of complaints about too difficult dungeons. That’s a “lack of content” problem, its similar as when unfit players “decide to raid”.
It’s not such a big issue, if there is other content available. Which is, to some degree, my point. I personally think Anet has choosen to adress the open world players and the more hardcore teamplayers. I think they choose to ignore the “casual teamoriented players”. You can’t cater to all players, it’s ok.

Feanor.2358:

There are group events, there are fractals and dungeons, there are guild missions, there’s PvP and there’s GvG. You can do a lot of things with friends. People aren’t complaining because there isn’t enough team content, people are complaining because they see exclusive rewards they can’t get.

I play with a casual guild more coordinated “once a week” since ~2015 (we all are playing since release together – GW1 since ~ 2010). We ran out of content long ago.
In ~ 2,5 years we got through LS, HoT story and maps, did even some open world event farming, did all dungeons (most more than once. easier ones or some needed for token), played fractals and guildmissions. And we skipped several months, because december is christmas. And summer is summer. Or because next LS episode is in a month, so we can wait for it. So once a week stretches the truth.
Motivation to repeat dungeons or fractals is minimal. Current LS takes 1-2 weeks to finish story and then you can take a 2 months break.
That’s the current situation. We got people which exclusivly log in for guild activities.
And at this point I don’t think GW2 is worth it for those players. We are probably better of playing some kind of coop game instead.

I did with several other guildmembers also dungeons in ~2012-2013. One left for another MMO soon after because he didn’t want to “play a MMO solo”. Heard and read similar opinions from several sides.
For example from my old GW1 alliance. I remember a elderly couple which shortly after released posted a calm and constructive post in the official forums (it got deleted), we had some debates in the ally forums – the couple left for Lotro. The alliance collapsed, roughly 90% stopped playing. Those who kept playing are either “every few months” players, the handful people active in my guild or ~ 30.000 AP players, so the hardcore players. The casual players which have logged in once a week for years to do guildactivities mostly stopped playing very soon after GW2 release. Open world is no replacement for instanced teamcontent – and dungeons were too difficult at that time for many of us.

Life goes on – people marry, get children, have less time for videogames. But such a big loss – and some of those players are still active in other videogames/MMOs?
Ofc we as a alliance were a bunch of players with similar mindsets, so it might be bad luck. But there were also a lot of similar complaints in other public forums, too. So its not that rare.
I also remember a former WoW guild which played a lot of fractals when they were new. After no new content got added they returned to WoW – never saw them online again.
So I’d say people need new content. Open world addresses mostly solo oriented players, and that’s probably the majority. Ok, fine. As I said: either solo open world or raids.

Open world events can be done as a team, sure. Might be ok for some. For me its not really a teamexperience, you can also go in solo and do them with a random zerg/bots. It feels like killing a dragon in skyrim with the help of town guards.
Instanced content allows a more coordinated teamexperience. Tequatl can’t replace dungeons, triple trouble can’t replace raids.

Did he played with other first timers or did he played with PUGs? Thats a difference,
a guildteam can’t be carried by some exp PUGs.

Did he played himself (meaning a very exp player, the normal player is not a platinum pvp player) or did he let a player play which has never played GW2 before?

“Expect to raid” is the wrong term. I said raids are for some players unrealistic because of their “gaming profile”. Not that these players should or could expect to beat the most difficult content in GW2. If such a player complains about a lack of content you can’t come up and say “do raids”. Raiding is unrealistic for many players and that’s ok. The lack of other (team)content isn’t.

Someone originally said raiding isn’t hardcore and described it more as a build and mindset problem. I don’t agree – it’s also a time investment problem. Or a problem of personal skill, some players are very talented others aren’t.

@maddoctor: True. But I made the experience that mostly “experienced” players used NPCs. Unexperienced players often lacked important hero-npcs, had not unlocked the necessary skills and didn’t know how to set up a proper build of other classes than their own. Some copied builds – but at this point you’re on the level of a metabattle build user, so an “advanced player”.
For beginners it was usually easier to search for a group, ask their guildmates, etc.
(+op pve skills)

Vinceman.4572:

For new players there is so much to explore and to get better, I don’t think you find a better situation in GW1. Even there are things you have to do over and over again and not as much to explore.

I think the situation in GW1 is way better because there is way more teamcontent, see my comment above. Which means more variety, less repetitions and a not so steep learning curve.

A player can play through story in GW2 without ever playing in a team – in GW1 you have to. In theory it would be better if you start with very easy story teamcontent at maybe level 20. Ofc many people want to play through story solo (see arah story-ending). Consequence is: you have “experienced players” which play GW2 since release, but have barely played in teams and perform bad in teamcontent.

GW2 dungeons were originally quite difficult for unexperienced players. And they are out of order. A player might start with AC, CoF1 is probably easier. CM is more difficult than SE1+3. If a player has done all dungeons maybe 2 times and reached level 30 fractals he might start to think about berserk equipment instead of soldiers. So there is still a long way to go – but the content is lacking at this point. And there is imho also a gap between open world/story and dungeons – but HoT powercreep has softened the gap a lot.

Feanor.2358:

It should. It would help create more realistic expectations.

Nah, I don’t have any expectations, it’s Anet.
We are going to see another 4 open world maps expansion, 1 raid and maybe 2 new fractals.

I am not a casual player. I just tend to play with some casual players a lot. Most of them probably don’t even know who wooden potatoes is. I personally don’t like 50 min YT videos.

I don’t think WP is a good example. I don’t know how often he plays, but afaik did he do all raids relativly close after release, has reached platinum in PVP some time ago, … he seems to be at least a skilled player.

I was mostly refering to the “training time” needed. Someone in the comments gave the 43 min mark, WP seems to mostly comment on the equipment/preparations needed.
But how many hours does it take to train a group full of “soldier staffguards” until they are able to kill a boss? 5 hours? 10 hours? Thats already 5-10 weeks for some players and I wouldn’t be surprised if some players need way more training.

On top of that: I sometimes made the experience that people forgot my explanations after a week. Sometimes the weather is fine, holidays, whatever – so you skip a week. Two weeks later everything is forgotten.
Also keep in mind that guilds want to play together. So its not a single bad player, its a full group. There are still quite a lot struggling with dungeons or even story.
And actually it’s ok. Raids are not meant to be easy content. The problem is the lack of easier content, not the difficulty of raids.

@Feanor: the effort anets needs to spend doesn’t matter to players. If Anet needs to work 10 years on a single open world players will leave the game. Reworks don’t replace new content.
If Anet adds a new mechanic to VG the raid experience does change – but it can’t replace a new raid. You don’t need to agree with my perspective. As I said: its not going to change anything, even if we would all agree.

@Vinceman:
Casuals rarely ask for anything. They play the game if they enjoy it or leave it if they don’t.

Actually its a very casual thing to play together with your girlfried, wive or friends. There are ofc also many casuals which look for solo content, but teamcontent is also important.

Vinceman.4572:

You use the tiers to get up to the highest level.

That’s actually a bit on the hardcore side already. You have to repeat the same maps (swing the sowrd again and again). People which spend hundreds of hours farming silverwastes probably won’t have a problem with “farming fractal levels”.

Vinceman.4572:

Raids are not hardcore, maybe some bosses are a little bit hard at the beginning or with bad pugs.

You seem to have a strange interpretation of hardcore content. Sure, they could be more difficult. But they are not comparable to story or open world exploring.
Raids are not meant to go in, byob and succeed without knowing mechanics etc.

People just need to be more open-minded build an extra gear for raids

A player who plays maybe an hour a week would have to spend a huge percentage of his ingame time (100% for months probably) to succeed in raids.From a hardcoreplayer perspective it doesn’t matter if you spend two hours farming gold. For a casual this might take him two weeks. For a hardcoreplayer it’s not too bad to spend 10 hours training at a boss, that’s a weekend. He will kill him many times afterwards, so the time spend is worth it.
A casual which wants to kill the boss only once would also have to spend 10 hours of traning (probably even more), which can be months for him. Months of preparations for a single boss kill. That’s pretty hardcore and not worth it for some players.
Casual players have a different perspective.

I had a low AP (~2k) warrior in arah who asked if it is possible to profit from more than one banner at the same time. These players should not need to figure these basics out in arah. If you play together with other people they will help you.
In GW1 I started with a monk and in the early content I was running mostly sword skills. After a while I realised my dps was bad and started to focus more and more on healing. Teamcontent got more difficult, playersize of groups increased – I had to adapt my build step by step. Other players showed me helpful skills, I saw other monks using their skills and so on. When I reached max. level my build was already nearly a metabuild. When I went into the underworld for the first time I had no problems with my class. Just by learning how to play in teamcontent through storycontent.
In GW2 you can run you staffguard through story and open world without even realizing that something is wrong. Nobody will inform you in anonymus open world or solo story. If you start to do dungeons people will tell you. But you shouldn’t have to learn those basics in “challenging content”. You complained about “special” builds in raids? People should have learned elsewhere to use working builds.
Fractals do prepare you, yes. But the amount of content is minimal and old. If you don’t like repeating the same content quite often (farming) fractals alone won’t do the job.

Feanor.2358:

Nonsense. You can say dungeons are the abandoned middle ground (which they are), but fractals are getting updates recently. So that’s the obvious middle ground aimed for players who lack the time/dedication to do raids but seek a challenge greater than the completely casual open world. It doesn’t matter if the guild “would have done the two new fractals”. The guilds have done W4, too. It doesn’t mean they stopped playing these. It is impossible to create new content with the speed the players exhaust it, so every content is meant to be replayed over and over again, no matter how casual the target audience for it.

Updates are maintainance, but can’t replace new content (new maps).
GW2 has, since 2012, a severe lack of teamcontent. Not everyone is looking for a challenge. There are casual guilds which simply look for easy content to enjoy together.
GW2 has not much to offer for these groups. Be it friends, family, couples,…
Teamcontent in GW2 boils down to dungeons (not maintained anymore, badly balanced (powercreep)), fractals (2012/2013 content) and raids (hardcorecontent, not meant for casuals). If you spend two weekends you might have already seen every piece of teamcontent GW2 has to offer. That might be ok for a new MMO, but it’s not 2012 anymore. GW2 should have more to offer by now.
(that’s the reason why I said there is only open world or raids and no in between. No new dungeons, not many new fractals, no teamquests or whatever.).

Hardcoreplayers are usually willing to repeat content quite often. Casuals are usually less willing to repeat content often.
To bring up some “example math”: a casual who spends 30 mins a week in dungeons does a path each week. A hardcoreplayer who spends 1 hour a day in dungeons does maybe 6 paths a day and 42 a week. When there are 10 paths available and a casual repeats every path twice it takes him 20 weeks. A hardcoreplayer would have repeated the content 84 times in that timespan.
As you see: the “lack of content” problem shouldn’t be a casual players problem. Hardcoreplayers will always burn through content fast. But they are more willing to repeat content or go for 100% (achievements). When casuals run out of content there is something wrong. Some repetitions are ok. But casuals are not going to repeat the 2 new fractals hundreds of times.

On top of that: a good player can do raids, dungeons and fractals. A not so talented player can only do dungeons and fractals. So the lack of content is a more severe problem for less skilled players.

That’s one of the reason why games usually offer lots of easier and medium difficulty content – and only a small amount of difficult content.
Before HoT members of the dungeon-running scene already complained about a lack of content. Then raids were introduced. The more casual players are more or less stuck in the “pre-HoT” situation, in the same situation as these dungeonrunners were – but two years have passed, so the situation got worse.
I’m not conviced all those raid players would be satisfied with two new fractals (and no raids) since HoT. More casual players are currently in this situation.

A consequence of this is also the missing “learning curve”. Players usually start with easier content, get into more difficult content, improve, go into more difficult content and so on. If a more casual players repeats all dungeons and all fractal maps (not level) maybe 3 times: is he then “raid ready”? Probably not. Especially when he did the dungeons/fractals back in 2012-2013 and has since then only played open world.

It is possible to create content fast. Just have a look at GW1:
Prophecies (2005), which consisted of ~25 storymissions (instanced team content, maybe comparable to dungeon story mode), two elite missions (~comparable to raids), plus hundreds of quests. Then Anet added Sorrow’s Furnace and the “underworld 2”(both “raidlike”). In early 2006 they released factions with 14 storymissions and two new “raidlike” instances. Plus normal maps, quests, new pvp modi,…
In late 2006 they released nightfall (20 storymissions), normal maps, quests, a “raid” with 4-5 maps. In 2007 they released EoTN again with storymissions, maps, quests – and 18 dungeons. In between all of these expansions Anet also introduced an hardmode which basically doubled the content, added new festivals (cantha new year, dragon festival) and more than doubled the content of old events (wintersday, halloween). Yes, GW1 was a simpler game. But not every piece of content needs to be handdrawn by 500 people. I don’t know why Anet is not able/willing to release more simple made content. There are games out there which map editors and everyone can create a crude map in a single day. It’s not impossible to release more than 2 new fractals in 4 years. Anet has created 18 dungeons in a single year for GW1 – plus a lot of other content. I would be very happy about some new copy’n paste dungeons, if we would get maybe 5 new dungeons each year then.
That’s not impossible.

I think Anet simply doesn’t care about more casual teamoriented players, otherwise there would be content. Therefore it doesn’t make much sense to debate easy mode raids, new dungeons and so on. It’s not going to happen.

OnizukaBR.8537:

How there is no mid ground? Fractals are the mid ground, they have updates. And they are guild friendly.

Fractals are mostly 2012/2013 content. Since then Anet has afaik only introduced 2 new fractals. In 4 years. Even a guild which plays twice a year (….) should have done them now.
Especially casual groups don’t tend to repeat content hundreds of times, that’s more a hardcoreplayer thing.

OnizukaBR.8537:

But why players dont get the same feeling from fractals? Because fractals is tiered content, and dungeons are not. And by not being tiered content they feel a lot more organic.

There are more reasons.
For example the rewards are identical. Why should I bother and play nightmare or chaos when I can also do snowblind, vulcano or jade?
Fractals are 2012 content. Most players have also stopped to play GW1. Fractals are as old as some GW1 content. Some new levels might improve the experience, but its still “the same”.
Fractals are also ~10-15 minute content. That’s a very limited amount. An 2 hour fractal doesn’t belong into this system.

But honestly I don’t think the whole debate makes any sense. Anet has shown that they don’t like casual groups. Players should either play solo open world or raids. There is no in between. If you are more casual and hope for teamcontent I’d recommend to buy another MMO and leave GW2 behind. Anet won’t change. It was the same with dungeons in 2012 which were also a bit more on the difficult side and left a lot of former GW1 players behind because there was nothing else to play together.
Since then Anet has made very clear that GW2 is mostly open world solo content and maybe a bit raids for the hardcore-teamcontent crowd. They give a kitten about casual guilds.

Condi damage can be countered in many ways. Currently I feel like there are too many counters, condition damage is weak.

Spira.4578:

It’s not just a wording. At some point anet decided that AP =Quest/Task points.

It is just wording. You even say so in the next sentence. You are the whole time complaining about Anet calling it “achievement” instead of “quest points”. Rename AP to quest points and your issue is fixed.
You are also ignoring the fact that its a common wording. In several games you can’t miss an achievement. You might have to start a new character or whatever, but achievements as “be the first person in the world to finish skyrims story”?

About removal of old achievements: see page 2-3 or so: Its problematic to remove old achievements. People spent effort in it, it’s difficult to remove the rewards afterwards. Anet is also not going to remove gold/loot obtained by tarir multiloot farming when they fix it.
Removing the old AP without compensation is problematic.

But: I’d like to see a (permanent) return of the old achievements. I don’t like temporary achievements.

Spira.4578:

The issue here is that anet decided to remove the achievements from something that’s actually an achievement if you manage to get it.

So you are here to complain about a wording which is common among probably hundreds of games? Seriously?

You are 4 years late to ask for a rename of AP. It’s also a common expression which is used by several other games, too. For example skyrim “achievements”: “reach level 5”.
A singleplayer can’t, per definition, have a “be among the top players” achiement. So all singleplayer achievements would be “no real” achievements and should be renamed.
Still several games call them “steam achievements”.

skarpak.8594:

while pvp’ers maybe do not care about ap itself, they maybe want some skin one day.

Imho there should be more AP for playing PVP. The average PVP player is probably not a top 250 player and would not profit from those achievements.
But he can get his 200 class wins. Or do those pvp-map-achievements. Maybe its a good idea to increase the amount of those achievements.
WvW has the same issue.

Entenkommando.5208:

Let’s make a compromise: a legendary for the first 10 and an account bound precursor of choice for the top 100? Is that better than a few kitten AP’s?

I think it is.
It is a more meaningful reward for most/all top players than some AP.
It doesn’t mess up the current AP system which should be a “to do list” (kill XY undeads, plants; swing your sword 10.000 times, eat 10000 candycorn or whatever).