Guild Wars 2

Miellyn.6847:

Astralporing.1957:

Vinceman.4572:

I still don’t know why people like you are either not able to read or not willing to. Again for you: I’m not against easy mode raids, I’m against easy modes with the current raid rewards + moving off raid developers from developing challenging content – I have no problem in taking LS developers and delay the next LS releases.

You had no problem however with assigning devs to raids, hadn’t you. You don’t think, i hope, that assigning a number of dev spots to raids didn’t deduce those spots from other types of content, right?

Most people from the raid team were specifically recruited for raid development. They didn’t work for ArenaNet before.

Can you name one raid team member other than Jason Reynolds who was hired specifically for raid development?

The list of known raid team members can be found here
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_Raids_Team

Either the list is very much incomplete if “most” of the raids team were hired, meaning the raids team has at least 20 people or you are in fact wrong.

Gift of Heroes was used to promote Hero’s weapons into misforged ones, and it cost slightly less tickets than buying a Mistforged weapon, however it was taken out last patch.

Right now I’m collecting the Hero’s weapons since their description still says they can be promoted, and I just wanted to know not adding Gift of Heroes to the ticket merchant was an oversight or intentional.

Thanks in advance.

Sly.9518:

Raids were meant to be the most challenging content, making an easier version makes Raids not the most challenging content….

What would you consider to be the most challenging content in this game if it had no raids at all?

Carighan.6758:

Yeah, fully agreed. This is so utterly disappointing. Come oooon. This is the best your team can do? Then you need a new team

Especially if this mess took 2 years to cough up!

It seems like their answer will be no team at all instead of a new one, meaning they don’t plan to create more Legendary Armor sets ever again

Link:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/68vw84/flashpoint_devs_here_ask_us_anything/dh1qa6m/?context=1000

Vinceman.4572:

Highly questionable because the huge majority of raiders is playing them for fun not for the armor.

The thing is, Blaeys,you always pretend to be objective and sober but with statements, half-truths and wrong assumptions with no proof at all and out of nowhere – like we can read above – you are noncredible to me and I wouldn’t trust you any single second!

Fatalyz.7168:

Scipio.3204:

Harper.4173:

If you have someone that can’t raid ( because of low skill) – if they’re hardcore enough about the game they can get the armor – they can buy the runs with gold.

Just a question. If it weren’t possible to buy raid runs, your argument would be that one could hire someone to play on his/her account and earn the Legendary Armor that way, therefore they would be accessible?

Harper.4173:

The difference between casual and hardcore is the time investment and how much the game means to them.

The casual is the one that can’t get the armor because:
1. He doesn’t play the game enough to earn the gold to buy his runs.
2. He doesn’t play the game enough to be good and gear up and find people to actually do raids.
3. The game doesn’t matter to him enough that he would spend that much money getting gems to buy gold and buy his way to legendary armor.

Probably this is the mentality that made me think twice in the recent months whether raids are a good addition to GW2 after all. Downgrading everyone who doesn’t want to participate in a game mode that wasn’t part of the game for 3 years , doesn’t have 17.000g by now and can’t afford to spend thousand bucks on a armor set?

Superiority complex is becoming too much of a thing here

Who is being downgraded? Could you be more specific? If you are referring to stats, Legendary is no stronger than Ascended. This will have the utility of being able to change stats, runes, and infusions, without needing multiple sets of gear.

Let me quote again.

Harper.4173:

The difference between casual and hardcore is the time investment and how much the game means to them.

The casual is the one that can’t get the armor because:
1. He doesn’t play the game enough to earn the gold to buy his runs.
2. He doesn’t play the game enough to be good and gear up and find people to actually do raids.
3. The game doesn’t matter to him enough that he would spend that much money getting gems to buy gold and buy his way to legendary armor.

Suddenly if you can’t earn the new Armor set you will be thought as less of a player compared to those who can, and it is starting to show, because you know, you can’t be hardcore if you are incapable of raiding for any reason and you are not loaded.

Harper.4173:

If you have someone that can’t raid ( because of low skill) – if they’re hardcore enough about the game they can get the armor – they can buy the runs with gold.

Just a question. If it weren’t possible to buy raid runs, your argument would be that one could hire someone to play on his/her account and earn the Legendary Armor that way, therefore they would be accessible?

Harper.4173:

The difference between casual and hardcore is the time investment and how much the game means to them.

The casual is the one that can’t get the armor because:
1. He doesn’t play the game enough to earn the gold to buy his runs.
2. He doesn’t play the game enough to be good and gear up and find people to actually do raids.
3. The game doesn’t matter to him enough that he would spend that much money getting gems to buy gold and buy his way to legendary armor.

Probably this is the mentality that made me think twice in the recent months whether raids are a good addition to GW2 after all. Downgrading everyone who doesn’t want to participate in a game mode that wasn’t part of the game for 3 years , doesn’t have 17.000g by now and can’t afford to spend thousand bucks on a armor set?

Superiority complex is becoming too much of a thing here

I haven’t decided which one I’ll craft since I haven’t seen them animations & I want to see them on more race first.

I like them all tbh. But whichever I’ll end up choosing I’m worried I’ll like the next legendary armor of that weight better, but my aim will be to craft one for each weight nonetheless.

There is no way I’m going to get another 300 provisioner token tho.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I know people are passionate about SAB, but I think fans have overestimated the number of folks that will spend time in it, new world or not. For example, those who hate JPs seem to be just as numerous in the forums (and just as passionate).

I’m not against new worlds and I certainly think ANet should maintain the current SAB indefinitely. However, I can’t agree that adding W3 and beyond would be a good use of ANet’s limited resources.

Perphaps, but I can’t be the judge of that. We know the first release of SAB was succesful enough for Arenanet to begin to work on W2 immediately, however W2 wasn’t as successful as they’ve hoped. I’m not sure however they also factored in what they released together with W2 , which might have affected it’s popularity (Ascended material release & crafting for example)

Anyway, what I’m asking here is just a closure. I could live without W3 & W4, but if ArenaNet not only has no plans to create them, but also threw away the idea entirely, I’d like to know that, which, I think, is a fair thing to ask for. Like I said, I don’t want to get disappointed each & every year.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

The Devs have just recently referred to this blog post: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/welcome-to-the-super-adventure-festival/

Nothing (about development) has changed at this time (according to the recent statement).

Good luck.

Yes I’ve read that , but this isn’t just about current development, but also the indefinite future. Back in 2013 they said they plan to do four world altogether, and they also said world 3 will come with red weapons and 4 with purple.

Now that red weapons entered the picture without W3 being added, I fear they permanently decided to cancel all future worlds. Now despise this, there is still a chance W3 & 4 isn’t canceled, but if they are, I don’t want to get disappointed each and every year.

As we know, Anet added (or rather, will add) red weapons to SAB for doing dailies. While I’m happy to look forward for new rewards this year, this also leaves me insanely disappointed, because the plan was (in 2013) to release Red & Purple weapons with the tribulation mode of W3 & W4.

Now, I’m not really an optimistic person, and my take is on the matter this means we will never get continuation for SAB. I really want to know if this is the case for sure , so I can stop dreaming about it & get disappointed every april.

Arenanet… or should I say Josh. If you’re reading this please reconsider. I don’t think I’d be wrong when I say a substinental amount of people from the community really loves your work, not just W1 but also W2, and I’m one of them.

SAB gave me some of the best memories playing GW2, not just solo experience but also as a party feature. I remember the first time we heard about tribulation mode, and me and 4 of my friends thought the night it was release ( and still we had classes in the morning) “OH WHAT COULD GO WRONG”. Welp, pretty much everything, but that was the best part about it. The first zone took us several hours of cursing and laughing , and only 2 of us made it til the end. And it. was. AWESOME. Dontains video of tribulation mode still is one of my favorite (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvcjIBp0kuA )

Maybe just the nostalgy speaks instead of me. Rose colored glasses like some say, but I genuinely love SAB and all it represents. I really hope the time this year SAB will be up we get a comfirmation wether I’m right or wrong, because one way or another I want to end the dreaming. I’m tired …. its been almost 4 years. ( Funnily enough, anyone heard about CubeWorld? I feel their misery )

zealex.9410:

You cant really stop ppl from complaining, it’s the easiest thing for them to do sadly. I stand by what i suggested in a diff thread to have an option to open a clreared instance on your own.

Not really, if it was the easiest thing to do, you’d see a more people complaining. It is a lot less effort to simply stop playing, but people complaining at least care about the game enough to complain. Believe it or not, only a small minority do.

Ayrilana.1396:

Rednik.3809:

NikeEU.7690:

Not sure why raiding changed anything for you since if you choose not to raid your experience remains exactly the same.

As very minimum – he is already denied from content that could be made instead of raids. Like, you know, fractals were promised as “ultimate endgame instanced content”, but now changed to mere “gateway to raids”.

They’re not being denied. Raids are created by an entire team hired for it.

Actually they were not hired for raids, most of them at least…. they were just moved. If you check the background of the people being in the raids team, its obvious.

Crystal Reid, Raid team leader?
Was known to have heavy involment with the revamp of teq and triple trouble.

Andew Mcleod?
has been with Arenanet since GW1 factions.

Bobby has been with Arenanet for longer than I can remember.

Just to name a few. But there are also devs in the raids team, who worked on PvP features, Halloween and free-to-play experience etc. As far as I can tell only Jason Reynolds has been hired to work on raids.

Ayrilana.1396:

So you’re saying that creating weapon skins takes up as much, if not more, resources that developing the entirety of a living story episode? I don’t recall them giving out that timeline for armor and you’re also not taking into consideration of how many staff were a part of it.

For example two staff members working on weapons for nine months is not the same as four staff working on the LS for six months. I don’t know the number of staff that work on a single weapon set but I’m pretty sure it’s considerably less than what they have working on the LS.

Also realize that whether or not raids is accessible has nothing to do with me saying comparing rewards across two areas of the games didn’t matter. I even explained why.

There you go, https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4urm84/out_of_the_shadows_developer_ama_summary/

You can find it in the Misc, section. Funnily enough, it took them only 5 month to create a fractal, compared to the 9 month of one armor set.

I didn’t count in the amount of staff members, because I can’t count with something I have no information about, and you shouldn’t either. What actually matters is, how much of their resources raids are taking, and we are back to square one.

Then ask for some grindy achievements or collections?

I could, but remember what you had to collect in Dry Top and SW for those collections & achievements?

Ayrilana.1396:

You’re so focused on rewards which have nothing to do with the resources being spent on content such as the LS and raids.

But don’t tell me rewards don’t affect the replayability of said content, no matter which one we are talking about. I’m focused on rewards because that is the topic at hand, but oh, believe me, the current system bleeds from several wounds, not just one.

Anyway, I think we reached the point when we are replying for just the sake of replying, so I’ll stop here. If you choose to believe the existence of raids doesn’t affect the rest of the game or the non-raider playerbase, you are free to do so.

Ayrilana.1396:

It doesn’t matter because the resources spent on rewards pales considerably to the resources spent on actual content. This is why trying to compare quantities of rewards between raids and elsewhere in the game is pointless.

How do you know? Anet explicitly said making an armor set takes around 9 month, much longer for a legendary. And we have no idea how long it takes to make a weapon set. And again, maybe pointless for you, because the accessibility of said rewards didn’t change for you.

SW and DT have grindy achievements and collections which kept players coming to those maps. You also earn those currencies at a much slower rate compared to all other maps with map currencies. The time spent in those maps to accomplish goals takes longer than it would in other maps with comparable goals.

And the new maps have close to nothing to grind for. Exactly my point.

makes absolutely no sense. The same reasons to play a map were going to exist whether or not raids existed. Raids have little impact on whether someone finds any of the LS maps desirable to play on.

Reason a.k.a. rewards? Do you think the same amount of people were raiding if it had no uniques? The same can be said for the new maps. I can’t even count it how many of my friends stopped caring about the new maps , because they asked “What can you earn?” and the answer was 1 armor piece and a backpack.

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

It did have at least as many rewards.

Sigh…. raids so far released the white mantle weapon set (16 piece) and the experimental envoy armor set (18 unique piece). Outside of these every boss has an average 2 unique item associated with it excluding trio and escort ( 2*11= 22 piece). That is 56 altogether +/- one or two.

LS episode one like I said released two unique piece. Rising flames gave us three, with an additional shoulder. The third one has 2 ,and like I said the last one has around 5. That is 12 altogether.

Even if we add the Clown weapon set , which has nothing to do with the new content outside of location, that is 28.

Calculating with this, the 4 raid wing has around twice as much reward compared to the 4 episodes released so far.

And you’re ignoring everything that the heart vendors sell. You’re ignoring the items you get from completing certain achievements. There’s the rewards from the recent current event. There’s also the backpacks, aquatic breathers, and home instance nodes.

I did not actually. Only two new heart vendors sell any kind of new equipment. I factored the few achievements that gives rewards like the Meta achievements. I did forget the new current event, fair enough, but as far as I can remember CE only gave us one headpiece and 7 new weapons, doesn’t really change the outcome.

I did not count in home instance nodes, accessories, tonics, miniatures and other similar items like the Portal Stone or infusions. The only thing that I did count are the ones Anet is known having problems in producing. E.g. things you actually wear. That includes Weapons, Armors and the back slot.

If you think I’m wrong you’re free to do your own list.

Rewards are not just weapon/armor skins. I’m not going to spend an hour making a list because it doesn’t matter one way or another.

For you maybe it doesn’t matter, but you know I’ve been playing a lot less on the new maps compared to how much I played on Dry Top and Silverwastes. But overall my playtime hasn’t decreased because I’ve made up the difference by playing raids instead.

However those who don’t play raids, they have a lot less reason to play the new content compared to when raids didn’t exist.

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

It did have at least as many rewards.

Sigh…. raids so far released the white mantle weapon set (16 piece) and the experimental envoy armor set (18 unique piece). Outside of these every boss has an average 2 unique item associated with it excluding trio and escort ( 2*11= 22 piece). That is 56 altogether +/- one or two.

LS episode one like I said released two unique piece. Rising flames gave us three, with an additional shoulder. The third one has 2 ,and like I said the last one has around 5. That is 12 altogether.

Even if we add the Clown weapon set , which has nothing to do with the new content outside of location, that is 28.

Calculating with this, the 4 raid wing has around twice as much reward compared to the 4 episodes released so far.

And you’re ignoring everything that the heart vendors sell. You’re ignoring the items you get from completing certain achievements. There’s the rewards from the recent current event. There’s also the backpacks, aquatic breathers, and home instance nodes.

I did not actually. Only two new heart vendors sell any kind of new equipment. I factored the few achievements that gives rewards like the Meta achievements. I did forget the new current event, fair enough, but as far as I can remember CE only gave us one headpiece and 7 new weapons, doesn’t really change the outcome.

I did not count in home instance nodes, accessories, tonics, miniatures and other similar items like the Portal Stone or infusions. The only thing that I did count are the ones Anet is known having problems in producing. E.g. things you actually wear. That includes Weapons, Armors and the back slot.

If you think I’m wrong you’re free to do your own list.

Ayrilana.1396:

It did have at least as many rewards.

Sigh…. raids so far released the white mantle weapon set (16 piece) and the experimental envoy armor set (18 unique piece). Outside of these every boss has an average 2 unique item associated with it excluding trio and escort ( 2*11= 22 piece). That is 56 altogether +/- one or two.

LS episode one like I said released two unique piece. Rising flames gave us three, with an additional shoulder. The third one has 2 ,and like I said the last one has around 5. That is 12 altogether.

Even if we add the Clown weapon set , which has nothing to do with the new content outside of location, that is 28.

Calculating with this, the 4 raid wing has around twice as much reward compared to the 4 episodes released so far.

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

Whether or not “released” was included, you’re still comparing rewards.

Well, Duh. Maybe because to extract any conclusion regarding the resources we have to look at the products, and since we don’t know the distribution of the reward team amongst game modes, the only thing we can look at is the actual released rewards.

Ayrilana.1396:

Raids are a new game mode so you’re going to see a greater influx of those. It’d be like if you were complaining that fractals at release were getting more rewards than the rest of the game.

There is a huge difference here because of several reasons. One being is fractals are made to be accessible, and two, fractals don’t expand like raids do. One new fractal doesn’t need its own set of rewards to be appealing , unlike in the case of raids.

Ayrilana.1396:

Besides, LS is getting released at a much greater rate so those rewards will soon surpass what was included as raid awards if they haven’t already.

I don’t recall the elite maps from GW1 getting an easy mode such as Underworld. They were meant to be challenging.

Could be a point ,if there weren’t single bosses having more rewards than entire episodes.
On the GW1 argument, I believe Vayne already adressed that a little way back.

Behellagh.1468:

No, the majority of rewards YOU want are behind the raids. And specific gameplay modes should have exclusive rewards. There are rewards I would love but they are behind gameplay modes I’m not willing to invest the time in. Raids are no different.

Context. Perhaps I was misunderstable , I was refering to rewards being released after HoT. Personally I have everything I want from raids including the armor

Then why go and say you weren’t comparing rewards?

Raids are accessible too. Fractals are not on the same level as raids and you can view the rewards as for the entire raid that is unlocked by completing each wing. There isn’t a difference in regards to what I was talking about as what you’re seeing is an influx of rewards to catch up with what other areas of the game provide.

Have you actually counted the rewards that each episode have provided against what each wing has provided?

Because the emphasis isn’t on what has been released, rather on what is currently being worked on and what will be worked on. Or should I say how much resources raids need to take to make them as compelling as they currently are. And as we know, content interest should be increased not kept on the same level.

It wouldn’t be such an issue that raids get this many, but the fact it is exclusive by it’s nature. Every content has exclusive rewards, but they also have a lot of non-exclusive. I’m pretty sure raids took the lead in terms of exclusives in the short period of time they are in-game.

Also yes, I did most , but feel free to do the same. For example Out of Shadows bought us a new Backpack skin and a Helm, which is multi-mode available. The latest one 2 armor piece, 1 back and 2 (?) weapon. Matthias alone has 9 exclusive weapon skin.

The living story inched ahead and even more so when you account for everything released since HoT. I wouldn’t focus too much on rewards since counting them doesn’t mean all that much as we don’t know how much time went into them.

The bulk of the unique rewards for raids are the weapon skins. I guess you could ask how many resources are spent on weapon skins but then we typically don’t get them in PvE anyway but though the BLTC chests. I haven’t seen any new BLTC weapon skins for some time so perhaps one could argue the raid weapon skins were developed by whoever did those skins. That would mean that PvE in the rest of the game didn’t really lose anything. there are some difference but I don’t know if they’re substantial enough to matter.

It has been said several times already: The gemstore team works independently from the others. As far as I can tell, the ticket weapons are coming at a steady state, alongside with the outfits. Also one could argue it would be even worse if the raid took resources from them.

Also, no. LS3 didn’t have as many reward as the raids did.

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

Ayrilana.1396:

Whether or not “released” was included, you’re still comparing rewards.

Well, Duh. Maybe because to extract any conclusion regarding the resources we have to look at the products, and since we don’t know the distribution of the reward team amongst game modes, the only thing we can look at is the actual released rewards.

Ayrilana.1396:

Raids are a new game mode so you’re going to see a greater influx of those. It’d be like if you were complaining that fractals at release were getting more rewards than the rest of the game.

There is a huge difference here because of several reasons. One being is fractals are made to be accessible, and two, fractals don’t expand like raids do. One new fractal doesn’t need its own set of rewards to be appealing , unlike in the case of raids.

Ayrilana.1396:

Besides, LS is getting released at a much greater rate so those rewards will soon surpass what was included as raid awards if they haven’t already.

I don’t recall the elite maps from GW1 getting an easy mode such as Underworld. They were meant to be challenging.

Could be a point ,if there weren’t single bosses having more rewards than entire episodes.
On the GW1 argument, I believe Vayne already adressed that a little way back.

Behellagh.1468:

No, the majority of rewards YOU want are behind the raids. And specific gameplay modes should have exclusive rewards. There are rewards I would love but they are behind gameplay modes I’m not willing to invest the time in. Raids are no different.

Context. Perhaps I was misunderstable , I was refering to rewards being released after HoT. Personally I have everything I want from raids including the armor

Then why go and say you weren’t comparing rewards?

Raids are accessible too. Fractals are not on the same level as raids and you can view the rewards as for the entire raid that is unlocked by completing each wing. There isn’t a difference in regards to what I was talking about as what you’re seeing is an influx of rewards to catch up with what other areas of the game provide.

Have you actually counted the rewards that each episode have provided against what each wing has provided?

Because the emphasis isn’t on what has been released, rather on what is currently being worked on and what will be worked on. Or should I say how much resources raids need to take to make them as compelling as they currently are. And as we know, content interest should be increased not kept on the same level.

It wouldn’t be such an issue that raids get this many, but the fact it is exclusive by it’s nature. Every content has exclusive rewards, but they also have a lot of non-exclusive. I’m pretty sure raids took the lead in terms of exclusives in the short period of time they are in-game.

Also yes, I did most , but feel free to do the same. For example Out of Shadows bought us a new Backpack skin and a Helm, which is multi-mode available. The latest one 2 armor piece, 1 back and 2 (?) weapon. Matthias alone has 9 exclusive weapon skin.

Ayrilana.1396:

Whether or not “released” was included, you’re still comparing rewards.

Well, Duh. Maybe because to extract any conclusion regarding the resources we have to look at the products, and since we don’t know the distribution of the reward team amongst game modes, the only thing we can look at is the actual released rewards.

Ayrilana.1396:

Raids are a new game mode so you’re going to see a greater influx of those. It’d be like if you were complaining that fractals at release were getting more rewards than the rest of the game.

There is a huge difference here because of several reasons. One being is fractals are made to be accessible, and two, fractals don’t expand like raids do. One new fractal doesn’t need its own set of rewards to be appealing , unlike in the case of raids.

Ayrilana.1396:

Besides, LS is getting released at a much greater rate so those rewards will soon surpass what was included as raid awards if they haven’t already.

I don’t recall the elite maps from GW1 getting an easy mode such as Underworld. They were meant to be challenging.

Could be a point ,if there weren’t single bosses having more rewards than entire episodes.
On the GW1 argument, I believe Vayne already adressed that a little way back.

Behellagh.1468:

No, the majority of rewards YOU want are behind the raids. And specific gameplay modes should have exclusive rewards. There are rewards I would love but they are behind gameplay modes I’m not willing to invest the time in. Raids are no different.

Context. Perhaps I was misunderstable , I was refering to rewards being released after HoT. Personally I have everything I want from raids including the armor

Ayrilana.1396:

You’re not trying to compare?

You left out the keyword.

Scipio.3204:

released

Ayrilana.1396:

There’s no way to compare resources for various rewards as we do not know how much was used for each and how much resources they used when compared to the actual content. Your post also gave no indication of resources.

We don’t typically see any new armor sets so it’s not a surprise that we haven’t so far as raid precursor/legendary armor were announced before the expansion released so they’re a part of that even though they’ve been delayed for so long.

That doesn’t really change the way things are. Since the release of HoT majority of the rewards is behind raids compared to other game modes, and yet some claim here they don’t understand how some feel raids are in the spotlight.

We did see an armor set during LS 2 , arguably one of the most fun to get. It’s not a crazy theory we didn’t get one with LS 3 because of raids

Ayrilana.1396:

Scipio.3204:

To see what I mean, I’d like to ask you to do a research on the following: compare every in-game earnable reward released from the release of HoT to this day. That means every game mode, Raid, WvW, PvP, Fractal, LS. Then calculate how much goes to each part of the game.

If you’re going to compare rewards between game modes, you should compare the total rewards that they provide up to a given time.

I’m not comparing rewards. I’m comparing the resources for rewards divided across all game modes. Take a look at Legendary Armor for example. We have no Idea how many people work on that for how long now , and besides envoy armor variants, we haven’t seen a new armor set released since the expansion.

For veteran players the past is pretty much irrelevant, likely they achieved what they wanted and wait for what will they release next. If the majority of rewards come to a game mode they don’t like at all, how do you think they will feel?

Miellyn.6847:

Raid team around 10 people, living world team 120.

You are severely underinformed on this topic. The raid team has around 10 people, who work on raids exclusively, you got that right, but the living world team doesn’t have 120, the live game does. That means just about everyone: LS, QA, Gem store , PvP/WvW etc.

And remember, the around 10 people we are talking about is only the raid team, if only the work of the raid team would be at question here , there would be a lot less issue.

To see what I mean, I’d like to ask you to do a research on the following: compare every in-game earnable reward released from the release of HoT to this day. That means every game mode, Raid, WvW, PvP, Fractal, LS. Then calculate how much goes to each part of the game.

Ayrilana.1396:

Crystal Reid.2481:

This comes up a lot so I’m going to jump in quickly since it’s a new post.

Tier systems for Raids come up a lot as a result of what Fractals did. I worked on the original Fractals team and a tiered system with increased difficulty scaling was always part of the original plan for that team. It was never a plan for Raids. They are, and should remain, the most difficult content in the game.

Accessibility in terms of difficulty is something we talk a lot about internally. We’ve made efforts to help players get in by delivering entry level encounters that ease you into the content (STK) and you’ll see more of that in the next release. You’ll still see encounters that live up to previous raid expectations for mid tier and final bosses. And if you think Matthias is a chump then we have something for you as well.

Accessibility in terms of “Hey, my 5 man Fractal group wants to try raids, but we can’t find 5 other players!” is also something we talk about. It’s just a much more difficult problem to solve.

Bolded a specific sentence I felt was important to point out.

This is a statement I still don’t understand to this day. It feels like when we asked Arenanet why didn’t we get first person view and they responded something along the line " We feel like first person view wouldn’t be optimal for combat". Or when they introduced different colored commander badges, and they thought the reason it was asked to be implemented was purely cosmetic.

Easy mode isn’t being requested to change this statement you bolded. If raids weren’t a thing in this game, the most difficult content would be nightmare fractal CM , and the fact that this fractal has several difficulty options doesn’t diminish that at all. If we add “Easy mote”s for example for raids that doesn’t suddenly make raids the not “most difficult content in this game”.

Anyway this topic has been discussed a lot, and I doubt it has any affect on Arenanet’s stance on the topic, like in several cases. There are issues with raiding that Arenanet can’t ignore on the long term, but it seems like providing variable difficulties isn’t going to be their solution.

Honestly I really like this solution, since it doesn’t hurt anybody and even adds some reward for the repetition of CMs.

Also I think they should take this one step further, and make one of the achievements repeatable. The bigggest issue right now with W4 is the lack of rewards for CM repetition. They could solve this by adding some reward on a repeatable achievement that rewards for example a stack of magnetite shards or something like that.

Miellyn.6847:

Scipio.3204:

Miellyn.6847:

the team has only 6 people.

I was always curious, why do people think only 6 people work on raids?

Because ArenaNet said it.

Intresting. Mind finding me a source? All I’ve found is a raid team introductory thread, where around 10 raid team member introduces and we know there is at least one dev that didn’t make an introduction, meaning there is likely more

Miellyn.6847:

the team has only 6 people.

I was always curious, why do people think only 6 people work on raids?

maddoctor.2738:

We can’t get exact numbers, a 75% might be 76% or 89%, so got to work with what is available, even though they are by no means accurate, they do show us a lot about player retention. .

As I said in another thread, you can check the graph below the table to check the more accurate percentages, for example aurilium is 87%.

maddoctor.2738:

Can I get the new Glacial Gauntlets without finishing the meta achievement? No.

Actually you can. As far as I know the only exlusive skins introduced through LS are the 3 new backpacks for each new zone.

maddoctor.2738:

Scipio.3204:

I did not try to draw a parallel between those two, however if there is one thing I can say is the release of raids did not stop them from leaving. Also if you want to compare the active population to the raiding one, you also need to look at the active raiders as well.

If you want to count the percentage of people Raiding (as your post about LIs suggest, I could be wrong) you need to count only those eligible to Raid in the first place. Those who stayed in the game for the month after release for at least the first Raid to be released. Otherwise you are using a percentage that is completely biased.

And like I said, this also doesn’t factor those who bought their runs or that someone with a gw2eff acc is likely more dedicated to the game than an average player and both of these factor turn the numbers in the favor of raiders. These calculations arent meant to be 100% precise for the whole population, but they are still a good estimation.

Furthermore it is still possible to make estimations using monitored data of several weeks to compare how many people get LI compared to Unbound Magic or Fractal relic for example, but most likely those would turn into raid’s favor since most of these can be spent, unlike LI. Maybe the number of deaths on the accounts might be the best way to tell the percentage of activity, since that covers most of the game modes.

maddoctor.2738:

Scipio.3204:

We did prove that 90% + of efficiency users bought HoT tho. If your main problem is that we don’t know the % of players that has LIs between 20-50 % I’m pretty sure the guy who runs the page have access to that data and you can contact him.

And how many of that 90% quit before Raids even got released? How many of that 90% stopped playing after entering VB once and never got to move any further?

First raid wing was released in November, second in March and third in June. How many of those that bought quit BEFORE November, or before any of the rest of the Raid releases?

I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here.

I did not try to draw a parallel between those two, however if there is one thing I can say is the release of raids did not stop them from leaving. Also if you want to compare the active population to the raiding one, you also need to look at the active raiders as well.

edit: Also I’ve just checked , you can actually check each 0,5 % on the Percentile Graph below the statistics.

Absurdo.8309:

Scipio.3204:

maddoctor.2738:

There is also the problem of going from 10% to 20% or from 20% to 50% which means the actual result might be number in-between the 2 values and we simply don’t know which one.

As a note to everyone: do not use gw2efficiency to prove a point.

We did prove that 90% + of efficiency users bought HoT tho. If your main problem is that we don’t know the % of players that has LIs between 20-50 % I’m pretty sure the guy who runs the page have access to that data and you can contact him.

Also I’m pretty sure the majority of people with 1-2 LIs aren’t really intrested in raiding at all, probably they went in to unlock the masteries. Also keep in mind the site can’t tell who acquired their LI’s legitimately from those who just bought a run.

Regarding the argument about reading the active raiding population from that site; I believe there is a solution for that too, though it takes some effort to get decent data. You just need to check the highest percentage of players who gets at least one LI each week. For the sake of argument lets say it’s 10%. I remember someone saying gw2eff has 100k registered accs, that means 10k player. This way you can also determine what percentage of players actually clear all 3 wings .

Now of course this only considers those who have made a gw2eff account, meaning in reality this number is most likely different, therefore it would be wrong to interpolate this data for the whole gw2 population, but I don’t see why it can’t be a decent indicator.

This whole line of discussion seems pointless. Anet has the data on raids, and they’re happy with it.

Plus, when you compare to the number of players who participated in the pvp league (using pvp tickets) you get similar numbers.

I’ve yet to see a quote that they are happy with it , all I remember is something along the line " We reached higher participation rates compared to the games we observed", which is meaningless without context.

Also if they were that happy with it they wouldn’t discuss accessibility a lot internally.

maddoctor.2738:

There is also the problem of going from 10% to 20% or from 20% to 50% which means the actual result might be number in-between the 2 values and we simply don’t know which one.

As a note to everyone: do not use gw2efficiency to prove a point.

We did prove that 90% + of efficiency users bought HoT tho. If your main problem is that we don’t know the % of players that has LIs between 20-50 % I’m pretty sure the guy who runs the page have access to that data and you can contact him.

Also I’m pretty sure the majority of people with 1-2 LIs aren’t really intrested in raiding at all, probably they went in to unlock the masteries. Also keep in mind the site can’t tell who acquired their LI’s legitimately from those who just bought a run.

Regarding the argument about reading the active raiding population from that site; I believe there is a solution for that too, though it takes some effort to get decent data. You just need to check the highest percentage of players who gets at least one LI each week. For the sake of argument lets say it’s 10%. I remember someone saying gw2eff has 100k registered accs, that means 10k player. This way you can also determine what percentage of players actually clear all 3 wings .

Now of course this only considers those who have made a gw2eff account, meaning in reality this number is most likely different, therefore it would be wrong to interpolate this data for the whole gw2 population, but I don’t see why it can’t be a decent indicator.

maddoctor.2738:

If there is one thing you can blame Anet’s scheduling is how many players stopped playing after Heart of Thorns was released. From an average of 75% playing during Heart of Thorns to an average of 50% playing in LS3. Which means of the 100% accounts of GW2 efficiency, 75% bought Heart of Thorns, but by the time LS3 started 50% of the total is still active (or rather Anet lost 25% of the gw2eff players)

But your first image on airship parts says 90% has at least 5 airship parts, doesn’t that mean at least 90% bought HoT?

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Scipio.3204:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t accept your assumptions in getting to the “50%” figure, but I can agree that ANet’s devoted more design resources to raids relative to the raid dev team’s size or the number of people who play it.

You are free to disprove my calculations with your own, but until then I’m going to stick with mine. I’d also argue on your SAB argument, since no exlusive comes to my mind other than a backpack and different colored weapons , since 2 out of 4 weapon sets can be bought on the TP, therefore they are not exclusive at all.

Regarding PvP , WvW and fractals, here is the list of the exlusives in there which took Arenanet 4 years to impement all in all:

-Fractal Weapons
-Fractal back + Legendary Fractal back
-Glorious Armor
-The Ascension + Balthazar Back
-Triumphant Armor
-Legacy Armor
- Mistforged Weapons

Now let’s take a look at what raids got in the lifespan of 1 Year:
- Experimental Envoy Armor
- White Mantle Weapon Set
- A dozen boss specific unique , including weapons and back pieces.

1 year of raids versus 4 year of 3 other game mode. You could calculate how much exlusives raids will have in the same lifespan currently the other 3 game modes have if you want, then say 50% is not realistic.

And non Raid Pve in 1 year got.

Guild Armor 3 sets
Mistward Armor
Bladed Armor.
Ley line armor
Shimmering Weapons
Tennerberous Weapons
Chak Weapons
Auric Weapons
Reclaimed Weapons
Machined Weapons
Plated Weapons
9 class specific Armor Pieces
18 class specific Weapon Skins
5 Legendary Weapons (plus Precursor Skins)
Legendary Backpiece
Auric Backpiece
Luminates Backpiece
3 story backpieces
21 Unique Weapon Skins

There is probably more just the main ones off the top of my head

I also said excluding expansions, meaning the resources of the non-expansion half of Arenanet. That means 2016 & likely 2017

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I don’t accept your assumptions in getting to the “50%” figure, but I can agree that ANet’s devoted more design resources to raids relative to the raid dev team’s size or the number of people who play it.

You are free to disprove my calculations with your own, but until then I’m going to stick with mine. I’d also argue on your SAB argument, since no exlusive comes to my mind other than a backpack and different colored weapons , since 2 out of 4 weapon sets can be bought on the TP, therefore they are not exclusive at all.

Regarding PvP , WvW and fractals, here is the list of the exlusives in there which took Arenanet 4 years to impement all in all:

-Fractal Weapons
-Fractal back + Legendary Fractal back
-Glorious Armor
-The Ascension + Balthazar Back
-Triumphant Armor
-Legacy Armor
- Mistforged Weapons

Now let’s take a look at what raids got in the lifespan of 1 Year:
- Experimental Envoy Armor
- White Mantle Weapon Set
- A dozen boss specific unique , including weapons and back pieces.

1 year of raids versus 4 year of 3 other game mode. You could calculate how much exlusives raids will have in the same lifespan currently the other 3 game modes have if you want, then say 50% is not realistic.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Rednik.3809:

And they are staying there, watching at “successful raids” and “new maps are here, why you are not happy” and all asking one question – “Where is my content, dude?”

Whether that’s true or not has nothing to do if raids should be changed from niche-only content. A primary reason why they are able to release raids more quickly and with fewer people per ‘content’ is because it only has to be appeal to a narrow crowd.

It’s fair to criticize ANet’s inability to consistently deliver new/updated fractals, updated open world, and more Living Story. It’s fair to ask why we can’t have more skins. But none of that has anything to do with whether Raids are successful or whether they would be better with tiered difficulty.

There is one problem though. Like you said, Anet’s capability to produce new skins is very much limited. If we add the fact that they are able to produce raid content fairly consistently (They have commented on this, I think they said 4-5 month/wing? not sure) we’ll get the recipe for disaster.

Let’s assume every boss in every raid has at least 2 unique Weapon/Armor piece. Also let’s count with 3 boss/wing. If we do the math with these numbers , we’ll get around 9-12 boss per year which means raids require around 20 new unique items every year just to keep it the way it is now. And this is the very lowest end of the requirement, since the average unique / boss encounter is now higher than 3.

Now the question remains, how does this effect the rest of the game? Let’s take a look for example at the year they released LS Season 2. As far as I can remember we got one weapon set with Dry Top and one Armor set with SW, and as far as I can remember nothing else PvE wise, maybe a few minor things.

Now let’s fast forward to 2016 , what can the players that do PvE but don’t like Raids earn through new content? So far 2 Back Pieces and 3 (?) Armor pieces, but we also got comments like “Don’t expect new armor sets with LS because armor sets are an expansion thing now”. (If I had to guess that’s because the armor department was busy making one armor set for more than one year), but the thing is, the only one that actually needs some time to spend to get is the two backpacks. If you look at the game in 2016 as a whole about 50% of the rewards are behind raids, and the year isn’t over.

Now if we compare 2014 with 2016 , everything major thing that was reward for PvE content in 2014 is now behind raids in 2016 ( New PvE armor set + weapon set) and the leftovers are for the rest of the non-raiders. It may be early to say this, since we are only two episodes in into season 3, but it is almost 100% we won’t get an armor set through living story and I don’t see anything else major we could work towards to.

In short , yes , the amount of skins we get in the non-raiding part of the game has a lot to do with raids. And to keep raids running , Arenanet has to put around half of the “Reward Dev Team” ’ s resources into them, excluding expansions.

maddoctor.2738:

Scipio.3204:

Arenanet already proved it they can make scaling content rather easily. They made a fractal from scratch in less than 4 months with 50 difficulty levels and a story version. The main reason we don’t see new fractals regulary isnt because “They’re hard to do”

Fractal scaling is very easy, because aside from some of the early levels all that’s changing is mob hit points and damage. There are no overly complex mechanics in Fractals either and those mechanics that DO exist do not change with the level at all. There is absolutely no difference in Fractal mechanics, mobs don’t go faster, counters don’t expire sooner, AoEs don’t pulse slower. Fractals were created with scaling in mind, that’s why they are easy to scale, it’s only damage and hit points nothing else.

There is a vast difference between a mechanic that deals damage (that can be scaled up or down) and a mechanic that is 1-shot killing people by design. There is a vast difference between a mechanics that cause wipes or make completing the content really hard if you fail, and mechanics that simply deal some extra damage that you can heal or tank.

Apples and oranges. If you find some of the proposals in this thread and others about how easy mode would work, they all contain much more than tweaking damage and hit points. They say to make mobs slower moving, make 1-shot kill attacks deal damage, make area of effect circles fill up slower and a bazillion other things that DO NOT EXIST in Fractals. Sure make an easy mode were bosses have 10% less Hit Points and their normal attack deal 10% less damage, see how successful that would be.

Maybe they could add difficulty levels in their Next Raid if it’s created in a similar manner to Fractals, tweaked through damage / hit point values. If it’s created that way then changing the difficulty by tweaking numbers is certainly possible. But Spirit Vale is not a simple “numbers tweak”.

I was not comparing anything to anything, I just simply corrected someone who had a misconception.

But if you insist, sure , we could jump into it and discuss scaling implementation to raids. Unfortunately I’m in kind of a hurry and I won’t be able to respond in the next 4-5 day, but in the meantime I’d like to ask you the following:

You yourself said that implementing scaleable difficulties is easy, but raids have the problem because some mechanics can’t be adjusted that way. Could you list me these mechanics? Also I disagree on hit points and damage being the only things that could be easily adjusted, considering fractals have instabilities and several other things like more time in the old swamp for orbs , more mobs spawning etc.

What I consider to be scaleable is in addition to damage and hit point:

- Break Bar hit points
- Enrage timer
- Number of people required on certain spots ( Green Circles)
- Amount of time between mechanic activations
- Enemy cast time
-Number of adds
-Number/Size of AoE s

Absurdo.8309:

Scipio.3204:

Absurdo.8309:

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

We don’t have a dedicated Fractal team though, or a dungeon team, haven’t you noticed?

We might have had one, if we didn’t have Raid team though.

We didn’t have a Fractal team for a long time before Raids were released or even announced. Blame the living world and the massive blob events for the neglect of fractals and dungeons. Not Raids.

The same question remains about raids as well.

I agree. But the uncertainty of the answer works both ways in the context of this thread. Why add new features (for example multiple difficulty tiers) to something that might not be worth it in the first place? I’d wait for a more definite answer before going on about Accessibility.

We also only got one new fractal in years … seems making difficulty levels is harder than just tweaking some numbers.

Or not…. Arenanet has plenty of reason not to focus resources on new fractals. Just to list a few

- New fractals doesn’t increase the replayability of FotM what so ever.
- The number of fractals they can release is 10 more, if they reach that they have to do an overhaul once again if they want to add new ones
- FotM isn’t a thing they can reasonably sell again.

Arenanet already proved it they can make scaling content rather easily. They made a fractal from scratch in less than 4 months with 50 difficulty levels and a story version. The main reason we don’t see new fractals regulary isnt because “They’re hard to do”

What are you referring to? I’m not aware of a such a fractal.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractured

Back then when they changed the max fractal lvl to 50, every level had the chance to be any of the fractals. (And even before that, with the exception of Jade Maw)

Also if my memory serves me right , fractals before the “Fractured” release could potentially scale to infinity, with only Agony being in the way. I remember people had so high fractal level, anet never intented them to have , but they managed to bypass the Agony gate.

On the 4 months, Kiel won the election early August 2013 and they delivered the fractal late November.

Vayne.8563:

It promised one raid wing and that one raid wing was delivered.

Technically speaking, they did “promise” more raid by advertising it in plural form.

https://heartofthorns.guildwars2.com/game/#raids

What we have now is just only one raid with 3 wings, like we have 8 dungeons but each with several paths. We will see at least one new raid , but it might have only one wing.

Vayne.8563:

If the stuff you need from raids would be sellable on the trading post, that would be better, because the game would handle the transaction instead of having to trust your gold to a guild you may or may not know.

The issue I see with this is everything raid related should also be behind HoT, if it is on the TP then peeps without HoT will be able to buy it. If it is possible to create a filter on TP that HoT items can only be bought by HoT owners I wouldn’t see an issue. At least Arenanet would go back to it’s roots.

Anka.5086:

You don’t sound like a player who raids. But regardless of that did you look at the price for each boss? 150g/LI per boss. Good luck farming 30,000 gold.

While what you wrote down is (sort of) true, that isn’t the option most go by. It is enough to purchase every boss once (With the exception of gorseval) , then repeat escort every week and maybe trio.

Now if we count with the 150 g / boss thats 6*150 (VG,Sab,Sloth,Matt, KC, Xera) + 5 * 150 (Gorseval) all in all 1650g, but wait since every boss gives the player a Supply box on the first kill which awards 2 random something , 7 Box in total meaning 14 random stuff, which on average costs 9 g ~ 126g. Also let’s not forget the Full set of Ascended at the end of the collection, let’s calculate with 80g / piece, that’s 480g

In conclusion for 1650g you not only be able to earn any raid skin available and work towards the legendary armor , you also get back around 600 g worth of stuff , not counting with the minor stuffs like exotics and random ascendeds. If one learns Gorseval only in addition to Escort and trio that number decreases drastically.

There is a reason you see so many raid sellers, because there are a lots of people who buy it. I’d have to agree with Vayne, I see no prestige here.

Absurdo.8309:

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

We don’t have a dedicated Fractal team though, or a dungeon team, haven’t you noticed?

We might have had one, if we didn’t have Raid team though.

We didn’t have a Fractal team for a long time before Raids were released or even announced. Blame the living world and the massive blob events for the neglect of fractals and dungeons. Not Raids.

The same question remains about raids as well.

I agree. But the uncertainty of the answer works both ways in the context of this thread. Why add new features (for example multiple difficulty tiers) to something that might not be worth it in the first place? I’d wait for a more definite answer before going on about Accessibility.

We also only got one new fractal in years … seems making difficulty levels is harder than just tweaking some numbers.

Or not…. Arenanet has plenty of reason not to focus resources on new fractals. Just to list a few

- New fractals doesn’t increase the replayability of FotM what so ever.
- The number of fractals they can release is 10 more, if they reach that they have to do an overhaul once again if they want to add new ones
- FotM isn’t a thing they can reasonably sell again.

Arenanet already proved it they can make scaling content rather easily. They made a fractal from scratch in less than 4 months with 50 difficulty levels and a story version. The main reason we don’t see new fractals regulary isnt because “They’re hard to do”

Vinceman.4572:

Still doesn’t change anything neither in term for raids nor against them. I haven’t brought this one up but I agree, it’s completely irrelevant.

It doesn’t change you made a false statement without looking it up either.

Vinceman.4572:

Absurdo stated it several times in the past: Most of the players blaming raids are blaming them because they are not willing to put effort into or for other reasons to get the rewards. If you argue in the way above you do not differ from that type of player.

Hah, best source ever, but we already had this discussion before. I’m raiding myself even if not as much as I used to. The “git gud” argument won’t really work on me. Anyway we’ve gone off topic so I’ll stop my side of discussion here.

Absurdo.8309:

I too blame raids for every deficiency in the game.

(/s)

Nah. However I will blame people who want to be unique little snowflakes at the expense of raids, because they fail to see why the current status is not going to work out in the long term.

Vinceman.4572:

Thx for mentioning, thereby the discussion is over for me in this point.

Their release schedule is the problem tho. Take 2016 for example. They released around 2 armor sets , 3 weapon sets around a dozen “unique piece” like backpacks and helmets and around 50 % of these things are behind raids, considering it’s likely we get a new raid with new stuff it won’t get better.

Now add to this that raids are meant for the minority and you’ll see the problem.

Vinceman.4572:

Even if so, there were open positions to be filled from people outside the company

I don’t see how this is relevant, I don’t remember a time they weren’t hireing. The fact is majority of the raid team were with arenanet prior raids.

Astralporing.1957:

And even that statement is not true. The very fact that raids exist influences the development of other content.

Vinceman.4572:

If Anet officially states that there is no interference to other development things so that nobody has to suffer, I personally trust them. It was the only valid source we could get.

To both of you, it’s context. If my memory serves me right when they said this it was sort of a behind the scene post and they were talking about how they borrowed some help from other teams , but that didn’t interrupt their development schedule.

And Vinceman if you don’t think raids are taking away the rewards from other game modes just look at the two new zones and compare them to the other two we had with LS. The old ones came with a weapon set and an armor set, while the new ones have 1 Backpack / Zone. To this day even fractal doesn’t have an armor set while raids have multiple. And the list could go on.

Also edit:

Vinceman.4572:

they installed the raid team with new developers. These ppl weren’t working at Anet before.

I could be wrong but I think the lead of the raid team has been with Anet far longer than raids.

Edit 2:

I’ve looked into it on Wiki , If I’ve read it correctly 8 out of 11 dev part of the raid dev team were with arenanet and worked on other stuff , including the guy who worked on Festivals like Halloween for example

Vinceman.4572:

You can blame them for developing less weapons and armor sets in the other game modes, yeah, totally agree. But don’t throw in raids as the big evil preventing you from having new skins. That is not true.

I don’t see how this two sentence doesn’t contradict each other. The amount of weapons and armors they can develop is finite, everything they add to raids they could have added it to somewhere else. They said raids doesn’t influence the development of other content, not that it doesn’t influence how rewarding they are.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Scipio.3204:

Considering you have a decade experience in sofware development, do you think adding a challenge mote to KC doubled the development time required to create that encounter? Do you think the fact every boss have an enraged version of itself, it doubles the testing time on each boss ever created and ever to be created? If these things were so hard to create why did anet bother? Why not just wipe everyone instead of enrage for example?

• No.
• No.
• Because they were minor implementations and critical to the meaningful design of the content (other raid modes are not).
• Because it’s bad design for a game like GW2.

How exactly is the challenge mote at KC is “critical to the meaningful design of the content”? It’s only purpose is a one-time achievement yet they made room for it’s implementation. And if you don’t think making changes to the encounter through a challenge mote is complicated, then why can’t we achieve the opposite of it’s original goal? Similary the same can be said about enrage.

Vinceman.4572:

Scipio.3204:

Yeah if raids only got the work of the raid team, you would have a point. But the fact that 50% of the HoT armor sets and about half the (non-gemstore) weapons added since HoT are behind raids implies you are wrong. Not to mention voice actors, QA etc

And they still insist on the fact that no other game content was denied, lowered or delayed due to raid development.
So there is still no point for me in Rednik’s statement.

Content? No. But reason to play any other content was denied, and will be. Have you ever counted how much exclusive skin PvP has? Or WvW? I have. And with the second raid probably raids will have more exclusive than 2 game mode combined.

Which is more important in a MMO? The amount of content, or the reason to spend more time in the game? This could be argued, but I’d say the latter, and currently how things are raiders got a lot more reason to play this game than the other “90%”.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Blaeys.3102:

I don’t think we can realistically make any statements about how much time it would add – only developers can do that.

You’re right that I can’t say anything for certain, but having spent over a decade in software development I would bet money that I’m right and it would have huge ramifications on their development cycle. Either way, the developers will never say one way or the other because to do so would poison the well, so I guess we’ll have to keep living in suspense.

Considering you have a decade experience in sofware development, do you think adding a challenge mote to KC doubled the development time required to create that encounter? Do you think the fact every boss have an enraged version of itself, it doubles the testing time on each boss ever created and ever to be created? If these things were so hard to create why did anet bother? Why not just wipe everyone instead of enrage for example?

It’s absurd to argue something would take double the time it needs without thinking a second about implementation.

Vinceman.4572:

The raid team is smaller than 10% of the rest of the development staff, so even if these magic “10%” are true, it’s already well-adjusted.

Yeah if raids only got the work of the raid team, you would have a point. But the fact that 50% of the HoT armor sets and about half the (non-gemstore) weapons added since HoT are behind raids implies you are wrong. Not to mention voice actors, QA etc

Mutaatti.2789:

They should separate queues, to pure soloQ and then put teams (2-5 players) on other.

But there can’t be TeamQ without soloplayers (Who gets matched with team of 4? ) and if solo players have the option to avoid teams, why wouldn’t they?