Guild Wars 2

However they do it, it should definitely be added to the game!
Please Anet, this is the coolest staff skin in my opinion, and it’s just sitting there in the wardrobe taunting us day after day

Blaeys.3102:

We tried to address the topic early on only to be asked to wait, which we have done. Now that we’ve waited, I think the “just let it drop now” response just doesn’t cut it.

I think you misunderstood me. I’m not telling you to drop it. I’m just saying that I think voicing it was enough. I don’t think we as players really have anything to contribute in terms of whether or not it will work, or what areas of raids encounters it might affect in better or worse ways. That’s something the devs have knowledge about, and therefore I think we should leave it to them, now that the point has been voiced.
No need for us to try making solutions in fields we have no expertise in. Ideas is what we could contribute, and we have.

Blaeys.3102:

The content of the raid is dependent on the context of the raid – in other words, a scalable raid would be developed differently than a set size raid. The same is true, to a lesser degree with multiple sized raids. That factor would need to be considered at the start of the process – not the end (which is why the mechanics conversation has veered in so many different and, often, conflicting, directions).
..
How raids are formed and how exclusive/inclusive they are is probably one of (if not the) most important elements that people care about. Content can (and should) vary greatly within the model they decide to go with, but the processes and accessibility model they choose to build raids upon will be the first decision they have to make (and is something we want to collaborate on).

I still don’t really see scalable as a working solution, I think (with my extremely limited knowledge) that it would simply be too difficult to balance.

But, what I meant was: you have voiced your concern for accessibility with fixed size raids (or just one size), and I’m sure the devs have read that concern.
To me, that’s all there is to do on that matter. I have no expertise in game development, I don’t know if you have, but I’m sure the devs have a much better idea of what will work and what will not, when it comes to this part of the raid discussion. That’s why I think it’s much more important to talk about the design of the raids, and bring up interesting/cool/etc. ideas, than it is to talk about the size, which we (I assume) haven’t got the expertise to properly comment on anyways.

I agree that raid content should vary as much as possible between different raids, but I also think that the most important thing about a raid is the encounter(s). I think it’s so much more important that the devs focus on making the encounters really amazing, and then they can tune each raid to 8, 10, 15 (not more) players individually for all I care. I (and my guild) will manage to get everyone in, even if it means taking turns. The quality of the encounters will always have the highest importance.

Blaeys.3102:

To put it simply, the pros outweigh the cons. Accessibility should be more important than both logistics and development time. If it takes you a month or two longer to add in a second size to accommodate the player base better, then I think many of us would GLADLY wait that time. Do it right the first time – give us raids, but give us ALL raids.

To be honest, I also think many of us would hate to wait another 2 months before getting raids, just so there could be more than one size to choose from..

I have every faith in ANet to know their own capabilities when it comes to development and development time, and I’m sure they are well aware of the wishes from part of the community for broad accessibility to the raids.
Now lets make the proposal focus on the core parts of the raids, which should be the design, and then let ANet’s development team focus on whether or not it will be worth the (balancing and development) time to make several sizes or scaling raids..

My top 3 priorities:

1. Challenging Content with the “knowledge > skill > setup” philosophy
2. Unique, Exclusive Rewards preferably with a lesser version (as the PvP armor)
3. Accessibility: fixed size, progression limited only by 1. and not by time

Gaile Gray.6029:

Blaeys.3102:

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

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

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

My bullet list for today:

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

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

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

This is true.

And another very good point to reading (previewing) your post before you post it, is to check if it’s easy to digest, and if it’s easy to see what you’re trying to say/propose.
In this CDI, I felt it started out pretty well, but already after the first 5 or so pages, people started writing huge essays with no concerns whatsoever as to whether their posts were easy to read.
I personally spent a long time formatting my posts with headers, sections, subsections and bullets etc. to make them as easy as possible to read, and I was sad to see so few do that same, as it made me skip more than half the posts on the past 15 pages or so, simply because I didn’t have the time to read all that text (real life you know).

Just a little point to help the flow in the future

Crystal Reid.2481:

How do others feel about this? Are these types of mechanics are the way to go to circumvent the lack of Trinity in the game? It’s not about tanks/healers, it’s about condi/reflect teams (similar to the Jungle Wurm).

Hard profession mechanics might be stretching i abit, but soft profession mechanics is a must in my eyes.

Crystal Reid.2481:

• How often should raids in GW2 reset?
• Should we also include the option to extend lockouts for groups that progress slower?

• I think the raids should have a base daily reset, but with the option of skipping any boss you had previously defeated. Skipping should only be available if the entire team has defeated the boss.
  I think it’s important to make sure we can’t ferry people in on boss X without them participating in defeating the earlier bosses.
  This would, however, only work for linear raids.
  For raids with choices along the way (in TA style), several bosses would have to be “grouped” together as for example: “layer 1 bosses”, “layer 2 bosses” and so on. Defeating any “layer 1 boss” would give access to the layer 2 “checkpoint”.
• When it comes to the rewards, I think there should be a daily reset on basic rewards (gold etc.) and a longer (weekly) reset on the unique/exclusive rewards (in my mind Boss Boxes).
  I’d much prefer the rewards to be the “lockout” rather than the raid itself.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

timmyf.1490:

Sure thing, Chris. I feel like the discussion of rewards progression in particular could use some guidance. I had suggested earlier a system by which players could earn Legendary Raid Armor through a progression system. I was expecting a lot of strong reactions, but I mostly heard silence.

Curious as to what others think. Personally, I think raids need unique (read: can only be earned in raids) reward skins that are earned either through RNG or a progression system. (Meaning: you can get them as a drop if you’re lucky, but you get a fixed-effort backup option as well.)

Edit: here was that post. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4529755

Crystal is taking point on progression and I am taking point on foundational design.

I am sure she will see your post soon.

Her discussion area is doing better than mine (-: so yes maybe it is time to focus in on some of the ideas in that area.

Chris

P.S: Note the Seahawks game is on soon and I will afk!!

Thanks for bumping this and bringing to my attention. That is definitely a cool idea, but of course it does touch a little on the topic of gear progression. So here are some more questions for you with regards to your proposal:

• Is Legendary armor better than Ascended armor stat wise?
• Can this legendary armor be obtained anywhere else in the game?
• How do we prevent the introduction of Legendary armor from invalidating players who spent a lot of time/money crafting their Ascended armor?
• Is this a drop from raid encounters, or is it obtained through a “raiding reward track”?

I think you can see where I’m going with this. Ascended armor is already a pretty hotly debated topic because it did introduce a very slight vertical progression to the game.

I’m not gonna steal Timmy’s idea, but I’d like to comment what I think about those points, Crystal.

• Their stats should be on level with ascended as it’s currently the case with the legendary weapons, but as it’s also the case with legendary weapons, the armor should allow you to change the stats. This will not only make the legendary armor a unique skin reward, it will also somewhat make it item progression, in terms of giving you more stat freedom.
• The legendary armor obtained through raiding should not be obtainable in other parts of the game. Other game areas could have their own set of legendary armor (I know that might be alot of work designing new skins), or the legendary armor could be made with difficult materials gathered (not RNG) from different areas of the game, including the raids. I prefer the first option though.
• Point 3 is a tough one. But I’d say that the legendary armor should be really tough to earn, so the slow rate at which you get it should keep ascended viable for quite some time.
• I’d say the legendary armor should be a long process of upgrading the unique drops from inside the raid. The base item could possibly be attained through a reward track, but some of the upgrade components should require defeating certain bosses, possibly with certain optional objectives succeeded.
  I put in a few thoughts of how to combine different reward ideas in this post:
  https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4531386
  Basically, the legendary step would just be one more step than I imagined, but I like the idea.

Guys, I think we’re derailing again…

We should be discussing how to make build diversity more viable through discussions on how the encounters could play around the core mechanics of GW2.
Not discuss what builds are and are not currently viable in the game at the moment..

Alternatively, we should discuss progression.

And to be honest, when I started catching up today, I skipped alot of posts, because so many of them seemed to deviate from the topics Chris currently wants us to discuss.

Also, a note to those it concerns: (those who like to write their proposals as long text heavy stories)
It’s all cool that you want to explain your ideas in full. But I think it would help tremendously if you would be so kind as to make headers, paragraphs, bullets etc. It just makes it so much easier to read what you’re proposing, and to catch every point of it.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I am watching how the conversation moves, over almost 20 pages now and there’s still this concept being clung to that there can be no such thing as a “casual raid”.

Hey Tobias.
Just to clarify my stance. I’m all for casual raids, I’m only against easy raids (as in, the only limiting factor of how far you can get is your skill (and the team’s), not time).

TPenny.5071:

..

10 – 15 Small guild sized raid

Pros:

• Small amount of members leads to each individual player having more of a role and feeling significant.
• Organization is easier and communication faster.
• Encounters and mechanics can be balanced easier around smaller groups.

Cons:

• Less inclusive, specially to larger guilds
• While having ones role mean significantly more it also means if they fail its more likely to cause a wipe.
• Higher pressure to perform well, emotions may flare when something goes wrong.

I consider the bolded part pros to be honest.
As for the other sizes you put forth, I don’t really consider those sizes feasible in GW2.

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

about progression I want to ask you (players as well as devs) a question:

How do you feel about the agony resist system from fractals? Do you see any cons to this system? What are they and how do you think these could be fixed?

I really like the concept of agony, having an impact on the fractals only and no use outside of these mini-dungeons. I could imagine that this system would work fine in raids as well.

Honestly, I think Agony was a bad idea. It’s not a test of skills, it’s a test of how much Agony Resist you grinded. I’d much rather have encounters focused on testing our combat skills than hitting us with an unavoidable partywide debuff.

VodCom.6924:

Symph.8407:

Hey Vod
I don’t know if you have all of page 19 done yet, but I made a few points about reward progression and how to progress inside the raid itself. Hope you can find a spot for it here

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4531386

Hi. So far I’ve only summed up two pages. The number of pages I’ve covered is indicated in the topic’s title (2/20).

Ah, silly me for missing that good work so far!

Hey Vod
I don’t know if you have all of page 19 done yet, but I made a few points about reward progression and how to progress inside the raid itself. Hope you can find a spot for it here

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4531386

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Both Symph. Thanks for asking.
Chris

Cool, gonna try giving a few ideas then.

Reward Progression

• Someone mentioned Reward Tracks, and I kinda like this idea.
  • Of course I immediately think of the PvP tracks, and how it can be converted to something in a raid.
    The PvP tracks progress based on each match, and a few other factors of those matches (winning etc.).
    For this to work in a raid, I think the raid would have to be separated in smaller parts. By this I mean that small parts of the raid should correspond to 1 PvP match.
    • This would obviously be every boss/encounter.
      For linear raids, I think the amount of progress should increase with every boss, and maybe a bit more at the last boss.
      For non-linear raids, I think the amount should be based on the individual difficulty of each encounter.
    • Perhaps optional objectives during each encounter would increase the amount of reward progress you gain.
      Successful optional objectives could possibly still give progress even if the primary objective (ie. the boss) failed. (not quite sure about this though, could be exploited)
    • Unlike PvP, failure should not give any progress (would be exploited).
  • Having a system like this, would ensure, that even those people who are not capable of beating everything in the raid, still eventually get to the shiny stuff. Just at a slower rate (seems fair to me).
  • Finally, this system should not stand alone in my opinion.
• Loot Tables
  • One thing I’ve really been missing in this game is loot tables.
    The problem with having very rare items (read: precursors) drop from everything, is that you never know when to be excited about killing something.
    I miss that feeling I had in WoW when we killed that specific boss that dropped the item I wanted. My heart would always be pounding, hoping to see it after defeating the boss, and I really want that excitement here in GW2 as well.
  • Of course it would have to be a little different, since the loot in GW2 is individual.
    That’s what we have the boxes for.
    Much like the Ascended Chests, but instead of an ascended item with specific stats, you would get a choice of anything from the boss’ loot table (the box would be the loot table).
    • Each piece of gear could be present in 2 or more unique boss chests.
    • Whether they should just be skins, exotics or ascended I’m not really sure about.
      If they were exotic or ascended, they would have to have chooseable stats.
      Since such a box would guarantee the item you wanted, it would have to have a reasonably low droprate. Something along the lines of getting one every 3-4 kills.
    • Naturally, the boxes could be locked behind daily/weekly chests like fractals.
• Upgrading Skins
  • A nice way of keeping the raids interesting would be skins that could be upgraded.
    This could be done by combining several of the same skin (plus some materials), several different skins, or one skin with special materials dropped in the raid.
    The upgrades could be similar to the way the fractal capacitor was upgraded over several steps (also works if the skins have stats).
  • As I mentioned in an earlier post, the materials needed to upgrade could be included in the boxes, and thereby giving the player a choice of whether they first wanted several basic skins, or first wanted to fully upgrade the first skin.

• Finally, I still believe very strongly, that raid unique skins should not be tradeable between players.

Raid Progression

• Linear raids would probably be the most straight forward approach, and easiest way to make sure everyone face the same challenges along the way, but I do think I’d prefer some choices along the way.
• I think the way Twilight Arbor was build is a really interesting design.
  By having several choices along the way, every run has the possibility of being different from the one before.
  It also gives the players the option of going for specific bosses, either because one (or several) boss(es) are causing trouble for their team, or because they want to kill a specific boss for its unique drops.
• Some of these choices could be gated behind optional objectives that had to be completed in order to access that choice (like the bonus in D’Alessio Seaboard in GW1).
• Finally I would like to see optional super hard bosses, that could be unlocked/accessed by completing several difficult optional objectives throughout the raid.
  Perhaps with some completely unique drops tied to them.

A little long, hope the bullets make it easier to read
Gotta get something to eat now, so mechanics will be later

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Can we get back to talking about the two main topics we are focusing on please.

Specifically:

1: Progression
2: Foundational raiding mechanics based on the core combat and movement of GW2.

Chris

Regarding 1, are you talking about reward progression or physical progression through the raid instance?

Roybe.5896:

A lot of the players I know would enjoy a reworked map of Underworld. The various missions leading to a conclusion was a great idea. It was originally designed for 8 players so the scaling to 15 shouldn’t be tremendously difficult.

I would like to see some of the quests within this be splitting quests. 3 5 man groups have to do something to advance to a bring up an NPC that gives the next quest in the chain.

I also would enjoy seeing an environmental debuff that is removed after the successful completion of a particular quest (it could even be a bonus quest rather than a main quest, so it increases the difficulty for speed clearing..you have to make the choice to do this quest or go for the faster way dealing with mitigation as you go).

If the underworld is utilized (or any other previous map) lore must be preserved with as little reconning as possible. Otherwise, the long time players will have issues that will decrease their desire to play.

Underworld had some timed events, kill x in y time or you lose. This is a nother valid quest type.

One quest could release NPC’s throughout the map, to either open doors or portals, provide small levels of support, or need to be saved before they all are killed…possibly another case can be made for a split party quest.

Just a few ideas

I would love to see UW in GW2, that would be an amazing raid in my opinion. As for the lore, I would like to see a continuation of the story in the GW1 UW. Maybe have Dhuum’s servants try to retake it, or maybe Dhuum got out and has already taken some of it. That’s for the lore guys at Anet to figure out.

Balsa.3951:

I have a question

Ppl say nobody should be carried/ pull there weight in those raids.

So how is that monitored/ controlled ?

Without a dps meter how we know who is been carried by 20 people?

One things is not making the raids too big – put a relatively low amount as the max numbers of players. 10 or 15 players ensures that there are not too many people in the raid, and thus makes it harder for each individual player to hide it if they’re not pulling their weight.
Alot of it lies in the design of the encounters as well. If you make the encounters difficult and complex enough, everyone will need to do their part, or the raid fails.
You can’t base the encounter on having
2 people doing thing 1
3 people doing thing 2
3 people doing thing 3
2 people to spare
etc.
There has to be something everyone needs to do (it’s doesn’t have to be super specific, but I hope you get what I’m saying).
This is also why scaling is a bad idea. It will make it much more likely that 1 or more players in the team don’t have anything (important) to do.

Astralporing.1957:

Naetell.3815:

In that case, you’d argue in favour of making all gear unbounded, so everything can be bought on the trading post.

Well, yeah, i was never in favour of soul/accountbound stuff.

After all, you make gold with everything you do in the game, so none of the rewards would be out of your reach then.

TP should be a backup method of getting anything, true, but it should always be a secondary method. And for every item there should be at least two primary approaches to obtaining it.

I just don’t understand this sentiment at all. Why do some people insist on everything being available to them?
You’re killing all sense of special for items this way. If everything is available everywhere, nothing is special. Then this game will completely and entirely be about who has most time for farming gold.
It’s already way too depending on gold farming, if they add more stuff to that, you might as well just pull the plug..

Edit:
The game should be made up of several “areas” of gameplay, each type more or less different from the rest, and each of those areas should have something exclusive and unique to them.
This way, the people who enjoy each respective type of gameplay and are good at it, can show off to the rest of community, that this is the area that they mastered.

I would hate to come to a game and spot someone in super cool looking gear, and think to myself “I want that”, and then when I ask how he got it, he tells me he just grinded for gold.. I would think “wow.. that was.. disappointing..” and then I would probably find another game.

Blaeys.3102:

I will probably be posting multiple scenarios like the following in the next week:

Raid Concept

Ulgoth’s Revenge, a siege style raid against centaurs intent on avenging Ulgoth’s defeat.

Setting

An instanced version of the western third of Gendarren Fields, specifically the area between Stonebore Vaults and Nebo Terrace.

Rules of Engagement

• The player’s base is in Nebo Terrace while the centaurs are in Stonebore Vaults.

Win/Loss Conditions

• Win: defeat two legendary centaur champions with raid style mechanics within the vaults – while simultaneously defending Nebo Terrace from progressively stronger centaur assault waves.

• Loss: Lose Nebo Terrace (the typical blue/red circle capture mechanic we are all familiar with)

Mechanics/Functionality

There are two ways to approach the raid:

• In the first, you split the raid in two, with one group defending NT and the other assaulting the Vaults.

• The second method (which would work better for smaller groups, but would take longer to complete) would be to have the entire party defend Nebo Terrace while you build upgrades (Walls, guard patrols, cannons, etc). Once the Terrace is fully upgraded and can stand on its own against the centaur assault, the entire party can assault the Vaults together.

Bosses/Other Encounters

• Centaur Siegemaster – The siegemaster would be an optional boss and would be virtually impossible to defeat even with a maximum sized raid. His job is to take Nebo Terrace (even though he doesnt attack the Terrace himself). He would be located just north of the Terrace. (NOTE: defeating this boss would not stop the assault waves – he is there solely as an optional hardcore challenge)

• Assault Waves – The centaur assault waves are more complex and troublesome than those found in open world DEs. They even use siege weapons such as arrow carts, ballista and even catapults to harass and attempt to “herd” your party into deadly chokepoints and traps.

• Centaur Shaman – The first legendary encounter within the Vaults, he would be a master of the elements, similar to Ulgoth (only with much more complex and deadly mechanics).

• Centaur Chieftain (final boss) – Defeating the chieftain will demoralize the centaurs and end the assault. The chieftain is lightning fast on his feet and uses a lot of cc style mechanics, such as nets and, if a players wanders to near to a ledge, a cave in under them. He switches between a bow and melee style spear as his primary weapons. He shifts between melee and ranged attacks liberally. In range, he never stands still, but does while using the spear (giving melee heavy parties burn phases in which to stack and get out lots of damage)

Achievements and Rewards (achievements should be a big part of raiding)

• Achievement: Faster than Lightening – defeat the final bosses in x time (this should be tuned to only be possible if groups split up and handle the defense and assault simultaneously)

• Achievement: Stop with the Knocking – defeat the optional (hardcore) Centaur Siegemaster

• Reward (one time): Cheiftain’s Head, which can be turned in at a new raid vendor in Lion’s Arch for credit toward a collection achievement and for a one time gold/unique skin reward.

• Reward (ongoing): 60 Golden Hooves (work identically to dungeon tokens, only with weekly diminishing returns) (Im not married to this option – just believe their should be unique rewards for raiding – but that they should be in line with rewards from other game modes)

Philosophy/Gameplay goal
The goal in this proposal is to show how GW2 style combat and encounters can be used to create a “flexible” encounter that rewards teamwork and player skill without a heavy reliance on numbers (skill trumps numbers). While smaller groups would make a sacrifice (the raid would take longer), they really wouldn’t be at a disadvantage when it comes to completing the raid.

I didnt go into too much detail regarding boss mechanics, but it should go without saying that the fights should be at a difficulty/complexity level higher than dungeons.

Again, this is just one idea. I may (probably will) come up with more as the week goes on and I brainstorm a little regarding how raiding in GW2 can be unique and fun.

Very cool idea, Blaeys. I’ll very much support this kind of raid.

Gele.2048:

15 man is good im more for 20 but if u like to be more easy to team up then keep it to 15 .
Also how about gear only for raids so we can have progresion PLS do this i wanna have carrot on a stick for long time in this game skins are not my thing and iv lost to many friends in the skin wars thank you in advance .
also the raiding gear will not work in pve/pvp/wvw only in raids so you can keep it balanced and we can have fun to make the game cooler and you can add some reputation grind like in eye of the north titles will make some skills stronger you take less dmg u deal more dmg etc etc !!

Adding any kind of gear (stat) progression would go against the core principles of the game. Just remember what happened when they introduced ascended gear (that was enough).
As for titles making skills stronger, all I can say is: NO. That’s is the very opposite of what we need. We don’t need more stuff gated behind time. We need stuff gated behind difficulty and skill.

Ohoni.6057:

Prestige should not be attached to gear. Gear should be about style and widely available. If you like under the delusion that other players are impressed by what you do, and care what gear you equip, then Titles are good enough to establish that. There should not be skins that only “the cool kids” can get.

Prestige should not be attached to gear, no. But some gear should be attached to prestige. What I mean by this is: it’s not the gear that makes it prestige, it’s your achievement. The gear is just the visual representation of your achievement. It’s your way of showing the community that you beat something hard. Why do you want to take that away from people?

And no, titles are not enough. I think maybe once a month I notice someone’s title, and that’s only when I’m actually playing with them and standing/running near them for longer periods of time. That’s visual enough.

Ashen.2907:

..
Some of your other suggestions seem reasonable so long as the return for vendoring undesirable drops is sufficient to offset the greater investment generally required of raiding than is the case in other forms of content. The key is to avoid reducing the play value of the content from a rewards perspective by making the rewards undesirable or making repeats of those rewards undesirable. “Wow this is my fifteenth copy of the Untradable Sword of Awesomeness !”

If salvaging such untradable rewards was introduced kitten a means of making them valuable to those who dislike the skin or who have it already I would hope that the materials so gained would be both valuable and tradable themselves.

Time to catch up

I know that we currently have places where you can be carried to rewards, but I’m hoping the raids will end up difficult enough to not make that possible. I hope they make the raids hard enough to make every single player have to pull his weight.

But you’re right, it could end up being the case, but if it does, I’d expect it to be once the “hardcore” players have become so used to the encounters that they can make up for one (or two) not pulling their weight.
If I’m right about that, the skins would at least have had a chance to be in the game, before people get easy ways in. Still a problem though, but not immediate.

As for vendoring and salvaging, I’m definitely thinking vendor values that will make it worthwhile your time, and materials that will either be useful to you or have some tradevalue.

Finally, I few pages back, I suggested first of all, that the rewards come in boxes, so at least you get the skin you want (if there is one).
And also, that perhaps several of the same skin and/or possible salvage parts from salvaging these skins could be combined in the mystic forge to upgrade the skin (adding more effects etc.) or possibly an actual item progression through exotic, ascended and infused ascended (with changing looks, like the fractal capacitor).

Ashen.2907:

My post was in response to another poster’s opposition of raid rewards being tradable between players. The point was that if such rewards cannot be traded they are useless to someone who dislikes them. If they can be traded then the player who does not like them can sell or trade them to someone who does. Being able to trade away drops that are of no use to me, for example, means that content with those drops as rewards can still be rewarding to me.

Of course you should be able to do something with them. You should just not be able to sell them to anyone who had not completed the required content. If by some means the game could differentiate between players in this way in regards to trading items, that would be nice, but I don’t think that’s realistic. So a complete untradeable policy is necessary.
The items could however have better vendor value than the meager 1g ascended pieces have at the moment. They could be salvageable etc.
Also, the exclusive skins should obviously not be the only drops from the raids. The raids should also drop lots of other stuff, that could be traded with other players.
You just have to understand, that the uniqueness of such items, and the direct coupling to achievement they have, is immediately lost if they can simply be bought with gold on the TP, which would completely ruin them.

Ohoni.6057:

..
And that’s pretty much my point. You shouldn’t have to do A or B, there’s should be a C) do the things I enjoy doing and also be able to progress towards those rewards. I’m by no means saying that the current game is in a perfect state on that regard, so bringing up areas that currently don’t work is irrelevant, all I’m saying is that I don’t want to see raiding make it even worse, by adding a whole new area of the game that many players just will not enjoy, and locking more cool skins behind it.

In short – there are in the game now a wide variety of items that are tied to one specific area of content and that area alone.
To say that adding this to raids would be a mistake is nonsensical since we already have this and the game hasn’t imploded nor has anything happened because of it.

Exactly, and they need to fix that, so let’s not make it worse.

..
If they want to “bribe” players into trying out Raids on a very limited basis, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but the goals should be realistic ones that they can accomplish in at most a few attempts, and then say “but this isn’t for me” and move on, not something they’d have to keep plugging away at for months in the hopes that they’ll get the thing they want out of it.

I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree on this one.
In my opinion and experience, having no unique rewards in areas like this partially devaluates the content.
Luckily for me, it seems most people here share my point of view on this particular matter.

Blaeys.3102:

Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.

Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.

We can’t have them design something that’s supposed to be challenging around X number of players, and then allow people to bring in more than that amount.
Everyone would go for the easy rewards, and that would ruin the whole point of this discussion.
Make it fixed, then we can always discuss the possibility for 2 or 3 sizes.

But as was said above, we should move away from this now and focus on the mechanics, as Chris asked us.

Edgar Doiron.2804:

Proposal Overview
Raids, Guild Wars 2 style
Goal of Proposal
A way to integrate Raids inside Guild Wars 2, in a way that it utilizes the Guild Wars 2 elements.

• Makes use of Dodging mechanics
• Makes use of the combat mechanics(move and cast, conditions, boons)
• Makes use of the event system
• Makes use of jumping puzzles, mechanics found in Guild puzzles and Guild Challenges.
• Makes use of the environment

Proposal Functionality
I’ll focus this on a 15 man raid.

I’ll also use a couple of ideas that I’ve seen throughout the thread and really liked.

• Even if you’re running with 15 players, it doesn’t mean the full content should be the 15 sticking together. Multi-paths
• Have something for every playstyle
• Don’t lock stuff down to specific class (make sure there’s alternatives)

So here goes

You’re at the entrance of a dredge mine, you set up your 3 party of 5 (or get pugs from LFG), a commander tags up, switches to RAID mode and creates a raid from the 3 parties.

Everyone enters the instance, you come in a big room. Hobo-tron is there, you interact with him, and he asks you if you want to bind this raid to your account.
There’s 3 paths leading out of the room, how will you split up? [No one knows! It’s your first time here and I’m writing this as I think about it]

The groups decide to split in 3 parties of 5, each taking a path.

Left Path
The Left path goes up to the scafolding on top of the mines, this is laid out almost like a maze, you can see across from it, to the exit, because it’s all wire walls. You also see different patrols walking inside the maze.
You start walking across towards the exit, you come across some switches, but they seem to do nothing, you can’t interact with them. Upon reaching the end of the Maze, you see a locked door with 3 lights that aren’t lit up… But the switches did nothing, you couldn’t interact with them.

Center Path
The Center path seems to lead straight ahead, deeper in the mine, after a couple of adds, they reach an open room with a big device in the center, looks like a Generator, but there’s no way to power it. A boss jumps in from the side, sending an electric shockwave in a small AOE around him. What if we used this to power the generator? Each stomps powers the generator for 30 seconds, and he stomps every 15 seconds. This group needs to make sure the shockwave hits the generator to power it up. They can’t kill the boss, he’s immune to damage and condi, but not CC(has a small stack of defiance).

Meanwhile on the Left Path, they can now interact with the 3 switches in the maze, and make their way out. The group can see the group from the Center Path fighting down below, there’s an arrow cart on the other side of the door from the maze. Someone gets on it, and notice that there’s a skill that will cause the immunity to damage to be removed, and another skill for the immunity to conditions, the cooldowns for both are the length of the debuff of one or the other on the boss.

Right Path
The right path goes far underground, you start to feel the heat, and you see lava flowing around you. After a while you come to an impass, a huge gap, there’s no way to make it across. But you see a path along the edge of the cliffs, where if someone that was good with jumping puzzles could go up and see what’s up there. Well look at that, there’s a crane-like device up here that can drop a bridge for the party to move on.

All Three Path merges back to a central area, except all 3 parties are on different levels. They prepare for the first boss, a huge dredge suit/mech that comes in. The team on top can drop boulders to stun/cc the mech into place, while the team underground are killing fire grubs to get some stones/coal to put in a huge furnace. On the main floor, the party sees a flame thrower on the side of the room, that’s powered by the furnace underground. But the thing is constantly under attack by adds, and also the boss that tries to crush them. So you need someone to man the flamethrower, and people on top to stun the boss in place so the shot actually hits, while the people on the bottom are feeding the furnace so the flamethrower can work.

—End Of Example—

Associated Risks

Being too awesome

I really like most of this example. That’s exactly the kind of stuff I want to see.
Perhaps with a little more focusing on using the class skills to accomplish the different subobjectives, but generally really nice.

Killthehealersffs.8940:

Symph.8407:

But you cannot exclude unique rewards because a minority of the playerbase might not like them.

You dont have to exclude the rewards , but that doesnt mean that the reward must be ’’beautiful’’ :P

PPl WILL BE FORCED to play the raid if the reward is visually beeautiful , and they will moan that encounter to be nerfed afterwards .
But if the lesser-easier bosses throw those ’’beautifuls’’ rewards they wont whine at all … and the other ‘’ugly-prestigious’’ gear can be be looted by the dificult bosses for the pro players :P

Edit : Ah , i didnt see the ’’red’’ post … sorry

The “beautiful” rewards do have to come from the later/harder part of the raid though, otherwise it’s counterproductive, and no one would care to do the later parts.
And nobody will be forced. It’s a choice, a matter of how badly you want that shiny reward.
People just need to accept that if they want everything, they will also have to do everything, and (for some of the things) be good at them as well.

Zephyron.7081:

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

As I said before, I really don’t think PvP has any place in raids. If you want to PvP, go do PvP, that’s what I do when I feel like PvPing.

Zephyron.7081:

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

Again, this just screams exploit issues.. Think about it.

Zephyron.7081:

Rewards seem to be a bone of contention for most. I suggest GW2 only offers Gold for a reward upon completion of a very long raid. LOTS of Gold!

I really don’t want this. Raids should not be another gold farming place, we have too much of that already.
Raids should be a place to put your skills to the test, and you should get something to show for it, if you beat it. Something unique, untradeable and not available anywhere else. This is a must!
They should still reward significant amounts of gold after each boss though (it should be worthwhile in gold).

Ohoni.6057:

So, what if a part of the playerbase does not like the unique rewards released with the first raid? Does that mean the raid should not be made? Or should not have unique rewards for those who do like the skins? Of course not.

No to the first, yes to the second, raids should NOT have unique rewards to them. Problem solved.

Please, do not design raids around sparing the feelings of people who do not want to raid.. Make the raids, make them the best they can be, give them unique visual rewards. If some people who don’t want to raid would want these items.. well, then they better start raiding.

No. Sorry, but you have to share this game with the rest of us, and we’ve gotten along quite well without raids for two years now. If the choice is between having raids, but everyone needs to do them if they want the “cool new raid lewt,” or not having raids at all, then I vote no raids at all. If you want to have raids you have to get along with those players that don’t, this is NOT a raidista game and never should be. I’m fine with there being raids, so long as non-raider players have no reason to go there. If they put in mechanisms to “encourage” non-raiders to participate then they can burn in the pits.

It’s clear that we disagree on this. But try to look at it this way.
With the argument that you put forth, basically, if there’s something in the game that I want, but the only way I can get it is by doing something I don’t want to (or don’t like doing), those things should not be in the game.
I’m gonna apply this to Legendaries. A part of getting legendaries could be attributed to luck, but generally, getting a legendary is all about grinding. A long endless grind.
I don’t like grinding, I don’t care to waste my time grinding. So there should be no legendaries in the game.

That’s pretty much the argument you’re making, and to me, that just doesn’t make any sense at all.

Blaeys.3102:

..
I could get behind multiple raid tiers, even though, as Ive noted before, I think their should be three tiers – 8, 12 and 16 person raids. These numbers mean, regardless of how many people you have (as long as you have at least eight), you are never more than 3 people away from viable raid groups.
..

A question for you Blaeys:
How would you feel about it, if Anet started out by making the raid(s) for 12 man only, but then later introduced the two other sizes?
(Hereby giving them time to perfect the balance of each size)
Side question:
Would you have faith in them to follow through on delivering the (3) sizes over time?

kratan.4619:

The only games I have enjoyed raids in have been games that do not limit the number of people who may participate. I have been a member of rather large guilds from EQ1 on and it has not been fun letting someone know that they cannot come on the raid because we are full up.

The limit on players seems to be the major cause of the exclusion of people and the elitism of prove you did it before or gear checks.

If “hardcore” people want to do the raid with fewer people they would still be able to “challenge” themselves. While the less than hardcore people would be able to bring more to enjoy the same content their way. A perfect example of this was doing the dragon raid in DAoC, for hte life of me I cannot remember his name, an open world mob so you can bring as many as you like, but a lot of people would only bring 24 people because then everyone got one of both seal types that dropped.

TLDR; create raids so that you can bring as many or as few people as you want.

The problem with this is that you create a balancing nightmare.
The only remotely working solution I have seen anyone mention, is having 2 version:
One with scaling (for the masses) and therefore no unique rewards, and
One with a fixed size and unique rewards.

While I wouldn’t mind them making that scaling version, I’d prefer if they focused on making the challenging, fixed version first, and then maybe later released the other version. Otherwise, those of us looking for (rewarding) challenges (for a long time) would have to wait even longer before we got some content.

Blaeys.3102:

In my opinion, exclusion via difficulty is fine. Exclusion due to poor processes (hard to form/find groups, unnecessary attunements, etc) is definitely not.

The bolded part is the core for me. That’s the only true exclusion I want in the raids.

Blaeys.3102:

The biggest issue is, the second anyone starts talking potential solutions, such as alternative scaling methods, they are flooded with negativity and brick walls from a very small group of people who have a preconceived notion of what raiding should be (based usually on what they have seen in other games).

If raiding is meant to be a carbon copy of what we see in Wildstar or the glory days of WoW (my raiding days), then there really is no need for further conversation.

Imo, though, this is GW2 and they can do better.

The raids in GW2 should not WoW raids, they should be GW2 raids. This doesn’t mean we can’t reuse some of the great mechanics and ideas from WoW raids, but it means that the raids in GW2 should be something that fits in GW2.
In my opinion, this will be partially achieved simply by the way GW2 is designed, and the rest is what some of these 14 pages have been discussing. That is, how to take those great mechanics and ideas and use them in GW2.

The reason I changed my mind from scaling raids to fixed size raids, was because of the statement Chris made on one of the first pages. Something that made me think about what was most important to me: the quality of the raid(s) (ie. how difficult would they truly be?) or that I would always be able to include everyone in my guild?
And to be honest, the answer was quite simple: the quality of course.
Because without the quality, the raids would not be worth it at all.

Roybe.5896:

spoj.9672:

@Blaeys

It seems to me that you want open world bosses in instances. Whereas the rest of us want actual raids. Open world bosses in instances is kind of just allowing exclusion to content we already have. Having proper raids will obviously create exclusion and it wont be for everyone. But its something the game sorely needs.

I think the game is at the point where anet just needs to ignore the excessive entitlement people feel they deserve and just create something epic in terms of challenge and reward. And to do this they need to forget about problems such as exclusion and elitism. Obviously dont completely forsake them or encourage them but they should be a very minor factor when designing a raid. Those are problems you cant really solve no matter what you do. And if you hold back on development because of those issues you will get nowhere. You cant create something amazing if you are afraid to displease people. Its not possible. If you try to please everyone it will be half baked and wont really satisfy either side of the spectrum.

Not much I can say about this that wouldn’t derail this whole thread. So, I strongly disagree with this sentiment.

I’m just gonna support Spoj on this. I’m very much in agreement with this sentiment.

Ohoni.6057:

..
I do not want raids to provide anything that people who don’t want to raid would want, but I do want raiders to feel their time has been justified. To that end, I suggest adding a special damage stat to the game that only raiders would ever need. This is similar to Agony resistance in Fractals, only it would be earned through Raiding and only applies to content within raids. This would prevent the need for “raid armor” that offers advantages over existing armor outside of raids, or that have unique skins which would make them desirable to non-raiders.

Proposal Functionality
This would basically be a stat that armor dropped in raids would have some base level of, and could be raised further with a collectible buff, similar to Agony Resist. Increasing this stat gives you a raw damage and defense buff that would ONLY apply to raid enemies. Effectively, a player with say 100 raid stat would deal 10% more damage to enemies in raids, and take 10% less damage from their attacks, or whatever is deemed balance-appropriate.
..

Please, do not design raids around sparing the feelings of people who do not want to raid.. Make the raids, make them the best they can be, give them unique visual rewards. If some people who don’t want to raid would want these items.. well, then they better start raiding.

To the stat thing. Do not include any kind of flat damage or defense buff ever. This is basically nerfing the raid(s) from the start.
Not only that, it would divide the playerbase even further (as alot of people seem to be afraid of. I’m not) because those players who can get far from the start, are already ahead shortly after the release of the raids, and then they should be given drops that makes it even easier for them, while those that struggle keep struggling?
Seem like a recipe for disaster in my eyes.

Conski Deshan.2057:

A token system is bad (with the assumption that tokens are dropped throughout the dungeon) as it allows a person who can’t get past the first boss to eventually get the item in question, this is an exercise in your abilities , if you fail to make it past the first boss 1000 times you still get nothing but the first bosses rewards, the items are not a “participation reward” they are a medal for completing the content.

If it’s placed at the end a crafting ingredient usable in the mystic forge or with high level recipes would be a suitable replacement to an additional currency. (which I did suggest in other posts)

A token system is not necessarily bad, Conski. It depends on the implementation.
It was implemented with X tokens per boss in the raid, and a vendor outside the raid, that would be bad. Because this would allow be to just endless kill the first boss, if they couldn’t defeat the second (or so) boss and still be able to acquire the unique rewards.

If instead the vendor were to spawn inside the raid after defeating specific bosses in the raid, you would still have to progress a certain amount into the raid before you were able to convert your tokens into a proper reward.
Furthermore, there could be several vendors along the way, offering progressively more desirable pieces of gear (like gloves first, weapons only after the end boss).

This, in my opinion, is one way that tokens could be positively included in the reward system, alongside a few guaranteed and some RNG rewards.

Blaeys.3102:

NOTE: I do believe the game would benefit from ultra hard content. However, I think that content belongs in dungeons. Five player content (or single player for that matter) doesnt have as great an impact on the atmosphere/community in the game.

I’m still gonna vote for 10-15 man instances, as it just opens up possibilities for more interesting encounters. Not that 5 man encounters can’t be interesting, there’s just more possibilities with 10-15 man instances.

As a note to the rest of your post. I don’t think introducing truly challenging content in the form of 10-15 man raids will cause those problems you speak of.
GW2 is a very different game than the games that currently have raids. And this difference is also why I think raiding in GW2 will be so much different.
Most posts I’ve read in this CDI are asking for challenging content, that is accessible (from a playtime perspective).
And I understand that as challenging content, that won’t require me to sit here for 4-5 hours every night of the week, but rather something where I can truly put my skills to the test, while both allowing for me (and others) to have real lives on the side, and allowing people to play the raids several times a week.

Ashen.2907:

Conski Deshan.2057:

Untradeable account bound rewards are an important part of raids for me,

The exact opposite is true for me.

If a given raid’s rewards are not appealing to a given player (weapon/armor skin appeal is very subjective) then that raid is not rewarding to anyone who shares his opinion about those skins.

Raid reward exclusivity works better in a game where the rewards are objectively appealing through stat increase than would be the case in a game supposedly focused on horizontal progression. Of course if eight or ten raids completely separate unique rewards were introduced simultaneously it might be at least somewhat more palatable.

I can see your concern. But this goes for many things in this game.
I for one think pretty much every legendary looks like stuff that would be censored if I wrote it. And on top of that, the few I actually like, weren’t weapons I really used alot, or they didn’t fit the character I used that weapon on, so for me the legendaries were not interesting. So I didn’t go for them.
So, what if a part of the playerbase does not like the unique rewards released with the first raid? Does that mean the raid should not be made? Or should not have unique rewards for those who do like the skins? Of course not.
It means that the raids should also have other rewards, stuff that can be traded, titles etc.
But you cannot exclude unique rewards because a minority of the playerbase might not like them.

Astralporing.1957:

That’s not necessarily true. There are ways you could do that without increasing difficulty for the less skilled players at all.
(simple example: make some of the boss attacks triggers not by a clock, but by the % hp he loses – so you get the same number regardless if you burst him down in 5 seconds or in 2 minutes. that is of course very general idea, as it would need to account for dodges and invulnerability, but that also can be done)

Having boss phases triggered by different things (time, hp etc.) from enconter to encounter as you suggest is definitely a thing I’d want to part of the variety between boss encounters in raids.

But what I think he was talking about was not so much the damage the players deal to the bosses, but rather the survivability of the players.
If the best players in the game cannot survive an encounter unless they wear the maximized defensive stat gear, how could we expect the lesser players to be able to survive it? This would just make Nomad gear the obligatory gear stats instead of Berserker gear.
So, to be honest, I think of us would prefer the gear difference lying in the fact, that if you’re a little better than the rest at surviving, then you can take the risk of using Berserker gear, while if you’re not quite as quick on your dodges etc. then you’d want to use something with a little more toughness or vitality and so on.

Iason Evan.3806:

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

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

While everyone being on a level playing field is a nice thought. This would completely devaluate the time and effort alot of people put into making their ascended gear. This would be a very bad thing.

Iason Evan.3806:

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

While upscaling characters could be a nice feature. Again it creates too many problems. First of all, there’s no way of telling whether someone has all their skills or traits, if they’re running around in blues or greens (as they probably will be sub level 80), or if they even know how to play their class yet.
All these things should be achieved on the way to 80, where you will then be ready to take on the challenging content, when you’re ready for it.
As for alts, those who really want/need another class for their raid party will find a way to get to 80 fast. Most people have lots of tomes stored away, or gold to craft their way there faster. It won’t be a huge problem for them.

Iason Evan.3806:

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

If I want to fight other players, I’ll go to sPvP or WvW. Please keep that out of raids.

Iason Evan.3806:

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

This could be exploited way too easy..

Iason Evan.3806:

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

What’s wrong with traditional raid design?
I’m not saying raids in GW2 should be exactly like in other games, but most of the core principles of raiding are pretty universal in my opinion. And combining those universal principles with the unique combat system of GW2 is enough uniqueness and difference to me.

spoj.9672:

The problem with account bound rewards is that they are only rewarding the first time you get them. After that they are completely worthless. So no i dont want to see account bound and soulbound rewards. I understand people dont want raids to become a vastly superior farm spot. But the whole idea of rewards is to get something rewarding. And for many people that means money to buy other things they want. Uniques skins are nice but if you already have them then you should be able to sell them for a nice profit.

• If they made a whole new set of skins (maybe with stats) for a raid, that’s 18 different pieces of armor, and 19 different weapons. Perhaps even 1 or more back piece skins. So there would be plenty of skins to get before you’re “done”. Of course if you only play one armor class, there’s less for you to get, but still quite a few pieces.
• The rewards should be given in form of boxes, so you always choose yourself what piece you want. This removes the problem of getting undesirable pieces.
• The unique skins should not be available right away, as in you won’t get them by defeating the first boss, but rather by defeating maybe the 5th boss (or only at the end boss).
• They could make every skin upgradeable. This could be achieved in a number of ways. ** Upgrading could require several of the same piece (along with other ingredients – in the mystic forge).
  • The skins could be upgraded with X amount of an item, that you could also choose from the boxes. This way you could already early on get the choice of “do I go for 5-6 pieces of base skins, or do I use my box 2-6 to get that item to upgrade my first skin?”.
• In line with the upgradeable skins: if the items were with stats, maybe they could start at exotic and be upgraded to ascended along with the visual upgrade (much like the fractal capacitor), perhaps up to infused status (in NO way calling for agony in raids btw)
• As the last thing. I wouldn’t rule out tokens completely, as they are a nice contrast to RNG (and I’m also not a fan of completely guaranteed rewards).
  • To make a token system work, without undermining the uniqueness of the skins in the raid, a simple barrier could be placed on the vendor. Much like I think the skins should not be rewarded by too early bosses in the raid, the vendor for the tokens could spawn (or be locked behind) specific bosses in the raid. This way you could work around your bad luck and still get your skins if you were able to get far enough into the raid. Perhaps the vendors could even be “tiered”, offering small armor pieces at the first spawn, bigger armor pieces later and finally weapons.

As for money, there should obviously be a much better gold/time+effort ratio in the raids than what currently exist in Fractals, and of course also various other tradeable rewards. Just keep the raid-unique skins non tradeable.

Astralporing.1957:

The raids, if they are implemented, would indeed need a reward system that is equivalent to time and effort investment. It should not however be visibly more rewarding than other forms of content (again, relatively to time and effort invested). Running raids should definitely not be less rewarding, that running dungeons. It shouldn’t be more rewarding either – or at least the differences should not be huge. So, rewards from, for example, 2 hours of raiding should not be higher that, say, ~4 hours of any other alternate content. And if raids are to offer unique rewards, then any other alternate content should offer equivalent unique rewards as well (though personally i think that there should be nothing in this game that would be available through less than at least two alternate methods – not including TP).

Other content should reward unique rewards, and most of them do. What we miss are unique rewards acquired through skill. We have unique rewards acquired through every other aspect of the game.
And the unique rewards from raids should in no way be available elsewhere, escpecially not on the TP.

Kaz.5430:

From a technical point of view, I am guessing that the reason for a 15 man limit is based on the theoretical maximum size for a party. Any more than 15 players would – I assume – mean that there is not enough screen space to include the health bar of all party members.

I’m not sure the 15 man limit was made up because of screen space. I think the 15 man limit is an estimated size, above which any encounter would start to become dumbed down by the amount of players. For every additional player in the team, less effort is needed per player.
Also all their particle effects would decrease visibility of indicators you need to see.
In my opinion, 10 or 15 players is probably the best size (also makes it possible to combine teams of 5), no scaling and preferably just one raid size (per raid) from the start.

As for your talk about the Marionette. I think it would be perfectly fine to have a few (in time) big one-boss raids like the Marionette for bigger raid groups (like the Vault bosses in WoW during WotLK).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

How about we focus on progression later and start brainstorming the core activities and encounters.

Don’t have alot of time (it took a while to catch up), but here are a few thoughts on what I would like to see in the encounters in a raid:

• A rework of Defiance:
  • Maybe the boss just has a fixed numbers of stacks. This way the “controllers” always know how many interrupts are needed to interrupt something.
  • Perhaps the stacks refresh if left untouched for a few seconds (5-10?), thus requiring that all necessary interrupts happen in short succession.
  • Let other control effects (immobilize, chill, cripple and blind) have more effect than they currently have. Make them viable.

• A need for movement:
  • Environmental effects (AoE etc.) appear in cycles (or randomly) – the party cannot remain in the same spot for more than a few seconds (whatever seems a fair amount of time).
  • Maybe some environmental effects can be negated with specific fields (waterfields on fire etc.).
  • Maybe some effects can only be removed with certain skill effects (burning removing vines etc.)
  • Some effects could require parts of the party to “leave” the fight to control/negate the effect through environmental means (levers, bundles etc.)

• A more visual aggro/threat system:
  • Not asking for threat generating abilities.
  • But a system to indicate which player is being targeted by the boss.
    • This could be a threat table, or it could be a sound or visual cue when the boss targets someone.

• Bosses and other encounters:
  • “Boss”-encounters doesn’t necessarily have to be a boss (or 2).
  • Could be gauntlet-like events, defense events etc.

Just a few thoughts before I go back to studying.

Blaeys.3102:

Scaling:

While it isnt perfect, it is preferable to the alternative. As Ive said before, the idea of possibly having to leave people I have been playing with for a long time out of guild raid nights makes me sick to my stomach a little. That said, I do believe scaling should be limited to make harder raids plausible (for example raids that scale from 8-24 people).

Difficulty:

The difficulty should come in the coordination and teamwork required to accomplish the task at hand. I understand this is hard to reconcile with scaling issues, but I think that is a challenge GW2/ArenaNet should try to overcome. The downside to scaling is just too great. There have been some good recommendations regarding this topic throughout this thread already.

Practically, I think the demarcation comes at the coordination level. Raids shouldnt be possible by groups that refuse to communicate in any way, but, at the same time, they shouldnt necessarily require voice comm programs either. You should shoot for a difficulty somewhere between the two.

Bottom line, though – EVERY player should be considered when designing raids. You really have to avoid creating tiers or castes of players in game based on who is and who isn’t allowed to raid (by the community).

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Rewards:

Raiding cannot be seen as the pinnacle of GW2 end game. It has to be complimentary to dungeons, Living Story, WvW, guild missions, world bosses, etc. If it isn’t approached this way, you risk creating an in game caste system similar to those found in other games (and that many of us came to GW2 to escape from). Rewards need to be modeled after reward models in other areas of the game (if there are issues with rewards as a whole, they should be addressed in a macro thread as well).

Scaling
I’d much rather have fixed size on the raids, than the alternative. I originally thought the raids should be scalable, but after reading Chris’ post about the problems this would cause in designing the encounters, I immediately changed my mind to fixed size.
In no way would I prefer lowering the quality of the encounters to make sure I could get everyone online in my guild in at once.
We have survived being odd numbers (not dividable by 5) for dungeons for 2 years, and we still managed to fill the gaps with “outsiders” or taking turns in who got to come along, and I’m sure we can survive it here.
Making the entrance cooldown low enough, I’m sure we’ll be able to cycle through our members for the raids.
We can always put a limiter on how many times you can claim the exclusive rewards (as I suggested), like once per week. This way, the X players who did not get to go on monday, can still join in for the go on wednesday and claim their exclusive rewards, while those who were also in on monday will only get the daily rewards on wednesday (unless they beat a boss they did not beat on monday).

Difficulty
As for difficulty, communication should definitely be necessary. I’d even prefer if voice communication was needed.
I’m fine with wide accessibility, but it must still be hard. Beating the later bosses (or whatever it turns out to be) must be an achievement. It has to take hard work, and for a big part of the playerbase it should take a long time to get to the end (probably myself included).

Rewards
Raids should be the pinnacle (of PvE). It should be the hardest, and the rewards should be exclusive. They should not be available anywhere else, and they should not be tradable.
I’m all for a “lesser” version of whatever skins will be in there. Just like the PvP Glorious armor set.

Dalanor.5387:

Same as tanky builds which renders mechanics such as active defenses completely meaningless.
The way i see skipping is just another way to deal with things and honestly, killing trash is not fun after a lot of runs when the novelty wears off and they still don’t worth the effort lootwise. Back in the days Hrouda posted about the issue why they can’t really do something about this which can be read HERE.

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What enables “mindless corner stacking” are the powerful nature of active defenses and slow enemy attacks. Press one button, damage completely negated.
With rapid damage income you just promote passive defense, which would be a dumb idea since this isn’t what GW2’s PvE combat is about. Or at least it shouldn’t.
Tanky setups should outlive the opponent and slowly kill it, while full offensive ones just blows it up before they run out of active damage mitigation tools otherwise they just die in 1-2 hits. Everything in between well thats another issue, but thats what we call unoptimized, right?

I agree that killing trash is usually not fun, which is why my proposal in this thread suggested a format with very little attention on trash, as I’m much more interested in the challenging boss encounters, and most trash are simply delays with rarely any loot in exchange for the time they took from you.
An option would be to design “Trash-Bosses” which would basically just be boss encounters, but instead of one boss, it would be alot of trash mobs you had to deal with in one way or another (haven’t given it much though, just a quick idea I just got).

I am aware of how stacking works, but it’s still in no way an interesting way of fighting a boss, and while it requires the players in the party to bring their share of defenses, I personally cannot remember the last time I stood in a corner in a dungeon thinking: “wow, this is challenging”..
Which is why I want encounters that makes stacking impossible. However they choose to do that, well, I guess that’s one of the things we need to figure out in this thread.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Hi guys!

I thought I’d swing by and leave a quick introduction as I’ll be working with Chris to monitor this thread (and because I don’t post nearly as much as he does on the forums so most of you are unfamiliar with me in these CDI discussions).

I previously worked on some of the Fractals, Tequatl/Triple Trouble, and the Boss Blitz. Much like you all, I have an invested interest in raiding and I’m extremely excited to discuss what that could mean in Guild Wars 2!

There are already some really great discussions going on! I’m trying to get caught up on everything now and looking forward to reading more of your ideas.

Welcome to the discussion! Hope you find some good ideas/inspiration in here

Dalanor.5387:

NoTrigger.8396:

more difficult and challenging content for a bigger party size. more teamwork, more coordination, more mechanics… the list goes on.

Any example? Didn’t read the whole thread yet sorry.

That Guy.5704:

Also, preferably, mechanics that discourage skipping and stack-and-spank.

Removing the active use of Swiftness, Stealth and melee in general is a great idea in your opinion, am i understand this right?
Why skipping bothers you?
Why melee fighting bothers you?

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Why not let the player decide when he wants to progress? Let average Joe take a longer break and try the next bosses with some other guys.

Thats exactly what weekly / monthly resets do.

Larger teams opens up possibilities for splitting the team into smaller parts, some players focusing on damaging the boss, others maybe have to defend an npc, some maybe have to deal with adds that shouldn’t be allowed to reach the boss or some other point in the room, someone might have to periodically pull a lever somewhere..
You might say these things can be done in a 5 man group, but the options are just more limited with 5 people (you can only split up in increments of 20%, while with 10 or more players, you have more options for splitting).

Skipping is bad, because it renders part of an instance obsolete (you know, because you skip it), and as such, the instance should be designed in either a way to prevent skipping or to make skipping meaningless.

And no one has anything against melee combat, there’s just nothing challenging about standing in a corner spamming skills while occasionally pressing “F” if someone gets downed. It’s not an interesting use of mechanics.
The boss encounters should have more focus on the use of control and support. This of course requires that the bosses are designed, so that control skills actually work on them (changing how Defiance works, or replace it with something new).

BenGrech.3912:

The difficulty of the raid could be adjusted by the player (the more difficult, the more AR needed) and so in this way, the hardcore players can do the most difficult version of the raid, having high AR values.

The raid itself would consist of multiple bosses, and would last more than a normal dungeon would. Each boss is to have his/her own Loot Table and that way no more RNG and getting random greens. Instead, one can look at the table to see his/her potential loot, giving people the initiative to do these raids even more if they see some epic l00t that drops from that one particular boss!

In my opinion, they should keep Agony far, far away from the raids. Agony is a bad gate. All Agony did was gate some of Fractals behind a grind for ascended armor and infusion.
The gate here should instead be actually difficult encounters. No stacking possible, adds that needs to controlled/taken care of, levers that need to be pulled at the right time, npcs that need to be kept alive etc.

Unique loot tables and unique skins are more than welcome. Account-bound of course, you can’t sell achievement.