Guild Wars 2

my final example is of a larger group dungeon raid leveraging AC as the setting

A Dungeon Raid: example using AC

Three parties begin the Ascalon catacombs dungeon and each party is bound to one of the NPC’s.in order to progress to the spider queen, one party may disable traps, and another hold back waves of gravelings while a third confronts spider queen. The trap team can later build or use siege/bundles on platforms above/around queen spider than can cleanse the spiders poison fields and destroy webs and cocoons created to snare other players.

After spider, players join up for Kohler as his essence is holding shut the doors to the north south east and west. The Kohler fight is similar to the barradin statue fight from dragons reach part 1. Menders and buffers approach from the eastern and western bridges and must be stopped. Ghostly reinforcements come from the north and south to overwhelm players. As the reinforcements die they weaken kohler so he can be attacked, menders that get in range heal kohler and buffers along with Kohler’s pull and spin attack regenerates his invulnerability buff and buffs his attacks.

Parties split to work with their respective NPC; Detha to traps at flooded temple, Tzark to lover’s crypt, and hodgins to the south. Hodgins and Tzarks group meet in the hall of champions and work together to destroy graveling burrows and kill 5 graveling lieutenants to find the scepter pieces. Hodgins and Tzarks groups move to graveling tunnels to confront colossus rumbulus and the howling king, Detha’s team must find the parts for traps (new), and moves to the now clear hall of champions to set up traps, for Ghost Eater. Some where along the way each party is beset by a cave troll, the troll stuns the party for a time and blocks the way forward for the party with debris. The trolls must be fought and killed by each party.

Boss encounters: Tzarks team has been turned into Ghosts but needs to become in tune to fight Colossus Rumbulus by getting hit by the howling king’s laser blast attack. The attack does little to no damage as they are transformed. Tzarks team properly attuned can now move into the Puzzle area up the stairs to fight Rumbulus. If a player falls off the platforms their attunement is removed and they must get it again to rejoin the fight. During the fight Tzark will summon ghost allies on a specific platform that use shelter that players must get to, to avoid the ceiling collapse.
Detha’s team sets up traps and must charge all three. The ghost eater once de-buffed by traps regains stacks of ghostly armor by absorbing the spectral oozes that are attracted to the traps, in addition to the ones he spawns in his spectral phase. All in all it is much harder though maybe not completely impossible to kill ghost eater in one trap.
The howling king has his own spectral phase that must be removed by kiting him through hodgins fire, also the fire rings hodgins summons act as attunement rings similar to the watch knight champions from battle for LA; players get a short buff from the fire that allows them to deal damage. The Howling king will regain specral armor by the gravelings he summons dying near him. It will be important to wait to down the howling king so that people fighting rumbulus can still get attuned if they fall.
All three graveling bosses must be downed within 1 or 2 minutes of each other or they will regenerate from the ghostly energy of the one/s that remain alive.

NOTE the encounter mechanics will only be vaguely similar to those of the explorable mode dungeon. Again, I refer to the many brilliantly brainstormed mechanics ideas within this thread to be implemented throughout to create a meaningful challenge for the group experiencing the content.

my second example, a short term raid using dry top as an example

A Dry top “boss blitz” raid:

For 45 minutes players in the instance must split up to different areas and complete events to raise the favor of the Zepherites. Each event has bonus objectives that will add extra favor. To reach the maximum favor tier, every event and its bonus must be completed. Each event that is completed ads to a overall reward tally that determines total reward for every player in the instance. Each player will receive thier reward in a number of “daily” chests at the conclusion of the favor phase based on the entire group’s total achievement.

For 15-20 minutes after the favor phase is a sandstorm phase, events that appear are determined by the total tier reached in the favor phase. For each tier of favor earned, a “boss” will spawn in a different part of the zone (sand giant, two inquest golems at their respective bases, a mordrem in the ley-line hub, chicken-ado, dust mite twister, some kind of boss in the mine at prosperity) each boss must be taken down in the time limit to get full rewards. Like in boss blitz, as they die, their mechanics are spread to the other bosses. A number of other minor events or bonuses to the boss fights also occur in the sandstorm.

Finally In the event UI a number of earned “lockpicks” is displayed and every player has access to the pool of “lockpicks”. Players can use these to open the buried locked chests that appear in the sandstorm and every player receives rewards based on the number of chests found. The sandstorm phase concludes with each player receiving loot based upon the number of bosses defeated bonuses achieved and chests opened.

NOTE the map and events therein will be balanced around a specific number of people completing them with little, or no scaling as if too many people are there other events are not completed. some events should only trigger at the completion of other events the amount of interdependence of events should be high, as that will take players longer to learn and unravel the connections and bonuses/secrets availiable.

here is an example of a zone clear raid, remember that it is supposed to be an example of implementation of high level principals drawing from many of the posts on this topic any specific fight mechanics that have been mentioned in previous posts can be applied anywhere, the goal is for each encounter to be a challenge to learn, and complete successfully.

A Zone Clear raid: example using Cursed shore

The group starts at the top northern entrance and pushes toward Caer Shadowfain escorting a supply moss heart/dolyak/charr tanks….etc. Physical obstacles/patrol spawns must be dealt with while defending the escort. Boss encounter: Risen archmage, blocks progress with bone walls, must be defeated to progress. Party splits for Events: take caer shadowfain from the risen / defend caer shadowfain from the risen assault from the plateau to the east / explorer plinx chain. one group goes on to R&D encampment and pushes down to Graveborn’s landing and starts melandru, one group enters the Maze triggers important mechanic for melandru and assaults temple from the water, one group travels south to penitent/ shelters gate/ jofasts camp escorts joins melandru event from the south. Boss encounter: cleanse the temple of melandru. This event should include the Cartesian well area behind the temple of verdance.

From the temple of melandru, group pushes to meddlers summit. Events: champ Giant champ ooze and risen chicken and gorilla events. Once at meddlers group splits to take control of three important objectives, one each to the east (tombs), south (anchorage), and west (harbinger torch). Once anchorage is taken, Arah cannot be assaulted until the protective barrier origionating from Grenth’s temple is disabled. The group Must take control of the remaining beacons/torches in order to assault cathedral of silence. Boss encounter: temple of Grenth.

After temple of Grenth each party is teleported to a different location on the south end of cursed shore: the top end of Buried archives (must do jumping puzzle in reverse, finds a portal back to cathedral of silence, fights out to the north), shipwreck rock (fights the megalodon, and stays in the water fighting north), and the bottom of the ship at deaths anthem( fights rot beard, grubs, escort through caves). each group must fight their way back to anchorage by the event chains that lead north from these locations. Once at anchorage, the assault on Arah begins. Boss encounter: Assault on Arah. Gather support >champ giant >champ Eye > champ wizard.

Each boss in the zone is a significantly difficult fight with failure conditions other than a timer. Each boss in the zone cannot be bypassed and there are walls preventing players from skipping each encounter until they are completed. Each area of the zone has different environmental effects due to god statues that are removed upon successful completion of the areas events, or sometimes events specific to each statue, similar to urgoz’s warren or DOA in GW1.

NOTE the idea is not for the fights to happen as they already do in the open world but to have added mechanics and requirements and failure conditions. I leave specific mechanics of fights and encounters to readers imagination as may many excellent example have been given in this thread

Types of raids:

to me raids fall into 3 potential generalized categories with more specific subcategories

1. Long term
a. Long, linear or semi-linear series of encounters with save points (more traditional style)
b. Zone clears: less linear, could take a long time to complete at first but can be done faster once it is learned and mastered. (save points debatable)

2. Short term, Timed encounters:
a. Single boss Instances
i. Take any large boss encounter already in game
ii. Add a bunch of new and important mechanics
iii. Balance for x number people
b. The “Boss blitz” raid:
i. I would put a “dry top raid” in this category
ii. Multi phase (Build phase/reward phase) timed open areas with multiple objectives/events/bosses
iii. Tower defense content could go here
iv. Reward based on level of completion achieved as in Zepharite favor tiers
(these systems can get very intricate which is nice)
3. Indeterminate: no time limit
a. Dungeon raids
i. All three paths done simultaneously by three parties
ii. Interwoven mechanics and requirements
iii. Places where groups are together and apart
b. Zone clears can also go in this category depending on intricacy
c. Possible GvG or PvP raid instances belong here

I will follow up with a generalized example of a potential raid from each category, remember that it is supposed to be examples of implementation of high level principals drawing from many of the posts on this topic

What should raids do?

o Raids should be the pinnacle of difficult game-play within a game
o should leverage all the mechanics, tricks, and gimmicks in the game
o The content pushes the players experiencing it to their skill and knowledge limits.
o Raids should require players to rely on each-other
o have real failure (kick mechanic),
o Also have come-back (second chance) mechanics. (So far the marionette fight is the closest I have experienced to this idea of relying on others and having second chances for success in GW2.)

What are the mechanic limits?

GW 2 combat is not about some arbitrary formula of managing healing, tanking, and damage numbers as separate entities. Look at what every player gets regardless of profession.
o 2 dodges one every 5-10 seconds: complete damage mitigation for .75 seconds
o 1 heal skill on a relatively short cool down 15-30sec (can also provide utility)
o 5 utility skills (counting heal and elite) that can be swapped out of combat that cover a wide variety of situations (blocks, blinds, dodges, projectile reflection/destruction, movement, boon management, etc)
o 5 to 20 weapon skills that can be swapped out of combat (weapon sets)
o A selection from a limited amount of: 15 minor traits, and 65 major traits, that can be combined in various ways any time out of combat that effect how that character interacts with teammates and enemies.

What challenges can be formulated while still allowing for any party composition?

- Managing dodges:
o this would mean one hit skills on a choreographed pattern that force the players to use and their dodges very carefully
o fight mechanics that deal damage only when mob/boss’s attack is dodged successfully
o dodging is the only/primary damage source
o mob’s hits will heal it for a significant amount

-Positioning:
o choreographed attacks and mechanics that can be mitigated or taken advantage
o Smart positioning,
o Forcing the party in and out of stacks and open formations.
o The smaller the room for error the more “difficult” the content will be, (I say choreographed because if it is all just random there is little in the way of “learning/knowing” the encounter and the satisfaction that comes form said learning)

-Control or lock down through aggregate Teamwork: this was the IMO the intended purpose of Defiant. Not everyone likes Defiant, but it can be used very well if balanced correctly for smaller coordinated groups. For example:
o because of defiant bosses cannot be permanently shut down,
o key attacks that must be interrupted or the party will wipe.
o defiant must be removed before that attack is up,
o during a warm up phase,
o Perhaps the attack is a long channel life siphon (champ risen wraiths, or mordrem leeching thrashers are good examples)?

-kill timing: multiple enemies/bosses that need to be taken down in a short window,
o If not, some failure or reset mechanic occurs. (triple wurm/ SE path 2 golems)

- splitting up: 1, 2, 3, or 5 man groups separate to:
o Finish specific objectives simultaneously before everyone comes together for a climactic finish. There are many good examples of this in game already.
o CoF P1,
o parts of AC when well coordinated,
o TA forward and Aetherpath
o dedicated teams from tequatl and triple wurm,
o marionette lanes and platforms,
o Various guild challenges and puzzles
o Drytop
o Boss blitz
o Toypocalypse

- Roles: more specifically mechanics that require people to be doing something other than circle strafe or stack, and auto attack. This includes:
o Any kind of siege that needs maintenance or defending,
o defense groups vs. attack groups,
o some form of managing boss Aggro/attacks and juggling that between players.
o These mechanics also can mean some kind of change to a players skill bar while interacting with an object, or being transformed.

-Phases: to break up the monotony of a fight, essentially making it less repetitive.
o Breaking defense, then burn phase.
o Attunement phase, damage phase, removal of attunement, repeat.
o Critical phase, dodge phase, condition phase, environmental weapon phase, interrupt phase……. Etc

Most of the mechanics I would like to see in this kind of challenging instances group content has been expanded upon. However, most of them already exist; such as the mechanics in many places of the game that are either ignored because of lack of impact, or that they are already understood by a majority of players and do not require the whole party to participate. I think there are a huge pool of mechanics that exist within the game now and they just need to be adjusted to be a bit more punishing and require more teamwork/coordination in these “raid” encounters

What about mechanics that haven’t existed in the game?

- mobs that take damage or gain debuffs from the parties heals

- mobs that require a specific condition to be upkept to take damage
Example: a mob that only takes damage while chilled or with vuln or cripple this reminds me of the shaggaroth in Arah though (on fire)

- something requiring the down state?
Example: a player goes down at the enemies feet and that allows extra damage, or initiates a burn phase, the player could be Rezzed after or kept down with party members partly rezzing for the duration (make use of extra down hp traits)
^ I know this one is a stretch????

With regards to the armor duscussion and General raid progression, instead of just making legendary armor, why not have raid rewards allow people to build a stat library for their gear? The stat library seems the most useful over looks as far as progression in my opinion.
– Slowly, one stat set at a time, peice by peice while doing the content. It should be long term right? Replay value and all that stuff.

- players will have access to the different gear stats that they may want to play with without taking up inventory space

- with this everything about a players build is modifiable outside of combat, it allows for more finely tuned encounters as later raids are developed.

- this system could allow for a non traditional “teir” system for raids where a raid that is benefitted by having a certain star set drops the necessary loot for adding that stat set to the stat library.

- encounters could then be developed so that a number of players (not all) using a specific stat set will make the encounter easier (significantly) over other stat sets

- a truly horizontal system of progression (diversifying the player characters utility) while playing the content. No numbers get bigger just adding the ability to fully min max builds at any time out of combat.

I think adding libraries on an individual item basis is a strength and not a time sink, allowing for mix matching and only adding libraries to certain prices to maximize efficiency makes for strategy and such. Also having fully diversified characters gives the developers more power to allow for less room for error by the players

RISKS:
Players wanting only people who have full stat libraries leading to the Lf healer dilemma

I think I was looking to get in on the horizontal CDI, however it seems to be the eleventh hour for that so I’ll post this here maybe it will spark some discussion, but I feel the need to put it somewhere.

Ascended armor and build variety:

I will start by saying that while traits are easy enough to redistribute (3.5 silver at lvl 80), the additional stats on armor trinkets and weapons are many times the total stat points available to you through traits, and can make a big difference in how your build plays.

While ascended quality armor and weapons are in my opinion, good for the game overall, They do have some drawbacks:

The amount of materials involved are immense and time/gold consuming to achieve, this leads to degenerate, or not fun play in order to attain even just one set.

Having best in slot gear being so time consuming to attain makes it seem unlikely that average players would ever consider having multiple sets of different stats to run different builds with. this limits build experimentation (due to high cost) and therefore limits build variety.

Being able to change builds easily and cheaply is the best way to encourage build variety and opens an entire avenue of viable horizontal progression for our characters. Especially if the rewards is access to a feature like “build templates”

Having any stat combo available to run on legendary weapons is great incentive to attain these weapons and makes them worth getting over exotics for long term players.

it makes sense for legendary a to have any stat available to them, they include 250 of each of the stat determining materials( claws, bones, totems, fangs, blood, scales, venom sacs), which makes up for the 8 or 9 stat combos that either can’t be crafted, or are crafted with different items like Passion flowers, karka shells, Azurite, quartz, or random inscription/insignia salvages/purchases.

To be honest, I would not like to see a legendary set of armor. Even if the requirements were very, very different from that of legendary weapons or if we got all 6 pieces at once. If we were eventually able to attain legendary armor, the function of stat swapping should be achievable by other means.

What if ascended armor could be “infusable”? Not with agony resistance, or with extra infusion slots, but with different stat combinations, one at a time, until it had every stat combo you wanted at your disposal….

There are a number of ways this can be implemented, either through boring but quicker means such as crafting, mystic forge recipes, or more interesting means like a number of npc’s (either in your home instance, or within your order or even the pact) that lead the player through instances (personal story style) themed for the type of “stat infusion” desired.

Or perhaps a combination of the two. Where the “infusion instances” give a material as a reward that is used in the crafting window or the mystic forge. that way there can be lore, And story, and a journey to increasing the stat combos available to you, and it can be done out of order, where you get stat infusions while working toward your ascended armor (the content won’t be gated).

This allows for a player to “unlock” variety, diversity, and new gameplay opportunities. Essentially progressing their character past the level cap, increasing the ways they can be effective without losing inventory space or having to grind out another set with different stats just to try a new play style.

It expands the game (more things to do/personal goals to reach for) without breaking the systems that are in place and having to change or consider rolling people back. And allows for expansion as new stat combos are added into the game.

Thoughts?