Guild Wars 2

Subdue.5479:

@Lishtenbird:

There wasn’t anything particularly meaningful about the dailies before the patch. Talk to a laurel vendor? Kill ambients? Remove conditions?

If anything, the fact that the changes encourage players to explore other areas and modes is far more meaningful.

That last one was actually really meaningful. It taught people to equip a condition cleanse skill. Just as daily dodger taught people to dodge. You’d be surprised how many people didn’t know either was possible before that.

kornfanxxx.9143:

Another thing to note too, I haven’t done alot of fractals since the update, But has the gold reduction been slapped there too?

Well, definitely they didn’t move the rewards to fractals, like they said they did. And on average, the loot from encryption boxes is so bad it’s not worth buying keys for them.

emikochan.8504:

They wanted to do it without blowing out the economy

It had nothing to do with economy. They just wanted people to stop playing dungeons, because they themselves are not interested in maintaining those.
Also, it was most likely done in order to boost raid participation numbers once they are out. Seems they are afraid Raids won’t be as splendid a success as they’d have wanted without some “creative help” like that.

SplendidDust of AncientSuns.8453:

I have crafted 2 ascended weapons, and will soon have a third. I won’t be worried if armor crafting piece by piece requires a similar crafting process. You don’t have to be a hardcore player to get this stuff IMHO.

Let me now laugh at this sentence very long and hard. Just getting your craft (one, not all 3) up to level 500 requires some serious farming – even if you played from the very beginning, casual gameplay won’t get you enough mats for it. Then, you have to get lot of mats again for deldrimor/spiritwood (or blow a lot of cash on those), do over 20 temple/world boss events, and 25 dungeons. And kill over thirty champions. To craft one weapon.
Just how it is not hardcore?

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

tl;dr No one should have to worry about using the TP or become a detective to determine if the person with whom they are trading is engaged in RMT (buying or selling)

Exactly. In fact, Anet encourages us to use TP (and pay the tax), using this as an argument. TP is supposed to be safe, and Anet is supposed to guarantee this.
There should be no exceptions from it.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well they managed to kill this thread using their typical means. It’s sad that we won’t even get the dignity of a response after almost 3000 posts. This thread was more active than the whole game and yet nothing.

It’s not like this is the first time it happens. They don’t like for players to point out that something is wrong, and prefer to just ignore it hoping it will go away on its own. Which may work short term, but just keeps building up dissatisfaction more and more.

In the end, it’s their inability to connect with the community that will kill this game.

Kite.2510:

A-net mentioned many times that they didn’t anticipated Exotics to become so common.

Which is funny, since before that their stated goal wast to have pretty much everyone be in Exotics at level 80. They didn’t anticipate to ever reach their stated goals? Oh, really?

Cyninja.2954:

Astralporing.1957:

alwinp.2791:

Why can’t you people just assume the fact that ascended changes NOTHING except giving players a goal to work for.

i wouldn’t call ~+20% dps bonus on zerkers (full exo vs full ascended) to be nothing. Besides, the problem goes beyond mere stats – it changes the core ideology behind the game away from things i bought this game for.

Exagerate much? Here read up:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/159ml1oahEyM6zWQ-oD4XQcHsk1mI5G6tVnjk_FOeinA/edit?pli=1#gid=348011649

It’s 10% and that is with a majority of this bonus comming from trinkets (the easiest to aquire ascended),a medium part from weapons (the in between ascended), and a very minor part from armor (the by far biggest chunk with lowest return).

Okay, adding might stacks, fury and other buffs does change the calculation a bit, downplaying the effect of ascended. Still, +11% is still a significant bonus. Actually, to think of it, if you are a person that always fights with full buffs, then +11% dps (well, +12.5%, since you’d likely have infusions as well) is definitely a huge bonus.

Cyninja.2954:

Games change, ascended is here to stay. Learn to deal with it and enjoy the game or not, your call.

As you say, games change. It changed once in a way that i dislike due to few people crying, so i see no reason why it couldn’t change the other way someday if i won’t give up on it.

Danikat.8537:

I just feel bad that new players only get the items and can’t play the actual content.

This. No matter how many items from that time they’ll obtain, new players will never be able to get that feeling we had then.

I see no reason to deny them even this small and really insignificant part of fun from that time. I only wish it may someday be possible for them to be able to see, feel and obtain more.

Dante.1763:

Doesnt bother me at all, frankly i wish players had a way to get some of the HoM rewards, because i barely see anybody using them anyways.

They can, it’s not that hard for most of them. The only reason (well, two reasons) why almost noone uses them nowadays is because:
1. Most people that do not already have access to them do not consider them worthy of the cost to get them,
which ties into
2. Those are really old skins. Which can be seen when comparing them to more recent ones. Seriously, only a few of them survived the test of time.

Still, if anyone wants those, i’d advise them to try to get them. While GW1 is quite old now, it’s still a great game, and they can have fun on top of getting the HoM unlocks. Totally worth the cost, as i see it.

One wold think that a high-profile armor like a legendary precursor would be done better than just copypasting the human model on other races. But if race-specific variations (which would include adapting it for racial physiology, like asuran ears and toes, charr tail and horns etc) are just too much for the overworked Anet devs, then yes, change to male version would have to suffice.

(that saying, the light and medium sets definitely qualify for complete do-overs at this point. And that’s including the male version)

Yeah, the only useful builds should have at least 60 positions long rotations.[/sarcasm]

PopeUrban.2578:

What makes repeated completion of a piece of content compelling is the rewards. Those can take many forms, but the one people seem to agree universally are the most fun and interesting are skins.

These are the reasons people are proponents of exclusivity. It’s not about bribery, or limitations, but rather about feeling that what you’re doing is special and different than the other things you could be doing, and that the lasting mark on your character as a result is reflective of the stuff you did.

You do realize, that works only for the people that wanted to do that content in the first place? If you didn’t want to do it (because you don’t like the content, or, even worse, are not skilled enough for it), then it achieves the result exactly opposite. It makes you feel that what you are doing is a boring and painful slog, that saps the fun out of the game.

Besides, of course it is about bribery (“noone would be doing it otherwise”) and limitations (“it would be worthless if everyone could get it”).

Zalladi.4652:

While they can be very annoying when there are two, they really do add to the realism of a ‘siege’.

Realism may be good in simulations, but too much of it in an entertainment can kill the fun. This is the second case.
Yes, i agree, that with Scarlet having complete aerial superiority, heavy machinery and overwhelming military presence in place (which is not realistic, by the way, but let’s not concentrate on it) most of the rescuers should die within seconds of entering the city (and any zergs should be wiped out from above with aerial barrages within minutes of forming). I’m also sure that noone (or practically noone) would actually want to play the “Omaha beach” scenario where you are one of the frontline grunts bound to die so that the next waves can deploy in slightly better safety.

EverythingXen.1835:

Because adding a tier of gear does not imbalance anything.

I am amazed that you are able to say something like that with a straight face.

Harper.4173:

Tigaseye.2047:

so, unless you provide something for everyone, it’s basically insanity.

This is exactly what HoT did with the addition of hardcore content. GW2’s content remains in its majority casual – but now there are truly hardcore areas and encounters for those who are truly hardcore.

GW2 core content, yes. HoT? No, not even close. And that’s the problem – HoT was paid mostly by people it is not meant for. It was expected to be paid by people it was not meant to (because the population it caters to is too small to pay for its creation on their own).

People may say anything they want now about how “all those complaining players weren’t paying attention to Anet’s warnings” but it still doesn’t change the fact that Anet obviously intented for a vast majority of players to pay for something that was never meant for them. And while it may be a good business move short term (business has nothing to do with morality, after all), it is a terminally stupid thing to do if you are thinking more longterm. People you have cheated once are far less likely to trust you with their money next time, afer all.

Sylum.1806:

It’s amusing how many chime in with anecdotes of high AP players with low skill levels and low AP players with high skill levels.

You folks do understand that the more you cite exceptions, the more you prove the rule, don’t you?

So, you’re saying that the more exceptions there are, the better the rule?
I’m sorry to disappoint you, it doesn’t work that way.

Sylum.1806:

There will always be exceptions. There’ll always be groups that use AP filters that actually are crap and can’t speed run. There’ll always be players that don’t meet the AP requirement who can actually speed run. There’ll always be players that meet the AP requirement who can’t.

All these doesn’t negate the fact that AP filters do work to assemble a team capable of faster runs, most of the time.

In my experience, the time gained by this is on average, less than time wasted on enforcing those requirements.

Solution is simple (and the mechanic for it already exists, so no need for big changes). If there’s an ingame meta that takes up to 2 hours to complete, increase the forced restart timer for open world from 1 hour to over 2.
And if you don’t want to increase those timers, don’t create 2-hour long metas in the first place.

Christos de Soufre.3802:

Wait a week for a general strategy to form and for people to understand the fight. If it’s still too “hard” at that point, then consider nerfing it.

People thought AC and CoF were too hard and begged for nerfs. Didn’t happen, still turned out easy/farmable by the general population.

We had general strategy and general understanding by the third fight. It helped a lot – it let us move from 5% damage inflicted to like 35%. Unfortunately,that still means the best we can hope for is to get to 50%. Unless, like in Blackgate, huge organized guilds will crowd out all the pugs. As a guild event, with TS, it is doable – as BG has proven. As an open world content, it is just not viable unless you manage to negate practically all elements that make it an open world content.

Vyrulisse.1246:

Shiyo.3578:

I like it how it is and want more revealing female armors.

Likewise. I like my characters to look sexy in games. Personally I’m tired of being chastised for that preference.

The problem does not lie in the female armor being revealing. It lies with the different treatment of male and female versions.

It’s okay to have revealing sets alongside the normal-looking ones, as long as the revealing set is equally revealing in both versions.

And you know, exactly as some of the “male players prefer to make attractive female characters and cool-looking male characters”, there are definitely also female players that might want the exact opposite.

Though the problem with female envoy armor is a bit different. It’s not because light and medium female versions are revealing and sexy. Because, while they are revealing, they are definitely not sexy. They are just plain ugly.

Feanor.2358:

Astralporing.1957:

Yeah, the only useful builds should have at least 60 positions long rotations.[/sarcasm]

Except “optimal” isn’t the same as “useful”. Having a complex build deliver better result actually creates a choice rather than take it away. Having mindless “rotations” be the top dps options is the absolute worst thing for the game balance.

Maybe for you. Personally, i find the idea of maximizing dps by performing a complicated but set rotation, instead of having to react on the run to the situation, and using skills intelligently, to be the a far greater blight on the game system. It doesn’t matter how simple or complicated the rotation is – it’s equally mindless.

Kreejaffa.3682:

akalpurakh.9306:

What is really insulting is the lack of response from them.

You know, I find that odd, seeing as now that they have gotten HoT released, there was supposed to be more hands freed up so there would be more communication between the player base and the Devs. Seems to be at the same level or less than it was before release.

Did they fire half the staff after the project was done or something, or are they already working on the next one me wonders.

Nah, they just don’t need to speak to us anymore. After all, we have already bought the expansion.

Xenon.4537:

I play my alts because they are fun, not because I could reap extra rewards from them.

Neither do I. Unfortunately, it’s not about any extra rewards. I don’t ask to earn more for my alts, but i also don’t want to earn less.

3/10. There are some good spots to this expac, but they are covered by way too much grind that leaches all the fun out of it.

GodOfWar.3624:

WereDragon.6083:

GodOfWar.3624:

Why can’t I have something risk and fee-free? Why am I not allowed to have that as the player? What’s wrong with giving me the possibility?

Because trade systems across nearly all MMO’s suffer the risk of scams. THe trading post does not.

How the hell do you get scammed in a trade where you have to confirm?

If you have played in GW1, you’d know. There are 2 basic methods. One, you make the buyer believe they are buying something else than you’re actually selling (yes, even in a game with confirmation it is possible). Or, you make buyer think that what you’re selling is worth more than it is (or that what you’re buying is worth far less than it really is).

Azarath.7862:

How can the rage be minimized? I know our community can think of the solution.

Unfortunately, there would be only one solution that would satisfy everyone. It’s for the replacement Flamekissed skin to be significantly better than the original one.
Every other option would cause problems. And most of those that are suggested here benefit mostly those that suggest it, with no care about everyone else.

LordByron.8369:

Shouldn t be fair a solution in between?

No, that’s a golden mean fallacy speaking. In this case the “balanced” option is the least fair one, because it satisfies the least number of people.

LordByron.8369:

We don t deserve to lose ANYTHING since we did nothing wrong…..

It’s not about you deserving anything. It’s about what’s best for the game. And in this case Anet messed up so badly, that it cannot be fixed without someone undeserving to get shafted.
It’s just your bad luck that you ended up in that category.

SkiTz.4590:

No offense, but aquatic stuff is hilariously useless in this game

Yeah, that’s the point. It’s hilariously useless, because Anet keeps forgetting it exists.

SkiTz.4590:

Under water legendaries are useless…..whats the point? you wanna dive in and show off to a couple fishes? no is in the water to look at your new shiny besides NPCs……

Which is why i’d rather Anet didn’t keep forgetting about that part of the game. because as long as they do, it will keep being a wasteland.

Anet’s just way too eager to abandon large parts of their game just because it might require a bit of effort to fix/polish it. And the stuff they use to replace old content with seems to be aimed ad lower and lower percentage of the population.

Behellagh.1468:

Astralporing.1957:

Oh kitten. Did the watchwork pick debacle teach them nothing?

It’s not the same since you can buy expendable ones for karma. These is just the unlimited versions.

No, it’s exactly the same. It’s about breaking a certain principle, which is really dangerous. Before they broke it, i could be sure than what i buy from gemshop won’t become obsolete at some point in the future. Now i know that’s untrue, and Anet, in their rush for more shortterm income gains, will kitten me over (again) at some point. There will be a “new tier”. And that one won’t be safe from the same happening again either.

Vayne.8563:

I know people left Guild Wars 1 when Ursan was nerfed even though Ursan desperately needed to be nerfed. That was a much bigger change for those people than this one is.

Oh, please, let’s not act as if that double fractal daily is something as important to the game as game balance (or that keeping it is important at all). For some reason i get the feeling that you are defending it now just for defending’s sake, not because you think it’s worth defending. Again, by the way – you seem to do that a lot.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

On the schedule:

• It is not written in stone. We will adjust it as necessary.
• There’s lots of ways to go about this, but the current thinking is that it would be more convenient to plan for specific daily times rather than have a “sliding” rotation. We felt this was particularly necessary for larger events like the Triple Wurm and Tequatl.

Wurm and Tequatl were already on schedule, there was no reason to change it at all. Adding Queen to it on the other hand was a bad move, as it was a triggered event and could be done on demand.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• Although non-scheduled events are more dynamic, you have a low chance of encountering events with long cooldown periods. Although it was originally thought that big events would be happenstance and rare opportunities that players would stumble on and become immersed in, we found that many players enjoy this type of content as a mainstay of their GW2 experience. When they can’t access that content regularly, we have a problem.

Since cooldowns for those events got way bigger than before, many more people won’t be able to access them at all.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• The intent of the schedule is to:
  • consistently provide access to large scale content for players who want to play it

Again, while it will become consistent for some, many others will not have access to those events now, unless they seriously reschedule their real life (which lot of people are not able to do easily)

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• deliver that content in such a way that players can plan and organize to prepare for it

It is hard to prepare for events that happen when you are not playing (and with 6 hour cooldowns on some bosses, that is extremely likely). Besides, lot of appeal of those world bosses was that you could show up and participate on the fly, without the need to schedule it in advance. That’s what Tequatl was for (and see how those normal events were many, many times more popular than Teq).

• help ensure that there is always enough server capacity to for all of the participants regardless of overflows, megaservers, etc

There seems to be enough server capacity now. the change is not going to decrease that capacity, is it?

• There are still and will always be a large number of meta-events and bosses that are not on the schedule.

Correct me if i am wrong, but the events that are on schedule are those that people were most interested in.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

At some point, we would also like to introduce a messaging system in-game so that it’s always clear what world event content you participate in without having to utilize a resource outside of the game. I have no guarantee or ETA of when we might actually see this though.

Such messaging system either would be equally useless across the world as event timer sites would be, or would make the need for schedule unnecessary (as the main reason why it got introduced would have been solved).

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

• help ensure that there are always enough participants in the content

This is a valid reason for the metaserver system in general, true. This is not an explanation for the schedule however, as it is here seemingly only because you were unable to think of a way to implement underflow system without making a negative impact on many parts of the game. Notice also, how it benefits only a part of the population (those on small servers), and is not the only possible solution to the problem it tries to solve (some servers having too low a population).

Tl/DR: this seems to be very counterintuitive and clunky way to solve problems you have mentioned – and it may actually aggravate (instead of solving) some of them.
At this moment Metaserver system net gain as far as positive changes to the game go seems to be heavily negative.

Bri.8354:

• What level coordination should they require?

No content in the game should require out of game resources. Voice coordination is achieved through out of games resources. Thus, no content in this game should require coordination on the level that can be reasonably achieved only using voice chats.

SamTheGuardian.2938:

In a system with good balance and working MMR, regardless of how many games you played, you would reach a point where you capped at your level of skill. At this threshold your wins/losses would balance out to about 50/50 and it would become very, very hard to progress.

Yes. You are right. Where you are wrong is in assuming it has anything to do with league divisions. It has not.

You can reach your skill cap at any point of the league progression – what is worse, you can reach it before the league season even starts. The moment you reach that point, your league progression stops (assuming good balance and working mmr of course, this league season has severe problems with both). Now, the system doesn’t stop you at the moment you reach division that is appropriate for your skill level, because, again, league divisions are completely disassociated from your mmr. If you are a fast learner, or an experienced player, you may reach that point in Emerald. If you are a really slow learner, you may easily make it into higher divisions before your skill growth stops. Notice, that in both those cases mmr doesn’t care at what level your skill level caps – it’s interested only in whether you continue to improve or not.

That doesn’t sound like a properly designed system to me.

cranos.5913:

It’s ridiculous to blame the content drought on the raid team.

I’m not blaming the content drought on a raid team. I’m saying that the game that puts too heavy emphasis on raids (regardless if it’s intentional, or just an unintended byproduct of raid team being way better at their job than everyone else) is not the game lot of us came here to play. And raids are pushed out as “the” content. The fact that we got nearly a year now without any new content but raid would be enough to tell us that. Them receiving special recognition in the form of legendary armor (a type of gear that is not available anywhere else) is just a cherry on top, but it also points out to this not being completely unintended.

Just as Blaeys says, what we need is more content that brings the gw2 community together. Not one that divides it.

Miku.6297:

Reasons to add dueling: I really can’t think of a reason not too…

You don’t seem to have any reasons for it either.

Noktus.8506:

I believe its been said that they will be adding a dueling system into the game, its just not a high priority right now.

Not quite. One dev said that he “definitely wanted” to have duelling in the game someday. Mind you, if i remember right, it was the same dev that once claimed that they’ll “definitely” will be raising level cap – which we know is off the table now. It was also at the same time when other devs said, that the game isn’t (and won’t be) balanced for 1v1.
The best you can hope for is 1v1 sPvP arenas with not much of a dev support. Especially since duelling is not something many people want.

PrinceKhaled.5104:

choovanski.5462:

:-/

learn to dodge traps and your whole life will change.

Isn’t dodging the answer for everything? right?
Play versus DH with brains and sPvP, you will see that you can’t have 10 dodges in 2 seconds.
And yes, I was expecting the answer of “L2P” kind of thing.

You know what? just L2dodge and your life would be better….. how about that for an answer?

I’d advise you to play DH for a while, you will learn very fast how to avoid them when playing other classes.
It is a good noobkiller spec, but against anything more skilled it’s not that good anymore. People have already learned how to avoid it.

CMM.6712:

Well if that mission bothers you the next one really will bother you! Not even joking.

That’s unfortunately very likely.

@OP Just as TexZero already suggested, i advise you to do those missions with friends that will carry you through it.

Thaddeus.4891:

Who will care if you have a mini sabetha? Nobody, it like it was not even there because you bought it on the TP. You had gem to spend good for you.

Those items are badge about what you did in the game.

Yes, that’s what i was saying, was i not? Those things are only important to you because not everyone has them. If everyone in this game was a hardcore raider, raid rewards would become meaningless for you and others like you. In other words, you need people that are not raiders, because they give meaning to what you do.

Dawdler.8521:

Dont worry, they added leather nodes to WvW! I mean you only get jute scraps 99 out of 100 times, but still Anet is on it!!!

That actually increased my leather acquisition rate really significantly.
…which just tells me how bad it was before.

Devata.6589:

However that did not really worked out as planned and it turned in to full DPS. What they fixed in raids.

If anything, raids enshrined the “max dps” approach, not weakened it. Yes, you use roles that aren’t dps based, but there’s not only no incentive to go beyond that required minimum – quite the opposite, you are strongly penalized for doing that. Something that simply wasn’t true in group instanced encounters until raids appeared.

Illuminati.2431:

That’s like building a sportscar, but it is aimed to sell to grandma’s and grandpa’s that don’t drive harder than 100km/h.

No, that’s like building an economy car for city commuting, and some people protesting that this car doesn’t allow them to drive at 200km/h. It doesn’t , because it isn’t a sports car.

CMF.5461:

Biggest complaint I hear is that he takes all the credit/attention away from the player.

Well, the game does ask you “What is your story?”… and then answers with “Irrelevant. Instead, we’ll look at his story”
Personal story is anything but personal.

Honestly I feel the sylvari are the “heros” of this story since they were created or born purely for the sake of fighting the elder dragons. All of the other races are in retreat as the sylvari are in full charge forward. Thus it makes sense in some ways that Trahearne a sylvari is leading the charge with his great hunt, while still being somewhat new and less experienced than other races and characters.

Why would the other races care? Why should they care? Sylvari might be in upswing, but they still should be hopelessly inferior to any other race. Also, they are something completely new. Trahaerne might be a firstborn of Sylvari, but by standarts of other races he is just a teenager. And since he’s a firstborn, he didn’t have any experience of previous generations to support him, so he’s a relatively inexperienced teenager at that. Any claim that his knowledge may outstrip the knowledge of scholars of other races is at this point completely ridiculous. There simply wasn’t enough time for it.

And yet, the game claims that. Just as it claims that the wisdom of the Pale Tree is somehow important to all-knowing Asura, or the god(and mystical stuff in general)-hating charr. That the achievements of Sylvari are somehow impressive to the Norn. That it is a race that is respected by the humans.
It claims all that, but fails to answer why. Which, of course, makes the matter of Trahaerne himself even worse than it already is.

Absurdo.8309:

Raids are also an endgame goal. I’m not sure I see the problem in tying two end game goals together.

Problem comes from the fact that those two end goals are meant for different groups of players. Legendaries are for people that want to pursue their goals while playing relatively normally. You can be a casual player, and still pursue them. Raids are for people that want to challenge themselves through a specific environment that is designed to be unforgiving to those that won’t dedicate to it fully.

Absurdo.8309:

Regarding 2 – This seems like a lose lose for anet. Make new legendaries account bound? Complaints that you need to do X to get the legendary.

Solution, make those gates relatively easy to pass.

Absurdo.8309:

I don’t think an alternate method of acquisition would solve this problem, since someone would always be unhappy to do X to get the legendary.

If an alternate method existed, they wouldn’t. They might do Y instead. Also, gates that are easy to pass are relatively ok. Raids are nothing like that however.

An ability to have a graveyard/mausoleum in Guildhall, where you can put up plaques with selected text has been suggested more than once before.

Specific monuments are likely out, but at least some generic mechanics for such purpose would be greatly appreciated.

Kal Spiro.9745:

It has been three years now, they’ve learned and grown with the community.

You mean, against the community, right?

Hannelore.8153:

By that notion, you have 25 maps from Central Tyria to go auto-hit mobs in. Having 2/3rds of the game tailored to you isn’t good enough?

No, core alone is not good enough when you bought an expansion expecting that it would have something for you, and then found out that it didn’t.

The problem with HoT was that Anet wanted the whole game community to fund the expac meant for only a small minority. I really hope they won’t make that mistake ever again.

And back to new expac, personally, i haven’t seen any problem with PoF mobs and definitely wouldn’t want them to be made any harder than they already are.

Aenesthesia.1697:

Wtf really? And i was wondering why so few were raiding for no rewards…..

Because it had nothing with the raid being generally not appealing to a majority of players (and this by design, by the way).

Smooth Penguin.5294:

The point of this thread is to help people understand that Raids are not for everyone, never will be for everyone, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Agreed.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

If Legendary armor is exclusive to completing Raid content, that’s a bonus to those players who are skilled enough, coordinated enough, and geared properly.

Well, by definition. Still doesn’t make the exclusivity okay however.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

People need to remember that we’re not Entitled to having everything in this game handed to us. There are some things that must be earned.

Now, it is your time to actually read what is being said, instead of skipping. We’re not asking about Legendary armor to be handed to us. We are perfectly okay with earning it. We just don’t want to earn it in raids. Because, as you have said, raids are not for everyone.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

God Bless you Anet for adding more Challenges to GW2.

Exclusive rewards do not make a challenge.

Cyninja.2954:

All I want to mention here is, if you really want to consider raiding difficulties a benefit to WoWs raiding community, you seem to not have been a successful hardcore raider.

You may have misunderstood. He was talking about the benefit for the community as a whol, not for the Raiding community.
Of course, hardcore raiders do not benefit from it (not directly anyway). They could do raids just fine before, after all.
It’s the rest of the community that benefits. And incidentally, even in such a raid-heavy game as wow, that nonhardcore rest is a huge majority.
(also incidentally, raiders also benefit indirectly from having that majority happy – because it affects the game income and prospects).

Cyninja.2954:

What Blizzards streamlined raid service has done is open up “raiding” to a vast majority of their playerbase. That’s good as far as themepark MMOs go.

At the same time, and due to the nature of how scaling in these situation works, it has had a detrimental effect on raiding mechanics and uniquness.

Not to mention that the easier raid difficulties are themeparks or lootpiniatas to please the masses. Just because it’s called Looking For Raid does not mean its raiding. It’s more like gather x amaount of random players, show them the cool level design, reward them some shinies and bye.

Let’s not embarasse ourselves and call that raiding, please.

So, you agree. It did benefit WoW community (at the small cost of offending some hardcore raiders’ aestethics).

timmyf.1490:

Prophet.6257:

But like in sports all Anet has to do is start winning. Start implementing things the majority of the fan base wants and a lot of the negativity will fall into the background.

Wardrobe? Check.
Account-bound dyes? Check.
Underflow system? Check.
Free retraiting and repairs? Check.
Better rewards for PvP and non-Conquest maps? Check.

Are you sure the negativity will fall into the background? :-/

All of those (with the possible exception of the last one – not being PvP player, i wouldn’t know) were either implemented in a way that significantly differed from what was suggested, or were tied to some strictly negative changes, or both. Don’t you think it might be possible, that if they were implemented the way the proposers wanted the reaction would have been different?

viralthefrog.6130:

Nope, I tend to read everything that I see in chat.

Then we’re definitely playing a different game.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

It wasn’t in the patch notes, I don’t think though, was it?

It wasn’t. And it was exactly the opposite of what people asked for.
It was also the opposite of what what was proposed in the CDI about rewards and progression, which suggests that idea was discarded.

Squee.7829:

The final boss fight. I’m glad you had confidence in my ability to finally figure it out, but a little guidance would have saved a lot of pain. The boss with the grubs had a nice little subtext for his weakness (even if my first thought was “weak to Death Magic? I’m a necromancer! I have tons of it!” In hindsight I should have known that’s not what you meant xD) The final boss had nothing.

I have several friends that managed to do this fight and yet still have no idea what had to be done there. Yep, giving players some hints would have been a good idea.

zealex.9410:

JTGuevara.9018:

Because it is!

Raids are unfriendly by definition and design.

I dont see anything in their definition or their design that suggests that.

Raids are a type of content that is designed around exclusivity and elitism. That’s their whole point. Thus, they are basically unfriendly as a part of their nature.

Ohoni.6057:

The problem is, raids are unfriendly by design. You have to be reasonably skilled to complete a raid, so a team forming a raid MUST either A: exclude people who are not already good at the raid, or B: commit several hours of their lives to an activity that could be completed in twenty minutes, with no guarantee of success even after that. I can’t at all blame people for choosing A under the current design.

Basically, this.

Chadramar.8156:

Sadly, yeah. They don’t have to be, there’s absolutely no reason why there couldn’t be easy raids.

Unfortunately, no. Raids, to remain raids, need to be challenging, and that triggers the abovementioned inherent flaws. Yes, an “easy mode raids” can be created (and would probably be a good idea), but don’t let the name fool you – those would not be raids, they would be easy mode instances based on raid encounters. It’s just that this is a bit too long for a mode name.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

If all the people complaining about other people in raids would team up, they could do the raids.

If everyone could (and would) do raids, then many raiders would ask about something even harder.
After all, what’s the point of a “difficult” content everyone can do? Moreover, what’s the point of belonging to an elite group of players that consist of all of them?

IndigoSundown.5419:

To end, I’ll ask the same question I asked in a different thread, to which you have chosen not to respond. “Have you tried to do any of the easier raid bosses with your guild members? If not, what stops you?”

I don’t know about Blaeys (though he mentioned many times before that he is raiding, so most likely he had), but in my case, yes, i have.
That experience didn’t cause my opinion of raids (and the negative impact i feeel they caused to this game) to change for better. If anything, it only made it worse.

CrimeMaker.8612:

Secondly when you look at power damage its not just the power stat that does all the damage you also have to take in account precision and ferocity. If you want more damage out of your power builds you go more glassy and give up on sustain/tanky stats like toughness and vitality. If condition damage is going to deal direct damage then there needs to be two new stats that should be introduced or precision and ferocity should affect condition damage.

There are already additional stats needed to maximize damage output. Seriously, condi damage alone is relatively weak – to get the output comparable with berserkers, you really need Vipers. And even then berserkers are usually better. Just going pure condition damage, without expertise (to maximize the usefulness of each individual condition application) and precision (to use on-crit traits and sigils) is a massive dps loss.
You may not see it like that in pvp for one single reason – players are much better at using cleanses, and so the use of expertise is mostly negated (no condi is going to last its full duration anyway). And you don’t see much pure zerkers in pvp either, so you can’t really compare how big the dps disparity is.

CrimeMaker.8612:

Third when you have these damage reduction buffs they should also reduce condition damage alongside with cleanses and everything.

Only after cleanses will start working as a direct power damage negation (somehow) as well.

By the way – it’s equally easy to build against condi, as it is to build against direct damage. I’d like for you to guess why players, having that choice, generally tend to use the second option in WvW.
(Hint: it’s not because they perceive condi to be more dangerous of the two threats)