you won’t have it because you refuse to adapt and put some effort in raid, that’s all. And since it’s Anet decision, i guess they were thinking that legendary armors were a proper reward for challenging pve content, aka raid, and that people who mastered raid would deserve legendary armor. How is it unfair? we play the same game after all. The difference is that some people don’t mind putting effort in raiding, with countless wipes, changing stuff, buying expensive foods etc, while others want to do nothing and have the reward. Who do you think deserve the reward? the lazy one or the worker? I have the answer for you, if you want…
Here you really lost me.
GW2 is a game. Not a exercise, not a job, not a sports club. A game. I said it when the fractal backpiece was introduced for Fractals only, I said it when the backpiece for PvP was announced, I said it for legendary armor:
Gating content behind game modes is plain and simple wrong and bad for the game. It breeds exactly the discussions we are having here right now.I know that many people think that people are looking up with envy and want on your efforts, but I stand on the firm believe that nobody remembers the name of your toon after he has passed them in Lions arch with your Eternal title and your grinded Astralaria. So the number of people that maybe care for that is in your closest group, aka your raiding team and your guild, and a few people that write you PMs about how that looks on you.
Regarding the question who deserves content X more, I would be with you if this was one of the activities I mentioned above, aka work, sport, exercise. I believe that first and foremost effort and dedication by playing the game should be rewarded in a game, not skill or reflexes and effort for builds which is a non-game activity anyway in my mind. Skills and reflexes should net you more, but a less skilled person should not be forced to go out emptyhanded off anything.
tl:dr Gating is wrong, and nobody cares if you have the Eternal title or Astralaria.
OK I will try to write it in a simplier manner, since you have some understanding difficulties.
Raid is a challenging content, that was what anet was saying before they implement it. Anet said it would not be à content for everyone then.
They put à nice reward behind them, because, you know, doing raid is a little more harder than spamming 1 in open world, and also to motivate people to try harder content, to challenge themselves. Yes, even in a game, some people like challenge.
But, some other people don’t like challenge in a game. They see the shinny, and they are: oh, shinny, I want it. Oh wait, I have to do something à little difficult to have it! No way, it’s à game. I’m supposing to have everything I want, in a easy way. I don’t care if people put à lot of effort for the reward, I want it for no effort…And so we are in this topic. You’re saying that no one care about reward or title, but after you’re saying that Gating reward is wrong…you lost me.
But we will never agree between people who don’t mind challenge and a little work for a reward, and people who want all in an easy way.
As you were so kind to write it up in a more primitive form for, me, let me return the favor:
*The idea that there should be content for an elite part of players both alienates and angers me for the sake of finding it both distateful and misplaced in a game. I would probably be at least good enough equiped for it and could also spare the time if I really wanted, but I don´t want to support this kind of thinking in any way.*They put a nice reward behind raids to push them and not look like fools in implementing something only a minority of players will play. And it is not even working very well because most raiders could not care less for the armor because they can´t swap runes, just look around in the forum to check the validity of this statement. It is a grinders item for casual players who do not really care for their runes as long as they are halfway fitting, so it does not belong into a skill challenge like a raid. Besides, Anet does not care in the slightest if I am the best player in the world or the greatest scrub that can barely walk straight in game, not even remotely as long as I invest money and time. This is plain marketing chatter.
I had a chuckle when someone pulled Monopoly as reference game.
I love Monopoly! Especial Spongebob Monopoly which I play at work with kids.
So when I play Monopoly with kids, they all start the same as we do with raids.
Their skill level of dice slinging? Irrelevant for the sake of the game, relevant for my assessment of the physical abilities.
Their skill in counting? Irrelevant for the game as long as someone is there to help them.
Their tactical skill? Irrelevant for kids and thier enjoyment of the game, they like to have the crusty crab because it nets the most gain.
I have a blast when I play Monopoly with children because they get the spirit of the game. I am longtime motivated to play the game because I like the premise of it, not if I am the best and shiniest Monopoly player ever.
Monopoly is as RNG as it can get, discriminates nearly no one and has only very, very loose gates like 3 cards of a color. Even if oyu own only the street, you always get rewarded a little. Where is the reward in a raid if you fail at the first boss?So, where are my Monopoly legendary medals I can present to a 7 year old that played with me?
I’m not sure I understand your argument. Are you mad that there is hard content in the game? Or that it has exclusive rewards?
The Question is Was it a good idea to Link that Item to that Content
I think it is, at least for now in order to measure the impact of releasing these new items. Ascended were totally gated at the beginning but with time they gave opportunities to get some in many different ways.
For now they chose to give through raid to 1/Evaluate their ability to design raid that people like (I mean the one that are asking for challenging content for more than 2 years) and 2/See if many materials or other things won’t lose too much value because of this.
Maybe for the next expansion there will be a new set of legendary armor released through story achievement, adventures and map meta completion. Those who hate PvE meta will then don’t do it because they don’t find it fun.
But for now it is locked by raid completion and I am sure it attracts people to do raid while they wouldn’t have tried it without the reward.It also has the potential to alienate a substantial part of the player base, which could cause irreparable harm to their long standing customers.
For me, it’s not personal. The few times I did the raid because I was invited by my friends and guild mates, the armor and other baubles hold no attraction to me directly, might be because I am old school, and everything is about stats first, look second. The fact that my main toons have full ascended means I will never have to worry about a gear upgrade ever again, so the raid was, cute but pointless to me. But, I can see from the posts on this topic that I am apparently in the minority. Like Torolan said something profound when he said no one really cares about how pretty your gear is beyond you and maybe your close friends. While it might attract a passing comment, few really care that you have it, their interest is purely for it’s look on their own toon and less will even remember who you were when you part ways.
But, there are a lot of people who are very vested in the look of their toon. I guess that is the nature of a game like GW2. I believe the joke is “Fashion Wars 2”
So, will Anet pull in a good bank roll for their decision to make Legendary Armor Skins exclusive to the Raid.
Time will tell, but, I am betting not.
This argument makes no sense. Exclusive skins are part of every game mode, and they do not seem to alienate the player base. And we don’t even know what the skin looks like yet.
Gaile chastised you for doing exactly what you’re doing.
Here is the post and quote
Yes, and she still hasn’t gotten back to us with more accurate data, so my original estimate still stands.
I’m actually shocked that you are maintaining this position, when it is blatantly contrary to what she said. Here it is again.
But it’s counterproductive to have a discussion head down the path of misinformation and what seems to be a growing error in assumption. With all due respect, unless you’re a developer for GW2 you are not qualified to make a statement about the time needed, difficulty involved, or feasibility of such a feature.
… [D]on’t be misled by individual, external assumptions about the feasibility or practicality of such a request.
Basically: don’t make arguments based on the time involved to develop the feature, because you have no idea how long it would actually take.
There is a difference between being afraid to raid and just not wanting to raid. Raids attract the saltiest and least tolerant players in any game.
That may be true in other games, but I’ve yet to see it in GW2. And I pug every week. So far, only one person posted his example of raid toxicity, and it was “They asked me to change a trait,” and “They asked me if I had any other classes.”
I’m finding several arguments in this thread just plain bad.
1 – There seems to be a level of dislike for people who do raids/pvp/whatever only for the rewards. It seems hypocritical when they simultaneously argue that they want a new game mode just so they can get the rewards.
2 – legendary armor is not content. No one is stopping you from entering a raid and completing that content. Let’s no pretend that you are locked out of certain content. Rather, for one reason or another, you’re unable to get the reward.
3 – almost all multiplayer games require some effort to get rewards. Effort-driven rewards increase the longevity of the game. If you want instant access to every piece of content and reward, then play a single player game and use the console.
4 – guild wars 2 has always had exclusive skins and effort-driven rewards. Legendary armor is consistent with this principle.
5 – different people find different things fun. Some people find hard content with prestige rewards fun. Others find easy content, which still awards some cool skins, fun. It’s great that we have both. And you can get top stat gear from both.
6 – giving every single reward through low-effort content decreases the longevity of the game. There would simply be nothing to work towards. Some games address this by increasing the level cap. Others through a gear treadmill. Guild wars 2 does it through masteries and skins.
7 – have fun playing what you like to play. Don’t like raids? Fine, then open world, dungeons, fractals, pvp, wvw, SAB. You can still enjoy the game without legendary armor. And yes, awarding legendary armor to everyone would take some of the fun out of raids.
The one to rule is bringing your argument to its logical conclusion: that all forms of exclusive rewards should be achievable in any game mode.
Good. He is free to pursue that idea – i’m certainly not going to dissuade him.
You seem to take issue with the word “deserve.” How about: a reward corresponding to a certain type and level of content? In this case, raiders oppose legendary armor for easy mode raids, because it wouldn’t correspond to raid-type content, and it wouldn’t correspond to the amount of effort necessary to complete raids.
And I disagree, because the reason why it’s assigned to raids is completely arbitrary and has noithing to do with raids themselves.
Anet could as easily place that armor behind HoT metas and only new skins behind raids, for example, and it wouldn’t correspond to it (and the effort) any more or less than in the current situation.All game modes have exclusive rewards. Take the map verdant brink. It’s the only way to get bladed armor, and requires tier 4 completion. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
Oh, there’s a lot of things wrong with requiring tier 4 for chest piece (one of which is that doing tier 4 succesfully requires a lot of players, which will not always be something you can depend on on that map. It’s already becoming a problem). All the other pieces you can relatively easily farm for.
Also, based on info we’ve got, Anet is already revamping HoT maps to be more accessible.
There’s also a big difference between locking out a skin, and a whole gear tier.
So, not a great example.
Just to narrow the argument, are you against raid rewards because they award exclusive skins, legendary armor, or both?
As to exclusive skins – I really don’t see the argument here, as every game mode has them, and skins are cosmetic only. Skins can have value because they look cool, they are rarely dropped, or because it requires some effort to achieve (or a combination of these factors). Basically any skin not sellable on the tp has some degree of exclusivity. Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of examples:
Dungeon skins (dungeons/pvp), glorious armor (pvp), original and golden fractal skins (fractals), a certain story skin from HOT (story), HOT legendary weapons (HOT map metas), legendary pvp backpiece (pvp), legendary fractal backpiece (eventually fotm), king toad and storm wizard skins (tribulation SAB), specialization weapon skins (HOT pve), ambrite weapons (dry top/pvp), luminescent armor (silverwastes) …
And so many others.
As to legendary armor. There is a whole other thread about this, but it boils down to: All the HOT legendaries are gated behind certain content (as they are not sellable on the tp), ascended gear is much cheaper, we don’t know what the skin will look like (but see skin argument above), stat changing is not cost effective because you still need to change sigils and you could’ve made multiple ascended or exotic sets for a fraction of the cost.
I will get legendary armor because I am willing to work for it. Therefore I deserve it. You are not willing to do the work, therefore you will not get it. You do not deserve it.
Nope. You will get the armor because you happen to like the content they were released it (or at least do not dislike it too strongly). I will not get the armor because i happen to hate that kind of content. Liking one kind of gameplay over another however does not make you any more deserving of those rewards.
Raids are just like any other PvE content
If that was true, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Yeah guys the pvp backpack is too exclusive, I should be able to get it by only doing raids and open world events because I don’t enjoy pvp.
And the fractal backpack? I should be able to get it by doing wvw and dungeon paths.
You see the problem with your argument here now?
No. If you really think that way (instead of trying to troll the thread) then you have every right to ask for this to be implemented, and i won’t be arguing against you.
All games need exclusive rewards in different aspects or no one is going to do them. 99% of people running fractals are only doing it for the rewards. You think anyone likes running swamp 3 times a day?
You think anyone’s doing triple swamp for the exclusive rewards?
Sorry you can’t just go out and buy your legendary so you can act cool ith no effort
Nobody’s asking for that. It’s just some people that claim that only effort they approve counts.
The one to rule is bringing your argument to its logical conclusion: that all forms of exclusive rewards should be achievable in any game mode. At the risk of strawmanning, I don’t think most players agree with this statement, and its inconsistent with rewards generally in gw2 (and definitely HOT).
You seem to take issue with the word “deserve.” How about: a reward corresponding to a certain type and level of content? In this case, raiders oppose legendary armor for easy mode raids, because it wouldn’t correspond to raid-type content, and it wouldn’t correspond to the amount of effort necessary to complete raids.
All game modes have exclusive rewards. Take the map verdant brink. It’s the only way to get bladed armor, and requires tier 4 completion. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
Redesigning bosses, rebalancing all rewards and drop rates, QA and playtests, relinking achievements and then maintaining 3 additional instances. It took more than 2 months to adjust a drop rate of trash items from fractal inscriptions.
QA and playtests are not development, they are handled by an entirely different unit. I’m not saying that the project would be done within hours of them picking it up, I’m saying that it wouldn’t take more than a few hours of actual developer time. I’m saying that a handful or less of developers could make the changes they need to make within a few hours, send it out for testing, moving on to other tasks, get feedback, make a few corrections that would take several more minutes, repeat as necessary, but all in all it shouldn’t take very long when compared to ANY alternative.
Also, the “redesigns” I’m talking about are very straightforward and simplistic to implement, not like some others have suggested where they actually change the scale or timing of individual elements.
Also, I described it in a way that achievements would not have to be altered significantly, if at all. They could simply make it so that the easy mode versions just do not count as the same encounters, and therefore do not trigger the achievements. There are a few that might need to be triggered directly, but not all.
And as for “it took them X time to do this,” yes, sometimes simple things take them a long time from when we recognize it as an issue until they implement them, but that doesn’t mean that they took that long in actual labor, it just means that they didn’t prioritize it. We also know that they can turn around rather significant changes in hours or days after a patch, If they deem it necessary. The shorter turnarounds are far more informative to their capabilities than the longer ones.
Gaile chastised you for doing exactly what you’re doing.
Here’s one reason: The developers have limited time and resources.
Yeah, we’ve covered this one. The time and resources it would take to implement something like this would be negligible, not remotely enough to counterbalance the benefits it would bring.
At this point, I need to interject. I am familiar with the process of changing to a multi-modality system of game presentation, having written about it long ago, when I was a journalist writing about another company and another game. For that game, too, players said “No big deal.” And they were absolutely wrong. They said, “Just tweak a few stats, lower a few spawns, and voila, you’ve got it!” No, that’s not how it worked. And that’s not how I think it would work for Guild Wars 2.
I will ask about this, and if we’re prepared to say something official, one of us will do so. But it’s counterproductive to have a discussion head down the path of misinformation and what seems to be a growing error in assumption. With all due respect, unless you’re a developer for GW2 you are not qualified to make a statement about the time needed, difficulty involved, or feasibility of such a feature.
You’re welcome to discuss the situation, and we appreciate that you want to do that. We welcome the conversation! But please participate by sharing what you’d like to see, and why, and don’t be misled by individual, external assumptions about the feasibility or practicality of such a request.
We’ve also seemed to veer a bit off topic onto easy mode raids. The question is why are people do afraid of raiding. Your answer seems to be they are too hard.
Well i’ve read through this thread and it has yet to be established that there is any actual problem. As such I see no reason to change anything.
The vast majority of items can only be acquired by doing their associated content. There is no reason for legendary armor to be any diffent.
Want PvP armor… you must PvP
Want Chak weapons… you must play TD
Want Bladed armor… you must play VB
Want PvP mini… you must do ranked PvP
Want extra shiny PvP… you must reach the top 100 in ranked PvP
Want legendary armor… you must do raids
Want new legendary weapons… you must do all HoT contentI could go on for another 100 lines or so, but the fact is that almost ALL skins, titles, and armor in this game are tied to very specific content and can’t be acquired elsewhere. The only things that can be are base items that came with launch, and gemstore items that can be purchased with gold.
This is partly the reason why I feel all cosmetic/fluff/toy items should be sold in the gem store. I’ve seen complaints about the game being too gem store-focused, I personally feel that it is nowhere near gem store-focused enough and most, if not all of the stuff in the game should be available from there.
In my ideal game, we would all be able to play the content we enjoy (play the way we want) and earn gold doing it. Nobody would have to grind out unenjoyable/restrictive content for a real long time just to get a desired item, or even a piece of a desired item, and then repeat that no-fun grind again for another piece. We could all then play what we want, have a fun time playing the game, earn gold and then spend that earned gold on the item of our choice at the gem store.
Some content would clearly give more gold than others based on ‘difficulty’ or skill requirements, but nobody would be locked out from being able to acquire something. Everyone having access to all of the same items regardless of what content they enjoy playing makes sense to me.
If someone wants an item from the gem store sooner, they can buy it with coin earned in the real world from grinding unenjoyable content for a shiny.
I never understood why MMORPG developers felt they were required to lock ‘rewards’ behind different content. Forcing someone to have to play content they do not enjoy to get a specific reward is insulting, to the players and to the designers of that content. People should want to take part in the content you designed because it is fun and they enjoy taking part in that content, not because you tied a highly desired item to completing that content umpteen thousand times. Even if one does not enjoy that content, they are required to take part in it a ridiculous amount if they want the shiny. What does that say about the content then, where what seems to be the main reason people are even playing it is because it is required if they want the shiny, not because it is fun. That’s … pretty sad, and disappointing.
I think games should be fun and an enjoyable way to spend one’s time. Locking aesthetics behind hours upon hours of grinding content that some may not enjoy is not something I agree with, or support. Then again, perhaps I am the only one that feels this way, and that’s cool – it’s just my opinion.
I’m personally ok with the mix of gem store / in game we have now. I really don’t understand how people are “forced” to do content for aesthetics. I just don’t do the content if I don’t like it.
The aesthetic argument really doesn’t make sense anyway for legendary armor because we have no idea what it’ll look like. Could be ugly like ascended.
They have so lost the argument that they are now just regurgitating the same old trash in hope that people forgot that it got shot to death 10 pages ago.
No one has won or lost this “argument” because it’s just two contrary opinions clashing over and over again. “I think this is a good idea!” vs. "No, I like how things are now! " The end. It’s interesting to me though to see how toxic people become the more they must interact with those that do not agree with everything they say.
Honestly, it’s been my experience that the most toxic people are the elitist, not the elite players, but the elitist players. Truth is, players that are highly skilled often have nothing to prove, so they are typically really great people, however, it’s the elitist players, those with something to prove that cause all the problems. In fact, if you look at any long running topic like this, you will see that almost all the initiation of hostilities come from Elitist and that is because being toxic is a byproduct of their base stand that they simply don’t want to share. They approach things with the adamant point that the only way they can have fun, is if they deny other people the ability to have fun as well, and I don’t believe that it is possible to have that stand, and not be inherently toxic, because that stand can only come from a greedy self serving motive.
Insulting the other side through ad hominem attacks does not really help your case.
It’s not an Ad Hominem, as that is against the person, and I have not said anything against an individual.
However, it’s also true. Look at any gaming forum, from Hello Kitty to Mortalis, from Aion to WoW, every elitist is the same, they all say about the same thing too, look at every game forum, it’s same responses from the Elitist crowed when there is any request to make content more accessible. That is because they all have the same underlying motive, to build up their own smug feelings of superiority by putting other people down. It is impossible for that kind of person not to be toxic, because their entire goal is to derive pleasure at the expense of others.
It’s unfortunate that people like that even exist, but they do, and really destroy a community. There is no need for that kind of mindset in any MMO, especially one like GW2, which (outside it’s PvP content) is about one step above Second Life, on Difficulty Scale. I love GW2, it’;s a fun MMO, but in comparison to games like Eve, Mortalis, and Ark, Bragging about being a top tier PvE player in GW2, is like saying you sit at the front of the short bus of MMO’s, if you get my drift.
Now, I have not called anyone an Elitist, but if the shoe fits, lace that sucker up and wear it.
I’ll repeat myself again here. There are two main arguments against easy mode raids. 1) It would be a waste of developer resources 2) Anet would unlikely be able to balance the rewards.
Oh this again.
Ok cracks knuckles
- It would be a Waste of Developer Resources.
This is hard one to counter without really questioning how naive this person is. Never mind the fact they have no idea what resources the company has at it’s disposal, or even what the actual metrics are, beyond that, it shows that have no idea what an ROI is, to begin with. So it the Lets go with that. To start off, any content that does not cater to at least around 60 – 70% of the games population is a potential waste of resources, in case you missed this, this game is a product, something the company needs to sell , if content is not at least reaching 50%+ of the game’s population, it’s a risk to take due to lost sales and lost customers. I mean we are talking Basic CS, here, if you can’t make at least half your clients happy, you’re doing it wrong. Making anything that caters to what could amount to 10%, at the expense of the other 90%, is a total and utter complete waste of time on every level, in fact, basic economics would make it painfully clear that going in that direction is not just a waste of time due to limited ROI due to demographic constraints, since it is done at the expense of your other clients, it runs the risk of being determent to your finical future goals. Unless your plan was to loose money. So walking in, we can see that Raids, were a waste of time to even make to start with, unless at least 50+ of the population will enjoy them. Which, if that was the case, it would not be “elite” content, now would it?
To devote resources to making this content available to 50%+ of the population, would be about the only move since their inception that made any sense at all, from any design perspective. Sorry to burst you bubble, but making content/product for the small minority, is simply not a profitable move, unless, it is done in such a way that it is not at the expense of your other clientele. That is just basic business logic.
But the main reason why this falls flat, is because if a company has the resources to waste on making content for the 10% of their population, they must have an abundance of resources they can use to make that same content available to the other 90%.
- Balancing rewards
Yah, I personally love this one, nothing screams grasping at straws then when people start to call the development staff incompetent. Best argument ever.
I’m not really sure where to start here.
I won’t pretend to be a logician. The first line of the Wikipedia article on ad hominem defines it as “a logical fallacy in which an argument is rebutted by attacking the character, motive, or other attribute of the person making the argument, or persons associated with the argument, rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself.”
I think your post fairly fits this description. You call “elitists” greedy, toxic, and self serving. Even in your response, you continue this trend. I haven’t played many other MMOs. Do I fit your description?
However, it’s also true. Look at any gaming forum, from Hello Kitty to Mortalis, from Aion to WoW, every elitist is the same, they all say about the same thing too, look at every game forum, it’s same responses from the Elitist crowed when there is any request to make content more accessible. That is because they all have the same underlying motive, to build up their own smug feelings of superiority by putting other people down. It is impossible for that kind of person not to be toxic, because their entire goal is to derive pleasure at the expense of others.
Now, onto the merits. I have no training in sales or customer support. But I have a feeling you are pulling these percentages out of thin air.
Surely not everything needs to cater to 50% of the population. Heck, Guild wars 2 is so diverse, it would be extraordinary if anything catered to that percentage of players. I doubt fractals, pvp, or wvw meets those percentages.
And I think you overestimate how popular easy mode raids would be. You still need to wrangle 10 people together. And, if it requires almost no organization, then what’s the difference between easy mode raids and a world boss, a dungeon, or a fractal? I contend the content you want already exists in the game.
I also think that you overstate how non raiders are “harmed” by raids. The best argument that I see is that anet would put disproportionate resources towards a game mode that a large chunk of players would not find fun. But this doesn’t seem to be the case, as the developer team for raids is relatively small, and anet exceeded their raid participation goals.
I also think you’re underestimating how difficult it would be to balance rewards for easy mode raids. I’m not calling anet incompetent per se. But their track record in this area is not the greatest – see dungeons and fractals.
I just want to talk about the merits. Neither side needs to resort to insulting “elitists” or “casuals.”
There’s a lot of hate towards raids in this thread. I want to share my personal experience.
Raids (and currently, SAB) are the only things bringing me back to guild wars 2. I would not play anymore if map metas or fractals were the only things to do in pve.
I like the combat in Guild wars 2. I like dodging. I like moving and attacking at the same time. I like not having to worry about 4 rows of spells.
Raids epitomize that kind of combat.
I understand that some people don’t like raids, for some reason or another. I just ask that you don’t destroy them. That’s why people like me comment on these threads. If raids disappeared (or if they stopped making them) I would quit guild wars 2.
And for what it’s worth, I’ve never seen the kind of elitism lambasted in this thread. Just yesterday, I formed a matthias pug group: “LFM MATT, exp, play 2+ classes.” We beat it after 45 minutes. And for several members it was their first kill.
So please don’t destroy raids. I understand if you don’t like them. Luckily, 95% of guild wars is not raids. You still have fractals, dungeons, map metas, world bosses, pvp, and wvw to enjoy.
They have so lost the argument that they are now just regurgitating the same old trash in hope that people forgot that it got shot to death 10 pages ago.
No one has won or lost this “argument” because it’s just two contrary opinions clashing over and over again. “I think this is a good idea!” vs. "No, I like how things are now! " The end. It’s interesting to me though to see how toxic people become the more they must interact with those that do not agree with everything they say.
Honestly, it’s been my experience that the most toxic people are the elitist, not the elite players, but the elitist players. Truth is, players that are highly skilled often have nothing to prove, so they are typically really great people, however, it’s the elitist players, those with something to prove that cause all the problems. In fact, if you look at any long running topic like this, you will see that almost all the initiation of hostilities come from Elitist and that is because being toxic is a byproduct of their base stand that they simply don’t want to share. They approach things with the adamant point that the only way they can have fun, is if they deny other people the ability to have fun as well, and I don’t believe that it is possible to have that stand, and not be inherently toxic, because that stand can only come from a greedy self serving motive.
Insulting the other side through ad hominem attacks does not really help your case.
I’ll repeat myself again here. There are two main arguments against easy mode raids. 1) It would be a waste of developer resources 2) Anet would unlikely be able to balance the rewards.
I’m not trying to deny people fun. I don’t think I’m being toxic. I truly believe that other content in the game already satisfies everything you’re asking for. And I’d rather have Anet develop those resources.
I actually think it’s a win-win to develop something like fractals, as opposed to easy mode raids. Because: raiders would get to enjoy both sets of content, and non raiders would have more content at their skill level.
As to rewards, the argument seems to have shifted away from exclusive skins to legendary armor. (I think this shift is a result of super adventure box, because the hard mode there does have exclusive skins. And while you can earn baubles in easy mode, it’s not really a feasible way to acquire the blue weapons either.)
Yes, most raiders are not opposed to alternate methods to acquire legendary armor. But we don’t want a watered-down version of the current method. From a raiders perspective, that would be akin to awarding king toad skins to anyone who completed infantile mode X amount of times.
There are plenty of other vanity items in the game to shoot for, why single out legendaries?
Good question. The likely answer:
- L. items have been, from launch, the main endgame goal.
- ANet has been slow to add other endgame goals that have similar acquisition times. One reason for this is that anytime they try, there are tons of forum posts complaining about grind, takes too long, etc. The other reason is that ANet takes a long time to produce anything — or so it seems.
- A lot of the other goals the game offers (Achievement hunting, for example) are generally not mutually exclusive with L. pursuit — until lately.
Three is especially likely to be a main factor.
These points are well-taken. I’m still not sure they justify this hubbub over legendary armor. But we are moving closer into value judgement territory.
Regarding 1 – Legendaries are a endgame goal, certainly. In that they are generally goals for players who’ve completed the vast majority of content. I’m not sure that it’s the end game goal. Speaking for myself, while I do have 4 legendary weapons, I’ve stopped acquiring more. Mainly because I don’t like the other skins (old legendaries), or don’t want to grind the HOT maps to get them (new legendary staff).
Raids are also an endgame goal. I’m not sure I see the problem in tying two end game goals together.
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. Make them sellable? Complaints that legendaries lose their prestige value, because TP flippers or credit card heroes can achieve them. (For the record, I’m ok with sellable legendaries, because they’ll give gold to people who like raids but don’t really value legendaries, and/or it’ll support anet through gem to gold conversions.)
I’ll also note that the current complaints seem similar to #2, as people complaining that they can’t get legendaries because they don’t have the time/skill.
And to say that HOT has no other meaningful end game goals seems a bit like hyperbole to me. There’s the specialization collections, the HOT map collections, the new legendaries, the precursor collections, etc. Legendary armor is not the only end game goal.
Regarding 3 – I think the main reason they were non exclusive is because gold was a high percentage of the legendary cost. So you could just buy the precursor, buy the t6 materials. But now, legendaries are account bound, so that’s a no-go (at least for the precursor). 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.
The problem with other endgame goals that Anet has thrown in from time to time is that the massive complaints about grind keep them from making these collections the equivalent of building a L. item. Thus, the staying power of the goals is less. That’s why I say that L. items are the endgame goal. Sure, there are other goals, but they seem more like secondary stuff rather than the real deal. Like Achievements in WoW, which took a back seat to the raid/gear treadmill.
The problem that some people are having with tying L. Armor to raids is that they’ve been waiting for that goal for nearly 3 years (since it was first hinted at), and now find it’s tied to a game mode that didn’t even exist when they started wanting it.
I guess good thing there’s no gear treadmill in Guild wars 2?
And I think you’re overstating legendaries as the end game goal. It’s certainly not for me. And given that anet halted development on new legendaries, my guess is that it’s not for a large part of the player base, either.
And I’m not sure I understand your argument about tying legendary armor to a new game mode. Both are new. This argument would make more sense if you were talking about legendary weapons, since there was already an established method to acquire those.
In the end, this may boil down to a value judgment. I personally don’t view legendaries as casual, given the amount of time they take to acquire. So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to tie them to elite content.
What have you found “abusive” from raiders? I lead pug groups every week. I have not encountered any abusive behavior.
Something like “Can you change your class?” or “Don’t use x trait here because Y is a lot better.” or even “We are looking for a warrior but you entered as a ranger. Change class or leave.” is extremely offensive in gw2.
If you find this abusive or offensive, then I’m not sure what to tell you.
Asking to change a trait or skill seems helpful to me, if it’s coming from an experienced player. I’m not sure why it would hurt your feelings. It takes a couple of clicks.
As someone who organizes pug groups, I’m pretty lenient on class choice, at least for wing 1. But I understand why others aren’t, and that’s their prerogative.
Obviously, if the lfg asks for a certain class, and you’re not that class, then you have no right to join the group. It’s their group, not yours, and they make the requirements.
Even if there was no explicit class requirements in the description, I would be ok asking you if you had another class, provided that you just joined the group. There’s nothing wrong with trying to maximize group effectiveness. And some classes are not the best at certain roles. If you can’t fill that role, and you haven’t committed any time, how are you harmed? Just find a group where you can fill the role they need. Or make your own.
As some general advice: People often ask: “What class should I gear up for raids?” The answer is always: multiple. If you limit yourself to one role or class, and that role is already filled in the group, then you’re out of looking. Being versatile is golden in raids.
There are plenty of other vanity items in the game to shoot for, why single out legendaries?
Good question. The likely answer:
- L. items have been, from launch, the main endgame goal.
- ANet has been slow to add other endgame goals that have similar acquisition times. One reason for this is that anytime they try, there are tons of forum posts complaining about grind, takes too long, etc. The other reason is that ANet takes a long time to produce anything — or so it seems.
- A lot of the other goals the game offers (Achievement hunting, for example) are generally not mutually exclusive with L. pursuit — until lately.
Three is especially likely to be a main factor.
These points are well-taken. I’m still not sure they justify this hubbub over legendary armor. But we are moving closer into value judgement territory.
Regarding 1 – Legendaries are a endgame goal, certainly. In that they are generally goals for players who’ve completed the vast majority of content. I’m not sure that it’s the end game goal. Speaking for myself, while I do have 4 legendary weapons, I’ve stopped acquiring more. Mainly because I don’t like the other skins (old legendaries), or don’t want to grind the HOT maps to get them (new legendary staff).
Raids are also an endgame goal. I’m not sure I see the problem in tying two end game goals together.
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. Make them sellable? Complaints that legendaries lose their prestige value, because TP flippers or credit card heroes can achieve them. (For the record, I’m ok with sellable legendaries, because they’ll give gold to people who like raids but don’t really value legendaries, and/or it’ll support anet through gem to gold conversions.)
I’ll also note that the current complaints seem similar to #2, as people complaining that they can’t get legendaries because they don’t have the time/skill.
And to say that HOT has no other meaningful end game goals seems a bit like hyperbole to me. There’s the specialization collections, the HOT map collections, the new legendaries, the precursor collections, etc. Legendary armor is not the only end game goal.
Regarding 3 – I think the main reason they were non exclusive is because gold was a high percentage of the legendary cost. So you could just buy the precursor, buy the t6 materials. But now, legendaries are account bound, so that’s a no-go (at least for the precursor). 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.
Im 53 and disabled and dont like taking abuse from elitist teenagers.
Its not the raids so much as the people and attitude they attract.
If I came into this debate without knowing anything about either “side,” I would find this comment incredibly dismissive.
What have you found “abusive” from raiders? I lead pug groups every week. I have not encountered any abusive behavior.
Game isn’t balanced for beans.
The reason so many people raid percentage wise compared to other games is because other games are balanced. Dungeons, WvW, and so forth are all dead people leaving in swaths due to esports balancing their classes for all modes and crunching the visual flair. Anet can’t do more than one thing at a time and even SAB goes away the 19th leaving us back at square one afterwards.
But like others have said elitism the white knights and rampant elitism that grows from raids has ended with the destruction of more than it’s fair share of MMO’s. Many people came to Gw2 as a haven from that type of thing but after the elitsit killed their own games they came to GW2 and are now trying to destroy it usin the same type of raid rhetoric used in so many other games which lead to their own collapses. I’d say go back to your old heavy raid oriented game but I’d say it either doesn’t exist anymore or is a complete and utter ghost town right now which is the fate of any game that caters to the elitist and not the casual and history proves it as such.
If you don’t like raiding as content, then, well, don’t raid?
Raids have been generally well received by the players that do them. They are one of the most polished parts of this game.
Honestly, the only “elitist” attitude I’ve seen is from non raiders. It seems selfish to me to demand that all content cater to your skill level. The real problem is the severe lack of content since HOT.
That said, I’ll be in SAB all weekend. Not sure whether I’ll want to beat all the wing 2 bosses this week.
I wish it was a matter of skill. That’s the thing. Raids are not at all indicative of skilled play. It’s just optimization and then executing on it. There’s not much intrinsically difficult on the personal level so much as build-dependent and so long as the raid leader knows how to order people around. Removing the timer would make them a lot more approachable and remove much of the elitism associated with fixed builds. The pug dungeon community was quite large. I’ve never joined a zerk/AP requirement dungeon group nor have I started one, and some of the pug groups I have joined have rivaled some guilds’ speed clear times, despite the groups not being fully optimized or people abiding to a strict strategy deemed by the community as “necessary.”
Given the opportunity to play as they want to, they’ll complete the content together. Raiding should be hard on skill, not hard on build-dependence and composition.
Optimization and execution can describe all pve content, since you are facing non player characters. And the “execution” can demonstrate skill.
There’s actually a lot of variety in terms of composition, once you know how the fight works. Many are strict on composition for the first couple of weeks because people are new to the fight and they want to try a composition they know works. But after it’s out for a couple of weeks, people relax a bit. I don’t have set compositions when I lead wing 1 parties.
I still don’t get where the so-called elitism comes from. I have not seen it, at least in my experience. What I have seen is players that actually put forth the effort beat raids.
Game isn’t balanced for beans.
The reason so many people raid percentage wise compared to other games is because other games are balanced. Dungeons, WvW, and so forth are all dead people leaving in swaths due to esports balancing their classes for all modes and crunching the visual flair. Anet can’t do more than one thing at a time and even SAB goes away the 19th leaving us back at square one afterwards.
But like others have said elitism the white knights and rampant elitism that grows from raids has ended with the destruction of more than it’s fair share of MMO’s. Many people came to Gw2 as a haven from that type of thing but after the elitsit killed their own games they came to GW2 and are now trying to destroy it usin the same type of raid rhetoric used in so many other games which lead to their own collapses. I’d say go back to your old heavy raid oriented game but I’d say it either doesn’t exist anymore or is a complete and utter ghost town right now which is the fate of any game that caters to the elitist and not the casual and history proves it as such.
If you don’t like raiding as content, then, well, don’t raid?
Raids have been generally well received by the players that do them. They are one of the most polished parts of this game.
Honestly, the only “elitist” attitude I’ve seen is from non raiders. It seems selfish to me to demand that all content cater to your skill level. The real problem is the severe lack of content since HOT.
That said, I’ll be in SAB all weekend. Not sure whether I’ll want to beat all the wing 2 bosses this week.
It’s been a while since I’ve done easy mode SAB. I’m not 100% on whether you’re awarded a bauble bubble at the end of each zone, but I don’t think you do. Thus, blue weapons would be out of reach for easy mode players.
You must play normal and hard mode SAB to get the skins.
You can convert the little currency into the bigger one, so even in infantile you can probably save up to buy blue skins, but really most players should be able to clear normal mode for World 1. World 2 is a whole different story, mainly just because they made the zones sooooooooooooo long without a stopping point.
And let’s be clear, I’m not asking for Infantile mode here, that’s just the slander others have accused me of. I’m asking for Normal mode, when the only option currently available in raids is Tribulation.
Exclusive rewards in this game is nothing new. Not everything needs multiple paths towards acquisition. If you’ve truly held this view about rewards, then you’ve been suffering for 3 years.
Yeah, but hopefully they’ll continue to improve in this regard, as they have with the fractal weapon skins.
Ohoni.6057 do ask for the same reward.
Nope. From the very start I’ve been asking for less reward. I mean, don’t get me wrong, if they offered identical reward I wouldn’t put up much of a fight, but I get that hard mode should offer more reward and that’s fine. For now I’m at around 1/3 reward for easy mode, but my position has never been the exact same reward.
Tribulation mode has unique rewards. High level fractals have unique rewards.
Game modes have always had exclusive rewards in this game. Have you suffered through this for 3 years?
There is a lot of hearsay in this thread. I doubt that many have even put forth the effort to raid.
People are afraid of raids because they are afraid to fail. It’s hard to fail most content in this game. Open world has a reputation of “press 1 to receive loot.” You just can’t do that in raids.
I don’t think people remember dungeons when they came out. They were hard. No one had the right gear. No one knew the dungeon mechanics. No one knew their classes.
Now they’re easy because people know what to do. It’s even easier for new players because they can mimic the experienced ones.
The same thing will happen to raids. I found VG hard the first couple of weeks. But I was inexperienced, and the group was inexperieced. Now it’s much easier. Because people know what to do.
So try out raids. Fail. It’s ok. That’s how I learned. I tried sloth every day the first week it came out, and didn’t beat it. Now I do. Because I learned the fight, and so did everyone else.
It’s actually a lot easier for you now, because you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. You can have an experienced player tell you exactly what to do. Exactly what build and gear to bring.
So join a pug group. Create one (I don’t raid on a schedule – I pug every week). Join a guild. You can be the solution. So just do it.
No it doesn’t. Can’t call Ascended expensive if you work on a legendary. A Legendary cost about 10-16 times the cost of an equal Ascended item.
Ah, but one is purely a stat increase, and another is a vanity item. And a nice skin. You can’t compare the cost directly because they are in a different category.
For me getting ascended gear is a costly necessity. Getting the legendary weapon is a longterm goal to occupy me in the game. The fun part.
Ascended armor is hardly a necessity. Heck, some of my characters are missing a couple of ascended pieces, because I think they are way too expensive to craft. I gear them using random drops.
You are reinforcing my point to maddoctor even more.
If legendary armor is only a vanity skin, then why do you want it if you think the process to get it is terrible? Aren’t there other skins you can aim for that have fun (to you) content barriers?
Because i want the legendary, not the process. And because i think the process is terrible, i am lobbying for a change.
Besides, i never said legendary is just a vanity skin. It’s a vanity gear with top stats and some nice options on top. It is also the designated longterm goal of the game.We also have no idea what legendary armor will look like. Could be as ugly as sin. (As, in my opinion, ascended armor is).
Could be. Waiting to check that is going to cost me half a year however. I’m not willing to take that risk.
And even if it ends up really ugly, i’d still be ticked off at Anet for locking top tier gear behind a content made for a small minority.
Between all the cross talk here, it’s sometimes hard to isolate arguments. What’s yours again? Mine is that ascended and legendary armor is not a necessity.
Look, the only reason you’ve given for wanting legendary armor is “because I want it.” I don’t think that’s a sufficient, especially when you admit legendaries are vanity gear. There are plenty of other vanity items in the game to shoot for, why single out legendaries? And since they are vanity items, having them shows a measure of accomplishment — in this case raids.
Fair Points and Solid Response.
Devoting of Resources
Here is the thing. They already have a team for Fractals, which is working on instabilities, the new backpack, and even new Fractals, it has been confirmed that we will get new Fractals soon™.
Unlike other methods of making Raids more accessible, turning the Raid fights into Fractals is not just a Raid thing, it’s also a major Fractal addition (9 new Fractals added! Double the amount of Fractal content!) It would actually be worth it to devote resources on this one, resources that have nothing to do with the Living World or the Raids, so I think this is a worthy investment.I am all for more Fractals, My Point was simply that it would be more work to try and transform the 10 person Raid encounter into a 5 man Fractal Encounter.
Difficulty and Challenge Level affecting Reward
That’s a problem with existing Fractals too. Cliffside and Swampland are completely different in terms of difficulty. A fix is needed here to balance reward/risk but it’s not specific to these new potential Fractals. ALL Fractals need re-balancing of their rewards and as part of that they can figure out proper rewards of the new ones.
As for adding Legendary Armor rewards in these Raids, that’s a big one. The problem here is that Fractal rewards themselves aren’t balanced. Adding another tier of rewards before fixing the current isn’t a very good idea. Now if/when they fix the Fractal reward system (which I hope will come in the April patch) there are ways of adding Raid rewards but there is the big problem of one piece of content offering two different reward systems (raid and fractal). That’s a rough one to balance
I know and can already imagine how specific instabilities at higher levels can turn the encounters much harder than the Raid encounters themselves :P That’s another consideration that requires some careful thinking.
The reward would need to be balanced, because, well, you can run a Fractal daily, where I hare that the raid is a weekly thing. So there is a lot of factors that would need to be taken into consideration while doing this. I don’t there is a simple answer, but it should be addressed none the less.
As for the rewards for Fractals, to me, the best way to fix the rewards in Fractals would be to award “boxes” for each task done, with increased specific rewards based on Fractal Levels.
IE: Players get a Chest for each seal they do in Cliffside.
Players get a Chest for Each room they do in Thermanova, and extra smaller chests for each Portal they close.
Players get a Chest for doing the Wisps in Swampland.
Each Cannon Phase in Mai Trin awards a Chest.That way, they up the reward for the more involved Fractals, with the reward being inherent to the complexity of the Fractal itself.
Why do we need to turn raids into fractals? I’d rather have 9 completely new ones.
The divide Ohoni between what we are saying and what you are saying is honestly how rewards are viewed in this game.
I understand that, and I have no problem with you viewing rewards differently than I do, so long as you don’t then attempt to use your views to justify controlling my access to the rewards I’d like to have. I mean, if you want to view your armor as some Mark of Merit, and imagine people fawning over your enormitude, that’s your business, just don’t say “no, you can’t get that reward unless you jump through the hoops I’m comfortable jumping through, because mah enormitude.”
Your desire for me to NOT have something does not have as much value as my desire to have it. They do not cancel out, because yours is about controlling others. You worry about the rewards you get, and your reasons for doing that, I swear I won’t get involved at all, just you don’t worry about the rewards I’m going for, or the way I’d like to access them either.
I think your view of rewards differs massively from the average player.
Let’s look at game modes that do have easy modes. (But, again, for the record, I’m against easy mode raids as a waste of developer resources).
So SAB has an easy mode, normal mode, and hard mode. Green and yellow SAB skins are exclusive to hard mode. The new auras require you to complete the hard mode collections. No way to get them through easy or medium modes.
It’s been a while since I’ve done easy mode SAB. I’m not 100% on whether you’re awarded a bauble bubble at the end of each zone, but I don’t think you do. Thus, blue weapons would be out of reach for easy mode players.
You must play normal and hard mode SAB to get the skins.
Let’s look at fractals. Before HOT, you could not get a fractal weapon until after a certain tier (I think 20). And now, I’m pretty sure you can’t get a golden fractal tier from the lowest fractal levels.
Exclusive rewards in this game is nothing new. Not everything needs multiple paths towards acquisition. If you’ve truly held this view about rewards, then you’ve been suffering for 3 years.
No it doesn’t. Can’t call Ascended expensive if you work on a legendary. A Legendary cost about 10-16 times the cost of an equal Ascended item.
Ah, but one is purely a stat increase, and another is a vanity item. And a nice skin. You can’t compare the cost directly because they are in a different category.
For me getting ascended gear is a costly necessity. Getting the legendary weapon is a longterm goal to occupy me in the game. The fun part.
Ascended armor is hardly a necessity. Heck, some of my characters are missing a couple of ascended pieces, because I think they are way too expensive to craft. I gear them using random drops.
If legendary armor is only a vanity skin, then why do you want it if you think the process to get it is terrible? Aren’t there other skins you can aim for that have fun (to you) content barriers?
We also have no idea what legendary armor will look like. Could be as ugly as sin. (As, in my opinion, ascended armor is).
Wow as a player just returning this is very disheartening, ascended gear, legendary gear…. how will i even play the game now, i’m screwed..
Despite some hyperbole in this thread, ascended gear is not necessary to play the majority of content in this game.
But, if you want it, it is very achievable. You can get an ascended amulet from laurels – just log in. Rings are best acquired through fractals, but you can get them with laurels as well. For accessories, I recommend getting them through guild missions.
Ascended weapons are about 70 to 100 gold to craft. Or you can get them as a random drop through fractals, pvp, or teq.
Ascended armor does cost a lot. About 400 to 500 gold to craft a full set. You can get some as random drops in fractals, but the dps boost from a full set of ascended armor is only about 2 to 3 percent. Ascended weapons and trinkets contribute much more to stats and dps.
This thread is about the top 1% of players who want legendary armor, and, for various reasons (some better than others), don’t want to raid. Legendary armor has the same stats as ascended (with the same marginal dps boost).
And here I was thinking the top 99% casuals want legendary armour through Anet hand outs.
Nope, I just want Anet create another ways for me to create my legendary armor like the core game’s legendary weapons.
Well, to be fair, there were only two ways to originally get legendary weapons: the mostly-pve way, or buy it off the tp.
For the record, I’m ok with buyable legendaries. But I don’t think most of the player base was. Some saw it as a loss of prestige if you could just buy it off the TP (or with a credit card). I understand that argument.
So the result is the HOT legendaries. Where you can only get them one way. And if you don’t like the way, then you don’t get the skin. The good thing is that legendaries are just fancy skins.
I don’t particularly want to grind the HOT maps, even though I kinda like the legendary staff. But I don’t clamor for alternate methods, because it’s just a skin. And the problem here is not that legendary armor is behind raids, but that they are account bound.
I personally use legendary insights as a requirement for my groups.
Honestly, I do set the threshold arbitrarily. For my wing 1 clear this week, I advertised “VG / GOR / SAB full clear, ping 15+ insights.” Some weeks, I use 10. If I’m doing an individual boss, not a full clear, then I make the threshold much lower, from 2 to 8.
The reality is that I don’t know most players I raid with. I have no idea what their experience level is. For my first kill off the week, I want to have it go as smoothly and quickly as possible. I have no interest in teaching people.
Later in the week, after my kill, (and when I have time), I relax a bit. I join teaching runs. But I don’t want that for my first kill.
Legendary insights do show a certain experience in raids. They are the best way to gauge a stranger. And, since I’m the one organizing the group, I get to choose who to accept.
Nope. Not trying to change raids one bit.
Not even a little.
You like how raids are right this very minute, then good news!
Even if I get my way 100% on this, you’ll be able to log in after that patch and continue to raid exactly like you’re raiding tonight!
Nothing about that will be changing whatsoever.
There will just be another version.
and that version would be different, you might not like that version, but that’s ok. because that version is not intended for you, it is for people who are different than you are, who like different things. And they can play it, and you never have to, and everyone can be happy.
Exactly!
It such a simple idea where everyone can be happy.
Anet makes two separate difficulties of the same instance, so that people have options on how they want to play. Nothing at all changes from the current dungeon, just a “Story Mode” gets put in, that is a little easier, or shall we say, just a bit more forgiving. The timers are a little slower on some mechanics, damage is reduced on some effects, the Boss Mobs have Less HP and do a little less damage, nothing major, just a slight numbers change really. That is all you or anyone else has asked for, and yet you would think from the responses on this topic they are acting like they going to lose their only reason to live.
Anyway, as you said, Everyone Wins.
Not sure why Anyone would have a Problem with that, I guess some people can’t be happy, unless they make Someone else unhappy, how truly petty and pitiful.
Again, the main arguments against it are:
(1) It would be a waste of developer resources, since there is already tons of easy and medium tier content in this game.
(2) It would devalue the existing rewards for raids.
Everyone does not win with easy mode raids.
I understand that some want to experience the raid content, but currently aren’t able to beat it. So they want an easy mode catered to their skill level. Where one mistake won’t cause a wipe (although they don’t currently), where you can bring a variety of builds (although you can currently), that you can beat with 9 random people (although you can currently).
Easy modes are not really a thing in Guild wars 2. I know some claim that raids are outside the baseline skill level (presumably from open world), but other content is too. Aether path in TA is much harder than a regular dungeon path. Arah is much harder than other dungeons. “Not so secret” is much harder than other jumping puzzles. Triple trouble is much harder than other world bosses.
The great thing about guild wars 2 is that you can play what you want to play. You don’t need to play everything. I don’t wvw. I don’t do dry top. But I know some people like that content, so good for them.
But I don’t demand that all content is catered to my skill level. I don’t demand access to every single skin. I don’t ask for hard mode mark ii golem. I don’t ask for hard mode cof. Why? Because there’s plenty of content that is at my skill level! Just as there’s plenty of content at yours.
I’ve seen a mania over legendary armor. Despite that you’ve lived without legendary armor for 3 years. Despite that it has the same stats as ascended. Despite that stat changing is mostly worthless. Despite that other legendaries require similar amounts of effort to achieve. Despite that we don’t even know what the skin is. (And based on ascended armor, it could be very ugly).
No one has really admitted to me the real reason they want legendary armor. The only answer I get is that “I want it because it’s in the game.” This answer is wrong on so many levels. Unless you can tell me you’ve achieved every other skin in the game, don’t tell me you need legendary armor.
I know the real reason you want it. You want the prestige. You know that it shows a certain mastery and dedication to guild wars 2. But you don’t want to put in the effort. You could learn how to beat raids. It is pve content, after all, so everything has a level of predictability that you could learn. But you don’t want to.
That’s fine. I don’t particularly like teq, so I don’t have all the teq skins. I don’t like triple trouble, so I don’t have any skins there either. But it’s just a skin. I can live without it. So can you.
Wow as a player just returning this is very disheartening, ascended gear, legendary gear…. how will i even play the game now, i’m screwed..
Despite some hyperbole in this thread, ascended gear is not necessary to play the majority of content in this game.
But, if you want it, it is very achievable. You can get an ascended amulet from laurels – just log in. Rings are best acquired through fractals, but you can get them with laurels as well. For accessories, I recommend getting them through guild missions.
Ascended weapons are about 70 to 100 gold to craft. Or you can get them as a random drop through fractals, pvp, or teq.
Ascended armor does cost a lot. About 400 to 500 gold to craft a full set. You can get some as random drops in fractals, but the dps boost from a full set of ascended armor is only about 2 to 3 percent. Ascended weapons and trinkets contribute much more to stats and dps.
This thread is about the top 1% of players who want legendary armor, and, for various reasons (some better than others), don’t want to raid. Legendary armor has the same stats as ascended (with the same marginal dps boost).
The question is why should a player get Legendary Armor easier (or same difficulty) than Ascended Armor, the existence of Ascended Armor isn’t disputed.
I have no idea, you are the only person that mentions it. I have no problem in legendary armor requiring as much effort as legendary weapons, or backpacks.
I never said i want legendary armor just for stat swapping, did i?
I’m not sure how to respond to this. If you agree with me that stat swapping is not worth it, great!
I do not. I feel that stat swapping that doesn’t require lugging whole sets of additional armor in inventory is very useful.
Why do you want a legendary again?
Why did the chicken cross the road?
All the arguments for easier access legendaries seem bunk to me.
I’m not arguing for easy legendaries. I am arguing for legendaries that are not locked behind a narrow gate. And the arguments for that are good. It’s just not everyone is interested in hearing them.
It is much more cost effective to make multiple sets of ascended or exotic gear.
Using normal harvesting tools is more cost effective too, and yet people keep buying the infinite ones from gemshop.
QoL has its worth too, you know.(As an aside, legendary backpieces are much more useful, because you can use them across all classes, and because you don’t need to worry about a sigil or rune. And yet a see much less complaints about those …)
Because there are two of them, acquirable by different means, and on top of it the gates on them are mostly illusory.
We don’t even know what the skins will look like. Even if we did, it’s ok to have exclusive skins.
I might even concede the case on exclusive skins, but in this case i cannot, as for foreseeable future there will be only one set of legendary armor. And that single set being exclusive is not okay.
If someone doesn’t even have ascended, why are they going for a legendary?
I have ascended, several sets in fact. Just not multiple sets on a single char – that would be both inconvenient (loss of inventory space) and wasteful (i have more alts than ascended sets). Which is, again, besides the point. The primary reason for existence of legendary gear is for players to want them. Why are you surprised that they fulfill it well?
For the record, I’m ok with Anet eventually providing alternate ways to achieve legendary armor.
Sure you are, you won’t be the one waiting years for it (as we’re not going to see a second set anytime soon).
But they seemed pretty strained right now. And I don’t want them to water down raids just for legendary armor.
I’m not asking for a nerf to raids. Not yet anyway.
For now, it’s ok that this is the only method to achieve it. (Just as, for now, pvp is the only way to get a legendary backpiece).
As i have already said, there’s no real gate to pvp backpack, Anet said clearly that they expect anyone that participates to get it eventually. You’re not required to be a good pvper.
And the fractal legendary (so, an alternative) is on its way, and will likely be in before legendary armor.
There are no real situations in this game that require stat-swapping on armor. The most plausible explanation I’ve heard was to increase toughness for the tank, but that is more cheaply achieved by getting toughness trinkets or weapons. (And personally, that is exactly what I do on my tank characters).
I agree that you’ll likely never make your money back with a permanent harvesting tool. (Or, it will take years to make your money back). I’m not sure how this bears on raids. Permanent harvesting tools are available exclusively through the gem store, and gem store purchases support ANET. For the record, I would be OK will cool skins in the gem store (as they are indirectly through black lion skins) or even stat-changing armor on the gem store.
Currently, there’s only one way to get a legendary backpiece. Yes, fractals will happen eventually. Even so, I argue that the bar against raids are also “largely illusory,” as anyone who puts in the practice can raid.
I see legendaries as a prestige item. So it takes a certain amount of dedication to get them. You can show that through raids, pvp, or pve.
You were ok for years without legendary armor – what changed?
And I seriously doubt the complainers are even putting in significant amounts of time. It probably takes hundreds of hours to get a legendary weapon. Are people even trying to raid? Or do they give up after a couple of attempts?
Have you ever considered that maybe some people don’t enjoy raiding in its current form, and that since this is a game, and is supposed to be about having fun, they would rather spend their time doing other activities? The thing about classic Legendaries is that you can do all sorts of things to work towards them. I mean, between the time that I decided to pull the trigger on my Legendary and when I actually got it, it only took me about two weeks in total, and maybe 6-8 hours, tops, in actual direct effort.
I’d already had World Completion for a year, since I liked exploring, I already had plenty of badges from APs, I bought the Precursor on the TP because there was no other reasonable way to get it, I already had most of the T6 mats in my bank and bought the rest, the dungeon tokens took me like 3-4 days of running two paths a day, big whup, the clovers took like 10-15 minutes in front of the forge, it was all pretty simple, so these arguments about “Legendary weapons are this enormous undertaking, the armor should be too” are just nonsense.
Now sure, not everyone likes doing World Completion, and I’m totally sympathetic to that, and supportive of alternate ways of earning the Gift of Exploration, but nobody can say with a straight face that getting World Completion is even remotely comparable in effort to beating all six raid bosses. It might take more time if the raider is really good or being carried, but you can pretty much sleepwalk through the process.
And sure, it also takes a minimum of a few hundred gold, then some combination of either hand-farming dozens of different mats or buying those with more gold, but there are tons of different ways to pursue that objective, so anyone who is playing the game in ANY way should be able to progress towards that, rather than being restricted to just one specific activity that you may not enjoy. I mean, there might be some super efficient way to farm one of the mats, or an efficient way to farm up gold, but if you really don’t like that way, you don’t have to do it, there are slower paths. And again, that don’t involve paying other players to play that bit for you.
Legendaries take more than a few hundred gold. They take thousands of gold. And world completion. And karma. And dungeons. And wvw. It’s a lot of effort. So will getting legendary armor. And a wager if you put forth the hundreds of hours it took you to get a legendary weapon, you could get legendary armor. You happened to back into a legendary weapon because you liked the content tied to it. NOt everyone does. And not everyone has 100s of hours under their belt, as I wager you had.
It’s ok not to like everything in the game. What seems insane to me is that you are demanding an easy mode so you can get a reward. No one really does this for other game modes. No one demanded alternative ways to get the Christmas shoulder. Pvp legendary. Wvw skins. Guild armor. Because in a game with no gear treadmill, we need prestige skins as rewards.
You don’t like raiding? Fine. That’s ok. You don’t need to like everything in this game. But stop coming up with excuses why you can’t beat the raid. You can. You just need to put in the effort.
But what if you would not enjoy doing so? Why should you have to?
That’s the entire point, this is a GAME, you should enjoy playing it.
Why would you play content you don’t like just to get a skin?
How is it the best when it has the same stats as ascended?
If you don’t believe that it’s the best, then why do you care enough to want to keep it away from other players who want it? If the item is desirable enough that you want to hoard it for yourself like Golum, then it’s desirable enough for other players to be justified in wanting one of their own. Their position is less greedy than yours in this matter.
I am not opposed to eventually alternative ways to get legendary armor. I see it as a prestige item. I don’t want the current method watered down. Because, in my opinion, the effort required is on par with legendary weapons.
The same thing would happen if easy mode raids with access to the same rewards are implemented. There are people who collect skins for prestige (rarity usually) or fashion (sometimes both if lucky), let the people who want their prestige be happy too please!
But why are they entitled to their happiness, while people who would be happy just owning those skins, regardless of prestige or exclusivity, are not entitled to be happy? If the choice is between having an item that only a very few will ever earn, and that makes them happy because they have something that other people can’t, or to make the item be something that most people could conceivably earn, and they can be happy because they have it, not just because other people don’t, then I think it’s a no-brainer that you side with the latter option over the former, don’t you?
It’s not a zero sum game. You can have skins that are easy to get. Other that are hard to get. Cool skins that are easy to get. Cool skins that are hard to get. That pleases both groups.
And if all you care about is the “coolness” of a skin, then it’s dishonest to demand legendary armor, at least at this point. We don’t even know what it will look like. So clearly you want it for the prestige. So complete the prestige content.
I’m not sure I really understand this legendary mania. WHY do you really want legendary armor? It can’t be for the skin, we don’t know what it is yet. It can’t be for the stats, it has the same stats as ascended. It can’t be for stat changing, because legendary armor is not cost-effective.
So why? Prestige? Complete the prestige content. Progression? Well, progress in learning how to do raids.
Look at how it works already. People grind the raid multiple times just to hit the shard cap. If they raised that cap, people would grind more. The intent of Magnetite Shards isn’t to be a grind, and it certainly isn’t to make it a fast process to do so that you can buy rewards. Raising the cap actually heightens the grind because people want their shinies, and the more people grind the quicker they burn out on the content. I actually think 100 shards per week was a very good strategy by ANet to extend the life of their content while still giving people the ability to get rewards if their RNG is terrible.
I don’t mind the 2nd option presented here, though, but since the skins are the ‘ultimate’ rewards ANet likely wouldn’t buy into it. I, honestly, believe that the skin is what you’re paying 600 shards for and they give you the ascended weapon for free.
This may be how it is for groups that beat the bosses on their first try. In my pug groups, it usually takes 1-4 tries to beat the boss.
Now with wing 2, I never need to go back to shard cap. I think it would be beneficial to provide some incentive to help groups later in the week.
Yes, you’ll need to get better. Is that too much to ask for a legendary item?
It is when the game never asked that for any of the Legendary items before except this one. It’s worst when the only legendary armor in the game is lock behind one specific content. Again nothing like any of the legendary before.
Anet changed legendaries with HOT, because players clamored for progression and a sense of accomplishment. Anything you can’t buy off the trading post is tied to specific content. This problem isn’t unique to legendary armor.
For the record, I would be OK with sellable legendary armor if the method to acquire them was repeatable.
Raiding is not required to get the highest stat gear.
It’s not about stats, its about locking best items behind raids.
How is it the best when it has the same stats as ascended? Yes, I know about stat changing, but it’s more cost effective to have multiple ascended. In the end, legendaries are prestige items.
I like both of these ideas. It also encourages players who beat the raid earlier in the week to help those who still need a kill at the end of the week.
I’m not sure I completely understand your response. I’m positing that if you commit the time, like 5 hours a week for 40 weeks, you’ll learn enough to beat the raid. Yes, you’ll need to get better than you were at week 0, but that’s what the 40 weeks of practice is for.
Yes, you’ll need to get better. Is that too much to ask for a legendary item?
Forcing GW2 to follow WoW paradigm is definitely too much to ask. I had my share of high-end WoW raiding for years, and I bought GW2 because Anet promised to make it different.
Raiding is not required to get the highest stat gear.
I would argue that if you have the time to commit over a year to a legendary, then you can learn how to do raids.
Take time to accumulate what you need isn’t the same as having a skill gate. For exemple, if it take about 200 hours to craft a legendary item. An hardcore player could do that in like 5 weeks by playing 40 hours per week. But a casual playing only 5 hours per week will be able to get it in 40 weeks. It’s not a big commitment really, he just play a bit each week, but he will still have a long term goal and frankly that represent most players in gw2 going after a Legendary. Either because you only play 5 hours per week in the game or because you only put 5 hours per week toward your legendary, while the rest of your time you play something else in the game that doesn’t really help you toward your legendary. You can’t do that with raid.
Again. IMO all legendary should need a heavy commitment. Either by asking to be good in several portion of the game or to master one specific portion of the game. PvP legendary should ask you to be Dragon in Diamon League, WvW should ask you to have more than 1 thousand kills or at least a rank of several hundreds, it should ask you to go through raid, etc.
But Anet didn’t do that for any of the Legendary item so far. Either you put legendary behind heavy commitment or you don’t. Either you ask for a skill gate or you don’t. If all of your Legendary don’t ask that, except one, that just weird design. Especially since it’s the only version of Legendary armor in the game. I wouldn’t be against it if that was just the skin that was lock behind raid.
I’m not sure I completely understand your response. I’m positing that if you commit the time, like 5 hours a week for 40 weeks, you’ll learn enough to beat the raid. Yes, you’ll need to get better than you were at week 0, but that’s what the 40 weeks of practice is for.
Yes, you’ll need to get better. Is that too much to ask for a legendary item?
Anyone who wants a legendary just for the stat swapping is irrational, because no one stat swaps on a regular basis, and because the ascended counterparts are much cheaper.
I never said i want legendary armor just for stat swapping, did i?
I’m not sure how to respond to this. If you agree with me that stat swapping is not worth it, great! Why do you want a legendary again?
All the arguments for easier access legendaries seem bunk to me.
Legendaries have the same stats as ascended, so they do not provide a stat bonus against other gear.
Stat changing is mostly worthless, because you can’t switch out sigils or runes. It is much more cost effective to make multiple sets of ascended or exotic gear.
(As an aside, legendary backpieces are much more useful, because you can use them across all classes, and because you don’t need to worry about a sigil or rune. And yet a see much less complaints about those …)
We don’t even know what the skins will look like. Even if we did, it’s ok to have exclusive skins.
If someone doesn’t even have ascended, why are they going for a legendary?
For the record, I’m ok with Anet eventually providing alternate ways to achieve legendary armor. But they seemed pretty strained right now. And I don’t want them to water down raids just for legendary armor. For now, it’s ok that this is the only method to achieve it. (Just as, for now, pvp is the only way to get a legendary backpiece).
I would argue that if you have the time to commit over a year to a legendary, then you can learn how to do raids.
And you would be wrong. Which has been explained many times already in detail in multiple threads.
I’ve posted my reply in other threads, but I think it’s worth posting here.
So the primary response I get is “I can’t get commit to raiding for large amounts of continuous time.” I don’t really buy this response.
I think 1-hour chunks is plenty of time to make significant progress in learning how to raid. And we’re talking about making progress over a year. It’s been 5 months – we aren’t even halfway there yet.
And I seriously doubt the complainers are even putting in significant amounts of time. It probably takes hundreds of hours to get a legendary weapon. Are people even trying to raid? Or do they give up after a couple of attempts?
Join a guild that does raid teaching runs. Join pug groups. Have someone explain exactly what your role is in the fight. Know what gear you need. This isn’t pvp — there are several scripted mechanics that you can anticipate and overcome with practice.
All my “first kills” in wing 2 were in pug groups. Just last week, I joined several wing 1 groups that had first timers. Guess what? We beat them. It took less than an hour.
You actually have it easier now, because more people know what they’re doing. So you only need to concentrate on your personal performance, and not worry about anyone else’s mistakes.
You don’t like raiding? Fine. That’s ok. You don’t need to like everything in this game. But stop coming up with excuses why you can’t beat the raid. You can. You just need to put in the effort.
Yes, that’s confirmed. The description is just a bit misleading on this.
Oh thanks. Than my point is reinforced. No legendary in the game have any skill gate to it except the Legendary Armor. A casual can slowly grind at his pace any of the legendary weapons or legendary back item, but can’t do the same with Legendary Armor.
I would argue that if you have the time to commit over a year to a legendary, then you can learn how to do raids.
Everyone that I have played with and know have multiple armour sets and weapons.
That pretty much explains why you have such skewed idea about the community.
Hint: that’s not common. Not even close. You are talking here about perhaps top few percent group.Ascended chest drop quite often in fotm and there is no shortage of LFG for those. If you are new to the game them sure one set is most you can manage but for someone who has been here for at least 2 years you should have had chances of getting multiple sets.
I am here from the very beginning, with over 6000 hours of active play. I have 3 full ascended sets. Which means that most of my alts do not even have one. It will be a loooong time before any of my chars will have a second set. As far as i know, none of my guildies (who are also long-time players) have multiple armor sets on their chars either.
As i said, you have a really skewed vision of what’s normal in this game.
It might be more useful for a class like Chronomancer to adjust the amount of toughness you have between raids for tanking.
Adjusting toughness is something i’d really like to be able to do on my guardian. I have run into many situations where it would have been useful already, and i fully expect to run into those again.
We are examining this issue through the lens of players who get legendaries. If you have the time to get a legendary, you have the time to get multiple sets of ascended gear, at a fraction of the cost.
Anyone who wants a legendary just for the stat swapping is irrational, because no one stat swaps on a regular basis, and because the ascended counterparts are much cheaper.
Myself and others have already discussed the fault in your logic.
All you have really done is whine that it would impede your ability to play the way you want, since you don’t care that others have only asked for the same, Not feeling it.
Not caring either.
OK, people have addressed your gear check proposal at face value, and you’ve yet to respond to any of the arguments (in summary: most bosses are not dps checks, the content itself filters players, it punishes players with alts, it reduces experimentation, and it chills fun runs).
I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt. You claimed this was not a petty response just because we oppose easy mode raids. I see I was mistaken in taking your suggestion at face value
Regarding 1 – I’m not sure I entirely agree, because I sometimes do raids even when shard and reward capped. But legendary armor does provide an incentive to raid, because, frankly, the liquid gold and rng rewards are terrible.
But that’s due to the liquid gold and rng rewards being terrible. I fully agree that they are, and should be better.
Regarding 2 – I’m not sure what the problem here is. Other content provides exclusive rewards and allows players to stand out. Pvp legendary. Fractal weapons. Ley line armor. The HOT legendaries.
They all require a lot of effort, but aren’t gated beyond anything that’s unreachable for practically anyone. Some might get them faster, others will take longer, some might take much, much longer, but everyone can get them. Not so with raid.
I’m also not sure what the problem is in aiming towards a reward. Some people like goals, and have fun this way. And if wanting rewards is such a bad thing, then why do “casuals” care about legendaries? Shouldn’t they not care about rewards?
Where did you get the idea that casuals do not care about rewards, or long term goals? What is important here however is the way to that goal. It must be something a casual can progress on their own pace.
Regarding 3 – Yes, it really seems this way. It’s a legendary. Moreover, it’s just a skin. It took me a year to get my first legendary weapon. It’ll take be 9 months to get the pvp legendary. Why is requiring a bit of effort to get legendary armor such a bad thing?
I have no problem in legendary armor taking a year to get. Assuming i can walk the road at all. Raids are by design a road that majority of the player population are not expected to be able to advance on. That is a problem.
I may have phrased my response to 2 poorly – I was addressing the argument that only raiding for a legendary was somehow bad. I don’t think so, and I think we agree on this point.
I know we disagree on whether raids are beatable by any player. When we’re talking over year time frames, I think they are. I know the typical response is “I can’t commit to large chunks of time,” but, well, I don’t buy it. Surely you can find hour chunks of playtime over a year. And other parts of the game, like dragon stand require long periods of time (although, granted, you can afk).
And if it’s actually true you can’t find 1-hour periods to play over a year, then maybe you don’t deserve a legendary. I know this is a value judgment, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable.
This might be a little off topic but I just wanted to give my 2 cents on some of the things I’ve seen in this thread.
1) Someone said that if legendary armor isn’t exclusive to raids then the reward for raiding won’t be there and people won’t raid anymore. Also, he said that doing it just for the fun of it only works for a couple of runs and then dies off, it becomes a grind.
…
2) Exclusive raid rewards allow the raiders to stand out and feel accomplished
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3) Casuals just want a reward button
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Regarding 1 – I’m not sure I entirely agree, because I sometimes do raids even when shard and reward capped. But legendary armor does provide an incentive to raid, because, frankly, the liquid gold and rng rewards are terrible.
Regarding 2 – I’m not sure what the problem here is. Other content provides exclusive rewards and allows players to stand out. Pvp legendary. Fractal weapons. Ley line armor. The HOT legendaries.
I’m also not sure what the problem is in aiming towards a reward. Some people like goals, and have fun this way. And if wanting rewards is such a bad thing, then why do “casuals” care about legendaries? Shouldn’t they not care about rewards?
Regarding 3 – Yes, it really seems this way. It’s a legendary. Moreover, it’s just a skin. It took me a year to get my first legendary weapon. It’ll take be 9 months to get the pvp legendary. Why is requiring a bit of effort to get legendary armor such a bad thing?
Stat-swapping for ascended already exists…..
I think what’s meant is stat swapping out of combat, not running to the forge to change stats and running back. Crafting a stat change isn’t really the same that at all.
But how often do you stat swap your legendary? I have never heard of people stat swapping on a regular basis. You don’t hear of people having one stat for pocket raptors and once out of combat swapping stats to fight smokescales.
Most people here I would assume have a set for open world pve and instanced pve. Legendary armour will just replace one of those or allow you to try something new and I doubt everyone here is a theory crafter when it comes to builds.
One argument at least would be for lowering your crit in level 41-50 fractals, where I’d rather not crit and give the bad guys boons. Would I want to transform my armor just for that moment, or make a whole new set for 10 fractals I’ll probably never do again,. or just switch stats on everything?
I’m sure I can come up with other examples, like taking a character to PvE and then directly to WvW, nad the back to PvE on the same day. You don’t think it’s inconvenient to change stats in the forge in that circumstance?
Edit: Changing the weapon by itself doesn’t do much, but swapping armor and weapon stats does. I do have 8 legendary weapons.
I get you will want to swap for different game modes like PvE and WvW but after 3 years people here don’t have an armour set for that?
As for fractals, who on earth actually stat changes based on the instability. I have never heard of anyone doing that. You have fury, spotter, frost spirit etc. You are just picking bad examples.
I don’t play enough WvW at this time to make it worth making a seperate armor set, using six inventory slots and carrying it around or leaving it my chest. And that’s assuming I only need one set, since I WvW on muliple characters…but not that much.
So the question becomes, how many sets of armor do I need to make. I might even go into WvW more often if I had the ability to swap stats. I’d simply go with a neutral rune, since I’m not a min-maxer.
I very often play for convenience.
No one honest stat swaps on a regular basis. Your examples are hypothetical.
The reality is that stat swapping is mostly useless since you can’t swap sigils and runes without losing them. You could make 1000 exotic weapons or 20 ascended for the price of one legendary. Most players, myself included, just have multiple sets if we go into multiple game modes.
I have four legendary weapons. I’ve only stat swapped them twice. Once, when I gave my legendary shield to my mesmer when chronomancer came out. Another when I converted my pistol from sinister to viper for my engie. What do I do with my ascended weapons when the meta changes (which happens, at most, once a year)? I mystic forge them, like everyone else.
Stat swapping on legendaries is not a convenient, given the cost. The only real reason people want legendaries is prestige. Beating raids is a prestige event. I don’t see a problem.
I see a lot of raiders giving in to the idea of easy mode raids, but I still think it’s a terrible idea.
I’ve seen two main reasons for easy mode raids. 1) They want to complete the content. 2) They want the unique rewards, usually legendary armor.
Regarding 1 – Easy mode raids are not the best avenue for easy content. You’ll still need to find 10 people to group up with. You’ll (likely) still need to fulfill certain roles — tank, dps, healer, condi, etc. These organizational barriers (though not, in my opinion, very high) stop some from raiding. They’ll likely stop you from easy raiding too.
And, if you want content where you don’t need roles, or organization, you have it! Dungeons. Fractals. World bosses. Map metas. This content caters to your skill level.
The fact is, not all content is caters to all skill levels. You need some skill to beat arah. Liadri. Triple trouble. There’s no easy mode there. Why? Because there’s tons of easy content to enjoy. Ask for more fractals. More dungeons.
And, some raids bosses are easier than others. Like dungeons. Trio is easier than sloth. VG is easier than gorseval.
Not all content needs to be complete-able by the lowest skill level.
Regarding 2 – So there’s no gear treadmill in Guild wars 2. Which is great. Your gear stays relevant for a long time.
But post 80 players need something to work towards. And that’s skins. And, to a lesser extent, legendaries.
So I don’t really understand the hubbub against unique skins. Every game mode has them. Pvp, wvw, super adventure box, silverwastes, every hot map, dungeons – I could go on. Skins show other players you beat that content. Seems ok to me.
Now legendaries. Ok. They have the same stats as ascended. The stat change is mostly useless, because you can’t change sigils and runes. You could make 1000 exotics or 20 ascended weapons for the price of 1 legendary. But some people want them.
So I don’t think we need an easy mode just so people can get legendary armor. Seems like a round about way to solve a particular problem. The obvious solution is to provide a different way to acquire them.
It apparently takes a long time to do this, based on the legendary weapon fiasco. So let’s assume they won’t add alternate methods for the foreseeable future.
It’s not unprecedented to have legendaries tied to particular game modes. For weapons, it’s pve. For backpieces, it’s pvp (and, eventually, fractals). For armor, it’s raids. And so are you “forced” to do raids to get legendary armor. Yes. Just like you are forced to do open world pve, or forced to do pvp, for the other legendaries.
I won’t be getting another legendary weapon any time soon. The new HOT maps aren’t that fun for me. But I don’t demand alternate ways to get them. I don’t demand different HOT maps. When I see that legendary staff, I think, wow, that guy did a lot of pve. When I see the legendary backpiece, I think, wow, that guy is good at pvp. And when you see the legendary armor, you’ll think, wow, that guy did a lot of raids.
But his armor won’t be any better than yours. Just like the legendary staff isn’t any better than mine. It’s a prestige item. As it should be.
I don’t think this needs to be built into the system, as it would presumably be a burden for players that are already properly geared (by mandating something else), and it would eliminate fun runs and experimentation.
I would imagine a player that was already geared, would have no problems passing a Gear Check.
Also there is no shortage of other content for everyone to have “fun runs” and casually goof off and “experiment” with, but an “Elite Raid” should not be among them.
Since it’s instanced content, I have no problem with 10 people goofing off in a raid.
As to the type of gear check, I’m not sure what you are imagining. Fractals, for example, requires ascended gear with infusions. Ascended gear is not required to beat the raid (although it is helpful).
Regardless, we’ve veered off the topic of easy mode raids, which we both apparently agree is unnecessary.
I don’t want to be accusatory, but it seems like you’re strawmanning the “no easy mode” side. Which isn’t really constructive.
Not at all.
In fact, at one time, I was under the illusion that Raids should have been more Accessable, mainly because I thought they were supposed to just be “Content” if you will “80th level Content” akin to any other content of that level range. just a 10 man 80th level Dungeon, like Honor of the Waves just with 10 people.
But then I paused and asked a very powerful question, one that would set my next move. See, I asked “Are Raids Supposed to be End-Game Content” and the answer was informative and eye opening.
From the Mouth of the Developers themselves.
“Raids are 10-player, instanced, elite dungeon content that’s a challenge unlike anything we’ve previously released in Guild Wars 2.”
This changed everything for me. I realized my mistake, and I also realized that, their biggest flaw in this design was to allow people the Illusion they could enter with a 70th level player and have even the slimiest, most remotest chance to survive. That the reason why we are having this discussion at all, is because Anet failed to set a Hard Requirement to enter, and thus deceiving people that this is intended to be available to them.
It’s Not
Nor was it ever intended, and that was their flaw.
Difficulty is not enough, that just makes people bitter, that just makes people feel resentment, and that is what starts these hundreds if not in the thousands by now. Posts.
The flaw was they failed so say clearly “You Must Meet this Requirement To Enter”
Had they put that in, had they made it clear that nothing short of a complete character was going to even be able to do this, there would be no illusions about what the Raid was intended to do and be.
It would have been easy on everyone, no one would have to feel bad about kicking someone for not being optimal, or not fully prepared, they need to have their “Bane Resist” to play this dungeon.
When they get that, then they can play.
It sets a goal for everyone, lets them know clearly if they are ready or not.
Upleveling in fractals just starts topics like this: Why you kick me?
Raids really needed that “Meet this Bar to Enter” to ensure everyone and anyone knew exactly what this content was, what it’s intention was, and where they stood with their ability to do it.
In the end, I firmly believe had they put in a Hard Gear Check, this topic and others like it, never would have existed. What I don’t get, is why you don’t see that as well?
Alright, I see your point of view. It’s an interesting one.
Still, I don’t think a hard gear check is required. Really, the content serves as that check.
A hard gear check also allows for less experimentation. There was a very interesting run a while back where the group tried to survive as long as possible in VG enrage while still killing the boss. I think they lasted about 40 minutes. I’m not sure these types of runs would be possible with a hard gear check.
This type of hard gear check is also not in other parts of the game. The new maps are meant for level 80s, but that doesn’t stop a level 3 from getting there. That also doesn’t stop them from instantly dying from any attack. But I don’t see low levels complaining about the new maps.
As a small aside, my guild once had a new character race from LA to the gates of arah. It was really fun. But it wouldn’t be possible if cursed shore had a hard level check. I don’t want to put the same restriction on raid fun runs.
In the end, mandating a hard gear check seems like a drastic solution to fix a self-solvable problem. You’ll quickly discover, from the encounter or other squad members, whether your gear is good enough to raid. And then you get the proper gear. I don’t think this needs to be built into the system, as it would presumably be a burden for players that are already properly geared (by mandating something else), and it would eliminate fun runs and experimentation.
Again, a gear requirement for raids is a petty response. It is not a constructive suggestion.
It;s not petty at all, It’s simply wanting an Honest Bar that needs to be met to enter the raid.
Excuse me, but, why is someone who was once against doing anything to make the raid more accessible, suddenly regurgitating Ohoni’s arguments ad nauseam?
Didn’t you already argue against making things to easy, why the sudden change of heart to allow In-Progress and non-optimal toons into the Raid?
Yes, I don’t think raids should be easy. No, I don’t think we need some sort of external requirement to enter raids. The content itself serves as this requirement.
If people want to try to do raids in rare armor, or on level 70s, who am I to stop them? If they beat it (however unlikely) then it’s quite the accomplishment.
I would also note that no other content has the type of requirement you speak of. Not even fractals – it upscales you to 80, and it’s possible to avoid most forms of agony.
I don’t want to be accusatory, but it seems like you’re strawmanning the “no easy mode” side. Which isn’t really constructive.
I can’t play all of them if you add a hard gear check. I’d need to spend even more time (and money) to gear them all and have them ready for the Raid. We are not talking about one or two characters, more like 9.
.And so to be able to raid with all 9, you would have to do what is necessary, and gear them up.
I second STIHL’s proposal. If these “raiders” are going to oppose difficulty settings and the like, then there absolutely needs to be a hard gear check, instead to prevent these threads in the future. If people aren’t willing to put in the work to gear their characters, then they clearly don’t actually want to raid. That is what all the raiders have been saying after all. To “put in the work” to be “worthy” of raids.
So, let’s have a hard gear check and maddoctor can put in the work to gear his nine characters.
None of us need care that it makes it harder for him to raid, since he doesn’t care that the current setup makes it hard for others to raid. It’s a perfectly fair and valid proposal for STIHL to raise. Kudos to them.
Thank you very much.
I second STIHL’s proposal. If these “raiders” are going to oppose difficulty settings and the like, then there absolutely needs to be a hard gear check, instead to prevent these threads in the future.
Do you think that would prevent these threads from appearing? The next thread you will get is “please remove hard gear checks from Raids”
Sure they would, when was the last time you saw “please remove Agony Resist from level 100 Fractal” ?
Again, a gear requirement for raids is a petty response. It is not a constructive suggestion.
Speaking personally, I would be ok with getting rid of agony resist altogether. It’s confusing for new players, and an artificial gate on progression. I’d much rather have a system where you could only do a certain range within your personal reward level. But that’s another topic, and doesn’t really bear on easy mode raids. There is no hard gear check with raids.