Guild Wars 2

drunkenpilot.9837:

There is so much salt around these events. Why are you folks so angry at not being able to complete them within 1 day of implementation?

It’s not the delay that is a problem. It’s the waiting. Not ven knowing how long it will be. Because the mob may not spawn at all. Or spawn in the short moment when you just had to leave your computer for a second 9laving you with 3h + wait time).

If you could get only one of those per day, but the waiting was reduced (and made more reliable), as, for example, it worked with bandit events, it would be way, way better.

drunkenpilot.9837:

They aren’t even that difficult to do! Like Vayne, I finished everything within about five hours today and I honestly for the life of me could not understand why everyone is so salty over these bloodstone spawns.

I met a guy yesterday that claimed to wait for moa for 6 hours straight (without changing maps) without even seeing one. Due to weird schedule hiccups, the moa spawned when he went afk for a moment thinking that the break period has just started. In his place i’d be salty too.

drunkenpilot.9837:

They spawn on a fairly reliable schedule.

The schedule is, unfortunately, really unreliable, and seems to contains ome weird random elements. For example (based on device readings, and reports from other players), the evening schedule yesterday at EU was thus:*

- Moa/Devo
- Arcto/Shark
- break (yes, that’s no mistake)
- Wyvern (for 1 hour)
- break again

And that last break lasted only ~15 minutes (at least ten, according to the device. Was semi-afk for the remaining 5 and not checking, but from the map chat other people reported break as well aven in that time), before suddenly, with no warning, Moa spawned. Moa died really fast, by the way (by the time i arived from where i was standing, which was closer than the closest wp, it was already at 50% hp), so people that weren’t already nearby and checking situation had no chance at all.

(from the description seems to have been the same instance Xenesis was on)

That’s really bad design.

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

It works exactly like that. Source: that is literally how I did them.

Then you were extremely lucky. That’s not something that an average player can count on.

A bit. Still badly designed, though.

@OP: You forget (maybe, because they have been hidden and removed from the initial “play” panel) that hotjoin still exist in the form of “private arenas”. Specifically, the rankfarm and daily farm arenas of old are still around. Getting 200 wins in one of those is ridiculously easy. That’s where the “champion” titles come in – they have to be won the hard way.

Ranael.6423:

This discussion reminds me the game launch where people found dungeons such an awful experience because it was way too hard (with the same arguments).

And Anet listened, and made them easier (also, people started doing them at level 80 in full exotics/ascended, the first threads were made by people in greens/blues trying dungeons at their theoretically correct levels – no such change will happen now, people are already playing at full capacity). I wonder why people bringing “dungeons were hard” argument always keep forgetting about that.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

And it’s not blatantly false T4 Mai Trin is harder than Bloomhunger fight when it comes to mechanics, I see more people die there than in the new Swamp.

Oh come on, even devs already said that Swamp is now the hardest fractal (and that it was intentional).

morpheus.6489:

Ok, sorry about this but I still don’t get it. "The achievements are not really for specific level range, but for completing whole tiers. " You only got the achievement before for compeleting whole tiers. That was the achievement.

Yes, but the tiers now cover different level range.
“Initiate” achievement, for example, is for all levels in the Initiate tier (T1). Before, it was levels 1-20, after it was 1-25.
The couldn’t leave the old achievements, because it would be misleading (unlike what their names suggest, they weren’t for their tiers anymore – initiate required less than full tier, while Adept required more). They couldn’t change the achievements to cover the new level spreads (not only it’s supposedly hard for them to do any achievement manipulation on groups, completion rewards – which some people suddenly would stop qualifying for – were an additional complication). It was just much easier to retire the old achievements and introduce new ones.

Vinceman.4572:

Dunno how often we have to repeat that here in this forum:
Dungeons are abandoned stuff. They don’t have dev expertise in the company because all of the dungeon devs aren’t working for Anet any longer. They stopped to develop this part of the game very short after game release so it was clearly obvious to everyone that we won’t see any dungeons at all – never.

Not sure why are you addressing it to me. I wasn’t the one that brought dungeons up as an argument. I was merely responding to otome.

There’s no “party leader”. Those exist only in squads. In 5-man parties everyone is equal.

There are few advantages to partying in PvE.

1. you can easily see where your party members are (useful when you need to search for something, or when partying to help someone, to quickly locate that someone)

2. supposedly it helps with mob tagging (while you still need to attack mobs in order to tag them, the damage threshold you need to pass in order to qualify for reward credit is partywide).

3. taxiing. Being in party allows you to change instance to one your party member is on (or for that party member to jump to your instance)

3b. anti-dc safety. using the taxi mechanic above, helps with returning to the correct instance after a dc (or after you needed to leave the map for some reason).

4. private party chat – more useful than using whispers across several people, or having to share global map chat for messages that aren’t really meant for public or map-wide context.

morpheus.6489:

They were just completion achievements. How is it different exactly?

The achievements are not really for specific level range, but for completing whole tiers. And the tiers shifted from T1:1-20, T2:21-50 to T1:1-25, T2:26-50. They decided that having new ranges on tiers for rewards, but old ranges for achievements would be counterintuitive.

SirPrizeBartSachs.4670:

mostrol.6975:

I want it to be EZ

This is what you sound like. Frankly your aversion seems to stem from anything connected to the concept of raids, not the increased difficulty of the new fractals. If anet introduced the new fractals with the patchnotes

• Made swamp more challenging

you’d be okay with it. But if they wrote

• Stepping stone to raids

then all the complaints come out.

Yes, because it shows the dev mindset behind the changes. Raids keep having more and more impact on the non-raid part of the game. Their importance is blown way out of proportion compared to the tiny part of the community they were made for.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Then someone post a video of 10 tempest on the worst gear ( come one they are hitting like 180 – 300 damage lol ) clearing the hardest boss by far ( Matthias ), then suddenly its “well not everyone can do it”

They were doing it in full sustain gear. Basically, you can go full dps to clear the timer, or go full sustain to survive through it, but if you go middle way, you lack both and you wipe.

otome.2673:

You miss something. When HoT released all the casual ppl got the content they like. While ppl who enjoied instanced content like dung/frac had to wait

First, the fact they needed to do the damage control in april patch shows that you’re wrong on casuals getting what they wanted on HoT release (it was aimed for far more hardcore crowd). Second, i haven’t seen any new dungeons since that time either. And the new fractal is (looking at dev comments) aimed more at the raiders than the original fractal players.

Tentonhammr.7849:

I’m 100% convinced none of these people played the game at launch.

And i’m 100% certain you are wrong on that point.

Razor.9872:

There is a huge difference between being a “stepping stone” to something, and actually being that thing.

There’s also a massive difference between content standing on its own, and being treated as stepping stone to a different one.

If the reason they are changing fractals is because they feel there’s a need for a stepping stone for raids (unlike, say, because they were thinkink that it would make fractals more interesting), then it’s a bad decision. You should never base changes to one content on your designs for another. Not unless you want that content to stand on its own.

Jerus.4350:

But, at the same time, as someone who will do 1-3 t4 clears a day, most of which are in PUGs. I just don’t see much more than “lvl XX” or “dailies” posted. I did see ‘4nec+druid meta’ once, but in general I don’t see much in terms of demands. I’m guessing EU is different then?

Nope. And it never was. The unrestricted LFGs always outnumbered the ones with high requirements. And you were as likely to succeed on either of those.

perry.9645:

I don’t get why people still complain about timers when every boss can be beaten with 4+ minutes left on it smh…

That something can be done doesn’t mean it is an expected result, or that anyone can do the same.

Azure Prower.8701:

Good luck farming for the WvW spoon. You don’t get that one by farming.

Actually, you do. It’s rng, but it’s not a complete rng – it drops from tower/keep commanders and has (or at least had) a decent drop rate. I’d suggest running an EotM train for it.

Sykper.6583:

Utterly untrue simply due to class mechanics. Without even going into raids, there’s are massive issues with say Warriors being good group healers, or thieves being able to take many hits just due to mechanics, health pools, etc.

There was a decent warrior group healing build at one time. Got nerfed, because at that time Anet was, in general, against group healing in general (well, there were also some pvp reasons). And there’s a reason why thieves have so much damage avoidance options. Original design assumed that if you were depending on other characters with healing/sustain, you’d just plain die. You were supposed to take care of that on your own, and for yourself. Methods might have been different for each class, but the general idea was the same for everyone.

It has changed only relatively recently. And the main reason why it has changed is Raids.

Sykper.6583:

There’s a certain irony in a full ascended nomads player telling everyone that the requirement for doing instanced content is playing your build well. Actually, if that’s the core philosophy as you describe it, it still exists now. You have to know how to play your profession properly alongside others to succeed in raids. That’s literally the point of raiding.

No, the point of raiding is playing well a specific class and profession. Most possible combinations are excluded.

Sykper.6583:

Fixed that for you, I weep for any pugs that bring your immortal but ultimately not doing any damage profession into a high level fractal.

So? Can be done. Have done t4 fractals with 3 bunker guardians in the group before.
(Well, could be done. The same setup now would kill all non-guardians due to retal. Which even more shows how the game has changed lately).

Sykper.6583:

It’s utterly unbelievable that you think you are providing any sort of support in the fights when by being without damage all groups with you in it have much longer encounters, which can lead to more mistakes by your party members who actually geared to kill something.

But if they play well, the encounter is still doable. there won’t be a point after which the group will almost certainly wipe because it lacked dps. Unlike with raids, where certain group setups are just not viable.

Sykper.6583:

bai long.2085:

Remember, their idea for the game was “allow any combination of classes to succeed, so long as they’re played well”.

Wouldn’t mind you having a link for that quote, or are you just reinforcing a point you made earlier in this same exact post?

It’s an actual dev statement, from what i remember. Should be in one of the prelaunch posts (one about dungeons, i think). Might try to find that one later.

Sykper.6583:

bai long.2085:

Raids don’t fit that description.

Neither did Fractals when they first came out, a new PvE end-game concept imagined.

Untrue. So very untrue. Yes, a Fractal meta developed fast, but it was by no means a necessity, and most of pug groups made do with whatever was available, and were still fine.

Sykper.6583:

Now look where we are after years of supporting that content.

A good question. Certainly not where we were going originally.

Sykper.6583:

Raids are the same thing, a different branch of difficult PvE content focused on a larger than a party group that needs to coordinate together their builds, gear, tactics and skills to defeat epic bosses. Neat!

Nope. The need to coordinate builds and gear is something new, and that one makes the whole experience highly subpar. The difficulty of the content suddenly shifts away from actual skill towards buildcrafting and gearing up minigame.

Sykper.6583:

Very true, but raids were not meant to follow the same PvE conventions found elsewhere

Yes. Isn’t that the very point brought up? You think that this break with past convention is a good thing. Apparently, many players disagree.

Sykper.6583:

much like how Fractals require you to get Agony Resistance to even do the higher levels.

That was never a good mechanic, and people were pointing this out to Anet since Lost Shores introduction. Artificial difficulty doesn’t test anything, it just forces grind. If it got removed tomorrow, i’d definitely not cry after it.

Sykper.6583:

Honestly practically speaking, Raids are even more accessible.

Nah, go with wrong group setup in a raid, and you have less chances of succeeding than in fractals with few people lacking AR.

Sykper.6583:

Quite right! It’s the players who make it about speed, because they understand what happens when you aren’t doing things fast enough. Cause and effect, if a group does less damage overall to Subject Alpha for instance, there are more chances for someone to actually get nuked from something, and downstates can cascade fights poorly and waste everyone’s time. Turns out, players like doing things quick because their time is valuable.

Seriously, you’re comparing Subject Alpha fight, where taking it longer might introduce problems if several people will start making mistakes (but where even those mistakes are recoverable), to say, Gorse, where taking longer will just plain kill you, with no way to avoid it?

Sykper.6583:

What? And adapt to the encounter? By Ogden’s Hammer what horror!

There’s a massive difference between adapting your strategy and play approach to the encounter, and adapting your gear to it. First is interesting. Second is just a grind prerequirement.

Sykper.6583:

It’s almost as if this game has a certain set of requirements for you to do to get a reward. I wonder if you feel the same way about Holiday Specific rewards where you know people can’t do Clocktower at all.

Oh, so now Clocktower has a gear requirement to finish it succesfully?

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Debatable, on the Soldiers clear there was a raid that cleared in full Nomads, I bet a group will clear through with Soldiers.

Maybe, but it’s actually far less likely than the Nomads case. You either need a dps to clear the enrage timer, or a sustain to heal through damage. So, the builds that will have the most trouble will be those in between the extremes.

Absurdo.8309:

Given the lack of new content in other areas of the game (notwithstanding the recent patch, which I do enjoy) I am concerned about putting resources to something with minimal impact at best and harmful to normal mode at worst.

So, the same as many players thought about Raids when they were first unveiled.

OnizukaBR.8537:

First bold part, so your solution is to remove the current raids from the PUGs grasp?? A lot of people that like to pug the current raid wont, and will now be moved to easy mode?

They won’t be moved. They might move themselves, of course, if they decide to prefer that way. On the other hand, since, by stated design intention Raids were not meant to be pugged (there are several dev statements to that end) retaining pugs in this mode should not be considered an important point.

OnizukaBR.8537:

See how you are creating a problem for the people that are happy pugging raids just because people that are not the target audiance want the rewards.

Nah. People that are happy pugging raids now will not be prevented from doing so. The people that will move are the ones that are unhappily pugging raids now.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Fractals were never Marketed as Challenging like raids were

Are you sure, because i definitely remember otherwise. In fact, if i remember it right, they were meant to be a challenge for fully geared level 80 players at fractal level 1, and progress in difficulty to become even more challenging at higher levels.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

that’s the difference Fractals were designed with low levels being able to play in them as well hence the scaling effect.

It was mentioned right away, in the first blog post, that even though it is possible to play them underleveled, due to upscale level, unlike dungeons they are not really designed for below 80 players.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Raids were designed to be the hardest content in game

Same as Fractals, at the moment they were introduced

BlaqueFyre.5678:

I don’t see how you can’t understand that, fractals were not meant to be the hardest or most challenging content otherwise they would have never aloud up leveling characters

See here for example.

Leah Riviera

Unlike the other dungeons, your party can be any level. We’ve employed World vs. World-style sidekicking to make this dungeon accessible to all players. But keep in mind, our aim was to challenge level 80 players. Going in at low levels is not for the faint of heart!

Yeah, no intention on them being challenging whatsoever, right..[/sarcasm]

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Also using T4 fractals as an example they are by default less accessible than raids and always will be just based on the pure concept of fractals.

T4 Fractals, maybe. Fractals – not at all.

Generally you need to deplete his breakbar now to stop the heal.

Azoqu.8917:

And enrage timers are only there so you can’t nomad your way through all the fights

Actually, you can (well, you can for some bosses, not so much for others). You just have to build specifically for it.

Azoqu.8917:

and very rarely do people, that complain about the timer, fail because of the timer and not because of the actual mechanics in the fights.

Oh, but they do. The timer causes them to concentrate on dps instead of on the mechanics, and that is the major cause of wipes.

Azoqu.8917:

If they removed the timer all together the same people would still be failing the fights and would lose their easy to blame scapegoat.

If that’s true, then there’s no point to the timer at all, and it can be safely removed without changing anything.

Ayrilana.1396:

You kind of did say that it was easy. You said:

in order to do the escort event you need people to already have raid masteries unlocked. So it’s pretty easy, except for the fact that you have to join a raid group who has already unlocked masteries.

Okay, read that again, but this time look at the part you missed:

in order to do the escort event you need people to already have raid masteries unlocked. So it’s pretty easy, except for the fact that you have to join a raid group who has already unlocked masteries.

Yes, it’s easy if you’re getting carried by raiders. Not so easy if you try to unlock the mastery track on your own though.

Ayrilana.1396:

The only exception being finding a group who have already unlocked the mastery.

That’s a very big exception however.

Ayrilana.1396:

If you had not done the escort then I don’t really see how you can state whether it is easy or not. I am confused though since just earlier you said that you had done it. So which is it?

Vayne.8563:

What’s misleading is saying it’s easily accomplished, like this is somehow easier than doing a raid boss. It’s difficult, you have to get a group to do it and it sucks. I know cause I tried it with my guild.

I see Vayne saying he attempted it. Do not see him claiming he did it succesfully though. I assume that trying it, but without success is what he meant.

My take on this encounter: doable, but with a problem that if done by people new to raids, all people with experience with the encounter will end up in the tunnel group. Which will likely cause a ton of wipes before the other group will learn what to do.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Blaeys.3102:

As long as Anet insists on including enrage timers and other “kill fast” mechanics in 90%+ of the fights, this problem will exist.

You really think that without completely irrelevant enrage timers people will be fine with slow kills because some pugs decided that they are too good to be part of a team?

It worked in dungeons. It was much easier to find and fill all-inclusive LFGs than highly restrictive ones. And both groups were as likely to finish the content succesfully.

Deihnyx.6318:

Astralporing.1957:

Jerus.4350:

But, anyways, the dev who made the encounter said he specifically wanted to introduce some raid mechanics as a stepping stone to raids.

I’d rather they introduced old swamp mechanics to raids than the other way around. I really hate how that raid content is having impact on the whole game way out of proportion compared to the small group of players it was meant for.

So basically have all raids boss be doable by standing on a tree and spamming skill 1?

… i don’t think anyone has been doing it that way since a veeeeery long time. And even then it was a gimmick making the whole fight actually longer and more annoying.

But, to answer your question, if the alternative would be making fractals more and more annoying just to support a different content made for a minority of players, then yes, i’d rather see raids made into a joke. Less people would be negatively impacted by that.

And maybe they’d stop causing damage to the rest of the game then.

crimlet.9872:

Astralporing.1957:

But if you want an explanation: the reason it works that way is because Anet wanted leveled-up players to have a reason to go back to low-level areas and help out new players. At the same time, they also wanted the level to matter. Thus there is an advantage, but it’s small enough that downleveled players can still receive good rewards.

Doesn’t explain. The fact remains that a player higher than level X is still more powerful than a player truly at level X. Even when the player that is truly at level X has all the best equipment for their level. A higher level player with all the best equipment for their level, scaled down, is still more powerful.

Yes. Part of the design (as i have already explained to you in the quoted part above).

crimlet.9872:

If designed in a way that truly puts the higher level player to be the base equivalent of level X so that they would have no advantages over somebody of level X, then there would be no problem. You’re not depriving the lower level player at level X of enjoyability due to having somebody who is overpowered around.

As already explained, it does not deprive lower level players of enjoyability. At worst, it acts that way to you, personally. It’s clear that you are in minority here, however.

crimlet.9872:

And you’re not depriving the higher level player of enjoyability of enjoying content at their higher levels, and being too powerful to enjoy content at lower level zones.

…what? If higher level players were downleveled the way you want them to be, they’d definitely be deprived from the satisfaction coming from having that higher level.

crimlet.9872:

So you tell me how anybody doesn’t see any problem when a higher level players is present weakening the quality of the gameplay.

Perhaps because other people do not consider this as big problem as you think it is.

crimlet.9872:

Yet when playing with others of even level with no higher level players around, it makes for true gameplay.

Most players would rather group with downleveled players than be in an empty zone with only few other players of their same levels, doing other things and leaving them alone.

crimlet.9872:

I will clarify. Downscaling does not work. The reason it doesn’t work is because players aren’t truly scaled down on even level.

On the opposite, it was never meant to work the way you envisioned. It was only meant to reduce the difference between higher and lower players to manageable levels. Which it does well enough for a huge majority of players to not have any problem with it.

Again, that you don’t like how it works doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, or that it’s working wrong.

Short answer? Raids discriminate classes because the whole idea behind them is to discriminate.

Daddicus.6128:

I’ve never darkened the door of raids, but I’m getting spirit shards via experience again on all my 80s.

In core zones only, i bet. Not in Bloodstone Fen, for example.

CokoladaSunka.1369:

Let me put it like this: Legendary weapons are meant to be a symbol of an experienced player, his time and dedication to the game right? Well how would you feel if you’d have spent weeks saving up money and materials for a precursor, and then some other person would just get it dropped?

This is something that happened to me, actually. And you know what? I was perfectly okay with it – it made that other person happy, and it didn’t take away anything from me.

CokoladaSunka.1369:

Or if Anet made legendaries even easier to get? They would quickly lose their prestige and the players who spent hundreds of hours crafting them would feel cheated on right?

The legendaries do not have the same worth now they had in the first year anyway, and their value shifts every time the value of materials changes. And i never cared about the prestige, only about looks.

So no, i don’t understand what you’re talking about at all.

CokoladaSunka.1369:

Same goes for raids If you want it easy, go to bloodstone fen to farm the Unbound Guardian and if you press 1 for long enough you’ll get enough rubies for same quality gear, it will just take longer than a raid clear.

Oh, i can get legendary armor for rubies now? Good to know…

CokoladaSunka.1369:

And as many have said before I will repeat this because you’re too dense to get it. Raids aren’t meant to be easy.

And i will repeat this, t you, because you don’t seem to understand as well – easy mode raids are not the same thing, and, if made, would be meant for a wider audience. You’re too stuck on your preconception of what Raid word means. If you’re so set against easy mode raids, just because you think that Raid can never be easy, call them “forgotten thicket explorables” or whatever. An “explorable” doesn’t need to be as difficult as Raid, after all, even if the only difference between one and another lies in tuned down mechanics.

CokoladaSunka.1369:

The time you’ve spent here on this thread you could be spending on searching for a non rep raid guild (literally dozens of them out there).

I could, but that’s the one part i actually dislike the most about raids. The need to replace your friends.

CokoladaSunka.1369:

You either change your attitude or forget raiding.

So i either won’t have fun, or i won’t have fun. I get this. Unfortunately for you, i don’t like that choice. That’s why i am arguing to change the current situation.

crimlet.9872:

tolunart.2095:

This is a you problem, not a game problem. I suggest playing one of those countless other MMOs that handle it better.

Completely circular. Does not address the actual question whatsoever completely disregarding the question. Circular meaning all you have done is restate the question instead of provide an actual answer.

What is your point for responding if all you’re doing is restating the question asked?

He isn’t. He is pointing out that the problem is not objective but completely dependent on your perception. Properly geared characters of the right level for the map are weaker than downleveled 80’s, but they are not that much weaker as you seem to imply. The main point of difference is that characters that are in the middle of the leveling process are rarely fully geared up.
Get a character of the proper level, gear it up in the best available armor and you will see that you too are blowing through content. Yes, the 80’s will still do it better, but the difference, while visible, is not as massive as you claim.

So, as tolunart said, it’s not a problem that game has. It’s a problem you, personally have.

But if you want an explanation: the reason it works that way is because Anet wanted leveled-up players to have a reason to go back to low-level areas and help out new players. At the same time, they also wanted the level to matter. Thus there is an advantage, but it’s small enough that downleveled players can still receive good rewards.

Malediktus.9250:

Raids are the best pve content the game has to offer.

That’s a really pessimistic look on the game.

Dominik.5162:

there is no point in creating an easy mode for players that aren’t even the target audience for raids.

In the same vein there was no point in creating raids for people that were not even the target audience for GW2.
Hint: expanding target audience is a thing. If it was okay in one case, it’s equally okay in another.

Jerus.4350:

But, anyways, the dev who made the encounter said he specifically wanted to introduce some raid mechanics as a stepping stone to raids.

I’d rather they introduced old swamp mechanics to raids than the other way around. I really hate how that raid content is having impact on the whole game way out of proportion compared to the small group of players it was meant for.

Sarrs.4831:

Astralporing.1957:

That’s what you don’t get. Dungeon-level difficulty easy mode for casuals would be non-raid repeatable quality content.

that’s not an argument, that’s a contradiction

Contradiction of what? I see none.

Sarrs.4831:

Astralporing.1957:

Don’t get too stuck at the word “raid”.

if you don’t want people to get stuck on words, don’t use them
fwiw raids are 10-player instanced pve content, nothing more, nothing less

No, as seen by seeing people claim left and right that easy mode raids are a contradiction, they have much more meaning than that.

Not every 10-man is a raid. Not every raid is 10-man (well, in GW2 it is, at the moment anyway, but the meaning attached comes from other games, not GW franchise)

I suppose, to be precise, i could be saying “a 10-man instanced content with dungeon-level difficulty created by adjusting down raid mechanics” instead of “easy mode raids”, but it’s not very practical. And at the moment there doesn’t seem to be a better simple term to use that would carry the meaning i’d want to. “10-man dungeons” for example would not impart the meaning that they are supposed to be tuned down versions of a raid instances.

Unless you have a better name?

PopeUrban.2578:

You must have missed the bit where everything but the current expansion is free to play.

You must have misunderstood what they said about their expac policy. No, HoT will not become free when next expac hits. It will only be “free” inasmuch as it will be bundled with the next expac (and the core) at no additional price. You’d still need to buy that next expac to get it.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Blaeys.3102:

Here is what I don’t understand,

How does adding a lower tier raid experience – that everyone understands completely is meant to be less challenging – somehow invalidate the prestige of higher tier raids?

If anything, it adds to it by letting people have a small glimpse of what it’s like – and would probably give Anet more license to make the higher tiers that much harder/more challenging in the future.

If you’re running a marathon, the people down the street running that 5K understand you are doing something much more prestigious than they are.

And, as always, it makes me wonder why you care what they think in the first place.

Remember before the daily rework on fractal everybody would do only swamp?? You would spend a lot of time to do something like cliffside or mai trin high level and many times wouldnt form a group ( and 5 people its faster then 10 ) . So there you go your answer how easier mode CAN easily hurt the harder mode.

You would need to compare swamp with swamp, not swamp with cliffside. Existence of t1 swamp did not harm t3 swamps at all.

Sarrs.4831:

Non-raiders don’t want watered down raids. They want non-raid content.

That’s what you don’t get. Dungeon-level difficulty easy mode for casuals would be non-raid repeatable quality content.
Don’t get too stuck at the word “raid”.

Vinceman.4572:

One last note to organization: Sure, there are times when the whole lfg asks for chrono tanks, but usually, if you set the right requirements and you have several multiclass players with you, you don’t need very long to organize. I pug weekly and in my groups we are good to go after 5-10 minutes and need another 10-30 minutes to kill a boss depending on the group.
This Monday I pugged W1 once again, 15 minutes organization because the leader was very calm and sedate + 45 minutes clearing time. Nothing to complain, imho.

That’s only when you get a group that is already expreienced. You won’t get to that stage without needing to get past that organizational hurdle at some point in your raiding career, though.

A tip: you don’t need to destroy a lot of ascended weapons and armor pieces. You need some globs (2, i i remember correctly) to start the first tier crafting, but the next ones can always be gained just by salvaging previous tier backpack (which you’d need to do anyway in order to get a component for the next tier backpack).

Lahmia.2193:

Raids weren’t built for “the most”. They were designed for the few people that desire harder content.

Then they shouldn’t gate content that might be desirable to people outside that small group.

Mandar.9813:

Did you grow up in a world where people who didn’t do the same work and put in the same effort as others get the same reward? Because that’s not the world I know.

Then we really live in a different world, because in the one where I live that’s pretty common. Some people work hard and still get nothing, while others work half as hard (or not at all) and get rewarded better, simply because they happened to be born in a different country or a different social strata.

Whis is besides the point, seeing as one of the reasons why we play games is because they happen to be different from the real world.

Mandar.9813:

The bottom line is that a casual gamer is never going to get to reap the full benefits of what a hardcore gamer will, and you just gotta deal with that.

That’s indeed true, but there’s no need to increase this difference by creating hard restrictions that penalize casuals.

Mandar.9813:

What kind of terrible idea would it be to screw over all the people who work hard and long for those rewards if they just let any casual player have them?

I don’t know… good business perhaps? Remember, those casuals you deride are usually a bigger income source than those hardcores you want to promote.

Mandar.9813:

How in your right mind can you think that that is a good idea?

Why would you think alienating a majority of players just to give one more advantage to a small minority moght be a good idea?

Mandar.9813:

The whole freaking point of a REWARD is that people who put in the effort get something special in return.

In this case the “effort” is getting 250k xp. It’s just some players are rewarded for it, while others aren’t.

Mandar.9813:

Another way to look at it is that choosing to be casual is a choice, and so is being hardcore.

Yes, it’s a choice of playing style. I’d like to remind you however that neither choice is superior to others – you shouldn’t be rewarded simply because you like a different playstyle.

Chaos.5072:

The funny thing is, out of all the ways to earn masteries, raids are actually the easiest. You only have to do one single encounter of your choice, which means you can do the easiest one (escort) and never touch raids again. It’s not like you need to clear the entire raid 100 times or something.

You can’t say the same for adventures, story achievements, bosses, etc.

Man I would love to only have to do a single adventure of my choice to unlock all mastery points!

Then i have a good news to you. You don’t need to do even a single adventure to unlock all mastery tracks. Nor you do need any story achievements for that. You do need to kill at least one raid boss to unlock raid mastery track however, which is in strong contrast to all other mastery lines.

Chaos.5072:

Where did this ridiculous rumor about how raids are ‘not accessible’ start?

Most likely it started with raids. Which aren’t really that accessible.

Chaos.5072:

There are literally no prerequisites or hard lockouts other than simply owning the expansion. The only thing holding players back is their own choice to not raid.

There are no lockouts or prerequisities to getting into an instance with a group. There is a ton of soft prerequisities to actually raiding, though.

Chaos.5072:

Learn to adapt to the content instead of expecting ArenaNet to adapt everything to you.

Funny, i thought that the game was for the players, not the other way around.

Ranael.6423:

“We want top-tier fractal players to be exposed to more difficult encounters” is the key here. It is not “we want top tier fractals player to be ready to go in raid because it is our true end game content”…

It’s the context. It was strongly suggested that the reason they wanted top tier fractal players to be exposed to more difficult encounters was to create those stepping stones to raids. It wasn’t done for Fractal’s sake.

Are you trying to kill him in the designated place for his encounter, or earlier, during wisp stage? Because if it’s the latter, you can’t kill him. It’s not his time yet.

OnizukaBR.8537:

The bolded part, what people fail to see that the VG on BF is exactly this

They fail to see it, because it isn’t true. LUG is not VG with slightly less restrictive mechanics. At best it’s VG with mechanics completely disabled or toned down to near-zero. It’s not 1 or 0, full meta or faceroll. There is a space between. And while you said you understand this, you still act as if it can be only one or the other.

OnizukaBR.8537:

, but people think its just a strawman or way toned down

Because it is. Toned down to zero in order to make strawman a reality.

Note: i don’t advocate making LUG any harder. I’m just saying that it should not be brought up in a discussion about instanced easy mode version of raids. Because except for visuals, it has absolutely nothing to do with those.

Ighten Hill.5038:

Whilst I see the frustration I’m not convinced its a bad design.. Surely if it gets more people into a section of the game that is currently a little too niche – then its a deliberate design to get more users into raids.

I’m pretty sure that instead of bringing more people to that section of the game (which, by the way, is only niche because it was meant to be exclusive) it will just generate more negativity towards it.

Sykper.6583:

Seekers and Blue Circles still hit fairly hard from the Unbound Guardian, the green circle gives an incentive to ranged standing inside of it for a damage buff rather than preventing a wipe mechanic.

So far i have seen people at LUG fleeing from “those green AoE’s”, and trying to gather seekers together in order to better stack and cleave them about as often (if not more often) than stacking in green circles and avoiding real AoEs. And i haven’t noticed any meaningful real difference between those two in how much the guardian went down. Yeah, the second group did it 1-2 minutes faster, maybe.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Astralporing.1957:

flog.3485:

Sird.4536:

Go to Bloodstone Fen and fight the Unbound Guardian. Lern that fight and then you got your first easy mode boss.

100% this. It is an intelligent reuse of assets and it is great way to learn a bit about VG mechanics without having to form a group to raid.

What mechanics? Any “mechanics” of legendary unbound guardian could as well be just visuals for how much they impact the fight (hint: none at all).
It’s as if devs decided to make a jab at people asking for easy mode raids, by using a strawman example of one (and hinting using the name of the achieve that’s the best people can count on seeing). Any ties to vale guardian are nothing more than a bad (and definitely not funny) joke .

So just like the mechanics people want for easy raid ( non wiping ones ), see how this is bad? And if there are a wiping mechanic they will say thats not easy.

No. As i said it was a strawman example of “easy mode”. The one raiders claim people ask for, but not the one people asking actually want.

What i want is for the mechanics to be easier, not faceroll easy. It’s not a binary thing, there’s a ton of ground in between. Even if some people intentionally try to ignore it.

Also yes, i do care about the loot. I never claimed otherwise.

Ayrilana.1396:

You’re making the raid story out to be more than it really is.

You are making it less than it is.

Sabetha.4910:

I have to ‘bite the bullet’ as well when I did Adventures to get my mastery points. I spent an entire night trying to get silver on Leyline Scramble once. I don’t recall making a complaint…

If it was so unfun for you, you should have complained. Many did, which is why a lot of adventures were made easier, and why the new zone has so many relatively easily accessible mastery points (with only 1 needed for new mastery track).

Sabetha.4910:

I’m not advising you. I’m telling you what you can choose to do.

Sure, but the “cure” you suggest is as bad as the disease, so it’s no surprising people call you on it.

Sabetha.4910:

Or not. I don’t really care what solution you pick. I’m only here to say that this problem is very easy to solve.

Nope, since the “easy solution” you provided is the problem.

flog.3485:

Sird.4536:

Go to Bloodstone Fen and fight the Unbound Guardian. Lern that fight and then you got your first easy mode boss.

100% this. It is an intelligent reuse of assets and it is great way to learn a bit about VG mechanics without having to form a group to raid.

What mechanics? Any “mechanics” of legendary unbound guardian could as well be just visuals for how much they impact the fight (hint: none at all).
It’s as if devs decided to make a jab at people asking for easy mode raids, by using a strawman example of one (and hinting using the name of the achieve that’s the best people can count on seeing). Any ties to vale guardian are nothing more than a bad (and definitely not funny) joke .

Moyayuki.3619:

Just the other day I was playing in Snowden Drifts and the Svanir Champion (not literal “champion”, he was a Veteran) event was going on at Owl’s Abattoir. Suddenly, when the enemy’s health was less than half, someone told everyone to stop attacking him. I did and asked him “Why?”, but the others kept attacking and he was dead in a few seconds. Then the individual, who wanted something for Nevermore from the failure, swore up a storm and even went so far as to accuse me of killing the enemy, even though I had stopped attacking for him. But he called me a “kitten” and ran off.

Which was dumb of him, because that event chain has actually already been fixed, as far as Nevermore collection is concerned. Months ago.
The next event would have given him what he wanted if he didn’t leave.

nickhimself.2739:

It would help to ensure everything is above-the-board with conversions from gold:gems & gems:gold, and show that anet isn’t taking a tax on either side.

That would be hard, seeing as they do take a tax on conversion, and aren’t hiding it (it’s 15% for either, the same as TP tax, if i remember correctly).
(seriously, if they didn’t, the gem to gold and gold to gem prices would have been the same)

Also, who and why would they need audits for? I mean, besides someone checking that everything works as designed, which they definitely do (i believe JS is doing exacly that).

Hyper Cutter.9376:

They’re literal places on the map and you can waypoint into them like any other zone, so there’s not any real reason you can’t stay there.

Raid and home instance areas, as well as Hall of Monuments, while visible on map, are not open world areas but instances. Guild hall is the same.
If it was different, you’d end up seeing members of other guilds on the same map.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

The nodes might be a 24 hour reset.
I guess anet doesn’t want you to get them too quickly.

When I looked the vendor only had ring/amulet/back piece. Has the earring slot been added in a hotfix since then?

Nope, both earrings and a second ring (doubles, because for no reason at all anet still insists on making them uniques even when the only reason to do so has disappeared with last big patch) will be, according to devs, available in next chapters of the LS (likely at a rate of 1 piece per chapter).

Obtena.7952:

Ganathar.4956:

Obtena.7952:

Glacial.9516:

As Sartharina said, the problem is when you have more than enough exp for the Masteries, but not enough Mastery Points to acquire them. At that point your exp goes nowhere and is wasted until you are able to get enough mastery points to open up new masteries or you finish all of them.

That’s not a problem though … I believe that’s the intent. If you want that XP to matter, you need to actively get the mastery points. It’s a way for Anet to encourage players to experience the game. If some XP is wasted in the process, so be it.

Except for the fact that it also requires raiding, an activity that the very devs stated they developed as challenging group content for a minority of the player-base. I do not believe that this is intentional. Anet has made plenty of oversights before.

Mastery points require Raiding? Is that what you are saying?

No. Unlocking a raid mastery track requires raiding. And having even a single uncompleted mastery track (even if it’s locked) prevents you from getting spirit shards in that area (in this case HoT).

Seera.5916:

While I disagree with Obtena on whether or not the spirit shards should be able to be earned before completing all mastery tracks, Obtena is right in saying that they can’t please everyone.

There will always be some content that one person will love but another person will hate.

Sure, but this is not a valid argument to automatically discard any suggestion you might dislike.

Obtena.7952:

That’s not why I dismissed the idea. There is little value in it. The complaint is that you have to DO something to ‘unlock’ XP being useful … in otherwords, people don’t want to do something to get something specific.

No. The complaint is that something general, something that all players had (but has been taken away) is now locked beyond something specific that Anet knew kitten well most people will never do (and they knew, because they designed it that way).