Guild Wars 2

Back when HOT launched, Anet said they were working on a bigger guild PvP arena. I would love to know if that is still on the table.

And, to back up what Zephic said above, I would love to see some guild missions inside the hall. I’ve always wanted to see some kind of “defend the hall” mission based around the fights we did when we first captured the hall (and also a huge YES to the idea of minigames inside the hall).

Ramoth.9064:

Nah. Not true. Look up those slowest kills videos. You’re wrong.

The slowest kill videos suffer from the same issue, just at the other extreme – which is the entire problem. You either have to play the kill fast meta or build the entire team around staying alive through absolutely everything (again, directly because of the enrage timer effects – only this time on the other side of the timer). Both of these issues can be tied directly back to reliance on enrage timers to create the illusion of difficulty (and killing build and playstyle diversity in the process).

It becomes a game of extremes where there is little room for anything in between.

Walder.6524:

OK, thanks! I looked at my account and it appears I do have Heart of Thorns. How hard would it be for someone with my issues to get to level 80 on Engi? Someone asked for more specifics on my limitations. Basically, I have slow reaction times which limits dodging, and I have trouble moving and attacking at the same time. I understand that I will be limited in what PvE content I can do. I don’t PvP at all.

As long as you understand your ingame limitations (and it sounds like you do), you can play pretty much any profession. We had a stroke sufferer in my guild who had limited use in one arm, but he was still able to play the game effectively – even lower level dungeons (he stopped due to other real life pressures).

You might want to looking into playing a class that has access to blocks on your primary weapon set. Engineer is a good choice because of the off hand shield – and the block on the hammer later when you upgrade to scrapper. This gives you another way to avoid damage if needed. The engineer has the added advantage of the jump shot on the rifle being a way to make more difficult jumps when you need to.

Ultimately, you should play around with all of the professions and just find what feels most comfortable to you. Within the first 30 levels, you will have a good idea of how they all play.

And make friends with a Mesmer, if possible. My friend’s biggest issue with the game was jumping puzzles, which are intermingled into just about every type of content. A friendly Mesmer can help you get around that. If not, again – the engineer with a rifle may be worth exploring.

TexZero.7910:

If this sounds familiar it probably is, its the same complaints of the anti-meta crowd when dungeons existed and they used the same non-sense argument of dungeons being inaccessible despite having the same tools and access as everyone else. In otherwords not an Anet issue to solve, but a you/player specific issue. Form a non-meta group and be the happiest player you can be.

The difference is that kill fast mechanics mean that adherence to the meta has a greater impact on the chance of success than it did in dungeons – but not in a positive way that encourages creative thinking or real strategy (or creative raid design). Instead, the “strategy” becomes more of a dance where every member memorizes the steps based around preset builds and playstyles.

In raids – and fractals – where these kill fast mechanics are not the same hard barriers to success, people can base their strategy around the builds they enjoy playing – even if those builds do not conform to the kill fast meta. At the same time, the kill fast crowd can have fun setting speed records or whatever. There is more diversity of play and players can have the feeling that the “unique” builds they have grown to love over the past 3.5 years aren’t suddenly useless thanks to bad raid design (and I stand by that).

At the same time, I am fine with the higher end rewards being reserved for those who conform to that meta. All I am advocating for is more flexibility for those who choose to play differently – in a way that does not negatively impact or impede anyone’s play style in any real way (and that would even have a lesser reward).

Sykper.6583:

Do you understand Blaeys or do you want to continue your belief that somehow what you envision an easy-mode raid to be would be accessible to everyone? Because it wouldn’t. It never could, people still can’t beat the HoT Story mode, hell I know people who actively refuse to go into HoT maps yet want in on everything.

As with all things, the devil is in the details. Tiered difficulty would have to be accompanied by some incentive (lesser than what exists now) to encourage continued population – but that is true of every piece of content in the game.

As far as who can and can’t beat the content, I understand where you are coming from but still feel this is needed. The current barrier to entry is based – for the most part – around the meta (again because of “kill fast” mechanics overshadowing everything else). People who played their characters a certain way for 3+ years were basically told change or gtfo. That is an issue to me. There needs to be a way to experience the content (which can still be hard and uncompletable by a portion of the playerbase) that isn’t as reliant on the meta – even if it offers a considerably lesser reward.

Reality check – the difficulty of the current raids has nothing to do with how well you play your character. It is directly related to how well you copy and paste builds and playstyles from 3rd party websites. That hurts the game, imo, and needs to be fixed. And, the way you fix it is by providing a lesser level of the raid that offers a lesser reward but isn’t as reliant on the broken meta game.

I also know this is falling on a lot of deaf ears, especially here in the raiding subforum, but the conversation needs to continue – for those that are willing to have it.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Blaeys.3102:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Blaeys.3102:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

^ on OnizukaBRs note high level fractals are more inaccessible than raids are, and Blaeys you have used them as a comparison point saying High level fractals are more accessible which is alive since you need Almost full ascended and the Agony resist to survive them, also Anet has stated they are using the newer reworked fractals as the stepping stone into raids so they wouldn’t need a tiered raid difficulty.

Fractals are an example of the right way to add content – the same basic (with some changes) experience with tiered difficulty.

As far as accessibility, yes there is the armor issue (but ascended armor is not hard to get) – but no fractal uses enrage timers or “kill fast” mechanics, meaning they are essentially open to a much wider range of builds and playstyles. This is what is needed in a raiding environment.

Yes, they can be difficult, but when that difficulty is defined by its reliance on meta builds, then it isn’t real difficulty – just an illusion based on how closely you play to that meta (which contributes to the accessibility issue) and b. it breaks with the base design we are used to from the rest of the PVE game – the two elements we were told would be part of the raiding experience during the CDI.

Accessibility is the ability to access the content, there is no gate to access the content, as shown multiple times, in a variety of manners, accessibility does not equate to guaranteeing completion of said content, it has been proven you can beat the content with non meta builds and compositions, with less than optimal gear, and so on. Therefore it still met the accessible goal that Anet set out, they met 1 out of two goals, and that second Goal was thrown out the window long before raids were even put into game.

Nothing is stopping players from experiencing he content of raids, besides lack of willingness to be a team player, when raids first released I raided with groups as a thief in mostly exotics, which was very suboptimal at the time, I also got my first VG kill in said timeframe again was not meta, afterwards the group I was with asked me what else I could play to assist more and I raided with them as a Chrono even though I am not a fan of the playstyle but I wanted to continue to experience the content.

If anything overall accessibility has increased since the raids were released with the growing population of raiders that can successfully clear raids and the abundance of training raids in LFG and training Guilds prevalent now that the content is on farm for the raiding community.

There is only a perceived non accessibility to raids, because players don’t want to take the time to learn the mechanics and wipe over and over till they achieve a kill, they would rather have the kill with next to no effort. If someone is unwilling to set aside time to learn the raids, unwilling to adapt there build or class to complement the raid team for an optimal outcome, then that is no fault of raid design or the community but on the individual them self.

I raid every week. I understand exactly what is involved in the current system.

There is definitely room for improvement when it comes to accessibility and implementing a robust raid experience that encourages new people to join in (even those new to raiding) – even if the build and playstyle they’ve used successfully in every other part of the game for 3+ years doesn’t match the “kill fast” meta.

This isn’t about taking away any of what is available now. It is about expanding on that system to get back to the core systems and accessibility that cause so many of us to buy GW2 in the first place.

The content is already accessible to everyone with an 80 and exotics, the only thing needed is a willingness to adapt, and patience and set aside time, you don’t have to have the meta comps to kill the bosses, you don’t have to have best in slot gear, there are training raids to help new players to be familiar with the content, they are stepping up high level fractals difficulty and mechanics to be a stepping stone into raid difficulty, if you take away the difficulty which is what adding easy modes to it does then you are making raids into something they were never meant to be which is challenging group content.

Were not asking anyone to remove the challenge that exists now – or even change its design.

What were talking about is an interim experience that allows people interested in story/interesting fights/training to have a realistic chance of experiencing all of the raid content.

That doesn’t take away from the challenge of raiding in any way. It doesn’t remove the prestige of doing the hardest content in the game. All it does is give more people a way to develop real interest in the game mode – justifying continued development and giving raiders a deeper pool of potential allies when making groups in the future.

Even if their original intent was for raiding to be solely about challenging content, I think it’s time for them to open their eyes and realize more is needed to make the game mode fit into the GW2 experience – in ways that can only benefit the game and the raiding community.

Zoid.2568:

Raids should not be about killing as fast as possible. It should require you to perform in a way that benefits the members of the raid. i’d say the key word is synergy.

As of now the raid wings require synergy, but is on a kitten timer, which makes it so bad I want to puke.

The timer is just a bad excuse for ArenaNet’s laziness. They should improve creating difficult content without something like adding a timer that requires the raid to have maximized dps.

IF the raid had a stage which the dps in the raid needed to do something specifically that only dps can do, then that would be fine. THOUGH, the whole raid (boss) fight should not be defined by how fast the dps can decrease the boss’s HP bar through the whole fight.

I wouldn’t say quite as harshly as this, but I agree – this is the number one issue with raids right now.

I wish Anet would use the same level of creativity in raids that they did when the game launched. Break away from the norm or lazy model used by other raiding games and give us something truly unique that fits with the rest of the game. It can still offer eye bleeding difficulty, but not at the cost of build or playstyle diversity.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Blaeys.3102:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

^ on OnizukaBRs note high level fractals are more inaccessible than raids are, and Blaeys you have used them as a comparison point saying High level fractals are more accessible which is alive since you need Almost full ascended and the Agony resist to survive them, also Anet has stated they are using the newer reworked fractals as the stepping stone into raids so they wouldn’t need a tiered raid difficulty.

Fractals are an example of the right way to add content – the same basic (with some changes) experience with tiered difficulty.

As far as accessibility, yes there is the armor issue (but ascended armor is not hard to get) – but no fractal uses enrage timers or “kill fast” mechanics, meaning they are essentially open to a much wider range of builds and playstyles. This is what is needed in a raiding environment.

Yes, they can be difficult, but when that difficulty is defined by its reliance on meta builds, then it isn’t real difficulty – just an illusion based on how closely you play to that meta (which contributes to the accessibility issue) and b. it breaks with the base design we are used to from the rest of the PVE game – the two elements we were told would be part of the raiding experience during the CDI.

Accessibility is the ability to access the content, there is no gate to access the content, as shown multiple times, in a variety of manners, accessibility does not equate to guaranteeing completion of said content, it has been proven you can beat the content with non meta builds and compositions, with less than optimal gear, and so on. Therefore it still met the accessible goal that Anet set out, they met 1 out of two goals, and that second Goal was thrown out the window long before raids were even put into game.

Nothing is stopping players from experiencing he content of raids, besides lack of willingness to be a team player, when raids first released I raided with groups as a thief in mostly exotics, which was very suboptimal at the time, I also got my first VG kill in said timeframe again was not meta, afterwards the group I was with asked me what else I could play to assist more and I raided with them as a Chrono even though I am not a fan of the playstyle but I wanted to continue to experience the content.

If anything overall accessibility has increased since the raids were released with the growing population of raiders that can successfully clear raids and the abundance of training raids in LFG and training Guilds prevalent now that the content is on farm for the raiding community.

There is only a perceived non accessibility to raids, because players don’t want to take the time to learn the mechanics and wipe over and over till they achieve a kill, they would rather have the kill with next to no effort. If someone is unwilling to set aside time to learn the raids, unwilling to adapt there build or class to complement the raid team for an optimal outcome, then that is no fault of raid design or the community but on the individual them self.

I raid every week. I understand exactly what is involved in the current system.

There is definitely room for improvement when it comes to accessibility and implementing a robust raid experience that encourages new people to join in (even those new to raiding) – even if the build and playstyle they’ve used successfully in every other part of the game for 3+ years doesn’t match the “kill fast” meta.

This isn’t about taking away any of what is available now. It is about expanding on that system to get back to the core systems and accessibility that cause so many of us to buy GW2 in the first place.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

^ on OnizukaBRs note high level fractals are more inaccessible than raids are, and Blaeys you have used them as a comparison point saying High level fractals are more accessible which is alive since you need Almost full ascended and the Agony resist to survive them, also Anet has stated they are using the newer reworked fractals as the stepping stone into raids so they wouldn’t need a tiered raid difficulty.

Fractals are an example of the right way to add content – the same basic (with some changes) experience with tiered difficulty.

As far as accessibility, yes there is the armor issue (but ascended armor is not hard to get) – but no fractal uses enrage timers or “kill fast” mechanics, meaning they are essentially open to a much wider range of builds and playstyles. This is what is needed in a raiding environment.

Yes, they can be difficult, but when that difficulty is defined by its reliance on meta builds, then it isn’t real difficulty – just an illusion based on how closely you play to that meta (which contributes to the accessibility issue) and b. it breaks with the base design we are used to from the rest of the PVE game – the two elements we were told would be part of the raiding experience during the CDI.

domness.6719:

sorudo.9054:

new players can play the easy version while the veterans can play the hard one.

What. Everyone is new to the raids, why suddenly demand an “easy” version?

Seems pretty stupid to dumb down the content because people can’t be bothered to learn how to use their class beyond open-world zerging. Either learn to play (happily go into fractals/dungeons/DPS golem and learn rotations etc.), or don’t try and dumb down raids into something so worthless, that your average player can easily do.

I don’t think the answer is to tone down the existing level of difficulty – nor do I think it should be comparable in difficulty to open world (or even fractals), but rather to add interim levels that deal with this issue directly – and probably help more get into raiding at all levels.

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

The reality, that I hope Anet is starting to see, is that there are a lot of people who would like to experience the raids without having to completely alter how they have been playing the guild for the past 3 and a half years.

This is the single biggest issues with raids at the moment, imo. Even if it doesn’t give the same reward as the current strictures, they need to look at ways to fix it and expand the experience to more people.

Vinceman.4572:

Blaeys.3102:

For many of us criticizing the current model in these forums, the goal is to instill those elements in raiding in some way.

I still don’t see “many of” you in these forums.

There are good reasons for that.

First, this is the raiding subforum.

Second, it is hard to criticize raids in their current form because there is a small group of people who go on the attack the second you do. I would wager that at least one fifth of the comments in this post have had to be removed by moderators for that very reason. Speaking personally, I was actually hunted down and attacked verbally in game – and, believe it or not, I received an actual death threat through reddit (someone threatened to come to my house and kill me and my family").

While that doesn’t mean much to me (I served with the U.S. Marines for 6 years – I have pretty thick skin and don’t typically back down to criticisms), I can understand why some people don’t want to subject themselves to it.

The numbers on the forums are rarely a good indicator of interest in a topic, but that is even moreso the case here (for the reasons I list above).

And even despite that, I still see the sides represented in threads like this one as pretty even – probably about 50/50.

Back to the point, however – I think the current raids got one thing right – the difficult content (I think there is even cause to make it harder). What they lack however, is better accessibility. I think tiered difficulties (or a different solution, such as g/s/b rewards based on kill time) would fix that and offer a stepping stone process for people interested in getting to that top level content (and, at the same time, a more casual experience for those just wanting to experience the story or interesting fight mechanics).

Back during the very first raid discussions – during the CDI, Chris Whiteside said this specifically when providing guidelines for the discussion:

QUOTE:
Our design should be based around:

- Accessibility.
– Playing to the strengths of existing GW2 core functionality.

ENDQUOTE

Now, while they succeeded at the challenging content part, I do not believe they met either of these two criteria.

Speaking to accessibility – raids are overly restrictive, and will only become moreso as a subset of the community pulls further and further away from everyone else. Reliance on artificial difficulty barriers such as enrage timers and “kill fast” mechanics pigeon hole players into meta builds and playstyles they don’t necessarily enjoy.

Speaking to playing to GW2’s strengths, raids essentially backtracked on most of them – again creating a meta dependent game mode that walls players away from story, enjoyable content and (more and more now) their friends.

Yes, there was a subset of the population that responded well to the introduction of raiding. But, at the same time, the lack of accessibility and move away from core GW2 functionalities (introduction of the trinity, complete dismissal of scaling of any kind) have made others disillusioned with GW2 to varying degrees (even costing the game players at this point).

All of this was compounded by the content drought (which could have tempered somewhat if raids had been more accessible).

They succeeded in making raids challenging – but they failed when it comes to accessibility and cohesion with GW2 core philosophies. For many of us criticizing the current model in these forums, the goal is to instill those elements in raiding in some way. The easiest seems to be the model they use in fractals – tiered difficulty – but I could see scaling based on numbers or some other system working as well.

The absolute worst thing they can do at this point is to continue with the current raiding model – driving deeper wedges between communities in the game and moving further and further from what they game offered to players when it first launched.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Unfortunately for you, easier mode for raids wont be made. Fractal only have tiers because they were developed with it in mind from the start. Just like dungeons never had easy mode explorable mode ( Story mode dont count as its just like another path with different bosses etc). So like dungeons A-Net made easier bosses, even without timers for those that find Sloth for example too difficult. Then you have Scort ( wing 3 first boss ), if even that is too hard for you i’m sorry, you will never raid.
A-Net knows that you cant please everyone, and raids was the best receive content for its target audience by far, so they wont change that. So yeah you can still complain and dont get anything, or you can try to find things that you enjoy in the game, raids are not one of that and its fine.

ArenaNet has a solid history of listening to ALL players and adapting systems where necessary. Just look at WvW, living story between seasons one and two, the “new player experience” change,.

The audience for raid is PVE players who enjoy grouping with friends and playing in a mid sized instance – and with that in mind, raids were most definitely not the best received content; in fact, they are probably way down the list behind missions, fractals, new maps, etc.

We’ve seen one raid. Logic dictates that they are looking at how they can improve them – and like it or not, “improve” probably means looking at how they can get more players involved in them.

I don’t think anyone other than ANet can predict how raids will evolve – and there are those among their target audience who are not thrilled with how they are now. I think changes to raids will make it into the game – and, of course, I really hope those changes directly address the issue of accessibility.

And, as always, remember that almost no one is asking them to remove the experience we have now or detract from it in any way.

I really do think the arguments against are pretty thin.

And as for what people actually want out of raids, I would direct people back to the CDI when they asked people to list the top three things they would like to see from raiding in GW2. On the last few pages alone, the most requested features are accessibility and either scalability or multiple tiers. If you go back and read from the beginning of that thread (before Chris Whitesides actually laid out the planned parameters for raiding), you will find many more people asking for similar accessibility features.

On these subforums, I do think the community is split close to 50/50, with small contingents on all sides – namely me, Vinceman, Astralporing, Onizuka, Absurdo and one or two others – being very vocal. However, I also think that there is some bias in those numbers given this is the raiding subforum (and is, therefore, frequented by people who are currently actively raiding moreso than people who would be raiding if they were more accessible). This is made even more obvious when one of these posts starts in the general subforum or on reddit.

Absurdo.8309:

leads me to think most are just anti-raid.

Almost no one here is anti raid.

Just because people want to see something changed doesn’t mean they are against that thing.

As the question about what people want, I think that has been asked and answered a dozen times over -

- A way for people who do not spend the same time or conform to the meta to realistically have a chance at experiencing the content in a fun setting.

- A way for all players to experience the raid story (regardless of how slim that story is)

- Establish a stepping stone in terms of difficulty between fractals and the current raids.

- A return to the game’s philosophy of “this is my story,” in which there aren’t walls between the different PVE communities in terms of accessibility (and for the 100th time, no – Arah and Aetherpath are not the same thing as raids – as has been outlined dozens of times already)

I realize you disagree with all of these points, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t others who still see a need for this.

And, finally, again, I repeat what I said earlier -

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?

I really cant understand why people are so opposed to this.

Vinceman.4572:

Fortunately, there are only few people wanting this easy mode and I hardly believe that these few ones would shift Anet to such drastic changes. It’s all laying in the future but referring to past changes the group of opponents is way to small comparing to others that really had success with their wishes.

I actually see the opposite being true, but I’m willing to concede that I am probably colored by my perspective. However, I think the same is true of you.

Reality is, neither of us has any idea how many people are for or against the idea of tiered difficulty raiding. I think time is better spent arguing the pros and cons of the concept rather than worrying over statistics we don’t have.

I just want to say a huge thank you to Anet for the Guild Anthem upgrade. So far, Ive noticed that it plays after successful guild missions, when we use the guild flag finisher, when we take points in WvW and when we drop any guild banners (and I’m sure I’m missing something).

And I smile a little every single time I hear it. It’s one of those little touches that makes a guild feel more like a team.

If anyone out there is debating building this in your guild, I strongly recommend it. It is definitely worth 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.

I know that is what I saw people saying on the forums, but believe it or not, there were plenty of people doing all of the fractals because they enjoyed them – moreso when they started adding them to the daily rotation (something they could easily do with raids – just make them weeklies instead of dailies). There are still plenty of people who play the game for the content as much as anything else.

Furthermore, your example comes back around to reward for time/effort spent – something that almost everyone agrees should be scaled along with any difficulty tiering. The more challenging versions of the raid should obviously offer better reward.

OnizukaBR.8537:

It certainly wouldn’t you, would see post "A-net stop making raids, we want more LS, we want more maps, we want more … " Because there a lot of people that dont want to raid, be it easier mode or hard mode. I think the smallest part of the community is the one that still wants to raid, and only want if its an easier mode. Most want to raid at the current difficult or dont want to raid at all, so yeah waste of time and resource.

I think you are making assumptions here that probably aren’t true.

PVE-ers love new content – any new content – especially if it ties (even remotely) into lore or story they enjoy. It’s why people grind collection achievements or log on and hunt down every tiny corner of every single map.

If raids are more accessible, then more people will raid – I’m sure of that (especially if the raids are more amenable to a wider range of playstyles/builds/etc).

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.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

The fact is making raids easier trivializes what raids represent

I think you are over glamourizing raids a bit here. The only thing they represent is something (hopefully fun) to do in a video game.

There is no logical reason to design them around a subset of PVE-ers outside of – maybe – developer resource issues. If they can economically develop multiple tiers or scalable difficulties (that take nothing away from the challenging content modes), then they should. It would reduce the worries about content droughts, justify continued investment in raids and deepen the pool of potential raiders (again, without taking anything away from the challenging content modes).

The idea that raids represent or signify anything more than video game content is either patently absurd or born of unrealistic ego trips.

The thing is, the second you bring this up on these forums, one of two things will happen -

1.A small group of people will tell you that it is all in your head and you need to learn to play.
2. If you persist, they will tell you that it is a self-imposed problem and you are bad for not trying to fix it yourself. They do not understand that many just don’t play the same way they do – and that those people would actually enjoy a different kind of raiding experience in the game.

The reality is that there comes a point when things like this make the game less fun for some people – even some who love to raid.

Class balance for raids are a mess because of the HUGE gap in dps between certain professions – meaning raids will probably continue to be balanced in a way that makes a large number of builds/playstyles detrimental to the success of the group (or else risk making it faceroll for the upper end dps professions). While some mechanics encourage diversity and strategy, others (most notably enrage timers and other kill fast gimmicks) reinforce the meta and just constrict the ability of some players to play professions and builds they might actually enjoy.

While there is some personal responsibility on players to meet certain thresholds, raids (without tiered or scaled difficulty) in their current form take it further than this game – which has always reveled in and supported player choices – should have.

It is the single biggest issue with raids – and one I, unfortunately, don’t see going away anytime soon.

Absurdo.8309:

… anti-raiders …

Almost no one here is anti-raid.

Astralporing.1957:

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.

Which will become harder and harder as time goes on, people become less patient with new raiders and new raids result in fewer people running the older ones.

The logical answer is an interim level raid difficulty that a. serves as a training area for new raiders and b. offers the raid experience (story, interesting mechanics, etc) to those not wanting to (or not able to) put the time into the more advanced tiers.

I don’t think people actually understand what the groups that clear with 4 people or super fast (and, in some cases, super slow) do to make that happen.

They research all of the systems involved down to the minutest of details (of both the encounter and the professions involved). They practice for hours and hours. Every thing is planned and perfectly executed to achieve a singular goal.

But, what they do isn’t designed to work with regular groups. It is designed around those details.

It is VERY impressive, but using speed clears and abnormal groups to somehow invalidate the difficulty of regular raiding is based on faulty assumptions. Anyone that has raided in any serious raiding game knows that – and realizes what it is really about.

Back on topic -
As for the idea of allowing more people (15) into the current raid as a way to offer scalable difficulty, I would be all for it – but I suspect there are probably major technical limitations involved in making that happen. But, if they could, I could definitely see it working (provided, of course, the reward was less prestigious than that for 10 player groups).

fishball.7204:

15% reduction isn’t really going to be enough for those groups who can’t kill VG now.

They can’t kill usually because (a mix thereof):

- They miss greens
- Tank pulls too slowly to edges
- CC too slow
- People get ported and die on damaging AoE
- Bad Tank
- Healer not healing enough
etc

Pretty much nobody hits the enrage timer and then dies because of that. If you get that far, you can kill VG because you understand all the mechanics and after a few more wipes can probably execute them properly.

It’s an extremely reasonable assumption that 15% damage reduction will not change much and would still be too hard for most people that can’t kill VG now.

It would shorten the fight time in those phases where you have to deal with those mechanics, reducing the likelihood for error.

But, yea, it may not be the right path to take. It may require reducing the overall damage the green circles (or similar mechanic in other fights) do or lowering the number of people needed in them to 2 or something – or doubling the time people have to get to the green circle before it explodes. There are a lot of ways to go with it.

But would it be possible? Of course it would. How much effort and balancing it would take – and where is the cutoff where it would no longer be realistically worth doing – those are questions only Anet can answer.

But, again, I think it worth dealing with. Making raids more appealing to larger groups of people is good for the game (reduces the “content drought” issue) and for raiding in general (more people get a taste and start taking steps to becoming harder core raiders adds to the pool of potential pugs).

OnizukaBR.8537:

SkinnyT.5382:

hmmmm.

Vale Guardian:

Normal mode: (aka. NM)
Stays the same.

Easy Mode
- 15% base damage reduction from NM
- 20% skill recharge time increase from NM
- Enrage: VG get +15% base dmg. , and -25% skill recharge time

Hard Mode
- 15% base damage increase from NM
- 20% health increase from NM
- Phases now activate every time VG looses 1/5 of it’s full HP
- Enrage: Same as NM

Wait.. What this? A 3 tier Vale Guardian? No but this cant be. It’s not possible.
I mean despite not changing any mechanics at all, it clearly breaks the game. It’s too dumb down now, and any idiot can do it. Where’s the challenge? It was clearly taken away from the people who do easy mode and everyone else simultaneously.
Oh and the time! This is gonna gonna take so much time to implement. I mean the dev has to go and copy and paste THE WHOLE VG FIGHT CODE! And then! Then they have change whole HALF A DOZEN variables for each tier. I mean.. god they’ll need a whole new group of people for that.
You know what your guys? You’re right tiers are just not realistic. GG! Everybody go home! Raids are just for people with specific gear and builds!

Yes they are not realistic, i’m 100% sure that this easy mode you give of example the same people that cant kill VG now, wont kill that VG either so its a waste of time.

I think a lot of people would disagree with this prediction.

Personally, I’m not sure how the tiered difficulties would manifest, but I believe it would be possible (probably with minimal resources, but I cant say that for sure) – and to say that people wouldn’t or couldn’t play it if it were done is definitely a faulty assumption.

The only legitimate argument I see against the idea is developmental resources – and that is something that only Anet can truly speak to. I do believe, however, that additional resources – provided they aren’t exorbitant – would be justified to make this a reality.

The obvious solution – and a way to future proof against this issue with the next raid – is to expand the raid experience to offer lower tiers of difficulty, making them more accessible and open to the entire playerbase.

My guess is that Living Story Season 3 will focus on the conflict with Lazarus, with some side steps serving as a ramp up to the next expansion, which is where we will face the next dragon.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Blaeys.3102:

I understand the things you are saying, but the Unbound Guardian still isn’t a raid boss and has nothing to do with the conversation about tiered difficulties in raids.

It has, because people want easy mode to experience the bosses. And UG give you that, so why waste resource just to put UG in an instanced place?

People want tiered difficulties so they can experience the raid itself and the fun of a semiorganized group – just with a little more freedom regarding builds/playstyles/skill levels.

That experience includes the story, the setting and the mechanics involved in mid sized group play (as opposed to open world – which is an entirely different game mode).

I don’t think anyone thinks that mirroring the bosses in the open world – with different, albeit similar mechanics, is the solution people are looking for.

I understand the things you are saying, but the Unbound Guardian still isn’t a raid boss and has nothing to do with the conversation about tiered difficulties in raids.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Blaeys.3102:

OnizukaBR.8537:

Astralporing.1957:

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.

Yes there is ton of ground, that will maybe satisfy you or not , and probably not a lot of other people, because they will still fail at it ( as it will be not face roll ) so complain will still exists and now the raid group is divided in easy mode / normal mode. So in the end its way more harm/trouble then a solution for a problem that only exist if you want.
Many encounters if you remove 1 mechanic it become faceroll easy as you say. Remove Green Circle from VG = faceroll easy. Gorseval remove the enrage = slow grind his health updrafting all the time = faceroll easy. Remove warg from scort = faceroll easy. Remove cannons from sabetha = faceroll easy. Etc.
And if they dont remove this mechanic people will still fail and complain. Because they are already too easy, so its a player problem if you cant complete it in its actual state.

The idea that they cannot tone the fights down in ways that don’t make them “faceroll” is a little shortsighted, in my opinion. Of course there is room.

For me, most of the people I talk to are concerned more with the limiting nature of the fights in terms of build/gear/playstyle. Removing or toning down those elements that force (to a degree) players into the meta in order to have realistic chances would be a good thing - in a lower tier level of the raid (there should also be a harder experience that rewards the work people put in).

For many players, copy/pasting a build from metabattle takes the one thing they care about most from the experience – the perceived uniqueness of their character. While they shouldn’t expect to perform at the same level as those that min/max, I don’t think it is unfair for them to expect a raid experience that doesn’t overtly punish thme for getting creative with their characters.

The bolded part, what people fail to see that the VG on BF is exactly this, but people think its just a strawman or way toned down, and its not, the actual VG is actually that weak/easy, so if you tone down the wipe mechanic you will get BF VG that you dont want.

That comparison doesn’t really work. The Unbound Guardian is weak/easy because there are 60-100 people beating on it. While it shares a model and some mechanics, it was altered to be an open world encounter, not a replacement or easy mode version in a raid.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Astralporing.1957:

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.

Yes there is ton of ground, that will maybe satisfy you or not , and probably not a lot of other people, because they will still fail at it ( as it will be not face roll ) so complain will still exists and now the raid group is divided in easy mode / normal mode. So in the end its way more harm/trouble then a solution for a problem that only exist if you want.
Many encounters if you remove 1 mechanic it become faceroll easy as you say. Remove Green Circle from VG = faceroll easy. Gorseval remove the enrage = slow grind his health updrafting all the time = faceroll easy. Remove warg from scort = faceroll easy. Remove cannons from sabetha = faceroll easy. Etc.
And if they dont remove this mechanic people will still fail and complain. Because they are already too easy, so its a player problem if you cant complete it in its actual state.

The idea that they cannot tone the fights down in ways that don’t make them “faceroll” is a little shortsighted, in my opinion. Of course there is room.

For me, most of the people I talk to are concerned more with the limiting nature of the fights in terms of build/gear/playstyle. Removing or toning down those elements that force (to a degree) players into the meta in order to have realistic chances would be a good thing – in a lower tier level of the raid (there should also be a harder experience that rewards the work people put in).

For many players, copy/pasting a build from metabattle takes the one thing they care about most from the experience – the perceived uniqueness of their character. While they shouldn’t expect to perform at the same level as those that min/max, I don’t think it is unfair for them to expect a raid experience that doesn’t overtly punish thme for getting creative with their characters.

I’m willing to concede that the raid story is not 100% required to enjoy the living story – and that, in my zeal, I may have stretched the topic further than I should have.

But, I do still feel that making that story more accessible to the general playerbase would have added something to the holistic story experience. While it wasn’t 100% required, it was the first introduction to the antagonists and key plot points (which were then reintroduced during the Living Story).

Not only would it have provided content during the “drought,” it would have built more anticipation and excitement for the story we just played through – and that would have been good for the game, the community and Anet.

More importantly, I think it is important that this be addressed in some small way – if only to make sure the content and story developers at Anet understand the concerns when working on future raid content.

The Unbound Guardian is most definitely not a raid fight and not what people should seek when asking for a story or training mode raid.

To me, a better example would be the first encounter in Stronghold of the Faithful. By removing the enrage and toning the bosses down similar to that experience, we would have what were looking for – something that feels more like a stepping stone between fractals and the hard mode raids.

The Unbound Guardian is a great example of how they should do open world bosses – and something I hope they do with other raid bosses (a verson of Slothasor skulking around Tangled Depths would be pretty interesting) – but it isn’t what anyone (or just about anyone) means when they say they want tiered difficulty in raids.

For me (and many others, I’m sure), I just want a tier of fights that aren’t as punishing to players who deviate from the meta (alongside what we have now – or, even better, alongside much more punishing raid fights).

If so, you’re my hero.

Tonight is guild mission night.

I still want to know where things like guild missions fit into the development model for the game.

I worry that certain game elements, that many of us consider core to the GW2 experience, are slipping through holes in the development schedule – in a perpetual limbo as the team works almost exclusively on the content that plays better in a press release (focusing on bringing in new players more than building on the systems they have).

Again, the biggest of these, for me, is guild missions. We haven’t seen a new PVE guild mission in 3+ years.

fishball.7204:

Yeah about that enrage timer and DPS dependent elements:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEcVtSo0-H8

But yeah sure it’s the meta keepin you down mate sure sure

This is a ridiculous comparison – and even the people involved would tell you that. They did it simply because it is ridiculous.

Doing things like this take the same (probably more) level of planning and build tweaking that speed grouping takes. Instead of going super heavy dps focus, they took a super heavy defense focus.

Removing timers simply allows more build flexibility. You don’t have to go 100% dps or 100% defensive in group composition. You can still do these things if you want to spend 3 minutes or 2 hours killing the boss, respectively, but their would be room for other options (with a gold, silver, bronze reward system in place for taking that extra effort).

Absurdo.8309:

You cannot PHYW in all dungeons, and succeed in a reasonable period of time.
You cannot PHYW in all fractals.

When limited to the PVE content, I do not agree with either of the above.

You can complete any dungeon. Speed running may be out, but “finishing in a reasonable amount of time” – that’s definitely possible. I know this because Ive been in many groups that have.

And fractals use a tiered difficulty scaling – exactly what people are asking for here. In fact low level fractals are all doable with level 10 characters (Ive done it with a guild group for fun). All of the actual content is accessible – with challenge coming from higher levels.

As far as PvP and WvW, I could also argue that tiers exist in the form of ladders and rankings, but I don’t think you can really compare PvE and PvP content. They really are two separate games.

Nana.9512:

thrag.9740:

Absurdo.8309:

Raid story would not give you much insight into the current story.

But, if your actually care enough, it’s all there in a completed instance and summarized at the beginning of wing 3.

I saw plenty of teaching runs in lfg today — you can learn to raid if you want.

I think you missed what I said. We don’t want to waste the time of another player. It would be nice to be able to go in and experience and learn mechanics on your own time.

You can actually always go into a raid an just experience everything on your own. The raids themself are not that difficult, once you understand the mechanics.
The problem of the raids is, that it need 10 people to complete (or less very good people). My own guild has difficulties with finding 10 people for raiding :/
A mode for 5 people might be a solution, but could still be hard.

For the story part, the raid you play not as the raid commander, but as a totaly unknown group of soldiers(?). So in the living story it’s like your character hasn’t expirienced the raid at all and does not know, what happened there.
Hints for the white mantle activity existed in the silverwastes, where you could find bandit badges with the white mantle symbol

I agree with you on one point. The problem with the current raid design isn’t difficulty. The fights in themselves aren’t really that demanding.

The problem is that certain mechanics (most notably, enrage timers and other dps dependent elements) significantly punish anyone who doesn’t conform to the “more damage” metagame. After three years of being able to play builds that we have grown attached too (for whatever reason), this content effectively removes the idea of “play how you want.”

The best example of this is the escort event at the start of Stronghold of the Faithful. That fight allows for more build and group diversity, yet remains fun.

And all they would need to do to make it “more difficult” like the other raid fights is add a timer.

I would like to see them make a compromise that could benefit all types of raiders, and fix the meta issue. Remove the timers (and look at other dps dependent mechanics) and replace them with a gold, silver, bronze reward system based on how fast the encounter is beaten.

That way, the super focused hardcore raiders would still have the challenge and reward they do now, but groups who may want to play a little differently aren’t overly punished for doing so.

It’s not critical and it is not required, but I do believe they were both part of the same story arc. The raid was the player’s first introduction to the current conflict and what the White Mantle was actually up to.

Raiders were there first. They were given the chance (those that cared about that kind of thing) at greater immersion into the plot. And, that isn’t something that can be achieved with video or a few lines of NPC dialogue text (and definitely not with a cleared instance).

It potentially lessens the excitement for non raiders and makes them feel disenfranchised (we some examples of that in this very thread).

My point, however, is that this level of disconnect is not necessary. They need to take a more holistic approach to the PvE end game, making sure everything is there for all players to experience – and then add the challenge across multiple areas of the game through tiered difficulty levels – creating a mix of accessibility, challenge and storytelling tools that aren’t hindered by either of those things.

Absurdo.8309:

All I’ve seen are anti-raid complaints.

And, once again, this isn’t about anyone being anti-raid. I know it makes the argument easier if it is simplified, but that isn’t the case here.

I respect that you do not feel the raid ties directly to the living story. There are people who feel differently. The forums are here so that they – as well as you – can express those opinions.

After playing through the raid and the story, I see a direct continuation of the story in the Living Story Season. I – and several other posters – have outlined those connections multiple times above.

I don’t want raids to go away. I think they have a place in this game. I just do not see the current raid model as sustainable long term – and I want to bring up the points I think will fix that now. We see too many good things die due to lack of large scale player support for them. If raids are going to survive, they need better mass appeal.

As it relates to this thread, they have to be more careful about disenfranchising people from the story by leaving them out of parts of it. While you see the connections as minor or insignificant, someone who cares more about story will see it differently.

If you feel the conversation has run its course, then simply do not be a part of it any more – its existence will not hurt you in any way. But, there are those that feel a need to continue this dialogue. Respect that they are entitled to those opinions and to having their voices heard.

Absurdo.8309:

This argument is hilarious.

I finally finished living story today, and there is almost 0 connection between raid story and living world story.

The argument seems so weak, that, in my mind, whoever makes the arguments seems disingenuous and anti-raid.

Please avoid making statements about the people posting. It really only serves to stifle the conversation and browbeat people into not expressing their opinions.

Again, believing that something needs changed or improved does not mean people are completely against that thing. In fact, I don’t think many would be as adamant or concerned if they didn’t care about raids.

It isn’t raiders versus non (or anti-) raiders. It’s more nuanced than that. Most sides (and there are definitely more than 2) have brought up some good points. Let’s debate those points on the merits of arguments – not by trying to make it about the people posting personally. That really is counterproductive.

TexZero.7910:

the I don’t raid crowd

I do raid – every week. As, I’m sure, others who are critical of raids do as well.

This isn’t pro versus anti-raiding. It never has been (except in some very rare cases).

This is about wanting to see certain improvements to the system (which I respect you and many others do not see as improvements).

But, again, it isn’t about being for or against raiding. You can like something but still see a need for change.

Thaia.5146:

Vinceman.4572:

~snip~
But I would be fine with Anet picking the devs from LS and fractals to develop these 2 modes while the raid team is completely focussing on new raid content. Don’t blame the company for content drought then because you would have to suffer maybe a year before you get new stories or fracs.

I would be fine with them not making any more raids and start making something that caters to a larger playerbase.
/sarcasm

Your post was so toxic and selfish that I had to respond. Can we please all leave our elitism out of the discussion for once?

There is definitely a toxic undercurrent of posts on this forum designed to belittle people and encourage them not to post.

If you go back through these threads (and even moreso on reddit), pretty much anyone daring to criticize raids in any way is immediately attacked by the same small group of people. It gets to the point where people don’t want to get involved with/continue the conversation just to avoid having to deal with it (believe it or not, I even received a death threat on reddit).

People need to make counterpoints and lucid arguments to what people say – not attack those people directly (that is one of the surest signs of a weak argument).

thrag.9740:

I support an easy mode that literally has no rewards, only existing for story purposes (also shouldn’t get achievements from easy mode).

My entire guild has basically taken a 6 month break, we came back with living story 3, but it seems to continue from the raid story. We probably won’t be playing unless we can experience the raid story first.

It definitely continues from the raid story – something many of us have been trying to tell them all week – even as others try to deny it.

It is good to see a fresh perspective from returning players on this point. The more they hear this is needed, the more likely we are to see them do something.

All of this could be solved by making raids more accessible to everyone. Go back to what made this game great at launch.

That seems like a no brainer – and definitely worth the effort – to me.

BobbyStein.2315:

Blaeys.3102:

JayMack.8295:

Effectively you want a story mode for Raids, which is soloable. If they made it a no-reward purely story instance (or some minor one-time only reward), then I wouldn’t have an issue with that.

Issue with that is, and I expect this is a frustration Bobby experiences, is that doing that requires resources that he’s probably not in control of, i.e. people to implement it, people to adjust the boss encounters so they can be soloable, adjust the enemy encounters, etc. etc. etc.

And frankly, I’d rather he focus on creating good stories for raids and having someone else worrying about the implementation or the resources to do a story mode rather than have a basic raid with a lack of story or one so disconnected from the world it’s irrelevant and not worth caring about.

I think the raid storytelling is some of the best group storytelling in the game. It beats the storytelling in dungeons by a mile, so I want all of the community to be able to experience it as well (as I’m sure Bobby does!). I hope that a story mode IS implemented at some point but if they don’t have the resources available to do that, I’d rather he still sticks to making raids have a compelling and interesting story that is relevant to the world of Tyria.

I get the frustration, I do. I had to wrangle together 3- 4 other people just to get the full story experience of dungeons since most groups want to rush through, skip cutscenes and not absorb the story (a balance they’ve actually quite brilliantly achieved in raids) and I would have killed for a solo story mode for them back then.

Well said.

As someone who has taken more than my share of swings with the axe, I do applaud Bobby for putting his neck out to talk and interact with the community on this.

I agree that the issue is not with the story – and that the raid story is extremely well done.

It is solely an issue of accessibility – which goes back to the mechanical implementation of raiding.

There definitely needs to be a better way for players to experience this story – whether it is through tiered difficulties in raiding (my vote) or some other interactive playable content. The important part is that the player gets to feel like the hero of the story. Relying on access to cleared instances really feels like the opposite of that – nothing more than a guided tour from the “real heroes.”

But again, I don’t see this as something Bobby can fix – and his work on the story has been amazing.

But, as he is the only raid developer to really engage with the community on this topic, he is the one that gets to dodge our swinging axes .

I think you both have summed it up quite nicely: certain player frustrations aren’t with the fact that there’s a story in raids (or that the story is “bad” or “poorly told” in their opinion) it’s just that the content is out of reach for them and they want to experience playing it somehow.

Since that’s not something I can personally change, I’m hesitant to engage in discussions surrounding that because I have nothing to add. I can’t/won’t/don’t want to convince anyone that their opinion is bad or invalid, but since many of these suggestions fall outside the scope of what I do (or what the vision for raids as a whole is) I can only listen.

One thing you can influence is what happens next. What your team does next and how the story is told are very important. You’ve got the player base invested in the hunt for Lazarus and the White Mantle, as well as the hunt for the next dragon.

Do not leave them out of story steps associated with these storylines.

Given the current model, I realize that ties your hands a little from a story teller’s perspective. That is why I think the logical solution is making the raids more accessible to the average player.

Love the patch.

Really want to know how guild missions fit into the development schedule. Are they considered living world, do they have a team – and if neither, is anyone at all responsible for new ones?

Pyro.4765:

So only partially related, but here’s a thought:

Considering that the only way to initially get into Bloodstone Fen is by completing LS3 episode 1, will the map become locked out for players who miss out on it now and don’t buy it in the future?

I think that might hurt its long-term population, if that’s the case.

This is actually a very good question and possibly something the devs didn’t consider. I know that people who didn’t get season 2 in time can still access Drytop and Silverwastes.

I would hate to be doing a guild event in Bloodstone Fen a year from now and find that people couldn’t get in for this reason.