Guild Wars 2

deSade.9437:

Dadnir.5038:

- It would make aegis or pretty much every “on block” skill less and less effective as a survival tool.

No, make sure guardians turn from still alright to barely decent/crappy, because why not. I got carried too many times by random aegis and now I want my revenge!

Blaeys.3102:

A mix of the two should encourage a balance of playstyles/armor/etc and add more depth to GW2 PVE.

How does equipping clerics or knights armor ADD DEPTH TO THE GAME? How does a trinity add—-nevermind, this is pointless. Phiws won’t down raids with their kittenty nomads armor and kittenty teamcomps anyway, it’s a non-issue.
If anet does it right.

I said a mix of soft and hard enrage timers – with the soft enrage beginning really early in the fight and requiring cooperative survival techniques in order for the group to remain alive. In other words, if the only survival element is “dodge, dodge, dodge, heal, rinse, repeat” then there is a problem. I dont want a trinity and dont want groups full of clerics or knights gear.

But having a mechanic (such as the red orbs on the Vale boss) that encourages (not requires) the use of one or two “tanky” players in knights or soldiers to intercept big hits so the rest of the group doesnt have to, or a progressively increasing persistent damage tick (the soft enrage) that encourages the use of one or two people in zealots or clerics gear to up AOE heals in certain areas ADDS more to the encounter. It doesnt make it easier (the opposite actually).

The alternative means every fight has the exact same strategy – kill fast – because everyone is filling the exact same role. I know that is what people are used to from fractal and dungeon pugs, but it isnt the only way.

We dont need the trinity to add depth to the encounters, but there are ways to design fights with more than just pure dps requirements.

In addition to forcing multiserver guilds to leave people out of guild activities this weekend (which still baffles me), another major issue with no PVE guild missions during the first few days is that we will have to deal with the inherent issues of WvW.

Specifically, this means we will have to fight queues (which will be real the next few days) and hope that we get enough guildees (those not on other servers, of course) onto a map organized enough to manage whatever the missions happen to be. For PVE/PVX centric players/guild, this means foregoing – possibly for long stretches of time (because once we get into a wvw map, we probably wont be able to leave without dealing with queues all over again), the content we actually want to play.

I know many probably still do not see this as an issue, but for those multiserver PVE guilds that enjoy playing in large groups together, this is painful and will detract from our enjoyment of HOT launch.

I still love and plan to enjoy as much of HOT this weekend as I can, but how did Anet not anticipate these seemingly basic issues? I want opening the guild hall to be something fun and challenging for my guild to do together – that is not what were seeing it to actually be, and that is sad.

I know you are saying we wont be able to unlock the guild hall immediately, which is fine, but can you be just a bit more specific about the barrier to entry.

Is it simply that we need to get to the entrance or is it time gated based on the amount of favor you have to earn through pvp and wvw missions this weekend (since there are no pve missions available)? Will we be able to earn enough favor to unlock the hall at all this weekend? Also, are the entrances gated by gliding or mushroom mechanics?

Some of us already have events on the schedule this weekend bringing people together to unlock the hall. Just need to know if that is even possible.

I really do hope the community takes them up on this offer – and that they fix the exploits in content such as fractals (both the ones that exist now – like the mia trin relog or stack = no port berkserker, necros on jade maw, and any new ones) and raids very quickly when it is brought to their attention. It takes away from fight difficulty and makes a joke of otherwise interesting content.

Go with your heart on Friday when you wake up.

If you feel protective, go with Herald.

Reckless, go with the Berserker.

A little evil, go with Reaper.

If you feel like you need more time to make the decision, go with the Chronomancer.

Problem solved .

(not really, but figured I would try)

Gav.1425:

Blaeys.3102:

You still have plenty of time to turn that 350 K into …

To my knowledge, we will no longer be able to make consumables (banners, etc) after Friday. Is this not correct? Can we still make consumables?

I know whatever is queued will be completed, but 10 slots of build queue isn’t going to spend my remaining 350k. I’m been spending my influence from as long as I can remember—way before the influence announcements.

For those of you thinking 350k is no big deal, it translates to 1000g on conservative numbers. I don’t think anyone here would be happy on losing 1000g that you’ve actually earned.

How do you turn 350k influence into 1000 gold?

Not being sarcastic. If there is a way, I would love to know it.

On a practical note – as far as spending what you still have, you can spend influence to rush the build queue. It’s extremely easy to spend it before tomorrow night. I know – I spent half an hour yesterday burning through a bunch in that manner (probably close to 350K funnily enough).

Black Box.9312:

Kal Spiro.9745:

Agemnon.4608:

Farming, time, and effort aren’t the problem, ludicrous amounts of it are.

I see this phrase popping up over and over. Could someone define for me very specifically what constitutes ludicrous? Cause I’ve been reading the same things you have and I have not seen anything that I could define as ludicrous. Some of this will take a fair amount of time, which is GOOD, because more time spent unlocking things means more time with the content, and not burning through it all in a week and then wondering why there isn’t more to do.

Even with that, I’m pretty certain some people will accomplish 100% Elites on day one. They may not accomplish anything else, but they’ll have that.

The only people this seems to hurt are the people with way too many characters, of which they need all to have elites, for some reason. I’ve got 13 characters, about, one doesn’t exist yet, but will in a couple days. Of those, though, I only plan on getting elites for 4, one of which can definitely wait until much later to go through the process.

If for some reason I absolutely needed all 13 characters to be elites, that would be a problem, but that would still only be a problem for me for having such an unruly number of characters. It’s not ANet’s fault nor problem. If it takes x amount of time to get the thing, then it should absolutely take x times the number of characters you want to up to elites in order to do that. That’s completely reasonable.

Gating elite specs does not add value to the content. The new content was going to be present either way, and the people who wanted to do it were going to do it regardless. The only thing this has accomplished is that players now feel pressured to complete the content faster without getting to play through it with the elite spec that they want in the first place.

This does not add time and value to content that was going to be played regardless.

That desire to unlock as fast as possible is a self-imposed state of mind. You can still take your time, enjoy the content, and not fall behind other players in any real way.

Progressional goals are good for the game. They give us ways to change how we play over time. Most MMOs do this with a leveling system that directly impacts the stats and power of your character. Im still glad Anet chose a different path – a way that modifies how we play rather than forces us down a power treadmill.

You still have plenty of time to turn that 350 K into a bunch of hero banners, world boss unlocks, guild catas (which you can then sell for gold if you dont want to keep them), etc. I did that with about half of the 1 million influence we had as of last week.

And, as others have said, they wont be useless anyway – there will be conversion options post HOT.

We are still interested in recruiting new members. We have a very active and friendly community with a strong structure and plan for the future.
We will be tackling the expansion and everything it has to offer aggressively and head on. Anyone looking for a drama free guild is invited to come join us.

I think a combination of soft enrage timers like the decay aura and hard enrage timers makes sense. The hard enrage should be there to prevent all super bunker groups from cheesing the fight – and the soft enrage should be there to prevent all super squishy zerkers from cheesing the fight as well.

A mix of the two should encourage a balance of playstyles/armor/etc and add more depth to GW2 PVE.

My guess is that the time it takes people to get these hero points will be far less than the time they spend complaining about it on these forums.

They definitely should make some adjustments to the system for multiserver guilds and it truly is a shame this slipped through the cracks. As it stands, it’s not something I look forward to trying to coordinate.

Doug.4930:

ColinJohanson.2394:

PlatinumMember.5274:

Unless I am mistaken just to unlock half of the training line, we need 212 hero points?

It’s 400 points total to unlock everything in an elite spec training line – I just can’t remember off hand how many points folks have currently if they have done all the existing ones, but it’s right around 200. The rest you’ll need to earn in jungle to unlock the deeper skills/traits/etc. in the training line.

You only need 60 hero points to begin using your elite spec, the points you spend after that continue to unlock more skills, traits, skins, etc.

Again, hero challenges are worth 10 points each in the jungle. So no you don’t need to go do 200-400 jungle challenges.

Please some of us hate stepping foot in pve.

Please don’t make us grind so hard to unlock specializations so I can enjoy it in WvW.

Please.

They gotya covered – https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/earning-hero-points-in-world-vs-world/

Im glad they didnt just give it all to us right away. And, it is definitely still much better than “gain 10 levels.”

Like how they are doing progression for HOT.

Vayne.8563:

My concern isn’t doing WvW. My concern is people in my guild being left out because more and more of the guild isn’t on my server.

Maybe you think it’s okay for me to say okay I’m doing a guild mission now, the rest of you can listen to us on mumble and feel left out, but I don’t think that’s okay.

This is the issue 100%.

Last night, we had the largest group at guild missions that we’ve had in months. Guildees are excited about Friday and everything that is coming, but not about being pushed into doing guild content that we cannot do together in order to gain the favor needed to start the guild hall expedition.

And, unfortunately adding insult to injury, to avoid this issue for the foreseeable future, we also realize that we will also have to forfeit the 10% bonus we could get from having all of the options checked – simply because we don’t want to have to (possibly) exclude people due to the RNG of the system. Large multiserver guilds will have to always select only pve guild missions, even if they have other interests.

They went out of their way to make sure small guilds had the same opportunities as large. Now they need to make some small changes to do the same for multiserver guilds.

I was going to let this drop because of people whining at me on the forums. I decided that people can whine and call that entitled if they want, but my guild counts on me to act as an advocate on their behalf – and that is what I’m going to do. This is something that is going to dampen our enjoyment of the game day one – and needs to be fixed anyway it can be (easiest would be to just drop favor cost associated with guild hall charters at this point).

Lirale.6437:

Personally, I almost do nothing but PVE and have been doing GM ever since I started playing back in 2014 so it should be obvious how close to my heart it is. However, isn’t all this commotion about the first week of missions being random PVP and WVW a bit too much?

After all, the devs have clearly explained that this is only for the first week and that as soon as HoT rolls in you can remove PVP and WVW from your guild mission slots for the week after and any week behind it. How is a one week loss of mission worthy of all this clamor?

Plus, as PVE guilds you are in a strong position : PVE guilds will have tons of devoted players available during mission time to push for claiming of your Guild Hall as soon as week one of the expansion by doing the expedition. Why not canalize your guild’s energy in that if you really can’t live without missions for a week?

Not to mention Halloween will be there for tons of RP and labyrinth farming if it so pleases you. Tons of stuff to do with friends and guildies.

I find it a bit unfair for the devs and wonderful Colin that people get that worked up for barely a week of minor inconvenience that can easily be played around for even funnier group adventures…

Thank you for the well thought out and logical counterpoint. It makes a lot of sense.

While I still have some concerns and stand behind what I’ve said up to this point about wishing more of my guild could participate in our pre-guild hall missions, you are right that it is just one small part of the upcoming weekend and should occlude a fun time. It will still be a fun weekend with a lot of new things to do with our guilds and that is what we should all be focusing on.

Altie.4571:

Blaeys.3102:

Kitta.3657:

It is literally only 3 days for those guild missions, get over it.

It isn’t the three days. It is the favor required to begin the guild hall expedition.

I realize that, for many guilds, this isn’t that big a deal. However, for others it is an actual problem, so “get over it” really comes across snide and insulting.

Were still looking forward to HOT. We still respect all of the work that has been done.

We just want to be able to experience something important to our guild as an actual guild group – and do something we actually enjoy doing as a group when the game launches instead of feeling pushed into content we may not want to do. That isn’t a lot to ask.

If it’s that important why can’t you then simply do the WvW or PvP missions then? It’s easier in some respects than PvE ones?

I get the sense that you are feeling entitled and will not budge on something so extremely trivial that I don’t know how to approach an answer. 3 days start has not ever been a deal breaker and I would appreciate it if people would stop trying to blow it out of proportion.

It has nothing to do with being entitled or not budging.

Of course we will be doing the WvW and PvP missions – but not because we want to, because we have to have to. And we will have to leave members out of this activity as well (which is the entire point of my posts).

The point of a forum and dialogue is to allow for civil discourse and discussion. I realize this probably isnt an issue to you – and that some are probably very happy that they will have wvw and pvp missions to do this weekend. It happens to create a tangible problem for me and others. Keep that in mind before throwing terms like entitled around and “blowing things out of proportion.” Proportion is a matter of perspective. We come at the topic from different points of view.

My point is I dont want to leave people out of this activity, but I will have to anyway. I think this is a fair point and am sorry you do not. I definitely dont think this is something worth attacking my words over.

While I do still hold out hope that the developers will see these posts and offer some kind of solution, I think it is probably a dead issue at this point. I won’t post any more in this thread – Im sure my concern and passion for wanting to include all of my guildees in activities this weekend has been made very clear by this point.

Kitta.3657:

It is literally only 3 days for those guild missions, get over it.

It isn’t the three days. It is the favor required to begin the guild hall expedition.

I realize that, for many guilds, this isn’t that big a deal. However, for others it is an actual problem, so “get over it” really comes across snide and insulting.

Were still looking forward to HOT. We still respect all of the work that has been done.

We just want to be able to experience something important to our guild as an actual guild group – and do something we actually enjoy doing as a group when the game launches instead of feeling pushed into content we may not want to do. That isn’t a lot to ask.

ColinJohanson.2394:

DBZVelena.5186:

Are there WvW guild missions that can possibly be completed in Edge of the mists at all?

Just double checked w/ the team on this – you cannot do these while in EoTM.

You can however have people in different worlds running missions simultaneously for the guild that all contribute. They simply only need to have 3 guild members participating in the specific event for it to count towards the mission – regardless of which world.

The whole point of guild missions is to give guild members something they can do together (side by side) that they enjoy. It is what you have given us for the past 2 plus years.

Guilds with members on multiple servers or members who do not enjoy pvp or wvw will not be able to do so this weekend. This wouldnt be much of an issue (as youve said, its only 3 days), EXCEPT that it will have an impact on how quickly we can open our guild hall and who gets to be involved in that process. That one hurts.

Long term, the only issue I see is that multiserver guilds will be penalized the 10% bonus on guild missions, regardless of size, but I can live with/sell that to my guild. The idea of leaving people out as we work toward our guild hall this weekend is a little more heartbreaking.

ColinJohanson.2394:

DBZVelena.5186:

Are there WvW guild missions that can possibly be completed in Edge of the mists at all?

Many of the WvW missions can be completed in EoTM yes.

This still doesn’t fix the underlying problem. Even in EoTM, people have to be on the same color teams to play together.

I hate to belabor this, but I’m already getting concerned posts on my guild’s forums about this. This will have a negative impact on a large number of players who enjoy playing together for missions.

If it is truly impossible to reroll, then they need to do one of the following:

1. Eliminate the favor cost associated with opening guild halls.
-
2. Make sure we can trade in enough influence for favor on day one to give us access to the guild hall expedition charter – without having to do any missions.

Neither of these address the core issue, but they would at least let guilds do all of the steps to unlock their guild hall TOGETHER.

On a systemic perspective – long term, random needs to mean one PVE, one PVP and one WvW – with the option to have it all set to a single one. That way you dont punish any guild for playing the game they actually enjoy – including both specialized and diverse guilds like mine.

ColinJohanson.2394:

MatHack.4316:

Is it possible that you reroll this until you have a PvE, PvP & WvW mission (from what I understood there were three slots initially) considering we have no choice but to have a mix the first week. With only PvP & WvW missions I sorta feel like PvE guilds are getting the short end of the stick.

That was my question when I heard this too! Sadly no, the concept of re-rolling these while seemingly a simple idea – is apparently a mess code wise and would take a really long time to sort out. On the good news side – guild missions reset 3 days after the launch of HoT, so at most you’re waiting 3 days if you’re not interested in doing the launch day missions. Just make sure to set your guilds preferences in those first 3 days!

MatHack.4316:

Is it safe to do the current (PvE) guild missions before the launch, considering you have PvP & WvW rolled only atm? Will doing guild missions before the launch lock the ones that are available after the release?

It’s totally safe to do your guild missions before launch yes. The new guild mission system will activate on launch and offer a brand new set of missions that are not impacted by the ones you had before.

This is a big deal, Colin – because it impacts our ability to open guild halls – and is something that should have been thought of before today. PvP, by definition is 5 people. WvW, by definition, is only people on your server (and EOTM is only people with your color map that week). My guild (and many others) are bigger than those two scenarios – so the decision to limit guild missions to WvW and PVP effectively forces people out of guild missions with the group. That seems counter to the design of GW2.

If you cannot reroll this (and I think you should, even if it is a huge issue to do so), then you need to remove the favor cost from opening guild halls. It still doesnt fix the problem of multiserver guilds and guild missions, but it would address one issue.

My guild was among the first to open guild missions. For the past two plus years, we have done guild missions together every week (we haven’t missed a single one) – and had a lot of fun doing so, even as the they have grown repetitive. This will be the first time in that two years that we will not all be able to do missions together. I loath the idea of telling my guildees that tonight.

This is a bad precedent to set. I know the pvp and wvw missions are “new,” but that is no reason to exclude pve, especially when we need missions to open the guild hall.

Forum bug made thread invisible again – and this is one that needs to be kept alive. All guilds need the ability to play together for missions week one.

Juba.8406:

come on guys its just for week 1 cut the qq already, personally i would set my guild missions to be all in WvW, no need to go PvE anymore.

Then this doesnt really impact your ability to play with the people you want to play with.

That isnt true of any guild that enjoys getting together for PVE missions or that has members across servers and actually wants to play with them for missions.

This is a big deal to some of us that lead PVX or PVE guilds in the game. It is a bad precedent to set and hinders our enjoyment – as well as our ability to open our guild hall in a timely manner.

Calling something qq doesnt mean it isnt a legitimate concern. I lead a large guild of very active players. We have a lot of fun together. I see it as my responsibility to speak up and make the argument when something hurts our ability to enjoy the game as a group.

Bottom line – we will not be able to do missions together in a group the first week of Heart of Thorns – and will possibly have to wait longer than should be necessary to open our guild hall.

We play the game to play together. I know we are not the only guild in that situation. This seems like a little thing to guilds that it doesn’t impact, but it most definitely is not little for many of us.

butch.8136:

There are probably only 2 slots for missions to start with? Maybe thats why they have to pick two out of three?

Then those 2 need to be ones that guilds can actually do together in a group.

That isn’t asking much – and seems like an important thing week one as people start to play and reconnect with their guilds again.

Unless we designate we want all of one kind of mission, missions should include a mix of PVE, WvW and PvP – even if that means one of each every week until we open new slots.

This is locking us out of something we enjoy, hurting our ability to play together in content we want to play and punishing diverse guilds with members on multiple servers.

This needs to be rerolled and reconsidered.

I know there is alot going on at Anet this week (and I am excited for HOT), but the idea of no PVE guild missions is ridiculous and throws a wrench into my – extremely high – excitement for this expansion.

We (members of my guild) want to play the expansion together – this is a step in the opposite direction for many of us.

And, to address Vayne’s comment, I understand this is only week one – but week one is extremely important because those missions are needed to unlock guild halls. We want to do that as a guild and this stops us from doing so. It’s that simple.

I am usually the last to criticize Anet and their decisions – I love this game and respect what they do, but this is just a really bad decision and needs to be remedied.

With all respect, I see an issue here that worries me -

Guilds with members on multiple servers will have no way to do missions together. They cannot WvW together, can only go into EOTM if they are the same color that week (and the mission allows it) and can only send small parties of guildees into PvP together at a time.

You are taking what is the most social and fun part of our guild’s week and basically telling us we cant do it week one – and wont be able to ongoing if the RNG gods don’t favor us week to week.

A lot of my members are looking forward to opening guild halls and want to be a part of the process (as a team) to do so. To them – and to me – that includes the PVE guild mission portion.

Even after two years, guild missions are something we look forward to every week. Guild member logins and participation more than double on the nights we do missions. They may not be hard (we REALLY need new pve guild missions), but they are something we look forward to more than any other night of the week.

At the same time, I do see us wanting to do a little WvW and PVP to supplement our missions, but missions we can ALL do in the world of Tyria are very important to us.

Please reconsider and “reroll” so that we have at least one option in PVE.

Just as a clarification – does this mean there is no way to do PVE guild missions week one?

That seems a bit (just a little) punitive to guilds who enjoy doing PVE missions together and will need them to unlock guild halls.

World’s first head transplant. World’s first water powered car. World’s first civil cartoon cat/mouse political debate.

These things would be newsworthy. World’s first raid kill is not. No one outside of a very tiny number of people cares.

Test my game and make sure it is fun before my guild goes in. That is what I care about.

White Hunter.3416:

We have no info about new fractals.
Let’s just wait a week:)

I think it’s safe to say that they have announced everything – at least from a feature POV – that will be in the expansion next Friday, so you shouldn’t get your hopes up about new fractal maps.

We do need new fractal islands though, and hopefully they are already being worked on (along with new guild missions, which we also aren’t getting next Friday).

Im very happy with what we are getting in the expansion and will be playing for an obscene number of hours the weeks following the 23rd, but there are some game modes that haven’t seen new content for a REALLY REALLY long time, and that is truly a shame.

The point of masteries are to give us goals and something important to work toward without imbalancing competitive aspects of the game.

Personally, I vastly prefer the mastery system to a simple “gain 10 more levels” or gear grind approach. It gives them a way to continually add new goals for players to reach in the game that centers more around content than gear stats or levels.

Should be interesting and fun to see the cadence they set and overall diversity of future mastery lines.

Thaddeus.4891:

Errant.1509:

Could you please specify why [Att] was chosen? Their guild does easy world boss kills and isn’t particularly involved in high-end instances. That seems like a really odd choice for testing 10-man content when there are much more accomplished dungeon and fractal guilds available.

Does it have to do with the fact that several members of Arenanet staff are members in [Att]?

They did one of the first Triple Wurm kill and are pretty good at organizing large group of players.

Personally, I prefer that they test this new content with two perspective than by two guild with the same perspective.

100% this.

While I respect DnT’s efforts in the game, my guild probably has alot more in common with a guild like ATT in terms of size, game philosophy, gear levels, etc.

It is good to see them included and I sincerely hope it adds some diversity and different perspectives to how the community/Anet defines raiding in GW2.

As long as Anet ensure the raids are being tested with a full variety of professions/gear choices/builds, I don’t really care who is doing the testing – I’m just glad they are.

I like the new system they have outlined, but the unfortunate fact remains that we will have nothing substantially new (content-wise) to do in fractals after the 23rd.

Im also concerned that the new system may prove an impediment when it comes time to add new fractals.

What happens when they have more than 20 fractals? Does that mean some fractals will only be doable within the range of agony-inducing levels (im personally fine with that, but some may find it limiting).

If there are achievements associated with the 100 levels we are getting, what happens when they need to swap one of those levels with a new island? Do the achievements associated with the old just go away?

I realize these are easy issues to resolve, but they illustrate that the system they are introducing may potentially make it harder to add new fractal islands, in contrast to every other part of HOT, which seem to be designed to give the devs maximum flexibility.

I think not introducing new fractals with HOT is a developmental mistake.

Of course there is nothing wrong with doing it. People will always look for the easiest way to finish an encounter.

And of course it should be fixed. It trivializes otherwise engaging content.

It does bug me that, most likely, there wont be any new fractals coming on the 23rd (really wish they would confirm, though). I like what I’ve seen of the new system, but what most want is new content (same with guild missions, imo).

There are a TON of things they could bring back from the past three years in the form of a fractal:

From Season 1:
- Breachmaker fight
- Invasion of LA
- Toxic hybrid mini-instance from tower of nightmares
- Canach’s Lair mini instance
- Ancient Karka (would make an amazing fractal, imo)
- Candidate Trials mini instance
- Scarlett’s Playhouse mini instance
- Marionette
- Twilight Arbor F/U

From Season 2:
- Pretty much every story instance that involved combat

Much of this could be used (from a fight design perspective – know nothing about the coding) as it was originally designed within a fractal. For example, I would love to chase the ancient Karka across a version of Southsun again inside a fractal – or attack the breachmaker again.

The idea of improving the features and underlying system of fractals is noble and something I look forward to, but it has been a really long time since we saw a new map. I think many of us just expected a few with the expansion.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I find it funny that the only toxic players in this thread are the ones opposed to dps meters… maybe the reason they were a problem for you in other games is because of you… me thinks it is time for you to look in the mirror to find the source of the toxicity.

So you dont consider this toxic? -

Celeras.4980:

Newsflash to the baddies: there are already third party damage meters. We know if you suck. Adding it to the game by default in the squad UI would be fantastic, because then at least YOU could also know that you suck.

And there are tons of posts about meters. Can we please keep this one about the cool new ui were getting?

Pandabro.8743:

Blaeys.3102:

At the end of the raid, the leader looks at the logs (with all of the info you’ve provided). They see that:

a. I did considerably more damage
b. You let might stacks drop off (even though you had no choice)
c. Your fury uptime was around 70 percent while mine was 100.
d. You took more damage/less healing because you were away from the protective boons of the party.

In this example, you were much more valuable to the raid group than I was, but the numbers show the exact opposite. You are removed from the raid while I (the person that ignored all mechanics and just focused on getting high numbers on the meter) get to stay – meaning the group is going to continue wiping.

The point is there are too many factors that make the raw data basically unusable – if not downright deceiving.

Add to this the general toxicity that we historically see with these tools (and it is really bad, trust me), and adding meters to the game is just a horrible idea.

I don’t know what damage meters in other games you’ve been using but generally it’s very easy to see if people are training the wrong mobs. Usually you can check, with in game damage meters, who did how much damage to what mobs. Additionally it’s pretty easy to see in game when people switch to another mob.

The gist of your argument seems to be that:

Bad raid leaders will make poor decisions by not understanding how fights work and use damage meters to justify kicking players from their raids.

Yes that will happen, but it’ll happen regardless of damage meters. If the group hits that point where they are executing mechanics but the boss isn’t dying then something needs to change and raid leaders will start looking to figure out what it is.

The difference is without the tools they need even good raid leaders can make poor decisions because they have nothing but speculation to base their decisions off of.

While I still believe that even the most savvy leader can be misled by numbers in a meter, I at least partially agree with you and with dlonie’s post above yours regarding smart usage. Unfortunately, anyone who has ever raided in any MMO with these tools knows that this isnt the approach the majority of groups will take.

And, that is when these tools become the bile-inducing toxic generators we all know they can be.

It comes back to my original question – is access to these tools, which require a sophisticated understanding of the game to use properly in the first place – and which can still provide misleading data, worth the toxicity that they historically have created in other games?

I say they are not. I realize and respect that you disagree with that.

As a side note – as much as we are disagreeing, I think this has been a healthy discussion and a good use of forum space on both sides.

dlonie.6547:

Blaeys.3102:

Pandabro.8743:

So how do you see it going when a guild cannot get a boss down because of an enrage?

In my opinion the drama and hate will be no less, it’ll just be less informed. Wiping is frustrating enough as it is and blame will come down on someone, it way less likely that the person(s) causing the wipes will get blamed if we don’t have tools too gauge performance. It’ll come down on those who play a “sub optimal” build or those playing “inferior” classes, even though we’ll have no idea if those people are actually doing their job or not. It’ll be entirely speculation.

The lack of damage meters won’t cure toxicity in a highly competitive environment where you have multiple people working towards a goal. It WILL let good raid leaders make informed decisions about how to address issues though.

Toxicity issues aside, pure DPS meters wouldntt, in most cases, solve any issue – and, in fact, would probably create them.

DPS in this game is as much about group support as it is about individual contributions. Might/vuln stacking, blast finishers, fury uptime on the party – these are all crucial to success. When you stress the importance of dps meters, you encourage selfish builds that center around personal damage output, rather than group performance. You also encourage players to care less about strategically switching targets so they dont have to ramp up vuln or their condi stacks again.

To your hypothetical about what happens when you wipe, instead of looking at individuals and trying to pick out lower dps, your energy will be better spent looking at why you wiped and which group support functions will keep that from happening again.

DPS meters, more often than not, cause groups to focus on unimportant issues – and, as I’ve said before, cause drama where drama isn’t needed. They simply aren’t useful and act counterproductive to team play.

I think it’s safe to say that when anyone here talks about a “DPS meter”, we mean, ideally, a tool that would provide information on support, healing, etc., not just raw DPS.

But even so, let me take Mr. Pandabro’s example a bit further:

Your DPS team includes a necro and an engi. The necro is playing skillfully, putting out his fair share of damage, and all around performing to the best of his class’s ability. The engi, on the other hand, is using terrible rotations, missing damage modifiers, and spending too much time semi-afk, drinking bourbon, and eating spaghetti during the encounter. He stays near the boss, looks busy, but isn’t putting out nearly as much damage as he should.

Without the DPS meter, who is more likely to get blamed for the wipe?

It is realistically impossible to use a standardized tool to identify all of the factors leading to failure in raids with diverse mechanics. It requires honest communication between members and an understanding of the fight mechanics. If you dont have those two elements, then your raid is doomed to fail regardless.

Here is a theoretical – you and I are in the same raid with exactly the same damage output. A trash mob appears that will cause the boss to do double damage, so it must be killed. You switch to kill it but I don’t. You are IMMEDIATELY doing at least 25% less damage than I am because my target still has 25 stacks of vulnerability. If we are condi classes, it is even worse – you have to start stacking your conditions again, while I’m happily applying 30 bleed stacks every second. If you have to move away from the group – and any might stacking/fury – it is further compounded.

At the end of the raid, the leader looks at the logs (with all of the info you’ve provided). They see that:

a. I did considerably more damage
b. You let might stacks drop off (even though you had no choice)
c. Your fury uptime was around 70 percent while mine was 100.
d. You took more damage/less healing because you were away from the protective boons of the party.

In this example, you were much more valuable to the raid group than I was, but the numbers show the exact opposite. You are removed from the raid while I (the person that ignored all mechanics and just focused on getting high numbers on the meter) get to stay – meaning the group is going to continue wiping.

The point is there are too many factors that make the raw data basically unusable – if not downright deceiving.

Add to this the general toxicity that we historically see with these tools (and it is really bad, trust me), and adding meters to the game is just a horrible idea.

Pandabro.8743:

Blaeys.3102:

I started high end progression level raiding in 2006 – and leading those 10 and 25 man raids around 2008. In most cases, when I was raiding as a DPS, I topped the dps charts or came very close (but never linked those charts in chat).

I can say with 100% confidence that, in that time, almost nothing – not even shared loot tables – provided the level of drama and hate in a group as dps meters. Even when groups downed bosses easily, someone always felt the need to call out the lower numbers in the group. It is just the nature of many MMO players to hunt down and belittle those they feel aren’t pulling their weight (even when they are).

Would DPS meters be useful? Sure. Are they worth the drama and hate? Definitely not.

So how do you see it going when a guild cannot get a boss down because of an enrage?

In my opinion the drama and hate will be no less, it’ll just be less informed. Wiping is frustrating enough as it is and blame will come down on someone, it way less likely that the person(s) causing the wipes will get blamed if we don’t have tools too gauge performance. It’ll come down on those who play a “sub optimal” build or those playing “inferior” classes, even though we’ll have no idea if those people are actually doing their job or not. It’ll be entirely speculation.

The lack of damage meters won’t cure toxicity in a highly competitive environment where you have multiple people working towards a goal. It WILL let good raid leaders make informed decisions about how to address issues though.

Toxicity issues aside, pure DPS meters wouldntt, in most cases, solve any issue – and, in fact, would probably create them.

DPS in this game is as much about group support as it is about individual contributions. Might/vuln stacking, blast finishers, fury uptime on the party – these are all crucial to success. When you stress the importance of dps meters, you encourage selfish builds that center around personal damage output, rather than group performance. You also encourage players to care less about strategically switching targets so they dont have to ramp up vuln or their condi stacks again.

To your hypothetical about what happens when you wipe, instead of looking at individuals and trying to pick out lower dps, your energy will be better spent looking at why you wiped and which group support functions will keep that from happening again.

DPS meters, more often than not, cause groups to focus on unimportant issues – and, as I’ve said before, cause drama where drama isn’t needed. They simply aren’t useful and act counterproductive to team play.

Nokaru.7831:

First of all, the enrage that we experienced was not supertight.

Second, any complaints you have about suboptimal weapons or traits is not a raids complaint. That a skilled and balance issue. Thank god we’re getting raids before they decide to balance the game though because that’s literally never going to happen.

dlonie.6547:

Fair enough, but it might be a good idea to spend a week or two trying to progress with casual builds and see how it goes before asking for nerfs. This boss already doesn’t have a tight enrage timer that forces DPS. From what we saw last weekend, there’s plenty of wiggle room for less-than-optimal groups. And as I’ve mentioned, thinking about your build and being willing to change it up is an intended component of this raid content. If player refuse to at least retrait, take different weapons, and use unfamiliar utilities, this content is not for them, unless they find a team willing to carry them. They should stick with dungeons.

And to be honest, IMO your earlier suggestion of adding an enrage mechanic that would instantly and randomly put players in defeated state every 30 seconds sounds far more frustrating than a 500% damage buff. There’s no possibility of skillful counterplay. At least with the damage buff you could play defensively and whittle off the last couple HP after time’s up if you got close.

To both of you – I fully agree.

I had the chance to see the new raid boss during the beta and absolutely LOVED it. While the pug I was in didnt beat it, I did not think the enrage timer looked out of reach.

My comments in this thread are about the topic of enrage timers as a whole and the concept of multi-tiered skill based enrages – they are not about the Vale Guardian fight at all (again, I loved that fight and cant wait to get my guild in there).

Regarding my earlier proposal about the enrage timers, you are right dlonie, it probably isnt the best idea. I do like the concept of multi-tiered enrages though.

The thing I want to get across is that good design will allow for greater diversity, not less. And greater diversity means that the fights should be doable with more than just builds/gear/etc designed around “kill super fast.” They should provide strategic challenges that make players come up with creative solutions based around the professions/roles they enjoy playing.

I don’t think some realize exactly how much work goes into building and maintaining a guild of any actual size. While the idea of free rewards for everyone sounds nice, there should be some payoff associated with the effort larger groups put into building communities.

Smaller guilds should be supported, but there has to be a point at which we say, that isn’t really a guild, or else the concept of guilds loses all meaning.

That said, I do believe Anet should explore enhancements to personal housing instances.

NoTrigger.8396:

exactly. now what i dont understand is, why would people who WANT the challenging content and who WANT the difficulty not run what is effective or fairly optimal in terms of builds?

Because people want to run challenging content with our friends – and we want them to be able to play the professions and roles they enjoy playing. That isnt to say that every single build and stat choice should be supported. It’s just that the wider they can throw that net, while still maintaining actual difficulty through actual mechanics, the more diversity and interesting mechanics they can include in future raids.

Super tight enrage mechanics force people down set traitline paths, armor setups and playstyles – discouraging diversity and any semblance of real strategy. They limit fight design possibilities. If “kill super fast” is always the most important part of raiding, then the same builds, setups and strategies will be the most optimal on every single fight – which will get boring really fast.

Ive raided with (and led many) high end progression level groups for almost a decade now. In my opinion, enrage timers, while necessary to avoid cheese-able fights, should not, in most cases, be the element that defines fight difficulty. They loosely set the parameters – the mechanics of the fight set the difficulty.

I think a system that might work – and reward skill in most every group – would be to include prestigious achievements for things like faster kills, groups where no players are down, perfect execution of difficult mechanics, etc. They could even provide titles and one time gear rewards for these achievements. So – a speed kill group could get a reward/achievement, but a more survival-focused or tactically-focused group could as well.

Jerus.4350:

Blaeys.3102:

As many are noting, we have years of anecdotal evidence from other games showing that, while some would use them to improve the game, the vocal majority would just use them as a tool to incite drama, encourage exclusionary behavior, and put people down. I realize some of that happens already, but it isnt something Anet should support in any way.

As useful as the information might be, the positives simply do not outweigh the negatives.

My experience is the opposite, in that the majority use it as a tool for improvement and friendly competition, while the minority use it to be kittens.

I started high end progression level raiding in 2006 – and leading those 10 and 25 man raids around 2008. In most cases, when I was raiding as a DPS, I topped the dps charts or came very close (but never linked those charts in chat).

I can say with 100% confidence that, in that time, almost nothing – not even shared loot tables – provided the level of drama and hate in a group as dps meters. Even when groups downed bosses easily, someone always felt the need to call out the lower numbers in the group. It is just the nature of many MMO players to hunt down and belittle those they feel aren’t pulling their weight (even when they are).

Would DPS meters be useful? Sure. Are they worth the drama and hate? Definitely not.

As many are noting, we have years of anecdotal evidence from other games showing that, while some would use them to improve the game, the vocal majority would just use them as a tool to incite drama, encourage exclusionary behavior, and put people down. I realize some of that happens already, but it isnt something Anet should support in any way.

As useful as the information might be, the positives simply do not outweigh the negatives.

I would say there are most definitely viable scrapper builds out there – either tanky or pure direct damage.

You probably wont see many because of the prevalence of condi engineers in the early beta clears – which has as much to do with everyone rolling an engi to test the new elite as it did with actual strength in the raid. People in these games like to follow the leaders (nothing wrong with it – just how it is) – and the early groups used condi engineers to down the bosses.

If you want to run a hammer scrapper in a raid, take a look at the roles needed in the raid and craft a build around them. Shouldnt be too hard – engis are pretty diverse.

I would support the idea of incremental enrage timers, but I would take a slightly different, more simplistic approach that could be applied universally – At enrage 1, I would make it impossible to rez anyone fully dead, after enrage 2, anyone downed would immediately die (and be unrezzable) and at enrage 3, one random team member would die every 30 seconds.

As I’ve said before – enrage timers are necessary, but should – in most cases – not be so strict as to make them the defining difficulty in the fight. That would be lazy design and would only perpetuate the zerker meta. That said, I think there is a place for a Patchwerk-style dps check fight every now and then, as long it doesn’t become the norm.

Awesome.

My guild is planning our annual Halloween party and in game costume contest on the night of Monday the 26th, but I will talk to them during missions next week and see if they want to move it to the 30th.

It’ll be up to them though. I suspect many will have real world plans on a Friday night just before Halloween.

Enrage timers are needed to keep people from cheesing the fight, but the enrage timer itself shouldn’t be what defines the difficulty of the fight. That only perpetuates an all zerker meta, which even Anet reps have said they want to discourage.

So, enrage timers should be forgiving enough to allow for support builds (and support armor sets in some cases). The ACTUAL mechanics of the fight, however, should not be forgiving at all – and should encourage/reward good strategy and gameplay.

Relying on super tight enrage timers to create the illusion of difficulty would only encourage a single way to play for everyone (dps dps dps), making the fights boring for anyone who wants to play any other role.

It would also encourage lazy fight design.

I know I’m going to get jumped on by the same people for saying this again, but these kind of meters have proven to be one of the biggest sources of drama and hate in other games and have absolutely no place in GW2.

To elaborate, I agree that, in theory, these tools make a lot of sense.

In practice, however, they are more often used to put people down and emphasize bad gameplay practices- specifically, everyone prioritizing dps over EVERYTHING ELSE to avoid being called out or excluded.

Unfortunately, putting them into the game for the tiny percentage that would use them properly (as evidenced clearly in other games) isnt worth the hate, trollish behavior and plain out encouragement of bad gameplay they would create.

That said, I would have no problem with something that, at the end of the fight, shows you (and only you) which abilities you took the most damage from and/or died from during the fight – much like the death reports from PvP. That would be very useful information.