Guild Wars 2

moiraine.2753:

Chris,

I want to ask you something.Will Defiance be redesigned?Is there any plan for it at all?Because right now it is removing the need of any CC in the fights.If raids come will interrupts,stuns,fear become an actual mechanic?Will they be more useful from now?

All I can say on this is we have been talking about it internally and trying to come up with different solutions that make CC valuable without allowing players to “stun lock” creatures (which would be a very real problem if we did not have Defiance). I can’t say any more on that at this time, so here’s a better question for you:

If we removed Defiance, how would you propose a replacement that makes CC (interrupts, stuns, fears etc) valuable without creating a situation that allows players to CC a creature to death.

Quick note before I run out, but will try to get caught up with things later tonight.

Thanks to everyone who posted their notes on the questions I asked about Timmy’s proposal about Legendary Armor. Most of you guys are already touching base on what we would most likely do if we introduced legendary armor, but I wanted to push the brainstorming aspect of this CDI. It’s great to see everyone is more or less on the same page about this.

Conski Deshan.2057:

Proposal Overview
Potential Raid Mechanics: Part 6 Profession specific interactions

Goal of Proposal
To make use of the unique abilities of specific professions.

Proposal Functionality
I see two levels of functionality:

Soft Profession requirements and Hard profession requirements, soft, its ideal to have this class but at least one other class can carry out the same task. Hard: only one class can carry out this task and is based on the classes theme.

Soft Profession mechanics
-Stealth, Example: You must make it from one end of a corridor to another while stealthed the whole way or an instakill occurs. Can’t be bypassed by mistform or other invuln mechanics.
Another possibility is a stealth portion of a raid where you want to make it through an area unseen with patrols and the like.

-Elements and fields: Water/heal fields to douse flames or activate effects, Fire fields to ignite traps or activate explosives, Holy fields for god statue activations etc.

-Reflection: To shield from an explosive blastwave or redirect a magical blast to blow open a door etc.

Hard profession mechanics
Necromancer: Raise a corpse to get information/password/open a locked room from inside etc.

Guardian: Use holy magic to activate a god statue/complete a ritual/ seal a passage preventing reinforcements.

Ranger: Can make use of a fixed position sniper rifle to hit a switch/take out a target of opportunity at some point to assist in progressing.

Engineerer: Can activate disabled golems/rig a door to blow etc.

Elementalist: Can make use of magical reagents, Activate elemental doors, converse with elementals etc.

Mesmer: Can jedi mind trick some goon into opening a door / reveal a disguised illusion, do the kasmeer portal trick.

Thief: Can Identify a trap, bribe for information , locate a weakness.

Warrior: Kinda at a loss for this one since a warriors kinda meant to be the generic everyman. can use brute strength to open something/ force their way through something at some point?

Associated Risks
-Hard class requirements can result in the same lf healer issue in other games.

There’s some very cool stuff in here, including a few I may or may not have prototyped out in my spare time. This specifically touches on Chris’ note about mechanics.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Can we get back to talking about the two main topics we are focusing on please.

Specifically:

1: Progression
2: Foundational raiding mechanics based on the core combat and movement of GW2.

Chris

How do others feel about this? Are these types of mechanics are the way to go to circumvent the lack of Trinity in the game? It’s not about tanks/healers, it’s about condi/reflect teams (similar to the Jungle Wurm).

Dalanor.5387:

Yeah i understand you, but my question was more like about how big the instances would be. Think about WoW’s Ulduar or ICC. Even with good gear and team it took hours to complete which would be a lot considering how fast paced the combat is in GW2.
This is only an issue of course if you lack the time to play, thats why i highly suggest the progress saving and weekly resets so such players can keep up with others and won’t get in a disadvantage with rewards.

Entirely up for debate. I’ll use two extreme examples here with some hypothetical made up assumptions:

• A raid could be as small as a singular dungeon path that takes 4 hours to learn, but can be completed in as little as 30 minutes on farm.
• A raid could be as large as the Eternal Battlegrounds with many different paths/encounters that takes upwards of a month(s) to learn, but can be completed in as little as 4 hours on farm.

And ultimately, and here’s a totally crazy idea (because I love brainstorming)… Why can’t raiding be both?

• If we have a singular story to tell, can it just be a one off instance that tells one story and has one final boss at the end (imagine if we rebuilt the Marionette to be a 15 man encounter in a raid instance and that’s the entire instance)?
• If we have a much larger story to tell, can it be a full sized map complete with multiple encounters and hidden areas to explore (imagine if Dry Top was a 15 man instance and you progressed through the map learning the story of how a huge sand storm is coming, and the final boss is some sort of magical sand storm giant that summons chickenados as its minions)?

Dalanor.5387:

Weekly, at the same time as guild missions to keep up some consistency in such things especially if it becomes a guild restricted thing.
Hmm i would say no to this. Correct me if i’m wrong, but without the ability to continue the progress after a week should encourage the group to step up and try to beat it next time. Of coures, life is a birch (old sylvary proverb, don’t infract me) and sometime you can’t play. Thats life. On the bright side you may fight against a certain boss again and get the exact reward you want.

Thanks for your thoughts on this.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

timmyf.1490:

Sure thing, Chris. I feel like the discussion of rewards progression in particular could use some guidance. I had suggested earlier a system by which players could earn Legendary Raid Armor through a progression system. I was expecting a lot of strong reactions, but I mostly heard silence.

Curious as to what others think. Personally, I think raids need unique (read: can only be earned in raids) reward skins that are earned either through RNG or a progression system. (Meaning: you can get them as a drop if you’re lucky, but you get a fixed-effort backup option as well.)

Edit: here was that post. https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4529755

Crystal is taking point on progression and I am taking point on foundational design.

I am sure she will see your post soon.

Her discussion area is doing better than mine (-: so yes maybe it is time to focus in on some of the ideas in that area.

Chris

P.S: Note the Seahawks game is on soon and I will afk!!

Thanks for bumping this and bringing to my attention. That is definitely a cool idea, but of course it does touch a little on the topic of gear progression. So here are some more questions for you with regards to your proposal:

• Is Legendary armor better than Ascended armor stat wise?
• Can this legendary armor be obtained anywhere else in the game?
• How do we prevent the introduction of Legendary armor from invalidating players who spent a lot of time/money crafting their Ascended armor?
• Is this a drop from raid encounters, or is it obtained through a “raiding reward track”?

I think you can see where I’m going with this. Ascended armor is already a pretty hotly debated topic because it did introduce a very slight vertical progression to the game.

Dalanor.5387:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Nick.6972:

Just please top with all this Casual vs Hardcore.
Just because I’m able to play few hours in a week doesn’t mean I like hand holding and hate challenging and punishing content.
Likewise, I could be playing 12 hours/day for 2 years straight role playing and exploring without even touching dugeons, fractals, spvp or wvw.

I’m a few pages/days behind, but I would like to bring up this post again for the sake of keeping things on track.

I’ve seen the terms casual and hardcore thrown around a bunch in this thread. Those terms are too loaded and are going to have different meanings for different players. This thread is about brainstorming what raids could be in GW2.

Instead I propose we stick to using our own experiences as a gamer with regards to skill and play time when it comes to raiding.

Crystal! While you are here i would like to ask something.
Regarding to raids players would make bigger efforts to be succesfull, but what about time investment? Do you find it acceptable that raids are at least 1 hour long or you (ANet) wish to tailor it for casual players who has less playtime a week?
Oh another one. Weekly resets? Maybe only gate the rewards so players who run it for challenge or whatever they can still run through the content and practice.

It’s hard to comment on time investments because there’s no real answer to that. Every one has different play times. I’ve seen screenshots of players with over 10,000 hours played on their main character. Whereas I’ve only got about 800 hours on my main. Skill is also going to play an important role here too. A skilled group of players will be able to defeat a boss in fewer attempts, resulting in needing to spend less time within the raid.

Ideally, raiding should be about challenge, not time.

A very skilled group of players that might only be able to raid one night per week could potentially progress through a raid instance slower than a group of lesser skilled players that can play 4 nights per week. And yes, a group of very skilled players that have a lot of time are going to progress through the instance the fastest.

Resets are a much easier topic to discuss because they are somewhat less time involved. So let’s talk about that, and here are some questions for you guys to answer:

• How often should raids in GW2 reset?
• Should we also include the option to extend lockouts for groups that progress slower?

Petrus Petraeus.7368:

Don’t know if this has been mentioned before in this thread, but thinking of content that is uniquely GW2 and could be used in designing raids, the first category of content that came to mind was the Guild Puzzle.

Guild Puzzles require cooperation, timing, jumping skills et cetera. ArenaNet has shown they can make amazing Jumping Puzzles and puzzles of other sorts. What I’d love to see in a raid are encounters that force teams to choose: either they can go toe-to-toe with a boss and bash their way to mobs, or they can split up: 5 people attack the boss and mobs and 5 others have to work their way through (jumping) puzzles with punishing AoE and mobs on their path to get to side objectives that if reached help defeat the boss or even are necessary to defeat the boss.

Imagine a giant robot, each limb of which can be turned off independently of each other by turning off a generator of some sorts. Getting there involves a Not So Secret JP style journey on a timer with at least 5 people required to get there to turn off the generator and fight off mini-bosses at stages in between. If they fail to get there in time, the specific limb get enhanced and can’t be shut off anymore, adding to the power of the boss on the ground. Turning off the generator also requires that a certain health treshold of the boss robot is reached by the fighting team on the ground; if they fail to coordinate this, the boss goes rampant.

It’s just a scenario, I’ve seen many people talk about JPs and SAB to pull ideas for raids, my main reason to post is to draw attention to Guild Puzzles and to provide a scenario in which this type of content design could work out in Raids. Am sure others can think of more insane and more detailed scenarios; eager to read them.

Cheers.

Heck. Think of any co-op platformer.

Think also of Natural Selection 2: imagine above robot fight taking place in some kind of giant Inquisition Lab. Have one player take place in some kind of control room, being able to spot enemies, open and close doors, drop bundles, activate and deactivate traps, deploy structures, direct allied NPCs, but doing all this is limited by the amount of resources the other players provide him/her, by collecting batteries or securing accumulators. At the same time they need their ’operator’s’ help to get intel on certain enemy mobs or manipulate the environment and drop the right bundles in certain ways to progress through the lab (imagine puzzles and insane Orcs Must Die type onslaughts that the players ‘in the field’ can’t beat on their own) – there are several ways forward, but if the resources are spent unwisely the progress of the team will stall and the raid will have to restart. I’d like that.

Fun Fact: We had to tone down the original guild puzzles somewhat due to the nature of them being in the open world. It would be a very frustrating experience if the Painting room puzzle failed because someone performed the wrong emote on purpose.

What do you think of using Guild Puzzles as encounters, but ones that have consequences for failing to coordinate properly?

Nick.6972:

Just please top with all this Casual vs Hardcore.
Just because I’m able to play few hours in a week doesn’t mean I like hand holding and hate challenging and punishing content.
Likewise, I could be playing 12 hours/day for 2 years straight role playing and exploring without even touching dugeons, fractals, spvp or wvw.

I’m a few pages/days behind, but I would like to bring up this post again for the sake of keeping things on track.

I’ve seen the terms casual and hardcore thrown around a bunch in this thread. Those terms are too loaded and are going to have different meanings for different players. This thread is about brainstorming what raids could be in GW2.

Instead I propose we stick to using our own experiences as a gamer with regards to skill and play time when it comes to raiding.

This is really helpful! Thanks for all your hard work in putting this together.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Boottspurr.9184:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Hehe you are definitely not late. I can tell you from experience this CDI is going to last a long time which I am more than happy about.

The CDI group or only just starting to settle down into our first topics which is fine but you can gauge CDI time from that.

Chris

17 pages of Settling Down… WOW I can’t. how do you. reeaadd it all? New-found respect, Chris. New-found respect.

Because it is awesome and I love it and it is super important to the game (-:

It isn’t just me that reads it, in fact a lot of the team are reading this one (-:

Chris

Indeed. I had some back-to-back busy days and only time to read, but not respond, so I am mostly caught up.

Sytherek.7689:

Crystal Reid.2481:

I bolded a section of this that I wanted to inquire about. Do you think the fact the game has been live for over 2 years now change your thoughts on this? This is definitely a common occurrence with new MMO’s that launch with raiding, but what about a game that didn’t launch with raiding? Is there still an issue of players “rushing to 80” when a large percentage of the player base already has at least one 80? Thoughts?

Background: Long-time player in another MMO (the game-whose-name-cannot-be-said), with three fully-decked-out characters from top-level raids, raided 4-5 nights a week, was a raider from their original base game thru the expansion prior to “pandas.” I quit that game when “pandas” came out, a large part because of raiding.

Essentially, that game’s raids served to keep players playing with a gear treadmill. That is incompatible with a core GW2 philosophy.

If GW2 raids are a “must”, as in gear treadmill, I will leave the game and so will many people in my guild. Simple fact, not a threat, we just don’t want the “required” treadmill.

Now, if raids are parallel content to fractals, 5-man dungeons, and WvW, that’s great.

Just don’t make them mandatory for an even playing field with other parts of the game. Some unique raid-focused progression track is fine, like agony resistance for fractals.

Dungeons could give very unique visual rewards, too.

All classes must be usable in raids. No more developer-created elitism like in 5-man dungeons or “that other game’s” raids. Do not make certain classes “must have”. If anything, that’s where ANet fails on GW2 — poor balancing. I want to play the class I enjoy without gimping the party.

Raiding can be great fun; some of my fondest social gaming memories are from raids.

Don’t design a social activity around anti-social concepts.

I’m not the one who makes decisions on gear tiers, but it’s very unlikely raids will have a new gear tier with new stats. We would attempt to find other avenues to reward players, and create a sense of progression within the raids instead.

You mention a “raid-focused progression track”. What do you think that might look like?

cesmode.4257:

Hi, I mentioned this in my first post a few moments ago. I could be out of date as well as this mind set that we were given early on…but isn’t the entire game ‘endgame’ ? Hop in, do whatever you want to do. No pressure, nada. Take your time, the whole thing is your oyster. When you start creating level 80 content only, ala raids, you segregate the playerbase much like other games where its then a rush to max level to do the raids. All of the gorgeous 1-80 content you have in this game becomes completely trivial and a stepping stone to the real game. You might as well just allow people to boost to 80 via potions or something and skip leveling all together because it becomes absolutely meaningless. A meaningless time sink. I didnt need 80 levels to learn my class. Maybe less than two dozen and I had it down. The rest was just enjoyment because the 1-80 content was nice. I leveled through it without any pressure. Put max level content in the game, and we will feel rushed to get to the real stuff. Its human nature.

For this reason, I do not think raids belong in GW2. But if they are to be implemented, I do have suggestions which I have shared

I bolded a section of this that I wanted to inquire about. Do you think the fact the game has been live for over 2 years now change your thoughts on this? This is definitely a common occurrence with new MMO’s that launch with raiding, but what about a game that didn’t launch with raiding? Is there still an issue of players “rushing to 80” when a large percentage of the player base already has at least one 80? Thoughts?

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Astralporing.1957:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Let’s assume that because raiding would be a very new type of content for the game that it’s possible for us to re-write the principles of the game that we have seen so far.

That’s a worrying statement. Basically, those principles you are saying might be re-written are the main reason lot of people came to this game in a first place. It’s the reason why lot of those people are still staying even if they are dissatisfied with some late design decisions. It’s also one of the very few things that make GW2 different from other MMORPGs.
GW2 has always been proud of inclusivity and general accessibility of its content to the whole player population. Do not change that.

To be clear Crystal is simply engaging in brain storming. The foundation of GW2 as we know it is the core foundation that we should be building our proposal from. This said broadening our field of view outside of this is a good way of finding good ideas and then working to apply them to new areas.

Chris

Chris is correct, and I apologize if I came across as wanting to change the core principles of the game. I wanted to make sure I addressed Baltzenger’s comment on how his ideas on scaling contradict some of the principles of the game.

Baltzenger.2467:

I have a question for you.
When designing our proposals, should we think of raiding as an endgame type of content, or a more horizontal type of content (available for all kinds of players)?

This is a good question. This is really more of a personal question and the answer is going to differ quite a bit between individuals.

If you want my personal take on this… Raiding for me is a type of end game content I like to partake in with a group of like minded individuals that requires us to master both our classes and the mechanics in the encounter. Nothing in an MMO is more exciting to me than killing a boss we have spent weeks and dozens (if not hundreds) of attempts mastering.

Remember this is just my personal opinion. There are going to be differing opinions in this thread. We want to hear all of them, and not discourage anyone from posting if they think we are going in a direction that is not for them.

So to get back to your question… Let’s assume that because raiding would be a very new type of content for the game that it’s possible for us to re-write the principles of the game that we have seen so far. So having said that where do you feel raiding falls (end game VS horizontal)?

runeblade.7514:

Controversal Topics that I see around this thread.

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?

• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.

• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?

• AI- What AI should be in place?

• Rewards- How rewarding should Raids be?

• Punishment- How punishing should failing a raid be? How punishing should dying be?

These are all really excellent questions! I would love to see some drilling down into these specifics with your proposals.

Crysto.7089:

• EPIC BOSS ENCOUNTER
  Tribulation mode SAB jumping WHILE fighting Lupicus WHILE dodging the laser grid from CoE WHILE avoiding the wind mechanic from personal story priory where you have to time your running when you see the wind stop blowing the flag WHILE Liadri spams AoE and clones hunt you down

My brain. ;_;

Leablo.2651:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Leablo.2651:

Chris, can you provide a baseline definition of “raid”? What exactly is the intention behind creating “raid” content that cannot already be expressed in terms of existing dungeons or fractals? Is it about creating another category of content that is gated to guilds?

Here you go:

‘…instanced co-operative group based ‘challenging’ content…’

Chris

This seems to conflict with the title of the thread, which implies “instanced co-operative guild based ‘challenging’ content…”

I would just like clarification on that.

Should raids be restricted to the guild level that require some form of guild activity/currency to activate/enter, or should they be accessible by anyone? What are your thoughts on that specific?

Hi guys!

I thought I’d swing by and leave a quick introduction as I’ll be working with Chris to monitor this thread (and because I don’t post nearly as much as he does on the forums so most of you are unfamiliar with me in these CDI discussions).

I previously worked on some of the Fractals, Tequatl/Triple Trouble, and the Boss Blitz. Much like you all, I have an invested interest in raiding and I’m extremely excited to discuss what that could mean in Guild Wars 2!

There are already some really great discussions going on! I’m trying to get caught up on everything now and looking forward to reading more of your ideas.

frifox.5283:

22. Triumphant Distortion (?)

• Triumphant Distortion (possibly all distortion and invuln?) prevents you from receiving the hammer buff to attack the seals on the Cliffside Fractal.

Late reply, but figured you could use an update to know we are reading these.

This was a bug with how the hammer itself was unlocking Skill 4, and not any one particular profession’s ability fault. We’re investigating this now to make sure the fix works globally for all professions.

This is actually a separate bug from the one that was fixed in the feature pack. Investigating this issue, but I can’t offer an ETA on a fix.

The fix should roll out with the feature pack.

This is currently being investigated.

winterchillz.2564:

I would be grateful if we get a response from the ANet team if they’re aware of this issue.

Detailed repro steps like this go a long way towards helping us debug issues like this. We’re currently investigating the issue.

It is not retroactive. You will have to defeat her again to unlock the title.

The code changes were too risky to get checked in and tested properly for the build today. They will go live with the next release build (Note: An actual release build, not a hot fix).

Some additional details about the state the event was in when the bug occurred will greatly help us track and narrow down exactly what’s happening. Some things to consider:

• What state was the event in when the bug concurred?
  • Did you push TQ to 25% while he was still in his weakened state?
• Did the timer remained paused as though to kick off the Battery events, but nothing happened?
• Does this only occur at 25%? Has anyone seen the same issue at 50%?

Any additional details you can think of go a long way in tracking down bugs reported on the forums!

The fix for this issue required some code changes and we were unable to get this in to a Hot Fix build. You should retroactively get credit for the Meta as soon as you log in once the fix goes live.

Thanks for reporting this. We’re investigating the issue to find out why this did not automatically increment your Meta progress.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Crystal, please fix the 10 second Invulnerability bug today?

I wish it was that simple, but the fix needs to go through proper implementation and testing before it can go live. Unfortunately we won’t be able to roll this out until the next patch, but it is coming along with several other bug fixes to the edge cases causing the event to stall and break.

We’d like to get the invulnerability bug fixed first before changing any timers or balance of this phase, and so that is currently in progress.

We’re still investigating the scaling issues.

Thanks for reporting this and linking videos. We’re currently investigating why on rare occasions the Wurms aren’t deactivating/resetting correctly.

We’ve seen multiple reports of this scaling issue on the Wurm’s, and we’re actively investigating the cause. Please continue to post any details or repro steps you can think of. Links to videos with timestamps are also appreciated.

Thanks for reporting this. I’ll add this to my list of issues to investigate.

There is no weekly Wurm chest. That’s a datamined item that was never used.

Thanks for the report. We’re actively investigating the issue now.

He has 2 separate spin attacks based off the size of his animations. The first one is small and just out of range of those important locations. This is when he performs his “Drool” attack and spits out the green goo at players. The second one is much larger, and can occur when players get close to the Wurm.

The pets will continue to drop. They are permanent

Stacks of Hardened Scales do not reduce incoming damage. It is just a complete invulnerability at 20 stacks until the Bone Walls are killed.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Oh boy! Hourly fights confirmed!

I didn’t say hourly. ^_-

Tequatl will spawn in a similar fashion as the Clockwork Invasion. If an overflow is created within 10 minutes of the event spawning, he will also spawn there as well.

Interesting read! As Colin pointed out in another thread…

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ll be going through most of these in 2013 and looking at making them more fun and exciting encounters that better scale to support the huge armies of people who mob them.

And of course, we’re also looking into ways to make it so you can see more of those huge mobs of people as well.

Edited to add: This is a great place to throw out your ideas of what you’d like to see any of them do encounter wise to make them more exciting.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Mega-Boss-scaling/first#post1896695