Accessibility Knowledge and skill should be the only major barriers to completion. Barriers to entry should be much much less since that would allow people to fail and try again to get better. I also think that a Raid should not be very long (2 hours max unless you find a creative way of progression). It should also be about 10-15 players I think but they should not be needed. If there are any puzzle then make them doable with 5 players. Also to this end the roles in the raid should be soft; i.e. able to be completed by more than one class and any gear (difficulty would vary of course). Creativity I believe that raids can be great place to implement unique mechanics that make great use of the awesome combat mechanics of this game. Make us change our traits and utilities but not our gear since that is much more costly (accessibility issue). Feel free to use bundles and transformations to supplement mechanics and give options not require it. There should be many options and paths to complete a raid the shortest way should be the hardest and the easiest (but still challenging) the slowest. Review of Some Mechanics I think that this is a great opportunity to try to address some concerns people have with mechanics, specifically condition damage, CC application to bosses, and AOE caps. Since this would be higher tier content, I think that it would be fine if it had different mechanics. This could be a great place to test mechanics too.
I want raids to not only be fun challenging content but to also serve as assets which benefit both the players and the developers. Use raids, abuse them. Don’t be afraid to be radical. Let us make this an opportunity to advance player cooperation and skill by having the developers show a bit of their malicious side and to continue to provide us better and better content.
I would also take this opportunity to comment on fractals. I think that fractals are a great thing on paper and that they alone should be able to satisfy many of the player’s itches along with my wishes. They are a very excellent medium for challenging content so please give them some more love. Maybe release a fractal or two every year. They have their problems which need so adjustments (better rewards, more exposure to newer players, etc.).
GvG CDI is probably coming up soon so that would be a great place to put suggestions.
I haven’t played GW1 but there are so many conflicts going on in GW2 that I doubt that GW1 had more. Each race has been fighting like 3-4 different wars.
Anyway with a Teen rating they can only do so much and still the [many spoilers] foreman of prosperity is still dangling by the vine, so is drooburt and Belinda too I think. We have a dragon who made a peaceful adventurous young sylvari into a mass murderer. A soldier trying to gain salvation by bathing in the blood of his monarch. A centuries old war whose peace negotiations are being sabotaged by racist separatists. A group of people who, suspicious of their own existence, are filled with malice. Entire races of refugees who are even now being oppressed. Krait and Centaur slavers. The center of peace and racial cooperation was razed.
You want to know why they always use buttcapes, skirts, and trench coats so much? Because it gives them design real estate in which they have room to add in differentiating patterns and details. The argument could be made that the Anet art team relies too much on having that additional space, but there really is only so much you can do with a pair of pants.
That hasn’t stopped them making a ton of them for the human medium weight.
Those pants look so similar though, there really isn’t much of a difference in many of them. This is tolerated since the coats mostly hide them.
They’re named nón là in Vietnam
It’s the most known conical hat to western countries so this is probably why they made it that way.
Saying they goofed on the “asian hat” is wrong because there are many different hat styles all over Asia.
Erm. You just contradicted yourself.
So Western Countries can generalize most of asian hat styles with the nón là. While we, the rest cannot say the “asian hat” because it’s generalizing many different hat styles over Asia.
ROFL.
How is picking the most known/common type of hat generalizing?
Say someone calls for fruit and you give him an apple; are you generalizing fruit? You are just picking one common type of fruit, you can’t pick all the fruit.
It can work if those with the buffs could attack each other. (can they?)
I don’t like open world pvp either but I don’t see how this is a problem. It’s a small mechanic in a map and well they can’t attack you. optional too unless I’m mistaken.
Mesmers also have quite a few aoe interupts (focus, mantra, shatter).
Their only way to give aegis is through chaos fields and chaos armor (staff), not very reliable though. They also have Phantasmal Defender which takes 50% of the damage that the party receives (needless to say he doesn’t last long, has more health than Mesmer though).
‘…instanced co-operative group based ‘challenging’ content…’
I am little bit disappointed to hear that. I was always hoping GW2 would have the courage to build on past experiences and to try out new concepts of inclusive, open raid events. It’s sad to learn that we are heading for the same old exclusive type of “you are not welcome here” content.
~MRA
I don’t think that is set in stone; it depends on the mechanics they want for the raid. If it makes sense for it be as big as eternal battlegrounds or eotm with max amount of players then it would probably have to be all inclusive.
Open world has it’s own problems though.
Why would Instances be exclusive? Just because there is a player limit?
The only thing exclusive about the raid should be knowledge of the players. The players need to know the game mechanics and their own class. Some roles inside the raid may be exclusive in terms of skill (only skilled people may be able to fulfill that role).
Anyway this is something that they will discuss later, after we know what we want in a raid.
Thank you for the confirmation. Wow! I’ve been in the immediate company of ArenaNET royalty!
Probably the janitor. ^^
or the janitor’s cousin
I know the janitors cousin´s bff and she said that the cousin doesnt have an anet guild tag.
Oh yeah, well I know the janitor’s nephew’s cousin’s father twice removed on his mothers side’s former best friend’s step brother’s pet goldfish and he says he’s never heard of you. So the question is, who’s the person you actually know? :O
There might be more than one janitor, unless that janitor is really very good.
Why stop at bundles? Why not use transformations too? Tonics and the like (can be bought as a gold sink or given by npc during the raid).
It could be useful in multiple circumstances:
*1*There are a lot of mobs in a field that continuously gives them protection, regeneration and retribution. They don’t chase players and reflect projectiles.
Now players can try to knock them back one part at a time and then kill them. Or some or all players can turn into something that frightens the mobs (Ettins/Dragon Minnions/Wasps/Spiders) and make them run of a cliff or into an area where they can be more easily dealt with. 2 There is a heavily defended castle that the players need to assault. It has a lot of devastating siege equipment and other defenses at the gate (like the ascalonian fractal but more immense).
The players can employ their own siege, already placed in the field, which the defenders will often sally out to attack. They also have longer ranged bundles (like jormag fight) available to target towers which onagers (catapults) that are routinely do an attack like the mai trin cannon phase.
Or all or some of them can use tonics that they had bought to turn into enemy soldiers and infiltrate the door. They can avoid the fight entirely (and lose rewards from successful destruction of the towers and the gate) to quickly get to the boss. Alternatively only a small team infiltrates the area and they covertly sabotage the siege weapons and try to open the gate. 3 It opens up underwater quite a bit. It removes the problems of underwater class balance, gear requirements, utility selection etc. If everyone turns into the same thing (krait/shark/jellyfish etc) they will be equal in their effectiveness. Alternatively they can turn into different beings each of which serve a different role (CC kraits, Krait Shamans, etc).
Or hey, maybe we can turn into Largos. 4 Having one person turn into a giant/colossus/golem to fight a boss giant/colossus/golem that can only be reliably CCed by something as big as them. All the while the other players use turrets to heal the friendly being while hurting the boss and another group defends the turrets and another assaults the enemy turrets or helps keep mob off the transformed player. If the giant boss isn’t held in place he can make the player’s jobs harder by doing big aoe attacks and knockbacks.
We can have a giant robot deathmatch between a golem and the Destroyer of Worlds in SE story. The players should be able to switch the giant role if needed (it can have a cooldown and a limited duration) another person can turn into a giant when the other player reverts. 5 Transformations can also provide a unique way of travel in raids. Players can try to run a dangerous narrow part while under assault of CC and siege which can knock them off the passage and kill them (they return to the start of the passage). They also have to escort a dolyak (which can’t be CCed but will get hurt by the siege) through the path.
The players can then turn into a creature than can jump to previously not accessible platform to destroy the siege (shouldn’t be very well guarded and so can be done in the transformed form). The players may take care of all the siege before escorting the dolyak but will have to back track and it will take longer. Doing all this simultaneously would be more dangerous but faster. Ignoring the siege may be possible but very hard.
The tonics could be given right there by the NPC but I think having to buy a stockpile before the raid would be better. It would mean that players need to do more preparations and would have to learn when to use what tonic. They may be dropped as rewards at the end and by trash mobs. Rare chance to get unlimited versions.
Here are a list of mechanics that I think would be fun in parts or together: Boss: One Winged Angel
Sort of like lupicus in that he has stages in which he acts differently. First Stage: He has so much toughness that physical attacks are useless. He does CC conditions (and torment) to those around him. This is a stage of attrition, players must manage him with condition damage but while his minion wreck havoc with their charges and big aoe cleaves (sort of like rise abominations and the molten due combined). Another way to bring his HP down would be to have the minions charge into him. The boss is relatively large (size of lupicus to clockheart) and stationary. He also does an AOE attack that targets everyone and gives a stack of a debuff whose accumulation results in the summoning of a mob like the risen plaugecarrier which does a lot condition damage (bleed and poison mainly). This attack is dodge-able and very apparent. Second Stage: Changes shape, loses toughness. He begins to move a lot using charges and leaps. He still does CC (chill and cripple mainly) but only before doing a massive AOE (something like the vines from the shadow of the dragon in LS). Slow heavy attacks. The name of the game for the players is DPS and evasion (timing is important but more knowledge than skill). He mainly uses melee attacks. Third Stage: Changes shape again and this time he is faster, he may even fly and do evades. He also uses teleport charges like Lupicus does. This time his attacks aren’t very deadly or big AOEs but he does many more targeted multi strike attacks (Confusion and Retribution is important). He occasionally either flies high above or stealths and marks one target among the players. In about 3-5 seconds he either swoops or teleports to that player (doing a 300 distance aoe) and tries his best to down him in 10 seconds. If he succeeds than he gains some health (relative to the health of the person marked at the moment the mark was applied, this makes it easier though). This time the players must show that he can survive him even after the onslaught of the previous phase. This part is harder, players must try to keep alive and their best opportunity to attack the boss is when he is trying to kill a person. The zerg must be able to keep together and disperse fast (to save the person and to avoid the attacks). We can make the boss invulnerable unless he is attacking or vulnerable only from the flanks or front but this may be overkill. Terrain:
large circular room (lupicu’s room size or larger) divided into three circles (outer, middle, and inner). These circles move in alternative directions at alternating speeds. There can be penalties for crossing these circles but it’s not needed. The circles may change to become harmful or beneficial to players (regen players, cripple them, give stacks like the snow blind fractal, or they can have some mistlock stability like things).
There are also four points, as far from each other as they can be) at the edge of the outer circle that routinely spawn balls (like those in the rytlock ascalon mission in LS but little faster) which give boons and healing to enemies and hurt players. They try to prioritize the boss. (with my boss they may be disabled after stage 1 or two). This makes mobility and dispersal important.
These mechanics rely heavily on mobility and the boss and the terrain try to limit player mobility as much as they can so condition cleanses are important. It also features a lot of attrition so sustainability and defense is important. You must also out dps the heals and need to burst the boss at times so dps is very important.
Warriors are fine in high end fractals, they are the easiest class to manage and do fine in all game types. Mesmers are also good in all types (more roaming than zerg in wvw though).
Mesmers are also fine, less damage, and less survivability but in my opinion very fun. Their damage generally increases the longer the fight is so against bosses and in 1v1 they are very good.
Both bring very good support (most important part for dungeons), warrior gives buffs that increase damage a lot (but more than one warrior isn’t that great, still they can easily do a lot of damage and have very high health).
Mesmers have unique utilities like portals (painlessly get the group across puzzles etc.), condition removal, boon removal, reflects, phantasm defender, boon steal, time warp (increases party dps by around 50%), and some stealth.
Mesmer’s out of combat mobility is low though, they don’t have good access to swiftness or movement speed buffs like other classes. In combat they are very mobile with many teleports.
Also do you like purple? Even if you don’t you’ll grow to like it.
If raids are designed to be completed by 15 or fewer people, you’re going to end up with the same concerns you would have with dynamic scaling. You risk making the raids either too easy with 15 or too hard with fewer than 15. Either would be problematic
If the intent is to allow completion with fewer than 15 to begin with, then you might as well be scaling the raid.
Regardless, all Im asking for is dialogue – a real discussion of the impact that a single set raid size would have on guilds and groups of friends – and the merits of multiple raid sizes (or other potential solutions). As its worded now, that option is either off the table – or at least being heavily discouraged.
Ive seen firsthand what having to play this number game can do to a guild of even the closest friends. Ive been on the other side – the guy who had to take the heat when X number of people had to be left out every week. Its not fun – in fact, it’s the single biggest issue with raiding, imo.
Something that important (even if its just important to a small number of us) deserves a place in the discussion. I would much rather be discussing the raid itself, but Im not going to let something this important fall to the wayside so early.
I would suggest that the problem that you were facing was that those left behind weren’t as upset about not being able to play with the group. I’d wager they were more upset about being left behind from the vertical progression. THAT I can see as a huge problem. Remember we have no vertical progression.
snip
This might be alleviated by making raids activate multiple times (at your discretion) and making them much more rewarding for the first completion rather than the subsequent completions which benefit the guild more than individuals (the benefit to the guild becomes less and less as more of them are done so it can’t be farmed ad nauseaum and still be rewarding ). This makes missing raids painless (great for casuals) and gives incentives to do them again (great for guilds, especially big ones who may need to do raids multiple times to get people through them).
Something like this would help, even though I still believe the 8 and 12 person model would address the issue more eloquently and effectively (again, you would only ever need to find at most 3 people to fill in for any group larger than 8 to make multiple viable raids).
That said, in the model you propose, raids would have to be short – probably as short as a single boss or encounter (averaging around 30 minutes with a weekly lockout). People arent going to want to do multi hour long raids more than once a week with a diminished reward (and the diminished reward would be critical to making the system work). Im not sure people would like that.
And thank you for being willing to have the conversation and discuss potential solutions.
I think that it should be like fractals but grander in scheme with more coordination. I guess I want quality encounters rather than lengthy ones. My own play time is often sporadic and punctured by class work and semester schedules. So I would prefer that raids be no longer than 1.5 hours long for average people with knowledge to complete. Faster for those with skill and knowledge. Big guilds would have to do raids multiple time anyway if they want most of their people to experience them. Longer raids are just too un-accessable to be worth it I think.
8 player doesn’t seem epic enough and limits mechanically some of the cooler coordination mechanics (not a lot of stuff can happen simultaneously with only 8 people). 12 is fine but I think 12 should be possible and not that hard if the limit was 15.
oh and you are welcome. I keep writing about an encounter that i have been thinking and then scraping it…
E I guess.
Too cheap and poor to min-max
Too pragmatic to seek unique skins
Too lazy to be a completionist
Too scared to do spvp
I only get to play sporadically between classes on campus. I’m too lazy to farm and don’t have the time.
I prefer to do something challenging but quick (no min-maxing though) but well too casual to do serious speed runs (also in a casual guild so just finding people to do fractals is hard).
I like LS though.
I keep taking long breaks from gw2 coming back to play and accomplish a lot and then suddenly leaving again. I guess a better guild would serve be better but I’m too polite to just leave my current guild (they mostly seem to play at night and there aren’t very many of them).
I guess i could grow to like pvp but I’m currently still bad at it and not sure if i want to commit.
but ascended gear. It might be for Marjory alone or ingame acquisition. Getting an ascended from gem shop is breaking the floodgates. They added kite in the living world that are better than those in the gem shop so there is some precedent for ingame stuff being better than gem store.
Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.
Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.
Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.
You don’t really seem to understand what Chris has been trying to say.
They want to create a raid in which knowledge and mechanics are more important than number of players. He has stated this multiple times now.
To reiterate again, difficulty is designed based on knowledge of the fight and the skill of the players rather than the amount of people participating.
This is why he suggested 15 size limits, since the size isn’t as important. They want us to move on to how we would like the raids to be specifically (what kind of encounters, mechanics, how to employ the mechanics in fun ways etc.) The limit can be be subject to change based on how the raid is designed.
In other words the raid influences the size of player. The size of players don’t influence the mechanics of the raid. Much less constraints this way and we don’t have to be stuck on a single point to the detriment of all other points.
If raids are designed to be completed by 15 or fewer people, you’re going to end up with the same concerns you would have with dynamic scaling. You risk making the raids either too easy with 15 or too hard with fewer than 15. Either would be problematic
If the intent is to allow completion with fewer than 15 to begin with, then you might as well be scaling the raid.
Regardless, all Im asking for is dialogue – a real discussion of the impact that a single set raid size would have on guilds and groups of friends – and the merits of multiple raid sizes (or other potential solutions). As its worded now, that option is either off the table – or at least being heavily discouraged.
Ive seen firsthand what having to play this number game can do to a guild of even the closest friends. Ive been on the other side – the guy who had to take the heat when X number of people had to be left out every week. Its not fun – in fact, it’s the single biggest issue with raiding, imo.
Something that important (even if its just important to a small number of us) deserves a place in the discussion. I would much rather be discussing the raid itself, but Im not going to let something this important fall to the wayside so early.
I would suggest that the problem that you were facing was that those left behind weren’t as upset about not being able to play with the group. I’d wager they were more upset about being left behind from the vertical progression. THAT I can see as a huge problem. Remember we have no vertical progression.
They were upset (reasonably so) because they logged on during a raid night expecting to get to raid with friends and werent able to because of logistics. They suspended their real lives thinking they would be part of the group and, because of numbers, were not.
And this wasnt an uncommon occurrence. It got to the point where we would have to roll to see who got to go and who did not.
Is that something we really want to see happening in GW2?
This might be alleviated by making raids activate multiple times (at your discretion) and making them much more rewarding for the first completion rather than the subsequent completions which benefit the guild more than individuals (the benefit to the guild becomes less and less as more of them are done so it can’t be farmed ad nauseaum and still be rewarding ). This makes missing raids painless (great for casuals) and gives incentives to do them again (great for guilds, especially big ones who may need to do raids multiple times to get people through them).
Its not an optimal solution, but the only way I could see 15 or fewer player raids working is if the difficulty was designed around having 10 players.
Groups wanting the challenge could limit their size to 10 or fewer players and guilds like mine would still have some flexibility in the size of the teams they could field. Win-win.
Im not going to let this topic drop. If this is going to be a collaborative development initiative, then we need to collaborate and not ignore significant concerns from anyone.
You don’t really seem to understand what Chris has been trying to say.
They want to create a raid in which knowledge and mechanics are more important than number of players. He has stated this multiple times now.
To reiterate again, difficulty is designed based on knowledge of the fight and the skill of the players rather than the amount of people participating.
This is why he suggested 15 size limits, since the size isn’t as important. They want us to move on to how we would like the raids to be specifically (what kind of encounters, mechanics, how to employ the mechanics in fun ways etc.) The limit can be be subject to change based on how the raid is designed.
In other words the raid influences the size of player. The size of players don’t influence the mechanics of the raid. Much less constraints this way and we don’t have to be stuck on a single point to the detriment of all other points.
Side question: Everyone’s picked up a boulder/rock before in game and thrown it, right? And most everyone knows what happens when an Elementalist does it, right?
That’s Gold to Gem window. I think people are talking about Gem to Gold.
Nope thats is gem to gold. You now tell how many gems you have to buy instead of how much gold you want to trade. Much easier.
Gem to Gold is buying gold with gems, the window side is yellow.
The blue one is to buy gems with gold, Gold to Gems.
Palador’s issue is with the Gem to Gold.
Had a crazy thought regarding what might be going on – but I had it in a GuildMag discussion, so I’m just going to say I had it for now and give it a chance to go in the GM speculation website article unspoilt (unless someone else has the same thought, in which case I’ll acknowledge it if I see it) so that if someone else does have the same thought between now and then, I can use this post as evidence that it was concurrent thinking rather than cribbing off someone else’s. :P
Can’t you use this for any thought whether its yours or not?
One of GW2’s main strength is it’s mobility and fluid combat system. I would like this to be used more in raids than it is currently being used in dungeons. Switching ranges and positioning should be important.
I think it is only a gold or less (at max 4g) to get to lvl15. You can also use tome of knowledge from pvp if you enjoy competition.
how has making an unenjoyable part (your words) shorter make it messier (your words again)?
As has been stated that there are numerous alternative to exploration (you aren’t grinding things over and over again but doing different things…), there is crafting (cheap and takes like 10 minutes), there are lvl20 scrolls, tome of knowledge (reliably gotten through spvp), eotm, wvw, labyrinth. These methods can me made faster using numerous boosters.
heck walk in a line without so much as touching a mob from divinity’s reach to cursed shore and you’ll find yourself leveling up again and again…
9 Accounts, Manually Controlled, Ok, lets do some Bearbow math.
It’ll take you ~1 second to move between each client
1 second to initiate a command (assuming you only want 9 characters to do 1 skill and then auto attack)
As long as Guild Wars 2 is not in fullscreen mode, i can tab into it without any loading.
Activating a skill would also take me less then 0.5 seconds.
If i had GW2 running 9 times i am sure i would be able to tab through those accounts and use the same skill in 4 seconds or less. (less then 2 seconds when you’re asian)
For me the main problem would be to run multiple instances of the game without modifying anything or using 3rd party tools.
But i have to say that it would be possible to control 9 accounts way faster then what your math says. even without any makros or bots.
Did they not tell us that precursor crafting had a set back because of new reward structures? Did that lessen the complains about no precursor crafting? Not at all.
Oh and thanks Gaile for info, I’m looking forward to getting the items.
Wildstar actually wont have Halloween or Christmas updates.
Didn’t it take two guys two days just to make the commander tags free? Issue is probably more complex than we think.
I would have really liked for the change to arrive by now though. I want to buy the gobbler and the executioner’s outfit but I have only 500 gems I can afford 500 more but not 800 more.
I wonder how the season will end. Season one ended with the destruction of LA and they must top that since this is a dragon waking up. The other dragons completly changed the geography of their region. (a mountain range gone, an island lifted up, a huge scar of branded corruption).
Aren’t the vines Modremoth himself? I wonder what his main body would be like. He can probably be a map itself…
300 gems, seems like a nice purchase. Also it seems to have like a 75% to turn you into something rather than give random buffs. I think it is better than most boosters except for the birthday one.
