Guild Wars 2

Ok I’m back in, it seems this was a temporary problem. Still a bit lag in sPvP, but better than nothing.

tried it, the game suddenly loaded extremely fast, but a few seconds in the lobby of the mists I lost connection again. no playtime for me today I guess

It seems to me that Anet realized that selling things in the gemstore isn’t the most engaging way to get new items. Yes, you can buy stuff from the store with ingame gold but it feels more fun (at least to me) to find / work for items through gameplay.

So we got new armor-pieces (carapace) for us to work for by playing. I think this is awesome. We also got new tonics for crests as well as for completing the new jumping puzzle.

Nowadays there are a lot of cool things in the gemstore. Also quite a lot of reward types which aren’t available through gameplay yet. What am I talking about? Here some examples:

• movement gadgets (like the flying carpet, the flying broom, the sonic tunneling tool)
• minis
• salvaging tools
• finishers
• dyes
• self style kits
• mail delivery
• …

Why not take these ideas and expand them to the ingame-rewards? You probably would argue, that they won’t sell gemstore stuff anymore when everything is available ingame. I agree. That’s why they could make entirely new rewards from these reward-types which are only available through gameplay. Some examples:

• movement gadgets: A charr-bike. You get if for completing a charr-related collection. Some parts of the bike can be found as rare-spawn in Ascalon-zones. Some parts drop from charr-related events. Some rarely spawn in the Black Citadel.
• minis: new set: You can find small eggs anywhere in the world as rare spawns. Rewards exploration.
• gathering tools: finish a collection for a new kind of endless gathering tool. Parts of the collection drop from gathering.

Anet could also combine ingame and gemstore. Example: once you complete the gathering tool collection you can choose either an axe, a sickle or a pickaxe from the “Ogre gathering tools”. Being rewarded with that tool unlocks a gemstore option to buy the two other tools for gems.

TL;DR: reward types from the gemstore make it into the game; also ingame rewards may unlock gemstore items.

Baldrick.8967:

Sad. the new area is just one big jumping puzzle. This game really has become just another platform game with better graphics.

Great atmosphere? Lol.

If you want lots of jumping puzzles, go play a jumping game- there are thousands of them already out there.

I was hoping for a continuation of the first part, instead it’s just a wasted space and a JP that will be dead in a few weeks if not less.

speak for yourself. GW2 was advertised with jumping long before it’s release and a lot of people were happy about the ability to explore the world not only horizontally but also vertically.

I love jumping puzzles in GW2, they are all about exploring – a big part of the game.

I followed the puzzle to some outside area, saw the silverwastes map from above and fell down… no idea where to go haha. I won’t spoil myself with a guide though. Quite a confusing one for me at the moment.

I really like the new enemies. So far we had enemies which reacted very basic to our longer-cooldown-attacks, so our skills felt not effective. Why should I interrupt an enemy when he can do any attack right after the interrupt again?

So what I would love to see in the future is more enemies with weaknesses against specific attacks. A good example are the new Mordrem-Stabby-Cats. They have quite strong skills like the dash but are vulnerable against cripple. Once they are crippled they stumble at an attempt to dash and get knocked down for a few seconds. Very nice enemy design imho.

Why not have more enemies like that? Water enemies that freeze when chilled and break when near a combo-finisher: blast when in ice-form. Fire enemies who get extremely weak when in water fields,…

I love how you made a condition like cripple powerful against specific enemies. How you gave strong enemies a weakness. Please keep up the good work like that!

Ragnarox.9601:

Wait..you can get story done in 10 mins. and whats the point of 4 others doing it because it it easy even for 1 player.
Whats the point of Eotm? Its small WvW.
Whats the point of the new maps?Its just for grinding gold which gets borring after 1hour.

Grow up? Man how many hours did you played? Did you play this game from a start? Do you farm SW or dry top just for fun or the GOLD? This whole game become grindfest. Dont be white knight, ppl hate those.

So that your arguments for a 2yo game is valid? Some other games had 2 expansions in 2 years (eg. 10 maps, 20 levels, 20 dungeons, 4 classes, 4 races…)

I’m no whiteknight, if you follow my posts you’d see that I have enough criticism about some features in the game, but I also have praise when I feel it’s deserved. I also think that the no-talking policy is very bad for the game, the community and it fuels anger and frustration. People need something to look forward to, just like the roadmap we got from Colin “looking ahead”.

I also participate in the CDIs and it’s really a fun and interesting communication between motivated positive players and the devs. It gives us a glimpse in things that might come and it’s not 100% theoretical when I look at earlier CDIs and it’s numerous results (e.g. the reward structure in Drytop, the WvW-like Silverwastes map, the scavenger hunt for Mawdrey,…………..).

That said it would still be nice to hear clear statements that they are working on specific things (here: guild raids, GvG and guild halls) as well as some specifics on it – with the big notice: things are subject to change.

Gaile was talking about ebb and flow and we could take this on content releases as well imho: Season 1 had content for every group of players: jumping puzzles and maps for explorers, (temporary (sigh)) dungeons for the group-veterans, new sPvP maps, EotM for WvW players and players who are PvE and a bit afraid to jump into WvW,… Now in season 2 the focus is a bit more on single-players and challenging content for them, I strongly believe that the new story missions and the achievement-hunt in those is more challenging than other stuff people could do on their own before. Having this focus I assume that focus on other parts of the game WILL come.

The point of the new maps (for me) is to have fun. I don’t play the game to accumulate tons and tons of gold or to “grind” out the best gear. I do activities that will net me a reward, but I choose to do the ones I like to do at the moment and jump to other things too, even if those are less rewarding. I can see little grind (doing the same things over and over) since the variety of events you can do to get rewards is huge. It’s fun (for me) to defend a fort in the Silverwastes with a few randoms, then explore the area a bit and pick up some chests, then see other people in need for help and run up to aid them. It feels natural to me. I do not grind in the sense that I stay in a fort for hours just because it may net me the highest number of bandit crests.

Same with Drytop. I don’t do the same events every time, I go where I see others and leave again when it feels right. There are enough players in each map now (due to Megaservers) that the world feels alive and you don’t need to grind in this game period to get rewards and feel good.

Sorry for the wall of text. Just wanted to make clear that you don’t have to be a white knight to love something about the game and that people can have fun when they don’t strictly play for maximum amount of rewards. I also understand the frustration of having this no-talk policy and I also love each post of our new shining appearance Gaile – top motivated and with the attitude to help us as good as she can do.

Ragnarox.9601:

I hate when an mmo going to single player mode. Living story is a single player, and MMO died long time ago (don’t compare ls with wvw and pve which have stayed like this from the start, here and there minor changes…).

We want more MMO with new dungeons, new skills, new weapons something to hope for.

• New maps from Living Story: Drytop & Silverwastes (heavy focus on group-oriented zonewide cooperation in order to work on reward-tiers and open up worldbosses).
• Each story mission can be played with 2-4 other players
• a huge criticism of season 1 LS was the story-distribution and writing. LS S2 was extremely well received in this department.
• calling EotM, the Borderland ruins, the implementation of WvW-skill-trees minor changes is just insulting. Grow up.

We want?! Speak for yourself, I’m more than happy to get a new map instead of a dungeon. Sure, more skills, weapons, etc. will be nice when we get them, but dissing the things we actually get (which aren’t few) is biased presentation.

can anyone explain to me what this common expression “hurting the economy” means? What would be the problem if certain items get more expensive/less expensive than they are today?

@Ohoni: where did I say that the existing system is fine? It’s terrible.

@DaveGan: you could as well say: play 1000/x hours and you get your precursor for free.

I think getting tokens for doing anything in the game would be absolutely terrible. In a year from now every longterm player would have it without having actually earned it by active play towards it, but rather getting random tokens every few hours.

I think a precursor should be the exact opposite:

• you choose to work for it (a journey would be the best thing)
• it shouldn’t feel grindy (doing a huge set of specific tasks would be the optimum compared to mindless grind/doing the same thing over and over again)
• Legendaries should still be a rare sight (a Legendary should be a prestige object rather than a clone you see every 2 minutes when playing the game).

I’m not sure how common Mawdrey II is currently, but the task to craft one is pretty unique so far. It’s not too easy to craft one and you need to do quite a bit of interesting tasks in order to get the final ascended result.

Becka Williams.4978:

Lemme know how to AFK win at teq, okay? I’d like to put in less work for the “no rewards that I want” I get from teq now.

you park your character next to a turret, stay there the whole fight and auto-attack every enemy that comes close to you. People will revive you if you get downed and then keep doing that.

purecontact.1680:

What do you think about reward tracks in PvE ?

I think there could be a more interesting way to reward players. In sPvP you progress, whether you win or lose. This would be a bad system for PvE imho, since putting in no effort at all would also lead you to very prestige rewards. Slower, but guaranteed as well.

When I see a player running around with some special item, I would like to think that he earned that thingy. Just like you look at players with the yellow SAB weapon and you know: this one mastered that content.

Tokens suffer from the same problem. You could do dungeons, always wipe at the second boss but still have the tokens from the first boss to get enough of them in order to buy that prestige dungeon armor.

Becka Williams.4978:

Dude, I’ve already killed him 90 times, and not gotten a horde. Is that really fun?

I don’t think so. The way you killed him was irrelevant so far though. You could have put in a lot of effort or you could have done nothing but standing around and hitting something now and then… it would make no difference.

If you put in a lot of effort then it’s really a shame that you haven’t gotten anything yet.
If you put in no effort at all, then I’d say you haven’t earned a better reward anyway.

is it really fun if you have to kill Tequatl 40 times? Personally I would enjoy it much more to achieve something really challenging… if I’m good enough it would work on a few tries.

Killing Teq 40 times via standing there in one spot and doing afk damage… I don’t think you have earned that reward. Every labrat could do that.

Becka Williams.4978:

300% mf is a jump from .01 to .04. I thought the whole point of this thread was to discuss how to make it so that even when you fail, you get a little further on your goal. I don’t think we need to skill gate the changes. Again, it’s about making the game better for everyone, not just changing the select few from those that are lucky to those that are skillful.

It’s not that I want only the top 5% of skilled players to get advantages, even a little effort more than afking content should be rewarded considerably. I won’t suggest any numbers now, since it’s in the hands of the developers. It already works at a certain part of the game, for example daily achievements. You need to know how to dodge damage, how to find different enemies, how to find veterans and kill them… all things an afker would rarely do. So you see, players who put a bit of effort into it are rewarded with a laurel a day.

There could be multiple stages of such rewards, so that you will be rewarded fair. The better you play, the better the rewards. I won’t call this gating in any form, everyone can become a better player if he/she attempts to become better.

Becka Williams.4978:

Skillfull play isn’t rewarded by RNG, so why is a token system worse than what we have now?

I talked about how a reward track is worse than what we have now because even a failure would bring you one step closer to your goal.

Imho skillful play should greatly increase the chances at RNG for players who are willing to learn. Even a jump from 0.01% to 0.04% would be a decent reward imho. Do not forget that a precursor is just one of the exotic weapons – which would drop at higher rates.

I personally don’t like the reward track system (in sPvP it’s alright since there are no good alternatives). Compared to a token system where you can choose what to purchase it really feels grindy imho. The other thing I don’t like about it: skillful play isn’t rewarded that well. Every player, even those who put no effort in battles and watch TV-series on a 2nd screen while auto-afking the boss will get the desired item sooner or later.

It would be like doing the clocktower jumping puzzle and every minute you’re in that instance, you start a few meters closer to the reward chest. Playing long enough would have you start directly in front of the goal. Yes, you can see progress, but it’s not really your progress but an artificial progress.

Soren.9316:

It feels weird to say this but I do like this idea. At least it would feel like some of use weren’t on RNjeasus’ bad side. I mean I’ve pretty much given up on getting anything but runes of the sunless and spoons from teq… been doing Teq everyday since his reboot and have yet to see a Teq Horde.

I think choosing the lesser evil is not a good idea for a system which should be satisfying for most players.

Artanis.4963:

I like it, except magic find is only creature-kills. Not champion bags, not event chests, not the Mystic Forge, not even world boss event chests.

And the creatures at Tequatl don’t drop loot.

thanks! Well it could always be adjusted, just like the magic find buff in Silverwastes, which works on chest loot as far as I know. This temporary buff I’m suggesting would work for the content of Tequatls loot-chests and champion bags.

laokoko.7403:

I like 2.5

Very simple to add to it is by achievements. After X amounts of tequalt you get a free teq ascended box. After X amounts of lvl80 rare weapon in the mystic forge, you get a free precursor.

but getting something when you do it long enough is just the pure form of grind. I’d rather see the achievement-system involved in a way that your luck on getting better drops from a specific enemy scales with the number of achievements you’ve completed for this boss.

We have 10 achievements for Tequatl, each giving a specific amount of achievement-points. What if you also get a Magic Find buff with each achievement (more for harder ones, proportional to the amount of AP you get) that is permanent and active at that bossfight.

example: player XY has

• “I found it” – 5 AP —-> +10% MF
• “Above the waves” – 10AP —-> +20% MF
• “Tail Flail” – 5AP —-> +10% MF

—> 10%20%10% = +40% MF during the Tequatl-Meta

This way players who are skilled enough to get all the achievements quite fast have the advantage of getting better chances sooner than other players who won’t bother and auto-afk the boss.

Suggestion:
-) add some temporary achievements for Tequatl to the permanent achievements in order to increase MF even more for dedicated players.
-) When having the title “The Sunbringer” active, you have an aura which gives players in your party a non-stacking MF buff as well.

TL;DR: there should be a way to reward players who actively achieve something (rather than being very passive) with much better drop-chances imho. The achievement system would be a nice tracker for this. Added temporary achievements keep the players active instead of doing all boss-achievements once and then start being passive too.

bump this for visibility, I stopped actively doing collections because I’m not sure if some are still bugged, the last time I tried the champion-bag collection (you have to find various rarities of champion bags) wasn’t working and I kept some champion bags in my inventory.

I disagree with the OP, having done them on my own only and I like the challenge. Lv.80 missions are supposed to be really difficult imho.

the thing is: it’s sold for gems, so you are always free to unlock it entirely by ingame currency (=gold). It’s lv.80 content so you should have a bit of money once you get there.

200 gems for an episode isn’t a lot, unlocking it by earning the gold is a nice move imho.

same problem here, a designer had some solution (something with the stereo-sound options… can’t remember) but it didn’t work for me.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

Buy Some Apples.6390:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

IEverything is designed so that players can’t destroy others experience.

You obviously do not play in WvW.

exceptions prove the rule…
well at least we know that Anet works on a solution, there was a discussion about how this could be fixed here in the forums not long ago. It’s not an easy fix.

Well, technically it is an easy fix. It’s just there’s a hesitation to arm people with banhammers and make them police the players actively.

. . . which, mind you, is what I see as the only effective solution.

you realize that there are a lot of guilds in this game?! Giving players the power to ban other people and welcome vigilantism would lead to chaos soon.

Buy Some Apples.6390:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

IEverything is designed so that players can’t destroy others experience.

You obviously do not play in WvW.

exceptions prove the rule…
well at least we know that Anet works on a solution, there was a discussion about how this could be fixed here in the forums not long ago. It’s not an easy fix.

I really really love DryTop and the Silverwastes. It’s so much fun to have a good working reward structure and lots of things to discover. I’m not sure about the amount of dynamic events on Silverwastes yet, but so far it’s really fun to defend the forts and fight the really well made mini-bosses underground. Afk-autoattack farming… not anymore!

I think the community is as great as it is because the game works with a high priority on cooperation. Everything is designed so that players can’t destroy others experience. You can’t steal nodes, you can’t inspect other players, you can’t steal loot drops, you don’t roll dice on a good piece of loot, you don’t depend on single individuums like tanks or healers,…

We owe it to Anet that toxic behaviour is minimal in our game.

I really like the design of the new map, especially the underground bosses. The mechanics are fun and not every group makes it. I haven’t done these boss-fights too often yet, but in my experience a coordinated group would be more sucessful here, while there’s still a place for people who have none.

Good job whoever designed this open world mini raids!

small idea for a lore-collection

Make finding books in the open world / instances a part of a collection. Finding 5 books unlocks a lore-compendium where all the texts of books you find are unlocked one by one. (great convenience if you want to re-read a book and don’t want to go for the wiki)

To each book-unlock maybe a small artwork too?

I loved the cutscene with Marjory and her sister as well. I got distracted from the cutscene by two mobs who followed me to the dialogue-area though (I saw them fighting my “listening character” while the scene took place). I guess I just have to replay that mini-mission.

Devildoc.6721:

It is kind of nice in the Elder Scrolls games how you open a book and there’s a book with pages you can turn on your screen. Even the MMO does this

pic for comparison to our UI for books.

exactly, it also leaves room for decent artworks

Hi Leah! Congrats, the current episode is quite good in almost all aspects imho.

my thoughts:
-) In general I don’t enjoy the UI for books in the game. Setting it apart from dialogues would make reading the books much more enjoyable if you ask me. At the moment it feels like I’m talking to the books which somehow just feels odd to me, I enjoyed a “book-like UI” in older RPG games. I guess that’s not in your department though…
-) I don’t like the hologram in Glint’s Lair. The transparent nature of the NPC makes it look like a half finished thing to me, the pantomime like story telling isn’t something I enjoyed when looking at those over-transparent model (I was kind of freaky to see the eyeballs of the npc as well)

+) almost everything else, it’s awesome to see a camp full of interesting and fun dialogues; especially since it’s the only waypoint in the map this makes a lot of sense. Maybe hide some dynamic events on the map and add some story to it, then it would be perfect imho (remember the kid in Kessex Hills who fell into a destroyer cave?).

scaling numbers for 8-15 people Too big groups would become a mindless zerg fast and the contribution of individuals would be very small. Too small groups won’t feel like an epic encounter.

interesting motivations/rewards imho dungeon-token rewards were great but could be accomplished by very rare drops like we see at Tequatl & Co. Also add something between: rare skins but not too rare, like 20% dropchance from a boss.

interesting epic storylines which don’t end at the raid-entrance A negative example would be fractals. Too closed structure imho, not much lore about specific fractals outside of the fractal.

I don’t get it, you can be killed but you can’t damage other players?

Pyriel.4370:

more open world content would end up the same as the current, only a few guilds doing it, many smaller guilds just becoming inactive due to lack of meaningful group-based content that is new that doesn’t require 75-100 people.

I think getting the rewards right is one of the most important things here. Look at the Aeather-Path dungeon. A really good and fun one with the best mechanics in the game (by far imho) and then “nobody” (exaggerated) plays that dungeon.

I don’t want raids to fail because the rewards aren’t incentive enough to play it over and over.

I like Orpheals ideas, sounds too logical that all legendary gear opens up stat-swap in order to maximise convenience.

I guess we never see the first Legendaries taken out of the Trading Post, but we can hope that the next Legendaries won’t be tradeable (100% earned) and attached to some epic legend.

Adding convenience to the end-goal of progression, not skins only, sounds really exciting.

Gele.2048:

i know i may be asking something stupid but is there any chance ANY at all to bring back healing in gw2 ,dedicated healing ? cuz i dont see raids work whit out healer they just seems shallow to me whit out it somehow ?? Can any dev tell me if they have ever discus this as expansion or something ofc doge can stay .

I doubt they change healing for the game, but I could very well imagine that they have a raid which changes the rules while inside. Imagine all self-heals in the raid were made useless and only water field combo finishers would do the job of providing a good heal.

They could give us environmental weapons (only 3 available for each raid) which provide the only heals available.

Anet has all the options really, to change the rules inside of instances to try out new things.

for the sake of further ideas, would someone be so kind and explain to me GW1s raids in a few words. I’ve watched Woodenpotatoes Underworld-vids and it looked quite boring to me, to be honest. I’m not sure if I get what eveyone loved about these.

What I know about it:

• it’s instanced and a big map with possibilites to teleport (just like our GW2 maps)
• there are 10 quests you can finish (aren’t events superior to quests?)
• there are some hard enemies (quite similar to Cursed Shore)

What’s the difference? Those seem to me a bit like GW2s lv.80 maps, maybe a bit more difficult.

I wonder why they moved that far away from GW1 in many aspects

like the skill-variety of mobs
like patrolling mobs
like mob-groups

Maybe there was a reason for doing so and it wouldn’t work well with GW2’s gameplay?!

Personally I love to challenge myself with soloing the patrolling mob-group (yes, it’s there, but rarely seen http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Champion_Victurus_the_Shattered) of branded creatures with the champ in the brand.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yes we should definitely discuss the environment in regard to encounters.

Bundles, interactions etc.

Chris

To me environmental weapons have a huge potential in GW2 for horizontal progression. Each of those weapons could work like engineer-bundles, giving players the power to switch the new skill with your weapon whenever you want. Sort of like the stolen thief-skill.

Keeping it you a special bag and safe it until you need it would increase the usability immensly imho. Personally I don’t like the breaking mechanic though, instead an option could be: auto-switch back to your normal weapon when you’ve used the environmental weapon skill and let it go on cooldown; as soon as the e.v. is ready again you can switch back to it.

These weapons would not act as an increase in power for the player but rather as an increased skill-pool. Not usable in PvP/WvW. Environmental weapon kits could take an utility skill slot and/or an elite skill slot.

trying to build on the core foundations:

• Melee damage: Being in melee range is the highest damage but also the most risky.

• Range Damage: Range is for situations where it’s not possible to melee or you are playing it safe to counter an event mechanic.

• Condition damage: Condition vulnerable enemies, such as wurm husks. Removal of the condition duration from the unshakable buff and have unique player conditions.

• Kiting: Aggro of the boss or mobs should feel less random, maybe focusing their gaze onto a specific player through mechanics. (ooze attractant)

• Runner: When things require you move fast this is your guy! See that button? Go press it! Pressure plate over there? He’s on it!

• Reviver: A troop of people able to pick up the downed as fast as possible, and have the best chance of reviving a fully downed player. (not sure)

• Support boons: Primary focus on keeping up vital boons for survival such as: agis, vigor and protection also using appropriate combo fields.

• Support reflects: Supports the raid by placing well aimed and timed reflect spells to counter projectiles.

• Support Condition removal: Exactly what it says on the tin, removes conditions were applicable.

• Crowd Control: Slowing and knocking back of enemies running towards your more vulnerable players.

Melee damage: is in range of the bosses grasp —> could get thrown around, maybe to new locations where players have new alternative tasks.

Range damage: can activate switches, shoot down stalactite to make bosses more vulnerable / stop enrage (boss needs to be kited to the right location first)

Runner/Jumper: try to finish a jumping puzzle in the boss room to unlock a new defense mechanic against the boss / unlock a new follow up boss if done in a certain time-limit.

Reviver: Heals certain npcs in order to get a buff which does major damage to the boss. Heals a wounded ally-beast which needs to be defended as well. Fully revived (which may be quite challenging due to incoming enemies) it helps killing the main-boss.

Crowd control: multiple effects on a boss with 6 different target zones:

• legs: cripple both legs for at least 10 seconds —> boss trembles
• head: confusion: at least 5 stacks while trembling —> boss drops to the floor
• body: 25 stacks of bleeding —> the boss takes huge damage and attracts blood worms which eat him from the inside
• arms: vulnerable 25 stacks —> makes arm armour temporary fragile —> can be destroyed by a knockback-attack.

just a small idea for raid encounters:

areas which amplify certain combo-fields

Someone stated the importance of players who provide a group with combo fields for support. What if there are areas which greatly enhance the duration of combo fields in order to support a counter to a boss-mechanic?

example:
boss “Venom” uses huge fields of toxic poison to keep players away. The boss-room area consists of a surface which enhances the duration of water fields though. Every water field clears a small area of the poison and the field stays for about 2 minutes. Players have to create paths through the poison-field in order to get some players who carry a certain thingy to the boss/ a certain location on the other side of the room.

Some of the bigger differences between GW1 and GW2 is the fact that you’d had to clear areas out of mobs. There was little skipping of enemies (I might be wrong, I didn’t experience the harder missions in GW1).

What would you think of enemies which have no aggro-reset? Imagine mobs following you around the whole instance until you decide to kill them. Would it be a chore for you or would you like that? (provided that enemies aren’t just trash-mobs which aren’t challenging at all and can all be killed easily by stacking-methods).

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Regarding Agony. Personally I would not want to use it for Raiding. I would like us to focus on the core combat and movement mechanics of the game and then build on that as a foundation to how encounters and mobs interact with the player and group.

Chris

Thanks for this direct answer Chris!!

I think it’s important to talk about replayablility as well when we talk about progression. Fractals (where we have agony) are highly replayable because of multiple factors. One of the biggest is the randomness in which instances are drawn out of the relatively big pool of possible fractals. Because of this it was possible to introduce agony and people run the same fractals over and over again.

I imagine that raids won’t work that way (just speculating: we get a big raid instead of multiple mini-raids which are put together, for the sake of telling a compelling epic storyline). To create raids which are varied enough so that people enjoy multiple runs there needs to be some kind of randomness involved.

Some dungeons use the mechanic of randomly spawning events during a run. I think this is a great concept which could be expanded for raids. – to make them fun running them more than once.

Random crazy idea: what if there were some hidden event-starters throughout the (huge) map and you’d need scouts from your team who spread out and look for these. It would be a very challenging activity which should be done while the core-group is in an encounter (e.g. boss-encounter). If one of the scouts is fast enough (timer) to make it to the hidden event-starter, the whole group would get some bonus-events right after the encounter (or an additional elite-boss with unique rewards).

TL;DR:
Organized groups would need to split the group into a combat group and a scouting group, the latter having the challenge to unlock a follow up boss which will be fought together with additional bonus rewards. Event-starters are in only few possible places and can start a number of possible events.

Serophous.9085:

• 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”?

Just on legendary armor:

• if anything, just make it an unlockable skin. Double click to add to wardrobe
• I’d rather it be some kind of scavenger quest hunt like was just done for the new mystic forge recipe. Except you would need certain items from bosses to throw into the forge, and craft the the parts of the armor piece.

my take on this:

• Ascended Armor is the precursor to Legendary Armor.
• a necessary ingredient for the crafting of the LA will drop in the raid (not necessarily RNG but maybe through achievements, getting skillful group oriented things done —> a perfect team could get the reward in the first try, not the norm for these challenging achievements though; definitely harder than the story mission achievements of season 2)
• mats you need to craft your ascended armor will drop more frequently in raids compared to outside sources (because it’s the hardest content of the game)

I’d also love to see more of the devs thoughts about this, not only ours. How was agony received by them, after looking at the live-environment. Do they feel that the rewards we currently have from hard content (fractals, dungeons) are perceived as satisfying? (I’m asking because we currently talked about RNG with a dev where perceptions seemed to be quite different: magic find makes a huge difference VS. makes very little difference).

If we players would get information about Anets reality, it would be much easier to discuss certain topics imho.

could there be raid encounters where the size of the group would make little difference (in a certain intervall, like 10-25 players)?

What if only 10 people could do damage to the boss at any given time, and the player who had the power would eventually lose it so that others could give their best too?

example: a boss randomly targets a player and hits him hard. If the player takes damage but survives the attack, the player would get an enrage-buff. This would happen 10 times, after that the boss won’t do this attack anymore. 10 players would be “enraged” and could damage the boss. The rest of the group would have other tasks, like kiting some invulnerable strong but slow enemies etc.

I just feel like it’s very possible to create raid-mechanics which allow a freedom of player-numbers, so no need for scaling-mechanics or fixed raid sizes.

different raids, different ways to make this mechanic work:

enraged = being able to damage the boss

• raid A: the boss hits 10 players, survivors of the attack enrage
• raid B: the boss-arena has a jumping puzzle attached, the first 10 players who make it to the goal-location get the enrage-buff. The boss will try to hinder the jumpers, so others will have to try to get his attention.
• raid C: players who can ressurect one of the 10 dead npcs in an area get the enrage buff. NPCs will die again so other players can ress them
• raid D : up to 10 players who can manage to stay close to a certain npc will get the enrage buff after a certain amount of time. It’s a chase-like battle.

cesmode.4257:

But on a whole, agony is a lazy cheap mechanic (as is one-shot boss mechanics).

thanks for your take on this

Hmm, so your alternative to having unavoidable damage would be avoidable damage? But wouldn’t this lead to one-shot boss mechanics if the damage becomes high enough?

I guess you’d rather see more boss-mechanics the higher the fractal-level, no?

Personally I would love to see such sort of progression. Could we tie this to items like the agony infusions? Example: the infusions you get don’t act against any sort of damage, but instead make bosses do new skills on the player with this infusion while at the same time unlock a new tier of possible rewards. Players without the infusion wouldn’t be targetted by those new attacks but those players would have no chance for the next tier of cosmetic rewards.