Guild Wars 2

Did he miss one of the attacks where you need to go into the green circles for protection? That’s your main task there for the heart.

Ashantara.8731:

Wait, what about it? I was going to start farming the WvW track for my first legendary (so close now!), and they changed something about its acquisition?? What did they change?

He meant the change that put the Gift of Battle into the reward track. Before that change you could simply buy it with Badges of Honor.
Nothing changed recently and you will be fine after you finished your reward track.

There is also a chance for ascended items in PvP chests.
The armor from ascended shards of glory was just ridiculous cheap. Even if you bought all normal shards of glory needed for the pieces you could bought it would be a little over 7g for 5/6 armor pieces.

They tought about it and found that is too cheap compared to other methods.

Heibi.4251:

Elementalist – more nukes, with a few nerfs. Still OP.

Elementalist took a harsh nerf in PvE on enemies with large hitboxes. He should be much more balanced now in all game modes.

Engineer – no love ever

Condi-Ingi got buffed and he got an aura with 150 condition damage, making him meta for a condition subgroup.

Revenant – we like, but no updates

The jalis hammer buff could make rev come back into the raiding scene. The dps weren’t that far off outside of elementalist.

Ranger – you stay pigeonholed as healer because we only created druid for the raid content for the elites of GW2. In fact we’ll nerf your attacks with anything but staff. Oh, and that pet fix – NEVER – you don’t need that extra damage the pet is supposed to do(and takes away from your real damage output). It will still die to one shots, so keep it on a leash.

Condi-Ranger is still viable, infact with a engineer in the group you only lost around 400 DPS. GS got buffed. Pet survivability in sPvP is fine, the only game mode were they are bad is WvW.

Zaviel.1245:

Stacking to 5 is just a ballpark number, i’m speculating under the conditions of this being balanced in a proper way somehow.

I simply want regen to be more useful, it is easily the weakest boon in the game for any game-mode. Noone cares about Dwayna runes and that is a shame.

If regen stacking was a thing, build diversity would flourish and the classes capable of healing would increase.

The main reason that most groups take druids as healers is not that druids have the best heal but the best compromise between healing and offensive buffs. Revenant and Elementalist have more raw healing power but not the same amount of buffs.
The healing power that other classes can offer is just not needed at the moment so druid is the best healing specc as it offers enough heal to survive anything and the most offensive buffs.

If the tank is running less than 1801 toughness you will pull aggro if you attempt to rezz someone with your current build as the 400 toughness from Determined Revival will put you above many tanks.

The most common PS warrior build runs 1000 toughness, complete berserker stats.

It uses the wardrobe unlock for the achievement, you should be fine.

SorionHex.1327:

I disagree that it’s as relevant to the lore as you claim. Saul’s current state actually has very little bearing in the grand scheme of things in regards to Living Story (The game’s main big story), and so in GW2, I can agree that this is yet another side story. We can’t just have kittenty awful stories in Raids. They might have maybe been able to do a new Fractal for it, rather than a Raid wing but eh.

Pretty much every MMO ties in their main story with Raiding content, I think the only problem is there’s no highly casual equivalent to Raids like WoW has LFR level raiding.

The main story of GW2 isn’t tied to raids and the story team doesn’t intend to ever progress the main story through raids. Their stance is that the story should be soloable.

The bolded part is just wrong.

The simple fix for this is a highly unrewarding but easy/fair to complete Raid level for casuals who just want to get through the story (again like LFR in WoW.)

tl;dr: It’s not only fine for it to be in Raids, but it’s also the best place for it. The fix here is to add an LFR level raid instance for people who want to see the story and get small rewards (no Magnemite shards, or at most a super small amount for a successful completion for the week). Probably bosses at half HP and some reduced mechanics, also more merciful timing on mechanics.

The main story will most likely never take place in raids as GW2 is not intended to be raid centric as other games.
Right now raids are niche content, produced by a small team. Unless you are willing to transfer some ressources from other aspects to raids there is no reason to ever add something so time consuming as another difficulty level to raids.

draxynnic.3719:

And ArenaNet has been doing things to give people more incentive to try different game types since GW2 released.

There are zero barriers from ArenaNet to enter and try raids.

Evidence point 2: LS3 is explicitly set after the raid wings, suggesting that this was deliberate.

And you know that from? The next-to-last mission takes us to the location where Lazarus where. But we don’t know how long the first missions took. It is entirely possible that Forsaken Thicket takes place during the first episode, not before.

draxynnic.3719:

Resources put into building a raid:

1) Creating the maps. The cumulative size of the wings of raid 1 is about the size of a HoT map, albeit admittedly without the multiple levels.
2) Making the models for the enemies (although some can be, and are, reused).
3) Designing and implementing the mechanics.
4) Setting the numbers so that they produce the desired level of challenge.
5) Testing that the appropriate level of challenge has been reached.

Setting a different level of challenge is simply a matter of repeating step 4, and possibly 5, while implementing a method of selecting a level of challenge (motes!).

I’ve talked to people who are involved in modding and game design, and compared to steps 1-3, step 4 is low-hanging fruit (and step 5 can be done after release and feedback from the community). We already see it in Bastion with the challenge motes. Oh, and the entirety of Guild Wars 1 since the introduction of Hard Mode.

We can make informed estimates about the relative levels of work involved… particularly since we’ve already seen something similar done with the challenge motes in Bastion, which suggests that it’s not in fact something so hard to do that the opportunity cost is a whole new raid wing.

No we can’t. Those motes don’t change mechanics, they just add some new mechanics to the boss. They don’t alter the damage, health or enrage timer. Everything has to be tested and tuned new for a easy mode. Reward structure has to be revamped.

Zenith.7301:

Miellyn.6847:

Rune.4231:

Been playing Guild Wars since GW1 launch and Saul’s story was one of the bigger mysteries in the series. Having this locked in raids with no story/easy mode to experience that lore it is really messed up. Entering a cleared instance, as I see many people suggest, isn’t a great solution because that isn’t a long-term solution. In a year, it may be very hard to find a cleared instance. Even now I’m told it can be hard to find one unless you play during specific hours.

Self-contained stories that start and end in a raid would have been fine with me personally, but that’s clearly not the way they plan on doing raids so having a story/easy mode is a must in my opinion.

But this is a self-contained story in GW2.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

The White Mantle in GW2 has nothing to do with the White Mantle in GW1, it is just the name. Caudecus just took the name for his organisation because of the stories from the past. If you would have paid attention in the last story instance you would know this and you wouldn’t complain. The only people who know Saul D’Alessio are GW1 players.

Caudecus isn’t the leader in case you actually paid attention. He was one of the upper tier members, but he was actually recruited by devoted members of the White Mantle.

Caudecus instead used them and undermined them to stop Lazarus’s full revival, which would pose a rival against his plans to use this radical religious organization for his own secular purposes.

Matthias, Xera, and the Head Confessor were all true believers and practicing descendants of the White Mantle.

There are only two Confessors known in GW2, Esthel which dies during the human personal story and Caudecus. He is the leader of the White Mantle during most of the story line of GW2.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Well screw it, no point in me arguing a point for a game I feel passionate about, obviously the devs don’t care and the community is toxic to change.

Just re upped my account and will start doing World Quests to get this games version of a Power Great Sword Reaper ready for 5 mans and later Raids, where there is more than one viable tank and where Reapers aka Death Knights have a place in the META.

Get a clue ANet and some day my money might come back your way.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/proudmoore/Oldirtbeard/simple

There is more than one viable tank class but you won’t see it in PUGs as they try to optimize the group composition because you don’t know the players. Mesmers sacrifice less than other classes while tanking thats why they are optimal. viable != optimal.

There are rumors about the balance patch. If those rumors are true it will definitely change the meta.

Blaeys.3102:

Yes, the difficulty can add to the epic feelings you get while going through raids – but, for people with professions/playstyles that don’t necessarily conform to the balance point the developers decided upon, that difficulty point is in a different place than it is for you.

Defensive builds are always inferior to offensive builds, in raids you have normally healers, there are zero reasons to play a defensive build outside of the kiter at Deimos.
The classes are pretty close together with the exceptions of Elementalist and Necromancer.

Orpheal.8263:

@ Klowde…

An expansion has to deliver ON THE POINT, not first like 20% on release day and them slowly as snails the other 80% in tiny steps month after month later …

Thats not how expansions work. An expansion should deliver always its complete content onm release day on the point and that is it, what HoT dod absolutely not and why so many people are angry of this fact, that HoT did not deliver all of its announced content directly.

People don’t want to be spoon fed a hundred times with a small spoon, when they KNOW, they should get fed with just 1 big spoon instead and are satiated after that one then for a long time.
Or have you ever seen in similar big MMORPGs on the market the same behavious like ANet did with HoT ???

No, I can’t remember a single expansion in WoW or in FF14 for example, where their developers tried to do with their players the same idiotic method of delivering like only 20% of the content of its expansion and then adding very slowlsy the last 80% months later disguised as some kind of other patches.

They always delivered with their expansions completely, without leaving anything out, whatever got announced, was then also part of the expansion from begin on the expansion released – so they delivered in the eyes of the playerbase, what doesn’t change the fact that still for some people the content what they brought could jhave been disappointing, but they delivered and that completely.

So content patches in those game are not a continuation of the things introduced in the expansion? Like new skins or levels for the artifact weapons in Legion. Yes that should have been there from the start. Including all planned raids.
WoW cut advertised features since WotLK completly every expansion. Yes features that were announced and advertised and never appeared at all.

HoT didn’t deliver complete, what made the bug infested thing even more so disappointing, because having access to LS3 was no sales point that got marketed as “Feature” of HoT…. that LS3 is just a story extension of HoT is nothing but just a cheap excuse nobody paid for.
That people can have access to LS3 only due to owning HoT is just a story telling technical given thing, because LS3 plays after what happens in HoT.
Would LS3 play now, before the happenings of HoT, then wouldn’t have people to own naturally HoT to have access to LS3 – just plain logic!!

But the story continues, there are no flashbacks. Having the newest expansion to recieve the newest content is just normal. All MMORPGs do this.
New fractals can be entered even as a F2P player.

Thats why I say it would have been alot better for HoTnot to add new Story with the expansion, but instead Anet should have focused with the expansion only on adding new Features, QoL and improving the existing Features, and bigger properly done Game Balance that take finally also a look onto all of the games Combat System mechanics to prepare the game properly on the new added Elite Specializations and those that will come in the future, cause the game was before HoT already in a state of total balance chaos due to the Condition Changes and ANet had nothing better to do, than to rush it with Hot, due to basically NCSOFt pointing their pressure pistol into their backs – saying, release it fast, we needz the MONEY, cause your gemstore is simply too weak!!!
Thats the truth, because would the gemstore work good enough, then we wouldn’t need basically any expansions at all.

Nobody would have bought this so called expansion.
Expansion were a community wish, ArenaNet didn’t plan to do them. But there was a huge demand so they responded properly.

For the game would it be better, if completely all new story content, would be added to the game only via Living World Patches, so that Anet can focus themself with Expansions completely on new Features, Qol, Balance and improvements of existign content – thats it for what freaking expansions ARE FOR mainly in the first place. adding new story is just secondary as you can always add new story, but the game has to run functionally wise first good, that has always top priority over adding new story!!!

Quality over Quantity.

This was the plan. The community didn’t like it.
Expansions, as the name suggests, are there to expand existing content. Not to rebuild it.

draxynnic.3719:

Tried that. When I talked about banging my head against the initial or mid phase just to earn an opportunity to practice against the final phase, I wasn’t speaking theoretically. In fact, I was part of a guild group in the first weekend VG was open.

It was a sufficiently unpleasant experience that I told my guild that I’d consider subbing in when a regular can’t make it, but I would not be a regular. Partly because I have things outside of GW2 such that I couldn’t really commit to raiding every week at a specific time anyway, but largely because I simply don’t have enough free time to throw hours of my entertainment and relaxation time away on something that’s neither entertaining nor relaxing. I don’t know if you consider if fun spending hours eating dirt trying to get through an 8-minute fight that became repetitive hours ago, but I certainly don’t!

I read this argument time and time again. Maybe it wasn’t the right guild for you? I’m part of a raiding guild and nobody cares if you don’t want to raid 1 or 2 weeks in a row. Real life > raid. If you write down your name in the raid planer and you can’t make it that evening, nobody hates you for that if you say something, even if it is on time for the raid to start as long as you message someone. Life happens and that is fine.
This is not a problem with raids but with yourself and your social environment.

zealex.9410:

Miellyn.6847:

The raid population without LFR is pretty low. WoW has raids as main content, that drives the gear thread mill and progresses the main story of the expansions.
They need LFR so people can experience the main story.
So unless you want to turn GW2 into a raid centric game, you shouldn’t compare those

Both games are raid centric and progress the story with raids. Nobody considers LFR-players as raiders, as the social aspect is completely non-existent.

Both finders require a minimum item level, that makes them less accessible than GW2 raids, which you can enter whenever you want.

That isnt totaly accurate lfr wasnt made for ppl to experience the story simply it was made for ppl that dont have time to play to have an endgame…

the requirements of the lfr does not make it less aceesible to players than in gw2 in lfr you can join once you have se gear from dungeons and then its a matter of te usually a week or so to have the ilvl to join the automated q

If it worked the same in gw2 right after you get exotics from dungeons you should be able to enter raids which is far from the truth. You should have an ascented set ready at least since it will make it easier for you to join and then you gotta find a group then join whereas again lfr is automated so no gw2 raiding is harder than the lfr.

And players that don’t have that much time in GW2 can play open world/WvW/PvP/fractals for endgame. Unlike WoW it is not limited to raids.

How exactly is exotic equipment stopping you from finding a group of like minded people and playing the raids with them?

Automated systems should be avoided as much as possible. Group content is still about social interaction and those systems bypass it completly. They should have never been introduced outside of PvP.

Astralporing.1957:

Okay, then you can assume that I assume that easy mode raids would have rewards good enough to justify repeating them. I don’t want just a “training lobby”. I want a content that can serve as training for those that would want it, but could also stand on its own.
Rewardless story mode is mostly useless, as dungeons have shown. On that, i fully agree.
All my posts are made with the implicit assumption that easy mode would be repeatable.

(mind you, that would likely require significantly improving the rewards of current raid mode – which even in my opinion aren’t that good at the moment)

Raid rewards are actually fine and if you increase anything besides the pure gold rewards, the rewards will be worse in the long run. If you increase the shard cap you will reduce the value of ghostly infusions and Eye of Jantir, the only two items that are actually profitable, increase the droprate for ascended items and people will buy less ascended items/skins from the vendor, more shards for sellable items, decreasing them in value.
Raids reward you for continuous playing, they are not that rewarding if you only play them once or twice, the value is not instant like fractals. The reward structure is part of the long term motiviation and changing it can hurt the mode in the long run.

]That depends entirely on the conversion rates from other sources. Personally, i think that a conversion rate of 10% from easy mode, assuming that this mode would be popular, would create the best funnel of new people into raids. I sincerely doubt that the current conversion rates from non-raiding community come even close to that.

The conversion rate is definitely higher right now than an easy mode could ever reach. For absolute numbers we would need information from ArenaNet to draw conclussions.

I could live with, say, decrease of fractal development at the cost of creating easy mode (seeing as fractal team tries to go that direction anyway, which, in fractals, is, imo, a bad idea)
On the other hand, personally i wouldn’t be all that sad if it cut into raid development time. I doubt it would add that much once the ball got rolling once, and besides raids are being developed at a miraculously fast rate considering how small the current target group is.

One of the main reasons for the relative fast development compared to the ressources is the fact that the target group is small, they know exactly what that group wants and don’t need to compromise between sub-groups.

Why are difficulties in fractals are a bad idea? The target group is much bigger for fractals. The group size has a huge impact on that.

Miellyn.6847:

Miellyn.6847:

You got a complete revamp for the HoT rewards and the LS releases are now much faster than raids.

They are going to stop after few more releases, and then we’ll likely end with another year-long drought.
The LS development is faster now, but in the long run raids aren’t slower at all.

Wing 2 and 3 were developed by a half of the raid team each, Raid 2 was developed by the complete team and the Wing 2 half had most likely already started before Wing 3 release. So it took around a year for the current raid. Raids are not faster and if we don’t get a new raid/raid wing with episode 6 it is significant slower and even a year long content drought won’t make it equal. Especially because there will be development for a raid for the next expansion before it will be released.

At this moment, the development rate for this side content is definitely on par with the development of the mainstream one. What does that say to you?

Seriously, if the development rate followed the normal patterns of this game for side content, then we’d likely have seen a rate of several fractals for a single raid wing.

It may be a side content, but it’s definitely being treated as if that side content was one of the most important parts of the game. So, as i see it, either its importance gets degraded to match its limited target group numbers, or the content gets opened up. Significantly.

But it already has small ressources. Around 10% of the live team. Around 10% of the playerbase as regular raid players are enough to justify it. Less would be also fine. There is no team that already develops raids for the next expansion, but there is a team that produces the expansion which will feature content for the majority.

What would you also consider as side content?

Oldirtbeard.9834:

MashMash.1645:

Seera.5916:

then you’ll find yourself on a black list.

Shame things have become this bad.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer community, but if you put a toxic practice in your game it will breed toxicity and kill a decent community like cancer.

It’s all good because now we have Raids so that makes GW2 a real MMO right?

Ah the good, old toxicity argument. It was always there and it was worse during the dungeon time.
Toxicity from non-raiders against raiders is much higher than the other way around.

Nobody likes liars, that would happen in every community.

Astralporing.1957:

Miellyn.6847:

There is no incentive to run this mode ever again unless you overtune the rewards.

Well, duh. Obviously the reward structure would need to get rewarded. I just didn’t want to start that discussion here, since it’s offtopic.

Not it is relevant, it will otherwise become a one time adventure like story mode dungeons.

Miellyn.6847:

Miellyn.6847:

10% is nothing compared to the development that is needed, the team has only 6 people.

Debatable. That’s based on a mistaken interpretation of one dev quote.
Besides, 10% is still a good number.

If we assume 10-12 people for the raid team (8-10% of the live team) it is still fine for the whole picture.
No it is a terrible conversion rate. You want to open side content (your own words) for people outside of the target audience, slowing down content releases for that niche content. Either you promote raids to main content, where other people would come out and cry about another broken promise, and increase the development ressources for raids or you can live with the fact that a small team creates content for a small part of the community.

Miellyn.6847:

Miellyn.6847:

Between Wing 3 of Forsaken Thicket and Raid 2 were 8 months.

And how much was that between HoT and first LS release?

You got a complete revamp for the HoT rewards and the LS releases are now much faster than raids.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Chris McSwag.4683:

The issue with releasing numbers is that the community, especially the non-raiding one, cant handle it. Suddenly everyone is an expert business analyst and will fiercly argue that it is waste of money for whatever reason.

They have said that the amount of raiders is higher than what you normally see in an mmo and I think thats fine enough information.

I know what ‘they say’ how ever thinking about this logically when examining the Elephant in the MMO room that is WoW you have to imagine with Raid Finder their percentage easily dwarves GW2 percentage when talking about Raiders (remember I’m talking about percentages not populations).

The raid population without LFR is pretty low. WoW has raids as main content, that drives the gear thread mill and progresses the main story of the expansions.
They need LFR so people can experience the main story.
So unless you want to turn GW2 into a raid centric game, you shouldn’t compare those two.

ANet claims that more of their population Raids than typical MMOs, if Raidfinder in WoW, and lower tier in FF14 make Raids more accessible then wouldn’t those games have a higher percentage and not GW2 as ANet claims?

Both games are raid centric and progress the story with raids. Nobody considers LFR-players as raiders, as the social aspect is completely non-existent.

Both finders require a minimum item level, that makes them less accessible than GW2 raids, which you can enter whenever you want.

Rednik.3809:

Miellyn.6847:

We had this and people complained and it got changed, maybe try to change it back?

Right now we are talking about different subject.

No, that part was about repetable PvE content.

Miellyn.6847:

Miellyn.6847:

Yeah the dungeon team was removed over 3 years ago, it is still beyond me how people can live that far in the past and still complain about it. But maybe thats the reason they can’t adapt in raids.

Nightmare fractal is definitely not hastly made.

That was considered as pretty bad choice by almost everyone.
And I don’t know how else you can call fractal made literally from reused part of the Scarlet tower from LS1 and reused mobs from there.

Also, that discussion went into the wrong direction. Lets return to raids and their bad design.

The amount of people that voiced their concerns were actually lower than people that wanted challenging content.

You still have to prove the bad design and how a training mode, that doesn’t do much as proven in other games and doesn’t offer repeatable content in GW2 unless you overtune the rewards, would improve that. Raids are more accessible than raids in WoW, there are zero barriers to enter them unless you expect to one-shot everything without any experience.
A training mode would only accomplish something if you could train a certain phase with the same damage values and mechanics as normal mode, but you wouldn’t have to play through the entire encounter to reach it, eg Matthias 40% phase. An easier mode that let you still win doesn’t teach you what mistakes would lead to a wipe in normal mode.

Story mode dungeons are a good indicator for group story instances without enough rewards.

maddoctor.2738:

They are not 6, but they are not that many

As the wiki page says ‘Known current or former Raids Team members’, we don’t know the exact size, so lets assume 10-12 member, that would make it 8-10% of the live team.

Rednik.3809:

Miellyn.6847:

Hmm I thought there were new open world maps with the last 4 living story episodes, but maybe I’m wrong.

They are zergy, very unfriendly to anything less than 10 man group (have fun to solo anything besides hearts) and almost pointless when you are already farmed all rewards associated with map. Also overall quality is lower than base HoT or vanilla maps, even SW is made much better.

We had this and people complained and it got changed, maybe try to change it back?

Miellyn.6847:

Miellyn.6847:

Between Wing 3 of Forsaken Thicket and Raid 2 were 8 months.

And between last dungeon and… oh, right. But at least we have 2 hastily made fractals, from reused old models and assets. Ugh.

Yeah the dungeon team was removed over 3 years ago, it is still beyond me how people can live that far in the past and still complain about it. But maybe thats the reason they can’t adapt in raids.

Nightmare fractal is definitely not hastly made.

Scipio.3204:

Miellyn.6847:

the team has only 6 people.

I was always curious, why do people think only 6 people work on raids?

Because ArenaNet said it.

Rednik.3809:

And GW2 need raid participation because raids and fractals are only kind of repeatable PvE activity that is still getting any content updates. Actually, raids are getting most of it

Hmm I thought there were new open world maps with the last 4 living story episodes, but maybe I’m wrong.

Between Wing 3 of Forsaken Thicket and Raid 2 were 8 months.

Astralporing.1957:

Miellyn.6847:

Astralporing.1957:

Miellyn.6847:

Your beloved WoW proved that a training mode doesn’t work, even Blizzard said it.

Nah. One dev privately mentioned his dislike of the way it got implemented. Which he did, by the way, only after he stopped working at Blizzard.
Apparently, Blizzard disagreed, because LFR is still there.

They released a statistic, that only around 7%-10% actually advanced from LFR. Thats definitely not enough to justify a one time adventure for people that are not the target audience.

10%? That’s massive, regardless of what it’s 10% of. Remember, that it’s people that would most likely not raid otherwise.

And in WoW numbers, we’re likely speaking about more people that gw2’s active population.

There is no incentive to run this mode ever again unless you overtune the rewards. 10% is nothing compared to the development that is needed, the team has only 6 people.
WoW needs the raid participation as raids are the main content. Why are you still trying to ignore that point?

Rednik.3809:

Miellyn.6847:

The difference is, people run LFR multiple times for quests and equipment upgrades.
If you don’t implement very high rewards in GW2 people that don’t intend to run normal mode will play it once and return to the most profitable farming location.

And in T4 fractals rewards are better than in kitten combined. But people still run them, even now, with AR being highly available.

T2 und T3 fractals are basically dead except recommanded daily. T1 is mostly recommended and legendary weapon collections, sometimes some new players.

Rednik.3809:

Miellyn.6847:

They released a statistic, that only around 7%-10% actually advanced from LFR. Thats definitely not enough to justify a one time adventure for people that are not the target audience.
They will never remove it because raids are the main content for WoW unlike GW2, where it is niche content for people that enjoy challenging content. ArenaNet said they don’t want it to be main content.

And on on every next difficulty level number of raiders is roughly 1/10 from the previous one. So 7-10% from LFR is actually amazing number.

The difference is, people run LFR multiple times for quests and equipment upgrades.
If you don’t implement very high rewards in GW2 people that don’t intend to run normal mode will play it once and return to the most profitable farming location.

Astralporing.1957:

Miellyn.6847:

Your beloved WoW proved that a training mode doesn’t work, even Blizzard said it.

Nah. One dev privately mentioned his dislike of the way it got implemented. Which he did, by the way, only after he stopped working at Blizzard.
Apparently, Blizzard disagreed, because LFR is still there.

They released a statistic, that only around 7%-10% actually advanced from LFR. Thats definitely not enough to justify a one time adventure for people that are not the target audience.
They will never remove it because raids are the main content for WoW unlike GW2, where it is niche content for people that enjoy challenging content. ArenaNet said they don’t want it to be main content.

Rednik.3809:

By creating a playerbase that can run their own groups, and eventually force all that LI nonsense to cease. Just like WoW raid groups that are 99% asking only for kill experience and not for 300 kills in your armory.

And item level requirements way above or on par the items that drop.

How much is “more than enough” and how much of them are making 9/9 (13/13)?

You don’t need training on every boss. Basics are sufficient.

How beating your head against a wall for hours without result is not a disaster? Well, dunno, for some reason I think it is. Groups mentioned by you were mostly guild groups or premades, with good voice coordination and determination. I’m not sure if you can realistically expect same result from a bunch of random unexperienced guys from LFG.

Raids were never intended to be beaten by uncoordinated groups, there are fractals. If you beat your head against it for hours without any result you are just not ready for raids. If you can’t adapt or figure things out on your own it isn’t the content for you.

I’m not talking about 5-6 “serious raid guilds” worldwide tho. You can expect that in any raiding guild.

My guild gets a clear for every member every week if he has time, it depends on the social structures inside the guild.

So that means that we don’t need any improvements? This game is always needs more content, and keeping it out of reach for majority is a bad choice.

And slowing down content for another raid mode will increase it? The ressources are not there.

Your beloved WoW proved that a training mode doesn’t work, even Blizzard said it. An easy mode without over the top rewards doesn’t have long term motiviation. The current raids are easy enough, you said it yourself.

Rednik.3809:

Miellyn.6847:

Why do we need an easy mode again? Easy mode wouldn’t reward LI, so the only thing that it would accomplish is flushing down developer ressources, as you described it…

Because people need raid experience and current system fails to deliver it? Lets see:
1. Pug runs. Effectively blocked by the LI barrier. Groups with low reqs are becoming more rare with every day passed.

How does a training mode that awards no LI would change that?

2. Training runs. Rare by themselves, rarely covers all encounters, often full of completely unexperienced people so you are waiting for them to learn very raiding basics, every time.

There are guilds dedicated to training runs, there are weekly raid traings announced on reddit, I don’t know about NA but the EU servers have more than enough training runs.

3. Make your own group. Without raid experience usually leads to disastrous results, also not everyone is able to lead, ESPECIALLY without proper commanding and encounter experience.

How is figuring out mechanics on your own a disastrous result? The groups before them did the same and wrote guides.

4. Guilds for raids. Not everyone is ready to join a new guild for raiding, not everyone have a free guild slot, and guilds often have already established raid roster, so newcomer can be benched infinitely.

Serious raid guilds that don’t need people for their rooster don’t recruit.

Ofc these methods are works to some extent, but even all together they are not enough, not even close. I was pleasantly surprised actually when I saw community making a training raid runs because that was pretty uncommon thing for other raiding games, and was unpleasantly surprised when developers not understood this as a very clear sign, when community is struggling to do the work that must be done by raid developers instead.

Other games have a gear thread mill that let you overgear the encounter, so you can just brute force it. Thats why training runs don’t happen. Equipment is more importent than experience.
The equivalent for LI requirements are item level requirements in WoW, even LFR is restricted by them.

And stop comparing GW2 with ‘other raiding games’. GW2 is not a game with raids as the main content. It is niche content for people that enjoy challenging content, developed by a small dev team (~5% of the live team).

Coconut.7082:

Miellyn.6847:

Coconut.7082:

This is getting kittening ridiculous.

What lore are we talking about??
I’ve done every boss of the new raid multiple times already and I don’t see any lore during the fights, and don’t know anything about the “lore” behind the bosses (apart from maybe 2 lines you hear from the “prisoner” at 10% on the last boss).

What is the important lore behind the Giant Red Block of nothing (1st boss)?
What is the important lore behind the Mursaat DPS golem (2nd boss)?
What is the important lore behind the Smashing-Swinging Dark Sould boss guy?
Tell me please, because I really couldn’t figure it by fighting them!

There is literally NOTHING you see (considering you don’t run around and interact with notes while fighting), 99.5% of the lore is all located in the final cut-scene that you can only see once you’ve CLEARED the instance!

Anet chose an old GW1 story ,with a tiny loose end, that does not relate in any way to the current story (Don’t bring the stupid White Mantle argument again, you know it’s not the same While Mantle!) and you still complain!
They could release a raid without a story, then you wouldn’t even be able to see the ending of that GW1 story, and absolutely nothing in the current story wouldn’t change!

At this point I think that some people just look for reasons to complain, no matter how stupid the complaints are.

Unless Anet releases a Raid filled with DPS Golems in a blank area you, guys will just keep looking for reasons to bash on raids.

And then they will complain that the enrage timer is too tight or the rewards are too low.

Enrage timer lol, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWDvHazI8G4&t=13486s
Did the 1st CM couple days ago with: 1 Healing Tempest, 2 Healing Druids, 1 or 2 Minstrel’s Chronos’, with half the people dead at the end and still had like 2 minutes left. Does it get more forgiving than this?

The only bosses where DPS somewhat matter are Gorseval, Sabetha and Deimos.

My answer was meant to:

Unless Anet releases a Raid filled with DPS Golems in a blank area you, guys will just keep looking for reasons to bash on raids.

I should have deleted the rest of the post.

Rednik.3809:

maddoctor.2738:

And how is an easy mode going to help with this? Or you expect this easy mode to award LI and other rewards same as normal mode? Then it’s simple, the LFG mentality will move on to kill proof requests, or the easy mode will also give kill proof for the normal version?

I’m genuinely curious as to how an easy mode can help with the current LI situation

I expect this mode to award experience of encounter to majority of newcomers. GW2 encounters aren’t hard at all, and majority of those who got them on farm status aren’t possessing some outstandingly high skill. It’s just matter of experience and practice, which is heavily hindered by current “link pile of LI or gtfo” system.

Why do we need an easy mode again? Easy mode wouldn’t reward LI, so the only thing that it would accomplish is flushing down developer ressources, as you described it…

Coconut.7082:

This is getting kittening ridiculous.

What lore are we talking about??
I’ve done every boss of the new raid multiple times already and I don’t see any lore during the fights, and don’t know anything about the “lore” behind the bosses (apart from maybe 2 lines you hear from the “prisoner” at 10% on the last boss).

What is the important lore behind the Giant Red Block of nothing (1st boss)?
What is the important lore behind the Mursaat DPS golem (2nd boss)?
What is the important lore behind the Smashing-Swinging Dark Sould boss guy?
Tell me please, because I really couldn’t figure it by fighting them!

There is literally NOTHING you see (considering you don’t run around and interact with notes while fighting), 99.5% of the lore is all located in the final cut-scene that you can only see once you’ve CLEARED the instance!

Anet chose an old GW1 story ,with a tiny loose end, that does not relate in any way to the current story (Don’t bring the stupid White Mantle argument again, you know it’s not the same While Mantle!) and you still complain!
They could release a raid without a story, then you wouldn’t even be able to see the ending of that GW1 story, and absolutely nothing in the current story wouldn’t change!

At this point I think that some people just look for reasons to complain, no matter how stupid the complaints are.

Unless Anet releases a Raid filled with DPS Golems in a blank area you, guys will just keep looking for reasons to bash on raids.

And then they will complain that the enrage timer is too tight or the rewards are too low.

maddoctor.2738:

A team that can down Matthias, which is included in finishing Spirit Vale last I checked, shouldn’t have an issue with Deimos either. You know how to beat hard bosses.

Spirit Vale is the first wing of the Forsaken Thicket, Matthias is part of Salvation Pass.

Rednik.3809:

Miellyn.6847:

And lets ignore that raids are the main content updates, since the release of the lastest expansion, WoW got two raids and nothing else for PvE players. Also they are part of the main story, something the Story/Raid teams don’t want for GW2.
Also the raid team in WoW is much bigger than GW2 with their 5 people.

And they will stay that way if devs will continue to flush their resources to narrow such audience, because you cannot make something meaningful that way. It will not pay off. WoW devs understood that many years ago, dropped “raids are not for everyone” design into the thrash and keeping their title of #1 raiding game for 12 years.
That experience means something, don’t you think?

No, because GW2 is not raid centric and the devs don’t want it to be raid centric. They don’t want to progress the story in raids, just some loose lore. Raids are supposed to be a small niche area for people that enjoy a challenge.

Is that the main reason? People wanting raids to be meaningful in a game that never was intended to be raid centric? Turn it into a WoW copy with different combat?

And working with 5-6 people on raids while the live team is 120 people, it’s hardly flushing ressources…

Rednik.3809:

Sykper.6583:

Will you stop. linking. stuff. about WoW here? I don’t know how many times we have to consistently tell you that the raiding between WoW and GW2 is so vastly different. Even the basic foundation is different from the get-go.

WoW is literally about raiding as the ONLY end-game for PvE, everything builds towards raiding, gear progression is built INTO raiding. The MAIN story is built into raiding!

GW2 has raiding as a single PvE end-game solution, not the only one, where cosmetic unlocks and Side-Stories that enhance the world of Tyria but are not required whatsoever.

I wouldn’t even say Apples and Oranges here, the difference is greater than that. So whenever you link the decay of WoW Raiding, the causes of that decay can’t be easily linked to GW2. It’s that simple, stop comparing and focus, you hurt your arguments each and every time you try to make a comparison to another raiding game. GW2 is just too different.

Yeah, raiding between WoW and GW2 is really so vastly different, because WoW is doing at least some stuff right, due to their experience and millions of players who gave them raiding statistics over years and years of the MMO raiding evolution.
But hey, lets ignore it, it’s not like gw2 raids have obvious design problems, gw2 community is split apart due to these problems, and gw2 raid devs are trying to pretend that now is 2007 instead of 2017, right?

And lets ignore that raids are the main content updates, since the release of the lastest expansion, WoW got two raids and nothing else for PvE players. Also they are part of the main story, something the Story/Raid teams don’t want for GW2.
Also the raid team in WoW is much bigger than GW2 with their 5 people.
Raids in GW2 are vastly different than the raids in WoW.

Care to tell some of the design problems?

Astralporing.1957:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

Nike’s right, most barriers to raiding are self-imposed.

Social exclusion is still exclusion. In fact, it’s the worst kind, because it cannot be overcome by, say, farming a better set of gear.

Sorry but complaining about social interaction in an MMORPG, which were always about social interaction, deserves no pity. It’s a shame that most developers try to reduce most MMORPGs to single player games. If you can do some or most parts solo thats fine, but if everything is basically a solo activity than it defeats the original idea of MMORPGs.

Thank god ArenaNet already said they don’t want automatic matchmaking in PvE.

GoldenTruth.2853:

Miellyn.6847:

GoldenTruth.2853:

After having between Deimos this week and last I can honestly say that it is a very cool and good fight except for 1 very simple mechanic; the RNG nature of teleports. Specifically, the main problem is how the tank and AoE-kiter are included in those potentially selected to be teleported to the demon realm.

What this essentially does is give a 1/5 chance for every teleport to screw the group over. The only way to counteract this is to have your second chrono/off tank in zerk with 1080 toughness to sub (which is manageable but dumb). The real problem arises in how this limits AoE-kiter builds as if they put on any toughness they suddenly become the new tank. Now beating the boss even with this 1/5 chance is possible, but it feels like a design error that shouldn’t exist, similar to how it would be bad for xera to teleport the tank. This leads to a feeling of “unfair RNG”, something that is only really prevalent in KC with his bombs vs. ghost spawns. I’m hope that this is a bug rather than intended. Does anyone else feel this way? Does this seem like something Anet should change to make the boss feel more consistent?

TLDR: Boss is good, but the fact that the tank and the AoE-kiter can be teleportation targets feels like “unfair RNG”

The only teleport I know is only happening if you fail to break the add at 25% thats completely avoidable and fine the way it is.

The teleportation I am talking about is the 75%, 50%, 25% green teleport into demon realm phase (where you fight dark Saul)

I never experienced that the tank or kiter got the green circle, but maybe I am just lucky. :/

GoldenTruth.2853:

After having between Deimos this week and last I can honestly say that it is a very cool and good fight except for 1 very simple mechanic; the RNG nature of teleports. Specifically, the main problem is how the tank and AoE-kiter are included in those potentially selected to be teleported to the demon realm.

What this essentially does is give a 1/5 chance for every teleport to screw the group over. The only way to counteract this is to have your second chrono/off tank in zerk with 1080 toughness to sub (which is manageable but dumb). The real problem arises in how this limits AoE-kiter builds as if they put on any toughness they suddenly become the new tank. Now beating the boss even with this 1/5 chance is possible, but it feels like a design error that shouldn’t exist, similar to how it would be bad for xera to teleport the tank. This leads to a feeling of “unfair RNG”, something that is only really prevalent in KC with his bombs vs. ghost spawns. I’m hope that this is a bug rather than intended. Does anyone else feel this way? Does this seem like something Anet should change to make the boss feel more consistent?

TLDR: Boss is good, but the fact that the tank and the AoE-kiter can be teleportation targets feels like “unfair RNG”

The only teleport I know is only happening if you fail to break the add at 25% thats completely avoidable and fine the way it is.

Astralporing.1957:

Miellyn.6847:

Astralporing.1957:

IndigoSundown.5419:

We’re seeing reports about Bastion of the Penitent being “too easy” only days after release. There are challenge motes to make it harder. Is this an ANet version of easy/hard mode for raids? If so, will the people demanding easy mode be satisfied?

Not really. As it has been mentioned, they aren’t really all that easier, except for the upper tier of raiders. I don’t see any significant difference between Cairn and VG, for example, except for the fact that VG’s mechanics are far more clearly marked (while half of Cairn’s are plain invisible to me).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWDvHazI8G4

There is no easy mode needed.

Are there any mechanics just missing when you’re not in melee, and not in a bigger group? Because that fight sure as kitten wasn’t as easy as this.
(haven’t seen any description of the first two bosses anywhere yet, so our group can depend only on what we see and experience. Maybe knowing the mechanics well would indeed make it much easier, but so far it wasn’t the case)

Up to three people get the red circle, but thats easily managable with 2 healers.
The player who is farthest away from the boss has aggro, every second hit is the projectile wave, the tank will be hit with the second from right projectile, so don’t stand directly on the opposite side but a bit more right. If everyone is in melee range you need to destroy them with Swirling Winds or similiar skills, reflect is bad as they still count as enemy projectiles, you can’t dodge them proberly in melee.
The teleport thingies only appear in melee range and can mess with the aggro or red circles if you have designated players to get them, as they hit the farthes away player without the debuff.

TL:DR
Three people with red circle, Teleport thingies in melee range. Rest remains the same.

Rune.4231:

Been playing Guild Wars since GW1 launch and Saul’s story was one of the bigger mysteries in the series. Having this locked in raids with no story/easy mode to experience that lore it is really messed up. Entering a cleared instance, as I see many people suggest, isn’t a great solution because that isn’t a long-term solution. In a year, it may be very hard to find a cleared instance. Even now I’m told it can be hard to find one unless you play during specific hours.

Self-contained stories that start and end in a raid would have been fine with me personally, but that’s clearly not the way they plan on doing raids so having a story/easy mode is a must in my opinion.

But this is a self-contained story in GW2.

Astralporing.1957:

IndigoSundown.5419:

We’re seeing reports about Bastion of the Penitent being “too easy” only days after release. There are challenge motes to make it harder. Is this an ANet version of easy/hard mode for raids? If so, will the people demanding easy mode be satisfied?

Not really. As it has been mentioned, they aren’t really all that easier, except for the upper tier of raiders. I don’t see any significant difference between Cairn and VG, for example, except for the fact that VG’s mechanics are far more clearly marked (while half of Cairn’s are plain invisible to me).

There is no easy mode needed.

Rednik.3809:

Miellyn.6847:

Ghostcrawler also said LFR was his worst mistake during WoW.
The quarterly report has nothing to do with raids, the gemshop didn’t had many interesting items since months.

He forgot to mention that WoW already had 4 raid difficulties before LFR, and his real worst mistake was in total failure of balance system during MoP, which was so kitten up that they had to cut and remake almost everything in next expansion.

No he didn’t forget that, none of those allowed you to ignore almost all mechanics and let you still win.

Oldirtbeard.9834:

OriOri.8724:

Oldirtbeard.9834:

Crystal Reid.2481:

In the past year and a half, the overall skill level of the Guild Wars raiding community has risen at a staggering pace. Naturally, content will seem easier now as players continue to refine their theorycrafting and personal skill.

Our goal is not to make content easier, but rather add an additional layer of difficulty onto the challenge motes where it makes sense.

Thanks for giving the filthy casuals a bone, not like we spend lots of money on frivolous cosmetics or anything, or used to spend money I should say.

Oh calm down already will you.

I will not, roughly 5 years ago Ghostcrawler wrote a blog Heroics Are Hard on the WoW forums where he talked at us regarding their development philosophy regarding end game content, apparently we must have had an effect with Blizzard despite their dogma because by the end of that expansion cycle they introduced Looking For Raid or as ANet might call in Story Mode Raid ( you know once they come to their senses or NCSOFT throws a dictate at them after the next Quarterly Report).

Can we stop comparing WoW with GW2? Two completly different games.
WoW is raid centric, most of the content after expansion release are raids, story progresses through raids, gear threadmill.
The story of GW2 progresses through LS and raids give additional information at best.

Ghostcrawler also said LFR was his worst mistake during WoW.
The quarterly report has nothing to do with raids, the gemshop didn’t had many interesting items since months.

Blaeys.3102:

Miellyn.6847:

Blaeys.3102:

Miellyn.6847:

Blaeys.3102:

Miellyn.6847:

The thing that actually changed in the last 8 years is the mindset of players, that they have to see everything.

I’m not sure that people wanting to experience interesting content with friends – in a way that they find fun and that fits with their playstyle – is new to the game.

Yes thats why ArenaNet creates different content for different playstyles. Unlike WoW where everyone gets the same content and difficulties are necessery.

They are actually needed here more than they are in WoW, where gear and level treadmills (which will hopefully never show up in GW2) solve the accessibility issue across the board.

Atleast Wing 1 and 2 have been completed within the enrage timers. So you are already overgeared if you wear ascended. There are no accessibility issues. Or do we need an mindest equip-level to enter raids now as you need in WoW and restrict people from seeing the content?

There are definitely accessibility issues and ignoring them is not healthy for the game or the raid game mode.

The bigger issues center around the disparity between the accepted min/maxed comps and builds, but it extends to playstyle and the gear grind issues.

A simple story or training mode mote similar to the challenge motes currently implemented would address these issues nicely – as well as open up raids as a potential storytelling tool that can be integrated into the rest of the game. To not do so at this point is either one of three things on the part of the raid developers – apathy (which I have a hard time believing), shortsightedness (only seeing as far as the raid fanboys and ignoring the bigger issues) or a simple lack of leadership/direction.

The only barriers are reaching lvl 80 and finding like-minded people. There are no accessibility problems. There are many teaching guilds out there, that bring new people into the content.

Changing the stat scaling will just destroy PvP. There is no gear grind, accessoires have many sources in fractals, the new maps, laurels and guild commendations. You can change stats on armor and weapons and it is accoundbound. Many builds use the same stats/runes.
There is no minimum equipment-level like WoW that restricts you from entering.

The story is supposed to be playable solo, that’s the reason arah story mode got changed from a 5-man dungeon to a solo dungeon.
If raids become a major storytelling tool you focus more on raids, something most casuals actually don’t want and we would atleast need three modes. Solo, easy, normal.

The motes only add 1-2 mechanics. There is no health/damage/ability scaling that you would want in an easy mode. They are not in any form comparable.

You say there are people that want to discover interesting content with their own playstyle and you want to force people into group content to experience the story.
There is no lack of direction, they know what they want. It just doesn’t align with your vision of raids and storytelling and your vision with major story parts in raids is just worse than the actual implementation.

Blaeys.3102:

Miellyn.6847:

Blaeys.3102:

Miellyn.6847:

The thing that actually changed in the last 8 years is the mindset of players, that they have to see everything.

I’m not sure that people wanting to experience interesting content with friends – in a way that they find fun and that fits with their playstyle – is new to the game.

Yes thats why ArenaNet creates different content for different playstyles. Unlike WoW where everyone gets the same content and difficulties are necessery.

They are actually needed here more than they are in WoW, where gear and level treadmills (which will hopefully never show up in GW2) solve the accessibility issue across the board.

Atleast Wing 1 and 2 have been completed within the enrage timers. So you are already overgeared if you wear ascended. There are no accessibility issues. Or do we need an minimum equipment to enter raids now as you need in WoW and restrict people from seeing the content at all if you don’t want to gather equipment?

Blaeys.3102:

Miellyn.6847:

The thing that actually changed in the last 8 years is the mindset of players, that they have to see everything.

I’m not sure that people wanting to experience interesting content with friends – in a way that they find fun and that fits with their playstyle – is new to the game.

Yes thats why ArenaNet creates different content for different playstyles. Unlike WoW where everyone gets the same content and difficulties are necessery.

Crystal Reid.2481:

Our goal is not to make content easier, but rather add an additional layer of difficulty onto the challenge motes where it makes sense.

There you go.
And when they want to add a hard mode with challenge mote they think the actual difficulty is fine and doesn’t need an easy mode.

Blaeys.3102:

Miellyn.6847:

You still dance around the question how it should work without massivly increasing the devolopment cycle for raids or slowing down other content.

I can point to a feature that pretty much disproves the myth that adding this would significantly increase development time – challenge motes.

If it is possible to add challenge motes to every encounter in the new wing and still get the content out on schedule, then the idea of a story mote (or mode) should be possible as well.

They only add 1 or 2 mechanics. No damage, health, mechanic, enrage timer scaling. And there is a dev post in the Bastion of Penitent thread that says, that challenge motes are not intended to act like easy/hard mode.

Walhalla.5473:

Azoqu.8917:

My group that actually killed this boss consisted of the following: 2 mesmers, 1 druid, 2 condi ps, 2 rangers, 3 necros. I will say we killed him 10s into enrage and that this mechanic is the dumbest thing I have ever seen. We only really got through it by using epi when Rigom was just dying so that we could get some actual ticks of damage on Guldhem. I personally think this is super dumb and should be changed. There is no reason you should be 100% barred from doing the fight with physical damage.

Whats funny with this is that Anet planned Karrde from Sabetha Fight, to be only vurnerable to conditions but decided against it since it would be no fun to make an Enemy immune to physical damage. Instead they did something clever. Karrde gets more condi damage than normal and power damage is well… normal.

Don’t know why Anet now decided to go for this route.

Sabetha is a terrible comparison. As Karde is the only real NPC during this phase.

VG fits better, red guardian is basically immun to normal damage. Normal damage still helps to kill Rigom faster.

Walhalla.5473:

I think there is somethign missing with the Guldhem and Rigom Part, like even after killing Rigom over and over does not make Guldhem vurnerable to Power Damage.

He has a buff that states he is only vulnerable to condition damage, seems like working as intended.

Blaeys.3102:

Miellyn.6847:

Blaeys.3102:

LFR did not kill raids in WoW. I stopped playing the game years ago, but my friends who still do tell me that raids are more popular there than ever – and that is thanks in big part to the flex raiding system they implemented (which is needed in this game).

They are popular because the content patches features mostly raids and almost nothing for open world except 1 or 2 patches that feature open world but no raid. Also they are needed to progress the main story unlike GW2 and WoW is a raid game in general. Two completly different systems.
LFR is also automatic matchmaking which contributes to it’s popularity. Something that can’t be achieved in the current GW2 systems.

Flex raiding only exists for the 3 lower difficulties, not for mythic. GW2 raids are intended as the most challenging content (which would be mythic in WoW terms), which can’t be achieved with scaling as you can abuse some scaling breakpoints on abilities.

The fact that mythic – which is intended to be the most challenge – exists alongside flex raiding, LFR and the lower difficulty levels clearly shows that it is possible to have both challenge and accessible instances without detracting from either experience.

With a much bigger team. The raid team in GW2 is very small.
Between Stronghold of the Faithful and Bastion of the Penitent were 8 months. You still dance around the question how it should work without massivly increasing the devolopment cycle for raids or slowing down other content.