Guild Wars 2

Please tell me how spending hours crafting thousands of Elder Wood at a crafting station is “high effort”?

Most of the effort in crafting a Legendary is in World Completion and now Gift of Battle. And also a ton of gold. Now I wouldn’t mind a system that would reduce the gold involved considerably in exchange for more specific gameplay, but it is a system of Legendary items that are already in the game.

That’s precisely another reason why your preposition is absolutely impossible to implement. How do you subjectively balance players and their interests across all content? You don’t, you cannot do it, not for a game with as many niche interests as Guild Wars 2.

No, you can’t. And yet ANet does try to provide a balance of rewards across multiple modes, and where they miss, they usually try to correct it. I fully expect them to err on the side of caution, making the “easy mode” route to the rewards considerably less efficient than the current methods, and maybe if that proves too much, they could even scale it back a bit.

They can’t make it perfect, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t do it at all.

Yet they cope with doing either content, or ignore it all together. Who knows? They might change their minds months down the line to get what they want, choice matters here. There’s a certain freedom when you get to decide what you really want compared to what you have to do for it.

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here, because it sounds like you agree with me completely, which seems out of character. But yes, players should be able to choose which activities they want to do, and not have those activities decided for them by the type of reward they’re looking for.

Everyone can get what they want- Please understand that just because a reward is behind something you may not enjoy or want to do, it does not exclude them from the reward.

It excludes them from a positive choice in the matter. If a reward is locked behind a single type of content, and you love that content, then great, win/win for you! But if it’s locked behind content that you hate doing, or cannot do at all, then you’re stuck in the position of either doing it anyway to get the reward, in which case you hate the experience, become more disgruntled with the game, but eventually get that thing you wanted, OR you abandon the thing you wanted, have fun playing elsewhere in the game, but still pine after that item you wanted to get. When the choice is between “win/lose” or “lose/win,” there really is no good solution, just the “least worst” solution.

That shouldn’t be the case.

There should be win/wins for everyone, where they can both pursue the reward they more desire AND enjoy the experience of earning it. Some methods would be more efficient than others, and taking the alternate path would mean taking the longer one, but you’d get there eventually, and it’s better to spend twice as long on a path you enjoy than half as long on a path that you hate.

Give me a scenario where players won’t go for the path of least resistance to get their rewards.

Have you ever been to a modern building in which the entrance is several feet off the ground? It might have a flight of stairs leading up to that entrance, but it almost certainly also has an alternative. Likely that would be a winding ramp that covers ten times the distance, but at a shallow angle. In some cases it might be an elevator, but it would have a wait time or require you to go to another side of the building. Legally almost all buildings require SOME sort of wheelchair accessibility. And yet most people would choose to take the short flight of stairs, over the long ramp, because they’re comfortable enough with the stairs and therefore it’s shorter for them, even though the ramp is, strictly speaking, easier, especially for people who are uncomfortable with the stairs.

WvW operates on a different balance of rewards than the rest of the game,

And yet, those rewards APPLY to the rest of the game. There’s no less need for WvW rewards to be balanced against open world PvE and raids than for raid rewards to be balanced with open world PvE and a hypothetical easy mode raid. The only case in this game’s history in which one mode’s rewards did not have to be balanced with any other was the launch version of PvP, where no rewards translated between PvP and other aspects of the game. If you never wanted to PvP, there was no reason to chase rewards there, because you could never use them in any mode outside that one you don’t like. When they opened PvP rewards to the larger game, they ruined that element, and now PvP also much be balanced with all other modes.

And so you agree that instances of great reward for low effort/time are bad? Excellent! We can keep the format where you can get a massive reward like Envoy Legendary Armor, behind a massive effort and time like Raids.

Nobody is saying that it should be removed form there, just that there should be other paths that also take massive time and effort to achieve the same goal.

To be honest, it just seems disingenuous. Where’s your passion regarding the exclusive LS rewards? Or literally every game mode.

It’s been this way since release.

This is the issue I choose to spend my limited time on right now. That is my right. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe that other areas need change, but this is the area I choose to focus on until we see some progress. Once this issue is solved, I might have more time to devote to other areas.

Only when the balance of reward = time/effort is achieved.

That’s all subjective though. Some people in this thread have indicated that NO amount of time or effort spent outside of raids could ever amount to even ten seconds spent inside raids, because raids are just that much more special than anything else in the game. Others have been somewhat more reasonable in indicating it should only take a few decades for someone to get Legendary armor via any alternate method.

Obviously alternatives should be balanced for time and effort, and I’ve never suggested otherwise, but we do have to use reasonable standards of what IS balanced time and effort, and not rely on raiders alone to decide how very important raiding is compared to everything else. It’s a bit like trying to discuss the “relative pain” of child birth verses any other kind of pain, you just can’t win that argument, but it doesn’t mean that there aren’t some reasonable positions to take in there.

or request an alternative but equal reward elsewhere.

This is an argument I really have trouble with, because there’s no such thing as “alternative but equal reward.” Rewards are not fungible. You cannot say that Honor of the Waves armor is “alternative but equal to” Ascalon armor, even though they’re mathematically balanced and theoretically on the same tier of content. If someone wants to look like a Viking bear, the Ascalon armor is worthless to them. If someone wants to look like a gala ball performer, then HotW armor is worthless to them. You can’t say one is “equivalent” to the other, since that is an entirely subjective position.

You could line up a dozen armor sets in the game, some dungeon, some hardcore achievement based, some crafted, some vendor trash, and ask ten people to rank them from best to worst, and each of those lists will be in a different order, in some cases with best and worst in opposite positions.

So you can’t say "well, Raiders will get Envoy armor, and ONLY raiders can get it, but that’s ok, because open world PvE can get the “Sunspear” armor, and it’s just as good. Well Sunspear might be good in its own way, and some people will probably like it even better, but there will also be plenty of people who would still prefer to have one or more pieces of the Envoy armor, and those people won’t feel any better about having the option of Sunspear armor instead.

You need to be able to get the skin that you want, not the skin you’re assigned.

Not to mention that crafting Legendary quality armor for every possible game type would take a lot more work, and a LOT more time, so players would likely end up waiting 5+ years for the first set to be added to their favored gametype at the current rate of production, and it should go without saying that this is unreasonable.

The socialist reward style of gaming is just an opinion, not factually any better or worse.

I believe that it results in the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and that nobody should want anything less than that.

Re rewards: I’ll just point out, again, that all game modes have exclusive rewards.

Really only deserves one sentence at this point.

And I’ll just point out again, that no game modes should.

He doesn’t care, he/she/it only wants the rewards he feels he can’t get normally. Never have I seen him actually advocate on getting alternate methods of acquisition for all Legendary rewards.

Then you haven’t been in the right threads, but I do pick the battles I choose to fight, just as someone might give money to one charity, without that meaning that he believes that all other charities are not worth supporting.

Easier Raids will make them not Raids, since the intent/design/concept/implementation of raids in Gw2 is to be the Hardest PvE content there is, so easier mode will make them not Raids which will not increase raid accessibility, but having introductory encounters at the beginning of each Raid wing would increase raid accessibility with out diminishing what raids are and would give a very solid stepping stone into Raid content and they can attempt the higher difficulty encounters once they feel confident enough, good Thing Anet is looking to implement that solution.

No, that wouldn’t work at all. Some players might do the “more accessible” first encounter of the wing, but that would not make them any better at the later ones. I mean, you could run Escort hundreds of times and still not be better at Xera. They have completely different mechanics.

And you mean like all the incentives forcing players to do Open World Pve to acquire the majority of valuable items in game that can’t be had in any other content?

Again, two wrongs don’t make a right. If you don’t want to have to do open world PvE to earn something you have your eye on, push for it to be available elsewhere, I will support you in that, but the existence of that state does not justify Envoy armor being locked behind raiding.

I have yet to see you or others advocate to get all Legendary Incentives implemented in all game modes, only that you want them easily acccesible to you in easy Pve gamemodes.

Then you haven’t been looking.

I feel like if you want the equivalent of infantile mode for raids, it wouldn’t really help with accessibility. It would be a one and done — people would go in just to see the encounter.

Nobody’s looking for Infantile mode. If we’re using SAB as an example, raids are Tribulation mode, full of pointless OHKOs. We’re looking for something more like Normal mode, something where a random pug of compeltely inexperienced players can get through it, but you do actually have to pay a reasonable amount of attention to what you’re doing.

And if you wanted a mode that actually attempted to train players, and provided balanced rewards, you may as well make a new raid. New content > repeated content.

Again, for all the discussion of how we don’t know how long anything takes, it is impossible for an easy mode of existing raid wings to be harder to produce than an entirely new raid wing of equivalent scope. For all those complaining that easy mode will slow development of your precious next raid, adding an entirely new “easy raid” that is not using the assets of the existing one would set back not only that next raid wing, but like LW content by considerably longer, and don’t even pretend you believe otherwise.

New content is better than repeated content, but repeated content is easier to make, and just as good for players who cannot experience it in its existing form.

If it was so easy, why do fractals take forever to come out?

Fractals are exactly the sort of “new easy raid” you were talking about, each new Fractal involves creating new assets and designing new encounter scenarios, and all tuned to be very challenging at a high level, and all that does take time. We’ve yet to see an example of them taking a Fractal 100-class fight, fully completed, and then scaling that back to be a Fractal 20 encounter, which would be the equivalent of what we’re talking about here. That process should be considerably faster than their usual Fractal process.

Before discussing if Envoy Armor should get an alternative method of acquisition, wouldn’t it better if the topic was about getting everything through alternative methods of acquisition?

That’s a topic worth having, but it’s not what’s being discussed right now. Envoy armor is the element relevant to the topic at hand, and if there is any confusion about my stance, I’m happy to further explain myself, even when I inexplicably have to re-explain my position dozens of times to the same people, and they act incredulous each time.

In that raiding time, do you include training, gearing, mastering the content too? Do you add the time required for some players of the community to create guides for said content? Or you just say it will be the path of least resistance because a Raider can get the entire first part of the legendary armor collection in one evening, clearing all wings.
Do you use the time an average player will require to get the reward, or the best of the best raid runners?

Yes, I would include all that time. Keep in mind, it only took about a month or less for each wing to be figured out, and even if they implemented an easier option tomorrow, it would be a year after the raid started. I would fully expect any alternative to 1. not even start until at least a month or more after the “official” method starts, 2. to have some hard time gates that would make it impossible to complete in less than a given amount of time, and 3. solid gameplay gates that would require a significant investment of player effort, just in a different part of the game than the default method.

Of course there are those who are impossible to please on that count, who would thik that any amount of time would be “too short,” or any amount of effort would be “too easy” to ever be worth “their” rewards, but satisfying those players is not the point.

I still haven’t killed Matthias, one year after they released Salvation Pass. I admit I haven’t tried much, was too busy killing the other bosses, but still. In that easy mode, how many times (so how many weeks because you’ll always kill him) would it take to get all the collection achievement rewards from Mat?

You have to try to win. I’m afraid no system could ever be balanced around "I can’t be bothered to beat this boss, but I don’t want you to get the reward until I do. I’m flexible on the specific details on how each element unlocks, so long as the combined total is within reason. I’m sure that there are some players who would have an easier time completing the task via easy mode, and that’s fine, that’s part of the point, but for most serious raiders, who are willing an able to make an earnest attempt at completing the raid on hard mode, they should find that their path is much quicker and more straight forward than the easy mode.

Ideally you’d even be able to mix and match efforts, so if one particular boss is proving to be a huge stumbling block, you would be able to beat all the other bosses on hard, but complete that bosses’ requirements on easy, allowing you to complete the entire thing. It’s like of like an issue with the Legendary Precursors, that I did the first stage of the Chumpa and Kumquat quest, and that was a lot of fun, but then the middle bit is just “dump a FORTUNE in gold on the problem,” and then there’s a bunch more questing which sounded fun, but I didn’t want to dump hundreds of gold on it when I really didn’t like the bow in the first place, I just wanted to run the quests. If you have content that most players don’t do because insane barriers are put in their way, that’s a huge waste of development resources, which is probably why they scrapped the Precursor questing in the first place.

If some player is looking at raids and thinks “I can handle most of those bosses, but 2-3 of them would be a serious pain, and without them I can’t get what I want out of it, so I’ll just not bother at all,” wouldn’t it improve hard mode raid accessibility if he could still run the ones he was good at?

It IS the most important thing for a thread which is about that very topic…

Everything is holistic to the game. You cannot consider one feature in isolation, you have to consider it about the game as a whole. If I were to start a thread about making Envoy Armor available from World Completion on the Living World board, and someone came in arguing that this shouldn’t be done because they should remain exclusive to raids, do you believe it would be fair for me to attempt to silence that line of thinking because “we aren’t talking about raids in this thread?”

If you talk about one system, you also have to be open to discussing how that system impacts those around it. If we’re going to be discussing how to make raids available, we also need to discuss if raids should be more available, and why people want them to be more available. Perhaps people’s ultimate goals could be met through other means.

I’m fine with those other options not existing. As an example, now the best path to gold is AB multi loot, before that it was SW chest farm, I’d be fine with neither ever existing. We’ve all seen what the path of least resistance can do, enjoyment has absolutely nothing to do with it, it’s all about getting something the easy way.

But the path of least resistance would be raiding, these would be alternatives which would take longer.

Hmm you are talking about a population of players that are mostly casual. I tell you what is going to happen if you extend the farming too much: nobody would ever complete it because most of them will just look at the release of other items dropped in the game and decide to go for these items because in the end a legendary armor is just another skin to acquire in regard to what the game is about.

Fair enough. If they spend six months working towards the Envoy armor and then decide to give up to go after some other shiny, that’s their choice and it hurts no one, but that would mean that it kept them occupied for those six months while they were still on the chase, which is better than nothing, and at least some people would stick with it and get the skins they want.

Anyway Anet also needs to also be very cautious about what ingredients and currencies need to be farmed just to make sure that it doesn’t break the balance of the economy

The gold economy is already a fiasco, but I would not recommend adding any tradable commodities to the alternative earning methods. It should all be from achievements and account bound items.

I really don’t see them delaying other content just to make sure that a very optional armor that is no way required needs to be dropped in game to everyone at the expense of breaking the economy in the game.

Neither do I, but none of that relates to what we were discussing.

It is never a good thing to take away incentives from doing any content by placing them in an easier method to acquire them.

No, it often is a good thing, when those incentives would otherwise lead a player to do something he does not enjoy. You don’t like that, but it does not stop it from being true nonetheless.

Then why change the system if you provide a “solution” that is not better than what we currently have ?

You wouldn’t, but instead I present a system that’s better than what we already have, which is why they should implement it.

And when everyone can choose the path of least resistance, all complainers will go up in arms to forums, screaming “there is no content, there is a lack on rewards, there is no endgame, they need to hire more developers to add more rewards, blablabla….”

No. Nothing would change for the worse for most players. They can’t get Legendary Armor now because it’s locked behind content that won’t do, this would allow them to do it. Having items that they cannot reasonable progress toward is of no more value than already owning the item, and at least already owning the item gives you a toy to play with.

Nobody is talking about just handing anything out. The alternative paths should be designed to take up MORE of the player’s time than earning them through whatever the existing means are, the existing methods should ALWAYS be the shortest possible path. So if anything, this would add MORE player investment than the current options, because any goals they’ve previously abandoned as being eternally out of reach, they would now have a long and time consuming path towards actually achieving it.

Ohoni.6057:

I answered your other question several posts ago, but you ignored my answers

Where is it?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/A-Suggestion-For-Raids/6415323

How is adding the legendary armor in a pvp/wvw reward track going to help with raid accessibility?

It’s not, but raid accessibility is not the most important thing in the game, player enjoyment is. If a player would more enjoy earning Legendary Armor through PvP or WvW than through raiding, then that’s where he should be earning it, and that is completely irrelevant to raid accessibility.

Now you answer mine, why do you believe that adding easier raids might "reduce Raid Accessibility,” if not for the fact that some people would choose to play easier raids instead of the current ones, if given the opportunity?

It’s called path of least resistance, you can look it up.

So you agree that if players were given more options, some would choose to not raid rather than to raid. And yet you seem to be fine with those other options not existing.

I’m still waiting for an answer, how is adding more acquisition options going to increase the raid accessibility?

I answered your other question several posts ago, but you ignored my answers, and I’m more interested in following this discussion because it’s very illuminating about the raider psychology here.

Now you answer mine, why do you believe that adding easier raids might "reduce Raid Accessibility,” if not for the fact that some people would choose to play easier raids instead of the current ones, if given the opportunity?

Mate, that is only your opinion….In fact many players already do that (you know the fact that " He should be allowed to move to a part of the game that he enjoys without being locked out any cool rewards") since rewards locked behind a content already exist since the beginning of the game.

Just because something exists in the game doesn’t mean that it’s the best way to go. My point is that players shouldn’t have to play content that they don’t enjoy just because they want a specific reward OR abandon a reward they want because the content it’s locked behind is too annoying to stand. Nobody benefits from forcing that choice on anyone.

I really don’t see how any Anet can make sure that everyone has access to everything by taking into account all preferences and all levels of exeperience of all players without trivializing their content so much to the point that no one will care about the content.

It doesn’t have to take into account every possible player, just every player of THEIR game. If a player can already actively complete most content in the game, then that’s a fair baseline right there. If a player can complete no real content in the game, then obviously the game is just not for him and he should find something else, but if a player can complete most of the available content, then clearly the game as a whole is within his wheelhouse, and so any activity within it should be able to be compared to any other.

Just as different parts of the game offer amounts of loot relative to the challenge/effort required to complete them, this standard could be applied to ANY item. and no, it would not be perfect, because nothing is, but the current system isn’t perfect either, so “perfect” is not on the table.

No that’s not what we are talking about, I do not consider people as fodder to make LFG easier for me nor I “do not value them as human beings”, that’s something YOU came up with.

Then why do you believe that adding easier raids might "reduce Raid Accessibility,” if not for the fact that some people would choose to play easier raids instead of the current ones, if given the opportunity?

I answered your other question several posts ago, but you ignored my answers, and I’m more interested in following this discussion because it’s very illuminating about the raider psychology here.

The question still stands, how is adding the same rewards on other types of content going to increase raid accessibility? I don’t see how that will be done in any way or form. If you don’t like the reduced accessibility part make “no effect on raid accessibility”. Is it better now?

No, we’re not talking about that now. We’re talking about how you consider other people to be more important as fodder to make LFG easier for you than you value their lives as human beings. You acknowledge that if they were genuinely given a fair option in the process, many of them would opt out of raiding, and yet you’re comfortable with that. Justify that position and then we can get back to discussing accessibility.

That’s not my stance at all and in reality it is the exact opposite of what you are saying.

“And further, how is allowing the raid rewards to be acquired from other types of content going to help with Raid Accessibility? Wouldn’t that reduce Raid Accessibility?”

None of that changes the stance you have taken, that other people belong to you, and exist to make it easier for you to find raid groups, regardless of what would make them happy or be healthy for the game.

Because of that “and” in your sentence.

Exactly.

No I mean it as “it will have no effect on raid accessibility whatsoever”, I didn’t say it will reduce it, but it won’t increase it in any way.

I actually directly quoted you, sir. You said “And further, how is allowing the raid rewards to be acquired from other types of content going to help with Raid Accessibility? *Wouldn’t that reduce Raid Accessibility?”*

So what is your answer then? Do you believe that players should be raiding even if they don’t enjoy it, solely because they want the rewards? Why do you believe you are entitled to their help in filling out your raid party?

People have called me “entitled” because I feel like I should have more convenient access to certain rewards in the game, but at least I’m only talking about polygons and pixels. You guys seem to think that you’re entitled to actual human beings when they would make your own life more convenient.

On the topic of Raid Accessibility, how is multiple modes of raids going to increase accessibility? When I say Accessibility, I mean for the CURRENT Raids, so how is an easy mode version going to increase accessibility for the normal version?

One, it is not particularly important that it raise accessibility to the current raids. The point is that people who want to “do some raiding” and have some difficulty with the current set-up, would have an alternative that they are more comfortable with. Easier raids would, themselves, be more accessible, and that’s a plenty worthwhile goal in and of itself.

Second, with that said, having easier versions of the raids would help to ease people into the harder ones, and after players master the techniques from the easier ones, they would have an easier time getting into the harder ones, so that’s how it would increase accessibility for the harder.

I agree with Torolan here, those asking for an easier mode for Raids won’t suddenly like the content itself.

If they are asking for an easier raid, they will enjoy an easier raid. Otherwise why would they be asking? I’ve explained why I will never enjoy the raids as they currently are, I do not enjoy failure, I do not consider it a “learning experience,” and will never play a mode where I’m expected to fail for hours on end before eventually succeeding. But an easier raid that offers similar gameplay with lower risk of total collapse, that I would enjoy, and would play. And that’s the point, adding new content that people would play, mostly using available assets.

So it won’t do much (if at all) to help with Raid Accessibility, players will do it once, or twice, see the story/content and move on.

That really depends on the reward structure. If it’s the often insisted “it should offer NO loot, because I hate the idea of easy mode raids and hate the people who want them,” then yeah, people would do them once or twice and move on, and it would never be worth making.

I’m on the record as saying that full raid rewards, at a drastically reduced quantity, would be a fair reward system for all involved, and that’s what I favor, and if they were to offer that, plenty of people would play it as often as the rewards were provided.

But if that’s entirely off the table, I think the minimum reward that they could provide would be something comparable to dungeons of equivalent length and difficulty. You’d get maybe some rares and exotics, some gold, some materials, whatever, enough that people who run dungeons or Fractals today would look at the payout of the easy raid, look at the difficulty and likely time investment of running it, and go “yeah, that seems fair,” and work it into their daily or weekly rotation as something to do with their time.

And further, how is allowing the raid rewards to be acquired from other types of content going to help with Raid Accessibility? Wouldn’t that reduce Raid Accessibility?

If you mean “currently there are people playing raids today who are only doing so because they are chasing rewards, and would really rather be doing something else?” Then yeah, those players would likely move on, and that would make it harder to find a hard mode raid group, but guess what? Those players do not belong to you. They do not owe your their time, they do not owe it to you to make it easier for you to find a raid group. If they’d rather be doing something other than raiding, then they SHOULD be doing something other than raiding. That’s good for them, and it’s good for ANet, since a happy player is one less likely to burn out. The only people who should be raiding are those players that enjoy doing it, and if you want players who don’t want to be there, simply because it would make your life easier, then that would make you a horrible person. I think we all hope to be better than that.

Again…..WROOONG. No game will ever grow if they never put incentives( i.e. rewards) for players to participate in the different contents they develop.

Again, you can lead a horse to water, but you shouldn’t hold his head under until he drinks. They can offer unique incentives to get players to show up at new content and give it a shot, but these rewards should be “door busters,” something you can get relatively quickly. Anything that takes hours of time or extreme levels of skill to earn, you should be able to get through multiple paths so that you can enjoy the experience. Yes, they want to get the dedicated PvE player to give PvP a shot, but if that player does give PvP a fair shot and decides that it’s definitely not for him, then they have no interest in keeping him there anyway. He should be allowed to move to a part of the game that he enjoys, without being locked out of any cool rewards.

If people don’t like the prospect of raiding because they know they don’t enjoy it then they simply don’t play the content. It is as simple as that.

No, it’s not as simple as that, and never can be so long as “don’t play the content” means “don’t get to experience that story at all,” and “never get that reward, even if you’d really enjoy it.” You can’t eat your cake and have it too, you can’t have BOTH reclusive content and rewards tied to a gameplay mechanic AND claim that people can freely choose to “just not do it if they don’t like it.” The two concepts are mutually exclusive.

I generally agree with the OP. I like the idea of reward tokens rather than pure RNG, and I enjoy engaging fights, but not so much “hardcore” fights. I like fights where there are lots of unique mechanics to do, but where the balance is that the best teams can complete it quickly, while the bad teams can take 15-30 minutes more, but the only teams that fail completely are those that pay zero attention to what’s going on.

A couple years back I wanted to see them take a second pass at Tequatl. Remove the cannons and replace them with an infinite crate of bazookas with the same effect. You could theoretically have everyone using them, but the damage would be very low, so nobody would. The benefit though is that instead of relying on having one reliable player on each cannon, other players could pick up the slack if the minimal three artillery guys fell short.

Maybe the crate of bazookas would need to be guarded like the cannons are, and you’ve have to grab a new one after a few shots, just to keep people on their toes.

But overall, yes, I do like the idea of rewarding players for playing smart, for engaging the content.

WROOONG…I would say. All we need is this: people who like to raids should have some raid updates, people who like to go fractals should have some updates on fractals and people who like open world should have some living story and/or living event updates. So far this is have been getting recently and I can’t see how they can perform better than that, given that they also need to support PVP and wvw as well. There is your diversity. No more and no less than that.

That’s all well and good, so long as they stop providing incentive for players who don’t like one or more of those play type to play the type they don’t enjoy. So long as they continue to put rewards and scenarios that people might enjoy behind only one type of content the “to each their own and that’s fine” argument just does not apply.

But getting back on track and away from food thoughts, I find it highly toxic for the game to be against the diversity of content and challenge.

Agreed, so they should have both easy and hard versions of the raid to increase the amount of diverse content and challenge.

I want a Focus, l but only as a melee weapon. Thieves, first original class with a melee staff, first class with a melee focus.

I never said I disagreed with the balance changes; my opinion on them is irrelevant. I’m also pretty aware as to why balance changes happen. (At least I know as much as most players do) I was pointing out the consequences to them since they can affect the experience of players that raid pretty heavily and some suggestions into softening the blow of some of these negative experiences; that’s it. I’m not saying, “Don’t nerf stuff!” or “The balance devs are dumb for changing my class!” or “Revert Slick Shoes and Signet of Inspiration!”

I think I understand your point. The changes to Slick Shoes were not “PvE nerfs” they were “stop using them to break Gorseval” nerfs, they were made for raids, and I think you understand that. But I think the point you’re making is that if a player raids frequently, and has invested heavily into building an Engineer for the purpose of using that move, and learned how to play that way, then that nerf, however justified from an overall balance perspective, puts an immediate stop to his fun until he can manage to figure out an alternative build that works for his talents and resources.

And that’s a perfectly fair and important point.

They should have better tools in place to allow players to change course, taking a fully geared and ready Slickshoes Engi and turning those resources into something that fits the new meta. You shouldn’t have to lay out any significant amount of cash to recover from a balance change, they were the ones that changed things, the cost should be on them to allow you to adapt.

And they should have more flexible build options, so that a Slickshoes Engi would have minimal tweaks to approach the new meta, rather than becoming completely worthless and requiring you to start over with a different class and role, without falling too far short of the meta. Sure, people will say “you don’t have to play meta,” but if you’re not playing something that’s at least close to the best meta option then you’re being a drag on the team, and no responsible player wants that. The solution has to involve more options that are within spitting distance of optimal.

And it might be helpful to announce changes well in advance, so that over a week or two players can pretend those tactics no longer work before they actually don’t work, and devise strategies around them, so that when the changes go live, they’ll be ready with the right build and can hop back in immediately.

But not all players have the same opinion on what B should equal. I think B=0 for easy mode raids as easy mode raids should serve as training wheels for raids as they are now.

Right, but again, just because you believe that, doesn’t mean that’s the stance they should go with. If the overall opinion of the players in general is that, say, dungeon difficulty is a reasonable level for B>0, then that’s the will that should win out, even if some disagree.

They could say that easy mode raids give no legendary reward progress and there would be a portion happy with that decision and a portion unhappy with that decision. And they could say that it gives X% progress and a portion would be happy and a portion would be unhappy. Stop making comments that put all players into your category, because I can point to a number of posts in a number of threads by a number of players who do not fit your category. I’m one of them and this is one of those posts.

I’m certainly not arguing that all players fit into my category, and I can’t even say with any certainty that most players fit into my category, although I personally believe this to be the case. I’m just pointing out that whichever category IS the majority position, that’s the one that should win out, and ANet has better methods available to them than we do to determine what the true value is, to which I believe you agree.

In my opinion it is advantageous for ANET to give players incentives get out of their comfort zone and try other parts of the game. One of those incentives may be exclusive rewards.

Yeah, and I understand the idea of getting people to go outside their comfort zones, but they also need to respect when players go outside their comfort zones, but then go “you know, this isn’t for me, I’d like off now,” and allow them to do so without abandoning any long term goals. They want to keep players playing some part of the game, but they don’t have any reason for players to continue playing a portion they aren’t enjoying.

So with that in mind, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to have rewards that are 100% exclusive to a given mode, so long as they are buried shallowly, something that any reasonable player can earn within an hour or two or earnest attempting of the content. Nothing that requires significant skill at it, nothing that requires a massive investment of time.

The example I give to this is that there is the whole The Ascension achievement, the entire chain of which takes dozens of hours of PvP, and if you want it in any reasonable amount of time, you need relatively decent skills (or someone to carry you). But one of the steps is that you need to get the Recruit Wings, and to get them, you only need to complete Tier 1, which any player can do (since there’s no backsliding), and it should only take a couple hours or less.

My proposal would be that it would be reasonable to say that the ONLY place to get the Recruit’s Wings, and thus a necessary component to the Ascension, should be through that path, forcing all players who wanted the goal to play at least that much. The rest of the recipe, however, the other three base wings, the various other tokens and trinkets, there should be ways to earn these from WvW, or PvE methods. The alternatives should be balanced to take more time and equivalent player skill, if you enjoy PvP then the PvP route should be the clear and easy method of earning the wings, but if you really don’t enjoy PvP, then getting into Emerald once is all you’d ever need to do of it, and then you’d be allowed to complete the set elsewhere.

That’s how I believe all loot should function, “try this thing, but never feel compelled to stick around if the gameplay doesn’t interest you.” As pertains directly to raids, I think there could be a reward that absolutely requires you to at least attempt the VG for a good hour or two, but once that’s done, success or failure, you should be able to leave raids forever if that’s your choice, without abandoning any particular reward goals.

And as for players getting bored of the existing content, I still do open world PvP 99% of the time I spend in game, never WvW, only PvP when I need to knock out a daily, and I’ve been playing for three years now. It’s still fun, and if I got tired of it, I could do other things. The nice thing about flexible rewards is that you don’t have to stick around anywhere. Forcing players to engage in content that they don’t enjoy isn’t going to keep them around longer, it’s just going to burn them out faster, but giving them plenty of opportunities to go after their goals allows them to move from content to content however they like.

Based on my life experiences, I believe more competition is always better, but I can understand some may disagree. With competition needs to come a more mature audience who embraces competition and doesn’t belittle those who “lose” at that given time

I’m just not a competitive person. I am a cooperative person. I hate head-to-head, even in things that I’m good at, I prefer to support a team or go it alone. I really really wish that Overwatch had a campaign mode, for example. I think that there is certainly a place for competitive people, but I don’t see why that should need to come with special rewards. I think that people who beat an easy boss in a particularly creative or over-the-top way can be more impressive than people beating a much harder boss as intended, even if the former offers no special reward for that achievement.

The biggest issue I have with raiding is that the experience of raiders is at the mercy of PvE balance changes. Here are some of the most noteworthy nerfs that have affected raid balance:

I’m fairly certain that many, if not most of these changes were made because of raids, and it’s the non-raiding PvE public that are at their mercy, not the raiders. I think that if they had raid-split nerfs and buffs, only the raids would be experiencing some of these.

I do agree that they could do a better job of allowing players to re-build after balance patches though.

I am one of those people who would do raids even if there were no rewards. For me personally, I enjoy the hours spent failing and learning and researching. To me, that is the real reward, but I understand how not everyone has that same opinion.

See, to me, that is the ONLY opinion that should matter with raiding. I mean, you shouldn’t have to do it completely for free, there should be a level of reward that makes doing it feel justified, but it should never be so much that people would do it when they’d rather be somewhere else. If they’d rather be somewhere else, then that’s where they should be, not raiding for the loot.

And if people say “I love raiding, but I’ll only do it if it offers awesome loot that other people can’t have,” well they don’t love raiding, at least not enough, they just love feeling superior to other players, and I don’t see any reason why those players should be enabled. That just sets a bad example for everyone and creates toxic environments.

As I’ve said, I don’t believe in exclusive rewards, but I do believe in “themed rewards,” like dungeon armor, where the most direct path to earning it is by doing a specific type of content, but where other paths are available if that primary path is completely abhorrent to you. I see it a bit like Disney World merch, where the ideal place to get an Animal Kingdom t-shirt is in Animal Kingdom, but if you can’t get over there, you can still find it in the bigger shops in other parks, and if even that’s off the table, you can usually get them online too, sometimes through a second hand market with a mark-up.

I appreciate your views on the matter though, and respect your right to disagree.

I generally agree with what you say BP, but one thing to keep in mind is that the opinion that matters isn’t technically ANet’s, it’s the players’. I mean, they obviously have the option of going against the wishes of the players, but that’s counterproductive to their goal of maximizing profits. What they would instead want to do is figure out, to the best of their ability, what the players believe B equals, and then build around that. Based on other content in the game, I think it’s fair to say that B can represent effort considerably below the current level of the raids.

Ppl making valid arguments y rewards can’t be same for both ‘hypothetical’ modes. U can’t expect to get ascended that easily, or LI that easily either. U know what it stand for rite? Legendary insight and thers nothing legendary abt beating raid boss on faceroll mode. Pls pls agree with me on this

You can get Legendary Weapons off the trading post. You never even have to leave LA. Most established players could probably pick up 3-4 Legendaries by tomorrow if they felt like blowing their savings. There’s nothing particularly “Legendary” about legendary items in this game, just as most “Exotic” weapons share identical models and are most often used for Forge-mats, more “Rare” weapons are a dime a dozen, and most “masterpiece” weapons couldn’t cut their way through a wet paper bag. Don’t get hung up on the name. And you can get Ascended weapons by farming PvP reward tracks, which doesn’t even require that you be any good at PvP whatsoever. I’ve picked up several Ascended crates that way. You just overvalue what certain things “should” be worth.

There is alrdy very less incentive or drive to do raids, I mean farming tokens but what else?

The quantity of reward you get should be fair. If you spend an hour raiding, you should feel that what you get is worth as much or more than what you could get spending an hour playing elsewhere in the game. If they haven’t managed that, then that’s what they need to fix. But there’s no reason for those rewards to be unique to raiding.

If you do not feel that a fair reward is incentive enough to raid, then you shouldn’t be raiding, and that’s a perfectly acceptable choice. The only people who should be raiding are those players who find the experience of raiding to be the most fun thing they could be doing at that time. The reward should not be the reason for choosing to raid if you otherwise wouldn’t do it, the reward should only be fair compensation for your time spent raiding, so that even though you love raiding, you wouldn’t feel that your time was “wasted” when you could have been doing something else more rewarding. That is the balance point, that people will choose to do the things they would be doing if there were no reward at all.

Who cares abt legendary armor anyway? You said it urself I believe.. u can make like 10 ascended armor sets instead of wasting time on legendary armor. I don’t even care for it, and I’m raiding. Why should u, unless u just want the shiny cos it’s shiny? I want shinies too u know, but they cost too much

I care about the armor, not because it’s Legendary, but because I think it looks interesting. Parts of it, at least, and the other weights likely will too. As I’ve said, I personally would be totally fine if I could just earn the skin elsewhere, the actual purple gear I couldn’t care less about. I keep my Ascension stored in my shared inventory just in case someone needs a better backpack (I’ve skinned it with Mad Memories in case someone needs a torch), but I’ve applied the skins to several of my characters’ wings. That’s the important part.

And if you don’t care, that’s fine too, nobody says you have to care, but if you don’t care about getting it, then why do you seem to care that I don’t get it? That doesn’t seem right.

That last is big no no. Ok, compromise: 1 legendary insight to equal 10 beginner’s insight.. double click to combine or smthin. Do u agree? Shake hands if so

It might be. It depends on the total system. If the easy mode is on weekly lockout, so that the max you could get is 1/9th of an insight per week, then it would take over three years to earn enough for one set of armor (out of three, and by then there would likely be other things to work towards). And that’s after they implement it, meaning it would be at least four years after anyone else gets it. That seems a bit silly.

Now, if the easy mode raids each don’t take that long to clear, and you could clear each of them once per day or something, for a total of 6-ish per week, and that’s IF you run all nine bosses seven days a week, then you could get 150 LI in only six months, which is about two months longer than it would take on hard mode, and they would need a lot less completions to do it (and a roughly 1-year head start).

That could perhaps be fair. Or something in the middle of those two options, like maybe you only need 5 mini-LI to make one regular LI, but they are slightly slower to farm. The important thing is to balance out the time and effort well.

Our job is to play or not play the game. Everything else is equally not our job, it is a privilege.

If there are areas of the game that we feel could be improved for our benefit, and the benefit of others, then it’s important to let them know that. If you don’t tell them what you want, then they can’t know, and there’s no advantage to them leaving money on the table. What they do with that information is up to them.

I’d rather a 3month delay in LS3 for easy mode raid than a 1week delay of the next raid wing

Fair enough, and it would be up to them to decide which features are more important to more players. I think that they would automatically assume that raiders would prefer raids to come out as quickly as possible, and that open world players would prefer that open world content come out as quickly as possible, so I don’t think that telling them this would really add new information to the pool, however.

Would that same audience be okay with sacrificing one piece of content that is intended for them (I.e. LS3) for another piece of content they want (I.e. easy mode raids). That is the most fair IMO. Otherwise you are just asking to sacrifice content other people enjoy for your own benefit.

But that sort of assumes that both groups would be considered equal. But consider it like this instead, what if 80% of the population were serious raiders, and only 20% participated in new living world maps. Wouldn’t you agree that in such a situation, it would be in the game’s overall best interests to get the raids out quickly to satisfy 80 people out of one hundred, rather than getting the living world content out to satisfy only twenty out of that hundred? We don’t know the relative populations, but ANet does, and can judge accordingly which change would cause the greatest increase in the overall player satisfaction.

Like why ppl who do daily t4s never ever go back to do t1s unless they’re rly bored? Why going back in tiers once u acclimated to t4s makes u feel like it way too ez and not fun, and then u have to get used to t4 all over again whn u go back?

I don’t see what that would have to do with anything. This is not a feature targeted towards people who already enjoy the current raids. They already have the version they want, and if they see no reason to ever run the easy mode, then that’s totally fine. They don’t need it. It’s there for people who don’t want to run the harder version, or that might want to eventually, but don’t feel ready for it yet and have no interest in fruitless “training runs.”

My direct answer is that if T4 players don’t want to go back and play T1 content, then that’s great, they should never have to, but at least the T1 content is there for players who aren’t T4, and perhaps never will be.

Also y don’t u want ez mode for arah too? That hard stuff also and ppl still ragequit for no reason

I never had difficulty with Arah, so that’s not an issue I personally care about, but if someone else does care about that, I’m not about to tell them that their concerns don’t matter. Again, there’s no reason why I should have to argue on every possible issue just because I choose to argue on some. You have to pick your battles.

Nice to see how u dodge and evade arguments.. fact is u do bring up raid rewards a lot.

Ok, find an example. Find one quote from me (and please cite page number) in which I address the rewards in a post that is not directly in response to someone else addressing rewards.

Then u say something like ‘dont talk abt raid rewards pls, I’m trying to keep this on topic’.

I also don’t do that, what I actually said was that in response to the “ohoni only cares about the rewards” stuff, that I try to avoid going off topic. If you want to go off topic, it’s not my place to bother you about it.

Frankly I would be very, very strongly opposed to easy mode raids if it in any way compromised the regular pacing that they’ve achieved with Living Story episodes so far.

I’m sure they can juggle how much time a feature would take and what impact it would have on other elements of the game, and decide accordingly whether the costs would be justified.

I would be okay with that so long as the resources came from the ANET teams matches the intended audience for the easy mode, the more casual audience. If they were to take people from the LS3 team and have them work on easy mode raids that could work. Raid team keeps up status quo of content pacing and easy mode raids are made at the expense of LS3. Only ANET knows what kind of expense that would be.

And again, we have no idea how much time this would take, which developers would be needed, or what projects it would keep them from doing. That’s not our job. Our job is to make the case for features we want to see, it’s their job to figure out how to manage that process, and whether it’s worth the associated costs.

So you will repeat the same thing even when someone gives you new arguments until it is implemented? Just wow.

I address each new argument as it comes, but most of what I hear are the same old “raiders deserve pretty things and you don’t” line of “reasoning.”

Then why care only about the Raid rewards?

I don’t only care about raid rewards. I care about a great many things. I’m only discussing raids here because unlike some people, I’m trying to stay on topic.

You ARE hiding. You are not staying on the topic when you are talking about long term goal accessibility.

Again, I only comment on it when someone else brings it up.

I’m saying that the same principles apply to all other types of content, you want to apply the different “idea” only in Raids.

Nope.

So your problem is with long term goal accessibility and it’s irrelevant to the Raid discussion.

Again, I care about a lot of things, but it’s relevant to the raid discussion in so far as raids have one of the longest term goals in the game locked behind them, and I do not think it is healthy for the game for them to do so. Keep in mind, I was not the one who raised the topic of rewards, my comments on the matter have been in direct response to others who said things like “well if you get easy mode, it can’t have good rewards,” or “you don’t care about easy mode, you only cares about the rewards,” or similar things. If you have a problem with rewards being discussed in this thread, your problem is with them.

They’ve also not said how easy it would be to impliment either. That’s the whole point of the response by Gaile: You do not know, so stop pretending that you do. Even her opinion, which is far more informed than yours, is being dismissed off-hand by you.

Right, but you guys are pretending too, pretending that you know that it would take an unreasonable amount of time to implement. So long as you guys insist that it can’t be done because it would pull too many resources away from other “more important” areas of the game, I’ll continue to insist that this is unlikely.

I never said we don’t need introduction encounter/easier bosses. But we don’t need them in every wing.
VG is actually fine and fun even after many runs, but the siege event gets pretty boring after 3-4 runs.
You have to be careful how you design an introduction encounter and who many you actually want.

Wouldn’t it be nice if instead of having an introductory encounter that hardcore raiders would quickly get bored with, they could just have all hardcore raider-style encounters, but with easier modes for players to use as an introduction? That way, the hardcore raiders would never have to play those modes and could just have fun doing the version they like, while everyone else would have a version they could enjoy too!

It’s the other way around. How many times are you going to repeat the same thing without coming up with something new?

Until it’s implemented, or something of equal value.

There is already more than enough common reward between activities, there are only a few exclusive rewards around and if you take a hint, most content types already have exclusive rewards and that won’t change, ever. For example:

Quantity is entirely irrelevant. Rewards are not fungible. If there are ten possible wings, and one of them you love, and the other nine you mostly hate, then it does not matter if they make the other nine super easy to get, if the one that you actually want is locked behind an unreasonable barrier, then that is an issue. If all uniques were visually identical, if the only difference between Envoy Armor and stock Ascended armor was that the Envoy armor had slightly higher stats, then I could understand if they said that Envoy armor was restricted to only certain players. Who cares? Or if the raids were identical to other content in form and function, but just with tuned up difficulty, that would be fine.

But that’s not how they designed it. It is perfectly reasonable, in the current system, for players to want things that are locked behind systems that they cannot enjoy, and in such circumstances, it’s perfectly reasonable for them to fight for access to those things.

Can I get the new Glacial Gauntlets without finishing the meta achievement? No.
Can I get Koda’s Warmth Enrichment without doing the Koda’s Blessing achievement? No.

And two wrongs do not make a right.

Provide a valid reason why Legendary Armor should be available in multiple types of content, and those above LS rewards should not.

I would never. There’s absolutely no reason why those LS rewards should not be available elsewhere. Obviously they are thematically tied to the LS, so that should be the first and most straightforward way of earning them, but if those methods are found to be onerous by portions of the community then obviously they should provide alternate methods of earning them.

Of course from a practical standpoint, Any player who would be capable of earning Envoy armor would also be capable of earning both of those items in about 1% of the time and effort, while the opposite is certainly not the case, so in terms of balance, it just doesn’t add up.

This is going off topic, this is a thread about Raid accessibility (and more specifically tiers in Raids) not long term goal flexibility. If your goal as you state, was to make everything available through any type of content, then you’d go and directly say it, and ask for that, not hide it inside a thread about the accessibility of Raids. Stop hiding.

I’m not “hiding,” I’m always straight forward in what I believ,e but you are the one seeking to wander off the path towards other rewards, while I’ve at least tried to stay on the topic of raids unless directly asked to do otherwise. When have I ever brought up non-raid rewards except in direct response to a “but what about X reward on Y mode?” request? Ask me a question and I’ll give you an honest answer, but don’t then turn around and accuse me of wandering.

It is not his goal to make everything available everywhere. Only things he likes at areas he wants to play. The rest doesn’t matter.

Factually inaccurate.

There was a comment on reddit, that implementing a different difficulty is the same amount of work as implenenting a new map as the different difficulty is in fact a different map with different mobs. They just look the same.

I would be interested in a link for that. I suspect that perhaps their idea of “different difficulty” is more in line with Fractal changes, which can be significant, while what I’m looking for would be much more modest.

So you don’t want tiered difficulty?

I don’t want Fractals, and despite your infinite protestations, Fractals and raids have differences in content. It’s like I tell you I enjoy Community, and you tell me “well you’d like A Different World, it’s basically the same show.” No, there are obviously similarities, but there are also differences, and it’s perfectly reasonable to enjoy one without enjoying the others. Now, can you please stop accusing me of lying to your face and just accept that the things I am telling you about my own opinions are in fact what I believe?

Wanting a mode where mechanics don’t matter is not fighting for the raid experience.

It is fighting for the parts that I appreciate of the raid experience, which I fully acknowledge going in are not what you appreciate about the raid experience. If we both enjoyed the same parts of raiding then there would be no point to asking for alternate variations on the theme.

We are actually fighting for a consistent raid release pace and for the already existing raid community.
People are already complaining that the raid release cycle is too long and you want to make it even longer.
People complained that it took so long for LS3 to start. We are not that far away between Wing 3 and the new raid.

Gaile Gray:
I will ask about this, and if we’re prepared to say something official, one of us will do so. But it’s counterproductive to have a discussion head down the path of misinformation and what seems to be a growing error in assumption. With all due respect, unless you’re a developer for GW2 you are not qualified to make a statement about the time needed, difficulty involved, or feasibility of such a feature.

You’re welcome to discuss the situation, and we appreciate that you want to do that. We welcome the conversation! But please participate by sharing what you’d like to see, and why, and don’t be misled by individual, external assumptions about the feasibility or practicality of such a request.

But a game with only easy content will never be better than a game that features hard and easy content.

Totally false. You’re saying that variety in content is always preferable, but there is a value in consistency too. If you have a core audience and you make sure that no part of the game feels “off limits” to them, then that can be superior to having a divided community in which some of the players seem to be offered things that the rest cannot reach.

And the speedrunning community never left, so that part of the players was also always there.

And they can continue to speedrun all they like. They do not need challenging content to do that. You always have the option of setting your own challenges.

You don’t know the rest of the players so you can’t speak for them and you don’t care for the already existing raid community. And you don’t care for gameplay as a mode with mechanics that don’t matter is not the same experience.

Those are not arguments on the merits of the discussion, they are just ad hominem attacks.

I have a feeling you entirely missed my point.

And I have the feeling you don’t know what problems WildStar had at release. Hint: It was not the raid focus as it was advertised in this way.

That would confirm it then.

We have a developer comment on this one also.

Sort of, but not in any way that would be relevant to this particular point. We have the oft-repeated Gaile quote, which is coming not from a systems developer, but from a community relations person. Any knowledge she has of how this process actually works would be second hand, and there’s no indication that she actually discussed this topic with the developers who would be involved in this process to find out specifics. All she was doing was relating her own personal opinion on what she believed to be a similar system in a completely different project, and really I don’t know that what she was thinking of was the same sort of system I was describing or not.

I think that Gaile is great at her job, but we’re discussing a topic that is outside of her job. She did say that she would ask someone who did know how much time and effort this would take and get back to us, but we’re still waiting on that response.

Then we have Crystal’s post, which notes that tiered difficulty was never planned for Raids, but makes no statement as to how much effort it would actually take to produce if they decided to do so.

There are so far no statements out of an ANet gameplay systems developer that convey actual direct responses on how disruptive or difficult implementing easy mode raids as described above would be.

Yes it is relevant. Fractals offer the gameplay you want.

No. they don’t, and that should be obvious. I’d take my word over yours about what I want any day of the week.

Yeah you are not fighting for easy mode raids. You are fighting for your selfish, greedy desire for rewards, not for experiencing the raid.

I’m fighting for both, but you seem to think there would be something wrong about fighting for the rewards. Obviously there is not. Fighting for the rewards would be a perfectly reasonable position to take. The people being selfish and greedy in this discussion are those who already have access to the rewards by playing content they enjoy, and fighting tooth and nail to keep that access exclusive to them. Greed is the dragon sitting on his gold, not the beggar in the street hoping for some food.

And it won’t work. It didn’t work in WoW and it won’t work here. Waste of developer ressources unless you want to turn GW2 into a raid focused game. The raid team still consists of 6 people.

Again, that’s nonsense talk. The core raid team is only 6 people, and can remain at that size, but they have clearly stated on numerous occasions that many other people are involved in the process, building various assets. It’s like saying that a TV show only has the five principle actors involved in its production. And again, we have no evidence to say that the current core raid members could not develop an easy mode version without significant disruption to the existing raid progress, nor do we have any information on how available other members of the staff would be to work on such a project without significantly disrupting other priorities.

Gaile’s advice applies to you as well, don’t speculate that making an easy mode would take too much time and effort to be justified, and I won’t point out how unlikely that is.

No they just didn’t accomplish their goals. It was always the plan that there is harder content for organised groups.

And yet, the game that shipped was the game that shipped, and people liked it, and a massive community built up around that product, whether it was the intended result or not. At a certain point you just have to accept that the product you made may not be what you intended, but turned out better than what you’d intended ever could have been.

Normal mode and easy mode. It’s that simple. There is no hard mode.

“Normal” implies that the difficulty level is consistent with the rest of the game, which is not the case. It’s clearly harder than the baseline of content, hence “hard mode” if we’re going to have multiple modes. If you’re concerned that this would preclude them making even harder modes, they could always have “Nightmare,” “Tribulation,” or “Challenge” modes if they wanted.

No you present the arguments why you need access to those rewards. You don’t care for the game or the community.

Wrong, and rude.

You didn’t destroy a single argument against easy mode raids in the last 8 months.
Infact you are destroying your own idea for an easy mode raid with the focus on rewards.

Also wrong and rude.

I present arguments as to why I believe those preferences are both feasible and good for the game and its population. To be fair though, those presenting opposing views are doing no differently.

This is the best example that he does not participate in “discussions” but rather just tries to exhaust you with his own opinion; it’s very one-sided. It’s pointless to try to disagree with him because you’ll end up hearing the same story over, and over again.

I don’t like having to repeat myself any more than you enjoy hearing it, but I wouldn’t have to if people wouldn’t keep trotting out arguments that I’d already destroyed. If you read what I say and come up with novel responses, then I can come up with novel responses to them, but if you just keep repeating the same talking points, then there’s no point reinventing the wheel when the classics still work.

The basic thing is that you need to provide reasons and incentives to play all types of content and exclusive rewards is the best way, or at the very least adding limited exclusives.

Players should not be encouraged to spend lots of time doing activities that they do not enjoy.

Nobody benefit from that.

You can and should encourage players to try new things, to spend enough time at it to decide whether they enjoy it or not, but after they’ve had time to fairly decide whether they enjoy it or not, you should respect their choices and allow them to leave without penalty if that’s their choice.

Long term goals should be more flexible, so that people that like activity A can do that as much as they want and feel like their time is fairly rewarded, while players who prefer activity B can do that instead.

An interesting factor about exclusive rewards is how the PVP Ascension backpiece will be acquired in the future. We still don’t know how, I’d wait and see that first because What they do to the Ascension might also give us hints to future developments on other Legendary pieces like the Armor.

True, but that doesn’t mean there’s any reason to postpone discussion of it in the present, because the longer we wait to provide feedback, the longer it would take for them to act on that feedback. I don’t want a solution that involves not being able to get the armor until 2-3 years down the road.

So Wildstar had the focus on open world and everyone missed the point enterly?
Or GW2 was advertised as a dungeon and raid game?
Or is the focus of both completely different and not comparable outside that they are the same genre?

I have a feeling you entirely missed my point.

And you know exactly how the raid wing selection works and what it could do?

I know enough to say that they could do what I described. If you can have a selector that can pick between three different maps, it can be used to pick between three other maps. Even on the off chance that their technique only allows for three total choices in a single menu, they’d only need to create a second menu-spawner, like another door or an NPC that opens a second menu.

Gaile already said it to you 8 months ago and someone posted it in this thread. Stop making assumptions about development ressources.

Only when you stop making assumptions that it will take too much work to be worth it. So long as you try to push the narrative that easy mode raids would be an excessive burden on existing plans, I’ll continue to point out how it really shouldn’t be.

So what do you dislike about fractals and what do raids offer that fractals couldn’t?

It’s not really relevant to this discussion so I won’t continue this line of conversation, but the basic bulletpoint is that I don’t like AR gearing, don’t care as much about the plot as it’s disconnected from mainline Tyria, and none of the available rewards particularly interest me. But again, if anyone wants to fight for Fractals, I won’t fight against them.

Thats the thing. There is no reason for an easy mode unless people want an easy way towards the rewards. So there is no reason at all. We told you this months ago already.
The story is written on paper pieces, that can be read in a cleared instance.

I would suggest you read this thread, it may help you to understand why all of that was wrong: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/A-Suggestion-For-Raids/

No he hasn’t. Guild Wars 2 was never advertised as a game where everyone could see everything or can reach everything easily. It was advertised as an casual game, but that doesn’t mean that everything has to be or can be completed by everyone.

Advertising is irrelevant. They established a certain standard of play over the first three years, they own that standard now, and shouldn’t try to deviate from it.

Quit saying hard mode raiding there is no easy mode raiding so there is no hard mode raiding,

It’s a term used to differentiate the two concepts. You can’t say “would you prefer chocolate ice cream or vanilla” if you insist that vanilla ice cream just be called “ice cream.” It’s a pointless semantic argument to make.

You only complain about things that offer rewards that you like. It is always the same with rampant easy mode raiders. Rewards. Thats why you don’t accept an easy mode without the raid specific rewards.

I’ve said several times in this thread that I would be fine with an easy mode without the raid specific rewards, just that if they went that route, I would continue to push for the raid-specific rewards to be made available in some other content, because I believe that is important two. They are two distinct issues, it just so happens that the simplest solution is to solve both at once, but solving them separately is fine too.

You could play your easy mode to experience the story and the encounters and the normal mode for the rewards.

What part of “the normal mode is not fun for me” are you missing? If easy mode is added without the rewards, and they don’t put the rewards anywhere else, then I would have to run normal mode to get those rewards, and if I were already going to run normal mode, then why would I even need an easy mode? The whole point of easy mode is to avoid normal mode entirely, because plenty of players have no interest in that experience.

As you also complained about the PvP Backpiece (but not about the fractal backpiece, even if you don’t like fractals either, didn’t you like the appeareance?)

Exactly, I’m not a fan of the Fractal backpiece, so that isn’t my issue, but if it’s someone else’s issue, I’m not going to try and shut them up as you try to get me to shut up. If someone else really wants the Fractal backpiece elsewhere, then I fully support them in pursuing that goal, that doesn’t mean that it needs to be my goal.

This is like that old thing where if someone supports a given charity, the petty comeback is "well why don’t you care about [this other charity]? There’s just not enough time in the day to fight for everything at once.

and I say there is more than enough content comfortably within their reach, so some parts being out of their reach isn’t unreasonable.

I would argue the exact opposite. That when you put only some items outside of people’s reach, then if they want those things at all, it will bother them more than if most of the items are out of their reach. I mean, if you’re playing a game and most of the game fails to meet your expectations, like say only a tiny portion of the content is challenging enough for you, then the answer is easy, just find a different game where most of the content is of the sort you enjoy.

But if you enjoy most of the game, and certain portions are out of reach, then that’s much more frustrating, because this is a game that is mostly what you want, and here’s some part that you want but cannot reach. If people come to Dark Souls, they have no right to complain that it’s too hard. If they come to Guild Wars 2, they have no right to complain that it’s too easy, but Dark Souls players should have every right to complain about a certain part that they find lacking in challenge, just as a GW2 player has every right to complain about a certain part that is too inaccessible.

No it won’t. The majority doesn’t care at all. This has been proven multiple times in other games.

If GW2 followed “what has been proven multiple times in other games” then it would have been Wildstar.

What if I want a hard mode because I find the LS easy? Do I get it?

If enough people want that, then yes, you should. I don’t think the audience is there for it in the same way it exists for an easier raid mode though. We can’t argue over numbers, that’s for ANet to determine, I’m just telling you why I believe it’s not a priority for them. If that audience does exist though, then sure, they should make a harder LS.

The raids don’t support multiple difficulties right now. They would have to rewrite the complete raid structure.

No, they wouldn’t.

The current raids already support being able to select three different wings from a list. All this would need, at most basic implementation, is to add three more wings to that list, “Salvation Pass (easy mode),” for example. No complete engineering needed for that. The infrastructure is already in place, they just need to apply it.

That is not a reasonable effort to delay content for people who are not the target audience.

Again, it depends entirely on how many those people are, verses how many other people they stand to bring in, and depends on how much time it would actually take, and by whom. Most of these values are unknowable to us. Your stance is “any amount of effort is too much,” but that is wrong. There is an appropriate amount of effort that would be worth spending on this, it’s just impossible for us to calculate based on so many unknown variables. The best we could hope for is a loose Fermi calculation.

So you don’t like the only content in the game that offers multiple difficulties and want to change other content to offer multiple difficulties? Yeah that sounds resonable.

It is, because player interest is a very alchemical process. Players like what they like, and dislike what they dislike, even if they are very similar things.

The voice of the community is speaking again I see. You do know that there is new content coming for those who want it and get tired of other options.

Sure, and there’s more content coming for those who like hard mode raiding too. That’s a different topic entirely. Here we’re talking about how to make raids accessible to a larger audience.

good summarize for all your posts

there are many people loving raids as they are, without tiered difficulties.

I’m aware, and they’re just fine. This isn’t about them, this is about the other people. That’s why those players don’t need to approve of this, this is not about them, they’re fine with what they already have.

maybe you should accept that you’re not the only person on this planet and that not everyone has to like what you like.

That’s actually my point here, but at least you’re on the right track.

you claim “everything for everyone” which is wrong on so many levels.
you know, different people like different things. so there are many different parts in this game.

Again, that’s 100% my point. The raids in their current form aren’t for everyone, never will be, and never should be. But an easier option will widen the total audience of raids considerably. Those who don’t need it, don’t see the point, never have to touch it.

The majority doesn’t even care about raids.

The majority doesn’t care about raids in their current form because they understand going in that they will never enjoy the core elements that you enjoy, like extreme difficulty and “wipe until you make it” progression. But if you make the raid content balanced against the other content in the game, more along the lines of what players experience elsewhere, the audience grows considerably.

The best experience for both parties is content diversity and not the same thing in 4 difficulties.

Again, “content diversity” only helps those that can enjoy all of it. If you have two completely different encounters, one easy, one hard, then most players can only ever enjoy the easier one, if that. On the other hand, if you have two different encounters, both hard, but both with an easier version available, then the hard players get two unique encounters AND the easy players get two unique encounters, and some players might even enjoy all four.

If you add difficulties to everything, everything takes longer and in the end everyone is displeased.

Again, “everything takes longer” is just a meaningless blanket statement. We have no idea how much time it would add, or what ways around that they might have. We can agree that if it causes new raid production to halt entirely for months and months, that it isn’t worth pursuing, but if your insistence is that ANY delay is unacceptable, then I’m sorry, you’re wrong, because this would be of benefit to the game, and so long as the delays added are reasonable, it would be well worth the cost to more players than would be bothered by it. A hundred players who could enjoy the new version would trump fifty players who enjoyed the old version and wouldn’t want to wait a few extra weeks to satisfy the rest.

Funny how you aren’t complaining about the new fractal. Players playing the challenge mode get to see other content than lvl 25 players.

People keep bringing this up, “why aren’t you complaining about this entirely different thing?” That’s a pointless argument. I complain about the stuff I feel motivated to complain about, you don’t need to complain about everything to be able to complain about things that matter to you. Raids matter to me, Fractals less so. I’m not entirely satisfied with how Fractals are working at the moment, but I don’t owe it to anyone to spend my time addressing that topic unless I feel like doing so, and I do not. I’m addressing this topic, so if you want to participate in this thread, you do so as well.

There is always the option to improve your gameplay to beat the other encounters. GW2 doesn’t have a gear treatmill, they want player skill progression instead.

By and large, the players don’t agree. They just want “no progression.” They want new content to be available when they get tired of existing options, but they want it to be all comfortably within their reach. That is the community this game supports, whether you appreciate that or not.

Completely wrong. The raid team is aware that not everyone likes raids and that they are producing niche content. They develop the content for the target audience, not for everyone.

But int the quote on page one they were suggesting offering more “easier encounters” at the beginning of a raid, to “ease people into them,” which indicates that they do at least understand a need to make raids more accessible in some way. They seem to want to be better. My point was, the method they determined to accomplish that goal is not the best possible path to actually accomplishing it, because they are still targeting more or less at the people who already like the raids as they are, rather than looking at it from the perspective of the customers still on the sidelines who will never enjoy the current type of raid but could very much enjoy a more compromise option.

But it is wrong. You need to change the loot table, new items for your partial rewards, rebalacing the numbers, changes to the mechanics, bug fixes. Thats an amount of work that reaches easily the ressources for a new encounter.

It may approach the resources for a new encounter, but would never come close to reaching it. Whatever resources it would take to fully implement an easy mode version of an existing encounter, a completely unique easy mode encounter would require every single one of those resources, PLUS new modeling, new encounter mechanics, a new setting, and possible things like audio, dialog, lore hooks, etc. Again: “It’s impossible to judge exactly how much time an easy mode would take, except that it would be less than a totally new encounter of equivalent complexity.”

How do I access the other 6 wings I’m not aware off?

Sorry, misspoke, I was referring to the 9 total raid encounters available.

The casual players have the same 3 wings than the other players. Casual doesn’t mean bad.
You don’t need to clear all wings every week. You can only clear one wing and another one the next week. They are small.

Point successfully missed.

There is no ‘least intrusive’ way. Everything that delays future raid wings to cater to people that are not even the target audience is unacceptable.

And you wonder why I don’t put much effort into compromise? “Anything that would cost me even a half second would be unacceptable.” No, I’m sorry, that’s just wrong. This is a game in which the vast majority do not raid on a regular basis, by any reasonable evidence. There is a vast population of players who ARE valid customers of this game, yet who are left out by the existing raiding systems. It is in ANet’s best interests to appeal to those customers, even if it means some minor inconvenience to the current raiding population, and I’m sorry if you cannot accept that.

They should not completely ruin raids for the existing populations, or bring progress to a crashing halt, but I believe that they can balance the two in a way that raiders shouldn’t mind too much, while providing the non-raiders with a better overall experience.

The variant with starter bosses/events like Wing 3 is much better. People can see the raid and can try to improve to beat the other bosses.

Being able to only do the first bit is pointless when you can’t do the rest. That’s like the argument that Dungeons are a suitable alternative to doing the raids for people who feel left out by the raids. Players need to be able to clear the raid, start to finish, and without the sort of failure-grind that hardcore raiders lionize.

@Ohoni, you’re not clear enough about whom you think you’re talking about. The people wanting easier raid so that they can’t expérience the story at an easier pace, the people wanting to train for normal raids, or the people wanting easier raid rewards because they don’t want to Put the same effort as others ?

There are a lot of people who would benefit to varying degrees.

People wanting a story mode to experience the story at an easier pace would get what they want.

People wanting to train for normal raids would benefit. Yes, some of those people are already being served via “training runs” on the existing raids, and that’s great, they’re covered, but others just cannot abide the “you’ll fail tonight after three hours of work, but after a few more nights of this, maybe you’ll get something for your trouble!” philosophy. Some players have trouble focusing and learning new things when their adrenaline is spiked by a high cost of failure.

For players like this, the easy mode, properly implemented, would provide an alternative training method, one that they would find helpful in overcoming their difficulties in the raid, even if you would find this worthless to you. Again, you are not the target audience for this feature, so your own experiences are of limited value.

For people who want “easier rewards,” as you put it, it’s not about effort, they will be putting in just as much effort as anyone, but it would be in a version that they can enjoy, one with less OHKOs, less stress, over a longer period of time and number of iterations. Again, it has nothing to do with “less effort,” that won’t be on the table, but it would provide them a way that they could apply their effort in a way that is less painful or inconvenient to them.

Because, for 1, there is almost no story in raid ( even if I could understand that for lore lover, they still want to know it by themselves…)

Your opinion, not relevant.

2: people wanting to train for normal raid are already doing it, and plenty of initiatives are taken by exp raiders to help them

Some are, many aren’t.

3: Sorry, can’t do nothing for this kind of selfish player, but I’m sure there are only few of them

Doubtful.

Ohoni, you’re entitled to your opinion, but you need to stop spreading misinformation, especially with regards to something you were explicitly advised about. (Link)

“It’s impossible to judge exactly how much time an easy mode would take, except that it would be less than a totally new encounter of equivalent complexity.”

It is impossible for that statement to be anything less than 100% accurate.

Don’t forget with 2 loot tables (easier xera would loot almost nothing after all)

Sure, but what benefit is more loot tables? Better to keep everything concentrated. Now if you mean that hardcore raiders could get in less total successful runs in a week, that’s true enough, but they already have nine raid wings to run, while more casual players have zero.

Look, the goal is not to produce something that would cost current raiders nothing, or that current raiders would agree is a great idea. That’s impossible. The goal is to produce the best possible solution for BOTH current raiders AND more casual players that find the existing raids impenetrable. It will by its vary nature be a compromise, which means that it WILL be worse for hardcore raiders than the current path, but ideally it will be worse in the least intrusive method possible while still accomplishing the goal of adding an alternative for the other players.

I’m sorry but “as someone who already raids a lot, I would not like this as much” is not a compelling reason to reject a proposal, when the goal is to expand the total audience to larger than the existing base.

He leads and is successfully, don’t forget that. It’s sad that you are so narrow minded that you can’t see when you’re wrong. You’ve raided 6 hours and you prétend to know better than exp raid training leaders what is working and what is not working in raid…

He knows what works for him, he knows what works for people who are like him, for people who like raids the way they are. Those players have already been taken care of, they are not a factor in this discussion. This discussion is about accounting for the players who are NOT covered by the existing options, and for whom the existing methods of “try until you make it” are not good enough. Thousands of hours of experience as a hardcore raider or training other raiders to be better at raiding is meaningless when you aren’t talking about hardcore raiders at all.

Many other understand that training is about progression with a fight, until the boss is beaten.

and they are already covered, which is why they are irrelevant to this discussion. This discussion is about everyone else.

Going more into opinion zone, I’m not sure how anyone can think less content is better,

You can’t have less content than zero. If the content they do make is unplayably difficult, then from that player’s perspective, zero content has been made. An easy version and a hard version of the same fight is at least one version from their perspective, while just the harder version would be zero.

And remember that it’s NEVER “two versions of the same thing or two completely different encounters.” Yes, there is some trade-off, but not nearly that much. There is no rational argument that it would take the same amount of time to design an easier version of a fight as it would to design a completely different encounter from the ground up. It’s impossible to judge exactly how much time an easy mode would take, except that it would be less than a totally new encounter of equivalent complexity.

So, the more rational discussion would be “would you rather have nine completely unique encounters, two of them being easier than the others, OR six unique encounters, each with both an easy and a hard mode.” And of course the people that already clear all nine encounters would favor the nine encounters version, more content for them is always better for them, but for all the players that feel left out by the existing system, having six playable encounters (and twelve total if they ever get good enough to take on the hard mode versions) would always be better than just two.

And that’s just the worst case scenario. We don’t know for certain that adding an easy mode would result in less raid encounters overall, because they could just support that element using other staffers, rather than splitting the time of the existing staff, so there’s no reason to assume that they couldn’t just release nine hard encounters and nine easy ones, which is just more content overall.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Ohoni raids, at least anytime recently. And I think he wants full access to rewards in an easy mode, just at a slower pace.

I haven’t set foot in one lately, but I did spend about 6+ hours attempting both VG and Gorseval on several occasions, and neither was a satisfying use of my time. I never claimed to be an experienced raider, but I am an experienced Guild Wars 2 player, I know what I want from the game, and I know that the existing raids are failing to meet that standard, and always will until systems change.

Iirc Ohoni says he/she/it buys boss kills…

Never. That is the one thing I would never do. I never buy kills, never buy portals, and avoid buying high value items whenever there is a reasonable alternative. I want to work for whatever I get, I just want a path available that is fun and not meaningless grind.

Again, would you rather have escort and xera, or two versions of xera? The raid developers have adopted the former (and in my opinion better) philosophy.

Again, two versions of Xera. Better that most players get at least one thing for them, than for a small number of players to get two things for them.

Even considering that escort is the worst raid encounter by a large margin I don’t think that many players would agree with your opinion. If you do consider it and change the question to “would you rather have VG and Gorseval or 2x VG” I think that virtually no one would take the latter option.

I think you’d be wrong. Certainly players that can beat both of them would no appreciate having two VGs instead, but for the many more players who haven’t beaten either, having one VG that they can have fun with would be better than having two bosses that are essentially worthless to them.

I have been leading training runs for months – since before wing 2 was even released – and in my experience the exact opposite of this is true. If players are able to play poorly and succeed then they will continue to play poorly because there is no incentive to improve.

It’s sad that someone who carries such a view purports to lead training runs.

Furthermore, getting a boss kill isn’t the only measure of success for a training run.

Yes, it is, and the sooner you guys understand that, the sooner this discussion can move forward. Most players have zero interest in spending hours at something only to not get a prize, which is the entire reason that raids are a niche activity.

If someone doesn’t want to put in that kind of time already they aren’t going to suddenly feel up to it just because they are now able to kill the easy boss with easy mechanics that drops no rewards.

Certainly, but if they kill the easy boss with reduced penalties and get a reasonable reward for the time and effort they put in, then they will be satisfied with their efforts, and when they manage to do relatively impressive things, like correctly avoiding the enemy’s attacks, then they will remember that a a more positive memory than if they tripped and caused the entire party to wipe.

And the developers themselves were just yesterday on Reddit talking about the possibility of adding in challenge motes – which are basically the same as tiered difficulties. Logic dictates that the process could be used to develop a story or training experience using that same methodology.

Yes. It is easier to build a balanced encounter and then make it easier to complete, than it is to make an easier encounter and then add a harder mode. The harder you make something, the more precise the tolerances need to be. Making an easier mode is just loosening a few screws.

Ok — if you think the 2x Xera answer is better (or as another poster put it better, 2x VG versus VG and Gor), then we’ll never agree. And, to be clear, the raid devs think having intro raids, like trio and escort (and to an extent VG), is the best answer.

But they are wrong, because they are looking at the problem as raiders who like raids and believe that everyone thinks like they do, rather than looking at it from the perspective of people who don’t like the current raids, and thinking about what they actually want. It’s basically like a bunch of vegetarians sitting around and trying to brainstorm how to prepare meals for non-vegetarians that they will enjoy, but that don’t include any meat. “Well maybe if instead of burgers, we made some burgers out of tofu! That’s basically the same thing!”