Guild Wars 2

Sparks The Rescue.5043:

My first thought was “Thank god I main druid.” I can’t imagine doing it w/out one, or atleast a healing tempest. Last night was my first night I’ve ever had a party whipe on my druid in fractals, and it was in cliffiside. We had some bad RNG w/ the random fractal insta and between the bombs and poison trail it snowballed and GG. Granted, it was first night of the patch so people are still getting familiar w/ the mechanics, but it still hurt inside a little bit.

I for one really welcome this. Now a healer have a role in a place that isnt raid. You shouldnt need a healer for every fractal. But having fews that having a healer is really good is welcomed more diversity. Now i can use my zerk dh. Viper dh and zealot dh deppending which fractal im doing its a move in a good direction.
people that like to play zealot dh or ventari should love this changes as raids normally only want druid or tempest for heals

You can’t use skills that are blink on him because no matter where you are you will get “invalid path” message as he is floating on the lava. So you cant use skills like guardian sword 2 and Judge’s Intervention

Aweosome job with hearths, good set of objectives, love having the option of just farm mobs with each hearth.
Jade armor boss the place to fight him too small.
Good overall map design, way better then BSF.
Nice to have weapons skins on the map as well ascended itens.
Good job with LS story, really liked it.

HoT worth more then its current price. Its gorgeous, with a lot of fun things, and get better and better with each patch.
Saying that you think only worth 15$ is really sad, you should probably go play other games, as you seen the type of person that is entitled and will only complain.

Hesacon.8735:

The 3 silver from finishing them is pretty trivial. They do seem to be vendors for different items, but it’s unclear if it’s a daily rotation or not since buying some things changes the offers.

You can buy 3 logs from each vendor each day after you complete the heart, so its a really good rewards, as you can buy ascended backpiece and ascended acessory with it.

Finally some place where you can go and just kill mobs and nothing else and feel rewarded ( as farming mobs for drops isnt rewarding in GW2, in GW1 it was).
So now if i feel like just aggroing every mob i see and killing it, not worriend about events objectives i can do with the hearts on ember as they have the options of just kill mobs or do stuff. Hope to see more of it in the future.

Hope you find someone to help you in game.
Its hard to do things ( not only play ) with some kind of serious disability.
But you have to realise that if they catter to people with disability ( which is a really really tiny % of the playerbase ) it will make the game boring for most of the player base, its not viable.

Awesome job A-net !

I know that i will stop going to fractals with my reaper for a long time.
Time to use my zerk DH hammer / viper DH sword on the dailies.
Hammer DH now without boonthieves (perma prot and no retal ) and with lower toughness will be really welcome in groups instead of kicked.

coso.9173:

any build being efficient doesn’t mean the content is trivial, each build should still require a high amount of efficienty and skill, you should have to know how to bring the best of your build. no matter which one you should, that’s the point.
raids should be for skilled people, but not require a specific build for each class. simple as that.

But it is for skilled players as proven over and over again, look at the slowest mathias kill with only healers, or 10 guardian or 10 reapers .
But i guess you just prefer to ignore proven facts and just press that button “Meta is the devil”. And a lot of players think they are skilled because they are not playing meta. But when they go to VG and dont stop missing greens and wipe “I failied because i refuse to sell my soul to the meta devil”.

coso.9173:

that’s precisely my point. there should not be one or two best builds if we have 10 or more available for each class. it takes away a lot from diversity. Builds should be reworked in a way that more of them are closely effective. instead of how it is now.

If any build is efficient it just means the content is trivial, as you cant fail.

Raids are the only place that have build diversity as a lot of builds have a role, raids finally gave the same feeling when you got a new build and finish UW on GW1.

The people that refuse to use meta, are the normally one that if they fail the encounter they will never blame their own build, because that build is good in their mind. So they will make everyone waste hours on a boss and get nothing ( sometime not even MS as they take to little from the boss HP before the wipe ).

Why you need to go with your build, then if it fail you swap to meta? Why not do the other way, go with meta and now that you are experienced you can clearly say if your builds fits the fight/role or not.

Raids are the best content for build variety, let me give my group as an example.

Wing 2: sloth i go as DH with wall of reflect and it traited for more uptime. At trio i change to Condi reaper, because its very durable and epi help killing the many bandits fast. At matthias I change to core necro with plage signet to make the life easier of everyone with condi transfer.
Wing 1: At VG condi reaper without epi because normally i’m the only reaper at the fight ( the other reaper use engi for seekers ), at Gors i use Epi as we go 2 reaper, and the shout with chilling to help hold two spirits alone. At sab i use hammer DH as the party stack on sab so perma protection is nice.
Wing 3: At Scort i use reaper because epi kill the group of mobs really fast, at KC i use Scepter DH because really big damage on burning phase, on Xera i use PS warrior for the comp 4-4-2.

You see i play a lot of builds in raids, and everyone of them have a porpuse. In any other content like fractals you just use the same build forever.

So raids are the best thing in GW2 for build divertsity, but you never played it so you dont know if your build fit the role you will fullfil or not, so you take the meta learn the encounter then you can decide if it fits or not. Or just form a group without anyone use meta and have 0 experience in raid, then come back saying how fun it was to not finish first phase of VG.

Benjamin Arnold.3457:

Astralporing.1957:

Not a dev of course, so can’t say anything about their software or techniques, but from what they said before it’s not that. The real problem lies not in designing 6×2×5 pieces. It lies in matching that pieces to all already existing older armor sets, and making sure there aren’t some glaring connection problems.
(something they obviously didn’t do that well on non-human versions for some of the past armor sets, even for the same-set pieces – see naked belly case on many armors in Norn version, or charr armor in general)

Correct, and making sure it doesn’t clip with certain body types, which can still sometimes be a problem I am not an artist so I’m not sure exactly how difficult this all is, other than what I have been told.

If clipping is so much of trouble, why not make Fractal Costume, as some kind of reward for fractals.
I really like costumes, most people do, the problem with costume is that all is bought with gems only which make it feel nothing rewarding to get it, even if you get with gold.

Blaeys.3102:

cranos.5913:

Blaeys.3102:

I really don’t think that what we have is a sustainable model in this game.

Can I just ask how an easy mode would be sustainable? You would arguably need months more to create both systems. Not only would it set future raids back because they first need to create an easy mode for forsaken thicket, those new raids would also be double the work.

At this point with the crazy power creep in the now utterly broken dungeons and the boon and power build hate in fracs (which we’ve been doing for 4 years now btw), could you rly call a system where we get raids on an even less frequent basis in any way “sustainable”?

In an effort to get this thread back onto the actual topic, let’s backtrack to this post (which is actually really good feedback/reasoning/criticisms with no personal insults or attacks whatsoever).

If they had to make completely different versions of the raid between difficulty levels, I agree that it would take months. However, if they can develop a scaling mechanism that relies more on math than actually changing the mechanics (altering attack/health numbers, changing enrage mechanics, etc), I think the actual time needed to implement tiered difficulty would be very reasonable – and, in the process justify the implementation of difficulties far and above what we have now.

And, of course, rewards would have to scale as well – top end raiders obviously deserve greater reward.

Basically, by ensuring more accessibility, they would no longer have to worry about making them too difficult. This would be a win-win as far as I am concerned. It would address the idea of training, accessibility, making future raids too easy, etc.

And I agree with your thoughts/concerns regarding power creep in dungeons. Dungeons are not in a good place and don’t really work well/offer much of a challenge post-ascended gear. To me, that is yet another example of why a tiered scaling difficulty system is needed for raids long term. It helps alleviate stagnation of raids at both the easier and the harder levels (offering a moving target for ongoing challenge/reward levels).

And, once again – EVERYONE (me included), let’s stop talking about things that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand (and definitely stop with the personally directed comments/insults/etc). This conversation is going to continue – in one way or another – no matter how much some people don’t want it to or try to derail it. Let’s refocus and get back to productive dialogue.

So you are talking again about the scalling system, see what you said about “A child saying i dont wanna listen i dont wanna listen”.
There was proof and people gave example that scalling raids are really bad, you will get the option size for each boss fight. Like 8 for VG, 6 for gors… you will get kicked after a fight because for the next one, less people is better etc…
So unless you have something to bring to the table ( backed with proofs ) stop bringing the same argument that was already taken down.

Jerus.4350:

Blaeys.3102:

NikeEU.7690:

Blaeys.3102:

Now that the “challenging content” is here, it is time to logically expand on that content to create a system that encourages advancement, fits with the other storytelling tools in the game and opens new experiences for players with multiple playstyles and interests.

It already does all of those things. Guess we can close the thread now since the existing raid satisfies your requirements.

Your reply shows exactly why the conversation needs to continue. It is about degrees and the perspective of the player. While you find the system open and meeting the criteria I list, there are others (myself obviously among them) who do not. All of those opinions are important and of value to both the community and Anet.

Debating (calmly and respectfully) where the lines are drawn and if/how they can be improved upon is exactly why the thread should remain open and active.

You’re right, lets debate this. We have raids that are supposed to be challenging, yet they are being done at 40% strength (4 man) how is that reasonable? The raids need to get much harder.

Yes this, lets name the current one easy mode. And have a normal mode and a hard mode. Now Blaeys got what he wanted.

Blaeys.3102:

OnizukaBR.8537:

Ranael.6423:

I played Flex when it got released. It seemed quite good for us as the small guild we were because we could have a roster of 14 people without fearing to exclude people.

Nevertheless, iirc it was not a way to play the raid with less than 10 people but to accommodate between 10 and 30. Not meant to be a training in any kind.
Also there was rapidly a Meta for each boss in the raid based on the number of people because there were different threshold for every boss skill on its intensity (damage) or number of people affected. So it turned out to be Boss 1 should be done with 12, boss 2 with 14, boss 3 with 11….. I think it has been changed as RNG based on number of people by now.
And last but not least, it did not really help to sort out key archetypes, namely tanks and healers because boss mechanics imposed the number of tanks and total number of people the number of healer. Problem was that those two were not the easiest to be found, finding DPS is not hard. We actually had to reject players several times because we had not enough healers for the amount of people who wanted to play.

So Flex did not really bring more people in the raid scene and I would not compare it to any training mode. It had some usefulness for limited roster guilds but it also created new issues we hadn’t before.

Exactly this, a flex system will just create a meta of people by boss. For example VG you will only want to do as 4 people because with 4 people you dont get the green mechanic. For X boss you want exactly Y people because any number will make it harder. And most fight will be cheated with this system as you will avoid mechanics.

So you will exclude a lot of people from groups, as you dont want to reach some threshold with number of party members( as of know even if your group can 7 man VG you will still invite 3 more people because why not?).
With the system we have now for 10 people, as proven you can do with less people its actually a really good system for not let people out.

Unless you significantly reduce the rewards and use it solely for what it is intended – to “preview mechanics” and improve accessibility of raiding to the community.

It would never be intended as a replacement for the current raids.

You want to create the most toxic system ever.
You know what will happen, for VG 8 people are the meta, for gors 6.
Then you pug VG kill it and proced to gors. As gors is for 6 people, 2 people will get kicked. Really fun right?
This thread should be locked just as the other.

Ranael.6423:

I played Flex when it got released. It seemed quite good for us as the small guild we were because we could have a roster of 14 people without fearing to exclude people.

Nevertheless, iirc it was not a way to play the raid with less than 10 people but to accommodate between 10 and 30. Not meant to be a training in any kind.
Also there was rapidly a Meta for each boss in the raid based on the number of people because there were different threshold for every boss skill on its intensity (damage) or number of people affected. So it turned out to be Boss 1 should be done with 12, boss 2 with 14, boss 3 with 11….. I think it has been changed as RNG based on number of people by now.
And last but not least, it did not really help to sort out key archetypes, namely tanks and healers because boss mechanics imposed the number of tanks and total number of people the number of healer. Problem was that those two were not the easiest to be found, finding DPS is not hard. We actually had to reject players several times because we had not enough healers for the amount of people who wanted to play.

So Flex did not really bring more people in the raid scene and I would not compare it to any training mode. It had some usefulness for limited roster guilds but it also created new issues we hadn’t before.

Exactly this, a flex system will just create a meta of people by boss. For example VG you will only want to do as 4 people because with 4 people you dont get the green mechanic. For X boss you want exactly Y people because any number will make it harder. And most fight will be cheated with this system as you will avoid mechanics.

So you will exclude a lot of people from groups, as you dont want to reach some threshold with number of party members( as of know even if your group can 7 man VG you will still invite 3 more people because why not?).
With the system we have now for 10 people, as proven you can do with less people its actually a really good system for not let people out.

Blaeys.3102:

I quit WOW well before Flex raiding was introduced, but my friends still playing that game tell me it is awesome – not so much for pugs (where most of the hate online is coming from – but again, LFR raids are really for pugs there), but definitely for guilds looking to do training or conduct more casual raids with more diverse groups of players.

This is obviously a concept inspired by GW2 in WoW. Seems like it would work very well in GW2.

There are a lot more hate then praise to that system, just search on the forums.
A lot of people complain that it made way worse to make a group for higher difficulty as people got bad habits from the LFR difficulty and think they are playing fine.
So yeah people that dont like end game content are enjoying the LFR difficulty system ( where they can raid and watch netflix at same time ) while the original target audience got worse because of it.

Scipio.3204:

OnizukaBR.8537:

They dont have scalling system based on the number of people, they have 10 man instance and 25 man instance thats it.

http://wow.gamepedia.com/Flexible_Raid

This article must be wrong then.

OnizukaBR.8537:

Now you ask for changes thinking 3 years from now? You want to change something thats working because of your assumption of how it will be from 3 years from now? Thats non sense.

Yeah, because what do you think which is easier, rework 1 year of work or to rework 4? If we reach the point when they need to do the latter, they may consider abandoning raids, which I don’t want

Well i didnt know of the flexible as its not current in the game description ( i’m playing legion ) but after searching for a bit you can find a great number of posts hating the system, as it make it not balanced around any number of player ( actually it just make it a mess );
GW1 didnt have difficulty scale for its end game (FoW , UW….), it IS a bad system for end game. A-Net didnt add difficulty system for dungeons. Only fractal have it because it was the orignal plan.
Raids is working, and will work as people still do FoW and UW on GW1, there wont be need for a rework 4 years from now. So yeah bad idea.

Scipio.3204:

Absurdo.8309:

Why are you making arguments based on WoW if you don’t know the system?

Simple. The topic was gear-grind raid and you failed to make a decent argument , I just used WoW as an example since it is well known.

Absurdo.8309:

I don’t know that much about the WoW raiding system either. I was under the impression that when a new expansion comes out, the level cap increases and there is a new tier of gear.

That is pretty much it, we don’t need to know more than that to make an argument based on it. Also as far as I know they made systems like LFR , scaling instances based on number of people and stuff like that even though the number of available max level raids are always 2-5.

Absurdo.8309:

That won’t happen in Guild wars 2. There’s no rush to experience the content (as it’s meant to be played), because you can always do it.

You mean you can always do it, as long as there are 9 other people who want to do it. This is where the issue is. How hard will it be to find 9 other people or even a guild 1, 2 , 3 years from now on? If you try and spread the playerbase too thin there won’t be enough people to run anything

They dont have scalling system based on the number of people, they have 10 man instance and 25 man instance thats it. They dont scale if you have lets say 9 man.
They do different difficulty so players have gear trendmill to go by. Before that on BC they didnt have it, so the gear trendmill was based on another grind system and because of it the number of people that were raid ready was really low as it took an huge amount of time to be ready to meet the dps check of raids. This is the reason of difficulty scalling.
And a proof that you are wrong is the raid is getting old, and its always getting easier to get a group for it. So in GW2 with time a lot more people getting experienced with raids encounter making it easier to form a group, not harder. So 3 years from now it will probably be really easy to kill VG as that will be a lot of probably OP comps for VG with new specs, and a lot of people will be experienced on Raid type of content.
Now you ask for changes thinking 3 years from now? You want to change something thats working because of your assumption of how it will be from 3 years from now? Thats non sense.

Scipio.3204:

Shortly, I still don’t see touching the rewards as a solution ( As I explained in the previous thread too)

Well without even thinking to much, one thing they could do is just add a weekly reward structure just like Fractals Daily ( Do molten boss, or do May trin would translate to Do Wing X of Raid Y ), many people still do these really old fractals because of the daily, people would do really old raids because of the weekly (as daily rewards for raids would be overwhelming)

Scipio.3204:

Except Legendaries have access to all stat combinations. If you have a full set of legendary, then what?

I don’t think as many people care about item level there as you think. I’ve played WoW between Burning Crusade and Lich King and people still ran old raids. Are mounts not useful? Armor/weapon skins? Perhaps not , but people were intrested in them. I might be wrong but I’ve heard there is some kind of wardrobe system there now making old skins worth a lot more. I bet a lot of people are taking down Illidian now to get that skin for their Demon Hunters.

First not a lot of people will have the legendary armor, because there is a lot of gold involved, and you get very little gold on Raids, then having more than 1 set??
So i bet most of people will still want it. And they can easily add things like sigils/runes bought with Mag Shards, so still a reason to run. So as i said previously, when they want people to play older content they just need to look at rewards, as of now they are in a good place so 0 reason to change it.
Second, people run old raids for mount because they cant get the mounts on the current expansion, as the easier mode dont give any mounts, so they need to wait for the next expansion to release, then they go to older content on the max difficult and solo a content that was done by a 25-man raid ( So all the epic feeling of the raids die right there ).
So, today we have reason to run raids, and in the future? If the current rewards are not enought, A-Net will just change the rewards so people will run it.
Still 0 reason to easier versions of the raid.

Scipio.3204:

Absurdo.8309:

Scipio.3204:

Absurdo.8309:

No gear-treadmill is an argument for single difficulty.

Can you elaborate?

I’ll quote myself (from the same post)

Since there’s no gear treadmill, causal and hardcore raiders are literally on the same level.
Plus, raids only get easier as time passes.
- It’s much easier to learn raids if you’re surrounded by expreienced players
- There’s resources—including guides, guilds, and learning runs—to help new players
- Future elite specs could make the encounter easier
No gear-treadmill is an argument for single difficulty. Players can hop into this content right now, and forever.

Essentially, all content gets easier over time, and there’s no rush to beat the content. You can beat the content 1 year from now and be rewarded with still-useful stuff.

As far as I know WoW just released a new expac with 2 raids. Which of these points can’t be applied to them?

-It will be much easier to do them if you are surrounded by experienced players.
-There’s resources—including guides, guilds, and learning runs—to help new players
-Future updates will make the encounters easier
-You can beat the content 1 year from now and be rewarded with still-useful stuff.

These points you made have nothing to do with having gear-grind or not. If anything, a model without gear-grind requires higher participation rates because no content will ever become obsolete. And considering this even WoW , the most well known gear-grind MMO uses various systems to increase participations.

Experienced players have less reason to run raids after a while as the rewards are iLvl increase, and after they get it there is not much, at GW2 we have ascended box for example where we can choose an really big amount of combinations of stats ( that will increase with new expansion), so you will never have all the ascended stats, so there will be at least this reason to always run raids after getting all the skins.
And in wow future updates make the content easier AND obsolete. In gw 2 with new builds it will be easier AND NOT obsolete.
And finally after 1 year of the raid release, its not usefull stuff anymore as you can get almost equal gear by a lot of other ways.
So GW2 raids and WoW raids have a really big difference because of gear trendmil.

Scipio.3204:

Sykper.6583:

You have only speculated what might happen because other raiding MMOs have had this issue. Other Raiding MMOs had an expiration date on when their raid content becomes obsolete, GW2 does not.

This is a valid point, however considering how raiding works in other MMOs GW2 will have entirely different issues compared to them. Let’s take a look at WoW for example. With every new expansion they release a new set of raids and they try to spread the minority of players intrested in them. Since the number of raids could be considered a constant they don’t need to worry about trying to spread the playerbase too thin.

Right now with every new expansion the old raids become obsolete. If that wasn’t the case and they would raise every raid’s level they ever released to the maximum they would have an insane amount of raids people could run. I doubt even WoW’s raiding population would be enough to support that. Not even half of it.

But this is the case we have in GW2. No matter how many raids we will have in the future it should be expected the old raids to be still runned, because the nature of GW2 doesn’t make them obsolete. The number of raids isn’t a constant here, however the playerbase running them could be. If we don’t make changes to existing raids to make more people intrested at the same time we get new raids , sooner or later the playerbase won’t be able to support the amount if raids we will have.

This isnt the case now as we only have 1 raid. And when it becomes a problem you just solve it by adding rewards/incentives on the older raids for people to run it, it doesnt have nothing to do with easy / training raids.
As seen with dungeons people stopped the moment the rewards become bad (not because they are too old, because they were old and people still runned when got good rewards), if anet wanted people to run dungeons they would change the rewards ( not changing dificult ), the same go for raids.

If you take an difficulty specter Raids on GW2 are probably on the middle pending already to the easier side as proven many times. There is no barrier, there is no reason for difficulty scalling. As said many times you want raids to cather for people that dont give a cent about raids, so with this as the base for your reasons it should never be considered.

Blaeys.3102:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Blaeys.3102:

training and encouraging them to move on to harder content

This is what their fractal rebalance project is trying to do.

There will always be a reticence to jump from fractals to raids because raids define difficulty differently than fractals do (for example, no enrage timers or hard tanking requirements in fractals – among a range of other differences), so, while that system will help people move from Tier 1 to Tier 4 fractals, it doesn’t really apply to raids. They remain two separate game modes played differently.

Fractals are actually a good model for them to emulate in raids (just not the agony part, of course). Tiered content is played at all tiers (as seen in fractals and other games) and can be used to train encourage interest in higher difficulty versions within the same game mode.

Additionally, the change to fractals really doesn’t address the OP’s issue regarding training on specific bosses to learn/experience the mechanics in a stepping stone style of progression.

If you think things like Swamp T4 doesnt prepare people to raids,then easy mode raid will be even worst, it will not prepare people, and will make people create bad habits on raids. T4 hard fractals is the best thing as stepping stone/training, not easier/ignorable easy mode raids mechanics.

So just explain this to me.
Why people that want another mode, be it training or easy mode, are not clearing W3 scort every week?
Scort is easy, no enrage timer, you can go with literally any build, have top rewards ( chance of ascended and MS and LI ) , you dont need to another encounter before it.. hmm… strange.
If people dont do scort why they would do a easier mode VG with worst rewards for example as if they would make an easier VG it would be like scort tops on difficulty ( if not still a little harder )?
You see people that dont raid dont wanna raid, stop wanting to waste resources on a dead end.

You guys pro-easy mode keep bringing the same arguments, thats is proven fail by yourselves, when people say that VG in BSF is that, you say that it dont have the same mechanic ? So lets compare its mechanic lets see.
Blue circles ? Match. Green Circle ? Match. CC VG when he does its aoe attack? Match.
Seekers ? Match. The only thing that it doesnt have is the glowing damage ground.
The difference between the two are the one in BSF does little to no damage and you can ignore most mechanics ( but you still see a lot of people going down ). So this is the easy mode, and you say you dont want it? Make your mind people, you want easy mode but you dont want it when you got it.
In the end of day its crystal clear that you want the current rewards of the raid, not an easy mode. Stop lying to yourself.

Absurdo.8309:

Blaeys.3102:

Absurdo.8309:

I’ll disagree on multiple difficulty modes solving content droughts. It would just take longer to release anything. While it would, in theory, cater to more players, there would be longer gaps between any content being released. I think this was the main complaint — there was no non-raid new content before bloodstone fen.

If raid content had offered something for more playerstyles, then it would have been considered as part of the regular content release schedule my more people. That would have help alleviate the drought concerns.

The inverse is also true – more difficult (very difficult) content in other game modes would reduce the wait for hardcore players as well.

As to your point about fractals – it is about creating common experiences. Yes, people playing T4 cant be in a T1 at the same time, but it does mean that both groups are getting to experience the content (story, base mechanics, setting, etc). That is more important than most want to realize.

Walling off content (even soft walls) removes that commonality. It is no longer the same game played different ways. It is, in essence, two different games. The more we separate players like this, the more polarized the community becomes, which isn’t healthy for the future of the game.

I don’t know about others, but I view common experiences as a negative. If I want to play easy content, I don’t want a watered down version of something I’ve already done. And similarly for hard content.

As to content droughts, well, I don’t know what else to say. Your suggestions would make them even longer. And a hard instance is a far cry from a hard open world map. Each would cater to different types of players.

I think the same. And most people wouldnt touch easy mode raid. For many reasons:
- There are people that dont enjoy raids, be it easy or hard, and thats ok, as there are people that dont like PvP for example, so they wont start raiding because there is an easy mode.
- People think that the raids are full of history and cinematics, when they arrive at it and see that just an arena with a boss with 3-4 attacks, that dont even have really special effects they will be dissapointed ( they attacks are only thrilling because they can kill you not because they have super cool animations, so easy mode they dont have it ).
- Boring content need to have really good rewards, even Bloodstone fen being new if it didnt have the blood ruby for ascended gear most people would do the story, play it for some days and never go back to that map.
They are really solids arguments against easy mode raids. And really weak ones pro easy mode.

I choose the heavy viper as the precursor set because i wanted to play Condi DH on fractals. But even thought i really like it, its way worst that a PS Condi, a PS condi can deal the same damage and give everyone tons of might, Condi guardian will only be good if the next elite esp be a condi one unfortunately

Rednik.3809:

OnizukaBR.8537:

If ANet did really focus on raids by now we would have another one, which we dont, so its a false accusation.

They did tho. You already forgot all these excited raid talks, right in the middle of content drought? That was main reason why people started to complain so much about raids, despite them being pretty good overall.

A-Net choose the model of only one difficulty because they know its the best. Other games tried tired difficulty, but the only ones that enjoy it are the folks that dont enjoy raid at all ( and even then only small amount of them), because easy mode raid isnt a raid, its just a easy dungeon with 5 more people.
Try to find someone who really enjoy LFR mode, its a snore fest, people just use for get better gear and never do it again.
GW2 have the best raid model of present day MMO market, i doubt they will change it.

Care to name successful raiding game with such raid model? If it’s really “the best” and everything.
Also, who is talking about people enjoying easy modes or LFR (though I’m sure that there will be such people, because everyone have different tastes), when we talking about it as vital transition point to transfer people from casual activity to raid environment? It’s like saying that low level fractals will somehow hurt experience for T4 groups.

If T1 had good rewards it would hurt T4. And you want good rewards on easy mode raids ( LI being the good reward, if easy mode dont give LI you guys dont want easy mode) . And the point to transfer to raids, as A-Net already stated will be some of T4 fractals ( not all will be hard ), for example Swamp.

Rednik.3809:

People are not leaving because raids are bad content. People are leaving because Anet made very strong focus on them AND made them targeting very narrow audience. So a lot of people cannot experience raiding without a lot of frustration (multiple difficulty modes, suggestion found long ago? Ha, screw this, better use raid model straight from 2005) AND there is nothing new to do besides them. So, despite being a very good content, raids are pretty much involved in current population drop, just because Anet picked a wrong moment (content drought) and a wrong model (minority of PvE players) to introduce them.

If ANet did really focus on raids by now we would have another one, which we dont, so its a false accusation.
A-Net choose the model of only one difficulty because they know its the best. Other games tried tired difficulty, but the only ones that enjoy it are the folks that dont enjoy raid at all ( and even then only small amount of them), because easy mode raid isnt a raid, its just a easy dungeon with 5 more people.
Try to find someone who really enjoy LFR mode, its a snore fest, people just use for get better gear and never do it again.
GW2 have the best raid model of present day MMO market, i doubt they will change it.

Scipio.3204:

Not that I’m in for an easier mode that gives the same rewards as the current one, but if we do add one and people start running that instead, wouldn’t that mean people don’t enjoy the challenge raids give as much as some claim here and are only in for the rewards?

Nobody want to do things that the rewards are underwhelming, neither things that are really boring but got good rewards.
People seek the middle ground on MMOs, things that are both rewarding and fun.
So you do raids for both, if it was only for rewards fractals are better. So people enjoy challenge and enjoy rewards, is that really hard to understand?

Astralporing.1957:

Vinceman.4572:

And nobody would run mode 2 any more.

Just like noone’s running fractals t4…
Yeah, right.

Yeah because T4 give 1 master chest and T1 fractal give 1/2 master chest right?? No, kitten have really crap rewards, your suggestion Mode 1 give the same reward of Mode 2 just 1 less. So yeah nobody would run mode 2.

SoV.5139:

OnizukaBR.8537:

Not a single piece of GW2 is for everyone. Even open world, not because its difficult, its super easy, and for that reason there a lot of players dislike open world because its boring. So they would need way harder open world content to enjoy it. But they wont get it.
The same way people wont get easy raids ( Well many actually would aggre that we already have easy raids, scort and trio). Every content have a target audience. Good design = having choices of type of content. Bad design = trying to please everyone twisting content of its core porpuse and never pleasing everyone because its impossible.

There is a major fundamental difference between developing the content so <b>all can access it and have a chance to complete it</b>, and letting the players choose to play it or choose not to play it as they wish, versus having tier level content with a barrier to entry not accessible to some players.

This is where variable difficulty settings help developers, as all content can be designed for all players, rather than having to choose which crowd to please at the expense of observing net loss attrition in the others.

I’m talking about accessibility and availability here. The players choose what they want to play, not the designers.

But all can acess raids, and all have a chance to complete it, you choose to do it or not, not the designer. Variable difficult doesnt help developers, its a nightmare for them, because its very hard to say when its easy enough or when its difficult enough, and there are mechanics thats just impossible to make it easier without basically removing then.
So as said milion times:
- There is no wall on the content making impossible to anyone that wants to join.
- Difficulty settings make things a nightmare to develop.
- There will be always people that wont be able to complete, so wasting time making easier raids.

SoV.5139:

Game design 101.

Designing specific sets of content for specific subsets of the user base eventually results in the game being lopsided in specific types of content, and a polarized player base. The player(s) whose play style was not catered to in the past few iterations begin to attrite. Either more casual players end up hitting a barrier to entry for new content and are told repeatedly by hard core players that this is not for them, or the hard core players are wondering where their endgame is while casual players map their way through the expansion.

Looking at raids as content like everything else, and designing them for everyone, disallows this polarization in the community from happening, and allows the dev and design teams to focus on the entire game rather than having to choose between pleasing one crowd over the other. Game retains more customers. We ALL enjoy playing ALL of the content. The peasants rejoice. Unicorns barfing rainbows, etc etc….

Not a single piece of GW2 is for everyone. Even open world, not because its difficult, its super easy, and for that reason there a lot of players dislike open world because its boring. So they would need way harder open world content to enjoy it. But they wont get it.
The same way people wont get easy raids ( Well many actually would aggre that we already have easy raids, scort and trio). Every content have a target audience. Good design = having choices of type of content. Bad design = trying to please everyone twisting content of its core porpuse and never pleasing everyone because its impossible.

Scipio.3204:

TexZero.7910:

Scipio.3204:

TexZero.7910:

Deaths.9165:

Well radis are just for 5-10% of gw2 population.

Make easy normal and hard mode for Raids so we can choose which mode we want to join and the everyone is happy.

Except that raids aren’t supposed to be easy. They’ve been designed to be challenging group content.

So instead of complaining about it, go get to the point where you can complete them as they are optional content.

What content isn’t optional?

Also the term “challenging” is relative. They could make raids 10 times easier and it would still be “challenging” to some. I know about people being perfectly statisfied by say the difficulty of dungeons, it’s challenging and rewarding enough to keep them repeating it .

The way I see it the people against tiered difficulty think there are only two kinds of people: those who like raids and those who only like to hit one button to be rewarded. They seem to ignore the people in-between.

If they made it easier, people would still complain. See escort and trio.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way. There is no reason for the devs to cater to this notion that you need tier based rewards for times. All that does is restrict builds even further, restrict groups to best players only, and diminish the already strong PuG community of raiding.

If your guild had problems, well shucks sounds bad man. My guild had its own drama but we still manage to raid weekly and do just fine. Yes people experienced failure and a lot of it, however its up to whoever is leading to put the raiders in the right mindset. Failure is learning. If you constantly fail and take away nothing from your tries then you weren’t learning at all.

Point is every guild has its flaws but that doesn’t mean just because yours failed that the raids need to be changed to accommodate you.

As per you dungeon analogy, i have to respectfully disagree. People ran dungeons not because they were “challenging” but because they were lucrative. Dungeons pre-Hot and Post LS1 were a gold farmers haven both the liquid gold, Karma, Exp, Tokens, and Raw materials meant running them was easy, enjoyable gold gain. This is opposed to the TP flipping investment game which many found boring, or the miners life which was equally bad when it came to fun factor.

People would still complain whatever they do, that isn’t an argument. What really matters is the reason behind a complaint. If I didn’t think it was reasonable to ask for a tiered difficulty system I wouldn’t do it.

You are confusing me with someone, I never asked for a tiered reward system based on clear times, and I didn’t write my guild’s situation to demonstrate how bad it is for me. I’ve had my problems with raids, but I’ve overcome them, but I still think the focus of repeatable instanced end game content shouldn’t come with that much frustration/preparation. Not if there is no alternative at least. I’ve tried my best ,for example when I learned to tank VG I killed it 7 times a week with PUG with two different classes, I’ve learned how to catch bombs at Sabetha with revenant and stuff like that , but that still wasn’t enough to have a great time with those I’ve had a great time playing dungeons with.

And on my dungeon analogy, you can disagree , that doesn’t mean people don’t run them just for fun, don’t have to set prerequirements and have a good time. Perhaps all you saw was speedclears and gold farm, doesn’t mean that was the only thing people did.

Well people run raids today just for fun too, i for example after i get to the cap, and already clearead all bosses, still run VG just for the fun or just to help fellow guild members.
And there is a alternative for end game instanced content, its called T4 fractals.

I think you dont like the core of what raids are, for that reason you cant find fun on the current ones, and no matter what they do you will not find raids fun, because as i said you dont find the core of what a raid is fun.

If you think you deserve compensation, prepare to be very dissapointed with your life, because thats not how anything in the world work.

Scipio.3204:

OnizukaBR.8537:

Scipio.3204:

TexZero.7910:

Deaths.9165:

Well radis are just for 5-10% of gw2 population.

Make easy normal and hard mode for Raids so we can choose which mode we want to join and the everyone is happy.

Except that raids aren’t supposed to be easy. They’ve been designed to be challenging group content.

So instead of complaining about it, go get to the point where you can complete them as they are optional content.

What content isn’t optional?

Also the term “challenging” is relative. They could make raids 10 times easier and it would still be “challenging” to some. I know about people being perfectly statisfied by say the difficulty of dungeons, it’s challenging and rewarding enough to keep them repeating it .

The way I see it the people against tiered difficulty think there are only two kinds of people: those who like raids and those who only like to hit one button to be rewarded. They seem to ignore the people in-between.

Yes they could make it 100x easier and there would people that fail at them. So you are saying that will always be people unhappy with the difficulty be it easier or harder. And thats the absolute truth, its impossible to please everyone.

So by your logic its a waste of developer time, instead of change current raids ( that would still upset people, maybe new people will enjoy, but maybe people that enjoy it now will dislike so ), they need to seetle for 1 difficulty instead . And the difficulty they choose is the one we have. For me its perfect, because its hard enough to make it challenging+fun and at same time easy enought to make it versatile.

You are right , it is impossible to please everyone, the amount of unstatisfied people however does matter. Take a look at the period between the release of HoT and the first chapter of living story. People refer to it as a a 8 months long content drought, even though raid wings were released consistently through this time period. Even MO refered to it as a content “draught”. Does that mean the average player doesn’t consider the raids as content at all? I’d say very likely. This situation may be perfect for you, but I think it could be improved. Imagine what would you think now of raids if you didn’t gave it a second chance, also imagine how many people didn’t even give it one.

The people that dont care about raids, dont care about raids no matter the difficult. So they would still cry about content drought.

Scipio.3204:

TexZero.7910:

Deaths.9165:

Well radis are just for 5-10% of gw2 population.

Make easy normal and hard mode for Raids so we can choose which mode we want to join and the everyone is happy.

Except that raids aren’t supposed to be easy. They’ve been designed to be challenging group content.

So instead of complaining about it, go get to the point where you can complete them as they are optional content.

What content isn’t optional?

Also the term “challenging” is relative. They could make raids 10 times easier and it would still be “challenging” to some. I know about people being perfectly statisfied by say the difficulty of dungeons, it’s challenging and rewarding enough to keep them repeating it .

The way I see it the people against tiered difficulty think there are only two kinds of people: those who like raids and those who only like to hit one button to be rewarded. They seem to ignore the people in-between.

Yes they could make it 100x easier and there would people that fail at them. So you are saying that will always be people unhappy with the difficulty be it easier or harder. And thats the absolute truth, its impossible to please everyone.

So by your logic its a waste of developer time, instead of change current raids ( that would still upset people, maybe new people will enjoy, but maybe people that enjoy it now will dislike so ), they need to seetle for 1 difficulty instead . And the difficulty they choose is the one we have. For me its perfect, because its hard enough to make it challenging+fun and at same time easy enought to make it versatile.

runeblade.7514:

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

Yes obvious people will learn to raid by ignoring what they are failing. Next time i want to learn something i will do it by ignoring it /s

It is more like, People can’t just learn Calculus at first.

They need to learn how to do addition, subtraction, algebra, geometry, and Precalc.

They can learn when the mechanics pops up, how they can see it coming, and what to do when it comes, then when they are going up against the 10 minute enraged timer boss version, they’ll have better experience than just wiping and wiping and no one has fun like that.

They can see now the mechanics, if they ignore it, then when they go to the real deal, they will die again because they were ignoring it and didnt even know how much damage the mechanic does. So they learn nothing from ignoring it. Ignoring mechanics doesnt make you learn a fight, actually ignoring mechanics make you a worst player, because you will create bad habits.

And then they know how much damage the mechanic does now. Then they go back to the non-10 minute enrage timer raid again, learn to dodge that mechanic. Then they go back to the 10 minute enrage timer raid again and dodge that mechanic.

Done.

Because they can’t dodge the mechanic now the same way they would with no enrage timer? (maybe the clock hold your foot ? ) If you really cant see how silly it it is i have nothing more to say.

runeblade.7514:

OnizukaBR.8537:

runeblade.7514:

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

Yes obvious people will learn to raid by ignoring what they are failing. Next time i want to learn something i will do it by ignoring it /s

It is more like, People can’t just learn Calculus at first.

They need to learn how to do addition, subtraction, algebra, geometry, and Precalc.

They can learn when the mechanics pops up, how they can see it coming, and what to do when it comes, then when they are going up against the 10 minute enraged timer boss version, they’ll have better experience than just wiping and wiping and no one has fun like that.

They can see now the mechanics, if they ignore it, then when they go to the real deal, they will die again because they were ignoring it and didnt even know how much damage the mechanic does. So they learn nothing from ignoring it. Ignoring mechanics doesnt make you learn a fight, actually ignoring mechanics make you a worst player, because you will create bad habits.

runeblade.7514:

AnariiUK.7409:

In summary, removing the enrage timer at an encounter like VG allows groups to ignore their mechanical failures. Vastly reducing the difficulty of the encounter. Furthermore it sets groups up for disappointment when they reach bosses with soft-enrage mechanics such as Gorseval, Sabetha or KC.

I think this is a good thing.

This way new people/PuGs can actually learn to raid.

Yes obvious people will learn to raid by ignoring what they are failing. Next time i want to learn something i will do it by ignoring it /s

blajeengodx.6845:

Someone know if gw2 staff sayed something about put damage meter on Dungeon/Raids/Etc, and some dummy to train damage, this will make me more happy to do some pve, and farm for have the exacty set for the best damage, and i think going incentivate more pve for “a competitive” damage and healing.
If noone have talked about it, its a sugestion.
*Sorry if i writed some bad english, i training it

There is one already inside the raid lobby there is a portal to the training room with DPS meter, and you can apply any buff in yourself or anydebuff in the dummy.

Well i could complain that my bar is locked too, because i hate adventure and because of that i dont have enought mastery to unlock the bar. But i dont because i know if i want rewards i need to go get it, not complain for a-net to give it to me outside the content they were designed.

Just two new videos to show 2 things again: You really dont need meta to finish a raid, and enrange timer doesnt matter.

Elena.3642:

Quite a few interesting posts with some points I haven’t considered while writing this post and as such I would like to address some of them.

AnariiUK.7409:

I’d highly suggest giving the first encounter of wing 3 a try, unlike VG there’s no enrage timer there so your squad can take all the time you need to clear it. It serves as a much better intoduction to raiding than VG, who’s actually one of the hardest encounters!

Yes, we actually tried that after our last fail at Vale Guardian. While I’m thankful for advice the problem is that that particular encounter requires at least someone in the group to have raid mastery to get through the tunnel to tower. As far as I am aware (and I checked a couple videos and wiki) there is no way to survive through that tunnel without mastery and no workaround that would enable the raid group where none of the members have that mastery to beat that initial step. I do plan to try and get mastery by trying to get into pug raid this weekend and then use my mesmer to maybe get my guildies successfully through encounter but that will defend if I am able to find a pug that will accept a necro that doesn’t follow current meta (aka power reaper). Thank you anyways.

Fay.2357:

I can count the number of times I’ve failed a raid due to enrage timers on the fingers of one hand. Hitting enrage timers due to low dps is almost never the reason raids fail. What actually causes groups to fail is dying to various mechanics, spending too much time ressing people, not being confident enough with the fight to actually dps the boss, that sort of thing. You only end up hitting enrage timers if half your members are dead and you’re trying to squeak out a kill with the remaining people.

It’s not like you even have to play meta builds to finish these fights either. Plenty of groups finish with varying levels of non-meta-ness. VG was even finished with just 4 people. That shows you just how far you can go off of the meta 10 man group and still finish fights. People that require strict adherence to the meta are usually the same people that don’t have a good understanding of the fights or mechanics.

Ultimately, people complaining about enrage timers are always people that don’t actually have any experience in raids. They pick that ticking clock in the corner as an easy target to complain about, not realizing that they’re complaining about the least impactful mechanic in any currently existing raid. If you want easier raids, you should be asking for anet to make versions that have less punishing mechanics, not removing the enrage timer.

You are probably right. Maybe the biggest issue is that we just haven’t tried enough. But it is really easy to blame enrage timer, exactly because last few times I and my guildies tried Vale Guardian we died to that. Ultimately – the enrage timer gives you quite a psychological pressure. I will tell you honestly – when I see that time in corner ticking down (and it is very hard to resist not looking at it) I do panic. It is like a clock ticking down to your ultimate death. I would guess, and it probably would be correct guess, that a few deaths where we did get through second split resulted precisely because of those numbers ticking down. Hell, you know what would make me kinda happy? Removing enrage indicator. Leave the timer in effect but don’t show it to players. That would help slightly. Guess I could just try to cover that part of screen too. Might try that next time I raid.

LegACy.1296:

And that’s why enrage timer is needed. It’s to prevent player to win through mass ressurection. It’s to encourage players to actually outsmart and outplay the encounter. I’m sure a lot of raiders have experienced a “messy kill”. While you got the reward, I don’t think it feels good as beating the boss super quick in 1 shot with no one getting downed, right?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that you cannot resurrect dead people during raid. You can resurrect only players that are in downed state. As such your argument doesn’t really apply to raiding, but still thank you for taking time to read my wall of text and reply. I also wish you luck with fractals. ^^

Dinosaurs.8674:

And look at it this way – if you’re getting angry at your squad for making a simgle mistake that ruins a ~5 minute pull, imagine how frustrated everyone is going to be when each pull takes 20 minutes. Imagine how much more often this would happen since many of the mechanics ignore defensive stats and you now have to face them 4x as much to get a kill. Imagine how bored you will be when you die 3 minutes in because you’re team can’t CC on matthias, then you have to wait another 15 minutes while they run around in their super defensive gear with people getting picked off one by one. Sure removing the enrage timer might increase your chance of a kill for each individual pull, but if you’re actually taking advantage of that by running defensive gear then your pulls will take potentially a much longer time on average.

So yeah maybe there is some small set of players for which removing the enrage timers would help but really allowing players to be successful with defensive stat sets just makes the fights less enjoyable for groups that were already having trouble.

This is something I haven’t thought about while writing my first post and after reading through this and thinking about it for a bit – I agree. You are right – extended fights would actually also leave more time to make mistakes that would ultimately lead to wipe. When I wrote this post I fixated on enrage timers as easy solution because it is – having even a couple more minutes in Vale Guardian fight would have resulted in me and my guildies successfully killing Vale Guardian. Like I mentioned in reply a bit above – it is easy to blame and fixate on them and it is quite easy mechanic to dismiss and flame on. But yes, you are right, fighting Vale Guardian for an hour and then wiping because we somehow missed a green circle spawning in corner would not be fun.

Fluffy.1932:

I do want to express my appreciation to the OP for having a well thought out and respectful suggestion. Although I disagree with it, it is very nice to have some well-mannered discussion.

I think that part of the issue is that the community is very split. There is the section of the community that find enjoyment from just playing different parts of the game and have a much more relaxed playstyle. Then there are the people who find enjoyment out of really challenging content and min-maxing.

Pre-HoT the ‘hardcore’ community was really desperate for some challenging content. At the start of the game they had dungeons, which were very challenging at the time. Then they had fractals. But by the time HoT came around those gametypes had become very easy for various reasons.

What it comes down to is speedrunning and lowmanning easier content just isn’t as satisfying as having legitimately challenging encounters. If the game didn’t have raids as is, the hardcore community would be the ones on the forums asking for things to be different.

Without enrage timers, you’re right, people would be able to turtle up and beat the encounters. But then people who can kill the bosses quickly would not be satisfied with the content. It is satisfying to kill quickly because we have to kill quickly.

Raids were not designed to be completed by everybody, nor should they be. There will always be some people who optimize their builds, leading to creating the meta. This will always be a fairly large portion of the community, and they need content to play. If you are not one of these people, but want to become one, then there is a lot of support for learning. If you want to keep your playstyle and don’t like to optimize, then raids are content that was not designed for you and that’s ok. There is still a whole world out there for you to enjoy.

GLHF

Thank you for nice words, even if you do not agree with suggestion itself. Also thank you for taking your time to write your own walls of text for me to read through. Anyways, on to your post. Yes, community is split. Yes, prior to raids we did not have much of a challenge (even current T4 fractals are not actually that hard. That might change as they keep updating old ones, though). Yes, going through easy content and just getting rewards is not going to be satisfying. What bothers me the most, though, is the fact that yes, you are right – raids are not designed to be completed by everybody.

And that fact, if nothing else, is what makes me actually sad. As a person who loves unique stories and challenging, big bosses raids are a concept that I always looked for as an ultimate pve experience. It makes me quite… disappointed that a lot of people who can’t for various reasons get into raiding will never experience story, maps, and unique encounters present exactly in raiding. It is good that they are challenging, it is good that there is content that can’t be easily get through. But what is bad seems to me that the entry level to start and get through raid seems to be just too high.

I will agree to the posts here. Entirely getting rid of all enrage timers might be too much. But I feel that all people, regardless of class and skill level should have at least a bit of easier time at very first raid boss in GW 2. Because let’s face it – while I don’t know numbers and not sure if there is place to find them – not a lot of people are actually heavily into raiding. And it is not exactly easy to get into raiding after all this time. I would imagine that the quite a lot of people got discouraged and simply have wrong impression about raiding because they don’t know better. I, for example, was completely under impression that without fully following meta and perfect party composition you actually have no chance of beating any of the bosses. That is the kind of vibe I get from videos I watched on some encounters and my personal experience in failing to kill the very first boss in first wing seemed to only confirm this.

As this is the case and a lot of people are under opinion that raids are just not designed for everyone and those who do not optimize should just not attempt them, let me ask you this – is that a good thing? To me, it looks that at least slightly lowering down the difficulty bar in some way would attract more people to raiding. Is that good or bad is a whole different question, but more people trying out raids and successfully beating them maybe would melt the frosty opinion quite a few people have on raids currently. And then another expansion comes and we get new raid instead of multiple cries of ‘Oh no! Another ten people group content I will never manage to see. Guess I will pass this expansion.’ we would get ‘Yes! More epic bosses and interesting story! Pre-order now!!’ (exaggerated, but you get my point).

Let’s take some example of a progression from easy entry level to hard difficulty from fractals. One thing fractals kinda seem like they do right is increasing difficulty as you go through tiers, introducing instabilities and different mechanics. What if you applied similar concept to raiding? For example, start off bit easy – remove enrage mechanic from Vale Guardian, or extend it slightly so that even most new groups could kill it after a few tries and would get mastery. Then increase difficulty. Next boss has both soft and hard enrage mechanics. Yet another adds additional layer of complexity. That way new raid groups could get chance to unlock mastery, get 1 kill and attempt to get further and further against increasingly harder challenges. It would be just like climbing on large hill – feels easy at first, but at the top you encounter such a monster of epic proportions that you feel like typing /surrender by just looking at it.

What do you people think? As a compromise – would changing the very first boss of first wing to make it an easier ‘entry level’ fight would satisfy those who are currently hating on raids while leaving all of other bosses as a large challenge for those awesome skilled players who can beat them? Would allowing people who are just getting into raiding to have such easier ‘freebie’ be okay? I would like to hear what you all think about that. (And yes – I am aware that wing 3 escort is basically that. But it needs mastery. If it didn’t it would be nice, but can’t always have nice things.)

As I see it – all content need a carrot and a stick. Raids are not exception. And while the current raid has quite alluring little carrot (promise of legendary armor, ascended items and more), instead of letting you take a small bite and luring you deeper into rabbit hole, the rabbit holding the stick with carrot keeps beating you with stick until you either give up or take that stick and beat him with it (poor metaphor, but as I write this it is nearing 1am – sorry).

As such, once more to repeat myself, as I’m rambling – do you people think that lowering difficulty for just Vale Guardian and letting players have this lower level difficulty initial encounter and introduction to raiding would hook them enough to get them into raiding, changing their opinion and making them honestly want to get better and join raiding community? Would just giving this easier entry level be okay, or should raids just be kept as they are? Personally, I’m under opinion that something needs to change, but I can’t just yet figure out what. I want more people do raids. I want more friendly groups in LFG. I want to everyone have fun playing this great game. So please, discuss, offer suggestions and do your best so we could make raiding (and all other aspects of GW 2) as enjoyable as possible to as many people as we can.

Have fun and see you in game.

VG is already easy enough, if they nerfed it would just cause more frustration because if you cant beat VG in its current form you have 0 chance at Gors, so you would beat VG just to get really frustrated at Gors because there the enrage matters.

But you sound like someone that really want to raid, but dont have the exp to see how easy most of the encounters are. So I would gladly help you and your fellows guild members at VG or at Scort ( i can play my mesmer and portal everyone up). Feel free to add me in game if you want my help.

Jerus.4350:

OnizukaBR.8537:

Jerus.4350:

OnizukaBR.8537:

Jerus.4350:

OnizukaBR.8537:

ChrizZcE.5981:

Raids should be hard, entirely skill based, but accessable to everyone. Nobody likes gear grind.

So raids should be what they are now. Kind of hard, entirely skill based and acessable to everyone. GW2 is the first game that have raids with 0 gear grind.

Not much on the gear grind, but there is a mastery grind

Getting updraft is anything but a grind. I think people dont know what grind means anymore and just use it if you have a pre-requisite to something, even if its pre-requisite take little to no time to get.

I haven’t done Xera yet, was I told wrong and you don’t need leyline gliding? And, the raid masteries sure are handy.

Between that and new stats being superior to old ones for many things… I don’t know, I don’t feel it’s really any better than the old MMO’s I played.

Xera is the last boss of the last wing, you can get enough XP for its mastery just by doing wing 1 and wing 2, so yeah no grind at all. Its not like VG needs all the mastery to do. And about the new stats, only condi needs it, power still use the same old stats that you got years ago. So its miles better than any old mmo you played ( in the grind aspect ).
GW2 is literally the only MMO where you can buy the game ( you get a boost to 80 ) and go straight to raid. I could buy a new account boost a thief choose a carrion as gear stats and go raid. Dont even need DD as condi thief dont use it.

Ehh, I guess you make a good point in that you can take that 80 boost and do a raid. Just as someone who came back after taking a break before HoT, I’ve felt the same uphill climb to get set back up that I did in any other game I’ve played.

I dont know what to say, if you can give a real example of other game that you had the same uphill climb, because all the games i know if you stopped for more than a year and come back prepare for months of grinding some kind of token before you are able to raid. And here you can get Elite in 1 day easy and go to raid, and if you had already ascended gear to change for any stats is really easy as you only need 1 recipe ( insignea or inscription). So i really cant see how GW2 have the same uphill.

Jerus.4350:

OnizukaBR.8537:

Jerus.4350:

OnizukaBR.8537:

ChrizZcE.5981:

Raids should be hard, entirely skill based, but accessable to everyone. Nobody likes gear grind.

So raids should be what they are now. Kind of hard, entirely skill based and acessable to everyone. GW2 is the first game that have raids with 0 gear grind.

Not much on the gear grind, but there is a mastery grind

Getting updraft is anything but a grind. I think people dont know what grind means anymore and just use it if you have a pre-requisite to something, even if its pre-requisite take little to no time to get.

I haven’t done Xera yet, was I told wrong and you don’t need leyline gliding? And, the raid masteries sure are handy.

Between that and new stats being superior to old ones for many things… I don’t know, I don’t feel it’s really any better than the old MMO’s I played.

Xera is the last boss of the last wing, you can get enough XP for its mastery just by doing wing 1 and wing 2, so yeah no grind at all. Its not like VG needs all the mastery to do. And about the new stats, only condi needs it, power still use the same old stats that you got years ago. So its miles better than any old mmo you played ( in the grind aspect ).
GW2 is literally the only MMO where you can buy the game ( you get a boost to 80 ) and go straight to raid. I could buy a new account boost a thief choose a carrion as gear stats and go raid. Dont even need DD as condi thief dont use it.