Guild Wars 2

Sorin Noroku.5342:

I ask you then, where would YOU have placed a gate for legendary armor that was not crafting with the mastery like the weapons, that could show prestige? The only location that made sense to me was raids. Now, remember, it must be in a location that is exclusive to HoT as wether you disliked it or I liked it, which to be honest at the time I didn’t care, it was a selling point of HoT. We can’t place it in WvW, as nonHoT players do that too. Can’t just drop it in PvP for same reason. Sure they could have you grind out the metas over and over and over for a chance at the drop, but then we have things like chak eggs. Or we could have it like the new weapons, which is running around the world and then spending gold, which for more casual players is just as bad as raiding, because then you have to farm AB nonstop. Not many enjoy that. The next logical sense to me would be to tie it to raiding. It’s a new thing, they needed something to push people in that way, to play it and learn the hard content. So they put legendary armor gate there.

Even one HoT-exclusive collection piece in first tier makes the whole thing HoT-exclusive too, which is kinda invalidates your whole post.

Vinceman.4572:

I bet against that because you don’t have any relevant indication for this thesis.

I’m tired from pointless debates. Consider that my opinion with unexplained reasons.

You will get your raid wing with the legendary armor release. And this wing will be probably last one.

Ben Phongluangtham.1065:

After an internal review, we’ve decided that awarding points for achievements that are this exclusive goes against the intent and spirit of our achievement system. We’ll be removing the points on these in a future release.

So, achieving top position in pvp ladder is actually not an achievement? What?

maddoctor.2738:

Knowing how an “easy mode” boss works and knowing how the the actual boss works are too completely different things. I’d rather get a total newbie who has never done a Raid before over someone who has done an easy version, because those clearing an “easy” version will know the wrong tactics, wrong builds, wrong everything.

Except that in raiding game #1 it works perfectly. Opinion is opinion.

Sigfodr.9576:

Though I personally dont have a problem with seperating raid masterys from the rest. The way we have it now, is a design choise that also make sence. It is a soft way to “force” into giving raids a go, just like we have with ALL other game modes. Give WvW a go to get gift of battle, or give LW a go to get gliding etc etc etc.

But raid apologists are keeps saying that raids are not separated and basically just a part of general PvE, and because of that we don’t need any alternatives to raid rewards for other PvE activities.

maddoctor.2738:

Just this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5g3pmo/no_one_wants_meters_what_they_want_are_logs/

Which is basically the same thing. Someone makes a parser and here is your DPS meter.

BeLZedaR.4790:

As it seems there is no intention from the devs to add such a tool to the game or at least remove the threats on accounts using them, and I think this is a very poor decision as DPS meters solve a problem many people complain about.

Think about it for a second, why are raids not accessible for new players?
Truth is, because there is no DPS meter. Just to clarify, I don’t refer to only a DPS number but also boon uptime, heals, resses, damage taken etc. that allows you to see clearly who is dying from what, who does their job and who doesn’t beyond just DPS.

And why is that, that the lack of DPS meters push out new players?
People in LFG groups mostly just want the fast, least wipes as possible clear of whatever they’re going to do. As such they ask for people that know what they’re doing. The only gauge of knowing what you’re doing is how many Legendary Insights you have, Kill proofs, achievement points and so on.

ALL of these things are based on raw time spent in game. Think about it, for each 9 legendary insights you need at least one week spent already SUCCESSFULLY raiding. It does not gauge how many training runs you may had, or maybe you just got carried to get the kills, but only how long have you been raiding.

So what DPS meters offer, is a way for new players to prove they are an asset to the team, and if someone blames them for not having 9000 stacks of LI they can prove they do their job.
If anything, new players need to fight for the addition of adding DPS meters to the game so that they won’t need to suffer getting kicked simply because they did not start raiding 3 months ago, but 3 weeks ago, even if they perform better than people who’ve been raiding longer.

One more thing, not about LFG but still coming to raid accessibility. Once DPS meters are a thing, orginized guilds can give numbers of a bottom number DPS or quickness uptime or healing or whatever it is you’re supposed to be doing, that you, as a new player can aim for to know that you’re good enough to start raiding.
It allows you to see your weak points and improve upon them.

Also wanted to mention lastly that there basically exists a DPS meter in-game. WUT?? Yes. It’s called the combat log. The difference is that the combat log is completely unreadable and only serves to see how much a specific skill did in case you’re curious. All that basically is asked for is a revamped, readable, combat log.

I barely can remember any examples from other games where DPS meter helped anyone to get in a pug raid. But I remember countless examples when DPS meter was used as an instrument to find a scapegoat and start drama.

Phyxius Animus.7356:

I agree. And it eventually damages a game.

So, instead…

Action:
Make harder content for people that like challenge. Create rewards for said content.

Consequence:
People that can’t get it done, demand the another version of it because “I paid for the game too”

Action:
Ignore them.

Result:
People that actually PAYING for the game leaving due to the lack of content. Anet getting worst financial results ever.

And how this is better, eh?

Literally who cares. Everyone who as able to beat her with at least 4 ppl alive was able to beat timer every time. Heck, it was even possible to solo in 25m. So nerf after trin is no more 100 is pretty normal.

Tied to legendary armor, so when it’s ready™

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Quit saying hard mode raiding there is no easy mode raiding so there is no hard mode raiding, it is just Raiding and the Devs said they won’t make easy mode Raids, they will make introductory encounters, get over yourself, quit making baseless claims on how much time/effort/resources it would take for easy modes when the Devs have told you otherwise and have also told you to quit making those claims. move on the Devs have spoken!

They never said it tho. They said that there was no plans for it, but plans can change.

Cameron Rich.3905:

Today’s release of Nightmare shows off this new encounter design framework in full force, I encourage you to take a crack at it and let us know what you think.

It’s great overall, but something must be done with projectile defense abilities. When one of oldest mechanics in game is simply thrown out of window it doesn’t feel right. Maybe make them reduce orb damage, or slow them, if complete deflection feels too cheesy.

maddoctor.2738:

If you want to count the percentage of people Raiding (as your post about LIs suggest, I could be wrong) you need to count only those eligible to Raid in the first place. Those who stayed in the game for the month after release for at least the first Raid to be released. Otherwise you are using a percentage that is completely biased.

A handful of my guildies left after few days of raid release after their team became hopeless at beating VG and gave up. Are they not eligible? Then rest of their raiding group left with them. Are they not eligible too?

This is one of most absurd oversights, on par with previous one with stat combinations locked behind raids. If someone don’t enjoy doing particular activity he should not be locked from basic game stuff because of it. Raid masteries should not block mastery progress.

maddoctor.2738:

Now you are being funny.

You can see in the image that to reach 75% of the playerbase you need 152 Airship parts average. 152 Airship parts is what you can get easily after a SINGLE run in VB. This means that 25% of the population of the game run VB once in their lifetime.

To reach 50% of the playerbase you need 494 Airship parts on average, which is ~2.5 runs in VB. Which means on average those on gw2efficiency run VB two and a half times until now.

In other words using gw2efficiency data, since you cannot 0 your airship parts, the amount of the accounts that are playing Heart of Thorns is -much- less than 50% of the total of the registered accounts of gw2efficiency.

If you check unbound magic it shows clearly that only 50% of the population has any, and getting unbound magic is stupidly easy compared to let’s say Legendary Insights.

From the above you can conclude VERY easily that half the accounts of gw2efficiency are either bank/alt accounts, free accounts, don’t have hot installed or the owners stopped playing before LS3 even started.

10% of players on average do have LI. 10% of players have LI, while 50% are playing in Heart of Thorns zones.

I think using gw2efficiency we can see an actual problem, that has nothing to do with raids.

In total, using 100k accounts, 50k of those don’t play anymore, at least in content that requires heart of thorns (hot zones or LS3 content) and 10k of those play in Raids. 1/5 of the population, or 20%, is raiding which is what I said

tl:dr – in worst possible case, all these people are not seeing raids as something worth doing/buying HoT for it. So even from this point, raids in their current implementation are fail for absolute majority.

maddoctor.2738:

Next thing you will say is to count free accounts too, or alt accounts, or bank accounts. Not to mention there is no middle statistic and it goes from 50% to 20%, which means there is a possibility from 21% to 49% to indeed be raiding. It’s not exactly accurate

Again, if you have no data saying that any of these accounts are not paying any money, then you cannot exclude them from pool. Ergo, we are talking about 100% of them. And probably real data is even worse for raiders, because getting API key for gw2e requires some determination.

maddoctor.2738:

20% of players with 4k+ hours in the game have a minimum of 46 LI, so players with lots of hours are indeed raiding, what more do you want from a 20%?

We are talking about total population, not 4k+. Or you have data that sub-4k players are not paying money to Anet?

maddoctor.2738:

Some actual data somewhere?

100k API keys is not actual enough for you?

maddoctor.2738:

I’d love to see your data on that 5%

gw2e, you’re welcome

Uhmm what? So getting to know the Boss better is now an absurd Requirement?

Do you also know what Requirements the vanilla Raids of WoW had? The requirements in GW2 are completely laughable in comparison.

Not being afk during raid and grind for consumables?

Talindra.4958:

People need to understand you can’t expect to kill the boss without training. Why ? Bcos theres a lot of mechanics involve and each players has a specific task or tasks to get the team through. And if one person make mistakes that person can cause a wipe and restart. everyone needs to be good enough not saying pro but good enough and get his task/s done. it’s not like other content in the game where you can just jump in and get things done. That’s too easy and no challenge and no fun in that.

Emm… no? Even vanilla wow never had such an absurd requirement, and this is one of the main reasons why raiding population here floating near 5%. Wiping while “training” just because one person made a mistake is an absolutely absurd idea.

Hypairion.9210:

And, as you know it, 0 dungeon because no more dungeon team since years now, nothing to do with raids… you forget some fractal revamps, and the difficulty to make difficulty tiers in fractal (in raid, one difficulty, it’s more linear).

Sure, how about swap then? Raids will get only “revamps” for a year, and fractals will get all new content updates with maps, bosses and loot.

Hypairion.9210:

3 wings in one year. that’s all. Too much for you?

Zero dungeons and one fractal vs 3 raid wings? Yeah, I think it is too much one-sided.

Hypairion.9210:

But be honest, you won’t be satisfied until raids are erased from the game because you don’t like them. What i see is one more fractal soon, LS3 new episode soon, etc…

I will be satisfied when content targeting and content distribution will be proportional to the population of said content consumers.

maddoctor.2738:

Raids are the hardest content in the game, and need to stay that way.

In that case, raid will become an obvious scapegoat for a content drought, and if drought will continue at same rate as it was in HoT – a rightful scapegoat. Because there is obviously way too much content for a such little chunk of players who playing it constantly.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

@Goldfox
It has been discussed multiple times there has been nothing new to add to the conversation. The raids are fine as they are, they exceeded expectations of the target audience and then some.

Raids are not fine as they are, and constant flow of new topics about them only proves that.

OriOri.8724:

It will already take a new player over 4 years to reach the daily cap, putting GW2 at over 8 years old. Factor in those extra 2 months every year that veteran players will get and it will take a new player 5+ years to catch up. At that point there is no catching up, it just won’t happen.

What is that “catching up” you are talking about? It will make someone happy? Give something special? Have any rational purpose?

Seera.5916:

My question is why is earning 10 AP for doing those things so important? Important enough that players will stop playing the game if they don’t get it. If it’s not because the person is truly bored with the game and the loss in AP is making them realize that, then what is it?

I can repeat that again – that was the last thing that was giving a sense of progress in game for many. Nothing is going to change that. I’m personally spent hundreds of dollars on GW2 stuff during these years, and now I don’t have any reason to, because Anet took away last reason to log in.
They don’t want my money anymore? Fine, that’s their choice.

Kingsdavid.3598:

Fractals IMO are fun for a while and the “gear progression (AR)” in theme is fine, but it feel like it has no purpose. When you progress though the fractals levels it feel lackluster. It feels like just doing the same fractal but the boss has better stats (and sometime annoying mechanic Mistlock Instability before the update). And even if you get to level 100 in fractals it has 0 purpose, Because it’s the same F-ing boss from other levels (you already done) and you get nothing in return (no special skin or gear or recipe, nothing). In addition when an expansion is released you have no room to progress, instead the only thing they can do is just shove new fractal instead of other fractals in the level 1-100 (like Chaos Isles Fractal. It feels like the main purpose of fractal these days is for gearing up for raids. And Raids are good but not all people like them, have the time to do them or can gather 10 people to do them constantly. So while you wait for you guild/friends to to the raid you have nothing to do (PvE wise).
And before you jump to defend fractals, please really think of what I said and tell me that you to didn’t think that at same point (or atleast agree with on that subject).

They were supposed to be a main hub of instanced pve content, and even a dungeon replacement after HoT nerf. But for some mystical reason, all new instanced content is redirected to raids. Even new raid wing is announced already and there is new portal in LAA. But new fractal? /shrug

Tarasicodissa.7084:

I’m sure Anet and NCSoft appreciate how a bunch of uneducated and biased stranges on their forums perform analysis of their business plan and draw conclusions about how certain element of the game affects the revenue, although I believe they already have experts taking care of that, not to mention they have much more data available than the aforementioned forum warriors.

We sharing our opinions here. Raid praising group already was represented too disproportionally high on forums and reddit, and this most probably made devs think that raids are really that much popular and no more content needed.

kdaddy.5431:

agreed but why are they in there then?

If Anet wants to to be casual for everyone make it casual for everyone. Make it so raid rewards can be a reward track for PvP and WvW.

There is plenty of frustration going around for everything.

I simply want for PvP players to get PvP rewards. PvP can have its own unique items.

WvW to get there unique rewards for Leveling to say 2k, 3k, 4k+ rank

Fractal players got a back pc.

Raid players are getting legendary armor.

Daily is casual activity. Nobody is getting X Legend titles, or league ranks, or ESL prizes, or pvp legendary backpack from doing hotjoins. Leave pvp casual segment alone, it was already heavily damaged by useless pushing for unranked-ranked. It will not give PvP new players, it will not give you new rewards, it will just force even more people to drop PvP.

ButterPeanut.9746:

I’m not sure what numbers you are looking at? Q3 of this year was the lowest of the year. Q3 also had no raid releases but it did have 2 LS3 releases.

Q3 almost stopped revenue falling, but that was still not enough. Which means anet should make more of content that was delivered in Q3. Simple.

lcpdragonslayer.7895:

This is gw2efficiency’s table of magnetite shards

There is a gw2e table for LI, which is much more accurate representation because shards can be actually spent.

maddoctor.2738:

We haven’t had a fractal since November 2013 (Thaumanova Reactor Fractal), last time we got a dungeon was even further back in October 2013 (Aetherpath) so your claim of “content for wide audience” is a real joke. That’s 2 full years (HoT was released October 2015) of absolutely no instanced content released in the game.

Further, 10 months of those 2 years had absolutely no content released at all on ALL game modes! And yet you are saying how awesome it used to be and how Anet gave us content for a wide audience, when they gave content for NOBODY! I guess you blame Raids for all that too? The sole reason we didn’t get anything for 10 months, and no instanced content for 24 months is because of Raids.

You have a very weird memory of how the game used to be before Heart of Thorns.

And yet population was actually higher than now, with HoT stuff and raids.

maddoctor.2738:

I’m trying to remember when they did this pre-Heart of Thorns but I can’t find any time in the game’s history where they did fractal/dungeon, LS Chapter, pvp/wvw update, fractal/dungeon and so on. Point us at some time in the game’s where they did this.

Pre-HoT there was more content for wide audience actually. Like, you know, alive dungeons before famous HoT nerf. It’s pretty funny how Anet killed them and gave only grindy zerg maps, slightly reworked fractal system and raids for small minority.

CptAurellian.9537:

Your insistence on that nonsensical claim is almost impressive. But it’s getting old, so you should try something else. Stuff like Earth is flat, for example …

Ofc. I’m wrong, everything is fine, there was a tons of new content for everyone to enjoy, and these NCsoft numbers are just statistical error.

All they had to do is just not pushing raids at expense of everyone else. Raid wing – fractal/dungeon, LS chapter, pvp/wvw update – raid wing, fractal/dungeon, LS chapter…
Bam, everyone is happy, no one is dying from content drought, sales remain strong. But hey, lets listen loud minority and push content for them above all.
There was also an excellent post about same situation on reddit today.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/5c4qjy/ncsofts_earnings_report_stagnating_sales_for_gw2/d9u2svk/

Hypairion.9210:

hmm, there was no focusing on raids. You’re just over reacting. Do you forget that raid just had 3 wings in 1 year? And how was it a disaster?

While everyone else got… what, 1 hastily made fractal after NCsoft published worst financial result since game launch? They even postponed LS3 again, and again, and again. And at the same time, making exited reddit posts about how much they love raids and how much they are successful, and how their team is ready to make more of them, while completely ignoring everyone else who asking about something new for non-raiders. Afaik there was even some “l2p” posts.

Henry.5713:

Although, the degree of demonization towards raids is rather amusing. Opinions seem to range from ‘why raids are not a good idea’ to ‘how raids destroyed this game’. Almost like they are the root of all evil.

When in my opinion raids are the only reason why thousands of players even continued to play this game anymore after HoT.
Why a huge amount of players had to socialize, to form new guilds, found friends, gain experience together and make the game a bit more active and lively.
Why people like me continued to support the game with a few hundred euros over the past year while raids kept them interested. But maybe that is just me.

Raids were successful for their audience. Focusing on raids, however, was made in very wrong way and turned out as complete disaster.

Sure, because deleting game modes is definitely makes people happy. Like, it greatly increased PvP population when they gutted previous iteration of hotjoin (which was most popular PvP mode) and deleted soloQ (which was second popular), right?

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Drop started after the last wing was released tho. Also note how op post has nothing to do with earning reports.

Emm… no? Last wing was released June 14 and revenue already started to fall during Q1, which is like 6 months earlier.

Well, as predicted, revenue drop continued in Q3. LS3 and new fractal managed to compensate a lot and even almost stopped revenue fall, but that was not enough to make them grow. Obviously players need something more that that.

Here is some charr script, afair it was from early development stage, one of devs posted it long ago. Not sure if this became actually official or not.

Rauderi.8706:

I’d be more inclined to say that ANet wants people to log in at all. Playing is a bonus. No log-in, no contact with the player. No contact, no chance to upsell cosmetics, content bumps, or expansions.

Granted, once players get to logging in, of course ANet wants them to play. That’s increased time commitment that can be tilted toward the upsell. And I don’t even mean that in a sinister way. But if they lose players for any perceived “meh,” there’s a good chance they might not come back.

This. Before, I was used to find something else to do while I doing daily stuff. Like guildies forming fractal party, something new in gemshop worth looking and farming to buy, some ongoing events, some achievement popped in almost finished tab. But when there is no reason to log, then there is no possibility to actually become interested and involved into anything.

Probably one wing to close legendary collection. Everything else in uncertain.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Raids could be wildly successful and actually contributing to increasing their revenue and player base, and yet those numbers could still indicate that overall there is a net loss due to other reasons. Your ‘proof’ substantiates nothing. Anyway, not going to argue it further.

I have no idea how anyone can call something “successful and increasing revenue” when revenue is actually rapidly decreasing. Maybe you talk about another game or something.

Hypairion.9210:

yes, and i’ll be waiting the proof that raid, as you claim, will kill the game…you know, proof… (and not lack of content or other actual problem …)

Proof that raids, when being only repeatable content released, are killing game population due to being badly tuned for majority of players?
http://global.ncsoft.com/global/ir/earnings.aspx
Here, feel free to read.

Hypairion.9210:

yes and as a counter exemple, my guild is alive and has grown thanks to raid…

Soon we will get Q3 earnings report from NCsoft, and will see results.

Rising Dusk.2408:

Correlation does not imply causation.

Where is content then?

Rising Dusk.2408:

• In my opinion, raids have been nothing but positive for the game. A number of people in my guild, for instance, actually log in more than 5 minutes a week now because raids are their favorite in-game content. ANet should consider raids a great success.

Before introducing raid content my guild had like 20-30 constant online (with 300+ members, a lot of them are playing since game release) during any EU primetime. Yesterday we barely had 10 to do guild activities, where majority of people are supposed to log in. And situation is not getting any better, because no clear promises about new content were made, and no promises about different approach to raids either. But hey, we got a new raid wing announcement.