Guild Wars 2

maddoctor.2738:

How many had multiple difficulties when they released their very first and only raid?

So you admit that situation most probably will change in future?

OnizukaBR.8537:

Stop derailing the thread again about this bad ideia of easier raids. It wont happen just accept it and move on. The topic is about the next raid that is about to come, stick to it.

It will happen, sooner or later. Either this, or raids will be abandoned by dev team just like dungeons due to changed priorities. There is zero successful modern PvE raiding games on MMO scene with that long dead single difficulty model.
Also, next raid will be single-wing one, and will give you last piece of legendary collection. Fate of gw2 raids after that is unknown.

gin.7158:

So Can we discuss about 4 necro 1 druid meta “again” ? I dont understand the logic behind this. I would prolly change 1 necro into a rev or ps war. Druid in pug is also awful because people never stack properly but that’s not my point here.

I just wanna say 4 necro 1 druid meta is terribad -_-. I’m actually amazed by how many people think it’s good. I’m at NA server, is EU meta also the same?

It lets you to do a smooth run without wipes in decent time, without hassle with searching good metaparty. Just pop lfg, get it quickly filled and you got your daily run.
Sure, metaparty can do it faster, guild metaparty can do it even more faster, but who cares about extra 5-10 minutes when you can get an easy run in decent time.

Absurdo.8309:

WoW also has increased level caps with each expansion. Should gw2 do the same? Wow is the most successful MMO of all time.

This line of discussion is, well, pointless. Argue why your position would be good in Guild wars 2 (and, in a thread that’s relevant to your topic).

Level caps have nothing in common with raid difficulty model, so no, your argument is perfectly pointless.
And I’m already argued, with practical example from most successful raiding game ever. And everything I see against my point is empty theories, based purely on “I think so, therefore I’m right and no changes needed”.

CptAurellian.9537:

I won’t dispute anything of that, because it’s pretty close to my ideas. As I said, we’ll probably never definitely know why certain things happened, as we simply don’t have a proper control experiment. There’s just one kind of argument that I question and that’s the kind “LFR/easymodes/whatever worked so well in WoW, we need it here”, because there’s no data to support such claims.

They are obviously worked well in WoW because they are still in game, they being kept there by developers who obviously have all statistical data available, and this is a model from most successful PvE raiding game from all times. Even now.
So, this is pretty much proven. Feel free to bring other successful raiding games, without easy modes and with popularity even slightly close to WoW one.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Some people find them challenging. Most find the rewards really good compared to other instanced content. I’m sorry you don’t like them.

Too bad that there is only “some people” (and by some fun coincidence, almost all of them run guild premades). Majority will simply reroll to necroparty or will be frustrated and simply stop doing 8x at all.

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Your point being?

Just pointing out at real participation numbers, because some people are becoming too delusional.

Walhalla.5473:

If the Data is in any way representive, than 31% of all active GW2 Players are doing Raids. which for MMo Standards would be Mind Blowing

But there is still Room for Error so 15% less and we would have 16% which is much more Realistic but still great.

And well GW2 Raid Bosses in average are not a Joke and we have only one really bad designed Boss here with KC but otherwise the Bosses are pretty Challenging.

Right. Lets calculate some stuff, then. So, let’s assume that we have a Joe the Wannabe Raider. Let’s be generous and say that Joe missed like a whole W1 release and started after W2 release because people said him that raids are awesome and he should try.
Joe tried it ofc, he raided literally every week, but he was so bad that he managed to kill only one boss per week since W2 release. That’s 29 weeks, 29 insignias.
But hey, Joe is still a raider, right? Maybe one of the worst possible ones, but still. And now lets see where is his place on graphic, on “All” one…
In top 9%.
Lol.

Daniel.5428:

Cuz it would be far more easier to get it from fractals….just compare the backpiece from pvp with the one from fractals…..fractal is far more easier to get. Anyway, they’ve said it’s not gonna happen. Fractals already got it’s share" a legendary backpiece". If they will introduce a fractal armor, it’s not gonna be legendary.

So you don’t even know what possibly will be required to get a set of fractal armor but already tell us that it will be easy. Right, now this is an argument.
Also, they never said that it will not happen, they just said that fractal armor is not in their todo list right now.

Daniel.5428:

Just think how many weeks you needed to get the gear…..gw2 was all about tactics cuz most of the ppl already had ascended gear and dulfy published guides right after 2-3 days since release…..so don;t tell me wow raids were easier. If you consider this joke of a raid hard, then you can’t play anything except the trinity……In the end, you need no trinity in gw2, just to know how to rotate your spells…..this is the thing ppl can;t do, they just go press 1-2-3-4-5, activate everything then stay on auto-attack for 50 seconds cuz of cooldowns.(because,ofc, switching weapons is not good)

This “joke of raid” usually require to memorize and keep attention at more mechanics that usual 10man wow ones. Add to that an awful UI, no helpful addons, tiny number of proper training raids and small raiding community overall (yeah, there is new data on gw2eff, feel free to look at).

Daniel.5428:

I do not agree about making it legendary….I did not spent months raiding and collecting resources just to add another armor to some fractals which are far easier than raids….each game mode got his legendary part. Pvp and fractal already got a backpiece…..If you want to add new legendary armor, add it for w3 and make sure it will take months to complete the collections….or maybe add some legendary trinkets to w3 and this would be perfect…..is not ok to get fully equiped with legendary only by playing 1-2 game modes out of 5.

So how exactly another set of another legendary armor for another activity will diminish your achievements in raids? Or you did them only to feel yourself a special snowflake with purple items?

Daniel.5428:

But you got what you want. There is a weak version of VG on the new map. Don’t tell me that introducing story for other mmos work cuz they offer more accesibility…Look at WoW…..easiest is 10-man normal Raid, same as GW2…..what do you want easier than a 10-man normal raid?

Seems like you never ever played WoW raids. 10 man normal raids in WoW was faceroll easy (except Karazhan on start) due to trinity, and only problem in them was undergear. GW2 ones are harder, because there is no real trinity still.

OriOri.8724:

If you are still complaining about being handed 2 gold and 3 spirit shards every day then I don’t know what else to tell you. You keep acting as if you are getting nothing for doing the dailies because you have hit the AP cap, which is an outright lie. You are still getting 2 gold, 3 spirit shards, karma, PvP/WvW reward track progression. You are hardly getting nothing. And until you stop pretending as if you are getting nothing I really have trouble taking your arguments seriously.

Who cares about 2g when you can get it just for same 5m, simply by jumping to current farm map? How about AP rewards? You know, 30k+, 36k+. There is no sane way to farm them anymore. This is same level of bullkitten as old WvW titles, grossly overstretched requirements for no purpose.

Cynz.9437:

I play zerker thief in t4s daily and doing more than fine, never understood whole necro stacking thing – we kill bosses there just as fast with random groups consisting of anything really. Yes, having necro for boon thief is nice, but 1 is more than sufficient, imo.

I also melee most bosses so idk what you are talking about. Especially bosses you named – they are easiest to melee in fact (mai is cone – stabby stabby her in the back, shaman has obvious animations to dodge – drop dat smoke screen in his face, arch – just poke him in the back 24/7). Only bosses i range is like molten duo when my entire team is dead and i have to solo the boss or chaos fractal because boss needs to be kited 24/7.

Because in 99% pug necro will be better than pug thief, due to survivability and afk mode damage alone. I’ve seen too much pug thieves going p/p, or never switching from staff and then complaining about hard-hitting trash.

Absurdo.8309:

I’m trying get your take-away point to generate discussion, but it’s hard to see your point. Is it that raids should be more inclusive because the rest of the game is?

We’ve had hard content before. Why can’t hard content stay hard and easy content stay easy?

Further, most proposed easy modes would divide the player base, just as open-world and raids divides the player base.

Because this will widen raid playerbase, which is good in a lot of ways. Including actual possibility to continue raid development, instead of scrapping them due to low payoff from creating such niche content. You know that Ncsoft is pretty practical company when it comes to monetary decisions, right?

Aleksandar.1364:

That’s what i hope ! A new 1 wing raid with completely a new story(even a small one, where there is no impact on the world), with.. 4 or 5 boss !

At the beginning, they said they could do 4-6 wings per year ! We miss one

At the beginning, they were not expecting worst revenue drop in gw2 history. Afaik now they are working on next expansion instead, and everything else except LS3 is postponed.

Sykper.6583:

Ding Ding, we have a winner. This was one of the problems with why this ‘Wildstar’ system was an issue.

This issue is super easy to counter, just implement fractal tier chest system as reward for a kill. You killed boss in gold frame – you got all 3 chests (bronze, silver and gold), you killed boss in silver and then in gold frame – you got 2 chests (bronze and silver) and then gold one after gold kill.

Adding more rewards for rerun will almost certainly result a first run reward nerf to balance it out, making it nerf for majority and slight buff for minority. So no, this is not good idea at all.

Well, whole idea is ridiculous and impossible in lore, but there is a way around it.
evil Inquest crossbreeding experiments
don't ask me why they will do that

Jerus.4350:

How do pugs affect your ability to evade big attacks and play well?

Because you cant break all breakbars alone?

Sarahfull.4930:

Thank you for the laugh.. Can’t melee bloom pft..

Edit/Ps: lvl77 is emenies give random condi, that’s probely why your dieing alot. I could see a unlucky fear could kill you. Try get enough agony resistance for 89, booon theif is alot less punishing

You can. In premade guild group. Have fun melee him in pug.

Meehael.8240:

Yes, while at it, give us the option to hide player’s titles, armor, weapon and back item skins.
As a matter of fact, turn all player models into sheep.
That would solve everything.

Sarcasm aside, I don’t think it would be fair to be able to hide back items or armor/weapon skins of ALL other players.
I mean, I worked hard for those legendaries and I didn’t work for them just for me to see them.
This isn’t a single-player game, and that would be against the very definition of an MMO.

If some player in chat annoys me, I can block him, regardless of how hard he works on his troll skills and sentences. Why I shouldn’t be able to do the same with annoying appearances?

Agreed. Some slider for flashy items and giant backpacks will be pretty nice.

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.

Vinceman.4572:

Well, seems like you are missinformed here:
Fractal rewards are about 10g every day + loot (T6 mats, rares, you always get rares —> ectos) + chance of asc chest. The chance to get a box is higher than in raids! Raid wing 1 and 2 give 2g per encounter and we have 6 of them. After clearing the you get 2 champ bags and 5 green bags for every encounter + some minor events you are doing for a whole week!

If you are expecting endgame pve to be really profitable, then you clearly playing a wrong game. Last time it was good only in pre-hot arah before reward nerfs, when you could solo p4 and sell it for 25-50g x4 per run. People clearing fractals and raids for unique rewards and ascended drops, not for raw gold.

Vinceman.4572:

In EU I see lfgs for every boss the whole week with a high peak on Monday and Tuesday, little bit less on Wednesday. Lesser on Thursday and Friday and then with a high peak at weekends.
Some with LI requirements, some without, depending also sometimes depending on the encounter which is not very bad because if you are able to raid and beat the easy bosses, you are fast in learning the next ones. Getting to 30-50 LI is easy within some weeks of easy kills. Then do some practice runs for the harder ones and afterwards you are welcome in every group you want.

Again, try to join these groups and then tell me about these “safe kills” mentioned earlier.

Vinceman.4572:

I can again repeat Anet: They are pleased with the numbers and more players are raiding than in other MMOs. This is a big success of raids which you can’t neglect! Period.

I remember there was a discussion about that on reddit, when someone pointed out that Anet considered everyone who ever tried VG as “raiders”.

Vinceman.4572:

Wrong! People were leaving the game in droves because the HoT maps were made grossly negligent. Raids weren’t even out to that time. (Raid release was 1 month after HoT release!)
And now we have had a content drought once again! Look at the Bloodstone Fen at the moment. This is the real issue! Almost nobody is in the mood to play this map longer than necessary. It’s boring as hell. You cannot keep player with that, I agree.

But almost nobody left GW2 due to raids you can’t tell me that you are serious with that. You can’t blame raids and the small dev team for bad/horrible decisions in the company in general. I haven’t seen one single thread or comment on reddit of a player that said: I’m leaving because raids made GW2 bad. Hilarious!

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.

Vinceman.4572:

You are a player who doesn’t raid so I have to enlighten you: Raid rewards already are bad. Very bad if you compare them to fractals. And fractals are bad compared to many other things you can do to get gold in this game. Really, play raids and as a usual player you will be upset to see the reward after killing a boss because that’s what every player is without a particular addiction to raids.
So, if you give the usual raid reward to easy mode and double to current, it would split the raid playerbase hard because several would just run the easy mode because for them it’s ok to get the same things like before without a challenge as a double for way more effort. There has to be a fair balance and if you give the usual reward to easy mode, I suggest a change for the current mode to 10g per boss + 5 LI + 25 champ bags + 50 usual bags + 5 guaranteed exotic (precursor chance included) + 1 guaranteed asc item/infusion + 1 mini.
You see, this suggestion sounds doubtful or in some ears absolutely ridiculous but the relation has to be approximately like this otherwise the easy mode reward would shine over the other too much.
As we all know that Anet is still parsimonious with rewards we won’t see coming changes to that so easily and that gives hope that they are not crashing down the reward structure if they implement an easy mode. That would mean from a current mode with 2-4g + 1 LI, 1 exotic or the chance of 1 asc item/infusion + chance to get a mini + 2 champ bags + 5 green bags to almost 0 or maybe 2 champ bags + the 5 green bags for an easy mode.

Additionally, I strongly doubt that we will see such easy mode soon. We have had clear statements to Swamp and there still hasn’t been a change. Raids are out for a longer period now without changes. Sure, they have a look on their baby but at the moment it sees that there is 0% indication that we see an easy mode the next three months.

I’m glad that you posses telepathic abilities and reading minds trough internet. Sadly, they are working quite bad, because I’m cleared everything multiple times, and stopped a week ago, mostly because I finally got matthias staff drop, legendary armor is too grindy and raiding trough LFG is too much a hassle.
Also, I recommend you to get off your high horse and visit dungeons and fractals, to see how “awesome” is loot from them right now.

Vinceman.4572:

The lfg is full, the population isn’t low. Your statement won’t become true even if you repeat it several times. I wrote it in other posts before that I’ve met so many players I couldn’t believe they would have success in raids. They are now clearing all 3 wings with some minor problems at Sabetha, Matthias and Xera. The rest of the 6 bosses are safe kills after less than 2 hours on Monday – not with static groups!
Anti-raiders argument so heavily instead of trying and noticing that they are crying about nonsense.

LFG is full in NA primetime, after raid reset? Right. I usually see such population in fractal LFG during off hours.
Also, try to wait a few days and join some LFG with low/no LI requirements and enjoy experience that absolute majority of new raiders having right now. Then you can come back and tell about “safe kills” and “people who don’t have problems with raids”.

Vinceman.4572:

Raids are on their own stage and it’s a must to defend that because such content was lacking in this game waaaayyyyyy too long.

Along with worst population drop in whole gw2 history. Uh oh.

Vinceman.4572:

In theory, yes, practically no.
People would differentiate very fast: Is it worth to invest more time and effort just to get a little bit more of rewards or not? If the rewards of the easy mode are too good and useful same people would cold-shoulder the normal mode like they are doing now.

We had several very good examples during dungeon peak time: CoF 1&2 vs. 3, SE 1&3 vs. 2, TA up&fwd vs. aether, Arah 1,2&3 vs. 4 even AC 2 was neglected by a huge amount of players although the path isn’t longer or more difficult than 1&3.

So, the rewards for an easy mode have to be pretty low which results in people running this mode one single time —> very good for lore hunters but bad for the overall community due to heavy wasted development time. Still, the faceroll reward crew would raise their voices again and cry.

x2 rewards are not “little bit” at all, especially if you consider that raids are not that hard and their population is being kept low only because of negative feedback loop caused by anet oversight and community itself.
Situation is absolutely same as it was with fractals – at first T4 was considered unnecessary hard, but now everyone and his mother farming them because community have a lot of experience and there is no hassle to find a group to run with.

Vinceman.4572:

Of course, because the rewards are made for the challenging content not for succeeding a faceroll mode like in 99% of the game. Raid rewards for an easy mode are just unnecessary.

And if you give rewards to the easy mode, the rewards for the other modes have to be increased tremendously otherwise nobody would run them. Players are going the way of the least resistance. They would accept getting 100g (insert any other insane thought) per day just for the login. You can extend that till such changes would destroy the whole game in the end.

Emm.. what? I really can’t understand your logic. Let’s say Anet added easymode and rewards to it, like 50% of normal. It can have 2 possible models then.
1. Concurrent raid loot cooldowns. You did wing in easymode – you cant get loot in normal mode and vice versa. Outcome – everybody will try to get to normal mode ASAP. No one wants to get less loot when he can get more.
2. Separated raid loot cooldowns. You did wing in easymode – you can get loot in normal mode and vice versa. Outcome – everyone will try to clear everything in easy mode and then clear as much as they can in normal mode. Both modes cleared means 300% of easy mode rewards/150% from normal mode, and ofc everyone will try to maximize reward.
So… what exactly bad and wrong with that model?

zealex.9410:

multiple necros with a druid tent to simplefy every and all encounters and the multiple epidemics can destroy the trash packs quickly so you can move faster to the boss also many of the bosses have 1 or more add with them perfect for the epidemic if despite that bother you that much that the reaper fest is happening dont worry they will get the ely treatment soon™

Unlikely. Anet barely cares about pve balance outside of raids and in raids reaper is not even close to top.

Jerus.4350:

There’s a difference between an hp sponge and having enough health to not die to burst damage that completely ignores any mechanics going on.

Fractals have their optimal planned running time. Increasing time for a Mossman fight must be compensated by reducing something else then.

Cameron Rich.3905:

Rest assured that we have no desire to trivialize the Bloomhunger fight.

Just do something with projectiles (they are way too fast) and melee hate (halved breakbar maybe? or additional endurance regen in melee?).
Sometimes you just dont have endurance to dodge everything that is being spammed on you (especially with endurance regen instability), and then ofc he immediately focuses on downed target and charge at you again and again.

Most likely – 1 raid per expansion, 1-3 fractals and ofc LS. No reason to change this ratio without changes in difficulty system.

Harper.4173:

Yes – but there are 5 races. Obviously there are going to be more of the other 4 combined than any one of the races.
But the fact that there are more humans than any other races and the fact that the second closest is norn – which are literally bigger humans does say something too.

In fact you are purposing to lose majority of game population only because you think that it will somehow increase amount of armor sets made. Ugh.

I have 25 characters and 8k+ hours played, but wouldn’t buy human-only GW2 at all.

Well, that was pretty expected. I believe that current situation will help Anet to understand that making content for minority is not bad (raids are pretty nice content after all), but ignoring vast majority of players is very bad.

>ArenaNet needs to do more to prompt the community to become competitive. They lack a way to rekindle exclusivity prestige, (Gold trim/Guild Capes), Jarvan IV skin for S1 / League of Legends. ArenaNet panders a bit too heavily to the “everyone” via the pip/league system with the Ascension, which while it may not be bad, leaves little prestige/exclusivity for the dedicated competitive players to impress and inspire

>Content exclusivity ~ the community mentality, “Everyone wins!” Legend in Hearthstone 0.02% Legendary backpack isn’t really “legendary”. Shift in perspective between solo queue/motivation.
I’m so tired from reading this again. And again. And again. No, seriously, SCREW THIS. This “competitive push” killed almost all godkitten casual population. They killed hotjoin. They killed soloQ. They basically gutted casual pvp playerbase every time, trying to saturate their precious esports scene, and failing. Every. Time.
It’s like someone seriously looking at other pvp games and saying “Hey, they have l33t players on top who getting a lot of cool stuff, and large casual base below them! We need this too, so let’s start with creating the elite part and casual playerbase will grow by itself because I’m sure I understand how it works now!”. This is NOT how it works. You cannot build healthy competitive scene without heavily investing into casual popularity. Small pvp playerbase cannot sustain anything competitive, regardless of how much money you will spend on tourneys.

Is that only me, or he is just regularly ignoring CC applied to him during his regeneration, unless you fully deplete his breakbar? Before HoT is was enough to just apply any hard CC on him, but now this happens more and more often.

Vinceman.4572:

I still don’t see “many of” you in these forums.

I don’t see excited raid praising crowd either. Also, if you will look at reddit, where anet answering and participating in discussions way more often than here, situation will be even worse for you.

Absurdo.8309:

Re meta: You don’t need to use meta builds in raids. And there’s plenty of content where meta builds are not expected.

Re story: You can experience that right now by going into a completed instance. Heck, the one-liner that ties raids to the main story is in a completed instance.

Re stepping stone: High level fractals provide a stepping stone. Easier raid bosses, like escort, provide a stepping stone.

Re “this is my story”: I mean you can debate whether this content is as hard as raids (I think they were at release), but that doesn’t change that anet has put much more relevant story info behind that content.

Myself, along with several others, have already explained how an easy mode would directly harm raiders (there’s a post a couple above yours that does a good job). Here’s another summary:

1. It takes away resources either from new raids or new living world content. Put another way, it adds nothing for people who already raid or people that have no interest in raiding.
2. It splits the raiding playerbase, and provides less diversity of skill in raid groups
3. If the rewards are imbalanced, it may destroy regular raids.
4. If it also provides the rewards unique to raids, it may destroy regular mode and the achievement from beating regular mode.
5. If the rewards are balanced, or if there’s little reward, then there’s no staying power with easy mode — it would be a one and done, a waste of resources.
6. There will still be players who can’t beat easy mode

There are solutions to all your concerns that don’t involve easy mode raids. But I think you’re so fixated on a silver-bullet solution to problems (which may or may not exist) that it’s clouding your judgment. Heck, on the concern for spirit shards, your solution was easy mode raids, not the simple and obvious solution of a spirit shard track.

This bias, intentional or not, leads me to believe that many easy-moders are anti-raid.

1. It actually increases the chance that raids will get any development resources in future. Because, you know, there is just as much negative outlash as positive, if you take a look at resources with voting system, aka reddit. And Anet is not a charity company, so high management can make a decision to allocate development resources elsewhere, based on popularity. Like, if you remember, they did with fractals years ago, and fractals was WAY more popular PvE endgame content.
2. It splits playerbase and takes leechers and freeriders off normal mode. If people are ready to switch from normal to easier difficulty even with massively nerfed rewards, do you really think that they was active skilled raiders or something?
3. Anet is pretty good at balancing rewards in tiered content actually. See dungeons and fractals.
4. Lolwhat. It’s like saying that winning your local school championship and getting school reward devalues professional sport.
5. Small reward is still reward, plus putting this reward on separate CD from normal raids will give normal raiders initiative to play it with beginners for additional rewards if they want to. So beginners will get their small reward and normal raiders can get their big AND small reward. Win-win.
6. And there will be significantly more players raiding players at the same time, which is always good. Raiding playerbase will at least double in size, if reddit poll was true.

Sarrs.4831:

But extra difficulty modes are not quality repeatable content.

Raiders don’t want more difficulty levels to raid in. They want more raids.
Non-raiders don’t want watered down raids. They want non-raid content.

Almost 90%+ of players according gw2e did fractals at least once. It’s quite obvious that there is a LOT of people out there who want to raid but not raiding yet. Raid tiers will solve that problem and give new repeatable content to wide auditory.

Vinceman.4572:

Sorry, as a dedicated raider I cannot accept your reward structure.
Only blues, greens and a rare for a single boss in easy mode + 4 magnetite shard for a successful boss kill resulting in 36 shards per week. That would be ok nothing more.

Do you have any other propositions how to stimulate raiders to teach other players without restricting it by tying to rare teaching runs and guilds? Current system actually discourages from running with inexperienced people.

Sarrs.4831:

That’s bad, though. Those resources come from other places in the game, especially areas which are better designed by their fundamental mechanics to service casual players; open world content and fractals.

Raids are repeatable content, and repeatable content is a staple that keeps any MMO alive. So more quality repeatable content is always good.

Sykper.6583:

sigh

Because it can and will affect him/her.

Here’s a few just off the top of my head:

- Resources, regardless of their origin from either the raid team or some other PvE team, will impact production of all future content.
- Reward balance to avoid disfranchising raiders who had to fight hard for their encounters versus those seeking a lighter challenge. The incentive too good in easier modes? No one would try for a harder difficulty. Incentive too weak? No one would ever play easy mode raiding, and would rather farm Open World.
- Population for raiding divides, and depending on aforementioned previous point before, it’s entirely plausible that easy-raiding becomes the core method for farming raid only currency.

And probably a very important point that someone like you might not ultimately ever consider:

- Raiding is supposed to be an ultimate PvE challenge, as per its own premise. Having an easier difficulty defeats the whole purpose behind raiding’s existence.

I have very likely missed a few other points, but I believe I have competently countered your point objectively that adding an easier mode can’t do harm.

So, let’s say, easier mode difficulty added, with:
1. Separate CD from normal raid
2. Fractal loot formula (aka 1/3 chance of unique valuable drops if compared with higher tier)
3. LI dropped only from wing endbosses
4. Easymode have shared magnetite shard cap with normal mode plus separate +50 cap specially for easymode.
5. Items for legendary collection (except 1 LI from each wing endboss) can be obtained only in normal mode. Raid vendors still need bosskills in normal mode to open their selling options.
6. Boss abilities stays same, but players getting buff +20% damage output, -20% damage received, +20% health, +20% healing output.

What do we have in that case?
1. Learning mode. Encounters are absolutely same, same timers, same abilities, same mechanics. Only difference is significant buff to players, which makes lots of difficult moments way easier.
2. Initiative for normal mode raiders to actually do raids with new players. Yes, loot is not that great, but it’s something, instead of current “haha, you did it already so nothing for you”.
3. Slightly faster LI acquisition for those who ain’t happy with the idea of 8 months raid farm for 1 legendary set.
4. Bridged gap. Yes, loot drops are way lower, but experience of raid encounter + small drops is way better than current situation when unexperienced players meeting already pretty high demands in LFG and scarcity of teaching runs.
5. Seriously growing normal raid population. That’s pretty simple, more people, more raiding groups, more possibilities, more experience, even more people, even more raiding groups, etc. Classic positive feedback loop.
6. After p.5 – more initiative for developers to make more raids. Growing popularity of content means that investments of development time gives more return and becoming more likely.

Vinceman.4572:

The poll is too old while there are so many guides out now, helping & training guilds and a more forgiving wing 3.

I still found these comments about W3 especially funny, because literally almost every W3 LFG have something like 100+ LI+killproof and sometimes tonic as well. Yes, even Glenna.

Remaining collection items for legendary armor should be coming with future raid releases.
No date given for next raid release, just anything is possible when asked if we will see new raids before the next expansion.

Not sure if it means “mandatory”.

TexZero.7910:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4n6nzu/internally_the_raid_team_is_lauded_and_praised/d41ldky

You were sayin’ chief ?

Link’s more recent, states the team is together and working on the next raid.
Checkmate.

And they also said before that most of their developers are working on xpack 2. So yes, they are most probably working on next raid, for next expansion.

fishball.7204:

With all the work required to make the raid instance into a 5 man fractal might as well divert that effort to new fractals.

The fractal team and the raid team are also 2 different groups so it’s not they can simply copy & paste the instances over. The way they probably setup the raid is also heaps different since they use 10 man squads and not 5 man parties. Just looking at it from an external perspective it looks like the effort required will be huge with little to no difference in benefit when compared to getting a totally new fractal.

Also if you consider we haven’t gotten a new fractal in years it would suggest that the fractal system isn’t really intuitive with many restrictions unlike the raid design.

Right, more new fractals, “I want to believe”. Except I can’t remember any strict promises about them at all. Next fractal will be most probably last one for whole expansion, and this is optimistic time range. And if they will keep this pace, then I prefer to see 9 raid bosses split to fractal encounters, than 1 fractal with 2-3 bosses per expansion.

Artemis, I guess it will be better if you make a copy of this thread on reddit. Devs barely visit forums these days.

Azoqu.8917:

Those plus Ad Infinatum. Needing the legendary because it would be an extension of the legendary back.

How about gold liquid coating effect from combining that backpack and Ad Infinitum then? Just like Juggernaut adds silver coating.

TexZero.7910:

You already have something to bridge the gap, ironically you mentioned it in you post.

Dungeons -> Fractals -> Raid.

You can thank me later.

So you are supporting thread next to this one, about fractals being changed into the bridge between them? Because current fractals are obviously not doing that job.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

The unstated assumption seems to be that the game’s philosophy ought to be: all instances, all content, all rewards — should be available to everyone, regardless of how they play.

That’s a massive change in direction for the franchise — there has always been content that required different degrees of skill, always been rewards gated behind such content, and always been some amount of lore|dialogue in such content as well.

People forget that at launch and for months and months and months afterward, a huge fraction of the playerbase believed dungeons to be too difficult…and dungeons have all sorts of lore and skins. Fractals continue to be an area that a lot of people feel is inaccessible. Raids are just the latest target.

Therefore, it’s not a “compromise” to offer different levels of raiding or move some of the encounters to fractals — it’s a complete change of direction of the game’s philosophy.

Raids are designed to cater to a particular group of players. I was against adding them to the game, since I do not count myself among that group. But now that it’s here, I’m glad for the opportunity to challenge myself, even if finding the right 10 people remains the biggest challenge.

I think ANet should revisit locking legendary armor behind raids (I’d like to see other skins that are available via WvW, PvP, and PvE) and give non-raiders a chance to explore the instances (they are amazingly designed).

However, I don’t think it’s a good use of ANet’s time to shoehorn raid content to fractals or even to multiple degrees of difficulty. I’d much, much prefer to see ANet creating more content, not micro-engineering the same content over and over again.

Change direction of… what? Raids was not in game until HoT. There is literally nothing to change, and bridging gap “hardest fractals = easy version of raid” will create a perfect learning line for pve players, Dungeons->Fractals->Raids.