Guild Wars 2

[VZ] is still recruiting! Our first adventure into Salvation Pass is happening this Friday, so it’ll be a very exciting time for the guild. If you’d like to get involved with very casual and very friendly, low-stress raiding, then consider messaging one of our officers about joining! Of course, we also do a ton of other stuff, as mentioned in the OP, so take a gander!

I’m not sure where this was posted on Reddit, but anyone can claim something is written by an ANet employee. Always make sure to check for the ANet flair on Reddit or a reference to one such post on an official ANet communication channel before buying into anything that people claim is said by ANet.

I am expecting it in the spring seasonal patch in April.

RyanCid.9270:

Bringing up status quo and structural restriction on anet side is a problem for anet to solve. If anet decided it will continue to focus on Raid content which sadly excludes many casual players those people will also simply move on. This is also a reality of the situation

ANet is devoting more than 98% of its development effort on content and features outside of raids. If players move on to other games knowing that, then that’s their prerogative. ANet knows who their largest audience is, and will be working to support them in the coming months.

EcoRI.9273:

Hopefully the FoTM team can release boss encounters that are just as challenging as the raid bosses.

I know the Fractals team has been racking the brains of the Raids team and want to do exactly this for the highest level Fractals. How it’ll turn up is anyone’s guess, and when it’ll be playable is even less knowable at this stage.

Raids are already very accessible, there’s just this public stigma that it’s somehow impossibly difficult or takes insane amounts of time and so only elite players can experience the content. They’re even going to make the raids more accessible once they revamp the LFG tool to have sections for them.

For context, my extremely casual guild group spends less than 3 hours a week playing raids, and we’ve gotten through the entirety of wing 1 so far. All it takes is the willingness to adapt; half of us don’t even have appropriate ascended gear.

Vidal.4306:

The announcement for a raid that I can’t take part in isn’t doing me any favors, so I’d like it removed. It never should have been put there in the first place.

While I disagree with you and think it should be there to make people aware of the new raid wing, I do think ANet should invest in making the announcements’ visibility configurable in the user preferences so we don’t have to read the same announcements for months on end (ie. PvP league).

Healix.5819:

From the AMA: No plans for 5 man version of the raid or easier mode of the raid. We are working on solutions for finding raid groups such as adding raids to the LFG tool.

The problem with adding multiple modes is that it’ll cost more, both to implement it and to maintain it. Coming from the perspective of a raiding guild from other MMOs, without raiding, people simply didn’t know what to do back at launch, so they quit within the first month. With only a few devs working on raids, they’re goal was likely to re-attract those players at a low cost, and it did work, but I doubt it’ll stick with legendary armor being the goal, rather than vertical progression.

One day they might add an easy mode or simply nerf it, but for now, those resources are likely much better spent somewhere else.

The above quoted post is a good representation of the reality of the situation. That said, as I understand it there is no intention to have an easy mode or a nerfed version down the road either. The maintenance costs alone associated with another mode are prohibitively high for the raid team’s size.

In an attempt to collate good information together to report up to the team, and as groups finally clear all of the bosses, I am creating this topic so we can see what people liked about the wing and what people didn’t like about the wing. Some questions I’d like to see answered by the community:

• Was it too easy? Too hard? Just right?
• What did you think of the mechanics?
• Did they add new boss fight mechanics compared to Wing 1 that pleased you? This might be things like mandating projectile management.
• What things would you like to see mechanics-wise in Wing 3 now that you’ve seen the other 2?
• Which wing did you like more and why?

I, personally, won’t get to play it until Friday night, but I will chime in my thoughts once I get there.

Healix.5819:

The problem is the focus they’re currently putting on it. It doesn’t matter how little resources they’re spending on raiding, it’s the fact that raiding is all we’re hearing about. It’s making GW2 look like every other generic MMO devoted to raiding, and for everyone that wanted something different, what GW2 used to be, it’s currently looking bad. Even HoT itself was advertised with an emphasis on raids and guilds. Now knowing that the regular releases aren’t coming for nearly a year after HoT’s release, that’s going to be one long stretch of nothing. They could at least bring back the reoccurring monthly events to overshadow it, which will probably happen in April.

The only reason we’re hearing about raids a lot is because the raid wings weren’t all ready at launch. If they had all come out at the same time with HoT, you wouldn’t be hearing about it nearly as much as you are. The fact that they are coming out in a staged way, though, means you’ll hear about it more. It doesn’t mean they’re focusing on it more. There’s a very big difference there and it’s important that you and others understand it.

Frankly, though, I’m surprised people think that they’re hearing so much about raids at all. There was no mention of raids in the January seasonal patch, which also included a revamped Shatterer intended for players like yourself who aren’t interested in raids.

The Floor is Lava? is a great adventure, and the gold route is incredibly tight and a lot of fun to figure out. It’s about learning the path and mastering the mechanical skill to get it down. There’s no RNG involved; it’s great.

Shooting Gallery and Fallen Masks, however, are both grotesque RNG abominations with gold medals I’ll never get in their current states. I realize that some combinations are gold-possible, but I don’t have the patience to RNG until I get the right combination. I hope they address this.

Sure, I’ll participate!

1. Have the time between each season be a pre-season where placement during the pre-season seeds you into higher divisions in the next season. Have these count for division crossings in the achievements.

2. Buff the Legacy lord by making it stronger and giving it a down state.

3. More maps for Stronghold and for Conquest.

4. Allow division drops after you lose enough pips to lose the entire last tier of the previous division.

5. Limit class stacking in ranked to 2 per class, disallow class swapping after a ranked match starts, and use class-based MMR.

Bebunw.8137:

For 3 years gw2 had no raids but we can undoubtely say the direction of the game has change, even if it is a small part in the developpement ressource, raids are becoming the center of attention of gw2, players like me who has no interests in raid may choose another mmo to play with. it’s sad but it’s how i feel for the state actual state of the game.

So wait, just because players now have the option to raid you are going to quit GW2?

Wethospu.6437:

If you want defend this kind of content it’s not really my thing. I’m out.

Sorry, it’s in my nature to try and get useful information out of even the trolliest of threads.

Profession-based specialists were actually in the pipeline originally, but due to lack of community interest only a couple professions had people for them, so the idea was canned. Instead, myself and the other specialists sort of became the “balance specialists” for our area. I’ve submitted a lot of feedback regarding balance as it pertains to Fractals and Raids and even general PvE.

TheBravery.9615:

The forum tag that goes beside my name may unintentionally influence forum user’s beliefs that I might represent the interest of one profession over another profession if my forum tag is specified to one profession. (E.g. become warrior forum specialist, but make a guardian balance spreadsheet. My credibility in the guardian forum will decline and people would be more inclined to disapprove of my suggestions based only on the tag beside my name) Is there any way to hide the tag?

No, but this isn’t really a problem. I’m an active poster in the PvP forums as well, for instance, and no one takes that I am the instanced PvE specialist as meaning that I have no idea what I’m talking about in PvP. Really it comes down more to how you present your posts and less what your actual title is.

It’s very important as a specialist that your tag be displayed. I get a lot of forum PMs and in-game PMs from people with great feedback for ANet that would like it to get messaged to the appropriate team. Having the title displayed tells people who to talk to and helps a lot.

As for your spreadsheets, I wouldn’t worry about those. One thing you could do is make a thread containing your spreadsheet, and then see what public opinion on your spreadsheet is. Then you could report to ANet thoughts from that discussion. This is how I field a lot of topics in the instanced PvE forums when new things come up.

The ANet team really loves having specialists, though, and if you’ve got a demonstrated effort of making awesome posts throughout the forums and have the motivation to build up reports to help make the game better, then please apply. Seriously, it is a largely thankless job, but I love seeing patch notes where things I’ve proposed to ANet through this program and with player feedback get implemented. The recent patch for the second wing of the Forsaken Thicket, for instance, was very personally rewarding for me.

Good luck if you do apply!

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

I do like the idea of raids and I really would like to play it more but it is nearly impossible for me. I am trying to get the people in my guild to play but since raid was opened in the game my guild has raided once.

Heads-up, they’re actively working on updating the LFG for raids to make it easier to find and create groups. They’re targeting a release for that work with the spring seasonal patch in April, but they did mention that it may get pushed depending on how cleanly it works. This should help a lot with your organization issues!

EdgarMTanaka.7291:

Since HoT release I can only remember shatterer remake and copy-paste festivals with no story. I know the dev team is working hard with LS but I have been playing PvP and other games because GW2 offers me nothing I can do. A small teaser release of the LS together with the raid would have been nice atleast.

I can’t speak for the LS3 team, but I know they’re all hard at work and want to get things out to everyone ASAP. Also, there will be other things to do in-game before LS3 comes out (not including raids). We don’t know what they are yet, but Colin before he left did confirm that some other content was in the pipeline for Q2 2016.

Wethospu.6437:

Just look at what PvP are doing and take inspiration from that. It’s not very difficult but I’m not here to do their jobs.

I’m not sure I follow. How is player versus player relevant to AI for raids? Do you want raids to be 10v10 PvP modes?

Wethospu.6437:

Add some smart AI which actively and dynamically counters what people do so people need to think what they do instead of just doing some pre-recorded rotation. Add some real strategy by bringing more unique and fun roles than just dps only.

A lot of people make the suggestion to “bring more unique and fun roles than just pure DPS”, but can you elaborate? Give some examples? In raid testing, ANet experimented with lots of roles, including having people be “runners” where they perform some side mechanic, but preliminary user experience feedback said those roles weren’t fun because you interacted with the actual boss so little.

Also, it’s easy to say “make dynamic AI”, but that ultimately boils down to people working on fixed rotations anyway once people figure out all of the possible permutations. With sufficient complexity, you might create dynamic experiences for lower-skill players, but higher-skill players will figure out the best way to manage the behaviors easily, ultimately devaluing all of the enormous development time that went into that complexity. It’s a bad design.

Wethospu.6437:

Argue all you want but if someone can get to the end solo like 1 day after the release that says something about the raids.

Weth, there’s no kill chest for Matthias. The OP broke out of the map and just landed in the temple at the end to pretend he soloed it. The mechanics of the bosses alone clearly prevent anyone from soloing everything.

Also, Weth, if you have ideas for things they could do that would make it “dynamic” while not requiring you fight other players or something, please do tell.

Raids were and continue to be a great idea, and the raid team continues to be exceptionally responsive to player concerns and very open to player ideas. They stand as an example of success for other teams in the company, and the tech that has been developed in support of raids has already been leveraged elsewhere in the game to great effect. As a specialist, they are among my favorite people to work with, and I say that without any influence from the ANet crew.

Raids may not appeal to some people, but they are a great success that has minimal to no schedule impact on the rest of the game. You are not losing an earlier LS3 because of raids.

[DnT] tested all wings prior to the debacle whereby they were removed from testing. They weren’t reinvited, and even if they were, it’s ANet’s decision to make and not anyone else’s.

Yay, breaking out of the map!

They’re working on this actively. They’re targeting the spring seasonal patch in April for this, though it is not confirmed that it’ll make it yet.

There is no way they could ever actually know or decide months in advance what day they will release on, as that is a great way for ANet to make a promise and then fail to deliver. We found out about this particular release date ~3 weeks ago, which is already more advance notice than we usually get for stuff.

Gibon.1705:

Everything fine, but I have already salvaged like 3 pieces from raids b4 we were about to get any shards from that. Do you think that support is going to refund this?

Doubtful, but it’s worth a try.

They’ve confirmed that the story in the raid wings is unrelated to what will be present in LS3. It is a complete side story.

Jordo.5913:

I don’t hate raids. I actually like them being in the game.

I don’t like them affecting other content being released.

They don’t.

This has been confirmed repeatedly by the raid team themselves and ANet’s upper management. They are completely isolated from the living story team, the fractals team, the pvp team, the wvw team, and every other team. They are a team of 5-6 full time employees out of ~300 employees. Additionally, the tech that the raid team has developed has actually proven useful in other areas of the game, such as in fractals and open world content. The only impact the raid team has on the game is positive.

latinkuro.7304:

they changed them they should allow people to swap them boxes for the new ones.
it’s a principles thing. I got enough gold to do whatever I want, that don’t mean they should get away with kitten like this.

“Get away with kitten like this” is fairly myopic of you. Really, they listened to every single raid reward request I passed on to them as part of my raid specialist reports. It takes a lot of time to allow you to convert one type of box (which can’t even be distinguished from the Fractal boxes) in the old system to another in the new because each one would have to be a different currency. It’s a massive undertaking that they expertly decided wasn’t worth the effort, especially when people in your situation can simply open a support ticket to get it figured out if you’re so adamant on not converting in the mystic forge.

It depends on the group, really. For a group largely consisting of mediocre players who eat Gorseval slams and who fail to dodge Sabetha cannon fire, leaving staff is essentially consigning the group to death. In groups where players play perfectly and no one is getting hit when they shouldn’t, then you can sit in your damage weapon set and dish it out. For pubs, oftentimes Druids make the assumption that their team is going to get hit a lot and so they don’t prepare for the case where that’s not true.

Ultimately, your mileage may vary.

ANet is a company on the west coast of the United States. It’s ~8:30AM for them right now, which means no one is even in the office. Expect it to be released sometime in the next 6 hours.

Shylock.4653:

Fractals aren’t the only content after 80, and getting enough AR for low- and mid-level fractals is easy.

You also don’t need AR until L20, and even then you can do fine until about L28 with 0 AR depending on your dodge skills.

I just wanted to share that thanks to your all’s advice, my guild group was successful at beating Sabetha for the first time tonight (and we got The Eternal!). Thanks a lot guys.

[VZ] is still recruiting! We’re hoping to finally beat Sabetha this Friday before wing 2 comes out, but if not we’ll still be running both wings frequently after the update! Additionally, we continue to do all of the other things advertised in the OP, so if those things sound good talk to one of the officers! We’re happy to chat.

This is all great feedback, thank you! I’ll confess that I never really realized that the platform crush did minimal damage, and as the Druid I always just had to go into overdrive because people tunneled on avoiding the little circles and would eat other mechanics. With the knowledge that with effective protection and healing we can just facetank that mechanic and regard everything else as normal, I think we’ll be able to do it. I appreciate the suggestions, everyone.

There is a fractals team distinct from the raids team and fractals will be getting updates this year, including leaderboards, Ad Infinitum, and new fractals. They’re actively working on stuff now, they’re just not as communicative on the forums as the raid team so it doesn’t seem that way.

So my group has gotten everything in Spirit Vale down to a science, pretty much, but we have been continually struggling on one facet of Sabetha. Once she hits 25% HP and Karde comes out, we’ve gotten to the point where we can manage Karde, but as soon as Sabetha comes back and the bullet hell of falling ceiling pieces begins, everything consistently falls apart and people are getting smashed and wrecked. At first I was associating it with not enough experience in this phase, but we’ve gotten there plenty of times now and it still happens. Watching the other players in my group, I’m not sure if there’s a tactic here that makes this easier or if it’s just a lack of mechanical skill. Is there some trick to staying alive as a group at that point?

I’ve yet to even finish Sabetha because our best runs fall apart with 4-6 people dying very quickly after the transition. I’ve looked at some videos, but it’s non-obvious if there’s an actual strategy there or if it’s just a free-for-all of avoiding circles. It’d be good to actually see and experience a win once to know what to even look for. Any recommendations? Thanks.

Malchior.5732:

No, but it could be something like CoF p1, where you would need 10 different people to go to different spots and do something. You could still technically buy it, but you’re just paying for a group at that point.

You’re absolutely correct; they could utilize mechanics like that to discourage selling a little. It’d be interesting to have something like that in a raid boss!

The balance will never be harsh enough that it requires 10 players with optimal DPS rotations to succeed. It will always have some flexibility, which will mean that players can low-man it and sell the remaining slots if they like.

Anyway, given how many raids you have to complete to finish the first collection for Envoy Armor, if you’re willing to pay 5000g+ just for the collection and none of the other parts that’s your prerogative. The legendary armor will still have massive prestige in that case.

Yes, resetting the fight works. In my guild runs I have never encountered the bug since assigning myself as the only person to ever touch the hammer.

SlyDevil.3952:

Can you still carry the hammer with you from the double seal? That was a previous fix as well.

This works for the first seal hit on the final Archdiviner, but when you strike the seal all hammers vanish now. This means it doesn’t really help on second hit and beyond.

It drops, but if 2+ people try to pick it up at the same time it will bug and vanish. ANet is aware, though that doesn’t mean it’s a simple fix or that they’ll be able to get to it soon. The workaround is to only ever have 1 person pick up the hammer.

TexZero.7910:

….Did they seriously go and link them to the leaderboards ?

This has been their plan since Ad Infinitum was first announced. My general understanding is that the leaderboards will function more like the adventure leaderboards, where each specific fractal level has a bronze/silver/gold reward associated with it. I would expect Ad Infinitum’s final collections to require multiple silver rewards from numerous high difficulty fractals.

rfdarko.4639:

I hope they add it in before the next raid wing at least.

They won’t. The next raid release will be sometime in March by my understanding, and the earliest we could get Ad Infinitum if ANet finishes leaderboards is April.

I seriously think the current matchmaking premise is the best that we’ve ever had. It places you against random teams within your current division, which accelerates skilled players out of that division and ultimately only leaves behind those people who belong in that division. Statistically at the start of a season the lower-skill players will get beaten up more because all players start in Amber, but over a week and beyond it will get much better.

About the only thing ANet could do to make this better is seed players out of Amber based on their MMR (or qualifiers), but that has repercussions for the way they’ve programmed some of the achievements (cross X divisions, etc). Still, maybe that’s something they can work in for S3.

Buffalo Bruiser.3567:

if its “random”, then how is it possible that i have not been “randomly” placed on a team that wins? How is it that every game has been a destruction?

Because it’s not completely random; you can’t rely on luck to land on a team that’s awesome and get carried. You get placed on your team by MMR, and then your opponent is picked at random from any team in the division.

So if the average division MMR is 1200 and you are an 800 MMR player with an 800 MMR team, you are statistically unlikely to win your matches until those 1200 MMR players get to a higher division. Over time, as all of the higher MMR players leave the lower divisions, you will end up with balanced matches against players of your own skill level.

spoj.9672:

And it was an undead Gorilla. Hardly a joke design.

Undead gorilla or Canthan gorilla, we have no context for whether Slothasor is natural, infused with ley line energy, imbued with Mordremoth’s energy, an Inquest experiment, or what. “Inquest experiment gone awry” would be a perfect explanation for every part of its design, for instance, and based on whatever the Inquest did to create it I’d consider that a very serious design. You’re jumping to many conclusions about the creature and its adds without knowing literally anything about it other than how they look. Slublings may seem very strange, but I doubt it’ll go unexplained. There will be journal entries, or NPC dialogue, or something to justify it, and it’ll be fine.

Seriously, though, if the aesthetic appeal of this boss is the #1 complaint about the upcoming raid wing I’ll call it an unbridled success.

BloodyNine.7504:

But raid content, difficult content, should feel grand and intimidating. A sleepy sloth, no matter how hard it smashes my head into jelly still just feels silly.

You have literally no idea what the boss does. It may start asleep and ramp up to a very exciting and very compelling boss fight, and it may make a lot of sense in the context of the fight and what ANet was trying to achieve with the mechanics. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: we have undead gorilla bosses in-game, we can have sloth-based monsters too.

[VZ] is still recruiting! We’re doing well in raids and always looking for more people into that sort of thing. Very often we have a rotating roster in the guild, so lots of people get the opportunity to learn! Let one of the officers know if you’re interested in the things we do together as a guild; they’re happy to chat with you and see if you’re a good fit for the guild!

You need 125 league tickets and 60 days of the daily 3 games to get all of the items you need for the legendary. Getting to Diamond tier rewards you with (15 [Amber] + 20 [Emerald] + 20 [Sapphire] + 20 [Ruby]) 75 tickets. With 75 tickets, you should be able to complete the legendary after two seasons. That also works out to plenty more than 60 days.

Thaddeus.4891:

I disagree with that and you kind of shoot yourself in the foot with your own argument.

There is no skill limit to getting the PvP Legendary back item. You can play rank ruby/emerald league during enoug season to get your legendary back item eventually. It will take longer, but you whatever your PvP level you can get it, even if you are the worst player ever.

I read the rest of your post, but I wanted to hone in on this. There are a lot of people who can’t get to sapphire, let alone ruby. To get the legendary, you need 125 tickets. The legendary will only be available for 4 seasons before they introduce a new one. That means you need to hit the 35 ticket threshold each season to make it, which requires you break out of emerald into sapphire every season. That’s actually pretty difficult for some people, especially now that ANet has refined the matchmaking system. I wouldn’t say it’s exclusively skill-based, but it’s certainly more skill-based than anything else that’s comparable.

Even disregarding that, I think that enforcing some kind of skill gate on legendary armor is just fine. Ultimately, if someone wanted it that badly, they could just as easily pay a group to carry them through every collection item.