Guild Wars 2

STIHL.2489:

Are you saying that all the people who have been saying that they love and want the challenge were in fact lying, and would want to do an easy mode as well?

Mind = Blown

No, they wouldn’t necessarily want to do the easy mode, it would just be an advantage for them to do so- and therefore mandatory if they want to participate meaningfully in progression.

I hope they’re considering all options. My pet favorite is having both BLs but who knows. Hopefully we can get more news soon.

style.6173:

2. Gating legendary armor behind those raids. I thought ANET learned their lesson with ascended gear and fractals. Locking a new tier of armor behind one game mode is bad. Locking a unique skin is smart and what they should have done instead.

I don’t think they ever locked gear behind fractals though, you could always get Laurels and spend them on the rings?

If anything, the ‘worst’ they did was gating the necks behind Laurels and Laurels only.

If you don’t like soloqueuing why not just not do it?

Are you facing too many 2+1+1+1 teams as a 5man?

MatthijsB.4731:

What if we made raids accesible for squads larger than 10 players and give bigger groups (15?) lower rewards?

In that case, anet does not have to rework that much of the raid. The teams could learn the mechanics, get the better gear and gradually build down the players to 10.

What do you guys think?

A fixed raid size higher than 10 has its benefits, without necessarily reducing the reward rate. Simply having more people allows you to be more flexible with your group composition. This doesn’t really make the boss much harder- at least, at any level that would be appreciable enough that you would want to adjust rewards. They can balance around the higher raid size after all.

Alternatively, ANet could possibly look into creating a scaling system a lot like WoW’s where you could have 10 people in the raid or 30 in the raid and the boss’s health and abilities would increase or decrease respectively. I think this is probably the best long-term option, and it gives both players and guilds a lot of leeway in how they want to tackle the content.

Astralporing.1957:

And even on a racing motorcycle you can take it easy, you don’t need to participate in races.

Even in the current raids you can take it easy, you don’t need to participate in the progression race.

Rednik.3809:

This is two legendary backpacks from two different game modes. What exactly you trying to say?

He’s saying you shouldn’t be able to get the same skins from separate modes, which is a reasonable position, but I don’t think it’s what you were saying.

Spira.4578:

So they can suspend their developers and get 6 more that would be able to work in that department. At the end of the day – they would still be paying their emploees the same amount of money.

Yes. Driving out talent and replacing them with temporary hires is a fantastic recruiting strategy.

WereDragon.6083:

Exactly, one has no lived as a MM till they’ve relished in the 6 shambling 2 bone minion explosipocolypsegeddon.

I’ve gotten mine to burst nearly 10k on a single target not counting poisons from 6 shamblings, a flesh golem and two bone minions all popping at the same time. With 9 poison fields up. It’s a beautiful slurry of burst.

I just love it when you manage to get a good Rise, you move off point, and a thief chases you. He hits you with panic strike and starts spamming AA and then boom he gets flattened by 6 explosions.

Battle of Claw Island where you play as the Risen and have to kill Sieran/Tybalt/Forgal.
Cleansing of Orr as a boss fight.

Tower of Nightmare side rooms.
Tower of Nightmare final boss fight as a boss fight.

Battle on the Breachmaker hologram fight retuned for Fractal size as a boss fight.

Avatar of Mordremoth as a boss fight including Migraine achievement on higher fractal levels.

Tenebria.7239:

Ayrilana.1396:

But how do you know that you played better than your team? People tend to judge themselves less critically than they do others.

Sure, I’ll take a stab at it, almost have the list memorized.

…

Yes, I make mistakes, plenty of them, but there’s no way the above list should be occurring. I mis-rotate, I lose 1v1s I should have won, I moa into dodges. I could make a list just as long of things I do wrong, but they aren’t things like the list above.

Omg this list. I wish I had popcorn

I feel you tho. Here’s a strategy I like to try;
At the end of the game, pick out the one guy that you would want to be teamed with the most, invite them, queue again.
Just keep picking out players like this until you have 2-4 people and you’ll do much much better. Just make sure you don’t run 5 people because you can still munch pure soloqueuers as 4man but they stop appearing when you queue as 5man.

Ohoni.6057:

Hey, they’re the ones that make the case for that, not me. How else could you justify wanting to keep things away from people, when it would in no way hurt you for them to have it?

Because as usual you’re misrepresenting what people are saying and it’s plain as day.

Come on man

Ohoni.6057:

Well, that would certainly speed things up, but since some players would have to pay for LS2, I doubt that would go over well. Seriously though, if there were easy mode raids, and if there was a second PvE method for unlocking Legendaries, why NOT combine the two?

…What? You have to pay for HoT anyway.

Because having two rewards from the same raid in two different difficulties is boring and lazy.

Ohoni.6057:

If they expected a lower participation rate then why on earth would they bother making it at all? My assumption is that they believed they would design a different sort of raid, one that would appeal to a much larger audience than the raids in most MMOs. Whether it’s succeeded at that is dubious, and perhaps they never intended that, btu if not, I don’t see the point.

Because they projected a reasonable amount of developer effort for a return that they considered reasonable? We’re going backwards here.

And they’ve made those raids. It’s called Dragon’s Stand.

Ohoni.6057:

I consider all possible options, I just reject the ones that prove inferior.

You haven’t proven anything lol

Ohoni.6057:

Well that’s true, and I wouldn’t expect raids, in any form, to “save” GW2, should it need saving.

Well it’s good that you can agree that I actually have some knowledge on something. Raids, whether they have multiple modes or not, won’t save GW2.

Ohoni.6057:

But having multiple difficulties would increase the likely participation rate, because it would broaden the range of players who could potentially find raiding to be a fun and rewarding use of their time. Done right, you would have tens of thousands more players raiding on a weekly, or at least occasional basis. That’s a net positive.

You can’t say it’s a net positive when the amount of work required to implement the content is an unknown, non-negligible number, you don’t know the uptake rates, you don’t know the current uptake rates and you don’t know the targets.

Ohoni.6057:

And no matter how much work you think it may take to implement, it can’t be more work than actually implementing brand new content, so it’s a workload savings too.

…are you really making the argument that “if they introduce easy modes they get to make less content”

am i taking crazy pills? i put it in big letters because it’s important

Ohoni.6057:

And as I said, if they meet the parameters I laid out, I think it’s practically impossible for me to not complete it. But to entertain your hypothetical, if they do design the easy mode so that the overwhelming majority of players, given a few hours, could pass it, and yet somehow I am not one of these people, then I could accept that.

Consider my breath bated. Or is it baited. idk

Ohoni.6057:

And yet the rewards and the content they are attached to are completely arbitrary and at ANet’s whim. Today, the only way to earn the Legendary armor involves raiding. Tomorrow it could involve walking up to an NPC in LA and pressing “f”, and that would be “earning” it by your standards because you met the goal ANet set for you. I think that “earning” any reward in the game should be a matter of putting in a necessary amount of time and effort, I just believe that the game should try to be flexible with players, so that they ENJOY the time and effort they put in, because that works out better for EVERYONE. The only ones who could possibly oppose something like that are people who can only be happy at other people’s expense, and I do not pander to those people.

Everyone who disagrees with you is a sadist. Got it.

Ohoni.6057:

Again, you know that this is not a helpful comment, and yet you say it anyway, and there is a term for that.

I am sorry that you didn’t take any information from these stories to heart?

Ohoni.6057:

I totally agree, which is why they should be available in multiple places. I’m not talking about making it take less time or effort to earn them, just that the method should be more flexible.

I agree, legendary armor should be available in more places. I said this a few posts ago. Now on yer way

Ohoni.6057:

But again YOU are the one claiming that they would be incapable of meeting these targets

did not make this claim

Ohoni.6057:

if they could not hold certain rewards completely hostage. If YOU are correct in that, then raids do not justify their existence. All that would mean is that players really want those rewards and would do any horrible thing to get them. They could save a lot of time by just having an NPC that you have to chase around a field and press “f” every few seconds near him a hundred thousand times. It’d take little time to code and keep you all busy for quite a while, apparently.

bro, reducing the difficulty by reducing the game to ‘pressing f on an npc’ is the logical fallacy that i should be using on you, not the other way around

Ohoni.6057:

No, YOU are implying that they don’t like raiding, because YOU claim that if there were ANY easier path to those rewards, it would become impossible to find nine other players who would bother with serious raiding anymore. I’m only taking you at your word, nothing more.

not implying that. i’ve already told you about decision making when enjoyment is equal

Ohoni.6057:

It would take at least three times as long, representing dozens of hours of work, that’s plenty of trouble.

uh, no, we’ve explained why this is wrong several times before

Astralporing.1957:

Look at Fractals. The rewards are the same across all the levels, only droprates are different. Yet still people do the highest tier fractals, even when they are more difficult than level 1-10 ones. Quantity does matter.
(don’t bring swamp up, here we have the problem with quantity being the same for different difficulty, which is not anything anyon argues here for)

Sorry, I disagree. The data can’t be considered fairly when Swamps is in the mix. Swamps does not actually add any difficulty and it adds a trivial amount of time to the process. You need to be looking at the older data as Thaddeus points out.

Astralporing.1957:

Way to avoid the point completely.
Either after the split there will still be enough hard mode players to sustain it, in which case it’s not an argument, or there won’t be, in which case there wasn’t enough of them to justify the mode in the first place.

But raids as they are have exceeded their target participation rate so there’s no need to implement the model in the first place.

I get what you’re saying but there’s no need to make multimodal raids when they’re already justifying their resource expenditure and then some.

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, but the apple tree is not Raid. It’s ANet. Raid is just the box you pick them from – there’s no reason why they can’t also be in a different box.

I dunno. I think I’ve made myself clear on which rewards I think should be offered through other avenues and which shouldn’t. Legendary armor through a second avenue, sure, accessories with new stat spreads, sure, skins, I’d rather not.

Ohoni.6057:

So then what alternate method would you accept for PvE players to earn Legendary armors? Because “just hard raids” or equivalent is not an acceptable solution.

Iunno. Fractals? Dungeons? Some new form of content we haven’t seen yet? What if Luminescent armor was a precursor?

Ohoni.6057:

Reconcile these two statements.

There’s nothing to reconcile.

STIHL’s solution is not a raid.
What I brought up to Astralporing was a completely seperate set of raids with different bosses, mechanics, environments and tuning, with one mode.

Ohoni.6057:

You seem to think multi-model raids are fine, just so long as they do not allow the proles access to precious rewards.

The word is modal. Not model. Multimodal as in “it has more than one mode”. Though now that I think about it, having some models in raids would be good. Is Karrueche Tran a model?

Ohoni.6057:

I didn’t make my suggestion merely because it’s the fastest, but also because it is best.

It’s not the best. We’ve seen it before. It don’t work no good.

Ohoni.6057:

There is no alternative I can think of or that has been proposed so far that would be a superior outcome to the one I suggested for as many parties as possible.

STIHL’s solution is better because it evades the problem entirely. The solution I discussed with Astralporing is better because it provides more content as a whole and creates a progression.

Of course you wouldn’t think they’re better because you think it’s the only solution because I don’t know why. If you can only think of one solution to a problem then you shouldn’t be in the business of solving problems.

Ohoni.6057:

I hope you don’t mind if I quote you the next time Doc suggests LFG updates as a panacea.

I always mind when people take my quotes out of context.

Ohoni.6057:

and again, they’ve made no such claim, so unless you’re aware of non-public data, you can’t back this up.

I’m not accusing ANet of anything. I’m just pointing out that you’re either deliberately or accidentally miss-reporting what they actually said. I believe that they’re being honest when they say that they’re doing better than other MMOs in terms of raiding participation, I just don’t think it necessarily follows that they are satisfied with that outcome.

If you can’t see the logical link between the two statements then you’re being purposely obtuse.

I disagree that it does not follow. If I recall correctly, they seemed quite pleased with themselves when they made that announcement. Though it is fair that the long-term retention rates are still out to jury- however, I think we can safely assume that they will remain better than the market average.

Ohoni.6057:

I didn’t say that you were a troll, I would never accuse someone of being a troll on my own say-so. I just said that your own statements could be taken as an admission of trolling.

Look I said I have fun in these threads and you immediately jumped to the conclusion that I was a troll. Come on man.

At the very least, take it as “oh he thinks I’m fun to talk to” and appreciate the compliment.

Ohoni.6057:

GW2 is a very different game than others on the market with very different goals, it is not unreasonable to expect them to aim for different standards. Personally I would consider standard MMO raid adoption rates to be a failure in any game, but it’s up to Anet to judge for their own.

gw2 goals:
make fun game
make cash dolla dolla

But more seriously, if I were ANet and I went into it with the assumptions that you made about the game earlier (that they’re all casuals who hate other mmos and are refugees) I would probably expect a lower participation rate compared to the market. But no, the participation rate is higher.

Ohoni.6057:

No, that’s not how it works. If you want the reward then you want the reward, no more than that. It does not follow that you would want to do the content the reward is attached to, that would depend entirely on how that content plays. It’s perfectly reasonable to want a certain reward very much, and have absolutely no interest in the content that rewards it, or vice-versa.

More specifically, the solution to your desires should never be “hey maybe I should dogmatically pursue a very specific multimodal raid structure without considering alternate positions on the official forums”.

Ohoni.6057:

This isn’t a subscription game. Also, WoW has had LFR since 2009, and subscriptions slowly climbed over the following two years, before slowly sinking over the next three.

LFR is not the only mode I’m speaking about. The implementation of multi-modal raiding, not LFR, was in TotC- that’s when the game’s growth plateaued. Cata early declines were due to revamps to the early game and neglecting the endgame. Stabilized in Firelands, DragonSoul bled because bad raid. Pandaland was gross but people apparently liked it, but it wasn’t because of multimodal raiding; the strongest MoP patch was the one which introduced a broad swathe of content for multiple styles of play (ToT). WoD’s instant decline was due to an overestimation of the value of raid content because at that point they’d given themselves four raids which all required ilvl servicing which invalidated every other avenue of content.

The broad conclusions we can draw from the data-set is that multimodal raids will not make up for the rest of the game being weak. We can see that very clearly from early WoD with the high emphasis on multimodal raids and the massive subscriber drop. We can also see the inverse in ToT with a subscriber rebound. Similarly, for the majority of the game’s growth period which isn’t a data set which should be ignored, they used single-mode raiding until Ulduar; they used variations in group size for side content and direct progression for difficulty.

Ohoni.6057:

For a ten year old game, those aren’t bad numbers at all, and they’re still at above right before the first expansion. I am just not seeing any sort of causal link between LFR and any decline in WoW that would not be completely natural for a game its age.

They stopped posting subscriber numbers specifically because they have moved out of relying on subscriptions as the main mode of supporting the game. The data points which would imply continued sub bleeding have not been published- that’s why your data has hit an end.

You are assuming multimodal raids only go down, when that’s not the case. Also, WoD’s initial release pushing the subscriber count to 10mil is evidence that age is a surmountable factor: If Blizzard builds (and advertises), they will come. They just didn’t have the content ready and arranged in such a fashion to retain those players.

Ohoni.6057:

And again, I’ve corrected that deliberate misrepresentation too many times for you to claim ignorance.

Granted, I am being slightly hyperbolic, my apologies. Still, the point remains; if your exact parameters for the difficulty of the content are met, yet you cannot achieve them, will we be seeing you again asking for a third difficulty, or for nerfs to the new second difficulty?

Ohoni.6057:

I’m not talking about buying runs, I’m talking about earning it myself. To return to the plumber example, he doesn’t have to pay a Doctor to walk in and buy the car for him, he earned the money with his own effort, and can buy the car without any help.

Again, earning. We keep coming back to this word.

You don’t earn raid rewards like you earn money. You earn them like you earn an award. You complete an achievement, you get the reward. You get 90% or higher on the test, you get an A. You do the boss’s mechanics well enough, you get your rewards.

Ohoni.6057:

Lower difficulty over a long period of time is not inferior to higher difficulty over a short period of time. Haven’t you ever heard the story of the tortoise and the hare?

I have. I interpreted it as a story of hubris and of the value of dogged determination. If you are truly determined to earn the raid rewards, perhaps you should begin the long, hard slog to mastering the raids.

Ohoni.6057:

So what? If that’s how they want to play, that’s how they want to play. LET THEM.

Not so simple when developer resources are on the line and when group participation is up for grabs.

Ohoni.6057:

I’ve discussed this before, maybe you’ve heard it before, maybe not, but I think this is an abuse of rewards. It is fair to use rewards to get players to step outside their comfort zone, it is not fair to use rewards to get players to run a marathon outside their comfort zone.

Yeah we’ve had it before and I disagree. You want wings from not PvPing.

Legendaries aren’t those short term rewards. They’re long term rewards. The only valid criticisms of the current model is that you don’t have an alternative to get legendary armor, and some accessory stat-sets are completely unavailable. The core incentives, skins, are inconsequential by design.

Ohoni.6057:

If that is true, then hard mode should not exist, end of story.

Raid participation rates have exceeded their targets.

Ohoni.6057:

Hard mode can only justify its existence if people actually ENJOY doing it, regardless of rewards. Since we’re actually talking about significantly HIGHER rewards for hard more than easy, if people still don’t want to do it, then it has completely failed to justify itself.

Are you implying that raiders don’t enjoy raiding? The specific reason raids were added was because there wasn’t much challenging content and people who wanted that challenge can now chew on raids.

Also your reward model isn’t significantly lower. It’s barely lower. You still get all the important items from your dream ezmode without much trouble.

Ohoni.6057:

Yet individuals can acquire their own apples from trees, from the ground around trees, from carts, from stores of all shapes and sizes.

And you can buy your apples from the raid run seller.

AysonCurrax.3254:

Mike O’Brien has been Mike O’Lyin’ and will now be Mike O’Flyin’ in business class indefinetly. Nice Mike O’Tryin’ to fool me.

daaang boi

you gave him a mike o’fryin’

Ohoni.6057:

No, I’m not asking for a different type of reward, but “same” involves both quality and quantity. Yes, I’m asking for the same quality of rewards, but not the same quantity of them. I believe that this is perfectly fair.

It’s been tried before. It didn’t pan out. Sorry. Apples are apples.

Ohoni.6057:

Now, if you insist that easy mode raiding cannot ever provide things like Legendary armor advancement, then that is an argument to make, but in that case the legendary armor advancement would have to take place in some other PvE content, completely removed from raiding, and that seems to be like a much more complicated and time consuming process, so if you genuinely are concerned with not wasting ANet’s time on trivial complaints, I think this “they can’t have the same toys I have!” complaint would be the first place to start.

No, I’m not concerned with wasting ANet’s time.

What I’m concerned about is ANet making correct decisions which take longer to implement rather than incorrect decisions that can be quickly implemented. Time spent making good systems is not time wasted.

Multimodal raiding is not a good system.

Ohoni.6057:

Well, my point is, if they update the LFG well, then it should be easy to find nine other people willing to play hard mode raiding with you. If you can’t find nine other people willing to play hard mode raiding with you, then that’s pretty kitten sad, and they obviously shouldn’t have hard mode raids in the first place because not even nine people want to do it.

Still doesn’t actually have any bearing on the benefits or drawbacks of multimodal raids.

Ohoni.6057:

The point is, other players do not exist solely to serve at the pleasure of Sarrs.

Bro I don’t raid in GW2. I don’t have a horse in this race. I’m not making arguments out of self interest, I’m making them because your idea is bad.

Skipping the rest, conclusion doesn’t follow the premise.

Ohoni.6057:

You were the one that said that if they added easy mode it would present an undue burden on finding a group. I was only pointing out that if YOU were right, then that would be evidence that raids were a bad idea in the first place, at least the current difficult ones.

sing it with me
raids have already hit their target participation rates

Ohoni.6057:

If you believe you’re not making that up wholecloth

Dude if you’re not going to believe ANet then there’s no way you’re going to believe me. For argument’s sake you need to concede things. If you’re just going to throw up the “THEY’RE LYING” card why don’t you just throw it up at me.

Oh wait you did you called me a troll. GEE GEE

Ohoni.6057:

then at the very least you’re miss-paraphrasing their statements. They said that the participation (immediately after release, mind you), is above the level seen in other MMOs. We have no idea what their target participation was for raids in GW2, nor do we know whether participation rates will fall from their current rate, whatever it might be.

It’s not an unreasonable expectation that they would set their targets similar to similar products on the market.

If the audience is not expected to raid then they would have set their expectations lower, so the results are proportionally even higher.

Ohoni.6057:

Because interest in the rewards has absolutely nothing to do with the content it’s attached to? What kind of question is that?

Pretty straightforward question. If you want rewards you do the content that gives you that reward.

Ohoni.6057:

Occam’s razor. I think it’s a bit preposterous to attempt to argue that my approach would not end up pleasing more people, even as a devil’s advocate.

evidence

conclusions can’t be reached without evidence

see the thing is, i have evidence; when easy mode raids were introduced in another game, subscriber rates dropped drastically

Ohoni.6057:

Gaile herself said that she didn’t know how much time this would take

I never said thaaaat. Do a bit better on your misdirection.

Ohoni.6057:

If they aren’t enough to carry me to legendary armor then they wouldn’t meet the exact target I’ve been suggesting.

Granted, you’ve set the target “I should be able to get legendary armor with no effort”. I walked right into that one.

Ohoni.6057:

So if a man wants a fancy car, and the car dealer says “that car is $300K. You can get a job as a doctor and buy that car.” Becoming a doctor would take the man several years of schooling, then another several years of working as a doctor to afford a $300K car, say ten in all.

And the man says "I’m not really well suited to being a doctor, I don’t like blood, my hands aren’t all that steady, I’d like to do something else. So he trains to become a plumber, and it only takes six months, but earns him less, so it takes him 29.5 more years of working as a plumber to be able to afford the $300K car, but he does it, he puts in that time.

You would tell that man he hasn’t “earned it,” because he took a different path to get there?

You can buy runs using gold, a currency you can get from doing anything at all. Swing and a miss.

Astralporing.1957:

Yes. Still, 50 is not 5.

Yes, obviously. So?

The point of this apples analogy is that if you give players two options to earn rewards- one slow and easy, one quick and hard- most of all players will never rise up to the challenge and tackle the hard mode. This is a trend that we can pretty universally plot across all MMOs.

Rewards are used to direct populations and provide incentives to participate in particular content and to encourage people to step out of their box, in multiple avenues. This includes going across game modes. This includes going up difficulty levels. But when you attach rewards behind a difficulty increase and then attach the same rewards behind an easy path, you’re undermining the previous point; the drive and incentive to push into higher difficulties is undermined by the lower difficulty. That’s why you need to not have identical rewards across different difficulties to engage the playerbase.

Astralporing.1957:

I’m pretty sure that the easy mode would have at least as much players doing it as there are players doing raids now. Likely more. And if hard mode after that wouldn’t have enough players to create raid groups… well, it would only mean that there were never enough people truly interested in them to sustain that mode.

How many people are doing easy modes is outside the immediate scope of this question, and having too many people doing raids is bad because it distorts the development process for both those raids and the game as a whole.

The population argument boils down to “if easy mode is implemented, will there be people running hard mode”, and the answer is unequivocably ‘no’ when there is no real incentive, read rewards, to go into higher modes.

Astralporing.1957:

Then there’s no need to worry about the split.

I am frankly not worried about the split because I don’t see ANet making any moves towards multimodal raiding. Like I’ve said before, I’m just here to talk and have fun, and hopefully if I can help you guys refine your ideas or thoughts that’s great too.

Astralporing.1957:

“Earning” doesn’t mean “earning, but only this way”

Sure, but apples only come from apple trees.

why throw stones at the pvp daily system when you could throw stones at the legendary achieves which require alt classes

It’s not really bad, it just doesn’t fit the game, and its counterparts fit the game better.

Crate Drop applies a stack of effects simultaneously; it does Stun, gives you a bunch of bodies, an immobilize happens soon after, and then Burning starts happening.

Elixir X has the crazy strong toolbelt and Rampage isn’t a bad effect at all. Tornado not so great, but it causes disruption.

Sneak Gyro gives you a few seconds of invisibility which can be massive when that’s what you need to do a heal turret→overcharge→explode combo or whatever else.

Mortar also tends to synergize with Explosives and I think Firearms, but those aren’t meta traitlines to take.

Yeah it’s strong but it’s also very vulnerable. The Blood Fiend can obviously be killed, blinded and CCed, and its attacks can fail to land.

MasterElements.5023:

Are you in blood magic? That gives a base 150 Healing power in the grandmaster-minor trait.

The Blood Fiend’s attacks do not scale with Healing Power.

However, the Vampiric trait will increase the amount of healing the Blood Fiend applies, though I am not sure whether Vampiric’s healing would be rolled into Fiend Leech.

Also, it’s possibly that while it doesn’t scale with Healing Power it does scale with attack damage- in which case, the Fiend would benefit from Necromantic Corruption and effects like Might. Pure Leech attacks are weird, though.

Extreme.8350:

We dont know why hes not working in arenanet anymore.
My guess however is incompitence.
SO now can we have Cantha? can you nerf condi mesmer and buff power?
can we have fun in the game ? please
can you make 1 dessert border 1 alpine 1 eotm 1 eb in mu rotations?
we dont need 5 borders 4 is plenty

EOTM as a regular map? That’d be interesting.

Ohoni.6057:

Yes, and 50 is still well more than 5, and if you said you’d pay me 50 apples to do a hard task, but one that I would be reasonably willing and able to do, or 5 apples to do a much easier task, I’d take the 50 apples. I’d only take the 5 apples if the other task was either beyond my capabilities, or way too unpleasant. If I were the sort to ever choose 5 apples over 50, I wouldn’t then whine that they should never have offered me 5 apples in the first place because I really wanted to do the 50 if only there had been no other options!

Because you are missing the point.

50 apples and 5 apples are still apples. You are not asking for different rewards. You are asking for the same reward at a different rate.

It’s not hard to work out, come on man

Ohoni.6057:

But again, if you can’t find a group because there are not nine other people who want to do the thing you want to do, then that is an activity not worth doing. But haven’t you heard? They’re updating the LFG! That would solve your problem WAY more effectively than it would ever solve mine.

In your opinion, it’s not something worth doing. That’s the kind of thinking that alienated the dungeon community.

Yeah they’re updating the LFG but that doesn’t really have any bearing on the merits of an easy mode. If anything it goes against it.

Ohoni.6057:

If the raid community can’t survive being split into two parts, then it doesn’t have nearly enough players to justify its existence. The Dungeon community is split 24 ways, and it’s barely earning its place.

Raids have exceeded reasonable expectations of the participation rate. There is no reason to draw this conclusion.

Dungeons and fractals are a different kettle of fish. To say otherwise, with the amount of information we’ve already given you, is downright dishonest.

Ohoni.6057:

I think there would be outliers, certainly, but I think that this one current mode will only ever satisfy a small minority of the players.

raids have already exceeded their target participation rates

Ohoni.6057:

I think a second mode that would be balanced against the other content of the game should satisfy almost all remaining players

And satisfying the original group of raiders is not of interest?

Ohoni.6057:

because if they can’t handle the difficulty of the rest of the game then what the hell are they doing in the game in the first place?

if you can’t handle the difficulty of the raids then what the hell are you doing asking for the same rewards lol

Ohoni.6057:

You can’t please all the people

Yes, and there’s no evidence to imply that your approach would please more people.

Ohoni.6057:

but I think that with a minimal effort they could please way more people than they currently are, which makes it worth doing. Pleasing the remainder would not be worth the added problems.

Come on man, Gaile’s already told you off for speculating about how many internal resources it would take to implement the mode. Barking up this tree is a waste of time; if an ANet employee can’t convince you that you don’t know what you’re talking about how could I ever get through to you?

Ohoni.6057:

True, but it is the problem being discussed here. The idea of even more additional difficulties is only being raised by people who don’t want an easier mode in the first place, as a justification to make no change at all, rather than by people who actually believe those additional modes would be necessary.

I’m not unamenable to changes, I’m unamenable to the exact change that you keep pushing and aren’t willing to compromise on. I’ve already said to Astralporing that lower-tuned alternate raids are a good option. I’ve already agreed with STIHL that a solo-mode story mode is a good option. I just don’t think your idea is good, and you think that means that I think that no idea is good.

That doesn’t have any particular bearing on the complaint; that people who come onto the forum to demand content nerfs to receive shinies may just keep coming onto the forum to demand content nerfs to receive shinies.

What if it turns out that the exact targets you’ve suggested in the exact mode you’ve suggested are implemented, yet they still aren’t enough to carry you to your legendary armor? Are we to seriously believe that you won’t keep up your forum presence?

Ohoni.6057:

No, but that doesn’t mean that I’m unwilling to earn them, it just means that I’m unwilling to earn them via the existing methods.

Tomato, tomato.

Ohoni.6057:

. . . says a person who is definitely not a troll.

Dude you’re throwing a pretty serious accusation at me. Trolling’s an actionable offense.

maybe the elder dragons have formed a guild??? checmkate

Reapers are tissue paper. They have no blocks, invulns, or evade frames on their skills. Their stability is limited to CttB and Infusing Terror. They have no Vigor outside of Sigil of Energy and otherwise generally poor boon uptime outside of Might. They are one of, if not the least mobile class in the game.

Yes, you will lose against a reaper team if you are playing 4m1h every game without fail because building momentum and holding points against inflexible strategies is what they are good at. They are supposed to be good at 1v1 engagements, and the best at 1v1 engagements if they are full of lifeforce, because of their lack of defenses against focus fire and their poor rotation ability.

You need to change the rules of the engagement to beat a team of reapers, but once you understand what you need to do and specifically where to go, the reapers will fold.

4-5 necro is not exactly hard to beat. Spread between points and pick off the smaller groups of reapers then sweep into other points.

Ohoni.6057:

You guys keep saying “same” rewards when we keep saying “less” rewards. You would get MORE rewards for hard mode, so there would be a purely mercenary reason to be there.

50 apples and 5 apples are still both apples.

Ohoni.6057:

I will make a bet with you then (and any ANet employees lurking). If I lose, then I will shut up about easy mode raids forever.

Uh, okay.

Ohoni.6057:

If that’s true, then hard mode raiders never deserved those players in the first place. They do not exist to make it easier for you to find a group, they exist to have their own fun, and if they have more fun in easy mode than hard, that is THEIR choice to make, not yours.

It’s pretty hard to have fun if you can’t find a group. If the entire raiding base is split down the middle, both sets of players are going to have a lot less fun because they’ll be sequestered into different subcommunities making it harder to find a group.

Ohoni.6057:

Nobody is asking for tone of different difficulty modes, just two, one that is the current “hard,” and one that is comparable to the rest of the content in the game. Other difficulty modes would be unnecessary, and raising the point is pure straw.

I’m using the word multi-modal for a reason. Two modes is still multi-modal. I am also skeptical that the entire playerbase would be happy even with two difficulty modes.

Just saying that a presented problem isn’t a problem doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem.

Ohoni.6057:

Perhaps, but I do want to earn them, so what does it have to do with anything I’ve said?

So you’re participating in the raids as they are now, then?

Ohoni.6057:

So trolling then?

I’m acting in good faith to advocate for a change that I believe would be positive for this game. If you are not acting in good faith, deliberately ignoring facts that you understand so that you can re-litigate the point, then that would be trolling, just so you understand that.

If you think I am trolling, show the courage of your convictions and stop feeding me.

Astralporing.1957:

Ah, but easy mode is what Ohoni is after. I mainly dislike gating rewards (and specifically a gear tier) behind a content that, by design, only a small number of people is ever going to finish.

For me, any alternate way to get them that would not be so restrictive would do.

Yeah fair enough. I’m not sure if I agree with “only a small number of people will complete by design”, but I don’t think that’s strictly your point. We’ll see leg armor in other avenues, but that’s no reason to send raids as they are down the river.

Astralporing.1957:

Ah, yes, of course. Should have figured out you are just trolling.

Fun and trolling aren’t the same thing. I do enjoy these threads. They’re good exercise. If the regulars in this thread weren’t having fun, including you, you wouldn’t keep coming back.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I didn’t lie. I misunderstood the post and when I read it, it looked exactly like calling out names for the purpose of shaming. As several players pointed out I was wrong, I went back and re-read the post and saw what they were saying. I made a simple mistake. What’s your excuse for accusing me of something you have no evidence of?

I’m sorry if that’s the case. It’s difficult to read that from your messages when you’re writing with an aggressive tone.

Astralporing.1957:

At this moment, you do not only want something for yourself, you want also to deny something to us. That’s where the difference is.

Our position, in which we want something for ourself but do not want to deny anything to you is already a compromise, but for some reason it seems that for you a “hardstance” is asking you to compromise on anything, while a “compromise” is getting things you want anyway.

This is untrue. An easy mode which is, aside from tuning, mirrored from hard mode, and provides the same rewards, does detract from the hard modes.

Firstly, there’s the obvious point that while an easy mode may be a negligible amount of effort from an outsider’s point of view (I’m skeptical that it is, and I’m inclined to take any estimates from ANet at face value), it still does move developers away from other content and to raids. Raiders don’t exclusively enjoy raids; they’re not automatons who only enjoy that form of content. If they were raiders and exclusively raiders, then GW2 is, plainly, not the game for them.

Secondly, it does reduce the pool of players willing to enter hard mode. It does create fractures between community groups as ‘easy’ and ‘hard’ modes solidify. I’ve said before that a big issue with the reward structure of dual moding is that once this content becomes ‘old’, the difficulty divide means that one mode gets ignored when this wouldn’t happen with a single mode. It doesn’t actually solve any issue, any better than other solutions would, like STIHL’s suggested solo-mode story mode. And I asked you about this before, about a single raid that’s specifically tuned at a lower difficulty than the current raids, and I think you didn’t mind that idea though I’d have to double check. That’s a compromise in particular that I don’t think is a bad idea- But I’m speaking of myself, and not necessarily Tex who you were quoting, so forgive me if I missed the specificity.

Thirdly, it enables a development direction that neglects the rest of the game in favor of the raids. If you ask for raid modes that cover every difficulty, don’t be surprised if all you start seeing in future releases is raids. I’ve been saying this all through the thread; if you want to see what kind of impact on content development multi-modal raiding has, go look at WoW.

And there’s the whole “progression is doing the fight on easy mode, then on hard mode”, which really detracts from how fun the raids are.

Astralporing.1957:

If compromise is really something you can’t live with, however, then ok, have it your way. Let’s burn raids to the ground and salt the earth. Nobody will get access to that content and lore, nobody will get access to the rewards, noone will get legendary armor. That would remove this problem too. And would free the developers to put out the fires elsewhere (and we already know Anet needs developers working on other projects really bad).

By all impressions, there’s really no need to do that. Raids have exceeded reasonable expectations.

Astralporing.1957:

Perhaps because you have it already. You don’t really need to be good in pvp to get it at all.

The precedents are kind of worrying, that people want to come onto the forums and make posts asking for content direction changes not because they feel there’s a problem with the content, but because they want the sweet purps.

Ohoni.6057:

Why?

Because it’s a pretty straightforward response to someone who wants rewards but doesn’t want to earn them.

Ohoni.6057:

That being the case, why do you keep arguing as if you don’t know the answers to your questions?

I’ve already told you that it’s fun.

Ohoni.6057:

I don’t want to because I wouldn’t enjoy it, simple as that.

Well then you shouldn’t get the rewards for participating in that content. If you want content you enjoy, maybe play that instead and get the rewards for that.

Ohoni.6057:

Why is this such a revolutionary concept?

On the contrary, it’s nothing new. We’ve been speaking about it for about 30 pages over three threads. You keep ignoring counterarguments and not considering alternatives.

Celtic Lady.3729:

This has already been addressed repeatedly. Guess you just like being a parrot?

We like it when people tell the truth. We don’t like it when people lie or mischaracterize like you have.

Directing a response to an individual is not naming and shaming.

Ohoni.6057:

“not being able to put in time and effort?”

Not “not being able”. It’s “not willing”.

You could go and do hard modes and get the gear. But you don’t want to because you want an easy path.

AoE soaking and countering autotarget abilities is the entire point of MM builds and skills though.

Celtic Lady.3729:

I lost a LOT of respect for Mike O’brien when he posted and specifically named people in order to humiliate, embarrass, and shame them for their opinions. There are a lot of valid, demonstrable reasons why players see HoT as incomplete.

But for a professional to name and shame when Anet’s policy for their own players is not to allow this is just pathetic. And totally unprofessional. He needs to get a grip on his emotions and step back and look at all points of view objectively, politely, and professionally.

But he wasn’t naming and shaming he was making a direct response to those people :x

Saying he was naming and shaming them is like if you were to say I’m naming and shaming you right now by quoting you directly.

bloodpyrope.8630:

Can’t they do it like GW1 and capes? Everyone who PvPs gets a cape, but only tournament winners get a trim.

So GW2, the PvE argument is this is the only legendary backpiece available, and they want it for the stats since they think it’s an ugly skin anyways. So maybe Anet could make it so anyone who PvPs can get the backpiece, but top players get a unique trim/aura/effect on the backpiece itself?

Boom. Everyone wins. PvErs get their legendary. PvPers get a slightly more prestigious version.

Well, they are doing that. Everyone who breaks through the divisions can buy the four sets of wings in turn and then turn them into the precursor which then turns into the legendary. There’s already gradual progress.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Remove Hydromancy because ONE class has traits affecting chill? Why affect builds for ALL classes because of ONE class???

Because Hydromancy is very strong for almost every class, it’s just extra strong for Reapers.

I was thinking it would be better to remove Sigil of Hydromancy.

Something else I’ve been lazily considering would be swapping the positions of Reaper’s Onslaught and Decimate Defenses.

Ashen.2907:

What is the point of faster delivery of a second expansion if the first is left partially undelivered?

Expansions are effectively taken as though they’re a new game a lot of the time. An expansion draws in new players and draws back returning players. If the playerbase is diminished, an expansion can draw back a lot of people. A good expansion launch can effectively revive a dead game; the extreme example is FF14.

So cycling into the next expansion quicker, provided the game isn’t completely dead and the expansion content hits the mark, can be a better long-term strategy even if the current expansion is never really honored, just because it has that reviving quality to the game. A lot of people look at WoW’s current expansion as having been cut short and the next expansion emphasized as part of this recovery strategy.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

I’m pretty sure most of the classes in the game can use swords, as opposed to almost none of them who can use SB’s. Also swords allow an offhand weapon, giving utility, defense, or offensive differences, which is much different than a greatsword which is yielded in two hands.

I.E. your attempt at a response makes no sense at all.

i consulted a leading board of sociologists and linguists and they have come to the startling conclusion that what Tex attempted is something called a ‘joke’

i am not certain what this ‘joke’ is i will attempt to elicit more information from my panel of experts

Zynt.5769:

Yeah the class achievments was a stupid idea in my opinion. Sarrs mentioned previously about being in a game, where 2 team mates switched classes mid game, to get the achievments and ended causing them to lose the game.

To be clear, I don’t mind the class achievements, I think they could have merit. But not so long as they encourage such degenerate strategies to try to clear the achievements.

Dinks.2478:

6 people who managed to make 1 legendary in 6 months are not speeding up your story production. Its a complete fallacy to claim it is going to occupy more people. Its also contrary to the fact that I bought and paid for both parts and don’t accept that one needs to be cancelled for the other when there are 70 devs working on expac 2 instead of finishing this one. Which once again has been ignored.

It’s kinda hard to say without knowing their pipeline and what precisely the team was doing. It’s entirely possible that the legendary team has been pulled in so many directions that they simply can’t work on weapons.

Consider the following:
They pushed the three weapons at HoT launch, along with proceeding apace with the two legendary backpieces and the armor.
They’re confirmed to still be working on finishing Ad Infinitum.
They’re probably still working on legendary armor for raids.
There’s a WvW revamp coming up and I smell a rewards revamp. There could be legendaries in there that they’ve been working on.
And between trying to patch all of these elements, they’re trying to push out weapons. They’ve succeeded in making progress on at least two, with one being shipped in the next patch.

I have no idea whether this is the actual workload for the Legendary team, it’s possibly correct, it’s probably not. But without getting in amongst them, it’s hard to know.

Again, I’m just playing devil’s advocate. We know that the entire reason ANet’s pipeline is broken is because they had the entire team working on LS, and then put the entire team on the expac, and now MO’s picking up the pieces.

HazyDaisy.4107:

Only a WvW player hears the announcements of (no new legendaries for the foreseeable future, but, here’s Friday reset back, btw, we’re pulling resources to rework the new PVE maps) and ponders “so, no other updates for wvw for the next 2 years or so eh?”

I giggled cos it’s true. So much rage about legendaries, and you can hear the crickets in WvW.

Idk if you want to swap out shortbows with something I’d say swap them with crossbows.

Personally I actually really like that there’s a distinction between longbows and shortbows because they’re very different weapons.

What if each class had two viable specs which each performed a different role, so that if you have duplicate classes in a bad comp you could swap to that other role?

For example say you have two elementalists and double aurashare is not good for the opposing comp. If Fresh Air were a viable build you could have one of the elementalists swap and you have a better comp instantly without needing to rely on swapping to an alt of a different class.

I’m not a meta scientist but I’m pretty sure there are examples of classes which can do this even now. 3 necros? Have one go MM so he can play sidepoint bunker. Stuff like that.

Pyriall.1683:

You shouldn’t be able to profession swap after the game has already started.

I know. I just wanted to tell a sad story.

Einlanzer.1627:

Jesus Christ. It’s no wonder this game is failing. Nobody gives a kitten about the living world. I agree that we need new actual content, but I don’t understand how it’s so difficult to muster the resources to make a few new weapons.

uh, what

living story is the primary mechanism for new content being added into the game

southsun, dry top, silverwastes, dungeons and stuff that got turned into fractals- outside of hot, it’s absolutely everything, some of which is the best content GW2’s had. the only problem is they decided to delete 2/3rds of it

and it’s not like we’ll never get new legendaries ever, that’d be an incredibly bizarre decision

Pyriall.1683:

The profession requirement was one of the main issues with the achievement. I don’t feel A-Net went far enough with the requirements. You should not be allowed to log in at the end of the match to get credit for the profession win.

I got so mad lately because I was soloqueuing and got matched with a 4-man premade and we were doing really well. It was something like 150-350 in our favor.

And then it seems like we were losing every point. Because we were. Because two people were swapping to another class. They capped points and pushed us to 350 by sweeping while two of our team members were changing characters, then they sealed the win with a Lord kill.

The kicker: They swapped to Revenants. Why in the world swap to a completely viable class. Swapping to warriors, I can have a bit more understanding with that. But letting the other team sweep so you can get your Revenant progress?

Ohoni.6057:

It said you’d want to check it out, not that you’d necessarily like it. They also said that if you don’t like MMOs you’d definitely like GW2.

This just seems really really bizarre.

Like… Of course they’re going to say that people who don’t like MMOs will like GW2. They’re trying to sell copies of the game. Why would somebody selling a game go “nah you won’t like this game its horrible you don’t like the genre just please go, don’t give us your money”.

Firstly, that response wasn’t really intended to be a conclusive criticism or an analysis of the other thread’s opening post or even just me being mean: It was exclusively a challenge. Which is what the PvP divisions, and earning the wings, are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be something which you go out and conquer, and even though S2 has had matchmaking issues, I am fully convinced that this is still the state of the content. If someone’s upset or feels slighted by the MM system then turn that passion into productive energy and use that energy to get better at the game.

In the context of that thread, it’s especially so. The thread’s OP was sad that because they missed the first season of the year they didn’t believe that they’d be able to hit the division clear requirement for the achievements, but that assumes that the MM rules remain the same, when ANet’s all but confirmed that they won’t. It’s entirely likely that if they are indeed in MMR hell, the next season will give them an opportunity to leave that hell and get back to winning and/or grinning.

But there are two other points I’d like to touch on;

1. Toxicity. This is a tricky one but I honestly don’t believe that the seasons’ structure, or the playerbase, have actually become more toxic, for two key reasons.

Firstly, there’s the very flat analysis that I believe this toxicity has always been a part of the GW2 game. It’s always a part of any online game, but it’s not necessarily the case that this toxicity has increased- proportionally, at least. I think it’s not an unfair analysis that more people are participating in the Ranked seasons. So where do these increased rates of ‘toxic interactions’ come from?… The rate hasn’t increased, it’s just the raw numbers of posts on gw2 forums, reddit, etc has increased.

Secondly, the toxicity’s coming out because people are actually being put to the grinder and need to prove themselves to push through divisions. The stakes have never been higher for the average player- so of course that high pressure results in higher emotions. But personally, I’d rather have emotions running, at least in some content, than to have it all be nice and comfortable all the way through. After all, if you want to just play comfortably, there’s Unranked and Hotjoin.

2. Reward ‘entitlement’. This has, I think, also been a big problem in GW2. Like I said just before, players have never been put to the grinder. Almost every item in the game has been “if you work for long enough, you’ll get this thing!” with very few exceptions- Unless you have extremely ambitious goals, like earning every BLTC skin on release, but let’s leave that for now. The Wings seem to generate this much controversy strictly because they demand that players be willing to not only put forth effort but better themselves- at least, if you missed a season. But this texture, the rewards which you have to work for, are something that GW2’s been sorely lacking since launch- and you’re right, it’s also what’s getting the “gimme ezmode raids!” feathers ruffled.

Part of me wishes that the Wings may have even required Diamond or Legendary, just so it’s very clear that this is the intent, that you have to push to get better at the game, rather than the game saying “oh you’re not very good? that’s okay, you had great attendance on your classes, you get an A!”

Apologies if I’ve completely missed the point of the thread, but hopefully I’ve written something that can provide some insight.

Ohoni.6057:

GW2 is the refugee camp for people fleeing other MMOs because of things like kill stealing, “group if you want to leave town,” open world PKing, exclamation point fetch quests, “raid progression,” gear treadmills, and various other annoyances. The community that built up GW2 was trying to escape the old world concepts of what an MMO “should” have, and embracing what the players wanted them to have.

[citation needed]