Guild Wars 2

I remember back in the day during the usual speed-clears of fast dungeon paths, you would get called out ‘creatively’ if you weren’t with the group rushing through AC or CoF, and if you ever thought about pulling Kholer, instant-kick.

Arah was even worse, lots of groups had pretty high AP requirements back in the day since there was no other measure at that time. Oh, and only around 3 professions were allowed to roll in those pug groups, good times.

Your previous post placed a lot of onus on raids being a major issue with ‘toxicity’ in the game. In fact I would say it was fairly inflammatory and CptAurelian is right on the mark.

Just as an fyi Vayne, earning currency as you get further along in a raid encounter is not ‘no rewards’.

Provided you are raiding to Shard cap every week with due diligence, everyone raiding will get shards to purchase ascended gear of any stat they choose, at a much larger gold discount mind you.

And on the off-chance you do kill another raid boss just once, you unlock its equipment for purchase, the lovely unique skins and so forth.

Chewablesleeptablet.3185:

the introduction of Raids is where GW2 lost its identity. welcome back holy trinity.

Literally only in raids. And not even on all raid bosses.

Though I am starting to be less surprised about what the forums discuss these days, we got players complaining about Floppy Fish so I suppose anything can be complained about.

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’d expect another raid to ship alongside the next expansion. That’s my gut feeling from their current pace, where we’re at in the year, and how close (I’m estimating) we are to the expansion announcement.

Agreed, I think that now they have tested the waters they might consider putting the first wing of the new raid, on launch date.

Then those wanting to raid have to decide to go straight into progression with what they have now, OR do the open-world maps and unlock the next elite specs. I do have higher expectations of the upcoming expansion since they’ve taken what they have learned from the current state of the HoT maps and applying them forward. Meaning we won’t have HoT maps like they were at launch, and more rewards, ambient events, etc.

I don’t expect the difficulty to drop whatsoever.

Astralporing.1957:

Anet asked a small subset of players what they wanted, and then interpreted it their own way, ignoring most of the feedback.

They asked everyone, the CDIs covered several aspects of the game. By far the largest amount of community inquiries done during the forum’s lifespan.

Although if you want to pursue that even the CDIs were meaningless since the forums are based on a subset of the playerbase, then we should assume that just about every single thread on the raiding is pointless since they contain less individuals contributing overall.

Go have a look at the archive, these threads were no small subset of the community.

Actually no, you are right.

Arenanet, please apologize to the community who cares about the fish, clearly we need an video much to the same vein as this one which shows the community just how far you go to save the fish of Tyria.

I’ll chip in gold and gems for the preservation of Floppy Fish. Bless us all.

SlippyCheeze.5483:

Sykper.6583:

Explain to me, people who wish to change the Floppy Fish, how this instance of character actions to advance a level is somehow not on your radar to change?

How do you know it isn’t?

Because W2 in SAB came out years ago.

Are you saying that everyone’s been silent until now? Because that would be AWFUL of said people, keeping silent about the tragic savage deaths of blocky fish with snorkels. Or they are full of kitten, and don’t actually have a valid position on this.

How can today’s raids be anything but a result of what the community collectively wanted from the CDI?

From the multitude of suggestions there was a consistent theme, ‘instanced difficult content for more than 5 players’.

There was such a demand for this back then, nothing in the game at the time was truly challenging except for Triple Trouble which coincidentally likely caused such an upheaval. The open-world encounter at that time was very demanding, and it split the community between those who finally enjoyed a challenge on a large scale, and those who wanted to ask the question “Why is this in my open world? This is too hard.”

The best approach was creating truly difficult content in an instanced environment outside of the open-world that was larger than Dungeons. Hence we got the CDI of which dozens of forum-goers at that time gave their detailed ideas for how to go about it, and from there Arenanet gave us the content as it exists today. All of this for the goal of creating difficult-only content.

The CDI was most definitely a call for what raids could be in GW2, and no amount of denial from you is going to change what the CDI brought to us. And given the overwhelming positive remarks from those actually raiding the content since W1, loving the fact that we got instanced difficult content that requires coordination from more than 5 people, they nailed it.

And I really dislike how you continue to insist that GW2 raids are some sort of ‘carbon-copy’ of other MMOs. I would argue right now that adding other difficulties would actually make them MORE identical, which means we should keep to the single difficulty we have right now no?

Blaeys.3102:

Sykper.6583:

Astralporing.1957:

TexZero.7910:

Since when did a vocal minorities voice about excluding themselves from content matter to a developer?

Since a small vocal minority that didn’t want to play the existing content persuaded Anet to introduce Raids, i’d say.

We had a CDI that proves the opposite of this point.

I would recommend going back and reading through that CDI. What most people asked for or expected from raids isnt what they delivered.

It didn’t fit any single person’s idea of a raid from that thread, that’s true.

But they did deliver the content. It is instanced, difficult content that requires coordination and an above party-sized squad.

They actually held back a lot, there were definitely some requests for 20-man raids.

Astralporing.1957:

TexZero.7910:

Since when did a vocal minorities voice about excluding themselves from content matter to a developer?

Since a small vocal minority that didn’t want to play the existing content persuaded Anet to introduce Raids, i’d say.

We had a CDI that proves the opposite of this point.

That’s not how build diversity comes about…

FrostDraco.8306:

Astralporing.1957:

Najten.2418:

I know there is specific information regarding what a 3rd party program is allowed to do and not do; but since I’m not entirely sure of how these different programs operate I don’t know if they break these rules or not.
Is there an official list of for instance DPS Meters that are allowed to use or will I just have to install one and “hope for the best”? :|

More specifically, would BGDM be allowed?

It’s… tricky. By Anet statement dps check is allowed if it’s for your group or squad. BGDM has a slightly different selection method. On one hand that method seems generally okay (as it is an opt-in method, and so cannot be done if the player in question is unwilling), on the other it doesn’t really comply with the letter of the rule (as it can pull info from players that aren’t in squad/group).

They stated they would allow the parsing of all combat data. That would include people not in your group. What it does is estimate group DPS, which if you follow what the devs stated to a tee, is allowed.

I would be very wary of running meters that measure ‘out of group’ DPS. The reason being is a quote from Chris C. stating that joining a party or squad is a means of accepting DPS meter use on your performance…

We can then imply that not joining groups or squads is not giving your consent, aka you are within you right as a player to report others for measuring your DPS (aka calling you out in map chat) since you did not consent.

The recommendation for DPS meters in particular then would be:

- Do not abuse them on players not in your group, they should only be used when they join your group. Nothing in the open world even remotely needs a DPS meter.
- Do not use Gear Checking at all. This is specifically mentioned as a no-no, which I think is fair.
- Might be a fair practice to suggest to new raid members that you are running them, but anyone who joins a group is giving consent to them implicitly, that’s kind of what everyone agrees to when they form up. Giving their all to killing raid bosses.

Boris Losdindawoods.3098:

Squee.7829:

There are some valid points on either side,

This is a game that rewards the player with an achievement for killing large quantities of rabbits, birds, deer, etc. (ambient creatures) that are incapable of fighting back and will never agro. The game rewards players for kicking a quantity of chickens. The game rewards players for killing sentient, tool using, clothing wearing creatures in obscure locations who are doing nothing but hanging around their personal garden of 12 cabbage plants.

With all of the anti-social, rude, and simply evil things players are encouraged to do in order to obtain rewards, it’s nearly the pinnacle of snowflake hypocrisy to complain about a decorative minipet that has an unattractive mode of travel.

Couldn’t put it better. It’s legitimately about ‘How’ they could form that opinion given all other things they have conceivably done in the game over the years without a second thought. And ‘Well it’s just my opinion and you can’t change that’ isn’t really an excuse here when their opinion is advocating for a change in a cosmetic item players have purchased for likely the quirkiness of it’s appearance and demeanor.

Fun thought, in a particular level of SAB you have to tempt some piranhas in a pond to leap out said pond at you. Avoiding them correctly has them flapping on the ground, still fairly hostile to you, and you beat them with a stick which makes them docile enough to pick up temporarily.

Your mission with said carried fish? FEEDING IT ALIVE TO A GIANT SQUID.

Explain to me, people who wish to change the Floppy Fish, how this instance of character actions to advance a level is somehow not on your radar to change?

Drakz.7051:

It abandoned the water just like Anet did xD

I admit, I laughed.

Djinn.9245:

Second, no one is on a high horse. People are simply expressing their opinion.

Yes, and from what I have gathered people asking for the Floppy Fish to change are calling those wanting it to remain the same some manner of a Sadist.

It’s a ludicrous position to take, we’re talking about fish that doesn’t exist in the real world, of which is advertised as something magically abnormal and somehow at this late in the game they perceive it as ‘shocking’.

How much violence do you think is in this game? When you kill a Charr NPC with a fire-based attack, the death animation has the charr screaming as if it is being burned alive, flailing its arms trying to put out the flames. We also go kill Zombie enemies, with all the grotesque innards and limbs out in full view, some zombies don’t have eyes!

I am not saying they don’t have a right to an opinion, but given all the other things in this game that they haven’t spoken up about, the opinion that somehow a Floppy Fish is shocking and needs to be changed is outright disingenuous. I take into question the sincerity of the OP’s request. I am willing to be the OP is trolling everyone and managed to get some actual people who care about fish made of pixels.

Blaeys.3102:

And, AGAIN, if they ever did implement story modes and people started crying for LIs or other raid exclusive rewards in the mode, I can promise I will be right there with you explaining why it is a bad idea – a stance many I know in favor of story modes would agree with. This is about opening the experience – possibly with some minor reward to justify time away from open world (champ bag and, at most, maybe a magnetite shard or two to help players gear for the more difficult versions). It is not about getting access to legendary armor or unique raid related skins.

I’ve simply expressed what needed to be said.

At this juncture, Arenanet are the only ones who can make this judgment. There’s no doubt they have considered these possibilities.

Silently waves at the Devs reading this thread

I’ll be OK with whatever they decide is the best for their game, as long as they continue to bring out more raid content alongside everything else in this game. And I hope they take what they have learned from this first set of raids and expand upon it further, both in difficulty and creativity, down the road.

I also wouldn’t be against more gritty story, the Living Story and Raid Story have both been phenomenal, I really like the direction so far.

Blaeys.3102:

Youre making assumptions and arguing against based on what people might ask for next. That isnt really a logical argument against anything as it is simply assuming the worst of people.

It’s naive to think that these kinds of threads won’t come out. We have that ‘Fish’ thread on the General Discussion, or ‘Can we nerf the HoT Metas’ in the Expansion Subforum. The extent of what players might ask for is ANYTHING. Heck there’s been a couple threads asking for making something of a ‘Pay to Win’ option for GW2.

I would wager between both our ‘guesses’ about half or more would be correct, I would wager gems on it.

Blaeys.3102:

None of these things preclude the desire for this change – and, if it came to it, I would be the first in line to argue against LI rewards (or anything else substantially close to what the top difficulty offers) in a story mode version of the raid.

Almost no one is asking for that. I know it would be much easier to argue against easy modes if they were, but it just isnt the case.

I know you do realize that there is a substantial voice for the easy-modes being an alternative for these rewards. For instance, Raiders have given their opinion a while ago about not being opposed to having Legendary Armor being made available in another area of the game (a different skin though) and that simply isn’t enough apparently.

You might have a good intention for this mode, but like a line of dominoes if easy-mode comes down, everything else starts to as well and while you might immediately oppose giving out said rewards…

There will be dozens more coming out of the woodwork using the opportunity to demand more.

It’s kind of how these forums work. The bar is set that low because the threads that are made are that low.

AriaFiresong.7023:

Man, did people raise this big of a ruckus about the severed bleeding wurm head mini that flops after you?

Or the Heart quest involving throwing nets on Baby Dolyaks and likely killing their parent so you can capture them properly. I especially liked the Frog ‘Juicer’ that you threw on bandits so drakes could attack them, or you could kill the drakes for credit.

The amount of exceptional denial people complaining about the fish is pretty ironic.

Anyone who takes a high horse on this is being hypocritical. Enough said.

And we’ve come back full circle.

Essentially what I am getting at is that probably the hardest thing Arenanet can figure out is how many players who aren’t raiding are genuinely interested in the story, compared to those wanting an easy-mode to have a better track at getting rewards. It’s not hard for the devs to figure out how many are raiding, but they need to value their time with such a development.

The worst case would be that they create this story-mode that serves a purpose of delivering Story to the more general audience, and there’s maybe a thread or two from players who really liked the story instance and saw it as a positive…while the following shows up on this sub-forum and maybe General Discussion for weeks:

- “Story-Mode is still too hard!”
- “WTF Story Mode doesn’t give real loot?”
- “Now that you gave us story mode, give us Legendary Armor!”
- “Another broken promise, Raids no longer the most difficult content.”

Just as a flow, Devs get backlash not just from players who expected to be rewarded something akin to what the current raids reward, but current raiders who feel like the identity of raids is scarred permanently.

Does that make sense?

Astralporing.1957:

Tibicia.8315:

I saw it for the first time, tonight, and was horrified. I then spent two hours trying to decide if I would say anything or consider not playing the game for the next few weeks while this current fad wears off.
It may be pixels, but then why not make a mini of kittens being drowned in bag?

Did you try to take a swim with a kitten minipet?
If you did, you are a horrible person.

PS: i also don’t remember what the problem with the plane joke was. Anyone can enlighten me?

For some strange reason, maybe my memory is fuzzy here, people got offended by the arms forming a plane and the player character making funny silly sounds because it was offended to actual ‘mentally-impaired’ people?

I feel like there was a thread talking about it.

You know, in a way, the GW2 World Boss Timers are around the same deal, a 3rd party tool giving players information they might not easily track or handle themselves.

We should immediately ban anyone visiting that page on Dulfy.

It would essentially be a waste of resources though. Some champ bags would make it help slightly, but I am definitely going to wager that there will still be people complaining about the rewards.

Going to be very blunt here.

The players running the non-compliant version that allows for gear-checking aren’t interested in the DPS meter. We’ve gotten the OK to have DPS being tracked, that should suffice for the vast majority of players involved with that tool, but these players running a gear-checker are likely involved in wanting to find any measure to ridicule low-performing players.

Guilds, and raid leaders who run meters appropriately and legally are looking at these numbers and wanting to help out players who might need a nudge to figure out why they are performing sub-optimally. That’s extremely fair, and only serves to help the community as a whole. However there’s an abusive angle that can come about from using a gear-check, especially since despite what the meta has claimed, there have been very rare instances where the meta can be challenged for builds. And given that Arenanet drew the line at gear-checking, they are aware of it as well.

I’ll feel no sympathy for raiders who abuse the DPS meter to include Gear-checking.

Anyone who is using a DPS meter, whatever software version it may be, that allows for gear-checking is not compliant with what Arenanet has posted.

Report them immediately.

Astralporing.1957:

Sykper.6583:

So the question that everyone has to ask is:

At what point does the content become a ‘Player’ issue rather than a ‘Content’ issue?

It’s a player issue if it doesn’t negatively affect the company bottom line and game popularity. Once it starts doing that, it turns into a game issue.

That’s a specific answer that I’ll agree with. Specifically because it implies that Arenanet is always going to look for the financial benefits of their content decisions, both short and long term.

So the question that everyone has to ask is:

At what point does the content become a ‘Player’ issue rather than a ‘Content’ issue?

Where’s the line? I’m fairly certain each of us in the discussion has a fairly significant difference on where this line is, given how different we see the future of raid content in this game to be.

Just to make it clear, I am absolutely opposed to the concept that it is never the player’s fault that they can’t do the content. There has to be a certain level the developers have to expect from the players in order for content to continue to grow and become interesting, there has to be some level of adaptability.

Rauderi.8706:

Sykper.6583:

Let’s be careful Maddoctor, if you start suggesting that Raid Bosses should have healing and defensive capabilities, the encounters might get even more difficult.

:P

Well I mean.. they should. Just tweak down the HP to compensate. :P

I am a firm believer that the Raid Devs should continue to encourage varied encounters and design that test the full limits of the raid group. Coordinating consecutive breakbars from the Deimos encounter for instance, that can be a plan to consistently control a ‘Healer’ boss to prevent healing, or a rapid series of dodges and evasions.

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

oh thanks for letting me know that . now i gotten great news of the day . ahh you still fail to get my points . and that is this even tho mini pets have been in the get go . even tho dps meters have not . making this game to be more like wow than guild wars its self even .

Gonna save everyone a lot of time here.

Ahem, on the subject that GW2 is turning into WoW simply because DPS meters have been added as a measure for the Raiding Niche in this game, the overwhelming consensus suggests…“No, that’s really silly.”

If anything, WoW has been making more strides to turn into GW2, heck I can make a comparison with WoW adopting Transmogs, because everyone likes to run a certain look regardless of the gear.

OH MY GOD I must post on the Blizzard forums that WoW is turning into GW2! Full Panic!

I wonder what’s harder, doing normal mode Cairn or fighting Wyvern Patriarch in VB?

The first boss of W4 feels like a slightly more impressive Open-World boss, which I don’t mind honestly. As long as the wing became more difficult as you progressed.

Samarog normal mode was really close to being a decent third boss, they should have kept the spear pattern from Challenge Mote, except naturally keeping them able to be damage or killed in normal. That would have been enough imo.

It’s very plausible that you can be wrong though Blaeys. We don’t know the extent of which it took to bring out this last wing, we do know a raid dev had to go away for a month to train other new Staff, and Bastion took a far longer time to develop than the previous wings.

And like I said, if Arenanet sees Raids in a comfortable spot right now, they are under no obligation to change their course to make GW2 into a raid-centric game, and instead focus on developing the other areas of the game to a similar quality as raids have become in their niche.

We might never see Raids stretch difficulty settings beyond what we have now. Although I do imagine the Raid staff is aware that their raids are being done in many original methods that they might start challenging their niche audience further. We will see.

Blaeys.3102:

A really good overview of the issues with raids and possible fixes on MassivelyOP today -

http://massivelyop.com/2017/03/21/flameseeker-chronicles-creating-a-better-balance-in-guild-wars-2-raiding/

Definitely worth a read.

The issue I have with the read is that it’s another author again misconstruing the original premise behind GW2 at launch. I get this from a part in the 2nd paragraph under the ‘Financial Sense’ section, and it almost seems like Tina dodges a lot with the explanation:

“The answer is complicated, but the first point to note is that Guild Wars 2 was never originally designed with raiding in mind and so the core playerbase is not necessarily looking for this type of punishing, time-intensive content in the first place. What I will say, however, is that creating raids for the minority of players who do enjoy them isn’t an inherently bad move simply because the market for raids is niche, especially in a game with a sometimes overwhelming amount of activities to engage in that appeal to larger groups of the game’s community.”

GW2 has had elite content since launch, they’ve always WANTED dungeons to be the end-game, and ultimately if you think about it carefully, Legendary Weapons were the End-game cosmetic item since they drew heavy influence from doing these elite dungeons, doing map completion, doing WvW for Badges of Honor, and so forth.

Unfortunately the Dungeons were flawed, and eventually outclassed. A rather inclusive meta formed that made few professions viable with only a single stat set. That was mainly Vanilla. Another issue I find is that she uses the excuse that ’It’s complicated’ while throwing shade on the fact that Raiding is niche, as if other niche content is A-OK somehow.

At the very least she gets down to it, she talks about how players who don’t raid miss nuggets of lore, because somehow she hasn’t had the time to ask for a cleared instance of any raid wing. But she later follows up with that simply watching videos or going there after the fact wouldn’t sate her personally, because that’s not her issue. She also has a warped sense of ‘Key Story Content’ when the side-stories told within the raids so far, could have ended up on a Bookshelf in real life somewhere. But hey at least then we could all have paid real cash to get the same experience right? The Raid lore has continued to keep away from the Elder Dragon Storyline for a REASON.

She correlates to a quote from another user about Bobby trying to find a balance between raiding and story, and I think it’s very clear that Bobby and the Narrative crew are trying their hardest to give non-raiders the lore they need without the need to kill the raid bosses. At the very least she admits that the Lore is definitely enhanced by what it takes to have it brought out, the encounters being so difficult helps make the lore better, not worse.

…Despite a bunch of what I saw, there were a few solutions I was in favor of. The issue would be the amount of work involved, they can’t impede their already slow Raid Teams by forcing them to develop something like a Solo-Mode with NPCs. They would have to bring in other resources, maybe even Expansion or Living Story crews to help develop these rewardless ‘Story-Modes’.

Then we have a few other things to consider after that, is it worth their time? Should they put more development into raiding, is GW2 going to actually become a Raiding MMO or should they just keep it niche? Also, is the number of raiders participating a healthy number right now, and is it negatively, neutrally, or positively impacting their financial numbers?

Let’s be careful Maddoctor, if you start suggesting that Raid Bosses should have healing and defensive capabilities, the encounters might get even more difficult.

:P

vesica tempestas.1563:

Actually it does, because a % of people are affected by perceived monitoring, their behaviour can change negatively, its human nature, people do strange things when under pressure, and its niave to assume this is allways positive. E,g see post before yours and the ‘you dont like meters because you would be found out’ personal attack. a prime example of using meters in the negative.

This isn’t a mystery, its been discussed to death for years and denying it does not make it less so. for example 1 of thousands of discussions:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1073498-quot-Dps-kitten-quot-in-semi-hardcore-or-hardcore-guilds-How-to-deal-with-this/page5

in any case, each to their own, ive said my concern was really outside of raids.

Ultimately there is nothing to be concerned about, Arenanet isn’t foolish enough to do something along the lines of the Original Triple Trouble again, and they’ve shown it with the Shatterer Revamp which focuses less on DPS and more on mechanics. The end-game environments between WoW and GW2 are so different that it’s nearly impossible to make that correlation that the DPS meter tool will do the same impact. And lastly as long as Arenanet makes the open-world around the same pace that their latest Living Story maps have been, I expect there never to be any kittens who start calling out players in Map chat for DPS.

It’s isolated and a non-issue for non-raiders.

In every human language imaginable, “No.”

vesica tempestas.1563:

i’ve already said if it was kept to raids it would be a decent compromise.

Let me know when you get kicked from a squad doing Tetrad in VB for doing low DPS or something.

Where are you seeing these meters being used outside of raiding? I haven’t come close to anyone doing something like this, even in 100 CM in Fractals.

vesica tempestas.1563:

your suggesting its ok for pugs to have a potentially hostile atmosphere which is a bad thing in a community driven game right?

You do realize that we are playing an online game right? If anything I reckon the toxicity in raiding in general is still more mellow than previous open-world PvE content. Heaven forbid you fail a Silverwastes Vinewrath, or a guild opens up Tequatl early. The point we are trying to make here is that DPS meters are not going to cause a wipe-spread plague of toxicity throughout the whole game, they are specifically being used in a small part of the game intended for the most experienced players.

No one is going to pull up a DPS meter on Octovine,
No one is going to pull up a DPS meter in Fractals,
No one sees a need to run DPS meters in WvW and SPvP,
And certainly no one is going to pull up the DPS meter on any other known encounter in the game.

Only raids, which are difficult by design, see a productive use for the tool. Raids weren’t even intended to be pugged which seems to elude everyone discussing them, and yet everyone and their relatives wants in on them, for various reasons. And anyone pulling up an illegal DPS meter on the open world, calling out random players in map chat for doing so and so damage, and being a jerk in general deserves to be reported, and is likely a complete kitten even without the meter.

The DPS meter and how it is understood now by the players and how the devs have given their stance is fine now. It was smart of Arenanet to say that Gearchecking is illegal because it gives players a chance to show off what their builds can do in certain roles, maybe we will see some build be better than the meta, who knows?

vesica tempestas.1563:

Seera.5916:

vesica tempestas.1563:

all you are talking about is dps dps dps, this is the problem with meters, tunnel vision that leads down a single strategic path.

When discussing the benefits of DPS meters, of course you’re not going to talk about things that are not related at all to DPS.

Any group that only uses the DPS meter to decide who stays and who goes and disregards other aspects relevant to whatever content the group is doing, is not a group worth being in anyway.

well that’s the reality of things, people do indeed focus on dps over everything else otherwise there wouldn’t be a problem.

Said players were also ignorantly abusing LIs as a form of measuring raid experience and skill. Just because there are bad raiders who fail to understand how a DPS meter is run in a raid setting doesn’t mean the tool itself is the fault here. The best course is simply not the raid with such players who can’t understand why you, as the healer, are not doing the DPS.

Shauma.5470:

DPS meters and raiding, two of the three things that make WoW the toxic game that it is. The third being Trade chat. Do we really need those things in THIS game?

WoW’s Design in general made it toxic. Remember WoW had mob-tagging, resource tagging, etc. Many of the design choices WoW had, GW2 went in a completely different direction. Thus it goes without saying that the way Arenanet is handling both raiding and DPS meters at this second has this in mind, Raiding in GW2 isn’t literally the only end-game, it rewards you for attempts, accessibility is high, etc. Arenanet’s official stance on DPS meters is about as far as they will go, they won’t allow gearchecking (which I am ok with) and you can only give consent to having your DPS measured if you join a group. DPS meters serve no purpose in any other content in GW2, which is the vast majority of the game.

fishball.7204:

Meters that check DPS of players that aren’t in squad/party are against TOS. Joining a squad or party implies giving consent:

http://www.deltaconnected.com/arcdps/squadparty.png

Huh, I wasn’t aware it went to that degree for the consent.

Just out of curiosity is that from the reddit thread about DPS Meters some time ago?

Just as another perspective, let’s assume that the toxic groups aren’t likely to ever fall off ever, that’s pretty natural when you have so many players of different personalities trying to mesh in this game.

Regardless of whether DPS meters were involved, these groups would find any excuse, LIs, Achievement points, or simple guesswork to kick good and bad players from their squads. A DPS meter is just another measure that they can try to determine the fault in their squad, and if they were not going to be using a DPS meter they would still inappropriately kick players out of their groups.

Is that a fair assessment of a disadvantage of the DPS meter? Giving these toxic groups just another measure to try to figure out why their group is failing? Because even without a meter, they would aimlessly kick otherwise, there’s no way they wouldn’t just keep going.

That all being said, what does a DPS meter do that can acts as a positive for it? Well, interested players and squads can use it as a tool to teach and improve. It has a great use towards making raid groups more effective, and somewhat friendly competitive guilds might race on the DPS against a boss they regularly fight weekly. The DPS meter acts as another layer towards improving an aspect of End-Game PvE.

Both the flat positive and negatives aside above, we have a bit of gray area that needs to be brought up. I am more than certain that there are raid groups using this tool constructively, but have a member, regardless of being an old friend or a stranger, who just isn’t pulling the DPS they need to succeed, and absolutely refuses to improve.

This was able to be figured out from the DPS meter showing the DPS, and this person just can’t, or refuses to improve their damage and it is impacting the group’s performance. Does the raid group become toxic if they decide to kick this player from the group? I have my own thoughts about this but I want to hear from you guys first.

There’s a lot of other variations and variables involved in this, but I am of the standpoint that for Guild Wars 2, a DPS meter is more productive than destructive. Compared to any other Raiding MMO out there right now, I am seeing more proactive training groups and people just willing to take absolute strangers everyday than anywhere else. That might be because of how Raids are handled, they aren’t really the big focus of the game, but they are A focus that anyone can participate in if they want to spend the time to do so.

Cynz.9437:

I honestly should start to run a diary on all the toxic groups i encountered that used dps tools for toxicity and enforcing selfish gameplay (don’t rez ppl otherwise you lose dps/buff uptime etc.) This is getting worse and worse with every week.
Just another lovely monday today with raid leader moaning about alacrity uptime when 5 ppl are downed so i have to decide whether i run my golem rotation or actually rez ppl, the hell am i supposed to do? I am honestly getting tired of this crap and feel like quiting raiding all together. I have enough crap to deal with at work, i don’t need this kind of bs in game as well.

Tbf, it’s easy enough to know about alacrity uptime with simple observation, a dps meter isn’t required.

The bigger thing you listed was that half the raid was downed, that group has issues that can cause frustration and toxicity, not even a DPS meter could be blamed for that.

zealex.9410:

maddoctor.2738:

Rednik.3809:

Wasabi Kitty.8247:

I have a bachelor’s degree in accounting. If you had any idea what you were talking about you would realize that Anet’s quarterly reports have absolutely nothing to do with whether or not raids have an easy mode.

So when LOTS of people are disappointed and leaving, it have nothing to do with a major switch in endgame philosophy and direction. Allright.

It is confirmed that gem sales are stable so I’m not sure how you get that many people are leaving (without many others joining)

off tpic but how are gem sales stable if the quarterly updates show less and less income for anet?

When ‘drops’ or ‘climbs’ are negligible. There’s a difference between something dropping from 25.5 to 14.3 in a quarter, and it going from 14.3 to 14.1 over two more quarters.

Just keeping this at the top of the page to bring awareness.

GW2 SPvP NEEDS automated tournaments to facilitate team competitive play. With certain controls teams can form and play a tourney maybe once or twice a week, while not impacting the current ranked seasons too much.

Encourage authorized shoutcasters who can put a delay on their streams in twitch, let’s actually work towards an actual foundation for growing GW2 as a PvP game rather than throwing money at it for an ESports level. When you gather an audience, Esports makes itself.

Evan Lesh.3295:

The PvP team is investigating opportunities to update the sigils available in the game mode. This means removing, adding, balancing, and reworking. Our high-level goals include reducing RNG gameplay, promoting counter-play, reducing raw damage output, and removing ineffective choices. Some example changes would be removing on-kill stacking sigils and changing proc sigils to on-next-attack effects.

We are looking for feedback on these goals and potential changes. Feel free to suggest new sigils, sigils that exist in other game modes, or feedback on current sigils.

I am going to mainly focus on current sigils with recommendations towards newer ones.

First, Stacking Stat Sigils are GONE from SPvP, and maybe keep them in WvW. I feel they are mediocre at best and overall worthless.

Next, I dislike anything that is chance on hit/crit hit. These effects should be reworked so that certain interactions have to take place for the effect to kick in.

For example, Sigil of Ice has a 30% chance on hit to apply chill. I don’t want to make this a swap, so instead my first RECOMMENDED rework schema is changing on-hit effects like this to:

Sigil of Ice: While in this weapon-set you gain stacks of frost per landed hit, reaching 3 stacks allows you to Chill on next hit for a duration.

Instead of a random effect, the chill is now controlled by the user, and can be counter-played by the opponent. The amount of hits for stacks to charge up fully can vary on the effect in question, Chill is a potent condition so maybe if you land 5 or so hits rather than 3 hits for something like a Cripple would be nice.

Critical hit sigils should just do a flat effect immediately on the first critical, balance comes with the kind of effect it does.

%Cond Duration Sigils actually need a merge. Merge Weakness and Poison, Burning and Vuln, Chill and Bleed, and have Cripple merge with Stun/Daze/Fear Duration increase.

These give the duration sigils a passive theme instead of a potent effect that you can get from the newer on-hit sigils.

Lastly, I like on-swap sigils still, Hydro and Geo just need to be tuned down a bit.

Lemme know if this breaks anything.

Some other folks have already said it, but to reiterate, this would be more restrictive than what we have right now.

Very silly suggestion, it would also likely escalate meta build toxicity since each profession would have to bring the exact build for the boss in question, you still wouldn’t see a raid group bringing alternative necro or guardian builds to fights for instance.

Sojourner.4621:

draxynnic.3719:

The things you’re talking about can still have the potential to be nasty enough that you will learn how to deal with them in the story mode. Continuing with using VG as an example, the green circles could certainly be left as a strong enough hit that you’re going to notice it. The blue circles would still teleport. However, maybe the damaging areas that appear in phases 3 and 5 are less punishing, so you’re more likely to be able to survive if a blue circle teleports you into the bad or if a green circle appears in the bad. Anybody using it for training would likely know that the bad is a lot nastier in the real thing, so their target in training would be to reach a point where they can reliably ensure that nobody ends up in the bad.

See this is what I’m not getting about other people’s arguments. It’s like we’re assuming that if you’re tweaking numbers it means that you have to make all skills non-impactful. There are still difficult encounters in non-raid scenarios and skills that one shot players in dungeons. The only options are not “extremely hard or extremely easy there can be no other way!!1!” There is middle ground. Green circles would still one shot you, or at least close to it, if you stand in them. Blue teleports would still function exactly the same as they currently do. The biggest number you would have to change is how difficult it is to actually kill the boss (How big a meat shield it is) and in the mean time you would barely have to nerf the amount of damage the boss does at all, or even any of the mechanics. Yes, make it a 10 man dungeon, just make it a puggable experience so that it’s still a skill check but not as much of a DPS check.

There’s a lot of gray area here, I know exactly what you want though. The issue that presents to me is that this ‘Story Mode’ has to be able to reach out to the masses if that’s the idea behind it. It has to be puggable…

But then what would change? I imagine that there would be more players doing the story-mode, however I can easily envision these story-mode groups struggling with the fights, just because they are 10-mans that have some semblance of coordination involved. I’m not 100% sure the playerbase is at a level you guys think they are, and if I am correct in my assessment there will still be a large outcry from the playerbase who just can’t do the encounters themselves as they dislike organizing 10 people, and then proceed to go down and get defeated each fight which slow down runs for already low-quality rewards…

It feels like it could easily turn into a huge waste of resources, it’ll frustrate the larger playerbase as they honestly might start going a bit more elitist in story-mode just because normal pugging won’t work, and the raiders themselves will see raid resources diverted from development.

It’s entirely likely that I am incorrect, it could be a resounding success with little losses for raiders. But I think you guys think too highly of the general playerbase’s overall skill, this idea could backfire pretty badly.

Not seen dps meters in lfg yet.

Discuss.

(The texts walls are op)

draxynnic.3719:

At the very least, it means people would know what the mechanics are. Reading on the mechanics is no substitute for seeing them, even if they’re at a lower level.
(You’re drawing a lot out of “a little harder than Living Story”, I note. I picked that point as something that sets a benchmark of what most players are expected to be able to do. Personally, I’d accept “a little harder than Giganticus Lupicus before Ascended was introduced” – that was hard but it was a level of hard that managed to remain fun.)

I agree with your first statement that seeing mechanics visually is vastly better than someone telling out over comms or having you read. Experience helps. But it’s a whole other thing to try to emulate what each mechanic does and making an easier version of it without it giving a detrimental effect for failing to do it. Imagine a player who absolutely can’t see the blue circles, they teleport players on VG after a few seconds in a small area. Obviously the story-mode version won’t allow this mechanic to be totally threatening so said player will…be susceptible to blue circles for a long time. This person has never had to dodge them before, and after feeling confident from a lot of Story-Mode VG kills he now feels super proud and wants to do the raid-version. How do you think that’s going to play out?

And yes, I specifically mentioned the difficulty you described for a reason. Do you actually believe players are at that level? We are still getting complaints about HoT difficulty…

draxynnic.3719:

One could say the same thing about introducing raids into a game that was designed to break the usual MMO moulds. People asked for it, and it happened… likely at the cost of new dungeons or some other content that could have been made instead.

I agree, this was a direct consequence of Arenanet giving players what they wanted during the CDIs. My opinion is that dungeons didn’t give players the end-game they wanted, and GW2 had one of the most engaging combat systems in an MMO to date. They craved more, and so they went bigger, stronger, etc. Thus Raids naturally developed, and luckily Arenanet at least went with 10-man. Could you imagine the discussions we would be having if they went 25? Leave those zergs to the open-world Shatterer thanks.

draxynnic.3719:

That’s a problem. You’re right – there should be an incentive to play at the higher levels. However, that doesn’t mean that having lower levels that can bring more people in is a bad thing – it just means that the challenge motes were implemented poorly by making them a ‘do once for the achievement’ thing rather than giving it the GW1-style Hard Mode treatment that does reward you for repeating it if that’s your thing.

I just think it might be a major waste of resources and time, and could cause potential issues like I described above. I don’t think as many players will transition into the raid-mode properly, there have been raiding games that have tried this, and I’ve read and heard some fairly…scary stuff about how unprepared the ‘Easy-Mode’ raiders were for the normal difficulty. But that’s fairly subjective, I will want to say this though. Other MMOs that implement raiding often have a vertical gear check, meaning that at some point gear will give you a good edge in encounters. GW2 does not have this, it relies more on the skill of the player. I think you understand what I mean by that.

draxynnic.3719:

Now you’re making assumptions. Perhaps… if the team remains at 5 people. However, more people enjoying raids could mean more justification to have more people working on them.

I have to disagree with this. As much as I might personally want more raid development, raids aren’t supposed to be the focus of this game. They are a subset being developed on the side with Fractals. They are supposed to come less frequently than LS releases which hit the majority of players. GW2 is not going to be a raiding game.

draxynnic.3719:

I’m thinking 10, yes, because that’s probably the simplest, and because it retains a training purpose. People might complain about having to form a group, but for content that’s not tough enough to develop a toxic culture, it’s usually not too difficult to form PUGs, particularly if you can start off with a core of people you know.

I only need to point you to Explorable dungeons, or Dungeons in general for how that turned out. New players coming in a year after the story release will have a hard time making that 10-man when the time and effort isn’t worth the rewards. Hence is why they want it solo-able which technically can resolve this issue straight out…but stops story mode from becoming a training mode.

draxynnic.3719:

There’s a lot of content that is only intended to be played a handful of times per player. Most personal story steps, for instance, especially the original personal story.
Nothing wrong with that. A couple of times per player is still a lot better than zero, particularly if it’s in a period with a relative drought of other new content (as seen during the period the original raids were being released). And some of those players might be encouraged to transition to the real thing.

I’m thinking it’ll be best for all of us if maybe, just maybe Raids were left where they are, but things like Current Events (something new they are trying) kept coming out after expansion releases? So that maybe Raids aren’t the scapegoat for why content was ‘delayed’ because that’s a foolish argument to make.

draxynnic.3719:

The difference is that you actually get to practice the whole encounter. The current system doesn’t allow you to practice later phases at all until you can reliably beat the previous phases. So it can turn into a frustrating process of beating your head against a brick wall to earn the privilege of beating your head against the next brick wall behind it. Being able to practice against the whole thing gives training groups the opportunity to train against the encounter holistically, rather than being a case of one phase followed by the next.

The typical GW2 raid boss formula is something new added on a per phase basis. Doing each phase properly means the raid boss mechanics for that phase were understood, so it’ll toss something new out at you. Doing the story-mode encounter holistically doesn’t mean you’ll be able to anticipate the real deal and what it can do. Many mechanics that were trivial that you seemed to have mastered before suddenly become relevant, let’s take VG Green Circles for instance (fairly common example). Let’s pretend that doing the mechanic correctly means 0 damage for everyone, but failing to do it means everyone takes a slight hit to their health on story-mode rather than a massive nuke. In the midst of training, we got boons and all sorts of healing sources coming out, it’ll be almost impossible to know the green circle had failed, or succeeded in the story-mode. The only reason why people learn green circles in Hard-mode is because EVERYONE notices when they take 10k to the face. Thus they find the issue and fix it, the raid-mode encounter was tuned better than the story-mode for this.