Guild Wars 2

draxynnic.3719:

The above are the only folks that will gain something, that’s it. We aren’t attracting other communities like PvP and WvW obviously, but groups who aren’t interested in lore only won’t come. Players who in this story-mode to find the raid loot hopefully won’t come if you agree that Raid Loot should be obtained in the Raid-mode only. The appeal to apply resources to a story-mode version needs to have a pay-off. Because Raids right now are kitten ed well strapped for resources, they aren’t releasing a Wing every quarter, I didn’t expect Crystal’s enthusiasm with that comment to play out as intended.

Actually, it could lead to more resources being freed up for raids in the long run. How? Because if more people can experience the raid story, even if they just go through once, there’s going to be less rebellion if there’s an extended period where raids are the only new content of real note to come out – such as happened between October 2015 and June 2016.

The playerbase is selfish as hell sometimes, they forgot the returned and newly rewarding festivals, Revamped Shatterer, HoT Map rework, etc. The only thing that wasn’t added was the continued story while Heart of Thorns was launched for 8 months, and they needed a scapegoat.

Furthermore, by applying a story-mode, those who wanted the lore as an incentive to try the current difficulty and maybe realize they can do the content, no longer are part of a pool of new raiders coming in. What do Raiders gain? They gain nothing, they lose just about everything from this deal.

And maybe people who go through it at a level which is challenging but still more forgiving will then have more confidence to move on to develop their skills further and try to complete the full raids, therefore expanding the raiding community, instead of spending several hours eating dirt and deciding it just isn’t fun?

I want to iterate that the difficulty jump between something slightly harder than the living story, to current raiding is still rather large. Just visualizing the transition still makes me think Story-mode raiders will still spend hours on Raid-Mode VG.

And do not take your low-hanging fruit for resources applied here, your subjective experiences do not factor into the spagetti code that GW2 seems to be working from. Releasing just this recent wing has made Forsaken Thicket already more buggy than normal, KC is a kittenfest, still doable but so bad right now. In whatever you think Arenanet could just ‘nerf numbers’ isn’t something on a dial, the backend systems for fractals versus Raids/Dungeons (Given the interface I believe raids and dungeons share more similarities) are way different.

And yet, you have different difficulty levels in Bastion of the Penitent. The precedent certainly is there… and it’s not like the content has ever been bug-free all the time.

I despise what they did with Bastion. They disappointed a lot of raiders who were expecting something on-par with the previous wings and instead they went softer, and made the ‘hard-mode’ a one time, no reason to repeat, deal. The devs right now need to look to improve their raid difficulty a bit more now, not look to spend more time creating a lore mode that will still be group content, with a difficulty tuned far lower than the current raiding to make transitions easier, with rewards so crappy they aren’t run beyond a few times…

I am well aware the devs could create difficulty levels with motes, they technically did with changed abilities in Bastion. But it wasn’t done right. Not at all.

draxynnic.3719:

Same place the resources came from to split the Bastion bosses between regular and challenge mote. The precedent is there.

So longer development between raids.

Scale-wise, we have an idea of what players are expected to be able to handle in recent Living Story instances. While I’m not going to plant my flag at this particular point, an appropriate scale would probably be to make the story-mode raids a little harder than Living Story instances, taking into account that the story-mode raids would be done as a group while Living Story instances are generally soloed.

And we immediately run into the first problem. When you say group, I assume you mean the same size 10 man? That’s a barrier that has been stated time and time again by those non-raiding folks interested in the Raid lore as unacceptable right now. They want this to be soloed. If you don’t agree, you already are cutting the folks you are trying to get into this raid lore down quite a bit. But if we make it a solo instance…that’s a lot more work than just “tweaking the numbers”.

Rewards-wise… possibly around the level that explorable dungeons are at now. Enough that you aren’t getting nothing if you do choose to repeat them for fun, low enough that they’re not going to be the next farm.

So no more than a couple times, and a little more often than Activities. For a group that’s purely interested in the lore accessibility of the encounters themselves.

For training purposes, I expect so. The reward for failing a boss is pretty minimal: practicing against an easy-mode version of the boss until you feel ready to hit the real thing may well feel more rewarding overall, especially if you consider intrinsic rewards over “you got wiped for the nth time, have some magnetite shards as a consolation prize”.

Interesting that you suggest that this story-mode instance would be useful for training, that seems to supplement my thought above that you still think that this story-mode should be a 10-man. But furthermore, what’s the difference between training on the real thing and earning shards versus training on a lesser version that can’t possibly beat you and won’t give you a better picture of the real deal? I think the training would be far worse on the story-mode since it can’t accurately represent the real encounter at that low-level of ‘slightly above Living Story’.

Unquantifiable, but the interest is clearly there. People know that the first raid was really more of a prologue than a side-story anyway.

Interest doesn’t warrant a need to create. Hell I am interested in having Legendary Weapons being bought for Karma of which I reckon I can find a massive following agreeing with me. Doesn’t make it a good idea.

Again, unquantifiable, but other games have made the transition successfully. The full raids will still be the highest difficulty content in the game with unique rewards even if an easier mode was introduced.

I wouldn’t say successful. That’s a discussion for another day.

I think you underestimate the willingness of some people outside of the hardcore raiding community to repeat content for little extrinsic reward for the intrinsic reward of helping a friend to see something they wouldn’t be able to otherwise.

But it still wouldn’t be popular. The worry here is that Story-Mode will turn to dust on the wayside, just because the real Raid-mode gives the REAL rewards everyone wants and the same lore. They will do it once, go farm silverwastes or whatever OTHER open-world content gives them more Gold Per hour.

draxynnic.3719:

Making an easier version is no more of a compromise to the story than fractals scaling up for no clear lore reason. There is no story reason not to have an easier mode for the raids.

Then I ask you this:

- Where would the resources for these story-modes come from? What is their ‘scale’, rewards, etc? Would they be repeated if there was zero reward? Is it worth the cost?

- How many people do you expect would be interested in the story-mode raids that aren’t part of the main Elder Dragon Story? How many players would be lost when the promise of ‘Raids are the most difficulty content in the game’ is suddenly overturned by making an ‘everyone can experience them’ mode? Can this even be measured?

I do expect you have a fairly decent answer some of the above, but bear in mind that the audience you are anticipating to satisfy with a story-mode, needs to be interested in the side-story, needs to be interested in at least getting 9 other players for nerfed content, and isn’t already satisfied by what we have now.

The above are the only folks that will gain something, that’s it. We aren’t attracting other communities like PvP and WvW obviously, but groups who aren’t interested in lore only won’t come. Players who in this story-mode to find the raid loot hopefully won’t come if you agree that Raid Loot should be obtained in the Raid-mode only. The appeal to apply resources to a story-mode version needs to have a pay-off. Because Raids right now are kitten ed well strapped for resources, they aren’t releasing a Wing every quarter, I didn’t expect Crystal’s enthusiasm with that comment to play out as intended.

Furthermore, by applying a story-mode, those who wanted the lore as an incentive to try the current difficulty and maybe realize they can do the content, no longer are part of a pool of new raiders coming in. What do Raiders gain? They gain nothing, they lose just about everything from this deal.

And do not take your low-hanging fruit for resources applied here, your subjective experiences do not factor into the spagetti code that GW2 seems to be working from. Releasing just this recent wing has made Forsaken Thicket already more buggy than normal, KC is a kittenfest, still doable but so bad right now. In whatever you think Arenanet could just ‘nerf numbers’ isn’t something on a dial, the backend systems for fractals versus Raids/Dungeons (Given the interface I believe raids and dungeons share more similarities) are way different.

draxynnic.3719:

Pffffft. Hahahahah. Yes. Please. I’ve been in the lore community for a long time.

A “demon”, in Guild Wars lore, is simply a creature spawned by the Mists, or substantially changed using energy from the Mists, which has malevolent intentions (and even that last part may not actually be required, which would make Razah a demon, but Razah has never been described as one). They vary in power from pipsqueaks (imps are classified as demons) to extremely powerful individuals like Mallyx, Kanaxai, and the Black Beast. However, none of those were Elder Dragon levels of power. At that level of power, you’re starting to get to the level of dark gods, like the hinted at but never officially confirmed Arachnia. I’d be really disappointed with ArenaNet if it is actually canon that a demon god of that level just happened to be Saul’s jailor.

Which again processes the whole ‘how narrative is delivered across the content’. Are you surprised that someone the commander has issues in dungeons taking down Lupi, or a Legendary Spider exists in AC? Processing a enemy’s power as universal across all content is not gonna work.

draxynnic.3719:

Doesn’t really matter if he’s the real Lazarus or not – he still consumed an entire bloodstone, which should make him more powerful than Matthias or Xera, which were simply empowered by them.

If it turns out that Lazarus, fake or not, is a villain in the end, I’ll bet we’ll fight him in a story instance, and I bet he’ll be easier than the raid fights even with a challenge mote.

We will absolutely, main-storyline and all. That should be kept in the main story, but Raids tell side-stories. They enhance the world of Tyria, but aren’t relevant to the main story of GW2 where we have to slay the dragons.

draxynnic.3719:

So what you’re saying here is that the Pact has ten nameless soldiers that are more powerful than the Pact Commander?

Great! Jormag and Primordus should be no threat then – Glenna’s boys and girls will tackle them with one hand tied behind each of their backs. If they’d been spared, McLeod and Sabetha could probably solo an Elder Dragon. Each.

I mean we could have a separate discussion about narrative in MMOs and how it is delivered across solo, group, and zerg content. But I know you probably understand why what you said is utterly ridiculous.

draxynnic.3719:

Tweaking the numbers is a low-hanging fruit.

To what extent? You are likely underestimating how bad the average skill of the player is. If we go the low-hanging fruit, be prepared to have a lesser than Living Story level of difficulty, aka Core Tyria. That’ll leave an impression for content being the hardest in the game right?

draxynnic.3719:

At the moment, we’ve had quite a few development resources going into the raids that’s just not been relevant to the rest of the player base (in fact, I suspect that holding back the start of LS3 until the first raid was done has probably hurt player retention after HoT). Making an easier mode so that the results of that work is relevant to everyone else is low-hanging fruit: it’s a relatively small amount of work that magnifies the accessibility, and hence the impact of work they’ve already done.

All of this is acting on presumptions you can’t possibly know. Starting from the very first sentence is something you cannot prove. Good try though. As far as the devs have told us, there is only around 5 or a few more dedicated raid devs.

draxynnic.3719:

Cleared instances, incidentally, are no match for seeing what actually happens. It’s like the difference between an archaeological expedition and actually being there: you might be able to get an idea from the evidence left behind, but it’s never going to be the same and some of your conclusions may well be wrong.

Which is why I suggested we do something like a trailer or cinematic retelling of these epic encounters. Bridge this gap closer without sacrificing the content. And yes, an easier difficulty is sacrificing the content, no different than adding a PvE mode to SPvP.

draxynnic.3719:

They’re still following the same philosophy, though. Raids were planned in HoT’s development, but HoT still has things that can be soloed (with difficulty, but soloed nevertheless) in personal story, and then when they (or something equivalent) shows up in the open world, it takes a zerg to take them on. Jade constructs in Episode 1 personal story instances were easier to take on than any of the open world constructs at the time (although Episode 2 did introduce constructs that were only veteran-level in the mursaat ruins). And more examples are below…

Stop comparing the open world to personal story. That’s the first mistake you are making, in the personal story which is canon, you are the Commander who has done more than current canon characters like Destiny’s Edge in terms of smacking down Elder Dragons. It’s actually rather scary how powerful you are, almost beyond mortal honestly on your own. Kind of why you are able to take on dragons and their minions like Mouth of Zhaitan or the Sovereign Eye back in the day.

In the open world? You have a bit less power, mainly because Arenanet has the perilous job of making you and everyone around you playing as the Commander. It is why you can get killed by a champion Mordrem Sniper fairly quickly.

draxynnic.3719:

Y’know? I was actually trying to be generous there, in order to reduce how ridiculous the comparison was. Now we’ve got Mordremoth being mind-killed by three people… making it not about as difficult as fighting a typical open-world champion, let alone a world boss. So now we’ve got the conclusion that killing McLeod the Silent is more difficult than going into an Elder Dragon’s mind and killing it from within.

Again, you just can’t compare open world and personal story. Stop it. The narrative being delivered is mechanically behind the two are utterly different and thus impossible to measure.

draxynnic.3719:

Yes, we had the Pact distracting Mordremoth outside… but that pretty much just meant that we were able to get there in the first place. Mordremoth wasn’t particularly threatened by the Mouth of Mordremoth being destroyed – he’d just grow another one – but it did serve to divert his attention and that of his forces so we could get to Trahearne.

Which is just another weakness these Elder Dragons have, they underestimate the races or at least the commander. But this is not unusual, they are forces of nature more or less.

draxynnic.3719:

The raid bosses are mechanically difficult because they wanted hard content, but the very concept requires a certain degree of suspension of disbelief…

There’s two sides to this, if we didn’t raid the Forsaken Thicket, a single pact squad taking down the entire three wings would indicate to us that either A ) that pact squad was extremely competent compared to our other NPCs or B ) the foes inside were not that impressive. If we break through that wall and as the commander, lead 9 other pact members (your raidmates) into the wings, we get the truth of the raid story.

We run into enemies and foes unfamiliar to Tyria for decades, encounter things beyond this world. Something that even the Commander leading a squad of others would struggle against definitely. That’s the justification, and especially why it is justified for the latest Raid to require our services again, because the Mursaat involvement into fighting literally demons. I assume you are familiar with how Demons are treated in Guild Wars lore?

draxynnic.3719:

A lot of people already headcanon that when you’re raiding, you’re not actually playing the part of the Pact Commander, but some random Pact soldier or mercenary that just happens to be present…

Their head-canon would be inaccurate but not wrong, because Bennett could remark on you as the commander leading the efforts of that pact squad into the Forsaken Thicket after the events of Mordremoth’s defeat if you got involved. It’s a story in between the events of HoT and LS3, but at the end of it we were left with more questions than answers, the nature of the Mursaat Lazarus still left in the air like before we went into the thicket. Until LS3 landed, but now that’s being left up in the air courtesy of the last Confessor.

And finally if you didn’t raid, because Bennett remarks that a single pact squad cleared it out, that’s why people will say raiders would be just pact soldiers. The pact soldiers cleared it out, “I as the commander who cannot do the Thicket did not get involved…” And that would be correct.

Walls of Text OP, shortened things down.

draxynnic.3719:

Then don’t introduce the story mode until a month or so later…

I daresay well over 90% of people even in the raiding community don’t experience it by trial and error as you say…

It is still something you would have to actively spend development resources from the raiding team on (more delay on new releases), and can cause bugs for earlier raid content (another delay aspect). All for content that I guarantee to you isn’t relevant to the majority of GW2 players because believe it or not, a lot of players in GW2 haven’t played GW1! Shock, surprise!

What I want is to keep Raids where they are at because that is what they are supposed to be, without impacting their development more than we’ve already seen it being strained, and providing at least something for those in the community who can’t raid to at least grasp. We already have the cleared instance of raids having just about all the lore tid-bits you need. I think the suggestion for maybe a ‘retelling cinematic’ by Glenna on each boss would be a great way to help finish out that experience for those who clearly can’t do the encounters.

draxynnic.3719:

Uhhhh… The feeling of immersion based on the difficulty of what you’re fighting has been a case of ‘suspension of disbelief’ since raids were introduced, and possibly back to the release of the game with open world bosses that grow stronger when more players arrive.

Past examples do not negate future attempts. Raids right now are very authentic content because they aren’t being completely mitigated by those factors you described here.

draxynnic.3719:

Consider: In the story, we go into an Elder Dragon’s mind and kill it from the inside on terrain that was pretty much of its own choosing…

You would also be wrong because lore-wise there was a single commander who took only a choice between two companions inside to fight Mordremoth. The whole party-mode thing is just an achievement for those interested in trying the last story as a dungeon so to speak. It’s not canon.

draxynnic.3719:

Now, compare that to raid bosses. For Mordremoth, you’re going in with up to 5 players and two NPCs (you can get more allies later, but that’s part of the mechanics of the encounter)…

The comparison is already gone but whatever. If you have been paying attention at all to the raid-lore, a Pact Squad was sent into the Forsaken Thicket and did all the things there. If you were involved in saving Bennett from Matthias, Bennett will comment on the fact you were in that squad in Bloodstone Fen, otherwise he’ll simply reiterate a pact squad saved him. Furthermore you have to bear in mind that as the commander we are leading a scrambled assault on Mordremoth with still our massive forces. We aren’t soloing everything here, the Pact had to hold back Mordremoth’s physical body while we snuck in to try to find a way to end that Elder Dragon permanently.

Blaeys.3102:

It doesn’t do any of these things if you aren’t actually in the instance with the lower difficulty boss.

Do you know the raiding philosophy behind all progression or even new raiders?

There’s a common theme, a very sensible one in fact. Information is the key to winning the battle. The most hardcore of raiders do not go straight into the hardest difficulty of the raid without seeing if there is an easier mode. They need to understand what the enemy can do, what it is capable of, and work from there.

Imagine if what you proposed was accepted, all raiding guilds would 100% absolutely start off with the easier mode to gain an understanding of the base mechanics. From there they formulate their strategies, make attempts and proceed as planned. The only thing they’ve utterly LOST from the entire thing is that they have already killed the boss in question. They are now making attempts at a harder inflated difficulty they set themselves for some reason. Better loot perhaps? That’s the likely cause, but already at this point a major appeal was lost. How truly powerful the foe was, it becomes diluted…

They lost the impact of killing the boss on its own terms because they sought an easier means to progress, because it was made available as a mechanic scale they can just toggle. As much as you want to have this discourse, the fact remains that once you make any system where a boss is rendered into difficulty modes, it loses an organic feel and becomes less immersive. This is not something that can be debated, it happens regardless of whatever way you see to bring it about.

Which brings me to the question at hand, and something that keeps getting dodged. Why are you demanding these changes for story content that is extremely irrelevant, even on its own, to the main story of GW2? It has been brought up time and time again that it is purely optional, as long as it doesn’t directly interfere with the Elder Dragon Storyline we’ve been going through. What is at stake here really?

I won’t want to separate casuals and raiders because often members of both groups find out each are one and the same. There are casual raiders who enjoy the Raid content at their own speed, regardless of how fast some of their peers may fly through it. Being able to keep consistently raiding in GW2 only serves to benefit as weekly you earn currency to be able to earn unique rewards and upgrade your gear, even if you aren’t immediately progressing at that time.

Taking a high horse in either instance serves no one. For casuals who are willing to commit the time, they will see their efforts rewarded eventually. For raiders who continue to bring along the new folks, they will see the raiding community florish.

There’s a great deal of potential for GW2 to be the FIRST MMO to actually flesh out the raiding community without sacrificing the authenticity and difficulty of raiding to do so, like other raiding MMOs have.

Blaeys.3102:

How is this any different than T1 or T2 fractal or story/explorable mode dungeon.

Because the basic premise of GW2 Raids has from the onset, been being the hardest PvE content in the game. That’s what they were advertised for, they cannot go below that lest they betray the content they were designed to be.

Blaeys.3102:

All of a sudden, people are trying to make it seem like tiered difficulty content is somehow new to GW2 or videogames.

It’s not.

And there are a multitude of factors for why different difficulties have success, and failures in video games. Not everything needs an easier difficulty. Not everything needs a hard-mode. I would argue some Story-mode dungeons are a harder path than the explorable.

Blaeys.3102:

Almost every video game out there has this kind of system in place – because it works. People don’t play Doom on hard mode and think to themselves, “wow, that would have been a better experience if other people weren’t able to play on easy mode.”

Not unusually, some of these older games reward true endings for harder difficulties. Contra comes to mind when you do ‘hard-modes’ yet no one complained about endings not being made available on an easier difficulty.

Blaeys.3102:

People understand the difference between the levels – they respect the challenge it takes to complete the higher levels (often because they have seen the easier levels for themselves and can now envision what it might mean).

Using this as an argument against the idea of tiered difficulty is a thin argument with no real basis in game design.

It’s fine to respect the challenge, it’s even fine to understand the physical rewards behind the increased challenge. But ultimately the story-mode suggestion suffers from:

- Reducing the authenticity of the intent of raids
- Reducing the immersion for foes within raids being threatening
- Costing precious resources to develop

Blaeys.3102:

People keep saying this, but it really is ridiculous.

It fundamentally turns those encounters into something less organic. This isn’t a ridiculous claim.

Blaeys.3102:

A slightly altered version you never see and never do will not ruin your immersion unless you choose to let it do so. And, even if it did, that would be more on you than the game.

Excluding the factor of which you mean by slightly altered, the perception of the enemy in question is irrevocably changed. It’s no longer ’It’s Deimos, he’s a terribly hard to kill demon that we have to overcome!’ instead we get ‘Oh Deimos is easy, whatever. Oh wait you meant Raid-Mode Deimos? Oh wow that’s crazy!’

We no longer get a single powerful being, we get a fake version that hurts the image of the real deal. It’s not even on the player, it’s how players would see future raiding, in terms of inorganic terms like Easy-Mode, and Hard-Mode. No more saying the fight names until the scale is mentioned first.

Blaeys.3102:

And, by using that same logic, you’re essentially saying they should remove the challenge motes currently in the game – and never add any challenge above what is initially shipped – otherwise it messes with immersion.

Surely people see how silly that idea is.

I kind of agree with the challenge mote removal, I would rather the encounter have things like Slippery Slubling being around instead of some static floating blue fire saying ‘OH NOW YOU CAN FIGHT KC IN A SMALLER ROOM! THIS IS A GAME HAHA!’

At least Challenge Mote Nightmare changes it up by introducing some ominous NPC character at a ridiculous level with a unique influence on the fractal. But yea, I do dislike the challenge motes a bit.

Blaeys.3102:

When you do something like this right, all of the elements come together to deliver the story – and that includes the fights themselves. Take any piece of that away (entering a cleared instance is taking big chunks of it away) and the result is considerably different than it was likely intended.

You saying the encounters tell a bigger part of the story than the environment, does not make it right when you compare it to the statement of the Narrative Lead who designed it. Bobby quite literally said the environment was by far the biggest lore for the side-story than anything the encounters had. We’ve got quotes from the encounters in question that indicate how little the encounter conveys.

There was an interesting proposition on the reddit where someone suggested that to help out those who cannot clear the raids, something of a ‘Trailer’ or ‘Cinematic’ showing a group facing off against the encounters in question to give those who can’t do the fight themselves a sense of scale of the encounter. I actually think that would be an excellent compromise.

But the moment you create an instance of an encounter that is fundamentally weaker than the real thing, immediately kills the immersion and threat the encounter had regardless of difficulty.

Blaeys.3102:

Sykper.6583:

CrustyBot.3564:

As for story, sometimes you require challenge for the story notes to be the most impactful. There are some stories where you appreciate the narrative more because you earned your progress in it. Immersion and all that. As long as the story for raids aren’t necessary to understand the main story arc, and are self contained story arcs, I don’t see the problem.

If the story in the raid is more interesting than the main one, then that’s on the team working the main story to up their game. Not on the raid team to make their stories worse or less interesting.

All of this.

The one thing I can promise you doesn’t impact how the story is told is something that is taking place in a completely different instance with different people than the one you are in.

It absolutely does. That’s what I believe the underlying statement has been all along, the real discussion taking place here. There’s a disagreement where you believe that setting up encounters in an easier ‘story’ mode that anyone can do, does not take away the impact and immersion of the encounter in question. I believe it does, the mere existence of a story-mode Deimos would utterly decimate the immersion those who attempt him in the normal-mode have against him. It turns it mechanical, almost systematic like what happened with WoW and in part FF14.

It’s not just something selfish I am describing here, it’s a factor of ascertaining the extent of which the evil we face is a threat. It’s why I continue to bring up the prospect that no one remembers the fights they breezed through, but the ones they struggled with. I would rather there be pure difficult encounters in this game that is memorable for being difficult only, than turned difficult on a dial and reduced to just numbers.

And I don’t believe I’ll ever convince you otherwise of what I mean by this. Nor will I expect you to make me believe that story-mode hasn’t ruined other raiding MMOs by making them into systems instead. I will say this and I believe you will agree with me, the raid releases are slow, it’s already hard enough to release just a single difficulty wing without previous raids breaking (W1/W3 bosses have changed). Beyond the merits of the discourse we have right now, I don’t think we should even consider multiple difficulties/instances given how much more time might need to be spent with the next release.

Do you agree with that?

CrustyBot.3564:

As for story, sometimes you require challenge for the story notes to be the most impactful. There are some stories where you appreciate the narrative more because you earned your progress in it. Immersion and all that. As long as the story for raids aren’t necessary to understand the main story arc, and are self contained story arcs, I don’t see the problem.

If the story in the raid is more interesting than the main one, then that’s on the team working the main story to up their game. Not on the raid team to make their stories worse or less interesting.

All of this.

Sarda.5918:

Right now you can have the reward, or you can have the reward and the challenge. Everyone wins. What you are asking to have is that nobody gets the reward unless they do the challenge. That’s called elitism.

You really need to get out of this mindset that giving rewards to those taking on bigger challenges is a bad thing. It’s mind-blowing that you can make such a statement with a straight face, since what you are asking for is by effect, the removal of extra effort for extra rewards.

You have a misunderstanding of what Elitism is, because if what you described was the case, every single piece of content that provided above the average rewards when the content was only slightly harder than the open world would be elitist. Dungeons, Group Events, all of it gone because someone somewhere can’t do it, which makes everyone who can elitist and thus do not need things like champion bags for completing it.

Rednik.3809:

Yeah, raiding between WoW and GW2 is really so vastly different, because WoW is doing at least some stuff right, due to their experience and millions of players who gave them raiding statistics over years and years of the MMO raiding evolution.
But hey, lets ignore it, it’s not like gw2 raids have obvious design problems, gw2 community is split apart due to these problems, and gw2 raid devs are trying to pretend that now is 2007 instead of 2017, right?

WoW wasn’t the first to start the Raiding business, it’s definitely the most well-known though. Raiding in WoW has gone through different evolutionary phases, and given that the only avenue in PvE for an end-game was to Raid, WoW needed to go down paths not ventured before. It is because WoW made those mistakes that we have a clearer picture of what not to do going forward, in a traditional themepark MMO.

You are pretending that GW2 is locking the killing of Elder Dragons behind raids. You are pretending that major GW2 lore bombs are being held behind Raid Bosses. There is a degree of lore that can potentially enhance the world of Tyria for you behind a cleared instance and just a tiny bit more behind the encounters themselves. But absolutely none of the lore in raids has constituted interfering with how each player goes through the Main Story of GW2.

It is utterly selfish beyond a doubt to demand that something unrelated to the direct lore at hand be made available to you because you were not determined enough to try. There’s a consistent flow of success stories flowing in about how new raiders are getting together and trying the content, something you wish to stifle because you believe WoW had the better model. Something I am more and more disagreeing with every passing day a legacy WoW raid is trivialized by a solo over-leveled character.

GW2 is doing raids on a whole other level, a proper level in fact that makes sense for it being an alternative PvE end-game method. At this point I would dare say FF14 has gone above WoW in its own teams of a themepark MMO. Yet neither FF14 or WoW can compare to GW2 raiding, nor can GW2 compare to a themepark since that is not the intent.

Throw out all those numbers you have, they mean nothing compared to the potential GW2 has for raiding. This is a whole other field that is being traversed, for instance:

- Rewards for failure when progressing encounters (Shards)

- Incentives to repeat fights you have already done (Shards).

- Fine-Tuning the GW2 combat system and implementing challenging mechanics we’ve seen in previous raiding MMOs, Lich King’s puddles were an impressive and well-done thing to bring over yet giving a fresh feel thanks to the GW2 combat and movement.

- No Vertical Treadmill, removing the literal gear requirements that made some encounters impossible to do regardless of skill in WoW due to a gear check.

Are a few features from the top of my head, plus none of the raids are NECESSARY FOR GW2 MAIN STORY. Can’t emphasize that enough.

gw2efficiency suffers from pulling from a sample of the playerbase who knows about the site. I’m fairly certain that despite being out for years, the general population doesn’t know about it because those looking for a site such as GW2Efficiency are those who might want to work with the Trading Post, and people trying to pull statistics.

It’s not something like the GW2 Wiki which is Anet sponsored more or less. It’s a third party site developed to use GW2 API keys for those curious about the numbers. Casual and I would dare say veteran groups in this game have no use to inquire about such a site.

The only reasonable way to make GW2Efficiency more relevant would be to bring attention to it in game, I would say consistent LA spam of ‘Go to GW2Efficiency to look up how cool your account is!’ might start helping.

Good story OP, remember even the smallest of steps will help!

Jahroots.6791:

But as is, I’m probably gonna have to suck it up and give raiding one more go. This stuff looks waaaay too cool not to experience firsthand.

That’s the spirit!

It might be difficult as guilds are likely still making the guides for these encounters so that the general public can get involved with the strats. However I will say that the first three encounters of the new wing are more friendly as long as you are yourself fairly capable at knowing where to stand and when to dodge.

Deimos will be a true test of your mettle, he’s a hard one!

Continued:

Samarog the Warden, aka “Arenanet plays Dark Souls”, is a thing of design beauty. And what’s this Cinematic Intro? Outstanding. I was expecting a gothic-choir boss soundtrack during the fight (Wink) but I understand that costs money, so I was ok with the Gorseval theme again. This encounter was actually really close to being a good fight. I won’t rant too much, but I felt like you guys should have made more spears fall down in the middle of the arena and really promoted the lack of space. It felt like cheating having the raid group able to never get impaled on the side when you tanked him in the middle of the room, more damage/CC pressure from spears spawning in the middle would have given the raiders a trade-off: Either dedicate more resources to killing spears and making more space, or focus on DPS and just avoid all the knockbacks. Because everything else was really good! The Add Phase mechanic is really cool and unique, having two people stand outside the raid to stack is good, his attacks and changing fixation were fine! But again not enough pressure to force risks! Ughhh, this boss disappointed me the most honestly.

And of course, Deimos, Agent of the Unseen, aka “BDSM Hand Fetishist”, was on-point. Unlike the other bosses, Deimos didn’t mess around and had several sources of raid pressure, coupled with the theme of several insta-death and wipe mechanics. Bringing back Lich King’s ‘puddle’ mechanic was marvelous, a great fit to this encounter and I would say keep it unique to Deimos. I keep hearing about how Deimos was easier than Xera and Matt and I heavily disagree. He’s like a blend of Xera Positioning and AoE, with Sabetha “We wipe if so-so dies and if anyone dies above XX%”. There’s a frustration about wiping so late in the fight but he feels more engaging than Sabetha when you wipe. The only disagreement I have is that he’s such a sharp increase in difficulty and execution from the previous bosses mainly because the other bosses were too easy.

That goes into my next point. This raid is easier for new raiders to get into and get boss kills. Dwayne John- erm I mean Cairn can take the usual metabuild raiders, but his mechanics are I believe more player friendly than VG or Slothasor. And the Enrage Timers are way off. The Mursaat DPS Golem has a proper timer because of the pace of the encounter, Cairn can enrage if people start dying around 50%, but Samarog and Deimos?! Are you joking? Deimos I can forgive because he’s got more mechanics than hands, but you gave way too much time because I assume you thought we couldn’t figure out how to do his Add Phases in a timely fashion. We aren’t that bad, cmon now.

But I imagine the real reason behind the timers is because, sigh, they are meant for the non-repeatable challenge mote. I’ve touched on it before in a different thread but it deserves reiterating. It was a great disappointment to find out that the Challenge Motes were not-repeatable despite having unique mechanics behind them. It’s an entirely real possibility that this raid is an easy-mode raid and that the Challenge Mote was a clever decoy to hide from it. I really didn’t want to say it, but I have to just because it was a grave mistake to not provide even a small gold incentive to repeat the challenge motes every week. Cairn gets a bit more trolly, Mursaat adds another level to death floors which prevent a ‘No-Updraft Gorseval’-ish fight, Samarog gets a tighter enrage and Deimos is unbelievable.

Unfortunately, those who wanted more challenging encounters have enough incentive to do each of those fights, once. And never again, there’s nothing to gain, you can actually LOSE gold due to wasting food, IT HURTS RAIDERS TO DO IT MORE THAN ONCE!!! And that’s the biggest problem by far. Please Arenanet, you can ignore all my other comments if you would not do this again, not without it being repeatable.

Thank you for reading so much, I still appreciate the content, it was just a little underwhelming when it’s all said and done. I loved the story and the location of this raid, the environment was outstanding.

I really enjoy seeing the development and growth of the development team behind Raids. They are clearly taking inspiration from other games, and taking the GW2 twist to it rather well. The new Raid Wing had its pros and cons, but I just want to preface and say thank you to Arenanet for continuing to support this still relatively new PvE End-game to us.

That sappy stuff out of the way, let’s talk for real. Bastion passes but there are some substantial setbacks I do NOT want to see implemented in later raids. I get that there’s a lot of experimenting involved, and this is still technically the second raid released. But some of the decisions I dislike heavily here, that I feel could have been a greater opportunity to expand and even promote Raids in a more constructive manner.

For instance, I liked how this raid wing had yet ANOTHER theme behind the encounters. In case you weren’t paying attention, Spirit Vale was all about Tanking, balancing Power and Condition DPS, and CC with some roles here and there. Salvation Pass was about testing individual players on typically RNG mechanics that were simple if done properly but devastating if messed up upon. And Stronghold of the Faithful was testing your patience with bugged encounters that break more with every patch. At this point I am convinced that every-time we defeat Keep Construct and he goes boom, it actually breaks his code more for the next reset and thus the devs can never fix him. That’s the only logical reason behind that fight.

This raid focuses on how the raid handles unstoppable CC, positioning and INSTA-DEATH. And in actuality I believe the theme behind Bastion is both a good AND a bad. It’s good because it’s definitely a different feel, but it’s bad because the encounters are…easier because of it. I would say 3/4 of the encounters have no real outgoing pressure that makes it difficult to recover, it’s really easy to rez without being pressured. If the encounters had just a bit more tuning to that regard, I think the healers would have been awake more during them.

Specifically:

Cairn the Indomitable, aka “Dwayne Johnson”, is a knockback fest and an overall disruptive fight. But disruptive doesn’t mean hard, and the pressure isn’t there. I assume everyone saw the Marathon Druid solo the boss in a world-record speed-filled time of a little over four hours. This is largely due to the mechanics not being that painful for the individual, the pressure comes from the Agony of which for some reason when you get downed with the agony, it is NOT damaging to your allies until you get back up. The boss’s method for wiping the group mainly consists of forcing you off the ledge, and hoping that you don’t handle the star circles properly so you actually take a moderate amount of damage. I do want to note that the stars and circles mechanic is something I actually liked about the encounter, might have been the only thing, nice job!

Mursaat Overseer, aka “Tribulation Mode DPS Golem”, is given a lot more hate than I believe it should be. No seriously, and I’ve got the perfect response to why you guys aren’t giving it enough credit. Ready? It’s because it’s another version of No-Updraft Gorseval. And in fact with the enrage timer being a record-low 5:20, things are supposed to pace fairly quickly. It’s testing your DPS, keeping the movements to a minimal, you can lava font bad things at a distance that will make your life hell if you let them live too long. And the more DPS you have, the better things play out. We’ve been training on the strategy for this boss for months. The exception being, Gorseval actually does pressure with Retaliation, this boss is a literal structure that does nothing but live while you dodge the damage floors and DEATH spikes. Position and DPS are key, and the only real source of damage pressure is when Soldiers spawn which can be negated quickly. The CM version of this fight makes the positioning and mechanics much more important and critical, and it disappoints me that a full mechanic is removed from the normal mode. I’ll rant later on that.

Jahroots.6791:

Also, it’s a real shame to design such utterly epic and fantastic kittening bosses and not make sure that everyone has reasonable chance of beating ’em.

This might just be a stretch but maybe just maybe these bosses are so epic and fantastic is because they are a real challenge to face and not the current incarnation difficulty level of Chak Gerent in TD for instance.

Imagine seeing Samarog sweep you with a giant spear, and the damage that shows up indicates a Skritt in Dry Top hits harder. You lose so much immersion when the boss isn’t as threatening as its appearance. Why do you think the Mouth of Mordremoth fight is disliked so much compared to the triple boss coordination before it? It’s almost ironic really, well-designed and epic encounters cannot be weak to fight.

Randulf.7614:

Rising Dusk.2408:

I’m surprised people are upset over this, really. The story told in Bastion of the Penitent is totally tangential to anything that is going on in mainland Tyria, and is really just tying up a loose end from GW1. It’s a cool story, don’t get me wrong, but it has to be. Fighting a bunch of nameless, pointless, loreless encounters in a box devoid of features would be terrible. They have to have something compelling, but they’re being nice by not having it be main encounter stuff. If they had bosses like Caudecus or Lazarus in the raid, then I’d agree with you, but everything we’re seeing here is minor and side-note at best.

As a non raider, I agree with this.

I remember when the Zhaitan fight used to be fairly difficult with a group, the story instance had actually difficult encounters and Elite mobs. Hell the Legendary Mouth of Zhaitan was a real pain. The only complaint is that we ended such an epic instance with the cannons firing on Zhaitan, but I didn’t have too many issues with that at the time because we had to literally grind through all of his most powerful minions.

Now? I go back and do the story solo, everything is trivialized, it actually hurts to see the story so easy.

No one remembers the easy fights, only the fights where you struggled leave an impact. I do not want Raiding to be trivialized because of what happened with Zhaitan, although I could accept it now since it was a Main Storyline instance. But leave these Side-Story Raids alone.

Rednik.3809:

Here is some reading for you.
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1872614-Is-raiding-dying-A-statistical-analysis

Will you stop. linking. stuff. about WoW here? I don’t know how many times we have to consistently tell you that the raiding between WoW and GW2 is so vastly different. Even the basic foundation is different from the get-go.

WoW is literally about raiding as the ONLY end-game for PvE, everything builds towards raiding, gear progression is built INTO raiding. The MAIN story is built into raiding!

GW2 has raiding as a single PvE end-game solution, not the only one, where cosmetic unlocks and Side-Stories that enhance the world of Tyria but are not required whatsoever.

I wouldn’t even say Apples and Oranges here, the difference is greater than that. So whenever you link the decay of WoW Raiding, the causes of that decay can’t be easily linked to GW2. It’s that simple, stop comparing and focus, you hurt your arguments each and every time you try to make a comparison to another raiding game. GW2 is just too different.

Ayrilana.1396:

fluffdragon.1523:

Well considering how at this point ANet has gone back on just about every promise they have made and the Manifesto (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY) is absolutely dead …?

Yeah, I just … I’ve honestly stopped playing story things anymore, because I missed it all and cannot be kittened to go grind through a slog of nonsense to figure out stuff. And even LS3 has been a remarkable dearth of anything but a drawn out recap.

Almost every? Really? Have you counted up every promise that they have made and determined whether the fulfilled it or not? You’re also misinterpreted the manifesto. The topics you posted have been discussed to death numerous times, and while some of it had merit to a degree, it largely is just full of opinion than fact.

As far as the OP, I thought that they stated that no raid story aspect would be crucial to the living story. If there was anything, it would be brought into the living story in some manner like they did in episode 1.

Actually, they specifically said that it can and should be tied to lore. The exact opposite of what the OP is claiming.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Raid-Narrative-and-Lore/first#post6195598

I actually kind of forgot about that thread. Pretty much answers the OP right there, and as much as I want to discuss something months old, I think the talk’s been done enough times.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

And drop the stupid Primordus versus Jormag. They deserve more than a shared plot or a silly fire v ice theme that’s a player bandwagon. Stop making bandwagon theories and hopes the canon – do not meet player expectations. Exceed them. Like you have here with Caudecus and Lazarus.

Almost certain there will be a wrench thrown in those plans. Betting 100g that Taimi’s Theory won’t pan out as planned, and something worse is going to come out of it which might be the premise of the next expansion, alongside whatever ‘Who is this Lazarus’ conundrum.

I do agree though, the lore is starting to pick up big time, we might hit on a real big reveal soon.

Sykper.6583:

Crystal Reid.2481:

In the past year and a half, the overall skill level of the Guild Wars raiding community has risen at a staggering pace. Naturally, content will seem easier now as players continue to refine their theorycrafting and personal skill.

Our goal is not to make content easier, but rather add an additional layer of difficulty onto the challenge motes where it makes sense.

Just a question Crystal, I know you answered this on Reddit concerning how the Challenge Motes in this iteration were improving on mechanics or introducing new ones to the fold. But was there a real reason why there couldn’t have been a repeatable reward, even something small like a few extra gold, tied to a weekly clear with a challenge mote?

It seems like a waste that, although you did apply some unique one-time only rewards and titles to the achievements, that those victorious in the hard-modes won’t have any reason other than self-gratification for things like speed-running to repeat those hard modes again.

If it’s a tech-issue, I believe I could understand. But it almost feels like a waste to introduce new things that won’t have a repeated lifespan in this regard.

Just as an update, since people are starting to roll out their challenge mote kills on the first two bosses, it does seem like such a waste to not make that kind of content repeatable, especially the 2nd boss which can be abused by one profession, and suddenly removing that and making the encounter more position dependent depending on your dps than I think any other encounter. It’s a ‘clean kill or no kill’ kind of fight which just makes me sad because again to my point, without a repeatable reward said Raiders who complete the hard mode once won’t have a drive to do it again unless for self-gratification.

The Reward is good enough for doing it once absolutely, in fact it’s really good to the point of being almost too good. I almost would have preferred just a flat gold incentive per week so there would be a reason to do it more than once. I’m not saying there won’t be raiders who wouldn’t try it every week, but I am fairly certain there won’t be enough raiders doing the CM every week after doing it all at once the first time.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. And please don’t let the rising emotions dispel any enthusiasm, although there are issues I believe we are all fairly content with having something new to do for months again.

…And if something like a Weekly Reward is off the table because of any reason I have a different idea. Have a future raid, if it has challenge motes, add a unique rare item drop to the challenge mote raid bosses. Treat it around Gorseval’s Infusion Drop-rate. Each boss can drop a unique to itself one of these to combine into a key. This key opens a door behind the final boss of the wing encounter and brings the raid into a hidden Challenge-Mote level only level boss, that is open for the entirety of that particular instance, kind of like an event.

Make this boss extremely difficult, and the loot grand. This boss also is even more ambiguous to the raid story, so that maybe Glenna comes along after you kill it and says “Oh this thing was still around? How are you guys still alive?”

This creates a few things, one is an incentive to repeat the Challenge Mote Bosses for a key-part to unlock a hidden boss outside of even the raid story. Two, as to not make only the hard-core raiders have access it could be SOLD on the trading post, but because A ) it unlocks on a cleared final boss instance only, and locks up after you leave, and B ) It’s challenge mote only, there’s probably a scarcity until the challenge-mote bosses are done by more raiders plus the rarity of the drop, and a demand for only the best groups of the raiders.

Let me know what you think, and other people feel free to chime in as well.

Few things:

- The new raid wing concludes something from GW1, that’s all I’ll say. That’s not even close to related to the Main GW2 story (unless they decide to do something stupid down the road).
- The latest Living Story episode actually makes the raiders who did Forsaken Thicket’s efforts even MORE in vain. Not to spoil the story, but a big twist just made our exploits even more pointless than they actually were since things were going to play out that way anyways.

Good work.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Close? Unless I missed something about the end cinematic, my second line of thought was correct The prisoner is...Saul D'Alessio.

Though the exact circumstances behind the prison are still unknown to me, though. I just got into a cleared instance before the final (?) boss.

Show Spoiler

hide spoiler

From my understanding, there were a bunch of human males that oddly all look the same with different degrees of age to them imprisoned and hunted down by a demon (who seemed to be either an escaped prisoner as well, or the prison warden). There were also jotun, Forgotten, and oddly ettin prisoners.

The human corpses make me think that Saul was being “cloned” and imprisoned with himself with no knowledge of this happening – the clones all being at different spans of aging, and with different names (Brandt being one), but if they weren’t clones of Saul made to suffer time and time again, why did they have the same appearance except hair color and why was the hair color only black to white? If they wanted the corpses to be obviously multiple prisoners, why not change the hair and beard or at least the color to red or blonde?

What’s truly fascinating was that the Eye of Janthir’s presence slowed down all aging, including decay of corpses.

I think there was a little ambiguity, you did getSaul right and we did uncover his fate, but we saved him with death rather than bringing him back to Tyria which catered towards my theory about sending someone off like an Envoy (hence Legendary Armor theme).

What’s bothering me is that when didthe mursaat start employing demons? Maybe I misinterpreted things but weren't the Mursaat more or less against things from the Realm of Torment? Or maybe the demons we fight in the raid were created from the Eye of Janthir, manifest from Saul's own sins. Actually the coolest thought of mine was that since Forsaken Thicket showed a preview of the White Mantle, maybe we might start encountering demons soon in the Living Story.

Either way, from what I am looking at right now, strategies will start forming soon about the encounters, from what I’ve seen the first three are extremely straight forward.

The last one though I did personally touch on a bit tonight, it’s multiphase with continued added mechanics and plenty of potential wipe scenarios. The enrage timer isn’t even close to a problem, the easiest enrage timer by far. But they just threw a dozen mechanics at you and said ‘Have fun!’, it’s rather difficult.

Crystal Reid.2481:

In the past year and a half, the overall skill level of the Guild Wars raiding community has risen at a staggering pace. Naturally, content will seem easier now as players continue to refine their theorycrafting and personal skill.

Our goal is not to make content easier, but rather add an additional layer of difficulty onto the challenge motes where it makes sense.

Just a question Crystal, I know you answered this on Reddit concerning how the Challenge Motes in this iteration were improving on mechanics or introducing new ones to the fold. But was there a real reason why there couldn’t have been a repeatable reward, even something small like a few extra gold, tied to a weekly clear with a challenge mote?

It seems like a waste that, although you did apply some unique one-time only rewards and titles to the achievements, that those victorious in the hard-modes won’t have any reason other than self-gratification for things like speed-running to repeat those hard modes again.

If it’s a tech-issue, I believe I could understand. But it almost feels like a waste to introduce new things that won’t have a repeated lifespan in this regard.

If you haven’t seen any of the spoilers, we were almost there. Could we technically get away with combining theories?

Either way, it's apretty touching Cinematic huh? Rest in peace.

Except that non-raiders who care about the story wouldn’t have cared for the introduction of the White Mantle Sect in Forsaken Thicket. LS3E1 made sure to drill into everyone’s heads that they were a non-factor, and whatever influence they had could be covered by Bennett.

I’m going to expect more Raid Releases touching on GW1 lore before the main story does, and as long as the lore dump Raiders get from the main story is unfazed by the raid story itself, that doesn’t break any protocols however many hints or speculations they leave around. Because that GW1 plot point could also END with that raid and never see the main story.

The only issue I would have is what I have said above. And I’ll be looking for it, Bobby made a post on reddit to WoodenPotatoes about there being a lot of stuff to look at within the first couple minutes of entering the raid. It sounds like they went a bit more ambitious which leaves the question of if they crossed that line.

Astralporing.1957:

Sykper.6583:

Having the Lazarus ‘unknown condition’ occur at the end of Forsaken Thicket was a very clever and important plot point to ensuring the raiders and non-raiders were on the same page about Lazarus’s condition until he showed up in Living Story alive.

Not quite. Non-raiders had no reason to even expect that anything with Lazarus was going on at all. Raiders on the other hand were thrown a lot of hints pointing to the LS story.
That’s not “being on the same page”.

And yet Arenanet could have decided to say ‘Screw it, Lazarus isn’t coming back in GW2’ and that’ll be the end of it. The fun thing about making these kinds of plot devices, is that if written right no matter how one could rationalize, the efforts of the raiders or the ‘squad’ going into the Forsaken Thicket was utterly useless in preventing Lazarus’s return. They could have tossed the entire raid, our first glimpse of the White Mantle would have been Episode 1 where we could have gotten a briefing just before going to the Fen.

Lazarus had invincible plot armor well before Raiders even got to him.

Azukas.1426:

Reread my post then realize I said in this current system a pro player who just Yolo’d wouldn’t be at the top MMR rating due to the REQUIREMENT of duoq needed

A 5 man does not consist of purely duo queues, there has to be soloers in there. Duo Queue is a preferred method with an advantage I accept, but any pro player can and has absolutely achieved a high MMR this season Soloing.

If you want to address Duo Queues, create a disadvantage to offset their ability to remove an unknown variable of a good/bad teammate. Reduced Rating gains, naturally harder opponents, etc.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Sykper.6583:

Lordrosicky.5813:

Here is the reality:

1, Very few people with high MMRs EVER solo queue.

Let’s go with this being true for now.

Lordrosicky.5813:

2, As a result there are fewer high MMR people at all times so matches are worse

How does this make sense? Explain how you went from the majority of high MMR being duo queue, to making fewer high MMR people? I assume you must mean that there were fewer high MMR Solo Queuers, this is probably what you meant. Even if this were the case, duo queuers would still be queuing at high MMR…

Because the high MMR people sit in the HOTM waiting for their friend to get online so they can duo queue. So duo queue leads to population issues.

Lordrosicky.5813:

3, These duo queues get put into games with them 2 (mmr 2100 each) and 8 solo players with 1800. It is impossible to make a fair match out of these 10 players

Or 4 sets of high MMR with a single low solo on both sides, doesn’t matter.
It does matter because duo queue factually reduces the flexibility the matchmaker has. If you have 10 people and they have to be arranged in 2 5 man groups then there are more possibilities than if 2 of those 10 people have to be on the same team. In the second case you will often never get a good match up due to the restrictions the duo queue puts on the matchmaker

You know what the real issue is? SPvP population is extremely low, we are seeing bad matchmaking all around regardless of the solo and duo queue scenario because the pool is so low. The matchmaking wouldn’t have so many issues if it could pull more solo queuers at high MMR at all times, but since there are so few players it has to pick from Plats or even Golds (NA wise).
Duo queue seriously damages the population issues at high MMR, that was my point.

Which is why it’s smarter to give an artificial disadvantage like making the duo queuers earn less rating and lose more rating, face them against harder opponents without better gains, etc. Killing off Duo queue will make the matchmaking even WORSE thanks to the population issues.

Increasing the population across the board and developing SPvP player talents so that there is a naturally higher pool of good players at high MMR will most of the issues we see now. Converting some of the PvE players, of which there is an unimaginable amount by comparision to SPvP or WvW, helps. Creating a competitive environment for ESports-Twitch players in different games to try out GW2 can serve to improve our situation now.

Obviously increasing the population would help. But duo queue does the opposite at high MMR. I played there all season. My MMR is 1955. I am telling you how it is.

So how do you even consider making it Solo Q only to positively impact the experience? I guarantee those in the top 250 who duo queued, will still mostly be at the top 250 at solo only. You’ve probably already seen that coordination even in pure solo at Legend or high plat is solid, the players at that level aren’t brain-dead. All the removal has done is kittened-off the playerbase who can’t even play with a single friend in a SPvP environment. Hurting the already dangerously low SPvP community.

We should let Solo/Duo stay for a bit longer, as wiping out Duo Queue will make Team Queue much more difficult to return given that the only means to raising a team will be from a bunch of Soloers, rather than a mix of known-good Duo players and Solos. One season is not yet enough to remove the ability to play with anyone in Ranked absolutely, just create a disadvantage for the Duo Queue so they aren’t totally superior to Solo in every way.

Azukas.1426:

You just have to ask yourself this one question:

How many of the top 250 did it only by solo q, and of those how many are top 25, 50, or 100?

It’s a tell tale sign when pro players HAVE to duo q to even maintain a high MMR.

If you think for a moment the pro players need duo queue to maintain their positions in the top 250, you are a hopeless case.

Why do they do it? Why wouldn’t they is the better question! Per a point we all seem to agree with that it’s nice to play with a friend or teammate, it’s one thing that keeps them around playing the game and keeping the scene alive. Sometimes they duo, sometimes they solo. What matters is that they have a choice.

A lot of you Solo-only folks also seem to be under the impression that Team Queue can make a return, and should make a return. That won’t happen if you continue to make these half- kitten d statements without realizing just how pitifully low the community playing ranked actually is. Even with Duo Queuing the amount of Platinum and Legend Players across EU and NA is measured in HUNDREDS. We don’t need MORE players leaving the scene because they are unable to play competitive with a friend. We need to work with what we have NOW, and go forward.

Making this known now, we can barely support a solo/duo queue, as matchmaking still has hiccups trying to make balanced matches. We sure as hell don’t have enough for Team Queue. If I were the devs, I would say let Team Queue rot for a year, work with what they have now, MAYBE introduce automated Team Tournaments for loot and LAN qualifier points, and PROMOTE our most popular SPvPers on twitch and youtube.

Right now, we are back at GW2 Launch, let’s start from scratch.

Sooloo.1364:

Reasons to remove duoq:

Prevents match manipulation.

You think people won’t continue to manipulate with just Solo Q?

That’s just cute.

Sooloo.1364:

Makes matches fairer.

Yes, because when we have less players for a time, coupled with the still broken profession balanced compositions so that one team inevitably gets badly stacked, we will be fairer.

Sooloo.1364:

People should be earning their position on the ladder.

Pretty sure they do now, unless you are implying those in Legend aren’t there because of personal skill? Seems like a lot of folks are a bit delusional.

Sooloo.1364:

Most people solo.

You do not know this at all.

Sooloo.1364:

Nobody ever asked for a duoq, after the poll to get rid of teamq anet slipped this in.

Pretty sure nobody asked otherwise either.

Sooloo.1364:

Reasons to keep duoq:

I like playing with my friend.
Easier to transition into Team Q when it come back.
Promotes social-competitive scene whereas Solo Q is more singular.

Adding some reasons for Duo Queue. Obvious reasons are obvious.

FrownyClown.8402:

How does duo queue give you an advantage apart from using teamspeak? I duo with friends because I know they are reliable allies in a fight

This is literally the advantage. In a broad sense, the duo queuers are in agreement with each other that they are playing with an equally capable player. You reduce the system giving you an unknown player of relative weaker/stronger skill than you.

Teamspeak is a non-factor, what matters most is that you and your duo-mate are securing a spot for each other where you can say “Alright I know I will have an excellent Ele/Warrior/DH/Whatever, I can play around that” before you even get into the match. That’s the sole and most important advantage Duo has over Solo.

So if you are guaranteeing that there is another player of your skill level in your team, then you can imagine how this season Duo queues were securing so many wins by comparison (ALTHOUGH I do have to mention the rating ‘abuses’ as well). The simplest fix to this issue is to ensure Duo Queues face other Duo queues, and to make them artificially face harder opponents who at high MMR naturally behave like actual teams would. All without giving the Duo Queues more rating for those wins.

kdaddy.5431:

Just like every thread since HOT.

Anet needs to balance out the classes effectively, (give/take build set ups)

They need to work on class diversity and finally for the 5th straight season. They need to work on match making.

We cant blame 5 man premades and demand a solo/duo que. Only to get solo/duo que and then blame duo que players when once again. ITS ANET MATCH MAKING THATS FAILING.

Quit blaming small things on why you didnt get to where you wanted or why things are unfair. Simply put Anet has had some of the worst match making since HOT came out.

Lets quit dancing around the issue.

Don’t agree with some things KDaddy says, but he’s right. Duo Queue is not responsible for giving you the illusion you will do better in a Leaderboard without it.

All the Legends will still be Legends if it were removed, what’s going to happen instead is that there will be less legends because there will be LESS PLAYERS who quit GW2 SPvP because they couldn’t play competitive with a friend. When there’s less players overall, we are going to see higher ranges for 10 people to set up a game with, and longer queues. I hope you are ready for those 5 minute queue times in mid-gold, and getting matched up with a mix of 5 silvers, 3 plats and a Legend.

We’ve not even discussed how matchmaking continues to create profession stacked comps or even bad comps, that ties a bit into profession balance but overall I disagree with the notion that one team should be given something like Triple Thieves, Two Engineers while the other team was RNGed into a ESL comp, even if the Ratings are averaged to be even.

The SPvP community would be shooting itself in the foot if it got rid of Duo Queue. And the devs know it too, Duo queue is necessary which is why the poll they made did not make a third option for Solo only.

Lordrosicky.5813:

Here is the reality:

1, Very few people with high MMRs EVER solo queue.

Let’s go with this being true for now.

Lordrosicky.5813:

2, As a result there are fewer high MMR people at all times so matches are worse

How does this make sense? Explain how you went from the majority of high MMR being duo queue, to making fewer high MMR people? I assume you must mean that there were fewer high MMR Solo Queuers, this is probably what you meant. Even if this were the case, duo queuers would still be queuing at high MMR…

Lordrosicky.5813:

3, These duo queues get put into games with them 2 (mmr 2100 each) and 8 solo players with 1800. It is impossible to make a fair match out of these 10 players

Or 4 sets of high MMR with a single low solo on both sides, doesn’t matter.

You know what the real issue is? SPvP population is extremely low, we are seeing bad matchmaking all around regardless of the solo and duo queue scenario because the pool is so low. The matchmaking wouldn’t have so many issues if it could pull more solo queuers at high MMR at all times, but since there are so few players it has to pick from Plats or even Golds (NA wise).

Which is why it’s smarter to give an artificial disadvantage like making the duo queuers earn less rating and lose more rating, face them against harder opponents without better gains, etc. Killing off Duo queue will make the matchmaking even WORSE thanks to the population issues.

Increasing the population across the board and developing SPvP player talents so that there is a naturally higher pool of good players at high MMR will most of the issues we see now. Converting some of the PvE players, of which there is an unimaginable amount by comparision to SPvP or WvW, helps. Creating a competitive environment for ESports-Twitch players in different games to try out GW2 can serve to improve our situation now.

Anyone who claims statistics about how many solo Q or duo Q doesn’t actually have those numbers and cannot back up the claims.

Please refrain from making such statements without something to back it up, it makes you look bad. Thanks!

For clarification, I believe the name was, From Reddit Fool,Cairn the Indomitable, Guard of the Penitent.

Sooloo.1364:

If it were put to a poll duo would lose big. Everyone but the people that need it see it as an unfair advantage, which is why the guys that want it need it.

I doubt it would lose big or maybe even lose at all. Removing duo queue will be a direct step backwards to bringing back team queue.

Think of how much harder it would be to form 5s from a bunch of solo players rather than starting from a base of two people, finding another two people and a single solo?

All Duo Queue needs is a disadvantage, such as inflated skill rating to push them against harder teams. They also need to ensure more duo queues are facing each other rather than those rare 2-2-1 Vs. 1-1-1-1-1.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

A post in the other thread about Anise/Livia theory, saying that Livia is bound to show up next week due to the major events happening, made me wonder…

What if Livia is the Penitent?

What if she was captured by the White Mantle in between Sea of Sorrows and GW2, imprisoned and locked behind ancient mursaat defenses? If it turns out Livia did become a lich as one of the two rumors presented in Sea of Sorrows suggests (though I would not tie such an event to the Scepter of Orr as many would), it could be that they imprisoned her because they could not kill her but could overpower her utilizing the Bloodstone.

White Mantle capturing Livia, imprisoning and torturing her for centuries in secret since she was former Shining Blade?

Plausible, if she were captured for so long, I can’t imagine even she would be able to retain sanity too well. Maybe us freeing her from her undeath and imprisonment, guiding her soul to rest would be something an Envoy would have to do.

I wouldn’t hate that end too well if they pull off the story in the Bastion well. I definitely think that there’s something the White Mantle are trying to keep locked away, or maybe a White Mantle secret that would be mind-boggling to the point where it could change everything.

Bobby already hinted that there would be a lot of stuff to look at just with the first few minutes of going into the raid instance. I’m fairly convinced we are going to find either a lot of GW1 lore kicking in again, something we might look forward to ahead of us, or a mix.

Might as well right?

Some general observations first:

- Going by the leaderboards between EU and NA, populations with ranked interest is pretty low. That’s a sugarcoat, when your ‘legend’ community between the both is maybe 100, on a Bell Curve if legends consisted of 1% or even 0.1% of the ranked playerbase, we aren’t talking tens of thousands of Ranked SPvPers across all timezones, we are talking in thousands. There’s no way we could afford to split ranked queues, even now we have some fairly weird matches with the Matchmaking trying to make balanced matches. Time will have to be spent developing what we got right now.
- Arenanet had confirmed some erroneous matchmaking from unusual circumstances, the ‘Substitutions’ issue is hopefully going to be resolved by Season 6, a small % of games were affected but you can’t brag about matchmaking being accurate when you have to throw in a disclaimer saying “Matchmaking is working 97% of the time” as a optimal.
- Decay and massive Rating gains after breaks were abused slightly, this was addressed but it’s fine to bring up.
- Arenanet cares enough about the Leaderboards to actually ban players who abused the system in the first season of its iteration near the very end of the season. Kudos.

Overall, I can’t say this season was perfect, it had flaws. It needs improvements still, but it is still a better system than before. I do not care for all the naysaying that legitimately happens every single Season. In fact observant folks might have noticed that we’ve been getting more responses from the devs about this season than previously before. People care enough about their position on the leaderboard to post, and inevitably folks point out where they kittened up during their complaint about the system.

Don’t get me wrong, Profession balance (although every profession is played) is an endless struggle as Flavor the Month builds seem to change every season. In order to foster a good balance one needs to identify builds that create a good competitive environment and remove ones that foster toxicity (MEMBER WHEN TURRET ENGI WAS A THING?).

I am also one of those people who thinks matchmaking needs to focus a touch more on stopping Profession Stacking in Ranked if it can. One thought I had about this was creating a checklist of professions you can play well, and select up to 3 for. This helps the matchmaking give you a better comp based on what you can play. Make it the same interface we used to select Conquest and Stronghold Preferences…oh hey I solved profession stacking, you are welcome.

Going forward, assuming more of the hiccups this season are resolved for Season 6, I wouldn’t mind seeing Duo Queuers have a slight handicap given the biggest advantage it brings ideally, is a synergy and ‘1 less bad player’ on your side. I would say make the Duo Queue gain less rating and lose more rating, OR ‘inflate’ their skill rating to face harder opponents without giving them more rating for the win. We can’t have it be too detrimental to duo-queue, but advantages must be balanced.

Lastly, given our population, I don’t want Team Queue to come back for a while until we get more numbers. Instead, I recommend automated tournaments on a daily or weekly basis for teams to get flat rewards and maybe Tournament Qualifier points. I am leaning towards weekly for now as daily tournaments would impact the current queue system. But it is a start.

Cheers, can’t wait for next season.

I like one of the theories being tossed around, given that leak, of the White Mantle involvement going so far as to keep whatever is there locked away.

A secret they don’t want released? Perhaps a threat they would have to send some of their strongest forces to cover?

Plus, that demonic gate I believe isn’t something up their alley anyways. I wouldn’t toss out the Underworld involvement just yet, especially considering the Armor we are crafting is related to the Envoys.

I will be going into the raid expecting the same careful measures taken about the lore and keeping it irrelevant to the main story. Forsaken Thicket carefully avoided this, but something as simple as a line from an NPC can utterly break the continuity for those who don’t raid from those who do.

If it is something tangential and doesn’t impact how the main story plays out whatsoever, fantastic, keep up the good work.

If there are actual ramifications for the raiders that directly cause events to play out different in the Living Story and future Expansions, I’ll demand a Story-Mode. No question about it. It would break the rule about raiding being a Side-Story.

Having the Lazarus ‘unknown condition’ occur at the end of Forsaken Thicket was a very clever and important plot point to ensuring the raiders and non-raiders were on the same page about Lazarus’s condition until he showed up in Living Story alive. So I expect that same level of care to be put into the new Raid. And with the immense amount of lore in Guild Wars to pull from, I believe it wouldn’t be hard to avoid causing a divide.

Just my 2 cents, I don’t think I am being too harsh about this.

This is a well-crafted sarcastic post, well done, 10/10. It’s better than anything I could come up with, closest thing I would suggest would be enforcing race removals from the game and making all players of that race forced to choose another one. Because Asura are an abomination

Arden.7480:

I don’t know why, but I have not access to start CM100…

Can anyone say what have I do to get this access?

For all your personal runs, you need to complete the Nightmare Fractal Meta achievement. At least one of those achievements requires a completion of level 100, but the others can be done at lower levels.

When you, or anyone in your party has done this, at the very start of the fractal right before you drop down to the first trash pack, to your left is a red flame. Interacting with this will allow you to start the Challenge Mode on a party vote similar to select paths in Dungeons.

If a majority vote yes, welcome to the CM100!

maddoctor.2738:

Sykper.6583:

Now I definitely want the raid wing to come out before the Armor is ready, have one of the gift requirements disabled.

That’s assuming the precursor is ready. Maybe they haven’t finished the precursor either and they will create it after they are finished with the Legendary.

That’s my fear, but at the same time I am willing to gamble the Precursors are ready. We had the Legendary Heavy Armor revealed a while ago, which presumes the precursor was all squared away.

I am making an educated guess that the tech behind making the Legendary Armor ‘animate’ is taking a lot of time. I also have a theory about how the Precursor armor is just the “Legendary Armor in stowed form” 100% of the time. But all this is speculation, I just find it hard to believe that if they haven’t finished the precursors by now, and they speculate by LS5 which would be a few more months from this coming Living Story, they would still be at two precursors and two armors to finish. That seems like a lot for M O to stake a gamble on LS5 for.