Evidence?
The same place he pulled his anecdotal evidence from.
Well, you would clearly know better than he why his guild broke down.
His guild wasn’t chatting at all before raiding was happening. Sounds like a case of ‘Guild was already dead’ and they tried to make raids bring them all together again. Turns out that was a bad idea on their part.
“so that players that like the idea of the existing raids, but do not like the challenge level”
If they like the idea of existing raids, they should not hate the challenge level. Your statement in of itself is a contradiction.
Thank you Crystal for your response on this.
Also, Matthias is like a harder form of VG, the difficulty can spike pretty badly when someone messes up. I am liking the concept that you think you can one-up that encounter.
That’s something you will have to take up with the Guild Devs, honestly I agree with you, Guild Halls were a feature that ‘appeared’ to be a kind of content that would satisfy guilds for some time.
They underestimated guilds, hence why we have the drought.
1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 7.
There were no counterpoints to those Blaeys, feel free to state the arguments here that completely counter the arguments.
Notice how I did not note all of his points, I think point 5 is subjective and point 8 is not quite true yet, T4 fractals are still a different experience entirely.
For every guild that raids were the ‘last straw to break apart’ for, another guild returned or was formed to dedicate to the new content.
I really like how you emphasized how large your guild was, as if size mattered for a guild. I don’t know the whole state or active status of your guildmates were prior to raiding (20 online at one time, 100 online at one time, etc), the social interactions, cliques or other such groups. I can only gleam from the information you provided here.
But I take great offense to the notion that raids were purely the cause of the fractures in your story. It’s highly likely there was far more going on. There’s also the lovely bit of knowledge known about raids, in their optional status. If I had to speculate the turn of events, Raids were the first difficult group content your guild needed to create groups for, as you said. But given the group constraints, gear requirements, time, organization…it was only natural for certain members of your guild who managed to pull something together to want to progress together, without bringing anyone else with them at that point.
Then the excuses started rolling in, people didn’t want to wipe all night to progress, people didn’t want to come on Teamspeak, both things you expect from any normal raider. This isn’t being elitist, the content wasn’t a joke. And the few individuals in your guild who really found something they liked in the game just could not stick around any longer.
What’s really intriguing is that Raids were, in your words ‘the last time our large, Heart of Thorns guild had a reason to chat to one another and an objective to try and achieve.’
Were you doing guild missions still? Making up guild activities, trying other things? Were things quiet in your guild till raids arrived and got you all playing again?
It sounds MORE like your large guild wasn’t even playing together really, well before raids came out. If anything, what you guys want isn’t a raid, you want something you guys can do more as a guild.
Better guild missions, new guild mission rewards, incentives to play together.
Raids didn’t fracture anything, they just showed the ugly truth about the lack of guild content development.
@Dadnir,
There’s certainly room for more creative encounters, some of the more interesting ones in WoW involved ‘Healing’ battles where you had to do a large amount of healing to an NPC who started at 30% life while the rest of the group needed to hold off increasingly more difficult waves of enemies.
Some encounters did not have an enrage mechanic, but instead had dps checks where you needed to do a certain amount of damage to something in a short period the boss did or else it would kill the raid outright. And mind you, many of the creatures we face in this first Wing are already in their homes. Vale Guardian is restricted within its Pylons as a guardian, Gorseval manifests with the hatred and ire of thousands of souls, Sabetha is holding us back herself, only ‘enraging’ after having enough of the group to need to blow apart a large portion of her base.
I think there’s a bit of a confusion about enrages, the mechanic itself isn’t the monster suddenly having enough of the raiders shenanigans, that’s from the get-go, and the evolution, increasing mechanics and complexity of the encounters are signs of the boss struggling to take down the group. You can even make a case for Slothasor, a more primitive beast that literally wants to slumber during its encounter. But you are in its den, it is already cornered, and it does not particularly want you there.
I am all for inventive encounters, but what I do not want are encounters like Zhaitan, or at least if they make another ‘Shoot down the boss with guns’ encounter again, be far more creative with it.
Don’t misunderstand.
Despite my position, I have my own set of grievances with raiding, Forsaken Thicket was far from perfect. For instance, I am slightly concerned about the long-term, albeit I can see people still running the Thicket for more Ascended Gear, but there will come a time when some raiders get all the skins, or something of that nature.
Personally I have proposed something of a daily or weekly boss achievement, maybe something like ‘Wound Vale Guardian to Critical Health or Kill’ to get some extra gold or something. Coincidentally, another poster proposed something of ‘Vale Guardian takes 10% more damage this week’ on a rotation, or maybe the raid takes less damage from a particular boss that week to bring an incentive to raid at least the first boss. Again I don’t know how I feel about that, I would be leaning more towards the raid group doing more damage so that they still have to deal with many of the mechanics on a normal level, but even then I am fairly iffy.
I can’t actually decide IF there needs to be long-term rewards, the shards kind of pay for themselves when you can get ascended armor, weapons, trinkets in a cheaper way if you are dedicated to raiding, much like how Fractals do it.
Nope.
Pray tell, where would the resources for creating these easy modes come from? Are you implying that you want to strip open world devs away from open world?
Working as intended, but irrelevant to you because it’s not for you..
Degrades the reward for doing the much more difficult mode, divides the raiding community, no ‘transition’ or ‘training’ for the normal mode functionality…
Nope.
See my first response above.
Nope, but that would be a nice bonus.
Yep, that’s exactly why you are demanding an easier mode.
Why not? I get that you wouldn’t want to participate in it, but it’s not for you, so why should it bother you? You already have the version that is for you.
Because of reasons already stated above, in the past, all pointing out the unavoidable flaws of an easier mode.
I’ve already said that, just as I’ve always said that it’s not relevant to this discussion. If you want to talk about Glorious Hero acquisition, go to the PvP board.
You didn’t before until I brought it up, against your own words here:
There is currently no reward in the game that has a higher barrier of entry, except perhaps Glorious armor, and that’s just a flashy visual effect on top of Heroic armor, which is effortless to get.
You have zero issue with potentially EQUALLY difficult, no, rather a much harder to get armor set in a mode that you clearly did some content for (The Ascension). And yet now you seek to undermine Raids because you have an issue with getting a set of armor in them. And somehow you deny that you don’t have a bias here?
No, again, that’s not my concern. You want to portray that as hypocrisy , but that’s not how hypocrisy works.
…Mhmm.
Hypocrisy does not mean that you aren’t allowed to care about anything unless you care about everything, it just means that you can’t care about two conflicting things. You could not, for example, say that the Glorious Hero armor is working great, but the Envoy armor is bad, that would be hypocritical.
So when you say:
There is currently no reward in the game that has a higher barrier of entry, except perhaps Glorious armor, and that’s just a flashy visual effect on top of Heroic armor, which is effortless to get.
That’s you not disregarding a kind of armor that matches the exact scenario stated above? Because it certainly sounds like only when the reward is something you actually want will you care about how to acquire it.
But you can say "they both are not working well, but I care about this one more, so this one is where I will spend my time. If you’d like to spend your time arguing about the other one, then I won’t get in your way, but it’s not my fight to fight. "
That’s still holding a double-standard. You are only making these arguments to suit your own wants, without regard for other players. It’s quite definitively the ‘GIVE IT TO ME’ Attitude that once you are satisfied, who cares about anyone else?
Which is true, and not at all conflicting with anything else I’ve said (and not at all conflicting with anything you’ve said).
Good form, you call for some respectful discussion and then proceed to take it all back the next post. You are a real piece of work.
I have, but that hasn’t been the topic of discussion lately. Alternate locations for earning Envoy armor is a perfectly fine topic of discussion, and I fully support it, but that doesn’t reduce the value of anything else I’ve said.
The value of the other things you have suggested is far less, you would get nearly everyone I know on board with Legendary Armor elsewhere, instead of the insistent posts repeating the same thing ad infinitum.
To me, that would be no solution at all…
THAT. That is why we will always have an issue. Because your arguments have always been for your wants.
Ugh, I am going to back out of this mudslinging, just go ahead and retort or whatever. It’s deviated too far from the intent of the OP in this thread.
Yes, and for you that’s fun, and for me it’s not, so for you you should have that “Sisyphus-mode” version, and for me there should be a “have fun” version, and both of us can be happy because each of us has the version he enjoys. You would be no more intended to like my version than I was intended to like yours, but it’s ok because we’d each still have the version that we preferred.
Because your version would directly impact the quality and quantity of the raider version. Because your version deviates significantly away from the intent of raid content in general. The mere existence of a ‘trivialized’ raid would obstruct future iterations of a kind of End-Game content.
All for the sake of rewards that you would have more success asking Arenanet to put elsewhere.
Look, if the argument you are making is “Glorious Hero armor should be made available through more methods,” then ok, make that argument and I will support you 100%, but that’s not my argument to make because it doesn’t personally bother me. I will not argue against you, but neither is it something that I care to spend my time working on.
It’s because you are taking your personal agenda, and generalizing it as something that is impacting everyone. You consistently state that you want an ‘easier’ mode raid because you believe it would get you and maybe a few folks alongside you the rewards and “similar” raid experience like the current content. But it won’t, It cannot come close.
This is why we keep coming back to this, you aren’t offering a reasonable solution for the end-game. An ‘Easy-mode’ for raiding isn’t reasonable.
But if your argument is “Glorious Hero armor is hard to get, therefore it’s ok for Envoy armor to be hard to get,” well no, two wrongs don’t make a right. Them doing one bad thing does not justify them doing more bad things. If you believe that Envoy armor being hard to get is a good thing, then make that case, but you can’t do so by pointing to other flawed elements of the game.
So now you are saying that the Glorious Hero’s acquisition is flawed? As I have stated before it is just like all other ‘content to reward’ checks in this game. You are the one directly opposing that system, so you should have been gung-ho on denying how to get the Glorious Hero’s from the get-go.
But you didn’t, which made you hypocritical.
See, it’s this type of talk that bothers me. You are accusing me of being dishonest with you, and I suspect that a lot of others believe this as well. How can we have a reasonable discussion if we can’t even believe that the other person is accurately representing their own position? Everything I have said to you is 100% true. You can disagree that it matters that it is true, but please don’t be so disrespectful as to question whether the opinions I state are in fact my own opinions.
Yet we consistently see the argument that ‘Because raiders want to keep their rewards in their content, that they too want to be a special snowflake’. It’s a two-way street, we have a fundamental difference in how the reward should be structured in GW2 in general, and from our perspective the way Raids have their rewards is much more aligned with how all the rewards in this game are delivered.
Including all the reasons I stated above, you are the one trying to bring out a complete overhaul to a system that has been more or less in place since launch. All over a small segment of PvE content in which it doesn’t have to stay with for too long.
Because like I said, the raids are the straw that broke the camel’s back. The raids are the element with the requirements so much higher than most players are comfortable with that it moved from “annoyance” to “serious problem.” I may not have enjoyed earning The Ascension, I very much might not have enjoyed it, but at least it was a practical goal to work towards. I very much would prefer that they offered alternatives there, but could at least move forward in a lack of options. This does not apply to the Raids, which is why they are a larger issue.
Then ask for it being accessible elsewhere, I still have not seen one single argument from you for putting a kind of Legendary Armor acquisition elsewhere in the game! Hell, we should just get a new set and put it into WvW, giving everything in the game a Legendary Component agenda!
As I’ve said repeatedly, both do. When I watch videos of the raids, they seem like potentially fun content, but the constant wipes absolutely ruin them for me as content. A version without the wipes would be a lot of fun.
And again, you fail to comprehend that one of the core tenets of a raid, is that it is content you can likely wipe constantly to. That’s kind of a big selling point. Which is why we continue to say to you, that investing time and resources to developing a raid without wiping would be not fun for the audience it was intended for, it would create longer droughts for the audience it was intended for, and it would not be a RAID anymore.
So no, they should not make whatever this content is you are trying to get here, you would be better off asking the open world devs to create more open world content for you. That’s actually what you want and have an interest in.
Just because a model works in some situations, does not mean that it works for all situations. The way they are currently set up, the barrier of entry for raiding is too high for most players, and so it is an unreasonable barrier of entry for Legendary armor. There is currently no reward in the game that has a higher barrier of entry, except perhaps Glorious armor, and that’s just a flashy visual effect on top of Heroic armor, which is effortless to get.
So no, I’m sorry, but “all the other game mode are jumping off a bridge, so why not raids too?” just doesn’t apply here. For that argument to make sense, raids would need to be much more accessible to the average player than they currently are.
I really like how you have to inject your subjective opinion of the PvP armor and how it justifies why you can ignore content you aren’t interested in because it’s just flashy. I hope you understand how much of a hypocrite it makes you given you are doing the opposite with Legendary Armor in a mode you aren’t actually interested in but are pretending to be.
Anyways, the model you refer to here, isn’t a ‘some situation’ kind of deal. It’s happening everywhere in GW2. So why should Arenanet break away from their reward system just because of raids? For your selfish whims?
Your argument counters itself by being factually incorrect in the first place.
That’s a good one! Is that the excuse you come with all the time when you lose an argument, or just for me? Because you haven’t shown a kitten thing.
I’ve done all the stuff that’s interested me. Stuff that does not interest me is not relevant to me. There is no reason why I should have to do content that does not interest me in order to gain the right to be bothered by flaws in content that does interest me.
The Raid rewards interest you, not the raid itself. That’s the big difference and exactly why you want to change raids to be more aligned with your interests at the expense of others. It’s no different than all the other content you state here that you don’t do. You just really want the rewards in this case.
And since the reward structure in this game has always through theme, or the kind of content, created different branches to earn each different reward, Raids are not changing the formula here.
Yes, you were wrong, Forsaken Thicket lore is directly connected to Bloodstone Fen lore, and to Ember Bay lore, and so on. it’s all part of the same game world, and all the lore matters. There is no argument that can be made that the lore contained in the Forsaken Thicket is “irrelevant” to anyone.
It is absolutely irrelevant to the casual gamer who is not interested in raiding, it does not change anything on how the current game lore played out. You haven’t come up with any counter here to my argument, nor do I suspect you actually care about the lore unless you can use it as a weak tool to convince Arenanet to open up raids to people like yourself who don’t care for the current one.
Your arguments at this point have boiled down to simply that the raid rewards interest you enough that you want to demolish the current working system to get what you want. And you are willing to incorrectly invoke arguments like ‘The lore is critical to the casual gamer understanding what is going on’ when I and many others have pointed out the issues with that reasoning.
Yes. That was the exact reason that I was playing Guild Wars 2, and NOT one of those many other games that obsess over such things.
And the vast majority of this game doesn’t ask you to worry about such things. Game is still vastly superior to others in that regard. Not really sorry at all if some insignificant part of this game is not catered to your greedy selfish whim.
But I have explored all that other content. I’ve done all the other things. And raids are currently blocking me off from things that I’d like to have available.
Crafted every Legendary?
Done all the Masteries?
Gotten all those lovely ‘Skin list achievements’?
Have you been achievement hunting at all?
Created every profession and messed with every build?
I can keep going with this, but the funny thing is that if you have truly explored all other content, you are probably more hardcore than anyone else playing, because I doubt there’s a single person who has done everything casually in this game.
Wrong.
I assume you mean ‘Wrong’ as in “I was wrong, Bloodstone Fen lore can exist entirely on its own, the Living Story can outright ignore the Raid Lore.”
Because that is the only logical conclusion, unless you can rebuke my argument from page 1.
Go on! Try! Look up all the lore books, the scraps of paper, the NPCs, knock yourself out!
Please respect each others’ opinions and need for open conversation
I don’t even mind an open discussion on this, this conversation has just been going on for…well I suppose since that CDI came out. Probably one of the longest discussions in GW2 history.
I know very well that you were vocal back then, and I know you likely seek a sort of ‘After-CDI’ to see where the next steps will be. But I don’t know if that would be a good use of our time overall. Think about it:
- Bits and Pieces from different authors in that thread were put together to create the raids we have today, Arenanet definitely wanted to challenge the playerbase through a sort of instanced content, but wanted to see and gauge what we felt about it first.
- They created an implementation, a unique raid experience where even in failure you can gain currency. Unique encounter mechanics, trash and puzzles, and overall the return of challenging content to GW2.
- Against what was the current status quo for ‘challenge’ in the game, Arenanet specifically mentioned that the interest in the raiding experience was higher than anticipated. They had a line where the content they derived from the most vocal forum posters, including some from TTS and other well-known guilds, and the content passed and then some.
So their two-year plan paid off in their eyes, yet they are aware of what worked and did not work in Forsaken Thicket. They are improving on the small content that has its intended audience, much like all other content in this game has an intended audience…and you seek to justify changing it completely by diverting resources away from what makes it work right now, to more implementations of the same content everyone has been playing for ages now.
Alright continuing where I left off from the OP’s List…
Fracturing the playerbase
The PvE community has already been split for some time, well before raids. You easily saw it with the toxicity in ‘Berserker Meta only’ groups that refused non-meta. Certainly you can point out that guilds could just group up together, run whatever, and more or less complete said same content at their own pace, and that’s fine and dandy!
However, there was a massive void of actual challenge in the game, which put off the game’s potential for a PvE End-Game. Adversity adds depth, challenge promotes ingenuity and growth of the player to his character in question. Players grew terribly complacent with the status quo of dull encounters that threatened them in no way, shape, or form.
This was unhealthy for a game like GW2 that had the majority of its casual player-base who would eventually grow tired of the same easy game despite all the ‘special’ iterations or illusions of ‘interesting encounters’. HoT was the abrupt point where GW2 needed to get people out of their comfort zone, realize that maybe perhaps full signets for 99% of the game wasn’t a great idea.
Let alone if we talk about Raids, the apex or epitome of proving what you can do with your character. I want to know honestly from some of these players who cry out against Raids now, if they truly believe they ‘loved’ the way they could play their characters, that they were comfortable spending hundreds of hours not worrying about their stats, build, utilities…typical things you would normally see any regular MMO player worry about. And why do they feel like Raids which make up such a small insignificant amount of content in the game currently, are a smack to the face when I bet you they haven’t even come close to exploring all the other casual content in the game.
It is never a good thing to start enjoying the ‘stale sameness’, you need to create ‘dynamic content’ that addresses everyone. And realize that not everyone will like all the content, and that’s fine.
How to fix it
There are topics that Arenanet has indicated they feel have run their course on the forums, and I will respect that here. All I will say is look to the raiding CDI with Chris Whitesides that started 2 years ago (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/first). I think the solutions are there – proposed by active players of the game.
It’s heavily ironic that you posted that CDI. Most of the suggestions with relation to the raids we have now, indicated that they needed to be instanced and difficult. There was also the prospect of ‘Guild Open World Events’ that came from the thread as well. From my own memory of looking through the CDI back when it was being created, by far the largest spoken individuals desired the content you refuse to accept in its current iteration today.
There were a few suggestions about scaling, mode splitting, maybe boss buffs or nerfs-
Funnily enough, a lot of the discussion before raids were even on the table about how raids would be implemented, has been going on since then. And the same folks who still can’t accept the current iteration of raiding have continued to post since then.
Unfortunately, imo, Anet went into that discussion having already decided what raids in GW2 would look like. They wanted validation more than discussion. Despite that, there are a lot of great ideas in that thread (and many since then) that would make sense in the game – that would address these issues – and that I for one would love to see discussed in more detail.
You can’t honestly say that and you know it. ‘Having already decided’ is just a concession that you want to accept as the truth, when in reality the majority of the discussion in that CDI helped fixate and address the current concerns we have today. By concerns, I mean there are no issues. Raids are working as we, and Arenanet, intended them.
The complaint at launch and beyond for gw2 in the greater mmo community was that it had no real end game.
I am 100% sure that pre launch anet figured pve end game would be wvw. You’d go do dungeons and stuff to gear your character and then go into serious wvw. but that’s not how it worked out for a variety of reasons not the least of which is that dungeons weren’t as challenging as they thought they would be.
Simply put gw2 needed challenging instanced pve content. Call it raids or whatever or make it new hard mode dungeons or fractals whatever. It could have been done 1000 different ways. But it was a real need.
Seems their numbers were better without this real end game and all the challanging content …
Oh look causation without correlation again.
Don’t forget the rapid drop-off of players once PvE End-Game was discovered to not exist a bit after launch.
Now we can push for a reasonable set of PvE End-game, such as Fractals, Raids, and hopefully more Legendary Weapons which require Open World.
Neat!
3.6% is not a ‘drop’, that’s keeping it relatively even on a statistical level.
Furthermore earnings on that report can never pin down the exact root of why changes happened. Speculating that it was due to raids specifically is foolish and wrong.
Hmm, well I guess I won’t ever get a response or counter to my argument about story.
OK then. Time for some short retorts, and for the record, the forum is not a great metric which to gauge in-game reality, I believe everyone can assert that all of us are on the most extreme end:
Where the issue started <snip>
Part of the goal of Heart of Thorns, or any expansion for that matter, is yes, to bring in new blood. Another part is to improve/expand upon the ‘Vanilla’ game of that time with new content in general, keep your veterans entertained. And to say that the game was ‘never’ challenging is completely off. Every single new content beginning with Karka, to the Watchwork minions, to the starting minions of Mordremoth was oozing with difficulty. Some of the early open world content in Orr was absolutely brutal, there was a lot of imbalanced bosses like Grenth or Baltazar who…well it wasn’t necessarily difficult as it was completely insane. The difficulty spiking was off for something in the open world, and Arenanet realized that the Open World Orr needed to be more accessible but still a bit threatening.
However that didn’t stop Arenanet from releasing content steadily that was different, and fairly painful. Toxic Alliance and the Tower of Nightmares were examples that we look upon now as being relatively OK, but were difficult for the time. And it kept us interested, and we as a playerbase adapted. Arenanet has improved on this and pushed out their vision for where they thought the playerbase was at with HoT and the open world there. But…as you saw, certain design and reward decisions plus some rather ridiculous boss design that we saw back in Old Orr made the new maps really awful for the general populace.
When we get down to it though, Arenanet has always, always wanted to challenge players, and not just throw out encounters you can press 1 to win with. This does not match what you envision GW2 to be. And for Raids to be added, is intended design to further meet this goal by providing those who want even more from the challenges Arenanet will hopefully continue to release with every patch. Heck, the Jade Constructs are some of the most brutal mobs you can fight if you fight more than one at a time, and they aren’t HoT exclusive, they came after.
Playstyle diversity and the road to boring play <snip>
I don’t see this being an issue, because the ‘issues’ if they did exist would only exist in the Raid Medium, where the team needs to have the skills and gear to meet the need of the encounter to succeed. Adding more ‘diversity’ to each of the professions skill-sets in order to give them roles they aren’t normally capable of, is actually the intended Design of the Elite Specializations.
IMO, Arenanet whiffed quite a few of these Elite specs, some are just straight upgrades. In order to resolve this, more and more Elite Specs need to be implemented to offer a choice for the player, and then when the raid comps start coming together with these choices, Arenanet simply has to employ unique mechanics for how each profession does each role. For instance, the difference between how a Ventari Rev heals as opposed to a Druid, or Tempest Auramancer.
You can’t have stale gameplay if there are different methods to getting the role done.
Broken storylines <snip>
I’ve already laid out my rebuttal on this.
Watering down non-raid content <snip>
Lots of things here, and apparently you don’t see the fitting irony in why Unbound and Queen existed. The ‘Available Guardian’ achievement wasn’t a clear enough hint? Arenanet categorically recognizes that the majority of the playerbase isn’t down for something worse than a Triple Trouble in the open world. The majority of the playerbase will scarcely pay attention to any given encounter unless they actually have to, if it is physically preventing them from winning. The consistent complaints about the Legendary Vinetooth are testament to this.
No, what Arenanet instead needs to work with, is giving the open world players the impression of a challenging foe, which can down a lot of players fairly easily…but still be able to be killed with some amount of teamwork, and a bit of skill to make things easier. Unbound Guardian can easily kill a few players on him, he’s not solo-able by any means but with the map alongside you, you can fight him, and you can hopefully not be someone getting downed all the time. Everyone enjoys this, and gets their daily bloodstones. And mobs like Unbound Guardian are still much, much harder than the core game. The general playerbase is getting better steadily, Arenanet has the skill metrics nicely tuned.
Stay tuned for more responses later
I can touch on a few other things later, but I heavily disagree with your assessment of supposed story link and I want to get it out of the way first. To quote a previous response I made on that topic:
Here’s the best indicator that proves the raid is inconsequential to the story.
Pretend the Forsaken Thicket never existed. Bloodstone Fen and the Living Story Season 3 Episodes play out exactly as they should have. No content lost, the notes still refer to key figures like Matthias who we will never meet, so on and so forth. Bennett will still give you the background on the non-existent raid area that’s somewhere nearby that no player will ever reach, but a group did go there and discover the events. He won’t ever actually refer to you being his savior as a nod for raiders who went into this raid, but just another group that did it.
Does the Living Story and Lore hold up 100% without Forsaken Thicket?
The answer will be yes, players might be curious still, there would be more intrique, perhaps speculation about what lies North of Verdant Brink. Hell we can go through a few dozen scenarios, maybe the community would consider that we would be heading north instead of south for the next map.
But, the Living Story lore does not need Forsaken Thicket, there are no glaring holes in the story, even things like the Lazarus Reveal would still be hinted through the notes we find in the Bloodstone Fen, and what Squad Leader Bennett mentions.
You are welcome to believe what you want, but the fact is that Bloodstone Fen still holds up 100% if Forsaken Thicket never existed.
Feel free to look into any tidbit of lore in the Fen, any of the notes and revelations about key figures you would find in the raid today. None of them have an impact on the Fen, Bennett who is the closest you will find, will not care in the hypothetical above, about. He will simply be someone who was there, and you were not part of this ‘side-story’.
Lazarus’s condition before the raid, and after the raid, remained the same. No one knew if he was alive or dead, that speculation was literally said at the end of the Forsaken Thicket.
Ok as we all know getting into raid’s has become a problem. And it keeps getting worse as each new wing pushes some people even further behind from others. Which is why a lot of people still don’t even have the mastery unlocked.
And almost no one will take a newcomer along except for their guild. So I see 2 solutions:Slowly starting to think that the recent barrage of complaints has caused some voices to come out of hiding…to come up with “definitely productive solutions” to a “definite problem” that has nothing to do with getting “easy access to rewards”.
But I’ll bite.
1) <Snip – Guild Alliances>
Isn’t that why we have 5 slots for guilds we can tag up as? So we can talk with a raid guild, while SPvP with our 4 other SPvP guild buddies. I don’t see the point of this at all, we have the tools already to flexibly shift the guild you are representing, that choice is already in our hands.
2) <Snip – Easy Mode with access to all rewards>
Neat. At least you were up-front with what you really want, gotcha. I can totally see your enthusiasm for improving the Raiding Experience by providing a solution that would bury it forever. You are doing us proud.
So these are my idea’s. As a side note I will say I don’t care either way whether you like my idea’s or not. As this isn’t really my problem but a lot of people are unhappy with raid’s and their current pug group’s so I’m doing it for them really.
And I like this to, you took enough of your time to type this all up, and pointed out to the crowd and said ‘Well it’s more for those guys, I don’t care, and you shouldn’t bother responding because it ain’t my problem’.
If it isn’t your problem, you wouldn’t have made a post like this in the first place. By far one of the worst posts I have ever read.
2/10, at least stand by your threads next time.
Oh I’m sorry for not being one of those that have this problem like “monsieur.”
I never cared about Raids nor Legendary Armour and thus I only ever go raiding when people ask me too. Which is why it’s not really my problem.
However if his “lordship” is so distasted with my post then why doesn’t “monsieur” propose something better?
Please read my last two paragraphs of my last post. There’s my proposition.
That’s part of the issue, around half the folks will say ‘I actually don’t mind Easy Mode not having rewards’ while the other half claims the only purpose of said mode would be an alternative to getting the same rewards as normal.
I’ve gone through these motions dozens of times already. Imagine if raids did have a training mode that was worthless, explain to me how that content won’t get ignored after a few months of non-raiders going into it, and no one ever needing to use it again. Congrats, you have created another Dungeon in the game, except it doesn’t offer tokens or gold.
So then the argument shifts towards applying rewards, to what extent? You obviously need to keep the appeal of raiding up, and everything you do in this game has a cost associated with it. Make the rewards for Easy Mode too lucrative? No one would run the Normal mode, and you have actually nerfed raids. Easy mode not worth it enough? Non-raiders will do it once like before, but find their time more productive elsewhere…
But then they bring up the point about it being some sort of ‘right thing to do’ since that’s what everyone wants. How do they know? Do they have some sort of numbers the rest of us are unaware of? Or are they trying to take advantage of the conversation to push an agenda that no one who is actually raiding successfully wants?
There’s a lot of claims out there, a lot of biases. I know without a doubt some of the people complaining don’t actually care about raiding. I know they don’t, because the quality of their arguments or solutions isn’t considering the counterarguments or scenarios that would come from them. They just ignore it, or say ‘Well that’s what you think, but it won’t play out like that’. Oh because when you paint a “Raiding Picture”, that will totally happen but when we bring up something that could muddle that vision, suddenly we’re the ones that are wrong to think that?
…For a while now, I have been an advocate of applying some of the unique quality rewards from Raids, elsewhere. There should be a legendary quality armor outside of Raiding, and there is a fair point that this particular set is taking Arenanet quite a long time to dole out.
But I have to consistently ask what is it that makes my solution for Legendary Armor available elsewhere so unappealing to players who despise raiding so much that instead they want to take resources and time away from future Raid Development to fix an issue that they personally have with the content, that raiders right now are not having. When we can just as easily have Legendary Armor in content said raid-hating players DO enjoy.
Is that not a sound argument?
Ok as we all know getting into raid’s has become a problem. And it keeps getting worse as each new wing pushes some people even further behind from others. Which is why a lot of people still don’t even have the mastery unlocked.
And almost no one will take a newcomer along except for their guild. So I see 2 solutions:
Slowly starting to think that the recent barrage of complaints has caused some voices to come out of hiding…to come up with “definitely productive solutions” to a “definite problem” that has nothing to do with getting “easy access to rewards”.
But I’ll bite.
1) <Snip – Guild Alliances>
Isn’t that why we have 5 slots for guilds we can tag up as? So we can talk with a raid guild, while SPvP with our 4 other SPvP guild buddies. I don’t see the point of this at all, we have the tools already to flexibly shift the guild you are representing, that choice is already in our hands.
2) <Snip – Easy Mode with access to all rewards>
Neat. At least you were up-front with what you really want, gotcha. I can totally see your enthusiasm for improving the Raiding Experience by providing a solution that would bury it forever. You are doing us proud.
So these are my idea’s. As a side note I will say I don’t care either way whether you like my idea’s or not. As this isn’t really my problem but a lot of people are unhappy with raid’s and their current pug group’s so I’m doing it for them really.
And I like this to, you took enough of your time to type this all up, and pointed out to the crowd and said ‘Well it’s more for those guys, I don’t care, and you shouldn’t bother responding because it ain’t my problem’.
If it isn’t your problem, you wouldn’t have made a post like this in the first place. By far one of the worst posts I have ever read.
2/10, at least stand by your threads next time.
In principle, you’re right, but in practice, it really breaks down. If a player spends weeks and weeks practicing a raid, and then finally complete it, then he deserves to earn weeks and weeks worth of reward for that, sure. But then once people have the raid “on farm,” they really aren’t doing anything spectacular any more, and the rewards just continue to pile up, and not just better generic rewards than most content, but also content that can’t be found anywhere else.
You’re thinking about it a bit backwards, the weeks of training are definitely for first kills, but also to improve and eventually make the rewards farm-able. That’s a design choice, which is why Arenanet implemented Weekly Rewards and a Currency Cap.
It is fully anticipated that raiders will continue to raid the old content, especially when you are never guaranteed to get a particular drop from a boss. Raid Rewards 101, well at least in GW2 Arenanet is more generous with the consolation shards on wipes.
Definitely agree. They lost the hardcore players within the first six months. The people who stuck around, the people who made GW2 work, are the casuals. This is our mothership, OUR WoW. People who want hardcore challenge can find it in other games, this one is ours, and should always first and foremost be ours.
That’s a pretty big statement you made. I don’t know if you are ignoring it but when you say the hardcore players left in the first year, that’s a pretty big lie. Quite a lot stayed, Dungeons were still exceptionally hard back then, Fractals had come out some time after launch, and “hardcore” players were involved in the end-game of creating Legendaries (the rush), WvW, SPvP, or speedrunning dungeons. The hardcore never left, they’ve been here the whole time, not just casuals have continued to play this game. And it is not a small number either…
That one’s a bit more flexible. I think changing skills and traits around a bit is fine, although “needs” should be as flexible as possible to accommodate many builds. There can be a metabuild that is “best” for the content, but there should be several other builds that are “plenty good,” and if a player has more fun playing one of those alternatives, then he should still be able to clear the content that way and not drag down the party. I certainly do believe that if a player gears himself up in a certain way, and it is effective for most content, he should not be forced to buy an entirely new set of gear just to be competitive in the new content. In a sense that’s just a horizontal gear creep, where instead of having to buy a new set of level 83 armor to replace your level 80 armor, you have to buy a new set of Viper gear to replace your Rabid, when really Rabid should be fine.
You are giving a mixed bag here. Some alternative builds are going to be simply outmatched by a large margin compared to the better options, yet the content has to be flexible to accommodate all these alternatives so the player running the ‘OK’ build isn’t going to be feeling like he is dragging everyone down? If this were the case then effective immediately the following mechanics from enemies would have to be removed:
- Breakbars (Not everyone runs CC, making CC a prime mechanic to dealing with an enemy would be imposing too much on players)
- Condition-Susceptible only (Not everyone runs conditions, power builds would be isolated and again, pose too much of an issue with players)
- Condition-Layering (Not everyone runs decent condi-clear in their builds, it would be too hard to heal up from)
- Unblockable attacks (Blocking is an excellent way for some builds to survive, this would render some alternatives moot)
I could go on more, but I believe you catch my drift. What enemies could do against you, the player, would be sharply reduced or ignored to keep most builds from falling from viability.
I’m not there yet, but I’m sure some have already been passed there. I’ve been playing this game about four times longer than any previous MMO, and plan to for a while yet, but I certainly wouldn’t have stuck around if they’d gone into raid progression mode within the first six months of the game like many MMOs do.
It wasn’t on the table at the time, the content needs change over time. The community demanded difficult instanced content with unique rewards, they got it. And now you want to take part of it away?
And yet, the rules of every piece of content in the game have been modified, sometimes several times….
Many of the changes weren’t for the sake of lowering the floor for a matter of skill, overhauls occurred because they were ‘inconsistent’ with the prospect of Horizontal Progression, SPvP was probably the biggest issue at release with its own independent skins yet being unable to show off skins earned on either side. Dungeons had path skipping that allowed you to double up on ‘must-have’ tokens at the time.
These are not flagrant reductions in the quality of the content, rather instead what we saw as you pointed out was that some of the content described, fell victim to time and new releases. There was simply no way or reason to re-balance the old content for combat changes and balancing, there would be an insane amount of overhaul that new content would be further pushed back in development.
I don’t dispute that in the present, a player has to play within the rules as they presently are…
It’s a bit more than simply pressing for a change. It’s still way too early to call for any raid changes when we are still in the first year, and the ‘solutions’ being tossed out aren’t considering the future of the content in question. Or practical observations based on player behavior at this very moment. I agree with your point that it is up to Arenanet however.
Accepting the rules for what they are now is not incompatible with hoping for better rules in the future, and that’s what I’m doing here…
What’s to say that your rules are better than the status quo? How do you know better than the creators?
It is the most egregious outlier. It’s the most prestigious rewards…
So Legendary Weapons and Backpieces, all which consist of doing various other content which can include alienable Adventures, WvW, currency grinding, etc. Those legendary rewards aren’t as prestigious? There’s plenty of unreasonable things you need to do for Legendaries right now, but those are reasons why people will do the content for them. Legendary Armor is not an outlier, it is falling directly in line with other Legendaries. It’s not on Arenanet to change the content to give access to rewards here.
And yet “players who just started yesterday can go in and three-man it wearing only greens!,” or whatever it is they’re saying these days. I get how raids were designed and intended to work…
Then they can just not worry about it. Much like how players won’t build Legendary Weapons if they absolutely cannot do map completion, POI searching kills them on the inside. They don’t have to worry about aiming for The Ascension if they dislike SPvP, it’s their choice.
If they don’t like the Authentic Raid Experience, they certainly won’t want a lesser version of it. They would rather want a similar reward in content they currently enjoy. I disagree heavily with your assessment that these players are prevalent, or else they would be continuing to try raiding, joining a guild, joining a good set of friends and doing it right now.
Arenanet just needs to release Legendary Quality Armor outside of raids, somewhere. It’s that simple.
Anyone could be carried through the content, but spending half the fight on the ground is nowhere near as satisfying as actively participating through the end…
Is this some sort of ego issue here? I don’t see any reason why you should be upset about truly working with others when you can’t quite make it all the way through the fight. That’s a large part of the appeal of raiding, getting better at it! Raiding is demanding and expects failure or death, that’s not by accident but design of raiding at its very core. That’s why you improve, work with others, find out what you are doing wrong. Maybe you need to come up with a slightly better personal strategy that no one else does, but only to help you live through a certain mechanic that seems to kill just you.
I know we have said it before, and I do not expect you to understand, but introducing the prospect of an easier difficulty does diminish the raiding experience. It would be similar to spending WvW development resources recreating the borderlands, to a single-person instance where you can lead NPC armies around on your own and attack objectives and other NPC armies. It would not be close to the same experience as WvW right now, and it would be another thing to balance for the devs. It would be a waste of time and resources, which could have been used to improve the current experience for the players that are interested in the real thing.
I ignore none of it. I read it all, take it all in, give it all due consideration, and if my response is that I still don’t agree, it’s because I genuinely do not believe that your counterarguments address the concerns that are being raised. A lot of people default into one of four positions that I just cannot accept:
This is different, so I’ll respond.
1. If you are unwilling to play how the raids currently operate, then you never deserve to complete the raids, and never deserve to have any rewards arbitrarily attached to the raids.
The issue with this stance here is that you absolutely need to apply this to every other content in the game. Every piece of content in this game has a set of rules of which dictate success or failure. PvP, WvW, PvE, Metas, Jumping Puzzles, Adventures, anything you can think of.
I already know you have had the stance of just making all the rewards everywhere, available anywhere but we’ve discussed how impractical and toxic that would be to GW2 implementing it now, and in the future. You are specifically picking on Raids as an easy target for your ire.
2. That raids are fine and anyone can do them, so long as they play exactly how I enjoy playing.
Raids are specifically mentioned and defined around teamwork and coordination. Each encounter, rather any section of a raid wing has specific requirements before considering success. Not having these requirements covered is already setting yourself and your comrades for failure.
The requirements are not just things like build or skill either, you need to have the right mentality to work with others as well. Players who brashly rush into raids, forcing their way into groups running something that is not meshing with the team composition, or worse not paying attention or listening for call-outs and just being overall uncooperative this content was never intended to appease.
3. If you’re unwilling or unable to play exactly how I wish to play, then it’s ok for you to never participate in the raids, and never receive the rewards that you may want.
This is similar to the previous point, but the kicker is that the content itself with its current requirements don’t specifically state that said person couldn’t raid. In fact the content has been proven that it can be undermanned, meaning that in a way anyone could technically run through the content.
But the biggest mandatory requirement here is that you will still need to work with others, or have others carry you in this instance. I don’t think even you can disagree with group content that makes it mandatory to have a group with you, is not so much of a request from this hypothetical ‘New guy who runs anything he wants, ignores all commands from his allies’.
4. Raids are objectively “better” content than other content, more deserving of nice rewards. People who complete raids are more deserving of nice things than people who don’t.
It has been said on numerous occasions that the quality of equipment in the raid shouldn’t be restricted to just raids. I am of the group that sincerely wants Legendary Armor available outside of raids. Raid content isn’t better than other content, but there is certainly higher requirements and teamwork you need to achieve compared to a lot of other content.
Having a proportional amount of compensation for what is likely days/weeks of effort is not unfair to the other players. You try harder, you get more, this isn’t a complicated process. “But what about SPvP and WvW? Those aren’t like fighting AI you fight players, those are harder than PvE-”
That’s an entirely different discussion that I just simply won’t get into.
Now allow me to grant you some of the positions I find I need to consistently respond to:
1) That GW2 is a casual MMO, it should never challenge the playerbase. Instead Arenanet should come up with interesting content that still retain the same easier difficulty I know since launch!
2) That because for years GW2 has been casual, it makes no sense to attempt to steadily increase the difficulty and change how players go into each area. I should never, EVER need to change any of my skills or traits around.
3) I prefer this content, it’s fairly mindless but I don’t mind, it is what I like to do and it gets me a lot of money for almost everything. But I want more, and I am not going to leave this comfort zone of content because this is just a game, and I paid just like anyone else. In fact, if I don’t get what I want I’ll leave the game, Arenanet will lose a very good customer.
Notice how in that quote they didn’t say that the Raid participation was good.
Raiding as of right now is by far the most successful part of the expansion
Not that it would be a high threshold to beat, but still, do you have any proof on that?
Process of elimination really.
Can you tell me of another piece of content aside from the Music that needed to be improved or adjusted upon after launch?
Just as an example, Elite Specializations right now are still kind of a mess. They interfere with balance and are caused a bit of power creep. Arenanet needs to introduce another Elite Specialization which can create diversity, as you can’t choose both specs.
Edit: I don’t mean Music was ‘edited’, the Music has kept the same and has been well-received.
There ya have it.
Thought I would try again, out of some silly notion but this is no longer a discussion. A discussion would entail both parties entertaining the other and being open to having their opinions adjusted based upon how the discourse transpired.
Ohoni desires none of this. It’s not even being stubborn at this point, it’s legitimately ignoring all other counterarguments of which there have been many, and simply stating that no one else can possibly be correct.
Give it up folks, and just ignore him. Ohoni is no longer contributing any sort of constructive or productive statements about raiding in general if he rejects any and all other criticism. It’s not even up for discussion at this point, he’s made that very clear.
It’s a kitten pity really.
Neither does yours, just saying. You simply want content that was never made or intended for you to waste Developer time to cater to you because of a shiny that is it simply stated. You are the voice of Ohoni only looking out for Ohoni.
As I have to find myself repeating over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over because for some reason you guys refuse to take it in, if it comes down to “this is only something Ohoni wants,” then I do not want them to do it. It would not be worth their time or energy to do something like this for any one player, and I would rather they spend their energy on something else.
Case closed! We’re done here! Finally some headway on probably a year or so of discussion with you specifically! I’m so thrilled that you have reached a reasonable conclusion…
But I don’t believe that’s true for a second.
….But of course, things are never easy. Ugh, we aren’t arguing that there isn’t some set of players who think very similarly like you do. We have just been arguing that the set of players you believe are on your side, isn’t as big as you think it is. You aren’t arguing for any normal player. Your ’any content for any reward* propositions are absolutely not even registered on a scale, because the number is so small.
Your propositions have never argued for the normal populace, ever.
And neither do you.
And how dare you assume you know what other players believe?
If any of you believed I was actually wrong, that this was something that players didn’t want, that the devs did not, on some level, know that, then you wouldn’t wast so much time and effort trying to shout me down.
We waste so much time for many reasons. Arenanet has listened to their playerbase on multiple occasions before, and you have been spamming at this point, the same foolish ridiculous ideas since day one. We are the reason to your madness.
Others probably seek to…bring you back to normalcy. Certainly, I know I have tried, but after that deleted post where you compared raiding to hazing that I, for a lack of a better word, got absolutely frustrated with and responded with emotion…
You simply do not care. You just want to continue this foolhardy crusade.
But you know players want it, you know ANet does have an interest in making something along these lines happen, maybe not exactly what I’m asking for, but something, and you’re just doing the best you can to cover your eyes and hope it all goes away, because you want your special little “no newbs aloud” clubhouse.
You don’t know a kitten thing, and that is what is so sad. In your delusions you have become out of touch with what the community wants. You likely play this game day after day, feeling ‘righteous’ whenever someone who goes into raids for the first time comes to the forums to complain about why Arenanet implemented some challenge. You actually believe that because there are complaints from those people, who clearly the content was not made for, that it somehow justifies you and convinces you of a problem that does not exist.
Good luck with that.
In the meantime, I’m going to continue to try and workshop the best possible implementation of this sort of system, if they decide to do something.
Good luck with that, ol Sisyphus.
I’m sorry are the people on these forums not players? I thought I was a player. You seem pretty convinced that you speak for the people, when all these other people are here speaking for themselves.
You are players, but you are not all of the players, and your voices do not represent the players.
You have absolutely no clue about what the players want, the only one that desires what you have spoken for, is yourself.
Nothing you have said has any selfless intentions, you are not acting as a spokesperson of the general GW2 populace. Please stop pretending you are.
Thank you Absurdo for finding the quote.
It’s far more relevant and specific than just tinfoil ‘evidence’ with the faintest references to raiding and more strongly points to other issues.
Raiding as of right now is by far the most successful part of the expansion, the Music is probably the only other thing I can think of that has been a resounding success. The map alterations, HPs, Legendary Weapons, Story, all other things that have been changed or improved upon…they are more culpable in why HoT had issues.
Dismissing those issues and stating that Raiding is the sole cause is being insincere and foolish.
The above implying that raids are bad right now. Reality is currently showing the opposite.
Like who? Can I have a citation?
Raids are good. Raids being narrow-targeted and at the same time only new repeatable content released – bad. Current state caused all-time low game population, and it must be changed, one way or another.
Anything else?
Will get you the dev post about ‘better than anticipated’ numbers at some point today, I haven’t enough time this morning to do so.
As someone posted already, Bloodstone Fen and Ember Bay must have missed your radar or you really don’t care. Where are your sources for ‘all-time’ low game population? Can you link it to raids? Can you back up any of the claims you have made thus far without, irrelevantly, attempting to compare Raids to WoW which falls flat each and every single time?
Or are you going to waste all our time yet again? At the very least I will obligate you and find the dev post which is perhaps the only clear picture of raid performance anyone has ever posted on the forums. But I am going to assert you will shoot down official statements, and post some irrelevant or inconclusive statistics all over again.
Please, go ahead.
I know all these things. I’m just trying to point out the flaw in the logic. If raids are bad, how the hell can adding more raids fix that?
Adding more raids cannot. Opening them up to a wider community can.
The above implying that raids are bad right now. Reality is currently showing the opposite.
Agreed, I didn’t specifically mean you, I was being more general on any argument speaking on this representation.
We haven’t had a solid representative poll, Reddit is likely closer than GW2 efficiency but I believe all of us understand that a considerable amount of players don’t even go on the web for the games they play.
If more players actually went online and invested a bit more time on reddit even, we wouldn’t have had so many issues about ‘difficulty’ that we have now. People still aren’t aware of the Salvage All option…
Remember, that an average players, especially average casual players, don’t generally use the sites like gw2eff, which brings the percentage of the “raiders” way up compared to the reality.
It’s the LotRO forum >50% -> ingame <10% raid population case again.
Either you use GW2efficiency as a representative sample of the playerbase if it has enough of a sample size, or you don’t bring it up at all.
It can’t argue both ways here. I am responding to Red simply because Red’s insistent that it is representative as part of his argument. So I was going with the ‘statistics’ he presented to argue my case.
Edit: I still believe that at least 5% of the playerbase is at least of a group that is consistently raiding, getting more proficient, or actually trying to learn and getting some success. That may be a low number for some here, but Raids are still a very small part of the game here. I don’t see a need to improve this percentage, dropping the production and quality of new raid content to appease more folks, we have massive amounts of other content that can be produced that don’t interfere with raiding.
(edited by Sykper.6583)
As they increase the number of raid wings and subsequently the more ‘First Boss of this wing’ encounters, the availability of LIs will grow. The devs have already stated that LIs will continue to drop from future raid bosses. The more VG, Escort, Sloth encounters there are, the easier LIs will be able to be earned.
What’s great about the graph you showed, is a metric that I was concerned with. Notice between that 24.5% and 20% is the first time ‘Everybody’ finally breaches at least 1 LI. Eventually at 17.5% 3 is the average, with a rapid ascension from there.
A lot of the numbers are being driven down by players with 1000 hr or less, a lot of different groups fall into this range. Players who might not have a lot of time to play everyday but they do for maybe an hour, new players, maybe players who only play for about 5 hours one day a week. These are the players who are having the hardest time getting into raids from the metrics, only around 9% will you see the first LI spotted in the 500-1000 range.
1000 hours isn’t a lot of time frankly, there’s just so much to do in the game, I believe you can agree with me that for an MMO, hitting 1000 hours is finally getting into the swing of things. Should we expect these kinds of players to go straight into raiding as well? I don’t see why they couldn’t but I just don’t expect it to happen.
So from that perspective, I started looking for the first time someone between 1000-2000 hours will get their LI, the player that has played enough of the content and likely wants to raid. That kicks in around 22%, which is less than the average percentile but pretty kitten close.
…You pointed out that the pure dedicated raiders who are clearing the full wings every week for the past 3 months is less than 4.5%, that number is in between 4% and 3.5%. That’s neat, I was concerned with what the average experienced player might start seeing LIs in their account if they’ve played long enough for. Seeing the first LI in an account between 1000 and 2000 hours, at 22% is pretty kitten good for the casual crowd.
Edit: API might be down, but it holds a shot at that time. We could compare the newer statistic if you want but I don’t expect much deviance.
How much time does it take to switch some numbers? Make bosses do less damage, and take more damage. Keep the mechanics as is so that people can eventually learn them and do the harder versions. Raids are already instanced, and mostly all of the content is there.
It’s not hard to tweak the numbers. The mechanics change completely when you can ignore them. Making VG’s Green circles do even 10% less damage can be healed through. You can outright start ignoring mechanics that aren’t intended on instant killing you.
While things like Gorseval’s World Ender or Sabetha’s Flame Thrower likely wouldn’t change per your request, players wouldn’t get any relevant training on the encounter compared to the real thing when the easier versions had them ignore such mechanics.
…This point has been stated probably 20+ times now.
By making raids accessible to casual players, they are delivering comparatively a massive amount of content to casual players to the small amount of effort it would take to do so.
You have no idea of the effort that it would take, nor the impact it would have. Do casual players even care for raids? What makes you think casual guilds want to be restricted to just 10 people when they can go into AB with the full guild? You are speculating heavily at this point.
What we actually do know at this point is that an above-expected number of players have at least killed a raid boss. We know the content is still being run daily. Why fix what isn’t broken?
It’s ridiculous that so many developer resources and overhead time went into making these three fabulous raid chapters and only 10% of the player base gets to enjoy them. It’s just plain wasteful of content
So many developer resources- again, you do not know the extent. We know the minimum which is a small 5 man dedicated team. Given Arenanet only has a couple hundred employees, a dedicated small team pulling only the needed resources from audio, graphical and gameplay departments has entertained your number of 10% of the playerbase.
…That’s not a waste, that kittening efficient.
EDIT: inb4 25% of players have completed a raid boss, but how many people run every raid once a week? Those are the only players that get true unrestricted enjoyment out of this game mode
How many people don’t reach shard cap? How many people don’t kill all the bosses in one night? How many people only want to farm Gorseval for his infusion but still feel the need later on to kill some other wings?
Hate to shatter your rose glasses, but when I looked at percentage of people having at least one LI for first time, it was like 28%. Now it’s 24.5%.
What an upset! Nearly a quarter of the populace you took your accurate sample information from have killed at least one raid boss. Man, you got me, after all I set the low bar of 5% being an acceptable number for a few dedicated raid devs.
…If anything you defeated your own argument there, a quarter of the accounts you pulled LI information from have an LI, that’s insane participation, that shows wild success. Even if you were to assume an absurd 50% deviation where that nearly 25% could fluctuate to as low as only 12%, that would dedicate themselves to raiding every week, that percentage is still much, much higher than the threshold raiding would have to work with given the dedicated staff.
Furthermore, they did say they had only around 5 members dedicated to the raid staff, whose primary purpose much like the other dedicated devs for SPvP, Balance, Living Story is fixated on that content only. There’s music development, Terrain creation, Art and Design teams that get shared by all teams involved, and that’s how content is made! Those other teams that come in require a direction from the dedicated teams, or else we would have some rather odd music choices in content. Last time I checked, I doubt it would be a good idea letting the Music development put in ill-fitted music in some areas.
They have made it abundantly clear that they want the rewards and not the content. The logic and reasoning that have already been given out has been ignored outright, they want to butcher raiding period, which ironically their cries for change are likely exactly the kind of reaction the devs have hoped for.
I am going to put on my tin-foil hat here, and say that the only reason the mods aren’t shutting these threads coming up and up now, is simply at the request of the raid devs who are seeing their encounters bear continued fruit of salty tears. And rightfully so, they have done a great job creating content that is challenging enough to weed out the players who quit trying so quickly. And they have zero reason to acknowledge the arguments made as a dev some months ago pointed out, Raid attendance is actually higher than anticipated.
…I wonder if the next wing in that case might be even harder, I can imagine they were impressed by how quickly the raid community grew in just a year. They can keep the raid development team small and focused, and have the majority of the Arenanet staff focus on everything else. If even 5% of the playerbase were actively doing raids thanks to around 5 devs focused on raiding, that’s still an amazing attendance.
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Sykper.6583
Yes. Many players are “inept.” Amazingly enough the average player is…. average. Which if they were scored on a grade of A, B, C, D, or F, they are a C and after 4 years of playing they are still a C. Below them are the C-, the D and the F ability players. If raids are for the B and A level players then C level is going to struggle and D and F players don’t have a prayer of getting it without being carried. Remember, the C, D, and F players are half of the population. People who do raids are B level at worse.
I consider myself to be ~C+/B- and I know I personally would not be able to do raids (which is fine for me as I have no interest in either raids or the armor. I’m just arguing here that the opinion that everyone can do raids is not an opinion that fits the facts).
What facts here, that you feel half the population is a C player or lower ? That’s not a fact, that’s an arbitrary assignment.
The only fact of this is that, if you want to play the game, and do the mode you can. If you want to improve you can. The sheer fact that you there’s this notion that a vast majority of the player base is somehow inept is absurd.
No. That’s simple math and statistics. The average player is average, which is a C. Half of any population is average or below average, and that includes this population. I suggest you read up on statistics if you believe that the population is above average as that’s logically impossible. Half of any population is average or below average. That’s a mathematical truth and this population is not exempt. If content is deliberately designed by the Devs for the above average part of this population then the average and below average are going to struggle or not be able to do it.
And no, willpower and wanting does not conquer all. I suggest you think about that one too.
Compare the average player’s skill level now to Heart of Thorns Launch. Compare it to a year before that. Compare it to launch.
It’s very easy to know what you want to drive the argument at, but there are some major flaws with that perspective. One is that it proposes that the average player will always stay average, always. That’s unlikely, the more they play and experience the more they will learn and potentially grow. I am absolutely certain the raid content wasn’t marketed at average players, but even average players can get out of their current status with time. I suggest you rethink player personal growth.
There’s also another, very easy method which Arenanet has implemented to facilitate this player growth, the simple fact of the increasing difficult content. Open World HoT did get nerfed, but even in its current nerfed state the entire region is still the most challenging open world, mobs that force you to keep alert and change your strategies. You aren’t immortal even in a zerg, you can see the design differences between HoT and entertainingly enough the Halloween Labyrinth where some of the Halloween bosses would be brutal (Especially Lich).
Riddle me this, what happens when the average player is above average compared to a year ago, but is still average by the statistics?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Sykper.6583
Hardest of the hardcore? Not really. Above the average? Definitely. An average player is not likely to clear a raid unless they are being carried by better teammates.
I’m not sure if people who clear raids should take this as a complement or those that don’t take it as an insult….
It’s beyond belief that you think this lowly about people around you in this game. Yet you want to call the raiding community and its players toxic with this kind of attitude and mindset ?
You must have missed the threads complaining that the HoT maps were too difficult and the nerf of those maps that ANet put in a few months back.
Players have consistently complained about difficulty jumps since launch. Hell, I remember the QQ about Marionette mobs requiring being stomped to kill off. Yet somehow the community moved forward, should we just never raise the difficulty or challenge players ever?
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Sykper.6583
You won’t find many of the pro-raid posters arguing against implementing other sources for Legendary Armor outside of raids. That particular agreement was spoken on months ago.
The question was whether the Envoy Legendary Armor being made available, we want that kept to Forsaken Thicket. Design an alternative Legendary Armor anywhere else (WvW for instance) and much like how Legendary Backpieces have different content for accessibility, the Legendary Armor conundrum goes away.
….Well unless you want the skins, but just like 100% of this game has been, skins or rewards in general have been locked behind unique content before.
…
tldr: “this will not work because I said so”
Except that WoW have exactly that mechanics and it works. So, is that WoW have that special kind of people who understands that “ability that almost killing you on lower difficulty WILL kill you on higher, better avoid that”, or you think that GW2 have even more special kind of people who unable to understand that?
You don’t want an honest answer on this.
It’s not so much the rev nerf that really hurts PS condi, but SoI which was the sole reason for duplicating the first half of the PS condi stacks out.
What I am looking into right now is the old Burnzerker strictly condi, Reaper has taken a massive hit in overall condi damage so I am looking over the numbers and observing if things like Condi-Engi, Warrior and even Condi Tempest now are going to outshine necros.
Whoa, are you telling me that people have preferences on what they aesthetically like?
…Can’t please everyone, but I will say this armor is entirely new territory for…well as someone put it, MMOs in general. The effect itself is something delivered, I am going to wear this armor. Would I have minded some of the spikes being just a little less long? Sure, but this armor will look amazing on my heavy armor classes.
And I firmly believe that the Medium and Light Armor won’t get spikes, Metal spikes make sense for plated mail, I am curious about Leather and Cloth. Maybe…Organic and Magical animations?
When applied: Prevents the effects of boons on a target.
Durations: Very Short, the applications take the same duration as Boons like Protection and Resistance meaning they are used actively as a counter-play method.
Resistance vs Hexed: When Hexed is applied first, Resistance’s effects are negated. When Resistance is applied first, Hexed is negated. They share the same priority, meaning that if a Hexed Target continues to be Hexed without even single moment where it drops off for Resistance to kick in, Hexed will continue to deny such boons. And vice-versa where Resistance was set in first, naturally because Hexed is a condition it can be removed by clearing much like how Resistance can be stripped as a boon.
Use: An extra layer of depth from a PvP perspective, in the same vein as the short duration Immobilize that can be useful when used strategically. Mainly used to counter Resistance or Aegis. There can be some counterplay against this condition through the additional trait modifications adding clears for this debilitating condition especially in the cases for Guardians and Revenants. From a PvE perspective, this condition could be used by dangerous creatures who rely on their conditions not being negated by resistance unless the aforementioned cases above happen.
So, thoughts?
What maddoctor said. There have been only a few posters that have been honest about why they want an easier mode, and that they willingly know it can butcher the content directly for the intent of bringing more people in. They likely see Raids as bringing an ‘Elitist’ culture to GW2, which is woefully ignorant as it has always been around this game. What’s wonderful though is that the worst elitism you will see, just because of what this game is, is extremely narrow. The vast majority of this game is extremely welcoming to everyone, and even in raids which are advertised as the highest difficulty content for PvE, and rightfully so, elitism is being marginalized there courtesy of the unheard-of Training runs being done daily.
Ever have Viper Reapers believe that you have to stay in Reaper Shroud after popping 3-5-4 and consume it all as part of their condi rotation? Because RS1 is such an impressive dps rotation compared to scepter…
Was not aware pointing out grave flaws in reason and implementation was considered a form of shaming or belittlement.
Rather, what would be more prudent to bring up is that the continued ‘reappearance’ and ‘discussion’ of a topic spoken about over and over again, without contributing any further perspective or counter-points about the current non-dismissed arguments, would be a type of spam and thus ignored or at worst reported as such.
It’s not very different than the myriad threads you would see on the PvP forums crying about a profession being overpowered despite the consensus providing overwhelming facts against.
But I digress, the only new information in this thread that was relevant was posts demonstrating an idea of how one would create an easy mode with flat numbers, and there has already been enough discussion on why that in theory would break encounters apart.
It’ll be one season, and it will be an excellent method to help the SPvP populace figure out what they want from Ranked. There’s no PTR that will enable Arenanet to work with live figures of participation.
It’ll also filter out whether or not the community really wanted solo/duo queues. Not saying that the population wouldn’t know any better, but after you go through a few cycles of ironically the forum ‘balance experts’ getting what they wanted with buffs, nerfs, etc. Only for someone else to complain about the change in place, it becomes difficult to determine whether someone has a great idea about how to improve SPvP, or if its a selfish request that will ultimately cause more strife.
“To be clear, the goal of getting more players into raiding is a good one. But the way Raid Finder turned out removed, IMO anyway, a lot of the epicness of what made raiding raiding…”
Do we really need to say anything else?
Of course not. He clearly admitting that LFR expanded raiding community, and only downside was loss of “epicness”. I guess, by epicness he means 2% of vanilla raiders who ever seen Naxxramas.
It didn’t expand the ‘raiding’ community, it brought a bad raiding solution to non-raiders while gutting the core raiding philosophy. Reflecting upon what they could have done instead, I believe they could have implemented more than these flat tiers of gear (and in some cases half tiers) and created incremental tiers, which would lie in a lot more raids of perhaps easier difficulty for some bosses.
They could have kept different encounters the same difficulty, but opt to instead have certain incremental raids be easy on itself rather than force an easy-mode/hard-mode option. What has bothered me to this day is Ulduar which took a vastly different approach from the other raids in WotLK.
Flexible encounter difficulty based on out-of-encounter or in-encounter actions.
It felt like a completely kitten Raid dev came in for Ulduar and made it a masterpiece. But then the same lazy raid dev who rehashed Naxx came up with his ingenious idea of ‘WHY NOT JUST HAVE STRAIGHT BOSSES’? And thus the Trial of the Crusader was born and raiders wept.
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