Guild Wars 2

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

TL;DR:
Removing a timer may cause players to make less mistakes, and makes those mistakes less deadly.

But most of the bosses have “timers” other than the enrage timer, timed events that you must react to during the fight and those cause the wipes. The “dps checks” aren’t only about the overall timer of the encounter. And bosses that don’t have such dps checks will just be complete jokes without the enrage timer.

So there are two types of bosses, those who will be a complete joke without an enrage timer (like for example Vale Guardian), and those that won’t be any different if you remove the enrage timer (like Keep Construct).

You know what the answer will be to this right? “Just redesign bosses like KC for easy mode if enrage timer doesn’t do squat.”

Oh boy, more unexpected work to create a solution to a “problem” (if it even exists to begin with) that is blown way out of proportion (at least according to the forums).

Arya.3841:

Sykper.6583:

So please let us all know how exactly GW2 won’t make the same exact mistakes if they were to pursue different difficulties when based on cause and effect:

- Easier difficulties take development resources
- Easier difficulties do not adequately prepare players for harder difficulties
- Easier difficulties detract from one of the biggest merits in raiding: the First Epic Kill
- Easier difficulties divide the raiding playerbase

…I’ll stop with these for now, have fun!

Easy mode: remove timer for bosses.

Going to stop you right there. There’s been threads discussing why removing the enrage timer is a bad idea, and why it won’t train anyone on proper mechanics if they walk in as tanky as they could be and ignore the critical ones.

Furthermore, you pulled the ‘time’ numbers out of the nether, you have zero idea how long any of the changes can take, nor what bugs might be introduced.

Blaeys.3102:

Because they didn’t fail.

They failed the community which they built raids conceptually around. It was a middle finger to them.

Blaeys.3102:

I was raiding when the early iterations of multi mode raiding were introduced to WoW…

You talk about it a bit later on, but Blizzard didn’t fail at delivering the hardest content when they could, the ‘Hard-Mode’ or ‘True Intended Difficulty’ of some of the raids such as ICC Lich King or Ulduar 0 Watcher were by far some of the hardest raid content delivered at the time.

The issue is that developing and balancing even two different difficulties cost time and resources, the Raiding in WotLK where the difficulties were first introduced brought about the lowest amount of raids overall at the time in an expansion, plus rehashed content (Naxxramus) AND conceptually the worst raid imo that was Trial of the Crusader, just straight up bosses no trash, navigation, etc.

These are not issues you have spoken about, that you refuse to touch on. I absolutely refuse to accept any easier difficulty options that cause these issues. And they will cause these issues, regardless of what you and I can come up with.

Blaeys.3102:

The reality is these game modes accomplished what they were designed for in that game – they opened raids up to more people – and probably kept the game alive.

While there is some validity to the “more dev resources,” they most definitely did not split the playerbase in WOW and wouldn’t here as well. To the point about first epic kill, I can tell you that players killing Deathwing (or whatever) in LFR or easier modes had more respect for the groups achieving first hardmode kills, not less – because they had an understanding of what those mechanics might look like in harder situations.

This is something that GW2 needs to do. It opens raids up as a REAL storytelling tool, allows for multiple playstyles and gives them another way to fill the gaps between bigger open world content drops.

Two things.

WoW was a vertical gear treadmill, you needed to get geared to continue doing the content. That very concept in mind is why both you and I agree that WoW did need to come up with something to get players to play raid content. I don’t agree at all with the butchering of Raid content development in WoW to get players to do the raids, but they had no choice. There were literally statistical issues with a character trying to do a raid undergeared.

That’s why I can understand, but still despise, what Blizzard did with their Raiding. So when you say it kept the game alive, I can agree with it to some extent, it was a systematic issue with how they designed the game from the ground up that lead to such a dilemma.

…None of this is a problem with GW2. As we continue to state, GW2 does not have a vertical treadmill. This wipes out that hurdle completely.

The second thing, you mention that Raids would be a great storytelling tool.

I heavily disagree on this, because of in-game examples like Dungeon Story Modes. These unrewarding story-modes are 5 man instances built with GW2 Main Story in them, and years later that kind of content is obsolete. It’s easy to see why Veterans are not doing them, but as GW2 grows why aren’t new players getting involved?

You can argue that the rewards aren’t good enough and that may be. But the biggest reason I find against this is that the largest part of the PvE in this game, can be done as a very solo experience with some Open-World ambient assistance with events. I can do story-related activities in this game on my own, between Story Episodes and/or general exploration of open-world maps.

The moment you force story into an instanced content like Raids, much like how you do Dungeons, kittenes off Lore Hounds, and it forces a playstyle contrary to much of the content in this game. This is why Arenanet made the change to Arah Story for the finale of the first Personal Story to a Solo Instance…

Raids absolutely should not be in this game a medium to tell Story. They can allow side-stories that have no direct collusion with the plot, but if we force players who might not even like grouping up with others to do this Raid just for Living Story reasons so to speak, we then put ourselves much into WoW’s vertical progression system for Lore reasons rather than Gear.

So, nope, never, absolutely not, DO NOT put main story into raids, do not FORCE players to group for main storyline. Don’t repeat Story-Mode Dungeons.

Blaeys.3102:

The group finder in this game is very well done and doesn’t work anything like the LFR system from WoW.

The problem with the LFR system in WoW is that it throws 10 or 25 people randomly together based solely on their roles in the raid (tank, healer, dps) with no other considerations or functionality (other than a gear check, which is irrelevant to this conversation). That is the part that he probably feels takes the epic feel from raids.

Agreed.

Blaeys.3102:

Multiple difficulties exist in that game outside of LFR (they are two different concepts). Flex raiding has nothing to do with LFR. Those concepts do not suffer from the random and forced grouping that exist with the WoW LFR system. In the GW2 system, there is still a group lead that initiates the formation of a group. There is still a way to communicate group needs and see what you’re getting into before starting.

Flex Raiding has other issues that have been discussed before. Encounters couldn’t be balanced properly by Blizzard themselves where one boss would be best done by say 12 raiders, yet you would bring under 10 for the next boss and so forth. It was a whole other travesty of encounter difficulty spikes and drops that make Flex raiding extremely painful to balance. It’s actually a very different system than what GW2 does with open-world event scaling. I don’t think it would be particularly difficult to implement scaling, but it would cause inconsistency with the encounters, mechanics would change based on group size, the amount of memorization of the potential different capabilities a boss can do at certain levels would be outrageous.

Blaeys.3102:

So, yes – WoW could do LFR much better (by, possibly, mirroring the group finder from GW2), but that has nothing to do with multiple difficulties or flexible group sizes. Those concepts have proven to value added in games like WoW (which is why they still exist in those games) – and they would be value additive in GW2.

The quote from the ex-WoW executive is, most likely, not applicable here (because again, it is about the LFR system – which has major disadvantages when compared to the group finder tool in GW2 – and not about the concept of multi-difficulty raids).

These two solutions by Blizzard, probably one of the best pioneers of raid design and theory given their experience, turned Raiding into something that it was not. They created headaches, confusion, took away from development, and killed Raiding. I would even argue these mistakes are exactly why FF14 has managed to become a contender in the market, because WoW flipped and tried reaching for a more casual audience when in reality the vast majority of casual players shouldn’t be forced to raid. I have a personal theory why they went that route though that makes more sense, but that’s another story.

My point is this, LFR, and Flex Raiding were both solutions that sought to bring players into raiding easily correct? A massive part of LFR and Flex Raiding, is that the actual encounters for both difficulties were passively easier than the normal mode. When you talk about implementing different difficulties, these methods were how Blizzard did it.

And they failed.

So please let us all know how exactly GW2 won’t make the same exact mistakes if they were to pursue different difficulties when based on cause and effect:

- Easier difficulties take development resources
- Easier difficulties do not adequately prepare players for harder difficulties
- Easier difficulties detract from one of the biggest merits in raiding: the First Epic Kill
- Easier difficulties divide the raiding playerbase

…I’ll stop with these for now, have fun!

The LFR in That game literally had you specify what you were, a DPS, a Healer, or a Tank, and slotted you in a LFG automatically for that particular instance. You waited, then got notified when the raid was very close to filling up, and whammo you are all grouped together, tiny symbols of tank, healer, dps next to the corresponding pugs whom you grouped with.

You didn’t know what skill level these other people were running at, but you went through the instance anyways, the difficulty was tuned assuming this.

It took all the effort out of finding a group for raiding, the raids themselves were drastically reduced in difficulty so the players who randomly pugged with one another got a good experience “raiding” and everyone was happy…until the realization that Ghostcrawler spoke of came to light.

It took away the essence of raiding, as realizing that fighting something with trivialized mechanics diminished the effect of fighting the real thing, AND the so-called raiders who attempted to climb out of LFR did so at the expense of their fellow player. They were not adapting as intended to harder difficulties, and the encounters did not have that authenticity as finally killing the boss on its normal difficulty, as a LFR raider, did not have the same FIRST KILL experience.

The LFR raids were the easiest difficulty imaginable bent on trying to get all the players interested in raiding even a tiny bit, a space to go into. What ended up happening was the butchering of Raiding as a whole.

So please, tell us again how GW2 can possibly come up with a system as conforming and welcoming as LFR, yet still keep up the quality raiders have come to expect so far from Arenanet?

Because when the Design Lead of the ‘End of Raiding’ LFR tells you that kind of system that promotes bringing more players in was his worst kitten mistake, you god kitten know any solution similar to it will have very similar results.

TexZero.7910:

I like how people praise LFR, when even it’s creator and lead designer admits it was a flawed solution….

https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/52fxo1/ama_league_design_lead_greg_ghostcrawler_street/d7jwm98

“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?

ProtoGunner.4953:

There will always be people who won’t touch it, but at least there are more people who are willing to join if it is easy to complete.

Why is this a bad idea?

Eats development resources (Why delay development on more raids).
Not the intended audience (Why not just add more open-world content instead).

Are two of the very basic arguments. Raids were literally designed not to be for everyone. Much like how WvW is built around players interested in Large Open-World combat and Structure Sieges, or SPvP is built around small-man objective Player versus Player.

It’s up to the player ultimately whether they go into a piece of content in this game or not.

Let’s keep irrelevant side-stories to the raids. It’s a perfect means to maybe finish some loose ends from Guild Wars 1 that are utterly unrelated to the main story in GW2.

Never should the main story require any raid to get a full understanding of.

Blaeys.3102:

There is a reason this topic keeps getting reposted in various forums (and then all moved to this one) – all by different people.

This is something people want – and it just makes sense.

People have repetitively asked for less time-gates, less gold farm, less effort for earning Legendaries in this game since launch.

Doesn’t make it a good or sensible idea.

Don’t want to devalue T6 bags for laurels, but provides an easy cap on Mystic Coins should they rise too high.

Can we bring back the ‘By Ogden’s Hammer’ Norn in LA as a ghost?

Just have him randomly spawn if you want, say the line, and go poof!

That’ll be great.

For perspective:

- Enemy Pulls and Weakness – Reduce the damage output of the majority of monsters save bosses. Epidemic is a critical utility that ignores toughness (which scales a bit as levels progress) which applies the damage and the weakness to enemies to make them less deadly to the group.
- Consistent damage and several layers to protect against death. Conditions have a duration, meaning that albeit certain Power-based Cool-downs might hit for a ridiculous amount of damage, a condition-user has a bit more flexibility, abusing bleed/burning damage for safer kills. The majority of Bleeds/Burn/whatever damaging condition can be applied at a range, a substantial amount of monsters prefer melee. You can imaging the kiting picture…

Rednik.3809:

Absurdo.8309:

WoW also has increased level caps with each expansion. Should gw2 do the same? Wow is the most successful MMO of all time.

This line of discussion is, well, pointless. Argue why your position would be good in Guild wars 2 (and, in a thread that’s relevant to your topic).

Level caps have nothing in common with raid difficulty model, so no, your argument is perfectly pointless.

All of WoW’s Legacy Raids now and in the future will disagree with you.

By their very design, the Raids in GW2 which are still such a small sub-set of PvE in the game differ profoundly from WoW’s Raid model.

Pretty sure the answer to this has already been mentioned, make your own group.

There is absolutely zero obligation from the group or raid in this question to see what you have got running, it’s entirely possible that they could try giving your build a shot, but you might be a bit out of luck in the general raid LFG unless you make one yourself or join a Training group.

Hell funny story, I think it was a few years back during the time when Arah was effectively the hardest and longest content, I joined a group because they needed a Warrior, and after I zoned into the instance I noticed my party members were all colored pink. Not even joking with you, they asked me to quickly change the color of my armor to pink or I would be kicked. I would have to see if I have screenshots still but I asked if I could use Red instead and well, gg I was out of the group.

It’s not quite the same level of comparison like changing your build and gear, but the group can request whatever the hell they want since they made it. They all have agreed to the terms, and people who don’t agree the group ends up making the decision on whether to keep them or not.

Astralporing.1957:

Sykper.6583:

Please read my last post. We would have gotten a lot of hints just from the events in Bloodstone Fen.

You mean, the area most people start to explore after doing the story there?

You mean you never did Blood and Stone?

That literally brings you on a bit of an exploration, oh and you have to learn Counter Magic which was a new mastery before you progressed to A Shadow’s Deeds

The story literally has you go to the main lore points across the map, unlike other maps where you could try to get away from doing open-world lore Living Story Episode 1 more or less threw it in your face.

Anything else?

There’s always should be a concern about raids crossing the line with lore and content, I don’t intend on dismissing the possibility it could happen. What I am trying to get across is that it has not happened, and that Arenanet definitely pulled a few clever narrative tricks to ensure the lore stayed intact with Forsaken Thicket and Bloodstone Fen.

I can only hope they keep up that level of ‘side-story’ and never make the mistake of having them inter-twine directly. But yes, this discussion has more or less diverted heavily off-topic.

I suspect we will see one more solitary raid wing in the coming months. I would say even as early as the next patch after Rising Flames, so in a few more months.

Astralporing.1957:

Sykper.6583:

We never had a confirmation in the raid that Lazarus lived or died. We started with a hunch, we ended with the same hunch.

No, we didn’t. But if the raid story was really not related, we’d all be surprised by his appearance. Or at least some of us would be, and others would be a little bit more surprised than they were.

The hints in the raid were strong enough however, that when he appeared in the story, he wasn’t a surprise for anyone that was paying even cursory attention.
Raid ended up being a huge spoiler for LS3. Hardly something that’s unrelated.
And for everyone that wasn’t raiding, it was exactly that – a spoiler. Not part of the story you played yourself, but a huge reveal you learned because other people saw something you didn’t.

Please read my last post. We would have gotten a lot of hints just from the events in Bloodstone Fen. The very moment they revealed the White Mantle, people would have started speculating about the last Mursaat. Reading the notes, talking with Bennett would have given everyone just as much spoiler and surprise than the raid itself.

Nothing would have changed.

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.

Blaeys.3102:

I definitely don’t mean any personal offense. I understand that you believe the stories are 100% unrelated. I feel differently – for the reasons I have listed.

I am also willing to accept that this is a fairly subjective topic and where the acceptable line is drawn varies from person to person. That doesn’t change the fact that I (and others) do see the raid as part of the current story arc – and as a part that should have (imo) been more accessible to a greater percentage of the population. I do not see it as irrelevant.

Again, different people will have different opinions on this topic. My opinion was never meant to include all players. But this is something I feel they mishandled and, more important – something I feel will be detrimental to the game if they mishandle in the same way in the future. It doesn’t mean I’m ignoring what you believe to be true – it just means that I believe something different.

This isn’t a matter of belief, you aren’t allowed to dismiss facts as opinions. There’s a confirmed reality of the events happening in the Forsaken Thicket regardless of our intervention, there was nothing we could have done to shape the end result one way or another.

Accepting that the story can be interpreted one way or another is very similar to accepting the view that the Earth is Flat, that facts are not true. We all can ‘perceive’ the horizon and thus justify the Flat Earth reasoning, but there is overwhelming evidence that supports otherwise. It renders holding the opinion that the Earth is still flat illogical.

I am done with this particular topic at this point unless there is a clear objective point made that definitively shows the Raid is directly tied to the main story. All the points so far being made though, points that there is no direct tie-in.

Astralporing.1957:

Sykper.6583:

Did we see Caudecus?
Did we see Lazarus the Dire?

Did the forum know, based only on the raid lore, that the Lazarus will likely be making an appearance soon?
When he appeared in the story, i wasn’t surprised in the least, because i have already been warned (thanks to raids) this might happen.

Yeah, not even remotely related, right…

It’s also entirely possible that they could have killed him off from the explosion of the Bloodstone Magic. We never had a confirmation in the raid that Lazarus lived or died. We started with a hunch, we ended with the same hunch.

Just because the speculators hinted that he could have come back, there’s was an opportunity that he could have been destroyed when we killed Xera. That probably could have made some actual lore hounds extremely angry, and rightfully so.

Heck, Lazarus could have come out in a much later episode, or never appear. My point is that again, just because something is alluded to does not mean it is a substantial part of the story.

Blaeys.3102:

Sykper.6583:

Not completely accurate, activities in the Bloodstone Fen were happening regardless of the circumstances in the raid, there was communication between the two groups certainly, but as you would have noticed if you played the Living Story, the White Mantle activities in the Forsaken Thicket were from the other half of the White Mantle that were trying to bring back Lazarus.

The result, whether you did the raid or did not, was the same. It is precisely why after defeating Xera, Lazarus’s condition was in question. Why do you think our characters mentioned the possibility that we killed Lazarus by interrupting Xera’s little plan? That he might have been destroyed when we beat Xera?

What it came down to, is the same result that we came into the raid to begin with, is Lazarus dead or alive? Nobody knew until the first episode, where everyone is on the same footing.

This is also why Bennett’s ‘nod’ to raiders saving him from Matthias doesn’t break the story either, if you hadn’t raided at all what you would understand from both Bennett and the notes found in the Fen was that a group of mercenaries directly interfered with the Forsaken Thicket, they promptly saved Bennett, and some of the subtle events that transpired in the raid would be left unknown. If you did raid, the same messages apply, Bennett will mention that it was you and your allies who saved him, but nothing else.

If you can’t understand why the above renders the raid for a main-story perspective utterly meaningless, I do not know what else to tell you.

The raising of these questions – the tension and mystery they create (however small) – it’s all part of the storytelling process.

Stop. There’s no questions being risen, you are not understanding me here. The raid’s story is insignificant and does not impact anything the main story that happened in the Fen. The events would have occurred even if the Forsaken Thicket never existed. That’s the difference.

Blaeys.3102:

Can you enjoy Season Three if you didn’t experience the raid? Of course you can. That doesn’t mean that the raid story wasn’t part of the current story arc (of course it was).

Just because you think it was doesn’t mean it actually was. Please read my post rather than quoting it.

Blaeys.3102:

I agree that Forsaken Thicket is a just small piece of the story, but it is still a piece (and in this instance, the first piece) of this particular story – and something that many more players would like to experience for themselves (without having to significantly change their playstyles).

I never actually agreed that Forsaken Thicket was part of the main story, it is actually side-story. An incident that occurred between the events of Mordremoth’s death and the Living Story Episode 1. Irrelevant to the main story of the direct events that happened in the Bloodstone Fen, but alluded to like a small tale.

I am starting to take a little bit of offense if you continue to ignore my points. If you want to continue the discussion at the very least argue against why you believe the Forsaken Thicket story is proven to be part of the main story even though I pointed out why it is not.

Blaeys.3102:

Sykper.6583:

Blaeys.3102:

DrEckers.2039:

Blaeys.3102:

maddoctor.2738:

Maybe the Raid will be inside the Foundry!

As long as they insist on the restrictive raid model they currently employ, they really need to stay away from popular lore-based landmarks/settings/scenarios – and definitely stay away from anything to do with the story the current game is trying to tell.

I realize that is an unpopular opinion among a subset of the community, but it is the situation they have created for themselves if they want to avoid alienating or frustrating a sizeable number of their players.

Why? Look at Forsaken Thicket. The raiders roleplayed as a group of mercenaries that attempted to stop Lazarus Resurrection and failed. It tied into the current Living Story without impacting the Living Story in any way. Key example of the raid impacting the Living Story: Having Lazarus the Dire as a raid boss would be a big no, no.

Why would this alienate a sizeable number of players? It does not impact new GW players, Raiders, or any player who does not care about the story of GW, which is definitely the largest subset of players in the game. Sure, it may alienate a group of GW1 lorehounds who cannot complete the raid, but that is a minority of a minority. And while they may be vocal, they have plenty of options in terms of free cleared instances, in game dialogues and story journals, and out of game youtube videos for catching up on any lore they missed in the raid.

So my point is it would not alienate players to have the raid tie in to the current direction of the Living Story as long as the raid does not impact that direction.

It was a bit more than a tie in. It was the player’s introduction to the story arc and primary antagonists.

Did we see Caudecus?
Did we see Lazarus the Dire?

Were the events in Forsaken Thicket remotely related to Bloodstone Fen activity outside of the well-known use of Bloodstone by White Mantle? Were we even aware that was our next stop?

Nope. None of the things you mentioned were part of the raid story. Try again.

Many of the activities in Bloodstone Fen and Season Three were a direct result of what happened within the raid.

Even the game itself recognizes this – when you talk to the NPC in Bloodstone Fen (which you are asked to do as part of season three) and ask him to “replay” the White Mantle’s origin, he shows the cutscene from the raid.

Not completely accurate, activities in the Bloodstone Fen were happening regardless of the circumstances in the raid, there was communication between the two groups certainly, but as you would have noticed if you played the Living Story, the White Mantle activities in the Forsaken Thicket were from the other half of the White Mantle that were trying to bring back Lazarus.

The result, whether you did the raid or did not, was the same. It is precisely why after defeating Xera, Lazarus’s condition was in question. Why do you think our characters mentioned the possibility that we killed Lazarus by interrupting Xera’s little plan? That he might have been destroyed when we beat Xera?

What it came down to, is the same result that we came into the raid to begin with, is Lazarus dead or alive? Nobody knew until the first episode, where everyone is on the same footing.

This is also why Bennett’s ‘nod’ to raiders saving him from Matthias doesn’t break the story either, if you hadn’t raided at all what you would understand from both Bennett and the notes found in the Fen was that a group of mercenaries directly interfered with the Forsaken Thicket, they promptly saved Bennett, and some of the subtle events that transpired in the raid would be left unknown. If you did raid, the same messages apply, Bennett will mention that it was you and your allies who saved him, but nothing else.

If you can’t understand why the above renders the raid for a main-story perspective utterly meaningless, I do not know what else to tell you.

Blaeys.3102:

DrEckers.2039:

Blaeys.3102:

maddoctor.2738:

Maybe the Raid will be inside the Foundry!

As long as they insist on the restrictive raid model they currently employ, they really need to stay away from popular lore-based landmarks/settings/scenarios – and definitely stay away from anything to do with the story the current game is trying to tell.

I realize that is an unpopular opinion among a subset of the community, but it is the situation they have created for themselves if they want to avoid alienating or frustrating a sizeable number of their players.

Why? Look at Forsaken Thicket. The raiders roleplayed as a group of mercenaries that attempted to stop Lazarus Resurrection and failed. It tied into the current Living Story without impacting the Living Story in any way. Key example of the raid impacting the Living Story: Having Lazarus the Dire as a raid boss would be a big no, no.

Why would this alienate a sizeable number of players? It does not impact new GW players, Raiders, or any player who does not care about the story of GW, which is definitely the largest subset of players in the game. Sure, it may alienate a group of GW1 lorehounds who cannot complete the raid, but that is a minority of a minority. And while they may be vocal, they have plenty of options in terms of free cleared instances, in game dialogues and story journals, and out of game youtube videos for catching up on any lore they missed in the raid.

So my point is it would not alienate players to have the raid tie in to the current direction of the Living Story as long as the raid does not impact that direction.

It was a bit more than a tie in. It was the player’s introduction to the story arc and primary antagonists.

Did we see Caudecus?
Did we see Lazarus the Dire?

Were the events in Forsaken Thicket remotely related to Bloodstone Fen activity outside of the well-known use of Bloodstone by White Mantle? Were we even aware that was our next stop?

Nope. None of the things you mentioned were part of the raid story. Try again.

My best bet would be that either this episode or an episode after this one, we will fight a true champion of Prim, a familiar and difficult Destroyer model likely something from GW1.

Can we stop with the false narrative that LS3 directly followed the Forsaken Thicket Lore?

Thanks!

runeblade.7514:

Sykper.6583:

runeblade.7514:

Sykper.6583:

The Flexible Raid system is one of the failed systems WoW attempted to do back in Mists of Pandaria in order to ‘ease raiding onto raiders’.

Turned into a big mess, this thread sums it up nicely, and honestly I am feeling some deja vu about some of the arguments…
http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/8882348824

If you didn’t care to read much into it, Blizzard went with Boss mechanics scaling based upon the group-size, after utilizing their ‘group-finder’ system to get a big enough group. There would be multiple instances of the same raid, boss abilities got tweaked, etc. Players complained about how certain comps group-finder would make were not optimal, they would complain that certain boss mechanics weren’t working between say a 10-man version of that encounter to the 15-man version of that encounter. Dev mentions that some of the behavior does sound odd, some players question why would they need to go this far when a group-finder does enough of the job? Min-max talk, Flexible Raid is broken, and so on.

Mind you, this thread is years old, but the discussion is still relevant.

This is why I continue to deny this ‘easy-mode’ or ‘practice’ mode, because it is an utter waste of time and resources, and can do much more harm than good.

Leave. Raids. Alone.

Then ANet should just drop raids because it is a waste of time and resources.

What constructive insight. I am more than certain the devs will take your opinion and how the first raid of GW2 ultimately performed into consideration.

Much more constructive than leaving raids alone just because you fear that ANet might drop raids because we want variety of difficulty.

If there is a choice between dropping raids for more useful content vs. having raids not having varied difficulty, I would rather just drop raids.

The only relevant potential issues with raiding at this moment which a few have brought up that I haven’t gotten around to discussing at this time would be the reward incentive as time progresses, and conversion of unused boss rewards like Insights if one doesn’t seek Legendary Armor to something else.

Neither of these relate to varied difficulty, varied difficulty has not been proven to be a valid objective for raids right now, just about every single argument for additional easier difficulties has been discussed against with extremely valid points that I know Arenanet is aware of at this time.

I understand that you dislike raids heavily, you are ultimately welcome to your statements there. Just be prepared for the very likely fact that Arenanet disagrees with you, and that we will have raids in the future because a good enough number of raiders exist in the game, because there’s enough interest right now to make the content useful for them.

runeblade.7514:

Sykper.6583:

The Flexible Raid system is one of the failed systems WoW attempted to do back in Mists of Pandaria in order to ‘ease raiding onto raiders’.

Turned into a big mess, this thread sums it up nicely, and honestly I am feeling some deja vu about some of the arguments…
http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/8882348824

If you didn’t care to read much into it, Blizzard went with Boss mechanics scaling based upon the group-size, after utilizing their ‘group-finder’ system to get a big enough group. There would be multiple instances of the same raid, boss abilities got tweaked, etc. Players complained about how certain comps group-finder would make were not optimal, they would complain that certain boss mechanics weren’t working between say a 10-man version of that encounter to the 15-man version of that encounter. Dev mentions that some of the behavior does sound odd, some players question why would they need to go this far when a group-finder does enough of the job? Min-max talk, Flexible Raid is broken, and so on.

Mind you, this thread is years old, but the discussion is still relevant.

This is why I continue to deny this ‘easy-mode’ or ‘practice’ mode, because it is an utter waste of time and resources, and can do much more harm than good.

Leave. Raids. Alone.

Then ANet should just drop raids because it is a waste of time and resources.

What constructive insight. I am more than certain the devs will take your opinion and how the first raid of GW2 ultimately performed into consideration.

The Flexible Raid system is one of the failed systems WoW attempted to do back in Mists of Pandaria in order to ‘ease raiding onto raiders’.

Turned into a big mess, this thread sums it up nicely, and honestly I am feeling some deja vu about some of the arguments…
http://eu.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/8882348824

If you didn’t care to read much into it, Blizzard went with Boss mechanics scaling based upon the group-size, after utilizing their ‘group-finder’ system to get a big enough group. There would be multiple instances of the same raid, boss abilities got tweaked, etc. Players complained about how certain comps group-finder would make were not optimal, they would complain that certain boss mechanics weren’t working between say a 10-man version of that encounter to the 15-man version of that encounter. Dev mentions that some of the behavior does sound odd, some players question why would they need to go this far when a group-finder does enough of the job? Min-max talk, Flexible Raid is broken, and so on.

Mind you, this thread is years old, but the discussion is still relevant.

This is why I continue to deny this ‘easy-mode’ or ‘practice’ mode, because it is an utter waste of time and resources, and can do much more harm than good.

Leave. Raids. Alone.

Blaeys.3102:

Sykper.6583:

Simply saying ‘It will generate interest’ or ‘It will increase those numbers raiding’ are not good enough reasons to hijack the purpose of raiding as a whole in this game.

No one wants to hijack anything.

It is very much about ensuring the health of raids for years to come. Like you said, there is a gear/level treadmill in WoW that eventually causes raids to fall behind. But there is a time toward the end of each expansion that more casual players can experience the raids (not LFG) due to the gear transitions. That is by design because developers realize there is a need for that – for both story progression and general content reasons.

Raiding was WoW’s only largest end-game, there was no prospect of Horizontial Progression, or rather there actually used to be some of it from Reputation Vendors to get unique mounts and specific attunements for the end-game raiding.

GW2 has multiple end-games. The vast majority of the ‘general’ content isn’t limited by gear in this game at all.

Blaeys.3102:

There is no gear treadmill in GW2 (and hopefully never will be). While that alleviates many issues when compared to a game like WoW, it creates others. Less hardcore players will always be a step behind the hardcore raiders – and there will always be an experience just out of their reach.

Incorrect, which is particularly saddening since you previously stated that WoW has these problems because the experiences get dampened over time due to outleveling and out-gearing the encounters. Provided if GW2 maintains the current status quo of Ascended and Legendary gear being the highest stats in the game, the less hardcore will never truly fall behind those brute-forcing the raids day 1. It will take the less hardcore more time, but the experience will stay constant should they succeed a year from now, 2 years from now, however long GW2 lasts for.

While I agree that the upper level rewards and satisfaction of beating an encounter at the highest level remain important concepts, I also believe there needs to be an intermediate step for those players to experience the raids – both for story and to enjoy the content. Without that, you risk alienating large groups of people, disenfranchising them from the story (however thin the connection) and making them feel like they are somehow less important to the makers of the game.

Blaeys.3102:

For all of those reasons, there needs to be some kind of variable difficulty built into the raid experience in GW2. Other games realized this – even ones that started off with the “go hardcore or go home” approach to raids. It will happen in GW2 eventually. Doing it now – and building into the system – ensures that it will have a minimal impact on the hardcore experience so many people wish to retain.

There’s zero need for it, Forsaken Thicket won’t change in difficulty, it shouldn’t change. In fact, if anything as new expansions and extra elite specializations are brought out, the potential combinations of new raid comps will expand. Raiding will become naturally easier, yet still quite difficult given the current capabilities of the bosses. Green Circles will still need to be stand in (unless you pull off some Distortion Shenanigans) and Gorseval still ends the life of anyone on his platform after a long channel.

You have only speculated what might happen because other raiding MMOs have had this issue. Other Raiding MMOs had an expiration date on when their raid content becomes obsolete, GW2 does not.

Huh.

18 items for the first Envoy Armor Chest, 6 per wing.

We have 6 items hidden in the mist for the Envoy Stage 2 Armor set. And we have an allusion to Raids not necessarily being multiple wings.

Hmmmmm…..

I’ll never agree to anything remotely close to a ‘LFR’ solution that Blizzard created. In fact some folks have mentioned that there were more reasons than just ‘opening’ up the content to anyone with what they call a ‘computer’ into the scene:

- Unlike what we have for GW2, there won’t be level progression, or gear progression. There’s no hard requirements that made the math literally impossible for some characters. WoW does this constantly for every expansion, and suddenly after a few expansions that extremely hard-core raid you couldn’t do a year or two ago turns into a solo instance since you literally out-level everything which breaks all sorts of encounters.

- Touched on it, but the content is time-limited in WoW or any MMO where expansions drop releasing higher levels and thus better gear. For a game so fixated on raiding as literally its single end-game goal, in order to appease its vastly growing population they made decisions as far back as WotLK to make Normal-Mode easier than the Normal-modes of the past, and the Hard-mode the actual end-game that you aim for.

These decisions would later set the stage for massive population depletion, especially since they impacted the quality and quantity of raids being put out.

GW2 doesn’t have any of the above reasons to get players to play their raids, Forsaken Thicket will remain at the same difficulty it is now, and however long it takes eventually more and more players will familiarize themselves and well, it will go into the rotation for veteran raiding guilds for typical raid training or simple clearing and gearing alts. New folks (provided that if I remember properly from Mike O) will have free access to Forsaken Thicket when they get upgraded to HoT once the next expansion hits. I was pretty sure that was the case, that every expansion will open up the past content for free on old accounts and new accounts going forward.

Simply saying ‘It will generate interest’ or ‘It will increase those numbers raiding’ are not good enough reasons to hijack the purpose of raiding as a whole in this game.

Blaeys.3102:

Sykper.6583:

As an FYI, people keep bringing up LFR as if it somehow resolved all easy-mode solutions, the mechanics of the fights are actually ignored outright. For instance raid boss attacks that would normally force a tank swap in the normal encounter are negligible in the LFR version. And players in there are woefully unprepared for the actual normal difficulty encounters, it’s just a loot fiesta under the pretext of being raiding. You can agree that if that sort of solution was implemented in GW2 would be counter-productive no?

I don’t really see people pointing to LFR as a viable example of what this thread is about – and I am definitely not talking about adding something like LFR raids from WoW – that would be too watered down for GW2. Mechanics would still need to be part of the fight.

I would look at something like the OPs example of scaling the fights down to 5 people or the example I used in another thread (remove enrage and heavy dps reliant mechanics, then add a bronze, silver, gold reward system). It’s also likely that neither of these is the right solution. Anet is good at innovation and moving away from the MMO norm. Surely they could come up with a unique solution that rivals anything we could dream up here.

Now, if they did come up with an easily scalable system, I could see something faceroll being part of it solely for the very casual players, but that isn’t really what this thread is about.

That’s the issue though Blaeys. You acknowledge that we can’t have something like the LFR system WoW put into place, yet the ‘scalable’ raid difficulty you speak of needs to accommodate even players running around in their most comfortable armor and stats, regardless of what they be. That’s what is making this so painful, you are effectively telling Arenanet to come up with a difficulty setting that doesn’t trivialize the mechanics too much, yet allows anyone running their most comfortable gear and traits and builds, form up a 10 or maybe even a 5 man setting, and still do this mode and learn about what it will take to do the normal mode.

I don’t mean to insult the devs here, they have done a fantastic job with the first iteration of raiding with the first raid ever in GW2. But what you ask of them is something so insanely improbable on so many factors from not just what the players might be utilizing but what the boss is supposed to do, that it’s not just a matter of toning down the numbers it is ‘Can this easy-mode sustain itself’.

Rather than go through the dozen or so metrics I myself can conceive would make this easy-mode problematic, why not consider the option of having raid wings have paths as suggested and populate them with varied encounters of different difficulties? The easy-mode trio would be the same as the normal-mode trio, however the normal path would adjust for more bosses, which are significantly harder than previously.

Honestly, the best advice I would say to the devs is to truly make the encounters get progressively harder. Spirit Vale and Stronghold of the Faithful do this, Salvation Pass somehow has Slothasor before Trio…who knows why?

Crystal Reid.2481:

Ranael.6423:

Sorry to hijack your answer but if you think you can break the cycle by having a raid only composed of one wing, do you also think that now bosses could also not live in circular rooms/platforms ?

Sure.

Confirmed boss encounter on rapidly collapsing bridge.

Or on back of very large monster.

….Oh god.

Blaeys.3102:

Sykper.6583:

Just as an FYI.

Before the other thread was closed, a new poster created a really interesting take on what I believe is a more sensible solution and middleground: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Different-Raid-Difficulty-Would-Satisfy-Most/page/17#post6319985

The merit of the proposal which consists of a few posts is that maybe not for Forsaken Thicket, but future raids could deliver different ‘paths’ in the same instance that have different encounters. One path might be strictly easy bosses in other words.

This is actually not a bad idea.

This would be a step in the right direction (and is definitely a good sign in that people are willing to consider compromise).

I worry that this might actually take more work than implementing a true tiered difficulty system, though, due to new character models, mechanic designs, etc. It is something worth considering, however. Depending on how the developers did it, it might be the right level of compromise for all involved (only the developers have insight into how it might work).

I think raid one was a good start, but it was far from what it needs to be. With a little creativity and effort, I think they can develop a raid that meets the playstyles of multiple groups without watering down the challenge they are trying to provide. Anet is known for innovative solutions (this game is built on many of them). It’s time to use that creativity and innovation in moving raids to the next step (which, imo, has to be more inclusive).

As you have said, you have no idea how much work would be involved. It’s impossible to judge whether a tiered system is easier versus a raid based on path systems, kind of like how old Dungeon Explorables would work.

Another thing to consider that with this method, providing branches as opposed to a linear format, is that the difficulty does not need to be impacted. Being an ‘easy path’ one difficulty simply means the bosses in that avenue can still be the same level of challenge we have now from say Escort and Trio.

It’s much more accommodating to all than subjecting different tiered instances where it would be far too much work attempting to make an easy-mode instance actually train those raiders on the normal mode. I would say that is just an impossibility.

As an FYI, people keep bringing up LFR as if it somehow resolved all easy-mode solutions, the mechanics of the fights are actually ignored outright. For instance raid boss attacks that would normally force a tank swap in the normal encounter are negligible in the LFR version. And players in there are woefully unprepared for the actual normal difficulty encounters, it’s just a loot fiesta under the pretext of being raiding. You can agree that if that sort of solution was implemented in GW2 would be counter-productive no?

Just as an FYI.

Before the other thread was closed, a new poster created a really interesting take on what I believe is a more sensible solution and middleground: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Different-Raid-Difficulty-Would-Satisfy-Most/page/17#post6319985

The merit of the proposal which consists of a few posts is that maybe not for Forsaken Thicket, but future raids could deliver different ‘paths’ in the same instance that have different encounters. One path might be strictly easy bosses in other words.

This is actually not a bad idea.

Crystal Reid.2481:

A few development updates for you guys since there are some things I can clarify here.

While Forsaken Thicket was 3 wings that encompassed a complete story line, that does not mean all raids will be 3 wings. We’ll do that where it makes sense, and sometimes it will make sense to release a stand alone raid with 1 wing if we think we have an interesting story to tell there that doesn’t need to be stretched out over multiple releases.

This sounds like hype.

The question is, would you let down Gaming Corgi

Or give us more hints

……Not everything needs to be inclusive. I shouldn’t need to demand that SPvP have more jumping puzzle mechanics just because I love those mini-dungeons in the open-world so much, and I would like them in SPvP. WvW certainly didn’t NEED more NPC boss mobs, but we got them anyways.

Is it so hard to ask for an PvE element in this game, that through its very nature being difficult, stays difficult now and in the future? Where any inquiring new player would ask ’What’s the hardest content in the game right now’ and someone would suggest ‘Raids’ and not say ‘Raids, well except for the easy mode’.

Blaeys.3102:

When you look at it, your statement doesn’t really equate to further division. Saying that tiered difficulties will divide the player base just like it is being divided now because of open world is a zero sum start (eg, there is no further division).

But there would be. Right now all interest in raids is funneled into only one difficulty, all persons interested. Adding a difficulty either harder or easier would immediately divide the interest and population, of who knows what the divide would be, into those who want to do the normal, and the ones that want to do the other mode.

Blaeys.3102:

I posit that bringing new people into to raids will result in two groups. The first will be the casuals who just want to have fun in the raid. I say more power to them – more people having fun, the more successful the game is, and the more justification Anet has for investing in more raids. That’s something we all want.

Assuming they need more justification, sure. Is this really necessary though? That’s a question you have been dodging for a while, is it necessary to spend resources creating an easier mode for players who do not want to go through all the hoops that the normal version has to get what they assume is a ‘raid’ experience. You can not make that argument, that raiding can be more successful if they added an easier mode nor can you suggest that bringing in players who normally would not be able to raid the current raid content, to this new content, would generate further success.

Blaeys.3102:

But it is the second group that will have the impact I’m talking about – and the one that moves the needle even further. The group that wants to learn to raid but doesn’t want to beat their head against the wall learning the mechanics.

Excusing the hyperbole there, that particular line I pointed out is extremely important and has been a question left unanswered for a long time now. How does one learn to raid without learning the mechanics? Do you introduce the mechanics in the easier mode but do not make them threatening whatsoever? How would that teach them to deal with it in the normal version, why not just do the normal version and train the normal version while getting currency for wipes?!

Every single time you say that these ‘raiders’ who are interested in raiding but do not want to engage, learn and adapt to the raid encounters but simply just want to win, I feel you are taking a side that is strictly ‘not a raider’. It is anything but raiding if you remove failure from the equation. You aren’t giving these raiders who do not want to try the normal raid a raid, you are giving them a win button.

Blaeys.3102:

So, at worse, it’s a zero sum, only not really, because you would still have more people sharing similar experiences (which could still be considered less division). At best, it deepens the interest in raids, justifies more development and encourages more people to put in the work to tackle higher end challenges – giving those that raid (pug or organized) a deeper pool and more opportunities to raid.

Similar experiences, kind of like how that VG in the Fen is a similar experience for open world groups to have a taste of a raid am I right?

Let’s face it, there will be a net loss of raider population going into normal mode, as those raiders who weren’t quite confident of their skills yet very possibly could have raided normal mode just fine, were caught by an allure to do easy mode. Upon doing easy mode, they might it entertaining or very likely boring, as the ultimate PvE challenge has been trivialized.

Regardless, their perception of easy mode would taint and likely harm their chances of doing normal mode properly, depending on what extent the easy mode diverges from the normal, certain mechanics they could have avoided all together, now they cannot, and they have an entirely different fight. Oh joy! The easy mode did not prepare them whatsoever for the normal encounter! They will have to relearn it.

OR, if the easy mode is just a slightly tuned down version of normal, then there will still be complaints about how hard this easy-mode is. Because people are selfish and lazy, they certainly don’t want to learn, and they believe they are raider material until they get the pressure turned on and they either drop out, or strive and experience a thrill not felt anywhere else in the game right now.

Vicky.4563:

As it is, treb is balanced. The skill level of people using it is like a bell curve, which is fine. Less in the beginning, more in the middle, less at the end.

Is that healthy though?

Why even have a swing mechanic that is irrelevant at the extremes of gameplay, especially on a competitive level where the map is played consistently in Tourneys.

Saying its ‘balanced’ because of an arbitrary bell curve (that we can’t really validate ourselves) I believe is wrong. Instead we need to look at how to make the mechanic provide a valid trade-off, balancing risk versus reward, etc.

There really isn’t any other map mechanic that does this either. Not even Sva/Jotun and the Blue/Red Lords, being NPCs that are killed at varying degrees thanks to player builds and skills, come around the same manner as learning an irrelevant WvW skill not used anywhere else in SPvP. It’s too much of a break from typical SPvP ‘skills’ you would use anywhere else.

Treb needs help.

The thing is that responding to a controversial topic as Rising mentioned would potentially have the playerbase quoting it as a source, leaving expectations high or misplaced and could backfire.

Whereas responding to a simple ‘Thank you Arenanet’ thread is harmless. I get the feeling many devs do want to communicate more, but it is very hard to phrase ‘We are definitely improving raid rewards’ without some sort of backlash somewhere, a controversy popping up, speculation, the usual.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Sykper.6583:

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Sykper.6583:

I think the channel treb mechanic is a bit inconsistent for attacking certain points, and having it turn and not be accurate on a point also might diminish the effect.

Why not restructure it in a way that it will always hit a set distance (directly on the point) and you can select 1 of the three points to directly attack? In other words, no more turning mechanic per say, but say if it were targeting far, the abilities would be something like ‘Turn to Home’ ‘Turn to Mid’ ‘Fire Far’. Then if you selected Turn to Mid in this case, it would turn like before at the same speed to mid, and change the options to ‘Turn to Home’ ‘Fire Mid’ ‘Turn to Far’.

Make all the shots the exact drop distance to the center of the point, remove the channel gauge and obviously implement like a 2-3 second mandatory channel, plus there’s enough space for the ammo abilities mentioned.

So remove any and all skill from using the treb, right now with treb being skill based makes it so a team has to make a choice chance someone being crap at aiming or have them help on point, not provide almost automatic point coverage with treb.

Good. Remove ‘skill’ from a mechanic that ultimately promotes a lack of PvP, make it just like the other map objectives that aren’t supposed to be impacted by how well a player can hold down a button.

The Treb in its current state is far too impacted by how well a player knows how to use the channel gauge, whether they are playing seriously or trolling, etc. Making it more streamline much like how the Skyhammer was changed to an objective circle:

- Removes much of the player disparity when using the treb, as long as a player commits to it the treb will always target one of the three points directly to hit upon a key-press.
- Diminishes the ability of the treb to interact with fights in-between points, or new players failing to play the map mechanic to its fullest potential from the get-go.

It is stupidly designed right now, No Treb is better than the current Treb, my change would at least make it relevant and notable. Not to mention the other team can see how the treb is faced and make adjustments to how long it takes to rotate to a different point for pressure.

It’s stupid because it requires practice to use, and not all that much practice to figure out distances, especially since they have a training site that doesn’t impact any matches if players want to get better, in good hands it is very impactful and should be should strategically, not to be spammed for easy cc point control.

What you want will make it mind numbing point click point control, that requires no thought to use and no repercussions for being bad with the mechanic.

What I want is a mechanic that serves as a fundamental part of that map at all levels, as other posters have mentioned, good hands aren’t touching the kitten thing at high levels.

It doesn’t need to do more CC, or more damage. I am addressing the flaw in having something like a map mechanic being impacted by practice rather than simply playing the mechanic itself.

It doesn’t behave the same way regardless of who uses it, that’s an issue I have with it. Every other map mechanic on the other maps do behave the same way.

BlaqueFyre.5678:

Sykper.6583:

I think the channel treb mechanic is a bit inconsistent for attacking certain points, and having it turn and not be accurate on a point also might diminish the effect.

Why not restructure it in a way that it will always hit a set distance (directly on the point) and you can select 1 of the three points to directly attack? In other words, no more turning mechanic per say, but say if it were targeting far, the abilities would be something like ‘Turn to Home’ ‘Turn to Mid’ ‘Fire Far’. Then if you selected Turn to Mid in this case, it would turn like before at the same speed to mid, and change the options to ‘Turn to Home’ ‘Fire Mid’ ‘Turn to Far’.

Make all the shots the exact drop distance to the center of the point, remove the channel gauge and obviously implement like a 2-3 second mandatory channel, plus there’s enough space for the ammo abilities mentioned.

So remove any and all skill from using the treb, right now with treb being skill based makes it so a team has to make a choice chance someone being crap at aiming or have them help on point, not provide almost automatic point coverage with treb.

Good. Remove ‘skill’ from a mechanic that ultimately promotes a lack of PvP, make it just like the other map objectives that aren’t supposed to be impacted by how well a player can hold down a button.

The Treb in its current state is far too impacted by how well a player knows how to use the channel gauge, whether they are playing seriously or trolling, etc. Making it more streamline much like how the Skyhammer was changed to an objective circle:

- Removes much of the player disparity when using the treb, as long as a player commits to it the treb will always target one of the three points directly to hit upon a key-press.
- Diminishes the ability of the treb to interact with fights in-between points, or new players failing to play the map mechanic to its fullest potential from the get-go.

It is stupidly designed right now, No Treb is better than the current Treb, my change would at least make it relevant and notable. Not to mention the other team can see how the treb is faced and make adjustments to how long it takes to rotate to a different point for pressure.

I think the channel treb mechanic is a bit inconsistent for attacking certain points, and having it turn and not be accurate on a point also might diminish the effect.

Why not restructure it in a way that it will always hit a set distance (directly on the point) and you can select 1 of the three points to directly attack? In other words, no more turning mechanic per say, but say if it were targeting far, the abilities would be something like ‘Turn to Home’ ‘Turn to Mid’ ‘Fire Far’. Then if you selected Turn to Mid in this case, it would turn like before at the same speed to mid, and change the options to ‘Turn to Home’ ‘Fire Mid’ ‘Turn to Far’.

Make all the shots the exact drop distance to the center of the point, remove the channel gauge and obviously implement like a 2-3 second mandatory channel, plus there’s enough space for the ammo abilities mentioned.

Vinceman.4572:

Additionally the bronze-silver-gold system would be a very bad implementation because once a group gets near to the silver-gold time barrier they always have to commit suicide (/gg) to prevent slipping into the silver frame the last second of their try. This would lead to many more attempts to beat the raid boss in pugs and obviously resulting in higher frustration and most likely to rants and toxicity within pug groups.

Ding Ding, we have a winner. This was one of the problems with why this ‘Wildstar’ system was an issue.

Honestly, they could just implement Raid Dailies. Something like ‘Kill Gorseval without using an Updraft’ or ‘Defeat Sabetha without anyone dying’. Have those grant an extra bit of money like gold or maybe a bunch of T6 mats.

The problem are lockouts however. Maybe have the daily achievements for raids address all the bosses so that if you are locked out of a certain boss or have completed it for the week, you can simply join another group who hasn’t killed it yet.

But then there are probably some technical jargon like some groups not wanting to do updraft and just wanting a dead Gorseval. It can get messy.

I think the better platform is that Arenanet can set up a Weekly Achievement for the ‘harder’ version of bosses through Challenge Motes. That might be an alternative for those guilds wanting a little more bang for their buck while doing the weekly raiding.

They could just make those new guild missions.

Albeit, guild missions and guild progression itself needs some work, they need to add some goodies for those guilds who have reached peak progression or some tiers from guilds not quite wanting to max out just yet.

An extra 1-2g whether it be flat or maybe a few more bags from repeat daily only kills might be sufficient.

But bear in mind the raid currency is still used to buy Ascended Equipment, for something that raiders enjoy getting full ascended through raiding is a fairly decent perk that only Fractals compete heavily with (Fractals being far more gold earned).

As more raids do get added, I also do not believe Forsaken Thicket will be forgotten, aside from the ascended equipment I mentioned, there are a few unique and very wanted skins from there that people will farm shards for. Gorseval’s Infusion is expensive for instance, having an infusion like that in every raid will give raiders incentive to raid old raids for a long time.

Plus, old raids serve as training for newcomers.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Ok then tell me why you think more ppl play a raid now, then ppl played a dungeon at gw2 launch (basically the hard content evolution of gw2). Everything points in the direction of very few people playing (and especially succeeding) raids, while dungeons where much more succeeded.

Why would I make that point? There was a large amount of interest in dungeons or literally anything in the game because it was all new. The game was new, people didn’t know jack about how the mechanics worked, dungeons were an unknown with exceedingly difficult encounters.

From the get-go Raids were advertised and known to be the hardest content to come into GW2 by their very design, in which we can see in game as slowly becoming easier to accomplish after time passes and more people get accustomed to them. Forsaken Thicket is (at a slower rate than dungeons imo) becoming a decent routine but challenging PvE end-game. Very much the way Dungeons turned out now.

What you and I can’t deny is that Raiding is quite popular right now, with enough interest that the LFG and LFM tabs for it are being filled out with their intended purposes. Check any Monday reset and you will see a spawn of posts in LFG easily.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

I could have just gave the opinion it’s bad for the amount of players it will attract (op’s suggestion), I gave numbers so people understand my point better. Everyone knows HoT has less players then gw2 launch, everyone knows the gw2 sale figures are at all time low. Everyone knows (while not ultra hard), there’s quite a lot amount of lfg’s for raids.

OP suggested that for its intended audience for people wanting difficult content, that they could eventually make raids longer and/or harder. That’s not a bad point to make, but you followed up with made-up numbers that were ridiculous to begin with. How do you know the number of people who tried Liandri for instance? She was extremely accessible in an area where everyone went into. Fractals at release were a concept everyone would at least try, because it was new content.

So you are trying to link GW2 population decline / retention to the introduction of hard content? One does not beget the other, you can form an opinion at best but you cannot prove it. At all. Especially since Raids are such difficult content that the interest you see in the LFG / LFM is potentially a minority of the raiders in raids. Why? Because people run with guildies or consistent raid groups on a weekly basis. You could say the same thing about fractals except there’s an immense ease to forming a fractal group of 5 using the LFG tool as opposed to a longer delay with getting a raid group of 10 together. This justifies raiders making consistent raid groups without needing to pug.

You see what I just did above? I formed a more cohesive opinion that is rooted in facts. Mind coming up with a point that does the same thing?

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Like HoT mobs scared off lot of people, masteries to difficult to get etc. Everyone knows that.

I cannot deny the existence of players who kept getting pocket raptor’d, or players who simply hate exploring or getting masteries. These are likely the same folks who would have complained about Grenth or Balthazar Temples at launch, because people hate it when content makes them fail. People hate failing, they hate falling behind because they don’t want to put time into anything.

You can see this abhorrently evident when we had that exceedingly rare server downtime for a few hours, and people demanded hundreds of gems for their time. The entitlement to have everything in the game is astoundingly bad for the general populace of this game, but it can’t be helped when the content being delivered is supposed to reach out to multiple branches, Arenanet chose that path themselves.

Heck I am still impressed by players who do adventures often and try to hit the Leaderboards, I am never going to beat the Ley-line guy and I can’t imagine playing the game for the sole purpose of doing Adventure racing but more power to him. I hope they improve on Adventures and learn from the good ones in HoTs and avoid the Bad ones.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Now it’s your turn to prove that raids piqued lots of interest of people, more people then ever played lvl 100 fractals.

Again, don’t have to prove anything. If I had to prove anything, Forsaken Thicket has been around for a few months now fully, and I am still doing raids with veterans and newbies alike who are interested and want to get the content completed.

If anything, I am afraid you are going to have to prove why Raids are a bad thing for the game despite the LFG interest and guild interest for them. Good luck with that.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Disagree.

At gw2 launch 2.546.124 players played hardest content. (Arah dungeon)
6 months later 1.8245.654 (fractal update).
1 year later, 1,124.456 players played liadri, concealing dark (8 orb extra challenge)
6 months later 741.874 (Fractal level 100 was added)
Another 8 months later: 600.754 Hot Added, difficult maps/mobs only this much people have all masteries, map completions, and story completions in this map
3 months later: raids. Player tried 1.541.235. Players succeed 214.456
5 months later, game in stagnation, only two raids added, current amount of total play (defeats included) 412.456
4 months later: OP’s suggestion makes it out: 214.214 people left doing it
4 month later, op’s suggesiton make it out again 124.478
1 year later, 3 inclusions more: 32.458 players left, playing hardest content.

These numbers are artificial, and made up, but they are made up to illustrate a point, wich correlates closely with reality (in my opinion) of what Anet has done.

This is the funniest and worst argument against challenging content and raids I have ever read. The fact that you admit the numbers were made up, yet attempt to justify lies as facts (of which you follow up as an opinion) is a whole other level of literary dishonesty on these forums.

I think I might keep that last quote from you, it’s one hell of a fallacy.

Elena.3642:

After few hours of waiting in LFG yesterday with no real luck (apart from couple people telling me that I should play condi reaper or try rising other class if I want to play power and an offer to join raiding community in Discord) I finally managed to get into raid for Vale Guardian thanks to awesome AnariiUK, who offered a spot so I could unlock raid mastery.

And I got both amazed and speechless as I saw boss melt with like roughly three minutes to spare in enrage timer.

After seeing that – well, I can’t really say that you guys are wrong anymore, can I? You are right, after witnessing a perfect execution of Vale Guardian, I now can agree that yes – enrage timer seems to be fairly set with plenty of time with a good group that know mechanics and can carry even newbie like me (I still managed to get teleported maybe… twice by blue attack? Sorry Anarii!).

So now that I know what a huge waste of time it was to start this discussion and how wrong I actually am I wonder – what could be done to give newbies like me easier time to get into this content?

I’m not sure if anything can be done from developer side of things. Nerfing anything would only really annoy those raiders who love the current challenge (even though after seeing pros in action I now wonder if they are getting any challenge at all from those encounters anymore), so what could be done to allow players to get easier time?

Well, one idea pops up to see if someone could maybe write a guide with tricks and tips that make boss fights bit easier. I’m not sure if there is one anywhere in these forums or somewhere else, I obviously will need to look harder. I did notice one trick during Vale Guardian fight that I personally didn’t know about – Anarii and his group seem to not send anyone to green guardian during split, just focusing on mowing down blue and letting green come to them (or that is what it looked to me, was too busy gaping to really play close attention). Are there any more tricks like that which would make encounters easier? Do any of you guys know where I could find them if there are? And what advice you could offer for groups that are getting into raiding? These are the current questions I have and I will gladly accept any and all advice you can offer.

Thank you all for offers of help, keeping this discussion civil and overall being amazing and nice people. See you all in game.

Without sounding rude, I want to thank you Elena. This is precisely the response many of us in this forum wanted to hear with concern to one of the many topics about the state of raiding. It’s terribly difficult and very brave to admit something like this, and beyond anything else I am very glad that you too were open to the ideas being thrown around.

I believe that you touched on the very crux of where both sides more or less divide on, what constructive suggestions or prospects would make Raiding easier for someone not accustomed to it, without diminishing the raid itself.

I am personally against diminishing the difficulty, nor would I believe an ‘easy-mode’ solution would resolve things given the several points made about what ‘easy-mode’ raiding would take, the costs, longevity, rewards, etc.

So, right now we have to work from the current status quo. Which means from our Raider’s perspective, some very fundamental tips would be:

- Be mentally prepared to Wipe, and improve upon failure.

This is the foremost important aspect, these encounters are supposed to be fairly severe in difficulty compared to the rest of the game. Coordination, Rotations, Positioning, all of these are major aspects that each player needs to get down. Mechanics for each boss have varying levels that challenge all these aspects, and some are more relaxed than others which allow for, as you might have seen, being ‘carried’ a bit on certain phases.

The problem I see most of all is that GW2 has not had anything remotely close to the level of dedication for going in again and again, improving on wiping. Nothing comes close to spending hours on a boss with a completely new group of raiders, and because it is such a massive difference many would feel put off by it. If dungeons somehow kept that same level of difficulty from the start of launch until now I believe we wouldn’t have so many of these threads about raiding.

That being said, if you can overcome this mental hurdle and dedicate time to killing a boss, expecting at least a few hours that night to attempting it, regardless of success or failure you will improve drastically for future attempts. Oh and thankfully Arenanet put in consolation shards for good attempts, which is a very valuable currency to earn regardless of win or loss.

- Do your research, practice on the standing golem, consider your abilities for each encounter

Build + rotation versus what does the boss do. Pro-tip, Slothasor’s fear after he wakes from sleep is a quick double tick of 5s fear within a second. Blocks can actually stop this fear, so Rev Staff 3 (since you are in staff from the CC), Warrior Shield 5, etc are important enough to make sure you yourself don’t get feared.

This kind of thing isn’t something I should be telling new raiders, they could derive this themselves if they consider all the capabilities of what a boss does. Albeit, when a new Raid wing releases this kind of information is actually uncertain but that’s an entirely different set of circumstances outside the nature of this thread.

Point being, you can never be too prepared for a boss, get invested, and that gets you interested.

I believe those two points are some of the big ones.