This is the same stubborn mentality that brings you ‘GW2 is the worst grind MMO’.
It’s plausible that I am being bias with my subjective take on things, but I am willing to gamble my previous experience with games that have had actual grinds or P2W aspects to them that I can safely say GW2 is doing an excellent job making them nearly non-existent or absolutely unnecessary.
Until this game offers an item that you can only get through the gem store with gems, that is an outright upgrade over any pre-existing item you can normally get through playing the game, it will not be P2W.
I like someone’s statement before about it being paying for convenience. That’s extremely different than paying for an absolute advantage over your other players, and you certainly aren’t winning for it.
EQ the intro raids were designed that you could get the group gear (2-3weeks) and start raiding. Or, coming in with last years raid gear was fine, so taking long breaks wasn’t a huge issue (it was pretty normal to take a good 4-5month break at the end of an expansion cycle, and you’d come back for the next expansion missing nothing)
DCUO likewise had group gear lead into raid gear and took about 2-3 weeks to get back up to enter raids, though you could fast track that one with ‘gems’ and it was technically possible to be back and in top tier raid gear within a week, just it’d cost a pretty penny.
In either within a month or two you were in that top tier again.
Of course I could just be flat wrong and it’s more my hatred of the mastery system that makes it feel honestly worse or at least the same.
You say 2-3 weeks as if that were nothing. The release of the Forsaken Thicket wings at their pace was much more forgiving to allow even those who absolutely despised experience grinding, to get the masteries they need over months between the content.
With ascended gear being the apex of stats, there’s not going to be any sort of gear requirement whatsoever in GW2 raiding that requires getting the gear to do so. It ultimately depends on how Arenanet approaches the next raid if they want to slowly increase the Mastery requirements, which is effectively playing the game like we have for years.
I used to really despise gear walls that were far worse in many cases than something like an experience wall which we see with Masteries. It didn’t matter how good you were, your gear effectively nullified any sort of chance you would see the next raid until you got better gear elsewhere.
With the Mastery system? I can do literally anything in the next expansion zones. And somehow that’s supposed to be a barrier? I just can’t understand how people could even consider it a grind, hell I think people are terribly impatient overall in this game.
If they intended T4 fractals to offer the most difficult course of 5 man instanced content, the changes to say Swamp are steps in that direction, as it seems the balancing of the fractals across the multiple levels starts off forgiving at lower levels.
A brand spanking new fractal runner will have a more cohesive time going from fractal 1 to fractal 100 due to this.
I still wouldn’t mind bringing one Condi necro at higher level fractals. It’s an excellent safety net for pug runs that aren’t fixated on speed clears, which is effectively all of the runs which want to get T4 dailies done.
Having to spend a few extra minutes clearing all three T4 fractals versus the risk of a wipe if someone messes up is pretty good. This holds especially true when someone is dead the majority of an encounter, a necro is almost always immortal and guaranteed dps.
…Though, I wouldn’t stack them.
the thing is glenna was down the stairs about 600 units away from me at top of stairs as long as you stay between 900 and 600 units away the boss wont hit glenna.
Doesn’t matter in this case. Raid lead asked you multiple times to stack with the group, if Glenna was going to get nuked due to fear stacks which only summon adds that will not necessarily insta-kill her, let the Raid Lead take the blame.
The group knew more than you in this instance, please let this be a lesson.
But there was no old system…
If you are referring to the Mystic Forge and/or random drops, those aren’t a system and they still exist.
The classes are designed in a near vacuum, and the game modes PvE, PvP, PvW (player v raid) and WvWvW, have very little synergy with some of the classes.
Every game mode has its own style and requirement, and since there is no thought put into the synergy between the classes and the modes you get a “survival of the fittest” approach to team composition. The classes with the most useful features will be picked for that type of game mode.
I think that’s not quite correct, albeit even prior to launch Arenanet did intend for all professions to be self-sufficient. They all have personal healing, they can all actively move and defend themselves, and they can all attack.
The buff system goes off a 5 party group, in which they intentionally gifted nearly each profession with a unique group buff from traits, or some unique mechanic that supplements the group like Warrior Banners. WvW and now Raids have this organizational part that requires managing this 5 party buff system effectively.
That being said, I do believe the solution to this would be Elite Specializations that can fill the holes. If I had to look from a Raiding standpoint we have two roles in desperate need of attention:
- Tanking: Mostly Chronos take this role, however I have run with groups that support a Guardian instead which effectively turns on perma-protection for the group. The biggest issue I have with tanking roles is that the other professions suffer such an intense loss in their damage contribution that it almost seems pointless to bring them. I could maybe see the rare PS Warrior Tank but the Might Stacks can fall off pretty easily if they have to waste dodges all the time avoiding big hits.
- Healing: Druid is Supreme. Druid is Life. Druid is Love. However Healing Tempest is an excellent replacement for some of the encounters in Forsaken Thicket. This is probably the role in the worst shape just because of how effective these two professions are over their counterparts. Ventari Rev seemed to be created in mind for this same exact spot but there’s an unwieldy amount of micromanagement clicking you need to do with your healing tablet that borderlines insanity. It can do the job, but it’s just not fluid play nor fun to play with. And, in order to maintain those heals you would have to have the rev give up the unique boon duration buff, which would be equally insane.
We can have Elite Specializations address these holes, more options is always better, because it enables the possibility of more synergy between profession comps in raids specifically that was not there before.
I think part of what we have right now is that there are certain requirements for each raid encounter that need to be met, because the mechanics justify them.
What we actually should request is more Elite Specializations to come out that allow certain classes to branch out into roles they couldn’t normally do during encounters. Imagine an actually viable Healing Engineer build that’s not impractical bandages (seriously, those need some help).
I mean there is a certain level of flexibility right now, but there’s always room for improvement by not necessarily looking at the encounters, but what professions have themselves that makes them unfit for a certain role.
2 cents.
Even if the Dredge/Ice Elemental had its health reduced, that would ultimately reduce an encounter’s length and not the underlying issue. I mean, I suppose we could make it the easiest fractal boss given the fairly difficult first event…
I digress, right now especially since breakbars were introduced it has become immensely easier to outright negate anything remotely dangerous from the boss in there. You only need to manipulate the boss into the splash zone, CC it for a stun, do a full rotation, and run out. Bombs, Icicles, cleaves, red AoEs that either bosses do when there’s a player in range of it are outright ignored for the sake of having to kite it to the next cauldron to keep the debuff up that actually allows you to kill it.
Ironically, the only interesting mechanic that the boss has that has you designate a barrel friend is holding back the threatening mechanics.
In fact, if I had to think about it some more, due to the fact that the kiting strategy is the only method which the debuff allows time for, Arenanet has neglected to adjust any of the damage output for the other abilities on these Fractal Bosses. They hit like a truck still, easily harder than Volcano Boss. I cannot say what might prompt this as a design choice, but ultimately what we have is a near 100% full kiting boss that has no lingering threat potential, it is the easiest part of the fractal itself because of it.
I could go on a tirade for Underground, but Pope you brought up VG so let’s ponder that encounter and its lead-up.
So I have to disagree with you on Vale Guardian and training the raid. Mainly because of those same initial mobs training the raid on what the defenses are for the split mobs that have a smaller health pool than the trash counterparts. The initial trash does teach the raid nearly all of Vale Guardian’s mechanics, the split phase is likely to cause a single wipe unless some luckily observant and maybe intuitive raid lead deciphers why there are three different colored pylons. …That’s pretty unlikely, but once the first split phase happens and you see those same trash mobs again, the raid could presume that they need to divide and conquer.
The only mechanics that were not influenced were Vale Guardian’s ‘HAND TO THE SKY FOR FUN LIGHTNING TIMES!’ and the damage floors. These would be introduced after the 1st split phase, they could suggest another wipe but once the raid as a whole understands those mechanics this hypothetical new group has all but gotten a grasp of the full fight.
VG is likely the wrong choice for your example Pope, I would have suggested Gorseval and even Slothasor where you only see the mechanics from their adds and not the encounter itself. This might explain why Slothasor was such a pain in the kitten in the first place, but I want to believe that both progression raiders and those racing for world firsts desire the puzzle of figuring out these mechanics and strategies.
But…I will say this. If GW2 raid devs could create an encounter that is difficult and engaging despite having all the trash or events before it teach every single one of the mechanics, that would be on a whole other level of raid design. Not even Blizzard as far as I know has pulled that off, people simply attempt to decipher debuffs, visual clues, and other such mechanics live during that same encounter. I would be immensely impressed that if hypothetically they had the Matthias encounter mechanics for instance, all of them, influencing the entire raid up to that point and then put together in a way that made the final encounter difficult still.
Could you imagine the level of raid design that would be?
Is that really an interesting encounter overall?
Yes. It’s one of the more interesting (and fun) bossfight mechanics in fractals at the moment, actually.
Would you mind elaborating on this? I believe I made several different points that contested this narrative, as every attack but the dodge-able shockwave is ignored for the majority of the fight.
Now, this ball and chain mechanic, would you say it would be more interesting to have it when it hits you:
- Send you flying quite a distance with a heavy stun, a good chunk of your life gone, and you are bleeding and vulnerable.
- Knock you back a bit with a daze, low damage, mild annoyance.Which of these two effects from a mechanic will people more likely ignore outright?
Both. They will either melee, or range. Death zone will be dodged through once. Threat from the mechanic will not matter, because it won’t be actually engaging enough. You might try to force it by changing the safe ranges during fight, but (based on similar mechanics from SW) players will generally not like it. Melee players don’t usually like to be forced into range. Range players don’t like to melee. Most players don’t like to switch between one and the other too much during an encounter. Most builds don’t support that switching either.
(that’s one main reason why too widespread melee hate and missile hate mechanics aren’t generally liked too much)
That’s not the impression I garnered from the Silverwastes bosses (which mind you I might have forgotten during this random thought of mine, hehe) such as the honey boss under the wastes who has fast but short duration safe zones. The damage isn’t that bad, people typically sustain themselves. But of course players never want to have their rotations for damage interrupted because something is about to hit them, that’s the very point of an attack from an enemy, to have you do something about it.
When people talk about pressing 1 all the way through fights, its a hyperbolic point about how people can just do their most optimal rotations for damage or play however they see fit, without any regard to what the enemy is doing. The world is not filled with training dummies.
Would the encounter become more engaging regardless of either of these effects should the boss start spinning the Morning Star faster as it gets lower in health?
Not really (for the same reason as mentioned above). Might make it more annoying, though.
I kind of agree on the whole faster thing, the prospect of a boss swinging his ball and chain around to such a degree where it becomes impossible to keep at least a single rotation of damage on it would be very frustrating. I probably would have instead suggested that isn’t going to give the melee a nightmare to chase.
I should rephrase, would the augmentation of capabilities make the encounter interesting? Think Mordrem Cavaliers being dismounted at half life, that sort of change.
Objectively, should the mentality of players be that an Interesting mechanic is one that should not be ignored lest there be pretty bad consequences, or one that is annoying because it cannot be ignored even though it can never kill you?
“Objectively”, “should” and “interesting” do not fit in one sentence. But to answer the question you wanted to ask – both and neither. Both of those can be interesting, and both can be boring. Both of those can be fun, and both can turn to be unfun and irritating. Sometimes it will depend on the mechanic in question, often it will depend on the player.
There’s no “should” in this however. It’s not only not a game’s (or yours) job to change mentality of players, it would also be completely futile. If a player doesn’t like certain mechanic, no amount off telling him he’s “objectively” wrong will make them like it.
By the way, just thought of something. Attack gliding in new area is an interesting mechanic. Even if it’s not really dangerous. And can be ignored with no effort whatsoever.
It is also a lot of fun.
I worded the inquiry a bit poorly there, allow me to try again. I don’t think anyone could ever sway opinions on a particular mechanic in this game, some people like pocket raptors for what they do, yet others despise their existence for the same reason.
But either opinion shouldn’t have a sway on whether a mechanic is healthy for the engagement and interest in the encounter. You referenced it before, depending on the implementation, some mechanics become fun and engaging while others become dull and annoying (mostly unfun) just through their design.
A literal ‘Metapod’ enemy casting ‘Harden’ all the time without offensive capabilities, rendering all physical attacks against it void while making conditions very effective is an encounter I believe you and I would agree is not particularly well done.
An enemy built for high damage but low health, that will stunbreak and roll-back when engaged on might build a bigger interest though. Oddly enough, that’s a Mordrem Archer, one of the most talked about controversial creatures in the Jungle. Players still die to them despite certain indicators that let the player know when they are being targetted, nor do they adapt to the fight either. Yet they call it bad design, not interesting and not fun…
…Side-note, yep there’s a lot of potential with the new gliding attacks, it doesn’t have substantial damage but it carries a very strong CC and a slight group healing AoE. Plus, the additional requirement of needing you to be gliding could lead to Arenanet designing future content and encounters with updrafts and terrain in mind.
I think I understand where the other point is being made, but I believe that there’s an underlying issue with it.
So let’s presume we have a mechanic that’s not a threat but has to be dealt with in order to progress with the boss. The underground facility fractal encounter is an example of this as you mentioned. The boss needs to be positioned in the splash zone and there’s an interact-able console that applies a necessarily debuff which allows you to damage the boss effectively and prevent it’s own self-healing ability.
True, it has an engaging property to it, you need to designate someone for console duty (though sometimes the boss will aggro to console guy, making the encounter a little more annoying), while the rest have to actively be ready to do a kiting dance with the boss under the splash zone.
What happens though with this particular encounter, is that as a fight built around kiting the boss and staying in its potential threat zones only temporarily, turns it into a drawn out encounter with very little instances of active threats, sole exception being mainly the boss’s global attack which is not used very often.
It turns stale quickly. Neither Ice Elemental nor Dredge Suit escalate their attacks when you kite it constantly and properly, and provided that you can dodge the global shockwaves (something that you can train and learn on) the fight turns into a HP sponge. Is that really an interesting encounter overall? I can’t say that the Underground Facility boss is that interesting because although a mechanic is a requirement to pull off to beat the encounter, nothing else in that fight is putting you in danger because you are constantly at range of the bosses.
If that’s not enough, let’s try a thought experiment.
We have a large golem boss that possesses a single main mechanic: He wield a very large morning star with an extended chain. At the start of the encounter it swings around him until the actual spiked ball at the end of the chain is roughly 600 range from its main body, leaving safe spaces in its melee range or long range. The ball rotates around the boss in this smooth circular fashion every 3 seconds, so you can actually run in after the ball passes by.
Now, this ball and chain mechanic, would you say it would be more interesting to have it when it hits you:
- Send you flying quite a distance with a heavy stun, a good chunk of your life gone, and you are bleeding and vulnerable.
- Knock you back a bit with a daze, low damage, mild annoyance.
Which of these two effects from a mechanic will people more likely ignore outright?
Would the encounter become more engaging regardless of either of these effects should the boss start spinning the Morning Star faster as it gets lower in health?
Maybe introduce a breakbar that if not broken after 5 seconds the boss will throw the Morning Star into the ground causing a massive tremor that deals decent damage. But this too is a new mechanic, would it be interesting if this CC breakbar needed to be done lest it do massive damage or should the tremors be tolerable with just a single popped heal?
Objectively, should the mentality of players be that an Interesting mechanic is one that should not be ignored lest there be pretty bad consequences, or one that is annoying because it cannot be ignored even though it can never kill you?
With the discourse going forward about Raids and the latest Fractal Revamp, there has been a repetitive theme going on about a prospect that I want to discuss in detail here. It has implications in more than just the two discussions above so I felt it needed its own separate thread so we can flesh out its nature.
As per the title, I am here to talk about Interesting Mechanics, their purpose, requirements, and what they are and are not. Feel free to disagree with me on any point, I am more than happy to oblige. Going right into it then:
Interesting Mechanics can be new.
Interesting Mechanics must be different initially from the normal.
Interesting Mechanics have to be threatening.
Interesting Mechanics could be learned and potentially mastered.
The above is what we have been seeing from Raiding. It is what we have been seeing being introduced from the latest Current Event Champion Bandits who have variant attacks from one another, and more impressively the Bandit Executioner. And definitely from what we see in the Fractal update and Bloodstone Fen which introduces open-world Special Action Buttons.
However notice the phrasing I have above, only half of those statements are actual requirements. Interesting Mechanics don’t always stay new, and some of those interesting mechanics have the potential to be mastered flawlessly. I wouldn’t place VG mechanics too heavily on the latter as the raid has zero exact control over where blue circles and green circles spawn only that they can somewhat manipulate and react accordingly. Yet, it is because if the raid does not do the mechanic properly can something very threatening happen. And most certainly do Vale Guardian’s Mechanics have stronger punishments than the Unbound Guardian who provides benefits instead.
This all being said, I believe you will understand why I described Interesting Mechanics in such a way above. The mere concept of an ‘Interesting but Easy’ Mechanic is an oxymoron. It’s contradictory, it cannot exist.
It has been pointed out that the Unbound Guardian is similar in its nature and design to the Vale Guardian, reinforcing those who stand in Green Circles a damage buff while blue circles still can hit you fairly hard. But it is less threatening because of the reduced punishments and even less mechanics (no glowing damage floors or split phases). It is the perfect example of why Interesting Mechanics have to be a threat.
When you take away the threat regardless of what it is, the mechanic in question however unique, is ignored. Imagine the difference if those Legendary Wyverns in the Magumma Jungle had their breath attacks only apply a steadily climbing burning rather than a strong damage zone hit every second plus that burning. People would stand in those fires and dance their way to a dead Wyvern, rather than learn to stay out of them because fire is bad.
Does this ring true to some of you? Does anyone disagree with this?
Anytime you start off with ’I’ll share with you some facts’ you are being naturally antagonistic and taking some sort of high ground.
I very well could have pulled my punches, but it is far better to realize that although this game has a lot of soloble content, it is very much an MMO where everything you do can and will impact those around you.
I don’t want to go back into that age-old discussion about the individual versus the group, that’s been going on far longer than raids have been around.
I do know however, that as long as Arenanet has the numbers they know exactly how many people are raiding, and will know how to drive development. They seemed extremely optimistic about how well-received the current iteration of raids have been, thus my conclusion is that they are very likely to keep up that trend and provide more raids down that path rather than be distracted by an ‘easy-mode’ option.
I’ll share with you some facts:
ArenaNet had a core philosophy. I don’t know how long you’ve been playing (maybe since launch like me) but it’s always been about having no class roles.
Utterly untrue simply due to class mechanics. Without even going into raids, there’s are massive issues with say Warriors being good group healers, or thieves being able to take many hits just due to mechanics, health pools, etc.
There is no healer, no tank, no clearly defined DPS. That means dungeons are doable with no “healer” as they don’t exist. They’re doable by whoever and whatever combination of classes want to try.
What you meant to say above is that everyone can be independent, each player has their own healing, their own kinds of defenses, their own damage, etc. Dungeons used to be the hardest content in the game at launch because no one knew anything about how to approach them. Aggro wasn’t a thing, people went into AC in greens and yellows at the level it was at. Fun times, but quite easily as difficult as raids are right now.
There was always only one criteria:
You have the play your build well.That used to be the “core philosophy”.
There’s a certain irony in a full ascended nomads player telling everyone that the requirement for doing instanced content is playing your build well. Actually, if that’s the core philosophy as you describe it, it still exists now. You have to know how to play your profession properly alongside others to succeed in raids. That’s literally the point of raiding.
Understanding that, we can apply it to the game’s content…
Dungeons? Check.
Fractals? Nope
Raid? No check.
Fixed that for you, I weep for any pugs that bring your immortal but ultimately not doing any damage profession into a high level fractal. It’s utterly unbelievable that you think you are providing any sort of support in the fights when by being without damage all groups with you in it have much longer encounters, which can lead to more mistakes by your party members who actually geared to kill something.
You playing nomads is actually killing your allies.
Remember, their idea for the game was “allow any combination of classes to succeed, so long as they’re played well”.
Wouldn’t mind you having a link for that quote, or are you just reinforcing a point you made earlier in this same exact post?
Raids don’t fit that description.
Neither did Fractals when they first came out, a new PvE end-game concept imagined. Now look where we are after years of supporting that content. Raids are the same thing, a different branch of difficult PvE content focused on a larger than a party group that needs to coordinate together their builds, gear, tactics and skills to defeat epic bosses. Neat!
You can’t beat it with everyone wearing Soldiers gear. It doesn’t matter how good you are, you won’t beat the timer.
That, in and of itself, defies the core concept.
Very true, but raids were not meant to follow the same PvE conventions found elsewhere, much like how Fractals require you to get Agony Resistance to even do the higher levels.
Honestly practically speaking, Raids are even more accessible.
For me it comes down to the timers and the mechanics revolving around doing it as quickly as you can.
Mai Trin 100 has no timer. Lots of people STILL get ripped out of their minds. Could they make it a little harder? I’d love that. I never die on Mai Trin 100.
A rock placed on your keyboard can do Mai Trin 100 if geared for full Ascended Nomads Druid.
A timer is a cheesy way to introduce difficulty because it doesn’t fit well certain activities.
Of course you are on that side of the Timer Argument.
A timer is important in competitive track and field. It’s all about speed.
A timer has no place in competitive weight lifting. It’s not about speed.
Pointless and irrelevant comparisons, mind laying off those will you?
GW2 is not about speed. It’s not about any one thing.
Quite right! It’s the players who make it about speed, because they understand what happens when you aren’t doing things fast enough. Cause and effect, if a group does less damage overall to Subject Alpha for instance, there are more chances for someone to actually get nuked from something, and downstates can cascade fights poorly and waste everyone’s time. Turns out, players like doing things quick because their time is valuable.
If they introduced a solo challenge fight where a boss had 1000 health, you did 10 DPS (according to your build) and you have 60 seconds to beat him, you lose. You just lose. You’d do 600 damage by the time the timer had run out and the only way to beat him would be to change your character. Basically play a different way.
What? And adapt to the encounter? By Ogden’s Hammer what horror!
That goes against the core concept of the game; again, being that anyone can do anything as long as they’re good enough.
You have a different take on the core philosophy made back then. I do remember them talking about how everyone can heal, everyone can do damage, everyone can have their own defenses and be independent. That however does not mean you can do literally everything with anything. Sure as hell ain’t killing Destroyers as a Burn-only Guardian Build.
You see, there are 2 aspects to “your character”:
- there’s the numerical stat-based representation (your armor, traits, skills, weapons, runes, sigils, etc.).
- there’s the person sitting at their computer desk wielding #1
……….
No matter what build you play, if you’re just not that skilled a player you’ll do poorly and won’t be able to complete some of the content.
It’s almost as if this game has a certain set of requirements for you to do to get a reward. I wonder if you feel the same way about Holiday Specific rewards where you know people can’t do Clocktower at all.
It’s easy to call everyone else out when you’re playing a META build and can’t understand why anyone would want to play anything else.
It’s not at all laziness on my part that I’m not doing the raids. Post in the LFG that you’re full Nomad’s and watch what happens. You’ll be watching for a while because nothing will happen.
Actually I reckon people will think you would be from [SALT]
Just kidding, they would think you would be trolling as no one wants to have to 9-man a raid while carrying a nomad’s druid who could probably do some nice heals, but have thousands of DPS less that has to be made up with everyone else.
Oh wait, I have an idea. Let’s make our own raid. Oh wait, the second people figure out you’re wearing Nomad’s they’re going to leave your group.
It’s quite frustrating because I’m used to being welcome to participate in whatever people are doing, because I’m good at pretty much everything I do.
Dungeons sure, Fractals are a big maybe unless you are playing with guildmates or friends. Very surprised a pug hasn’t called out the group for noticing a severe lack of damage during Fractal Encounters. You might be lucky sir!
Even in the hypothetical situation that an easy-mode could be created, under no circumstances should it ever provide:
- Legendary Insights
- Unlocking the unique boss skins for each boss kill
- The same amount of Magnetite Shards, far less in fact.
Making the argument that you want easy-mode raiding is fine, but when you want similar rewards what you are actually saying is that you wanted easy-mode raiding because you couldn’t earn those rewards otherwise.
And I know a few of you genuinely want Easy-mode raiding for the experience or training or some other method, I have said my piece before about how I feel about that but I can understand where you are coming from. But you have to realize that a few folks here who want easy-mode raiding, want the loot period. They are using it as an excuse…
Were not asking anyone to remove the challenge that exists now – or even change its design.
Wrong. The mere existence of easy-mode raiding would be a detriment and scar to what raiding is supposed to be: The Ultimate PvE Challenge. Adding an easy mode would break it regardless of the intent of easy-mode whether you want to admit it or not.
What were talking about is an interim experience that allows people interested in story/interesting fights/training to have a realistic chance of experiencing all of the raid content.
We have already discussed what little story is involved, that’s a fruitless venture to branch into.
Interesting fights is a fun one, because you are under the impression that the fights will still be even remotely the same as their normal versions. Do you think an Easy-Mode VG will be interesting if the easy-mode has utterly nerfed mechanics that any group can ignore outright? The moment you want anything interesting happen in a instanced environment with your fellow allies, you will have people complain bar none. There is never a bar that’s too low, what you define as interesting can very well be still too hard for the general populace.
By that very logic, in order to sate the entire populace you have to create encounters that can be done by the lowest common denominator. So no, Easy-mode encounters can not be interesting as you suggest, that’s hypocritical.
Finally, what purpose would these easy-mode raids be to train groups? Doesn’t the implementation of Magnetite Shards on failed attempts give raid groups right now incentive to train on encounters?
That doesn’t take away from the challenge of raiding in any way. It doesn’t remove the prestige of doing the hardest content in the game. All it does is give more people a way to develop real interest in the game mode – justifying continued development and giving raiders a deeper pool of potential allies when making groups in the future.
There doesn’t need to be justification for the content to reach a wider audience. It’s very intention is to be the most difficult content on a PvE spectrum, much like how SPvP isn’t for everyone, WvW isn’t for everyone, etc.
Raiding right now is very healthy, it is getting its intended audience it certainly does not need anyone who doesn’t want the authentic raiding experience.
Even if their original intent was for raiding to be solely about challenging content, I think it’s time for them to open their eyes and realize more is needed to make the game mode fit into the GW2 experience – in ways that can only benefit the game and the raiding community.
I believe it is about time you open your eyes and realize that what you ask for is in complete opposition for what raiding is supposed to be. You keep coming back to this argument that ‘But I raid so I know this is a good idea’ as if that gave you some insight into what might be good for the game as a whole.
It is not, yet I believe it is also very difficult to explain to you in a way that helps you to understand what it is you are suggesting, so allow me to paint you a picture of what you are telling us on the other side through some (obviously hypothetical) examples:
- You are asking SPvP devs to create a version of the Heart of the Mists where you can queue up for everything like before, except you will always face AI bots with both strategically and skill deficits, so that non-SPvPers can ‘enjoy the SPvP experience’.
- You are asking WvW devs to mimic all the borderlands and EBG, with mass AI zergs and some AI roamers to emulate a real WvW environment for those not interested in fighting other players for real, so some folks can ‘enjoy WvW’.
Easy-mode raiding would be a waste of time and resources, period. Just because there would be no end to the balance of it. It is unreasonable to ask Arenanet to create the Easy-mode, and the Very Easy-mode, and then the Easiest of modes because there will always be someone worse than you.
Do you understand Blaeys or do you want to continue your belief that somehow what you envision an easy-mode raid to be would be accessible to everyone? Because it wouldn’t. It never could, people still can’t beat the HoT Story mode, hell I know people who actively refuse to go into HoT maps yet want in on everything.
Hint: expanding target audience is a thing. If it was okay in one case, it’s equally okay in another.
By that logic, we need to get WvW devs to create WvW AI blobs that people can fight instead of other people. We need some of that Overwatch Bot AI for SPvP where you don’t actually have to fight other players.
Of course, all of this at the expense of production of new content for those players involved originally.
How can one be against something that cannot possibly affect him/her is beyond me.
sigh
Because it can and will affect him/her.
Here’s a few just off the top of my head:
- Resources, regardless of their origin from either the raid team or some other PvE team, will impact production of all future content.
- Reward balance to avoid disfranchising raiders who had to fight hard for their encounters versus those seeking a lighter challenge. The incentive too good in easier modes? No one would try for a harder difficulty. Incentive too weak? No one would ever play easy mode raiding, and would rather farm Open World.
- Population for raiding divides, and depending on aforementioned previous point before, it’s entirely plausible that easy-raiding becomes the core method for farming raid only currency.
And probably a very important point that someone like you might not ultimately ever consider:
- Raiding is supposed to be an ultimate PvE challenge, as per its own premise. Having an easier difficulty defeats the whole purpose behind raiding’s existence.
I have very likely missed a few other points, but I believe I have competently countered your point objectively that adding an easier mode can’t do harm.
Reading some of the replies here made me realize, again, that people like to respond for the sake of responding to a topic, without any thought and without a proper reading of the topic.
It boggles my mind why would anyone be against this idea.
You want hard? You have a difficult option.
You want to experience the content but with less rewards? Sure thing.
Please read the responses from people who are against the idea before dismissing them all together.
Your statements have already been talked about 50x over.
It’s not critical and it is not required, but I do believe they were both part of the same story arc. The raid was the player’s first introduction to the current conflict and what the White Mantle was actually up to.
As an example, when the Lazarus revelation came at the end, those who had experienced the raid story had a better understanding of how he came to be there – and they felt a much stronger connection to that storyline. For everyone else, it likely came out of left field – and definitely didn’t have that same level of connection.
The same is true earlier in the living story when we learn of the bloodstone explosion and its effect on NPCs – and of certain details surrounding the White Mantle.
Raiders were there first. They were given the chance (those that cared about that kind of thing) at greater immersion into the plot. And, that isn’t something that can be achieved with video or a few lines of NPC dialogue text (and definitely not with a cleared instance).
It potentially lessens the excitement for non raiders and makes them feel disenfranchised (we some examples of that in this very thread).
My point, however, is that this level of disconnect is not necessary. They need to take a more holistic approach to the PvE end game, making sure everything is there for all players to experience – and then add the challenge across multiple areas of the game through tiered difficulty levels – creating a mix of accessibility, challenge and storytelling tools that aren’t hindered by either of those things.
You’re making the raid story out to be more than it really is.
This.
Go to Bloodstone Fen and fight the Unbound Guardian. Lern that fight and then you got your first easy mode boss.
100% this. It is an intelligent reuse of assets and it is great way to learn a bit about VG mechanics without having to form a group to raid.
What mechanics? Any “mechanics” of legendary unbound guardian could as well be just visuals for how much they impact the fight (hint: none at all).
It’s as if devs decided to make a jab at people asking for easy mode raids, by using a strawman example of one (and hinting using the name of the achieve that’s the best people can count on seeing). Any ties to vale guardian are nothing more than a bad (and definitely not funny) joke .
Seekers and Blue Circles still hit fairly hard from the Unbound Guardian, the green circle gives an incentive to ranged standing inside of it for a damage buff rather than preventing a wipe mechanic. The spirit of VG is in the fight in a much more easier form (people however like to stand in overlapping blue circles when he dips below 25% for some reasons).
By calling out unbound guardian, you have only hurt your own arguments for easy-mode raiding by proving you do not care about the encounters, just the loot.
At this point, and given the profound evidence in the other thread about the lore in the raid being utterly irrelevant to the main narrative of the Living Story, I believe we have reached a point demonstrating why Easy-Mode raiding would be a terrible waste of time and resources.
We need different raid modes.
We have normal mode right now, we need hard mode.
Actually, just step it up the next raid’s normal mode, we got a decent spread of encounters from this first one, let’s have less Escorts (albeit if it were just an event prior to a boss that’s fair), more Matthias…es?
Anyways, the larger issue present is that those who actually put in the work to raid and do the bosses on repeat find themselves getting better as raiders overall, more accustomed to dynamic changes in the encounter. VG is a decent introduction to changing strategies on the fly when people go down, and fights like Matthias or even Keep Construct test those capabilities.
Let’s not entertain the prospect of reducing the difficulty of raids and thus destroy the very nature of which the raids were created- The Ultimate Challenge for PvE End-game. If any solution did need to be provided for some obscene reason not yet fleshed out, the resources for this…‘non-raid’ raid difficult should never come from the raid devs but from work towards future open world PvE content.
I do not want the raid content that exists now, the quality and delivery of it to be diminished because of a group that seemingly knows what everyone wants, over what the content’s intended audience is supposed to be.
I just want to say that although the devs did a superb job at keeping the main overall lore and side-story lore intertwined in such as way that it does not mess with the main narrative, that I really do hope they keep up this…distance between the two.
If Lazarus in the next episode makes a quote at me for being the one to indirectly interfere with his plans previously, that would be crossing a very big line.
But, I think overall this episode proved that the devs did not absolutely break the lore continuity. Keep it up and most of all, I really think this previous LS episode was one of the best episodes by far.
I don’t think it’s all that far of a stretch, it’s still all Tyria history, something that isn’t spoken about often until brought up (Hence that whole joke about ‘Human History Class’ when my Norn was asked).
Point being, the Player Characters didn’t really need to recall the White Mantle until it became relevant, their knowledge across any of the races might have been spotty at best but they only needed to recall that the White Mantle were hostile Zealots. It also helps that Almorra in game was more than willing to refresh the lore for the Commander prior to going on the airship.
The Bloodstones, or rather the Magumma Bloodstone blowing up was not an instant process. The White Mantle have been working on it for years, they managed to put a small crack in it before Zhaitan’s death (Introduction of Small Crack = Vaporized Slaves according to Justicar’s notes).
Overtime, even when Zhaitan died and his energy released the Magumma Bloodstone in canon received some of it, and began growing out of the crack, cracking it some more and forming crystals for the White Mantle to experiment with. As you said, Volcanic Explosions are potent, but the outer shell of the bloodstones were quite durable enough.
I am actually more curious about what kind of tools managed to finally break the outer shell originally of the Magumma Bloodstone, all it says in the notes you find in Bloodstone Fen is that they were increasingly annoyed by how much longer they would have to try to break the shell open until I guess the shell caved.
Just as an FYI, things like the Bloodstones and White Mantle are canonically common knowledge, the former especially given what a Bloodstone actually is to Tyria. The White Mantle were likely lesser remembered, and I would say that Sylvari characters probably would have the least impressions from them given their short span being on Tyria.
The ‘Chummy with Bennett’ point is something I have not really considered, albeit he’s a NPC you have to meet up with during the LS episode. I would have to run through the dialogue again to see if I can’t get a different perspective from him, it’s difficult to come up with subjective viewpoints.
Can the devs answer whether or not this lore bit from the Squad Leader is different for raiders? This is an actual concern I want to go through.
If you rescued Bennett in the raid and you have the corresponding achievement, he’ll say that you saved him. If you don’t have that achievement, he should simply say that he was rescued. It’s a simple acknowledgment in a couple of spots. Here’s what I mean.
Didn’t Rescue Bennett in Raid: “After I was rescued, I notified the queen about Salvation Pass. Then I regrouped with my squad and chased some White Mantle here.”
Rescued Bennett in Raid: “After you rescued me, I notified the queen about Salvation Pass. Then I regrouped with my squad and chased some White Mantle here.”
Didn’t Rescue Bennett in Raid: “I’ve been thanking Dwayna that the rescue team found me in time. If not for them, I’d be rotting in a ditch.”
Rescued Bennett in Raid: “I’ve been thanking Dwayna you busted me out of that infernal place. If not for you, I’d be rotting in a ditch.”
Thanks for this Bobby, this is more acceptable than my original assumption. If there had literally been extra dialogue rather than a few word substitution I would have been more upset. I still might be a little bit weary, but at the very least from a continuity standpoint both a non-raider and a raider will see extremely similar contexts.
I think part of the issue that needs to be addressed is that people are still working under the mentality that the lore follows the game releases. From a gameplay perspective Raiders have been fighting White Mantle in the raid for months. From a lore perspective though, the raid and then the Living Story are literally within days of one another, where the overall narrative of White Mantle, their goals, the Bloodstone and even Lazarus are definitely described better in the Open World.
What does the raid divulge? There’s bandits up to no good, that carries into White Mantle, and a few of their high ranks trying to mess with Bloodstones (things lore fans kind of take hand and hand), and finally their goal of reviving Lazarus.
…We get an unknown at the very end. There was no confirmation of what happened, we are left with uncertainty, as if our whole mission which was to originally save Bennett ended up leaving us scratching our heads. The only thing we accomplished was killing some White Mantle, and then days later the events of Living Story come out and we finally do get some true story involvement with climaxes and twists.
The raid lore is a side-story, unneeded for anyone to have a complete understanding of the Living Story.
One of my biggest concerns about the Raid lore was that there would have been a very clear indicator that the events in the raid actually impacted the open world content. For instance, if the raid lore was indeed part of the main story rather than a side-story, you would have heard members of your group literally talk to you about it or mention ‘So I heard you infiltrated some White Mantle Stronghold’.
There would have been more animosity from the White Mantle zealots who definitely have you KoS. “You killed Inquisitor Matthias! We will see you bleed!” Things of that nature.
By and large, if we pretended that the Raid literally did not exist and we had this Living Story episode, there would have been just about zero loss in lore. The scraps of paper we find in the open world zone that talk about some ‘Matthias’ and his experiments would just be some random NPC name-drop about White Mantle Activity further north of Verdant Brink and nothing more. We get that all the time in the game, not all stories or lore points are spoken for.
This is why for the most part they did extremely well, in fact the Living Story never even brings up the Forsaken Thicket, the events that transpired there never impacted the lore we get from not raiding.
Maybe you all need to play through it again to understand that what you talk about with concern to ‘significant part of the story behind raids’ is not true in the slightest. Literally the only thing I have justified as to breaking the lore isn’t found at all in the Living Story so far, it’s an open world NPC who may or may not change his dialogue.
That’s it. That’s the only instance, and although it is a slight 2 lines (Start of Options 3 and 4) I believe that still crosses a line that a lore snippet is locked behind Raids, because it does mention that you had a contribution in at least saving Bennett.
That’s literally it.
If you are referring to the quote from MO:
“Armor sets are by far the most expensive reward we can make. A full set includes heavy, medium, light, times five races, times two sexes, so it’s like developing 30 sets. It takes nine months to develop. (That’s for a normal armor set — legendary is much longer.) It’s not something we can do for Living World episodes. Individual pieces are good rewards for Living World episodes; full sets are more something for expansion packs.”
Where he doesn’t even directly say anything about how far the Envoy Legendary Armor has come, I believe you have nothing to back up your claim.
The problem is, it was. It was the first introduction to the conflict, the bloodstone (in this timeline) and main enemy. It was chapter one – no matter how much they want to tell us it wasn’t.
That is bad form – poor storytelling – and a VERY BAD precedent for the future (in my opinion, of course).
Incorrect.
You are under the presumption that just because the Raid has the first instance from a gameplay standpoint of White Mantle Involvement and Bloodstone that it somehow breaks the storytelling by having it being the first chapter.
This is not true.
Even before the current events as we traveled through the Silverwastes we saw small indications of the White Mantle with badges, cloth, pieces.
The current events started escalating the story of the White Mantle, they becoming more directly involved. Without even going into the raid, the Living Story episode needed to escalate it further and just before we enter Bloodstone Fen we do hear about their activity, and Almorra was able to give you a low-down before going there.
This, chronologically and from a lore perspective, should be the first instance and massive lore dump for the White Mantle. And it WAS. Without even going into the raid, you can understand everything, and the Bloodstone Fen gave you more lore than the raid ever provided.
That’s why your concern falters, the raid is a side-story that is unneeded from a lore side. It is when the results of what you do in the raid that result in different context in the open-world is where I take offense.
Spoiler
After going through the story, and the open world zone released…I can definitively say that the main story has little bearing to the events that transpired in the Forsaken Thicket. There was effectively no link during all the dialogue that ever indicated that my involvement in the raid directly or indirectly resulted in what happened at the ending climax of the episode.
Arenanet took the route to propose that the Bloodstone ‘explosion’ was the overall outcome, not at all what we did in the Forsaken Thicket, that was simply filler.
From a lore perspective, to get the details of everything to us, there was far more details and lore intensity in this patch than any part of the raid. Scraps of paper everywhere touch base on the actual why of what happens in the raid, I would even say that the open-world zone provided more on what was happening in the raid than the raid itself.
With that all being said, there was a single instance that I took issue with, that if it is confirmed, there is a legit lore concern I want to address.
For those who don’t know, Squad Leader Bennett is in the open world zone near one of the vendors. If you talk to him he can give you a run down of the White Mantle, what he experienced in the raid, etc etc.
This is a decent lore-bomb, except for a line he mentioned that I believe directly contradicts the intent of keeping raid lore as a side-story. He mentioned that I was the one who saved him.
Think for a moment here, if this line is addressed only to those who helped save him from Matthias aka clearing Salvation Pass, that’s bad. That’s lost lore and content for non-raiders. It might be fine if it’s a generic line he throws out to everyone albeit kind of immersion breaking. But I believe it does break the lore, it just barely crosses the line and I think it needs to be addressed.
Can the devs answer whether or not this lore bit from the Squad Leader is different for raiders? This is an actual concern I want to go through.
- Regular WvW Reward Tracks do offer Obsidian Shards, but the rate they are acquired through WvW tracks is one of the worst methods in the game.
- Conversely, Karma is rapidly earned in WvW, this is true and does have merit. I would even argue that if they really wanted to go with this method, have BoH + Karma (Reduced in comparison to say Temple of Baltazar) to get Obsidian Shards.
I believe we could use another sink for BoH, and without directly impacting the economy yet offering an in-game mode option, I believe Badges to Obsidian Shards is fair.
The big factor is how many Badges to Obsidian Shards? I was actually thinking at the very least 50 Badges (likely more), maybe 30 Badges Plus Karma if we want to start discussing details.
Sykper.6583
I am not saying that your idea is bad I even think otherwise.
Put an “accessible” set of different Legendary Armor outside raids.
Sure, I think that every game mode deserves a different legendary armor. And if you want the certain armor you have to play that game mode. People are defending raids so much (including me) because everyone wants envoy armor without playing raids which is unfair towards raiders because then all the effort to get the LI would mean nothing.
FYI, I’m kind of been one of the early ones defending raids back then. I was more or less joking about my solution as what it would cause is more content droughts just for anyone not interested in the raids themselves due to taking resources from Living Story and so forth just to sate some false interest in raiding as a whole.
I digress, arguing about opinions at this time is pointless. The juncture here that has been the largest influence on this whole discussion is whether or not some opinions are or are not laid in facts, which are utterly impossible to prove. It has been literally months of the same thing being discussed, but in the end I believe just about every single point on this subject has been talked about. Everything from rewards, difficulties, design, you name it we have probably touched on it and then some.
I just hope that Arenanet understands all of these points made and is capable of rendering their own judgment on how to proceed. I definitely don’t think certain things about raids have been perfected yet, but I strongly disagree with certain ‘solutions’ that ultimately would tarnish the intent and concept of raids as a whole. I definitely think Arenanet knows this by now and can go forward.
…Side-note, I am willing to believe that the Raid team who talked about being able to enjoy the salty tears of players going into this raid content have had their fill from these constant threads. They have been nothing but a fountain.
See Title. Can we have a conversion?
I got a decent proposal.
- Let’s have Arenanet do this ‘lore’ based instance of the raid, tuned down with rewards similar to what we get from doing LS achievements. Put the LS/Expansion teams on it, Raid team and their dedicated resources are not involved.
- Put an “accessible” set of different Legendary Armor outside raids.
Boom, done.
Boom, everybody learns that legendary armor costs ~3500gold. Armor still stays unaccesible to the majority of the community. Nothing changes.
One thing changes though:
People complaining about the 150LI requirement and raid accesibility.
People complaining about 300 Provisioner Tokens and 4800 T6 materials requirement. Because everybody thinks that legendary armor is free if you play raids.
Those are problems with gold however, and I could never imagine the folks clamoring for Legendary Armor access wouldn’t consider that (Clearly)! The great news about my proposal is that everyone wins!
…Well except for the people who want more ‘outside of raid instance’ story and content, they get their content delayed because of those who really, really want to see the raid content lore.
Probably a waste of dev resources, but hey now everyone’s happy right? Yea totally…
I got a decent proposal.
- Let’s have Arenanet do this ‘lore’ based instance of the raid, tuned down with rewards similar to what we get from doing LS achievements. Put the LS/Expansion teams on it, Raid team and their dedicated resources are not involved.
- Put an “accessible” set of different Legendary Armor outside raids.
Boom, done.
I disagree, and actually I believe that is not how I picture Arenanet pulling off keeping the Raids as Side-stories. There should be zero lore advantage to raiders over the general populace, if they want to keep that end of raids quite fair. Rather, I believe our player characters, depending on LS3 playing out, be surprised by what’s to come.
I can make this assumption based on the dialogue in Forsaken Thicket, at no point during the entire instance do any pact members / NPCs refer to you as the Commander, rather it seems like they simply view you and your group as friendlies / other troops. Your character in that raid isn’t the pact commander, you are a group of adventurers/warriors/soldiers going in and attempting to stop White Mantle activities.
If there is any reference to the raid from LS3, what will probably be said is a direct reference to this group that went in and found out about what had transpired. That would be the best implementation of the lore for the Living Story with concern to the raid, an optional side-quest to see how those events played out through some soldier’s eyes with 9 others.
But remember, the long term goals STAY long term, they are just more flexible. I’m in no way saying “instead of The Ascension requiring you to complete Paths I-IV, you should be able to get the whole thing by just clearing Amber once.” It still should take just as long to complete, all I would change is to offer alternate methods of doing so. Only the first step of a long process would be locked into a single mode, so that you have to do that single mode at least long enough to earn that first step, but then you would be free to do some other mode. The entire process of earning that reward would take just as long as it does now, longer if they pursued it outside the default area, the only change being made is in which activities you were earning them from.
The content would only “die out quicker” if nobody actually wanted to do that content in the first place, in which case it would deserve to die out quickly, so that ANet no longer throws resources after it and they can focus on content that players do enjoy.
How would you balance that mess? Where would all the stats and numbers come from to accurately determine if A is only slightly slow than B or C, you cannot fathom how needlessly complicated your solution would be to attempt to balanced. Could you even come up with a number for how many HoT currencies would go into a Legendary Piece of Armor?
There’s so much that can go wrong that it’s extremely unreliable to make this request of Arenanet to do. This is nothing they have done before, they haven’t even figured out how to balance current reward systems yet with few options. For instance, why would you ever buy Obsidian Shards from the Fractal Vendor? It costs literal silver and relics for a single one. HoT Currencies take the map currency and karma. There’s proof right now that Arenanet can’t even balance a few paths correctly, let alone trying to add a few more on top of it!
That’s always been my position, I’m sorry if you misunderstood it. Let me be clear right now, when it comes to earning Envoy armor, completing the existing versions of raids and using the existing methods should ALWAYS provide you with the armor in less total time, and with less total repetitions of the content than any alternative method.
The default should always remain the default, and if you can stomach it, it should always be the objectively “best” option. The only change I would want to see is for OTHER options to be on the table, taking longer and more effort, but still available. They have done this in the past with various rewards that were relatively cheap and simple to earn in a certain event, but then became more expensive or complicated to earn after that event ended.
This is also a factor in the HoT maps, where the “best” way to earn certain map reward currencies is clearly to farm that specific map, but if you really dislike one map, like Tangled Depths early on, you can earn currencies in one map and convert them to currencies for another. It’s lossy enough to be very inefficient, but useful enough to provide a safety net.
How much more effort though? How do you measure effort? Time? Skill? There’s a lot going on here that you are just throwing out optimistic phrasing for?
If it were going to be based on time, for instance if a single piece of raid armor took a few months for a raider to obtain, the Verdant Brink Enthusiast would have to dedicate around a few months of Airship parts farmed at around the same pace.
What is that number Ohoni? Can you come up with it? I sure as hell can’t, at this pace I am thinking it is well above 10000 parts. And then you brought up conversions, what would these conversions be? 1 to 1 so you can go anywhere, but wait some currencies are farmed at a lot slower pace (Dry Top /cough).
A lot of your argument is just conceptual, again there’s a tremendous, easily unreasonable balancing act going on here.
Again, they already do this, no major change involved. And even though there ARE “most efficient” ways of earning gold in the game, or earning karma, or whatever, that doesn’t mean that these are the methods that EVERY player uses. Many players are just content playing in the ways that they enjoy, and earning whatever gold or karma happens to result from that. Same thing here.
They try, and failed, some methods are outright ignored because they are not balanced correctly. If they can’t balance methods in game that try to do what you want, what makes you think they can come close to balancing offering every exclusive reward to every unique vendor?
They can’t.
Maybe, but all resolving that would take would be for them to behave proactively to correct such issues. They have adjusted reward payouts in the past, and can do so again. Most “broken” events in the game, from a reward standpoint, are broken only being ANet chooses to allow it, not because it would be difficult to correct. If an event pays out 5 tokens per cycle, and this turns out to make it too efficient, then they can drop it to 4, or even 3. No problem. And even if it is too efficient, who cares?
Not if they have to continue adding content, there would be a lot of overhead at their headquarters if they mess up rewards. There would be a LOT of toxicity on the forums about ‘Why isn’t my method doing this faster?’ or ‘I hate how all the elitists are coming to my map to farm for this, they are harassing me!’
Then you mentioned simply nerfing or buffing events themselves. I didn’t even want to go down that balancing act yet but thank you for bringing it up as another point they cannot balance correctly. Do you think Auric Basin Multimap can ever be fixed? I assume you know what I am talking about. This is another point that will be escalated if everything can be rewarded to everyone.
Perhaps, but again, you already have to do this. All rewards already need to be balanced across all currencies. This is not adding an extra burden. Also, it wouldn’t have to be a token system, it could perhaps be a collection, in which each item has several ways of earning it but you need to get one of each. Basically we know the recipe for The Ascension, so just have each piece acquirable through several means, each balanced in terms of effort and difficulty with what it would take to earn it via the PvP track.
And now we are pulling in achievements and collections? You are just going everywhere tossing out ideas. How do you even evaluate these things? Have you done the Legendary Precursor crafting yet? That’s proof that Arenanet has not gotten the tech balanced yet just due to bugs and different stages where it repeats the same activity in a later collection.
I do have to thank you for taking the time to save me from pointing out the flawed systems.
Look, ideally, sure, those would all be methods, but of course the lazier methods would take much longer, perhaps unrealistically long (like 2000 daily completions to get Envoy Armor or something). More realistically, I’d settle for just having MORE options, to have all the core gameplay styles covered, so while your very favorite activity might not provide direct access to the reward you want, changes are that something at least similar to your favorite would. Players should be expected to be at least a little ell rounded, but expecting all players who want Envoy Armor to “git gud” and run the existing raids is just an unreasonable expectation.
You said this. I can pull up a conversation we had around 9 months ago in a different topic in the Instanced Raids Confirmed thread. We were talking about the raid exclusive rewards being delayed for everyone else for a while to give raiders adequate time to complete the set and show it off. This is part of the discussion where I offered my compromise a few posts before…
Ohoni.6057:
Well, if I recall the “compromise” offer was that it might take a month or so to get it via raids, and like 2-3 years to get it via alternate means. That was never going to be a starter. Others suggested that items might be exclusive for a period of 1-6 months, which is far more reasonable, and then be available for everyone else. I think if you’re going to hard lock the exclusivity period then the items should be relatively easy to earn, while if you only make them more time consuming to earn then they can involve a lot more effort. My point is, they shouldn’t say “you can’t even begin working on them for six months, and then once it becomes available it would take another six months to earn.” If the method itself takes six months then you should be able to get started immediately.
But no, I’ve always been in favor of that method as a compromise, so long as the time and effort required for the alternative is a fair one, and not some cruel joke.
Tell me Ohoni, is 2000 daily completions still a fair compromise? And Astralporing would you still say Ohoni is consistent with his arguments or has he been influenced by months of back and forth.
It’s good to know that you have slightly changed your position since back then.
There’s no “conflation” going on here.
The GW2 playerbase is the entire population of players. The reddit userbase is a sample. These are standard statistical terms.
While the sample doesn’t necessarily and accurately represent the entire population (due to bias – again, another statistical term), it’s the closest approximation we’ll get to the actual numbers (only ArenaNets metrics will reveal actual numbers for the entire population of players).
The only way we’ll know actual numbers is if the survey was sent to every player upon login and completed in game, with the numbers revealed publicly. That is about as close as it gets to a census (since you can’t guarantee every active player will complete an in-game survey). The other option would be for ArenaNet to flat out reveal the numbers.
yeah, and the reddit bias is that people on reddit care more about the game in general than the entire playerbase (which means that you will be more likely to run into people interested in raids than you would if you are sampling from the general playerbase). thats not a statement i can quantify, but its extremely likely to be true to some extent because it is simply logical. raiding is the “hard” content that requires extensive game knowledge to complete successfully. people not interested in or heavily invested in the game will be less likely to want to raid, and those are the people more likely to be missing from reddit.
Finally something we can work with. So there’s a presumption that /r/guildwars2 reddit has the capacity to have more players that are knowledgeable about the game posting in it, thus a greater likelihood that a good number of them are potentially hard core to the point of being heavily invested into raids.
That’s a decent assumption, but one neither one of us can ever prove. The only prospect we can work with on that angle is the interest / threads posted about Raid specific things, compared to everything else being posted. We would have to look at the average amount of things like ‘qT Matthias Speed Kill’ being posted, the amount of posts about that topic, compared to when someone posts a funny screenshot or a bug elsewhere. The reason we can work with those numbers is because it’s our best course to see just how much discussion is made over raid topics versus other content.
Then we could factor in things like votes on posts, where although that might show interest in raiding, it could show the more opinionated side of reddit and how the posters feel.
….But this has been sort of done already weeks ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4panwo/poll_does_rguildwars2_raid/
I extremely doubt anyone else is going to mess around with this Strawpoll way too many pages back, which means that more or less the results are kind of final. I’ll let you have a look at those results.
The intent of the survey was that /r/guildwars2 might be the only people that vote, but anyone and their mother who visited the site with some knowledge of the subject matter could vote. This survey could have easily been done on any medium like the official forums here that has the target audience being GW2 players, /r/guildwars2 is a better alternative as there’s less requirements to participate and it is an external site.
I can’t stop you from disagreeing with me, but I will stop ignorance spreading.
way to contradict your own argument bro. here you go saying the reddit audience is the reddit audience and not the general gw2 playerbase.
I don’t know how you gleamed that from my message. So I shortened my quote to assist your reading comprehension issues to where I believe you are making the argument. If you want to promote a survey on a game with multiple different sites dedicated to it, you choose one of the most visited. However as I said there’s no way to filter out who participates. Normally that would be a standard survey practice, but the parameter that as long as you visit the GW2 reddit, you potentially have a say in the discussion and are likely a part of the general gw2 playerbase. There’s zero chance you can go on a sub vs no sub basis here, like you claim.
Now, if you are done with your retorts that seem to only react when I make an argument, maybe you can try some critical thinking skills and create an actual counter-argument other than ‘No you are wrong’.
Otherwise, I wish to get back to the task at hand for LI discussion.
it isnt worth my time to write pages upon pages about how wrong you are and how you contradict yourself. you have a problem. you have a disconnect between understanding standard survey practices and understanding that the gw2 playerbase is not the reddit userbase and that you cannot call one base to be the other. you understand one of these and dont understand the other. and for some reason you keep writing things that show you have some kind of understanding but still refuse to apply it. it reminds me very strongly of other real world arguments with zealots. its silly.
I addressed that later in the post you’re quoting from. The tr;dr of it is that no, it is not sadistic for them to offer incentives to get players to TRY new modes, but by necessity these rewards should be relatively quick and easy to acquire, because there is nothing to be gained by encouraging players to continue in a mode that the player has already learned they do not enjoy.
Because the content dies out quicker? The moment you bring in the prospect that rewards have to be rewarded quicker is the moment you are going into territory that will never happen. You want to have players participate at least a decent amount of time in new modes or content to help with the starting life-span or else you start having some very upset players wanting new content a week after the new content released, and they have an awesome few months to deal with nothing.
Also fyi, at this point is where everything you have requested thus far begins to fall apart, and I will start from here:
They already have to do this to come degree, since the majority of rewards are in gold, or something that can be converted into gold, and an excessively generous or stingy gold reward can cause the content to be over/underplayed relative to genuine interest.
And we have seen Arenanet steadily move away from the universal gold standard because of this. We cannot afford universal currencies or rewards that you can farm because it can trivialize content or make some content obscenely long to get done.
Besides, while I agree it would be difficult to balance things perfectly, it is not necessary to allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Basically, I agree that the “original” method should always be objectively superior to alternatives. The PvP backpiece is a simple example, it should always be easiest to acquire it by completing Path to Ascension I-IV in their current forms. Any alternate methods should take more time, more effort to complete, such that there should be no ambiguity. “If you enjoy PvP, by all means, PvP for it, nothing else would be anywhere near as efficient.” But, if you really don’t enjoy PvP, alternatives should be available, such that you can earn the vast majority of the components without having to PvP for them.
And now you are playing the hypocrite here. Remember, your position has always been that regardless of the content you enjoy you should be able to earn every single reward in the game. That has been your position for a long time now, and that everything should be balanced to achieve everything. In fact you threw out some numbers to me a long time ago that if it took something like 10 weeks to get some Legendary Armor, it should be something about 90% as effective for a task like farming bandit crests in Silverwastes (I believe I likely jumbled up those values, but you sincerely disagreed with my proposal that it should be 5 times longer due to the effort/time ratio).
Now you say you want the main path to be the most effective means?
…Let’s continue.
So say there are methods A, B, and C for earning an item. The goal would be to have option A take 75% of the time/effort of B or C, and clearly be better for anyone that enjoys that activity at all. Then the second goal would be to keep B and C to within at least 10% difference, maybe B is slightly more efficient than C, to the point that more players would pick B than C, but still if you really enjoyed C, it might take you slightly longer that way, but not so much longer that you’d give up on it entirely.
They’ve shown that they are capable of this when they put their mind to it, although obviously they sometimes just choose not to address such imbalances.
And this is a nice analogy, but the realistic model would be not something like A to C, we have to balance around everything here if we want to cater to your model. Try kitten , where we have to evaluate how fast Jumping Puzzle enthusiasts get their Ascalonian Catacomb Weapons compared to the Auric Basin Lump farmers. But what if farming Karma in Orr needs to be faster, because the Risen are so much more difficult? No, that’s not right, that’s too elitist for the World Boss Train crew who are farming Ectos. You are not balancing a few things here Ohoni, you have to balance All of it. And if you don’t balance all of it, then someone ELSE is going to complain about why they can’t get the same rewards as everyone else.
There’s no middle-ground here, and I am being completely serious about those groups, or at the very least you have to look only in your Wallet and see the different currencies in play. Those don’t even include future currencies.
But this has always been a factor in the game. I’m sure people who love PvP don’t enjoy having so many disinterested players just grinding out their Ascensions either. Allowing alternate methods would DECREASE these behaviors, not increase them, since a player wouldn’t have to pursue any given path to an item, they would have options.
This has never been a game in which the ONLY people doing an activity are the ones who find that particular activity to be the most fun, but my recommendation would move us closer to that, rather than further way.
It does not matter, the factor would be escalated because there would be one method that could innocently enough be too fast at the rate of getting a particular reward, and all hell will break loose for that particular content.
The scale you are seeing today where maybe an occasional Event Map of Vinewrath has a sour apple complaining and everyone else dismisses him or just ignores it, would not be the case here. Try quite a few more, constant rage whispers, just overall worse toxicity. They would NOT take the alternative, because the reward would be earned far too slow for any normal player. These kinds of things would happen far more often than you think, on many more maps.
I don’t see any reason to time gate it. You’d want people who show up six months after the event launches to have some reason to try it as much as people who were there at the launch (assuming it’s designed as viable content). The idea isn’t to gate it via time, but rather via effort. To again use PvP as an example, the full Ascension chain is a huge pain that takes a lot of time and effort, and is not something non-PvPers should be expected to complete if they want the Ascension.
I was more projecting a sort of hype for the new content with the preemptive reward, but in this regard I suppose it wouldn’t be terribly wrong for it not to be time-gated. ‘Getting feet wet’ kind of thing works too.
But to earn one of the ingredients, the Wings of the Recruit, all that is required is that you complete the Amber tier once, something that any player is capable of within a dozen rounds or so (likely less). So my recommendation there would be to make it so that these wings can ONLY be acquired via this method, forcing players to play at least that much PvP, but then allowing them to acquire all other pieces via other means. Full PvP would still be the fastest method, but only that small amount of PvP would be necessary to it. Of course, you could clear this requirement any time that the leagues are open.
Just see my argument above, you have to balance it across at least all the currencies (save the ones you cannot get anymore, WvW tickets /ahem )
No. You’re missing the point entirely. Yes, you would have big, shiny, long term goals, but you wouldn’t bind them to specific methods. Players may choose to continue doing that specific content until they get the big shiny long term goal, and if they enjoy that content, then that’s exactly what they would do, but if they don’t enjoy the content, then they should be free to go without abandoning that long term goal entirely.
As long as you realize the truth of what I said above was.
ANet has nothing to gain by, encouraging players to play PvP or Raids or moa farming for long amounts of time if that’s not what the player wants to be doing. ANet benefits only by having players playing the game for long periods of time, regardless of the specific activity, so long as the player is engaged and enjoying himself. So you set those long term goals, but in a way where the player’s tastes determine which activities he’s doing, rather than his desire for specific rewards.
Idealistic, but cannot ever be set in reality. Everyone should be able to get the rewards, you don’t want to leave out the daily farmers right? The achievement point hunters? Dry Top Enthusiasts? Tangled Depths…Masochists? (Hey don’t look at me like that, Chak are annoying little pests.)
All or none but the content the reward is made for, take your pick.
Raids are succeeding where Dungeons failed hard
Considering that dungeons likely were far more popular than raids will ever be, that’s a mighty claim.
Key word is were, which results in why they failed.
Fractals and Raids will be the focus, in fact I would say that Fractals are even better than Dungeons ever were. Raids are just starting, but Fractals are consistently being run.
The intent of the survey was that /r/guildwars2 might be the only people that vote, but anyone and their mother who visited the site with some knowledge of the subject matter could vote. This survey could have easily been done on any medium like the official forums here that has the target audience being GW2 players, /r/guildwars2 is a better alternative as there’s less requirements to participate and it is an external site.
I can’t stop you from disagreeing with me, but I will stop ignorance spreading.
way to contradict your own argument bro. here you go saying the reddit audience is the reddit audience and not the general gw2 playerbase.
I don’t know how you gleamed that from my message. So I shortened my quote to assist your reading comprehension issues to where I believe you are making the argument. If you want to promote a survey on a game with multiple different sites dedicated to it, you choose one of the most visited. However as I said there’s no way to filter out who participates. Normally that would be a standard survey practice, but the parameter that as long as you visit the GW2 reddit, you potentially have a say in the discussion and are likely a part of the general gw2 playerbase. There’s zero chance you can go on a sub vs no sub basis here, like you claim.
Now, if you are done with your retorts that seem to only react when I make an argument, maybe you can try some critical thinking skills and create an actual counter-argument other than ‘No you are wrong’.
Otherwise, I wish to get back to the task at hand for LI discussion.
Hey all,
Can we stop with this 5% bogus nonsense? It’s definitely much higher than that. Indications from the frequent reddit polls that come up suggest that about 20% have tried and liked Raids, but there’s a large percent (around 45%) would like to at least get into them. I believe everyone knows the reddit poll I am referring to, and I think it’s a decent indicator of interest in raids in general.
Thanks!
lol 20-45%.
yeah not even 1/2 of the playerbase cares enough to look at reddit. and most of the people who dont are casuals who are prolly not interested in raids, meaning any survey of redditors will be heavily skewed towards showing extra interest in raids.
You cannot back up this claim. Furthermore when I am looking at the data I am not thinking ‘Well shoot, this game only has around 4000 people playing’ rather instead we can choose that as a decent sample size for the GW2 population. There’s a possibility the reddit community has a bias for raids, and a same possibility that they might have no interest in raids (This was one of the answers polled, it was about 40% had no interest in raiding whatsoever).
However, given all that’s been said relevant to GW2 raiding from the devs who admitted seeing higher than anticipated raid participation, the near constant stream of LFM/LFGs for Raiding akin to the old days of Dungeoneering, the praise/hate for raids in general…the thought that only 5% of the population has a constant interest or would repeat the content becomes less and less likely.
That 5% value actually came from someone introducing WoW’s Raid Statistics too, which makes it even more questionable.
i can back up that claim. look at the subs to /r/guildwars2. then look at how many copies of HoT sold. theres an order of magnitude of difference and it will give you a ballpark that clearly shows my statement is not wrong.
The only issue with your statement here is that reddit doesn’t restrict subreddits from being viewable unless you are subbed. I am not subbed to /r/guildwars2 or any subreddit yet I am able to participate in polls/surveys as well as read the comments.
Sub count is not a statistic you can use to verify how many players look at reddit, you can only get a gauge on how many players feel the need to have a forum to discuss GW2 on that’s not these official forums.
the game is free to play and does not require purchasing HoT to play, just as the reddit is free to read and does not require subbing. the qualifications are comparable.
Your original statement again was suggesting that not even half of players read the GW2 subreddit, to counter my argument referring to the statistical charts and polls made by the public reddit posts that both subs and non-subs can participate in.
You only pointed out sub-count on that subreddit (of which you even admit is not required to read) versus the number of actual copies of HoT sold (you admit earlier you do not have the approximation rather we can go by the NCSoft profits) as some factor which describes how a majority of players do not read or care about the subreddit, which again to repeat does not need subs to be able to participate in its content like polls and surveys.
Do you understand what I am saying here? The survey with a few thousand sample sized players, that was a general survey of the playerbase, not of /r/guildwars2.
yes i understand what you are saying. you are wrong. it is a survey of reddit, not of the general playerbase.
We will agree to disagree then. I’ve already laid out my arguments why it’s not a survey of reddit, and since you understand where I come from and disagree, this line of discussion is at a close.
yeah ok. sure. every survey done on reddit has a disclaimer that is some form of “well, this is targeted at gw2/mmo/______ players, but im only posting this on reddit so take that as you will” which is a pretty obvious nod to the fact that the reddit userbase is not the gw2 playerbase. ask literally any surveyor. so yeah, feel free to disagree and continue being obstinate in the face of standard survey practices (“know your audience”). i cant stop you.
Lol, here I am trying to be polite here and reasonably end the discussion as I have proven where my standpoint acts from and where yours is also potentially true.
Let’s start from the top then, you wanted to keep this going, as if you have any idea what the /r/guildwars2 users actually consist of. Roll it back to your full quote before:
yes i understand what you are saying. you are wrong. it is a survey of reddit, not of the general playerbase. reddit users are more invested in the game and will be more likely to seek out hard content. if they cared less about the game, they wouldnt visit reddit, like the majority of people.
It is true that reddit users have a bit more interest in the game to create a sub and post in a separate forum format. It is hilariously not true that they seek hard content, have you even been paying attention to the typical reddit posts that actively get posts, or get upvotes versus downvotes? Literally last week during some of the heavier raid discourse there were ‘Raids are awesome’ threads being overwhelmingly downvoted, by those reddit users who could use the downvote, to wipe out anything related to a positive in raiding.
In actuality, there’s a substantial size of that subreddit that absolutely despises raids to the point of toxicity. Furthermore there’s no clear indicator that you have to sub to /r/guildwars2 to be actively involved in how the game turns out, you only need to look at these official forums for that.
And your claim that ‘Every single poll / survey carries a disclaimer’ is not true at all, there’s no need for that when the survey is simply posted on reddit, it speaks for itself. What that also means is that non-subs who see the survey on the reddit if they were curious enough to visit the site can also vote, as I said before. The intent of the survey was that /r/guildwars2 might be the only people that vote, but anyone and their mother who visited the site with some knowledge of the subject matter could vote. This survey could have easily been done on any medium like the official forums here that has the target audience being GW2 players, /r/guildwars2 is a better alternative as there’s less requirements to participate and it is an external site.
I can’t stop you from disagreeing with me, but I will stop ignorance spreading.
Hey all,
Can we stop with this 5% bogus nonsense? It’s definitely much higher than that. Indications from the frequent reddit polls that come up suggest that about 20% have tried and liked Raids, but there’s a large percent (around 45%) would like to at least get into them. I believe everyone knows the reddit poll I am referring to, and I think it’s a decent indicator of interest in raids in general.
Thanks!
lol 20-45%.
yeah not even 1/2 of the playerbase cares enough to look at reddit. and most of the people who dont are casuals who are prolly not interested in raids, meaning any survey of redditors will be heavily skewed towards showing extra interest in raids.
You cannot back up this claim. Furthermore when I am looking at the data I am not thinking ‘Well shoot, this game only has around 4000 people playing’ rather instead we can choose that as a decent sample size for the GW2 population. There’s a possibility the reddit community has a bias for raids, and a same possibility that they might have no interest in raids (This was one of the answers polled, it was about 40% had no interest in raiding whatsoever).
However, given all that’s been said relevant to GW2 raiding from the devs who admitted seeing higher than anticipated raid participation, the near constant stream of LFM/LFGs for Raiding akin to the old days of Dungeoneering, the praise/hate for raids in general…the thought that only 5% of the population has a constant interest or would repeat the content becomes less and less likely.
That 5% value actually came from someone introducing WoW’s Raid Statistics too, which makes it even more questionable.
i can back up that claim. look at the subs to /r/guildwars2. then look at how many copies of HoT sold. theres an order of magnitude of difference and it will give you a ballpark that clearly shows my statement is not wrong.
The only issue with your statement here is that reddit doesn’t restrict subreddits from being viewable unless you are subbed. I am not subbed to /r/guildwars2 or any subreddit yet I am able to participate in polls/surveys as well as read the comments.
Sub count is not a statistic you can use to verify how many players look at reddit, you can only get a gauge on how many players feel the need to have a forum to discuss GW2 on that’s not these official forums.
the game is free to play and does not require purchasing HoT to play, just as the reddit is free to read and does not require subbing. the qualifications are comparable.
Your original statement again was suggesting that not even half of players read the GW2 subreddit, to counter my argument referring to the statistical charts and polls made by the public reddit posts that both subs and non-subs can participate in.
You only pointed out sub-count on that subreddit (of which you even admit is not required to read) versus the number of actual copies of HoT sold (you admit earlier you do not have the approximation rather we can go by the NCSoft profits) as some factor which describes how a majority of players do not read or care about the subreddit, which again to repeat does not need subs to be able to participate in its content like polls and surveys.
Do you understand what I am saying here? The survey with a few thousand sample sized players, that was a general survey of the playerbase, not of /r/guildwars2.
yes i understand what you are saying. you are wrong. it is a survey of reddit, not of the general playerbase.
We will agree to disagree then. I’ve already laid out my arguments why it’s not a survey of reddit, and since you understand where I come from and disagree, this line of discussion is at a close.
Hey all,
Can we stop with this 5% bogus nonsense? It’s definitely much higher than that. Indications from the frequent reddit polls that come up suggest that about 20% have tried and liked Raids, but there’s a large percent (around 45%) would like to at least get into them. I believe everyone knows the reddit poll I am referring to, and I think it’s a decent indicator of interest in raids in general.
Thanks!
lol 20-45%.
yeah not even 1/2 of the playerbase cares enough to look at reddit. and most of the people who dont are casuals who are prolly not interested in raids, meaning any survey of redditors will be heavily skewed towards showing extra interest in raids.
You cannot back up this claim. Furthermore when I am looking at the data I am not thinking ‘Well shoot, this game only has around 4000 people playing’ rather instead we can choose that as a decent sample size for the GW2 population. There’s a possibility the reddit community has a bias for raids, and a same possibility that they might have no interest in raids (This was one of the answers polled, it was about 40% had no interest in raiding whatsoever).
However, given all that’s been said relevant to GW2 raiding from the devs who admitted seeing higher than anticipated raid participation, the near constant stream of LFM/LFGs for Raiding akin to the old days of Dungeoneering, the praise/hate for raids in general…the thought that only 5% of the population has a constant interest or would repeat the content becomes less and less likely.
That 5% value actually came from someone introducing WoW’s Raid Statistics too, which makes it even more questionable.
i can back up that claim. look at the subs to /r/guildwars2. then look at how many copies of HoT sold. theres an order of magnitude of difference and it will give you a ballpark that clearly shows my statement is not wrong.
The only issue with your statement here is that reddit doesn’t restrict subreddits from being viewable unless you are subbed. I am not subbed to /r/guildwars2 or any subreddit yet I am able to participate in polls/surveys as well as read the comments.
Sub count is not a statistic you can use to verify how many players look at reddit, you can only get a gauge on how many players feel the need to have a forum to discuss GW2 on that’s not these official forums.
the game is free to play and does not require purchasing HoT to play, just as the reddit is free to read and does not require subbing. the qualifications are comparable.
Your original statement again was suggesting that not even half of players read the GW2 subreddit, to counter my argument referring to the statistical charts and polls made by the public reddit posts that both subs and non-subs can participate in.
You only pointed out sub-count on that subreddit (of which you even admit is not required to read) versus the number of actual copies of HoT sold (you admit earlier you do not have the approximation rather we can go by the NCSoft profits) as some factor which describes how a majority of players do not read or care about the subreddit, which again to repeat does not need subs to be able to participate in its content like polls and surveys.
Do you understand what I am saying here? The survey with a few thousand sample sized players, that was a general survey of the playerbase, not of /r/guildwars2.
The other possibility is if they created an easy-mode that was a one-time deal for rewards, so if you want the vast majority of the rewards you would have to do the normal encounter as you can’t repeat the easy-mode.
The issue is that this creates dead content, the easy-mode raid would never be repeated once it is done once.
There’s no best way to adequately implement Easy-Mode raiding that does not damage raiding as a whole. It’s a waste of time, we should instead encourage the sub-culture which is being fostered alongside other content. As more and more players raid, more training groups are made, more guilds become dedicated.
Raiding becomes another avenue for socialization, for players to face the most difficult of challenges.
Hey all,
Can we stop with this 5% bogus nonsense? It’s definitely much higher than that. Indications from the frequent reddit polls that come up suggest that about 20% have tried and liked Raids, but there’s a large percent (around 45%) would like to at least get into them. I believe everyone knows the reddit poll I am referring to, and I think it’s a decent indicator of interest in raids in general.
Thanks!
lol 20-45%.
yeah not even 1/2 of the playerbase cares enough to look at reddit. and most of the people who dont are casuals who are prolly not interested in raids, meaning any survey of redditors will be heavily skewed towards showing extra interest in raids.
You cannot back up this claim. Furthermore when I am looking at the data I am not thinking ‘Well shoot, this game only has around 4000 people playing’ rather instead we can choose that as a decent sample size for the GW2 population. There’s a possibility the reddit community has a bias for raids, and a same possibility that they might have no interest in raids (This was one of the answers polled, it was about 40% had no interest in raiding whatsoever).
However, given all that’s been said relevant to GW2 raiding from the devs who admitted seeing higher than anticipated raid participation, the near constant stream of LFM/LFGs for Raiding akin to the old days of Dungeoneering, the praise/hate for raids in general…the thought that only 5% of the population has a constant interest or would repeat the content becomes less and less likely.
That 5% value actually came from someone introducing WoW’s Raid Statistics too, which makes it even more questionable.
i can back up that claim. look at the subs to /r/guildwars2. then look at how many copies of HoT sold. theres an order of magnitude of difference and it will give you a ballpark that clearly shows my statement is not wrong.
The only issue with your statement here is that reddit doesn’t restrict subreddits from being viewable unless you are subbed. I am not subbed to /r/guildwars2 or any subreddit yet I am able to participate in polls/surveys as well as read the comments.
Sub count is not a statistic you can use to verify how many players look at reddit, you can only get a gauge on how many players feel the need to have a forum to discuss GW2 on that’s not these official forums.
I think I agree with just about everything Wooden said here.
Even the factor where it is longer/harder to get 9 other players than just 4. We are seeing players and guilds actively making training runs and/or recruiting for groups, but it’s likely still not enough. As much as I hate to admit it, it’s a downside that has to come with the territory to maintain the authenticity of the raid format. The future action at this point would be to have more Fractal content releases to facilitate their 5 man content quota.
Also Brazil’s Comment on the video was concerning, apparently EU LFG is real extreme about their requirements to a point of absurdity imo.
Hey all,
Can we stop with this 5% bogus nonsense? It’s definitely much higher than that. Indications from the frequent reddit polls that come up suggest that about 20% have tried and liked Raids, but there’s a large percent (around 45%) would like to at least get into them. I believe everyone knows the reddit poll I am referring to, and I think it’s a decent indicator of interest in raids in general.
Thanks!
lol 20-45%.
yeah not even 1/2 of the playerbase cares enough to look at reddit. and most of the people who dont are casuals who are prolly not interested in raids, meaning any survey of redditors will be heavily skewed towards showing extra interest in raids.
You cannot back up this claim. Furthermore when I am looking at the data I am not thinking ‘Well shoot, this game only has around 4000 people playing’ rather instead we can choose that as a decent sample size for the GW2 population. There’s a possibility the reddit community has a bias for raids, and a same possibility that they might have no interest in raids (This was one of the answers polled, it was about 40% had no interest in raiding whatsoever).
However, given all that’s been said relevant to GW2 raiding from the devs who admitted seeing higher than anticipated raid participation, the near constant stream of LFM/LFGs for Raiding akin to the old days of Dungeoneering, the praise/hate for raids in general…the thought that only 5% of the population has a constant interest or would repeat the content becomes less and less likely.
That 5% value actually came from someone introducing WoW’s Raid Statistics too, which makes it even more questionable.
Does anyone take reddit seriously? For any reason?
I would take community polls that give hard data than this fake 5% number uninformed players parrot around like it is some sort of gospel.
Not affiliated with ArenaNet or NCSOFT. No support is provided.
All assets, page layout, visual style belong to ArenaNet and are used solely to replicate the original design and preserve the original look and feel.
Contact /u/e-scrape-artist on reddit if you encounter a bug.