Guild Wars 2

SkiTz.4590:

Straight from the blogpost that posted a few hours ago

" First, you can earn unique rewards once per week from raids, but you can play a raid as many times as you want to help your friends earn rewards or to refine your strategies. The encounters within Raids will contain tons of exclusive new items you’ll never be able to find anywhere else in the game, from miniatures, to weapon skins, to awesome titles. You can then proudly display these out in the open world to show off your skill and accomplishments. Own a Guild Hall? Awesome! You can loot a trophy from some of our bosses and use them as decorations to show off the challenge you’ve conquered. "

To quote Brad Pitt in Troy here:
“IS THERE NO ONE ELSE?”

Yawn, snorkle and twinklydoo.

Miniatures, Weapon skins, titles that are only obtainable through raids, that sounds as ridiculously unimportant to me as making fractals for the glory and the skins alone. The only setback for me is that my ascended armor will stay fixed with it´s stats as long as I don´t take gold in the hand and convert them, but that is not so severe. As long as this is it, the glory is all yours to conquer, boys and girls. Have much fun in the raids!
(And no, tihs is not sarcasm)

That they are not available for the f2p gamers and core game “premium” owners was pretty obvious, so of course the raiding friends will have to bend over and buy HoT if they want to play raids.

Pretty exciting to see if people who would not have bought HoT else wise will now grudgingly fork over the money, or if it backfires in a way that involves ragequitting.

Lux Dominatoris.3941:

Torolan.5816:

Lux Dominatoris.3941:

I agree with OP, it is a nice step especially since the content in not forced on anyone through gear tiers for example. If you think, in the situation that the raid reward will be legendary armor pieces and not a precursor for a piece, that you are forced to do it because you want it, I would like to suggest that you are just jealous of people being better at a certain part of the content. Chances are a person who does not likes raids is at the moment not liking fractals/dungeons. Why would you NEED the new armor? For open world? It makes an galactic difference I am sure. For the QoL stat change? For where, again Open World? Since the only place that QoL would be useful is the content you do not play.

Nice try, but try again. I like both fractals and dungeons but think raids are a bad idea. Of course that is my problem, but maybe can also think this through:
Lets assume Anet choose to do this step, even after several promises in the past that they would not or only if they must, because numbers were low. There is no other reason to do it actually, because a raid probably meant a costly new production team.
Now we have a low number and a band aid to close the gapping owund of worn out players that leave or are so dense that they don´t even reach lvl 80, raids. People always asked for raids, marketing institutues probably picked on this trend, and so a probably unwarranted hype turned into a full blown strategy to gain customers, because the customer is always king and always right.
So lets further assume this band aid keeps some of the flowing blood inside in the form of old and defector from other games players, but oh my, the wound was right beside a crusty old wound that had healed, but the band aid rips of the crust and blood in the form of disgruntled players tickles, flows or gushes out, depending on how the number of casual gamers are and how much are willing to be stamped as casuals, pugs or second class citizens who have no right to get the best trinket without bending over and doing raids.
There is nothing in a fractal that you could not obtain elsewise that yo u can´t gain in another way, or is really worth to lose sleep about like a fractal skin. But a whole type of new armor with stats is completely another box, that should be reasonable to everyone.

Try what? You didn’t even say. The simple fact that you consider this new in game content from the perspective of a wound speaks that you are just an extremist in my book. Content is not in game, it is new, yet you are so sure it will cause some sort of nuclear fallout. Trend? What trend? Give some evidence for your claims.

“There is nothing in a fractal that you could not obtain elsewise that yo u can´t gain in another way, or is really worth to lose sleep about like a fractal skin.” You do fractals for the skins and the tonic. Of course you forgot about the prestige of the tonic but you made sure to include “not worth” regarding the fractals skins. While they are the only reason people do fractals. And then you say fractals does not offer anything unique. Wow, what a conclusion who would have expected that!

“But a whole type of new armor with stats is completely another box, that should be reasonable to everyone.” = entitlement over an armor that offer only a QoL feature only worth it from any POV in the content that you detest so much. Also every armor has stats.

Have a good day! Next please.

Try again to make people think that if you are for example a fractal person, you are also liking dungeons and raids. I thight that would be clear, but was probably not clear enough, my bad.

So you believe that Anet made Raids because they are not in trouble somehow? If they did not have pressure from upper management or the numbers of customers were low, why bind the new stone of raids around your neck when you can barely carry the stones of wvw, pvp and pve all at once? I already stated the reason why I believe that with the expensive production.

And yes, you are right, your numbers are as good as mine. I did also not say that my statement is the truth, I just asked you to consider the scenario and ask yourself if it is reasonable.

Wow, that is something I really did not expect to appear here, doing fractals for the prestige or the tonic. I do fractals with my guild mates. I have gotten exactly 2 fractal skins(Shortbow and Rifle) in my 800+ runs. If we ever meet in lions arch by chance, take a look at my guardian if you want. He carries his fractal back for ages, but you´ll see that it does not shine or sparkle, and never will as I think of this as unwarranted waste of money and ressources. I most of the time forget that the tonic even exists. So don´t tell me I do fractals for prestige.

Entitlement? If it has the same stats as ascended and I don´t like the raiding content after testing it, there is not a single reason for me to try to collect it as I, a casual type of content loving open world pug, had the time to walk all through Tyria and collect my stuff.

Lux Dominatoris.3941:

I agree with OP, it is a nice step especially since the content in not forced on anyone through gear tiers for example. If you think, in the situation that the raid reward will be legendary armor pieces and not a precursor for a piece, that you are forced to do it because you want it, I would like to suggest that you are just jealous of people being better at a certain part of the content. Chances are a person who does not likes raids is at the moment not liking fractals/dungeons. Why would you NEED the new armor? For open world? It makes an galactic difference I am sure. For the QoL stat change? For where, again Open World? Since the only place that QoL would be useful is the content you do not play.

Nice try, but try again. I like both fractals and dungeons but think raids are a bad idea. Of course that is my problem, but maybe can also think this through:
Lets assume Anet choose to do this step, even after several promises in the past that they would not or only if they must, because numbers were low. There is no other reason to do it actually, because a raid probably meant a costly new production team.
Now we have a low number and a band aid to close the gapping owund of worn out players that leave or are so dense that they don´t even reach lvl 80, raids. People always asked for raids, marketing institutues probably picked on this trend, and so a probably unwarranted hype turned into a full blown strategy to gain customers, because the customer is always king and always right.
So lets further assume this band aid keeps some of the flowing blood inside in the form of old and defector from other games players, but oh my, the wound was right beside a crusty old wound that had healed, but the band aid rips of the crust and blood in the form of disgruntled players tickles, flows or gushes out, depending on how the number of casual gamers are and how much are willing to be stamped as casuals, pugs or second class citizens who have no right to get the best trinket without bending over and doing raids.
There is nothing in a fractal that you could not obtain elsewise that yo u can´t gain in another way, or is really worth to lose sleep about like a fractal skin. But a whole type of new armor with stats is completely another box, that should be reasonable to everyone.

Jaymee.1560:

For as much fun as she was… I seriously doubt her return. Not unless they decide to resurrect Scarlet Briar in the future, which is always a consistent fear that I have.

Lol, she´s a Sylvari, maybe she is just lurking behind the walls of HoT, waiting for you to pound you in the dirt again? With OPEN WORLD EVENTS, VANISHING TO THE NEXT OPEN WORLD EVENT BEFORE YOU CAT CATCH HER???? What to do then?^^

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Torolan.5816:

Oh my, Diessa raid, that´s not good:
Player A: Port to Rhendrack plz?
Player B: THEY ARE HERE! MORDREM INCOMING!
Player C: Port to Rhendrack in 25 seconds, donation welcome.
Player Any Events?
Player B: Random Waypoint
Player E(who is rather new): Hey, what is that supposed to mean, Mordrem or Rhendrack?
Player F: Hey, is the main event here already through?

So it will be all Scarlet Invasion Part 2 probably if it are open worlds events. Should be good and funny all at once to watch casuals fail and elitist howl in rage^^

Probably only a very small, iron farming kind of group would ever realize that something has changed in Brisbane since Drytop went online though…

Lol.

You forgot, middle of any fight,
Player G: REZ PLZ!
(Everyone pings waypoint a few feet away)

Oh yes, how could I have forgotten that, including the angry responses because of scalling and well, everything else!^^

Oh my, Diessa raid, that´s not good:
Player A: Port to Rhendrack plz?
Player B: THEY ARE HERE! MORDREM INCOMING!
Player C: Port to Rhendrack in 25 seconds, donation welcome.
Player Any Events?
Player B: Random Waypoint
Player E(who is rather new): Hey, what is that supposed to mean, Mordrem or Rhendrack?
Player F: Hey, is the main event here already through?

So it will be all Scarlet Invasion Part 2 probably if it are open worlds events. Should be good and funny all at once to watch casuals fail and elitist howl in rage^^

Probably only a very small, iron farming kind of group would ever realize that something has changed in Brisbane since Drytop went online though…

If I am really fed up with something really boring and horrible, like in this case the ls2 achievements, I sometimes try to defeat the cheapskate in me and cough up the money.

Although I also deem it morally questionable, I have to admit that this is a valuable service. You seemed to have moved in the barriers of the law here.

Sylent.3165:

Many people saw on reddit a player based post that you’ll need 175 hero points to unlock elite specs, and skills. And 250 for the special weapon.

The 175 hero points thing HAS to be a joke. Anet knows a strong amount of the playerbase does pvp and wvw only. You pretty much would need map completion to unlock an elite specizalation. A requirement for map completion to unlock one of the biggest things in the expansion would cause a massive drop in the playerbase, to much complaints, to many demands for refunds.

Whoever came up with the 175 does not work for anet, so they have 0 idea how to even unlock the elite specizalation classes. It could even be a special quest you need to do to unlock it. I wouldn’t worry about the 175 points personally. A lot of people do not have map completion and a lot of people never will. They wouldn’t introduce a major selling point for something most people won’t get. So relax. Gw2 is a great game, they wouldn’t kill it on purpose. The elite specizalations will be able to be unlocked by everyone I would imagine fairly easily.

OP, do you know that your name reminds me of Soylent Green, and Soylent Green is people?

Something tells me that the PvP and WvW only people will have to bend over and simply take it, like the raiders were forced to do for years, and the open world supporters are forced to do right now.^^

Kormeg.2469:

Torolan.5816:

Kormeg.2469:

Torolan.5816:

…Anet has no qualms about putting the breaks on something or changing their strategy midair.

I know right? Responding to what their player base wants is ludicrous?! LOL!

Why do you think they’re coming out with a boxed expansion after previously saying they wouldn’t? Why do you think the content of it is probably going to be small? Why do you think raids are just now coming into the game?

Players wanted these things to happen, despite Anets plans so they changed those plans to suit those player wants. You don’t succeed in a capitalist market by having a rigid plan and sticking to it hoping for better, you adapt.

Uhm, no, it´s not ludicrous? Don´t know why you spring out of your box with so much effort, but I actually agreed that raids are the curent state of the art toy.
So what is one of the pillars of your precious capitalist market system? Adaption. Say it with me: Adaption. Repeat: Adaption.
Now think it further with me:
If raids are not the band aid Anet is looking for, it will be abandoned. Why? Because they adapted.

I don´t see my opinion actualyl contradict in any point with yours, do you?

The entire first line of my point was sarcasm. I’m pretty sure you din’t get that.

Also, considering that you think we are saying the same thing now, I realize I have no idea what you were trying to say in your post I quoted. Regardless, my point is this: players were not happy with how the living story was going, so Anet adapted by working on a boxed exapansion. Players were not happy with the lack of difficult coordinated endgame content available, so Anet adapted by introducing raids.

The point of this thread in general, as I see it, is to complain about how things apart from what the OP wants are being given attention. My post is to try and explain that reason for alterations in vision have to do with the need to adapt to player wants.

People still gonna be selfish tho.

Sadly, a message board is not a good medium for sarcasm, but I get it now.^^

My point was this:
Years ago, devs said:
“We want to promote dungeons.”
Some months later:
“We want fractals to be our new dungeons. Hooray!”
Again some months later:
“Open World ls1 is the way to go.”
Some time later:
“Yeah, well, ls2 is going to be instanced.”
And again and metaphorically today:
“We bring you: Raids!”
At some date in the future, and this is where I am looking at with my state of the art comment:
“Well, according to our numbers, and maybe because we neglected them like every other pet project we had, numbers are not good with raids. I am now proud to present you open worlds PVP! It´s gonna save our numbers and sorry behinds from the unemployment line, you know?!”

Undertow.2389:

Unfortunately I don’t think many of the raiding elitists in this thread would be satisfied with anything but full on mythic mode. It’s up to Anet though.

Exactly my first thoughts when I saw hardcore raiders groan here for raids. They can´t be satisfied, it is either too long, too short, too small, too X. Ask them to really name what they want and all they can give you is a vague picture like “challenging” content with a boss mecnanic that is “good”. A select view can give you exactly what they want, but how could it be challenging for them if it is tailormade and not surprising at all. Total randomization of a given raid would be their only chance to be challenged, but that is impossible by default becasue nobody would ever accomplish it.

So trying to satisfy the more hardcore raiders is like kittening against the niagara falls in the hope that they turn yellow. Best of luck with that, Anet. ^^

Although having witnessed first hand how stupid the AP barrier is, if you´re for example a big company, you have to start somehere to see who you will hire, and there it is grades because they can´t look at you when they have 3000 more applicants. Too bad that GW2 isn´t a big company, but people can´t escape their coprporate mentality, putting that stamp on everything even when it has no place there at all. On a sidenote: some movies, people, teams or corporations are successful beside being themselves, not because of themselves. Jurassic world for example was ripped a new one by some critics, but now it is the third most successful movie ever.

My first fractals “teacher” had 2.5K AP because he was a fractal purist and told me everything about them, while I was completely cluesless at first with my then 10K.

Kormeg.2469:

Torolan.5816:

…Anet has no qualms about putting the breaks on something or changing their strategy midair.

I know right? Responding to what their player base wants is ludicrous?! LOL!

Why do you think they’re coming out with a boxed expansion after previously saying they wouldn’t? Why do you think the content of it is probably going to be small? Why do you think raids are just now coming into the game?

Players wanted these things to happen, despite Anets plans so they changed those plans to suit those player wants. You don’t succeed in a capitalist market by having a rigid plan and sticking to it hoping for better, you adapt.

Uhm, no, it´s not ludicrous? Don´t know why you spring out of your box with so much effort, but I actually agreed that raids are the curent state of the art toy.
So what is one of the pillars of your precious capitalist market system? Adaption. Say it with me: Adaption. Repeat: Adaption.
Now think it further with me:
If raids are not the band aid Anet is looking for, it will be abandoned. Why? Because they adapted.

I don´t see my opinion actualyl contradict in any point with yours, do you?

Andred.1087:

Colin was very clear that raids are the way they will continue to add challenging content to the game, integrating with future expansions and other releases. If you think he wasn’t 100% serious, I don’t know why you’re wasting your time on this game.

“What do I care for my talk from yesterday.”
Most likely coined by Konrad Adenauer, famous peace chancellor after WWII.

I actually don´t know their strategy, but I would not bunk too much on that Colin stuff. If it´s not PvP, that is somehow always spared from the butcher´s block, Anet has no qualms about putting the breaks on something or changing their strategy midair.

FogLeg.9354:

FogLeg.9354:

Was that DrN or BTA? And where did they go?

Just few days ago I asked which guild left. The real answer – they ALL left. Another server left completely empty.

So, in EU tier 9 we now got 2 playerless servers. And before some i-know-all-about-wvw-because-I-play-in-high-tier guy pops in with some meaningless reply, when I say empty, I mean empty. Completely empty. As no players left. None.

Funny thing is – they still both marked as “medium” population, same as Dzagonur, Vabbi and Arborstone. Gives new meaning to word “medium”.

From the recent matchup, I would not be surprised to see another server die same way very soon too. Exactly what is the purpose of having 9 tiers and 27 servers when there simply is not enough players, is not clear to me. If it is just to show BIG numbers, why not add 99 more tiers with 300 more servers, surely it will work even better.

So, if any guild in high EU tier complaining about queues and lags wants to get their hands on whole server where they can play as much as they want whole day long, there are now 2 to offer.

I´d bet my money on Miller becoming at best a regular again in the Bronze tier if I were you. As valiant as we fight with our few people, there is no way we can beat Drakkar, Aurora or Gunnar or whoever server sinks to position 16. And with Ring of Fire gaining strength as we lose it, we´ll soon be down to T7, and hopefully stabilize there.

And the sad thing, is we were nearly really silver material some months ago.

Let me see, OP:
1/10: I agree with you that hanggliding is not funny and that the person who had that idea as a main feature of HoT should be demoted into the post department.
2/10: I also don´t like djungle as new theme.
3/10: Former fanboy that turned critic and wants to refocus on dynamic event. Ok with that.
4/10: Concludes a number and posts it as fact. Great diversion tactics, OP. Thumbs up^^
5/10: Kobra X, that reminds me of the Cobra dojo from Karate kid.
6/10: Not impressed Barack Obama meme looks trollish and awesome all at once. Would vote again if I were American and if it would be possible to vote him again.

So a 6/10, OP. Not really meh, but nothing to write home about.^^

Add to that that it is probably the worst, luckily not necessary to repeat grind when you try to unlocked the achievements that block not only one but two items and AP(jewelry and lumi) by offering lots of unskippable videos and runs that can virtually net you nothing, not even small loot. Makes me downright angry just to think about ls2.

Probably the worst implementation of a grind that I have ever seen in GW2 if you are not a fan of flawless dodging stuff.^^

Would I think that it is funny if a game mode that is of disputable size and popularity but shamelessly lobbied for by vocal fans until it was finally implemented shows that is not sustainable on a larger scale like PvP is too, while a mode like WVW has to live in the shadows but still performs well, probably much to the astoundishments of devs, ultimately fails to deliver?

You can bet your rear on it.

No raid will ever be good enough for the upper ranks of raiders, and Anet is in for a nasty surprise if they realize how much work it will be for them to make these kind of raiders happy. If they just sit it out like with other modes, the´re back to square 2 at least (yes, we have raids, no matter that they suck or are not popular) and away from square 1(we have no raids).

But let´s not open that box with a serious conversation, I wrote that this is my not so serious hope, not something I actualyl expect to happen anyway.

Dahkeus.8243:

Good. There’s a reason I left WoW at Cataclysm.

Pug raids are miserable. They’re either an organizational disaster or they’re pitted against content that’s made easy enough for a pug clear.

The latter of those two options is the worst.

Here’s the moment I decided to quit raiding:

I was entering the Deatwing’s Lair raid with a Raid LFG. We breezed through every boss, downing them without a wipe. I defeated Deathwing by doing almost nothing but tab targetting and following the mob of pugs. When the great and legendary Deatwing died to this group…I realized that there was nothing to be proud of.

Deathwing suddenly felt like a pushover schmuck and there was nothing any challenging hard mode could do to fix his ruined reputation.

Please ArenaNet. Please, please, keep this content challenging and don’t ever build out a group finder. Don’t just cater to casual content and don’t just cater to hardcore content. Provide both and embrace a complex and diverse playerbase!

Wow, this is so sad that it is funny again, do you have some more chilling tales in your warchest maybe? If there is ever a party in WVW that advocates for a map where only people that have defeated content X in GW2, I hope people vote you for their president there. Of course only so long if someone comes along and dethrones you, preferably in a new, top notch raid.^^

So I guess that you already mastered that raid on a higher level of difficulty and had either nothing to loose or win from doing it again, or did not get the stuff you wanted in the hard version. And still you could not stand to see people beat the content on an easier level for a place at the sun too?

Wow, jost wow.

MikaHR.1978:

WWW has like 1 dev working on it occasionally. It has received only few minor updates in 3 years, yet ANet confirmed it performed beyond every expectation.

Lol, wut? Anet has confirmed that it has worked beyond exception? As it is, speaking from the prespective of logistics, recognition, fame and replayability, only a poor DAOC WvW clone, imagine how many people would play it if some really minor additions were made. But that is obviously of not much concern for Anet.

This company sometimes…^^

maddoctor.2738:

Torolan.5816:

Not to step on the toes of the pro raiding faction here too much, but even with the generous? 16% of people doing it, should the effort for it then not go over 15% of the 100% that is HoT to gain a significant success from the start? Pretty sure budget was tight anyway, and 15% of tight is not much. Maybe not put to much hope in it if I were you^^

I’d guess that less than 15% of the GW2 population is doing PVP and less than 15% of the population is doing WvW in big guild groups (raids) playing “the real WvW”. Still they put way too much on their PVP aspect, and next to nothing on WvW.

It has been suggested on other threads that raids being treated as a separate game mode, just like you split PVE, PVP and WvW, now add a 4th named raids. The real question is if the raid population will be higher than any of the other 3 modes, obviously not higher than PVE, but what about the other two?

Good argument if you see raids as a new mode of play instead of just PvE. Let´s hope then that Anet does not make the same mistake with the allocation of ressources. Everybody should get happy in his own fashion, but a company should in the best of circumstances work with numbers and not with pipedreams about E-Sports or conformity with other games. If raiding becomes a huge success, I will gladly admit that I was wrong to loathe and that it was the best for GW2 to add it.

Not to step on the toes of the pro raiding faction here too much, but even with the generous? 16% of people doing it, should the effort for it then not go over 15% of the 100% that is HoT to gain a significant success from the start? Pretty sure budget was tight anyway, and 15% of tight is not much. Maybe not put to much hope in it if I were you^^

Uhm, I am not that good with mathematics and statistics, but does that not just show that this is the number of people that at least once raided?
Of course you could also turn that around for any open world content(like 90% of people did the karaka queen once), but does not harder availability automatically mean lower, continuous participation?

@maddoctor
You gave, at least in my opinion, a pretty accurate listing or raid participation in Wow in some other thread, and 2% was your starting point too before significant changes were made on raids there. Another person also showed the number of turbine, where it was shown that raiders were really the smallest group of people with LotR.

IndigoSundown.5419:

Due to arthritis, I will be excluded from bosses that require platforming-style movement while also fighting, dodging and maintaining situational awareness. I’m in wait-and-see mode on the raid bosses, but suspect we’ll see a lot of that — which would mean that raids are not for me. For me, I’m OK with that, but would prefer to see some raids I could do rather than all raid wings having that style of challenge.

I ask your forgiveness up in front for writing this, IndigoSundown, but I would indeed lobby for a social spot in raids where the disabled, sick, old and very young can contribute to the success despite of not having the reflexes needed for such raids in general. I can not imagine how painful arthritis really is, but I have seen enough people suffering from it to know that it is very painful. Maybe a spot where you can turn something on and off with little hand/eye coordination or whatever, or act like a sentry or something like that.

My main reason to dislike Raids is indeed that some groups of people are excluded by default if there are no social spots, despite some people vehemently refusing to acknowledge this. I hope you guys stay at least up when you sit in the bus and a painwracked older person or generally disabled individual steps into the bus too.^^

MikaHR.1978:

So, content that pretty much all other MMOs are slowly but surely dropping, content that only 5% of the playerbase does….

How does one justify spending ANY money on that.

Of course I don´t know the reason why the introduced them, only Anet knows why they went that way. The scenarios I can imagine are:
a) To finally shut up the raider community, so that they only have to fend of the smaller GvG community
b) Because everyone has raids in the game and Anet could not be any longer the special snowflake
c) Shareholders demanded more money, and that requireds an action to be done, stupid or a stroke of genius does not matter then when people try to save their sorry behind from getting bootet.
d) A convincing chart from some PR or accounting guy showed them that it would bring customers. also known as “we need a band aid, and we need it quick”
e) The President/CEO falling out of favor with shareholders is now trying to bid for forgiveness with them by making the game more mainstreeam
f) ls2 did not sell as intended.

Dinks.2478:

I think people who join speedruns and lie about their gear should be banned for abusing the LFG. Nicest community my kitten , this sort of behavior is something expected of children. And encouraging it on the forums should be a suspension. It is encouraging toxic behavior towards others in the community. Lying and ruining other peoples runs because you can’t be bothered to join a group that isn’t speed running. You want the benefit of all the people wearing zerker and running meta builds but you don’t want to put in the effort to do those things yourself so you piggy back off of others who do and then slow them down out of spite and laziness.

Lol, that is both elitist and brash all at once. With the same justification, I could demand the banning of people that join come as you are groups in zerker and constantly berate people there why this is superior to that. After all, they provide services and benefits to you too, that you deem these inferior is not their problem but yours then.

+1 from me too.

I can´t stress enough how much I liked the open world concept and want to see it get better for everyone, not just for the casuals or the hardcore people.

maddoctor.2738:

Torolan.5816:

Seriously curious how you can troll the Melandru, Lyssa or Dwayna event.

You don’t troll those, you afk them. The fact that anyone can attack once then go get a coffee is one of the epic fails of the open world design. Really the main reason many open world events fail is because of sad scaling, when the amount of afkers reach a critical point content certainly becomes more frustrating. Not hard though, having a billion hit points doesn’t make something hard, just badly designed.

Still contesting the idea the open world was not a good concept in general. It made the world come alive, and I would love to see it reappear again sometime. As far as I am concerned, raiders can have their content if they finally bug off from the open world maps then. Everybody should be happy then.

The open world was fine pre-megaservers. Soloing or 5-manning the Fire Elemental in Metrica was an epic battle indeed. After the megaservers the world doesn’t feel “alive”, it feels overcrowded. There are way too many players concentrating on events that make them all look trivial. Safety in numbers. And the main problem with that is because of the horrible scaling system, instead of adding more mobs, giving mobs more abilities, spawning more complex mobs, their scaling just increases the hit points.

Yawn

Ok, I bite on the argument of afking is bad because people get stuff for diddly squat or make events fail because of scaling, although both you and me will regret it.^^

-It´s up to Anet to change the mechanism of scaling. I am no programmer, but if a simple program like Excel can separate between
If X is greater than 2, it gets a + . If X is smaller than 0, it gets a – .
why can´t the program of a big company full of talented programmers?
-I don´t know which open worlds events you visited, but only a majority I was in failed because of Afkers. They failed because people did not know anything about the machanism or how their class works. I give you Marionette though. Although all kinds of awesome, it sometimes made me ashamed to be part of the human race with the sheer level of sometimes trollish, sometimes simply fail because of terribad players involved there.^^

We are on the same page when saying that most of the old boss mobs in open world need a big overhaul again, and the megaserver system probably too. Maybe make it a fluctuating number of people that can enter a given map when a boss mob is up? don´t know if that is possible.

I feel your pain, OP.

The guy that taught me much I know about Fractals disappeared basically over night to play another game. If they only had made the fractal level higher then!

But now, too little, too late…^^

maddoctor.2738:

Or was “supposed” to be their raid-like endgame but that never happened because Temple events proved to be easy mode. Explorable dungeons were supposed to be their challenging endgame but that never happened either because once again, with some rare exceptions, they were ridiculously easy. Triple Trouble is not hard or challenging content, unless you call “challenging” the herding of sheep to not screw up the run.

That’s why they finally realized Open world can never be good challenging content so they made raids 10-man instances. Can’t troll there like in the open world, in order to be rewarded you have to actually PLAY the game, not just stand still auto attack and afk all that remains is if their reward/time and reward/effort ratio are well made.

Seriously curious how you can troll the Melandru, Lyssa or Dwayna event. I give you Grenth and to a certain degree also Balthasar as trollable. Also curious how to troll Tequatl up to a point that it can fail. Triple headed worm is indeed easily trollable.
Melandru, Grenth and Balthasar were actually challenging for a lot of people some time ago without guides, people died in droves there. People even died at the defense of one of the camps in Orr when the ghosts had a giant reach with life drain and people did not get it.
Dungeons are not just easy, they are also simply gold farms because of the ability to stack. Remove that and see people groan in frustation when they get shoved into the abbys from a run of the mill foe like Kholer.

Still contesting the idea the open world was not a good concept in general. It made the world come alive, and I would love to see it reappear again sometime. As far as I am concerned, raiders can have their content if they finally bug off from the open world maps. Everybody should be happy then.

Kevan.8912:

“a variety of difficult challenges that will require your raiding team to bring a high level of skill, strategy, and coordination in order to succeed.”

There is no mention to GEAR.
In FOTM, AR is required in order to go up with fractal difficulty.
What about raids?
New tiers of gear?
Need of legendaries/ascended for AR or stats boost?

I feel that just “skill, strategy and coordination” is something rarely seen in MMOrpg-s…or so important..

Brilliant OP. I know the treadmill question was asked in the past, but I guess you are the first one to ask it after raids were now officially announced!^^

garland.5193:

Any new solo content coming? And No, LS doesn’t count.

I would instantly give you a +1 to just be always reminded of this thread, OP. But sadly, I can´t because people would probably think that I actually support this message and the question asked.

This may actually be my favorite question asked in MMOs.
“When do I get my next itch of SOLO content in my Massively Multiplayer Online game?”

Working as intended I guess…

This is getting better and better every day! Now as raiders finally had their way, the GcG community goes on the warpath too. I got to hand it to you guys, you´re really tenacious and grittily holding on your point of view.

I am aso actually pretty astounded that someone can actually determine the size of a given map by a single feature. Not joking, really impressive stuff.

PaxTheGreatOne.9472:

Now just wait till the 1st 5 man party clears it, then the 1st 3 man party,….

You know it will happen. Solo maybe not, but Duo might … Unless they have 3 buttons for the doors -.-

Then a littlwe later a party with 10k AP combined finishes it… in rare gear…

With a Youtube video showing how it´s done, greatly labeled as:
“Yolo, two guys making hard content look easy. Lololol…”
Closely followed by a step by step guide from one of the guys, labeled as
“How to make a hard looking dungeon to be really easy”
A while later, a first angry gamer rant will apeear on Youtube:
“What is wrong with GW2 raids and what I would have done better!”

Can hardly wait for raids since yesterday to be honest after realizing that this will probably happen, with Anet nearly being back where they started, square 2 instead of square 1 basically.^^

IndigoSundown.5419:

I hope that the raids truly scratch that itch for those who’ve asked for them.

I guess we both know that it won´t. Peopel are already saltily speculating that Anet will only be able or willing to provide 1-3 raids per expansion, maybe just in one level of difficulty that could be much too easy to itch anything. This is basically the only thing that makes me laugh and giggle about the whole development as Anet is trying to accomplish the impossible here: Satisfy the unsatisfyable.^^

I was just throwing lvl 8 in for kitten and giggles. I don´t know how much of a level you would ninimally be with the avoidance of everything tactic.

Regarding the dad example, I had another thought:
If your dad is such a lover of stories, why did he not look in the stories of the human starter area?
Oh, centaurs attacked the castle and summoned the giant hand. Why did they do this? Hm, over there is a human outpost. Maybe there are some hints there? Centaurs attack the road, alarm!

I certainly won´t say that the story of vanilla maps of GW2 is a breathtakingly good work of pulitzer deserving art, but if you look hard enough, you find some gems in that too. Kessex Hills comes to mind actually, with the ls1 system of open world events still in effect, many casual players could spend days or even weeks there. They actually did when the tower stoood there.

wasted.6817:

???
I didn’t say anything about upgrading to raids. The rest of your post is… i don’t even know what’s that about, i think you misunderstood me. Doesn’t matter anyway.

You were asking for dungeons to get a hard mode if I understood you right, kind of the argument you constantly hear from raid people in general. Sorrys when I threw you in a bin of apples you don´t belong in, but the reasoning looked quite familiar to me.^^

@Shel
Better written? I can agree with that if a heart quest would fit into the story instead of being like. And it is not Ignorance in the sense of too stupid it´s being ignorant in a sense that you know it and simply don´t want to do it to get X. I don´t know a better word for it and it may actually be a false friend translated from my language into english, but I hope you understand what i mean.
So instead of:
“Yeah, uhm, I am a bee farmer and have a spoon for you.”
It makes sense that a person like tihs lives in the starting map, but it could be like:
“Yeah, Player X, I knew your sister. She was a nice girl.”
to catch the players who want ot make the game for story reasons.

And as he started a while ago, why not give him tomes so that he could level by using tomes? We´re back at the equivalent of unwilling to do it now, or not?

@phys
It also made sense when this was not the case. But you are also right in a way, nobody could stop you when you wanted to make the story of lvl 30 with a lvl 8 char. But that would just have condemned you to a painful death or forced your relatives, friends etc to babysit you through it while you watch the cinematics. Because you neither have the euipment nor the skills to survive the story when you a) never leveled and b) never caught the basic mechanic even GW2 asks from the most rudimentary of casual gamers.

???
Half finished job? Can you show me the dev blog promising that dungeons would be upgraded to raids sometime?
Fractals are group content too, are they also only half finished?

Did you also walk over to Dodge, Mercedes or Daihatsu and ask when they start to produce cars that work like busses?
“Well, you guys produce cars with 4 seats, minibuses with 8 seats and since some days, also busses with up to 80 seats. Don´t you think it´s time to produce a car now with 80 seats too? You know, it looks a little bit half finished right now, although it drives and works…”
^^

ShelBlackblood.7826:

phys.7689:

they kinda messed it up by putting the personal story in 10 level blocks, especially having the first story start at level 10. The personal story was kind of the thing that gives you a purpose and guides you through the game, (until you no longer care, at which point you know what you want to do in game and have your own goals)
They really dropped the ball on that in the NPE imo, it was one of the most detrimental changes.
They actually start the game with a straight up level grind, with no other obvious purpose. Who thought that was a good idea?

/signed
That’s the reason I never got my dad to like GW2. He’s not a MMO player but upfront when it comes to good stories (which imo is the case with the personal story). Meaning he would have played the story and then left the game. He started it on my second account a while a go and said “Where is the purpose? What am I even doing here?” – I couldn’t motivate him to grind to lvl 10 only to see a glimpse of the story and grind 10 levels more after that. Not to mention that the PS was also my motivation when I leveled my first three characters.

I wonder if the OP would still be playing the game if he actually knew that there will start a story eventually…

Please don´t take this a rant against you or you people, folks. I also have people in the family I scratch my head over their abilities and inabilitie to grasp concepts like this.

But when someone can´t understand the concept of leveling, he or she has no reason and motivation to play a game like this. I am not talking about the purpose of leveling, that is indeed debatable. But someone who is not able to grasp the concept that he needs to crunch some numbers if he wants to reach the story aspect of the game, should not play this at all.
I think that your relatives are all intelligent people, therefore I can´t understand what is so hard to grasp about a sentence like:
“Look dad, see that number over there? Until that number is a 10 or more, you can´t look the story. It gets higher if you do any of X.”
If you were able to get a drivers licence for example with such easy commands like “If this light turns green, your car can go”, you can also grab the above concept.
You don´t need a Ph.D in mathematics to understand this.

So we´re not talking about inability to play, we are talking about ignorance and impatience.

My serious hope is that I can make it through quickly as I dislike jumping, mazes and djungles and would have hoped for another scenario.
I also want to see the story progress, despite the crappy ls2 performance.

My not so serious hope is that the raid is supereasy and the raid people finally get what they asked for, but it still amounted to nothing. That would be funny!^^

I wish a cloud would form over my house and rain down money bills in my garden.

Looks like we will both be disappointed…

Edit: Yes, this was a grumpy, salty response, but you raid people should just be content for a while that you bashed the walls of Anet through with your thick skulls at last.^^

Can´t speak about the other games, but DAOC was indeed much harder, especially in the dungeons, you were probably dead meat if a mob 3+ levels above you targeted you and you did not run from it. You could have never afforded to just sit by and wait in Avalon City if you were not sitting in a safe spot, even some of the less skilled necromancer players were killed when they were afk for too long.

GW2 is severely lacking in terms of Vanilla mobs and lacking in WvW(no buff bots, big bonus!) compared to DAOC, despite acting on the same kind of system. The one major advantage is has over DAOC is that it´s story moves on. Snail like, but it moves forward.

RoffleMyWaffles.1295:

Hey everyone. I’m a new player. Before I begin my rant, let me precede by telling you the kind of games I play frequently: DoTA2, Battlefield 3 & 4, Starcraft II, Dragon Age: Origins. For single player games I play on a harder difficulty because I like challenge, and as for the others, I play PvP because I like in-depth mechanics, strategy, and a good challenge.

On to GW2. I picked this game up because my friends raved about it, and after reading the stunning reviews, I went ahead and took the plunge and bought the game. I played World of Warcraft a long time ago and thought that was a decently challenging game. But right now I have a level 9 sylvari and all I can say is this game is INCREDIBLY, INCREDIBLY, INCREDIBLY, INCREDIBLY EASY and BORING!

I am “completely” floored by how easy it is to “kill stuff”. I don’t even need to use 2, 3, or 4, all I do is walk up to stuff (that is my level or higher) and kill in 6 or less hits with auto-attack. Am I missing something here? I haven’t bought anything from the stores. Does the game get harder as you go along? Does the PvE get any better than this? My experience feels way different than everyone else, and I’m wondering if I’m doing it wrong. What exactly makes this game so great to stand out amongst the other MMO’s on the market? Maybe it isn’t for me, but judging by the reviews there’s got to be some hidden substance.

Thanks for the help.

So you play three strategy games PvP games and a single player RPG. Of course the PvE is a walk in the park for you.

I did not really think about it up until now, but how awesome would it be if Anet finally had given in to raiders, only to make it a pale shadow to any serious raid in any other game? The really glorious and funny part would be that they got their wish, a raid. Some people specifically demanded hard content instead of raids, those would still be screwed, But the rest could never complain again, akin to Anet saying:
“Here is your lousy raid, guys. Now leave a h:ole in the environment while we design open world content…”

Really, H O L E gets censored?

Beldin.5498:

I wanted to hear the outcry of the vocal players here if they had made legendarys
only available to PvP players that win some E-Sport events.

And hi to my stalker NT.

That would be awesome. Then declare one of them king of the mountain for this year and see a round of FlameWars 2 erupt around his comfy throne. The icing on the cake would be if it is a toxic, elitist moron who is king, preferably a young man that has turned 12 the day he bought GW2 and can only pull his stunts because he has snakelike reflexes instead of years of training and hard work.^^

A non profit organization that exists to help a certain kind of people most of the time(prosecuted, poor, homeless, stupif, disabled etc etc) does not produce games to stay afloat, they receive donations big and small from companies, regular people and philantrophes.

I think nobody contests the love the designer had when making it too. Beside the helmet, I think it is fitting for a third birthday. I just contest the idea that people have to scream hoorray! for every present they get.

Ayrilana.1396:

— Imagine this scenario:

You have a child who receives a gift from his/her parents. That child then says that they do not like it and proceeds to list off numerous reasons why such as it looks like garbage, they want something else instead, and so on. The child’s parents did not have to give their child a gift in the first place.

How would you describe that child?

— Now imagine another scenario:

You have a player who receives a gift from the developers. That player then says that they do not like it and proceeds to list off numerous reasons why such as it looks like garbage, they want something else instead, and so on. The developers did not have to give the player a gift in the first place.

How would you describe that player?

If you buy your child for example a scratchy pair of socks out of the blue, a polite child will thank you and look happy while asking itself if you had smoked something at work to come home with this ridiculous present. It will probably try to hide the scratchy socks in the drawer, right beside the scratchy underwear you bought last year for the same, well intended but ultimately incomprehensible reason.
A not so polite child will tear up, cry or even get angry why it has to wear scratchy socks now.
Don´t believe me and have children? Take a look into your drawer, at places you can hardly reach to clean up.

Well meaning parents can be a plague for children sometimes…^^

Aeolus.3615:

Quote:*
“ArenaNet need to realize most people strive to complete the difficult content, but failing can actually be enjoyable, because if you fail to beat a boss for 5 months, and finally beat it, it feels great, and also give you “bragging rights” which might make other players want to do it as well."*

That sits pretty high on a list of moronic quotes you can expect from a hardcore raider, congratulations. How someone can enjoy doing the same garbage without getting a substantial reward over and over for months is completely beyond me. That would basically remind me of working in a really low browed federal office, doing the same stuff over and over again with it getting send back by your next higher superior because of you attempting to use the same tired arguments all over again until you finally, finally find a formulation that is ok for your boss and he winks you through to the next higher boss.