Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

Trying to keep out noobs because they might cause the group to wipe a dozen times or more before they can complete the boss is somewhat reasonable…

And that’s why average people in the lfg are setting requirements.

Ohoni.6057:

…but trying to keep out noobs because it might mean the fight takes 12 minutes to complete instead of 10 would just be pointlessly rude.

That’s not a reason why average people in the lfg are setting requirements. Definitely not!

Shadowstep.6049:

The joke is LI requirement is a lotto……because they don’t mean crap.

I disagree. They mean a lot if raid leaders are using their brains.

High LI requirements only are a deterrence for inexperienced, new or most often crappy players. It’s not there to weight a boss’ difficulty or a groups talent.
Overall it is working fine with some exceptions here and there. The thing why it is working and not everybody is faking codes is that a huge majority of the playerbase is honest about themselves. So, if they see such a requirement and don’t meet them they don’t even consider to join. A further larger group also don’t want to lie about in the chat and betray others so they don’t join neither. The whole argument of “You know they can be faked.” is irrelevant because it’s a tiny minority doing it. And even if that minority would grow unless they aren’t terrible they will bring bosses down with your group so their LI is growing plus nobody would have realized the issue and feel comfortable due to killing the boss.

While I agree it’s not perfect and you rather set a requirement like for example “The Eternal” for Wing 1, “Tonic” buff for Wing 2 and “Minis” for Wing 3 because these cannot be faked! Yes, somebody could have bought wing kills to get some of these but it’s highly unlikely.

In the end, the case is simple: You exclude the probability of getting players without having the knowledge and the skill to beat bosses with certainty and mostly speed. The result is enough to get enough decent players and identify the bad apples that are trying to get into your group for a carry and kick them right into the b… out of the group!

Everything is absolutely ok about it because it’s nothing less than to exclude people from playing a specific sports game with them on the court. It’s neither elitist nor toxic.

Special edit to answer this one:

To all of those saying make your own new players group: what if a player already killed bosses couple times and actually have experience and gear, just don’t have 80+ LI. The problem is most LFG want flippin 80+ LI (if not 150, yes i saw those) if you want to join. Yesterday i saw VG group requiring 30 LI to join – VG is first boss in raids, easiest thing ever (although escort is probably easier) and 30 LI for it? Are you nuts?

30 LIs for VG are ok. I have seen players bringing kp and 80 LIs dying to VG over and over again. That can happen due to having a really terrible day, being unmotivated or other reasons. As I mention above if you don’t set a requirement you can be lucky or not, you don’t know it. With a requirement you lower the chance of a failure drastically while it’s still possible to fail and it still happens; happened to me in a kp + 100 LI group after VG at Gorse. But nevertheless I, for myself, rather increase the chance to win in advance than playing lotto.

Ging.6485:

T And as far as I have seen, most people have the most fun with escort. All except super hard core l33t raiders.

I highly doubt that! Escort is ok for the first time, after that it’s getting heavily boring. The other fights are way more interesting.

0/10

You had a bad day struggling in fractals or what is the goal behind this troll post?

maxwelgm.4315:

The accessibility to raids I believe, is worse for people that are “kinda there” than for absolute newbies that haven’t done any boss before. Because if you have a couple LI’s from downing a few encounters, but still don’t know the harder ones (e.g Matt, Xera) and join a training run, you know you’re jumping onto a sinking ship: neither will you be able to carry the newbies because you need more training, nor will you have as much patience to have the encounter explained over and over and over and see people not listening over and over and over, and instead of actually training your role, you’ll just watch people wiping repeatedly over mechanics you already went through.

But you can’t join groups that are too exp either: most will politely tell you that you need more training if you try explaining you’re new but already familiar with many of the mechanics, or simply flat out ask for 80+ LI’s and leave you out for good. So basically (at least concerning lfg) there’s a vaccuum there; Xera training runs, for example, I think are completely absent if you’re not on a guild that runs you through it.

I suppose the solution would be for these people that already started on their raiding but are not quite there yet (e.g you wouldn’t join a VG training run to have it explained to you but you can’t join the LFM wing 1 50+ LI ones) to make their own groups like “LFM practice [Boss] (know the fight!)” or something like this. I do it myself sometimes but I feel like there should be much more of those around, because I think these people are the ones that actually want more access to raid (unlike a lot of the newbies that can’t/won’t listen and do not really learn the mechanics during a training run).

What speaks against your “theory” is, that if you already into raiding and you are able to get some bosses down you know what’s going on in raids and your LIs also increase for a good amount per week. Without difficulty you can play the easier roles like ps warrior, rev and necro (pre-patch, dunno about now, we will see) at Sabetha and Xera. It’s also no problem to get into teams just be brave and don’t go like a bull at a gate. Of course, be honest but if you have been in 1-3 training runs before and you are experienced with other bosses you will be able to be a solid part in the team without struggling. You should not always yell loudly: “Here I am, I am new.”, because all distrust will fall onto you if there is a wipe even though you were not the one failing.

At last, tbh Xera isn’t as hard as Matthias, also Sabetha is easier if you are not one of the cannon jumpers.

You are pugging T4 Thaumanova fractal and you are using banners + signet at the anomaly?
Well, it’s fine due to being the meta build on the board but have you actually looked around you during that fight?

I tell you something: Most of the fight your allies aren’t in range of banners and you aren’t in range for stun breaks that come from your allies for example a druid because people are still running (too) much. Even in coordinated groups you have to sidestep a lot, especially after 50% hp of the boss almost everybody has to rotate a bit definitely ending up being outside of banner range most of the time.

So, if you don’t want to change banners and bring them with you because you think it’s a huge dmg increase in this fight, there is another utility slot to use. Swap the signet to “Shake it Off” and you have a stun break every 25 seconds which should be enough to deal with the few irregular knockbacks. Not taking the signet with you doesn’t lower the fight with pugs significantly.
It’s one of these rare fights where full dps won’t work best as long as you are not highly coordinated and bringing a lot of skill. Dunno how often I have given the advice to others to bring defensive utility skills in this fight after jumping from the platform because I wasn’t willing to solo 30-50% of the boss because every other players has been dead already.

nagr.1593:

…

Your whole post clearly shows that you have no clue about the condi reaper and how it is working!

Btw. it helps if you generally shorten your posts. They are very hard to read and to understand every single time you’ve posted them into this forum. Write short sentences and use more paragraphs. ty

Which one? The one that not all of the raid team are new to Anet? I accept it but the direction you brought the argument was irrelevant, so it doesn’t matter if all or some are new. There is no way that this makes a difference to the discussion we were about.
Are you here to just have a right point on any little thing that is mentioned here or are you interested in the important question which is:
“Is the raid team denying us from having open world/fractal/whateverest content?”
The answer is straight No.
“Are the skin developers helping raids denying us from having open world/fractal/whateverest rewards?”
The answer is straight No again.

Scipio.3204:

Hah, best source ever, but we already had this discussion before. I’m raiding myself even if not as much as I used to. The “git gud” argument won’t really work on me. Anyway we’ve gone off topic so I’ll stop my side of discussion here.

Where is a “git gud” argument? I don’t care if you are raiding or not. I stopped a while because the three wings are already boring for me. Our both sides here are irrelevant once more.
The thing is: You haven’t understood or you don’t want to like in the past arguments we had together.

It’s more a reward argument: People want things served to them in this game without doing anything than pressing 1 iteratively. GW2s history in doing that is long. But since almost one year we have content that isn’t handed on a silver plate and overall we are doing very good with it. Look at the AB multiloot zombies players, they like such content and it’s there for them.
Only a tiny amount of players is grumpy about raids – still no huge skritt storm till today. It’s a small legion who is not pleased with actually doing something for their reward. I repeat myself, the majority of non-raiders doesn’t even care and plays open world, fracs, dungeons, pvp and wvw.

The fact that this game has problems has nothing to do with raids what we could have seen with the recent halloween patch (DR, class balancing, price of the raven and more) and Anet again not being without faults and upsetting people once again.

It sounds so melodramatic and usually I am not the guy coming up with end time atmosphere but if the game is dying it’s not due to raids. I see many more drastic issues in this game than some minor problems around raids.

Scipio.3204:

I don’t see how this is relevant, I don’t remember a time they weren’t hireing. The fact is majority of the raid team were with arenanet prior raids.

Still doesn’t change anything neither in term for raids nor against them. I haven’t brought this one up but I agree, it’s completely irrelevant.

Scipio.3204:

Their release schedule is the problem tho. Take 2016 for example. They released around 2 armor sets , 3 weapon sets around a dozen “unique piece” like backpacks and helmets and around 50 % of these things are behind raids, considering it’s likely we get a new raid with new stuff it won’t get better.

Now add to this that raids are meant for the minority and you’ll see the problem.

You are the first one complaining about having too few rewards outside of raids and raids being filled up with them on the other hand.

Absurdo stated it several times in the past: Most of the players blaming raids are blaming them because they are not willing to put effort into or for other reasons to get the rewards. If you argue in the way above you do not differ from that type of player.

I don’t see a problem here because most of the GW2 players that do not play raids also don’t care about them or their rewards.

Scipio.3204:

but that didn’t interrupt their development schedule.

Thx for mentioning, thereby the discussion is over for me in this point.

Scipio.3204:

And Vinceman if you don’t think raids are taking away the rewards from other game modes just look at the two new zones and compare them to the other two we had with LS. The old ones came with a weapon set and an armor set, while the new ones have 1 Backpack / Zone. To this day even fractal doesn’t have an armor set while raids have multiple. And the list could go on.

Sry, but it’s cheap to first argue months/weeks against raids because they are taking away content which was proven to be wrong and now crying out loud “raids are taking my rewards away”. This is nonsense.

Scipio.3204:

Vinceman.4572:

they installed the raid team with new developers. These ppl weren’t working at Anet before.

I could be wrong but I think the lead of the raid team has been with Anet far longer than raids.

Edit 2:

I’ve looked into it on Wiki , If I’ve read it correctly 8 out of 11 dev part of the raid dev team were with arenanet and worked on other stuff , including the guy who worked on Festivals like Halloween for example

Even if so, there were open positions to be filled from people outside the company “ArenaNet hiring designer for Guild Wars 2 raid content”, so there hasn’t been a significant reduction of the other teams if you compare the raid dev team size to the rest.
Still don’t know where this should lead us to…weird theories?

Yes, and 9/11 was an inside job….

Please, do you want to have a serious discussion or not?
If Anet officially states that there is no interference to other development things so that nobody has to suffer, I personally trust them. It was the only valid source we could get.
If you don’t believe that, ok, but then don’t expect to be treated seriously.

Scipio.3204:

everything they add to raids they could have added it to somewhere else.

Of course they could. So, you would have some more collections in the open world. Good for some AP grinders but definitely not for content lovers. And you don’t want to tell me that ppl would be satisfied only with collections. The overall majority of players wants to play content.

Scipio.3204:

They said raids doesn’t influence the development of other content, not that it doesn’t influence how rewarding they are.

And that is an argument for what?

And again, Astralsporing, they installed the raid team with new developers. These ppl weren’t working at Anet before. So there were no plans to enlarge the fractal team or rebuild a dungeon team.
Dungeons are dead for a reason: It takes way too long to design new ones or even bugfixing the older ones. Fractals are a similar thing, we would have had enough new fractals if developing and balancing them for tiers was easy. It’s not. That’s the reason we got a new fractal with reheated content, called Chaos. I myself, I find it ridiculous that we don’t have new fractals besides the mentioned one but realistically seen it has nothing to do with raids that the situation is like it is.

Stajan.4581:

O grand Pooba of fractals how about you stuff it I know you are wrong, we are not elites all of us.

Yes, we all are not elites. But nevertheless every day thousands of people pugging fractals in various team compositions without having any problems. It’s not the fractals that stop you from succeeding, it’s your lack of skill.

Stajan.4581:

The fractals should not have to be build specific that is what raids are for and pvp and wvw, and pve with the zerker every kit thing.

You can build anything you want. Even today I had a power necro, 2 tempests and 1 chrono with me. 1-2 were underperforming but the rest of us cared and so it wasn’t a fast run but in the end successful. Your argument is invalid.

Stajan.4581:

How about some of use hate meta and think meta is a joke, how about there is no best build just best at builds.

You still don’t need to run meta.

Stajan.4581:

I think you need to watch some of Nemisis videos and listen to what he has to say and realize the game should be just as easy with any build out there.

Sorry, last time I watched videos of that guy I had to laugh and shut them down within the first thirty seconds. I can’t take him seriously. Additionally, Novaan is already wrote it: Nemesis’ videos are old (8 months or older) and his builds are not the ones you want to use nowadays if you really want to follow a guide.

Stajan.4581:

I run 2 builds is a toxic tank necro and the other is a perma protection elle and when I get 2 ticks of agony when I have full 150AR and if takes 21K HP away in 2 ticks time line there is a problem with the fractal.

Your builds are fine unless you find 4 players that want to play with you. That’s easy possible because there are enough groups in the lfg just asking for “T4 dailies”. You know why they don’t put requirements in the first place? The answer: Fractals are easy to be played with any class!
To your calculations/observations: I have a full zerk fractal char and a full condi fractal char. Both only offensive geared. And I have never ever experienced such things you mention in all of my fractal runs, except for the jellyfish underwater when this boss was bugging!

Stajan.4581:

I have mastered all the levels and was able to run them with any class I wanted with little to no issues and it was fun now it is not even worth my time to look at them.
The meta are now 4 necros and a druid which is a stupid class in the first place or 5 necros. trying to run them with anything else is pointless. and that is the problem if you can not see that then you are as blind as ANET

Again, you don’t need to play “meta”, “pug meta” or any other kind of meta. If you have mastered all the levels you should be able to succeed in all of them, even now. If not, you have never ever mastered them a single bit!
I am able to run T4 with 1-2 dummies, so you should be able to run them with 4 usual T4 players. If that is not the case you are definitely lacking in skill. Sorry to tell ya!

Scipio.3204:

Content? No. But reason to play any other content was denied, and will be.

Why? Because the help of designers to implement raid weapons denied designing of shinies in other areas? No way, man, no way. They have made clear that none of the involvement of further devs in raids has had any influence on other content. Deal with it!
You can blame them for developing less weapons and armor sets in the other game modes, yeah, totally agree. But don’t throw in raids as the big evil preventing you from having new skins. That is not true.

Scipio.3204:

Yeah if raids only got the work of the raid team, you would have a point. But the fact that 50% of the HoT armor sets and about half the (non-gemstore) weapons added since HoT are behind raids implies you are wrong. Not to mention voice actors, QA etc

And they still insist on the fact that no other game content was denied, lowered or delayed due to raid development.
So there is still no point for me in Rednik’s statement.

The raid team is smaller than 10% of the rest of the development staff, so even if these magic “10%” are true, it’s already well-adjusted.

1. What’s the name of your guild? And I really like to see other members supporting you in here because I cannot believe what you are writing. Fractals are faceroll if you know the mechanics and your class.

2. A full necro reaper team shouldn’t have any problems at all! It’s still so easy to play through with that comp in a decent amount of time even with the recent patch. I’m really asking myself what you are doing in there. Trash is melting in seconds due to epi, you are still safe due to jagged horrors + your shroud and you can avoid toxic trails by standing a bit ranged.
How the hell are you dying?
So many ppl are pugging T4 and even groups without the “necro stacking” – I rly don’t get your problems in there.

3. Back in the days level 50 wasn’t possible for everyone. Actually it was harder than the T4s now so you are wrong with your claim of “fixing fractals” to an old easier version. Seriously, they should be more difficult than they are now.

4. Today it was
a) Solid Ocean – one of the easiest – no need to mention any tactics or hints
b) Uncategorized – Old Tom can be a problem for some groups, but not with necromancers and definitely not with collecting enough tears. The final boss should be a joke due to corrosive poison clouds of necro; in a 5 reaper group you should always have one up.
c) Swamp – was nerfed to being hilarious again. If you really wipe there after several times practicing it nobody will be able to help you. Just run in circles and dodge his rampage attack on you. If you miss the dodge use shroud or any stun break.

5. My request: Can anyone of your guild/group record one of your runs maybe? And please link all of your builds. I think we can help to improve your playstyle and showing you the clear fact that T4 fractals are easy.

+ don’t forget pvp-rank farm
+ many wvw-players are at eotm for karma-trains

1. Rebalancing isn’t only a thing of numbers. It’s also about mechanics and some of them need to be changed entirely + tested to be functional. All in all it would massively increase time to balance and stopping the dev team from bringing out new content. Additionally, raids are easy if you practice enough. In several eyes, mine included, some of the 9 bosses are too easy if you know what you are doing. Even pugs kill some of them with a big amount of time left.
btw: fractals were designed from the scratch to have different stages of difficulty – raids not!

2. When I started raiding in spring almost all people were nice to me. Of course here and there you find some bad apples like in every corner in this and other games. I doubt that this attitude has changed dramatically and you are reading so many insults and other toxic things. A hint: Read and understand lfgs properly!, it can prevent awkward and toxic situations.

3. There are still enough training and helping runs in the lfg. Every frickin day Plus certain raid teaching guilds exists – have a deeper look into the forum and especially reddit.
In the end you can open your own squad and form a training run. It will fill fast but don’t expect to kill the boss you are going for because it needs time to get along with the mechanics and so on. Not everybody in your group will be on the same level. There is only one reason not to build up an own squad if you want to start raiding: You want to get carried by better players and get your kill fast without practicing. In that case: Sorry, that’s not how raids are working!

4. There are classes that easily can be played by everyone knowing a little bit of the class for example PS warrior; Necro and Rev are also easy (dunno about their need in team comps due to the post-patch situation). If you are proficient with the druid it’s also very simple to play that class in magi’s gear. I got several first kills with druid although I had no clue about the class and were just smashing buttons to burst heal what I could. My team stayed alive whole time, had scholar rune buff up as much as it was possible and could focus on doing dmg – easy peasily!

If you really want to get into raiding then gear up 2-3 different classes and at first follow the basic guides. They are existent for everyone and well explained. It may not always be the best for you and some fights/kills later you will adjust skills/traits but to start with that’s the way to go.
I don’t get why people still blaming raids like they are. The game is old now and everybody can afford ascended gear within an appropriate time due to fractals, AB multiloot and other farm maps. There is no excuse to not have asc gear and simultaneously having the wish to raid.

Sectry.1236:

I did Mai Trin 100 last night with 4 reapers (I was one of them) and 1 engie with a very smooth run so yeah it’s still pretty good.

Had the same group comp. Maybe it was the same group. ^^
And yes, I can agree.

4 Reaper isn’t “meta”, only wanted by almost all pugs. It is still viable and faceroll.

Well, even if it’s on a necro this one is a serious run compared to the previous record which was a joke. Go beat it asap if you can.

Dro.1047:

Vinceman.4572:

Nice one, finally a serious one. The existent record was kind of ridiculous.

because double necro is supposed to be serious ? <:

Nah, because they were going for a fast time, no matter what. The existent one was pure trash.

Nice one, finally a serious one. The existent record was kind of ridiculous.

Golemancer.6215:

3. Poison trails damage can not be negated by any means. I main warrior, i run endure pain, i still die, its still painful. This just makes no sense in light of every other instability having the opportunity to have its damage negated, evaded, etc.

The trails are not there to take a rest on their spot. You have and you can avoid those areas even as melee char.

Also have a look at the wiki for Endure Pain:
“Take no damage from attacks. You are still susceptible to conditions and crowd control effects.”

If you really die to poison trails it’s just a l2p issue not a fail in development/design. I barely see people dying due to this instability in my fractal runs with pugs.

All what they were trying to say is:
Raids are the most difficult PvE content in GW2. Nothing is harder than raids but in the end they are not very hard. Especially not after being available since several months to a year. That’s all.
Or do you know any PvE content that is harder than raids? Because I don’t. They are the most difficult PvE thing in this game but it’s not a difficulty you can’t overcome easily nowadays.

Fancypants.9705:

Oh please get over yourself, Raids aren’t a breeze. They are not comparable to a 10 man dungeon.

Yes, they are and… yes, they are.
6 out of 9 (VG, Gorse, Sloth, Trio, Escort & KC) bosses are super easy for pugs nowadays and the other 3 are only more tricky but also easy doable in pugs if you know what you are doing. Referring to the statement that raids were developed for organized groups in the first place and now being cleared by pugs is definitely a sign of a not so hard difficulty.

FrostDraco.8306:

Muffin Nook.5923:

You could have avoided the whole situation.

Ok. Noted. But again, you are preaching to the choir.

Muffin Nook.5923:

Knowing that the oakheart has a KD and choosing to stay and continue to res was your first mistake,

I never said I didn’t know that the oakheart has a knock down. It’s plain obvious that it does. Don’t put words in my mouth.

Muffin Nook.5923:

not identifying that Bloom was within leaping distance to the downed player was your second,

Another assumption. Can you actually go on the information I gave you, not other BS that I never said and is just you trying to take the kitten? And even if he is in leaping distance that doesn’t mean he will in fact leap.

Muffin Nook.5923:

not knowing who the oakheart and bloom had aggro on was your third.

Another assumption. I never said this.

Muffin Nook.5923:

If you had the aggro, you should have kited the mobs away from the downed person and not gone for the res.

Which I didn’t. Or did you miss the part about it being totally unexpected? Did you even read my post? Seems like you are just here to put words in my mouth and tell me things I’ve already figured out, way before you came along.

Muffin Nook.5923:

If someone else had aggro, then you should have told them to get away from the vicinity while you rubbed the down person.

….Do you even play t4? No seriously. Bloom can change aggro at anytime. It’s not purely based on “who is closest”. But if you have actually done t4 swamp and still don’t know this. Stop trying to use it in an argument, because you are clearly speaking from ignorance. I wouldn’t have ressed the person if bloom was in the vicinity. But of course, YOU, are the only person that could possibly think of that.

kitten right off.

Muffin Nook.5923:

Shouldn’t have to mention all this to someone who “pugged their way to 100 and got their legendary fractal backpiece all on their own”.

You didn’t. You came here and responded days after this was even posted. on top of that you have the audacity to accuse me of things that you can’t possibly know. Your post was useless.

And why did you respond to him then?

End of story:
You made a mistake and you are not well-trained for swamp which is no wonder after having had a change here. Just go and play it several times and you will experience that this encounter isn’t very much harder than the others.
I just came back from a break and still had 0 downs while 3 others in my group died to various reason. It’s all about skill or as someone from Anet said on reddit: “git gud”.

I agree with OnizukaBR.

Malediktus.3740:

Vinceman.4572:

insanemaniac.2456:

there is a non rng method to obtain gold weapons, but 10 gold relics is ridiculous with current drop rates.

I’m sitting on 45 golden relics and don’t know what to do with them after having all golden skins. I agree the drop rate of golden fractal weapons is way too high.

Sounds like you got lucky. I think I have 2 golden fractal skins, 7 or 8 relics and the choice chest from doing 75-100 fractals.

Since you are a fan of rng in games like GW2 everything is perfectly fine for you in this case.

insanemaniac.2456:

there is a non rng method to obtain gold weapons, but 10 gold relics is ridiculous with current drop rates.

I’m sitting on 45 golden relics and don’t know what to do with them after having all golden skins. I agree the drop rate of golden fractal weapons is way too high.

runeblade.7514:

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

I would rather just drop open world.

Every intelligent pugging raider has the tonic in a slot (shared inventory or bank), starts in the aerodome and can therefore ping it in seconds.
Eternal title is shown inside on the flow, so is the mini.
So, the check is done within seconds to a minute only. People knowing they are getting kicked if they are not fast with pinging because it is annoying for the other players to wait or to ask again although it was written in the lfg.
Someone who has killed a boss once is often able to carry his/her weight. Maybe not perfectly but it’s enough to compete with the rest of the group.

Henry.5713:

But it’s about time that we get the option to inspect other players with not only gear but also stuff like the kill counter or anything similar.

Eternal title + active tonic buff + showing appropriate mini (all not fakeable) already are enough. You don’t need to inspect the gear. If there is someone inexperienced although he is bringing the proves from above you will recognise him very soon due to his playstyle (2-3 pulls) otherwise you are “inexperienced” as well.
I never had strong issues with pug groups that made these requirements. VG, Gorse, Sloth, Trio, Escort & KC are “first/second try” in almost all attempts.

Blaeys.3102:

Vinceman.4572:

To implement a practice mode almost one year after release of wing 1 would be a farce and absurd.

Not at all if the goal is to encourage greater interest in raiding and extend the experience to a larger audience.

Yes at all. You don’t encourage greater interest in raiding with easy/practice modes. People will try, most of them succeed and still fail to succeed the current raids due to real life time issues, unable to use the lfg like they are since years what we have seen during dungeon high peak, unwilling to change their gear after beating the easy/practice version of VG/other bosses and many more.

Your wish is, you want to bring the audience of Tarir multi loot, Cursed Shore farming, Silverwaste and Bloodstone Fenn grinding to raids. You don’t want to bring any alley cats to raids that are around on other places in Tyria – these are rare species. You are speaking of the exact people I mention because in PvE there is no any other significant target group in between. The problem of these people is, they want max loot, not fun to kill raid bosses etc.
So, the main issue that rests is they would try such an easy mode, run it if it’s worth compared to Tarir and others. If that’s true rewards have to be increased like hell and as well much more for the current mode. I think we can agree Anet would never do that, not even in our dreams.
On the other hand if the rewards aren’t worth compared to the farm maps people would play practice/easy mode once and then leave it while it suffers a horrible death.

Anka.5086:

Mini Liadri the Concealing Dark. It took me 3 days to get that mini. That achievement was a pain in the a**e. But the satisfaction that I felt overcoming that challenge was well worth that 3 day attempt.
If they start making raids easier I think those original group of players ANet was thinking when designing raids will be discouraged even more and after that everything will just go down hill. Most of us want raids to be on Anet’s top of the list agenda. And the only way to do that is to increase player participation not reduce them even more. Give players the tools to fill that gap between non-exp raider and exp raider.

You haven’t understood. I was saying that if some days raids will lose popularity Anet will make them easier and/or increase the rewards. Look at dungeon powercreep and several open world things in the past.
Forsaken Thicket will lose attractiveness and a practice mode won’t change that. While I want to see more challenging content like the 3 wings we already have I don’t think the current ones will be primary playing target of the raid playerbase in the next 2 years or if still played they are like accessory parts. A thing to grind for some shards/asc stuff/bad stuff.
The 9 encounters already became boring to me and I agree to Dinosaurs:

Forsaken thicket is great but the novelty has of course long since worn off and there isn’t much in the game that presents a comparable challenge (besides solo / low man stuff).

To implement a practice mode almost one year after release of wing 1 would be a farce and absurd.

If raids lose popularity Anet will take care and turn them down (not before several new ones are out) a.k.a. making them easier. At the moment this is not the case so there is no need to take action.

@OP:

I’m against your ideas. You will find reasons in this thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Different-Raid-Difficulty-Would-Satisfy-Most/

I think there is no need to discuss it further from my point of view.

Blaeys.3102:

Repeating the same questions over and over and then claiming no one responds to them EVERY single time is misleading. You may not have agreed with my responses (and others – again, not just me), but they are there. What I wont respond to any more are continued comments that try to make it personal – things like saying someone’s guild is bad because they don’t raid or that people aren’t playing the game right, etc. Let’s get past the obvious attempts to derail the thread and continue the real discussion.

Denying and not realizing the problems/difficulties your ideas have brought up over and over is also misleading and resulting in a dead end.
Nothing went personal this page or the one before so it’s not fair to repeat that again and again. It’s your wish to have an ongoing discussion but let’s face it: We haven’t seen anything new that has to be discussed. Threads are not there to be bumped frequently to hope for an Anet dev will take action due to reading it some day because it belongs to the first threads in a subforum.
Absurdo is right with his statement:

Absurdo.8309:

You necro’ed a dead thread, and then failed to discuss anything.

Rednik.3809:

Sykper.6583:

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

This issue is super easy to counter, just implement fractal tier chest system as reward for a kill. You killed boss in gold frame – you got all 3 chests (bronze, silver and gold), you killed boss in silver and then in gold frame – you got 2 chests (bronze and silver) and then gold one after gold kill.

What leads to the issue that every boss has to be present in the raid until you beat him at gold level or you are excluded to proceed raiding until you either play with the same group or stay in the same instance at this time point or find someone who opens the next boss to go for bronze/silver there. Otherwise groups have to raid from the start of every wing again.
If you think ahead and you want a particular boss to kill on gold but nobody of your group has killed another boss before this one on gold. You’ll always have to fight the bosses before the one you want to kill because they respawn when everyone leaves the instance.
Such a system would cause so many extra annoying problems and cost so much more of dev time, it would not be justified or worth the effort.

Due to the fact that some bosses have to be changed anyway (Gorseval, Sabetha, KC, Xera), it would be better to have a switch/request at raid start with “easy” – “normal” (current) – “hard” mode. The event system with bronze-silver-gold is too complex and produces too many new problems.

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

“If you are expecting endgame pve to be really profitable, then you clearly playing a wrong game. "

I don’t but there is. Tarir multi loot. I don’t play it. I play raids. Raids are fine for me although the rewards are bad imho. In the end I’m right with fractals being far superior in terms of rewards than raids. That’s undisputable!

“Again, try to join these groups and then tell me about these “safe kills” mentioned earlier.”

Did. 30-50 LI groups are very successful here. Below that, not always. Of course.

“I remember there was a discussion about that on reddit, when someone pointed out that Anet considered everyone who ever tried VG as “raiders”.”

Quote of an official or just an opinion of a salty player like so often? I think Anet has the real numbers. They are comfortable. Unless they aren’t telling a different thing, I believe it for now.

“if we add an easy mode people will have as hard time "

Easy mode is easy, not hard. If people would put effort into the actual bosses they would notice that they can beat them.

“If you think harder modes are welcome, wouldn’t that mean noone would be intrested in them since the normal ones are rewarding enough?”

No, because you already said that there are static groups like qT and others who seek for a new challenge after having the current mode out for months. This is how it goes – everywhere.

“If people could choose between a 20 week long and a 50 week long timegate to get the legendary armor, which do you think they would aim for?”

Starting at 0 – obviously the 20. If you are at week 35, you don’t care and that’s what applies for the actual raiding people. But like I said, I couldn’t care less. Getting to 150 is an ease with all the guides, builds, help of raiding guilds etc. etc. etc. Even if you only run the most simple to pug bosses per week (VG-Gorse-Sloth-Trio-Escort-KC) you end up with 25 weeks of playing. Half a year, sounds pretty legit to me for a legendary armor but that’s only my subjective opinion.

“Anet plans to do the second, the source is in the latest reddit AMA.”

So we end up having a legendary armor would be as “cool” as a legendary weapon which are to easy to get at this moment = nothing cool/legendary or anything prestigious.
Hope we get new content soon then because I see the boredom coming faster with such changes. For sure/We all know those changes won’t only apply to the leggy armor!

“I however remember a top 10 hated list on reddit, raids are number 9 on them. "

Ofc raids are hated because they have rewards behind their barrier that bad players cannot attain. People always cry for and drag things down if they cannot get the profit out of those.

“I also saw comments on reddit like people trying VG 150 times yet couldn’t succeed.”

Yeah, rly? Sorry, no words for that. I don’t want to judge those players but they are definitely doing something wrong. See above, guides are out, enough raiding guilds to start with are present. I myself have lead many players to their first kills of bosses. I can’t repeat it enough: Put real effort into it and not only pretend to.

Rednik.3809:

I’m glad that you posses telepathic abilities and reading minds trough internet. Sadly, they are working quite bad, because I’m cleared everything multiple times, and stopped a week ago, mostly because I finally got matthias staff drop, legendary armor is too grindy and raiding trough LFG is too much a hassle.
Also, I recommend you to get off your high horse and visit dungeons and fractals, to see how “awesome” is loot from them right now.

Well, seems like you are missinformed here:
Fractal rewards are about 10g every day + loot (T6 mats, rares, you always get rares —> ectos) + chance of asc chest. The chance to get a box is higher than in raids! Raid wing 1 and 2 give 2g per encounter and we have 6 of them. After clearing the you get 2 champ bags and 5 green bags for every encounter + some minor events you are doing for a whole week!
Fractal high reward can be attained daily --> about 70g compared to 6g + 6g + 12g (wing 1+2+3)
Additionally you can run fractals after doing the daily and you still get a huge amount of gold even if you buy the keys. The net outcome is still worth it, that’s why people farm level 40 regularly. You even have to use proper buffood (expense!) in these groups and the outcome is still high enough.
So, it seems you have absolutely no clue about the reward structure in this game.

Rednik.3809:

LFG is full in NA primetime, after raid reset? Right. I usually see such population in fractal LFG during off hours.
Also, try to wait a few days and join some LFG with low/no LI requirements and enjoy experience that absolute majority of new raiders having right now. Then you can come back and tell about “safe kills” and “people who don’t have problems with raids”.

In EU I see lfgs for every boss the whole week with a high peak on Monday and Tuesday, little bit less on Wednesday. Lesser on Thursday and Friday and then with a high peak at weekends.
Some with LI requirements, some without, depending also sometimes depending on the encounter which is not very bad because if you are able to raid and beat the easy bosses, you are fast in learning the next ones. Getting to 30-50 LI is easy within some weeks of easy kills. Then do some practice runs for the harder ones and afterwards you are welcome in every group you want.

Besides that, raids weren’t meant to be pugged. The fact that it’s possible is a good one and the presence of the lfg clearly shows: Raids are played regularly and by a not so small number you want to tell us.
I can again repeat Anet: They are pleased with the numbers and more players are raiding than in other MMOs. This is a big success of raids which you can’t neglect! Period.

Rednik.3809:

Along with worst population drop in whole gw2 history. Uh oh.

Wrong! People were leaving the game in droves because the HoT maps were made grossly negligent. Raids weren’t even out to that time. (Raid release was 1 month after HoT release!)
And now we have had a content drought once again! Look at the Bloodstone Fen at the moment. This is the real issue! Almost nobody is in the mood to play this map longer than necessary. It’s boring as hell. You cannot keep player with that, I agree.

But almost nobody left GW2 due to raids you can’t tell me that you are serious with that. You can’t blame raids and the small dev team for bad/horrible decisions in the company in general. I haven’t seen one single thread or comment on reddit of a player that said: I’m leaving because raids made GW2 bad. Hilarious!

Scipio.3204:

If you really think that, I don’t see why you are against the idea of tiered difficulty. Raids aren’t meant to be easy , it should be considered hard by everyone. That issue would also be resolved by adding harder modes to those who find the current one boring.

Because the status quo is absolutely fine and yes, raids aren’t meant to be easy as hell. And with easyness I don’t mean that you can just go into them brainafk and kill the boss. That’s all. Stop splitting hairs, it’s neither constructive nor is it bringing you success in this discussion.
And sure, harder modes are always welcome but the majority of raiders is fine with the current difficulty. On the other hand an easy mode has to be refused. Valid arguments were given enough in this and other threads.

Scipio.3204:

If you really meant what you said here I don’t see what has to be prevented, noone would do the easier ones if they can do the normal ones , because they are in for the challenge also.

Least resistance argument – if you give the same rewards. You need to have a good balance of rewards to play them. With former aether path reward nobody ran it. Dungeon reward nerf – nobody ran them. Of course playing the content is fun but if you get absolutely nothing out of it it reduces the fun. With easy mode and same rewards before and not a huge increase of rewards for current mode, people would still having fun playing the easy mode but the current mode would become unpopular because the balance and fairness wouldn’t be existent, leading to a withering of the current mode.

Scipio.3204:

Arenanet already plans to shorten the time gate. I didn’t see you raising your concerns about that.

Official words? Quote? I just read something about time gating in general but that was more directed to easy collection issues and crafting.
Furthermore, we have also read: “We have an eye on the raids and if some difficulty changes have to be made.” This statement is months ago, still no easy or another mode and like I wrote before I hardly believe that we will see an easy mode the next three months. And if we are getting one I guess they have the next hard raid rolling out or already in the pipeline.

To reduce the 150 LI is nonsense to me because if you have raided regularly from the start you could be at 200+ LIs now, if I’m right. And the armor still hasn’t been attainable so far. Enough time to get the 150.
Personally, I started late with raids but I’m on 100 now without clearing all 9 every week due to time + motivation issues. If they lower the amount, well ok, but it’s unreasonable for me, just an unneeded change.

Rednik.3809:

x2 rewards are not “little bit” at all,

You are a player who doesn’t raid so I have to enlighten you: Raid rewards already are bad. Very bad if you compare them to fractals. And fractals are bad compared to many other things you can do to get gold in this game. Really, play raids and as a usual player you will be upset to see the reward after killing a boss because that’s what every player is without a particular addiction to raids.
So, if you give the usual raid reward to easy mode and double to current, it would split the raid playerbase hard because several would just run the easy mode because for them it’s ok to get the same things like before without a challenge as a double for way more effort. There has to be a fair balance and if you give the usual reward to easy mode, I suggest a change for the current mode to 10g per boss + 5 LI + 25 champ bags + 50 usual bags + 5 guaranteed exotic (precursor chance included) + 1 guaranteed asc item/infusion + 1 mini.
You see, this suggestion sounds doubtful or in some ears absolutely ridiculous but the relation has to be approximately like this otherwise the easy mode reward would shine over the other too much.
As we all know that Anet is still parsimonious with rewards we won’t see coming changes to that so easily and that gives hope that they are not crashing down the reward structure if they implement an easy mode. That would mean from a current mode with 2-4g + 1 LI, 1 exotic or the chance of 1 asc item/infusion + chance to get a mini + 2 champ bags + 5 green bags to almost 0 or maybe 2 champ bags + the 5 green bags for an easy mode.

Additionally, I strongly doubt that we will see such easy mode soon. We have had clear statements to Swamp and there still hasn’t been a change. Raids are out for a longer period now without changes. Sure, they have a look on their baby but at the moment it sees that there is 0% indication that we see an easy mode the next three months.

Rednik.3809:

especially if you consider that raids are not that hard and their population is being kept low only because of negative feedback loop caused by anet oversight and community itself.

The lfg is full, the population isn’t low. Your statement won’t become true even if you repeat it several times. I wrote it in other posts before that I’ve met so many players I couldn’t believe they would have success in raids. They are now clearing all 3 wings with some minor problems at Sabetha, Matthias and Xera. The rest of the 6 bosses are safe kills after less than 2 hours on Monday – not with static groups!
Anti-raiders argument so heavily instead of trying and noticing that they are crying about nonsense.

Rednik.3809:

Situation is absolutely same as it was with fractals – at first T4 was considered unnecessary hard, but now everyone and his mother farming them because community have a lot of experience and there is no hassle to find a group to run with.

Yes, and nobody except grinders and gold monkeys are wanting to become raids as easy as the rest of the content. Raids are on their own stage and it’s a must to defend that because such content was lacking in this game waaaayyyyyy too long.

You didn’t give us “facts”, you gave us your numbers and a very subjective impression/opinion.
You prove nothing with that but on the other hand you agreed that your numbers are completely comparable with KINGs data. Just saying: WTH?
Everything is fine!
And I repeat the Anet statement:
“It is pseudo-intended pieces with less stats(gloves/boots/shoulders) to be more common than the ones with the most stats(coats/leggings) but the rates were skewed further than they should be. As a result we brought them closer together this patch.”

So, it’s easier to get a complete set now but as Illconceived Was Na was stating. It’s not unsual that you don’t get a full set with these numbers. I rather call your full set drop within 4 months pre-patch very luckily and while you were lucky others were not.

In the end fact is: It’s easier to get asc stuff now. It’s easier to get a complete set now too because adjustment of drop rates +T7 materials + huge amount of gold per run. The crafting process was simplified a lot as an additional thing.
The average player is better off now than before HoT. If that doesn’t count for you, what a pity. Karma is a bxtch.

Red Daing again with some more wrong declarations. But hey, it’s hard to convince someone who is totally showing bias against facts.

1. It’s easier to get asc drops than pre HoT. That’s a fact that cannot be denied.
“Ascended drops were actually increased significantly in the 26-50 range, and while they’re slightly lower in the 51-75 range, the addition of the 76-100 tier means the overall chance of getting Ascended from your dailies is a lot better!”

+ don’t forget T7 materials + more gold —> money & materials to craft the missing pieces faster than ever before!

2. To have a complete set is easier as it was before. We also got gloves, boots and shoulders more often pre HoT. The drop rates of armor parts weren’t even pre-patch!
Also:
“It is pseudo-intended pieces with less stats(gloves/boots/shoulders) to be more common than the ones with the most stats(coats/leggings) but the rates were skewed further than they should be. As a result we brought them closer together this patch.”

Citations from April 19, 2016 – GW2 Spring Quarterly Update Reddit AMA

Rednik.3809:

Emm.. what? I really can’t understand your logic. Let’s say Anet added easymode and rewards to it, like 50% of normal.

In theory, yes, practically no.
People would differentiate very fast: Is it worth to invest more time and effort just to get a little bit more of rewards or not? If the rewards of the easy mode are too good and useful same people would cold-shoulder the normal mode like they are doing now.

We had several very good examples during dungeon peak time: CoF 1&2 vs. 3, SE 1&3 vs. 2, TA up&fwd vs. aether, Arah 1,2&3 vs. 4 even AC 2 was neglected by a huge amount of players although the path isn’t longer or more difficult than 1&3.

So, the rewards for an easy mode have to be pretty low which results in people running this mode one single time —> very good for lore hunters but bad for the overall community due to heavy wasted development time. Still, the faceroll reward crew would raise their voices again and cry.

Scipio.3204:

… look at qT, raids are faceroll easy for them … most static groups find every wing easy … … why would they clear the easier ones …

At first, even for the most pugs the raids are very easy. They are only hard for the ones not practicing & playing them enough till today. In my opinion there is really no need to implement an easy mode because all the guides, build advices, adjustments and experience of players who are willing to share and train ppl were resulting in the fact that it has never been easier to get into raids than before.

Of course, static groups would not clear the easy mode if they are able to clear the usual one. The danger is if you split up into several modes you split up the players playing these. Looking back onto the reward structure, with an unbalanced situation here, the current mode would lose many players because they would be pleased with an easy reward from an easy mode. This has to be prevented absolutely.

Scipio.3204:

The “path of least resistance” not only refers to difficulty but time as well. People ran CoF p1 because it was short, not because the others were hard.

There is no need to shorten the time gate. Some people were complaining that 150 LI would have been too much. These voices became more or less silent because the armor is still not attainable and you can raid and raid and raid with more ease from week to week.
And I extremly disagree to your CoF statement. Almost all dungeons are short as well. Like I mentioned above AC2 is one of the best example contradicting your thought; a very short path but in my opinion most of the players lacking intelligence to get that into their head. They think it’s hard to manage the cave which is one of the easiest mini event and the ghostbuster part which also has 0 difficulty.

Of course, because the rewards are made for the challenging content not for succeeding a faceroll mode like in 99% of the game. Raid rewards for an easy mode are just unnecessary.

And if you give rewards to the easy mode, the rewards for the other modes have to be increased tremendously otherwise nobody would run them. Players are going the way of the least resistance. They would accept getting 100g (insert any other insane thought) per day just for the login. You can extend that till such changes would destroy the whole game in the end.

And nobody would run mode 2 any more.

Completely against such an idea. Give the complainers an easy mode without rewards and it’s fine. The people who will cry afterwards are the ones who just want the rewards without putting effort into something.