Guild Wars 2

Boss fractal where you get to kill Brill Glint like in GW1 ? Maybe. Maybe.

Not sure if it would do justice to the original mission though.

2k Hours in this game.
50% of the time I played solo without a guild.

Still not dungeon master.
I complain about the meta anyway and talk about it like I’m knowing everything. Best part is : people take what I say seriously and thank me for my advices.

One legendary : the torch. (booooo this man!)

I wanted a mesmer for jumping puzzle. I created a norn for this job. #wrongchoice

Devata.6589:

Malin.2490:

Teq is a great example there, it is very easy to explain to someone what is important to do in the main dps zerg, but there are so many other roles to have once you’ve got bored with that bit. You can learn while watching others, without messing things up for them.

To me Teq seems now also like easy content. Once people learned the trick the challenge was pretty much gone. There are a few roles (DPS, turret and turret defender) that is good but I would not say Teq was able to keep itself challenging overtime. Not that that is necessarily a problem but I would not use it as an example of being that.

Same for fractals btw. It mainly gets harder because of agony, you then earn better agony resistance and so get put on the same level again and that repeats until you get against the wall of having the max agony resistance you can get. When in the future that gets higher people will also be able to get a higher level. But the difficulty scale does not really change that much. The fact that a new player can not do fractals level 50 is for 75% because he does not have the agony resistance and has not much to do with how good he is. It is in essence a type of tier grind.

If you really want to keep things hard over time you make the fights in fact less about one specific mechanic (just for the record, I do thinks raid dungeons should use many mechanics) you need to learn but give it a better AI that uses a lot of randomizer in it’s code. That way there is no trick you can learn that then trivializes the content.

I guess everything becomes easy once you know it by heart

After this, it’s a matter of forgiving vs unforgiving encounter design. Teq is very forgiving in this regard, while TT isn’t that much.

Welcome to the party!

GW2 is a great game that teaches poorly how to play it (though it got better since september). Make sure you integrate a newbie friendly guild to guide you through the arcanes of the game. You’ll then see the amazing potential of GW2.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Morning,

Ok I have been up all night reading the posts and thinking about this CDI.

To be frank this is not a good CDI, specifically because whilst some folks are trying to be collaborative and have valuable discussion others are just bullying with their different agendas.

I have always said that if a CDI loses its value on both sides that it will be stopped.

So I am at some what of a loss. I can’t tell anymore if it is of value to this group. Whilst it certainly has been valuable for us it has been extremely time consuming to get to the good stuff.

So I will leave it up to you folks. If you feel you can work more collaboratively then by all means let me know that you want to carry on.

If you feel that it is a lost cause then I will ask for everyone’s top three priorities for raiding and call it a day.

I want to say thank you very much to all those who tried to follow the rules of the CDI and who had a healthy discussion. I also wanted to say a big thank you to TTS and DnT. We appreciate your feedback.

Chris

Raiding is definitely a touchy subject. Past discussions in this forum showed me this. However, this discussion was far more collaborative than I expected.

From day one I believed that this CDI was about more than just raids. I believed that it would be used to determine what endgame content design was acceptable for both casuals and hardcore and what was not acceptable. Of course, some casuals and hardcore tried to pull the blanket towards themselves but there were others who worked hard to find compromises.

As a personal feedback, it has been very difficult to do a summary for this. Splitting up suggestions by categories, while easy to read, is very slow and tends to destroy the coherence of an idea as a whole. Luckily, I think I got all the general concepts (given by DnT and TTS) by simply covering the first 5 pages.

I’ll proceed to translate the summary in French so this community is aware of what has been discussed here. I do not speak german nor spanish. While the two communities had their independant discussion about Raids, I’d like to share with them what has been discussed here. Help would be appreciated.

1) Fight design that uses everything the GW2 combat system has to offer (and not just fragments of it like the actual meta – Conditions, boon stripping, crowd control etc. should have a purpose in PvE)

2) Reward design that is balanced with the existing content (Avoid the Fractal and TA aether abandon by players – give harcore players the tools to differenciate themselves from the common crowd – a mix of RNG and reward track is a good idea)

3) Difficulty scaling system, design the content so that everyone can experience it while few can get the most prestigious rewards (Fractals are excellent because of this : most people can enjoy the first 10 levels while only the very best can rise up to 50)

hybrid.5027:

VodCom.6924:

How about putting everyone in combat just like the weapon test room as soon as the raid start ?

Is that fun? I know that aspect of the weapons test is rather annoying.

Thus you eliminate the toolbox meta approach and shift to a global build approach like in GW1.

It seems weird to implement gear swapping, utility swapping and trait swapping in instances and then eliminate those things later. I’m not saying that they can’t take their game design in a different direction, only that it would be a puzzling choice given the direction the game has been going, which is greater freedom of builds.

It’s way too much micromanagement for an evening play session after work.

This is raiding, not lazy dungeon or open world farms. I expect to be challenged.

All your points are reasonable except one :
“I expect to be challenged.”

Tell me, is switching gear in a middle of a raid really challenging ?

I called this micromanaging for a reason : it’s just open a window and double click. Because I’m not a theory crafter, I’ll just copycat the builds DnT will design, buy the required aquipment and be done with it.

Respec’ing after each encounter is neither fun nor challenging. It’s common practice in the dungeon meta but this is not what makes the actual meta interesting.

The interesting bit of the actual meta lies in the rotations and coordination and timed dodges.

hybrid.5027:

You realize that you can change gear and traits and skills at any point out of combat? Each boss, each difficult trash pull etc will have its own meta. If you need condition damage for a particular encounter, the warriors or engineers will throw on their Rabid gear with giver’s weapons and retrait, and then go back to whatever is good for other encounters.

The meta will be determined boss by boss and encounter by encounter. That’s how it should be, by the way.

How about putting everyone in combat just like the weapon test room as soon as the raid start ?

Thus you eliminate the toolbox meta approach and shift to a global build approach like in GW1.

I’m not saying it is necessarily better, however it is something that can be easily implemented and can be interesting.

Let’s be honest I am (and most of the people I play with) bored to no end to switch my trait/skills/weapons between every encounter. This is the reason why I stick to a polyvalent build all the time.

This is also the reason why people asked for metabolic primers and prefer to get an ascended armour rather than consumming a sharpening stone before each dungeon when pugging.

It’s way too much micromanagement for an evening play session after work.

Conski Deshan.2057:

@ Chris/ Crystal

Several people have mentioned the Marionette and Battle for LA and they are two pieces of content I really enjoyed (Anything that involves being on coms coordinating several strike teams, getting status reports and an overall ebb and flow of the battlefield type thing is super fun).

I don’t see them being spectacularly suitable for raid content due to part of that fun being the large scale (100+ players) and chaos, but would love that type of thing as a different concept “Battlefields” or “Area Assaults”.

I think it would be a concept worth getting a look over as its own separate CDI.
It could act as an area event ramped up to 11 like scarlet invasions or LA. Perhaps semi instanced as in you choose “Black Citadel” or “Black Citadel under assault” when you attempt to enter a map under attack (Just so a new player doesn’t go “Yay just created my new character, Oh my god a giant death laser has just blasted me and half the map what is going on”.)

PS: Those Airship lasers that fired on you during LA really added to the tension and were awesome.

On the contrary, I think this is the right place to discuss it. Since Anet (hopefully) won’t copy-paste the traditionnal Raid WoW formula, we have to redefine the genre.

Let’s be honest about it, this CDI is not about raids, it’s about designing larger scale endgame content to keep GW2 hardcore crowd busy for the next months. One can see that after reading the first four pages. Look at the TTS proposal. It certainly does not look like a raid, but it has the potential to bring a similar challenge.

The title “CDI Guild Raiding” is kind of a misnomer in this regard.

However you’re right when you say that part of the fun of the marionette was the organised chaos happening there. Though I believe, that in a controlled environment (i.e instanced Marionette) the fight could be very organised and neat picky. If the fight becomes unforgiving and meat picky, I don’t see how this can not be a called a “raid”.

Btw, is there anyone who volunteers to create a google form to count more easily the top 3 choices ?

We could also improve the formula by counting opinions on various themes of GR (length, capacity, link with guilds, OW/instanced/both etc…).

Page 4 is covered. I do have problems to edit some of my my posts though :/

I strongly disagree with no trigger on the topic of build diversity.

Among the list of builds for guardians he presented, I can only see two archetypes of builds : GS+something or Hammer+something.

All GS builds followed the same core basis with small variations to adjust a particular encounter. Same for hammer builds.

To make an analogy in GW1 :
The ele in GW1 have 2 meta builds in PvE :
http://gwpvx.gamepedia.com/Category:Meta_working_general_builds

Yet if I follow your reasonning, I could claim that the ele has at least 10 different meta builds (the variations around the infuse bonder and the searing flame ele). See what I mean ?

Back to GW2:
True diversity means at least that conditions builds are a viable alternative to direct damage builds. They are not at this moment for multiple reasons that have been discussed time and again.

This is why some contributors suggested to include mobs that are vulnerable to conditions to give conditions a use in PvE.

Nick.6972:

VodCom.6924:

Disclaimer and conflicts of interest:
I do NOT claim to be 100% objective and I am highly biased toward expanding the megabosses rather than creating Guild Raids.
I’m a biased person but not an obtuse one.

Hopefully Arena Net understands this and doesn’t listen to cherry picked opinions that lobby certain type of content.

I came to realise during my studies that nobody is objective and the perception one has of an opinion is usually polluted by personnal experiences and social background. This is why I try as much as possible to listen to feedback, since this summary must be as fair as possible in order to be useful.

I got a lot of PMs recently, thanks for you feedback, this is really helping.

This post is here to answer some questions about my methodology when contructing the summary:

Step 1 : I always skim through the first 5 pages of the CDI to get an idea of the directions the discussion is taking. It helps me getting a general vision of what is going on and the general topics that will be discussed.

Step 2 : Construct categories and taking notes. I work with a notepad file on one screen and the forum page on an other.
I read each post individually and try copy-paste punch lines and key sentenses in the notepad’s categories. Splitting posts in categories is the most time consuming part of the job, since some contributors do not split their proposition in categories (for better coherence and lisibility which is something I understand).

Merforga’s post is a good example of the challenge. The post is detailed, cristal clear and well constructed. Splitting it in many categories while keeping the coherence of merf’s idea is really tough. I’m not saying you should change merf, keep it up and I’ll do my best to do justice to your ideas.

Step 3 : Re-organise the notepad file. Ordering categories and eliminating doubloons is a boring but necessary task. This is where I do most of my mistakes.

Step 4 : Previewing. In this step, I focus on lisibility and clarity. A necessary task to avoid walls of text that nobody will read.

Step 5 : Post. Analysing a page of the CDI takes about an hour of work.

I hope some questions have been answered

Symph.8407:

Hey Vod
I don’t know if you have all of page 19 done yet, but I made a few points about reward progression and how to progress inside the raid itself. Hope you can find a spot for it here

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4531386

Hi. So far I’ve only summed up two pages. The number of pages I’ve covered is indicated in the topic’s title (2/20).

spoj.9672:

You missed my comments about infusions for rewards.

It’s possible. Thanks for reminding me. Could you link me your post with a PM so I can find the exact proposition asap ?

Sytherek.7689:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The Casual vs. Hardcore argument is not in the spirit of the CDI as you know, and I mean this in regard to those on both side of the fence who can’t see that we aren’t even at the stage where this is even worth discussing.

Chris, raiding is a social activity.

Social dynamics will determine whether your mechanics “work.” If you choose mechanics that do not support a broad social dynamic, raiding in GW2 will fail for the population at large.

You’ve stated that GW2 raiding should “fit” with the overall philosophy of the game. I agree. But you’ve put the cart before the horse IMO.

We need to decide what the social aspects of raiding are before designing mechanics.

No offense to you but the social aspect of anything comes AFTER the said thing is released. It is not something you can discuss in advance. I can slap you an entire wall of text in the face explaining to you how a well designed raid can solve the issue of casu vs hardocre.

And btw The summary is up: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guild-Raiding-The-condensed-edition-2-19/first#post4531399

Conski Deshan.2057
Hide raid items from the wardrobe until they are collected.
Create a new sets of legendaries available only by doing raids.

TPenny.5071
As new raid content is released the older raids will be rebalanced to make it more accessible

Randulf.7614
One of the problems involve ‘teaching’ current mechanics to a wider player base before the raids are introduced.
Personnal note by VodCom.6924 : this is a problem that rose up several times during previous discussions about endgame and raids. Some players claims that the average GW2 player is dumb. I think this is because the game teaches poorly how to play in group. Time to get this fixed

Retro.6831
Raids should occur when it is convenient for the individual; time locks and such should not dictate when a player can raid. (Not everyone has a regular work schedule!)

Noobix.3958
Improve the UI for Raids and create specific UI tools for this type of content.
More details here : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4522652

Asgaeroth.6427 (similar suggestion)
A revamp of the current squad system for a unified raiding, world boss, and WvW large party system experience.

Evee.2714 (The one from the podcast relics of Orr)
This post is an interesting recap on the history of raids in MMOs.

Thyrm.8352
So what definition of raid would I not want to see?

• The one with gear treadmill. Beat raid x to get access and gear required for raid y, ad infinitum.
• The one that requires you to have a certain lineup to even try it.
• The one that needs people with positioning knowledge and movement skill, so you can actually find people to raid with you.
• The one requiring you to chew through 15 min off so called tactics.
• The one where key functions of the fights are placed on one or two people.
• The one where you can’t take more than x meele, because fight mechanics.

Soren.9316
By utilizing the already created squad interface I think Anet has the ability to put a new spin on raiding

Risingashes.8694
Detailed analysis on the strengths and weaknesses of GW2 combat system and how they will perform in GR
Weaknesses : Agro (or lack of agro to be precise), graphic spam, condition cap
Strengths : Mobility, dodges, no trinity
OP : https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4523042

Karizee.8076
Leaderboards for Raiding Guilds, as a motivating tool.
Raid completion data could be included in the API

Kartel.2561
Suppose that raids were instanced (and I think they should be specifically for guilds), but they also had an effect in the open world that everyone else can notice and benefit from.
I think public recognition and making a difference in the world for yourself and others

leviN.4390
Give new abilities to commanders to manage raids

Metredel Le Preux.2587
Raids should be instanced, but also include a preparation room that can be accessed by everyone. The room includes usual city commodities.

Snowball.3497
Raid Leader boards – A scoreboard similar to the challenge leader boards in GW1.
Incentive to repeat the content over and over.

Chris, on the topic of Scaling:

timmyf.1490:

timmyf.1490:

Hey, is there any reason why raids wouldn’t just scale to your size? So like… 5-20 man, bring what you can, and it scales.

Very hard to get the balance we would want from this kind of content.

The experience we are looking for would also be diluted the more players you have in an instanced raid.

This said, let’s say the number was ten. We shouldn’t stop folks from trying to beat content with 5 for example.

Chris

Colin, on the topic of copying a well know MMORPG and thinking outside the box:

Lots of great concepts here already, great job folks. I’ll echo that this discussion is most helpful if we consider what the concept of guild raids in Guild Wars 2 could be, rather than attempting to limit to what “raids” in other games have been.

Think outside the box and ask yourself what other “raid” type systems don’t do well, and consider proposals that you think both make best use of what Guild Wars does well; it’s a similar process we use when evaluating any system or feature for Gw2 in general.

Looking forward to read more of your ideas!

Anthony Ordon, on scaling magic:

On scaling: it is true that we have a certain amount of “magic” scaling in the game, commonly seen in dynamic events. The intent of that system is to keep difficulty consistent across a variety of player counts. The sticking point for myself on raids and scaling is that while we can scale enemies, it is far more difficult to meaningfully scale objectives.

To elaborate, in a 10-player raid, each player is responsible for approximately 1/10 of challenge. As you add players, that challenge share diminishes, so in a 20-player raid, the individual role is about half as important as it would have been with 10 players (challenges of coordination aside).

Of course, group content is rarely so singular and for a good reason. If we have 3 objectives, we divide the focus of the group and your ownership of a 20-player challenge goes from 1/20 to 1/6ish.

Is it possible, then, to just scale objectives along with the player counts? Perhaps. But it seems that would equate to just making many tiers of the content which, to me, sounds like a good way to diminish the total amount of content we could build. What do you guys think?

Chris: On the definition of a raid (sorry for you OW fans, I’ll still list your propositions though ‘cause they’re interesting)

Leablo.2651:

Leablo.2651:

Chris, can you provide a baseline definition of “raid”? What exactly is the intention behind creating “raid” content that cannot already be expressed in terms of existing dungeons or fractals? Is it about creating another category of content that is gated to guilds?

Here you go:

‘…instanced co-operative group based ‘challenging’ content…’
Chris

I am listing here oposing opinions about various topics of GR with the corresponding arguments:
I won’t include the paternity of each argument since they are pretty much mainstream.

Instanced vs non instanced
The pro instance arguments:

• Bystanders: they are removed from the equation
• Organization: Map limits may be filled by other people causing some of your team to get misplaced
• Control: You control the conditions, the combatants and the overall flow of the combat.
• No Conflict: Lower skilled players can attempt casual runs (I’m not saying they should be able to complete it, just if they want to experience it/practice/improve) without wrecking some top tier players day and vice versa.
• I don’t like when people just happen to wander through a piece of content and get over rewarded for no effort
• You avoid the : turn up 1 hr early, plug headset in and play the WP lottery when a map IP is announced to try and get into the organised event… and then hope you don’t get DC’ed and loose all chances of getting back into the correct map to complete the event you spent the best part of 2hrs supporting
• Easier to fine tune encounters, no taking down a whole map cause triple trouble bugged

The pro open world arguments:

• It’s possible for ad-hoc additional players to contribute meaningfully without being amazing players.
• random players get to experience content without it being gated by membership to specific player communities.
• Lower skilled players won’t practice it because they won’t have the infrastructure to organise a group.
• Encourages scaling of events therefore LOSELY determined by minimum or maximum amount of players ( aka not rigid 10 man only ).
• Likeminded players will more easily “find” each other

Guild centered vs guild independant
The Guild independant arguments:

• To not lock raids to specific guilds (that can prevent some people from accessing the content)
• What would likely be my “Raid Group” in this game consists of leaders/commanders from a few different guilds.
• Opposed to the raids being only activated through means that only a guild could have. The raids should be able to be put together through chat or LFG tool if wanted.
• Raids that are independant from guilds allow the community to organise their own raiding throughout the day and not have to rely on trying to catch a TTS run event or such

Other controversial topics listed by runeblade.7514 :

• Scaling- Should Raids be rigid to make balancing easier or, should Raids be very flexible so that all guilds can be more inclusive to their members?
• Difficulty- Should Raids be easy enough for casual players, or should raids be difficult so it requires skill on the risk of excluding casual player.
• Stacking- What steps should be taken to remove stacking or should it even be removed at all?
• AI- What AI should be in place?

Larger or smaller? (Reflexions by Zanthrax.6538)
Large Raid pros

• Opportunity for larger and more “epic” fights
• Less likely to leave people aside
• People won’t split up in small raiding cliques within and between guilds

Small raid pros

• will promote and help grow MORE guilds
• Larger guilds can still set up multiple raid teams
• Easier to get a full group

Partial summary of the controversies so far in page 5
Gilgalas.7860
Link to the post : a very good read
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/4524109

GR reward system:
Conski Deshan.2057

• Guaranteed rewards, next to no RNG drops (will be outlined in my later proposals)
• Not vertical progression rewards (i.e no stat increases).
• No lockout timers, you want to try and run it daily by all means go ahead.

Blaeys.3102

• Rewards should be similar to guild missions: a set number of commendations + a chest on par with a world boss chest
• Flesh out what we can purchase with commendations.

TPenny.5071

• Loot table with; unique and rare drops, raid currency, mystic forge components and mini pets.
• Unique armour and weapon skins, achievements and titles

Lunar Sunset.8742
Unique titles, armor, weapons, achievements is a must.

hybrid.5027

• Trash mobs drop T7 mat
• sub-bosses : drop recipes using the T7 mats
• End boss : drop multiple pieces of the t7 refined mats and a chest containing either one of the unique ascended weapons or one of the armor pieces
• Clearing the Raid unlock a title, speed clearing it unlock an other title.

NoTrigger.8396

• Create a unique looking weapon and armor skin set for each profession.
• The raid armor and weapon skins should be looking somewhat specialised for each profession
• special raid style infusions to be used on raid weapon set.

Baltzenger.2467

• No RNG means devaluated rewards, RNG means we get only greens and blues. Reward tracks are a good way to fight against this problem
• Integrate rewards with other systems in the game : outfits, minis, finishers, dyes, skins, tokens, home instance upgrades, trophies, utility items, consumables, boosters, etc.

globe.7238
Make sure that the average gold earning rate is equivalent for the different raids. Otherwise, some raids will be forgotten to oblivion.

Evee.2714 (The one from the podcast relics of Orr)

• tokens system is possible (to unlock rewards in the short term)
• Synthesis Track: good long term goal for raiding. A hybrid system of the current PvP track reward system and the Mystic Forge. Using materials that can be obtained from all aspects of the game the player will be able to spend “Raid Experience” to synthesize these materials into new items giving access to difficult to obtain items that span the entire game.

lunacrous.6751

• Raid exclusive consumables, or runes/sigils, or anything else of that nature that is not so much more powerful as it is different (but still has an effect on gameplay)
• Disable these rewards in WvW

spoj.9672
Add infusions to the boss loot tables. These would be tradeable and would range between the regular +4 stat infusions and the versatile +5 X stat with +5 agony resist. Also add new infusions which give a +5 stat bonus and/or a cosmetic glow.

Exosferatu.2961
Precursors, dungeon gift, full armor set, influence and merits to cover the costs of the raid.

Sithaco.4673
Each time the raid is completed, it gives a currency to purchase rewards as well as random reward drop. It is important that the reward structures gives us an incentive to go back to the raids.

Zanthrax.6538

• As for bosses there should be 2 catergories of rewards : Everytime you kill a boss and once a day you kill a boss. Once a day is where you get a chance at your RNG shenanigans
• Ensure trash mobs aren’t exploitable (aka no respawn and farm situation) and ensure it doesn’t scale to give more champions that drops champ bags etc…
• Include a token-like reward system for those who have trouble with RNG.

TraumaReaper.8610

• Since it’s a guild raid, make sure it rewards the guild aswell. (like some statue, picture or anything inthe guildhalls, that can work like a guild achievementlist)
• Make sure it is rewarding for every person joining. (for both people in as out the guild)

VodCom.6924
If you are to create OW and instaced versions of MB (cf guardian Jack’s proposition) make sure the rewards do not overlap each other. The goal is to maintain an incentive to do both the OW and instanced version of the GR.

Metredel Le Preux.2587
Every end’s chest guaranteed the drop of 2-4 gold or exo, 1 raid’s token and some gold (5 or more) + usual green-blue. It is also possible to loot : Ascended weapon/armor box, Ascended raid weapon/armor box, Raid minipet, Ascended trinket, Raid’s crafting material (40-45% drop rate), Raid’s recipe

Merus.9475
Progression should be tied to the guild, instead of players

Symph.8407
Skin rewards should of course be account bound : The only way to get them, is by beating the challenge

mindweller.5978
Rewards that require multiple steps to obtain throughout the raid content (e.g. “scavanger hunts” similar to process of obtaining Mawdrey, Mad King Memoires etc.).
These rewards should be scaled in regard to time-investemnt and skill level required in comparison to the existing content in the game.

BenGrech.3912
Each raid boss has its own loot table and that way no more RNG and getting random greens.

Encounter design and punishment featured by the raids (part II) :
Conski Deshan.2057

• A bad player should not be allowed to be carried by a team of good/experienced players.
• If you are an average player of this game, you are expected to fail the raid.
• Additional members can’t join an in progress raid.
• A rewardless(gold only) story mode for raids so that players who want to view the content can, but the rewards for the challenge mode maintain their meaning

TPenny.5071

• All foes will no longer leash to their origin, they will now pursue relentlessly until you or they are killed.
• Some creatures can sense you through stealth, so hiding won’t work!

Marcus Greythorne.6843

• insta-kills. Not sure that’s fun.
• dungeon-specific buffs determine roles (e.g In the entrance-area of a dungeon there are 5 golden-glowing weapon bundles. If you pick up one of these your current weapon-set(s) will become golden glowing. Only golden-glowing weapons can hurt the boss directly.)

Devata.6589

• What is also important is to require many roles. Lack of real roles is turning much of the dungeon into DPS spam
• Raids require communication

hybrid.5027
Lupicus as an example of the baseline easiest difficulty and complexity of these subbosses

IndigoSundown.5419
Whatever other characteristics the ANet take on raids might have, there should be a normal and a hard mode. Rewards for hard mode should consist of increased coin and increased chances for rare drops

Baltzenger.2467

• Raids should feel like fractals, on a scale of world bosses, with less people involved
• inside of the raid instance, you never leave combat
• lava and water shouldn’t be the only terrain modifications we can experience
• I want to see something different from “stack” or “zerg”

Iason Evan.3806
A tiered raiding system. Fractals are a great example

Crysto.7089

• Platforming/Environmental Hazards should be a strong element in any “raid.”
• Tribulation mode SAB jumping WHILE fighting Lupicus WHILE dodging the laser grid from CoE […] WHILE Liadri spams AoE and clones hunt you down (O_O)

Dramen Maidria.1034
There could be fail mechanics (like when quests failed in UW or FoW) that close the raid

Bloodstealer.5978

• Give condi builds a role, give zerks their job, bring in the need for certain classes to perform certain tasks and skills (stealth etc etc)…
• Add puzzles, co-op actions, mix up what certain encounters within the raid require

Arewn.2368
Consider multiple difficulties : An “easy” and “hard” mode could be a good way to keep everyone involved

Evee.2714
A long post featuring suggestion of what GW2 did well in terms of bosses design and how to build on these mechanics. A good reading if you have time.

Exosferatu.2961

• Boss and minions
• Tower defense (camps)
• Supply management: logs, ores, etc. (this will come up as whether the guild is ready and have enough resources to move on to the next boss)
• Profession abilities will be needed, such as Leap, Stealth, Portals, etc. to navigate the raid instance

merforga.4731
Mechanics I feel should be on par with TT at the easier end of the scale. The fundamental concepts should be easy to understand, but execution and most importantly coordination will be where the difficulty lies.

Iason Evan.3806
Please don’t include Defiance in raids. Make “Control” mean something

runeblade.7514
Design the game around countering stacking and LoSing. (e.g All mobs can revive each other just like players).

Tuomir.1830

• Multi-phased fights that require different player groups doing different things at different phases.
• About trash mobs : make ranged mobs attempt to stay out of melee. Give melee enemies more access to crippled. There you have it, mobs no longer stack.
• Quoting one of his old posts : I feel the mordrem and the karka are actually quite well designed, and provide the right amount of challenge in high level open world content.

aRestless.6213
“tough mobs” could have a different version of the Unshakable Buff, that allows coordinated crowd control.

Spyritdragon.6048
Challenging and anti-stacking mechanics already exist in the game (e.g prime hologram fight). Capitalize on them.

Zanthrax.6538

• Promote under-used aspect of the GW2 combat. Allow bosses to inflict unavoidable damage to players to force them to heal. Use anti stack attacks like the exhalted grawl shaman etc…
• What about bosses that upon being defeated effect the remaining bosses in some fashion

masaplata.3965 (Zok.4956 posted a similar suggestion later)
The leadup to any final raid encounter should be tutorial-like

LuBu.9086
Increasing HPs isn’t more Challenging / Fun…it’s just boring and frustrating

Capacity of the GR and scaling:
guardian.6489
Have multiple raid sizes with scaling in order to accommodate multiple sizes of guilds

Conski Deshan.2057

• I see GW2 raids coming in 2 sizes, 10man (half raid) and 20man (full raid) and no 40 man raids due to the logistical issues
• Gate requires Dungeon master or fractal personnal level 20 or a mix of both or a trial that forces contact with advanced bosses

Blaeys.3102

• The one who started the raid controls the size.
• (Page III post) scaling is what can set raiding apart in Gw2, even if it does affect the difficulty a little.

TPenny.5071

• Only guild members can access this instance.
• 10 person minimum and content scales up to the map capacity of 150 people.
• While encounters inside the raid are in progress it will not scale down. This is a mecanic to punish death.

Serophous.9085
Allow any sized guild to participate in the raid, with a set minimum that can be determined later

CMM.6712
More than 5 players for sure

Retro.6831
Setting the bar at “Mega-Organized Events” for enormous guilds only is a mistake
Scale based on the number of players present or should come in a variety of different size options. Guild mission “scaling” is a good example.

Marcus Greythorne.6843
Scaling for up to 150 people: I think it might be too difficult to create an interesting encounter that scales from 10 to 150 people.
A mix between open/scaleable and closed/fixed number: •2 groups enter a raid-instance: one of them – the core group – consists of 5-8 players and these do damage to bosses, the other group is open for 5-20 players. They can’t damage bosses but they can have multiple roles in the battle as well

Devata.6589
Something between 10 and 25

Baltzenger.2467
A raid should require at least 16 players, and the maximum limit of participation, should be related to the amount of players that can be on the same map

Torsailr.8456 BlackBeard.2873 (similar suggestion)
To avoid scaling, why not have multiple raids of different sizes? A raid for 10 people, another for 25, another for 50?

Arewn.2368
Static group size : since it’s challenging content, it needs to be carefully tuned. A variable group size unnecessarily complicates that.
This is not to the exclusion of multiple static group sizes (for example, a 15person version of the raid & a 30 person version).

merforga.4731
Groups as small as 15 to as large as 150 can participate in.
Each path of the raid would be capped with a set number of players (say 15-20) [We are talking about an instanced multi-path raid]

Mingus Dew.8620
Create two different types of raids :

• 10-15 person instances – Style of instances that are a fusion of Guild Challenge & Puzzle combined.
• 150 person instances – Similar to open world boss encounters.

Zanthrax.6538
My vote here would be 100% be behind 10-20 man raids ideally 10-15 man

Spyritdragon.6048
If a suitable “LFG/topping up” system could be found, i think raids of around 30-50 people seem like a better size

spoj.9672

• You should avoid implementing scaling to raids. Its not present in dungeons or fractals and that works. If you attempt something with fewer players it should be more challenging.
• Keep puzzle player requirements to a minimum.
• I think its best to keep the max sized raid as a multiple of 5.

Encounter design and punishment featured by the raids (part I) :

VodCom.6924
Expand the system of mistlock instabilities and include them in raids. Design instabilities to promote new types of builds and gameplay.

Metredel Le Preux.2587
Trash mobs have unique and interesting skills (like mord minions) in order to restrict corner stacking. Furthermore they have an optimized composition with different role and combo.

Marcelinho.3190
In need of a intelligent thing or need group collaboration please no solo raid for sellers of paths as we are seeing in arah.

mindweller.5978
GW2 combat system has much depth that is poorly utilized in most of current meta-events and even dungeons. Current world bosses such as Tequatl and Great Jungle Wurm do utilize this versatility of GW2 combat system but to a very low extent. Time to remedy this.

Riku.4821
Each phase, or level, will be a large meta event chain meant for a large party to do. these events should force players from time to time, to split up and do things that cannot be done with the “stacking” meta

ShadowBane.5836
Start with designing the challenging version of the raid for the organised groups. Once that’s done, figure out what will make less skilled/organized groups struggle and proceed to make a dumbed down version of the raid for them.

Instanced or Open world GR?
guardian.6489

• An expansion of tools to allow current “Mega-Organized Events” and old Living Story events to become Raids to allow more inclusive play.
• Guilds would be allowed to create their own separate instances for either certain current world events or old living story events.
• Once inside, if the Guild does not have enough players to fill the instance, they may use the LFG tool to taxi pug

Blaeys.3102
One person starts the raid by opening an instance and controls who comes in. The instance can be public, guild restricted or invite only.

TPenny.5071, Serophous.9085, Conski Deshan.2057 hybrid.5027 Evee.2714 Bloodstealer.5978 and many others that I’ve forgotten. Send a PM if you want to be in the list.
New raids are fully instanced and do not have an open-world counterpart.

Soren.9316 Send a PM if you want to be in this list.
Keep Raids in the open world, like the MB.

merforga.4731
Instanced raids, anyone can join, but the instance owner is able to control and remove people where necessary (in the event of trolls or whatnot)

Foefaller.1082
In essence, you’re doing the pre events and boss of a world event, only in your own instance, with the challenges/fail state set much higher than what’s found in the open world.

Zanthrax.6538 (also know as killchain, founder of the guild Attuned of BlackGate)
Proposition similar to Guardian Jack’s one:
I think instanced raids are superior to anything OW can offer. Perhaps a compromise that could be worked out is providing an easier open world alternative to raid bosses as well.
e.g something like keeping Tequatl as is but also providing a harder instanced version of Tequatl with different rewards etc.

masaplata.3965
Vote for instanced raid because OW is too “polluted” with consumables.

Gating the GR and interaction with guilds:
guardian.6489
GR use the world event spawner to create instances. Just reguires the guild WB upgrade.

Conski Deshan.2057
Only a minor entry gate (Thinking Dungeon master or 30 AR)
Not linked to guilds

TPenny.5071
Raids in Guildwars2 are a guild activity => New guild upgrades category: RAID

Baltzenger.2467
It should offer two modes: Mercenary and Guild mode

Bloodstealer.5978
More controllable LFG if you like where the raid leaders set the requirements and only those that meet the criteria (class reqd, lvl, AP’s etc) get through the filter

Arewn.2368
No barrier to entry : Pugging (for those who wish to brave it) should be readily available, the raids shouldn’t be locked behind guild upgrades and the like. Something like a short “story lead-in” attunement that is account wide would be acceptable though

Dreamcaller.4612
Create kind of ‘key/pass’ to access raids : If there is kind of costs or consequences when a raid is in preparation/progress/fail, each actions inside of the raid is much more thoughtful.
Key could be obtained through multiple channels (treasure hunt, crafting, trade with BLTC).

Exosferatu.2961

• Guild upgrade : cost 1k merit, 100k influence, 1month to build.
• Guild instanced raid
• Guild members can go in and out of the raid to bring resources to the raid through the course of a month (month long open instance)

Mingus Dew.8620
Accessibility: Fractals System or LFG system or Guild unlock

PseudoNewb.5468
Leverage existing, previous and future living story, open world, world boss style content, but to expand in games UI, tools, and capabilities to enhance the ability to organize, increase accessibility, and bring a renewed focused on the guilds, of Guild Wars 2, to all players even lone wolfs.
Raids have a Guild rally system implemented to taxi players in without using the LFG.

rapthorne.7345
Should raiding guilds be viable? Absolutely. Should they be mandatory? No.

leviN.4390

• Create multiple types of GR, each one being an “evolution” of content that currently exist
• Raid types could be : World Boss Raid (instanced with time challenge), Dungeon Instance Raid (created ad hoc with tiers and failing conditions)

Zanthrax.6538
There definitely has to be some form of gating behind the progress you make, however I don’t think the shear entering of the instance to begin with should be gated by anything.
You implement 3 raids, does raid z require all of raid y to be completed before entering? Something to consider.

Merus.9475
There’d be a lot less frustration for PvE commanders if they could cull the poor performers, or even if the game would specifically target and eliminate poor performers.

Ideas of GR themes and propositions of fight mechanics (I am listing raid themes and lore here).
Conski Deshan.2057

• Look at ultima weapon from FFXIV
• Boss buffs: game changing fight mechanics (e.g “lone wolf” Each player within 500 of the player reduces damage by 20%)

guardian.6489 and many others (your servitor included). Note (guardian is a leader of the [TTS] guild)

• Ancient karka event scaled down
• Tower of nightmare (small scale raid)
• The marionette (on high heeeeeeels)
• The battle of the breachmaker (some suggest to include the assault knights as well)

Blaeys.3102
The heart of Zaithan (a mini zaithan chased all over the cursed shore)

TPenny.5071
Mordremoth’s Lair

Devata.6589
Design a boss that cannot be fought directly in melee but we go power ranger style. Having to control some huge robot.
Imagine if you need 15 people to control it, everybody moving different parts of that robot

hybrid.5027
“The Cleansing of Arah” where players would spawn in the Lupicus room and could move outward to through any of the 5 doors

aRestless.6213

• The Boss Blitz
• Evacuation of LA

runeblade.7514
Zhaitan Raid : When the players shoot down Zhaitan aka finish the dungeon, you get to unlock a raid that lets you go on a raid mission to kill Zhaitan. It will be a ground mission.

Proposition to create GR ad hoc .
TPenny.5071
We wanted raids to differ from the world boss content therefore each raid will have a portal in the zone the raid is situated.

Retro.6831
We already have dungeons and we already have World Bosses. Raids should not just be “Bigger Dungeons” or “Private World Bosses”, but something meaningfully distinct.

Tuomir.1830 not exactly about raid content, but close enough forthe author
Infrequently at set times, large map-sised event happen and culminate in Boss battle. These event are similar to Scarlet’s invasions.

Marcus Greythorne.6843

• 3 groups play a raid-instance parallel on 3 paths; paths do not intersect but players on a path can help players on other paths (via ranged, siege,…)
• Champions of the Mists : 3 parties enter a raid. Your party looks normal to you, the other 2 parties’ characters look like ghosts (to your team only). Each party can only take down 1 of 3 health-bars of their enemies.

hybrid.5027 (Also known as Nike, leader of the GW2 branch of [DnT])
Raid instances will be large zones, similar in size to an entire explorable dungeon or one of the main cities (Lions Arch, Divinity’s Reach etc). Players will spawn in a central area and can move outward in any desired direction, as the instances will be open ended.

Foefaller.1082 Dramen Maidria.1034 (similar suggestion)
Raiding Zones, explorable instanced areas with linking events/plot, roughly half the size of current open-world zones.
For those who played GW1, think Underworld/Fissure of Woe, and you are pretty much there.

nopoet.2960
Open world raid maps (similar to what hybrid proposed but in the OW). More details here

Exosferatu.2961
Instanced, WvW-like battle that lasts a week up to a month.

merforga.4731 (Also know as merf, head of TTS in Guild Wars 2)
Create multipath instanced raids. Similar to hybrid’s proposal with a twist : Each path could be run simultaneously, culminates with final boss fight.
Once all paths are cleared, a final boss area would appear with a boss that is scalable

Proposition to create a “raid-like” mode for fractals/dungeons
Devata.6589
RAID dungeons. Explorable dungeons on steroids for groups larger than 5.

Dramen Maidria.1034
Guild Raids: Mobs,Bosses, and puzzles

aRestless.6213
Guild Fractals – going back to Tyria’s Living World challenges with your guild.

VodCom.6924
Fractal Raids : allow guilds to rush fractals with multiple groups of 5 in parallel with new instabilities/gambits.

Symph.8407
Raid layout resembling Fractals, continuos string of short levels, with one huge difference : the levels are focused on the boss encounters

Hey everyone!

I’m back into the fray and I present you:

Note : There will be a French version at some point as well.
Note (bis) : holy kitten, how I am supposed to sum up a threat that grew to 19 pages in 3 days ?
Edit : After 2 days of perfectly scientific research, I’ve realised that I’ve forgotten to reserve some posts to expand the summary. Expect heavy layout change sin the coming weeks

What is this thread for?
Many of us have little time to read pages and pages of (very often) well constructed and cool suggestions.
This is the place when you can learn quickly what other proposed before you and see what you can add to their idea or propose something entirely new.

Why is it called “The condensed edition (X/Y)” ?
Since I do my summary page by page, the X/Y is here to inform you of the advancement of the task. X is the number of pages I’ve covered. Y is the number of pages of the CDI when I last updated the thread.

How does this summary work ?

• I’ll deviate a bit from the formula that Orpheal.8263 created a few months ago. In this CDI, instead of listing new ideas page by page, I’ll sort them by broad categories that I’ll expand over time.
• If I see original ideas that do not fit the classical categories, I’ll include them below following Orpheal’s style.
• I see an interesting idea, how do I reach the OP ? Log in the forum, and look for the lists of posts by the author. Go and read his post(s) in the CDI topic. Eventually you’ll get to where he posted his/her suggestion.
• I’ll shorten Guild Raid as GR, world bosses as WB and megabosses (Teq, Triple trouble) as MB. Open world is OW.

Why did you only list fragments of my suggestions?
In order to keep the summary short and readable, I’m not going to post the same idea twice. Sorry about it. If you feel I’ve missed your point…. well you have PMs.

Disclaimer and conflicts of interest:
I’m French (no, there is no white flag factory in my country), that explains the multiple grammar murders I make. Feel free to correct me with PMs.
I do NOT claim to be 100% objective and I am highly biased toward expanding the megabosses rather than creating Guild Raids ad hoc .
If you feel cheated, ignored or misunderstood just send me a PM and we can work this out.
I’m a biased person but not an obtuse one.

Link to the Main Page of the Guild Raid CDI:
>>> https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/first <<<

Novuake.2691:

High DPS via Fire fields and condi clear via Light fields do the trick A LOT easier than needed to specifically boon rip.

Also people tend to listen more if you just ask them to light and fire field only.

EDIT : Oh and this is obviously done by stacking in that corner behind the bolder.

This strategy only works for an optimised zerg. If the fight drags on, retaliation will melt your group ftl.

Boon stripping is still the most reliable strategy.

Cornerstack works in dungeons since you can easily have optimised groups there. It’s unreliable at best in open world.

cesmode.4257:

I think GW2 should focus on making the entire game end game as marketed, give us incentive to be out in the game in any zone we want. Even though I have provided my suggestions for how raiding should be handled in GW2, I am still not convinced it belongs in the game.

Keep in mind that I’ve seen many people rushing to level 80 and acquiring their exotic gear after 2 weeks of (relatively) casual play.
However, after a month and a half, they still don’t have unlocked all their traits because they do not perceive the importance of them.

These players can perform relatively well in low level dungeons and the living story (even though it gets tough for them). However, even stuff like the crucible let alone arah eat them simply because they do not master their characters.

Conclusion : you cannot make all the 1-80 content as end game. Content from level 1 to 80 can be enjoyed thanks the dynamic level system, but that does not make it endgame.

Note : Nobody forces us to divide content between : leveling (i.e boring) and endgame (i.e super challenging). There is a middle ground between the two and this is where GW2 excels imo.

Astralporing.1957:

Crystal Reid.2481:

Let’s assume that because raiding would be a very new type of content for the game that it’s possible for us to re-write the principles of the game that we have seen so far.

That’s a worrying statement. Basically, those principles you are saying might be re-written are the main reason lot of people came to this game in a first place. It’s the reason why lot of those people are still staying even if they are dissatisfied with some late design decisions. It’s also one of the very few things that make GW2 different from other MMORPGs.
GW2 has always been proud of inclusivity and general accessibility of its content to the whole player population. Do not change that.

This is also the reason why some people suggested to expand on the content that currently exists rather than creating content from the ground up.

GW2 already has an array of tools and content that covers a wide array of game types. There is no special need to re-invent the wheel. Just keep improving it.

Blaeys.3102:

NoTrigger.8396:

Blaeys.3102:

If 10, 15, 20 or 25 player raids (with no scaling) were implemented, this wouldnt be the case. Many players would be left on the sidelines due to the arbitrary number requirements. Even worse, groups that play together now in larger numbers would be forced to leave friends out of weekly raids (again, the thought of this turns my stomach and would be devastating to the way I enjoy playing the game).

i am forced to leave friends out because i can only play with 4 friends at a time in dungeons.

Yes, but it is alot easier to fill out a second 5 party group if you end up with 1 or 2 extra players than it is to fill out another 10, 15, etc. group. I did this just last night in setting up dungeons in my guild.

I can tell you from years of experience forming set number (10 and 25 player) raids that raiding in other games leads to exclusionary behavior primarily because of the math more than because of the difficulty of the content. GW2 is in a position to do something about that. Scaling seems like the most logical solution.

No matter how large the party is, some people will always feel cheated and excluded from content. Look at the people trying to join a specific shard to do teq with friends.

GW2 chose to limit the party size to allow easier pugging (and it worked). Scaling can alleviate the exclusion problem but can’t solve it entirely (nothing can solve it entirely).

Just a quick remark here :

While it is interesting to see people presenting themselves in this thread so we know your background, please do not turn this in chest pounding.

I will probably start a summary thread soon, and reading pages of presentation about yourself makes my job more difficult and is time consuming.

I assure you, if I include a post in a summary thread, it’s because the suggestion/proposition is well presented/understandable and has an element of novelty.

I will NOT include a post simply because the author claims he has played MMOs for 150 years or more and knows everything that’s worth knowing or whatever.

While we all have different background, the validity of an opinion is determined by its logical strength and not by the reputation of the one formulating it.

Zanthrax.6538:

Perhaps a compromise that could be worked out is providing an easier open world alternative to raid bosses as well. My example would be something like keeping Tequatl as is but also providing a harder instanced version of Tequatl with different rewards to reward prestige etc.

I support this compromise. As long as we make sure that instanced and open-world versions of bosses reward different things, I don’t see any problem.

Proposition 3 :

I am among those who think that megabosses are the raids in GW2. Thus I am putting forward this:

Expand the pool of megabosses by bringing back old LS season 1 large scale encounter and tequatl-ise the other two dragons.

Proposal Overview
Guidelines on how to turn the shatterer and the claw of jormag into megabosses. There are old topics about this buried deep in this forum, I am just bringing back some suggestions posted here.

Goal of Proposal
To turn the shatterer and the claw of jormag into megabosses. What’s more to add ?

Proposal Functionality
Shatterer :
Ideas for shatterer revamp:

1. Remove mortars. Make sure the large charr turrets can only be manned and repaired by NPCs.
2. The charr turrets should spawn one minute before the start of the shatterer (THEY are the so called “vigil siege weapons”). These turrets remove invulnerability buff (same as tequatl except that players aren’t manning turrets).
3. Have bigger waves of mobs attacking the charr turrets and the NPC that repair them => this forces us to have defence teams.
4. During the current “crital phase”, have cristals heal the shatterer quickly, forcing the players to rapidly destroy them (timer related challenge). Each destroyed cristal gives the remaining ones a 25% damage reduction buff (i.e, you have to kill the cristals at the same time).
5. Add a breath attack to the dragon to eliminate the safe spots.

And that’s it. These 5 changes are enough to make this dragon more interesting. You teach players to :

• coordinate kills (cristals)
• split up (defending turrets)
• protect and revive key NPCs (defence teams)

Claw of Jormag
Ideas for a revamp of the claw of JoJo:
The fight is still divided in 2 parts : part 1 w/ ice shield, part 2 w/ golems

1. Remove the Bazooka and improve grenades functionnalitites. The fight is much more intense and involving if you have to run to the ice shield to drop a grenade than if you just stack and spam #1
2. Rework the fire shield skill for all pact weapons : instead of being a 3 sec invuln, it purges the stacks of ice degen. Reduce Cd.
3. Include a defense phase between P1 and P2 à la tequatl. Failing this phase allows the Claw to bombard the zone with ice spikes that insta kill on hit.
4. Pact anti-air canons are manned by npc. The NPCs must be protected and healed (they do not regain health even out of combat), losing npcs in P1 makes the ice shield more resilient. Losing NPCs in defense phase is an automatic fail.
5. Turn icebrood colossi in condition vulnerable monsters like the husks from TT
6. Icebrod trolls are now suicide monsters with very high HP and armour. Vulnerable to CC. Used in defense phase and P2 vs the pact golems. => Niche use for tank builds and use of crowd control.
7. For an instanced version of the Claw only: The golems in P2 lose health over time and are regularly inflicted by chill => Niche use for heal builds and condi clear builds.

Associated Risks

You weaken the classic world boss rotation by doing this. A way to solve this problem is to integrate the fire shaman and the eye of zaithan in the rotation to replace the two dragons.
Lots of qq incoming because the claw requires more than just pressing one, yet is not really interesting in terms of design right now.

Proposition 2 :

As the leaders of TTS proposed earlier : allow the guild the options to generate a private instance of the megabosses.

Additionnal suggestion :
Public megaboss hosting (the way it exists actually) should reward on average MORE the players while the instance should reward only influence, merits and non-tradable items.
In other words, the instanced and open-world versions of the same megaboss should not have the same loot table (one mode should not overshadow the other one).

Goal of the proposition:
Give large guilds the possibility to experience content without interference of pugs while not removing the incentive to publicly host megabosses.

Associated risks :
If the rewards are not carefully balanced, large guilds might only do private versions of megabosses, killing the spirit of megabosses in the first place.

Ok I’m late to the party it seems. Since we were asked to think outside the box and the sky’s the limit, here you go : feel free to insult/oppose/screm in pain when you read this :P

Proposition 1 :

Proposal overview
New type of guild mission : Fractal Raid. A mix between fractal speed clearing and a guild rush.

Goal of the proposal:
Reuse already existing content to provide a new and very challenging experience, along with an entire new set of rewards.
Split the mistlock instabilities and the agony level.

Proposal Functionality
Fractal raid is a guild mission that is awailable at 3 tiers of difficulty. The higher tiers require more guild members to be completed.

Fractal raids are:

• instanced content
• requiring at least 5 players up to 20 (each extra 5 generate a new cluster of fractals)
• unlocked with a guild upgrade and then purchased like any other guild mission
• the group(s) can include non representing members. These group members will not recieve commendations and items at the end of the run. Just a sum of gold.
• grants reward once per week per account

How does it work ?
Once the mission has started, players can interect with a consortium executive near the fractal gate.
They will be thrown in a random instance containing a set of 3 pre-defined fractals and no boss fractal. (swamp, uncat, thaumanova or ascalon, cliff, grawl etc…)

The instances:

• contain all 3 fractals (no loadscreen between fractals)
• works like a personnal story instance (i.e : if you get out of the instance for any reason, there is no way to get back in unless the entire group restarts).
• are set at level 20 agony for the tier 1 raid, 35 agony in tier 2 (no standard instability though) and level 50 in tier 3.

When you are teleported in the 3 fractals cluster, you start in a “safe zone”. In this zone, you are out of combat and no mob can attack you.
As soon as one member steps out of the “safe zone”, a timer starts and all party members are put permanently in combat. The skill “portal” cease to function.

The objective of the group(s) is to complete the cluster of fractals as fast as possible. If the rush includes more than one group, the groups have to complete the instances at the same time.
There is a commandation+gold+exotic reward for completing the raid and a bonus gold for completing it faster.

The catch is…
A new set of instabilities applies to the cluster.
e.g : in the uncategorised fractal, skill that destroy or reflect projectiles cease to destroy or reflect said projectiles. Instead, these skills increase the damage done by your skills that have a range over 800.
e.g : in the dredge fractal, each second spent in stealth removes 20% of your max health (mitigated by armour) [Bomb room does not count ofc]
Each instability is designed to neutralise the classic way of completing the fractal and incentivise players to find new strategies.
Anet, get crazy when you create these new instabilities

Associated Risks
Extremely elitist content. Can fail to be challenging very quickly if a weakness in the AI or a glitch is found. Stacking will probably not disappear soon.

guardian.6489:

I also feeling scaling would function better in an instanced enviroment then a open world eviroment. Currently if a newbie joins you in a fight, it doesn’t matter what skill level they are, the fight will be a bit easier (otherwise you’d hate every new PVT newbie showing up to any event because they’d scale it up). The problem with this is that every event gets stupidly easy when enough people show up.

I don’t think instancing large encounters will solve the problem of scaling. No matter how good your scaling system is, encounters and their mechanics are designed with a target audience in mind.

The major pitfall of traditionnal world bosses was their intended target audience : they were created to be optimal for a 5 player group. The Scaling is just here to prenvent the golem Mk II to be stomped in 3 seconds, but does not make it a zerg crusher.

An optimal scaling would not only change the HP and armour of the WB, it would completely overhaul the mechanics of the WB when a zerg shows up (and this is something Anet is not able to do right now).

Teq and TT were designed with large zergs in mind and the scaling works better for them simply because of this.

Truth be told, I’d rather have Anet :

• expand the pool of megabosses we have, since it is the content that approaches the most traditionnal “raids”.
• give guilds the option to generate private instanced versions of the megabosses for special guild rewards
• add new fractals and expand the maximum level of fractals with new instabilities.
• have a special guild mission that consists in clearing a pre defined set of fractals with unique instabilities and gambits as fast as possible.

Conski Deshan.2057:

I was going to do a summery of everyone’s stance from this thread but it gets surprisingly messy and hard to tell.
From the first page there were:
Page 1
Pro : 11
SirBlunticus.4258
Morsus.5106
Gele.2048
SundayTrash.9562
Killface.1896
Rasimir.6239
kitten .9460
Xar.1387
Valento.9852
Blaeys.3102
Korossive.7085

Strictly Anti: 1
Halvorn.9831

Ok with under conditions :5 (3 for no new gear tier, 2 for not instanced)
Thia.4891
LanfearShadowflame.3189
Kartel.2561
RSLongK.8961
Sizer.5632

Did not express an opinion either way: 9
Rangerdeity.5847
Scryeless.1924
Rashy.4165
Boneheart.3561
Yargesh.4965
Bloodstealer.5978
Vayne.8563
Chameleon Dude.1564
poisonality.8972

Be careful with this kind of lists :

• opinions can change over time
• I fail to see how we can divide people between pro and anti raid since the definition of “raid” in GW2 is fuzzy (except for NoTrigger who has a precise idea of what it means, but he is an exception).

Nice initiative nonetheless.

NoTrigger.8396:

[snip for readability]

You’re getting closer. I’m quoting you: “Teach people how to play”

Now watch this : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FpigqfcvlM

It’s a bit longer but you’ll learn here something important :

A good chunk of level design and game design is spent on teaching player how to play

That’s right, the content has to teach people how to play. Don’t expect the gaming masses to understand the delicate details of GW2 mechanics by themselves because they won’t. GW2 never taught them this. It taught them they have to be autonomus and not care about what skills their neighbor is using.

Now about your response :
1) Stop being agressive on me, I’m trying to argument my case, not to insult you.

2) If you say “Teach players how to play” but do not suggest something concrete and implementable in the game to teach players, you sound childish and entitled. I’m sure you’re neither childish nor entitled, try to flesh out your propositions.

3)maha pointed out that the lupicus is interesting for everyone. Maybe integrating bosses like this in raids could be a solution.

4) So I’m still waiting for your idea of content

maha.7902:

There is nothing in this game currently comparable to the stupidity of pre-nerf FGS rushing so I don’t even know why you’re linking that.

I’m linking this, because it used to be the great meta ruthlessly enforced on the community no matter how stupid it was. If a player finds something equally stupid in the coming months, it will become the meta no matter how stupid it is.

Don’t lecture me with the “it won’t happen again” fallacy please. Real life and the gaming universe are full of examples of mistakes made multiple times.

It is also here to show the challenge of creating content that is accessible to the majority of the population and remain interesting for optimised groups. There is a huge gap between the two. The larger the group, the wider the gap.

Please tell me how to design something that accomodates both. I’m still waiting for concrete examples. Right now, we are still flailing at shadows.

NoTrigger.8396:

this doesnt make any sense, because its just a matter of how you design bosses and the mechanics behind the fight.
and bosses for 20 people need more hp obviously. i dont understand what you are trying to say.

I’ll try to clarify then.

First, watch this :
http://youtu.be/x88CmDOWnc4?t=15m42s

It’s with the old meta but you get the idea : Anet designed a boss featuring a nice “invuln phase” that requires the group to pull and kill a mob at the right time. Here, the [rT] team did such a good job that they literally obliterated the clockheart before it had the time to do anything.

Basically, the interesting boss has been turned into an hp bag.

They just did the classical rotation and then boom! target down. Nothing special required. Of the entire run, only slick and sparki required a special strategy.

To have the clockheart use its special mechanics again, Anet should have doubled its HP. Now imagine what a hell this would be for non optimised groups.

Can you tell me how you can design a 10 player content that is at the same time doable by 75% of the population and still remain interesting for the top 1% optimised groups ? Ofc Anet could double the HP of all monster, double their armor, their damage etc… but this would only turn endgame content in a power creep. It won’t make content more interesting.

I hope this is now clearer.

Brutality.9631:

And moreover, 10-20 man raids SHOULD also require the skill of a high end fractal.

I do have a problem with this statement:

A lot of players stated GW2 lacks any type of endgame content and also pretend that even fractal 50 is easy and/or cheesed out with stealth, portal and LoS/cornerstack.

So for the difficulty, you’ll have to look beyond what fractals have to offer.

I repeated this time and again : an optimised party can nuke almost any HP bag Anet can throw at it and thus prevent the boss from using its abilities (read: make the boss uninteresting). Imagine now what a party of 20 can do. How much DPS such a group can generate.

Then use the Hall of Monument Portal stone that should appear in your inventory and double click it to teleport to the GW2 hall of monument to get your rewards.

Boneheart.3561:

Kain Francois.4328:

Sand Giant is not done because it is a mechanically boring fight, unrewarding, simply a big dps fest (unlike Marionette which requires coordination and many different gameplay strategies), and most importantly: Sand Giant goes on when too many other events ar happening.

Dry Top during sandstorms is basically an event-train, and Giant conflicts with it.

If there were no Skritt Queen, more people would do Giant.

The Sand Giant is fun to melee, and has a (I assume) unique quicksand ability. I’m conflicted on it’s time/reward ratio, in reference to other Events taking place (even without the Skritt Queen) simultaneously. You’re given three Champion bags, if I remember correctly.

The reason why nobody does the giant is because of arbitrage :

the giant does not give you something that other events in the area can’t give you and the reward earning rate is too low compared to other events.

If killing the giant could bump by two levels the zephyrite favor during the sandstorm, it could have some use.
Alternatively, make him a world boss and integrate it in the rotation with a massive chest in the end.

spoj.9672:

Its disgusting because they dont even give decent justification.

Heres a summary of the anti raid posts:
- no (stronger or not) gear specific to the raid because they’d feel “forced” to raid;
- no highly desirable cosmetic/vanity items in the raid else they’d feel “forced” to raid;
- no content that requires high coordination (guilds), else they wouldn’t be able to raid;
- no content that requires high skillcap, else they wouldn’t be able to raid [duh];
- no content that requires a big team/time in an instance else they wouldn’t…

You cannot create decent endgame content if you follow these absurd guidelines.

Of course you can’t. Yet the guidelines you underlined are requested by a minority of entitled players that are very happy with the system right now and do not want it to change. Do you believe Anet only cares about these dudes ?

This is not the opinion of the majority of players.

On the topic of difficulty and accessibility :
Fractals were a very good compromise in terms of accessibility and difficulty scaling. The major failures of fractals as they stand right now are:

• Most of them are being facerolled (i.e not cahllenging)
• The reward distribution is atrociously bugged and wonky.

I still consider the owner of a fractal weapon as a person with lots of experience with fractals, simply because acquiring one is difficult and requires lvl 30+

If Anet designs 10 men raids with difficulty tiers so that casuals can experience them and get basic rewards (backpiece, trinkets), and harcores can get randomly dropped prestigious rewards at high levels (ascended armour set, weapons, minis etc.), I do not see the problem.

maha.7902:

You mean the boss which is literally the epitome of spam 1 and dodge red circles?

Man, I’m sure you’ll be surprised to see the amount of newbies that are ready and willing to turn up the microphone and get involved in group content.

Sure there is a vocal minority of entitled players that are bothering because they are jealous of people that have more shinies than they have.

Don’t just give up and assume only a minority is capable of getting kitten done.

@Lich King.1524 @Blaeys.3102
Now this is something I like to read. Looking forward to see what you have to say in the upcoming CDI.

I disagree with turing the marionette in a fractal. These are two very different content aimed at a very different audience.

I do understand (and agree) with the idea of storing the marionette in some “mists location” since we cannot bring her back in Lornar’s Pass anymore. However, the marionette should not be turned in a fractal ever.

Zeldain.5710:

Astralporing.1957:

Additionally, avoiding the term “raid” will mean far less people will get mentally locked into preconceptions taken from WoW raiding design.

But that familiarity is what would draw players to the game in the first place. It’s no mistake ArenaNet is using the word “raid.”

Part of the GW2 hype pre-launch was based on the assumption that GW2 would not be like your familiar MMO.

However you have a point when you say : It’s no mistake ArenaNet is using the word “raid.”

joe.7684:

NoTrigger.8396

people like you are the reason why gw2 has become so stale and boring

mind explaining what
-gear grind
-having dedicated healers and tanks (trinity)
-grinding reputation
has to do with raids?

i do hope the mods will do a good job and keep the raid cdi clean from the anti-raid faction

I couldn’t disagree with this last sentence more. The “anti-raid faction” has just as much a right to be heard in the upcoming CDI as the people who want raid content, providing both sides keep it courteous as Chris required.

If we could agree on a definition of what a raid is in GW2, that would be great to begin with.

Nick.6972:

Here’s wondering what were to happen if they were to replace word Raids with Elite Missions.

People will be much less opposed, simply because “elite mission” sounds more guild wars and less WoW than “Raids”.

Packaging and communications are important. Especially on that matter.

Gabe.6810:

Heyo,

So I recently capped my first 80. It’s taken me a long time because I tend to be an alcoholic. I have all exotic gear and ascended jewels as well as everything I wanted as far as runes, sigils, traits and skills. The only thing I have left to do on this character is finish getting the rest of the waypoints and finish my awesome outfit.

What else do you guys do at 80? I’ll still PvP and WvW and help friends complete maps and do jump puzzles but the only thing I can think of doing on this character in the PvE world where I spend most of my time is try to earn cash, and I’m not entirely sure how to do it or why I would when I could be earning cash on a character that would also level up as I’m doing it.

1. Get 100% world completion
2. Get yourself an outstanding look
3. Fill in your collections
4. Complete your achievement list (puzzles, mini dungeons, fractals etc…)
5. Lead a group trying to kill tequatl
6. Enter the Gold Wars
7. Unlock the radiant chestpiece. #trololo

These are a few ideas. (I omitted the “get a legendary” because legendaries are mainstream now ^^)