Guild Wars 2

And let’s not fool ourselves. If there were no special rewards for Raids, it would be an empty wasteland. A tiny minority of players would do it. I question whether people would raid for even silverwastes-level rewards.

Coulter.2315:

Windsagio.1340:

The fascination of this thread is this:

The non-raiders just want access to the rewards.

The raiders want to believe that raiding is a special accomplishment that deserves special rewards.

To some degree neither is right: Not all subjects HAVE to have the same rewards, and being willing to put up with the raid experience doesn’t earn you anything.

‘Put up with’ and ‘earn’ were nice touches, language really far from fun and gaming. This is why I said it isn’t for you – you can’t even see the fun.

The bribe belies the fun. This is a central point to my argument.

I’m not interested in raiding because my experience is that raiding brings out the worst in people. I also don’t need the rewards very much. My part in this discussion i more one of interest than one of personal gain.

On the other hand, Anet knows that raids are for raiders about the rewards and about standing out, which is why they’re so heavily incentivizing them.

~~~~

To put it another way, Anet also can’t see the fun (or more specifically they can’t see the extended player interest), or they wouldn’t have to sell it on special rewards.

The fascination of this thread is this:

The non-raiders just want access to the rewards.

The raiders want to believe that raiding is a special accomplishment that deserves special rewards.

To some degree neither is right: Not all subjects HAVE to have the same rewards, and being willing to put up with the raid experience doesn’t earn you anything.

“Deserve” doesn’t have anything to do with it.

It is more accessible.

Let’s wait to see if they’re actually hard before we get into that part though.

Not for you to tell them to not complain tho :p

It’s true that this is a thing and people are just gonna have to buck up (or not play the game), but people complaining about posts they can just ignore always irks me just a bit :p

How about a pve/pvp split?

I don’t pvp that much (so it’s not for me), but it seems a reasonable compromise for high prestige items.

~~~

Honestly I don’t mind the exclusive rewards for stuff, I just hate them filtering it on something so bleah.

Nike.2631:

The standard trinity is fundamentally stupid because it hinges on “tanks” — a role based entirely on BAD AI BEHAVIOR. This is why you don’t see ‘trinity’ behavior in games played between people from table-top RPGs to chess or in the real world either. Intelligent gamers and real combatants do not attack the enemy with the toughest armor and least damage output first. This is why ‘tanks class’ always have to restructured in PvP (and why healer classes get mauled first, foremost, and always in PvP)… Intelligent opponents don’t waste their time on tanks unless the game does a triple backflip to force you to prioritize them (such as forced behavior like GW2s new taunt condition).

Which is why I’m still not a fan of ‘taunt’ although it’s not so offensive gameplay wise.

Taunt that permanently assigns threat is just silly and weird.

~~

GW1 had some really clever ai behaviour that they couldn’t get functional for #2 for some reason.

To my memory:
Targeted proximity, especially if slowed
Targeted lower health followed by lower armor
Targeted casters over martial enemies
Targeted heavily based on damage taken.

Outside aggro they also fled AE’s if able.

You could still tank, but it was a very very different experience and you had to take some risks.

Still miss it sometimes, although it would make some content in the current game SO HARD

Tongku.5326:

Windsagio.1340:

PopeUrban.2578:

Not it doesn’t

There are no additional gear tiers. The gear you have right now is raid ready. There are no contrived barriers to entry, just as there aren’t any in dungeons. You have to be able to do the content to get the reward, but there are no game systems in place preventing each and every player from having the mechanical ability to do so.

You’re just wrong on this. The time commitment and the organizational commitment are barriers to participation. Gear is far from the only way to limit access to a game system.

No. It is you who are wrong. It doesnt matter if you play 3 hours 4-5 times a week or 1 hour 2-3 times a week. Sooner or later, you will have the appropriate gear / build set up for this content. And likewise, there are plenty of guilds who include both dedicated and casual players in their ranks in this game.

The dedicated players will help you out significantly shortening the commitment on your part as wel las by the time you get to the content, they will have worked out all the strats and ways to complete it.

Your only issue here is that you want the rewards IMEMDIATELY in addition for doing nothing / being carried. And sorry, I do not agree with your personal demands. Your way of playing does not give you any right whatsoever, to demean and belittle players who enjoy exclusive content. Even if you paid for such, and you did not, otherwise it would have stated so in EULA / TOS, it would still not give you that right.

It… kitten . Do you really think the only barrier to being able to do this content is gear? The gear and likely the skill are never the issue in GW2. —well excepting fractals and Agony. The issue is that forming larger working groups and setting aside more time to get a raid together and do it are real barriers to players.

You can keep your personals to yourself though, you don’t know what the kitten I want.

Lord Kuru.3685:

After a few weeks, when everyone is done with the open world PvE, if people don’t shift to raids and population starts to dwindle, Anet will follow the metrics and make them easier.

I think in general people are going to be pretty disappointed with the ‘difficulty’ thing.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Arenanet already said the rewards will be exclusive. While it is all possible to make different routes and such for it, they have not decided to do so.

So this arbritrary discussion about arbritrary content for arbritrary rewards should probably end. There’s no compromise and the discussion is going into the same circles over and over.

Except they want to have their voices heard, which is totally legitimate.

PopeUrban.2578:

Not it doesn’t

There are no additional gear tiers. The gear you have right now is raid ready. There are no contrived barriers to entry, just as there aren’t any in dungeons. You have to be able to do the content to get the reward, but there are no game systems in place preventing each and every player from having the mechanical ability to do so.

You’re just wrong on this. The time commitment and the organizational commitment are barriers to participation. Gear is far from the only way to limit access to a game system.

It’s always the folks you disagree with that are whiny and entitled.

In all honesty, I think they’ll eventually at least put the tokens into PVP, but are going to wait a while. Almost all rewards now are available through both of the big ‘buckets’ (pve and pvp), and these will probably come.

Coulter.2315:

Windsagio.1340:

Coulter.2315:

Windsagio.1340:

Coulter.2315:

Windsagio.1340:

Fernling.1729:

There are plenty of rewards exclusive to open world pve that can’t be earned by raiding.

But one has more barriers to entry than others.

So you are fine with the concept and just haggling over price? Well Raiding is the price – pay or don’t pay – its up to you.

My first version of this was too harsh, but one of the advantages of the game to many professionals is that you can play it on an open schedule and in relatively small bites.

I’m happy to prioritize myself away from raids (I hate the way it seems to draw wamma be alpha-males), but I have empathy with the people who get annoyed that the ability to block off a few hours on a weekly schedule is the primary qualifier for special rewards.

This is content specifically designed for people who do have the time to spend in game, I think a lot of people in this thread are forgetting that.

The content is not designed for someone who has only 45mins and no guild to complete.

The is plenty more stuff out there for you, but not this.

They understand it extremely clearly, that’s why they’re complaining!

Lol really?

“I refuse to play this game for more than 45mins at a time and if anyone gets something I can’t because of that I’m going to cry!”

^This is their stance? Cause raiding really shouldn’t be their first complaint destination.

people are complaining because they’re pouring exclusive rewards into content that’s (to use your phrasing, which I was reacting to) explicitly not designed for them. Of course people are annoyed at that.

It’s not a monolithic discussion, of course, but there are some variations. In the dark old days I knew (and I’m sure we’ve all known) people who were hurting their jobs and families because they had to hit the raid schedule.

Now people who make that decision (imo) have some pretty jacked up priorities, but one of the big draws of GW2, especially to older more established gamers is that that decision has never even been on the table.

Now it is, and some people are going to make some bad decisions, and more people are gonig to resent being (in their minds) punished for making the (and lets be honest for it) right decision.

~~~~

I’m sure people would still complain if this were a skill cap, people always complain. But there would be fewer, and it not being a skill cap, but instead being a scheduling cap, reasonably ruffles feathers.

Coulter.2315:

Windsagio.1340:

Coulter.2315:

Windsagio.1340:

Fernling.1729:

There are plenty of rewards exclusive to open world pve that can’t be earned by raiding.

But one has more barriers to entry than others.

So you are fine with the concept and just haggling over price? Well Raiding is the price – pay or don’t pay – its up to you.

My first version of this was too harsh, but one of the advantages of the game to many professionals is that you can play it on an open schedule and in relatively small bites.

I’m happy to prioritize myself away from raids (I hate the way it seems to draw wamma be alpha-males), but I have empathy with the people who get annoyed that the ability to block off a few hours on a weekly schedule is the primary qualifier for special rewards.

This is content specifically designed for people who do have the time to spend in game, I think a lot of people in this thread are forgetting that.

The content is not designed for someone who has only 45mins and no guild to complete.

The is plenty more stuff out there for you, but not this.

They understand it extremely clearly, that’s why they’re complaining!

Coulter.2315:

Windsagio.1340:

Fernling.1729:

There are plenty of rewards exclusive to open world pve that can’t be earned by raiding.

But one has more barriers to entry than others.

So you are fine with the concept and just haggling over price? Well Raiding is the price – pay or don’t pay – its up to you.

My first version of this was too harsh, but one of the advantages of the game to many professionals is that you can play it on an open schedule and in relatively small bites.

I’m happy to prioritize myself away from raids (I hate the way it seems to draw wamma be alpha-males), but I have empathy with the people who get annoyed that the ability to block off a few hours on a weekly schedule is the primary qualifier for special rewards.

Fernling.1729:

There are plenty of rewards exclusive to open world pve that can’t be earned by raiding. [/quote]

But one has more barriers to entry than others.

Astralporing.1957:

Azumi.9572:

Speaking as someone who is iffy on doing the raids – if they offer raid gear outside of raids, then raids are pointless and they might as well go the way of Dungeons.

Lol. You seem to have forgotten why these raids were introduced. Let me remid you – it wasn’t in order to give elitists unique gear. It was to supply a challenging content. Which they would do regardless of exclusivity of the rewards.

But if what you are saying is true, then the raids are pointless, because the function they were created for is not needed. They could be replaced by a vending machine that offers the unique gear to you and few other chosen people, but not anyone else.

Well it was to give the illusion of challenging content ,yes.

There’s a huge difference. Raids are replacing execution challenge with accessibility challenge.

That and them trying to honestly meet requests for guild and multigroup content.

It also adds some really stupid AI assumptions to the game.

Pompeia.5483:

Personally, I do not care for the zerker meta… I want to play with what I want… and I aim for survivability. I came from the trinity games (Rift, WoW) and originally made my necro a tanky healer (with clerics) on purpose… and guess what, no one dies in dungeons with guild or pug runs. I sure as hell don’t, either.

The current problem, and the problem with all games… nay, life… is people are impatient. They want to do things as fast as possible instead of enjoying what’s around them, strategizing, and killing mobs as would have to be done if they were sitting at a D&D session with friends. Instead, they aim for high-DPS and use exploits (line-shooting with ice bow and friends, LOS-grouping mobs) and ruin any fun there would be in the fight.

There is no way around people being impatient and exploiting game mechanics (which devs only encourage by not fixing them) without resorting to content that requires multiple roles be filled. They have, at least, tried to force groups be mix of condi and power now, which is nice, and gives variety. If they want to try to push for every player to consider at least one support skill to help the team… is that such a bad thing? Too many players are out to get things only for themselves with no consideration to help others. That’s not a good thing… in games or in real life. That is why the trinity happened… to enforce the model of helping others (some of us like being healers in other games).

The zerker “meta” is a different issue – specifically because it’s entirely player driven.

Now imagine them intentionally designing encounters so you had to be all zerker to complete it. That’s the actual impact of trinity encounter design.

As far as the current “Meta” goes, it actually HATES selfish classes. Every class that’s desired adds significant support to the group, and those that aren’t wanted are the ones that don’t offer support

standard response 1: We have plenty of build snobbery without trinity considerations

standard response 2 Why must all MMO’s have the same core class interaction?

Canakun.8031:

There’s a really old-fashioned idea that people can be proud of their accomplishments, and typically, completing a raid is a pretty big accomplishment, within the scope of the game.

Except the conversation at hand isn’t about them being proud of their accomplishments (such as they are), but about them getting stuff for doing what they want to do exclusively.

Anet has some reasonable looking business reasons to put in these rewards, but let’s not pretend this is about the joy of doing it.

Rauderi.8706:

Windsagio.1340:

Sooo cannot be bothered with extra credits (or argumentum ad youtube in general).

As I said, it’s something to be careful of, and players know an abitrary barrier to completion when they see it.

Damage and repairs works at least in part because it has a strong metaphor, which isn’t really available in this case.

Eh, I had the wrong link anyway. :P

But yes, I agree. Less ‘wait to have fun’ and more ‘get rekt by raid again’. Because there is no repair anvil for your ego.

That’s all fine as a theoretical point, but it’s just that: A nice bit for a game school design lecture, but dangerous to apply willy-nilly.

In the case of GW, there is that delay already, in the form of release-run back-do your next prep. An arbitrary timer is taking an especially sloppy sledgehammer to a concept that can (and is) handled in much more elegant and inline ways.

Sooo cannot be bothered with extra credits (or argumentum ad youtube in general).

As I said, it’s something to be careful of, and players know an abitrary barrier to completion when they see it.

Damage and repairs works at least in part because it has a strong metaphor, which isn’t really available in this case.

Torolan.5816:

Tl;dr Raids are hard and take time, of course most people need to be attracted with shinies to do them.

I’d agree to that, with the caveat that the greater the # of shinies the more they think they need to sweeten the pot.

As to my point, it’s not realaly to be pro-raids or anti-raids as a feature, so much as a speculation on it’s expected strength vis a vis the essential failure of dungeon content.

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

It forces players to take a break, and punishes death, something that is found in few places in this game..

This is the end all and be all of that discussion. This isn’t about difficulty, it’s about punishing failure… a concept a smart designer treats VERY carefully.

Said this in another thread, it’s still true.

Every exclusive reward is another sign that Anet thinks most players won’t raid without being “incentivized”.

Ven Zehn.6573:

Yea, but you cant get into the foyer once you’re in a fractal instance, you have to leave the fractal completely, by going to the log screen, and repairing in LA before re-entering.

Yeah because of the sub-instance thing – without sub instancess I’d expect like all the old dungeons, which also had an anvil in the foyer.

Honestly though, unless you do a lock timer there’s only a little bit more inconvenience for that.

Random thoughts:

Res orbs are super tricky, and I doubt they’d have much impact on encounters either way. That’s really why I feel removing them is more about image than mechanics. They’re simply not that much of a factor.

Anvil removal (and I saw someone mentioning hard timers above as well) on the other hand is a straight attempt to make dying more punishing.. As zaith said, this isn’t increasing difficulty this is just decreasing accessibility.

Which ties to my whole thing with the whole system. It’s easy to make fake difficulty by deceasing accessibility & convenience. The group size is part of that, the no rez orbs migt be an attempt at part of that (although again – so hard to use effectively), and these timer/no repairs suggesions would be a HUGE part of that.

It’s not real difficulty though, why would we even want that kind of exclusivity?

Ven Zehn.6573:

It does, and even now, in fractals, there’s no anvil, and people have gotten around that, so how much will removing the anvil really change? who knows lol

There are anvils in the fractal foyer, and one would expect the same for raids.

Disabling res orbs is a necessary part of the HARDKORE!!!! image they want to present.

InsidiousWaffle.7086:

I am for removing the anvil… And a short cooldown after exiting(say 5 minutes)

Having an anvil allows you to bang your head into a wall infinitely until the wall cracks. If there are waypoints inside of the raid and an anvil, it will be beaten within a few hours for the first ever try. Unless anet puts in place things to stop players from grinding their way to victory, players WILL grind their way to victory

Yes, yes, let’s make raids even more about putting up with annoyances. Only those with TRUE patience should be rewarded!

My bad, missed the ‘change between active’ bit.

I thought you wanted multiple active rune sets at once ><

It’s breaking a core precept of GW2 legendaries:

Prestige and QOL advantages vs. gameplay advantages.

account level also makes it schedule-enforcing.

one of the things I wish we could stay away from is “Hey, everyone come on at 6:00 PM Wed if you want to raid!”

rotten.9753:

Windsagio.1340:

You asked me for a source, then agreed with me?

There’s no question that they initially intended dungeons to be a core part of the gameplay, and then they abandoned supporting them after a certain point (nobody’s contesting this)

Above you said, it was unsupported: As a feature it was supported then abandoned, presumably for ROI reasons.

Anet thinks, or is willing to take a risk that this content will be different and will have a better ROI… but given the example of their past experience, it is by no means a sure thing.

Edit: The distinction I’m making there might be fine, but its important. We have to ask ourselves this question:

Why, given the initial development support for Dungeons, did Arenanet abandon them?

Sorry, I’m not native english speaker and 10+ tenses are way too complicated for me. By “dungeons not supported” I obviously meant that they were abandoned after few months, not they were not supported at all.

Let’s blame the internet, we had a misunderstanding

Zok.4956:

Test.8734:

Mr Hrouda’s parting words are very sad. He mentions how he wanted to build something that would last… And instead his last assignment was a temporary dungeon.

Neither you nor me where there at A-Net at that time, so we do not know the real reasons why the decision was made to fire him.

Test.8734:

The game has failed, like any other MMORPG that found itself forced to go into free to play (like TOR, ESO, WildStar and so on).

In do not share your opinion. And GW2 ist not free to play like the other games you mentioned. If you want the latest and full game, you always have to buy it. So the latest version of the game (at the moment: HoT) you have to buy and only the older versions you can play for free (but not really free-to-play like most other games, but more in a free-to-trial fashion).

Yeah this is the point: “FTP old content, pay for the expansion!”

They’re not going to get any more vanilla sales, so why not make it free as marketing for HOT?

Neox.3497:

Gibson.4036:

The final nail in the coffin to bury the GW2 dream.

So what? Do you want even MORE easy content?

Honestly, it makes sense for them to do this. They’ve essnetially tied up the casual mmo player, there’s no reason to play any other game out there (unless you’re into giant anime eyes), so they’re going for the segment they don’t rule.

Anyways, the point of the observation is they’re making a guess on raids, so the people who like them have to show numbers when they come out.

This doesn’t mean they won’t work out, Anet knows their player numbers better than any of us do and they’re going for it (which implies that they think they’ve figured it out this time), but also it doesn’t guarantee anything or mean much outside the fact that they’re giving it another try.

phys.7689:

Windsagio.1340:

You asked me for a source, then agreed with me?

There’s no question that they initially intended dungeons to be a core part of the gameplay, and then they abandoned supporting them after a certain point (nobody’s contesting this)

Above you said, it was unsupported: As a feature it was supported then abandoned, presumably for ROI reasons.

Anet thinks, or is willing to take a risk that this content will be different and will have a better ROI… but given the example of their past experience, it is by no means a sure thing.

Edit: The distinction I’m making there might be fine, but its important. We have to ask ourselves this question:

Why, given the initial development support for Dungeons, did Arenanet abandon them?

it definately wasnt for return on interest reasons.
They took most the team off to put them on living story which at that time was moslty temporary content. Which has very little ROI. They used pieces of this content in fractals, but they needed a lot longer to fix em for fractals, and a lot content never returned.

i think they basically were going with the flow, they didnt have an overall vision, they just wanted open world to be really compelling, and was trying to figure out how to do it. After all this time, i think they realized their LS method had low ROI and tried to come up with a new gameplan

I think many of their descions were focused on keeping a small world. They really wanted people to play this same maps/dungeons forever.

why else remove TA up? and focus on content that disapears?
they are always overly concerned with splitting the playerbase, when keeping the playerbase engaged is the most important thing.

We’re working from the assumption that they’re a business, and not acting arbitrarily. As a business, the occam’s razor position is that they cut investment in the feature that they thought would show the least return..

The answer, by the way, is almost certainly that they weren’t giving enough returns for the work they were having to put into them, or more charitably that further work wouldn’t effect those returns.

You asked me for a source, then agreed with me?

There’s no question that they initially intended dungeons to be a core part of the gameplay, and then they abandoned supporting them after a certain point (nobody’s contesting this)

Above you said, it was unsupported: As a feature it was supported then abandoned, presumably for ROI reasons.

Anet thinks, or is willing to take a risk that this content will be different and will have a better ROI… but given the example of their past experience, it is by no means a sure thing.

Edit: The distinction I’m making there might be fine, but its important. We have to ask ourselves this question:

Why, given the initial development support for Dungeons, did Arenanet abandon them?

Substatic.6958:

But you aren’t forced to do those, like spvp tournaments and high level fractals….which can get just as “teh elitist”.

Should those be removed for you guys also? What else should we take away.

No, just don’t have multigroup content :p

Edit: Noting that we’re getting it regardless of what I, or anyone else thinks :P

rotten.9753:

Windsagio.1340:

It was, and then they cut back support because not enough people were doing dungeons.

Which begs the question, “How do we keep that from happening again?”

Source?

source

25 dungeon paths, with a second wave introducing the fractals is not an unsupported feature.

They largely abandoned support, but that was almost certainly a business decision.

Which is my version: They supported dungeon/instanced content at first, and it seemed hard at first, but they abandoned support as a bad investment.

Which goes back to the point: Will the same thing happen again?

~~EDIT~~

@Phys: We’re essentially in agreement about what went down, with some disagreement about why. If they were abandoning a feature, I’d feel exceptionally safe saying the one they abandoned was the one with the worst ROI.

::: I agree aobut Sylvari though, just not interesting at all ><

“Or almost none.” Ohoni above for instance wouldn’t be happy with skins either.

There’d be much less conflict, however. People care a lot about the ‘legendary’ thing… and heaven help us all if there are achievements for the armor set.

Otherwise, yeah you’re right. That last bit came out way more negative than I intended. I’m gonna hold to part of it though:

I think a major motivator for people is the ability to stand out, visibly for things they’ve done that others couldn’t. There already has been hard content in GW2 that ’wasn’t worth the reward’ and essentialy nobody does. This tends to reinforce my point.

Further reinforcing it is my other pet peeve, in that raids really aren’t, and to a large degree CAN’T be about personal second-to-second game skill. The more players you include in an encounter the less viable that becomes, because the difficulty is kind of multiplicative.

rotten.9753:

Windsagio.1340:

Honeslty though, I think it’s a gamble. I dunno what their raids cost to develop, but instance play as a game mode hasn’t been very popular in general in the context of GW2.

Maybe because it wasn’t supported?

It was, and then they cut back support because not enough people were doing dungeons.

Which begs the question, “How do we keep that from happening again?”

Navi.9308:

Windsagio.1340:

Navi.9308:

Windsagio.1340:

Navi.9308:

I really don’t understand these complaints.

If you want gear of equal strength to raid gear you can already get it. This is not an issue.

If you want specific vanity gear then play the content for it.

If you don’t have the time to do the long, difficult content, then do the content that you have time to do. You’re still working towards gear of the same power level.

Some posters seem to have an intense level of entitlement, wanting vanity items handed to them on a silver platter.

I’ll ask the question I keep asking:

Would people who don’t want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins, and would the people who do want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins?

They are just skins. Just because they’re called ‘legendary’ and require more effort to acquire than ascended gear doesn’t mean that they’re anything more than just glorified skins.

There is literally no differentiation between legendary and ascended gear other than visuals.

And the stat swapping and the purple pretty.

If that’s the case, whats your answer then? Would you be okay with it if you just got unique armor skins from raiding?

I’m for unique rewards from raiding. I’m also for unique world rewards, dungeon rewards, crafting rewards, SPvP rewards, and WPvP rewards because I don’t think every single item should be available through every type of content.
It increases the longevity of the game and pushes players to experience and take part in content they normally wouldn’t.

Also, you can stat swap ascended gear can’t you? It’s just more difficult?

At the end of the day it impacts me little because I think nearly every single legendary skin is hideous. I just get annoyed with the “I want X reward but don’t want to do Y content, why can’t I get it from Z easier content or why can’t Y content be catered to my level of skill” thought process, it’s very self serving and elitist.

If by ‘destroy the item at a mystic forge and get, for a notable cost an equivalent item with different stats’ then yes.

Also, I hate being this guy, but you’re dodging the question.

A skin is also a unique reward. Would raids offering skins instead of unique legendaries be enough?

~~~~

I’m harping on this for a reason. There’s be no conflict (or almost no conflict) if it were just skins. Anet knows this. They also want more people trying for legendaries and people who normally wouldn’t normally do a raid to try them.

Which I’m fine with, let people have unique rewards for wahtever. My dog in this is I kind of want people to admit it’s about the exclusive rewards not the joy of playing hard content.

Honeslty though, I think it’s a gamble. I dunno what their raids cost to develop, but instance play as a game mode hasn’t been very popular in general in the context of GW2.

Navi.9308:

Windsagio.1340:

Navi.9308:

I really don’t understand these complaints.

If you want gear of equal strength to raid gear you can already get it. This is not an issue.

If you want specific vanity gear then play the content for it.

If you don’t have the time to do the long, difficult content, then do the content that you have time to do. You’re still working towards gear of the same power level.

Some posters seem to have an intense level of entitlement, wanting vanity items handed to them on a silver platter.

I’ll ask the question I keep asking:

Would people who don’t want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins, and would the people who do want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins?

They are just skins. Just because they’re called ‘legendary’ and require more effort to acquire than ascended gear doesn’t mean that they’re anything more than just glorified skins.

There is literally no differentiation between legendary and ascended gear other than visuals.

And the stat swapping and the purple pretty.

If that’s the case, whats your answer then? Would you be okay with it if you just got unique armor skins from raiding?

kankanKk.2748:

Legendary armor is not necessary for your gameplay, just a skin, nothing special.
Not legendary force you to the raid, but you force yourself to the legendary.
If you want special, go learn it, go do it, then you get reward, it’s fair trade.
Btw I believe anet will add legendary armor in pvp league someday and ppl will complain about it.

It’s not just a skin, people need to get saying that. Yes, it is true that it doesn’t have better stats, but it’s not ‘just a skin’.

Navi.9308:

Who is ArenaNet designing Raids for?

They’re making a marketing play. They’re hoping to get MMO players in who didn’t go for GW2 the first time, and one of the pieces they can add is raids.

They’re also trying to get high player investment. Especially given that the loot element isn’t just a free drop, people are going to have to grind, play the market, and potentially buy gems to get the actual armor pieces.

I could go more into the need for high skill content in online games to drive the average players towards something and how that’s good for the overall health of the game and other things but this has already gotten long enough xD

I’d argue the skill thing. Individual skill is best tested through smaller group content. Raids tend to be about logistics and organization as compared to straight up second-to-second execution skill. It’s good for exclusivity however.

Navi.9308:

I really don’t understand these complaints.

If you want gear of equal strength to raid gear you can already get it. This is not an issue.

If you want specific vanity gear then play the content for it.

If you don’t have the time to do the long, difficult content, then do the content that you have time to do. You’re still working towards gear of the same power level.

Some posters seem to have an intense level of entitlement, wanting vanity items handed to them on a silver platter.

I’ll ask the question I keep asking:

Would people who don’t want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins, and would the people who do want to raid be okay with it if it were just skins?

Mayga: If they don’t do this, nobody will do raids.

Everybody knows it, we’ve seen it from other things in the games.

It’s never been about challenge, it’s always been about having something to stand out with.

Edit: If they open it up, those who can get their special stuff most efficiently with raids will do them and nobody else will.

It’s a feature they don’t think players will actually play