Guild Wars 2

The only question you have to ask yourself, Op, is: does fun equal bringing out huge dps to you? If that is the case, then you won’t have fun with this class. As for mechanics, I find mesmer gameplay TREMENDOUSLY fun, imo. You should test it, although the levelling of mesmer is harder than other classes I would say

Linken.6345:

flog.3485:

I am a non-raider yet I feel like “yelling at you”: getting good and remaining exclusive is not a toxic attitude as long as what raiders can get is not superior to what casuals non-raider can obtain by playing at their pace while not feeling forced into raiding. As for the lore, it has been pointed out a gazillion time that it consists of notes that people read on the ground easily accessible with a cleared instance…….And honestly I really don’t need to go into raiding instances to understand that white mantle might get involved and that ley-line energy is getting out of control with the added events that take place in core tyria. I personally don’t want a core-tyria experience of what raiders have I would rather have LS3. At some point you need to realize that raiding was advertised as hot content as it was also advertised that hot would bring challenging content. Nerfing them while still providing easy core-tyria content is a waste of resources and time. Let the people that like raids enjoy the current difficulty of all the raid wings as it stands now for a great replay-ability of what they enjoy….Edit: the old raids will always be relevant to them because they are well designed

Ok since none raiders can get the same stat switching armor somewere else at their own pace please point it out to me.

Superior can be higher stats true but it can also be a totaly new mechanic to it like for example legendary stat switching.

It is true that you can’t but afaik, raiders can’t even start crafting their amor also. And no stat-switching is not superior because in GW 2, whether I am wearing condie gear or zerker gear I can participate in any given content content that take place in tyria and in the maguma jungle. The game also not requires you to switch stats on a frequent basis. Let me also add they you can certainly switch stats but you can’t switch runes. And if legendary was so legendary then everyone would already have a legendary weapon, which is certainly not true. There is no gear treadmill in the game simply because unlike other mmos you don’t have to grind to be relevant, just like you don’t need to grind the latest viper stats to feel relevant, whether you do dungeons, fractals or open world. Heck on my condi gear I don’t even own sinister stats. In fact the only real place where stat-switching might be relevant is raids, as for pve. Oh the irony

I am a non-raider yet I feel like “yelling at you”: getting good and remaining exclusive is not a toxic attitude as long as what raiders can get is not superior to what casuals non-raider can obtain by playing at their pace while not feeling forced into raiding. As for the lore, it has been pointed out a gazillion time that it consists of notes that people read on the ground easily accessible with a cleared instance…….And honestly I really don’t need to go into raiding instances to understand that white mantle might get involved and that ley-line energy is getting out of control with the added events that take place in core tyria. I personally don’t want a core-tyria experience of what raiders have I would rather have LS3. At some point you need to realize that raiding was advertised as hot content as it was also advertised that hot would bring challenging content. Nerfing them while still providing easy core-tyria content is a waste of resources and time. Let the people that like raids enjoy the current difficulty of all the raid wings as it stands now for a great replay-ability of what they enjoy….Edit: the old raids will always be relevant to them because they are well designed

A new elite spec? Hexes!!!! Move a bit away from the shatters by consuming illusions. When you consume illusions hexes are applied to single or multiple targets for condie or raw damages. This new spec should also give a new mechanic that allow mesmers to choose how many illusions they want to shatter and how many they want to consume. Mesmers gain different effects based on the distribution of shatters/consumption and the tratline should support/reflect this distribution while setting a higher number of illusions for consumption increased the power of hexes and a higher number of illusions for shatters increases the power of shatters. Shortbow for weapon: weapon skill number five sets the distribution for consumption/shatter 10s skill recharge. As for utilities: I really don’t know, maybe we could have glyphs

If you want a successful ley-line event, open LFG and join a commander. I did it yesterday and got 3 events in a row

Personally, what I think must happen is this: remove team queue in ranked but heavily incentivize it in unranked. We should learn to play our class as a team in a less stressful and rage quiting environment and also make sure that players who stick with solo queue are accustomed to face teams. Maybe Anet should add/move some requirements of the PVP backpack in unranked that players could achieve off-season by teaming up in unranked. I also think players should not be able to gain pvp ranks in hotjoin. Players (I include myself in the lot) that have barely set a foot in unranked nor in ranked have no experience whatsoever oh how to play as a team: I casually farmed 77 ranks by playing exclusively hot joins for the most part and my experience of it is people randomly leaving teams making these uneven with no sense of how to rotate. Hotjoins should only be played for the sole purpose of farming reward tracks but if players really want to get a the backpack they should be more incentivized to team up, learn what their can class achieve in a team and then apply in ranked. As a a whole the PVP severely lacks visibility of how to properly balance it simply because it is impossible to reach a compromise between the experience of players going solo without having to train playing as a team in unranked and the players teaming up who really are serious about PVP. Creating a team only queue is necessary but for that the PVP population needs to grow. Hence why I propose only solo queue in ranked for now

I don’t know about you but I kinda feel like this thread doesn’t belong here. At least post it in pvp forums

STIHL.2489:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Bysvyken.6235:

I really don’t understand all this talk of minorities.
Being capable of raiding isn’t some minority you’re born into like race/ethnicity, it’s simply researching and participating in something. The only ones stopping you from becoming part of this “minority” are yourselves.

Demographics in gaming communities — at least the ones being talked about in discussions like this one — are based around preferences. For instance, I’m in a demographic that prefers not to raid but doesn’t worry about exclusive rewards being in that content. Yes, that group exists. It might well be the real “majority” regarding this issue. My reason to not raid is that I promised myself back during WoW I would not get sucked into the raiding time sink again. While it looks like the time commitment for GW2 raids is lower, it’s still higher than I care to commit to.

Bysvyken.6235:

How far do we stretch this logic?
I’m no good at PvP, you have to let me get the PvP legendary backpiece by participating in hot-join.
I’m no good at high level fractals, you have to let me get the legendary backpiece by participating in fractals 1-10.

Back when the game launched, there was some thought that most rewards would be obtained via Karma as a sort of universal currency. Even then, though, making L. weapons required doing at least one dungeon and real WvW (pre EotM or achievement chests with Badges). Also, dungeon skins were only available for use in PvE by doing that dungeon. So, there were unique rewards tied to specific content even then.

A funny thing’s happened since. ANet learned that: (a) a lot of players would not repeat content without reward; and (b) that players would seek the path of least resistance to obtain the universal currency, ignoring any other content. This led to the idea that players could be enticed to do specific content by including rewards they can’t get elsewhere — whether this is a matter of degree (rares via world bosses) or exclusivity (Glorious Armor). Karma was incorporated as a component into a few collection rewards, but was otherwise largely abandoned.

Now, virtually every new thing the devs throw out for players to do has an exclusive reward attached to it. What we’re seeing in threads like this one is the reaction from players who still have attachments to the idea behind that universal currency and what it meant to them — even though ANet pretty much abandoned universal access regardless of preference long ago.

Not really, all the “exclusive” stuff was purely cosmetic skins, right up to LS2, with Luminescent being rare for pity’s sake, but exclusive cosmetics, have been in the game since day one.

The real problem here, is that shoehorned the entire game into Raids being the “end game”, as they give the best access to the higher rewards then any other game mode.

Prior to that, players could pick what they wanted their end game to be and still get around same overall loot value, now, Anet set it as ‘raids’ as their game. And while it’s their game, they can do whatever they want, for the people that don’t want to bother with doing raids, to be stuck forever playing the ‘Bert Bell Benefit Bowl’ if you will.

It’s pretty clear that’s going over as well as a fart in a church.

Now, what is done can’t really be undone, so now they are faced with the issue of making other content that offers an equal abundance of ‘end game’ rewards as well as a feeling of pride, that players can do in alternative to raids.

LS3, will not fit the bill.

Seriously, dude I think you got it all wrong….Nobody is forced into raiding here and my endgame content will most likely never include raiding. I really don’t see why I should feel like raiding is the endgame content and I don’t understand what “higher rewards” the game is providing with raids. When in the future I would come across a character wearing a legendary armor, the only thing I would say is: “wow he is wearing a leggie armor, he must have farmed raids a lot”, just like in the original GW I would think to myself “Wow this character is wearing the armor of fow” I would then take a look at my only set of ascended transmutabled with the best skin possible according to me and be like: “Whatever, I am doing the same damages and whatever part of tyria or maguma I travel to, I will still be relevant and able to get things done in the game no matter what”

TexZero.7910:

flog.3485:

TexZero.7910:

Phil.8901:

TexZero.7910:

While they do a good job, this is probably the last set-piece we’ll see concerning Raids for a very long time….

I wouldn’t expect Raid 2 to happen for at least 6 months if not longer.

I think raid 2 will come with the next xpac

Either that or as i guessed every 6 months or longer. It’s sad because raids are great.
But color me jaded because if they can’t keep 4 people working on legendaries, i don’t know how they can justify 5 on raids… So another indefinite suspension of the project may happen.

Personnally, I think that yes, they will keep the 5 people on raids. It is much easier to do that simply because creating legendaries cater to all types of players and will therefore inherently take more time to produce and cost more resources for all to enjoy. In raids developers have more freedom imo because they don’t need to take into account all players and don’t need to make adjustements to how events spawn to complete a collection tied to crafting a legendary. They create raids from the grounds up, except maybe for inclusion of lore from GW1, hence why it is consistent.

Agree to disagree. The scope may be narrower, but it’s about resource allocation at that point. If the teams are as swamped as lead to believe (assuming nothing has changed), then it’s a real hard sell to say 4 isn’t okay here and 5 is okay there.

At the end of the day it’s ultimately upto Mo since it’s his vision of the games direction we are getting.

Well I guess we need to agree to disagree. You are right, at the end of the day, Mo will decide. I am just being an optimistic whereas you are rather pessimistic

TexZero.7910:

Phil.8901:

TexZero.7910:

While they do a good job, this is probably the last set-piece we’ll see concerning Raids for a very long time….

I wouldn’t expect Raid 2 to happen for at least 6 months if not longer.

I think raid 2 will come with the next xpac

Either that or as i guessed every 6 months or longer. It’s sad because raids are great.
But color me jaded because if they can’t keep 4 people working on legendaries, i don’t know how they can justify 5 on raids… So another indefinite suspension of the project may happen.

Personnally, I think that yes, they will keep the 5 people on raids. It is much easier to do that simply because creating legendaries cater to all types of players and will therefore inherently take more time to produce and cost more resources for all to enjoy. In raids developers have more freedom imo because they don’t need to take into account all players and don’t need to make adjustements to how events spawn to complete a collection tied to crafting a legendary. They create raids from the grounds up, except maybe for inclusion of lore from GW1, hence why it is consistent.

DoctorDing.5890:

flog.3485:

DoctorDing.5890:

Yeah. Welcome to HoT. A whole expansion that is targeted solely at the higher skilled players. And Anet wonder why it is not as successful as they hoped….

Yeah….No, the only real content that is targeted at higher skilled players are raids, which does not account for the whole expansion in itself. And we are not forced into it

Maybe you need to read the OP’s post again. That is someone who expected HoT to be harder but is still surprised at the difficulty level. They are not talking about raids. HoT is frustrating rather than fun. It is not a success.

I perfectly understand what the OP wrote, I was merely disagreeing with you, hence why I quoted you. @OP To give you some advice, don’t try to aggro mobs like you could before and expect to face roll it in your berserk gear. Frogs always throw you a bunch of arrows at the beginning of the encounter so expect to dodge or equip some reflect or use blocks. Mini raptors attack fast but are always very sensitive to field effects. All mobs are pretty squishy in fact, except for beetles, but they are clearly not threatening. As a side note it is pretty hard to give some advice when we don’t know what class you main.

DoctorDing.5890:

Yeah. Welcome to HoT. A whole expansion that is targeted solely at the higher skilled players. And Anet wonder why it is not as successful as they hoped….

Yeah….No, the only real content that is targeted at higher skilled players are raids, which does not account for the whole expansion in itself. And we are not forced into it

Vinceman.4572:

Yeah, because we have a handful players complaining about things without using their brains a.k.a. aren’t understanding to use the lfg the right way, aren’t willing to practice and aren’t realizing that raids are a different content than over 95% of the rest of the game.

Sorry, but you are wrong. The implementation of raids is fine without any percent of a doubt and I don’t see your so called “proves” for a second!

Plus, if I may interject, the OP only talked about fractals. It simply got derailed once again

I really don’t think adding only raids without something else would have been profitable….If they had done this, they would have lost time making sure that the most casual extreme laid back player would have been able to complete the raids. I prefer options in a more challenging content and I think it is awesome that they ramped up the difficulty in open world (crossing my fingers for more in the next living story update) because I am really not into completing the raids so far. Granted, the balance was a bit off at the beginning but it really is a trillion times far from being a waste of resources

Just to add my 2 cents: the argument of OP would only be valuable if acquiring a legendary was some sort of mandatory or heavily incentivized stuff to access some part of the game. Legendaries are the most optional pixel detail of the game. It is nothing but a vanity item and you can already buy some of them on the TP. So no, no need to make it easier.

Personally, OP, I just think your proposition is too soon. It could become interesting when next expansion hits. Anyway I think you provide a bad example: you can glide in core tyria but, correct if I am wrong, you still to gain experience from doing events in hot to be able to glide in core tyria

STIHL.2489:

flog.3485:

Last of all you seem to forget that people do “git Gud” at any JP whatsoever by failing and restarting it many times. It is not because you don’t like it that every other players do the same as you don’t.

No they don’t. In every case of progressive learning, the way someone can ‘git gud’ or ‘lean to play’ is by progressive practice, IE: you Start with Easy Jumping Puzzles, and work your way up progressively harder ones, as your skill and ability increase from practice. It’s been proven many times over to be one of the most ineffective means to learn anything to be put on a difficult challenge and fail time and time again.

Much in the say way you don’t learn to fly a plan by jumping in the kittenpit and giving it your all, and eventuality learn though enough crashes. You don’t learn to drive by being put on the interstate and learning by crashing. You take progressive steps, you start in easy, safe environments, where failing is not as punitive, and you work your way up to harder things, as skill and ability provide. Some people never obtain the skill to do air-to-air combat in a plane, even after thousands of hours flying. Just as many people have driven for 20 some odd years and still don’t have the skill to race in the Indy 500.

But regardless of that factor, progressive learning is the way to learn something like a JP, you don’t simply jump in and there is this magical effect where if you fail enough times you will win. There is no RNG to victory or learning a skill.

Much in the same way you don’t just try to jump into a conversation using a language you do not know, expecting that after you fail to speak it correctly enough times, you will figure it out. You start slow, learn a few words at a time, work someone who understands you are learning, and eventually you can string a sentence together, but that in no way means you will ever become fluent in that language, some people at best become ‘passingly decent’ or ‘good enough’ to be coherent when they speak it, but never fully fluent.

Regardless of what people think, You don’t learn to swim by jumping into the deep end of the pool.

Life and learning simply do not work way, why anyone falls under the illusion that games do, is beyond me.

Dude you are too focused on irl. People can fail, repeat how many times they want until they get something done. I am not implying that everybody does it but I really fail to see how it would not be a (common) practice. Playing a game reminds me a lot of the movie edge of tomorrow btw. I have never been a huge fan of JP, didn’t complete a lot of them yet I was able to complete the one in lions arch after its rework. Sure I failed on many jumps many times but in the end I got it. Why? Because I wanted to complete it. Of course there is no magical effect but practice and the experience gained from that practice exist

Ohoni.6057:

I find it pretty dishonest to compare a raid which is a team effort and endgame content and a jumping puzzle that you can solo……

How is it “dishonest?” I mean, what about anything I said was inaccurate? You may not agree that it’s a fair comparison, but to be fair, I wasn’t comparing the two, I was just giving an example of a skill-based activity in which I’d once struggled, and showing how it wasn’t through failure that my skills improved, but rather through repeated successes.

Cool, easier stuff…and why? 99% of the game is faceroll content and would only be harder if you set your own difficulties like soloing some stuff (champs, fracs and more) or carrying 4 clueless pugs through instances.

Hey, people want it. You don’t have to understand why people want it, just accept that they do, that it would make their gaming experience better, just as I can’t understand why you would enjoy the current raids, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be allowed to have them. It’s not your role to say “I don’t need this, so you have to prove to me why I would want if for you to be able to have it.” Nobody has to justify it to you in any way that would make it useful or important to you. You just have to accept that it would be useful and important to people other than yourself.

No, you need not, indeed. And nobody in this thread has ever said it’s a must to fail to become better, nobody followed “an idea of whatever”, dude.

>

You have to fail to become better.

I quoted it right there in my post. Somebody clearly said it.

I won’t go into detail about your suggestions in removing the timer or anything else. Please be informed and you will find out that it will absolutely make no sense to change it like you have described.

Like I said, it’s not my favorite solution to the difficulty problem, so I won’t go out of my way to defend it, I was just pointing out that removing the timers WOULD make a difference to players who are currently struggling with it.

Also have a look onto this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl_IUQuZuCg

I’d rather not watch a 40 minute raid video, but my assumption is that they played for like 30 minutes under the enrage phase? Is that something that you believe any low-skill group of players should be capable of doing? If not, how would that be at all useful here?

People trying to defend raid difficulty tend to whip out videos of expert players still managing to beat the bosses even after doing something ridiculously disadvantaging, but that proves nothing about how an inexpert group could perform the basic task of beating the boss. Just because an expert group can survive 30 minutes in the enrage state doesn’t mean that it is not a threat that an inexpert group has to deal with, and that they would have an easier time completing the boss if they didn’t have to worry about it.

People who cannot beat the raid encounters are just not playing well, that’s all.

Yes, and fair enough, not everyone is or ever will be a high skilled player, but they’d still like to play and clear the raid, even if they can’t play well. So assuming that their skills don’t improve significantly, what options would you suggest they regularly clear the raid anyway?

I apologize for the use of the word “dishonest”. What I really just meant, well you said it yourself, it is an unfair comparison. Simply because it is completely disproportionate. The “skill” people use to complete a JP in a starting area zone is not the same as the skill players need to have, to gain to complete a raid. You also don’t fail at dark reverie, complete other JPs and then happily come back at it to complete it because it holds some special value to the game. It is just as generic as other JP just like the only real threat to these JPs it to time your jumps accordingly or worst case of scenario, use the portal of a mesmer. Last of all you seem to forget that people do “git Gud” at any JP whatsoever by failing and restarting it many times. It is not because you don’t like it that every other players do the same as you don’t.

Ohoni.6057:

You have to fail to become better.

This is completely 100% wrong.

You do not have to fail to get better, you can succeed, and then do it again and also succeed, and do it better.

I just did Dark Reverie for the first time in about two years the other day. First try, cleared it without missing a beat. Is that because I kept failing and failing until I “got gud?” No. Far from it. The first time I tried it I did fail a few times, fell, died, got some lucky rezzes, etc., but eventually I beat it. If I’d gone back in the next day I likely would have fallen and died a bunch of times along the way again. But a couple years later, and I’m sailing through it.

That doesn’t come from repeated failures, it comes from repeated successes. It comes from spending the past two years jumping on all sorts of things in all sorts of ways and just constantly building my basic jumping skillset, not from failing at those challenges, but by succeeding at them, better and better each time. Failure often happens along the way of learning new things, but that doesn’t mean it actually benefits the process. The failures impede the learning process, by forcing you to backtrack and redo portions that you’ve already cleared.

This idea that “you must fail to grow” is complete nonsense, I don’t know why some people insist on repeating it.

Raids are the challenging PvE end content in this game. It’s not meant to be facerolled like dungeons and fractals.

The OP’s suggestion was for an ALTERNATE VERSION. Your “raids as challenging content” version would still exist, but this would be an alternative for people who aren’t looking for that.

VG : Most wipe are because the boss you lose too many people. Either because of green circle, because of teleport on the floor, because the boss don’t move fast enough and you have to move on the floor, or because of seekers.

But, if there were no timer, players would not have to focus on DPS. They could gear for tankiness, or at the very least they could chill out on damage, just putting out the minimal DPs, so they could focus more on avoiding mechanics and using their moves tactically rather than “on rotation.” It’s hard to argue that removing the timer would not give players more flexibility.

Gorseval : Removing the timer wouldn’t change much tbh. The updraft will still limit you. If you slow cc at the 3rd and 4th spot you could probably do like 10% more damage while using the 4th Updraft but you can already do that. So all it would make is like a 1min with less incoming damage.

This is true, but in a case like this, if the goal is to “remove the timer,” then why stop with removing the enrage timer, why not remove the “updraft timer” as well. Once you get through all four updrafts, allow the first one to respawn, allowing you to rotate indefinitely.

Sabetha : I’m not sure about that one. The enrage is pretty brutal for her with all 4 canons, but how much time can you keep the platform alive? This could make a difference, but I’m not sure how much. Most likely if you need the extra time, you already fail at some of the mechanics and the platform will collapse not long after.

Again, the collapsing platform is another soft timer, so just remove that as well. Show some visible damage, but don’t actually allow it to fall. Again, the point is to “remove the timer,” so “remove the timer.”

Slothazor : I don’t even know what he does in enrage. I seriously never ever got to that point. The dps check is almost non existant, most people bring 2 healers here. It’s the mechanics and incoming damage that make this one fail.

See VG.

Matthias : Really easy dps check here. Most people bring 2 healers here too. It’s all about mechanics and survivability. Even the enrage is super easy. You can easily fight 1-2min in enrage with almost zero impact.

See VG.

Removing the timers isn’t my preferred solution, but it would provide a different experience, and one that would at least be easier in some ways.

I find it pretty dishonest to compare a raid which is a team effort and endgame content and a jumping puzzle that you can solo……

Honestly, I think Anet should look at improving the mini-map. That is the only thing they need to do. Personally, I think the map is awesome: great design and great use masteries that you gain while exploring it. It really feels like you accomplished something when you master it and it is the best possible content for endgame purpose. I had a lot more fun exploring it than going to dragon stand for comparison.

Quick answer: they add boosts to clones and phantasms because in pve you are not constantly shattering like you would do in pvp. And you would like to keep your phantasms up simply because with the illusion line there is a trait that makes you illusion attack faster….Oh and with the chrono line you would want to shatter to gain some boons and make more damages simply because you gain them back

I agree it can be frustrating and a toggle option would be widely appreciated I think. Who knows, maybe they are working on it? I mean we did not expect tyria gliding to be implemented yet we got it with a patch…lets keep optimism up!!!

Of course it is a sequel….Why? The familiar places that you visited in GW1 can be visited in GW2. The characters that you knew about in GW1 are mentioned in GW2 or have a statue of them to make players remember about these particular characters. End of discussion

Khisanth.2948:

flog.3485:

Khisanth.2948:

flog.3485:

DirtDowney.5187:

Linken.6345:

Yea they never said it would be a cheaper way to obtain a precursor, just a sure fire way to get the specific one you want.

And buying the precursor you wanted off the TP isn’t a sure fire way to get it?

True but to some players farming gold to buy something off the TP is soooo boring

I guess chopping elder wood in malchor leap is very exciting for some people …

That would be true if the only way to get some wood was by chopping it. I don’t know about you but personally I don’t login just to chop wood and do some mining for whatever collection it is required….I also play the game and do the events. Whether it takes 9 months or less or more to acquire my precursor by chopping, mining and playing the game with my casual playtime is irrelevant. In the end I know I will get it whereas before it was only based on how much gold a player will be able to gain and we all know gold is not only used for legendary weapons to acquire

It is all equivalent to the gold anyway. Refusing to sell the materials to convert them into gold doesn’t really change that.

Sure but now, I will no be forced to only rely on gold value because hoarding gold just like you would hoard money in a separate account irl to buy yourself something nice or to please someone or offer yourself some expensive vacation because you would not be able to afford it in normal time, is definitely something I do not want to duplicate in game. But hey that is just me

Khisanth.2948:

flog.3485:

DirtDowney.5187:

Linken.6345:

Yea they never said it would be a cheaper way to obtain a precursor, just a sure fire way to get the specific one you want.

And buying the precursor you wanted off the TP isn’t a sure fire way to get it?

True but to some players farming gold to buy something off the TP is soooo boring

I guess chopping elder wood in malchor leap is very exciting for some people …

That would be true if the only way to get some wood was by chopping it. I don’t know about you but personally I don’t login just to chop wood and do some mining for whatever collection it is required….I also play the game and do the events. Whether it takes 9 months or less or more to acquire my precursor by chopping, mining and playing the game with my casual playtime is irrelevant. In the end I know I will get it whereas before it was only based on how much gold a player will be able to gain and we all know gold is not only used for legendary weapons to acquire

Astralporing.1957:

Forestgreen.7981:

I think people forgot that prices of mat jump all over the place. Some precursors are cheaper to craft still, asking for a perfect system. At the moment, from the prices I’d say they did a good job. Crafting the precursors have some added benefits of extra items (see Colossus) which is why they are higher.

That’s only for a few of the precursors. Most don’t have those added bonuses – it’s just a mats sink.

flog.3485:

Hyper Cutter.9376:

flog.3485:

DirtDowney.5187:

Linken.6345:

Yea they never said it would be a cheaper way to obtain a precursor, just a sure fire way to get the specific one you want.

And buying the precursor you wanted off the TP isn’t a sure fire way to get it?

True but to some players farming gold to buy something off the TP is soooo boring

Farming stacks and stacks of mats is actually worse. And that’s without the inexplicable and wild disparity where some precursors require an order of magnitude more mats than others for… reasons.

It’s a real shame, too, the actual playing the game parts of the collections are pretty good, but the “go farm mats, kitten you” parts are miserable. It’s blatantly obvious that Anet was more concerned about the sanctity of their precious fake economy than player enjoyment (as usual).

Well that is only your perception. Of course if you only want to get your legendary as quickly as possible, sure buy the precursor off the TP but personally, like Illconceived has said before in this thread I just like to see my progress being taken into account with collection whereas before it was just like “omg how much dungeon, WB and world events do I need to farm until I get enough gold to buy the precursor off the TP or buy enough rares to try my luck with the mystic forge” : the first looks to much like irl and the second, well, I never got lucky in three years. I think we just need to agree to disagree I guess

And how is the second tier of the precursor collection any different?

Where did I state it was any different ? Like I said, it is only a matter of preference. And I prefer this model because it gives a choice, whereas before……You could not obtain a precursor like you could farm mats and then use the mystic forge to create the other components that are parts of crafting a legendary weapon.

Swagger.1459:

Old school hard core pvper here…

Moa was and still is problematic. Take any hard cc skill and give it a 6 or 10 second timer that’s unbreakable and you have problems.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to use such a broken skill… Get opponent low in health, hit with Moa and win…

With all the visual combat chaos and attention needing to focus on many elements, more often than not players are getting hit with Moa.

Just like how stealth functions mid combat, it’s skills like these that are factored into the profession equation. Thieves almost universally need to have a crap ton of stealth to survive and find success in pvp modes, but once you take that away the profession falls apart. So much like stealth for thief and stealth and moa for Mesmer, each profession here has its gimmick that is needs to build around to have any chance to win. This in turn limits build diversity because it’s like pulling teeth to be successful outside of these limited builds…

Having said the above, the overarching main problems with GW2 that has nothing to do with individual skills. It has to do with these…

1. The devs design(ed) and test(ed) everything profession and combat related for PVE first. I’m sure a couple of things had pvp in mind, but hardly anything meaningful.

2. The devs REFUSE, yes REFUSE to make any real efforts to make balance separations between pve and pvp because (paraphrased quote) “we discussed it, but it would add a lot of overhead to balance patches”… This is great that a company taking in millions per month won’t devote the proper time and resources to the pvp side of the game…

3. 1 and 2 ARE fully developer issues, not profession or player issues.

The devs are fully aware at this point the problems of professions, combat, certain individual skills in pvp modes, lots of other stuff…, but until profession development becomes a priority we will always have issues.

I’m not advocating any other game, but the classes and combat in CU are being built with pvp in mind because it’s not a pve game… And even if there were plans for pve stuff, I guarantee strong efforts would be made to make balancing efforts between pvp and pve modes unlike here..

What we need to do is stop blaming players and individual skills, we need to budge the devs to start caring about the pvp side of the game.

We all know that the devs could make GW2 into one of the best fantasy combat mmo so if you really want change then you all should get out there and make your voices heard that the devs need to start balancing this game between modes. We have to show the devs it’s time to make pvp modes a priority. I’m not saying go and rant negatively, but get out there and make your constuctive videos, talk to popular gw2 streamers out there, start constuctive blogs… We can get the devs to act once we get these issue out from under the rug that arenanet has swept them under.

Yeah sure we all know how meta it is for mesmers to use moa in pve lol…..I agree that Anet should split the balance for all three modes but look at the traits: you have got three traitlines for three major game modes..I don’t think it is a coincidence and I really don’t think they tested skills to be effective only in pve first. Look at core elite skills for mesmer: moa for pvp fights, mass invisibility for open world fights such as wvw and timewarp for pve stuff because in mian pve encounters mesmers buff the capacities of allies to make foes die quicker

Hyper Cutter.9376:

flog.3485:

DirtDowney.5187:

Linken.6345:

Yea they never said it would be a cheaper way to obtain a precursor, just a sure fire way to get the specific one you want.

And buying the precursor you wanted off the TP isn’t a sure fire way to get it?

True but to some players farming gold to buy something off the TP is soooo boring

Farming stacks and stacks of mats is actually worse. And that’s without the inexplicable and wild disparity where some precursors require an order of magnitude more mats than others for… reasons.

It’s a real shame, too, the actual playing the game parts of the collections are pretty good, but the “go farm mats, kitten you” parts are miserable. It’s blatantly obvious that Anet was more concerned about the sanctity of their precious fake economy than player enjoyment (as usual).

Well that is only your perception. Of course if you only want to get your legendary as quickly as possible, sure buy the precursor off the TP but personally, like Illconceived has said before in this thread I just like to see my progress being taken into account with collection whereas before it was just like “omg how much dungeon, WB and world events do I need to farm until I get enough gold to buy the precursor off the TP or buy enough rares to try my luck with the mystic forge” : the first looks to much like irl and the second, well, I never got lucky in three years. I think we just need to agree to disagree I guess

HARDOFREADING.7298:

The sad amount of advantages that HoT has over Core makes the game virtually unplayable. Now there are going to be people from all over this forum trying to troll but yet they’re all more than likely running HoT builds or they’ll say there are still some Core Guardian builds in spvp.
Doesn’t change the fact that a vast majority of HoT skills/architecture are simply much better than Core. Now there are too many advantages to list…Ill leave those for the people that know the game well enough to know what they’re talking about…But had I been told that any expansions would be far superior & in fact designed to make you uncompetitive so you would be forced to buy them, I never would have invested any time/effort/money in a business model that is clearly “Pay to Win” now. In fact, we were told the opposite.

Dude I am having a hard time following you. You say hot brings a lot more advantages compared to core gw2, yet you don’t want to list them, you only talk about the pvp side of it and you ask other players to talk about it because you don’t know enough…Why not post this in pvp subforum instead?

DirtDowney.5187:

Linken.6345:

Yea they never said it would be a cheaper way to obtain a precursor, just a sure fire way to get the specific one you want.

And buying the precursor you wanted off the TP isn’t a sure fire way to get it?

True but to some players farming gold to buy something off the TP is soooo boring

battledrone.8315:

Thaddeus.4891:

NightStalkerT.1983:

so, if anyone has guides on crafting amour – it seems this is where im falling short – because materials like jute – where the heck do you get this> leather i get plenty but i think its more or less a grind – or i save up gold and buy which i think could get a buff.

Gold in the game is far too little – yet Arenanet wants us to trade, where as im seeing incinerator for 4000 gold- i would jump and buy this if i had the gold.

p.s. my friend says MOBA or MMORPG are pay to win – its very true.

I will look into the builds you posted for thief, im only 25 points away from maxing elite.

http://dulfy.net/2013/12/12/gw2-ascended-armor-crafting-guide/

It’s old and some minor stuff changed in the game, but it will still give you a good idea.

Also go take a look at the official wikia in the specific crafting at the grandmaster recipe page like this : http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armorsmith/Grandmaster_recipes

You can also go there to learn what is the lest costly way to level up your crafting profession to 500.

http://gw2crafts.net/

If you want a basic tutoriel how to craft your first ascended armor.

1) Level up your crafting to 500
2) Try to do your daily craft. It’s Lump of Mithrillium, Glob of Elder Spirit Residue, Spool of Thick Elonian Cord and Spool of Silk Weaving Thread. You can only craft those once a day so start early on those that you need. You can refine those into the materials you need to craft your armor and those refined material can be bought on the TP, but they will cost you far less if you refine them yourself.
3) Buy your recipe. They are very cheap. You need a Inscription Recipe for the stat that you need and 1 recipe per piece of armor with the same stats. Those recipe if I remember cost 3-5 gold and 5 laurels.
4) Craft your armor.

Keep in mind that you really don’t need an armor at all. Unless you want to raid, do fractal T4 or just want to get the end game gear. You should also focus to have your 6 trinkets and weapons ascended before you go for your armor. The armor is the most expensive and the less important part.

Dude, you seem like a really new player and as a new player you just don’t know yet how to make gold. Making gold in this game is super easy. There is a reason so many skin are so high in price. It’s because most people can get that kind of gold over time. Just by doing your daily everyday you gonna end up with 730 gold by the end of the year. Do dungeon runs, fractal 40, gathering run (especially if you want to craft), etc. As you get more experienced in the game you gonna learn what to do and what to not do to get gold.

P.S. : Your friend is a generalizing idiot. MMO and Moba are not by definition pay to win. There is people that think that GW2 is pay to win, but that’s not true. We can argue that maybe the expansion could be pay to win because the elite spec are better than core spec, but even there it’s a stretch. No matter how many real money you put in the game, you won’t be able to have a better character than other player. The only advantage of putting real money into the game is to have customization, quality of life or skins.

WRONG! mistfire wolf was part of DD edition for 15 bucks more
even more , i could buy a lot gems, and simply convert them to gold, and buy some very good gear for that
this game certainly has some P2W elements too

And how is most mistfire wolf better than any other elite skill in the game? What sort of content is blocked off because a player didn’t pay for the DD edition? What exclusive skin does mistfire wolf grant you when you purchase the DD edition? I just lol’ed so hard when I read your response…..Sorry still not P2W

Well in case you haven’t noticed GW2 has always been advertised as being very casual….So yeah, no surprise here.

Zenith.7301:

flog.3485:

BlueEyesWhiteDragon.6951:

I’m actually genuinely heartbroken. I preordered the deluxe version of HoT months before a release date, and couldn’t wait to explore the jungle!
I have been waiting for a friend to help me with my final story since october… Tonight we spent 2 and a half hours trying to kill Mordremoth, beating him down to a third of his health, [/spoiler even reuniting me with tybalt,] which, had me choking back a tear… only for the game to not let us jump into the air during his ‘ultimate floor of death’ move or suddenly having our wings disappear during mid glide, then being sent back to the very beginning?! What? WHY?? Fighting Zhaitan was tough, but if I died fighting the mouth, I came back fighting the mouth! Why are there no checkpoints in this fight at all?!
I am not here trying to slag the game off, I truly love this game! I have even defended HoT many times to my friends, even going as far as to say maybe the chaotic feeling in the jungle is to reflect the chaos of the situation. And the story is amazing as always!
But it’s too difficult to just go exploring solo. And so many people I know people who love guild wars 2 who have literally stopped playing because of this expansion. And others who promise if the next expansion isn’t ‘better’ they’ll stop playing too…
And if you are one of the people that aced this all first time, then I am happy for you, but you are not in the majority here.
I have played this whole game solo, only joining groups to do the odd dungeon or fractal. I’m not saying the people on the map now aren’t friendly, but the map is sparse most of the time, and i have been party to more failed missions than successful ones recently. Doesn’t it say something when I’m happier redoing old content rather than exploring the new areas?
Please ArenaNet listen to your players! I understand that some players want a ‘Real Challenge’ you have provided raids to people who want to push themselves to the max, but it’s unfair to us who play because we love the story, our characters, and your universe, to now have us play on insane mode to experience new content is ridiculous.
Now i’m not sure when, or if, I even want to try the last part of my story again, I will probably stay in central tyria just having fun instead.

Honestly, it boggles me….Why do you want to solo a map that was advertised as being an end-game content? You know it is not because some players are obviously better skilled than others that they aced it in the first try….They also had to fail and then they adapted their gameplay to the content hot contains because it is different than core GW2. I am casual player, I play the class with the lowest personal DPS (mesmer), I have no intention in raiding and yet I find hot maps a lot more interesting, valuable and fun that core maps…How do you explain that? If the map is sparse I suggest you to look at the LFG if you are struggling too hard to do the events. As for the personal story, I sympathize because it was so buggy before that you couldn’t do it but now it is possible. To jump into the air you just need to follow your group with bram, you don’t even need to press the jump bar, only do it when your are thrown into the air to activate your glider

No content that is beat by a brainless zerg is “end-game content”. Orr was not end-game content, and neither are these maps.

you might not feel like it is worthy of end-game content but the thing is Anet provided masteries as end-game content and you train your masteries with experience that you gain in hot zones….If you don’t like hot zones, sure do masteries in core GW2, that will suit your end-game content I guess. However I don’t see much difference in training masteries in core GW and masteries in hot, unless you think that your end-game content must be only solo-friendly

BlueEyesWhiteDragon.6951:

I’m actually genuinely heartbroken. I preordered the deluxe version of HoT months before a release date, and couldn’t wait to explore the jungle!
I have been waiting for a friend to help me with my final story since october… Tonight we spent 2 and a half hours trying to kill Mordremoth, beating him down to a third of his health, [/spoiler even reuniting me with tybalt,] which, had me choking back a tear… only for the game to not let us jump into the air during his ‘ultimate floor of death’ move or suddenly having our wings disappear during mid glide, then being sent back to the very beginning?! What? WHY?? Fighting Zhaitan was tough, but if I died fighting the mouth, I came back fighting the mouth! Why are there no checkpoints in this fight at all?!
I am not here trying to slag the game off, I truly love this game! I have even defended HoT many times to my friends, even going as far as to say maybe the chaotic feeling in the jungle is to reflect the chaos of the situation. And the story is amazing as always!
But it’s too difficult to just go exploring solo. And so many people I know people who love guild wars 2 who have literally stopped playing because of this expansion. And others who promise if the next expansion isn’t ‘better’ they’ll stop playing too…
And if you are one of the people that aced this all first time, then I am happy for you, but you are not in the majority here.
I have played this whole game solo, only joining groups to do the odd dungeon or fractal. I’m not saying the people on the map now aren’t friendly, but the map is sparse most of the time, and i have been party to more failed missions than successful ones recently. Doesn’t it say something when I’m happier redoing old content rather than exploring the new areas?
Please ArenaNet listen to your players! I understand that some players want a ‘Real Challenge’ you have provided raids to people who want to push themselves to the max, but it’s unfair to us who play because we love the story, our characters, and your universe, to now have us play on insane mode to experience new content is ridiculous.
Now i’m not sure when, or if, I even want to try the last part of my story again, I will probably stay in central tyria just having fun instead.

Honestly, it boggles me….Why do you want to solo a map that was advertised as being an end-game content? You know it is not because some players are obviously better skilled than others that they aced it in the first try….They also had to fail and then they adapted their gameplay to the content hot contains because it is different than core GW2. I am casual player, I play the class with the lowest personal DPS (mesmer), I have no intention in raiding and yet I find hot maps a lot more interesting, valuable and fun that core maps…How do you explain that? If the map is sparse I suggest you to look at the LFG if you are struggling too hard to do the events. As for the personal story, I sympathize because it was so buggy before that you couldn’t do it but now it is possible. To jump into the air you just need to follow your group with bram, you don’t even need to press the jump bar, only do it when your are thrown into the air to activate your glider

Ohoni.6057:

Your point is just because some raiders completed a gate long time ago it doesn’t count? Also I wouldn’t bring up opinions and assumptions as counterpoints.

My point is that it’s not a gate in the first place. As Meillyn said, people have beaten the raid bosses in greens. If you wanted Ascended, and got Ascended, then good for you, but ANet does not owe you anything if they introduce a different mode that does not require it.

And if difficulty levels would be tailored towards every single players we would end up with infinite difficulty levels.

Yeah, nobody’s asking for that. We’re asking for two difficulty levels, one tuned to be very high challenge, for those that seek it, and another tuned to equivalent difficulty to the rest of the game, for people who are generally satisfied with the difficulty of the rest of the game. This is not a preposterous request, no matter how many times you insist that it is.

Actually you have several options: You buy the reward associated with the content you dont enjoy, you can also choose to try and start enjoying the content you dont like at this point in time. You can also go for another reward and get it through content you enjoy.

None of these are valid options. 1. We don’t even know if Envoy armor will be available for purchase, and buying raid runs is straight up cheating. You might do that, but I will not. 2. I have tried to enjoy raids in their current form, I am incapable of doing so. 3. That brings me no closer to getting this specific reward, we aren’t talking about other rewards, we’re talking about this one.

By your logic, a person that only likes jumping puzzles should be able to get his Legendary through jumping puzzles.

Not exactly, although I’m not opposed to that. Specifically, you are saying that if a player only likes ONE part of the game, he should be able to get ALL rewards from that. That wasn’t my position. My position was that there should be multiple options, to make it more likely that of the several options, at least one of them would be favorable. If you only like ONE thing, then maybe you won’t be able to get everything you’d want, but if you enjoy a lot of different things about the game, you should be able to find at least one path to your goal.

But sure, ideally every activity that currently offers some amount of reward could be the path to any reward you want, given enough perseverance. I think that’s a less likely short term goal though, so let’s stick with easy mode raids for now.

Ofcourse plenty of players dont want to advance if you can get the best reward through easy mode.

then they shouldn’t have to. There’s no inherent value in players advancing, and it’s a net negative if they do not enjoy the experience. Let players advance at their own rates, if they want to improve, give them options to improve. If they are comfortable where they are at, provide novel experiences at that level. There is no reason why players should be at any level that they do not want to be.

Nope I wouldn’t call an entire base of players good or bad customers. Apperantly since you ask the question you would be willing to rank segments of players?

I’m not sure your point here. Customers have value in so far as they contribute to ANet’s bottom line. Customers that spend more are worth more than those who spend less, and that’s the ONLY distinction between players that matter. My only point was, highly skilled players are of no more value to the game than low skilled players, they are not deserving of superior rewards or attention from the developers. Outside of how much money each player spends, all players are equal.

Nope I didnt, thats however how you did process the information. Grinding is doing simplistic repetitive tasks over and over again. Raiding consists out of complex tasks. In before you say: SUBJECTIVE, you can objectively measure whether a task is complex or not.

Yes, but whether you enjoy repeating simplistic tasks more than you enjoy repeating complex tasks is entirely subjective. To me, novel experiences matter. If I fight a boss, get him to 90% health, die, repeat, repeat, repeat, then that is awful. It is MORE awful to me if that was a difficult fight in which I had to pay attention, because I’d need to stay fully engaged in the encounter. If I am going to be fully engaged in an encounter, then I want to do it once or twice in a row and then move on to something completely different, not repeat it many times in a row. If I’m going to repeat something over and over, then I would prefer it to be a low engagement activity, so I can put my mind on autopilot and focus on something else instead.

So to you, maybe grinding against a difficult raid encounter over and over until you win is fun, and grinding an easy to complete encounter over and over is not fun, to me, the opposite is true. Ideally, you could play your version and I could play mine and we could both be happy.

So many assumptions about the player base, ask yourself are these really true? You dont know anything more than me about the game population. I however do know plenty of friends and guildies that left the game and got back into it because of raiding.

Are you aware of something called “self-selection bias?” It basically means that people tend to surround themselves with like-minded people, and then when those like-minded people express similar thoughts to what you were thinking, you take that to mean that most people think that way too. You happen to know a lot of people who enjoy the same sort of content you do, since you likely met most of them doing the sort of content you like. It should come as no surprise that they share similar views with you, but that does not mean that the general population does.

I have heard of a lot of players who left GW2 early on when it lacked the hardcore raiding experience they were looking for. And maybe some of them have since come back. But over the intervening three years, GW2 did just fine with one of the most healthy communities in MMOs, and according to sales figures HoT uptake hasn’t been sensational, so it’s unlikely that a massive flood of new players came in and bought HoT for the raiding. There is no reasonable evidence that the majority of GW2’s active players enjoy the current state of raiding.

This is why more difficult modes should be more rewarding and clever thinking should be incentivized with cool rewards.

Personally, I’d love that, but there is none of that in the current raids. The current raids have nothing to do with clever thinking, they have to do with precise movement of the controls, precise rotations of skill usage, putting together a meta build that is useful to the party, and hoping that everyone else on the team does the same. It requires no actual human intelligence, just a talent for going through the motions.

It would actually be cool to have more content that requires each player to figure things out on his own, but that’s what Jumping Puzzles are for.

Why should more easy content that is also less time demanding on the short term reward legendary armor?

Why shouldn’kitten

Weird I was under the impression that a MMO was about progressing with the character you play.

Yeah, a lot of the other players in this thread seem to have missed the last three years of GW2 as well. No, that’s not what this game is about. This game is about capping out fairly easily, and then playing whatever content you enjoy, at all sorts of difficulty levels, and all of them being roughly equally rewarding. If you enjoy challenging stuff, do challenging stuff. If you don’t enjoy challenging stuff, that’s great! You don’t have to do challenging stuff and you won’t be missing out on much. HoT and the raids sort of broke that compact with the players that we’d been living under since launch, so some of us are understandably upset about it.

Your opinion, and the fact remains that you cannot buy raid wing 3.

Oh, you know that for a fact? Never?

I have been looking through most of your posts, I think you should replace the playerbase with Ohoni. Ohoni wants easy access to legendary armor without spending significant effort. Ohoni does not want to improve and progress. Ohoni wants rewards available through whatever Ohoni enjoys playing, afterall who wants to make an Hoblings choice.

That’s not my point, but if you’d like to fight for me then go right ahead. I’ll continue to fight for the GW2 playerbase.

LA being locked behind raids would only be a problem if it provided stats that are superior to ascended….Since it is not, I think it is safe to say that we can close this thread now

LA being locked behind raids being a problem has nothing whatsoever to do with stats. At all. If that is the only reason that would cause you to be concerned about it then that’s fine, but you have no control over why any other player would feel concerned about it.

If it has nothing to do with stats for you, then what is it all about for? What is so special about the armor that you want to cap out for? There is no need to “cap out” because there is no need to constantly grind for new armor in this game: in this regard I am pretty sure I crafted one ascended over the course of 9 months since I started playing this game one month and a half after his release….And you know what, I am also pretty sure that this armor is relevant in any part of the maps of GW2. If I really need to change my stats I can already do that with the mystic forge but nothing in GW2 expects you to constantly switch your stats because all foes will eventually die if you at least wear berserker stats. I really do think we have reached the best compromise possible between casual players who can reach the best gear possible without having to enter raids and the more hardcore players who will be awarded an extra stuff for beating raid wings. Furthermore I find it contradictory that you advocate for LA to be obtainable no matter the skill with easy raids, making people grind for a new armor in a wow-type kind of progression while you don’t want to turn GW2 into a wow clone.

DutchRiders.2871:

Ohoni.6057:

And yet Ascended does not have the same stats as Exotic, and before, that was ok, but now the raids makes it very difficult for players without Ascended to win. Yes, some groups have been able to win with far less, but they are the exception, not the rule.

Cough fractals cough… The raid bosses are not considered hard dps checks and I have cleared them plenty of times with groups far from optimal. I say full ascended and optimized comps are the exception.

. . . for you. You really need to preface all of those statements with “for me,” because they really are just your opinion for how YOU enjoy playing games. The same is not true for every player. If you feel this way, then you probably shouldn’t play easy mode raids. You’re welcome to, of course, but I don’t think you’d enjoy them. But just because you wouldn’t enjoy them has zero bearing on whether other people would enjoy them.

And if difficulty levels would be tailored towards every single players we would end up with infinite difficulty levels.

Again, no, they do not have a fair choice, they only have a Hobson’s choice, to either “do the content that you don’t enjoy” or “never get that thing you want.” There needs to be a third option “do something that you can enjoy AND get that thing you want.”

Actually you have several options: You buy the reward associated with the content you dont enjoy, you can also choose to try and start enjoying the content you dont like at this point in time. You can also go for another reward and get it through content you enjoy.

By your logic, a person that only likes jumping puzzles should be able to get his Legendary through jumping puzzles.

If people want to learn hard mode, then they can do so, and easy mode would be a great tool for that. But what you need to understand is that easy mode can’t JUST be a tool for people on their way to hard mode, it must be able to stand on its own two feet as a valid gameplay mode of its own, because plenty of players will never want to advance to hard mode, and that is totally fine. Hard mode is not and should not be for everyone. It is not “the goal,” it is just another gameplay mode that some people enjoy and others do not. If people want to play hard mode, then they have it available, but if people don’t want to ever play hard mode, there is not something wrong with them that needs fixing.

Ofcourse plenty of players dont want to advance if you can get the best reward through easy mode.

Outfits are a complete waste of time regardless of what happens with raids. If your argument is that people getting Legendary armor would cut into their Outfit sales though, then wouldn’t that mean that raiders would be their worst customers, and should not be at all supported?

Nope I wouldn’t call an entire base of players good or bad customers. Apperantly since you ask the question you would be willing to rank segments of players?

You just said two completely opposite things.

You basically said “GW2 is known for not being grindy, so it’s a good thing that raiders have to grind against the raid until they beat it.”

Nope I didnt, thats however how you did process the information. Grinding is doing simplistic repetitive tasks over and over again. Raiding consists out of complex tasks. In before you say: SUBJECTIVE, you can objectively measure whether a task is complex or not.

Yeah, not everyone feels that way. The players that feel that “increasingly more challenging content” is a good thing DID leave the game, and mostly didn’t come back. The customers that made GW2 successful over the past three years are the players who DON’T believe that, who DON’T want “increasingly more challenging content” to keep them entertained, they just want novel content, content that is of roughly the same difficulty as the existing stuff, only more of it and in more interesting combinations.

The raid encounters are novel, they offer a whole bunch of new mechanics to work against, but in their current form, if you screw up the mechanics then you wipe and reset, which is frustrating and anti-fun. An easy mode would allow players to tackle those mechanics without the frustration of wipe and reset. Novel content, not challenging content.

Again, if you do like challenging content, hard mode is there for you, but stop pretending that everyone wants that on any level.

So many assumptions about the player base, ask yourself are these really true? You dont know anything more than me about the game population. I however do know plenty of friends and guildies that left the game and got back into it because of raiding. I do know for a fact its in human nature to solve riddles, problems and understand mechanics, again this is objective not subjective. At the same time we will always pick the path of least resistance and want as many riches as possible. This is why more difficult modes should be more rewarding and clever thinking should be incentivized with cool rewards.

I am not pretending, you are pretending about a hard mode that does not exist. We only have 1 mode.

But the time gate itself will be time gated. With current raids you’re expected to spend many consecutive hours challenging the bosses until eventually you might get them on farm, that is the “bot-like grinder” activity you talk about. With easy mode, you might only spend an hour or so a day running raids, and then it would be locked out for that day or week so you’d do something else. It would take longer overall, but require a much smaller time commitment in the short term, so it would appeal to players who “have more important things to do.” Nobody is suggesting a mode where you could easy mode raid for eight hours a day.

Where do you get these numbers from? I spend 2-4 hours a week to clear the wings. There is no time gate its a skill gate. One that most of my guildies can pass after a couple of attempts.

Why should more easy content that is also less time demanding on the short term reward legendary armor?

This is not a problem that needs a solution. The playerbase does not want to improve and does not have to. General content should be balanced on the idea that they have not. More challenging optional content can be included, but is not the priority.

Weird I was under the impression that a MMO was about progressing with the character you play. Again all this talk about a playerbase, yet the vast majority of players that I know like improving and progressing. Did you dare I say exclude them from your player base O.O.

The fact remains that anything you can buy your way through has ZERO prestige.

Your opinion, and the fact remains that you cannot buy raid wing 3.

and yet you are in favor of the existing raids, which are exactly that.

Ask yourself whether what you are saying is true…. Hint its not.

In other MMOs, not in GW2, which is why people love GW2.

So this whole thread isnt about you wanting to improve your wardrobe and add a new legendary armor to the mix?

I have been looking through most of your posts, I think you should replace the playerbase with Ohoni. Ohoni wants easy access to legendary armor without spending significant effort. Ohoni does not want to improve and progress. Ohoni wants rewards available through whatever Ohoni enjoys playing, afterall who wants to make an Hoblings choice.

Except for you and a handfull of others, I don’t know any players that have problems with legendary armors being locked behind raids. And I wont say anything more on the matter.

LA being locked behind raids would only be a problem if it provided stats that are superior to ascended….Since it is not, I think it is safe to say that we can close this thread now

In that matter I particularly remember warriors playing a OP spec that was called Ham/bow. They did good condi damage and they could also easily interrupt, so I guess it has always been killing the fun for you

Absurdo.8309:

We’ve gone around in so many circles in this thread, I’m getting dizzy. Sign me up for closing it.

It’s become abundantly clear that the people who want easy mode raids only want the legendary armor. When you ask them to describe the content they want in the abstract it sounds awfully similar to dungeons, fractals, and world bosses.

For some reason, some people in this thread are against exclusive rewards in any form. Despite that every game mode has them.

I’m also finding that many of the pro-easy mode side are being argumentative just for the sake of it. Please lay out your proposal for an easy mode raid, with a reward structure, and we can talk about. No reason to quibble over side points.

Some people like hard content. Some people like easy content. Some people like exclusive rewards. Some people don’t. Well, the game has something here for everyone. Hard content. Easy content. Easily accessible cool skins. Cool skins not tied to a particular game mode. Cool skins that are tied to a game mode.

This is what the game is all about. Something for everyone. And that’s what makes this game so great. As someone above said, welcome to guild wars 2.

2 thumbs up for me

I would like to propose two changes to reduce the “OPness” of chronomancer which won’t affect core mesmer: 1. Chronomancer should loose the base addition of illusionary persona. 2. We should tie the duration of moa under CS form up to how many illusion were sacrificed for it. Here is what I propose: the duration gain 3 seconds for each illusion that were sacrificed. Of course the duration moa would be unchanged in chronomancer if we don’t use CS with it. Why these changes? As for 1. I believe that mesmers got a lot more viable with the 23rd June patch due to illusionary persona becoming baseline: before they were food for thieves and warriors because warriors would simply cleave illusions before gaining the benefit of shatters and thieves would simply blind or become invisible so mesmers could not summon their clones or phantasms to shatter. Now that illusions gain superspeed on shatters, now that there is a shield with double-block and double-stun, now that there is chronophantasma to double shatter + the gain of alacrity for each shatter, I think illusionary persona should be a mechanism of core mesmers only because the disadvantages mesmers got pre 23rd June patch are covered with the elite spec of mesmers. As for 2. I just think, since it is an elite skill, that it shouldn’t be so much easy to pull off since it can turn a team fight into the favor of a mesmer when used with intelligence. Changing the skills of moa form is too hard to balance in the end, I think

Rednik.3809:

Astralporing.1957:

It’s far more likely to happen in the current situation. Insights could be farmed on VG alone, but having a legendary armor will mean you have finished all of the bosses in the first raid.

And 90% of next raid LFG requirements will be “full legendary armor or kick”. Wooo, I’m already see that friendly raiding community.

Frankly I don’t see how it is any different than what we have already seen in dungeons. People also used to ask for “for full ascended berserker 5k AP speedclear, ping or kick”…..It is the exact same deal in pugs situation: players want it fast, so they set requirements. The thing is you can promote your own group if you don’t adhere to this kind of mentality

Yeah I think that is the best solution in the end: the reality of pvp at the start of the game is different than now and yet moa skills have never been upgraded or modified

Ohoni.6057:

if we relax the effort, it’s perfectly normal to relax the rewards.

And we are. You would get less for easy mode than for hard, requiring you to do easy mode several times to make the equivalent of hard. That is fair. What would not be fair is to say “if you do easy mode, even for months or years, you will NEVER get this reward. You can ONLY get it through hard mode.”

Again, think about story dungeon and explorable dungeon. The first one is basically easy mode, with no reward except some money. Easy mode raid could be like that, i will be perfectly fine with that.

That’s nice that you would be perfectly fine with that, it’s very magnanimous of you to give up nothing at all in order to make so few players happy, but that’s not what I’d want, and not what would benefit the game. Almost nobody runs Story mode more than once, I know some do, but probably less than currently run raids. We need something that people will want to repeat, at the very least it would need rewards equivalent to the time and effort it would take to complete, which would be equivalent to an exploration-path dungeon.

Again, I’m not entirely opposed to the easy mode raids offering no path to Legendary, so long as there is some other PvE path of equivalent difficulty, I just see easy mode as being the simplest option to implement.

and who are you to decide what a raid can or cannot reward? you’re talking like you’re the only one with the TRUTH. It’s Anet decision, respect it at last ^^

That’s what I just said to you.

And, btw, we’re not entitle to exclusive reward, we just have raid rewards because we’re doing raid, that’s all. It’s the same as you not having raid rewards because you don’t want to raid.

Right, so if they make it so that those rewards can be earned through other means, then both of us would be happy.

More effort? how? it’s easy raid, you want it tunned so that almost everyone can beat it. there is no effort in that for many of us. And you talk about more time, but again, for me more time would mean 10 times as us, or more.

I’ve discussed this up thread, but I would even be ok with ten times as much, although in that case they’d have to change things up a bit, because if it took say three months realtime to earn the rewards in hard mode, taking 2.5 years to earn it via easy mode is a bit preposterous, but they could make it so that it would take ten times as many runs, but on daily lockout rather than weekly, so that instead of taking 12 runs over 12 weeks to get it in hard mode, it would take 120 runs over 17 weeks on easy mode, or perhaps even a bit more than that (and of course would start months after hard mode, so hard mode people who started when the raid opened would have exclusive access for months before even the most dedicated easy mode people).

I’m just really tired of this “it’s sooooooooo easy, I can sleepwalk through it” whinging nonsense. That may be true for you, fine. No one cares. It’s not true for most of the people playing this game, and it’s more important that they are happy than that you are happy, because they outnumber you. Playing through a dungeon-level difficulty content IS an effort for most players, and that’s what content should be balanced around, not around what the 1% can pull off.

If people want to play hard content like that, then that’s fine, it should be around for them, but they should be playing it because they want the challenge, and their reward is that challenge, not because they want better loot than everyone else gets. If ANet offers you better loot for playing how you enjoy, then you accept it with gratitude and humility, and you don’t throw a fit if they decide to also offer those rewards to your “lessers.” You are not owed that better loot, ANet has gifted it to you. Be grateful, not greedy.

The “lessers” as you call them, lol, can have a LA but not with a dumbed down version of raids (and believe me, I am including myself in this demographic), if Anet ever comes up with a good, sustainable plan for it. Like the original GW had elite zones, let GW2 have its share of elite zones. That is how you retain players: give players options to either have an easy content and a more difficult content. The state of the game as it is now have that: dungeons, open world bosses and fractals for easy stuff while raids for the people who like it or the people who mastered the previous content and got bored with it. What matters here is to give a sense of progression, which was severely lacking in core GW2 before. And you don’t give a sense of progression if Anet has to create a dumbed down version of every content they create while giving the same rewards for whatever level of difficulty players choose to complete. Anyway the bottom line issue with you, imo, is that you fail to understand that LA is not superior in any wayyyyyyy

Wow….So much for competitiveness. I am glad that cheaters got rightfully banned

Astralporing.1957:

flog.3485:

True, these metrics do not show how many truly like raids but in the end it is totally irrelevant. What matters here is the participation rate of raids.

Ah, but does that participation rate tells us tha raids are a success, or maybe that raid rewards are a success? Because, you know, those are two very different things.

flog.3485:

As for legendary armor obtained elsewhere, let’s not lose the focus of my argument: I am mostly against easy mode raid granting legendary, as in the pve-focus players should get only one way to obtain legendary gear, which is the current raids.

The reason you supplied for it few posts back was that you don’t want that to happen. because people will get through that content, obtain rewards and then claim they have nothing to do. I pointed out that raids are in the same situation, only worse (because easy mode would be a slower way), to which you countered that no, Raiders are for some unexplainable reason different.

No, as i have pointed out already, you can’t have both.

Of course raiders will be in a different position, they will have to struggle a bit before being able to complete the current raids. In easy mode stuff…….well I hope you get the idea. We have enough content imo that consists in a spamming fest where you farm easy stuff in such a long fashion to get stuff done and get something exclusive. Why not push the limits of the game a bit more far where skill will matter a lot more?

serialkicker.5274:

flog.3485:

serialkicker.5274:

Omne.4603:

Aytheist.9476:

Solo players cannot advance in the new content, and any decent publisher would disclose such a fundamental change prior to taking your money.

They did. This is an MMORPG and is marketed as such. Not just multiplayer, but MASSIVELY Multiplayer.

http://internet-games.yoexpert.com/mmorpgs/what-s-the-difference-between-an-mmorpg-and-mmo-1636.html

Multiplayer means you’re playing a game with other real players around the world, it doesn’t mean you’re playing game that requires cooperation and teamwork to progress.

True, but in the other hand it would be a bit dumb to gather so many players around an event and never make them care about others by requesting some form of cooperation and teamwork: take a look a triple trouble, tequatl, tarir

That was not the point of that comment and of my reply. But yes, I agree, teamwork and cooperation is nice, but events should properly scale. I wish dungeons would also scale and we could do them solo and up to 10-man team.

You can already solo dungeons….10 man dungeons? I don’t know, with 5 it is already pretty easy, Anet team dungeon was already disbanded years ago. If you 10 man instanced content you should try raid, as for 5-man content, fractals are the way to go

Astralporing.1957:

TheRandomGuy.7246:

Ohoni.6057:

Nope. Guy approaches the finishline in a marathon, another guy zips past on a bike, nobody says “wow, that second guy was so much faster”.

Question! Who gets a trophy in your analogy?

The first one. Notice however that the only function of that trophy is prestige. If someone wanted it for a different reason (i.e. because they think it looks cool and would look great on the shelf) they most likely can easily (and cheaply) buy a perfect replica from an internet shop.

Legendary armor is not that kind of trophy. That function in GW2 is fulfilled by titles.

flog.3485:

If raids are a success according to Anet metrics then you can’t say that only raiders who liked raids in other games came to raid in gw2

I’m not saying that. I am saying that the “metrics” do not show how many people truly like raids and how many are in there only (or primarily) for these exclusive rewards.

flog.3485:

No, the people who will get the legendary armor will not stop raiding the moment they get their gear: they will continue raiding for the simple enjoyment of beating some content with friends and the social aspect of raids will take over because they have had fun running raids and meeting new people who came raiding just like players had fun running dungeons and repeating them ad nauseam.

If it is so, then saying that unlocking legendary armor to non-raiders will make raiders stop raiding is untrue.

Either people will stop raiding once they get LA in easy mode which will kill raids, but then the same will happen once they’ll get it in current mode (which will happen faster), or they will continue raiding even after obtaining legendary, but then obtaining it in other modes will also not make them stop playing.

You cannot have both.

True, these metrics do not show how many truly like raids but in the end it is totally irrelevant. What matters here is the participation rate of raids. As for legendary armor obtained elsewhere, let’s not lose the focus of my argument: I am mostly against easy mode raid granting legendary, as in the pve-focus players should get only one way to obtain legendary gear, which is the current raids.

serialkicker.5274:

Omne.4603:

Aytheist.9476:

Solo players cannot advance in the new content, and any decent publisher would disclose such a fundamental change prior to taking your money.

They did. This is an MMORPG and is marketed as such. Not just multiplayer, but MASSIVELY Multiplayer.

http://internet-games.yoexpert.com/mmorpgs/what-s-the-difference-between-an-mmorpg-and-mmo-1636.html

Multiplayer means you’re playing a game with other real players around the world, it doesn’t mean you’re playing game that requires cooperation and teamwork to progress.

True, but in the other hand it would be a bit dumb to gather so many players around an event and never make them care about others by requesting some form of cooperation and teamwork: take a look a triple trouble, tequatl, tarir

Astralporing.1957:

flog.3485:

@ Astralporing Sorry I should have been more precise: giving too many options to players to obtain legendary armor will not retain players: the moment you give an option that presents itself as the path of the least resistance, players will burn the content as fast as possible and then complain in forums that there isn’t much to do.

But there isn’t much to do. I’m not going to do raids as they are now anyway, after all.

flog.3485:

Besides, the people that do care about hard content will feel betrayed and as the population of players who enter raids dwindle because most of other players just get their legendary by not entering the normal raid mode,

Why they should feel betrayed? It just meant that those other people were never in this for the content. Either a majority of raiders do like the content they play in, in which case there’s no need of exclusive rewards to keep the population up (having simply good rewards would be sufficient), or most are in there for the exclusives, not challenge, and any claims that raids are a resounding success because “so many people like them” are false.

Besides, if it’s the leg armor that is the main draw, then once that runs out (after people will obtain it), population of raids will come crashing down anyway. That reward mode is simply unsustainable in the long run. It works with old style hamster wheels, because new raids will keep getting better gear, but that doesn’t work in GW2. That’s even if there will be new raids, which at this moment seems really doubtful.

In short, a year from now, as far as raid incentives ae concerned, it won’t matter whether that legendary will be accessible by other means or not. All raiders that will be capable of obtaining it will have it already (and there aren’t that many new players coming in this game anymore).

Dude I really don’t know what to tell you. All your assumptions about raids are based on the fact that you have a very pessimistic opinion of the future of GW2. The patch did address issues and people will inevitably be coming back…yes raiders will feel betrayed because it is exactly like people spending time and resources building a legendary weapon from the game and then see some rich bloke coming into the game, converting lots of money into gems and then into gold to buy it off the TP and yes people like the raids because they both offer some challenge and some exclusive rewards. It just goes hands in hands: you think it it shouldn’t be tied because on a personal level you can’t stand the fact that you need to face any form of challenge whatsoever to get some rewards. If raids are a success according to Anet metrics then you can’t say that only raiders who liked raids in other games came to raid in gw2: there is a part of casual in the game that just accepts challenges and like the combat system to “git better at it”. No, the people who will get the legendary armor will not stop raiding the moment they get their gear: they will continue raiding for the simple enjoyment of beating some content with friends and the social aspect of raids will take over because they have had fun running raids and meeting new people who came raiding just like players had fun running dungeons and repeating them ad nauseam. What will be the future of raids? I can’t really tell but I just can’t agree with you. To me it feels like this: the players who got their legendary will be able to try new composition of teams with the ability of switching stats on demand and in the long run it will serve the benefit of new players who come into this instance for reward or enjoyment because the veteran raiding runners will easily adapt to team composition

flog.3485:

+1 Fermi. If the game gives too many options to players, it will inevitably fail to retain players.

Ah, but which option is the one too far? Because, you know, that argument can be used against current raids as well.

[/quote]
@ Astralporing Sorry I should have been more precise: giving too many options to players to obtain legendary armor will not retain players: the moment you give an option that presents itself as the path of the least resistance, players will burn the content as fast as possible and then complain in forums that there isn’t much to do. Besides, the people that do care about hard content will feel betrayed and as the population of players who enter raids dwindle because most of other players just get their legendary by not entering the normal raid mode, Anet will just spread themselves too thin to try supporting each mode of raids, until it is eventually scrapped. So no, no easy mode raiding which grants a legendary gear

+1 Fermi. If the game gives too many options to players, it will inevitably fail to retain players. And seriously, It is hard, within this game, to find reasonable line between easy, medium or difficult simply because the game has strong mechanics and classes. Even thedifficulty that raids bring isn’t so hardcore, because even the players who really were interested in this kind of content, had a quite an easy time to figure out how to beat it