Showing Posts For maddoctor.2738:

Why would you put important lore in a Raid?

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

No we can’t. Those motes don’t change mechanics, they just add some new mechanics to the boss. They don’t alter the damage, health or enrage timer. Everything has to be tested and tuned new for a easy mode. Reward structure has to be revamped.

This is what many don’t get. Challenge motes do not change mechanics, they add new ones. It’s far easier to add a new mechanic to a fight than to alter a mechanic.

Also, when altering mechanics, tweaking some health and damage is also relatively easy, it can even be done automatically as seen in Fractals. Tweaking things like speed, cool downs and so on is much harder to balance on each level.

Keep Casuals and Raiders Separate

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

I first invested in a 300 gold Commander’s tag and started hosting VG training sessions.

Last I checked you don’t need a commander tag to enter a Raid why exactly do you need a commander tag to be raiding?

Changes to Ascended Vending

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

I don’t think ascended boxes you already have will be affected.
I mean they state this:

Please note that you will be able to buy gear with current prices until the update is live.

They should’ve said something if they will be affected.

Skill Balance Coming

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

To take part, please join the new thread we’ll post after the build goes live. For our players who participate on the French, German, or Spanish forums, we will provide a list of highlights from the conversation by the end of the week.

Is there a possibility to create a new thread for each profession instead of one thread for all of them so it’s easier to follow?

Changes to Ascended Vending

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

The way you got a nearly full ascended armor set from pvp by afking in a corner was sad, but I’m not sure if this fix is what was needed.

Skill Balance Coming

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Can’t wait for the necro “minor fixes”

Should zerk gear be used by casual players?

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

I’d much rather choose more durable stats for my chosen preferred profession than change profession just so I could play *some*thing with berserker stats.

There is another angle too. In the Elementalist – Warrior example, if an attack can down a Warrior in Berserker gear then an Elementalist in Berserker or Marauder or Valkyrie gear will also be downed by the same attack, meaning choosing the durable gear on the Elementalist is a total waste. You’ll be downed if you are hit anyway so why bother with more durable gear?

The OP specifically asked for Marauder and Valkyrie and not really durable sets like Cleric or Soldier

Should zerk gear be used by casual players?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

This zerk meta crap just has to die one day or the other.

If someone is getting killed too much, especially in the open world, they can use a more durable profession, or they can try playing mostly with ranged weapons. As I pointed out earlier in this thread, an Elementalist in Marauder or Valkyrie gear will still be one shot killed by an attack that can down a Warrior using Berserker gear. So your profession plays a very important role in choosing your gear.

What classes are being chosen most for Raids?

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

When a developer balances with a Sledgehammer, although they claim they don’t, you get a different meta every time a big balance patch appears. I believe there is a balance patch coming in the near future so if you can wait I’d suggest waiting for that, who knows what it might do.

Otherwise, Tempests are almost always needed for their DPS on big targets, Berserkers for Might and offensive buffs, Chronomancers for their great support/utility, Druids for their also great support/utility, Rangers for their great condition damage.
Guardians and Thieves are not in a horrible situation, I’d put them in good tier. Thief has great DPS but sadly not enough Support or any use other than DPS, so they are outclassed by others. Guardians provide reasonable support and dps. Both of them have stupidly easy rotations.
I’ve seen great success with condition Reapers on fights with multiple adds, that’s where they shine, but their usage is relatively low because there aren’t enough of those fights out there.
Engineers and Revenants are at the worst situation right now. Engineers can be amazing at condition dps but the rotation is very complex and you can achieve similar results with other builds with less complexity.

If I would rank them:
Top tier: Tempest, Berserker, Chronomancer, Druid and Ranger
Good tier: Dragonhunter and Daredevil
Mid tier: Reaper
Bottom tier: Engineer and Revenant

My best advice is to go for the big 3 buffers, Berserker, Chrono and Druid, as those are almost always needed (apparently everyone has a Tempest these days so there is more competition)

The numbers of the raiding community.

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Right now we can see only how many people are tried raiding at some point.

Exactly why LI isn’t a very good indication of a “raider”.
However what we can see from the data is if the raiding community is growing. Unfortunately my old data is only a month old so it was highly unlikely to change much. But keeping those stored and checking every couple of months can show if there is a rise or decline in the number of players who raided at least once, that is, if there is new blood joining Raids. It won’t show us if old raiders stopped raiding in the same time frame but it’s as good as we can get given the tools at our disposal.

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

What would work better is an “official” version of gw2eff that uses all the user data (like how wow armory works?) but I really doubt we’d get something like this ever.

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Oh, come on, it has been over a year since HoT now. It’s not like the decision to buy HoT had to be made before launch.

And how did they find out about raid accessibility without actually playing the game? They don’t even know if they can handle the Raid or not. I’m not sure if Raid accessibility qualifies as a reason not to buy an expansion, I mean even if the Raids aren’t accessible they still have the rest of the expansion to play.

Oh, i agree about that part of your post – the definition of a “raider” is definitely different for everyone here, and without agreeing on it first we can’t really have a meaningful discussion about size of the raider community.

Indeed.

Though too bad about the archival data not being available. I had hoped for more detailed info.

Actually gw2efficiency has a much better statistic, it clearly gathers all the boss kill achievements and you can see in your achievement tab if you’ve killed a boss or not. If they expose that in graph form they could show us how many players actually killed a boss, including challenge mote versions. That would be a really valuable statistic.

That’s how WoW measures their raiding population, by counting how many players have boss kill achievements, it’s much more reliable and effective than counting a currency. It could help with accessibility too if that info was exposed somehow, showing you have an achievement (and especially the challenge mote achievement) should bypass any LI requirements easily. For example, a player that killed KC with the challenge mote, is likely more experienced at fighting KC than a player with 200+ LI that got them by farming VG or Escort.

Of course in those WoW statistics they also used subscriber numbers to have an accurate representation of the total playerbase, while those numbers were available. This meant that the percentage of Raiders was accurate enough. Now that subscriber numbers aren’t available they use different statistics to find out how many players are still playing to compare the raiders with the actual total.

The next problem after finding out the number of players who are raiding, is finding the number to compare them with, and that might prove much harder to come by, at least there is no statistic on gw2eff that you can use for that.

(edited by maddoctor.2738)

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Found it! Meh it’s from January 3rd, 2017 so not really old but here it goes:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Raid-Normal-Hard-Mode/first#post6453090

January 3rd, 2017
Everyone: 29%
0-500h: 3%
500-1000h: 11%
1000-2000h: 25.5%
2000-4000h: 44%
4000h+: 61.5%

Friday 17th, 2017 (1 month later!)
Everyone: 30%
0-500h: 3%
500-1000h: 11%
1000-2000h: 25.5%
2000-4000h: 43.5%
4000h+: 61.5%

The everyone statistic is 1% up. The 2000-4000h statistic is 0.5% down, everything else looks the same.

I might have older ones that I didn’t post on the forums. Now I’ll bookmark this and probably do an archive every month to see how it grows.

(edited by maddoctor.2738)

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

You don’t know if some of those people would not have bought expac if raid accessibility was better.

Because they knew what the Raid accessibility would be like when the expansion was released…

I specifically mentioned those that stopped playing completely in my post, didn’t you notice?

Did you also count them and removed them from the total? The problem wasn’t about not tweaking the total, but more about tweaking the Raiders by choosing a number of LI like 130 while keeping the total the same. Why not be fair and use 1 LI with the total, since you don’t know when those players got that 1 LI, what if players started raiding very recently? To use your own words:

And since you don’t know, you can’t just exclude them from the picture.

And since you don’t know, you can’t use 130 LI for your data, but rather 1 LI.

Though, actually, for that question alone gw2eff might be useful (but only if we could have access to achival data, or if someone kept checking it over time).

Although the site itself doesn’t have archival data, I do. I’ll go find them and post them here

(edited by maddoctor.2738)

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Why did i forgot them? I just showed the number of players (using gw2e as one of the only statistic we have access to), who played raid content.

Knowing how many players are raiding over the entire GW2 population is a completely worthless statistic. Context is always important in statistics. Of course those you forgot have 0 LI but if they don’t have access to Raids then it’s meaningless to add them to the total, the funny thing is you used gw2eff to find out the Raiders and while there are more than enough statistics to find out those you forgot and remove them, you didn’t, just to show a fake number.

The funniest part in your biased analysis is that you refuse to remove those who can’t count from the total and yet you used a RANDOM number of LI for your percentage of Raiders. First you use a random 130 LI to prove who is raider, and then you don’t make any changes to the total, how about you make zero changes to both to be fair? And if you really want to be fair you should count players with a single LI, that’s 30% of the population btw.

You can find many interesting statistics if you want to compare other parts of the game with the entire population.

66% of the players are still “left” playing the game (judging by Unbound Magic)
30% have at least 1 LI
28% run at least one dungeon path in their life
27% reached T4 fractals
15% reached level 100 in Fractals

Some context is always nice. And if you don’t use some random number of LI while not touching the total the results aren’t as you expected.

The original question didn’t go into the reasons why someone might not raid, only about the relative size of raiders compared to the whole community.

And that’s a completely useless metric. If the expansion wasn’t good enough to convince players to buy it, it has nothing to do with Raid accessibility. If the expansion wasn’t good enough to grab the attention of players and they left soon after starting, that also has zero to do with Raid accessibility.

The original question asked if the Raid community is growing or not. Got something to say about that?

(edited by maddoctor.2738)

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

error in measurement

You forgot to exclude those who didn’t buy Heart of Thorns from the total.
You forgot to exclude those who stopped playing Heart of Thorns before the release of Raids.
You forgot to exclude those who do not have an elite spec unlocked yet.
You forgot to exclude new players with little play time that do not even have Exotic gear.

There are more but I’ll stop here.

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

You can also be a raider without any LI if you are constantly failing.

You can also be a raider with a single LI if you started raiding last week and killed VG on your first day. And a billion other things that make LI a terrible statistic to measure raiders and non-raiders.

So, instead of 8.5% we have 5.5% raiders.

Even if there was an agreement of who is considered a raider or not, by counting LI for example, it’s not enough to give us accurate statistics. So, let’s assume that players with 100+ LI are the “raiders”, what does that 5.5% mean exactly? What’s the 100% you compare it with? All the registered accounts?

To have an accurate statistic you’d need to remove players without Heart of Thorns, they can’t even access the Raid.
You’d also need to remove players who stopped playing Guild Wars 2 in the first month after the expansion was released, so before the Raid was even released.
Maybe remove players who don’t even have an elite spec since it’s mostly elite specs that are needed in Raids.
You’d probably need to remove players with low play time because they are highly unlikely to have the experience, or the gear, to enter the Raid in the first place.
Good luck getting those statistics.

Getting an accurate percentage of Raiders is nearly impossible and getting the percentage of what to compare it against is equally impossible.

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

This whole discussion about gw2efficiency is pointless. Suppose for the shake of argument that gw2efficiency is 100% accurate of the entire population. Which statistic would you use to find out the raiding population?

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Maybe used more often but I doubt it. Can only speak for my guild, no one uses gw2ef but timers, dulfy and the wiki almost daily. Also to mention: You can use the site without having an account.

I used the second part of my post to counter this point:

Quite often, because they don’t even know such sites exist.

It wasn’t about gw2efficiency in particular.
I doubt the average Guild Wars 2 player doesn’t know external websites, that can help them play the game, do not even exist. In fact I guess that almost every single player of this game knows or has used at least once an external website, be it dulfy, wiki, dragon timers, gw2crafts, gw2spidy, gw2eff or any other such website that exists out there. With some rare exceptions that always exist but they are the exception, not the rule.

If everyone had an account on gw2eff then it’d have way more than 100k accounts. I know players that Raid or run T4 fractals that do not have a gw2eff account. Having an account there doesn’t require them to be hardcore players, there are even some really nasty statistics you can check that show that the gw2eff isn’t in fact “hardcore” at all.

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.completedDungeons
28.5% of “everybody” has run a dungeon at least once

https://gw2efficiency.com/account/statistics/statistics.fractalLevel
15% has reached Fractal level 100 and 27.5% has reached T4 in Fractals

I’m sorry but if only hardcore players were making accounts on that website then something is wrong here.

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Never ever read “gw2efficiency” in an open world chat or squad chat during meta events tbh.

What about other “advanced websites”? Dulfy? A timer website? The wiki?

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Being in a big guild creates a bias in itself.

I didn’t say “big” guild, I said guild in general. How many players are in personal or family-only guilds and how many are in actual guilds out there? I think you are trying to create an imaginary “average player” here.

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

The act of using a site like this for daily activities already sets them above the average crowd. Most players do not even care enough to use forums, much less more advanced sites. Quite often, because they don’t even know such sites exist.

First, the forums have much less activity than GW2efficiency.
Second, if they are in a guild they should know such a site exist. If they’ve been to many meta events chances are they’ve heard about it too.
Unless they are an anti-social person who plays completely on their own, or someone who is in a small guild of similar players, chances are someone in their surrounding has used the site (or gaming sites in general) at least once.

Also, about using “advanced sites”, how many times have you been at an event and someone asked when is the event coming and the response was “check the timer”? Or how many times someone in map chat said “use the wiki /wiki”, or “check dulfy” when someone asks something that has a guide. Every single player of GW2 must’ve heard about timers and “advanced websites” at least once while playing the game. This is a game that depends heavily on external websites to work properly because sadly in game timers do not exist and most high end events depend on timers.

(edited by maddoctor.2738)

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

And having an understanding of statistics tells us that Vinceman is correct. A biased sample is unlikely to be representative of the entire population. All GW2E can tell us is what percentage of people who signed up for GW2E have LI’s or MS’s.

And those who joined GW2E aren’t “random” enough?
I think people are underestimating how many are using GW2E for their daily activities, inventory management, crafting guides and not for hardcore play like Raids. There is zero evidence that the GW2E population is mostly a group of hardcore players

The numbers of the raiding community.

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

There are lots of problems with that data, even if we say that the gw2efficiency is representative of the actual playerbase (which personally I think it’s close, but others will disagree)

First, 29.5% of Everybody has at least 1 Legendary Insight but that doesn’t make them a Raider. It means they killed ONE boss sometime. Maybe they then stopped playing? 1 Legendary Insight isn’t enough to show a “raider”. If you look at about 30 Legendary Insights, which I think is more “normal” for someone who finished the first Raid, it’s only 10%

Second, in that 29.5% of Everybody the list counts players with 0-500 hours of playtime. Those players are likely not to have Ascended equipment and not be very experienced in the game yet, so they are not yet ready for Raids. Only 3% of the players in the 0-500h bracket have at least 1 legendary insight. On the other hand 62.5% of those in the 4k+ bracket have at least one Legendary Insight, which means the older players are more likely to Raid. Where do you draw the line?

The key with Raids is to identify what a “raider” is first and then compare those players with those who could be running them in the first place.

The numbers of the raiding community.

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

The raid community is bigger than the pvp community

Source?

The numbers of the raiding community.

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

That should be easy to speculate, there must be some way to figure out how many DPS meter downloads have occurred since add on sites like Curse show the total downloads.

There is no number of downloads about the dps meters but even if there was it would be a meaningless number. Knowing how many players are raiding alone isn’t enough, when you have no idea how many players are actively playing total.

1000 raiders out of 10000 active players is vastly different to 1000 raiders out of 1000000. And I doubt Anet has any desire to release active player numbers, not to mention it will be extremely hard to count active players in a game like guild wars 2.

flat number were never the answer a % would be the way to go

That’s true, a percentage would be nice. Before they give a percentage they need to find out the active population though, without telling us if they don’t want to.
How do we count the active population of Guild Wars 2? We can’t count subs.
And second, how do we count the active population of Raids? Those who have LI? Those who have Magnetite Shards? Those who killed a boss in the last week? Those who cleared an entire wing in the last month? Which metric do you use for active raiders?

There are also different issues. Do you count the percentage of players compared to the total active population? Do you count the percentage of players compared to Heart of Thorns owners? Do you include free accounts? Or only accounts that have access to Raids.

If we go only with people that have access to Raids (Expansion owners) do we also include players that started playing this week? It’s only logical that only players with some experience and play time will be in Raids, they’ll have the gear, the experience and the unlocked elite specializations to enter the Raid in the first place. So each player will use a completely different metric to show if Raids are successful or not.

These numbers aren’t the easiest to come by in order to give that percentage, and each number tells a different story. Even a “5% of the players are raiding” doesn’t mean much.

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Seriously, if the development rate followed the normal patterns of this game for side content, then we’d likely have seen a rate of several fractals for a single raid wing.

The “Fractals team” started releasing work with Chaos Fractal on July, 2016. Since then they released 2 complete fractals (3 if you count CM Nightmare separately) and various content updates for Fractals. I made a rather extensive list of what we got from the Fractal team since they started working.

In the same time frame we got a Raid with a single wing, I’d say they are more than comparable.

The numbers of the raiding community.

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

That should be easy to speculate, there must be some way to figure out how many DPS meter downloads have occurred since add on sites like Curse show the total downloads.

There is no number of downloads about the dps meters but even if there was it would be a meaningless number. Knowing how many players are raiding alone isn’t enough, when you have no idea how many players are actively playing total.

1000 raiders out of 10000 active players is vastly different to 1000 raiders out of 1000000. And I doubt Anet has any desire to release active player numbers, not to mention it will be extremely hard to count active players in a game like guild wars 2.

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

There is quite a bit of misinformation going around here so let’s try to provide some facts.

the team has only 6 people.

First, the size of the Raid Team:
Take a look here:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Raid-team-introductions/first
and here:
https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_Raids_Team

They are not 6, but they are not that many. Also note on the wiki page:

Known current or former Raids Team members

But at least we have 2 hastily made fractals, from reused old models and assets. Ugh.

Second, the work of the Fractals team. You are giving them to little credit for the work they do. Since Chaos Fractal was released they’ve done a remarkable job.

First of all, you must understand that Fractals is old content and as always in programming fixing/tweaking old things is harder than making new things. Second, the content they released in Fractals isn’t so bad at all.

Chaos Fractal on July, 2016.
With the same update they massively updated Swampland Fractal and Snowblind Fractal, Swampland is like a completely new Fractal, while the changes in Snowblind were also great in making all boss fights more interesting. Other Fractals got various upgrades too, all of them leading to a far better experience. They also changed how infusions work (again)

On September, 2016 we got an update and rework of instabilities, big changes to toughness and health scaling of high level fractal mobs and other fixes and updates

On November, 2016, we got the other new Fractal (Nightmare) together with the challenge mote which is a different beast, essentially we got 2 new Fractals not one.

Fractals have more complex overall mechanics than Raids. Their reward system is more complicated, their scaling system makes them more complicated. Also, you should notice if you read the release pages of Fractals that very often we get balance fixes and tweaks in Fractals while they are far less in Raids. This generally means that Raids are better tested than Fractals, which is kind of normal because they get the help of guilds to help them test Raids, while to my knowledge they don’t do that with Fractals.

Adding a new Raid won’t affect the old Raids. Adding a new Fractal has a great effect on all other Fractals, adding a new instability or tweaking old ones, also has a potential effect on all other Fractals. You need to remember that Fractals require way more maintenance work than Raids.

I’m going to laugh at the re-used models and assets part. If you are so concerned about re-used assets then remember that other than story mode bosses and Subject Alpha, every single asset and model in the old Dungeons is re-used from other types of content. Heck they didn’t bother to create some new model for the Gravelings in AC and used the Skelk model although they are supposed to be something different. How lazy is that?

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

And in T4 fractals rewards are better than in kitten combined. But people still run them, even now, with AR being highly available.

T1 fractals are being run for the precursor achievements and the research pages not for the material rewards. And maybe to get enough infusions to go to higher AR levels. AR isn’t as highly available as you might think especially if you want to run multiple characters (when the T4 meta changes for example)

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Yes. People are far more likely to start the LFG (or join it), if they think they are experienced enough to do it (as opposed to whether they really are good enough). It’s a self-perception thing.

If this easy mode is supposed to help players without optimal builds to succeed in the content, then these same players won’t be of any use in the next tier of difficulty. In fact they will be a liability. Learning the wrong tactics and using the wrong builds can be more detrimental to a run than not knowing anything.

I think A-Net is testing the player base that claims that GW needs easy mode raids.

I guess we’ll find what those metrics show by how they design the next Raid, is it “worth” designing such easy bosses or not. Second boss is even easier than the first, in fact it’s easier than Escort which makes you think.

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Why? the first 3 bosses are nowhere Matthias level, so killing him is hardly a requirement.

Only to understand why people call the new Raid easy. Once you reach the level of killing Matthias you’ll find out.

Come to think, there’s no "required raid order

Yeah just like there is no order in many other things which cause numerous serious problems when some players want to skip the difficulty curve. I’d say there is an order because it should be easier to find groups for the older Raids.

more LFGs with lower requirements would inevitably appear.

Why? There is no relation between the two because a player who finishes the easy mode won’t suddenly be accepted in a normal run. You think the “easy runner” will somewhat be more ready to start their own groups because of the easy mode? In that case why don’t we see non-LI requirement groups forming for Escort which doesn’t need an easy mode in the first place?

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

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Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Not sure what you’re asking about here (as you were the one that mentioned SV and compared it to Deimos).

I compared SV to Deimos by mistake you should’ve seen the posts under that one where I was corrected that the Raid is Forsaken Thicket and not Spirit Vale. Once you are at the point to down Matthias consistently you will figure it out. Preferably, do it before you even enter the Bastion. Only then you’ll understand and it’s apparently pointless to talk about it before you reach that point.

Create an increased number of people able to run easier raid encounters, but not having LI yet.

No matter how many more people run the easier version of the encounter, the LFG listing will still be “LF 50+ LI” meaning those players running the easy mode are still excluded from the normal version. So, how is that helping with finding a group that requires LI, that is, a group for the normal version of the Raid? That was the actual question, how are easier modes going to help pugs get into the normal raids.

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Because people need raid experience and current system fails to deliver it?

They don’t need raid experience to enter the Raid, they need LI.
See without an easy mode: “LF9M 50+ LI”
after the easy mode: “LF9M 50+ LI”
What did you accomplish?

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Matthias is in Salvation Pass. Spirit Vale is VG, Gorse and Sabetha. People that finished SV had definitely lot of problems with Matthias (and likely at least some of them could also have used a bit of training it on easy mode).

It was Matthias compared to Deimos, or Matthias compared to all other bosses of Forsaken Thicket, since he is the hardest boss of it.

Should zerk gear be used by casual players?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Only people wearing all offensive gear get downed in one shot .

With Berserker gear (no vitality) the health values are as follows:
High: 19,212
Medium: 15,922
Low: 11,645

Marauder and Valkyrie provide the following health boosts (if using full Ascended)
Marauder: +6330 health
Valkyrie: +9610 health

Marauder and Valkyrie are also offensive stats and the health they provide is hardly enough to compensate for a second hit which also depends on your profession, a Warrior in Berserker gear has almost the same health (19212) but more armor than an Elementalist in Valkyrie gear (21255), if an attack can 1-shot the Warrior it WILL 1-shot the Elementalist too. This means that some professions, like the Elementalist, shouldn’t get defensive gear and rely on active defenses and good positioning to survive.

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

I expect this mode to award experience of encounter to majority of newcomers.

How is experience of the encounter going to help with the LI requirements?

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

A team that can down Matthias, which is included in finishing Spirit Vale last I checked, shouldn’t have an issue with Deimos either. You know how to beat hard bosses.

Spirit Vale is the first wing of the Forsaken Thicket, Matthias is part of Salvation Pass.

Doh. Of course Forsaken Thicket is the Raid, Spirit Vale is the Wing, thanks for correcting me.

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Not the first tier, but t2 and t3? Definitely. It did happen. And that’s people that did old t4 easily, without any struggling.

Then it’s weird indeed. I thought the “Easy mode” of Raids would be T1 fractal difficulty and there has never been a discussion about T2 or T3. I’m curious if these friends of yours would “train” at T1 if T2 and T3 wasn’t available.

The first 2 bosses? Likely. Samarog? Possibly. Deimos? I definitely see how a training option would be useful here.

A team that can down Matthias, which is included in finishing Spirit Vale last I checked, shouldn’t have an issue with Deimos either. You know how to beat hard bosses.

It’s relevant as long as you will keep saying that someone not needing easy mode for training purposes for all encounters means that easy mode for those ’superfluous" encounters is not necessary.

There are other topics on the requirement of easy modes for other reasons. This one was about using it for training. Which wasn’t even the actual topic of the thread but oh well.

There’s a difference between learning your class/playing in general, and learning the encounter. While the first is important, it can never fully replace the second.

It actually can. Once you learn a really hard encounter and how to beat it, let’s say beating Matthias, further harder encounters can also be beaten, like Deimos. You already have the experience in countering hard bosses in general. You know how to react, you know how to deal with break bars, splits big damaging area of effect attacks, timing of mechanics and so on.

(edited by maddoctor.2738)

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

1. New players, because current situation for them is absolutely ridiculous – I’m already see 50+ LI requests not just for Sloth or even VG, but even for Escort (!). Getting a fresh blood into raiding, thing that must be done by itself via proper game design is absolutely failed here.

And how is an easy mode going to help with this? Or you expect this easy mode to award LI and other rewards same as normal mode? Then it’s simple, the LFG mentality will move on to kill proof requests, or the easy mode will also give kill proof for the normal version?

I’m genuinely curious as to how an easy mode can help with the current LI situation

(edited by maddoctor.2738)

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Since i know personally a lot of people like that, you are factually wrong here. You just happen to not associate with such players, i guess.

You know players that were already running T4 Fractals (like old 100 Mai Trin) successfully and when Nightmare was released they went to kitten “train” for the mechanics? That’s really hard to imagine. Unless they went solo for the achievements I guess. A player who is running T4 doesn’t even need a group for T1, unless there is an encounter that requires a specific number of players.

That might be true for some (perhaps even most), but not necessarily true for all. Besides, not all raid encounters are equal, as you know.

Unlike WoW were Raid difficulty has ups and downs from what we’ve seen so far the overall Raid difficulty in GW2 doesn’t do that. Any group of 10 people who cleared Spirit Vale will have zero trouble clearing the Bastion, which is why there is this perception that it’s “easy”. So a training mode for Bastion is redundant, since everyone who goes to the Bastion would’ve already cleared Spirit Vale.

Additionally, as i have mentioned, easy mode would have other (often more important) functions, and for that reason alone having more modes of all encounters should be considered.

That’s irrelevant to what is being discussed here.

There are players that learn better under pressure – for those, throwing them on deep waters of raids is better. There are however players that learn better when they can do it slower, on their own pace, without additional pressure. For those, easy mode would be better.

Those players can learn on all the other content that exist in the game where there is no additional pressure.

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

First, because i disagree from your assumption that it helps noone (most is not the same as all), and second, because you seem to think that it’s the only purpose of easy mode. Which it isn’t. Not by far.

I never, ever, said that it’s the only purpose of easy mode. I was ONLY contesting the point that an easy mode will lead to more players to the normal/hard versions and that still stands. A player that wants to enter hardcore content doesn’t need an easy version of that specific content to begin their journey, they can become “good” players by playing any other type of content of intermediate difficulty. And that’s the purpose of that in-between content in the first place, the stepping stone for the higher difficulty.

Because its not accurate and not even slightly right?

A player who went to T4 Fractals doesn’t need to train for the newer Fractals. I have serious doubts that any T4 player ever needed to play Chaos or Nightmare on lower difficulties to “Train” for the T4 version, they are already good enough, by reaching T4 in the first place, to run any T4 fractal that will be released in the future. There is a reason the challenge mote for the Nightmare fractal is only available at level 100 and you can’t “train” for it at lower levels, it’s supposed to be run by already expert Fractal players.

Let’s imagine a game with 20 Raids. A group of players plays the first one in the line in some form of easy mode. They get good at it, playing well together, forming great teamwork, using amazing builds and then go to the higher difficulty and beat it. Provided that in this game all future Raids will be of similar difficulty to the first one, that’s because it has no vertical progression, no new tiers of gear, nor new level caps, for the other 19 Raids they won’t go to their respective easy modes but go directly to the higher difficulty, they no longer need the training wheels.

That “initial” Raid can either be indeed a Raid encounter, or the content that is the precursor to Raids, namely in this game T4 Fractals. 2 competent groups of T4 fractal runners combined, shouldn’t have any problem clearing any Raid.

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

fixing forum bugs

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

I guess the community split is just too wide for us to even speak the same language.

I don’t know what you are on about.

I’m pretty sure it DOESNT solve the problem in other games. From my understanding from other games (DNT is a multi-game guild) most of the intro/easy mode raiders don’t matriculate up to harder difficulties.

True, but then that’s not the primary problem those difficulty modes are trying to solve (Rednik is indeed mistaken about that).

You even agreed that those who run intro/easy mode raids do not go to the higher difficulties and yet after that you are trying to prove otherwise. It’s simple, those who run the easy versions run those and won’t run the harder versions so following the initial argument (which you also said was mistaken) my initial assessment that

And adding a new difficulty won’t solve the “problem” of not finding groups for the normal/hard versions of the Raids.

is accurate. Why have we been going on and on with multiple posts since then?

Achievements tied to Winning and Losing

in Living World

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Players can wait another week or so for the 1AP that can easily be gotten solo unlike the defend event with the horrible scaling.

That’s not true because in order to get the achievement you must finish a group event. And a group event that is REALLY hard on a level similar to the lumberyard and ship events where you need to break breakbars of some torch bearers before they reach the prisoners. It’s probably the hardest event to do in the entire zone and it’s available only ONCE per run or at least it has a very long cooldown.

So if you wait for the map to die, you will never get the achievement.

The one achievement to save the people from being burned at the stake doesn’t require a group. I did not see anything to indicate that it couldn’t be done solo. It was only 3 mobs from what I remember. I did it with a few other people and they went down very quickly.

Also as an FYI, I got the lumberyard achievement with one other person doing it. Scaling is a factor.

Good to know. So it’s probably a scaling issue because when I tried that event it was near impossible to break the breakbars

Achievements tied to Winning and Losing

in Living World

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Players can wait another week or so for the 1AP that can easily be gotten solo unlike the defend event with the horrible scaling.

That’s not true because in order to get the achievement you must finish a group event. And a group event that is REALLY hard on a level similar to the lumberyard and ship events where you need to break breakbars of some torch bearers before they reach the prisoners. It’s probably the hardest event to do in the entire zone and it’s available only ONCE per run or at least it has a very long cooldown.

So if you wait for the map to die, you will never get the achievement.

Raid Normal/Hard Mode

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Which begs the question of why you care so much about what other people want out of the game.

It only makes sense to care about what other people want, if what they want can hurt your own enjoyment of the game.

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Ah. Yeah. Everyone either starts at 110% efficiency, or they will remain scrubs forever. Got this.

You do know that players can learn how to play from a variety of content and knowing how a SPECIFIC content works is largely irrelevant, right? You don’t need an easy version of an encounter to become a better player, and once you are a better player you don’t need an easy version of future content either.

It’s not useful only to people that have already learned most of those lessons elsewhere.

And again, as I said above, you don’t need an easy version of specific content to become a better player as a whole. You can very very easily get your lessons and become a better player by playing Fractals before ever entering Raids. Fractals have multiple tiers that you want, climb the tiers of Fractals you so like and once you reach the top of Fractals you can move on to Raids. That’s all the training and experience you’ll ever need.

Yeah. Just as the people that are running current raids do not need easy mode. That doesn’t mean (again) that those are not needed for everyone else.

It does mean it’s not needed for everyone else. Since you say this easy mode will help TRAIN people for the normal version of Raids, it means players playing the easy version will move on to the normal version by using the experience they got in the easy version. Otherwise there is no point in calling it training now is there? And once they do move on and master the normal version of one Raid there is no need for an easy mode for future raids (as training) anymore.

You seem to think that the game should completely ignore all players that are not experienced and skilled veterans. Sometimes i even think that you forget that such players even exist.

Those players have a ton of content in the game to play in order to become veterans and skilled players before going to play the content that is for veteran and skilled players.

Should zerk gear be used by casual players?

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

However, that’s not the case at all. The comparison being made is between Berserker and Valkyrie or Marauder, which with the right runes or food can compensate for the lack of precision.

First, the difference between Berserker and Valkyrie/Maruader isn’t as small as you think it is
Second, if all players are running Valkyrie/Marauder it gets even lower because it’s multiplied by each player not running Berserker
Third, how does using different runes compensate for the 10% dps loss of Scholar Runes? Even without perfect uptime, Scholar Runes are a rather large static damage boost

The difficulty of the Bastion of the Penitent

in Fractals, Dungeons & Raids

Posted by: maddoctor.2738

maddoctor.2738

Yes, there are people that could do that. These people are likely already raiding, or could start at current difficulty mode with no problems. They are not for whom easy mode would be made.

People who are struggling with T1 or are not comfortable running T4 will stay in T1 in their lifetime. That’s fine but irrelevant to what was being discussed.

I’m currently “stuck” in T2 fractals because I’m not focused on increasing my AR, and its quite ridiculous how bad some people are at fractals.

In both cases, having the T1 is useful for those who cannot go above that, but let’s don’t pretend it’s useful for those who want to train for T4 as was the original discussion. Players being bad at playing the game and not knowing their builds won’t become better by playing T1 Fractals where you do not need to play your build well or know how to play well.

And even beyond that. Using the Fractal example again, those who trained to be better players and are now running T4 do not need a “training” version for any future fractals anymore.