We aren’t happy with how the length of Shattered Observatory ended up either. It ended up being out of whack with the standard fractal experience for most players. We are taking a lot of things into consideration for the next fractal.
As far as non-cm, t4 goes, I don’t think it is too far off. If you did the following I think it would be pretty comparable to nightmare, and as long as it only comes up in daily rotation with some shorter fractals it would be consistent.
-modify boss 1 so that after the islands phase, his break bar is always up and ready to be broken. It seems the breakbar doesn’t recharge during the islands phase.
-remove trash mobs between bosses 1 and 2.
-speed up unlocking the door for boss 3 after killing boss 2. The NPC is too slow. Same for opening the door to boss 2.
-arc: I think you should standardize orbs phase to happen based off hp %,. at the same percentage every time.
Congrats! Can’t wait to play. Super happy to support you guys, you’ve been killing it lately.
I agree with some points, disagree with others. To me, social awkwardness is ridiculous, and teaches you the exact opposite of what you should be learning for raids. So I agree, fractals have some annoying mechanics.
I do believe that exotics being more expensive than ascended gear is absurd (a real phenomena in hot), and that dungeons helped keep the game from being very grindy. I.e exotics use to be easy to get. Now if your not a raider, both are pretty hard in some cases, such as minstrel.
However, it is no longer an easy task to compare the two styles of content. Dungeons (at least for end game, meta/speed clear players), were about 10 second burst rotations, blasting stealth, sharing swiftness, and running to the next 10 second burst. Fractals usually involve much less trash, much less travel, and more extended combat (which allows mechanics to be relevant). I enjoyed both pieces of content myself.
I’ll add this, no boss in fractals makes me as giddy as lupi did.
I want to emphasis how good the advice these two are giving. Finding teammates who are like minded is an extremely effective way to enjoy this game.
It sounds like you think Astral was implying one player would afk on account 2, while playing with their main account. That is not the case, one player would actually raid on their alt account.
Well, that is not a problem, require everyone to not be afk to get the bonus reward
LOL
Astral outlined the problems well. In particular problem #2. It sounds like you think Astral was implying one player would afk on account 2, while playing with their main account. That is not the case, one player would actually raid on their alt account.
It is actually very easy to get an alt account raid ready. Lv 80 boost an engi, use a power engi (core spec), run cof a few times for zerker gear. Its not optimal by any means, but for a good group it won’t really be a problem either.
10 people in a static all do it together, means that for the price of 1 account, you get 10 weeks of bonus rewards in your full clears? That’s what? 5$ a week? Less if you get hot when its on sale.
In addition, you get an alt account out of the deal: daily log in rewards, daily fractals rewards, weekly raid rewards (save up 1000 magnetite, sell ghostly infusion, transfer gold to main account, repeat).
Ofc Anet might be fine with this, after all it leads to ppl buying accounts (which you can’t get with gems).
(edited by thrag.9740)
If you think discussing PFL is derailing the thread, you should complain to the person who brought it up.
meh, it is a little too rectangular for me. I liked the sorta aerodynamic shape of the prior. But I’d take either if I could just dye the thing.
I love how much more communication we get from devs in this forum now. Pre-hot and post-hot is like night and day. I hope you guys keep it up, because its making a difference.
Here is something people have not really brought up into the discussion.
Yes, condi ps brings a lot of offensive support, but they bring no defensive support. condi ps can’t heal you. Compare to druid which not only brings strong offensive support, but also strong condi clense, strong healing, and other defensive abilities such as projectile conversion, search and rescue, stone spirit for protection, etc.
Also compare this to chrono. In addition to great offensive buffs, chrono also has amazing defensive utility. First off, distortion. Distortion share is insanely strong. good chronos consistently distort:
-gorse slams
-sloth shakes
-matthias haduken (especially when rezzing somone)
-kc slams, and pizza cutter after catching orb phase
-samarog slams
-deimos slams
That alone makes chrono defensive utility amazing, but then you have things like permanent protection through chaos line/herald runes, vigor easily accessible through chaos, resistance, and stability, all pretty easily accessible. They can slot things like feedback, disenchanter, and precog for even more defensive utility. They can pull and group mobs together. A 4 condi clense on a 10 second cool down via their healing mantra.
What defensive utility does warrior have for the group? Very little. What I am saying is, your comparing a class that has offensive support and dps to two classes that have both offensive and defensive support, and complaining that the prior class has too much dps.
Personal stance: I don’t see people stacking condi ps in raids. I see 2 warriors in each group, and it could very easily drop down to 1 warrior (which is the point of this thread). Occasionally you get a dps warrior, but that is a seperate build. So no, I don’t think warrior is broken. If people start stacking them, then I will reevaluate my stance.
Because interplay between class specific mechanics isn’t that vastly different. At most your changing you positioning and rotations.
I mean, you could literally say that is the only difference between every class. If changing rotation isn’t too big of a change to warrant being locked out of t4s, then why would class matter? The only difference between dps ele and dps guard is the, ‘rotation’.
Also, I think a hammer guard and a staff thief play more similarly than a condi ranger and a magi druid.
edit: just to be clear, I understand thief can have more than auto-attack as a rotation. But I think for average t4 pugs, this is a fair comparison.
You’re not trying to pick learn upwards of 50 new skills and traits, while learning cast times, animations and ranges all the while trying to balance all of that on the pre existing difficulty of fractals which are tiered in such a way that presupposes that you already have all of that knowledge.
Weaver is introducing 48 new weapon skills above water, 58 if you include the 10 on trident. Plus 5 utility skills. Should we make fractal level elite spec based?
Look, its your belief, you can ignore these inconsistencies if you want. I’m just pointing out that the lines you want to draw, viewing progression as character based rather than account based, are pretty blurry at best.
So, do people still feel 100 cm is rewarding enough? I’ve voiced this opinion before and no one seemed to agree. I consider the rewards for 100 cm pretty underwhelming.
If a mesmer chooses mirage, he loses alacrity and quickness completely. If a ranger chooses soulbeast over druid, he loses grace of the land. And both in turn become kittenty, selfish low tier DPS specs as a result with nothing to offer.
Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t realize those specs were already released and tested in raids. Please post those logs for us, I’m sure that information would help Anet balance it to be better.
I brought this up because Tex believes fractal level should be character specific. Is that your stance too? Not even class specific, but character specific?
I mean before we jump shark here, if the game had a way to detect class vs character i’d support that over character. That being said it still would make the entire topic irrelevant as you could just toss your ascended stuff on your alt of the same character type since literally all of it can be shared.
Since that however isn’t the case, and there’s a real ease of getting ascended gear / money in the game i don’t think it would be unhealthy for the fractals to return to the old system, with some adjustments as already proposed above.
What? Its a simple 1 by 9 array (9 for classes). If anet can’t do that, they can’t do anything.
Lets talk about the core of your belief. You think that in order to learn to play a class effectively in t4, they should have to play that class through t1,2, and 3 correct?
And you believe that playing one class doesn’t allow you to learn to play another class. My question is, why would that mentality stop at class lines? Why not builds?
If you play a condi mesmer from t1-t4, why should you be allowed to swap to a chrono/buff build and still play t4? After all, they are very different builds. Or what about magi druid vs condi ranger? Worlds of difference, just as much difference as warrior vs ele. What about elite specs? Why should fractal level being character/class specific, rather than build specific?
Unlike chrono and druid, warrior gets these huge group power boosts for free in a core spec, which means they can take this powerful utility on any warrior spec.
For free, is just another way of saying, ‘they have nothing better they can take’. Warriors have a good support line, but they don’t have 3 separate dps oreiented lines. As such, you usually see two warriors in a group, but never more than that.
Considering 6 ranger groups were pretty good pre condi food nerf, and mesmer has so many different viable builds I can barely count them, I don’t think either of these classes have any room to complain.
You say that warrior’s core specs are too good, but there are no good core warrior builds I know of, unlike ranger,thief, engi,mesmer, and even ele (arcane-water-fire) to a lesser extent.
They’re more powerful, unkillable versions of druid spirits that can be moved around once combat ends, and nobody seems to mind (warrior banner elite is a flat out superior version of ranger spirit elite).
Battle standard cool down: 240
Nature spirit cool down: 120
Both have a duration of 1 minute.
Effective radius of both: 600.
banner cast time: 2 seconds
spirit cast time: 1.5 seconds
Battle standard’s boons are all redundant, nature spirit pulsing stability is encounter changing for several bosses.
Empower Allies is fine, those auras encourage bringing at least one of every class. But PS and banners push warrior utility way over the top.
Actually they encourage bringing 2 of every class, unlike banners which encourage you to bring only a single warrior. We just have not yet reached that point.
PS in particular is toxic because it stacks might so effectively, it makes any utilities or traits that grant might obsolete on other classes.
I hope they revisit combo fields, because honestly blasting fire fields and taking advantage of auras in a group should be a group effort to maintain high stacks of might instead of some trivial task fulfilled by a single group member.
If you think class exclusion is bad now, just wait until every time a guardian drops a light field, and the entire team can’t stack might anymore.
Also, the might stacking of other classes is not irrelevant. A regen druid provides enough might that warrior can change its build around. Some groups might choose to be lazy and just overcap might, but its hardly fair to blame anything but the players for that. Anet made a system where that might is not irrelevant, players simply ignore it because most players are not interested in optimized runs, just quick and easy ones.
And I’ll repeat the same thing. Who is everyone? Those of us who know the dungeon paths and don’t suck, are not bothered by this one bit. If you did daily dungeon tours for the 8 token bonus, you would not have this issue at all.
All of AC, All of CM, All of SOE and so on. Multiple times a week.
I mostly run dungeons on my warrior, theif and ele anyway. Because they are the best classes for dungeon running. It’s simple really.
Do you even run dungeons? Because this is mostly a non issue for the seasoned dungeon runner. And it’s perfectly understandable why it exist. But I actually seek to understand the systems of the game, not simply complain that something that doesn’t give instant gratification is inconvenient.
I think your heavily misinterpreting what I am saying.
I am pointing out, that you can’t open dungeons in explorable mode, unless you have done story mode on that specific character. You could have multiple warriors (like I do), and have gotten the dungeoneer title with one of them, and the game won’t let you open explorable mode with any of the others. Let alone other classes. Worse yet, there is no easy indicator where you can see which characters have done which story modes.
Even if you believe there is merit to playing through story mode on your alt rather than letting explorable mode be unlocked account wide, are you really going to argue it makes more sense for it to be character specific and not class specific?
Do you really think the game is better because my third warrior needs to do ac story mode before doing p123, even though my other 2 warriors have already done it?
I brought this up because Tex believes fractal level should be character specific. Is that your stance too? Not even class specific, but character specific?
Exploits and bugs are not the same.
Distortion working on green circles for VG is an exploit, not a bug. Technically speaking both are working as intended, even if that’s not how the fight is intended.
Source? How do you know Anet intended for only a single method of handling mechanics?
I’m not trying to say dungeon’s form of it is identical to fractals, I’m just pointing out that it is a widely hated system.
This thread again? If you have problems with the current agony system you are either cheap, lazy or both. This game throws agony infusions at you like bukkakke.
And hated by who? The same people that think ascended armor is hard to get? The only people i see that ‘hate’ the current agony system are those that hate working, or the same ones asking for the same thing for years, that make a similar thread every few weeks. Like its literally the same people crying about agony.
If i ever want to gear an an alt for fractals i just dig into my 10+ stacks of +5’s and make the infusions i need.
The cuddle police that moderate these forums will censor me if I say what I want to say to you, so I’ll just leave this:
I’m just going to point out that character bound, non-tradeable progression exists in dungeons, it never had the effect your describing, and to this day everyone hates it.
And hope that you can figure out your own mistake.
To me, a much larger problem is that no matter how many fractals we get, we are for the most part only going to do 3 per day.
Worse yet, look at the frequency that each new fractal is available for daily rewards. Check the 15 day rotation here: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractals_of_the_Mists
Players are only playing shattered observatory non-cm once a week roughly. As we get more fractals, each fractal’s frequency will decrease. Unlike the dungeon system where old dungeons could die off, and new dungeons could be well populated (well…if there had ever been new dungeons), fractals never allow old content to die. And although that can certainly be appealing, they are not allowing new content to thrive either.
druid when you don’t need much healing but like doing more damage
ventari rev when you want to be healed A LOT AND QUICKLY (super burst heals)
magi auramancer for HIGH SUSTAIN HEALING (think things like ignore-mechanics-o-clock vg runs)
minstrel chrono is more of an off healer. they’re still insanely good, of course. but I’m not sure having a minstrel chrono would mean you could swap a healer for another dps… you ccould try. it could be interesting.all healers can sustain and burst heal, but those are the strengths from what I’ve seen.
In a sense, you can swap minstrel chrono for healer. If a minstrel chrono allows you to swap magi druid for condi druid. It would effectively be similar.
Most famous example: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/56mmnk/trio_vale_guardian_by_sc/
There is also minstrel chrono, which is not technically a healer, however if your playing with a non-regen druid, the more powerful regen ticks of the minstrel chrono are significant.
So, if your playing with a staff/staff magi druid or a condi druid, minstrel chrono can make a significant impact. Condi druid are typically only seen in experienced groups, but some new players seem to like staff/staff magi druid. It is the widely held opinion of my static that there is no reason to play staff/staff rather than staff/warhorn+x.
The leader board sounds a lot like fractal leaderboards. For those unaware, Fractal leaderboards were promised 3 times (the latest being with HOT) and every time Anet realized it just doesn’t work (they should be permanently canceled now). Fractal leaderboards were a huge investment sink with no payoff. I’d rather not see resources wasted like that again.
My stance: Keep making raids, make the first boss of every raid easy, make the middle boss medium difficulty, make the final boss hard. Keep doing challenge motes if it is not too resource heavy. I.e. If it takes more resources to make a challenge mote than to make an entire encounter of equal difficulty, make the new encounter instead. Considering the art assets are reused, I would assume this is not the case.
If Anet wants to devote more resources towards the casual players, I believe dungeons and fractals would have a better return on investment. However, I do support a quick dirty easy mode for story purposes. Divide all boss stats by 10, remove all rewards, and still allow 10 players to complete the raid. Disable all achievements too ofc.
Another is utilization of partywipe mechanics – in dungeons there were practically no mechanics where a mistake of a single person could wipe a whole group, and almost no situations (barring total wipe) that you couldn’t recover from. Group size is another consideration, one that magnifies the previous problem.
Raids have almost no guaranteed full party wipe mechanics either. Lets examine them:
No party wipes you can’t recover from:
Vg- you can recover from missed greens
sabetha – you can recover from one person dying to flame wall, or a missed jump. In fact there is an achievement for missing a lot of jumps.
sloth – you can changing eating patterns if someone drops volatile on the group
trio – I can’t think of anything you would call a party wipe mechanic here
matt – Nothing here wipes a party, worst scenario would be a person dropping their special action key on the group, even that can be recovered from (although you probably lose some players)
escort – single wipe mechanic, not party wipe
cairyn – no party wipe mechanics. Reflects are bad, but recoverable.
mo – bad claiming can be recovered from.
sammy – friendship mechanic fails can be recovered from.
deimos – 2nd chrono can back up tank, 2nd druid can back up hands kite.
failed mechanics you can’t recover from:
xera – missed special action key is a party wipe, and completely individual responsibility.
kc – a real party wide wipe pretty much guaranteed if one person isn’t in the correct circle.
gorseval : real party wide wipe imo, although it is hardly personal responsibility, and more so group responsibility to either destroy walls or pass dps check.
So of the 13 raids, I can see 3 guaranteed party wipes. 2 of them are individual responsibility, 1 is group. Please point out any others you want to discuss, because it hardly seems like raids are filled with situations where a ‘mistake of a single person could wipe a whole group.’
Dungeons had examples of this.
AC – a person summoning spider queen at the wrong time wiped the group, this happened frequently. Although this was certainly recoverable. Effected all 3 paths
CM – not putting exploding barrel on door properly could cause wipe, but recoverable.
COF – Not standing in circles after flame run in p1 before the final boss, could cause wipes, and this was definitely personal responsibility. But recoverable.
COE – agro the abom could lead to group wipes pretty easily.
Arah – giving lupi grubs sure didn’t help things (for the few groups that fought him legit).
So yeah, I guess there were no guaranteed wipes in dungeons that I can recall, but there were certainly instances of personal responsibility leading to wipes.
But the thing that pains me the most (and the thing that is directly tied to what this thread is about, maddoctor) is the fact that raids promote the elitist behaviour in ways dungeons never did. Yes, the toxic behaviour existed in dungeons too, but it could be easily ignored, because it was not supported by game mechanics. Now it’s no longer true. And not only it’s not true, but in many cases dev statements seem to suggest that Anet is encouraging the elitist feelings of the raid group
It is difficult for me to understand what situations your referring to. Could you please give me your definition of toxic behavior, and specific mechanics that are promoting it?
Which brings us to the last point: there’s also a difference in the attitudes of devs. The level of importance devs assign to raids (and to raiding community) is orders of magnitude greater that they’ve assigned to dungeons. It’s so great that it impacts other content as well (which never happened with dungeons). As such, it makes raid really hard to ignore if you happen to dislike them.
Are you saying that it is better when content is as neglected as dungeons were? Every actively developed piece of content in the game should have orders of magnitude more importance than dungeons. Although I will concede, Anet set a precedent with dungeons, that instanced content should be abandoned, buggy, and the laughing stock of the game. I am personally, glad they broke that precedent, and it was certainly not a precedent that was advertised with the game.
Did 12 runs in a “relaxed farm” and went out with 40g + 150k (full karma boosters) in one hour. This is definitely farm and the complete opposite of terrible in my eyes. Of course you can always optimize it and get away with more but terrible is something different.
Some people really need to be grounded. ^^
I’m not commenting on whether the farm is good, I’m commenting how much it stinks to have to, ‘wait to play’ because people leave frequently.
This is more so a problem with the fact that players are not synchronized. Say your farming for 1 hour, and someone leaves. You fill that spot with a fresh player, but the other 4 players are not fresh, and may not want to continue for as long. Finding a team that matches your desires and needs is always key. This is typically more difficult with pugging.
I’m not trying to say dungeon’s form of it is identical to fractals, I’m just pointing out that it is a widely hated system.
I’m just going to point out that character bound, non-tradeable progression exists in dungeons, it never had the effect your describing, and to this day everyone hates it.
12 runs is about 20-30mins. That’s not really a farm bro.
This is why pugging this farm is so terrible. You spend more time in the lfg than you do in the fractal.
Yh, idgaf how wow does raids. This is a different game, not a wow clone, if you want wow go play wow.
This post perfectly encapsulates why raids never should have been put into the game to start.
Yh, idgaf how wow does raids. This is a different game, not a wow clone, if you want wow go play wow.
Just as people that wanted raids should have looked for games with raids instead of wanting them to be brought to gw2?
Other than the fact that raids are actually supported content, and dungeons never were, what is the difference between raids and dungeons? Dungeons were not face roll easy at release. Dungeons had mechanics, we just killed bosses so fast that we could ignore them (which we do with raids: kc, xera stand still, gorse no updraft). Dungeons required teamwork (either of the panel puzzles in COE).
Is it that dungeons were not designed around healers existing? Valid criticism, if you want to argue that. However, dungeons were suppose to have a trinity too, its just that the trinity was suppose to be support, damage, and debuffing (or cc), and every class was suppose to be capable of filling each role.
I don’t care if they are called raids or not. This game promised challenging instanced content from release. Dungeons fell short of that, raids are much better, and have addressed that issue.
However, I will agree that Anet abandoned some of their core philosophy. For example, no gear grind was promised, but then expansions release stat distributions (vipers) that are more optimal than prior stats (sinister or even earlier rabid if I recal), and make exotics literally more expensive than ascended (minstrels). That’s bs and I will support you if you make a thread calling anet out for it.
Basically, tell me what about raids doesn’t fit with gw2? Is it just the name? Is all the raid backlash really over a name? Or do you want to explain to me, what mechanically raids are doing that dungeons were not trying to do?
Astral, it is also worth mentioning that having both would devalue the exclusives. If players could farm magnetite shards infinitely, the prices of things like ghostly infusion would crash, and raids would be a lot less rewarding.
Additionally, we have seen repeatedly through out the history of this game, that currencies which have unlimited caps, never get good rewards added, because players would dump their stock piles and flood the market with that reward. This is one of the reasons fractals get a new currency with every new fractal, rather than using the preexisting currencies (relics, pristines, pages, golds, matrix, and now the new celestial one). You can also look at badges of honor, which have largely been abandoned by Anet (even having their value nerfed by removing the gift of battle from vendors).
Why not put in different raid difficulties so everyone can enjoy it?
They did:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/scale-raid-bosses-from-easiest-to-hardestThat isn’t raid difficulty.
Yh, idgaf how wow does raids. This is a different game, not a wow clone, if you want wow go play wow.
A new currency would be nice, I hope the portable magnetite vendor works with the new currency.
Honestly, my main interest is the gold for each boss kill, the exotic, and the loot bags. I want the liquid rewards. More rare drops like ghostly infusion would excite me more than mag shard cap being raised.
Its also possible support (boon duration→quickness) guards will become a thing. But right now, berserker guard is the typical guard you will find. My static brought guards for our run this week, seemed solid.
One of the devs was on here a few months ago. Basically they said that if there were designing it from scratch, they would have made it account wide progression rather than single character progression. But at this point, it is probably too much of a change to switch. So, it seems unlikely.
Just one of many reasons I like dungeons and raids more.
Why not put in different raid difficulties so everyone can enjoy it?
They did:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/scale-raid-bosses-from-easiest-to-hardest
ANet didn’t kill off the dungeon community;
They literally told us their intentions directly when they did it.
Here is the source, straight from John Smith.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/Economy-Questions-Repost/first
Is the intention to deincentivize dungeons
YesIs the intention to reduce targeted liquid gold earning, or are you putting that liquid somewhere else thats targetable?
The intention is not entirely to reduce liquid gold earning, we’ll be using up the slack we generate in other locationsWhat type of instanced content do you see offering marketable rewards that players can take part in on a regular basis?
Fractals
Please re-read. You get rewards for all the fractals you do each day. You don’t get a special bonus reward for additional fractals.
Ok, lets continue with this naive fallacy that the daily chests are just, ‘bonus’ and not the real reward. Why are there no groups that do any t4s besides dailies? The daily is just a, ‘special bonus reward’ after all. It sounds like fractals are incredibly under tuned then, since only fractals that receive a ‘special bonus reward’ are ever ran at all.
Hey you said it, that’s just a, ‘special bonus reward’. So then the content should be rewarding enough that players run it without that ‘special bonus reward’ right? It is after all just a, ‘special bonus reward’ right?
(edited by thrag.9740)
Doing fractals already has a pretty good reward; there’s no need to add more.
Doing fractals has a good reward, for 30 minutes a day.
It has a great reward for 30 minutes a day; it has a good reward for additional time spent, depending on your group’s speed.
Your misinterpreting what I am trying to convey. I am not trying to save t4s are not rewarding enough if your group takes 45 mins. I am complaining about how much less daily content we have now than we had years ago.
If you don’t want to hear disagreement, why post in a public forum? The reason people don’t do dungeons is that there’s a lot of stuff out there with competitive rewards — the lack of which was a major deficit in the game before.
I’m not interested in hearing the same tired excuse, that is why I adressed it preemptively. If you want to add something to it, go for it. But the fact is, anet purposefully killed off the dungeon community, and that drastically changes the experience for the worse.
Anet decimated the amount of daily content we had. They promised us that fractals would be taking up the slack and be the developed 5 man content going forward. But it doesn’t matter how many new fractals we get, as the daily fractal system limits the amount of daily content. There could be 200 fractals, and we would only get rewards for 3 per day in this system.
If you think you only get 3 rewards per day for doing fractals, you’re not looking at all your loot.
.
Please reread, you misread. I did not say you only get 3 rewards, wtf would that even mean. I said, you only get rewards for 3 fractals per day. That is accurate, 3 fractals per day give the full rewards, 6 if you want to include recs. However considering pages are worthless, I don’t include recs.
fixing the forum bug. I want to say something about how ridiculous it is that this bug has existed this long, but I guess I should make a reddit thread instead.
Doing fractals already has a pretty good reward; there’s no need to add more.
Doing fractals has a good reward, for 30 minutes a day. My proposal wouldn’t add anything to that reward. What if I wanted to play gw2 for a few hours on the weekend? Daily dungeon tours use to give a lot more daily content, now we have a ton less.
And I’m not interested in hearing anything like, ‘dungeons are still there’. They are still there, the community however is not, and that was Anet’s stated intent.
Anet decimated the amount of daily content we had. They promised us that fractals would be taking up the slack and be the developed 5 man content going forward. But it doesn’t matter how many new fractals we get, as the daily fractal system limits the amount of daily content. There could be 200 fractals, and we would only get rewards for 3 per day in this system.
Now, to be fair to Anet, they have produced these repeatable challenge motes for 99 and 100. However, those hardly feel like a replacement for the purposefully killed off dungeon scene, and they certainly don’t feel like a means towards expensive goals such as legendary items, etc.
That would inevitably lead to a new meta comp designed and tailored for speed and efficiency. Any kind of repeatable farm leads to this. It would genuinely be much more interesting at first but over time it would become just as repetitive as Frac40 is. Farm aint about fun or being casual. It’s about hardcore efficiency, otherwise u are better off playing silverwastes and HoT metas.
I never said it wouldn’t have a meta, I said probably a more interesting one, in particular I imagine stealth skipping would enter into the discussion. A skill which use to be important in gw2, which is now pretty much forgotten.
Also, there are plenty of casual farmers. Half the dungeon community pre hot were basically casual farmers. Half the f40 groups have relaxed group comps. I see necros, engis, and thieves in f40 groups all the time.
You say casual fractal farmers might as well run meta events, has it occurred to you that players actually have preferences? We get about 45 minutes of instanced pve content per day. More like 3-4 total hours on raid night (thats including fractals). Maybe players want to play content where their individual contribution is meaningful, while also working towards long term goals such as legendaries, etc.
Obviously op should just make their own group, but I want to bring up something else.
Can we replace the fractal 40 farm with something better? How about a repeatable achievement to do all fractals 25-50, that has a really good monetary reward? I think it would be a lot more interesting to run through a variety of lower level fractals, rather than the same fractal again and again. Additionally, this would probably lead to more interesting team comps, and filling a lot of the void left behind by the killing of dungeons.
Of course it is, Elitism is driven by Ego, purely put Elitism is a feeling that someone is better then other people. If 10 random filthy casuals could clear raids reliably, it would substantially dull the egotism and pride currently surrounding doing raids. This Egotism is what is fueling the Elitism. It’s that Simple, people that do raids feel they are superior to those that don’t.
Exactly how Dungeons used to be, and once the filthy casuals were able to PUG dungeons reliably, it curbed the elitism surrounding them.
You obviously have read the older posts, you can clearly see the cycle.
There was no cycle, it was simply the case that dungeons were easy enough for players to clear while playing casually. There were still plenty of people, myself included, who make lfgs such as, ‘p123 experienced 80s’ right up until the day dungeons were killed. We expected thieves to blind and blast stealth, we expected warriors to run ps/ea/banners, and we expected our teammates to contribute. These are things you call elitism, but they were not necessary to clear content. They were necessary to clear content faster.
In present day, basic teamwork is still considered elitist by you, but you have content that requires basic teamwork. So casual groups are unable to clear reliably. None of that, has to do with egos. There were and always will be players who want to be efficient with their time. Its human nature, raids neither created nor exacerbated it, raids are simply difficult enough that the casual option which was present in dungeons is not longer as viable.
This is not to say there are no casual raiders, but even casual raiders typically have put some thought into their builds. Compare this to casual dungeon runners, who sometimes didn’t even have all rune slots filled.
Thank you for that history lesson, but that reinforces my point, it does not shoot it down.
Allow me to explain, see by the time I joined (2 years after launch) Dungeons were accessible to the point that a scrub like me could post an “All welcome” for most Dungeons and Fractals, and still have a pretty good chance of success.
So in that regard, over time the elitism surrounding dungeons had obviously lessened, to the point that pretty much anyone with almost any build could have a shot to get some dungeons done, as the Chillax base of players started to move in and do them.
Whereas, Raids ,now 2 years after launch, the elitism cultivated by them has grown to the point that they feel justified to use of DPS meters.
So I stand by what I said, now, since you know your history, you should be able to see clearly that this is a negative trend down the path of toxic elitism.
The fact you could post, “all Welcome” and reliably clear was not at all indicative of elitism. You could post an exact replica of that lfg for raids, and it would fill. It just might not clear. This is not in anyway related to elitism, this is because raids are more challenging than dungeons by design.
However, what your doing, is imo the wrong approach. Gw2 needs challenging instanced content. Before raids, gw2 pve was such a joke that when this happened:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5RCeGiMby8
No body defended gw2, because it was true:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/2tisb0/pve_thats_not_terrible/
If that same comment happened today, there would be many players who would defend this game, and spread a popular message about it. The optics surrounding a game matter to draw new players in.
However, the game is lacking the casual content dungeons use to provide. Dungeons should have their rewards returned, maybe 1 or 2 new dungeons should be released, etc. All this hostility towards raids comes from the fact that dungeons are discontinued. I bet you wouldn’t view raids nearly as unfavorably if anet was still making dungeons too.
nahh.. raids din’t create Elitism.. they may have fostered it, nurtured it, and gave it a place to grow exponentially to the point that people who do raids feel justified to use spyware on other players.. but they did not create it.
I think your determined to remain ignorant of the truth. Elitism was cultivated and grown plenty inside of dungeons.
If you want, go back to the old forum threads, people have always been excluding players who would slow them down….
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/You-re-not-level-80-kick
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Skipgeons-and-80s
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Thief-Ranger-in-dungeons-kick
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/I-think-this-game-s-population-became-offending
This ones really good example:
https://dviw3bl0enbyw.cloudfront.net/uploads/forum_attachment/file/47323/thief_vs_guard.jpg
Disparaging of the name calling, I still stand by what I said, the fact that people feel the need to use 3rd party software like DPS meters, is most assuredly a negative direction for the game.
Oh please, you act like dekeys didn’t have a spreadsheet predicting optimal dps of every class before raids came out. There have always been players who seek to optimize, dps meters are just the empirical tool they use now, instead of purely theoretical predictions.
Well given it was far easier for me to quickly find 4 half-way competent people and do a dungeons or fractals, and leave the elitist to rot in the corner while I played the game, as opposed to needing to find 9 raid equipped people that want to a dungeon that tame gated by the week. So yah.. things were better back then.. might explain however why I made so many friends with necros and rangers.. always wondered about that. but we completed dungeons just fine…
If you want the re-introduction of casual instanced content, I would support you fully. I love the harder instanced content we have received, but I also miss having casual instanced content available. I think dungeon rewards should be un-nerfed, and I would love to see the dungeon community come back to life. In fact I would also love to see new dungeons come into the game.
But, you were implying that raids created the ‘elitism’ you don’t like. I’m pointing out facts counter to that notion.
Underwater that was so long ago just before hot you stood on the tree mate.
You understand my point is that this negative behavior existed before raids right?
I dunno.. personally, and this is just me, but I think the fact that people are using DPS meters, is a sign that things have taken a negative direction.
You didn’t think dungeon groups that insta kicked all necros was a problem? Or rangers?
What about right when hot came out and we all did swamp of the mists by killing mossman underwater, and anyone who didn’t want to was kicked?
What about when cheesing lupi was the norm, and any guard who wouldn’t do it was kicked from the group?
All that was fine? The community was to your liking before raids came out?
A game that’s supposed to be prided in its community got this from a new player to our game.
It’s disgusting that it’s devolved so far that it’s making outside players laugh, sneer, insult and pity what is happening here.
Something that troubles me, is that neither of these are informed opinions. New players do not have an accurate picture of the raiding community. One week isn’t enough to form an accurate picture. Outside players is even less informed.
Due to the fact that there is no gating to raids, literally anyone can do them. There are no storyquest requirements. You aren’t required to have cleared any dungeons, there’s not even a gearscore (or in this case quality) requirement. Show up. Be 80. You can technically walk in.
Gating is imposed by players. Things like LI pings, gear pings, and even monitoring dps meters are used by players to gate new players from joining groups they don’t belong in. The problem is always, when players get teammates that are not a good fit. Experienced speed runners need to stick with experienced speed runners, and beginners need to stick with beginners. When these groups mix, that is when expectations are not met, and frustration emerges.