Do you think vertical progression only for specific Raids would help the mode in the long term ?

As many have noticed vertical progression in MMOs has gotten stale over time and every new raid is just boost to the numbers which in turn turns the older raids pointless so the carrot on the stick has gotten rotten after some time. Before big part of raiding , lets say 90% was preparation and the rest 10% was the execution which made the hard content last for long and killing the last boss after months made it feel like you accomplished something, now most of that has been "streamlined" and the RP in your G has been removed.Even though vertical progression is flawed it gives the incentive to work towards something.So i suggest that a system of vertical progression, not by armor, weapons or trinkets but with the mastery system and i dare say collections ( even though some are bad) and something similar to the PVP build panel, but for mastery buffs and skills only **usable in this one raid and not anywhere else. So lets say you have a boss with freezing powers and what not so your raid build consist of masteries that help you overcome wipe attacks, maybe you have a collection, which requires you to do fractals ,some old raid bosses,some open world stuff, some crafting and then it opens a mastery that lets you craft a cauldron of thawing elixir like the one in Bitterfrost Frontier which gives you a buff reducing cold damage of the area. Even lets say you get a mastery that breaks a wall and opens a bonus boss and what not. As you see this is somewhat influenced by the way SAB works and i wonder why the devs didn't use similar design in the rest of the game.Maybe this should be only Challenge Mode system and raids stay as is so it doesn't alienate the community. Also creating this for CM as a long term goal might spark some competition like in Warcraft(even though it's finished in 3 days as opposed to before when it took months), people seem to care who will get the world first when its presented like a race. A leaderboard for who killed each boss first, who has the fastest full wing clear or boss would also help.

Vertical progression in Raids won't work for multiple reasons, but the first one on the list is that Raids are locked behind expansions. If the Raids of Path of Fire require a mastery that you can earn by playing Heart of Thorns Raids, this would mean Raids are no longer specific expansion content but you'd need every single expansion in order to play them.

I know that in lots of cases, you absolutely need both expansions to Raid, either for gear stats or elite specs but there is no hard lock on those. There are many good spec options that only need Path of Fire and others that need Heart of Thorns. This isn't like other games that you get all previous expansions cheap (or free) when you buy the most recent one. Each expansion must be bought individually.

Unless this part is changed (do we want it?) then adding a complete vertical progression system in all Raids won't work at all. Such vertical progression could only work in Raids that belong to a specific expansion, like for example, having a collection or a mastery that you must acquire in Wing 5, in order to survive an attack in Wing 6. But I don't think such limited vertical progression would be of any use, it would most likely be just an annoyance.

I don't even quite see exactly what problem you are trying to solve. This won't bring in new players, and I suspect it's not in the purpose of making regulars not leave. So we'd basically do what we already do (play bosses over and over) but now the optimal paths will be locked until we do X runs? This somehow manages to handicap both the noobies and speedrunners alike, doesn't it?

Grinding is almost always a state of mind OP, not something hard coded into gameplay. If you have several hundreds of hours total playing the game (like many of the regular raiders), you got your money's worth already, and expecting that the same bosses would keep feeling rewarding over and over and over is just a naive feeling. Even if they timegated your progress into optimal paths by vertical progression, you'd still find it bad that you're killing the same boss over and over just to "artificially" get rewarded with content you're already good enough to overcome.

There is no way out of this conundrum without more content, and if it's more content you're asking for, just that is enough, not to gate it behind convoluted and non-streamlined means.

Finally, the long term of GW2 (and also raids in particular) is already here, it's happening right now. This is a mature game with an established community, and even if raids came at a late date, we're already well into the second expansion which had them and they've been here for years. Like Fractals, we can expect updates and lots of structural changes but the overall pace and most importantly, the developing cadence, is going to remain what it is right now, in average. Personally, me and many others I know are the kind who play intensively when something we want is released, then leave the game until (and if) some other update pops up later, but I'm absolutely not going to use my anecdotal evidence to say the game is dying. Quite on the contrary, I don't think we have to worry about the 'long term' content, let alone enough to introduce meaningful vertical progression years into the game's release.

I somewhat agree with your general idea but I don't think its really "polished enough". Don't see why should these skills be used only in raids. Why not open world or fractals? Obviously PvP is a no go for this. Making it apply only in raids doesn't really make sense from the perspective of getting new players who are not doing raids or keeping up current raid population. Nobody really does fractals because of fractal potions, so i don't really see why would people do raid content for some slight modification that is only applicable in the very same content.

@"maxwelgm.4315" said:I don't even quite see exactly what problem you are trying to solve. This won't bring in new players, and I suspect it's not in the purpose of making regulars not leave. So we'd basically do what we already do (play bosses over and over) but now the optimal paths will be locked until we do X runs? This somehow manages to handicap both the noobies and speedrunners alike, doesn't it?

Many people react well to external motivation. Making your character stronger is one of those so its safer to assume it would attract some new players who are currently "so-so" about the raids. But i agree with your sentiment that this is kind of a weird way to do it.

@maddoctor.2738 said:Vertical progression in Raids won't work for multiple reasons, but the first one on the list is that Raids are locked behind expansions. If the Raids of Path of Fire require a mastery that you can earn by playing Heart of Thorns Raids, this would mean Raids are no longer specific expansion content but you'd need every single expansion in order to play them.

So you can make it work by making it so that each raid has its own respective short mastery line. No?

People keep trying to solve problems they perceive without thinking of the bigger picture.

Let's address vertical progression:GW2 lacks vertical progression after a point X. Many raiders, especially long-term raiders, and even non raiders have passed point X ages ago. Even the most casual long-term raiders I know are on their second or third legendary armor by now. Many long-term non raiders have multiple sets of ascended armor, even more if they run fractals.

1.) Adding a small amount of vertical progression will hardly make a difference to long-term raiders and it will certainly not keep many motivated long. Thus we arrive at the same situation for them as we have now. What it does create is another barrier for new raiders which they might have to grind through.

2.) Adding a big amount of vertical progression will substantially change the game. It might scare off long-term raiders who just don't feel like having to deal with this. Meanwhile it would create even bigger barriers for new players.

3.) If this vertical progression is limited to raids only, how will this entice people who are not interested in raids currently to start raiding? Your character does not grow in power any where else, so why should someone not interested in raiding suddenly go:"Oh yes, now my character can become even more powerful in a game mode I was not interested in." There is tons of progression available in WvW which would fill weeks worth of game play. I don't see a vast majority of uninterested players from PvE flood that game mode. It's the exact same principle and clearly shows ho pointless this idea is.

3.) Any player seeking constant vertical progression will never be satisfied with GW2s system. That should be clear by now. Trying to walk some bastard middle path between some vertical gear progression and no vertical gear progression will simply alienate players from both sides.

@"kasoki.5180" said:So you can make it work by making it so that each raid has its own respective short mastery line. No?

We had that for wing 1. How long exactly was this of use? What good did it do long-term? Nothing at all besides being another bar which needed filling and was forgotten 1 week in.

GW2 motivation for players can not come from adding substantial vertical progression. A bit, like masteries, is fine, yet even here people refuse to participate long enough to max all of them out. Slight vertical progression can enhance the game to some extent, but it will never fill that void for players who seek a constant gear thread-mill. There is no point in trying to "fix" this issue because it needs no fixing. This player is simply not the target audience.

no thank you, I'm happy with raids as they are, lets focus on making new wings. In particular it really disappoints me that we havn't had anything using mounts yet.

Noticed most didn't bother to read the whole thing, that is on me shouldn't post walls of text, but in the suggestion i said "Maybe this should be only Challenge Mode system and raids stay as is so it doesn't alienate the community.". Do people even do challenge mode after they get the achievements.And for those that say more wings, well for one there is no incentive for Anet to make more, raids are not played by the majority of the player base and are not monetized in any meaningful way. If they were occupying people's time for the majority it wouldn't need gimmicks for the gem store. I'm honestly surprised that they make 1 wing a year.Making challenge mode really hardcore, should probably come with easy mode, giving you all the boons like the training area and even some bonus buffs at the expense of worse loot the same as world boss and for the "hardest" the same number of rewards as Tequatl .

@"Vancho.8750" said:Noticed most didn't bother to read the whole thing, that is on me shouldn't post walls of text, but in the suggestion i said "Maybe this should be only Challenge Mode system and raids stay as is so it doesn't alienate the community.". Do people even do challenge mode after they get the achievements.And for those that say more wings, well for one there is no incentive for Anet to make more, raids are not played by the majority of the player base and are not monetized in any meaningful way. If they were occupying people's time for the majority it wouldn't need gimmicks for the gem store. I'm honestly surprised that they make 1 wing a year.Making challenge mode really hardcore, should probably come with easy mode, giving you all the boons like the training area and even some bonus buffs at the expense of worse loot the same as world boss and for the "hardest" the same number of rewards as Tequatl .

Your own wall fo text literally speaks for over 2/3ds about vertical progression. You then throw in some maybe and could bes at the end like challenge mode.

Maybe be more clear in the future then. The way your suggestion is phrased is unclear that you wanted a challenge mode system. Which in turn would again not address the majority of issues like lack of content or why people would bother with it when they are not bothering with it now. The similarities to WvW remain.

Don't complain about other people misunderstanding or not reading your suggestion when it is unclear and not focused.

In general, when this many people "misunderstand" the message, it's likely an issue of the original message not being clear, not that people are conspiring in intentionally misunderstanding it.

Short answer, no.Longer Answer, no.

People dont do the cms more then once since your only rewarded for them once its quite simple really.

Well suggest something if you don't like my idea instead of just saying no, because no. Something to bring players to the mode and something for more hardcore people to enjoy in long term, cause the way i see it raids will become dungeoned.

Just more raids.

@"Vancho.8750" said:Well suggest something if you don't like my idea instead of just saying no, because no. Something to bring players to the mode and something for more hardcore people to enjoy in long term, cause the way i see it raids will become dungeoned.

More content is the only thing they can hope for, but my actual bet is, stop trying to bring more people in and actually cater to the ones who already want raids to begin with. The same thing goes on with sPvP where ranked has somewhat nice rewards (that I even play only for them, admittedly) and it drags the PvE crowd who would otherwise only play unranked if said rewards were actually there; In this PvP example, if they actually add content in the form of new game modes and maps (this is an 8 year old game where capture the point is STILL the same meaningfully developed arena PvP) people will go play the new flashy stuff and many will stay for a longer while. Otherwise we'll just grind the rewards (or even worse, grind the purposely introduced vertical progression) and population slowly diminish.

The same goes on for raids in that we can't introduce any reward/timegated system and hope for new people to come in who actually want to play the mode, if they don't play the mode as it is right now. By introducing lots of content we can perhaps pick the interest of the "gray area" of people who are not immediately refusing of raids but didn't quite care about the mode yet. This group, I can almost assure you, will not look twice if vertical progression is introduced even if it is kept within a niche area within raids - they will immediately perceive that there is something there that is not for them to reach, even before going into the mode.

Even then, does Anet care about this even, or do we have "enough" people by their standards? They must realize that raids were never meant to be in GW2 and the fact that they are even remotely successful is a testament to how well they were developed. Still, their priorities (even after the reorganization issue) remain dead set on the Living World and open world content, with development intentions slowly spreading to PvP and WvW (not raids+fractals). I think that they are fine with what we have now, and will simply keep adding content, which is what I think is best for them to do.