Jump to content
  • Sign Up

How do you all feel about Strike Missions?


Recommended Posts

Strike Missions are the new stepping stone introduction to Raids and new content feature for those with some time on their hands to play Raids but without the preparation and group politics that usually go hand and hand with Raids.

Seen some mixed reactions to it, mostly on the idea of resources going to this rather than new Raids.

But what you all think of this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 199
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

@Randulf.7614 said:You do create a lot of threads ;)

I’m reserving judgement until I see them in action. Right now info is too scarce to go on for anyone to give an informed opinion.

This is better conducted once they are released

Well I can't help that somebody else didn't make the thread discussion first. This a discussion forum to discuss things. Why should it matter who it came from? ??

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It just sounds like a mini-world boss. I personally don't think they are the correct way to go about making an easy mode for raids. I'd rather see them just change scaling in normal raids. Reduce the HP, add more time, put perma chill or something on bosses to make them easier. I wouldn't change it too much or mess with mechanics because the easy mode should be a training process to get into "normal" raids. Then just disallow players to get marks and reduced rewards for the easy mode and that be it.

I think one person said it well. Strike Missions just sound like more content to abandon in a year from now. Keeping it tied to raids would be a lot better.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@Knighthonor.4061 said:

@Randulf.7614 said:You do create a lot of threads ;)

I’m reserving judgement until I see them in action. Right now info is too scarce to go on for anyone to give an informed opinion.

This is better conducted once they are released

Well I can't help that somebody else didn't make the thread discussion first. This a discussion forum to discuss things. Why should it matter who it came from? ??

It doesn't I'm largely just ribbing ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's premature to offer an opinion. At the moment, it's vaporware: it's content that ANet has mentioned, without offering more than the barest hint of detail. There's literally nothing we can discuss other than, "ANet says they have a plan to get more people into raiding." Like anything anyone says, I'll believe it when I see it.

This is an example of how fans tie themselves into knots and become disappointed later: we start a discussion about how we feel about something before we have any idea what that something entails. What is the rush to offer an opinion about something that isn't in the game? It's already on ANet's release schedule, so it's not as if anything we say is going to delay its implementation. The resources have already been spent.

tl;dr I'm waiting to evaluate until there's something that's ready to be evaluated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hmm, to me it sounds quite interesting to be honest, and in theory it interests me a lot. I don't raid at all, and I don't like spending a ton of time doing PvE-related things. Strike missions--aside from gathering a group--sound pretty quick and easy as far as content goes, but still not as mindless as a world boss or bounty. It seems like a happy medium where I could enjoy it casually without feeling like I have to invest a ton of time and stress into it while still having to worry about stuff like builds/comps. Time will tell how they actually pan out, but for now I am definitely on board with the idea.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'll reserve judgement until I see them in action since so far the developers have shown they either don't care or don't read the feedback on the forums about soon-to-released features. Plus when you give feedback, about something that hasn't been released yet, the forum police will say "have faith!" or "wait until its released!" or (when we get a few more tidbits) "this isn't the final version!".

Also it's not Strike Missions but it's singular. One of these is coming and who knows how long to get a second one.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@"Blackarps.1974" said:It just sounds like a mini-world boss. I personally don't think they are the correct way to go about making an easy mode for raids. I'd rather see them just change scaling in normal raids. Reduce the HP, add more time, put perma chill or something on bosses to make them easier. I wouldn't change it too much or mess with mechanics because the easy mode should be a training process to get into "normal" raids. Then just disallow players to get marks and reduced rewards for the easy mode and that be it.

I think one person said it well. Strike Missions just sound like more content to abandon in a year from now. Keeping it tied to raids would be a lot better.

I think the problem with scaling normal raids, making easy modes, is that, regardless, the raid will likely be more of a time investment that any other content. And people really don't want to waste time. So pugging an easy mode, could still be considered an absolute waste of time, creating tension if the people you play with make the process even slower. The thing about strikes, in how they describe it. They are making the time investment much lower, because it is one boss, and done. That person doing crap DPS? they cost you 2 extra minutes, and you don't have to carry for more than 1 boss. The reduction in time investment should smooth over how players interact.

Now, I don't know if this will have the same issues as dungeions. Where dungeons are a grind to the point where, basically, you get a group, and do specific (zerker meta) strategy of minimizing the run time so that you can rinse and repeat for more rewards faster. Even the relatively short dungeon, is go fast or gtfo, because we need to grind faster.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@PseudoNewb.5468 said:

@"Blackarps.1974" said:It just sounds like a mini-world boss. I personally don't think they are the correct way to go about making an easy mode for raids. I'd rather see them just change scaling in normal raids. Reduce the HP, add more time, put perma chill or something on bosses to make them easier. I wouldn't change it too much or mess with mechanics because the easy mode should be a training process to get into "normal" raids. Then just disallow players to get marks and reduced rewards for the easy mode and that be it.

I think one person said it well. Strike Missions just sound like more content to abandon in a year from now. Keeping it tied to raids would be a lot better.

I think the problem with scaling normal raids, making easy modes, is that, regardless, the raid will likely be more of a time investment that any other content. And people really don't want to waste time. So pugging an easy mode, could still be considered an absolute waste of time, creating tension if the people you play with make the process even slower. The thing about strikes, in how they describe it. They are making the time investment much lower, because it is one boss, and done. That person doing kitten DPS? they cost you 2 extra minutes, and you don't have to carry for more than 1 boss. The reduction in time investment should smooth over how players interact.

I definitely see what you mean. I true easy mode or training mode for raids would need to be done carefully. It would need to be similar to fractals but even more in depth. Let people pick the conditions for any boss. If they want to jump to Slothasor, they can. Open the UI at the start, pick the boss, pick the mode/difficulty, and off you go. I know getting 10 people can take some time but with easier content, it shouldn't be too bad. An easy/training mode would be much more forgiving on comp choices too. Its still a raid though so its not just brain-dead mashing 1 like an open world champion lol. This mode would purely be for those interested in getting into raids themselves without feeling overburdened by mistakes, perfect comps, max DPS, perfect rotations, etc. It would be a lot more work probably than entirely new bosses via strike missions but its hard to say at this point given we haven't seen the strike missions yet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not optimistic. The issues which will determine the success or failure of strike missions are in conflict with each other. There is no longevity without rewards, no raid prep without chance of failure, and cooperation will suffer if groups fail and don't get rewards.

  • Longevity: there will have to be rewards, or there will be little interest over time. If the rewards take too much effort to get, the complaints will come. If "just enough," people will finish and move on to more lucrative pursuits. There will probably be a "daily strike mission" added to PvE dailies, which will help with longevity to some extent.
  • Community cooperation: The more failure we see, the more arguments and blame-slinging we'll see. The amount of salt will be proportional to how much players want the rewards. Remember Queensdale Champ trains, and that was about one champion bag per kill. Sure, the "failure" was someone killing out of sequence, but the key thing is people not getting the amount of rewards/time they expected.
  • Raid preparation: If the strike missions are truly going to "help prepare people to raid," there will have to be a real possibility of failure, and that means punishing content for a lot of players. The biggest obstacles to raid participation now are players wanting to play "their" build, and players wanting to bypass necessity of the learning curve. The blind join feature will allow for players with non-optimal builds to play strike missions. This will not suddenly make those builds acceptable by raiders. Learning less-punishing mechanics in strike missions might give some players insight into how to learn raid mechanics. Bear in mind, though, how easy a Legendary Facet assault where players know and adhere to its mechanics is -- versus the bodies littered everywhere in a group that doesn't.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@PseudoNewb.5468 said:

@"Blackarps.1974" said:It just sounds like a mini-world boss. I personally don't think they are the correct way to go about making an easy mode for raids. I'd rather see them just change scaling in normal raids. Reduce the HP, add more time, put perma chill or something on bosses to make them easier. I wouldn't change it too much or mess with mechanics because the easy mode should be a training process to get into "normal" raids. Then just disallow players to get marks and reduced rewards for the easy mode and that be it.

I think one person said it well. Strike Missions just sound like more content to abandon in a year from now. Keeping it tied to raids would be a lot better.

I think the problem with scaling normal raids, making easy modes, is that, regardless, the raid will likely be more of a time investment that any other content. And people really don't want to waste time. So pugging an easy mode, could still be considered an absolute waste of time, creating tension if the people you play with make the process even slower. The thing about strikes, in how they describe it. They are making the time investment much lower, because it is one boss, and done. That person doing kitten DPS? they cost you 2 extra minutes, and you don't have to carry for more than 1 boss. The reduction in time investment should smooth over how players interact.

Now, I don't know if this will have the same issues as dungeions. Where dungeons are a grind to the point where, basically, you get a group, and do specific (zerker meta) strategy of minimizing the run time so that you can rinse and repeat for more rewards faster. Even the relatively short dungeon, is go fast or gtfo, because we need to grind faster.

But that's all content though

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Agreed. We know basically nothing about them and they were arguably the highlight feature of the announcement.

We don't know how many there will be do we?

Or what the incentives to do them will be?

Or if they'll be repeatable or on daily/weekly cooldowns like actual raids?

We know next to nothing about them, and the presentation could have been a good place to talk about them but that didn't happen.

I think one is coming with the prologue isn't it? If not, then perhaps they just aren't finished and it was more of a teaser of a future feature. In which case, worst case, they can just make them instanced bounties which is what they sound like to begin with.

We know nothing about the masteries either but I suppose they're coming in 6 months with episode 1.

We don't even really know anything about the upcoming release. lol

I highly doubt that these strike missions will offer the same level of rewards as raids. I doubt they will release strike mission specific armor and weapon skins, ascended gear, or another way to obtain legendary armor. I imagine, to keep my expectations as low as possible, it will be the bounty system in an instance setting in which players can complete them and get champion bags and possibly map currency. Whether or not there is anything of value to spend that map currency on is another question, because for prologue at least, they didn't advertise any grindable weapon/armor skins or general bonuses other than just a quick overview of the map.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm not judging it yet, or evaluating it. The question was am I interested in it as a non-raider? And yes, I am interested in seeing what it is. (Clarification: I am not currently a raider, but I have managed to get an Escort done so I have the masteries, and I did raid for years in WoW. It's simply not how I want to spend my GW2 time. So I might be someone with a little more interest in easy-entry 10 man content than a true never-raider).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I want to know the most is whether old content will get strikes too.

There's tons of bosses that are wasted when used in a single story instance with no reason to repeat other than replaying the content with another character.
Some have cool designs, some have interesting mechanics, some are in maps that would be perfect for short dungeon-like encounters, some had very underwhelming encounters that ended to fast or were too boring, some were temporary, never to be seen again. For example:

  • The personal story steps shared by all characters regardless of choices: The Battle of Claw Island, A Light in the Darkness, Retribution, Forming the Pact, The Battle of Fort Trinity, Temple of the Forgotten God, What the Eye Beholds, Further into Orr, Against the Corruption, The Source of Orr, and of course Victory or Death.
  • The Ancient Karka
  • Canach under Southsun.
  • The twisted watchwork assault knigths
  • Scarlet's Hologram
  • Barradin's Statue
  • The winged Teragriff from "Tracking the Aspect Masters".
  • The Shadow of the Dragon.
  • Mordremoth's Mind
  • The Ice Beast
  • Bloodstone Caudecus
  • Tegon and Temar
  • Lazarus
  • Balthazar
  • The First City.
  • Joko
  • Kralkatorrik
  • Kralkatorrik's inner realm
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm curious on how they will play out but it will definitely help me gauge better on if I want to try raids or not. I'm not gauging my response though on the content but on the players. If raiders here act anything like the ones in WoW did when LFR was introduced, it will definitely help me decide on whether or not I want to raid. It'll give me a good gauge on which guilds are actually helpful and which ones are toxic. An example being, there was a warrior in the Sha of Anger fight that just filled chat with vitriol that was in mythic gear, blaming the healers for constantly dying and linking his recount over and over again showing him top damage and calling everyone worthless, etc. and unfortunately there were plenty others like him. If I go into a few hundred Strike Missions and have people in ascended gear in most of them basically showing this same attitude, I'll decide that I will not touch raiding at all and the Missions will probably be the farthest I go. First impressions, at least to me, do exist in games and seeing a raider act like that in a 'raid lite' basically tells me they act worse in an actual raid. I've dug through too many mounds of crap trying to find gold. I'm not gonna go the distance on something I'm actually interested in just to get screamed at. If I'm doing that, I may as well just wait until my shift at work where at least I get paid.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...