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[Raids] Why raids in GW2 stayed niched


Yasi.9065

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@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:

So you do not like raiding. Nothing wrong with that. Play what you enjoy and move on.

and there we have the problem. Most people move on.

Nobody besides a very tiny subset cares about raids. Wonder why? It is exactly that attitude.

Attitude? You explained how you do not enjoy scripted encouters and I obliged.

Most people do not even attempt raids because they do not enjoy raiding (true accross all MMOs). That is not the same as trying them and quitting.

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The lack of ramp is definitely to blame. I hypothesize that casual does not equate to not wanting difficulty. That difficulty just needs to be presented so that each step up is as seamless as possible. You need to hand hold players through exploring their toolkit and give them safe, practical applications to practice it.

As an example, the game could explicitly teach you about stability and stun breaking in AC. The dungeon should have an instructor npc that tells you what stability is. You then take severely reduced damage while not stunned against the skelk and severe damage if they manage to cc you. If you wipe, the game should highlight the skills in the ui that is suggested with the glowy circle. Tada, players actually know how to deal with enemy cc now. Do this with big story beats leading up to level 80 with different facets of the game and you wont have the brainless open world player we have today that can only headsmash the keyboard.

The experience takes place completely in game, and the player gets to now feel skill progression as they level all without having to consult esoteric guides. Now you have a general population of players that actually know the basics and all of a sudden pug raiding becomes a lot more attainable because the average skill level is higher. You wont have (as many) people who cant even beat hammerfell in queens gauntlet because they're too busy casting barrage during his hammer smash.

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I see the difficulty of rotations and the huge skill gap being discussed extensively here. However, there are a few more factors to consider. GW2 is possibly the MMO with the largest freedom of stat selection in gear and in buildcraft. In the end the vast majority of stat sets and trait combinations are completely worthless compared to the optimal meta. If you take current WoW as an example, you will see that players are more limited in their choices there, which means that you cannot make builds that are absolutely worthless. No matter what talents you choose and no matter your gear choice (as long as it's the high ilvl gear) you will be at least somewhat effective. All the gear has stats that change depending on your spec, which means that you cannot kitten up your damage by taking soldier's gear. In WoW you do not choose which skills to slot either, which makes having an effective build even easier. Even worse, GW2 has this exponential scaling in power damage with the power, precision, ferocity trio. Taking hybrid defense and offense gear in GW2 reduces your damage more than in any other game that I can recall. Overall, the difference between a good build and a bad build is astronomical in GW2, which is an additional issue when you add in that skill gap as well. You have all of these complex systems in GW2 and there is no proper tutorial.

Then there are the boons. The boons in GW2 are way way way too strong. In many other MMOs you do not need to have an entire profession with a rotation solely dedicated to keeping buffs up. They are usually easier to apply. However, these buffs do not double or triple your damage and survivability. In GW2, If your group has bad boon support it is automatically 2x worse even if all the DPSers are amazing at their jobs. Now if you have such a group with less competent damage dealers it gets even worse. I wouldn't be surprised if an optimal group outclassed a noob group by 10x in terms of efficiency. Let's look at PvP too for a moment. Why is holosmith damage so broken in PvP while being one of the lowest DPS classes in PvE? The builds that are used in these modes are different for sure, but there is more to it. In PvP you do not have have constant access to all the boons from your supports. This means that holosmith's ability to get easy might, quickness and stability makes it much more powerful than other choices because of how insane GW2 boons can be. Why does reaper usually do more damage than weaver in solo PvE? Because of the boons. Boons are just broken.

Edit: Just compare perma-quickness to this https://www.wowhead.com/spell=80353/time-warp, It's like night and day.

There is so much that can go wrong in GW2 compared to other games that it is genuinely difficult to learn for people trying to get into raids and even high level fractals. There are too many mechanics that are needlessly convoluted or uninuitive, such as the stat system, the boons, combos, not seeing cooldowns etc. They have made no effort to fix these or to at least add a tutorial. There is still no tutorial on breakbars. Maybe some players will understand what you mean when you tell them to CC. However, they will not understand the difference between how hard and soft CC affect the bar and what is best for breaking it. With all of these factors it's no wonder most players are bad. Other games do not have more skilled playerbases, GW2 is simply much harder to learn.

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@Ganathar.4956 said:Then there are the boons. The boons in GW2 are way way way too strong. In many other MMOs you do not need to have an entire profession with a rotation solely dedicated to keeping buffs up.

While I agree that boons are very strong, the alternative is to make them weaker and remove them from the meta. If boons are weaker they:A.) remain a necessity because the overall benefit is greater to the party of having themB.) become to weak and as such are not required any longer, parties are then only pure dpsC.) content and classes would need to get rebalanced around no boons or weaker boons or content becomes directly harder

There is a reason why many experienced players refer to good boon uptime as easy mode.

In other MMOs you are less penalized for not bringing certain buffs, but you are gated by trinity and most buffs are provided via the innate trinity anyway.

GW2 has role compression which is simply more difficult than a given trinity in other games. The reason why this is more difficult is because adapting and playing in a more open environment without forced trinity demands more flexibility from players.

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@Yasi.9065 said:Hi,

raids in GW2 are little pieces of art and game mechanic heaven, that sadly never really took off and now are well on their way to decline into nothingness. Thats extremely sad, because, well, as I said, raids in GW2 are so well designed. But there are several fundamental flaws with how they got implemented, and with GW2 in general tbh.

The most important flaw is that the raids were designed with the idea to be completed by very few. This is officially, please search for what Collin said. So, it was a niche content even from the design phase. I can say the raids now behave as expected from the very beginning. The difference now is that even the raiders started to admit how niche this content is.

@"thrag.9740" said:your way overthinking it. Its simple:

-gw2 is a casual game-raids are not casual

Indeed. But why the raids are not casual? Because of the difficulty? In my opinion NO. The difficulty is not the real reason. I consider myself a casual. Without any ambition to gain a place in the top 10% (let's say) players. But still, I can follow my objectives. I completed the Mad King Tower JP enough times to have all the AP from it. I solo-ed the last instance from HoT story. It was not easy for me, it took time, but I done it. I have 3 legendary armors from WvW (I forgot when I started and I don;t even know if I will be ever able to complete the other tier legendary armors). I have the precursors for all the legendary trinkets - I will turn them into legendary if we will have the possibility to craft them as many times as we want. I cleared 11 bosses from Queen gauntlet few days ago - in one session. I lost 3 times to Liadri and and I stopped. I wait another day with more than 2 hours of play to try to defeat her.

Why all this presentation of "deeds"? To show that even a casual, non ambitious player can defeat hard content. So, not the hard content makes the raids non casual friendly.

In my opinion what makes the raids so unfriendly for casuals is the 10 man composition. And the fact that ANet is still sticking to the idea that the raids should be completed by very few. I will explain:

Even if the casuals can work to overcome difficult content, this particular case is different. Here I cannot try 2-3...10 times the content and to learn how to improve my performance. Because here is a 10 man content and another 9 players are condemned to failure if I fail. This is not something happily accepted by a PUG group. On the other hand, a casual is not the player to change his RL schedule according to the timer of an event in a game. So, this was the way Anet choose to make the raids harder. They knew the structure of the GW2 playerbase and opted for the hardest hurdle :# - the social component. This is what makes the difference between a casual and an hardcore player. Making a static group of 10 casuals for a long period of time is virtually impossible in my opinion. And ANet knew this and the number of 10 players was not the result of hazard. Because this was the best way to keep the raid into the niche it was designed for.

The other way to help preserving the status of niche content for raids was to change the builds and classes in such a drastic way that to keep raiding you should spend a lot of gold. Something a casual is not happy to do many times. As an example, now, in this days, the Chronomancer, the only and single class in the game able to use Alacrity is the second best in generating Alacrity, and .... modest in sharing it. Why? Because at some point the PUG's learned the raids and with the help of Alacrity and Quiqnes they were able to complete the raids. They turned the niche content into something accessible to many. Intolerable.

To speak here about build changes? In the very beginning of the raids I was interested because I wanted to maximize my Mastery Points. And I geared my Chrono for raids. Lots of gold for me. I raided few times and a change struck. Almost all my gear was useless. I kept it for Open World and I crafted Commander Gear. Other runes, other sigills. After 2 months this build was useless again due to a change :/. I think this was the moment I decided to craft my Legendary Armor. To be protected by these changes. And that was the moment I decided that the raids are not my content.

So, in my opinion, these are the causes of the raid position now: ANet decision to make them niche content, adding for this a social component very hard to bypass for the casual players and changing the "rules" for raiding every time too many players started to complete them.

Just my opinion.

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@zealex.9410 said:Meh imo Nike's video explains it better.

While I agree with some things of Nike's video. Quite a lot of it is an opinion piece. I could have told you at the beginning of HoT that this game would never hold the hardcore crowd and that has nothing to do with raid deployment. It has and always was due to the gear cap and unique non trinity game design.

Even with raid wings coming out every 3 months, the current problem of raids being niche and the problems of rewards ever since wing 5 released would exist. Nike and his dead guild are looking at the game from a very hardcore perspective. Suffice to say, that group of players has always been a minority in all MMORPGs and has little to do with why the big majority of the player base do not raid.

As such, Nike might be to some extent right as to why the hardcore crowd does not raid or leave for other games, but last I checked, this thread is not about that.

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Let me make this painfully clear RAIDING is niche in every mmo. From my understanding less than 3% of mmo players raid apparently. The difference between them is overall player population. So of course the other mmos seem more active. The reason being they have idk 4, 5, 6 times more players. Simple math ill show you. If gw2 has 100 raiders, WOW will have 600. What a big difference player population impacts a game. And dont forget they have to a pay a monthly. So again, math time boys, if 600 pays 10 bucks a month thats 6000 dollars. So with gw2 if 100 players pay 0 a month its, take a guess i dare you, 0 dollars. Its a fucking miracle we get what we get. Hope this answers the obvious on the reason why we get what we get. Cash shop is different and most of those people dont raid so why should they pay for it.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@zealex.9410 said:Meh imo Nike's video explains it better.

While I agree with some things of Nike's video. Quite a lot of it is an opinion piece. I could have told you at the beginning of HoT that this game would never hold the hardcore crowd and that has nothing to do with raid deployment. It has and always was due to the gear cap and unique non trinity game design.

Even with raid wings coming out every 3 months, the current problem of raids being niche and the problems of rewards ever since wing 5 released would exist. Nike and his dead guild are looking at the game from a very hardcore perspective. Suffice to say, that group of players has always been a minority in all MMORPGs and has little to do with why the big majority of the player base do not raid.

As such, Nike might be to some extent right as to why the hardcore crowd does not raid or leave for other games, but last I checked, this thread is not about that.

Hardcores or casual and minorities or majorities aside it doesnt matter what you like in a game, if that thing u like is barely supported you will lose hope for the game.

And a raid every 9 months will do just that.

Besides as much as nike's piece is opinionated so much is the op's, from the 4 points they make i mostly argee with two, the second and fourth.

His first point is ignoring that there are defined roles and raid compositions use them such as tanks, healers and dps. the fact that every class can be any of the 3 is smth but doesnt really bring down the experience.

His third point is also false, not enough content? Not enough of a community? Excuse me? The relevant raiding content u have to clear on a weekly basis in gw2 rn is the highest of all the big mmos (unless eso is simmilar but idk). The fact that the game doesnt move on means everything stays relevant and worth clearing if you deem raids worth clearing.

Community? Mayhaps now that point rings true but only because raids and the raiding scene got where it is today.

Their fourth point is solid, past the legendaries the rest of the loot is lackluster and that turns ppl away from clearing past that point.

All in all if i were to say what really brough the scene where it is now is 2 things mainly: 1. mode killing release cadence, 2. raids that after a point pleased little to no one.

On the second point: Raids where designed to be the endgame challenging content and the last 2 raids havent accomplished that, allienating that playerbase in the process. But also, as nike pointed out w7 failed to grab the attention of the ppl asking for easy raids as did w6 so literally, its content neither of the parties enjoy.

Its no secret all other mmos have at least 2 dificulty modes to please the 2 largest groups, something that gw2 doesnt do and for that its raids continue to bleed players.

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@Cristalyan.5728 said:

@thrag.9740 said:your way overthinking it. Its simple:

-gw2 is a casual game-raids are not casual...In my opinion what makes the raids so unfriendly for casuals is the 10 man composition. And the fact that ANet is still sticking to the idea that the raids should be completed by very few. I will explain:

Even if the casuals can work to overcome difficult content, this particular case is different. Here I cannot try 2-3...10 times the content and to learn how to improve my performance. Because here is a 10 man content and another 9 players are condemned to failure if I fail. This is not something happily accepted by a PUG group. On the other hand, a casual is not the player to change his RL schedule according to the timer of an event in a game. So, this was the way Anet choose to make the raids harder. They knew the structure of the GW2 playerbase and opted for the hardest hurdle :# - the social component. This is what makes the difference between a casual and an hardcore player. Making a static group of 10 casuals for a long period of time is virtually impossible in my opinion. And ANet knew this and the number of 10 players was not the result of hazard. Because this was the best way to keep the raid into the niche it was designed for.

Allow me to rephrase my first point:-raids require teamwork-gw2 is anti-teamwork

A large portion of the player base play this game as a solo game. Although 10 vs 5 players does produce a slight barrier, the much larger barrier is simply the fact that raids require a lot more teamwork/coordination. Double the health of everything in fractals and make them 10 man. The players who treat gw2 as a solo game will still do fractals. Why? Because you don't need much of a plan for anything in fractals. In raids, if you don't have a plan for sabetha cannons for example, your group will 100% not beat the boss Same for dhuum greens. This is the case for many bosses. But fractals? Even in cms, there isn't any coordination that compares to raids.

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@thrag.9740 said:

@thrag.9740 said:your way overthinking it. Its simple:

-gw2 is a casual game-raids are not casual...In my opinion what makes the raids so unfriendly for casuals is the 10 man composition. And the fact that ANet is still sticking to the idea that the raids should be completed by very few. I will explain:

Even if the casuals can work to overcome difficult content, this particular case is different. Here I cannot try 2-3...10 times the content and to learn how to improve my performance. Because here is a 10 man content and another 9 players are condemned to failure if I fail. This is not something happily accepted by a PUG group. On the other hand, a casual is not the player to change his RL schedule according to the timer of an event in a game. So, this was the way Anet choose to make the raids harder. They knew the structure of the GW2 playerbase and opted for the hardest hurdle :# - the social component. This is what makes the difference between a casual and an hardcore player. Making a static group of 10 casuals for a long period of time is virtually impossible in my opinion. And ANet knew this and the number of 10 players was not the result of hazard. Because this was the best way to keep the raid into the niche it was designed for.

Allow me to rephrase my first point:-raids require teamwork-gw2 is anti-teamwork

A large portion of the player base play this game as a solo game. Although 10 vs 5 players does produce a slight barrier, the much larger barrier is simply the fact that raids require a lot more teamwork/coordination. Double the health of everything in fractals and make them 10 man. The players who treat gw2 as a solo game will still do fractals. Why? Because you don't need much of a plan for anything in fractals. In raids, if you don't have a plan for sabetha cannons for example, your group will 100% not beat the boss Same for dhuum greens. This is the case for many bosses. But fractals? Even in cms, there isn't any coordination that compares to raids.

Not all 10 players need to do smth other than dps at all times, theres always 4 or 5 key roles that 4 or 5 ppl will be doing and the rest will simply deal dmg. Its not too diff from fractals with the only diff being that in fractal cms the 4 or 5 key roles will will have to be done by the entirety of the group. For each individual player the personal responsibility in fractals is greater.

Gw2 has at large many areas that require little teamwork, namely all of the open world but to perform well in many others communication is key, such as wvw guilds fighting, high lvl spvp matches, t4 cms and raids.

Hell u even saw it in ow to a very small extend in the hot metas like auric basin, early chak gerent and Ds.

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@zealex.9410 said:Not all 10 players need to do smth other than dps at all times, theres always 4 or 5 key roles that 4 or 5 ppl will be doing and the rest will simply deal dmg.You still need coordination to make sure that those 4-5 key roles are being covered. If you'll go into raids with the same mindset as in the other parts of pve, you will likely find out that there's no tank, there's one healer (that heals, but doesn't provide boons), one mechanic is being done by 3 people, while noone's doing another...

Its not too diff from fractals with the only diff being that in fractal cms the 4 or 5 key roles will will have to be done by the entirety of the group. For each individual player the personal responsibility in fractals is greater.That's exactly what Thrag was talking about - raids move part of the difficulty from personal level to an organizational/teamwork one. In raids, you don't need to play better. You need to coordinate better.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@zealex.9410 said:Not all 10 players need to do smth other than dps at all times, theres always 4 or 5 key roles that 4 or 5 ppl will be doing and the rest will simply deal dmg.You still need coordination to make sure that those 4-5 key roles are being covered. If you'll go into raids with the same mindset as in the other parts of pve, you will likely find out that there's no tank, there's one healer (that heals, but doesn't provide boons), one mechanic is being done by 3 people, while noone's doing another...

Thankfully you have the ability to make your own groups with your requirements or join statics and make sure 90% of the issues u would see in a pug domt happen.

All im saying that the coordination between 4 or 5 ppl isnt new and have existed in fractals and to a much less skillful extend in ow with metas.

Its not too diff from fractals with the only diff being that in fractal cms the 4 or 5 key roles will will have to be done by the entirety of the group. For each individual player the personal responsibility in fractals is greater.That's exactly what Thrag was talking about - raids move part of the difficulty from personal level to an organizational/teamwork one. In raids, you don't need to play better. You need to
coordinate
better.

I disagree, when it comes to doing the mechanics you can see the same coordination exist in fractals, the team needs to coordinate who will do what, who will cc what who will kill what in what order etc.

In metas the groups need to coordinate how things are progressing in diff lanes, if a lanes needs help or not etc.

Again most mechanics are done by half pf less than half of the ppl in a raid group and you can communicate that before the fight even begins.

Could anet do more? Yeah, they could have all the bosses of lw be group content that you have to group up with others to tackle, that would get ppl in the mindset for raids, but the lack of it doesnt mean raids were destined to fail. The community was ready to support and help players understand the encounters and fractals has introduced similar concepts to easy the entry.

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Raids are niche because they are meant to be so., at least in the context of this game. The type of content they offer is of no interest to the majority and that's fine.

Take FromSoft games for example. They are well made, critically acclaimed games. They have created their own niche, with their higher difficulty. But they will never become as mainstream as other games because the vast majority of gamers enjoy playing more casually. And that's fine.

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@zealex.9410 said:His third point is also false, not enough content? Not enough of a community? Excuse me? The relevant raiding content u have to clear on a weekly basis in gw2 rn is the highest of all the big mmos (unless eso is simmilar but idk). The fact that the game doesnt move on means everything stays relevant and worth clearing if you deem raids worth clearing.

It’s not false as there is such a thing as exhausting content where you have done it enough times that you have all of the rewards and it’s not really worth the effort anymore. It’s really no different than veteran open world players saying there’s a lack of content despite having all of those living story maps. Or anyone else saying there’s a content drought such as the one back in 2015.

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@zealex.9410 said:His third point is also false, not enough content? Not enough of a community? Excuse me? The relevant raiding content u have to clear on a weekly basis in gw2 rn is the highest of all the big mmos (unless eso is simmilar but idk). The fact that the game doesnt move on means everything stays relevant and worth clearing if you deem raids worth clearing.

It’s not false as there is such a thing as exhausting content where you have done it enough times that you have all of the rewards and it’s not really worth the effort anymore. It’s really no different than
veteran
open world players saying there’s a lack of content despite having all of those living story maps. Or anyone else saying there’s a content drought such as the one back in 2015.

True and as you said that can happen with in all kinds of content gw2 puts out but thats the point, the whole game is designed this way and all bits of content can be exausted if ppl do them enough, its not specifucally a weakness to raids anymore than it is to fractals or ow. Een pvp game modes suffer because the meta grows stale because not enough balance happens.

Still it works in favour of gw2 when it comes to bringing in new ppl, because unlike mmos where only 9 bosses or 5 maps are relevant at any given time and expansion for new ppl to raids, dungeons and ow the list grows.

Besides, not all mmos like like wow that gets 4 or so 9-boss raids per expansion, ff14 iirc gets like 4 bosses per couple of months (7 or 6 i think?) thats bosses which have a hard mode. They do get easy raids inbetween and trials which are one boss fights but in general those dont scratch the challenging content itch.

Edit: also ultimates, forgot those. Still nowhere near mmos like world of warcraft.

I assume anet find the fact that content remains relevant past its release lomgterm as an excuse for the slow pace.

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@zealex.9410 said:

@zealex.9410 said:His third point is also false, not enough content? Not enough of a community? Excuse me? The relevant raiding content u have to clear on a weekly basis in gw2 rn is the highest of all the big mmos (unless eso is simmilar but idk). The fact that the game doesnt move on means everything stays relevant and worth clearing if you deem raids worth clearing.

It’s not false as there is such a thing as exhausting content where you have done it enough times that you have all of the rewards and it’s not really worth the effort anymore. It’s really no different than
veteran
open world players saying there’s a lack of content despite having all of those living story maps. Or anyone else saying there’s a content drought such as the one back in 2015.

True and as you said that can happen with in all kinds of content gw2 puts out but thats the point, the whole game is designed this way and all bits of content can be exausted if ppl do them enough, its not specifucally a weakness to raids anymore than it is to fractals or ow. Een pvp game modes suffer because the meta grows stale because not enough balance happens.

Except it’s content that’s geared toward them and produced a a slow pace. It’s the same thing that WvW and sPvP players have been experiencing when they see open world getting all of these updates.

Imagine if the content release structure were flipped and raids got the majority of the content releases and OW only got updates every 9 months. Would the OW players react any differently? Would the argument hold any less weight?

I assume anet find the fact that content remains relevant past its release lomgterm as an excuse for the slow pace.

I don’t believe relevancy has anything to do with the current pacing.

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@zealex.9410 said:His third point is also false, not enough content? Not enough of a community? Excuse me? The relevant raiding content u have to clear on a weekly basis in gw2 rn is the highest of all the big mmos (unless eso is simmilar but idk). The fact that the game doesnt move on means everything stays relevant and worth clearing if you deem raids worth clearing.

It’s not false as there is such a thing as exhausting content where you have done it enough times that you have all of the rewards and it’s not really worth the effort anymore. It’s really no different than
veteran
open world players saying there’s a lack of content despite having all of those living story maps. Or anyone else saying there’s a content drought such as the one back in 2015.

True and as you said that can happen with in all kinds of content gw2 puts out but thats the point, the whole game is designed this way and all bits of content can be exausted if ppl do them enough, its not specifucally a weakness to raids anymore than it is to fractals or ow. Een pvp game modes suffer because the meta grows stale because not enough balance happens.

Except it’s content that’s geared toward them and produced a a slow pace. It’s the same thing that WvW and sPvP players have been experiencing when they see open world getting all of these updates.

Imagine if the content release structure were flipped and raids got the majority of the content releases and OW only got updates every 9 months. Would the OW players react any differently? Would the argument hold any less weight?

I assume anet find the fact that content remains relevant past its release lomgterm as an excuse for the slow pace.

I don’t believe relevancy has anything to do with the current pacing.

If OW started getting updates, like it had pre-HoT, it would start bleeding players very rapidly again

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Unfortunately, here is what people on all sides of this conversation have to accept - what we have now is the best it's going to get. With the consolidation of resources at Anet, there is virtually zero chance of raids coming out more often or of them adding any significant new features (including difficulty scaling) (In fact, in terms of how often they come out, I would fully expect the wait to increase). The same can be said of better rewards - it just doesn't make sense to dedicate resources to creating the kind of rewards it would take to keep people raiding long term -and, with fewer people raiding, they risk separating players even more if they go too far down the "more power as a reward" path. The unique skin approach is the best you can hope for. As far as current difficulty, without scaling, their only real option is to look for a "happy medium" somewhere between the less skilled and highly skilled players interested in the game mode - and I am just not sure that is possible.

So, each player has to decide if the mode is something of interest for them personally or not based on what it is now rather than what they think it could be, because it isn't likely to change in any meaningful way anytime soon.

Hoping that they can magically make more of them than what they are now is just yelling at the clouds - it really wont make a difference.

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@"Blaeys.3102" said:Unfortunately, here is what people on all sides of this conversation have to accept - what we have now is the best it's going to get. With the consolidation of resources at Anet, there is virtually zero chance of raids coming out more often or of them adding any significant new features (including difficulty scaling) (In fact, in terms of how often they come out, I would fully expect the wait to increase). The same can be said of better rewards - it just doesn't make sense to dedicate resources to creating the kind of rewards it would take to keep people raiding long term -and, with fewer people raiding, they risk separating players even more if they go too far down the "more power as a reward" path. The unique skin approach is the best you can hope for. As far as current difficulty, without scaling, their only real option is to look for a "happy medium" somewhere between the less skilled and highly skilled players interested in the game mode - and I am just not sure that is possible.

So, each player has to decide if the mode is something of interest for them personally or not based on what it is now rather than what they think it could be, because it isn't likely to change in any meaningful way anytime soon.

Hoping that they can magically make more of them than what they are now is just yelling at the clouds - it really wont make a difference.

Im sorry, but this is nonsense.Scaling and repeatable rewards - Those two demands of the raiding community really are NOT expensive or difficult to implement. Anet just doesnt want to.

Easy mode for example: Add a buff to each player that buffs all boons every 5 or 10 seconds. Done.Hardmode: Add denied downstate buff to every player. DoneRepeat raid rewards: Add achievement a la dungeoneering achievement that gives out gold + champ bags. Done.

Sorry, but no. Anet just doesnt want to do this. Its not a matter of not enough resources.

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@"Yasi.9065" said:Scaling and repeatable rewards - Those two demands of the raiding community really are NOT expensive or difficult to implement.Perhaps that is so when looking only at resources and effort needed. Things become completely different however when you want to meet the "demands" of the community. Remember, that the raid community (or at least a very vocal part of it) does not want easy mode at all. What they want is more CMs and repeatable rewards for those. And while those might not be expensive to implement, it would still be relatively expensive compared to the amount of players that would benefit from it (remember, CMs are for only part of raiding community). Making a reasonable reward is also not trivial - too little and noone will care. Too much and it will cause farming, and will pull players from normal mode.Easy mode on the other hand would be something that might benefit a lot more players, but is also something that quite a number of veteran raiders are afraid of (because they think it would destroy raids, "like LFR destroyed WoW"). Problem of rewards for that mode is also not trivial.

So, it is not as effortless and easy as you say. It might have been still worthwhile some time ago, when raids still had decent population, but today Anet might not be willing to unsettle the status quo and deal with some raiders' ire for the unlikely chance that it might help keep the mode afloat for a while longer (instead of dealing the finishing blow).

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Yasi.9065" said:Scaling and repeatable rewards - Those two demands of the raiding community really are NOT expensive or difficult to implement.Perhaps that is so when looking only at resources and effort needed. Things become completely different however when you want to meet the "demands" of the community. Remember, that the raid community (or at least a very vocal part of it) does not want easy mode at all. What they want is more CMs and repeatable rewards for those. And while those might not be expensive to implement, it would still be relatively expensive compared to the amount of players that would benefit from it (remember, CMs are for only part of raiding community). Making a reasonable reward is also not trivial - too little and noone will care. Too much and it will cause farming, and will pull players from normal mode.Easy mode on the other hand would be something that might benefit a lot more players, but is also something that quite a number of veteran raiders are afraid of (because they think it would destroy raids, "like LFR destroyed WoW"). Problem of rewards for that mode is also not trivial.

So, it is not as effortless and easy as you say. It might have been still worthwhile some time ago, when raids still had decent population, but today Anet might not be willing to unsettle the status quo and deal with some raiders' ire for the unlikely chance that it might help keep the mode afloat for a while longer (instead of dealing the finishing blow).

You are completely wrong there. We dont want easy mode AT THE COST of more raids, that was the proposal we got about 1-2 years ago from a dev here on the forum. Also, not a single veteran thinks easy mode would destroy raids, or split the community, or whatever, thats absolute nonsense. The only problem vets had with easy mode was that it was said it would be either easy mode OR new raid. Nothing else.

And while repeatable CMs would be nice, Im sure pretty much everybody would be okay with "just" a hardmode.

Rewards are easy, at this point pretty much nearly everything is better than what we have. But here's some quick math for you: full clear approx 3hours with a good pug, 25 encounters -> makes roughly 7 minutes per encounter. Lets say the achievement gives reward at 18 encounters (so you dont have to kill any "endbosses"), thats 7minutes * 18 encounters -> roughly 2hours worth of gold. SW RIBA is what... 15g/h? 20g/h? Something around that. So lets say put 25g as reward, after all, SW is more challenging and anet hates raids..... rest is easy, put those 25g not as raw gold but part gold, part champ bags into the achievement box -> voila.As for rewards, its really quite easy. Anet could either go with 3 weekly bonus rewards (1 per mode), or shift rewards towards the repeatable achievement chest. Hardmode progresses both hardmode and normal mode achievement with increased rewards on the hardmode chest, normal mode only progresses normal mode achievement. No gold for easy mode. Ascended/minis, LI, currencies stay in weekly chest.

The argument of "too costly" just doesnt fly. Especially since anet repeatedly releases throwaway content aka "living story".

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Let's be honest here ... it's WAY more costly to develop raid content for a small portion of the playerbase than it is to expand the current raids to incorporate an easy mode to appeal to a way more significant part of the playerbase. The ROI on including an easy mode is much higher.

Even if it was exactly double the cost to implement a similar easy mode for every raid that currently exists, it's not hard to think Anet would easily more than doubling the population of people interested in completing raids if they did that.

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@"Yasi.9065" said:You are completely wrong there. We dont want easy mode AT THE COST of more raids, that was the proposal we got about 1-2 years ago from a dev here on the forum. Also, not a single veteran thinks easy mode would destroy raids, or split the community, or whatever, thats absolute nonsense.You might want to reread all the raid threads from the current and past forums, because this argument isn't mine, but was something quite a number of raid veterans brought up. Remember, "LFR destroyed WoW raids" (a sentiment that is also very popular somehow).

The only problem vets had with easy mode was that it was said it would be either easy mode OR new raid. Nothing else.If developing an additional mode would be hard and costly enough to slow down development of raids then, what makes you think it would be different now?Although it wasn't really an Anet's argument, but (again) was something brought up from the raiders' side at the time raiders thought raids were thriving, and didn't want easy mode bringing casuals in and spoiling their fun.

And while repeatable CMs would be nice, Im sure pretty much everybody would be okay with "just" a hardmode.That's the same.

Rewards are easy, at this point pretty much nearly everything is better than what we have. But here's some quick math for you: full clear approx 3hours with a good pug, 25 encounters -> makes roughly 7 minutes per encounter. Lets say the achievement gives reward at 18 encounters (so you dont have to kill any "endbosses"), thats 7minutes * 18 encounters -> roughly 2hours worth of gold. SW RIBA is what... 15g/h? 20g/h? Something around that. So lets say put 25g as reward, after all, SW is more challenging and anet hates raids..... rest is easy, put those 25g not as raw gold but part gold, part champ bags into the achievement box -> voila.As for rewards, its really quite easy. Anet could either go with 3 weekly bonus rewards (1 per mode), or shift rewards towards the repeatable achievement chest. Hardmode progresses both hardmode and normal mode achievement with increased rewards on the hardmode chest, normal mode only progresses normal mode achievement. No gold for easy mode. Ascended/minis, LI, currencies stay in weekly chest.So, what rewards exactly would easy mode have? And what difficulty level would you envision for them? (remember, current fractals with their not so small rewards are currently dying out as well, so, considering easy mode would require 10-man teams, rewards would need to be better just to have equal interest).

The argument of "too costly" just doesnt fly. Especially since anet repeatedly releases throwaway content aka "living story".that "throwaway content" is for 90% of the game population. I sincerely doubt easy mode would be that easy. Besides, that LS content you speak of also doesn;t seem to be doing a good job of keeping the interest in the game up. If Anet want to keep players, they will need to put more effort in it as well.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Yasi.9065 said:You are completely wrong there. We dont want easy mode AT THE COST of more raids, that was the proposal we got about 1-2 years ago from a dev here on the forum. Also, not a single veteran thinks easy mode would destroy raids, or split the community, or whatever, thats absolute nonsense.You might want to reread all the raid threads from the current and past forums, because this argument isn't mine, but was something quite a number of raid veterans brought up. Remember, "LFR destroyed WoW raids" (a sentiment that is also very popular somehow).

LFR has nothing to do with raiding. There is also no data which suggests that LFR in any way increased the raiding population in WoW (or other MMORPGs). It's best viewed as additional game mode which shares resources with raiding. Sort of how story episodes share resources with Living World Maps.

Now one could make the argument that a LFR type mode would be cost efficient enough to allow for additional, raid unrelated, content. That would not be possible with the current developer and resource allocation though.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Yasi.9065 said:The only problem vets had with easy mode was that it was said it would be either easy mode OR new raid. Nothing else.If developing an additional mode would be hard and costly enough to slow down development of raids then, what makes you think it would be different now?Although it wasn't really an Anet's argument, but (again) was something brought up from the raiders' side at the time raiders thought raids were thriving, and didn't want easy mode bringing casuals in and spoiling their fun.

This had/has nothing to do with spoiling anyones fun. It's always been about resource allocation.

Making more raids and raid modes would have, and still means, to make GW2 more raid centric. Last I checked, Arenanet has been doubling down on casual periodic content. How about we devote one of the Living World Teams to challenging instanced content? I doubt that would go over well with the majority of the playerbase.

The problems with raids go far beyond how accessible they are and touch on subjects like:

  • no gear progression
  • no proper rewards for challenging content
  • insane difference in performance requirements between game modes
  • etc.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Yasi.9065 said:The argument of "too costly" just doesnt fly. Especially since anet repeatedly releases throwaway content aka "living story".that "throwaway content" is for 90% of the game population. I sincerely doubt easy mode would be
that
easy. Besides, that LS content you speak of also doesn;t seem to be doing a good job of keeping the interest in the game up. If Anet want to keep players, they will need to put more effort in it as well.

This I agree with. Both on that the vast majority of players want non raid related content, as well as that Living World content does not hold players interest permanently.

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