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[Raids] Why raids in GW2 stayed niched


Yasi.9065

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@"Astralporing.1957" said: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.

That assumes 90% of the population plays the Living Story. Does it? The 90% of the population finished all living worlds story instances so far? My guess is that no, not even close. There is this weird assumption on the forums that everything that is in the open world is "for the 90%" or "for the majority", while Raids are for a "tiny minority". Yet I see absolutely no evidence to support that the living world is finished by that 90%. For example, what's the number of players that finished War Eternal compared to the "entire playerbase"?

As for your second part, I agree. The LS doesn't seem to keep interest up, but that's by design, it's supposed to be filler content, to fill the gaps between bigger releases. I really hope S5 will be such a big release.

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@"Yasi.9065" said:

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.

Technically Arenanet has been developing an easy and a hard version of each raid encounter ever since wing 4. Probably had an effect on the release cadence, but so much for "impossible due to lack of resources".

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@Katary.7096 said:

@"Yasi.9065" said:

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.

Technically Arenanet has been developing an easy and a hard version of each raid encounter ever since wing 4. Probably had an effect on the release cadence, but so much for "impossible due to lack of resources".

Cms add another ability, tweak another and increase hp. All the suggestions about easy ask to tweak every single ability. You can see the difference in resources required

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Yasi.9065" said:

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.

Technically Arenanet has been developing an easy and a hard version of each raid encounter ever since wing 4. Probably had an effect on the release cadence, but so much for "impossible due to lack of resources".

Cms add another ability, tweak another and increase hp. All the suggestions about easy ask to tweak every single ability. You can see the difference in resources required

Neither teapots nor my suggestion ask to tweak anything actually. Teapots suggestions was to add the "basically unkillable" buff from living story 4 to raids, mine is to add a buff that gives out all boons. Hardmode no downstate debuff is also inspired by teapot's upcoming raid tournament.

And honestly, Im pretty sure anet devs did think of something like that already. That we dont get it is a management decision, pure and simple. Nothing to do with it being too resource draining.

Hence, raids stay niche content and it will only take a single good raiding mmo being released onto the market, for raids in GW2 to die.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:Cms add another ability, tweak another and increase hp.Generally true.

All the suggestions about easy ask to tweak every single ability.Then all the suggestions for easy mode design are lacking in creativity.

You can see the difference in resources requiredI beg your pardon, but no I can not and for the matter of fact neither can you. I am confident that there is a difference in required resources, but people on the outside will likely be unable to quantify it accurately. What I personally believe is this: Given the current state of raid development it is definitely possible for Arenanet to commit to two different difficulty settings, with a decent chance that it will slow down releases by a measure of months. Since a new wing roughly every nine months is insufficient for sustaining the raiding scene, the worst consequence would be that raiding in Guild Wars 2 dies slightly faster than it is doing at the moment.Perhaps you have an incredibly detailed vision regarding the implementation of multiple difficulties and that specific version may very well be impossible. All I am saying is that the developers would be capable of delivering a functioning difficulty split, because they have been doing it partially for some time.

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Yeah. I actually wanted to raid in this game and it's just really hard to break into. My guild canceled their training runs, 95% of the time, open groups want Kill Proof (KP) or are actually run sales. Sometimes i've even noticed the KP groups failing to fill and then just fizzling out.

I agree that in general the community doesn't match the challenge

I agree that classes don't have specific, obvious roles and people don't really know how to play their class and aren't really challenged on a regular basis

I also feel like there's not really a natural way for me to learn my rotations for the classes i'm interested in raiding with.

And there should be incentives for people to clear raids.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:That's not completely true. The reason why simple rotation were mostly used was because in the era without dps meters it was much harder to do proper estimation of more complicated rotations. Additionally, the "meta" was extremely niche, and something you could have easily ignored in the whole PvE content, both OW and instanced. In fact, because you could not easily see your damage output, 99% of the population was completely unaware of how big the dps difference between average players and 100% efficient ones was, and noticing dps differences between two similar rotations was often beyond the capability of even most hardcore players.

Still, constant weapon switching for most classes, attunement dance for eles (and kit swapping madness for engis) were completely a thing then, if you wanted to be truly serious about efficiency.

Also, the "power creep" people keep bringing about is mostly a myth. While it did indeed happen both times after the expac hit, people keep forgetting that each of those cases were preceded by massive wave of nerfs. For example, i keep hearing about how PoF introduced power creep. This is indeed true - but at the same time it is also true that the highest dps builds are builds from the height of HoT era, and nothing in PoF times could even come close to some of those.

For the engineer, yes. But for other classes... it really was easier. All of the specializations keep adding more and more stuff to maintain, which creeps the power until everything gets nerfed and it becomes the new standard. The core classes had less skills available to them, so they used less skills to do their damage. I still remember many of them:

Mesmer: You made sword phantasms and then used auto attacks, blurred frenzy, and at the start of the fight, mantra of pain.Elementalist: you camped fire in staff using lava font, unless you're using FGS in which case you corner rushed enemies to death.Necromancer: You shroud-flashed for buffs and auto attacked with dagger. Lich form off cooldown.Warrior: You camped Greatsword and used 100 blades whenever possible.Guardian: This one actually required switching. You'd use Scepter 2, then switch to greatsword and use the symbol and spin.Thief: Backstab into heartseekerRanger: No clue what this one wasEngineer: Beethoven's the 5th.

This was when quickness was a rare unique buff, so outside of Time Warp mo;st classes didn't even get it. On some of these, maybe you could eke out a few extra DPS by swapping weapons around, but for most of them that wasn't really an option.

That was well before elite specializations. Yes they made rotations more complex 5 years ago, but they've been simplifying them since then.Holosmith rotation was simplified, in the most recent patch, no more overheat, no more kitsChronomancer rotation was simplified, multiple timesWeaver rotation was simplified, no more conjures, it looks complex but it's "use all your skills" kind of thingDaredevil and Deadeye never had rotations to begin withCondi Ranger was removed and Condi Soulbeast has a very simple rotation

The only really complex rotations remaining in the game are Condi Renegade and Condi Engineer. I suspect they will be simplified soon because it's unreasonable to have only two such complex rotations in the game while the others are rather simple. And Condi Weaver but I don't see anyone playing that anymore, Condi Engineer is also rare.

You have obviously never played boon support chrono. That's hard.

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@Firebeard.1746 said:Yeah. I actually wanted to raid in this game and it's just really hard to break into. My guild canceled their training runs, 95% of the time, open groups want Kill Proof (KP) or are actually run sales. Sometimes i've even noticed the KP groups failing to fill and then just fizzling out.

I agree that in general the community doesn't match the challenge

I agree that classes don't have specific, obvious roles and people don't really know how to play their class and aren't really challenged on a regular basis

I also feel like there's not really a natural way for me to learn my rotations for the classes i'm interested in raiding with.

And there should be incentives for people to clear raids.

I feel it Has incentives even, some of the loot in there is pretty sweet. But I can also confirm that LFG is filled to the brim with sale runs, and rarely anything else. I see a couple of Pugs, generally with up to 3-4 people in it, and those disappear after a while. You rarely see a group that lacks specific roles, and more rarely a training run. I also think that the kill proof and legendary insight requirements is kind of becoming less relevant since people can literally buy them by buying runs, thus nulifying all guarantee that the holder knows the mechanics he's supposedly proficient at based on that Indicator. Yes people have that much money by the way. The cost of a raid run is not prohibitively expensive.

The idea of a ramped up difficulty is in my opinion good. Fractal T4 and Vale guardian actually have a pretty big difference, both in effect and in context. Enrage timer for one, actual hits as well. Some of the more recent fractals do incorporate a semi raid-like mechanic which I think is a pretty good idea. The issue is that taking a hit in a T4 fractal during a mechanic is trivial if you have the right agony res. Taking a hit in any raid mechanic is Not. Lenght is a very big factor in that : Fractal bosses dont last long, which in turn, means player downs handicap is lessened, even if you have less players. In a raid, any player down is actually a very big handicap. If you lose a DPS, you risk the enrage timer going off. If you lose a healer, you risk a general wipe, if you lose a buffer, you risk either/both.

Hell, you know what they should do ? Turn the kitty golem into an actual raid boss with customizable mechanics, and let it fight players.

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One last thing: the raids in this game are crazy hard compared to wow.

1) It feels like there are way more roles to fill2) classes are expected to perform at a crazy high level: the rotations are very difficult. I have like 4-5 buttons in Wow plus some long cd abilities i have to time3) also the vertical progression in WoW allows players to close to overpower raids. They're balanced around 15-20 ilvls below what the raid drops (with consumables) and titanforged drops from bosses you can kill or gear from other sources can help you just juke things. The only thing that separates good from a bad player is skill in this game and the skill cap required feels very high based on the one raid i did do.

I'm actually shocked GW2 doesn't have elitists from WoW oozing into the system, because of how hard it is.

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Raids are the reason class balance got thrown out of whack. Gw2 never even really needed raids; all it needed was to update and tinker with the dungeons that were in place to make them more challenging (if players wanted more challenge). Either by adding new paths, new bosses, or even perhaps some sort of "raid" boss at the end of each dungeon, if players wanted a tougher scripted encounter. Hell, even add in a few more dungeons to correspond with the new maps they've released.

It really made no sense to add in content that so few people were going to play over the long-haul; waste of resources. From the sounds of it OP, they're on the decline, which is exactly what many of us said was going to happen. Sure, people still play them; however, how many resources are they wasting on creating these raids when so few people touch them?

It's the same with LS content. Outside of the first few days where people are powering through the achievements, the maps are largely dead until the meta-train comes rolling through.

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@DeadlySynz.3471 said:It really made no sense to add in content that so few people were going to play over the long-haul; waste of resources. From the sounds of it OP, they're on the decline, which is exactly what many of us said was going to happen. Sure, people still play them; however, how many resources are they wasting on creating these raids when so few people touch them?

It's the same with LS content. Outside of the first few days where people are powering through the achievements, the maps are largely dead until the meta-train comes rolling through.

So you are saying that LS content is also a waste of resources? What isn't a waste of resources?

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@Firebeard.1746 said:One last thing: the raids in this game are crazy hard compared to wow.

Raids here are between Normal and Heroic raid difficulty in WoW. The main difference being, you can not massively outgear raid content to make it aritifically easier than intended. That's what is causing some people to perceive them as harder. They are not.

@Firebeard.1746 said:1) It feels like there are way more roles to fill

10 mann WoW raids use 1-2 tanks, 1-2 healers, rest dps (usually split between a bit less melee than ranged). That's pretty similar to this games setup.

@Firebeard.1746 said:2) classes are expected to perform at a crazy high level: the rotations are very difficult. I have like 4-5 buttons in Wow plus some long cd abilities i have to time

Try any thief build, condi shortbow soulbeast, Dragonhunter, banner power warrior. Those have quite simplistic rotations mostly consisting of 1-2 button and auto attacks.

The required damage on most bosses is a fraction of what classes can peform at the top end. The most limiting factor is people being incapable of dealing with mechanics on a prolonged basis. When elite raid guilds kill bosses within 2-3 minutes while they are given 10 minute timers and when more casual groups wipe on mechanics and almost never on enrage timers, that is a clear sign that the actual requirement to rotation and class performance is rather low.

@Firebeard.1746 said:3) also the vertical progression in WoW allows players to close to overpower raids. They're balanced around 15-20 ilvls below what the raid drops (with consumables) and titanforged drops from bosses you can kill or gear from other sources can help you just juke things. The only thing that separates good from a bad player is skill in this game and the skill cap required feels very high based on the one raid i did do.

So basically WoW allows you to make the content easier than intended by outscaling it. That is not possible here yes.

@Firebeard.1746 said:I'm actually shocked GW2 doesn't have elitists from WoW oozing into the system, because of how hard it is.

Because in the end, raid content is not that hard. Mythic WoW raids are way above GW2 raid content AND require a lot of dedication along the way in gearing up. Raids here are peanuts compared to that.

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@Katary.7096 said:I beg your pardon, but no I can not and for the matter of fact neither can you. I am confident that there is a difference in required resources, but people on the outside will likely be unable to quantify it accurately. What I personally believe is this: Given the current state of raid development it is definitely possible for Arenanet to commit to two different difficulty settings, with a decent chance that it will slow down releases by a measure of months. Since a new wing roughly every nine months is insufficient for sustaining the raiding scene, the worst consequence would be that raiding in Guild Wars 2 dies slightly faster than it is doing at the moment.

The idea of adding multiple difficulties is to reduce the time between raid releases. If they add multiple difficulties and at the same the time it takes longer to release raids, then they shouldn't add more difficulties, as there is no point. It's already ultra slow, need ways to make it faster.

Perhaps you have an incredibly detailed vision regarding the implementation of multiple difficulties and that specific version may very well be impossible. All I am saying is that the developers would be capable of delivering a functioning difficulty split, because they have been doing it partially for some time.

No I don't, others do and have posted especially in that mega thread about raid difficulties. And the encounters they proposed where fundamentally different to the current ones, reducing every single ability to non-existence. As for me, I made a suggestion on multiple difficulties a very long time ago, even before Path of Fire was released. It's rather simple and should take very little (if at all?) development resources: stop the easier encounter version at the early phases, disregard the rest of the encounter. No changes to mechanics at all, just do the opposite of CM, remove mechanics.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:One last thing: the raids in this game are crazy hard compared to wow.

Raids here are between Normal and Heroic raid difficulty in WoW. The main difference being, you can not massively outgear raid content to make it aritifically easier than intended. That's what is causing some people to perceive them as harder. They are not.

You're proving my point. In WoW there is a separate way for acquiring high end gear (Mythic+ dungeons) . I'm not sure you can claim "artificially easier": the way blizz intends it is that you can eventually actually clear content, they don't want you "stuck". You can only really claim "artificially easier than the beginning of the raid tier". If you look closely at the way gear is done, you gradually accumulate more throughout the season making clearing the content easier. It's funny a game intended to be easier than WoW is actually harder if you look at the whole season in WoW. Also i didn't fully represent the impact of gear: you still have to mind mechanics, you just have a little more cushion. You can still wipe with a well geared group.

And you're wrong about difficulty. I've cleared most bosses on Heroic Antorus last expansion and it didn't feel nearly as hard as the wing i did. The number of mechanics felt way lower. I also dabbled in BoD and Uldir this expansion.

@Firebeard.1746 said:1) It feels like there are way more roles to fill

10 mann WoW raids use 1-2 tanks, 1-2 healers, rest dps (usually split between a bit less melee than ranged). That's pretty similar to this games setup.

Let's see:

GW2:TankHealersBoon support (the number you need is dependent on class & gear composition you have available based on my research)Banner supportDPSWith only 10 raid members mind you

WoWTankHealersDPSWith 25 people.

How am i wrong? Or is all the crap i'm reading about raiding wrong?

@Firebeard.1746 said:2) classes are expected to perform at a crazy high level: the rotations are very difficult. I have like 4-5 buttons in Wow plus some long cd abilities i have to time

Try any thief build, condi shortbow soulbeast, Dragonhunter, banner power warrior. Those have quite simplistic rotations mostly consisting of 1-2 button and auto attacks.

The required damage on most bosses is a fraction of what classes can peform at the top end. The most limiting factor is people being incapable of dealing with mechanics on a prolonged basis. When elite raid guilds kill bosses within 2-3 minutes while they are given 10 minute timers and when more casual groups wipe on mechanics and almost never on enrage timers, that is a clear sign that the actual requirement to rotation and class performance is rather low.

Other people have said that they barely clear the boss with their experienced raid party seconds before the enrage timer hit in other discussions. So i'm taking what you're saying here about output with a grain of salt.

So some classes are really hard, others are stupid easy? Sounds like a balance problem.

@Firebeard.1746 said:3) also the vertical progression in WoW allows players to close to overpower raids. They're balanced around 15-20 ilvls below what the raid drops (with consumables) and titanforged drops from bosses you can kill or gear from other sources can help you just juke things. The only thing that separates good from a bad player is skill in this game and the skill cap required feels very high based on the one raid i did do.

So basically WoW allows you to make the content easier than intended by outscaling it.Because in the end, raid content is not that hard. Mythic WoW raids are way above GW2 raid content AND require a lot of dedication along the way in gearing up. Raids here are peanuts compared to that.

Have you raided in mythic perchance? When was the last time you did?

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@Firebeard.1746 said:So some classes are really hard, others are stupid easy? Sounds like a balance problem.

The developers are doing all they can to reduce complexity of rotations. There are only a few builds left that still have complex rotations, but most of them have easy rotations by now.

Other people have said that they barely clear the boss with their experienced raid party seconds before the enrage timer hit in other discussions. So i'm taking what you're saying here about output with a grain of salt.

If you take into account that players wearing no armor at all beat bosses without reaching an enrage timer, you can understand that those reaching it are doing something fundamentally wrong. Maybe their composition isn't good, not covering all important boons. Maybe their dps characters are getting downed all the time (or are dead) because they fail mechanics, or simply the dps characters don't follow the rotation.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:So some classes are really hard, others are stupid easy? Sounds like a balance problem.

The developers are doing all they can to reduce complexity of rotations. There are only a few builds left that still have complex rotations, but most of them have easy rotations by now.

Other people have said that they barely clear the boss with their experienced raid party seconds before the enrage timer hit in other discussions. So i'm taking what you're saying here about output with a grain of salt.

If you take into account that players wearing no armor at all beat bosses without reaching an enrage timer, you can understand that those reaching it are doing something fundamentally wrong. Maybe their composition isn't good, not covering all important boons. Maybe their dps characters are getting downed all the time (or are dead) because they fail mechanics, or simply the dps characters don't follow the rotation.

Is this in every wing that naked players are pulling this off? Did these parties have realistic compositions with a fair amount of diversity in professions?

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@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:So some classes are really hard, others are stupid easy? Sounds like a balance problem.

The developers are doing all they can to reduce complexity of rotations. There are only a few builds left that still have complex rotations, but most of them have easy rotations by now.

Other people have said that they barely clear the boss with their experienced raid party seconds before the enrage timer hit in other discussions. So i'm taking what you're saying here about output with a grain of salt.

If you take into account that players wearing no armor at all beat bosses without reaching an enrage timer, you can understand that those reaching it are doing something fundamentally wrong. Maybe their composition isn't good, not covering all important boons. Maybe their dps characters are getting downed all the time (or are dead) because they fail mechanics, or simply the dps characters don't follow the rotation.

Is this in every wing that naked players are pulling this off? Did these parties have realistic compositions with a fair amount of diversity in professions?

No of course it's not on all wings/bosses. There are some bosses were dps is really tight, like Twin Largos and Gorseval but for every other boss not even training runs reach enrage timers. If the group fails, it fails way before that point.

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If you are interested in the dps required, take a look here:https://www.gw2raidar.com/global_stats

The difference between 30% and 99% is gigantic. On average from all raid bosses, the best groups do 218,253 dps and finish the fight in 1:54. The 30% groups do 74,507 dps and finish the fight in 6:24. This means the best groups do triple damage than the lowest groups.

6:24 is enough to kill most Raid bosses without hitting the enrage timer.Vale Guardian: 8 minsGorseval: 7 minsSabetha: 9 minsSlothasor: 7 minsMatthias: 10 minsKeep Construct: 10 minsXera: 11 minsMursaat Overseer: 6 minsSamarog: 11 minsDeimos: 12 minsSoulless Horror: 8 minsDhuum: 10 mins

This means, if your team, or yourself, can't reach 30% on gw2raidar, you need some more training. Once the team reaches 30% they should beat all bosses without reaching enrage timers anymore.

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@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:One last thing: the raids in this game are crazy hard compared to wow.

Raids here are between Normal and Heroic raid difficulty in WoW. The main difference being, you can not massively outgear raid content to make it aritifically easier than intended. That's what is causing some people to perceive them as harder. They are not.

You're proving my point. In WoW there is a separate way for acquiring high end gear (Mythic+ dungeons) . I'm not sure you can claim "artificially easier": the way blizz intends it is that you can eventually actually clear content, they don't want you "stuck". You can only really claim "artificially easier than the beginning of the raid tier". If you look closely at the way gear is done, you gradually accumulate more throughout the season making clearing the content easier. It's funny a game intended to be easier than WoW is actually harder if you look at the whole season in WoW. Also i didn't fully represent the impact of gear: you still have to mind mechanics, you just have a little more cushion. You can still wipe with a well geared group.

There is multiple ways to get end game gear in this game, most of them do not involve raiding. It is artificially easier. That is not to be disputed given how progression in WoW works and how people magically start clearing content which was to hard for them when it was initially released. No, players did not magically get better when they suddenly clear Mythic+7 dungeons midway into an expansion while struggling with Mythic+1 at the beginning. It's outscaling of difficulty, nothing more.

Also top end players also do not magically become better when they clear +10s at the start of an expansion and then move to +20 mythic dungeons towards the end. Similar concept at the top end: gear scaling shifts the difficulty down.

@Firebeard.1746 said:And you're wrong about difficulty. I've cleared most bosses on Heroic Antorus last expansion and it didn't feel nearly as hard as the wing i did. The number of mechanics felt way lower. I also dabbled in BoD and Uldir this expansion.

and I'm sure you were not 1 item level above the designed difficulty. I've done high level mythic dungeon and raid (mostly heroic, some mythic) content in WoW on level, being a few Mythic+ dungeons behind top end players. I know how players clear content which was originally to difficult: outscale it by 30 ilevel, then clear it. That is no argument that you cleared the content as it was designed.

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:1) It feels like there are way more roles to fill

10 mann WoW raids use 1-2 tanks, 1-2 healers, rest dps (usually split between a bit less melee than ranged). That's pretty similar to this games setup.

Let's see:

GW2:TankHealersBoon support (the number you need is dependent on class & gear composition you have available based on my research)Banner supportDPSWith only 10 raid members mind you

Let's see:

  • 4 supports (3 for high end raid guilds)
  • 6 dps

You are not making a strong argument if you can't even apply the basic group setup to your argument. There is no pure tank in GW2, there is no pure healer in GW2. Just like healers and buffers are not seperate entities in WoW. Or how damage dealers do more than just damage but also often crowd control.

I was comparing 10 man group setups in GW2 to 10 mann group setups in WoW. More than 10 mann in WoW simply scale up the amount of similar roles required.

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:2) classes are expected to perform at a crazy high level: the rotations are very difficult. I have like 4-5 buttons in Wow plus some long cd abilities i have to time

Try any thief build, condi shortbow soulbeast, Dragonhunter, banner power warrior. Those have quite simplistic rotations mostly consisting of 1-2 button and auto attacks.

The required damage on most bosses is a fraction of what classes can peform at the top end. The most limiting factor is people being incapable of dealing with mechanics on a prolonged basis. When elite raid guilds kill bosses within 2-3 minutes while they are given 10 minute timers and when more casual groups wipe on mechanics and almost never on enrage timers, that is a clear sign that the actual requirement to rotation and class performance is rather low.

Other people have said that they barely clear the boss with their experienced raid party seconds before the enrage timer hit in other discussions. So i'm taking what you're saying here about output with a grain of salt.

That is something almost NEVER stated, and something I have almost never experienced in my over 1,700 LI/LD of raiding. You are making this up, sorry. The main reason for wipes in over 90% of all cases is wipes to mechanics way before a timer expires.

@Firebeard.1746 said:So some classes are really hard, others are stupid easy? Sounds like a balance problem.

Sure, there is a difference in how difficult classes and their rotations are. Doesn't mean there is no easy classes to raid on.

@Firebeard.1746 said:

@Firebeard.1746 said:3) also the vertical progression in WoW allows players to close to overpower raids. They're balanced around 15-20 ilvls below what the raid drops (with consumables) and titanforged drops from bosses you can kill or gear from other sources can help you just juke things. The only thing that separates good from a bad player is skill in this game and the skill cap required feels very high based on the one raid i did do.

So basically WoW allows you to make the content easier than intended by outscaling it.Because in the end, raid content is not that hard. Mythic WoW raids are way above GW2 raid content AND require a lot of dedication along the way in gearing up. Raids here are peanuts compared to that.

Have you raided in mythic perchance? When was the last time you did?

During Warlords of Draenor. Then Mythic Dungeons up to +12 (when top players were doing +15s) in Legion and heroic raids.

The general consensus among top end raiders is as I have stated: raid content is between Normal and Heroic WoW raid difficulty (normal being the easiest bosses on normal mode like Cairn or MO, Heroic being some of the CMs and difficult normal bosses like Dhuum normal) with maybe Dhuum CM being around easy mythic as the hardest encounter.

EDIT: obviously that consensus does not take into account people who outgear content and clear it weeks or months later. This is based on gear level being aproximately around content difficulty for which it was designed for.

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I don't think LW is for 90% of the player population at all.Even if a large part of the community is playing LW, I wonder how many are just doing so because that's all there is while waiting for proper and challenging content.

Metrics can be quite misleading that way.If Anet develops a lot of LW and very little Raids, of course over time there is going to be a lot of engagement with LW and low engagement with Raids (besides the naturally higher engagement with easy content).That shouldn't justify even more development of LW and even less development of Raids though.

Just the sense that there is a healthy endgame to look forward to, even if a majority will never reach it or participate in it, is pretty important for the health of an MMO or online game in general.If I newly get into a game and hear that the endgame is severely underdeveloped and dying out due to lack of content, even if I'm enjoying the early game experience and just running around in the world for now, chances are I'm not going to be around for that long and not feel motivated to put in the effort to find people and to get into that endgame content in the first place, even if what's there is really good, if it feels like that it doesn't have a future and isn't going anywhere.It's a self-perpetuating death of the gamemode at that point.

Super easy solo non repeatable content just isn't sustainable for an online game. As much as I enjoy playing through a story, it just takes way too much time to develop for what players get out of it to be the main focus.There is a reason single player games generally get picked up, played through and then dropped. That doesn't work for an MMO long term.Imagining if even just half the resources of LW had been put into in guild systems, revitalizing dungeons and development of Fractals, Raids and WvW over the last few years I think it's pretty much impossible the game wouldn't be in an objectively much better state at this point.

Trading potentially hundreds of hours of repeatable content that gets players to group up and keep them engaged, for 2-3 hours of one time content that takes just as much resources, if not more, in creating all the maps, assets, writing, voice acting and so on, just isn't a good deal.It has it's place and can be really fun to play through, but as I said, it can't be all there is IF you want to sustain a healthy community long term and not just cash out.

There is a huge difference between 90% (which is think is way too high of an estimation) of players playing certain content, and those players actually wanting to play/enjoying that content.One of the main reasons endgame content is niche is because it has been terribly neglected, both in incentives and introduction as well as content development.The difficulty isn't the main problem per se.What are Easy modes that take out all the mechanics, take out the need to group up, the need to fill certain roles like boon supports or are unfailable exactly going to teach and how is that going to transition into actual Raids?

Easy mode Raids could have a place and do some good, but they would need to be done right and with proper effort and resources, which leads to the same problem endgame content has in general, the lack of that.The development of proper introductory easy mode Raids at this point would mean no proper Raids being released for 1 year+ (if they are even still being developed in the first place).That won't do any good for that community either as more Raiders would leave by the time than easy modes would probably bring into the scene.

If Anet want's to see the endgame community and content grow, they need to invest more into it. Much more.If they don't, then that's that and press F indeed.

This comes back to what I said earlier, unless ArenaNet knows and states what they want for the game and where it is going, we can argue about what it needs or how to solve the issues for years without changing anything.Right now the focus of GW2 seems to be to run a round alone completely unengaged with the game and it's systems to press F on things to check a box in endless collections. I'm sure there is a demographic for that, I just don't think it's higher than things like Raids, Fractals, WvW etc., especially once all those things fall away as backdrop motivation.Nor do I think there will be anything that could even be called a community left once those players are all that's left.

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@"Asum.4960" said:I don't think LW is for 90% of the player population at all.

Well let's take a look at some statistics to find out. using gw2efficiency data

This is from a month ago:91.5% started Heart of Thorns, 66.2% killed Mordremoth67.2% started S3E1, 59.7% finished it62.4% started S3E2, 57.2% finished it63.3% started S3E3, 55.7% finished it59.6% started S3E4, 50.8% finished it56% started S3E5, 49.9% finished it52.7% started S3E6, 46.8% finished it79.9% started Path of Fire, 62% killed Balthazar57% started S4E1, 47.1% finished it47.9% started S4E2, 42.3% finished it48.7% started S4E3, 39.9% finished it40.6% started S4E4, 35.8% finished it36.3% started S4E5, 31.7% finished it32.8% started S4E6, 29.6% finished it

It's perfectly clear that 90% of the players is NOT playing the LS, only Heart of Thorns was started by that mythical "90%", but that's to be expected, gw2eff launched at the release of Heart of Thorns so most accounts had access to the expansion. The rest of the episodes are much lower, even going under 30% near the end of Season 4. So I wonder where is the proof of the claim that "LS is for the 90%"

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Asum.4960" said:I don't think LW is for 90% of the player population at all.

Well let's take a look at some statistics to find out. using gw2efficiency data

This is from a month ago:91.5% started Heart of Thorns, 66.2% killed Mordremoth67.2% started S3E1, 59.7% finished it62.4% started S3E2, 57.2% finished it63.3% started S3E3, 55.7% finished it59.6% started S3E4, 50.8% finished it56% started S3E5, 49.9% finished it52.7% started S3E6, 46.8% finished it79.9% started Path of Fire, 62% killed Balthazar57% started S4E1, 47.1% finished it47.9% started S4E2, 42.3% finished it48.7% started S4E3, 39.9% finished it40.6% started S4E4, 35.8% finished it36.3% started S4E5, 31.7% finished it32.8% started S4E6, 29.6% finished it

It's perfectly clear that 90% of the players is NOT playing the LS, only Heart of Thorns was started by that mythical "90%", but that's to be expected, gw2eff launched at the release of Heart of Thorns so most accounts had access to the expansion. The rest of the episodes are much lower, even going under 30% near the end of Season 4. So I wonder where is the proof of the claim that "LS is for the 90%"

Considering that includes a whole lot of people who don't care much for LW at all and only complete it while waiting for things they'd much rather have like Fractal (CM's), Raids and WvW updates etc., 30% is actually shockingly low.

Even Raids as "super niche content" managed to generate that much participation before they too declined after W4 due to neglect and focus shift on mainly LW.If they had received the same amount of content, they may even be about even at this point.

That does make me wonder though, what if anything are people actually playing still?

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@Asum.4960 said:Considering that includes a whole lot of people who don't care much for LW at all and only complete it while waiting for things they'd much rather have like Fractal (CM's), Raids and WvW updates etc., 30% is actually shockingly low.

Yes. When I got that data I used story completion, I should''ve used meta achievement completion too because completing the meta means you played everything (or most) the episode had to offer. One can assume that creating the map, achievements, races and collections is more expensive than the story alone, so a comparison between meta achievement completions and raid completions would be nice. I might do one

Raid stats from a month ago (for reference):Wing 1: 30.2% killed Vale Guardian, 19.8% killed SabethaWing 2: 18.5% killed Slothasor, 16.2% killed MatthiasWing 3: 27% finished escort, 13.7% killed XeraWing 4: 23.5% killed Cairn, 14.4% killed DeimosWing 5: 9.8% killed the Soulless Horror, 6.8% killed DhuumWing 6: 8.5% killed the Conjured Amalgamte, 5% killed Quadim

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