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Why invest resources in new 10 person content instead of difficulty settings?


Swagger.1459

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Why invest resources in new 10 person content instead of putting that time and money into difficulty settings for current raids?

Not like players haven't been asking for years, and it would certainly help fight some of the toxic culture that raid designs have fostered against newer raiders and those not as “twitch” inclined.... Confused as to this decision, and the team is certainly not doing “right” for the player base here.

Edit- To put this into perspective, Raids were introduced in 2015 and the team hasn’t done anything that makes Raids more inclusive to more players. And I’m not personally saying this, but I can guarantee that players are still thinking “The devs don’t care or listen to our feedback.”

And yes, I have my full set of medium legendary raid armor already.

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@"Swagger.1459" said:Why invest resources in new 10 person content instead of putting that time and money into difficulty settings for current raids?It's a cheaper investment. You've almost certainly read about how complicated it is to manage multiple difficulties, because it's never just "change a little health, change the enrage timer;" there are always lots of other considerations to make it a worthwhile challenge. (Look no further than Shattered Observatory T1 vs T2, vs T3 vs T4 vs CM.)

In contrast, extending the "bounty" concept to include 10-player limits is part & parcel of creating the newer maps. (Not cheap; just cheaper.) It's also more accessible because it doesn't require people coordinating top tier builds. (My friend is thinking "Freezie" from Wintersday, although I'm more pessimistic.) This makes it more likely that it might attract people who hate the very idea of raids and wish ANet had never heard of them.


Of course: the proof is in the pudding. We really have no idea what ANet has planned. The good news is that whatever it is ... is already done; it's going to happen no matter how good or bad an idea it is. The bad news is that whatever it is... it's already done; it's going to happen no matter how good or bad an idea it is.

Accordingly, I'm withholding criticism, praise, or even cautious optimism about Strikes. When it releases, when I've tried a few, when the community has tried a few (and loves or hates them), when we see whether in fact it attracts people like skritt to shinies, when we see whether it has any effect on who raids... well, that is some months away. I can wait.

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@Swagger.1459 said:Why invest resources in new 10 person content instead of putting that time and money into difficulty settings for current raids?

Because new content beats old content as far as reach and players trying it. Basic logic.

@Swagger.1459 said:Confused as to this decision, and the team is certainly not doing “right” for the player base here.

If strikes work out and open an easier path for people to prepare for raids, raids won't need multiple difficulties.

If not, it is questionable that multiple raid difficulties would have accomplished this. Strikes allow for an all new approach to challenge (and train players).

@Swagger.1459 said:And I’m not personally saying this, but I can guarantee that players are still thinking “The devs don’t care or listen to our feedback.”

Please only speak for yourself. Last I checked the crowd demanding multiple difficulties was not the overwhelming majority and I have not yet seen you prove the opposite.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:Why invest resources in new 10 person content instead of putting that time and money into difficulty settings for current raids?

Because new content beats old content as far as reach and players trying it. Basic logic.

@Swagger.1459 said:Confused as to this decision, and the team is certainly not doing “right” for the player base here.

If strikes work out and open an easier path for people to prepare for raids, raids won't need multiple difficulties.

If not, it is questionable that multiple raid difficulties would have accomplished this. Strikes allow for an all new approach to challenge (and train players).

@Swagger.1459 said:And I’m not personally saying this, but I can guarantee that players are still thinking “The devs don’t care or listen to our feedback.”

Please only speak for yourself. Last I checked the crowd demanding multiple difficulties was not the overwhelming majority and I have not yet seen you prove the opposite.

Raiders are the minority of the player base, and difficulty settings don’t ruin that for them period. That’s “basic logic”, along with showing the entire player base that the team is interested in getting more players to participate, and have fun with, end game content.

Edit- The other “basic logic” with difficulty settings is that it gets more players involved with actual Raids, and they improve their skills, at their own pace, over time, while still enjoying that content. And eventually that creates more experienced players for higher level groups to run with.

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The other “basic logic” with difficulty settings is that it gets more players involved with actual Raids,no, it doesn't necessarilyPeople who are intellectually opposed to raids aren't going to try "easy mode" raids, even if it were cost effective to add tiers.

Raiders are the minority of the player baseWhich is fine; ANet never expected it to appeal to the majority, which is why they could make them with so few developers. The more homogeneous the community, the easier it is to design content that appeals to them. It is geometrically, if not astronomically more difficult as the variety of players increases.

More to the point: if ANet wants to attract the 85% who aren't raiding, it's not going to happen by doing a variation of the same thing. Trying to find a middle ground between open world and raids is ultimately going to make it easier for people to bridge the gap.

Of course, that assumes that Missions will be interesting to the right group, challenging enough, rewarding enough, and that ANet doesn't forget about them in 9 months.

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@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

The other “basic logic” with difficulty settings is that it gets more players involved with actual Raids,no, it doesn't necessarilyPeople who are intellectually opposed to raids aren't going to try "easy mode" raids, even if it were cost effective to add tiers.

Raiders are the minority of the player baseWhich is fine; ANet never expected it to appeal to the majority, which is why they could make them with so few developers. The more homogeneous the community, the easier it is to design content that appeals to them. It is geometrically, if not astronomically more difficult as the variety of players increases.

More to the point: if ANet wants to attract the 85% who aren't raiding, it's not going to happen by doing a variation of the same thing. Trying to find a middle ground between open world and raids is ultimately going to make it easier for people to bridge the gap.

Of course, that assumes that
Missions
will be interesting to the right group, challenging enough, rewarding enough, and that ANet doesn't forget about them in 9 months.

Did you ever play an mmo that had difficulty settings for instanced content?

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@"Swagger.1459" said:Did you ever play an mmo that had difficulty settings for instanced content?

We're not talking about "an mmo;" we're talking about this MMO.


You asked a question. A couple of people have offered answers. I don't know what you're expecting to see that will justify to your satisfaction that ANet made a sensible choice. (I'm not arguing that they made the best choice or the right one; as I keep saying, we don't know anything at all about the actual implementation, so there's little to discuss.) There are good reasons to try something new, even though that is not your preference.

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@Swagger.1459 said:Edit- To put this into perspective, Raids were introduced in 2015 and the team hasn’t done anything that makes Raids more inclusive to more players.

I am so tired of this false hood being perpetuated. In that time Anet has:

-made trio-made escort-updated spirit woods to give LI-updated twisted castle to give LI-wing 4 has 3 bosses that are notably easier than other bosses in game, one boss is so easy it has been soloed by both thief and druid builds-wing 5, while much more challenging, still has a one of its four LI geared towards new players (rainbow road)

It is true that Anet hasn't implemented an easy mode. But, any experienced raider can tell you there is a large fluctuation of difficulty between the various fights, and typically the final fight in a wing is the hardest one. I didn't start raiding until after wing 3 was released (at least not in a serious way). I started with weekly escort, and started to slowly build up my knowledge by working my way up (trio, then kc, then vg and gorse etc). Unfortunately a lot of new players are not aware of this large range of difficulty.

The community talks of raids as a monolith. They say absurdly uninformed things like, 'raids are all one difficulty', which is very much so untrue. Dhuum is not the same difficulty as escort.

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Swagger.1459" said:Did you ever play an mmo that had difficulty settings for instanced content?

We're not talking about "an mmo;" we're talking about this MMO.

You asked a question. A couple of people have offered answers. I don't know what you're expecting to see that will justify to your satisfaction that ANet made a sensible choice. (I'm not arguing that they made the best choice or the right one; as I keep saying, we don't know anything at all about the actual implementation, so there's little to discuss.) There are good reasons to try something new, even though that is not your preference.

Your answer was “it’s a cheaper investment”, but is that really true? Or just your feeling off of what you envision difficulty setting to involve?

I mentioned this stuff long ago, but city of heroes allowed players to change the “level values”...

https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Notoriety

of the enemies within their instanced missions and “raids”. Those are selectable value changes for content already created, as opposed to the time and resources needed for the creation of all new maps, bosses, encounters... I also suggested a player and npc buff/debuff mechanics design as a way to potentially introduce a creative type of “difficulty settings”....

I asked that question to you because I did play a game with difficulty settings and my experience leads me to believe that it makes content more appealing and approachable for all levels of players. You’re right, some people will never raid no matter what, just like some won’t ever pvp, but I can guarantee that if difficulty settings were implemented then you’d see much higher participation rates compared to what we have now.

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@"Illconceived Was Na.9781"

And for reference...

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Suggestion-Raid-Difficulty-Settings-Merged

Part of my post...

“Difficulty scaling allows players to decrease or increase the challenge level. This works out well for players of all skill levels. Rewards can be scaled appropriately to match.

Let’s look at some possible ways to implement this…

*Enemy scaling… http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Notoriety

*Player stat scaling and descaling. Pretty self explanatory.

*Boon buff and Boon debuff scaling. This could either be permanent boons placed on players or prevented, or have boon potency and timers increased or decreased.”

Using those difficulty scaling ideas as the example, I’m not sure it’s more cost effective to essentially create 10 player dungeons over those suggestions for content already in place.

Edit- This is pretty interesting... https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Special_Forces_Training_Area “Added with the April 19th, 2016 update.“

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@"Sarrs.4831" said:I think that "we're releasing the content that we already have" is probably not a very exciting thing to announce ever.

I don’t think you can say that, it would be more like... “We’ve been listening to your feedback over the years and we are proud to introduce a new function called “Threat Scaling” to make it easier for players of all experience levels to participate and enjoy our 10 player end game content! Along with this, the team will be even more focused with pumping out more Raids regularly for the future!”

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@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:

The other “basic logic” with difficulty settings is that it gets more players involved with actual Raids,no, it doesn't necessarilyPeople who are intellectually opposed to raids aren't going to try "easy mode" raids, even if it were cost effective to add tiers.

Raiders are the minority of the player baseWhich is fine; ANet never expected it to appeal to the majority, which is why they could make them with so few developers. The more homogeneous the community, the easier it is to design content that appeals to them. It is geometrically, if not astronomically more difficult as the variety of players increases.

More to the point: if ANet wants to attract the 85% who aren't raiding, it's not going to happen by doing a variation of the same thing. Trying to find a middle ground between open world and raids is ultimately going to make it easier for people to bridge the gap.

Of course, that assumes that
Missions
will be interesting to the right group, challenging enough, rewarding enough, and that ANet doesn't forget about them in 9 months.

Did you ever play an mmo that had difficulty settings for instanced content?

4 which were based around gear threadmills.

0 Which had no gear threadmills.

All of which the radining cummunity was always niche compared to the entire playerbase (yes, even WoW).

Your point?

@Swagger.1459 said:

@Swagger.1459 said:Why invest resources in new 10 person content instead of putting that time and money into difficulty settings for current raids?

Because new content beats old content as far as reach and players trying it. Basic logic.

@Swagger.1459 said:Confused as to this decision, and the team is certainly not doing “right” for the player base here.

If strikes work out and open an easier path for people to prepare for raids, raids won't need multiple difficulties.

If not, it is questionable that multiple raid difficulties would have accomplished this. Strikes allow for an all new approach to challenge (and train players).

@Swagger.1459 said:And I’m not personally saying this, but I can guarantee that players are still thinking “The devs don’t care or listen to our feedback.”

Please only speak for yourself. Last I checked the crowd demanding multiple difficulties was not the overwhelming majority and I have not yet seen you prove the opposite.

Raiders are the minority of the player base, and difficulty settings don’t ruin that for them period. That’s “basic logic”, along with showing the entire player base that the team is interested in getting more players to participate, and have fun with, end game content.

Edit- The other “basic logic” with difficulty settings is that it gets more players involved with actual Raids, and they improve their skills, at their own pace, over time, while still enjoying that content. And eventually that creates more experienced players for higher level groups to run with.

You are assuming that many of the players who are currently not raiding WANT to raid. I do not. There is maybe a small fringe group who due to different issues has not started raiding, but besides those and given other MMORPGS, chances are high the remaining non raiders are not interested in raids (and will likely not be interested in strike missions).

I doubt the team wants the vast majority of playres to participate. It's even a risk to introduce strikes at this point. It makes GW2 more raid centric design wise. Given the disproportions in played content, if this does not pan out, you will have a lot of wasted developer resources.

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Short answer: because they don't want their current Raids (or future ones) to have multiple difficulty settings.

Long answer: Instead they create a new type of content to bridge the gap between the rest of the game and Raids. Why make new difficulty settings for Raids, when you can keep them as they are and instead make new content as an introduction to the actual Raids? Resources better spent.

The real question about raid accessibility isn't how to make Raids in general more accessible, but how to make the current ones more accessible. Introducing scaling or more difficulty modes to current Raids, won't make their current investment (the normal difficulty) any more accessible than it is. So they are trying new ways to increase the value of their investment.

Further, there is the big question of just how many players in this game are even interested in instanced content, which is a rather low percentage. If a "tiny minority" plays Raids, imagine how tiny the population of "total instanced content player" - "raiders" is.

As for your suggestion about scaling, it won't work. Health and damage are never the problem with Raids, mechanics are. And not all mechanics translate well with damage scaling.

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I assume because its easier to create Strikes than raids, so its more about "bigger picture stuff". If strikes turn out to be successful they will probably be able to publish them at a more frequent rate than they are with raids.

@Cyninja.2954 said:chances are high the remaining non raiders are not interested in raids (and will likely not be interested in strike missions).

There is a poll on another topic, and it seems majority of non-raiders want Strikes. Of course its not really representative of entire game's population but it is something

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@kasoki.5180 said:There is a poll on another topic, and it seems majority of non-raiders want Strikes. Of course its not really representative of entire game's population but it is something

Only 65 non-raiders expressing interest in Strikes. Meanwhile, those not interested will simply not vote, so the poll is heavily biased towards those that are interested in it. Also, a funny result of that poll is that 19% of the players are in fact raiders, that's something for sure.

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Swagger.1459" said:Did you ever play an mmo that had difficulty settings for instanced content?

We're not talking about "an mmo;" we're talking about this MMO.

You asked a question. A couple of people have offered answers. I don't know what you're expecting to see that will justify to your satisfaction that ANet made a sensible choice. (I'm not arguing that they made the best choice or the right one; as I keep saying, we don't know anything at all about the actual implementation, so there's little to discuss.) There are good reasons to try something new, even though that is not your preference.

You shouldnt imo base the arguement of having easy mode and hard mode on getting the ppl that hate raids into raiding, those ppl will hate it regardless and nothing will get them into it. similarly u shouldnt base the dificulty of hard mode around the top of the top.

The important bit and the key to diff dificulties is to help the bigger subset of ppl that simply dont want to spend the time u'd spend in a normal raid just to clear it/experience it. An easier mode thats based largely around just experiencing it, that its at most a couple wipes hard will serve to get most ppl through the encounter just fine.

On the other hand ppl who want and like the harder encounters, the challenge and the recognition/loot that comes from it will look at the hard mode and such hard mode should be hard.

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Because the word "raids" is tainted now by player expectations. Raiders do not want their precious raids to be "dumbed down" with easy mode, and will reacti violently to it. Non-raiders by now know, that raids are that toxic and difficult content they don't want to even get close to. Making a new type of content, and calling it "strikes" sidestep that issue. If they'll be unpopular, Anet can just abandon them and go back to raids. If they'll be somewhat popular, they will be an intermediate content between OW and Raids. But if they happen to be significantly more popular, then Anet can simply abandon Raids and concentrate on Strikes from now on. Just like they abandoned Dungeons for Fractals once before. And as an added bonus, they can hype it up as a new content.So, for Anet, it's probably a good move.

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Why is it so important to you that the encounters be the same encounters dumbed down instead of new content that is specifically designed to bridge the skill gap and help players get better? It's very well possible that anet determined the dumbed down version of current raids wouldnt accomplish the goal of bridging the skill gap because they're constrained to existing boss mechanics. If they're going to create new mechanics to substitute existing ones, might as well create a new guided boss fight without those constraints that teaches players good habits.

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There are players that might play both. If there is easy and hard mode then there is no new content for players that already raid and also new player will not come since raids are "toxic".

I will try strike and i play raids. I wouldnt even try easy mode raids. If there is decent reward and completion of strike require some skill then I will gladly speedclear strike.

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I really have no idea.

Please, please tell me how killing an unrelated boss, with different mechanics, in a different setting/instance, will help a player learn the existing raid bosses? Or help PUG commanders find 10-man quickness/alacrity faster?

That being said, Strikes might not be intended as a learning environment to get into raids. They might be intended to replace raids altogether as the game's 10-man content. That's my guess, personally.

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@gateless gate.8406 said:I really have no idea.

Please, please tell me how killing an unrelated boss, with different mechanics, in a different setting/instance, will help a player learn the existing raid bosses? Or help PUG commanders find 10-man quickness/alacrity faster?

That being said, Strikes might not be intended as a learning environment to get into raids. They might be intended to replace raids altogether as the game's 10-man content. That's my guess, personally.

That’s exactly what I’m thinking there’s only going to be one or two more raid releases at the most then all strikes.

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We don't know how strikes will look like. It could be indeed like Freezie which was an easy mode raid I would say. I have done that one a few times with pug groups (few times killed it and sometimes failed it as well due to enrage timer and not enough dps). Normally I never set foot in raids because they take a lot of organising, time and I am simply scared I would have to copy some build and do some perfect skill rota instead of just play how I like to play my toon and know it. Bottom line: I cannot do some perfect skill rota nor am equipped to min/max. Its not what I seek in a game. It is fun and being able to clear everything over time to experience the full game (thats why the easy mode). The fact I do not play regular raids does not mean I am against hardmode raids, I am actually in favor of it just because there are players that like to challenge themselves. But this hardmode in a way of a CM (like Migraine has in example). I am also for CM in strikes btw.

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Im worried about the rewards actualy. Rewards cannot be better than raid rewards, and raid rewards are already extremly lackluster. Will the casual playerbase even do the strikes more than once ?Like, best i can see is 1g and some rares as a reward for killing these bosses, with maybe some unique exotic skins. Maybe ascended with extremly low drop chance ?Also, are they gonna have their reward reset daily ? Weekly ? Can you grind them ?

Point is, they cannot have better rewards than raids, since then, those people will have even less reason to try actual raids.

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@Glider.5792 said:Point is, they cannot have better rewards than raids, since then, those people will have even less reason to try actual raids.

This works in the opposite way too, if their rewards are much lower than the average open world farm fiesta, then the people Strikes are aimed at, will have no reason to try them. Which means Strike rewards are in a very bad spot since open world farm fiestas are much more rewarding than Raids. I expect a few achievements, a couple unique/exclusive skins and that's it mainly. It will be interesting to see how they plan to keep Strikes relevant in the long term.

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