If current raids are too difficult for you, you are not the target demographic of raiding content

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

the thing to take away from Mike's interview:the difference between average dps and hardcore dps is 10x.

Let that sit for a while. And that is AVERAGE not LOW END.

Then you might realize why raids are a total niche and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players. Who probably spend a lot more real money on the game than the oh-I-am-so-awesome-hardcore-raid people.

[Raknar.4735]

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:the thing to take away from Mike's interview:the difference between average dps and hardcore dps is 10x.

Let that sit for a while. And that is AVERAGE not LOW END.

Then you might realize why raids are a total niche and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players. Who probably spend a lot more real money on the game than the oh-I-am-so-awesome-hardcore-raid people.

I reread the part from Mike's interview and you are indeed correct about the "average", not "low end" part.

But you also have to consider that not everyone doing raids does "harcore dps", above average DPS is enough to clear raids.I don't think demonizing the raid-community based on some vocal outliers is the correct way to go about things. The same thing goes for the opposite side, the casual/mostly-openworld community.

[Thornwolf.9721]

@Raknar.4735 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Raknar.4735 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

1. Meta builds are not the "Best" they are for the people who can't handle build craft, and are made to make raiding and endgame content accessible without the need of a guild or group of friends.
2. A bump in difficulty will be a good thing in the long run, it means things will be challenging even if its only minor which will go a long way for retention. If they put worthwhile rewards on the story and cool stuff to earn, but require multiple play-through's then we will be in an even better spot.
3. Telling people to leave for any reason is ludicrous and makes you part of the problem, this is a point where we can tell you "Grow up" and it fits.
4. If you cant handle challenging content you're not a casual you are lazy, you don't want to work for anything and NO GAME should cater to you so that it can remain healthy. This is not me saying it needs so hard its almost dark souls level (Which admittedly isn't hard) so that the majority can still go about playing but it does need to be engaging.
5. Raids won't become any more popular due to strikes, if you weren't raiding now then I highly doubt you will raid then. But it does offer another source of endgame content which is ALWAYS good. It also gives us the chance to get bosses we've seen before and aesthetically are cool but might not preform well today, which cuts down work on their part. (The eyes of Zaithan in the source of orr comes to mind, also so does balthazar and so on.)

1. most effective tactic available pretty much means it should be the "best, most efficent" way. These builds are made by buildcrafters to create the optimal way of playing content. Most of the time DPS is the main factor, so most of the time the highest dps builds are the Meta builds.
2. I agree with the worthwhile rewards for story. I also would want a general bump in difficulty, though I'm not sure it is a good thing in the long run. HoT scared away a lot of players initially, and they never came back.
3. Agree, telling others to leave is never the right way.
4. Disagree, there's a reason why games like Animal Crossing and similiar games exist. Calling someone lazy because he can't handle challenging content, instead of actually listening to his point of view is narrow minded. There are lots of reasons why someone might not do "challenging" content, or deem content "challenging": time, difficulty etc.Saying that no game should cater to a laid-back playstyle is the same as someone saying no game should cater to a hardcore playstyle.
5. Agree

I consider it lazy and I have little respect for people who don't want there to be a challenge in any form, as I stated I don't want it to be super hard but if you want extremely laid back press one button and kill everything than the rest of the game is there for you. This next chapter should offer more in terms of what it is, what it brings and what it means for the franchise. Challenging does not equate to super hard; Challenging could mean the mobs actually fight like a player would which require more thought when approaching them. Orr was a good example at launch you couldn't go ham and just rush through you constantly had to fight and constantly were under threat of being attacked, but it was nerfed because people claimed it was "too hard". Same with HoT the maps were not hard they were different, they offered new things and the bosses and mobs there were more dynamic than the regular world.

All things must evolve to continue to grow, guild wars is no different. There is a difference between "Laid back" and completely brain dead, I mean WvW is laid back if you're doing it with friends and even pvp can be as well. It depends on who you surround yourself with and your mentality the modes themselves inherently regardless of what anyone does will never be super "hardcore" this game will never be that way. But making the content immersive, challenging and reward as well fun to do and Re-do is and should be top priority. The push back against such things comes from ignorance and people un-willing to accept that this is the direction they choose to take, it is also a direction I for once fully support. (There was little point in replaying content prior, because really unless you're trying to be an acheivo nut the rewards were lack luster at best.)

I appreciate your insight and point of view however, We shouldn't be forced or expected to use or follow the meta. And If I was A-net Id nerf the hell out of it and rework everything to turn it on its head and bring everything to a viable level. I feel they need to return to the ~ Play how you want, when it comes to builds but require to at the very least understand the mechanics of the game and the fun that can be had there.

Man, i'd really like a Dark Souls-esque MMORPG where enemies fought like players, or atleast on the level of some of the NPC-Invaders. (Not sure how that'd work, playing Co-op makes the DS series so much easier)I can't agree with your perspective on which players to respect, but everyone should have their own perspective on that and i'm not here to change that.

I think one of the main problems GW2 has that hinders an increase in difficulty is the gear system, more precisely the way current stats work. Anet themselves say that there's a 10x dps discrepancy from low to high-skilled players, so they have to create story missions the way they are, easily beatable with low dps. (I think they already stated they want to change that in some way during the new saga in some interview)

How does such a huge disparity happen? My guess is people just don't know what their gear does when they equip it. While in other MMOs like WoW (not speaking of Vanilla/Classic, since stats were weird back then) there's pretty much only one way to gear a specific spec, gear is mostly subdivided into Tank/Dps/Heal. Someone playing a Warrior will mostly only get offered gear that is for Tanks or Damage Dealers, so it's easy to know what's best for them. And then it just goes higher stats = better piece.

In GW2 however there are so many different stat-types on gearpieces that it can be complicated for the average player that doesn't look up builds. They see "vitality" and think: "sure, why not", while ignoring if that stat is truly useful for them, so they end up with gear i wouldn't even call suboptimal, just plain bad.Many sets that should be "side-grades" are actually just traps, and content gets harder for them, since they don't have the adequate damage output. So Anet is "forced" to create easy content. (There's a huge difference between someone in WoW not using a meta build and someone in GW2 not using one, the whole "Play how you want" is easier in WoW than in GW2)

Well, that's my opinion on the disparity and why Anet has a problem creating harder content.

I also want to thank you for elaborating, i now have a better understanding of your point of view and I agree that GW2 should have a harder open world, but i do think the "complexity" of the gearsystem in GW2 is holding back both Anet and a big part of the playerbase. So to be able to make the content harder players need to understand how stats affect their performance. (I really don't think there are a lot of players that just run around and press 1 while not in a zerg. At least i don't want to believe that)

@"Astralporing.1957" said:

I didn't want to create 2 posts so I'll answer you here.You are right that the term is constantly changing, and everyone uses the word with the definition he wants. There are so many different definitions of that word that no one can really say what it means. Its' meaning even changes depending on genre. Depending on who you ask Meta may be the "most effective tactic available".

I can just share my own opinion on what that word refers to and how i use it (I want to make clear this most likely isn't the correct way of using it):Meta builds for me are the most optimal builds that were created after crunching the numbers. Depending on the activity you're doing a class can have many Meta builds: one for Open World, one for Raids, one for Fractals. IMO there's no PvP-Meta build, since depending on your enemies, everything changes, counterbuilds are part of the gamemode and there normally never really is an "optimal" build, since enemies and their builds change constantly.

Honestly why not just remove the horrible gear stat options, ones they know full well can't be used. They could remake them with all the bells and whistles; Or they need to just push everyone into dps and only dps. I think the biggest mistake they ever made was move away from the trinity which holds this game back so hard, because definitive roles with the builds within the class specifically don't truly exist. (You wana tank? Stack toughness, but only a few classes can be optimal tanks for example.) Tanking in this game is a joke, healing is AOE spam fest with tons of damage on it for front-loaded burst. It makes me wonder if A-net even knows what they are doing sometimes, because the trinity is not bad in the slightest. People just don't want to be expected to play their role the way they should and if each class had a tank spec, a heal spec, a dps spec, and a spec that can fill any of the above but not as optimally as a pure specialized spec I think we would be fine.

But they keep trying to re-invent the wheel and its just not working, clearly. A soft trinity may be the way to go ~ Now that you got me thinking about it, I feel your not only right on the gear system/stat system but the core of the game has this issue. Core classes and all have the issue of they aren't in a kind of "This role is primarily the one you will exceed at" they are all dps with some nuance to them. The disparity comes from people wanting to play X class in a way that is unintended, because they prefer that playstyle. I feel like A-net should capitalize on that and make it work... so we can all win lol

[Raknar.4735]

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Raknar.4735 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

@Raknar.4735 said:

@Thornwolf.9721 said:

1. Meta builds are not the "Best" they are for the people who can't handle build craft, and are made to make raiding and endgame content accessible without the need of a guild or group of friends.
2. A bump in difficulty will be a good thing in the long run, it means things will be challenging even if its only minor which will go a long way for retention. If they put worthwhile rewards on the story and cool stuff to earn, but require multiple play-through's then we will be in an even better spot.
3. Telling people to leave for any reason is ludicrous and makes you part of the problem, this is a point where we can tell you "Grow up" and it fits.
4. If you cant handle challenging content you're not a casual you are lazy, you don't want to work for anything and NO GAME should cater to you so that it can remain healthy. This is not me saying it needs so hard its almost dark souls level (Which admittedly isn't hard) so that the majority can still go about playing but it does need to be engaging.
5. Raids won't become any more popular due to strikes, if you weren't raiding now then I highly doubt you will raid then. But it does offer another source of endgame content which is ALWAYS good. It also gives us the chance to get bosses we've seen before and aesthetically are cool but might not preform well today, which cuts down work on their part. (The eyes of Zaithan in the source of orr comes to mind, also so does balthazar and so on.)

1. most effective tactic available pretty much means it should be the "best, most efficent" way. These builds are made by buildcrafters to create the optimal way of playing content. Most of the time DPS is the main factor, so most of the time the highest dps builds are the Meta builds.
2. I agree with the worthwhile rewards for story. I also would want a general bump in difficulty, though I'm not sure it is a good thing in the long run. HoT scared away a lot of players initially, and they never came back.
3. Agree, telling others to leave is never the right way.
4. Disagree, there's a reason why games like Animal Crossing and similiar games exist. Calling someone lazy because he can't handle challenging content, instead of actually listening to his point of view is narrow minded. There are lots of reasons why someone might not do "challenging" content, or deem content "challenging": time, difficulty etc.Saying that no game should cater to a laid-back playstyle is the same as someone saying no game should cater to a hardcore playstyle.
5. Agree

I consider it lazy and I have little respect for people who don't want there to be a challenge in any form, as I stated I don't want it to be super hard but if you want extremely laid back press one button and kill everything than the rest of the game is there for you. This next chapter should offer more in terms of what it is, what it brings and what it means for the franchise. Challenging does not equate to super hard; Challenging could mean the mobs actually fight like a player would which require more thought when approaching them. Orr was a good example at launch you couldn't go ham and just rush through you constantly had to fight and constantly were under threat of being attacked, but it was nerfed because people claimed it was "too hard". Same with HoT the maps were not hard they were different, they offered new things and the bosses and mobs there were more dynamic than the regular world.

All things must evolve to continue to grow, guild wars is no different. There is a difference between "Laid back" and completely brain dead, I mean WvW is laid back if you're doing it with friends and even pvp can be as well. It depends on who you surround yourself with and your mentality the modes themselves inherently regardless of what anyone does will never be super "hardcore" this game will never be that way. But making the content immersive, challenging and reward as well fun to do and Re-do is and should be top priority. The push back against such things comes from ignorance and people un-willing to accept that this is the direction they choose to take, it is also a direction I for once fully support. (There was little point in replaying content prior, because really unless you're trying to be an acheivo nut the rewards were lack luster at best.)

I appreciate your insight and point of view however, We shouldn't be forced or expected to use or follow the meta. And If I was A-net Id nerf the hell out of it and rework everything to turn it on its head and bring everything to a viable level. I feel they need to return to the ~ Play how you want, when it comes to builds but require to at the very least understand the mechanics of the game and the fun that can be had there.

Man, i'd really like a Dark Souls-esque MMORPG where enemies fought like players, or atleast on the level of some of the NPC-Invaders. (Not sure how that'd work, playing Co-op makes the DS series so much easier)I can't agree with your perspective on which players to respect, but everyone should have their own perspective on that and i'm not here to change that.

I think one of the main problems GW2 has that hinders an increase in difficulty is the gear system, more precisely the way current stats work. Anet themselves say that there's a 10x dps discrepancy from low to high-skilled players, so they have to create story missions the way they are, easily beatable with low dps. (I think they already stated they want to change that in some way during the new saga in some interview)

How does such a huge disparity happen? My guess is people just don't know what their gear does when they equip it. While in other MMOs like WoW (not speaking of Vanilla/Classic, since stats were weird back then) there's pretty much only one way to gear a specific spec, gear is mostly subdivided into Tank/Dps/Heal. Someone playing a Warrior will mostly only get offered gear that is for Tanks or Damage Dealers, so it's easy to know what's best for them. And then it just goes higher stats = better piece.

In GW2 however there are so many different stat-types on gearpieces that it can be complicated for the average player that doesn't look up builds. They see "vitality" and think: "sure, why not", while ignoring if that stat is truly useful for them, so they end up with gear i wouldn't even call suboptimal, just plain bad.Many sets that should be "side-grades" are actually just traps, and content gets harder for them, since they don't have the adequate damage output. So Anet is "forced" to create easy content. (There's a huge difference between someone in WoW not using a meta build and someone in GW2 not using one, the whole "Play how you want" is easier in WoW than in GW2)

Well, that's my opinion on the disparity and why Anet has a problem creating harder content.

I also want to thank you for elaborating, i now have a better understanding of your point of view and I agree that GW2 should have a harder open world, but i do think the "complexity" of the gearsystem in GW2 is holding back both Anet and a big part of the playerbase. So to be able to make the content harder players need to understand how stats affect their performance. (I really don't think there are a lot of players that just run around and press 1 while not in a zerg. At least i don't want to believe that)

@"Astralporing.1957" said:

I didn't want to create 2 posts so I'll answer you here.You are right that the term is constantly changing, and everyone uses the word with the definition he wants. There are so many different definitions of that word that no one can really say what it means. Its' meaning even changes depending on genre. Depending on who you ask Meta may be the "most effective tactic available".

I can just share my own opinion on what that word refers to and how i use it (I want to make clear this most likely isn't the correct way of using it):Meta builds for me are the most optimal builds that were created after crunching the numbers. Depending on the activity you're doing a class can have many Meta builds: one for Open World, one for Raids, one for Fractals. IMO there's no PvP-Meta build, since depending on your enemies, everything changes, counterbuilds are part of the gamemode and there normally never really is an "optimal" build, since enemies and their builds change constantly.

Honestly why not just remove the horrible gear stat options, ones they know full well can't be used. They could remake them with all the bells and whistles; Or they need to just push everyone into dps and only dps. I think the biggest mistake they ever made was move away from the trinity which holds this game back so hard, because definitive roles with the builds within the class specifically don't truly exist. (You wana tank? Stack toughness, but only a few classes can be optimal tanks for example.) Tanking in this game is a joke, healing is AOE spam fest with tons of damage on it for front-loaded burst. It makes me wonder if A-net even knows what they are doing sometimes, because the trinity is not bad in the slightest. People just don't want to be expected to play their role the way they should and if each class had a tank spec, a heal spec, a dps spec, and a spec that can fill any of the above but not as optimally as a pure specialized spec I think we would be fine.

But they keep trying to re-invent the wheel and its just not working, clearly. A soft trinity may be the way to go ~ Now that you got me thinking about it, I feel your not only right on the gear system/stat system but the core of the game has this issue. Core classes and all have the issue of they aren't in a kind of "This role is primarily the one you will exceed at" they are all dps with some nuance to them. The disparity comes from people wanting to play X class in a way that is unintended, because they prefer that playstyle. I feel like A-net should capitalize on that and make it work... so we can all win lol

Yeah, i honestly think revamping / removing some parts of the gear system would increase the average "skill" floor level (as in people would be able to clear current story instances / open world easier, so they could make newer content harder in relation to the new skill floor, since players are better prepared for it, closing the gap between low skill and high skill a bit). This would also allow a higher skill ceiling in terms of content difficulty, which many skilled players want. (Not only talking about raids, but also more things like Liadri pre HoT)

I don't really have an opinion on the trinity system, sometimes i miss it, sometimes i don't, so i don't think i can share a good solution.

[Vinceman.4572]

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:Then you might realize why raids are a total niche and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players. Who probably spend a lot more real money on the game than the oh-I-am-so-awesome-hardcore-raid people.

You really think anything was stolen?Man, you're a veteran player and according to your post history at least able to raid and get all the rewards "hidden" in there. If you don't want to put effort into that that's perfectly fine but you should also accept that there is a target group of players that wants to have challenging content like there is for PvP and WvW. Those players hate to only press 1 to get grindy loot in the open world. Just accept that we don't like that type of game play and we're also eligible to play this game and get some content.The majority of this game is getting constant updates every 3 months + has HoT and PoF open world in two expansions which is also completetly directed to the easy content group.

[mindcircus.1506]

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players.Such entitlement.Much wow.

[deatine.2498]

Of course I'm not the target demographic for raids. That's why I play GW2, duh.If I wanted raids or challenging endgame content I'd play the dozens of MMOs that focus on that.

[Dante.1763]

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:Then you might realize why raids are a total niche and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players. Who probably spend a lot more real money on the game than the oh-I-am-so-awesome-hardcore-raid people.

You really think anything was stolen?Man, you're a veteran player and according to your post history at least able to raid and get all the rewards "hidden" in there. If you don't want to put effort into that that's perfectly fine but you should also accept that there is a target group of players that wants to have challenging content like there is for PvP and WvW. Those players hate to only press 1 to get grindy loot in the open world. Just accept that we don't like that type of game play and we're also eligible to play this game and get some content.The majority of this game is getting constant updates every 3 months + has HoT and PoF open world in two expansions which is also completetly directed to the easy content group.

I mean id still like to have an open world legendary armor set, so thats kinda stolen for me(ill never get it now, my raid guild died off due to raids being "to easy"). I just dont have the time to sit down and wait for a raid group to form on me(hint, pugs in raids suck.) . Ive -done- raids, plenty of them, most without wipes, and i still havent been able to get enough stuff to finish my armor because no training group wants to run the harder bosses that i need.

I wont be surprised if they make raids easier, even if slightly. Would i rather have a easy(half the rewards) normal(Self explanatory) and hard mode(Double rewards, doubley hard), yes, but i doubt theyd do that, it would appease everyone. The easy mode players would still get the loot just it would take longer, or take more runs of the raids. But hey, im just a "casual" so i dont count i suppose.

[Vinceman.4572]

@"Dante.1763" said:I mean id still like to have an open world legendary armor set, so thats kinda stolen for me(ill never get it now, my raid guild died off due to raids being "to easy"). I just dont have the time to sit down and wait for a raid group to form on me(hint, pugs in raids suck.) . Ive -done- raids, plenty of them, most without wipes, and i still havent been able to get enough stuff to finish my armor because no training group wants to run the harder bosses that i need.

I wont be surprised if they make raids easier, even if slightly. Would i rather have a easy(half the rewards) normal(Self explanatory) and hard mode(Double rewards, doubley hard), yes, but i doubt theyd do that, it would appease everyone. The easy mode players would still get the loot just it would take longer, or take more runs of the raids. But hey, im just a "casual" so i dont count i suppose.

You're not a casual any more when you've raided more than just having a first look. Additionally you got bosses down, so no, you aren't what many and I call a "casual".If you need kills of the "harder" bosses which is Xera only in my opinion due to "flying is endgame" you shouldn't have any problems in getting those over time. The thing here is you aren't a trainee any longer and several groups from the lfg should take them with you in their wing clears. I don't mean full clears here but single wing clears. Even a lot of full clear groups are just looking for 250 LI KPs in those wings and that's what you can easily get once you are familiar with lots of bosses. Just try and ask, take the risk of a "No!" as answer and maybe some bootings here and there. If you keep on trying you'll succeed and there are enough guilds/group that'll help you through Matthias, Deimos (where you can afk-range) and Xera once you have proven to be a useful squad member during the boss fights before.

Final remark: Once you got the armor don't be disappointed but it's pretty ugly and you won't use the stat swapping very often or effectively, trust me. And that's why I call it wasn't stolen from real casual players. Those don't use the the function at all. The decision to have the armor raid only wasn't the best but not a big deal some people want to make us believe.

[SinisterSlay.6973]

what if raids and strikes, etc. Had the test golems outside. And a newly formed group would attack it and the game could use the data to calculate how strong the group is and adjust the difficulty and rewards to match? It could also then determine individual effectiveness and personalize rewards accordingly.Basically difficulty scaling on a personal level. If you are weak, you get less rewards. Simple.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Raknar.4735" said:Man, i'd really like a Dark Souls-esque MMORPG where enemies fought like players, or atleast on the level of some of the NPC-Invaders. (Not sure how that'd work, playing Co-op makes the DS series so much easier)There's a reason why we don't hear much about those kinds of MMOs - they don't sell. Not at a level where they might end up being big enough to get noticed anyway.

I can't agree with your perspective on which players to respect, but everyone should have their own perspective on that and i'm not here to change that.

I think one of the main problems GW2 has that hinders an increase in difficulty is the gear system, more precisely the way current stats work. Anet themselves say that there's a 10x dps discrepancy from low to high-skilled players, so they have to create story missions the way they are, easily beatable with low dps. (I think they already stated they want to change that in some way during the new saga in some interview)

How does such a huge disparity happen? My guess is people just don't know what their gear does when they equip it. While in other MMOs like WoW (not speaking of Vanilla/Classic, since stats were weird back then) there's pretty much only one way to gear a specific spec, gear is mostly subdivided into Tank/Dps/Heal. Someone playing a Warrior will mostly only get offered gear that is for Tanks or Damage Dealers, so it's easy to know what's best for them. And then it just goes higher stats = better piece.

In GW2 however there are so many different stat-types on gearpieces that it can be complicated for the average player that doesn't look up builds. They see "vitality" and think: "sure, why not", while ignoring if that stat is truly useful for them, so they end up with gear i wouldn't even call suboptimal, just plain bad.Many sets that should be "side-grades" are actually just traps, and content gets harder for them, since they don't have the adequate damage output. So Anet is "forced" to create easy content. (There's a huge difference between someone in WoW not using a meta build and someone in GW2 not using one, the whole "Play how you want" is easier in WoW than in GW2)

Well, that's my opinion on the disparity and why Anet has a problem creating harder content.It doesn't have much to do with gear, actually. That's only a minor part of that disparity. You can still have an average player in full meta gear/build doing 5x times less damage than a hardcore player in hybrid build. That's because, while some builds do have simple rotations and you can get a lot out of them simply pressing keys at random, most builds just don't work like that. Remember the old condi core engineer build? If you gave that build to an average player that didn't have any idea how to play it, the end result would have been absolutely horrible. Same with eles - let that hypothetical "average player" use it, and you might see dps around 6-8k. And that's only when that player is in a group with support players that do know what they are doing.

Yes, something that would ensure (or at least greatly increase chances of) players picking the "right" gear and builds (whatever that mean) might help a bit, but the disparity would remain, and it would still be huge.

I also want to thank you for elaborating, i now have a better understanding of your point of view and I agree that GW2 should have a harder open world, but i do think the "complexity" of the gearsystem in GW2 is holding back both Anet and a big part of the playerbase.Again, it's not the complexity of the gearsystem. It's that the player efficiency is way more dependant on player skill than in other mmos. Other games put a lot more weight on gear, which means that simply gearing up can be a massive help for an average player. In gw2 it won't work, as gear is only a small fraction of your effectiveness.

So to be able to make the content harder players need to understand how stats affect their performance. (I really don't think there are a lot of players that just run around and press 1 while not in a zerg. At least i don't want to believe that)It's not "pressing 1". That's a meme. Most players do use all their skills. It's just they aren't aware that using them in a specific order may result in a massive improvement in dps. I am also certain that most players are not even aware that by just pressing all skills off cooldown they constantly keep interrupting their autoattack chain.

[AlexxxDelta.1806]

Not exactly a shocking revelation OP.

The dev who made them said as much back then.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:the thing to take away from Mike's interview:the difference between average dps and hardcore dps is 10x.

Let that sit for a while. And that is AVERAGE not LOW END.

Then you might realize why raids are a total niche and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players. Who probably spend a lot more real money on the game than the oh-I-am-so-awesome-hardcore-raid people.

It's a bit more complicated than that. It really comes down to the setting, goals, and connectivity of the players.

I know I rep these numbers a lot, but awhile ago I did some auto attack tests coupled with a few simple rotations. This was all done assuming raid builds, raid buffs, and raid food. The results I came to are pretty simple: for most weapons the baseline DPS for any class is half what the peak was for melee DPS, about a third for ranged and condi weapons, and much lower for several meme builds (staff necro being the worst). Considering that this is what is done from either auto attacking or spamming 2 or 3 skills, these numbers are the minimum you can expect from any player who is geared, somewhat informed, and not dead from failed mechanics. Adjust for each encounter's DPS uptime.

What Mike is talking about are players who are not geared, informed, or motivated. I.E. the player who spams every skill on their bar randomly while wearing whatever random gear they happened to loot using a build of nonsensical or random traits, and all of this while traveling alone with no outside buffs. When we're dealing with this degree of... lack of skill, there's only so much that can be done to reasonably accommodate that player. Aside from utter randos who have no idea what they're doing and/or do not care, it isn't unreasonable to expect that a player who wants to raid is going to show up in full berserker gear with mostly DPS boosting traits.

However, it has been one of my biggest criticisms toward this game that it's build system and game mechanics encourages players to be terrible at it. Getting good at the game involves abandoning all of the conventions and tools given to you. Roughly akin to that one video The Spiffing Brit did where he showed one of the best ways to play Prison Architect is to forgo the prison and just make a lumber yard. I don't know how to solve this problem, since it is ingrained in everything that defines GW2, but nonetheless it is the biggest issue facing challenging content design.

[Blaeys.3102]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Blaeys.3102" said:I think the take away from today's Mike Z interview is pretty definitive. Tiered difficulty levels are something they are most definitely considering - albeit with a close eye on resources and achieving a balance between the hardcore and access to a story mode. His comments about the Bastion of the Penitent storyline are pretty straightforward.

Do I expect to see this anytime soon? Of course not. But it is good to see that they are attempting to look at this issue from multiple perspectives - and that is the right thing to do. Raids as they are now are not sustainable in any way - they are too easy for "real" raiders and too hard for more casual story-oriented players. It's time to stop fighting against a split (tiered levels) and look for ways to make raids even harder while, on the other side, offering a way to simply experience the content (including the fights) for those who don't necessarily want to play the build/meta game.

If that is the take away you are having from the answer, you are very very optimistic. I'm reading into that: we don't have the resources, we will try not to lock story behind raid content, past raid content will probably never see any change in difficulty.

He is literally saying that they would rather create new content than revisit old content. Yes, future content, in this case strikes, might scale (think dragon bash), but raids will not.

Except, when asked the direct question:

"Is there room for a ‘story’ difficulty in raids and other high-end content?"

his response is:

"There is. "

That is a pretty definitive statement. He even goes on to give an example of content that could be retrofit with an easy mode (Bastion of The Penitent). Now, he does explain the issues with this approach (resources), but he basically does the opposite of rule it out - he confirms they are considering it.

The most important part is the last line, though:

"We want to make sure that we’re trying to service both groups."

That pretty much invalidates the argument that raids are supposed to be reserved for a small percentage of the playerbase - that they are looking at how they can extend that content to people who aren't as skilled or don't have the time to dedicate to raiding (while, at the same time, he talks about how they might be able to make open world more appealing to raiders).

I think this should get everyone excited. It shows they are committed to making raids work within the structure of the game - offering a truly difficult experience without excluding chunks of the game from more casual players. For raiders, this could mean more content - not less. If this content is made in a way that appeals to a larger audience (without compromising the high end experience), then there is real incentive to make MORE of it, leading to a raid release cadence that might actually keep raiders in the game.

[Henry.5713]

I am most likely not the target audience of Open World PvE and story content. What should I do? Quit the game and move on to other games which focus on the content I enjoy most: raids and Open World PvP? Should I complain and ask Open World PvE and story instances to be changed to be more to my liking because I am entitled to it? Or should I just play the content I like while being happy for those who do enjoy content I do not? I wonder....

[maxwelgm.4315]

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:the thing to take away from Mike's interview:the difference between average dps and hardcore dps is 10x.

Let that sit for a while. And that is AVERAGE not LOW END.

Then you might realize why raids are a total niche and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players. Who probably spend a lot more real money on the game than the oh-I-am-so-awesome-hardcore-raid people.

It's a bit more complicated than that. It really comes down to the setting, goals, and connectivity of the players.

I know I rep these numbers a lot, but awhile ago I did some

auto attack tests

coupled with a few simple rotations. This was all done assuming raid builds, raid buffs, and raid food. The results I came to are pretty simple: for most weapons the baseline DPS for any class is half what the peak was for melee DPS, about a third for ranged and condi weapons, and much lower for several meme builds (staff necro being the worst). Considering that this is what is done from either auto attacking or spamming 2 or 3 skills, these numbers are the minimum you can expect from any player who is geared, somewhat informed, and not dead from failed mechanics. Adjust for each encounter's DPS uptime.

What Mike is talking about are players who are not geared, informed, or motivated. I.E. the player who spams every skill on their bar randomly while wearing whatever random gear they happened to loot using a build of nonsensical or random traits, and all of this while traveling alone with no outside buffs. When we're dealing with this degree of...

lack of skill,

there's only so much that can be done to reasonably accommodate that player. Aside from utter randos who have no idea what they're doing and/or do not care, it isn't unreasonable to expect that a player who wants to raid is going to show up in full berserker gear with mostly DPS boosting traits.

However, it has been one of my

biggest criticisms

toward this game that it's build system and game mechanics encourages players to be terrible at it. Getting good at the game involves abandoning all of the conventions and tools given to you. Roughly akin to that one video

The Spiffing Brit

did where he showed one of the best ways to play Prison Architect is to forgo the prison and just make a lumber yard. I don't know how to solve this problem, since it is ingrained in everything that defines GW2, but nonetheless it is the biggest issue facing challenging content design.

So these topics always get heated up to the point of uselessness but I'd like to point whoever is new/kinda new to raids to this one post since it goes a little more into the usual rant about low skill floor and high skill ceiling. You're heavily incentivized in open world PvE to do things that are flat out suicide during serious instanced encounters and they took as long as HoT to even try fixing it (and then it was a mess of a fix because HoT was deemed too hard and they had to retcon a lot of open world mechanics in PoF, going back to semi casual). The 'tutorial' if you can even consider it to be one, has absolutely NO mention of the most fundamental mechanics such as dodging telegraphed attacks and defiance bars, as well as the importance and the difference it will make in your DPS to finish your AA chains (protip: if you're going to ever have the player put in a DPS race, make smaller ones way before said player reaches that point).

So what we have are two completely different games where most mechanics from raids are either trivialized or don't see the light of day at all in open world, and open world is awfully disconnected to the kind of gameplay going on in raids, to the point the skill gap eventually became the problem we have today. The way in which this is a problem however is not what people might think. You see, it's not hard to get into raids and raiders are correct to say this. If you're a support class your DPS will not be looked at, at all, for 90% of groups, and also if you do take a DPS there are several DPS classes where you can ONLY auto attack if you so wanted and it would still reach upwards of 18k DPS, more than enough for practically anything and allows you to pay attention to mechanics.

But you see, this is not what happens is it? There are no "middle tier" groups taking 4 Shiro/Jalis Heralds to Gorseval and not many groups taking 3 healers to pug Matthias. Instead we either have training groups or high LI squads that expect you to be at or nearly at the top of your game, and take a class with high potential DPS regardless of your ability to reach that ceiling. It's also not even team-imposed but self-imposed sometimes, as in you could actually have asked your squad to take a power Rev but explicitly decided to take your 13k Weaver because reasons. So yeah, this game has basically been designed around there being no consistent middle tier in skill and only somewhat tight knit groups tend to pursue the route to the skill ceiling for this reason. Anet is finally after so many years trying to repair this situation and Strike Missions are their next attempt, in spite of OP's or anyone else's feelings about raids having to be kept exclusive and etc etc. Not that this is going to stop people to discussing this to exhaustion, but just a heads up for newer players: something is being attempted about it and you kinda can go into raids without reaching any kind of skill ceiling.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@maxwelgm.4315 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:the thing to take away from Mike's interview:the difference between average dps and hardcore dps is 10x.

Let that sit for a while. And that is AVERAGE not LOW END.

Then you might realize why raids are a total niche and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players. Who probably spend a lot more real money on the game than the oh-I-am-so-awesome-hardcore-raid people.

It's a bit more complicated than that. It really comes down to the setting, goals, and connectivity of the players.

I know I rep these numbers a lot, but awhile ago I did some

auto attack tests

coupled with a few simple rotations. This was all done assuming raid builds, raid buffs, and raid food. The results I came to are pretty simple: for most weapons the baseline DPS for any class is half what the peak was for melee DPS, about a third for ranged and condi weapons, and much lower for several meme builds (staff necro being the worst). Considering that this is what is done from either auto attacking or spamming 2 or 3 skills, these numbers are the minimum you can expect from any player who is geared, somewhat informed, and not dead from failed mechanics. Adjust for each encounter's DPS uptime.

What Mike is talking about are players who are not geared, informed, or motivated. I.E. the player who spams every skill on their bar randomly while wearing whatever random gear they happened to loot using a build of nonsensical or random traits, and all of this while traveling alone with no outside buffs. When we're dealing with this degree of...

lack of skill,

there's only so much that can be done to reasonably accommodate that player. Aside from utter randos who have no idea what they're doing and/or do not care, it isn't unreasonable to expect that a player who wants to raid is going to show up in full berserker gear with mostly DPS boosting traits.

However, it has been one of my

biggest criticisms

toward this game that it's build system and game mechanics encourages players to be terrible at it. Getting good at the game involves abandoning all of the conventions and tools given to you. Roughly akin to that one video

The Spiffing Brit

did where he showed one of the best ways to play Prison Architect is to forgo the prison and just make a lumber yard. I don't know how to solve this problem, since it is ingrained in everything that defines GW2, but nonetheless it is the biggest issue facing challenging content design.

So these topics always get heated up to the point of uselessness but I'd like to point whoever is new/kinda new to raids to this one post since it goes a little more into the usual rant about low skill floor and high skill ceiling. You're heavily incentivized in open world PvE to do things that are flat out suicide during serious instanced encounters and they took as long as HoT to even try fixing it (and then it was a mess of a fix because HoT was deemed too hard and they had to retcon a lot of open world mechanics in PoF, going back to semi casual). The 'tutorial' if you can even consider it to be one, has absolutely NO mention of the most fundamental mechanics such as dodging telegraphed attacks and defiance bars, as well as the importance and the difference it will make in your DPS to finish your AA chains (protip: if you're going to ever have the player put in a DPS race, make smaller ones way before said player reaches that point).

So what we have are two completely different games where most mechanics from raids are either trivialized or don't see the light of day at all in open world, and open world is awfully disconnected to the kind of gameplay going on in raids, to the point the skill gap eventually became the problem we have today. The way in which this is a problem however is not what people might think. You see, it's not

hard

to get into raids and raiders are correct to say this. If you're a support class your DPS will not be looked at, at all, for 90% of groups, and also if you do take a DPS there are several DPS classes where you can ONLY auto attack if you so wanted and it would still reach upwards of 18k DPS, more than enough for practically anything and allows you to pay attention to mechanics.

But you see, this is not what happens is it? There are no "middle tier" groups taking 4 Shiro/Jalis Heralds to Gorseval and not many groups taking 3 healers to pug Matthias. Instead we either have training groups or high LI squads that expect you to be at or nearly at the top of your game, and take a class with high

potential

DPS regardless of your ability to reach that ceiling. It's also not even team-imposed but

self

-imposed sometimes, as in you could actually have asked your squad to take a power Rev but explicitly decided to take your 13k Weaver because reasons. So yeah, this game has basically been

designed

around there being no consistent middle tier in skill and only somewhat tight knit groups tend to pursue the route to the skill ceiling for this reason. Anet is finally after so many years trying to repair this situation and Strike Missions are their next attempt, in spite of OP's or anyone else's feelings about raids having to be kept exclusive and etc etc. Not that this is going to stop people to discussing this to exhaustion, but just a heads up for newer players: something is being attempted about it and you kinda

can

go into raids without reaching any kind of skill ceiling

Join a raiding guild or form your group. There is most definitely a middle ground between the high LI pug groups and training runs.

[maxwelgm.4315]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@maxwelgm.4315 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:the thing to take away from Mike's interview:the difference between average dps and hardcore dps is 10x.

Let that sit for a while. And that is AVERAGE not LOW END.

Then you might realize why raids are a total niche and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players. Who probably spend a lot more real money on the game than the oh-I-am-so-awesome-hardcore-raid people.

It's a bit more complicated than that. It really comes down to the setting, goals, and connectivity of the players.

I know I rep these numbers a lot, but awhile ago I did some

auto attack tests

coupled with a few simple rotations. This was all done assuming raid builds, raid buffs, and raid food. The results I came to are pretty simple: for most weapons the baseline DPS for any class is half what the peak was for melee DPS, about a third for ranged and condi weapons, and much lower for several meme builds (staff necro being the worst). Considering that this is what is done from either auto attacking or spamming 2 or 3 skills, these numbers are the minimum you can expect from any player who is geared, somewhat informed, and not dead from failed mechanics. Adjust for each encounter's DPS uptime.

What Mike is talking about are players who are not geared, informed, or motivated. I.E. the player who spams every skill on their bar randomly while wearing whatever random gear they happened to loot using a build of nonsensical or random traits, and all of this while traveling alone with no outside buffs. When we're dealing with this degree of...

lack of skill,

there's only so much that can be done to reasonably accommodate that player. Aside from utter randos who have no idea what they're doing and/or do not care, it isn't unreasonable to expect that a player who wants to raid is going to show up in full berserker gear with mostly DPS boosting traits.

However, it has been one of my

biggest criticisms

toward this game that it's build system and game mechanics encourages players to be terrible at it. Getting good at the game involves abandoning all of the conventions and tools given to you. Roughly akin to that one video

The Spiffing Brit

did where he showed one of the best ways to play Prison Architect is to forgo the prison and just make a lumber yard. I don't know how to solve this problem, since it is ingrained in everything that defines GW2, but nonetheless it is the biggest issue facing challenging content design.

So these topics always get heated up to the point of uselessness but I'd like to point whoever is new/kinda new to raids to this one post since it goes a little more into the usual rant about low skill floor and high skill ceiling. You're heavily incentivized in open world PvE to do things that are flat out suicide during serious instanced encounters and they took as long as HoT to even try fixing it (and then it was a mess of a fix because HoT was deemed too hard and they had to retcon a lot of open world mechanics in PoF, going back to semi casual). The 'tutorial' if you can even consider it to be one, has absolutely NO mention of the most fundamental mechanics such as dodging telegraphed attacks and defiance bars, as well as the importance and the difference it will make in your DPS to finish your AA chains (protip: if you're going to ever have the player put in a DPS race, make smaller ones way before said player reaches that point).

So what we have are two completely different games where most mechanics from raids are either trivialized or don't see the light of day at all in open world, and open world is awfully disconnected to the kind of gameplay going on in raids, to the point the skill gap eventually became the problem we have today. The way in which this is a problem however is not what people might think. You see, it's not

hard

to get into raids and raiders are correct to say this. If you're a support class your DPS will not be looked at, at all, for 90% of groups, and also if you do take a DPS there are several DPS classes where you can ONLY auto attack if you so wanted and it would still reach upwards of 18k DPS, more than enough for practically anything and allows you to pay attention to mechanics.

But you see, this is not what happens is it? There are no "middle tier" groups taking 4 Shiro/Jalis Heralds to Gorseval and not many groups taking 3 healers to pug Matthias. Instead we either have training groups or high LI squads that expect you to be at or nearly at the top of your game, and take a class with high

potential

DPS regardless of your ability to reach that ceiling. It's also not even team-imposed but

self

-imposed sometimes, as in you could actually have asked your squad to take a power Rev but explicitly decided to take your 13k Weaver because reasons. So yeah, this game has basically been

designed

around there being no consistent middle tier in skill and only somewhat tight knit groups tend to pursue the route to the skill ceiling for this reason. Anet is finally after so many years trying to repair this situation and Strike Missions are their next attempt, in spite of OP's or anyone else's feelings about raids having to be kept exclusive and etc etc. Not that this is going to stop people to discussing this to exhaustion, but just a heads up for newer players: something is being attempted about it and you kinda

can

go into raids without reaching any kind of skill ceiling

Join a raiding guild or form your group. There is most definitely a middle ground between the high LI pug groups and training runs.

Please, this is exactly what my post says. The middle ground is all inside of tight knit groups and they will always remain tight knit. GW2 is an egotistical game that heavily favors playing by yourself and finding random people on the map to join you, until you reach instanced content. Then it becomes the exactly opposite and you are strongly motivated to move into discord servers and group up with specific players for more than one session if you want to efficiently achieve goals. This design dichotomy does not depend on us players, it's simply ingrained into faulty design. Raids are very well designed and, lack of difficulty apart, open world is very well designed as well. But there is really no consistent middle ground at all in between both, and the word consistent is key here, since of course I can make my own groups, but there is no middle tier culture when I first get there to being with, and all of what there is, I will only find out if I do what the game never told me to do before (i.e socialize). This has nothing to do with the playerbase in itself really - most of us will be social if the game requires it, see WvW - and entirely something Anet has to work around and change incentives and motivations. It is quite tempting to put gameplay all on the backs of players and go by Anet's motto of "we are playing it our way" but in reality psychology plays an immense role in how a majority of people will treat the game.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@maxwelgm.4315 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@maxwelgm.4315 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:the thing to take away from Mike's interview:the difference between average dps and hardcore dps is 10x.

Let that sit for a while. And that is AVERAGE not LOW END.

Then you might realize why raids are a total niche and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players. Who probably spend a lot more real money on the game than the oh-I-am-so-awesome-hardcore-raid people.

It's a bit more complicated than that. It really comes down to the setting, goals, and connectivity of the players.

I know I rep these numbers a lot, but awhile ago I did some

auto attack tests

coupled with a few simple rotations. This was all done assuming raid builds, raid buffs, and raid food. The results I came to are pretty simple: for most weapons the baseline DPS for any class is half what the peak was for melee DPS, about a third for ranged and condi weapons, and much lower for several meme builds (staff necro being the worst). Considering that this is what is done from either auto attacking or spamming 2 or 3 skills, these numbers are the minimum you can expect from any player who is geared, somewhat informed, and not dead from failed mechanics. Adjust for each encounter's DPS uptime.

What Mike is talking about are players who are not geared, informed, or motivated. I.E. the player who spams every skill on their bar randomly while wearing whatever random gear they happened to loot using a build of nonsensical or random traits, and all of this while traveling alone with no outside buffs. When we're dealing with this degree of...

lack of skill,

there's only so much that can be done to reasonably accommodate that player. Aside from utter randos who have no idea what they're doing and/or do not care, it isn't unreasonable to expect that a player who wants to raid is going to show up in full berserker gear with mostly DPS boosting traits.

However, it has been one of my

biggest criticisms

toward this game that it's build system and game mechanics encourages players to be terrible at it. Getting good at the game involves abandoning all of the conventions and tools given to you. Roughly akin to that one video

The Spiffing Brit

did where he showed one of the best ways to play Prison Architect is to forgo the prison and just make a lumber yard. I don't know how to solve this problem, since it is ingrained in everything that defines GW2, but nonetheless it is the biggest issue facing challenging content design.

So these topics always get heated up to the point of uselessness but I'd like to point whoever is new/kinda new to raids to this one post since it goes a little more into the usual rant about low skill floor and high skill ceiling. You're heavily incentivized in open world PvE to do things that are flat out suicide during serious instanced encounters and they took as long as HoT to even try fixing it (and then it was a mess of a fix because HoT was deemed too hard and they had to retcon a lot of open world mechanics in PoF, going back to semi casual). The 'tutorial' if you can even consider it to be one, has absolutely NO mention of the most fundamental mechanics such as dodging telegraphed attacks and defiance bars, as well as the importance and the difference it will make in your DPS to finish your AA chains (protip: if you're going to ever have the player put in a DPS race, make smaller ones way before said player reaches that point).

So what we have are two completely different games where most mechanics from raids are either trivialized or don't see the light of day at all in open world, and open world is awfully disconnected to the kind of gameplay going on in raids, to the point the skill gap eventually became the problem we have today. The way in which this is a problem however is not what people might think. You see, it's not

hard

to get into raids and raiders are correct to say this. If you're a support class your DPS will not be looked at, at all, for 90% of groups, and also if you do take a DPS there are several DPS classes where you can ONLY auto attack if you so wanted and it would still reach upwards of 18k DPS, more than enough for practically anything and allows you to pay attention to mechanics.

But you see, this is not what happens is it? There are no "middle tier" groups taking 4 Shiro/Jalis Heralds to Gorseval and not many groups taking 3 healers to pug Matthias. Instead we either have training groups or high LI squads that expect you to be at or nearly at the top of your game, and take a class with high

potential

DPS regardless of your ability to reach that ceiling. It's also not even team-imposed but

self

-imposed sometimes, as in you could actually have asked your squad to take a power Rev but explicitly decided to take your 13k Weaver because reasons. So yeah, this game has basically been

designed

around there being no consistent middle tier in skill and only somewhat tight knit groups tend to pursue the route to the skill ceiling for this reason. Anet is finally after so many years trying to repair this situation and Strike Missions are their next attempt, in spite of OP's or anyone else's feelings about raids having to be kept exclusive and etc etc. Not that this is going to stop people to discussing this to exhaustion, but just a heads up for newer players: something is being attempted about it and you kinda

can

go into raids without reaching any kind of skill ceiling

Join a raiding guild or form your group. There is most definitely a middle ground between the high LI pug groups and training runs.

Please, this is

exactly

what my post says. The middle ground is all inside of tight knit groups and they will always

remain

tight knit. GW2 is an egotistical game that heavily favors playing by yourself and finding random people on the map to join you, until you reach instanced content. Then it becomes the exactly opposite and you are strongly motivated to move into discord servers and group up with specific players for more than one session if you want to efficiently achieve goals. This design dichotomy does

not

depend on us players, it's simply ingrained into faulty design. Raids are very well designed and, lack of difficulty apart, open world is very well designed as well. But there is really no consistent middle ground at all in between both, and the word consistent is key here, since of course I can make my own groups, but there is no middle tier

culture

when I first get there to being with, and all of what there is, I will only find out if I do what the game never told me to do before (i.e socialize). This has nothing to do with the playerbase in itself really - most of us will be social if the game requires it, see WvW - and entirely something Anet has to work around and change incentives and motivations. It is quite tempting to put gameplay all on the backs of players and go by Anet's motto of "we are playing it our way" but in reality psychology plays an immense role in how a majority of people will treat the game.

Your post said there was no middle ground but there is. So no, this isn’t exactly what your post said. Joining a guild that does raids is not the same as the pug groups that require high LI/KP.

[maxwelgm.4315]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@maxwelgm.4315 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@maxwelgm.4315 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:the thing to take away from Mike's interview:the difference between average dps and hardcore dps is 10x.

Let that sit for a while. And that is AVERAGE not LOW END.

Then you might realize why raids are a total niche and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players. Who probably spend a lot more real money on the game than the oh-I-am-so-awesome-hardcore-raid people.

It's a bit more complicated than that. It really comes down to the setting, goals, and connectivity of the players.

I know I rep these numbers a lot, but awhile ago I did some

auto attack tests

coupled with a few simple rotations. This was all done assuming raid builds, raid buffs, and raid food. The results I came to are pretty simple: for most weapons the baseline DPS for any class is half what the peak was for melee DPS, about a third for ranged and condi weapons, and much lower for several meme builds (staff necro being the worst). Considering that this is what is done from either auto attacking or spamming 2 or 3 skills, these numbers are the minimum you can expect from any player who is geared, somewhat informed, and not dead from failed mechanics. Adjust for each encounter's DPS uptime.

What Mike is talking about are players who are not geared, informed, or motivated. I.E. the player who spams every skill on their bar randomly while wearing whatever random gear they happened to loot using a build of nonsensical or random traits, and all of this while traveling alone with no outside buffs. When we're dealing with this degree of...

lack of skill,

there's only so much that can be done to reasonably accommodate that player. Aside from utter randos who have no idea what they're doing and/or do not care, it isn't unreasonable to expect that a player who wants to raid is going to show up in full berserker gear with mostly DPS boosting traits.

However, it has been one of my

biggest criticisms

toward this game that it's build system and game mechanics encourages players to be terrible at it. Getting good at the game involves abandoning all of the conventions and tools given to you. Roughly akin to that one video

The Spiffing Brit

did where he showed one of the best ways to play Prison Architect is to forgo the prison and just make a lumber yard. I don't know how to solve this problem, since it is ingrained in everything that defines GW2, but nonetheless it is the biggest issue facing challenging content design.

So these topics always get heated up to the point of uselessness but I'd like to point whoever is new/kinda new to raids to this one post since it goes a little more into the usual rant about low skill floor and high skill ceiling. You're heavily incentivized in open world PvE to do things that are flat out suicide during serious instanced encounters and they took as long as HoT to even try fixing it (and then it was a mess of a fix because HoT was deemed too hard and they had to retcon a lot of open world mechanics in PoF, going back to semi casual). The 'tutorial' if you can even consider it to be one, has absolutely NO mention of the most fundamental mechanics such as dodging telegraphed attacks and defiance bars, as well as the importance and the difference it will make in your DPS to finish your AA chains (protip: if you're going to ever have the player put in a DPS race, make smaller ones way before said player reaches that point).

So what we have are two completely different games where most mechanics from raids are either trivialized or don't see the light of day at all in open world, and open world is awfully disconnected to the kind of gameplay going on in raids, to the point the skill gap eventually became the problem we have today. The way in which this is a problem however is not what people might think. You see, it's not

hard

to get into raids and raiders are correct to say this. If you're a support class your DPS will not be looked at, at all, for 90% of groups, and also if you do take a DPS there are several DPS classes where you can ONLY auto attack if you so wanted and it would still reach upwards of 18k DPS, more than enough for practically anything and allows you to pay attention to mechanics.

But you see, this is not what happens is it? There are no "middle tier" groups taking 4 Shiro/Jalis Heralds to Gorseval and not many groups taking 3 healers to pug Matthias. Instead we either have training groups or high LI squads that expect you to be at or nearly at the top of your game, and take a class with high

potential

DPS regardless of your ability to reach that ceiling. It's also not even team-imposed but

self

-imposed sometimes, as in you could actually have asked your squad to take a power Rev but explicitly decided to take your 13k Weaver because reasons. So yeah, this game has basically been

designed

around there being no consistent middle tier in skill and only somewhat tight knit groups tend to pursue the route to the skill ceiling for this reason. Anet is finally after so many years trying to repair this situation and Strike Missions are their next attempt, in spite of OP's or anyone else's feelings about raids having to be kept exclusive and etc etc. Not that this is going to stop people to discussing this to exhaustion, but just a heads up for newer players: something is being attempted about it and you kinda

can

go into raids without reaching any kind of skill ceiling

Join a raiding guild or form your group. There is most definitely a middle ground between the high LI pug groups and training runs.

Please, this is

exactly

what my post says. The middle ground is all inside of tight knit groups and they will always

remain

tight knit. GW2 is an egotistical game that heavily favors playing by yourself and finding random people on the map to join you, until you reach instanced content. Then it becomes the exactly opposite and you are strongly motivated to move into discord servers and group up with specific players for more than one session if you want to efficiently achieve goals. This design dichotomy does

not

depend on us players, it's simply ingrained into faulty design. Raids are very well designed and, lack of difficulty apart, open world is very well designed as well. But there is really no consistent middle ground at all in between both, and the word consistent is key here, since of course I can make my own groups, but there is no middle tier

culture

when I first get there to being with, and all of what there is, I will only find out if I do what the game never told me to do before (i.e socialize). This has nothing to do with the playerbase in itself really - most of us will be social if the game requires it, see WvW - and entirely something Anet has to work around and change incentives and motivations. It is quite tempting to put gameplay all on the backs of players and go by Anet's motto of "we are playing it our way" but in reality psychology plays an immense role in how a majority of people will treat the game.

Your post said there was no middle ground but there is. So no, this isn’t exactly what your post said. Joining a guild that does raids is not the same as the pug groups that require high LI/KP.

There are no middle tier groups in between training and close knit guild groups from guilds that do raids. You are forced to get organized and this is OK for raid design but is a total 180, a complete disparity from the rest of the game, and this needs to be addressed. Why excuse Anet for faulty design putting it on the back of the playerbase? Training guilds and whatnot are workarounds and that's it. Of course High LI/KP groups and raiding guilds are not the same, but they have the same expectations that you are either in training or ready to push towards the benchmarks instead of sitting at some middle term plateau, and this is a direct consequence of how the game is designed, it's not something players have sat down and decided upon by themselves.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@maxwelgm.4315 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@maxwelgm.4315 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@maxwelgm.4315 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:the thing to take away from Mike's interview:the difference between average dps and hardcore dps is 10x.

Let that sit for a while. And that is AVERAGE not LOW END.

Then you might realize why raids are a total niche and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players. Who probably spend a lot more real money on the game than the oh-I-am-so-awesome-hardcore-raid people.

It's a bit more complicated than that. It really comes down to the setting, goals, and connectivity of the players.

I know I rep these numbers a lot, but awhile ago I did some

auto attack tests

coupled with a few simple rotations. This was all done assuming raid builds, raid buffs, and raid food. The results I came to are pretty simple: for most weapons the baseline DPS for any class is half what the peak was for melee DPS, about a third for ranged and condi weapons, and much lower for several meme builds (staff necro being the worst). Considering that this is what is done from either auto attacking or spamming 2 or 3 skills, these numbers are the minimum you can expect from any player who is geared, somewhat informed, and not dead from failed mechanics. Adjust for each encounter's DPS uptime.

What Mike is talking about are players who are not geared, informed, or motivated. I.E. the player who spams every skill on their bar randomly while wearing whatever random gear they happened to loot using a build of nonsensical or random traits, and all of this while traveling alone with no outside buffs. When we're dealing with this degree of...

lack of skill,

there's only so much that can be done to reasonably accommodate that player. Aside from utter randos who have no idea what they're doing and/or do not care, it isn't unreasonable to expect that a player who wants to raid is going to show up in full berserker gear with mostly DPS boosting traits.

However, it has been one of my

biggest criticisms

toward this game that it's build system and game mechanics encourages players to be terrible at it. Getting good at the game involves abandoning all of the conventions and tools given to you. Roughly akin to that one video

The Spiffing Brit

did where he showed one of the best ways to play Prison Architect is to forgo the prison and just make a lumber yard. I don't know how to solve this problem, since it is ingrained in everything that defines GW2, but nonetheless it is the biggest issue facing challenging content design.

So these topics always get heated up to the point of uselessness but I'd like to point whoever is new/kinda new to raids to this one post since it goes a little more into the usual rant about low skill floor and high skill ceiling. You're heavily incentivized in open world PvE to do things that are flat out suicide during serious instanced encounters and they took as long as HoT to even try fixing it (and then it was a mess of a fix because HoT was deemed too hard and they had to retcon a lot of open world mechanics in PoF, going back to semi casual). The 'tutorial' if you can even consider it to be one, has absolutely NO mention of the most fundamental mechanics such as dodging telegraphed attacks and defiance bars, as well as the importance and the difference it will make in your DPS to finish your AA chains (protip: if you're going to ever have the player put in a DPS race, make smaller ones way before said player reaches that point).

So what we have are two completely different games where most mechanics from raids are either trivialized or don't see the light of day at all in open world, and open world is awfully disconnected to the kind of gameplay going on in raids, to the point the skill gap eventually became the problem we have today. The way in which this is a problem however is not what people might think. You see, it's not

hard

to get into raids and raiders are correct to say this. If you're a support class your DPS will not be looked at, at all, for 90% of groups, and also if you do take a DPS there are several DPS classes where you can ONLY auto attack if you so wanted and it would still reach upwards of 18k DPS, more than enough for practically anything and allows you to pay attention to mechanics.

But you see, this is not what happens is it? There are no "middle tier" groups taking 4 Shiro/Jalis Heralds to Gorseval and not many groups taking 3 healers to pug Matthias. Instead we either have training groups or high LI squads that expect you to be at or nearly at the top of your game, and take a class with high

potential

DPS regardless of your ability to reach that ceiling. It's also not even team-imposed but

self

-imposed sometimes, as in you could actually have asked your squad to take a power Rev but explicitly decided to take your 13k Weaver because reasons. So yeah, this game has basically been

designed

around there being no consistent middle tier in skill and only somewhat tight knit groups tend to pursue the route to the skill ceiling for this reason. Anet is finally after so many years trying to repair this situation and Strike Missions are their next attempt, in spite of OP's or anyone else's feelings about raids having to be kept exclusive and etc etc. Not that this is going to stop people to discussing this to exhaustion, but just a heads up for newer players: something is being attempted about it and you kinda

can

go into raids without reaching any kind of skill ceiling

Join a raiding guild or form your group. There is most definitely a middle ground between the high LI pug groups and training runs.

Please, this is

exactly

what my post says. The middle ground is all inside of tight knit groups and they will always

remain

tight knit. GW2 is an egotistical game that heavily favors playing by yourself and finding random people on the map to join you, until you reach instanced content. Then it becomes the exactly opposite and you are strongly motivated to move into discord servers and group up with specific players for more than one session if you want to efficiently achieve goals. This design dichotomy does

not

depend on us players, it's simply ingrained into faulty design. Raids are very well designed and, lack of difficulty apart, open world is very well designed as well. But there is really no consistent middle ground at all in between both, and the word consistent is key here, since of course I can make my own groups, but there is no middle tier

culture

when I first get there to being with, and all of what there is, I will only find out if I do what the game never told me to do before (i.e socialize). This has nothing to do with the playerbase in itself really - most of us will be social if the game requires it, see WvW - and entirely something Anet has to work around and change incentives and motivations. It is quite tempting to put gameplay all on the backs of players and go by Anet's motto of "we are playing it our way" but in reality psychology plays an immense role in how a majority of people will treat the game.

Your post said there was no middle ground but there is. So no, this isn’t exactly what your post said. Joining a guild that does raids is not the same as the pug groups that require high LI/KP.

There are no middle tier groups in between training and close knit guild groups from

guilds that do raids

. You are forced to get organized and this is OK for raid design but is a total 180, a complete disparity from the rest of the game, and this needs to be addressed. Why excuse Anet for faulty design putting it on the back of the playerbase? Training guilds and whatnot are workarounds and that's it. Of course High LI/KP groups and raiding guilds are not the same, but they have the same

expectations

that you are either in training or ready to push towards the benchmarks instead of sitting at some middle term plateau, and this is a direct consequence of how the game is designed, it's

not

something players have sat down and decided upon by themselves.

There are raid guilds which are actively recruiting members and willing to train. Those with some experience are also able to join them as well. Your blanket statement that there is no middle ground is wrong.

It’s not faulty design to have challenging content. It’s on the players to learn the raid mechanics; not Anet. Existing group content, and the upcoming strike missions, help bridge this gap from between the open world spam auto attack and raids.

[Vinceman.4572]

The main problem is still the access to recruiting members on the one hand & finding guilds on the other. Forums, reddit and community discords are the way to go here but that seems unplausible to many players because they have to go "outside of the game".Things would definitely work better with a proper ingame searching tool (both ways) like some (maddoctor.2738 for example) have already proposed.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Henry.5713" said:I am most likely not the target audience of Open World PvE and story content. What should I do? Quit the game and move on to other games which focus on the content I enjoy most: raids and Open World PvP? Should I complain and ask Open World PvE and story instances to be changed to be more to my liking because I am entitled to it? Or should I just play the content I like while being happy for those who do enjoy content I do not? I wonder....Whatever you want. You're free to ask developers for anything, just as other players are. This doesn't mean everyone will agree to it, of course, but fortunately for you, it;s the devs that will ultimately decide, not the other players.

By the way,your second example - "Should I complain and ask Open World PvE and story instances to be changed to be more to my liking because I am entitled to it?" - has already happened in this game before ina very visible way. More hardcore crowd complained on the forums that the PvE was too easy and it should be made harder. The result was HoT. The difficulty... as you know was not met with as much applause as those asking for it hoped.

In short: asking for content to be changed frequently happens on both sides of the divide, and infrequently ends up with results (again, for either one or the other side). It's a constant tug of war, in which no side has ever been satisfied with what they had. Because, it is not really possible to satisfy everyone.

[kasoki.5180]

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@maxwelgm.4315 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@maxwelgm.4315 said:

@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@maxwelgm.4315 said:

@Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:the thing to take away from Mike's interview:the difference between average dps and hardcore dps is 10x.

Let that sit for a while. And that is AVERAGE not LOW END.

Then you might realize why raids are a total niche and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players. Who probably spend a lot more real money on the game than the oh-I-am-so-awesome-hardcore-raid people.

It's a bit more complicated than that. It really comes down to the setting, goals, and connectivity of the players.

I know I rep these numbers a lot, but awhile ago I did some

auto attack tests

coupled with a few simple rotations. This was all done assuming raid builds, raid buffs, and raid food. The results I came to are pretty simple: for most weapons the baseline DPS for any class is half what the peak was for melee DPS, about a third for ranged and condi weapons, and much lower for several meme builds (staff necro being the worst). Considering that this is what is done from either auto attacking or spamming 2 or 3 skills, these numbers are the minimum you can expect from any player who is geared, somewhat informed, and not dead from failed mechanics. Adjust for each encounter's DPS uptime.

What Mike is talking about are players who are not geared, informed, or motivated. I.E. the player who spams every skill on their bar randomly while wearing whatever random gear they happened to loot using a build of nonsensical or random traits, and all of this while traveling alone with no outside buffs. When we're dealing with this degree of...

lack of skill,

there's only so much that can be done to reasonably accommodate that player. Aside from utter randos who have no idea what they're doing and/or do not care, it isn't unreasonable to expect that a player who wants to raid is going to show up in full berserker gear with mostly DPS boosting traits.

However, it has been one of my

biggest criticisms

toward this game that it's build system and game mechanics encourages players to be terrible at it. Getting good at the game involves abandoning all of the conventions and tools given to you. Roughly akin to that one video

The Spiffing Brit

did where he showed one of the best ways to play Prison Architect is to forgo the prison and just make a lumber yard. I don't know how to solve this problem, since it is ingrained in everything that defines GW2, but nonetheless it is the biggest issue facing challenging content design.

So these topics always get heated up to the point of uselessness but I'd like to point whoever is new/kinda new to raids to this one post since it goes a little more into the usual rant about low skill floor and high skill ceiling. You're heavily incentivized in open world PvE to do things that are flat out suicide during serious instanced encounters and they took as long as HoT to even try fixing it (and then it was a mess of a fix because HoT was deemed too hard and they had to retcon a lot of open world mechanics in PoF, going back to semi casual). The 'tutorial' if you can even consider it to be one, has absolutely NO mention of the most fundamental mechanics such as dodging telegraphed attacks and defiance bars, as well as the importance and the difference it will make in your DPS to finish your AA chains (protip: if you're going to ever have the player put in a DPS race, make smaller ones way before said player reaches that point).

So what we have are two completely different games where most mechanics from raids are either trivialized or don't see the light of day at all in open world, and open world is awfully disconnected to the kind of gameplay going on in raids, to the point the skill gap eventually became the problem we have today. The way in which this is a problem however is not what people might think. You see, it's not

hard

to get into raids and raiders are correct to say this. If you're a support class your DPS will not be looked at, at all, for 90% of groups, and also if you do take a DPS there are several DPS classes where you can ONLY auto attack if you so wanted and it would still reach upwards of 18k DPS, more than enough for practically anything and allows you to pay attention to mechanics.

But you see, this is not what happens is it? There are no "middle tier" groups taking 4 Shiro/Jalis Heralds to Gorseval and not many groups taking 3 healers to pug Matthias. Instead we either have training groups or high LI squads that expect you to be at or nearly at the top of your game, and take a class with high

potential

DPS regardless of your ability to reach that ceiling. It's also not even team-imposed but

self

-imposed sometimes, as in you could actually have asked your squad to take a power Rev but explicitly decided to take your 13k Weaver because reasons. So yeah, this game has basically been

designed

around there being no consistent middle tier in skill and only somewhat tight knit groups tend to pursue the route to the skill ceiling for this reason. Anet is finally after so many years trying to repair this situation and Strike Missions are their next attempt, in spite of OP's or anyone else's feelings about raids having to be kept exclusive and etc etc. Not that this is going to stop people to discussing this to exhaustion, but just a heads up for newer players: something is being attempted about it and you kinda

can

go into raids without reaching any kind of skill ceiling

Join a raiding guild or form your group. There is most definitely a middle ground between the high LI pug groups and training runs.

Please, this is

exactly

what my post says. The middle ground is all inside of tight knit groups and they will always

remain

tight knit. GW2 is an egotistical game that heavily favors playing by yourself and finding random people on the map to join you, until you reach instanced content. Then it becomes the exactly opposite and you are strongly motivated to move into discord servers and group up with specific players for more than one session if you want to efficiently achieve goals. This design dichotomy does

not

depend on us players, it's simply ingrained into faulty design. Raids are very well designed and, lack of difficulty apart, open world is very well designed as well. But there is really no consistent middle ground at all in between both, and the word consistent is key here, since of course I can make my own groups, but there is no middle tier

culture

when I first get there to being with, and all of what there is, I will only find out if I do what the game never told me to do before (i.e socialize). This has nothing to do with the playerbase in itself really - most of us will be social if the game requires it, see WvW - and entirely something Anet has to work around and change incentives and motivations. It is quite tempting to put gameplay all on the backs of players and go by Anet's motto of "we are playing it our way" but in reality psychology plays an immense role in how a majority of people will treat the game.

Your post said there was no middle ground but there is. So no, this isn’t exactly what your post said. Joining a guild that does raids is not the same as the pug groups that require high LI/KP.

There are no middle tier groups in between training and close knit guild groups from

guilds that do raids

. You are forced to get organized and this is OK for raid design but is a total 180, a complete disparity from the rest of the game, and this needs to be addressed. Why excuse Anet for faulty design putting it on the back of the playerbase? Training guilds and whatnot are workarounds and that's it. Of course High LI/KP groups and raiding guilds are not the same, but they have the same

expectations

that you are either in training or ready to push towards the benchmarks instead of sitting at some middle term plateau, and this is a direct consequence of how the game is designed, it's

not

something players have sat down and decided upon by themselves.

There are raid guilds which are actively recruiting members and willing to train. Those with some experience are also able to join them as well. Your blanket statement that there is no middle ground is wrong.

It’s not faulty design to have challenging content. It’s on the players to learn the raid mechanics; not Anet. Existing group content, and the upcoming strike missions, help bridge this gap from between the open world spam auto attack and raids.

To be fair, raid recruitment/training guilds often end up with a close static group very fast. And population of the game simply isn't stable enough to have multiple statics. So if you joined at the bad time it is basically "no soup" for you. Not saying I disagree with you but its also not as simple.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

@mindcircus.1506 said:

@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:and everything hidden in raids is basically stolen from the vast majority of players.Such entitlement.Much wow.

if there is one group that better check their priviledges it is raiders:

who got the good looking legendary armor while everybody else (who have to spend hundreds of hours to get it) gets garbage? raiderswho gets more or less regular content drops, while others (wvw, pvp) get nothing? raiderswhose playmode dominates balancing and make others suffer? raiderswho get lore that this locked away for others? raiders

see a pattern?btw, raid legendary armor: I am still angry (really angry) that the legendary raid skin was and is not the universal legendary armor skin. Oh no, the precious flowers had to get something really really special. Why?