Including Strike Mission Achievements as a Required Part of the Zone Meta

[Astralporing.1957]

@DonArkanio.6419 said:I don't have a problem with that requirement. And I don't believe this discourages most players.

Strike Missions are a bridge between open-world and Raids. It's ANet's design choice and they simply want you to play the content they make. Don't like the content? Who's fault is that?Well, if developer suddenly decides to change the content players like into one players do not like, it's definitely not players' fault.

@"Cyninja.2954" said:

Which does not in anyway address the huge performance disparity between players which is evident at every step of PvE content (which would explain nicely how a certain part of the player base could potentially not perform adequately in a raid environment). Or past desire of players for easy mode raids. Or the developers attempt to bridge this performance disparity.Except, as it has been explained already, stikes do absolutely nothing about it. They are a bridge between two types of content, but to walk that bridge players need to take care about fixing that performance disparity completely on their own. Exactly as they had to do before strikes were introduced.Basically, those that were not able (or didn't want) to walk the path to raids before, will still be unable/not willing to walk it today.

And as about easy mode raids - for the most part, people were asking about them exactly because they didn't want to go to normal ones. Yes, they were supposed to be able to function as an intermediary, but that was not their intended primary purpose. Their intended primary purpose was to give "raids-lite" version for more casual players.

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

they tried to force people into raids with legendary armor. And to this day, raid legendary is the only one looking legendary. The other two look like standard crap (lets face it, all wvw armor/weapons look horrendous).

Did it work? No, not at all. What a surprise.

But instead of realizing that people just do not want to do raids, now they try to strongarm people into strikes to make them 'interested' in raids via meta achievement.

I wondering how this will end.

Surely roleplayers who would like to have another useful emote are THRILLED by now. GW2 is starved when it comes to emotes. We need more. Lets make it depending on strikes, because those who would like more emotes are not doing this kind of content. This way we can force them. And then they see the light and be happy.

Yeah. Maybe someone at anet should think again. Forcing people does not work.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

@"Cyninja.2954" said:

The 100s of page long threads about easy mode raids ...

In all of those threads, those opposed to easy mode raids point out that its only a few posters who keep asking for the "easy mode" raids. Having read through most of them, it certainly looked that way to me, also. The length of those threads also owes a lot more to dozens of back-and-forth posts by two opposed contributors than it does to any groundswell of demand. I'm not sure the length of those threads is a good argument for a sufficient demand for easier raid-like content to warrant strikes. It looks more like every once in a whole someone new comes along and makes the request, then the usual suspects jump in on both sides of the discussion.

as well as the developer approach to this issue would suggest you are incorrect in your assumption, which is mostly based on your personal subjective experience. That's all I am saying.

ANet offering strikes as a bridge to raids could suggest that there are a significant number of players who want to raid but are put off by the difficulty jump. However, as has been pointed out many times in the "easy raid" threads, there is already an easier-to-harder difficulty curve in the existing raids. However, that has not been sufficient to bridge the gap. Releasing easier raid encounters with no real rewards as "strike missions" may do so, or it may not. I tend not to think so, but maybe I'll be wrong.

Either way, it's a mistake to assume that because ANet has more data than us, they know what they're doing. There is too much history of ANet missteps over too many things, and of them misreading the psychological factors behind what players want for me to buy that. Using strikes as a bridge to raids seems more to me like a last-ditch pie-in-the-sky attempt to be seen to be doing something to suggest that there will be more raids in future. ANet could well be grasping at straws to try to offer some hope to hardcore players in the wake of the lengthy periods between raid wings and the "template" fiasco rather than betting on a sure thing.

I think the truth is that there are both players who want to raid who need training wheels, and those who don't raid because they don't want to raid. I think what Vayne is suggesting is that he does not raid not because of difficulty but because he doesn't like that type of content, and that there are likely more players like him -- not that all players who don't want to raid could if they want to. His reaction is likely a response to the several comments that he -- to put it crudely -- "git gud."

[Vilin.8056]

@Vayne.8563 said:But if you want to raise the bar, in my opinion, this isn't the way to do it. It's long been a problem with the nature of open world PvE being so casual in this game. You change the game you lose the playerbase. It's just logic.

It isn't logic, it is just denial.And developers has been feeding this denial by making map events brainlessly simple even more players left because there is no thrills even fighting meta bosses.Years back, we had even more players online when half the world bosses and have medium to high chances of failure.

Besides, I don't see the majority of casual player cares about finishing map meta achievements either, strike mission or not. They play to grind, instead to achieve.

The Arah story mode was changed to solo mode because it takes too long and too little reward for players who have done this story to replay, not because it was too hard.

[Astralporing.1957]

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:I know a whole lot of people who have no interest in raids, having raided in other games. None. Zero. Burned out on raids. Came here to get away from raids. Relaxing, not min/maxing, as one guy put it. You can say I'm wrong because there's a thread on the forums that asks for easy mode raids, but probably half the people in that thread were against it.

But the 100 response long pages of requests for easy mode raids that constantly gets brought up is direct evidence against what you're saying.

It's not. It's at best an evidence, that people want

easy mode

raids. Not normal/hard mode ones.The people that simply want better access/less limitations towards raids, are the people that ask for automatic queuing system or similar stuff. Frankly, don't remember a lot of

those

threads.

[sevenDEADLY.5281]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:But the 100 response long pages of requests for easy mode raids that constantly gets brought up is direct evidence against what you're saying.

It's not. It's at best an evidence, that people want

easy mode

raids. Not normal/hard mode ones.The people that simply want better access/less limitations towards raids, are the people that ask for automatic queuing system or similar stuff. Frankly, don't remember a lot of

those

threads.

It 100% is. If it was as he is saying and people didn't do raids because they just don't like raids, and NOT because they feel they aren't good enough for raids, they WOULDN'T be asking for easier raids. It's really not that hard to understand.

[Vayne.8563]

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:

@"Vayne.8563" said:I know a whole lot of people who have no interest in raids, having raided in other games. None. Zero. Burned out on raids. Came here to get away from raids. Relaxing, not min/maxing, as one guy put it. You can say I'm wrong because there's a thread on the forums that asks for easy mode raids, but probably half the people in that thread were against it.

But the 100 response long pages of requests for easy mode raids that constantly gets brought up is direct evidence against what you're saying. Saying "I know people" is literally just anecdotal evidence. Also the fact that you think you NEED to download a dps meter and that you NEED to copy a meta build from a top tier raiding website also shows that you're out of touch with what it takes to raid. I don't have a dps meter and you just need to have slightly more than a basic grasp of mmo mechanics and build synergy to raid, and again, people who literally just press 1 and down world bosses in a mix of random gear with random traits don't have this because they've never had to. These are the same people that complain that story mode is too hard when most people can can sleepwalk through story mode.

Edit: Heres a quote from @"Fundor.2098" I just found in another thread about the whispers of jormag strike. He seems to be exactly the type of person you're saying doesn't exist.

"Is it truly so difficult, it's comparable to raids?I've never done raids before (well, after a couple of epic failures after Vale Guardian was added to the game), but I'm quite interested in them nevertheless. Always expected them to be far out of my skill level though, and finding a group to learn them with has been too much of a hassle thanks to my irregular gaming times. Let me tell you, a three-shift work and a long-distance relationship make it impossible to attend literally anything regularly.But after figuring out the strategy for the Whisper, the groups I've attended haven't failed a single run, despite there having been people who were new to it. A simple explanation of what is to come and what to keep an eye for, making sure at least a portion of the people are playing with team support focused builds, and everything goes smoothly!

Are the Strike Missions actually doing their job? If so, I'm even more grateful for them, than I was before!

Anyhow, your point numer 5, about a strike mission currency, the like of raid currencies, was a very good one."

I'm pretty sure the number of people who say they want easy mode raids isn't because they want easy mode raids. Those same people probably didn't want raids before they came to the game. Do you know that thread you're talking about. The one that said raids should never be here is not longer than the one that said no raids in teh first place. People don't want to feel left out. They don't want to have an area of the game that is off limits to them. You might postulate that's because they're not good, but the reason for a lot of us is because we don't want to coordinate or be told how to play, or have to change builds or build a new set of armor.

Do you know what I was told when I bought this game? No holy trinity. No need for a healer. No need to wait to have fun, you can have fun right now. Five wariors can do a dungeon. Five mesmers. Five eles. Five necros. That's what I was sold on. Don't wait to have fun, do it now. And in raids it's back to needed a healer and a tank which frankly is not the game I bought. It was advertised as a different game.

You're assuming wanting an easier raid means we're not good enough. In my case at least, wanting an easier raid is to see the story, without having to go along with the other nonsense raids bring to the game without breaking my own game. I'd rather have not had raids here at all, but once they were here I don't want to be excluded from an area, just because I want to play the game I purchased, that was advertised a certain way. If I wanted a trinity I'd be playing WoW or Final Fantasy XIV. I've always hated the trinity long before Guild Wars 2. Hence, an easy mode raid request. Nothing to do with not good enough...for me. Having to change the way I play to play content I didn't want to play in the first place or be locked out of story? Bad design on Anet's part.

[Vayne.8563]

@Shadowmoon.7986 said:

@Pirogen.9561 said:

@Shadowmoon.7986 said:And you are a vocal minority. And there is evidence to show this. Using gw2 efficiency data, of the 49653 people who started the episode, 8677 people have killed strike whisper of jormag, the boss the same difficultly as a raid boss. Compare this to people who completed all the light puzzles, 7433, jumping puzzles are a bigger barrier to the meta than strikes. If you ignore boneskinner achievements (he been bugged since the update) or the high skill "flawless" strike achievements, the lowest completed achievements are the mundane repeat events 20 times. Honestly repeating the same unrewarding event 20 is probably the biggest gate from completing the meta, not doing the strikes.

Only 8K players did strike? Thats a very small number.

Can we plz stop being disengenious, 8.6k out of a 50k sample size. That is almost 18%. Only 60% of the sample even finished the story. Less than 15% completed all the light puzzles. Less than 5% completed the totem events 20 times.So back at the statement, about 1 in 5 people is not a small number.

In order for any of these statisics to really matter we'd need to know a couple of things we don't know. Active player count is one of them. That is how many players use gw2efficiency that are still actually playing instead of taking a break or moved on to other games. For example I have an efficiency account for an alt account that isn't anywhere near Grothmar even and I play story in order. But I may never get to it on that account.

Another issue is what percentage of the playerbase uses gw2efficiency and what percentage of those are harder core players to begin with. How many casuals that would never raid or finish harder strike missions would do meta but not make an account on a site. Who's more likeliy to sign up on a site? Casuals or hard core players? It's just not a useful metric either way. You know who does have metrics? Anet. And what those metrics tell them will be a bit more useful, even though those too can be misleading.

[sevenDEADLY.5281]

Some people hate PVP. PVP exists in this game. Those people can feel "left out" because they feel its "off limits" to them. Do you want them to get rid of PVP? WvW exists in this game. Some people hate WvW. Do you want them to remove WvW from the game? Some people absolutely loath jumping puzzles. By your logic jumping puzzles should be removed from the game because someone who can't do jumping puzzles might feel "left out" of that area of the game. Raids exist, its part of the game. You can either accept that its part of the game like everyone who doesn't enjoy pvp accepts its part of the game, like people who don't enjoy wvw accepts it part of the game, and people who hate jumping puzzles accept they're part of the game, or you can continue to crusade tirelessly against the evil raids that have made you feel left out and tell everyone about how your opinion is the correct one because you personally don't enjoy them. Either way its pretty clear arenanet isn't making design choices around a single person's preferences.

[Vayne.8563]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:I know a whole lot of people who have no interest in raids, having raided in other games. None. Zero. Burned out on raids. Came here to get away from raids. Relaxing, not min/maxing, as one guy put it. You can say I'm wrong because there's a thread on the forums that asks for easy mode raids, but probably half the people in that thread were against it.

But the 100 response long pages of requests for easy mode raids that constantly gets brought up is direct evidence against what you're saying.

It's not. It's at best an evidence, that people want

easy mode

raids. Not normal/hard mode ones.The people that simply want better access/less limitations towards raids, are the people that ask for automatic queuing system or similar stuff. Frankly, don't remember a lot of

those

threads.

But I do remember a lot of people asking in those eaasy raid mode thread saying they're interested in seeing the story. That is, you've locked some lore and story behind this door. How do you know that wanting easy mode raids has more to two with diffiuclty and not more to do with organization challeges like finding tanks/healers or changing builds or building new armor sets, or getting ascended gear. Whether you need a full set or not, a lot of people believe you need ascended gear to raid. Other games have sort of taught that and it's ingrained in the thought process of a lot of people.

I want easy mode raids too, so I can take a bunch of casuals that are hard to organize (and that's the key for me, not wanting to herd cats). They want to see the content not play a different game than I bought. Me too.

[Vayne.8563]

@"sevenDEADLY.5281" said:Some people hate PVP. PVP exists in this game. Those people can feel "left out" because they feel its "off limits" to them. Do you want them to get rid of PVP? WvW exists in this game. Some people hate WvW. Do you want them to remove WvW from the game? Some people absolutely loath jumping puzzles. By your logic jumping puzzles should be removed from the game because someone who can't do jumping puzzles might feel "left out" of that area of the game. Raids exist, its part of the game. You can either accept that its part of the game like everyone who doesn't enjoy pvp accepts its part of the game, like people who don't enjoy wvw accepts it part of the game, and people who hate jumping puzzles accept they're part of the game, or you can continue to crusade tirelessly against the evil raids that have made you feel left out and tell everyone about how your opinion is the correct one because you personally don't enjoy them.

PvP existed from launch. Raids didn't exist until 3.5 years after launch. If you don't see a difference between something the game was advertised with that I new would be there when I bought and started supporting the game by choice, I'm not sure whatt to tell you. Do you think people who don't want to raid, didn't come to the forums and fight against raids being introduced into the game in the first place? Because I remember those posts.

PvP has always been there and I accept it because I paid for a game that has it. Do you know what I didn't pay for? A game that requires a healer and a tank. A game that makes you jump through hoops to get a dungeon group together, because any five people could go in. The way the game was advertised.

Like it or not, raids changed the game from what was advertised into something that was not. And to a lot of peope that felt like betrayal. The same can't be said for PvP.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:But the 100 response long pages of requests for easy mode raids that constantly gets brought up is direct evidence against what you're saying.

It's not. It's at best an evidence, that people want

easy mode

raids. Not normal/hard mode ones.The people that simply want better access/less limitations towards raids, are the people that ask for automatic queuing system or similar stuff. Frankly, don't remember a lot of

those

threads.

It 100% is. If it was as he is saying and people didn't do raids because they just don't like raids, and NOT because they feel they aren't good enough for raids, they WOULDN'T be asking for easier raids. It's really not that hard to understand.

There are both kinds of players. The ones who don't want to raid are not the people asking for easier raids. They're the ones saying raids are bad for the game, that they should never have been introduced, and/or that ANet should not tie open world and raid-lite content together for rewards purposes.

Each time a new poster has started a thread about easier raids, the same posters jump in to inflate the thread. A few new voices (who usually post once, then disappear) will sometimes chime in. At least half of the posts are arguments against easier raids. The "huge" threads about easy raids are 90% back and forth arguments by the same people -- and those same arguments appear in all of those threads.

I'm afraid Astral has a point. If you study what's being said, most of the demand for easier raids is about easier access to raid rewards. This could mean that posters demanding easier raids may not actually want to up their game. Thus, strikes may be training wheels content, but they are not what at least some of the players who post in those threads ask for.

[sevenDEADLY.5281]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@"sevenDEADLY.5281" said:Some people hate PVP. PVP exists in this game. Those people can feel "left out" because they feel its "off limits" to them. Do you want them to get rid of PVP? WvW exists in this game. Some people hate WvW. Do you want them to remove WvW from the game? Some people absolutely loath jumping puzzles. By your logic jumping puzzles should be removed from the game because someone who can't do jumping puzzles might feel "left out" of that area of the game. Raids exist, its part of the game. You can either accept that its part of the game like everyone who doesn't enjoy pvp accepts its part of the game, like people who don't enjoy wvw accepts it part of the game, and people who hate jumping puzzles accept they're part of the game, or you can continue to crusade tirelessly against the evil raids that have made you feel left out and tell everyone about how your opinion is the correct one because you personally don't enjoy them.

PvP existed from launch. Raids didn't exist until 3.5 years after launch. If you don't see a difference between something the game was advertised with that I new would be there when I bought and started supporting the game by choice, I'm not sure whatt to tell you. Do you think people who don't want to raid, didn't come to the forums and fight against raids being introduced into the game in the first place? Because I remember those posts.

PvP has always been there and I accept it because I paid for a game that has it. Do you know what I didn't pay for? A game that requires a healer and a tank. A game that makes you jump through hoops to get a dungeon group together, because any five people could go in. The way the game was advertised.

Like it or not, raids changed the game from what was advertised into something that was not. And to a lot of peope that felt like betrayal. The same can't be said for PvP.

MMOs change. Ask WoW players if its the same today as it was at launch. It's not my fault, or anyone else's fault that you've been arguing with tirelessly, that you can't understand that fact.

[Dante.1763]

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:Some people hate PVP. PVP exists in this game. Those people can feel "left out" because they feel its "off limits" to them. Do you want them to get rid of PVP? WvW exists in this game. Some people hate WvW. Do you want them to remove WvW from the game? Some people absolutely loath jumping puzzles. By your logic jumping puzzles should be removed from the game because someone who can't do jumping puzzles might feel "left out" of that area of the game. Raids exist, its part of the game. You can either accept that its part of the game like everyone who doesn't enjoy pvp accepts its part of the game, like people who don't enjoy wvw accepts it part of the game, and people who hate jumping puzzles accept they're part of the game, or you can continue to crusade tirelessly against the evil raids that have made you feel left out and tell everyone about how your opinion is the correct one because you personally don't enjoy them. Either way its pretty clear arenanet isn't making design choices around a single person's preferences.

or..or they dont do those modes, like i dont.

The problem i have with this, is the meta is under the "Story" category. The strikes are not part of the story, are some of the bosses -in- the story? Yes, but are the strikes part of the story? No. The story does not require 10 people to do, so neither should the story meta(IMO)

Not asking for the achievements to get removed from the game, just to be able to obtain the meta in the future without doing strikes, hell they can give strikes -more- achievements, give them their own meta, i dont care if they end up having a huge chunk of AP or rewards i wont be able to obtain, but let me be able to get the story achievement doing story stuff. Sometimes anet does make mistakes. Stating an opinion or what one think isnt a bad thing, doing it as a fact is.

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:But the 100 response long pages of requests for easy mode raids that constantly gets brought up is direct evidence against what you're saying.

It's not. It's at best an evidence, that people want

easy mode

raids. Not normal/hard mode ones.The people that simply want better access/less limitations towards raids, are the people that ask for automatic queuing system or similar stuff. Frankly, don't remember a lot of

those

threads.

It 100% is. If it was as he is saying and people didn't do raids because they just don't like raids, and NOT because they feel they aren't good enough for raids, they WOULDN'T be asking for easier raids. It's really not that hard to understand.

There are both kinds of players. The ones who don't want to raid are not the people asking for easier raids. They're the ones saying raids are bad for the game, that they should never have been introduced, and/or that ANet should not tie open world and raid-lite content together for rewards purposes.

Each time a new poster has started a thread about easier raids, the same posters jump in to inflate the thread. A few new voices (who usually post once, then disappear) will sometimes chime in. At least half of the posts are arguments against easier raids. The "huge" threads about easy raids are 90% back and forth arguments by the same people -- and those same arguments appear in

all of those threads

.

I'm afraid Astral has a point. If you study what's being said, most of the demand for easier raids is about easier access to raid

rewards

. This could mean that posters demanding easier raids may not actually want to up their game. Thus, strikes may be training wheels content, but they are not what at least some of the players who post in those threads ask for.

Pretty much yes, i made the mistake of posting in one of those threads once, i wont ever do that again.

[sevenDEADLY.5281]

@"IndigoSundown.5419" said:

It 100% is. If it was as he is saying and people didn't do raids because they just don't like raids, and NOT because they feel they aren't good enough for raids, they WOULDN'T be asking for easier raids. It's really not that hard to understand.

There are both kinds of players. The ones who don't want to raid are not the people asking for easier raids. They're the ones saying raids are bad for the game, that they should never have been introduced, and/or that ANet should not tie open world and raid-lite content together for rewards purposes.

Each time a new poster has started a thread about easier raids, the same posters jump in to inflate the thread. A few new voices (who usually post once, then disappear) will sometimes chime in. At least half of the posts are arguments against easier raids. The "huge" threads about easy raids are 90% back and forth arguments by the same people -- and those same arguments appear in

all of those threads

.

If you study what's being said, also, most of the demand for easier raids is about easier access to raid

rewards

. This could mean that posters demanding easier raids may not actually want to up their game. Thus, strikes may be training wheels content, they are not what at least some of the players who post in those threads ask for.

Yes, but I wholeheartedly agreed from the begining that meta achievements should NOT be tied to strikes. I just dared make the opinion that something should encourage players to try to increase their skill level in the game beyond auto attacking in a mix of bad gear with random traits and pointed out that there's a jump in difficulty from open world boss to raid boss. If the argument is that challenging content should not exist in the game because someone might not be able to do it, well that's just crazy.

[sevenDEADLY.5281]

@"Dante.1763" said:

or..or they dont do those modes, like i dont.

The problem i have with this, is the meta is under the "Story" category. The strikes are not part of the story, are some of the bosses -in- the story? Yes, but are the strikes part of the story? No. The story does not require 10 people to do, so neither should the story meta(IMO)

If you read my initial post I already agreed strikes should not be tied to metas so I'm unclear of what our disagreement is.

[Vayne.8563]

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:Some people hate PVP. PVP exists in this game. Those people can feel "left out" because they feel its "off limits" to them. Do you want them to get rid of PVP? WvW exists in this game. Some people hate WvW. Do you want them to remove WvW from the game? Some people absolutely loath jumping puzzles. By your logic jumping puzzles should be removed from the game because someone who can't do jumping puzzles might feel "left out" of that area of the game. Raids exist, its part of the game. You can either accept that its part of the game like everyone who doesn't enjoy pvp accepts its part of the game, like people who don't enjoy wvw accepts it part of the game, and people who hate jumping puzzles accept they're part of the game, or you can continue to crusade tirelessly against the evil raids that have made you feel left out and tell everyone about how your opinion is the correct one because you personally don't enjoy them.

PvP existed from launch. Raids didn't exist until 3.5 years after launch. If you don't see a difference between something the game was advertised with that I new would be there when I bought and started supporting the game by choice, I'm not sure whatt to tell you. Do you think people who don't want to raid, didn't come to the forums and fight against raids being introduced into the game in the first place? Because I remember those posts.

PvP has always been there and I accept it because I paid for a game that has it. Do you know what I didn't pay for? A game that requires a healer and a tank. A game that makes you jump through hoops to get a dungeon group together, because any five people could go in. The way the game was advertised.

Like it or not, raids changed the game from what was advertised into something that was not. And to a lot of peope that felt like betrayal. The same can't be said for PvP.

MMOs change. Ask WoW players if its the same today as it was at launch. It's not my fault, or anyone else's fault that you've been arguing with tirelessly, that you can't understand that fact.

MMOs change, you're 100% right. And when they change in a way that the community doesn't like, they lose players. If you think there were more players aferr the HoT launch than before, I'm not sure what to tell you. If there were, PoF would have been a lot more like HoT. HoT in my opinon, as much as I like it personally, did more to drive casuals away from the game than anything else. But we still don't have enough people raiding for ANet to suppor that content. So they again go and change the game to make it less casual to get peope into raids, a change which a whole lot of people railed against in the first place.

You're right, MMOs change all the time. Bad changes get railed against and sometimes kill games. Just look at Star Wars Galaxies.

[Dante.1763]

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:

@"Dante.1763" said:

or..or they dont do those modes, like i dont.

The problem i have with this, is the meta is under the "Story" category. The strikes are not part of the story, are some of the bosses -in- the story? Yes, but are the strikes part of the story? No. The story does not require 10 people to do, so neither should the story meta(IMO)

If you read my initial post I already agreed strikes should not be tied to metas so I'm unclear of what our disagreement is.

I must have missed that post, this thread has gotten decently large! Sorry~

[Shadowmoon.7986]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@Shadowmoon.7986 said:

@Pirogen.9561 said:

@Shadowmoon.7986 said:And you are a vocal minority. And there is evidence to show this. Using gw2 efficiency data, of the 49653 people who started the episode, 8677 people have killed strike whisper of jormag, the boss the same difficultly as a raid boss. Compare this to people who completed all the light puzzles, 7433, jumping puzzles are a bigger barrier to the meta than strikes. If you ignore boneskinner achievements (he been bugged since the update) or the high skill "flawless" strike achievements, the lowest completed achievements are the mundane repeat events 20 times. Honestly repeating the same unrewarding event 20 is probably the biggest gate from completing the meta, not doing the strikes.

Only 8K players did strike? Thats a very small number.

Can we plz stop being disengenious, 8.6k out of a 50k sample size. That is almost 18%. Only 60% of the sample even finished the story. Less than 15% completed all the light puzzles. Less than 5% completed the totem events 20 times.So back at the statement, about 1 in 5 people is not a small number.

In order for any of these statisics to really matter we'd need to know a couple of things we don't know. Active player count is one of them. That is how many players use gw2efficiency that are still actually playing instead of taking a break or moved on to other games. For example I have an efficiency account for an alt account that isn't anywhere near Grothmar even and I play story in order. But I may never get to it on that account.

Another issue is what percentage of the playerbase uses gw2efficiency and what percentage of those are harder core players to begin with. How many casuals that would never raid or finish harder strike missions would do meta but not make an account on a site. Who's more likeliy to sign up on a site? Casuals or hard core players? It's just not a useful metric either way. You know who does have metrics? Anet. And what those metrics tell them will be a bit more useful, even though those too can be misleading.

The 50k number is from those who finished the first story instance, unlocking the bjora marches errant achievement. I am not counting the the 220k total accounts registered. Your alt account would not be counted because it has not it has done the first story instance. Using this metric filters out inactive accounts. Now this number might be low balling this situation, you dont need to do the first story instance to enter the zone. 59k accounts finished silenced,Again, seeing how 40% of the account have not finished the 2 hour story, it is safe to assume casual do make up part of the sample. Now is it perfect, heck no. Only anet has more accurate data, but it is the best we players have. But they do line up with current events. 74k accounts started bound by blood, only 59k started episode 1, a 21% drop. Very comparable with the 25% income drop over the same quarter. If you want, you can data dive to see if income and player engagement has a correlation, but as a microtransactions game, my guts tells me it exist.

[Zaklex.6308]

@"Ayrilana.1396" said:For all of those that don't like having to do strike mission achievements for the meta: have you actually done strikes and put as much effort into them as you would have done for any story or open world achievement? I have a suspicion that a lot of those that don't like it probably have never actually done strikes or at least put much effort into it.

I have a problem with that statement for the following reasons, most story and open world achievements don't require much effort, a lot, and I do mean a lot of them happen organically while you play the game "normally". I play for entertainment purposes, to have fun, if I wanted to put effort into something it would be a single player game and not an MMO, once I have to exert effort to achieve something in this game then I just leave what ever it is alone. Effort does not equal entertainment, at least for me, some it does, most I would say it doesn't. FYI, I did the Grothmar strike once, and only once, that was enough and that's the easy one, never have bothered with the other and probably won't, don't really care.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:

@"IndigoSundown.5419" said:

It 100% is. If it was as he is saying and people didn't do raids because they just don't like raids, and NOT because they feel they aren't good enough for raids, they WOULDN'T be asking for easier raids. It's really not that hard to understand.

There are both kinds of players. The ones who don't want to raid are not the people asking for easier raids. They're the ones saying raids are bad for the game, that they should never have been introduced, and/or that ANet should not tie open world and raid-lite content together for rewards purposes.

Each time a new poster has started a thread about easier raids, the same posters jump in to inflate the thread. A few new voices (who usually post once, then disappear) will sometimes chime in. At least half of the posts are arguments against easier raids. The "huge" threads about easy raids are 90% back and forth arguments by the same people -- and those same arguments appear in

all of those threads

.

If you study what's being said, also, most of the demand for easier raids is about easier access to raid

rewards

. This could mean that posters demanding easier raids may not actually want to up their game. Thus, strikes may be training wheels content, they are not what at least some of the players who post in those threads ask for.

Yes, but I wholeheartedly agreed from the begining that meta achievements should NOT be tied to strikes. I just dared make the opinion that something should encourage players to try to increase their skill level in the game beyond auto attacking in a mix of bad gear with random traits and pointed out that there's a jump in difficulty from open world boss to raid boss. If the argument is that challenging content should not exist in the game because someone might not be able to do it, well that's just crazy.

Well, I'm certainly not making that argument. In fact, I have no problem with players arguing for more hard(er) content, more raids, or that ANet should encourage players to improve. I have no issue with players defending the idea that raid rewards should not be diluted by making them available in easier content. Likewise, I have no trouble with the idea that rewards for specialized instanced PvE content be kept separate from rewards for GW2 Living World meta rewards. Something for everyone is a healthier practice than using existing reward structures to force participation because ANet cannot figure out how to make content desirable for its own sake.

[Astralporing.1957]

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:It 100% is. If it was as he is saying and people didn't do raids because they just don't like raids, and NOT because they feel they aren't good enough for raids, they WOULDN'T be asking for easier raids. It's really not that hard to understand.

Ah, but you are not noticing that difficulty of raids impacts a ton of other things, and that some of the players may be okay with difficulty, but not with the consequences that increased difficulty in 10-man content bring. Or that when players are not okay with difficulty, it doesn't mean it's because they think it's beyond their ability. Perhaps they just think that this level of difficulty is not fun.

It's not that players that don't raid think they are not good enough for raids. It's that they think that raid are not good enough for them. But easy mode raids might be.

@"Vayne.8563" said:But I do remember a lot of people asking in those eaasy raid mode thread saying they're interested in seeing the story. That is, you've locked some lore and story behind this door. How do you know that wanting easy mode raids has more to two with diffiuclty and not more to do with organization challeges like finding tanks/healers or changing builds or building new armor sets, or getting ascended gear. Whether you need a full set or not, a lot of people believe you need ascended gear to raid. Other games have sort of taught that and it's ingrained in the thought process of a lot of people.

I want easy mode raids too, so I can take a bunch of casuals that are hard to organize (and that's the key for me, not wanting to herd cats). They want to see the content not play a different game than I bought. Me too.Well, yeah, precisely. The people that ask for raids are not interested in a way to do current raids. They are interested in a version of raids that would suit them. That version generally gets dubbed as "easy mode". It doesn't actually need to be individually easier - it's generally about not needing the preparation phase (golem training, group training - and group gathering in general). Someone may be good enough to run raids at their current difficulty level, but still want easy mode ones, because they do not want to bother with making certain other players in the group are up to the same standart. Or they do not want to wait till a person with a specific role becomes available. They might just want to have fun in the content without worrying about things that players that go raiding to be challenged think are required.

Basically, people asking for easy verion of raids are people that do not like the current version, and think that (for many reasons, difficulty being one of them) easy version would be more to their liking.

[Vilin.8056]

@"Zaklex.6308" said:I have a problem with that statement for the following reasons, most story and open world achievements don't require much effort, a lot, and I do mean a lot of them happen organically while you play the game "normally". I play for entertainment purposes, to have fun, if I wanted to put effort into something it would be a single player game and not an MMO, once I have to exert effort to achieve something in this game then I just leave what ever it is alone. Effort does not equal entertainment, at least for me, some it does, most I would say it doesn't. FYI, I did the Grothmar strike once, and only once, that was enough and that's the easy one, never have bothered with the other and probably won't, don't really care.

And in what way should the developers reward full meta achievements on every map for those who don't care about contents?

I respect that any player can play their MMO anyway they want, but demand how the game should fully reward players for denying content is another thing. Achievement can be voluntarily, but shouldn't be free gives in the first place. Strike missions isn't raid, doesn't demand raid experience, and still ties perfectly into PvE category.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

@Dante.1763 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:Some people hate PVP. PVP exists in this game. Those people can feel "left out" because they feel its "off limits" to them. Do you want them to get rid of PVP? WvW exists in this game. Some people hate WvW. Do you want them to remove WvW from the game? Some people absolutely loath jumping puzzles. By your logic jumping puzzles should be removed from the game because someone who can't do jumping puzzles might feel "left out" of that area of the game. Raids exist, its part of the game. You can either accept that its part of the game like everyone who doesn't enjoy pvp accepts its part of the game, like people who don't enjoy wvw accepts it part of the game, and people who hate jumping puzzles accept they're part of the game, or you can continue to crusade tirelessly against the evil raids that have made you feel left out and tell everyone about how your opinion is the correct one because you personally don't enjoy them. Either way its pretty clear arenanet isn't making design choices around a single person's preferences.

or..or they dont do those modes, like i dont.

The problem i have with this, is the meta is under the "Story" category. The strikes are not part of the story, are some of the bosses -in- the story? Yes, but are the strikes part of the story? No. The story does not require 10 people to do, so neither should the story meta(IMO)

Not asking for the achievements to get removed from the game, just to be able to obtain the meta in the future without doing strikes, hell they can give strikes -more- achievements, give them their own meta, i dont care if they end up having a huge chunk of AP or rewards i wont be able to obtain, but let me be able to get the story achievement doing story stuff. Sometimes anet does make mistakes. Stating an opinion or what one think isnt a bad thing, doing it as a fact is.

@IndigoSundown.5419 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@sevenDEADLY.5281 said:But the 100 response long pages of requests for easy mode raids that constantly gets brought up is direct evidence against what you're saying.

It's not. It's at best an evidence, that people want

easy mode

raids. Not normal/hard mode ones.The people that simply want better access/less limitations towards raids, are the people that ask for automatic queuing system or similar stuff. Frankly, don't remember a lot of

those

threads.

It 100% is. If it was as he is saying and people didn't do raids because they just don't like raids, and NOT because they feel they aren't good enough for raids, they WOULDN'T be asking for easier raids. It's really not that hard to understand.

There are both kinds of players. The ones who don't want to raid are not the people asking for easier raids. They're the ones saying raids are bad for the game, that they should never have been introduced, and/or that ANet should not tie open world and raid-lite content together for rewards purposes.

Each time a new poster has started a thread about easier raids, the same posters jump in to inflate the thread. A few new voices (who usually post once, then disappear) will sometimes chime in. At least half of the posts are arguments against easier raids. The "huge" threads about easy raids are 90% back and forth arguments by the same people -- and those same arguments appear in

all of those threads

.

I'm afraid Astral has a point. If you study what's being said, most of the demand for easier raids is about easier access to raid

rewards

. This could mean that posters demanding easier raids may not actually want to up their game. Thus, strikes may be training wheels content, but they are not what at least some of the players who post in those threads ask for.

Pretty much yes, i made the mistake of posting in one of those threads once, i wont ever do that again.

I don't know that 'being part of the story' is a requirement for Meta Achievements. Pretty sure there are Jumping Puzzles that are part of Metas, or needed for Mastery Points that aren't 'part of the story'. Just like the Light Puzzles?

[Vayne.8563]

@Vilin.8056 said:

@"Zaklex.6308" said:I have a problem with that statement for the following reasons, most story and open world achievements don't require much effort, a lot, and I do mean a lot of them happen organically while you play the game "normally". I play for entertainment purposes, to have fun, if I wanted to put effort into something it would be a single player game and not an MMO, once I have to exert effort to achieve something in this game then I just leave what ever it is alone. Effort does not equal entertainment, at least for me, some it does, most I would say it doesn't. FYI, I did the Grothmar strike once, and only once, that was enough and that's the easy one, never have bothered with the other and probably won't, don't really care.

And in what way should the developers reward full meta achievements on every map for those who don't care about contents?

I respect that any player can play their MMO anyway they want, but demand how the game should fully reward players for denying content is another thing.

Because we've never had to do ten man content to get a meta ever. In what way would you open a restaurant that only servers vegetarian dishs and then start serving meat, and then asking us to accept it, because it's on the menu?