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Top 3 reasons why raids only attracted a small audience


Swagger.1459

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:I'm not aware of Anet removing raids or stopping development of them.

They did stop developing them, along with Fractals, although they recently stated that a new Fractal is under development. So maybe things might change?

You disagree with that? Great ...

Do you disagree with the developer statements that Raid participation was higher than expected, and that they were planning faster releases for them?

I didn't see them but whether I agree with them or not doesn't change my position.

Raids have low audience in this game because they are inconsistent with how content was offered to the original adopters of this game.

Of course I disagree with that because there is more than enough evidence to suggest that their audience was enough to both justify their existence AND their continued development. Raids didn't fail to attract an audience, they failed to maintain it, due to reasons not always having to do with Raids themselves.

OK. But I'm not talking about the fact that Raids attracted some part of the population and decreased. I'm talking about the fact that how raids are offered as content in this game is like like oil and water. They don't mix. It's inconsistent with other content offerings. It's like ... Raids should have been it's own game or something. People make this more complicated than it really is. No one is going to go to McD's for sushi ... no one is going to GW2 for raids. Those things are inconsistent offerings to their customers.

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@"Obtena.7952" said:I didn't see them.

Here from the first page of this thread:

Raid in MMOs are high-end content designed for the more hardcore player. However, from an analytics standpoint, the participation is higher than other games we’ve seen. This is likely due to the nature of our progression system in GW2.

http://dulfy.net/2016/03/05/gw2-reddit-developer-ama-summary/#Schedule

Yup! We are planning more frequent raid releases this season. I look forward to being able to share more details :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7g7wds/living_world_season_4_daybreak_devs_here_ask_us/dqh6g3v/

It's inconsistent with other content offerings.

Yet they attracted enough of an audience, for a while at least. This means there was enough of the playerbase that embraced them and they could've been successful if not for their neglect and inconsistent release schedule and comments. Which in turn would've been good for the game as a whole.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:I didn't see them.

Here from the first page of this thread:

Raid in MMOs are high-end content designed for the more hardcore player. However, from an analytics standpoint, the participation is higher than other games we’ve seen. This is likely due to the nature of our progression system in GW2.

Yup! We are planning more frequent raid releases this season. I look forward to being able to share more details :)

It's inconsistent with other content offerings.

Yet they attracted enough of an audience, for a while at least. This means there was enough of the playerbase that embraced them and they could've been successful if not for their neglect and inconsistent release schedule and comments. Which in turn would've been good for the game as a whole.

That's a very one-sided perspective. Their might have been enough of a playerbase to embrace raids ... but that came at the expense of something else, because Anet doesn't have infinite resources to be everything to everyone. That something else was content consistent with how the original adopters of the game expected it ... who never signed up because of the existence of raids to begin with.

Put it this way ... if raids were THE thing that was going to sustain this game with the players it attracted, Anet would have ramped up their development, not scaled them down. Honestly, I don't think raids were as popular as you give them credit for. Clearly, the revenue per minute played just wasn't there to invest in raid development.

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@"Obtena.7952" said:That's a very one-sided perspective. Their might have been enough of a playerbase to embrace raids ... but that came at the expense of something else. That something else was the original adopters of the game that never signed up because of the existence of raids.

You mean episodes stopped being released and we only got Raids? Interesting because I don't remember that happening at all.Also the "original adopters" didn't sign up for Griffon races, or mounts of any kind, they didn't sign up for Fractals (or Fractal CMs), automated PVP tournaments, map meta events, elite specializations, episodes, map meta achievements, achievement rewards, and loads of other things that nobody signed up for yet you single out Raids. Furthermore original adopters signed up to get content "for those that are raiding in other mmorpgs", because it was part of the game's advertising, it was sold with that and marketed with that. In the end they didn't find any of that. It used to be for a while, until we figured the "zerker and stack in a corner" meta.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:That's a very one-sided perspective. Their might have been enough of a playerbase to embrace raids ... but that came at the expense of something else. That something else was the original adopters of the game that never signed up because of the existence of raids.

You mean episodes stopped being released and we only got Raids? Interesting because I don't remember that happening at all.Fun ... more words in my mouth. If you're just going to tell me what I mean so you can argue, I'm going to ignore these passages.

Also the "original adopters" didn't sign up for Griffon races, or mounts of any kind, they didn't sign up for Fractals (or Fractal CMs), automated PVP tournaments, map meta events, elite specializations, episodes, map meta achievements, achievement rewards, and loads of other things that nobody signed up for yet you single out Raids. Furthermore original adopters signed up to get content "for those that are raiding in other mmorpgs", because it was part of the game's advertising, it was sold with that and marketed with that. In the end they didn't find any of that. It used to be for a while, until we figured the "zerker and stack in a corner" meta.

Again, and this is your big barrier here ... I'm not ONLY talking about content and I'M not singling out raids; inconsistency is rank in this game, EVERYWHERE. I'm talking about how content (new, old, same, different) is offered to customers. If you can't think that abstractly, we simply can't continue. In fact, the strike mission thread you referenced earlier is a great example of how content is offered inconsistently, WITHOUT it being new; the change that thread has issue with did not exist on previous strike missions.

Yup, there is lots of inconsistency ... and it's bad. That's not to say we can't have new content. Just because something is new doesn't mean it's can't be offered in a consistent way with how customers experience this game. If you continue lump new content into what I'm referring to as inconsistent offerings, then it's no wonder you don't understand my point.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:That's a very one-sided perspective. Their might have been enough of a playerbase to embrace raids ... but that came at the expense of something else. That something else was the original adopters of the game that never signed up because of the existence of raids.

You mean episodes stopped being released and we only got Raids? Interesting because I don't remember that happening at all.Interesting. I do remember a long content drought just after HoT where raids were the
only
content being released. I also remember, that it didn't end well, and that the raid release schedule later on was way slower than during that time. Coincidentally, that very point where raid releases slowed down, but everything else started being released, is the very point you claim was the moment Anet started being inconsistent with raiders.Somehow, i don't think it would have ended well if Anet kept being "consistent" beyond that point. I mean, that very content drought for all the content types
except
raids was one of the things that contributed to the post-HoT income drop, as well as one of the things that got raids their bad name in GW2.

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@Obtena.7952 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:That's a very one-sided perspective. Their might have been enough of a playerbase to embrace raids ... but that came at the expense of something else. That something else was the original adopters of the game that never signed up because of the existence of raids.

You mean episodes stopped being released and we only got Raids? Interesting because I don't remember that happening at all.Fun ... more words in my mouth. If you're just going to tell me what I mean so you can argue, I'm going to ignore these passages.

Also the "original adopters" didn't sign up for Griffon races, or mounts of any kind, they didn't sign up for Fractals (or Fractal CMs), automated PVP tournaments, map meta events, elite specializations, episodes, map meta achievements, achievement rewards, and loads of other things that nobody signed up for yet you single out Raids. Furthermore original adopters signed up to get content "for those that are raiding in other mmorpgs", because it was part of the game's advertising, it was sold with that and marketed with that. In the end they didn't find any of that. It used to be for a while, until we figured the "zerker and stack in a corner" meta.

Again, and this is
your
big barrier here ... I'm not ONLY talking about content and I'M not singling out raids; inconsistency is rank in this game, EVERYWHERE. I'm talking about how content (new, old, same, different) is offered to customers. If you can't think that abstractly, we simply can't continue. In fact, the strike mission thread you referenced earlier is a great example of how content is offered inconsistently, WITHOUT it being new; the change that thread has issue with did not exist on previous strike missions.

Yup, there is lots of inconsistency ... and it's bad. That's not to say we can't have new content. Just because something is new doesn't mean it's can't be offered in a consistent way with how customers experience this game. If you continue lump new content into what I'm referring to as inconsistent offerings, then it's no wonder you don't understand my point.

You actually haven't made the point about how to introduce new content consistently with the game. You probably should actually explain that before going further in the conversation.

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@Obtena.7952 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:That's a very one-sided perspective. Their might have been enough of a playerbase to embrace raids ... but that came at the expense of something else. That something else was the original adopters of the game that never signed up because of the existence of raids.

You mean episodes stopped being released and we only got Raids? Interesting because I don't remember that happening at all.Fun ... more words in my mouth. If you're just going to tell me what I mean so you can argue, I'm going to ignore these passages.

Game launched with less than 200 employees. Game reached 220 with heart of thorns. Raids used 7 developers out of 220 which were already more than at release. Game kept releasing episodes after raids... Raids were released at the expense of what?

Also the "original adopters" didn't sign up for Griffon races, or mounts of any kind, they didn't sign up for Fractals (or Fractal CMs), automated PVP tournaments, map meta events, elite specializations, episodes, map meta achievements, achievement rewards, and loads of other things that nobody signed up for yet you single out Raids. Furthermore original adopters signed up to get content "for those that are raiding in other mmorpgs", because it was part of the game's advertising, it was sold with that and marketed with that. In the end they didn't find any of that. It used to be for a while, until we figured the "zerker and stack in a corner" meta.

Again, and this is
your
big barrier here ... I'm not ONLY talking about content and I'M not singling out raids; inconsistency is rank in this game, EVERYWHERE. I'm talking about how content (new, old, same, different) is offered to customers. If you can't think that abstractly, we simply can't continue. In fact, the strike mission thread you referenced earlier is a great example of how content is offered inconsistently, WITHOUT it being new; the change that thread has issue with did not exist on previous strike missions.

You were only talking about raids in this thread at least. As for strike missions yes and raid releases getting so slow was also a big part of the inconsistency. Which is what I haven't seen acknowledged as such

Yup, there is lots of inconsistency ... and it's bad. That's not to say we can't have new content. Just because something is new doesn't mean it's can't be offered in a consistent way with how customers experience this game. If you continue lump new content into what I'm referring to as inconsistent offerings, then it's no wonder you don't understand my point.

And who is going to make that distinction?

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:That's a very one-sided perspective. Their might have been enough of a playerbase to embrace raids ... but that came at the expense of something else. That something else was the original adopters of the game that never signed up because of the existence of raids.

You mean episodes stopped being released and we only got Raids? Interesting because I don't remember that happening at all.Interesting. I do remember a long content drought just after HoT where raids were the
only
content being released. I also remember, that it didn't end well, and that the raid release schedule later on was way slower than during that time. Coincidentally, that very point where raid releases slowed down, but everything else started being released, is the very point you claim was the moment Anet started being inconsistent with raiders.Somehow, i don't think it would have ended well if Anet kept being "consistent" beyond that point. I mean, that very content drought for all the content types
except
raids was one of the things that contributed to the post-HoT income drop, as well as one of the things that got raids their bad name in GW2.

You mean the content drought wasn't because they revamped the entire expansion experience but because of raids?

Also I never mentioned the start of s3 as the moment Anet went inconsistent with raiders but after the release of Daybreak because with Daybreak they stated more often releases were coming. Instead they got more delays, at least between w4 and w5 we got an entire expansion.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:That's a very one-sided perspective. Their might have been enough of a playerbase to embrace raids ... but that came at the expense of something else. That something else was the original adopters of the game that never signed up because of the existence of raids.

You mean episodes stopped being released and we only got Raids? Interesting because I don't remember that happening at all.Interesting. I do remember a long content drought just after HoT where raids were the
only
content being released. I also remember, that it didn't end well, and that the raid release schedule later on was way slower than during that time. Coincidentally, that very point where raid releases slowed down, but everything else started being released, is the very point you claim was the moment Anet started being inconsistent with raiders.Somehow, i don't think it would have ended well if Anet kept being "consistent" beyond that point. I mean, that very content drought for all the content types
except
raids was one of the things that contributed to the post-HoT income drop, as well as one of the things that got raids their bad name in GW2.

You mean the time where the entire HoT maps underwent reworks and core received gliding? Small reminder:

  • HoT released in October 2015
  • HoT maps got reworked until January 2016
  • core Tyria gliding was introduced in January 2016 (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/gliding-in-central-tyria/)
  • the 3 raid wings released during that time frame were done during the HoT development time and released in November 2015, March 2016 and June 2016 (these raid wings also mark the only time where raids were released in a sort of semi annually pace, dropping and further increasing with wing 4)
  • living world season 3 episode 1 released on July 26, 2016

Sorry but the official statements as to the size and amount of developers working on raid content was and always has been very clear (a small team, the number often used was around 5-6. Later this team was merged with the fractal team). It certainly was not the reason as to why other content might have suffered. The praise was even huge when the initial raids released how such a small team managed to deliver such great content. Let's not start making things up.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:Sorry but the official statements as to the size and amount of developers working on raid content was and always has been very clear (a small team, the number often used was around 5-6.Untrue, actually. They only dropped a dev number once, and it was about the devs from the raid team that worked on single specific wing. We do know however that at that time they were working on more than one wing at the same time, and that there were more than just raid team devs that were working on raids. People from other teams were involved as well. In the end we were never told how many devs and manhours were involved in raid development and how that compared to other content types.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:That's a very one-sided perspective. Their might have been enough of a playerbase to embrace raids ... but that came at the expense of something else. That something else was the original adopters of the game that never signed up because of the existence of raids.

You mean episodes stopped being released and we only got Raids? Interesting because I don't remember that happening at all.Fun ... more words in my mouth. If you're just going to tell me what I mean so you can argue, I'm going to ignore these passages.

Game launched with less than 200 employees. Game reached 220 with heart of thorns. Raids used 7 developers out of 220 which were already more than at release. Game kept releasing episodes after raids... Raids were released at the expense of what?

At the expense of consistent content offerings. I could care LESS how many people worked on it. What I'm talking about is HOW it's offered to customers. If you expect black and you get white, it's irrelevant if you get 100 people giving it to you, or just one person.

Also the "original adopters" didn't sign up for Griffon races, or mounts of any kind, they didn't sign up for Fractals (or Fractal CMs), automated PVP tournaments, map meta events, elite specializations, episodes, map meta achievements, achievement rewards, and loads of other things that nobody signed up for yet you single out Raids. Furthermore original adopters signed up to get content "for those that are raiding in other mmorpgs", because it was part of the game's advertising, it was sold with that and marketed with that. In the end they didn't find any of that. It used to be for a while, until we figured the "zerker and stack in a corner" meta.

Again, and this is
your
big barrier here ... I'm not ONLY talking about content and I'M not singling out raids; inconsistency is rank in this game, EVERYWHERE. I'm talking about how content (new, old, same, different) is offered to customers. If you can't think that abstractly, we simply can't continue. In fact, the strike mission thread you referenced earlier is a great example of how content is offered inconsistently, WITHOUT it being new; the change that thread has issue with did not exist on previous strike missions.

You were only talking about raids in this thread at least. As for strike missions yes and raid releases getting so slow was also a big part of the inconsistency. Which is what I haven't seen acknowledged as such

OK. i don't know what you want me to say. I've JUST said that there is inconsistency everywhere in this game. If you don't think that's an acknowledgement that this includes raid releases slowing down, I don't know what to tell you.

Yup, there is lots of inconsistency ... and it's bad. That's not to say we can't have new content. Just because something is new doesn't mean it's can't be offered in a consistent way with how customers experience this game. If you continue lump new content into what I'm referring to as inconsistent offerings, then it's no wonder you don't understand my point.

And who is going to make that distinction?

I literally just provided you with an example of what I'm talking about and you are asking for distinction? That's special. Honestly, if you can't put together what I'm talking about given that example, little I can say will change that.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:Sorry but the official statements as to the size and amount of developers working on raid content was and always has been very clear (a small team, the number often used was around 5-6.Untrue, actually. They only dropped a dev number once, and it was about the devs
from the raid team
that worked on single specific wing. We do know however that at that time they were working on more than one wing at the same time, and that there were more than just raid team devs that were working on raids. People from other teams were involved as well. In the end we were
never
told how many devs and manhours were involved in raid development and how that compared to other content types.

Strait from the wiki and based on ingame reference:

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Wars_2_Raids_Team

Total known size is around 10 and if we factor in the fact that some of those devs, maybe all, were likely working on other projects as well, and for the later merge of the raid and fractal teams: the size of the raid and fractal team has always been small. If you take the time to go read the provided wiki link into the old forms, it becomes very clear that many of these developers were working on all aspects of instanced content besides raids.

The instanced content team has always been far smaller then the multiple teams working on living world content. Always.

So I politely disagree and would very much ask you to stop this nonsense or provide actual facts or proof why you suddenly question a so far held belief that the instance team was rather small, for which as mentioned there was even praise in the past.

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There are multiple factors that make any of these pve type game modes within the game mode itself so unpopular. The first thing is when you have the aspect already in your mind of banning or kicking someone from a group that is the first step in half the player base not even interested in playing with you. Then anything that you might look at as fun is not fun to everyone else and that is attacking one thing for hours with small percentage of the time that you actually kill that one thing. Then the whole anet company motto was play how you want to play and raids specifically threw their whole mission statement out of the window especially when dealing with the ban/kicking its just never going to work.

Its like strike missions were a great plan on paper but then when you add these elements of people who raid into the mix the urge to do them has completely dwindled down to not ever going to happen. The whole random people jumping into strike missions has gone out the window so a good plan on paper for the mission statement but then back to what is wrong with raids and the people who do them make strike missions fail too.

So in the end a lot of people for pve type aspect of playing just do living story or expansion based metas since world bosses are mostly just waiting for something to happen and get bored before anything ever happens and log out. So there is a lot of human problems with content that anet can never fix and then the things they can fix will never be addressed and then with their competitive balance just full out make classes so much different from pve that it just gets too annoying to switch between the two. Then makes loyal players like myself leave the game for the most part like I still login for some wvw but other than that I've already left.

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@"Klypto.1703" said:Then the whole anet company motto was play how you want to play and raids specifically threw their whole mission statement out of the window especially when dealing with the ban/kicking its just never going to work.

Please don't abuse this "mission statement" or rather design promise. It was never said in the context you are using it as. It was stated in the context that any content will reward the player and as such, players are not funneled into very specific content for rewards (like traditional MMORPG where eventually specific content became useless reward wise).

Also while at it, please stop using the term mission statement. The closest thing to a mission statement for Arenanet is:

We bring art to life. We're ArenaNet. We make the games we want to play a reality, and infuse them with innovation, hand-crafted detail, and creative passion

While at it, the original design manifesto for GW2 supports this statement:https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/

Neither of the two make mention of your supposed mission statement. That term has a specific meaning, please adhere to it.

Otherwise, I agree with most things you said.

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@"Astralporing.1957" said:People from other teams were involved as well. In the end we were never told how many devs and manhours were involved in raid development and how that compared to other content types.

We were told though (or can see ourselves) how many mechanics developed for Raids ended up being used in other parts of the game as well. Fixation, green circles, rotating "flame thrower" attacks, phases in boss fights (including story bosses) with phase transitioning, to name a few. And of course this applies to graphics too, bosses that borrowed design from Raid encounters, Vale Guardian and Slothasor were reused in the open world. How many man-hours did they "save" by having these mechanics developed by the Raid team instead of the living world team?

Also:

Raid teams are smaller than teams for Living World releases. For example, with Salvation Pass, we had only about 5-6 people working on it full time for 4 months.

That would be the expected raid release cadence too, 4 months for a new Raid, designed by 5-6 people. It does seem very reasonable, and doable, it's less than 1/40th of the company's man-power. Do Raids have 1/40th of the population of other content? I'd bet that yes they do

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@"Obtena.7952" said:At the expense of consistent content offerings.

You mean after Raids were released they stopped giving consistent content offerings? That the living world was affected by Raids? Care to give some examples of how Raids affected the other content offerings?

I literally just provided you with an example of what I'm talking about and you are asking for distinction?

You mean this "example"?

n fact, the strike mission thread you referenced earlier is a great example of how content is offered inconsistently, WITHOUT it being new

And I will ask again, who will make the distinction which offering is consistent and which is not? Why is it that adding strike missions to meta achievements is "inconsistent", but let's say adding griffon races to the game is not. Or adding bounties to daily achievements. Or literally anything new they've added in the game after release. Who is to decide what's is and what isn't?

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:At the expense of consistent content offerings.

You mean after Raids were released they stopped giving consistent content offerings? That the living world was affected by Raids?Yes. That was the end of the "whole game is the endgame" design, and the beginning of the "stairway to raids" approach. You said it yourself - a lot of raidlike mechanics trickled down to other parts of the content, and many of those cases were introduced not with the intention of making those low end content encounters more fun, but in order to prepare people for raiding - even if they
didn't
consider it fun.

There was also the impact on fractals (probably positive as seen from the point of view of hardcores, but negative for everyone else), and how introduction of raids gave Anet the final push towards completely and officially abandoning dungeons. Raids also removed any chance of having a legendary amor set obtainable through the old, legendary weapon-like methods (and that change definitely wasn't liked by all of the players that were after legendaries up until that point).

About the the content drought i was talking about earlier - you may argue about the reasons it happened, but it did happen. And it, coupled with a lot of dev statements from that time, sent the message to many people that Raids are all Anet cares about. Even if that was not the message devs intended to send, it was the message players received. And Anet had to do damage control ever since that.

As for raid development delays? As far as we know, Raid team remained pretty much unchanged until the layoffs, and didn't work on raids any less than before. Maybe they received less help from other teams, but in the end, the fact is that release schedule expectations Raiders had were based on mistaken belief that release schedule of first 3 wings is what Anet is capable of sustaining longterm (which was never the case, as that release schedule had nothing to do with development schedule - they were just releasing things they've already partly worked on beforehand, before first wing was even launched).

And about them planning "more frequent" raid releases "this year" (which in Anet speak might have meant just releasing 2 wings in that one year), apparently those plans just didn't work out. They probably would have required increasing raid team size, but it was time when

  1. raid population was already dropping
  2. Anet started siphoning resources off everything and moving them to those other "unnamed projects" we still don't know much about (apart from them apparently being a flop).Raid popularity probably even then simply didn't justify increasing resources dedicated to that content high enough to make raiders satisfied. Which, frankly, was clear to me even since before raids were released - i was already quite sure then, that raiders won;t be satisfied with raids getting as much resources as Anet was willing to dedicate to them. Only going full ahead on that type of content, to the detriment of everything else might have sufficed. Turns out, i was 100% right.

In that context, introducing raids was a major mistake - it created some assumptions in hardcore community that were never true, and some expectations Anet was never able to fulfill. In the retrospect it would have been better to not give hardcore community any false hope at all.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:As for raid development delays? As far as we know, Raid team remained pretty much unchanged until the layoffs, and didn't work on raids any less than before. Maybe they received less help from other teams, but in the end, the fact is that release schedule expectations Raiders had were based on mistaken belief that release schedule of first 3 wings is what Anet is capable of sustaining longterm (which was never the case, as that release schedule had nothing to do with development schedule - they were just releasing things they've already partly worked on beforehand, before first wing was even launched).

Except for the raid and fractal team merge, right?

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@Astralporing.1957 said:You said it yourself - a lot of raidlike mechanics trickled down to other parts of the content, and many of those cases were introduced not with the intention of making those low end content encounters more fun, but in order to prepare people for raiding - even if they didn't consider it fun.

How is adding a better way for your character to talk in the world going to prepare people for raiding is anyone's guess.... Which raid-like mechanics made future content less fun? Fixation? Rotating red fields? Phased bosses? The only part of the game developed to prepare players for raiding is supposed to be Strike Missions, yet most of them have very little to do with raiding.

As far as we know, Raid team remained pretty much unchanged until the layoffs, and didn't work on raids any less than before.

The release schedule of Raids suffered for one very specific reason: tying them to Episode releases. And since Long Live the Lich caused many organizational problems and delays to the Living World releases, Raids suffered because of it too. Who is to say when was Mythright Gambit ready for release and what would've happened if it was released when it was ready.

Edit: as for the rest of your comments, you are assuming that the challenge/difficulty of the expansions and the seasons after them was a result of Raids. That the difficulty of bosses like Balthazar, Mordremoth and the difficulty of fractals like Nightmare were all because they released Raids. And without Raids they'd be much easier. The problem with that type of argument is that before Heart of Thorns many of the Fractals were considerably harder than they are today, there were boss encounters in Season 2 (long before Raids) that were more challenging than Season 3/4 bosses, plus we didn't even have elite specs back then. Or encounters like the Queen's Gauntlet, or Aetherpath in Twilight Arbor, were Raids responsible for those too even though they did not exist at the time?

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:At the expense of consistent content offerings.

You mean after Raids were released they stopped giving consistent content offerings? That the living world was affected by Raids?Yes. That was the end of the "whole game is the endgame" design, and the beginning of the "stairway to raids" approach. You said it yourself - a lot of raidlike mechanics trickled down to other parts of the content, and many of those cases were introduced not with the intention of making those low end content encounters more fun, but in order to prepare people for raiding - even if they
didn't
consider it fun.

There was also the impact on fractals (probably positive as seen from the point of view of hardcores, but negative for everyone else), and how introduction of raids gave Anet the final push towards completely and
officially
abandoning dungeons. Raids also removed any chance of having a legendary amor set obtainable through the old, legendary weapon-like methods (and that change definitely wasn't liked by all of the players that were after legendaries up until that point).

About the the content drought i was talking about earlier - you may argue about the reasons it happened, but it
did
happen. And it, coupled with a lot of dev statements from that time, sent the message to many people that Raids are all Anet cares about. Even if that was not the message devs intended to send, it was the message players received. And Anet had to do damage control ever since that.

As for raid development delays? As far as we know, Raid team remained pretty much unchanged until the layoffs, and didn't work on raids any less than before. Maybe they received less help from other teams, but in the end, the fact is that release schedule expectations Raiders had were based on mistaken belief that release schedule of first 3 wings is what Anet is capable of sustaining longterm (which was
never
the case, as that release schedule had nothing to do with
development
schedule - they were just releasing things they've already partly worked on beforehand, before first wing was even launched).

And about them planning "more frequent" raid releases "this year" (which in Anet speak might have meant just releasing 2 wings in that one year), apparently those plans just didn't work out. They probably would have required increasing raid team size, but it was time when
  1. raid population was already dropping
  2. Anet started siphoning resources off
    everything
    and moving them to those other "unnamed projects" we still don't know much about (apart from them apparently being a flop).Raid popularity probably even then simply didn't justify increasing resources dedicated to that content high enough to make raiders satisfied. Which, frankly, was clear to me even since before raids were released - i was already quite sure then, that raiders won;t be satisfied with raids getting as much resources as Anet was willing to dedicate to them. Only going full ahead on that type of content, to the detriment of everything else might have sufficed. Turns out, i was 100% right.

In that context, introducing raids was a major mistake - it created some assumptions in hardcore community that were never true, and some expectations Anet was never able to fulfill. In the retrospect it would have been better to not give hardcore community any false hope at all.

"The whole game is the Endgame" approach was never successful in the first place.Before the introduction of expansions and raids, "Straight into Berserker meta into the Dungeons" was already the approach. Dungeons becoming level 80 only instead of their advertised levels, kick heavy, and nearly impossible to be completed with low level or new players. Maps quickly become abandoned as players simply flock into Queensdale champ train for both leveling and causal gold grindings.

The introduction of Raid was actually an improvement, as the squad based approach opens up from 5 player elite into a community based co-op, with more tolerance of class type varieties.

Sustainability has always an issue across across all PVE contents, raid included but NOT exclusive to raid and fractals.New world maps and Living stories events were equally abandoned by players as there is no purpose for revisit once a certain level of grinding is complete.It has been a problem with the whole game.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"Klypto.1703" said:Then the whole anet company motto was play how you want to play and raids specifically threw their whole mission statement out of the window especially when dealing with the ban/kicking its just never going to work.

Please don't abuse this "mission statement" or rather design promise. It was never said in the context you are using it as. It was stated in the context that any content will reward the player and as such, players are not funneled into very specific content for rewards (like traditional MMORPG where eventually specific content became useless reward wise).

Also while at it, please stop using the term mission statement. The closest thing to a mission statement for Arenanet is:

We bring art to life. We're ArenaNet. We make the games we want to play a reality, and infuse them with innovation, hand-crafted detail, and creative passion

While at it, the original design manifesto for GW2 supports this statement:

Neither of the two make mention of your supposed mission statement. That term has a specific meaning, please adhere to it.

Otherwise, I agree with most things you said.

So you are missing the whole thing where they say play as you want. Also telling people how to think and how they should do things is the entire mindset of why content like this is avoided at all costs. It was approachable in theory when you could just dive into it as playing as you want but then that changed and then people quit trying strike missions.

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@"maddoctor.2738" said:

Actually players signed up for GW2 because they expected content that was aimed at raiders. "This is the content for those that are raiding in other mmorpgs" is what Anet said before release. So when Anet decided to introduce Raids, it was to benefit the ORIGINAL adopters of the game and give them what was promised so long ago. The expectation was that the other content will be what "those that are raiding in other games" would find suitable to their needs, but in the end it didn't work. Do note that the vast majority of those that bought the game stopped playing in the first few months and Anet did a course correction. Part was hype, part was broken promises.

WHAT? Or to be more precise, for WHAT players is this valid? More probably for the players who joined the game after the HoT release in Octomber 2016. So, most of the players in cause joined GW2 after 2017.

But look what Mike O'Brien told us in 2012: "So if you love MMORPGs, you should check out Guild Wars 2. But if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you should really check out Guild Wars 2. Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun"

What was one of the prominent features of traditional MMO at that time - the raids. So, come join GW2 if you hate them - said O'Brien.

And now, if I want to raid (to have fun), I must watch videos on Internet / adapt my playstile to be not necessarily on my liking, but to be helpful to the team / work to gear my toon not to play the game, but to successfully raid etc. Well, the preparation to have fun exceeds the fun rewarded by beating the encounter.

I think that these are the ORIGINAL adopters of the game, and, sadly, ANet gave them exactly the thing they promised to not give. Hard to understand why the raids are so unpopular?

@"Cyninja.2954" said:

That does not make any sense. Raids with the release of HoT were neither rewarding, nor was legendary armor, the main draw for many players, even implemented. The content as such was absolutely side content and had literally no effect on players not participating in them. Similar to how the initial releases of fractals had almost no impact on the game until many many revamps.

To reason that raids were a reason in drop of revenue at the beginning of HoT is pure fantasy. There were a ton of other likely way higher contributing factors.

I cannot agree with this - in my opinion the raids were important (forced by ANet to be important). Because of NO other content (except raids) released for almost 1 year after HoT launch everything revolved around raids. Even the most basic thing, absolutely normal in any other game - awarding experience - was related with the raids. You want XP - that means a spirit shard every level-up? You need to raid. This means absolutely no effect on players? Also, for the legendary armor - every player knew that it will require LI. And the LI drops from raid bosses. So, even if the armor was not ingame from the start, the players actually stored LI to craft it. No effect on players?

So, another reason to the OP question - why raids attract only a small audience: The legendary armor has been acquired by the ones wanting it. And now, without it, the raids started to be unappealing even for them (or for some of them at least). If we "strip" the raids of the armor, we can see how attractive is a "naked" raid.

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@Cristalyan.5728 said:

Actually players signed up for GW2 because they expected content that was aimed at raiders.WHAT? Or to be more precise, for WHAT players is this valid?

Content that was aimed at raiders and raids are two different things. And they did mention before release that they will have content aimed at those that are raiding in other games.

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@Klypto.1703 said:

@Klypto.1703 said:Then the whole anet company motto was play how you want to play and raids specifically threw their whole mission statement out of the window especially when dealing with the ban/kicking its just never going to work.

Please don't abuse this "mission statement" or rather design promise. It was never said in the context you are using it as. It was stated in the context that any content will reward the player and as such, players are not funneled into very specific content for rewards (like traditional MMORPG where eventually specific content became useless reward wise).

Also while at it, please stop using the term mission statement. The closest thing to a mission statement for Arenanet is:

We bring art to life. We're ArenaNet. We make the games we want to play a reality, and infuse them with innovation, hand-crafted detail, and creative passion

While at it, the original design manifesto for GW2 supports this statement:

Neither of the two make mention of your supposed mission statement. That term has a specific meaning, please adhere to it.

Otherwise, I agree with most things you said.

So you are missing the whole thing where they say play as you want.

I didn't miss this. They never stated this in the context you used it. You are free to find the original citation and check yourself. This issue has been a topic of debate many times over the years and it gets tiresome that some players still miss use this quote.

@Klypto.1703 said:Also telling people how to think and how they should do things is the entire mindset of why content like this is avoided at all costs. It was approachable in theory when you could just dive into it as playing as you want but then that changed and then people quit trying strike missions.

Where is anyone telling you how to think? The only correction I made is that you are using the term "mission statement" incorrectly since this term has an actual defined meaning in the context of business: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_statement

@"Cristalyan.5728" said:I cannot agree with this - in my opinion the raids were important (forced by ANet to be important). Because of NO other content (except raids) released for almost 1 year after HoT launch everything revolved around raids. Even the most basic thing, absolutely normal in any other game - awarding experience - was related with the raids. You want XP - that means a spirit shard every level-up? You need to raid. This means absolutely no effect on players? Also, for the legendary armor - every player knew that it will require LI. And the LI drops from raid bosses. So, even if the armor was not ingame from the start, the players actually stored LI to craft it. No effect on players?

So, another reason to the OP question - why raids attract only a small audience: The legendary armor has been acquired by the ones wanting it. And now, without it, the raids started to be unappealing even for them (or for some of them at least). If we "strip" the raids of the armor, we can see how attractive is a "naked" raid.

and as pointed out by me, the actual amount of developers working on raids has been minimal. I don't care what your opinion is when we have actual facts which disprove that raid development took away resources of other game content or are to blame for content delay in a significant manner. The size of the developer team for raids IS/WAS KNOWN. (PS. the content gap was 3/4 of a year between HoTs release and LWS3 Episode 1, if we omit the reworks of HoT maps in January and the implementation of gliding.)

As far as raid appeal, I can only speak from the communities I am part of, but the main reasons currently why players of my caliber, similar caliber or higher/lower caliber, are leaving the content (I'm at 1.7k LI and 500+ LD) has nothing to do with legendary armor (we've had that covered many times over).It's based on 3 things:

  • over all amount of players has dropped, reducing player numbers across all game modes
  • there has not been any new content in ages
  • there is no prospect for future raid content

If you think LI are a major factor almost 5 years in (the top LI player in gw2eff is at 3.2k) for veteran raiders, you are wrong. Yes, having LD be basically useless did not help the longevity, but these are side issues for an entire community. Lack of content is and always has been the main factor for decline, and that is CONSISTENT WITH EVERY GAME MODE in this game.

As far as new raiders and less experienced raiders, I've mentioned that I have witnessed new groups forming even now (I personally know of a guild which is closing in on clearing W 1-4 and they started around 2-3 months back). But when more and more players leave the game mode, it becomes more and more difficult to pass on knowledge (just look at the smaller and smaller amount of damage benchmarks, guides and updates provided to the community). If the veterans leave, it has an effect on everybody.

TL;DR:It becomes more and more evident that "raids" have become the boogeyman for some players and are to blame for nearly every issue the game has. No matter if facts or logic might dictate otherwise.

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