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Top 3 reasons why raids only attracted a small audience


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@psyt.9415 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:In FFXIV the Duty Finder works, because:
  1. Each class is assigned one of the 3 basic roles (tank, healer, dps)
  2. different classes within the role are very balanced (there are differences, but are relatively small - compared to what can happen in gw2 they are basically negligible)
  3. effectiveness due to skill (within same class), while important, is also much, much smaller than what we're used to see here.As such, there's a reasonable assumption that a random group that fulfills basic role requirements, enforced by the Finder, should be fully capable of clearing the content, and the normal content (unlike Savage or Ultimate difficulties)
    can
    be balanced around such a random party.

None of those assumptions hold true for GW2 however, making creation of such a system an exercise in futility.

It really just depends on how they balance the encounters to be pugged by casuals. You are making an assumption that they cant play test and nerf the casual queue to the level of an ex dungeon or boost the player gear levels inside each these instances etc. Its a matter of tweaking the numbers, making it accessible and giving decent rewards.

You are severely underestimating effectiveness gaps due to skill in this game. And vastly overestimating effectiveness gaps due to gear.No, you can't just "drop the encounter to the level of yellow gear" and hope casuals will be able to do it. Remember, Dhuum Challenge Mode has been done by a group geared with budget greens. That group's effectiveness was still probably like 7-8x greater than that of an average casual. And i do mean an average casual in full ascended.

It's completely different than what happens in FF XIV, where most of the damage difference comes from gear, and actual skill is responsible for at most 3x gap in effectiveness.

You're also forgetting that, since GW2 has no set roles, you can't set duty finder to create a functioning squad. You may end up with a group that has no healers, no tanks, no boon strip, poor boon upkeep, no condi damage, and/or poor cc. Or without a specific role meant for a specific strategy on the encounter (say, no portal mesmer at escort, no hand kiter at Deimos, etc)Basically, in gw2 you can easily end up with an encounter that one player will be able to solo easily, while at the same time another whole 10-man squad will be completely unable to complete. It's next to impossible to balance something like that properly, and still keep the encounter somewhat interesting.

Case in point: Grothmar strike.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:In FFXIV the Duty Finder works, because:
  1. Each class is assigned one of the 3 basic roles (tank, healer, dps)
  2. different classes within the role are very balanced (there are differences, but are relatively small - compared to what can happen in gw2 they are basically negligible)
  3. effectiveness due to skill (within same class), while important, is also much, much smaller than what we're used to see here.As such, there's a reasonable assumption that a random group that fulfills basic role requirements, enforced by the Finder, should be fully capable of clearing the content, and the normal content (unlike Savage or Ultimate difficulties)
    can
    be balanced around such a random party.

None of those assumptions hold true for GW2 however, making creation of such a system an exercise in futility.

It really just depends on how they balance the encounters to be pugged by casuals. You are making an assumption that they cant play test and nerf the casual queue to the level of an ex dungeon or boost the player gear levels inside each these instances etc. Its a matter of tweaking the numbers, making it accessible and giving decent rewards.

You are severely underestimating effectiveness gaps due to skill in this game. And vastly overestimating effectiveness gaps due to gear.No, you can't just "drop the encounter to the level of yellow gear" and hope casuals will be able to do it. Remember, Dhuum Challenge Mode has been done by a group geared with budget greens. That group's effectiveness was still probably like 7-8x greater than that of an average casual. And i do mean an average casual in full ascended.

It's completely different than what happens in FF XIV, where most of the damage difference comes from gear, and actual skill is responsible for at most 3x gap in effectiveness.

You're also forgetting that, since GW2 has no set roles, you can't set duty finder to create a functioning squad. You may end up with a group that has no healers, no tanks, no boon strip, poor boon upkeep, no condi damage, and/or poor cc. Or without a specific role meant for a specific strategy on the encounter (say, no portal mesmer at escort, no hand kiter at Deimos, etc)Basically, in gw2 you can easily end up with an encounter that one player will be able to solo easily, while at the same time another whole 10-man squad will be completely unable to complete. It's next to impossible to balance something like that properly, and still keep the encounter somewhat interesting.

Case in point: Grothmar strike.

Disagree. You have a personal perception that GW2 is harder than other mmos which I disagree with. They are all difficult in thier own way. The ability to tune the raids to be more accessible is only limited by that perception. They can remove difficult mechanics or moves from certain bosses if they want, they can even remove certain wings if they want. They can add a stat bolster buff. they can add raid wide buffs that compensate for the lack of certain classes making them unnecessary. Theres lots of things they could do to allow a casual tuned raid to work and this is just 5 minutes of thought on the subject. But then again this is the same team that said dx12 would do nothing for the game and I get close to 30 more fps with the pxy. So im not surprised if they write things off before even trying it.

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@psyt.9415 said:Disagree. You have a personal perception that GW2 is harder than other mmos which I disagree with. They are all difficult in thier own way. The ability to tune the raids to be more accessible is only limited by that perception. They can remove difficult mechanics or moves from certain bosses if they want, they can even remove certain wings if they want. They can add a stat bolster buff. they can add raid wide buffs that compensate for the lack of certain classes making them unnecessary. Theres lots of things they could do to allow a casual tuned raid to work and this is just 5 minutes of thought on the subject. But then again this is the same team that said dx12 would do nothing for the game and I get close to 30 more fps with the pxy. So im not surprised if they write things off before even trying it.

Aside from all the reasons @Astralporing.1957 pointed out, there is one more, Raid wings in this game are badly designed because bosses inside one wing require different party compositions. A composition that works on Cairn, won't work on Deimos. This means a group formed for one boss, won't be ready for the next one, players would need to swap characters anyway, making the whole process of automatic group finding tedious.

Yes, they could make Raids work with any group composition, they could turn all raid bosses in loot pinatas like the choya pinata in Amnoon so anyone can press 1 on their keyboard and win. Everything is possible, but auto grouping won't work very well. In Strike Missions there is a public version, but it doesn't work on the harder bosses.

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.> @maddoctor.2738 said:

@psyt.9415 said:Disagree. You have a personal perception that GW2 is harder than other mmos which I disagree with. They are all difficult in thier own way. The ability to tune the raids to be more accessible is only limited by that perception. They can remove difficult mechanics or moves from certain bosses if they want, they can even remove certain wings if they want. They can add a stat bolster buff. they can add raid wide buffs that compensate for the lack of certain classes making them unnecessary. Theres lots of things they could do to allow a casual tuned raid to work and this is just 5 minutes of thought on the subject. But then again this is the same team that said dx12 would do nothing for the game and I get close to 30 more fps with the pxy. So im not surprised if they write things off before even trying it.

Aside from all the reasons @Astralporing.1957 pointed out, there is one more, Raid wings in this game are badly designed because bosses inside one wing require different party compositions. A composition that works on Cairn, won't work on Deimos. This means a group formed for one boss, won't be ready for the next one, players would need to swap characters anyway, making the whole process of automatic group finding tedious.

Yes, they could make Raids work with any group composition, they could turn all raid bosses in loot pinatas like the choya pinata in Amnoon so anyone can press 1 on their keyboard and win. Everything is possible, but auto grouping won't work very well. In Strike Missions there is a public version, but it doesn't work on the harder bosses.

I mean there has to be a happy difficulty medium they could come up with some where along the lines of an explore mode. They would need to put in the work and some encounters would end up significantly different. Its just up to them whether they want to sink the time to open it up to the other 94% of playerbase. It would just be engaging the mechanics team since everything else is complete. I believe it would be worth it personally to get some more milage out of the raid content that they already have created. Every one of the big 3 mmos has some sort of raid or dungeon roulette. I think they need to get a little more creative here. I never needed a special party for explore .They can set that as their target diff level and go from there. There is a ton of content no one will run that people would if there was an easy mode and convenient auto party system with good rewards like other games.

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@psyt.9415 said:.> @maddoctor.2738 said:

@psyt.9415 said:Disagree. You have a personal perception that GW2 is harder than other mmos which I disagree with. They are all difficult in thier own way. The ability to tune the raids to be more accessible is only limited by that perception. They can remove difficult mechanics or moves from certain bosses if they want, they can even remove certain wings if they want. They can add a stat bolster buff. they can add raid wide buffs that compensate for the lack of certain classes making them unnecessary. Theres lots of things they could do to allow a casual tuned raid to work and this is just 5 minutes of thought on the subject. But then again this is the same team that said dx12 would do nothing for the game and I get close to 30 more fps with the pxy. So im not surprised if they write things off before even trying it.

Aside from all the reasons @"Astralporing.1957" pointed out, there is one more, Raid wings in this game are badly designed because bosses inside one wing require different party compositions. A composition that works on Cairn, won't work on Deimos. This means a group formed for one boss, won't be ready for the next one, players would need to swap characters anyway, making the whole process of automatic group finding tedious.

Yes, they could make Raids work with any group composition, they could turn all raid bosses in loot pinatas like the choya pinata in Amnoon so anyone can press 1 on their keyboard and win. Everything is possible, but auto grouping won't work very well. In Strike Missions there is a public version, but it doesn't work on the harder bosses.

I mean there has to be a happy difficulty medium they could come up with some where along the lines of an explore mode.Actually, no, there's no such difficulty level. The discrepancy between average and top is just too great in GW2 for it to be possible. No matter the difficulty level you'd pick, you'd find that it is either way too too hard, or ridiculously easy for a vast majority of players. The range of players for which the difficulty would be fine is very narrow.

Other games can get away with it because their mechanics make effectiveness gap between low and high skill be way smaller. In gw2 however it works exactly the opposite - the game mechanics inflate even the smallest skill differences to have massive impact on player's effectivenes. It means that even a small change in player skill can be a difference between "not possible for me" and "can do it half asleep, with both hands behind my back, just rolling my face on keyboard"

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@psyt.9415 said:Disagree. You have a personal perception that GW2 is harder than other mmos which I disagree with. They are all difficult in thier own way. The ability to tune the raids to be more accessible is only limited by that perception. They can remove difficult mechanics or moves from certain bosses if they want, they can even remove certain wings if they want. They can add a stat bolster buff. they can add raid wide buffs that compensate for the lack of certain classes making them unnecessary. Theres lots of things they could do to allow a casual tuned raid to work and this is just 5 minutes of thought on the subject. But then again this is the same team that said dx12 would do nothing for the game and I get close to 30 more fps with the pxy. So im not surprised if they write things off before even trying it.

Aside from all the reasons @Astralporing.1957 pointed out, there is one more, Raid wings in this game are badly designed because bosses inside one wing require different party compositions. A composition that works on Cairn, won't work on Deimos. This means a group formed for one boss, won't be ready for the next one, players would need to swap characters anyway, making the whole process of automatic group finding tedious.

Yes, they could make Raids work with any group composition, they could turn all raid bosses in loot pinatas like the choya pinata in Amnoon so anyone can press 1 on their keyboard and win. Everything is possible, but auto grouping won't work very well. In Strike Missions there is a public version, but it doesn't work on the harder bosses.

I mean there has to be a happy difficulty medium they could come up with some where along the lines of an explore mode.Actually, no, there's no such difficulty level. The discrepancy between average and top is just too great in GW2 for it to be possible. No matter the difficulty level you'd pick, you'd find that it is either way too too hard, or ridiculously easy for a vast majority of players. The range of players for which the difficulty would be fine is very narrow.

Other games can get away with it because their mechanics make effectiveness gap between low and high skill be way smaller. In gw2 however it works exactly the opposite - the game mechanics inflate even the smallest skill differences to have massive impact on player's effectivenes. It means that even a small change in player skill can be a difference between "not possible for me" and "can do it half asleep, with both hands behind my back, just rolling my face on keyboard"

For the 6% that can roll their face on keyboard they can continue to do regular raids for the most efficient reward. For the other 94% the explore mode scaled down difficulty is still a win because now that content is usable by a much much larger subset of the gaming population. As long as the rewards that you get are decent but dont invalidate the regular difficulty its a win as that content is now no longer wasted on most of the player base. Ss long as the regular mode is still the most efficient way to get those rewards everyone wins. Two rule sets, two difficulties, two different levels of reward ie more tokens for legendaries, gold, etc. for regular raid difficulty.

Example: Tie rewards to a daily reward chest like every other game. The 1%er can run the explore mode difficulty version and roll his face on the keyboard for 30G (or whatever is worth it while not destroying the economy) 1 time daily. For him its easy gold. For the other 94% its a decent challenge that can be pugged through an auto queue daily and increases the daily content base they have available to do for fun and profit. If the 1%er wants a challenge and leggys they can still run the regular raid. So we maximize the use of the content already in the game just by just tweaking bosses. We create a casual dungeon/ raid community for fun and profit. Tweak the rewards however necessary so that it doesn't invalidate the regular difficulty mode raids but increases the content availability. The fact some are better at the game than others wouldn't really be relevant at all as long as it cant be abused. You find the middle ground like an explorable and if more people are having fun thats a win and not excluding the majority of the playerbase from this content. I guarantee nearly everyone will run their daily to get that gold or token or whatever and you don't invalidate the regular raid by doing it or open it up to abuse by time gating the explore version reward as a daily. Its also easier to tweak preexisting content then to start making it from scratch so even the devs win.

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raids are 'memorize mechanics, memorize perfect rotation, done'.

which might be fun and challenging for some, but I am sure it is borderline soul crushing boring for others.

add to this that a lot of times mechanic clues are hard to see with all the circles, particles, effects, oversized backpacks, flamboyant armor and big ass charr and big ass norn filling up your field of view.

GW2 is pretty but sometimes it is so hard to see what is actually going on - why even bother? Oh, everybody died to boss X because some players did not see the tell for mechanic Y+2. Which they couldn't because they drowning in a sea of shiny effects. Sure, veteran raiders don't have that problem. But those veterans prob. could do the encounter with both eyes closed and just a timer/hp counter in their ear just the same.

Which again makes raids so incredible boring.

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@psyt.9415 said:For the 6% that can roll their face on keyboard they can continue to do regular raids for the most efficient reward. For the other 94% the explore mode scaled down difficulty is still a win because now that content is usable by a much much larger subset of the gaming population.

Not gonna go into tiers for Raids because there are threads on that subject and have been discussed to death. Plus raid development was cancelled so no new mode will be created. That said, you are assuming here that the 94% of the population will be interested in such a scaled down version of a Raid. I'm gonna ask, do you think the Grothmar Strike has been completed by 100% of the population?

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@"VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.3618" said:raids are 'memorize mechanics, memorize perfect rotation, done'.

which might be fun and challenging for some, but I am sure it is borderline soul crushing boring for others.

add to this that a lot of times mechanic clues are hard to see with all the circles, particles, effects, oversized backpacks, flamboyant armor and big kitten charr and big kitten norn filling up your field of view.

GW2 is pretty but sometimes it is so hard to see what is actually going on - why even bother? Oh, everybody died to boss X because some players did not see the tell for mechanic Y+2. Which they couldn't because they drowning in a sea of shiny effects. Sure, veteran raiders don't have that problem. But those veterans prob. could do the encounter with both eyes closed and just a timer/hp counter in their ear just the same.

Which again makes raids so incredible boring.

Relying on only direct visual cues is the biggest noob trap for inexperienced raiders. Most mechanics have sound cues or the yellow shimmer around your screen that is in your peripheral view. If you cant avoid mechanics because you cant see them, turn on your game sound. Also doing raids blind folded would be more fun for experienced raiders than you think because we enjoy the feeling of mastery of content. Blind folded relying only on sound cues would probably be an awesome challenge to do.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@psyt.9415 said:For the 6% that can roll their face on keyboard they can continue to do regular raids for the most efficient reward. For the other 94% the explore mode scaled down difficulty is still a win because now that content is usable by a much much larger subset of the gaming population.

Not gonna go into tiers for Raids because there are threads on that subject and have been discussed to death. Plus raid development was cancelled so no new mode will be created. That said, you are assuming here that the 94% of the population will be interested in such a scaled down version of a Raid. I'm gonna ask, do you think the Grothmar Strike has been completed by 100% of the population?

How many people do casual raids and dungeons and use looking for raid in WoW or raid roulette in FFXIV. The answer is hundreds of thousands. Many left GW2 because new ex dungeons stopped being offered. Doesnt mean there isnt a market for it or people wouldn't come back for it. The topic was top 3 reasons why the audience is small. Accessibility, difficulty and rewards thats my answer. Change all 3 people would be more inclined to do the content. There's a large market for casual dungeon/raid group content. Thats pretty much the main hook in every other mmo. How many run non savage or non mythic raids... lots. They dont need to create new raids they need to open up what content they do have to the masses.

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@psyt.9415 said:For the 6% that can roll their face on keyboard they can continue to do regular raids for the most efficient reward. For the other 94% the explore mode scaled down difficulty is still a win because now that content is usable by a much much larger subset of the gaming population.You are missing the point. that "explore level" difficulty would still be either too hard or way too easy for a majority of that 94% group. It would be a decent challenge only for like 5-10% of the community at best - everyone else would be either below or above the challenge level borders.

Again, case in point is Grothmar Strike. It is very easy. (hint: if you want to compare it to FF XIV, it is way, way easier than Crystal Tower raids). And still you see most of the player population wiping on it (well, not anymore, because most of those players stopped doing it already). It is not a decent challenge to practically anyone - you either aren't good enough to pass (and then you wipe), or you win easily. Another case is T1 fractals - if you made truly everyone attempt them, you'd see a lot of groups failing.

As long as the rewards that you get are decent but dont invalidate the regular difficulty its a win as that content is now no longer wasted on most of the player base. Ss long as the regular mode is still the most efficient way to get those rewards everyone wins. Two rule sets, two difficulties, two different levels of reward ie more tokens for legendaries, gold, etc. for regular raid difficulty.

Example: Tie rewards to a daily reward chest like every other game. The 1%er can run the explore mode difficulty version and roll his face on the keyboard for 30G (or whatever is worth it while not destroying the economy) 1 time daily. For him its easy gold. For the other 94% its a decent challenge that can be pugged through an auto queue daily and increases the daily content base they have available to do for fun and profit.Any content easy enough to be puggable by an auto queue with significant chances of victory won't be a decent challenge. It will be a boss you will be able to AFK to death.Because anything more complicated will result in a fail.

Yes, making more difficulty tiers would probably have been a good idea at some point, but do not deceive yourself thinking that it would make a huge majority play that content. Yes, the amount of players doing it would be greater, but not as great as you think it would be.

@psyt.9415 said:How many people do casual raids and dungeons and use looking for raid in WoW or raid roulette in FFXIV. The answer is hundreds of thousands.Again, you do not understand the core system differences between FF XIV and GW2, and why those differences make something easy to implement in FF XIV but next to impossible in GW2.Hint: the difference between top and bottom of players in FF XIV (assuming same class level and wearing gear appropriate to your level) is like 3-4x. In GW2, that difference is 10x, but not between top and bottom, but between top and median.No, it's not because FF XIV players are more skilled. It's because skill in FF XIV impacts your effectiveness to a far lesser degree than in GW2.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@psyt.9415 said:For the 6% that can roll their face on keyboard they can continue to do regular raids for the most efficient reward. For the other 94% the explore mode scaled down difficulty is still a win because now that content is usable by a much much larger subset of the gaming population.You are missing the point. that "explore level" difficulty would still be either too hard or way too easy for a majority of that 94% group. It would be a decent challenge only for like 5-10% of the community at best - everyone else would be either below or above the challenge level borders.

Again, case in point is Grothmar Strike. It is
very
easy. (hint: if you want to compare it to FF XIV, it is way, way easier than Crystal Tower raids). And still you see most of the player population wiping on it (well, not anymore, because most of those players stopped doing it already). It is not a decent challenge to practically anyone - you either aren't good enough to pass (and then you wipe), or you win easily. Another case is T1 fractals - if you made truly everyone attempt them, you'd see a
lot
of groups failing.

As long as the rewards that you get are decent but dont invalidate the regular difficulty its a win as that content is now no longer wasted on most of the player base. Ss long as the regular mode is still the most efficient way to get those rewards everyone wins. Two rule sets, two difficulties, two different levels of reward ie more tokens for legendaries, gold, etc. for regular raid difficulty.

Example: Tie rewards to a daily reward chest like every other game. The 1%er can run the explore mode difficulty version and roll his face on the keyboard for 30G (or whatever is worth it while not destroying the economy) 1 time daily. For him its easy gold. For the other 94% its a decent challenge that can be pugged through an auto queue daily and increases the daily content base they have available to do for fun and profit.Any content easy enough to be puggable by an auto queue with significant chances of victory won't be a decent challenge. It will be a boss you will be able to AFK to death.Because anything more complicated will result in a fail.

Yes, making more difficulty tiers would probably have been a good idea at some point, but do not deceive yourself thinking that it would make a huge majority play that content. Yes, the amount of players doing it would be greater, but not as great as you think it would be.

@psyt.9415 said:How many people do casual raids and dungeons and use looking for raid in WoW or raid roulette in FFXIV. The answer is hundreds of thousands.Again, you do not understand the core system differences between FF XIV and GW2, and why those differences make something easy to implement in FF XIV but next to impossible in GW2.Hint: the difference between top and bottom of players in FF XIV (assuming same class level and wearing gear appropriate to your level) is like 3-4x. In GW2, that difference is 10x, but not between top and bottom, but between top and
median
.No, it's not because FF XIV players are more skilled. It's because skill in FF XIV impacts your effectiveness to a far lesser degree than in GW2.

I understand quite well and ive said it before, the general population used to run explores and story modes all the time and for the most part had no issues (especially COF for gold). It only stopped when they took away the good gold rewards and stopped making them. Its your opinion not fact that the community is too low skill to handle any kind of group content. I've seen with my own eyes that the community can do explore, and story dungeons and fractals and they do them every single day so saying its not possible to balance any form of group content to be done by a reasonable subest of the population is completely false it happens every day..... low level fractals and explores you can pretty much mongo with any class. During the explore mode heyday was Warrior the meta, sure, but every game has a meta group and it didnt matter ive seen story, explore and low lvl fractals done by all sorts of comps.

Again thats also irrelevant, it does not matter one bit if they balance the casual raids so that 20% find it difficult or 50% as long as people enjoy it and its not abuseable just like low lvl fractals. Do you consider low lvl Fractals and Explores to be the same as the Amnoon Pinata? The both of you are deliberately using hyperbole if you dont believe there is a difference. Would the fractal community do it, probably, would the old Explore mode folks do it, probably to, is there enough evidence in other games people like casual mode raids and dungeons yes hundreds do them every single day hundreds of times a day and in those games some raids can do them in their sleep and some find it hard Guild Wars isn't unique to that. The point is is a larger majority getting fun and reward out of it than without having a casual mode and the answer would be yes, we see it in every other game. Instanced group content died in GW2, because they killed the gold reward and stopped making new ones making it pointless to do any of them unless youve never done it before. It wasnt because mmo players dont like instanced content. Your accessibility, rewards and difficulty need to be such that the majority can handle it and in this game there is already content like that and its being done daily.

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Oh, i'd very much like to see midcore and/or more laid back instanced content back. I'm just not deluding myself into overestimating how popular would that content be. Don't think that dungeons you keep bringing up were being done by a majority of players. They weren't. They were being done by a lot more people than raids were, that's true, but that still wasn't a majority. To many players out there, playing happily in open world, dungeons would still be very, very hard. Yes, even the easier ones.If you want that kind of content to be developed more, i agree, and i would also like that a lot. Just don't keep using arguments that are completely untrue to support that.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:Oh, i'd very much like to see midcore and/or more laid back instanced content back. I'm just not deluding myself into overestimating how popular would that content be. Don't think that dungeons you keep bringing up were being done by a majority of players. They weren't. They were being done by a lot more people than raids were, that's true, but that still wasn't a majority. To many players out there, playing happily in open world, dungeons would still be very, very hard. Yes, even the easier ones.If you want that kind of content to be developed more, i agree, and i would also like that a lot. Just don't keep using arguments that are completely untrue to support that.

I mean I dont know which part is untrue. I'm basically just saying since they dont have a raid or dungeon team any more- they can re-use/ refurbish the raids to support that midcore group since its probably easier tweaking bosses than making it all from scratch at this point. My honest belief was that a large part of why they killed the explore mode community by killing the gold reward was because its was competing against gem sales / gold conversion/ skins. Once they removed the reward it wasnt worth it so I dont know if they would ever even bother with this because at one end no one will do it if there isnt enough rewards and if there is then its a gold farm again unless they can limit it to a daily reward. Its a fine balance of fostering that community again while not shooting their gem sales in the foot unless its like a daily token towards a leggy. Is that worth it for them? I dont know, but I personally miss that type of content I used to really enjoy it.

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@psyt.9415 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:Oh, i'd very much like to see midcore and/or more laid back instanced content back. I'm just not deluding myself into overestimating how popular would that content be. Don't think that dungeons you keep bringing up were being done by a majority of players. They weren't. They were being done by a lot more people than raids were, that's true, but that still wasn't a majority. To many players out there, playing happily in open world, dungeons would still be very, very hard. Yes, even the easier ones.If you want that kind of content to be developed more, i agree, and i would also like that a lot. Just don't keep using arguments that are completely untrue to support that.

I mean I dont know which part is untrue. I'm basically just saying since they dont have a raid or dungeon team any more- they can re-use/ refurbish the raids to support that midcore group since its probably easier tweaking bosses than making it all from scratch at this point. My honest belief was that a large part of why they killed the explore mode community by killing the gold reward was because its was competing against gem sales / gold conversion/ skins. Once they removed the reward it wasnt worth it so I dont know if they would ever even bother with this because at one end no one will do it if there isnt enough rewards and if there is then its a gold farm again unless they can limit it to a daily reward. Its a fine balance of fostering that community again while not shooting their gem sales in the foot unless its like a daily token towards a leggy. Is that worth it for them? I dont know, but I personally miss that type of content I used to really enjoy it.

You do realise dungeon rewards got buffed and now are worth more then they where back then?

Why do you think dungeons aren't as popular as they used to be?

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@yann.1946 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Oh, i'd very much like to see midcore and/or more laid back instanced content back. I'm just not deluding myself into overestimating how popular would that content be. Don't think that dungeons you keep bringing up were being done by a majority of players. They weren't. They were being done by a lot more people than raids were, that's true, but that still wasn't a majority. To many players out there, playing happily in open world, dungeons would still be very, very hard. Yes, even the easier ones.If you want that kind of content to be developed more, i agree, and i would also like that a lot. Just don't keep using arguments that are completely untrue to support that.

I mean I dont know which part is untrue. I'm basically just saying since they dont have a raid or dungeon team any more- they can re-use/ refurbish the raids to support that midcore group since its probably easier tweaking bosses than making it all from scratch at this point. My honest belief was that a large part of why they killed the explore mode community by killing the gold reward was because its was competing against gem sales / gold conversion/ skins. Once they removed the reward it wasnt worth it so I dont know if they would ever even bother with this because at one end no one will do it if there isnt enough rewards and if there is then its a gold farm again unless they can limit it to a daily reward. Its a fine balance of fostering that community again while not shooting their gem sales in the foot unless its like a daily token towards a leggy. Is that worth it for them? I dont know, but I personally miss that type of content I used to really enjoy it.

You do realise dungeon rewards got buffed and now are worth more then they where back then?

Why do you think dungeons aren't as popular as they used to be?

Its because we've been doing the same dungeons for 7 years. Outside of the Classic WoW community, who wants to do the same thing for that long? We need new dungeons. Provide new content and ill do it. You cant ask people to do the same thing for the same skins for 7 years or the fun is gone and it becomes, "is this worth it just to farm because ive drained the fun out of it at this point"? So in this instance new content tied to new rewards is needed as we have hit a point of burnout. Its the same reason I dont run around doing the events in Queensdale anymore or the Vine in HoT, eventually you need new experiences. New Raid difficulty = new experience for 94% of the population.

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@psyt.9415 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Oh, i'd very much like to see midcore and/or more laid back instanced content back. I'm just not deluding myself into overestimating how popular would that content be. Don't think that dungeons you keep bringing up were being done by a majority of players. They weren't. They were being done by a lot more people than raids were, that's true, but that still wasn't a majority. To many players out there, playing happily in open world, dungeons would still be very, very hard. Yes, even the easier ones.If you want that kind of content to be developed more, i agree, and i would also like that a lot. Just don't keep using arguments that are completely untrue to support that.

I mean I dont know which part is untrue. I'm basically just saying since they dont have a raid or dungeon team any more- they can re-use/ refurbish the raids to support that midcore group since its probably easier tweaking bosses than making it all from scratch at this point. My honest belief was that a large part of why they killed the explore mode community by killing the gold reward was because its was competing against gem sales / gold conversion/ skins. Once they removed the reward it wasnt worth it so I dont know if they would ever even bother with this because at one end no one will do it if there isnt enough rewards and if there is then its a gold farm again unless they can limit it to a daily reward. Its a fine balance of fostering that community again while not shooting their gem sales in the foot unless its like a daily token towards a leggy. Is that worth it for them? I dont know, but I personally miss that type of content I used to really enjoy it.

You do realise dungeon rewards got buffed and now are worth more then they where back then?

Why do you think dungeons aren't as popular as they used to be?

Its because we've been doing the same dungeons for 7 years. Outside of the Classic WoW community, who wants to do the same thing for that long? We need new dungeons. Provide new content and ill do it. You cant ask people to do the same thing for the same skins for 7 years or the fun is gone and it becomes, "is this worth it just to farm because ive drained the fun out of it at this point"? So in this instance new content tied to new rewards is needed as we have hit a point of burnout. Its the same reason I dont run around doing the events in Queensdale anymore or the Vine in HoT, eventually you need new experiences. New Raid difficulty = new experience for 94% of the population.

But its absolutely not for 96 percent of the community. This was the biggest fallacy that was made when advocating easy mode,it will totally depend on how much people would actually like doing instanced content. For example, if they added a pvp system against bots do you think suddenly all the players would do pvp?

On top of that the name raiding caries a negative meaning because of past experiences/ Prejudice so even an easy mode won't necessarily help that.Ofcourse thats what their trying to figure out with strikes though so we'll so how that goes.

And why bring dungeonrewards up if they are not the final reason dungeons died?

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@psyt.9415 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:Oh, i'd very much like to see midcore and/or more laid back instanced content back. I'm just not deluding myself into overestimating how popular would that content be. Don't think that dungeons you keep bringing up were being done by a majority of players. They weren't. They were being done by a lot more people than raids were, that's true, but that still wasn't a majority. To many players out there, playing happily in open world, dungeons would still be very, very hard. Yes, even the easier ones.If you want that kind of content to be developed more, i agree, and i would also like that a lot. Just don't keep using arguments that are completely untrue to support that.

I mean I dont know which part is untrue. I'm basically just saying since they dont have a raid or dungeon team any more- they can re-use/ refurbish the raids to support that midcore group since its probably easier tweaking bosses than making it all from scratch at this point.

Which group is the midcore group exactly? You have so far only divided the player base into 94% and 6%, approaching this subject in a binary manner. Can you explain what exactly the midcore performance level is? Also is this based on the entire player base, or only those players who do instanced content?

Before you answer, and this should help you undestand the issue here which Astralporing has been trying to explain to you:No matter which group of players you define as midcore, unless it's the brain afk 1 auto spammers, there will always be players who will be far weaker than the challenge level you suggest. As is VERY evident since the implementation of strikes (the strike which can literally be soloed by good players, while entire groups of 10 players have wiped to it). As long as gw2raidar was up (a site for tracking successful raid kills and performance), even among the already "better" players, those who succeeded at raiding, the disparity was HUGE (we are talking easy 50 or 100% more damage between 50% percentile and 99% percentile players), and that was among SUCCESSFUL raid clear players. The pit further down is endless.

What you seem to not understand is:The performance disparity between players here reaches factors of times 20-30, and that's just on damage, the way more significant players are the supporter players which can make or break a group (where performance disparity is harder to measure except with healing amount and boon uptime).

@psyt.9415 said:My honest belief was that a large part of why they killed the explore mode community by killing the gold reward was because its was competing against gem sales / gold conversion/ skins. Once they removed the reward it wasnt worth it so I dont know if they would ever even bother with this because at one end no one will do it if there isnt enough rewards and if there is then its a gold farm again unless they can limit it to a daily reward. Its a fine balance of fostering that community again while not shooting their gem sales in the foot unless its like a daily token towards a leggy. Is that worth it for them? I dont know, but I personally miss that type of content I used to really enjoy it.

As pointed out, The dungeon rewards were increased shortly after the change back to original levels. The reason players are not running dungeons, and I have stated this in the past: they are rivaled by solo open world content in gold reward and as such, the extra organization required is not worth the hassle for many players.

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Guys I honestly dont even care anymore to debate with you so this is my last word on this. Have your raids then I can play other games. I still disagree but i'm not arguing the same point in circles. Yes rewards were changed, no they do not provide a good time vs reward investment I already said that myself. Can this mix be changed yes. Is there group content in this game that average joes can do yes, look at low lvl fractals. Call it a fractal with re-used assests if you want I dont really care. There is groupable content and there is room inbeween the amnoon choyka and Dhuum to play with on difficulty. Its up to them to find that mix if they are interested in the casual grouping community. If not I dont care im not getting paid to theorycraft out the risk vs reward structure for them thats their job. Can it work of course but you need the right, reward, difficulty/risk and accessibility. It can work the choice is up to them if they care enough and I guess we will find out if they get that mix right with Strike Missions. It wont fail because people dont want to do it, people play mmos for social interaction. It will fail because they cant get the mix right between how hard it is, opportunity cost and what do i get, plus the 4th issue fun, ie. am I expected to do the same thing for the next 10 yrs.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

  1. Content is too hard for the masses.

True given the lack of incentive to improve for large parts of the player base.

Untrue for even the simplest "easy" builds, similar to the open world builds on metabattle, which trivialize any open world content.

There are rather simple and safe builds which bring more than enough performance while being very easy to play. That leaves only boss attacks and strategies as difficulty, and those can be practiced or simplified with certain setups.

  1. The population that does raids is beyond toxic and elitist.

First, I'd question how you'd know since you are not known to be a player who actually engages in said content. So this is a pure hear say from your side. (If you haven't participated in at least a certain set amount of raids, given this content is over 4 years old, don't presume to make judgements on an entire part of the player base. Either make a personal subjective statement based on your own experience, or refrain from unqualified judgments).

Second, from the thousands of raid players I've met, the vast majority were casual raiders within their own guild groups or social circles, and I daresay, 99% of them were very friendly and great people (from the short time I had with many, others I have as friends and help out in their casual raids).

I assume the toxicity you are referring to is the age old:"oh I wasn't taken along", the "oh the barrier is to high with thousands of KP and LI requirements" or "random toxic person xyz was mean to me". To that all I can say:
  1. PUG raids are not representative of the entire raid community, just as open world toxicity when a more difficult meta fails is not representative of the average open world player (and man can players in open world get toxic in chat).
  2. a lot of players who are interested in playing raid content regularly are organized in many different types of social communities and guilds. Toxicity is not present to a large extent here or otherwise the toxic individuals get removed. These "non toxic" players will not be present to a large extent in the PUG raiding pool while still being a large part of the community.
  3. the term elitism gets thrown around a lot. Most often in this games in context of:"every one who enjoys to improve or improves their game play is elitist". I don't consider players who enjoy taking on challenging content elitist, and given the huge performance disparities between even successful raiders, I find that notion rather offensive against a large part of this games player base.

  1. The rewards are not equal to the content.

Sure, raid rewards are on the low side. This has been complained about on multiple occasions. That's a benefit though since it makes raids less a requirement (but would directly affect why less players do them).

@Dante.1508 said:On a side note most modern customers do not have time to spend hours in these things failing over and over..

Then this content is not for you if you are unwilling to dedicate enough time to it.

I know enough players who have very busy real life issues taking up time (kids, work, family, renovation, vacations, etc.). Some carve out room for raid content because it's the content they enjoy, others spend time on other things.
Time commitment and devotion is a matter of personal availability to leisure time and preference
.

TL;DR:For someone who calls other players toxic and elitist, the casual approach to marginalize an entire part of the player base seems a rather toxic approach to this issue. Especially since it's not support with any facts. That's called having a bias.

Its not my first mmorpg i've done many raids in other mmo's, raids are all the same content and those elitists flock to the content, in all mmos.. GW2 is no different, i gave up the tread mill of raids a long time back its a horrible experience.

Well thanks for at least being so open about this, here:

prejudice
/ˈprɛdʒʊdɪs/Learn to pronouncenounnoun: prejudice; plural noun: prejudices
1.preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.

or, if you want the one from the Cambrdige Dictionary:

prejudice
noun [ C or U ]uk/ˈpredʒ.ə.dɪs/ us/ˈpredʒ.ə.dɪs/B2an unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling, especially when formed without enough thought or knowledge

I get it, you are opinionated and have strong feelings on this subject, but even you must realize how prejudicial your approach is on this matter. You are basically judging thousands of players and content whom you have neither interacted with, nor even played the content in a substantial way to make any judgments.

As far as other MMO's, I've raided in most that I've played, be it Dark Age of Camelot during Atlantis, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Eve Online, etc. and I would absolutely not call all of them equal or even similar in approach. I would even less dare make judgement calls about the player who play them, since the spectrum of characters and play styles I've seen could fill books.

On forums i see many customers saying how the communities are great in raiding, in the actual game though i'm yet to ever see these nice and friendly sorts, at all.. ever.. Call it what you like but the proof is in the pudding so to speak, raiding customers aren't nice, friendly or easy going by nature.

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@Dante.1508 said:

  1. Content is too hard for the masses.

True given the lack of incentive to improve for large parts of the player base.

Untrue for even the simplest "easy" builds, similar to the open world builds on metabattle, which trivialize any open world content.

There are rather simple and safe builds which bring more than enough performance while being very easy to play. That leaves only boss attacks and strategies as difficulty, and those can be practiced or simplified with certain setups.

  1. The population that does raids is beyond toxic and elitist.

First, I'd question how you'd know since you are not known to be a player who actually engages in said content. So this is a pure hear say from your side. (If you haven't participated in at least a certain set amount of raids, given this content is over 4 years old, don't presume to make judgements on an entire part of the player base. Either make a personal subjective statement based on your own experience, or refrain from unqualified judgments).

Second, from the thousands of raid players I've met, the vast majority were casual raiders within their own guild groups or social circles, and I daresay, 99% of them were very friendly and great people (from the short time I had with many, others I have as friends and help out in their casual raids).

I assume the toxicity you are referring to is the age old:"oh I wasn't taken along", the "oh the barrier is to high with thousands of KP and LI requirements" or "random toxic person xyz was mean to me". To that all I can say:
  1. PUG raids are not representative of the entire raid community, just as open world toxicity when a more difficult meta fails is not representative of the average open world player (and man can players in open world get toxic in chat).
  2. a lot of players who are interested in playing raid content regularly are organized in many different types of social communities and guilds. Toxicity is not present to a large extent here or otherwise the toxic individuals get removed. These "non toxic" players will not be present to a large extent in the PUG raiding pool while still being a large part of the community.
  3. the term elitism gets thrown around a lot. Most often in this games in context of:"every one who enjoys to improve or improves their game play is elitist". I don't consider players who enjoy taking on challenging content elitist, and given the huge performance disparities between even successful raiders, I find that notion rather offensive against a large part of this games player base.

  1. The rewards are not equal to the content.

Sure, raid rewards are on the low side. This has been complained about on multiple occasions. That's a benefit though since it makes raids less a requirement (but would directly affect why less players do them).

@Dante.1508 said:On a side note most modern customers do not have time to spend hours in these things failing over and over..

Then this content is not for you if you are unwilling to dedicate enough time to it.

I know enough players who have very busy real life issues taking up time (kids, work, family, renovation, vacations, etc.). Some carve out room for raid content because it's the content they enjoy, others spend time on other things.
Time commitment and devotion is a matter of personal availability to leisure time and preference
.

TL;DR:For someone who calls other players toxic and elitist, the casual approach to marginalize an entire part of the player base seems a rather toxic approach to this issue. Especially since it's not support with any facts. That's called having a bias.

Its not my first mmorpg i've done many raids in other mmo's, raids are all the same content and those elitists flock to the content, in all mmos.. GW2 is no different, i gave up the tread mill of raids a long time back its a horrible experience.

Well thanks for at least being so open about this, here:

prejudice
/ˈprɛdʒʊdɪs/Learn to pronouncenounnoun: prejudice; plural noun: prejudices
1.preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience.

or, if you want the one from the Cambrdige Dictionary:

prejudice
noun [ C or U ]uk/ˈpredʒ.ə.dɪs/ us/ˈpredʒ.ə.dɪs/B2an unfair and unreasonable opinion or feeling, especially when formed without enough thought or knowledge

I get it, you are opinionated and have strong feelings on this subject, but even you must realize how prejudicial your approach is on this matter. You are basically judging thousands of players and content whom you have neither interacted with, nor even played the content in a substantial way to make any judgments.

As far as other MMO's, I've raided in most that I've played, be it Dark Age of Camelot during Atlantis, World of Warcraft, Warhammer Online, Eve Online, etc. and I would absolutely not call all of them equal or even similar in approach. I would even less dare make judgement calls about the player who play them, since the spectrum of characters and play styles I've seen could fill books.

On forums i see many customers saying how the communities are great in raiding, in the actual game though i'm yet to ever see these nice and friendly sorts, at all.. ever.. Call it what you like but the proof is in the pudding so to speak, raiding customers aren't nice, friendly or easy going by nature.

It's called Occam's Razor:

Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor) is a principle from philosophy. Suppose there exist two explanations for an occurrence. In this case the one that requires the smallest number of assumptions is usually correct. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation. Occam's razor applies especially in the philosophy of science, but also more generally.

Or in this case:Is it maybe possible that the players who talk about raiding being fun have actually approached the game in a specific way and actually spent a significant amount of time raiding. While others, who like to theorize about how evil raiding is, simply base these assumptions on hear say and singular experiences? You would fall into the second group, would you not?

Last I checked, the forum warrior ratio of players who claim raiding is full of toxic players comes from a very minor fraction of players, most often those who have NOT raided (or base their claims on singular events). I have yet to see a vast majority of players who claim they have spent a significant amount of time with the content and community and walk away with such a terrible opinion as those who have spent no time in it or as part of it.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@psyt.9415 said:Disagree. You have a personal perception that GW2 is harder than other mmos which I disagree with. They are all difficult in thier own way. The ability to tune the raids to be more accessible is only limited by that perception. They can remove difficult mechanics or moves from certain bosses if they want, they can even remove certain wings if they want. They can add a stat bolster buff. they can add raid wide buffs that compensate for the lack of certain classes making them unnecessary. Theres lots of things they could do to allow a casual tuned raid to work and this is just 5 minutes of thought on the subject. But then again this is the same team that said dx12 would do nothing for the game and I get close to 30 more fps with the pxy. So im not surprised if they write things off before even trying it.

Aside from all the reasons @"Astralporing.1957" pointed out, there is one more, Raid wings in this game are badly designed because bosses inside one wing require different party compositions.Recently Nike issued the "Viability Challenge" A raid comp that consisted of:1x Heal Warrior tank in nomads gear5x carrion longbow soulbeast1x full support renegade in captains stats1x base ranger heal build in rampager gear1x base mesmer boon sharing with staff an valkyrie's gear1x lb dragon hunter grieving statAnd Teapot and his crew cleared multiple raids with this comp.Composition isn't something Arenanet designs for. Specific comps are not required for a kill. Composition is something the community decides is the best tactic available and rolls with it.It's not the only one that works.This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

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@Dante.1508 said:On forums i see many customers saying how the communities are great in raiding, in the actual game though i'm yet to ever see these nice and friendly sorts, at all.. ever.. Call it what you like but the proof is in the pudding so to speak, raiding customers aren't nice, friendly or easy going by nature.Have you ever once joined a training raid in Guild Wars 2 and interacted with the other players?

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@"mindcircus.1506" said:This "bad design" is a perception problem of yours.

I can't help but notice that composition included two healers, two support and six damage dealers with condition damage, that's the meta build composition for Raids. I also notice that their composition does have access to boon strip. In a sense it's a very good composition, where for one reason or another they used terrible stats and miss-matched weapons on, but the composition itself is meta as it covers all you'll need in a Raid fight. The "bad design" comment I made is about bosses in Raid wings requiring specific things, that others in the same wing do not.

For an easy example, Vale Guardian requires boon strip, don't tell me you can kill Vale Guardian without a source of boon strip. However, Sabetha does not. If you build a composition specifically for Sabetha you don't need boon strip, but it's essential for Vale Guardian. For another easy example, Matthias requires projectile reflection, please don't tell me how doable the fight is without it. Slothasor and Trio do not require projectile reflection (projectile destruction is good though)

Arenanet designs specifically for compositions, and the composition requirements change between bosses of the same wing. That's bad design and an actual problem. showing a composition that can cover EVERYTHING but with non-meta (or terrible) build/gear choices) isn't gonna change that.

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