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Do raids need easy/normal/hard difficulty mode? [merged]


Lonami.2987

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@Draygorn.7012 said:It's a good idea and will definitely help more noobish players (like myself) get into the swing of raids in a less daunting manner. I think a lot of us do want to try our hand at raiding, but have been a little intimidated to try it because of the large leap in difficultly, which may also be part of the reason why the raiding player base is so minimal.
I know Anet has implemented Strike Missions as pseudo easier raids, but doesn't really bridge the gap well enough.
Also, harder difficulty for raids will help the veterans to not get bored of the content as much :P

It would if players took them seriously as if they were doing actual raids. The problem is that you still have a lot of people doing them while having terrible personal DPS and not even attempting the bonus chests.No, The problem is that the people that would treat strikes as seriously as raids should be treated are the people that do
not
need any bridges of this kind. For everyone else however strikes are no help at all.Strikes as they are might be good for only one thing - experimenting with the different levels of difficulty and rewards and seeing which works best for the target group Anet has in mind. But even for this they aren;t all that good, because a lot of players tend to lump all strikes together, instead of seeing and treating each of them individually.

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@"Captain Kuro.8937" said:Strike Missions from the scale of 1-10 (10 being the hardest) , how hard are they ?5 ?

Icebrood Construct has a very low difficulty, easier than fighting story bosses like Balthazar or Mordremoth, easier than all dungeons and all fractals, including story paths and T1 fractals. Basically can be done solo, the only reason to fail soloing it is the timer, it's very strict for a solo player. But with 2 or 3 people it's doable.

Fraenir of Jormag is also very easy as it lacks any party based mechanics, it's of comparable difficulty to easier dungeon/fractal bosses and some story bosses. 10 players is overkill for this one, can be done in a smaller group, like with 5 without problems.

Claw and Voice, is the first "proper" squad content Strike Mission. Unlike the previous ones that can be done with very low number of players this one is easier done with an actual squad. Low tier Fractals (up to T2 maybe T3) and some dungeons is the appropriate difficulty for this one

Boneskinner depends on the version... did they fix it? I haven't done it in a while, but it started stupidly easy, then it get really hard, then I lost count of the patches.

Whisper of Jormag is essentially a lower tier Raid boss. It has proper phases to teach you its mechanics little by little, and at the last 20% it gets really tough to survive.

So I guess Icebrood Construct is 1/2, Fraenir is 2/3, Claw and Voice is 4/5, Boneskinner is ? and Whisper of Jormag is a 8/9Since they have such well defined difficulty progression I'd suggest you start from the easier one (Icebrood Construct) and progress slowly. You can start with a duo and see how it goes.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Draygorn.7012" said:It's a good idea and will definitely help more noobish players (like myself) get into the swing of raids in a less daunting manner. I think a lot of us do want to try our hand at raiding, but have been a little intimidated to try it because of the large leap in difficultly, which may also be part of the reason why the raiding player base is so minimal.
I know Anet has implemented Strike Missions as pseudo easier raids, but doesn't really bridge the gap well enough.
Also, harder difficulty for raids will help the veterans to not get bored of the content as much :P

It would if players took them seriously as if they were doing actual raids. The problem is that you still have a lot of people doing them while having terrible personal DPS and not even attempting the bonus chests.No, The problem is that the people that would treat strikes as seriously as raids should be treated are the people that do
not
need any bridges of this kind. For everyone else however strikes are no help at all.Strikes as they are might be good for only one thing - experimenting with the different levels of difficulty and rewards and seeing which works best for the target group Anet has in mind. But even for this they aren;t all that good, because a lot of players tend to lump all strikes together, instead of seeing and treating each of them individually.

Arenanet should label strikes based on their difficulty, that way there would be no "excuse" to lump them all together. Hopefully as we get more of them they will do a tier system similar to Fractal tiers and avoid this issue altogether.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:Boneskinner depends on the version... did they fix it? I haven't done it in a while, but it started stupidly easy, then it get really hard, then I lost count of the patches.

Yeah they fix it, but he's still the hardest boss of the strike missions. It can fail pretty easily if people don't take care of their positioning for example (carry heal scourge is really useful for non-exp party).

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  • 3 weeks later...

If you want easy mode for raids, go to the mesmer forum. Ask anet to reverse all mesmer and chrono changes. These changes include to reverse the signet of inspiration to SHARE all boons with alies for 10 seconds. Also gives it back the lesser signet of inspiration. Also on chrono, they need to be able to shatter at all time. So reverse that aswell. Bonus points if you also ask to bring distortion share back. This way you have easy mode for raids.

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@waaghals.6124 said:If you want easy mode for raids, go to the mesmer forum. Ask anet to reverse all mesmer and chrono changes. These changes include to reverse the signet of inspiration to SHARE all boons with alies for 10 seconds. Also gives it back the lesser signet of inspiration. Also on chrono, they need to be able to shatter at all time. So reverse that aswell. Bonus points if you also ask to bring distortion share back. This way you have easy mode for raids.

Think that ship has sailed a long time ago.

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At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

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@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

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@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

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@yann.1946 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.True, it was not the only reason for its death. Still, It was one of the
greatest
reasons for it. In fact, many of the secondary reasons were also a byproduct of that initial tunnelvision and overfocusing on hardcore players.
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@yann.1946 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

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@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Ask yourself whether you are focusing on only a part of Wildstar downfall because it's the part you disliked, or because it's the only part that's relevant.

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@yann.1946 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Ask yourself whether you are focusing on only a part of Wildstar downfall because it's the part you disliked, or because it's the only part that's relevant.

its not belief in Wild star, its a matter of record and well documented. I agree the devs should not focus only on the majority, it should be proportional to the player demographic, and in GW2 90% of the player base have practically no 10 man end game instanced content that is designed for casual play.

to quote an example:

'One of the values that Wildstar as an MMORPG sold to players prior to launch was that it wanted to make MMOs hardcore again. That meant harder raids and end-game content. While this for the most part is true about the higher, harder tiers of the end-game content post launch, it also pretty much killed it for everyone else. With where the MMO community is today, one could argue a more casual and accessible approach with the optional hardcore end-game would be more preferable. The playerbase have ‘aged’ since vanilla WoW. The once upon a time youths of hardcore MMOs have grown up to start families and work jobs, and that’s a possible result for the low demand for hardcore MMOs these days. As a result, this shunned many potential players away from the game or for sticking around longer than necessary.'

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@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Ask yourself whether you are focusing on only a part of Wildstar downfall because it's the part you disliked, or because it's the only part that's relevant.

its not belief in Wild star, its a matter of record and well documented. I agree the devs should not focus only on the majority, it should be proportional to the player demographic, and in GW2 90% of the player base have practically no 10 man end game instanced content that is designed for casual play.

to quote an example:

'One of the values that Wildstar as an MMORPG sold to players prior to launch was that it wanted to make MMOs hardcore again. That meant harder raids and end-game content. While this for the most part is true about the higher, harder tiers of the end-game content post launch, it also pretty much killed it for everyone else. With where the MMO community is today, one could argue a more casual and accessible approach with the optional hardcore end-game would be more preferable. The playerbase have ‘aged’ since vanilla WoW. The once upon a time youths of hardcore MMOs have grown up to start families and work jobs, and that’s a possible result for the low demand for hardcore MMOs these days. As a result, this shunned many potential players away from the game or for sticking around longer than necessary.'

Like I said earlier, it was not the only reason and giving it as a reason why hardcore content is bad is just a bad example.

BTW I'm not disputing what the devs intent was. But please tell me where you found this well-documented that that was the singular reason the game failed.

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@"yann.1946" said:Like I said earlier, it was not the only reason and giving it as a reason why hardcore content is bad is just a bad example.Sure, it was not the only reason, but it was the root of the problem. All the other problems are a consequence of that design approach.

And no, it's not about why "hardcore content is bad". It's about how overfocusing on hardcore content, and overestimating its importance is bad. Simply put, Wildstar is a proof that hardcore players cannot carry the game of that size - that for success you need casual players to be at least equally (and likely way more) interested.

Simply put, a game aimed at hardcores in the current market situation can be at best a niche project. It will no longer be able to reach the size of a proper AAA title.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"yann.1946" said:Like I said earlier, it was not the only reason and giving it as a reason why hardcore content is bad is just a bad example.Sure, it was not the only reason, but it was the root of the problem. All the other problems are a consequence of that design approach.

And no, it's not about why "hardcore content is bad". It's about how
overfocusing
on hardcore content, and
overestimating its importance
is bad. Simply put, Wildstar is a proof that hardcore players cannot carry the game of that size - that for success you
need
casual players to be at least equally (and likely way more) interested.

Simply put, a game aimed at hardcores in the current market situation can be at best a niche project. It will no longer be able to reach the size of a proper AAA title.

I guess you missed the part where someone said that they where happy raids where dying etc.You might believe that it's not about how hardcore content is bad. But for some people it was and the other two posters i responded to did fall into that category.

Now do you believe that the game over focused on hardcore content? Because as i see it after HOT the focus was not on hardcore content.

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@yann.1946 said:Now do you believe that the game over focused on hardcore content? Because as i see it after HOT the focus was not on hardcore content.It actually did both. It focused on hardcore content enough to have impact on all the rest of the content (yes, i know that a lot of raiders simply do not see it, but for me that impact was very clear, and it still continues, even after raids were mostly abandoned). Impact, that for a lot of players was very negative. At the same time it didn't focus on hardcore content enough to satisfy hardcore players. It was a lose/lose situation from the beginning - all it caused was an overall less happy community.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:It actually did both. It focused on hardcore content enough to have impact on all the rest of the content (yes, i know that a lot of raiders simply do not see it, but for me that impact was very clear, and it still continues, even after raids were mostly abandoned). Impact, that for a lot of players was very negative. At the same time it didn't focus on hardcore content enough to satisfy hardcore players. It was a lose/lose situation from the beginning - all it caused was an overall less happy community.

So the impact of Heart of Thorns was so negative for a lot of players and it led to a reduction in revenue right? What did the recent change in policy to remove hardcore content completely and only focus on the easiest possible parts of the game did for it? Oh right the worst quarter in the game's history.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:It actually did both. It focused on hardcore content enough to have impact on all the rest of the content (yes, i know that a lot of raiders simply do not see it, but for me that impact was very clear, and
it still continues
, even after raids were mostly abandoned). Impact, that for a lot of players was very negative. At the same time it didn't focus on hardcore content enough to satisfy hardcore players. It was a lose/lose situation from the beginning - all it caused was an overall less happy community.

So the impact of Heart of Thorns was so negative for a lot of players and it led to a reduction in revenue right? What did the recent change in policy to remove hardcore content completely and only focus on the easiest possible parts of the game did for it? Oh right the worst quarter in the game's history.You're saying it as if there were no other, far more serious reasons for that drop in revenue - like, for example, no expansion (the very thing they are now desperately trying to reverse). Or other small things, like the need to somehow keep the lights on after massive layoffs. And after one after another people in management positions (MO, and then MZ) kept leaving.

Who knows, maybe if they were trying to desperately hold on to the hardcore content instead of letting it go, the numbers might have been even worse.

In short - the drop in revenue was due to a large number of players starting to feel as if GW2 was going into maintenance mode (whether that was true or not - the perception was way more important than reality here). And for that, the announcement that there will be no expansion after LS4 (ans possibly ever) was way more important than small thing like not releasing more raids. The first impacted practically all of the players. The second impacted only a small minority.

Notice by the way, that raiders starter leaving quite a long time ago - at the time of w7 the raid scene was already only a shade of its former past, and that wing caused even more raiders to leave. And yet, the decrease in income (the worst quarter in game's history), happened only after players realized that Anet was serious about expansionless mode.

Notice also, that when Anet decided to do something about that loss of income, their decision was not "let's announce more raids and more hardcore content". It was "Cantha expansion incoming".

So, again, in my opinion you are vastly overestimating the importance of hardcore content for the game's health, and tend to concentrate on it over other, far more visible and impactful causes of potential problems.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:You're saying it as if there were no other, far more serious reasons for that drop in revenue

You are saying that with Heart of Thorns release there was no other reason for the drop in revenue than the difficulty of the content? Got it.

In short - the drop in revenue was due to a large number of players starting to feel as if GW2 was going into maintenance mode (whether that was true or not - the perception was way more important than reality here).

That's how players feel if the content they enjoy/play is ignored and abandoned.

So, again, in my opinion you are vastly overestimating the importance of hardcore content for the game's health, and tend to concentrate on it over other, far more visible and impactful causes of potential problems.

You are the one vastly overestimating the importance of hardcore content for the game's health here not me. I'm simply drawing parallels between the so called Heart of Thorns drop due to the existence of more hardcore content and the even worse drop of revenue due to the absence of it.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@yann.1946 said:Now do you believe that the game over focused on hardcore content? Because as i see it after HOT the focus was not on hardcore content.It actually did both. It focused on hardcore content enough to have impact on all the rest of the content (yes, i know that a lot of raiders simply do not see it, but for me that impact was very clear, and
it still continues
, even after raids were mostly abandoned). Impact, that for a lot of players was very negative. At the same time it didn't focus on hardcore content enough to satisfy hardcore players. It was a lose/lose situation from the beginning - all it caused was an overall less happy community.

Well to me it appeared more on a perceived focus (the adding of special action key etc.) but to me it always appeared more of a perceived notion do to a part of the population have insta negative emotions attached to the word raids. Now i agree that sometimes perception is more important then truth in these contexts.

Not giving any attention to the hardcore community would have been a bigger loss in my opinion. You need to spend some focus on all your parts of the player base. And an mmo specifically needs a diverse content pool.

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@yann.1946 said:

@yann.1946 said:Now do you believe that the game over focused on hardcore content? Because as i see it after HOT the focus was not on hardcore content.It actually did both. It focused on hardcore content enough to have impact on all the rest of the content (yes, i know that a lot of raiders simply do not see it, but for me that impact was very clear, and
it still continues
, even after raids were mostly abandoned). Impact, that for a lot of players was very negative. At the same time it didn't focus on hardcore content enough to satisfy hardcore players. It was a lose/lose situation from the beginning - all it caused was an overall less happy community.

Well to me it appeared more on a perceived focus (the adding of special action key etc.) but to me it always appeared more of a perceived notion do to a part of the population have insta negative emotions attached to the word raids. Now i agree that sometimes perception is more important then truth in these contexts.

Not giving any attention to the hardcore community would have been a bigger loss in my opinion. You need to spend some focus on all your parts of the player base. And an mmo specifically needs a diverse content pool.

Some of the timed world bosses wont get done if all the hardcore people leave unless they nerf their health pools. (The new one, Drakkar being the first obvious one.)

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@yann.1946 said:

@"Rednik.3809" said:At least it is good to see that raids are finally dying and all fresh blood is pouring into the more casual content like strike missions.Let it be a fine example to all future developers who would be so naive to ever listening to so-called "hardcore" crowd. A sad lesson, but still very important one.

dont need to look any further than Wildstar (RIP) to see where that road leads :)

Honestly please don't have this false vindication.

Wildstar died because of more then just catering to the hardcore crows.Their is a middle road to achieve between only catering to the hardcore vs only the casual crowd.

No wildstar did in fact die because the whole ethos of the game centered around hardcore gameplay, the devs talked about that goal prior to release. Amazing housing and high quality zones and open world pve did not compensate for an end game consisting of heavy gating and intense 'stay out of the fire and learn the pattern' gameplay. People hated it and the game pop collapsed.

You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

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@Obtena.7952 said:

@yann.1946 said:You can believe what you want really. And I never said the focus wasn't also a problem.

But let me tell you a secret, focusing on any single part of your playerbase is a bad idea. Even if that part is the mayority.

Not sure that's true ... the focus should be on the segment of your customers that give you money because if a business continues to pay attention to those customers and what they want, the stick around.

For a game focused on expansions that's probably true. For a game that is focused on a cash shop though, the majority of the players (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean the majority in spending. Invested players tend to pay more.

Further, the majority of the players (in numbers) doesn't necessarily mean the majority in activity either. For example, you can have 10000 players that play 1 hour every month and they'd be a majority by numbers but the game will appear mostly dead on a day-to-day basis. On the other hand, having 100 players that play 2-3 hours every day will make the game active, despite those players not being any kind of majority in numbers.

Thinking only about what the majority of the players do in a game is an unhealthy way to go about making a game. Case in point, the majority of accounts of this game have less than 500 AP, meaning they aren't really playing the game much, so what this majority does or doesn't do while in-game is hardly relevant, or important.

Also, we've seen last quarter what happened when they focused on a single part of the playerbase.

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