Raids for not so good players

[maddoctor.2738]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

The raid community is really small because of this problem.Indeed.

Because the Fractal / Dungeon / Strike Mission communities are so gigantic right? In general this game is well known, and played, for all it's instanced content but because raids don't have multiple difficulties they alone have a small community.

[Astralporing.1957]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

The raid community is really small because of this problem.Indeed.

Because the Fractal / Dungeon / Strike Mission communities are so gigantic right? In general this game is well known, and played, for all it's instanced content but because raids don't have multiple difficulties they alone have a small community....what does that have to do anything with what was said? Does Fractals having population problems of their own make Raid community any bigger?Sure, GW2 having some inherent problems with difficulty tuning (and massive gaps in effectiveness caused by even small skill differences) due to its core design, impacts more than just Raids, and there are also

other

problems that plague Raids, (and Fractals, and some other types of content), but in what way does this make what i said any less true?

[maddoctor.2738]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

The raid community is really small because of this problem.Indeed.

Because the Fractal / Dungeon / Strike Mission communities are so gigantic right? In general this game is well known, and played, for all it's instanced content but because raids don't have multiple difficulties they alone have a small community....what does that have to do anything with what was said? Does Fractals having population problems of their own make Raid community any bigger?Sure, GW2 having some inherent problems with difficulty tuning (and massive gaps in effectiveness caused by even small skill differences) due to its core design, impacts more than just Raids, and there are also

other

problems that plague Raids, (and Fractals, and some other types of content), but in what way does this make what i said any less true?

I probably should've quoted the part above your post.I'm challenging the idea that solving this so called "problem" of not having multiple difficulty tiers (that can miraculously solve all of the problems with Raids as @Asgaeroth.6427 claims) would make the raid community any bigger. Players not interested in instanced content at all, won't suddenly go and play Raids if they have different difficulty options, as is evident by the communities of the other instanced content in this game also being relatively small. Including content that does have multiple difficulties.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"maddoctor.2738" said:I probably should've quoted the part above your post.I'm challenging the idea that solving this so called "problem" of not having multiple difficulty tiers (that can miraculously solve all of the problems with Raids as @"Asgaeroth.6427" claims)Well, that claim was something, i have to agree. I also happen not to believe in miracle cures that fix everything as a result of a relatively small change.

would make the raid community any bigger.Oh, i agree, it would not help - at least as far as the current community is concerned, and not definitely not directly or in short time. It would however increase the overall, new "multitier raid community" (which in reality would consist of two or more separate subcommunities, one for each tier). And that might cause devs to put more resources into raids, including more resources for normal tier (or possibly even hardmode tier), which should have some at least positive impact on the current raiders.

Of course, there's a lot of assumptions in it, and i may be wrong about it (although i don't think i am). And, of course, it's not really "might" but "might have", as the time to make that decision was in the past - now that raids got abandoned it's probably way too late for it.

Players not interested in instanced content at all, won't suddenly go and play Raids if they have different difficulty options, as is evident by the communities of the other instanced content in this game also being relatively small. Including content that does have multiple difficulties.I have explained several times already why i think Fractal approach to multiple tiers was something different than what i was talking about for raids (and why i consider the Fractal approach to multiple tiers idea to be the bad move in the end). If you want, i may rpeat it again, although i don;t think this is a good thread for this kind of discussion. Not that it matters, seeing as you seem to strongly dislike the idea regardless of th form it might take.

[Linken.6345]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Asgaeroth.6427" said:Every problem with raiding in GW2 is solved instantly with difficulty options. It's blatantly obvious and is a standard necessary modern MMO feature. How could anyone with any amount of ability to think critically not see it?

Let's take a look at Fractals, that have multiple difficulty options. One "problem" is that a player cannot join a Fractal CM without having the necessary KP first, and since you get those from running Fractal CMs it's a circular problem. How is that problem "fixed" with multiple difficulties?

Also, T1 fractals lack certain abilities, that do exist at higher levels. This means beating the lower difficulties is done using completely different tactics, as an example in Uncategorized Fractal Old Tom's room doesn't require using the fan at lower difficulties. This means, the problem of players going into content without having a clue of how the content is played isn't going to be fixed by multiple difficulties

Just found two problems not solved with difficulty options. With proper amount of critically thinking you can find more

You dont need to use the fan in t4 either fyi

[Fangoth.4503]

@Fueki.4753 said:

What the point of spending 10% to 15% of your resources on content less than 1% of the player will ever attempt?Those resources would better be spent on content that more people might play.

Simple, making a raid keep people busy a while. first you kill the boss then focus on improving your gameplay and get a smoother kill.content that fit everyone involve killing mob with 1 auto attack, not much to improve on that. and if you make it more difficult and good player stick together while not so good player complain they are toxic.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@Fueki.4753 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:Even IF raids are hard, wouldn't having that kind of group content be a good thing? You know for having people play the game long term?

What the point of spending 10% to 15% of your resources on content less than 1% of the player will ever attempt?Those resources would better be spent on content that more people might play.

Do you have a source which backs up that raids was taking up 10-15% of resources on content?

[maddoctor.2738]

@Astralporing.1957 said:I agree with the rest of post, any decision to help Raids should've been made a very long time ago, and there is no simple miracle cure that can solve all the problems alone.

I have explained several times already why i think Fractal approach to multiple tiers was something different than what i was talking about for raids (and why i consider the Fractal approach to multiple tiers idea to be the bad move in the end). If you want, i may rpeat it again, although i don;t think this is a good thread for this kind of discussion.

I didn't give Fractals as a specific example of an implementation for multiple tiers, but it was about the size of the community interested in those lower (different) tiers compared to the higher tiers. I'm quite positive that there are more players running T4/CM fractals, than the other tiers combined. This would mean, at least to me, that implementing a new tier for Raids, that have already a low population to begin with, wouldn't increase the overall population by a great amount.

At least I don't think the overall population of Raids (no matter how many difficulty tiers) would ever surpass Icebrood Construct completion rates, and those are also not that high. I for one don't expect someone not running the easy Strike Missions to run any kind of easy difficulty Raid, unless they offer access to legendary armor, then I guess they'd run it until they got the armor, then leave the content. I see Strike Missions (the easier ones) as a test of how much of the game's population would be interested in an easier tier for Raids. Maybe I'm wrong and someone that stays away of the easy Strike Missions would jump at the idea of playing an easier Raid, maybe not.

Not that it matters, seeing as you seem to strongly dislike the idea regardless of th form it might take.

Actually I once posted my own idea of how difficulty tiers could work. It's not that I'm opposed to the idea of new tiers, I just never found it to be very useful (on its own) and now it's too late to do something about it anyway.

[Fangoth.4503]

making new tier is:Good if you think that players that are not able to do raid right now will go there get the lore and a reward that would be story like as bosses wouldn't be bosses anymore.Bad if you think that that player that are not able to do raid right now will go there and become able to start higher difficulty for one simple reason: it is already really easy to get started and not that hard to meet pug required performances. Players currently unable to raid either refuses to learn how to play the encounter or refuses to adapt their rotation/traits to match raid standard and no cheezy mode will change that.

So if a cheezy mode ever happens fine but you shouldn't receive any kp/li/magnetite/crystal/ascended item for it :)

[Astralporing.1957]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Astralporing.1957" said:I agree with the rest of post, any decision to help Raids should've been made a very long time ago, and there is no simple miracle cure that can solve all the problems alone.

I have explained several times already why i think Fractal approach to multiple tiers was something different than what i was talking about for raids (and why i consider the Fractal approach to multiple tiers idea to be the bad move in the end). If you want, i may rpeat it again, although i don;t think this is a good thread for this kind of discussion.

I didn't give Fractals as a specific example of an implementation for multiple tiers, but it was about the size of the community interested in those lower (different) tiers compared to the higher tiers. I'm quite positive that there are more players running T4/CM fractals, than the other tiers combined. This would mean, at least to me, that implementing a new tier for Raids, that have already a low population to begin with, wouldn't increase the overall population by a great amount.Yes, that's how the current fractal tier design works now. In this, those lower tiers are

meant

to be transitional, and you are

supposed

to "graduate" from them and go up. Devs do not intend for players to stay for longer in them, and that's why, for example, all the new rewards are solely concentrated on the top (and not even in T4, but in CMs). In a way, the original Fractal design was better in this regard.

Actually I once posted my own idea of how difficulty tiers could work. It's not that I'm opposed to the idea of new tiers, I just never found it to be very useful (on its own) and now it's too late to do something about it anyway.Wel, in that last part i have to agree. In a way, it's quite ironic - at the time when there was the greatest possibility of implementing some (any) changes that might have potentially made the situation better, the Raider community thought that everything was fine, and was extremely opposed to any such changes (or to mere mention of the idea that the situation may not be sustainable in the long run). And now, when at least some might be more agreeable, it's already too late to do anything.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Fangoth.4503 said:making new tier is:Good if you think that players that are not able to do raid right now will go there get the lore and a reward that would be story like as bosses wouldn't be bosses anymore.Bad if you think that that player that are not able to do raid right now will go there and become able to start higher difficulty for one simple reason: it is already really easy to get started and not that hard to meet pug required performances. Players currently unable to raid either refuses to learn how to play the encounter or refuses to adapt their rotation/traits to match raid standard and no cheezy mode will change that.

So if a cheezy mode ever happens fine but you shouldn't receive any kp/li/magnetite/crystal/ascended item for it :)There's a reason why noone was doing dungeon story modes, and it was not because they were too easy. Almost noone repeats current story steps either, unless it is on new character (for completion), or for achievements. So, if you think that making another content with story like reward is good... well, what can i say

Also, there's absolutely no connection between your two bad options and your conclusion.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:I agree with the rest of post, any decision to help Raids should've been made a very long time ago, and there is no simple miracle cure that can solve all the problems alone.

I have explained several times already why i think Fractal approach to multiple tiers was something different than what i was talking about for raids (and why i consider the Fractal approach to multiple tiers idea to be the bad move in the end). If you want, i may rpeat it again, although i don;t think this is a good thread for this kind of discussion.

I didn't give Fractals as a specific example of an implementation for multiple tiers, but it was about the size of the community interested in those lower (different) tiers compared to the higher tiers. I'm quite positive that there are more players running T4/CM fractals, than the other tiers combined. This would mean, at least to me, that implementing a new tier for Raids, that have already a low population to begin with, wouldn't increase the overall population by a great amount.Yes, that's how the current fractal tier design works now. In this, those lower tiers are

meant

to be transitional, and you are

supposed

to "graduate" from them and go up. Devs do not intend for players to stay for longer in them, and that's why, for example, all the new rewards are solely concentrated on the top (and not even in T4, but in CMs). In a way, the original Fractal design was better in this regard.

Actually I once posted my own idea of how difficulty tiers could work. It's not that I'm opposed to the idea of new tiers, I just never found it to be very useful (on its own) and now it's too late to do something about it anyway.Wel, in that last part i have to agree. In a way, it's quite ironic - at the time when there was the greatest possibility of implementing some (any) changes that might have potentially made the situation better, the Raider community thought that everything was fine, and was extremely opposed to any such changes (or to mere mention of the idea that the situation may not be sustainable in the long run). And now, when at least some might be more agreeable, it's already too late to do anything.

The argument was always against splitting the low resources on the content. You are assuming that with the same amount of developer resources the already slow raid releases would have remained the same. They would have not. Meaning either more developers would have been needed, for temporary content as was already discussed in relation to fractals since eventually no one would be running the "easy" versions.

Meaning it would have meant more resources spent on the content overall (drawn from other content) OR even more gaps between raid wings. Which would have killed the raid community even faster. The only reason some players are more agreeable now is because we are at a state of 0 resources devoted to raid content. At that point ANY resources spent is better than none. That does NOT mean that the past stance was in any way wrong or that players have changed their mind.

The content could have just as well bleed even faster players with longer gaps between content releases, meaning that the loss in veteran players would have progressed faster than the gain in potentially new players, which your assumption does not account for in any way.

I have to agree with what @maddoctor.2738 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:At least I don't think the overall population of Raids (no matter how many difficulty tiers) would ever surpass Icebrood Construct completion rates, and those are also not that high. I for one don't expect someone not running the easy Strike Missions to run any kind of easy difficulty Raid, unless they offer access to legendary armor, then I guess they'd run it until they got the armor, then leave the content. I see Strike Missions (the easier ones) as a test of how much of the game's population would be interested in an easier tier for Raids. Maybe I'm wrong and someone that stays away of the easy Strike Missions would jump at the idea of playing an easier Raid, maybe not.

If we look at strike completion rates, especially the easiest ones, we can gouge pretty well how many players are even interested in 10 player size instanced content.

Stay Frosty, the achievement for killing the Icebrood Construct, was completed by 25% of all accounts on GW2efficiency.Beyond the Vale, the achievement for killing the Icebrood Construct, was completed by 29% of all accounts on GW2efficiency.Free at Last, the achievement for killing Deimos, was completed by 15% of all accounts on GW2efficiency.

There is absolutely NO reason to believe that there is a whole lot of more possible conversion or players who are interested in instanced 10 player content, besides the couple of loud forum posters who have been somehow incapable of getting into this content for years while far more recent players have had no issues, who are not participating in it already. On the contrary, the biggest issue or loss here is players QUITTING the content which we are seeing right now and which is mostly due to lack of new content and incentives.

No amount of conversion from an already disinterested player base would have helped here.

As far as incentives: we can make a well educated guess at which point raids and proper raid development was lost: some time after the introduction of Legendary Divinations. The entire implementation, especially with the conversion option, just screams: we wanted to do something here but quit mid way because at it stand right now, Legendary Divinations are completely useless and they could have stuck with LI only.

Simply put:The vast majority of players who are seriously interested in raid content have found ways to enter the content and enjoy the content. The rest is basically a small minority who is incapable for what ever reason to mirror what thousands of others have done, and a vast majority who has 0 interest to begin with. For the minority it is questionable if easy mode raids had helped because it is very likely that other issues are involved (time constraints, disabilities, difficult personalities, etc.) and for the majority it is likely that no matter how "easy" or accessible the content is, there was never any interest to begin with.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Cyninja.2954 said:If we look at strike completion rates, especially the easiest ones, we can gouge pretty well how many players are even interested in 10 player size instanced content.

Stay Frosty, the achievement for killing the Icebrood Construct, was completed by 25% of all accounts on GW2efficiency.Beyond the Vale, the achievement for killing the Icebrood Construct, was completed by 29% of all accounts on GW2efficiency.Free at Last, the achievement for killing Deimos, was completed by 15% of all accounts on GW2efficiency.It has been pointed out many times over how those percentages cannot be directly compared, due to the overall population shrinking and many gw2efficiency players that are no longer active, as well as the differences in time the content was available.

Not to mention, we don;t have any numbers on players that run either strikes or raids on more constant basis - the only achievement we have access to is a single kill one.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Astralporing.1957 said:It has been pointed out many times over how those percentages cannot be directly compared, due to the overall population shrinking and many gw2efficiency players that are no longer active, as well as the differences in time the content was available.

That doesn't really change much, if anything. Sure we can't say that Vale Guardian was killed by more players than Icebrood Construct, due to time and playerbase differences, but the numbers do tell us about something important: how many players are interested in instanced group content over time. And any version of easier Raids would never get higher numbers than that, so I think Anet giving us the easiest Strike Mission first, and then gradually increasing their difficulty gave the developers two important statistics:

How many players total are interested in instanced content, I can't think why someone that kills Deimos, or Whisper of Jormag, wouldn't kill Icebrood Construct, so the numbers of Strike Missions like Icebrood Construct or maybe Fraenir of Jormag are the upper limit. Then we can subtract the number of players that run Raids and the hardest Strike Missions to figure out what's left and if it's worth developing an entire new tier of difficulty for. Remember Raids were cancelled because they apparently didn't attract a large audience. There is no indication that an easier tier for Raids would attract a bigger (or even comparable) audience leading to even more wasted resources.

Second, they can see the drop off as the difficulty increases, to identify what's the sweet spot that balances effort to develop with population playing the content. I believe this is also the reason more recent Fractals are harder than earlier ones, they are designed for the actual playerbase of Fractals, to challenge those that are already experienced with T4/CM and then they try to downscale them for the lower tiers, which doesn't always produce very good results.

[Asum.4960]

@"Astralporing.1957" said:In FF XIV, for example, when you go into max level content, the difference in dps between bad and good player nowadays is around 3x. Average players end up somewhere in the gap of between half to 2/3 of that good player's dps. In gw2, the good player has a dps of 5 to 10 times that of an average player. And bad players are even worse than that. Think what does that mean for encounter designs.

I believe we had this discussion a couple times before and I do agree that that's Anet's self inflicted issue with creating engaging, especially instanced (since it can't just be zerged), content for a sizeable part of the player base. In the end they basically threw the towel and just went with focusing on the lowest common denominator only (aka, very low difficulty Story, OW) so everybody could play it, although that ofc also didn't work due to a sizeable part of the playerbase being bored out of their mind with that tutorial level content and leaving, as the last two years especially have shown.

I do not think GW2's systems are too complex though by any means. I mean, I have played games with literally easily 10 times the complexity in build craft, min maxing and such - especially found in ARPG's, and they aren't exactly unpopular either.Where GW2 as a whole, rather than "challenging" content like Raids etc., failed is to just being way too afraid of ever requiring players to actually learn and knowing the game and it's mechanics, even on a most basic level.

Players who do 3k DPS and boast comparable survivability skills simply should have no business being in max level second expansion+ even Open World or Story content, and the fact that that is the average player, not just some newbie boosting their first character, shows the game has fundamentally failed in preparing players for any sort of challenging content, instanced or not, with natural game and player skill progression.

Not ramping up the core game sufficiently to prepare lagging behind players for HoT, and then following that with caving way too early to outcry about it being to hard and nerfing it into the ground, and to then further move back to tutorial level difficulty with following releases, was imo possibly the biggest misstep of GW2, plaguing all of it's content design going forward.

As people mentioned before, Raids have literally been beaten in green gear. Some of the Raid DPS checks deemed impossible by some players literally just require less than half the DPS of many entirely self buffed builds doing little more, or straight up nothing more, than simply Auto Attacking. Some Raid bosses have been solo'ed.

That coupled with the fact that as @Cyninja.2954 mentioned in their fantastic post, a Raids easy mode wouldn't have been free and likely would have just slowed down the already way to slow to retain a community release schedule of them further, just killing the game mode even faster while not addressing the underlying issue.That is why many Raiders were opposed to the idea. Not as usually insinuated for any toxicity or gatekeeping reasons (similarly to KP, which really most people use to keep a certain highly toxic and entitled type of unskilled player out we've all met too many of to bear any more, rather than spitefully wanting to exclude or discriminate against new players).

Imo neither are Raids to hard or impossible to get into, nor are Raiders to blame or especially toxic. I also don't think most people simply aren't interested in any moderately engaging group content, nor that the game mechanics are simply too complex by any means.

The problem is just that 99% of the content in the game cultivated a culture of severe social anxiety/isolation as well as of sub-mediocrity, by allowing players to play through the game for thousands of hours without ever encouraging or even forcing them to group to normalise that process, nor ever requiring even the most baseline level of understanding of the game, it's mechanics, build craft etc., to beat anything from giant open world bosses to endgame/expansion big story bads.A process that has been going on for so long that a majority of players seemingly even believes that to be a desirable state at this point, forgetting the whole point and fun of an MMO of player's coming together, cooperating, forming friendships and overcoming challenging content, be it instanced or out in the world, together.

Now I'm sure there is a tiny subset of players who genuinely enjoys eternally running around alone in Queendale level of difficulty killing mobs by randomly pressing buttons, hating any change, any challenge, any interaction, but I refuse to believe that that naturally is the majority of players, nor is that a reasonable demographic to entirely cater to with an MMORPG by any means.

That lack of lead up, together with Anet never fully committing to any instanced/challenging content and really pushing it with a proper backing of resources and development teams for proper release schedules is why any form of that content will never succeed in consistently reaching a ~20-30% player participation, no matter how hard or easy or what the required party size over one player is.Stuff like Raids and Fractals CM's can be, and imo are, by miles the best designed and most fun content in the game and it won't matter, as long as the average player never graduated in skill past ~level 30, where the game should have actively started to teach them how to play and group to tackle challenges and progress and showing them how fun an actual MMO can be.

Blaming Raids for the death of Dungeons, complaining about perceived toxicity of Raiders or the unfortunately necessary reality of KP or the overstated difficulty of content such as Raids imo all misses the mark of why these types of content seem to die faster than Anet can keep coming up with new misguided versions of them, or why the game has struggled as a whole to reach it's full, fantastic, potential over the years.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Asum.4960" said:I do not think GW2's systems are too complex though by any means. I mean, I have played games with literally easily 10 times the complexity in build craft, min maxing and such - especially found in ARPG's, and they aren't exactly unpopular either.What do you mean "unpopular"? I honestly just can;t believe that a system as niche in design as GW2's can be utilized properly by a majority of players in a game with 7 digit population numbers.

Where GW2 as a whole, rather than "challenging" content like Raids etc., failed is to just being way too afraid of ever requiring players to actually learn and knowing the game and it's mechanics, even on a most basic level.It's not that. The problem is way more basis. Simply, there's no point in having a multitude of build options if you are going to push players into playing only a very select few of them in the end.Their "failure" was not in being afraid of requiring players to learn to utilize that system fully - if they tried that, they would simply have lost majority of players and this game would have went under long ago. Remember what happened due to difficulty spike in HoT? Anet had to cave in, because players simply refused to learn, and just didn;t go into the new content.

Their "failure" was in being too afraid to give up on this complex freestyle build system they were so proud of and go for something much more simpler, but working for a much bigger player population.

Players who do 3k DPS and boast comparable survivability skills simply should have no business being in max level second expansion+ even Open World or Story content, and the fact that that is the average player, not just some newbie boosting their first character, shows the game has fundamentally failed in preparing players for any sort of challenging content, instanced or not, with natural game and player skill progression.The only way the game could have "prepared" the players would have been by limiting player choices. That is, because in the current system, lack of said guidance towards the good options is a feature. They have given players the system that resulted in multitude of choices - a huge majority of them bad. As such, players went and made a multitude of different builds - a majority of them bad. Hint: most players in a game with such big population do not ever learn the intricaties of build system. They just follow the game's guidance. And here's the catch - GW2 could not do that. Could not do that, because you learning that on your own was part of the design.

Like i said, if the game tells you which builds are good and which ones are bad, and expects you to follow the advice, then there's no point in those bad builds even existing. All that fantastic potential of this whole complex system gets completely wasted.

Not ramping up the core game sufficiently to prepare lagging behind players for HoT, and then following that with caving way too early to outcry about it being to hard and nerfing it into the ground, and to then further move back to tutorial level difficulty with following releases, was imo possibly the biggest misstep of GW2, plaguing all of it's content design going forward.They caved in not in reaction to the outcry. They caved in because players simply didn't learn. They just went in, saw it was too hard, and gave up on it. And it wasn't "too early". It took them half a year to arrive at this decision.

That coupled with the fact that as @Cyninja.2954 mentioned in their fantastic post, a Raids easy mode wouldn't have been free and likely would have just slowed down the already way to slow to retain a community release schedule of them further, just killing the game mode even faster while not addressing the underlying issue.That is why many Raiders were opposed to the idea. Not as usually insinuated for any toxicity or gatekeeping reasons (similarly to KP, which really most people use to keep a certain highly toxic and entitled type of unskilled player out we've all met too many of to bear any more, rather than spitefully wanting to exclude or discriminate against new players).Well, the end result is that the mode still got abandoned. They may have tried to delay it, but in the end they only made sure that no attempt to save the mode was even made. And when the idea was first brought up, it wasn't refused because raiders were afraid of accelerating raids' downfall - if you look at those first threads you will see, that they simply didn't believe there was any danger to raids. They thought those suggestions were just some attempts to take away part of what they were due. Even when later wings started releasing at a slower schedule, they still didn't think it may result in even worse situation later. Many still thought w8 was in the works when we've got not so subtle hints it wasn't.And the end result is what it is.