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


Lonami.2987

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@FrizzFreston.5290 said:I see raids sort of like SAB tribulation mode, as in "one wrong step" and you can start over. (Or multiple "wrong" steps rather)

I can see why not everyone is interested in the whole trial and error die startover playstyle.

This isn't true at all. For most of the Raid bosses there are "slots" that have very low difficulty requirements. On the other hand, in SAB Tribulation Mode everyone must do the jumps on their own and the difficulty is the same for all players. The difficulty for the squad as a whole is high in Raids, but individual difficulty varies wildly. And this is something Anet could find ways of "exploiting".

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As the devs introduce more and more progression locked behind raids, such as the new ring, it makes sense to open the gates of raiding to people who have little interest in challenging raid content. I myself would raid more often with an easy mode. It's not that I can't do it right now, I just don't have unlimited time and would rather play something else and raids are too long. I'm just not terribly interested and invested in raiding, I find pvp and wvw more interesting due to the ever changing parameters and enemies. That being said, since raiders can come to wvw and take a slot to afk and flip a camp every 10 mins for our game mode's rewards, it would only be fair if I could do the same thing with raids. I'm mostly interested in raid weapon skins and magnetite shards, legendary insights aren't excessively appealing to me.

As for the hard mode, why not, that being said, just don't turn GW2 into wow by putting too much emphasis on hardcore raiding.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:I will give the exact same example I give all the time when someone mentions this terrible idea of "easy modes for training":Try joining a Fractal 100 CM while only having beaten Fractal 100. Or, since the easy modes are supposed to be a joke (based on your VG example) try joining Fractal 100 CM with knowledge of Fractal 25. To keep the comparison fair.

So you're saying new fractal players should jump straight to level 100, and don't bother doing lower levels because it's a waste of time? So instead, they should learn fractals by doing level 100cm and wiping again and again until they learn it, instead of playing from level 1 to 99.

Sounds pretty dumb.

@Ayrilana.1396 said:If there’s an easy mode then none of the rewards that are available right now should be made made available to those playing on easy. The same goes for achievement and collection progression. Would you be fine with that? Chances are a lot of other players wouldn’t.

Yes? It's exactly what I wrote at the first post, did you read it?

Fractals tier 4 and cm has exclusive rewards and achievements too, and no one complaints. Why would they for raids? We're talking about an easy mode, not about "free legendary armor for everyone".

@Blaeys.3102 said:So, what we end up with is content that feels disconnected from the rest of the game, that is only enjoyed by a small percentage of players, that people "master" within a few weeks (month at the longest), and that comes out at a snail's pace (unfortunately, rightfully so, given the size of the team and target audience).That is not a sustainable model for success. If you doubt that, think about what raids would look like if the rest of the game weren't here. No one - not even hardcore raiders - would think that was enough - or interesting enough - to warrant their attention. They are relegated to ancillary content at best. And, when that ancillary content cannot have strong story ties to the rest of the game and is partially walled off due to the math of raiding (refuse to call them actually difficult), it will eventually begin to feel more and more out of place.

Despite the reluctance from the developers and worries from hardercore raiders, the mode needs difficulty tiers. It needs them to justify stronger story ties to the GW2 narrative and to justify more development resources from Anet. Until that happens, we are stuck with how raids are now, a model that I believe is unsustainable longterm.

Exactly, glad to see someone who understands the problem.

Raids will never be good if they don't have an easy mode, because ArenaNet will never make hardcore-only content at a good enough pace. If you think they will, you're delusional. Enjoy your next escort "boss".

@Seera.5916 said:It's better for ANet to fix the learning of raid specific skills out in other areas like personal story and open world or even fractals. So that players learn the skills outside of the demanding raids.

So you want them to teach players raid mechanics outside of raids? That sounds like a waste of resources, it would be easier to add difficulty modes and focus those resources on more raid bosses instead.

@Blaeys.3102 said:Here's a prediction - now that a mod has moved the thread from the general subforum to the raid subforum, we will see the opinion skew heavily toward the "raids should only be hardcore" point of view in the poll.

It's something we've seen before. Limiting the audience will result in very different results. Sorry to see that happen. Hopefully, any Anet devs trying to read into any results understands that and actually sees the (admittedly small scale) results prior to the thread move.

Yeah, it's very sad. This topic gets always sidelined or outright censored. We will never be able to see the real opinion of common folk like this.

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:I see raids sort of like SAB tribulation mode, as in "one wrong step" and you can start over. (Or multiple "wrong" steps rather)

I can see why not everyone is interested in the whole trial and error die startover playstyle.

That's a pretty bad comparison. SAB has baby, normal, and tribulation mode. Exactly what the thread is asking for raids.

A tribulation mode for raids would be awesome, but we'll never get it if we don't get baby mode too.

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@Lonami.2987

Yes? It's exactly what I wrote at the first post, did you read it?

Fractals tier 4 and cm has exclusive rewards and achievements too, and no one complaints. Why would they for raids? We're talking about an easy mode, not about "free legendary armor for everyone".

I did read it. Note the last thing I stated where I said that I don’t think all those that want an easy mode would be happy with it if they couldn’t get the existing rewards.

Fractals are different as they were not designed to be challenging 10-player content. That is the sole purpose of raids which is to fill that void.

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I don't see how they can spend that much development time in order to make tiered easy/normal/hard type raids. It would make it a raiding game.

At the moment they release relatively good encounters, and as they add more wings, it allows them to release bosses of varied difficulty.

They can't hand hold people into raids. They're already not very hard and most require very little effort (ie pulling 10k damage on a class that when optimized pulls 30k) will still allow you to succeed with wiggle room.

Raids are about as casual as you can possibly get right now. You can join in any boss, as long as someone has an instance. You can quit or join as you please in LFG. You can do things at your own pace, with normal strategies (such as normal greens on vg) or advanced strategies (disorting greens).

I don't see why they should change anything, really. Having some form of long term harder endgame is good.

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@Lonami.2987 said:So you're saying new fractal players should jump straight to level 100, and don't bother doing lower levels because it's a waste of time? So instead, they should learn fractals by doing level 100cm and wiping again and again until they learn it, instead of playing from level 1 to 99.

No I say the opposite, a player that plays anything other than 100 won't find groups for 100 and a player that doesn't play 100 cm will never find a group for 100 cm. That you completed levels 1-99 means nothing for 100, and that you completed 100 doesn't mean anything for 100 cm. In a very similar way, your experience in an easy mode Raid proves nothing about your ability in the normal version, even worse it means that you know the wrong things about it. Also, similar how someone beating Escort means nothing about their skill on Matthias. Plus why asking for kill proofs of previous bosses to run the new Wing is absolutely stupid.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:So you're saying new fractal players should jump straight to level 100, and don't bother doing lower levels because it's a waste of time? So instead, they should learn fractals by doing level 100cm and wiping again and again until they learn it, instead of playing from level 1 to 99.

No I say the opposite, a player that plays anything other than 100 won't find groups for 100 and a player that doesn't play 100 cm will never find a group for 100 cm. That you completed levels 1-99 means nothing for 100, and that you completed 100 doesn't mean anything for 100 cm. In a very similar way, your experience in an easy mode Raid proves nothing about your ability in the normal version, even worse it means that you know the
wrong
things about it. Also, similar how someone beating Escort means nothing about their skill on Matthias. Plus why asking for kill proofs of previous bosses to run the new Wing is absolutely stupid.

I think the kill proofs are more of an indication of your skill level at beating bosses of raid quality in coordinated group. Never mind that you can still get carried or purchase kills.

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@Ayrilana.1396 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:So you're saying new fractal players should jump straight to level 100, and don't bother doing lower levels because it's a waste of time? So instead, they should learn fractals by doing level 100cm and wiping again and again until they learn it, instead of playing from level 1 to 99.

No I say the opposite, a player that plays anything other than 100 won't find groups for 100 and a player that doesn't play 100 cm will never find a group for 100 cm. That you completed levels 1-99 means nothing for 100, and that you completed 100 doesn't mean anything for 100 cm. In a very similar way, your experience in an easy mode Raid proves nothing about your ability in the normal version, even worse it means that you know the
wrong
things about it. Also, similar how someone beating Escort means nothing about their skill on Matthias. Plus why asking for kill proofs of previous bosses to run the new Wing is absolutely stupid.

I think the kill proofs are more of an indication of your skill level at beating bosses of raid quality in coordinated group.

I guess they exist for the first few weeks until players get kill proofs of the new Raid

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:This is a heated topic, but let's have a serious discussion about it.We already have several serious discussions about it, some in which you joined (some not).

We have mostly the same participants, saying mostly the same things, and often digressing in the same direction (e.g. what's meant by "elitist" or "casual" or "reasonable").

Yes and this is how changes are made. When a lot of people constantly rant about something or suggest the same thing over and over again. If we just shuted up and said nothing, then nothing would change. Raids would still only be run by power gamers and people with a lot of spare time or only guilds on weekends and 80%+ of the population would still have never run a raid in their lives.Is that great? To never have played a content in your life, while being a 5-years GW2 player? Especially now that they connected story and UNDERWORLD (loved it from GW1 series) to raids. Tons of players myself included will simply never run it, because of being unskilled or not having a guild to run or working 40+ hours a week and no time to devote on raids.

So yes, we REALLY need an easy/hard mode for raids. It has been said before and it will always be said until executed. It will profit Anet by making big content open to more players and it will profit the playerbase too obviously.Otherwise you will still see the same posts, you will still see the power gamers complaining that raids are too easy, because they have to be balanced in ONE mode for everyone and you still still see 4-man raid completions. ONE mode for all is not possible.

We are not all casuals and we are not all power gamers. You have different players so make different modes for each one. This is how content balancing works.Otherwise we would have in PVP only one division and everyone would be in the same rank. ESL pro gamers would be roflstomping newbs and the lucky group would win.This is what in theory is happening right now to the raid community. Fractals have tiers and I have so far not read a negative comment about them. Casuals are happy with their T1 fractals and end gamers are happy with their T4 fracs.

ANet listens and I know they can do this. This is why I just spent 10 mintues of my life writing this post.Thank you and enjoy your gaming.

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@Phil.7369 said:

@Lonami.2987 said:This is a heated topic, but let's have a serious discussion about it.We already have several serious discussions about it, some in which you joined (some not).

We have mostly the same participants, saying mostly the same things, and often digressing in the same direction (e.g. what's meant by "elitist" or "casual" or "reasonable").

Yes and this is how changes are made. When a lot of people constantly rant about something or suggest the same thing over and over again. If we just shuted up and said nothing, then nothing would change.
> ANet listens and I know they can do this. This is why I just spent 10 mintues of my life writing this post. I'm not asking anyone to just "shuted up and say nothing". I'm saying: we already have over a dozen posts discussing exactly the same ideas, mostly by the same people. There's no need for yet another thread. It makes it harder for everyone, including the participants.
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Anet (particularly, the Raid team) is doing nearly the best they can with a game that is not prepared to what we know as Raids in any way whatsoever. Seriously, they're really pushing the envelope with this content. You know why people get so frustrated that they "can't" play raids? In many cases, it's because of how amazingly well done they are, to the point you wish you were playing it even if you despise the very concept of raiding. Everything about it is so good that most mechanics slowly found their way into the rest of the game. From the well paced and well developed lore tidbits to the addition of challenge motes (the only problem with them is not being repeatable really), every little detail on the Raids appear to be that much more carefully tailored than the rest of the game. It was only until LS3 and now LS4 that we got open world stuff that seemed polished, because Raids really blew HoT content out of the water before the reward/events overhauling.

With that said, this game is sadly not fit at all for raiding. It is NOT guild oriented, it's much more of a plug and play game where you simply get on with it accompanying whoever is online at the moment, be it a friend or not. There is ironically no official Guild vs Guild mode in a game entitled "Guild Wars" and even though guilds and alliances were the core of the first game's social activities. And without pushing for guilds and tight-knit communities, you end up with a heavy pug mentality. This would be fine (and it is, in Fractals), but the 10-player requirement, the overall sentiment of bitterness emanating from people who left other MMOs precisely because they focused on Raids, and also the immense disparity between this mode and the rest of PvE, cause it to be a very bad experience to anyone who doesn't commit to the intense logistics of guilds and actually planning the Raids. And I wouldn't blame anyone that says "I love raiding but I hate waiting", even though I'd say they gotta just deal with it.

To get into the point at last, Raids are practically the best they can be for this game, if it must have Raids to begin with. Whatever else Anet does is just going to bring in more drama involved with the "allocating more resources for Raids" part. It already takes a lot of work to create Raids in the current format (this one took what, 9 months? It's literally their baby, a beautiful one, but still), and Anet already puts it into a sufficiently unimportant place across their overall design plans (it ships "when it's ready" as opposite to Living World which is their main content and ships regularly). Development in LW episodes has been getting better and better anyway, and I think it will soon come to the point where you really won't be missing much from not playing Raids, other than key moments of coolness that are just not worth the hassle of logistics.

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@Lonami.2987 said:

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:I see raids sort of like SAB tribulation mode, as in "one wrong step" and you can start over. (Or multiple "wrong" steps rather)

I can see why not everyone is interested in the whole trial and error die startover playstyle.

That's a pretty bad comparison. SAB has baby, normal, and tribulation mode. Exactly what the thread is asking for raids.

A tribulation mode for raids would be awesome, but we'll never get it if we don't get baby mode too.

Thats because I'm not comparing the entirety of SAB and not even the entirety of tribulation mode and just one aspect of it.

I guess it's too hard to understand the way I put it.

I merely meant to say that within tribulation mode as well as within raids you need to have this attitude to learn through trial and error which things to do and which to avoid with a high amount of precision and memory.

Also, whether you can fulfil a small easy role or not, as a team you need to succeed within that, I'm not comparing the teamaspect or personal prowess and more the attitude needed as a whole team in general.

You wont like raids if you dont want to practice ... or learn alot through making those mistakes.

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There is nothing that's been said here that hasn't already been brought up and discussed dozens of times.

Let's just go with a quote from the Raid Dev on the current status:

@"Crystal Reid.2481" said:New forum, so I'll jump in with a new post on this.

We won't be adding a different difficulty tier at this time. Raids need to continue to remain the most challenging content in the game, and they aren't designed to be accessible by everyone from a skill perspective. Could they be more accessible from a "finding 9 other players to play with" side? Sure. That isn't always an easy problem to solve, and any solution would detract away from the team making more raid content. We'd love to get more content out to you guys faster really.

Their priorities are keeping raids the most challenging content in game, and wanting to deliver the content to us faster than it took this one.

That's literally all.

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I have to agree with the Raid advocates at this point. All that is going to be said, has been said as far as this goes. All voices have been made, and heard, and to those wanting scaling or difficulty tiers, the answer is " NO ", directly from Anet.

As such, you are only left with only a few options at this point:

  • Raid to get what you want
  • Accept you won't do the content / get the items, embrace that and keep playing anyway. (feel free to become jaded and never spend another cent on the game in protest, if that will make you feel better)
  • Move on, and find another game to play.

There is really no wrong choice, but this topic and the many others like are done.

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@Kapax.3801 said:Normal mode / challenge mode (current difficulty)

This I find very interesting tbh. I personally see that as: Raids already have two difficulty modes.

This makes the poll partially pointless.

Which is probably also why I said other, mostly because the game is lacking instanced bigger group content at a lower lvl.

What I think is mostly important to what is happening here is:In GW1 instanced group content was basically everywhere. GW2 is lacking that bigger party instanced group content that brings guilds together (easier). Open world doesn't make it feel like much of a guild or organized activity. Fractals are short and/but repetitive, dungeons are discontinued and don't play a huge role in endgame goals. Raids are a nice length, nice group size, have those endgame goals to shoot for, but their difficulty and style of difficulty is making it a fairly niche type of player.

So, I think, with asking for an easier raid mode, people really just want instanced group content with the length/groupsize/endgame goals of raids but not that difficulty.

I dont feel that raids need to make an easier mode to fulfil that, even if they could, but I do see a type of content that is missing there.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:I personally see that as: Raids already have two difficulty modes.

They would have two difficulty modes if the CM gave repeatable rewards. As they are now, it's one mode and the CM are a little extra.

Thats why I said personally... I cant always account for strange definitions other people might have.

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I do not think raids need several difficulty tiers. You do not have to be an outstanding player to complety raids. I would rate myself as a mediocre skilled player, yet I managed to earn almost 1000 LI already. If I can succeed at raids everyone else can also with a bit of determination.After learning the mechanics of an encounter for a few hours you usually have them on farm mode pretty fast.

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