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


Lonami.2987

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Raids have always ruined games. Just take a look at wow they are sub 6mil player base last time i checked. Due to wow's tragic raid obsession they have even less players then gw2 does.

Not only that raids are extremely boring fighting the same thing 1000x times and trying to find a group is a nightmare. Let alone the detestable player base raids have.

Currently I Refuse to do raids for the fact i cant solo them. Why solo? I simply don't want to put up with mindless children.

Point of fact: Ascended equipment is the same Legendary equipment but with per-determined stats, however they are far easier to obtain. So the 1 thing raid has that might attract people is useless!

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@GrizzlyTank.3145 said:Unfortunately when looking over at WoW, easy mode there "LFR" just result in exhausting players on the raid content. Now top it off with 3 more difficulties and once you actually reach mythic a lot of the joy is simply gone.Perhaps, but remember that without them most of those people would just not raid at all. And maybe, just maybe, a lot of them simply do not find the increased challenge to be fun.

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What I think we need to figure out is, is the lack of raiders due to difficulty of the content or the attitude and elitism of the current raiders? For example, do you need to have a team with full ascended gear and the perfect set up in order to clear the current raid content? I haven't done any of the raids in this game so far but just looking at the mechanics of the boss fights, none of them are as complex as your average WoW boss, and yet the WoW community isn't nearly as elitist as it Is here. Is the skill ceiling really as high as people make it out to be, or is this just an illusion put on by the raiders so that they don't have to play with "noobs"? If the experienced raiders are expecting entry level raiders to have a full set of ascended gear and the perfect build before even stepping into a raid, is it any wonder hardly anyone new gets In?

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It's definitely the difficulty that keeps people from taking part. You can't really view challenge and toxic behaviour separately because the attitude and elitism we associate with raiding are just natural, human responses to the 'risk' that the difficulty creates.

Players are almost always relaxed and friendly when content is more manageable.

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@Jahroots.6791 said:It's definitely the difficulty that keeps people from taking part. You can't really view challenge and toxic behaviour separately because the attitude and elitism we associate with raiding are just natural, human responses to the 'risk' that the difficulty creates.

Players are almost always relaxed and friendly when content is more manageable.

And yet other games I have done raids in have been (In my opinion) more complex than the gw2 raids and yet don't have the same elitist attitudes with them. Now I know that complex doesn't necessarily mean hard, but if the gw2 bosses are less complex, what makes them so hard? I'm reading through the boss abilities and they all seem very simple to me.

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In theory I am for multiple difficulties. I find it unfortunate that more people don't raid and I feel like the in-game tools to aid people in learning raids is subpar. However if we want to get more than one raid every 2 years, it would extract concessions from other types of PvE content as the raid team is not large enough to handle 3 difficulties (let alone CM on top of that). Would people be willing to wait 6 months inbetween each living world release and even more time for new fractal releases?

I am not too sure.

Guild Wars 2 is intentionally setup with segregation in mind. The endgame is a variety of different mini game modes which allows people to focus on their preferred type of mode, or allow people to mix and match at will. I don't think it's fair to raider focused players to have their favourite content schedule slowed down because Arenanet wants to outreach to people who lack the initiative to make use of the significant community efforts to teach newer players raids. Even speedrun guilds like Snow Crows will tell you where you can go for quality raid training if you are new and want to learn.

On the other hand, it would be even more unfair if the release schedules for everything else were to be slowed if the raid team had to pull additional dev resources from other teams in order to keep up.

What I would like to see is more open world bosses have similar mechanics to raids. We have the Unbound Guardian in Bloodstone Fen and while I wouldn't like 1-1 replicas of raid bosses in open world, having some mechanics be similar can give better context in training and make raid mechanics more relatable.

I also wouldn't mind significant updates to the training golem (I know we just got one) to allow people to practice some mechanics from raid bosses. So stuff like blue circles at VG, poison drop at Slothasor, egg aoe at Gorseval, timed bomb at Sabetha, etc. Stuff where people can learn to practice elements of a raid without being spoiled on the raid before they try it.

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No for easy mode raids from my side.

I did never want raids in the first place, but now they are here and I have to accept that. Contrary to other game modes you could consider challenging, raids are an all in business. Either you score a total victory or you get nothing. And yes, you can compare wvw and pvp in difficulty to raids because you can also buy/trade your way through raids and you need awareness to be good in it.

To avoid the uproar this causes Anet could simply let exclusive, noncosmetic stuff out of raids or generally only one game mode and put it into all game modes from the get go. But that seems to not be easy because Anet always sees the need to supplement raids so they let this particular theme dangle along for years.

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@"Wandering Mist.2973" said:What I think we need to figure out is, is the lack of raiders due to difficulty of the content or the attitude and elitism of the current raiders? For example, do you need to have a team with full ascended gear and the perfect set up in order to clear the current raid content? I haven't done any of the raids in this game so far but just looking at the mechanics of the boss fights, none of them are as complex as your average WoW boss, and yet the WoW community isn't nearly as elitist as it Is here. Is the skill ceiling really as high as people make it out to be, or is this just an illusion put on by the raiders so that they don't have to play with "noobs"? If the experienced raiders are expecting entry level raiders to have a full set of ascended gear and the perfect build before even stepping into a raid, is it any wonder hardly anyone new gets In?Raids in GW2 are not difficult and you definitely do not need full ascended to be able to do them. The "elitism" thing, which really is more pronounced in GW2 than in other MMOs, has two aspects. First, parts of the community have ridiculous expectations and requirements, but that's an old phenomenon not related to raids. Anyone still remember the "10k+ AP" requirements for vanilla dungeons?

Second, and that's possibly more important, it feels like large parts of the GW2 community are atrociously bad. The kind of pugs you regularly encounter in T4 fractals (in theory, the second-hardest PvE content) just makes you cringe if you run Arc and know halfway how to play a class. That isn't that difficult, by the way, since most normal players should get acceptable results (i.e. 70%+ of the benchmark) after practicing an hour or so at the golem unless they're hell-bent on playing a piano class like condi engi. Is spending an hour or so of preparation too much to ask for the most difficult content in the game? Sure, it won't translate directly into perfect gameplay in the real encounter, but too many people lack even these basics.

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@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@"Wandering Mist.2973" said:What I think we need to figure out is, is the lack of raiders due to difficulty of the content or the attitude and elitism of the current raiders? For example, do you need to have a team with full ascended gear and the perfect set up in order to clear the current raid content? I haven't done any of the raids in this game so far but just looking at the mechanics of the boss fights, none of them are as complex as your average WoW boss, and yet the WoW community isn't nearly as elitist as it Is here. Is the skill ceiling really as high as people make it out to be, or is this just an illusion put on by the raiders so that they don't have to play with "noobs"? If the experienced raiders are expecting entry level raiders to have a full set of ascended gear and the perfect build before even stepping into a raid, is it any wonder hardly anyone new gets In?Raids in GW2 are not difficult and you definitely do not need full ascended to be able to do them. The "elitism" thing, which really is more pronounced in GW2 than in other MMOs, has two aspects. First, parts of the community have ridiculous expectations and requirements, but that's an old phenomenon not related to raids. Anyone still remember the "10k+ AP" requirements for vanilla dungeons?

Second, and that's possibly more important, it feels like large parts of the GW2 community are atrociously bad. The kind of pugs you regularly encounter in T4 fractals (in theory, the second-hardest PvE content) just makes you cringe if you run Arc and know halfway how to play a class. That isn't that difficult, by the way, since most normal players should get acceptable results (i.e. 70%+ of the benchmark) after practicing an hour or so at the golem unless they're hell-bent on playing a piano class like condi engi. Is spending an hour or so of preparation too much to ask for the most difficult content in the game? Sure, it won't translate directly into perfect gameplay in the real encounter, but too many people lack even these basics.

Maybe that's a problem with the leveling process not preparing players for end-game content than the end-game content itself. I hit level 80 on 2 characters and went into my first fractals without even knowing anything about defiance bars and combo abilities, which are 2 of the core mechanics required for completing T4 fractals. I only learned those aspects of gameplay purely from researching them myself outside of the game. I can definitely see how a lot of people would get into T4 fractals not knowing that sort of thing. It might be worth trying to add these sorts of mechanics into the core leveling experience through the personal story to better prepare players for the end-game content. We should also look at the number of people who level characters through PvP and then transition into fractals at level 80. In my opinion this shouldn't be possible because the mechanics and skill requirements for the 2 modes are vastly different. I'd much prefer the system they had in GW1 where you could make a max level PvP only character that was completely separate from any aspect of PvE.

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@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@Jahroots.6791 said:It's definitely the difficulty that keeps people from taking part. You can't really view challenge and toxic behaviour separately because the attitude and elitism we associate with raiding are just natural, human responses to the 'risk' that the difficulty creates.

Players are almost always relaxed and friendly when content is more manageable.

And yet other games I have done raids in have been (In my opinion) more complex than the gw2 raids and yet don't have the same elitist attitudes with them. Now I know that complex doesn't necessarily mean hard, but if the gw2 bosses are less complex, what makes them so hard? I'm reading through the boss abilities and they all seem very simple to me.

This I gotta hear, what game have you played where the raiding community was not slathered with elitism?

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@maddoctor.2738 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:Second, and that's possibly more important, it feels like large parts of the GW2 community are atrociously bad.

The big question then becomes, how to "train" the players to be better at the gameCertainly not by raid easymodes, since you learn exactly nothing from doing them.! Yes, I know you wouldn't ask for that nonsense.

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@STIHL.2489 said:

@Jahroots.6791 said:It's definitely the difficulty that keeps people from taking part. You can't really view challenge and toxic behaviour separately because the attitude and elitism we associate with raiding are just natural, human responses to the 'risk' that the difficulty creates.

Players are almost always relaxed and friendly when content is more manageable.

And yet other games I have done raids in have been (In my opinion) more complex than the gw2 raids and yet don't have the same elitist attitudes with them. Now I know that complex doesn't necessarily mean hard, but if the gw2 bosses are less complex, what makes them so hard? I'm reading through the boss abilities and they all seem very simple to me.

This I gotta hear, what game have you played where the raiding community was not slathered with elitism?

WoW and FF14 are the 2 games where I've raided the most, and neither of them were as elitist as GW2 (in my experience anyway).

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@Wandering Mist.2973 said:

@Jahroots.6791 said:It's definitely the difficulty that keeps people from taking part. You can't really view challenge and toxic behaviour separately because the attitude and elitism we associate with raiding are just natural, human responses to the 'risk' that the difficulty creates.

Players are almost always relaxed and friendly when content is more manageable.

And yet other games I have done raids in have been (In my opinion) more complex than the gw2 raids and yet don't have the same elitist attitudes with them. Now I know that complex doesn't necessarily mean hard, but if the gw2 bosses are less complex, what makes them so hard? I'm reading through the boss abilities and they all seem very simple to me.In GW2 there's no pre-filtering present in game that prevents you from even participating. No attunements, no required "must be this high to participate" gearchecks etc. This usually mean that most of people trying raids in other games already have the "correct" attitude and mindset - and those whose skills are not up to the task are usually also discouraged before this point. Additionally, mechanics of many bosses put different roles on players - some of them are harder, but others can be really easy. On top of that, GW2 is a highly casual game, where the ratio of casuals to hardcores is likely higher than in other game communities

All that means that among people trying to raid there may be many that in other games wouldn't even have made it to the entrance. In fact, there are a lot of people like that even among the "pro elitists". Seriously, i have seen quite a number of people in elite armor, with stacks of LI and tons of KPs that didn't know many of the boss mechanics, because they've always been doing the dps only and left everything harder to others.

So, even if the complexity of raids is indeed much lower than in some other games, the average skill, commitment and overall experience of average raider is probably lower.

It doesn't mean that other games are less elitist. It just means you have less chance of seeing it. When you do see it, though... oh boy, it can be much, much nastier than in GW2. I have seen toxic behaviour in other games that was tolerated (or even considered to be "justified") that would get someone at least suspended here.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:Second, and that's possibly more important, it feels like large parts of the GW2 community are atrociously bad.

The big question then becomes, how to "train" the players to be better at the gameThat's a big question indeed. I haven't seen this done well like ever. The only thing all those "attempts to train people" accomplish is to filter less skilled players out.

Besides, that's a wrong question to ask. The real question should always be "how to keep players in the game longer". Attempting to trainin them to be better at the game rarely accomplishes that - quite often it does the opposite (by discouraging them).

Becoming "better at the game" has no inherent worth. It's just a thing some people like to do.

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@Sykper.6583 said: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.

Someone should send this to the fractal team then, there’s fractals that are much harder than some raid content :tongue:

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Jahroots.6791 said:It's definitely the difficulty that keeps people from taking part. You can't really view challenge and toxic behaviour separately because the attitude and elitism we associate with raiding are just natural, human responses to the 'risk' that the difficulty creates.

Players are almost always relaxed and friendly when content is more manageable.

And yet other games I have done raids in have been (In my opinion) more complex than the gw2 raids and yet don't have the same elitist attitudes with them. Now I know that complex doesn't necessarily mean hard, but if the gw2 bosses are less complex, what makes them so hard? I'm reading through the boss abilities and they all seem very simple to me.In GW2 there's no pre-filtering present in game that prevents you from even participating. No attunements, no required "must be this high to participate" gearchecks etc. This usually mean that most of people trying raids in other games already have the "correct" attitude and mindset - and those whose skills are not up to the task are usually also discouraged before this point. Additionally, mechanics of many bosses put different roles on players - some of them are harder, but others can be really easy. On top of that, GW2 is a highly casual game, where the ratio of casuals to hardcores is likely higher than in other game communities

All that means that among people trying to raid there may be many that in other games wouldn't even have made it to the entrance. In fact, there are a lot of people like that even among the "pro elitists". Seriously, i have seen quite a number of people in elite armor, with stacks of LI and tons of KPs that didn't know many of the boss mechanics, because they've always been doing the dps only and left everything harder to others.

So, even if the complexity of raids is indeed much lower than in some other games, the average skill, commitment and overall experience of average raider is probably lower.

It doesn't mean that other games are less elitist. It just means you have less chance of seeing it. When you do see it, though... oh boy, it can be much, much nastier than in GW2. I have seen toxic behaviour in other games that was tolerated (or even considered to be "justified") that would get someone at least suspended here.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:Second, and that's possibly more important, it feels like large parts of the GW2 community are atrociously bad.

The big question then becomes, how to "train" the players to be better at the gameThat's a big question indeed. I haven't seen this done well like ever. The only thing all those "attempts to train people" accomplish is to filter less skilled players out.

Besides, that's a wrong question to ask. The real question should always be "how to keep players in the game longer". Attempting to trainin them to be better at the game rarely accomplishes that - quite often it does the opposite (by discouraging them).

Becoming "better at the game" has no inherent worth. It's just a thing
some
people like to do.

A lot of the time you just need to make people aware of the mechanics. Like I said before I hit level 80 on 2 characters and never even knew that combo skills and breaking bars existed, because during the leveling process I had never had to use those mechanics. FF14 had the right idea when it came to training new players, with their "Hall of the Novice" section. These were training scenarios designed to teach you specific aspects of the game depending on the role you had chosen. So for example if you were a dps player you learned how to avoid aoe attacks and how to quickly switch targets in the middle of a fight. If you were a tank you learned how to maneuver a target into certain positions, and engage new enemies as they approached. Things like this may seem very simple but to a new player they can completely open your eyes to various aspects of group combat.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

The big question then becomes, how to "train" the players to be better at the gameThat's a big question indeed. I haven't seen this done well like ever. The only thing all those "attempts to train people" accomplish is to filter less skilled players out.

Besides, that's a wrong question to ask. The real question should always be "how to keep players in the game longer". Attempting to trainin them to be better at the game rarely accomplishes that - quite often it does the opposite (by discouraging them).

Becoming "better at the game" has no inherent worth. It's just a thing
some
people like to do.

I wasn't talking about Raids only. It's no secret that large parts of this community are terrible at playing the game. And it shows everywhere, open world bosses, story instances, dungeons, low tier fractals, everywhere. A large part about the exclusiveness experienced in Raids is due to this. In other games a "gear score" or the level (since they go up with expansions) is an indicator that a player progressed the game and has at least some form of experience. In Guild Wars 2 we have achievement points that rarely prove skill and mastery points that also rarely prove skill. There is no easy way to differentiate those who are good at playing the game from those who are bad at it, so players resort to their own ways, KP, LI and so on.

Attempting to train players in Raids might indeed discourage some players. Attempting to train players in the actual mechanics of the game won't.But that cannot happen as long as some brain dead activities that involve exploiting the game (multi loots for example) give the best rewards while the player's don't even have to play the game.

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@maddoctor.2738 said:Attempting to train players in Raids might indeed discourage some players. Attempting to train players in the actual mechanics of the game won't.HoT was such an attempt. They upped the overall open world difficulty in those areas partly because they wanted players to "up their game". It didn't work all that well. Some players did indeed learn and became more skilled (at least a bit) - but they were the ones that would have learned eventually anyway. Others however just decided that they dislike the new direction the game went, and this negatively impacted their enjoyment. Especially their enjoyment of the new content. I know a number of people that simply stopped playing the game at that point, for that exact reason.

As i have said before - for many players "getting better" is not something that holds any value to them. What's worse, for quite a number of them, the actual process of getting better is not enjoyable. If you'll try to train them, not only often you won't succeed, but even if you do there will be no gain here. They won't like the game more - quite the opposite, they may end up liking it less.

So, why exactly should the game train people to be better at it?

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I voted yes, because why lock raids into unique and special bosses and lore? We non-raiders miss so much lore and other cool stuff inside of the raids who are not these ''elite pro skilled only gud gears or you're out!!11111!!!''.

Why not make all players happy? The elites get their hardcore and normal players can also get to play raids on an easy level to enjoy story and the instances. What's the loss of this? It's a win-win imo and a happier playerbase.Make easy mode, please ANet! :confused:

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GW2 has a story that is directly tied to raids ( see the bloodstone fen story regarding the squad leader bennet) So having raids not accessible to the average player ( as In, not completable ) means that the story drops and restarts missing a chunk that our character "knows" about, but we do not.

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