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

[Brynioch.1873]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"Miellyn.6847" said:And most will still don't do raids without an automated grouping feature.

I don't see what the need would be for an auto-grouping feature if you can just open the LFG and grab the first nine people you see. What is the difference?

So it devolves into open world. The easy mode gets easier over time it seems.

No they are not. Balancing instanced content around such players makes it easier than open world.

Again, that is a complex question to answer, because the "difficulty" of open world is so random due to the higher number of variables.

Would we be talking "easier means that it has a higher chance of succeeding/lower chance of failing," or "easier means that the individual tasks needed to succeed are fewer and/or easier for each individual player to successfully complete?"

I don't think that "player who does not engage the mechanics at all, or does so half-heartedly" should really factor into "difficulty" calculations, it should be about how the content is

meant

to play out when players are actively

trying.

I said it before. You can choose who you play with in instances not in open world. That is part of the difficulty in open world. So instanced content with the same balancing is inherently easier than open world.

[Ohoni.6057]

@"Miellyn.6847" said:So it devolves into open world. The easy mode gets easier over time it seems.

How is what I suggested any different than the current LFG for dungeons, low tier Fractals, or any other form of instanced content? You can complete any of them with whichever randos show up.

I said it before. You can choose who you play with in instances not in open world. That is part of the difficulty in open world. So instanced content with the same balancing is inherently easier than open world.

I don't know how it would be possible to quantify any of that though. I prefer to judge them as "systems," "what does the event require you to do?" How difficult is it to avoid the attacks the enemy makes, how likely are they to do serious harm, how difficult is it to successfully damage the enemy, etc. "who might show up" is just too chaotic to worry about in terms of design discussions, and it's steering the discussion more into semantics, rather than productive.

[Brynioch.1873]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"Miellyn.6847" said:So it devolves into open world. The easy mode gets easier over time it seems.

How is what I suggested any different than the current LFG for dungeons, low tier Fractals, or any other form of instanced content? You can complete any of them with whichever randos show up.

I said it before. You can choose who you play with in instances not in open world. That is part of the difficulty in open world. So instanced content with the same balancing is inherently easier than open world.

I don't know how it would be possible to quantify any of that though. I prefer to judge them as "systems," "what does the event require you to do?" How difficult is it to avoid the attacks the enemy makes, how likely are they to do serious harm, how difficult is it to successfully damage the enemy, etc. "who might show up" is just too chaotic to worry about in terms of design discussions, and it's steering the discussion more into semantics, rather than productive.

'Who might show up' is actually an extremly important question, if not the most important question, for balancing content where you have to form a group prior entering it.

[Ohoni.6057]

@"Miellyn.6847" said:'Who might show up' is actually an extremly important question, if not the most important question, for balancing content where you have to form a group prior entering it.

And the answer to that would be "the same sorts of randos who show up to all the other instanced content LFGs."

[Brynioch.1873]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"Miellyn.6847" said:'Who might show up' is actually an extremly important question, if not the most important question, for balancing content where you have to form a group prior entering it.

And the answer to that would be "the same sorts of randos who show up to all the other instanced content LFGs."

Yeah and that are mostly not your rare/exotic guys with random stats and builds which you want a balancing for.

[Feanor.2358]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"Miellyn.6847" said:And most will still don't do raids without an automated grouping feature.

I don't see what the need would be for an auto-grouping feature if you can just open the LFG and grab the first nine people you see. What is the difference?

No they are not. Balancing instanced content around such players makes it easier than open world.

Again, that is a complex question to answer, because the "difficulty" of open world is so random due to the higher number of variables.

Would we be talking "easier means that it has a higher chance of succeeding/lower chance of failing," or "easier means that the individual tasks needed to succeed are fewer and/or easier for each individual player to successfully complete?"

I don't think that "player who does not engage the mechanics at all, or does so half-heartedly" should really factor into "difficulty" calculations, it should be about how the content is

meant

to play out when players are actively

trying.

You're just replacing one subjectivity with another. How do you tell if a player is actively trying or not, aside from judging how they handle fight mechanics? You measure how hard they press the '1' key on their keyboards maybe?

[Ohoni.6057]

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:'Who might show up' is actually an extremly important question, if not the most important question, for balancing content where you have to form a group prior entering it.

And the answer to that would be "the same sorts of randos who show up to all the other instanced content LFGs."

Yeah and that are mostly not your rare/exotic guys with random stats and builds which you want a balancing for.

That hasn't been my experience with LFG randos.

You're just replacing one subjectivity with another. How do you tell if a player is actively trying or not, aside from judging how they handle fight mechanics? You measure how hard they press the '1' key on their keyboards maybe?

There are certain basic gameplay expectations to be made. If they're only spamming 1, and their class is not one in which this actually is the best way to play it, then they're probably doing something wrong. There's a wide gulf, however, between that, and needing to nail very specific combinations of attacks to maximize DPS. Basic expectations are somewhere inside that gap. There's a basic expectation that they will not stand in place, unless standing in place is safe to do. There's a basic expectation that they will follow the general guidelines established by the majority of content in the game, and there's a wide gulf between that, and expecting them to know every phase of a specific boss fight by heart, and what patterns to run around the field without visual prompts. Basic expectations fall inside that gulf.

I'm not intending an easy mode that could be beaten by any random people you pulled in off the street and set in front of a keyboard, but I do expect an easy mode that could be beaten by ten people of whom the majority of them have had plenty of general GW2 experience with open world, story, and low tier instanced content, know basically how to play the game, and ideally one or two of them have read a FAQ and can offer a basic strategy in chat if anyone else is completely clueless. Players of that sort should not require multiple training runs to burn the mechanics into their neurons, just having a vague idea of what's going on should be plenty for them to figure it out as they go. When they screw up a mechanic, they should be able to tell that, and figure out how to do better the next time the mechanic comes up, without that initial failure wiping the entire party and forcing a restart.

On a difficulty scale of 1-10 (within the range of GW2, so forget outside games), if 1 is "gerbil on a keyboard," and 10 is "one of those guys who can complete raids with the smallest, weakest possible teams in minimal time," if a 2 is "can't complete LW chapters solo," and an 8 is "can clear raids currently without being carried or taking the "easy" roles," if a 4 is "can't carry his own weight through CoF" and 6 is "can handle mid to high tier Fractals, but maybe not the topmost ones," I'm aiming around an average of 5s. I expect some players to be 6 and 7s, some to be lower and need to be carried a bit, but for the content to be forgiving enough to allow for that. I believe that this is a reasonable expectation for GW2 open LFGs.

[sigur.9453]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"Miellyn.6847" said:

On a difficulty scale of 1-10 (within the range of GW2, so forget outside games), if 1 is "gerbil on a keyboard," and 10 is "one of those guys who can complete raids with the smallest, weakest possible teams in minimal time," if a 2 is "can't complete LW chapters solo," and an 8 is "can clear raids currently without being carried or taking the "easy" roles," if a 4 is "can't carry his own weight through CoF" and 6 is "can handle mid to high tier Fractals, but maybe not the topmost ones," I'm aiming around an average of 5s. I expect some players to be 6 and 7s, some to be lower and need to be carried a bit, but for the content to be forgiving enough to allow for that. I believe that this is a reasonable expectation for GW2 open LFGs.

The Content IS already forgiving enough that "7´s" can carry 2-3 "<5´s".For most bosses you need 3-4 people to know whats going on, and the rest "paticipates" and tries not to die. The question is IF those players are WILLING to carry those others.Which can be communicated. But there is the MAIN "problem" raids have. People want to hop in, and get the loot, since the whole other pve content works like that.But since its group content (oh my god 9 other individuals with different expectations and needs) you actually have to communicate with each other, or at least read the lfg.There are so many grps in lfg with no requirements, with terrible terrible dps and mechanic execution, but they still get the job done. Im sorry to say, but he next lower step would be an interactive cutscene.

[Ohoni.6057]

@"sigur.9453" said:The Content IS already forgiving enough that "7´s" can carry 2-3 "<5´s".

I either don't believe that is true, OR we aren't using the same scale, OR that group with 7s in it would not allow any <5's into it (unless they paid first).

If nothing else, easy mode would be balanced with the expectation of a high number of <5's, and therefore any 7s that showed up would know what to expect. By my scale, a group of entirely 7s would have a hard time soloing the harder encounters, particularly on their first tries. By the scale I'm using here, a "balanced raid group" would be mostly 8s, with maybe a 9 or two, and maybe a few 6s and 7s. A "raid seller" group that intends to full-on carry 1-2 players (again, for the harder encounters) would be more in the all 8's with maybe a solid number of 9s or 10s.

For most bosses you need 3-4 people to know whats going on, and the rest "paticipates" and tries not to die. The question is IF those players are WILLING to carry those others.

And in easy mode, a few of those players could drop the ball more often, so the "carried" players would be much less of a burden on the rest of the team. They;'d be easier to keep alive, and contribute a higher percentage of the damage than in a regular raid.

Now would you have "elitist" groups in easy mode? Groups that insist on higher than necessary levels of skill and experience? Sure, that happens, human nature, just as during the heights of dungeons you'd have those "Zerk Warriors only" teams on LFG, but those wouldn't be the only teams available, nor the only teams to succeed. It would be faster to just take on a few "2-4" players and beat the encounter anyway than it would be to sit around waiting for more 7s to show up.

There are so many grps in lfg with no requirements, with terrible terrible dps and mechanic execution, but they still get the job done. Im sorry to say, but he next lower step would be an interactive cutscene.

Hyperbole adds nothing to the discussion.

[nia.4725]

While I don’t agree with the need of a raid babymode, therefore I’m going to leave the discussion about how that babymode should be to those who believe in it, I do believe that current raids have some issues that make difficult for new potential raiders to start raiding. So, instead of commenting useless things, I’m going to try to do something productive and give a couple of ideas on how to improve raids without actually changing them.

ISSUES WITH CURRENT RAIDS AND HOW TO (MAYBE?) FIX THEM

Accessibility

Number 1 issue with raids, without a doubt, is how difficult it is to start raiding. Why? New raiders face these problems, and I have, too, faced them when I started raiding:

• They don’t know where to start, nor they know where to find the information they need to know in order to be able to start.

• A lot of people come to me saying “I want to raid, but I don’t know anything. What do I need to do? Where do I find information? How do I start?”

This makes experienced raiders the ones who have to provide that information. And while I don’t have any problem with us helping new raiders (I actually love it), there’s a problem with this: not every player has access to it. Not everyone knows raiders, some people find difficult to ask in map chat and, let’s speak the truth, asking in map chat isn’t a good option nor it should be the only option out there. At the same time, not everyone is able to just look for a raiding guild, some people are so clueless that they don’t even know that raiding guilds exist. These are my ideas on how to improve this:

Create NPCs in the aerodrome that provide that information.Let’s say, an NPC that will tell you “hah, so you’re new to raids? That’s so cool! Maybe I can help you get started”. And this NPC provides some basic information, like:

• What are raids
• What’s needed in order to raid (per example, some talking about the need to have a coherent build, without the dialogue being affected by community created things like meta builds; just something like “you will need your best tools!”)
• Where can they practice (info about the location of the training golem and what it offers)
• How to actually get started.

This could be a different NPC next to the first one, since this kind of info is kinda long and more advanced than the other one.

Here we would have info about how the raid LFG works: you can create your own squad and you don’t need a commander tag to do it, you can join an already created group, some groups are training, some groups ask for experience, blabla. What are LI and what are boss tokens.

Inexperience tied to real raid encounters being the only source of practice available

The only way for a noobie to get practice is to go to the boss. The problem here, though, is that there aren’t a lof of practice groups in the LFG. Players are left with 2 options: creating their own practice group (something difficult because they are the ones who need practice, so they maybe don’t even know what they need to ask for in LFG, they don’t need where to place markers in the arena and even less they know how to lead the group, etc), or joining an already created training group.

In the end what we have is unexperienced raiders who join experienced groups and end up having bad raiding experiences, since everyone else expect them to perform at a certain level. This creates frustrated experienced raiders who don’t want noobies in their groups and ask for more and more LI in their LFGs, and frustrated noob raiders who might give up. How can we solve or improve this?

Providing more tools to practice

• Something like “practice instances” where you can open the boss as it really is, the only difference being that it’s a practice instance so you won’t get any rewards if you kill the boss. You can practice as much as you want there, away from expectations. But this would still have some issues –things like needing practice at Dhuum orbs, so you would be forced to do everything else in order to reach the point where the orb mechanic starts.
• Improving the special forces training area so the golem is able to spawn a certain boss mechanic. Let’s say, I want to practice VG’s blue circles so I configure the golem to spawn VG’s blue circles. I want to practice Dhuum orbs so I configure the golem to behave like Dhuum and spawn orbs that I can collect.

Note that I know that these two last ideas are probably too time consuming and very difficult to implement, so they probably aren’t doable. But I had to write them down anyway.

• Create community raiding events that will help noob raiders and expand the raiding community while giving noob raiders a chance to learn and improve in a safe and meant to train environment.Something like “raid training weekend” where some experienced raiders will tag up and, for some time, do raid trainings for new people. That weekend, all raid encounters could get double exp and magnetite rewards.

• Making raid mechanics more usual in open world PvE so that new raiders don't find them so hard and new. This would lessen the gap between open world mechanics and raid mechanics. What I mean with this is giving open world bosses some raid mechanics, like that "brother" of VG in Bloodstone Fen who spawns VG's circles. Something like an open world PvE boss that spawns circles that teleport; another one that spawns shards like the ones from Cairn; another one that does the Deimos pizza attack... This way new raiders would be more used to raid mechanics and would find them less difficult and weird.

OTHER THINGS THAT COULD IMPROVE RAIDS

• Sharing raid tutorials and guides and all useful information about raid bosses in GW2 social networks
• Improving the LFG tool by giving some more options, like a dropdown menu in the place LFG tool that lets us say crearly if the group is training, kill or training then kill

[sigur.9453]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"sigur.9453" said:The Content IS already forgiving enough that "7´s" can carry 2-3 "<5´s".

I either don't believe that is true, OR we aren't using the same scale, OR that group with 7s in it would not allow any <5's into it (unless they paid first).

Since its a made up scale, who knows. But i have been in grp´s with huge "skill gaps" between each individual player where nobody was payed (to my knowledge) or cared about the dps.

If nothing else, easy mode would be balanced with the

expectation

of a high number of <5's, and therefore any 7s that showed up would know what to expect. By my scale, a group of entirely 7s would have a hard time soloing the harder encounters, particularly on their first tries. By the scale I'm using here, a "balanced raid group" would be mostly 8s, with maybe a 9 or two, and maybe a few 6s and 7s. A "raid seller" group that intends to full-on carry 1-2 players (again, for the harder encounters) would be more in the all 8's with maybe a solid number of 9s or 10s.

Every "7" already knows what to expect when joining a grp, if she/he is able to read the lfg correctly or the commander is able to state the lfg correctly.And while i am not in a raid seller guild, and we are a mixed bunch of 5-9s we are still able to carry 1 or 2 people who havent raided before trough most of the encounters, so i have to say your assumtions on this matter are incorrect.

For most bosses you need 3-4 people to know whats going on, and the rest "paticipates" and tries not to die. The question is IF those players are WILLING to carry those others.

And in easy mode, a few of those players could drop the ball more often, so the "carried" players would be much less of a burden on the rest of the team. They;'d be easier to keep alive, and contribute a higher percentage of the damage than in a regular raid.

So you mean easy mode would be better for the experienced players?Now would you have "elitist" groups in easy mode? Groups that insist on higher than necessary levels of skill and experience? Sure, that happens, human nature, just as during the heights of dungeons you'd have those "Zerk Warriors only" teams on LFG, but those wouldn't be the

only

teams available, nor the

only

teams to succeed. It would be faster to just take on a few "2-4" players and beat the encounter anyway than it would be to sit around waiting for more 7s to show up.

Probaply, but then again, those groups already exist.Will it be a 100% kill on the first try? Maybe not.It also happens a lot that you take "whatever comes" in your grp when the group isn´t filling fast, or "lowman" it even without a problem (and im speaking of your average raid group full of 5-7´s, not those godlike dps monster groups)

There are so many grps in lfg with no requirements, with terrible terrible dps and mechanic execution, but they still get the job done. Im sorry to say, but he next lower step would be an interactive cutscene.

Hyperbole adds nothing to the discussion.While i will consider your adivse, it also adds nothing.Especially when you ignore the other part of my writing.

[Ohoni.6057]

@"sigur.9453" said:So you mean easy mode would be better for the experienced players?

In a sense, it could be. If they were forming a random pug, the pug would be less likely to fail due to too many "duds" in the group. On the flipside, you would expect less loot per win, so if you could join a group likely to succeed at hard mode, you'd probably be better off doing so. It depends on whether you prefer something casual and relatively likely to succeed, or something a bit higher stakes.

It also happens a lot that you take "whatever comes" in your grp when the group isn´t filling fast, or "lowman" it even without a problem (and im speaking of your average raid group full of 5-7´s, not those godlike dps monster groups)

Perhaps, but if you are one of those weaker players it can be harder to stumble onto a group that's already at that point. Better to join a group where you would be in the middle of the pack than hope for one where you're a charity case.

[sigur.9453]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"sigur.9453" said:So you mean easy mode would be better for the experienced players?

In a sense, it could be. If they were forming a random pug, the pug would be less likely to fail due to too many "duds" in the group. On the flipside, you would expect less loot per win, so if you

could

join a group likely to succeed at hard mode, you'd probably be better off doing so. It depends on whether you prefer something casual and relatively likely to succeed, or something a bit higher stakes.

Why would the expierenced player do so though? Since,well he IS expierenced enough to join expierienced groups, which most likely beat the NORMAL mode anyway.You wouldn´t lose much time on a failed attempt either.

It also happens a lot that you take "whatever comes" in your grp when the group isn´t filling fast, or "lowman" it even without a problem (and im speaking of your average raid group full of 5-7´s, not those godlike dps monster groups)

Perhaps, but if you are one of those weaker players it can be harder to stumble onto a group that's already at that point. Better to join a group where you would be in the middle of the pack than hope for one where you're a charity case.

Perhaps, perhaps not?Or join a group where you are "in the middle of the pack". But yeah, there would n´t be your 100% success quaranty in it. Which again is different for each induvidial.I remember when bringing VG to his next phase was a HUGE success. But i get it, only (virtual) vallue counts today.

[Ohoni.6057]

@sigur.9453 said:Why would the expierenced player do so though? Since,well he IS expierenced enough to join expierienced groups, which most likely beat the NORMAL mode anyway.You wouldn´t lose much time on a failed attempt either.

Exactly.

[sigur.9453]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@sigur.9453 said:Why would the expierenced player do so though? Since,well he IS expierenced enough to join expierienced groups, which most likely beat the NORMAL mode anyway.You wouldn´t lose much time on a failed attempt either.

Exactly.

What now?

Edit: i think something was lost in translation. i meant, if said exp player would have a failed attemt in normal mode, he would lose so much time anyway (im not a nativ english speaker, pardon me that)

[Turin.6921]

@"nia.4725" said:While I don’t agree with the need of a raid babymode, therefore I’m going to leave the discussion about how that babymode should be to those who believe in it, I do believe that current raids have some issues that make difficult for new potential raiders to start raiding. So, instead of commenting useless things, I’m going to try to do something productive and give a couple of ideas on how to improve raids without actually changing them.

ISSUES WITH CURRENT RAIDS AND HOW TO (MAYBE?) FIX THEM

Accessibility

Number 1 issue with raids, without a doubt, is how difficult it is to start raiding. Why? New raiders face these problems, and I have, too, faced them when I started raiding:

• They don’t know where to start, nor they know where to find the information they need to know in order to be able to start.

• A lot of people come to me saying “I want to raid, but I don’t know anything. What do I need to do? Where do I find information? How do I start?”

This makes experienced raiders the ones who have to provide that information. And while I don’t have any problem with us helping new raiders (I actually love it), there’s a problem with this: not every player has access to it. Not everyone knows raiders, some people find difficult to ask in map chat and, let’s speak the truth, asking in map chat isn’t a good option nor it should be the only option out there. At the same time, not everyone is able to just look for a raiding guild, some people are so clueless that they don’t even know that raiding guilds exist. These are my ideas on how to improve this:

Create NPCs in the aerodrome that provide that information.Let’s say, an NPC that will tell you “hah, so you’re new to raids? That’s so cool! Maybe I can help you get started”. And this NPC provides some basic information, like:

• What are raids
• What’s needed in order to raid (per example, some talking about the need to have a coherent build, without the dialogue being affected by community created things like meta builds; just something like “you will need your best tools!”)
• Where can they practice (info about the location of the training golem and what it offers)
• How to actually get started.

This could be a different NPC next to the first one, since this kind of info is kinda long and more advanced than the other one.

Here we would have info about how the raid LFG works: you can create your own squad and you don’t need a commander tag to do it, you can join an already created group, some groups are training, some groups ask for experience, blabla. What are LI and what are boss tokens.

Inexperience tied to real raid encounters being the only source of practice available

The only way for a noobie to get practice is to go to the boss. The problem here, though, is that there aren’t a lof of practice groups in the LFG. Players are left with 2 options: creating their own practice group (something difficult because they are the ones who need practice, so they maybe don’t even know what they need to ask for in LFG, they don’t need where to place markers in the arena and even less they know how to lead the group, etc), or joining an already created training group.

In the end what we have is unexperienced raiders who join experienced groups and end up having bad raiding experiences, since everyone else expect them to perform at a certain level. This creates frustrated experienced raiders who don’t want noobies in their groups and ask for more and more LI in their LFGs, and frustrated noob raiders who might give up. How can we solve or improve this?

Providing more tools to practice

• Something like “practice instances” where you can open the boss as it really is, the only difference being that it’s a practice instance so you won’t get any rewards if you kill the boss. You can practice as much as you want there, away from expectations. But this would still have some issues –things like needing practice at Dhuum orbs, so you would be forced to do everything else in order to reach the point where the orb mechanic starts.
• Improving the special forces training area so the golem is able to spawn a certain boss mechanic. Let’s say, I want to practice VG’s blue circles so I configure the golem to spawn VG’s blue circles. I want to practice Dhuum orbs so I configure the golem to behave like Dhuum and spawn orbs that I can collect.

Note that I know that these two last ideas are probably too time consuming and very difficult to implement, so they probably aren’t doable. But I had to write them down anyway.

• Create community raiding events that will help noob raiders and expand the raiding community while giving noob raiders a chance to learn and improve in a safe and meant to train environment.Something like “raid training weekend” where some experienced raiders will tag up and, for some time, do raid trainings for new people. That weekend, all raid encounters could get double exp and magnetite rewards.

• Making raid mechanics more usual in open world PvE so that new raiders don't find them so hard and new. This would lessen the gap between open world mechanics and raid mechanics. What I mean with this is giving open world bosses some raid mechanics, like that "brother" of VG in Bloodstone Fen who spawns VG's circles. Something like an open world PvE boss that spawns circles that teleport; another one that spawns shards like the ones from Cairn; another one that does the Deimos pizza attack... This way new raiders would be more used to raid mechanics and would find them less difficult and weird.

OTHER THINGS THAT COULD IMPROVE RAIDS

• Sharing raid tutorials and guides and all useful information about raid bosses in GW2 social networks
• Improving the LFG tool by giving some more options, like a dropdown menu in the place LFG tool that lets us say crearly if the group is training, kill or training then kill

People will ignore you since that is how the economy of these discussions go but i hope a dev is watching for some inspiration. These are all interesting and positive suggestions.

[Feanor.2358]

@"Ohoni.6057" said:I'm not intending an easy mode that could be beaten by any random people you pulled in off the street and set in front of a keyboard, but I do expect an easy mode that could be beaten by ten people of whom the majority of them have had plenty of general GW2 experience with open world, story, and low tier instanced content, know basically how to play the game

There's your problem, right here. You're assuming "general GW2 experience" means you know how to "basically" play the game. No, it doesn't. The vast majority of the players will only improve and learn as far as the content pushes them. I didn't know how to play the game, not really, before I started to raid. Yes, I knew to get out of red circles, I knew I had a dodge button and a heal skill. That's not remotely knowing the basics of the game. In my experience, players like this lack proper understanding of the teamplay aspects of the game and its combat system. That's why they fail. It's not about learning rotations. These are good to know, but even then they are only a guideline. On many fights the optimal sequence of attacks will vary, depending on a variety of factors, from boss invuln phases to interrupts. But you don't need either. Understanding your class - properly understanding it, mind you - and improvising are more than enough to get you through fractal cms and normal mode raids. I expect you can even beat some raid cms with this. But the thing is, players generally don't have this understanding. Because the open world, the story and the low-tier instances never pushed them enough to make them understand. That's the problem. Having easy mode raid won't push them either. it will simply bring the content down to their level. So basically make them glorified punchbags like I said.

[Ohoni.6057]

@sigur.9453 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@sigur.9453 said:Why would the expierenced player do so though? Since,well he IS expierenced enough to join expierienced groups, which most likely beat the NORMAL mode anyway.You wouldn´t lose much time on a failed attempt either.

Exactly.

What now?

Edit: i think something was lost in translation. i meant, if said exp player would have a failed attemt in normal mode, he would lose so much time anyway (im not a nativ english speaker, pardon me that)

Ok, I just meant, it adds flexibility. If he wants to try the normal mode and maybe fail a few times, he can do that. If he prefers playing with less stress through the easy mode, he can do that. It adds options, players aren't forced into either.

@"Feanor.2358" said:There's your problem, right here. You're assuming "general GW2 experience" means you know how to "basically" play the game. No, it doesn't.

Again, I'm not buying into the elitist stance of "all these other players are peonbabies who aren't worth licking my boots" that these threads too often devolve into. Many players may not be good enough at the game to instantly take to raids, and I've certainly found myself grouped with players who clearly didn't know the mechanics of the encounter we were in, but in my five+ years playing this game, the vast majority of people I've pugged with, the majority of pretty much every party I've been in, have at least been reasonably competent and capable of picking up what needed to be done to clear the instance. These are the players I'm picturing as the target audience for this mode.

Having easy mode raid won't push them either. it will simply bring the content down to their level.

Which would be the entire point, so mission accomplished.

[sigur.9453]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@sigur.9453 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@sigur.9453 said:Why would the expierenced player do so though? Since,well he IS expierenced enough to join expierienced groups, which most likely beat the NORMAL mode anyway.You wouldn´t lose much time on a failed attempt either.

Exactly.

What now?

Edit: i think something was lost in translation. i meant, if said exp player would have a failed attemt in normal mode, he would lose so much time anyway (im not a nativ english speaker, pardon me that)

Ok, I just meant, it adds flexibility. If he wants to try the normal mode and maybe fail a few times, he can do that. If he prefers playing with less stress through the easy mode, he can do that. It adds options, players aren't forced into either.

Flexibility already exists in normal raids because of the different difficulty layers.And sorry to say, but if she/he prefers playing with even less stress then easy raid encounters---> open world, which still is the largest part of pve. and offers the same gameplay experience as your "easy raid mode".. especially when raids ARE an option to other gw2 "endgame activities"even i do open world from time to time when i don´t want to raid, since nobody forces me to.

would you like easy raids with no way to get legendary armour? since i am getting the feeling that this is your main goal here. i that case i guess it would be easier to simply add a open pve legendary armour, then precious raid team time wouldn´t be wasted to add nothing new to the game. (im sorry, like you i am egocentric and want content which i prefer released as fast and often as possible). But i think we are in the wrong thread for that (its hard to keep track, since the same people posting the same stuff everywhere)

[Sykper.6583]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"Sykper.6583" said:So still easier than open world bosses. You also aren't quite 'qualifying' the effort here, nor understand that open world bosses intentionally scale to down people fairly readily, just because there's so many people actually doing the event.

Again, it is VERY difficult to compare instanced content to open world, just because of the nature of their design. Most open world is designed around swarm tactics, designed around large portions of the people challenging it playing poorly. You can have a dozen players doing everything perfectly, and another two dozen standing around pressing 1. How would you gauge the difficulty of that encounter? I'm saying, I think that the easy mode should be "more reliably successful" than certain open world bosses, just due to the random natures of crowd control, but the players should be expected to pay attention and play like the open world boss players who are actively

engaged

with the encounter, not the ones that just bunch up and auto-attack.

It's not all that hard actually. Mainly because you are still continuing to give feedback that contradicts itself.

You want the easy mode to be reliably more successful than open world bosses, you also don't want the encounters to discourage any builds, any comps. But you still somehow want more 'effort' than auto-attacking which is particularly strange because given all the other descriptions you've provided you have likely forgotten to consider self-sustaining builds that can get away with higher than average self-healing courtesy of things like Healing Signet and Regen. These groups will still quite effectively auto-attack the boss to death without any worry of difficulty hike that can kill the group, there CAN'T be a wipe mechanic. There's no tanks or healers, which means the 10 man group simply does whatever and just survives, and there's also no Enrage mechanic either.

I am certain you likely have a vision of how these easy-mode encounters are actually supposed to be, but all you have done is describe to the rest of us I would say something easier than Open World. Definitely easier than Dungeons.

At the very least admit you want HP golems that do fancy moves that hit like a wet noodle.

Do you agree that this is a leading question?

Certainly that was phrased wrong, perhaps you can be very specific on whether or not failure is an option for these easy-modes?

Can you FAIL? Can you go in with any comp, any group, ANY experience level, a group of 10 newbies who want to smack the glowing no-face Guardian, and succeed each and every time? Last I checked whether it was this thread or the other one you had said yes. Has this changed?

Because here's the thing, any comp, even includes LOW Effort builds.

[Ohoni.6057]

@"sigur.9453" said:And sorry to say, but if she/he prefers playing with even less stress then easy raid encounters---> open world, which still is the largest part of pve. and offers the same gameplay experience as your "easy raid mode"..

/sigh, I REALLY wish that people would just stop suggesting existing game activities like open world, or fractals, or whatever as an "alternative" to having easy mode raids. If that was actually the solution, why do you think I would have even engaged in this discussion? I would have been playing this game for the past five years and read you say "maybe try open world?" and thought "Open world? What is that? Maybe I should see what that's about. . ."

I'm asking for easy mode raids because I believe that easy mode raids would fill a niche that NO other existing content would adequately fill, so no, none of the existing content will serve as an adequate alternative to that.

would you like easy raids with no way to get legendary armour? since i am getting the feeling that this is your main goal here.

I view it as two things. I definitely do want Envoy armor, I've never "disguised" that, but I definitely also want easy mode raids, even without the armor. I just see the latter as a wasted opportunity, since without the armor (and other raid-specific loot), that means that they'd need to come up with a completely new and separate way to earn the armor, when the easy mode raid would be a much more natural fit, and it also means that it would be hard to offer enough incentive to farm the easy mode raids regularly, which means they would end up like story dungeons, something players might do, and enjoy once, but wouldn't be likely to repeat. Adding chase-worthy rewards to them would make them reliable farmable content, which I believe would better justify the costs of implementing them in the first place.

@"Sykper.6583" said:You want the easy mode to be reliably more successful than open world bosses,

Yes, but only in the sense that with open world encounters there are much higher chances of having masses of players who are completely unskilled and unmotivated to even try, than you are likely to get out of any instanced content LFG. It's not that the open world encounters are particularly difficult in terms of design, it's that there's just a fairly significant "well this is clearly not happening tonight" factor that should be much more rare in instanced content. This is why I believe that comparisons just cannot work, they are too dissimilar in terms of what is likely to cause them to fail. It's like trying to argue whether horse betting or knife throwing is the "more challenging" task.

you also don't want the encounters to discourage any builds, any comps.

Agreed. Meta builds/comps would work better, but large percentages of non-meta builds/comps would not make or break the outcome. Keep in mind, this is already true of most instanced content in the game, so I'm not talking outright heresy here.

These groups will still quite effectively auto-attack the boss to death without any worry of difficulty hike that can kill the group, there CAN'T be a wipe mechanic.

Interesting theory, how long do you expect such a group to take to kill the boss, and what would happen to such a group if they attempted it in the current raids?

There's no tanks or healers, which means the 10 man group simply does whatever and just survives, and there's also no Enrage mechanic either.

Keep in mind, there could be tanks and healers, they would just be less vital to the outcome.

I am certain you likely have a vision of how these easy-mode encounters are actually supposed to be, but all you have done is describe to the rest of us I would say something easier than Open World. Definitely easier than Dungeons.

Ok, if you say so, but I think a lot of you are just very biased in terms of how you want to think of me. Plenty of raiders are already talking about how the existing raids are all suuuuuuuuuper easy, when clearly the majority of GW2 players don't agree. I have to assume that you are either being disingenuous, or that you have an extremely skewed perspective about the skill levels of anyone you consider "beneath" you, like basically "if you're a B-average student then you might as well be digging ditches" sort of mentality. I'm not proposing anything easier than Dungeons or low tier Fractals, or expecting anything less of the players than I would expect from a pug in those.

Certainly that was phrased wrong, perhaps you can be very specific on whether or not failure is an option for these easy-modes?

And option, certainly. A likelihood, no. Like most other instanced content in the game. So long as t least a few people are decently skilled and have some basic understanding of the mechanics, the remaining people should not be a significant burden on the success of the mission, and whatever flailing effort they can provide will be more help than hindrance. If too many mechanics overlap then players can still die, it's just a lot less likely that an individual failed mechanic would do the trick. If there is zero thought put into the encounter and everyone is just spamming auto, then either the damage should catch up to them and they should die, OR the encounter should take well longer than ideal because they have way more heals than damage, wasting a lot of everyone's time (but still better than wiping).

Can you FAIL? Can you go in with any comp, any group, ANY experience level, a group of 10 newbies who want to smack the glowing no-face Guardian, and succeed each and every time? Last I checked whether it was this thread or the other one you had said yes. Has this changed?

I don't think I said every time, unless it was just a flip response to one of those leading "you want a baby mode where everyone wins" remarks that come up at least twice per page. I've clearly said "most of the time" at least. . . most of the time.

I think low effort builds should be able to perform a role, but I do think that if the majority of the group was low effort builds, and the group went in having no idea what they were doing, then it likely wouldn't go well. Keep in mind though that raids have already been around for years now, so picking up the basics before going in is not some massive climb. It certainly beats having to spend dozens of "training raid" attempts trying to drill the rotations into muscle memory.

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"BlaqueFyre.5678" said:One no such thing as Hardmode Raids in this game.

One, we're discussing the potential of an "easy mode" raid, the hard mode is the other end of that spectrum. The current raids are hard, we're looking for something easier. Use whatever terms you believe are appropriate, but I'll use mine.

Two Devs did Commot to resolve this, here it is again straight form the Raid Devs.

Two, devs have commented on the issue, but with a, so far, negative response, which will never make this topic go away. They need to respond with a

positive

response that actually

addresses

the interests of the community, not one that merely says that they don't intend to fix it.

I'm just stating a fact, with or without my involvement this topic comes up every few weeks, at minimum. there si clearly community interest on it, and they need to provide

some

answer that actually satisfies the interests of those players.

Devs don’t have to do anything, they provided their answer and justification for their answer, again they are happy with their results on their content and have resolved the issue, every wing has entry level bosses for less experienced players to get into raiding, again just because certain people don’t like that answer doesn’t mean it’s not their.

[Ohoni.6057]

@"BlaqueFyre.5678" said:Devs don’t have to do anything,

Generally speaking, that is true. I said that within the context of "ending this discussion." If the goal is to end this discussion, it has to involve the devs making positive changes to the game that would address the concerns of players left in the cold by the current state of raids.It would involve having some lower-challenge variation on the existing raid content, and it would involve making Envoy armor more accessible. They don't have to do that, but until they do, the debate will keep reoccurring, because the conditions will continue to exist.

A homeowner doesn't have to fix a crack in the foundation, but if they choose not to then the basement is just going to keep flooding every time there's a heavy rain, and complaining that it would take too much work to fix, even if they believe that to be true, isn't keeping the water out.

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"BlaqueFyre.5678" said:Devs don’t have to do anything,

Generally speaking, that is true. I said that

within the context

of "ending this discussion." If the goal is to

end this discussion,

it has to involve the devs making positive changes to the game that would address the concerns of players left in the cold by the current state of raids.It would involve having some lower-challenge variation on the existing raid content, and it would involve making Envoy armor more accessible. They don't

have

to do that, but until they do, the debate will keep reoccurring, because the conditions will continue to exist.

A homeowner doesn't

have

to fix a crack in the foundation, but if they choose not to then the basement is just going to keep flooding every time there's a heavy rain, and complaining that it would take too much work to fix, even if they believe that to be true, isn't keeping the water out.

Again they provided the answer and the resolution to the problem, just because certain people don’t want to accept doesn’t mean it wasn’t provided, no matter what people will complain look at any portion of this forum, just because people whine and complain doesn’t mean anything needs to be catered to them or changed because of them.

[Ohoni.6057]

@"BlaqueFyre.5678" said:Again they provided the answer and the resolution to the problem,

Yes, they said "we see that crack, we don't intend to fix that crack at this time." The water will continue to flow.