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

[nia.4725]

I'm going to drop this. It's from september 12, 2017. Crystal Reid.

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.

I see a lot of comments about W4 difficulty, so I'll add some notes on that as well. Balance came in later than expected since we had far more bosses and content to test than usual. Are we totally happy with how balance turned out? Yes and no. The Mursaat Overseer base difficulty is too easy, but we were very happy with the CM difficulty. For the next release we'd like to get difficulty tuned more back in line with Spirit Vale. However, some of that original difficulty and magic is hard to re-capture. You never forget your first raid boss kill.

[Feanor.2358]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"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.

Sure they can manage an encounter, as long as it is composed of generic punchbags and mechanics that can be ignored and/or facetanked.

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"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.

Again it’s fixed certain people just don’t like the fix and that’s perfectly AOK, history shows not everyone will be happy with any implementation, and Anet has stated their stance time and again every single year since Raids release and they are perfectly happy with their results and the participation of their implementation of Raids, remember just because certain people don’t want to accept the answer/solution that was provided with full justification doesn’t mean it’s not there and was never given.

Also just because someone says there’s a problem doesn’t mean it’s actually a problem.

[sigur.9453]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"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. . ."

to me your version of easy raid, or the intended felling to play trough it sounds like open world hero points, since the challenge IS what makes raid feel special.so why don´t you demand more open world content then? wouldn´t that even suit your needs better? i mean, sure, we can waste develepors time to revamp old content but why not use it for new content?

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.

you fail to see that raids ARE the alternative to open world content. why should there be an optional mode for an alternative mode?a niche in a niche.

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.

i am sorry, envoy armour should stay where it is, only obtainable by raiding as it is now.i would have no problem with a pvp,wvw style open pve armour. (whatever time/gold sink that would mean)since i am, like you playing this game for a long time anets

completly new and seperate

way to earn this armour would simply be slapping it on events nobody cares to do anymore.and see, i as a raider i actually do not need that loot carrot hanging in front off me to enjoy raiding, i do it for the fun.(envoy armour was a huge bonus, even more that i had to do a loooooot of my not so favoured meta events over and over again) be real here, it would be a "once and done" mode without rewards. like personal story.

[Ohoni.6057]

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@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.

Again it’s fixed certain people just don’t like the fix and that’s perfectly AOK, history shows not everyone will be happy with any implementation, and Anet has stated their stance time and again every single year since Raids release and they are perfectly happy with their results and the participation of their implementation of Raids, remember just because certain people don’t want to accept the answer/solution that was provided with full justification doesn’t mean it’s not there and was never given.

Also just because someone says there’s a problem doesn’t mean it’s actually a problem.

And the water will continue to flow.

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@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.

Again it’s fixed certain people just don’t like the fix and that’s perfectly AOK, history shows not everyone will be happy with any implementation, and Anet has stated their stance time and again every single year since Raids release and they are perfectly happy with their results and the participation of their implementation of Raids, remember just because certain people don’t want to accept the answer/solution that was provided with full justification doesn’t mean it’s not there and was never given.

Also just because someone says there’s a problem doesn’t mean it’s actually a problem.

And the water will continue to flow.

As intended and it is supposed to, remember just because certain people think it’s a problem doesn’t it’s actually a problem.

[Ohoni.6057]

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@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.

Again it’s fixed certain people just don’t like the fix and that’s perfectly AOK, history shows not everyone will be happy with any implementation, and Anet has stated their stance time and again every single year since Raids release and they are perfectly happy with their results and the participation of their implementation of Raids, remember just because certain people don’t want to accept the answer/solution that was provided with full justification doesn’t mean it’s not there and was never given.

Also just because someone says there’s a problem doesn’t mean it’s actually a problem.

And the water will continue to flow.

As intended and it is supposed to, remember just because certain people think it’s a problem doesn’t it’s actually a problem.

and the water will continue to flow.

[sigur.9453]

@Ohoni.6057 said:How is this contributing to the thread?

[nia.4725]

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@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.

Again it’s fixed certain people just don’t like the fix and that’s perfectly AOK, history shows not everyone will be happy with any implementation, and Anet has stated their stance time and again every single year since Raids release and they are perfectly happy with their results and the participation of their implementation of Raids, remember just because certain people don’t want to accept the answer/solution that was provided with full justification doesn’t mean it’s not there and was never given.

Also just because someone says there’s a problem doesn’t mean it’s actually a problem.

And the water will continue to flow.

As intended and it is supposed to, remember just because certain people think it’s a problem doesn’t it’s actually a problem.

This person is saying that they have to change raids because otherwise they won't stop. Like give me what I want and then I'll stop being annoying. There's no point in keeping the conversation going anymore.

[Cerioth.7062]

Or lets make raids 5 man content. Accessibility issues solved.

[Radina.6057]

@"Cerioth.7062" said:Or lets make raids 5 man content. Accessibility issues solved.

For some People, Raids are already 5 man content, which is one of the biggest Issues GW2 has. Lots of content, even T4 fractals, require nothing from you and still are totally doable and rather "quickly" doable.Why is that so?Totally easy to answer. People have not intention to step out of their comfort zone when something is doable. Why improve if the Boss dies anyway?This would be further fed if you invested into an easy mode. People might play it like WvW. Following a commander pressing 1 learning nothing from it, experience nothing diffrent.The amount of damage you need right now to kill a boss before its timer runs out is really tiny. (Thank god there is gw2raidar to show what I am talking about.)

So let's take Cairn for example.The average group (50%) deals 100k damage and need 3 minutes and 25 seconds to kill it.10% of the Groups kill it with 138k damage in 2:30.1% of Groups kill it in 2:11 with 159k damage per second.

Now the funny part. The Bosses enrage timer is SEVEN minutes.That tells us, by numbers, that even the average group that took 3 minutes and 25 seconds to kill the boss, would be able to five men it in 6 minutes and 50 seconds killing it just before the timer would runs out.You might say now that only "pro players" upload their combat logs, and would be wrong about it. After creating an account there I found that nearly all of my PUG endeavors where listed there. Even the really horrible ones. Although the 50% tells you that there is actually still half of the people that kill it with even less damage in an even longer period of time successfully. Else this would not count into it.Usually, you would think in "hard" raiding content, that the times equals the close to maximum amount what a Group can handle. Not in GW2. In GW2 you can literally deal pitiful damage, knowing nothing about your class but "1" dealing damage, and still kill most of the Bosses. The balancing of Raid Bosses right now is really easy compared to other games and the only thing that repels players from joining is that they want the kills in GW2 style. NOW, or better the moment before now. No one writing about the need for an easy mode is interested in advancing his class or gameplay, some might not even be interested in the tiny amount of group interaction that the raids require.Both of these aspects are what make Raids great, both of them would absolutely vanish if they turned the bosses any amount easier. If at all I hope we get more Bosses like Sabetha, Matthias, Sloth and the two Wing 5 bosses that require more than two players to actually play the game, instead of standing there and pressing "1".

[STIHL.2489]

Well this topic has cemented that the elitist only care about their lootz. They don't care about the game or it's future.

And you know that's fine, as long as Anet is smart enough to realize that.

If the developers at Anet are foolish enough to to be duped to think otherwise, well.. I'll say it again.. it's their grave

[Cerioth.7062]

@Radina.6057 said:

@"Cerioth.7062" said:Or lets make raids 5 man content. Accessibility issues solved.

For some People, Raids are already 5 man content, which is one of the biggest Issues GW2 has. Lots of content, even T4 fractals, require nothing from you and still are totally doable and rather "quickly" doable.Why is that so?Totally easy to answer. People have not intention to step out of their comfort zone when something is doable. Why improve if the Boss dies anyway?This would be further fed if you invested into an easy mode. People might play it like WvW. Following a commander pressing 1 learning nothing from it, experience nothing diffrent.The amount of damage you need right now to kill a boss before its timer runs out is really tiny. (Thank god there is gw2raidar to show what I am talking about.)

So let's take Cairn for example.The average group (50%) deals 100k damage and need 3 minutes and 25 seconds to kill it.10% of the Groups kill it with 138k damage in 2:30.1% of Groups kill it in 2:11 with 159k damage per second.

Now the funny part. The Bosses enrage timer is SEVEN minutes.That tells us, by numbers, that even the average group that took 3 minutes and 25 seconds to kill the boss, would be able to five men it in 6 minutes and 50 seconds killing it just before the timer would runs out.You might say now that only "pro players" upload their combat logs, and would be wrong about it. After creating an account there I found that nearly all of my PUG endeavors where listed there. Even the really horrible ones. Although the 50% tells you that there is actually still half of the people that kill it with even less damage in an even longer period of time successfully. Else this would not count into it.Usually, you would think in "hard" raiding content, that the times equals the close to maximum amount what a Group can handle. Not in GW2. In GW2 you can literally deal pitiful damage, knowing nothing about your class but "1" dealing damage, and still kill most of the Bosses. The balancing of Raid Bosses right now is really easy compared to other games and the only thing that repels players from joining is that they want the kills in GW2 style. NOW, or better the moment before now. No one writing about the need for an easy mode is interested in advancing his class or gameplay, some might not even be interested in the tiny amount of group interaction that the raids require.Both of these aspects are what make Raids great, both of them would absolutely vanish if they turned the bosses any amount easier. If at all I hope we get more Bosses like Sabetha, Matthias, Sloth and the two Wing 5 bosses that require more than two players to actually play the game, instead of standing there and pressing "1".

I actually think making them 5 man content would increase the difficulty - and also make them more fun. Designing them for 5 man would just reduce the need to come up with 10 players who have similar schedules.

[GreyWolf.8670]

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:

@"BlaqueFyre.5678" said:A few Key points that need to be stated since this is Anet’s Stance on the Matter and is extremely relevant to this thread:

Crystal Reid:

“In the past year and a half, the overall skill level of the Guild Wars raiding community has risen at a staggering pace. Naturally, content will seem easier now as players continue to refine their theorycrafting and personal skill.

Our goal is not to make content easier, but rather add an additional layer of difficulty onto the challenge motes where it makes sense.”

“Tier systems for Raids come up a lot as a result of what Fractals did. I worked on the original Fractals team and a tiered system with increased difficulty scaling was always part of the original plan for that team. It was never a plan for Raids. They are, and should remain, the most difficult content in the game.

Accessibility in terms of difficulty is something we talk a lot about internally. We’ve made efforts to help players get in by delivering entry level encounters that ease you into the content (STK)”

So from these posts we can see their clear intent on Raid Difficulty.

It's their grave.. they can dig it however they want.

All I have done is try to warn them..

this is not a good way to do things

.

WoW (and other MMO's) already went though this, they already learned that it was not a good idea to do things that way. It defeats the point to hire professionals to design and build things for a company if those people are not willing to learn form the mistakes made by others.

But again.. their game.. their job.. their pink slip if they screw up.. good luck to them.

You fail, as always, to mention four key differences. All those other games have automated grouping features for the lowest difficulty, which won't happen in GW2 ArenaNet already said 5 years ago they don't want such systems in PvE. And all other games use raids as main content, part of the main story and main part for gear progression. This is not the case in GW2 so how should ArenaNet learn from those games when their approach is completely different?

That is because, not all games with raids have those features.

But, the way Anet put in raids and the rewards behind them, fell into the trap all those games suffer from, which is also a massive failing on their part as well.

"

Oh look the highest tier gear is locked behind a Raid

" Humm now where have we all seen that before.. oh right.. every game ever with a raid.

Zero originality, Zero Effort to make Raids in this game their own Unique Thing, and Zero effort to Avoid Any of the Pitfalls of all the MMO's before them.

If they are going to WoW Clone like that, they should at the very least, make some effort to learn from WoW's mistakes.. that's just common sense.

And if that is their forward method.. yah.. it's their grave.

Thank god legendary armor is not locked behind raids. So they already avoided everything you wrote here.

Oh, it's not? Pray tell, how do we get access to legendary armor that requires raids, then?

Gaile was right. This thread is worthless. All I see is people that are already raiding saying others don't deserve access to content they also paid for.

[Rhiannon.1726]

@GreyWolf.8670 said:

Oh, it's not? Pray tell, how do we get access to legendary armor that requires raids, then?

Gaile was right. This thread is worthless. All I see is people that are already raiding saying others don't deserve access to content they also paid for.

Nobody is saying others don't deserve access to raids. Everyone can just enter and start them (with a little bit effort every boss, not just the first one). The skin of the legendary raid armor should just stay as a raid reward.

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

@GreyWolf.8670 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:

@"BlaqueFyre.5678" said:A few Key points that need to be stated since this is Anet’s Stance on the Matter and is extremely relevant to this thread:

Crystal Reid:

“In the past year and a half, the overall skill level of the Guild Wars raiding community has risen at a staggering pace. Naturally, content will seem easier now as players continue to refine their theorycrafting and personal skill.

Our goal is not to make content easier, but rather add an additional layer of difficulty onto the challenge motes where it makes sense.”

“Tier systems for Raids come up a lot as a result of what Fractals did. I worked on the original Fractals team and a tiered system with increased difficulty scaling was always part of the original plan for that team. It was never a plan for Raids. They are, and should remain, the most difficult content in the game.

Accessibility in terms of difficulty is something we talk a lot about internally. We’ve made efforts to help players get in by delivering entry level encounters that ease you into the content (STK)”

So from these posts we can see their clear intent on Raid Difficulty.

It's their grave.. they can dig it however they want.

All I have done is try to warn them..

this is not a good way to do things

.

WoW (and other MMO's) already went though this, they already learned that it was not a good idea to do things that way. It defeats the point to hire professionals to design and build things for a company if those people are not willing to learn form the mistakes made by others.

But again.. their game.. their job.. their pink slip if they screw up.. good luck to them.

You fail, as always, to mention four key differences. All those other games have automated grouping features for the lowest difficulty, which won't happen in GW2 ArenaNet already said 5 years ago they don't want such systems in PvE. And all other games use raids as main content, part of the main story and main part for gear progression. This is not the case in GW2 so how should ArenaNet learn from those games when their approach is completely different?

That is because, not all games with raids have those features.

But, the way Anet put in raids and the rewards behind them, fell into the trap all those games suffer from, which is also a massive failing on their part as well.

"

Oh look the highest tier gear is locked behind a Raid

" Humm now where have we all seen that before.. oh right.. every game ever with a raid.

Zero originality, Zero Effort to make Raids in this game their own Unique Thing, and Zero effort to Avoid Any of the Pitfalls of all the MMO's before them.

If they are going to WoW Clone like that, they should at the very least, make some effort to learn from WoW's mistakes.. that's just common sense.

And if that is their forward method.. yah.. it's their grave.

Thank god legendary armor is not locked behind raids. So they already avoided everything you wrote here.

Oh, it's not? Pray tell, how do we get access to legendary armor that requires raids, then?

Gaile was right. This thread is worthless. All I see is people that are already raiding saying others don't deserve access to content they also paid for.

Every gamemode has their own singular way to acquire Legendary Armor and again this thread isn’t about Legendary Armor it’s about If Hardmode or Easymode are necessary so please don’t try to derail the Thread.

Second point everyone that purchased the game ie HoT can access the Raids, there is absolutely nothing in game that is stopping them from accessing the Raids and doing the content, every wing has easy entry level encounters to help with accessibility even further, the only thing stopping players from accessing the content are the players coming up with excuses for why they won’t do it and nothing else.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:It seems to me this thread has become less about the concept of difficulty levels and more about name calling. "Darned Raiders!" "Filthy Casuals!" And so it goes.

Is there anything left worth saying, in thread spanning nearly five months, 1,500 posts, and 16,000 views? You tell me!

I think it's more a topic that has been discussed for 4 years. The discussion always at some point ends up revolving about the specifics of difficulty levels where no one is willing to consider any different ideas. It's the notion about "how it should be" without any other way possible and much less so about the pros and cons of each idea. people get very defensive if something isn't exactly according to their agenda. There's very little understanding for any different ideas.

All the same I don't think anyone really is against difficulty levels if they are implemented in a way that agrees with each person personally. Which is exactly where the problem lies, as some believe one way is THE way and others say it can only be another way. And that just goes back and forth. Because of the rejection of other ideas in any way of shape, there's become this counter reaction of simply repeating the same arguments over and over until someone gets frustrated (myself included at points)

It's lead me to believe that difficulty modes are probably going to be more miss than hit and other solutions would probably lead to more success. It's avoiding the issue by finding a different solution. Which could be along the lines of new easier raids/dungeons with their own rewards or improving painpoints in the current raids. There's definitely an interest in instanced group content that isn't as hard and unforgiving as raids, takes place in the open world and have some lore that has to do with the actual open world/current story. I wouldn't be against any other solution, but it just seems to me that there's no right way of implementing difficulty levels that either doesn't go far enough for some or completely against some of the ideas of other players.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Sephylon.4938 said:Also I am interested in hearing your ideas on how we can further eliminate the chances of human errors in raids, such as what you described, in my other thread if you would be so inclined.

I do have ideas, but am now on holidays with poor in ternet access, so will likely engage in that discussion a week from now (if it will still be going on).

@nia.4725 said:Soulless Horror isn't easy and even less it would be for a noob raider... Its main problem is the insane amount of RNG it has and how it puts all the pressure on 3 or 4 people -chronos and druids. We could argue though that SH is easy for a DPS player, once he gets used to the horrible instakill walls.Indeed, i'd definitely rate SH as one of the top 3 most difficult raid encounters now.

@nia.4725 said:However what I understood from that quote is that there are some bosses that are "entry level", not that those entry level bosses are always the first ones in their respective wing.True. On the other hand, it's the difficulty of the first encounters in a wing that really matter. If the first encounter is prohibitively difficult, it won't matter for many players that the next one is easy. MO for example is one of the easier bosses, but what really matters is that Cairn, while a bit harder, is easy as well. Almost noone starts at MO.

@Miellyn.6847 said:All those other games have automated grouping features for the lowest difficulty, which won't happen in GW2 ArenaNet already said 5 years ago they don't want such systems in PvE.You do remember, that one of the reasons given was because they did not intent for raids to be pugged? And it was not about automated system alone, but about any LFG for raids at all? And they said it relatively shortly before they changed their minds about raids and pugs and remade LFG so it became raid-compatible?

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:As intended and it is supposed to, remember just because certain people think it’s a problem doesn’t it’s actually a problem.The opposite is equally true.

[BlaqueFyre.5678]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:Also I am interested in hearing your ideas on how we can further eliminate the chances of human errors in raids, such as what you described, in my other thread if you would be so inclined.

I do have ideas, but am now on holidays with poor in ternet access, so will likely engage in that discussion a week from now (if it will still be going on).

@nia.4725 said:Soulless Horror isn't easy and even less it would be for a noob raider... Its main problem is the insane amount of RNG it has and how it puts all the pressure on 3 or 4 people -chronos and druids. We could argue though that SH is easy for a DPS player, once he gets used to the horrible instakill walls.Indeed, i'd definitely rate SH as one of the top 3 most difficult raid encounters now.

@nia.4725 said:However what I understood from that quote is that there are some bosses that are "entry level", not that those entry level bosses are always the first ones in their respective wing.True. On the other hand, it's the difficulty of the first encounters in a wing that really matter. If the first encounter is prohibitively difficult, it won't matter for many players that the next one is easy. MO for example is one of the easier bosses, but what really matters is that Cairn, while a bit harder, is easy as well. Almost noone starts at MO.

@Miellyn.6847 said:All those other games have automated grouping features for the lowest difficulty, which won't happen in GW2 ArenaNet already said 5 years ago they don't want such systems in PvE.You do remember, that one of the reasons given was because they did not intent for raids to be pugged? And it was not about automated system alone, but about any LFG for raids at all? And they said it relatively shortly before they changed their minds about raids and pugs and remade LFG so it became raid-compatible?

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:As intended and it is supposed to, remember just because certain people think it’s a problem doesn’t it’s actually a problem.The opposite is equally true.

Only responding to the portion where you quote me since on mobile editing Down to that is a hassle.

One flaw to that reasoning, the current implementation of Raids is inline with the Raid Devs intentions and design goals for Raids so every thing is working as intended and therefore there is absolutely no problem.

There would be a problem if the Raid Devs intended for Raids to be easier and they weren’t, then their intentions and implementation would not coincide and that is a problem, but again that is not the case here.

Again just because certain people think there is a problem doesn’t mean there is one, especially when the perceived problem is that the Raid Devs intentions and implementation don’t line up with their own on Raids.

One last time everything about Raids are working as intended and within the Raid Devs goals, as shown by the multiple posts by said Raid Devs, which have been reposted here in this thread. So again no the Raids do not need an Easymode, since that would go against the design goals and intentions for Raid content, and there are already Easy bosses per wing to allow players to get accustomed to Raid encounters.

[STIHL.2489]

@nia.4725 said:As if you know more than arenanet the real GW2 statictics about players, content played and so on. Like they don't have completely and accurately designed their target audience for each type of content, lol.

I know far more then you think about what is going on behind the scenes.

But that is not a topic about Raid Difficulty Mode.

So, back to the topic.

Do raids need a hard/normal/easy mode?

Well it has been requested, time and time enough on this topic and others. Anet can chose to take this request into consideration and do something about it, or they can ignore it. That is their call, and I believe at this point, I have said all that can be said as far as this goes.

Anet has been made astutely aware there is a subset of their population that is very unhappy with the current situation regarding raids and legendary armor, how they handle it is, up to them, if they think difficulty modes are the answer, then that is what they do, if they try some other approach, then that is what they do, if they opt to try and ignore the situation and hope it burns itself out, then that is what they do. I wish them the best in that venture to handle this kind of situation with the best of their abilities, but, my best wishes does pretty much nothing.

[Vinceman.4572]

@"STIHL.2489" said:I know far more then you think about what is going on behind the scenes.

How so? Former Anet employee?I'm careful with statements of "destroying their game" or "people leaving GW2". Analysts predict a strong 1st quarter. Let's see if they are right and if so it's a clear indicator that raids haven't harmed the game at all from a company perspective.

[Sykper.6583]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"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.

Explain to me why instanced group content should have even less instances of, the technical jargon is 'shenanigans' where things just aren't playing out as intended? The entire rationale behind instanced content versus open world is that instanced content is treated and balanced around a small set of people organized to go in. It should be incumbent on instanced content, in theory and practicality, to be actually more prone to shenanigans or strictly harder. In other words it's against the design of instanced content to be of the same difficulty of open world, because it defeats the point of it. This is exactly why Dungeons back in the day were designed in this manner.

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.

That's not particularly true, we've had several instances of hard content (eventually getting outdated by patches) that actively worked against several comps. The 'original' purpose behind the Meta, as I presume you are aware, is to be the most effective method to any encounter. Just enough tools were provided for the meta comps to prosper at beating an encounter without any issues. What would happen is that when an off-meta build was introduced to a meta comp, the shift of tools and buffs and timings cause the encounter to go in unexpected directions, or last too long for some glassier builds to get downed or defeated. This caused the whole debacle 'Bring Meta or get kicked' scheme that's been in the game and shifted since inception, since Dungeons were first introduced.

So there's a substantial amount of 'heresy' about what you are saying because no currently worked on instanced content, or SUPPORTED instanced content, simply allows any comps except for early fractal tiers. You can try working a complete off-meta comp for T4s and CMs if everyone brings the tools needed, but mixing it up randomly in pugs can easily lead to failure.

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?

Well we have videos of full Minstrel's comps like Tempests spending an hour with complete defensive stats killing an Enraged Vale Guardian on normal difficulty, but that's full defense gear intentionally built around a boss that is supposed to kill you well before that. Hypothetically if we presume any builds so builds that bring just enough healing to withstand the damage, of which ambiently we should expect the likes of Protection from a Base Guardian running Hammer (doesn't have to be a guardian) or Regen from a druid (could be an Engineer, or elementalist, etc), on top of personal healing, I can see a bunch of auto-attacking "raiders" beating the easy mode Vale Guardian in a weird mix of damage and defense stats under 10 minutes.

How about you provide me with some numbers on what you expect some of Vale Guardian's attacks to hit for? For example Vale Guardian in normal mode does a cleave every 3 seconds, his auto hits for about 7k on a glass cannon. What would his autos do in this easy mode?

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.

"Tanks" are simply people running the highest toughness in order to tank the boss, thus forcing a build for them. I presume in the easy-mode there would be no such aggro system correct?

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.

And I think this is where it gets a little vexing and difficult for us, because you have given a lot of vague answers. Many raiders here who are telling you 'It is easier than you think' understand the nuances behind a lot of the attacks from bosses, what the effect of them is, the conditions behind why certain moves have ended the raid. Raids are extremely lenient and fair for their mechanics. You don't step in Vale Guardian greens properly? Everyone gets punished and you have to deal with that consequence or more practically you work that into your favor, you plan and ORGANIZE for it. A massive part of raiding in general is the group coming to an understanding of how to deal with the encounter, and steering AWAY from the usual beat-downs that go into killing world bosses. And everything you have just described is to us "I want more world bosses to kill, but it's ok if I can bring 9 other whoevers with me."

That is in some way, but a single takeaway from the people requesting easy-mode. They have not quantified the numbers, they have not explained how this could be beneficial to the scene or they've simply said: "Give us Envoy Armor outside of raiding." They just want the loot.

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).

Here's the tricky part as I read this segment by segment, you've finally given me somewhat of an inkling of where the difficulty can be. "An individual can't wipe the group, but the group can get wiped if different mechanics happen at once, unless they can just outheal the damage but at the same token it's a longer fight." I presume this is an accurate paraphrase correct?

Allow me to dissuade you of one particular notion right now. While it is meta to want to get things done quick and effectively, there's a trade-off between being fast and being safe. The casual audience in this game who wants to do raids for rewards, isn't going to go for the most effective builds for killing the boss quick. But if the group can kill the bosses 100% of the time running the raid wing and each encounter 25% slowly because they put on 25% more defenses to ignore literally all the mechanics, that's the casual meta right there.

People who play this game casually will find the safest and easiest strat to killing a boss, they will ENDURE the mechanics while pressing buttons randomly to end the boss, doing all the 'don'ts' from Vale Guardian to Dhuum. It will literally be a world boss, where their only regret is that they couldn't bring their 40 other Valkyrie-geared guildmates into the instance to farm. And this includes people who want to tryhard and not just autoattack too.

Vale Guardian's Enrage timer is normally 8 minutes, easy mode won't have an enrage timer but we can assume an average pug group with balanced damage and defensive stats is going to hit that mark. If I had to assume the comp was built to be 25% more defensive at the same rough cost, it's 2 extra minutes to kill Vale Guardian at a significantly less chance to wipe. Two Minutes, that's NOTHING in the casual pug standards for things like T4s, and those would be harder than this.

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.

That's fine. Given the above information I can get an idea of the range of possibilities where a group can fail, somewhere in the realm of a group running full damage but misunderstanding that they shouldn't stand in the bad zones, the kinds of folks who stand in the Wyvern Fire in Verdant Brink.

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.

And again we come back to damage numbers. Would Vale Guardian have an Damage Aura? How much would the Damage floors tick for? Things like this will gauge how far many of the low effort comps go.

To give you an idea, if you cut all the damage from Vale Guardian in half, from all of it's attacks...it would still be too hard for a lot of people running average comps. There would still be wipes from the raw damage, or at least a lot of downs that would frustrate players.

[Tyson.5160]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:Also I am interested in hearing your ideas on how we can further eliminate the chances of human errors in raids, such as what you described, in my other thread if you would be so inclined.

I do have ideas, but am now on holidays with poor in ternet access, so will likely engage in that discussion a week from now (if it will still be going on).

@nia.4725 said:Soulless Horror isn't easy and even less it would be for a noob raider... Its main problem is the insane amount of RNG it has and how it puts all the pressure on 3 or 4 people -chronos and druids. We could argue though that SH is easy for a DPS player, once he gets used to the horrible instakill walls.Indeed, i'd definitely rate SH as one of the top 3 most difficult raid encounters now.

@nia.4725 said:However what I understood from that quote is that there are some bosses that are "entry level", not that those entry level bosses are always the first ones in their respective wing.True. On the other hand, it's the difficulty of the first encounters in a wing that really matter. If the first encounter is prohibitively difficult, it won't matter for many players that the next one is easy. MO for example is one of the easier bosses, but what really matters is that Cairn, while a bit harder, is easy as well. Almost noone starts at MO.

@Miellyn.6847 said:All those other games have automated grouping features for the lowest difficulty, which won't happen in GW2 ArenaNet already said 5 years ago they don't want such systems in PvE.You do remember, that one of the reasons given was because they did not intent for raids to be pugged? And it was not about automated system alone, but about any LFG for raids at all? And they said it relatively shortly before they changed their minds about raids and pugs and remade LFG so it became raid-compatible?

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:As intended and it is supposed to, remember just because certain people think it’s a problem doesn’t it’s actually a problem.The opposite is equally true.

I think astral has a point here. The raids would probably be less of an issue if each wing had its difficulty scaled so the first boss of the wing is always the easiest and the last one is always the hardest. Putting an easier raid boss in the middle like that seems strange to me. If I recall, Wow raids worked like this easier boss at the start with the hardest at the end. Kinda sucks that you have sloth, which has been a personal pain in the ass to me come before an easier encounter like trio or like astral was saying Cairn then MO, Same with Gorseval then Vale Guardian. Progression itself would probably be more visual as well as in ok we can kill all the first bosses of every wing let’s try the 2nd one for each now.

[nia.4725]

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:Also I am interested in hearing your ideas on how we can further eliminate the chances of human errors in raids, such as what you described, in my other thread if you would be so inclined.

I do have ideas, but am now on holidays with poor in ternet access, so will likely engage in that discussion a week from now (if it will still be going on).

@nia.4725 said:Soulless Horror isn't easy and even less it would be for a noob raider... Its main problem is the insane amount of RNG it has and how it puts all the pressure on 3 or 4 people -chronos and druids. We could argue though that SH is easy for a DPS player, once he gets used to the horrible instakill walls.Indeed, i'd definitely rate SH as one of the top 3 most difficult raid encounters now.

@nia.4725 said:However what I understood from that quote is that there are some bosses that are "entry level", not that those entry level bosses are always the first ones in their respective wing.True. On the other hand, it's the difficulty of the first encounters in a wing that really matter. If the first encounter is prohibitively difficult, it won't matter for many players that the next one is easy. MO for example is one of the easier bosses, but what really matters is that Cairn, while a bit harder, is easy as well. Almost noone starts at MO.

@Miellyn.6847 said:All those other games have automated grouping features for the lowest difficulty, which won't happen in GW2 ArenaNet already said 5 years ago they don't want such systems in PvE.You do remember, that one of the reasons given was because they did not intent for raids to be pugged? And it was not about automated system alone, but about any LFG for raids at all? And they said it relatively shortly before they changed their minds about raids and pugs and remade LFG so it became raid-compatible?

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:As intended and it is supposed to, remember just because certain people think it’s a problem doesn’t it’s actually a problem.The opposite is equally true.

I think astral has a point here. The raids would probably be less of an issue if each wing had its difficulty scaled so the first boss of the wing is always the easiest and the last one is always the hardest. Putting an easier raid boss in the middle like that seems strange to me. If I recall, Wow raids worked like this easier boss at the start with the hardest at the end. Kinda sucks that you have sloth, which has been a personal pain in the kitten to me come before an easier encounter like trio or like astral was saying Cairn then MO, Same with Gorseval then Vale Guardian. Progression itself would probably be more visual as well as in ok we can kill all the first bosses of every wing let’s try the 2nd one for each now.

Very true, this would help new raiders a lot. It's weird to have an easy boss behind a difficult boss.

[Tyson.5160]

@nia.4725 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Sephylon.4938 said:Also I am interested in hearing your ideas on how we can further eliminate the chances of human errors in raids, such as what you described, in my other thread if you would be so inclined.

I do have ideas, but am now on holidays with poor in ternet access, so will likely engage in that discussion a week from now (if it will still be going on).

@nia.4725 said:Soulless Horror isn't easy and even less it would be for a noob raider... Its main problem is the insane amount of RNG it has and how it puts all the pressure on 3 or 4 people -chronos and druids. We could argue though that SH is easy for a DPS player, once he gets used to the horrible instakill walls.Indeed, i'd definitely rate SH as one of the top 3 most difficult raid encounters now.

@nia.4725 said:However what I understood from that quote is that there are some bosses that are "entry level", not that those entry level bosses are always the first ones in their respective wing.True. On the other hand, it's the difficulty of the first encounters in a wing that really matter. If the first encounter is prohibitively difficult, it won't matter for many players that the next one is easy. MO for example is one of the easier bosses, but what really matters is that Cairn, while a bit harder, is easy as well. Almost noone starts at MO.

@Miellyn.6847 said:All those other games have automated grouping features for the lowest difficulty, which won't happen in GW2 ArenaNet already said 5 years ago they don't want such systems in PvE.You do remember, that one of the reasons given was because they did not intent for raids to be pugged? And it was not about automated system alone, but about any LFG for raids at all? And they said it relatively shortly before they changed their minds about raids and pugs and remade LFG so it became raid-compatible?

@BlaqueFyre.5678 said:As intended and it is supposed to, remember just because certain people think it’s a problem doesn’t it’s actually a problem.The opposite is equally true.

I think astral has a point here. The raids would probably be less of an issue if each wing had its difficulty scaled so the first boss of the wing is always the easiest and the last one is always the hardest. Putting an easier raid boss in the middle like that seems strange to me. If I recall, Wow raids worked like this easier boss at the start with the hardest at the end. Kinda sucks that you have sloth, which has been a personal pain in the kitten to me come before an easier encounter like trio or like astral was saying Cairn then MO, Same with Gorseval then Vale Guardian. Progression itself would probably be more visual as well as in ok we can kill all the first bosses of every wing let’s try the 2nd one for each now.

Very true, this would help new raiders a lot. It's weird to have an easy boss behind a difficult boss.

Problem is they can’t physically rearrange the fights, without screwing up everything. So they would have to nerf Cairn, Vale Guardian and Sloth and then increased the difficulty of Gorseval, Trio and MO.