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

[Lonami.2987]

Are you guys ready for another raid wing full of events instead of bosses?

Escort and River are so great! Raids are such challenging content! /s

[Grogba.6204]

Indeed, and here we are, almost on page 100 to make said challenging content even easier/more braindead. /s

[sigur.9453]

@Lonami.2987 said:Are you guys ready for another raid wing full of events instead of bosses?

Escort and River are so great! Raids are such challenging content! /s

are you saying that there are bosses/events with different difficult levels?huh,who would have thought.

[Xerxes.2468]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@"Xerxes.2468" said:I've always been of the opinion that no game needs a tier of content that only the hardcore element gets to see. This is important to this game since it decided not to continue to add dungeon content. I feel like fractals are ok but an imperfect solution to 5 man content at best. Varied difficulties with more/better rewards as you go up are fine.

Your opinion is easy to refute. There are players who seek hardcore challenge, therefore failing to provide that means you lose these players. There are many games for which that's fine. ANet, however, have decided GW2 won't be one of these. And if anything, fractals are a solid example how tiered difficulties fail.

That's just another opinion. You didn't "refute" anything. Game design preference is not a matter of hard scientific facts. It's all opinions and preferences.

[Feanor.2358]

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:I've always been of the opinion that no game needs a tier of content that only the hardcore element gets to see. This is important to this game since it decided not to continue to add dungeon content. I feel like fractals are ok but an imperfect solution to 5 man content at best. Varied difficulties with more/better rewards as you go up are fine.

Your opinion is easy to refute. There are players who seek hardcore challenge, therefore failing to provide that means you lose these players. There are many games for which that's fine. ANet, however, have decided GW2 won't be one of these. And if anything, fractals are a solid example how tiered difficulties fail.

That's just another opinion. You didn't "refute" anything. Game design preference is not a matter of hard scientific facts. It's all opinions and preferences.

No, it's not all opinions and preferences. Not only is there solid theory behind it, it is also a business. As such, its goal is market success, which is not a matter of opinion and preference. There are different ways to achieve this, there's no doubt about that. But some of there will be more successful than others, and there's no doubt about it either.

[Xerxes.2468]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:I've always been of the opinion that no game needs a tier of content that only the hardcore element gets to see. This is important to this game since it decided not to continue to add dungeon content. I feel like fractals are ok but an imperfect solution to 5 man content at best. Varied difficulties with more/better rewards as you go up are fine.

Your opinion is easy to refute. There are players who seek hardcore challenge, therefore failing to provide that means you lose these players. There are many games for which that's fine. ANet, however, have decided GW2 won't be one of these. And if anything, fractals are a solid example how tiered difficulties fail.

That's just another opinion. You didn't "refute" anything. Game design preference is not a matter of hard scientific facts. It's all opinions and preferences.

No, it's not all opinions and preferences. Not only is there solid theory behind it, it is also a business. As such, its goal is market success, which is not a matter of opinion and preference. There are different ways to achieve this, there's no doubt about that. But some of there will be more successful than others, and there's no doubt about it either.

Do you own a bunch of stock in the company or something? They don't need you to white knight for their marketing decisions and quarterly earnings. The poll was literally "what would you prefer?". That's a question about preference and opinion. My job is not praise every last decision made by the devs. It's their game, they're free to do what they want with my criticism.

I'm all for having a hardcore mode that gives better rewards, but if some people were really going to get bent out shape and leave because lower difficulty setting existed for people to see content and learn mechanics, I don't really care. Warcraft isn't losing all its mythic raiders because normal and heroic modes exist. More content accessable to more people in some fashion means more active players.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:I've always been of the opinion that no game needs a tier of content that only the hardcore element gets to see. This is important to this game since it decided not to continue to add dungeon content. I feel like fractals are ok but an imperfect solution to 5 man content at best. Varied difficulties with more/better rewards as you go up are fine.

Your opinion is easy to refute. There are players who seek hardcore challenge, therefore failing to provide that means you lose these players. There are many games for which that's fine. ANet, however, have decided GW2 won't be one of these. And if anything, fractals are a solid example how tiered difficulties fail.

That's just another opinion. You didn't "refute" anything. Game design preference is not a matter of hard scientific facts. It's all opinions and preferences.

No, it's not all opinions and preferences. Not only is there solid theory behind it, it is also a business. As such, its goal is market success, which is not a matter of opinion and preference. There are different ways to achieve this, there's no doubt about that. But some of there will be more successful than others, and there's no doubt about it either.

Do you own a bunch of stock in the company or something? They don't need you to white knight for their marketing decisions and quarterly earnings. The poll was literally "what would you prefer?". That's a question about preference and opinion. My job is not praise every last decision made by the devs. It's their game, they're free to do what they want with my criticism.

Good point, but keeping a reality check and realistic mindset when it comes to suggestions, expectations and possibilities keeps one from asking for nonsense or look all to stupid.

@Xerxes.2468 said:I'm all for having a hardcore mode that gives better rewards, but if some people were really going to get bent out shape and leave because lower difficulty setting existed for people to see content and learn mechanics, I don't really care. Warcraft isn't losing all its mythic raiders because normal and heroic modes exist. More content accessable to more people in some fashion means more active players.

Please don't bring WoW into this discussion again, or be prepared to get refuted heavily on their approach to LFR including by me.

Go read through this thread to be informed why the WoW LFR approach does and would not fit GW2. The reasons are many fold and reach as far as not working with the very basic itemisation this has versus Wows.

WoW isn't losing it's mythic raiders true, but you also fail to show how LFR specifically has in any way improved the mythic raiding community (or raiding community as a whole) . There is enough differing opinions on that issue alone. Some even from the developers themselves who were not necessarily happy with introducing LFR.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Cyninja.2954" said:WoW isn't losing it's mythic raiders true, but you also fail to show how LFR specifically has in any way improved the mythic raiding community (or raiding community as a whole) .Oh, that one is simple. It "improved" the raiding community by allowing it to exist. WoW may be a raid-focused game, but it stays afloat only thanks to more casual players. True, many raiders don't want to acknowledge it, but in the end they wouldn't want to raid in a dead game either. Even if it wasn't just simply shut down.

[Brynioch.1873]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:WoW isn't losing it's mythic raiders true, but you also fail to show how LFR specifically has in any way improved the mythic raiding community (or raiding community as a whole) .Oh, that one is simple. It "improved" the raiding community by

allowing it to exist

. WoW may be a raid-focused game, but it stays afloat only thanks to more casual players. True, many raiders don't want to acknowledge it, but in the end they wouldn't want to raid in a dead game either. Even if it wasn't just simply shut down.

You still need to prove how a comparison between an instanced/raid focused game and an open world focused game has any relevance to this discussion.WoW had a healthy population and it's population peak without LFR existing. LFR does not allow raiding to exist. We have the exact same system WoW had during it's population peak.

Most people won't play raids with an easy mode either. The majority just doesn't care about instanced content. As long as it isn't LFR-like with an auto-grouping system you will still only reach a small minority. The casual playstil involves that most don't bother with group searching. That is one reason GW2 is successful, open world with spontaneous participation. LFR won't work with the mechanics involved in raids, the stats people are running and the class system. We don't have explicit tank, healer, DPS.

[KGS.9842]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:WoW isn't losing it's mythic raiders true, but you also fail to show how LFR specifically has in any way improved the mythic raiding community (or raiding community as a whole) .Oh, that one is simple. It "improved" the raiding community by

allowing it to exist

. WoW may be a raid-focused game, but it stays afloat only thanks to more casual players. True, many raiders don't want to acknowledge it, but in the end they wouldn't want to raid in a dead game either. Even if it wasn't just simply shut down.

Well that "existence" it has allowed is a far cry from a real raiding community. You don't have to organize anything with anybody, you can ignore the boss mechanics, and when you wipe you just get buffed (https://wow.gamepedia.com/Determination) so you have 0 incentive to improve and 0 difficulty to overcome.

[Feanor.2358]

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:I've always been of the opinion that no game needs a tier of content that only the hardcore element gets to see. This is important to this game since it decided not to continue to add dungeon content. I feel like fractals are ok but an imperfect solution to 5 man content at best. Varied difficulties with more/better rewards as you go up are fine.

Your opinion is easy to refute. There are players who seek hardcore challenge, therefore failing to provide that means you lose these players. There are many games for which that's fine. ANet, however, have decided GW2 won't be one of these. And if anything, fractals are a solid example how tiered difficulties fail.

That's just another opinion. You didn't "refute" anything. Game design preference is not a matter of hard scientific facts. It's all opinions and preferences.

No, it's not all opinions and preferences. Not only is there solid theory behind it, it is also a business. As such, its goal is market success, which is not a matter of opinion and preference. There are different ways to achieve this, there's no doubt about that. But some of there will be more successful than others, and there's no doubt about it either.

Do you own a bunch of stock in the company or something? They don't need you to white knight for their marketing decisions and quarterly earnings. The poll was literally "what would you prefer?". That's a question about preference and opinion. My job is not praise every last decision made by the devs. It's their game, they're free to do what they want with my criticism.

"What would you prefer" is a meaningless question, except if what you really are interested into is the personalities of the people answering. If this is the case, then please accept my apologies, I didn't mean to ruin your fun. I assumed people here are actually interested in the actual decisions made in the actual game, together with the reasons why. They, too, are free to do what they want with my criticism.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:WoW isn't losing it's mythic raiders true, but you also fail to show how LFR specifically has in any way improved the mythic raiding community (or raiding community as a whole) .Oh, that one is simple. It "improved" the raiding community by

allowing it to exist

. WoW may be a raid-focused game, but it stays afloat only thanks to more casual players. True, many raiders don't want to acknowledge it, but in the end they wouldn't want to raid in a dead game either. Even if it wasn't just simply shut down.

I will agree to many things that LFR did, I will not agree that it expanded the raiding community if raiding is supposed to be challenging content which one is to overcome as a group of players.

What LFR did for WoW:

• allow easy distribution of meaningless gear to a majority of the player base

• give a majority of players a feeling that they are part of larger collective working together to overcome challenge while at the same te removing actual challenge and requirements

• focus the game a lot more on raid content and making raids an integral part of both story and item progression (until they introduced mythic+ dungeons to allow people to NOT raid but still get their gear)

• make grouping easy as pushing one button while removing all interaction between players. People are literally playing "group" content without in any way interacting with each other

So are you willing to take all the bad with the good? Are we going to make raids story centric and required? Are we going to reduce rewards far enough for a GW2 LFR so they are on the same level as Wows?

[Linken.6345]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:WoW isn't losing it's mythic raiders true, but you also fail to show how LFR specifically has in any way improved the mythic raiding community (or raiding community as a whole) .Oh, that one is simple. It "improved" the raiding community by

allowing it to exist

. WoW may be a raid-focused game, but it stays afloat only thanks to more casual players. True, many raiders don't want to acknowledge it, but in the end they wouldn't want to raid in a dead game either. Even if it wasn't just simply shut down.

I will agree to many things that LFR did, I will not agree that it expanded the raiding community if raiding is supposed to be challenging content which one is to overcome as a group of players.

What LFR did for WoW:

• allow easy distribution of meaningless gear to a majority of the player base

• give a majority of players a feeling that they are part of larger collective working together to overcome challenge while at the same te removing actual challenge and requirements

• focus the game a lot more on raid content and making raids an integral part of both story and item progression (until they introduced mythic+ dungeons to allow people to NOT raid but still get their gear)

• make grouping easy as pushing one button while removing all interaction between players. People are literally playing "group" content without in any way interacting with each other

So are you willing to take all the bad with the good? Are we going to make raids story centric and required? Are we going to reduce rewards far enough for a GW2 LFR so they are on the same level as Wows?

Well be ready for 1 blue and 2 green as reward with rare being the precursor level exception from lfr gw2 bosses =)

[Tyson.5160]

@Linken.6345 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:WoW isn't losing it's mythic raiders true, but you also fail to show how LFR specifically has in any way improved the mythic raiding community (or raiding community as a whole) .Oh, that one is simple. It "improved" the raiding community by

allowing it to exist

. WoW may be a raid-focused game, but it stays afloat only thanks to more casual players. True, many raiders don't want to acknowledge it, but in the end they wouldn't want to raid in a dead game either. Even if it wasn't just simply shut down.

I will agree to many things that LFR did, I will not agree that it expanded the raiding community if raiding is supposed to be challenging content which one is to overcome as a group of players.

What LFR did for WoW:

• allow easy distribution of meaningless gear to a majority of the player base

• give a majority of players a feeling that they are part of larger collective working together to overcome challenge while at the same te removing actual challenge and requirements

• focus the game a lot more on raid content and making raids an integral part of both story and item progression (until they introduced mythic+ dungeons to allow people to NOT raid but still get their gear)

• make grouping easy as pushing one button while removing all interaction between players. People are literally playing "group" content without in any way interacting with each other

So are you willing to take all the bad with the good? Are we going to make raids story centric and required? Are we going to reduce rewards far enough for a GW2 LFR so they are on the same level as Wows?

Well be ready for 1 blue and 2 green as reward with rare being the precursor level exception from lfr gw2 bosses =)

Honestly you could throw in a few rares per boss and people would probably run it. Add a few extra achievements. Leave all the Legendary stuff for the normal mode.

[Warscythes.9307]

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Linken.6345 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:WoW isn't losing it's mythic raiders true, but you also fail to show how LFR specifically has in any way improved the mythic raiding community (or raiding community as a whole) .Oh, that one is simple. It "improved" the raiding community by

allowing it to exist

. WoW may be a raid-focused game, but it stays afloat only thanks to more casual players. True, many raiders don't want to acknowledge it, but in the end they wouldn't want to raid in a dead game either. Even if it wasn't just simply shut down.

I will agree to many things that LFR did, I will not agree that it expanded the raiding community if raiding is supposed to be challenging content which one is to overcome as a group of players.

What LFR did for WoW:

• allow easy distribution of meaningless gear to a majority of the player base

• give a majority of players a feeling that they are part of larger collective working together to overcome challenge while at the same te removing actual challenge and requirements

• focus the game a lot more on raid content and making raids an integral part of both story and item progression (until they introduced mythic+ dungeons to allow people to NOT raid but still get their gear)

• make grouping easy as pushing one button while removing all interaction between players. People are literally playing "group" content without in any way interacting with each other

So are you willing to take all the bad with the good? Are we going to make raids story centric and required? Are we going to reduce rewards far enough for a GW2 LFR so they are on the same level as Wows?

Well be ready for 1 blue and 2 green as reward with rare being the precursor level exception from lfr gw2 bosses =)

Honestly you could throw in a few rares per boss and people would probably run it. Add a few extra achievements. Leave all the Legendary stuff for the normal mode.

Wait oops read it wrong.

[Xerxes.2468]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:I've always been of the opinion that no game needs a tier of content that only the hardcore element gets to see. This is important to this game since it decided not to continue to add dungeon content. I feel like fractals are ok but an imperfect solution to 5 man content at best. Varied difficulties with more/better rewards as you go up are fine.

Your opinion is easy to refute. There are players who seek hardcore challenge, therefore failing to provide that means you lose these players. There are many games for which that's fine. ANet, however, have decided GW2 won't be one of these. And if anything, fractals are a solid example how tiered difficulties fail.

That's just another opinion. You didn't "refute" anything. Game design preference is not a matter of hard scientific facts. It's all opinions and preferences.

No, it's not all opinions and preferences. Not only is there solid theory behind it, it is also a business. As such, its goal is market success, which is not a matter of opinion and preference. There are different ways to achieve this, there's no doubt about that. But some of there will be more successful than others, and there's no doubt about it either.

Do you own a bunch of stock in the company or something? They don't need you to white knight for their marketing decisions and quarterly earnings. The poll was literally "what would you prefer?". That's a question about preference and opinion. My job is not praise every last decision made by the devs. It's their game, they're free to do what they want with my criticism.

Good point, but keeping a reality check and realistic mindset when it comes to suggestions, expectations and possibilities keeps one from asking for nonsense or look all to stupid.

@Xerxes.2468 said:I'm all for having a hardcore mode that gives better rewards, but if some people were really going to get bent out shape and leave because lower difficulty setting existed for people to see content and learn mechanics, I don't really care. Warcraft isn't losing all its mythic raiders because normal and heroic modes exist. More content accessable to more people in some fashion means more active players.

Please don't bring WoW into this discussion again, or be prepared to get refuted heavily on their approach to LFR including by me.

Go read through this thread to be informed why the WoW LFR approach does and would not fit GW2. The reasons are many fold and reach as far as not working with the very basic itemisation this has versus Wows.

WoW isn't losing it's mythic raiders true, but you also fail to show how LFR specifically has in any way improved the mythic raiding community (or raiding community as a whole) . There is enough differing opinions on that issue alone. Some even from the developers themselves who were not necessarily happy with introducing LFR.

I missed the part where I suggested they put LFR in. I don't like LFR, and I don't like when people straw man my points. I was just talking about having a couple of difficulty tiers to cater to more of the game's community since they puta great deal of their resources into raids, that's it. I was responding to the question posed by the thread and stating my preference. It may not be yours and that's fine. I wasn't looking for approval.

[Tyson.5160]

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:I've always been of the opinion that no game needs a tier of content that only the hardcore element gets to see. This is important to this game since it decided not to continue to add dungeon content. I feel like fractals are ok but an imperfect solution to 5 man content at best. Varied difficulties with more/better rewards as you go up are fine.

Your opinion is easy to refute. There are players who seek hardcore challenge, therefore failing to provide that means you lose these players. There are many games for which that's fine. ANet, however, have decided GW2 won't be one of these. And if anything, fractals are a solid example how tiered difficulties fail.

That's just another opinion. You didn't "refute" anything. Game design preference is not a matter of hard scientific facts. It's all opinions and preferences.

No, it's not all opinions and preferences. Not only is there solid theory behind it, it is also a business. As such, its goal is market success, which is not a matter of opinion and preference. There are different ways to achieve this, there's no doubt about that. But some of there will be more successful than others, and there's no doubt about it either.

Do you own a bunch of stock in the company or something? They don't need you to white knight for their marketing decisions and quarterly earnings. The poll was literally "what would you prefer?". That's a question about preference and opinion. My job is not praise every last decision made by the devs. It's their game, they're free to do what they want with my criticism.

Good point, but keeping a reality check and realistic mindset when it comes to suggestions, expectations and possibilities keeps one from asking for nonsense or look all to stupid.

@Xerxes.2468 said:I'm all for having a hardcore mode that gives better rewards, but if some people were really going to get bent out shape and leave because lower difficulty setting existed for people to see content and learn mechanics, I don't really care. Warcraft isn't losing all its mythic raiders because normal and heroic modes exist. More content accessable to more people in some fashion means more active players.

Please don't bring WoW into this discussion again, or be prepared to get refuted heavily on their approach to LFR including by me.

Go read through this thread to be informed why the WoW LFR approach does and would not fit GW2. The reasons are many fold and reach as far as not working with the very basic itemisation this has versus Wows.

WoW isn't losing it's mythic raiders true, but you also fail to show how LFR specifically has in any way improved the mythic raiding community (or raiding community as a whole) . There is enough differing opinions on that issue alone. Some even from the developers themselves who were not necessarily happy with introducing LFR.

I missed the part where I suggested they put LFR in. I don't like LFR, and I don't like when people straw man my points. I was just talking about having a couple of difficulty tiers to cater to more of the game's community since they puta great deal of their resources into raids, that's it. I was responding to the question posed by the thread and stating my preference. It may not be yours and that's fine. I wasn't looking for approval.

I have to agree, they do put in a lot of resources into these boss designs and raids.The monster design looks great. It’s a shame more people aren’t experiencing it. Perhaps it would be an added addition once there are few more raid wings.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Xerxes.2468 said:I've always been of the opinion that no game needs a tier of content that only the hardcore element gets to see. This is important to this game since it decided not to continue to add dungeon content. I feel like fractals are ok but an imperfect solution to 5 man content at best. Varied difficulties with more/better rewards as you go up are fine.

Your opinion is easy to refute. There are players who seek hardcore challenge, therefore failing to provide that means you lose these players. There are many games for which that's fine. ANet, however, have decided GW2 won't be one of these. And if anything, fractals are a solid example how tiered difficulties fail.

That's just another opinion. You didn't "refute" anything. Game design preference is not a matter of hard scientific facts. It's all opinions and preferences.

No, it's not all opinions and preferences. Not only is there solid theory behind it, it is also a business. As such, its goal is market success, which is not a matter of opinion and preference. There are different ways to achieve this, there's no doubt about that. But some of there will be more successful than others, and there's no doubt about it either.

Do you own a bunch of stock in the company or something? They don't need you to white knight for their marketing decisions and quarterly earnings. The poll was literally "what would you prefer?". That's a question about preference and opinion. My job is not praise every last decision made by the devs. It's their game, they're free to do what they want with my criticism.

Good point, but keeping a reality check and realistic mindset when it comes to suggestions, expectations and possibilities keeps one from asking for nonsense or look all to stupid.

@Xerxes.2468 said:I'm all for having a hardcore mode that gives better rewards, but if some people were really going to get bent out shape and leave because lower difficulty setting existed for people to see content and learn mechanics, I don't really care. Warcraft isn't losing all its mythic raiders because normal and heroic modes exist. More content accessable to more people in some fashion means more active players.

Please don't bring WoW into this discussion again, or be prepared to get refuted heavily on their approach to LFR including by me.

Go read through this thread to be informed why the WoW LFR approach does and would not fit GW2. The reasons are many fold and reach as far as not working with the very basic itemisation this has versus Wows.

WoW isn't losing it's mythic raiders true, but you also fail to show how LFR specifically has in any way improved the mythic raiding community (or raiding community as a whole) . There is enough differing opinions on that issue alone. Some even from the developers themselves who were not necessarily happy with introducing LFR.

I missed the part where I suggested they put LFR in. I don't like LFR, and I don't like when people straw man my points. I was just talking about having a couple of difficulty tiers to cater to more of the game's community since they puta great deal of their resources into raids, that's it. I was responding to the question posed by the thread and stating my preference. It may not be yours and that's fine. I wasn't looking for approval.

How much easier is raid content supposed to get according to you then? It's possible to clear all raids with pick up groups and no voice communication and not even max level gear, how much down does it have to go eaier so people are happy with the difficulty? Once easier raids are introduced, who says the reduction in difficulty will be enough? What's with the next wave of people who consider easy raids still to hard (similar to how some consider T1 fractals a challenge)?

One of the major flaws people keep bringing up with easy mode raids is: the actual difficulty of raids is already low (with 1 exception being Dhuum which might be en par with heroic raids in WoW). We are already on normal mode raid level compared to most other MMOs. Going any lower is basically asking for LFR level of difficulty.

Hence my arguing against LFR since you conveniently brought up WoW to make a point. GW2 raids are approximately normal mode WoW raids, some bosses easier and some slightly harder. Where do we go from here?

[Tyson.5160]

The word easy means different things to different people.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Cyninja.2954 said:

How much easier is raid content supposed to get according to you then? It's possible to clear all raids with pick up groups and no voice communication and not even max level gear, how much down does it have to go eaier so people are happy with the difficulty? Once easier raids are introduced, who says the reduction in difficulty will be enough? What's with the next wave of people who consider easy raids still to hard (similar to how some consider T1 fractals a challenge)?

One of the major flaws people keep bringing up with easy mode raids is: the actual difficulty of raids is already low (with 1 exception being Dhuum which might be en par with heroic raids in WoW). We are already on normal mode raid level compared to most other MMOs. Going any lower is basically asking for LFR level of difficulty.

Hence my arguing against LFR since you conveniently brought up WoW to make a point. GW2 raids are approximately normal mode WoW raids, some bosses easier and some slightly harder. Where do we go from here?The problem with difficulty is that there's just way too much difference between top skilled groups and the average players (and not even average out of the whole game, but average raiders). Have you seen the dhuum cm challenge with budget (under 3g per person) gear? The group that did it had better dps than average, experienced raiders in full BiS gear. That creates a massive problem - anything that will be a challenge for the first group, will be prohibitively hard to the second (and completely out of the question for over half of the raiding community, not to mention everyone else). And what the first group considers easy might be anything but that for everyone else.

That's why we need different dificulty tiers. Because the skill spread is so big one tier is never going to encompass it, even if we're already limiting it to, say, top 10%.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:

How much easier is raid content supposed to get according to you then? It's possible to clear all raids with pick up groups and no voice communication and not even max level gear, how much down does it have to go eaier so people are happy with the difficulty? Once easier raids are introduced, who says the reduction in difficulty will be enough? What's with the next wave of people who consider easy raids still to hard (similar to how some consider T1 fractals a challenge)?

One of the major flaws people keep bringing up with easy mode raids is: the actual difficulty of raids is already low (with 1 exception being Dhuum which might be en par with heroic raids in WoW). We are already on normal mode raid level compared to most other MMOs. Going any lower is basically asking for LFR level of difficulty.

Hence my arguing against LFR since you conveniently brought up WoW to make a point. GW2 raids are approximately normal mode WoW raids, some bosses easier and some slightly harder. Where do we go from here?The problem with difficulty is that there's just way too much difference between top skilled groups and the average players (and not even average out of the whole game, but average

raiders

). Have you seen the dhuum cm challenge with budget (under 3g per person) gear? The group that did it had better dps than average, experienced raiders in full BiS gear. That creates a massive problem - anything that will be a challenge for the first group, will be prohibitively hard to the second (and completely out of the question for over half of the

raiding

community, not to mention everyone else). And what the first group considers easy might be anything but that for everyone else.

That's

why we need different dificulty tiers. Because the skill spread is so big one tier is never going to encompass it, even if we're already limiting it to, say, top 10%.

That's were I disagree.

I believe we need better preparation and in game activities which prepare people for raids as well as better grouping and LFG options.

The question this boils down to is:Should raid content be complete-able by any player of any skill level or should a certain minimum skill requirement remain.

Questions of secondary nature are resulting from this primary question:

• How would this get implemented reward wise?
• What is the lowest tier of player skill which we should aim for?
• How many difficulties are required?
• How would fracturing the already small raid community affect raids?
• Should raid exclusive rewards be made available via other methods?
• How many resources need to get devoted to this game mode?
• etc.

In direct comparison with other games raids are simple and there is even raid bosses in this game which are dwarfed by normal dungeon bosses in other MMOs. That is not a matter of opinion or spread, it's a simple observable fact by comparison of required skills in order to succeed. Raids in this game are easy. The fact that a vast majority of the player base is absolutely incompetent is a mistake which has been carried down since launch.

I believe with correct incentives and opportunities players can be taught (as has been shown thousands of times in practice runs) and prepared to approach challenging content via in game activities. I have asked for this for over 1 year by now in other threads as well were I was vocal about getting a proper training campaign or mission which teaches players the basics (combo fields, crowd control, dodging, etc.).

Making raids easier at this point is a terrible band-aid on a problem of game design and will not help in the long run. No one who completes a LFR difficulty level raid will stick with it in the long-run. There is no challenge and if there is no itemization incentive to lure people to play this trivial content, it will die out while costing developer resources which could have been spent on actually addressing the problem.

[Vinceman.4572]

I almost always agree to your posts, Cyninja but in this case I'm going with Astralporing. You won't get the average GW2 player out of his/her comfort zone. By it's core design it was never the goal to have a - I would say - "competent focus" challenging content. Although it also wasn't just made for relaxed gaming only I'm seeing that nowadays there's a lot of content the average player isn't going to see ever that is to say six wings packed with decent to cool designed bosses (just my opinion). With fractals they have a chance to see actual group content via T1.Therefore I'm still pleading for an easy mode but my terms and conditions still stay clearly:

• No Legendary Insights/Divinations
• No Ascended Drops/Minis/Raid specific drops
• No unlocking of Legendary Armor/Ring collection
• Hand out a rare and some blue/green stuffs
• Allow unlocking HoT raid masteryetc.

Of course this shouldn't lie on the shoulders of the raid + fractal dev team which already seems to be in an unhealthy state to me (the raid release does not allow a different evaluation). Do not fire the LS dev team which was responsible for "Domain of Kourna" - just take them away from LS developing so things don't go bad/worse there and let them tune down the actual raids for one-time-experiences for all the players not wanting/being able to raid the regular ones. You won't silence the hardcore crybabies but those who are interested in lore, the design and the "feeling of being epic" without actually being it.

Edit: My opinion hasn't changed (that much) as people can see in previous threads and in this one. Rewards still shouldn't be toned down!

[Cyninja.2954]

I'm not against easy modes because I enjoy making life harder on players.

I am against easy mode because the extra development resources going into this kind of content are valuable. If Arenanet came out right now and told us:"Guys, we are doubling the fractal/raid team to allow for easy mode development so you should not see any change in release cadence." I'd be a lot more open to this kind of idea (and still believe there would be better approaches to get people into raiding). Knowing that this will not happen I see this as wasted resources.

I would rather they spend resources on trying to improve the overall performance via new tutorials than adding an unnecessary mode. That way players would have a choice to improve their game play if so desired and get prepared for multiple game modes instead of having to run practice raids for easy and normal mode.

[Vinceman.4572]

@"Cyninja.2954" said:I'm not against easy modes because I enjoy making life harder on players.

I am against easy mode because the extra development resources going into this kind of content are valuable. If Arenanet came out right now and told us:"Guys, we are doubling the fractal/raid team to allow for easy mode development so you should not see any change in release cadence." I'd be a lot more open to this kind of idea (and still believe there would be better approaches to get people into raiding). Knowing that this will not happen I see this as wasted resources.

I would rather they spend resources on trying to improve the overall performance via new tutorials than adding an unnecessary mode. That way players would have a choice to improve their game play if so desired and get prepared for multiple game modes instead of having to run practice raids for easy and normal mode.

Can partially agree but in my opinion easy mode raids are the same wasted resources like a living world episode. We get some parts of story instances and most of the people play it once only to experience the lore. Afterwards there are only two things why you would replay it: 1. achievements and 2. to get the story done with alts. The latter is negligible for almost everyone and for the first one there could be achievements for an easy mode as well. Sure, with my proposal we would get one map less but in the end I think players can live with that in case of a map like Kourna.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:I'm not against easy modes because I enjoy making life harder on players.

I am against easy mode because the extra development resources going into this kind of content are valuable. If Arenanet came out right now and told us:"Guys, we are doubling the fractal/raid team to allow for easy mode development so you should not see any change in release cadence." I'd be a lot more open to this kind of idea (and still believe there would be better approaches to get people into raiding). Knowing that this will not happen I see this as wasted resources.

I would rather they spend resources on trying to improve the overall performance via new tutorials than adding an unnecessary mode. That way players would have a choice to improve their game play if so desired and get prepared for multiple game modes instead of having to run practice raids for easy and normal mode.

Can partially agree but in my opinion easy mode raids are the same wasted resources like a living world episode. We get some parts of story instances and most of the people play it once only to experience the lore. Afterwards there are only two things why you would replay it: 1. achievements and 2. to get the story done with alts. The latter is negligible for almost everyone and for the first one there could be achievements for an easy mode as well. Sure, with my proposal we would get one map less but in the end I think players can live with that in case of a map like Kourna.

Sure, I guess we'll have to wait and see how this gets approached overall. Developing more raid modes creates a bigger focus on the game mode after all, not sure every one advocating for easy mode raids would end up being happy with such a change but then again sometimes one should be careful what one wishes for.