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


Lonami.2987

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@"Lonami.2987" said:Good video about the topic:

Also, poll numbers for the record, for a total of 1022 votes:

  • We need both easy and hard modes - 51% - 531 votes
  • We need an easy mode, but not a hard mode - 7% - 78 votes
  • We need a hard mode, but not an easy mode - 7% - 81 votes
  • Raids are fine the way they are, combining bosses of various difficulties - 25% - 260 votes
  • Raids have problems, but we need a better solution - 7% - 72 votes

We have 65% of the voters wanting easy or hard mode, 58% wanting easy mode, and 58% wanting hard mode. Only 25% are fine with the current status of raids, against a 74% which isn't happy with the current situation.

Isnt happy with the current situation, is as vague as you can be though.

I think that there's always something to improve, and something that is niche like raids, always has a large majority of people who think it needs improvement in one way or another. Where the double improvement is the more social option. Or perhaps the 'more fair' option. ("If you get easy mode then i want harder mode")

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@"Lonami.2987" said:Good video about the topic:

Also, poll numbers for the record, for a total of 1022 votes:

  • We need both easy and hard modes - 51% - 531 votes
  • We need an easy mode, but not a hard mode - 7% - 78 votes
  • We need a hard mode, but not an easy mode - 7% - 81 votes
  • Raids are fine the way they are, combining bosses of various difficulties - 25% - 260 votes
  • Raids have problems, but we need a better solution - 7% - 72 votes

We have 65% of the voters wanting easy or hard mode, 58% wanting easy mode, and 58% wanting hard mode. Only 25% are fine with the current status of raids, against a 74% which isn't happy with the current situation.

Great video and analysis.

And the ideas Teapot raises in the video have potential in both directions - something some of us have been saying as far back as 3 years ago (in the dev thread asking what raids could be before they came out). Most of the current living story steps (like the recent fight against a certain giant dragon) could incorporate similar tools and be made into raid fights - without corrupting the easier mode experience. Using these simple tools, they could expand the game exponentially for all players - both hard core (by adding challenge to existing easy mode content) and casual (by adding easy modes to existing challenge/raid content).

The numbers show this is something the community wants (in VERY clear terms). The video shows an easy way (presumably) of accomplishing it. Hopefully, the developers are listening.

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@Blaeys.3102 said:

@"Lonami.2987" said:Good video about the topic:

Also, poll numbers for the record, for a total of 1022 votes:
  • We need both easy and hard modes - 51% - 531 votes
  • We need an easy mode, but not a hard mode - 7% - 78 votes
  • We need a hard mode, but not an easy mode - 7% - 81 votes
  • Raids are fine the way they are, combining bosses of various difficulties - 25% - 260 votes
  • Raids have problems, but we need a better solution - 7% - 72 votes

We have 65% of the voters wanting easy or hard mode, 58% wanting easy mode, and 58% wanting hard mode. Only 25% are fine with the current status of raids, against a 74% which isn't happy with the current situation.

Great video and analysis.

And the ideas Teapot raises in the video have potential in both directions - something some of us have been saying as far back as 3 years ago (in the dev thread asking what raids could be before they came out). Most of the current living story steps (like the recent fight against a certain giant dragon) could incorporate similar tools and be made into raid fights - without corrupting the easier mode experience. Using these simple tools, they could expand the game exponentially for all players - both hard core (by adding challenge to existing easy mode content) and casual (by adding easy modes to existing challenge/raid content).

The numbers show this is something the community wants (in VERY clear terms). The video shows an easy way (presumably) of accomplishing it. Hopefully, the developers are listening.

The numbers show this is something half of the people who come to an easy mode debate want. Which might be a big difference.

I do believe most people in this debate already agreed they aren't against it if it doesn't take lots of development time.

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@"yann.1946" said:I do believe most people in this debate already agreed they aren't against it if it doesn't take lots of development time.From the raiders side it's more like "if it doesn't take any developer time, and if it gives the easy mode players nothing, especially nothing that would able the mode to be sustainable". There is still a number of people that seem to agree on the surface, but hedge that with requirements that are sure to sink the mode (well knowing that those would sink the mode). And then they are saying that they've made the concessions already, so the opposite side should make concessions too.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"yann.1946" said:I do believe most people in this debate already agreed they aren't against it if it doesn't take lots of development time.From the raiders side it's more like "if it doesn't take any developer time,
and if it gives the easy mode players nothing, especially nothing that would able the mode to be sustainable
". There is still a number of people that seem to agree on the surface, but hedge that with requirements that are sure to sink the mode (well knowing that those would sink the mode). And then they are saying that they've made the concessions already, so the opposite side should make concessions too.

The problem has always been that everyone has different expectations.

Should it serve as training yes or no,What should the rewards be because everyone has different ideas of what the difficulties should be.

Let also not forget that their have been a substantial part of the pro story mode crowd also where/are for no loot.

This debate never was two groups against eachother

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@lare.5129 said:easiest way: and don't break balance:add 3-5 fractal instabilities in raid, if used by activation mote, and give additionally +2 gold from each bossno add any achiv, item's and etcYes, seeing how well that works for fractals currently, i see no possible way it could be imbalanced. Also, adding more instabilities on top of already difficult raid mechanics is definitely the easiest way of introducing easy mode[/sarcasm]

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@"Hugheszie.6291" said:LFR was a good idea, it helped in WoW to bring a bunch of new raiders into the scene who otherwise, wouldn't. By joining public groups automatically to learn the raids etc and progress through. Once they're good enough they can apply to to "proper" raids with raiding guilds etc.

LFR has about as much in common with raiding in WoW as a banana with some salad. That is: almost nothing at all.

If your definition of raiding is:Have easy content which you zerg down with 20-40+ people and have near 0 chance of failure, then that is called open world metas here.

The only thing missing in GW2 compared to WoW LFR is a stacking buff which ensures people will succeed at the latest some tries in.

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@"gonandro.4768" said:This thread....86 pages.Ok let's be realistic, easy mode is NOT gonna happen. We got 1 (O N E) Raid wing in 2018.Well, yeah, there's that. And since the player population for raids will continue to diminish, we'll probably keep getting bigger and bigger delays with each next wing. Possibly with some decreases to their difficulty (and eventually even some retroactive "rebalancing" for better accessibility, or simply a general decrease of difficulty due to power creep). There will be indeed no need for easy mode then.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"gonandro.4768" said:This thread....86 pages.Ok let's be realistic, easy mode is NOT gonna happen. We got 1 (O N E) Raid wing in 2018.Well, yeah, there's that. And since the player population for raids will continue to diminish, we'll probably keep getting bigger and bigger delays with each next wing. Possibly with some decreases to their difficulty (and eventually even some retroactive "rebalancing" for better accessibility, or simply a general decrease of difficulty due to power creep). There will be indeed no need for easy mode then.

Yeah no. The only reason the first 3 wings were pretty fast was because they started during HoT development. All wings after that were pretty slow. This has nothing to do with raid population. Which is still pretty healthy and doesn't care about you doomsayers.

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@Miellyn.6847 said:

@"gonandro.4768" said:This thread....86 pages.Ok let's be realistic, easy mode is NOT gonna happen. We got 1 (O N E) Raid wing in 2018.Well, yeah, there's that. And since the player population for raids will continue to diminish, we'll probably keep getting bigger and bigger delays with each next wing. Possibly with some decreases to their difficulty (and eventually even some retroactive "rebalancing" for better accessibility, or simply a general decrease of difficulty due to power creep). There will be indeed no need for easy mode then.

Yeah no. The only reason the first 3 wings were pretty fast was because they started during HoT development. All wings after that were pretty slow. This has nothing to do with raid population. Which is still pretty healthy and doesn't care about you doomsayers.

Also important to note is that the release cadence of lw has slowed in general.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"yann.1946" said:I do believe most people in this debate already agreed they aren't against it if it doesn't take lots of development time.From the raiders side it's more like "if it doesn't take any developer time,
and if it gives the easy mode players nothing, especially nothing that would able the mode to be sustainable
". There is still a number of people that seem to agree on the surface, but hedge that with requirements that are sure to sink the mode (well knowing that those would sink the mode). And then they are saying that they've made the concessions already, so the opposite side should make concessions too.

Well people seem to ask for a open world boss fight level of difficulty. (But scaled to 10 players)So it should have the same rewards as that right?

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@Miellyn.6847 said:

@"gonandro.4768" said:This thread....86 pages.Ok let's be realistic, easy mode is NOT gonna happen. We got 1 (O N E) Raid wing in 2018.Well, yeah, there's that. And since the player population for raids will continue to diminish, we'll probably keep getting bigger and bigger delays with each next wing. Possibly with some decreases to their difficulty (and eventually even some retroactive "rebalancing" for better accessibility, or simply a general decrease of difficulty due to power creep). There will be indeed no need for easy mode then.

Yeah no. The only reason the first 3 wings were pretty fast was because they started during HoT development. All wings after that were pretty slow. This has nothing to do with raid population. Which is still pretty healthy and doesn't care about you doomsayers.I get it you didn't see the message about DnT disbanding and the stated reason behind it? And they are not the only ones. Old guilds disband, veteran raiders stop playing, and the influx of new players is way too small to cover that.

It's not a prediction, or "doomsaying". It might have been when i was saying this long time ago, when raids have just started, but now it has already became reality.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"gonandro.4768" said:This thread....86 pages.Ok let's be realistic, easy mode is NOT gonna happen. We got 1 (O N E) Raid wing in 2018.Well, yeah, there's that. And since the player population for raids will continue to diminish, we'll probably keep getting bigger and bigger delays with each next wing. Possibly with some decreases to their difficulty (and eventually even some retroactive "rebalancing" for better accessibility, or simply a general decrease of difficulty due to power creep). There will be indeed no need for easy mode then.

Yeah no. The only reason the first 3 wings were pretty fast was because they started during HoT development. All wings after that were pretty slow. This has nothing to do with raid population. Which is still pretty healthy and doesn't care about you doomsayers.I get it you didn't see the message about DnT disbanding and the stated reason behind it? And they are not the only ones. Old guilds disband, veteran raiders stop playing, and the influx of new players is way too small to cover that.

It's not a prediction, or "doomsaying". It might have been when i was saying this long time ago, when raids have just started, but now it has already became reality.

Well, everyone predicted the game to become less populated. This is and has never been a miracle, you'll expect this in every game. It's already affecting some harder map metas like Vabbi where you really need to look for communities doing it from time to time/on a fixed schedule which means relying on websites etc.The only thing I agree to is that again some recent changes - a.k.a. some of the fractal instabilities + the new one - have again thrown out & excluded players from content that was accessible without bigger problems.In my surroundings more than 10 players have stopped playing within the last 2 months - most of them shortly after LS release because it also offered less than some of the releases before. The changes to Istan some months ago and the recent ones aren't positive trends as well since it makes no sense to gut things that were well-visited (although not by me).

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"gonandro.4768" said:This thread....86 pages.Ok let's be realistic, easy mode is NOT gonna happen. We got 1 (O N E) Raid wing in 2018.Well, yeah, there's that. And since the player population for raids will continue to diminish, we'll probably keep getting bigger and bigger delays with each next wing. Possibly with some decreases to their difficulty (and eventually even some retroactive "rebalancing" for better accessibility, or simply a general decrease of difficulty due to power creep). There will be indeed no need for easy mode then.

Yeah no. The only reason the first 3 wings were pretty fast was because they started during HoT development. All wings after that were pretty slow. This has nothing to do with raid population. Which is still pretty healthy and doesn't care about you doomsayers.I get it you didn't see the message about DnT disbanding and the stated reason behind it? And they are not the only ones. Old guilds disband, veteran raiders stop playing, and the influx of new players is way too small to cover that.

It's not a prediction, or "doomsaying". It might have been when i was saying this long time ago, when raids have just started, but now it has already became reality.

So your solution is to instead of bringing out more content, offer multiple difficulties for established content. DnT was a hardcore raid guild (not to mention they pretty much became irrelevant 2 years ago or longer). Them leaving the game will have not been affected by easy mode difficulty. The reason they gave was that even though the new wing was good, it was not difficult enough to hold people's interest.

Here is what it boils down to in essence:Easy mode requires extra developer resources devoted to raiding content. More developer resources to raid content means the game becomes more raid focused. More raid focus means it might potentially drive away players who are not interested in raids (as another flip side). It's literally the same thing which happened to WoW years ago. Their over focus on raids and gear has stripped the game of any actual content beside that and left the player base addicted to a constant gear thread mill. Now that one of the expansions has not delivered on this core premise, the game is hemorrhaging players like never seen before.

If raids as they are, do not survive in GW2, then they will take a spot just like dungeons and become side content. The game as a whole might very well remain successful, as it has now.

Easy mode raids is not the solution to lacking content. Please don't mix those 2 things up.

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@"Cyninja.2954" said:So your solution is to instead of bringing out more content, offer multiple difficulties for established content.Nah, it's 2 years too late for that, to be honest. Now i'd rather see the already existing raid content become open to a wider group of players, because apparently the group it was originally intended for simply cannot be satisfied by the amount of effort Anet is willing to devote to it. Which at least some of us have been saying from the beginning, by the way.

DnT was a hardcore raid guild (not to mention they pretty much became irrelevant 2 years ago or longer). Them leaving the game will have not been affected by easy mode difficulty.Not directly, but indirectly, they were. See below.

The reason they gave was that even though the new wing was good, it was not difficult enough to hold people's interest.That's one of the reasons they gave. The other was a significant declining of NA raiding scene, and the fact there were no new players to replace those who left. To quote Nike: "There simply is no new pool of up and coming players to recruit from".

Easy mode introduced early enough might have provided such a pool, or at least helped in sustaining it. Now it's probably way too late for that, though.

If raids as they are, do not survive in GW2, then they will take a spot just like dungeons and become side content. The game as a whole might very well remain successful, as it has now.Yeah, the possibility of raids getting abandoned is there as well. Like with dungeons, would be a pity (since that content is already there, the game should at least try to use it better).

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:So your solution is to instead of bringing out more content, offer multiple difficulties for established content.Nah, it's 2 years too late for that, to be honest. Now i'd rather see the already existing raid content become open to a wider group of players, because apparently the group it was originally intended for simply cannot be satisfied by the amount of effort Anet is willing to devote to it. Which at least some of us have been saying from the beginning, by the way.

DnT was a hardcore raid guild (not to mention they pretty much became irrelevant 2 years ago or longer). Them leaving the game will have not been affected by easy mode difficulty.Not directly, but indirectly, they were. See below.

The reason they gave was that even though the new wing was good, it was not difficult enough to hold people's interest.That's one of the reasons they gave. The other was a significant declining of NA raiding scene, and the fact there were no new players to replace those who left. To quote Nike: "There simply is no new pool of up and coming players to recruit from".

Easy mode introduced early enough might have provided such a pool, or at least helped in sustaining it. Now it's probably way too late for that, though.

If raids as they are, do not survive in GW2, then they will take a spot just like dungeons and become side content. The game as a whole might very well remain successful, as it has now.Yeah, the possibility of raids getting abandoned is there as well. Like with dungeons, would be a pity (since that content is already there, the game should at least try to use it better).

Please don't selectively read the tweet:

Foremost, Wing 6 did not reinvigorate the raid community, and our guild, the way wing 5 did. This was Arenanet’s fault and simply a case of to little to late. That said, Wing 6 is great, and makes a valuable addition to the game, but it was simply not enough after then months of raid content drought. The fights, while fun, are too straitforward and were too easily “solved from as peed clear perspective to encourage real competition and innovation.Secondly, as a result of the long content drought between Win 5 and 6, the NA raid scene declined significantly. After the realease of each raid wing we historically saw a bug rise in the amount of applications to join the guild from skilled players looking to make the leap to a speedclear guild. This did not happen after Wing 6. There is no new pool of up and coming players to recruit from, or if there is, I certainly don’t know about it.

You selectively decided to omit the entire 2 paragraph explanation of why the guild decided to disband in favor of focusing on the last sentence, which in context does not even support your claim. DnT was looking for new high skilled players. No one who needs easy mode raids would have even remotely fit that description.

Furthermore Nike clearly pinpoints the problem he sees in a lack of content.

The DnT disband is the complete opposite of an advocate or reason to bring easy mode raids (or even go remotely in the direction of making raids easier as a whole). Now one can argue about if easy mode raids would produce enough skilled raiders in the first place by exposing people to the content, but even that is hard to prove. Harder living world episodes don't seem to do the trick with the vast majority of the player base.

I remain by my point, while I enjoy raids and do also feel the problems arising from people dropping out, I do not feel that GW2 should become more raid centric.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:You selectively decided to omit the entire 2 paragraph explanation of why the guild decided to disband in favor of focusing on the last sentence, which in context does not even support your claim. DnT was looking for new high skilled players. No one who needs easy mode raids would have even remotely fit that description.Yes, most probably. But easy raids might have influenced the influx of new players to the normal raiding as well, and this would result in a greater pool of skilled players. And it's not only about direct influx (conversion from easy mode to normal mode), but also about the perception of raids. At this moment, there are many players that are probably good enough that they would have been okay in normal raids, but will never see that, because they are too scared of the raids' reputation. Easy mode might have partially countermanded it.

Furthermore Nike clearly pinpoints the problem he sees in a lack of content.That's how he sees it, yes. It's entirely possible however that, if the raiding scene did not diminish that much, because there would have been a bigger influx of new players, they would not have made the same decision.

The DnT disband is the complete opposite of an advocate or reason to bring easy mode raids (or even go remotely in the direction of making raids easier as a whole).I don't really see it that way. I'm pretty sure that it is exactly the difficulty level aimed at only highly skilled players that slowly kills the raid scene.

Now one can argue about if easy mode raids would produce enough skilled raiders in the first place by exposing people to the content, but even that is hard to prove.Or it might have given a chance for players that do have skill, but never got into raiding for reasons other than that.

Harder living world episodes don't seem to do the trick with the vast majority of the player base.Vast majority of playerbase cannot be trained, that's true. On the other hand, even an increase of skilled players for raids that would be insignificant when looking at the whole playerbase, might be huge when compared to the raid population.

I remain by my point, while I enjoy raids and do also feel the problems arising from people dropping out, I do not feel that GW2 should become more raid centric.Neither do i. At this point i'd say that it would be better if GW2 shifted its focus even further away from the hardcore community. After all, by hindsight, Raids do seem to be an effort mostly wasted. The people that Anet tried to bring in/keep using them are going to leave anyway.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:You selectively decided to omit the entire 2 paragraph explanation of why the guild decided to disband in favor of focusing on the last sentence, which in context does not even support your claim. DnT was looking for new high skilled players. No one who needs easy mode raids would have even remotely fit that description.Yes, most probably. But easy raids might have influenced the influx of new players to the normal raiding as well, and this
would
result in a greater pool of skilled players. And it's not only about direct influx (conversion from easy mode to normal mode), but also about the
perception
of raids. At this moment, there are many players that are probably good enough that they would have been okay in normal raids, but will never see that, because they are too scared of the raids' reputation. Easy mode might have partially countermanded it.

Furthermore Nike clearly pinpoints the problem he sees in a lack of content.That's how he sees it, yes. It's entirely possible however that, if the raiding scene did not diminish that much, because there would have been a bigger influx of new players, they would not have made the same decision.

The DnT disband is the complete opposite of an advocate or reason to bring easy mode raids (or even go remotely in the direction of making raids easier as a whole).I don't really see it that way. I'm pretty sure that it is exactly the difficulty level aimed at only highly skilled players that slowly kills the raid scene.

Now one can argue about if easy mode raids would produce enough skilled raiders in the first place by exposing people to the content, but even that is hard to prove.Or it might have given a chance for players that do have skill, but never got into raiding for reasons other than that.

Harder living world episodes don't seem to do the trick with the vast majority of the player base.Vast majority of playerbase cannot be trained, that's true. On the other hand, even an increase of skilled players for raids that would be insignificant when looking at the whole playerbase, might be huge when compared to the raid population.

I remain by my point, while I enjoy raids and do also feel the problems arising from people dropping out, I do not feel that GW2 should become more raid centric.Neither do i. At this point i'd say that it would be better if GW2 shifted its focus even further away from the hardcore community. After all, by hindsight, Raids do seem to be an effort mostly wasted. The people that Anet tried to bring in/keep using them are going to leave anyway.

No easy mode wouldn't produce any high skilled player. It has been proven now over multiple games that easy modes
do no
increase the population in difficulties over easy mode and worse sometimes decrease the population towards easy mode. It is useless as a training mode and people that are skilled enough to play normal would play it anyway.

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@Miellyn.6847 said:No easy mode wouldn't produce any high skilled player. It has been proven now over multiple games that easy modes do no increase the population in difficulties over easy mode and worse sometimes decrease the population towards easy mode. It is useless as a training mode and people that are skilled enough to play normal would play it anyway.WoW way is not the only way it can be done (and even then, the conversion is supposedly bad only for the lowest level to the next one. Alll the Mythic players did come from lower difficulty levels though). In other games though it does seem to work better. For FFXIV apparently it works really fine, for example.

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More Raids like Snowmen's Lair, 6 years I've been playing, and never enjoyed that content due to Elitist and those awful METAS. I don't want to be rejected anymore and having unexplored areas on my world map locked behind that. ME and SEVERAL of my friends want an EASY mode, requiring only 5 PLAYERS where everyone can come with the build they have, like we've done with SECRET LAIR OF THE SNOWMEN. Every patch I see "new raid" I'm crying bcause at the contrary of Fractals, Living story, WvW which are accessible, raids aren't, and I find the idea of locking explorable maps behind raids horrible. (Yeah they are explorable map with a ton of awesome lore, and that's sad I can't experience it 6years after the beginning of the game). I play with my own full ascended set and will not trade it for another corresponding to meta just to fit a role corresponding to a play-style I hate.

GUESS I will stay with several unexplored maps on my world map 6 more years!

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@Tyson.5160 said:I think this idea is pretty good honestly. I think if we use the Lair of the Snowmen as an easy mode template and adjust the bosses to those difficulties that would be great.

The thing is, someone design the Lair of the Snowmen. Could this person or team or who ever designed this thing go back and make adjustments to the current raids for an easy mode? Then slap in a watered down reward system with maybe easy mode achievements.

The people who are complaining about not being able to do this content from a lore perspective would then be satisfied at the very least. Then this dwindles the people complaining to a smaller pool of people.

Exactly that, would like to enjoy the lore.

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