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Wing 7 CMs are too easy


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@"maxwelgm.4315" said:I am quite glad that both CMs and normals are easy. The LFG in NA has already died down, discords are not nearly as heated up as they were during w6 release, and it's just hard in general to make any kind of group that is not a static. This is quite weak and means the mode has become extremely insulated, if even fresh content from 2 days ago doesn't stimulate on/off players, newbies and people with alts to simply hook up a pug group and have a go at it.

It's the communities fault though which is fueled by incoherent game design. I think that more people would be into raiding if people wouldn't exaggerate with KP-requirements and all that stuff. Finding a static is also quite hard since most LFGs in the forum or elsewhere are either bloody casual or extremely hardcore without anything in between. The "monday clear" mentality is also kitten stupid. I just want to have fun with other people in raids and try out the raids I want to try out.

@tim.4596 said:Also Raids, are not everything, but all in all they need more inexhaustive content that players can play at a try hard level. Cause right now, the PvE scene in GW2 is seriously dying. I see a lot of new players who get into raids, that are really hyped about raids for the first few months, they create multiple characters, do various raids, play various builds etc.... have fun spamming raids for a little while, and after they've done that, that's it. The game doesn't leave you room for improvement beyond a certain point. (By that I mean, you just grow bored of raids, and don't see a point in improving beyond a certain point).

I've been through the newbie-experience after having acquired approx. 240 LI and then quitting the game for several months. The problem isn't being bored. The problem as a newbie is being burned out by all the kitten about the raiding community. There are far too many special snowflakes in PUG-raiding who are either quitting after the first fail or who downright sabotage you since they just don't care about the rules you've set up (like taking the kitten last updraft at Gorsy-chan for safety reasons) which then leads to a wipe. After having put up with these people, having organized multiple training raids to get the LI to somewhat get into PUG-raids and having bad luck during PUG-raiding, you're bound to be burned out for good.

I just hope getting into W7 won't be a pain in the kitten...

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@zealex.9410 said:

@Vinceman.4572 said:Well, who would have thought that? Isn't it obvious that this is the outcome after the layoffs earlier this year? I mean seriously what did you expect? A shift to the better in terms of challenging content when it was already a niche before the structural changes? Especially when the lead developer and most dedicated & communicative person here in the forums & reddit left the company.GW2 will be in a good state but raids and fractals won't be. At least that was and still is my logical conclusion. And finally this is a perfect one for the whole community. Wing 5 & 6 are too complex for a lot of players and also not interesting enough. Hopefully the new wing will change that and be a perfect equivalent to W4.

Great days/weeks for GW2 at the moment. I'm very happy.

The last boss of wing 7 is around wing 5 & 6 complexity wise. Single points of failure doesn't make a boss complex.

Given the fact that people of my old - more casually oriented - guild already cleared all CMs in the new wing the 2nd day (1st day was clearing normal mode) contradict that.

I wouldn't call them casual if they already have the raid done. But I guess this is where definitions can differ

Casual doesnt mean bad or unskilled.

Indeed but it would mean (for me personally) that they don't have that much time to play

It took the best guilds in the world around idk 3 to 4 hours to beat it? Thats cms, plus this thread is about the raid cms being rather easy so you already know this wont be a week long grind to kill it.

2 days is perfectly normal if you dedicate like a couple hours per day. Plus, the more skilled you are the less time u will need.

Yes, and personally dedicating a couple of hours per day I wouldn't consider casual. But that's a matter of definition I guess

Knowing a week or more in advanve about upcomming content helps you make schedule.

So then you schedule around the game which would make then noncasual in my opinion. But this is a pointless argument anyway as it is just a definitional thing

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@Raizel.8175 said:

@"maxwelgm.4315" said:I am quite glad that both CMs and normals are easy. The LFG in NA has already died down, discords are not nearly as heated up as they were during w6 release, and it's just hard in general to make any kind of group that is not a static. This is quite weak and means the mode has become extremely insulated, if even fresh content from 2 days ago doesn't stimulate on/off players, newbies and people with alts to simply hook up a pug group and have a go at it.

It's the communities fault though which is fueled by incoherent game design. I think that more people would be into raiding if people wouldn't exaggerate with KP-requirements and all that stuff. Finding a static is also quite hard since most LFGs in the forum or elsewhere are either bloody casual or extremely hardcore without anything in between. The "monday clear" mentality is also kitten stupid. I just want to have fun with other people in raids and try out the raids I want to try out.

@"tim.4596" said:Also Raids, are not everything, but all in all they need more inexhaustive content that players can play at a try hard level. Cause right now, the PvE scene in GW2 is seriously dying. I see a lot of new players who get into raids, that are really hyped about raids for the first few months, they create multiple characters, do various raids, play various builds etc.... have fun spamming raids for a little while, and after they've done that, that's it. The game doesn't leave you room for improvement beyond a certain point. (By that I mean, you just grow bored of raids, and don't see a point in improving beyond a certain point).

I've been through the newbie-experience after having acquired approx. 240 LI and then quitting the game for several months. The problem isn't being bored. The problem as a newbie is being burned out by all the kitten about the raiding community. There are far too many special snowflakes in PUG-raiding who are either quitting after the first fail or who downright sabotage you since they just don't care about the rules you've set up (like taking the kitten last updraft at Gorsy-chan for safety reasons) which then leads to a wipe. After having put up with these people, having organized multiple training raids to get the LI to somewhat get into PUG-raids and having bad luck during PUG-raiding, you're bound to be burned out for good.

I just hope getting into W7 won't be a pain in the kitten...

Well, I was not even talking about PUG runs, since there are too many variables (they have already cleared, are trying a new class for the first time, weekend raid heroes that play once in a blue moon, etc... the list can go on).

It's true that PUG groups asks way too many KP's especially when it means nothing, but puging really shouldn't be anyone's starting point or end point. It's way too much time and effort for all the frustration that it can bring (even though I pug most of the time, but I am starting to get really tired of it, especially now that there are 7 raid wings).

What I was trying to convey in my previous post, is that raids, except from getting the legendary armour brings nothing. And all in all they are starting to feel like, getting the legendary armour from them seems to be their only goal... With the addition of W7 Anet removed the NPC that allowed you to exchange LI to LP ... And for what reason ? Because they wanted to make getting the legendary ring capped to new raid wings only whilst getting the legendary armour even more easy as you can still downgrade your LP. I am getting a bit off track here, as it's not a valid argument, but I am just saying... It's those small things which Anet does, which makes you strongly question what direction are they taking with PvE ...

And if we look at W7 CM's to find an answer. The answer is not great.... CM's in raids are getting easier than ever. And if you look at fractals, they completed deleted CMs from any new coming fractal. In last Sunday Teapot streams they talked about a conversation which one of them had with a developer at Anet regarding repeatable CM's to which they replied that they were scared of splitting the community into 2 by doing so... So I am not really sure. It is true that 100CM + 99CM have split the community sort of, as the people doing CM's consistently wouldn't bother doing Normal Mode anymore especially since CM's actually give more loot. But I think there is a difference between being downright scared of the impact that CM's (or Hard mode / Elitist group) might have on the community and releasing them while looking for ways around it to invite players to play together, and provide something that players can strive for.

What's so frustrating in all of this,is that GW2 is a great game.... with great fighting mechanics and actually descent and fun classes to play... So to see that if you want to take the game to the next level, it's plain not possible. Like compared to other game WoW mythic depending on your level might take you a good whole month to clear in guild (of course this is mostly due to gearing) but once you managed to clear all bosses in mythic you feel like it's an achievement. In GW2 I am not sure anymore. Demon Demise was something (Deimos pre nerf was actually difficult + you had 4 CM to clear) Voice in the Void, even though Desmina was somewhat a complete joke, Dhuum was really good.... Then came W6 (someone explain me what happened) and then W7 ... What does that say about the future of raids in GW2, W8: 'enter the raid' and get the title already, or ?

What is currently labelled as "challenging content" in a thorough rework... And maybe new content should be released as open beta before release, so that they may check what's actually going on... And maybe increase/decrease the difficulty...

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@Vinceman.4572 said:

@Vinceman.4572 said:Well, who would have thought that? Isn't it obvious that this is the outcome after the layoffs earlier this year? I mean seriously what did you expect? A shift to the better in terms of challenging content when it was already a niche before the structural changes? Especially when the lead developer and most dedicated & communicative person here in the forums & reddit left the company.GW2 will be in a good state but raids and fractals won't be. At least that was and still is my logical conclusion. And finally this is a perfect one for the whole community. Wing 5 & 6 are too complex for a lot of players and also not interesting enough. Hopefully the new wing will change that and be a perfect equivalent to W4.

Great days/weeks for GW2 at the moment. I'm very happy.

The last boss of wing 7 is around wing 5 & 6 complexity wise. Single points of failure doesn't make a boss complex.

Given the fact that people of my old - more casually oriented - guild already cleared all CMs in the new wing the 2nd day (1st day was clearing normal mode) contradict that.

Also developer != designer. They have almost nothing to do with balancing the content. They said the new wing will be near wing 1 difficulty which they actually achieved.

So you are telling me that Ben wasn't the one focussing on balancing stuff in raids & fractals? And we know of two additional members of the raid team that left. If I'm speaking about raid developers I mean those individuals who tweak the balance a.k.a. difficulty not the graphical surroundings, music or anything else unrelated.

Ironically it can be an equivalent to wing 4 for pugs. Do everything except the endboss looks quite realistic. A lot of pugs are still afraid of Deimos.

Pugs who fail Deimos are
trash
not really competent players. There's nothing hard at Deimos. If you want to make it ubersafe there are 3 people who need to know the boss: the tank, the hand kiter and the black kiter. Everyone else can still afk-range from the middle and get an easy LI. This tactic also is the best pug tactic because even if all pug players have a gazillion of LIs somebody is definitely going to step into a black and make the group wipe. Can compare those people to the ones dying in poison fields of Tequatl.

The only difficulty at Deimos is that depending on your PC performance / internet connection, things can go insanely wrong. Tank may not see green spawning and get ported, lagg might make you dodging the slam attack fly off the platform. The game just doesn't seem optimised for bosses like Deimos. Stepping out on black doesn't bug though... So if people step on blacks then they seriously have to start looking at what they are doing indeed.

Otherwise what kills most pug groups is pure mechanic knowledge. 2 people can actually carry the whole fight. Or 1 really good druid can definitely hard carry the whole fight and prevent wipes (but those don't seem to exist anymore). Maybe too many people trashed talked druid players, saying that druid is for newbie... I don't know :D.

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@"Miellyn.6847" said:A crucial thing that many players won't understand is that you can't design real challenging content for the top 5% without locking out everyone else in GW2.

You can with CM's though, which is I believe what the OP is saying. I'm all onboard with making standard difficulty content accessible so new players can learn the game mode. If T1 Fractals were overly punishing, many wouldn't stick around to learn and develop until they were capable of doing T4.

But CM's are a different story. In my opinion, a developer has carte blanche for making CM as sadistic and as punishing as they want, since the fallback position will remain "if you don't enjoy the CM because it's too hard/long/difficult/stressful, just play regular mode".

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@"tim.4596" said:It's true that PUG groups asks way too many KP's especially when it means nothing, but puging really shouldn't be anyone's starting point or end point. It's way too much time and effort for all the frustration that it can bring (even though I pug most of the time, but I am starting to get really tired of it, especially now that there are 7 raid wings).

Well... True, it shouldn't, but for quite a lot of people it is due to their job/studies or simply because the game is so kitten unsocial.

What I was trying to convey in my previous post, is that raids, except from getting the legendary armour brings nothing.

I have to disagree. I like doing raids for their gameplay-aspect. I also like other silly things which several people severely dislike like JPs. Not everything has to be overly rewarding in terms of loot. Fun gameplay is - at least for me - also a reward.

In last Sunday Teapot streams they talked about a conversation which one of them had with a developer at Anet regarding repeatable CM's to which they replied that they were scared of splitting the community into 2 by doing so... So I am not really sure. It is true that 100CM + 99CM have split the community sort of, as the people doing CM's consistently wouldn't bother doing Normal Mode anymore especially since CM's actually give more loot. But I think there is a difference between being downright scared of the impact that CM's (or Hard mode / Elitist group) might have on the community and releasing them while looking for ways around it to invite players to play together, and provide something that players can strive for.

The general problem I see in GW2 is that it's utterly unsocial which in turn leads to the aforementioned elitism and a split community. The lack of any difficulty-progression in other game modes is also a reason. There's probably no way to fix that anymore, so yeah... There will sadly always be a split in the community.

What's so frustrating in all of this,is that GW2 is a great game.... with great fighting mechanics and actually descent and fun classes to play... So to see that if you want to take the game to the next level, it's plain not possible. Like compared to other game WoW mythic depending on your level might take you a good whole month to clear in guild (of course this is mostly due to gearing) but once you managed to clear all bosses in mythic you feel like it's an achievement. In GW2 I am not sure anymore. Demon Demise was something (Deimos pre nerf was actually difficult + you had 4 CM to clear) Voice in the Void, even though Desmina was somewhat a complete joke, Dhuum was really good.... Then came W6 (someone explain me what happened) and then W7 ... What does that say about the future of raids in GW2, W8: 'enter the raid' and get the title already, or ?

I don't think it's all that bad to have varying degrees of difficulty. Sure, CMs should feel challenging, I'm with you on that. But I see a problem here with how the playerbase is affected by that kind of game design. I'd argue that we have a really big perception-problem in the raiding community as to what is actually difficult. People who have raided for years in statics have such a sheltered view on different bosses and mechanics as someone who - for example - mostly PUGs stuff. I've heard from many hardcore-people that W6's first boss is actually "just another Cairn", which is blatantly false of course. These viewpoints trickle down into general game design (and of course also normal variants of raid bosses) as the raid team - as far as I've heard - works together with top raid guilds which of course are heavily biased when it comes to difficulty. In that regard, I'm quite with this here:

@"Turkeyspit.3965" said:You can with CM's though, which is I believe what the OP is saying. I'm all onboard with making standard difficulty content accessible so new players can learn the game mode. If T1 Fractals were overly punishing, many wouldn't stick around to learn and develop until they were capable of doing T4.But CM's are a different story. In my opinion, a developer has carte blanche for making CM as sadistic and as punishing as they want, since the fallback position will remain "if you don't enjoy the CM because it's too hard/long/difficult/stressful, just play regular mode".

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@"Raizel.8175" said:

I don't think it's all that bad to have varying degrees of difficulty. Sure, CMs should feel challenging, I'm with you on that. But I see a problem here with how the playerbase is affected by that kind of game design. I'd argue that we have a really big perception-problem in the raiding community as to what is actually difficult. People who have raided for years in statics have such a sheltered view on different bosses and mechanics as someone who - for example - mostly PUGs stuff. I've heard from many hardcore-people that W6's first boss is actually "just another Cairn", which is blatantly false of course. These viewpoints trickle down into general game design (and of course also normal variants of raid bosses) as the raid team - as far as I've heard - works together with top raid guilds which of course are heavily biased when it comes to difficulty. In that regard, I'm quite with this here:

You do CMs once. There is 0 reward from doing them again. They should be hard. They should be challenging. You should feel rewarded when you complete them. W7 offers none of that. Pugs got titles 1 day after releases. Pugs. It's a tragedy. NOW me and my guild will quit the game cause there is nothing to do. It's to easy. It's not fun, not rewarding. We have no reason to stay. No reason to get better cause everything is so easy.Everything else in this game - the open world events, metas, world bosses can be easy. We stuck around just hoping that CMs are going to be hard and we will have fun learning them. Too bad there is nothing to learn. Air Djiin CM can be mistaken for normal mode fight it's this easy.

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There needs to be an incentive to do CMs on the regular, whether it be a single rotating CM a week as an extra reward (to promote killing that certain boss that week while maintaining Normal Mode attendance) or something else, I can't really say.

It's probably one of the few areas of content in this game that are considered to be obsolete after the first run-through, with no incentive to do after.

It's understandable that the devs don't want to pull the trigger however there are now 7 wings with tons of bosses, having a single CM give bonus that week won't impact the other 6 wings or the other bosses of THAT wing any further.

Not to mention for those who haven't cleared that CM, it might provide incentive for a group to bring in fresh players to do it, as well as pugs getting together that week for the clear and achievement.

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I think in wing 7 Qadim CM is at a good level in difficulty it felt very satisfying to complete, but air and earth are a bit easy definitely. I shouldn't have been able to pug earth cm twice and complete it in less than 30min on week 1, with no voice coms I feel. Qadim cm took a lot more and comp change slightly it's well designed.

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@zealex.9410 said:Sc got the world first without knowing to an extend what was even going on.

Im not saying progression should take weeks but cms at peast should be an entry lvl encounter.Careful. When people started talking like that after w4, Anet listened. We got w5 - the wing that was probably the main reason behind a major drop in raid population. One, that raids never really recovered from.

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The issue with W7 difficulty is that the previous wings are much harder. W6 is harder than W7 and W5 is harder than W6. This creates multiple problems, including a disjointed story (W7 follows W6 but it's easier to complete) and it makes the later wings look so much easier. After all once you've done Dhuum CM any other CM will be easy. Now if it was the opposite and the easier CM of Wing 7 was released first, maybe we wouldn't see such fast completions. Remember that those running W7 CMs now have already beaten Dhuum CM. The alternative would've been to make Wing 7 CMs as hard (or harder) than Dhuum, but Dhuum would be hard to top.

Arenanet should do well to remember in the future to release the easier Wings first and then make them progressively harder, including in the first wing some bosses for easy currency farm. The reason Wing 4 is so popular (pre-Deimos) is because the 3 bosses are easier than the first bosses of the previous Wings (excluding "Escort"). And let's not forget the "failure" of Wing 2 with Slothasor being much much harder than the Trio.

Both within a specific wing AND considering all raid releases of an expansion, Arenanet should have some form of difficulty progression.

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@"maddoctor.2738" said:The issue with W7 difficulty is that the previous wings are much harder. W6 is harder than W7 and W5 is harder than W6. This creates multiple problems, including a disjointed story (W7 follows W6 but it's easier to complete) and it makes the later wings look so much easier. After all once you've done Dhuum CM any other CM will be easy. Now if it was the opposite and the easier CM of Wing 7 was released first, maybe we wouldn't see such fast completions. Remember that those running W7 CMs now have already beaten Dhuum CM. The alternative would've been to make Wing 7 CMs as hard (or harder) than Dhuum, but Dhuum would be hard to top.

Arenanet should do well to remember in the future to release the easier Wings first and then make them progressively harder, including in the first wing some bosses for easy currency farm. The reason Wing 4 is so popular (pre-Deimos) is because the 3 bosses are easier than the first bosses of the previous Wings (excluding "Escort"). And let's not forget the "failure" of Wing 2 with Slothasor being much much harder than the Trio.

Both within a specific wing AND considering all raid releases of an expansion, Arenanet should have some form of difficulty progression.

Yes, Difficulty in Raids shouldn't go backwards but get higher as the players get better with each new wing.

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I'm just going with the assumption that the only reason why W7 is easier/same as W6 is that they are both part of the same general raid story. W5 was a one-off and thus they ramped up the difficulty from W1-4 which were their own mixed bag.

If so, they could use the excuse that if W8 goes into a new story, maybe a one-off like Dhuum, to make it as hard as W5.

That's my speculation anyways. They still need to add some sort of reason to repeat a CM per my suggestion before.

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@"maddoctor.2738" said:The issue with W7 difficulty is that the previous wings are much harder. W6 is harder than W7 and W5 is harder than W6. This creates multiple problems, including a disjointed story (W7 follows W6 but it's easier to complete) and it makes the later wings look so much easier. After all once you've done Dhuum CM any other CM will be easy. Now if it was the opposite and the easier CM of Wing 7 was released first, maybe we wouldn't see such fast completions. Remember that those running W7 CMs now have already beaten Dhuum CM. The alternative would've been to make Wing 7 CMs as hard (or harder) than Dhuum, but Dhuum would be hard to top.

Arenanet should do well to remember in the future to release the easier Wings first and then make them progressively harder, including in the first wing some bosses for easy currency farm. The reason Wing 4 is so popular (pre-Deimos) is because the 3 bosses are easier than the first bosses of the previous Wings (excluding "Escort"). And let's not forget the "failure" of Wing 2 with Slothasor being much much harder than the Trio.

Both within a specific wing AND considering all raid releases of an expansion, Arenanet should have some form of difficulty progression.

While this approach makes sense from a progression stand point, introducing easier wings (similar to W1-4 somewhat, even if that might have been by accident) as time passes on makes more sense if you want to reach a player base outside of the very hardcore crowd.

First off, GW2 is not a raid centric game and never will be. I think every raider has noticed this by now and hopefully come to terms with it.

Second, introducing a new set of wings with the hardest wing first, causes the hardcore crowd to work on that wing (while meta rewards like a full set of armor W1-4 or legendary trinkets W5-7 are not in place yet) while the less hardcore crowd can ignore (and does ignore) said content. Then once the overall set is completed, newer or less focused raiders have an opportunity to start working on easier bosses to work up to the more difficult ones if desired.

Finally the LI and LD accumulated benefit both: hardcore raiders accumulate ludicrous amount of these currencies over time while newer raiders or less experienced raiders get an opportunity to acquire less currency later down the road (think Escort, W4 B1-3, Trio, etc.). In a way it is Arenanets approach to add easy mode to wing sets (counting W1-4 as set 1, and W5-7 as set 2).

If the situation were flipped and a new set of wings started with easy encounters, the hardcore raiders would immedaitely be bored and the more casual crowd might not attend since the final reward is not in place, or just attend until the difficulty gets to much. This obviously only works if the overall reward design is enticing. Where Wing 5-7 fail is the currently unique (ludicrous expensive compared to armor and ascended trinkets) legendary trinket reward and the possibility to acquire more LI per week.

My guess is Wing 5 river and statues, Wing 6 B1 and Wing 7 B1+2 (or maybe all 3, Quadim2 really is not that hard when chessed with Scourges) will be the second sets equivalent encounters to the first sets Trio, Escort and W4 B1-3. The only question will be, of how much vlaue will LD be.

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@Astralporing.1957 said:

@zealex.9410 said:Sc got the world first without knowing to an extend what was even going on.

Im not saying progression should take weeks but cms at peast should be an entry lvl encounter.Careful. When people started talking like that after w4, Anet listened. We got w5 - the wing that was probably the main reason behind a major drop in raid population. One, that raids never really recovered from.

Oh and i thought the drop in population was because raids come out so slowly.

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@Cyninja.2954 said:

@"maddoctor.2738" said:The issue with W7 difficulty is that the previous wings are much harder. W6 is harder than W7 and W5 is harder than W6. This creates multiple problems, including a disjointed story (W7 follows W6 but it's easier to complete) and it makes the later wings look so much easier. After all once you've done Dhuum CM any other CM will be easy. Now if it was the opposite and the easier CM of Wing 7 was released first, maybe we wouldn't see such fast completions. Remember that those running W7 CMs now have already beaten Dhuum CM. The alternative would've been to make Wing 7 CMs as hard (or harder) than Dhuum, but Dhuum would be hard to top.

Arenanet should do well to remember in the future to release the easier Wings first and then make them progressively harder, including in the first wing some bosses for easy currency farm. The reason Wing 4 is so popular (pre-Deimos) is because the 3 bosses are easier than the first bosses of the previous Wings (excluding "Escort"). And let's not forget the "failure" of Wing 2 with Slothasor being much much harder than the Trio.

Both within a specific wing AND considering all raid releases of an expansion, Arenanet should have some form of difficulty progression.

While this approach makes sense from a progression stand point, introducing easier wings (similar to W1-4 somewhat, even if that might have been by accident) as time passes on makes more sense if you want to reach a player base outside of the very hardcore crowd.

First off, GW2 is not a raid centric game and never will be. I think every raider has noticed this by now and hopefully come to terms with it.

Second, introducing a new set of wings with the hardest wing first, causes the hardcore crowd to work on that wing (while meta rewards like a full set of armor W1-4 or legendary trinkets W5-7 are not in place yet) while the less hardcore crowd can ignore (and does ignore) said content. Then once the overall set is completed, newer or less focused raiders have an opportunity to start working on easier bosses to work up to the more difficult ones if desired.

Finally the LI and LD accumulated benefit both: hardcore raiders accumulate ludicrous amount of these currencies over time while newer raiders or less experienced raiders get an opportunity to acquire less currency later down the road (think Escort, W4 B1-3, Trio, etc.). In a way it is Arenanets approach to add easy mode to wing sets (counting W1-4 as set 1, and W5-7 as set 2).

If the situation were flipped and a new set of wings started with easy encounters, the hardcore raiders would immedaitely be bored and the more casual crowd might not attend since the final reward is not in place, or just attend until the difficulty gets to much. This obviously only works if the overall reward design is enticing. Where Wing 5-7 fail is the currently unique (ludicrous expensive compared to armor and ascended trinkets) legendary trinket reward and the possibility to acquire more LI per week.

My guess is Wing 5 river and statues, Wing 6 B1 and Wing 7 B1+2 (or maybe all 3, Quadim2 really is not that hard when chessed with Scourges) will be the second sets equivalent encounters to the first sets Trio, Escort and W4 B1-3. The only question will be, of how much vlaue will LD be.

I think that aproach is just bad. Every other mmo for years has followed the aproach of the entry point being the easiest and then (hopefully in a well balanced maner) upping the challenge from wing to wing.

That does 2 things, first it introduces ppl to the content, that is espeatially good in gw2 because raids are usually tied to multiwing collections and having the starting point being the easiest gives the opportunity to more ppl to get engaged with said collections. If the easiest wings are the final ones then ppl feel less so inclined to try them because theres no progress being made in terms of said collections.

Another point is the climax, if the last wing is the easiest the payoff is gone and all the engagement ppl have diminishes and they get bored or burned out. I believe raiders or everyone really would be far more bored and underwhelmed and speptical of sticking around for new raids if say a multiraid story ends on a rather underwhelming note (esp if the final boss is fought for the second time and is easier than the first).

Like it or not, increasing dificulty draws emotions and immerses players in what they do (thats usually why ppl feel exstatic after killing a boss in ds, its the payoff).We already have examples of this in various parts of the story, biggest example is zhaitan which is infamously known as a joke of an encounter for the climax of the ps.

Again to go back to other mmos, ff14 and wow both follow an aproach of having the entry point being the easiest and then ramp up the dificulty. Yes u can say these are raid centric mmos (which is ehh idk) but being raid centric or not mainly has to do with the cadence of new content, quality is tied ofc but u can still release a raid once a year and be considered a masterpiece or a raid every 4 months and 2 out of 3 raids being called bad. I didnt mention Eso because i dont closely follow it but from talking with ppl thats largely the same aproach.

Plus having the entry point be the easiest just creates bigger drive to engage with the content than having the entry point be the hardest, bad first impressions leave stigma to the players and gw2 community doesnt let go of stigmas. (mainly when it comes to the "extreme" dificulty of the content)

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@Cyninja.2954 said:If the situation were flipped and a new set of wings started with easy encounters, the hardcore raiders would immedaitely be bored and the more casual crowd might not attend since the final reward is not in place, or just attend until the difficulty gets to much.

When the first wing of the Raids is released, if it's (like POF and HOT) close to the expansion release it's exactly when most players are still active. Perfect introduction to Raids when most players are playing. We've seen over time players stop playing the game and leave, the open world has massive reductions. Releasing the easy wing late means a great number of players already gave up on Raids (and even the game)

Moreover, the collections for the raid rewards start on the first wing (the hard one) which means a player MUST go and do that one before progressing to the easier ones. I get it there are multiple benefits from having hard raids first and release easier ones later. But there are also too many drawbacks and I think there is more benefit in releasing Raid wings with a set difficulty progression.

And don't forget the topic of the thread. Those that beat the harder wings, will find the next ones boring.

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There is something to consider, that I think might help everyone here to keep in mind as well.

We don't have a Vertical Progression system in GW2, meaning that the artificial 'difficulty' advantage that games like WoW and FF14 get for a week or more due to simply not having the stats yet for completing the content with, in large part skill and raid composition, factors into why WoW / FF14 might feel more difficult.

This is not to say GW2 doesn't have inventive encounters, in fact I feel like FF14 most recently is taking lessons from GW2 combat in terms of abilities having charges for balancing and so forth, everyone learns from each other.

However, I wanted to make this note as while I do agree the latest wings are easier, ANet has to decide how strict the encounters are based on gear requirements, for now and onwards. This is probably their metric since the end of Wing 3...

To that end however, I do suggest that W7 CMs could have had a higher health pool overall, made a stronger enrage timer and DPS check.

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@Sykper.6583 said:There is something to consider, that I think might help everyone here to keep in mind as well.

We don't have a Vertical Progression system in GW2, meaning that the artificial 'difficulty' advantage that games like WoW and FF14 get for a week or more due to simply not having the stats yet for completing the content with, in large part skill and raid composition, factors into why WoW / FF14 might feel more difficult.

This is not to say GW2 doesn't have inventive encounters, in fact I feel like FF14 most recently is taking lessons from GW2 combat in terms of abilities having charges for balancing and so forth, everyone learns from each other.

However, I wanted to make this note as while I do agree the latest wings are easier, ANet has to decide how strict the encounters are based on gear requirements, for now and onwards. This is probably their metric since the end of Wing 3...

To that end however, I do suggest that W7 CMs could have had a higher health pool overall, made a stronger enrage timer and DPS check.

Well it's too late now. That ship has sailed. Can't wait for SC to quit the game next.

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@"Raizel.8175" said:

I don't think it's all that bad to have varying degrees of difficulty. Sure, CMs should feel challenging, I'm with you on that. But I see a problem here with how the playerbase is affected by that kind of game design. I'd argue that we have a really big perception-problem in the raiding community as to what is actually difficult. People who have raided for years in statics have such a sheltered view on different bosses and mechanics as someone who - for example - mostly PUGs stuff. I've heard from many hardcore-people that W6's first boss is actually "just another Cairn", which is blatantly false of course. These viewpoints trickle down into general game design (and of course also normal variants of raid bosses) as the raid team - as far as I've heard - works together with top raid guilds which of course are heavily biased when it comes to difficulty. In that regard, I'm quite with this here:

I totally believe this is the reason why they make it easy.

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Balancing for a much larger crowd of players means using the easier bosses as a benchmark. An understandable approach.However, I had always hoped they'd pursue a two-pronged strategy. Easier normal bosses to attract more players to raids and far more challenging Challenge Motes along the lines of Dhuum CM for the more dedicated.

That said, focusing on attracting more new players seems such a hollow goal if you end up alienating most of your veterans by not considering their wishes. Let's be honest, these CMs were almost jokingly easy. Pretty much all of the raid groups I am close to finished them without a hassle, even those who have been stuck on Dhuum CM or even Quadim CM (W6) for quite a while. Those groups will continue to try hard until they eventually reach their goals while the newest CMs have been nothing more than a little moral booster to them. Yet everyone else who has been waiting desperately for something good, my own static included, went right back to being bored after having spend a day on the new wing. Not surprised I am hardly the only one who feels this way.

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@Henry.5713 said:That said, focusing on attracting more new players seems such a hollow goal if you end up alienating most of your veterans by not considering their wishes. Let's be honest, these CMs were almost jokingly easy. Pretty much all of the raid groups I am close to finished them without a hassle, even those who have been stuck on Dhuum CM or even Quadim CM (W6) for quite a while. Those groups will continue to try hard until they eventually reach their goals while the newest CMs have been nothing more than a little moral booster to them. Yet everyone else who has been waiting desperately for something good, my own static included, went right back to being bored after having spend a day on the new wing. Not surprised I am hardly the only one who feels this way.

Sums it up pretty good. The CM´s should have been the normal encounter.Especially Qadim NM feels like hes MISSING mechanics. Like theyve done the CM first and simply removed stuff instead of doing NM first and adding new stuff.

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@zealex.9410 said:Again to go back to other mmos, ff14 and wow both follow an aproach of having the entry point being the easiest and then ramp up the dificulty. Yes u can say these are raid centric mmos (which is ehh idk) but being raid centric or not mainly has to do with the cadence of new content, quality is tied ofc but u can still release a raid once a year and be considered a masterpiece or a raid every 4 months and 2 out of 3 raids being called bad. I didnt mention Eso because i dont closely follow it but from talking with ppl thats largely the same aproach.

???

Release cadence doesn't matter at all. What matters is how raid-content is tied to its game. In FF XIV, you have to raid for gear- and story-progression, so of course raids are a major part of the game. In GW2, it's just niche-content because you don't really need them.

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