Public-instance Raids and Legendary armor

[Astralporing.1957]

On 12/6/2021 at 2:56 PM, lokh.2695 said:

Tell me, if doing something easy in 5 min gave you the same rewards as something challenging that takes you 15min, which one would you do?

What if the reward quality is the same, but the reward quantity per hour for challenging mode is 2x-3x as high as for easy one? Which one would you choose? Easier but slower, or harder but faster?

[Gibson.4036]

11 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

But that's exactly what it boils down to, so you're just "arguing" against the wording that in the end means the same thing you now agree with.

Just to be clear, I didn't say I agreed with anything. Just that "from the design it appears the Devs intent is..." was a good argument. Trying to discern intent from the way it's been designed is a good approach that can be debated.

"Would have by now" adds nothing, and is just an appeal to status quo. Design intent can change at any time, and often has over the course of GW2 specifically.

[Cyninja.2954]

13 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Just to be clear, I didn't say I agreed with anything. Just that "from the design it appears the Devs intent is..." was a good argument. Trying to discern intent from the way it's been designed is a good approach that can be debated.

"Would have by now" adds nothing, and is just an appeal to status quo. Design intent can change at any time, and often has over the course of GW2 specifically.

Sorry, but that's taking the easy way out.

First off appealing to the status quo is not a bad thing. On the contrary, given people are generally change adverse, maintaining a status quo is inherently beneficial unless explicitly proven that change must happen. (in case you want to see this in live effect, go to the WvW sub section of the forums and see what drastic changes result in, even if only temporary. Or feel free to go to any of the big upheavals of the past, say when runes/sigils were changed or unidentified gear was introduced, etc. The vocal minority on the forums, which by nature is subjective, is not reflective of the general adverse to change)

Second, the duration of a status quo or a situation can very well play into this. There is a difference between having something in place for weeks, months or years. Something not having seen change in a very long time does not offer the suggestion that it WILL change. Might it change? Sure, but the odds are against it.

Finally, on similar issues which are brought up consistently, yet do not see change, complacency or at the very least no desire to put effort into the issue can be deduced. We have had far more things NOT change over many years versus the occasional break up or shift. Yes, the sudden upheaval when something does get changed drastically is noticed more, but on the far and wide, consistency has been in place in nearly all areas of this games design and delivery. That goes hand in hand with abandoning old designs in favor of completely new ones instead of reworking the old approach unless absolutely necessary.

"Would have by now" is literally a quantifier of how long something has been in place. You can decide to omit this aspect, but that is only in order to serve an agenda because as far as relevance, it has one.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Gibson.4036]

Well, we had five and half years of people arguing mounts "would have been added if they were going to" before they were added to the game.

We've had about four and half years since the implementation of legendary armor.

Y'all can hang on to "would have if they were going to" and I'll hang on to "meaningless argument" and ANet will do what Anet does.

Hope you all have a great day.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Just to be clear, I didn't say I agreed with anything. Just that "from the design it appears the Devs intent is..." was a good argument. Trying to discern intent from the way it's been designed is a good approach that can be debated.

"Would have by now" adds nothing, and is just an appeal to status quo. Design intent can change at any time, and often has over the course of GW2 specifically.

Ok, you didn't say you agree with anything, but you did say it's a good argument and the point remains: the only difference between what you apparently think "is a good argument" and what you think is "meaningless argument" is that it's worded differently, but in the end it boils down to the same thing.

I don't know if people argued exactly the same thing about mounts (as in using the same wording), but I know mounts meaningfully impacted gameplay patterns and content that was released after their introduction, so I don't see how that strawman is supposed to mean anything in the context of what's proposed in this thread.

Edited December 14, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Obtena.7952]

9 hours ago, Gibson.4036 said:

Well, we had five and half years of people arguing mounts "would have been added if they were going to" before they were added to the game.

We've had about four and half years since the implementation of legendary armor.

 

Again, the point here is not that if you don't see it, it won't happen. The point here is that there is an establishment of some level if acceptance and satisfaction with the current implementation. 

Edited December 15, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Neva Eilhart.5347]

On 12/13/2021 at 10:05 PM, mythical.6315 said:

There’s a very good reason why this works in other games like FF14 and wouldn’t for GW2. 

 

Why exactly ?

Why giving old raid content (which is no longer relevant to most of the elite players who have farmed it already) a new life by opening it up to more players, while tuning down the rewards to keep elite stuff gated behind difficult modes, wouldn't be working on GW2 ?

How would that "break" the game ?

Edited December 15, 2021 by Neva Eilhart.5347

[Vilin.8056]

1 hour ago, Neva Eilhart.5347 said:

Why exactly ?

Why giving old raid content (which is no longer relevant to most of the elite players who have farmed it already) a new life by opening it up to more players, while tuning down the rewards to keep elite stuff gated behind difficult modes, wouldn't be working on GW2 ?

How would that "break" the game ?

Because in GW2 our characters aren't locked behind a singular role with a gearscore like other MMOs.

Which is the reason squad based contents falls either onto build/gear mandate or simply just mindless zerging, without a viable middle ground.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Vilin.8056

[Neva Eilhart.5347]

29 minutes ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Because in GW2 our characters aren't locked behind a singular role with a gearscore like other MMOs.

Which is the reason squad based contents falls either onto build/gear mandate or simply just mindless zerging, without a viable middle ground.

 

This seems to pinpoint why raids in GW2 aren't working as well as in other MMos. 

 

I don't see where it's related though to old raid content of GW2 being opened up to more casual players with an easier difficulty and accordingly lesser rewards, which has been the thing I was advocating for. I'm not here saying it will be a fun experience for everyone, but I find it sad for the game to have huge chunks of content (and by content I mean boss skins, unique assets, cutscenes) still locked years after their release behind a mandatory build/gear as you're rightfully stating. 

Edited December 15, 2021 by Neva Eilhart.5347

[Vilin.8056]

2 hours ago, Neva Eilhart.5347 said:

This seems to pinpoint why raids in GW2 aren't working as well as in other MMos. 

 

I don't see where it's related though to old raid content of GW2 being opened up to more casual players with an easier difficulty and accordingly lesser rewards, which has been the thing I was advocating for. I'm not here saying it will be a fun experience for everyone, but I find it sad for the game to have huge chunks of content (and by content I mean boss skins, unique assets, cutscenes) still locked years after their release behind a mandatory build/gear as you're rightfully stating. 

Again, as stated, because this game does not lock your class into a specific role, neither is there a gear score to meter your character rating.  With player performance gap as wide as 400% across lv 80 participants, there isn't an "easier difficulty" easy enough to avoid mandates yet challenging enough that won't descend into mindless zerging.

And the sad part about the lock wasn't the mandate, it is the player base who still lock themselves behind the mindset of gearscoring rather than build crafting. Who also limit themselves in mindless grinding for legendaries in mindless farm modes in the vain hope that it will raise their performance without putting thoughts onto their stat-trait-skill coordination, locking themselves from various fun contents and mechanics that fundamentally builds the game's combat.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Vilin.8056

[Sobx.1758]

2 hours ago, Neva Eilhart.5347 said:

This seems to pinpoint why raids in GW2 aren't working as well as in other MMos. 

Don't think that's the reason here, it's probably more about people getting used to mindlessly zerging metas so now they expect to get all the rewards for the same instead of taking time to learn the content and complete the relevant mechanics.

But yes, that seems to be the reason lfg isn't what some people would want it to be and it's based on joining squads manually rather than being automated.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Neva Eilhart.5347]

1 hour ago, Vilin.8056 said:

Again, as stated, because this game does not lock your class into a specific role, neither is there a gear score to meter your character rating.  With player performance gap as wide as 400% across lv 80 participants, there isn't an "easier difficulty" easy enough to avoid mandates yet challenging enough that won't descend into mindless zerging.

And the sad part about the lock wasn't the mandate, it is the player base who still lock themselves behind the mindset of gearscoring rather than build crafting. Who also limit themselves in mindless grinding for legendaries in mindless farm modes in the vain hope that it will raise their performance without putting thoughts onto their stat-trait-skill coordination, locking themselves from various fun contents and mechanics that fundamentally builds the game's combat.

 

Really sounds like we're talking about very different topics of the game.

I agree on the mindless zerging, and pretty much all of the open world game has ended up like this but... this seems a core design problem spreading all over the game rather than a specific one tied to raids being opened to less strict builds.

I'm not saying making raids easier would not result in mindless zergs. I'm saying opening up old content to new players would result in more players playing this content, meaning giving them something "new" at a very low cost (because everything's already made assets wise). Yet the raids becoming mindless zergs in an easy mode difficulty setting would be a non issue to me : players wanting to play it will go in anyway. Let them play however they want. If players on GW2 hated zerg mentality we wouldn't have so many players logged in everyday.

And just to be more precise, I'm one who wishes the game wasn't a huge zergfest and I still hope one day they could take us back to times where we had meaningful abilities granting just one boon or one attack, before the champ trains and champ loot bags were a thing. 

30 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Don't think that's the reason here, it's probably more about people getting used to mindlessly zerging metas so now they expect to get all the rewards for the same instead of taking time to learn the content and complete the relevant mechanics.

But yes, that seems to be the reason lfg isn't what some people would want it to be and it's based on joining squads manually rather than being automated.

Playing an easier mode should yield lesser rewards - I think that's a given in pretty much every game there is out there. Legendary armor should stay gated, albeit it's already fairly easily obtainable (with enough patience) in other game modes.

But I still think there could be something difficulty-wise between mindless zerging and higher difficulty which requires you mostly to play one specific meta build and comp. Opening up the old raids a bit with an easy mode could end up in introducing more instanced content to usually open world minded people and eventually would draw more players into higher level raiding. I mean, the game has so many great old instanced content which devs spent hours of work on, like old dungeons, and now old raids. It's such a waste to see these contents no longer relevant for the majority of players. There has to be some way to make something out of it to provide us all with some alternative to the mindless zergs.

 

Edited December 15, 2021 by Neva Eilhart.5347
Answering a 2nd post

[Linken.6345]

2 hours ago, Neva Eilhart.5347 said:

 

This seems to pinpoint why raids in GW2 aren't working as well as in other MMos. 

 

I don't see where it's related though to old raid content of GW2 being opened up to more casual players with an easier difficulty and accordingly lesser rewards, which has been the thing I was advocating for. I'm not here saying it will be a fun experience for everyone, but I find it sad for the game to have huge chunks of content (and by content I mean boss skins, unique assets, cutscenes) still locked years after their release behind a mandatory build/gear as you're rightfully stating. 

Just because the raids are old dont mean that old players dont still do them week after week.

Learn the content and get the reward mate.

[Neva Eilhart.5347]

12 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Just because the raids are old dont mean that old players dont still do them week after week.

Learn the content and get the reward mate.

 

Oh feel assured I don't need someone to tell me to "learn the content and get the reward" to know how it works. I'm glad some are still enjoying it on a weekly basis, and get what they should rewards wise.

Doesn't mean that the game as a whole couldn't be improved by using what's already made inside in order to make it relevant for more players in the long run. Read my previous comments, you'll see it's really not in my case about "learn to get good lolz" and more about not letting old modes (because Anet won't produce more raids, fact)  die because just 1% of the playerbase plays it. I couldn't care less about the rewards so to speak.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Neva Eilhart.5347

[Sobx.1758]

54 minutes ago, Neva Eilhart.5347 said:

Playing an easier mode should yield lesser rewards - I think that's a given in pretty much every game there is out there. Legendary armor should stay gated, albeit it's already fairly easily obtainable (with enough patience) in other game modes.

But I still think there could be something difficulty-wise between mindless zerging and higher difficulty which requires you mostly to play one specific meta build and comp. Opening up the old raids a bit with an easy mode could end up in introducing more instanced content to usually open world minded people and eventually would draw more players into higher level raiding. I mean, the game has so many great old instanced content which devs spent hours of work on, like old dungeons, and now old raids. It's such a waste to see these contents no longer relevant for the majority of players. There has to be some way to make something out of it to provide us all with some alternative to the mindless zergs.

Ok, but to be clear: now that's different than what Bakeneko said on the previous page and what you've respondeed with "all other mmos done this" to. I don't have a problem with training/easier modes, but those modes rewarding "end-goal" rewards don't push people to higher tiers nor do they "save" anything.

54 minutes ago, Neva Eilhart.5347 said:

I'm not saying making raids easier would not result in mindless zergs. I'm saying opening up old content to new players would result in more players playing this content, meaning giving them something "new" at a very low cost (because everything's already made assets wise).

Another thing about that is "other mmorpgs" doing that, frequently still play around the gear treadmill design, so it's more of a "catch-up" mechanic than anything else. There's no need for a "catch-up" mechanic with gw2's legendary items, because you can get ascended gear, stop playing for 4 years, come back and still have gear with top stats. Really, "other mmorpgs done that!" is pretty much a non-argument here imo.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[Neva Eilhart.5347]

1 minute ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Ok, but to be clear: now that's different than what Bakeneko said on the previous page and what you've respondeed with "all other mmos done this" to. I don't have a problem with training/easier modes, but those modes rewarding "end-goal" rewards don't push people to higher tiers nor do they "save" anything.

Another thing about that is that "other mmorpgs" that do that, frequently still play around the gear treadmill design, so it's more "catch-up" mechanic than anything else. There's no need for a "catch-up" mechanic with gw2's legendary items, because you can get ascended gear, stop playing for 4 years, come back and still have gear with top stats. Really "other mmorpgs done that!" is pretty much a non-argument here imo.

 

I realize now I should have been more careful in what I was saying because it might have caused some confusion. I apologize if this didn't came through as intended.

By "other Mmos have done that", I meant that these other games (I'm playing regularly Wow and FF14 fyi) have used the same content for both casual and hardcore players, just tuned accordingly and with rewards matching the difficulty. Wow has used LFG for many xpacs as a story mode device, while FF14 has always been story oriented in its normal/brutal modes.

The big thing here being that it allows the devs to produce content which is relevant to more of the playerbase of the game and to reuse it for both story content at first, and long term hardly obtainable rewards in harder tiers. In the long run, my point of view is that it keeps the game rather healthy because these game modes (raids) are always relevant and the lowest difficulty always works as an incentive to higher tiers of difficulty for new players.

In other terms, I am advocating for the raids being used in a way they can be played by more players, but I am also advocating for keeping the meaningful rewards gated behind difficulty.

I'm stating this because it saddens me to see Anet struggling with the same issues over and over : releasing new content, like instanced dungeons, then raids, and years down the road forgetting it even exists and starting anew reinventing the wheel with new content (strike missions) instead of building on what's already existing and finding ways to improve it and get more players into it.

[Linken.6345]

11 minutes ago, Neva Eilhart.5347 said:

 

I realize now I should have been more careful in what I was saying because it might have caused some confusion. I apologize if this didn't came through as intended.

By "other Mmos have done that", I meant that these other games (I'm playing regularly Wow and FF14 fyi) have used the same content for both casual and hardcore players, just tuned accordingly and with rewards matching the difficulty. Wow has used LFG for many xpacs as a story mode device, while FF14 has always been story oriented in its normal/brutal modes.

The big thing here being that it allows the devs to produce content which is relevant to more of the playerbase of the game and to reuse it for both story content at first, and long term hardly obtainable rewards in harder tiers. In the long run, my point of view is that it keeps the game rather healthy because these game modes (raids) are always relevant and the lowest difficulty always works as an incentive to higher tiers of difficulty for new players.

In other terms, I am advocating for the raids being used in a way they can be played by more players, but I am also advocating for keeping the meaningful rewards gated behind difficulty.

I'm stating this because it saddens me to see Anet struggling with the same issues over and over : releasing new content, like instanced dungeons, then raids, and years down the road forgetting it even exists and starting anew reinventing the wheel with new content (strike missions) instead of building on what's already existing and finding ways to improve it and get more players into it.

Yea not sure releasing a easier mode that reward 30silver per boss and 2 blues and a green is good return on developer time spent at this stage.'

People would play it once for the story I guess then go back to farming silverwaste, dragonfall or drizzlewood coast.

They are fixing rhis going forward with strikes tho.

[Vilin.8056]

1 hour ago, Neva Eilhart.5347 said:

 

Really sounds like we're talking about very different topics of the game.

I agree on the mindless zerging, and pretty much all of the open world game has ended up like this but... this seems a core design problem spreading all over the game rather than a specific one tied to raids being opened to less strict builds.

I'm not saying making raids easier would not result in mindless zergs. I'm saying opening up old content to new players would result in more players playing this content, meaning giving them something "new" at a very low cost (because everything's already made assets wise). Yet the raids becoming mindless zergs in an easy mode difficulty setting would be a non issue to me : players wanting to play it will go in anyway. Let them play however they want. If players on GW2 hated zerg mentality we wouldn't have so many players logged in everyday.

And just for info, I'm one who wishes the game wasn't a huge zergfest and I still hope one day they could take us back to times where we had meaningful abilities granting just one boon or one attack, before the champ trains and champ loot bags were a thing.

I agree it is a problem across many other MMOs, but other MMOs has its build mandate built-in onto the system so it's like comparing apple and oranges when it comes to raid scaling, because players already following a system based role/gear scoring mandate in these games.

You might be fine with mindless zerging in a raid mode, but participation rate in easy strike missions of Icebrood Saga speak other wise, or Elona bounties which serves as an open map raid. They are quickly abandoned once certain achievements are met by the majority of players. Implementing mindless grind mode onto challenging contents don't make the mode fun, but instead a chore with no replayable value even among the casuals.

Players are already free to play however they want, but games are also about choices and consequences. Refining flaws through consequences serves as part of an RPG experience.  It is up for the player to choose either to progress or stay on the same level of contents. Which is why developers termed raid as "Inspiration Content", it is never meant for everyone.

Ironically PvE wise, nobody care about meaningful ability granting outside of raid.

The thing you are looking for, and I believe what the developers should be working on to, is to eliminate skill gap by giving players a direction on how to overcome hard challenges the easier way, via some educational contents on the entry level. so they don't not have to be told by the community to drastically rebuild their character the moment they just made their foothold.

Edited December 15, 2021 by Vilin.8056

[Obtena.7952]

10 hours ago, Neva Eilhart.5347 said:

 

Why exactly ?

Why giving old raid content (which is no longer relevant to most of the elite players who have farmed it already) a new life by opening it up to more players, while tuning down the rewards to keep elite stuff gated behind difficult modes, wouldn't be working on GW2 ?

How would that "break" the game ?

Actually, I see no reason this couldn't work in GW2 (but we are past that ... raids are done). Despite some of the claims, the fact that people are still 'mindless zerging' the easier Strikes for dailies, etc ... indicates they wouldn't have a problem doing the same if the option for raids existed. 

This all boils down to motivation. What are the motivating factors that bring players into content? As long as people have motivation, they will do that content as long as the barriers are low enough for them to succeed. 

Here is the thing ... if it couldn't succeed, Anet wouldn't be trying it in the strike format for EoD. So ... people just being wrong here about how it can't work or there isn't a middle ground for group content between the tryhards and the zerglings.  If Anet wants group instanced content to succeed, they are going to implement it in a way that is more inclusive to more players and give them a reason to do it. 

Edited December 15, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Cyninja.2954]

5 hours ago, Neva Eilhart.5347 said:

 

I realize now I should have been more careful in what I was saying because it might have caused some confusion. I apologize if this didn't came through as intended.

By "other Mmos have done that", I meant that these other games (I'm playing regularly Wow and FF14 fyi) have used the same content for both casual and hardcore players, just tuned accordingly and with rewards matching the difficulty. Wow has used LFG for many xpacs as a story mode device, while FF14 has always been story oriented in its normal/brutal modes.

The big thing here being that it allows the devs to produce content which is relevant to more of the playerbase of the game and to reuse it for both story content at first, and long term hardly obtainable rewards in harder tiers. In the long run, my point of view is that it keeps the game rather healthy because these game modes (raids) are always relevant and the lowest difficulty always works as an incentive to higher tiers of difficulty for new players.

In other terms, I am advocating for the raids being used in a way they can be played by more players, but I am also advocating for keeping the meaningful rewards gated behind difficulty.

I'm stating this because it saddens me to see Anet struggling with the same issues over and over : releasing new content, like instanced dungeons, then raids, and years down the road forgetting it even exists and starting anew reinventing the wheel with new content (strike missions) instead of building on what's already existing and finding ways to improve it and get more players into it.

 

Originally, when the idea of "easy mode raids" (trainings raids, beginner raids, w/e you want to call them) was brought up years ago (and it did come up years ago, pretty much the moment raids hit the game), was that the already limited developer resources spent on the mode should cover the multiple difficulties. One has to remember, we are talking a small team in charge of fractals and a small team in charge of raids, which eventually even got merged later on. Living World was alive an kicking with 3-4 teams working on new episodes at all time.

 

The suggestion never went along the lines of:"let's devote more developer resources to this content and let's pull them from other content" (not sure that would have gone down well too, if suddenly living world episodes took 1-2 months longer to release, which they eventually did anyway given the developer resources were pulled to other projects). It was always:"let's have this at the expense of the niche content its self", thus eventually extending the already scarce releases of raid wings and fractals.

 

There was never consensus about how rewards should be handled. Not even among like minded players in favor of the idea of "training raids". That has remained a divisive issue to this day. This very thread has topic creator mention that he wants LI and LD in his larger scale raids idea, so your suggestion or question already deviates from the original suggestion and every person who defended that LI/LD obviously would have to be rewarded.

 

What we are left with is a game struggling in multiple niche areas pre Covid, some near death (Spvp), some on heavy life support (raid scene in NA) which limp on by vast community efforts of few, some in steady decline like WvW and the raid scene in EU.

 

Strikes 2.0 are just what you are asking for (after strikes 1.0 failed): shared developer resources for multiple difficulties of instanced content. How this will fare will have to be seen. Instanced content in general is not liked by a vocal minority and in case rewards are locked behind higher difficulties, expect similar backlash as with raids. The net positive here is the shared developer resources this time around.

As far as old content? Why waste resources here when new content could be created?

Edited December 15, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Firebeard.1746]

6 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

Originally, when the idea of "easy mode raids" (trainings raids, beginner raids, w/e you want to call them) was brought up years ago (and it did come up years ago, pretty much the moment raids hit the game), was that the already limited developer resources spent on the mode should cover the multiple difficulties. One has to remember, we are talking a small team in charge of fractals and a small team in charge of raids, which eventually even got merged later on. Living World was alive an kicking with 3-4 teams working on new episodes at all time.

 

The suggestion never went along the lines of:"let's devote more developer resources to this content and let's pull them from other content" (not sure that would have gone down well too, if suddenly living world episodes took 1-2 months longer to release, which they eventually did anyway given the developer resources were pulled to other projects). It was always:"let's have this at the expense of the niche content its self", thus eventually extending the already scarce releases of raid wings and fractals.

 

There was never consensus about how rewards should be handled. Not even among like minded players in favor of the idea of "training raids". That has remained a divisive issue to this day. This very thread has topic creator mention that he wants LI and LD in his larger scale raids idea, so your suggestion or question already deviates from the original suggestion and every person who defended that LI/LD obviously would have to be rewarded.

 

What we are left with is a game struggling in multiple niche areas pre Covid, some near death (Spvp), some on heavy life support (raid scene in NA) which limp on by vast community efforts of few, some in steady decline like WvW and the raid scene in EU.

 

Strikes 2.0 are just what you are asking for (after strikes 1.0 failed): shared developer resources for multiple difficulties of instanced content. How this will fare will have to be seen. Instanced content in general is not liked by a vocal minority and in case rewards are locked behind higher difficulties, expect similar backlash as with raids. The net positive here is the shared developer resources this time around.

As far as old content? Why waste resources here when new content could be created?

Oof sounds like PVE has been massively understaffed, let's hope EoD is different. Which is absolutely bizarre given how it rewards the best rewards in the game XD. I don't care what EU fast farming says, I don't get anywhere near the farming from Open world I'm supposed to. Fractals and raids seem to be what really boosts my g/week. 

This is like the catch-22 of game dev: sometimes companies cut staff to games that aren't doing well, but sometimes, the answer is to increase staff and do something innovative. That's how FFXIV came back to relevance after it all but collapsed after launch. 

 

[Obtena.7952]

I think the current situation more of a case of managing the stigma attached to raids than it is to staffing. Frankly, the optics of doing anything with raids at this point ... is bad, no matter what Anet do. Strikes is a nice way to hit the reset button. 

[Tails.9372]

1 hour ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Strikes is a nice way to hit the reset button. 

No they aren't, they're already tainted with the whole "stepping stone to raids" thing and their article about how they are the new place for difficult content in EoD doesn't make it any better.

As of right know the average casual player avoids even the easy SMs like Shiverpeaks Pass and is more inclined to try out T1 fractals despite most of them being significantly more difficult than "DPS golem".

[Obtena.7952]

2 minutes ago, Tails.9372 said:

No they aren't, they're already tainted with the whole "stepping stone to raids" thing and their article about how they are the new place for difficult content in EoD doesn't make it any better.

As of right know the average casual player avoids even the easy SMs like Shiverpeaks Pass and is more inclined to try out T1 fractals despite most of them being significantly more difficult than "DPS golem".

Well, you can believe what you like I guess but it's the path we are on. Players have the choice to make the best of it ... or not. Even people doing T1 fractals is a step in the right direction because I'm just going to throw my hypothesis out there ... it's NOT just about difficulty preventing people from engaging with instanced content. 

Edited December 16, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

On 12/13/2021 at 2:06 AM, Bakeneko.5826 said:

With current state of raids, open raid instances with nerfed versions could actually save raiding. Make public versions give LI/LD like they are doing now, and amp up Private Squad loot to make it on par with fractals (one full raid run giving same ammount of gold in items as week doing all fractals, more LI) this way you have "training" mode (sort of) for raids and influx of new players in raids, as well as incentive for players move onto squad based raiding for monetary gains.

 

tl;dr make open raid with current loot, put loot of steroids for private squad raids, save raids.

If this happens, please add a sink for LI/LD.  It's starting to take up bank space now..