Raids, strikes, story missions, response missions, ... How to unite them together into cohesive experience

[phoenixXx.9105]

As the title says, I'm proposing a system, that would allow the players to seamlessly transition from the story missions into instanced endgame(s). The biggest change would be to rebrand the "Raids" into something like "Strike Assaults", with the idea that Arenanet can, going forward, develop new type of raiding. Allow me to explain every part of the system and how it would work:

 

1. Story/Response Missions

1-5 man content, repeatable and easy(ish) to do, with rewards and extra achievements to hunt after. There should be a "explorable" 5-man version of story missions available to players. Harder in difficulty, CMs available, extra rewards, you get the idea. Similar to response missions but without the annoying parts.

 

2. Strike Missions

I don't care if they reuse the story bosses or develop new ones - strike missions are the perfect bitesize 10-man content. they should vary in difficulty and serve as the introductory content into strike assaults.

 

3. Strike Assaults

Here is the biggest change. I'm borrowing this idea from elite areas in GW1.  Reuse the maps (or create new ones, idk) to develop "instanced 10-man elite areas" with several bosses, events, trash mobs and a final boss. Defeating the final boss would finish the assault, but the players would have options on what to do: defeat various bosses to increase the rewards, complete events to spawn additional bosses or specific NPCs/crafters, activate CMs, do the vanquisher runs, farm specific mats, etc...

 

How are strike assaults different from raids? For starters, the name carries some stigma in the community. Renaming them also allows arenanet to experiment and develop them differently or even faster. The areas could be non-linear, they could reuse some of the bosses/maps for different content, they could make a few easier and shorter introductory assaults, etc ... But the main thing is to show the players strike assaults are the next logical step after they're done with the story and strike missions. 

 

 

What do you think about this idea? From my point of view, the devs dont know what they want to do with the endgame content in the game. Strike missions were a good step in the right direction, but I think they have to double down and commit to it, changing/rebranding previous iterations of the endgame. Strike assaults would be the perfect solution to change the traditional raiding into something more gw1/gw2 inspired.

 

 

Extra: Fractals

Let me just say that I don't play fractals. I hate the daily system, I hate the reccomended system and I hate the 100 level system. Just let us select the fractal that we want to play and let us select the difficulty (4 levels,  0 - 50 - 100 - 150AR required), with CMs available at level 4. That's it. No need to juggle around and change the levels everytime a new fractal is added, just drop it in and that's it.

Edited January 15, 2022 by phoenixXx.9105

[Linken.6345]

Yea dont think a name change, change much at this point mate.

[Giannis.8651]

uh this is not gonna happen cause its a waste of resources from anets perspective. Think of why we won't get another raid wing for example; its too cost inefficient cause too small a number of the playerbase enjoys raids to justify development. That's why we are getting strikes in EoD as they are very cost efficient to make(single instance,1 boss, scaleable difficulty according to what they promised...). Personally I don't really care if they are called Strike Missions or Strike Assaults or whatever as long as the difficulty scaling of the content isn't completely unsatisfactory(which it probably will be anyway).

[phoenixXx.9105]

2 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

Yea dont think a name change, change much at this point mate.

True, it's a just a name change for already released raids, but it also means new ideas and opportunities for the future. Strike missions were well received, why not expand on them and build a next gen raiding?

[Cuks.8241]

The thing is raids are fine, strikes are fine. Fractals are great. And DRMs are whatever, too much different systems and too much reused assets, don't need. All the systems are there, combat mechanics are great, character trait systems are good, balance would need to be maintained.

There is really only one issue. If you want to have raiding (or strike assaults or 10 man instance mode or whatever you want to call it) community you have to provide quality content with often updates. You can't have casual open world focus 99 % and sprinkle some raiding in there and expect to have a community. You have to commit and have to do it hard. And you have to provide exclusive shiny rewards that are hard to get (bragging stuff) and the more tears other players shed because they cant get them, the better because that is what makes it more desirable.