Regarding the recent News Post

[Swagger.1459]

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-end-of-dragons-strike-missions-balance-and-rewards/

*I apologize if this comes off as negative. 

 

*This is NOT about Raids or instanced content, the topic is broader.

 

 

Bit confused and concerned with the News Post…

 

Raid development stopped due to low participation.

 

Strikes are the stepping stone to the now not-being-developed Raids.

 

Strikes are now getting “Challenge Modes” to serve as improved stepping stones to Raids that are not being developed anymore due to low participation.

 

Professions (and Boons as mentioned in the article) are continuing to be developed around Raids which are not being developed.

 

Warrior and Ranger are getting Boon reworks in the summer of 2022. Ranger Spirits were mentioned as being the potential target of Boon changes…

 

Ok, bear with me… … …

 

Raids are done because they were designed to cater to a small audience, and the end result was development for Raids being canned. We saw that coming btw… However, the team invests in Strikes and Challenge Modes, but completely IGNORED the thousands of requests from 2015 for Difficulty Setting (AKA Challenge Modes) for Raids, but now Strikes get them so players can prepare for Raids that are no longer being developed… Also, Profession changes are being done for dead Raids, meanwhile… the more than plethora of requests to improve Professions for all areas of the game are ignored. 
 

So by Summer, Ranger Spirits that will not be used in any part of the game except for low participation Strikes and Raids, but will get an update. Meanwhile, the tons of requests to make Druid less clunky, Ranger Trap improvements requests, Pet fixes and improvements requests, Weapon improvement requests, Spirit improvement requests that allow them to be used in every mode… will all be ignored while Spirits get their Raid rework even though Raid development is done… And this lack of meaningful improvement isn’t just limited to Ranger, all of the professions and E-Specs suffer from issues that are ignored. It’s kind of frustrating that the team doesn’t really seek to genuinely improve Professions, yet they are the most important factor to the game. 

 

So, why doesn’t the team work on giving boons to the Warrior and Ranger EOD specs so they can be used in any part of the game? Why is the team reworking Professions to ultimately participate in Raids now that development of Raids is done? Why is the team investing in Strike “Challenge Modes”, but not bothering to tackle the main issue of why Raid participation tanked in the first place?
 

Rambling over…

 

The planned development of this game makes zero sense. And not trying to be disrespectful, but it doesn’t seem like there is any urgency to work on Professions for game-wide improvements.. Instead, the team keeps throwing time and money at the obviously not-so-good raid experience and continues to shove Raid tailored Profession changes in… And unless I’m missing something, none of what the team is planning on doing makes any sense and just serves to strengthen the negative development stereotypes. 
 

And if the team is bent on making Spirit changes, then at least make them useful in every mode…

 

 

 

Again, I apologize if any of this comes off as negative. 

Edited February 12, 2022 by Swagger.1459

[Linken.6345]

Did you read that correctly boons are not being change to benefit raids.

The 10 man boons are going to be cut into 5 man boons again promoting mirror compostions in raids.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Linken.6345

[Tiviana.2650]

The change to mystic coins and the cost and change to the amount of clovers you can buy makes me wonder also wth is going on. Im not happy about this

[Firebeard.1746]

They've shafted a lot of people here.

1) This massively devalues the fractal reliquary. The nerf by increase required MCs is a bit of a slap in the face. It's generally a bad thing to devalue investments like this in game. 

2) This is actually a double-nerf for fractals, because those extra MCs they're making you spend could have been used for a legendary. So now legendaries through fractals cost more, in addition to them giving fewer mats. 

3) I thought usually anet liked making sure people's efforts aren't lost, this change to not give ANYTHING through the old IB strikes is garbage. Are they retroactively going to rip out of LI -> LD conversion they put in because W5 used to give LI? I mean that's a great way to build enthusiasm for the new game mode leading up until the expansion. And to say thank you to the people who spent their time organizing groups, etc and building the communities in those sectors. And yes the last 2 sentences are sarcasm in case it's lost. 
4) I have mixed feelings about the raid changes. They benefit me personally, but i still feel I was only able to crunch into raids because someone was willing to take a newb into a static, they really need to fix the training part of raids if they're going to use them as a major reward system moving forward. If it were me working these systems, I would have actually merged raids with strikes if they intend to keep them live: give raids 2 levels of CM: 1st level is it's exactly as in-game now, 2nd level is what's known as the raid CM today and tune the normal encounters down to a strike. LI/LD/EOD equivalent comes from strike CM and above. 

Edited February 12, 2022 by Firebeard.1746

[TexZero.7910]

17 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Did you read that correctly boons are not being change to benefit raids.

The 10 man boons are going to be cut into 5 man boons again promoting mirror compostions in raids.

It's pretty clear they didn't as they somehow without the post stating anything about "participation of raids" jumped to Raids are dead content.

 

[Monarc.9726]

I can’t help but feel like instanced group content is being pushed for the wrong reasons. Players may say they don’t raid because it’s too time consuming, or too difficult to find a good guild, etc., but it’s probably more that they just don’t want to. That’s fine, don’t push it. Not sure why they can’t just let it go and focus on other content, but whatever. I’m interested in the new Strikes and how they will build from solo sorry missions to challenge mode mini-raids, it’s an interesting concept, but feels forced. 

[Obtena.7952]

Lots of things in PO's post don't seem correct but ...

The claim that buffs for Warrior/Ranger incoming for summer aren't useful outside of instanced content ... weird stuff, especially since we don't know what they are yet. 

But sure, more crystal ball users around here.

[Firebeard.1746]

5 minutes ago, Monarc.9726 said:

I can’t help but feel like instanced group content is being pushed for the wrong reasons. Players may say they don’t raid because it’s too time consuming, or too difficult to find a good guild, etc., but it’s probably more that they just don’t want to. That’s fine, don’t push it. Not sure why they can’t just let it go and focus on other content, but whatever. I’m interested in the new Strikes and how they will build from solo sorry missions to challenge mode mini-raids, it’s an interesting concept, but feels forced. 

Not to mention that raids in other MMOs are supposed to be MASSIVE in scale, they're supposed to be the thing you build your guild around, 10-man isn't enough to do that. it would have made WAY more sense imo for them to attach the MCs to DS and Marionette in squad form (not public) if their real goal was to build their communities. Raids in this game are interesting, but they are missing the components to perform what raids are in other games. Honestly I think Marionette in squad form deserves an LI or two. And a chance at dropping an infusion with how hard it is. Maybe people will actually do it. 

Edited February 12, 2022 by Firebeard.1746

[Cyninja.2954]

Or a different way to read this:

 

Raids to this day are some of the content with the highest player retention among longterm players and the highly engaged crowd. 

 

While past development, or lack thereof, put the mode into a difficult spot, the developers are unwilling to lose out on these players or the content.

 

Rewards are being adjusted to both keep content relevant as well as allow better access to challenging instanced content, especially 10 man content.

 

Fractal CMs are being toned down in regards to their gold/day reward given they likely didn't serve as a proper introductory content to raids. The gold/hour will remain medium to high, just not as high with the chance to get Mystic Coins tacked on.

 

All instanced content is made more relevant to acquire legendary gear (while fractals take a hit), likely due to metrics showing that a large portion of players engaging with this content at the state of their hours spent on the game are aiming for these items or are working towards them. As well as "encouraging" players to move to different types of instanced content besides fractals.

The boon target cap change was to be expected from a mile away given the new elite specializations and their entire focus on 5 targets. Yes, this might lead to mirror comps once again, time will tell. Unlike during HoT, there are now alternatives for some essential boons.

 

TL;DR:

Instanced content is repackaged reward wise to provide easier and more direct access to legendary gear materials, especially content requiring more players. Likely because this is what a large majority of players in this content go for or are expected to go for.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[zealex.9410]

52 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Did you read that correctly boons are not being change to benefit raids.

The 10 man boons are going to be cut into 5 man boons again promoting mirror compostions in raids.

Technicly not true, it will only promote mirror comps if the balance is that bad to where the overwhelmingly better choise of alac/quickness/might etc.

 

If they where to balalnce the build to where the diff in performance is negligable they would be interchangable and therefor not mirroring. That would assume tho that abet will manage ti balance them well post eod.

[zealex.9410]

20 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Or a different way to read this:

 

Raids to this day are some of the content with the highest player retention among longterm players and the highly engaged crowd. 

 

While past development, or lack thereof, put the mode into a difficult spot, the developers are unwilling to lose out on these players or the content.

 

Rewards are being adjusted to both keep content relevant as well as allow better access to challenging instanced content, especially 10.man content.

 

Fractal CMs are being toned down in regards to their gold/day reward given they likely didn't serve as a proper introductory content to raids. The gold/hour will remain high, just not as high whith the chance to get Mystic Coins.

 

All instanced content is made more relevant to acquire legendary gear, likely due to metrics showing that a large portion of players engaging with this content at the state of their hours spent on the game are aiming for these items or are working towards them.

The boon target cap change was to be expected from a mile away given the new elite specializations and their entire focus on 5 targets. Yesy this might lead to.mirror comps once again, time will tell. Unlike during HoT, there are now alternatives for some essential boons.

 

TL;DR:

Instanced content is repackaged reward wise to provide easier and more direct access to legendary gear materials, especially content requiring more players. Likely because this is what a large majority of players in this content go for or are expected to go for.

For fractals its less relevant now as a way to aquire legendary  gear.

Edited February 12, 2022 by zealex.9410

[Firebeard.1746]

33 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Or a different way to read this:

 

Raids to this day are some of the content with the highest player retention among longterm players and the highly engaged crowd. 

 

While past development, or lack thereof, put the mode into a difficult spot, the developers are unwilling to lose out on these players or the content.

 

Rewards are being adjusted to both keep content relevant as well as allow better access to challenging instanced content, especially 10.man content.

 

Fractal CMs are being toned down in regards to their gold/day reward given they likely didn't serve as a proper introductory content to raids. The gold/hour will remain medium to high, just not as high with the chance to get Mystic Coins tacked on.

 

All instanced content is made more relevant to acquire legendary gear (while fractals take a hit), likely due to metrics showing that a large portion of players engaging with this content at the state of their hours spent on the game are aiming for these items or are working towards them. As well as "encouraging" players to move to different types of instanced content besides fractals.

The boon target cap change was to be expected from a mile away given the new elite specializations and their entire focus on 5 targets. Yesy this might lead to.mirror comps once again, time will tell. Unlike during HoT, there are now alternatives for some essential boons.

 

TL;DR:

Instanced content is repackaged reward wise to provide easier and more direct access to legendary gear materials, especially content requiring more players. Likely because this is what a large majority of players in this content go for or are expected to go for.

 

I'm fine with them rewarding raid content. It's bizarre to me to make that game mode the most efficient legendary armor acquisition and best legendary anything acquisition when they aren't actively developing it and when there's so many barriers to entry, I literally would not have been able to have been trained in raids without my very fleeting static that took a noob so I could pug once it died out. Groups like that are VERY rare.. The game implicitly telling people to do really old and stale content with huge amounts of gatekeeping because it gives the best rewards flies in the face of literally how they've handled every other PVE mode. Like fractals are old. What do they get when the new things comes? A nerf. Dungeons were the old thing, what did they get when fractals came? A nerf. Strikes come? Raids get a buff. 


 

[DKRathalos.9625]

The Fractal CM reward changes are total BS I really mad about this.

[Monarc.9726]

I'm interested in the meaning of this part of the post:

"With Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons you’ll have more options, and all our endgame content can help you advance your legendary goals."

I assume they mean that all endgame content can help you advance your legendary weapon goals, not armor, right? Or is there something I'm missing?

Edited February 12, 2022 by Monarc.9726

[TexZero.7910]

5 minutes ago, Monarc.9726 said:

I'm interested in the meaning of this part of the post:

"With Guild Wars 2: End of Dragons you’ll have more options, and all our endgame content can help you advance your legendary goals."

I assume they mean that all endgame content can help you advance your legendary weapon goals, not armor, right? Or is there something I'm missing?

Clovers and coins are used in both weapons and armor.

So yes you were missing out because you're overthinking it.

[Monarc.9726]

Just now, TexZero.7910 said:

Clovers and coins are used in both weapons and armor.

So yes you were missing out because you're overthinking it.

Right, I get that, but you're not going to craft legendary armor from just doing strikes, or even from doing strikes and fractals. Certainly not from doing dungeons and world bosses, lol. It's not possible from just getting clovers and coins, so I still don't see how the statement is accurate, because it's not going to help me advance my legendary goals much more than the current system.

[Linken.6345]

3 minutes ago, Monarc.9726 said:

Right, I get that, but you're not going to craft legendary armor from just doing strikes, or even from doing strikes and fractals. Certainly not from doing dungeons and world bosses, lol. It's not possible from just getting clovers and coins, so I still don't see how the statement is accurate, because it's not going to help me advance my legendary goals much more than the current system.

Well you cant craft pve legendary armor now or after by only doing raids either.

So what was your point?

[Monarc.9726]

11 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

Well you cant craft pve legendary armor now or after by only doing raids either.

So what was your point?

So all they're saying is EoD will bring more options to get clovers and coins? Okay, so not more options for getting legendary armor, basically still the same track for endgame. That's not very exciting news, considering raids aren't a focus for the expansion. 

[Linken.6345]

23 minutes ago, Monarc.9726 said:

So all they're saying is EoD will bring more options to get clovers and coins? Okay, so not more options for getting legendary armor, basically still the same track for endgame. That's not very exciting news, considering raids aren't a focus for the expansion. 

Yes that is exactly what they are saying and with the addition that the safe way to get clovers will dubble in price.

[Vilin.8056]

Sure.

likewise the Battle of Shaemoor is the highest participating and least complained instance for the last 9 years, therefore developers should pour all their resources and class balances around it. Might as well bind legendary armor as the end reward.

Edited February 12, 2022 by Vilin.8056

[TexZero.7910]

2 hours ago, Monarc.9726 said:

Right, I get that, but you're not going to craft legendary armor from just doing strikes, or even from doing strikes and fractals. Certainly not from doing dungeons and world bosses, lol. It's not possible from just getting clovers and coins, so I still don't see how the statement is accurate, because it's not going to help me advance my legendary goals much more than the current system.

It's not a fault of the system that your goals are unrealistic.

If your goal is Legendary armor then PvP, WvW or Raid. That's fairly straightfoward.

You're still getting progress on your legendary goal of armor and weapons with this change. 

[Obtena.7952]

15 hours ago, zealex.9410 said:

Technicly not true, it will only promote mirror comps if the balance is that bad to where the overwhelmingly better choise of alac/quickness/might etc.

 

If they where to balalnce the build to where the diff in performance is negligable they would be interchangable and therefor not mirroring. That would assume tho that abet will manage ti balance them well post eod.

Well, it's PRACTICALLY true because that's exactly the case we are already at even when we already have shared boons. 

I think anyone that believes Anet is going to 'balance' builds that share the defined 'role boons' so they perform equally is just fooling themselves. IN otherwords ... if Anet can't balance classes with Alacrity to be equally preferable to teams  NOW ... I see no reason to believe they will be able to do it when they add more Alacrity classes. 

Here is what is going to happen ... pretty much nothing, at least for a while. Boon sharing 'role boons' over classes is not a compelling reason for Anet to balance things to be similarly desirable. If anything, it's a reason for them to NOT do that since the distribution of role boons is theoretically already a balancing move. 

Edited February 12, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[anbujackson.9564]

I hope they bring a few balance changes to PvE already at EoD launch. Else those new strike missions are going to be an absolute shitshow. If not the strike CM's will be released even before summer probably. And that would be a bad move imo.

[Tails.9372]

Quote

integrating these encounters directly into the story, we’re looking to grow the Strike Mission audience

 Expanding on similar encounters is going to do nothing as the Sunqua Peak fractal has already shown. Also, you're not going to "grow the Strike Mission audience". At least not from the pool of players you'd want them to grow from because:

Quote

we’ve tuned the base difficulty of each Strike Mission to make knowledge and mastery over the encounter’s mechanics the most important factors in achieving success. Each encounter has a series of “pass or fail” mechanical checks that reinforce this design philosophy

Which is exactly the kind of thing the "average causal player" avoids like the plague. If you guys think that the player engagement was low because strikes were just not challenging enough then you're just deluding yourselfs.

Quote

We sought to strike a balance where players of all kinds can enjoy the content and have a satisfying experience working their way towards victory.

And that's the core of the issue A-Net stubbornly refuses to understand. Their compromised attempt to please "both sides at once" is just going to end up pleasing neither of them. It's still to demanding for "the average casual player" while also way to easy for the "hardcore audience". Well at least the later ones might get something out of it if the challenge modes manage to deliver but that's about it.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Tails.9372

[Tiviana.2650]

I think its pretty obvious what this is, they are pushing people that normally do CMs to do strikes .How many people clear CMs on a regular basis? How many actually do CMs? This is about their new instanced content and one way to get people there is to nerf the rewards from CMs, its already a slog to get mystic coins and clovers this way. Now they want us to make it even more of a grind and scoot us to strikes.