Are strike missions going to succeed where raid failed?

[Sevens.9452]

Title says it all, the issues that made raid a thing of the past are now on strikes again:

1. people unwilling to learn/participate - which is their right, they'll play what they find fun and move on to the next thing/game
2. gatekeeping with LI/KP requirements, mostly just harvest temple at the moment, but you can bet it's going to be for every CM - again their right, no one wants to fail over and over with noobs

Maybe anet needs to accept they've cultivated a casual audience over the last decade, and just devote resources to open world content rather than raid/strikes.

 

Edited March 6, 2022 by Sevens.9452

[ugrakarma.9416]

Is the union of the illusion that players like strikes, + the temptation of a developer think that of cheap, low-cost content will be a good carrot.

Its smells hearding the vocal minority again, this happened with HoT. Also happened in past PvP balances, and always lead to disaster.

Anet should be careful when cater these guys who makes videos with their "DPS records" or too much "pro players"..... 

The open world player don't carry a DPS meter. The casuals carrot is almost looks, and these guys is who like buy Gem Stuff just to say to their friends that they look cool, not to say to friends theyre good and meta-building or have big DPS numbers.

Strikes worked on IBS, because theyre done what theyre promised for: a intro for others instaced content, not the main instanced content game-mode. The the IBS "strike economy" was around that idea: not forcing players to do it. Strikes rewards in IBS is  separated from OW rewards. So the elitism in IBS strikes was very reduced, at same time casuals jumped on it when they want not because they're forced.

 

 

 

Edited March 6, 2022 by ugrakarma.9416

[Vilin.8056]

It wasn't an illusion that players like strikes that leads to these development decisions.

 

Instanced contents are far more cost effective to develop than extending the open world. Squads are less sensitive onto individual player performance than a 5 player party.

Therefore Instanced, squad based PvE combat will always be the direction of end-game.

The question is how NOT to make it utterly boring (IBS) or intimidating (Raid)

Edited March 6, 2022 by Vilin.8056

[Funky.4861]

Where do you think raids failed?

[Firebeard.1746]

I think they definitely have potential. I do think that herding could ruin the overall vibe and community.

 

But their reward and difficulty structure is pretty brilliant. The first 3 EoD ones are harder than IBS, but they're not that bad and give more rewards. The 4th is actually raid level difficulty, but if you do all EoD strikes, you get a raid level reward from the weekly achieve. if you ignore it, you can still get max Strike rewards. They're trying to marry the 2 systems and I think that's brilliant. I still would have preferred CMs exclusively being raid content, but it's an extra LI if you're willing to do both. 

Edited March 7, 2022 by Firebeard.1746

[Katary.7096]

On 3/6/2022 at 6:12 PM, Sevens.9452 said:

Maybe anet needs to accept they've cultivated a casual audience over the last decade, and just devote resources to open world content rather than raid/strikes.

How large would the gains be that Arenanet can potentially make in a situation where they produce 100% open world/ story content versus a situation in which they develop 90% open world/ story content and 10% raid/ strike content? Could the audience of open world content take significant advantage of a small relative increase in open world content production? And will this overcompensate the complete loss of any raid audience?

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

Nope, the community on average is way too casual.

[Vidit.7108]

I think they are doing a better job of getting players to join up than IBS strikes did. That said the rewards are kind of weird & lacking right now, and I don't see most players continuing to play this content if they don't have a lot more to offer than mystic coins.

[Legend of Rogue.5394]

20 hours ago, NorthernRedStar.3054 said:

Nope, the community on average is way too casual.

GW2 created a casual game, any MMO is casual when COD and Tarkov exist

[Astralporing.1957]

On 3/6/2022 at 8:03 PM, Funky.4861 said:

Where do you think raids failed?

In being aimed at a subgroup of community that turned out to be too narrow to sustain that mode.

[Funky.4861]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

In being aimed at a subgroup of community that turned out to be too narrow to sustain that mode.

I beg to differ; raids are completed every day. If the mode was unsustainable anet would not be creating bridges (strike missions) to that content.

[Legend of Rogue.5394]

2 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

I raid every week and Im pretty sure, Im someone.

If you cant get 9 other people to play with you then the content was not meant for you.

Raiding is sucky and competely boring. No it isnt for me. Useless and the general population completely disagrees with you

[Funky.4861]

5 minutes ago, Legend of Rogue.5394 said:

Raiding is sucky and competely boring. No it isnt for me. Useless and the general population completely disagrees with you

Your bias invalidates your argument, along with your social bullying and assuming you know what other people think. Anet have the metrics and raids (or raid-like content) is obviously worthwhile enough for them to invest development time.

Raids aren't for everyone, indeed, but you'd be surprised at how far a positive attitude, some game knowledge and a decent training group will get you. If you can do t4 fractals, you can do raids.

[Laken.9018]

Honestly for me raids always felt like the complete anthesis of the philosphy Arenanet gave when designing Guild Wars 2.
A casual MMO with no clear defined roles where you could play the character however you want.
Raids as they stand strip all of that away and I can't help feel that the day the first raid was added into the game that was the sign they lost faith in that vision.

IMO if Strikes are to succeed that vision needs to still be viable.

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, Funky.4861 said:

I beg to differ; raids are completed every day.

Sure, they are being completed by some players. At the same time Anet already said that this raiding community is so small it just can't justify any further development of raid content.

1 hour ago, Funky.4861 said:

If the mode was unsustainable anet would not be creating bridges (strike missions) to that content.

They are creating bridges exactly because it is unsustainable with the current population and desperately needs more players if devs are to spend any more effort on it in the future. Except it's not the first (or even second) bridge Anet created so far, and it so happens that all the previous attempts to do so failed. Because the problem was never due to lack of bridges. The issue was always in the end point of the road itself.

[Linken.6345]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Sure, they are being completed by some players. At the same time Anet already said that this raiding community is so small it just can't justify any further development of raid content.

They are creating bridges exactly because it is unsustainable with the current population and desperately needs more players if devs are to spend any more effort on it in the future. Except it's not the first (or even second) bridge Anet created so far, and it so happens that all the previous attempts to do so failed. Because the problem was never due to lack of bridges. The issue was always in the end point of the road itself.

Well if all open world got was 1 map every year with 5 events, it would not be sustatable either so.

[yann.1946]

9 hours ago, Laken.9018 said:

Honestly for me raids always felt like the complete anthesis of the philosphy Arenanet gave when designing Guild Wars 2.
A casual MMO with no clear defined roles where you could play the character however you want.
Raids as they stand strip all of that away and I can't help feel that the day the first raid was added into the game that was the sign they lost faith in that vision.

Whilei completely understand the sentiment, and it might be true that they envisioned more roles when raids came out.

The reality is that to do raids you do not really need specific roles, there are different potential succesful strategies you could employ, with different party compositions. It just happens to be the case that healer-tank-dps is the easiest framework for people to grasp. 

9 hours ago, Laken.9018 said:

IMO if Strikes are to succeed that vision needs to still be viable.

It still is in raids, you just need to actually communicate with your group about what you want to do, and pug probably will not like it.

[yann.1946]

On 3/6/2022 at 6:12 PM, Sevens.9452 said:

 

Maybe anet needs to accept they've cultivated a casual audience over the last decade, and just devote resources to open world content rather than raid/strikes.

 

That is not how healthy game design works though, like at all.

 

There is a continuous reduction of effectiveness when adding the same content type. As such in general it is better to instead of going 100-0 to go 90-10 or 80-20,... based on how big a part of the population plays these content types. You dont even need the majority to engage in the content type to be worthwhile.

[Teratus.2859]

Much like i've said in the past the main problem is difficulty tiers.

Raids didn't have them, this was a problem and still is and always will be until there is an easier difficulty mode to help players learn each bosses mechanics.
Strikes did have them but didn't implement them very well and some of them were cheesy and encouraged skipping mechanics which is always a very bad thing.

EoD strikes did it a lot better but putting the bosses in the story mode, so players could gets some experience with their mechanics before they try the strike mission.

[Astralporing.1957]

3 hours ago, yann.1946 said:

That is not how healthy game design works though, like at all.

A design that ignores the playstyle of the game population and tries to forcibly change it is not healthy either.

[Cyninja.2954]

12 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Sure, they are being completed by some players. At the same time Anet already said that this raiding community is so small it just can't justify any further development of raid content.

They are creating bridges exactly because it is unsustainable with the current population and desperately needs more players if devs are to spend any more effort on it in the future. Except it's not the first (or even second) bridge Anet created so far, and it so happens that all the previous attempts to do so failed. Because the problem was never due to lack of bridges. The issue was always in the end point of the road itself.

So, if the community is so niche, why even build a bridge? If your claim holds true, the developers should have continued with neglecting the more challenge oriented players in favor of more content for the masses.

They did the exact opposite.

Maybe, just maybe the decline had far more to do with neglect for an extended period of time, which now the developers are trying to unhealthily fix by forcing the bridge on all players.

Edited March 10, 2022 by Cyninja.2954

[Astralporing.1957]

6 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

So, if the community is so niche, why even build a bridge?

That's a good question. It would not be the first time Anet tried to push content not according to the real needs, but according to their personal likes. Notice, how they tried that originally with SPvP (and how they had to eventually give up on that, because it simply didn't work).

From the very beginning there seem to be people at Anet that think, that it's possible to change the playstyle players like, if you can just push them towards certain types of content long and hard enough. It never works, but it has also never stopped them from trying.

 

Edited March 10, 2022 by Astralporing.1957

[yann.1946]

4 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

A design that ignores the playstyle of the game population and tries to forcibly change it is not healthy either.

Astral, that does not contradict anything I wrote though. I never said it was healthy to forcibly change the playstyle, the world is not as black or white as you seem to think it is. 

 

I do think there are advantages to push people in directions (the monetary training and jade bot training hard for example.) 

[Funky.4861]

Raids do have difficulty tiers though; they are just not conventional.

 

Also, anet hasn't done away with the holy trinity of roles; they have just arranged the functions of those roles differently and spread those functions across the classes. I believe a good introduction to raids would be to get some t3/t4 fractal experience and some of the harder strikes (Whisper, ol' Boney, Cold War) and have a couple of classes/functions ready to go. Generally a dps spec and a support spec form a good base for raiding and if you can gear them  up and be somewhat competent with their skills and encounter mechanics you should be fine.

 

Raids aren't that hard generally; they just pressure you in ways that open world doesn't.

[Hume.2876]

On 3/10/2022 at 5:28 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

That's a good question. It would not be the first time Anet tried to push content not according to the real needs, but according to their personal likes. Notice, how they tried that originally with SPvP (and how they had to eventually give up on that, because it simply didn't work).

From the very beginning there seem to be people at Anet that think, that it's possible to change the playstyle players like, if you can just push them towards certain types of content long and hard enough. It never works, but it has also never stopped them from trying.

 

 

That's not it at all.   There were at least two good reasons to build a raiding community.

 

1. There are a subset of players who want to raid. If they don't get at least some raids or some hard instanced content they will leave.  It's like a car company broadening its base. Not everyone needs a Ford Bronco with the most hard core off road package. Few people take their SUVs off road. But by offering it - they keep these customers in the Ford family. If they do not - these customers will just go buy a Jeep.

 

2. You should not restrict your game design decisions to only please fans of your current game - but consider the overall gaming world.  It's like Porsche saying because they don't have SUVs - and the fans of their sports cars are not clamoring for one - you shouldn't build SUVs. On the contrary since SUVS are so popular - you should build them even if the tiny niche of current fans hates SUVs. It's the same thing here.  Instanced content is standard in the VASTLY MORE POPULAR other MMOs - so why not bring it to your game? Makes a ton of sense really..

 

The issue for Arenanet is that is was too little - and too late. The ill fated decision to eliminate roles (at the start of the game) had already made raiding quite difficult for them and alienated most of the players that liked teamwork.  Basically they have dug themselves into a hole - and don't know how to dig out. 

GW2 is slowly sliding into one of those "idle" games - and there seems to be nothing they can do about it..  It is really the weirdest thing.  I can see why they started working on another project. This is the only way out for them - a new IP without the tragic mistakes that hurt the initial game.