Are strike missions going to succeed where raid failed?

[Astralporing.1957]

23 minutes ago, Hume.2876 said:

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

You don't seem to understand my point. Building a raiding community is not a problem. Problem starts, when you try to build that community using players that do not like raiding. And if you keep insisiting on pushing them towards that type of content long after they've already decided they do not want to have anything with it.

And your example with Ford cars is a bad one, because in this case everyone's already using Anet's product - that kind of pushing just tries to move some GW2 players from content they like to play into content they dislike.

[Zok.4956]

On 3/9/2022 at 10:36 PM, Funky.4861 said:

Anet have the metrics and raids (or raid-like content) is obviously worthwhile enough for them to invest development time.

Anet wrote in a public statement that raid-usage is too small to justify to put any ressources into developing new raids.

Instead, to increase the popularity of raids (to secure their investment) they created the (cheaper than raids) IBS-strikes as a stepping stone for raids. The idea sounded good, but the real implementation was not.

Thats why they are trying with the EoD-strikes (strikes 2.0) a different approach (normal and CM mode) with the CMs beeing "raid like difficulty".

[Hume.2876]

7 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You don't seem to understand my point. Building a raiding community is not a problem. Problem starts, when you try to build that community using players that do not like raiding. And if you keep insisiting on pushing them towards that type of content long after they've already decided they do not want to have anything with it.

And your example with Ford cars is a bad one, because in this case everyone's already using Anet's product - that kind of pushing just tries to move some GW2 players from content they like to play into content they dislike.

 

Arenanet is building their game from the subset of ALL MMO players - not just ones who currently play. You just can't wrap your head around that for whatever reason.  I am sure they have tons of info that show players who have played for several hundreds of hours and no longer play. There are also billions of other potential players who never played because it didn't have the features they wanted.

 

The problem with building your game around the players that currently play is that it's a shrinking market. If you offer more activities you can grow your base.  Raiding is an activity.  Makes total sense that they would try to broaden their game. Now we can agree they failed to broaden their base. But the idea behind doing this is sound.

If they continue down the path they are on - with only grindy open world content with face roll style players dominating running Minion Master or Mechanist or other Low Intensity builds the game will just slide into maintence mode.  Many modern gamers want some challenge.. not just grind.  And they vote with their pocket book.

When the game is idle style -they play something else.. You want people buying stuff from the gem store - you want to keep people engaged. 

Again the shipped has mostly sailed for Arenanet.  They listened to the wrong people and catered to the wrong crowd. And now they are in a big hole. I don't know how they can climb out. 

4 strike missions isn't going to exactly pull players from New World or Lost Ark or FFXIV.  It makes me a bit sad..

Edited March 14, 2022 by Hume.2876

[Shiyo.3578]

There won't be any strikes after these new 4, I guarantee it. The people who want 20 minute long square room bosses went to FFXIV years ago.

Edited March 15, 2022 by Shiyo.3578

[Bakeneko.5826]

2 hours ago, Shiyo.3578 said:

There won't be any strikes after these new 4, I guarantee it. The people who want 20 minute long square room bosses went to FFXIV years ago.

do not agree with 20 minute part, but some strikes are way too long for no good reason (Harvest temple and Kaineng being the worst offenders)

[Einsof.1457]

On 3/14/2022 at 9:54 PM, Shiyo.3578 said:

There won't be any strikes after these new 4, I guarantee it. The people who want 20 minute long square room bosses went to FFXIV years ago.

I will absolutely take that bet. Every living world chapter going forward will likely have a "final boss" of sorts as part of the story. That final boss will be easily tweaked to be a new strike. It doesn't require any new assets or hardcore development to add strikes that are part of the story. Your post will not age well.

[maxwelgm.4315]

Strikes will succeed, yes, and the new ones we got are objectively great at what they strive to be.

 

FFXIV has shown that not only the dungeon model is outdated but raids themselves are also somewhat being replaced due to that infamous term, "streamlining" of content. In that game their genius idea was to introduce the "Trials" game mode where you go into an arena, fight a boss, loot, go home - none of the trash mobs or anything else really other than a big bad to fight against. And it does seem to work as Trials are very popular there.

 

Anet is not (as far as we know) oblivious to the rest of the MMO market and seems to have picked up on not only WoW but several other raid-centric games drawing their long excruciating last breaths. So I would not look at strikes as any sort of "bridge" to raid content as much as I like raids myself, nor I'd look at it as a direct substitute of raids that we can compare directly to.  Strikes are rather a mode in itself that Anet is promoting because it follows on the steps of other successful MMOs, most notably FFXIV's A Realm Reborn and its Trials bosses.

 

Because Anet seems to have significantly less resources (or less intention?) to promote instanced content, they will of course reuse story assets for both normal strikes and optional but harder CM strikes, all based on the same story events, probably even on the regular (one per Living World episode). It works well with GW2's themes and concepts so they don't really need a whole set of optional encounters aside from story ones, like raids used to be. That doesn't mean they don't want to develop raids, but they have the data and it must have shown that even IBS strikes were significantly more engaging to the population as a whole than raids are. So I'd say they could develop raids if the existing ones surprisingly do become popular because of EoD strikes. But my initial prediction is that EoD strikes are just going to become somewhat popular by themselves in virtue of (also future) rewards and they will simply have Strikes made on the regular rather than "wasting" resources on unique raid encounters that few players will get to see.

[Einsof.1457]

34 minutes ago, maxwelgm.4315 said:

Strikes will succeed, yes, and the new ones we got are objectively great at what they strive to be.

 

FFXIV has shown that not only the dungeon model is outdated but raids themselves are also somewhat being replaced due to that infamous term, "streamlining" of content. In that game their genius idea was to introduce the "Trials" game mode where you go into an arena, fight a boss, loot, go home - none of the trash mobs or anything else really other than a big bad to fight against. And it does seem to work as Trials are very popular there.

 

Anet is not (as far as we know) oblivious to the rest of the MMO market and seems to have picked up on not only WoW but several other raid-centric games drawing their long excruciating last breaths. So I would not look at strikes as any sort of "bridge" to raid content as much as I like raids myself, nor I'd look at it as a direct substitute of raids that we can compare directly to.  Strikes are rather a mode in itself that Anet is promoting because it follows on the steps of other successful MMOs, most notably FFXIV's A Realm Reborn and its Trials bosses.

 

Because Anet seems to have significantly less resources (or less intention?) to promote instanced content, they will of course reuse story assets for both normal strikes and optional but harder CM strikes, all based on the same story events, probably even on the regular (one per Living World episode). It works well with GW2's themes and concepts so they don't really need a whole set of optional encounters aside from story ones, like raids used to be. That doesn't mean they don't want to develop raids, but they have the data and it must have shown that even IBS strikes were significantly more engaging to the population as a whole than raids are. So I'd say they could develop raids if the existing ones surprisingly do become popular because of EoD strikes. But my initial prediction is that EoD strikes are just going to become somewhat popular by themselves in virtue of (also future) rewards and they will simply have Strikes made on the regular rather than "wasting" resources on unique raid encounters that few players will get to see.

To be fair, in FFXIV raids (ouside of coil and alexander) are also just walk in, kill boss, go home. 

Edited March 16, 2022 by Einsof.1457

[Zok.4956]

On 3/15/2022 at 12:44 AM, Hume.2876 said:

Arenanet is building their game from the subset of ALL MMO players - not just ones who currently play. You just can't wrap your head around that for whatever reason.  I am sure they have tons of info that show players who have played for several hundreds of hours and no longer play. There are also billions of other potential players who never played because it didn't have the features they wanted.

GW2 was not successful because it was a WoW-clone. GW2 was successful because it was NOT a WoW-clone. (WoW is used as just an example).  GW2 is a MMO for players who didn't like "typical MMOs".

Catering to all potential players will not result in a successful game, it will just result in a mediocre look-alike game.

 

On 3/15/2022 at 12:44 AM, Hume.2876 said:

If you offer more activities you can grow your base.  Raiding is an activity.  Makes total sense that they would try to broaden their game. Now we can agree they failed to broaden their base. But the idea behind doing this is sound.

Anet does not have the ressources to support all GW2 game modes equally and good (said former Anet president Mike O'Brien some time ago). Look at PvP, WvW and even raids (it is a while since Anet added a new raid). If you do not support a game mode well, you will loose customers/players. Adding more game modes/activities increases that problem. 

And: Usually it costs a lot more to win a new customer than it costs to keep an existing customer. If you change a product/service too much, you will first loose existing customers and then later, maybe, if the product is a lot better than your competition, you will get new customers.

So, from a business perspective: No other game really does massive PvP fights like GW2's WvW but a lot of other games are for hardcore PvE players and raiders. So, let us just scrap strikes and raids and put all freed ressoures into WvW (just kidding). 😎

 

[Maltyrius.2961]

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

It would not be the first time Anet tried to push content not according to the real needs, but according to their personal likes.

I’ve been thinking this for a while now. I enjoy the game well enough but they need to understand their player base and focus on their core competencies.

[Infusion.7149]

The lack of tanking and less focus on smacking the boss until it dies has made some of my WVW friends take a liking to it conceptually. On top of that all the WvW commanders laugh when people instantly die in AOE just like in a well bomb in WVW. Just can't throw siege 😄

So in that sense it is a success unlike most of the IBS strikes (the exceptions are WoJ / Forging Steel) and the majority of raids. The lack of a timer means it is more akin to a 10 man fractal with a less stationary design.

The same goes for people in another guild that people raiding don't even use arcdps. Since it's a mechanic check without enrage it is more suitable for experienced people that just want to get a kill and not race an arbitrary timer.

Rewards' time-gate could use a tuneup though. In any future strikes it would be nice if they continue to use player skills as a basis (i.e. the first 3 EOD strikes) as it helps people transition to competitive modes such as PVP/WVW.

Edited March 17, 2022 by Infusion.7149

[Hume.2876]

On 3/16/2022 at 1:14 PM, Zok.4956 said:

GW2 was not successful because it was a WoW-clone. GW2 was successful because it was NOT a WoW-clone. (WoW is used as just an example).  GW2 is a MMO for players who didn't like "typical MMOs".

Catering to all potential players will not result in a successful game, it will just result in a mediocre look-alike game.

 

Anet does not have the ressources to support all GW2 game modes equally and good (said former Anet president Mike O'Brien some time ago). Look at PvP, WvW and even raids (it is a while since Anet added a new raid). If you do not support a game mode well, you will loose customers/players. Adding more game modes/activities increases that problem. 

And: Usually it costs a lot more to win a new customer than it costs to keep an existing customer. If you change a product/service too much, you will first loose existing customers and then later, maybe, if the product is a lot better than your competition, you will get new customers.

So, from a business perspective: No other game really does massive PvP fights like GW2's WvW but a lot of other games are for hardcore PvE players and raiders. So, let us just scrap strikes and raids and put all freed ressoures into WvW (just kidding). 😎

 

 

No one claimed they have to support all modes equally but some more support would be nice for 5 and 10 man instanced content. It's a balancing act. Did they get the balance right? I don't think they did..

 

They seem to be kinda out of ideas with regards to the open world stuff. A few nice fractals and a continued supply of strike missions would be great additions.  But overall yeah they are in a hard place right now.  They did a nice job on the open zones which was a big step away from their design in GW1. But it was never meant to be the sole mode of play.  it's clearly hard to innovate with the game engine and game design they have in GW2.  

 

My point wasn't about that though - just that trying to add raiding made a ton of sense - even if it didn't work out.  They didn't want the game to become just an open world EZ mode "idle" game.  I do agree there is little they can really do about things now.

Here is to hoping for GW3 - maybe bring some of the best elements of GW1 back while keeping the fun combat and other innovates from GW2.

 

 

[Lightnin Luke.9470]

No this strike is if you are not good enough or your grp is not good enough you dont get turtle mount. Another 3 hrs wasted on top of the 40 hours wasted on meta!

[Fangoth.4503]

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

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.

Agree that nothing will change because strike doesn't bring much more. just the same but slightly different.
Dyesespite agreeing that having a boss increasingly difficult can an will help players to get in, i still can't find any in game tools for player to improve their dps/boon/hps (golem exist yeah but it doesn't give any goals at all) and because of that players that are satisfied by having 2k dps (unknowingly) won't be able to make it through.

 

On 3/10/2022 at 12:16 AM, Astralporing.1957 said:

They are creating bridges

They are giving the raw materials to make a bridge but no blueprint at all
 

[Fuchslein.8639]

I don't understand threads like this. Just because raids don't have a big part in the game, doesn't mean that they have failed. I am part of a very active raid guild and many of them play the game only for raids. Does that mean for these people open world has failed?

What is it about people wanting to take things away from other people just because they don't enjoy it?

But what am I trying to do here anyway. Thats the gw2 forum for you ...

[Bunny.9834]

I'm not a fan of raiding but I love Strike Missions. And this is coming from somebody who never did them before EOD. 

EoD actually implemented the Strike Missions well and changed my whole view on them. 

I like that the current "Normal" mode is not impossible to do (maybe except Harvest Temple). Having no timer is great for new players so they don't need to worry about perfect DPS rotations. They can actually learn mechanics instead of panicking about enrage timers. 

And it's good that they can reserve the CM for a more hardcore crowd. 

Kaineng Overlook is my favorite Strike Mission period. The theme, the mechanic, the area... everything about this is well done. 

[Rhatha.2376]

So far, I've only had a chance to do a few of them, but I think the EoD strikes are well positioned to go over better than raids.  Some  people are just not going to like that type of content, and that's fine.. but I think there are a lot of people who actually would like the content if they got in and got to play it without so much stress.  There were a few problems with raids.

 

1.  The name.  Sounds kind of silly, right?  But there's a LOT of baggage with the term "raid" from people who have played similar games.  GW2's raids are a lot more approachable than what I've played in similar games.  The amount of effort needed to get a starter set of gear and to maintain your food/utility and the like is much lower, the mechanics are for the most part consistent with the rest of the game (orange circles bad, green circles good) and now that they're all released there are plenty of "easy" fights to start with.  You don't even have to come remotely close to all those benchmark numbers to do the content.  But just the fact that they're called Raids leads to people having misconceptions about what they are.

 

2. The bad side of the community.  The vocal minority that belittles people trying to learn who aren't at whatever level they expect yet makes that worse (and this has been a thing from the days of Citadel of Flame speedruns, early fractals, etc. all the way to today).   And while it is a minority, and there are a ton of people who are extremely helpful and do training runs to this day, it's like trying to watch the news.. maybe you smile at the story about someone helping a friend through hard times, then it immediately goes back to whatever the current world drama is because we as humans are predisposed to remember negativity.  One person lashing out can undo the goodwill built up by dozens of helpful players.

 

3. Onboarding.  So, while I love all of the good effort put out there for raid training - in fact, I did the entirety of the legendary armor collection without a consistent group through a training discord and can't say enough good things about all the people who helped with it - there's just such a huge difference in what you need to understand about the game to finish the story and run some fun meta events vs. what you need to understand to succeed at its instanced content.  And I think we've all seen what happens when there's too much of a jump in difficulty in the open world.  This has been rehashed to death, but within instanced content there's not an easy way to jump in.  Dungeons and fractals are played in a fundamentally different way than raids most of the time and there was no other 10 man instanced content to prepare you for them.  And even learning how groups are set up for that content is a big step up.. with raids it was far harder.  And if you're not the type of person who's ok looking up a guidee to help you figure out what's going on, you'd better have a good friend to explain it all.

 

4. Difficulty of raid bosses and their release order.  Would raids have been seen as more approachable if bosses like Cairn, MO, and Samarog came out before VG?  I distinctly remember early VG attempts as being pretty frustrating when everyone was learning.  The raids are laid out in terms of story relevance for the side story being told, but the boss difficulty is all over the place.  Wing 1 starts with some moderate difficulty bosses..  Wing 2 has a trickier one out the gate.  Wing 4 starts with three of the easier bosses, followed by one of the hardest ones.  Maybe if doing them in order started you with easier fights and led into harder ones in later wings it would have gone over better.  People who are very into raids can figure this out, but someone who just wants to try the game mode, starts on a harder boss, and gets too frustrated without knowing any better might write it off as not for them.

 

5. The Meta and player tools. When raids came out, most people didn't consider boon uptimes for an entire group outside of might and fury.  Healers were near unheard of.  Quickness was much more limited and alacrity was just added.  And people tried to figure out how good they were doing by methods much more crude than just looking at arcdps or feeding a chat log into a website for analysis.  Once these things started to emerge, people began to really determine what is effective and what is not.  There's some downside here, as it does mean that there's an even bigger gap between someone who just figures out the very basics (greatsword is my power weapon so I'll use berserker) and maybe plays around with a few traits to make things easier for themself, and the type of refined builds that can be looked up in seconds today, that have data backing them up.  Once the frontrunners found what worked, it trickled down to the rest of the playerbase.. but not everyone who looks at a guide understands why the moving parts work as they do, and others don't run the type of content where they have the support those builds need attached to their hip.  This was a massive change in how the game is played by some.  Honestly, I think a lot of people just don't realize how much more effective they could be with a few small changes to their build, their gear, even just hitting one button before another or more frequently.  This is a difficult problem to solve, though, as anything you do to try to help has a big potential for pushback.  The last thing you want to do is alienate people who would enjoy the content, yet that happens all too often.  And there's also a vocal minority who are dead set against any form of instanced content.. which again is fine, but there's a difference between saying "not for me" and "this shouldn't exist" the same as there is on the other side.

 

In terms of strikes:

Now, we have IBS strikes, some of which are comparable to a world boss, just with 10 people, and some of which add a couple mechanics you need to respect, and Boneskinner at the top which, while not a raid level, makes it very clear that there will be some things you just flat out need to dodge.  The EoD strikes are a step up from that, but not a huge step - the gradual difficulty increase is such that if you can do IBS strikes, then learning one or two extra mechanics that will down you is enough to start to learn the new ones, plus you've already seen them in the story, it's just doing the same thing with 10 people and slightly higher numbers.  It doesn't solve the initial jump of learning about what is effective for your profession, how 10 man groups work, how to manage boons, having healers, and so on, but from the entry point that exists it's a good next step.

[Caliboom.3218]

Imo  the issue with strikes is that they were supposed to be an introduction to harder instanced content, but instead they just became mini-raids.

The first strike was fine. It wasn't too easy but it wasn't stupidly hard either. Then everything went to crap with the later strikes. Now people are gatekeeping them with LI and specific roles. It's dumb. 

They were supposed to be an introduction to raids, but instead they became "smaller raids".

[Mell.4873]

I think the biggest problem which I illuded to in another thread is there is no raiding or striking system. 

We need a gear grind like fractals for raids/strikes. Why would a PvE player even consider doing them regularly if they can obtain no benifit outside of the odd achievement or jade bot module.

Gold per hour is one thing but what if they provide special infusions or something that effects your gameplay outside of this end game content like fractals do. Why can't we buy map progress with raid/strike currencies like pvp? 

I mean all players have to really do in this game to achieve anything is to play open world metas for the gold to gem conversion. 

[Bakeneko.5826]

3 hours ago, Mell.4873 said:

I think the biggest problem which I illuded to in another thread is there is no raiding or striking system. 

We need a gear grind like fractals for raids/strikes. Why would a PvE player even consider doing them regularly if they can obtain no benifit outside of the odd achievement or jade bot module.

Gold per hour is one thing but what if they provide special infusions or something that effects your gameplay outside of this end game content like fractals do. Why can't we buy map progress with raid/strike currencies like pvp? 

I mean all players have to really do in this game to achieve anything is to play open world metas for the gold to gem conversion. 

I'm confused as to what do you see as gear grind. Agony is hardly grind, doing T1, by the time players reach agony levels that need agony resistance, they will have more than enough AR to keep on going on. On top of that, buying full infusion set for T4's is not that big of investment. Or are you talking about ascended gear, which fractals are designed around to begin with - you must have it to run fractals. How would you use something similar to raids? Do we need more one-trick-pony items used in only one instance, like living season map currencies? Raid progress system could work to some extent - don't let players into wing 2, if player never did wing 1 and so on, but that wouldn't solve anything.

[Mell.4873]

20 hours ago, Bakeneko.5826 said:

I'm confused as to what do you see as gear grind. Agony is hardly grind, doing T1, by the time players reach agony levels that need agony resistance, they will have more than enough AR to keep on going on. On top of that, buying full infusion set for T4's is not that big of investment. Or are you talking about ascended gear, which fractals are designed around to begin with - you must have it to run fractals. How would you use something similar to raids? Do we need more one-trick-pony items used in only one instance, like living season map currencies? Raid progress system could work to some extent - don't let players into wing 2, if player never did wing 1 and so on, but that wouldn't solve anything.

I just feel most players have no reason to raid and to complete a strike more than a few times. The weekly caps don't help but again this content already has a reputation for not being played so I don't think it will change. 

Anything that could improve it like a group finder would just result in massive backlash so the solution is probably retire all 10 man content except for the odd strike mission. 

[Kozumi.5816]

Worse rewards than raids while being harder than the first 1/3rd of raid fights. They will fail harder than raids.

[rune.9572]

Judging by how strikes turned out at least 6 magintudes less toxic than raids, I'd say they succeeded. 

/thread

Edited May 8, 2022 by rune.9572
markdown when

[Bakeneko.5826]

15 hours ago, rune.9572 said:

Judging by how strikes turned out at least 6 magintudes less toxic than raids, I'd say they succeeded. 

/thread

I mean normal mode strikes are DPS golems with 1-3 mechanics that need to be avoided and pugs rarely do harvest temple... So yeah... There is no doubt, that running strike of shiverpeak level difficulty wouldn't be toxic

[Tukaram.8256]

I am gloriously retired and do not have much time that I am willing to spend playing a game (but I was the same even before retiring).  I enjoy GW2 because it is casual friendly.  I do not play everyday, and when I do play - it is rarely for more than an hour at a time.  I have no interest in strikes/raids/pretty much any instanced content. So I have no dog in this fight... but...

I like that they have more advanced content for those that are interested in it, but no matter what carrot they offer - I am not the target demographic. I do not think I am alone it that.  Looking at all the complaints ANet got for the strike like fight to get the turtle egg, it would seem that there are many players similar to me.  

Will strikes take off and be hugely popular? Doubtful.  Will they continue to develop them for those that want them?  Hopefully. 😎