Are strike missions going to succeed where raid failed?

[Obtena.7952]

3 hours ago, Krzysztof.5973 said:

The only wrong decision ANet made was releasing raids before introducing simple 10 man content to the audience of very casual playerbase. The vast majority was just bad at the game in 2015, not good enough to tackle raids. Only some were determined enough to learn and improve on their own. Most just gives up too easily.

That wouldn't have mattered. The real problem is that Anet assumed the playerbase had a critical mass of people that were even interested in that kind of group content in the first place. It's not a matter of people being good enough. The interest simply wasn't enough.  Would there be more interest if there was an easier version? Perhaps a bit more but consider that even dungeons challenged people at that time. They should have just keep pumping those out. 

Edited June 17, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Krzysztof.5973]

4 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

That wouldn't have mattered. The real problem is that Anet assumed the playerbase had a critical mass of people that were even interested in that kind of group content in the first place. It's not a matter of people being good enough. The interest simply wasn't enough.  Would there be more interest if there was an easier version? Perhaps a bit more but consider that even dungeons challenged people at that time. They should have just keep pumping those out. 

If you are good enough at the game - raids are easy. If you are capable of consistently doing them - that is what you do. ANet assumed their playerbase was good enough, and they were proved wrong. Also we got reworked fractal scaling for 5 man content. 

[Obtena.7952]

10 minutes ago, Krzysztof.5973 said:

If you are good enough at the game - raids are easy. If you are capable of consistently doing them - that is what you do. ANet assumed their playerbase was good enough, and they were proved wrong. Also we got reworked fractal scaling for 5 man content. 

You can't conclude that if a person is good at raids, they do them. I can do raids ... and I hate raiding in this game. The reason raids failed is not just because people weren't good enough to do them, though it's probably one contributing factor. There are other plausible reasons that exist that aren't just 'not good' players ... like the fact that it's just not content that interested enough of the playerbase, whether they were good or not. 

That's an important thing to recognize because regular strikes aren't harder than raids. How many people are adopting that as content they do regularly? Let's just agree the question of the raids failing is more than just people are bad players.

Edited June 17, 2022 by Obtena.7952

[Krzysztof.5973]

2 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

You can't conclude that if a person is good at raids, they do them. The reason raids failed is not just because people weren't good enough to do them, though it's probably one contributing factor. There are other plausible reasons that exist that aren't just 'not good' players ... like the fact that it's just not content that interested enough of the playerbase, whether they were good or not. 

Of course that is not the only reason but a main one. 

[Astralporing.1957]

On 6/16/2022 at 7:32 PM, Firebeard.1746 said:

Really the community in GW2 just doesn't feel built for raiding when I type that. 

Because it's not, and it never was. A byproduct of raiding getting stapled on to a game that at the time already had a very different direction. The raiding community was not a result of a natural growth of a general player community, but for the most part a separate entity, with both groups from the very beginning not wanting to have much to do with each other.

Edited June 17, 2022 by Astralporing.1957

[Gibson.4036]

You have a vision for a different kind of MMO. People who want a different kind of MMO are ecstatic.

At launch, not only the people who loved the vision show up, but with the way the MMO scene is, you get a lot of people who love MMO as usual and jump into any new game that shows up. This means way more people than you expected! Great, right? Wildly successful launch!

Only a month later, all those people who weren't on board for the vision are confused, disgruntled, and leaving already. Oh no! But what about all the undreamed-of success? What do you do?

Spend the next ten years trying to simultaneously provide the original vision for the people you made it for while also trying to woo back the people you never though would be on board in the first place.

[Labjax.2465]

4 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

You can't conclude that if a person is good at raids, they do them. I can do raids ... and I hate raiding in this game. The reason raids failed is not just because people weren't good enough to do them, though it's probably one contributing factor. There are other plausible reasons that exist that aren't just 'not good' players ... like the fact that it's just not content that interested enough of the playerbase, whether they were good or not. 

That's an important thing to recognize because regular strikes aren't harder than raids. How many people are adopting that as content they do regularly? Let's just agree the question of the raids failing is more than just people are bad players.

Yes, a big reason raids struggle in this game is just because the game was never built for raids to begin with. Progression raiding in a trinity game is just so fundamentally different than this loose-roled, lightshow, little to no vertical stat gain. And I mention stat gain because it's an important part of how typical progression raiding works; for example, maybe you can clear boss 1 and 2, but your team is really struggling with boss 3. Well you can still clear boss 1 and 2 every week and get gear from it for your team, which makes it a little easier over time to take on boss 3. So it's designed to help you get unstuck as long as you can make some progress (and the first boss or two are usually made to be somewhat easier). They can't do it that way in this game though because ascended stats are the best and always stay the best. So if your team struggles, you will just continue to struggle until you win or give up. For that to work, along with the looser roles, the content is probably tuned less tightly, so the end result is it doesn't present the same challenge that a progression raiding game does. And if it did, it would skill out a lot of would-be raiders.

Raiding games also tend to be built around raiding being *the* end-game. For this MMO, the end-game is anything from doing achievements to leveling masteries to unlocking mounts, etc. It's more of a variety show and the best rewards are usually centered around OW rather than instanced content (which is one reason it still bothers me that they so desperately tried to shoehorn raids into the game by putting legendary armor in them, instead of doing it like they did legendary weapons).

[SlayerXX.7138]

On 3/10/2022 at 2:22 PM, Funky.4861 said:

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.

I do Strikes but stopped trying to get into raids. Doing strikes/fractals is helpful but general gameplay while necessary isn't all that impactful because Raids are challenging in all the wrong areas. Raids are convoluted and visually way to busy. Most Raid mechanics are not that hard on their own just numerous and hidden behind visual clutter. Having whisper on farm isn't helpful when wing 1 is 20 minute long homework to know the general mechanics. Walking out of the teleport isn't hard. Seeing the teleport is hard. A fact that is made worse thanks to the boon deathball meta which forces player to sit on each other for 90% of the fight.

And they made eod strikes into raid fights with the same exact Problems for some stupid reason. Fights are way to busy. Players are to powerful so everything has to instantly down/kill us. And halve of the strikes are long with way to much stuff going on to learn them in a natural way.
Just look at Aetherblade Hideout Normal mode(easy mode). The Mechanic with the 3 circles and the "hidden" gunshot line. Why is that here? It is the most boring, easy baby mechanic you could do. But it can kitten people up who are new. Its literally just here to make your first run more annoying by instantly killing you while not being fun or rewarding to do in any form after you learned it.

If EOD Strike mission stay fringe it will be for the same reason raids did. Thanks to the boon meta LFG is confusing and everything has to instant down you while player stack on each other like Strikes are some kind of 111 meta train. No smooth difficulty progression, something that ibs did right. The one thing Eod Strike did right was giving players different difficultys.

[Funky.4861]

On 6/23/2022 at 10:38 AM, Albi.7250 said:

...Raids are convoluted and visually way to busy. Most Raid mechanics are not that hard on their own just numerous and hidden behind visual clutter. Having whisper on farm isn't helpful when wing 1 is 20 minute long homework to know the general mechanics. Walking out of the teleport isn't hard. Seeing the teleport is hard. A fact that is made worse thanks to the boon deathball meta which forces player to sit on each other for 90% of the fight.

None of the raids are convoluted; some of them just add pressure and distractions as a way of challenging people's mental capacity. If wing 1 is a 20-min long homework and that's all it takes for you to clear it week after week, that's 20 mins well spent. Walking out of the teleport isn't hard, i agree; but seeing it isn't hard either because you get a massive yellow line around your screen when you're standing in one. Also, because they spawn on player locations, balling-up makes moving out of teleports easier. If boons had a larger area of effect or affected more players, group compositions would become stale and most mechanics actually harder to pass.

[SlayerXX.7138]

1 hour ago, Funky.4861 said:

some of them just add pressure and distractions as a way of challenging people's mental capacity

Testing their eyesight, flinger dexterity and ability to automatize rotation depending on the class of course. Learning to Pressing buttons almost subconsciously is hard work, but it ain't calculus. Your brain didn't get bigger when learning a rotation, the pressing abilities part just uses up less space in the brain. Same with mechanics if your are on your 50th run of wing 1.

1 hour ago, Funky.4861 said:

but seeing it isn't hard either because you get a massive yellow line around your screen when you're standing in one.

Maybe your vision is 20/20, you have a nice setup and "correct" graphic options. For people who didn't automate a rotation, have suboptimal setting and/or average eye sight seeing a que like that isn't easy in the visual vomit while concentration is split. Don't misunderstand me i'm not saying raids are hard or impossible. But they have a hard barrier of entry for the median player, and visual clutter is one of then. You may can manage 12+(maybe you come from a normal mmo with 20/30+🙂) buttons in a visually busy environment, while being in a high stress situation with instant death mechanics the median player can not. GW 2 doesn't has a nice path way to go from median to top 25 percentile.

Anyways Raids are of course doable especially with a raid guild. But they are pug-unfriendly and almost impossible to get into as "solo" player. Which is way Strike even the ibs ones who are made rather cheaply are more popular then Raids.

1 hour ago, Funky.4861 said:

None of the raids are convoluted;

Sure not all of them but none? Come on, i know the wiki is wordy and a bit bloaty on information/ just look at that:

 

Quote

 

Cardinal Adina[edit]

Health: 22,611,300 (24,872,430 if the Challenge Mote is active)

Enrage Timer: 8 minutes

Enrage Effect: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/7/78/Vengeance_%28Mordrem%29.png/20px-Vengeance_%28Mordrem%29.png Enraged - Increases damage dealt by 200%.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/3/39/AdinaArena.jpg/700px-AdinaArena.jpg   Adina Arena throughout the fight. It changes every 25% and after the hand phases.

Pillars

Pillars on the arena can be one of 3 stages: undamaged, slightly damaged, or heavily damaged after 1 Boulder Barrage. Diamond Palisade brings any undamaged pillars to be slightly damaged. A slightly damaged pillar is then destroyed after 2 hits of Boulder Barrage. For each damaged pillar on the arena, Adina receives a stack of the buff https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/d9/Captain%27s_Inspiration.png/20px-Captain%27s_Inspiration.png Pillar Pandemonium. Each stack increases outgoing damage by 20% and reduces incoming damage by 20%.

• At certain points in the fight, Adina launches the arena-wide attack Diamond Palisade, which damages all pillars as well as all players. An orange circle will expand from underneath Adina, and when the circle fills, Adina throws out Boulder Barrage projectiles targeting each player. They will damage and be stopped by any pillars in their way. Pillars require two Boulder Barrages to be completely destroyed. If a pillar is hit by only 1 Boulder Barrage, it will stay standing on the arena until another pillar is placed next to it, it get's hit by Adina's Perilous Pulse cone attack, it is destroyed with a second Boulder Barrage, or Adina phases.

• Periodically throughout the fight, the five furthest players from Adina (except the designated tank) will be marked with Tectonic Upheaval and receive a message on their screen, as well as an expanding orange AoE circle beneath them. When the circle fills, their current location will be marked to spawn a new pillar on the closest hexagon tile after a few seconds. The pillar spawn will also generate a shockwave around the pillar, which applies https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/f/fb/Crippled.png/20px-Crippled.png Crippled and https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/3/32/Immobile.png/20px-Immobile.png Immobile to any players hit by it. The shockwave from a pillar spawn will destroy any old damaged pillars caught in its way. Standing directly on top of a pillar spawn will instantly kill a player. Additionally, only one pillar can spawn per hexagonal tile of the arena. That is, if multiple pillar spawns are close enough to one another such that they would end up occupying the same hexagonal tile, only one pillar will be spawn on that tile.

• Each stack of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/d9/Captain%27s_Inspiration.png/20px-Captain%27s_Inspiration.png Pillar Pandemonium increases outgoing damage by 20% and reduces incoming damage by 20%. Additionally, Boulder Barrage projectiles will instantly down a player. Hence, it is recommended to stand two players behind each of the pillars, so that they are distributed such that all pillars are destroyed by two Boulder Barrage projectiles. If multiple people are dead in the fight, e.g. two players are dead so there are only 8 remaining, it is recommended to “stack pillars” (i.e. spawn them close enough such that they occupy the same hexagonal tile) so that there are fewer pillars on the arena, and hence they can all be destroyed entirely by the projectiles to remove stacks of Pillar Pandemonium from Adina.

Other Core Mechanics

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/c/c9/Persistently_Blinded.png/20px-Persistently_Blinded.png Radiant Blindness: An uncleansable blind that causes all attacks to miss for it's duration. Radiant Blindness can be applied in the following ways: Falling into the sand, facing Adina when she casts Diamond Palisade, or being near Adina when a pillar shockwave touches her. The first apply a 10 second blind, while the latter two apply a 20 second blind^{[verification requested]}.

• Stalagmites: Mines that explode if you touch them. Adina spawns Stalagmites on the field when she is preparing her Diamond Palisade attack. Additionally, when Adina phases, she will explode all Stalagmites on the field. When they explode, they destroy the arena tile they are on, damaging, https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/f/f9/Weakness.png/20px-Weakness.png weakening, and https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/3/33/Bleeding.png/20px-Bleeding.png₅ Bleeding any players in a small radius of approximately one tile around them. Each hexagonal tile of the arena can only have one Stalagmites at a time.

• Quantum Quake: A lethal sand wall which rotates 360 degrees counterclockwise around the map, similar to Sabetha’s flame wall. Quantum Quake has 2 rays on opposite sides in normal mode, and 3 rays in a tri pattern in challenge mode. Technically multihit

• Terraform: Adina launches an arena-wide shockwave which damages players and reshapes the arena.

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/de/Toxic_Gas.png/20px-Toxic_Gas.png Eroding Curse: Debuff applied periodically by the Hand of Erosion. Damage and condition damage taken are increased by 15%; stacks in intensity.

Raid Composition

The raid composition for Cardinal Adina may include boon thieves, quickness heal or damage firebrands or chronomancers to provide quickness (and other boons). Usually a renegade is taken to provide alacrity as well as Protective Solace to block projectiles when killing Hands in the split phases. That being said, a standard double chrono comp is also acceptable. A druid is usually taken to provide might, additional healing and the spirit utility skills, although other healers can be used instead as well. Power dps classes, or condi dps classes with fast ramp-up times, are highly preferred for this fight due to the large number of short phases.

Overview

Upon arriving at the platform, players will see 5 pillars placed around Cardinal Adina. Attacking Adina directly, or simply approaching Adina closer than the pillars are placed, will start the fight.

Cardinal Adina will target the player with the highest toughness for her auto attacks. The rest of the players should always stand behind her to avoid getting hit by these attacks. During the fight Adina will continually cast Terraform and change the shape of the arena. The areas of the ground about to be destroyed will be colored yellow/orange right before the attack. Players should also try to avoid falling into the sand or risk dying to the damage.

Phase 1 (100%-75%)

The first phase of Cardinal Adina is a dps phase. Mechanics during this phase include Tectonic Upheaval, Stalagmites, Boulder Barrage, and Diamond Palisade. Adina stands in the middle of the arena and attacks the player with the highest toughness. Her attack chain consists of 3 auto attacks, followed by a charged knockback with spawning pillars, another 5 autos, then spawning mines and destroying pillars. All players other than the tank should stand behind Adina in order to avoid the Stalagmites especially since this explosion will often kill your tank.

The charged knockback (indicated by an orange cone attack) can be blocked or negated with stability. During the charged knockback, the 5 furthest players (not including the tank) from Adina will be targeted with Tectonic Upheaval. A notification appears across the screen and an orange AoE appears under the players who are targeted. A pillar will spawn on their location after a couple seconds (indicated by the orange AoE). These five players should move away from the group to place the pillars. Once the orange AoE changes to a decorative orange AoE that is stationary on the ground (no longer moves with the player) the player should immediately get clear of it. After a short period of time a stone pillar will appear and kill any player still within the AoE. Additionally, a shockwave will spread out from each of these five pillars that deals damage, and applies https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/f/fb/Crippled.png/20px-Crippled.png Crippled and https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/3/32/Immobile.png/20px-Immobile.png Immobile. It is recommended to take the pillars far from the boss, as spawning them too close to Adina will apply https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/c/c9/Persistently_Blinded.png/20px-Persistently_Blinded.png Radiant Blindness for 20 seconds to all players in a small radius around her.

After the knockback, she makes another 5 autos before beginning to spawn mines on the ground, as indicated by small orange expanding circles in a cone arrangement behind the tank. She also gains https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/0/06/Resolution.png/20px-Resolution.png Resolution and https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/6/6c/Protection.png/20px-Protection.png Protection during this time. At this time, she will say a line of dialogue while an eye appears above her head, before damaging all players and pillars with Diamond Palisade. Players must face away from Adina or else they will have Radiant Blindness applied for 20 seconds. A large orange expanding circle under Adina will begin to fill the arena, and all players should get behind one of the five pillars (maximum two to a pillar) to avoid getting https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/c/c9/Persistently_Blinded.png/20px-Persistently_Blinded.png Radiant Blindness as well as to avoid the next attack. When it fills, she will launch a Boulder Barrage projectile at each player. Any player not behind a pillar will be downed by this attack. A pillar will be destroyed if two projectiles hit it, hence requiring two players for each. Any pillar remaining after this attack (whether hit by one projectile or none) will give Adina https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/d9/Captain%27s_Inspiration.png/20px-Captain%27s_Inspiration.png Pillar Pandemonium increasing her damage.

This sequence of attacks will continue in each of Adina's dps phases. Pillars can also be stacked on top of one another to generate a single pillar (if the decorative orange AoEs are overlapped). This should be avoided at all costs if all players are alive, but if two or more players are dead it becomes beneficial to stack these pillars to avoid having undamaged pillars that give Adina the dps increase from stacks of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/d9/Captain%27s_Inspiration.png/20px-Captain%27s_Inspiration.png Pillar Pandemonium.

Phase 2 (Hand Phase 1)

Once Cardinal Adina reaches 75% health, she will destroy all Stalagmites and pillars on the map and become invulnerable before beginning Quantum Quake, a lethal sand wall which rotates 360 degrees counterclockwise around the map, similar to Sabetha’s Flame Wall. Quantum Quake has 2 rays on opposite sides in normal mode, three with the Challenge Mote on. Stepping too close to these walls, or Adina herself, will cause a player to be killed instantly. These walls rotate counterclockwise around the arena. Players should continually walk forward to avoid being caught by these. The arena also changes shape due to Terraform meaning players will likely have to jump to avoid holes in the ground (see images above). Once Adina stops channeling these walls players should avoid standing on the orange colored ground since those spots will disappear when she casts Terraform again.

After the arena is reformed, a Hand of Erosion and a Hand of Eruption spawn at the northwest and northeast corner of the arena respectively. The Hand of Erosion will apply stacking debuffs of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/de/Toxic_Gas.png/20px-Toxic_Gas.png Eroding Curse, while the Hand of Eruption will periodically fling knockback projectiles at players. Since stacks of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/de/Toxic_Gas.png/20px-Toxic_Gas.png Eroding Curse causing incoming damage to be increased, it is generally recommended to kill the Hand of Erosion first. Furthermore, care should be taken to not be knocked back by the Eruption projectiles into the sand. These projectiles can be blocked, absorbed, reflected, invuln’d, or mitigated with stability. Common mitigations include Protective Solace (ventari bubble), Feedback, "Stand Your Ground!", and Corrosive Poison Cloud.

During the Hands phase, Adina also throws auto attacks in the direction of each of the 4 hand spawn locations, starting at the northwest hand and going clockwise.

Phase 3 (75%-50%)

Once the hands have been destroyed, the arena will once again change shape and another dps phase begins. The arena shape is different from that of the first burn phase, but the same mechanics from (100-75%) are present.

Phase 4 (Hand Phase 2)

When Cardinal Adina's health reaches 50%, she will once again become invulnerable, destroy all mines and pillars, and spawn rock projectile walls that must be avoided. This phase is very similar to Hand Phase 1, above, except that two of each type of hand will spawn in the four corners of the arena. Different groups may choose to start killing these in different orders.

However, since Adina throws auto attacks in the direction of each of the 4 hand spawn locations, starting at the northwest hand and going clockwise, it is recommended to start on the southeast Erosion hand during the 50% and 25% split, and kill hands moving clockwise around the arena. This minimizes damage taken as well as stacks of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/de/Toxic_Gas.png/20px-Toxic_Gas.png Eroding Curse.

Phase 5 (50%-25%)

After the four hands have been destroyed, another dps phase will begin. Again, the same mechanics present during this phase are the same as that in the rest of the dps phases.

Phase 6 (Hand Phase 3)

As in Hand Phase 2, four hands will spawn at the four corners of the arena and must be killed to move on to the final dps phase.

Phase 7 (25-0%)

The final dps phase has all the mechanics of the previous ones with an added difficulty. A Hand of Erosion will alternately spawn in the northwest and southeast corners of the field. Even if destroyed, they will respawn after a given period of time, so some groups will choose to instead heal through the damage in order to continue killing the boss. The additional stacks of https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/thumb/d/de/Toxic_Gas.png/20px-Toxic_Gas.png Eroding Curse will cause Adina's auto attacks and damaging aura to start dealing very heavy damage to the squad, so healing pressure will get increasingly high during this phase. Once Adina has been reduced to 0% health, the fight is won!

 

 

 

Edited July 16, 2022 by Albi.7250

[Linken.6345]

1 hour ago, Albi.7250 said:

Testing their eyesight, flinger dexterity and ability to automatize rotation depending on the class of course. Learning to Pressing buttons almost subconsciously is hard work, but it ain't calculus. Your brain didn't get bigger when learning a rotation, the pressing abilities part just uses up less space in the brain. Same with mechanics if your are on your 50th run of wing 1.

Maybe your vision is 20/20, you have a nice setup and "correct" graphic options. For people who didn't automate a rotation, have suboptimal setting and/or average eye sight seeing a que like that isn't easy in the visual vomit while concentration is split. Don't misunderstand me i'm not saying raids are hard or impossible. But they have a hard barrier of entry for the median player, and visual clutter is one of then. You may can manage 12+(maybe you come from a normal mmo with 20/30+🙂) buttons in a visually busy environment, while being in a high stress situation with instant death mechanics the median player can not. GW 2 doesn't has a nice path way to go from median to top 25 percentile.

Anyways Raids are of course doable especially with a raid guild. But they are pug-unfriendly and almost impossible to get into as "solo" player. Which is way Strike even the ibs ones who are made rather cheaply are more popular then Raids.

Sure not all of them but none? Come on, i know the wiki is wordy and a bit bloaty on information/ just look at that:

 

 

What about the cardinal adina fight is conveluted?

[Funky.4861]

I appreciate your reply Albi, though you seem to imply that as soon as the encounter starts the screen/boss is full of unceasing brightness and explosions which simply isn't true. My rig is probably below what's considered good for a gamer (amd ryzen 5600x and geforce 1070ti) though i'm happy with it.

 

I do disagree with much of your first paragraph though. You say raids are pug-unfriendly? All you need is knowledge of the encounter, knowledge of your class/role and co-ordination with the other players in the squad. You wouldn't turn-up to a t4 frac daily with assorted gear stats and rarities and an incoherent build and expect to clear it easily; why should you expect the same of a raid? Also, i think my brain did get bigger when i started raiding. I noticed within a couple of weeks that i was becoming a much more efficient player as i was slobbing around in pve (i don't do pvp and only a little wvw) by knowing how to kill things faster, not doubting my ability to handle packs of mobs, using terrain/obstacles to my advantage etc. So yes, perhaps for the median GW2 player raids are quite a step-up in difficulty- the question then becomes whether they choose to improve themselves or not.

 

My main challenges with raids are lag and my reaction times. My eyesight is pretty bad with a 5-point discrepancy between each eye, so my brain has a lot of compensating to do...

They are the hardest pve content in the game, but as i said before, if you can do t4 fractals (esp challenge modes) you can do raids. Every one of them is timed and scripted, with maybe one or two rng elements, so the 'hard part' is learning what to do during each mechanic then going back to buffing/healing/dps/tanking. If you think about it, Adina is basically a simplified Sabetha.

 

Another way to think about raids is like a PoF bounty inside an arena; what kills people during PoF bounties is lack of awareness. There are many smaller raid-like encounters in the game, from Queens' Gauntlet to the various champions scattered around the maps; even dragon bash has the hologram arena with bosses comparable to an easy-mode raid, so there are introductions to raid-like encounters before you even get to them.

[SlayerXX.7138]

2 hours ago, Funky.4861 said:

I appreciate your reply Albi, though you seem to imply that as soon as the encounter starts the screen/boss is full of unceasing brightness and explosions which simply isn't true. My rig is probably below what's considered good for a gamer (amd ryzen 5600x and geforce 1070ti) though i'm happy with it.

Well my old machine did handle minimal settingsXD. Visual became better after the upgrade to a new pc and better again with tweaks to settings. But seeing a AA chain in the blob is still quite hard and not worth the concentration.

 

2 hours ago, Funky.4861 said:

GW2 player raids are quite a step-up in difficulty- the question then becomes whether they choose to improve themselves or not

And we know the answer. No they don't. The part of the player population who is willing to join a raid guild or go thorough lfg hell is tapped. Strikes outperform Raids by sheer accessibility. And the not so smart people at Anet made halve the new Strikes basically Raids. Overlook and Harvest temple both could need an easy mode as they both are way to complex and long, for the median player anyways. And with new player cut off from IBS Strike will stagnate like raids. With the weekly limit and the KP Eod Strikes like Raids are just to much of a hassle.

2 hours ago, Funky.4861 said:

They are the hardest pve content in the game, but as i said before, if you can do t4 fractals (esp challenge modes) you can do raids. Every one of them is timed and scripted, with maybe one or two rng elements, so the 'hard part' is learning what to do during each mechanic then going back to buffing/healing/dps/tanking.

Yeah i agree, but why would i want to do Raids if I can do Strikes with a 4th of the waiting time. The hart part is to find a group to learn the hard part. I know joining  a discord or guild is the answer, but apparently people don't want that. Me included. Which creates a negative feedback loop. PvP for all the neglect and salt it causes has at least short wait times. PvP is probably more unforgiving then Raids which is one of the many Reason people don't do it.  I did because i really like it, but the progression was horrible as in Raids. And the people willing to go through the Mountain of hurdles these mode brings is tapped. All that is left is the slow dribble outweigh by people leaving the game or lets be honest dying of natural cause.

 

[mythical.6315]

On 6/17/2022 at 12:33 PM, Astralporing.1957 said:

Because it's not, and it never was. A byproduct of raiding getting stapled on to a game that at the time already had a very different direction. The raiding community was not a result of a natural growth of a general player community, but for the most part a separate entity, with both groups from the very beginning not wanting to have much to do with each other.

It looks like this thread got bumped recently but I'm going to respond anyway.

I disagree that this was never the direction.  Maybe not for instanced content but increasing difficulty was the direction that the game had been going towards for years until LS3.  With all of the complaints from a lot of players who were upset that they couldn't just ignore mobs as they ran through them, that they had mechanics, and didn't die easily like pre-LS2 mobs; the direction changed after HoT launched.  They realized that a fairly large percentage of the playerbase didn't want content that was even remotely challenging or required effort to succeed.  Every time they make an exception and add content like that, there's always push back.

[Astralporing.1957]

On 7/17/2022 at 3:27 AM, mythical.6315 said:

It looks like this thread got bumped recently but I'm going to respond anyway.

I disagree that this was never the direction.  Maybe not for instanced content but increasing difficulty was the direction that the game had been going towards for years until LS3.  With all of the complaints from a lot of players who were upset that they couldn't just ignore mobs as they ran through them, that they had mechanics, and didn't die easily like pre-LS2 mobs; the direction changed after HoT launched.  They realized that a fairly large percentage of the playerbase didn't want content that was even remotely challenging or required effort to succeed.  Every time they make an exception and add content like that, there's always push back.

Increasing overall difficulty at haphazard rate in OW, and creating raid instances that were being designed around significantly different combat principles are two completely different things.

Also, this changes nothing about what i said before - raid community was not the part of the community that was created from natural difficulty increases in main game content. It was a separate group of players that from the very beginning pursued completely different gameplay. And the game never was designed around naturally funneling players from one group to another. It only tried to force that later, but by that time the game design was already set and it was way too late for that.

Hint: in a game with proper progression which is designed around players "graduating" from less difficult content through stages towards high difficulty endgame, there should exist two things. First is a natural difficulty progression with clearly defined progression stages. The path on which players are forced to improve in order to move forward, but which is also clearly marked so players always know which direction is forward. And second, a natural improvement progression - a path which (unlike the first one) instead of forcing players to improve, helps them to improve, by (either blatantly or more subtly) prodding them towards the right direction. Of course, content-wise both paths can be done through the same content chain, but those are two different concepts.

In the first case, GW2 content is actually lacking. Although there are diffeent content types of differing difficulties, there's no clear progress path for those. This comes from the original design concept of "the whole game is the endgame". Sure, you can push players towards specific content by using rewards, but there's no natural path at all. This is the lesser issue however - the bigger one is a complete lack of the second type of progression. This is also a direct result of one of the core game concepts - the freestyle build system. The system which is designed to let you improve completely on your own, in a direction of your own choosing, with the game offering no help whatsoever in that regard.

TL;DR: GW2 was not designed as a progression game. Trying to turn it into one, or expecting the community to behave as if it was a progression game, is just not going to work. You'd have to redesign the game from ground up for this.

Edited July 21, 2022 by Astralporing.1957

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

As someone has done all end-game content, on many occasions, and with many different characters and builds, I can say that I enjoy them all, but I enjoy raids the least because they're just too long. Dungeons were acceptible at the same length because they weren't as difficult.

 

Strike Missions have the right idea, but even poorer execution. Its like someone said "What if raids, but Fractals?" Instead of re-using the Fractal system extended to 10man they decided to just go with something else entirely, leading to this strange situation where some Strikes are practically raids (like HT) while some are just 10man Fractals without the interesting mechanics and rewards of them.

 

Ultimately, it comes down to the same problem I've stated many times. All problems with instanced content have been solved in this game, e.g how dungeons solved storytelling, how Fractals solved difficulty tiers, how Strike Missions solved excessive upfront difficulty and and length (kind of).

 

The issue is, none of these solutions are brought together in any way. They're fragmented all over the game, resulting in every PvE activity having its own problems, even though solutions exist.

 

The devs need tone down their efforts to try and satisfy every playerbase individually, and make it so that all playerbases can partcipate in the same content by changing the variables instead of the content itself. In Strike Missions, you're literally playing against weak story mode bosses scaled up to 10man raid-esque encounters, so the devs have proven that you can merge game modes together successfully without re-inventing the wheel every few years. This is further shown with how LWS1 story missions are re-used in Fractals, two very different applications of the same content successfully enjoyed by players in either or both versions simultaneously.

 

We need to see more of this going forward, and ideally we'd see some of it going backwards too.

Edited July 21, 2022 by Mariyuuna.6508

[Kozumi.5816]

Strike rewards are still trash.