Do raids need easy/normal/hard difficulty mode? [merged]

[mortrialus.3062]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:The driving principle is not exclusivity, its freedom of choice - you pick a long term objective out of a sweety shop of long term objectives, all of which are time based..except for 1 single strand of content - raiding in its current form requires contiguous time blocks to learn and play properly.

Yet there are less people (far less) that finished CM Fractals than are raiding and Fractal CMs have their own exclusive rewards.There are less people that finished Migraine (CM Mordremoth) than killed Xera in Raids, and Migraine has an exclusive reward.Winning a PVP Monthly Tournament has exclusive rewards and the number of players that have won one is tiny percentage.

How are those "timed based" I wonder.

ummm no, interesting eh that the few things that are played the least for rewards don't fit into the GW classic reward model.

Or maybe it's because raids being this single difficult challenging experience makes them more appealing, interesting and exciting than designing something like a fractal or story instance where everyone is going to see the easy version first and then slapping a hard mode on top of it after it's already tired and old and has already left players with the first impression that it's boring and you shouldn't care about it.

But by your own admission I'm not allowed to have an opinion that's different than yours so mods should ban me.

[Brynioch.1873]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:Solo raids don't exist. Raids are group content.

Called it.

Fate Grand Order is not an MMORPG. It doesn't even have any multiplayer component outside of those raids. They don't even classify themself as an MMORPG.

Called it again.

Also both are mobile games and not PC MMORPGs.

and a third time.

So which PC MMORPG that has no actual focus on instanced content has raids in different difficulties?

Have you ever heard of "No True Scotsman?" Look it up.

We are comparing games in a certain genre. Bring examples from the same genre so you bring atleast some credibility. But we both know that such MMORPG doesn't exist.

You still don't know what parts have to be redone and which not. Also balancing in stats and loot. You don't know how tiny your fraction is so just stop it.

Whatever amount it is, it's still a tiny fraction. I don't know how much time it would take to paint a room in my house, but I at least know it would take less time than painting the

entire

house.

You don't know it. The remaining parts can easly get bigger and you don't know how long it takes to implement. Stop the lies.

If the time needed was actually so small you claim, don't you think ArenaNet would have already considered it? They said it won't happen so chances that the time investment is not worth it is very high.

Wouldn't the same argument apply to having raids at all if this were 2014?

No because raids added something that wasn't there before and filled a niche. And easy mode only caters towards already existing content and whining players.

They also said that raids are not build to support multiple difficulties unlike fractals. They have to rebuild the entire raid system. That's far far away from a tiny small change.

But nobody's talking about them having a broad spectrum of difficulties "like fractals." The proposal on the table is them adding ONE additional difficulty per wing, and accessing it could be as simple as just using the existing raid interfaces and picking "Spirit Vale (easy mode)" instead of "Spirit Vale," rather than needing a separate UI to select difficulty. It could be a copy/paste of the original with tweaks, rather than an instance of a single structure with realtime modifications applied to it.

If they believe it would be too hard, then I would love to discuss with them what they would plan to do and why they think that would be too hard, and brainstorm alternate ways that might be easier to implement, because I know that a lot of the ideas kicked around on here have been WAY more complicated than anything they'd actually need, and perhaps that's the hole they've dug for themselves on this issue.

It doesn't support any difficulty settings outside of the current one. It is not as easy as you want it to be.It is not too hard. It takes too much time to be worth it. Very big difference.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:That's irrelevant to my point. Plenty of games have easy mode raids, so no, "raids, by definition, is not "easy mode"." is objectively false.And all of them have dungeons/raids as main content.This, again, is completely irrelevant. Asserting that "raids are difficult by definition" is objectively wrong, because most games that have raids do in fact have easy raids as well. Those do exist. Trying to claim those cannot exist is thus just plain wrong, with no arguing about it. And whether raids are core or side content has absolutely no bearing on that initial assertion.

Basically, you could possibly argue about whether easy mode raids have their place in games where raids are a side content (and whether something that raiders consider to be the pve endgame can be treated as a side content), but you can't claim that easy mode cannot exist, that raids must always be difficult, because that's what raids are. That claim is simply completely and objectively untrue.

It wasn't about the inherit difficulty of raids but about the fact that easy modes only ever saw their existence in raid focused games because many players were excluded from experiencing the story line when it was current. It is very relevant. Easy modes were never introduced because your company was friendly or people cried enough. They only got introduced because enough players stopped playing. Nothing of those reasons they got introduced in other games exist in GW2 outside of loot entitlement. And this is not worth the time investment.

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:um yes i can, legendary weapons (tick), wvw legendary (tick), spvp (tick) , other open world (tick), fractal (tick), crafting (tick).

How do I progress towards Gen 2 legendaries in sPvP or WvW only?

[Ohoni.6057]

@"Miellyn.6847" said:No because raids added something that wasn't there before and filled a niche. And easy mode only caters towards already existing content and whining players.

That's a distinction with no relevance outside your own mind. The facts remain that 1. Raids did not exist prior to HoT, 2. Raids took a lot of time to implement even though their current implementation only applies to a small audience, and 3. They implemented raids anyway. All three facts also apply to easy mode raids today, except that the audience for them is higher and the time to implement them is lower.

It doesn't support any difficulty settings outside of the current one. It is not as easy as you want it to be.

Again, it doesn't need to support "difficulty settings." If that would be tricky to implement, they can just bypass it completely.

Think of it this way, when PoF came out they added a brand new wing, Wing 5, right? Well instead of thinking of easy mode as an alternate mode to Wing 1, think of it as an entirely new wing. It wouldn't be a "mode" of wing 1, it would be "wing 1.5," in which instead of starting completely from scratch, as they did with Wing 5, they just copy and paste all the data they have already from Wing 1. Then they just rename everything, instead of "Spirit Vale Map" it would have "Spirit Vale Easy" map. Instead of "Vale Guardian" spawning with an "easy mode modifier" on him, "Vale Guardian Easy" would spawn, a boss that is suspiciously identical to the normal VG, only some of his attacks deal less damage.

There would be no "alternate modes," it would just be an entirely unique raid with unique enemies, a process simplified by them being minor alterations to existing enemies, much like the Bloodstone Fen VG boss was based off the core design of the raid version.

Implementing an easy mode like that should require few if any structural changes to their systems, since it would be no different than when they add an entirely new wing to the game. But in comparison to a new wing, it should be far faster and easier to actually implement, since they don't need to create any new environments, art assets, animations, sounds, story, loot, etc.

It wasn't about the inherit difficulty of raids but about the fact that easy modes only ever saw their existence in raid focused games because many players were excluded from experiencing the story line when it was current.

But there are story elements in the GW2 raids that players will miss out on by not participating in them. Furthermore, there are plenty of games with easy mode raids where the raids do not carry on the core story any more than GW2's does, but instead either have no story to them at all, or just tell side stories that are not directly related to the "core narrative." I expect a lot of hair-splitting in your response, about how "some story counts more than others, and players shouldn't care about the story in GW2's raids," but I don't have time for that nonsense.

[Brynioch.1873]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"Miellyn.6847" said:No because raids added something that wasn't there before and filled a niche. And easy mode only caters towards already existing content and whining players.

That's a distinction with no relevance outside your own mind. The facts remain that 1. Raids did not exist prior to HoT, 2. Raids took a lot of time to implement even though their current implementation only applies to a small audience, and 3. They implemented raids anyway. All three facts also apply to easy mode raids today, except that the audience for them is higher and the time to implement them is lower.

It doesn't support any difficulty settings outside of the current one. It is not as easy as you want it to be.We had this multiple times now. Your group is smaller than the current raiding population and you still dare to call the raiders a small audience. Hyperbole much?

Again, it doesn't

need

to support "difficulty settings." If that would be tricky to implement, they can just bypass it completely.

Think of it this way, when PoF came out they added a brand new wing, Wing 5, right? Well instead of thinking of easy mode as an alternate mode to Wing 1, think of it as an entirely new wing. It wouldn't be a "mode" of wing 1, it would be "wing 1.5," in which instead of starting completely from scratch, as they did with Wing 5, they just copy and paste all the data they have already from Wing 1. Then they just rename everything, instead of "Spirit Vale Map" it would have "Spirit Vale Easy" map. Instead of "Vale Guardian" spawning with an "easy mode modifier" on him, "Vale Guardian Easy" would spawn, a boss that is suspiciously identical to the normal VG, only some of his attacks deal less damage.

There would be no "alternate modes," it would just be an entirely unique raid with unique enemies, a process simplified by them being minor alterations to existing enemies, much like the Bloodstone Fen VG boss was based off the core design of the raid version.

Implementing an easy mode like that should require few if any structural changes to their systems, since it would be no different than when they add an entirely new wing to the game. But in comparison to a new wing, it should be far faster and easier to actually implement, since they don't need to create

any

new environments, art assets, animations, sounds, story, loot, etc.

So you know how the world maps works and if it supports multiple instances of maps (normal and easy would not use the same map as you stated)? Or didn't you waste any tought on that? Or do you want to block space on the world map for your easy mode? Or do we need a rework of the world map?

You still know nothing about the code base and how things work or what changes are required.

It wasn't about the inherit difficulty of raids but about the fact that easy modes only ever saw their existence in raid focused games because many players were excluded from experiencing the story line when it was current.

But there

are

story elements in the GW2 raids that players will miss out on by not participating in them. Furthermore, there are plenty of games with easy mode raids where the raids do

not

carry on the core story any more than GW2's does, but instead either have no story to them at all, or just tell side stories that are not directly related to the "core narrative." I expect a lot of hair-splitting in your response, about how "some story counts more than others, and players shouldn't care about the story in GW2's raids," but I don't have time for that nonsense.

You get more information about Forsaken Thicket in LS3 than in the raid itself. You don't miss out on anything there.Wing 4 and 5 don't even tell a story about GW2. They are endings of GW1 stories. Completely irrelevant to the normal GW2 player.

[Ohoni.6057]

@Miellyn.6847 said:We had this multiple times now. Your group is smaller than the current raiding population and you still dare to call the raiders a small audience. Hyperbole much?

We had this multiple times now. Your group is smaller than the current non-raiding population and you still dare to call the non-raiders a small audience. Hyperbole much?

So you know how the world maps works and if it supports multiple instances of maps (normal and easy would not use the same map as you stated)?

Again, it's nothing that they aren't already doing in the game. For example, they have the Personal Story versions of the open world maps, there is no reason to believe it would be non-trivial to do a direct copy-paste of the existing raids and make them functional. The only part that would take actual work would be tweaking them to be easier, and the amount of work that would take is highly debatable.

You get more information about Forsaken Thicket in LS3 than in the raid itself. You don't miss out on anything there.

That's not your call to make.

Wing 4 and 5 don't even tell a story about GW2. They are endings of GW1 stories. Completely irrelevant to the normal GW2 player.

All story in the game is story about GW2. The story of Wing 4 links in to the end of LWs3, and the story of Wing 5 flows out of the plot of PoF, but even if they were completely unrelated to the personal story plots, they are still a part of Guild War 2's story, and they still matter. ALL stories in the game are relevant to those that are interested in them, and no, you don't have to be interested in every story to have a valid interest in some of the stories.

[Brynioch.1873]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:So you know how the world maps works and if it supports multiple instances of maps (normal and easy would not use the same map as you stated)?

Again, it's nothing that they aren't already doing in the game. For example, they have the Personal Story versions of the open world maps, there is no reason to believe it would be non-trivial to do a direct copy-paste of the existing raids and make them functional. The only part that would take

actual

work would be tweaking them to be easier, and the

amount

of work that would take is highly debatable.

There is a pretty good reason to assume that it will be a huge workload. A red post that said exactly that.Raid entrances and personal story don't work even remotely the same.

[yann.1946]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:We had this multiple times now. Your group is smaller than the current raiding population and you still dare to call the raiders a small audience. Hyperbole much?

We had this multiple times now. Your group is smaller than the current non-raiding population and you still dare to call the non-raiders a small audience. Hyperbole much?

He was talking about the people who might play easymode not about the people who don't raid.

You get more information about Forsaken Thicket in LS3 than in the raid itself. You don't miss out on anything there.

That's not your call to make.

This doesn't change the fact that their is more of the Raidstory in ls3 then in the raid itself. It is a fact that's you don't miss any of the story of you don't raid.

People may want to play the story but that doesn't mean that they are missing out on the story (content eisen)

[Ohoni.6057]

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:So you know how the world maps works and if it supports multiple instances of maps (normal and easy would not use the same map as you stated)?

Again, it's nothing that they aren't already doing in the game. For example, they have the Personal Story versions of the open world maps, there is no reason to believe it would be non-trivial to do a direct copy-paste of the existing raids and make them functional. The only part that would take

actual

work would be tweaking them to be easier, and the

amount

of work that would take is highly debatable.

There is a pretty good reason to assume that it will be a huge workload. A red post that said exactly that.

Again, perhaps they just weren't thinking through their options in the same way. Plenty of people have suggested things in these threads that would take a great deal of work, such as rebuilding the raid encounters from scratch to behave entirely differently. I don't believe that the proposals I've made would take nearly as much effort to implement. It's not zero, but it's not an insurmountable amount either.

Raid entrances and personal story don't work even remotely the same.

How do you know that?

and what about Dungeon entrances?

@yann.1946 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:We had this multiple times now. Your group is smaller than the current raiding population and you still dare to call the raiders a small audience. Hyperbole much?

We had this multiple times now. Your group is smaller than the current non-raiding population and you still dare to call the non-raiders a small audience. Hyperbole much?

He was talking about the people who might play easymode not about the people who don't raid.

We have no data on the size of that group. There has been plenty of rampant speculation on the matter, but nothing even remotely conclusive. There is no reason to believe that it is smaller than the number of active raiders by an amount reltative to the work it would take to satisfy them.

You get more information about Forsaken Thicket in LS3 than in the raid itself. You don't miss out on anything there.

That's not your call to make.

This doesn't change the fact that their is more of the Raidstory in ls3 then in the raid itself. It is a fact that's you don't miss any of the story of you don't raid.

People may want to play the story but that doesn't mean that they are missing out on the story (content eisen)

That's exactly the literal definition of those words. If they want to play the story and they aren't able to in a way that is convenient to them, then they are, by definition, "missing out" on that experience.

[Feanor.2358]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@"mortrialus.3062" said:I'm going to cross post this message I made back when the first Easy Mode discussion popped up on the new forum."This is a debate I've been hearing since Vanilla World of Warcraft added Molten Core. I heard these arguments after Dark Souls became a smash success. And now I'm hearing it with GW2. Easy mode in raids would absolutely be unhealthy for GW2.

I've only started raiding in GW2 relatively recently. I joined a guild that advertised raid training and I really wanted that experience. For a long time, I didn't have a real guild outside of a couple of real life friends I played with. GW2 was for a long time a game that was actually pretty easy to mostly play on your own. And when Raids came out and I started getting really into the game again I really wanted to be a dedicated raider. About a couple of months ago I pulled the trigger and joined a raiding guild and I’ve never been happier playing the game.

And what makes raids appealing is the fact that they are exclusionary. More specifically, what makes raids appealing to me is the fact that I can be (And was for quite sometime) excluded from them because of the difficulty. I couldn't just solo my way through them or even reliably pug it. It was the same thing with Raiding in World of Warcraft. It was a very similar thing with Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls. The fact that there is real risk that I can’t see the content is what makes the content exciting. It creates a sense of danger, anticipation, and a sense of accomplishment that you just can’t get otherwise. Even if there was an easy mode, and I never ever touched the easy mode and just did the hardmode, the fact that it's possible for me to hit a switch and see all the content removes all the tension and danger and fear of failure.

I’ve never cared to get the achievement Migraine. Because I’ve already killed Mordremoth. I already know how that fight goes down. There’s just no interest in doing it for me. I’ve seen it all before. If Raids had an easy mode that I could have steamrolled, I would have 0 interest in doing them anymore. And I certainly wouldn’t have joined a raiding guild and become a part of a community. I have more more friends and people I play with in game because the exclusionary nature of raids forced me to finally stop being a loner and find and join other like minded players.

Regarding the story, Deimos isn’t that interesting of a character because of his dialogue or his character arc. He’s interesting explicitly because he is incredibly difficulty and the mechanics of his fight. He’s incredibly threatening and extremely intimidating because he’s hard. If there was an easy mode players could just steamroll or a story mode then Deimos losing a huge part of his character. Without that, there’s little more to him than being a weird demon we’ve never seen before that’s mean to Saul. That’s it. Matthias would be a weird crazy mage and that's it. Xera would be a Mesmer you fight in a trippy arena and that's it. They'd be like Zhaitan or the Primordus / Balthazar encounter in Flashpoint. Cinematic fights with interesting things visually, but ultimately huge jokes. Their difficulty, the time players have had to spend mastering their fights, have actually manage to give these raid characters actual character. I'm always going to remember Matthias and Slothazor and Xera and Deimos. I couldn't tell you any of the named white mantle boss's names from Living World Season 3 aside from Caudecus himself. Because the difficulty makes the story and writing shine.

It was the same thing with WoW and Dark Souls. Ragnaros was only interesting and iconic because he was hard and it took so much work and group effort to fight and defeat him(Over at least a month if the guild is starting from scratch like mine did to get someone the reputation with the Hydraxian Waterlords high enough to fight him). Aside from that he was just a really, really large fire elemental . C’thun was only interesting because of how difficult of a fight he was . Ornstein and Smough are only interesting because of how difficult they are. If Dark Souls wasn’t hard, people would blow through that game in literally two or three hours their first playthrough and it wouldn’t leave anywhere near the impact it had on players and everyone would have forgotten about it.

This might seem like a bit of a tangent, but I don't WvW. It's just not a game type I find interesting and will only dip my toe into it to get a Gift of Battle for a legendary weapon and that's it. And if WvW ever someday gets an update that adds new interesting things to it I'm not going to be upset about it. I think WvWers should have the coolest and most fun experience even if I don't ever set foot in a WvW map ever again. Warbringer is the coolest looking legendary backpack, but I'm never going to get it. And I'm fine with that. I don't want or need an easy mode that lets me immediately get the back pack, or lets me never have to fight other players or removing the possibility of dying while playing that content. If they add a new WvW map that's the coolest zone ever added to the game I'm not going to complain "Oh why can't they add a PvE version of this map. It's so unfair that WvW players get to run around this cool new zone that I don't get to enjoy because I don't WvW."

It seems like you have one section of the nonraiding crowd who wouldn't be happy unless raids were nothing more than wireframe hallways with fights against wireframe monsters with 0 value outside of their exact fight mechanics because "If all you want is hard content then that's all it should be." . Raids should be the coolest possible content they can possibly be in every regard, fights, zones, music and story. I think that should be true of every aspect of the game.

Another problem is that some players just don't want to put in the effort and try. You have people who are incredibly offended at the idea that you should use food and utilities in raids or fractals (And don't get me started on the people who get pissed that you ask that you use pots for Fractals) and consider the suggestion you telling them how to play and take away their free will and individuality. They look at things like meta builds as elitists telling them how to play, instead of the community and theory crafters coming together to try and help everyone see the content as easily as possible. People spend time theorycrafting, analyzing and testing stat sigil and rune combinations, crunching numbers, practicing rotations, doing practical runs of the raids for testing, and writing detailed guides on builds and strategies are for each class during each boss because they're trying to help you. They want you to kill the bosses and see the content. Not because they arbitrarily decided that warriors should use this playstyle and that all people must use this playstyle all the time because if you don't you're stupid and my build must be the most popular.

Guilds are always advertising that they provide raid training. You'll see raid training groups in LFG all the time. If you put in the effort to have a good build, to be able to pull off good rotations and provide good damage, if you show up to the group with food, you'll have a much better time.

But a lot of players don't think the game should be challenging period. That they shouldn't have to worry about actually being good at the game or putting up an effort for anything. They want everything to be like the world boss train where it's this big sloosh of nothing and no effort and easy loot. These people shouldn't be listened to catered to.

Easy mode would be a disastrous mistake. It would drain all of the appeal and mystique of raiding and fracture the community built up around them. I'm really happy with Arenanet's response on this.

"

you do realise you are part of a minority don't you? this isn't wow, the guild wars ethos is not exclusivity at all.

Endgame is always played by a minority. And exclusivity is always part of it. So while this indeed isn't WoW, the "ethos" you speak of never existed.

People are confusing 'exclusivity' as a strategy and 'exclusive' gear/skins, very different things. The ethos exists in this and a couple other mmorpg (e.g eve/lotr/gw/eso). The principle is that the goal is not to have 'better' items than others that is tied exclusively to 1 type of content, but to provide satisfying long term goals/skins that spreads across a broad spectrum of content. That's different from saying each type of content has exclusive/unique content, which as it should be.

Oh really? So how come all the long term goals/skins in this game are strictly tied to specific content?

That's simply that skins are exclusive to content, i said that in my post. If you are looking at a single thing in isolation ( a skin, an item of gear e.g) ofc its exclusive. look at the thread of conversation, the chat was implying that GW should take a similar strategic approach as games like WOW. It does not and should not. Think of it this way, if wow was a mountain, it would get higher every year, and you only get the best stuff if you get to the top. The strategy is exclusivity - being top dog at the top of the mountain and you get to the top gear. This exclusivity is the hook that drives people. In GW2 that is not the strategic approach or ethos that Anet follow. Just like GW1, all gear at end game is or should be equal, and you pick your route to a desired skin. The driving principle is not exclusivity, its freedom of choice - you pick a long term objective out of a sweety shop of long term objectives, all of which are time based..except for 1 single strand of content - raiding in its current form requires contiguous time blocks to learn and play properly.

Exclusivity:

• the practice of excluding or not admitting other things.
• restriction to a particular person, group, or area.

But a route to your desired skin is exactly what you can't do. You can pick a route for the top-tier gear in respect to power. But skins? Nope.

um yes i can, legendary weapons (tick), wvw legendary (tick), spvp (tick) , other open world (tick), fractal (tick), crafting (tick).

This is only true for the material/currency sink part of their crafting. Go ahead and choose to craft Aurora without playing LS3. Or craft Ad Infinitum without playing fractals. Or craft Nevermore without finding and egg, hatching it in the fires of Mount Maelstrom and nurturing the raven chick. The essential part of "route" is always "play this specific content". It applies to open world legendaries, to PvP, WvW and fractal ones. Notice that even though for the new gen 2 legendaries they ditched the open world collections, they still require both open world participation (in the form of map completion) and the completion of a particular WvW track. The crafting process for every single legendary in the game has some hard requirements you cannot avoid. So why shouldn't the raid legendaries have the same?

[yann.1946]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:So you know how the world maps works and if it supports multiple instances of maps (normal and easy would not use the same map as you stated)?

Again, it's nothing that they aren't already doing in the game. For example, they have the Personal Story versions of the open world maps, there is no reason to believe it would be non-trivial to do a direct copy-paste of the existing raids and make them functional. The only part that would take

actual

work would be tweaking them to be easier, and the

amount

of work that would take is highly debatable.

There is a pretty good reason to assume that it will be a huge workload. A red post that said exactly that.

Again, perhaps they just weren't thinking through their options in the same way. Plenty of people have suggested things in these threads that

would

take a great deal of work, such as rebuilding the raid encounters from scratch to behave entirely differently. I don't believe that the proposals

I've

made would take nearly as much effort to implement. It's not zero, but it's not an insurmountable amount either.

Raid entrances and personal story don't work even remotely the same.

How do you know that?

and what about Dungeon entrances?

@yann.1946 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:We had this multiple times now. Your group is smaller than the current raiding population and you still dare to call the raiders a small audience. Hyperbole much?

We had this multiple times now. Your group is smaller than the current non-raiding population and you still dare to call the non-raiders a small audience. Hyperbole much?

He was talking about the people who might play easymode not about the people who don't raid.

We have no data on the size of that group. There has been plenty of rampant speculation on the matter, but nothing even remotely conclusive. There is no reason to believe that it is smaller than the number of active raiders by an amount reltative to the work it would take to satisfy them.

Of course. But claiming that all the non raiders are a potential target audience is stupid at best.

You get more information about Forsaken Thicket in LS3 than in the raid itself. You don't miss out on anything there.

That's not your call to make.

This doesn't change the fact that their is more of the Raidstory in ls3 then in the raid itself. It is a fact that's you don't miss any of the story of you don't raid.

People may want to play the story but that doesn't mean that they are missing out on the story (content eisen)

That's

exactly

the literal definition of those words. If they want to play the story and they aren't able to in a way that is convenient to them, then they are,

by definition,

"missing out" on that experience.

The experience yes. Not the story these are two very different things.

And they don't want the experience. They want a similar experience which admittely is bit a small destinction bit a distinction non the less.

[maddoctor.2738]

@Ohoni.6057 said:We have no data on the size of that group. There has been plenty of rampant speculation on the matter, but nothing even remotely conclusive. There is no reason to believe that it is smaller than the number of active raiders by an amount reltative to the work it would take to satisfy them.

There is no reason to believe that it is larger than the number of active raiders either. The argument about the size of the group works both ways.

[Brynioch.1873]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:So you know how the world maps works and if it supports multiple instances of maps (normal and easy would not use the same map as you stated)?

Again, it's nothing that they aren't already doing in the game. For example, they have the Personal Story versions of the open world maps, there is no reason to believe it would be non-trivial to do a direct copy-paste of the existing raids and make them functional. The only part that would take

actual

work would be tweaking them to be easier, and the

amount

of work that would take is highly debatable.

There is a pretty good reason to assume that it will be a huge workload. A red post that said exactly that.

Again, perhaps they just weren't thinking through their options in the same way. Plenty of people have suggested things in these threads that

would

take a great deal of work, such as rebuilding the raid encounters from scratch to behave entirely differently. I don't believe that the proposals

I've

made would take nearly as much effort to implement. It's not zero, but it's not an insurmountable amount either.

Or your ideas just don't work because you still don't know anything about the internal logic and code base.

Raid entrances and personal story don't work even remotely the same.

How do you know that?

and what about Dungeon entrances?

Do you even play the game? Do raid entrances wait 15sec for a confirmation from party members and open an instance that gets closed when the opener leaves?

@yann.1946 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:We had this multiple times now. Your group is smaller than the current raiding population and you still dare to call the raiders a small audience. Hyperbole much?

We had this multiple times now. Your group is smaller than the current non-raiding population and you still dare to call the non-raiders a small audience. Hyperbole much?

He was talking about the people who might play easymode not about the people who don't raid.

We have no data on the size of that group. There has been plenty of rampant speculation on the matter, but nothing even remotely conclusive. There is no reason to believe that it is smaller than the number of active raiders by an amount reltative to the work it would take to satisfy them.

As you don't know the amount of work AND the amount of people that will play it, it is a really bold call.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:So you know how the world maps works and if it supports multiple instances of maps (normal and easy would not use the same map as you stated)?

Again, it's nothing that they aren't already doing in the game. For example, they have the Personal Story versions of the open world maps, there is no reason to believe it would be non-trivial to do a direct copy-paste of the existing raids and make them functional. The only part that would take

actual

work would be tweaking them to be easier, and the

amount

of work that would take is highly debatable.

There is a pretty good reason to assume that it will be a huge workload. A red post that said exactly that.Raid entrances and personal story don't work even remotely the same.

well it cant be a huge workload, if there are 400 people working on GW2 and only 8 people to create all the raids you have today. The effort would be a one off up front cost to resolve any issues when running the clones instances alongside each other. After that its number tweaking.

[Ohoni.6057]

@"yann.1946" said:Of course. But claiming that all the non raiders are a potential target audience is stupid at best.

Perhaps, but no worse than claiming "only this small category that already did X, Y, and Z according to Efficiency stats" is a valid argument.

The actual value is somewhere in between zero and all the players. We can't know where it would fall until they actually try it.

The experience yes. Not the story these are two very different things.

It's a game. The experience is the important part, otherwise everyone would just watch let's plays. If they aren't experiencing the story through their own character then it doesn't count.

And they don't want the experience. They want a similar experience which admittely is bit a small destinction bit a distinction non the less.

Fair enough, but that's still what they want.

@maddoctor.2738 said:There is no reason to believe that it is larger than the number of active raiders either.

It doesn't have to be larger, even though I believe that's the more likely scenario.

@Miellyn.6847 said:Or your ideas just don't work because you still don't know anything about the internal logic and code base.

Possibly, but highly unlikely, and again, if that's the case then I'd like to be able to troubleshoot alternatives. I can't imagine it could actually be a fraction as difficult as you guys wish it were.

Do you even play the game? Do raid entrances wait 15sec for a confirmation from party members and open an instance that gets closed when the opener leaves?

Yes, like various other content like dungeons and fractals and SAB and story missions, etc. The differences are miniscule at best.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Ohoni.6057" said:It doesn't have to be larger, even though I believe that's the more likely scenario.

Yet you have no evidence to prove that it is "the more likely scenario". Instead, there is more than enough evidence to the contrary.First, the Raid population is very similar to the other more challenging parts of the game, Arah, T4 Fractals, Fractal CMs, and the hardest achievements available (Like Mordremoth CM) all have similar completion rates to Raid wings (it depends heavily on the boss obviously, but they are similar in general)Second, those that have more data haven't done anything about it, how do you know they don't see the data and figure it's not worth it?

There is no conclusive evidence to prove that the player size that would be affected will be smaller or larger, but there is at least some evidence pointing towards "smaller". On the other hand there is absolutely nothing supporting your scenario.

[Lucinellia.9247]

While I'd be in favour of more raid difficulties (at the minimum, repeatable CMs for slightly less loot), the biggest barrier I'm facing as someone that can get into groups and has seen all the current content is the expectation that I'll be happy not playing my main (Thief) and rerolling to Chronomancer or Druid as the group needs.

This is particularly unfun when both of these professions have been staples for three years and there aren't alternatives for the Chronomancer role and only variation in secondary healers, not Might provision. The raid content is becoming stale due to lack of meta shifts, equitable balance in both dps and especially support and a lack of alternatives and I'm seriously considering leaving GW2 for a game where I can actually play my main in high end content without constantly being asked to switch to something else.

Though it wouldn't fix the issue, I'd happily take an easier raid difficulty if it meant I could legitimately experience the content with off-meta compositions or professions and playstyles I truly enjoy instead of needing to switch to Druid or Chrono. While I'd adore to run Might share Deadeye and two non-Druid healers in "normal" difficulty raids alongside a Chronomancer alternative (whatever that might finally be), I'd settle for being able to do that in easier runs if Anet isn't willing to properly balance because PvE is becoming dull, restrictive and frustrating currently.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@"Ohoni.6057" said:That's irrelevant to my point. Plenty of games have easy mode raids, so no, "raids, by definition, is not "easy mode"." is objectively false.And all of them have dungeons/raids as main content.This, again, is completely irrelevant. Asserting that "raids are difficult by definition" is objectively wrong, because most games that have raids do in fact have easy raids as well. Those do exist. Trying to claim those cannot exist is thus just plain wrong, with no arguing about it. And whether raids are core or side content has absolutely no bearing on that initial assertion.

Basically, you could possibly argue about whether easy mode raids have their place in games where raids are a side content (and whether something that raiders consider to be the pve endgame can be treated as a side content), but you can't claim that easy mode cannot exist, that raids must always be difficult, because that's what raids are. That claim is simply completely and objectively untrue.

It wasn't about the inherit difficulty of raids but about the fact that easy modes only ever saw their existence in raid focused games because many players were excluded from experiencing the story line when it was current.Actually, no, it was specifically referring to the argument (brought up many times in this thread) that no such things as easy mode raids can exist because "raids" and "easy mode" do not ever go along. Trying to change the topic won't make that argument any less false than it was before.

As i said, your argument (about how easy mode raids do not fit in gw2) is something completely separate.

@"vesica tempestas.1563" said:um yes i can, legendary weapons (tick), wvw legendary (tick), spvp (tick) , other open world (tick), fractal (tick), crafting (tick).

How do I progress towards Gen 2 legendaries in sPvP or WvW only?It's significant that you have to specify "gen 2" here, isn't it.

[nia.4725]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:So you know how the world maps works and if it supports multiple instances of maps (normal and easy would not use the same map as you stated)?

Again, it's nothing that they aren't already doing in the game. For example, they have the Personal Story versions of the open world maps, there is no reason to believe it would be non-trivial to do a direct copy-paste of the existing raids and make them functional. The only part that would take

actual

work would be tweaking them to be easier, and the

amount

of work that would take is highly debatable.

There is a pretty good reason to assume that it will be a huge workload. A red post that said exactly that.Raid entrances and personal story don't work even remotely the same.

well it cant be a huge workload, if there are 400 people working on GW2 and only 8 people to create all the raids you have today. The effort would be a one off up front cost to resolve any issues when running the clones instances alongside each other. After that its number tweaking.

It's not only that, and it's obvious. You don't even need to know anything about game design... just try to have some common sense.

But even if you don't, as you have already shown, you can go back to what Gaile Gray said.

[yann.1946]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@"Ohoni.6057" said:That's irrelevant to my point. Plenty of games have easy mode raids, so no, "raids, by definition, is not "easy mode"." is objectively false.And all of them have dungeons/raids as main content.This, again, is completely irrelevant. Asserting that "raids are difficult by definition" is objectively wrong, because most games that have raids do in fact have easy raids as well. Those do exist. Trying to claim those cannot exist is thus just plain wrong, with no arguing about it. And whether raids are core or side content has absolutely no bearing on that initial assertion.

Basically, you could possibly argue about whether easy mode raids have their place in games where raids are a side content (and whether something that raiders consider to be the pve endgame can be treated as a side content), but you can't claim that easy mode cannot exist, that raids must always be difficult, because that's what raids are. That claim is simply completely and objectively untrue.

It wasn't about the inherit difficulty of raids but about the fact that easy modes only ever saw their existence in raid focused games because many players were excluded from experiencing the story line when it was current.Actually, no, it was specifically referring to the argument (brought up many times in this thread) that no such things as easy mode raids can exist because "raids" and "easy mode" do not ever go along. Trying to change the topic won't make that argument any less false than it was before.

As i said, your argument (about how easy mode raids do not fit in gw2) is something completely separate.

@"vesica tempestas.1563" said:um yes i can, legendary weapons (tick), wvw legendary (tick), spvp (tick) , other open world (tick), fractal (tick), crafting (tick).

How do I progress towards Gen 2 legendaries in sPvP or WvW only?It's significant that you have to specify "gen 2" here, isn't it.

We'll yes gen2. The legendaries which where made unsellable so people people where forced to do certain things. Why do you think that Is;)

[Voltekka.2375]

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:So you know how the world maps works and if it supports multiple instances of maps (normal and easy would not use the same map as you stated)?

Again, it's nothing that they aren't already doing in the game. For example, they have the Personal Story versions of the open world maps, there is no reason to believe it would be non-trivial to do a direct copy-paste of the existing raids and make them functional. The only part that would take

actual

work would be tweaking them to be easier, and the

amount

of work that would take is highly debatable.

There is a pretty good reason to assume that it will be a huge workload. A red post that said exactly that.Raid entrances and personal story don't work even remotely the same.

well it cant be a huge workload, if there are 400 people working on GW2 and only 8 people to create all the raids you have today. The effort would be a one off up front cost to resolve any issues when running the clones instances alongside each other. After that its number tweaking.

It's not only that, and it's obvious. You don't even need to know anything about game design... just try to have some common sense.

But even if you don't, as you have already shown, you can go back to what Gaile Gray said.

Do you perchance have Gaile's actual quote?

[nia.4725]

@"Miatela.5047" said:While I'd be in favour of more raid difficulties (at the minimum, repeatable CMs for slightly less loot), the biggest barrier I'm facing as someone that can get into groups and has seen all the current content is the expectation that I'll be happy not playing my main (Thief) and rerolling to Chronomancer or Druid as the group needs.

This is particularly unfun when both of these professions have been staples for three years and there aren't alternatives for the Chronomancer role and only variation in secondary healers, not Might provision. The raid content is becoming stale due to lack of meta shifts, equitable balance in both dps and especially support and a lack of alternatives and I'm seriously considering leaving GW2 for a game where I can actually play my main in high end content without constantly being asked to switch to something else.

Though it wouldn't fix the issue, I'd happily take an easier raid difficulty if it meant I could legitimately experience the content with off-meta compositions or professions and playstyles I truly enjoy instead of needing to switch to Druid or Chrono. While I'd adore to run Might share Deadeye and two non-Druid healers in "normal" difficulty raids alongside a Chronomancer alternative (whatever that might finally be), I'd settle for being able to do that in easier runs if Anet isn't willing to properly balance because PvE is becoming dull, restrictive and frustrating currently.

I've had some problems with this, too. At first, because I had to always play druid. It's my main and I love it, but it isn't fun having to play always the same profession. Then it happened with my handkiter rev. I hate having to play something in particular because no one else can. However, I don't think an easy mode so dumbed down that those roles aren't necessary anymore isn't the solution. It would solve your problem with not being able to play thief (although, honestly, thief is viable in the current raids), but it wouldn't solve my problem. I mean, it would not solve every diversity problem. You will also need boons, you will always need a handkiter, you will always need a tank.

My (not the best and not always working) solution to this is refusing to play something else. If I'm pugging, I will join as whatever I want to play and, if the commi asks me if I can play chrono or druid or whatever, I'll just say no. If I'm raiding with my static, I'll be more flexible, but I'll ask my raid leader to not make me play that role I don't want to play unless it's completely necessary.

It's a shame anet does not fix this issue, but it's a very complex issue, and it can't be solved easily. I don't think an easy mode will make this any better.

[Brynioch.1873]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:Or your ideas just don't work because you still don't know anything about the internal logic and code base.

Possibly, but highly unlikely, and again, if that's the case then I'd like to be able to troubleshoot alternatives. I can't imagine it could actually be a fraction as difficult as you guys wish it were.

Do you even play the game? Do raid entrances wait 15sec for a confirmation from party members and open an instance that gets closed when the opener leaves?

Yes, like various other content like dungeons and fractals and SAB and story missions, etc. The differences are miniscule at best.

What you see maybe. But as they already said dungeons got abbadoned because they are a mess from the programming side the differences inside the game are much larger and this is what actually matters and you know nothing about this.

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:well it cant be a huge workload, if there are 400 people working on GW2 and only 8 people to create all the raids you have today. The effort would be a one off up front cost to resolve any issues when running the clones instances alongside each other. After that its number tweaking.

As we don't know any other team size and the last two raid wings took 8 and 10 months there is no indication it is an easy task. So same for you as Ohoni: You know nothing about internal processes, code base, technical limitations. Stop the assumption.@"Astralporing.1957" said:It's significant that you have to specify "gen 2" here, isn't it.

Yes it it. Because Gen 1 can be bought from the TP. If it's about item qualilty: You are in luck, already present in WvW and sPvP (unlike weapons which can only be bought with gold, if you want to progress on your own you need to play open world if you want it or not). Is it about the skin? How do I get Gen 2 legendaries without open world? Ah the same way you get the envoy armor without raids, question answered.

[yann.1946]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"yann.1946" said:Of course. But claiming that all the non raiders are a potential target audience is stupid at best.

Perhaps, but no worse than claiming "only this small category that already did X, Y, and Z according to Efficiency stats" is a valid argument.

The actual value is somewhere in between zero and all the players. We can't know

where

it would fall until they actually try it.

We'll people van quite accuratly predict the amount of people interested.

But yes we don't have the data to do this.

The experience yes. Not the story these are two very different things.

It's a game. The experience is the important part, otherwise everyone would just watch let's plays. If they aren't experiencing the story through their own character then it doesn't count.

I know what you're getting at nut you really should stop the generalisation. Their where quite a lot positive reactions to the Books in istan while nobody experienced the story.

And they don't want the experience. They want a similar experience which admittely is bit a small destinction bit a distinction non the less.

Fair enough, but that's still what they want.

[nia.4725]

@Voltekka.2375 said:

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Miellyn.6847 said:So you know how the world maps works and if it supports multiple instances of maps (normal and easy would not use the same map as you stated)?

Again, it's nothing that they aren't already doing in the game. For example, they have the Personal Story versions of the open world maps, there is no reason to believe it would be non-trivial to do a direct copy-paste of the existing raids and make them functional. The only part that would take

actual

work would be tweaking them to be easier, and the

amount

of work that would take is highly debatable.

There is a pretty good reason to assume that it will be a huge workload. A red post that said exactly that.Raid entrances and personal story don't work even remotely the same.

well it cant be a huge workload, if there are 400 people working on GW2 and only 8 people to create all the raids you have today. The effort would be a one off up front cost to resolve any issues when running the clones instances alongside each other. After that its number tweaking.

It's not only that, and it's obvious. You don't even need to know anything about game design... just try to have some common sense.

But even if you don't, as you have already shown, you can go back to what Gaile Gray said.

Do you perchance have Gaile's actual quote?

Nope. I can't find it, I don't remember the details (the exact words and the place it was posted) to be able to search it. It was something like all things in development need resources, and that those resources are more than what we can imagine. That those resources would need to be moved from somewhere else, so if you give resources to one thing, you are taking them from one another.

[Ohoni.6057]

@"maddoctor.2738" said:Yet you have no evidence to prove that it is "the more likely scenario".

Of course not, it's a position that can neither be reasonably proven nor disproved, which is why I referenced it as "a belief" instead of as a "fact."

First, the Raid population is very similar to the other more challenging parts of the game, Arah, T4 Fractals, Fractal CMs, and the hardest achievements available (Like Mordremoth CM) all have similar completion rates to Raid wings (it depends heavily on the boss obviously, but they are similar in general)

Similar in some ways, though different in many others, such as the start date, the reward desirability, the relevance to the existing game, etc.

And remember, we we talking about people who would play the easy mode raids, which would not be comparable in difficulty to the harder content in the game, they would be more comparable to the lower tier Fractals and easier dungeons.

Second, those that have more data haven't done anything about it, how do you know they don't see the data and figure it's not worth it?

I'm not sure what data they have, but I know that you've reached some wild conclusions based on the data you've come across, so I can't expect that they are interpreting what data they have accurately either. Or they might not care.

@"nia.4725" said:You will also need boons, you will always need a handkiter, you will always need a tank.

Hopefully with the reduced requirements of an easy mode, there would be less requirement that you build a certain way to fill these rolls. One thing I have thrown out there as an optional element for easy modes would be the idea of a "toughness shrine" that could grant one party member enough Toughness that they'd almost certainly take the tank role from anyone else, if that's what they wanted. It could be a little complicated to implement though.

@Miellyn.6847 said:What you see maybe. But as they already said dungeons got abbadoned because they are a mess from the programming side the differences inside the game are much larger and this is what actually matters and you know nothing about this.

So you'd think that they wouldn't make the same mistakes again with raids, and resolve those scalability issues, right?

As we don't know any other team size and the last two raid wings took 8 and 10 months there is no indication it is an easy task. So same for you as Ohoni: You know nothing about internal processes, code base, technical limitations. Stop the assumption.

You're also making assumptions though, that it couldn't possibly be done in a reasonable amount of time and effort. Both are assumptions. I'll continue to stick with mine until we get some more detailed feedback, feel free to stick with yours.

Yes it it. Because Gen 1 can be bought from the TP. If it's about item qualilty: You are in luck, already present in WvW and sPvP (unlike weapons which can only be bought with gold, if you want to progress on your own you need to play open world if you want it or not). Is it about the skin? How do I get Gen 2 legendaries without open world? Ah the same way you get the envoy armor without raids, question answered.

But ideally, both situations would be fixed.

@"yann.1946" said:I know what you're getting at nut you really should stop the generalisation. Their where quite a lot positive reactions to the Books in istan while nobody experienced the story.

That's an entirely separate situation. If there was a "books of Istan" story mission available, but only a fraction of the players could meaningfully participate, but the devs put out the books as an alternative experience, you can kittened-well bet that players would not be satisfied by that. Remember the backlash that the Season 1 "cutscene-machine" received? If the written story is all that exists, all that anyone is allowed to play, then sure, that's interesting and people will enjoy it. But if the written down version is only a "second place" option for those that can't engage actual playable content that also exists? I'm sorry, but no one is satisfied by that. It's like a placebo with "placebo" written on it, and instructions that read "'Placebo' means it's not a real drug and its effects are entirely in your head, enjoy!"