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

[Tyson.5160]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"nia.4725" said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

[TexZero.7910]

@Tyson.5160 said:

@TexZero.7910 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:What about watching the 50 lbs for $40.00 and then getting $20.00 after?

What about just raiding if you want the Armor ?I think it's literally that simple. No need for bad analogies or metaphors.

If you do not want to raid, you're not getting the reward. Simple as that, no there's not going to be any budging on this as the developers have already confirmed Legendary Armor (Envoy) is for completing the current raids.

If that doesn't suit your need, your next best bet isn't coming to the forums it's playing PvP or WvW for their Legendary Armor. Complain that they lack "Legendary" visuals if you want they come with everything else that is "Legendary" stat swap/rune swap/particles and that sweet sweet purple font.

I already have Legendary Armor...

That's great. Then there's even less reason for silly metaphors and devils advocate arguments in this thread that try to equate a certain person 0 effort to other peoples actual effort in a vain attempt to get something for nothing.

[Ohoni.6057]

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"nia.4725" said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again, this is not a proposal for something they should do. I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the concept that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow automatically more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be simulated simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a fairness perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to encourage group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we were discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually reduced, the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

[Tyson.5160]

@TexZero.7910 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@TexZero.7910 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:What about watching the 50 lbs for $40.00 and then getting $20.00 after?

What about just raiding if you want the Armor ?I think it's literally that simple. No need for bad analogies or metaphors.

If you do not want to raid, you're not getting the reward. Simple as that, no there's not going to be any budging on this as the developers have already confirmed Legendary Armor (Envoy) is for completing the current raids.

If that doesn't suit your need, your next best bet isn't coming to the forums it's playing PvP or WvW for their Legendary Armor. Complain that they lack "Legendary" visuals if you want they come with everything else that is "Legendary" stat swap/rune swap/particles and that sweet sweet purple font.

I already have Legendary Armor...

That's great. Then there's even less reason for silly metaphors and devils advocate arguments in this thread that try to equate a certain person 0 effort to other peoples actual effort in a vain attempt to get something for nothing.

That’s for me to decide...Tex, not you.

[Tyson.5160]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"nia.4725" said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

[Ohoni.6057]

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"nia.4725" said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in favor of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

[Feanor.2358]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"nia.4725" said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

And both would be too much work and not worth doing.

[Ohoni.6057]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

And both would be too much work and not worth doing.

Yes, we're aware of where you plant your flag on that topic.

[Tyson.5160]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"nia.4725" said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

And both would be too much work and not worth doing.

I was thinking about that 20 man squad raid again and thought they should do the occasional 20 man weekend or week long event as a change in pace for raids, that way it’s not a permanent feature.

[Sarrs.4831]

Raids are inaccessible because you need to get 9 other people who know how to do the content......So the solution is to release raids for which you need 19 other people.

Uhhhhhh?...

[Feanor.2358]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

And both would be too much work and not worth doing.

Yes, we're aware of where you plant

your

flag on that topic.

And we're aware where you plant yours.

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"nia.4725" said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

And both would be too much work and not worth doing.

I was thinking about that 20 man squad raid again and thought they should do the occasional 20 man weekend or week long event as a change in pace for raids, that way it’s not a permanent feature.

This in my opinion can be done with relatively small amount of work, the way it was first described - just 20-man squad, no special rewards or whatever. Just the normal bags you get from killing a boss a second time in the same week. I imagine it would be worth doing even for just an occasional weekend event.

@"Sarrs.4831" said:Raids are inaccessible because you need to get 9 other people who know how to do the content......So the solution is to release raids for which you need 19 other people.

Uhhhhhh?...

Dragon's Stand usually requires 40+. It's not just the numbers. Doubling the players will greatly increase the relative power of the group and allow the encounters to be "cheesed", with few obvious exceptions on mechanics that scale with the number of players (e.g. KC/Matthias circles). These could be just capped to preserve their current behavior on a higher number, again, for relatively small amount of work as you'd only need to address few individual mechanics instead of each and every one out there.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"mortrialus.3062" said:You can match my effort. By matching my effort. It's quite simple.That's actually not true. By "matching my effort" what you really mean is "i don't care how much effort you put in, as long as it is in the same content". He could be carried and that would be perfectly okay, but doing any amount of effort in another content is disqualifying.

@TexZero.7910 said:That's great. Then there's even less reason for silly metaphors and devils advocate arguments in this thread that try to equate a certain person 0 effort to other peoples actual effort in a vain attempt to get something for nothing.You're right. There's no reason for silly metaphors that try to equate any form of effort that doesn't suit your fancy to no effort at all.

[TexZero.7910]

@Astralporing.1957 said:You're right. There's no reason for silly metaphors that try to equate any form of effort that doesn't suit your fancy to no effort at all.

You'd have a point if there wasn't direct sources in this thread alone where said person says they don't want to put in the effort.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"nia.4725" said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

ye making raids 5 manable addresses 0 issues. The issue is the content gap, i.e:

wvw available for casual to hard core - yesDoes 5 man instances have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does pvp have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does open world have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.

Does raids (>=8 players say) have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - not yet in GW2, available everywhere else.

Which leads me to a different point, what if Anet introduced easier 8 MAN raids, and kept 10 man as it is? now there's a way to get a win win here.

[maddoctor.2738]

@STIHL.2489 said:when I point out their blatant lies and inconsistencies

You mean lies and inconsistencies like:

This is spot on, I mean really.. GW2 never needed the hardcore players to start with, when you think about it.. GW2's best non-expansion Quarter was Scarlet's Attack on Lions Arch.. this was only beat by the Launch of HoT. Which tells us that is story and fun that sell this game.. not challenge and raids.

If you check the quarterly reports, the best non-expansion quarter was 4Q 2013. Scarlet's attack was in 2014, not in 2013, Escape from Lion's Arch in February 2014 and Battle for Lion's Arch in March 2014, which means 1Q 2014, not 4Q 2013. Which brings the big question, what happened in 4Q 2013 in terms of content?Twilight Assault and World vs World Season 1 in October and Tower of Nightmares and a big Fractal update in November.Well if you look at that... the best non-expansion quarter in the game's history was the only one that added new challenging content to the game (dungeons and fractals)

This isn't the full story of course because we got Christmas sales on 4Q 2013, we also had a free trial for the first time in 3Q 2013 (which means some players bought the game on the next quarter) but at least it shatters completely the argument that when they had no challenging content they had a higher revenue.

[nia.4725]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"nia.4725" said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

ye making raids 5 manable addresses 0 issues. The issue is the content gap, i.e:

wvw available for casual to hard core - yesDoes 5 man instances have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does pvp have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does open world have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.

Does raids (>=8 players say) have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - not yet in GW2, available everywhere else.

Which leads me to a different point, what if Anet introduced easier 8 MAN raids, and kept 10 man as it is? now there's a way to get a win win here.

That's false.

pvp has not content tailored to all players. all players get mixed until skill level gets its way through mmr rating and the best players get higher ranks. but still high ranks get mixed with lower ranks, being that a source of big frustrations, sided matches and great toxicity

open world has not content tailored for all players. there's no ow challenging enough for hardcore players.

raids are The Hardcore Part of PvE. so many years and so many pages and you still don't get this.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@nia.4725 said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

ye making raids 5 manable addresses 0 issues. The issue is the content gap, i.e:

wvw available for casual to hard core - yesDoes 5 man instances have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does pvp have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does open world have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.

Does raids (>=8 players say) have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - not yet in GW2, available everywhere else.

Which leads me to a different point, what if Anet introduced easier 8 MAN raids, and kept 10 man as it is? now there's a way to get a win win here.

That's false.

pvp has not content tailored to all players. all players get mixed until skill level gets its way through mmr rating and the best players get higher ranks. but still high ranks get mixed with lower ranks, being that a source of big frustrations, sided matches and great toxicity

open world has not content tailored for all players. there's no ow challenging enough for hardcore players.

raids are

The Hardcore Part of PvE

. so many years and so many pages and you still don't get this.

your wrong, pvp does have content for all players including hardcore, its called ranked, your confusing balance with accessibility. And hardcore players have access to open world content, the challenge is there if they want it. and yet again you are wrong, TUNED raiding is for hardcore players, raids are also tuned for non hardcore players - this is not wow.

[nia.4725]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@nia.4725 said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

ye making raids 5 manable addresses 0 issues. The issue is the content gap, i.e:

wvw available for casual to hard core - yesDoes 5 man instances have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does pvp have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does open world have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.

Does raids (>=8 players say) have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - not yet in GW2, available everywhere else.

Which leads me to a different point, what if Anet introduced easier 8 MAN raids, and kept 10 man as it is? now there's a way to get a win win here.

That's false.

pvp has not content tailored to all players. all players get mixed until skill level gets its way through mmr rating and the best players get higher ranks. but still high ranks get mixed with lower ranks, being that a source of big frustrations, sided matches and great toxicity

open world has not content tailored for all players. there's no ow challenging enough for hardcore players.

raids are

The Hardcore Part of PvE

. so many years and so many pages and you still don't get this.

your wrong, pvp does have content for all players including hardcore, its called ranked, your confusing balance with accessibility. And hardcore players have access to open world content, the challenge is there if they want it. and yet again you are wrong, TUNED raiding is for hardcore players, raids are also tuned for non hardcore players - this is not wow.

ranked is the same content as unranked, the only difference is the level of expectations and rewards, but the content is exactly the same. so no you can't say that ranked is content for hardcores and unranked for casuals wth. yeah you can say that hardcores are competitive and so they play ranked but ranked right now is a lot more about rewards than the leaderboards. ranked is played by all types of players, not only hardcores. xd

open world content has no challenge. are you going to say that hot metas are challenging? open world bosses? shadow behemoth? what part of ow is challenging and suited for hardcore players, in your opinion? because you're saying that there is, but you're not giving any example of that. i have yet to find any ow content that is challenging enough for me, and i'm far from being a hardcore raider. still, ow is numb and boring af for me.

raids are for hardcore players, it's really incredible that after all this time you still haven't understood all those anet statements about the purpose of raids. you can argue that raids should be aimed for a wider range of players, you could argue that raids should not be only hardcore content and that's fine, but not this. like really.

that's completely different from accessibility of course, are you now going to say that recurrent lie that casuals do not have access to raids?

[Feanor.2358]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@nia.4725 said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

ye making raids 5 manable addresses 0 issues. The issue is the content gap, i.e:

wvw available for casual to hard core - yesDoes 5 man instances have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does pvp have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does open world have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.

Does raids (>=8 players say) have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - not yet in GW2, available everywhere else.

Which leads me to a different point, what if Anet introduced easier 8 MAN raids, and kept 10 man as it is? now there's a way to get a win win here.

That's false.

pvp has not content tailored to all players. all players get mixed until skill level gets its way through mmr rating and the best players get higher ranks. but still high ranks get mixed with lower ranks, being that a source of big frustrations, sided matches and great toxicity

open world has not content tailored for all players. there's no ow challenging enough for hardcore players.

raids are

The Hardcore Part of PvE

. so many years and so many pages and you still don't get this.

your wrong, pvp does have content for all players including hardcore, its called ranked, your confusing balance with accessibility. And hardcore players have access to open world content, the challenge is there if they want it. and yet again you are wrong, TUNED raiding is for hardcore players, raids are also tuned for non hardcore players - this is not wow.

ranked is the same content as unranked, the only difference is the level of expectations and rewards, but the content is exactly the same. so no you can't say that ranked is content for hardcores and unranked for casuals wth. yeah you can say that hardcores are competitive and so they play ranked but ranked right now is a lot more about rewards than the leaderboards. ranked is played by all types of players, not only hardcores. xd

open world content has no challenge. are you going to say that hot metas are challenging? open world bosses? shadow behemoth? what part of ow is challenging and suited for hardcore players, in your opinion? because you're saying that there is, but you're not giving any example of that. i have yet to find any ow content that is challenging enough for me, and i'm far from being a hardcore raider. still, ow is numb and boring af for me.

raids are for hardcore players, it's really incredible that after all this time you still haven't understood all those anet statements about the purpose of raids. you can argue that raids should be aimed for a wider range of players, you could argue that raids should not be only hardcore content and that's fine, but not this. like really.

that's completely different from accessibility of course, are you now going to say that recurrent lie that casuals do not have access to raids?

i was probably raiding on paper when you were still in nappies, I know what raiding is. Raiding is an instance supporting more than 5 player generally speaking. difficulty is irrelevant from that perspective. However raiding is the premium end of pve for hardcore players and games like WOW. Hardcore raiding being the end all of PVE died oh nearly a decade ago. the rest of your chat has got nothing to do with my points, whether or not the ranking process works has nothing to do with accessibility, and open world being easy does not make it inaccessible to hardcore players (open world is not about difficulty). Raider obsession with difficulty is not the be all and end oll of mmorpg, your a niche market, get over yourself.

ps read the thread, we know whats Anets comments are, this thread is not about Anet's current position.

If difficulty is irrelevant, then easy mode raids exist - they're called T1 fractals. Because what is even more irrelevant is the player number limit. The only reason raids are considered premium endgame is because they are not trivial. Which - surprise, surprise - is only because of their difficulty.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@nia.4725 said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

ye making raids 5 manable addresses 0 issues. The issue is the content gap, i.e:

wvw available for casual to hard core - yesDoes 5 man instances have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does pvp have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does open world have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.

Does raids (>=8 players say) have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - not yet in GW2, available everywhere else.

Which leads me to a different point, what if Anet introduced easier 8 MAN raids, and kept 10 man as it is? now there's a way to get a win win here.

That's false.

pvp has not content tailored to all players. all players get mixed until skill level gets its way through mmr rating and the best players get higher ranks. but still high ranks get mixed with lower ranks, being that a source of big frustrations, sided matches and great toxicity

open world has not content tailored for all players. there's no ow challenging enough for hardcore players.

raids are

The Hardcore Part of PvE

. so many years and so many pages and you still don't get this.

your wrong, pvp does have content for all players including hardcore, its called ranked, your confusing balance with accessibility. And hardcore players have access to open world content, the challenge is there if they want it. and yet again you are wrong, TUNED raiding is for hardcore players, raids are also tuned for non hardcore players - this is not wow.

ranked is the same content as unranked, the only difference is the level of expectations and rewards, but the content is exactly the same. so no you can't say that ranked is content for hardcores and unranked for casuals wth. yeah you can say that hardcores are competitive and so they play ranked but ranked right now is a lot more about rewards than the leaderboards. ranked is played by all types of players, not only hardcores. xd

open world content has no challenge. are you going to say that hot metas are challenging? open world bosses? shadow behemoth? what part of ow is challenging and suited for hardcore players, in your opinion? because you're saying that there is, but you're not giving any example of that. i have yet to find any ow content that is challenging enough for me, and i'm far from being a hardcore raider. still, ow is numb and boring af for me.

raids are for hardcore players, it's really incredible that after all this time you still haven't understood all those anet statements about the purpose of raids. you can argue that raids should be aimed for a wider range of players, you could argue that raids should not be only hardcore content and that's fine, but not this. like really.

that's completely different from accessibility of course, are you now going to say that recurrent lie that casuals do not have access to raids?

i was probably raiding on paper when you were still in nappies, I know what raiding is. Raiding is an instance supporting more than 5 player generally speaking. difficulty is irrelevant from that perspective. However raiding is the premium end of pve for hardcore players and games like WOW. Hardcore raiding being the end all of PVE died oh nearly a decade ago. the rest of your chat has got nothing to do with my points, whether or not the ranking process works has nothing to do with accessibility, and open world being easy does not make it inaccessible to hardcore players (open world is not about difficulty). Raider obsession with difficulty is not the be all and end oll of mmorpg, your a niche market, get over yourself.

ps read the thread, we know whats Anets comments are, this thread is not about Anet's current position.

If difficulty is irrelevant, then easy mode raids exist - they're called T1 fractals. Because what is even more irrelevant is the player number limit. The only reason raids are considered premium endgame is because they are not trivial. Which - surprise, surprise - is only because of their difficulty.

t1 fractals is 5 man and ofc number of players changes game dynamics. Let's not be obtuse and lets not pretend games like WOW and ESO don't exist where there are a literally millions of players playing raids with > 5 players that are tuned to be accessible with little preparation.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Feanor.2358" said:If difficulty is irrelevant, then easy mode raids exist - they're called T1 fractals. Because what is even more irrelevant is the player number limit. The only reason raids are considered premium endgame is because they are not trivial. Which - surprise, surprise - is only because of their difficulty.Yes, basically you're right. Raids are nothing more than 10-man t4 fractals and they shouldn't have been treated as something else, as if the word "raids" suddenly gave the content any prestige. Of course, that brings up again to the problem at hand - not only these fractals for some reason have their own reward structure, separated from other fractals, they also lack their own t1 versions.So, i guess we should fix both of those mistakes, right?

[Bladestrom.6425]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Feanor.2358" said:If difficulty is irrelevant, then easy mode raids exist - they're called T1 fractals. Because what is even more irrelevant is the player number limit. The only reason raids are considered premium endgame is because they are not trivial. Which - surprise, surprise - is only because of their difficulty.Yes, basically you're right. Raids are nothing more than 10-man t4 fractals and they shouldn't have been treated as something else, as if the word "raids" suddenly gave the content any prestige. Of course, that brings up again to the problem at hand - not only these fractals for some reason have their own reward structure, separated from other fractals, they also lack their own t1 versions.So, i guess we should fix both of those mistakes, right?

Raids are just 10 man instances. difficulty is simply an attribute. The elitism surrounding raids is behaviour.

[Feanor.2358]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@nia.4725 said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

ye making raids 5 manable addresses 0 issues. The issue is the content gap, i.e:

wvw available for casual to hard core - yesDoes 5 man instances have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does pvp have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does open world have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.

Does raids (>=8 players say) have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - not yet in GW2, available everywhere else.

Which leads me to a different point, what if Anet introduced easier 8 MAN raids, and kept 10 man as it is? now there's a way to get a win win here.

That's false.

pvp has not content tailored to all players. all players get mixed until skill level gets its way through mmr rating and the best players get higher ranks. but still high ranks get mixed with lower ranks, being that a source of big frustrations, sided matches and great toxicity

open world has not content tailored for all players. there's no ow challenging enough for hardcore players.

raids are

The Hardcore Part of PvE

. so many years and so many pages and you still don't get this.

your wrong, pvp does have content for all players including hardcore, its called ranked, your confusing balance with accessibility. And hardcore players have access to open world content, the challenge is there if they want it. and yet again you are wrong, TUNED raiding is for hardcore players, raids are also tuned for non hardcore players - this is not wow.

ranked is the same content as unranked, the only difference is the level of expectations and rewards, but the content is exactly the same. so no you can't say that ranked is content for hardcores and unranked for casuals wth. yeah you can say that hardcores are competitive and so they play ranked but ranked right now is a lot more about rewards than the leaderboards. ranked is played by all types of players, not only hardcores. xd

open world content has no challenge. are you going to say that hot metas are challenging? open world bosses? shadow behemoth? what part of ow is challenging and suited for hardcore players, in your opinion? because you're saying that there is, but you're not giving any example of that. i have yet to find any ow content that is challenging enough for me, and i'm far from being a hardcore raider. still, ow is numb and boring af for me.

raids are for hardcore players, it's really incredible that after all this time you still haven't understood all those anet statements about the purpose of raids. you can argue that raids should be aimed for a wider range of players, you could argue that raids should not be only hardcore content and that's fine, but not this. like really.

that's completely different from accessibility of course, are you now going to say that recurrent lie that casuals do not have access to raids?

i was probably raiding on paper when you were still in nappies, I know what raiding is. Raiding is an instance supporting more than 5 player generally speaking. difficulty is irrelevant from that perspective. However raiding is the premium end of pve for hardcore players and games like WOW. Hardcore raiding being the end all of PVE died oh nearly a decade ago. the rest of your chat has got nothing to do with my points, whether or not the ranking process works has nothing to do with accessibility, and open world being easy does not make it inaccessible to hardcore players (open world is not about difficulty). Raider obsession with difficulty is not the be all and end oll of mmorpg, your a niche market, get over yourself.

ps read the thread, we know whats Anets comments are, this thread is not about Anet's current position.

If difficulty is irrelevant, then easy mode raids exist - they're called T1 fractals. Because what is even more irrelevant is the player number limit. The only reason raids are considered premium endgame is because they are not trivial. Which - surprise, surprise - is only because of their difficulty.

t1 fractals is 5 man and ofc number of players changes game dynamics. Let's not be obtuse and lets not pretend games like WOW and ESO don't exist where there are a literally millions of players playing raids with > 5 players that are tuned to be accessible with little preparation.

Oh, you mean large-scale accessible events like the Octovine? Or the Jungle Wurm? I agree, these have their place.

[Feanor.2358]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Feanor.2358" said:If difficulty is irrelevant, then easy mode raids exist - they're called T1 fractals. Because what is even more irrelevant is the player number limit. The only reason raids are considered premium endgame is because they are not trivial. Which - surprise, surprise - is only because of their difficulty.Yes, basically you're right. Raids are nothing more than 10-man t4 fractals and they shouldn't have been treated as something else, as if the word "raids" suddenly gave the content any prestige. Of course, that brings up again to the problem at hand - not only these fractals for some reason have their own reward structure, separated from other fractals, they also lack their own t1 versions.So, i guess we should fix both of those mistakes, right?

Nope. it is pointless to have their own t1 version, because it serves no point - the t1 already exists. And the increased difficulty warrants the extra reward - just like the t4 has more rewards then t3 and the cms have more rewards than t4. So actually there are no mistakes and nothing to "fix".

[Bladestrom.6425]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@nia.4725 said:And the answer is NO. A complete rework is not "just involve changing the movement patterns or relative strenghts of certain abilities", it would require much more work, not just tweaking here and there.

Again, I am not making a serious proposal here, I am not quantifying the

amount

of work this would take or making any claims that "this would be easy," or any such thing. There is no need to get defensive about it. The only point I'm making in this portion of the discussion is that it would be

possible

to redesign the encounter such that it could be soloed, and the play experience for that solo encounter would involve the same mechanics

for him

as

he

would be expected to perform if he were one man in a ten-man raid squad. Clear?

In the most simple terms, if a very basic "spam DPS" boss takes 100,000 damage to kill, and each player in a team is expected to average 10,000 damage to meet that total, then a single player could simulate that experience by reducing his HP to 10,000

or

buffing the player's damage by 10x. If the boss could "strip" one of those 10x buffs, then it would be equivalent to if he killed off a single player in a raid squad in terms of the overall DPS.

About the shrines thing, I think maybe you don't know how DPS works in raids. Most people will do whatever deals most damage, to the point of skipping mechanics if that allows the party to deal more DPS. The thing goes like this:

I'm aware of those mechanics, and those could likewise be simulated in a solo encounter. Whether it's one person attacking or ten, so long as you would be capable of reaching the DPS to phase the boss, the same tactic would work.

And this would apply to your shrine thing. The drop in DPS caused by a shrine destroyed would be tested. If moving and dealing with that mechanic is a bigger DPS drop than the drop caused by the mechanic failing, or if reaching certain % of the boss cancels the mechanic, then the mechanic will be ignored.

Sure, but the point of it was to

replicate

the impact of the "if you don't break a player's breakbar then that player will be sacrificed" mechanic you were talking about above, so the same discussion would happen. "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that character, and prevent his DPS from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same scenario, "Is it worth taking time away from DPS to save that shrine, and prevent its DPS buff from being removed from the encounter? Y/N?" Same thing, same outcome to either scenario, same choice for the player to make. You see my point here? If it's balanced properly, then players would make the same decision, either to save the player/shrine or allow it to die, in both scenarios.

Again, I'm not suggesting this as some new and clever mechanic that should be added to raids, I'm using it to make the point that existing raid mechanics that rely on party interaction

could

be replaced with equivalent effects that would alter the outcome of the matches in the exact same ways, and would require identical player interaction to resolve them, with identical results based on whether they succeed or fail to do so.

@mortrialus.3062 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

But what if you think even that is too generous to the plebes? So what if the 50lb. weight pays out $20 each time? That means you'd need to lift twenty of the 10lb. weights, 200lb. in total, to equal one of the 50lb. weights. This is clearly unbalanced in favor of the 50lb. weight, nobody would lift the 10lb. weights if they had any capacity to lift the 50lb., and anyone who couldn't lift the 50lb. would have a significant incentive to improve so that they too could lift the 50lb. weight.

And yet,

as unfair as this arrangement is to the 10lb. people, there is still choice. They still have

an option.

It is not fair, but they can progress. If their goal is to make $1000, it will take them 1000 lifts, 10,000lbs. in total, when compared to the alternative of 50 lifts, 1/4 the total weight, but if 50lbs. just isn't an option for them,

they can still reach their goal eventually.

Your analogy falls apart. If raids right now are lifting 50lbs and getting $20 dollars, easy mode raids that are designed to be solo'd and beatable by anyone regardless of build, gear, and skill that rewards legendary armor is comparable to someone watching 50lbs sit on the floor and getting $20.

And I guess this is my point, that it's impossible to have a conversation on this subject with someone who so devalues the basic humanity of his fellow players that

none

of their efforts can

ever

possibly match up to what He is capable of.

I actually kinda like the idea of a solo encounter. If some mechanics require another person, couldn’t another npc be brought in to assist?

Right,

or

that mechanic would just handle itself. Like if there were two circles and you had to stand in both at once, then either A only one circle would be required, or B, an NPC would run for one circle and you would have to run to the other. Either way the experience for that one player would be the same.

So if you did it solo you would get like one third an insight?

Well, again,

this is not a proposal for something they should do.

I actually do not think that implementing a solo mode version of raid encounters would be an effective use of their time. Too much work relative to the payoff. I was just discussing the

concept

that Sarrs raised that group oriented content is somehow

automatically

more challenging than solo content, just by virtue of it involving multiple players. I'm trying to point out that any challenges that might be raised in an encounter by adding more players could be

simulated

simply by just adapting the mechanics accordingly. This is especially true in cooperative content.

I also think that from a

fairness

perspective, if the individual challenge would be equal, then the reward should be equal as well. Feanor raised the point that you want to

encourage

group content for the interest of the community, so you want to provide group content above and beyond what is fair, and I agreed with that to some degree, but if they ever did implement a solo mode that was as challenging as the group raid, then the rewards should at least be close, like 2/3 of an Insight or something.

But when we

were

discussing "easy mode" versions of the encounters, still ten people but with the challenge actually

reduced,

the proposal was 1/3 of an insight per encounter, yes.

I mean if they did a solo encounter, you could in theory shoot for 5 man as well.

Sure, there's nothing that would prevent either from being doable. The reason I'm not in

favor

of solo/five man versions though is that I believe that the balance and design changes needed to craft those, while 100% doable, would be more significant than what it would take to just make easy mode versions of the existing 10-man encounters. I feel like the cost/benefit balance is less worth doing.

ye making raids 5 manable addresses 0 issues. The issue is the content gap, i.e:

wvw available for casual to hard core - yesDoes 5 man instances have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does pvp have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.Does open world have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - yes.

Does raids (>=8 players say) have content tailored for all players, casual to hardcore - not yet in GW2, available everywhere else.

Which leads me to a different point, what if Anet introduced easier 8 MAN raids, and kept 10 man as it is? now there's a way to get a win win here.

That's false.

pvp has not content tailored to all players. all players get mixed until skill level gets its way through mmr rating and the best players get higher ranks. but still high ranks get mixed with lower ranks, being that a source of big frustrations, sided matches and great toxicity

open world has not content tailored for all players. there's no ow challenging enough for hardcore players.

raids are

The Hardcore Part of PvE

. so many years and so many pages and you still don't get this.

your wrong, pvp does have content for all players including hardcore, its called ranked, your confusing balance with accessibility. And hardcore players have access to open world content, the challenge is there if they want it. and yet again you are wrong, TUNED raiding is for hardcore players, raids are also tuned for non hardcore players - this is not wow.

ranked is the same content as unranked, the only difference is the level of expectations and rewards, but the content is exactly the same. so no you can't say that ranked is content for hardcores and unranked for casuals wth. yeah you can say that hardcores are competitive and so they play ranked but ranked right now is a lot more about rewards than the leaderboards. ranked is played by all types of players, not only hardcores. xd

open world content has no challenge. are you going to say that hot metas are challenging? open world bosses? shadow behemoth? what part of ow is challenging and suited for hardcore players, in your opinion? because you're saying that there is, but you're not giving any example of that. i have yet to find any ow content that is challenging enough for me, and i'm far from being a hardcore raider. still, ow is numb and boring af for me.

raids are for hardcore players, it's really incredible that after all this time you still haven't understood all those anet statements about the purpose of raids. you can argue that raids should be aimed for a wider range of players, you could argue that raids should not be only hardcore content and that's fine, but not this. like really.

that's completely different from accessibility of course, are you now going to say that recurrent lie that casuals do not have access to raids?

i was probably raiding on paper when you were still in nappies, I know what raiding is. Raiding is an instance supporting more than 5 player generally speaking. difficulty is irrelevant from that perspective. However raiding is the premium end of pve for hardcore players and games like WOW. Hardcore raiding being the end all of PVE died oh nearly a decade ago. the rest of your chat has got nothing to do with my points, whether or not the ranking process works has nothing to do with accessibility, and open world being easy does not make it inaccessible to hardcore players (open world is not about difficulty). Raider obsession with difficulty is not the be all and end oll of mmorpg, your a niche market, get over yourself.

ps read the thread, we know whats Anets comments are, this thread is not about Anet's current position.

If difficulty is irrelevant, then easy mode raids exist - they're called T1 fractals. Because what is even more irrelevant is the player number limit. The only reason raids are considered premium endgame is because they are not trivial. Which - surprise, surprise - is only because of their difficulty.

t1 fractals is 5 man and ofc number of players changes game dynamics. Let's not be obtuse and lets not pretend games like WOW and ESO don't exist where there are a literally millions of players playing raids with > 5 players that are tuned to be accessible with little preparation.

Oh, you mean large-scale accessible events like the Octovine? Or the Jungle Wurm? I agree, these have their place.

lol ok Feonar, we are not stupid people are we.