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

[Tyson.5160]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:So I was trying to kill as many birds with one stone here. So just hear me out for a second as this kinda a work in progress. Let’s say there was a way to obtain just Envoy skins, not the stat swap, which provides the true utility, but just the skins, much like the achievement skins.

Ok so, leave the Raid situation as it is, that should get a lot of people off my back right there. Instead add Raid like bosses to the dungeons. Different currency separate from LI. LI won’t exist here. Use the current setting for the dungeons, let’s take caduceus manor. When you enter, you get story explorer or boss. Make it instance as it is already, but make the area smaller and in a wide location. Maybe in one of the courtyards or by that one barn area. So the boss could reuse a skin from the dungeon, like perhaps the centaur or the big robot boss from the story mission. Now give this boss attacks that some of the raid bosses use, so is similar but not identical. That way if players go into raiding they are familiar with some of these raid mechanics. Possibly bridge the gap in a better way .Not sure if you would do I boss per dungeon or not. Boss would give a currency to be exchanged for the skin or something of that nature.

So in review, Raids don’t change, LI isn’t an issue and people can have the Envoy skin.

Eh, Envoy skin is good, and the new boss fights might be interesting, but that sounds a lot harder to implement than an easy mode, and it leaves out experiencing the zones/stories themselves. I'd want to be able to participate in the actual content of the raid maps, not to just have disconnects boss fights in a generic map.

I’m not even sure really if you want it to be a 5 man or a 10 man. It could be a 5 man to keep it consistent with the rest of the dungeon. You could also have two fights per dungeon too, I suppose. Use this area to introduce people to mechanics seen in raids. I would be fine with them using the same boss mobs in the dungeon or do a random rotation kinda like the specimen chamber works in Sandswept. Not only could you have a new currency that comes off the bosses, but you could require dungeon tokens as well.

[zealex.9410]

@Tyson.5160 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Just imagine what kind of reaction would I get if I sent Ferrari a complaint that their cars are way too expensive and I feel excluded because I can't drive one. But I really, really want to. Would anyone take me seriously? I seriously doubt that.

But don't you understand

what

would make that a ridiculous request? It's not that you want the Ferrari or that you're asking for it, it's that Ferrari's have high component and manufacturing costs which limit how many they can reasonably produce. Further, you are in no way a Ferrari customer, and it would harm their bottom line if they complied with your request. None of that is true here.

In this case, it is GW2 customers, who are asking the makers of GW2 for a feature that would make their gameplay experience better, a feature that would in no way harm them to provide.

@"Grogba.6204" said:I am commenting because you and Ohoni keep bringing up the idea of a player - allow me to call him Bob - who is absolutely unable to raid because the content itself is too difficult and thus warrants nerfing even though said player pulled all levers and did everything in his or her power to get into raids. And this player is just a fabrication, that is the problem here.

Bob does exist, but it doesn't entirely have to be about him, it's also about the player who might be

theoretically

capable of clearing the current raids, but

does not want to,

because the sort of experience the current raids provide would be extremely frustrating and uncomfortable to him. And

he matters too,

because this is a

game,

not a

job,

and it shouldn't be about

"what you are capable of enduring,"

it should be about "what you

enjoy

doing." If players do not enjoy the design of the current raids, then they should have an alternative option available on that basis alone.

And besides all that, Ohoni, even

if

we had an easy mode it would

still

take 2-3 hours, perhaps longer, to clear all the raid bosses in a week so yes, if you cannot bring up the time to do that then Raids aren't suitable for you or Bob.

Perhaps, but in that case, either the player could still take that time, and enjoy the experience more because it was a more palatable easy mode,

or

the player would be able to pick and choose a few encounters to do each week, and thus progress at a slower rate than he possibly could, but at least he would be progressing.

The most time consuming thing is waiting for players, be it to fill up the squad or for everyone to press ready and the only thing that would prevent that would be nerfing the fights so hard that you finish them pressing one with random gear drooling over your keyboard.

They wouldn't be made quite that simple, but the goal is to make them easy enough to complete that you could fill a team first-come, first-serve, so most times of day you should be able to find ten people to tackle an encounter within a few minutes.

@"Miellyn.6847" said:Many of the commenters here agreed partly with your ideas in the past and proposed some changes. But you dismissed everything if it looked like you wouldn't get everything you want.

All I'm asking for is that two criteria are met, 1. That it provide an easier version of the raid that can be completed at a casual difficulty level comparable to the rest of the game's content, and 2. that it provide a path to the same rewards that are available in the current raids. Nothing more than that. I have my own ideas about the best way to accomplish those, but I'm very flexible on that. Now if someone

claims

to be "supportive" while insisting that one or both of those items must be completely off the table, then I'm sorry, but that's just being disingenuous at best.

You don't want any compromise where you have to give up some of the things you want. That's not how compromises work.

The compromise is that the easy mode would be

in addition to

the existing raids. The non-compromise situation is that the existing raids would be the ones nerfed into being the easy mode versions, as they did with various other content in the game. Don't claim that I'm not compromising simply because my starting position was already a fair compromise. I've been trying to be reasonable from the start here.

You had the chance for a real discussion and you blew it with your selfishness.

Ok, I'm willing to listen to your advice here. Let's say we start from scratch. What tack should I take here to achieve my point 1 and 2 above, without "blowing it?"

Quick question if there was an alternate way to get the armor and not step foot in the Raids, is that a possibility?

Been brainstorming some ideas.

But the 3 boss settup isnt entirelly accurate. Event encounters reward li as well amd w1,4 and 5 have in total 4 li each iirc.

I was just using it as an approximation, Maybe we will a 4 boss wing raid maybe there will be 2, who knows.

More often than not the been 4+ so its safe to assume it will be around that.

[Tyson.5160]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Just imagine what kind of reaction would I get if I sent Ferrari a complaint that their cars are way too expensive and I feel excluded because I can't drive one. But I really, really want to. Would anyone take me seriously? I seriously doubt that.

But don't you understand

what

would make that a ridiculous request? It's not that you want the Ferrari or that you're asking for it, it's that Ferrari's have high component and manufacturing costs which limit how many they can reasonably produce. Further, you are in no way a Ferrari customer, and it would harm their bottom line if they complied with your request. None of that is true here.

In this case, it is GW2 customers, who are asking the makers of GW2 for a feature that would make their gameplay experience better, a feature that would in no way harm them to provide.

@"Grogba.6204" said:I am commenting because you and Ohoni keep bringing up the idea of a player - allow me to call him Bob - who is absolutely unable to raid because the content itself is too difficult and thus warrants nerfing even though said player pulled all levers and did everything in his or her power to get into raids. And this player is just a fabrication, that is the problem here.

Bob does exist, but it doesn't entirely have to be about him, it's also about the player who might be

theoretically

capable of clearing the current raids, but

does not want to,

because the sort of experience the current raids provide would be extremely frustrating and uncomfortable to him. And

he matters too,

because this is a

game,

not a

job,

and it shouldn't be about

"what you are capable of enduring,"

it should be about "what you

enjoy

doing." If players do not enjoy the design of the current raids, then they should have an alternative option available on that basis alone.

And besides all that, Ohoni, even

if

we had an easy mode it would

still

take 2-3 hours, perhaps longer, to clear all the raid bosses in a week so yes, if you cannot bring up the time to do that then Raids aren't suitable for you or Bob.

Perhaps, but in that case, either the player could still take that time, and enjoy the experience more because it was a more palatable easy mode,

or

the player would be able to pick and choose a few encounters to do each week, and thus progress at a slower rate than he possibly could, but at least he would be progressing.

The most time consuming thing is waiting for players, be it to fill up the squad or for everyone to press ready and the only thing that would prevent that would be nerfing the fights so hard that you finish them pressing one with random gear drooling over your keyboard.

They wouldn't be made quite that simple, but the goal is to make them easy enough to complete that you could fill a team first-come, first-serve, so most times of day you should be able to find ten people to tackle an encounter within a few minutes.

@"Miellyn.6847" said:Many of the commenters here agreed partly with your ideas in the past and proposed some changes. But you dismissed everything if it looked like you wouldn't get everything you want.

All I'm asking for is that two criteria are met, 1. That it provide an easier version of the raid that can be completed at a casual difficulty level comparable to the rest of the game's content, and 2. that it provide a path to the same rewards that are available in the current raids. Nothing more than that. I have my own ideas about the best way to accomplish those, but I'm very flexible on that. Now if someone

claims

to be "supportive" while insisting that one or both of those items must be completely off the table, then I'm sorry, but that's just being disingenuous at best.

You don't want any compromise where you have to give up some of the things you want. That's not how compromises work.

The compromise is that the easy mode would be

in addition to

the existing raids. The non-compromise situation is that the existing raids would be the ones nerfed into being the easy mode versions, as they did with various other content in the game. Don't claim that I'm not compromising simply because my starting position was already a fair compromise. I've been trying to be reasonable from the start here.

You had the chance for a real discussion and you blew it with your selfishness.

Ok, I'm willing to listen to your advice here. Let's say we start from scratch. What tack should I take here to achieve my point 1 and 2 above, without "blowing it?"

Quick question if there was an alternate way to get the armor and not step foot in the Raids, is that a possibility?

Been brainstorming some ideas.

But the 3 boss settup isnt entirelly accurate. Event encounters reward li as well amd w1,4 and 5 have in total 4 li each iirc.

I was just using it as an approximation, Maybe we will a 4 boss wing raid maybe there will be 2, who knows.

More often than not the been 4+ so its safe to assume it will be around that.

I guess that is a completely different issue of LI. Though it was 4 then that’s 37 LI a week for a full clear and just a month to complete. If they go to a total of 10 raid wings.

[Astralporing.1957]

@zealex.9410 said:More often than not the been 4+ so its safe to assume it will be around that.You get 3 LIs in w1, 2, 3, and 4 in W4, w5, so for now 3-boss wings are in (slight) majority.

[Feanor.2358]

@Tyson.5160 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Tyson.5160 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:Just imagine what kind of reaction would I get if I sent Ferrari a complaint that their cars are way too expensive and I feel excluded because I can't drive one. But I really, really want to. Would anyone take me seriously? I seriously doubt that.

But don't you understand

what

would make that a ridiculous request? It's not that you want the Ferrari or that you're asking for it, it's that Ferrari's have high component and manufacturing costs which limit how many they can reasonably produce. Further, you are in no way a Ferrari customer, and it would harm their bottom line if they complied with your request. None of that is true here.

In this case, it is GW2 customers, who are asking the makers of GW2 for a feature that would make their gameplay experience better, a feature that would in no way harm them to provide.

@"Grogba.6204" said:I am commenting because you and Ohoni keep bringing up the idea of a player - allow me to call him Bob - who is absolutely unable to raid because the content itself is too difficult and thus warrants nerfing even though said player pulled all levers and did everything in his or her power to get into raids. And this player is just a fabrication, that is the problem here.

Bob does exist, but it doesn't entirely have to be about him, it's also about the player who might be

theoretically

capable of clearing the current raids, but

does not want to,

because the sort of experience the current raids provide would be extremely frustrating and uncomfortable to him. And

he matters too,

because this is a

game,

not a

job,

and it shouldn't be about

"what you are capable of enduring,"

it should be about "what you

enjoy

doing." If players do not enjoy the design of the current raids, then they should have an alternative option available on that basis alone.

And besides all that, Ohoni, even

if

we had an easy mode it would

still

take 2-3 hours, perhaps longer, to clear all the raid bosses in a week so yes, if you cannot bring up the time to do that then Raids aren't suitable for you or Bob.

Perhaps, but in that case, either the player could still take that time, and enjoy the experience more because it was a more palatable easy mode,

or

the player would be able to pick and choose a few encounters to do each week, and thus progress at a slower rate than he possibly could, but at least he would be progressing.

The most time consuming thing is waiting for players, be it to fill up the squad or for everyone to press ready and the only thing that would prevent that would be nerfing the fights so hard that you finish them pressing one with random gear drooling over your keyboard.

They wouldn't be made quite that simple, but the goal is to make them easy enough to complete that you could fill a team first-come, first-serve, so most times of day you should be able to find ten people to tackle an encounter within a few minutes.

@"Miellyn.6847" said:Many of the commenters here agreed partly with your ideas in the past and proposed some changes. But you dismissed everything if it looked like you wouldn't get everything you want.

All I'm asking for is that two criteria are met, 1. That it provide an easier version of the raid that can be completed at a casual difficulty level comparable to the rest of the game's content, and 2. that it provide a path to the same rewards that are available in the current raids. Nothing more than that. I have my own ideas about the best way to accomplish those, but I'm very flexible on that. Now if someone

claims

to be "supportive" while insisting that one or both of those items must be completely off the table, then I'm sorry, but that's just being disingenuous at best.

You don't want any compromise where you have to give up some of the things you want. That's not how compromises work.

The compromise is that the easy mode would be

in addition to

the existing raids. The non-compromise situation is that the existing raids would be the ones nerfed into being the easy mode versions, as they did with various other content in the game. Don't claim that I'm not compromising simply because my starting position was already a fair compromise. I've been trying to be reasonable from the start here.

You had the chance for a real discussion and you blew it with your selfishness.

Ok, I'm willing to listen to your advice here. Let's say we start from scratch. What tack should I take here to achieve my point 1 and 2 above, without "blowing it?"

Quick question if there was an alternate way to get the armor and not step foot in the Raids, is that a possibility?

Been brainstorming some ideas.

But the 3 boss settup isnt entirelly accurate. Event encounters reward li as well amd w1,4 and 5 have in total 4 li each iirc.

I was just using it as an approximation, Maybe we will a 4 boss wing raid maybe there will be 2, who knows.

More often than not the been 4+ so its safe to assume it will be around that.

I guess that is a completely different issue of LI. Though it was 4 then that’s 37 LI a week for a full clear and just a month to complete. If they go to a total of 10 raid wings.

You could cap the number of LIs per week, much like the currencies. It will be impractical to keep the current system for much more (assuming new wings keep coming). You don't want to make raiding a full-time job.

[zealex.9410]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@zealex.9410 said:More often than not the been 4+ so its safe to assume it will be around that.You get 3 LIs in w1, 2, 3, and 4 in W4, w5, so for now 3-boss wings are in (slight) majority.

Doesnt w1 spirit woods give 1 li at the end?

[Klypto.1703]

The other thing is the need to practice when the time spent could be in more fun aspects of other game modes. Having to practice like that all the time can burn you out as well as old ppl like me who can't see some of the orchestrated mechanics and just get kicked out of training groups lol. I'm sure they are fun but atm not worth my energy to go all try hard over.

[Grogba.6204]

No, just the three bosses drop one each.

[Ohoni.6057]

@"Vinceman.4572" said:If you have a look at all the bosses with tanking mechanic which are VG, Gorse, KC, Xera, MO, Deimos, SH, Statues and Dhuum you kinda have to change them dramatically because you cannot expect a random player joining and being the tank although he has zero clue about what's going on. So, keeping the tanking mechanic you need at least one player knowing to tank.

True, although out of ten people, having ONE of them being able to run in a circle is not that terrible an expectation. And again the consequences of a "bad tank" would be reduced, since most of the environmental damage would be toned down. Also, I don't know how much trouble it would be to add, but it would be nice to have some sort of "shrine" in the easy mode that could be activated to provide ONE player with a temporary Toughness buff (you could swap it around, but the last player to activate it would keep it), providing enough Toughness to guarantee him the tanking slot regardless of who showed up in what gear. That last bit's more optional though.

Again, it would be expected that most of the players would at least understand the basic mechanics well enough to explain them to the rest of the group, like in a normal dungeon encounter, it's just that there would be less expectation that everyone get the mechanics right all the time. Instead of needing 8-10 people who really know what they're doing, you'd only really need 2-3 people with a pretty decent grasp of the basics, and they could quickly get the rest in shape via chat.

But then yeah, people will outheal things, ignore any mechanic at all because it would easily be doable and in the end you have a completely different encounter than the real Vale Guardian because the tanking mechanic is one of the most crucial ones at VG that leads to many wipes if not executed properly.

It is intended that players could be able to do this. If that's what they want to do, that's fine, and if that's "completely different" than the original, then that's fine too. The goal is for it to be easy, the encounter ending up easy is a feature not a bug.

But it's also intended that if they choose to play the encounter straight, if they choose to play into all the mechanics of the harder version, because they want to train, then it will function like the harder version, it will go through all the same motions, and if they can manage to "stay out of the fire," even if they don't explicitly have to, then that will indicate that they've picked up the skills they would need for hard mode.

@Tyson.5160 said:I’m not even sure really if you want it to be a 5 man or a 10 man.

10 man. It needs to follow the same rules as the normal raid, just be less likely to fail. Making the encounters for for 5 players would not only be harder for the devs to implement, but also make it useless for training purposes.

[Astralporing.1957]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@zealex.9410 said:More often than not the been 4+ so its safe to assume it will be around that.You get 3 LIs in w1, 2, 3, and 4 in W4, w5, so for now 3-boss wings are in (slight) majority.

Doesnt w1 spirit woods give 1 li at the end?

No, the events in w1 do not give LIs. Just magnetites. You only get LIs for VG, Gorse and Sab

[Talindra.4958]

This been going on for many years discussion between same few people.. I don't want to be rude but seriously guys...I don't know what to say. Everyday there's like 50 new posts on this topic.. ?? Why don't admin do something about this? Or dev to come and say somethingOr we intent to keep this thread just for general on going discussions.. Otherwise I believe it should be discontinued. I believe what need to be discussed should have been covered by now

[Malediktus.9250]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"Eramonster.2718" said:The scenario isn't the point :smile: . Just happen to pick fractals instead of raid since there isn't a lower tier raid(easy mode) in game to set as an example.

Said this before, it's more productive if a specific encounter is mentioned to be worked on. Why do players find it hard? and how to overcome it. Or to make it easy mode? (How?). I believe most players that did raid find the bosses are fine as it is.

It is always hard fighting blind, not knowing the enemy. Players new to raids in raid training are making kills (even if they're not in a full meta squad) but new raiders find it difficult to do so in some PuG. Ever thought why? Raid have problems, but I don't think easy mode is the solution or related to it.

There are obviously SOME players for whom the raids are currently perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with that, and the current raids should be left intact for those players. Different players are DIFFERENT, however, one side does NOT fit all.

The point is not to figure out a way to "make the non-raiders into raiders." The point is to ACCEPT that the non-raiders will never embrace the current raids, that there is no process to get them from here to there, and to instead make a version that is what THEY want, which may have absolutely nothing at all to do with the version that current raiders enjoy.

Think of it like a staircase. A standard architectural stair is seven inches high, which has been deemed appropriate for most people. But imagine that a staircase had stairs twelve inches high. A person of over, say, six foot four or so, probably would have no issue with that, they could climb that staircase easily enough, easier perhaps than they could a seven inch step. To a person five feet tall, on the other hand, they would have some real difficulty getting their legs up high enough to cross that stair, it would be a serious chore. Now maybe some would relish that option, would enjoy taking essentially two steps at a time, but plenty of others would just seriously hate that straircase.

The question would not be "how can we convince those people to like that staircase," the question is, "how can we provide a staircase that they could enjoy."

If you keep coming at this question from the angle of "how to convert people to our way of thinking," then you're missing the point entirely.

It already takes too long to make raids for a single difficulty (most current raiders would consider the current raids relatively easy, even CMs are not really that hard, just missing any reason to do more than once unless you are a raid seller). Good groups are not even coming close to enrange timers (eg over 50% left on the clock)It would be a waste of resources to make an even easier mode considering Anet already seems to be spreaded insanely thin.I would support having at least 3 difficulty tiers (one easy, current diff and lastly one above CMs) if that would not impact the amount of time it takes for new raid wings, sadly that is unrealistic with the way Anet works.

[Ohoni.6057]

@Malediktus.9250 said:It already takes too long to make raids for a single difficulty

Not an issue. The easy mode raids should take a tiny fraction of the time to generate as the existing raids, because they share 95% of the work, and they would be a decrease in difficulty rather than in increase. They should not slow the development of new raids by even a single patch cycle.

Good groups are not even coming close to enrange timers

This isn't about what good groups can achieve, good groups are irrelevant to this discussion because they already do fine. Until you can tell me that bad groups are about to clear every encounter reliably on their first or second try, they are still not yet where they need to be to make easy mode irrelevant.

[Feanor.2358]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Malediktus.9250 said:It already takes too long to make raids for a single difficulty

Not an issue. The easy mode raids should take a tiny fraction of the time to generate as the existing raids, because they share 95% of the work, and they would be a decrease in difficulty rather than in increase. They should not slow the development of new raids by even a single patch cycle.

You're SO wrong.

[Ohoni.6057]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Malediktus.9250 said:It already takes too long to make raids for a single difficulty

Not an issue. The easy mode raids should take a tiny fraction of the time to generate as the existing raids, because they share 95% of the work, and they would be a decrease in difficulty rather than in increase. They should not slow the development of new raids by even a single patch cycle.

You're

SO

wrong.

How so?

[Feanor.2358]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Malediktus.9250 said:It already takes too long to make raids for a single difficulty

Not an issue. The easy mode raids should take a tiny fraction of the time to generate as the existing raids, because they share 95% of the work, and they would be a decrease in difficulty rather than in increase. They should not slow the development of new raids by even a single patch cycle.

You're

SO

wrong.

How so?

You're vastly underestimating the amount of work needed, and as a result you're also underestimating the impact on the raid release schedule as well. Rebalancing and the needed mechanic changes and tweaks related to them, followed by the testing and bugfixes... it won't take as much time as developing a new wing of the same size and complexity, but it will be in the same ballpark.

[Ohoni.6057]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"Malediktus.9250" said:It already takes too long to make raids for a single difficulty

Not an issue. The easy mode raids should take a tiny fraction of the time to generate as the existing raids, because they share 95% of the work, and they would be a decrease in difficulty rather than in increase. They should not slow the development of new raids by even a single patch cycle.

You're

SO

wrong.

How so?

You're vastly underestimating the amount of work needed, and as a result you're also underestimating the impact on the raid release schedule as well. Rebalancing and the needed mechanic changes and tweaks related to them, followed by the testing and bugfixes... it won't take as much time as developing a new wing of the same size and complexity, but it will be in the same ballpark.

I really don't see how. I mean look, what goes into a raid?

1. Story
2. Environment modelling
3. New enemy models and animations
4. New audio
5. Scene scripting
6. Basic encounter design and attack animations
7. Testing those elements

Did I miss anything? Well keep in mind that for each of those things, basically one person or team is working on just that portion, you don't speed up the environment modelling by spending less time on encounter design, each task takes the time that it takes. Now of those, 1-5 would be completely untouched for easy mode, you just copy and paste them wholecloth, no additional work needed, none of those devs would need to spend a single minute working on easy mode. Even 6 is barely touched, and 7 should fly by.

So then you have the encounter tweaking and testing. Well getting the "hard" raids right is the "hard" part. These need to be carefully balanced, to be engaging enough that raiders don't whine that they're too easy, and yet doable enough that raiders don't whine that they're "cheap." Further, they need to get it just right on the first go, as best they can, because if it starts out too easy then the first groups will sail through it and it'll ruin their experience of the raid, and too hard people will complain that they "chickened out" later. Everything needs to work like a precision clock, comparatively speaking.

Easy mode would be a lot more loose, it doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be easier, If they don't get it right on the first pass, no big deal. They can tweak it more later and nobody will mind, too easy, too hard? Whatever, fix it in post. And there would be no new mechanics, nothing new to test, it would just be copying and pasting the existing code, going into the databases that store enemy behaviors, and taking a few zeros off of attack damage, or swapping a "defeat player" flag for a "deal X damage" flag. I wouldn't be shocked if the first pass on something like this could take a knowledgable developer less than a half-hour per encounter. We've discussed a few slightly more complicated changes, like causing Gorseval's updrafts to refresh after the last one, but compared to the complexity of adding them in the first place, that shouldn't be too hard to drop in.

And then testing, I have no idea how much time they spend testing everything, or how much slack the testing team would have on this sort of thing. I can't imagine that this would take more than a tiny fraction as much testing though, since they already have over a year of testing on the default mechanics, and all this would be is reducing their impact, so they'd basically just need to run it a couple times, see if it's a little too light or hard for what they want, tweak the numbers, test it a few more times, until they get a version that is "about right." They don't even need to get it perfect, just close enough, then see what the wild does with it.

They could even launch it initially with little to no prizes for it, just as a "beta," and see what players do with it, before activating the actual reward progression. Maybe offer prizes to the raid teams that can "break" it the most. That should work out the kinks with minimal dev time, and it wouldn't have the consequences that doing the same with the "normal" raids would have, of cheapening the encounter for the target audience.

I'm not saying it would take no work, but whatever work an existing raid encounter takes, down-scaling it to easy mode MUST take a tiny fraction of that amount.

[Feanor.2358]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Malediktus.9250 said:It already takes too long to make raids for a single difficulty

Not an issue. The easy mode raids should take a tiny fraction of the time to generate as the existing raids, because they share 95% of the work, and they would be a decrease in difficulty rather than in increase. They should not slow the development of new raids by even a single patch cycle.

You're

SO

wrong.

How so?

You're vastly underestimating the amount of work needed, and as a result you're also underestimating the impact on the raid release schedule as well. Rebalancing and the needed mechanic changes and tweaks related to them, followed by the testing and bugfixes... it won't take as much time as developing a new wing of the same size and complexity, but it will be in the same ballpark.

I really don't see how.

I can see that. Still doesn't make you any less wrong.

[Ohoni.6057]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Malediktus.9250 said:It already takes too long to make raids for a single difficulty

Not an issue. The easy mode raids should take a tiny fraction of the time to generate as the existing raids, because they share 95% of the work, and they would be a decrease in difficulty rather than in increase. They should not slow the development of new raids by even a single patch cycle.

You're

SO

wrong.

How so?

You're vastly underestimating the amount of work needed, and as a result you're also underestimating the impact on the raid release schedule as well. Rebalancing and the needed mechanic changes and tweaks related to them, followed by the testing and bugfixes... it won't take as much time as developing a new wing of the same size and complexity, but it will be in the same ballpark.

I really don't see how.

I can see that. Still doesn't make you any less wrong.

You didn't address any of the rest, so I assume you agree with it. That's fair.

[Feanor.2358]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Malediktus.9250 said:It already takes too long to make raids for a single difficulty

Not an issue. The easy mode raids should take a tiny fraction of the time to generate as the existing raids, because they share 95% of the work, and they would be a decrease in difficulty rather than in increase. They should not slow the development of new raids by even a single patch cycle.

You're

SO

wrong.

How so?

You're vastly underestimating the amount of work needed, and as a result you're also underestimating the impact on the raid release schedule as well. Rebalancing and the needed mechanic changes and tweaks related to them, followed by the testing and bugfixes... it won't take as much time as developing a new wing of the same size and complexity, but it will be in the same ballpark.

I really don't see how.

I can see that. Still doesn't make you any less wrong.

You didn't address any of the rest, so I assume you agree with it. That's fair.

That's rather presumptuous of you.

[Ohoni.6057]

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Malediktus.9250 said:It already takes too long to make raids for a single difficulty

Not an issue. The easy mode raids should take a tiny fraction of the time to generate as the existing raids, because they share 95% of the work, and they would be a decrease in difficulty rather than in increase. They should not slow the development of new raids by even a single patch cycle.

You're

SO

wrong.

How so?

You're vastly underestimating the amount of work needed, and as a result you're also underestimating the impact on the raid release schedule as well. Rebalancing and the needed mechanic changes and tweaks related to them, followed by the testing and bugfixes... it won't take as much time as developing a new wing of the same size and complexity, but it will be in the same ballpark.

I really don't see how.

I can see that. Still doesn't make you any less wrong.

You didn't address any of the rest, so I assume you agree with it. That's fair.

That's rather presumptuous of you.

Be that as may, if you can't refute any of the points made, we have to agree on them.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@Feanor.2358 said:

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"Malediktus.9250" said:It already takes too long to make raids for a single difficulty

Not an issue. The easy mode raids should take a tiny fraction of the time to generate as the existing raids, because they share 95% of the work, and they would be a decrease in difficulty rather than in increase. They should not slow the development of new raids by even a single patch cycle.

You're

SO

wrong.

How so?

Quite obviously because theres 4 wings with each at least three encounters. With each encounter needing a specific rebalance to make it still challenging enough to be fun but not so challenging that its putting off players. Probably needing to go through several QA cycles as well to be sure everything still works.

And thats not even talking about specifics. Its like deassembling a car to put it back together again afterwards with slightly different nonfitting parts. Ofcourse some stuff will be the same. The monstrosity you create by just altering a few numbers would not be accepted by anyone as a proper easy mode.

Ofcourse, none of us here know the exact details, but downplaying it as some insignificant amount of time is not realistic nor based on any knowledge that we have.

All I know is that when players say "but its easy to..." alot of developers are already burying their faces in their hands (figuratively or literally). Thats why alot of people who know that often say, if it was that easy it would be in the game. (warranted that the devs agree with the suggestions anyway).

[Ohoni.6057]

@"FrizzFreston.5290" said:Quite obviously because theres 4 wings with each at least three encounters.

Well obviously now they are quite behind the curve, and if they were to drop everything and get easy mode for all available wings finished before any other task, it would take them. . . weeks, maybe even a month to accomplish, but they don't need to do it all at once, they can do an encounter or two at a time, to better fit it into their existing schedules.

And again, the tolerances on each wing would be a lot looser than existing raids, because there would be a lot less pressure to get it perfect on the first pass. They could always tweak it a bit more later and people would mind a lot less.

The monstrosity you create by just altering a few numbers would not be accepted by anyone as a proper easy mode.

It would by me, and I'm the target audience for this sort of mode. All I want is a mode that behaves like the current one, only with looser fail conditions. That's fairly easy to achieve. It's the hardcore raiders who probably wouldn't even play the mode that keep offering suggestions to overly complicate the mode with entirely new and different mechanics, presumably in an attempt to make the project impractically difficult to implement.

Ofcourse, none of us here know the exact details, but downplaying it as some insignificant amount of time is not realistic nor based on any knowledge that we have.

And yet nobody has been able to present a serious argument as to why it would take so much time to produce, when so much of the work that goes into a raid would not need to be duplicated. It may in fact be complicated and time-consuming for inexplicable reasons, but logic dictates that it shouldn't be, and I won't accept "it'd take too long to make" from a layman as an excuse to not do it.

[yann.1946]

@Ohoni.6057 said:

@"FrizzFreston.5290" said:Quite obviously because theres 4 wings with each at least three encounters.

Well obviously

now

they are quite behind the curve, and if they were to drop everything and get easy mode for all available wings finished before any other task, it would take them. . . weeks, maybe even a month to accomplish, but they don't need to do it all at once, they can do an encounter or two at a time, to better fit it into their existing schedules.

And again, the tolerances on each wing would be a lot looser than existing raids, because there would be a lot less pressure to get it perfect on the first pass. They could always tweak it a bit more later and people would mind a lot less.

The monstrosity you create by just altering a few numbers would not be accepted by anyone as a proper easy mode.

It would by me, and I'm the target audience for this sort of mode. All I want is a mode that behaves like the current one, only with looser fail conditions. That's fairly easy to achieve. It's the hardcore raiders who probably wouldn't even play the mode that keep offering suggestions to overly complicate the mode with entirely new and different mechanics, presumably in an attempt to make the project impractically difficult to implement.

Well their are some mechanics which translate badly for example the red guardian, the floor at sloth etc

Which is why people keep bringing these things in the picture.

Ofcourse, none of us here know the exact details, but downplaying it as some insignificant amount of time is not realistic nor based on any knowledge that we have.

And yet nobody has been able to present a serious argument as to

why

it would take so much time to produce, when so much of the work that goes into a raid would not need to be duplicated. It may in fact be complicated and time-consuming for inexplicable reasons, but logic dictates that it shouldn't be, and I won't accept "it'd take too long to make" from a layman as an excuse to not do it.

Their are 3 things which would take a lot of time

• meeting and planning the easy mode. How IT would look and function etc . Even if you're Idea is the best solution they still would need to give enough ideas to make it reasonable.-bugfixing: ever heard of the saying programming is 5% coding and 95% bugfixing. Remember when introducing AT broke raidrewards?

  -we have no Idea how long each of the Seven steps takes and how much happens parallel to eachother.

[Ohoni.6057]

@"yann.1946" said:Well their are some mechanics which translate badly for example the red guardian, the floor at sloth etc

Which is why people keep bringing these things in the picture.

Yes, but so far they've all be easily enough manageable. The Slathasor encounter has a number of potential ways to soften it. The most direct method would be to reduce the amount of damage the poison can do, so that while avoiding it is preferable, it would be possible to "stand in the fire" and still handle the encounter (but again, a group intending to train would want to play it straight). Other optional elements would include removing the "nauseated" buff so that a single player could do the entire thing (but maybe leave on a cosmetic version with no actual effect so that training groups could track their progress), and perhaps make it so that player slublings are auto-rezzed (so that they know that they "died," but without harming the attempt). Also, without an enrage timer, players could take more time and care with the encounter. The goal would be to allow players to play through the same mechanics as hard mode, to be aware whether they are doing it right or not (if they know what to look for), but to not absolutely require that they nail most of them for the encounter to succeed.

-bugfixing: ever heard of the saying programming is 5% coding and 95% bugfixing. Remember when introducing AT broke raidrewards?

The amount of bugs should be relatively negligible, since in most cases it would either be turning off potentially bug-inducing abilities, or just tweaking the number on a functional ability. Obviously bugs can still occur, but I think compared to most content they should be fairly minimal.

-we have no Idea how long each of the Seven steps takes and how much happens parallel to eachother.

Again though, the fist five steps would be entirely irrelevant to this discussion, since they're already done. The last two, yeah, it's possible that they could take a while, I just highly doubt it based on what we do know. Occam's Razor.