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

[Tyson.5160]

@nia.4725 said:

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:Even now the people who completed every Arah path is like 27% of gw2eff users. For nearly 6 year old content. Ofcourse the amount of people there who at least completed every encounter in the first raid wing is (probably) like 18% if going by sabetha completions.

Good catch and just another sign that the possible audience for an infantile mode is

very

limited.

Well I would say the reasons for each of those numbers is very different. Difficulty, time it takes, age of the content. Groupsize is also a big factor. But most arguments get twisted into absolutes of one direction or the other. I really just think the numbers on gw2eff are very interesting more than proving a point. Ill leave unfounded majority minority claims to the people who feel like they need to validate their opinion with unfounded numbers.

Which is like:At least one lvl 80 character: 97%Completed personal story: 77%Complete core exploration: 63%Killed (harder version of) tequatl: 84%Killed triple trouble wurm: 54%Each of fractals (one time completion achieves):between 71% (Mai trin) and 83% (urban battleground)

Raids rounded down:Vale guardian - gorseval - sabeth29% - 23% - 18%

Sloth - trio - matthias17% - 17% - 14%

Escort - KC - Xera26% - 15% - 12%

Cairn - mursaat - samarog - deimos20% - 19% - 18% - 12%

All Dungeon paths:AC - CM - TA - SE  - CoF - HotW - CoE - Arah62% - 44% - 41% - 35% - 45% - 36% - 38% - 27%

TA-Aetherpath24%

I think that on average, not that many people are out to complete everything multiple times and the addition of more content will mostly focus on completing it once rather than multiple times.

So if an easy mode ever would be made or even easier raids or even just content at all, most people would complete it once and be done. Only about 30 to 20% of people is also really out to grind the rewards as well. No matter how easy.

I also think this shows that raids aren't as minority content as some people want to make them look. They're similar to some dungeon paths. This makes me think that the reason of less people raiding isn't the difficulty (as there are people who haven't even completed Arah or Aetherpath, dungeons much easier than raids), but rather more than one reason which could be anything (difficulty, 0 interest in raids, other goals...)

For the time investment for Arah there isn’t really much reason to do the explorable mode more then once. Easier to choose Arah Tokens with the repeatable dungeon frequenter. Armor and weapons you could get from pvp tracks, more efficiently anyways.

[Astralporing.1957]

Pretty much this. There isn't as much achievers (people that feel the need to complete every single path of a dungeon, for example) among casuals. If there was a single dungeon path that was much harder than the rest, much longer than the rest (or had a nasty bug that made completing it a matter of chance), many people would simply skip that one. The same when we're comparing whole dungeons. Those that were unusually harder or longer to complete would obviously have lower completion rate.

Out of curiosity, I'd really like to see statistics on individual paths, instead of just the achieves for full dungeon completes. Unfortunately i don't think there's a way to see those.

By the way, from what we heard TA forward up had a much, much lower completion rate than even Arah p4 (which was cited as a main reason why it got removed). It wasn't because Twilight Arbor was harder than Arah, or because that path was harder than Arah, but because of a single bug in the final fight that made many players simply give up on it and never attempt it again.

[Ohoni.6057]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Ohoni.6057" said:Again, intent is completely irrelevant. The result is all that matters, and the result is that it was much easier to casually pug a dungeon than it is to casually pug a raid.

You probably never run Arah in the first month (or two) after release, or if you did you don't even remember it.

That's true, but beside the point. Wing 1 has already been out for over two years now, so comparing it to Arah in month 1 is meaningless. Compare it to Arah in month 24.

How can you allow a "casual pug" to defeat the Blue Vale Guardian without reliable access to boon stripping? Not every profession has boon strip capabilities, which by default excludes many many team compositions from defeating that content.

Less requirement for boon stripping. Make it something that makes that portion easier but not necessary, like how some enemies are weaker against condi but can still be powered down if you're willing to take longer to do so. Ideally you'd want to bring the right tools for the job, but the requirements would not be so tightly wound that you couldn't use a screwdriver to pound a nail.

Same is true for every single encounter in Raids, while in dungeons and T1 fractals you can probably beat most without any specific builds, even though some of them are considerably harder without specifics (thief skips are a thing for a reason)

Yes, and that's what we're asking for here, an easy mode that works like that.

@nia.4725 said:If you pug with low li groups you get unexperienced runs, so things get messy. But that's completely normal. A low li pug is like doing a dungeon with non lv 80 players who don't know the dungeon. And by low li I'd consider anything under 100li. I'd even say 150li. Judging from my own experience, when I had 150li I knew nothing about raids. I thought I knew, but I didn't. If you go with starters, you get starter runs

Yes, we agree with that, which is why we are asking for a version where that isn't the case.

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:Seriously, it

was

easier to casually pug Arah than it is possible to casually pug raids now. Many people i could run Arah with at their skill level then would never have been able to finish a single raid encounter (

escort included

).

The Vale Guardian was killed by 29.8% of the gw2eff users, Gorseval: 23.9% and Sabetha is at 18%. On the other hand, Master of Arah is at 27.8%Fewer people cleared Arah than have killed Vale Guardian. Was it easier to run Arah? Probably, but the difference isn't as high as you make it out to be.

A player wanting to clear all Arah paths is not a requirement for them wanting to have easy mode raids.They are two separate things.

@FrizzFreston.5290 said:I think that on average, not that many people are out to complete everything multiple times and the addition of more content will mostly focus on completing it once rather than multiple times.

It really depends on what the incentive is to keep repeating it.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Ohoni.6057" said:That's true, but beside the point. Wing 1 has already been out for over two years now, so comparing it to Arah in month 1 is meaningless. Compare it to Arah in month 24.

If I recall they added another tier of gear before the game reached its first birthday. I wonder how much of a difference a new tier of gear can make on content that wasn't designed for it.

Less requirement for boon stripping.

How do you do that while keeping the mechanic the same? The mechanic asks for boon strip, the "mechanic" asks for condition damage, you can't allow groups to ignore either and call it the same mechanic.

Yes, and that's what we're asking for here, an easy mode that works like that.

Which means, fundamentally changing the mechanics. First you are saying not to change the mechanics, then you propose to change them. Make up your mind!

[Ohoni.6057]

@"maddoctor.2738" said:If I recall they added another tier of gear before the game reached its first birthday. I wonder how much of a difference a new tier of gear can make on content that wasn't designed for it.

Considering how few people actually bothered to accumulate it, probably not much outside the speed-clear crowd, which isn't who we're talking about.

How do you do that while keeping the mechanic the same? The mechanic asks for boon strip, the "mechanic" asks for condition damage, you can't allow groups to ignore either and call it the same mechanic.

He currently has an "immune to all damage and conditions" buff. The best way of softening that without completely eliminating it would be to change it to something like "60% (or more) resistance to damage and conditions" buff, making it a hassle, but not something impossible to power through. The "easy way" would be to just strip the boon and deal a lot more dps. The "hard way," if the easy way isn't an option, is just to bully through it. The mechanic still wants the identical response, it just no longer requires it.

Which means, fundamentally changing the mechanics. First you are saying not to change the mechanics, then you propose to change them. Make up your mind!

/sigh.

I really hope you're engaging in rhetorical questions rather than genuinely not know the answer to the questions you're posing, after this much dialog has already gone on on the subject.

Just to humor you, the point is to maintain as much of the mechanics as possible, while still arriving at the goal of making the encounters casual friendly, pick-up puggable encounters. Yes, that means weaking the "impact" of the mechanics, but ideally while maintaining things like timing, requirements to short-circuit the mechanic, and ideal outcomes as best as possible. The goal is to make it so that if you play it as if it were the hard mode, then you would clear it just as well as it would work on the hard mode, while if you can't or won't play it like it was the hard mode, then there would still be less efficient paths to reach the finish line.

Just for future reference, could you please tag future questions you do know the answer to with "#Poe's Law," so to avoid confusion?

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Ohoni.6057" said:I really hope you're engaging in rhetorical questions rather than genuinely not know the answer to the questions you're posing, after this much dialog has already gone on on the subject.

So you indeed want to fundamentally change the mechanic yet for some reason you claim otherwise. That was something I was always curious about and why I kept asking for "specifics", which until now you never actually gave. Now that I have them it's all been verified. Good luck!

[Bladestrom.6425]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Ohoni.6057" said:I really hope you're engaging in rhetorical questions rather than genuinely not know the answer to the questions you're posing, after

this

much dialog has already gone on on the subject.

So you indeed want to fundamentally change the mechanic yet for some reason you claim otherwise. That was something I was always curious about and why I kept asking for "specifics", which until now you never actually gave. Now that I have them it's all been verified. Good luck!

its really simple and can be abstracted quite easily - remove mechanics that makes PUGS fragile i.e one shot mechanics, bullet storms, tight timers.

[nia.4725]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Ohoni.6057" said:I really hope you're engaging in rhetorical questions rather than genuinely not know the answer to the questions you're posing, after

this

much dialog has already gone on on the subject.

So you indeed want to fundamentally change the mechanic yet for some reason you claim otherwise. That was something I was always curious about and why I kept asking for "specifics", which until now you never actually gave. Now that I have them it's all been verified. Good luck!

its really simple and can be abstracted quite easily - remove mechanics that makes PUGS fragile i.e one shot mechanics, bullet storms, tight timers.

Those mechanics don't make pugs fragile. Those mechanics make bad players/inexperienced players fragile, and that's the whole point of raids: you need to learn in order to be able to do the mechanic.

If I join a pug group or I make a squad full of pugs I'm a pug too, you know? And still hands at Deimos won't make me fragile when I kite them, because I know how to kite them.

[maddoctor.2738]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:its really simple and can be abstracted quite easily - remove mechanics that makes PUGS fragile i.e one shot mechanics, bullet storms, tight timers.

I wouldn't call the blue guardian damage immunity a one shot mechanic nor a timing issue. Same for the red guardian enhanced resistance to power damage and weakness to condition damage. Now since you bring up GW1 a lot, would you run any high end guild wars 1 content, Underworld, The Deep, Domain of Anguish, without even one healer? Or a protector? And is it even possible to succeed in those without one? I'd say absolutely not, proper team composition is key in GW1, yet what is asked here is to make any team composition work in all content. Heck, in GW1 you can't even get out of the starting town without your pet healer, let alone enter high end content.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:its really simple and can be abstracted quite easily - remove mechanics that makes PUGS fragile i.e one shot mechanics, bullet storms, tight timers.

I wouldn't call the blue guardian damage immunity a one shot mechanic nor a timing issue. Same for the red guardian enhanced resistance to power damage and weakness to condition damage. Now since you bring up GW1 a lot, would you run any high end guild wars 1 content, Underworld, The Deep, Domain of Anguish, without even one healer? Or a protector? And is it even possible to succeed in those without one? I'd say absolutely not, proper team composition is key in GW1, yet what is asked here is to make any team composition work in all content. Heck, in GW1 you can't even get out of the starting town without your pet healer, let alone enter high end content.

no but in GW1 there was raids with plenty of wiggle room you could pug with little experience. re mechanics I was abstracting the problem for pugs.

[maddoctor.2738]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:no but in GW1 there was raids with plenty of wiggle room you could pug with little experience.

So requiring a person to bring boon strip in GW2 is much more of a hassle for pugs than bringing a full fledged protector/healer character in GW1 (and probably an interrupt Mesmer too).

[Bladestrom.6425]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:no but in GW1 there was raids with plenty of wiggle room you could pug with little experience.

So requiring a person to bring boon strip in GW2 is much more of a hassle for pugs than bringing a full fledged protector/healer character in GW1 (and probably an interrupt Mesmer too).

i'm not talking about anecdote and example, im talking about the underlying systemic issues.

[maddoctor.2738]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:i'm not talking about anecdote and example, im talking about the underlying systemic issues.

The discussion that you quoted was about the Blue Guardian's buff giving a 60% immunity to condition and power damage instead of immunity, so it was all about a very specific example. Got anything to say about that?

[Bladestrom.6425]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:i'm not talking about anecdote and example, im talking about the underlying systemic issues.

The discussion that you quoted was about the Blue Guardian's buff giving a 60% immunity to condition and power damage instead of immunity, so it was all about a very specific example. Got anything to say about that?

if you cant abstract the problem you will spend a year and a day arguing about point x and point y, as per thread.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"vesica tempestas.1563" said:if you cant abstract the problem you will spend a year and a day arguing about point x and point y, as per thread.

We've had threads like this for years and that's because some try to abstract the so called "problem".

Check this thread: https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/37656/how-would-an-easy-mode-raid-work-vg/p1 started with suggestions on a specific subject until the "abstract" people came aboard.

Now if you want to continue talking about this in an abstract way, have fun for the next few years.

[Bladestrom.6425]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"vesica tempestas.1563" said:if you cant abstract the problem you will spend a year and a day arguing about point x and point y, as per thread.

We've had threads like this for years and that's because some try to abstract the so called "problem".

Check this thread:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/37656/how-would-an-easy-mode-raid-work-vg/p1

started with suggestions on a specific subject until the "abstract" people came aboard.

Now if you want to continue talking about this in an abstract way, have fun for the next few years.

lol so now we are attacking abstraction are we. As i said you can either play word battles and argue anecdote or you discuss the root issue (the majority of players in GW2 don't raid, and they do in all other AAA mmorpg). your choice.

[nia.4725]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:if you cant abstract the problem you will spend a year and a day arguing about point x and point y, as per thread.

We've had threads like this for years and that's because some try to abstract the so called "problem".

Check this thread:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/37656/how-would-an-easy-mode-raid-work-vg/p1

started with suggestions on a specific subject until the "abstract" people came aboard.

Now if you want to continue talking about this in an abstract way, have fun for the next few years.

lol so now we are attacking abstraction are we. As i said you can either play word battles and argue anecdote or you discuss the root issue (the majority of players in GW2 don't raid, and they do in all other AAA mmorpg). your choice.

LOL and you're the one that argued yesterday about my use of the word noob. Yet here you are telling someone else to not do what you have already done.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"vesica tempestas.1563" said:lol so now we are attacking abstraction are we. As i said you can either play word battles and argue anecdote or you discuss the root issue (the majority of players in GW2 don't raid, and they do in all other AAA mmorpg). your choice.

I'm attacking abstraction because it's useless in every discussion. You either play word battles (which is what abstraction does) or focus on something specific that everyone can comment on and discuss.

Scroll up and you can find some statistics on what the "majority" does in GW2. If you don't want to bother, here is the break down: the majority of GW2 players don't run instanced content, that means Raids, dungeons and fractals. How do you expect this "majority" that avoids instanced content, to Raid? Or the Raids are gonna be easier than the dungeons and fractals? I don't think you understand what the word majority means

[Bladestrom.6425]

@nia.4725 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:if you cant abstract the problem you will spend a year and a day arguing about point x and point y, as per thread.

We've had threads like this for years and that's because some try to abstract the so called "problem".

Check this thread:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/37656/how-would-an-easy-mode-raid-work-vg/p1

started with suggestions on a specific subject until the "abstract" people came aboard.

Now if you want to continue talking about this in an abstract way, have fun for the next few years.

lol so now we are attacking abstraction are we. As i said you can either play word battles and argue anecdote or you discuss the root issue (the majority of players in GW2 don't raid, and they do in all other AAA mmorpg). your choice.

LOL and you're the one that argued yesterday about my use of the word noob. Yet here you are telling someone else to not do what you have already done.

I'm not a mind reader, I didn't know you don't know the difference between the insult 'noob' you were using and the word newb. It seems most raiders don't know this difference eh - go search the number of times that word is used in the raiding forum. I'm not gonna get drawn into war of words, I was abstracting the point made, if you don't get that fair enough.

[nia.4725]

I've just got out of a Sabetha training. Chronos were experienced (me and a guildmate). One cannoneer was, too. The other cannoneer was completely new. We wiped 3 or 4 times because the new cannoneer didn't get the order of the cannons, and people were missing green bombs. So we explained the thing again, had 1 player call the cannons so the newbie got some help, and we killed the boss. Less than an hour in total. The mood was positive: the experienced ones only explained if it was needed, helped and everyone got their chance to learn.

[Feanor.2358]

@vesica tempestas.1563 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"Ohoni.6057" said:I really hope you're engaging in rhetorical questions rather than genuinely not know the answer to the questions you're posing, after

this

much dialog has already gone on on the subject.

So you indeed want to fundamentally change the mechanic yet for some reason you claim otherwise. That was something I was always curious about and why I kept asking for "specifics", which until now you never actually gave. Now that I have them it's all been verified. Good luck!

its really simple and can be abstracted quite easily - remove mechanics that makes PUGS fragile i.e one shot mechanics, bullet storms, tight timers.

So basically have a bag of hitpoints that poses no threat. Why does that sound so familiar? Where have I seen it? Oh, right... the Shadow Behemoth.

[Tyson.5160]

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@"vesica tempestas.1563" said:lol so now we are attacking abstraction are we. As i said you can either play word battles and argue anecdote or you discuss the root issue (the majority of players in GW2 don't raid, and they do in all other AAA mmorpg). your choice.

I'm attacking abstraction because it's useless in every discussion. You either play word battles (which is what abstraction does) or focus on something specific that everyone can comment on and discuss.

Scroll up and you can find some statistics on what the "majority" does in GW2. If you don't want to bother, here is the break down: the majority of GW2 players don't run instanced content, that means Raids, dungeons and fractals. How do you expect this "majority" that avoids instanced content, to Raid? Or the Raids are gonna be easier than the dungeons and fractals? I don't think you understand what the word majority means

Quick question: when you mean majority, do you mean the majority of players in the actual game or those who inputted their info into gw2 efficiency?

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Tyson.5160" said:Quick question: when you mean majority, do you mean the majority of players in the actual game or those who inputted their info into gw2 efficiency?

Does it make a difference? The "majority" of the players on gw2efficiency do not run instanced content, will the actual game population be any different?Meaning, talking about making Raids accessible to the "majority" when the rest of the instanced content (which is much easier) isn't being run by the same majority doesn't make any sense at all. If in other games the majority does indeed run Raids, which I find unlikely, then maybe we'd first need to get the easier instanced content up to that point first, before touching Raids.

[Sykper.6583]

Just a friendly reminder that we should keep away from arguments that deal with specific 'numbers' about participation in raiding. GW2 Efficiency is not a solid example or correlation of the true population levels. It's also important to stop trying to have the argument flow in that direction, absolutely no one in this thread can say for certain what the real number of people participating in raids is. That means no one can make the case that there's not enough people raiding, or there's actually way too many people raiding, it's frivolous at this juncture.

The only method we have for getting an idea on where raid participation actually is, is how future raid development progresses, if raids get harder, etc. Arenanet has the real numbers, and if their numbers suggest that implementing the latest harder raid caused the participation to go upwards, they will consider that as the community actually enjoying progressively harder content and vice versa.

[CptAurellian.9537]

@Sykper.6583 said:The only method we have for getting an idea on where raid participation actually is, is how future raid development progresses, if raids get harder, etc. Arenanet has the real numbers, and if their numbers suggest that implementing the latest harder raid caused the participation to go upwards, they will consider that as the community actually enjoying progressively harder content and vice versa.I am not convinced. You imply that ANet can tune the difficulty of encounters very finely and exactly according to their wishes. I don't see evidence for that.