The Return of Raiding and Convergences in Janthir Wilds

[Toraseishin.1932]

2 hours ago, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

I've seen this question here and there so you're definitely not alone in wondering–I can help clarify! 

There won't be an additional currency or essence type. Kryptis Essences (Essences of Despair, Greed, and Triumph) that are in the game now will be renamed "Rift Essences". They can be used for the legendary Obsidian armor in SotO as well as the legendary spear and legendary backpack coming in Janthir Wilds. 

Like legendary Obsidian armor, there will be additional materials required to craft the legendary spear and backpack, but the Kryptis essence you're earning now will carry over to Janthir Wilds as rift essence. 

 

Thank you for clearing this up! 🙏❤️

I appreciate cutting down on excess currencies by reusing/renaming previous currencies. It just seems a bit odd for what is essentially the main currency of a previous expansion carrying over to the next in this way. I guess my hope then, is that there is enough access to rift essences in Janthir Wilds that players won't feel more inclined to focus on SoTO content to gain them instead (as in; it's an option, rather than a better option). SoTO legendaries, while more numerous, also used a pretty large amount of these essences - even for a single piece of armor. So I'm curious to see how heavily they factor into JW legendaries compared to SoTO.

[andreiblue.8231]

3 hours ago, Parasite.5389 said:

as a crafting item, no

Dont forget that legendary insights were also a crafting material though.

[Parasite.5389]

14 minutes ago, andreiblue.8231 said:

Dont forget that legendary insights were also a crafting material though.

yes, but once you'd Crafted Coelesence and/or Perfected Envoy, LI became useless as a crafting material, it would just fill up your storage, with no viable recipe to use it.

Edited July 25 by Parasite.5389

[Linken.6345]

8 minutes ago, Parasite.5389 said:

yes, but once you'd Crafted Coelesence and/or Perfected Envoy, LI became useless as a crafting material, it would just fill up your storage, with no viable recipe to use it.

And once you craft open world legendary armor, back item and legendary spear (or not if you already have them) how is the kryptis essences any different?

[Parasite.5389]

1 minute ago, Linken.6345 said:

And once you craft open world legendary armor, back item and legendary spear (or not if you already have them) how is the kryptis essences any different?

motivations exist, and can be sold for gold.

plus whatever new recipies are added in JW, since it's clear they want to keep the items around.

Edited July 25 by Parasite.5389

[Eekasqueak.7850]

4 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

And once you craft open world legendary armor, back item and legendary spear (or not if you already have them) how is the kryptis essences any different?

There's a merchant in SoTO who can trade in essences for stuff. 

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

20 minutes ago, Eekasqueak.7850 said:

There's a merchant in SoTO who can trade in essences for stuff. 

That's nice.

Edited July 26 by Inculpatus cedo.9234

[Scratchpaw.1069]

Good to see they are using more story content/boss fights and integrating them into raids or other instanced group content. There are so many cool boss encounters during the story mode from all the different expansions that have so much potential to become a great raid/strik encounter. 

[Whitaker.3019]

This makes me hesitate to buy the expansion.  It was bad enough getting stonewalled by a map event in the last expansion to progress in the storyline, a raid sounds even worse.  

[Randulf.7614]

7 minutes ago, Whitaker.3019 said:

This makes me hesitate to buy the expansion.  It was bad enough getting stonewalled by a map event in the last expansion to progress in the storyline, a raid sounds even worse.  

They specifically state this does not happen in JW

[Sobx.1758]

On 7/25/2024 at 4:55 AM, AllNightPlayer.1286 said:

So, instead of making a raid with unique story and assets, there will be a light (story instance), medium (raid), and hard (convergence) version of the same thing? Sounds like more recycling and laziness to me.

Personally, I prefer strikes' format anyways (exlucing things like cw/fs) because it -for the most part- doesn't have the escort-type fillers. But still as far as I understand when people asked for raids, they wanted them to come with their own new lore/storylines so if it's indeed nothing more than straight up retelling of the personal story... that might be missing the point of people asking for raids.
Other than that, the format seems to be imitating what strikes did, except now we might have no ability to pick individual bosses for 10-player encounters and there most probably will be fillers between the boss encounters, so... outside of the boss encounter design itself, my enjoyment will probably depend on how slow the npcs will keep walking and how long they'll keep retelling what we already heard.

9 minutes ago, Whitaker.3019 said:

This makes me hesitate to buy the expansion.  It was bad enough getting stonewalled by a map event in the last expansion to progress in the storyline, a raid sounds even worse.  

I don't know where you got any "stonewalling by raid" from, care to clarify?

Edited July 26 by Sobx.1758

[Whitaker.3019]

"The raid will be integrated into the main storyline, and players who might be hesitant to join a raid group will be able to enjoy their own personal narrative. The 50-player version is built as a Convergence, similar in structure to those found in Guild Wars 2: Secrets of the Obscure™. "

 

It makes it sound to me like I am going to have to do one of the versions to proceed no matter what, if you have to do the raid it sounds like its being setup the same way the entrance to the wizard tower was.  

[andreiblue.8231]

17 hours ago, Parasite.5389 said:

yes, but once you'd Crafted Coelesence and/or Perfected Envoy, LI became useless as a crafting material, it would just fill up your storage, with no viable recipe to use it.

Same for essences, their only use after crafting the legendary stuff is the skyscale skins after that nothing except a currency like aurilium lumps.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Whitaker.3019 said:

It makes it sound to me like I am going to have to do one of the versions to proceed no matter what, if you have to do the raid it sounds like its being setup the same way the entrance to the wizard tower was.  

Based on this:

1 hour ago, Whitaker.3019 said:

players who might be hesitant to join a raid group will be able to enjoy their own personal narrative.

I think the encounters will be more-or-less remade with increasing number of players involved in mind: story(1-5), raid(10), convergence (50). Kind of similar (-convergences) to how strikes were made after certain parts of regular story.

 

55 minutes ago, andreiblue.8231 said:

the skyscale skins after that nothing except a currency

In other words: not nothing.

Edited July 26 by Sobx.1758

[Von Dobbs.9072]

On 7/25/2024 at 7:22 PM, Rubi Bayer.8493 said:

I've seen this question here and there so you're definitely not alone in wondering–I can help clarify! 

There won't be an additional currency or essence type. Kryptis Essences (Essences of Despair, Greed, and Triumph) that are in the game now will be renamed "Rift Essences". They can be used for the legendary Obsidian armor in SotO as well as the legendary spear and legendary backpack coming in Janthir Wilds. 

Like legendary Obsidian armor, there will be additional materials required to craft the legendary spear and backpack, but the Kryptis essence you're earning now will carry over to Janthir Wilds as rift essence. 

 

Hey Arenanet people!

Have you thought for a single moment about the players who crafted one, two (that's my case) or three legendary SOTO armors and then got tired of doing rifts and convergences, drew a line under this chapter and got rid of all their essences?

Couldn't you have left a clue, however small, suggesting that these essences would continue to be useful in the next expansion?

Furthermore, to completely remove all doubt, you have put into circulation the "Portable Wizard's Tower Exchange" which commits us to exchange many essences for a paltry number of map currencies or crafting materials!

Really, once again, you show that you are really not good at communication, you don't know how to communicate with your most fervent player base.

Personally, I must have done I don't know how many hundreds of rifts, more than 200 Convergences, and... and I've had enough!

There's no way I'm going back to doing this kind of content. So I'm giving up on the legendary spear, I'm giving up on the legendary back item.

[Parasite.5389]

1 hour ago, andreiblue.8231 said:

Same for essences, their only use after crafting the legendary stuff is the skyscale skins after that nothing except a currency like aurilium lumps.

clearly didn't read the rest of the discussion, but okay...

 

[andreiblue.8231]

18 hours ago, Parasite.5389 said:

clearly didn't read the rest of the discussion, but okay...

 

And? Just make them purchasable from Lyhr with the same materials and with them as a currency instead of a material.

[andreiblue.8231]

1 minute ago, andreiblue.8231 said:

And? Just make them purchasable from Lyhr with the same materials and with them as a currency instead of a material.

Actually what am I even talking about? Those already use a currency (research notes) to make. So making the essences into currencies and changing the recipe isnt impossible

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

In one respect... Since Anet is significantly raising the difficulty of convergences in JW, I feel Anet is setting itself up for continual outcry for nerfs to the convergence, like when Triple Trouble was new before power creep. People hate Umbriel enough as it is.

Players don't seem to want 50-player content to be as difficult/ mechanics-heavy as 10-player raids. (Those that do, prefer WvW anyway) Open - worlders dont seem to like the potential "months-long process of learning the mechanics and then it's super easy" aspect of raiding. (Like a Rubix Cube, people would rather read up on the solution first, making it easy). Many just don't have the time and patience to waste on the learning curve for raids, and won't do the convergence if it feels too much like i just described.

There's a reason that Game Genie and The Konami Code were so popular back in the day. This is a game, not a military training Sim, and not a profession (IE, I'm not getting paid money.)

EDIT: Many times before... Anet bragged about the harder content... and then admitted to overtuning the fight (boss, meta, whatever) and then nerfed it (due to HP sponge or bad skill cooldowns resulting in certain debilitating boss skills being spammed, or, or, or...)

I'm fine with harder content... I just hate the constant vitriol during the long tuning process before it becomes fun for the masses.

Edited July 30 by Forgotten Legend.9281
EDIT 1: added everything after "Edit"; EDIT 2: highlighted part of my post for clarification

[Sobx.1758]

On 7/28/2024 at 9:35 PM, Forgotten Legend.9281 said:

In one respect... Since Anet is significantly raising the difficulty of convergences in JW, I feel Anet is setting itself up for continual outcry for nerfs to the convergence, like when Triple Trouble was new before power creep. People hate Umbriel enough as it is.

Players don't seem to want 50-player content to be as difficult/ mechanics-heavy as 10-player raids. (Those that do, prefer WvW anyway) Open - worlders dont seem to like the potential "months-long process of learning the mechanics and then it's super easy" aspect of raiding. (Like a Rubix Cube, people would rather read up on the solution first, making it easy). Many just don't have the time and patience to waste on the learning curve for raids, and won't do the convergence if it feels too much like i just described.

Not sure about that, I pugged gold cm umbriel and silver a few times (and at no point I was somehow trying to heavily farm it out). Content can sometimes fail, there's enough of basically fail-proof things to do in the game, I'm not sure why there is supposed to be an "outcry" about slightly harder encounter here or there, let alone why anyone should be afraid of someone complaining about it. Considering the lfg squads I joined (including the very day you wrote your post), I'd go ahead and advice you to avoid using "players don't seem to want x" to show what you like/dislike. Since the groups keep getting created, it looks like your claim about it is false.
For me, it's worse than raids/strkes, but better than the tag-and-grab-loot ow bosses. No worries though, I'm sure there will also be the usual tag-and-loot bosses/events in the new expasion. Doesn't mean everything needs to follow that exact uninteractive model.

With that said, I'm not expecting it to get "significantly harder" anyways, for now these are just words in a news article, but we'll see when it's released.

 

 

Edit@what you added hours after my answer: I do understand that you think "players don't seem to want it" and I'm simply correcting you by explaining that players do want it, as evident by often created -and filled- pug squads in lfg.
I'm now also struggling with your edited in "I'm fine with harder content" when x hours before that in the same post you apparently had an issue with it, saying "This is a game, not a military training Sim, and not a profession (IE, I'm not getting paid money.)". You're fine with it, but you directly compare it to some paid job/military training? If now you're fine with it then I don't understand why you wrote what you did before or how this was supposed to be interpreted.

Edited July 30 by Sobx.1758

[Forgotten Legend.9281]

2 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Not sure about that, I pugged gold cm umbriel and silver a few times (and at no point I was somehow trying to heavily farm it out). Content can sometimes fail, there's enough of basically fail-proof things to do in the game, I'm not sure why there is supposed to be an "outcry" about slightly harder encounter here or there, let alone why anyone should be afraid of someone complaining about it. Considering the lfg squads I joined (including the very day you wrote your post), I'd go ahead and advice you to avoid using "players don't seem to want x" to show what you like/dislike. Since the groups keep getting created, it looks like your claim about it is false.
For me, it's worse than raids/strkes, but better than the tag-and-grab-loot ow bosses. No worries though, I'm sure there will also be the usual tag-and-loot bosses/events in the new expasion. Doesn't mean everything needs to follow that exact uninteractive model.

With that said, I'm not expecting it to get "significantly harder" anyways, for now these are just words in a news article, but we'll see when it's released.

I guess I hit the "submit post" button before I finished my thought... real life interrupts posting again... ugh

The final part of my thought is the result of "the outcry". Many times before... Anet bragged about the harder content... and then admitted to overtuning the fight (boss, meta, whatever) and then nerfed it (due to HP sponge or bad skill cooldowns resulting in certain debilitating boss skills being spammed, or, or, or...)

I'm fine with harder content... I just hate the constant vitriol during the long tuning process before it becomes fun for the masses.

Edited July 29 by Forgotten Legend.9281

[Killerassel.2197]

On 7/26/2024 at 7:36 PM, Sobx.1758 said:

I think the encounters will be more-or-less remade with increasing number of players involved in mind: story(1-5), raid(10), convergence (50). Kind of similar (-convergences) to how strikes were made after certain parts of regular story.

I'd like to have an official clarification for this as well. The blog post talks in lengths about there being two modes: raid and convergence. And it mentions that the raid is "integrated into the main storyline". Only in one place it it said that "players who might be hesitant to join a raid group will be able to enjoy their own personal narrative".

There are two ways I can read that:
A: There's two modes, raid and convergence, and players without a raid group can just enter the (50 player) convergence solo (as in: without premade group)
B: There's three modes: Story mode (solo, or probably 1-5), Raid (10) and Convergence (50).

If it is B then: meh, whatever. Nice for players who want more raids or who enjoy convergence type content. Reusing the story assets in repeatable group content was the basic idea of strike missions and while many players would prefer unique raid content I think this is good use of limited resources.

If it is A then it depends on how "integrated into the main storyline" is meant. If this really means it is a mandatory story step then I'm out. From past experience I don't even look at the raid section of the LFG tool. I don't have a million kill proofs for this new content anyway. And my experience with the SotO convergence is terrible. Bad enough that I need(ed?) an external tool to find out when this starts. Even worse is my bad luck in finding instances. If there is one in a million instances that fails you can bet that this is the one I'll join. This has been my experience since at least Tarir ("how do you farm that, it fails 99,99% of the time!?"). I stopped bothering long time ago. There's enough other things to do that are not as frustrating.

Also, reading it as A fits an observation. To me it seems that GW2 has been moving away from what it once was and getting more similar to how FF14 handles some things. So this would fit, as FF14 has dungeons and their equivalent to strike missions as mandatory steps in the main story. BUT: they did their homework. You can just queue for random groups and since there's incentive for queuing for random content wait times are not that bad. I don't think such a system would work easily within GW2, though, since the roles are way more complex than holy trinity here.

[Astralporing.1957]

43 minutes ago, Killerassel.2197 said:

Also, reading it as A fits an observation. To me it seems that GW2 has been moving away from what it once was and getting more similar to how FF14 handles some things. So this would fit, as FF14 has dungeons and their equivalent to strike missions as mandatory steps in the main story. BUT: they did their homework. You can just queue for random groups and since there's incentive for queuing for random content wait times are not that bad. I don't think such a system would work easily within GW2, though, since the roles are way more complex than holy trinity here.

This. FF XIV can easily push the instanced content and integrate it with the storyline only because it's so easy to just queue for it, without having to go out of your way to make a group. And even then, it was apparently so problematic SqEnix was eventually forced to create the duty support/trust system to allow players to bypass the grouping part for huge majority of required, story-integrated instanced content.

Besides, honestly, whenever Anet tried to push more difficult instanced group content on players, most of the player community just plain did not engage with it. If they were to try doing that as requirement to progress story, it would most likely end up with large number of players just dropping the story altogether. Instead of making the players more engaged with the game, it would most likely end up causing the exact opposite results. And i doubt this is what Anet would want to achieve.

Edited July 30 by Astralporing.1957

[Vidit.7108]

On 7/24/2024 at 6:01 PM, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

I would love to see more content with difficulty tiers. Even strikes - my friends/family guild maxes out at 6-7 people online so we can do the first three IBS strikes but the more difficult strikes are a challenge for our small group as are raids (even when emboldened). We'll keep working on getting better but it would be nice if GW2 10 person instanced content had more difficulty levels available for us (or maybe a way of turning on scaling by squad size for a corresponding decrease in loot or some such).

At the other end of the scale there was a lot of excitement and buzz around a couple of the recent really difficult CM strikes (now called legendary mode) where the worlds best groups of players were competing to be the first to complete them. I'm never going to be at that level (Legendary Mode) but I think it's great that the mode exists for those who are.

I am far from against there being difficulty tiers. Let me clarify what I mean a little bit. What they are doing is introducing the same encounter to the player base in essentially 3 game modes each with their own possible difficulty scaling. Story, Raid, and Convergence. They are also saying out loud to us the player base, that further "Raids" are contingent on the player response to this release. The newest fractal release the Lonely Tower does not have a strike mission version or a bounty board mission or a world boss meta copy of the fight that seems to possibly reward the same rewards while sharing all the mechanics (presumably). It seems to me that they've set it up to fail just a little bit. The future of fractals doesn't ride on the newest fractal competing with a different game mode while also sharing a name and mechanics that have to be balanced if they're overtuned. If it actually doesn't share mechanics like with the story versions of the strike missions sometimes don't that's potentially an even bigger confusing issue, and is also not going to help on-board new players.

On the subject of the LCM, it seems much more to me that the "buzz" was mostly negative. Players bemoaning it as "mesmer only" content didn't exactly make me want to try it. Like the pre-HB-Alac ren raid meta it seems to depend on just bringing the right class capable of making the content clearable. Nothing takes the wind out of the sails of players craving hard content than finding out some classes are specifically disadvantaged from being able to clear it. 

[Nash.2681]

While I appreciate the release of a new raid and hope the best for it (also since it would be the only reason for me to buy JW). But when I read this from the blog post:

"With the introduction of our new raid encounter, some of you might be wondering if we will continue to create raids in the future. The short answer is “maybe.” Raids require a significant amount of development resources, but only a small subset of players engage with the 10-player group instanced content, which is part of the reason it has been five years since our last one. This new raid serves as a test to see how we can support raids moving forward."

This makes me worry that this won't be the revitalization of raids, but just a quick spark in the dark. I don't doubt that players engaging with 10-player grouped instanced content are a small subset, they have the numbers, I don't. What baffles me is, that they keep throwing new10-player content (be it strikes in the past or now the new raid) at the players and apparently expect something to magically change. Raids (or strikes), especially on normal mode, are not hard. The problem imo is twofold. One the one hand side, the game itself does little to prepare players for this kind of content. Players that are willing to use external sources usually have little to no problems to get into this kind of content and find likeminded people on their level. But those that don't (want to) look outside the game itself, are immediatly left behind. One the other hand side it's the stigma this kind of content got put on over the years. The sheer amount of people parroting how "hard" raids are, how toxi "the raiders" are has run its course for years now and most likely did some serious damage.

So to me, the solution would be to change the fundamental problems. Teach players ingame how to play better, how to improve their builds, what geaar combinations make sense for what purpose, implement tools like (at least personal) dps meters, etc.  I'm pretty certain, the more people see how easy it would be to perform on a level that is more than enough to succeed at 10-player group instances, the more players would engage in this kind of content. And if this would raise the subset of players engaging in this kind of content, developing more of it would be more justified from an economic point ov view.

But just adding a new raid, no matter how good it may be (still having hopes , won't change anything in the long run. I don't know if they don't even have the ressources to think about the underlying problems for a moment, simply neglect them or just don't care. But right now, it seems like trying the same stuff over and over again while expecting a different outcome...