Future of PvE in Guild Wars 2. How do I see it

[Xar.6279]

I may be wrong of course, but IMO it looks like GW2 PvE is going back to it's roots atm. So it will be accessible to everyone again. Gw2 is not raiding mmo and it looks like it won't be. It's too late for it tbh. "Strike missions" will be surely really fun for many GW2 PvErs.

When players will get bored of "strike missions" someday, then Arena Net will again come up with something new. It's their idea on doing pve in Guild Wars 2. It was always like that. You never know what's next. They definitely like to improvise. Abandon old projects. And focus on doing brand new things.

[Nephalem.8921]

Their idea whats pve is supposed to be consists of 90% single player story dungeons. I rather play Witcher 3 or another actually good single player game than their pve releases. Most maps have exactly 1 event thats worth repeating. Most other stuff is ignored by the majority of players. Or only done once by ap hunters. Only the last map was different, the other maps are almost only done for the meta. Ignoring 90% of the map.Also how is hammering 1 while watching netflix going back to it's roots? Strike missions will be exactly that if they are balanced to be completeable by a random team without any selection.I would like to be proved wrong if Strikes become the best thing this game has ever seen but i have my doubts.

[maddoctor.2738]

To be fair the reason open world content can be completed by pressing 1 on your keyboard is because there tons of players and bosses rarely scale well, plus reviving others in a big blob is very easy. Finally in meta events even if you die, you can either stay dead and get your rewards, or port to a waypoint and run back.

Strikes are 10-man content, so I really doubt they will require zero thought process. Reviving won't be as easy, a dead person out of 10 can lead to failures (rather than one dead out of 50), there should be no waypoints either. So a lot of the things that make the open world really easy won't be present. Have you ever fought the Wyvern Matriarch in Verdant Brink with 5 people? Or Axemaster? There are many bosses in the game that are actually somewhat challenging to fight and you can't beat them while watching Netflix, it's the huge number of players that allow you to do so and the other mechanics that exist in the open world. Take them all out and there is a chance of having good content that can be fun and engaging (not challenging, but engaging, big difference)

[Vayne.8563]

@maddoctor.2738 said:To be fair the reason open world content can be completed by pressing 1 on your keyboard is because there tons of players and bosses rarely scale well, plus reviving others in a big blob is very easy. Finally in meta events even if you die, you can either stay dead and get your rewards, or port to a waypoint and run back.

Strikes are 10-man content, so I really doubt they will require zero thought process. Reviving won't be as easy, a dead person out of 10 can lead to failures (rather than one dead out of 50), there should be no waypoints either. So a lot of the things that make the open world really easy won't be present. Have you ever fought the Wyvern Matriarch in Verdant Brink with 5 people? Or Axemaster? There are many bosses in the game that are actually somewhat challenging to fight and you can't beat them while watching Netflix, it's the huge number of players that allow you to do so and the other mechanics that exist in the open world. Take them all out and there is a chance of having good content that can be fun and engaging (not challenging, but engaging, big difference)

I've seen the blood-crazed wyvern in VB fail numerous times even with 10 people.

[Vinceman.4572]

@"Xar.6279" said:I may be wrong of course, but IMO it looks like GW2 PvE is going back to it's roots atm. So it will be accessible to everyone again. Gw2 is not raiding mmo and it looks like it won't be. It's too late for it tbh. "Strike missions" will be surely really fun for many GW2 PvErs.

When players will get bored of "strike missions" someday, then Arena Net will again come up with something new. It's their idea on doing pve in Guild Wars 2. It was always like that. You never know what's next. They definitely like to improvise. Abandon old projects. And focus on doing brand new things.

Sorry, to say but GW2 stays the same as before. They don't cancel raids or fractals for Strike missions. They are just an extra - at what costs we will have to find out. But nowhere in the stream they said they will abandon other stuff for Strike missions.Additionally GW2 was never accessible for everyone when it was released. People avoided dungeons heavily at start and only a total overhaul of Ascalon Catacombs and well-thought-out strategies/builds made dungeons accessible for more players. Still there were lots of people not running dungeons on a regular basis due being too hard, too & too long because they refused to gear properly which isn't/wasn't a problem per se but could lead to problems in content like dungeons. Same can be said about the introduction with fractals and their development till HoT. At start they were inaccessible as hell and a little bit later on they still stayed niche content and not regular or easy to play content for the player base. So, it's pretty clear that developing Strike missions isn't going back to the roots.I would rather say that they realized developing throw-away content a.k.a. releasing map after map with gazillions of currencies and the need for special items (like Aurora and Vision) to get players back to those maps later on won't please the community in the long run. Even people who are not going for challenging content are bored by the same pattern (3-4 months release cadence for a playtime of 2-3 weeks at max) over and over again.

[Linken.6345]

@maddoctor.2738 said:To be fair the reason open world content can be completed by pressing 1 on your keyboard is because there tons of players and bosses rarely scale well, plus reviving others in a big blob is very easy. Finally in meta events even if you die, you can either stay dead and get your rewards, or port to a waypoint and run back.

Strikes are 10-man content, so I really doubt they will require zero thought process. Reviving won't be as easy, a dead person out of 10 can lead to failures (rather than one dead out of 50), there should be no waypoints either. So a lot of the things that make the open world really easy won't be present. Have you ever fought the Wyvern Matriarch in Verdant Brink with 5 people? Or Axemaster? There are many bosses in the game that are actually somewhat challenging to fight and you can't beat them while watching Netflix, it's the huge number of players that allow you to do so and the other mechanics that exist in the open world. Take them all out and there is a chance of having good content that can be fun and engaging (not challenging, but engaging, big difference)

To me it sounds like strike missions will be tuned so 10 random people can group up and do them.Hence more then pressing 1 or facerolling keyboard will be to much for some people to handle.

[Cameron.6450]

@maddoctor.2738 said:To be fair the reason open world content can be completed by pressing 1 on your keyboard is because there tons of players and bosses rarely scale well, plus reviving others in a big blob is very easy. Finally in meta events even if you die, you can either stay dead and get your rewards, or port to a waypoint and run back.

Strikes are 10-man content, so I really doubt they will require zero thought process. Reviving won't be as easy, a dead person out of 10 can lead to failures (rather than one dead out of 50), there should be no waypoints either. So a lot of the things that make the open world really easy won't be present. Have you ever fought the Wyvern Matriarch in Verdant Brink with 5 people? Or Axemaster? There are many bosses in the game that are actually somewhat challenging to fight and you can't beat them while watching Netflix, it's the huge number of players that allow you to do so and the other mechanics that exist in the open world. Take them all out and there is a chance of having good content that can be fun and engaging (not challenging, but engaging, big difference)

I'd argue that most of those fights are intended for significantly larger numbers of players though, so the difficulty with a smaller group may not be the best judge of that. Similar to the way that dungeons are difficult if you go in on your own, but with a group of the intended size they're almost trivial.

The best comparison we have is most likely the riftstalker fights from a few months ago, which had instances that were capped around 15 (i think). If strike missions are of a similar difficulty, then autoattacking your way to victory would still be an apt description. That being said, we have so little to go on at the moment that we will have to wait and see. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

[Linken.6345]

Looks like it will be worse then I thought its not 10 man..... up to 10 man so anything bettwen 1 and 10 is on the table.

Strike Missions—Tackle these challenging boss encounters in a group of up to ten players, either as a pre-formed squad or in a public mode anyone can join.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Cameron.6450" said:I'd argue that most of those fights are intended for significantly larger numbers of players though, so the difficulty with a smaller group may not be the best judge of that. Similar to the way that dungeons are difficult if you go in on your own, but with a group of the intended size they're almost trivial.

They are not. Most world bosses are "tuned" for about 10 people and you can beat them with 5 or less, provided they have very good dps. Heck I remember that Engineer soloing the Fire Elemental in Metrica Province back when it was considered "hard fight" (close to release).

The best comparison we have is most likely the riftstalker fights from a few months ago, which had instances that were capped around 15 (i think). If strike missions are of a similar difficulty, then autoattacking your way to victory would still be an apt description. That being said, we have so little to go on at the moment that we will have to wait and see. I'd be happy to be proven wrong.

I'm thinking more of Freezie and the Elite Dragonbash arena to be honest. Although they were easy, I still found them fun to do because they did have mechanics. Not mechanics that a hardcore Raider would find difficult, but mechanics that do look similar to Raid mechanics but much easier for randoms to handle. Of course they were both festival events, tuned lower to account for it being temporary content, so I expect Strikes to be above those in difficulty, but not by far.

[Xar.6279]

@Linken.6345 said:Looks like it will be worse then I thought its not 10 man..... up to 10 man so anything bettwen 1 and 10 is on the table.

Strike Missions—Tackle these challenging boss encounters in a group of up to ten players, either as a pre-formed squad or in a public mode anyone can join.

Lowmans confirmed

[Vinceman.4572]

@maddoctor.2738 said:I'm thinking more of Freezie and the Elite Dragonbash arena to be honest. Although they were easy, I still found them fun to do because they did have mechanics. Not mechanics that a hardcore Raider would find difficult, but mechanics that do look similar to Raid mechanics but much easier for randoms to handle. Of course they were both festival events, tuned lower to account for it being temporary content, so I expect Strikes to be above those in difficulty, but not by far.

You nailed it but I doubt the Dragonbash would meet their quality standards for those Strike missions. I think Freezie will be the starting point and then we see some improvements and further development.

[Xar.6279]

@Vinceman.4572 said:

@"Xar.6279" said:I may be wrong of course, but IMO it looks like GW2 PvE is going back to it's roots atm. So it will be accessible to everyone again. Gw2 is not raiding mmo and it looks like it won't be. It's too late for it tbh. "Strike missions" will be surely really fun for

many

GW2 PvErs.

When players will get bored of "strike missions" someday, then Arena Net will again come up with something new. It's their idea on doing pve in Guild Wars 2. It was always like that. You never know what's next. They definitely like to improvise. Abandon old projects. And focus on doing brand new things.

Sorry, to say but GW2 stays the same as before. They don't cancel raids or fractals for Strike missions. They are just an extra - at what costs we will have to find out. But nowhere in the stream they said they will abandon other stuff for Strike missions.Additionally GW2 was never accessible for everyone when it was released. People avoided dungeons heavily at start and only a total overhaul of Ascalon Catacombs and well-thought-out strategies/builds made dungeons accessible for more players. Still there were lots of people not running dungeons on a regular basis due being too hard, too & too long because they refused to gear properly which isn't/wasn't a problem per se but could lead to problems in content like dungeons. Same can be said about the introduction with fractals and their development till HoT. At start they were inaccessible as hell and a little bit later on they still stayed niche content and not regular or easy to play content for the player base. So, it's pretty clear that developing Strike missions isn't going back to the roots.I would rather say that they realized developing throw-away content a.k.a. releasing map after map with gazillions of currencies and the need for special items (like Aurora and Vision) to get players back to those maps later on won't please the community in the long run. Even people who are not going for challenging content are bored by the same pattern (3-4 months release cadence for a playtime of 2-3 weeks at max) over and over again.

We will see of course. IMO it looks like Raids and Fractals are complete in some way. With fractals you got 100 (!) levels with different difficulty and CMs at the very end (as a ultimate, ending fractal challenge). While in raids theres 4 HoT wings and 3 for PoF. It's collections ended.

And what's most important to notice: you can repeat it all whenever you want in Guild Wars 2. Old content is always a thing here because our max lvl (80) is always the same. And there's not better items than ascended if it comes to statistics. Wing 1 was released in 2015 but a lot of players are still learning it in 2019.That's why releasing too much raid wings probably isn't something that developers wants to do here.

Guild Wars 2 was always about living, changing world. Arena Net adapts to the current situation. As we can see usually they improvise, rather than plan things 10 years foward. We've got no schedules, because GW2 is not about these at all. And never was. Noone knows what's next. Even ArenaNet probably. Because they can't anticipate their ideas.

We've got no gear treadmill also. So it means they kind of have to develop their PvE this way. Every kind of instanced PvE content will end up someday. Because it gets boring for people after time. No matter if its guild missions, dungeons, fractals, raids, strike missions, etc, etc. Arena Net will have to do something brand new, to build players' interest around it.

[The one to Rule.2593]

that's not a good thing. games die without a more hardcore endgame scene. Even at release there were dungeons which were the only content i found enjoyable as it was the only thing that required any thought about skills and positioning other than pressing 1 while watching netflix. Anet has allowed those communities in every game mode to stagnate. No one is going to stick with a game that releases " press 1 to win" maps every 3 months.

Strikes won't fix any of their problems. People will play them until they realize they will get 1 blue as a reward then never touch again.

I've stuck with them this long even through rough patches as I had hope but now i just feel as if anet doesn't care about my wants and needs as a player anymore. I'm just tired of defending them.

[Xar.6279]

By the way. As we all know raids reset weekly.There's seven days in a week. And we've got also 7 raid wings.1 wing per day :D

[The one to Rule.2593]

that's also not realistic in a community that's comprised mostly of adults who work and have lives. We set aside a few days to raid and clear them all within those 2 days.

there's also over 30 open world maps where people can press 1 on and experience more story. I don't get your point.

Without hardcore guilds like snow crows, who's gonna make your builds? who's gonna test benchmarks? Who's gonna make your guides? Who's going to help new players get into the harder content?

I don't think you appreciate the gravity of the situation either. It's not just the raid scene. Wvw hasn't received a meaningful update besides the warclaw in 3 years.

Pvp scene is next to dead as they don't balance it enough and that bugs have been in the game for more than a year are still there. More maps and swiss tournies won't fix the low pvp population.

[kasoki.5180]

So what about fractals? They are obviously near-equally forgotten as raidsOr are you trying to tell me that they never intended PvE to be played by a group of 5 people?

Don't get me wrong, and I am saying this with utmost respect, but I honestly feel like some people are by now just grasping at straw in order to portray "this" as an actually good thing. We literally now came to the point where people seem to be like "yeah, group PvE is dead, this is great"

So no, this is not a return to roots of its PvE. Unless strikes turn out to be greatest things ever, PvE in this game is slowly going to be reduced to just open world.

[Blaeys.3102]

@"maddoctor.2738" said:To be fair the reason open world content can be completed by pressing 1 on your keyboard is because there tons of players and bosses rarely scale well, plus reviving others in a big blob is very easy. Finally in meta events even if you die, you can either stay dead and get your rewards, or port to a waypoint and run back.

Strikes are 10-man content, so I really doubt they will require zero thought process. Reviving won't be as easy, a dead person out of 10 can lead to failures (rather than one dead out of 50), there should be no waypoints either. So a lot of the things that make the open world really easy won't be present. Have you ever fought the Wyvern Matriarch in Verdant Brink with 5 people? Or Axemaster? There are many bosses in the game that are actually somewhat challenging to fight and you can't beat them while watching Netflix, it's the huge number of players that allow you to do so and the other mechanics that exist in the open world. Take them all out and there is a chance of having good content that can be fun and engaging (not challenging, but engaging, big difference)

Agreed. I am optimistically excited for strikes.

I think the best example is probably the snowman from last Wintersday - and was likely a test for this very feature. I do think they will be instanced and, for most groups, need 10 people at least partially willing to work together/listen to directions.

As I said in another post, I see a lot of potential there and just wish they had used this model from the start for hard content. Single entity encounters tied directly to the story fit extremely well with how the rest of the game is designed (something you cannot say about raids). If they had started with this - and then provided scaling from super easy to eye bleeding hard - I think it would have been extremely well received. Imagine if every map since HOT launched (including LS maps) had 1-2 strike encounters that offered hardcore gamers a worthy challenge. I think a similar idea was even talked about/recommended in the pre-raid "what do you want from challenging content" thread on the old forum. It just feels like a more sustainable model that fits with the feel of the rest of the game.

[AlexxxDelta.1806]

@"maddoctor.2738" said:To be fair the reason open world content can be completed by pressing 1 on your keyboard is because there tons of players and bosses rarely scale well, plus reviving others in a big blob is very easy. Finally in meta events even if you die, you can either stay dead and get your rewards, or port to a waypoint and run back.

Strikes are 10-man content, so I really doubt they will require zero thought process. Reviving won't be as easy, a dead person out of 10 can lead to failures (rather than one dead out of 50), there should be no waypoints either. So a lot of the things that make the open world really easy won't be present. Have you ever fought the Wyvern Matriarch in Verdant Brink with 5 people? Or Axemaster? There are many bosses in the game that are actually somewhat challenging to fight and you can't beat them while watching Netflix, it's the huge number of players that allow you to do so and the other mechanics that exist in the open world. Take them all out and there is a chance of having good content that can be fun and engaging (not challenging, but engaging, big difference)

If strikes are "Axemaster" level of challenging, they will die just a couple months after release. Unless they offer extremely disproportionate rewards to everything else in open world.

[CptAurellian.9537]

I expect exactly nothing from those ominous strike missions. They'll most likely be faceroll easy and still be abandoned within a rather short timeframe, because most open world players simply aren't interested in any instanced group content. We've had enough examples for that.

Apart from that, The One To Rule already mentioned the important stuff with regard to the rest of currently neglected PvE content. Of course, the devs may decide that niches aren't worth catering to. However, in that case they shouldn't be surprised if those niche populations (and that will be a good chunk of the total player base) decide to move elsewhere.

[kasoki.5180]

@CptAurellian.9537 said:I expect exactly nothing from those ominous strike missions. They'll most likely be faceroll easy and still be abandoned within a rather short timeframe, because most open world players simply aren't interested in any instanced group content. We've had enough examples for that.

Apart from that, The One To Rule already mentioned the important stuff with regard to the rest of currently neglected PvE content. Of course, the devs may decide that niches aren't worth catering to. However, in that case they shouldn't be surprised if those niche populations (and that will be a good chunk of the total player base) decide to move elsewhere.

Many people who play fractals dont do raids. Also alot of people did winter quasi raid. What you have said simply isn't true.

[zealex.9410]

@Vayne.8563 said:

@maddoctor.2738 said:To be fair the reason open world content can be completed by pressing 1 on your keyboard is because there tons of players and bosses rarely scale well, plus reviving others in a big blob is very easy. Finally in meta events even if you die, you can either stay dead and get your rewards, or port to a waypoint and run back.

Strikes are 10-man content, so I really doubt they will require zero thought process. Reviving won't be as easy, a dead person out of 10 can lead to failures (rather than one dead out of 50), there should be no waypoints either. So a lot of the things that make the open world really easy won't be present. Have you ever fought the Wyvern Matriarch in Verdant Brink with 5 people? Or Axemaster? There are many bosses in the game that are actually somewhat challenging to fight and you can't beat them while watching Netflix, it's the huge number of players that allow you to do so and the other mechanics that exist in the open world. Take them all out and there is a chance of having good content that can be fun and engaging (not challenging, but engaging, big difference)

I've seen the blood-crazed wyvern in VB fail numerous times even with 10 people.

He didnt say it was imposible or challenging, he just said a good bit more engaging.

[zealex.9410]

@Xar.6279 said:

@Linken.6345 said:Looks like it will be worse then I thought its not 10 man..... up to 10 man so anything bettwen 1 and 10 is on the table.

Strike Missions—Tackle these challenging boss encounters in a group of up to ten players, either as a pre-formed squad or in a public mode anyone can join.

Lowmans confirmed

U didnt want content to scale on player count for lowmans to be possible, these are supposed to be entry points into raiding, if you can less than 10 man them very easily then they arent doing that.

[CptAurellian.9537]

@kasoki.5180 said:

@CptAurellian.9537 said:I expect exactly nothing from those ominous strike missions. They'll most likely be faceroll easy and still be abandoned within a rather short timeframe, because most open world players simply aren't interested in

any

instanced group content. We've had enough examples for that.

Apart from that, The One To Rule already mentioned the important stuff with regard to the rest of currently neglected PvE content. Of course, the devs may decide that niches aren't worth catering to. However, in that case they shouldn't be surprised if those niche populations (and that will be a good chunk of the total player base) decide to move elsewhere.

Many people who play fractals dont do raids. Also alot of people did winter quasi raid. What you have said simply isn't true.

Anecdotal stories don't say much, where's your hard data? I do not deny that fractals may be played by more people than raids (they probably are), but that group does not appear very large. According to efficiency, just 20% have reached flvl 100, more than 40% haven't even completed T1, and so on. When we look to dungeons, just 25% have completed all Arah paths at least once and the other dungeons do not look so much better. And all of that still does not yield any indication whether people play that stuff repeatedly. Quite a few probably don't.

So please, provide some data that would convincingly indicate that there is a large audience for doing instanced content repeatedly. I don't see it in the current data.

[Nephalem.8921]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Xar.6279 said:

@Linken.6345 said:Looks like it will be worse then I thought its not 10 man..... up to 10 man so anything bettwen 1 and 10 is on the table.

Strike Missions—Tackle these challenging boss encounters in a group of up to ten players, either as a pre-formed squad or in a public mode anyone can join.

Lowmans confirmed

U didnt want content to scale on player count for lowmans to be possible, these are supposed to be entry points into raiding, if you can less than 10 man them very easily then they arent doing that.

you can lowman most raids aswell. 5man spirit vale isnt even that hard. It feels like it was balanced for 6 or 7man. Strike bosses will be bursted within seconds by any decent fractal cm group if they are balanced for open world players.It's better than nothing for sure and maybe shows some open world only players how the combat system works and what cc is but it wont replace fractals, raids or even dungeons.One fractal every 6month is just insanely slow. We also didn't get a bunch of them with the start of a new expansion like in every other mmo. Wvsw is basically the same it was at release with only 1 new map. Spvp is quite dead aswell. Everything this company does takes forever. Build templates are already a thing for multiple years if you use arc.

[zealex.9410]

@Nephalem.8921 said:

@zealex.9410 said:

@Xar.6279 said:

@Linken.6345 said:Looks like it will be worse then I thought its not 10 man..... up to 10 man so anything bettwen 1 and 10 is on the table.

Strike Missions—Tackle these challenging boss encounters in a group of up to ten players, either as a pre-formed squad or in a public mode anyone can join.

Lowmans confirmed

U dont want content to scale on player count for lowmans to be possible, these are supposed to be entry points into raiding, if you can less than 10 man them very easily then they arent doing that.

you can lowman most raids aswell. 5man spirit vale isnt even that hard. It feels like it was balanced for 6 or 7man. Strike bosses will be bursted within seconds by any decent fractal cm group if they are balanced for open world players.It's better than nothing for sure and maybe shows some open world only players how the combat system works and what cc is but it wont replace fractals, raids or even dungeons.One fractal every 6month is just insanely slow. We also didn't get a bunch of them with the start of a new expansion like in every other mmo. Wvsw is basically the same it was at release with only 1 new map. Spvp is quite dead aswell. Everything this company does takes forever. Build templates are already a thing for multiple years if you use arc.

For most ppl are and the goto is 10 man because its not scaleable, thats what im talking about. Ofc raids can be lowmanned but thats an inherently harder thing to do, strikes doesnt sound like that if you go there with less than 10 ppl. It should work like raids but just be easier.