Making Raids Accessible To People Without Enough Time

[HotDelirium.7984]

I am not quite sure how we can put it more plainly to folks who have not yet raided. You can already do this. Want to do just Mursaat Overseer, who is arguably almost a dps dummy? Just ask in the raid lobby for an MO instance. Or, with your own group, clear Cairn(the boss preceding MO) one day and leisurely meander over to MO on another. The only time ever you will need to work your way up is right smack dab after the weekly reset, since no one will have a lockout yet. Raids are not like fractals, where it resets when you leave.

I do get the point people have made before but that's on the complete reliance of others for that to happen. How many events have stalled because you didn't have a group to do it with + the requirements and commitment of raiding= very unreliable. Relying on this "kindness of strangers" if you will is not very conducive to effective gaming for people who must practice time management. What will be will be. I'm not naive to think they will change their direction by simply reading this post. I'm hopeful but till then we will just continue NOT to experience the content.-RAYMERA

[Rasimir.6239]

@"Clyan.1593" said:Raids really don't take too much effort if you understand your class and play a proper build. What you have to do is go to youtube, watch a guide on how to beat the boss you want to kill and then go in with a raid training squad.There's one of the fundamental problems right there: you assume that everybody can learn well from youtube. Different people have different ways to learn things, and those of us that don't learn well (or at all) from watching videos need a decidedly different approach to things, and often one that is difficult to prepare solo but relies on 9 others to have the patience to let us learn "on the job".

That's a pretty steep requirement, one that is a lot harder to fill. If you're among the lucky that can learn the basics from youtube and master them quickly, within a few practice runs, then good for you, but for lots of people out there, it doesn't work that way, and the cost of finding 9 other people with matching timeslots for hours upon hours until everyone has mastered the content can get exorbitant if you need a different approach to mastering that kind of content.

Source: a 50-year-old ex-raider (in previous MMOs) that learns from explanations while doing things. I don't want to count the number of hours I've wasted trying to put together raids with people in similar situations (older, slower learners without "youtube learning talents") only to have them fall apart after weeks of wiping to the same bosses. I'm lucky in that I have younger friends that drag me along if they need a filler, so I've at least been able to experience about half of the raids, but getting enough practice to feel comfortable with the fights is pretty much impossible in my current situation, no matter how much I'd like to get there.

[LadyKitty.6120]

To be frank, peoples who think it's difficult to get an instance, have you actually ever tried asking for an instance? For most peoples it's no big deal and giving 1-2g certainly helps if there's no free instances available as it literally takes less than a minute to open. Like it's been already pointed out, you can start a squad and look for instance while waiting for squad to fill. A common practise among raiders.

And for peoples in this thread speaking of time management, spending an hour reading about and practising a dps build at golem helps you get stuff done a LOT faster than continuing with whatever mixmash you've had this far if you haven't really cared about damage efficiency before. Generally players who don't know much about how builds work do about 10-20% of the damage that player with effective build and and bit of practise would do and that also reflects in the time it takes to kill stuff in the open-world as well as getting into the instanced content. And on power builds, you can even run Strength runes and sigil to keep up might in open-world without horribly compromising instanced dps output. And obviously this effectiveness allows doing lots more within the limited time people may have. After all, there's a huge difference between killing a veteran mob in 10 seconds vs spending over a minute on it, not to mention multiple of those at once...

[Tinker.6924]

Raiding is a time intensive team activity. Groups may spend an entire night on one boss. You have to be ready to allocate 2-3 hours otherwise it's unfair to your teammates.

If there was one raiding change i would like to see is allowing larger groups 15-20 people. More people can play that way.

[Algreg.3629]

@"HotDelirium.7984" said:

I am not quite sure how we can put it more plainly to folks who have not yet raided. You can already do this. Want to do just Mursaat Overseer, who is arguably almost a dps dummy? Just ask in the raid lobby for an MO instance. Or, with your own group, clear Cairn(the boss preceding MO) one day and leisurely meander over to MO on another. The only time ever you will need to work your way up is right smack dab after the weekly reset, since no one will have a lockout yet. Raids are not like fractals, where it resets when you leave.

I do get the point people have made before but that's on the complete reliance of others for that to happen. How many events have stalled because you didn't have a group to do it with + the requirements and commitment of raiding= very unreliable. Relying on this "kindness of strangers" if you will is not very conducive to effective gaming for people who must practice time management. What will be will be. I'm not naive to think they will change their direction by simply reading this post. I'm hopeful but till then we will just continue NOT to experience the content.-RAYMERA

not sure what you are talking about. Yes, if you want to skip to a specific encounter, you will have to rely on an opener. But you have to join a team anyway or are you going to solo raids?

[Algreg.3629]

@Rasimir.6239 said:

@"Clyan.1593" said:Raids really don't take too much effort if you understand your class and play a proper build. What you have to do is go to youtube, watch a guide on how to beat the boss you want to kill and then go in with a raid training squad.There's one of the fundamental problems right there: you assume that everybody can learn well from youtube. Different people have different ways to learn things, and those of us that don't learn well (or at all) from watching videos need a decidedly different approach to things, and often one that is difficult to prepare solo but relies on 9 others to have the patience to let us learn "on the job".

That's a pretty steep requirement, one that is a lot harder to fill. If you're among the lucky that can learn the basics from youtube and master them quickly, within a few practice runs, then good for you, but for lots of people out there, it doesn't work that way, and the cost of finding 9 other people with matching timeslots for hours upon hours until everyone has mastered the content can get exorbitant if you need a different approach to mastering that kind of content.

Source: a 50-year-old ex-raider (in previous MMOs) that learns from explanations while doing things. I don't want to count the number of hours I've wasted trying to put together raids with people in similar situations (older, slower learners without "youtube learning talents") only to have them fall apart after weeks of wiping to the same bosses. I'm lucky in that I have younger friends that drag me along if they need a filler, so I've at least been able to experience about half of the raids, but getting enough practice to feel comfortable with the fights is pretty much impossible in my current situation, no matter how much I'd like to get there.

this is not an age thing.

[HotDelirium.7984]

@"EmmetOtter.8542" said:Raiding is a time-intensive team activity. Groups may spend an entire night on one boss. You have to be ready to allocate 2-3 hours otherwise it's unfair to your teammates.

Well you do bring up a point about the requirements of raiding so I ask- should raiding have been introduced into this game at all? I believe this game was originally advertised as for "casual players." All the raiding content could easily be like dungeon/fractal difficulties but I wonder if they wanted to appeal to more people in other MMO's who raid? Here and in-game I hear nothing but complaints (as I complain lol) from people unable to get into raiding and raiders being dissatisfied with the lack of raid content. Hindsight is 2020 and if they decide not to make any more raids then we have our answer for the success of it- a very costly one, however.

[Dante.1763]

@HotDelirium.7984 said:

@"EmmetOtter.8542" said:Raiding is a time-intensive team activity. Groups may spend an entire night on one boss. You have to be ready to allocate 2-3 hours otherwise it's unfair to your teammates.

Well you do bring up a point about the requirements of raiding so I ask- should raiding have been introduced into this game at all? I believe this game was originally advertised as for "casual players." All the raiding content could easily be like dungeon/fractal difficulties but I wonder if they wanted to appeal to more people in other MMO's who raid? Here and in-game I hear nothing but complaints (as I complain lol) from people unable to get into raiding and raiders being dissatisfied with the lack of raid content. Hindsight is 2020 and if they decide not to make any more raids then we have our answer for the success of it- a very costly one, however.

Raids have been a point of contention since they originally where announced. This games community is honestly -bad- at the game, a good player does 10x the damage of an average one, and i can only imagine the difference between a good player and a "bad" player. Which is why i honestly think they should never have added raids, but thats a dead topic, they are here..and well kinda dead themselves.

There hasnt been a new raid in awhile. ANET has also stated that strikes are meant to try to bring players into raids . IMO they missed out on an easy but unpopular(at least for the current, small portion of the community that does raids)fix, easy mode. Instead of adapting the game to the player they are trying to force the player to adapt to the game and that has not worked well in the past.

Saddly strikes dont fix the reason i dont do raids anymore, easy mode would, and no its not the difficulty of the raids themselves, i like them in normal mode and wish i could do them more.

[Tinker.6924]

@HotDelirium.7984 said:

@"EmmetOtter.8542" said:Raiding is a time-intensive team activity. Groups may spend an entire night on one boss. You have to be ready to allocate 2-3 hours otherwise it's unfair to your teammates.

Well you do bring up a point about the requirements of raiding so I ask- should raiding have been introduced into this game at all? I believe this game was originally advertised as for "casual players." All the raiding content could easily be like dungeon/fractal difficulties but I wonder if they wanted to appeal to more people in other MMO's who raid? Here and in-game I hear nothing but complaints (as I complain lol) from people unable to get into raiding and raiders being dissatisfied with the lack of raid content. Hindsight is 2020 and if they decide not to make any more raids then we have our answer for the success of it- a very costly one, however.

Raiding isn't hardcore or casual by itself, but it is an activity that requires time and is best accomplished by a large static group capable of managing/coordinating members and communication before/during/after combat. It breathes life into guilds. You saying, "gw2 didn't have that feature" just illustrates that gw2 lacked depth and had a massive hole that needed filling and raids help fill it. The group-dynamic. The social interaction. The excitement of being part of a team. Those are more important to me in raiding than the challenge and loot and those are the reasons I want to raid. WvW can provide this too, but only if I'm lucky enough to find a commander really interested in leading and can get into voice chat with a group.

If raiding fails in GW2 it won't be because of boss difficulty but many other things.

1. GW2 allows way, way too much visual and audio noise from your own and friendly units to pollute the combat area and even the lowest game/graphic/sound settings aren't enough to eliminate the noise and see/hear important boss mechanics reliably. Other games are library-quiet by comparison. I don't need to hear a Mesmer's coo-coo-clock noise blast in my ear whenever they cast whatever god damn spell that makes that stupid noise, but I do need to hear that barely audible "sizzle" from the Cairn's displacement attack which I can't reliably see because my own AOE is obscuring it (and yes I know about the yellow screen border but that requires looking away from combat to other things and isn't a good H.U.D. design). This noise more than anything artificially inflates the difficulty of raiding.
2. Total lack of sophistication in healing/support. AOE and stack! stack! stack! or nothing are your options for healing/support in this game whereas that is a secondary mechanic (at best) in other games. Other games allow group members to use the squad unit frames to not only see health and boons and dispellable conditions on squad mates but also click on the frame to target a specific squad member and cast a heal/dispel/boon on him. This allows groups to spread out to optimal locations and still support each other (players who like ranged can play from ranged!). Stacking as a group ALL. THE. TIME. makes the problems from #1 even worse.
3. When you're not in combat you want an unblemished view of the world, but when you're in combat you need to be able to clearly and quickly see all combat-relevant and decision making-relevant info at a glance without taking your eyes off the enemy in the screen's center. Instead GW2 has boons and conditions that are teeny tiny little things at the bottom of the page, cooldowns from weapon skills are only visible for the currently active weapon set and again are at the bottom of the screen. To view those things you need to look away from combat for a significant time. Compare that to a modern fighter pilot who has all the most important combat decision-making info about their airplane and target projected onto their helmet's visor, literally in front of their eyes, so they can see that info without ever taking their eyes off the enemy. Many games do a poor job of displaying this info and unfortunately so does GW2.
4. The 10-man limit in raids is an extremely small size compared to other activities in GW2 and it forces groups to exclude interested individuals. It feels like this limit may actually be a poor workaround to the noise problem in mentioned in point #1.
5. Developer disinterest and lack of follow through. They created the raids, but they really haven't followed through on them.

There are many changes the dev team could make that would make raiding easier, without changing the boss difficulty, and also benefit every other player in any other kind of combat.

[Vilin.8056]

@"Obfuscate.6430" said:If making an easy, normal and hard mode isn't feasible, then perhaps add Raid save points or chapters like in Living World story instances.For myself and I am certain many others, it isn't a lack of desire to participate in Raids. It isn't an inability to learn, or min max my way in to a perfect party composition for a challenge - it's that I work an almost full time physically demanding job with an erratic schedule and I have life responsibilities. My free time is not on a consistent schedule.

Imagine if you could Raid in smaller chunks

You could argue that is what Strikes are for but my counter argument is that Strikes will not teach you what you are going to face in a Raid. Fractals have an easy version to teach you what to do so that you aren't totally free falling when you finally work your way up to the hard version, which Strikes do not do. However, making difficulty levels for Raids doesn't seem to be something on the table. The compromise then is logically to cut it up in to smaller pieces because that would allow people who want to do it all at once and maintain the - I guess "purity" of the challenge - to do that, while people who have less time can also participate and experience the challenge.

Thoughts?I mean I want to get in to Raids so bad. The rewards look so worth it.I just. Don't. Have. Time.Even now. My work is considered essential so I still don't have the kind of time to dedicate that I would need.

Check out the Single Short Bow Soulbeast build. Low learning curve to to its nature of skill spamming.

Find raid bosses that's been heavily exploited with easy strategies. Here's an example on Vale Guardian, where DPS players simply skill spamming behind the boss ignoring the majority of its mechanics.

Takes 25 minutes from learning the build to master this boss.

[Nightcore.5621]

Most of the raids take less than a haour if not All of them

[Cyninja.2954]

@HotDelirium.7984 said:

@"EmmetOtter.8542" said:Raiding is a time-intensive team activity. Groups may spend an entire night on one boss. You have to be ready to allocate 2-3 hours otherwise it's unfair to your teammates.

Well you do bring up a point about the requirements of raiding so I ask- should raiding have been introduced into this game at all?

I believe this game was originally advertised as for "casual players."

All the raiding content could easily be like dungeon/fractal difficulties but I wonder if they wanted to appeal to more people in other MMO's who raid? Here and in-game I hear nothing but complaints (as I complain lol) from people unable to get into raiding and raiders being dissatisfied with the lack of raid content. Hindsight is 2020 and if they decide not to make any more raids then we have our answer for the success of it- a very costly one, however.

Would you be so kind to provide a citation or anything which supports this belief/assumption?

I don't recall ever that any communication was made that this game was only casual. I might be wrong though. Also dungeons were insanely hard on release until players figured them out and adapted to a no trinity play style. Some fractals are currently harder than a big chunk of the current raid content, as are some of the strike missions. The original implementation of Living World Season 1 was also anything BUT casual with constant time limited content added every few weeks which took a lot of grind to complete.

[frareanselm.1925]

@Friday.7864 said:Raids aren't rewarding at all when you take loot into consideration. If you want ascended and gold just do t4+CMs.Lege armor only thing worth gunning for. And for that they can't possibly lower the difficulty. Your only option is to buy runs from LFG then.

This is fashion wars2, raid loots are super rewarding in a fashion sense, for example the Oblivion staff (Dhuum raid) is more amazing than any legendary staff.

[sokeenoppa.5384]

@frareanselm.1925 said:

@Friday.7864 said:Raids aren't rewarding at all when you take loot into consideration. If you want ascended and gold just do t4+CMs.Lege armor only thing worth gunning for. And for that they can't possibly lower the difficulty. Your only option is to buy runs from LFG then.

This is fashion wars2, raid loots are super rewarding in a fashion sense, for example the Oblivion staff (Dhuum raid) is more amazing than any legendary staff.

As an owner of said staff I just have to disagree with you.

[HotDelirium.7984]

@Dante.1763 said:

@HotDelirium.7984 said:

@"EmmetOtter.8542" said:Raiding is a time-intensive team activity. Groups may spend an entire night on one boss. You have to be ready to allocate 2-3 hours otherwise it's unfair to your teammates.

Well you do bring up a point about the requirements of raiding so I ask- should raiding have been introduced into this game at all? I believe this game was originally advertised as for "casual players." All the raiding content could easily be like dungeon/fractal difficulties but I wonder if they wanted to appeal to more people in other MMO's who raid? Here and in-game I hear nothing but complaints (as I complain lol) from people unable to get into raiding and raiders being dissatisfied with the lack of raid content. Hindsight is 2020 and if they decide not to make any more raids then we have our answer for the success of it- a very costly one, however.

Raids have been a point of contention since they originally where announced. This games community is honestly -bad- at the game, a good player does 10x the damage of an average one, and i can only imagine the difference between a good player and a "bad" player. Which is why i honestly think they should never have added raids, but thats a dead topic, they are here..and well kinda dead themselves.

I've been in the game 6 years and only in the forums for 3 days now lol is there a point to complaining/feedback etc or is all pretty pointless besides being an echo chamber?There hasnt been a new raid in awhile. ANET has also stated that strikes are meant to try to bring players into raids . IMO they missed out on an easy but unpopular(at least for the current, small portion of the community that does raids)fix, easy mode. Instead of adapting the game to the player they are trying to force the player to adapt to the game and that has not worked well in the past.

I do agree easy mode all the way. One Dev recently here on the forums talked about development and the line that stood out to me went along the lines of "even if they don't work as intended or don't" referring to strikes; that lets be know there is this space where they have no idea what the results will actually be for the Strikes -> Raids pipeline. That does not sound/feel like effective game design. You should not be guessing and hoping something will plan out in game design. You ensure it. For example, that's like saying dungeon's will lead to strike missions. Eh.Saddly strikes dont fix the reason i dont do raids anymore, easy mode would, and no its not the difficulty of the raids themselves, i like them in normal mode and wish i could do them more.MikeZ did state easy mode raids were on the table as a possibility so let's keep the faith. If we got season1 content maybe they could squeeze that out too.

[HotDelirium.7984]

There are many changes the dev team could make that would make raiding easier, without changing the boss difficulty, and also benefit every other player in any other kind of combat.

It would never happen but if I had unlimited resources and was a dev I'd implement the lfg queue (when we reach 10 we are prompted to teleport and begin). Each player then is given a specific role and has visuals queue's about where to stand, attack etc per boss or encounter. Consider it "hold your hand during regular mode" instead of just an easy mode. ^_^ lol

[Teratus.2859]

@AgentMoore.9453 said:Wouldn't different difficulties also solve this problem? Being able to navigate the content more easily would mean that you'd probably be able to navigate it faster, thereby removing most of the problem.

I've always advocated for multiple difficulties for raids (and other secondary game modes), because it works so well in other parts of the game. Want to beat a story boss but with 18% more internal bleeding? Challenge motes. Enjoy relaxing festivals but wish you could relax while impaled on an endless sea of spikes? Super Adventure Box Tribulation Mode. These different modes also scale their rewards to ensure that the harder you bash your face against a wall, the more you earn for the effort.

There's no need for there to be any kind of division in the players or accessibility leap for something as integral to the game as raids. People shouldn't feel ashamed of their decision to relax or to challenge themselves. They shouldn't have to feel restricted by their time zones or available free time; the option to choose your route to success (hard and fast or casual and gradual) should be as open as is reasonable.

If it works for fractals, story bosses, SAB, and adventures/races, why can't it work for raids as well?

Yes.

I too have voiced support for difficulties as well.

Imo the best way would be easy, medium and hard modes.

Easy serving as a rewardless training mode so that people can familiarize themselves with the bosses mechanics and learn how to overcome them in a less punishing environment with others that are there for the exact same thing.Also serves as a way people less interested in raids can still experience any lore and story locked within a raid.

Medium serving as a default raid difficulty for all bosses

And Hard being the obvious everything is a suped up superboss that gives far more rewards for the hardcore raider who really want that raid challenge.

Everyone wins with those options because everyone gets to experience the content on a level that they feel comfortable with it.

Atm it's more a mix of Med/Hard depending on the boss and far too restricted to a small population of players who have decided that there is only X amount of ways the content can be played and beaten and I do not agree with that mentality.

[Taygus.4571]

@Teratus.2859 said:

@AgentMoore.9453 said:Wouldn't different difficulties also solve this problem? Being able to navigate the content more easily would mean that you'd probably be able to navigate it faster, thereby removing most of the problem.

I've always advocated for multiple difficulties for raids (and other secondary game modes), because it works so well in other parts of the game. Want to beat a story boss but with 18% more internal bleeding? Challenge motes. Enjoy relaxing festivals but wish you could relax while impaled on an endless sea of spikes? Super Adventure Box Tribulation Mode. These different modes also scale their rewards to ensure that the harder you bash your face against a wall, the more you earn for the effort.

There's no need for there to be any kind of division in the players or accessibility leap for something as integral to the game as raids. People shouldn't feel ashamed of their decision to relax or to challenge themselves. They shouldn't have to feel restricted by their time zones or available free time; the option to choose your route to success (hard and fast or casual and gradual) should be as open as is reasonable.

If it works for fractals, story bosses, SAB, and adventures/races, why can't it work for raids as well?

Yes.

I too have voiced support for difficulties as well.

Imo the best way would be easy, medium and hard modes.

Easy serving as a rewardless training mode so that people can familiarize themselves with the bosses mechanics and learn how to overcome them in a less punishing environment with others that are there for the exact same thing.Also serves as a way people less interested in raids can still experience any lore and story locked within a raid.

why rewardless? no one will do it if it gives nothing....

what would be helpful..is earnable token towards exotic gear, helping people learning also gear up classes for raids.

[Teratus.2859]

@Taygus.4571 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@AgentMoore.9453 said:Wouldn't different difficulties also solve this problem? Being able to navigate the content more easily would mean that you'd probably be able to navigate it faster, thereby removing most of the problem.

I've always advocated for multiple difficulties for raids (and other secondary game modes), because it works so well in other parts of the game. Want to beat a story boss but with 18% more internal bleeding? Challenge motes. Enjoy relaxing festivals but wish you could relax while impaled on an endless sea of spikes? Super Adventure Box Tribulation Mode. These different modes also scale their rewards to ensure that the harder you bash your face against a wall, the more you earn for the effort.

There's no need for there to be any kind of division in the players or accessibility leap for something as integral to the game as raids. People shouldn't feel ashamed of their decision to relax or to challenge themselves. They shouldn't have to feel restricted by their time zones or available free time; the option to choose your route to success (hard and fast or casual and gradual) should be as open as is reasonable.

If it works for fractals, story bosses, SAB, and adventures/races, why can't it work for raids as well?

Yes.

I too have voiced support for difficulties as well.

Imo the best way would be easy, medium and hard modes.

Easy serving as a rewardless training mode so that people can familiarize themselves with the bosses mechanics and learn how to overcome them in a less punishing environment with others that are there for the exact same thing.Also serves as a way people less interested in raids can still experience any lore and story locked within a raid.

why rewardless? no one will do it if it gives nothing....

what would be helpful..is earnable token towards exotic gear, helping people learning also gear up classes for raids.

Training/learning and lore/story will be the main reasons.It can't have rewards because it will take away from the normal raids and create a community of casual raiders who will just farm the easy modes rather than use them to learn how to better play the normal ones.

That wouldn't be a good thing for the game, but a rewardless easy raid would benefit a lot of people who do want to get into raiding as well as those who just want to experience the story side of it.

The easiest and best way I can think of doing easy modes is to keep them virtually identical to normal raid content but allow for self reviving after a few seconds to rejoin the fight and not having the boss enrage when the timer runs out.

The revives would serve to teach players what mehcanics will wipe players and groups in normal raids without actively screwing up a run.. this allows you to make mistakes and learn at your own pace without being benched for the rest of the fight (where you will learn literally nothing) or until the group wipes giving you multiple attempts, the rest of the group is also not effected as much by your mistakes either, a win win for everyone in this case.It leaves you free to concentrate on your own role as well as the bosses mechanics in a less stressful environment which imo would make a lot of difference.

The lack of enrage would make the timer a better target goal, if it it continued counting past the expire time it would give a good idea of how much more damage the group needs or how better then need to play in the normal mode.When a group is able to beat the boss within the time limit in easy they will know without doubt that they are ready to beat the normal boss and they will also know that they can win with the squad and builds they currently have.. it would be a big morale boost for them and chances are as soon as a group does this they will instantly want to try beating the normal mode boss.

[Etria.3642]

@"HotDelirium.7984" said:

There are many changes the dev team could make that would make raiding easier, without changing the boss difficulty, and also benefit every other player in any other kind of combat.

It would never happen but if I had unlimited resources and was a dev I'd implement the lfg queue (when we reach 10 we are prompted to teleport and begin). Each player then is given a specific role and has visuals queue's about where to stand, attack etc per boss or encounter. Consider it "hold your hand during regular mode" instead of just an easy mode. ^_^ lol

Each player then is given a specific role--does that then mean the queue won't "pop" if a support class isn't there, and/or would someone be forced to play support/tank/heal/kite? I have fought, for instance, Deimos many times, both ranged and melee, but have never tanked it, never kited oil, and let's just say I'm not the first choice for hands, either. GW2 isn't the normal trinity, where an auto pop is rather easier to define(tank,heals,dps) and if you queue as one of the three that is where you'll be slotted. But a player who is specced as, say, a nice and simple shortbow condi soulbeast(perfect for ranged strat Deimos) might be expected to respec and play heal druid kiting oil. I cannot see how that would work out so well in most cases.

and has visuals queue's about where to stand--this kind of exists already, or at least, it's when to move out of bad(yellow flashy screen edges) and when to move into good (green circles) and honestly, the floor is usually covered with stuff so adding even more individualized circles might go into information overload. Plus, how to do something like that for Sloth, where the floor practically IS the fight, or...eh, I can't think of a fight where this would work, to be honest. Too much can be changed by the players, too many visuals already.

The games I've experienced that used a "story mode" for raids, usually ended up dumbing down even those. They either eliminate, or lessen, all mechanics. So for instance, Deimos oils would drop, but not spread. Hands would appear but do no damage. You wouldn't actually get knocked off the platform. Saul wouldn't ever die.

------------

To a couple other points above the quoted post, regarding rewards. Raids are not all THAT rewarding one boss at a time, it's only nice when you do a few bosses in clumps. As in. a couple or more entire WINGS. So if the easy modes still gave rewards, they would be so trivial as so be insulting. The suggestion was exotics. Well, that's what the regular raids give. An exotic, a couple gold, some green and blue gear, magnetic shards. A CHANCE at a mini or ascended. You can go weeks without getting one of those drops. Yes, raid enough and you will get them, or can buy them with the shards, but what would you reduce that to for an easy version? 30 silver, a rare and a chance at an exotic, plus a couple shards? At that point Strikes are a better time investment, and require much less in terms of group composition.

In order for easy mode raids to be useful for progression, they should at least INCLUDE the visuals of the mechanics. So someone could learn oil kiting in Deimos, orb-pushing in KC, greens in Dhuum, but without incentive to do them, there won't be enough folks filling them up. In the raid area, someone suggested just little training areas for these mechanics, which I agree with.

I do think that raids currently have a huge disparity in difficulty. You can't put Twin Largos on the same scale as Cairn. I DO wish they had some consistency. If they were to level raids to make 2 levels that would be reasonable, in my opinion. For instance, leave Wing 4 as is for "easy mode" with perhaps making Deimos slightly more forgiving. Bump them all up for a regular mode. Challenge motes for truly difficult(and put in rewards for completing it more than once). For wing 5, make it easier for a regular mode. Maybe bump up a couple things for regular, but it's somewhat difficult as is, and again, make the challenge motes truly difficult AND truly rewarding. Not impossible. Difficult.

Basically level them out. Otherwise, as it currently is, someone could try Mursaat Overseet and think, hey, yeah, I can do this. They glance at LFG, and try Quadim and nope right out of any other raids.

[DMO.4158]

All of the nonsense, the stigma, the drama etc could easily be addressed.

Every single game with group content goes through this. It isn't new, it isn't exclusive to guildwars 2. The same patterns emerge in every genre/game. It has very little to do with game design and everything to do with human nature that is compounded by players being given too much control over game systems and accessibility. Mostly through abusing a text based LFG tool.

All you need to do is figure out the commonalities between various systems. What's the one singular thing that each group based game has in common?

Answer: the power is given to a small niche of players. These players set the rules and pace and ultimately get to gatekeep an entire chunk of content.

The solution: take the power and control away from the players and bake it into every raid. Treat raids like open world events. Allow the game to lead the raid and dictate pacing. Whether through a disembodied Voice or an actual NPC raid leader. Allow the game to teach mechanics in an organic manner rather than a 14 yo screaming over discord.

Keep the existing hard mode for tryhard sweats. They can all enjoy each others company in their own private groups.

The developers should be in control of group content. It should have an automated matchmaking system too. Half the battle is farting around building a group. That time sink and deterrent could be eliminated.

I walked into the fractal lobby for the first time yesterday and was met with me zoning into an instance alone.....why isn't the game matchmaking me into a group? I don't have time to foster relationships and beg people in chat. It's 2020 for god sakes.

This content is mostly going to waste without a proper automated grouping system. And if it can't be completed by an automated pug in a reasonable time frame, it's over tuned for the largest demographic of the game. Simple.

Otherwise you end up with a business model like world of Warcraft. Where millions of players are financing content for a small portion of raid guilds. And those guilds gatekeep the content through various methods and shut out the very people that are paying for THEIR fun.

[maddoctor.2738]

Raids already save your progress. When you beat a boss, it is saved, so next time you enter you can continue from where you left off. So what's the point of your suggestion?

[Vilin.8056]

@DMO.4158 said:All of the nonsense, the stigma, the drama etc could easily be addressed.

Every single game with group content goes through this. It isn't new, it isn't exclusive to guildwars 2. The same patterns emerge in every genre/game. It has very little to do with game design and everything to do with human nature that is compounded by players being given too much control over game systems and accessibility. Mostly through abusing a text based LFG tool.

All you need to do is figure out the commonalities between various systems. What's the one singular thing that each group based game has in common?

Answer: the power is given to a small niche of players. These players set the rules and pace and ultimately get to gatekeep an entire chunk of content.

The solution: take the power and control away from the players and bake it into every raid. Treat raids like open world events. Allow the game to lead the raid and dictate pacing. Whether through a disembodied Voice or an actual NPC raid leader. Allow the game to teach mechanics in an organic manner rather than a 14 yo screaming over discord.

Keep the existing hard mode for tryhard sweats. They can all enjoy each others company in their own private groups.

The developers should be in control of group content. It should have an automated matchmaking system too. Half the battle is farting around building a group. That time sink and deterrent could be eliminated.

I walked into the fractal lobby for the first time yesterday and was met with me zoning into an instance alone.....why isn't the game matchmaking me into a group? I don't have time to foster relationships and beg people in chat. It's 2020 for god sakes.

This content is mostly going to waste without a proper automated grouping system. And if it can't be completed by an automated pug in a reasonable time frame, it's over tuned for the largest demographic of the game. Simple.

Otherwise you end up with a business model like world of Warcraft. Where millions of players are financing content for a small portion of raid guilds. And those guilds gatekeep the content through various methods and shut out the very people that are paying for THEIR fun.

Been there, done that with Scarlet Briar events, we ends up with players AFK/Macro/Bot/Lazy farming in hard bosses dragging events to fail.

[Ayrilana.1396]

@DMO.4158 said:Answer: the power is given to a small niche of players. These players set the rules and pace and ultimately get to gatekeep an entire chunk of content.

You're only prevented from doing content with them. There's nothing preventing you from creating your own group and doing the content with others like you.

[mindcircus.1506]

@"Etria.3642" said:The games I've experienced that used a "story mode" for raids, usually ended up dumbing down even those. They either eliminate, or lessen, all mechanics. So for instance, Deimos oils would drop, but not spread. Hands would appear but do no damage. You wouldn't actually get knocked off the platform. Saul wouldn't ever die.If the mechanics do not punish the player who fails them how is the player going to learn to avoid them?If I can hand kite using an Apothecary Deadeye because there is no damage then all I am learning is where to stand. If they do no damage then the player isn't learning anything but bad habits. They will just say "well I can totally handle this on my Carrion Spellbreaker".Then you know what happens?More "raids are too hard" threads.@"Taygus.4571" said:what would be helpful..is earnable token towards exotic gear, helping people learning also gear up classes for raids.What an amazing idea.They could create some basic boss encounters that teach people the basics and then tie in stat-selectable exotic gear that is earned by completing the content. If they were really serious about it they could even make the Exotic gear with new cosmetics to further incent players.This idea is so great you should let Arenanet know about it. Suggest they call the basic Boss encounters "Strike Missions" and the Stat-selectable exotic gear "Runic" armor. Maybe they could call the currency "Shards" or something wacky like that....I don't know... go wild with it.It's an idea so good you would swear it was already in the game.