EOD Stream on July 27 has to say something about RAIDS.

[Dante.1763]

1 hour ago, Sajuuk Khar.1509 said:

I find it ironic that the OP talks about content no one plays... when the whole reason why Anet stopped making raids was because so few people played them that it wasn't justifiable to keep making them.

 

The whole point of Strikes was to serve as raid primers, content to get the rest of the playerbase into a raid mindset. But the problem with Strikes is that the vast majority of people who don't do raids don't do them not because they don't know how, or couldn't have learned, but rather because they simply don't want to do that kind of content in the first place. Strikes were fundamentally flawed because they assumed the problem was ignorance, when it was really apathy.

 

You can't change player apathy to that kind of content, so most people will never get into raids. So raids will always remain little developed since so few people play them its hard to justify making them except once every 3-4 years.

You arent wrong here. Im curious to see if they will go the way of dungeons entirely.

[Omega.6801]

12 hours ago, Raknar.4735 said:

*Your deciding factor in buying the expansion.

 

I'd rather have ANet spend resources on something else.

B..but they did mounts....😨

On topic: No they don't have to. It would be good to have an update on raids. Wether or not they're still a thing or not and I'd prefer the statement to not be "oh it's definitely on the table". I personaly like raids a lot but I also have a nice community to raid with. The way OP words his/her post as "casuals got blablabla" makes me think OP might feel a bit entitled, not being "one of those story playing, open world bosses killing, map completing, good-for-nothing casuals" and all that. It's fair that raids are a deciding factor for YOU and that YOU NEED this to happen, but be aware that there aren't that many awesome extreme hard core raiders in GW2's community. So we come back to: No they don't need to adress it.

[Obtena.7952]

It's like someone wakes up from a coma and asks where MC Hammer is. 

 

Adding more raids as we know them and seen them implemented in the past would be one of the most tone-deaf things Anet could do right now. 

Edited July 21, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Fueki.4753]

Unless Arenanet mentions the addition more difficulties for raids, I'd rather not have them spend resources on new raids.

Before they make new ones, they should make the existing ones more accessible to a wider part of the playerbase.

[Krzysztof.5973]

4 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

It's like someone wakes up from a coma and asks where MC Hammer is. 

 

Adding more raids as we know them and seen them implemented in the past would be one of the most tone-deaf things Anet could do right now. 

Obtena and hatred towards anything remotely involving raids - name more iconic duo. 

[Infusion.7149]

10 hours ago, lokh.2695 said:

B..but they did mounts....😨

On topic: No they don't have to. It would be good to have an update on raids. Wether or not they're still a thing or not and I'd prefer the statement to not be "oh it's definitely on the table". I personaly like raids a lot but I also have a nice community to raid with. The way OP words his/her post as "casuals got blablabla" makes me think OP might feel a bit entitled, not being "one of those story playing, open world bosses killing, map completing, good-for-nothing casuals" and all that. It's fair that raids are a deciding factor for YOU and that YOU NEED this to happen, but be aware that there aren't that many awesome extreme hard core raiders in GW2's community. So we come back to: No they don't need to adress it.

Mounts are heavily monetized and like it or not they increase living story engagement which inflates the hours played metric by people that play it episodically (only when new living story : i.e. the TV show business model). Even warclaw has skins for it.

If you had to monetize raids in the same vein as living story (it is charged gems if you miss an episode) it would be a fraction of a percent ROI probably. Many of the people that left or laid off in 2019 were in the raid team , there is zero job security for someone in that team if they do not do something else besides raids exclusively.

WvW could be more monetized without toxifying the mode (see server transfer hopping in current model). Mount skins, siege skins, guild banner changes for structures, guild claiming effects when you capture a structure, NPC/guard skins when you own something, siege effects, etc. We already have glider skins and such. As a subset of monetizing WvW, GvG in EoTM if garnering greater support from the overall community could gain viewership in terms of competitive play. Arenanet has provided minor amounts of support to community tournaments via titles.

PvP used to have tokens for games that you bought for gems, guess what happened to it? That concept died off because the monetization failed so all we have now are custom arena time tokens for ingame gold. Before it was 150 gems for 5 tokens, which is far more than the 10 gold it costs now after the inflation of gold. If it was still pre-HOT that would be equal to something akin to $5 (5 gold = 100 gems before 2014). Now the main profit from PVP players is likely finishers.

At the end of the day Arenanet is a business and raids are probably the worst thing they can do with the resources they have currently. There is basically nothing to set the PvE raids apart from other games which are more focused on endgame raiding, whereas PvP on an even footing and WvW have far more potential that has yet to be tapped into.

Right now the main person that works on both fractals and raids is Cameron Rich (who was laid off in 2019 and rehired in Feb 2020). Jason Reynolds left in 2019 and he was responsible for raid content exclusively before July 2018. Crystal Reid, who I quoted in the original post here and was a design lead for raids and fractals, left in 2019 and was responsible for iconic raid bosses such as VG, Sab, Sloth, Matt, MO and Deimos. Paul Ella also left in 2019 and was part of the raids design team. Trevor Bennett was one of the three main people responsible for the start of raids (programmer that made 10 man squads and checkpoints) and left in 2019 . Benjamin Arnold (programmer) was rehired in 2020 after 2019 layoffs and was responsible for Qadim, Adina, Deepstone, Twilight Oasis, Nightmare Fractal, and Shattered Observatory. Jon Olson left in 2019. Branden Gee left in 2016 and was mainly working on raids after initially doing PVP programming (Stronghold , mist champions). Given that Sunqua peak still has bugs in it and so do some raids as old as wing 1 and 2 there needs to be more QA on those before even thinking of putting out more of them. Even as recently as May 25 patch, Twin Largos mechanic bug was patched and so was a Samarog bug.  

Quote

Bastion of the Penitent: Fixed a bug in which Samarog would inconsistently pull spears across the room throughout the fight.
    Mythwright Gambit: Fixed a bug in which certain mechanics would fail to initiate in phases 3 and 4 of the Twin Largos encounter.

See also
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnVLGGPYMdE
 

Quote

 

41:59

prototyping wise um crystal reed

42:02

uh was the the team lead at the time we

42:04

had crystal

42:05

jason reynolds um we had trevor bennett

42:09

uh do we have anybody else i think that

42:12

was just us three at the start

42:13

okay um and then i think paul ella was

42:16

our producer

42:17

um so we were a small little rag tag

42:18

team

 

and https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Raid-team-introductions/5556443

In summary:
* Cameron Rich is the only person that mainly did raids still left and is also responsible for fractals. Guess which is more likely to be made? Consider he is Living World designer now.
* Jason Reynolds left Nov 2019 , before leaving in July 2018 was transitioned to Living World team lead
* Crystal Reid (Design Lead for the Guild Wars 2 Raids Team and Fractals of the Mists) left Nov 2019
* Benjamin Arnold mainly does fractal content
Basically asking for something that is essentially not feasible without new hires.

 

Edited July 21, 2021 by Infusion.7149
add link to raid team intro from old forum archive

[Firebeard.1746]

3 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Jason Reynolds left in 2019 and he was responsible for raid content exclusively before July 2018.

I also want to note he was a wildstar dev before that. Wildstar was supposed to be all about raiding and its hardcore PVE and we see where that took it.......

I don't know how much input he had over other devs, but I wouldn't trust a wildstar dev with designing raids for my game. Apparently people like him though and he works for Bungie now.

[Firebeard.1746]

Though I will say this though:
Raids fill an interesting niche and that's solid content for players who have climbed the mountain and are bored. People who have played this game a lot, I mean alot, seem to start gravitating towards them if you look at GW2efficiency rankings, at least 50% of 5,000+ hours players have gotten their feet wet (19 LIs) and 20% have earned enough for 2 armor sets and 1 ring (789). This is probably because contrary to popular belief, players in other game modes get better at their classes and want to start pushing themselves harder. Interestingly enough 10% of the players in this category also have more LI than you'd ever need for each class of legendary from raids. So there are people who do them just for fun.

So I'm not sure raiders should be completely ignored. Even if there's no new raids, Anet needs to give something for veterans who want to push themselves as part of their engagement. If there are new raids, I want to see other PVE  game modes and legendaries for them for non-raiders (or heck, just an expansion of dungeon/fractal systems). They should also close the gap in terms of time spent for legendary acquisition between game modes. Anet also needs to think harder about how to keep hardcore PVE content friendly and inviting. Because most people who get interested or who can tolerate it play with people they know, not the craziness that's sometimes in the LFGs.

My heart may be softening a little towards the raid community now, but a lot of trolls on these forums give them a super bad name (and a lot of raiders in game too). And if they want the rest of the community's support, they should probably support the rest of the community (the 60% ish) that don't want to raid in their goals. If we work together, anet can make something that works for both of us.
 

Edited July 21, 2021 by Firebeard.1746

[Obtena.7952]

4 hours ago, Krzysztof.5973 said:

Obtena and hatred towards anything remotely involving raids - name more iconic duo. 

Rightly so ... especially since Anet themselves admit there failure here with stopping releasing them. 

[Cyninja.2954]

7 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Rightly so ... especially since Anet themselves admit there failure here with stopping releasing them. 

 

So, if they do decide to return to creating raids, does that mean they changed their opinion on this then? Going with your logic, it does does it not?

 

They now have far more data than they had in the past, even in regards to trying different types of content between the mentioned announcement and EoD (strikes, DRMs, instanced open world event content).

 

The developers have reversed decisions and approach in other areas. Surely you must agree that decisions are thus not set in stone? Or is this one of those: only the decision I agree with made by the developers is/was correct?

Edited July 22, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[HotDelirium.7984]

Instead of new raids they need to have multiple difficulties of existing raids and an easy queue to get into them instead of begging raid training guilds or buying raid currency as your only ticket in. In other MMO's you just queue up and go- their raids are practically dungeons and there is nothing wrong with that. Fractals have multiple difficulties so why can't raids. Its mind-boggling. 

 

If the purpose of strike missions was to "train for raids" why in the ever living TYRIA were the mechanics irrelevant in many of the encounters. The bosses should be....oh I dunno...MAYBE the actual raid boss in the raid your training for....crazy idea I know ❤️  

[Infusion.7149]

12 minutes ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

Instead of new raids they need to have multiple difficulties of existing raids and an easy queue to get into them instead of begging raid training guilds or buying raid currency as your only ticket in. In other MMO's you just queue up and go- their raids are practically dungeons and there is nothing wrong with that. Fractals have multiple difficulties so why can't raids. Its mind-boggling. 

 

If the purpose of strike missions was to "train for raids" why in the ever living TYRIA were the mechanics irrelevant in many of the encounters. The bosses should be....oh I dunno...MAYBE the actual raid boss in the raid your training for....crazy idea I know ❤️  

 

People were adamant that any lowered difficulty of raid setting give full rewards which would never work because you'd have no incentive to do normal or challenge mode. The weekly challenge mode box with provisioner tokens was specifically added for this reason.

 

An easy/infantile mode with full ressing (as opposed to from downstate) , no timers, and checkpoints (see fractals) would have been fine. If you have played Forging Steel on normal and had someone troll a casual group that did not sign up for full CMs you would know the difference is stark. Every time I did Forging Steel on full CMs was with a fully comped group that specifically knows what they are signing up for.

 

There's also the problem the game was not designed with a trinity in mind so you have people bringing stuff that may clash with other people's builds. If you watch the interview with the raid dev I linked above they said the raids' inception was originally based off WoW/FFXIV. They needed to have mechanics such as CC boss to get them to stop killing tank , stopping orbs from getting to Vale Guardian, or whatnot. There's several instances where the systems in place are not ideal such as kiters (people ignore the mechanic in Boneskinner which I guess is training for Qadim the Peerless pylons) but generally red circle = spread out , green circle = stack to distribute damage.

[Michram.6853]

I'd rather hope they would work on easy mode for every raid, rather than creating new. this would certainly attract new players to join raids and experience their amazing story. 

[Michram.6853]

19 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Rightly so ... especially since Anet themselves admit there failure here with stopping releasing them. 

It simply means raids don't concern most of the players, but story and open world exploration do. 

So raids don't generate money. 

Edited July 22, 2021 by Arden.7480

[Sobx.1758]

Nothing against training modes to help people understand mechanics and grow confidence before joining actual raiding, in fact that's something I already proposed/supported on this forum as well. That said, there's still something I can't stand and need to comment on:

7 hours ago, HotDelirium.7984 said:

Ito get into them instead of begging raid training guilds or buying raid currency as your only ticket in.

Here's the question: how many of the people that keep repeating this kitten actually tried getting into any kind of training/beginner/no req raids? After reading this post, I've went into the game, pressed Y and right away got the ones on the left. Then after 2 minutes I pressed refresh and screenshotted new ones, that are on the right while trying to avoid any "duplicates":

https://i.imgur.com/hkbLKJT.png

(yup, cm cairn/mo were "know mechanics" without any kp requirements, didn't know the pop-up extensions on mouseover aren't getting captured 🙄 )

 

Again -I see the appeal of easy/training mode, but stop lying. Anyone who's complaining on the forum could be trying out some raids instead, if they were in the game and actually tried. And I wasn't even specifically camping lfg, as I said, this is literally prompted by reading your post, pressing "y" and scrolling/screenshotting. Does it mean there are training/no req/low req raids 24/7? Nope, absolutely not. But I know -and already wrote it on this forum- that for the past few weeks whener I raid, I'm constantly joining those training/low req raids without even specifically looking for them (as I don't really need them, but on the other hand don't mind playing with newer players) and every time I see someone pretending they need raiding guild or 10 friends to start raiding, it's just laughably wrong. You're free to be scared of random people in the game or whatever else your actual reasoning is, but stop pretending you don't have opportunities to start.

 

Edited July 22, 2021 by Sobx.1758

[yann.1946]

In light of their attempt to be more commutative, yes they should talk about them.

Either say their will come more, or conclusively say that no raids will come out again.

[Obtena.7952]

On 7/22/2021 at 1:37 AM, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

So, if they do decide to return to creating raids, does that mean they changed their opinion on this then? Going with your logic, it does does it not?

 

They now have far more data than they had in the past, even in regards to trying different types of content between the mentioned announcement and EoD (strikes, DRMs, instanced open world event content).

 

The developers have reversed decisions and approach in other areas. Surely you must agree that decisions are thus not set in stone? Or is this one of those: only the decision I agree with made by the developers is/was correct?

That's true ... and we are STILL waiting for more raids. Either it takes a REALLY REALLY long time to make one ... or raids still can't be developed as sustainable content. 

 

I'm also not dismissing the fact that they could still make raids ... and it's not sustainable content. I wouldn't put it past the current Anet executive to do such a thing seeing as they are the ones that brought them in the first place, along with massive difficulty increase in HoT ... all a bunch of things I'm sure everyone was really excited about 🙄

Edited July 23, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Cyninja.2954]

51 minutes ago, Obtena.7952 said:

That's true ... and we are STILL waiting for more raids. Either it takes a REALLY REALLY long time to make one ... or raids still can't be developed as sustainable content. 

Is this true for new story and open world content too? Given that this content is also not released and used to be THE content which always saw release?

 

Might this be related to an upcoming expansion?

 

Quote

 

I'm also not dismissing the fact that they could still make raids ... and it's not sustainable content. I wouldn't put it past the current Anet executive to do such a thing seeing as they are the ones that brought them in the first place, along with massive difficulty increase in HoT ... all a bunch of things I'm sure everyone was really excited about 🙄

 

Or, their metrics do suggest that raids are beneficial to the game, and are/have designed raids as content to be launched alongside other content with the next expansion.

 

All I am saying is:

you can't have it only 1 way. Either the developers decision are meaningful, no matter if you like them or not. Or you accept their decisions are prone to error, which both reduces meaning as to past decisions as well as opens up possibilities for diverging future decisions.

Edited July 23, 2021 by Cyninja.2954

[Obtena.7952]

3 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Is this true for new story and open world content too? Given that this content is also not released and used to be THE content which always saw release?

I could be ... Maybe that's why we got 'expansion-like' IBS. 

 

 

Quote

 

Might this be related to an upcoming expansion?

 

 

Or, their metrics do suggest that raids are beneficial to the game, and are/have designed raids as content to be launched alongside other content with the next expansion.

There could be lots of reasons ... what I do know is that we used to get raids, expansion release or not. And then they stopped ... oh no wait, they didn't stop, they just 'take over 2 years' to make. 😉

 

Yes, developers decisions are meaningful, especially when they are bad for the game and doubly so if they REMAKE those same decisions a second time. 

Edited July 23, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Cyninja.2954]

1 minute ago, Obtena.7952 said:

I could be ... Maybe that's why we got 'expansion-like' IBS. 

 

 

There could be lots of reasons ... what I do know is that we used to get raids, expansion release or not. And then they stopped ... oh no wait, they didn't stop, they just 'take over 2 years' to make. 😉

 

2 years during which content similar to raids was produced, or at least tried. With varying degrees of success. I guess this can be interpreted in differing ways, most likely subject to ones preferences or desire. 🤷‍♂️

[Obtena.7952]

11 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

 

2 years during which content similar to raids was produced, or at least tried. With varying degrees of success. I guess this can be interpreted in differing ways, most likely subject to ones preferences or desire. 🤷‍♂️

I view this last 2 years as an experiment. Hopefully the result, whatever it is, will be used to make good decisions about the game moving forward and not just get good idea fairies in the ivory tower pushing their pet projects and saying things like "we are going to make the game for the players again" That kind of talk gets you raids in the first place. That kind of talk is how OW game difficulty ramps up to HoT levels. 

Edited July 23, 2021 by Obtena.7952

[Teratus.2859]

Why should Anet bother to continue investing a game mode that most of their player base either has no interest in playing anymore or never could get into in the first place?

I've been saying for years in my numerous arguments with raiders that what raids needs more than anything is a larger active playerbase to justify it's continued support.. much of which was just ignored by people who were more focused on dismissing the numerous calls from players asking for more options.. such as easy mode raids for example.

I'm not going to just state that raids are dead or anything nor am I saying Anet has given up and will never make more raids.
But if you feel like the game mode is stagnating at this point and being actively neglected then you are feeling what I was trying to warn you about for a long time.

If more people regularly play raids.. raids would probably have more support.
But something needs to change within raiding to get more people interested.
Strikes tried to be a bridge to help people get into Raid content but ultimately it failed to do so.
I'm still a firm believer in easy/story mode raids that help teach people the actual mechanics of each raid boss in a less punishing environment but that's just me.
I'm not interested in getting into another argument over that though XD

[Fuchslein.8639]

The gw2 community seems to be a big fan of Anet dropping one content after another.

 

"I'd rather they work on other content" <-- that's what they do all the time, Sherlock 😄

 

  

22 hours ago, Arden.7480 said:

I'd rather hope they would work on easy mode for every raid, rather than creating new. this would certainly attract new players to join raids and experience their amazing story. 

 

What story?

Edited July 23, 2021 by Fuchslein.8639

[Astralporing.1957]

19 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Is this true for new story and open world content too? Given that this content is also not released and used to be THE content which always saw release?

 

Might this be related to an upcoming expansion?

Might be. Except they visibly tried to keep casual players engaged (with the return to LS metaevent), they tried to keep the WvW players engaged (with the few weekend events, and with the announcement that alliances are, indeed coming, and not soon(tm), but soon), they tried to keep those interested in moderately challenging content engaged with stuff like Marionette, but they never tried to reach in any way to Raid community.

If they wanted to keep raiders engaged in waiting for the new wing that is so surely in the works, they would have dropped that bomb on the hardcore community long ago. Or at least sent some hints out to keep people interested. Instead, the last information we have is that Raids don;t have the population big enough for them to be worth working on, and hints (from a certain recent youtube interview with certain dev) that the population problems started way back, when they were still officially commenting how they are satisfied with raids (specifically - that the first fractal CMs were okayed partially due to that, which means the population problems had to be already visible even before November 2016)

 

19 hours ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Or, their metrics do suggest that raids are beneficial to the game, and are/have designed raids as content to be launched alongside other content with the next expansion.

See above. If they thought that keeping raider population was that beneficial, they would have sent out at least some hints to that community by now.

 

I guess we'll see in 4 days. Still, i would be surprised if they were to return to Raids, and not try some other forms of challenging content that is easier to develop and maintain, and more open to overall community instead.

[Touchme.1097]

I believe raids to be a vital part of any decent MMO, I am definitely asking ArenaNet to invest more time and resources on raids.

If done well this game mode will definitely turn to be an asset and not a liability.

Hope to see some news about raids for EoD.