Legendary armor is... Locked for some people.

[Epsilon Indi.2031]

5 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I agree with you. The difference is night and day. Anyone can see it.

 

And yet, I guarantee you those people are the ones that keep this game going. They're the ones that buy the oufits and skins in the gem store or black lion keys that keep the lights on at Anet.  So yeah they don't have the skillsets as raiders. You should be grateful that they're keeping the game going, because there aren't enough raiders to keep it going.

Nah, whales

The 'casuals' don't keep anything going.  It's the gambling  addicts who keep buying keys and I've yet to meet someone who isn't addicted to fashion to the point where they buy any and all new skins they like from the gemshop.  I've also yet to meet anyone who'd be really 'casual' and also have the same attitude as you.  They'd not even know about legendary armor given the average awareness of your open world player.  So if I'm completely honest, people who do open world, fractals, wvw, and pvp aren't casual by any stretch of the imagination.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Sir Alymer.3406

[Vayne.8563]

24 minutes ago, Sir Alymer.3406 said:

Nah, whales

The 'casuals' don't keep anything going.  It's the gambling  addicts who keep buying keys and I've yet to meet someone who isn't addicted to fashion to the point where they buy any and all new skins they like from the gemshop.  I've also yet to meet anyone who'd be really 'casual' and also have the same attitude as you.  They'd not even know about legendary armor given the average awareness of your open world player.  So if I'm completely honest, people who do open world, fractals, wvw, and pvp aren't casual by any stretch of the imagination.

I approach the game casually even though I play a lot. You can call me hard core, but I don't do hard core content. I do PvP but I'm not competitive about it. I play WvW but I'm not a roamer.  I don't get the DPS raiders get, but I don't get the DPS open world players get either.  People are different degrees of casual and hard core. That's why I call myself a hard core casual.

[Xanadrine.4352]

8 hours ago, Aeis.8519 said:

They don't, though?  The general sentiment I'm getting from this thread is that there's a subset of players here that want legendary armor for less work than what it currently takes to get it from any of the game modes.  Alternatives involving more lively, daily activities were suggested, shot down, and petty argumentation ensued that lead to no solution.  There's also this huge schism between what everyone here believes is deserving of legendary armor with people suggesting that world bosses are enough to requiring multiple strike CM clears in EoD.

Work ...in a game. I think you got that wrong, a game is supposed to be fun, not work. 

The huge schism is the old...well in my day/hey you kids get off my lawn.. routine. Why does it matter if casuals that dont raid get a set? What does it hurt you? It would actually be good for the game, since it would put people on a path to create a set something they would not have done before. Trying to say there can be no alternative to raids! is ridiculous, this game is not based on raids. They were put in because they thought people would flock to them. Guess what..they didnt, its been 6 years and people avoid them.

 

It truly is a git good scrub mentality that people have that do raids vs everyone else. Even the legendary sets could not entice people to do them. There is nothing wrong with giving a plain jane set to the casual open world players. What im seeing is , you cant have our sets! we want you to know we have something you never will. The thing is you still have envoy armor that says look at me I raided for this. So a plain open world set isnt going to take anything away from you. But it will increase regular players interest and participation in doing their own legendary path. There have been good suggestions in many threads on how to do this. At the end of the day it takes nothing away from you.

 

   

[Astralporing.1957]

6 hours ago, Infusion.7149 said:

Tell us how you really feel. It was already obvious from previous threads how absurdly easy you would want acquisition methods to be.

You must not have read any of it then.

[yann.1946]

9 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

Well, I define 'bad' in this case as two things:

 

1. Anet did the work to create methods and put leg armor in the game. I do believe Anet's intention was that raids were going to be the direction forward for 'endgame content' for people ... but that's not how it worked out. Yes, I'm assuming that raids wasn't just a '4 year project' that ends. I think that assumption is pretty reasonable given the scope and effort Anet put into it.  

I agree with this point, but their is no explenation why the limit accesibility is bad.

9 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

2. Players aren't engaged in that content. Regardless of the work, no developer of ANYTHING wants to see their realized creations not get used. That's bad for business. 

This is actually a reason, and their was not even a reason to mention raids in regards to this point so even better.

Now i will disagree with the spirit of the point because im going to assume that you are being hyperbolic when talking about NOT being used and mean get used by the minority.

 

I'm going to argue that a reward can be usefull for the mayority even if the mayority will never get them. 

For example the "im rich you know" title serves a purpose for the game even though the majority of the players will never get them.

Lengendaries still serve a purpose (giving value to some materials) even if only a tiny fraction of the population will ever get them.

Most achievement/rewards are designed with the explicit understanding that the minority will get them.

 

 

 

9 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

From my perspective, the more instances of work being done/players don't engage, the worse it is. I don't think it's a 'problem' that we have this particular instance in the game, but I do think it's a wasted opportunity for Anet to not explore ways to get this gear in the hands of players with content they ARE willing to do. This is especially true considering:

 

1. the paradigm of end game gear is that it should be something everyone takes SOME interest in obtaining in an MMO. 

2. the items in question here are convenience items that wouldn't affect the performance of a player in PVE. 

 

1) true which is the reason its good lure to get people to try content. I would argue though that the game might be healthier if less people have legendary gear period. The reason is that we do not want the having of legendary quality gear as the norm, we already have problems with people asking wether ascended is nessecary.

 

2) This is equally a reason why it would not matter if people get it or not. TBH if their was a power difference i would be 100 percent on your side. One of the reasons i'm greatly in favor of the easier acces of ascended gear.

 

9 hours ago, Obtena.7952 said:

I think the only barrier to this idea of alternate PVE methods to obtain leg armor is that it would be perceived as an easier path than WvW, where the armor does have a performance impact. I also believe that this can be addressed. It's actually similar to how Anet addressed crafting precursors when that was introduced. 

Their is actually value in excusivity, or more precise the fact that you can get lots of things with just gold decreases the feeling of reward people get. (The fact that the reward system sucks is a freqsuent complaint after all.). 

 

Their will be actual damage done to the game if leg armour is to widly accesible.

 

 

 

I feel like their our base disagreement is this 

 

You think that more accesistion methods will increase player engagement.

 

I think the opposite is true in the long term. personally i think it would be better for the game if the pvp and wvw trinkets would have completed the pve set. And this new amulet would be a new set entirely. Then people will be pushed in more content to finish their set which in general is better.

[T G.7496]

Really, just do WvW.

That's your easy to acquire a PvE set.

WvW is PvE - the game says so - and there is a lot of plain PvE content in it.

Most open world content, especially core maps and world bosses, is nothing more than training wheels content.

[yann.1946]

9 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I don;t know what @Zuldari.3940 meant when he said that, but as i see it, there are several issues with it:

First, Envoy was a big draw that brought a number of players into the content, and inflated it beyond the numbers it would have without it. On surface, that seems good, for raiders at least, because they have more people to play with. On the other hand, it affects the statistics, and makes it so devs are unable to see what the real situation is. As such, when eventually the people that went there for shinies pull out, it becomes too late to attempt to fix the situation. Additionally, it not only confuses devs, but also raiders themselves. They see other players doing that content, and think it validates their view about the content. It also makes it so they feel safe, and as such react violently to any attempt to change the situation which they might perceive as giving ground. And when they eventually see people leaving, they look into all the other reasons that might have caused it, not admitting that their content might just have been that (un) popular from the get go. While, if the situation was not falsified from the beginning, they might have been more amenable to changes (and the changes might have happened way before raiders dug out on their positions).

 

Second, we know that making raid armor took a lot of resources from anet. So many, they never considered making another set of similar quality. That resource expediture unfortunately ended up being partially wasted, because it happened to end up being used by only a small amount of players. At the same time, it set certain expectations. For one, exclusivity - Anet could not just use the same rewards for raids and other content because by that point raiders fully expected them to be 100% exclusive and would have thrown a riot if that were to change. But at the same time, raiders expected the same amount of resources dedicated to future rewards, and Anet could not justify doing that, seeing how few players actually benefitted from it. And when Anet started lowering the resource expenditures, it also triggered negative response, and players leaving (which in turn caused Anet to have to reduce resource expenditures even more, in adjustment for even lower raid population, which caused even more people getting angry and leaving, and so on, and so on).

 

The above of course is not just about Envoy set, but it did play a big role here.

 

Basically, if Anet did not make Envoy locked behind raids, raid population would not have gotten inflated so much at the start and Anet would have noticed there are problems much earlier, and be able to make adjustments before the situation got so bad that it was unsalvageable. If the problems would have been visible from the beginning, raiders would have been far more willing to adjust, just to keep their content. And if Anet's resource expenditures on raid content were lower, they might have been more willing to still keep working on them even at lower population levels.

 

Perhaps. Or perhaps Raids were simply doomed from the very beginning and nothing could have saved them.

Thank you, this explenation makes sense, although it does not change anything about people not wanting envoy in other places?

 

Their are a few thing i will have to disagree with, almost all raiders on this forum knew/said that raids where not popular/content for the minority. I do not feel like that ever was debated. (maybe you consider the mention of the devquote that said that raids where more popular then expected as raiders not saying raids are only played by the minority?)

 

Also, i do not think people expected the same amount of resources spend on subsequent rewards (the opposite actually because how long it took to get the armour out.) They expected a consistent amount of resources on the content though. People would have been fine if their was consistency and communication about that.

 

The major problem i see with your take is that it puts all the downfall of the raid population as inevitable based on their design. And this has not been shown at all.

[Aeis.8519]

2 hours ago, Zuldari.3940 said:

Work ...in a game. I think you got that wrong, a game is supposed to be fun, not work. 

The huge schism is the old...well in my day/hey you kids get off my lawn.. routine. Why does it matter if casuals that dont raid get a set? What does it hurt you? It would actually be good for the game, since it would put people on a path to create a set something they would not have done before. Trying to say there can be no alternative to raids! is ridiculous, this game is not based on raids. They were put in because they thought people would flock to them. Guess what..they didnt, its been 6 years and people avoid them.

 

It truly is a git good scrub mentality that people have that do raids vs everyone else. Even the legendary sets could not entice people to do them. There is nothing wrong with giving a plain jane set to the casual open world players. What im seeing is , you cant have our sets! we want you to know we have something you never will. The thing is you still have envoy armor that says look at me I raided for this. So a plain open world set isnt going to take anything away from you. But it will increase regular players interest and participation in doing their own legendary path. There have been good suggestions in many threads on how to do this. At the end of the day it takes nothing away from you.

 

   

Work, effort, skill, time spent in content or performing actions.  Please don't start playing semantics, we won't get anywhere with those.

EDIT for clarity:
Also, don't think I'm one of these raiders.  I've been through exactly one raid.  I'm not prepared nor am I good enough yet to do more.  I'd love to spend more time on them, but I'm around in-game about once  a month, if that at odd hours thanks to my job.  My opinions are purely from the perspective of what people would consider a casual, where, even generation 1 legendary weapons are a daunting task of either spending thousands of gold or farming content and I do believe any set of armor that would be released that would allow for a path towards legendary armor would be just as, if not more expensive.  That's what I was saying there; any new legendary armor set that comes along is going to have a similar cost in both materials and in effort to acquire as the other three sets and this is okay.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Aeis.8519

[Astralporing.1957]

41 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

Thank you, this explenation makes sense, although it does not change anything about people not wanting envoy in other places?

Why would it change anything?

 

Quote

Their are a few thing i will have to disagree with, almost all raiders on this forum knew/said that raids where not popular/content for the minority. I do not feel like that ever was debated. (maybe you consider the mention of the devquote that said that raids where more popular then expected as raiders not saying raids are only played by the minority?)

There's a difference between knowing that you are a part of exclusive group, and a part of dying out one. Between a group that is small because it is exclusive and not everyone is allowed to join, and one that is small because most other people do not want to join, or have anything to do with them.

 

Yes, all raiders know that raids are a content for the selected few - but initially they thought that it was still a group big (and important) enough that Anet will always treat Raids with priority. It didn;t even cross their mind that they might run into population problems. There are still in this very thread people that think that obviously Anet is still working on raids, and that this community is still thriving. For some that is just desperate wishful thinking, but there are those that simply cannot believe otherwise.

 

Quote

Also, i do not think people expected the same amount of resources spend on subsequent rewards (the opposite actually because how long it took to get the armour out.) They expected a consistent amount of resources on the content though. People would have been fine if their was consistency and communication about that.

About the latter, i completely agree - consistency and communication would have improved this game in any type of content. That is a general problem we all have to deal since the day one.

As for the former - yes, quite a number of people did expect continued rewards on similar scale. A lot of people were disappointed by the fact that the reward for PoF raids was a legendary ring, which had nowhere close to the value of the Envoy set. It's not only about rewards alone though - Raiders generally expectedmore raid rewards, more raids, better raids, more CM-style additional challenges on top of it. And what they got was less of everything. Which was probably exactly as much as Anet was willing to spend on that group of players (but the players got spoiled by the first 3 wings, and some not well thought out dev statements and thus were unwilling to accept that).

 

Quote

The major problem i see with your take is that it puts all the downfall of the raid population as inevitable based on their design. And this has not been shown at all.

Yes,that's how i see it. Everything points out to Raids being designed to a much smaller group of people than their resource costs warranted. And to a group that expected much greater resource expenditures than their size warranted. Somewhere someone made a miscalculation - either in underestimating resource costs, overestimating raid popularity, or underestimating how narrow their accessibility to the overall population is (which, while connected, is not the same). Or all of the above.

 

(there is also the issue of how the core elements of the game fuel and inflate the massive effectiveness differences between different player groups, but that's something better discussed in a completely separate thread, because it is a major topic on its own)

 

Notice, btw, that some of the recent interviews show that the GW2 raid team was made up at least partially by people that were avid raid players themselves, and came from raid-focused games, and were too used to see the MMORPGs in that context to even consider a wider perspective. It's quite likely that the raid dev team had exactly the same tunnel vision a large part of the raid community has - the absolute certainty that raids are a pinnacle of PvE and that "all roads lead to Raids". In GW2 it turned out to be false.

 

It might not have been a problem if the uper management had a coherent vision of the game and better control over all the projects, but Anet's approach to this was always far more haphazard, with frequent project jumping, abandoning older content at the first sign of trouble, and "improving"content not by refinement of old stuff, but by constantly creating new ideas and trying to see which ones will work out and which ones would not.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[yann.1946]

2 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Why would it change anything?

Well the statement that people holding on to their envoy harms raids sort of implies that at present it would still cause damage to raids. Its not a statement you made though so i cant really expect you to explain that part.

2 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

 

There's a difference between knowing that you are a part of exclusive group, and a part of dying out one. Between a group that is small because it is exclusive and not everyone is allowed to join, and one that is small because most other people do not want to join, or have anything to do with them.

Sure their is a difference. But lets be honest here, the fact that people where part of dying group, the fact that raids could not sustain themselves is still up for debate.

ANd i do not mean the outcome atm btw, but the fact that people then should have assumed that the population could not sustain themselves. As you said earlier we all could have done with general better comunication. and as a nich content all mismanagement of the game will be felt harder in those parts first. 

 

2 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Yes, all raiders know that raids are a content for the selected few - but initially they thought that it was still a group big (and important) enough that Anet will always treat Raids with priority. It didn;t even cross their mind that they might run into population problems. There are still in this very thread people that think that obviously Anet is still working on raids, and that this community is still thriving. For some that is just desperate wishful thinking, but there are those that simply cannot believe otherwise.

Their are extremes on either side of any discussion, i do not need to share their opinion. And they are not the majority.

2 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

About the latter, i completely agree - consistency and communication would have improved this game in any type of content. That is a general problem we all have to deal since the day one.

True, honestly the biggest problem of the game in my opinion. Which is whythe recent posts saying what well get in the next quarter are so great.

2 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

As for the former - yes, quite a number of people did expect continued rewards on similar scale. A lot of people were disappointed by the fact that the reward for PoF raids was a legendary ring, which had nowhere close to the value of the Envoy set. It's not only about rewards alone though - Raiders generally expectedmore raid rewards, more raids, better raids, more CM-style additional challenges on top of it. And what they got was less of everything. Which was probably exactly as much as Anet was willing to spend on that group of players

Their is a difference between some people wanted something and the group wanted something. In general raiders where way more reasonable then you make them out to be. The one thing of all the things you mentioned which was true of what they wanted was mre cms and repeatabvle rewards their. And that is sort of a comprimise with the easy mode part btw. As that came with the explecit idea that normal mode could be easier.

2 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

(but the players got spoiled by the first 3 wings, and some not well thought out dev statements and thus were unwilling to accept that).

That is probably part of it. With the dev statement do you mean that of that they where more popular then expected, or that they said that they wanted 4-6 raids per year?

2 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Yes,that's how i see it. Everything points out to Raids being designed to a much smaller group of people than their resource costs warranted. And to a group that expected much greater resource expenditures than their size warranted. Somewhere someone made a miscalculation - either in underestimating resource costs, overestimating raid popularity, or underestimating how narrow their accessibility to the overall population is (which, while connected, is not the same). Or all of the above.

Not everything points in that way. But their is noting i can say to convince you of that. So i really will not even bother.

 

2 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Notice, btw, that some of the recent interviews show that the GW2 raid team was made up at least partially by people that were avid raid players themselves, and came from raid-focused games, and were too used to see the MMORPGs in that context to even consider a wider perspective. It's quite likely that the raid dev team had exactly the same tunnel vision a large part of the raid community has - the absolute certainty that raids are a pinnacle of PvE and that "all roads lead to Raids". In GW2 it turned out to be false.

I've never seen anything in the design that suggest that. Thats the reason that the raid stories are general sidestories.

And the only part that sets up season 3 gets completely explained in the episode these raidstories gets used.

 

On top of the fact that they are pretty different raids then industry standards as far as ive seen. W2 beeing the best example of that part in the earlier wings.

2 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It might not have been a problem if the uper management had a coherent vision of the game and better control over all the projects, but Anet's approach to this was always far more haphazard, with frequent project jumping, abandoning older content at the first sign of trouble, and "improving"content not by refinement of old stuff, but by constantly creating new ideas and trying to see which ones will work out and which ones would not.

A general game problem i agree with. not a problem with raids specificly though.

 

 

As a final note, instanced group content in general has always been for the minority in this game (as we can see with the complains about needing strikes for the meta-achievement, and one of the reasons people where against easy mode btw). That itself is not a problem though. all groups of players need to have something for them.  

[Astralporing.1957]

24 minutes ago, Aeis.8519 said:

That's what I was saying there; any new legendary armor set that comes along is going to have a similar cost in both materials and in effort to acquire as the other three sets and this is okay.

Oh, i agree. The issue lies in how diffeent people see the "equal effort" part. For many raiders, anything that is not "raid difficulty" can never be equal in effort. There's a number of raiders in all those threads that think (or claim to think) that anything below raids is "braindead easy", and thus no effort at all. And so any amout of "zero effort" would still end up being no effort at all.

I mean, i have just been commented about how my suggestions about a set of armor hidden behind high (30k+) AP (and another based on Gen2/aurora/vision acquisition methods) are "absurdly easy".

[Astralporing.1957]

5 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

Well the statement that people holding on to their envoy harms raids sort of implies that at present it would still cause damage to raids. Its not a statement you made though so i cant really expect you to explain that part.

Well, i believe that raids are no longer actively developed, so by this point there's very few things that can still hurt them - as i see it they are already dead after all, not everyone just knows it yet.

 

5 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

Sure their is a difference. But lets be honest here, the fact that people where part of dying group, the fact that raids could not sustain themselves is still up for debate.

The signs of raids being unable to sustain themselves were present long before Anet went and either fired or reassigned to other projects every single member of the raid team (and yes, we do have a confirmation that this is what happened - although of course it does not necessarily mean they haven't created a new team since. I just do not believe they did)

 

5 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

ANd i do not mean the outcome atm btw, but the fact that people then should have assumed that the population could not sustain themselves.

If there were signs of population problems from the beginning, people would have paid attention to it. But initially all looked really rosy, so many people assumed it will always be that way.

 

5 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

Their is a difference between some people wanted something and the group wanted something. In general raiders where way more reasonable then you make them out to be.

That's not what my take from my contact with that community has shown to me. As i see it, the "more reasonable" generally appeared only after it has started to become clear to many that wing 8 was not in the works. And it was really not present at all during the HoT raids time when people still thought Raids were on a rising wave.

Although, of course, it is my subjective view based on my personal experiences with the community. As such, it can differ from yours.

 

5 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

That is probably part of it. With the dev statement do you mean that of that they where more popular then expected, or that they said that they wanted 4-6 raids per year?

Both. And the general excessive optimism all raid devs were showing initially. I mean, i can understand why they acted that way - they just loved the content they developed, and felt really optimistic about it, thus were showing it through every interaction they had with the community on the issue. It's just it ended to be massively misleading, because it did not represent the direction the upper managemet agreed upon.

 

5 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

I've never seen anything in the design that suggest that. Thats the reason that the raid stories are general sidestories.

And the only part that sets up season 3 gets completely explained in the episode these raidstories gets used.

You can try to listen to the deegchat interview with Cameron Rich (the full version, not the short parts). There's a lot of interesting stuff in it (and not only about raids). I'd advise listening to it regardless of the discussion in this thread, btw, it's just a lot of good talk worth hearing.

 

Still, CR's attitude towards raids can be clearly seen throughout all the parts that touch upon that content - and it's not an attitude of a conten dev. It's an attitude of a raid player.

It is generally good if the developers play the game (and much worse when they do not), but it should inform their decisons, not shape them.

 

 

5 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

A general game problem i agree with. not a problem with raids specificly though.

Oh, i agree.

 

5 minutes ago, yann.1946 said:

As a final note, instanced group content in general has always been for the minority in this game (as we can see with the complains about needing strikes for the meta-achievement, and one of the reasons people where against easy mode btw). That itself is not a problem though. all groups of players need to have something for them.  

The problem lies not in existence of said content. The problem lies in trying to funnel people too much into it.

 

You can bet there would have been far less complains about raids, strikes etc if a lot of stuff general populace is interested in was not locked behind them. Most people couldn't really care less about raids themselves. It's the fact that they are being constantly told how that content is not niche, but "pinnacle", how other content is being developed/changed around it (the whole concept of stepstones to raids), etc. For example, i personally know a lot of people that are very angry about the only PvE legendary armor being locked behind raids even though the armor itself is not something they would consider reasonably pursuing even if it was available in similar ways as Gen1/gen2 weapons are. They just feel they are being treated as second class citizens in the very content/game they thought was for them. If there was a second, OW armor set, they would have probably ignored it, but would have felt far better, because they would not think devs are trying to tell them they are playing the game wrong.

 

It's a point i rarely bring up, because raiders generally do not understand it at all (after all, most do genuinely think that OW players indeed play the game wrong)

[Sarrs.4831]

I think it's for the best that different modes give different rewards. Gives everyone a good reason to try them out.

[Astralporing.1957]

7 minutes ago, Sarrs.4831 said:

I think it's for the best that different modes give different rewards. Gives everyone a good reason to try them out.

There's a difference between rewards that are meant to encourage trying out a mode, and rewards that require massive longterm engagement. Gift of Battle is the first kind. Envoy set is the second one.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Astralporing.1957

[yann.1946]

5 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Well, i believe that raids are no longer actively developed, so by this point there's very few things that can still hurt them - as i see it they are already dead after all, not everyone just knows it yet.

 

The signs of raids being unable to sustain themselves were present long before Anet went and either fired or reassigned to other projects every single member of the raid team (and yes, we do have a confirmation that this is what happened - although of course it does not necessarily mean they haven't created a new team since. I just do not believe they did)

I know that this happened, can you give me an example of signs that raids where unable to sustain themselves?

5 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

If there were signs of population problems from the beginning, people would have paid attention to it. But initially all looked really rosy, so many people assumed it will always be that way.

So people work with the then reasonable assumption that their are enough. I mean

5 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

That's not what my take from my contact with that community has shown to me. As i see it, the "more reasonable" generally appeared only after it has started to become clear to many that wing 8 was not in the works. And it was really not present at all during the HoT raids time when people still thought Raids were on a rising wave.

Although, of course, it is my subjective view based on my personal experiences with the community. As such, it can differ from yours.

I feel like this is some slight selectionbias. The same way that sometimes people say vegan are selfrightious because the only vegans they know are vegan are the shouty kind.

Also your viewing this through the lens that your view of the situation is the reasonable one, which is understanble. But someone disagreeing with your take on something does not make them unreasonable.

5 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Both. And the general excessive optimism all raid devs were showing initially. I mean, i can understand why they acted that way - they just loved the content they developed, and felt really optimistic about it, thus were showing it through every interaction they had with the community on the issue. It's just it ended to be massively misleading, because it did not represent the direction the upper managemet agreed upon.

Well yes, but the community can only work based on what devs have told us right.

5 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You can try to listen to the deegchat interview with Cameron Rich (the full version, not the short parts). There's a lot of interesting stuff in it (and not only about raids). I'd advise listening to it regardless of the discussion in this thread, btw, it's just a lot of good talk worth hearing.

 

Still, CR's attitude towards raids can be clearly seen throughout all the parts that touch upon that content - and it's not an attitude of a conten dev. It's an attitude of a raid player.

It is generally good if the developers play the game (and much worse when they do not), but it should inform their decisons, not shape them.

It might be, can you post the link somewhere?

But my point still stands that GW2 raids are extremely gw2-like content, they are not some copypaste of other raids ive seen atleast. So i would not call it completely fair to say that they looked at it as all pve should lead to raids. atleast in the earlier design.

 

Ironicly the game has taking the pve leads to raids approach way more recently with the addition of strikemission as a stepping stone, and the general pushing of more instaces. Dragonstorm, marrionete etc. So i would argue the exact oppisite. Originally the game did not really push raids at all (ignoring the unfortunate planning of post hot content making it seem that way)

but later gamedesign (after raids where let go) is pushing players more into raids.

 

5 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

 

Oh, i agree.

 

The problem lies not in existence of said content. The problem lies in trying to funnel people too much into it.

Lets ask a broader question then, do you think it is okay for rewards to be tied to specific peaces of content?

Honestly i feel like all this all applies way more to the skyscale for example. That specifcly changes your playstyle way more then leg armour does. But the complains where never about that it is ow locked, they where about the timegate.

5 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You can bet there would have been far less complains about raids, strikes etc if a lot of stuff general populace is interested in was not locked behind them. Most people couldn't really care less about raids themselves. It's the fact that they are being constantly told how that content is not niche, but "pinnacle", how other content is being developed/changed around it (the whole concept of stepstones to raids), etc. For example, i personally know a lot of people that are very angry about the only PvE legendary armor being locked behind raids even though the armor itself is not something they would consider reasonably pursuing even if it was available in similar ways as Gen1/gen2 weapons are. They just feel they are being treated as second class citizens in the very content/game they thought was for them. If there was a second, OW armor set, they would have probably ignored it, but would have felt far better, because they would not think devs are trying to tell them they are playing the game wrong.

See i understand that idea/mindset. But i also strongly oppose it, it seems extremely unhealthy to me. Where they angry about the pvp gizmos? etc?

I understand that emotions play a big part in this, and that they should be thought about. And i do not want to suggest that their feeling are wrong in some way. 

 

But i come from a different mindset, i think it is healthy for the general feel of the game to have things you can only get doing specific things. This makes the rewards people get feel more attatched to the content. (for example how the release of aurora invigorated the old s3 maps., how we have mapbased currencies and not everything becomes reduced to gold, how the new amulet requires all these old lw maps)

 

ive never thought the devs told me i played the game wrong because i do not partake in wvw much and won't get stuff their. Or thought i played the game wrong because i don't have the gizmo.

 

The biggest question to me is why specificly legendary armour and not all the other things which they are locked out of?

And slightly more broad, how do you suggest we would design the game in general to counter these feelings? In your ideal game should their be a pvp skyscale, a instanced content mountset, an open world leg backpack, a wvw leg trinket set?

 

5 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It's a point i rarely bring up, because raiders generally do not understand it at all (after all, most do genuinely think that OW players indeed play the game wrong)

Most of the time ive seen mostly the mechanical skillset being worse on average. Ofcourse like in all cases their are some extreme outliers on this topic.

 

[Crystal Paladin.3871]

Reality:

Anet introduces Legendary armor to seduce ppl to participate in raids so the average player goes to the next level of improving themselves in terms of reaction speed in fast paced game(gw2 is a fast paced game), improving damage rotations by understanding their builds and classes, paying attention to the surroundings and attack animations of bosses, the platform u stand on while fighting ,etc....

 

ppl tried to start raiding without getting any exposure in-terms of training guilds or friendly groups and got yelled at, ridiculed by or kicked by raiders who want perfect clears and dont want to waste time by risking wipes and explaining mechs to newplayers

 

some ppl took that as a hint and joined training guilds and improved themselves and continued raiding

 

Some ppl got threatened and left. and even some got threatened and in-turn scared even more new ppl by instilling fear among new players that raiding is hard and toxic

 

so new players got diverted away from raiding... anet viewed the drop in numbers of raiders.. anet stopped releasing new raid content... raid became stagnant with old content and frequent raiders and raid trainers got bored and left the game mode.. now less training groups so less number of new players are introduced to raids

 

now since less influx of raiders, lazy ppl want the reward item from that content stating that the content is dead anyways and why cater to the niche group of players and dead game mode and lock that reward for others

 

Future (if anet introduces easily obtainable attractive rewards like legendary pve armor without any challenging or demanding content) :

 

noone would bother improving their class or builds or playstyle since everything they want is easily obtainable by chopping 10 trees or auto attacking a boss 10 times or taking a mesmer portal to a hard jp

 

since theres no challenging content, snowcraows, metabattle and other sites wont exist anymore

 

no training groups for any content will exist since every attractive stuff in game is readily and easily avaialble

 

and at a point when a few handful of ppl do try to do some old content like chak gerent or auric basin, TTT wurm or any content with lil bit of challenge, will fail miserably coz ppl wont have efficient healing builds, tanking builds or dps builds even if the builds do exist, ppl wouldnt know or get motivated to perform at their best

 

and the following content and similar content or similar or content with a lil bit of higher level difficulty will fail miserably:

Drakkar: no healers constant damage lot of dead bodies (or) timer getting expired

Octovine: not enough dps, not enough coordination in terms of either kiting away or killing frogs, multiple reasons for failure, etc...

Death Branded shatterer: Not enough dps, no healers, everyone dead

Chak gerent: no healers, less dps so chak reaching the cannon and meta failing, lazy reaction times and too many dead bodies on chak donut goo

Leyline anomaly: this will definitely fail with low dps I'm 100% sure.. the only reason this ley line anomaly is succedding these days is because hig hdps players are participating in this event.. try taking a late anomaly see if u guys can kill it with low dps soldier stats gear or junky who knows what stats gear

...

...

...

a lot of boss will fail, dragon storm will get extended by another hour for killing and clearing the instance due to low dps and noone would care

 

then ppl start complain threads about old bosses being hard and need a nerf

 

anet nerfs the bosses because the 99% of players are considered majority and they shd satisfy the majority to keep their "lights on" as someone mentioned in this thread somewhere

 

now that bosses are nerfed... ppl would complain why do we have so many skill buttons, pls remove them theres no ned for those... we just want one button the auto attack and a heal button if necessary....

 

anet removes all otehr skills and elite specializations and different builds and balance and uniqueness from the class professions and make everything the same with only 2 skills one attack and one heal skill

 

new ppl from other mmo games try gw2 and would ridicule and ask whether this is a game or afk one clicker and would never play the game and game dies miserably

 

 

now.. how do we avoid this bad outcome:

 

players who lost interest and left coz their first encounter at raids gave them a bad experience... are they at fault?

are players who scared others and caused a less influx of players in raid game mode at fault?

are raiders who thought themselves to be such gods and important person and ridiculed new players at fault?

anet as a game company, not giving one more chance to raid game mode by releasing new content at fault?

even if anet released strike missions with reduced difficulty to get new players into raids somehow.... is that decision by anet at fault?

 

can't blame any of the above.... these are expected outcomes... what we can do is.. take action on our part to increase influx of players into the game mode rather than scaring them away and introducing alternative ways to avoid the game mode altogether... pls treat every game mode in gw2 as an integral part of the game and its community altogether.. if u cut out one part or block the blood supply to that part, then it becomes crippled or deformed.. even if I feel pvp to be toxic and avoid it now, I do wish to get better at pvp myself and engage in that game mode... ngl, every game mode in this game is still enticing me to want to play those game modes

 

what anet can do is... introduce new ways to curb toxicity at the bud and more ways to encourage new players to try out all game modes... which they are doing it even now in various ways btw. Im not criticizing they didn't, we shd improve bit by bit even if thats so little

 

and as a community, instead of arguing and debating our hearts out to kill the game mode, pls take steps personally .. if youre an expert in raiding, start an lfg train new ppl use discord or whatever... if ure not an expert, dont ridicule or assert dominance on new players and give them a bad experience on the game mode...and if ure a nor mal playerand new to raids, pls dont scare away others from the game mode but rather encourage them to try it out and move away if not intend to joining the mode in anyway... new ppl are not stepping into raids not because they dont want to but in reality, they do want to try out everything only thing thatys blocking them are the fear instilled by other about the game mode and not sure where t o start from level0 they ned someone to introduce them to training or friendly groups or something.. every player is curious enough to try out everything the game has to offer.. if not why in the name of skritt would they even move from queensdale to kessex hills? why not smush the same centaur dead bodies over and over again and be contend with it?

Edited August 9, 2021 by Crystal Paladin.3871

[Vayne.8563]

18 hours ago, Zalavaaris.5329 said:

What does that have to do with anything?!? Ok so let's say they completely retire tbe content. You still need to do it to get the armor! God the whiney entitled bads in this game are enough to drive people to ff14 or new world I swear. I'll tell you what. If they EVER make an open world way to get envoy armor I'll personally pay for yours. Hell I'll pay for everyone's in here who is "totally capable and obviously good enough but just doesn't want to on principle" or whatever bs you said earlier. In fact, ill start saving money now because I'm sure that's right around the corner. 

I didn't ask for open world envoy armor.  I said that the only animating armor is locked behind raids, and that's true. I'd take a different set of animating armor, if that became available or even the skin without the functionality.   However, this is the very attitude that will ensure raids don't survive here.  This is why you don't have enough people doing raids. Because everyone else is just an entitled bad. 

 

You think you raiding makes you better than other people who play the game. If you can't see what's wrong with that, there's not a lot more to say.

[Vayne.8563]

13 hours ago, Aeis.8519 said:

They don't, though?  The general sentiment I'm getting from this thread is that there's a subset of players here that want legendary armor for less work than what it currently takes to get it from any of the game modes.  Alternatives involving more lively, daily activities were suggested, shot down, and petty argumentation ensued that lead to no solution.  There's also this huge schism between what everyone here believes is deserving of legendary armor with people suggesting that world bosses are enough to requiring multiple strike CM clears in EoD.

I'm working on legendary armor in both PvP and WvW. I already have one piece. But only raid legendary armor has skin that animates. When you go into battle spikes pop out of it. When you leave battle they retract.  To me this is more than just another skin. It's an animating skin.

Give me an animating skin for PvP or WvW and I'll be fine.

[yoni.7015]

3 minutes ago, Vayne.8563 said:

I'm working on legendary armor in both PvP and WvW. I already have one piece. But only raid legendary armor has skin that animates. When you go into battle spikes pop out of it. When you leave battle they retract.  To me this is more than just another skin. It's an animating skin.

Give me an animating skin for PvP or WvW and I'll be fine.

I got a  WvW and a PvP legendary set and I’m totally fine that the skins are not like the raid set. The raid set should have a unique skin because it is harder to get than the other two sets. 
 

If you want that skin you have to raid, just like everyone else that has this armor. 

[Dante.1763]

8 minutes ago, yoni.7015 said:

I got a  WvW and a PvP legendary set and I’m totally fine that the skins are not like the raid set. The raid set should have a unique skin because it is harder to get than the other two sets. 
 

If you want that skin you have to raid, just like everyone else that has this armor. 

He didnt say "that" skin. He said an animated unique skin. Which well, i cant disagree with. Not much legendary about the wvw/pvp sets as is.

[yoni.7015]

7 minutes ago, Dante.1763 said:

He didnt say "that" skin. He said an animated unique skin. Which well, i cant disagree with. Not much legendary about the wvw/pvp sets as is.

They have the QoL aspects and now with the armory they feel quite legendary to me. 
but sure, a unique skin would be great but it is nothing I demand. 

Edited August 9, 2021 by yoni.7015

[Sarrs.4831]

 

26 minutes ago, yoni.7015 said:

They have the QoL aspects and now with the armory they feel quite legendary to me. 
but sure, a unique skin would be great but it is nothing I demand. 

 

I disagree entirely, the game needs more cool skins

 

Unironically I think that ANet should put at least some degree of priority into making legendary WvW armor with a neato legendary skin, and maybe legendary sPvP armor, but mostly WvW because I mostly play WvW.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Sarrs.4831

[Turin.6921]

On 8/8/2021 at 2:27 AM, Vayne.8563 said:

It's a little different. A person can get legendary armor in PvP losing every single game. It'll just take them three times longer. Every win you get shortens that obvoiusly.  Almost anyone can get a legendary weapon. But not everyone will be able to get legendary armor.  It creates a have and have no game, because it's the only animating armor in the game.  Frankly I won't raid because it's locked behind raids. I'll get PvP legendary armor instead, even though I'm a  PvE'er.  But I don't enjoy raiding and I'm not happy that Anet is trying to force me to raid to get the only animating armor in the game.

 

I do get your point but none is forcing you to do anything. The armor is not a requirement for any content in game and deliberately designed not to be. The "enforcement" is self-inflicted. I also love the WvW backpiece but have not played WvW since 2014. I will never get it unless i start playing and its fine. It is not a blackmail. Modes need unique cosmetic and QoL rewards as a prestigious goal for the game mode. Players should not let their sense of envy drive them to flatten game rewards. A game still needs to be a game. A game needs aspirational content to be healthy (as Rich said in an interview) and this comes with respective rewards. Feeling that you need to have them is the player's problem not the game's when the game is designed not to require it.
Play for the content first and the rewards second.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Turin.6921

[Vayne.8563]

1 hour ago, yoni.7015 said:

I got a  WvW and a PvP legendary set and I’m totally fine that the skins are not like the raid set. The raid set should have a unique skin because it is harder to get than the other two sets. 
 

If you want that skin you have to raid, just like everyone else that has this armor. 

You're right. If I want that skin I have to raid, just like everyone else. That's exactly my point. Since raiding is the least popular content in PvE, it was a mistake for Anet to lock an armor collection behind it. Why kitten off the majority for a small minority? Because they demanded those types of rewards.

Raids didn't exist in the game I bought. I was playing everything in this game until raids. The should have never been added, they didn't work out, but that skin is still locked there.  If it's only benefitting raiders, it's probably not great for the game. And in some cases it'll drive people to raid who really don't want to raid and you know, that might not be good for the game either. Not for actual raiders or those people.

Edited August 9, 2021 by Vayne.8563

[Astralporing.1957]

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

I know that this happened, can you give me an example of signs that raids where unable to sustain themselves?

No hard evidence, but the first really visible signs that the community is shrinking could have been seen around wing 5 release. I know i have seen it - players not willing to engage with new raid content, players just leaving, and no influx of new raiders either (practically everyone that wanted to go and try that content already has done that by that point).

And of course wing 5 was also the first clear sign that Anet is reducing resource investments on the content.

 

But even earlier there were some signs that can now be noticed when taken in retrospective. The very fact how easier wing 4 is, for example, shows that something must have been going on behind the screens that forced Anet to experiment (which they would not have been doing if what they originally did was working).

 

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

So people work with the then reasonable assumption that their are enough. I mean

Yes. My point is that if the Envoy set did not inflate the numbers at the beginning, perhaps the situation would have looked differently enough that the assumptions would have been different.

 

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

I feel like this is some slight selectionbias. The same way that sometimes people say vegan are selfrightious because the only vegans they know are vegan are the shouty kind.

Also your viewing this through the lens that your view of the situation is the reasonable one, which is understanble. But someone disagreeing with your take on something does not make them unreasonable.

Like i said, it's my subjective take based on what i personally observed. Notice, though, that i've had a lot of interactions with said community, both from outside and inside of it, on many levels, from more casually-minded raiders, to some of the near-top tier ones.

 

 

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

It might be, can you post the link somewhere?

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

But my point still stands that GW2 raids are extremely gw2-like content, they are not some copypaste of other raids ive seen atleast. So i would not call it completely fair to say that they looked at it as all pve should lead to raids. atleast in the earlier design.

 

Ironicly the game has taking the pve leads to raids approach way more recently with the addition of strikemission as a stepping stone, and the general pushing of more instaces. Dragonstorm, marrionete etc. So i would argue the exact oppisite. Originally the game did not really push raids at all (ignoring the unfortunate planning of post hot content making it seem that way)

but later gamedesign (after raids where let go) is pushing players more into raids.

It started from the very beginning. Remember, that Envoy set is not just a Raid legendary, but technically the PvE armor. There's a clear expectation here that everyone pursuing legendaries will end up as heavy raiders. Then, the first mentions of "stepstones to raids" were not made about strikes. They were made about fractals, and made even before first Fractal CM was released. If you look at the interview above you will see, btw, that this desire to create a pathway to raids impacted fractal design almost immediately. Fractal CMs were made because a raid dev thought there needs to be more intermediate content types leading to raids - not because someone thought it would be good for Fractals.

 

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

Lets ask a broader question then, do you think it is okay for rewards to be tied to specific peaces of content?

Rewards, yes. Reward categories, no. It's okay for the Envoy set to be locked behind raids. It's not okay for the only PvE legendary armor (and the only transforming/animated skin set in the game) to be locked behind that content however.

I feel also that ist is sometimes okay to lock something behind shallow engagement in some type of content in order to encourage players to try it out (i.e. i have no problems with Gift of Battle - it does require you to go into WvW and play for a bit, but it's not locked behind a massive engagement wall).

 

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

Honestly i feel like all this all applies way more to the skyscale for example. That specifcly changes your playstyle way more then leg armour does. But the complains where never about that it is ow locked, they where about the timegate.

Notice, that most of those complains faded out - but those about the envoy set keep getting back at regular intervals.

Frankly, i would fully expect OW legendary armor collection to be timegated as kitten as well. I'd expect some people to complain about it, but I'd also expect that those people would get over it relatively soon.

 

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

See i understand that idea/mindset. But i also strongly oppose it, it seems extremely unhealthy to me. Where they angry about the pvp gizmos? etc?

I suppose there might have been some individuals complaining about those, but overall those were never an issue to PvE community, because PvE community mostly accepted those as what they are - badges of prestige, nothing more. The same way you don;t see many people complain about other raid-exclusive skins, the infusion, or the dhuum throne. Even though the throne is cool as kitten

 

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

I understand that emotions play a big part in this, and that they should be thought about. And i do not want to suggest that their feeling are wrong in some way. 

Emotions have always been a key issue here - on both sides. Which is one of the reasons why the discussions have never moved forward, and we're still debating th very same things we were debating when Raids just launched.

 

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

But i come from a different mindset, i think it is healthy for the general feel of the game to have things you can only get doing specific things. This makes the rewards people get feel more attatched to the content. (for example how the release of aurora invigorated the old s3 maps., how we have mapbased currencies and not everything becomes reduced to gold, how the new amulet requires all these old lw maps)

Problem lies in that it gets only those people that liked the content attached. Trust me, my envoy armors do not make me attached to raids in any way. They do not fill me with accomplishment. What getting them did however was to make me practically stop playing the game for over a year after i've obtained them.

 

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

ive never thought the devs told me i played the game wrong because i do not partake in wvw much and won't get stuff their. Or thought i played the game wrong because i don't have the gizmo.

Devs never promoted SPvP/WvW to that degree as they did promote raids. They always kept some sort of separation between modes. Even the very few cross-mode events during LS1 where they tried to push pve players into WvW were really mild.

The Ascension/league start SPvP events were not mild, but we already knew at that time there will be more than one legendary backpack (and the Fractal one did not require as massive engagement).

The jump from the "Whole game is the endgame" to "Raids are the PvE endgame" however? That was massively heavy-handed. It completely redefined the whole PvE landscape on conceptual and emotional level (even if the actual in-game design changes were not that big).

 

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

The biggest question to me is why specificly legendary armour and not all the other things which they are locked out of?

Because there's a replacement for other things. And people can see the difference between just having content-unique skins, and content-unique gear category.

 

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

And slightly more broad, how do you suggest we would design the game in general to counter these feelings? In your ideal game should their be a pvp skyscale, a instanced content mountset, an open world leg backpack, a wvw leg trinket set?

PvP Skyscale is not needed - SPvP players have no use of mounts, and WvW players have one, which is locked behind WvW content. Similar for the most part with instanced content (in most you can't even use mounts at all).

As for other stuff? Yes, i'd think that, for example, WvW legendary weapons set, legendary raid backpack etc would be a good idea.

 

 

1 hour ago, yann.1946 said:

 

Most of the time ive seen mostly the mechanical skillset being worse on average. Ofcourse like in all cases their are some extreme outliers on this topic.

 

It's not only about the skill differences. It's about general contempt shown towards all the "lesser" content, and the belief that raids are not just one of the side contents of PvE, but are the content on top of it. The "pinnacle of PvE". Surely you have seen more than one example of those in this very thread.

 

And sure, not everyone is acting like that, but, first, those "outliers" make up a large part of participants in any raid discussion, being very vocal - and i don't see raid community as a whole disagreeing with them either. maybe it's not an outlook that everyone would voice, but it certainly seems to be met with at least silent approval.

 

Also, even most of the remaining, non-extreme raiders truly do not seem to understand the mindset of casual community,. and are judging others by what they themselves value in the game.

 

I mean, i've had some otherwise very seemingly reasonable people trying to explain to me how the "second category citizen" talk is not appropriate, because nothing prevents non-raiders from graduating to the proper content.