Astralporing.1957

> @"Trise.2865" said: > You'd rather reduce exploration, questing, and gameplay activity to mindless XP grinding You might have a point - except, of course, lately way too many of the MPs are nothing _but_ mindless grinding. If that were to be replaced with exploration, questing and gameplay, then sure, that would be for the best for everyone involved. Probbaly even for those that ask for them to be obtainable from gemshop. > @"maddoctor.2738" said: > Let me make this easier for you: you claimed they priced individual WPs > > > Yes, some MP's are easy and some are hard and like MP's ... some Waypoints are also easy and some are also hard .. yet Anet has figured out how to price WP unlocks ... so to they could determine it for MP's. > > that's false because they did not. Actually, there was that one case in Bitterfrost, wasn't it? (although i may remember it wrong, it may have been a vista or something). Although for sure that one _wasn't_ met with warm reception from the community.

> @"HnRkLnXqZ.1870" said: > - ArcDPS: We do have Mr. Cleary's quotes scattered on these boards, Reddit and the old forums. There is no official summary of the situation, just a ton of puzzle-pieces. In addition Mr. Cleary is no longer part of ANet, so it would be questionable if his quotes are still valid. They could have added an article about this in the Third Party Programs thread or create a separate one. Those topics just pop up over and over, because there is nothing we can rely on. Just two sides smashing their heads against each others. Actually, we can rely on past statements, and delta is in constant communication with Anet still, so there's no change to this. The threads appear because some people _want_ dps meters to not be allowed, and refuse to believe it's otherwise. > - Black Market trading: There is no official statement about this. The fact that this secret sub-community uses Mystic Coins, a designed **rare crafting material**, as phantom-currency to trade stuff off the market is delicate enough. The topics pop up frequently. What you speak of is just off-TP trading. Nothing black about it. It's completely legit. It just receives no protection normal TP has, so even if you get scammed, you can at best try to have the scammer actioned, but won't get your stuff back. Black market is anything where real cash is involved, and it's also a clear case - it's not allowed. The stuff that is in gray (unclarified) area are only very specific cases of favour trading between GW1 and GW2. Ther are people that, for example, sell/buy titles/minis etc in gw1 in exchange for gold (or other favours) in gw2 (for the hall of monuments achieves). Technically it probably should not be allowed (as gw1 and gw2 are considered to be separate games, even if both are under Anet), but Anet used to close their eyes on this, and never clarified the situation (even though it _has_ been asked about more than once) > - Exploit Abuse: When a player finds an exploit that can be used to make profit, they claim ownership of that exploit. They make videos, offer teachings in LFG for gold, spread the exploits to a wide audience of players. This is the current situation for several years now. Technically it is exploit abuse, which is equal to cheating. There is no official statement, so parts of the community assume "if it was not fixed yet, I am free to use it whenever I want." In the past, people have been banned for exploit abuse. The fact that Anet is far less willing to do so nowadays does not mean the official policy has changed. It just became somewhat less effective. > - Target Blocking: Which occurs on the forums once every month at least. Those players who enjoy dropping boxes of Fun and other objects at locations with NPCs, for the purpose of just annoying other players. Is it allowed? Is it legal? We do not know. If it was not prohibited officially, with a warning about certain sanctions if you get caught bloody-handed, this would be less of a problem. That's the one point from that list that has really never been addressed in any form. > - Wintrading Is a match manipulation, so, strictly forbidden. Again, Anet not being very effective at dealing with such cases does not change the official policy.

> @"Excursion.9752" said: > You may think its dumb but so is waiting 15 min for a specific class to join so you can clear something 2 min faster and that happens. So normal logic does not always apply. If that was just about clearing something 2 mins faster, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It's not dungeons, where it really worked like that. In Raids it's often more of a question of whether you clear at all. > So you can let this dictate you or you can control it. The choice is yours. Here is a funny story to leave you with. I joined a group we 1 shot the whole wing. No one died no mistakes. I asked if we were doing more. The commander replied we are! but your not because you suck! and kicked me. I laughed so hard tears came to my eyes. Sure they could have been serious but I took it as a joke. And you probably _should_ have treated it seriously and tried to find what you did wrong. Not dying, and the group oneshotting the boss does not mean _you_, personally, contributed to this. It's quite possible that the other 9 players lowmanned the run and just pulled you along, and just got tired of doing it. Pugs generally don't want to upset a working group (it's too much of a bother trying to fill the slot back), so if you did get kicked, usually this means something must have been really wrong there. I have been on both sides of that equation, so i can tell you that quite often when you are inexperienced, but in a good group, you don't even see that you're doing badly and it's others that pull all the weight. On the other hand, once you get that experience, you will start noticing many errors you (and others) make that you were not even aware of before. It's easy to say you got kicked out for no reason, but usually it's not what really happens. Yes, that unfortunately does mean that Raids are _not_ suitable for a vast majority of the game's population. Ironically (for probably the most casual MMORPG on the market) to an even greater degree than in other MMORPGs, due to you not being able to outgear the content eventually. That's however due to the content itself, not due to the people that run it.

> @"Sniper.5961" said: > I was comparing it to t4 because the guy I quoted wrote that t1 sunqua endboss is like fighting a strong t4 boss even though that's not the case. Well, while it may not be a t4 level, it definitely would be considered a strong boss even among t2. It definitely does not belong in _t1_. Which is all this thread is about. > So I quoted his comment and was referring to it. After I wrote that I also explained why it makes sense for the fractal to be the way it is. People have to learn the mechanics in t1 and need to get enough damage to make failing a mechanic noticeable. Maybe even with stability unavoidable cc instead of damage would work out, too. You could then replace the cc with damage in higher tiers. Doing so maybe even be a decent middle ground. New people would learn the mechanics and not fail the boss over and over again. It would create a false image of the boss fight though. Individual fractals do not exist in a void. They are a part of a greater system. A such, difficulty should not be considered only for different tiers of the same fractal, but also between the different fractals _in the same tier_. It is **not** okay for some t1 fractals to be on a level that places them significantly above other t1s (and many t2s).

I don't think _we_ are waiting for anything like that. You might, but i definitely don't. If anything, the ones from @"Ashantara.8731"'s post are more to my like. Also, to be honest, the "capes" from initial post look to me more like trenchcoats. And this game doesn't really need more trenchcoats. Although i'm quite sure that medium armor designers would disagree.

> @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said: > * Non-festival earnings are *currently* 20-25g for most people (who effectively process everything earned, except spirit shards) For most people that are highly efficient farmers (so, not really for most). It's not about just effectively processing everything earned. Lot of the examples on that spreadsheet are chest or node runs (which require knowing very well the most efficient farming paths, or your efficiency goes down _hard_). Some of other cases also require being in a highly efficient farming squad - if you are not in one, again, your efficiency goes down a lot. A lot also depends on running very high MF-boons setup, which again, most players don't I'd say that for most people attempting this that are _not_ experienced farmers you should safely cut down earning rates by half > * Mileage varies with the markets and new maps > * Festival earnings can be greater. (the owner of the site usually includes that information during the festival; iirc, for this past halloween, it was 30g/hour) (again, my observation showed that most players in squads in Labyrinth weren't running any MF buffs - not even guild one - or running only banners that someone put up on that map. Most players also probably didn't have their base MF capped. That _heavily_ affected amount of bags obtained. I doubt most players i saw were getting anywhere close to 10g/h then) So, yeah, for the relatively small group of experienced farmers you can go up to like 25g/h now, but most players are not really capable of that. I'd say that what should be expected of non-farmers trying to farm some gold is rates around 10-15g/h at best. I also am not aware of anything that currently could go up to 50g/hour. The only case of this kind of farming rate i ever heard of was the Deadeye farm during LS1 (and it was also not something everyone could do, and the rate was not only heavily dependant on you being able to practically oneshot him, but also on you having an unrestricted and exclusive access to a gauntlet cage, so it was mostly theoretical anyway).

> @"Cyninja.2954" said: > I am torn on this to be honest, on the one hand I loved the heros in GW1 (a game I mostly played solo and just on and off) and given how well "pet" systems are received in the MMORPG landscape (assumption of mine, might not be true) this could be a great way to implement hours upon hours of stuff for players to tinker with. SW:ToR for example had me loving the companion system. > > At the same time I fear the consequence of such a system, unless it is pet only, as far as party setups go and player interaction. Suffice to say, as great as the GW1 hero system was, it also had its share in the games decline being the cause for more and more players being able to solo everything (counting myself here as well). In general not something healthy for a MMORPG community overall. I don't think we need to worry about this. The combat system is completely different than in GW1, and i doubt Heroes would be anywhere close to being as useful as they were then. That's due to a much higher emphasis on proper skill combinations and on positioning. GW1 heroes didn't really need to bother with proper positioning because that game was a lot more static. They also couldn't really perform most of the skill combinations, and thus the builds for them were mostly limited to skills that could be used independently. They also had problems with skill prioritization. All those things could have been worked around in GW1, by using builds that were concentrating on AI strenths, and avoided their weaknesses. I don't think that anything like that can be done in GW2 however. There might be one or two relatively simple dps builds that woudl still work (like Soulbeast shortbow condi), but anything more complicated (or, ironically, even simpler), or support/heal builds would likely be out of question. And that's only when we consider just skill rotations on a golem. Adjusting those dynamically to the situation in actual battle, would be a _really_ hard challenge for AI to handle - one i'm not sure is even possible to solve. Same for proper positioning. As such, there's no point in even introducing Heroes - they would be only a pale shadow of their GW1 glory.

> @"Sniper.5961" said: > > @"Black Storm.6974" said: > > Agony excluded, right now for inexperienced players doing T1 Fractals, fighting the last boss of Sunqua Peak is kind of like fighting a strong T4 boss (obviously a really frustrating experience). I’m confident ArenaNet can see or at least guess the problem by watching at their metrics. > > > > The difficulty at low tiers needs to be reduced a lot to make it more in line with other low tier Fractals. > > Why? The cc requirement is a lot less than t4 You should not be comparing with t4. You should be comparing with other fractals _within the same tier_. And this fractal on t1/t2 definitely feels as if it should belong at least a tier higher (and wouldn't even be counted among the easier of the fractals in that next tier). It's not the first time it happened, by the way (with the most dramatic case happening with Shattered observatory, when originally, before it got fixed, T1 was around middle-t3 tier and was massively harder than other t1 fractals). Nowadays, when making new fractals, Anet makes the t4/CM first, and then tries to scale it down for lower tiers. This is exactly opposite to how the original fractals were made, and usually results in new fractals being way overscaled in lower tiers initially (until Anet eventually goes around to fixing it). > @"Nephalem.8921" said: > It is braindead easy in t1. Every dungeon in ff has deadlier mechanics and they are casual content there. I helped in t1 a few times now and there is just no pressure at all. And? It's not about how easy it is. It's about how easy it is _compared to other t1/t2s_. > most open world bosses are deadlier. Most world bosses can be afked through, so i strongly doubt this.

> @"Asum.4960" said: > I do not think GW2's systems are too complex though by any means. I mean, I have played games with literally easily 10 times the complexity in build craft, min maxing and such - especially found in ARPG's, and they aren't exactly unpopular either. What do you mean "unpopular"? I honestly just can;t believe that a system as niche in design as GW2's can be utilized properly by a majority of players in a game with 7 digit population numbers. > Where GW2 as a whole, rather than "challenging" content like Raids etc., failed is to just being way too afraid of ever requiring players to actually learn and knowing the game and it's mechanics, even on a most basic level. It's not that. The problem is way more basis. Simply, there's no point in having a multitude of build options if you are going to push players into playing only a very select few of them in the end. Their "failure" was not in being afraid of requiring players to learn to utilize that system fully - if they tried that, they would simply have lost majority of players and this game would have went under long ago. Remember what happened due to difficulty spike in HoT? Anet had to cave in, because players simply refused to learn, and just didn;t go into the new content. Their "failure" was in being too afraid to give up on this complex freestyle build system they were so proud of and go for something much more simpler, but working for a much bigger player population. > > Players who do 3k DPS and boast comparable survivability skills simply should have no business being in max level second expansion+ even Open World or Story content, and the fact that that is the average player, not just some newbie boosting their first character, shows the game has fundamentally failed in preparing players for any sort of challenging content, instanced or not, with natural game and player skill progression. The only way the game could have "prepared" the players would have been by limiting player choices. That is, because in the current system, lack of said guidance towards the good options is a _feature_. They have given players the system that resulted in multitude of choices - a huge majority of them bad. As such, players went and made a multitude of different builds - a majority of them bad. Hint: most players in a game with such big population do _not_ ever learn the intricaties of build system. They just follow the game's guidance. And here's the catch - GW2 could not do that. Could not do that, because you learning that on your own was part of the design. Like i said, if the game tells you which builds are good and which ones are bad, and expects you to follow the advice, then there's no point in those bad builds even existing. All that fantastic potential of this whole complex system gets completely _wasted_. > > Not ramping up the core game sufficiently to prepare lagging behind players for HoT, and then following that with caving way too early to outcry about it being to hard and nerfing it into the ground, and to then further move back to tutorial level difficulty with following releases, was imo possibly the biggest misstep of GW2, plaguing all of it's content design going forward. They caved in not in reaction to the outcry. They caved in because players simply _didn't_ learn. They just went in, saw it was too hard, and gave up on it. And it wasn't "too early". It took them half a year to arrive at this decision. > That coupled with the fact that as @"Cyninja.2954" mentioned in their fantastic post, a Raids easy mode wouldn't have been free and likely would have just slowed down the already way to slow to retain a community release schedule of them further, just killing the game mode even faster while not addressing the underlying issue. > That is why many Raiders were opposed to the idea. Not as usually insinuated for any toxicity or gatekeeping reasons (similarly to KP, which really most people use to keep a certain highly toxic and entitled type of unskilled player out we've all met too many of to bear any more, rather than spitefully wanting to exclude or discriminate against new players). Well, the end result is that the mode still got abandoned. They may have tried to delay it, but in the end they only made sure that no attempt to save the mode was even made. And when the idea was first brought up, it wasn't refused because raiders were afraid of accelerating raids' downfall - if you look at those first threads you will see, that they simply didn't _believe_ there was any danger to raids. They thought those suggestions were just some attempts to take away part of what they were due. Even when later wings started releasing at a slower schedule, they still didn't think it may result in even worse situation later. Many still thought w8 was in the works when we've got not so subtle hints it wasn't. And the end result is what it is.

> @"Cyninja.2954" said: > If we look at strike completion rates, especially the easiest ones, we can gouge pretty well how many players are even interested in 10 player size instanced content. > > Stay Frosty, the achievement for killing the Icebrood Construct, was completed by 25% of all accounts on GW2efficiency. > Beyond the Vale, the achievement for killing the Icebrood Construct, was completed by 29% of all accounts on GW2efficiency. > Free at Last, the achievement for killing Deimos, was completed by 15% of all accounts on GW2efficiency. It has been pointed out many times over how those percentages cannot be directly compared, due to the overall population shrinking and many gw2efficiency players that are no longer active, as well as the differences in time the content was available. Not to mention, we don;t have any numbers on players that run either strikes or raids on more constant basis - the only achievement we have access to is a single kill one.

> @"lare.5129" said: > > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > > > @"lare.5129" said: > > > The + is bigger than 0 nowadays. So if this give one(1) euro - this profitable. > > So, like City of Heroes? > yes, good game from 2004, and good demo of mmo reality. My best example ragnarok online. And a good example of what NCSoft does to games if they think they're not profitable _enough_. No, one(1) euro is far from being enough.

> @"Fangoth.4503" said: > making new tier is: > **Good** if you think that players that are not able to do raid right now will go there get the lore and a reward that would be story like as bosses wouldn't be bosses anymore. > **Bad** if you think that that player that are not able to do raid right now will go there and become able to start higher difficulty for one simple reason: it is already really easy to get started and not that hard to meet pug required performances. Players currently unable to raid either refuses to learn how to play the encounter or refuses to adapt their rotation/traits to match raid standard and no cheezy mode will change that. > > So if a cheezy mode ever happens fine but you shouldn't receive any kp/li/magnetite/crystal/ascended item for it :) There's a reason why noone was doing dungeon story modes, and it was _not_ because they were too easy. Almost noone repeats current story steps either, unless it is on new character (for completion), or for achievements. So, if you think that making another content with story like reward is **good**... well, what can i say Also, there's absolutely no connection between your two **bad** options and your conclusion.

> @"maddoctor.2738" said: > > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > I agree with the rest of post, any decision to help Raids should've been made a very long time ago, and there is no simple miracle cure that can solve all the problems alone. > > > I have explained several times already why i think Fractal approach to multiple tiers was something different than what i was talking about for raids (and why i consider the Fractal approach to multiple tiers idea to be the bad move in the end). If you want, i may rpeat it again, although i don;t think this is a good thread for this kind of discussion. > > I didn't give Fractals as a specific example of an implementation for multiple tiers, but it was about the size of the community interested in those lower (different) tiers compared to the higher tiers. I'm quite positive that there are more players running T4/CM fractals, than the other tiers combined. This would mean, at least to me, that implementing a new tier for Raids, that have already a low population to begin with, wouldn't increase the overall population by a great amount. Yes, that's how the current fractal tier design works now. In this, those lower tiers are _meant_ to be transitional, and you are _supposed_ to "graduate" from them and go up. Devs do not intend for players to stay for longer in them, and that's why, for example, all the new rewards are solely concentrated on the top (and not even in T4, but in CMs). In a way, the original Fractal design was better in this regard. > Actually I once posted my own idea of how difficulty tiers could work. It's not that I'm opposed to the idea of new tiers, I just never found it to be very useful (on its own) and now it's too late to do something about it anyway. Wel, in that last part i have to agree. In a way, it's quite ironic - at the time when there was the greatest possibility of implementing some (any) changes that might have potentially made the situation better, the Raider community thought that everything was fine, and was extremely opposed to any such changes (or to mere mention of the idea that the situation may not be sustainable in the long run). And now, when at least some might be more agreeable, it's already too late to do anything.

> @"lare.5129" said: > The + is bigger than 0 nowadays. So if this give one(1) euro - this profitable. So, like City of Heroes?

> @"Heizero.9183" said: > Crazy that we still get these threads in 2020. Why? It's not like the situation is any different than, say, in 2018. If we got those threads then, we'll obviously keep getting them now.

I'd say it is way too weak. It neds far more visible effects. Maybe icicles forming on your body, or chilly mist circling around you, the infusion level stuff. Anything below that simply can't be tolerated. I mean, what's the point of you being chilled, if noone notices?

> @"maddoctor.2738" said: > I probably should've quoted the part above your post. > I'm challenging the idea that solving this so called "problem" of not having multiple difficulty tiers (that can miraculously solve **all** of the problems with Raids as @"Asgaeroth.6427" claims) Well, that claim was something, i have to agree. I also happen not to believe in miracle cures that fix _everything_ as a result of a relatively small change. > would make the raid community any bigger. Oh, i agree, it would not help - at least as far as the _current_ community is concerned, and not definitely not directly or in short time. It would however increase the overall, new "multitier raid community" (which in reality would consist of two or more separate subcommunities, one for each tier). And that might cause devs to put more resources into raids, including more resources for normal tier (or possibly even hardmode tier), which should have some at least positive impact on the current raiders. Of course, there's a lot of assumptions in it, and i may be wrong about it (although i don't think i am). And, of course, it's not really "might" but "might have", as the time to make that decision was in the past - now that raids got abandoned it's probably way too late for it. > Players not interested in instanced content at all, won't suddenly go and play Raids if they have different difficulty options, as is evident by the communities of the other instanced content in this game also being relatively small. Including content that does have multiple difficulties. I have explained several times already why i think Fractal approach to multiple tiers was something different than what i was talking about for raids (and why i consider the Fractal approach to multiple tiers idea to be the bad move in the end). If you want, i may rpeat it again, although i don;t think this is a good thread for this kind of discussion. Not that it matters, seeing as you seem to strongly dislike the idea regardless of th form it might take.

> @"maddoctor.2738" said: > > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > > > The raid community is really small because of this problem. > > Indeed. > > Because the Fractal / Dungeon / Strike Mission communities are so gigantic right? In general this game is well known, and played, for all it's instanced content but because raids don't have multiple difficulties they alone have a small community. ...what does that have to do anything with what was said? Does Fractals having population problems of their own make Raid community any bigger? Sure, GW2 having some inherent problems with difficulty tuning (and massive gaps in effectiveness caused by even small skill differences) due to its core design, impacts more than just Raids, and there are also _other_ problems that plague Raids, (and Fractals, and some other types of content), but in what way does this make what i said any less true?

> @"Asgaeroth.6427" said: > You're looking at it backwards in my opinion. The core design may have problems, but they are not insurmountable. Unfortunately, as long as there's only one difficulty tier, they _are_. > I am not an inexperienced raider. I cleared every heroic raid in WoW as main tank while it was the current raid from Wrath to the end of Pandaria. The problem is GW2 raids are not tuned around the game design, they are tuned around arbitrary checks that make no sense for the majority of players. You have experience with non-gw2 raids then, and thus are probably judging this ones using those past experiences. Problem is, GW2 design is significantly different. Things that work in other games simply do not work here. > > There's nothing about that that is unfixable and it is nothing that has to be lived with. The baseline raid difficulty doesn't need to be on par with Ascalon story mode, it just also should not be so ridiculously daunting. And here's the problem - what you consider daunting is actually not requiring anything even close to peak performance. There are players out there that consider even the hardest of the raid encounters to be too easy to pose a challenge. Let's put it that way - the encounter considered to be the hardest, the Dhuum Challenge Mode, has been done by a guild in budget (under 5g worth of TP-acquired equipment for a person, if i remember right) gear. Meaning, they used green equipment, cheap runes and sigils, and had no access to some stat sets (like the ones with boon duration). Each gear tier is an improvement of around 10% dps over the tier just below it, so we're talking about at least 30% dps loss right there. On a fight with a dps check in the last phase. A dps check that is way, way harder than the Gorse one. In any other MMORPG that would relegate it to an easy raid tier. In GW2 even the non-challenge mode version is consideed to be top difficulty. Why it is so? Again, the answer is game design. In FF XIV, for example, when you go into max level content, the difference in dps between bad and good player nowadays is around 3x. Average players end up somewhere in the gap of between half to 2/3 of that good player's dps. In gw2, the good player has a dps of 5 to 10 times that of an _average_ player. And bad players are even worse than that. Think what does that mean for encounter designs. > The DPS check on gors is unwinnable in a pug, I've tried to teach the fight to like 75 groups at this point, it's just impossible. Some people already commented on that, but i will repeat - there are several other ways to do that encounter, that let you do it with lower dps. Also, gorse dps check is not even that high. > A middle ground had to happen and still could happen. The raids don't need to be 2 hours of trying to fill and then replacing 3 slots every two wipes, they could be so good if they just took the edge off the baseline difficulty. Except in a single difficulty mode it cannot be anything but what it is now. You cannot properly balance the encounters for groups with such massive effectiveness gaps. Basically, in order to do that, you would need to _completely remove dps from the equation_. What would result from this would not be a boss fight. It would be a kind of a mechanical puzzle. Which might be interesting once or twice, but that's hardly what people would want from _all_ (or even majority) of boss encounters. > So many people say the problem is for some it's too easy and for some it's too hard. Because it is. > The raid community is really small because of this problem. Indeed. > If there was more people able to see the layouts of the instances and get comfortable with them, there would be more people working their way up through the ranks to a harder difficulty. Possibly, although at this point i no longer believe the conversion would be all that high. the main benefit from multiple difficulty mode would _not_ come from "teaching" players to improve (most players are either incapable of improving beyond their current level, or simply do not _want_ to put enough effort that would be required to do so. Which is understandable - this is a game, not everyone wants to change it into some sort of challenge or work) > If we had difficulty options, there could be a facemelting absolute "and then we doubled it" mode for the people bored with the way too brutally difficult version we have. Indeed. > Every problem with raiding in GW2 is solved instantly with difficulty options. I definitely wouldn't go that far (there's a number of problems that are completely unrelated to this) but i _do_ believe that multiple modes would help at least a bit. But that's only assuming Anet even wants to still do something about the mode, instead of just abandoning it and never speaking of it again, as they like to do to anything that has run into problems that require a bit more effort to fix. > It's blatantly obvious and is a standard necessary modern MMO feature. How could anyone with any amount of ability to think critically not see it? "LFR destroyed WoW", remember? People believe what they want to believe.

> @"Asgaeroth.6427" said: > I would give anything to play the raid content. It has been bothering me for 5 years every single day. Raids are exactly what I want out of GW2, and I was so excited for them to come. I just never expected them to release them at a baseline difficulty that required the degree of precision and build specificity that they do. There is definitely grounds to have a trinity style or very hardcore raid difficulty for the people who like that, but that's not what GW2 puts forward primarily. It's just such a missed opportunity. People don't play raids because they are brutally difficult, even if you think they are not. Problem is not that they are tailored at some "brutal" level of difficulty. Comparing to raids in other games, they actually often give significantly more leeway to players. The problem is that, due to how the game is designed, the skill curve in GW2 is much steeper, so even relatively small skill differences result in massive effectiveness gaps. Also, the freestyle build system offers a lot of choices to build your character, but most of those choices are just plain bad. Making a single difficulty mode that is meant to offer some kind of challenge in this kind of situation is a really big problem. Make it require a bit more skill, and it's beyond the reach of a huge majority of players. Make it require slightly less skill, and suddenly the players that wanted challenge are rolling over it withou noticing any kind of difficulty. While watching Netflix. And a lot of other players _still_ find it too hard. Basically, it's not a consequence of how raids are designed. It's caused by how _the game_ is designed. This was for the most part unintentional, btw. The old gw1 freestyle skill system worked relatively well, so they went with it again when they started working on the continuation. Unfortunately, adding to it a new trait system, boons, food bonuses, and (as one of the relatively late decision changes) stat bonuses to gear unbalanced that to a massive degree. What might have worked okay when operating separately turned out to be borderline ridiculous when it got stacked on top of each other, with each subsystem reinforcing the others. Unfortunately, since it was unintentional, the consequences got noticed way too late. And now we have to live with them.

Sure it was because of fractals. And the fact that Fractals already existed for 3 years at this point, but the nerf happened only at the moment first wing got introduced was certainly accidental and had nothing to do with them being afraid people will not want to move to Raids at all. The fact that in the subsequent months they started calling Fractals the stairway to raids - which was the first use of that term - also didn't signify anything about the final destination they planned for all those people they chased out of dungeons. Not at all.

> @"Asum.4960" said: > As far as I'm aware the company peaked at around 300-400 at HoT times, but I could be wrong there. First, your numbers are later, in the time around PoF release. Mine are from around half a year after HoT launched, and when Raids were at their highest. Second, you are comparing devs to all Anet employees. (also, the ~400 employees time was also probably the time when they started repurposing a lot of devs to non-gw2 projects) > Still, my point stands that the narrative about Raids being this massive undertaking taking significant company resources is wrong, when really it was just one small team of a handful devs, which frequently were called away to other projects such as LW or Expansion work, and ofc also some people from other teams contributing there as well as was happening with across all teams. And my point from the very beginning since we have learned more about raid team and work required on raids is that the resources used for them are massively underestimated. From what i can remember about the dungeon team from the times Anet still had one, it was _smaller_. Fractal "team" for a long while consisted of only one person, i think. And, by the way, the point at which Raid devs started to multitask and help out in other projects (instead of the devs from other projects helping _them_) was somewhere between w4 and w5 - which incidentally is considered by many raiders as the point where the release schedule went straight to kitten. > Of course those numbers are all to be taken with a grain of salt due to all the variables and lenses that we get them from and through, but exactly, it's far from the narrative that it's content no one played while taking massive resources. Yes. That still doesn't mean it didn't require _too much_ resources to keep running on a level that would be satisfying to Raid community. > > Absolutely, yea. Completion numbers dropped drastically across the board as the active population of the game was dropping off rapidly over the last few years, be it for Raids, Story or everything else. Plus ofc just more people getting to old content in total overt time. > But it is important to note that over the time when Raids was abandoned for, as people like to claim, dropping populations, LW participation, from the numbers we do have, dropped almost just as much, even though Anet pretty much put all their resources into just that. Well, as they found out (for the second time, but it seems they have fogotten the original lesson - or they really were intending to wind the game down), LS alone is not enough to retain game population longterm. You **need** expansions for that. And Anet went and cancelled the one that should have been released after LS4. > There wasn't really a cancellation though, was there? It seemed to me Anet just thought their LW concept with it's participation numbers was strong enough to single handedly carry the game, or at least keep revenue flowing on the back end as maintenance mode of sorts as they were focusing on their other (since cancelled) projects. It was not the cancellation in the meaning that they probably didn't even start working on Ex3. They _were_ however talking earlier about future expansions in general, and at some point they apparently changed their mind. Which also might be called a cancellation. Not of work on expansion, but of the idea of an expansion. > But it's not just the Expansion announcement itself that accomplished some quelling of the exodus, but also the (likely) misguided hopes of many that an Expansion could shift the focus of the game in a different direction again akin to HoT, rather than being another PoF, with maybe seeing a return of more MMO content such as Alliances, Raids and more community building repeatable content in general. More like expansion announcement was a hope that this game will have a _future_. Basically, any direction was good as long as it was a direction forward (and not directly straight at a wall or off the cliff). Remember, at this point a lot of players were genuinely thinking it was the end of the road. Expansion news gave them hope that no, it wasn't. > People just needed a hope for the future of the game again, and LW just wasn't doing that. This. > Sure, I'm just not convinced that it wasn't a major miscalculation on Anet's part based on a very vocal minority in the game. It's entirely anecdotal ofc, but I barely know or over the years knew a single player who wasn't deeply unhappy and unsatisfied, or at the very least "meh" about Anet's focus on LW and mostly non repeatable short story content, along with desperate economy breaking OW farms to hold on to player engagement, without actually producing much quality content in terms of gameplay, or driving the game forward and really evolving it's systems. As anecdotal evidence, i could say the same about lot of people i know and their negative opinions of Raids and _their_ impact on the game... I guess we just associate with different people. Apart from echo chamber, it is also the same principle that results in two people blasting the same balance patchnotes - one being disappointed that Anet again ignored PvP players for the sake of dealing with some unimportant stuff in PvE, and the other crying about another case of PvP-directed balance team mindset leading PvE to ruin. Everyone sees only part of the picture, and they interprete that based on their own beliefs and desires. > > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > > Raids did _not_ "keep the rest of the game fresh". It may have seem that way to raiders, because _they were raiding_ (and **that** kept the game fresh for them), but in more than one way, the influence of raids on other content was often not so positive, and not so well-liked. Of, quite often, simply non-existent. > > Just to name one thing, Raids were one of the main reasons why devs finally decided to deal the final blow to dungeons, and push the players out of them > > Dungeons hadn't seen additions since launch (excluding a TA path replacement) and updates for well over a year before HoT and Raids if I remember correctly, so I don't think it's fair to make that content responsible for the death of them, especially since most Raiders I know are very keen on Fractals and Dungeons and such as well and would have loved to see more of them. Anet flat out said they nerfed the dungeon rewards because they wanted dungeon players to move to raids. That was what dealt the killing blow. Partially reverting that nerf later on didn't help - by that point everyone already got the message and left. Up to this point however, even after being abandoned, dungeons were doing fine. So, yeah, while devs had other reasons for not wanting to touch dungeons, they _killed_ them because of raids. > As for what impact Raids had on the rest of the game, both positively and negatively, I find largely misrepresented as well, since the blinding light shows everywhere in OW that people are complaining about coming as influence of Raids weren't really, that's actually what I liked about Raids and dislike about OW content. In my experience it was more the other way around, where the OW meta event clusterf lightshows started invading instanced content like later Fractals and Raids, rather than originating there and coming to the rest of the game. It's not about the lightshows. It's about trying to "educate" the players so they could "graduate" to raids. The whole "stairway to raids" idea affected the whole game, including many, many people that didn't want to have anything to do with raids or anything connected to them. And yeah, the first year of raids was basically devs telling everyone that all roads lead to raids, and you should start walking fast if you don't want to remain a second category citizen. Or at least large number of players read it that way. > As for all the neat little things from Raids which did actually come to OW, like VG and it's greens mechanic being reused for an OW boss in Bloodstone Fen or whole new mechanical additions like the Special Action skill for example, most non Raiders probably didn't realise how that was Raid development being reused or contributing to OW and Story. That's probably most of those players didn't _care_ about those "improvements". A lot of players i know actively dislikes when Anet tries to do something new and "inventive" to circumvent normal, old style combat engine., and learned to associate any new mechanics with getting a new annoyance they won't like. A number of my friends stopped doing fractals (which they were very actively doing before) as a direct response to bullet hell mechanic on Nightmare. That's how well they thought of that neat new mechanic. I understand that raiders will consider those "neat little things" to be positive, but you need to understand as well that not everyone saw them that way.

> @"Asum.4960" said: > Except Raids were made by ~1% of the company, Company had 220 devs at that time. And it took 5-6 dedicated devs (and an unknown, but significantly higher than zero number of devs working parttime on them) for a single wing (hint: they were working on more than one wing at that time). That's much more than just 1%. > and had Efficiency completion rates as high as 30% early on when Raids where still properly supported with frequent releases and promised a future for players to get into that content. Meaning, around 29% of efficiency-registered (so, mostly more dedicated) players killed VG _once_. And not then, but during the whole time since the wing first released (at the time the efficiency numbers for kill achieves were around 20% at best for VG, and somewhere below 10% for Sabetha iirc - and remember, those numbers were most certainly overinflated compared to the whole community, due to how biased away from casuals Efficiency population is) (although yes, it's still not 15% of resources to 1% of players. It was at best 10% of total resources, and significantly higher than 1% of players (possibly close to 10% or so, initially, although i am only guessing here, since we have no official data on this). Although it's also something we cannot compare so easily, because due to key specializations, some devs are "worth" more than others. >Which also happens to be a higher rate than what some later LW story completions had on Efficiency. Lower population in the game with each year means lower percentages of the total Efficiency population (because some efficiency players stop playing as well). You'd have to compare raid wings with LS completion from the same timeframe. That's also why you can't really compare further wings with earlier ones so easily. > And sure, Raids dropped to <5% participation later on (which while still reasonable for high end content, especially one produced by just a handful people, isn't fantastic), but that's not really surprising with maybe one Raid Wing a year just not being enough to sustain that community. I'd bet they adjusted resources meant for raids to the actual population. Which caused the population to go down more, of course, but it just means they probably had lower population _per amount of devs assigned to it_ Anet was comfortable with even in the beginning. > Plus, if 2019 revenue and it's staggering record drops has shown us anything, it's that LW and Story, which they almost entirely focused on that year, is absolutely not what is carrying the game. It's far more likely that what caused those revenue drops was not raid abandonment, but the announced cancellation of the _expansion_. Notice, how those numbers suddenly got better after EoD was announced, even though by that time raids being completely abandoned (and strikes not really being able to take that place) was something well known by anyone and pretty much irreversible. > That's why designing by statistics is a sure way to fail at making games. Just because most people play something like LW, simply because hey it's there and it takes about nothing to do so, doesn't mean that it's what most people are actually there for. > Just because something like Raids isn't played by the majority, because it does take "a lot" to do so, doesn't mean that it doesn't attract a great deal of players to the game and can serve as motivation for long term engagement for players to get to and experience some day. Indeed. That's why you can't be just speaking about "minority this, majority that", but constantly need to weight resources spent versus playerbases. It is indeed often worth spending a bit of resources on a minority project, if it keeps some part of the community happy. Problems start when you need to spend more resources than you feel comfortable for this gain, and/or that content starts, for one reason or another, make _other_ parts of the community unhappy. Raids here, unfortunately for them, did eventually end up in that zone. > So not only are your stats backwards, they are also largely useless or at the very least deceptive in how they more often than not go counter to good game design. Yes, the percentage comparison was overblown. The answer here is not so clear, and generally needs to be decided on case-by-case basis. And of course things like mismanagement (which is something that definitely happened to raids - and not only to raids) can also heavily influence this. > Sure you can have 0.01% of the company (one dev) make some really, really poor and unfun content that is incredibly rewarding and get absolutely fantastic engagement numbers of >80% as everybody wants the quick easy rewards, but if that's all you release then because stats tell you it's a great idea, you are going to kill your game quicker than you can blink with bored players who got everything and have nothing to do. Agreed, doing content _only_ for 50+% parts of the population ie very shortsighted. > Endgame content doesn't need to boast majority numbers to be healthy for a game, be it for advertisement, carrot/inspiration for existing players wishing to get there, or for trickle down of innovative and engaging design and tech to the more generic and basic content, at least adding some variety to that and keeping the rest of the game fresh as well, as we've seen with Raids in GW2 repeatedly. Raids did _not_ "keep the rest of the game fresh". It may have seem that way to raiders, because _they were raiding_ (and **that** kept the game fresh for them), but in more than one way, the influence of raids on other content was often not so positive, and not so well-liked. Of, quite often, simply non-existent. Just to name one thing, Raids were one of the main reasons why devs finally decided to deal the final blow to dungeons, and push the players out of them

> @"Cyninja.2954" said: > So your saying you did not have fun for 2 months playing together with others? > > Just think about this for a minute, unrelated to how hard or easy content might be, you are essentially complaining about having an activity to do with your guild on a daily basis for 2 months (not really complaining but giving as example I guess). I had activities to do with my guild on daily basis _before_ raids were introduced. Raids practically _killed_ that. And as for those months... let's just say that some players had more fun than others. And that i'm still not on speaking terms with some of the people i have started raiding with then. > Even IF raids are hard, wouldn't having that kind of group content be a good thing? You know for having people play the game long term? While i don't actually like how the raids were introduced in this game (and the consequences it had on everything else), i don't really mind raiders having a content for themselves and having fun in it. I'd just liked a version that was more tailored to my preferences. I _definitely_ would have liked another way to get those armors. While there were indeed some good memories in it (i will give you that), the overall amount of stress i got from it contributed massively to me practically dropping out of this game and now logging only shortly for LS. It also killed a lot of friendships i had in this game prior to raids. And contributed greatly to fractures in 3 different guilds i were in (the first one, the one i was the most invested in, got practically killed by this). Overall, i'm not sure i have benefitted at all from the experience. Which, by the way, was completely _not_ the point of the post you responded to. The point was that counting on finding several vets that will not have a problem with carrying you through the content is not a good advice. It's not something you can depend on, and being that helpful it's definitely not something you should expect from others. All the story told by @"mindcircus.1506" tells us is that he lucked out. Nothing more.

> @"Jilora.9524" said: > Btw you are literally the 1st person ever to complain about this. That's literally not true. GoB complains are a common recurring theme of those forums. Not saying the problems are not exagerrated, or that getting GoB is not easy, but at least let's not lie about this _not_ being talked about often. > @"Randulf.7614" said: > It makes perfect sense because ANET want players crossing the modes. That would have been a valid response if they actually remembered WvW even exists. [/sarcasm] Still, the only response i can give to OP is that it's extremely unlikely GoB acquisition is going to change (especially with the current amount of attention Anet is paying to WvW). So, use the other suggestions that already were offered and perhaps you will find it's not as bad as you think it is. > @"Strider Pj.2193" said: > How about a WvW reward track that gives me the GoE for map completion for any area. Either for the PoF, HoT or core maps? Sounds sensible. > Or, better yet, allow me to swap with a vendor the GoB for said exploration? That would be a good idea. Perhaps it could even work both ways.