Asum.4960

> @"Cleopatra.4068" said: > I don’t understand the raiding community at all. They complain they never get new raids. Then they yell at anyone who wants to play raids that they are all too incompetent, lazy, casual, and suck at the game to play with them. So no one plays raids. So ArenaNet doesn’t make anymore raids. So raiders yell at all the people who they wouldn’t let play raids for not playing raids. It just goes around and around in a circle that somehow never seems to be the raiding communities fault. > > If you want people to play raids, stop insulting people who want to play them and let them play with you. Stop creating artificial barriers to growing the raiding community by placing ridiculous hoops for people to jump through in the way. > > Want to play raids with us? First, install a third party application, then spend hundreds of hours whacking a training golem until the third party application says your DPS perfectly matched our arbitrarily defined measure of competence. Sure....I’ll get right on that. Then, join a training guild and spend months running training runs once a week until you have obtained our arbitrarily defined measure of KP and LI that indicates you aren’t too noob to live. That doesn’t sound condescending, insulting, rude or overbearing at all. Who wouldn’t want to play with a community of condescending, insulting, rude, overbearing elitists like that? > > The hoops aren’t really even the problem. The problem is that only kitten want to play with kitten. GW2 apparently doesn’t have enough kitten playing to support the raiding community. If that were how it happened, that would indeed not make any sense.

> @"MattDu.7123" said: > > @"mindcircus.1506" said: > > The low-effort "open world pve" population in this game actively rebels against any content that has a fail condition. > > @"Cyninja.2954" said: > > Raids needed a bigger player base > > @"Asum.4960" said: > > But to blame people who simply want to play with other players of similar skill levels > > So, you need a bigger player base, but not the "open world pve" population and only those that already know how to do raids? Doesn't leave a lot of people to pick from, but sounds like a great plan. > > > @"Pyriin.3291" said: > > The entry point itself is player motivation. > > What entry point are you talking about > > > @"aspirine.6852" said: > > Why would I join only to get kicked because I never done it before.. > > > @"vicky.9751" said: > > Why do people need to join a discord, put an api key, and then get pinged endlessly for mostly **experiencd** groups or stuff that fills too fast? **this is not** a healthy way to get people to play these raids. I wish gw2 had a matched finder like other games, at least you would GET a party. > > > > Tomorrow make a brand new account, quickly get your guy to 80, ascended everything and pop on down to the dome. Lay it on thick that you have never done a raid before but have watched the videos and come on here the following day to tell us how you failed miserably to find a game and it completely put you off the whole experience, or you can lie. > My money say you will lie? > You could always knee jerk reply straight away and say things like join a training guild(but not your one), try strikes first, or a favourite of mine come back when you've gain experience. > > I don't want raids or strikes to die, it seems like it could be great end game content but if you don't meet the majority of the population half way, they will. > > > ..you do realise that every Raider at one point had never done Raids before and then got into that content, right? It sometimes genuinely feels like people are arguing like there are people who were born as Raiders and those that weren't, and then those evil Raiders are keeping everyone else out from becoming one too. People need to have internal motivation to get better, and be willing to group and communicate. The whole emergence of LI/KP and gating in general is due to the countless times every Raider, Fractal or even Strike player experienced of people joining. refusing to communicate their purpose/contribution to the group, providing no perceivable damage, boons or healing, and at worst, then often getting incredibly toxic and combative at even the most gentle prodding about what they are doing or even tips going their way, after repeatedly causing wipes/fails. I don't know why some people think it's just the unconditional responsibility and duty of every existing Raider and such to take these people along and endure any waste of time, lack of fun or even abuse being hurled their way, because apparently everybody is just entitled to being taken along for endgame content without any preparation or common courtesy? Is it really that outlandish or surprising that many, if not most experienced players eventually lost patience and just gated their groups in order to not have to start at 0 again every week, enduring hours of wipes or even abuse, and never getting anything done? When I got into Raids, almost 2 years after their introduction to GW2 (being essentially brainwashed by the community for that time that they were way to hard and the environment way too toxic for me), it's not like I sat in the LFG just watching/joining experienced groups that were looking for like-minded/skilled people with no idea what I was doing and expected them to carry me or complain if they didn't. I crafted/looked up builds, practiced rotations/roles, watched and read guides and then went out to search and find a community that I was comfortable with doing training to do the content together with. That's exactly the kind of player I, and every other person I Raided and talked about this with, would have loved to have join us too. The "telling me how to play is toxicity" 1-5k DPS at max range sitting Longbow Ranger type OW player is never going to get into content like Raids unless they change their mindset though, and you can't blame any Raider for that. So no, getting into Raids and such is not a case of "OW players and beginners not allowed", but "common courtesy and motivation required". (And that is not why Dungeons, Raids, Guild Missions, Strikes, Fractals for the most part, etc. etc. died.)

> @"Captain Kuro.8937" said: > > @"Asum.4960" said: > > > @"Captain Kuro.8937" said: > > > > @"Cyninja.2954" said: > > > > > @"MattDu.7123" said: > > > > > > @"mindcircus.1506" said: > > > > > > > @"MattDu.7123" said: > > > > > > > Didn't the raid community want strikes as a way to encourage more people to raid, increase the player base so they could could justify needing more content. Seems that by making it a closed loop it will end up having the opposite effect. > > > > > > The raiding community did not ask for Strikes. > > > > > > They asked for more raids. > > > > > > > > > > I'll repeat it because obviously you must of missed it, in your haste to reply. Raids needed a bigger player base and an entry point to help it to grow, so they could could justify needing more content. If you don't have an easy way for new players to join then, your just cutting off your own nose. > > > > > > > > Raids needed a bigger player base because they were neglected for years at a time. In fact most players who raid disliked strikes from the get go, since those resources even in diminished form could have been used in new raids instead. You enjoy story and open world and are disheartened by the latest Icebrood Saga releases? Imagine having NO released content for over a year, regularly. That's what diminished raids. Raids were fine population wise before that. > > > > > > > > Some of us actively argued against this type of content (similar to the constant recurring "easy mode raids" demands), knowing that it would not work because having actually experienced the transition from baseline to challenging GW2 content and in some cases actively training the next generation of raiders gave us enough insight. Lo and behold, that turned out to be true. > > > > > > > > So again, no. Players who enjoy raiding did not "ask" for strikes. We hoped for the continued minimum developer resources be put into raids as in the past. The game got strikes instead. > > > > > > Ereyone got hurt at those 9 months, while they where making the expansion. > > > I don't see raiders in Wow, having the same issue with every expansion. > > > . > > > The simply do other stuff, than Raids in the meanwhile > > > > > > A quick google search tells me that WoW has about 50 Raids, with some single expansions launching with up to 9 Raids. > > GW2, over it's entire life cycle of 8+ years, added 7 Raids, at a pace of a little bit over one a year, after the initial 3. > > > > The Raiding community was hurting since 4 years, not 9 months. Not to any fault of the content or those playing it, but because there simply weren't enough of them to sustain a healthy playerbase. > > Even as highly repeatable as they are, 30 minutes of content every 9 months just isn't enough, neither for people to stick around, nor for people to see it as a healthy content avenue to get invested in, strive towards and join in alongside others (in turn keeping the community fresh and varied). > > > > As for doing other stuff meanwhile? > > The Shattered Observatory CM released in mid 2017, the next piece of Hardcore content came with the Sunqua Peak CM in late 2020. That's well over 3 years wait for another piece of ~15 minute challenging group content. > > > > What else was added over that time to keep these communities of highly proficient players engaged and playing together while waiting for those sporadic Raid releases? > > Any Dungeons? Tough.. or any new Guild Missions to rally around, anything? > > In fact, the only thing Anet did over recent times is taking features, such as proper, unlimited, Templates, essentially out of the game, in favour of a monetization scheme. > > > > I get confirmation bias and all that, if you never liked or played content such as this, to want to believe it just failed, didn't have interest or simply didn't work. > > But let's not bend over backwards just to not have to admit that Anet drastically mismanaged resources, siphoning talent and funding away from GW2 since years to their other (since failed) projects, while scaling GW2 down to nothing but the bare minimum, aka LW, to retain some periodic Gemstore engagement to fund their other products. > > > > With them now scrambling for an Expansion after revenue plummeted massively over the time they focused on LW and most of their new game projects they intended to transition to falling through. > > > > That's what happened to Raids, and just about any other form of content in the game, aside from LW. > > When casual where coming to the thread to whine , not for the dificulty/nor for the rewards of the Raids , but for the KP + damage meters , it wasnt the company telling them to suck it up , and do it the proper way . > And now people are trying to wash their hands from the responsibility If there was a healthy community being fostered, not just for Raids but group content in general (strange concept in an MMO, I know), with people having guilds, groups, networks to play with and feel comfortable tackling more challenging content with, whatever already experienced players/groups are doing on LFG to fill slots wouldn't be of much concern - as that is not the ideal place to first get into the content with anyway, in any case. Although even that would be much better ofc with more content and more frequent waves of new players coming in to take the dive in together. But to blame people who simply want to play with other players of similar mindsets and skill levels to be responsible for the death of a game mode is ludicrous, especially looking at Raids with all it's training communities, benchmarking efforts and build guides to help out less invested/proficient or so inclined players. And let's not forget - everybody can post an LFG. Posting your own with requirements is not excluding anyone, who have that very same ability to do so without requirements if they so wish, from any content. Players are not responsible for teaching the game (and yet many went above and beyond to try), nor for making a largely unsupported game (mode) look attractive, the developer is. It's just that growing GW2, in nearly all of it's aspects, clearly wasn't the priority over the last few years for Anet.

> @"Captain Kuro.8937" said: > > @"Cyninja.2954" said: > > > @"MattDu.7123" said: > > > > @"mindcircus.1506" said: > > > > > @"MattDu.7123" said: > > > > > Didn't the raid community want strikes as a way to encourage more people to raid, increase the player base so they could could justify needing more content. Seems that by making it a closed loop it will end up having the opposite effect. > > > > The raiding community did not ask for Strikes. > > > > They asked for more raids. > > > > > > I'll repeat it because obviously you must of missed it, in your haste to reply. Raids needed a bigger player base and an entry point to help it to grow, so they could could justify needing more content. If you don't have an easy way for new players to join then, your just cutting off your own nose. > > > > Raids needed a bigger player base because they were neglected for years at a time. In fact most players who raid disliked strikes from the get go, since those resources even in diminished form could have been used in new raids instead. You enjoy story and open world and are disheartened by the latest Icebrood Saga releases? Imagine having NO released content for over a year, regularly. That's what diminished raids. Raids were fine population wise before that. > > > > Some of us actively argued against this type of content (similar to the constant recurring "easy mode raids" demands), knowing that it would not work because having actually experienced the transition from baseline to challenging GW2 content and in some cases actively training the next generation of raiders gave us enough insight. Lo and behold, that turned out to be true. > > > > So again, no. Players who enjoy raiding did not "ask" for strikes. We hoped for the continued minimum developer resources be put into raids as in the past. The game got strikes instead. > > Ereyone got hurt at those 9 months, while they where making the expansion. > I don't see raiders in Wow, having the same issue with every expansion. > . > The simply do other stuff, than Raids in the meanwhile A quick google search tells me that WoW has about 50 Raids, with some single expansions launching with up to 9 Raids. GW2, over it's entire life cycle of 8+ years, added 7 Raids, at a pace of a little bit over one a year, after the initial 3. The Raiding community was hurting since 4 years, not 9 months. Not to any fault of the content or those playing it, but because there simply weren't enough of them to sustain a healthy playerbase. Even as highly repeatable as they are, 30 minutes of content every 9 months just isn't enough, neither for people to stick around, nor for people to see it as a healthy content avenue to get invested in, strive towards and join in alongside others (in turn keeping the community fresh and varied, and with that easier to break into). As for doing other stuff meanwhile? The Shattered Observatory CM released in mid 2017, the next piece of Hardcore content came with the Sunqua Peak CM in late 2020. That's well over 3 years wait for another piece of ~15 minute challenging group content. What else was added over that time to keep these communities of highly proficient players engaged and playing together while waiting for those sporadic Raid releases? Any Dungeons? Tough.. or any new Guild Missions to rally around, anything? In fact, the only thing Anet did over recent times is taking features, such as proper, unlimited, Templates, essentially out of the game, in favour of a monetization scheme. I get confirmation bias and all that, if you never liked or played content such as this, to want to believe it just failed, didn't have interest or simply didn't work. But let's not bend over backwards just to not have to admit that Anet drastically mismanaged resources, siphoning talent and funding away from GW2 since years to their other (since failed) projects, while scaling GW2 down to nothing but the bare minimum, aka LW, to retain some periodic Gemstore engagement to fund their other products. With them now scrambling for an Expansion after revenue plummeted massively over the time they focused on LW and most of their new game projects they intended to transition to falling through. That's what happened to Raids, and just about any other form of content in the game, aside from LW.

> @"Kaliwenda.3428" said: > I said PoF difficulty, b/c I definitely didn't want HoT difficulty, but now I'm remembering some of the places in PoF where I died repeatedly and I feel maybe that was the wrong choice. What's the problem with that though? Especially in GW2. If you die or fail at something, you can just rethink your builds/strategy, discover or learn to better understand a game mechanic, grow as a player and try again (what some would say playing a video game is in the first place) - and then benefit from that gained experience throughout all your time going forward with playing GW2. It's not like GW2 deletes your character upon death, takes away hours of experience or even de-leveling you, or even just making you go through a tedious or costly revival process. It's one button click at the price of a few silver that you'll make back in literally seconds with the first trash mob drop. Even the armor repair system has essentially been removed, requiring just a quick NPC visit, for free, after 7+ deaths. The option to fail, to me, always has been a pretty important part of what makes a game a game. If there is no failure state, pretty much no matter what you could reasonable do, then there isn't really any point or achievement to it, no? Doesn't seem very compelling, outside of non-traditional gaming products specifically advertising and catering to that, like walking simulators or visual novels, maybe. The only way I can see that being frustrating is if difficulty is done excessively or cheaply (which GW2 is as far from as a video game can be while still being a game), or if a player completely refuses to adjust and grow, essentially frustrating themselves, trying the same flawed strategy/build over and over, expecting different results. > @"sorudo.9054" said: > you should not have to go trough all of it, you should be able to go straight to EoD without any previous experience. It's max level (expansion) content... since when "should" that be easy to straight jump to and go through without any experience whatsoever in an RPG? Sometimes I wonder if some people even still want to play video games, or trying to turn video games into essentially success guaranteed non-interactive linear media.

> @"Cuks.8241" said: > The first thing cFB needs nerfed is the huge CC from Sanctuary. No need that the most versatile profession gets also a 1 button huge CC skill. I don't think the dmg is the issue here. If only there was some great equalizer in the game.. idk, something like consumables that CC, to increase build variety.

> @"Ashen.2907" said: > I find the open world content in this game to be mind-numbingly bland. Almost a complete lack of challenge. I prefer playing with others in general, just not here. Working as a group to overcome challenges greater than any one of us is fun. Having multiple people semi-afk auto-attack a foe down with almost no chance of failure is not more fun than doing so alone. Without challenges to overcome as a group (and I admit that there are a few) then playing as a group is meaningless. If all one wants is to socialize the game is not needed. Amen. @"Sobx.1758" There are a few negatives to other people joining/being around, in that trash mobs these days are near oneshot by (proficient) players, so when grinding out some heart, doing an event or needing something for a collection, kill stealing can be annoying. Similarly when soloing some Champion/Legendary/Group event, it's generally easy until other player's join and scale the whole thing up without contributing much themselves, essentially just making things more "bullet spongy" for myself and dragging out the time. Considering many/most of those have time limits, it can be annoying when the presence of other's fails an event by inflating boss HP too much, when I know I could have easily solo'ed it. (Dis)honorable mention, Longbow Rangers and the like rolling their face over their keyboard, knocking mobs out of all of your AoE's you've just put down every 15 seconds. As for positives.. yay, another player? I guess. It's not like you ever need to group, communicate and cooperate to overcome anything though, so meeting other players to silently play alone together with for a moment by happenstance doesn't really matter.

> @"Blood Red Arachnid.2493" said: > The starter zones are designed to be approachable by the lowest common denominator. A lot of us are seasoned gamers around here, so we've lost perspective on how [low that denominator is.]( ) Anet wants to sell this game to people who don't know what hit points are, who don't know how to type yet, who don't know what damage is, who don't know how to auto attack. A lot of the lower level enemies may seem like they're trivial gimmies to us, but that is because we know how to play the game. But, there are potential players out there who upon being attacked will quickly panic, freeze, look at their keyboard, struggle to remember where the keys are, struggle to remember what the keys do, begin mashing randomly hoping that something will happen, panic again when they open a bunch of windows, ask the nearest person what they should do, and then maybe they'll mouse over the auto attack skill and click on it. Even if these enemies are so easy that you can slaughter them in mass by auto attacking, even that is not guaranteed for a new player. > > And that is why we need a defiance bar tutorial somewhere in the early game. Absolutely agree on the starter zones. The problem is that it doesn't change much from there, especially through out core. Many players, after getting over those perfectly understandable initial hurdles you describe either get overly complacent or slowly see their interest in the active combat system, movement etc. fade as they more and more realise that really all their buttons are redundant, and that if they wanted to they could just Autoattack everything down. Why that is an issue is because the seemingly majority of players, even by level 80 and beyond, still don't know things like either even how or at least when to dodge, or that dodging is a tool to be used against attacks that you can't just walk out of. Whenever I'm in OW I constantly see player's frantically trying to double dodge out of an incoming AoE Hit, burning all of their endurance, just to then get hit at the end anyway, when they either could have just taken a shorter path and walked out, or ideally timed a single dodge inside the AoE without moving at all to avoid it. Similarly timing and utilising CrowdControl. It feels like the Nr. 1 use of CC in Open World is knocking mobs out of other player's AoE's, essentially helping the mobs out and frustrating other players, by randomly hitting the buttons, while then in turn failing any and all interrupts or breakbars for which one is supposed to save those skills (who's primary purpose is largely CC, while generally doing less damage than even an Auto Attack). Boons and to a lesser extend conditions especially seem utterly undervalued or forgotten and I can almost guarantee that every player struggling with the game isn't aware of the fact that they can just select 2-3 Traits these days on most professions to grant themselves sheer perma 25 Might and Fury, which together with often even easier acessable 25 Vulnerability in many cases can double or even triple their damage, in turn massively increasing their survivability as well by defeating mobs before they ever even get to act. Speaking of survivability, Circle strafing is another big one ofc, and I don't think many players realise that by (turning off melee assist in the options and) simply strafing around and through enemies, one is able to avoid a good 90% of all melee attacks by making them swing/bite/claw into thin air. The Core experience simply never requires a player to stop and think, to master or even just learn any of these fundamental systems. I don't think anyone is asking for Queensdale to be tough as nails, throwing new player's into a frustrating hell, but imo the game does need a gentle curve upwards from 15-80 (at least if they want to grow the new playerbase with such things as a Steam release), which conveys the need to understand those systems, so that players then later aren't completely overwhelmed in (let's be honest, largely still incredibly easy, **If** one has learned those game systems) expansion content and beyond. It's not like failure and death are punished in any real way in GW2 already, so really those moments are nothing but learning opportunities, and I don't know why people seem to be getting so allergic to those. Without those moments to make player's look at their Skills, Traits, Skill use etc. to reconsider or better understand, there won't ever be room for growth, unless through already existing intrinsic motivation to be better - which then creates a massive rift in the community of those who do have that, and those who don't, making content delivery for the game extremely challenging.

> @"Oxstar.7643" said: > It isn't. If you are 1-shotting anything then you are either way overleveled for that area or have incredibly good gear. None of these applies to new players. For one, the design intention of the game with for example the downscaling feature was so content would, although easier, never be entirely invalidated in engagement, and secondly, >90% of mobs in core being literally one-shotable or to be killed by holding down Auto Attack without any challenge is indicative of the issue that many, including the OP have witnessed, where even if level, gear and experience appropriate, core especially still hasn't kept up with powercreep and design, becoming way too easy - if not for some to enjoy, at the very least for all to learn how to actually play, build and gear an effective character. Which the early to mid game is supposed to teach in an RPG. Suggesting for players to actively sabotage themselves (as I've seen plenty in these forums) by taking off gear/traits (which is as unfun as it is counter-intuitive and -productive) or seeking out zones which the game's design literally tells them in numbers they aren't supposed to go to yet, just to have a normal experience of actually fighting mobs, learning how to play, reading their skills and traits and combining them in a sensible way is quite backwards. That's an issue that ripples all the way back to how perceptively hard Expansions, all the way to even Raids are, and how much Anet struggles with content delivery that's suited to both players who got by for hundreds if not thousands of hours of content with literally just holding down Auto Attack or pressing buttons randomly off cooldown (doing ~5k dps), and people capable of 60k+ damage per second bursts. Without a proper teaching experience to close that massive gap, this game has become impossible to develop broadly engaging content for. That's ultimately not good for anyone.

> @"Oxstar.7643" said: > That is why I enjoyed taking on champions by myself and stuff like that. There are plenty of things in the leveling maps that is actually hard if there isn't already people there. My experience is actually the opposite. The average OW player scales up content more with their presence than they contribute, effectively just making me get hit harder and have to do more total damage (or stopping constantly and taking extra hits to ress). That's part of my critique of the game coddling it's players way too much, especially the outdated core experience - as it just completely removes the incentive for players to improve to overcome hurdles, which has progressed to a point where having other players around in the OW is actually a tangible detriment (at least for the proficient player). > @"kharmin.7683" said: > Not every game is for everyone. It simply cannot happen. There are many games I've tried and found the early experience to be more difficult than I would like to the point where it started to become more of a chore than entertainment. I didn't go to those forums and complain about the difficulty and/or ask for changes to it to suit my preference; rather, I left and found other games that more ably fit my gaming entertainment needs. > > Clearly, not every new player is turned away by the early parts of GW2 -- I see new players all of the time in higher than 1-15 zones. The thing is GW2 used to be a lot harder at launch and through it's prime. Running around self-buffed with 25 Might, Fury (and some cases Quickness) was utterly unthinkable at launch. Healing was more limited, damage much lower. Powerful open world options like the Diviner Stat set or Firework Runes didn't exist. Elite Specs weren't a thing. Many skills had longer cooldowns, less or or no cleave at all and so on. One little example, Ranger's Maul went from a 6 second Cooldown, single Target 300 base Damage ability, with a 1.1 Power coefficient and a Minor Bleed at 150 range at launch; to a 700 base Damage Ability, with a 1.75 Power coefficient, with extra Vulnerability, 5 Target nuke at 220 range at a 4 second Cooldown - for which, if that wasn't enough, an instant CD reset was added to Hilt Bash, which, together with the increase to Might, Fury and Vulnerability access, basically increased it's damage potential by sheer tenfold, leading to the little engaging oneshot gameplay we have today. OW, at GW2's peak, was actually a lot more difficult and engaging. The content, both numerically and design wise just has not at all kept up with the massive increase in efficacy and variation of player tools, let alone the increase of skill at the game for those who bothered to learn it's mechanics, old and new alike. The majority of mobs being literally oneshot by players wasn't a conscious design decision, nor what attracted many of us to the game initially (besides coming from GW1). It's not that the game wasn't designed for us, much of it's content just became outdated and obsolete over time, that being the new player/learning experience is now largely responsible for the harmfully massive skill gaps and Anet's struggle with creating and maintaining widely appealing content avenues.

I think that's unfortunately a fairly accurate representation of the game. If your skill at the game (as well as game knowledge) increases proportionally to the content, in retrospect I'd almost say HoT and especially PoF now are, relatively speaking, easier than core was 8 years ago. We had a lot over powercreep over the years, and once you realise that nowdays you can easily achieve perma 25 Might and Fury on yourself on all professions (often times as low as by level 30), and 25 Vuln on enemies, and beyond that learn to circle strafe and/or chain CC's - I don't recall struggling in HoT or PoF anywhere as much (or rather, at all) than with Core at launch, despite me coming in as an experienced MMO (and in general RPG) player at the time too. Meanwhile, sure, core nowdays genuinely allows you to oneshot the vast majority of mobs with almost any single button press on a reasonably set up/equipped character (while that's only true for select skills and builds for expansion content), paling in comparison to content down the line in genuinely problematic ways in terms of retaining new players, and lack of teaching those who get through it the base game mechanics to then find HoT and PoF easy as well. So yes, while the game gets drastically more "difficult" from core to expansion content at any given time, the vastly buffed player tools as well as expected increases in player skill through moving through that content and adjusting and building your character, imo actually still made it easier overall, while completely invalidating core as a game, or at least learning experience. > @"artcreator.4859" said: > It's just too easy, been playing with new people and they wanted to quit due to the first leveling maps, its just a steam roll, walk up, press 1 on key board, move on That's unfortunately the gist of GW2's open world content (and with that, the vast majority of game content). You can try rushing to expansion content and maybe have them struggle and have fun for a bit, but if they are adaptive/learning players - updating their build and gear as they go, those soon won't be much more than movement keys to walk/circle strafe and 1 either.

> @"Donutdude.9582" said: > There are more builds out there than simple condition builds. Thematically, it makes sense that inanimate objects do not take condition damage. This is something I enjoy immensely when popping back into Core Tyria. A lot of vanilla structures with condition immunity. > > Learn to build for the situation. You will see much better results that way. Tbf, if you want to make the thematic or realism argument, neither should bladed weapons or arrows be viable choices to damage most structures, or be flagged to break themselves. I don't think that's a solid argument at all. A Pillar would bleed to death long before swords or arrows have chiseled it down. _(apparently surprisingly, I was being facetious here)_ At the end of the day, it's just a further annoyance to generally already slower condition builds - and really not the place for GW2 to suddenly care about it's theme and world integrity. Plus previously thematically condition immune enemies have already been "fixed" in the past, due to the unfun dynamic they provide of suddenly invalidating certain builds/professions, in a game that otherwise doesn't care for such specifics/mechanics. As well as newer objects being changed to be affected by conditions as well. So there is precedent. The theme/realism argument falls flat, and existing non updated objects are simply an oversight/testament of Anets unwillingness at large to go back and fix things, especially concerning core.

> @"Redfeather.6401" said: > In order for it to be both fun and fair if the trash mobs... > 1. ... have knockdown skills then I would like a skill warm up bar for them. > 2. ... have immunity/evasion phases then I would like a way to interrupt them. Difficulty definitely can't just be numerical (high health and damage) or be cheap/annoying (oneshots, instant CC's). I just wish Anet would make greater use of all the already existing mechanics and with greater creativity. Have mobs that run around wildly and are hard to damage while having Swiftness, but bring some boon strip and they become snared and vulnerable. Give mobs big AoE CC's/nukes, dangerous buffs in PvE like Retaliation or invuln/evade phases, but telegraph them properly with Breakbars which can be used to interrupt them, making them more vulnerable instead. Give some mobs really dangerous opening attacks that need to be dodged, other's enrage at low health values with Might, Fury and Quickness and need to be bursted/kited. Give some mobs heavy projectile barrages akin to Bristleback's in HoT. Have some mobs briefly stun themselves when their attacks are blocked, but otherwise are really dangerous. Just give different professions opportunities to shine and struggle. Create rewarding difficulty by allowing players to learn tells and patterns. Teach and reward use of game mechanics and ability to adapt. Reward game knowledge. Nobody wants to get oneshot, roleplay a ping pong ball, make some tea while a Mob dances around evading for a minute or aggro half the map walking somewhere. That's not what (imo good difficulty) has to be though. Running always the same (often lacklustre) build, not knowing when and how to use half of the game mechanics such as CC, dodges, projectile denial, boon strip etc. and just pressing buttons at random/off cooldown just should not cut it in max level, especially expansion, content though in my opinion.

> @"Fueki.4753" said: > I think that map completion, including Hero Challenges and hearts, and the story should be viable to be done alone. > I used WvW to complete many HoT skill challenges (and some of PoF) because people simply didn't care to join me. > > But there should also be ample group content outside of that. > Meta Events, smaller Group Events, a variety of instanced content - there is so much that _could_ be done that doesn't interfere with map completion and the story. I do think that (people not caring to join) is largely a symptom of the current design which heavily consists of easy non-repeatable solo play, which then also leaves players often underprepared for challenges and without the infrastructure/network for grouping - rather than the problem being the semi-mandatory challenging/grouping sections themselves. If the content (like for example Hero Challenges) was per design much more difficult, requiring much higher level play or grouping, but also much more rewarding to repeat, come back to and help out - and people also being much more used to grouping, friendlisting and having active, helpful guilds in general (due to it being a necessity much more often) - those things, rather than being a rare annoyance that the average player grew frightful of or frustrated with, would be a lot more fulfilling, engaging and memorable experiences of grouping, meeting people and helping out, rather than just players walking through the world/maps solo like a checklist. GW2's problem, imo, is that 99% of the content is incredibly easy and soloable, making the 1% that isn't extremely frustrating or daunting for the average player. While if that was more balanced, with the game encouraging much more (gradual) skill increases in players and/or the formation and maintaining of social networks within the game, the whole experience would be a lot more engaging and memorable - and things like tough HP's or even content like Fractals, Strikes and Raids a lot more accessible for a lot more players, due to pre-existing groups and communities to play with and slimmer skill gaps.

> @"Oxstar.7643" said: > > @"Asum.4960" said: > > > @"Krzysztof.5973" said: > > > Difficulty that would encourage people to team up while playing a multiplayer game :) > > > > Are you proposing some sort of.. MMO? Where people have to ask for help, team up, overcome challenges, form communities and bonds and possibly play together for years to come, staying engaged with the game? > > Rather than some instant gratification train, walzing through the content in a week or two in "alone together" GW2 fashion and then quitting until the next content drop months down the line? > > Madness. > > I think you should have both. Not everybody wants to team up with strangers for all the content, and some just are not the soecial butterfly who makes enough friends to always have people to rely on. Balance is hard, as it usually is, but it seems to me ANet are trying to find a middle ground. The vast majority cannot solo legendary group events for instance, and those who can are honestly skilled to the point where they've earned it. Absolutely, but I don't think GW2 is in any danger of not having >95% of it's content be doable with auto attacking solo. Plenty, if not the majority of at least OW and Story content should imo be soloable, but I do think it's equally if not more important in an MMO to have certain areas, progression and rewards at least soft-gated behind group activities. Being the opposite of a social butterfly myself I always hated the idea of being forced to group/having to ask for help, but with more maturity, experience in game design and witnessing the effects of almost complete lack of that on a community in GW2, it really made me realise how vital those points are for an MMO especially. Always catering to that social anxiety just reinforces it and keeps players isolated, not as engaged with the game/with higher risk of burning out as well as hindering player growth through exchange and example. Whenever I look back to memorable MMO experiences in the past 1-2 decades, it's almost exclusively those experiences of having to group up for some character or story progression moment, meeting people, forming communities etc.*, maybe a few moments of overcoming some though challenge alone, and next to non of running around alone hitting mobs which aren't remotely a threat. GW2 for the last 2 years almost exclusively focused on providing the latter. If that doesn't change at least to a noticeable degree with EoD - with it turning out akin to PoF, I just don't see it having much longevity, at a very crucial point for the game. Too much of something is always bad, even if it is convenience. _*having to group up and people asking/coming for help for things like Hero Points in beta/early unnerfed HoT being one of those great experiences, and imo a golden age for GW2_

> @"Krzysztof.5973" said: > Difficulty that would encourage people to team up while playing a multiplayer game :) Are you proposing some sort of.. MMO? Where people have to ask for help, team up, overcome challenges, form communities and bonds and possibly play together for years to come, staying engaged with the game? Rather than some instant gratification train, walzing through the content in a week or two in "alone together" GW2 fashion and then quitting until the next content drop months down the line? Madness.

[Other] I don't think we need powercreep or just "more", as much as we need better/more interesting choices. Way too many Traits are either complete duds, extreme niche cases or bland. The Trait system (and their selectable amount) itself imo is mostly fine, those choices just need a major overhaul and balancing pass. _"This is the PvE Trait, this the PvP Trait and this is the useless Trait no one ever takes"_ for each line, isn't really a choice. Neither are do 10% more damage interesting choices, nor are a majority of "Grandmaster" or line Capstones at all interesting or build defining. If I were to redesign the Trait system though, I would get rid of Minor Traits, as well as the concept of Adept and Master Traits, since they have long lost meaning anyway (both design wise, since we don't put points into Trait lines anymore, not making reaching higher tiers in a line an opportunity cost anymore, as well as many Minors or Adepts vastly outperforming Masters or even Grandmasters. Instead each Trait line could have 4 slots, in which one can freely slot any Traits of that line in any order, and then a capstone slot at the end, replacing the Grandmaster idea, in which a limited choice of major build/gameplay/visual defining Traits can be slotted, really defining that Traitline via altering a core aspect of the profession in an impactful way. So let's say each Trait line has 12+ "minor" Traits associated with it (out of reworked/balanced current minors, adepts, masters and most Grandmasters), 4 of which can be slotted in, and then at the end a choice of one of ~3 Major effects, affecting moment to moment gameplay, visual effects and feel of the build (a good example that I've repeatedly used for this are the Daredevil Dodges, or especially something like Writ of Persistence, which changes Symbols, a core mechanic of Guardian, via gameplay (making them bigger), functionality (adding duration and healing) as well as being visually represented ingame as choice to the player and those around, giving it an identity). No more bland but (for PvE at least) must pick do 10% more damage or gain 120 Power/Ferocity, especially not as "Grandmasters". TL;DR: We need more interesting and meaningful choices at the current scale, not just more bland no brainers added on top.

What I'd like to see most, change in game direction aside, is a balance and design pass on the game. Completed Heal/Utility/Elite skill sets for core professions. Reworks of drastically underperforming Skills and Weapons _[for ex. Serpent Siphon, which probably nobody ever seriously used anywhere in years or ever]_. Overhaul of the Trait System with a proper choice between three Grandmaster/Capstone Traits for each line _[for ex. like Writ of Persistence, Daredevil Dodges, etc., Traits that visually and functionally change fundamental aspects of a profession - altering moment to moment gameplay, not just bland "do 10% more damage"]_. Rebalance of the core game to make it an actual introduction to the game and learning process, teaching at least fundamental game mechanics, rather than being beatable with W + 1 or a ranger Pet and then leaving players with hitting a frustrating wall in content proper. General overhaul of PvE content and mob design _[give the majority of mobs various boons and breakbars via different means to make the game more interesting using existing mechanics. Pulsing boons, boon pulse on entering combat, interruptable skills granting boons - possibly with breakbars, low health/rage boon triggers, channeled "nukes" with breakbars etc.]_ As for game direction, I'd like to see more actual MMO content, building and retaining communities. Be it a revival and much more investment of and into Raids, Guild Missions, something like (actually challenging) instanced GW1 like "Vanquishing" of open world maps both for solo, group and Guild play or things like the Alliance System (also 12v12 akin to Faction's Alliance Battles pls). GW2 right now just doesn't know what is, while failing both to compete with dedicated single player games, as well as falling off completely as MMO. After that, a pass on the engine to make the game play more reasonably/as expected on modern computers would be welcome. While I don't have high hopes for any of that to ever happen, I do feel like until at least some of that does, any new feature, Race or Story etc. will just keep being shiny new patchworks on a sinking ship. The game just doesn't need more content to alone hold down W and 1 in to beat, all while purchasing Gemstore items which have long surpassed even ingame earnable legendaries, let alone everything else, in place of actual worthwhile ingame reward systems - motivating people to come together to tackle and beat certain content, for both a cool journey and rewards - aka actually playing an MMO. If the 2019 financials have shown us anything, it's that people coming back every couple months for a few hours of single player Story content and some Gemstore purchases isn't at all sustainable longterm. If EoD doesn't mark a drastic shift from that, then I don't really see the point or any future.

Nothing makes the game as easy as Battle Scars/Dance of Death + Sword AA (+ 25 Might, Vuln, perma Fury/80% Crit chance from Traits and perma Protection with power Renegade). Just Darkrazor's Daring + Icerazor's Ire, swap to Shiro for Impossible Odds and AA. Rinse and repeat. 30k burst that perma dazes and heals you for well over 1000 HP per second.

> @"Astralporing.1957" said: > 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. I believe we had this discussion a couple times before and I do agree that that's Anet's self inflicted issue with creating engaging, especially instanced (since it can't just be zerged), content for a sizeable part of the player base. In the end they basically threw the towel and just went with focusing on the lowest common denominator only (aka, very low difficulty Story, OW) so everybody could play it, although that ofc also didn't work due to a sizeable part of the playerbase being bored out of their mind with that tutorial level content and leaving, as the last two years especially have shown. 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. 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. 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. 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. As people mentioned before, Raids have literally been beaten in green gear. Some of the Raid DPS checks deemed impossible by some players literally just require less than half the DPS of many entirely self buffed builds doing little more, or straight up nothing more, than simply Auto Attacking. Some Raid bosses have been solo'ed. 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). Imo neither are Raids to hard or impossible to get into, nor are Raiders to blame or especially toxic. I also don't think most people simply aren't interested in any moderately engaging group content, nor that the game mechanics are simply too complex by any means. The problem is just that 99% of the content in the game cultivated a culture of severe social anxiety/isolation as well as of sub-mediocrity, by allowing players to play through the game for thousands of hours without ever encouraging or even forcing them to group to normalise that process, nor ever requiring even the most baseline level of understanding of the game, it's mechanics, build craft etc., to beat anything from giant open world bosses to endgame/expansion big story bads. A process that has been going on for so long that a majority of players seemingly even believes that to be a desirable state at this point, forgetting the whole point and fun of an MMO of player's coming together, cooperating, forming friendships and overcoming challenging content, be it instanced or out in the world, together. Now I'm sure there is a tiny subset of players who genuinely enjoys eternally running around alone in Queendale level of difficulty killing mobs by randomly pressing buttons, hating any change, any challenge, any interaction, but I refuse to believe that that naturally is the majority of players, nor is that a reasonable demographic to entirely cater to with an MMORPG by any means. That lack of lead up, together with Anet never fully committing to any instanced/challenging content and really pushing it with a proper backing of resources and development teams for proper release schedules is why any form of that content will never succeed in consistently reaching a ~20-30% player participation, no matter how hard or easy or what the required party size over one player is. Stuff like Raids and Fractals CM's can be, and imo are, by miles the best designed and most fun content in the game and it won't matter, as long as the average player never graduated in skill past ~level 30, where the game should have actively started to teach them how to play and group to tackle challenges and progress and showing them how fun an actual MMO can be. Blaming Raids for the death of Dungeons, complaining about perceived toxicity of Raiders or the unfortunately necessary reality of KP or the overstated difficulty of content such as Raids imo all misses the mark of why these types of content seem to die faster than Anet can keep coming up with new misguided versions of them, or why the game has struggled as a whole to reach it's full, fantastic, potential over the years.

Most Fractals can be fairly comfortably solo'ed on T1, which is what I do whenever a new Fractal comes out, both to learn the basics as well as to listen to the story and take in the environment the devs created without any time pressures for the first round. That might be something that works for you. Otherwise there are other options like reading/watching a guide, starting a training LFG or playing with Friends/Guild mates at first. If you are first learning Fractals though I'm sure nobody will mind you being inexperienced as long as it's happening in T1, and if someone does then that's on them and you should allow yourself to ignore that and move on. It's group content and everybody has to learn it from scratch at some point. As long as you don't jump into T4's or CM's unprepared with randoms who expect experienced players, there is really no need to feel bad about that.

Writ of Persistence has always been one of my favourite Traits in Guardian, if not the game altogether, despite any efficacy issues (good or bad), simply because it's one of those rare GM's which actually changes up a core mechanic of the profession, both in terms of gamplay and visually, like imo all GM's should do. So just for that reason alone it's a shame to see it butchered like this, both with previous changes of nerfing the already meager heal, but now especially just seeing the Trait reduced to yet another bland and underwhelming modifier (+2sec duration), which I hope is a change that at least will never make it to the rest of the game. As for people finding it unfun to play against or complaining about the radius covering too much ground, that's at least to me just as laughable as all the people who complained about old Scourge and it's AoE. When playing against those myself I never had any issue at all with the radius and kiting out of it for a moment nor found it unfun, and when playing those builds I realised it was pretty much mandatory to make use of Symbols and Shades at all to ever hit anything with them. Small Shades and Symbols are just utterly useless for anything but CC lock/burst combos, and I was never a fan of that who can CC lock and burst whom quicker style of PvP - nor all the bunkers attempting to counter that, and much prefer the slower tactical game of positioning, rotating and focusing intelligently - in which AoE Traits and specs like that very much so have a place. Woe anything on the ground which makes it so someone can't just jump onto anyone and execute a brain dead cc/burst combo, rather than having to think about and time their engagements. Plus people act like placing a big Symbol or big Shade on point makes it an instant death area, when really you can comfortably walk/dodge through the whole thing getting hit by like 1 burn/torment, and then either pressure ranged or pull/knock them out of their zone. But I guess that's too complex. These days it seems like everybody wants to play CC spamming near immortal perma evade/invul/block crap that never has to worry about any intelligent positioning whatsoever, as well as instantly being able to resustain from any mistakes somehow still made. Clearly some AoE's are the problem though..

> @"Opopanax.1803" said: > > @"Lily.1935" said: > > As the post Suggests. We need more boon removal in the format. This is something that is usually held almost exclusively by necromancer as it is nearly impossible not to run at least a little boon strip. But this isn't something that should be exclusive to them. They shouldn't only be the boon stripper in the game and Spellbreaker is a start but there are a lot of classes that should be strong at boon strip but are quite weak at it. > > > > Engineer, Mesmer, Revenant and Thief all should have much stronger boon removal. > > > > Although I'd also add that the boon strip at the end of the Mesmer sword auto should be removed and put on their skill 3 to keep with consistency as this removed the boon control roll from raids entirely. > > > > Perhaps some might think this is part of necromancer's identity, but I disagree that strong boon strip should be their identity as boons are extremely important across all classes. > > > > But let's discuss. > > Actually, I think they need to reduce boon application, and also address control condition spam as well. > Too many classes can apply rapidly many full stacking, permaduration uptime boons and control conditions. > > I would prefer they limit certain boons to specific classes, and also control conditions; IE, > warrior, thief, elementalist are might > guardian, engineer, and necro are protection > etc, etc, by groups of three, Heavy, Medium, and Light armor to keep the mix balanced. Do this with all of the boons, alacrity, regen, quickness, fury, etc and weight all of them so that each class has 2 things that are desirable. Then do the same thing with conditions that affect control; chill, cripple, slow, weakness, etc. Condition damage stacking is it's own problem and would take more time to solve. > > At this point, the spam and re-application is so out of control, that I dont find it fun to have 8 conditions dropped in a bomb, or likewise boons. And if they get stripped, they can get re-applied with relative ease. It would be more fun instead of playing the spam game and just answering it with tons of boon strip to just reduce them all together and make them more valuable. > > This would take a ton of work and I doubt they will do this... even though they should for the health of the game. > > Makes me wish I could play Beta again, but with gliding and ground mounts and have that be the only changes... The major problem with that is Anet would essentially have to completely resdesign half the game/professions. Like if Guardian wouldn't be allowed to have Might, what does Empowerment or Symbol of Punishment, as well as all the Traits like Empowering Might or Zealous Scepter now do? And that's just a tiny slice of one boon on one profession on a few example skills and Traits. Anet would basically have to retool and balance all professions. And even if they could pull that off, how would that affect solo play (beyond possibly forcing everybody to be a Diviner boon hybrid providing their 1-2 Profession boons in group content)? You basically wouldn't want to play anything outside of group content that didn't get the Might and Fury treatment at the very least, which are at the bare minimum essentially mandatory for any solo build. Honestly I think Anet did a pretty decent job at culling boon and condition spam/uptime in PvP and WvW (where it was a problem) already with the big CmC patch. The problem was just as usual that it didn't get any of the frequent follow up patches that it needed. But Imo that's probably the better way to go about it, as much as I personally like they idea as well of more Profession identity with boons and conditions, I also think that might just be a way too big redesign at this point, especially with soon three elite specs which further diversify any given profession. Boons are just too universal and integral to the game and to all professions. > @"Nimon.7840" said: > > @"Aplethoraof.2643" said: > > As long as Necromancer in turn gets just as easy access (as everyone else) to active blocks, evades, boons, and mobility - I am OK with this. > > > > As it stands, boon removal is the one niche that Necromancer does really well. Pretty much everything else is done better than them by anyone else. Taking that away from Necromancer means that you need to make Necromancer far more competent in all other fields. > > Fun fact, in pve and WvW there's better boon removers than necro is xD Same in PvE, Necro was never really used for content requiring Boon removal, be it in Fractals or Raids, since it's just too lacklustre as profession over all. Usually it was covered by the Mesmer (boon/tank Chrono) or Revenant (Alacrigade). As long as Necro is just damage, and poorly at even that, it can have all the boon corrupts as niche it wants (which it lost many of over the years already, without getting much in return), there already was never a point in taking it - so if someone is afraid of that adding some boon removal to other specs will invalidate Necro, that ship has long sailed, or rather, was never in port to begin with. And yes, I agree. Necro needs to be more competent in other fields and actually be designed for GW2, rather than some game that never was. The vulnerability applying, boon corrupting and such "debuffer" role it seemed intended to be just never existed, at least in PvE.

> @"Astralporing.1957" said: > 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. Exactly. > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > 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. Imo Anet just never gives anything a fair shot. They release some "pilot" Raids, Strikes, whatever every couple months, and then expect massive engagement in that content to tell them if they should properly invest and commit to it, but that's just not how things work. If Anet had really committed to supporting Raids with a new Wing every ~3 months, and expansion like PoF launching with 3+ Raids etc, and **then** didn't have the numbers to justify the investment after trying to properly grow that community and cancelled it then, fair enough. But they just keep dipping their toe into things, and if everybody doesn't immediately absolute love it and throws themselves at it, it's already abandoned by them before it can grow and prosper and be iterated on. That's at least how Raids, as well as a majority of other thing's they tried, looked to me (even as someone who was anti Raids for years before trying them). > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > 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. I see what you meant with cancellation, and yes, at least we can fully agree on that one. > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > 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. Yea, I do remember that. Although I recall it as a pretty much universally disliked move which no one but Anet, as unfortunately so often, quite understood. Least of all the people into instanced PvE, like then Raiders. I'm not sure why Anet thinks that every time they want to try something new, everything "old" just needs to be utterly abandoned and/or die, be it terms of builds/balance or content, like there isn't room for multiple options. I do think Dungeons were already far from doing "fine" at that point though. > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > 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. That's a bit strange to me tbh. I never had been a raider before in any other game, and ate up all the anti Raid hate in the community with HoT and was firmly convinced that that content just wasn't for me and way to difficult and demanding, and it took me until shortly before PoF to first even try them, to then discover it as some of the most fun, by far best designed and friendly community building content. But even then I never really had that impression in the two years after HoT that Anet was pushing for or advertising Raids hard, if at all. Just seemed like a barely supported side thing I eventually wanted to try for completion sake, bc mastery completion was still locked behind them back then. > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > 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. > I have to say that I simply don't understand that mindset. If I wanted everything to be just Queendale, I would just stay in Queensdale. Imo it's vitally important for games, especially MMO's and RPG's, and even more so the combination of the two, to evolve over time and get more intricate and complex with Expansions and such, as players slowly master all the systems moving through the game, in order to keep the experience fresh. If two to three expansions down the line it's still exactly the same gameplay loop with the exact same mechanics, builds, approaches, I'm not sure what could be worse or how that could keep entertaining. And it's not like I love things like that bullet hell for example, but at least it's something different for a short moment, keeping the gameplay loop from going stale. I mean, GW2 exactly wasn't supposed to be the "swing a sword and swing it again" game. But to each their own I suppose.

> @"Astralporing.1957" said: > > @"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%. As far as I'm aware the company peaked at around 300-400 at HoT times, but I could be wrong there. 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. But it's absolutely incredible what that small team of talented devs accomplished for the game in terms of quality repeatable content, even more so in comparison to the almost 10 times amount of devs and resources that LW takes (who still do great work ofc, but are just drastically limited by the nature of the content they are working with). > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > > 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. 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. > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > >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. 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. > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > > 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. 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. And I'm not saying it was just Raids of course, absolutely not. A variety of factors caused those record drops, which imo was just a general feeling of the game not having a future with Anet just doing their LW releases and nothing else - which at least to me, always just were filler between things like Expansions, Raids, Fractals and major system updates, be it Guild Missions, Alliances etc. Once Anet realised that a significant amount of players participating in LW just did so because that's all Anet offered while they were waiting for "proper" content, rather than being the mainstay Anet and many in the community thought it was, and revenue almost freefalling, that's when Anet course corrected with at least a (very early) Expansion announcement in a desperate attempt to quell the player exodus. 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. People just needed a hope for the future of the game again, and LW just wasn't doing that. But yea, Raids alone ofc won't fix that either, and the lack of them wasn't by far the sole reason of that feeling being lost in the first place. > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > > 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. 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. Content like Expansions, Raids, or the promised Alliances drive innovation, both technically and in terms of design, and pave a future for the game, LW, by nature, just doesn't. Yet Anet was more than happy with putting all their eggs into that basket, even with player population and revenue in near freefall likely largely because of it. So I'm not sure if Raid numbers dropping, after not being properly supported anymore, as well as some parts of the community not being happy with them existing, largely for imagined reasons of them being super hard and toxic, holds all that much weight, considering, again, LW dropping all the same and a significant part of the community being largely indifferent or unhappy with it as well, just less vocally so. > @"Astralporing.1957" said: > > 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 > 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 just in general has major problems with game direction and management, constantly abandoning especially any forms of group content. Be it Guild Missions, Dungeons, Fractals, Raids, Strikes and on and on, I don't think any of those failed as content itself, or directly caused the death of another. It's just Anet not committing enough resources to the MMO part of their MMO altogether to actually make anything work longterm. 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. 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.