Do raids need easy/normal/hard difficulty mode? [merged]

[Ohoni.6057]

> @"Miellyn.6847" said:

> Exclusive rewards are good for the game and if you want them play the corresponding content. We had this like 2000 times already.

 

Again, no, they are only a positive if you *both* want the item in question *and* enjoy the specific content to which they've been assigned. If either of those conditions is untrue, then they are a negative to the game. You are lucky that the Envoy armor is attached to something you'd want to do with or without it. All I'm trying to do is provide that *same* opportunity to more players.

 

>For players that never tried it. Most players that actually started raiding saw that they aren't as hard as many players claim them to be. There is no consenus.

 

So then you wouldn't agree with those that say that Envoy armor should be reserved only for those that can complete the "most prestigious" content in the game?

 

>For hardcore players yes. For casuals no, selling materials is a huge part of their ingame income.

 

Source?

 

>Most liquid gold rewards are placed in harder content. Fractals, raids, sPvP ATs.

 

Maybe that should shift. Remove some liquid gold from those activities, replacing it with sellable items, and then increase the liquid gold given for more mundane activities (but time-limited so that hardcores are not encouraged to farm something stupid to exploit the system).

 

>Yes they are relevant. GW2efficiency shows the interest of manual instanced group content. And it is not that good to begin with.

 

But Efficiency isn't representative, nor are those data points telling the story you insist on telling with them. They in no way determine how many people would play easy mode raids.

 

>You claim the majority will play it.

 

51% of active players? I think that's reasonable, but that wouldn't be the necessary minimum. If even half as many new players are added as currently raid then I think it would more than cover its costs. That would be a fraction of a full majority, but no, a majority would not surprise me either.

 

>AC is different as it is the only dungeon that is still relevant for current content. If you want to play a healer you are forced to play AC as it is the only place in the game where you can aquire the monk rune unless you count mystic forge gamble as a source but getting 6 monk runes could take a while.

 

That's beside the point. The point is that you were using "whole dungeon completes" as some sort of rough metric for how many players might be interested in easy mode raids, and Astral was pointing out one of several good reasons why that data cannot be abused to make the point you were trying to make with it.

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Astralporing.1957" said:

> As it has been pointed out already, no, we don't have those numbers. We only have numbers for doing _all_ the paths, which is not the same. For example, i'm pretty sure completion rates for CoF p1 were much higher than for all 3. And completion rates for AC were around 60% even in the "all players" bracket.

> If you want to compare those numbers, compare dungeon completions to doing whole wings.

 

Check the numbers of the level 80 dungeons not the low level content. Which means completion rates of Arah (28%) and Crucible of Eternity (38.1%) let's say compared to a full completion of Wing 1 (18.7%).

 

We can get a bit more technical with the data if you wish. There are some important limitations for Raids.

For example, you need to buy Heart of Thorns. 93.48% Have Heart of Thorns, meaning the actual percentage of players with **access** to Raids is 7% lower than dungeons

 

Another option is that Players that never went further inside Heart of Thorns are highly unlikely to have moved on to Raids. 91.5% have Airship Parts, this means ~2% bought Heart of Thorns but never even touched Verdant Brink. We can follow this with the rest of Heart of Thorns currencies, Aurillium is at 88.5%, meaning 3% of the players never moved on from Verdant Brink to Auric Basin. Leyline Crystals are at 83.5%, meaning 5% of the players never moved on from Auric Basin into Tangled Depths, limiting even further any potential Raiding players.

 

Another statistic we could use is the completion rate of Heart of Thorns, which is at 67.269%. Seeing how many players around here are asking for a way to see the Story of the Raids, it makes sense to be talking about players that finished Heart of Thorns story. It's shouldn't even be considered to make a story mode available for Raids, for players that didn't even finish the expansion story, lowering the potential audience even further. Given how the Ascalonian Catacombs completion rate is 62.311%, very similar to the completion rate of Heart of Thorns story, it means that it's not that Raiding has a problem with completion rates, but the Heart of Thorns expansion. **93.5% started, 67.3% finished, that's a drop rate of 26.2% (that has nothing to do with Raiding) but it DOES limit the potential Raiding audience.**

 

If the expansion failed to attract players, it limits the potential audience of Raids, and has nothing to do with Raids. Using numbers comparing the completion rates of Raids with the completion rates of Dungeons tells us half the story. Dungeons have a potential audience of every player, Raids have limitations, limitations set by external factors not by Raids themselves. 18.7% of the gw2efficiency players finished Wing 1 and the potential audience is 67.269% (those that finished Heart of Thorns) not 100%. **115,781 players finished Heart of Thorns, 32,177 players finished Wing 1, that's a completion rate (relative to the potential audience) of 27.8% which is pretty good in my opinion.**

 

To reiterate one more time, the lower values of Raids should never be seen alone. There are MANY factors, that contribute to the numbers of Raiders, which also include the ability of the expansion to force players to actually BUY it, the ability of the expansion to attract players and keep their attention throughout its zones (currencies show this), the ability of the expansion to get enough attention from players to actually finish it (Heart of Thorns completion rate), all of which are factors completely outside of Raiding.

 

Edit: added some bold parts with more data

[Ohoni.6057]

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

>Check the numbers of the level 80 dungeons not the low level content. Which means completion rates of Arah (28%) and Crucible of Eternity (38.1%) let's say compared to a full completion of Wing 1 (18.7%).

 

So roughly half and again as many players completed Arah as Wing 1, and twice as many completed CoE as wing 1? That seems like well more than enough to justify creating an easy mode.

 

>For example, you need to buy Heart of Thorns. 93.48% Have Heart of Thorns, meaning the actual percentage of players with access to Raids is 7% lower than dungeons

 

First, that's not how those numbers work. You can't just subtract 7% from all other figures, because chances are that most people who did bother to complete dungeons also bought HoT. Not all of them, but probably almost all.

 

Second, maybe a player doesn't own HoT yet, for whatever reason, but if raiding were an option, he might pick it up while it's on sale. You never know.

 

>18.7% of the gw2efficiency players finished Wing 1 and the potential audience is 67.269% (those that finished Heart of Thorns) not 100%.

 

Ok, so *maybe* **only** three times as many people would play easy mode as currently raid. Wow, how could they possibly justify the time and effort of making a fraction of a raid encounter for such a *tiny* audience?

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> Ok, so *maybe* **only** three times as many people would play easy mode as currently raid. Wow, how could they possibly justify the time and effort of making a fraction of a raid encounter for such a *tiny* audience?

 

115,781 players finished Heart of Thorns, 32,177 players finished Wing 1, that's a completion rate (relative to the potential audience) of 27.8% which is pretty good in my opinion for the most challenging content in the game.

 

Edit: Arah has a completion rate of 28% (hardest content in the game on release) and T4 Fractals (hardest non-raid content in the game) is at 29.5%, pretty close to the 27.8% of Wing 1.

[Ohoni.6057]

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > Ok, so *maybe* **only** three times as many people would play easy mode as currently raid. Wow, how could they possibly justify the time and effort of making a fraction of a raid encounter for such a *tiny* audience?

>

> 115,781 players finished Heart of Thorns, 32,177 players finished Wing 1, that's a completion rate (relative to the potential audience) of 27.8% which is pretty good in my opinion for the most challenging content in the game.

>

> Edit: Arah has a completion rate of 28% (hardest content in the game on release) and T4 Fractals (hardest non-raid content in the game) is at 29.5%, pretty close to the 27.8% of Wing 1.

 

See, so there are plenty of players left who could still complete a wing 1 if it had an easy mode.

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > > @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > > Ok, so *maybe* **only** three times as many people would play easy mode as currently raid. Wow, how could they possibly justify the time and effort of making a fraction of a raid encounter for such a *tiny* audience?

> >

> > 115,781 players finished Heart of Thorns, 32,177 players finished Wing 1, that's a completion rate (relative to the potential audience) of 27.8% which is pretty good in my opinion for the most challenging content in the game.

> >

> > Edit: Arah has a completion rate of 28% (hardest content in the game on release) and T4 Fractals (hardest non-raid content in the game) is at 29.5%, pretty close to the 27.8% of Wing 1.

>

> See, so there are plenty of players left who could still complete a wing 1 if it had an easy mode.

 

The question is how it compares with the *other* harder of the game and they do seem pretty similar. Do we need an easy mode for Arah?

[Ohoni.6057]

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > > @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > > > @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > > > Ok, so *maybe* **only** three times as many people would play easy mode as currently raid. Wow, how could they possibly justify the time and effort of making a fraction of a raid encounter for such a *tiny* audience?

> > >

> > > 115,781 players finished Heart of Thorns, 32,177 players finished Wing 1, that's a completion rate (relative to the potential audience) of 27.8% which is pretty good in my opinion for the most challenging content in the game.

> > >

> > > Edit: Arah has a completion rate of 28% (hardest content in the game on release) and T4 Fractals (hardest non-raid content in the game) is at 29.5%, pretty close to the 27.8% of Wing 1.

> >

> > See, so there are plenty of players left who could still complete a wing 1 if it had an easy mode.

>

> The question is how it compares with the *other* harder of the game and they do seem pretty similar. Do we need an easy mode for Arah?

 

Maybe? That isn't something I'm particularly interested in, the PvP tracks cover that to me, but if you see a point to it I wouldn't argue against you.

[LucianDK.8615]

Yes, raids do need easier versions considering the sheer unbelievable toxicity around them.

As well for the hideous levels of class exclusion going on there.

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> So roughly half and again as many players completed Arah as Wing 1, and twice as many completed CoE as wing 1? That seems like well more than enough to justify creating an easy mode.

>

 

Time to reply to this part after I found this really interesting bit of information playing with the data (it illustrates my point perfectly):

67.269% Killed Mordremoth (115,781 players)

54.756% Killed Balthazar (94,245 players) (lower than Mordremoth)

 

However, those numbers tell us half the story. If we see the completion rates RELATIVE to their potential audience (those that bought the respective expansions):

Heart of Thorns owners: 179,947 ~64% of the potential audience killed Mordremoth!

Path of Fire owners: 136,201 ~69% of the potential audience killed Balthazar!

 

In absolute numbers, using the entire population, more players killed Mordremoth than Balthazar, however, if you only use those eligible for the kills, Balthazar has a 5% higher completion rate! Context is important when using numbers, plus defining what the "100%" means. That's why comparing the number of AC completion rate with wing 1 completion rate directly is like comparing apples to oranges. Need some extra context to make the numbers relevant.

 

*Edit Gw2efficiency has something weird, showing only 115,781 of 172,117 for Hearts and Minds, although it shows 179,947 as Heart of Thorns owners, not sure how their data works, probably some players weren't crawled when I checked.

[Ohoni.6057]

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

>In absolute numbers, using the entire population, more players killed Mordremoth than Balthazar, however, if you only use those eligible for the kills, Balthazar has a 5% higher completion rate! Context is important when using numbers, plus defining what the "100%" means.

 

Ok but you raise an interesting point that you don't carry forward here. If ~30% of players who had HoT also cleared wing 1, and ~65% killed Mordremoth, that that leaves 35% additional players who have not cleared wing 1, and yet could jump right into it if they wanted, and by killing Modremoth have shown that they are at least willing to tackle a somewhat difficult and story-driven campaign if it's available to them. I'm not saying that *all* of those 35% of players would jump into easy mode raiding, but I don't think half of those would be at all unrealistic, and more than that would be possible, which would be plenty to justify the work that would go into an easy mode, well more than plenty.

 

> That's why comparing the number of AC completion rate with wing 1 completion rate directly is like comparing apples to oranges. Need some extra context to make the numbers relevant.

 

*Riiiight*. . . you do realize that was *our* position in the discussion, right? the side you were arguing *against* for several pages? Just to clarify, Astral and I were on the "the data is insufficient to determine the things you're trying to use it for, more data would be needed" side.

[Sarrs.4831]

> @"LucianDK.8615" said:

> Yes, raids do need easier versions considering the sheer unbelievable toxicity around them.

> As well for the hideous levels of class exclusion going on there.

 

Truth be told, my most toxic raiding experience was in a WoW LFR raid. People don't care, people don't try, people get bored and start trolling other players because there's nothing better to do in brainless content which you are only running for the rewards.

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> Ok but you raise an interesting point that you don't carry forward here.

 

Killing Mordremoth doesn't make a player interested in instanced **group** content. If you recall when the data came up in the past it was about how many players would be interested in an easier mode for Raids using the dungeon completion rates.

 

The dungeon completion rates are like this:

Arah: 27.873%

Crucible of Eternity: 38.130%

Honor of the Waves: 36.306%

Citadel of Flame: 45.937%

Sorrow's Embrace: 35.454%

Twilight Arbor: 41.194%

Caudecus Manor: 44.684%

Ascalonian Catacombs: 62.311%

 

Now compare those numbers with the Wing 1 number, adjusted for eligibility, which is 27.8%, and you can see the actual potential audience for instanced group content.

From 0% to ~18%. Is it worth making a new tier of content for a -potential- 18% (or even zero)? I'd say no, you'll probably say yes. I'll let the developers decide, that have the more accurate data based on the entire game population.

 

Edit: excluded AC because it's the lowest level dungeon, plus the importance of Monk Runes inflate it further

 

> *Riiiight*. . . you do realize that was *our* position in the discussion, right? the side you were arguing *against* for several pages? Just to clarify, Astral and I were on the "the data is insufficient to determine the things you're trying to use it for, more data would be needed" side.

 

The data is sufficient if you use them properly. The boss kill example shows the correct usage (counting only eligible users) and the wrong usage (using all the users) and it also shows how the two methods produce different results. In the "wrong version", Mordremoth has a higher completion rate, but in the "correct version" Balthazar wins, that's why I called it a perfect example. The 27.873% completion of Arah compared to 18.7% of Wing 1 is the wrong version. Using eligible users it brings us to the result of 27.873% vs 27.8% which means they are very similar.

 

Edit: We could use as eligible users the average of actual dungeon runners, which could bring the Raid percentage way higher. But that would be a different comparison altogether.

[nia.4725]

> @"LucianDK.8615" said:

> Yes, raids do need easier versions considering the sheer unbelievable toxicity around them.

> As well for the hideous levels of class exclusion going on there.

 

Class exclusion is due to 2 things

 

a) Anet's horrible, terrible, balance that makes some builds and/or classes unviable

b) Player ignorance combined with the influence of the "meta definer guilds"

 

What I mean with B is that if you have a guild that defines the meta by creating builds (which is a good thing, creating builds, don't get me wrong), and you have players that don't know about builds, how to create them, etc, the result is that those players just copy those buils without understanding them and, so, when they see anything different they say no. Because they don't understand different builds, either. "If Snowcrows does not have this build, it has to mean that build is shit" "If this DPS build is not meta, it must mean it is shit" etc etc.

 

The problem is that you can't really fix player ignorance. And anet should really fix the game balance, but we don't get that either. Does that mean we need easy mode to fix that? No, the solution to a problem is the cause of the problem, and the cause of those things you're mentioning isn't the difficulty of raids.

[Ohoni.6057]

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> Killing Mordremoth doesn't make a player interested in instanced group content.

 

Ehhh, debatable. Keep in mind, with easy mode we're talking much lower *pressure* group content than the existing raids, it's much more "come as you are and do whatever," so it's much closer to soloing story missions than a traditional raid, and since players can jump into specific boss encounters, it should actually take les time to complete one than a traditional raid, allowing players to move along quicker. Well executed, an easy mode raid would be a lot more in line with story missions than most group-oriented content.\*

 

>Now compare those numbers with the Wing 1 number, adjusted for eligibility, which is 27.8%, and you can see the actual potential audience for instanced group content.

From 0% to ~18%.

 

Again though, I reject the notion that "completed a full dungeon" is some sort of "hard cap" for potential participation. It's purely speculative, not least of which because players often focused on 1-2 wings while ignoring the rest, meaning many players could have spent dozens, or even hundreds of hours in dungeons, and never fully cleared even one.

 

>Is it worth making a new tier of content for a -potential- 18% (or even zero)? I'd say no, you'll probably say yes. I'll let the developers decide, that have the more accurate data based on the entire game population.

 

Well the last bit is likely a given. They likely already have far more comprehensive data than you and don't need you parsing it for them. This is for external discussions. As to the first, if 28% of the available population would be enough to build five raid winds from scratch, I think it's obvious that 18% would be *more* than enough to justify the relatively minor alterations that would be needed to create an easy mode. We're talking well less than half the work for 2/3 the potential audience, and that's just by your own relatively conservative calculations.

 

\* and for the record, anyone that recoils in horror at that thought, remember that easy mode is not *for* you, you already have the harder version, *that* version is for you and will provide you anything you could possibly get out of easy mode)

[Miellyn.6847]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> >Is it worth making a new tier of content for a -potential- 18% (or even zero)? I'd say no, you'll probably say yes. I'll let the developers decide, that have the more accurate data based on the entire game population.

>

> Well the last bit is likely a given. They likely already have far more comprehensive data than you and don't need you parsing it for them. This is for external discussions. As to the first, if 28% of the available population would be enough to build five raid winds from scratch, I think it's obvious that 18% would be *more* than enough to justify the relatively minor alterations that would be needed to create an easy mode. We're talking well less than half the work for 2/3 the potential audience, and that's just by your own relatively conservative calculations.

>

> \* and for the record, anyone that recoils in horror at that thought, remember that easy mode is not *for* you, you already have the harder version, *that* version is for you and will provide you anything you could possibly get out of easy mode)

 

And we are back at square one that you don't estimate the actual workload for ArenaNet for implementing an easy mode.

But we actually have you acknowledging that your group is potential smaller than the current population and 18+28=46, so even than no majority for you. Again you just disproofed everything your argumentation is based on.

[Ohoni.6057]

> @"nia.4725" said:

> > @"LucianDK.8615" said:

> > Yes, raids do need easier versions considering the sheer unbelievable toxicity around them.

> > As well for the hideous levels of class exclusion going on there.

>

> Class exclusion is due to 2 things

>

> a) Anet's horrible, terrible, balance that makes some builds and/or classes unviable

> b) Player ignorance combined with the influence of the "meta definer guilds"

>

> What I mean with B is that if you have a guild that defines the meta by creating builds (which is a good thing, creating builds, don't get me wrong), and you have players that don't know about builds, how to create them, etc, the result is that those players just copy those buils without understanding them and, so, when they see anything different they say no. Because they don't understand different builds, either. "If Snowcrows does not have this build, it has to mean that build is kitten" "If this DPS build is not meta, it must mean it is kitten" etc etc.

>

> The problem is that you can't really fix player ignorance. And anet should really fix the game balance, but we don't get that either. Does that mean we need easy mode to fix that? No, the solution to a problem is the cause of the problem, and the cause of those things you're mentioning isn't the difficulty of raids.

 

Part of the problem is though, while a lot of you guys talk about how "you can totally clear the raid using non-meta builds," and I'm sure that's true, *if* every other element of the group is above average for a pug, the fact remains that taking on non-meta characters presents a significant risk if the team is not confident of their chances, so of course pugs are going to play it safe.

 

That's one of the inarguable benefits of an easy mode, since the odds of failure are relatively low, and the worst a non-meta build is likely to mean is that the attempt will take a few minutes longer to clear, it *allows* groups to be more generous in their team compositions, without requiring them to take on unreasonable burdens of risk in the process.

 

> @"Miellyn.6847" said:

> And we are back at square one that you don't estimate the actual workload for ArenaNet for implementing an easy mode.

 

And we're back to me openly laughing at anyone who believes that an easy mode raid of the sort I describe would take *more* than half the work of the existing encounters, given that it would have NO new enemy models, NO new environments, NO new animation, NO new audio to record, And even most, if not all of the encounter coding could be reused. "Half as much" is an *extremely* conservative estimate by *any* rational stretch of the imagination. To suggest otherwise would be equivalent to suggesting that an Overwatch skin that is merely a pallet swap of an existing skin would take as much work as making a completely new character from scratch, mechanics and all.

 

>But we actually have you acknowledging that your group is potential smaller than the current population and 18+28=46, so even than no majority for you. Again you just disproofed everything your argumentation is based on.

 

I said the majority of *active* players. The numbers we were kicking around were based on numbers of people who have *ever* played the game, so they are likely higher in totals than the group I was talking about. Even beyond that, I continue to dispute Doc's methodology for determining what *he* believes is the absolute cap of potential players based on other statistics, I was merely working through the thought experiment on his own terms.

 

Btw, @"maddoctor.2738", interesting thing I noticed playing with the API, if you look at people with 0-500h playtime, almost none of them have any dungeon completions listed. 500-1000h, still pretty weak. Yet in those same two categories, there seem to be a decent amount of Li to go around, about half as much in the 0-500h range as in the 4000+ range! I may be reading too much into that, but the implication to me is that there are plenty of players who haven't spent a huge amount of time in the game (presumably because they are newer players that started post HoT), who DO raid, at least enough to get a few hundred Li together, without even *setting foot* in a dungeon. So to me, that sort of blows up the whole "only dungeon masters would ever consider raiding under any circumstances" argument. What am I missing on that one?

 

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > Killing Mordremoth doesn't make a player interested in instanced group content.

>

> Ehhh, debatable. Keep in mind, with easy mode we're talking much lower *pressure* group content than the existing raids, it's much more "come as you are and do whatever," so it's much closer to soloing story missions than a traditional raid, and since players can jump into specific boss encounters, it should actually take les time to complete one than a traditional raid, allowing players to move along quicker. Well executed, an easy mode raid would be a lot more in line with story missions than most group-oriented content.\*

>

 

Careful now, Feanor will come and tell you about Shadow Behemoth :)

 

[nia.4725]

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > > @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > > Killing Mordremoth doesn't make a player interested in instanced group content.

> >

> > Ehhh, debatable. Keep in mind, with easy mode we're talking much lower *pressure* group content than the existing raids, it's much more "come as you are and do whatever," so it's much closer to soloing story missions than a traditional raid, and since players can jump into specific boss encounters, it should actually take les time to complete one than a traditional raid, allowing players to move along quicker. Well executed, an easy mode raid would be a lot more in line with story missions than most group-oriented content.\*

> >

>

> Careful now, Feanor will come and tell you about Shadow Behemoth :)

>

 

Well, no one can deny that "come as you are and do whatever" sounds pretty bad, pretty like "get a kill just autoattacking if you feel like just autoattacking", because that is what whatever means: do whatever.

 

So Feanor would be right in this one. xD

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> Btw, @"maddoctor.2738", interesting thing I noticed playing with the API, if you look at people with 0-500h playtime, almost none of them have any dungeon completions listed. 500-1000h, still pretty weak. Yet in those same two categories, there seem to be a decent amount of Li to go around, about half as much in the 0-500h range as in the 4000+ range! I may be reading too much into that, but the implication to me is that there are plenty of players who haven't spent a huge amount of time in the game (presumably because they are newer players that started post HoT), who DO raid, at least enough to get a few hundred Li together, without even *setting foot* in a dungeon. So to me, that sort of blows up the whole "only dungeon masters would ever consider raiding under any circumstances" argument. What am I missing on that one?

>

 

That was expected, as Astral said earlier in the thread there are players that came to GW2 for Raids and you found evidence of that, that's great. It also proves that Raids ARE healthy for the game and bring NEW people into the game.

 

Now for the "only dungeon masters would ever consider raiding under any circumstances", although that's false and some might take on Raiding without playing dungeons, I'd be more interested to know if players with more experience in the game (1000+ hours) that had 5 years to experience dungeons and did not, will now take on raiding.

[Ohoni.6057]

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > > @"maddoctor.2738" said:

> > > Killing Mordremoth doesn't make a player interested in instanced group content.

> >

> > Ehhh, debatable. Keep in mind, with easy mode we're talking much lower *pressure* group content than the existing raids, it's much more "come as you are and do whatever," so it's much closer to soloing story missions than a traditional raid, and since players can jump into specific boss encounters, it should actually take les time to complete one than a traditional raid, allowing players to move along quicker. Well executed, an easy mode raid would be a lot more in line with story missions than most group-oriented content.\*

> >

>

> Careful now, Feanor will come and tell you about Shadow Behemoth :)

>

 

Hence the asterisk. ;)

 

Seriously though, it wouldn't be that easy, but it *is* intended to be very easy *when compared to the existing version of the raids.* Again, it's very difficult to compare it to any world boss (positively or negatively) due to the massive team size differences involved, but comparing it to the tougher Story bosses would be reasonable *(if* you have a group supporting you).

 

> @"nia.4725" said:

> Well, no one can deny that "come as you are and do whatever" sounds pretty bad, pretty like "get a kill just autoattacking if you feel like just autoattacking", because that is what whatever means: do whatever.

 

So maybe don't assume the worst or get overly specific about an offhand remark?

 

> @"maddoctor.2738" said:

>That was expected, as Astral said earlier in the thread there are players that came to GW2 for Raids and you found evidence of that, that's great. It also proves that Raids ARE healthy for the game and bring NEW people into the game.

 

Well, not necessarily. We don't know that those players came *to* do raids, just that raiding is *one* of the things they did when they got here. it's also worth noting that they are all within the top 1% of players, so it's not a *huge* group.

 

>Now for the "only dungeon masters would ever consider raiding under any circumstances", although that's false and some might take on Raiding without playing dungeons, I'd be more interested to know if players with more experience in the game (1000+ hours) that had 5 years to experience dungeons and did not, will now take on raiding.

 

Maybe, maybe not. Different people pursue different goals. The point is, it's difficult to divine intent from statistics alone. You can tell what people have done, but not why they did it, or what they are likely to do next.

[Miellyn.6847]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > @"Miellyn.6847" said:

> > And we are back at square one that you don't estimate the actual workload for ArenaNet for implementing an easy mode.

>

> And we're back to me openly laughing at anyone who believes that an easy mode raid of the sort I describe would take *more* than half the work of the existing encounters, given that it would have NO new enemy models, NO new environments, NO new animation, NO new audio to record, And even most, if not all of the encounter coding could be reused. "Half as much" is an *extremely* conservative estimate by *any* rational stretch of the imagination. To suggest otherwise would be equivalent to suggesting that an Overwatch skin that is merely a pallet swap of an existing skin would take as much work as making a completely new character from scratch, mechanics and all.

>

You don't know anything about the developing process, tools, code base. Stop it. It is wrong. Gaile Gray herself said it to you.

You don't know how large the part is that they have to remake. The lastest fractals actually got more balance changes than high level. Another level of work you still deny.

[Ohoni.6057]

> @"Miellyn.6847" said:

>You don't know anything about the developing process, tools, code base. Stop it. It is wrong. Gaile Gray herself said it to you.

 

Gaile said that it would take a non-*trivial* amount of work, and that's quite possible. There's a massive gulf between that and "as much as making a new encounter from scratch."

 

>You don't know how large the part is that they have to remake. The lastest fractals actually got more balance changes than high level. Another level of work you still deny.

 

Again, the balance work might indeed take a lot of work, for the balance team. But the balance team is only a small fraction of the total work that goes into a unique encounter space like the raids. You do understand that, right? It could take the balance team *twice* as much work to make easy mode than hard (which I don't believe, but let's imagine for a second), and the overall encounter would *still* take less total man-hours than the original encounter, just by virtue of being able to reuse so many art assets.

[maddoctor.2738]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> Well, not necessarily. We don't know that those players came *to* do raids, just that raiding is *one* of the things they did when they got here. it's also worth noting that they are all within the top 1% of players, so it's not a *huge* group.

>

 

Keep in mind that players in the 0-500h bracket started Path of Fire, not Heart of Thorns. The expansion that was advertising Raids for the first time was Heart of Thorns and it was one of the big selling points of the expansion. Unfortunately we can't see how the -500h bracket looked around December 2015, so how many "new" players joined specifically for Heart of Thorns AND Raided at that time. In Path of Fire Raids were lessened and not as much advertised, plus Raiding wasn't something new anymore.

[Teamkiller.4315]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> Sorry I lied, I'm actually a quitter.

 

Is that so? That's what I figured.

 

 

[Miellyn.6847]

> @"Ohoni.6057" said:

> > @"Miellyn.6847" said:

> >You don't know anything about the developing process, tools, code base. Stop it. It is wrong. Gaile Gray herself said it to you.

>

> Gaile said that it would take a non-*trivial* amount of work, and that's quite possible. There's a massive gulf between that and "as much as making a new encounter from scratch."

>

She also said that you shouldn't come up with assumptions if you don't know internal processes.

> >You don't know how large the part is that they have to remake. The lastest fractals actually got more balance changes than high level. Another level of work you still deny.

>

> Again, the balance work might indeed take a lot of work, for the balance team. But the balance team is only a small fraction of the total work that goes into a unique encounter space like the raids. You do understand that, right? It could take the balance team *twice* as much work to make easy mode than hard (which I don't believe, but let's imagine for a second), and the overall encounter would *still* take less total man-hours than the original encounter, just by virtue of being able to reuse so many art assets.

 

There is no PvE balance team. Changes are done by the raid team.

 

There is still that tiny little fact that all sides complain about too slow releases and your solution is slowing down everything further.