Implementing Training Raids in to the game

[Terter.4125]

I'm referring to this topic:

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/74233/please-make-the-raids-with-an-additional-mode-solo#latest

But making a twist. For a long time what raids are missing is this middle step where people are finding a hard time to climb the ladder without it. Create a Training Mode where people can learn about the tactics and what the raids are all about. Don't give any awards to the players when they finish the boss, make them autores when they got killed, make the boss with less HP. When they learn more about the boss and his tactics then they can move to the real raids but more prepared and with better understanding of the raids and team-play.

[Ayrilana.1396]

This has been suggested many times. It would likely be abandoned fairly quickly as players don’t want to use it to train nor will it be as effective as doing the raid normally. I also wouldn’t be surprised if players used this as a stepping stone to eventually request rewards in the “training mode”.

[phs.6089]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> This has been suggested many times. It would likely be abandoned fairly quickly as players don’t want to use it to train nor will it be as effective as doing the raid normally. I also wouldn’t be surprised if players used this as a stepping stone to eventually request rewards in the “training mode”.

 

CMs abandoned even quicker, cus reward is one time thing in those, yet those are implemented and will be.

Whoever go ahead and ask for same reward, already asking for free items in game be that rewards or cash skins.

[Ayrilana.1396]

> @"phs.6089" said:

> > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > This has been suggested many times. It would likely be abandoned fairly quickly as players don’t want to use it to train nor will it be as effective as doing the raid normally. I also wouldn’t be surprised if players used this as a stepping stone to eventually request rewards in the “training mode”.

>

> CMs abandoned even quicker, cus reward is one time thing in those, yet those are implemented and will be.

> Whoever go ahead and ask for same reward, already asking for free items in game be that rewards or cash skins.

 

The difference being that raids were designed to be the most challenging content in the game and CM’s only enhance that. CM’s lack rewards to be worth the effort.

[phs.6089]

> @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > @"phs.6089" said:

> > > @"Ayrilana.1396" said:

> > > This has been suggested many times. It would likely be abandoned fairly quickly as players don’t want to use it to train nor will it be as effective as doing the raid normally. I also wouldn’t be surprised if players used this as a stepping stone to eventually request rewards in the “training mode”.

> >

> > CMs abandoned even quicker, cus reward is one time thing in those, yet those are implemented and will be.

> > Whoever go ahead and ask for same reward, already asking for free items in game be that rewards or cash skins.

>

> The difference being that raids were designed to be the most challenging content in the game and CM’s only enhance that. CM’s lack rewards to be worth the effort.

 

I'm only pointing at the things. Implementation isn't a problem. That they would be empty has no proofs.

What it does with raids design I don't know, OP isn't asking to nerf current raids, do they?

 

[Raknar.4735]

> @"Gopaka.7839" said:

> Create a Training Mode where people can learn about the tactics and what the raids are all about. Don't give any awards to the players when they finish the boss, make them autores when they got killed, make the boss with less HP. When they learn more about the boss and his tactics then they can move to the real raids but more prepared and with better understanding of the raids and team-play.

 

I doubt a lot of players will use the training mode. Not gaining any rewards will make most players think it is a waste of time.

[AlexxxDelta.1806]

> @"Raknar.4735" said:

> > @"Gopaka.7839" said:

> > Create a Training Mode where people can learn about the tactics and what the raids are all about. Don't give any awards to the players when they finish the boss, make them autores when they got killed, make the boss with less HP. When they learn more about the boss and his tactics then they can move to the real raids but more prepared and with better understanding of the raids and team-play.

>

> I doubt a lot of players will use the training mode. Not gaining any rewards will make most players think it is a waste of time.

 

This. One of the biggest roadblocks for raids is the time commitment needed. Having a version of them that needs the same commitment but with no rewards, would be considered a waste of time, and rightly so.

 

My opinion on all those changes proposed lately is to just leave raids as they are. After the initial push, Anet has come to their senses and are giving raids the attention that is proportional to their playerbase. Adding new modes or revamping stuff would be time and resources better spent on more popular content.

[Rasimir.6239]

I used to raid in another MMO (long before GW2) that had seperate difficulties for raids as well as challenge modes for the highest difficulty. The idea was to allow people to progress from one difficulty to the next, but in reality what happened was that people soon found out how to cheese the lower difficulties with tactics that just wouldn't work with the higher ones. Effectively when you started to learn a whole new fight each time you changed difficulties since there were always mechanics you'd just ignored before that you couldn't ignore any longer.

 

As such training difficulties simply don't work, as there's no way to make the mechanics less punishing and still have people learn how to deal with them.

[joneirikb.7506]

An alternative would be to make a single "Training Raid" that would fit this role, to teach a bunch of the mechanics, explain some of the standard ways to behave and deal with the bosses etc. That way it would be limited to only making a single raid, rather than trying to retrofit the entire bunch.

[Ayrilana.1396]

> @"joneirikb.7506" said:

> An alternative would be to make a single "Training Raid" that would fit this role, to teach a bunch of the mechanics, explain some of the standard ways to behave and deal with the bosses etc. That way it would be limited to only making a single raid, rather than trying to retrofit the entire bunch.

 

We have that with many open world events, dungeons, fractals, and story bosses.

[IndigoSundown.5419]

What's that? Accessibility? There are already community-run training raids. There are already raid paths that are significantly easier than the harder paths. The problem isn't that there aren't ways to get into raids. The problems are that players: don't find the existing options to be convenient (people just want to drop in, do content and be done with as little time commitment as possible); don't want to conform to expected builds and behaviors; or both. Training raids would remove neither of those problems _unless they replaced raids, not prepared players for raids_. That's what WoW did with LFR.

 

A lot of players don't even do open-world content if the rewards aren't there. A reward-less training raid would be a pointless waste of resources. A rewarded training raid would provide path-of-least-resistance content that those primarily after the rewards would use to avoid the more challenging versions. Neither would be good for the game.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

I'd go with calling it "Story Mode". Have all the mechanics, but less enemy damage.

 

Give no account-bound rewards, raid currency or LI, but have a chance for rare tradable rewards that players can get without raiding anyways.

 

The chance for rewards would be based on personal participation. The better you do mechanics and the less damage you take, the more you are learning the mechanics and the higher your chances for a nice thing in weekly story rewards.

 

There could also be bonuses in Normal mode for players that have the achievement for beating a boss that increase for each player in the party that didn't have the achievement when you do beat the boss.

 

And I'd be nice if every boss had repeatable CM rewards. Not weekly, or that'll split people between CM and non-CM. For example, CMs could refresh every time or every other time a wing gets the Call of the Mists. So it could be monthly, bimonthly or even quarterly if we ever get another expansion and another set of raids.

[Ayrilana.1396]

We have this thread requesting a training mode to train on mechanics and another thread requesting a solo mode so they can experience the story.

 

If that’s their true intent, why do they need rewards to be included as well? It just comes off as a poorly veiled attempt to get an easy mode for the existing raid rewards.

[Khisanth.2948]

Much easier and simpler to implement would be to add a Training section to the LFG. The effort to implement this should be extremely low unless the LFG system is just that terribly written.

 

If there are enough people with both interest in doing raids and willingness to put in the effort to learn then it will be sufficient. If either are missing then all will be for nothing anyway.

 

The primary purpose would be to set appropriate expectations.

[Knighthonor.4061]

Great idea

[Erasculio.2914]

I like the OP's idea. Even something as small as knowing where to go in a raid would already help people who have never tried it before.

 

Just remove all unique raid rewards. Probably the best reward scheme would be the same thing we have for Adventures (so there's still a way to incentive people to play doing their best).

[Reanne.5462]

how bout we stop with the exclusive raids, and move them into the open world, where the people who bought this game to play PVE can have a challenge, instead of 1'ing something with a high health pool. put a boss in open world that requires people to learn the mechanics, and have the correct build, and requires teamwork.

[Mordayn.6198]

Splitting the LFG is a Great Idea. They actually need a few different filters for them. One for Experienced Kill Groups. One for Raid Selling Advertisement. One for Static Group Recruitment and Guild Recruitment. One for Training Runs. This would go a long way toward giving people a clear path and unclutter the current LFG which is kinda off putting when you see it crowded with nothing but Raid seller advertisement. I'm against an "easy" mode version as it wouldn't really teach the raid mechanics.

[Tiviana.2650]

WoW has this, its called LFR, despite all the hate you hear, its a very popular mode of raiding.

[Mordayn.6198]

The issue, as it has been said many times before, is having an easier raid will not actually teach the mechanics of the raid so it's a waste of development time. Not to mention most people wouldn't play it because it gives no rewards. However, an update to the LFG to split the bloat of advertisements for raid sellers, guild recruiting, experienced kill runs and training runs is an easy UI update.

[Khisanth.2948]

> @"Mordayn.6198" said:

> One for Raid Selling Advertisement.

 

Unless they want to spend time enforcing it there is not much point to having that.

 

This was demonstrated back in GW1 when they added a separate chat channel for trade but people were till too lazy to do it. They had to do automatic redirects based on message content.

 

[Naxos.2503]

Or you know, the one thing most groups fail at is the enrage timer. Most experienced groups are built around the concept that enrage timer cannot, Under any circumstances be reached. However when it is reached, the encounter doesn't exactly autofail, the game just become unfair to the point a wipe is almost inevitable. Ergo, the devs have built in a bit of leeway, one that is never actually seen in experienced groups (so pointless) or insta wipe less experimented players (so mostly pointless).

 

If you want to implement a training version, make it Exactly the same as raid, remove the Enrage part of the timer, Simply make it a reward timer. The boss wont enrage when timer runs out, but you wont get rewards (or lesser rewards). That wouldn't rob players of the actual difficulty of raids, and incentivize them to be faster and more efficient, while letting them experience the relevant mechanics of the encounter. If anything they can train on them actively by repeating the mechanism of each phase by not damaging the boss, instead focusing on proper boon/heal timing and placement. Food for thoughts.

[Ayrilana.1396]

> @"Reanne.5462" said:

> how bout we stop with the exclusive raids, and move them into the open world, where the people who bought this game to play PVE can have a challenge, instead of 1'ing something with a high health pool. put a boss in open world that requires people to learn the mechanics, and have the correct build, and requires teamwork.

 

Raids are PVE.

 

Open world bosses with the difficult of a raid boss won't work because if it requires everyone to perform the mechanics correctly then it's going to fail. If it allows a percentage of players to not need to do the mechanics then they essentially get carried.

[Sigmoid.7082]

> @"Reanne.5462" said:

> how bout we stop with the exclusive raids, and move them into the open world, where the people who bought this game to play PVE can have a challenge, instead of 1'ing something with a high health pool. put a boss in open world that requires people to learn the mechanics, and have the correct build, and requires teamwork.

 

Judging by how many people found the eater of souls too hard and contained u til it got nerfed this would not go down well.

 

People don't like to hear it but the average skill level of players in this game is fairly low. For 95% of the game at no real point does it force you to get better or really think about trait and gear choices or even what skills to use when.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

> @"joneirikb.7506" said:

> An alternative would be to make a single "Training Raid" that would fit this role, to teach a bunch of the mechanics, explain some of the standard ways to behave and deal with the bosses etc. That way it would be limited to only making a single raid, rather than trying to retrofit the entire bunch.

 

I think the secret lair of the snowmen raid was filling that role pretty well.

 

But that also was just done once and never again by most, even though it was possible.

 

Honestly, I do prefer raids more on that level of difficulty, so that the people I play with actually want to play it too.