What about Instanced Dynamic Events?

[JiaYow]

So, seeing that there are no raids in GW2 and many people being happy with the decision (see the "Should GW2 have raids?" thread in this forum, I'm not allowed to post links yet -.-) I must say I'm not too sure what to think about it.

True, "traditional" raids have some fundamental flaws already discussed in the thread linked above, but I worry a lot about PvE endgame content for the guild. I'm perfectly fine with 5man dungeons being the "main challenge" in GW2 PvE, but this game, as its name already says, is guild focused. And most guilds have far more than 5 members. So, what can we do with our guilds, aside from PvP?

Of course we could join the fray of large Elite Dynamic Events, fighting alongside many other people. While this sounds great, it's not a guild activity per se, maybe we want to try some specific tactics, or down a 10-man boss with only 9 guildies, etc.

I've already posted a suggestion on the official GW2 wiki (again, I'm not yet allowed to post links, but it's pretty easy to find in the PvE-suggestion section) so I won't go into more details here, but seeing that active discussions are rare over there, I wanted to ask you guys here for your opinion.

In short, I'm not asking for a new raid feature and raid mechanics with special loot and progress and whatever.
Rather, I'd like to see some kind of Instanced Dynamic Event(-zone), instanced for the guild. Nothing too fancy, 5man can continue to be the "real" challenge. It would just be nice to have a private place for me and my guild, where we can do some Dynamic Event chains in our own pace, without missing parts because other players have completed a step in our absence (which is great in the open dynamic world, but not so great for the epic accomplishment feeling), and defeat some bosses that are harder than "normal" Elite Events. You know, bosses that require full usage of the awesome skill combination feature. GW2 has all the technology needed for this already available, like instancing for particular groups/guilds, and even scaling. Imagine a "raid" where you don't have to bring 10, or 25 players, but as many players as you currently please/have available, and the content scales accordingly. Especially for small guilds that would be awesome.

GW2 has the potential to make this happen, so why not do it?

[Grable]

You're trying to make this game be something they're trying hard not to be.

[Deleted]

[JiaYow]

I was afraid that responses like these would appear, but please keep in mind that I'm not questioning the 5man focus or the lack of raid focus per se. I myself think that most other MMOs rely too much on raids.

I specifically avoided the word "raid" in the title because "raid" seems to be a "bad word" here in this forum and I'm not asking for a raid^^

Also, the video linked here is not new to me (I think I've seen like every GW2 on youtube :-P). The video addresses many very valid points, but I think he's too focusing on why raids are not good. For example, he states that in smaller teams it's easier to coordinate the new combat mechanics. True, but maybe some people want the challenge of coordinating more than 5 people with the new combat system? Also, aren't Elite Events especially designed for many players? He also states that you have to wait for members in raids, which is true, but GW2 has this awesome scaling technology. Why not make use of it here?

Whatever. that's not my point. I don't want 1-2-3-buttonpress-tankspank raids. I'm just thinking that bringing the advantages and awesomeness of Dynamic Events into some guild-specific zones where the guild can have fun trying new things and hone their skills might be a good idea. Hell, I don't even ask for special rewards or loot or anything. There should be motivation to travel the open world. It's just that sometimes, there are things that you can only do with your guild, like trying crazy tactics, or earning the feeling to have accomplished something without help from "outside".

[Grable]

I bet there will be some bosses who will crush any unorganized group (pug, not guild), but why wouldn't you let randomers join in on the fun?

Instead, you want to instantiate this so only you and your guild can brag or something? I don't get the point.

[Maarius]

scaling in dungeons for complex boss-encounters wouldn't work with the GW2 system imho.

Think of all the active skills, like the guardians line of warding. If there are too many players which can spam skills like this, all boss-mechanics can be exploited and any difficulty (is balanced about 5x line of warding max., for example) gets nullified. You can say: "but those skills don't have to work with bosses", but the problem is: a profession is all about such skills.

In other games you roll your rotation, most of the skills do only damage and perhaps a little debuff-effekt, real utility skills which have to be used situational are really rare. In GW2 this is very different, most of the skills are situational. You use them for certain moments. There is no clear rotation.

This is imho the main reason why raids won't work, because when you got too much situational skills, difficulty is gone. There is no 1 tank who holds all the mobs and the dps will only have to deal damage. Nope.

[Newbryn]

Well to answer your question there are DE's in the dungeons
.

[Zeek Daniels]

Well to answer your question there are DE's in the dungeons
.

yea basically what Newbryn said there are DE's in dungeons that will help tell the story and even provide greater challenges in explorable mode.

[JiaYow]

I bet there will be some bosses who will crush any unorganized group (pug, not guild), but why wouldn't you let randomers join in on the fun?

Instead, you want to instantiate this so only you and your guild can brag or something? I don't get the point.

See, what I don't get is why people constantly misinterpret any suggestion towards coordinated guild efforts. It's like a pressing effort to be "different" at all costs.
Never did I mention that guilds should be able to "brag". No loot, no rewards, no achievements, nothing like that comes with my question why ANet does not instantiate some zones to cherish guild efforts. I never even thought about the idea of bragging, since my focus was on "How can one improve an already awesome game by providing challenges for guilds?". It's about fun, challenges, teamwork, creativity, strategy and tactics, not about bragging.

I wouldn't be surprised if ANet specifically abandoned raids out of fear that people would start their elite progress bragging minigame again.
Seeing that I proposed the idea for already existing Dynamic Events to be coupled with instancing (nobody complained about grouped Hot Joins in PvP yet, right?), and most of the answers are like "raid. evil. gw2 doesn't want raids" or "oh you want to brag" (which is completely NOT the point), it seems ANet is, sadly, right.

It's not about excluding randomers, it's about including an optional zone where you can have fun with your guild. For example, take The Shatterer. He's meant for 10 players. Say, my guild with 10 people happen to be in the zone, the event starts. But actually, we're just goofing around, like trying to kill him without the lasers, whatever. Now 3 randomers come along and want to do the event. That would be frustrating for us, because they might use the lasers, and frustrating for them, because we don't defend them. Y'know what I mean? Of course this is a far-fetched example. Normal open world, fighting alongside randomers should always be priority. But there might be situations where you want to try something just with your guild. That's all.

Also, I understand that traditional raiding is not compatible with the current combat system - which is a good thing! Obviously many people can fight against a single boss, see the Elite Dynamic Events. I see no reason why that shouldn't be possible in an instanced environment. Of course that's no tank and spank, and this is great. Making skills not work in PvE is really bad, I agree with that. And I see this problem, that you can overpower any boss by exploiting certain skills. But then again, this doesn't seem to be a problem in Elite Events, and since this is not a competition and about fun, one could actually encourage people to find creative ways to down a boss.

In PvP it's the same:
You got tournaments, 5v5. Equivalent to PvE dungeons. The real competitive stuff is here.
You got WvWvW, all vs. all. Equivalent to world (elite) events. Everyone joins and has fun. Together.
You got HotJoins with random people. Equivalent again to world events.
BUT in PvP you can i.e. choose a 10v10 server and join as a group with your friends. No equivalent in PvE here. Instanced dynamic events would just aim to fill this niche.

[MissCleo]

I worry a lot about PvE endgame content for the guild. I'm perfectly fine with 5man dungeons being the "main challenge" in GW2 PvE, but this game, as its name already says, is guild focused. And most guilds have far more than 5 members. So, what can we do with our guilds, aside from PvP?

Of course we could join the fray of large Elite Dynamic Events, fighting alongside many other people. While this sounds great, it's not a guild activity per se, maybe we want to try some specific tactics, or down a 10-man boss with only 9 guildies, etc.

I considered letting this thread lie, but felt I needed to address this point. As you have indicated, content in which whole guilds can participate seems to consist of either structured PvP (your guild fighting together in WvWvW, capturing keeps, sticking together on the battlefield as a sort of organized battalion, etc.) or participation in Elite Dynamic Events out in the world. Your concern about the latter is that players outside of the guild can join in the fray at any time, scaling the event and making it not just about your guild's contribution any more.

Now, I won't get into a discussion of game philosophy and the fact that GW2 is set up to encourage this type of cooperative gameplay with people outside of your guild; those points have been made already and I'll leave them for other threads. I just want to chime in with a point about how a guild's participation in an Elite Dynamic Event can potentially make a huge impact on the success of that event, so that even though other players might be taking part, your guild still feels as though it is working together to overcome an obstacle, and its contribution is having a significant impact.

If you get a group of, let's say, 10 guildies together to tackle an elite event like Tequatl or The Shatterer or any number of other epic events we haven't seen yet, and your guild group is the only group of players there participating, then your presence accounts for 100% of the scaling of the event, while you contribute 100% of the effort to the downing of the boss.

However, lets say that your group of 10 guildies is joined by 90 other random players, not particularly organized or representing any other guild groups, but just other players that happen to be in the area or who have been working on the event chain. Your guild group now accounts for only 10% of the scaling of the event (10 players out of 100), but might contribute something akin to 40% of the actual completion of the event, due to your organization, communication, execution of strategies, etc. The event is more difficult than it would have been if your guildies were the only players there, the experience is more difficult, more epic, more fun - and it was, in a way, still a guild experience. Take what Maarius said:

scaling in dungeons for complex boss-encounters wouldn't work with the GW2 system imho.

Think of all the active skills, like the guardians line of warding. If there are too many players which can spam skills like this, all boss-mechanics can be exploited and any difficulty (is balanced about 5x line of warding max., for example) gets nullified. You can say: "but those skills don't have to work with bosses", but the problem is: a profession is all about such skills.

In other games you roll your rotation, most of the skills do only damage and perhaps a little debuff-effekt, real utility skills which have to be used situational are really rare. In GW2 this is very different, most of the skills are situational. You use them for certain moments. There is no clear rotation.

This is imho the main reason why raids won't work, because when you got too much situational skills, difficulty is gone. There is no 1 tank who holds all the mobs and the dps will only have to deal damage. Nope.

This is exactly right. If you can stack enough of a certain profession or skill, then even with scaling it's possible you will trivialize a portion of an encounter. Think about how often this happens in WoW competitive raiding, raid stacking to bypass or trivialize a certain mechanic. If you bring 10 of a certain situational skill to an EDE and the event scales to include only those 10 people, and that situational skill trivializes a particular part of the fight, then it's not really much of a challenge and probably not all that fun (imo). But if that group of 10 is only a fraction of the participants, they can still have a huge impact on making the fight easier without completely trivializing the encounter (due to the boss scaling to have more health, do more damage, have new abilities, etc.)

TL;DR - You can get your guildies together and go participate in Elite Dynamic Events, have more of an impact than a group of unorganized players, and at the same time be recognized by your peers for your contribution and your awesome coordination and boss-killing skills.

The same thing goes, by the way, for WvWvW PvP. You can get your whole guild together, go participate, and really kick some ass together, but you're still just one squad on the battlefield, fighting alongside all the lone wolves out there. If you see WvWvW as a fun group activity for your guild where playing together is rewarding, there's no reason why participating in EDEs can't be the same.

[Koshun]

Quite honestly, the only reason it's called Guild Wars 2 is because it takes place in the same universe.

[JiaYow]

I'm somehow having trouble to post in here (I get a message that a moderator must approve of my post, which I find strange since I can't recall that this is necessary or happened before in this forum), so I apologize in advance if there end up to be multiple posts or posts in strange "order".

On topic, I appreciate all your feedback, but somehow still feel that I'm misunderstood. For example, there is mention that my wish was to "brag" about achievements in those instanced zones, which was never my intention. I never even thought about it, but the fact that this came up shows me that people are still trying to force any idea that remotely resembles a raid into the "he's talking about raid. dismissed."-corner. Bragging is not part of what I envisioned as Instance Dynamic Event, not even achievements should be necessary. The whole purpose is not to form a raid or exclude randomers. It's to provide guilds an opportunity to come together and do something crazy and fun, without affecting others.

It's also not about contribution. If I'm a part of 100 people downing an Elite Event, I'm proud of it, regardless of how large my personal contribution was. That's the charm of GW2. It's about being able to, say, try defeating a boss without the lasers or whatever. You can't do that in an open world, where a "random" might come along and use the laser. Even worse, this random player might get irritated or even frustrated because we don't tackle the boss "the normal way".

Finally, scaling being too hard for "raids" is a valid point, I've not considered those "situational" skills when I came up with the idea. Making them "not work" is a bad situation, yes, but consider that the intent was never a competitive environment for hardcore raiding, but a zone where guilds could try out their own things. As such, it's not important that the boss cannot be exploited. It's not about difficulty. It's not about progress. Heck, I would even encourage that people find creative ways to down a boss. YouTube is filled with videos of people creatively defeating bosses in inventive ways, and the seemingly endless possibilities of the skill combination system literally begs for this to happen in GW2. I just don't think that the open environment, where other people could be affected, is a suitable environment for this.

Just think about the Shatterer. Say your guild wants to try this encounter with 20 engineers and and engineers only, and only with bomb and flame kits. Just for the lulz of it, or to train their skills. My guild comes along and wants to down him normally. Without doubt there will be a (at least minor) clash.
Or, you play with just 9 RL friends, making you a total of 10. Excited, you make your way to The Shatterer, for great justice! ... only to see the two top guilds of your server downing the last 5% of him, ending the event. Job done. What do you do now? Desperately search for some other elite event that happens to be active at the moment?

I hope this makes my point more clear, I don't know how often I must emphasize that I'm not talking about raid progress, but guild fun.

[Lucky_]

If you get a group of, let's say, 10 guildies together to tackle an elite event like Tequatl or The Shatterer or any number of other epic events we haven't seen yet, and your guild group is the only group of players there participating, then your presence accounts for 100% of the scaling of the event, while you contribute 100% of the effort to the downing of the boss.

However, lets say that your group of 10 guildies is joined by 90 other random players, not particularly organized or representing any other guild groups, but just other players that happen to be in the area or who have been working on the event chain. Your guild group now accounts for only 10% of the scaling of the event (10 players out of 100), but might contribute something akin to 40% of the actual completion of the event, due to your organization, communication, execution of strategies, etc. The event is more difficult than it would have been if your guildies were the only players there, the experience is more difficult, more epic, more fun - and it was, in a way, still a guild experience.

This is a wonderful pipe dream. Reality is exact opposite. Concrete example: WoW forums exploding with Dragon Soul nerf whines. Nerfs you can turn off with no problems and two clicks of a mouse, that "make the experience more difficult, more epic, more fun".

So if two-click away "slightly harder" mode generates this much bile, how much bile will be generated by boss that will power up several times to order(s) of magnitude by random players showing up?


Now, arenanet has promised us that we "will not hate someone else joining us on our quests and events". How they will accoplish this in light of above is a mystery at this point. If they really are convinced (like the person I'm quoting) that just giving loot to everyone is the way to make everyone happy... I foresee a failure bigger then SWTOR in terms of discrepancy between what's promised and what will be delivered. I suspect that they have something up their sleeve that they're not telling us about.

[MissCleo]

This is a wonderful pipe dream. Reality is exact opposite. Concrete example: WoW forums exploding with Dragon Soul nerf whines. Nerfs you can turn off with no problems and two clicks of a mouse, that "make the experience more difficult, more epic, more fun".

So if two-click away "slightly harder" mode generates this much bile, how much bile will be generated by boss that will power up several times to order(s) of magnitude by random players showing up?


Now, arenanet has promised us that we "will not hate someone else joining us on our quests and events". How they will accoplish this in light of above is a mystery at this point. If they really are convinced (like the person I'm quoting) that just giving loot to everyone is the way to make everyone happy... I foresee a failure bigger then SWTOR in terms of discrepancy between what's promised and what will be delivered. I suspect that they have something up their sleeve that they're not telling us about.

Well, I think the dynamic will be very different in GW2 than it is in WoW - I bet most of the rationale for not wanting to click off the zone-wide nerf in Dragon Soul, just as it was for the buff in ICC, is that guilds want to remain competitive, or at least feel like they're not being left behind by their peers by choosing to make the content more difficult for themselves. Every guild thinks, "But no one else is going to click off the buff! If we do, all those other guilds will get ahead of us and we'll be behind them when the next big tier/gear grind comes out." It's a vicious cycle.

However, with the PvE "endgame" in GW2 being nothing like the competitive raiding model in games like WoW, I don't see how you can assume the same concerns will be present when it comes to experiencing GW2 events. Do you think guilds are really going to care about being the "World 403rd" guild to "down" The Shatterer? What would that even mean? How would that be measured in a system like GW2's? Why would it matter? Without the same dynamic of grinding better and better gear to down content faster and faster, and with content still being challenging/relevant years after its initial appearance (see GW1), I don't think it's a pipe dream to expect people to enjoy working together, or at least not to hate "random players showing up."

[BlairPhoenix]

Of course we could join the fray of large Elite Dynamic Events, fighting alongside many other people. While this sounds great, it's not a guild activity per se, maybe we want to try some specific tactics, or down a 10-man boss with only 9 guildies, etc.

How is it not a guild activity? As long as your guild is there, why does it matter if a few pugs get in the mix as well? Do you feel that when guild raids are forced to pug a few members, that stops that raid from being a guild activity?

[Wyrmrider]

GW2 has the potential to make this happen, so why not do it?

Because it would undermine what they're trying to accomplish with open-world PvE.

[theredviola]

<snip>

I had not seen this video. Thank you Nektar. This needs to be posted more!

[Deleted]

I don't really get Maarius statement. If it wouldn't work for the GW2 system atm then how is it gonna work for DEs with 50-100 people or WvWvW? Same thing, spam skills with certain professions...where is the difference?

Personally, I don't need raids in GW2. I like raids, I still do them now in "that bad game that no one wants to be mentioned here" and will continue as long as I'm having fun, but I don't need another game that has the same concept. There has been a lot of MMOs lately which were going in the same direction and did not "fail" so much due to content but for the simple reason that people wanted to see and feel something else.

From all what has been said and keeping my fingers crossed, GW2 will be finally something different and should just stay that way!

[Merendel]

I don't really get Maarius statement. If it wouldn't work for the GW2 system atm then how is it gonna work for DEs with 50-100 people or WvWvW? Same thing, spam skills with certain professions...where is the difference?

The difference is in an instance you can plan ahead of time what bosses you are going to face, know what abilities they will use, and pre plan tactics and timeing of situational abilities to make the most impact. Frankly wow raid encounters involve little adaptation. They revolve around training your members to preform a well choreographed dance, if you do it right you win, if you Fup, well your runing back agian. Situational abilities need to be either relitivly weak in power or limited in how many you can use per fight (see the battle rez limit since cata) or they risk raid stacking being able to trivialize mechanics you know in advance are comeing.

Open world DE's you dont know that a particular boss is going to be avalible at "Raid Time". He could be up, his chain could be runing but you need to push it in the right direction, or he could not show up for another week but one of several other bosses are avalible. You also dont know how many people will be there. a fight at 10 man may have an ability that you can negate with 10 guardian walls chained but when he scales up to 15 people he now has another ability that will wipe you if you cluster behind a wall to dodge the first ability. Due to the random nature of what you'll be faceing any given day its just not feasable to plan out a strat involveing stacking for a specific encounter.

[JiaYow]

I'm somehow having trouble to post in here (I get a message that a moderator must approve of my post, which I find strange since I can't recall that this is necessary or happened before in this forum), so I apologize in advance if there end up to be multiple posts or posts in strange "order".

On topic, I appreciate all your feedback, but somehow still feel that I'm misunderstood. For example, there is mention that my wish was to "brag" about achievements in those instanced zones, which was never my intention. I never even thought about it, but the fact that this came up shows me that people are still trying to force any idea that remotely resembles a raid into the "he's talking about raid. dismissed."-corner. Bragging is not part of what I envisioned as Instance Dynamic Event, not even achievements should be necessary. The whole purpose is not to form a raid or exclude randomers. It's to provide guilds an opportunity to come together and do something crazy and fun, without affecting others.

It's also not about contribution. If I'm a part of 100 people downing an Elite Event, I'm proud of it, regardless of how large my personal contribution was. That's the charm of GW2. It's about being able to, say, try defeating a boss without the lasers or whatever. You can't do that in an open world, where a "random" might come along and use the laser. Even worse, this random player might get irritated or even frustrated because we don't tackle the boss "the normal way".

Finally, scaling being too hard for "raids" is a valid point, I've not considered those "situational" skills when I came up with the idea. Making them "not work" is a bad situation, yes, but consider that the intent was never a competitive environment for hardcore raiding, but a zone where guilds could try out their own things. As such, it's not important that the boss cannot be exploited. It's not about difficulty. It's not about progress. Heck, I would even encourage that people find creative ways to down a boss. YouTube is filled with videos of people creatively defeating bosses in inventive ways, and the seemingly endless possibilities of the skill combination system literally begs for this to happen in GW2. I just don't think that the open environment, where other people could be affected, is a suitable environment for this. I mean c'mon, not offering content for full strategic usage of the skill system (with more than 5 people) is like self-censoring, isn't it? No one complains about it in PvP anyway, and there will be like 15v15 iirc.

Just think about the Shatterer. Say your guild wants to try this encounter with 20 engineers and and engineers only, and only with bomb and flame kits. Just for the lulz of it, or to train their skills. My guild comes along and wants to down him normally. Without doubt there will be a (at least minor) clash.
Or, you play with just 9 RL friends, making you a total of 10. Excited, you make your way to The Shatterer, for great justice! ... only to see the two top guilds of your server downing the last 5% of him, ending the event. Job done. What do you do now? Desperately search for some other elite event that happens to be active at the moment?

I hope this makes my point more clear, I don't know how often I must emphasize that I'm not talking about raid progress, but guild fun.