Originally posted by Fozzik

This discussion has been replayed about 45 times on these boards, and even more on other GW2 forums.

GW2 does have end-game progression. It's just not a vertical gear treadmill based on repetitive raid farming. There are other types of progression. I know, hard to fathom, but it's true.

Progression centers around content (there will still be TONS of content you haven't done when you reach max level), and is horizontal in terms of character advancement. It's about exploration, completionism, and customization. There will always be more things to collect, more ways to refine your play style through gear, traits, and skills, and more new things to see, rather than doing the same content over and over. By the time people complete the entire world and gain every achievement and title, I'm sure ArenaNet will have added additional events. If not, the high-level events in the open world should offer a lot of replayability, plus all the personal story possibilities with alts.

The reason they won't have instances for large groups is because they don't need them. Period. The whole idea of these highly exclusive cliques of players that raid together militaristically every night grew out of that endgame treadmill design. Without the treadmill, that culture is no longer needed, and an entirely different one will develop. It will be about server community, and about playing with friends and taking part in all the content in the game (because it's ALL available at max level). The traditional MMORPG "raiding guild" won't need to exist in GW2, and will likely go the way of the dinosaurs as more and more players discover they no longer have to endure that crap.

If the militaristic guild and the vertical gear treadmill is the ONLY reason you play these games, GW2 isn't for you. There are any number of games available for your play style.

There's an area called Fort Mariner in Lions Arch, there is some dungeon gear there. If you had the oppurtunity to do explorable mode of Ascalon Catacombs you would realize how many runs it would take to get a full set of gear and runes for that gear.

P.S. It's a whole lot of runs.

So lets say you do the 30 or 40 runs that it requires for you to get all that gear, well good job you probably out leveled the gear anyways.

So in short, currently there is grind from what we know from last beta, and hopefully there won't be in the future.

Also something to note, the gear that would get from AC would be better than anything else you could obtain, unless you were extremely lucky to get a rare item as a drop.

To be honest the fact the game was the way it was, really doesn't mean anything considering the difference between the previous "press" beta's and this last beta. You never really know what you'll be playing a month from now, we could have Sylvari and Asuran, or we could be playing Super Mario Online.

Originally posted by Fozzik

 

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Originally posted by Sykoleisa

 

I don't need to convince my friends to play some other game, I already know the majority of their answers: "do you really think there's a decent game coming soon that isn't GW2, because we've already decided that everything else that's out is not to our tastes?"

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Translated: "Just about every game released in the genre in the last 8 years has been created to cater to us, but we don't like any of those. We want to play this one game that isn't meant to cater to us, and we want them to change it so it does."

Yeah, entirely reasonable. *sarcasm*

No, because they're not too fussed.

There's a part of me that would like to see raids added. But that's becaus I spent years doing raids and being trained to believe that the game only really begins when you hit max level.

I realize it's not the same thing, but in a guild, I don't see any reason why someone wouldnt say "Hey the dragon event is up in..." and members of the guild could flock to it and coordinate their efforts on vent. When all the content is revealed, I imagine there will be a significant number of zone bosses. Most of us scratched only 5% of the surface in the BWE. And the content will always be available due to downleveling. On top of this, the gear that drops from these guys will be level appropriate for you, and scaling will mean that when your guild shows up, the boss will get additional health and/or powers to keep it challenging.

Having said that, for people looking for a truly tiered, instanced, end-game raiding system, GW2 is not it.

In my opinion raids are the worst thing for an mmorpg community it creates elitest guilds who expect you to play the game like a second job or else you're out. The minute a raid for guild wars 2 is announced is the last minute i will spend in the game.

Originally posted by Auxiliary

If you mean something like the original WoW worldbosses. I would love that myself, but even in those fights random people could join the fight and ruin it. Generally they were prevented from doing this by common sense and the fact that the people in the killing raidgroup would be the ones getting all the loot.

that goes against guild wars 2 design philosophy..its supposed to be about people working together and helping one another, not being tied to one massive selfish elitest guild who shun others because their  gear score is not over 9000.

I dislike the way raids are set up in most MMOs. They do nothing but alienate a large chunk of the community by excluding them from the content. You have a small minority that does the raids and the majority is looking on from the sidelines because they either don't have the time, the will or the guild required to experience this content.

This is why I like GW2's approach with world bosses. It's still good large group content for raid group but now, everyone can join, have a good time and be rewarded.

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Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

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Originally posted by Auxiliary
If you mean something like the original WoW worldbosses. I would love that myself, but even in those fights random people could join the fight and ruin it. Generally they were prevented from doing this by common sense and the fact that the people in the killing raidgroup would be the ones getting all the loot.

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Those world bosses will be there, they will be part of the major Dynamic events.

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And we cannot start whining about no end game if we have not even played trough first 30 lvls properly.

Plenty to do to end game ist just not gear treadmill like WoW get use to it OP.

Right ok, whatever man *read in a passive as opposed to an aggressive (?) one*

Doesn't make much of a difference either way, I'll still play it.

Also, is anyone else getting a wierd change in the amount of posts in threads or is it just me?

Originally posted by moosecatlol

Originally posted by Fozzik

This discussion has been replayed about 45 times on these boards, and even more on other GW2 forums.

GW2 does have end-game progression. It's just not a vertical gear treadmill based on repetitive raid farming. There are other types of progression. I know, hard to fathom, but it's true.

Progression centers around content (there will still be TONS of content you haven't done when you reach max level), and is horizontal in terms of character advancement. It's about exploration, completionism, and customization. There will always be more things to collect, more ways to refine your play style through gear, traits, and skills, and more new things to see, rather than doing the same content over and over. By the time people complete the entire world and gain every achievement and title, I'm sure ArenaNet will have added additional events. If not, the high-level events in the open world should offer a lot of replayability, plus all the personal story possibilities with alts.

The reason they won't have instances for large groups is because they don't need them. Period. The whole idea of these highly exclusive cliques of players that raid together militaristically every night grew out of that endgame treadmill design. Without the treadmill, that culture is no longer needed, and an entirely different one will develop. It will be about server community, and about playing with friends and taking part in all the content in the game (because it's ALL available at max level). The traditional MMORPG "raiding guild" won't need to exist in GW2, and will likely go the way of the dinosaurs as more and more players discover they no longer have to endure that crap.

If the militaristic guild and the vertical gear treadmill is the ONLY reason you play these games, GW2 isn't for you. There are any number of games available for your play style.

There's an area called Fort Mariner in Lions Arch, there is some dungeon gear there. If you had the oppurtunity to do explorable mode of Ascalon Catacombs you would realize how many runs it would take to get a full set of gear and runes for that gear.

P.S. It's a whole lot of runs.

 

So lets say you do the 30 or 40 runs that it requires for you to get all that gear, well good job you probably out leveled the gear anyways.

So in short, currently there is grind from what we know from last beta, and hopefully there won't be in the future.

Also something to note, the gear that would get from AC would be better than anything else you could obtain, unless you were extremely lucky to get a rare item as a drop.

 

To be honest the fact the game was the way it was, really doesn't mean anything considering the difference between the previous "press" beta's and this last beta. You never really know what you'll be playing a month from now, we could have Sylvari and Asuran, or we could be playing Super Mario Online.

Ye, from what I understand, there is a bit of a gear grind regarding the explorable mode gear. It seems you get like 5 tokesn/run and you need like 100 for each piece, and they are all different tokens, so you are tied to a certain explorable for a certain set.

As for it being outleveld by the time you get it, except the lvl 80 explorabe one, you would get it to transmute the looks, not for the actual stats.

There may be a little optional gear grind (although it's not much of a grind, since there's at least four different paths within each dungeon), but it's definitely not required. It gets you cosmetically distinct gear for that dungeon. The stats will be on the same plateau as gear you can get from crafting, karma, and other methods (boss drops?). There won't be a ladder of ever-increasing stats that you MUST grind to get in order to continue playing.

This is quite different from the gear grind in other games, where there's really only one path...you have to get each tier in order to take on the mobs in the next tier, etc. I think it's kind of a stretch to say "GW2 has a gear grind"...it's just too different from other "traditional" MMORPGs. The power plateau means that you can get gear from many different types of content, and it's easy to get the best stats in the game. After that, it's all about just doing the content you want, and getting the looks you want.

Sorry OP, but there isn't going to be some big instanced "raid" dungeon available.

The closest Guild Wars ever had to raiding numbes was ONE mission, one mission in factions where two teams of 8 converged together within a mission and continued on. Even then, the other group (barring empty channels) was random with either all players, players + NPCs, or all NPCs.

When it comes down to "elite" content, such as Underworld, Domain of Anguish, or any of the heroic mode dungeons in Eye of the North, the maximum number of players needed was 8. 8 players, or players + heroes if they wanted to try it. It's always been about making the content not require a large number of people PLUS time investment.

It just doesn't fit along the lines of their design philosophy. I've done large-number raids before, and while it might be fun to get the guild together and do it as a big group, its also a pain in the ass to get the actual numbers. Its why they dropped 40-man raids for Burning Crusade, and dropped the "25-man only" raids in Lich King. It ISN'T fun to stand around, thumbs twiddling, waiting for people to show up. And while this game doesn't have the issue of "OMG MAIN TANK AINT ON, WE AINT GONNA DO IT!", there's still the numerical limit. You also didn't exactly specify the kind of numbers you were looking for, which makes it hard to really say anything about it.

If you are expecting 40+ man raids, good luck on that buddy.

If you are expecting 25-man, while easily a more manageable number than 40+, its still a pain to get even with a full guild because of time requirements.

10 would actually probably work pretty well though, and is most possible (10 is really close to 8 as well). Of course, that's just two dungeon groups put together so it isn't nearly as much as the other two options.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by tazarconan

Originally posted by Fozzik

This discussion has been replayed about 45 times on these boards, and even more on other GW2 forums.

GW2 does have end-game progression. It's just not a vertical gear treadmill based on repetitive raid farming. There are other types of progression. I know, hard to fathom, but it's true.

How about random created dungeons with random created bosses for raiding? That would eliminate the Repetitive boring raid farming term. Dont u think?

Random abilities to bosses is not a bad idea at all, but why limit that to raiding? 

Random created dungeons on the other hand tends to be somewhat... random. Daggerfall was probably the game who had most random 3d dungeons ever and while some of them were fine others were hopeless. It would take a lot of hard work to make a good random dungeon system that actually would make dungeons of good enough quality. 

You could do as you say even if it is very hard, but GW2 is not really tha game that would need this stuff. A game like Rift on the other hand, or basically most themeparks would need this a lot more. But as I said, making a good random raid is really hard.

There are other possible endgames in a MMO than raiding.

It worked in diablo, i cant see why it couldnt work in mmorpg's.

Actually its quite wierd why none of most commercialised mmo's that came out last years Aoc,Rift,swotr and many others along with GW2 as well,didnt even tried that formula. What? They believe that farming same bosses every day and every week in 5 men dungeons and raids is fun? Blurmb :S

Originally posted by Lord.Bachus

Originally posted by Auxiliary

If you mean something like the original WoW worldbosses. I would love that myself, but even in those fights random people could join the fight and ruin it. Generally they were prevented from doing this by common sense and the fact that the people in the killing raidgroup would be the ones getting all the loot.

Those world bosses will be there, they will be part of the major Dynamic events.

And they will be AWESOME !

Originally posted by tazarconan

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by tazarconan

Originally posted by Fozzik

This discussion has been replayed about 45 times on these boards, and even more on other GW2 forums.

GW2 does have end-game progression. It's just not a vertical gear treadmill based on repetitive raid farming. There are other types of progression. I know, hard to fathom, but it's true.

How about random created dungeons with random created bosses for raiding? That would eliminate the Repetitive boring raid farming term. Dont u think?

Random abilities to bosses is not a bad idea at all, but why limit that to raiding? 

Random created dungeons on the other hand tends to be somewhat... random. Daggerfall was probably the game who had most random 3d dungeons ever and while some of them were fine others were hopeless. It would take a lot of hard work to make a good random dungeon system that actually would make dungeons of good enough quality. 

You could do as you say even if it is very hard, but GW2 is not really tha game that would need this stuff. A game like Rift on the other hand, or basically most themeparks would need this a lot more. But as I said, making a good random raid is really hard.

There are other possible endgames in a MMO than raiding.

It worked in diablo, i cant see why it couldnt work in mmorpg's.

Actually its quite wierd why none of most commercialised mmo's that came out last years Aoc,Rift,swotr and many others didnt even tried that formula. What? They believe that farming same bosses every day and every week in 5 men dungeons and raids is fun? Blurmb :S

Random dungeons in a 2D-limited environment are easy yes.

Random dungeons in a 3D environment? Pain in the ass.

I was playing a game called Disgaea once, and it has something called an Item World, its a dungeon with up to 100 floors, all randomly generated. Its fine for the most part, then you hit a point where the base you deploy from is on a column so far up, that your characters can't move down, and their attacks are all out of range. Which, of course, means you'll have to restart the entire game (and lose progress that you made up to that floor).

To get a 3D randomly generated dungeon to work even decently, you'd have to put limits on everything about it. You'd also have to figure just what limits are justifiable for it as well. Its all a hell of a lot easier to do in a 2D game with no actual vertical movement because you just have to make sure A and B connect.

gw1 did have a 12 man run

Originally posted by MercAngel

gw1 did have a 12 man run

The Deep.

Urgoz's Warren

 

 

Ahh, I knew I was forgetting something! I've personally have never been able to find a group (for one odd reason or another) for those two, so I end up forgetting they exist at times.

Like I was saying before though, something between the 10-15 range would probably be the best bet of seeing any "raid" like content in GW2, but I didn't see any specification on numbers from the OP, so who knows just how big a dungeon he's looking for.

Originally posted by Fozzik

There may be a little optional gear grind (although it's not much of a grind, since there's at least four different paths within each dungeon), but it's definitely not required. It gets you cosmetically distinct gear for that dungeon. The stats will be on the same plateau as gear you can get from crafting, karma, and other methods (boss drops?). There won't be a ladder of ever-increasing stats that you MUST grind to get in order to continue playing.

This is quite different from the gear grind in other games, where there's really only one path...you have to get each tier in order to take on the mobs in the next tier, etc. I think it's kind of a stretch to say "GW2 has a gear grind"...it's just too different from other "traditional" MMORPGs. The power plateau means that you can get gear from many different types of content, and it's easy to get the best stats in the game. After that, it's all about just doing the content you want, and getting the looks you want.

GW2 has replaced raiding gear with cosmetic gear. At 5 tokens per run and about 100 tokens a piece, I would say it is a bit of a grind.

As you said it's optional, but so was raiding in other games.

So you are probably going to have to do a similiar grind to get that cosmetic look you want.

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Originally posted by Atlan99

GW2 has replaced raiding gear with cosmetic gear. At 5 tokens per run and about 100 tokens a piece, I would say it is a bit of a grind.
As you said it's optional, but so was raiding in other games.
So you are probably going to have to do a similiar grind to get that cosmetic look you want.

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I thought you got a piece of gear each run... I'm surprised they are making it cost that much. Is that confirmed? Seems odd, since you only get to do story mode once per character...how is anyone going to earn enough tokens for the dungeon weapon set? You have to find dozens of different groups to farm the story mode over and over? Doesn't sound right.

Raid farming is mandatory in other games in that there is no other way to continue to progress. You either start up the gear ladder, or you stop getting to see new content and you stop getting to improve your character.

In GW2, because of the multiple ways to get the max-stat gear, it's really much more of a choice. You can continue to progress your character (horizontally) and continuing playing the way you like at max level, without ever doing dungeons more than you choose to.

Originally posted by Fozzik

 

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Originally posted by Atlan99

GW2 has replaced raiding gear with cosmetic gear. At 5 tokens per run and about 100 tokens a piece, I would say it is a bit of a grind.
As you said it's optional, but so was raiding in other games.
So you are probably going to have to do a similiar grind to get that cosmetic look you want.

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I thought you got a piece of gear each run... I'm surprised they are making it cost that much. Is that confirmed? Seems odd, since you only get to do story mode once per character...how is anyone going to earn enough tokens for the dungeon weapon set? You have to find dozens of different groups to farm the story mode over and over? Doesn't sound right.

Raid farming is mandatory in other games in that there is no other way to continue to progress. You either start up the gear ladder, or you stop getting to see new content and you stop getting to improve your character.

In GW2, because of the multiple ways to get the max-stat gear, it's really much more of a choice. You can continue to progress your character (horizontally) and continuing playing the way you like at max level, without ever doing dungeons more than you choose to.

I'm guessing they expect people to grind the dungeons in exploration mode.