This quarter, Guild Wars 2 received a major overhaul to its raids system. Raids and strikes were combined into one gamemode with shared rewards, the new raid UI was added along with the long-awaited quickplay queue, and a bunch of changes were made to raids' reward system, including the addition of many new rewards to purchase with magnetite and LI.
Raids are more accessible and rewarding than ever, but the changes aren't all perfect, either. Let's go over all of the additions and alterations and analyze how raids could be further improved.
Raid Quickplay
The addition that most players have likely interacted the most with is raid quickplay. This new feature provides a convenient way for players to queue up for raids form anywhere without worrying about the hassle of forming a proper group composition or waiting for a squad to fill. It also provides a way to participate in raids continuously, since the main rewards of raids are otherwise weekly-gated.
Those aspects are great and all, but the third—and likely most prominent—function of quickplay is to serve as an entry point for new players to try out raids. The two previous attempts at this—the introduction of strikes and the Emboldened mechanic—weren't as successful as ANet clearly hoped; it remains to be seen if quickplay will meet expectations, but based on personal experiences and what I've seen in community discussions, it seems a lot of new players are engaging with the system.
Similar to fractal quickplay, raid quickplay features a curated roster of encounters that are easy for new players to pick up... for the most part, but we'll get to that. The intent is for an experience that's "easy", but not "too easy", as the IBS EZ3 encounters are notably absent. This curated direction makes a lot of sense; it ensures new players don't get frustrated with an encounter way above their pay grade, and it also enables an environment where proper team comps aren't necessary thanks to the relative ease of the encounters (and the extra damage and survivability from the Quickplay Morale buff).
One small gripe with quickplay is that it's only accessible form the LFG tab, despite the original blog claiming it would be accessible from the new raid UI. Its inclusion there in addition to its current location would be a small but appreciated change.
The Roster
One member of the quickplay roster stands out from the rest—Old Lion's Court. It is noticeably more difficult and complex than the other quickplay encounters, and in multiple ways. It is the only encounter to require special roles (red and green tanks, and the optional green kiter), it has far more moving parts, and it is very punishing, particularly when it comes to its CC mechanic.
There is a valid argument to be made that OLC simply isn't a good fit for quickplay. Its core mechanic—the bosses' insta-kill AoEs swapping locations when they're CC'd—is the sort of mechanic that's unintuitive, since CCing enemies is usually an unequivocally good thing. If there isn't a veteran player in the squad to explain it beforehand, it's basically guaranteed that the group will wipe to it at least once, and that isn't going to be a great feeling for new players. While choosing specific players to serve as tanks or a kite isn't strictly necessary to get a clear, it's the intended strategy and eases clears a lot; meanwhile, having to stop and delegate roles is inherently antithetical to quickplay's purpose as a system. There's also the issue of filling the squad—since OLC stands out as more difficult than the other quickplay raids, many players will abandon the squad if they see it, resulting in a poorer experience for everyone.
I'm personally torn on OLC's inclusion. On one hand, the reasons above all make a very valid case for why it shouldn't be included. On the other hand, its presence has some benefits, as well. Quickplay is meant to face players with relatively little friction, but it does still need at least some friction. I've written previously on how a large part of players' hesitance to try out raids stems from the game's failure to challenge them; quickplay is an opportunity to remedy this somewhat, and the team seem to understand that given the lack of the EZ3. Ultimately, I do think it would probably function better without OLC's inclusion; encounters like KO already provide friction and a decent challenge without violating the core tenets of what quickplay is.
So, what should they add?
In the blog which properly announced quickplay, ANet referred to the list of quickplay encounters as what the system would include "at launch". This naturally implies that more encounters will be added eventually, with the basic assumption being that those additional mechanics will come from the raid wings. I personally suspect the reason they weren't included to begin with could be a technological limitation—compared to the strikes, which were designed as individual instances, they need more preparation to make versions of the raid wings that spit you out after the single encounter you're queued for.
The question on many players' minds is: which encounters can we expect to be added? To answer this, we must consider the purposes of quickplay. It's meant to be a quick, accessible intro to the gamemode and a method of raiding without requiring the hassle of forming a group and coordinating a group comp. Based on this, we can derive several core principles for which encounters can and cannot be a part of quickplay:
- Any encounter that strictly requires any specific utility effects is ineligible. It is, while very unlikely, possible that a group could form where none of the players present are on builds capable of bringing the necessary utility, and needing to coordinate regarding who in your quickplay squad has the utility covered is antithetical to quickplay.
- Any encounter that generally requires a specialized build or role—something that a player could not pick up intuitively based on the fight's mechanics alone—is similarly ineligible.
- Any encounter that is too difficult is ineligible. We can use Kaineng Overlook and Old Lion's Court as decent metrics of acceptable difficulty.
- While length alone won't inherently disqualify an encounter—KO is already quite long—especially long fights should also count against inclusion, given we are talking about quickplay.
It's worth noting that I will largely be ignoring the actual in-game difficulty rating for the purposes of point 3, relying instead on my experience as a raider and raid trainer. There'll be a whole section on the difficulty ratings later, but suffice to say I don't think they're currently very useful or accurate. I'll also note that, while I'm quite confident in my ability to identify the encounters that will be the most difficult for new players, my perception of everything below the upper echelon is a bit blurred due to my experience running with high-end groups. Over the past year, I've rarely seen the majority of these fights fail, and the strategies my groups use trivialize many aspects that could be difficult to new players; in short, take anything I marked green in the 'Difficulty' column with a grain of salt. In the same vein, my groups breeze through most fights rather quickly, so I don't have a great gauge of how long some of the easier fights really are relative to each other. Without any further ado, here are my thoughts on which encounters could work in quickplay.
Starting with Vale Guardian, I unfortunately can't see it being a good fit due to the Blue Guardian, which requires a boonrip. It is actually possible to kill it before its mechanic takes effect, but just as we can't assume quickplay groups will bring all the correct utilities, we can't assume they'll bring enough DPS for that check, either. While very unlikely, it is entirely possible for a quickplay group to be 100% softlocked in Vale Guardian unless someone swaps characters, which strictly eliminates it from the viable pool. A shame, since VG is otherwise a great encounter for introducing players to endgame mechanics
Gorseval is our first winner of the day. There is technically a special role in this fight, given Gorseval will target a toughness tank, but a player actually assuming that role is not at all necessary for a relatively clean kill. Quickplay groups may not be able to meet the World Eater DPS check, but they can simply do the intended mechanic instead. There is one wrinkle in that beating the fight that way would require the updraft gliding mastery, but I don't see that as a serious issue. VoE introduced an interesting new mechanic where players are given temporary access to masteries when they enter the areas of relevant events; the same could be applied here, granting updraft gliding while players are facing Gorseval.
Sabetha is an interesting case. The fight does feature several special roles in the cannons and the flak kiter, but those are jobs that can be achieved by any player without the need for a specialized build, and could theoretically also be done without coordination beforehand. I lean towards it not being a viable inclusion due to its complexity, but I could also see it working alright in quickplay.
Slothasor is a fight I have personally found to be quite tough for new players to wrap their heads around in my time as a raid trainer. Its mechanics are very punishing, and it also has a special role in the mushrooms, which are in a similar place to Sabetha's cannons—they don't necessarily require communication, but doing the fight without establishing roles would be very messy. I wouldn't include it.
Matthias strictly requires a reflect, and he requires it often. This is the easiest "not viable" yet.
Keep Construct is, in my opinion, our second clear winner. It has no special roles except the orb pusher, but the fight can very easily be completed without assigning that to a specific person—especially with modern powercreep, which makes doing well at the orb mechanic very optional. I would absolutely include it in quickplay.
Xera is an interesting case. The minigames do demand some coordination, but they can be done on-the-fly—the fight itself even prove this when it sends random players back into them later on. The biggest issue is that, like Gorseval, Xera requires a tank. Unlike Gorseval, the tank does actually need to move her to specific locations, and she does enough damage that the tank needs to actually be built for tanking. Her fight also requires ley-line gliding, but as with Gorseval, I think this requirement could be hand-waved away if ANet really wanted her in. I personally wouldn't include her.
Cairn is another fight with no special roles and no necessary utilities. It's also fairly easy. Back when I led raid trainings, we considered wing 4 a comparable entry point to wing 1 due to the relative ease of its non-Deimos encounters. I think Cairn should absolutely be included in quickplay.
Mursaat Overseer is a very interesting case. On one hand, it has three special roles, which would usually make a very good argument against its presence in quickplay since it would require extra coordination. It is unique, however, in that the encounter has a built-in way of deciding who performs each role, essentially solving the problem. I could see it going either way, but I personally would actually include it in quickplay. Its unique approach is a good way to ease new players into the idea of coordinating a team comp without actually slowing down the run too much.
Samarog would be an amazing fight for quickplay, but it unfortunately requires a push in order to kill Guldhem and Rigom. I am against the idea of removing/altering mechanics for the quickplay version of raids, since that would be antithetical to teaching new players said mechanics, which sadly means Sammy has to get benched.
Deimos requires both a tank and a handkite. Clearing without the latter is probably possible—I doubt the handkite role was the original, intended solution to dealing with his hands—but this falls to the same argument as the previous encounter. 100% of actual raid groups do use handkites; even if it wasn't originally intended, it essentially is a mandatory mechanic of the fight now, and making players learn a version of the fight without it would be antithetical to actually teaching them the fight. Deimos should not be added to quickplay.
Soulless Horror is another obvious no. It requires three special roles—two tanks and a pusher. Having one dedicated pusher isn't strictly required, nor is having a push, but pushing the TDs is clearly the intended strategy, and clearing without doing so would be painful and, as before, antithetical to teaching the encounter. The fight is also very punishing, especially for new players.
Do I even need to explain why Dhuum shouldn't be included? I don't think anyone's gonna fight me on this one.
Conjured Amalgamate is an interesting case. Its two special roles, the sword and shield collectors respectively, can be done by anyone and picked up on-the-fly, but I find that an unlikely outcome compared to stopping and assigning the role. It theoretically could work, but I'd lean towards not.
Twin Largos are another interesting case. The fight does have tanks, but it's a case like Gorseval where having one is pretty optional. The main issues would be splitting players evenly between the platforms, which could be done on-the-fly, and meeting the DPS check. I can 100% see quickplay groups being unable to do the latter, which would be very frustrating. I wouldn't include them.
Qadim is another obviously ineligible encounter. Of all raids, it's the one normal mode fight I see experienced groups fail most often, which I feel very obviously precludes it from quickplay. It also has several special roles to worry about, including one that generally requires a specialized build.
Adina is an interesting case. While most groups treat the pillar mechanic as something to be handled by a special role, it can absolutely be done on-the-fly by whoever happens to get it, and intentionally pillar-baiting as melee is also possible. The hands could be dangerous without consistent stability, but in normal mode that shouldn't be a huge problem. My only real concern with this fight is its difficulty; this is one of those cases where I can't give a good, objective take on how difficult the fight actually is for newer players.
Sabir is a very similar case to Adina. Nothing in the fight requires any special roles or utilities, though the coordinated CC does require, well, coordination. It's probably fine, but like Adina, I'm not sure how to rate the encounter's difficulty in general.
Qadim the Peerless requires three pylon kiters and a tank. Quickplay will never get a taste of his power.
Greer requires projectile hate, but that honestly isn't even the biggest issue with his inclusion. No, the main problem is that this fight is very hard—probably second to Qadim in terms of "how often I see experienced groups fail it". More importantly, the fight features a rather strict DPS check, even for experienced, organized groups. I am quite confident most quickplay groups wouldn't be able to beat him.
Decima generally requires ranged players and a kite. Though it could theoretically be done with a group of full melee builds where whoever gets the laser steps back to do it, that is antithetical to the fight's intended design, and the actual kite isn't really optional. The fight is also very complex, and would be very difficult for new players to grasp.
Ura is our final raid encounter to consider, and she's a very interesting case. The fight doesn't strictly require any roles or utilities, and it's fairly easy when compared to the previous two. However, its difficulty is highly dependent on the strategies players came up with for her. The typical strategy for Ura normal mode allows the group to ignore most of her mechanics and stay still for most of the fight. A group of 10 new players who don't know these strategies would be faced with something much, much harder, so I wouldn't recommend her inclusion.
In conclusion, here are my finalized thoughts on each encounter and how likely they are to be added to quickplay—if we are actually getting more encounters added to the rotation—and how well they would actually work in the rotation. With only three encounters being very confident yes-es, this has really illustrated to me just how different the design philosophy is between strikes and raids.
Just three new encounters wouldn't be a lot, but I think it'd make a decent addition, and it's entirely possible we'll get a few of the maybes—or that ANet will disagree with my standards for which encounters "should" be included.
The New "Raid Encounter" Terminology Sucks
Time for our next topic—the replacement of the term "strike" with the new term "raid encounter". If my consistent usage of the former didn't already key you in, I think the new term sucks. It's confusing, unspecific, and way wordier than 'strike', and I can prove it!
First of all, I don't think this point actually needs to be argued, but I'll do so just to be comprehensive—wordiness. "Strike" is one word, one syllable, six letters. "Raid encounter" is two words, three syllables, thirteen letters. That's 1-0 for strikes!
Now, the real issue—the term "raid encounter" is unspecific in a way that can be actively confusing and makes communicating about the game more difficult. You'll notice that, throughout this article, I consistently use the term "strike" to ensure my meaning was easy to understand. "Strike" is a term that is very clear in its intent—it refers specifically to the single-encounter instances released in IBS, EoD, SotO, and VoE. "Raid encounter", on the other hand, is unspecific; the individual encounters within raid wings could also be considered "raid encounters", thus making it impossible for the reader to know at a glance whether I'm referring to all raid encounters or to the ex-strikes.
To a degree, I'm sure this was the point. In unifying the gamemodes, ANet want players to start treating them as essentially the same thing. Even so, just calling them the same thing and unifying their rewards system doesn't actually make them the same thing. For one, strikes are a distinct instance format from raid wings, consisting of just a single encounter (and sometimes a pre-event). That alone is enough to differentiate them, but as the above section helped to display, the encounter design philosophy between strikes and raids is also quite different. Both in what the content demands from the player—with raids tending to require specific utilities and builds while (normal mode) strikes don't—and in how the fights feel, there is a very noticeable difference.
Even ignoring these differences, there's also the simple fact that players may often need or want to refer to strikes as a whole in terms of organization. The raiding community has existed for a long time, and as such established certain accepted standards—such as, for example, the "fullclear static", a group which does all of the raid wings together. A player like myself, who is a member of such a static, may want to put together a group in the LFG to do all of the non-wing raids in one go. It goes without saying that "all strikes" is a much more concise LFG listing than "IBS, EoD, SotO, and VoE raids"; on the other hand, "all raid encounters" doesn't work either, since it could be potentially misread to mean all raid encounters. This is just one example of a situation where one might need to refer to strikes separately from raid wing; the same idea applies elsewhere.
To summarize, "raid encounter" is a much wordier and less useful term than "strike", and that's a problem. In addition to the above issues regarding its use, the fact that the term is so unwieldy means that many players are going to continue to refer to them as strikes, regardless of what terminology ANet and the game itself now use. I predicted this would be the case before the update went live, and based on what I've seen across several main hubs of the community, I was entirely correct. The vast majority of experienced players still say "strike", and in the rare case they do say "raid encounter", it's usually done coyly or as a joke—"Hey guys, I'm about to run some strikes raid encounters."
This is a problem because it's going to make communication more difficult for new players getting into endgame content. Currently, the team missed a lot of spots while removing the strike terminology from the game, but if/when they go through with completely purging it, there'll be no in-game indication of what a "strike" is. This will make things unnecessarily confusing for new players.
Luckily, there's a very easy solution to all of this—just bring the term "strike" back. Strikes can exist as a distinct subcategory of raids while still maintaining their unique terminology, which should work out best for everyone. In the original mockup for the raid UI, the words "Strike Mission" were even included in the names of the strike encounters—a detail that I praised in my original analysis. While I understand that this could take up too much space, there are other ways a similar effect could be achieved in the UI. Maybe the term "Strike Missions" could be appended to the expansion category tabs, or there could be an indicator somewhere on each individual strike's page that it's part of this subcategory. Whatever the case, I dearly hope ANet will see the community reaction to this change and bring the term back in some way.
Updated Raid Rewards
While I am a certified hater of the "raid encounter" terminology, I think the rest of the combining of raids and strikes into one gamemode worked out incredibly well. Of course, aside from simply saying "strikes are actually raids now", the only meaningful change to the gamemode was how its rewards were altered and brought into line with raids.
Prophet crystals are officially no more, replaced by magnetite shards and gaeting crystals. I'm glad they've kept the system of two rotating currencies in order to promote playing the current expansion's raids, though I do believe this decision highlights a glaring flaw in the pattern of expansions coming with only two strikes. Kela is currently the only way to get gaeting crystals, meaning you need to fight this same boss over and over, multiple times per week, for weeks on end—only getting full rewards for a fraction of those clears, mind you—in order to get enough currency to afford anything. It is pretty dumb; things would work out a lot more smoothly if, for example, we'd received a Sebb strike to go along with Kela, providing two sources of gaeting crystals.
All strikes now grant LI, including the incredibly easy IBS encounters. This does come with the downside of the currency being a bit devalued—you're no longer forced to participate in more difficult content to make Envoy or Coalescence—but I think this is a good change overall. More sources of LI means more variety and flexibility for players pursuing their goals. I also very much appreciate that there are finally sinks for LI beyond the legendaries. The new items, such as the infinite primers, are great, and there are some nice repeatable uses for LI now as well, including what I believe is the only method of purchasing LW3 materials.
Another great new addition to raids is the daily raid bounties. This system came at the cost of the IBS strikes providing daily rewards (though their essence chests are still daily, so plenty of players still do them), but I think that was a cost well-worth paying. Raids are sorted into four categories based roughly on difficulty, and each of those categories rotates through its selection to provide players with four daily bosses to complete each day. Doing so grants an additional copy of the boss's coffer.
This is a very simple addition, but it is an incredible boon for raiding as a whole. A major issue with getting new players into raids is that a majority of experienced raiders primarily use external communities on Discord and/or statics to complete content, causing the in-game LFG to feel empty. In particular, many players would get their weekly fullclear in immediately on Monday and not raid again the rest of the week. The daily raid bounties provide an incentive for players to actually log in and raid every day, and thanks largely in part to this, the LFG feels more populated than ever.
One issue with the new system is the allocation of magnetite rewards. The amount of shards provided by each encounter is intended to scale with both difficulty and length, but this is not actually reflected by the current amounts. The IBS strikes are currently the best way to farm shards by far, and several long and/or difficult encounters provide pitifully little currency. This aspect of the new rewards could do with some serious rebalancing. On a related note,
Difficulty Ratings are Kinda Useless
Before we get to an in-depth analysis of the raid UI as a whole, I'd like to focus on one aspect of it that I believe was implemented particularly poorly—the difficulty rating. Each raid wing and strike in the UI is given a score from 1-5 as a quick reference for players to see how difficult the raid is relative to others. There are several problems which make these scores incredibly inconsistent and more or less useless. Let's go over each. Oh, and here's each raid's score, for reference:
Problem #1: The Scores Represent Two Different Things
While this score is labeled as a "difficulty score", that term is misleading. The scores seem to account for both difficulty and length, as evidence by the high scores of Forging Steel and Harvest Temple, and by how the magnetite rewards are based on both factors.
This is a problem, because can be very long without being difficult at all. Forging Steel is the perfect example of this—in terms of actual difficulty, it is arguably the easiest raid of all by account of how it can be comfortably solo'd by players who don't even have half-decent builds. I consistently solo'd the entire mission myself as a new player, playing as a hammer Herald back when that spec didn't even provide quickness and was generally considered unplayable—yeah, it's that easy.
Point is, the score is meaningless if it's trying to average out two different things. It's impossible for players to know based on the score alone how much of that score represents difficulty versus how much represents length. The degree to which length modifies the score is also nebulous and rather inconsistent. Though it's about the same difficulty as Fraenir and the bears, Shiverpeaks Pass's pre-event apparently isn't long enough to net it any additional score; meanwhile, the eight-minute wave defense section from Cold War is either raising it from 1 to 2 or not providing anything at all. Forging Steel's duration of over twenty minutes gets it two additional points, and its unclear whether HT is boosted despite only being half as long or if the team genuinely think it's one of the hardest encounters they've ever made.
Problem #2: Raid Wings Only Get One Score
In the UI, raid wings are treated the same as strikes. This means that entire wings are given only a single score to represent the entire thing, as shown in the table above. This obviously isn't ideal, since the difficulty of different encounters within the same wing can differ drastically.
A practical example of this is Wing 4. It's scored at 3, marking it as more difficult than Wing 1. However, raid trainers like myself actually consider its first 3 encounters—Cairn, MO, and Samarog—to be just as good of intro points into raiding as Wing 1 is. They're of comparable difficulty, with only Deimos being a significant step up, and even then only due to how punishing oils are. Many, myself included, would argue that Cairn is the easiest raid wing boss by far.
Problem #3: The Scores Are Just Plain Wrong
Even accounting for how some scores might be affected by the encounter's length, there's a serious lack of logic in some of the scoring choices. You cannot convince me that Aetherblade Hideout is somehow the same difficulty as Shiverpeaks Pass, an encounter that is actively difficult to get downed in if you try. XJJ strangely jumps to a score of 3 despite most players considering it equal in difficulty to AH. And Kaineng Overlook is being grouped up with some of the toughest raid wings? You genuinely think Li is up there with Dhuum and Qadim? To use a recent, relevant example—you think KO is harder than Kela?
I could bring up further examples, but the point is that there doesn't seem to be a consistent rubric for how encounter difficulty is scored—and if there is, it doesn't line up well with the player experience.
How Can We Fix It?
Pointing out the problems with the scoring system is easy, but critique is best accompanied with a plan of improvement. Here are some ways these problems could be addressed:
- Split difficulty and length into two separate scores. There's plenty of room on the right side of the header that could be used. Just stack a second copy of the difficulty graphic on top of the first and swap out its "Base Difficulty" label for something like "Average Length". Providing two separate scores would make what's actually being conveyed much less ambiguous.
- Give individual encounters and events within raid wings their own scores. While the idea itself is obvious, how to implement it is a bit trickier. My best suggestion is that the scores would appear in the same location on the UI, but only when you click on an encounter to select it.
- Include a viewable rubric for what scores actually mean. There could be an information icon within the raid UI that shows some information such as, for example, how much time each point of length score accounts for, or what sorts of traits identify an encounter as more difficult than others. This would provide players with a practical reference through which to compare different encounters, and having a formal rubric would also make it easier for the team to more accurately rate them. Some of the same information could also be displayed as a tooltip when the player hovers their mouse over an encounter's score.
A few simple fixes like these would go a long way to make this aspect of the UI a lot more intuitive and helpful. I also believe the team could do with a second pass at the scores they've already doled out to improve their accuracy.
On the topic of encounter difficulty, I'm interested to learn what the community's general opinion is on the difficulty of various encounters. I've included a survey here for rating each fight's difficulty; I'd appreciate if any of the raiders reading this considered giving it a look, but be warned—it's a very long one. If you'd like to see the data that's already been gathered from the survey, it's publicly available here.
The Raid UI Is Awesome
I've had a lot of negative things to say about the raid UI so far, but with those gripes out of the way, the general implementation is great. The quality of life improvements of being able to skip to specific encounters at any time and join your squad from anywhere revolutionized the experience of raiding. Combined with the additional rewards, quickplay, and the new daily bounties, raids have gone from a niche activity that often felt like an afterthought to a fully fleshed-out part of the core game experience. They're more active than ever before, and the actual process of raiding is so much more streamlined and enjoyable.
The raid UI itself is simple, but it accomplishes just about everything it needs to. There's the aforementioned ability to jump to any encounter in a raid wing, which is a huge boon. I also appreciate how it doubles as a weekly clear tracker, finally providing a convenient way to view that information in-game. The raids and encounters are all organized well, and the UI is sleek and makes good use of space. I have no complaints regarding the design of the UI itself, and I appreciate the smaller details, like how it uses icons to differentiate events from bosses and displays challenge mode clears separately.
One interesting part of the UI is the "details" button. It takes a prominent position on the page and shows a tooltip when hovered over providing additional information on the raid, such as the masteries that are required or recommended. This is a very nice feature to have, though the formatting across these descriptions is inconsistent, and there are some mistakes in them. Most notably, wing 3 fails to mention that ley-line gliding is strictly required for Xera despite mentioning how it's required for navigation (which isn't even true unless you're a member of escort's tower team). It also states the warclaw is recommended for wing 8 despite it being used for absolutely nothing and providing no practical advantage there. This aspect of the UI could definitely do with another pass.
I've already discussed the issues with the difficulty ratings at length, so that sums up my thoughts on the UI itself. While I have gripes about the ratings and info descriptions, my one biggest criticism of the UI is that it's only accessible within a few specific lobbies. Adding a new button to the top of the screen, allowing players to access the raid UI from anywhere, would be an incredible addition, and the only bit of major QoL I feel is still missing.
Conclusion
I jumped between a lot of different topics throughout this article, so let's recap. The new raid changes are a massive improvement, with the new raid UI and overhauled rewards making raiding more accessible and enjoyable than ever before. While these changes are great, there's still work to be done to make raids even better. Making the UI accessible from anywhere would be another great boon, and the difficulty ratings and info descriptions in particular could use some work. The removal of 'strike' as in-game terminology is also a step in the wrong directions which will only make communication between players more difficult.
Quickplay is also a great new addition that could also use some work. There are some issues with how players are loaded into quickplay instances, but they're otherwise a decent way to bring new players into the gamemode and are an appreciated addition. It's unclear if the team plan to add raid wing encounters, but if they do, I find it unlikely more than a few will make it in.
I'd love to hear what others think about the new changes, and what additional changes you'd like to see. What are your thoughts on quickplay, the new rewards, and the UI itself?
- Encounter Difficulty Survey, for those interested in filling it out
- The data from the aforementioned survey
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