In response to players agitating for improving raiding in Guild Wars 2, ArenaNet Game Designer Crystal Reid has addressed both tiers and accessibility for the endgame content. In short — don’t expect tiers for raiding.
“Tier systems for Raids come up a lot as a result of what Fractals did,” she writes. “I worked on the original Fractals team and a tiered system with increased difficulty scaling was always part of the original plan for that team. It was never a plan for Raids. They are, and should remain, the most difficult content in the game.”
Accessibility, on the other hand, is a tougher nut to crack because ArenaNet actually wants players doing its content, and difficulty comes in multiple forms.
“Accessibility in terms of difficulty is something we talk a lot about internally. We’ve made efforts to help players get in by delivering entry level encounters that ease you into the content (STK) and you’ll see more of that in the next release. You’ll still see encounters that live up to previous raid expectations for mid tier and final bosses. And if you think Matthias is a chump then we have something for you as well. Accessibility in terms of ‘Hey, my 5 man Fractal group wants to try raids, but we can’t find 5 other players!’ is also something we talk about. It’s just a much more difficult problem to solve.”
