Guild Wars 2

I just don’t like it if people are throwing in wrong statements that have already been contradicted by the company.
You were saying: “that raid team borrows more people from other departments” and this is wrong. To this point we had these “several statements” in this forum saying it is not true. Yeah, you can deny it but then don’t be surpised if nobody will take it seriously.

Just to come back to your point: The raid team doesn’t borrow more people from other departments. It’s a fact. Bobby told this more than once now.

That is why i call people to discuss properly otherwise it’s very annoying and you get the impression that your opponent in the discussion doesn’t want to argue in a fair manner or he isn’t an adequate person who is able to pursuit a discussion in an adult way.

On topic:

I think the future of raids looks brilliant. The raid team was awesome with their first 3 wings and the announcement that there is more in the pipeline makes me feel happy. I’m excited to see more in the future – after the next boring step called LS3.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/48zlyd/im_mike_obrien_here_with_gw2_dev_team_ama/d0nwad9?context=10000

That’s what I meant saying that raid team “borrows” other people. Please, close this case. And apologize for making me look.

Well and Bobby said that those assisting people weren’t an issue to prevent LS3 from being released at the time they are going for.
This was the doubt people had because they persisted on the assumption that raids lead to content drought for all casuals and that is 0.0% true.

Vinceman.4572:

Well and Bobby said that those assisting people weren’t an issue to prevent LS3 from being released at the time they are going for.
This was the doubt people had because they persisted on the assumption that raids lead to content drought for all casuals and that is 0.0% true.

I never stated nor tried to prove that.

Despite the official statements, the reality is that LS3 is still not released. Raids are. People will look for a scapegoat, so raids are naturally taking all the heat.

What is more, LS3 eventually should be released. When that happens, player population should increase, since a bunch of players (me including) are not logging in so often during content draughts. If everything goes right, people will enjoy LS3 but raids will still remain their thorn in a side as the end content they want to do, but for various reasons can’t. If the lore in LS3 continues the storyline of raids, expect even more heat put on raids.

Vinceman.4572

On topic:

I think the future of raids looks brilliant. The raid team was awesome with their first 3 wings and the announcement that there is more in the pipeline makes me feel happy. I’m excited to see more in the future – after the next boring step called LS3.

Sorry for disagreeing with this. The raids are part of GW2. Starting from the HoT launch (when the raids were released) the GW2 started to feel “ill” The illness was ignored for a while, until a heavy surgical intervention was needed – consisting in: Changes in the high lvl management of the game (again, my opinion is that Collin LOST his job – his departure was not the result of a sudden worry about his family), Mike O’Brien redistributing the work force on several projects and canceling other projects (again a sign that under Collin’s management the resources were used without efficiency), the officials admitting the mistake they made (" we learned the lesson" ) etc. One of the mistakes was the release of content only for a small part of the players – the raiders. The statement that “nobody stops you to raid” is FALSE. From the developers statements you can see that the raids were designed with the idea that only a small part of the players to be able to complete it. This may be good for other games, but is bad for GW2. Now: if the raids are part of the illness cause of GW2, I see no meaning developing further this aspect of the game. The future of the raids can be brilliant only in a brilliant GW2 environment. If the GW2 starts to die (due to the raids) then the raids will die also.
My feeling is that the raid development will be stopped in order to save the game.

This was the doubt people had because they persisted on the assumption that raids lead to content drought for all casuals and that is 0.0% true.

It seems that you don’t understand: In this game exists only players. The division in categories as “casuals” and “hardcore” (with other words “scrubs” and “elite” ) is an invention of some …. refugees from other MMO’s. Because, I repeat, in this game you can find players. Your statement I quoted (with the content for casuals) makes me wonder if that content is exclusive for casuals and if somebody denied you the right to play the content “designed” for casuals.
Because until now I thought that this casual content is for all players (including raiders) and the raids – according to the developers statements – are for a very few players (casuals excluded here). Conclusion: The raiders have MORE content released. That means MORE for a very FEW. This is another cause of the players anger.

The thing is you are not partially wrong, you are completely wrong.
The reason why HoT wasn’t such a big success (in whateverest’s eyes) had nothing to do with raids. Raids came out one month after HoT-launch and the moaning and complaining was there before.
Topic of complaints: HoT-Maps, Inaccessability of getting the masteries done straight because mobs were too punishing and therefore the maps hard to explore for the majority of the playerbase. Grinding for collections was also a thing and many more.
All that got adjusted and improved by the Q2-update, not really understandable for me but it’s ok if the majority needs to have it easier. It’s open world content so I don’t really care because this sort of content has always been faceroll in GW2.
The complaints about raids were small or almost non-existent. These voices got a little bit louder now – they are still decent – because the only PvE-content brought into the game over the last 6-8 months were little events, the Q2-Update (not really contentwise) and the raids. No surprise people got sad or bored and watch raids as their evil denying them new content but on a objective site, this is not true at all. And Bobby clarified that.
It’s nothing more that the usual PvE-casual – as I divide between casuals and more non-casual players – wants to have its cookie too. That’s fine and he will be served the next weeks with LS3 as promised.

Also, raids are an improvement. I met so many new friends ingame, broadened my ingame network and I am way more flexible in playing certain classes like I have never been before. The lfg for raids is never standing still – a good sign that raids have arrived at this game and it looks like they will stay there as the challenging content for a respectable playerbase. It was wished by that base for over 3 years now and it was a reasonable decision to put something like that into the game when fractals and dungeons were nerfed into the ground and/or abandoned (dungeons).

And just one single thing according to your “raiders have more content released”: Most raiders just want to raid but they also had to do map explore and get the masteries. While I am not complaining about that, there are raiders who got offended by this. Additionally, raiders are less interested in the LS3, so next big update will give the casual more content released – much more the raiders got with their 3 wings. You are telling me I am able to play LS3 and easy content too like you and I tell you are able learn and to play raids if you want. You just deny it, that’s not my problem. But don’t take my content away, I am not stealing yours! With such intuition you are building a toxic discussion basis not the ones like me who are pleading for difficult content.

You have to accept that this game serves things to a broad spectrum of your so called “players”. But we don’t sit all together in that boat. I don’t want to be compared with a SW farmer, world boss adventurer or anything like that. I am not such a “player”. Please don’t try to built a Hello Kitty online out of GW2.
(I am also no refugee from another MMO. This is my first one and I like the way the game is going right now with raids!)

We have WvW, we have PvP, we have faceroll PvE, we have challenging PvE, we have RP. And all that is good to have because it creates a huge pool of possibilities. You can choose so much and if you are willing to learn and put effort into you can succeed in every area of the game. It’s just on you to do so.

Vinceman.4572:

And just one single thing according to your “raiders have more content released”: Most raiders just want to raid but they also had to do map explore and get the masteries. While I am not complaining about that, there are raiders who got offended by this. Additionally, raiders are less interested in the LS3, so next big update will give the casual more content released – much more the raiders got with their 3 wings.

Most raiders just want to raid? Ok, just to get this clear, how can there be people only interested in raids?

Game launched in August 2012, raids only in November 2015. What “most of the raiders” where doing for 3 years? Played a game they don’t like? Or played some other game and only joined recently? And they are already offended? It’s like coming to the vegan restaurant and complaining that there’s no meat in there ^^

We were running dungeons, that were harder at the beginning at least.

We were running fractals, that were harder too before HoT.

And we made our own challenges, be it speed clear tournaments (btw. with more viewers than the PvP tournament ^^), be it solo/duo/trio running and some were playing PvP and WvW with great success.

Plus, we have had several threads about players that came from other games just for joining the GW2 community to play the raids.

One special thing is that the combat system of GW2 is a really good one and it was disappointing to see that it was only used for content in which you don’t have to use it all the way because you simply press 1 and you are successful.

The reason why HoT wasn’t such a big success (in whateverest’s eyes) had nothing to do with raids. Raids came out one month after HoT-launch and the moaning and complaining was there before.

True, although it is fair to say that HoT’s launch was hampered but the “raid mentality,” in a sense, as the HoT maps were designed to be “light raids” in a way, and the HoT enemies were more challenging than previous mobs. The feeling among a large part of the community was that even the non-raid HoT content was targeting raid players more than it was the core GW2 fanbase, and this led to a lot of discontent among the players.

The issue was more the apparent developer focus on raider players, rather than the actual raid itself, although the subsequent six months of nothing but raid communication certainly did not help.

You are telling me I am able to play LS3 and easy content too like you and I tell you are able learn and to play raids if you want.

A player capable of doing raids stepping back to do relatively easy story mode content is a far different thing than a player suited to story mode content being able to participate in raids, and if you cannot understand the distinction then you cannot meaningfully participate in the discussion.

Game launched in August 2012, raids only in November 2015. What “most of the raiders” where doing for 3 years? Played a game they don’t like? Or played some other game and only joined recently? And they are already offended? It’s like coming to the vegan restaurant and complaining that there’s no meat in there ^^

/second

There is actually a pretty decent thread on Reddit that includes a variety of viewpoints from both sides of this issue. Definitely worth reading/considering as part of this ongoing discussion.

Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4rlzc1/so_whats_up_with_the_raid_hate_its_like_i_blinked/

Vinceman.4572:

We were running dungeons, that were harder at the beginning at least.

We were running fractals, that were harder too before HoT.

And we made our own challenges, be it speed clear tournaments (btw. with more viewers than the PvP tournament ^^), be it solo/duo/trio running and some were playing PvP and WvW with great success.

Plus, we have had several threads about players that came from other games just for joining the GW2 community to play the raids.

One special thing is that the combat system of GW2 is a really good one and it was disappointing to see that it was only used for content in which you don’t have to use it all the way because you simply press 1 and you are successful.

I believe that’s what people had in mind when they were asking for harder content. Melting world or dungeon boss in 5 seconds is hardly fun. They started to fix that issue (Tequatl for example), but for some reason stopped in the middle and shifted they focus. Dungeons are completely abandoned by developers and raids are now a thing. From one extreme to the other and people are still complaining…

Ohoni.6057:

A player capable of doing raids stepping back to do relatively easy story mode content is a far different thing than a player suited to story mode content being able to participate in raids, and if you cannot understand the distinction then you cannot meaningfully participate in the discussion.

Everyone without harder disabilities is able to participate in raids and even myself knows players with disabilities being successful there.
Like we already stated in other threads: It’s more a “I don’t want to raid” than a “I am not able to raid.” in your case.
As others in this forum gave me the advice, I won’t discuss any further with you.

Ohoni.6057:

Game launched in August 2012, raids only in November 2015. What “most of the raiders” where doing for 3 years? Played a game they don’t like? Or played some other game and only joined recently? And they are already offended? It’s like coming to the vegan restaurant and complaining that there’s no meat in there ^^

/second

That has been answered elaborately.

Everyone without harder disabilities is able to participate in raids and even myself knows players with disabilities being successful there.

Not at all relevant. Whether someone is capable of eventually doing something is not relevant to whether they want to. And again, if someone can already do something difficult, expecting them to deign to do something relatively easy as well is a far different thing than expecting a player who can only do easy things to “train up” to be capable of doing something difficult. It’s not an equivalent relationship, it’s not “just as hard” on the high skill player to expect him to bother with low skill activities.

Like we already stated in other threads: It’s more a “I don’t want to raid” than a “I am not able to raid.” in your case.

Definitely. And for some reason you don’t believe that choice should be respected?

Ohoni.6057:

Like we already stated in other threads: It’s more a “I don’t want to raid” than a “I am not able to raid.” in your case.

Definitely. And for some reason you don’t believe that choice should be respected?

No one is saying that. Rather, I think anet should focus on content that would cater to you, like living world.

You seem to be upset at the mere existence of raids. Which, to be fair, lines up with your principles.

But you can’t design content in an MMO that caters to every single player. For example, I don’t like wvw. I find the combat on that scale uninteresting. Do I demand that anet turn wvw into raids or pvp? No. Because I know people like wvw. And because I have pvp and raids to enjoy. I don’t need to like everything.

I know you do. Fair enough. But not many people share your view.

No one is saying that. Rather, I think anet should focus on content that would cater to you, like living world.

I think they’re already doing that, and that’s fine, but I would prefer they also work on an easy mode raid, and if we are talking about catering to me, then I think my opinion on what would cater to me would be of more value than your opinion of what would cater to me, right?

You seem to be upset at the mere existence of raids. Which, to be fair, lines up with your principles.

Eh, in a sense. I’m more upset with the sense of superiority and entitlement that they enable. there are plenty of raiders out there that think “hey, I like to raid, therefore I deserve to get better loot than players who don’t like to raid, I’m better than those players,” and I think that sort of attitude is toxic to the game’s community. I don’t think the game’s systems should encourage some players to feel that they are “better” than their fellow players, we’re all just playing a game.

But you can’t design content in an MMO that caters to every single player. For example, I don’t like wvw. I find the combat on that scale uninteresting. Do I demand that anet turn wvw into raids or pvp? No. Because I know people like wvw. And because I have pvp and raids to enjoy. I don’t need to like everything.

Yes, and fair enough, but let’s say that there was an item that could only be earned through WvW that you really wanted. I think it would be fair for you to ask for some method of earning that item that would not require significant time in WvW.

Or let’s say you don’t like WvW, but there are elements of WvW that you do enjoy. A simple example would be, what if you really enjoyed the Obsidian Sanctum JP, but hated the PvP aspects of it. Maybe you would be much happier being able to run that JP in a purely PvE environment. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to request that they make this an option? I think if the goal is just to satisfy you, that might be a bit much to ask, but if thousands of other players wanted that, it might be worth pursuing.

You can create alternate versions of content without harming the existing content. I’m not talking about nerfing the existing raids, although I wouldn’t exactly cry myself to sleep if they did, I’m talking about an alternate mode. You may not like that alternate mode at all, but you don’t have to play it, the existing hard mode will still be there for you.

Now maybe you personally would not push for these sort of things, maybe you personally would just accept things how they are, even if they could be made better, and that’s fine, but don’t begrudge others for not passively accepting less.

Ohoni.6057:

Eh, in a sense. I’m more upset with the sense of superiority and entitlement that they enable. there are plenty of raiders out there that think “hey, I like to raid, therefore I deserve to get better loot than players who don’t like to raid, I’m better than those players,” and I think that sort of attitude is toxic to the game’s community. I don’t think the game’s systems should encourage some players to feel that they are “better” than their fellow players, we’re all just playing a game.

It’s not about whether you like to raid, it’s about whether you’re able to raid successfuly. Nobody thinks they’re a better person than someone else just because they’re better at a game, but they might think (and rightfully so) that they’re better gamers. After all, competition has been around as long as gaming itself was. And someone who can complete a challenge in a game does deserve better rewards than person who cannot, doesn’t he? That’s kinda the point of games. Trying to overcome a challenge. If there’s no chance of ever losing, then there’s no challenge.

I don’t think anyone can say, with a straight face, that raids haven’t split the GW2 community considerably.

I do not think raids are a bad idea, but I do not like that fracturing of the community. Extending the raid experience to include a more casual experience (which is more than just a tour of a cleared instance) is the best way to mend that rift.

The only other option I see is to abandon raiding altogether, and I don’t think many people really want that.

Again, this is my opinion – but it is coming from someone who sees this first hand. I have been playing since the first beta weekend, I am the guild leader for a guild numbering more than 100 active players (roster is closer to 400, but I see about 100-150 logging in weekly). We have several ally guilds, ranging in size from 10 up to 400+. Despite the size of this community, we remain a tight knit group. We do have multiple groups that raid every week – and enjoy them (I lead one group and fill in as leader for another myself). But we also have a large number of players getting disheartened and feeling left out of both guild and game activities – and that is the heart of the problem with raids, imo.

Raiding is the biggest divisive factor ever introduced into this game – but it is because of the exclusive nature of raiding and reliance on the meta. They need to fix that – and I believe (based on my experience leading a large GW2 community) that a tiered difficulty model is the only way to do that short of abandoning the idea of raiding altogether.

Tarasicodissa.7084:

It’s not about whether you like to raid, it’s about whether you’re able to raid successfuly.

So, you disagree with Vinceman when he claims that there’s no meaningful distinction between those two?

It’s not about whether you like to raid, it’s about whether you’re able to raid successfuly.

What’s the difference? I take it that you raid? Who’s to say that you’re a better raider than I am? I don’t raid because it’s a horrible experience, but I imagine that if I put myself through the same time you had I’d be as good or better, but so what? Who cares? Being “better at raiding” shouldn’t be a quality that anyone should care about unless they want to raid.

Trying to overcome a challenge. If there’s no chance of ever losing, then there’s no challenge.

Yes, but not all players particularly enjoy challenge. GW2 has been a haven to many such players. Personally, I like setting my own goals for an encounter that meet and exceed the minimum requirements. I like to judge my performance based on whether they met those standards, but if I did not meet them, I don’t want to have to immediately go back and do it again and again and again until I get the reward. If I fail to meet my standards, I want to still get my reward, move on to something else, and maybe come back later to try again. I certainly don’t want to have to restart the challenge because some other player made a mistake.

Some players enjoy raids, and this is fine. Other players do not. Those other players should not have their potential experienced diminished because they do not enjoy raids.

Astralporing.1957:

Tarasicodissa.7084:

It’s not about whether you like to raid, it’s about whether you’re able to raid successfuly.

So, you disagree with Vinceman when he claims that there’s no meaningful distinction between those two?

Where is my statement that I have said there is no distinction between those two? I have never ever made that up.
In this discussion nobody was stating that he must successfully raiding. Most of the complaints in this forum are that they are not able to get into a group while this is very easy in reality.
Players got the advice of recruiting guilds on reddit (links were posted several times), there is also a huge chance to get into a guild via “Looking for”-section in this forum, the german, the french or the spanish one. There is a massive amount of guilds looking for raiding people – be it beginners or experienced players. I can show you up to ten german guilds looking for beginners and some more for exp with restrictions.

The problem lies deeper, they want to be successful asap and that won’t happen until you’re experienced.
Afterwards it’s just a little matter of time when pugging and being successful.
I started first and killed VG + Gorse. Tried Sab, went into W2 all that with training. Nowadays I kill 5-7 bosses each week. It could be more but my work and friends are too important to go for the must of 9. I achieved all that without a raiding guild, sometimes it was/is with 2-3 friends or I am just meeting nice people and put them on my friendlist and broaden my network.
Pretty easy thing tbh.

Vinceman.4572:

Astralporing.1957:

Tarasicodissa.7084:

It’s not about whether you like to raid, it’s about whether you’re able to raid successfuly.

So, you disagree with Vinceman when he claims that there’s no meaningful distinction between those two?

Where is my statement that I have said there is no distinction between those two? I have never ever made that up.

Where?
Perhaps where you claimed that the problem is not about not being able to raid, but not wanting to raid, because anyone wanting to, can?

Basically, if the main distinction between raiders and non-raiders lies in the fact that the first group wants to put an effort, and the other doesn’t, then being able to raid in itself is not a sign of being better in any way. Just of liking different things.
Which was Ohoni’s point all along.

When Taradiscodissa claims that raiders are rightfully thinking of themselves as better gamers, because they are able to raids, it is also an assertion that everyone else can’t. Which stands in direct contradiction to what you were saying earlier.

Both of you can’t be right at the same time.

No, i’m not even going into discussing whether being able to do a specific content makes one a “better gamer” or not.

Some players enjoy raids, and this is fine. Other players do not. Those other players should not have their potential experienced diminished because they do not enjoy raids.

i dont understand how raiders diminish your gaming experience… you dont like raid, so i guess you dont play with raiders after all. Or maybe, you’re just jealous because they have access to some reward that you want but can’t have? if that’s the case, it’s your fault, not their.

The problem lies deeper, they want to be successful asap and that won’t happen until you’re experienced.

So then how would you resolve that problem? How would you make it so that they ARE successful asap, which is what would make it an enjoyable gaming experience for them?

i dont understand how raiders diminish your gaming experience…

Because if Envoy armor and the Forsaken Thicket content is blocked behind having to raid, then if I do not raid, I cannot have those things, and therefore, raiding is diminishing my experience. If raids did not exist, then Envoy Armor would be placed somewhere else in the game, and the Forsaken Thicket content would be told as an open world, or LS, or perhaps dungeon style content, and that would be far preferable.

Blaeys.3102:

I don’t think anyone can say, with a straight face, that raids haven’t split the GW2 community considerably.

I would say it hasn’t. People argue about it on the forums here a lot, but forums tend to show opinions from the poles rather than the center. Based on my encounters outside of this setting I would say that most players probably just don’t care either way. They certainly don’t care enough to post here about it.

Blaeys.3102:

I do not think raids are a bad idea, but I do not like that fracturing of the community. Extending the raid experience to include a more casual experience (which is more than just a tour of a cleared instance) is the best way to mend that rift.

The only other option I see is to abandon raiding altogether, and I don’t think many people really want that.

Again, this is my opinion – but it is coming from someone who sees this first hand. I have been playing since the first beta weekend, I am the guild leader for a guild numbering more than 100 active players (roster is closer to 400, but I see about 100-150 logging in weekly). We have several ally guilds, ranging in size from 10 up to 400+. Despite the size of this community, we remain a tight knit group. We do have multiple groups that raid every week – and enjoy them (I lead one group and fill in as leader for another myself). But we also have a large number of players getting disheartened and feeling left out of both guild and game activities – and that is the heart of the problem with raids, imo.

I think that saying raids are causing players to feel left out is overgeneralizing what is a more specific problem. I too am in a large guild with many raid groups, and I haven’t seen anyone be “left out” – we make a conscious effort to get newer people into raids and set them up with static groups. However, what has changed is that raids are taking priority over other content. We get lower turnout for guild events because of scheduling conflicts, or because people just want to raid instead. The popularity of raids has certainly has impacted turnout for large-scale group events that we do, and I can see how people might be upset by that, but it isn’t dividing our guild and it certainly isn’t making people feel left out.

If you’re meaning that people in your guild are feeling left out of raids even while your guild has multiple successful raid groups then that isn’t a problem with the raids. That’s a problem with either the raiders not making an effort to help guildies or the non-raiders not making an effort to be included.

Blaeys.3102:

Raiding is the biggest divisive factor ever introduced into this game – but it is because of the exclusive nature of raiding and reliance on the meta. They need to fix that – and I believe (based on my experience leading a large GW2 community) that a tiered difficulty model is the only way to do that short of abandoning the idea of raiding altogether.

This is gross exaggeration. Especially with you being in a large guild…if raiding is feeling too “exclusive” for some of your members then why not teach them to raid? And if they are unwilling to learn then raiding just isn’t for them. And really “reliance on the meta” come on man…as someone leading a raid group you should know this is BS. Do you remember the ridiculous comps people were using for their first kills on VG? When people barely understood subsquads? We were all garbage back then and still managed to make it work with ridiculously bad comps. The “meta” is made by players for players, it has nothing to do with the content itself, and following it or not is up to the discretion of the players.

I’ve said before that I don’t think tiered raid content is a bad idea but all this stuff about raids being more divisive than any other content ever is BS. People within your guild being excluded by raids is BS. You want your guildies to not feel left out? They’re not being left out by raids, they’re being left out by other players.

i dont understand how raiders diminish your gaming experience…

Because if Envoy armor and the Forsaken Thicket content is blocked behind having to raid, then if I do not raid, I cannot have those things, and therefore, raiding is diminishing my experience. If raids did not exist, then Envoy Armor would be placed somewhere else in the game, and the Forsaken Thicket content would be told as an open world, or LS, or perhaps dungeon style content, and that would be far preferable.

hmm, then you’ve got a serious problem and i’m sorry for you. You just have to accept that it’s a game, you can’t have everything. And if you were trully motivated, you’d be raiding right now. But since you have decided that raiding is not for you and it’s a horrible experience, just move on. You’d be better. Or be patient, Anet will probably add legendary armor elsewhere in the game.

Astralporing.1957:

Where?
Perhaps where you claimed that the problem is not about not being able to raid, but not wanting to raid, because anyone wanting to, can?

Basically, if the main distinction between raiders and non-raiders lies in the fact that the first group wants to put an effort, and the other doesn’t, then being able to raid in itself is not a sign of being better in any way. Just of liking different things.
Which was Ohoni’s point all along.

Yeah, but why is he arguing then? He doesn’t want to raid. I don’t want to play PvP and WvW. So, I am rational to say to myself: Nope, Vinceman, you won’t get the rewards/titles/etc. if you don’t play these modes.
It’s as easy as it is and there is no problem to grant others the different game modes + rewards.

Vinceman.4572:

Astralporing.1957:

Where?
Perhaps where you claimed that the problem is not about not being able to raid, but not wanting to raid, because anyone wanting to, can?

Basically, if the main distinction between raiders and non-raiders lies in the fact that the first group wants to put an effort, and the other doesn’t, then being able to raid in itself is not a sign of being better in any way. Just of liking different things.
Which was Ohoni’s point all along.

Yeah, but why is he arguing then? He doesn’t want to raid. I don’t want to play PvP and WvW. So, I am rational to say to myself: Nope, Vinceman, you won’t get the rewards/titles/etc. if you don’t play these modes.
It’s as easy as it is and there is no problem to grant others the different game modes + rewards.

He’s arguing because he thinks that “liking different things” shouldn’t preclude you from access to rewards gated behind those different things. It’s a defensible argument but one that most players would fundamentally disagree with because people generally enjoy exclusive rewards for the content they actually do play, and because achievements feel more rewarding if they are more difficult.

You and most others are not going to find common ground with him because you have a fundamental disagreement about the rewards structure in the game (and by extension the purpose of raids as a whole).

hmm, then you’ve got a serious problem and i’m sorry for you. You just have to accept that it’s a game, you can’t have everything. And if you were trully motivated, you’d be raiding right now. But since you have decided that raiding is not for you and it’s a horrible experience, just move on. You’d be better. Or be patient, Anet will probably add legendary armor elsewhere in the game.

This is what I’m doing, hopefully sooner rather than later, but some people are being real jerks about it.

Yeah, but why is he arguing then? He doesn’t want to raid. I don’t want to play PvP and WvW. So, I am rational to say to myself: Nope, Vinceman, you won’t get the rewards/titles/etc. if you don’t play these modes.

Because I’m not a quitter. I don’t look at a broken system and say “whelp, it’s broken, might as well settle,” I look at it and say “now how can we fix it?”

because people generally enjoy exclusive rewards for the content they actually do play,

Why do you believe this to be true? I mean sure, if a reward that a player actually wants just happens to be locked behind content he enjoys doing, then it’s win/win, but if the reward he wants is locked behind different content, or the rewards specific to the content are not interesting to him, then wouldn’t he be happier being able to go for different rewards from the content he enjoys?

If the point is just to establish “I have done this thing,” there are better ways to do that than armor and weapon skins, such as titles or nametag flairs.

Dinosaurs.8674:

Blaeys.3102:

I don’t think anyone can say, with a straight face, that raids haven’t split the GW2 community considerably.

I would say it hasn’t. People argue about it on the forums here a lot, but forums tend to show opinions from the poles rather than the center. Based on my encounters outside of this setting I would say that most players probably just don’t care either way. They certainly don’t care enough to post here about it.

Blaeys.3102:

I do not think raids are a bad idea, but I do not like that fracturing of the community. Extending the raid experience to include a more casual experience (which is more than just a tour of a cleared instance) is the best way to mend that rift.

The only other option I see is to abandon raiding altogether, and I don’t think many people really want that.

Again, this is my opinion – but it is coming from someone who sees this first hand. I have been playing since the first beta weekend, I am the guild leader for a guild numbering more than 100 active players (roster is closer to 400, but I see about 100-150 logging in weekly). We have several ally guilds, ranging in size from 10 up to 400+. Despite the size of this community, we remain a tight knit group. We do have multiple groups that raid every week – and enjoy them (I lead one group and fill in as leader for another myself). But we also have a large number of players getting disheartened and feeling left out of both guild and game activities – and that is the heart of the problem with raids, imo.

I think that saying raids are causing players to feel left out is overgeneralizing what is a more specific problem. I too am in a large guild with many raid groups, and I haven’t seen anyone be “left out” – we make a conscious effort to get newer people into raids and set them up with static groups. However, what has changed is that raids are taking priority over other content. We get lower turnout for guild events because of scheduling conflicts, or because people just want to raid instead. The popularity of raids has certainly has impacted turnout for large-scale group events that we do, and I can see how people might be upset by that, but it isn’t dividing our guild and it certainly isn’t making people feel left out.

If you’re meaning that people in your guild are feeling left out of raids even while your guild has multiple successful raid groups then that isn’t a problem with the raids. That’s a problem with either the raiders not making an effort to help guildies or the non-raiders not making an effort to be included.

Blaeys.3102:

Raiding is the biggest divisive factor ever introduced into this game – but it is because of the exclusive nature of raiding and reliance on the meta. They need to fix that – and I believe (based on my experience leading a large GW2 community) that a tiered difficulty model is the only way to do that short of abandoning the idea of raiding altogether.

This is gross exaggeration. Especially with you being in a large guild…if raiding is feeling too “exclusive” for some of your members then why not teach them to raid? And if they are unwilling to learn then raiding just isn’t for them. And really “reliance on the meta” come on man…as someone leading a raid group you should know this is BS. Do you remember the ridiculous comps people were using for their first kills on VG? When people barely understood subsquads? We were all garbage back then and still managed to make it work with ridiculously bad comps. The “meta” is made by players for players, it has nothing to do with the content itself, and following it or not is up to the discretion of the players.

I’ve said before that I don’t think tiered raid content is a bad idea but all this stuff about raids being more divisive than any other content ever is BS. People within your guild being excluded by raids is BS. You want your guildies to not feel left out? They’re not being left out by raids, they’re being left out by other players.

Raids does actually make people feel left out. Because you can’t take everyone who to raid to your 10 man squad. Because can’t take two chronos, since you only need one. Because you can’t take a break from a game, since your spot in a raid squad will be taken. You could argue with details here, but point stands, raids does indeed produce tension in guilds.

Not players, raids. Players are always the same. There are no good or bad communities. Game’s mechanics is the deciding factor if your community will be friendly or not. GW2 was making the content which encouraged cooperation. I love the game for that. Raids does encourage cooperation, but also competitiveness among guildmates. Because you want to be taken to the raid squad, not the guy you used to call friend.

Ohoni.6057:

because people generally enjoy exclusive rewards for the content they actually do play,

Why do you believe this to be true? I mean sure, if a reward that a player actually wants just happens to be locked behind content he enjoys doing, then it’s win/win, but if the reward he wants is locked behind different content, or the rewards specific to the content are not interesting to him, then wouldn’t he be happier being able to go for different rewards from the content he enjoys?

Why do you not believe it? Would pvp players rather not have the pvp backpack? Would wvw players rather that the wvw skins be available to anyone? I’m not going to pretend I’ve done a survey or something but it’s intuitive that people like to be working towards an external goal in games.

And to answer you question: no, I would not be happier if I could get every reward from the content I enjoy. That would make the game much less enjoyable. Removing exclusivity from rewards makes them less desirable as rewards. Maybe you just enjoy being able to customize your fashion however you want, but if you remove the prestige from items then many players would lose their incentive to obtain them.

This is why I said that there is a fundamental disconnect between the way you view the game’s reward structures compared to other players. I’m not going to agree in any way that the envoy armor should be available outside of a raid setting because the entire purpose of the armor is to be a raid-exclusive reward. You disagree with the idea that rewards should be exclusive to particular content. That’s fine, I’m not going to say your opinion is wrong, but it’s equally ridiculous to tell people that they are wrong for liking that exclusive rewards exist.

Ohoni.6057:

If the point is just to establish “I have done this thing,” there are better ways to do that than armor and weapon skins, such as titles or nametag flairs.

Why are armor/weapon skins a worse method of showing off achievements than tags and flair? Not even joking, I would rather have the yakslapper title than any skin or item in the entire game. Saying you think armor skins should always be generally available as rewards but titles shouldn’t isn’t really fair. Either you think rewards should be generally available or you don’t; if you want to eliminate skins as a prestige reward but leave other prestige rewards then your argument is basically “I want skins”.

Manthas.6234:

Raids does actually make people feel left out. Because you can’t take everyone who to raid to your 10 man squad. Because can’t take two chronos, since you only need one. Because you can’t take a break from a game, since your spot in a raid squad will be taken. You could argue with details here, but point stands, raids does indeed produce tension in guilds.

Not players, raids. Players are always the same. There are no good or bad communities. Game’s mechanics is the deciding factor if your community will be friendly or not. GW2 was making the content which encouraged cooperation. I love the game for that. Raids does encourage cooperation, but also competitiveness among guildmates. Because you want to be taken to the raid squad, not the guy you used to call friend.

I would say to this that people feeling jealous and paranoid about their spots being taken is more a reflection on the people they are surrounding themselves with. I certainly would agree that raids create some competition between guildmates, but this is only a problem if the people involved make it one. You’re implying a situation where everyone got along and was super good friends before but now raids are out and people had their personalities change to be cutthroat kittens, but it’s because of raids and not because they were already kittens? I don’t see it.

Because you want to be taken to the raid squad, not the guy you used to call friend.

This is particular is pretty insane. If people in your community are so cutthroat that they are willing to give up friends to get into a raid group I would say without hesitation that it is a bad community. You’re saying that someone who would do that is only bad because raids encourage it? I have plenty of friends that are god awful at raids and I still enjoy raiding with them because they’re my friends. If we have friends who need clears and our group is full we just get them clears later in the week, or someone drops to let them in. We do this because we’re good people and we genuinely want to be helpful. Honestly if random guildies even say they need X kill in ts then we will probably help them get it lol. There’s no tension about getting into this group or that because the raiding community is full of helpful people.

Why do you not believe it? Would pvp players rather not have the pvp backpack? Would wvw players rather that the wvw skins be available to anyone? I’m not going to pretend I’ve done a survey or something but it’s intuitive that people like to be working towards an external goal in games.

Again, why would they? I’m not a PvPer, but I want the PvP backpack. If I were a PvP-only player, I would want to have A Sunrise or Dreamer. I honestly can’t imagine wanting any item in the game to be exclusive to only one portion of the game, even if it was the only portion I enjoyed.

Maybe you just enjoy being able to customize your fashion however you want, but if you remove the prestige from items then many players would lose their incentive to obtain them.

Well that’s depressing, because none of it had any “prestige” to begin with. I mean, I hate to be that kid, but “emperor, you’re wearing no clothes.”

Why are armor/weapon skins a worse method of showing off achievements than tags and flair?

Because there are other reasons for wanting it. I mean, if there is a title “I beat the raids guys!” then why would anyone want that if everyone could have it? You would only ever want that because only people who beat the raids could get it, and you wanted to show off. And I can get why armor could fill that same role, and why people who earned that armor might like being able to show off that they completed the raids.

But that’s only half of the equation. The other half is EVERYONE ELSE. There are other players who might not want to raid, but might want that specific armor. They couldn’t care less about other people knowing they completed the raid, because they understand that nobody else cares that they did the raid. They would have no interest in the “I beat the raids guys!” title, because that does not interest them. But they do like the look of that armor, and they don’t care whether it comes as a raid reward, or whether it was a daily log-in reward, that is the armor they want to wear.

So in the current system, people who want to brag about their accomplishments will get a tool for that, but people who just like the armor for its intrinsic properties are left out. But if they allowed you to earn the armor elsewhere, BOTH people would be able to wear the armor if they liked, and the raider guy could still pretend that other players care that he completed the raids by displaying his “my kid is on the honor role” title.

Ohoni.6057:

But that’s only half of the equation. The other half is EVERYONE ELSE. There are other players who might not want to raid, but might want that specific armor. They couldn’t care less about other people knowing they completed the raid, because they understand that nobody else cares that they did the raid. They would have no interest in the “I beat the raids guys!” title, because that does not interest them. But they do like the look of that armor, and they don’t care whether it comes as a raid reward, or whether it was a daily log-in reward, that is the armor they want to wear.

But what if I don’t want to raid, but I want that sweet kitten title that’s exclusive to raiding? I couldn’t care less about the armor, but I’ve always wanted “I beat the raids guys!” title to show off .

Dinosaurs.8674:

It’s a defensible argument but one that most players would fundamentally disagree with because people generally enjoy exclusive rewards for the content they actually do play, and because achievements feel more rewarding if they are more difficult.

Not quite.

1. They people are generally okay with exclusive rewards for the content they actually do. Some might even like it. If those very same rewards end up beind the content those very same people don’t do however, you usually find out that they’re no longer so behind that whole exclusivity idea. Or that they are fine with the idea, but don’t want the exclusivity to exclude them.

2. Achievements do feel rewarding if they are more difficult, but only as long as that difficulty stays within the comfort zone. Make it too difficult, and it stops being rewarding very fast.

Dinosaurs.8674:

Why do you not believe it? Would pvp players rather not have the pvp backpack?

Sure they would. They also kept arguing about PvE exclusives until Anet listened and made reward tracks.

Dinosaurs.8674:

Would wvw players rather that the wvw skins be available to anyone?

Again, generally not. But they sure as kitten were displeased by many things being unavailable in their game mode.

And both PvPers and WvWers were known in the past to complaing about legendary weapons requiring PvE.

Dinosaurs.8674:

Removing exclusivity from rewards makes them less desirable as rewards.

That’s only if that exclusivity can move you to actually play that content. If there are some reasons why you won’t, but you will still desire the reward, all that exclusivity will accomplish is making you dislike that content (and the game as a whole) more.

Dinosaurs.8674:

You’re implying a situation where everyone got along and was super good friends before but now raids are out and people had their personalities change to be cutthroat kittens, but it’s because of raids and not because they were already kittens? I don’t see it.

Sure. Seen that happen before. And it doesn’t have to be all people, nor major character flaws (and, let’s be honest, everyone have some character flaws). Often minor issues with only few players, in an environment where raiding generates stress and competiveness, start up a domino effect that keeps snowballing and snowballing until it tears an once friendly guild apart.

At least you don’t have to deal with loot distribution problems in GW2. Those made the problems worse by several orders of magnitude.

Dinosaurs.8674:

Because you want to be taken to the raid squad, not the guy you used to call friend.

This is particular is pretty insane. If people in your community are so cutthroat that they are willing to give up friends to get into a raid group I would say without hesitation that it is a bad community.

You sure? Let’s say there’s that one guild member, Jimmy, that wants to raid. He is your best friend, and a good guy. He’s a fun guy to have around, and everyone like him. Except, he’s so bad that when you take him with you to raids, he’s certain to turn your whole experience into hell. You can see he’s trying, and genuinely want to improve. You also can see, that it’s just not working. Will you be a good friend and continue to raid with him, or would you rather take Bob, who, while rather obnoxious in his behaviour, and not liked that much, is really competent and turns your raid attempts into smooth sailing? Even after you see, that as a result Jimmy is no longer as cheerful as before, and starts playing less and less?
What if whatever you choose, some other guildies will disagree?

Dinosaurs.8674:

You’re saying that someone who would do that is only bad because raids encourage it?

No, i’m saying that raids encourage situations where you have to make hard choices of the lose/lose kind.

And no, those are not purely hypothetical situations. I have seen those in other games before. It’s one of the reasons why i started playing GW2.

Scipio.3204:

But what if I don’t want to raid, but I want that sweet kitten title that’s exclusive to raiding? I couldn’t care less about the armor, but I’ve always wanted “I beat the raids guys!” title to show off .

You’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.

Have fun.

People can rail against the idea of making raids more accessible, come up with a 1000 reasons why it shouldn’t be done and even believe that it isn’t really an issue at all, but the reality is that when people begin to feel disenfranchised or left out, they begin to lose interest in a game – and that is exactly what is happening.

You can argue that is just a small percentage of game population, but when it is compounded by the content drought, you end up with a lot of people not entertained by the game right now. When they see that the only content released is designed specifically for a subset of the population – that does not include them – what happens next is pretty obvious.

And, I don’t want that obvious thing to happen. I love this game. I love the communities I am a part of in this game.

Multiple tiered difficulty raids would have given the PVE populations something new to do together. Going the way they did with raid development created issues in the game that I never thought we would have in this game – and that I never want to see again in this game.

Blaeys.3102:

People can rail against the idea of making raids more accessible, come up with a 1000 reasons why it shouldn’t be done and even believe that it isn’t really an issue at all, but the reality is that when people begin to feel disenfranchised or left out, they begin to lose interest in a game – and that is exactly what is happening.

You can argue that is just a small percentage of game population, but when it is compounded by the content drought, you end up with a lot of people not entertained by the game right now. When they see that the only content released is designed specifically for a subset of the population – that does not include them – what happens next is pretty obvious.

And, I don’t want that obvious thing to happen. I love this game. I love the communities I am a part of in this game.

Multiple tiered difficulty raids would have given the PVE populations something new to do together. Going the way they did with raid development created issues in the game that I never thought we would have in this game – and that I never want to see again in this game.

You can keep on blabbering about how raids destroy this game all you want, it still doesn’t change the fact that you are wrong.

Nothing will happen, you will leave and others will come, not a lot of people will be sad about it. I certainly wont.

No, multiple tiered difficulty will just make the raiders sad that their content, that they have fought for (for years), to get trivialized and devalued.
Not everything needs to adjust to the players, sometimes players have to adjust to the difficulty of content.
And this is one (the only) of these cases.
Enough people wanna see more of this way of development.

You just finally need content that fits you skilllevel, and i agree that you should get it, but raids should remain at their current difficulty, as we see 95% of GW2 content being faceroll, trivial or already had tiered difficulty.
GW2 needs Raids just as they are for players who want challenging content.
Stop destroying it for us!

Dominik.5162:

Stop destroying it for us!

Again, no one is trying to take anything away from anyone or destroy the idea of raids in GW2.

We are looking for additive solutions that will bring more players into raids. It is about extending the experience to a wider pool of people through tiered difficulties. That doesn’t trivialize anything because it doesn’t change the higher difficulty raids in the slightest (raiders aren’t that insecure).

And none of us should be happy (or even ambivalent) about people possibly leaving the game.

Dinosaurs.8674:

This is particular is pretty insane. If people in your community are so cutthroat that they are willing to give up friends to get into a raid group I would say without hesitation that it is a bad community. You’re saying that someone who would do that is only bad because raids encourage it? I have plenty of friends that are god awful at raids and I still enjoy raiding with them because they’re my friends. If we have friends who need clears and our group is full we just get them clears later in the week, or someone drops to let them in. We do this because we’re good people and we genuinely want to be helpful. Honestly if random guildies even say they need X kill in ts then we will probably help them get it lol. There’s no tension about getting into this group or that because the raiding community is full of helpful people.

So, you’re basically saying that you need to be extra nice in order to avoid tension in guild. You need to step back in order for a friend to succeed. That’s the same thing that I’m saying, only the other end of the same stick. Because you can only be extra nice fort a short time. Long term it’s always the average nice, that’s how people are – average.

Dominik.5162:

Nothing will happen, you will leave and others will come, not a lot of people will be sad about it. I certainly wont.

No, multiple tiered difficulty will just make the raiders sad that their content, that they have fought for (for years), to get trivialized and devalued.
Not everything needs to adjust to the players, sometimes players have to adjust to the difficulty of content.
And this is one (the only) of these cases.
Enough people wanna see more of this way of development.

Except it will happen if this raid bashing trend continues. People were asking for a harder content (not necessarily raids, just harder content) for a long time and now they got raids. Why can’t this work via versa?

More than enough people want raids gone or at least adjusted.

Manthas.6234:

More than enough people want raids gone or at least adjusted.

Not even that. Don’t remove anything, don’t change anything. Leave Raiders with their fun. But at the same time add something that others can have fun as well.

It’s sad, how this (and almost every other raid threat) strays off topic to a “We want raids gone/nerfed/easy mode…” against “Don’t take our raiding fun away from us by nerfing it”.
I believe there would be much less of this discussion, if there were new content for the “casual” players. But since raids are almost the only content for several month, it seems, they’re just the perfect target to complain about.

Well, back to the actual topic, which I believe is the future population of raids.
I think with new content releases like LS3 it’s likely, that a lot of people will focus on this for some time and probably raid less. They might however return to raiding when there is a lack of content again.
I also believe, that most of the current raides will still try to kill all or as many bosses as possible each week. I can’t really imagine new pve content to take away much of the raiding population, but I might be wrong there.
The bigger problem imo might be future raids. As mentioned, with more bosses, it might be more difficult to find a group doing a specific boss. However, since raids are the only way to get legendary armor (till now) many people will want to get their max LI each week and will therefore continue raiding.

Astralporing.1957:

Manthas.6234:

More than enough people want raids gone or at least adjusted.

Not even that. Don’t remove anything, don’t change anything. Leave Raiders with their fun. But at the same time add something that others can have fun as well.

Hmm, LS 3 is coming and will fill that role ^^

Nana.9512:

It’s sad, how this (and almost every other raid threat) strays off topic to a “We want raids gone/nerfed/easy mode…” against “Don’t take our raiding fun away from us by nerfing it”.
I believe there would be much less of this discussion, if there were new content for the “casual” players. But since raids are almost the only content for several month, it seems, they’re just the perfect target to complain about.

Well, back to the actual topic, which I believe is the future population of raids.
I think with new content releases like LS3 it’s likely, that a lot of people will focus on this for some time and probably raid less. They might however return to raiding when there is a lack of content again.
I also believe, that most of the current raides will still try to kill all or as many bosses as possible each week. I can’t really imagine new pve content to take away much of the raiding population, but I might be wrong there.
The bigger problem imo might be future raids. As mentioned, with more bosses, it might be more difficult to find a group doing a specific boss. However, since raids are the only way to get legendary armor (till now) many people will want to get their max LI each week and will therefore continue raiding.

Thank you, decent poster!
I would only add a little worry that some of the raid bosses will eventually be cheesed (looking at you mossman). People would hop in, do the easy boss and forget about the other ones.

Dominik.5162:

You can keep on blabbering about how raids destroy this game all you want, it still doesn’t change the fact that you are wrong.

Nothing will happen, you will leave and others will come, not a lot of people will be sad about it. I certainly wont.

No, multiple tiered difficulty will just make the raiders sad that their content, that they have fought for (for years), to get trivialized and devalued.
Not everything needs to adjust to the players, sometimes players have to adjust to the difficulty of content.
And this is one (the only) of these cases.
Enough people wanna see more of this way of development.

You just finally need content that fits you skilllevel, and i agree that you should get it, but raids should remain at their current difficulty, as we see 95% of GW2 content being faceroll, trivial or already had tiered difficulty.
GW2 needs Raids just as they are for players who want challenging content.
Stop destroying it for us!

People asking tiered difficulty mostly for accessibility purpose, not for farming. Even if they have halved drop on everything, majority will learn encounters and move on to full feature raids, because people want full reward, just like in fractals nobody cares about T1-2-3 when they finally able to clear T4 for T4 rewards. And only you trying to make drama out of it.

Rednik nailed it.

I want tiered difficulty raids because I think it would be fun to do them with my friends and guildees who aren’t hardcore, who might be in exotics or who enjoy playing a rifle engineer (or whatever).

I don’t care if they nerf the rewards to almost nothing- maybe weekly rewards on par with a world boss like Claw of Jormag. That would be fine by me. I just want a deeper experience for a wider group of friends.

Vinceman.4572:

The discussions aren’t even toxic so the argument that’s brought into here from time to time that players are afraid of posting here is nonsense.

First, the idea that this is just a small group of players is provably false. There is a reason raid posts on Reddit do not stay on the front page longer than a day – and looking through posts like these -

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4rogz6/raids_are_friggin_fantastic/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4rlzc1/so_whats_up_with_the_raid_hate_its_like_i_blinked/

shows that there are a lot of people out there unhappy with the current model, even more so if you focus on the higher rated responses. While the number of responders is lower on these forums, I argue that is primarily a result of Anet moving all of these threads to the raiding subforum and people just not having the energy to deal with the constant barrage of negativity.

Secondly, as Ive stated before, it is really hard to criticize raiding on these (and other forums). Just the past few days, weve seen a few instances related to situations in which elitism has shown itself very clearly -

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Is-this-normal-in-pugging-raids/first#post6237770
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/An-incredible-experience-in-raid-today
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Raids-Now-impossible-for-newcomers/first

Additionally – and I debated hard about sharing this – there is the attached image, which is a private message I received after daring to criticize raiding in its current form on reddit. I struck out the sender and the first line, because that line was beyond obscene and would have been inappropriate for these forums.

There was another instance of this that I had to deal with in game (albeit not an actual threat to track me down and kill me like the attached), but I didn’t think to screencap it.

The point I’m trying to make is two fold -

• One of the biggest issues with the current model of raiding is that it brings these kinds of attitudes to GW2. Anyone that has played a raiding centric game has seen it there and knows that, until now, it has remained fairly calm in GW2. Things are changing, imo, because – when you start to build different parts of the PVE game for different communities based on skill/commitment time/willingness to conform to a meta, you end up with animosity between those communities (with scorn/disdain on one side and jealousy on the other).

• Second, while people have started to speak up and be heard a little more (as evidenced on Reddit), there is a concentrated effort on the part of the nastier people out there to shut the conversation down – through getting threads closed, browbeating people to the point of not wanting to care – and, yes, through direct threats (like the one in the attached image).

I don’t think raids would be bad for the game – but creating an entire PVE game mode dedicated to hard modes builds walls that do not need to be built. Build a game for everyone – then incorporate varied difficulties (ranging from very easy to face melting) throughout multiple areas of the game. That way, everyone has realistic access to the content/experience and you retain the challenge (probably even expand on it).

@OP: Find a good guild. Raids aren’t nearly as enjoyable if you’re not doing them with a group of friends that are reliable and fun to be around for hours at a time. Seriously, don’t force yourself into this content with a group you don’t enjoy.

If you’re in need of a guild, keep a look out in the ‘looking for’ section of the forums or just make a post yourself to ask for interested guilds.

Blaeys.3102:

• One of the biggest issues with the current model of raiding is that it brings these kinds of attitudes to GW2. Anyone that has played a raiding centric game has seen it there and knows that, until now, it has remained fairly calm in GW2. Things are changing, imo, because – when you start to build different parts of the PVE game for different communities based on skill/commitment time/willingness to conform to a meta, you end up with animosity between those communities (with scorn/disdain on one side and jealousy on the other).

Spot on, people are jealous. The problem with raids is that they are the best piece of content arenanet has created for gw2. They have cool unique rewards, a good story and plenty substance for lore fanatics, and more importantly they have by far the best boss mechanics.

Those that do not want to put in the time and effort to raid, miss out on the best content. They get jealous and they start making threads about easy mode raids/rewards/lore they missing out on. They feel if these 6 devs would not have been put on raids, we would have the quality we are seeing in raids in open world/dungeons/fractals. However they fail to realise the reason arenanet has not produced this type of quality before raids, is that the other formats are simply not suited for this type of content.

The future of raids is IMO highly dependent on the succes of LS3, if it is enough and quality content, the larger part of the community will probably stop bashing on raids. I think this is the hardest challenge by far for the devs to create fun/easy and quality content for 99% of the players. The job the LS team has to do is alot harder than what the raid team had to do ( they could essentially forget about 90% of the community).

I wouldn’t be so sure about this. Yes, LS3 if it’s any good, will likely lower the amount of negativity against raids. For a while. Because, you see, the main problem with LS is that it isn’t really a repeatable content. And there will be no new dungeons, we already know that.

Also, Anet is definitely capable of doing a high quality content aimed at a general populace. It’s just they haven’t been doing it for a long time. Raids are not the best content game has to offer. They are simply both good and new, while all other good content is now really dated and seems stale in comparison.

So yes. People are jealous. Understandably jealous, because it seems that anet is developing content for a small minority while ignoring the huge majority of their players. And not only ignoring them – making content that reinforces the outlook that said majority became second class citizens, that they are somehow worse for not raiding.
And that last one is a really bad idea.

Astralporing.1957:

I wouldn’t be so sure about this. Yes, LS3 if it’s any good, will likely lower the amount of negativity against raids. For a while. Because, you see, the main problem with LS is that it isn’t really a repeatable content. And there will be no new dungeons, we already know that.

Also, Anet is definitely capable of doing a high quality content aimed at a general populace. It’s just they haven’t been doing it for a long time. Raids are not the best content game has to offer. They are simply both good and new, while all other good content is now really dated and seems stale in comparison.

So yes. People are jealous. Understandably jealous, because it seems that anet is developing content for a small minority while ignoring the huge majority of their players. And not only ignoring them – making content that reinforces the outlook that said majority became second class citizens, that they are somehow worse for not raiding.
And that last one is a really bad idea.

What you have to remember is that raids are part of the expansion and they worked on them even before the release of the expansion.

Would people also complain if they had released all 3 wings with the expansion besides the 4 new open world maps, the 2 guild halls, the new PvP gamemode/map and the new WvW map?

Also looking at the thousand fixes and tweaks of the open world maps MONTHS after the release you should quickly see that developing those huge meta event map is simply much harder and requires more work.

Now let’s wait for LW3 and see what those ~140 other devs did all the time.

DutchRiders.2871:

Blaeys.3102:

• One of the biggest issues with the current model of raiding is that it brings these kinds of attitudes to GW2. Anyone that has played a raiding centric game has seen it there and knows that, until now, it has remained fairly calm in GW2. Things are changing, imo, because – when you start to build different parts of the PVE game for different communities based on skill/commitment time/willingness to conform to a meta, you end up with animosity between those communities (with scorn/disdain on one side and jealousy on the other).

Spot on, people are jealous. The problem with raids is that they are the best piece of content arenanet has created for gw2.

While I’m not sure I would call them the best content ever created for the game, I agree that they are very well done – and, as you note, that creates a problem.

Endgame in this game has never been about raiding. In fact, they made a huge point early on of the fact that they wanted endgame and leveling to feel pretty much the same – they didn’t want people to suddenly start doing something new at endgame that felt like a different game – and that was a great goal.

The idea that raiding has be only for the elite or dedicated players is contrived and patently false. They need to go back to focusing on content that meets the need of the community as a whole (and raids could do this with tiered difficulty) – and then make sure there is sufficient challenge for the varied audiences in game.

Also, you only quoted half the problem. The jealousy on one side is actually overshadowed by the bigger problem – that raids create a class of players that begin to look down on the rest of the game – to belittle and deride those who don’t raid. Even your response here makes it seem as if you are somehow proud that people are jealous of the experience you have access to. That really isn’t good for the game.

Raiding in its current form creates barriers in the community and nastiness that have no place in the GW2 we played for the first few years. Just look at the examples I provided – and definitely at the message from reddit I attached.