Hey everyone.
So…been a week huh. Fancy that, Spirit Vale launched, we got our tastes in Raiding…and we have shared our opinions on the content thus far. That’s cool.
I want to keep this as concise as possible, but I feel like that might prove problematic. This is due to my own personal fairly expansive opinion on raiding in general, being a part of it from MMO to MMO. To see raiding come to GW2 has brought mixed emotions as I know quite well the benefits and downsides of it. Nevertheless I have been an outspoken advocate of raiding and its exclusive reward structure, but that’s not what I am here to talk about.
I want to talk with you my fellow players. Specifically, we are at a very important time for GW2, it’s future is being fleshed out by how the Expansion is being received by us. I could write a novel on the different opinions, positive and negative, about the expansion but that wouldn’t bear much in what I want to talk about. That, which is GW2 Raiding. It finally seems like the first iteration of how Raids work has come out, and interestingly enough, outside of the usual ‘This is just too hard’ or ‘Enrage timers need to be harder’ within the first week of players raiding the first Wing, overall the reception is quite positive! I couldn’t be happier with a great launch of sufficiently difficult and meaningful content if the rewards are specific to it! Great!
…But. I fear many things. Let me list some of them below and some details:
- I am afraid of a negligible gear-check, such as a Raid Leader absolutely requiring full ascended or gtfo. No compromise over whether you have that Vale Guardian Mini right next to you when you are running Exotic Armor with Ascended Weapons and Trinkets, but ill-informed elitism that bears no fruit and causes only strife. In fact, the ‘strictly armor’ difference in stats is so negligible that I might kick anyone in my raid that really gets on one person’s case for not having Armor, but all the right weapons, trinkets, build and strategy down. If you are going to throw out numbers, you gotta know where the line is folks…
- I am afraid of the potential of a gear treadmill, despite the fact that we shouldn’t ever see one. I really believe Raids can be made more or less difficult within the constraints of what we have now with numbers, using purely mechanics to achieve difficulty. There’s always this nagging feeling though, kind of like their vertical progression with Fractals and Agony. I have hope though that Mechanics in of itself can make up for a number difference.
- The prospect that Legendary Armor as its own mechanic function, won’t be available in a proper field outside of Raiding. I doubt they would miss it since they made two Legendary Backpieces in two different earn-able settings but you can never be sure. There’s a lot that isn’t off the table here…
- More importantly, I am fearful of players just…just conceding. This is actually my biggest concern. I can’t understand this mindset of seeing this wall in front, and outside of actual physical ailments, never going back to raid after just a single afternoon of attempts. It’s unfathomable that in a game where you progress originally through levels, through zones of different foes, through events of small or large magnitudes, that one isn’t entertained by the thought of slow but steady steps to overcoming a massive objective! It’s extremely likely I am just from a different generation of MMO gaming but it’s just aggravating to see players give up.
Am I wrong here? I don’t know if it’s hardcore to think that something like a Raid Wing would take a casual group a month or two to complete, or perhaps shorter/longer. Anyways, this was merely a vent, perhaps a bit too illogical for some people’s taste.
Go ahead, tear me apart or shake my hand. I am just curious about what you all think too.
- I am afraid of a negligible gear-check, such as a Raid Leader absolutely requiring full ascended or gtfo. No compromise over whether you have that Vale Guardian Mini right next to you when you are running Exotic Armor with Ascended Weapons and Trinkets, but ill-informed elitism that bears no fruit and causes only strife. In fact, the ‘strictly armor’ difference in stats is so negligible that I might kick anyone in my raid that really gets on one person’s case for not having Armor, but all the right weapons, trinkets, build and strategy down. If you are going to throw out numbers, you gotta know where the line is folks…
Are we still discussing this? Basically I would give the same answer we have been giving for years when it came to dungeons: Got a group of friends? No Problem! Don’t like the lfg? Make your own lfg.
That being said I will expect people to best in slot gear/food, not because it is necessary, but because it is a sign of the dedication raiding requires.
- More importantly, I am fearful of players just…just conceding. This is actually my biggest concern. I can’t understand this mindset of seeing this wall in front, and outside of actual physical ailments, never going back to raid after just a single afternoon of attempts. It’s unfathomable that in a game where you progress originally through levels, through zones of different foes, through events of small or large magnitudes, that one isn’t entertained by the thought of slow but steady steps to overcoming a massive objective! It’s extremely likely I am just from a different generation of MMO gaming but it’s just aggravating to see players give up.
Honestly I think it is fair to concede. Raiding is not gonna be for everyone. If you just wanna dabble into it to see what all the fuzz is about but decide that it is not for you that is fair. I certainly never got past the dabbling stage in PvP or WvW.
Freaking “elitists” have become the boogeyman around here.
Make sure there’s no DPS meters, or the elitists will come get ya! Make sure there’s no gear check, or the elitists will come get ya! Make sure there’s no hard content, or the elitists will come get ya!
Guess what? There really aren’t as many “elitists” as people here claim to see. Are there people out there that think they’re better than everyone else? Absolutely. That’s an intrinsic part of gaming, no, the internet itself. Not even just that, it’s a part of human nature. Whether it’s the diamond player in league of legends raging at his teammates, or the bronze player raging at his teammates. Or maybe it’s the guy on a forum who feels that anyone who disagrees with him is an idiot. Or maybe it’s the loud guy at the bar who feels the need to talk over everyone else. You will never, ever, get away from it.
But just because it exists doesn’t mean every single person who doesn’t run want to run with you is an elitist. Some people just enjoy clearing content at a high level. Finding the optimal strategy, executing it, and perfecting it is a challenge and finally pulling off that sub 10 minute dungeon run is exciting and usually the culmination of hours of trial and error.
The first time I really saw people start to be labeled as elitist was when CoF path 1 speed clearing was a thing. And yea there were kitten who did it sure. But the vast majority of the time, a group wanted to clear it as fast as possible because they were doing it for gold. So what you would often see is, “Hey we’re looking for a mesmer for CoF1 speed farming.” “Hey I’m a necro, can I join?” “Sorry man, we’re looking for a mesmer.” And this exchange would usually be followed by said necro claiming that everyone in the party was an elitist scumbag, before he would run off to the forums and/or reddit to make a post about how elitists are ruining the game.
But are they really? Are they really elitists for trying to do content optimally? Really? Some people just want to do things as efficiently as possible. And you can do so while being respectful, but the problem is the INSTANT that you tell someone that their build isn’t ideal or that you can’t take them to do some piece of content with them, you are INSTANTLY labeled as an elitist by this community.
Some people need a reality check, just because you aren’t wanted on an instance it isn’t because the people who rejected you think they’re somehow better than you, they just want to clear the content efficiently and you’re unable to assist them with that.
And I don’t understand this desire, no, this obsession with wanting to clear content with people, that you supposedly don’t want to play with! If you think people that demand full ascended gear are elitists, then why do you want to run with them so much? If anything, they’re doing you a favor by making a gear check, because then you can instantly identify them as someone you don’t want to run with, and can go ahead and leave.
And you mention rejecting someone who has exotic armor with ascended weapons and trinkets, but what comes after that? What if you reject someone because you ask for ascended armor/trinkets with exotic armor, and they only had ascended weapons with exotic armor + trinkets? Or full exotic? Or rare gear? Or master sigils/runes instead of superior? At what point do you become an elitist?
- Requiring full ascended : There is nothing that Anet can do about that. I heard of people excluding a guildmate because he wasn’t meta. What meta lol, there is no freaking meta yet. Or people excluding Thief just because they are thief (I killed the Vale Guardian twice now once with 1 thief and another one with 2 thiefs). Yes people will be jerk, yes people will have nonsense idea about what is needed and what is good (Especially in pugs). Nothing Anet can do about that and we’ll have to live with it. Just like we had people asking for AP while doing dungeons. It’s their right to ask for those thing and it’s our right to not join them if we don’t like it.
- Potential of a gear treadmill : That’s always a potentiel problem. When I see that no buff work in the raid except basic food I feel better about it. But then I remember the potion and AR from fractal and I fear some more subtle gear treadmill. I highly doudt that we ever gonna see better than ascended, but if we end up with special potion in addition to our food or special +10 stats infusion, etc this would still be a type of gear treadmill. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen.
- Legendary Armor outside of Raiding : The game need to have a Legendary Armor for Open World, PvP and WvW at least and fast like in the next 6 months, not in 2 years. Exclusive skin is ok, but exclusive type of armor is not a good thing at all. To be honest, we can’t have a legendary armor yet so they still have time to introduce them.
- players just…just conceding : People will be people what do you want. Anet can help by making the game reward teamplay. One exemple (outside of raid) where they fail at this is some of the legendary collection where you need to fail certain events. Lets hope they don’t put that into raid. Otherwise we are human playing with human so we gonna see human reaction that we like it or not.
TBH, the aspect that I’m the most afraid is power creep. I talk about this on several occasion here on the forum, but my Zerker Guardian used to do around 8k dps in exotic gear at launch. Now my DH Zerker can do between 16-17k of dps. Ascended was a big power creep, but Specialization and Elite Specialization were even worst on that front even if it was subtle. If they keep the power creep growing what happened to Dungeon will partially happen to Raids. I don’t want to see the Vale Guardian killed in less than 4min because the new Elite spec of the next expansion boost even more the dps of everybody.
There will be no gear treadmill associated with raids, of that I can assure you. Additionally, there is nothing ANet can do to regulate the expectations of individual groups forming to complete the raid; people are free to advertise and require whatever they like. If you don’t like it, your best bet is to go with friends or form your own group. Lastly, I would expect future legendary armor sets to be available through alternative means. There might be a WvW legendary armor set, or maybe a PvP legendary armor set. It’s hard to say at this point, but nowhere has ANet decided that legendary armor will only ever be acquired through raids.
I think all your points are valid concerns, especially as they deal with existing gw2 mentality and how signs point to that changing.
I am all for challenging content, but it should be accessible to players of all skill levels (perhaps evekittengnificant penalty) in keeping with the friendly attitude of the gw2 games. Should a group in full Nomad’s be able to sit there and whittle the boss down? I don’t think it should be achievable that way, but nor do I think that the highest level of skill and gear should be mandated. I like where the raid currently is, but I am also looking forward to when more players can experience it successfully and I think the best way to do that is tiered difficulty content with matched tiered rewards, and/or activateable challenge motes (since challenge motes already exist in the game) to increase rewards and difficulty further for those groups who have already mastered the easier versions. And no, it does not invalidate my kill of Vale Guardian as it currently stands to have a more accessible mode that others can win in.
Your last point about players simply conceding is one that has been on my mind a lot since the raid came out. The first day or two VB was full of people of all skill and gear levels looking for a group, but now there’s no one outside them and many players have stopped actively trying to find a group. I am not fond of the idea of content designed for less than 15% of the population (like this raid as announced by the devs) and I think that this problem has a two-fold cause.
1. There’s no real learning curve for mechanics to bridge the gap between the raids and the rest of the game. I think a dungeon or two with difficulty very close to the difficulty of the raids would be fantastic to help people who have never been truly challenged in this game to learn better how to pay attention, what to pay attention to, and how to optimize their class in a much easier-to-learn environment (especially since the lfg would work for dungeons).
2. Anet itself is an issue here. They appear to be trying to push the game to be less and less casual friendly (because let’s be real, gw2 is an extremely casual friendly game). I’m not opposed to that in the slightest. I am, however, opposed to suddenly abandoning anyone who is not at a high skill level like this raid content has done. I say abandoning because, like my point above, there’s simply no real opportunity to improve in the game because there are no real challenges of the caliber or close to the level of raids. Either you go into raids at your current skill level and fail repeatedly (which is demoralizing to many people) or you go out into the overworld and keep succeeding. For many players, raids are simply not accessible, and they will (or already have) become too demoralized to even try the content believing they either aren’t good enough, or no one will have them in their group because of their gear/profession/etc.
Anet itself is an issue here. They appear to be trying to push the game to be less and less casual friendly (because let’s be real, gw2 is an extremely casual friendly game).
They’re not trying to do this in the slightest, they just designed HoT specifically to give end-game players something to do and something to work towards. The theme of this expansion from the get-go was improving the end-game experience across the board.
Anet itself is an issue here. They appear to be trying to push the game to be less and less casual friendly (because let’s be real, gw2 is an extremely casual friendly game).
They’re not trying to do this in the slightest, they just designed HoT specifically to give end-game players something to do and something to work towards. The theme of this expansion from the get-go was improving the end-game experience across the board.
I would appreciate a response to the rest of that paragraph rather than just cherry-picking a quote.
I would appreciate a response to the rest of that paragraph rather than just cherry-picking a quote.
Better a response to one part of it that particularly interested me than a reply to none of it because I don’t have enough time.
Suffice it to say that I believe that raids in their current form are incredibly accessible even to average skilled players. The first boss, for instance, introduces you to all of his mechanics in the form of trash mobs leading up to the boss. Furthermore, the most optimized groups are beating all of the bosses with 2+ minutes left on the timer, which gives you a whole extra 2 minutes of flexibility for less skilled groups to succeed. Random pub groups are succeeding right now in assorted boss kills and the content has been out for less than a month. I think their current difficulty level is perfect because they’re tough enough to encourage players to get better at the game and to care more about carefully tuned builds, but they’re not so tough or stringent that only a few groups will ever succeed.
If you’re willing to improve, to do some research about your class and various builds, to get proper gear, and keep trying after failing, you will be able to do raids.
If you wipe a few times and give up, if you’re unwilling to get exotic/ascended gear, if you’re unwilling to change your build, you will fail.
And if you can’t do raids, that’s fine, because there’s still a ton of stuff you can do instead
But don’t expect raids to be tailored so that everyone can do them without putting them in the effort. This is challenging content, you can either rise up and meet the challenge, or give up.
I honestly think requiring full ascended armour in a fight where seconds matter is not an unreasonable thing. While it’s not even 2% difference, sometimes it’s all you need. I also think it’s completely fine for people to require whatever they want. You don’t like it? Find a different group. Having ascended armour should be basic for everyone who wants to clear the whole raid as it’s not just about the 2%, but also about putting all the effort into clearing it. Everyone can decide what kind of people they want to have around.
Hey guys, thanks for some of the responses here.
I might have been a bit unclear on some of my points, specifically the gear-check mentality and the ‘players giving up’ which both tie into the sort of large issues with Raiding in any MMO.
When I was referring to the gear-check mentality, I was referring to the toxicity about negligible stat differences. Sure, we can all make whatever groups we want, but does that really help us form a good Raiding Community in the long run? How does encouraging a false narrative about specific gear requirements help us cooperate? We all saw last week Boss kills with plenty of time on the boss timer, these kills might look smooth given the raiders managed to pull off a kill but all of us know that the more practice put in, the better you get. Those kill times are only going to get quicker now that the mechanics are fully worked out by those players. It means that with first-time kills with approximately a minute on average on the timer left, what is going to kill the raiders isn’t gear. It’s mechanics, that’s the important part. You would absolutely take someone in full exotics who won’t get killed halfway into a fight over someone in full ascended that does.
Thus the mentality of elitism behind ‘Ping full ascended armor or gtfo’ is just wrong, nor does it help those players willing to learn to raid and CAN do a very good job at it to do raiding! Wasabi did bring up a good point though, where would I draw the line?
Well, given the heavy mechanical nature behind the encounters we have seen thus far (and likely that is what drives GW2 raids in the future) the gear might be one of the last few things to look into. There is a noticeable DPS difference between someone using an Ascended Weapon versus another using an Exotic one, but the DPS difference between someone without ascended armor and someone with the armor is just too close to warrant outright stating ‘WE WIPED BECAUSE YOU HAD EXOTIC BERSERKER’S.’ You know when it might be their fault? Given everyone else was fully ascended, if the boss had nearly a tenth of a single percent left as the boss enraged and somehow immediately killed everyone then and there without given a few seconds to do more damage…that’s when you could validate that person’s gear. That’s how little Ascended Armor matters, that’s why I am going to point out to very naive and possibly bad players who think gear is greater than skill in a raid and shun them for it if they continue to harass raiders who aren’t dying to mechanics.
The player conceding portion I actually think should not be addressed by nerfing the content, I agree with Rising Dusk the difficulty is pretty spot on for Spirit Vale. I actually think a lot of people actually underestimated Arenanet, and that includes myself! How many of us were fearful that the content would be a breeze? This content didn’t come out of nowhere, we knew raids were coming, but I bet a lot of players were just not ready for the walls that appeared. I couldn’t be more happier that something like this came into being in GW2.
What possibly could have helped, in my eyes if I were some ‘full-of-himself’ newbie Raider might have been something like those ‘Hints’ you had at the beginning of GW2 that you would click and essentially Arenanet would give you a brief rundown of what to expect in a Raid. Maybe say something like:
‘You have entered a Raid Environment, the challenges ahead of you will be greater than anything you have faced before! Be prepared to die…a lot. Do not fret, persevere and you will be rewarded greatly for your efforts!’
It would be like a one-time thing, but it would ease new potential raiders into what would be the hardest content in GW2 by far without having their egos blown up too terribly.
There is no problem with “elitists”. The problem is, non-elitist people will ask you for a specific gear, build, setup because they don’t want to fail the same boss for hours on end. They are not elitist by default but the raid requires a quite specific (high dps) setup.
So at the end of the day, you cannot blame others for this, if you want you can blame Anet or you can get the gear they want you to get and that’s it.
Ironic how those who wanted to get rid of the “evil zerk meta” got their wish but now are stuck with an even stricter and unforgiving meta that is not even demanded by the players but by the encounter itself.
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The problem is you’re just looking at the first encounter which doesn’t really require that high dps. However, on gorseval it’s completely different, you just need all the dps you can get. Ascended armour only is 2% difference, but if people are not willing to get the best gear, why would you take them over people on the same skill lvl with the best gear?
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The problem is you’re just looking at the first encounter which doesn’t really require that high dps. However, on gorseval it’s completely different, you just need all the dps you can get. Ascended armour only is 2% difference, but if people are not willing to get the best gear, why would you take them over people on the same skill lvl with the best gear?
You wouldn’t be able to confirm the skill level in pick-up groups. So people just assume otherwise, which is bad. It fixates on a mentality for raiding that doesn’t do anyone any favors. The ‘best gear’ is behind a time-sink/gold sink, there’s no semblence of skill involved in making said gear.
If you want to really stretch it and see if they are putting in the effort to raid, see if the first thing said raider does is pop the correct food and utility buffs. That is probably a better indicator that the raider is serious about raiding than asking him to suit up full ascended, especially if he’s only been playing for a few months but has all the weapons and trinkets correct.
I like to believe I am asking for a reasonable mentality here, but perhaps I am wrong, so be it. Gorseval is definitely a DPS check to be certain, you got to squeeze out every last drop at key points during his channeling and keep up proper DPS uptime based on his position. But by that time, again you should have cleared out Vale Guardian and gotten a good idea where your DPS is at. If you killed Vale Guardian with over 60 seconds on the timer, you probably have enough DPS for Gorseval.
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The problem is you’re just looking at the first encounter which doesn’t really require that high dps. However, on gorseval it’s completely different, you just need all the dps you can get. Ascended armour only is 2% difference, but if people are not willing to get the best gear, why would you take them over people on the same skill lvl with the best gear?
You wouldn’t be able to confirm the skill level in pick-up groups. So people just assume otherwise, which is bad. It fixates on a mentality for raiding that doesn’t do anyone any favors. The ‘best gear’ is behind a time-sink/gold sink, there’s no semblence of skill involved in making said gear.
If you want to really stretch it and see if they are putting in the effort to raid, see if the first thing said raider does is pop the correct food and utility buffs. That is probably a better indicator that the raider is serious about raiding than asking him to suit up full ascended, especially if he’s only been playing for a few months but has all the weapons and trinkets correct.
I like to believe I am asking for a reasonable mentality here, but perhaps I am wrong, so be it. Gorseval is definitely a DPS check to be certain, you got to squeeze out every last drop at key points during his channeling and keep up proper DPS uptime based on his position. But by that time, again you should have cleared out Vale Guardian and gotten a good idea where your DPS is at. If you killed Vale Guardian with over 60 seconds on the timer, you probably have enough DPS for Gorseval.
I’m not sure how many bosses of the raid you killed, but the dps check is way way way higher than that. We killed VG with nearly two minutes left, yet we spent several hours wiping on Gorseval when he had 0,00001% HP before actually being able to down him. Everything matters there and after this experience I wouldn’t dare to take someone in exotics. The boss isn’t only about DPS, but also mechanics.
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