Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

i was having this discussion earlier and was wondering how popular raids are at the moment.

https://goo.gl/forms/or3qojvCFqWViWdH3

I hope i’ll get a lot of responses

I never respond to fan-generated polls, because the questions are usually worded in such a way as to skew the results, the cross-section of people who answer are typically vastly different from the community as a whole, and the numbers are typically too low to draw statistically useful results.
(That’s no fault of the OP — even professional pollsters can mess this up, e.g. US Presidential Election 2016. It’s a lot more difficult to design a good poll than most of us realize.)

I prefer using other tools to estimate participation. Go to GW2 efficiency and look at LI for registered users. Clearly, GW2/E users are going to have a different profile than the community; it’s a group that’s almost certainly more engaged in the game. So I think it’s safe to say that GW2/E will overstate participation, rather than understate it. I think it would be hard to say whether it’s a big difference or a small one.

I agree that this poll is hardly representative of the complete community. But this is the closest my resources will get me I guess

For what its worth, its what made me pretty much quit GW2 (I have logged on occasionally but no where near as much as pre HoT, so sad because GW2 was meant to be the MMO without the grind) was so excited about HoT too.

The forum community is going to have a disproportionately large percentage of raiders. It’s the 70-80% of the people who never come to the forums, who will probably not be raiding. That’s the problem with polls like this.

A Lotro dev said straight out only 10% of the population of Lotro EVER raided, but they accounted for 50% of all forum posts.

I’m not going to answer the poll because I’d have to use my Google account, which is under my real name.

But I’m in the “I’m planning to raid someday” category and have been since raids were announced. I like the idea but it seems to be quite a time commitment. Even my guilds casual, training runs require you to commit to raiding at a specific time on the same day each week which just isn’t possible for me.

Vayne.8563:

The forum community is going to have a disproportionately large percentage of raiders. It’s the 70-80% of the people who never come to the forums, who will probably not be raiding. That’s the problem with polls like this.

A Lotro dev said straight out only 10% of the population of Lotro EVER raided, but they accounted for 50% of all forum posts.

I was hoping by posting it on the forums and on reddit to get a good mix of players.
If i could id post it in-game but i’m not sure its allowed or even possible.

Realistically you can’t post it in game. You could go around different maps posting a link and asking people to copy and paste it and complete the survey but you’d still only get it out to a small subset of people.

You’re also going to run into the same problem as you’re getting here (and surveys in real-life have) that there is a particular kind of person who is more likely to answer and that will bias your survey.

People who aren’t as ‘committed’ to the game – new players, free players, extremely casual players who log in once a week or so to roam around PvE maps etc. are unlikely to either raid or to feel inclined to answer a survey about raiding (or GW2 in general).

A while after the free accounts were launched Anet sent a survey out to people who had created one, played for a bit and then stopped logging in to ask why they stopped. I got one and only answered it because I’m still an active player, from past experience I know if I had quit I’d never actually bother to answer it. (It worked out well for me though, I’d stopped playing the free account because I forgot the password and the retrieval system asks for your serial number from when you purchased the game, after that Anet helped me get back in.)

There were lots of other people on the forum saying much the same thing – they’d stopped playing their free account only because they had a main paid account too (or more than 1) and they received and answered the survey. Obviously I don’t know how many free players answered but I’d bet money the number of responses from active players with 2 accounts were disproportionate.

I have a different issue with polls like this, namely what do you compare the result with? If you compare the percentage of players raiding with the active population of the game, then it won’t give very useful information regardless if it’s a high or a low number.

It would be much more interesting to see the percentages of raid participation compared to other activities in the game. That could certainly show some really useful results. For example, although the participation of Raids has been often been assumed to be low compared to the overall population, the amount of players running T4 fractals, or more specific level 100 in CM isn’t really high either.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I never respond to fan-generated polls, because the questions are usually worded in such a way as to skew the results, the cross-section of people who answer are typically vastly different from the community as a whole, and the numbers are typically too low to draw statistically useful results.
(That’s no fault of the OP — even professional pollsters can mess this up, e.g. US Presidential Election 2016. It’s a lot more difficult to design a good poll than most of us realize.)

I prefer using other tools to estimate participation. Go to GW2 efficiency and look at LI for registered users. Clearly, GW2/E users are going to have a different profile than the community; it’s a group that’s almost certainly more engaged in the game. So I think it’s safe to say that GW2/E will overstate participation, rather than understate it. I think it would be hard to say whether it’s a big difference or a small one.

Yeah. Every time I see such a poll i want to write a mock-essay about the methodological problems of forum polls

I raid Daily/weekly/monthly
this option completely ruins the poll. It’s not a bash to you, it but it just shows that nothing of value will come out of it.
Someone who tags along for a raid with some friends who happen to have a space left, will now be “actively raiding” as someone who does every every boss, every week, at the earliest convenience

Amaimon.7823:

I raid Daily/weekly/monthly
this option completely ruins the poll. It’s not a bash to you, it but it just shows that nothing of value will come out of it.
Someone who tags along for a raid with some friends who happen to have a space left, will now be “actively raiding” as someone who does every every boss, every week, at the earliest convenience

I understand. But would someone regularly tag along on raids if he didnt enjoyed them or at least was interested in them? Because that is all i was interested in.

OniGiri.9461:

Amaimon.7823:

I raid Daily/weekly/monthly
this option completely ruins the poll. It’s not a bash to you, it but it just shows that nothing of value will come out of it.
Someone who tags along for a raid with some friends who happen to have a space left, will now be “actively raiding” as someone who does every every boss, every week, at the earliest convenience

I understand. But would someone regularly tag along on raids if he didnt enjoyed them or at least was interested in them? Because that is all i was interested in.

I raid every week with my guild. If they didn’t need me and my wife to make 10 we wouldn’t do it at all. It’s not my preference. I don’t enjoy it. But I am a team player and I will help out my guild.

It’s too bad the API isn’t public, then you would be able to see how many people are active and have completed what (it could still be anonymous). I wonder how fractals, raids, SAB TM, Liadri 8 and adventures compare.

You can probably assume similar statistics to WoW. Easy bosses are completed by roughly 30%, normal by 20% and hard by 5%, with less than 1% completing all challenges.

Vayne.8563:

OniGiri.9461:

Amaimon.7823:

I raid Daily/weekly/monthly
this option completely ruins the poll. It’s not a bash to you, it but it just shows that nothing of value will come out of it.
Someone who tags along for a raid with some friends who happen to have a space left, will now be “actively raiding” as someone who does every every boss, every week, at the earliest convenience

I understand. But would someone regularly tag along on raids if he didnt enjoyed them or at least was interested in them? Because that is all i was interested in.

I raid every week with my guild. If they didn’t need me and my wife to make 10 we wouldn’t do it at all. It’s not my preference. I don’t enjoy it. But I am a team player and I will help out my guild.

There’s an elaboration, some people join raids not so much because they want to raid but just because they want to part of a group activity and are like “whatever”.

Supz.9836:

For what its worth, its what made me pretty much quit GW2 (I have logged on occasionally but no where near as much as pre HoT, so sad because GW2 was meant to be the MMO without the grind) was so excited about HoT too.

GW2 has always had grind.

Supz.9836:

For what its worth, its what made me pretty much quit GW2 (I have logged on occasionally but no where near as much as pre HoT, so sad because GW2 was meant to be the MMO without the grind) was so excited about HoT too.

Not sure why raiding changed anything for you since if you choose not to raid your experience remains exactly the same.

NikeEU.7690:

Supz.9836:

For what its worth, its what made me pretty much quit GW2 (I have logged on occasionally but no where near as much as pre HoT, so sad because GW2 was meant to be the MMO without the grind) was so excited about HoT too.

Not sure why raiding changed anything for you since if you choose not to raid your experience remains exactly the same.

No no no, didn’t you know. Because a bakery opened up in town, all the other shops had to close.

NikeEU.7690:

Not sure why raiding changed anything for you since if you choose not to raid your experience remains exactly the same.

As very minimum – he is already denied from content that could be made instead of raids. Like, you know, fractals were promised as “ultimate endgame instanced content”, but now changed to mere “gateway to raids”.

Rednik.3809:

NikeEU.7690:

Not sure why raiding changed anything for you since if you choose not to raid your experience remains exactly the same.

As very minimum – he is already denied from content that could be made instead of raids. Like, you know, fractals were promised as “ultimate endgame instanced content”, but now changed to mere “gateway to raids”.

and raids are the ultimate 10 man end game content….

So you’d think that people at end game whether 5 or 10 man would do said content.

It actually makes me believe that 90% of the complainers never used to do fractals back at the old 50 scale and only started doing it when they thought fractals of the swamp was hard.

TexZero.7910:

It actually makes me believe that 90% of the complainers never used to do fractals back at the old 50 scale and only started doing it when they thought fractals of the swamp was hard.

A lot of people only made the switch to fractals when dungeons became redundant. And, yes, the ‘Swamp of the Mists’ days made the transition a lot easier for many of us. Prior to that I only made it as far as scale 30 because anything higher was essentially pointless to me.

And of course the introduction of raiding changed a lot. On the most basic level raids are exciting content with great rewards, tuned to a level that is a ways out of the comfort zone for most players who would otherwise have been interested in them.

TexZero.7910:

and raids are the ultimate 10 man end game content….

And water is wet and sun gives light. Point is – PvE endgame was changed harshly, along with rewards, development focus, balance focus and so on. And that change left a lot of people behind due to new format and amazingly badly made learning curve, which created one of the worst entry bottlenecks in GW2 history.
And old f50 was not that hard at all btw. Only Trin and Archdiviner was kinda dangerous due to damage output on inexperienced players.

PvE endgame before HoT was exactly map farming, dungeon farming and fractals while dungeons were only played by a little amount of so called “casuals” + the speed run community. The majority was farming maps like Cursed Shore etc., not to mention role players, PvPers, WvWers and marginal groups. These all together have never been interested in dungeons or any other bigger challenges and left out fracs and dungeons.

Nowadays, fractals are still there as PvE endgame, a lot easier than before. Old 50 definitely was harder, the statement of Rednik is completely wrong. And there is nothing wrong to be a “stepping stone into raids” as well – fractals still remain PvE endgame.
The majority of dungeon runners moved on to raids while few still rest on dungeons. So nothing has really changed but the people who are left out of raids – the group that wasn’t interested in challenging content like before.

I bet most of the complainers are the ones who actually say they could run a dungeon and succeed – on the contrary to raids but they have rarely done that after the introduction of HoT.
It reminds me of: “But you have heard of me.”

Rednik.3809:

NikeEU.7690:

Not sure why raiding changed anything for you since if you choose not to raid your experience remains exactly the same.

As very minimum – he is already denied from content that could be made instead of raids. Like, you know, fractals were promised as “ultimate endgame instanced content”, but now changed to mere “gateway to raids”.

They’re not being denied. Raids are created by an entire team hired for it. There’s also a team currently working on the next fractal.

Rednik.3809:

TexZero.7910:

and raids are the ultimate 10 man end game content….

And water is wet and sun gives light. Point is – PvE endgame was changed harshly, along with rewards, development focus, balance focus and so on. And that change left a lot of people behind due to new format and amazingly badly made learning curve, which created one of the worst entry bottlenecks in GW2 history.
And old f50 was not that hard at all btw. Only Trin and Archdiviner was kinda dangerous due to damage output on inexperienced players.

End game wasn’t changed; just expanded. What players could do before raids, they still can. They can ignore raids if they wish.

Raids were made for those that wanted a challenge. It’s a little entitled to think that everything in OvE must be catered to you. Anet has also added some easier encounters in raids to ease players into them. You should give them an honest try.

Rednik.3809:

NikeEU.7690:

Not sure why raiding changed anything for you since if you choose not to raid your experience remains exactly the same.

As very minimum – he is already denied from content that could be made instead of raids. Like, you know, fractals were promised as “ultimate endgame instanced content”, but now changed to mere “gateway to raids”.

Woah there “denied” is a big word u know he/she/it is free to tackle whatever he/she/it finds interest in. Iirc we also got reworks with each lw update to fractals HUGE qol changes and 2 new fractals so ye….

Vinceman.4572:

PvE endgame before HoT was exactly map farming, dungeon farming and fractals while dungeons were only played by a little amount of so called “casuals” + the speed run community. The majority was farming maps like Cursed Shore etc., not to mention role players, PvPers, WvWers and marginal groups. These all together have never been interested in dungeons or any other bigger challenges and left out fracs and dungeons.

Nowadays, fractals are still there as PvE endgame, a lot easier than before. Old 50 definitely was harder, the statement of Rednik is completely wrong. And there is nothing wrong to be a “stepping stone into raids” as well – fractals still remain PvE endgame.
The majority of dungeon runners moved on to raids while few still rest on dungeons. So nothing has really changed but the people who are left out of raids – the group that wasn’t interested in challenging content like before.

I bet most of the complainers are the ones who actually say they could run a dungeon and succeed – on the contrary to raids but they have rarely done that after the introduction of HoT.
It reminds me of: “But you have heard of me.”

was 50 harder than 100 of today?

zealex.9410:

was 50 harder than 100 of today?

Yes, definitely. Back in the days it was more likely that a pug group disbanded at Lvl 50 or at least struggled hard – not regularly but it was possible. That’s not the case for 100. (CM is a different thing.)

Vinceman.4572:

zealex.9410:

was 50 harder than 100 of today?

Yes, definitely. Back in the days it was more likely that a pug group disbanded at Lvl 50 or at least struggled hard – not regularly but it was possible. That’s not the case for 100. (CM is a different thing.)

I think 50 of old was differently difficult from Tier 4 of today. There were groups that couldn’t manage 50 back when and groups now that struggle with new swamp, chaos, and nightmare. It’s easier to gear up now than before and today’s builds/comps are turbo-charged compared to before.

So, I think a new player will find 100 today more accessible than that same player would have felt for the old 50. I don’t know if I’d say that’s the same as “easier.”

Ayrilana.1396:

Rednik.3809:

NikeEU.7690:

Not sure why raiding changed anything for you since if you choose not to raid your experience remains exactly the same.

As very minimum – he is already denied from content that could be made instead of raids. Like, you know, fractals were promised as “ultimate endgame instanced content”, but now changed to mere “gateway to raids”.

They’re not being denied. Raids are created by an entire team hired for it.

Actually they were not hired for raids, most of them at least…. they were just moved. If you check the background of the people being in the raids team, its obvious.

Crystal Reid, Raid team leader?
Was known to have heavy involment with the revamp of teq and triple trouble.

Andew Mcleod?
has been with Arenanet since GW1 factions.

Bobby has been with Arenanet for longer than I can remember.

Just to name a few. But there are also devs in the raids team, who worked on PvP features, Halloween and free-to-play experience etc. As far as I can tell only Jason Reynolds has been hired to work on raids.

They obviously decided to give up on some of the stuff they promised us during the development of the game. Ideas can and quite often will turn out to be an error of judgement in due time. They made sure the game wouldn’t stagnate through continued work and further content additions to the game. Don’t make it sound like progress is such a bad thing. The game might not even exist anymore, or at least not pull such numbers, if the expansion and everything that came with it didn’t happen.
It is so easy to deny something you personally dislike and then think about everything that could have happened instead. “If only those developers would have continued to work on content I LIKE instead of content others enjoy. The game would have exploded in popularity and everything would be so great.”

I would have loved further work on dungeons more than any other content in the game myself, just like everyone else in the former dungeon community. But it didn’t happen, they went with Fractals instead. A good idea, even if I disagree with it personally. Raids were added much later as another form of group content and NOT to replace Fractals. They didn’t trash Fractals nor took huge resources from whichever team works on your most favorite type of content.

Why does every talk about raids have to end in people accusing them of stealing their wives and children?

Because if it wasn’t for the handsome Raid guy, that pretty girl would be my wife and his kids mine. /s

I seen raid community improve over the last few months. It will only get better. xD
I seen many ppl raid all the time hving clear bosses a few times a week. As for me clear all wings once a week and that’s it :p free to do anything I like the rest of week

OniGiri.9461:

I understand. But would someone regularly tag along on raids if he didnt enjoyed them or at least was interested in them? Because that is all i was interested in.

Sure. Remember, that there is more than one reason to be doing raids, and those reasons are not really related to each other. Enjoyment is only one of those reasons. Even the raiders admit that many people wouldn’t be raiding if not for the lure of legendary armor and unique skins. You can be sure that at least some of those people do not in fact enjoy that content, even if they do it regularly.

Amaimon.7823:

No no no, didn’t you know. Because a bakery opened up in town, all the other shops had to close.

Actually, it is something like that. Remember, that there’s another limited resource other than devs – it’s players.

In many cases what happened is that most guilds ended up with the situation where some players were interested in raids, and others were not. It was likely not a problem in big mass-recruiting guilds, but in those that had been made of real friends it created friction.

Say, there was a group of players that were doing content together up until that point. After raids appeared, they had several possibilities:
1. the players that didn’t like raids could go raiding with others, even if they disliked the content, just to be able to still play together.
2. the players that liked raids could not play them, choosing instead to play with their friends in non-raid content.
3. a split could appear, where some players would start doing raids, while others would remain doing other content. In case where the number of players was too low to support both at the same time, additional tension could be generated.

Additionally, even if all players would want to do raids together, the hard truth is that not everyone is really qualified to do them. For those interested in succesful runs, their less-skilled friends that unintentionally keep dragging them down would be one more source of discord.

If there’s only enough clients around to support the current number of bakeries, then opening one more can lead to closing of some. Or even, to closing of all of them.

I have to sign up with google account for it? Ewwwww. No, ty.

Cynz.9437:

I have to sign up with google account for it? Ewwwww. No, ty.

yeah sorry. i hadn’t educated myself about polls before creating this one. I learned there are better options

the login is to hinder people from voting more then once.

My opinion is that the outcry about raids will eventually fade away.

Even though this poll isn’t really representative about the whole community it kinda reasurse what i was thinking.

The majority of players oppused to raids have a problem with the jump of difficulty in PvE which hinders them to play this new shiny shiny content and also blocks them away from the shiny shiny reward(s).

As a pretty casual player – If i compare the raid wings my rating is kinda like:

Wing 1 – mix of easy and mid range hard
Wing 2 – mix of easy and super hard
Wing 3 – mix of super easy and mid range hard
Wing 4 – mix of super super easy and super hard

For me that concludes that there will be more and more raid wings and bosses that are doable for more casual groups and easier stepping stones for beginners. What do you think?

OniGiri.9461:

My opinion is that the outcry about raids will eventually fade away.

Even though this poll isn’t really representative about the whole community it kinda reasurse what i was thinking.

The majority of players oppused to raids have a problem with the jump of difficulty in PvE which hinders them to play this new shiny shiny content and also blocks them away from the shiny shiny reward(s).

As a pretty casual player – If i compare the raid wings my rating is kinda like:

Wing 1 – mix of easy and mid range hard
Wing 2 – mix of easy and super hard
Wing 3 – mix of super easy and mid range hard
Wing 4 – mix of super super easy and super hard

For me that concludes that there will be more and more raid wings and bosses that are doable for more casual groups and easier stepping stones for beginners. What do you think?

How does the question you posed have anything to do with difficulty?

I think you might be reading something into the (probably limited) data you received from this that isnt actually there.

Blaeys.3102:

OniGiri.9461:

My opinion is that the outcry about raids will eventually fade away.

Even though this poll isn’t really representative about the whole community it kinda reasurse what i was thinking.

The majority of players oppused to raids have a problem with the jump of difficulty in PvE which hinders them to play this new shiny shiny content and also blocks them away from the shiny shiny reward(s).

As a pretty casual player – If i compare the raid wings my rating is kinda like:

Wing 1 – mix of easy and mid range hard
Wing 2 – mix of easy and super hard
Wing 3 – mix of super easy and mid range hard
Wing 4 – mix of super super easy and super hard

For me that concludes that there will be more and more raid wings and bosses that are doable for more casual groups and easier stepping stones for beginners. What do you think?

How does the question you posed have anything to do with difficulty?

I think you might be reading something into the (probably limited) data you received from this that isnt actually there.

possible

the poll is missing a better feedback option (and the questions weren’t detailled enough as well)

my conclusion is mainly based on the feedback i got after posting the poll.

No I dont raid and i’m not interested in raiding. The poll requires google account login, not interested in doing that either…. I don’t enjoy working through the attitudes of 10 players who are only in it for the leggie armor. I did try it with my guild, but most were already burned out on the HoT grind before wing 1 came out, and when it did, and the first successful guild run took about 5 or 6 nights of trying, the guild members went and started playing other mmos and found something else to do than show up on guild raid nights.

zealex.9410:

Vinceman.4572:

snip

was 50 harder than 100 of today?

Not wanting to go to much off topic here but depending on which “50” we are talking about the answer can be yes and no.

The very first itteration of fractals when they had been fresh released was harder than required due to the fact that agony resistance required was not attainable on the available gear (I’d say this was the hardest fractal version when not exploiting). Boss fights only occured every even fractal (meaning 12,14,16… 28, 30, etc.) and only Jade Maw was available. Similarly there were less agony attacks (most end fractal bosses had 1 or 2 only) but those were 1-shot kills meaning if you couldn’t dodge them 100% of the time, you were toast. At the same time there was a ton of exploits which allowed people to reach insanely high fractal levels. Rewards stoped scaling and it was more of an “I did it” thing. The fractal community was tiny too.

The first revamp changed and fixed most of the imbalance issues and by then ascended gear had cought up to fractal requirements. Getting a pug to disband was still a thing to happen, but maybe only 1nce per week. A usual fractal run was between 40 – 90 minutes (with complete random pugs and based on which fractals you got).

Needless to say, this has changed a lot. In a way original fractals were less gear gated since if you could dodge all the agony thrown at you, you didn’t need agony resistance. This gating change came a lot later while taking a lot of danger out of agony attacks.

I would want to know how the popularity would change if this were linked in the pvp and wvw forums as well(though moderators would likely move it here if it wasn’t titled well)

and the general forum, too

Wasn’t this thread in the general forum at the beginning? So yeah, moderators …

Raid? Naw. When you’re liable to be kicked for the slightest misstep? You need to follow a commander? Not a chance.

When I signed up for the Army, I raised my right hand and swore to follow orders, ( among other things.) This is a game I play for fun.

Sure, it must be fun for “commander high muckety muck” but I’m not a follower and I don’t see a big enough payoff to be worth allowing myself to be used that way.

Ithilwen.1529:

When you’re liable to be kicked for the slightest misstep?

You won’t get kicked for one single mistake unless you are in a bad pug with bad attitudes – that’s rarely the case.
On the other hand, if you commit the same mistake over and over again it’s just logical to be thrown out because people in usual runs want to have their kill and not a training.

Ithilwen.1529:

You need to follow a commander?

Then don’t join his squad – ez pz.
What’s more, I would also kick you out of my 5 man group if you are jerking around and don’t try to be successful in fractals or dungeons.
You can have endless fun in afking in Lions Arch, jump around and do jokes during Tequatl, rant about the weather in farm trains, roleplaying while doing JPs and other creepy stuff, but…don’t waste the time of others in instanced content and strictly follow the rules, everything else is impolite as hell.

Ithilwen.1529:

Raid? Naw. When you’re liable to be kicked for the slightest misstep? You need to follow a commander? Not a chance.

When I signed up for the Army, I raised my right hand and swore to follow orders, ( among other things.) This is a game I play for fun.

Sure, it must be fun for “commander high muckety muck” but I’m not a follower and I don’t see a big enough payoff to be worth allowing myself to be used that way.

Have you tried joining a guild who raids for fun? I can recommend RTI, very social

Ithilwen.1529:

blah blah This is a game I play for fun. blah blah

Sure you might find it fun to keep wiping to a single boss because you refuse to look up a guide, gear your character properly and follow commander’s orders, but there are other 9 people, who might not find it nearly as fun as you.
This is a game and you’re entitled to play it in any way you want. But so are other people. And if they don’t want to play with you because of your attitude, you can’t blame them.

It’s weird how delusional and selfish some people are. You want to play a multiplayer game, yet you refuse to take tiniest step to accommodate other people’s needs? Do you seriously expect 9 random strangers to go out of their way to allow you to experience raids in the one exact way you want?

a lot of new people coming for raids .. a lot of weekly raiders do raids as a chore.. but a lot too that stop playing or don’t bother anymore :P