Guild Wars 2

Hey guys,

So I’ve never really done raids. However, I am aware, and in fact part of this post is to spread the word of accessibility of raids, because they have become more accessible. With many people willing to help, guilds made for them, and several community members posting on Reddit and the forums setting up events to help, anyone can get into them. However, I still feel like even thought they are accessible, there’s still going to be those jerks that want to belittle the newer players to raids, and put them down simply to raise their ego or discourage them.

Recently I joined a TeamSpeak from a group I joined to do Gorseval, and there were a couple people in that group that gave me bad vibes, as they spoke about how people were blind idiots not knowing how to use their class or their builds to do the raid and not paying attention and listening, and calling them kittens because they kept messing up. Now these weren’t directed towards me, but just hearing those things be said about our own community really kinda made me cringe.

Now I can understand if someone relies solemnly on the raid leader or the person who knows what they are doing. Say you’ve never looked up a build, never looked up a raid video, or read any guides, then sure anyone would get aggravated that you’re just wanting to be spoon fed the loot and the raid run. So I guess one of my points is to at least watch a video, or read up a guide before you go into a raid. And my second point I guess, is that if you’re going to help someone, and teach them, don’t be an kitten to them and be so toxic, because that doesn’t help anyone, nor does it encourage the community to even participate in raids. I really don’t want to see “League of Legends” attitudes in GW2, because I know we’re all better than that.

I spoke a little bit more about my raid experience in my last YouTube video where I also talk about the new White Mantle Stronghold raid coming soon in-game, if you’d like to watch see the link below:
https://youtu.be/OdqJ9e_lhMQ

I’m sorry you had a bad experience like that. From what I’ve heard, it’s better to explicitly look for “training” groups. They tend to understand that you’re not a perfect raiding robot and are, in fact, a person who occasionally makes mistakes and may not understand everything instantly lol.

This feels like an attempt to just get youtube views. opened your link only to see your channel name. going to avoid your channel if it ever comes up

I enjoyed reading your post, and I agree that some people need an attitude adjustment. But I’m not going to watch your video because I’m petty and don’t like self-promotion disguised as a topic for discussion.

Read your post and watched your video, totally agree that people need to be a bit nicer. My boyfriend and I tried to do raids about 2 weeks ago, but we got kicked from the party because we apparently didn’t have enough DPS, even though we had Ascended Zerk gear, and others had Exotic only.

Don’t know why everyone’s being an kitten about his link. So what? It’s actually good GW2 content in the video, didn’t even know there was a new raid coming out. Jesus, some people are quick to judge… it’s not like it’s click-bait to get easy views, it’s actually informative content.

So your semi-terrible raid experience consisted of…

You having no raid experience, yet joining a gorseval group

The group taking you anyway

The group saying mean things to no one in particular but still willing to take you with no experience on one of the hardest raid boss fights.

End of story?

This seems like an example of them doing everything right, and going out of their way to accommodate you, yet you come here and complain anyway.

This is why we don’t like pugs fyi.

OMG reading this I was like “hmmmm this is VERY similar to gaming with GS” and here you are XD

Puffer Fish.1796:

I’m sorry you had a bad experience like that. From what I’ve heard, it’s better to explicitly look for “training” groups. They tend to understand that you’re not a perfect raiding robot and are, in fact, a person who occasionally makes mistakes and may not understand everything instantly lol.

Yes, I’ve actually learned that as well.

Roman God of War.6953:

This feels like an attempt to just get youtube views. opened your link only to see your channel name. going to avoid your channel if it ever comes up

Um, if I wanted to get YouTube views, I’d spam my videos on the boards all the time. It’s an experience I wanted to share, with a relevant video. I don’t see what your issue is and why you’re assuming the worst.

RoseofGilead.8907:

I enjoyed reading your post, and I agree that some people need an attitude adjustment. But I’m not going to watch your video because I’m petty and don’t like self-promotion disguised as a topic for discussion.

Self promotion disguised as a topic? It’s a topic, my video covered the topic, I wanted to share the topic, my experience, and share my video. Like I said to the other person, if I wanted to self-promote so hard I’d post all my videos on here, which I clearly don’t do. I really don’t understand what people’s problem is.

pinkpandagirl.7615:

Read your post and watched your video, totally agree that people need to be a bit nicer. My boyfriend and I tried to do raids about 2 weeks ago, but we got kicked from the party because we apparently didn’t have enough DPS, even though we had Ascended Zerk gear, and others had Exotic only.

Don’t know why everyone’s being an kitten about his link. So what? It’s actually good GW2 content in the video, didn’t even know there was a new raid coming out. Jesus, some people are quick to judge… it’s not like it’s click-bait to get easy views, it’s actually informative content.

Sorry to hear you had a terrible time, DPS is a big issue though, not sure why they kicked you though if you had Ascended Zerk. Thanks for the support though, I don’t get it either why people have such a fit with me sharing my YouTube video. It’s as if my content is garbage and I just want to make a quick buck. I work hard on my videos and all of them have relevant informative content. Sorry for trying to make a living.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

So your semi-terrible raid experience consisted of…

You having no raid experience, yet joining a gorseval group

The group taking you anyway

The group saying mean things to no one in particular but still willing to take you with no experience on one of the hardest raid boss fights.

End of story?

This seems like an example of them doing everything right, and going out of their way to accommodate you, yet you come here and complain anyway.

This is why we don’t like pugs fyi.

Me having no raid experience? Yes, however I did read guides and watch videos, so not completely inexperienced.

The group taking me anyway? Under the consideration that I had posted an LFG and stating I was a beginner, yes also true.

The group saying mean things? Right, I don’t get your point? I don’t like people’s attitudes, and it’s toxic. That’s my point.

And they didn’t do everything right, because it completely discouraged myself and even some of the others players in the group who were also beginners. The group leaders were aware that a lot of us were beginners, so why be so negative and toxic? Doesn’t seem very encouraging to try and learn the raid.

eduardo.1436:

OMG reading this I was like “hmmmm this is VERY similar to gaming with GS” and here you are XD

Hey there, nice to see you on here! And you’re right that is me

A glance at your post history shows that pretty much every post you’ve made over the past 6 months is a link to a video you’ve posted on youtube. So, you do self-promote pretty hard. You’re completely free to do that, though. I just won’t personally contribute to the viewer count.

Firstly there are always going to be a couple of bad apples in any game mode, especially one which has a higher chance of failure.

However, assuming this was a training raid (otherwise I don’t know why they picked you up), you would be surprised at the degree of variance between player skill and knowledge who want to try and have never tried before. You legitimately will get many many people who have not watched or read anything, do not even know what toughness is or crowd control or what half their skills do and generally are not at the standard to be doing T3 fractals let alone raids. These people make it nearly impossible to teach the players who genuinely are at end-game level knowledge without the experience in raids and essentially ruin the experience for everyone. My guess is that the leader of your training run was dealing with many people like this and snapped eventually.

We are all humans at the end of the day and repeatedly getting your training runs for end game content sabotaged by players who haven’t taken the time to go through the basics of the game can be frustrating (some people cannot control their frustration as well as others). Of course I don’t advocating slandering people but at least it was done to vent without them hearing it which is not so bad, surely you have vented about people in game or in life.

Raids are so unpopular that they act as a concentrator of emotional and elitist players, like dungeons were. In other games, there are enough experienced and mature players to overwhelm and isolated players who over stress about mistakes.

“Bad raids” do not help sell the game. I would hope the dev’s and GMs would take more active roles in managing player experience. There are plenty of good mentors who do that work every day. More frequent discrete GM participation could help.

So you want people to read guides and watch gameplay videos of the game they are playing? That’s like reading the Tomb Raider walktrough and then playing. I rather get a group that has, well, “fun” dying and trying. Or no raid at all.

A lot of players don’t go into maps where attitudes rule because of high-strung group dynamics. I wish they would find a way to make the raid content available to the casual to mid-skill player while keeping the raid style for the players that like it. Basically a explorable PvE mode instance for the raid maps. That way both types of players could have access to the content that is important to the story of the game and the high strung players wouldn’t freak about players who don’t meet their expected skill/build level.

The maps are there, the contents is there, it’s a matter of presenting it in another way.

I personally don’t go into raids, dungeons, PvP, etc because I just don’t want to deal with the group dynamics of high-strung players plus I don’t want to rush thru content. I like to explore it. I feel going slow thru content makes you appreciate the work put into it more.

Tekoneiric.6817:

I wish they would find a way to make the raid content available to the casual to mid-skill player while keeping the raid style for the players that like it. Basically a explorable PvE mode instance for the raid maps. That way both types of players could have access to the content that is important to the story of the game and the high strung players wouldn’t freak about players who don’t meet their expected skill/build level.

The maps are there, the contents is there, it’s a matter of presenting it in another way…

This, a million times this. This would make a lot of people happy I’d wager. Are you paying attention Anet?

Anet could make raids for everybody if they would just introduce “tiered” loot model. Take the time gate off on all bosses (incl. world bosses) and based upon the time it takes the raid or zerg to down the boss determines the loot reward.

Simple solution that satisfies everyone!

RoseofGilead.8907:

A glance at your post history shows that pretty much every post you’ve made over the past 6 months is a link to a video you’ve posted on youtube. So, you do self-promote pretty hard. You’re completely free to do that, though. I just won’t personally contribute to the viewer count.

This.

Now granted you at least put some effort into disguising your selfpromotion TC, but don’t pretend it’s not just that.

When 29 out of 50 recent posts contain a link to your youtube page, then that is pure selfpromotion. Especially when most of the remaining posts are answers in the same threads.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

So your semi-terrible raid experience consisted of…

You having no raid experience, yet joining a gorseval group

The group taking you anyway

The group saying mean things to no one in particular but still willing to take you with no experience on one of the hardest raid boss fights.

End of story?

This seems like an example of them doing everything right, and going out of their way to accommodate you, yet you come here and complain anyway.

This is why we don’t like pugs fyi.

Just because they took him doesn’t give them a right to treat him or someone else bad for not having any raid experience, that is not how you treat people, if your going to be a jerk about it then don’t take them its that simple, if they have an attitude about it then clearly they didn’t really want to did they?

Therefore they should not have of bothered if it was so bad they are trash talking about someone being new to something. And by the way that very hypocritical, everyone has been new once. I shouldn’t even have to respond to a message like this, its just sad because these things should be common sense.

Tekoneiric.6817:

I personally don’t go into raids, dungeons, PvP, etc because I just don’t want to deal with the group dynamics of high-strung players plus I don’t want to rush thru content. I like to explore it. I feel going slow thru content makes you appreciate the work put into it more.

Yeah, exactly the same here. I am here for 11.5 months, I am slowly crawling to Level 74 now, explored 34% (which is actually roughly 50% because I leave Vistas out) of the map and I do enjoy it so much, like, I repeat myself, a good cigar: Slowly. After unlocking the third skill trait I try to get used to proper dodging for the tool belt skill reset and all that stuff, it doesn’t get boring that fast as many people say. I am basically wandering around on my own and shoot everything that comes into my way. Or at least I try to do so.^^

But then I see the “unlocked a dungeon” message, the slowly increasing interest to check out PvP. Which is immediately turned down when thinking of the elitist people that I might face. I saw this happen in LoL, which I played since June 2010.. 6 years ago, the community chilled. If I see it today, it gives me all sorts of diseases, so I uninstalled it 2 months ago. Do not really want to be matched with people that are overly raging (even though I have a threshold, as I think this sort of emtion is required and normal) or to get blamed for minor things that nobody cares like in FF14. “Oh, you used skill C instead of A, you are a bad blackmage, now we end this dungeon 6 seconds later as usual vote kick”.

If the matchmaking of PvP would work, I’d try it, because I would end up with people around my skills. But when I see the higher/even lower levelled players to get matched in as compensation and to fasten the queue times as seen many times in the PvP subforums, I do not want to enter PvP. WvW sounds.. not appealing to me at all. And dungeons, well they are a mix of all the aforementioned things. It’s like a Pandora’s Box. And I have a 70% chance I will regret it..

Not to discount your experience, but last night I pubbed Matthias because my guild missed a raid night this week… And we killed it on the third try with everyone being really good sports and encouraging eachother after the first couple wipes. It was a memorably positive experience.

Why am I sharing this? I’m sharing this because I don’t think singular anecdotal experiences tell us anything about the community at large. If you wanted to say “I had this bad experience, and therefore the community is toxic and elitist” I would disagree. You should be forthcoming about your experience level for what you’re doing, and particularly seek out training runs instead of experienced runs or blank runs.

pinkpandagirl.7615:

My boyfriend and I tried to do raids about 2 weeks ago, but we got kicked from the party because we apparently didn’t have enough DPS, even though we had Ascended Zerk gear, and others had Exotic only.

You do realise ascended zerker/viper gear doesn’t actually mean you’ll be doing super high dps right?

You can do very low dps just by not knowing your skill rotations/priorities. I’m quite sure I don’t do top dps on my condi engie because with quickness and alacrity that rotation makes my fingers bleed xD but I do focus on skill prioritisation which does the job most of the times.

Had a war in a tier 4 volcanic fractal with twilight and whatnot and he was swinging his sword randomly around, not actually attacking the boss, every time the boss would bubble up. He did not do a ton of dps in that instance ;-) Gear =/= skill nor damage on it’s own.

Raguel.9402:

pinkpandagirl.7615:

My boyfriend and I tried to do raids about 2 weeks ago, but we got kicked from the party because we apparently didn’t have enough DPS, even though we had Ascended Zerk gear, and others had Exotic only.

You do realise ascended zerker/viper gear doesn’t actually mean you’ll be doing super high dps right?

This.

Raguel.9402:

Had a war in a tier 4 volcanic fractal with twilight and whatnot and he was swinging his sword randomly around, not actually attacking the boss, every time the boss would bubble up. He did not do a ton of dps in that instance ;-) Gear =/= skill nor damage on it’s own.

and this.

It still amazes me how people think that by simply stating they are full ascended they believe they are guaranteed top dps. All this numbercrunching and comparison and over and over stating that the numeric difference between exotic and ascended is not that big has a reason.

Having full ascended means nothing. It simply opens up the possibility of someone running top dps. As possibilities go, with the wrong rotation, runes, build, prioritisation, etc. you might very reaslistically end up doing less damage than someone in part exotic. Especially if that someone gives 110% knowing that he is not full ascended while our full ascended person rests comfy knowing he has maximum gear.

Also don’t forget naked/almost naked runs have been made and were actually successfull only due to the players executing perfect rotations/prioritising their skills well.

So unless you’re playing condi engie who is also charged with green circle duty on VG there’s no reason for doing bad dps other than a lack of practice.

Go to the dome in LA. Check out your rotation and practice it on the golem.

I get that GW2 is a game with a massive variety in player skill, but people that are asking for more accessible raids are completely missing the point of raids to begin with. Just like fractals used to be (they even made that easier for the more casual player!), raids are aimed at the hardcore portion of players. I would follow the advice people in this thread have given before me and practise your knowledge, rotation, and orientation before actually engaging in “hardcore” content.

GW2 is actually one of the most casual-oriented MMOs I’ve ever played, and now that there is even a fraction of gameplay directed towards the (semi-)hardcore community, there’s already people crying for adjustments.

That experience seems pretty tame, under the circumstances. In tough content like this, I find things tend to go one of two ways – people either get scared off early, or stick around long enough to become monsters themselves.

I’ve found myself doing a lot of the same things that used to kitten me off when I was a newbie (dropping out of parties without a word if they seem unskilled, offering strongly worded ‘suggestions’, kicking people who don’t figure things out or respond quickly enough.. etc)

And to be fair, this applies to pretty much all of the endgame content, not just raids. I’ve seen people fly into paroxysms of rage at octovine. It just comes with the territory.

When a group of 9 people, who all put in time and effort, gets flustered because the people attempting to join don’t know what they are playing and are thus effectively wasting the other 9 people’s time and someone thinks that is ‘toxic’ behaviour, then you have both a perfect example how ‘toxic’ is overused and pointless as well as how casual the playbase is (even while attempting ‘high level play’ content).

If you really get so worked up about people saying mean things directed at nobody in particular (which have merit in my opinion – you don’t need to know everything about the encounter, but being able to SEE what’s happening onscreen and reacting in a somewhat timely manner are no special skills), then I think you need to re-evaluate your priorities in life and in what you seek in games. Call this attitude toxic if you want, but in my opinion there’s a huge difference between experiencing ‘toxic’ behaviour (whatever that may mean these days) and lacking any sort of thick skin and looking for hugboxes.