Guild Wars 2

take dps races out of raids and I would have no issues with them, you can have difficulty without forcing dps as a premium – that’s poor design that comes from the dated power race based MMORPG that is slowly dying.

Raids are not the problem what is is the requirements with them that nobody likes. All other content can be done with any group and gear makeup plus skill set. The problem is none of it works in raids cause raids are made for the most exact set up or in many peoples minds none fun set ups or something they do not want to play and the fun goes out because the more you force play on people who enjoy there builds and play styles the more you cause them to leave what they enjoy behind and makes them not learn how to make there set up work for them.

The meta play does not help ether cause then the game gets changed to meet those build types leaving the rest of the players to not enjoy what they are playing. Its not a matter of getting better or get good its a matter of understanding the game is built on 1000’s of build combination’s that you can not make it work only for say 5 but not the other 995 you have to make it work for all.

And yes its that simple the content is only as hard as it is period nothing else the content can be hard for some and not so hard for others. This is one of the many reasons the trinty system has been around so long is it makes the content locked into an exact requirement of stats and class make up or roles like tank, healer, dps. But this game does not have that cause of the freedom of play many have been asking for in the mmo space for so long its not even funny. Is this system perfect no not by a long shot but even in a mmo is everything ever going to be perfectly balanced cause of the difference in the builds them self they create more then can be balanced and the only way to make a perfect balanced game is to remove stats on gear and Levels and no way for any player to be more powerful then someone else so say you only have this in stats and nothing more.

I’m not scared of Raids, I just don’t have any desire whatsoever to do them. Also, I don’t think the addition of Raids will attract or keep players interested in the game…just my opinion.

vesica tempestas.1563:

take dps races out of raids and I would have no issues with them, you can have difficulty without forcing dps as a premium – that’s poor design that comes from the dated power race based MMORPG that is slowly dying.

Poor design? If you take the dps race out you also have to remove ALL varations of gear and replace them with a universal one.

If not raids would be become easy, long and BORING.

Many people raid for gear, mats, and just for fun, yes elitism exists in raiding but it exists everywhere anyways, you just need to find a guild that does not have that kind of attitude towards raiding, in fact I recommend you join a guild that is just learning raiding and learn with them, it may be frustrating at first but it will teach you how to raid well. Atleast in my experience in other mmorpgs.

The problem is that it’s a double edged sword. If you try to join with elitists, then they might be a jerk to you, or to others in the group, and it all gets toxic and horrible. If you don’t try to join with elitists, then you’ll probably end up with some horrible players, and you’ll do your best but be unable to carry them, and the entire group fails over and over and over and over and over until you all quit for the night having accomplished nothing.

The real issue is that the raids require such precision from every player in the first place. If it were more forgiving of mistakes then you could take a casual pug in and they would succeed, rather than fail constantly, allowing you to avoid both the elitism AND the constant failure.

Most of the people saying that they don’t want to raid, their reasons boil down to “I don’t want to fail constantly, I don’t want to waste time failing constantly, and I don’t want to deal with the conditions that would be necessary to not fail constantly.” Remove the constant failure and pretty much every issue with raiding goes away.

vesica tempestas.1563:

take dps races out of raids and I would have no issues with them, you can have difficulty without forcing dps as a premium – that’s poor design that comes from the dated power race based MMORPG that is slowly dying.

What dps race? Most if not all of them can be 6 manned. VG, Bandit Trio and Matthias have huge slack on their timers. Gorseval used to be a dps race, but not really since they fixed his aggro system and that slow cc method became widespread. Sabetha lack of dps is in the vast majority because too many people down at the last phase and most people bring 2 Druids healers at Slothazor.

The dps is almost never an issue in raid. The problem is when people down or miss a mechanics that you end up behind in damage. As a joke with new players in my raiding group, I often tell them that they could remove their weapon completely to focus on the mechanics and their surviability. That’s a lot lot more important than your dps in raid.

I think the main issue is that raids is basically a content very difficult to face with a pug.

Or you are really super elitist and lucky and you can get only people that They know the mechanics really well or besides vg is difficult to go.

It’s because raid requires a lot of practice and pug people don’t have the patience to improve.

Or you get people already trained and Ready or disband is inevitable.

The main way is find a solid grp of people.

Pug can be good to upgrade Your experience or If super lucky to have good runs, but main goal should be find the right guild raid for you.

Or create a new one with good people you find in pugs.

I am a player that dont enjoy raid. I played couple rounds of dungeon recently, it was fun. Because nobody asked for full zerker, stacking or whatever they think it is most effective anymore. They all went to raid, that left behind still playing dungeon seems more friendly again.

I am glad that i can enjoy the everyone is welcome kind of dungeon run again, thanks raid.

I believe the negative attitude that some players have towards raids stems from a number of factors.

- GW2 is marketed as a very approachable game that makes no explicit time demands on its players. Players do not have to clear an afternoon in order to acomplish most of what GW2 has to offer. This is not the case with raids, especially for a newbie raider.

- Raiding has developed a reputation for being exceedingly difficult. This is not just relative to GW2, but accross the whole MMO genre. Raiding is touted as ‘end game PvE’ and for various reasons, a lot of emphasis is put on its difficulty. This can put people off even attempting to learn the content.

- Raiding is the playground of the elitists. This is not to say that only elitists raid, merely that those looking to push forward their achievements demand certain (sometimes unreasonably) standards of others. As a result, it can be difficult for a new raider to find a place.

Due to the fact I took a significant break from the game, I recently found myself in the position of a player looking to enter raids. In the past four days, I have outfitted my Revenant and spent time joining training and practice groups, as well as reading guides on the bosses. Yesterday, I cleared the Vale Guardian and Gorseval for the first time. It was immensely satisfying for me and I look forward to raiding further in the future.

However, that preparation was definitely a commitment, the practice runs were a commitment and I spent a while yesterday just watching groups pop up which were willing to accept me. Numerous other players do not wish to invest time in such things. This is fine. Raiding caters to the people who wish to be challenged by the game in a particular way and that’s not everyone.

I definitely wish that there was a larger variety in content being released more regularly as it seems unfair to force PvP players into long off seasons and non-raiding PvE-ers into waiting for more Living Story and more Fractals while these Raid releases hit.

Crossaber.8934:

I am a player that dont enjoy raid. I played couple rounds of dungeon recently, it was fun. Because nobody asked for full zerker, stacking or whatever they think it is most effective anymore. They all went to raid, that left behind still playing dungeon seems more friendly again.

I am glad that i can enjoy the everyone is welcome kind of dungeon run again, thanks raid.

Yes the “elite” players are raiding every day since it takes 5 hours each day in a week to complete the 2 raid wings and they have no time to do anything besides raiding. /s

indeed, dungeons are a lot more fun now, there is no more must be xerk/stack on boss mentality and the dungeons and still get cleared with a lot less negativity. Interesting when you think of it that way, maybe raids should stay just as they are.

vesica tempestas.1563:

indeed, dungeons are a lot more fun now, there is no more must be xerk/stack on boss mentality and the dungeons and still get cleared with a lot less negativity. Interesting when you think of it that way, maybe raids should stay just as they are.

Or it was the extreme power creep. Who knows.

power creep just as raids appeared, mm :P

Power creep is more or less inevitable with expansions and new content. ANet needs to make each new gear set (as well as elite specs and/or new skills) slightly more powerful than before otherwise players just go “What’s the point of switching?” and continue to use their old gear/builds. Then they complain that there’s nothing new to do.

I do agree that raids could perhaps be adjusted to be more inclusive, however. I think the biggest factor holding back greater participation is the enrage timer. If that weren’t there, you’d probably get more people willing to try different builds with different gear. Sure, it’d be slower (maybe MUCH slower), but that’s the price you pay for safety. People who are more concerned with speed farming or record setting can go in with optimized builds or smaller teams as they always have. That was the way dungeons worked for years and people seemed pretty content with the setup.

Power creep is more or less inevitable with expansions and new content. ANet needs to make each new gear set (as well as elite specs and/or new skills) slightly more powerful than before otherwise players just go “What’s the point of switching?” and continue to use their old gear/builds. Then they complain that there’s nothing new to do.

I expected powercreep with the addition of elite specs, but I don’t expect powercreep from the second set of elite specs. I mean, elite specs by their very nature have to be at least a little bit better than not having one, but with the second set they should be co-equal sets, no better or worse than the other option, just different, and the reason to use it is for the variety, not because you “have to.”

DeceiverX.8361:

One word:

Elitism.

And this is why the game, which prospered so much at launch, didn’t feature any kind of “elite” or arbitrarily “difficult” content. And also part of why, HoT, an expansion featured as pleasing the “hardcore” crowd has failed in the eyes of a bulk majority of players when looking at sheer numbers.

Strictly speaking, not many people care. And those that do are likely too exclusive to not care about anyone not involved in their personal affairs.

I totally agree. I am not as sure what exactly goes on between the community and company, but this makes sense because I could always tell that their must have been and still is either a bigger population of challenge seekers or said group is small but just more important customers. I really wish there was a choice so that some, if they wanted, could roam and solo and feel great about their gaming skills even if they don’t have the time to practice 24/7. I am too loyal to the game, lore, characters, and world however to stop playing…even though I many times feel outplayed and unable to achieve the things I want to without help. But Tyria is just so beautiful and fun to be a part of that I’ll live with my apparent squishy deficiency lol, but doesn’t mean I don’t hope they’ll do something about it in the end. Sidenote: If they come out with Tengu as a playable class, I may not even care about the unfairness because I’ll be so happy to be a bird! xD Haha, much love! <3

Raids take to long. I hate standing around waiting on people to get ready to start.

I fell asleep one night just waiting on a few of the people to get setup = lame. When I woke up I was logged out of the game.

If it were some game type that I could jump in and start kickin *ss, I would be all in. But Raids… No thanks.

There are a lot of reasons people are afraid to raid, most noticable cause they don’t want fingers pointed at them. Considering most instances are easily carriable, whether someone fails the mechanics or not doesnt have as big of an impact while in raids it makes all the difference.
Generally it is impossible to fail 95% of this game so people get intimitated easily by even the concept of “failure”.
As for people that talk about elitism i can honestly say i only found 1-2 of those rude “elitists” over my half year of raiding so that’s not a problem.

Three reasons:

It’s not my speed: Most of the time, I’m in Gw2 to relax. If I need high-energy combat I’ll take my Daredevil to Pvp.
It’s not my style: I prefer to fight as either a tanks or as a Mesmer. (a term which has lost all meaning.) The long game is fun and enrage timers remove that.
I want to be a hero more than I want to raid: It’s hard to explain, but Gw2 was good at making me feel like a hero. Playing a hero in raids is a liability to the team.

Ossyrana.1637:

DeceiverX.8361:

One word:

Elitism.

And this is why the game, which prospered so much at launch, didn’t feature any kind of “elite” or arbitrarily “difficult” content. And also part of why, HoT, an expansion featured as pleasing the “hardcore” crowd has failed in the eyes of a bulk majority of players when looking at sheer numbers.

Strictly speaking, not many people care. And those that do are likely too exclusive to not care about anyone not involved in their personal affairs.

I totally agree. I am not as sure what exactly goes on between the community and company, but this makes sense because I could always tell that their must have been and still is either a bigger population of challenge seekers or said group is small but just more important customers. I really wish there was a choice so that some, if they wanted, could roam and solo and feel great about their gaming skills even if they don’t have the time to practice 24/7. I am too loyal to the game, lore, characters, and world however to stop playing…even though I many times feel outplayed and unable to achieve the things I want to without help. But Tyria is just so beautiful and fun to be a part of that I’ll live with my apparent squishy deficiency lol, but doesn’t mean I don’t hope they’ll do something about it in the end. Sidenote: If they come out with Tengu as a playable class, I may not even care about the unfairness because I’ll be so happy to be a bird! xD Haha, much love! <3

Oh my goodness oh mighty Necromancer who has risen this dead post from the grave I bow to you.

You are right but these posts are from April and it’s the distant month of November now and the damage done by elitism has already showed itself as earning have been cut in twain only the game which destroyed itself from focusing on Raids the once known Wildstar is below us. The elitists hobble from corner to corner ruining every game with their order of knights little can be done at this point I’m afraid. This land has gotten to old and to little has been done over these four long years too many bridges burned and E-sports jokes made the knights have more or less vanished and the kingdom rots.

Take care Necromancer the roads of these boards are quite vacant as well compared to how they once were there activity has dwindled sharply from those times of yore. The trolls and knights have since passed only the ghosts of old reminiscing about what could have been remain these these days….

reaganjn.9371:

Three reasons:

Elitism, Short on time, It’s not fun.

I think it’s because they feel like they will end up in a raid with people who are short tempered. Not that they are afraid of raiding, they just are afraid of the kind of people they will meet in raids. And by afraid, i don’t mean actual fear. I just mean, they will end up with people who aren’t fun to raid with. Cause raiding is definitely fun. But fun is also dependent on the people you’re grouped with.

And it’s true. A lot of people in raids are very short tempered and sometimes nasty toward each other. But there are also a lot of people who aren’t like that.

And everyone in a raid wants to beat the boss. Even a so called “training run.” People still try their best while learning. But for the most part, they want to have fun. And even just one person’s bad attitude can be toxic and ruin the light atmosphere of a group.

So i don’t think people are afraid of raiding at all. They want to raid with people they enjoy playing with. And it’s very hard to find a steady group of 10 people to do that with. They join, or maybe never join, any group expecting some tense atmosphere.

So to answer your question OP, most players aren’t afraid of raiding. Most players just don’t like the tension that sometimes goes along with raiding with people who are not as easy going as they would like.

I have done lots of raids in other MMOs but in GW2 it just feel off and I simply don’t enjoy it.Throw me back in Vanilla WOW raid dungeon or any raid Boss from Ancient Port Warehouse from Vanguard (yes I played that game ) and I’m good to go.

I play GW2 because of its relax nature it is plain and simple.

the raids in GW2 feel very similar to raids everywhere else, and mechanic wise they are fun. However the negative social behaviors (impatience, rudeness, selfishness etc) are also similar, and for many we have been there done that. IMO they need to relax the tunnimng slightly, bring in line with GW1 style of raids and open up to more players.

someone pumped a 6mth old thread

It’s not that we are afraid, in fact most people WANTS to raid, people are curious about raids, and it’s the only real end game content HoT added, and the only one being worked on.

We just can’t.

I have tried raiding before, and I could only thanks to raiding groups. I used to think raiding cold be completed regardless of team composition, but I noticed that it’s false: In a game where they’re supposed to reward player creativity and lack of role trinity, they made it necessary. You can’t pretend that VG is beatable under 6 minutes by the majority of the in game population without bringing condition damage, tanking and healing, for example, specially considering how the “useful” Meta condition builds are entirely based arround Viper’s, which is only aviable thru crafting.

Raids demmand a lot of practice, but they’re also like your first job: You need previous experience, and they won’t hire you without it.

Those “for fun” groups are unicorns, they exist but only after a little while, and even on those, it doesn’t takes much time for someone to get in and demand gear checks or voice services.

Raids woldn’t be that bad if they hadn’t rage timers, as they push what has been “ruining” the meta game since eons back: speedrunning; it keeps the zerker meta very high up there, and hurts diversity.

And yes, there’s an elite running the raids, I mean, when you see they charge you 250+ Gold for being able to experience content… things are twisted.

Aldath.1275:

And yes, there’s an elite running the raids, I mean, when you see they charge you 250+ Gold for being able to experience content… things are twisted.

I got HoT last week and I’m still only on second act of the story and I know absolutely nothing about raids. Are you saying that if I try to make a raid group right now, some elite will stop me unless I pay them 250g?

He probably wants to say you that groups that raid for fun sooner or later turn into gear check groups and the price for being carried through a raid is on average 250G. Which I find pretty funny as it basically kills the idea of raids as content for only those determined enough to do it and also enlarges it to those who have open wallets.^^

Haishao.6851:

Aldath.1275:

And yes, there’s an elite running the raids, I mean, when you see they charge you 250+ Gold for being able to experience content… things are twisted.

I got HoT last week and I’m still only on second act of the story and I know absolutely nothing about raids. Are you saying that if I try to make a raid group right now, some elite will stop me unless I pay them 250g?

Nope, some people takes advantage on how not everyone can win raids, so they sell vctories.

Aldath.1275:

It’s not that we are afraid, in fact most people WANTS to raid, people are curious about raids, and it’s the only real end game content HoT added, and the only one being worked on.

We just can’t.

I have tried raiding before, and I could only thanks to raiding groups. I used to think raiding cold be completed regardless of team composition, but I noticed that it’s false: In a game where they’re supposed to reward player creativity and lack of role trinity, they made it necessary. You can’t pretend that VG is beatable under 6 minutes by the majority of the in game population without bringing condition damage, tanking and healing, for example, specially considering how the “useful” Meta condition builds are entirely based arround Viper’s, which is only aviable thru crafting.

Raids demmand a lot of practice, but they’re also like your first job: You need previous experience, and they won’t hire you without it.

Those “for fun” groups are unicorns, they exist but only after a little while, and even on those, it doesn’t takes much time for someone to get in and demand gear checks or voice services.

Raids woldn’t be that bad if they hadn’t rage timers, as they push what has been “ruining” the meta game since eons back: speedrunning; it keeps the zerker meta very high up there, and hurts diversity.

And yes, there’s an elite running the raids, I mean, when you see they charge you 250+ Gold for being able to experience content… things are twisted.

Do you have evidence that most people want to raid? Because I personally don’t believe that’s true.

Raids are designed wrong. They are too linear and gated. What I mean by that is the group must execute the event in the order required and at the pace required or it will be reset with a loss of progress.

There is pressure to find trusted, experienced raiders, then committ a block of time where the rewards are weighted at the end rather than as the raid progresses. Failure at any point is very bad, if not catastrophic, so experience and profession/build mix become critical to success. Raiders will not tolerate deficiency because of this.

Vayne.8563:

Do you have evidence that most people want to raid? Because I personally don’t believe that’s true.

There was a good bit of evidence to show that loads of players attempted the raids around HoT launch. Saw some posts here and on reddit with the figures to back this up, I’d add a link or two if I had them at hand but alas they are all months old by now.

Now, I don’t think most people wanted raiding in GW2 at all. Just that people were interested because it was new content. Everyone from the dungeon and fractal community would have moved into raiding were it not for the high barriers to entry.

Vayne.8563:

Do you have evidence that most people want to raid?

I doubt most people want to “raid” but most people would probably like to play through the content. The problem with group content is that most people play MMOs like they would single player games, as in they simply want to login and play for fun. Finding groups is simply not that, nor is being told what to do, how to play, etc. After LFD opened up dungeons, WoW offered LFR (casual raids you queue in to) as the solution to raids, which was able to tap into the majority of endgame players. So, does the majority want to raid? Who knows, but the majority is willing to if it’s casual.

timed raid is a lazy design, forcing players to follow meta build to have optimum result. no meta no raid. no meta , you get abused. zzzz……..

Organising teams. PUGs are likely to be elitist, while guild groups (at least in any of the guilds I’m part of) and other premade groups tend to want people who can consistently raid at specific times, and that’s just not a commitment I’m in a position to make.

DPS checks and enrage timers (which are basically sustained DPS checks). As soon as you get those, you get gear checks. ArenaNet excused going back on their “no gear grind” promise by saying that Ascended gear would only matter for fractals, which were explicitly designed as a section of the game that was intended for people who enjoy gear treadmills while everyone else could pretty much enjoy them. Raids… well, you don’t need Ascended gear, but when you have DPS checks, Ascended gear may well be the difference between passing a DPS check and not. The resources and therefore grind that you need to put into getting Ascended gear is such that getting full Ascended sets moves into the territory of playing to prepare to have fun rather than playing to have fun.

Lack of fun. Most of the boss fights I’ve had when I did go into a raid (usually substituting for a regular that couldn’t make it) feel more like puzzles then the rest of the game. You need to do X, Y, and Z, and if you figure out X, Y, and Z and execute them perfectly (and have the DPS to get past the DPS checks and enrage timers), you win. The “challenge” comes from harsh penalties from getting anything wrong. So, for me, they get boring after just a few attempts (because you’re just doing the same thing over and over again) while also being stressful (because if anything goes wrong that’s likely /gg time). If I wanted stressful and boring during my down time, I’d work overtime and get paid for it.

TBH, though, it’s the DPS-check nature that’s the biggest offender. IMO, it should be possible for people to start off by doing things a little bit slower and get through, and then work on getting through faster. They could make it so that the rewards are less if you take longer, but make it so that it is practical to go in with fewer people, worse gear, or tankier gear and get through in the end.

Jahroots.6791:

Vayne.8563:

Do you have evidence that most people want to raid? Because I personally don’t believe that’s true.

There was a good bit of evidence to show that loads of players attempted the raids around HoT launch. Saw some posts here and on reddit with the figures to back this up, I’d add a link or two if I had them at hand but alas they are all months old by now.

Now, I don’t think most people wanted raiding in GW2 at all. Just that people were interested because it was new content. Everyone from the dungeon and fractal community would have moved into raiding were it not for the high barriers to entry.

Loads of people are not most people. And trying something doesn’t mean you want to do it. That is to say, I tried certain types of food I didn’t like so after that I didn’t want to eat them because I didn’t like them.

Still I’d be surprised if 50% of hot owners even came close to beating a single raid boss.

I’d be surprised if 50% of HoT owners even tried. And am quite sure many (possibly majority even) of those that did, did not go past their first few (failed) attemps.

draxynnic.3719:

The resources and therefore grind that you need to put into getting Ascended gear is such that getting full Ascended sets moves into the territory of playing to prepare to have fun rather than playing to have fun.

what? Im have 2 1/2 sets of ascended gear that was found not crafted. Granted I may have had luck on my side…..with the multi servers AB, cursed shores, silverwastes etc…. there is zero excuse for money issues.

Yup as you go on gear requirements increase, if they had left it at the vale guard level people would be completeing it with green gear or smaller groups…..eventually leading to naked groups like the good ol arah days.

Majority of players don’t do raids on the sole fact that players are too sensitive in discovering that they are wwaaaaay below subpar should they ever step out of the mass of people in public events. In the open world events their individual participation doesn’t matter purely due to number of players present. Instead of trying to improve they instead resort to claiming " I don’t do them because elitism this or elitism that". You can attempt to try to disagree but look at when teq was upgraded or triple trouble was released… the vast majority avoided it like the plague until groups got the sequence down then they came back, before fractals update they didn’t go past lvl 15 becuase of “elitism” after they dumb down the system suddenly high levels. Its the same pattern over and over again so when they dumb down raids guess what will happen to this argument?

echo.2053:

with the multi servers AB, cursed shores, silverwastes etc…. there is zero excuse for money issues.

That’s exacty “playing to prepare to have fun”.

Astralporing.1957:

I’d be surprised if 50% of HoT owners even tried. And am quite sure many (possibly majority even) of those that did, did not go past their first few (failed) attemps.

I agree. I’m erring on the side of caution, but yeah it’s very unlikely to me that most people want to raid.

Astralporing.1957:

echo.2053:

with the multi servers AB, cursed shores, silverwastes etc…. there is zero excuse for money issues.

That’s exacty “playing to prepare to have fun”.

You were doing that sort of stuff ( minus the AB part of course) even before there was even any talk of bringing raiding into the game !!! you can only drag excuses for so long….

This is a type of ENDGAME content…..it shouldn’t be a surprise for what is expected

To answer the question asked; Nobody is afraid of raiding.

Not afraid of turning off my headlights while driving at night either.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to do it, EVER.

echo.2053:

Astralporing.1957:

echo.2053:

with the multi servers AB, cursed shores, silverwastes etc…. there is zero excuse for money issues.

That’s exacty “playing to prepare to have fun”.

You were doing that sort of stuff ( minus the AB part of course) even before there was even any talk of bringing raiding into the game !!!

Not much of it, actually, as i find it extremely unfun, but even if i did, so what? It’s not like it makes my words any less true. Farming for gold to spend on equipment used so you can play in a content you want is “playing to prepare to have fun”. And nothing you said contended that.

echo.2053:

you can only drag excuses for so long….

Yes, precisely. You can only drag excuses for so long…

echo.2053:

This is a type of ENDGAME content…..it shouldn’t be a surprise for what is expected

“Whole game is the endgame”, remember?

Vayne.8563:

Astralporing.1957:

I’d be surprised if 50% of HoT owners even tried. And am quite sure many (possibly majority even) of those that did, did not go past their first few (failed) attemps.

I agree. I’m erring on the side of caution, but yeah it’s very unlikely to me that most people want to raid.

Agree, a lot of people would enjoy 10 man instances, but 10 man instances tuned to the point where a small subset of builds is viable and it becomes the classic raid model where you need to rote repeat the boss a large number of times, less so these days. A lot of people have been there done that.

As for the pugging experience, its a borderline awful gamble as per typical mmorpg: regular quiting, frustration, lack of patience (in particular), forcing people to play build x, bad attitudes/rudeness.

Perhaps people are afraid of raiding because it is very scary. Very threatening. Almost overwhelming in the despair it inspires. The horror of sitting at a computer, looking at a screen filled with terrifying images of…a game.

The horror. Seeing characters, other players, digital monsters….in a game that we are choosing to play. How ever do we manage to cope?

Or perhaps, just maybe, there is the slightest chance that people are not afraid of raids (gasp, inconceivable!) but rather just dont want to play them.

It may be difficult, nearly impossible for some, but try to imagine that you are not the center of the universe and that other players are real people, who dont all share your exact tastes in entertainment, too. They like things that you dont and dislike things that you do. Its nice when there is overlap between different peoples’ likes. Great in fact. But its ludicrous to label others as somehow deficient for not sharing your exact tast in entertianment media.

Raiding, and the re-gearing only to find that the meta changed and having to re-gear again, coupled with the stress of guildmates wanting to check our gear… echoed something I hated about all other MMOs. Honestly the addition of the raid content and the thought of grinding for gear almost made me quick QW2 overall. I took a nice long break ankitten ow back to just enjoying PVE content and WvW, choosing to ignore raiding all together.

Raiding is something I did in Everquest. I have had my fill of it, it’s not why I play. My preference would have been more living story content over raiding.

echo.2053:

draxynnic.3719:

The resources and therefore grind that you need to put into getting Ascended gear is such that getting full Ascended sets moves into the territory of playing to prepare to have fun rather than playing to have fun.

what? Im have 2 1/2 sets of ascended gear that was found not crafted. Granted I may have had luck on my side…..with the multi servers AB, cursed shores, silverwastes etc…. there is zero excuse for money issues.

Putting aside that AB multimap is a borderline exploit (they haven’t done anything to shut it down, unless that was part of the motivation for reducing the number of small chests in the vaults, but I highly doubt multimapping was intended by the devs), that’s called ‘farming’, and farming for gear so that it’s viable to attempt some higher-level content is pretty much exactly what people interpreted ArenaNet’s statements like “your success is determined by your skill, not your time spent” (Guild Wars 1) and “we want people to play to have fun, not to prepare to have fun” (Guild Wars 2).

I’m aware that some people do have fun in the farming content (and fractals was, I think, originally thrown in for the people who do like the gear grind: the ladder is there to be climbed by the people who enjoy it, while those who don’t could play the fractals at the lower levels to experience the content and ignore the higher levels if they wanted), but for many people, including myself, repeating the same PvE content over and over simply because it’s the most lucrative gets mind-numbingly boring very quickly. As a result, gear is a barrier for entry, particularly since things like VG runs in greens are things that groups who have become highly experienced in doing the raid with proper gear do to show off, and are hardly typical of what can be expected from entry-level raiders.

Both Guild Wars games were advertised as games where not spending time to farm gear would be no barrier to attempting top-end content. Guild Wars 1 largely held to that promise, apart from a period where PvE-only skills were ruling the meta and they required significant grind to max out. Guild Wars 2 put a dent in that promise when Ascended was introduced, and blew it out of the water when they acknowledged that they had designed raids with people with full Ascended in mind and ruled out having an ‘easy mode’ (despite the ‘normal mode’ and ‘hard mode’ split in Guild Wars 1 being one of its most appreciated features). For those people who chose the Guild Wars franchise specifically because it wasn’t based on gear grind, this promise is only held if you pretend that high level fractals, and now raids, just don’t exist. Now, it was easy to just ignore high-level fractals since you could experience the content with low-level fractals. There is no such option with raids.

You’ll also note that one of the other barriers I listed was time. I work a full-time job and often have other commitments on weekends: I simply don’t have the luxury to commit to raiding once a week with an organised group. Similarly, I don’t have a lot of time for farming even if I wanted to. This is compounded by the fact that I live in Australia: generally, the times I’m most likely to be able to play are off-peak times on the NA server, and as a result even if I had both the spare time and the inclination, the map might not be sufficiently populated in the first place.

Not afraid. It would waste too much of my rl time. Wait how you see them when you get some years older. Only right into the action for me. And it attracts a unfriendly immature crowd (not everyone ofcourse, but too many).

I raid but I don’t like it, it just feels terrible and I would have liked more dungeons instead.

Highly interesting thread as the replies after it was re-animated from the dead are basically echoing the original posts from 6-7 months ago.