I am an experienced raider with 15 yrs of experience in multiple mmo’s including ffxi, ffxiv, wow – vanilla, bc, wotlk, cata expansions (did hard mode 25 man in all expansion packs w/top guilds). also played gw1, got gwamm did speed clears with the guild LOD, for domain of anguish (which had world record) as well as UW, FOW, and the deep/urgoz warren. I also have been playing gw2 since launch, lvl 100 fractal level, spvp legend in 2 seasons, part of tier 1 blackgate wvw, have over 20k+ gold from playing the tp, 5 characters fully ascended, and 4 legendaries.
yet i cannot find a raid group.
Why might you ask? because every time I ask to join one they say EXP ONLY.
Well I’ve seen the video’s on youtube and learned meta builds + rotations on 5 classes as well as updated for last weeks patch and followed meta updates as per the guild qT
https://m.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4v76gq/qt_updated_guides_and_dps_benchmarks_for_all/
there is no way for anyone to know that I’ve done any of these things. I get a litany of crap from people saying – go get a training run, which is a joke because half the people who show up are lost or don’t care about beating the content. and exp groups won’t take me because I have no LI’s so catch 22 right there. Then I get asked to make my own group, which is tantamount to saying why don’t i just form my own guild – which I don’t want to do, its way too time consuming for such little pay off. Would be nice if there was some way to make this process easier.
I also don’t like that such a casual game (which is why i somewhat liked it) decided to make raid content that is ultra gimmicky. Bring X builds or you run out of time or are one shot by some mechanic because you didn’t bring X. THAT’S NOT DIFFICULTY. that’s a gimmick. Difficulty is like playing a game like binding of issac. Random elements that are just difficult to handle and you have to adapt spur of the moment. That’s difficulty. Make a boss where 99% of the floor is fire and only 1% isnt and it moves around fairly quickly – THATS HARD, no class would give u an advantage to that just pure movement and reflexes. Instead we get ZERK only meta, oh CONDI meta only on this part, oh need healer blah blah blah. (which is fine for me I have all of those things but its still gimicky as in not hard). Or how about a boss where u can dps it while having to navigate a jumping puzzle, that’s difficult again no class would really give you an advantage there.
When we all complained about wanting harder content (myself included) why did anet interpret that as being we need more difficult GROUP CONTENT. I waste HOURS standing around trying to find a group. HOURS talking to ppl on discord and TS only for raids to fall apart or ppl not showing up (even when I try to form a static group). I’ve even read from others that as soon as they train someone to do a fight they usually quit, and don’t keep raiding and the process of training new ppl starts all over again which makes exp players not want to raid.
Its too hard and inconvenient in this day and age to organize 10+ ppl. The fact that we have to use third party voice coms is a testament to that. In addition this is why raiding in mmo’s in general is not as popular as it once was, who has patience for this. I’m not succeeding at raids because I CANT find Groups, not because they are hard or challenging.
I also like when ppl say things like OH YOU JUST don’t want to put in the time. I guarantee that as someone who is starting raiding, that i have put in probably 1000x’s more work into “GETTING READY TO RAID” then 99% of most people who get started. If I didn’t want to put in the time, I’d just buy a raid run, because screw it I have tons of money, I already put the time in and it has paid off with nothing. Would be more efficient for me to play the TP harder and just buy it. (I use to sell HM fights in FFXIV to other players so I’m no stranger to this type of transaction). It’s even more funny because i played FFXI, I used to wait sometimes 3-4 hours just for an experience party, I once fought a boss in that game for 12 hrs straight, so ya, I’d say I have the patience.
I’m like 2 seconds away from just buying the entire run because dealing with group forming/matching/meeting up is just too much of a hassle, and it would be cheaper/less time for me to buy the entire run. (freaking sad, and i’m dissapointed in this).
at least games like wow and ffxiv made the effort with large raids. WOW has LFR which auto joins you with other players. nobody would probably use that here because the LFR system would probably not match you with a person w/the correct build/stats/exp because again the fights are too precise and gimmicky. So they would just rely on the same “show me your LI exp only” LFG messages rather than use a system like this.
FFXIV i think found a balance they have auto joining LFR but they made the raids that are somewhat challenging (not really they’re pretty ez, they could be harder though but not gimmicky) but you get to do it w/strangers and no voice com, so the fights are straightforward, you get nice rewards, you experience the content w/a lot of ppl and most raids are a win. They could modify this to make it harder, more challenging or random but at least w/this it’s not a painful approach to forming up.
Now they could modifiy this system to some extent, by adding more players to the raid 15 man’s + auto grouping. But as it is now its too hard (gimmicky (+ it’s not hard for me, its just hard enough that ppl won’t take ppl who are new)) w/10 man and it limits TONS Of potential players who would LIKE TO RAID, but can’t.
again I have been turned off and discouraged from doing content I Want to do, and am ready to do, countless times because of the matching and human aspect, of forming a group combined w/how the encounters and raids are structured as well as lack of an auto-grouping feature.
I wish they had made difficult solo, or duo content, or perhaps 5 man content that is even more difficult than fractals. Organizing and dealing with the petty human aspect of this game is not only the most difficult its the most painful and time consuming barrier to a game which is supposed to be fun.
Either make the raid itself easier, so ppl require less from PUG’s, add auto group feature so we don’t have to deal with the hassle of finding players or, increase player cap in raids to require less from PUG’s or make hard smaller group content instead of raids, Or make raid fights ACTUALLY DIFFICULT yet STRAIGHTFORWARD, w/no requirement of certain builds, instead of this gimmicky garbage so that ppl lighten up on raid requirements. Also make more viable builds, and try to balance raid dps so all classes are on par not specific classes so that you see stuff like “LF DPS TEMPEST ONLY” cuz its at 44k dps atm and other classes are at like 29k. (tall order but whatever).
TLDR: raid content is too gimmicky (not hard but filled w/specific cheese mechanics + you need specific builds), makes players discriminate against pugs and not take/teach new players. No way of really telling who is good vs bad, your’ either EXP or NOT. Dunno why they chose 10 man content to be difficult, why not 2 or 5 man content? No auto join system, trying to get a group and organize is painful if your not in a raid static/guild
(edited by Jumpin Lumpix.6108)
I raid during my night time when there are less chances to get group in EU. still I am able to get myself into raids. I am sure you can too. just hard to start with .. I have been kicked once only so far that was because they remembered me raged quit their team (and before I raged I called out noob team lol) but I have my reason why I did that and it was my first time raging at people. I am usually patience even with super failing group.