I didn’t read the whole topic, I don’t know what Recount is, but I gather it’s some sort of statistical tracking thing which was very popular in the raiding environment of a certain other MMORPG. Something to keep track of your damage per second, total damage, total damage per specific enemy, death count, healing, etc.—I’m all for that, if it’s available to just you, and for just you. I don’t see the purpose of it being available to everyone in the group, about everyone in the group.
The dungeon community is already relatively elitist. Sure, there are listings with no requirements stated, but a lot of the time, they do have their little requirements nonetheless. Oh, you’re not x profession, nope, kick. Gear check, link gear pl0x. Now, in my case, I am besides the profession (I like playing Mesmer) in most cases perfectly fine. I have Ascended gear of Berserker (and Berserker+Valkyrie trinkets too for that matter), Rabid, Dire, Soldier, Sentinel stats. What can be (Infused) are (Infused). I got my Exotic Assassin’s set (there is no Ascended). I have over 15k AP (why would that matter..). I have 80 Agony Resistance. All my weapons are Legendary (and I carry all weapons of the profession), I can have whatever stats I want. I use rather decent Sigils, Energy and Battle. It can’t be linked, but all my gear has +5 stat +5 AR Infusions (Power – Weapons, Toughness – Armor, Precision (that includes Versatile Precise on Defensive slots) – Trinkets). Different sets have different Runes, e.g., Scholar (damage), Strength (Might stacking. Yes.. Mesmer can do that rather well and copy it to everyone else for bursts), Traveler (when running). I use expensive consumables. I also somewhat know what to do (but there are dungeons I’ve never touched because of how demotivating this community can be). That’s besides the point. When you see all these “exp only, Warrior/Guard” messages, you get.. demotivated. You may put up your own LFG, but then the elitists joins you regardless and start dictating that everyone should be x, y or z, even if you announce it as a casual run. Or nobody joins for several minutes, 10 minutes go by, nobody joined. 15 minutes. Maybe one or two guys did, but they left because it took so long to fill up. Yeah, that’s fun. That’s waiting for fun.
I understand, it’s frustrating to get really bad players in your group. I understand that it’s fun to kill a boss quickly. I also get somewhat frustrated when you try telling people something, and they simply refuse to listen. But I don’t mind bringing along inexperienced players. I can solo most dungeon encounters anyways, so if they mess it up really badly, I can complete it while they are watching from the floor. I don’t even see it as leeching. I’m meeting new people and have fun interacting with them in the chat. Everyone needs to learn sometime. If the experienced players are unwilling to teach, inexperienced players are stuck with inexperienced players. That’s not to anyone’s benefit.
Sure, initially, everyone is inexperienced when something is new. There’s a few people who will look at encounters and figure them out, share the tactics, and then everyone copies them. I remember that from raiding in that other MMORPG, myself and a select few others would brainstorm encounters, analyze what is killing us, what to do during phases, attacks, positioning, how to conquer and get our purples. It was at most 4 of us.. in a group of 36 other players. I’m certain over half the elitist players who asks for experienced only runs, wouldn’t be able to deduct how to do them if they weren’t told at some point. It’s like builds. Very few people on average actually makes new builds, most people gets them from somewhere and complains about how few builds there are…
I don’t want to be a part of the elitist community. But I sure aren’t having all that much fun. I wait for fun, and get discouraged. So I go do PvP in World vs. World instead, do open world content, or solo the dungeon path, even if I wanted to do it with others. I rarely do dungeons. Reason? All these elitist players with their requirements. Would I like to do them? Sure, I would love to do more dungeons, even if the rewards are a bit lackluster and the challenge isn’t quite there. I still want to do them, it’s social and fun when you get the right groups. But when I feel unwanted, it doesn’t exactly motivate me to play that game mode. It’s exclusive, not inclusive, when players are making it revolve around a few professions, and on top of that don’t want to bring in players who hasn’t done something before. They may be awesome players even, maybe better players than you (Lyssa forbid!), but you exclude them purely because they aren’t experienced, or consider themselves as experienced. I at least, don’t like this game’s overall dungeon running community.
Seafarer’s Rest