Guild Wars 2

PzTnT.7198:

I always found the rather extreme amount of elitism in this game to be strange and incredibly off putting. Are the raids really hard enough to force everyone that wants to play one to go with the “meta” of the specific raid allowed classes?

Hrm, no. Although, just as in any other MMORPG, people do kinda have this unwritten agreement that you’re not going to “waste everyone else’s time” by playing sub-optimal.

Which , in class/spec based games, not only means playing well as a player, but also as a character. So that in other words, you might lack the time to farm armor XYZ (Ascended in our case), but at least you run the correct spec / skills. You’re doing your best, basically.

Cyrin.1035:

Tekoneiric.6817:

saeleth.3915:

Being someone who hasn’t raided previously in GW2, I’d like to get into it. But honestly the vibe I have gotten across the board has been that its pretty much out of the question unless you are lucky enough to find a “training” group. I looked in LFG and it was pretty much only wanting exp players.

Am I missing that much if I don’t get to experience raiding?

My main gripe is about raids is the same as dungeons and fractals. To many high strung types are drawn to them. ANet seems to go out of their way to lock content and rewards behind forced multi-player instances because they assume everyone wants or should to be social. PvE is about as social as many people want to be. Going into pressure cooker instances is very stressful for some people like myself. Plus there is finding people to join a group when your ready to play.

It’s easy for some people to say that you don’t have to do it but if you want specific achievements, unlocks or rewards it’s your only choice.

I unfortunately have had to do Ascalonian Catacombs so I can get Ascalonian Tears to make the Nightfury Skin. My experiences haven’t been the best.

I really wish ANet would give us a version of heroes (controlled NPCs) like GW1 that we can use for dungeons and raids. You could fill the player slots with real players or heroes. If we could use our own characters for the hero slots we could equip and build them to our needs.

This^

Its an mmo after all.

If all the people complaining about other people in raids would team up, they could do the raids.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

If all the people complaining about other people in raids would team up, they could do the raids.

Yeah true. Although many players don’t want to be social enough to worry about things such as “starting a guild” or “recruiting like-minded players” or “getting to know players”.

Even though it is, ultimately, the whole reason this genre exists. If not for the social aspects, other games provide far better gameplay for each specific element GW2 has. Its upside is that it provides a lot of different gameplay elements (something for everyone, basically) in a social context.

I’m just glad I managed to beat one raid boss to unlock the raid mastery and continue getting xp in open world and now…. I never have to set foot in raids again.

I dont think its too hard to get in a raid, If you have proper Gear, just start your own lfg with Gear check and all that other s**t. Thats how i complete My first raid

My opinion on raids is that they are unnecessarily difficult. Not necessarily from the actual fights but the time limit that they put on them. It has really created a high barrier to entry for the majority of players. Most of the fights would be doable (with some practice) if not for the timers as well. It has created a pretty poor community where:

a) Players are forced into meta builds/comps simply to meet the time allotment. So in order to even be considered for a raid, players may have to completely re-outfit themselves to hope to clear even the first boss. Players that are in full Ascended conceivably contribute very little depending on their builds. That sucks.

b) A clear divide between raiders and the rest of the PvE community is created.

c) Tolerance for new players learning a raid is non-existent these days. Alienated people from even attempting it.

You really end up needing a dedicated raid group, or a pug filled with experienced players. You can’t just casually round up 10 guildies and hope to kill even the first raid boss. That’s pretty crappy considering this game is sorta designed to have a low barrier to entry on pretty much everything else.

I’m all for difficult raids, but make it on technical abilities like dodging and placements (which they do already as well) and remove the time constraints.

Carighan.6758:

Yeah true. Although many players don’t want to be social enough to worry about things such as “starting a guild” or “recruiting like-minded players” or “getting to know players”.

Even though it is, ultimately, the whole reason this genre exists. If not for the social aspects, other games provide far better gameplay for each specific element GW2 has. Its upside is that it provides a lot of different gameplay elements (something for everyone, basically) in a social context.

I actually don’t think that you are 100% right. This might’ve been the reason back in the days but since then a lot of things changed – nowadays this (MMO/RPGs) spot has shifted a lot and exists for different reasons (not just the social aspect) and each of them as important as the others.

Uzunari.1964:

I actually don’t think that you are 100% right. This might’ve been the reason back in the days but since then a lot of things changed – nowadays this (MMO/RPGs) spot has shifted a lot and exists for different reasons (not just the social aspect) and each of them as important as the others.

Heh, caught. I admit, I play MMORPGs since 1999 (EQ1), so I guess many of my views are a fair bit outdated.

saeleth.3915:

Am I missing that much if I don’t get to experience raiding?

Find a raiding guild (there are plenty for that purpose, they don’t require representation) that has certain days per week dedicated to newcomers. You should be fine.

Djinn.9245:

saeleth.3915:

Being someone who hasn’t raided previously in GW2, I’d like to get into it. But honestly the vibe I have gotten across the board has been that its pretty much out of the question unless you are lucky enough to find a “training” group. I looked in LFG and it was pretty much only wanting exp players.

Yep. Good thing Anet decided to gate finishing the masteries behind Raiding, huh? No non-core XP for me for the rest of the game unless they don’t do the same stupid thing with PoF. But of course if they aren’t going to gate Masteries / XP behind raiding in PoF, why did they do it in HoT?

Hard to say why Anet does things.

I ended up paying for a run to unlock those masteries. Could’ve gone with a group, but Anet doesn’t believe in archaic ideas like colorblind mode or UI manipulation.

Draknar.5748:

My opinion on raids is that they are unnecessarily difficult. Not necessarily from the actual fights but the time limit that they put on them. It has really created a high barrier to entry for the majority of players. Most of the fights would be doable (with some practice) if not for the timers as well. It has created a pretty poor community where:

a) Players are forced into meta builds/comps simply to meet the time allotment. So in order to even be considered for a raid, players may have to completely re-outfit themselves to hope to clear even the first boss. Players that are in full Ascended conceivably contribute very little depending on their builds. That sucks.

b) A clear divide between raiders and the rest of the PvE community is created.

c) Tolerance for new players learning a raid is non-existent these days. Alienated people from even attempting it.

You really end up needing a dedicated raid group, or a pug filled with experienced players. You can’t just casually round up 10 guildies and hope to kill even the first raid boss. That’s pretty crappy considering this game is sorta designed to have a low barrier to entry on pretty much everything else.

I’m all for difficult raids, but make it on technical abilities like dodging and placements (which they do already as well) and remove the time constraints.

The timer doesn’t make the raids difficult.
90% (just an estimation based on my own raid training experience) of all attempts fail long before the enrage timer.
When you think the timer is a problem you can start with Cairn, or when you have a Mesmer with the raid mastery you can start with Escort -> no timer to worry about.

Pugs always want to run meta or have you forgotten the zerker dungeon meta?

I regularly see training runs on the lfg and there are training guilds (like RTI for EU). So there is enough possibility to learn.

Many guilds started with 10 unexperienced players when VG was released. Now it’s way easier to start, as you have a meta comp and guides. You also can start with bosses that are way easier than VG.

To be fair, the DPS requirements are so low that you can do the raids with naked people. For the most part.

saeleth.3915:

Being someone who hasn’t raided previously in GW2, I’d like to get into it. But honestly the vibe I have gotten across the board has been that its pretty much out of the question unless you are lucky enough to find a “training” group. I looked in LFG and it was pretty much only wanting exp players.

Am I missing that much if I don’t get to experience raiding?

I thought someone posted a really good answer on this?

It isn’t raid itself that is unfriendly, many players are often unfriendly. Gw2 design attempt to hide or minimize this via the carebear approach and forced cooperation via shared rewards and social system but raids do not have any of those. Players will naturally choose the experienced to finish it asap, majority are not gonna be that kind to run or even help out in training raid. They can and will be mean. That is a harsh reality. That is human.

Best is to just find a guild that has a training raid in a timing where you can join.

Carighan.6758:

Blockhead Magee.3092:

If all the people complaining about other people in raids would team up, they could do the raids.

Yeah true. Although many players don’t want to be social enough to worry about things such as “starting a guild” or “recruiting like-minded players” or “getting to know players”.

Even though it is, ultimately, the whole reason this genre exists. If not for the social aspects, other games provide far better gameplay for each specific element GW2 has. Its upside is that it provides a lot of different gameplay elements (something for everyone, basically) in a social context.

But that diversity is what make the social in this game really questionable. It become a question of passerby vs acquaintance vs friend vs using-each-other.

Arenanet could allow an automatic grouping feature similar to PvP matching but assigning veteran players to less familiar or new players. An 8:2 vet/noob ratio should be manageable even if the noobs die.

Some games do not even allow players to choose how they are grouped

Raiding feels unfriendly cause it is information overload, u need class and role knowledge, nice effective gear, need to know mechanics etc etc otherwise u become a burden.
That’s where raiding guilds come in and that was always the way raids were meant to be played, with statics and guildies.

The fact that u can pug them shows how easy they are if u are willing to put some effort.

Some people also mentioned training raids….. training raids, unless organized with voice comm and an exp leader, are doomed to fail from the start and people should have never bothered in the first place. Thats where forums like this and reddit come in handy. U will find nice organized newbie runs or raiding guilds to take u in and teach you the ropes IF U SEARCH.

Problem is people are too lazy/dumb to do that so they bash their head against the wall even though there’s the door next to them.

So a question to you : How did people even got into raiding at this point if raids are so hard and unfriendly and toxic ? I started raiding 1 year after they came out and never had a single problem even though i never had a group (100% pugs) and no it wasnt luck. Just enough effort.

Case in point most people that complain are just too lazy/ignorant to do anything and would rather cry on the forums than actually go after what they want.

Yeah true. Although many players don’t want to be social enough to worry about things such as “starting a guild” or “recruiting like-minded players” or “getting to know players”.

Exactly, that’s why the game needs to adapt to suit those players’ needs.

The timer doesn’t make the raids difficult.
90% (just an estimation based on my own raid training experience) of all attempts fail long before the enrage timer.

True, although part of that is that the raid team is trying hard to beat that timer. If a raid group was forming with no pressure to beat the timer, built to be tanky rather than max DPS, playing slow but steady rather than trying to do as much damage as possible, then they might do a lot better.

Because the design and implementation of raiding that Anet chose in antithetical to pretty much every part of the GW2 PVE experience. For the average player moving from the open and flexible systems in something like fractals or the open world to the walled off and shortsighted experience that is GW2 raiding is jarring and encourages elitism. And anyone that claims otherwise is immediately belittled, called lazy, ignorant, greedy or other such nonsense in the raiding subforum.

The reason behind the introduction is crystal clear – marketing to an audience from other MMOs – hardcore raiders – that they were not addressing before. Unfortunately, in doing so, they had to, imo, compromise on core tenants of what GW2 was. That decision has been harmful to the game and has created an unfriendlier environment in the community – even though there are alternatives (multiple tiers, as an example) that would have made much more sense.

It’s also interesting to see how much differently this kind of discussion progresses outside of the raiding subforum. Hopefully Anet doesn’t move this thread.

Blaeys.3102:

Because the design and implementation of raiding that Anet chose in antithetical to pretty much every part of the GW2 PVE experience.

Other than party size and needing to know mechanics, which was not always true in dungeons, raids are very much like explorable dungeons.

For the average player moving from the open and flexible systems in something like fractals or the open world to the walled off and shortsighted experience that is GW2 raiding is jarring and encourages elitism.

There are assumptions here, like: the average player is not already doing raids and/or the average player gives a kitten about raids one way or the other (my take is that the average player doesn’t care, and includes a whole host of players who came to GW2 to get away from raid-only endgames and who are avoiding raids); no attempts are made by the raiding community to teach players new to raiding (that one is just plain false); there is an insurmountable difficulty barrier in raids (ANet has made easier, moderate and difficult raid encounters).

And anyone that claims otherwise is immediately belittled, called lazy, ignorant, greedy or other such nonsense in the raiding subforum.

There is a fair bit of that. Not to excuse rude behavior, but neither side is looking at things from the other’s perspective. A lot of the difficulty in finding a raid group comes from the use of LFG. The “open and flexible” system in the open world is part of the problem. People get used to the idea of, “Open LFG, join, play, win.” The difference, though, between raids and open world meta events is that ignorance (using the real definition of the word, which is “lack of knowledge or information”) means failure and wipe in raids, whereas in the open world, not so much. So, while some LFG users want to drop in and play just as they do in the open world, the LFG makers are looking for people who have more commitment than that.

The reason behind the introduction is crystal clear – marketing to an audience from other MMOs – hardcore raiders – that they were not addressing before. Unfortunately, in doing so, they had to, imo, compromise on core tenants of what GW2 was.

ANet planned to cater to that demographic from launch. Explorable dungeons were supposed to be raid equivalents. The reason raids may seem to be a departure is that explorable dungeons did not work out that way for the most part. So, no, core tenets were not in any way compromised by raids. Raids fulfilled an expectation that people who bought the game before launch had to wait over three years to see.

That decision has been harmful to the game and has created an unfriendlier environment in the community – even though there are alternatives (multiple tiers, as an example) that would have made much more sense.

“Harmful to the game” is an easy accusation to bandy about, but a hard one to prove. What it boils down to is that you and some other people want to do raids but choose to believe you can’t unless there’s an easy tier. Some other people don’t want to fail because failing is not fun, so they want an easy tier. Still others want the ease and convenience of, “log in, open LFG, join raid squad, complete raid, collect loot, log out.” Those peoples’ intentions are thwarted because they want something that raids are not. That does not mean raids are harming the game. As to an “unfriendlier community,” there were more exclusion complaints in dungeons than I see for raids.

See italics for responses.

To end, I’ll ask the same question I asked in a different thread, to which you have chosen not to respond. “Have you tried to do any of the easier raid bosses with your guild members? If not, what stops you?”

zealex.9410:

JTGuevara.9018:

Because it is!

Raids are unfriendly by definition and design.

I dont see anything in their definition or their design that suggests that.

Raids are a type of content that is designed around exclusivity and elitism. That’s their whole point. Thus, they are basically unfriendly as a part of their nature.

Ohoni.6057:

The problem is, raids are unfriendly by design. You have to be reasonably skilled to complete a raid, so a team forming a raid MUST either A: exclude people who are not already good at the raid, or B: commit several hours of their lives to an activity that could be completed in twenty minutes, with no guarantee of success even after that. I can’t at all blame people for choosing A under the current design.

Basically, this.

Chadramar.8156:

Sadly, yeah. They don’t have to be, there’s absolutely no reason why there couldn’t be easy raids.

Unfortunately, no. Raids, to remain raids, need to be challenging, and that triggers the abovementioned inherent flaws. Yes, an “easy mode raids” can be created (and would probably be a good idea), but don’t let the name fool you – those would not be raids, they would be easy mode instances based on raid encounters. It’s just that this is a bit too long for a mode name.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

If all the people complaining about other people in raids would team up, they could do the raids.

If everyone could (and would) do raids, then many raiders would ask about something even harder.
After all, what’s the point of a “difficult” content everyone can do? Moreover, what’s the point of belonging to an elite group of players that consist of all of them?

IndigoSundown.5419:

To end, I’ll ask the same question I asked in a different thread, to which you have chosen not to respond. “Have you tried to do any of the easier raid bosses with your guild members? If not, what stops you?”

I don’t know about Blaeys (though he mentioned many times before that he is raiding, so most likely he had), but in my case, yes, i have.
That experience didn’t cause my opinion of raids (and the negative impact i feeel they caused to this game) to change for better. If anything, it only made it worse.

saeleth.3915:

Being someone who hasn’t raided previously in GW2, I’d like to get into it. But honestly the vibe I have gotten across the board has been that its pretty much out of the question unless you are lucky enough to find a “training” group. I looked in LFG and it was pretty much only wanting exp players.

Am I missing that much if I don’t get to experience raiding?

Let me be honest. There are good people who raid and usually these are guild based and set groups. Most larger guilds have training days. HOWEVER just like every other MMO I have played there are always the few who ruin it for me every time which is WHY when I started playing GW2 (no raids at that time) I swore I would never raid if they ever let it in game. Well…they let it in game and I have ZERO interest and never been in a raid. I know many people who enjoy it and I see in chat those who would ruin it for me. SO I just stay away.

Good luck if you decide to raid but IF you do have fun…don’t be a jerk

Raids now a days are SOOOO MUCH less toxic than they were before. As long as you know the fight, (can watch videos) most don’t care. We had a Druid today for VG that was at 1,800 toughness and was pulling off the tank. We finished just fine with him. No one asked for kill proof, or to ping LI, or even cared if you were experienced or not, just if you knew the fight.

Which for those not at max mastery, that is highly suggested for you too!

Other than party size and needing to know mechanics, which was not always true in dungeons, raids are very much like explorable dungeons.

Raids are about as much like GW2 Dungeons as rebuilt Tequatl was like Shadow Behemoth. Similar in theory, MUCH more complicated and failure prone, which makes them completely different experiences.

ANet planned to cater to that demographic from launch. Explorable dungeons were supposed to be raid equivalents. The reason raids may seem to be a departure is that explorable dungeons did not work out that way for the most part.

This may be true, but is completely irrelevant. What ANet intended with the launch dungeons is beside the point, they launched how they launched, and people who came to the game liked what they were, and played for several years under the expectation that this was how the game should be, that this was the best possible state for the game. Then raids were added and were something else entirely, meant for a completely different audience of players.

“Harmful to the game” is an easy accusation to bandy about, but a hard one to prove. What it boils down to is that you and some other people want to do raids but choose to believe you can’t unless there’s an easy tier. Some other people don’t want to fail because failing is not fun, so they want an easy tier. Still others want the ease and convenience of, “log in, open LFG, join raid squad, complete raid, collect loot, log out.” Those peoples’ intentions are thwarted because they want something that raids are not. That does not mean raids are harming the game.

If those players exist, and they do, in some number, then it is harming the game. Now, that said, it also is clearly benefiting the game, in players who like raids just how they are. So the only unknown question is, how many are there of each group, what is the balance of benefit vs. harm, and how much should ANet care?

I mean I can tell you as a fact that the introduction of raiding caused fairly catastrophic damage to my guild at the time, and that it has severely eroded my enjoyment of the game, because it set whole portions of the story, rewards, and mastery process out of my reach. I still enjoy the game, but I’ve definitely been far less invested in it over the year since raids came out than I was in the several years previously.

“Have you tried to do any of the easier raid bosses with your guild members? If not, what stops you?”

Yes, and Vale Guardian stopped us.

Vale guardian aint one of the easier bosses, escort is alot easier and cairn alittle harder but easier then vale.

The issue isn’t the difficulty of the raids, the problem is the psychology and effort that is required to convince others that you know what you’re doing. Not only is that aspect not fun, but it’s tiring, toxic, time consuming, repetitive and overall a negative experience.

The reason the community is having a hard time with engaging others as they do in other mmos like wow, is because this game had no content like raids foe years and so the player base is either not used to this type of strict gameplay or they specifically play gw2 because it didn’t have strict requirements and thus the need to convince others of ability.

It’s difficult to know what mechanics Anet should introduce in order to make a demographic of the population be more accepting or less stringent in requirements. Therein lies the problem.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

It’s difficult to know what mechanics Anet should introduce in order to make a demographic of the population be more accepting or less stringent in requirements. Therein lies the problem.

I’m not sure making the population more accepting is something that can be done, after all it’s their own time and how they spend it is their own choice. It’s only logical when you make a random group to require players to be experienced so you finish it for the rewards. There is nothing wrong with that, that’s what random groups are for. I don’t think random groups are there for training and practice unless explicitly stating so.

Maybe what they need to do is add a better way to find and join guilds with similar interests rather than forcing random groups to take inexperienced players.
For example, an in-game guild browser where guilds can post their recruitment needs could help. There are training guilds for Raids, but they aren’t as visible and not all players browse reddit or these forums to know about them. In a game that allows you to join 5 guilds that can help a great effect on all game modes, finding a Raid training guild, a role playing guild, a WvW guild, a PvP guild. The possibilities are endless.

Blaeys.3102:

Because the design and implementation of raiding that Anet chose in antithetical to pretty much every part of the GW2 PVE experience. For the average player moving from the open and flexible systems in something like fractals or the open world to the walled off and shortsighted experience that is GW2 raiding is jarring and encourages elitism.

It adds that the implementation is also – understandable – hopelessly infantile in production value. I mean sure, it’s a new thing added to a game which was never meant to have it. Ofc it’s going to feel rough around the edges. And surfaces. And everywhere.

But, it still means that established MMOs (yes, specifically including WoW!) are running circles around GW2’s best raidfights. With their worst fights. And their whole systems and setup, all meant to facilitate and enable good raid gameplay.

In contrast in GW2, everything feels incompatible with raiding. The way we spec characters is unnecessary given raids, spell effects are detrimental to handling boss abilities, no support for UI mods (which could alleviate the previous point), no ally-targeted skills and hence no click-cast healing, no specific loot systems to enable raids to assign dropped items, no nothing really.

And it makes sense. GW2 was never meant to have raiding. Obviously so, or the whole combat system wouldn’t work this way.

It just feels like a misguided “me too!”-effort. Now GW2 has raiding, and all it does is motivate me more and more to quit and play a MMO where the game supports raiding instead.

Blaeys.3102:

Because the design and implementation of raiding that Anet chose in antithetical to pretty much every part of the GW2 PVE experience.

The GW2 PVE experience had nothing for guilds to do and outside of Raids there is still nothing for guilds to do in PVE. The major difference between raids and the previous PVE experience is that in Raids you are required to join a guild (to start your journey). Most of the older players who start pugs already did the raids with their guilds, that’s where you learn and practice. A random group is not the place to teach you mechanics, they are there for the rewards. Without guild raid teams there wouldn’t be random groups out there. The core of the raiding experience is guilds and that’s what needs a boost

This may be true, but is completely irrelevant. What ANet intended with the launch dungeons is beside the point, they launched how they launched, and people who came to the game liked what they were, and played for several years under the expectation that this was how the game should be, that this was the best possible state for the game. Then raids were added and were something else entirely, meant for a completely different audience of players.

There were also a lot of players who bought the game with the expectation that it would offer content they found challenging. While dungeons did fill that role at first, that did not last long. Once people figured out what a coordinated group could do, they were able to make short work of a lot of the paths. That propagated down through the skill continuum, abetted by nerfs and build changes until dungeons reached the state that you describe. The thing is, the people who wanted challenge have been begging for it for far longer, and in far greater numbers, than those who are asking for easy tier raids.

While I can understand the desire of raiders to keep raids from being diluted by the formation of an easy tier, that is not my objection. Mine is selfish, though no more so than theirs, or yours for that matter. The resources to make easy tier raids would have to come from somewhere. It would either take away from existing raid development, or from some other aspect of the game. I don’t want to see that. I also don’t believe that the number of people who want to raid but are unwilling to embrace the current setup is sufficiently high to warrant taking away from areas that do see a lot of interest.

I also happen to believe that the best thing for the game is for players in general to accept that every aspect of the game may not be for them. The more players restrict what they’re willing to do, the more likely they will need to foster that acceptance. You, of course, will disagree, as well as continue to fail to demonstrate that what you want has the numbers behind it to prove it would be good for the game.

There were also a lot of players who bought the game with the expectation that it would offer content they found challenging. While dungeons did fill that role at first, that did not last long.

Sure, but most of those players left pretty fast, and good riddance. They were corrosive tot he culture of the game.

I also happen to believe that the best thing for the game is for players in general to accept that every aspect of the game may not be for them.

And that’s fine. I can get 100% behind that, so long as two conditions are met:

1. Said “not for everyone” content cannot block progression towards earning rewards that “maybe everyone” players might want. Rewards are “for” anyone who wants them.

2. That no story is locked behind completion of any of this content, not even to the point of requiring someone else to “clear” the content for you and invite you in. This condition was clearly violated by the HoT 1 raids, no matter how much ANET and raiders might protest otherwise.

So long as those conditions are met, fine, “not all content is for everyone,” and there’s plenty of content I don’t do. But so long as that content is used as a gate between me and things that I definitely, 100% do want, then I’m sorry, but “not for everyone” no longer applies.

At all.

I actually think there are several things that could improve the state raids are currently in:

- Having in-game voice chat (maybe command channel → only commander could speak) would be great improvement to PUG.

- 2 difficulty settings where the harder one would unlock after finishing all bosses of the easier one or based on certain number of LI’s where each of the difficulties could be run for 13 LI’s each (would mean that higher skilled players would eventually help the lower skilled ones because of extra rewards).

- Having scaling difficulty or preparation course. I mean, fractals ain’t just the top X on the 150 AR. Either some beginner raid that explains the mechanics thoroughly or some some easy to grasp course for each raid where players can learn the mechanics.

- VERY EXPERIMENTAL! Remove linkable LI’s, make them a currency and do the same for KP’s like stuff. Let the community handle itself. Not having to proof anything would mean that there are higher chances of getting stuck with randoms but also having more aspirations to make a guild or group of players you want to experience raids with. People tend to use DPS meters anyways so if you get kicked you will have your reason there (you did poorly).

I think all above is doable and could prove some worth because having more players interested in raids would be great.

Uzunari.1964:

- Having scaling difficulty or preparation course. I mean, fractals ain’t just the top X on the 150 AR. Either some beginner raid that explains the mechanics thoroughly or some some easy to grasp course for each raid where players can learn the mechanics.

If scaling difficulty was actually useful for training then you could join CM Nightmare after you played T1 Nightmare, yet that’s not the case. Even if you finish fotm 100 Shattered Observatory you will still be excluded from 100 CM, and yet when a scaling difficulty is suggested, the challenge level is proposed to be T1 or T2 fractal level. Which is already proven by fractals to be worthless as a training and accessibility option.

JTGuevara.9018:

Because it is!

Raids are unfriendly by definition and design.

How?

bigchunk.5190:

i’m glad it’s there for those who need that experience as it retains quality hardcore players.

Not sure how the presence of an elite who are often openly hostile to people trying to start off raiding (as the OP has accurately commented on) is an asset to the 95+% of players who can’t get in or don’t want to get into this small niche content; the vast majority will never interact with this elite in any way that advances their [the majority] game experience.

As a non-raider myself all raiding means to me is scarce dev. resources being used to create content I’ll never get a chance to see, as won’t the vast majority of players: only WOW of all the major MMOs has a ‘raiding’ community above single-digit percentage and that’s because of the tiered raiding system, which the vocal elites shout down in most other MMOs when the subject is raised.

Kraggy.4169:

bigchunk.5190:

i’m glad it’s there for those who need that experience as it retains quality hardcore players.

Not sure how the presence of an elite who are often openly hostile to people trying to start off raiding (as the OP has accurately commented on) is an asset to the 95+% of players who can’t get in or don’t want to get into this small niche content; the vast majority will never interact with this elite in any way that advances their [the majority] game experience.

As a non-raider myself all raiding means to me is scarce dev. resources being used to create content I’ll never get a chance to see, as won’t the vast majority of players: only WOW of all the major MMOs has a ‘raiding’ community above single-digit percentage and that’s because of the tiered raiding system, which the vocal elites shout down in most other MMOs when the subject is raised.

And where can we look up the percentage for GW2?

Oh wait, again someone who makes up percentages to proof his point.
If the raid population is so low, why do they still develop raids?

LucosTheDutch.4819:

How?

Because they are tuned and designed for coordinated groups with good gear where every player knows what they are supposed to do within their role – so taking the non-meta speced guy in green gear who’s never done the raid before is actively detrimental if you want to actually beat it.

It’s not really Anet’s fault, unless you want to say their game design is conducive to creating this kind of elitism. It’s the community. This game has a more elitist community than any game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played them all. This fixation on ascendant gear, meta classes and meta builds is at a fever pitch in GW2. Not sure how or why it got that way, but it’s very off-putting for myself and many people I know.

It absolutely is anets fault. You can’t just grab 9 random other people, jump into a raid and make it to the end successfully, can you – that’s by design.

Draknar.5748:

My opinion on raids is that they are unnecessarily difficult. Not necessarily from the actual fights but the time limit that they put on them. It has really created a high barrier to entry for the majority of players. Most of the fights would be doable (with some practice) if not for the timers as well. It has created a pretty poor community where:

a) Players are forced into meta builds/comps simply to meet the time allotment. So in order to even be considered for a raid, players may have to completely re-outfit themselves to hope to clear even the first boss. Players that are in full Ascended conceivably contribute very little depending on their builds. That sucks.

b) A clear divide between raiders and the rest of the PvE community is created.

c) Tolerance for new players learning a raid is non-existent these days. Alienated people from even attempting it.

You really end up needing a dedicated raid group, or a pug filled with experienced players. You can’t just casually round up 10 guildies and hope to kill even the first raid boss. That’s pretty crappy considering this game is sorta designed to have a low barrier to entry on pretty much everything else.

I’m all for difficult raids, but make it on technical abilities like dodging and placements (which they do already as well) and remove the time constraints.

Which brings up a good point. They could easily create a difficulty tiering based entirely on Time to Clear under their current system, without having to inject mechanical hindrances like they did with Fractal Instabilities. In fact, missions in Factions and Nightfall were time trails, to which they added a Hard mode on top of later for higher rewards.

The adjustments wouldn’t be hard to figure out. Keep the current reward structure for partials, but set aside 5 shards as the Speed clear bonus. Speed clear bonus is based on the current time limit. Next change the Rage timer….. rather then effectively being a near guaranteed wipe, have it ramp up over 3-4 minutes. That should be enough wiggle room for a PUG group (that had any chance of finishing) to make it to the end. If they can beat that, they get the 10 shard standard reward.

This does 2 very important things for a novice or training group……. First: Its still the same base line difficulty, but it opens the margin for error, and allows them to move on if they don’t want to retry for the Speed bonus. The rewards are effectively less then 75% wipe, which encourages pushing for speed runs…. but doesn’t foster the kind of frustration and animosity a flat wipe does. Second: The englonged rage phase still puts pressure on the group to make the kill to survive, but emphasizes even more attention on the fight mechanics to stay alive long enough to matter.

A lot players hate Overtime in Competitive games, because of the chances for an upset at the end of the match. But if you think about it, this shifts into a more aggressive mind set so long as the odds of victory are attainable. This is where aggression actually means something; and a crushing blow against the enemy ends the match on a high note. Where as a crushing blow when the timer still going isn’t definitive, and leads to spending that time taking as little risks as possible.

Apply that thought process to raid comp, and you start to realize that skill rotations are just a function of conditioning… and is a huge reason as to why so many players can’t handle deviation from the established formula. Competent players can make adjustments to recover….. but the game goes out of its way to punish them for it. That doesn’t promote improving skills; all it does is focus on making things as predictable (ie: as Safe) as possible.

That becomes your dividing line for Raid Meta. Speed runners will still be elitist jerks, and continue to be like they’ve always been. But you now have segment of mid-tier raiders who are gaining experience with the mode over time- but not create this situation where a mid-tier run feels like a total waste of time. The mechanical difficulty doesn’t have to change (in fact, its preferable to keep it consistent); but starts to become more friendly to training groups (which needs to focus more on mechanics anyway), and gives enough wiggle room for players who haven’t pinned down the DPS portion to not immediately be the reason the group has to /gg half way through, even though they could still make a kill if push hard enough.

Ohoni.6057:

I mean I can tell you as a fact that the introduction of raiding caused fairly catastrophic damage to my guild at the time,

There’s that. I’ve seen some of that as well. It’s one thing when a game has this sort of “exclusive” content from the start, but when it’s thrown in later, it can be quite disruptive in various ways.

Carighan.6758:

spell effects are detrimental to handling boss abilities, no support for UI mods (which could alleviate the previous point),

This is a huge issue for me, because my brain seems to be wired weirdly and overloads fast when spammed with visual clutter, which is bad when a game has a generally hectic combat with little time to react. I can process text so much better. Even simply adding a brief chat message (like the good old “Onyxia takes a deep breath”) for the worst boss abilities helps a lot.

(And yes, I know that having mods like DBM means that content is likely to be designed around everyone using them, and some people don’t like that. Which is a perfectly valid opinion, too. Just saying that it’d be nice to have a happy medium between “visual clutter out the wazoo” and a “this mod tells you everything about the fight and everyone expects you to use it”.)

no ally-targeted skills and hence no click-cast healing,

Including no self-targeting ability. Another design choice I don’t get. Even without specifially ally-targeted spells, there are still reasons why you might want a quick hotkey for yourself or a party member.

Uzunari.1964:

- Having in-game voice chat (maybe command channel -> only commander could speak) would be great improvement to PUG.

Voice chat is even more prone to abuse than text chat, so making it more instead of less required is probably not a good idea, IMO. I’d rather see a better chat system, including macros and buttons/hotkeys for them, but I doubt they’ll ever go there.

Vindicus.2130:

It’s not really Anet’s fault, unless you want to say their game design is conducive to creating this kind of elitism. It’s the community. This game has a more elitist community than any game I’ve ever played, and I’ve played them all. This fixation on ascendant gear, meta classes and meta builds is at a fever pitch in GW2. Not sure how or why it got that way, but it’s very off-putting for myself and many people I know.

That’s it and it has been like that forever. That kind of toxicity and blind meta-adherence could already be experienced back in dungeons.

I’ve done the first raid like 2 times, or maybe it was just the final boss idk, but it was with my guild and they asked me. From my time playing other games raids and such they are all basically the same, If you can’t have a group teach you the ropes then you have to watch videos, streams, and whatever and basically pretend you know what you’re doing and hopefully you can get through it without being kicked.

saeleth.3915:

Does that mean there are no new raids coming with PoF in favor of open world content?

I hope it’s the former. There is no point to raids in this game and HoT should have proven that.

Miellyn.6847:

Kraggy.4169:

bigchunk.5190:

i’m glad it’s there for those who need that experience as it retains quality hardcore players.

Not sure how the presence of an elite who are often openly hostile to people trying to start off raiding (as the OP has accurately commented on) is an asset to the 95+% of players who can’t get in or don’t want to get into this small niche content; the vast majority will never interact with this elite in any way that advances their [the majority] game experience.

As a non-raider myself all raiding means to me is scarce dev. resources being used to create content I’ll never get a chance to see, as won’t the vast majority of players: only WOW of all the major MMOs has a ‘raiding’ community above single-digit percentage and that’s because of the tiered raiding system, which the vocal elites shout down in most other MMOs when the subject is raised.

And where can we look up the percentage for GW2?

Oh wait, again someone who makes up percentages to proof his point.
If the raid population is so low, why do they still develop raids?

You are proving his point for him, man.

Raiding has been unfriendly for years but don’t worry this type of gameplay is dying out completely. Right now in any MMORPG raiding is demanded by only 1% of the population, so every developer save for Blizzard has stopped making new raids. It’s also good to point out that even Blizzard has made raids for the purpose of killing bosses with less power in order to see the storyline rather than require everyone to do the same thing.

Every game out there that’s been focused on raiding has eventually had to work on the demands of the casual players which is the majority.

GreyWolf.8670:

saeleth.3915:

Does that mean there are no new raids coming with PoF in favor of open world content?

I hope it’s the former. There is no point to raids in this game and HoT should have proven that.

Well, looks like ANET thinks otherwise though.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/new-expansion-has-no-raid/first#post6667709

The gear grind is why I don’t raid. I have all ascended, but it still isn’t enough to raid with. There are all these other conditions you have to meet for each class that you play. I play all 9 classes, so that’s a lot to keep up with.

Wildfang.3271:

GreyWolf.8670:

saeleth.3915:

Does that mean there are no new raids coming with PoF in favor of open world content?

I hope it’s the former. There is no point to raids in this game and HoT should have proven that.

Well, looks like ANET thinks otherwise though.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/new-expansion-has-no-raid/first#post6667709

Yay? They’re paying an entire team to produce content 1% of their customers want.

If i can’t play my class how i want to, and am to be expected to play a dumb internet build.. thats a easy and simple .. okay bye .
Good thing i don’t care about legy weapons or armour.. its simply not worth all the gold-materials and effort.

And like PzTnT said *The elitism in this game makes the raids (and some other team stuff) extremely unpleasant and it really is the worst I’ve seen in any of the MMOs I’ve played.

I agree and this is a fact.

Vindicus.2130:

It’s not really Anet’s fault, unless you want to say their game design is conducive to creating this kind of elitism.

But that’s exactly what it is – a result of a game design that Anet introduced into the game. Thus, Anet helped to encourage this kind of behaviour in the community.