I normally try to keep my nose out of the toxicity of the mayhem that is the GW2 forums, but I wanted to find a way to articulate my reasons without being over-the-top dramatic and resorting to directly mailing my concerns via email, which were likely forwarded to the development/support team more times than a toilet’s seen business. And aside from the matter of condition-based inhibitions or irl issues, I think Blood Red Arachnid accurately relayed a large number of problems down to a T that I myself am profusely repulsed about, to the point that I’m about ready to quit the game.
I like running solo and all, and heaven forbid, I like myself a challenge, and was willing to give raids a go. I wouldn’t even have qualms with working up to the necessary credentials to gain admission to a raid, to learn about it… but what I cannot condone enough to TOLERATE running five minutes in a raid, is the obnoxiously unpleasant attitude of elitists in the first place, which is what drives the rift between casuals looking to give the raids a try, and the elitists who live, breathe and thrive in raids. And a common misconception said elitists seem to make when accusing casuals of whinging about raids, isn’t always that they don’t want to raid, it’s that they’re either too disconcerted by the crowd they’d be associating with to raid in the first place, or are feeling provoked that they have to coexist with these people to get future incentives soon to be implemented into the game, and on a time schedule that may not even work for them so they have to ultimately scrap the idea, embittering them about the raid idea as a whole. Hell, it’s even a shame that I’ve seen posts about people whose guilds have fallen apart because their interests differentiated too much, and it’s sad to see that raids can provoke such a problem in a game whose strongest point was its social community.
I really, really liked this game way back when. Sure, it was simplistic, and frankly not all that challenging I’ll admit, but this game’s shining quality was its casual nature that had me coming back time and time again. And now? People will religiously point it out if someone asks what skin you’re wearing, you link the gear piece and they catch you wearing healing gear, followed by an unnecessary tirade of why healing gear sets have absolutely no utilitarian benefit in this game. They released healer classes in the game to be healers, when did trying out something new and tinkering with its potential a bit become so banal? When did, as Arachnid said, the motto of “play how you want to play” become obsolete because the new content had to go and oppose that quality? Who knows, maybe I’m wrong and some raids bring healers, but for every map chat, regular chat and forum chat I’ve witnessed, healers were the devil.
As a little constructive criticism to Anet, raids were, in a sense, a good feature with a promising aspect, I won’t deny that. I was even looking forward to trying it out myself. But there is definitely a LOT of room for improvement on how it could have been integrated, such as tweaking the raid insofar the holy trinity of tank, healer and DPS became relevant, and thus stats that weren’t just berserker would have value again. Heck, so that classes designated to their roles would be useful once more. Perhaps add a DoT AOE that would compel healers to wear gear that maximized their healing potential, keeping their teammates alive when it became hot and heavy, and then perhaps a feature that would require a tank to lure the boss away from the group, whilst being heavily fortified enough to take the lethal blow the boss would deliver so that the group stayed alive, and the tank did his job without falling flat on his meaty posterior in the process.
I liked the look of the raids, but their delivery was so awkwardly executed in my perception, this game isn’t fun so much as toxic these days, and this is coming from someone who likes their skills being put to the test as much as any hardcore gamer. But I value sociability on par with challenging content, and in the long run, it wasn’t the raid that killed this game’s luster for me, it was the rancid attitude it invoked in a target group of people that have made the atmosphere of the game much less immersive than it used to be.
Who knows, if I start seeing good news from afar about GW2’s sense of direction and they fix these issues that alienated the new features they sought to capitalize on in the first place, I’d give it another spin, but I’ve spoken my peace, and with that said, tah!