Guild Wars 2

thrag.9740:

-arc: I think you should standardize orbs phase to happen based off hp %,. at the same percentage every time.

You mean the orb pushing phase? That’s exactly at 80, 50 and 30% of his hp.

STIHL.2489:

it’s a well known fact that tiers would resolve the current problem with raids, I have not advocated them, and I still don’t.

They won’t. And it’s not a fact it’s just your opinion.

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

thus still making raids not worth doing . and not even fun . when you can go to pve for a half hour and get a lot more fun

I don’t know man. I have a lot of fun in raiding and raids are worth for me in terms of gold, social interaction with other team members and progress towards ingame items. That’s why I was looking for a static group – the best decision you can do if you want to raid on a regular basis.

Makai.3429:

Jahroots.6791:

You’re probably not missing anything. It’s a matter of taste.

Some players are into ‘twitch’ style gaming. They enjoy mechanically complex encounters and quickly become bored if they don’t feel a rush while playing. Most (if not all) of the highly skilled, seriously dedicated sort that the devs actually collaborate with fall into this category, thus going forward a lot of of the newer PvE content appears to have been designed with their preferences in mind.

There are still lots of others (like me) who really just want something moderately engaging to play with other people at a comfortable pace, but we aren’t the intended audience for fractals and raids.

For example: I really, really enjoyed T4 fractals when Necro was OP and instabilities were basically negligible. You could pug everything everyday with virtually guaranteed success. And for what it’s worth, the rewards were much more satisfying when the content was easier. But, others felt this level of difficulty was a ‘joke’ and so on, so they changed things to be legitimately challenging. So now the hardcore players are satisfied, but now I can hardly stand to bother with ’em.

They simply cannot please everyone, unfortunately.

Yep, and those of us who don’t like or can’t do twitch play are getting pushed out of the game, just to satisfy the elitist raiders, which is really sad.

You can still run 99 & 100 with 5 necros or 4 necros + 1 druid and almost go afk. Both fractals are easy as hell with that team comp.
The only difference is if you run the respective CMs (challenge modes) but even here 99CM is at least decent doable with necro comp.

Murdock.6547:

… I dunno… it just irks me more than anything to see that nobody ever questions the commander.

It’s because such coms are rare. You can see within seconds after joining if a com is inexperienced or not, even before the fight has started. At the latest you’ll recognize it during the first minutes of the first pull like with other inexperienced people. If somebody is so good at hiding his inexperience and additionally can carry his weight (for example his dps is fine, plays the mechanics right on Sloth or is calling things out correctly during a fight) I don’t see any problem to play with him or letting him be the com.
Since those things are obvious to veteran raiders it’s a non-issue again. Of course it would be a problem for new raiders but they can’t join anyways because the com would have set the entry barrier too high for them.
So, where’s the problem again?

WARIORSCHARGEING.2637:

wipe out the elitism and the I am so pro thinking like this and take away all dps meters from the game add ons . and make the players use the dps meters in the game the game came with .

and give better rewards and let players of all types of play do the raid . they fail or they will make it . but as it stands now raids with all its problems is not even worth bothering with at all .

Bad players will still remain bad players if they do not want to take effort. The removal of DPS meters wouldn’t change anything. On the contrary people will kick more randomly again like before the introduction of meters instead of knowing the one(s) slacking.

Thenme.6491:

i want to play this part of the game, i don’t want to make this game my life, and i did search for guilds, none of which accepted recuitment without Li

And? You still can. Raids weren’t designed to be pugged in the first place and advertised as organized group content. Deal with it.
And referring to the guild part: I don’t believe you. Ask in a raiding initiative or a starter guild. Don’t ask the experienced ones because it is obvious that these do not want to carry dead weight over weeks till you have learned.

Thenme.6491:

It’s not about forming a group or leadership. Its about difficulty gap. I who never beaten a boss allready know how to do so on 3 of the bosses. I form a group and explain people what to do. and at first as a group we suck, takes time to get it. every try we get a bit better. The problem is, people get impatient. Most of the time when the boss gets to 20% and then we lose at least one person breaks and leaves. Since in raids everyone has their own parts u need to explain the new guy what to do and he needs to get better so it takes us backwards and then more and more people leave until even i get frustrated and leave. until the next time where i form a new group and the cycle begins anew.

Stop pugging raids, look for a raiding guild/community. There are enough out there in EU and NA and you’ll at least find one that will recruit you instantly even as beginner.

AllNightPlayer.1286:

That’s an outright lie. There IS a problem in this community. Denying its existence is a lie.

Are you able to specify it? What is the exact problem?
Players demanding a title because they don’t want to carry others?
Are players not able to open an own fractal group for practice purpose and learn it the way the others did?

I was actively pug raiding in EU this evening. There hasn’t been any single group demanding API key or such must have filled faster than the usual ones.
Of course, I can’t speak for NA but in EU the percental appearance in LFGs must be <1% so to speak a non-issue at all.

Mister Asdasd.6194:

Where do people base the “t4 fractals are raid stepping stones” BS anyway?

It’s because they officially stated that the harder ones in T4 should serve as a stepping stone into raids in their opinion!

Mister Asdasd.6194:

It also doesnt help that people start demanding “meta builds” and killproofs and titles and AP points all over again because of the difficulty curve of the new fractal and people being bad at the game. I had this ele who was the party leader, he asked for meta build, food + pots 15k AP title exp dps meter check or kick and guess what? He died within less of a minute 4 times in a row. THe boss would go to 97% and his portrait was already grayed out.

The first thing coming to my mind is: Why the hell on earth would you join such a group if you personally believe it’s toxic? And due to your joining you supported this player and you bowed yourself to his attitude. WTF?^
There’s only two reasons to join such LFG requirement: The first one you really want to avoid bad or average players to carry their corpse. In that case you are no different to the player who set the lfg and the other one: you need to be carried.

I’ve carried several players through the usual T4 (Level 100) now, especially on Arkk and Viraastra. If your whole group is not able to bring them down, you should really take a step down and do T2 or T3 first. I mean, it’s the new 100 and you join to think it’s a cakewalk or what? Of course you have to deal with the mechanics first and that’s easier to learn on the lower ones. Go 100 afterwards and you will see there isn’t much difference, it’s just a little bit harder.
In my last dailies with pugs there we were 3 or 4 alive in the end and it was easily possible to get the boss(es) down. Only a real bad group with no knowledge of the mechanics will fail as a group.

CM is different. If you can’t make it, you are too bad. Nothing to be ashamed for, you reached your limit. Try again and “git gud” or accept the the fate!

I haven’t seen such requirement in EU yet and I doubt it’s getting popular. For the most groups this is too much circumstantial and too absurd.
Personally, I won’t join such a group and wait some more seconds to join the next one.
In addition I don’t think that you want to play with those guys anyways.

Maybe you stop to produce multiple post and create one instead.

And next time stop posting when in a rant. Calm down and overthink your words.

Challenge Mode should be challenging, it’s possible that you are not good enough so take the usual 100 or T3 if you aren’t able to beat it. You can also create your own group and stop pugging if you feel left out!

STIHL.2489:

If changing the loot would kill the raid, then it was always about the loot, it’s not about the fun, or the challenge, or any of the other snake oil reasons that get passed off, it all boils down to loot, That’s how they killed dungeons, by doing nothing but modifying the loot.

So can we all just admit to it now?

That’s bs. I play for fun & loot. It’s the combination of both plus that there is content I’m able to beat and others can’t. I do and have done a lot of sports over the last 10 years and it was always about competition – being able to improve and push yourself to limits. I know that there are enough couch potatoes out there liking to log into the game and get their legendary for free. And so, Anet is a company that has or wants to serve content & rewards to everyone. Fortunately, there’s both for all fractions and yeah, ofc the lazy crowd is moaning about the harder stuff. I can live with that because it is fair.

Astralporing.1957:

maddoctor.2738:

Astralporing.1957:

Anything “equal” to you would be something actually way harder to get than the raid one – and likely practically impossible to get.

Legendary armor is available in PVP and WVW

And i have already seen many raiders complaining about it, saying that it’s way too easy to get it there. Even if it doesn’t have any special skin.

Many raiders? It’s more like that the overwhelming majority doesn’t even care about it at all. Even in this subforum where so many people are being treated like toxic elitists almost all comments were positive towards the change.
Personally, I have yet to found someone who is strictly against it.

Fenris Amarok.4052:

All the base materials yeah, but I don’t think you can buy things like lumps of mithrillium, which you can only craft once per day. So no, you can’t craft it all in a day.

Nope, you are totally wrong. Everything you need to craft weapons and armor can be bought and you can simply craft it right away.
Your assumption to start from the bottom is your mistake here. You can buy Deldrimor Steel Ingots and never craft any Lump of Mithrilium.

But this ignorance is significant for a lot of GW2 players. Not that I’m annoyed by this but it gave me a different look onto many players in case of challenging content. If you don’t know anything or good enough you’ll obviously struggle over and over again until you either learned it the hard way or you try to inform yourself better and you can get away with far less attempts and effort.

Nick.6972:

As far as I know, you even if you have the gold, crafting all pieces cannot be done in a single day.

Nope, you can buy all the things needed for crafting in the TP.

Did 12 runs in a “relaxed farm” and went out with 40g + 150k (full karma boosters) in one hour. This is definitely farm and the complete opposite of terrible in my eyes. Of course you can always optimize it and get away with more but terrible is something different.
Some people really need to be grounded. ^^

Faaris.8013:

You must be reading impaired then (yeah, you insult my buddy and you get this in return :P )

I wrote that these groups don’t actually state their requirement in LFG. My guild mate joined a few random groups in T1 and got vote kicked before they started. He just started the game and probably has <200 AP (haven’t actually checked, but that’s what you get after playing a few weeks I guess)

That was enough for him to be discouraged. I know not all groups are like that, but he got fed up quickly. Usually players in fractals have at least 2.5k in T1, those few hundred a new player has are obvious to them. They don’t state any requirements but they implicitely require you to have a decent amount of APs.

And I still don’t believe any single word!

I have another acc with low AP and I’m doing T1 fractals with it since 3 weeks. I haven’t been kicked out of one single group and almost all groups below fractal level 20 have zero to little experience in those runs and absolutely no, they don’t have at least 2.5k AP in average.
So your friends words are highly disputable. I assume that he is not honest with you and there’s reason why he doesn’t play fracs. The most obvious one is that he wants to play with his friends, namely you and others, and not with some strangers around which is understandable.
Best thing is to take his hand and do T1 with him together. Since you know fractals T1s become a breeze – for you and for him.

Your friend must be blind then, lying or he was in the wrong section, maybe T2 or T3. There are dozens of T1 groups popping up, filling, disappearing and repeat – in EU and NA.
Only very few of them have requirements, mostly the ones above level 20 because those are the ones where you need AR in T1. The majority is set without any requirements and as a beginner you have a broad choice spectrum.

In their latest statement they said they have no intention to raise the cap. It was a dev post in this forum but I don’t know which thread it was.

Substatic.6958:

It’s actually very hard to get into a GW2 raid compared to WoW/FF, which have over 100 listings at any given time. GW2 has like 3-4.

And the kicker is, those 2 games have much harder raids yet are pugged much more frequently.

You know that raiding is the endgame content and the main focus in WoW, right? GW2 is a totally different game with raids as a niche/side content. So, it’s more than obvious that you have many raiders in WoW while the majority of GW2 players are not raid focused.

Amineo.8951:

People keep saying Deimos is easy, but it’s the worst raid boss to do with pugs by a mile, one fail from the black kite, hand kite or tank and it’s GG, and I’ve been in groups that failed below 10% hp…

On the other hand you only need 3 competent people at Deimos namely the ones you mentionend. The rest can afk dps while doing the boring range strat.

Würde Sinn machen zunächst im deutschen Forum in der richtigen Sektion zu posten:

https://forum-de.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/lookingfor

or if you want to stay international here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/community/lookingfor

First of all, I did Escort yesterday on my 2nd account with around 1,5k AP and nothing else. No title, no LI, no kp and I didn’t mention anything about my experience. We did it the first try with nobody dying. And to state a fact: There were several similar LFGs like that – for different bosses.
So, from this point you’re horribly wrong.

Keep in mind that raids are NOT meant to be pugged via LFG. It is possible, yes, which shows that raids are not as hard as they were expected to be but they were meant for organized groups.
The most helpful advice is to join a raid training guild or something comparable to this. You find them via “Looking for” in the forums or reddit. There’s also a lot of guild promotions in chat ingame – everywhere and every day.

Also, since you know about the Samarog part with thief skipping it you are not as unexperienced or new as you want us make believe. It seems that you have at least some LIs + KPs so you should be able to join groups here and there to gather more and more experience. Or you could just open your own group, your experience should be enough to lead some bosses – you don’t have to be a supreme commander for the easier ones!
Another hint: write less – play more. Although I like people debating over the game in the forums you have a high amount of long posts over the last days. It could help to spend more time actually playing the game than writing about it.

No, I don’t like your suggestions at all.

The reward pattern will be overhauled anyways, look at the corresponding thread on the first page of this subforum.
Stat-swapping is relevant when patches hit. It would be very annoying to swap everytime you enter a new fractal, with pugs it would take aeons because they forget, don’t have the gear on their toon they are playing atm etc. etc.

I also don’t like to be dependent on playing my chars due to mistlock instabilities. They are annoying and add nothing challenging to the content. I’d rather have new fractals and not overhauling the system every fricking year. Too much time and development was spend to overhaul fractals over the last years. It’s enough, just rework the older ones and bring new fracs.
In my opinion they can also remove the instabilities completely because they add no fun to the fights.

zoomborg.9462:

Not really an exaggeration, most casual groups disband pretty quickly, not even an hour tbh making the farm too short to compare to a full commited farming group. Also in the real scenario u will also have people dying at least on molten effigy cause people will down if u dont kill it fast which increases the overall time by a big margin.

An hour of farming is a reasonable and adequate indicator for comparing. You don’t need to extend it because the loot won’t change over time.
And I have never seen anyone dying on molten effigy besides being total incompetent or a new player in this fractal. A lot of classes are able to block/reflect his autoattacks making them no threat at all.
You are mixing up newcomer groups with casual farmers, there’s a big difference between those.

Rankomonaut.4708:

The big problem is, imo, that when you miss the start and don’t do cm in the first couple of days , you end up being excluded from good parties. (until you get a clear)
Although, as in my case, knowing all the stuff and only did a LNHB run (Arkk 4% godkitten it! Nova Launch bugged for one guy) I have problems to get into groups, because title or kp I can’t provide, although I know the whole stuff.

I know people want experienced players but the big problem is, that an essence or the first title proofs nothing. (since you could have been carried or bought it.)
The requirement separates wheat from chaff, but in many cases the chaff is filled with good players that can’t proof that they are good.
As for dps meters, I couldn’t care less.

Trust me, there are enough decent players out there who are also still trying to get the CM done. You just have to be self-confident and open your own lfg. Most of the people are just sitting straight in front of their monitor waiting the perfect lfg for them to be opened. On the other hand don’t expect taken care of players that already have finished it and do it on a daily basis to join you because you think you deserve it. Also, don’t claim that there are so many players out there that can’t proof that they are good. Good people wanting to have it done either have already done so or go in and do it and not complaining in the forums or elsewhere.

And a big “no” to the argument that players “could have been carried or bought it”. The vast majority of these will most likely never ever run this CM again and if they do you’ll recognize them immediately if you by yourself aren’t a bad player and you can wipe them out from your party.

zoomborg.9462:

40 fractal with a “relaxed” group just doesnt make enough gold to justify running it. Again it is all about efficiency.

No, that’s not true. Even a “relaxed” group farms more g/h in fractal 40 than in every other content around. RIBA is far away in numbers.
It’s one thing to not know anything about your class, the encounters and be a total beginner in this fractal but that doesn’t fit to a standard casual farm. With 5 players in at least appropriate damage gear bosses are melting anyways. Only a group of complete beginners would struggle and be total inefficient but those mentioned relaxed groups aren’t. Of course they don’t dupe the video scene, don’t use the meta comp or best in slot food but this is not necessary. And it’s not 3-4 times the gold difference, that’s too much of an exaggeration.

12 runs is an hour – I myself can’t stand farming a lot longer because it’s becoming kitten boring. This is the reason why people leave then and there’s no problem with it.
Making around 40g in one hour is enough for many players a day. You have to keep in mind that the average GW2 player wants to have fun and play the stuff he likes. They do this fractal to obtain gold for stuff they want to buy, not for fun!

Still, your expectations are different. You want to do this for several hours, I suggest either going the “efficient” way with experienced people and strict rules – such players tend to be more focused and will stay – or you just open the lfg and ask for new players which definitely works as well.

Zefiris.8297:

Easy to explain.

Everyone that joined did not think it was a L40 relaxed farm, they thought it was a hardcore meta only speedclear farm – ie, that thing where four people do the job and the fifth person leeches.

Except all of them except one wanted to be that leech.

Nope. As you can read above.

Ohoni.6057:

There absolutely is a reason, you just don’t support it.

If raids are something people want to do, then there is no need for it to have a unique reward.

If raids are not something that people would want to do without a unique reward, then they are doing a disservice to their customers by bribing them into playing it.

No, as a raider you do raids for fun and the reward. For me both is needed because my raid motivation is lowered after having cleared all wings the first time. Afterwards you get nothing which is like playing fractals (not lvl 40 farm) or dungeons twice or more per day which almost nobody is doing. On the contrary you can play Tarir/DS or the mentioned fractal 40 over and over again to get rewards + a lot of gold and that’s what the majority of players is doing. And even there are exclusive rewards like Leystone armor or Auric weapons.

Faaris.8013:

I joined a group in LFG that was “L40 relaxed farm” a week ago just because I was curious how it works out. In my opinion, a “farm” is by definition not a relaxed activity.

- nobody except me used fractal potions or the Scarlett’s Armies pot
- not everybody used food/nourishment
- we had trouble keeping the defiance bar down
- people were not dodging or jumping over Berserker’s shock waves
- people didn’t stack
- there was no run without someone dying
- each run took much longer than it takes with my guild mates when L40 is a rec daily

After about a dozen runs, the group disbanded because people left. In the last 3 runs I had to take down Molten Firestorm alone at 10% health because everybody else died. Three times in a row! That was probably the reason why the group disbanded afterwards.

I play power daredevil, so staying alive isn’t a big deal, and it wasn’t my responsibility to keep the team alive. I don’t have skills like that guy who soloed the Molten Bosses at L90 with thief, but any fractal below T4 is easy for me.

My point is: there is no chill farm, it just doesn’t work. If you commit to farming, it’s work. People don’t do L40 over and over again because it’s fun or because they enjoy the cutscene (it’s really well made, but gets old after the first 200 times or so). The only reason these farm groups exist is profit. Characters are just the tools for generating that profit, and for everything there are good and bad tools. In this case, there are classes better suited as tools than others. If you want to get a share of the profit, get a decent tool. You are in a team, and the others are coming with sledgehammers. Don’t show up with a chisel and expect to be allowed in and get the same share.

You got exactly what a “L40 relaxed farm” is – and yes, it definitely works!

- People aren’t using food or if so they are using MF food – totally ok
- Nobody is forced to use fractal or Scarlett army slaying potions
- If you don’t have enough cc it doesn’t matter
- People don’t need to execute the mechanics in a relaxed farm
- If people die it won’t matter because it’s “relaxed farm”
- Runs take longer because it’s relaxed farm with strangers

You had the wrong expectation of such a “L40 relaxed farm”. It’s not about being highly efficient at all, you just do it while chilling on your 2nd monitor and still you get more gold than playing any other content in the game. I did it some nights ago for one hour which is comparable to your “dozen runs” and I made around 40g in that time + 150k karma because I used evertyhing that could boost my karma income for that hour.
Another issue is to insist on others doing the support stuff because you are there for the dps. Again, it’s a chilled run so don’t expect others to be top with their class even if you are.
So, definitely no, a relaxed 40 farm is not work – it’s comparable with running in the (old) train farms in CS or FGS with your loot stick. If you want to make the best profit out of it, join the exp farms but be prepared there.

eXruina.4956:

Lol such animosity over my post.. I’m just stating the fact that such programs are abused and this is in fact undeniably real.

Have people abused those programs in the recent past in terms of gear checking which is and was not allowed? Yes, I think so.
Is selectivity per dps abuse? No, because dps meters are allowed and since a squad belongs to a commander he has the right to remove you if you won’t bring his requirements.
Will you get mad as a player to be removed via abusing or just not meeting their dps check? Probably yes, but you shouldn’t. You don’t want to play with such individuals anyways. Only very toxic people will be very rude to you or set requirements you won’t fulfill so there’s a positive selection for you as well.
And as I already wrote the vast majority of squads won’t kick you even if your dps is slacking a bit due to some of the players are performing better than you need to kill the boss.

eXruina.4956:

I just don’t like seeing people, specially the newbies who try really hard to get ostracized for one reason or another, specially over the blown up egos of people who think they’re better than other people. ^^ I remember a time when GW2 was so much friendlier and such things though not unheard of are quite minimal.

edited

If you are a newbie you don’t belong into an experienced group as long as the group is willing to carry you (which is not very rare in case of raiding).
As a beginner you should start to practice and learn because if you have no clue about what you are doing and not improving it won’t help you for future attempts. On the contrary most of those people will create a bad atmosphere in their next groups pretending they are good in what they are doing although it’s not the case. Either “git gud” or buy the reward/title if it’s possible and then don’t play that content again without getting into a learning group before!

eXruina.4956:

since most of the people who run cm run third party software to check out your dps, gear, etc.. and will auto-kick you should you perform below their standards.

I doubt that. If people are looking for dps and you bring maybe 2k less than the other ones, the majority won’t care. People become suspicious if your dps is lesser than around 5k because then you are lacking in skill fundamentally (or you aren’t well prepared in terms of gear, food or wrong traits).
In fact I haven’t kicked or haven’t seen anybody that got kicked out who was in the range of expected parameters. Since 100CM seems much harder without decent dps it’s reasonable to expect people to know their dps class. I haven’t tested much with classes in the new CM but one day we tried with a viper necro group first and it was pain at Arkk (for us – we have no speed clear background) while the power comp (ps, chrono, druid, dps) is very comfortable.

eXruina.4956:

Besides that most groups also require you to already have done the run and have the title. Which makes it really hard to get the titles in the first place because its such a closed group.

Yes, I believe it’s hard to get into those groups that already have the title but it’s still possible to make it with your own lfg and several attempts. Don’t expect any of the other players to carry you and maybe you have to also change players by yourself because they can’t make it. I know a lot of T4 people struggling a bit at 99CM but succeed and I think a lot of them will never succeed in 100CM. It’s possible that you have to try it hours, maybe on different days and there’s also a chance of not getting it done.

eXruina.4956:

ANET should really disallow third party software at the least. Its not healthy for the game. Specially for the new and/or casual players.

edited

New or casual players won’t get into contact very fast unless they try to join (very) experienced groups. Even in one of my casual raid groups we just use the dps meter to check if we or some of us are not doing too bad. We rather use it for troubleshooting (wrong gear or traits due to class swapping etc.) or trying out new stuff and what works best for us. As long as you don’t run into groups with very high and strict requirements dps meter won’t harm you. Of course toxic individuals exist in GW2 like in any other online game. Just sort them out like they would do with you – straight to block list.

Astralporing.1957:

True. They are still a group of game veterans whose individual skill is probably above average. Moreover, they are a guild of good friends that seem to trust each other, know each other’s skill levels, play with each other often, are on a voice chat, and are using tools like damage meters. What’s more, they are seemingly perfectly okay with failing. It’s completely different situation compared to pugs.

It seems you don’t have much clue about dmg meters or you haven’t watched the videos completely.
And what is thing about to be a veteran? It’s just an advantage like you have in every game around that exist in the world compared to a beginner. Except some gambling stuff.
As a non-veteran you are still not excluded from joining a raiding guild but I think everyone agrees that it’s not very useful to get into the game and start raiding immediately. The same goes for dungeons, fractals or even running around on lvl 80 maps, especially the HoT maps.
Nothing of the above mentioned things are inaccessible or hard to achieve if you have some fundamental social skills.
The recommendation for new players playing GW2 on reddit and in these forums is to join a guild. I don’t see why that should be different to raids, especially for raids because they are endgame content

Astralporing.1957:

Many of the pug groups would likely be able to do so, if they were okay with failing countless times first. Which they aren’t.

And that’s why you don’t join pugs that explicitly state that they are training or that one should bring patience and not leave after some fails.

FrizzFreston.5290:

There are also alot of more exclusinary “elitist” groups as well.

Of course, nobody denied that but as non-toxic player you won’t even get access to such static groups most likely by failing to meet their requirements at first.

FrizzFreston.5290:

And on the other hand I haven’t met that much toxic behaviour within PuG groups myself. Just by avoiding those that have too much LI requirement than makes sense. In fact with some groups when you’re honest about your LI even if you don’t meet the requirement the reaction usually is, “Ah it doesn’t matter that much” as well.

Tell that to Astralporing and others, not to me. I’m not pretending the LFG is a dark pool of elitists. I personally have made some really good experience with it, only a few annyoing ones but as somebody with healthy self-confidence you wish such individuals a nice day and move on a.k.a. leave the group and look for another one.

Cristalyan.5728:

:-)) I don’t think the developers really knows that Cristalyan is playing their game to stop me with a dedicated sign to play something. But I know that the developers stated that the raid is designed in such a way that most of the players won’t be able to complete it successfully. You know what most of the players means? That means that the raid is designed to be completed by only few players. That I belong to one side or to another is not important. What is important is that the developers denied the possibility to play and complete a certain part of the game to most of the players.

And no, when I bought the game I bought it as a whole, with the intention to play it as a whole and not only some portions of it. This was my intention. Unfortunately, the developers made HoT in such a way that most of the players cannot enjoy a “portion” of the game.

In conclusion – I don’t blame the community. The community cannot stop me to play what I want to play in this game. Also, the decision to not play the raids is not mine. This decision belongs to the developers who designed the raids in a way that only a few of the players can complete it.

Even if I completed the raid I don’t consider myself to be a raider. Why? Because accepting the bait with “the raid is only for a few chosen” you risk your freedom to have an option. If you consider yourself one of the Chosen, you will defend any ANet action regarding the raids – even if the action is against the community. Aaaah :-)) And by accepting that you are one of the Chosen, you automatically excluded yourself from the community :-)).

I think I will regularly raid when the developers will apologies for the statements regarding the exclusion promoted by the raids, admitting their mistake.
I always considered myself as a part of the GW2 Community. But is clear that the raids are not for the Community. The raids are for the Chosen.

If more and more parts of the game will be reserved for only a few players I think I will respect this also and I will stop playing GW2. As per the developers intention, I guess.

Well, if the design have been good from the start, you wouldn’t be able to complete explorable paths in dungeons as you were able after some months after release and today. Dungeons were thought to be the challenging content in this game and luckily for you everyone can participate in them but actually that wasn’t intended.

Murdock.6547:

TexZero.7910:

[…]create your own raid group[…]

I came back because this needs to be talked about right now before anyone makes the same mistake as me.

DO NOT. I REPEAT, DO NOT make your own group.

You will be taking on a massive amount of responsibility, like it or not, you will be thrust into an authority and leadership role and if you’re not looked up to as an authority then nobody will listen to you and the group will fail.

You will be forced to disband and recreate, recruit, and deal with irrational people insulting, questioning and ignoring you. Players growing complacent or lazy and not doing research, leading to wipes and sloppy kills. Unless you crush out this sort of behavior swiftly and cleanly; but few people have it in them to be so surgical all of the time, then your group will stagnate and fall apart.

You will deal with so much crap both in the forming and maintaining of a static.
I’ve both personally experienced, and witnessed groups fall apart because the leader vanished, wasn’t taking the job seriously, or was too lenient.

As my dear friend told me multiple times before during and after my group fell to crap due to my inability and unwillingness to manage it…

“Do not start your own group unless you GENUINELY want to be a raid leader, and you enjoy the responsibility that comes with it.”

Then there’s the fact that the entire group has to get along and play well together. Once cliques start forming its up to you to make sure they stop that. The entire group needs to be one happy family or new people will be put off and eventually (once cliques leave, and believe me, entire groups will leave together if you let any form) you’ll be left with nothing.

It will ruin the game for you if you do not want to do any of these things.
Or at the very least you’ll end up not wanting to do raids anymore and come complain on the forums about the awful community (heh)

Seems to me that you just haven’t been good at things you were trying to achieve. Of course, not everybody is born to be a good commander and most likely you are not.
But on the other hand it is not very hard to have a solid lead and human beings are always able to learn and improve – same applies for leading a squad.

FrizzFreston.5290:

They are a guild. Not a PuG.

And? I haven’t said anything else and posted that for exact this reason.

It’s common sense that while pugging there is always a high(er) chance of experiencing toxic behaviour than within organized groups. We are debating about the raiding community and I’m just stating that there are ways to avoid elitism, toxic behaviour, selection and exclusion. The first step to achieve that is joining a guild.
If you are not able, not willing to or have other hurdles that hinder you from doing so you have to deal with the pug strat. Since most of these are strangers for us on the internet we know that some of them are bad apples.

My example of cmaj was just demonstrating that raiding hasn’t to do with elitism in the first place because they show it is possible to raid successfully without running meta strats, take too much too seriously and having a lot of fun. And I can tell from own experience with 2 guilds filled with casual players that this is the standard within a static group.

Animism.6849:

So.. you are trying to discredit the idea of at least changing the RNG, by… complaining about the RNG?

No, the only thing I don’t like in the current system is that I cannot choose my armor parts from the chest on the contrary to the weapon chest.
The drop rate is fine for me as it has been for the last 1.5 years (since fix) – sometimes you win sometimes the other one gets the chest.

Animism.6849:

How about making level 100 have a reduced chance than typical at receiving an Asc. Box from the actual loot chests, which in itself could be repeatable. (I always wished Fractals was repeatable).

I don’t like the prospect of playing Fotm daily for months in attempt to gear up some other characters. The minor amounts of gold I make elsewhere need to be spent on other things.

1. Allowing to repeat fractals + getting the usual reward would result into ppl picking the fastest ones. We already had this situation in the past with “Fractals of the Swamp”. It was disgusting, cheap and boring.

2. I repeat, fractals are not build for obtaining ascended armor or weapons. That is not what they stand for! Asc things are a reward and since we don’t have better drop rates in other content the majority of people are running fractals. Take the gold – it’s at least 10g+ per day – and craft the stuff you need.

Animism.6849:

I would 110% support FOTM 100 specifically dropping Asc. boxes though, that would be awesome.

No, 100 is too easy to hand out an asc box every day/daily. Either with power comps or the “lazy” method with necros this fractal is done faster than several others.

Animism.6849:

The drop rates between them aren’t far apart, also.

Ah, that’s why I have and still get countless of gloves and shoulders while chests are rare as ….

Astralporing.1957:

O one of the reasons behind cancelled development was that their “metrics” have shown to them that players are not interested in new dungeons. Why? Because Aetherpath was not popular. And it was a new dungeon they’ve put a lot of effort into. I also remember something about some tension between management and some dungeon team devs that might have resulted in some of them leaving, but that’s just a rumour and i don’t really know how much truth was in it.
Also, from what we’ve heard, dungeon coding was (and still is) a real mess and noone wanted to touch it. Especially after the people that wrote it were gone.

People were interested but Aetherpath was a disappointment due to various bad implementations:
First of all – an annoying & unnecessary puzzle that wasn’t intuitive. Almost all inexperienced groups disbanded at the oozes. If you were beyond that barrier the rest wasn’t as difficult as that.
The length has also been an issue because without HoT elite specs it took some time for non-meta groups to fight their way through.
The non-skippable cinematics which makes it frustrating to repeat on a daily basis.
And finally the reward in comparison to the length.
Nowadays this path fits way better although the puzzle is still the thing where pugs lose most of the time.

Astralporing.1957:

Higher personal skill level allows for more leeway in strats. You can’t really do that with any player, though – even on Samarog (which is indeed easy). Which is exactly why filtering pugs in raids is, unfortunately, sensible. Just having “level 80” as requirements won’t do.

Remember, that in raids, requirements are put not just because players demand perfection, but simply to increase the chance of success. Which is important, because (unlike in dungeons then), the base success chance with unfiltered crowd is close to zero.

Ermm, you know that cmaj is a music guild, right? Their focus lies on making music with ingame instruments. No offense to them and I’m convinced that there are skillful players in this group like in every other guild around as well but as they have stated in the videos they are not professional raiders or approximately experienced. That’s why I have big respect for their attempts and that they are recording and presenting this to the community! They laugh over themselves, producing funny moments, using non-meta compositions as shown in the latest video and still, yeah albeit this, they still killed several bosses now.
So, if someone thinks he has to raid due to whatever reasons he has to reconsider strategies and maybe accept it with a little less of salt and overall stop pugging if it’s hurting too much. There are many friendly (casual) souls out there that meet for raiding purpose and do other stuff 5-6 evenings a week.

Fractals are not there to obtain armor and weapon chest in the first place. It’s a possible reward with a better drop rate than in other content, nothing more nothing less.

If you’re really looking for armor or weapons take the gold and craft it with or without fractal journal pages. It’s more reliable and faster than to hope for a specific drop. Especially for armor it’s not really reasonable because there are 6 different body armor parts and it’s most likely that you won’t get the one(s) you need plus they have a different drop rate themselves.

Astralporing.1957:

Two reasons. First is obviously the legendary armor. Second is wanting to play with your friends, if too many of them happen to be raiding. I personally know a number of people that play for one of those reasons (or both) and do not actually enjoy the challenge at all.

(i also know a few people that do not enjoy the difficulty, but do enjoy the feeling of belonging to an exclusive club of “better players”)

So yeah, some players are in this because they find the challenge fun, but there are also many other reasons why people might be raiding.

In my case, for example, i enjoy playing with friends. I’m also a completionist, and the legendary armor is also a nice bonus. On the other hand, i find raiding to be extremely stressful, which saps most of my enjoyment from the previous points. No, difficulty is not fun for me at all, and i’d definitely feel better and enjoy the game more if it was lowered a bit.

Well, then I don’t have anything to reply here except that I’m beyond that with my age.

First, if you play a game in your leisure time and you play stuff in there you don’t like or which stresses you, you are acting irrational. There’s no absolute need of anything in this game. I could accept effort, a little bit of stress and the will to do annoying things to ensure the wealth of your family or own property. But for a game? Seriously, that doesn’t sound healthy.
Secondly, it’s highly doubtful that friends are raiding the whole week since even the average player can clear all wings in 1 evening after a couple of successful boss kills, maybe a 2nd day for bosses that have failed the other day. Again, sounds not very rational rather not reliable.

Astralporing.1957:

You can’t do that in raids, because, unfortunately, a lot of the requirements are sensible (even if people often tend to overdo them, and/or not be polite about them as well)

Yeah, that’s why a guild like cmaj can kill Samarog, one of the easier but still not the easiest boss, without chronos or meta composition.

If you set your own hurdles too high of course you will fail.

Astralporing.1957:

Plot twist: many of the players running raids now do not really enjoy them, and many are not there for the challenge.

Why on earth would they do that?
Playing a game or a specific mode and not enjoying it? I would definitely quit that at least the game mode.

Sorry for the double post but I want to share with you the next chapter of elitism in raiding, a real masterpiece of toxicity, ppl blaming and playing against each other without having a single spark of fun:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6vc2as/a_music_guild_tries_to_raid_part_3/

/s

Astralporing.1957:

Not true. The majority of visible LFG’s? Maybe – but that’s because the casual ones filled and disappeared off the list way faster.

Hmm, I don’t know what to say but I was playing dungeons and fractals only for more than over 2 years on a daily basis. Of course there were enough “welcome” lfgs but I doubt they were nearly as often as the ones with requirements, not even close to 50%. If that have been the case, Anet would never have cancelled dungeon development and they would be one of the main parts in the game.
Yes, those lfgs mentioned of you filled fast because players were sitting in front of the monitor and wait till the golden one appears instead of making their own.
I remember back in the days we had threads on a daily basis like “I was kicked out of a dungeon group because <insert reason>” and almost none of those people have ever formed their own group or at least match with the requirements. There were some really embarrassing threads about someone complaining and then the former of the group was also joining the thread.

Astralporing.1957:

Then i could open an “all welcome” LFG and have pretty much the same chances of completing as the elitist restricted ones. That is definitely not true in raids.

Or you can just open the lfg section – let’s say as druid – and ask for “2 chrono (1 tank) – 1 druid – 2 cPS – 4 dps” and there is a good chance of beating several of those bosses. Maybe not the “harder” ones like Sabetha, Matthias and Xera but you can and will improve over time and be able to do them later like someone who is starting T1 and will end in T4 some day.
If you just want to have chilled sessions, that’s not what raids stand for. For this situation this game offers open world exploration, several dungeons (not all), maybe some T1s (not all) and world bosses.

Astralporing.1957:

And yet i have never ran into the problems you describe. And i mean literally never.

Oh, you must be very lucky then or not playing T4s on a daily basis like me. When I pug in EU I literally have to set up lfgs like “Daily T4 – know the mechanics – relaxed run” otherwise the chance is high that players join for T4 that have no clue at all or not knowing about the harder T4 mechanics. Yes, I can leave that out but then the possibility increases of having a run lasting more than 1 hour and since I am able to finish T4s like today with a non-meta group in 27 minutes it’s a no-go for me. I have defined time to play and I’m not willing to spend the double than necessary. And as I said if I don’t write “relaxed” or anything similar the chance will be high that someone is joining and tries to tell every bit of tactic we already know and yells some more stuff if something happens out of normality.
People have different standards, not everyone is able to play with each other – this is no socialism where we all have to be the same. People would do good if they respect the lfg, it would create less harm – but I doubt this will ever happen.

nagr.1593:

I’m not sure how linking the same old sites…

If you had followed these links you would have seen that they are up-to-date. The german “Looking for” section has new posts within less of an hour and guilds are constantly searching, same on map chat. I know that because I’m very active there.
In addition the reddit threads are the freshest themselves as you can easily check via time stamps. People are doing such runs regularly – for complete beginners!

Seriously, if people do not use such things today although people tell them about their existence it’s their thing. Same if you apply for a job via letters and written stuff although the company has online applications only – to fit into your crude comparison.

I’ve seen so many casual players without 0 experience getting into raids over the last months because they wanted. They haven’t given up and just staring at LFGs where you won’t find many opportunities to start raiding.

Almost your whole post is about LFG, LI and pugging. If you don’t want to deal with toxic players or playing the roulette called LFG, then stop pugging and look for guilds. It’s just normal that the first guild needn’t to be the last, sometimes you have to walk on to find the people that are fitting to you.

I’m done with such stories because I’m helping raid beginners every week and those guys and girls aren’t professional fractal players or of any similar skill level although most of them are playing T4 regularly (which is nothing special due to being instanced content which attracts this crowd). They are usual players interested in raiding and have at least looked once at metabattle or qT’s site to inform themselves about no-no’s and appropriate gear. It’s not hard to play a magi druid as introduction as well as condi ranger or cPS. Even the 2nd chrono (in a meta scenario) is an easy starter without having the must to distort or other shenanigans.

And nagr, you have quite a history here maybe that is still an issue, I don’t know but since you have experienced so much tragic stuff I would look at myself and change it drastically like for example, stop pugging and joining a guild – as I mentioned above – with a nice atmosphere that kills maybe 3-6 bosses per week and grow with them. You can share your know-how and in a few weeks you will be able to fullclear.

Astralporing.1957:

I don’t know. I haven’t personally seen any of those behaviours, even though i was intensively pugging in the old days.

Yeah, elitists did exist them, but they were easily marginalized. Because all the elitists’ restrictions were, in fact a total bunk and most people knew it.

Now, raids created a situation when those elitist restrictions are no longer so absurd as they were then. In fact, many people can reasonably think they’re justified.

That is the difference.

What?

The majority of dungeon runs was set with requirements and people were kicked out instantly after not having the specific gear/stuff/whatever and would not adjust to the lfg. Of course to avoid that you had the opportunity to open your own lfg and you got mates to play with you – you can do the same today – in raids!

Similar situation for fractals, people left first phase of swamp when one run was failing. Mossman in the open without stating it in the lfg? Insta kick attempt or the one who joined left immediately. Not to speak about class discrimination!

When I pug fractals nowadays there is a high chance of somebody yelling around, trying to be the pro, being rude or pretending to be superior although he is a little light in reality. That’s why I rather run with guildies like in raids. The fractal pug community – I don’t like to call it that name – is way more toxic and selective than the raid community.