Guild Wars 2

Blaeys.3102:

TexZero.7910:

So why should Anet, pander to you guys when the people who are currently raiding, have been able to use the tools available to them to prove that there are barriers except those you impose upon yourself.

Because it’s not pandering – it is making a logical compromise to meet a customer and a community desire. It is also expanding the game mode to include more players and, potentially, generate greater interest in raiding – thereby creating a greater pool of potential lfg (and static group) raiders (helping fix what many see as the biggest issues with raids now).

Anet created raids in response to people asking for higher-end difficulty. It was a customer and community desire to have harder content. THAT’s the premise behind it. You’re talking logical compromise, but i only see devaluing the efforts of the developpers (not sure bout that orthograph) and of the raiders that make fair use of the tools the game gives us to fight and help the new people step up their games.

I’ve wrote it before, but an easy mode wouldn’t create a much wider static group of raiders; it would create a split-group that stays in the easy mode.

In the same optic that dungeons, personal story, sPvP, WvW and most PvE beside fractals don’t have a difficulty setting, i hardly see a point to easy mode.

Ohhh my god, yes @ the broom becoming a glider. yeeesssss

Blaeys.3102:

Sird.4536:

Blaeys.3102:

Raiding as it is now is not well received by the majority of players (that is my opinion, btw, but it is based on what I see in game talking to people) – and, even if they don’t post here, there is a good bit of animosity toward them.

Not well received because those people can’t find a group or guild, got nothing to do with the encounters or story or whatever in the instance.

I agree. The problem is not the mechanical design of the raids, which are well done.

It is an accessibility and overarching design issue. And one I think they need to fix before starting development on any new raids. They need to use some of the amazing creativity and new MMO thinking we saw in so many areas at launch to make raiding a true cohesive part of the GW2 experience.

What is stopping would-be raiders from raiding?

I get the feeling most of the complainers just don’t like raids. That’s ok. I don’t like wvw. But that hardly means it’s not accessible. Same with raids.

BordeL.1283:

I still fail to see the goal of being able to complete a raid on an easy mode, even as a trial run.

Because you re not the target group this content would be developed for.

Basically, challenge is not the same for everyone. There are people that would be challenged even by the easy mode, just as there are people that are already claiming that current difficulty is faceroll easy.

BordeL.1283:

Players that want easy mode will stay in easy mode.

Even if that’s true, what’s wrong with that?

No. No, no, nonononono, no.

Raid was meant to be a challenging content. I’m probably not the only one that stepped up my game by raiding, helping each other guildie out, gaining more stuff, tweaking builds, switching composition as needed, trying new strategies to get better, getting wiped miserably half the time. What’s the point of a dumbed down version? If you give people an easy version, there won’t be a flock of new raiders; you won’t get more people interested in the raid, you’ll just get more people interested in easymode.

The great thing behind GW2 is the panoply of modes you can play in. Dungeons (which already got dumbed down, kitten), fractals (that already have a tier system that i don’t really support) and a lot of different content out there either solo or in group, with a varied difficulty curve.

What’s next? Make WvW easy mode, where you can’t get killed by roamers and siege cost half the supplies? An easy sPvP mode where you get less pips but always go up in ranks? If you feel like raiding is a job and not a game, then it’s not for you. I’m too lazy to quote whoever said it in this thread, but not all content is made for 100% of the population. That’s what make it meaningful to play them, and worthy of existing.

Associating lower content with lower content may work in a casual way, but once you’ve done it a few times, there’s a big portion of players that will not go to higher tier. That’s what’s happening with fractals right now: when you’ve done Molten Furnace 1000 times, you’re not excited to do it with twice the agony damage around, you got bored of it already. I sincerely don’t want that to happen with raids.

Wow threads like this every day…..
Raids are good because they’re challenging.
The only people atm who are cut off from raids are people with little time on their hands to find a group or join their guildies, that i can completely understand.
The rest are the usual plebs that want things handed to them, “make asc gear cheaper, make easy mode for raids, make mechanics easier cause im bored to use 2 hands”.

Then everyone comes up with excuses like raid story content. Easy mode raids would have very poor rewards and people would only play them once (for the story), then proceed to forget about them.

Pls no double staff… If you want to tank you can go for GS/Staff at VG (Autoattackchain can evade every hit if timed correctly) or just s+a/Staff or s+wh/Staff at Gorsevall/Xera/KC (they only burst some times, but dodgeable).

Rednik.3809:

TexZero.7910:

Because talking to other players is super difficult……

It’s almost like those allegedly exclusive guilds aren’t recruiting or something…..Oh wait reddit/gw2 forums and even in game daily there’s adverts for guilds.

According to reddit survey, there is like total 40+% players who want to try raiding. If raid teaching is so widely accessible, then why these numbers are so high? It’s not like people have problems to join WvW/PvP/general PvE guilds, but suddenly all of them are too lazy to find a raid one? Why there is so many threads, topics and posts here and on reddit, under literally EVERY dev post?
Your logic is not working here.

It’s 100 times easier to complain about the process than actually take an effort to change the problem yourself.

Source, any “Functional Society”.

There’s an old adage “Those who can do, Those who can’t teach”….I think it’s time to update that for the 21st century. “Those who can do; Those who can’t, teach and Those that wont, complain.”

wut xD but the whole point of the raids, that makes them time-consuming, is hitting a difficulty wall that you need to plan and think ahead to overcome, if you adjust the difficulty to your personal preferences it misses the point of a raid.
What makes them repeatable is the rewards and the exhilarating effect of overcoming something extremely difficult, neither of which are or should be present in lower difficulty modes.

In reverse order:
I assure you that most raiders care for the gameplay, not the story, as well as anyone that decides to get into raiding; the story available in raids is minimal and accessible in a clear wing
Giving raid-exclusive skins to people that didn’t work for it, is something I’m against as well
“Catchup gear” is supposed to be exotic, no? I personally had crafted the exotic version of vipers accessories before I managed to get the asc accessory from raid.
All in all, creating a story mode could be a good idea (making newbies accustomed to a less potent version of each boss attack maybe) however I don’t think it’s gonna be worth it.
Raids are meant to be challenging, and you end up spending the majority of your time fighting bosses or planning how to beat them rather than experiencing the story. Taking the challenge out of them means that the extent of the content becomes quite short (it’s only 3 bosses per wing) also it makes the idea of “raid” less meaningful (atm raids are there to be the “very very endgame” that is barred from casual players).

Lastly spending resources on rebalancing and overhauling preexisting content to cater for a not-so-large portion of the playerbase, especially when said content will have no replayability, is something I don’t see anet doing anytime soon.

It’s not a compromise if you stand to gain everything.

If you want a story mode be prepared to give up any and all access to raid specific loot, as you are not raiding.

I repeat myself again but it’s needed:

People are like this in fractals.

People are like this in dungeons.

People are like this in open world.

People are like this in WvW.

People are like this in PvP. (Oh yes, they hell are! ^^)

People are like this in achievement groups, for example LS2 achievements.

Don’t attach “toxicity” or insulting players to raids. That isn’t true at all. You find such players everywhere and definitely not contentrated around raids.
In my opinion the raid playerbase is much more helpful with build hints, gear issues, tactics than any other playerbase. I’ve never learned more than from speedrunners, highly-addicted dungeon and fractal players and raiders.
Even in open world chat you get at least one ironic, sarcastic or a useless answer if asking a question.

Blaeys.3102:

• One of the biggest issues with the current model of raiding is that it brings these kinds of attitudes to GW2. Anyone that has played a raiding centric game has seen it there and knows that, until now, it has remained fairly calm in GW2. Things are changing, imo, because – when you start to build different parts of the PVE game for different communities based on skill/commitment time/willingness to conform to a meta, you end up with animosity between those communities (with scorn/disdain on one side and jealousy on the other).

Spot on, people are jealous. The problem with raids is that they are the best piece of content arenanet has created for gw2. They have cool unique rewards, a good story and plenty substance for lore fanatics, and more importantly they have by far the best boss mechanics.

Those that do not want to put in the time and effort to raid, miss out on the best content. They get jealous and they start making threads about easy mode raids/rewards/lore they missing out on. They feel if these 6 devs would not have been put on raids, we would have the quality we are seeing in raids in open world/dungeons/fractals. However they fail to realise the reason arenanet has not produced this type of quality before raids, is that the other formats are simply not suited for this type of content.

The future of raids is IMO highly dependent on the succes of LS3, if it is enough and quality content, the larger part of the community will probably stop bashing on raids. I think this is the hardest challenge by far for the devs to create fun/easy and quality content for 99% of the players. The job the LS team has to do is alot harder than what the raid team had to do ( they could essentially forget about 90% of the community).

@OP: Find a good guild. Raids aren’t nearly as enjoyable if you’re not doing them with a group of friends that are reliable and fun to be around for hours at a time. Seriously, don’t force yourself into this content with a group you don’t enjoy.

If you’re in need of a guild, keep a look out in the ‘looking for’ section of the forums or just make a post yourself to ask for interested guilds.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4ft01q/qt_dps_benchmarkstests_for_all_classes/?compact=true

SO what you are asking is the devs run around in a lion den in a meat suit? XD

I love when they claim a tower – seeing all the guards with little anet tags overhead, and enemies just flock to it (npc’s > rl players) like fly’s on … well you know. Would be interesting to see an Anet vs Anet vs Anet commanded event. Each leading a world pugmanding & in voice comms.

Even if it’s only just a one time event (outside of regular business hours)

Kain.7809:

(first note for hardcore players – pls no hate on this topic, ok? thx )
Well, I thought about that in nearest or next big patch, players could get the opportunity to play raids in the mode called “story mode”.
This would work in this way:
1. You could play all the raids in this mode without other players to read the story, dialogues, etc. with no rush. (you could play with npc’s)
2. Of course, the player did NOT receive ANY awards and achiv, which normally can be earned by playing raids with other players in the normal mode. (or maybe only some golds at end).
Really such a thing would be cool, because certainly there are people who care more about the story contained in these raids than the huge prizes and legendary armor. (Including me and my girlfriend).
_
So yeah… What do you think?
(sorry for my english xD )

There are tons of threads on this topic.

1. Almost all lore comes from a completed instance.
2. There’s almost 0 lore from the boss fight
3. An npc at the beginning of wing 3 summarizes the lore
4. Anyone can experience the boss fights
5. A story mode as you describe provides no replay value.

Cobrakon.3108:

I have a method that works 100 percent for the dive. Feel free to whisper me in game. Ill help you out. I have mesmer(s) parked there for this very reason.

This guys is super awesome! I’ve tried this number of times with mesmers’ help as well, but the jump itself never worked. I never thought i get it done, even with mesmer’s help, so ofc i was skeptical, but Cobrakon made it happen for me, i can’t thank him enough<3.

Cobrakon.3108:

I have a method that works 100 percent for the dive. Feel free to whisper me in game. Ill help you out. I have mesmer(s) parked there for this very reason.

Is it something you could share? I’d be happy to help you add it to the wiki, if you’re interested.

I have a method that works 100 percent for the dive. Feel free to whisper me in game. Ill help you out. I have mesmer(s) parked there for this very reason.

What I’d like to see is a game community in which everyone recognized that everything does not have to be aimed at everyone.

LegACy.1296:

Anyway, you laid out the counter argument for your proposal in what you wrote:

The fact is that raids accomplished a great deal for the game that was truly needed. They introduced content that genuinely requires intelligent play and sticking to mechanics in a game in which, other than the two large world boss events, no mechanics really mattered and autoattacking was good enough to clear anything. They took the control and support roles, which had never actually had any value for the life of the game, and made them useful, rewarding, and heck, worth running. They introduced a reason to actually make use of some of the enormous variety of stat sets that have long been in the game but for just as long had no purpose beyond leveling crafting. They did a lot more, too.

You see, raid did all those great things exactly because they’re hard and there’s no easy mode. If it’s easy, why bother doing anything other than autoattacking? If it’s easy, why bother using cc or healer? If it’s easy, why bother thinking about stat sets like condi armor or healing armor?

This reminds me of my time when I learned to swim:
Go in the water with inflatable wings. Some rows, you´re tired, pause. Rinse, repeat.
Go in the water with a foam board, Some rows, you´re tired, pause. Rinse, repeat.
Go in the water, make some rows, grab the edge of the pool, you´re tired, pause. Rinse repeat.

I can swim today, and I learned it just once. I just don´t want to learn to swim over and over again in GW2.

Ohoni.6057:

Any actual solution has to involve providing these players with the aspects of the current raid experience that they do want, without requiring that they participate in the elements that they don’t want.

Raids are in the game not because ArenaNet decided it on a whim, but because players actually wanted challenging experiences. The players who don’t want those challenging experiences have made that decision.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/CDI-Guilds-Raiding/first

I’m seeing more “I don’t like raiding” than “I don’t like this particular specific aspect of raiding”. I’m seeing a lot of “I want to experience the story of raids” which can be done in a cleared instance, but people are resistant to that idea because they “still want to experience the fights themselves” (which contradicts their original view of not wanting to get into raiding for the fights) which doesn’t have much bearing on the story (you get only a bit of flavour dialogue during the fight itself, and what little story is in the raids are items you can interact with, and only give subtle hints).

The point being, non-raiders aren’t being specific enough, or are making contradictory statements about what they want.

ANet’s current approach is probably the only thing they can do: keep raiding separate. If story elements of raids are important elsewhere (Living story), then it will be made available to non-raiders through alternative means. Living story is the content that’s targeted at the average player, and if the stories are related, then it’s two different experiences of effectively the same story.

Ohoni.6057:

I personally think more people are able to get into raids than they give themselves credit. The average players, the ones who know how to play their class well in dungeons and fractals, are able to get into raids with the right group, with enough exposure to boss mechanics to practice doing them. All it takes is a bit more effort to get to that point (I speak from experience. I considered myself about average before raids, and after about 2 months of raiding, I’ve gotten to the point of being able to do full clears, and it really didn’t take as much effort as I anticipated).

Just because people might potentially be capable of passing a raid, doesn’t mean that they want to, or should have to. If a player does not enjoy raiding, then he should have no reason to do raids, and should not feel that he’s missing out on anything OTHER than the experience of hardcore raiding content. You are trying to encourage players who aren’t raiding to raid, how about instead accepting that they don’t want to raid, and helping them to find what would make them happy about the situation?

Then that is their choice. If they don’t want to get into raiding for the sake of raiding, then there’s little else I can do to help.

As for making non-raiders “happy” about the situation, people want different things. I can’t please everyone, and ArenaNet can’t do that either.

The ones who don’t want to get into raiding have lost the right to complain about lack of rewards or content – they choose to separate themselves from that content even if they are fully capable of experiencing that content. That’s decision is entirely on them, and I take absolutely no responsibility for it, and shouldn’t be obligated to.

Manthas.6234:

Rashy.4165:

The raid team has pretty good momentum. I don’t see them slowing down anytime soon, and expect to see the second raid soon. The target is one wing every 3.5 months or so, and we’re about a month after Forsaken Thicket has been completed. I’m personally expecting a raid with LS3 to tie in with the open world and story content.

Look for dedicated raiding guilds looking to fill out static teams. r/guildrecruitment is a good place to look. The one I’m in right now does frequent learning raids to get people familiar with mechanics and to spot the fast learners to get into static teams for quicker clears.

And this is what worries me. New raid wing every 3.5 months or so, means older raid wings gets more irrelevant.

Well, your worries are unfounded. The great thing about GW2 Raids is that every wing will always be relevant for two reasons. One, all bosses drop insights. Two, there is no extra tier of gear to make old raids pointless like WOW and other MMO’s. It’s actually really well thought out.

Vg will still be as relevant as whatever bosses come out in future raids.

I personally think more people are able to get into raids than they give themselves credit. The average players, the ones who know how to play their class well in dungeons and fractals, are able to get into raids with the right group, with enough exposure to boss mechanics to practice doing them. All it takes is a bit more effort to get to that point (I speak from experience. I considered myself about average before raids, and after about 2 months of raiding, I’ve gotten to the point of being able to do full clears, and it really didn’t take as much effort as I anticipated).

There are plenty of avenues for that.

The ones against hardcore raiders and calling them “elitists” have been the ones that appear the most toxic from my point of view. I don’t see these “elitist” raiders coming into the forums making threads that disparage “casual” players. You saw the same with dungeons long ago as well. Players are entitled to have requirements in their LFG posts on who they want to group with. If others have issues with this requirement then they can simply create their own LFG with no requirements and play with like-minded players. Everyone wins.

Raids are also meant for a small subset of the playerbase that actually enjoy content that is challenging. Just because some people do not like that type of content does not mean that it should be discontinued. It’s a little selfish and seems to be on the same level as some PvE players who get upset when Anet does anything PvP or WvW related as if the entire game should revolve around their specific game mode or style of play.

This is a beautiful story, we need to set up a sticky thread with ‘Raid Success Stories’ and keep it in this sub-forum for all to read and share, IMHO.

Since I’ve seen threads lately on people saying it’s impossible for newer players to get into raids, I’d thought I’d share my story and provide a checklist for what newer players or players new to raids should do to maximize their chances of getting a raid kill.

I bought the game when it first came out, then set it aside basically until about a month and a half ago because I raided in Star Wars the Old Republic. Once I quit that game, I wnt fullspeed into GW2, and got my elementalist from 40 to 80, started learning dungeons, got him full exotics and weapons with the right runes and sigils, got my ascended trinkets and built my ascended staff.

I wanted to get into raids. The guild that I rep has wonderful knowledgeable people, some of whom have killed the bosses in the various wings, but doesn’t have a static raid group and isn’t raid focused, and I wanted to try the raids. So I kept LFG open for a while, and I found one that didn’t specifically list kill experience required. I had read guides and videos ahead of time and checked leading raid guilds’ websites to learn the loadouts elementalists use on Vale Guardian. I watched Fennec’s video on the dagger/warhorn rotation to learn it the best I could get. I did all this before stepping into an LFG raid.

Before I joined that raid’s squad, I whispered the person advertising the raid and let him know that I knew the strat, was properly geared, but had never actually been in there before. I asked for the opportunity, but said it would be no hard feelings if they didn’t want to take me. They took me, I joined their teamspeak, I said thank you, I learned, I died too much, but I learned a lot and seeing it that first time helped a great deal. I repeated this process a few times that day and the next. I watched some more VG videos from an elementalist perspective. On all my attempts I was stocked with the best in slot food for my class.

On day 3, I felt confident enough to post in the LFG “LFR VG exp tempest.” I felt that after 30 or so pulls, I could post that i was experienced, because I knew the fight, knew what was required for my role, even though I hadn’t actually killed it. There was a separate squad that was looking for a tempest for VG but wanted 10 LI, and I purposefully did not join that squad because I didn’t have what they required and I didn’t want to try to be someone I wasn’t. It turned out that that squad saw my entry in LFG and invited me. I joined, but said immediately, “Just so you know, I didn’t join you in the first place because I don’t have the kill and want to be honest here. I’m properly geared with proper food, know the fights, know my role, but I don’t have the kill. No hard feelings if you want to kick me.” Then the group was looking for a voice chat. And a conversation ensued. They asked me if I was running dagger/warhorn meta build. I said yes. They asked me if I had at least exotic gear and ascended trinkets. Yes on both counts. So I offered to host the group in my guild’s teamspeak if they would take me, but said no hard feelings either way. So the commander said ok fine, your job is damage and don’t die, so let’s give it a go.

The group was obviously experienced. We wiped a few times at first, and fortunately the mistakes were unrelated to my role, and the leader noted the dps was fine, so no one dwelled on the fact I hadn’t killed it yet. Between pulls while people were discussing, I asked if anyone noticed anything I could do differently, and asked a few questions about parts of the phases. After a player or two switched classes, and about 6 pulls total on that run, I got my first VG kill. I was so excited that I forgot to friend everyone before they quit the squad and left teamspeak Was I helped by an experienced group? Absolutely. Did I make mistakes? Sure. Did I get lucky? Somewhat, but I did things to make luck possible, and that leads me to the checklist for people who want an experience like mine.

TL;DR

1. Prepare in advance as much as you can by helping yourself as much as you can. There a lot of resources out there. Learn what gear, weapons, runes, sigils, builds and food are best in slot for your class and role for the specific boss you want to kill and get them. No excuses. Have at least exotic gear and weapons and ascended trinkets. No excuses. Have the right food and enough of it to last a couple of hours. No excuses. Watch the videos and know the strategies ahead of time. No excuses. I used qT and LoD’s websites and DeKeyz’s videos to learn the builds and other videos to watch the fights.

2. Attitude. There are always jerks everywhere, but as a whole this community is awesome compared to other MMOs. Clarify with your group what they want you to do and do it. If the raid leader tells you to do something, do it no questions asked. It’s his/her raid and you’re a guest. If you want to ask about why, save it for after the raid. This leads to a related point which deserves its own number.

3. Raids are about the team, not about you. You don’t get to play how you want, you must play in a manner that’s best for the group to get that specific kill. It’s not elitist for people to expect you to run a certain build, equip certain weapons or to slot specific skills. It can obviously be very helpful to understand why a certain loadout is the best, but the time to get into those issues is not during the raid. Talk to people after the raid or PM them later. Or better yet, look in the Players Helping Players subforum, look for the sticky, ask to join the guild called “Noob” as a student. Then reach out to the class specific mentors (who at least for elementalist are awesome), ask them about tips for your class before you even get in a raid, and ask them why a certain build is used. The raids have been out for a long time and people have spend countless hours testing everything out. That time and effort must be respected if you’re new to raids. Just run the meta builds until you’re experienced enough to know when to tweak them. It’s not elitist for people to expect you to run them. No one should be required to discuss this with you or argue with you about it during a raid.

4. Have voice chat programs and use them and get a headset and a mic. You at least need to be able to listen. I get that people are shy and don’t want to talk, but it would be best if you could actually talk because typing during a raid is a pain and takes too long. In my case, having a teamspeak that others could use was likely a factor in my group taking me in the first place.

5. Don’t misrepresent what you have done and what you haven’t.

Hope all this helps. Yes, you will have to work, spend a lot of time in LFG if you can’t find a dedicated raid training guild, and make a dedicated effort. It all depends on how bad you want it. But with a right approach and the right attitude, it’s all within reach. If you have the right approach and the right attitude, I think you’ll find the raiding community as a whole to be accepting of you. It just happened for me, it can happen for you.