Non-raiders — a (hopefully) constructive conversation.

[Silvia.9130]

What I would like is this thread not to turn into a useless 'battlefield' between raiders and non-raiders but rather a constructive conversation that could help improve the experience and bring more players into raids.

What I would like to talk about is: why people who don't raid, don't want to raid. Tell our reasons, explain our point of view — possibly in a polite way.

I'll start with my own reasons, that are mostly three:1) My disability, which makes me simply unable to play as flawlessly as most other people.2) Anxiety disorder, that is not helped by the pressure and high expectations other players have, in raids.3) The mandatory use of voice chat for trainings. (I perfectly understand it is necessary and there is probably no other way to do it, it simply doesn't work with me.)

I don't expect raids to change to fit with my needs, I knew from the start I was not fitting for them.

I don't think I'm a terrible player, I just know I would end up kind of suffering from playing under that kind of pressure. :(

[Ayrilana.1396]

For #3, I believe most training groups don't require you to have a mic. It's just easier to give commands and such through voice comms rather than type them out.

[SinisterSlay.6973]

I like fractals well enough with random people. But sometimes it's quite rough even in the 1-25 I bother to play.Strikes I just don't like. Of the ones I have done, they always seem to be a matter of "everyone just attack this thing" and you get 1 hit killed a lot by the boss. No concept of anything but just spamming attacks. So a mixture of boring, yet frustrating.

I did one time with a group that was training a raid, and I frankly understood none of it. Except that I was forced to change to a character build that I really really sucked with.

So strikes were a funny thing for me, they convinced me to never bother trying to raid again. If strikes are to prepare you for raids. I have a bad image in my head for raids.

[Icefyer.9208]

For me, I have cerebral palsy, and it seems the only groups available require kill proofs, so you end up in a situation where you need to join a group to get kill proofs to join a group to get kill proofs, and it ends up locking new players out. Like trying to get a job, but all the entry-level positions require you to already have 6+ years at that company, rendering it impossible to get that experience in the first place unless you did it when it was new.

Either that or LFG is full of nothing but "selling X Raid". Ontop of the fact that the classes I like to play just aren't welcome in raids, like engie not having a viable / welcome support spec because it's Firebrand + Alacrenant or nothing.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

@Silvia.9130 said:What I would like is this thread not to turn into a useless 'battlefield' between raiders and non-raiders but rather a constructive conversation that could help improve the experience and bring more players into raids.

What I would like to talk about is: why people who don't raid, don't want to raid. Tell our reasons, explain our point of view — possibly in a polite way.

I'll start with my own reasons, that are mostly three:1) My disability, which makes me simply unable to play as flawlessly as most other people.2) Anxiety disorder, that is not helped by the pressure and high expectations other players have, in raids.3) The mandatory use of voice chat for trainings. (I perfectly understand it is necessary and there is probably no other way to do it, it simply doesn't work with me.)

I don't expect raids to change to fit with my needs, I knew from the start I was not fitting for them.

I don't think I'm a terrible player, I just know I would end up kind of suffering from playing under that kind of pressure. :(

i don't raid, but its only because i don't want to sign up for 3 websites and 3 discords, just get into a guild that does training, but its a dead guild anyway to people i have no emotional connection toward. Also i've mainly been a PVP'er/WvWer for the majority of my time in gw2, and so it's only until recently my game modes are basically dead so now i'm doing pve.

I like strike missions. I get to meet new people...so that's always fun, and it's not that hard, but challenging enough to be interesting content. difference between raiding and strikes is that you can pug strikes. What they need to do is have raid bosses have strike versions so that pugs can learn the mechanics there in a puggable and less stressful environment, so that we can move onto raids and pug raids.

Also most raiders or players that demand roles and KP from strikes are not smart and don't understand math. All they know is what they see on Metabattle and don't even understand why or how these builds are actually used or made in the first place.

[Fenella.2634]

For the record, both of my guilds do regular raid trainings without any voice chat ever.It is not impossible.

[Fenella.2634]

Sorry, double post

[sitarskee.5738]

I decided to learn raids this weekend and it took me about 25 minutes in LFG to find 9 other souls with desire to give raids a try. We didn't have any composition, we didn't have a tank and only 1 cdps but we had a healer fortunately. In 10 minutes we killed green and blue but red took us another 10 minutes due to it requiring condidps. Of course, 90% of us didn't realize that at first. Vale Guardian took us around 5-6 tries since mechanics were pretty easy (though I got ported every freaking time which tilted me af because I just couldn't see when it happens). After that most of people left but they wanted to progress further another time. I am definitely looking forward to doing it again on the weekend, I just gotta make sure to watch some tutorials this time to avoid silly mistakes and save some time.

It's not that hard to find a group when you don't require anything from people; yes, it was chaotic at first but then it kinda worked. Although, I understand why people demand kp and certain classes, they just wanna do it quick and without problems.

[Teratus.2859]

I've made mine clear over the years.Ironically many of my arguments with raiders have been about the exact same thing they argue for as well.

I just want to play the content with like minded players who don't care for the whole perfection min maxing meta stuff that many raiders claim is required for the content.

I disagree with raiders on that stuff being "required" based on the fact that many players including myself have beaten some raids without those kinds of perfect meta builds and there are other players who have beaten raids with low tier gear, small groups and non meta builds as well so obviously there are plenty of ways to enjoy and beat raid content and meta builds are nothing more than the most efficient builds for beating content as quick as possible.. they're not the be all and end all that they are promoted as.

Raiders often claim that they shouldn't have to compromise and take players who "don't want to learn how to play" but truth is nobody is demanding they do that.We just want our own more casual raiding community with more freedom to decide how we! want to play and enjoy the content, this is exactly what happened with dungeons and Fractal content in the past despite the big meta communities that existed around them as well and that casual community existing did not screw over the meta crowds and how they wanted to play that content.So there is no reason raids shouldn't have this option either.

Raiders already have a community of trained meta raiders they can team up with.A second more casual community would not effect how they wanted to play raid content even if they wanted to play with us and joined our groups.But any discussions i've had about the subject has just devolved into arguments about people "playing wrong" or trying to force raiders to compromise and take "bad players" in their groups etc..That's never been my demand and to this day I still won't join mega dungeon and fractal groups even though the content is easy to me, I always make my own groups but that simply isn't possible with raids because there simply isn't a casual community to recruit from.

[Lan Deathrider.5910]

@"Teratus.2859" said:I've made mine clear over the years.Ironically many of my arguments with raiders have been about the exact same thing they argue for as well.

I just want to play the content with like minded players who don't care for the whole perfection min maxing meta stuff that many raiders claim is required for the content.

I disagree with raiders on that stuff being "required" based on the fact that many players including myself have beaten some raids without those kinds of perfect meta builds and there are other players who have beaten raids with low tier gear, small groups and non meta builds as well so obviously there are plenty of ways to enjoy and beat raid content and meta builds are nothing more than the most efficient builds for beating content as quick as possible.. they're not the be all and end all that they are promoted as.

Raiders often claim that they shouldn't have to compromise and take players who "don't want to learn how to play" but truth is nobody is demanding they do that.We just want our own more casual raiding community with more freedom to decide how we! want to play and enjoy the content, this is exactly what happened with dungeons and Fractal content in the past despite the big meta communities that existed around them as well and that casual community existing did not screw over the meta crowds and how they wanted to play that content.So there is no reason raids shouldn't have this option either.

Raiders already have a community of trained meta raiders they can team up with.A second more casual community would not effect how they wanted to play raid content even if they wanted to play with us and joined our groups.But any discussions i've had about the subject has just devolved into arguments about people "playing wrong" or trying to force raiders to compromise and take "bad players" in their groups etc..That's never been my demand and to this day I still won't join mega dungeon and fractal groups even though the content is easy to me, I always make my own groups but that simply isn't possible with raids because there simply isn't a casual community to recruit from.

I'm going to parrot this due to my experience in FotM.

What is 'Meta' is meta in relation to what the speed clearing guilds have found to work. Something that is 75% as effective as the meta works just fine, and often not at a steep time differential. For warrior, banners are meta for example. They are almost never needed. Ever. Unless you are trying to shave off of a run time.

They are a nice buff for the comp. They will increase DPS. But unless people's DPS rotations are on point, then they are a wasted effort on the part of the warrior.

Look for non KP parties. Friend the people that joined. PM them again later to see if they want to do the raid again. Soon enough you'll have a static group that will get better and better at the raids even without voice coms.

I personally do not raid, I don't have the block of time available to do them in one sitting. But if I did that is what I would do. Its what I did in FotM and ended up with an amazing static group.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

@Silvia.9130 said:What I would like is this thread not to turn into a useless 'battlefield' between raiders and non-raiders but rather a constructive conversation that could help improve the experience and bring more players into raids.

What I would like to talk about is: why people who don't raid, don't want to raid. Tell our reasons, explain our point of view — possibly in a polite way.

1.) The system is build around the meta. The enrage timers leave not much space to errors or improvisation. You can out-heal certain mechanics nowadays. But there is basically just one scripted way of doing things. If you do not have the proper team for it, you will suffer and fail. In Dungeons and even Fractals you have space to improvise and if an encounter takes 40 minutes, you are not wiped after 10.

2.) Roles can be taken by several classes. But a few jobs are limited to 1-2 professions only. Some classes can be the 2nd Healer, which sounds as nice as being the 3rd wheel. The squad needs a dedicated healer with the right class, then you can play a less effective class doing the same job just worse, because your class is not designed to be that good. Support with boons is even worse. And then there is the FB, which can do many roles simultaneously at expert level. You look down on yourselves, realize your class/specialization offers nothing useful and decide not to give it a try. Maybe re-roll on a Guardian.

3.) As long as you are not an expert or have an almost full group, the LFG is useless. It is a group-finder for farmers. The KP system, which is often criticized, is not the root of all evil. The farmers just want to run with experienced players only. Had tons of discussions about that topic as well. After my last, I decided to advise new players to ignore the LFG for raids straight and just look for a guild that does training-runs. The entire debate is a huge waste of time for both sides.

4.) After 8 years, we have several classes which can do great damage in long-range combat. BUT we are still stuck with the stack-meta. Boon and Heal range are too narrow to allow ranged-combat. No party will risk taking your with your longbow/rifle build. Play melee or you are out. At this point, I do not argue with the raid-community. It is just bad design. Having ranged classes, but not supporting them.

5.) Resurrection of dead players is impossible. The meta for DPS classes is 100 % glasscannon, so as long as you are not in a team of experts, you can scrap this. Been in a couple of raid-trainings. You basically wipe constantly until you memorize the combat-mechanics, then keep trying to get as less players killed as possible. Some of the boss mechanics have instant-kills. If the healer gets killed, the entire squad does /gg. The /gg emote is probably the most used emote in the game.

-

tl&dr; The raid-community is not the reason I avoid raids. I just cannot get along with the design. I enjoy GW2 for many reasons, but raiding just feels like a different game with a GW2 paint job. Looks great, but does not work for me.

[Astralporing.1957]

I like mostly semi-casual play. That means, while i am okay with some level of difficulty, i am not okay with:

• having to train god knows how long in order to be able to kill a single boss (and in my case it really means long)
• having to repeat the training as soon as there are some changes to the group roster
• even after that training, and putting my effort into it, failing the encounter just because someone else made a mistake
• and finally, wasting more time on the organizational aspect of this content than on running the content itself

ah yes, there's also the point that i included in my sig: i don't like the cases where it's the content that decides who i can (and cannot) group with.

Notice, btw, that those are for the most part points on which any constructive discussion is pretty much impossible. What i consider to be issues, most raiders consider to be the very core of the "raiding experience". There's next to no space for any form of compromise to be had on those points in a single difficulty mode. Those differences can only be resolved by the way of having more than one version of the content.

[Armen.1483]

There are 3 ways to find a group for raiding:1)Make a discord event with friends/guild2)LFG3)Raid statics created from LFG

1st case is pretty simple and maybe the best bet for you. You don't need any KP/specific classes to play with friends or guild. Even if you got tons of it you have nothing to prove to your friends, as they play with you because they like you and that's it. So this proves that KP is not mandatory to get into raids. Also to note there are training groups too on some discord channels, they are usually filled very fast.

LFG people DO require KP and somewhat meta classes as they are not playing with you, but want to clear raids. They are either solo or with their own guild and filling the gap with LFG and need rewards or somewhat clean runs.

Raid statics sometimes require a certain number of KP to apply. Nothing to say here it is pretty logic: creating a static group that is capable of blazing through all raid wings in 2 days. Or sometimes they don't at all and are willing to teach you. Here again depends on your personality and willingness to socialise.

About the voice chat. Mic is not always required, but voice chat normally is for training groups or it wouldn't be a training. You don't have to speak in voice, but must listen to commander. If you are just starting, it will help you a lot. When I train groups I explain them mechanics before the fight, and tell them what to do during the fight, it is not possible to write it all. With no explanations rookies would just not understand why they died or what is happening. Voice chat is important for starting, but not that much if you are really good at the raids and can command squads yourself. If you are shy or don't want to talk, just mute yourself in discord, and answer commander in chat, it is completely ok. And let's be honest, you are playing the game with headphones on, so you can hear the in game sounds, then you certainly can hear to a real person too right ? Human voice is better than NPCs and combat sounds, especially when it helps you learn (unlike gw2 tutorial system -_-)

About the META class choices. You don't have to run full meta classes to clear raids. BUT more meta is your comp, easier to beat the raids. It becomes more important in low skill groups, as you will have a larger window for misplays. Another thing is playing something completely useless. Something like a dps druid will just handicape a group. People who say "I can't play raids because I am offmeta" usually are new ppl who don't understand the class/build choices for raids as they are much different from open world PVE. I can assure anyone here that any offmeta role that can do his job reasonably will always be welcome into ANY group. If the meta is to play a quickness/dps firebrand, but you want to do it with a chrono, you won't have any problems, as chrono can do the same thing with a lil less efficiency. But if you want to play a quickness warrior you will instantly get kicked of a group, as there is no such thing as a quickness warrior. Usually there is less diversity in support roles.