Why would I help newer players?

[Vinceman.4572]

@"Turial.1293" said:You must get your wing done within the first 3-6 hours of reset or there is a high possibility that you will not even see a group in LFG at all.

That's not true I can still get bosses & clears over the week without any problems. If I don't find the right group I open a squad myself and it is working fine. Maybe there are days/weeks where you won't get a full clear but that's the optimum anyways and not seriously needed.

This system doesn't work for raids and after 4 years the raid system is only available to a tiny, tiny portion of the playerbase.

Yes, the question is: Does it need any serious changes? You won't bring most players into raids due to one single reason: It's too hard for them or better said: They are not in the mood to invest that much time you need to beat one or several bosses. Speaking of adjusting builds, learning easy to hard rotations plus practice the encounters.I'm in a big community with 2 guilds in which the leader is streaming GW2 almost every day. He started trying to organize raids for beginners. Guess what the first couple of times around 50% of the players signing up were veterans although everybody was encouraged to join and taken before veteran players. Usually those community members participate in most of the advertised stuff. After several weeks - they got 5-6 bosses down on every evening - only veterans were signing up. After having asked the others it turned out that all of them weren't interested in raiding because it's just not their business to kill bosses without real story, not using the mounts and more. Now there are 3-5 people left from both guilds who want to seriously continue raiding and we will do so the next weeks.

Many people do have multiple accounts whether they multibox or play each legitimately, they still have to play those raids, they still earn their rewards. Speaking of rewards, almost all rewards in raids are account bound anyway so it's not like they would get much profit. Who cares if they run their alt accounts first, once they are done and out of the way, it means they will eventually have to help other players (based on a reward system for first time clears). The people that really care about DPS meters already use one out of game, build templates are on the way and while a mentor system seems very complicated, nobody is saying that is how it should be done. The point raised in the OP is that the current system is not working for 95% of the game, this is wasted development time if your players cannot even access it 4 years later.

You also mention that "Raiding is an absolute niche content" well I gotta say "what an absolute waste of development time then". What is the point of making content that 95% of your playerbase cannot get a group for except for 3-6 hours after reset if they are not already in a static group otherwise they have to buy raids. The current system is very flawed.

"Eventually", yes, maybe. But I highly doubt it. I've raided enough myself, compared notes with others & seen enough raid streams over the last years that it's highly questionable that a lot will change their attitude and suddenly help others. Nice & friendly people are already helping and organizing training runs be it in communities, guilds or just via LFG.A further thought: Are raids wasted development time? Well, that's a thing only Anet could answer. I think that they have calculated that for them very well. Raid releases are around every 8-9 months which is pretty slow. They know they cannot hold all the raiding enthusiasts but it seems it is enough to hold a certain kind of player in the game that'll stay or come back for raids AND spend money in the gem shop and therefore have their impact on revenues. Otherwise we wouldn't have seen 7 raid wings in total.

I welcome every new idea and things that would improve here and there no matter what situation that is in the game but from my impression it's only a very tiny proportion that cannot get into raiding but wants it very badly. All the others have found their way in by being proactive for example by joining friends, communities, guilds, discords or trying the hard way via LFG only. And trust me, if you know what you're doing you won't have any problems to get into raiding without being a professional or very skilled player.

[maddoctor.2738]

Suppose that they add some rewards for repeating raids. What will stop existing raid teams to play the same raid with the same people over and over? In other words, how is adding repeatable rewards in raids going to allow more players to experience them? If not full team they can go with 9 plus 1random

[Iozeph.5617]

@"maddoctor.2738" said:Suppose that they add some rewards for repeating raids. What will stop existing raid teams to play the same raid with the same people over and over? In other words, how is adding repeatable rewards in raids going to allow more players to experience them? If not full team they can go with 9 plus 1random

Nothing would stop them. I mean what sort of community saints are we talking about in this best case scenario?

Because in general the random is just a warm body and tends to get screwed by the regulars. At least in my past experiences raiding. In truth there's no incentive for being the random- they're expected to perform well- to 'prove themselves' to the group.

Chances are good the group won't be the least interested in taking the slower approach to accomplish whatever earn-once achievements they'd acquired on the way to setting that bit of content on farm. So that's gone. Why? They're there to farm- to be in and out as quickly as possible, and the random slows them up. Because of that they'll be rushed, struggling to keep up, and utterly subject to the group's whims.

Take this- I've seen it many times where the person who hadn't logged in on time -which necessitated pulling in that warm body in the first place- suddenly showed up a third or even half way through things - the random would often be expected to leave or would simply be kicked to allow their regular in. Perhaps if they're lucky they'd get a perfunctory, 'Sorry man,' in a private tell by one of the group but little more than that. And there's your evening. What fun! It's terrible, but that's just the way it runs.

-And please don't say, "Well, they should have found a better group," because if that was so we wouldn't be setting here talking about ways to pull more people in to play what some here consider to be a dwindling player base for a niche game mode. The group needed a body- and the random was desperate just to see the content.

Want to get more people into the mode? It's nothing that hasn't been tossed about here a hundred times- Make a scaling levels of difficulty. Five, ten and twenty player versions and call the five player versions the new dungeons. All three have a path to the same rewards via a token system with a dungeon/raid vendor in lion's arch or wherever they put them now. Those electing to stick with five-manning it will have a longer, slower road via fewer tokens rewarded in any given run. But at least they get to experience the contents. And at least the moneys and hours spent crafting them it won't have gone to waste because a lot more people will choose to try them out.

[Cerioth.7062]

Because it's fun.

[The one to Rule.2593]

i just do it when im bored and have nothing else to do, what else am i gonna do once i've cleared my raids for the week.

[Ashgar.3024]

Don't. Just don't complain the game is dead when your raid group falls apart tho.

[Chingalling.1208]

I'm in favor of Teapot's idea of a core gw wizard's tower raid that acts as an easier introduction to raiding for players transitioning into that type of endgame.

[Raizel.8175]

Well...

The major problem is that the game is rather antisocial, isn't it? It's hard to actually find and/or to put together a decent and stable squad - it's even already quite difficult to put together a static for fractals due to the antisocial nature of GW2.

Then of course you have these "the rich get richer" problems MMORPGs suffer from in general, which is embodied in GW2 through the KP-systems. You're quite screwed if you start late since the requirements are ever rising meaning you won't ever catch up - especially since you certainly won't be able to full-clear upon starting raiding.

No idea how to change that in any meaningful and efficient way though.

[Yasi.9065]

@Blocki.4931 said:Because you will never know whether your group will stay together or not. The moment a single person drops out and needs to be replaced you know your answer.

Before the reward nerf I used to think along those lines. To improve the raiding in general and so on.Now? If someone leaves my static, Im going to replace him with someone dependable that I then train on properly doing mechanics - though so far I got lucky and always found experienced, dependable and good players for my static.Im done wasting my time on training pug newbies. If anet wants the raidscene to survive THEY have to step up. Add easy-/trainingsmode. Make training newbies rewarding etc. Maybe if anet shows support towards raidtraining Ill come back to it, but as it is? Hell, no.

[Raizel.8175]

@Yasi.9065 said:Im done wasting my time on training pug newbies. If anet wants the raidscene to survive THEY have to step up. Add easy-/trainingsmode. Make training newbies rewarding etc. Maybe if anet shows support towards raidtraining Ill come back to it, but as it is? Hell, no.

I don't really think that an easy- and/or training-mode will help whatsoever. GW2s raid-content works almost purely on a mechanical level - dps is more or less not the issue and if it is, people first can - and probably should - learn rotations on the golem or even on open world bosses etc. How is such an easy- and/or training-mode supposed to work in the first place? Most people suggested to lower the incoming damage while also making failing mechanics less punishing. The problem though is: How are support-classes supposed to properly learn mechanics that way? How do you want to reward training newbies etc.? People already stated that there could be a huge risk of abuse involved. Besides the problems I've already mentioned, I think that raid-content is far too separated from the main-game in the first place.

[sokeenoppa.5384]

Personally i help new raiders, lead trainings for them etc etc etc so i could reduce he amount of "too hard to get into raiding" posts ?

[tim.4596]

@Turial.1293 said:Now I don't mean me personally but ask yourself this question, what's in it for you? You get your guild group together at reset, rush through the raid wings in about 3 hours and then you are done for the week, no more rewards, you are capped. You see guildie after guildie ask in chat, you see pugs beg in map chat for a full party so they can even practice.... but why bother? You don't get any rewards for helping them, not even blues/greens, you get zilch. Maybe you can join the raid sellers instead, at least that way you get gold and others can get their raid done, who cares if they understand the mechanics or learn anything, what is important is that you make money. If only there was a system in place where you got extra loot if someone in the party completes their first clear of a wing, that could be incentive but that doesn't exist. You get nothing, why bother?

Maybe I should pose the question to the GW2 Raid Devs instead? There is only a small numbers of players that complete raids weekly and everyone else has to suck it up; the current system is flawed, especially when you consider that the only constant day to day is raid sellers in the LFG tool. No issue with raid sellers mind you, they are just filling a gap that the devs have left wide open. GW2 Raids have an artifical barrier built in that makes it harder and harder for the casual player to experience them, if you don't have 100 kill proofs then you cannot join but they can't get a group so they cannot join, it's a catch 22. This isn't a topic on the difficulty of raids by the way, just the lack of rewards for everyone. It's a minority of players that do full clears every week with the vast majority of players not able to find groups and it has nothing to do with their gear or skill levels, plenty are able for raids but if you don't play by reset each week, then you just don't play and that is the reality.

Update: The emphasis of my post has less to do with rewards and more to do with a flawed raid system that cuts off 95% of the playerbase by it's design, not by player choice.

The answer is very easy:

1. If you're a true raider, you only play this game to do raids
2. Because you're bored

[Turial.1293]

@Vinceman.4572 said:

I'm in a big community with 2 guilds in which the leader is streaming GW2 almost every day. He started trying to organize raids for beginners. Guess what the first couple of times around 50% of the players signing up were veterans although everybody was encouraged to join and taken before veteran players. Usually those community members participate in most of the advertised stuff. After several weeks - they got 5-6 bosses down on every evening - only veterans were signing up. After having asked the others it turned out that all of them weren't interested in raiding because it's just not their business to kill bosses without real story, not using the mounts and more. Now there are 3-5 people left from both guilds who want to seriously continue raiding and we will do so the next weeks.

I'm glad you say that, so a big community with 2 guilds means one of those guilds had to hit 500 before overflow brought you to a 2nd guild for that community effectively giving you the capacity to hold 1000 members. For arguments sake, let's say you have 500 members and that most of them participate in your guild events and yet only several weeks later you were taking only veterans and less than a full party are actually still interested in raids. This is what I am talking about, raids have failed to keep peoples interest and the ones that do end up being vets (or speedrunners). This to me is significant of a large problem with the game when 95% do not participate.

Personally I don't think raids are exceptionally hard and some will agree/disagree with that statement but it all depends on gear and practice. The quote below to me is the perfect view of the raid scene for most people. Why help other players train raids, it's just not worth it.

@Yasi.9065 said:If someone leaves my static, Im going to replace him with someone dependable that I then train on properly doing mechanics.Im done wasting my time on training pug newbies. If anet wants the raidscene to survive THEY have to step up. Add easy-/trainingsmode. Make training newbies rewarding etc. Maybe if anet shows support towards raidtraining Ill come back to it, but as it is? Hell, no.

[zoomborg.9462]

@"Skotlex.7580" said:If this is specifically about raids, I imagine there's a few possible reasons to help new people out. Such as:

1. Looking to increase the raid playerbase
2. Looking for people who to be part of your organized runs
3. boredom (because raids are too easy when everybody knows the mechanics)
4. To show off by attempting to carry the squad (which was totally what was happening when chronomancer could use party-distortion)
5. Because one enjoys teaching others.

These things used to happen like a year ago, unfortunately the people you are training are supposed to take the wheel at some point and lead their own groups or at least keep the scene going but that never actually happened. Also people who had statics still joined pugs to train new classes/new builds but atm very little is changing and most of the intricacies that made builds fun are gone, almost all classes have been completely streamlined at this point. Distortion share made chrono very fun and challenging to play, staff temp/sc wh temp/staff weaver/condi engi etc etc were very risky but very rewarding hence fun... now all builds seem boring and very limited. There is no "edge" anymore.There is no point in having a class mastered.

The brutal truth for me is that the first wave of raiders aka the veterans had to learn raids the hard way, no guides, no meta builds, no training communities. Just simply go in and wipe for hours until u get things done. These people came together through raids,played long hours, made communities and played for the sake of gameplay alone regardless of rewards. These are the people that still play together in discord statics, being completely fed up with lfg and just raid with their static and fullclear within 3h without breaking a sweat.

My experience from leading training raids has been that the new waves of raiders arent willing to put that kind of effort, not in the slightest. They just wanna take as less responsibility as possible, afk dps on the boss and hope that some1 in the group actually gives a fuck and tries to carry if things go bad. After a while leading training groups becomes tedious cause not everyone has the same mindset in the group. You basically have 2-3 people at best who tryhard and wanna get their first kill and the rest just dont give a shit or skillclick after playing the game for years...... You realize it when u see a training group 9/10 asking for a chronotank on VG. Basically no1 wants to take the most important role, no1 wants to learn the important roles like druids pushing and entangling, every just wanna afk dps or something even if their dps is crap.Add to that, after the initial clear you actually lose gold from replaying raids as the rewards you get dont even cover your food/utility. There is, absolutely, no point on helping new people atm. The game doesnt reward you, people dont put any effort or appreciate the time a veteran puts in organizing a chaotic and long training run and anet has pretty much given up on keeping the mode even slightly competitive and exciting.

[Super Hayes.6890]

I want to do raids. I want to earn legendary armor. I really like the heavy set. I tried to get involved a few day ago. What a nightmare! Unless I buy the raids I'm stuck. I'd like to see something happen that populates the lfg with more than raid sellers or groups that demand experience. I don't have the time to make gw2 raids a part time job either. Get rid of the weekly reward cap and see what happens please. If it breaks the game you can put the reward cap back on. For now players like me can just "want to raid" from afar. Seems pointless to try in its current state.

[Rhiannon.1726]

@"Super Hayes.6890" said:I want to do raids. I want to earn legendary armor. I really like the heavy set. I tried to get involved a few day ago. What a nightmare! Unless I buy the raids I'm stuck. I'd like to see something happen that populates the lfg with more than raid sellers or groups that demand experience. I don't have the time to make gw2 raids a part time job either. Get rid of the weekly reward cap and see what happens please. If it breaks the game you can put the reward cap back on. For now players like me can just "want to raid" from afar. Seems pointless to try in its current state.

The best way to start raiding is joining a guild that accepts beginners.

If you don't want to join a guild you could join one of the training discords. You can get infos at https://snowcrows.com/raids/training/

[Super Hayes.6890]

Thanks for the link!