Firebeard.1746

I'm in NA. The communities in EU and NA are completely different. I've had debates about kp in the past and casuals and raiders are both right. I rarely do training runs. But i'll join from time to time. Training is a herculean amount of effort and i don't have the time to do it. That being said people who can't raid because they can't find groups aren't wrong either. The worst thing about training runs is you're likely training with other new players and If they're bad, you're artificially kept from progressing, your skill be damned. So even if you can find groups, you're basically put through a meat grinder over and over and i don't blame anyone who can't take it. It's an awful experience all around, getting into raids. Sanest thing is a static that trains you, but 99% of statics want exp players. Enter my friend who trained me and used me in his static.

So are you blatantly ignoring my posts to try to bait a toxic reaction? I mean I don't know what else to say. Also I editted this before your response hit. I would say ignoring someone is toxic when you think you're having a conversation with them. You're exactly right though and that's why I editted it out before your response hit. Didn't want to be like you. The point stands that I made the effort but training runs weren't available and no one helped me when I was able to play (or said training runs were rare and when they existed, they were a terrible experience). That was the problem. I also sound like a broken reecord at this point. The culture around raiding wasn't inclusive enough. THE FACT I CAN SUCCESSFULLY RAID NOW, BUT COUDLN'T BEFORE CLEARLY ILLUSTRATES COMMUNITY GATING IS AN ISSUE. I ONLY GOT OUT OF IT DUE TO A LUCKY BREAK. THAT IS EVIDENCE ENOUGH THE FORMAT WAS BROKEN: A CLEARLY CAPABLE PLAYER WAS ARTIFICIALLY KEPT FROM SUCCEEDING IN THE FORMAT. I fear strike CMs may end up having the same issue. We'll see. You can raid and not be elitist. I don't inquire people whining about raids as to how many kills etc, say things like "git gud noob." Blatantly ignore that they're trying on discords, etc. I also never yelled at people for poor performance like some of my trainers. To the credit of another one of my trainers they started being honest about comps and stopped setting people up for failures, but there are trainers that do that, but I feel that discourages people. I respect that people have had a hard time with raiding and I honestly feel like anet needs to accommodate casuals as well as raiders. And I'm sure to call out the played time differences anytime someone calls non-raiders "entitled" when they talk about legendary armor specifically. I agreed to that in my previous post. If you agree with this point, it shows why the game mode was dead: Anet shouldn't be wasting valuable resources on content only a fraction of the player base wants to play, especially when they don't get as much cash as other studios. I feel like anet should take a page out of blizzard's book and make some legendary armor sets based on more casual content, much like how blizzard has raid finder armor sets. And yeah they don't have the same prestige, but some of them are cool transmogs. A legendary armor based in IB saga strikes would never be as prestigious as envoy because it doesn't require the same effort, but it would still be a good gesture for casuals who don't want to raid. And it would give people more things to do if they're an OCD collector. They should also keep difficulty consistent across game modes: HT strike mission is on paar with a real raid and is more difficult than many raid encounters. Sorry for getting tilted, shouldn't have called you a fool for blatantly ignoring me, though I'd say that's a very disrespectful way to approach someone. YOu're no angel.

That's the problem though. When I was trying to get trainings, the discords I was on didn't line up. You're not listening. People screaming on forums isn't the issue either, it's a symptom: engagement falls when newer players feel gated out of attempting the game mode.

But if all the groups available are clears and you ping in a community or LFG for trainings and no one responds during your play time windows, what are you supposed to do?

Really? because I'm not asking for anything. I already raid. Strikes didn't exist when I started. I was also still learning the game. Based on what I knew that's how long it took me. I'm find now dude, have many geared roles. All . I have Coalescence, 1 crafted piece of legendary envoy armor + 100+ extra LI laying around. You must have missed the part of my post where I explain that I got to raiding later when a nice person actually helped me get into it by training me. Did you even read my post? I already explained that I learned roatations too. On one of the harder support roles that doesn't even exist anymore. Is spending hours practicing on a golem not good enough for you? I also used the very same site you linked to learn it. Also I've solo trained a CA by reading guides with a bunch of randos before. Training is still very difficult and nerve racking at the same time. No they aren't. The /played time it takes to get them is WAY slower than raiding. Raiding has a high upfront cost, but once you're exp you get LI progress insanely fast compared to Ascended shards of glory or tickets. Raiders are spoiled. And on top of getting the easier acquisition method, they get a special title and 25 AP to boot if they do the collections. That's not all though: they can get the cool legendary versions of PVP and WvW armors much cheaper by skinning on top of envoy, because they're tied to the ascended set, not the legendary upgrade. I feel that's really cheap and unfar. For context, I got way more LI in terms of legendary progress in less than a year of raiding than I did doing years of other game modes. Also Xanblast, a convert to GW2 from WoW has backed me up on her stream saying that Raids in this game approach mythic difficulty in WOW. that's a level 90%+ of WOW players never hit. Raiders and anet shouldn't expect most GW2 players to play on that level. That's another reason they failed. Raiders think they're easy because they're old and they're very used to the content, but technically speaking, GW2 raids are more difficult than WoW Heroic.

hahahahahahahahahaahah As a newer player, coming back in season 4, I put TONS of effort into earning gear. And learned a fairly tricky rotation too (double well chrono for alac/quick) and still had trouble finding spots when they were still a thing. And most of my experiences with raids were quite toxic to start out with. The people who raid regularly are people who consistently have good experiences and unfortunately that tends to be experienced raiders. Most experienced raiders don't care if you've done everything you can as a "noob" to prepare. Some of the few trainers out there are super mean. Most players don't want to prepare you. That's really where the problem lies. And sometimes, you'll still get flack for playing suboptimal build that is actually more optimal for training, even if it outpaces an exp player who's gotten rusty on a rotation. The only "entitlement" you could argue newer players have is to others' time in terms of learning, but once you're saying that garbage, you're basically saying you don't want raids: The whole point of raids in an MMO is to get players to band together and work together, but unfortunately in this game and in other games it's become turning into a cog in a machine and doing tons of research which just isn't fun. And that's basically why I went on such a strong crusade against raids for such a long time on these forums: I had put tons of effort in, learning harder rotations and gearing out many roles and couldn't find people willing to train me. The reason raids failed was because they were so complex, they encouraged toxicity in party formation, especially towards newer players. The other reason they failed that plays into this is many raids have many roles. I, for example have really only tanked 2 encounters in raids, and ebcause of it, I couldn't train a lot encounters worth crap even if I wanted to because I"d have to train tanks and I don't have a ton of experience telling tanks where to position. I couldn't train a tank in Xera right now even if I wanted to. It takes a lot of in-depth knowledge to properly train a whole squad because of how many little chores there tends to be. Also it's funny to note how subtle some of the tells in GW2 are compared to other games and how FFXIV basically added the WoW equivalent to DBM as baseline into the game. And now there's a similar debate in WoW about if they should make tells more clear. Defending GW2 raids in a box is like defending making everyone raid mythic in WoW: it's not really something most players do or would want to. The reason I was even able to get into raiding was I was lucky enough to find some random guy willing to train me who loves weed and was super chill, like all the time. He basically took me under his wing and let me try out a few roles in most raids and that got me to the point where I had LI and KP to do most encounters. Even then, I've lately been just sticking to interactions with the NA raid academy because I find most players too toxic to deal with and they'll help people remember mechanics when they're struggling instead of just booting. Anet needs to do more to encourage grit and cooperation, even when failing so players continue to work together instead of treating each other like cogs in a machine. But on the flip side, given the difficulty of raiding in GW2 against other games, I have to argue that they should give people more casual methods of legendary armor/ring acquisition that don't require WvW or PVP. Not everyone has a backpocket doobie rolling Californian willing to train them, so I honestly don't judge people who don't want to get into it, because I assume their experiences were much like mine before meeting said Californian.

Poll does not match in-game reality. Literally every match when I play PVP is metabattle kitten. And I don't mean that in the sense that it's bad people use cookie cutters, but what's bad about it is meta playstyles feel awful and playing against them feels awful. Like mobile condi classes that spam you into combat while self-healing OOC. I don't know if they've nerfed it yet, because it's been so long, but I really wish that the devs had an idea of what they want the meta to look like and did a good job forcing people to play it. Because that doesn't feel intended, that feels like kitten. And it's but 1 example off the top of my head from when I cared about PVP.

Yes and no. Sometimes when I care about character performance too much, DPS meters feel like they're turning the game into a chore, and that I have failed if I didn't hit a benchmark. I'm not talking about just this game, but MMOs in general. Combat feels way different when you're playing what feels good vs. being frantic. That being said, when DPS checks exist, not having access to them is essentially a handicap. It definitely takes off social pressure if others can't see your numbers if they're bad. But the issue with DPS meters isn't just social, though it's perhaps the worst of the 2 issues.

Basically this. I have some gen1 pres laying around I hadn't finished yet, would have been good to know I needed to get the gifts yesterday.

Basically this. I don't think the current devs care much for the manifesto or original intents of the game. And I feel like it's made the game feel very bipolar at this point: core tyria is a joke, but obviously casual friendly, but if you buy the expansion and go straight to DE meta you'll get blasted in the face without watching a ton of mighty teapot videos to even know how to approach it XD. I feel like they need to focus on content that delivers a cool RPG experience, but have knobs with more rewards for more hardcore players. And even within game modes there's a lot of inconsistency between difficulty level. Kaineng is too long for a strike mission and HT is practically a raid. I mean I guess the devs know how I feel already but probably don't give a crap.

Random maps failing is the issue. If this requires a proper organized raid like in other mmos, it belongs in instanced 50 man content. And what you're saying, sounds like organized raiding. And if you think about it, most people don't play this game orbiting their communities. So anyone who doesn't play that way or anyone who joins new is guaranteed to fail, according to you. And that's not fun gameplay. And quite possibly the worst new and returning player experience possible, especially with the story and achieves leading up to it encouraging you to do the event. I have no issues with anet making difficult content or even large scale raids. But this is a worse experience than raiding in an mmo that focuses on raids as content. Because you have 0 control over who is in your group (map) and can't reset at will. And people will literally leave in the middle of the encounter if the slightest thing goes wrong, further screwing up scaling and success rates. I only started playing this game seriously when i tried it out again at the end of season 4 because it gave me a raid-like experience (dragonfall) without all the bs. This is with more bs than a typical raid experience in other mmos and is gw2 not playing to its strengths. I had high hopes when anet said they were adding strikes and making cm versions that they were finally acknowledging they had different players with varying levels of skill/or commitment to being hardcore in this game. EoD has felt like trying to get everyone trying to play like a raider all of the time. Which is fine, if you're a raider. Or think it's the funnest thing to do all the time. If you don't fall into that bucket (and even some people who raid don't because they expect non raid content to he casual and enjoy it that way), this expansion sucks.

To me, Dragonfall encapsulated a hard struggle without making me lose an extremely long meta with little rewards over and over again. And to effectively farm gold in OW, even before DE, you needed particular builds and squads. Eu fast farming explains this in their site. And sometimes you even need to hit the metas at particular times with coordination. I don't think that's any less effort than raiding in this game, just a different type of work. The number on EU fast farming lie without this consideration. There's a place for people who want massive metas that are difficult. It's called Eye of the North. They did this with the Marionette fight. I'm all for absolutely massive content on an organized scale. I don't think there's a ton of demand, given the popularity of Marionette. But the guilds, in guild wars matter when they do things like this. Raids imo, don't really hit that spot because they're not really a front and center guild activity based on their design. Both dragonstorm and Marionette are map-sized. There's nothing stopping them from using this system to having more massive content. They could even do a public version with slightly less rewards and make the private give more to incentivize organized play. You learn in public, get gud rewards with their guild If it was me, I would have actually made the Soo-won phase an instanced 50-man thing with a 100% drop rate on the summoning stone. And added a 75 man public version with a 50-75% drop rate on the summoning stone. And made the DE meta end just before the Soo Won encounter and that's where you got your chests from your bonus buff that don't drop the summoning stone. I'm not opposed to hard content, it just doesn't belong in OW, especially when you're requiring hard DPS checks. But while we're talking about DPS I want to point this out: How is it fair that so much of this game emphasizes DPS when so few of the gear and trait combinations actually generate optimal DPS? In order for legendaries to be worth something, there should be content where it's optimal I'm wearing full minstrels (that doesn't feel like a damage sponge, which could easily happen there). This game punches far below its weight. With permanent gear progression, all they need is fun content to keep players engaged, with enough reward that it feels rewarding. Just look at Lol and Apex: LEgends. Players appreciate games you dont' have to grind gear, and anet is massively underplaying their hand with both the direction they've gone in the PVE meta as well as their overall design. This could be the MMO that people just play to have fun and it would CRUSH. but instead we have a 5-role+ nightmare that only rewards one type of play in a sea of gear and trait line choices.

You're right, I'm missing nuance here. I also at this point have raided enough for coalescence and am just shy a few LI to being about to craft 5 pieces of legendary armor. So I talk about hardcore players as "other" while I could theoretically be labelled as one at this point. What I really mean when i talk about this is people who think that the meta as it currently stands is good, and that playing anything off-meta is bad. I literally couldn't finish the video where teapot talks about trying to get new players to play like raiderse in OW. And quite frankly, it's not fun, imo, and kills all the build diversity both in gear and traitlines when you have so few "right" answers in terms of build. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about "hardcore" players. People trying to force others to play this meta, that in my opinion formed organically, it doesn't seem to match the manifesto and it's not fun to play. There are raiders who don't like this level of challenge and chaos in the game. Because it essentially holds you hostage to so much of someone else's play. I respect them. And I do count myself in survivor bias. I'm not commenting nearly as much as I used to, because I don't feel tied to the game anymore. And I might stop altogether soon. i'm not sure anet gives a kitten about playesr who don't want to play raid metas any more. At least in terms of PVE given their choices. And the metas in EoD outside of DE haven't hit me as hard as Dragonfall or other metas I've enjoyed, so I feel like they don't have a commitment to event driven, organic experiences in large meta events like they've had in the past. My impression is that far fewer players are playing. When I have done LLA since EoD launch, population has been really low, sometimes not even enough to do it efficiently, before EoD, it was usually a 1-burn unless you were in the runoff map. One of my guilds seems enitrely dead, I see no comments when i am online. And Don't get me wrong, I do want something for passionate players in the game to do, but I feel like doing it at everyone else's expense, and abandoning the DNA of the game is wrong. Raiders aren't all bad. Though getting into raiding may make you feel otherwise while you're trying to hit the point of enough KP for people to take you.

These forums are starting to suffer from survival bias I think. I appreciate your feedback, but am lurking less frequently.

Exactly. And his followers are self-selected, so they'll. just agree with him The DE meta and them forcing raid roles into every profession is them listening to him. DE meta is something raiders have been asking for for years, and quite frankly, it wasn't well received, and ruined the expansion in my opinion. Contrast that with Dragonfall, which to me, felt like an open-world raid without all the garbage that I had to do in WoW just to succeed and get people to accept me. Once you start testing performance and forcing role organization in OW you kill the appeal, which is a raid-like experience, without all the garbage involved in raiding in other MMOs. There's already massive reward differences in OW based on build if you're paying attention to the EU fast farming group (their times are all based on optimized OW builds). They should just focus on making effective play more rewarding by accelerating the event based on effective play, while making the even feel like a good experience. I feel like Dragonfall was what hooked me on the game, DE has killed it for me. I'd rather do Mythic+ and traditional raiding in WoW over a raid experience I can only do every 2 hours with no control over who I'm playing with. I still poke at GW2, but this is the direction they're going and it's not fun in the context of how much freedom they give you in builds in this game.

There's literally 0 reason to OW for a hammer. Fractals will give all the gold you need. Just buy off ah. Or buy the mats.

All it takes is a timer for it not to matter. See the "Soo won" controversy. I actually would prefer raiding over soo won any day.

For me, it's mostly the new ones. You can just tell they're drawn out because reasons.

I don't play as much these days, but for WvW comming: 1) People don't take your tag seriously 90% of the time unless you're a well-known comm on your server. 2) It's highly likely no one will care, and you just become a target for anyone who is using a smurf account to watch open tag movements. 3) In the event that despite #1 and #2 you actually start putting a squad together, there's a high chance the people in your squad won't move with you, even if you've exhausted all the targets you can reasonably take and/or defend on your current BL. In fact IIRC, when this happened is was because I was just wantonly inviting people, not because I had an open tag.

Dude, i already made a thread on this. Someone literally @'d me on these forums saying their regulars in their guild that clear the meta regularly run raid builds. People i talked to in game who passed: same thing. The thread i started on this was on the top like over a whole weekend. The only thing this comment reveals is how out of touch you are with this conversation. The people who say raid builds aren't required are far rarer, and tbh weren't aware of the organization in their maps when i've asked. Like they weren't in the squad or the like

Pretty sure the success rates on the meta without at least 50% of your group running raid builds are abysmal enough for it not to be the way you should do things, like raiding in whites. So i guess we agree? The only people who raid in whites are like teapot elite raider champions trying to prove something during a competition, not normal players. So raid. If you want to succeed in that meta.

This is literally the most boring way to play wvw, it's not without the risk of getting perpetually ganked by small ganking groups and i don't think it'd be wise for anet to force their player base to play this way. Also i find people railing on casuals about wanting things easier massively hypocritical if they're raiders. 1 piece of a wvw armor set averages 1.3k tickets(amounts are different depending on the pieces). And even then, it's the ugly, non-legendary looking skin. The first chest gives a measely 17 tickets and takes about an hour to earn on 8 pips/tick which is something you'd achieve only if you'd been playing for a while. That's about 1% of one armor piece in an hour. An armor piece in raiding is 50 li. I spent less than an hour in a semi-exp largos run last night and got a divination which converts to li. So it's double efficiency. Against the UGLY wvw skin. But there's more: i'm working on my first set, so it's actually quadruple efficiency because the li requirement is only 25 per piece on your first set. So you think someone is entitled because they don't want to spend an hour doing something mindless earning something slower than raiders? Wvw ticket efficiency goes up as you progress tiers, but even at the high end it's barely competitive, and your efficiency was still lower on the lower tiers and it would be 15 hours a week, the equivalent of a part time job. Doing something mindless. O ps, anet gives you a special achieve if you get the pve sets, there's no equivalent for the other modes, even though they're more time consuming. And if you have the pve sets, you can get the legendary appearances for the other types faster because the skin is tied to the ascended set, no need for expensive gift components, you just reskin your envoy. The spoiled ones imo are the raiders and they have no room to speak about entitled casuals.

I have not heard of a group that reliably clears that doesn't. . My understanding is the regulars do. And i even retried over the weekend in a pug and it still didn't go well. So the message based on a combination of my experience and what i'm hearing from the groups that do clear is pretty clear. Also why is anet pushing boons onto every class? And major content creators posting li builds? It's pretty clear they want us playing this way. From anet to content creators.

accidental repost (latency on submit) please delete.

I'm really sorry to inform you people have been begging for an OW method of legendary armor acquisition for YEARs and what was anet's response in EoD? A "crowning meta" that requires at least a significant portion of the paticipants running raid builds with good raid boon uptime (at least that's what we're hearing from communities that regularly clear). And a nerf to sustain and solo play at the beginning of EoD. The message "raid or die" couldn't be clearer. The icing on the cake is the length of this raid (I could clear multiple bosses in WoW with how long Soo Won encounter is), you're held hostage by early leavers, and you don't really have control over who is in your map, unlike any raid in any other game (well barring you're not some evil jerk like that guy in Teapot's community, I'm sure some of the regulars are doing that). it's so poorly designed I'm not even sure if EQ could surpass this in clunkiness. I didn't play it, but I would imagine only a late 90s MMO committing these sins.