Guys, don't be afraid to try Raids

[jcH.7109]

I've seen too many people here who think raids are full of unfriendly and rude elitists who think they're part of an exclusive circle. This view is NOT aligned with reality. There are good communities who are more than willing to accept new people and form Raid Training groups to teach them. For example, Raid Academy is a perfect place to start. Just join the discord, follow the rules, and join a raid training group where you can learn the mechanics and such. https://discord.com/invite/gw2ra

 

I want raids to become popular so that Anet will make more new raids. Cantha raids would be dope.

EDIT:

Raid Academy is for NA.

Raid training community for EU: The Crossroads Inn https://discord.com/invite/nDcv395

Edited March 27, 2022 by jcH.7109

[Erise.5614]

The issue isn't that everyone is rude.

But that most raid players are extremely detached from the general player base. Very much including training communities. 

Learning curves are extremely steep and the general expectation when getting into a training run is to know everything relevant about your class (relevant for raids), a full meta build (or similarly effective in raids) and ideally watched a guide on the encounter. Meaning it only needs a few quick pointers by the commander / community. 

These communities are designed to move very good players into the content. 

They don't make raids generally approachable. They just make it easier for people who are already deeply invested into group content to start out with raids.

Just the huge wall of lingo requiring an elaborate glossary for the average player is extremely intimidating. I myself went through that over the past year. Using several communities including some of the widely advertised ones. And while it was the only thing that made it even remotely possible for me to play raids. It cost a huge amount of effort and time to get into it. Most of it wasn't smoothed out by training communities. They mostly just made it possible to find a group at all. 

TLDR: I do hope you don't overpromise and underdeliver with this ad. Rather than misunderstanding the problem a lot of players have with raids. 

 

Edited March 27, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Farohna.6247]

Also not everyone has the time involved in raiding.  Much of the community is causal, dropping in and out, afk'ing for a while, and limited hours of play.  It's a wonderful thing to have a game that has so many options for ways to play.  You aren't limited to get gear from raiding only, and it's more of a fun, challenging thing for those interested. 

That being said, I think it's a great invite and encouragement, and hope you are dedicated to bringing in new players to the raid experience who might be looking for just that. 

[Ashen.2907]

31 minutes ago, jcH.7109 said:

I've seen too many people here who think raids are full of unfriendly and rude elitists who think they're part of an exclusive circle. This view is NOT aligned with reality. There are good communities who are more than willing to accept new people and form Raid Training groups to teach them. For example, Raid Academy is a perfect place to start. Just join the discord, follow the rules, and join a raid training group where you can learn the mechanics and such. https://discord.com/invite/gw2ra

 

I want raids to become popular so that Anet will make more new raids. Cantha raids would be dope.

I am not afraid of raids, they just do not provide rewards worth the time investment. Spending that much time preparing and training for an encounter that I will play once for the experience seems out of line for me. 

[jcH.7109]

32 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

The issue isn't that everyone is rude.

But that most raid players are extremely detached from the general player base. Very much including training communities such as RTI. 

Learning curves are extremely steep and the general expectation when getting into a training run is to know everything relevant about your class (relevant for raids), a full meta build (or similarly effective in raids) and ideally watched a guide on the encounter. Meaning it only needs a few quick pointers by the commander / community. 

These communities are designed to move very good players into the content. 

They don't make raids generally approachable. They just make it easier for people who are already deeply invested into group content to start out with raids.

Just the huge wall of lingo requiring an elaborate glossary for the average player is extremely intimidating. I myself went through that over the past year. Using several communities including RTI. And while it was the only thing that made it even remotely possible for me to play raids. It cost a huge amount of effort and time to get into it. Most of it wasn't smoothed out by training communities. They mostly just made it possible to find a group at all. 

TLDR: I do hope you don't overpromise and underdeliver with this ad. Rather than misunderstanding the problem a lot of players have with raids. 

 

Raid training groups are not just for people who are "deeply invested into group content". I'm mostly a spvp player but I've been in several raid training groups in the past and just joined this discord to start raid training again after I learned a lot more about weaver (my main) from playing builds besides fire weaver in pvp. RA seems like a good community, so I just figured I'd post their discord here to encourage people who are somewhat interested in trying raids but might be intimidated.

[TheGrimm.5624]

1 hour ago, jcH.7109 said:

I want raids to become popular so that Anet will make more new raids. 

 

WvW waves. I want less Raids so that Anet will spend some time on WvW which might have more players and gets even less changes. 

Joking aside, I appreciate your intent but would question your message. Is it that players are afraid you think or more its harder to get larger groups. Maybe ANet should introduce a matchmaker. I think they are working their way there with changes overtime.

As far as players, WvW suffers from the same thing that raiding does, its not the people trying to be helpful, its all the others that bring out the 'what are you doing here if you don't know what you are doing' attitudes. Also people trying to 'sell' raid spots creates the same bad atmosphere. I think a better message would be to your fellow raiders saying, why the attitudes if you really want more people. Again the WvW subforums suffers from the same issue. 'We want more players!'. 'We don't want those players!'. Makes you smack your head at times. 

Edited March 27, 2022 by TheGrimm.5624
forum double spacing bug

[Elden Arnaas.4870]

Thank you for making an effort to help other players.  But raids simply aren't for everyone.  And that's really the point.  Raids are *exclusive* content, meant to exclude the *majority* of players.  So *everyone* shouldn't be trying raids.

 

I had what I would consider to be an ideal introduction to raids in GW2  - it was with a guild  of friends; and our instructor was patient, kind, and helpful. But I didn't care for the super high stress, hyper dexterity and extreme rote-memory focused gameplay.  I didn't find it fun(very un-fun, in fact) and I did not perform well, (low dexterity) and I felt like I was constantly letting the group down.  So I quit raids, with no intention of ever returning.

 

But this is *my* experience, and everyone is different.  Just please remember that raids aren't for everyone - they were never intended to be.  Players can certainly try them if they like, but it's okay not to like them.

[Doggie.3184]

1 hour ago, jcH.7109 said:

I want raids to become popular so that Anet will make more new raids. Cantha raids would be dope.

I still wish they would have stuck with 5 man content only, such as the dungeons. Less people required = less annoying to form groups since the game has no queue system or simple class structure like the mmos built for raids. Plus there's no "hide other player's effects" so less people also = nicer looking fights. 

[Elden Arnaas.4870]

Also, you should please let us know what regions(EU, US, both) Raid Academy plays in.

[TheGrimm.5624]

2 minutes ago, Doggie.3184 said:

I still wish they would have stuck with 5 man content only, such as the dungeons. Less people required = less annoying to form groups since the game has no queue system or simple class structure like the mmos built for raids. Plus there's no "hide other player's effects" so less people also = nicer looking fights. 

 

4 minutes ago, Elden Arnaas.4870 said:

Thank you for making an effort to help other players.  But raids simply aren't for everyone.  And that's really the point.  Raids are *exclusive* content, meant to exclude the *majority* of players.  So *everyone* shouldn't be trying raids.

 

I had what I would consider to be an ideal introduction to raids in GW2  - it was with a guild  of friends; and our instructor was patient, kind, and helpful. But I didn't care for the super high stress, hyper dexterity and extreme rote-memory focused gameplay.  I didn't find it fun(very un-fun, in fact) and I did not perform well, (low dexterity) and I felt like I was constantly letting the group down.  So I quit raids, with no intention of ever returning.

 

But this is *my* experience, and everyone is different.  Just please remember that raids aren't for everyone - they were never intended to be.  Players can certainly try them if they like, but it's okay not to like them.

 

I admit I multi-game because I like to spread content but I also like to see how different developers apply similar concepts. I think Anet could take one from Destiny 2 here or even fractals and use a multi-level systems for raids. Allow for 5 & 10 people content and then with different level of scaling in mechanics and challenge. The higher the challenge the better the reward. Allow people to work their way into it.  

[DexterousGecko.6328]

I don't enjoy the idea of having to lfg for a strike, let alone doing a raid. I don't play Guild Wars 2 for difficult group content, I play for casual fun.

 

Also, the idea of spending 30 - 60 minutes getting a raid group together isn't remotely appealing to me. I want to turn on the game, and play, not sit around waiting for people.

[jcH.7109]

13 minutes ago, Elden Arnaas.4870 said:

Also, you should please let us know what regions(EU, US, both) Raid Academy plays in.

Raid Academy is NA, but apparently there is a raid training community for EU called The Crossroads Inn. Crossroads Inn Discord: https://discord.com/invite/nDcv395

Edited March 27, 2022 by jcH.7109

[fenriswolfman.5486]

Ive raided in plenty of other games. I just hate group content in THIS game.

[Sarius.9285]

46 minutes ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

Maybe ANet should introduce a matchmaker.

seriously how would that work? 

 

There are so many different things you need to consider for a working composition that an automatic system would never work.

[NorthernRedStar.3054]

Introduce raid guild missions, and reward those handsomely. 

[Sobx.1758]

2 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

These communities are designed to move very good players into the content. 

They don't make raids generally approachable.

Please don't make up stuff like this, since it's not true. These communities are "designed" to move any player that wants to learn into the content. Pretending that everyone is either good right away or won't/can't raid is false. These training guilds mostly teach people from whatever level of ""skill"" those players start from. It is also completely possible to join training raids and learn exclusively through lfg.

The learning curve got/gets less steep with introduction of EoD SMs too. And while obviously their mechanics don't align 1:1 with raids, the base idea behind learning SM mechanics still carries over to a lot of the raid encounters, allowing players willing to improve to do so with a less steep curve.

1 hour ago, Ashen.2907 said:

I am not afraid of raids, they just do not provide rewards worth the time investment. Spending that much time preparing and training for an encounter that I will play once for the experience seems out of line for me. 

Then that post is probably not directed at you. You know what you want and you're free to make that decision. I don't think anyone -including OP- has any problem with that 😉 But definitely I see way too much fearmongering and misinformation going on in regards of that contenet and it was like that almost(?) since the release.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Ashen.2907]

9 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Please don't make up stuff like this, since it's not true. These communities are "designed" to move any player that wants to learn into the content. Pretending that everyone is either good right away or won't/can't raid is false. These training guilds mostly teach people from whatever level of ""skill"" those players start from. It is also completely possible to join training raids and learn exclusively through lfg.

The learning curve got/gets less steep with introduction of EoD SMs too. And while obviously their mechanics don't align 1:1 with raids, the base idea behind learning SM mechanics still carries over to a lot of the raid encounters, allowing players willing to improve to do so with a less steep curve.

Then that post is probably not directed at you. You know what you want and you're free to make that decision. I don't think anyone -including OP- has any problem with that 😉 But definitely I see way too much fearmongering and misinformation going on in regards of that contenet and it was like that almost(?) since the release.

Sure, but rewards vs time spent will have a massive impact on willingness to even give raids a shot. Only tangentially on topic, I know, but perhaps pushing for better, any really, rewards for casual participation or for ongoing raiding might be a solid piggyback for the OP's goal of attracting new players to the game mode.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

2 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

The issue isn't that everyone is rude.

But that most raid players are extremely detached from the general player base. Very much including training communities. 

Learning curves are extremely steep and the general expectation when getting into a training run is to know everything relevant about your class (relevant for raids), a full meta build (or similarly effective in raids) and ideally watched a guide on the encounter. Meaning it only needs a few quick pointers by the commander / community. 

These communities are designed to move very good players into the content. 

They don't make raids generally approachable. They just make it easier for people who are already deeply invested into group content to start out with raids.

Just the huge wall of lingo requiring an elaborate glossary for the average player is extremely intimidating. I myself went through that over the past year. Using several communities including some of the widely advertised ones. And while it was the only thing that made it even remotely possible for me to play raids. It cost a huge amount of effort and time to get into it. Most of it wasn't smoothed out by training communities. They mostly just made it possible to find a group at all. 

TLDR: I do hope you don't overpromise and underdeliver with this ad. Rather than misunderstanding the problem a lot of players have with raids. 

 

Basically this.  I couldn't get into any good training groups, so I had to tag up and host the raids myself.  The biggest problem I encountered with letting anyone raid is that the average player is wholly unprepared for it.  They don't conceptually understand DPS or Crowd Control, they don't rez downed players, they press random players during fights, and their gear is a mishmash of random prefixes with no coherence to it.  In short, they barely understand the game and staring down Vale Guardian is the worst place to try and teach these people.

Though I'd like to point out a bit of the weasel wording used by the OP.  He says that "there are good people," but this doesn't exclude the presence of bad people.  It has been my general experience that raiders do not like anyone without 90% benchmarks and 30-50 killproof.  If you can get any of them in chat, it will become very clear they look down on other players.  This posed a great problem for me, since my disabilities make high benches impossible, even on "easy" professions.  It's why I played tank.  You'll still get people who will ragequit in the middle of a successful pull, commanders who will win-kick the lowest DPS because they don't like to "carry" people, and endless chat-fights about who messed up where.

[Erise.5614]

2 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Please don't make up stuff like this, since it's not true. These communities are "designed" to move any player that wants to learn into the content. Pretending that everyone is either good right away or won't/can't raid is false. These training guilds mostly teach people from whatever level of ""skill"" those players start from. It is also completely possible to join training raids and learn exclusively through lfg.

The learning curve got/gets less steep with introduction of EoD SMs too. And while obviously their mechanics don't align 1:1 with raids, the base idea behind learning SM mechanics still carries over to a lot of the raid encounters, allowing players willing to improve to do so with a less steep curve.

Well, you are a perfect example for what I mean when I say raid players are extremely detached from the rest of the community. 

Of course players aren't inherently good. But the difference between raid players and most of the general community is knowledge. Not about the raid encounter mechanics but about the game, about the combat system, about settings. About everything.

It is basically expected that you gained all of this knowledge elsewhere in the game. During fractals, strikes or whatever. Other group content where you got in contact with all the terms, all the basic info and where you built up a high familiarity with your class.

Raid training communities do not have a system in place for teaching a player who's new to group content everything necessary to be a useful participant within a raid. At best they dump hours worth of guides and articles at you. Most just link you to snow crows. Some just kick you (again, speaking from experience here)

Not to mention learning in LFG. Not only are training runs extremely rare. Like, extremely, extremely rare. It's basically only training communities who are missing 1 - 3 people who advertise training raids. Even semi training is extremely rare or any group not requiring 250 LI for that matter. The only group that accepts you with open arms and is frequently available is raid sellers. 

It's really not at all about skill. Learning the necessary skills is pretty easy compared to the incredibly steep learning curve necessary. The knowledge that is expected of you to even get started. 

Edit: See the reply by Blood Red Arachnid for other examples.

Learning raids is extremely intimidating for extremely valid reasons. If you just say "nu-uh. You're a liar!" to others sharing their very real experiences you just reinforce the perception of the raid community. Anyone who has a not perfectly smooth experience with raids so far will look at your statement, see it as being entirely different to what they experienced and just believe you're part of the "in group" they don't get to belong . Slap the label "elitist" on you and disregard any advice you give. Because it obviously doesn't apply to them.

You just reinforce here how huge the gap is. 
If anything is supposed to change at the very least raid players need to acknowledge that people get deterred for reasons different than being lazy and not wanting to learn. They need to understand and acknowledge that it is intimidating. And be especially welcoming and supportive to people who mess up, who have poor builds, etc. Not just tiny niches on the internet. Some obscure discord communities or within hard to find guild. But as community overall.

And just to clarify. By being supportive I don't mean just carrying them. That's an even worse experience. I mean being empathetic, taking time, explaining things calmly and giving advice that's easy to follow for a new player. No abbreviations, no short cuts, no expectation of preexisting knowledge, no instakick.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Erise.5614

[Caliboom.3218]

Maybe I would do raids if people didn't ask for 250 LI, expect you to do 40k DPS and know your rotation precisely, and didn't start crying after a singular wipe.

I was a frequent raider in Destiny 2, even got a raid title in-game, and people in there are much better than the raiding community in this game.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Caliboom.3218

[Westenev.5289]

People don't play in my timezone, so raids are off the table 

[SinisterSlay.6973]

26 minutes ago, Caliboom.3218 said:

Maybe I would do raids if people didn't ask for 250 LI, expect you to do 40k DPS and know your rotation precisely, and didn't start crying after a singular wipe.

I was a frequent raider in Destiny 2, even got a raid title in-game, and people in there are much better than the raiding community in this game.

40k? Wow I am struggling to push past 9k on harbinger.

[Vayne.8563]

Just the title of the post turns me off from raids.   Raiders are assuming I don't raid because I'm afraid.  I raid about once a week now, and I don't really enjoy it, even though I'm with a great training guild. It's just not my preferred content. I have less fun raiding than I do doing other content. It's not that enjoyable to me.

Now, a raider comes along and suggests the only reason I don't raid is because I'm scared of it. The raiding community like it so much that they're going to tell us that we'd all raid if we were good as them, or only tried or only put in the effort.  It's just not true.

Imagine me standing on a street corner and trying to get people to come eat vegetarian food because they enjoy it. You don't have to be scared of eating vegetables. People would be annoyed because they just like meat. They're not scared.

The very fact that you think most people want to raid but they're scared, or they'd enjoy it if they only tried it is in fact one of the reasons I don't like some raiders. They have this idea in their head that because they like something it has value.

You know, I'm a huge fan of the WWE.  If you weren't so scared of it, you could come watch it with me. There are people who can help explain the long time storylines to you, and you'd like it. If only you weren't so scared.

Do you see how that sounds to someone who doesn't like it because it's not something they like?

[Sobx.1758]

2 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

Well, you are a perfect example for what I mean when I say raid players are extremely detached from the rest of the community. 

Nice attempt at unsubstantiated personal remarks, but I've started raiding LONG after the raids were introduced, I wasn't dedicated to any hardcore endgame content, didn't and do not participate in organized guild gameplay, nor I am -or ever was- a part of any "static" group to help me get into any type of content. Nothing here makes me "detached from the rest of the community", just because you've painted some made up image of me in your mind and you think players that want to learn somehow can't. Apparently I was "the rest of the community", until I've decided to start learning and completing raids, so I fail to see how I can be detatched from what I clearly once was.

Are Raids a perfect content to get into? Not really. EoD SMs are doing much better job at that. But it doesn't mean solo players can't start learning the game if only they wish to and complete endgame content solely through the use of lfg. You might dislike these facts, but they remain being facts.

2 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

But the difference between raid players and most of the general community is knowledge. Not about the raid encounter mechanics but about the game, about the combat system, about settings. About everything.

Right. And nobody just happens to have that knowledge. I didn't have that knowledge and then... I did. Through what, magic? Just because I've decided to learn makes me "detatched from the community"? Apparently if you learn something, you're no longer part of the rest of the community and you never were -what a convenient (but also wrong) take.

2 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

It is basically expected that you gained all of this knowledge elsewhere in the game.

Oh and with time you clearly can. But there's a difference between "I can't learn" and "I don't want to learn". That's the difference that was already presented in the past on this forum, when someone complained about PoF story boss, got help from multiple people on multiple classes, with multiple solutions, even on severly undergeared characters (to prove the complaint about "needing expensive gear to even play through the story"). The response OP of that thread gave those people? "I don't want you to help me, I want it to be easier".

People can learn. Some of them faster, some of them slower, but if they want to -vast majority of them will. But then there are also people that don't want to learn, but want to have. In that case... They're making their own choice and it's not the game's or the community's fault.

 

2 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

Raid training communities do not have a system in place for teaching a player who's new to group content everything necessary to be a useful participant within a raid. At best they dump hours worth of guides and articles at you. Most just link you to snow crows. Some just kick you (again, speaking from experience here)

So people refuse to learn basic mechanics of the game, then try to jump right into ""endgame"" content and it's somehow the game's fault? If people want to learn, they should stop trying to rush the game.

Edited March 27, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Tatwi.3562]

Quote

So if you love MMORPGs, you should check out Guild Wars 2. But if you hate traditional MMORPGs, then you should really check out Guild Wars 2. Because, like Guild Wars before it, GW2 doesn’t fall into the traps of traditional MMORPGs. It doesn’t suck your life away and force you onto a grinding treadmill; it doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun; and of course, it doesn’t have a monthly fee.

 

- by Mike O'Brien on April 27, 2010

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/guild-wars-2-design-manifesto/