Guys, don't be afraid to try Raids

[The Boz.2038]

11 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You've just pretty much agreed with the point you tried to challenge.

The people at the "first level" of "not knowing" are already past the most impotant hurdle - for example, they already have working builds, and know where to find information on those. And probably on raids as well. In reality, all raid training offers to them is organizing a group for them for long enough so they can get on-hand knowledge on raid bosses (because watching the guide will never be as good as trying it on your own). Ultimately, the only things that might stop those players from raiding is either lack of a group, or dislike of the content itself. Lack of knowledge is never the problem here.

Most players are not in that group. Thus, trainings done this way is not going to help them.

 

No, the point is, "raid training is here to teach you raids, not basics of the game".
Getting frustrated because you lack the basics of the game, approach a training, and have a bad time, is not the fault of the raid training. 
You don't approach a gymanst and ask them to teach you how to do a Produnova vault, if you can't even manage a simple jump turn. Jump turns aren't hard. There are resources teaching you jump turns left and right. Don't blame the gymnast for turning you down, and don't slander them for being "elitist" because you didn't get to learn how to do the Produnova vault on your Produnova vault training.

[The Boz.2038]

18 minutes ago, Aridon.8362 said:

Just piggybacking on my earlier story after that guy did that crap I started ranting about how he needs mental help from a therapist on map chat and then another dude came in and started excusing the crap that guy pulled on me. I noped tf outta the game in a fury and went to do something else irl.

 

I swear once I get what I need out of raiding namely any insights and the leg armor, I'm done with it for good, maybe ill do a new raid once and never again.

You...

You think this makes you come off good? Badmouthing people in map chat, ranting to anyone who happens to come by? And when someone points it out to you, you think... they're also bad?
Why, they must be in cahoots! They're probably in the same guild, secretly, on the same discord! Toxifying!

[Erise.5614]

15 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

No, the point is, "raid training is here to teach you raids, not basics of the game".
Getting frustrated because you lack the basics of the game, approach a training, and have a bad time, is not the fault of the raid training. 
You don't approach a gymanst and ask them to teach you how to do a Produnova vault, if you can't even manage a simple jump turn. Jump turns aren't hard. There are resources teaching you jump turns left and right. Don't blame the gymnast for turning you down, and don't slander them for being "elitist" because you didn't get to learn how to do the Produnova vault on your Produnova vault training.

Like. Sure. That's a valid opinion. But then no one ought to be surprised if ANet abandons content like this and focuses on other things. 

If you view this as good state and neither the game nor the community is at fault here. Then the only conclusion is that the vast majority of players are not interested in this kind of end game content and no future effort should be put into it. 

[Tachenon.5270]

I think of it like, here's some kids down at the playground playing hide and seek, and here comes someone saying, not unkindly, "You know, if you'd wear dark clothing and put on some camo face paint, you'd be able to hide a lot better."

And the kids are all like, "Huh?"

And then along comes the Git Gud Gang in their black tactical gear with the afore-mentioned camo face paint smeared up one side and down the other, with shrubberies on their heads, saying, "If you won't even bother to learn to count to 100 in increments of 5 before saying 'ready or not here I come' you should just go home!"

Edited March 28, 2022 by Tachenon.5270
oops

[The Boz.2038]

The OP came with an offer and an encouraging message to people that were intimidated by raids.

You jumped at his throat. Why? Because his approach wasn't a holistic nirvana panacea that magically elevated anyone from bearbow to voice in the void in one fell swoop.

Please. 

A tiny little bit of introspection.

[The Boz.2038]

1 minute ago, Tachenon.5270 said:

I think of it like, here's some kids down at the playground playing hide and seek, and here comes someone saying, not unkindly, "You know, if you'd wear dark clothing and put on some camo face paint, you'd be able to hide a lot better."

And the kids are all like, "Huh?"

And then along comes the Git Gud Gang in their black tactical gear with the afore-mentioned camo face paint smeared up one side and down the other, with shrubberies on their heads, saying, "If you won't even bother to learn to count to 100 in increments of 5, you should just go home!"

...and then the kid is like "Know what? All hide and seek players are tactical-gear-wearing hindholes, I don't need to play this game if the entire community is going to be like that!
And that guy that told me to wear black? He's a hindhole too, because he wanted to lure me into the toxic swamp where all the others lurk, all of them are like that!" And leaves.

Yeah, clearly the optimal play here.

[Astralporing.1957]

25 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

No, the point is, "raid training is here to teach you raids, not basics of the game".

Yes. That was the point. The raid training is for people that are perfectly capable of learning raids on their own. Those trainings make it easier and faster for them, but do not remove any roadblocks, because those never existed for people trainings are for.

If you have forgotten, that was the original point:

21 hours ago, Erise.5614 said:

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. 

And the post i responded to basically agreed with this. So did you.

[The Boz.2038]

1 minute ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

The raid training is for people that are perfectly capable of learning raids on their own.

Stop trying to shove in that "on their own". I never once hinted at it.

[Erise.5614]

8 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

The OP came with an offer and an encouraging message to people that were intimidated by raids.

You jumped at his throat. Why? Because his approach wasn't a holistic nirvana panacea that magically elevated anyone from bearbow to voice in the void in one fell swoop.

Please. 

A tiny little bit of introspection.

I've started responding because OP, despite good intentions is presenting it as if there was a straight way towards raids within these communities. Including for new players. 

Which is not true. Only very specific people are helped into content by these communities. Completely understandable and fine. 

But requires clarification. That's the entire point. Getting into that content is extremely hard. These communities bridge a very small and very specific gap. They aren't good resources to help the average player into the content.

Making sure these expectations are managed is important.

 

 

[Cyninja.2954]

Not going to get into the entire this and that. There is a very vocal minority of active non raid players or players who dislike raid content with a passion which just love to jump at any type of "raids could be fun, try it" encouragement. The same goes for keeping up biases and stereotypes in this game.

 

If there is 1 stereo type which can go it's that other parts of the game are "better" or less "toxic", especially players who are interested in "relaxed" content. The vitriol and unbelievable levels of inhuman toxicity and slander which went around when players were unable to immediately clear the last meta map of the expansion was all the "proof" needed to go and show just how unfriendly parts of this community can be, and it has NOTHING to do with raids. Probably some of the nastiest and most pathetic reaction I have ever witnessed in a video game, over not beating some content for some pixels on week 1. Definitely beat any and all toxicity I have ever experienced in spvp, raids or you name it in this game.

 

As far the intent, thanks for the encouraging words TC, maybe some players take it to heart and give it a try.

[The Boz.2038]

4 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

If there is 1 stereo type which can go

The smileys and confuseys in the thread are just interesting. Interesting and depressing.

[DarcShriek.5829]

22 hours 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.

EDIT:

Raid Academy is for NA.

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

You want to know why I thing raids are "full of unfriendly and rude elitists...".  It's because I've tried them, and that's exactly what I found.  The community is horrible.

[Erise.5614]

7 minutes ago, Cyninja.2954 said:

Not going to get into the entire this and that. There is a very vocal minority of active non raid players or players who dislike raid content with a passion which just love to jump at any type of "raids could be fun, try it" encouragement. The same goes for keeping up biases and stereotypes in this game.

 

If there is 1 stereo type which can go it's that other parts of the game are "better" or less "toxic", especially players who are interested in "relaxed" content. The vitriol and unbelievable levels of inhuman toxicity and slander which went around when players were unable to immediately clear the last meta map of the expansion was all the "proof" needed to go and show just how unfriendly parts of this community can be, and it has NOTHING to do with raids. Probably some of the nastiest and most pathetic reaction I have ever witnessed in a video game, over not beating some content for some pixels on week 1. Definitely beat any and all toxicity I have ever experienced in spvp, raids or you name it in this game.

 

As far the intent, thanks for the encouraging words TC, maybe some players take it to heart and give it a try.

If my interpretation of both situations is correct it's actually the same reaction twice. DE was worse mainly because there was less control over your environment. 
But in the end it appears to me that the primary negative reaction is that people feel gatekept. Vs people who feel like there is no real gate they are keeping. 

The game just doesn't do a good job between bridging that gap. Group content is extremely different from your initial open world experience and that transition is uncomfortable to many. Which, for an entertainment product, is not a good property that encourages pushing through. Much less so in group content where your impact ins diluted and it is drastically easier to blame others. Doubly so when there are no game systems to give you feedback about your own performance. 

This causes a lot of false expectations and negative experiences. Which in turn foster resentment. Especially when the system encourages min maxing which disincentivizes empathy and supporting others. 

[danickar.3495]

Here is my perspective for what it is worth.

I recently quit WoW (for most likely the last time) because the game has changed from what it was and the emphasis on Mythic+ dungeons. I believe Raido.io to be one of the worst most toxicity inducing things ever created. In my last go around in the game I decided I wanted to work towards the mount from doing all of the M+ dungeons at a high enough level. I accepted that in order to do this I would have to work on my own Raider.io score. I stubbornly held onto the desire to play my Demonology Warlock even though that was not the preferred way to Warlock in that setting. I worked hard and eventually had the highest IO score for a Demo Warlock on my server and one of the highest around. I still had a hard time getting into the higher tier groups that I needed so I decided to start my own groups. It was not long before I realized that when forming my groups I was using the same selective processes that I had hated and why I was against M+ and Raider.io to begin with. This realization is why I ultimately quit WoW. I had turned into the toxic player I never wanted to be.

What's my point? My point is that game design often forces people into situations that ultimately start creating toxic behaviors even among people who don't consider themselves toxic or never wanted to be. I would wager that there are many people in the raiding community who do not realize that they are engaging in toxic behaviors. (Side note I do not think toxic behavior is limited to any one community or game mode). If these players are so deep and invested in their activity though they might be truly unaware of what the image they are portraying really is. Yes, there are also others who simply don't care.

I am working on my turtle mount slowly. I am not at the strike requirement yet, however, every time I look into LFG for the strike just to see how groups are doing I do not see a single group that doesn't have some sort of gate keeping requirement. 

When I look to see if people are raiding I either see these gate keeping requirements or people selling runs.

The other side of this problem from what I see is that ANet created a monster they can't control here. The idea of "play how you want" and then they design encounters that require such specificity is counter productive. The changes recently to boons (in my opinion) doubles down on this because it is further forcing groups to have certain requirements. If a player really only enjoys playing a certain spec of a class, and that class isn't <insert specific content> viable then they either suffer through a lot of torment from those around them or don't do that content. That is just poor game design. It reminds me of WoW's "Bring the player not the class" which never actually resulted in that being true. 

Anyway, thank you for listening to my thoughts from an "outside" perspective on the topic. I return you to the fighting between factions now.

[mindcircus.1506]

3 hours ago, Sarius.9285 said:

lol what? Guess what there is at least 10% toxic players in pvp, wvw and open world as well...how is that exclusive to raids?

People who float that kind of rhetoric usually gloss over the fact that if you want to see REAL toxicity in GW2:
-Cap Amber before Red
-Open doors "out of order" in the Mad King's Labyrinth
-One Burn south at Octovine

I've seen sweaty tryingharding elitism in every part of this game but every time I have seen someone truly losing their minds with racist epithets, screaming and toxic babyrage it's been in open world when some troglodyte faced the prospect of two less green unidentified gear bags an hour.

[Sindust.7059]

23 hours ago, jcH.7109 said:

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

I joined this server after I saw this thread yesterday and took a look around. They have a tier system for sorting players according to their skill and experience (t0-t3) which gives them access to increasingly advanced runs. And what I found most jarring is that despite the requirements for t2 and t3 (among other things) being 80% and 90% of the snowcrows benchmark respectively, they do not allow builds that would hit those numbers that deviate from the ones listed on snowcrows. For example the shortbow soulbeast build is explicitly prohibited even though it hits the required numbers.

 

Basically, if you want to advance there, you need to be a meta slave. And if you don't like the playstyle of the meta build for your spec and decide to make adjustments to make it work for you, you're punished for that by blocking your progress beyond t1.

 

I had a bit of a discussion with them about it, and the answer was something along the lines of "we want you to improve, and the only way it can happen is if you play the meta". The fact that people might just not like the playstyle of a certain build was dismissed as people just refusing to improve.

 

They weren't outright hostile, but this attitude of "meta or else, and we don't even care if your build performs well if it's not copy-pasted from the approved website" is quite toxic too. You're much better off looking for a proper guild in-game, with less bureaucracy, and where people look only at your performance and don't care how you get there. But then we come around full circle to the point where raiding does have a very high barrier of entry if you don't find the right kind of guild for where you are and what you want to do.

[mindcircus.1506]

5 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

I joined this server after I saw this thread yesterday and took a look around. They have a tier system for sorting players according to their skill and experience (t0-t3) which gives them access to increasingly advanced runs. And what I found most jarring is that despite the requirements for t2 and t3 (among other things) being 80% and 90% of the snowcrows benchmark respectively, they do not allow builds that would hit those numbers that deviate from the ones listed on snowcrows. For example the shortbow soulbeast build is explicitly prohibited even though it hits the required numbers.

 

Basically, if you want to advance there, you need to be a meta slave. And if you don't like the playstyle of the meta build for your spec and decide to make adjustments to make it work for you, you're punished for that by blocking your progress beyond t1.

Actually I just checked their discord to fact check and it's worse than that.
They are saying Snowcrows builds just to join training.
Ugh.

[jcH.7109]

30 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

 

Basically, if you want to advance there, you need to be a meta slave. And if you don't like the playstyle of the meta build for your spec and decide to make adjustments to make it work for you, you're punished for that by blocking your progress beyond t1.

 

I had a bit of a discussion with them about it, and the answer was something along the lines of "we want you to improve, and the only way it can happen is if you play the meta". The fact that people might just not like the playstyle of a certain build was dismissed as people just refusing to improve.

 

They weren't outright hostile, but this attitude of "meta or else, and we don't even care if your build performs well if it's not copy-pasted from the approved website" is quite toxic too.

What is your current build? What role is it that you would want to fulfill? Can you post an arcdps log to show me what you’re talking about?

[Naxos.2503]

Honestly, I agree with Cyninja, every part of the community is exactly the same and can be just as toxic. It doesn't appear everywhere, because that side shows only when faillure is a reasonably common outcome. 

Let's tally up the most common places where you expect that amount of toxicity :

PvP : because for one side to win, one has to lose, the losing side is likely to show a lot of toxicity and throw teammates under the bus that they believe could have done better.

WvW : Same thing as PvP but on a larger scale, sometime mitigated by the fact there are 3 sides, so the lines are blurred, but not all the time, when the losing server believes the other two have teamed up against them, and is the reason they're losing.

Hard PvE meta : Exemplified by the latest addition to the meta cycle, made worse by the fact it isn't common for a meta to fail so long as you throw enough bodies at it. People will genuinely complain that people do not pay attention, or do not follow instructions. Unfortunately, before, they didn't have to, or the instructions were much clearer because the meta was simpler

Hard PvE content : Again, it comes down to faillure : whether it be from a wipe in a CM fractal, or a raid that took the better part of an hour for the entire squad to run only to fail at the last part, toxicity has a high chance of rising from failure under the expectation that someone somewhere did not pull their weight or did not follow instructions, made worse by the fact there -is- a timer, and that you -will- fail if that timer runs through, so it makes efficiency required. Similar to the hard meta part, those instructions are not clear, and anyone coming off fresh from the PvE has to adapt to not being given the information from the get go.

In all situations you see toxic behaviour only when faillure is the outcome. You dont see people complaining about the lack of efficiency in their success unless efficiency gives them a better outcome at that same success (Timer for strikes), but even then people are less mad about it.

If you want to make it brief in a shallow way : you could make the point the community has a lot of sore losers. The truth of the matter is that people dont like to waste their time and get nothing to show for it.

[mindcircus.1506]

5 minutes ago, jcH.7109 said:

What is your current build? What role is it that you would want to fulfill? Can you post an arcdps log to show me what you’re talking about?

Why would they need to post their build and logs? It's the second bullet point on their welcome document.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SLvufFxt8oWovBdDKTdqoy9zSZSsqw7HYlAPV2CwP7s/edit

Please bring a character with a meta gear and build.
Check https://snowcrows.com for builds
 

 

 

Edited March 28, 2022 by mindcircus.1506

[jcH.7109]

Just now, mindcircus.1506 said:

Why would they need to post their build and logs? It's the second bullet point on their welcome document.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SLvufFxt8oWovBdDKTdqoy9zSZSsqw7HYlAPV2CwP7s/edit
 

• Please bring a character with a meta gear and build.

Check https://snowcrows.com for builds

 

Because he claimed to have a non-meta build which can perform as well as meta

[Erise.5614]

[Delete]

Edited March 29, 2022 by Erise.5614

[jcH.7109]

3 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

They said if they modify the build to a playstyle they enjoy they are exempt from the content. Because it doesn't perform as well and the game punishes non ideal builds by a huge degree.

 

45 minutes ago, Sindust.7059 said:

And what I found most jarring is that despite the requirements for t2 and t3 (among other things) being 80% and 90% of the snowcrows benchmark respectively, they do not allow builds that would hit those numbers that deviate from the ones listed on snowcrows. For example the shortbow soulbeast build is explicitly prohibited even though it hits the required numbers.

As you can see, he claimed that there is a shortbow soulbeast build that can “hit the required numbers”, but it is not allowed, according to him. I’m just curious as to what build he’s talking about and wanted to see the numbers.

[Sindust.7059]

19 minutes ago, jcH.7109 said:

What is your current build? What role is it that you would want to fulfill? Can you post an arcdps log to show me what you’re talking about?

Currently my favorite build is condi mechanist with flamethrower (replacing grande kit and switching a few traits due to the lack of explosions in the rotation making the "meta" traits bad for the flamethrower setup). I did 31k solo when I tested it (i.e. with no boons on the mech), 34k when I was doing Mursaat with my guild. That's with only 2 stat infusions (on weapons), so the final DPS should be about 2k higher, which is basically the same as the benchmark with grenades.

 

Before EoD I played the aforementioned shortbow condi soulbeast that did 30k on dummy (also without stat infusions).

 

That's the only builds I have that fit the "good enough but different" category. The others are either meta (power holosmith), outdated (celestial condi alacren), aren't meant for raids, or are support builds where the DPS benchmarks are irrelevant (healbrand).

 

And no, I can't give you logs. I didn't record any.

Edited March 28, 2022 by Sindust.7059

[mindcircus.1506]

1 minute ago, Erise.5614 said:

They said if they modify the build to a playstyle they enjoy they are exempt from the content. Because it doesn't perform as well and the game punishes non ideal builds by a huge degree.

Let's be clear that this does NOT bar him from the content. Only for training with TCI.