Guys, don't be afraid to try Raids

[Linken.6345]

5 hours ago, frareanselm.1925 said:

Does raids in Gw2 include stressing mechanics like "click this object when the boss is at 30% of HP" and if you fail your entire party wipes by you fault? If yes, i dont want raids.

Well there is some mechanics like that, poison on sloth/matthias, the protective bubble on Xera to name afew.

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

11 hours ago, frareanselm.1925 said:

Does raids in Gw2 include stressing mechanics like "click this object when the boss is at 30% of HP" and if you fail your entire party wipes by you fault? If yes, i dont want raids.

It does, but they're quite rare.  There's a lot of bosses with abilities that will force you to do random things, but they aren't too pressing and a lot of them can be worked around.  There's... two exceptions to this, though, and they're my most hated bosses in the game: Dhuum and Deimos.  The other mechanically heavy fights are either much more lenient, or require you to specifically volunteer for a mechanic.  But Dhuum and Deimos are just frustrating, because a single mistake wipes the whole party.  

[Linken.6345]

6 minutes ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

It does, but they're quite rare.  There's a lot of bosses with abilities that will force you to do random things, but they aren't too pressing and a lot of them can be worked around.  There's... two exceptions to this, though, and they're my most hated bosses in the game: Dhuum and Deimos.  The other mechanically heavy fights are either much more lenient, or require you to specifically volunteer for a mechanic.  But Dhuum and Deimos are just frustrating, because a single mistake wipes the whole party.  

You forgot about Xera's random protection bubble mechanic mate.

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, Blood Red Arachnid.2493 said:

It does, but they're quite rare.  There's a lot of bosses with abilities that will force you to do random things, but they aren't too pressing and a lot of them can be worked around.  There's... two exceptions to this, though, and they're my most hated bosses in the game: Dhuum and Deimos.  The other mechanically heavy fights are either much more lenient, or require you to specifically volunteer for a mechanic.  But Dhuum and Deimos are just frustrating, because a single mistake wipes the whole party.  

Xera's bubble protection is instawipe if you fail it. So is, in practice, Sloth's poison if dropped in a wrong spot (well, it's not insta, but still results in a wipe). Both of those mechanics are randomly assigned. Failure at jump-bomb throwing at Sabetha, or poison dropping at Mathias are not instadeath, but can create problems if repeated. Bad positioning on menagerie summons at W6 Quadim can easily kill the group. So can detonating a big bomb mid-stack at Sabetha.

Haven't done w7, so not sure if there's anything like this in there.

In general, there's a few of those types of random-assigned mechanics sprinkled around.

(yes, i know that Sabetha mechanics are theoretically not random-assigned, but in pug groups in practice they often are)

Edited March 29, 2022 by Astralporing.1957

[The Boz.2038]

15 hours ago, mindcircus.1506 said:

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.

How many minutes of each run should a training commander spend making sure the trainees have builds that make sense?

For snowcrows builds, you just check the build. It takes three seconds.
But what if you're that super special unique build DPS that does bring more than just DPS to the squad, huh? What if you've discovered the build nobody else did, but woe, if only the commander would spend ten minutes with you to make sure your condi shortbow isn't running sigil of rage and strength...

[Erise.5614]

13 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

And again, as mentioned in the previous post/s, I am saying that based on my own experience. Experience I still know, remember and understanad even though I am now able to participate in that content.

In this thread alone you've tried saying those communities are made solely to introduce already very good players into raiding, but for the most part it is not true and those people are happy to help newer players with whatever they need to be helped with in order to improve.

I'm honestly not sure what's happening in most of that thread. It doesn't seem addressed at me? Almost as if you just argue against your assumptions of me? Most of the things you argue against seem to be misunderstandings. 

My main point was that raids were portrayed as too easily and advertised in a place where people might misunderstand it and have negative experiences as result. It being moved into the instanced content section of the forums already changes this entirely as well as most of my complaints.

These communities are designed in such a way that it deters people below a specific skill and experience due to lingo and expectations of familiarity with all kinds of aspects of the game. The "whatever they need to be helped with" extends maybe as far as dumping a link with several pages of text or 30+ minutes of video. No one is sitting down with the player and actually helping them through. It feels cold and intimidating. Which would be a huge time investment. No doubt. And expecting others to do that in their free time is unreasonable. Though that makes it all the more important that people enter these communities with the correct assumptions and mindset. Anything else is gonna push them away even harder than before and long term. 

 

And no. The game isn't doing a remotely passable job at teaching either. The training grounds are too late and too little. I'm pretty sure their impact on the overall game is gonna be relatively small and limited to sharing awareness of the existence of certain mechanics. They don't even try to teach how to be effective, they don't try to reinforce that knowledge and as always the game lacks an approachable method to understand your own effectiveness. Your own DPS and combat performance is just obfuscated beyond reason to the point where no one can be expected to know their own DPS. The only in game location you can check is within raids and even there it fakes you out by taking a minutes or longer before displaying your DPS numbers if you're in the low single digits. How anyone is supposed to figure that one out on their own is a mystery to me. 

ANet is showing intention to improve this aspect of the game. But as of today it's nowhere near a good state. Any pointing at it and claiming it's all there is denying the reality that the vast majority of players aren't prepared by the game for that content.

That, despite it's advertising and open world format supporting "play how you want". Instanced content enforces a very weird holy trinity. Where ranged gameplay is straight up killed. Where you need a tank, a healer, four different types of boon supports, a few utility skills and DPS. Only that classes overlap multiple roles arbitrarily making it extremely difficult to start commanding and building patchwork teams.

The game is deeply confused about what it wants to be and while improving into various directions has created two mostly detached kinds of PvE gameplay. It's doing a really poor job bridging that gap. And external efforts are not great either at stepping up and doing it for ANet. 

Which is why we see what we're seeing today. Divide and disappointment on both sides. 

I just want that people go into different content with the right mindset. You don't min/max open world. You don't expect that of open world players. But you don't just waltz into raids either. And you don't expect raid players to spend hours with personal mentoring to bridge the entire gap. 

Edited March 29, 2022 by Erise.5614

[The Boz.2038]

OP: "If you're afraid of raids, don't be! Come, try, have some fun!"
Erise: "Me being afraid of raids isn't why I don't raid! Also, what if I have ping? And the toxic community makes me play builds I don't want to play? There is 100% reasons to be afraid of raids, but nobody is claiming being afraid is the problem! You need to train me to understand the basics, first, before you try to train me to play the raid! And you need to spend ten minutes with me, and every other player (or only me, because *I* am the protagonist with the good special build, not them), to see what a good build I got set up for myself!  And the OP does NONE OF THIS which is why OP is bad, and part of a toxic community of bad!"

This is what you sound like.

[Erise.5614]

16 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

OP: "If you're afraid of raids, don't be! Come, try, have some fun!"
Erise: "Me being afraid of raids isn't why I don't raid! Also, what if I have ping? And the toxic community makes me play builds I don't want to play? There is 100% reasons to be afraid of raids, but nobody is claiming being afraid is the problem! You need to train me to understand the basics, first, before you try to train me to play the raid! And you need to spend ten minutes with me, and every other player (or only me, because *I* am the protagonist with the good special build, not them), to see what a good build I got set up for myself!  And the OP does NONE OF THIS which is why OP is bad, and part of a toxic community of bad!"

This is what you sound like.

I mean. Yeah. That checks out. That I sound like that to you.

An entirely detached elitist who half skims the text to find just enough snippets to attack others. 

Edited March 29, 2022 by Erise.5614

[The Boz.2038]

"Please don't demand of the training commander even more time and special consideration above and beyond what they are freely volunteering by holding this training run" is not an elitist take, my dude.

[Erise.5614]

Just now, The Boz.2038 said:

"Please don't demand of the training commander even more time and special consideration above and beyond what they are freely volunteering by holding this training run" is not an elitist take, my dude.

 

28 minutes ago, Erise.5614 said:

No one is sitting down with the player and actually helping them through. It feels cold and intimidating. Which would be a huge time investment. No doubt. And expecting others to do that in their free time is unreasonable. Though that makes it all the more important that people enter these communities with the correct assumptions and mindset. 

 

[The Boz.2038]

So why bother and admonish the OP for not doing the everything ever possible to solve every non-raider's problems?

[Erise.5614]

1 minute ago, The Boz.2038 said:

So why bother and admonish the OP for not doing the everything ever possible to solve every non-raider's problems?

I am saying that these communities are for very specific players. Since it was posted in the general guild wars 2 discussion section it had an above average chance of reaching people who are not ready for it. So clarification is important.

I've lost two good friends from ever trying out raids or strikes because of misaligned expectations. I tried but I can not convince them to try or let me help them because they hated their time trying the first time so much. That's what I want to prevent.

Bringing these two parts of the community together also means not pushing them into the content before they are ready. You don't do this part of the game any service if you just push it as hard as possible.

People don't just have superstitions regarding raids. They also have very valid points. 

 

[The Boz.2038]

1 minute ago, Erise.5614 said:

I am saying that these communities are for very specific players.

So, an irrelevant derailing of the thread, then?

OP: "If you're afraid, don't be!"
You: "But what if we aren't afraid, and just don't like it, huh? Huh? What about that? You didn't think about that? Or any of the other dozen problems, did you?"

[Erise.5614]

6 minutes ago, The Boz.2038 said:

So, an irrelevant derailing of the thread, then?

OP: "If you're afraid, don't be!"
You: "But what if we aren't afraid, and just don't like it, huh? Huh? What about that? You didn't think about that? Or any of the other dozen problems, did you?"

I said that the superstition isn't that raid players are rude but that there are other, very real issues with it. And luring players into it who aren't ready is gonna foster superstitions and bad blood between these groups. Neither has bad intentions but if you push people into something they aren't ready then it does turn bad. 

So yes. Any raid ad should be in context (e.g. Raid LFG, Instanced Content Forum Section, etc.) to reach the right people. Or needs sufficient disclaimers to not attract the wrong people and thereby reinforcing the negative image of raids and the raid community. 

Though you guys are doing an incredible job reinforcing every assumption people have.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Erise.5614

[The Boz.2038]

So... you do actually think raiders are inherently toxic?

Because that's the only way you reach "normal people shouldn't experience this content with these players, because they'll most likely not like it, and have a miserable time".

[Blood Red Arachnid.2493]

1 hour ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Xera's bubble protection is instawipe if you fail it. So is, in practice, Sloth's poison if dropped in a wrong spot (well, it's not insta, but still results in a wipe). Both of those mechanics are randomly assigned. Failure at jump-bomb throwing at Sabetha, or poison dropping at Mathias are not instadeath, but can create problems if repeated. Bad positioning on menagerie summons at W6 Quadim can easily kill the group. So can detonating a big bomb mid-stack at Sabetha.

Haven't done w7, so not sure if there's anything like this in there.

In general, there's a few of those types of random-assigned mechanics sprinkled around.

(yes, i know that Sabetha mechanics are theoretically not random-assigned, but in pug groups in practice they often are)

I'm mean more about binary mechanics.  Sloth Poison, Matthias Poison, Sabetha Bombs, Twin Largos Poison, Menagerie aggro, all of those are things that a team (even a pug one) can realistically recover from.  I forgot about Xera's bubble, mostly because it has, like, a 10 second window to activate, so most people do it easily. 

I mentioned Deimos, for example, because his whole schtick is those kinds of mechanics.  The pizza slices, the oil, the bubble attack, it's all meant to ruin runs off of a single misstep.  Its a wipe any time the tank or kiter gets yeeted, or if there's a central oil spawn, or if aegis is mis-timed.  In all my time raiding I think I've seen a group recover and win from the oil getting nicked once, which is far less than other mechanics from other bosses.  

[The Boz.2038]

We recover from oil missteps... fairly regularly, I'm sad to say.

[danickar.3495]

2 hours ago, The Boz.2038 said:

I've been toxic? Lol.
Please, demonstrate.

If you don't see how you are being toxic then anyone pointing it out will not help. You are attacking others and not actually contributing anything meaningful to this thread. 

[Mithrilos.8036]

Apart from the fact that this convo went a little overboard. I do believe that there is enough people doing Raids already, or else why would Anet keep adding some, hell you even have strikes now ( a content that I also avoid personally ).

 

I think people are free to enjoy the content they want, and complaining about them so they do the same thing than you is just futile.

 

I'm hostile to any kind of raid content type, yet that doesn't mean I'm lacking respect to those that actually enjoy this. Diversity is what I like about GW2. Thinking that raid stuff must be the only end game mod for PVE isn't really something appealing I believe.

Edited March 29, 2022 by Mithrilos.8036