Thoughts on Emboldened Boon, and suggestions

[Astralporing.1957]

13 minutes ago, Artemis.8034 said:

Dont believe everything you hear on the internet.

Don't automatically disbelieve anything that does not agree with how you think things are/should be. You will be only digging deeper and deeper into confirmation bias and will ever preclude yourself from widening your horizons. Or correcting any misunderstandings you may have.

[Carnifex.3275]

The thing that was annoying to me that even if you disable emboldened mode (it was w1 for us). After VG goes down emboldened mode goes back up. And i expected there'll be emboldened mote before Gorseval so we can disable it again. But nope, you have to go back to the starting area and disable that mode again. It's sucha nonsence.... if we disable that mode at the beginning, please leave it disabled for the rest of the wing. Or atleast place the motes before every boss... 🤦‍♂️

We just got fed up by disabling it so went and did it on emboldened mode. Just wiped a few times on purpose and destroyed everything.. at that point no1 really cared anymore about disabling it, just used it to our benefit. Anet!! Change this nonsence. Overall emboldened mode is very very good. Maybe i'd even add it to 2 or even 3 wings / week so new players could practice more and get into raiding easier - a very very good change. But please do something about the disabling system.... 

Edited July 2, 2022 by Dave.6819

[Linken.6345]

On 6/30/2022 at 10:00 AM, Dante.1508 said:

They said i looked like i wouldn't be able to pull my weight and when i asked why they pointed out my cat hood customization.. I have no idea why that was hated and would lower my dps.

Maybe they have seen your posts here on the forums?

[Xerxez.7361]

On 6/28/2022 at 10:52 PM, Dante.1508 said:

I tried to do a raid and was kicked because i had certain customization.. A cat hood.

 

Groups will ask you to link Headgear to make sure your gear is Exotic or better with correct stats. Example playing a Reaper and then linking an Exotic Piece of Gear with Harrier (Healer) Stats is a fairly good sign you don't know your class.

[Feduddle.5209]

Emboldened boon is definitely one solution to the raid accessibility problem. However I think ANet focused too much on creating an innovative solution to the problem, rather than the much more practical solution of just adding difficulty tiers to raids.

 

- Easy mode for players to learn the raid encounters, with reduced rewards.

- Normal mode

- Hard mode, which could just be all the CMs active, with better rewards

 

There are plenty of other ways to go about it, but this feels to me like an attempt was made to make an original solution, when better solutions have existed for this very issue long before GW2 raiding existed. This just feels like adding a time-gated entry point into raids.

[Nakasz.5471]

From what I realized this week on lfg, I saw more people raiding on lfg, I saw a lot of training too, with this buff.
A lot of people from guilds I'm part of were starting their walk towards the legendary set, which is wonderful.
I don't have numbers, I'd love to see them, but from what I can see, the interest in raids has increased (finally).

Edited July 1, 2022 by Nakasz.5471

[Astralporing.1957]

41 minutes ago, Nakasz.5471 said:

From what I realized this week on lfg, I saw more people raiding on lfg, I saw a lot of training too, with this buff.
A lot of people from guilds I'm part of were starting their walk towards the legendary set, which is wonderful.
I don't have numbers, I'd love to see them, but from what I can see, the interest in raids has increased (finally).

I saw a lot more groups in other wings than w1 too. I bet a lot of this is due to the new machinist meta, not to the buff. From what i have seen so far, I'd say that this semi-afk meta makes raiding way easier than the emboldened buff - which only strengthens my earlier point about difficulty and effort being based on a multitude of things, and not only on that one change.

[Dante.1508]

11 hours ago, Xerxez.7361 said:

 

Groups will ask you to link Headgear to make sure your gear is Exotic or better with correct stats. Example playing a Reaper and then linking an Exotic Piece of Gear with Harrier (Healer) Stats is a fairly good sign you don't know your class.

My gear was Lunatic exotic so even if they'd asked they couldn't see the stats.. Also i have three sets of gear berserker, Viper and Celestial.

Edited July 2, 2022 by Dante.1508

[Luthan.5236]

Haven't played raids. Only fractals up to tier 2. (Fractal rush got me into playing them.) And the easy IBS strikes ... and the one for turtle once. I might try dungeons - and repeat the easy fractals and maybe try tier 3-4 there. And the easy IBS strikes.

For the raids - as well as the harder/longer strikes (everything except the 3 easy IBS ones): Only once or so ...

The turtle I got. Mainly want to unlock the raid masteries to ge the remaining 8 mastery points spent. Without having to "pay".

The "training" lfg for strikes looks pretty empty. In raid ... there seems to be a small amount of groups when I checked. I guess the emboldenment still needs some time/effort (unless you die on purpose to get a lot of stacks quickly - people might do that? Could be countered by having a timer to get people actually to try first ... unless they wanted to afk wait - for next stack)

With them having some achievements only available without using this buff ... I guess it would not devaluate the raids a lot? I mean legendary armor you still can get from PvP/WvW - where it is easy. (If you don't take the skin into account - that probably most of the people do not care about when buying other skins. :D)

The trinket .... might be a thing though - since those are separate and I think there is a special effect for having all 3 ones (including the one for raids). And there people would not just switch to another skin like with the armor - but instead being interested in getting that one (instead of the other ones) - so this maybe could get changed to only be available without the emboldenment buff.

But for the armor it does not make a big difference I think. (Or is the skin that great and tons of people using it - when ArenaNet actually is selling lots of other fancy stuff on gem store and other armor from other free sources available from just playing the game.)

One thing I noticed though: This isn't really advertised in-game? New players checking out everything might notice the raids with the new buff - never getting to know about the old system where this did not exist.

Old players that never cared about raids ... would not (unless they sometimes try to check raids again) notice this -  unless they read patch notes regularly. Also not everyone is reading the news on the websites. Could have at least put a ingame mail or a news in the launcher that has this in the news title. Not "game update june" as title where not many might read all the details lol.

For fractals actually the season 1 episodes remind of the related fractals - directing new playerfs that start fully newly with the game - to the fractals. (While core story directs to the dungeons and the strikes are  implemented in the living world story chapters and the EoD.)

Edited July 2, 2022 by Luthan.5236

[Gehenna.3625]

10 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Nah, you stop accusing someone of lying just because you don't want to believe it could have happened. It's also just missing a larger point, which is that elitism definitely happens in a game like this. And it's far more productive to confront that, than deny its existence.

He shouldn't accuse people of lying; I do think the person he's responding to most likely didn't understand what was happening. The most plausible explanation is that they checked that he was wearing at least exotic gear with appropriate stats. It's not impossible, I suppose, but to kick someone over a skin is something that just doesn't seem likely at all.

On the other hand perhaps you judge something as "elitist" too quickly. In raids the right stats are important to have, in fact they're necessary to have. It's as simple as that. Asking people to have the right stats is not elitism and if it's not advertised as a training run, then you shouldn't join a raid group without knowing what you're doing. It's disrespectful to other raid members. Now before you kick off, please understand that I haven't set foot in a single GW2 raid.

Now the Emboldened boon is meant to encourage more people to do raids and also to have more training raids overall. Raids are more difficult content and as such players should have the willingness to learn and prepare for raiding. If I remember right there is a separate section in LFG for training raids specifically now as well.

Personally, I don't like how the combat system for group content relies so heavily on maintaining boons and that's the reason why I've never been interested in raiding, but I do understand that raiding comes with requirements. 

Again, before you kick off, I do not deny there's elitism. There definitely is. But what I'm saying is that you shouldn't be so quick to judge things as "elitist" when it's actually a simple requirement in order to be able to complete specific content.

 

-----

 

As for the OP, these rewards should stay because it will make more people consider raiding and the bottom line is that it's niche content and they're trying to open that up. And that's more important than people seeing some of their efforts devaluated.

[Raizel.8175]

On 6/28/2022 at 6:36 PM, Albi.7250 said:

Is that an NA thing?

From my personal experience of playing (M)MORPGs - especially being forced to play certain (M)MORPGs in NA (like TERA which was kitten in EU due to Gameforge - I'd really say that the average players skill level is lower on NA and that NA players are - on average - more prone to kittening and drama'ing around. I'd even believe the "cat hood" example - if it happened on NA - even if it seems to be really far-fetched. Listing to people like Snebzor who are playing on NA kinda confirms that prejudice.

[Labjax.2465]

57 minutes ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

He shouldn't accuse people of lying; I do think the person he's responding to most likely didn't understand what was happening. The most plausible explanation is that they checked that he was wearing at least exotic gear with appropriate stats. It's not impossible, I suppose, but to kick someone over a skin is something that just doesn't seem likely at all.

On the other hand perhaps you judge something as "elitist" too quickly. In raids the right stats are important to have, in fact they're necessary to have. It's as simple as that. Asking people to have the right stats is not elitism and if it's not advertised as a training run, then you shouldn't join a raid group without knowing what you're doing. It's disrespectful to other raid members. Now before you kick off, please understand that I haven't set foot in a single GW2 raid.

Now the Emboldened boon is meant to encourage more people to do raids and also to have more training raids overall. Raids are more difficult content and as such players should have the willingness to learn and prepare for raiding. If I remember right there is a separate section in LFG for training raids specifically now as well.

Personally, I don't like how the combat system for group content relies so heavily on maintaining boons and that's the reason why I've never been interested in raiding, but I do understand that raiding comes with requirements. 

Again, before you kick off, I do not deny there's elitism. There definitely is. But what I'm saying is that you shouldn't be so quick to judge things as "elitist" when it's actually a simple requirement in order to be able to complete specific content.

 

-----

 

As for the OP, these rewards should stay because it will make more people consider raiding and the bottom line is that it's niche content and they're trying to open that up. And that's more important than people seeing some of their efforts devaluated.

Based on the information we have, the person was kicked over a skin. I never said it's elitist to have gear requirements for a raid.

Edit: Also worth noting that assuming for a moment you're right and it was about gear rather than a skin, that evidently was not conveyed to the person clearly and that would reek of elitism in its own way; there is a difference between having a set requirement and being dismissive toward people who don't meet it. In other words, being of high skill does not have to imply you are impatient or unwilling to take the time to communicate with those who aren't. I'll grant, too, that being impatient doesn't always mean you're elitist, but people who are elitist are usually more impatient with those they consider to be of lesser skill than they'd be with people who they see as peers.

Edited July 2, 2022 by Labjax.2465

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

It's not impossible, I suppose, but to kick someone over a skin is something that just doesn't seem likely at all.

Have seen it happen. Granted, in at least one situation (Xera and using too obnoxious and flashy glider skins) it's even understandable, but the reason behind it wasn't always communicated to players being kicked (Xera and gliders case is something i was seeing quite often actually back when i was still doing full clears). Seen also a case of tank constantly getting downed blaming it all on phalanx strength BS warrior (yes, it was that long ago) with twilight - because twilight supposedly was blinding him. And i have seen someone being kicked for running a "human female meta" character, due to commander "not wanting to have a run with dumb idiots". Yeah, that run fragmented very fast (that commander was a kitten in many other ways, and to other players as well, and the rest of the squad wanted none of it) but the kicked player got no knowledge of that. Have seen also a lot of toxicity not related to skins, but on equally dumb level, so i can believe the cat hood example, even if it's quite unusual.

There are some real tools out there and just due to statistics, from time to time someone is going to run into them. The community itself is not doing a good job in excluding those,  unless it is a very extreme case. And by extreme i don't mean singling out someone for dumb reasons, but rather toxicity on a level that affects all players in a squad - because most of the time raiders that are not directly affected by such toxicity completely ignore it and allow it to happen.

Edited July 2, 2022 by Astralporing.1957

[Gehenna.3625]

1 hour ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Based on the information we have, the person was kicked over a skin. I never said it's elitist to have gear requirements for a raid.

Edit: Also worth noting that assuming for a moment you're right and it was about gear rather than a skin, that evidently was not conveyed to the person clearly and that would reek of elitism in its own way; there is a difference between having a set requirement and being dismissive toward people who don't meet it. In other words, being of high skill does not have to imply you are impatient or unwilling to take the time to communicate with those who aren't. I'll grant, too, that being impatient doesn't always mean you're elitist, but people who are elitist are usually more impatient with those they consider to be of lesser skill than they'd be with people who they see as peers.

That was his version of the story. And that is a rather strange story. One side of a story and a very unlikely one at that, shouldn't be considered reliable information.

Like I said, the more likely explanation is that it was not over the skin. I'm not dismissing the possibility but due to its high improbability, I think the person just misunderstood what it was about.

It's interesting that you say that "people who are elitist are usually more impatient". Because you say that for the same reason I say that it's more likely that he was kicked over the stats. Just think about that for a moment if you will. You argue against the most likely scenario for the skin situation and then you argue for the most likely scenario for being impatient.

It seems a little inconsistent.

[Nakasz.5471]

15 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

I saw a lot more groups in other wings than w1 too. I bet a lot of this is due to the new machinist meta, not to the buff. From what i have seen so far, I'd say that this semi-afk meta makes raiding way easier than the emboldened buff - which only strengthens my earlier point about difficulty and effort being based on a multitude of things, and not only on that one change.

Agree, the new meta makes it easier to achieve good numbers.
In fact, this is one of the things I like about these low-intensity rotations, they actually allow more people to be included in the endgame content. I'm not defending the balance patch or anything, I think the balance patch is bad. But I don't see a problem with having low intensity rotations that are viable in endgame content, the problem is decreasing the amount of viable classes in a patch that should increase.

There's one more point about emboldened raids: the fact that CM strikes are not an alternative way to get LI.
I'm not criticizing CM strikes or anything like that, I think they are some of the best content ever created. But don't tell me that the new strikes are an additional way for players who don't/never did raid to get LI, right? The new CMs are focused on those who are already in the endgame content, and that's the truth.
We're watching the best guild in gw 2 struggling to finish Harvest Temple CM, and I see some people saying that CM strikes can be a way for non-raid players to get LI, isn't it.

Edited July 2, 2022 by Nakasz.5471

[Astralporing.1957]

2 hours ago, Nakasz.5471 said:

We're watching the best guild in gw 2 struggling to finish Harvest Temple CM, and I see some people saying that CM strikes can be a way for non-raid players to get LI, isn't it.

Oh, definitely. They are an additional way to obtain LI for players that likely already have more of them than they need.

[Sobx.1758]

7 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Based on the information we have, the person was kicked over a skin.

Based on basic logic and large sample of different squads participating in content like that, we know that neither training squads (which are the ones he is joining) nor high-req squads kick players for skins they're using. The training ones are set on practicing and teaching players how to get into raids, while the high req ones just care about efficiency. Kicking for using x helmet skin doesn't happen and anyone participating in content like that should understand that pretty well by now.

Edited July 2, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Astralporing.1957]

13 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Based on basic logic and large sample of different squads participating in content like that, we know that neither training squads (which are the ones he is joining) nor high-req squads kick players for skins they're using. The training ones are set on practicing and teaching players how to get into raids, while the high req ones just care about efficiency. Kicking for using x helmet skin doesn't happen and anyone participating in content like that should understand that pretty well by now.

Normal squads, sure. Normal squads don't ask players to ping their gear anymore however, and haven't been for years, so we already know it was a "special case".

[Sobx.1758]

2 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Normal squads, sure. Normal squads don't ask players to ping their gear anymore however, and haven't been for years, so we already know it was a "special case".

Pretty sure he didn't say he was asked to ping it, though? Pretty sure he said "My gear was Lunatic exotic so even if they'd asked they couldn't see the stats", which from my understanding directly tells us that in his story, they really just "kicked him for cat hoodie skin"?  Can you point me to that part of the story I apparently might have missed?

(and, again, he recently said he's new, so he's only joining training squads)

 

 

So many people ""confused"" and still not one of you told me what I've missed in those posts 🤷‍♂️

Edited July 2, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Labjax.2465]

14 hours ago, Gehenna.3625 said:

That was his version of the story. And that is a rather strange story. One side of a story and a very unlikely one at that, shouldn't be considered reliable information.

Like I said, the more likely explanation is that it was not over the skin. I'm not dismissing the possibility but due to its high improbability, I think the person just misunderstood what it was about.

It's interesting that you say that "people who are elitist are usually more impatient". Because you say that for the same reason I say that it's more likely that he was kicked over the stats. Just think about that for a moment if you will. You argue against the most likely scenario for the skin situation and then you argue for the most likely scenario for being impatient.

It seems a little inconsistent.

Huh? What does impatience have to do with whether they kick over stats or a skin?

[Labjax.2465]

8 hours ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Based on basic logic and large sample of different squads participating in content like that, we know that neither training squads (which are the ones he is joining) nor high-req squads kick players for skins they're using. The training ones are set on practicing and teaching players how to get into raids, while the high req ones just care about efficiency. Kicking for using x helmet skin doesn't happen and anyone participating in content like that should understand that pretty well by now.

Ah yes, "basic logic." When someone knows that what they're saying isn't actually logical, but they want to give it more weight.

Face it, you've got nothing but pure conjecture and anecdote to reject what was claimed. You are talking as if people are computers running a program in a predictably repeatable way every time it runs. Well... they aren't. They just aren't.

[Sobx.1758]

1 hour ago, Labjax.2465 said:

Ah yes, "basic logic." When someone knows that what they're saying isn't actually logical, but they want to give it more weight.

Face it, you've got nothing but pure conjecture and anecdote to reject what was claimed. You are talking as if people are computers running a program in a predictably repeatable way every time it runs. Well... they aren't. They just aren't.

Ah yes... I'm not the one running from what others write though. 🙄 And what exactly isn't logical about what I said here?

I'm not the one unwilling to face the facts here though. Nobody will kick you for reskinning your headgear into whateveranimal ears, that's just not a thing. Not only in training squads -which is what he said he's only playing in- but in any other as well.

Edited July 3, 2022 by Sobx.1758

[Labjax.2465]

28 minutes ago, Sobx.1758 said:

Ah yes... I'm not the one running from what others write though. 🙄 And what exactly isn't logical about what I said here?

I'm not the one unwilling to face the facts here though. Nobody will kick you for reskinning your headgear into whateveranimal ears, that's just not a thing. Not only in training squads -which is what he said he's only playing in- but in any other as well.

"Not unwilling to face facts."

*denies what someone says happened because they don't want to believe it and something about probability*

BTW, improbable things happen on a regular basis. Furthermore, how probable something seems does not define how probable it actually is. And the typical scope or intention of something does not make it impossible for it to violate that scope, especially where human decision-making is involved.

I will now proceed to run away I guess. I would have preferred to walk, but if you'd like me to run, I'll be the entertainment, what the hey.

[Sobx.1758]

14 hours ago, Labjax.2465 said:

"Not unwilling to face facts."

*denies what someone says happened because they don't want to believe it and something about probability*

BTW, improbable things happen on a regular basis. Furthermore, how probable something seems does not define how probable it actually is. And the typical scope or intention of something does not make it impossible for it to violate that scope, especially where human decision-making is involved.

I will now proceed to run away I guess. I would have preferred to walk, but if you'd like me to run, I'll be the entertainment, what the hey.

I know you will, that's exactly what you did in the last few posts too. In the previous post you threw in some "you know it's not logical!" empty phrase and when asked what exactly isn't logical there, you simply avoid it again. Moreover, I don't even know why you went on with some "probablility!" explanation when nothing in the posts above talks about probability. How about you just respond to what you were quoting instead of doing whatever you keep doing above?

Face it, nobody kicks people from a group based on how they reskinned their headgear. 🤦‍♂️

Edited July 3, 2022 by Sobx.1758