Raiding is on the verge of destroying huge segments of the GW2 community, if it hasn't already

Cyninja.2954 · December 17, 2018

@Jockum.1385 said:
@Cyninja.2954 said:
This is the simple reality:
players as casual as you describe are 99% of the time not interested in raids, fractals or dungeons. Dungeons being the hail-marry exception when they do a path 1nce a year with other guildies. IF they do dungeon paths, most do not
dungeons are not raids. Dungeons and low rank fractals do not require any type of setup. High level fractals (CMs specifically) and raids require specific setups and a minimum knowledge and understanding of ones class. By your own admission this is not present with super casual players. That is not a rift, that is content designed for a different type of player, from the conception

While it is true that quite a lot are only interested in solo content (see those threads asking for solomodes for dungeons etc.) there are also teamoriented players. How big each group is, is speculative since GW2 offers no teamcontent. To asume the amount of hardcoreplayers being bigger than the amount of casual- or coregamers is extremly optimistic. Usually there are by far more casuals. I think it's safe to asume that there are more players interested in casual group content than in hardcore group content as raids. It is also definately wrong to say "doing dungeons only once or twice = not interested in them". Many players also do story only once, too. But all of this aside:

I never said hardcore players outnumber casual players. I said casual players are as a majority not interested in the content you so gladly attribute as lacking for them. If you have 1-2 hours per week to play a game, you are highly unlikely to start grouping and doing group content when there are a 1,000 other things to do. Since you are so fast to tell others they are clueless, please refrain from putting words in my mouth and read more carefully.

@Jockum.1385 said:If you have read forums in the past years you have for sure seen many threads asking for new dungeons, asking for new fractals, asking for easymode raids, asking for new guildmissions. More casual players are usually less engaged in a game and not as active in forums as hardcoreplayer.I asume you have also seen all those threads complaining about zerg meta. Or too strict fractal requirements. Maybe you have also seen some of the threads where guilds/players said that GW2 has nothing to offer for them since dungeons are dead. There have been plenty of complaints, bc raids don't cover the needs of all former dungeon runners. So obviously there are players caring about easier teamcontent.

Sure I have. I have also seen threads about not wanting mounts (one of the best additions to the game). Threads about balance which asked (and still ask) for ludicrous changes. Threads about new races, classes, etc.

I have also read threads about the zerker meta which then changed into threads about the viper meta, condi meta, boon meta, etc.If you are using the forums and the average understanding and knowledge of the average gamer as basis on what should be done, yeah good luck with that.

Yes, lack of content in some areas is real (guild missions etc.) but at the same time rest assured, Arenanet has metrics on which content is being played how much and as a result they are likely putting their resources to use to develop and design content based on what is player by how many how much. That's exactly thre reason why raid and fractal content is made by a small team within Arenanet, while Living World content has multiple teams working on it.

@Jockum.1385 said:No, it is a rift by game design, as explained by me earlier. You simply should not have to recruit a open world player and have to teach him his class mechanics. This is a proof of a terrible designed game. A game should not be splitted into "does not need to know anything about his class mechanics in endgame content and still performs well (open world)" and "needs to know everything (raids)". There should be content in between closing this gap. Lots of content. It's called "learning curve", not "learning cliff". Many small steps form a curve, not one huge kitten step from "111 in green equip" to "needs to know his class rotations and mechanics, boss mechanics and be full asc". There really should be something in between, it should not be necessary to explain basics as CC in raids.

There is, it's called fractals and they gradually increase in difficulty. If you had stuck with them and actually played instanced content on a regular basis, you might have improved far enough to join raids.

@Jockum.1385 said:
@Cyninja.2954 said:
the gear you described is not even required for raids. Raids have been cleared in greens. Even ifShows your lack of basic understanding. Grab a group of terrible open world players which struggle in T1 fractals and try to teach them more difficult content, especially raids. You'll be happy about each extra % of damage. Those who cleaned raids in greens are by far no "111 faceroll" noobs. If you think so you should probably debate that with the involved guilds and not with me. Maybe try to understand that good players are able to do stuff with a handicap. For a bad player an additional handicap is a problem. In theory bad/new players should have a by far better equipment to learn boss mechanics and the better they get the worse their equip can get to keep content interesting. Such "negative level ups" are afaik a theoretical concept in game design.

You might want to tone down your constant attacks. My lack of understanding is based on hundreds of hour of team content and thousands of hours of all GW2 content. Both training myself and others (as in leading and/or participating in training raids or helping out in fractals etc.). I believe I have by far a better understanding of which player type is represented where and how one can move from open world to difficult team content than you. How much experience are you exactly bringing to the table? Besides actively discouraging people of playing the game.

I said the gear is not required, I did not say bad players can clear everything in the lowest tier possible. It goes to reason that better gear will help but it also shows that player skill is a far bigger factor than in comparative/competitive products. If you want to out gear content, go play WoW. There is a limit to how much you can out gear content in GW2, and that is a game design issue and not a rift too.

@Cyninja.2954 said:

Teamcontent is not per se challenging content. That's nonsense. It wasn't about raids being meant as challenging content. That's ok. The serious lack of easier teamcontent is not ok and is a huge reason for this segregated community.

Raid content in GW2 makes up approximately 5% of all content added.

It's roughly 50%. I am refering here the whole time to teamcontent. Or should I now start counting PVP seasons as challenging content and start complaining about too much challenging content? There is no need for a new raids, bc there is a new pvp season? Is it this what you are claiming? Maybe try to understand that challenging content as triple trouble does not cater to raid players? Maybe try to understand that guilds want to play content together as a guild and GW2 offers nothing for such players? Open world content can't replace instanced teamcontent.

GW2efficiency stats are pretty clear. I was going by amount of developers devoted to content creating by official announcements. From both of those perspectives, team content is way below 50%. One need only look at how much Living World content and solo-able content is released.

Once again, there is instanced team content. There might not be instanced team content to your liking, but there is easy instanced team content of all difficulties.

@Jockum.1385 said:
@Cyninja.2954 said:Your problem is not with the design or difficulty of raid content, it's with lacking alternatives on the lower end.That's exactly what I said some posts earlier, yes. If HoT and PoF both would've added 10 new dungeons all of this would be a very different debate. But they didn't.

That is not a rift though. You want to make it a rift and thus have an argument to demand easier content, when all it would take is to state: we need more easy group content.

@Jockum.1385 said:Conclusion is: GW2 is not made for casual- or coregamers interested in teamcontent. If you got 3 friends and are looking for a MMO, GW2 is the wrong game for you. If you are looking for a MMO but want to play it without having to play with other players or having to team GW2 is doing a good job. But I personally think that such players should better stick with Skyrim etc., I'm also not asking for Battlefield to be turned into a racing sim.

Yet the game is hailed by pretty much every one as one of the best casual experiences to go play. Given everything you have written, I believe the game is simply not for you. You being the "I want to invest x amount of hours into a game but at the same time not invest x amount of hours into a game".

You have so far spent far more hours on these forums in a week than a casual player of your description would have spent on this game in a month. You are actively discouraging people try the game or play it. You are very knowledgeable about content you have basically no experience in. Somehow I'm not sure you are the target audience for any content delivered to this game.

gonandro.4768 · December 17, 2018

Yeah, just because you don't like or can't do "something" completely means it's **DESTROYING MUH GAEM***Seriously, people don't get tired of posting this stuff?

maddoctor.2738 · December 17, 2018

@Jockum.1385 said:I think it's safe to asume that there are more players interested in casual group content than in hardcore group content as raids

No it's not safe to assume this at all, this is something you have nothing to base on.

Amaranthe.3578 · December 17, 2018

GW2 doesnt get enough new bosses to actually have a hardcore community. This prevents you from having a semi-hardcore community and so on.Guild Wars 2 PvE was designed around 5-man groups and thats why balancing raids is always a mess.Raids are a mess in general and should never have been added to the game with HOT.

Jockum.1385 · December 17, 2018

@"zombyturtle.5980" said:
They invest in raids to keep hardcore players playing regularly and spending money regularly. [...]
Again, 10-20 dungeons is a ridiculous estimation. There were only 8 dungeons at launch. 2-3 would be more realistic for an expansion.
Without raids teamoriented hardcoreplayers would probably stop playing GW2, yes. Same applies for teamoriented casuals without casual group content.There are and have been many complaints about lacking guild- and teamcontent in GW2. You can't claim that casuals- and coregamers are not interested in group content when people are constantly asking for exactly this.Your reasoning of ~ "useless because people might only play it once" is questionable. Same would apply for living story, which is often only done once. Dungeons also do get repeated by casuals. Not on a daily basis, but occasionally.

10-20 dungeons is not ridiculus. Just because you are used to GW2s slow development it does not need to be so. As example: GW proph: ~25 storymissions (comparable to dungeon story mode I'd say). Factions (one year later): ~13 story missions. Nightfall (half a year later): ~17. EotN (one year): 11 "storymissions". Note that I'm here only refering to storymissions. Proph got two "raids" (fow, uw), two in between (uw2+sorrows furnance), factions added two (deep, urgoz), nightfall doa (4-5 maps), eotn added 18 dungeons. Ignoring HM which basically doubled all of this. GW2 is slow at releasing new content. That's a matter of design choices and probably also of dev tools. Ofc it takes more time to deliver a mouthpainted piece of art than some form of simpler content. But quantity matters, too. Some content of GW2s living story could've been used as dungeon. Lake doric caudecus mansion story part, as example. You could also do it as DDO does: offer a "single" "team" "challenge" mode for such content and add different rewards and maybe achievements for each modi.

@"Cyninja.2954" said:
I never said hardcore players outnumber casual players. I said casual players are as a majority not interested in the content you so gladly attribute as lacking for them.
We are debating teamoriented players, not hardcoreplayers in general compared to casuals in general. There are also hardcore PVP, WvW and open world players or AP hunters. When looking at teamoriented players only I seriously doubt that there are more hardcoreplayers than casuals. Ofc we don't really know. But for example in early 2015 I personally thought that more people were doing easy dungeons as COF or AC compared to arah and COE. I also think that there were plenty of "non raid ready" players in PuGs at that time. But that's, at best, a guess. Maybe there are now more players doing raids than players doing fractals. I doubt it, GW2 efficiency indicates the opposite.There is, it's called fractals and they gradually increase in difficulty. If you had stuck with them and actually played instanced content on a regular basis, you might have improved far enough to join raids.Farming content hundreds of times isn't really the "casual way" to play a video game. Repeating content a few times is fine, doing the same content hundreds of times isn't. That's why a wide variety of content is, especially for more casual players, important. Hardcoreplayers are usually willing to repeat content more often, but also spend more time ingame."Player skill is a bigger factor than equip" is offtopic. My initial claim was, that for bad/unexperienced players good equip is important and running some budget 20G variant is a huge handicap (~30% less damage? sigil of force/scholar ~15%/fullasc~12, +buffood) and nothing you can use as example for low costs. Even beginner guides do, afaik, often strongly recommend at least an ascended weapon and trinkets. I was only refering to full exo with meta runes/sigils.That is not a rift though. You want to make it a rift and thus have an argument to demand easier content, when all it would take is to state: we need more easy group content.When you got two different playerbases which got nothing in common anymore it is a rift. The more players seperate from each other (usually for reasons) the bigger the rift. People asking for killproof is an indication of such a rift. It's not "okay, doesn't matter anyway, everyone welcome", which would cause some exchange between "both worlds". In easier content as fractals or dungeons etc. a casual might run accidentally into experienced players. He might see more advanced tactics, maybe gets advice for his build. There is some exchange which closes such a gap. He gains understanding of hardcoreplayers knowlegde, experience etc. - and hardcoreplayers can see where such a player struggles. Be it bc of mechanics, be it bc of equipment etc. Content where players have to deal with each other helps to close such a rift. The amount of content where those "two worlds" meet is in GW2 very limited - and if they do, as in open world, there isn't much interaction. You rarely see someone telling a warrior in open world to drop skill X and exchange it for a better one. In dungeons etc. such advice is much more common, simply bc of "we are a team" and better visibility.
Yet the game is hailed by pretty much every one as one of the best casual experiences to go play.I said: "GW2 is not made for casual- or coregamers interested in teamcontent." For an open world player who wants to logg in once a month and do his fireele world boss GW2 is for sure a good game, but that wasn't questioned. Actually I even said: " If you are looking for a MMO but want to play it without having to play with other players or having to team GW2 is doing a good job."
@maddoctor.2738 said:No it's not safe to assume this at all, this is something you have nothing to base on.In general there are more casuals than hardcoreplayers. This goes for all content. There are usually more people doing pvp casually than e-sport pvp players. There are more players in low wvw ranks than wvw rank 5000+. There are more players doing open world casually than 35k AP players or hardcorefarmers. Maybe teamcontent is an exeption. But based on GW2efficiency it seems that there are more players doing fractals than raids.

Cyninja.2954 · December 17, 2018

@Jockum.1385 said:
@"Cyninja.2954" said:
I never said hardcore players outnumber casual players. I said casual players are as a majority not interested in the content you so gladly attribute as lacking for them.
We are debating teamoriented players, not hardcoreplayers in general compared to casuals in general. There are also hardcore PVP, WvW and open world players or AP hunters. When looking at teamoriented players only I seriously doubt that there are more hardcoreplayers than casuals. Ofc we don't really know. But for example in early 2015 I personally thought that more people were doing easy dungeons as COF or AC compared to arah and COE. I also think that there were plenty of "non raid ready" players in PuGs at that time. But that's, at best, a guess. Maybe there are now more players doing raids than players doing fractals. I doubt it, GW2 efficiency indicates the opposite.

and Arenanet knows exactly since they have all those metrics. They have a very low release rate of team oriented very easy content. They have a very high release rate of casual content which does not require grouping but can be grouped in (living world episodes and instances).

Given that every time there is slightly more difficult content added (way way way below actually difficult content like T4 fractals or raids, but slightly above open world difficulty) a roar goes through the forums of things becoming to hard (just look at how much rebalancing they had to do for HoT open world or some living world bosses in season 3 like Major Caudecus).

True, we as playes have no idea and are subject to our own experiences and the more we make in different modes, the clearer a picture we get. We can only assume that Arenanet developers devote resources based on what they believe will give a reasonable cost-benefit ratio.

I still fail to see how this is a rift since we are still talking about fundamentally different players here. There is a minority of hardcore crowd (and don't mention spvp or wvw, those game modes have not seen a lot of love in ages) which gets a small amount of content (1 raid and 1-2 fractals a year) and there is a huge casual crowd which gets multiple living world episodes per year and a majority of the development. How you are now making the leap that due to raids there is a rift, I still don't understand. There never was a rift because these are basically 2 different groups of players.

Does it suck that there is not more say dungeon content? Sure. Unless you want to argue that this is due to raids having a small team, you would be much better off complaining about the huge amount of resources going into open world and casual solo content since that is an area where one could actually draw developers off from and commit to casual group content development.

@Jockum.1385 said:
@"Cyninja.2954" said:There is, it's called fractals and they gradually increase in difficulty. If you had stuck with them and actually played instanced content on a regular basis, you might have improved far enough to join raids.Farming content hundreds of times isn't really the "casual way" to play a video game. Repeating content a few times is fine, doing the same content hundreds of times isn't. That's why a wide variety of content is, especially for more casual players, important. Hardcoreplayers are usually willing to repeat content more often, but also spend more time ingame.

Sorry, there is no value in creating 1-time group content. There is almost no value in creating 1-time solo content in a MMO. You are in the wrong game genre here.

@Jockum.1385 said:"Player skill is a bigger factor than equip" is offtopic. My initial claim was, that for bad/unexperienced players good equip is important and running some budget 20G variant is a huge handicap (~30% less damage? sigil of force/scholar ~15%/fullasc~12, +buffood) and nothing you can use as example for low costs. Even beginner guides do, afaik, often strongly recommend at least an ascended weapon and trinkets. I was only refering to full exo with meta runes/sigils.

Change the beginner guides. Every single half way decent guide will tell you that exotic gear is fine. Maybe make a mention that ascended weapons and trinkets are recommended both of which have seen multiple avenues into this game for near no gold or some little time commitment over a few days.

Full exotic berserker gear with proper runes is easily affordable by a casual player who takes 1-2 months to hit level 80. The materials alone from the 30 days login will cover that cost multiple times over.

@Jockum.1385 said:
@"Cyninja.2954" said:That is not a rift though. You want to make it a rift and thus have an argument to demand easier content, when all it would take is to state: we need more easy group content.When you got two different playerbases which got nothing in common anymore it is a rift. The more players seperate from each other (usually for reasons) the bigger the rift. People asking for killproof is an indication of such a rift. It's not "okay, doesn't matter anyway, everyone welcome", which would cause some exchange between "both worlds". In easier content as fractals or dungeons etc. a casual might run accidentally into experienced players. He might see more advanced tactics, maybe gets advice for his build. There is some exchange which closes such a gap. He gains understanding of hardcoreplayers knowlegde, experience etc. - and hardcoreplayers can see where such a player struggles. Be it bc of mechanics, be it bc of equipment etc. Content where players have to deal with each other helps to close such a rift. The amount of content where those "two worlds" meet is in GW2 very limited - and if they do, as in open world, there isn't much interaction. You rarely see someone telling a warrior in open world to drop skill X and exchange it for a better one. In dungeons etc. such advice is much more common, simply bc of "we are a team" and better visibility.

This has been covered multiple times and I'm getting tired of having to address this over and over again.

Kill proof are no rift, they are an attempt to match player skill and experience of the group to be on one level. You have no right as inexperienced player to experienced groups, in no game. There is literally no game where an experienced group will take an inexperienced player. If you find one tell us all how they managed that.

There are venues and approaches to get experience. Joining Kill Proof groups is not one of them and is even the most toxic since you are essentially wasting other peoples time (yes, a casual or inexperienced player can be toxic too when deliberately wasting other people's time).

Open world content is probably the lowest denominator of difficulty one can find. There is people unattentive farming (not botting or afk) open world content. Don;t use this as an argument, it's pretty poor. I'm not even going to mention the toxicity which comes out of open world players when a world boss does not die first try or people refuse to way point.

All of this does not constitute a rift or a growing rift. All of this has been present since vanilla (dungeon speed runs back then). The problem this game has, which is ultimately why it is hailed as so casual friendly is: open world content and 95% of this game require -50 skill (not even 0, going negative here). This makes the game great to pick up and just mess around a bit, but automatically causes more effort to actually be able to address challenging content. Raids are not the cause, the difficulty people find in accessing this type of content is a result of the games main design.

@Jockum.1385 said:
@"Cyninja.2954" said:Yet the game is hailed by pretty much every one as one of the best casual experiences to go play.I said: "GW2 is not made for casual- or coregamers
interested in teamcontent.
" For an open world player who wants to logg in once a month and do his fireele world boss GW2 is for sure a good game, but that wasn't questioned. Actually I even said: " If you are looking for a MMO but want to play it without having to play with other players or having to team GW2 is doing a good job."

Well there you have it, GW2 is great for casual players with very limited time or who want to solo a lot.GW2 is okayish for players who want challenging content (since the release schedule here is way lower than competitive products).GW2 is not as great for the crowd who wants easy group content to play 1-2 times per month (once they have finished all the dungeons and low rank fractals).

Still not seeing a rift here, only developer resources divided up onto 2 crowds with the crowd you want to be in not being represented big enough.

Cyndercat.7615 · December 17, 2018

@Jockum.1385 said:
@"zombyturtle.5980" said:
They invest in raids to keep hardcore players playing regularly and spending money regularly. [...]
Again, 10-20 dungeons is a ridiculous estimation. There were only 8 dungeons at launch. 2-3 would be more realistic for an expansion.
Without raids teamoriented hardcoreplayers would probably stop playing GW2, yes. Same applies for teamoriented casuals without casual group content.There are and have been many complaints about lacking guild- and teamcontent in GW2. You can't claim that casuals- and coregamers are not interested in group content when people are constantly asking for exactly this.Your reasoning of ~ "useless because people might only play it once" is questionable. Same would apply for living story, which is often only done once. Dungeons also do get repeated by casuals. Not on a daily basis, but occasionally.

10-20 dungeons is not ridiculus. Just because you are used to GW2s slow development it does not need to be so. As example: GW proph: ~25 storymissions (comparable to dungeon story mode I'd say). Factions (one year later): ~13 story missions. Nightfall (half a year later): ~17. EotN (one year): 11 "storymissions". Note that I'm here only refering to storymissions. Proph got two "raids" (fow, uw), two in between (uw2+sorrows furnance), factions added two (deep, urgoz), nightfall doa (4-5 maps), eotn added 18 dungeons. Ignoring HM which basically doubled all of this. GW2 is slow at releasing new content. That's a matter of design choices and probably also of dev tools. Ofc it takes more time to deliver a mouthpainted piece of art than some form of simpler content. But quantity matters, too. Some content of GW2s living story could've been used as dungeon. Lake doric caudecus mansion story part, as example. You could also do it as DDO does: offer a "single" "team" "challenge" mode for such content and add different rewards and maybe achievements for each modi.

I dont see many casual groups asking for more dungeons tbh. I see older vet players asking because they miss the dungeon format. Maybe you do and im wrong but w.o evidence neither of us can prove we are right. Judging by how many casuals refuse to even set foot in forced group content at all, I think you are overestimating how many casual teamplayers there are. Certainly not enough to cause anet concern when they leave out of boredom, or we would see investment in them.

Most casual players , who the living story is designed for take several months to complete 1 episode. This retains them as paying customers long enough for the next release to drop. While its not repeatable, it fulfils the same purpose as raids, keeping them returning regularly and spending regularly since there is a significant amount of content. You have not explained how adding team content would keep more players returning REGULARLY.

Gw1 was a very different game with much simpler combat, and world design. Comparing the two is in fact ridiculous as gw2 is far far more complex even with just the addition of a Z axis on maps. They did add a team challenge mode to HOT final boss, but obviously it wasnt worth it as they never did it again.

maddoctor.2738 · December 17, 2018

@"Jockum.1385" said:Maybe teamcontent is an exeption. But based on GW2efficiency it seems that there are more players doing fractals than raids.

There are way more LFG listings for T4, CM Fractals and Raids than T1,T2,T3 Fractals and Dungeons. In fact up until Heart of Thorns Fractals outside T4 was a wasteland and dungeons mostly dead. Only reason Fractals aren't anymore is thanks to the extra added collections (precursors) being available there, easily checked when the listings require the specific fractals for the collections.

If you also account that Raids require 10 players while fractals and dungeons 5 you can see there are way more "hardcore" players playing instanced group content than casual players. Given how "hardcore" players are required to run dungeons and low level fractals for collections too, and that the majority of the listings are for those, it's safe to assume that the amount of players running dungeons and T1,T2,T3 fractals for the content itself, and not those external rewards, is a tiny minority, much lower than those running Raids.

Jockum.1385 · December 17, 2018

@maddoctor.2738 said:There are way more LFG listings for T4, CM Fractals and Raids than T1,T2,T3 Fractals and Dungeons.Listings are imho not a good indicator. In theory you are more likely to run into a player who plays 10 hours per week than into one who plays 1 hour. You are also by far more likely to run into a fractal runner than into someone who occasionally plays fractals but is mostly doing other content.I also only used fractals bc we got access to some metrics. Imho are fractals a bad example bc, by my experience, many players are burnt out on them. New fractals don't change this, same rewards, same reason to (not) play them. Fractals are mostly 2012/2013 content, most players did them already.

Even Anet has to interpret statistics. As example aetherpath. Maybe it wasn't very popular, but why? Too difficult? Too many unskipable cutscenes etc.? Too low rewards? Too long? Or because dungeons are unpopular? That's something statistics don't really tell. So it's hard to tell why Anet releases so little teamoriented content. Anet might simply release popular content - without questioning why not existing or weak content is not as popular.Back in the days Anet talked about tequatl etc. as group content or challenging group content. There was apparently for a long time the concept of forcing all players into open world content. Afaik was this also the idea behind open world guildmissions. Players should be visible in the open world and not be hiding in instances, guildhalls and so on. Anet has tried a lot of experimental stuff and lots of it wasn't great (temporary content, no trinity/roles/healers, no quests, only open world,...).

Apparantly Anet puts lot of ressources in one time content, see living story. Even worse: temporary content (LS1). So I don't see a problem with dungeons being played 1-5 times by more casual players.

@"Cyninja.2954" said:Full exotic berserker gear with proper runes is easily affordable by a casual player who takes 1-2 months to hit level 80. The materials alone from the 30 days login will cover that cost multiple times over.Problem here is: such a player is also doing story content or open world content. Maybe this is even content he does most. So he builds his character for this content and runs fullcleric, soldiers or whatever with traveler runes or so. If such a player wants to get into more demanding content he needs new equipment. Ideally a player in open world would slowly improve and run a similar or the same build as in raids. In fractals/dungeons this does btw happen, but as said: more casual players don't repeat them often enough. So they start to progress towards a metabuild, but they don't reach it because there is not enough content. Maybe someone starts doing fractals in fullsoldier and switches to zerk step by step. But if he stops playing fractals before he has also optimized his runes and sigils etc. there is still a lot missing. If he then does open world for two years exclusivly bc not enough new dungeons/fractals he might even return to fullsoldier again.
Kill proof are no rift, they are an attempt to match player skill and experience of the group to be on one level. You have no right as inexperienced player to experienced groups, in no game. There is literally no game where an experienced group will take an inexperienced player. If you find one tell us all how they managed that.GW1 came close to it. The how to needs a more detailed explanation:
Equip is not such a overcomplicated nonsense as in GW2. ~3 different helmets and ready to run thousands of builds. It also reduced complaints about balance updates, bc people did not lose their expensive equipment when updates hit. Imho do all those different equipment variants in GW2 add nothing of value to it's gameplay. Effects/stats could be part of the actual build and don't need to be on equipment. I don't want to have a fullcleric "dps" warrior in my team, this is a huge dps loss. Game mechanics (stats on equip) motivate players to be more picky.
GW1s content was nearly exclusivly teamcontent. So players were more trained to work in a team - since tutorial.
Team synergies mattered a lot. Ranger running double and tripple shot was not doing super much damage. But add some "on hit +X damage" buffs from other players which then get triggered two or three times instead of one and your "not so good" build could outperform meta builds.
Players suck at focusing on different things at the same time. GW2 asks players per default to do many different tasks (dps, healing, dodging,...). Clear roles as healer and dps are easier to play. This does not say that mastering such a role needs to be easy. A healer can also run an interupt, do dps or whatever. But if he fails at this job and only heals his team still stands. If you do great dps in GW2 but fail to dodge you are usually dead.
"damage math". In GW1 most buffs are +X, GW2 is *X. Which means that the bad performance of a player stays. As fictive example: bad player A does 1000dps, good player B 5000dps. Buffs double this, so player A does 2000, player B 10000dps. In GW1: player B would get a +5000dps buff and end up with 10000dps, too. But player A would also get +5000dps and end up with 6000dps. A low dps player in GW2 stays low dps, in GW1 it's the more buffs, the less his initial dps matters. In this example player A does 20% damage after buffs in GW2 - and 60% in GW1. A 60% player is more acceptable than a 20% player.
those +X buffs etc. resulted in very "visible" differences. A player whose damage got doubled notices it. In GW2 there are many many buffs, but they all are like +5%. This is not "visible". So players develop less by try and error and stick to bad choices.
Layers of defence. Positioning with a frontline (melee fighters), midline (ranged) backline (supporters). Enemies had to run to you, kiting etc. was helpful. If an enemy was heading for a backliner your frontline could either bodyblock him or cripple him. Your midline could slow him, blind him (stays for XY seconds and not just one attack), give the backliner a speedbuff, etc. Your backline could protect or heal him. Only if all of these layers/players failed he died. In GW2 it's often a single missed dodge which kills you. Everyone has to carry his own weight, a good player is less able to compensate bad players.
no easy roles. Everyone needs to dodge and has to deal with mechanics etc. in GW2. Ofc is chrono more challenging than some other builds, but there is no "just place your banners there warrior and then you can go afk" style of build. In GW1 beginners or bad players were often put into such builds, while good players run frontline, interupt etc. which required much more experience.
no easy tells. You need to memorize animations, there are no castbars in GW2. You need to know animations to know when to dodge. Which is difficult to explain in chat.

Overall this resulted in more good players being willing to carry a bad player. You had more options to do so and he was no dead weight, he still did bring okayish dps instead of being a useless corpse as in GW2. Ofc did speedrunning/clearing teams still ask for very experienced players. In these teams players split up and solo content. But your average "we want to succeed" group was usually willing to accept anyone. I did DOA ("raid") with an insane terrible alliance member "stay there, don't move. No matter what happens. Don't move. Just dps and if you die, die there. But don't move!" Worked fine. In GW2 I wouldn't even do 2018s dungeons with him, would only be an frustrating experience. In GW1 he slowly progressed. After a while he managed to interupt 5 second spells and at the end even often hit 2 second spells.But even in GW2: In easier content as T4s, recs or dungeons good players also often don't care that much and are ok with more or less anyone bc they can carry. Players of varying skill mix in these kinds of content. An unexperienced player can learn a lot whenever he plays with good players - this content helps "to unite the playerbase" a bit.When there are different groups of players there is a splitted community, a rift. In some aspects as PVP, WvW or speedrunning etc. this is normal. But on the more casual side "we just want to succeed in this content" there is no need for it, even when playstyles are very different. The lack of such "uniting content" in combination with some of the above describes game mechanics cause such a rift. I personally think a level-system similar as in fractals would've been better for raids. T4 could be challange mode like and T1 easymode. Guilds could recruit out of T2 do some T2 runs and climb into T3 etc. With maybe weekly rewards for each tier, so a T4 player has an incentive to run T1, too. But ideally such suggestions would be made by the raiding community. It's their content, they are by far more knowledgeable at this and if not enough player do raids it's their content which gets cut. Idc. I also think it doesn't mater for GW2 anymore. At this point GW2 will stay as it is anyway.

maddoctor.2738 · December 17, 2018

@"Jockum.1385" said:Listings are imho not a good indicator. In theory you are more likely to run into a player who plays 10 hours per week than into one who plays 1 hour. You are also by far more likely to run into a fractal runner than into someone who occasionally plays fractals but is mostly doing other content.

Listings are the only good indicator, together with maybe gw2efficiency stats. Everything else you describe is a valid reason why those that spend too much time in that type of content need more of it, while those that play 1 hour a week or are mostly doing other content don't really justify the need to create content for them. There is no need to cater to this supposed part of the community that likes "casual group content".

Btw, before Heart of Thorns dungeons and Fractals was mostly dead content only run by the true fans of challenging content. It wasn't until Raids appeared that they suddenly became the most amazing thing of this game. Instanced group content was never popular which is why they hardly gave us any of it. Raids proved that it can be popular, if it appealed to a different audience, it's not surprising that after the success of Raids they started developing Fractals too.

You are 6 years too late to ask for casual group content, and if you like that so much I wonder what you are still doing in the game and haven't left a long time ago.

Fractals are mostly 2012/2013 content, most players did them already.

It appears that you have no clue what you are talking about. Fractals became popular only after the release of Heart of Thorns when they revamped them and their rewards, Fractals after HoT were like brand new content. Then in a span of the last 2.5 years we got 5 brand new Fractals.

The game was released with 9 Fractals, we got just 1 new and 4 simple refreshes of Living Story dungeons in late 2013, and then 5 new fractals in the last 2.5 years starting in mid 2016. We are getting more Fractals than we ever got in the game's history, and after a gigantic 3 year gap of no Fractals. And the sorry state of the release Fractals meant they had to revamp them multiple times until they became good content. Swampland, Underground, Thaumanova, Snowblind, Cliffside are very different to how they were on release. Volcanic, Uncategorized and Urban Battleground are the only left outs without huge changes.

-And Solid Ocean, that's one of the worst Fractals and it's normal because it's nearly the same as it was on release. Very little changes

Dante.1763 · December 18, 2018

@maddoctor.2738 said:
@"Jockum.1385" said:Maybe teamcontent is an exeption. But based on GW2efficiency it seems that there are more players doing fractals than raids.

There are way more LFG listings for T4, CM Fractals and Raids than T1,T2,T3 Fractals and Dungeons. In fact up until Heart of Thorns Fractals outside T4 was a wasteland and dungeons mostly dead. Only reason Fractals aren't anymore is thanks to the extra added collections (precursors) being available there, easily checked when the listings require the specific fractals for the collections.

If you also account that Raids require 10 players while fractals and dungeons 5 you can see there are way more "hardcore" players playing instanced group content than casual players. Given how "hardcore" players are required to run dungeons and low level fractals for collections too, and that the majority of the listings are for those, it's safe to assume that the amount of players running dungeons and T1,T2,T3 fractals for the content itself, and not those external rewards, is a tiny minority, much lower than those running Raids.

Well, it doesnt help that anet effectively killed dungeons, and these days dungeons are so easy two people can do everything where it used to require five to complete, yay powercreep, so of course people dont really do LFGS for them. As to Fractals what you say is true, but it was alot harder to get into fractals then too. T4s can be completed by most "casual"(skill level) players, and id argue most of them could completed at least the level 99 CM. But the reason for t4s being more commonly listed is the daily rewards. Why do lower tiers when you can do a t4 and get all of them?

Jockum.1385 · December 18, 2018

Listings are pretty pointless. If I place a listing which does not fill in 2 hours it appears as some activity. If a listing fills in seconds it's gone. But whatever, GW efficiency indicates a much higher popularity of fractals compared to raids.The reasoning of "just one hour peer week does not justify" results in the conclusion that no casual content is worth developing it. Especially story content gets barely done more than once.

@maddoctor.2738 said:Btw, before Heart of Thorns dungeons and Fractals was mostly dead content only run by the true fans of challenging content. It wasn't until Raids appeared that they suddenly became the most amazing thing of this game. Instanced group content was never popular which is why they hardly gave us any of it.I strongly disagree. Dungeon entries were full of people, you rarely run into the same people twice, there were many extremly unexperienced players as staffguards, bearbow rangers and so on which were obviously no dungeon enthusiasts. There were huge complaints about zerg meta in all forums. I'd like to know exact metrics, because by my guestimations are raids by far less popular.But yes, solocontent is more popular imho. Raids are niche content in the niche of teamcontent.

People ask for more teamcontent since ~2012. Afaik got dungeons, which were intended as challenging content, a reduced difficulty because too many too casual players entered them on their search for group content.

Fractals became popular only after the release of Heart of Thorns when they revamped them and their rewards, Fractals after HoT were like brand new content. Then in a span of the last 2.5 years we got 5 brand new Fractals.Fractals were also relativly popular in 2012/2013. After they were abandoned by Anet player number seemed to drop. A whole fractal guild I played with at that time left GW2 for this reason and went to WoW. A lack of new content does not keep players active. 50 (?) was max. at that time, with some tricks you could go further but that was then indeed challenging content and not everyone's cup of tea.

Tasty Pudding.3764 · December 18, 2018

@zombyturtle.5980 said:They invest in raids to keep hardcore players playing regularly and spending money regularly. Thats literally the only purpose of raids. Without raids, most of those players would leave the game out of boredom and stop spending.

Hardcore PVE players don't spend on anything other than expansions. If you are not swimming in gold to be able to do as much gold->gems as you want, you are not a hardcore PVE player.

Cyninja.2954 · December 18, 2018

@Tasty Pudding.3764 said:
@zombyturtle.5980 said:They invest in raids to keep hardcore players playing regularly and spending money regularly. Thats literally the only purpose of raids. Without raids, most of those players would leave the game out of boredom and stop spending.

Hardcore PVE players don't spend on anything other than expansions. If you are not swimming in gold to be able to do as much gold->gems as you want, you are not a hardcore PVE player.

Depends on the definition of hardcore doesn't it?

Not every hardcore or dedicated player spends 10 hours per day on the game.

Also your reasoning is flawed on top of the initial argument being vague and incorrect. Any gems used in the store are money bought. The ones converted went through two conversions of gem->gold->gem and are as such especially expensive from a gold and gold drain perspective.

I could get into details how the gem-gold exchange works and how any one using it effectively promotes Arenanets business model, but I'll give you a chance to figure it out yourself first.

Suffice to say:Both your reasoning and lumping together all hardcore players as insanely rich are flawed.

Vinceman.4572 · December 18, 2018

@"Jockum.1385" said:Listings are pretty pointless. If I place a listing which does not fill in 2 hours it appears as some activity. If a listing fills in seconds it's gone. But whatever, GW efficiency indicates a much higher popularity of fractals compared to raids.The reasoning of "just one hour peer week does not justify" results in the conclusion that no casual content is worth developing it. Especially story content gets barely done more than once.

Listings aren't pointless if you compare the activity of players. Dungeon lfgs aren't filling in seconds, same stands for low level fractals. On the other side you have a very active T4 lfg and the same for raids.

I strongly disagree. Dungeon entries were full of people, you rarely run into the same people twice, there were many extremly unexperienced players as staffguards, bearbow rangers and so on which were obviously no dungeon enthusiasts. There were huge complaints about zerg meta in all forums. I'd like to know exact metrics, because by my guestimations are raids by far less popular.

Dungeon LFGs were full because running dungeons was the most profitable source of gold besides Silverwastes. They weren't popular due to being super fun or being the most attractive content in the game. With gutting the gold rewards from dungeons the lfg turned into a desert immediately after people found out.I was there and did my daily routine with Arah included. We kicked a lot of players because not every day we were in the mood to carry beginners and prolonged our runs due to endless pulls of mobs etc.

But yes, solocontent is more popular imho. Raids are niche content in the niche of teamcontent.

That's why there are 3 big teams for living story for every 3 months (and even here they can't hold the pace) and a much smaller instanced content (raid & fractal is one team at the moment) team with pretty long release cycles.

People ask for more teamcontent since ~2012. Afaik got dungeons, which were intended as challenging content, a reduced difficulty because too many too casual players entered them on their search for group content.

And it was only the dungeon running community that asked for more team content. They were one of the most active communities in the forum when reddit didn't existed for GW2 and they tried to stay in touch with the game developers (I still remember the distinct bug threads for every dungeon we had to make). The "casual" group was never that organized that vocal and that creative when it came to group content for them.

Fractals were also relativly popular in 2012/2013. After they were abandoned by Anet player number seemed to drop. A whole fractal guild I played with at that time left GW2 for this reason and went to WoW. A lack of new content does not keep players active. 50 (?) was max. at that time, with some tricks you could go further but that was then indeed challenging content and not everyone's cup of tea.

You have no clue. Fractals weren't popular for the casual crowd. Before HoT it was a more elitist place than they are now. The lower levels were much harder than T1 nowadays and not run by your so-called daily casual peeps. Being successful in the range of level 40-49 and 50 wasn't clear as well, many groups disbanded.

mortrialus.3062 · December 18, 2018

@Tasty Pudding.3764 said:
@"zombyturtle.5980" said:They invest in raids to keep hardcore players playing regularly and spending money regularly. Thats literally the only purpose of raids. Without raids, most of those players would leave the game out of boredom and stop spending.

Hardcore PVE players don't spend on anything other than expansions. If you are not swimming in gold to be able to do as much gold->gems as you want, you are not a hardcore PVE player.

[CITATION NEEDED]

Every thing we know about Microtransactions from other companies shows that very few players actually engage it in, and a small subset of it, derogatorily called 'Whales', make up the vast bulk of it. This is basically true for all games.

"0.15 percent of mobile gamers account for 50 percent of all in-game revenue."

https://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-whales-of-microtransactions-and-the-elephant-in-the-room

https://venturebeat.com/2014/02/26/only-0-15-of-mobile-gamers-account-for-50-percent-of-all-in-game-revenue-exclusive/

Other studies put the number at top 10 percent of an app’s spenders being responsible for 70 percent of its revenue.

It's probably not the 2 hours a week players making up that 50 percent in revenue.

maddoctor.2738 · December 18, 2018

@"Jockum.1385" said:Listings are pretty pointless.

Listings are all that matters. Also keep in mind that the vast majority of raiders is using static groups which is why there are so few listings.

But whatever, GW efficiency indicates a much higher popularity of fractals compared to raids.

I think you don't know how to read the data from gw2efficiency. Btw is T4/CM fractals considered "casual group content" now? Because there is nothing on gw2efficiency that proves your point.

The reasoning of "just one hour peer week does not justify" results in the conclusion that no casual content is worth developing it. Especially story content gets barely done more than once.

Story content is created to be done once. Instanced content needs people to actively play it to be successful and alive. So try again.

I strongly disagree. Dungeon entries were full of people, you rarely run into the same people twice, there were many extremly unexperienced players as staffguards, bearbow rangers and so on which were obviously no dungeon enthusiasts. There were huge complaints about zerg meta in all forums. I'd like to know exact metrics, because by my guestimations are raids by far less popular.

No they weren't you simply have rose tinted glasses now and ignore reality. There were zero entries for dungeons outside some very fast/easy paths. Raids are far more popular than dungeons ever were, your guestimates are simply wrong.

But yes, solocontent is more popular imho. Raids are niche content in the niche of teamcontent.

"Casual group content" is even more niche type of team content than Raids.

People ask for more teamcontent since ~2012.

And if they were successful we would get some but we didn't. Try again.

Fractals were also relativly popular in 2012/2013.

No they were pretty much dead outside the higher levels.

After they were abandoned by Anet player number seemed to drop.

You got it backwards. There were no player numbers that's why they were abandoned.

Laila Lightness.8742 · December 18, 2018

@"Jockum.1385" said:Listings are pretty pointless. If I place a listing which does not fill in 2 hours it appears as some activity. If a listing fills in seconds it's gone. But whatever, GW efficiency indicates a much higher popularity of fractals compared to raids.The reasoning of "just one hour peer week does not justify" results in the conclusion that no casual content is worth developing it. Especially story content gets barely done more than once.
@maddoctor.2738 said:Btw, before Heart of Thorns dungeons and Fractals was mostly dead content only run by the true fans of challenging content. It wasn't until Raids appeared that they suddenly became the most amazing thing of this game. Instanced group content was never popular which is why they hardly gave us any of it.I strongly disagree. Dungeon entries were full of people, you rarely run into the same people twice, there were many extremly unexperienced players as staffguards, bearbow rangers and so on which were obviously no dungeon enthusiasts. There were huge complaints about zerg meta in all forums. I'd like to know exact metrics, because by my guestimations are raids by far less popular.But yes, solocontent is more popular imho. Raids are niche content in the niche of teamcontent.

People ask for more teamcontent since ~2012. Afaik got dungeons, which were intended as challenging content, a reduced difficulty because too many too casual players entered them on their search for group content.

Fractals became popular only after the release of Heart of Thorns when they revamped them and their rewards, Fractals after HoT were like brand new content. Then in a span of the last 2.5 years we got 5 brand new Fractals.Fractals were also relativly popular in 2012/2013. After they were abandoned by Anet player number seemed to drop. A whole fractal guild I played with at that time left GW2 for this reason and went to WoW. A lack of new content does not keep players active. 50 (?) was max. at that time, with some tricks you could go further but that was then indeed challenging content and not everyone's cup of tea.

Dungeons was not popular only specific ppl did them and if you were a ranger or necro or enginer you could forget to ever do them since those 3 was not allowed by most ppl in dungeons. Dungeons got popular then anet said there wont be more then ppl suddenly cared. And the thing is your numbers is wrong. You are making up your own proofs. You want dungeons but alot of ppl didnt do dungeons. Dungeons was high end pve on release at that time and not many did it so stop it. Dungeons werent even casual on release. If wow and gw1 was so perfect why play gw 2

Kiza.5630 · December 18, 2018

@irrimn.3192 said:
Well, first and foremost, difficulty. If there are challenge difficulties for raids, why not have a newbie-mode? [...] Ideally, newbie mode would still teach the mechanics of the fight without being too punishing.

I've seen that in other games though. The outcome was (and will probably always be): ppl don't learn the fight, because you can just ignore the mechanics and mow the bosses down. And then they will just farm this dumbed down version without thinking.

Take a look at the open world bosses. When was the last time a group doing them actually paid attention to mechanics? Example would be bounties with phases shifted. Almost 75% of the ppl stack at the boss and just keep hitting until its dead. Or Serpents' Ire. It has but one single mechanic, yet it still fails miserably.

I fear you can't teach players with simple versions of fights. Just find a good middle ground and throw everyone in. Some learn, some don't.

maddoctor.2738 · December 18, 2018

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:Dungeons was not popular only specific ppl did them and if you were a ranger or necro you could forget to ever do them since those 2 was not allowed by most ppl in dungeons. Dungeons got popular then anet said there wont be more then ppl suddenly cared. And the thing is your numbers is wrong. You are making up your own proofs. You want dungeons but alot of ppl didnt do dungeons. Dungeons was high end pve on release at that time

You forgot Engineer!

Brynioch.1873 · December 18, 2018

@Laila Lightness.8742 said:
@"Jockum.1385" said:Listings are pretty pointless. If I place a listing which does not fill in 2 hours it appears as some activity. If a listing fills in seconds it's gone. But whatever, GW efficiency indicates a much higher popularity of fractals compared to raids.The reasoning of "just one hour peer week does not justify" results in the conclusion that no casual content is worth developing it. Especially story content gets barely done more than once.
@maddoctor.2738 said:Btw, before Heart of Thorns dungeons and Fractals was mostly dead content only run by the true fans of challenging content. It wasn't until Raids appeared that they suddenly became the most amazing thing of this game. Instanced group content was never popular which is why they hardly gave us any of it.I strongly disagree. Dungeon entries were full of people, you rarely run into the same people twice, there were many extremly unexperienced players as staffguards, bearbow rangers and so on which were obviously no dungeon enthusiasts. There were huge complaints about zerg meta in all forums. I'd like to know exact metrics, because by my guestimations are raids by far less popular.But yes, solocontent is more popular imho. Raids are niche content in the niche of teamcontent.

People ask for more teamcontent since ~2012. Afaik got dungeons, which were intended as challenging content, a reduced difficulty because too many too casual players entered them on their search for group content.

Fractals became popular only after the release of Heart of Thorns when they revamped them and their rewards, Fractals after HoT were like brand new content. Then in a span of the last 2.5 years we got 5 brand new Fractals.Fractals were also relativly popular in 2012/2013. After they were abandoned by Anet player number seemed to drop. A whole fractal guild I played with at that time left GW2 for this reason and went to WoW. A lack of new content does not keep players active. 50 (?) was max. at that time, with some tricks you could go further but that was then indeed challenging content and not everyone's cup of tea.

Dungeons was not popular only specific ppl did them and if you were a ranger or necro or enginer you could forget to ever do them since those 3 was not allowed by most ppl in dungeons. Dungeons got popular then anet said there wont be more then ppl suddenly cared. And the thing is your numbers is wrong. You are making up your own proofs. You want dungeons but alot of ppl didnt do dungeons. Dungeons was high end pve on release at that time and not many did it so stop it. Dungeons werent even casual on release. If wow and gw1 was so perfect why play gw 2

But mostly because people were stupid and couldn't read skill descriptions. Ranger got actually really popular once somebody read the decription of frost spirit.

Astralporing.1957 · December 18, 2018

@"mortrialus.3062" said:It's probably not the 2 hours a week players making up that 50 percent in revenue.Probably not. Although that doesn't mean it's hardcores that do that spending.

Hardcores in general spend their cash on p2w upgrades, as well as some QoL (especially the ones that increase their effectiveness - inventory increase, movement boosts, etc). They also prefer to get their stuff in game over buying it if there's an option. On the other hand, they do not spend all that much on vanity (they'd rather go for ingame exclusives for it, as for them vanity is not about looks, but about prestige). It's the social players that spend the most on vanity. In MMO, that's usually the so called "dedicated casuals" group (those that play a lot, but with a more casual approach to it) that makes the most of whales (in western style MMOs anyway, in asian style MMO with significant pw2 options the breakdown shifts more towards hardcores). Also, many whales actually play not as much (although it's stil a significant amount) and use real cash as one of the ways to "catch up".People buying raid kills, instead of getting them the hardcore way? They're often whales.

@"Miellyn.6847" said:But mostly because people were stupid and couldn't read skill descriptions. Ranger got actually really popular once somebody read the decription of frost spirit.You're talking about the current iteration of frost spirit (or spirits in general). Originally, in most encounters they used to last a few seconds at best (if they were lucky) because if they were close enough to give buffs, they were also close enough to get hit by accidental attacks. Same happened with pets, by the way.

Although the original premise by Laila still was invalid. Yes, there was some class discrimination, but it wasn't done by "most people in dungeons". I had absolutely no problem in pugging them with nonmeta builds/classes (yes, including the infamous bearbow). Some playes did discriminate, but many others idn't care. It's just that first group was much louder.

maddoctor.2738 · December 18, 2018

@Astralporing.1957 said:On the other hand, they do not spend all that much on vanity (they'd rather go for ingame exclusives for it, as for them vanity is not about looks, but about prestige).

One view around the Aerodrome gives a different idea, hardcore players are more about vanity items than casual players, they like to stand out in crowds after all. But you are right, if some mount skins (the by far highest sellers) were available as in-game exclusives, hardcore players would be more likely to use those instead of the gem store versions. Provided their looks were good enough.

hellsqueen.3045 · December 18, 2018

@Cyninja.2954 said:
@"Astralporing.1957" said:I guess we're playing completely different games then. Which, by the way, just proves my point about the split existing and being really massive. It's apparently so big that you can't even see the other side anymore.

Considering I am in 3 guilds with a wide mix of players from hardcore raiders, to casual raiders, to no raiders, not sure I'm the one not seeing the other side.

Raids are a niche, just as spvp and wvw. 80% of the player base don't give 1 cent about those game modes.

I do agree though that to the small group of "want to raid players but I don't have a raid yet or entered raids", there is nothing more challenging or toxic. That's based on the very nature of a desire not fulfilled.

I am mostly just a PvE player, but I play my fair share of WvW and sPvP. I am not hardcore in those modes, I might occasionally do ranked in sPvP to test myself.

I just want to point out though, that a lot of the WvW and sPvP specific loot is obtainable far easier for a casual player simply by joining a zerg or failing sPvP matches.

There is a lack of motivation to deal with failure in Raids, compared to other game modes.

You could get wiped in a WvW zerg, but you probably still got kills for loot bags, participation gain for the normal reward track and PIP reward track and exp that can help better your experience in WvW.

You could lose match after match in sPvP and still end up gaining reward track progress and PIP track progress.

You can still find ways to obtain what you want and need from those modes even by failing, so if you are someone who is bad at those modes but you still want something, you can handle the failure because you still get what you want in the end.

The other modes reward trying even if you fail far more than raids does, and that doesn't really make for good motivation to try.

Cyninja.2954 · December 18, 2018

@hellsqueen.3045 said:
@Cyninja.2954 said:
@"Astralporing.1957" said:I guess we're playing completely different games then. Which, by the way, just proves my point about the split existing and being really massive. It's apparently so big that you can't even see the other side anymore.