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

[Celsith.2753]

Here's my experience with raiding

I decided a few weeks ago i'd like to give them a try. I looked for a guild advertising raid training. I joined said guild and signed up for a raid advertised as for totally new raiders.Because i'm not a selfish kitten who thinks 9 other people should stand around for an hour while I get geared, I went to places like Snowcrows to make sure I had a couple toons with the appropriate builds and messed round with a golem to make sure I knew what I was doing on them.The raid leader was great, explained everything clearly and was very patient with the result that I had a pleasant experience and now raid regularly.

I don't see this apparent rift in the community at all.

[Algreg.3629]

@"Celsith.2753" said:Because i'm not a selfish kitten who thinks 9 other people should stand around for an hour while I get geared, I went to places like Snowcrows to make sure I had a couple toons with the appropriate builds and messed round with a golem to make sure I knew what I was doing on them.

I have a feeling that separates you very much from OP and the majority of "raid complainers".

[Vayne.8563]

There are few people who were as against raids being introduced as I was, and I still think introducing raids was a mistake, over all. However, there's only so much you can second guess success and the game continues to be successful. There's no real way to tell if the numbers would have been higher if they'd continued more along the lines of core than if they introduced HoT, in spite of the fact that HoT didn't have such a stellar launch.

I don't personally like raiding and I never thought it belonged in this game for any number of reasons. But now that it's here, and doesn't particularly affect my game overly, I'm happy to ignore raids and play the way I've been playing all along. There's still plenty for me to do.

At the end of the day, Anet is trying to appeal to different demographics to increase the playerbase. I'm not so sure that diversifying is actually going to draw in more players since making the game closer to what some people want, is making it further from what others want. The game was dead casual before HOT, with very little hard core content. The shift in direction probably drove quite a few people from the game at that time, and you won't get those people back by abandoning raids now. This ship has sailed and I don't think Anet is putting too much effort into raiding that it overly affects other areas of the game.

If you don't like raids, the best way to handle them is to forget they're there.

[maxwelgm.4315]

Unsurprisingly, this topic has been moved from the general forums to the raid one, and should be let to fade away since discussion is now unilateral and boring.

[Tyson.5160]

I’m still thinking that Anet will eventually cap raids at some point. Whether it’s 10,15 or some other number.

In raids like WoW, generally you have what 6 or 7 raids per expansion that become obsolete the second a new expansion comes out and are eventually soloable.

The difference with GW2 Raids is they aren’t obsolete. The challenge for the most part still remains.

[Nowaki.2136]

@Abelisk.4527 said:Guild Wars 2 is a game. Something you go on to find entertainment, it's not something that should be placed on very high priority on your life plans (unless you're a known streamer/commit to GW2 for other reasons, usually for publicity).

That being said, raid trainers often work like this:1) Meet up once a week, and hope to beat the boss.2) The training run usually fails at some point in the wing, players have to wait a whole week to try again.3) Each trainer can only get 9 other people, so space is limited.4) The runs are not only done on certain days, but certain hours usually later in the day. Personally, I do my homework in the later hours before getting ready to go to bed. There are also people working real-life jobs.5) I suppose you could talk with a Trainer to reschedule, but a) trainers are sacrificing their own time to train and b) other inexperienced players may be discontent with your reschedule.6) Bosses you want to beat may not even be considered by the trainer as the trainer(s) may have a different wing in mind.

That is absolutely not how it works o.o, on the training discords Trainers rarely have scheduled trains, they just do them when they feel like no matter the hour, tho i gotta admit is easier to find people to fill the squad on peak hours, during off hours is just hader to fill within the discord.

Now to the point of the OP, the reason people ask for those on LFG, is because if you are on LFG you want your kill and thats it, you dont want to keep wiping due some inexperienced players, and yes there are many raids when 1 person can wipe the party, also since there are many raids with many different mechanics, no1 is going to Type THAT much information every time, plus inexperienced players benefits alot from mechanics callouts which is something you cant really do without voice communication, hence why Training discords are a huge thing to help the community, and LFG should not be used as a mean to learn.

[shejesa.3712]

So what is a 'semi-casual', "competent-but-not-uber DPS", though "wants-to-learn" supposed to do?

Get into a training guild. I'm pretty bad myself, I remeber my first VG kill, I'd spent ~8hours practicing it before we managed to get the kill. The point is that I am done with training myself, I just want to get my kills. If I want to help I join training runs, but if I want to do stuff in a timely manner (namely get it done so I have some time for anime and sleep before uni) I ask for kp because kp means you're not a newb.

[SkyShroud.2865]

Just deal with it peeps, that's how the game is.

There will always people looking only for decent players. Let's be real here, people just want to complete the raid, not interested to carry people.

OP is just simply complaining because there are so many people looking for decent players, it is slowly killing the game due to no new blood, little people willing to help train new people to do raid.

Then again, let's be real here. If many really cares about such matter, they would not have been so exclusive. That is the reality we live in, people just want to complete raid, they don't care about any other things.

Another reality is no people respect so-called training organisation or guild, it is a thankless thing, everybody knows it.

At the end of the day, people only cares about completing or not completing, win or lose, benefits or no benefits. That is all. Welcome to gaming.

[STIHL.2489]

This is one of the reasons why I play MOBA's when I am looking for challenging fights, and play mobile games when I am looking to relax and unwind.. MMO's just don't really offer either of those anymore. GW2 used to.. but not anymore.

I wish them well tho. Maybe next expansion I'll see what they cook up.

[Cattastrophy.2874]

Don't join groups or play with people who don't want the same things in the game as you do. They won't like you, you won't like them.

[Neutra.6857]

@STIHL.2489 said:This is one of the reasons why I play MOBA's when I am looking for challenging fights, and play mobile games when I am looking to relax and unwind.. MMO's just don't really offer either of those anymore. GW2 used to.. but not anymore.

I wish them well tho. Maybe next expansion I'll see what they cook up.

Open world Guild Wars 2 still exists. It is still relaxing. You did not lose anything when raids where added to the game, since all previous content still exists.

[Henry.5713]

@Celsith.2753 said:Here's my experience with raiding

I decided a few weeks ago i'd like to give them a try. I looked for a guild advertising raid training. I joined said guild and signed up for a raid advertised as for totally new raiders.Because i'm not a selfish kitten who thinks 9 other people should stand around for an hour while I get geared, I went to places like Snowcrows to make sure I had a couple toons with the appropriate builds and messed round with a golem to make sure I knew what I was doing on them.The raid leader was great, explained everything clearly and was very patient with the result that I had a pleasant experience and now raid regularly.

I don't see this apparent rift in the community at all.

This pretty much reflects my experiences with leading multiple training guilds and groups.Those we came in with a humble attitude, made sure to be somewhat prepared and were willing to do what is needed generally ended up having a good time. Quite a few of them turned into regular raiders, some were even inspired start their own groups. You may not always find what you are looking for but it will happen if you keep trying just like with anything else in life.But then you do also get the type that comes in uninterested in group content or anything raids stand for. They will make sure to agree to take any steps needed just to ignore absolutely everything you tell them, will make sure come in thinking they will get easy rewards and everyone is going to accept them being continously late or unreliable and constantly distracted during the runs.In short, they aready start the entire ordeal by completely disrespecting the leader and every other person in that group. Nobody should surprised that this won't work out but trust me, they will make sure to blame everyone but themselves for that.

These stories do always have two sides to them. Half of the people in the latter group I mentioned will go on to tell everyone who'd listen about how terrible raids are, how unfair and judmental the commander was and why raids need to be removed. They will make sure to give most casual a very wrong impression which then in turn leads to some claiming how raids will destroy this game.

That said, it may be a matter of maturity but I will never understand why people can't just focus on content they enjoy. Why they have to make it so any changes in game direction are all about them and about how unfair life is if those aren't to their liking.@Vayne.8563 has the right attitude. Something we share even I might enjoy vastly different aspects of this game. Don't like raids? Don't bother with them.I don't bother with Open World content, most event stuff like races and the majority of the story. You don't see me campaigning against content I dislike or against rewards being avaible in content I can't be arsed with.

[Astralporing.1957]

@Cattastrophy.2874 said:Don't join groups or play with people who don't want the same things in the game as you do. They won't like you, you won't like them.

That's one problem with raid system now. It mixes people with different goals in the same content, while at the same time being demanding enough that even small differences in opinion/behaviour can cause tempers to flare.

[Cyndercat.7615]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cattastrophy.2874 said:Don't join groups or play with people who don't want the same things in the game as you do. They won't like you, you won't like them.

That's one problem with raid system now. It mixes people with different goals in the same content, while at the same time being demanding enough that even small differences in opinion/behaviour can cause tempers to flare.

I think thats a problem with almost every mode. Ticket farmers in PVP and WVW who just want rewards and dont want to enjoy the mode itself clash constantly with the more hardcore players of that mode.

I think open world PVE and raids have LESS of a problem than the competitive modes because lfg allows you to clearly advertise what your groups intentions are and find like minded people, while also giving a fair justification to kick people that ignore those intentions. In competitive modes, theres no way to filter so its more toxic.

[Jockum.1385]

I think GW2 is split between raiders and non-raiders in GW2. Players don't know much about each other, the content the other side likes, the differences in time spend, difficulties with mechanics and so on. And yes, this is a problem. All of this was debated lengthily years ago, but:

-If a community is split into different groups both groups will lack a broader understanding of each other. No new open world content, but a raid? ->complaints ("too many raids, but no open world content"). Legendary armour raid exclusive? Complaints. Not enough raid content? -> Complaints.

-Suggestions as "join a training run" or "join a raid guild" miss the point. This works fine for dedicated people which really want to become active raid players. It's an useless suggestion for most other players. More casual players want to experience the content, do it maybe once/twice and not farm the content weekly. Join a guild, get the kill and leave? I'm sure most raid guilds prefer to recruit permanent members and not leeches. If players play the content they can figure out if they like it. Improve, join a specialised guild, spend time. That's the "natural" approach. Not joining a guild and investing lots of time beforehand - just to figure out you don't like the content.

-Time spend varies a lot. For an hardcore player 10 hours of training is can be one weekend, for a casual it might be two months. Those 10 hours of training are an investment for future runs. A hardcoreplayer does maybe 100 runs, so 0,1 hours of training per run. A casual does two runs and spend then 5 hours of training per run. Asuming both require the same time for training, which is unrealistic.

-Yes, no one is forced to raid. But GW2 seriously lacks teamcontent. As example: my guilds "fixed team" hasn't played for roughly half a year, we all played this week again for the first time - and got not much to do. Open world is shitty content for groups. Real, good, group content are raids, fractals and dungeons. They, as most more casual players, spend less time ingame, but also don't really enjoy repeating the same content hundreds of times. As a simple example: if HoT and PoF both would have added ten new 30min-1 hour dungeons and we would repeat them maybe 5 times this would be 50 weeks of content which keeps us busy. One new 15min fractal per year with no real reason to play it: maybe content for a month and then 11 months pause of playing GW2? That's a problem. I've seen many complaints by more casual teams/guilds that there is nothing to do in GW2.

-You'll find many veteran players which are playing GW2 for years but don't know what combo fields are, got no clue about CC, proper builds or equip. That's not good. As comparision: in GW1 i started as a monk with mostly warrior skills. Enemies got stronger, my team needed more heal, I adapted step by step. At the end of doing story I was more or less running a meta build and was able to go into "raids". This progress was achieved by doing storycontent which is in GW1 teamcontent. You can see the performance of other players. You get advice. You see your own mistakes and learn. In open world I can run with no traits and green equip. As long as I tag the boss I'm fine and get my rewards. World bosses are not failing bc my dps is shit. A world boss is not failing bc my healing build does not work. It shouldn't even fail, bc this would punish good players for being on a map with too many bad players. GW2 is incredible bad in teaching players how to play. An open world veteran is not raid ready.

-GW2 isn't really supporting groups of mixed player skill. In GW1 there were simple roles, as dps. You could do "raids" with very simple instructions as "stick to player X" "stay there and don't move, no matter what happens" and all was good. Such a player contributed his dps, if he was going to get damaged a monk would protect him - so your team carried him and he still contributed. This is teamplay. In GW2 such a player is only a burden. He is dead on the floor (or even kills the whole team). This is a terrible experience for both sides. You can't even learn something, because you are dead and can't practice. So by my experience players in GW2 are much more demanding. It's a much bigger problem to bring an unexperienced player with you than in GW1. In consequence this results in less players being trained to become good players, resulting in a more divided community. People are not only asking for KP because they want a fast kill (which did exist in GW1, too), they ask for KP because they want success.

-Schedules are problematic for many players. It's difficult to raid spontaneous. Especially as unexperienced or bad player who has more difficulties to pug. PUGs are more problematic bc see above: two good players can't really carry a team of bad players. To some degree, yes. But not as extreme as in other games.

-Communities need some form of content which requires you to team up. That's a problem for guilds. Why join a guild? What has a guild to offer? Even open world communities - see GW2community (EU) got that problem. They formed for content as tequatl or triple trouble. Content which required some form of cooperation and knowledge. These communites give advice, train players, create builds, keep each other engaged in GW2, write news about the game, got community activities - overall its good to have such communities. But there is a lack of more demanding open world content, these communities are not required anymore - GW2community (EU) shut down. Why should I join some form of community (guild, voicechat, team, forum,....) when I'm fine with my green equipped staffguard on autoattack?

-Content exclusive to one small group is not that relevant for Anet. Going by player numbers open world is very likely by far more relevant. This can result in less content being developed for such a small group. A good example for well made content were fractals. They cater to casuals and hardcoreplayers at the same time. Raid are exclusive content. A huge group of players is left without new content with each release. It's much more likely that Anet can't really justify money/dev hours being spend on such content. In the end it has to be worth it. Now fractals suffer from being old content. Their reward structure is outdated. Some players like them, others don't. You can't really put a 2 hour fractal into them, they have to be similar in length. Token can be spend from any fractal for the same rewards. Maybe it's time to create a "fractal 2.0" system which has also T1-T4 and CMs - but got new rewards and is maybe 30 min per map instead of 10 min. Or got a more dungeonlike design, so less focus on bossfights and a bit more trashmobs. No reason to abandon fractals, but I think an additional system is required since dungeons are dead and fractals alone are not good enough.

TL;DR: GW2 is a game seperated into more casual open world solo players and a tiny group of hardcore raidplayers. Content in between is missing, making it difficult to step into raids. It hurts teams and communities a lot, since there is no content for casual and coregamers. GW2 is basically the opposite of GW1, which had a strong focus on casual- and coregamer teamcontent ("family and friends" guilds).

[Astralporing.1957]

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cattastrophy.2874 said:Don't join groups or play with people who don't want the same things in the game as you do. They won't like you, you won't like them.

That's one problem with raid system now. It mixes people with different goals in the same content, while at the same time being demanding enough that even small differences in opinion/behaviour can cause tempers to flare.

I think thats a problem with almost every mode. Ticket farmers in PVP and WVW who just want rewards and dont want to enjoy the mode itself clash constantly with the more hardcore players of that mode.Yes, that's true. Basically, it happens every time you create a mode where players need to depend on each other, design it for a specific group of players, and then create rewards aimed at a completely different group of players. The more effort and teamplay the content requires, the more toxicity is going to happen.

[STIHL.2489]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cattastrophy.2874 said:Don't join groups or play with people who don't want the same things in the game as you do. They won't like you, you won't like them.

That's one problem with raid system now. It mixes people with different goals in the same content, while at the same time being demanding enough that even small differences in opinion/behaviour can cause tempers to flare.

I think thats a problem with almost every mode. Ticket farmers in PVP and WVW who just want rewards and dont want to enjoy the mode itself clash constantly with the more hardcore players of that mode.Yes, that's true. Basically, it happens every time you create a mode where players need to depend on each other, design it for a specific group of players, and then create rewards aimed at a completely different group of players. The more effort and teamplay the content requires, the more toxicity is going to happen.

So what exactly is the advantage of making this content then, if it invariably breeds a toxic environment?

[VAHNeunzehnsechundsiebzig.]

as long as the balance team uses the test golem as a benchmark to do their balancing, raiding is indeed destroying the game.

[Sigfodr.9576]

@"Emberstone.2904" said:Where can I find this raid-training Discord? I've been wanting to try them out now that my Weaver is geared.

Abit late to the party, but https://snowcrows.com/raids/training/ is one of the places.

[Hot Boy.7138]

Last year I wouldn't have agreed with this post, but my situation has changed. My guild's raid team fell apart last February/March, and since then I found it very difficult tog get into decent new groups. It's been so many months of this that I only log in now for the log in reward and just spend most of my time in Destiny 2 now.

[Cyndercat.7615]

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cattastrophy.2874 said:Don't join groups or play with people who don't want the same things in the game as you do. They won't like you, you won't like them.

That's one problem with raid system now. It mixes people with different goals in the same content, while at the same time being demanding enough that even small differences in opinion/behaviour can cause tempers to flare.

I think thats a problem with almost every mode. Ticket farmers in PVP and WVW who just want rewards and dont want to enjoy the mode itself clash constantly with the more hardcore players of that mode.Yes, that's true. Basically, it happens every time you create a mode where players need to depend on each other, design it for a specific group of players, and then create rewards aimed at a completely different group of players. The more effort and teamplay the content requires, the more toxicity is going to happen.

So what exactly is the advantage of making this content then, if it invariably breeds a toxic environment?

The enjoyment people get out of group content is worth the risk of toxicity from a small number of people. If you remove all group content from an MMO you end up with a single player live service. This is not what gw2 is intended to be.

Do you really want all dungeons, fractals, raids, wvw, pvp and group events removed from the game?

[STIHL.2489]

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Cattastrophy.2874" said:Don't join groups or play with people who don't want the same things in the game as you do. They won't like you, you won't like them.

That's one problem with raid system now. It mixes people with different goals in the same content, while at the same time being demanding enough that even small differences in opinion/behaviour can cause tempers to flare.

I think thats a problem with almost every mode. Ticket farmers in PVP and WVW who just want rewards and dont want to enjoy the mode itself clash constantly with the more hardcore players of that mode.Yes, that's true. Basically, it happens every time you create a mode where players need to depend on each other, design it for a specific group of players, and then create rewards aimed at a completely different group of players. The more effort and teamplay the content requires, the more toxicity is going to happen.

So what exactly is the advantage of making this content then, if it invariably breeds a toxic environment?

The enjoyment people get out of group content is worth the risk of toxicity from a small number of people. If you remove all group content from an MMO you end up with a single player live service. This is not what gw2 is intended to be.

Do you really want all dungeons, fractals, raids, wvw, pvp and group events removed from the game?

You are confusing social content with group content.

Dungeons, Fractals, and Raids, are group content as they require you to be in a group to play with other people, such they are group based content.

WvW and open world like content IE: World Bosses, Meta Events, Dynamic Events, etc, are Social Content as they have no such requirement to group for anyone to contribute to the completion and receive a reward for doing so.

Spare me the "Oh no it would be a Solo Game without group content" there is only Fractals, Dungeons and Raids that are group content, and there is a huge world of the game that is social content.

They could get rid of the group content, BDO did, and it;s doing fine.

[borgs.6103]

Griffon timed adventures is on the verge of destroying huge segments of the gw2 community, if it hasn't already.First, it requires you to get the griffon, which is in itself a grind!Then you have to practice a lot to know how to maneuver your griffon in the adventures!Finally you have to challenge yourself to get gold on each adventure!

Anet please remove Griffon timed adventures to the game!

[Cyndercat.7615]

@STIHL.2489 said:

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@STIHL.2489 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@zombyturtle.5980 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Cattastrophy.2874" said:Don't join groups or play with people who don't want the same things in the game as you do. They won't like you, you won't like them.

That's one problem with raid system now. It mixes people with different goals in the same content, while at the same time being demanding enough that even small differences in opinion/behaviour can cause tempers to flare.

I think thats a problem with almost every mode. Ticket farmers in PVP and WVW who just want rewards and dont want to enjoy the mode itself clash constantly with the more hardcore players of that mode.Yes, that's true. Basically, it happens every time you create a mode where players need to depend on each other, design it for a specific group of players, and then create rewards aimed at a completely different group of players. The more effort and teamplay the content requires, the more toxicity is going to happen.

So what exactly is the advantage of making this content then, if it invariably breeds a toxic environment?

The enjoyment people get out of group content is worth the risk of toxicity from a small number of people. If you remove all group content from an MMO you end up with a single player live service. This is not what gw2 is intended to be.

Do you really want all dungeons, fractals, raids, wvw, pvp and group events removed from the game?

You are confusing social content with group content.

Dungeons, Fractals, and Raids, are

group content

as they

require

you to be in a group to play with other people, such they are group based content.

WvW and open world like content IE: World Bosses, Meta Events, Dynamic Events, etc, are

Social Content

as they have no such requirement to group for anyone to contribute to the completion and receive a reward for doing so.

Spare me the "Oh no it would be a Solo Game without group content" there is only Fractals, Dungeons and Raids that are group content, and there is a huge world of the game that is social content.

They could get rid of the group content, BDO did, and it;s doing fine.

GROUP events in pve. Literally have group in the name.PVP requires a group of 5 playersWVW you can play without a group but your success as a server depends on group play.

[Grogba.6204]

What is social about 20-30 players converging in one spot for 10-15 minutes to beat a loot pinata and going on their ways afterwards? It's group content, sure, but it's not social content as there is no socialising. At least the HoT Metas, Tequatl and Triple Trouble require coordination and strategy to beat successfully but the majority of world bosses do not.