The biggest barrier to raids

[Cyninja.2954]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:I never said it is easy. I contradict this threads main theme that this is the main barrier to raids.You didn't. This not being a mechanical difficulty does

not

mean this is not a barrier. Barrier does not need to be mechanical.

I never mentioned mechanical and I am well aware that personal anxiety or similar will pose a way bigger hurdle than joining. Again for the 3rd time: I explicitly stated that I disagree that this is the MAIN barrier to raids. I never stated that it is not a barrier or might not be a problem for some.

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Cyninja.2954 said:If a player wants to start raiding, that's very easy. I'd even go as far as making the claim that joining a guild and getting taken along for a raid, if going through the correct channels like a discord or in-game guild advertisement is more enjoyable than joining random strike groups without knowledge of the LFG terminology.

The problem is this widespread misconception that raids are hard, all raiders are toxic, and one must be a god at his class to succeed and enjoy the content. That is not true, all it takes is literally just asking and joining the correct players.It's not that raiders are toxic. It's that they create a separate social circle. And your suggestion amounts to someone joining that different social circle. You might as well be telling an US Democrat to join Republican party (or vice versa). Yes, it's as easy as making a choice to do so. No, it's not that easy as just "making a choice".

And as for that claim, been there, done that. It all depends on the specific people you end up with, and (for me at least) there's still way, way too big a chance of happening on people i'd rather avoid (and i need only

one

such person in a group to sour the whole experience). Most raiders simply are players with attitide towards the game that's very incompatible with mine. I wouldn't be comfortable in such an environment, and it would make the whole affair not enjoyable (again, I am speaking from past experience, not an expected future one).

Hint: the way you completely seem to not understand what i am talking about clearly underscores that difference in mindset.

As i said in my sig - the whole point of a social game is to play with the people

you want to play with

. The advice to find a guild, for me, is asking me to ignore that rule, and starting to play with people that are decided not by my social requirements, but by the content. You may consider this to be natural, but for me that's a way of thinking i just don't understand. It's something i might be doing when looking for work, but doing that in a game i play for fun is something that's complelety alien to me.

There is subjective difficulty and relative difficulty. The mere act of joining and a guild is NOT difficult unless a player has a mental precondition, which one could argue some players have (aka very strong social phobias) which lead these people to play video games in the first place. I in this case would disagree that this is widespread enough to engulf the entire player base, but would argue that rather time constraints, unwillingness to put in this minimum amount of effort or simple lack of knowledge that this is helpful are far more reasonable explanations for people not joining a guild.See above. It's not about "joining a guild". It's about joining a

raiding

guild.

Going to keep this short, because you and I disagree fundamentally on which type of players compromise a guild. There are raid guilds which most certainly are focused on raiding, and solely raid. There are guilds that focus on WvW and solely only WvW. The vast majority of guilds though has a huge spectrum of players. What I personally have experienced is that there are a lot of players that participate in MANY different activities instead of just one. These players will be part of multiple guilds and/or do multiple things with their omni gaming guild.

Simply put: there are enough casual guilds that raid, that would absolutely not classify as "raiding guild".

[Obtena.7952]

@Cerioth.7062 said:

@"A R W E N.6895" said:I'm just gonna get back to the point of my post. It's not about gear (you can raid in exotic), it's not about skills (you can practice a rotation quite easily on the golem), its about getting 10 players and start the kitten raid. (Oh and please don't tell me the "Join a guild" kitten. GW1 did that properly. Not this game. )

...Why is joining a guild not an option? What is the part that is so bad or difficult about joining a raiding community? It would solve all your problems.

Honestly, because it's not a narrative that fixes the ACTUAL problem these people aren't describing ...

See we all know getting people to team with isn't hard if you take the right path ... but if a person CHOOSES to exclude themselves from the process of "guilding" for easy raids ... then its harder. If they DENY that this is a personal choice or even a choice available to them at all, they suddenly excuse themselves from the responsibility and capability to fix it through their own efforts ... That makes it appear like it is a problem Anet has to fix even though they are well within their own ability to do so.

Same goes with playing how you want ... that's a problem players fix, not Anet ... but a subset of players continue to paint the picture they are powerless to get teams. /shrug ... that denial is not affecting anyone but themselves.

[Astralporing.1957]

@"Obtena.7952" said:See we all know getting people to team with isn't hard if you take the right path...exactly the issue. The "right" path. My way or the highway.

And then people get surprised that after all that someone might not want to join...

[Bigpapasmurf.5623]

As someone outside looking in, the barriers stem from the amount of time you have to complete the raid. Due to a tight times in a lot of cases, theres specific classes and rotations that have to be nailed down and most people dont want to have to learn something like that. If the timers werent as strict, the raid metas would be a bit looser, thus more people would be intrigued to actually attempt as more build options and rotations would be a bit relaxed and not as hard to learn.

[Obtena.7952]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@"Obtena.7952" said:See we all know getting people to team with isn't hard if you take the right path...exactly the issue. The "right" path. My way or the highway.

And then people get surprised that after all that someone might not want to join...

I don't understand what the problem is with that. Why would any reasonable player think that a MMO is going to cater to their exacting ideas about how they should be accomodated in the game? They wouldn't. If it's hard for you or anyone else to get a team, that's not a game problem. There are multiple ways to search and obtain a team for this game ... if none of them work for you, that's a you problem. It's not Anet's job to play matchmaker for you if you are so picky about your teammates.

Regardless, even if that's all false ... none of it indicates the biggest barrier to raiding is finding people anyways. That's ALWAYS going to depend on the individual player unless the game or other players purposefully preventing teaming up ... that's just NOT happening in GW2.

[Shikaru.7618]

@Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:As someone outside looking in, the barriers stem from the amount of time you have to complete the raid. Due to a tight times in a lot of cases, theres specific classes and rotations that have to be nailed down and most people dont want to have to learn something like that. If the timers werent as strict, the raid metas would be a bit looser, thus more people would be intrigued to actually attempt as more build options and rotations would be a bit relaxed and not as hard to learn.

Since you're making the claim of raids having tight timers, that must mean you know the minimum performance required for bosses to beat said tight timer. Why else would you say the timer is tight unless you can quantify it. Can you tell us what the minimum squad dps needed to kill the easier bosses is? How about the average dps your average open worlder can pull?

[Astralporing.1957]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:See we all know getting people to team with isn't hard if you take the right path...exactly the issue. The "right" path. My way or the highway.

And then people get surprised that after all that someone might not want to join...

I don't understand what the problem is with that. Why would any reasonable player think that a MMO is going to cater to their exacting ideas about how they should be accomodated in the game? They wouldn't. If it's hard for you or anyone else to get a team, that's not a game problem. There are multiple ways to search and obtain a team for this game ... if none of them work for you, that's a you problem. It's not Anet's job to play matchmaker for you if you are so picky about your teammates.

Regardless, even if that's all false ... none of it indicates the biggest barrier to raiding is finding people anyways. That's ALWAYS going to depend on the individual player unless the game or other players purposefully preventing teaming up ... that's just NOT happening in GW2.

And yet, in the end, after what you said, one of the greatest barriers to raiding is finding people.

[Henry.5713]

Some timers are more forgiving than others, some bosses are harder than others and all that. But the only times I ever see them being a true hindrance is with groups which do not even follow the most basic of PvE "rules".

Basic stuff like:

• Boons are good, having a lot of boons is even better, perma boons are best of all
• Always take group or squad boons over personal boons
• Take group healing and group support over personal sustain
• Be at least 50/50 on who is in Berserker/Viper and who wears less offensive gear (would be even lower with strong DPS players)
• Use appropriate weapons for the gear you wear (don't be the condion gear ranger running longbow)
• Want stuff to die? Make sure to actually hit it with your skills
• Don't want to die yourself? How about not standing in every red circle you see
• I know this might be a lot to ask of people but maybe read what your skills actually do

You do not need to run a single best-in-slot META build to get kills. Why would the M(most) E(ffective) T(actic) A(vaible) suddenly "loosen up" if the timers were to be stretched or entirely removed? The most effective strategy will remain the most effective strategy no matter what. And people will continue to be unwilling to spend an hour killing easy bosses. Many will continue to deluded in thinking you need to run the exact SC compositions to raid at all.Many squads already run compositions which could be considered far from optimal in their choice of builds. They go with an additional healer (or evne multiple). Most of them are hardly filled with DPS players who are able to swap to half a dozen builds on the fly while achieving near perfect numbers on all of them. And yet they seem to do just fine.

[Obtena.7952]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:See we all know getting people to team with isn't hard if you take the right path...exactly the issue. The "right" path. My way or the highway.

And then people get surprised that after all that someone might not want to join...

I don't understand what the problem is with that. Why would any reasonable player think that a MMO is going to cater to their exacting ideas about how they should be accomodated in the game? They wouldn't. If it's hard for you or anyone else to get a team, that's not a game problem. There are multiple ways to search and obtain a team for this game ... if none of them work for you, that's a you problem. It's not Anet's job to play matchmaker for you if you are so picky about your teammates.

Regardless, even if that's all false ... none of it indicates the biggest barrier to raiding is finding people anyways. That's ALWAYS going to depend on the individual player unless the game or other players purposefully preventing teaming up ... that's just NOT happening in GW2.

And yet, in the end, after what you said, one of the greatest barriers to raiding

is

finding people.

RIght ... like I said ... that's about choices people make. It's absurd to claim finding people is the 'biggest barrier' to raiding when it's a problem based on a choice. Those aren't reasonable conclusions. Make the right choices .. these things aren't a problem.

The people are there, the methods to find them are there. The rest is up to the player.

[Kylden Ar.3724]

My biggest barrier is time. I have done some Raids with [RaW] and a few of my [TACO] folks. When we're on, and have the time, we can usually get a 10-man team together to give it a try. We're not worried about speed running them or perfection, just enough practice to get the job done eventually. We start with "Meta" as the idea, and then get as close to it as we can with what people have.

The issue is time. Since we're trying to have fun learning as we go, it takes more time than just following "The Solution" as found by others. But we enjoy it this way, so that's the way we do it.

[Cerioth.7062]

@Bigpapasmurf.5623 said:As someone outside looking in, the barriers stem from the amount of time you have to complete the raid. Due to a tight times in a lot of cases, theres specific classes and rotations that have to be nailed down and most people dont want to have to learn something like that. If the timers werent as strict, the raid metas would be a bit looser, thus more people would be intrigued to actually attempt as more build options and rotations would be a bit relaxed and not as hard to learn.

Actually boss timers have not been an issue for a long time. The powercreep has gone up massively - classes used to have much lower possible benchmark DPS than they do now. Killing bosses within time limit is easier than it has ever been before. Even casual, not meta compositions can kill Gorseval within time limits whilst skipping updrafts.

The main thing that I have seen that causes fails with new raiders (I run in a lot of trainings) is poorly executed mechanics. That, sure, is going to take time investment to learn to do them properly, but once you put in the effort, raids become much faster to complete.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

I disagree.

The biggest barrier IMHO is the unforgiving nature of the game type, combined with relatively complicated game mechanics and a big dose of player elitism/toxicity.

[Henry.5713]

The biggest barrier to PvP is actually having to play against other players if that isn't your thing in the first place.

[Shikaru.7618]

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:I disagree.

The biggest barrier IMHO is the unforgiving nature of the game type, combined with relatively complicated game mechanics and an unwillingness to group with like minded and like skilled players.

Fixed that for you.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

@Shikaru.7618 said:

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:I disagree.

The biggest barrier IMHO is the unforgiving nature of the game type, combined with relatively complicated game mechanics and an unwillingness to group with like minded and like skilled players.

Fixed that for you.

By changing my quote it no longer reflects my opinion tho.

[Arcaniaxs.4519]

Not all raiders are toxic. And not all beginners are willing to learn.You could say a small amount of raiders are toxic and most of begginers are unwilling to learn.Btw... some of raiders dont have enough time to fail bosses so... we use the most effective way i think? Right? Wouldnt u do dat? And u call us elitists? Bec we wanna do it with no fails and want to minimize the chance of failure doesnt mean we are bad ppl or that we are toxic. :(My personal opinion though

[yann.1946]

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:

@Shikaru.7618 said:

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:I disagree.

The biggest barrier IMHO is the unforgiving nature of the game type, combined with relatively complicated game mechanics and an unwillingness to group with like minded and like skilled players.

Fixed that for you.

By changing my quote it no longer reflects my opinion tho.

It does reflect reality better though:p

[Astralporing.1957]

@yann.1946 said:

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:

@Shikaru.7618 said:

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:I disagree.

The biggest barrier IMHO is the unforgiving nature of the game type, combined with relatively complicated game mechanics and an unwillingness to group with like minded and like skilled players.

Fixed that for you.

By changing my quote it no longer reflects my opinion tho.

It does reflect reality better though:pActually, your "correction" turns it in the exact opposite of reality.The reality is that the people in

both

groups would vastly prefer to group with like-minded and like-skilled players (Hardcores hate carrying noobs. Casuals do not want to group with toxic elitists).

It's just that only one of those two groups can actually do that and succeed.

So, it's not the unwillingness to group with like minded and like skilled players that creates the barrier, but rather the desire to do so.

[Cyninja.2954]

@Astralporing.1957 said:

@yann.1946 said:

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:

@Shikaru.7618 said:

@TheQuickFox.3826 said:I disagree.

The biggest barrier IMHO is the unforgiving nature of the game type, combined with relatively complicated game mechanics and an unwillingness to group with like minded and like skilled players.

Fixed that for you.

By changing my quote it no longer reflects my opinion tho.

It does reflect reality better though:pActually, your "correction" turns it in the exact opposite of reality.The reality is that the people in

both

groups would vastly prefer to group with like-minded and like-skilled players (Hardcores hate carrying noobs. Casuals do not want to group with toxic elitists).

It's just that only one of those two groups can actually do that and succeed.

So, it's not the unwillingness to group with like minded and like skilled players that creates the barrier, but rather the

desire

to do so.

This would imply that the issue and group separation is binary between skilled and unskilled players. It is not. Unfortunately it gets discussed way to often that way.

The only maybe binary separation here is between players who know how to group to achieve goals, and players who do not (either know or deliberately decide to ignore it).

Given the non binary aspect of player skill reflected in the huge divide in the player base with players present on nearly every part of the spectrum, I'd say this issue far far more complex than "hardcore players carrying noobs".

The adjustment made by yann.1946 simply corrected the uneducated earlier statement.

[yann.1946]

@Astralporing.1957 and @"Cyninja.2954" It was actually not the person making the "correction", Shikaru did. I just pointed out that while the correction made might be further away from his/her opinion, it was closer to the truth as the toxicity that gets cited is mostly a combination of the disconnect in multiple people desires/intentions.

And i'd have to say that you're take on this topic seems quite binary astral. Their are skilled players in the casual side and bad player in the hardcore side (as much as you can speak of sides).

[Cristalyan.5728]

@"Cyninja.2954" said:

Yes, you coming and basically saying:"Oh I don't accept the fact that using the guild system or organizing yourself for raids is a valid approach"

is hardly an argument. Joining a raid guild and having fixed raid schedules or making out times with guild members is one of THE main ways to address the issue you are talking about. I know because that is literally how EVERY raid guild and casual raid guild does it.

Yes, if all you accept is the PUG and LFG, then organizing 10 people will be hard.

I think that reading this we can easy find the main reason of the raids state - It is something abnormal for this game.

Let's explain: in order to raid we should first join a guild, adapt our schedule to the raid schedule of the guild, make trainings, and after all of this we can successfully raid. Did you see? The raids, as concept, breaks one of the main points of this game (you can find it in the Manifesto): "we don't want you to prepare to have fun".

With this in mind the game started and created a playerbase pleased by this approach. And these players are the majority - it is the oldest part of the playerbase.

And suddenly - starting from a certain point on, ample preparation before doing something in this game are required. What? As a consequence:

Yes, if all you accept is the PUG and LFG, then organizing 10 people will be hard - YES, it is hard. But many players played this game because for LFG you did not use a planning activity before. It was SIMPLE, not HARD. And it was for 5 not for 10. BTW - the things were very simple. The game started without LFG if I remember correctly. And still the players completed 5 man instanced content.

As a conclusion - the main reason for the raid state is the simple fact that this anomaly exists in GW2 in the actual form.

[yann.1946]

@Cristalyan.5728 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:

Yes, you coming and basically saying:"Oh I don't accept the fact that using the guild system or organizing yourself for raids is a valid approach"

is hardly an argument. Joining a raid guild and having fixed raid schedules or making out times with guild members is one of THE main ways to address the issue you are talking about. I know because that is literally how EVERY raid guild and casual raid guild does it.

Yes, if all you accept is the PUG and LFG, then organizing 10 people will be hard.

I think that reading this we can easy find the main reason of the raids state - It is something abnormal for this game.

Let's explain: in order to raid we should first join a guild, adapt our schedule to the raid schedule of the guild, make trainings, and

after

all of this we can successfully raid. Did you see? The raids, as concept, breaks one of the main points of this game (you can find it in the Manifesto): "

we don't want you to prepare to have fun

".

With this in mind the game started and created a playerbase pleased by this approach. And these players are the majority - it is the oldest part of the playerbase.

And suddenly - starting from a certain point on, ample preparation before doing something in this game are required. What? As a consequence:

Yes, if all you accept is the PUG and LFG, then organizing 10 people will be hard

- YES, it is hard. But many players played this game because for LFG you did not use a planning activity before. It was SIMPLE, not HARD. And it was for 5 not for 10. BTW - the things were very simple. The game started without LFG if I remember correctly. And still the players completed 5 man instanced content.

As a conclusion - the main reason for the raid state is the simple fact that this anomaly exists in GW2 in the actual form.

We'll that ignores the portion of the population who finds this preparation fun

[Cyndercat.7615]

@Cristalyan.5728 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:

Yes, you coming and basically saying:"Oh I don't accept the fact that using the guild system or organizing yourself for raids is a valid approach"

is hardly an argument. Joining a raid guild and having fixed raid schedules or making out times with guild members is one of THE main ways to address the issue you are talking about. I know because that is literally how EVERY raid guild and casual raid guild does it.

Yes, if all you accept is the PUG and LFG, then organizing 10 people will be hard.

I think that reading this we can easy find the main reason of the raids state - It is something abnormal for this game.

Let's explain: in order to raid we should first join a guild, adapt our schedule to the raid schedule of the guild, make trainings, and

after

all of this we can successfully raid. Did you see? The raids, as concept, breaks one of the main points of this game (you can find it in the Manifesto): "

we don't want you to prepare to have fun

".

With this in mind the game started and created a playerbase pleased by this approach. And these players are the majority - it is the oldest part of the playerbase.

And suddenly - starting from a certain point on, ample preparation before doing something in this game are required. What? As a consequence:

Yes, if all you accept is the PUG and LFG, then organizing 10 people will be hard

- YES, it is hard. But many players played this game because for LFG you did not use a planning activity before. It was SIMPLE, not HARD. And it was for 5 not for 10. BTW - the things were very simple. The game started without LFG if I remember correctly. And still the players completed 5 man instanced content.

As a conclusion - the main reason for the raid state is the simple fact that this anomaly exists in GW2 in the actual form.

Almost nothing of the original manifesto is left in current gw2. New achievements have you grinding mobs and events 20+ times. When the manifesto said grind would never happen. We have dedicated healers in all game modes, and tanks in raids, when they said they would get rid of the trinity. They said pvp would be developed around esports and now its half dead and full of bots. The manifesto says environmental weapons would be a huge part of combat, but they are almost never ever used.

And yes the manifesto said you shouldnt prepare to have fun, but 2 months after launch people were leaving in masses saying there was no endgame content and no challenge left to the game.

As the game has grown, anet has realized alot of what they originally envisioned just doesnt work in the context of an MMO, at least for long term player retention.

Edit: players created their own LFG outside the game for instanced content before LFG in game existed. http://gw2lfg.com/ and you still had to learn the speedrun strategies from guides or other players in order to farm dungeons.

[maddoctor.2738]

@"Cristalyan.5728" said:The raids, as concept, breaks one of the main points of this game (you can find it in the Manifesto): "we don't want you to prepare to have fun".

Good that you tell other players what they find fun. My greatest fun in this game has been clearing every single dungeon path with the same team, one by one, working together with very little prior experience. My greatest fun was going from level 1 to level 40 (was the max at that time) in fractals, again playing with the same people daily until we got there. The greatest fun was clearing the first Raid wing, Spirit Vale and especially killing Vale Guardian for the first time, with a group that never raided before and most started playing instanced content with Spirit Vale (yes half the members didn't even have dungeon or fractal experience) yet we succeeded and eventually cleared every single Heart of Thorns Raid from scratch and had great fun doing it.

Oh how terrible it is to join a random "raid guild" and be forced to use their evil schedule. How about you go into Raids with your OWN guild, how about you go into Raids with your OWN schedule? It must be really hard to find other 9 players in your guild to go play with. Experience isn't required, good builds and meta gear isn't needed either. People to have fun with is all you need

[Obtena.7952]

@yann.1946 said:

@Cristalyan.5728 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:

Yes, you coming and basically saying:"Oh I don't accept the fact that using the guild system or organizing yourself for raids is a valid approach"

is hardly an argument. Joining a raid guild and having fixed raid schedules or making out times with guild members is one of THE main ways to address the issue you are talking about. I know because that is literally how EVERY raid guild and casual raid guild does it.

Yes, if all you accept is the PUG and LFG, then organizing 10 people will be hard.

I think that reading this we can easy find the main reason of the raids state - It is something abnormal for this game.

Let's explain: in order to raid we should first join a guild, adapt our schedule to the raid schedule of the guild, make trainings, and

after

all of this we can successfully raid. Did you see? The raids, as concept, breaks one of the main points of this game (you can find it in the Manifesto): "

we don't want you to prepare to have fun

".

With this in mind the game started and created a playerbase pleased by this approach. And these players are the majority - it is the oldest part of the playerbase.

And suddenly - starting from a certain point on, ample preparation before doing something in this game are required. What? As a consequence:

Yes, if all you accept is the PUG and LFG, then organizing 10 people will be hard

- YES, it is hard. But many players played this game because for LFG you did not use a planning activity before. It was SIMPLE, not HARD. And it was for 5 not for 10. BTW - the things were very simple. The game started without LFG if I remember correctly. And still the players completed 5 man instanced content.

As a conclusion - the main reason for the raid state is the simple fact that this anomaly exists in GW2 in the actual form.

We'll that ignores the portion of the population who finds this preparation fun

It sure does .. but the argument here is that it should have never existed in the first place because of the expectation in the manifesto by Anet to the original adopters of the game. We can see the consequences of Anet's decision to ignore their OWN commitment to players ...

@maddoctor.2738 said:

@Cristalyan.5728 said:The raids, as concept, breaks one of the main points of this game (you can find it in the Manifesto): "

we don't want you to prepare to have fun

".

Good that you tell other players what they find fun.

He's not telling anyone what they find fun ...