Raiding community issues: recruitment, player expectations, & attitudes

[Zojha]

I know I reason like that, I know that I'll be able to get gear of equal value (or very close to) without doing the savage modes if I just wait for a while, and there's nothing else in the game that I'd ever need that gear to complete.

Well, but that's a systemic issue: If you reward the best gear from the hardest content, it naturally follows that you will never need that gear for anything, because you already beat the hardest and thus most gear intensive content in order to get it.

Hence why it's pointless to reward gear from the hardest content at all - stats are a means to an end and that end is beating harder/more gear intensive content.

[Yonanja]

Well, but that's a systemic issue: If you reward the best gear from the hardest content, it naturally follows that you will never need that gear for anything, because you already beat the hardest and thus most gear intensive content in order to get it.

Hence why it's pointless to reward gear from the hardest content at all - stats are a means to an end and that end is beating harder/more gear intensive content.

While that is true for the game as it is now, would it still hold true if you couldn't buy better/equal gear with the tomes? If you needed the gear from A1S-A4S to get into A5S and on, then maybe people would actually think that doing the raids might be more worthwhile?

I'm of the opinion that the tomestones should only be used to buy gear that brings you to the "lowest expected for endgame" in HWs case this would be gear that lets you enter A1 or maybe A1S. More or less reseting the gear every time they add a new batch of raids is silly in my opinion, since it means that the previous raidtier is made outdated completely, as it's not needed for anything anymore. It's also this that makes the devteam having to keep making up so many reasons for people to do the older content in the game. A raidtier getting outdated in 3-4 months is just ridicolous.

[Zojha]

While that is true for the game as it is now, would it still hold true if you couldn't buy better/equal gear with the tomes? If you needed the gear from A1S-A4S to get into A5S and on, then maybe people would actually think that doing the raids might be more worthwhile?

But that then means that once you get the A1S entry gear, there cannot be any further gear upgrades outside of raids, or the first raid gear would be invalidated. This in turn means that the only gear progression to be had from then on is in raids and thus, they become the only "endgame" for people who care about gear progression.

And not just for a few patches - forever. The moment any reset is scheduled, the most recent gear is going to be pointless again.

Honestly? If raids suck that much that you need to coax people into them like that, maybe they simply aren't fun and the real issue lies therein. It reminds me of the Diadem debate, truth be told.

[Ririta]

While that is true for the game as it is now, would it still hold true if you couldn't buy better/equal gear with the tomes? If you needed the gear from A1S-A4S to get into A5S and on, then maybe people would actually think that doing the raids might be more worthwhile?

I'm of the opinion that the tomestones should only be used to buy gear that brings you to the "lowest expected for endgame" in HWs case this would be gear that lets you enter A1 or maybe A1S. More or less reseting the gear every time they add a new batch of raids is silly in my opinion, since it means that the previous raidtier is made outdated completely, as it's not needed for anything anymore. It's also this that makes the devteam having to keep making up so many reasons for people to do the older content in the game. A raidtier getting outdated in 3-4 months is just ridicolous.

If you do that then you run into the same problem that WoW had - it was extremely hard to replace veteran raiders.

The perfect system for raiding was Coil. Gear wise, everyone was equal, but the real valuable was the clear and how BIS would help you in the next tier. However, for that to work again, we'd need to go back into a single difficulty mode, which would displease a lot of people.

Personally, I enjoyed the Coil model, the problem was that the best story line was on it. So I felt a lot of pressure to do it.

[JunseiKei]

The perfect system for raiding was Coil. Gear wise, everyone was equal, but the real valuable was the clear and how BIS would help you in the next tier. However, for that to work again, we'd need to go back into a single difficulty mode, which would displease a lot of people.

Personally, I enjoyed the Coil model, the problem was that the best story line was on it. So I felt a lot of pressure to do it.

Do you mean unable to proceed to the next tier unless you completed the previous one?

[Ririta]

Do you mean unable to proceed to the next tier unless you completed the previous one?

Yes. The balance was really wacky (Nael and Twintania never getting nerfed, walling people from the easier new tier fights), but the model itself was good as it valued clears instead of gear.