Lucky Bancho and NA raiding problems.

[SargentToughie]

People often bash what they do not understand, or have an interest in.

Pretty much this.

The raiding playerbase has been made into some kind of boogeyman by the people on this message boards.

It's pretty sad, too, because it's a case of people not really understanding the real problem. People use the term "elitist" to describe the people who lock jobs in PFs, or monitor parses like hawks, or demand everybody adjust to their catered strats, but those are just assholes. In reality, you're never actually going to see a legitimate elitist, because most of the time they don't have any actual interest in ever sharing a party with you. I don't really consider myself all that elite, but even I wouldn't be caught dead in an EX primal/Savage party without at least 3ish of my friends there to pitch in. And in the event that I do run with randoms, I don't really waste my time arguing about mistakes or calling people out. Expecting randoms to perform up to my standard is unrealistic, and when you accept randoms into your party, you need to come to terms with the fact that you may end up needing to pick up some extra weight. It comes with the territory.

Assholes give the raiding playerbase a bad name, but even to raiders these same players are still exactly that: assholes. The difference is that people who raid will roll our eyes, kick them, and move on. Meanwhile people that may just be trying out content at that level for the first time, may not have statics, or may not be prepared for the burden of playing at that level end up having an entire chunk of the playerbase negatively tarnished in their mind off of the actions of a few bad apples.

[Alleo]

People often bash what they do not understand, or have no interest in. I do not get it though the raiding community is like any other community you have your helpful, neutral, and asshats.

Or these people got really unlucky and truly had those people in their group. I am quite sure that a lot of raiders are fine but lets not forget that the bad side exists there too. And if you have been hurt by such people you are likely not interested in raiding anymore. If they go and state that every single raider is toxic than that would be false, but if they say that they dont raid anymore because they met such toxic players, its completely in their right to say that because they do exist. Just talking in absolutes is a bad thing.

[Awha]

Or these people got really unlucky and truly had those people in their group. I am quite sure that a lot of raiders are fine but lets not forget that the bad side exists there too. And if you have been hurt by such people you are likely not interested in raiding anymore. If they go and state that every single raider is toxic than that would be false, but if they say that they dont raid anymore because they met such toxic players, its completely in their right to say that because they do exist. Just talking in absolutes is a bad thing.

While that is true, but often times the lack of understanding aspect leads to their poor experience because some conflate elitism as inherently being toxic.

[Hamada]

Pretty much this.

The raiding playerbase has been made into some kind of boogeyman by the people on this message boards.

It's pretty sad, too, because it's a case of people not really understanding the real problem. People use the term "elitist" to describe the people who lock jobs in PFs, or monitor parses like hawks, or demand everybody adjust to their catered strats, but those are just assholes. In reality, you're never actually going to see a legitimate elitist, because most of the time they don't have any actual interest in ever sharing a party with you. I don't really consider myself all that elite, but even I wouldn't be caught dead in an EX primal/Savage party without at least 3ish of my friends there to pitch in. And in the event that I do run with randoms, I don't really waste my time arguing about mistakes or calling people out. Expecting randoms to perform up to my standard is unrealistic, and when you accept randoms into your party, you need to come to terms with the fact that you may end up needing to pick up some extra weight. It comes with the territory.
Assholes give the raiding playerbase a bad name, but even to raiders these same players are still exactly that: assholes. The difference is that people who raid will roll our eyes, kick them, and move on. Meanwhile people that may just be trying out content at that level for the first time, may not have statics, or may not be prepared for the burden of playing at that level end up having an entire chunk of the playerbase negatively tarnished in their mind off of the actions of a few bad apples.

While that is true, but often times the lack of understanding aspect leads to their poor experience because some conflate elitism as inherently being toxic.

And the times you told a raider how to do something in expert? How many times has that lead to a good result? It is mind boggling the number of top savage gear players you meet act like some people doing expert for the first time or simply mouth off to people because they do not know how to talk to others. Yes some people confuse what elitism means. Some people call "toxic" to someone making a suggestion or teaching how to play a basic part of the job. I do not play on the Japanese server, but I bet a problem with NA having less clears is people knowing it is not worth dealing with, when there is no incentive to put your self though that. Why would someone place themselves in an environment that has high risk for "toxicity" for no reward? it will become faceroll in 3-6 months, or complete faceroll in the next expansion when it is so outdated so soon it is WT fodder.

[SargentToughie]

And the times you told a raider how to do something in expert? How many times has that lead to a good result? It is mind boggling the number of top savage gear players you meet act like some people doing expert for the first time or simply mouth off to people because they do not know how to talk to others. Yes some people confuse what elitism means. Some people call "toxic" to someone making a suggestion or teaching how to play a basic part of the job. I do not play on the Japanese server, but I bet a problem with NA having less clears is people knowing it is not worth dealing with, when there is no incentive to put your self though that. Why would someone place themselves in an environment that has high risk for "toxicity" for no reward? it will become faceroll in 3-6 months, or complete faceroll in the next expansion when it is so outdated so soon it is WT fodder.

Being a raider myself, and very rarely running EXR without my friends, I really can't speak with any definitive knowledge about this. That said, I'd be pretty surprised if somebody with, say, a Diamond weapon doesn't understand a part of their job that's so basic that it becomes relevant to even your every day EXR run. It's possible that they were running on their alt jobs, maybe? I'm not saying that it's impossible by any means, I just don't really have enough information to provide more input than that. Sorry.

As for the second part of your comment, I mean, you're pretty much right. As we've gone over in previous pages, WoW has an infinitely superior raiding infrastructure in place in terms of quantity of raid fights, and incentive for partaking in them. As a result, NA raiders that are more interested in actually experiencing the fights themselves just play WoW, because FFXIV's raids have such a tiny window of relevancy that it's not really worth it for most people. Now that being said, I still personally find the Savage fights to be the most fun pieces of content in the game, and I'm really excited to get dug into 4.4 when that comes out. But I totally understand why a majority of the playerbase that values that level of content would find it elsewhere, or would be turned away by other various circumstances.

[Singularity]

...when there is no incentive to put your self though that. Why would someone place themselves in an environment that has high risk for "toxicity" for no reward? it will become faceroll in 3-6 months, or complete faceroll in the next expansion when it is so outdated so soon it is WT fodder.

This is kind of what I was talking about earlier. If a person views content as something you "put yourself through" and needs incentives and rewards, they clearly don't like it. Even if the reward is the best thing in the world, such a person would do the content, but only to the bare minimum required to obtain that reward. They don't enjoy it, and therefore they want to do as little of it as possible and most likely won't be interested in becoming good at it beyond what is required to achieve that bare minimum.

[TeddyAltman]

As a personal account on this situation --

Susano'o and Lakshmi Ex were two raids (well, maybe I should say Ex trials, but skill-wise they felt like raids I'd done in other games) I definitely wanted to do because they seemed fun. The struggle I encountered when trying to do Susano'o, back when it was still fresh, was finding groups on Party Finder. There were 3 different types of groups:
1) There would be plenty of groups taking people who had previously completed the raids and had gear levels higher than the actual minimum requirements of the fight.
2) There might be one or two groups doing runs to get a clear and expected people to have already made at least one attempt and know mechanics.
3) And every two or three days there might be a first-timer friendly group for learning mechanics.
So I spent several days trying to get into #3 and spent the wait time watching videos and reviewing fight mechanics. Never got one and just skipped to #2 because I'd watched the fight so many times on youtube 'learning mechanics' became a matter of just experiencing them first hand rather than not knowing what to do or how they worked.
Then I spent a few weeks getting into #2 maybe every other day and had no success at clearing with the groups despite working at it for hours simply because we couldn't make the dps check or we hit enrage. (I figure this is what I get for running Bard instead of any other dps except Machinist).
Never having a clear, I never joined #1 and eventually the number of PF's for these raids dwindled to nothing.

Now people will get it by doing it unsynced with whatever group we can manage to pull together while we're all well over-geared for the content. But hey, at least it'll be easier! And far more boring!

If that's the case for NA servers in general, I have to wonder if people would raid more if there were more groups willing to take 'beginners' and work with them rather than going the 'clear it quickly or not at all' route.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

As a personal account on this situation --

Susano'o and Lakshmi Ex were two raids I definitely wanted to do because they seemed fun. The struggle I encountered when trying to do Susano'o, back when it was still fresh, was finding groups on Party Finder. There were 3 different types of groups:
1) There would be plenty of groups taking people who had previously completed the raids and had gear levels higher than the actual minimum requirements of the fight.
2) There might be one or two groups doing runs to get a clear and expected people to have already made at least one attempt and know mechanics.
3) And every two or three days there might be a first-timer friendly group for learning mechanics.
So I spent several days trying to get into #3 and spent the wait time watching videos and reviewing fight mechanics. Never got one and just skipped to #2 because I'd watched the fight so many times on youtube 'learning mechanics' became a matter of just experiencing them first hand rather than not knowing what to do or how they worked.
Then I spent a few weeks getting into #2 maybe every other day and had no success at clearing with the groups despite working at it for hours simply because we couldn't make the dps check or we hit enrage. (I figure this is what I get for running Bard instead of any other dps except Machinist).
Never having a clear, I never joined #1 and eventually the number of PF's for these raids dwindled to nothing.

Now people will get it by doing it unsynced with whatever group we can manage to pull together while we're all well over-geared for the content. But hey, at least it'll be easier! And far more boring!

If that's the case for NA servers in general, I have to wonder if people would raid more if there were more groups willing to take 'beginners' and work with them rather than going the 'clear it quickly or not at all' route.

We had to replace a member of our static a few weeks ago (maybe 2 months at this point) and we ended uup with a person who had only been playing for about 2 months and had never raided before. We were on O7S prog at the time. We ended up teaching him O5S and O6S in 1 night, and then cleared O7S a couple weeks later (we only run 2 nights a week for a couple hours).

Its just a matter of finding a group that meets your requirements.

[OurMom]

Why should I bother to raid when the gear is outdated in 2-6 months? that is the issue for this.

This is partially why I don't raid. Mix it in with the raids not actually being raids and just boss fights and then nothing to actually do with the better gear cause everything syncs you down. For me there's just no reason to progress since the game stops you from progressing.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

This is kind of what I was talking about earlier. If a person views content as something you "put yourself through" and needs incentives and rewards, they clearly don't like it. Even if the reward is the best thing in the world, such a person would do the content, but only to the bare minimum required to obtain that reward. They don't enjoy it, and therefore they want to do as little of it as possible and most likely won't be interested in becoming good at it beyond what is required to achieve that bare minimum.

This is often forgotten. In fact, let's take this to its logical extreme and make Savage truly necessary.

- Mounts from O4S, O8S and O12S will only drop if cleared at the minimum ilvl
- There is no longer "catch up" patches. For casual players, your ilvl stops ten below raid gear.

How many players does this incentivize? I wager precisely zero more than those already interested. What will happen is a considerable amount of bitching because now casual players can't faceroll Savage years later for dyeable gear and mounts.

Pretty sure I'm not gonna like what happens, opening this box of worms, but screw it. This thread started off talking about incentives and clear rates. So...

... What's with the bashing on the raid community?

It's easier to bash raiders than acknowledge you aren't good enough to do the content. More often than not, the people who legitimately aren't interested in raiding or can't commit the time aren't the ones crying how toxic raiders are.