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So I figured out why so many people hate raiding...
Beiloch
Member UncommonPosts: 75
For quite a while I wondered why people are so intensely opposed to raiding. More recently with games like TSW and especially GW2 I see this a lot more. Players literally begging that no kind of raiding touch their game. I love raiding so for a while I couldn't see why it was so despised. Then I looked back and figured out why..
Raiding in other MMO's is terrible.
I was able to figure out some key reasons why, well why I think they are terrible anyway. And since these games are so popular I imagine they are big reasons at least for some other people.
DISCLAIMER: I am talking about raiding in WoW, SWTOR and RIFT. These reasons don't necessarily apply to all of them but do apply to at least one of them.
1. Not self sustaining
This seems minor from the outside but I think it's a big deal and have seen people complain about it. Basically raiding requires time spent outside of raiding to get funds together for supplies or even special currency to buy armor for raiding. Be it solo farming, dailies or running those group dungeons you obliterate yet still have to run it repeatedly so you can raid next week. This was a huge turn off for me, and I would say is one of the biggest reason I quit raiding on those games.
2. Lack of Difficulty
This is also quite the turn off. It really brings the whole 'loot treadmill' term home for these games IMO. It's not hard on it's own once you do it, but to get results not only for you but for others you have to do it over and over and over. There's no inherent reward for just accomplishing the kill not only the first time but subsequent times. It also removes any feeling of 'power' when you get better stuff later and can now steam roll that mob that gave you so much trouble way back when. This also ties in with my next reason.....
3. Lack of Progression
Now when I saw this in other MMO's I really wasn't mad, I just thought it was silly. Raid content so easy that instead of guilds being purely ranked based on 'who has killed what' it was 'who killed first' Raid progression reduced to little more than a race. Almost everyone can kill it so guilds had to be ranked on speed rather than skill.
4. Smaller Size
I suspect this one won't get nearly a much agreement, but I can only speak for myself and this is a big reason for me.
I find these small, 2 group raid sizes redundant in MMO's. Why even have them? They instantly drive out the bigger raids since they can drop the same loot in some cases. We can do a big raid and get good loot or do a smaller version and get the same loot. Hmm which one are people gonna do...
Just make a version of the raid zone one group can run, don't even bother with such a small raid size. If some other MMO introduced some revolutionary version/system of high end raiding but said they would just be 10 mans I would just tell them don't even bother. 20 man? I’m listening. 30? 40? 60 man?! TAKE MY MONEY.
Now by this point you may have asked 'well what game do you raid on?' Well I raid on EverQuest 2. Where none of this happens to a decent raid guild. Things like lack of difficulty and smaller size exist but only for a small chunk of the content and as a gimmick rather than part of the main raiding progression.
Obviously this is all personal opinion, but with things like this happening to literally millions of players, frankly I don't blame them one bit for hating raiding. I'd hate it too. But its not the only way its being done, and it can be done even better.
Comments
I haven't raided seriously since Molten Core in vanilla WoW, mostly for the reasons you state above. A lot of people thought it was too difficult to gather and coordinate more than 8 or 9 other people. I always thought that was really big challenge and enjoyed it immensely. It was also more fun to have a huge gang of people to roll with. I made lots of new friends that way.
One of the other huge turnoffs for me concerning raiding was the advent of teamspeak and ventrillo. I understand the necessity for it in many of todays raids, but I really really hate it. It pulls me out of the game and makes me feel like im talking on the phone. I don't like talking on the phone, especially to whiney 15 year olds unless i'm related to them. I guess I'm just lucky I can type almost as fast as I can talk, hehe.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
I hate raiding for the same reason I hate going through the same starter area over again. I don't want to do the same thing over and over. I like your post and that is true. . but people that hate raiding don't even likely care about a lot of what you said.
I enjoy raiding the same area once or twice. It is a blast. . exciting etc. But to redo the same area 30 times to get gear is just nuts to me. Having said that I have never argued to keep raiding out of a game either . . I don't care if other people want to do it or if they have better gear.
People hate it because they are competative and feel that they have to do it if it is an option.
Wa min God! Se æx on min heafod is!
Nice theory, but it doesn't apply to me.
( edit: should I assume that you are speaking specially about people who are group-focused yet still don't like to raid? If so, I should just politely excuse myself from your conversation and refer followups to the group-vs-solo thread )
my biggest issue with raiding is the fact that its just to easy. once you do it a few times it becomes as mind numbing as grinding mobs, everybody knows their job and off you go doing the same thing you did the last 18 times you raided the dungeon.
in my opinion
what would make raiding alot more fun, would be dungeons that wernt linear and didnt have maps. had multiple options to progress threw the dungeon such as levers that open certain doors and or skill jumps and such. also give me some respawns, i hate the fact that you can kill some mobs then just sit there idle for how ever long you want before you progress farther. make mobs respawn and keep everybody on their toes.
and i cant say enough, NON linear. make these dungeons a maze that randomly changes throughout the day with bad ass mobs respawning. when my group finishs this place i want to feel like damn that was crazy, we almost died 50 different times. we had to rebuff on the fly while fighting mobs and so on.
make that dungeon feel dangerous, im tired of hard = mob with more HP that doesnt make the dungeon harder that just makes my group do the same thing over and over for a longer period of time to kill a mob, thats not fun. fun is action and intense situations that could mean death. and if death means corpse run then even better.
Personally I don't hate raiding per se... but the one things I do hate about raiding is the "hardcoredness" it tends to bring out on people.
I first raided in WoW back in Karazhan, a group of friends seeing how far we can go (we eventually cleared it) and found it very fun. We had a target hour but didn't mind if someone let us know it was going to be late or not come, we would just look in or out of guild for a replacement or just didn't go that night (we raided 3 nights a week) We usually were in good spirits, if we failed to down a boss several times we just called it a day and nobody really complained, jokes around and the like. When something dropped our rule was that whoever could benefit from it for the role they were playing that particular run, to roll for it, highest roll wins, then if nobody wanted it for their own role, offspec could roll for it. If you got loot on that week, you'd pass on further loot unless nobody else wanted it. It worked, and nobody really complained (well, except for some cursing at the RNG for doing low rolls, that is).
After some people left the game and the group mostly dissolved (mainly because of the death of our guild leader) another group was formed with some members from other (more hardcore oriented guild) and well... after a couple of weeks going with them, changing to a points system for loot, punishing people that were late or couldn't come a particular night, and lots of yelling and drama, well, I just decided to give it a pass. I've tried raiding, mostly as a PUG, and usually end up with a bad taste in my mouth from the drama, people yelling at each other, and basically treating it not as something fun to do together, but as a job you have to do. I get paid to do a job, I pay to play a game to have fun.
What can men do against such reckless hate?
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The top 5 reasons I come up with for people not raiding are:
1. People are lazy. If there is an easier way to get gear than raiding, they will do it instead.
2. People "used" to raid, but are now burnt out on it. The gear grind and progression isn't the carrot it used to be.
3. People have never raided, but heard horror stories about needing to farm all day in order to raid. Even though this isn't the case anymore, people are still uninformed.
4. Raids take too long. A 5-man dungeon can be competed in less than a hour, a raid is usually 2+ hours.
5. People do not like scheduling their lives outside of game around their raid schedule.
Honerable mention: Everyone now wears epics. There was a time that epics were worn only by the most dedicated players, but now it's pretty easy to be in full epics within days of reaching max level. So I guess this is an e-peen reason. Having good gear used to be a status symbol (for some) and now it no longer is.
Most of my raid exp came from EQ - it was fun BUT..... unless you were in the inner circle of a good guild or had hours upon hours of time you would never be rewarded. First couple times you do a raid its exciting, after that your doing it for a purpose be it loot,progression,etc. hence the term farming. You would have to do the same raid over an over until you finally got what you needed from it. Thats worse than grinding levels imo - at least you get something grinding levels.
When your competing with 20,30,50,100 people for 2-5 drops from the raid,chances are unless you have spent a ton of hours building DKP or were in the inner circle you prob wouldnt get anything unless it was left over trash. Which would leave you doing the same raid over so many times until you resented it,but you had to do it to progress to the next raid. So people would get tired of the grind and move to the next raid under-geared which then handicaps the raid itself, its a vicous cycle.
Best raiding experience I had was in DAoC darkness falls, everyone from toddler to a vet just gathered to open dungeon, grouped up and went off killing things.
Nowadays post-wow raiding involves guild mathematicians going through charts and formulas to pick out the absolute best group possible, then they spend 3-4 hours discussing tactics and then 1-2 hours making sure everyone has the proper addons and then 1-2 hours of waiting everyone to appear at entrance and then 3-4 hours of tedious grinding through trash mobs and then 30mins to 1 hour fighting bigger version of the trash mob thats about just the same as tiny trash mobs just with 10 times the hp and damage and random extra skill meant just to make you spend extra time killing the boss to give illusion of the boss being hard.
Not to forget the mandatory drama involved in every phase of the raid.
I think the title should say "So I figured out why I hate raiding" because the reasons stated are not what most people are saying when they speak of hating raiding.
I raided for years in WoW, my reason for hating it, the gear grind. I absolutely hated when it came to arena nights and raid nights. It felt like a second job grinding out gear, I knew would just be obsolete in new updates. If it weren't for family/friends/guildies I'd been with since DAOC/UO/AC1/PS days I would have never done them, and thankfully they are so burnt out on raiding they have sworn them off as well. Going to be nice to have 2 games GW2 and PS2 to play that has no pve raiding whatsoever. I can kick back and enjoy WvsWvsW and massive 3 way battles in PS2. I can actually play the game for fun, not gear grinding.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
Now there you are right. I had 0 problem with raiding in Darkness falls as Midgard on Guinevere. We'd take over Darkness Falls, the zerg head to the bottom and kill for days even when we didn't have DF anymore. We had lowbies we didn't even mind tagging along because just like in pvp every class could contribute, speed, buffs, whatever.
What happens when you log off your characters????.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFQhfhnjYMk
Dark Age of Camelot
I love old school raiding; big raid sizes, hard bosses, lots of hours of concentration, consumables put in for zero gear. Why?
Because it was a challenge, it was sociable, it was that feeling of downing that boss, being the first on the server, or second, or third. Watching the progression table, good natured competition with other raiding guilds, and big raids meant big guilds where I've met some fantastic people I still talk to, what, 8 years on. Few games do this now.
Now, raids are puggable, co-op affairs where it's gogogo to get it done fast and no one really cheers when a boss dies and everyone grabs for gear. Sure you can have fun with your small group of friends for a couple of hours a week, but mostly it's a pointless grind where no one cares if you do it well or do it badly, then the next raid comes out in a couple of months making the old one obsolete.
The raids in WoW I wouldn't even call raids, they are just bigger dungeons. Like everyone has said before, you need exact group makeup, addons, and clearing trash mobs which are a waste of time. Eventually killing the same end boss 50 times loses it's lustre.
I remember back in FFXI, world bosses would spawn randomly. Then when one did, everyone would start talking about it being up and lots of people would rush over there to try to get it. There would be people watching and it was exciting. The loot meant something and it didn't happen too often. Now, in WoW, it's just a second job. I wouldn't even want to come online because I dreaded sitting in a dungeon for 5 hours per night. If I wanted to leave I wouldn't be allowed to come back next time because I abandoned the guild, or if I didn't want to raid I would get bitched at.
People forget that MMOs were a niche genre. They were made by and for people that liked the camping and raiding type of gameplay. Sadly, like most things, the genre has been whored out to the lowest common denominator to make money and the passion is gone.
The last raiding I enjoyed (as far as PvE goes) was in EQ1 back when it was just Fear and Hate. I loved the laid back, social nature of it all, and the fact that the gear was just gravy to an otherwise fun experience that sometimes lasted full weekends.
The day it became about the gear, I stopped enjoying it. I watched a super great group of folks go from AC1 (where I played with them for years) to WoW, and suddenly there was infighting and bad feelings being slung around, tension, ultimately the break up of a great guild who spent years as a "family" in another game.
I'm not blaming WoW for that. I know the greed factor is innate in a lot of people. So I try to play games which at the very least, try not to encourage it. I don't question why my types of games aren't popular though, I know for 100% certain that I am in the minority anymore... and that's ok.
I do not agree at all with your 1. statement. I'm tired of you people labeling other play styles as lazy if they aren't hardcore. The sheer arrogance of such a statement is mind boggling, especially when it's about gaming, which is the epitome of laziness as we all use it for entertainment / avoiding real work / escapism.
It is only a massive time investment, if you are in a sub par guild. In good guilds, you only have a heavy time investment for few weeks when new content is released. Once you have cleared the new content, a typical raiding time is around 1-3 hours per week. It is a fact, that when you are in a good guild, you have to play a lot less unless you also like to PvP and just generally spend time in the game doing something else.
The mistake many people make, who really enjoy raiding, is to stay loyal to sub par guilds. You should always aim to be within the top five guilds in a typical server. However, this might mean that you have to bail out, and often piss off people. There is a huge difference in the level of commitment you have in the best guilds. It is not so much about skill anymore, but commitment. That is the reason why you do not have to fuck around.
This does not mean that casual raiding can't be fun as well, the above is true only if you are serious about raiding and do not like to waste time.
"The person who experiences greatness must have a feeling for the myth he is in."
onlöy raided once or twice i think i kno i avnt got the skill for tht w 7 alts in wow
so i dun even try since i kno ow elitistic raiders usually r. for example ive only sen the bosses in forge o souls due to the fact i culd stealth there with my rogue 
so i dun hate raiding i dun like it either its simply somefing i wont / cant do
Exactly.
A couple more of my reasons, could easily list a few more:
- As someone already said, raids tends to bring out the worst in people. I play for fun - I don't think it's fun when the new guy did something wrong, and suddenly the chatbox has more prophanity than an average Joe Pesci movie.
- Raids are really not that special. It's just like dungeons and other stuff, it gets boring when you've done the same things many, many times before. And when the repetitive stuff requires hours of your time, each time, there is no fun left.
OP, you may have figured out why SOME hate raids, but your list is way too short to cover the majority. And btw, I don't hate raids, I just think they're among the most boring things you can do in any MMO.
I enjoyed raiding somewhat but I am really hoping that it gets improved immensely.
I enjoyed taking part in a difficult area with multiple dynamics that meant lots of people have to work as a team to finish the goals at hand.
I did not enjoy the fact that for things to be really challenging it also meant that one person who is not doing their job well, could bring the raid to a halt. This leads to elitism and the flooding of group chat with "noob" comments.
I enjoyed being part of a large group working together.
I did not enjoy waiting around for the large group to get logged in and organized before the raid started.
I enjoyed finding some really cool gear from boss loots.
I did not enjoy feeling obligated to complete the raids numerous times just to have enough gear to progress to the next raids.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
I did some hard mode raiding back in WOTLK .. what i hate ...
1) too much time commitment. I have a life.
2) too hard (we are talking about hard mode) ... you miss one manuevr and it is a wipe. You did a little less dps, and the boss enrage,, and it is a wipe. You move a little slower out of the area, and it is a wipe. If i want to play finger gymnastics, i would become a professional SC2 player in S Korea.
3) too much loot drama
4) too much fighting for raid spot .. for god sake, it is a game. Do i really need an interview, and a try out to get on the raid team?