This game is too Raid Orientated

There are tokens equally distributed among attendees. They're just imaginary tokens, and they're called DKP. Your problem is you want to take a token and spend it at a merchant that doesn't accept your tokens. And when they don't, you have a tizzy.

Wow, I'm a thief now all of a sudden? Just wow.

P.S. I'm not a guild leader, raid leader or an officer in my guild. My statement was more of a general statement about how most if not all guilds would feel about you wanting to walk in and have some right to gear that you put little or no effort in getting to drop. And no, I've never seen anyone "steal" any crafting items. It all goes to the guild members, as it should.

Anyone notice that Payton's comments sound suspiciously familiar? Almost as if it is Nynaeve posting under a different name. (Note: I'm not stating that this is necessarily the case, just that the DKP and the crafting item comments match.)

Hahaha.
Exactly what I was about to post.

some guilds I was in, were dying out.
it getting harder to join other guild when they say we don't need another paladin or dirge, they now want healers.
also another problem to keep healers to stay in.
most players who played healers seem to get very stress-out.

as for gear 'progression', there are some 'advanced solo' seem too hard with some tactic or scripts involved and some don't like it.
plats runs seem to hit hard by nerf, less buyers for raid's sell loot rights.

now I will never get any "Underfoot's tier 3 red crystal set armors, since no one want to go there, and now I have half-done set from CoE raid zones, and current guild no longer went raiding since 9 weeks ago. I am getting bored and wonder why am I paying and not been playing, I finished most of questlines, except few of newer Scar's questlines, hate few of those solo quests.
little too hard without any new skills or extra AA's.

that why some players who doing solo feel the need of elite armors just to complete the quests.

another big issue, with grouping, many other groups have their own 'fixed' group members and not wanting other members that are in guild, some had no choice to do PUGs but some end up in fail.
some of different group may have their own "6-pack group" bots, we cant beat those.

it is very frustrating and had no choice but to do solo most of times, and they keep finding roadblocks to quest progression to next stage.

some groups will ask "how many crits do you have?" if I don't have enough, and cant get invite.
see? that why....

wrong perception of how a token system could be set up.
they could design a token system kinda like for the CoE merchant, where you need Obol & essences to buy loot. Maybe even require 3-5 essences for really good loot, but the essence drops should be guaranteed. So you would have to kill some bosses 5 times to be able to buy 1 of his uber gear drops.
They could even factor in some randomness. For example, each time you kill a certain boss, he can flag your character to be eligible to buy certain rare loot. like 10% chance for chestpieces, 10% trousers, 10% weapons, etc...
this way you'd have to kill the boss multiple times to even get flagged to be allowed to buy certain loot.

& my regards to the conspiracy theorists.

k the op sounds like a raider to me, certainly not a Casual player who enjoys the Many other aspects of the game. I myself MIGHT attend 1 raid a week...usually pick ups and looky here. I am still here and i been aound mainly since beta. took 1 winter break once and the other was the soe shut down. I never really had the time to raid even casually. My lifestyle is too busy.

so this game being too raid oriented is a fail statement.. its just the op is too raid focused and getting disappointed cause he has to have some kind of time and skill involved to join his guilds of choice

lol i cant believe this has so many pages to such a glaringly funny topic. hmm maybe that's why. someone is obviously too new to know much about the rest of the game?

I am glad you agree on the gear orientation versus using raid gear in solo content, but that obviously wouldn't happen. Lets take a look at whats happened just recently.

Etherials gear dropping that started rampant at first, I would say YES that was way to much and to often. I would even go so far as to say most if not all of that stuff should be left to raid content, and raiders are welcome to it. NOW as for the items such as fables versus legendary, for the most part you can only see slight increases in stats on most all the pieces except for a very few, and the raiders STILL cried about solo people having access to that stuff to.

That doesn't even qualitfy as best gear in game let alone warrant raiders wanting less to drop for solo people. Yet again after GU66 we see people running 30 or more advanced solo places and never see anything above an ornate chest with trash in it.

Hell even the crap from the drinal steward isn't as good as what raiders can get and STILL we have those same people on here griping about solo people getting to much good stuff. Well that's just a LIE and the only thing it says , is that raiders are DAMN GREEDY, and selfish.

You are wrong about solo people working just as hard for there accomplishments. Read the statement again if you cannot understand how that is so. Basically you see it one way and I see it totally another. These DKP is another excuse for raiders to feel powerful and grow there epeens in there minds.

You just cannot seem to get past the fact that raiding should be because you LIKE GROUPING and taking on harder CONTENT with people, like a social butterfly. The fact that the raiders KEEP skipping over is that NOT EVERYONE LIKES TO HANG WITH STRANGERS AND HAVE TIME TO DO THAT FOR HOURS ON END.

Raiders have some kind of delusion that if solo people aquire great gear as they do , that somehow it stops you from raiding. If your raiders leave and do solo content to get the stuff they want then , THEY DONT WANT TO GROUP WITH YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE. You mean to tell me you cant see, that out of your own mouths you are stating the fact that they would drop you like a dirty dishrag in a heart beat to get what they want??

Holy crap , I mean Wowzer this doesn't sound like the kind of good natured people I would like to spend the evening with, does it to you?
Hmm lets see , should I hang out with strangers tonight that want to use me, maybe listen to them chat about there personal life, or listen to there perverted jokes and snyde remarks about people they know? Or should I group with a friend or 2 that I might know in real life and hunt for some gear the 3 of us could use, because I know my 2 friends wont judge me by my DKP points , and we just have fun.?

Geee im not sure that's a tough one. OH HELL lets go with the strangers, who knows maybe the guild leader will throw me a few extra DKP if I laugh at his jokes and hang on every command he gives me.

YAY another raid night for me woohoooo, and just think, in about 2 or 3 weeks I might have saved enough DKP to become useful and the grateful gods will throw me an item. I just hope those guys don't tell those same ole jokes again , and if I have to hear that one guy talk about his girlfriend one more time or her stupid dog I think ill /wrists

Black I think you grossly missunderstand the DKP system. It's a system in place to allow guild-members to bid on gear agaist others. This means the more consistent you are and longer you stay, then you have a higher chance. Loyalty gears first.

DKP is not some "ego-stick" by which Raiders measure each other against. Solo-Fableds only issue was it was better than Heroic Fabled. Stewards T2 is not better than EM-Raid Gear and anyone who thinks it is... well they haven't tried equipping anything. Maybe it's darn close to EM-CoE but it's not better than PoW.

lol wut?

Something like that would be interesting. I'm just going on past experience with games that used token systems, like Rift. There they had a very specific token that dropped from each boss (Like Boss A drops a chest token, Boss B drops Leggs token etc etc)

I don't disagree with token systems, just saying that random loot systems tend to provide more longevity.

Oh, and Black, you truly have no idea what DKP is. There are as many different DKP systems and rules as there are guilds. It has nothing to do with measuring someones epeen because it's not even tracked in game, or even shared outside of your current guild.

As Estred mentioned, the only complaint about the fabled loot dropping out of AS zones, is that equivalent loot DOESN'T drop in heroic content, which basically killed grouping in this expansion. That's where the progression broke down. Solo fabled is better than steward gear. The marginal stat increase isn't really the problem, it's the extra adornment slot.

The complaint about Steward gear (mainly weapons) vs raid is that it has more adornment slots than raid gear. The Steward gear is actually better than some EM raid boss drops. Again, the progression broke down and you are technically getting the same or LESS reward for doing more challenging content.

As to the "you don't want to group/raid with people you don't know" thing. If all you want to do is solo, that's cool, but you shouldn't EXPECT (demand?) the same reward as the people who do have the time and inclination to do the more challenging content. Stop asking for 3 hours of pay for a 5 minute job.

Black is though right about what people talk about during raids. Geez! Sometimes I just mute some of my fellow raiders.

Raiding is so fun and rewarding that if SOLO content offered near equal rewards NOBODY would continue to raid. I guess its not that fun after all.

I kinda thought the idea was to give soloers a chance to get good equipment so when they applied for a group and was asked to see their gear, they wouldn't offhandedly be turned away. I solo 99% of the time, but rarely I will join a group. I remember when I joined a pug that a high geared put together and I and others were poorly geared out (compared to raiders, and regular groupers) and we couldn't finish the zone. This was years ago, when shard groups were first out, I think. The leader was nice enough about it, helped us with suggestions, but the lack of gear really made the difference between pass/fail.

^this. I always think the same. It was a nice upgraid for people to gear up their chars and apply to a raiding guild so they would keep up with existed raiders for awhile till they gain enough dkp and pass a test.

Well before Steward tier2 gear was introduced.

That is why I dont understand why raiders still so against it. So what? It's all good. More geared up chars on a market the better for recruiting guilds. /shrugs

The majority I see against Solo-Fabled are actually groupers/casual raiders. There are a few HM-Raiders who notice the weakness of grouping who are also speaking. Heroic being invalidated was the issue, not having players with decent gear.

Why run heroic when solo awards better quality gear? Just grind a bit more. That is the general message I hear from people on the opposition side. I don't mind there being some gear in Solo Zones that are better than Heroic, but not full sets.

If you do not do Heroic Content and therefor know how to coordinate in a group. A raiding guild would rather take a lesser-geared but more experience players than someone who is in pure-solo gear. To raids, a player in full Primal/Soul-Touched gear is a big gamble. Do they give them gear and hope they aren't a completely ignorant solo-player? Please note I am not calling solo-players stupid or inept, the stigma is that they are inexperienced and uncoordinated once put in a group/raid setting which varies a fair bit from solo play. Stories of tanks using /taunt when asked to taunt come to mind. Perhaps healers that do not know what a Cure-Curse is also come to mind.

Back when I ran a guild, though short, I preferred recruiting heroic-level players. Not soloers in Heroic+ gear.

Not sure how other raiding guilds run their DKP, but here's how we take care of new members. First, how our guild runs loot;
Loot drops and the designated looter links all loot to the raid. He/she with say Members? Alts? Recruits? Purchase? If a member wants it, they bid, if no one bids it goes to alts. Same for alts, no one bids it goes to Recruits. No one bids still it goes to purchase and anyone can have at it. Now say we have a new Troubadour and a scout piece drops, Well heck, everyone in the raid know this and knows that the new Troubadour needs it so we have this standing (non binding) agreement not to bid on it and let it go to purchase as the new member can purchase the item. The only rule against purchase is that if you have any DKP you have to bid the minimum. (We allow you to go into the hole on DKP, but only if you bid with positive DKP). We in the raid guild all want the same thing, to win, to kill mobs that we haven't killed before and to get geared out so we can do the first two. We also know that getting a raid equipped new person is a rare occurrence. So to win we need to gear up our members, even the new ones. An in-game generated DKP system just wouldn't work for my guild. We are not going to let someone we don't know come into our guild with a large amount of DKP that they have gotten elsewhere and just start snapping up gear that they "feel" they deserve. Just not going to happen.

No, more geared up characters on a market isn't better for the recruiting of raid members, it doesn't matter. We recruit the classes we need, and really don't care what gear they have when we recruit, just that they know how to play their toon to a minimum standard. (ok, some times we get desparate and are willing to take a warm body!). Who are our favorite targets to recruit? Returning players who know their class and want to get back into raiding. Gearing people up isn't a problem, teaching them to play their class is. That does not mean we won't help with AA setup, macro setups, and anything else that will help you play to your max ability. But for some people they just don't fully catch on and those are the ones that eventually you have to let go for a better player.

We will take care of those who join on our own thank you very much. Raiding guilds are about the members of the guild, we keep on average about 30-35 members in ours. It is not about YOU, and if that's a concept you can't handle then you probably won't last in any raid guild that I know of. Gear dropped is for the guild not for the individual. If at all possible any dropped gear must make the guild better and stronger, not just serve some manufactured DKP system that no raiding guild wants.

And you would miss lots of good chars. My illy was recruited being not a grouper at all. Just freshly powerleveled. But I read everything i could, trained and learned quick. Friendly illys helped to with advices.

Now I am a coercer betrayed 4 times (lol) and i can parse on par with some mages and scouts. Well i guess they are not that good then and keep up a decent job feeding power to 4 groups when i am the only one in a raid. Not simultaniosly though. I wish I could...

Sorry but you are pooring off a child with a soupy water ignoring soloers who applies to raid.

Veeman. Our is simillar. But be able to bid on gear the recruit has to pass a test of attendance first. Which helps to accumulate dkp. Or bid plat if no mains or raidind alts need.
Sometimes an exception can be made if a char is indeed in need to get them geared up quickly. But mostly the system and rules apply.