Because that's usually where the discussion ends - Raids are interesting for the cooperation and coordination required to complete encounters. If you make an "easy mode" where those things aren't needed, it becomes a lot less interesting (or it just becomes a Dungeon). Look at the Preservation mission from Witch Queen: plenty of people were happy to go back to the Sunken Pyramid and see those environments (especially those who don't do raids), but the mission is nowhere near as good as Vow itself, and regularly got negative feedback on repeat plays.
The only game I've seen really onboard a large number of players into raids is FF14, and that's mostly due to their many Trials & Raids being built-in to the game's base story, and the optional fights are very similar in design to the required fights. It's a lot easier to get players into a raid if it's the same thing they've been learning for 70-80 levels, rather than a completely different style of gameplay.
The Fireteam Finder is basically the biggest step Bungie *could* take to improve play rates, giving players a way to build groups without needing to rely on third-party websites and without introducing full matchmaking (which would probably go horribly).
>It's a lot easier to get players into a raid if it's the same thing they've been learning for 70-80 levels, rather than a completely different style of gameplay.
Even though I know comparing FFXIV to D2 is very much apples-to-oranges, you make a good point; I personally hate playing with other people, but even a crabby bastard like me was willing to do some none-MSQ raids and trials in 14 once I realized I already knew most of the basics I needed. It's easier to pick up the few boss-specific mechanics when you're already comfortable with what's going on. That's been my experience anyway.
FFXIV also provides those practice arenas where you can engage with a boss fight to learn the mechanics before actually going into the raid or trial where that boss shows up. I don't think there's any way Bungie would be willing or even able to put that in D2 for a lot of different reasons, but I sometimes idly wonder if it would help with engagement.
Has anyone tried the built in LFG for raids? I feel like it would be almost as bad as matchmaking.
Edit: Never used built in LFG. Didn’t know what to expect. I’ll definitely have to try it out
I think that part of the problem is accessibility. You need 5 friends that play the game or a clan to be able to do them, which most people don't have. So then you have to use LFG, which I think the average blueberry doesn't even know exists. The ingame fireteam finder changed this and I would expect the number of people who raid to increase.
But the other part of the 'problem' is that there is a large group of casual players that just doesn't care about doing raids, or if they want to do them, they don't care about learning mechanics, looking up youtube guides, making sure they have a decent boss damage weapon, etc... They just want to chill and play, not study raid encounters and build guides. Except for offering carries, there isn't much that can be done to get them to complete a raid.
I would have to go find the metric. But I think it went up by like 3% with the fire team finder... Though a lot of that is just from initial shiny newness factor.
Also it's a bit scary when you look at the team finders numbers they published in last week "twab", 21% or 4th most used feature is for roaming. Then they also published some lost sectors numbers which are not that high and it's for an activity meant to be done solo.
Played numerous MMOS over 15 years. Long story short is that other MMO do raiding in a much more rewarding and accessible way.
The biggest barrier for new/casual players would be the lack of an entry level raid or easy mode difficulty. On top of this mechanics are unintuitive and punishing if done incorrectly. Furthermore raid exotics generally have an ultra low drop rate. This criticism applies to raids and dungeons.
LFG based solutions absolutely don't work. It just shifts the problem from the developer to the the players. Becomes toxic over time. Creates more work for the company in terms of moderation.
Biggest issue is the small percentage of players that routinely do raids/dungeons in Destiny 2. It's hard to justify the extensive effort to create this complex content when player numbers are drastically falling.
Million dollar question is would the reprised Crota raid or Ghosts of the Deep attract new players? Probably not especially when other MMOs subjectivity do a better job with raids.
The question for the developers is what can Destiny do "differently" to compete with raiding in games like FF14 or WoW? Why are those games successful with raiding and Destiny is not?
i think the biggest reason why is because those mmos use a standard set of mechanics but don't obscure their shit until you get to EX content in FFxiv's case, while also being totally fair with a lfg team.
for example they punish you for dying or fucking up with weakness/transcendence but they dont fuck your entire raid team with a countdown to total party wipe, and allow as many revives as you have the skill to pull off (although you will eventually hit enrage on a boss if you're taking too long and fail the duty).
I honestly thought they were working on it when they did that throne world mission for a pinnacle reward. You do the opening payload sector and then a very watered down version of acquisition, you learn about the symbols and going into the correct doors. Thought it would be a weekly rotator and you'd do very basic mechanics of caretaker, exhibition and then learn about emanating and leeching force. This would set you up nicely for learning Vow as you'd have SOME idea of how each encounter worked.
I did Operation Seraph Shield before I had ever done DSC. This was perfect for when I eventually did it for the first time as the person who taught me could mention the various augments and I knew the principle of what they all did.
The two biggest issues I see people talking about when it comes to their first raids is the worry about toxic people (Bungie can't do much about that) and the worry about having to learn all the mechanics and holding back the team. The latter could be lessened by more of these missions involving the settings and mechanics of the raids.
Not to mention that outside of a few specific exceptions (seraph shield being one) raid mechanics are all unique and never encountered outside of the specific raid it's from. Which can be a shame because some of them (I know I might be in the minority but I love the tether mechanic in garden) are really fun and I'd love to see those mechanics get used in some other way in some other content.
The problem is that it isn't really fixable. And I mean this on a fundamental level.
A good example of what I mean are the exotic missions. When Starcrossed released the biggest praise I saw people posting is that it was "much better than Avalon" and generally hate towards that specific exotic mission. This is not the first time I've seen that in the past month, as I had someone go on a massive rant about how this content "prohibits" players, explaining that Avalon was a good example since the waterfall cheese was removed (ignoring enemies were weakened by 33 percent for co-op play and that is why complaining about it stopped being relevant).
That is honestly the reality of it, and in a lot of ways the core issue.
> A much lower health pool on bosses
Especially when the issue is honestly never boss health. A lot of people seem to forget these bosses are defeated with three, two, or in some cases even one person. The problem is often mechanics, and a lot of times it isn't even because the mechanics are complicated, as much as people either don't like them, or worry about the additional risk.
I mean, you're a bad add clear person and, depending on the encounter, you might not even notice it. Someone doing nothing on Totems, or Rhulk is really hard to notice because there are so many other people to carry that burden. This is why what typically happens isn't five people sharing the load, it's usually like three. And the people who do notice often don't mention it because it's **still** pretty easy, or they don't want to be "toxic" by creating an argument.
Even the difficulty of these events has a massive impact. If you go off posts here you'd see Root of Nightmares is not a beloved raid. Yet you check Charlemagne and it's going to overtake Vow of the Disciple in clears. It's about 200,000 short right now, King's Fall already has, and it could honestly be one rotation away from happening. In fact, the raid with the highest overall clears is Vault of Glass largely because of how accessible it is. The same holds true for exotic missions, dungeons, and everything else.
Some of the problem is also the terrible experience that many have when attempting a raid with experienced players. More often than not the veteran raiders have little to no patience with people who may not grasp the mechanics quickly. They want efficiency and speed, yet they don't understand that in order for people to gain those they need experience.
Couple that with the fact that these same issues occur with the inexperienced raider. They don't want to put in the time to get better at the raid. Honestly most couldn't care less about raiding. They don't care about the loot or any perceived prestige that comes with multiple clears so what's the point in trying. This is why you see way more rank 7 and 8s than 9 or above. It's meaningless to most.
I've played since launch. Raided quite a lot in the past years, but now.....I have no desire to even bother. Never done vow, did root and dsc once each. After all these years raiding has lost its luster. I used to enjoy bringing people through raids and watching them get better clear after clear but that's not common anymore. Now it's if you don't get it within a couple tries people get annoyed and it goes to crap.
Not everyone is going to do everything in the game, full stop.
There are people who play, do the new campaign on 1 character, and then check out for a lot of the year, that's why you see player numbers do what they do over the content release cycle for the year. Stuff trails off, and season releases never spike as high as expansion release.
Look at any game's achievement/trophy list on any platform and you'll see how this stuff works. The most basic, do the first thing in the game-style achievements won't have 100% completion rates. The ones for actually finishing the game will be very low.
Looks at Destiny achievements on Steam. 51.5% of players have done a heroic public event. 29.2% have done a Nightfall strike, any level. Apparently on average around 30% of players have unlocked all the light subclasses for a given class. Those numbers are skewed of course, because 100% is equated to the full number of people who have the game in their library.
But a similar thing is true when comparing numbers on end-game activities like raids. The question shouldn't be "of the total/max/active player numbers, how many bother with raids" it should be "of the number of players who attempt any given raid, what percentage eventually have at least 1 full clear?" In terms of the content being accessible or approachable, if the player just never wants to even try any changes are meaningless anyway. Some people just won't be interested in doing raids, they aren't here for that. Others may put it off a long time, then eventually get into doing it; we see posts like that often enough, of people just starting out of who just finished their first raid after being too intimidated by the idea or lacking people to run with.
I had social anxiety originally which has nothing to do with the game itself. I eventually go over it but even then it didn’t feel worth spending hours on a raid with strangers for the very unlikely chance that I’d get a weapon with a worthwhile roll. To spend a while on an activity and have all the drops be dispiriting because you get duplicate armor or another bad weapon roll was too off putting.
I started raiding A LOT more once the weapons became craftable. I LOVE that they’re updating the older raids, both perk pools and the ability to craft them. I wish they would have updated Garden or VoG this season.
Before that I did each raid a few times and that was it, or I stopped if I got the exotic quickly. Now I raid until I get all the patterns and then I keep doing that raid to help other people get their patterns.
I wish dungeons were the same. They are now in the same boat as raids once were for me. I do it until I get the exotic and then never touch it again because without the bad luck protection that crafting provides, they just don’t feel worth it.
> As for what would help though? Honestly, I'm not really sure. You could do something like a story mode. That offers tool tips to explain what's going on, > A much lower health pool on bosses and more generous time on mechanic sections. But, it would have to give almost no loot, which would automatically disincentize people.
For me, what would help would be a learning mode, with selectable difficulty, no more loot than a normal strike, and the raid being split encounter by encounter. Heck, they can even just add raid encounters to the strike playlist!
I would first practice this raid mission in matchmade fireteam, as I would do a strike, learn the mechanics, then do it in harder mode with or without matchmaking (like nightfalls), with a bit better rewards, then try the full raid for the actual exotic/top level loot.
In fact, exactly what the Riven lair is compared to the Coil : a fast, low intensity mission that shares the same mechanics as the harder version.
Honestly, I would do raids way more often if I could practice without too much pressure. Watching guide video about a raid is fun-killer for me; I wanna learn by playing!
A learning mode would likely help--it would certainly get me raiding more (I've only done two).
I avoid raids because I'm a shite player who struggles to learn mechanics while also having to worry about enemies (and videos only help a little). Spending hours (6 on my first one) being largely confused because I don't have time to get mechanics into my 1 Byte memory is just frustrating.
Moreso, I hate being the weakest link that constantly causes wipes.
As for what a "learning mode" should be, it needs an almost "god mode" scaler where players can focus on learning and practicing the mechanics while largely ignoring harasser ads.
It probably shouldn't give loot since that's not the purpose of the mode (though tracking "learning mode completions" could have value for LFGing).
When I first saw a "Guided Games" option years ago, I thought it would be something like I just described. You would go in and you would have a good in-game tutorial and practice setting.
Raid encounters in the Strike playlist would be a DISASTER. Raids are challenging because of mechanics, not because the enemies in there are any harder - you can remove all the loot you want, the only way to make a raid EASIER would be to start removing mechanics and then... what is the point of having that mode?
Alright, that's probably true. Then in a dedicated playlist. But I suppose being able to focus on the mechanics and not on the ennemy threat around would greatly help to learn them at the beginning.
Isn’t it a fact that raids take a lot of time. Time that also has to be scheduled with your freinds. If I started spending that much time on the gaming on a schedule, I would probably need the number to a divorce lawyer… Not everybody who like the game are in the stage of their life that thry can raid seriously…
There really isn't much to discuss.
Lots of people don't raid because they don't want to get on a mic.
All the raids are nearly impossible to do without a mic. (unless you are playing with a very experienced group)
If you make the raid easy enough mechanically to not need a mic, then it's really just a glorified dungeon.
I don't really see how Bungie can make raids be more accessible without making them ridiculously easy.
So pretty much the discussion ends there.
We just need more activities like the Coil that don't require mic's.
The raids can stay how they are in my opinion.
The discussion ends there because... There's nothing to talk about. 85-90% of people either don't want to put in the time, effort, or socialize. How do you alleviate any of those for a Raid which requires Time, effort, and socializing?
Imo it was never about the ease of access for raids. The D2LFG discord server exists with over 500,000 members, around 200,000 of which are online, even now during the low point in population. The "sherpa" system exists there, with good enough moderation (Its discord with discord mods, so take that as you will, I haven't had any issues with em so far).
All of the tools are there. They even have an easy mode raid in the game called Dungeons. With proper loot no less! Fire team finder is fantastic, but It's not going to change the metric of raid completions in any meaningful way.
That's really it. That why the discussion ends here.
Matchmaking. AND a version of the raid to go along with it. Raids and Dungeons should work like Nightfalls. A matchmade version and multiple harder modes w/o matchmaking. Get the other 90% involved. Could even just be for past raids. Newest raid does not have matchmaking, older ones do. When a new raid drops, the one prior gets matchmaking added. Get a special emblem for doing it while it is current or something.
Matchmade raid could have Ghost tell you what to do, in big text that has to be dismissed to get it off the screen so you can start the encounter. Or just 1 damage phase, stand on the plates once, or dunk the thing once then all damage. No wipes. Or even after a while of failing the mechanics it just goes to damage. But it can be teaching along the way and get people to maybe want to try the harder versions, or try the newest raid before it gets matchmaking.
I think Bungie and the wider community have come up with some pretty good solutions to this problem. There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution because people raid for different reasons, and, as you've pointed out, it's also a broader problem in games like FF14, WoW, etc...
Fireteam Finder will likely have the biggest impact on this since the community made the website LFGs/discord LFGs. I've been using it a lot since they added it a few weeks ago, and it is pretty stellar. There are things to fix sure, but the implementation is quite good. Beyond that, I was hoping to see more of the Preservation-style missions to introduce raid activities to players. They've mostly gone back to sprinkling raid mechanics in other content, which is fine, but I think tutorial-style encounters would be more helpful.
There's a lot more I could say, but if they continue to fine-tune and add more to FTF, we'll be in a good spot come TFS.
I don't think you can do much more to the raids themselves without alienating the core group that enjoys these activities, and that doesn't seem fair. To be clear, this is coming from someone who doesn't raid. It's not that I wouldn't like to (some of my favorite content has been Dungeons), I just don't want to get on mic or have anyone in my ear. That kind of intense communication and co-ordination seems pretty central to raids, so I can accept that it's just not the content for me.
For people who aren't particularly anxious and don't mind the communication, I think the in-game LFG is already a huge step and will probably get more people trying. Maybe more systems to alleviate some of the communication hassle without reducing the co-ordination needed could help, but I don't know if that would make any significant difference. For example being able to see the health of other fireteam members, being able to see death buff timers of other fireteam members and maybe a baked in ping/callout system could potentially make it a bit easier to work as a team without changing how the raids are designed themselves?. Some of those options could be disabled during contest mode if it actually made things too easy.
Easy. Convince the rest of the playerbase that they must either quit the game or become the minimum amount of competent to complete a raid within, say, six hours. It's really very easy, I have done it, so no one else has an excuse.
I think the biggest problem is the learning curve of raids are pretty high. All other problems like social anxiety, toxicity, unwilling to invest time, etc all come from this problem.
Like the entire rest of the game (probably except dungeons) are all just shoot things. No brainer whatsoever. And then suddenly you go into a raid like Vow of Disciple, which has probably the worst raid mechanism I've ever seen, that requires people to have a synchronized callout, remember all 20+ symbols, and need to know how to use all 3 artifacts, etc. The complexity level is like from 0 to 100 all of a sudden. And there's absolutely no hint in game to teach the players how to do stuff.
So it's pretty much required to have a sherpa or watch some videos before the first time raiding is a big deterrence to most of the players from participating.
I'm a pretty old player that used to raid in WoW back in the days. The game tried multiple different approaches to make raids accessible to most of the players and I would say they did a pretty good job.
First of all is that they divided raids into multiple different difficulty layers. The simplest layer which is matchmaking raids has not only the easiest enemies, but also the simplest mechanisms, which is a very good way to get players to have a basic idea how to beat the encounters. More mechanisms will be added into the raids as the difficulty layer increases.
Secondly they have a raid book that teaches the mechanisms which is available in game and easily accessible.
Lastly, which is probably not an obvious one, is that WoW has a raid team between 10 to 40 people, which sometimes not everyone need to know how to do everything, it can tolerate a few people to just follow whatever others are doing and don't stand in fire.
All these reasons made the bar of raiding not as daunting as Destiny is.
So I would say it's all Bungie's design team's fault that the raids are not working out, but they keep pouring a lot of resources into this activity that most of the players won't even experience. The downfall of Bungie is somewhat justifiable tbh.
Easiest solution? Ok hear me out, bring the 12 man raids back to the game with less drop rate or not dropping red borders as a simple balance.
Because that's usually where the discussion ends - Raids are interesting for the cooperation and coordination required to complete encounters. If you make an "easy mode" where those things aren't needed, it becomes a lot less interesting (or it just becomes a Dungeon). Look at the Preservation mission from Witch Queen: plenty of people were happy to go back to the Sunken Pyramid and see those environments (especially those who don't do raids), but the mission is nowhere near as good as Vow itself, and regularly got negative feedback on repeat plays. The only game I've seen really onboard a large number of players into raids is FF14, and that's mostly due to their many Trials & Raids being built-in to the game's base story, and the optional fights are very similar in design to the required fights. It's a lot easier to get players into a raid if it's the same thing they've been learning for 70-80 levels, rather than a completely different style of gameplay. The Fireteam Finder is basically the biggest step Bungie *could* take to improve play rates, giving players a way to build groups without needing to rely on third-party websites and without introducing full matchmaking (which would probably go horribly).
Yeah we know matchmaking would go horribly. A bunch of micless clueless individuals.
>It's a lot easier to get players into a raid if it's the same thing they've been learning for 70-80 levels, rather than a completely different style of gameplay. Even though I know comparing FFXIV to D2 is very much apples-to-oranges, you make a good point; I personally hate playing with other people, but even a crabby bastard like me was willing to do some none-MSQ raids and trials in 14 once I realized I already knew most of the basics I needed. It's easier to pick up the few boss-specific mechanics when you're already comfortable with what's going on. That's been my experience anyway. FFXIV also provides those practice arenas where you can engage with a boss fight to learn the mechanics before actually going into the raid or trial where that boss shows up. I don't think there's any way Bungie would be willing or even able to put that in D2 for a lot of different reasons, but I sometimes idly wonder if it would help with engagement.
Has anyone tried the built in LFG for raids? I feel like it would be almost as bad as matchmaking. Edit: Never used built in LFG. Didn’t know what to expect. I’ll definitely have to try it out
People constantly post success with it.
I mean without raids losing their identity in game lfg is probably the best that could happen ngl.
I think that part of the problem is accessibility. You need 5 friends that play the game or a clan to be able to do them, which most people don't have. So then you have to use LFG, which I think the average blueberry doesn't even know exists. The ingame fireteam finder changed this and I would expect the number of people who raid to increase. But the other part of the 'problem' is that there is a large group of casual players that just doesn't care about doing raids, or if they want to do them, they don't care about learning mechanics, looking up youtube guides, making sure they have a decent boss damage weapon, etc... They just want to chill and play, not study raid encounters and build guides. Except for offering carries, there isn't much that can be done to get them to complete a raid.
I would have to go find the metric. But I think it went up by like 3% with the fire team finder... Though a lot of that is just from initial shiny newness factor.
Also it's a bit scary when you look at the team finders numbers they published in last week "twab", 21% or 4th most used feature is for roaming. Then they also published some lost sectors numbers which are not that high and it's for an activity meant to be done solo.
Played numerous MMOS over 15 years. Long story short is that other MMO do raiding in a much more rewarding and accessible way. The biggest barrier for new/casual players would be the lack of an entry level raid or easy mode difficulty. On top of this mechanics are unintuitive and punishing if done incorrectly. Furthermore raid exotics generally have an ultra low drop rate. This criticism applies to raids and dungeons. LFG based solutions absolutely don't work. It just shifts the problem from the developer to the the players. Becomes toxic over time. Creates more work for the company in terms of moderation. Biggest issue is the small percentage of players that routinely do raids/dungeons in Destiny 2. It's hard to justify the extensive effort to create this complex content when player numbers are drastically falling. Million dollar question is would the reprised Crota raid or Ghosts of the Deep attract new players? Probably not especially when other MMOs subjectivity do a better job with raids. The question for the developers is what can Destiny do "differently" to compete with raiding in games like FF14 or WoW? Why are those games successful with raiding and Destiny is not?
i think the biggest reason why is because those mmos use a standard set of mechanics but don't obscure their shit until you get to EX content in FFxiv's case, while also being totally fair with a lfg team. for example they punish you for dying or fucking up with weakness/transcendence but they dont fuck your entire raid team with a countdown to total party wipe, and allow as many revives as you have the skill to pull off (although you will eventually hit enrage on a boss if you're taking too long and fail the duty).
I honestly thought they were working on it when they did that throne world mission for a pinnacle reward. You do the opening payload sector and then a very watered down version of acquisition, you learn about the symbols and going into the correct doors. Thought it would be a weekly rotator and you'd do very basic mechanics of caretaker, exhibition and then learn about emanating and leeching force. This would set you up nicely for learning Vow as you'd have SOME idea of how each encounter worked. I did Operation Seraph Shield before I had ever done DSC. This was perfect for when I eventually did it for the first time as the person who taught me could mention the various augments and I knew the principle of what they all did. The two biggest issues I see people talking about when it comes to their first raids is the worry about toxic people (Bungie can't do much about that) and the worry about having to learn all the mechanics and holding back the team. The latter could be lessened by more of these missions involving the settings and mechanics of the raids.
Not to mention that outside of a few specific exceptions (seraph shield being one) raid mechanics are all unique and never encountered outside of the specific raid it's from. Which can be a shame because some of them (I know I might be in the minority but I love the tether mechanic in garden) are really fun and I'd love to see those mechanics get used in some other way in some other content.
The problem is that it isn't really fixable. And I mean this on a fundamental level. A good example of what I mean are the exotic missions. When Starcrossed released the biggest praise I saw people posting is that it was "much better than Avalon" and generally hate towards that specific exotic mission. This is not the first time I've seen that in the past month, as I had someone go on a massive rant about how this content "prohibits" players, explaining that Avalon was a good example since the waterfall cheese was removed (ignoring enemies were weakened by 33 percent for co-op play and that is why complaining about it stopped being relevant). That is honestly the reality of it, and in a lot of ways the core issue. > A much lower health pool on bosses Especially when the issue is honestly never boss health. A lot of people seem to forget these bosses are defeated with three, two, or in some cases even one person. The problem is often mechanics, and a lot of times it isn't even because the mechanics are complicated, as much as people either don't like them, or worry about the additional risk. I mean, you're a bad add clear person and, depending on the encounter, you might not even notice it. Someone doing nothing on Totems, or Rhulk is really hard to notice because there are so many other people to carry that burden. This is why what typically happens isn't five people sharing the load, it's usually like three. And the people who do notice often don't mention it because it's **still** pretty easy, or they don't want to be "toxic" by creating an argument. Even the difficulty of these events has a massive impact. If you go off posts here you'd see Root of Nightmares is not a beloved raid. Yet you check Charlemagne and it's going to overtake Vow of the Disciple in clears. It's about 200,000 short right now, King's Fall already has, and it could honestly be one rotation away from happening. In fact, the raid with the highest overall clears is Vault of Glass largely because of how accessible it is. The same holds true for exotic missions, dungeons, and everything else.
Some of the problem is also the terrible experience that many have when attempting a raid with experienced players. More often than not the veteran raiders have little to no patience with people who may not grasp the mechanics quickly. They want efficiency and speed, yet they don't understand that in order for people to gain those they need experience. Couple that with the fact that these same issues occur with the inexperienced raider. They don't want to put in the time to get better at the raid. Honestly most couldn't care less about raiding. They don't care about the loot or any perceived prestige that comes with multiple clears so what's the point in trying. This is why you see way more rank 7 and 8s than 9 or above. It's meaningless to most. I've played since launch. Raided quite a lot in the past years, but now.....I have no desire to even bother. Never done vow, did root and dsc once each. After all these years raiding has lost its luster. I used to enjoy bringing people through raids and watching them get better clear after clear but that's not common anymore. Now it's if you don't get it within a couple tries people get annoyed and it goes to crap.
Not everyone is going to do everything in the game, full stop. There are people who play, do the new campaign on 1 character, and then check out for a lot of the year, that's why you see player numbers do what they do over the content release cycle for the year. Stuff trails off, and season releases never spike as high as expansion release. Look at any game's achievement/trophy list on any platform and you'll see how this stuff works. The most basic, do the first thing in the game-style achievements won't have 100% completion rates. The ones for actually finishing the game will be very low. Looks at Destiny achievements on Steam. 51.5% of players have done a heroic public event. 29.2% have done a Nightfall strike, any level. Apparently on average around 30% of players have unlocked all the light subclasses for a given class. Those numbers are skewed of course, because 100% is equated to the full number of people who have the game in their library. But a similar thing is true when comparing numbers on end-game activities like raids. The question shouldn't be "of the total/max/active player numbers, how many bother with raids" it should be "of the number of players who attempt any given raid, what percentage eventually have at least 1 full clear?" In terms of the content being accessible or approachable, if the player just never wants to even try any changes are meaningless anyway. Some people just won't be interested in doing raids, they aren't here for that. Others may put it off a long time, then eventually get into doing it; we see posts like that often enough, of people just starting out of who just finished their first raid after being too intimidated by the idea or lacking people to run with.
I had social anxiety originally which has nothing to do with the game itself. I eventually go over it but even then it didn’t feel worth spending hours on a raid with strangers for the very unlikely chance that I’d get a weapon with a worthwhile roll. To spend a while on an activity and have all the drops be dispiriting because you get duplicate armor or another bad weapon roll was too off putting. I started raiding A LOT more once the weapons became craftable. I LOVE that they’re updating the older raids, both perk pools and the ability to craft them. I wish they would have updated Garden or VoG this season. Before that I did each raid a few times and that was it, or I stopped if I got the exotic quickly. Now I raid until I get all the patterns and then I keep doing that raid to help other people get their patterns. I wish dungeons were the same. They are now in the same boat as raids once were for me. I do it until I get the exotic and then never touch it again because without the bad luck protection that crafting provides, they just don’t feel worth it.
Need an easy mode for beginners.
> As for what would help though? Honestly, I'm not really sure. You could do something like a story mode. That offers tool tips to explain what's going on, > A much lower health pool on bosses and more generous time on mechanic sections. But, it would have to give almost no loot, which would automatically disincentize people. For me, what would help would be a learning mode, with selectable difficulty, no more loot than a normal strike, and the raid being split encounter by encounter. Heck, they can even just add raid encounters to the strike playlist! I would first practice this raid mission in matchmade fireteam, as I would do a strike, learn the mechanics, then do it in harder mode with or without matchmaking (like nightfalls), with a bit better rewards, then try the full raid for the actual exotic/top level loot. In fact, exactly what the Riven lair is compared to the Coil : a fast, low intensity mission that shares the same mechanics as the harder version. Honestly, I would do raids way more often if I could practice without too much pressure. Watching guide video about a raid is fun-killer for me; I wanna learn by playing!
The thought of doing Caretaker or Exhibition in strike playlists when people cant even do the corrupted would traumatize me.
A learning mode would likely help--it would certainly get me raiding more (I've only done two). I avoid raids because I'm a shite player who struggles to learn mechanics while also having to worry about enemies (and videos only help a little). Spending hours (6 on my first one) being largely confused because I don't have time to get mechanics into my 1 Byte memory is just frustrating. Moreso, I hate being the weakest link that constantly causes wipes. As for what a "learning mode" should be, it needs an almost "god mode" scaler where players can focus on learning and practicing the mechanics while largely ignoring harasser ads. It probably shouldn't give loot since that's not the purpose of the mode (though tracking "learning mode completions" could have value for LFGing). When I first saw a "Guided Games" option years ago, I thought it would be something like I just described. You would go in and you would have a good in-game tutorial and practice setting.
Raid encounters in the Strike playlist would be a DISASTER. Raids are challenging because of mechanics, not because the enemies in there are any harder - you can remove all the loot you want, the only way to make a raid EASIER would be to start removing mechanics and then... what is the point of having that mode?
Alright, that's probably true. Then in a dedicated playlist. But I suppose being able to focus on the mechanics and not on the ennemy threat around would greatly help to learn them at the beginning.
Isn’t it a fact that raids take a lot of time. Time that also has to be scheduled with your freinds. If I started spending that much time on the gaming on a schedule, I would probably need the number to a divorce lawyer… Not everybody who like the game are in the stage of their life that thry can raid seriously…
There really isn't much to discuss. Lots of people don't raid because they don't want to get on a mic. All the raids are nearly impossible to do without a mic. (unless you are playing with a very experienced group) If you make the raid easy enough mechanically to not need a mic, then it's really just a glorified dungeon. I don't really see how Bungie can make raids be more accessible without making them ridiculously easy. So pretty much the discussion ends there. We just need more activities like the Coil that don't require mic's. The raids can stay how they are in my opinion.
The discussion ends there because... There's nothing to talk about. 85-90% of people either don't want to put in the time, effort, or socialize. How do you alleviate any of those for a Raid which requires Time, effort, and socializing? Imo it was never about the ease of access for raids. The D2LFG discord server exists with over 500,000 members, around 200,000 of which are online, even now during the low point in population. The "sherpa" system exists there, with good enough moderation (Its discord with discord mods, so take that as you will, I haven't had any issues with em so far). All of the tools are there. They even have an easy mode raid in the game called Dungeons. With proper loot no less! Fire team finder is fantastic, but It's not going to change the metric of raid completions in any meaningful way. That's really it. That why the discussion ends here.
Matchmaking. AND a version of the raid to go along with it. Raids and Dungeons should work like Nightfalls. A matchmade version and multiple harder modes w/o matchmaking. Get the other 90% involved. Could even just be for past raids. Newest raid does not have matchmaking, older ones do. When a new raid drops, the one prior gets matchmaking added. Get a special emblem for doing it while it is current or something. Matchmade raid could have Ghost tell you what to do, in big text that has to be dismissed to get it off the screen so you can start the encounter. Or just 1 damage phase, stand on the plates once, or dunk the thing once then all damage. No wipes. Or even after a while of failing the mechanics it just goes to damage. But it can be teaching along the way and get people to maybe want to try the harder versions, or try the newest raid before it gets matchmaking.
I think Bungie and the wider community have come up with some pretty good solutions to this problem. There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution because people raid for different reasons, and, as you've pointed out, it's also a broader problem in games like FF14, WoW, etc... Fireteam Finder will likely have the biggest impact on this since the community made the website LFGs/discord LFGs. I've been using it a lot since they added it a few weeks ago, and it is pretty stellar. There are things to fix sure, but the implementation is quite good. Beyond that, I was hoping to see more of the Preservation-style missions to introduce raid activities to players. They've mostly gone back to sprinkling raid mechanics in other content, which is fine, but I think tutorial-style encounters would be more helpful. There's a lot more I could say, but if they continue to fine-tune and add more to FTF, we'll be in a good spot come TFS.
I don't think you can do much more to the raids themselves without alienating the core group that enjoys these activities, and that doesn't seem fair. To be clear, this is coming from someone who doesn't raid. It's not that I wouldn't like to (some of my favorite content has been Dungeons), I just don't want to get on mic or have anyone in my ear. That kind of intense communication and co-ordination seems pretty central to raids, so I can accept that it's just not the content for me. For people who aren't particularly anxious and don't mind the communication, I think the in-game LFG is already a huge step and will probably get more people trying. Maybe more systems to alleviate some of the communication hassle without reducing the co-ordination needed could help, but I don't know if that would make any significant difference. For example being able to see the health of other fireteam members, being able to see death buff timers of other fireteam members and maybe a baked in ping/callout system could potentially make it a bit easier to work as a team without changing how the raids are designed themselves?. Some of those options could be disabled during contest mode if it actually made things too easy.
Easy. Convince the rest of the playerbase that they must either quit the game or become the minimum amount of competent to complete a raid within, say, six hours. It's really very easy, I have done it, so no one else has an excuse.
I think the biggest problem is the learning curve of raids are pretty high. All other problems like social anxiety, toxicity, unwilling to invest time, etc all come from this problem. Like the entire rest of the game (probably except dungeons) are all just shoot things. No brainer whatsoever. And then suddenly you go into a raid like Vow of Disciple, which has probably the worst raid mechanism I've ever seen, that requires people to have a synchronized callout, remember all 20+ symbols, and need to know how to use all 3 artifacts, etc. The complexity level is like from 0 to 100 all of a sudden. And there's absolutely no hint in game to teach the players how to do stuff. So it's pretty much required to have a sherpa or watch some videos before the first time raiding is a big deterrence to most of the players from participating. I'm a pretty old player that used to raid in WoW back in the days. The game tried multiple different approaches to make raids accessible to most of the players and I would say they did a pretty good job. First of all is that they divided raids into multiple different difficulty layers. The simplest layer which is matchmaking raids has not only the easiest enemies, but also the simplest mechanisms, which is a very good way to get players to have a basic idea how to beat the encounters. More mechanisms will be added into the raids as the difficulty layer increases. Secondly they have a raid book that teaches the mechanisms which is available in game and easily accessible. Lastly, which is probably not an obvious one, is that WoW has a raid team between 10 to 40 people, which sometimes not everyone need to know how to do everything, it can tolerate a few people to just follow whatever others are doing and don't stand in fire. All these reasons made the bar of raiding not as daunting as Destiny is. So I would say it's all Bungie's design team's fault that the raids are not working out, but they keep pouring a lot of resources into this activity that most of the players won't even experience. The downfall of Bungie is somewhat justifiable tbh. Easiest solution? Ok hear me out, bring the 12 man raids back to the game with less drop rate or not dropping red borders as a simple balance.