145880-raid-or-bust-mentality-fault-of-players-or-the-game

== Content ==
			So, a month into the re-release my guild is dead again. Reason? We do not raid. Only a month in and Luminai feels emptied out again, new guilds on the exile side barely rise, titans compete and use dirty tricks to rip raiders from each others hands. We lost our raiders, again, because we weren't fast enough. And this really bugs me. I'm in other guilds in other games were raiding is just as important (FFXIV, WoW) and yet I'm in non raiding guilds. And we're doing just fine. So why is Wildstar so "raid or bust"? Even without a guild, even in passing, in conversations when you go "I won't raid" you get asked "so why are you here?". How came this game has just as much content outside of raids, yet not raiding is so not accepted? So I tried to compare. Why is it okay to not raid in FFXIV:- there's casual raiding. 24 man raids you queue for and Alexander normal is fairly easy. You can still experience content and have fairly okay gear without raiding. - crafting and gathering are both its own little game. Both have just as much skills as a fighting class and with materia melding (the same as runes here) being done by crafters only, crafters are fairly high up on the importance scale. - the gold soucer gambling house. Has nothing to do with fighting again. We got toys, pets, collectibles, but nothing this huge. They're introducing an RTS mini game into it soon as well. - one character can be all, so a fair amount of time is wasted by people leveling over and over and over again. Then on top of that hardcore raiding is a fairly small occasion. Got 7 friends? You can do hardcore raiding! Meaning that non guild groups and raiding circles pop up almost naturally. Yet Wildstar also has a very robust housing system. Dungeons here are not easy mode, PvP scene exists and is fairly competitive... I can see many things to do besides raiding and yet the community seems more heavily raid or bust here than anywhere else... Why? I honestly want a discussion because this leaves me very much puzzled. Is there anything else that Carbine could provide for a non raider, to make the game worth their time without raiding? Or is it that Wildstar just attracts more raid minded people than any other MMO?Sorry hard to put thoughts into a coherent post, after the guild going bust this morning pretty much, but I hope that my point is clear enough.
			
				
	Edited October 31, 2015 by mirta000	
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Think about this: Maybe people want to Raid in Wildstar because Raiding in Wildstar is fun? It's probably the most fun part of Wildstar apart from PVP, which is in my opinion about the same (and by the way, non-raiding PVP-focused Guilds can be very successful in picking up members)
 
You seem to assume the community is a bunch of elitist raiders or something. When in reality it's probably a lot more likely that people just want to enjoy one of the funnest and best parts of the game. And they don't want to join a guild that will not let them experience that part of the game. No wonder your guild isn't doing well if you're denying people some of the best content.
 
I'm guessing you can get away with not raiding or pvping at all in a game like Final Fantasy because the Raids and PvP probably suck. You said yourself you can solo-queue for Raids in that game and they're easy, sounds like crap raiding to me.
			
				
	Edited October 31, 2015 by Seztren	
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Think about this: Maybe people want to Raid in Wildstar because Raiding in Wildstar is fun? It's probably the most fun part of Wildstar apart from PVP, which is in my opinion about the same (and by the way, non-raiding PVP-focused Guilds can be very successful in picking up members)
 
You seem to assume the community is a bunch of elitist raiders or something. When in reality it's probably a lot more likely that people just want to enjoy one of the funnest and best parts of the game. And they don't want to join a guild that will not let them experience that part of the game. No wonder your guild isn't doing well if you're denying people some of the best content.
 
I'm guessing you can get away with not raiding or pvping at all in a game like Final Fantasy because the Raids and PvP probably suck. You said yourself you can solo-queue for Raids in that game and they're easy, sounds like crap raiding to me.
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We have plenty of non-raiders in our guild. I always assure folks when they join us that raiding is entirely optional. We have folks that almost exclusively play in housing, enjoy leveling alts, achievement hunting, crafting, etc. However, if you want to raid, then you have to be committed and available to do so. Raiding in this game is ridiculously fun, but it also involves patience and practice. As to why folks are impatient...I think that's just people. The art of waiting and growing things is something a lot of folks just don't feel they want to do anymore. I'm not sure why.
 
Then there's the other parts of running a guild. How active are your officers? How often and what types of events are you running? Are folks enjoying them? Do you get on voice together? Are you making a point to welcome in and run stuff with new members? Guilds are built on relationships. If you can't get your membership fostering relationships, it's going to be hard to keep folks around. They feel disconnected and get bored and move on. It's not an easy thing to grow (or regrow) a guild. It takes patience and dedication from the leaders and the membership. Most of all...it takes time. Probably at least twice as long as you think it will.	
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To be fair mirta, I run a non-raiding guild on luminai and I have exactly the opposite problem. I can't find enough time to do all the things everything want to do. Some people are here just for housing, some just for casual pvp and chatting on ts, some for dungeons, some of us are actually attuning now and some are ready for the new season.
 
New guilds rise every day, the server is absolutely packed in illium around the contract boards, halloween areas and cx, I get new apps for the guild every day and imho population is stable, and new people are always popping up.
 
I went to thayd last night at around 4am and it was still quite busy, so I'm pretty sure luminai is doing quite well for itself.
 
plus levelling, there are always people around, which is a complete difference to how it was 6 months ago where you could go a whole 50 levels without seeing a soul.	
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The thing is there needs to be something in between dungeons and raid.
Y83 should have been an easy raidboss for 10 players this would have filled in a gap perfectly.
 
now y83 is a boss that nobody does except when they are bored :/	
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			Poor Y83. It seems to be something pretty much everyone has decided simply isn't worth their time. xD Someday, we'll get around to it. When we don't need GA class sets anymore. And we've killed Avatus. And....yea...I guess when we're bored. LOL	
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We have plenty of non-raiders in our guild. I always assure folks when they join us that raiding is entirely optional. We have folks that almost exclusively play in housing, enjoy leveling alts, achievement hunting, crafting, etc. However, if you want to raid, then you have to be committed and available to do so. Raiding in this game is ridiculously fun, but it also involves patience and practice. As to why folks are impatient...I think that's just people. The art of waiting and growing things is something a lot of folks just don't feel they want to do anymore. I'm not sure why.
 
Then there's the other parts of running a guild. How active are your officers? How often and what types of events are you running? Are folks enjoying them? Do you get on voice together? Are you making a point to welcome in and run stuff with new members? Guilds are built on relationships. If you can't get your membership fostering relationships, it's going to be hard to keep folks around. They feel disconnected and get bored and move on. It's not an easy thing to grow (or regrow) a guild. It takes patience and dedication from the leaders and the membership. Most of all...it takes time. Probably at least twice as long as you think it will.
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			I think (at least for Vet players) a lot of the appeal of this MMO was the promise of a satisfying and demanding raid experience. I know this was my primary purpose for playing this game from level 1.Now that I've experienced all of GA and progression in DS, I have to admit it's hard not to gush about them. DS in particular is an absolutely stunning raid in terms of boss and art design. I think part of the "raid or bust" mentality is that for players that have been around awhile, DS is the only place there's any unseen content left, so they push people to join the roster. The game hasn't had the finances to push out lots of new dungeons, which while difficult and well-designed, only feel "fresh" for so long.	
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If anything it sounds more to me that you're recruiting the wrong people. My guild has been around since near the beginning of the game, and I think that's primarily due to a core group of people that enjoy being around each other all the time. We're technically a raiding guild, but we haven't managed to progress past SD in months, yet we're not having huge problems with losing people. We also have plenty of other things we do. A lot of us are rpers, but even those that aren't are not overly perturbed with our lack of progress. We're not exactly desperate to find people either though, and it sounds to me that that is more your problem. If you're just grabbing people as they show up or leveling then they might see you as more of an "intermediate" "temporary" or "leveling" guild. If people are focused on progression only and are just using your guild for the free social net and guild buffs, then they are certainly going to leave when things seem to stall out. We had a few people like that. When we put raiding on hold for a month or two before f2p, there was a small group of people we lost to Mystic. But when they left no one else followed them. No one else was interested in leaving our community that we have created.
 
So my advice would be to not really worry about it. If you've got a core group of people that you enjoy being around, you don't need any more. More people will come when they encounter your community and want to join, rather than you spending lots of time recruiting transient players who just want to join Enigma's Z raiding team and sit on the bench for 4 hours (seriously they have so many raiding teams that the Enigma tag is worthless on Entity at this point).
 
As an example, my guild STILL hasn't restarted our progression in DS (we just have GA nights on occasion). Yet we have more than enough people to fill out our raid roster and have spares. Hell it seems like recruitment has actually gone UP if anything lately. People come to US to join, not the other way around.
			
				
	Edited October 31, 2015 by ZuberiGF	
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So, a month into the re-release my guild is dead again. Reason? We do not raid. 
Only a month in and Luminai feels emptied out again, new guilds on the exile side barely rise, titans compete and use dirty tricks to rip raiders from each others hands. We lost our raiders, again, because we weren't fast enough. 
 
And this really bugs me. I'm in other guilds in other games were raiding is just as important (FFXIV, WoW) and yet I'm in non raiding guilds. And we're doing just fine. So why is Wildstar so "raid or bust"? Even without a guild, even in passing, in conversations when you go "I won't raid" you get asked "so why are you here?". How came this game has just as much content outside of raids, yet not raiding is so not accepted? 
 
 
Truly have no idea what you mean.  In WOW there is Raid at max level or nothing to do peroid.  WOD gave a grand total of 30 doays worht of content, then another 30 when they added in Tannan.  Im not playing even though its completely free (with tokes being 6 hours to farm).  There is simply nothing to do but raid 1 or 2 nights a week.
 
 
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If anything it sounds more to me that you're recruiting the wrong people. My guild has been around since near the beginning of the game, and I think that's primarily due to a core group of people that enjoy being around each other all the time. We're technically a raiding guild, but we haven't managed to progress past SD in months, yet we're not having huge problems with losing people. We also have plenty of other things we do. A lot of us are rpers, but even those that aren't are not overly perturbed with our lack of progress. We're not exactly desperate to find people either though, and it sounds to me that that is more your problem. If you're just grabbing people as they show up or leveling then they might see you as more of an "intermediate" "temporary" or "leveling" guild. If people are focused on progression only and are just using your guild for the free social net and guild buffs, then they are certainly going to leave when things seem to stall out. We had a few people like that. When we put raiding on hold for a month or two before f2p, there was a small group of people we lost to Mystic. But when they left no one else followed them. No one else was interested in leaving our community that we have created.
 
So my advice would be to not really worry about it. If you've got a core group of people that you enjoy being around, you don't need any more. More people will come when they encounter your community and want to join, rather than you spending lots of time recruiting transient players who just want to join Enigma's Z raiding team and sit on the bench for 4 hours (seriously they have so many raiding teams that the Enigma tag is worthless on Entity at this point).
 
As an example, my guild STILL hasn't restarted our progression in DS (we just have GA nights on occasion). Yet we have more than enough people to fill out our raid roster and have spares. Hell it seems like recruitment has actually gone UP if anything lately. People come to US to join, not the other way around.
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I'm guessing you can get away with not raiding or pvping at all in a game like Final Fantasy because the Raids and PvP probably suck. You said yourself you can solo-queue for Raids in that game and they're easy, sounds like crap raiding to me.
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When I came back for the F2P launch, I discovered that all of the things that made me like dungeons and raids are gone. 
-The simple rotations that let you keep your eye on the battlefield, not your hotbar, are gone, replaced by 7-slot DPS rotations for every class.  Before I had a bar loaded with utility skills, watching for the moment they were needed.  Now I desperately try not to miss a cooldown.
-Healing is now a resource management game, and not a battlefield management.  Before, healing was like cooperative PVP - the mechanics were almost exactly the same as DPS combat, but your targets were other people (to heal them with telegraphs, as they dodged and dove and such).  It was glorious.  Now it's spent worrying about my focus pool.
 
Instead, I've been doing contracts, dailies, and pvp.  Raids are dead to me, like they are in WoW - just another script-heavy, canned encounter.
 
It really makes me sad, since those things made W* dungeons a genre-buster, now they are gone, replaced by the same old hotbar management schlock.	
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Actually, the reason you can get away with it is the sheer breadth of content in FF14
 
The absolute hardcore raid content isn't done by all guilds not because they suck. You can get away with not having a hardcore raid branch as an official part of your guild. Nor do you need them, since the gear offered by those hardcore raids are only a fistful of iLvl's above the rest of the gear.
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			you make me want to play final fantasy 14 again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! jk	
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You really can't compare Wildstars player base to WoW and FFXIV.
 
FFXIV and WoW both have a multi million sized player base. Last I heard a while back, FFXIV had hit 4 million subs and it was still growing. 
 
Larger player base means you will find more varied types of player. Plus WoW and FFXIV are more "casual" friendly (I don't like using that word but it fits here) while Wildstar was billed as a more "hardcore" game from the get go.
 
I don't raid here. I got into heavy raiding in FFXIV and we hit it hard leading up to the expansion to get everyone else ready. I got burnt out on end game group content, I just can't face doing it anymore in any game.
 
I have a couple of 50's but I barely touch them. Outside of housing and the daily grind there is very limited things to do except group orientated things. 
 
WoW and FFXIV are far more solo player friendly. Getting all the classes on my character in FFXIV took me a pretty decent amount of time. That kept me going when I had nothing else to do, here it's alts. 
 
Due to how Wildstar was marketed it brought in a lot of raid heavy types but the player base isn't large enough to be as diverse as the bigger MMO's. There are quite a few non raiders but they tend to either already have guilds or stick with a group of friends they already know.	
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You really can't compare Wildstars player base to WoW and FFXIV.
 
FFXIV and WoW both have a multi million sized player base. Last I heard a while back, FFXIV had hit 4 million subs and it was still growing. 
 
Larger player base means you will find more varied types of player. Plus WoW and FFXIV are more "casual" friendly (I don't like using that word but it fits here) while Wildstar was billed as a more "hardcore" game from the get go.
 
I don't raid here. I got into heavy raiding in FFXIV and we hit it hard leading up to the expansion to get everyone else ready. I got burnt out on end game group content, I just can't face doing it anymore in any game.
 
I have a couple of 50's but I barely touch them. Outside of housing and the daily grind there is very limited things to do except group orientated things. 
 
WoW and FFXIV are far more solo player friendly. Getting all the classes on my character in FFXIV took me a pretty decent amount of time. That kept me going when I had nothing else to do, here it's alts. 
 
Due to how Wildstar was marketed it brought in a lot of raid heavy types but the player base isn't large enough to be as diverse as the bigger MMO's. There are quite a few non raiders but they tend to either already have guilds or stick with a group of
friends they already know.
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FF14 is a well polished game with a successful re-launch while Wildstar is a casual game. 
 
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What does mini-WOD mean?Anyway, Wildstar could use some more casual friendly elements. I'm pretty sure the devs are aware of that, though. Hopefully they add racing in the future, shit was fun.
 
But yeah, I'm still not even sure how FFXIV has the amount of players it does. Probably mostly due to it being available on consoles as well. It's a polished game with a lot of content, but I found it absolutely boring. Maybe it's just me, though,	
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What does mini-WOD mean?
 
Anyway, Wildstar could use some more casual friendly elements. I'm pretty sure the devs are aware of that, though. Hopefully they add racing in the future, shit was fun.
 
But yeah, I'm still not even sure how FFXIV has the amount of players it does. Probably mostly due to it being available on consoles as well. It's a polished game with a lot of content, but I found it absolutely boring. Maybe it's just me, though,
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I really wish FF14 had better pvp but I 100% respect them for not going for it. They initially made FF14 for PvE and only added pvp because everyone asked for it. They stick to their guns despite players moaning, that's respectable in my books.
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Ppl got sucked into the hardcore raid fab and that's why you see ppl wanting to raid and do nothing else,
To be frank dungeons seems harder than raids simply because we have more ppl to carry the load in raids than in a dungeon, some raid bosses were insulting "Stack at the corner guys and mow him down " really this is epic experience you want us to have ??	
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FF has players for the same reason SWTOR has players(Hint: It's not because they're innovative of creatively good games).     Name brand and style carry a lot of weigh, and is probably one the primary reasons why Wildstar isn't doing better than it is(among other reasons).    Final Fantasy has a MASSIVE following. People will play it simply because it has the FF 'feel' to it.  I would wager that a large portion of the people don't even know - or CAN'T -  be objective about the overall quality of a game.   They just play it because they 'like'  it.    And to be fair, there's nothing wrong with that on an individual basis. 
 
But when we start looking at games on a larger scale, we really shouldn't be accepting trashy or poorly designed games simply because they have a namebrand or style we like.   It's one of the reasons I get so critical of MMOs lateley, INCLUDING Wildstar.  Too much is just copy/pasted because it's the way MMOs have always been. There's so little innovation in this genre right now. It's no wonder literally every MMO is struggling to retain players. 
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We're just getting around to DS progression, too. Unless you have a full raid of alts, it's taken this long to get 8/8 GA-level class foci for everyone. We only raid 2-3 nights a week so DS progression has taken the back burner (until probably a week from now).
 
Good observations. Honestly I think most of the long-time guilds stick together because of social factors, and not being all-consumed with progession. It's the only way a semi-casual guild stays together, IMO.
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FFXIV and WoW both have a multi million sized player base. Last I heard a while back, FFXIV had hit 4 million subs and it was still growing. 
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The thing is there needs to be something in between dungeons and raid.
Y83 should have been an easy raidboss for 10 players this would have filled in a gap perfectly.
 
now y83 is a boss that nobody does except when they are bored :/
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- crafting and gathering are both its own little game. Both have just as much skills as a fighting class and with materia melding (the same as runes here) being done by crafters only, crafters are fairly high up on the importance scale.
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Dang, I can't even get that far. I guess ESO spoiled me a little with quest setups. As I can't stand having chore list questing style. I can't even get to level 10.
 
 
However, I will say this..Wildstar is a good game for people who want raiding, and that old school feel it seems. A lot of the newer mmos coming out, are leaning away from the hardcore raid or die mindset. Raiding just lost all meaning and shine thanks to tools like lfr. So for people who still love it. Respect, because I am so burnt out on doing raids, I find them pointless.	
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Dang, I can't even get that far. I guess ESO spoiled me a little with quest setups. As I can't stand having chore list questing style. I can't even get to level 10.
 
 
However, I will say this..Wildstar is a good game for people who want raiding, and that old school feel it seems. A lot of the newer mmos coming out, are leaning away from the hardcore raid or die mindset. Raiding just lost all meaning and shine thanks to tools like lfr. So for people who still love it. Respect, because I am so burnt out on doing raids, I find them pointless.
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FF14 is a well polished game with a successful re-launch while Wildstar is a casual game. 
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Dang, I can't even get that far. I guess ESO spoiled me a little with quest setups. As I can't stand having chore list questing style. I can't even get to level 10.
 
 
However, I will say this..Wildstar is a good game for people who want raiding, and that old school feel it seems. A lot of the newer mmos coming out, are leaning away from the hardcore raid or die mindset. Raiding just lost all meaning and shine thanks to tools like lfr. So for people who still love it. Respect, because I am so burnt out on doing raids, I find them pointless.
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... Sorry hard to put thoughts into a coherent post, after the guild going bust this morning pretty much, but I hope that my point is clear enough.
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			I don't think I've ever had someone basically say I shouldn't be playing Wildstar since I'm not a raider.  I think the "raid or bust" mentality you are experiencing is player fault, not game fault.  There's plenty to do outside of raids, as the infamous Brad pointed out. 	
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When I came back for the F2P launch, I discovered that all of the things that made me like dungeons and raids are gone. 
-The simple rotations that let you keep your eye on the battlefield, not your hotbar, are gone, replaced by 7-slot DPS rotations for every class.  Before I had a bar loaded with utility skills, watching for the moment they were needed.  Now I desperately try not to miss a cooldown.
-Healing is now a resource management game, and not a battlefield management.  Before, healing was like cooperative PVP - the mechanics were almost exactly the same as DPS combat, but your targets were other people (to heal them with telegraphs, as they dodged and dove and such).  It was glorious.  Now it's spent worrying about my focus pool.
 
Instead, I've been doing contracts, dailies, and pvp.  Raids are dead to me, like they are in WoW - just another script-heavy, canned encounter.
 
It really makes me sad, since those things made W* dungeons a genre-buster, now they are gone, replaced by the same old hotbar management schlock.
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The thing is there needs to be something in between dungeons and raid.
Y83 should have been an easy raidboss for 10 players this would have filled in a gap perfectly.
 
now y83 is a boss that nobody does except when they are bored :/
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  Please don't ive seen alot of people out there fighting him.. since players with several 50s go out there to farm the technophage decor.World bosses fill this gap now.
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Issue is that boss is supposed to be GA lvl and Hardcore post DS lvl
 
The bosses are not that hard but are extremely tactical which is not easy to get accustomed to for fledgling raiders. 
 
Most guilds pass it by because getting the kills/loot from ga/ds is much easier	
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If you are into PvE and dont like PvP there is not much to do once you have DS clear outside of raids. you do some dungeons here and then but overall you dont do worldbosses too often because you have done it all like 20 times already and the time investment is just not good enough for the rewards. obv thats the same in other games and the fact that raid still keep so many players motivated besides there is not much else to do speaks volume for the quality of the raids.
from time to time they include very small upgrades (new energy shields for example) or make some drops very rare (avatus weapons) to keep raiders motivated.
outside of raids i dont know what to do for the most parts beacuse i have done it all multiple times and pugging dungeons in WS is for the most parts a lottery.
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Issue is that boss is supposed to be GA lvl and Hardcore post DS lvl
 
The bosses are not that hard but are extremely tactical which is not easy to get accustomed to for fledgling raiders. 
 
Most guilds pass it by because getting the kills/loot from ga/ds is much easier
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When I came back for the F2P launch, I discovered that all of the things that made me like dungeons and raids are gone. 
-The simple rotations that let you keep your eye on the battlefield, not your hotbar, are gone, replaced by 7-slot DPS rotations for every class. Before I had a bar loaded with utility skills, watching for the moment they were needed. Now I desperately try not to miss a cooldown.
-Healing is now a resource management game, and not a battlefield management. Before, healing was like cooperative PVP - the mechanics were almost exactly the same as DPS combat, but your targets were other people (to heal them with telegraphs, as they dodged and dove and such). It was glorious. Now it's spent worrying about my focus pool.
 
Instead, I've been doing contracts, dailies, and pvp. Raids are dead to me, like they are in WoW - just another script-heavy, canned encounter.
 
It really makes me sad, since those things made W* dungeons a genre-buster, now they are gone, replaced by the same old hotbar management schlock.
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Ppl got sucked into the hardcore raid fab and that's why you see ppl wanting to raid and do nothing else,
To be frank dungeons seems harder than raids simply because we have more ppl to carry the load in raids than in a dungeon, some raid bosses were insulting "Stack at the corner guys and mow him down " really this is epic experience you want us to have ??
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The world boss respin was supposed to be the "in-between" raids. Unfortunately the design isn't quite there. The biggest fail is the open world nature of it. It is not uncommon to get a bit more than two full raid groups beating on them which turns it into a slideshow zergfest. The second is the particle farming is way too grindy. Thought CRB got the message that very few people like that.
 
Recommendations:
Make them instanced boss-in-a-box fights that scale from 10-20 or 30 man
Keep the particle farming mechanic but increase the drop rate and reduce the number needed for an unlock to 40
Can also limit particle farming to instance basepop
Probably need to implement daily lockouts per boss
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Poor Y83. It seems to be something pretty much everyone has decided simply isn't worth their time. xD Someday, we'll get around to it. When we don't need GA class sets anymore. And we've killed Avatus. And....yea...I guess when we're bored. LOL
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but you can't expect a 6/6 guild to hit up Y83 when then can spend time on SD and have access to new glory gear and a whole new raid instance lauded by many.
 
It's not a matter of how valuable Y83 is, but how valuable its competition is.	
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Kind of baffles me how people are holding up FFXIV as a PvE model to be admired. There are some good aspects to it (for example, accessible large-group content in the form of Crystal Tower, etc; also I like how hard modes are not simply tuned up versions of the old dungeons), but I really do not want to see WS's content get turned into the horrendously dull treadmill that is FFXIV. Not to mention there's hardly any actual challenge available, as SE is dedicated to the 4-mans being easily pugable in your sleep and the new 8-man raid (Alexander) is no where close to the difficulty of the normal versions of Coil. There's Savage mode, but even then...
 
Anyway, I've never actually encountered this "raid or bust" mentality in-game. I've heard people complain about a lack of things to do outside of raiding (not sure I'd agree), but no one's ever told me that I shouldn't be playing the game if I'm not raiding.	
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When I see threads like this in any game with raiding - I always have to ask:  what would you rather they do?  what do you want added?  And do you think they should just remove raids/ make them not worth it?
 
I personally don't feel "raid or bust" in wildstar.  I have raided GA a few times (like.. 5?  Mostly in pugs, like twice being carried by an old guild) but I can still dump hours into playing WS.  While ultimately I do want to raid more and higher stuff, I'm not too stressed about not doing it right away (And it's not because i feel obliged to raid - It's just something I love to do in MMOs).
 
Any time I feel like "I have nothing to do" is really "I have tons to do, I just don't feel like doing it".  Run vets, play build house, knock out dailies for gold, farm some mats, finish the backlog of expidition dailies I have saved up, knock out some contracts, level those alts, pvp...  You get the idea.
 
While a lot of content feels like it does "lead up" to raiding, nothing is saying you HAVE to raid.  Raiding does give the best gear - but I don't see how they can change that without making raiding irrelevant, or making other gear acquisitions better to run so you can plow through the raid better.  People seem hung up on needing to do the content that gives the best gear, when really, the gear is just there to help people down the content it's IN.
 
The only issue I have with WS right now is not properly showing a progression path with expiditons > adventures >dungeons etc. 	
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It's not that GA/DS is easier, it's that the gear is better. The gear from Y83 doesn't beat the GA gear (and you need to be geared enough to kill Ohmna to down the normal version). And the DS gear is significantly better. The only thing going for it is that it drops nice runes. However, if you've killed Ohmna and are progressing in DS, there's just no real point in taking time to do Y83. You'll get no gear upgrades, and you'll delay your time spent progressing in DS. It's just not worth it...which is sad, because it looks really fun.
 
We've done some off night runs of it, but we had to stop because we need the class sets from GA now. We'll get around to it again eventually.
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Kind of baffles me how people are holding up FFXIV as a PvE model to be admired. 
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Parts of the story also get secluded into at least one of the raids (or at least that's the impression Omnicore-1 gives), so if that's your thing you also have to raid.
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Not anymore.
 
Killing normal mode Augmentors now nets you several pieces of ilvl116 gear in a wider variety than what drops off of probes in DS. It's also a significantly easier fight to learn than System Daemons, and once you learn it it can be killed in under 20 minutes at the end of a raid night. It can be done without any issues in GA gear.
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I'm just not sure how well it really fits into the current raiding scene.
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I ran a guild in WoW for about 5 years that was casual with some raiding. Started at BC launch from the members of a starter dungeon PUG and lasted until the end of Cata.
 
I think the OP is just not willing to self reflect for causes of guild failure and so is wildly casting out blame at easy targets.
 
I too lost a few hundred, yes plural hundreds, to raid guilds poaching my members. I even lost a coo 150 in a single moment once when my casual and raider team leads got into a midnight fight and took their respective wings and left.
 
Each time my core shrugged, scaled back, and rebuilt.
 
I didn't blame WoW because I'm not foolish. The blame was on me. Organizing a huge number of people takes a lot of time and energy and is way beyond "movie night". In fact movie night kind of hints at the problem - it is the kind of activity suited to a couple of friends not an organization on scale with a mid sized corporation.
 
If your guild fails, look to yourself. Decide if you are willing to change what kind of person you are, and if not, join somebody else's guild instead. Running a large guild is not about being popular or nice or even harsh. It is about being managerial. And the worst thing you can do in that role is refuse to self reflect. If your instinct is to blame others you have no business being a leader.	
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I ran a guild in WoW for about 5 years that was casual with some raiding. Started at BC launch from the members of a starter dungeon PUG and lasted until the end of Cata.
 
I think the OP is just not willing to self reflect for causes of guild failure and so is wildly casting out blame at easy targets.
 
I too lost a few hundred, yes plural hundreds, to raid guilds poaching my members. I even lost a coo 150 in a single moment once when my casual and raider team leads got into a midnight fight and took their respective wings and left.
 
Each time my core shrugged, scaled back, and rebuilt.
 
I didn't blame WoW because I'm not foolish. The blame was on me. Organizing a huge number of people takes a lot of time and energy and is way beyond "movie night". In fact movie night kind of hints at the problem - it is the kind of activity suited to a couple of friends not an organization on scale with a mid sized corporation.
 
If your guild fails, look to yourself. Decide if you are willing to change what kind of person you are, and if not, join somebody else's guild instead. Running a large guild is not about being popular or nice or even harsh. It is about being managerial. And the worst thing you can do in that role is refuse to self reflect. If your instinct is to blame others you have no business being a leader.
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If that game is still basically how I remember it, it means PuGs almost never fail in non-extreme/savage versions of dungeons. Which is a pretty big point of comparison when one significant problem with Wildstar seems to be that newer players do the 'dump 2-3 hours into a dungeon, wipe, group gets disbanded, get nothing for your time, yay!' dance. 
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I'm fairly well acquainted with a few different 6/6 guilds, and I don't know ANY that are working on it. Everyone wants to hit X-89. And then after that, I think it would be hard to pull back out of DS. You really only want to be learning one boss at a time.
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hahahaha...wait till you get to pairs!! xD Seriously...the fights are cool in and of themselves, but I hope the raid team never again implements such a random system of ever changing boss fights to gate the final boss in the instance. Juggling multiple progression fights at once with no real clue when you'll see each pair again is just....ack! Keeps it interesting, I guess? 
 
 
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y83 is not worthless. Is one of the most fun fights in the game and delivers the BiS Gadgets and pretty good rune sets.
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Well yeah, they don't fail cause the content's *cupcake* easy and boring. >_< Not something I'd look to, personally.
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Agreed 1000000% no one plays FFXIV for the challenge, like SWTOR, they play it for the IP (It's a final fantasy game)
 
FFXIV is shadow of what FFXI's raids were in terms of challenge and the level of strategic acumen and precision coordination needed even just farming seals.
 
Is this really a widespread issue? I don't raid in W*, and don't really plan on it . I've never noticed a "raid-or-bust" mentality, and I've never been bored with the PvE aspects of the game I enjoy... Maybe this is something raiders experience? 
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if IP could carry the game, 1.0 would have never gone bust. Also I'm pretty sure that Savage raiders are doing that part of the game for challenge. However casual raids and easy expert dungeons give something to do for those that don't have the time for high skill level high coordination content.
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IP can absolutely carry a game. IP can't save an incomplete or broken one however. 
 
I'm going to have to agree to disagree. Savage difficulty is about on par with the gods in XI (mini bosses needed to farm to pop Kirin in Sky), and don't even come close in difficulty to anything in Sea. Sure, the only real reason to do them is that they are MORE challenging than the easymode raids you can literally face roll (no joke, I actually got so bored in a regular binding coil run I actually ran my Lala's heal rotation using my nose and hot keys.... ). But MORE challenging than minimally so doesn't mean something is itself a challenge. 
 
Savage modes aren't easy...and yes, they are considerably more challenging than their normal counterparts. However, compared even to XIV's predecessor they are far from a "challenge". Whether this is because XI was uniquely challenging, or XIV is uniquely casual isn't something I can say... But I will say that something similar can be said of SWTOR's "raids". 
 
To be clear I'm not knocking anyone who enjoys XIV, I enjoy the cupcake out of my Lala WHM, and the story is great as far as FF goes, plus the aesthetics and music are top notch. As a shameless FF fanboy I even might say ... XIV is a great game! But I couldn't in good conscience honestly suggest to anyone it's a challenging game. Just as XI started to ramp down it's difficulty the past few years, XIV started off with that trend from the start to make it more new player and casual friendly... something I really don't mind... but wouldn't want to see here in W*
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Y83 normal mode is worhtless, and Hardmode is to overtuned, for most guilds.
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did you try Alexander Savage? 
. 
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if IP could carry the game, 1.0 would have never gone bust. Also I'm pretty sure that Savage raiders are doing that part of the game for challenge. However casual raids and easy expert dungeons give something to do for those that don't have the time for high skill level high coordination content.
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Not personally. I got bored of raiding in XIV. For what ever reason raiding just bores the daylight out of me the past few months (in all the mmo's I play). From vids it seems that all they did was up the gear check and tighten the mechanics from the normal Alex fight... Which if true is a big disappointment. I actually kind of enjoyed what they did with the extreme primals (they at least shook up the fights).
 
 
 
Fair enough :)
 
 
Anyway, has this really been an issue outside of raiding circles in W*? I've honestly never noticed a "raid-or-bust" atmosphere in my guilds / in playing W*. I remember the vicious politics of raid guild poaching in most other games I've played, but is it worse with the guilds here? Has anyone not in a raid specific guild experienced this kind of mentality?
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Nope the "Raid or Bust" is a player problem when they don't want to raid but they wont all the fat lewt so they cry for it.
 
You dont need to raid in this game to enjoy it but at the same time if its not something you do then why would you cry about it? Only 1 new raid instance has been added since launch ( if you can call that shit hole of a boss a raid) yet so many people cry that raids are getting all the end game attention. 
 
More pvp has been added than raids, More daily content has been added than raids. People just jump on the bandwagon and cry with the other morons in the corner because they used 3 hours on doing dailies while raiders used those 3 hours to raid. You choose how you spend your time in game. Not our fault you chose the easy path with the least rewards, Then those people come on the forums and cry they don't get ilvl 120 gear for collecting 10 bear ass's.
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did you try Alexander Savage? 
 
The gap past HW made it a bit worse. If you thought Binging was faceroll easy, then Alexander normal you would fall asleep in. However while you could carry an average player trough Binging, Alexander Savage isn't so anymore and most statics outright disbanded on Turn 3 and 4. 
 
It kind of suffers from a similar problem to Wildstar right now, except with more difficulty levels. Wildstar's raids are catered to the top notch and nobody below. Well Heavensward raids are catered to super casual and super hardcore. Mid core statics are complaining that there's no place for them in the world as Alexander Savage is too hard, but Alexander Normal is meant for pug faceroll difficulty. 
 
So agree to disagree indeed :)
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Congratulations. You have just instantly discredited yourself with this sentence. With the relative ease it is to GA these days, and with how you can craft good starter gear that "levels up" to near top end gear while you progress through raids, only someone who's never set foot in a WS raid and resorts to out-dated memes would dare say this.
 
My guild is HARDLY "top notch" (if you're using that as a synonym for "uber elite"/hardcore), and we're progressing through DS just fine. We're not min/maxers and we only raid 2.5 hours a night max. Three days a week.
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That doesn't change the fact that the raids were initially intended to be for the "top notch" players.
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You can't keep criticizing the WildStar from over a year ago. We have the WildStar we have now, and now it is extremely easy to get into GA (and has been for a while). GA itself is not extremely challenging - at least the earlier bosses.
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What I want to say is that you're progressing the extremely nerfed version of GA and DS, when they came out they were a lot more difficult than they are now. This means carbine will make their raids accessible to more and more people as time goes by.
 
But you can be sure as hell that the redmoon raid will get released as an extremely difficult raid (and you can be sure as hell there'll be a lot of threads from people whining about how the raids are too difficult because people who spend 4 hours a week raiding can't kill the first boss in the newest and most difficult raid in the game), and then after months, the powercreep and general mechanic nerfs will make it playable for less skilled / time investing individuals. And that's a good thing, that's how it should be and that's what carbine wants their raids to be.
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SD was a lot more difficult, they changed how adds and add-rooms work to make the fight significantly easier.
Limbo got the Dehydration nerfed to the point where Dehydration doesn't even matter anymore. All telegraphs from the Keepers got nerfed in damage aswell.
Lattice got shortened by a lot and devourers die a lot quicker due to less HP and powercreep.
Maelstrom is probably the only fight that stayed the same or became a little more difficult because of necessity to do the pillars now. Powercreep removed the DPS check though.
 
I cba listing pairs and avatus, but most of them got straight up nerfs aswell that weren't just the result of powercreep (Kuralak aswell). Some DPS checks simply don't exist anymore due to powercreep (Kuralak, Phage Maw, Convergence Frog). I can understand saying GA didn't change that much, but DS got huge changes that weren't just "powercreep".	
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Savage modes aren't easy...and yes, they are considerably more challenging than their normal counterparts. However, compared even to XIV's predecessor they are far from a "challenge". Whether this is because XI was uniquely challenging, or XIV is uniquely casual isn't something I can say... But I will say that something similar can be said of SWTOR's "raids".
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Congratulations. You have just instantly discredited yourself with this sentence. With the relative ease it is to GA these days, and with how you can craft good starter gear that "levels up" to near top end gear while you progress through raids, only someone who's never set foot in a WS raid and resorts to out-dated memes would dare say this.
 
My guild is HARDLY "top notch" (if you're using that as a synonym for "uber elite"/hardcore), and we're progressing through DS just fine. We're not min/maxers and we only raid 2.5 hours a night max. Three days a week.
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that's more time than I would ever have. 
 
You're organizing 20 people with different schedules to play together at the same time for 2.5h at a time 3 days a week. That kind of time investment is hardly anything to laugh about.
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Then you're not even a casual raider, and should excuse yourself from all discussions about casual raiding. Since you can't even meet the bare mimimum.
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Getting together 20 people is not that hard but the problem comes with getting the same 20 people every "raid time" every week.  Thats why you have subs.  Than subs get bored sitting and start looking for elsewhere so they are doing raiding 100% of the time.  This game at one time was alot of raiders and all you saw were raiders and people doing housing, and not casual players.  Now it's shifting over to a good pvp/casual/raiders paradigm and all that.  For the OP, Luminai, I'm sorry, I have understood that Luminai PVP server is more dead than the NA pvp server Warhound.  But they have gotten better, but most of the focus for the guilds there are pvp.  This is one of the few games that I've seen where pvp server is more pvp than pvp server w/ pve guilds.
 
 
And for the couple posts asking for something between dungeons and raids, um huh?  It's dungeons>raids.  Now it could be Dungeons>casual easy raids to get used to raid environment>raids.	
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Then that makes your own guild a "top notch" guild, since you all are not only scheduling GA, but are doing it for MORE hours/days than my own guild. Your boo-hoo rhetoric and lowering the bar to make raiding look like it's some mountainous task here, doesn't match what your own..."just for funzies guild" is doing/aiming to do. Especially when you state that you're not trying to be "hardcore/top notch" because you all want to raid that chosen amount of hours/days. So you're busted. I'm not going to call you a troll, but you've lost ALL credibility, by making my case for me.
 
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wait.. My guild is raiding? 
 
The premise was that I'm having a tough time to find a niche for a casual non raiding guild as everyone I meet seems to go "raiding raiding raiding", however we run a non raiding guild.
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At GA's intended gear level I'd put it somewhere around TOR's HM fights.  GA is only "easy" now due to powercreep (and that is not a bad thing).
 
As has been noted before, raid gear allows you to blow up the open world dailies.  Not a whole lot of fun when you can't even get a tag in when somebody's just globaled a mob you need or solo burned down a multiperson boss before you can even get within range.  IMO that's not really raid-or-bust it's just poor mission design.
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