120370-attuned-and-unattuned-endgame-content-page-4

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Let's see.
 
By this definition people who do not know the specific strategies of the fights involved in the raid and who do not have the best gear the game offers are not "raid-ready". Which basically means the current attunement process is useless: it doesn't warrant you'll have the required gear (unless one of the steps is 'get the best pre-raid gear available', which I'm sure you'll correct me if it exists), it doesn't require you to have any consumables ready, it doesn't teach or show you any specific mechanics of any raid, and, worse of all, it allows you to skip most of it by being 'carried' by other people who do know or overpower the content. 
 
How is that an acceptable definition of 'raid-ready'?
 
 
 
I'm pretty sure half of Yasfan's points have been that the current Attunement is not a good practice for raids at all because it doesn't actually make sure you know squat about raiding or that you can learn mechanics. To follow your analogy, it would be like telling someone that, to play soccer, they need to be able to kick a ball. First: well, duh! Second, these 'practices' (attunement) also allows the prospect soccer players to basically get someone else to do the process for them (the famous carries) and then get into the team/raid anyway.
 
How is that a useful form of practice, if the person practicing and getting ready isn't actually forced to learn anything from it? At the end of the Attunement process, the real exam to know if someone is raid ready comes: the raid itself. Were you carried? That won't matter if you know how to spot mechanics and avoid them. Then the whole Attunement process is suprefluous at best. You didn't actually need it. 
 
That's, I bet, why so many raiding guilds will carry their new raiders through the process instead of leavng them alone until they do it themselves: because Attunement is padding and not actual practice. 
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Give us veteran world bosses that can't just be skipped.  Or make sure that the world bosses cannot be damaged by anyone higher level than the mob itself to force people to fight the bosses at level (it might be worth allowing people to sync their level to the boss at that stage).  That way, people actually do learn how to do the boss fights without being able to just five man it with 50s.
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The idea of veteran world bosses is fun.
 
In terms of attunement forcing players to sync down to a bosses level is something that I think should already exist.  Currently out damage is synced down but our healing and mitigation is not which in turn trivializes world bosses.  It could be as simple as rallying to a dungeons level:  We retain our skills but our health and all stats are reduced appropriately.  This would allow for veteran players to bring their experience and assist in attunement but would greatly increase the level of difficulty an individual player will face when fighting world bosses.
 
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Snip
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I guess I don't understand the point of "Hey do all this content before you raid" unless it is aimed at preparing you, even if it is very little and you are still not going to be "fully raid ready" after doing them.  Regardless of dev intentions, I don't see how it serves the game, nor raiding at large (once they removed the silver requirement).  If you aren't going to raid, this is all the content you have available to you, so you are either going to do it, grind dailies, pvp, or quit.  If you are going to raid, then you have a wealth of content and lots of hours filled with wiping ahead of you, which makes more upfront content unnecessary.  
 
If it is just to get you to do content, and not to prepare you for raiding, it doesn't serve raiding, as it just puts up another roadblock to raiding, when there is constant recruitment from virtually all raid guilds.  You are preventing anyone from trying out raiding, and getting a taste before they commit to a process.  You are also reducing alt and friends/family participation to fill in when needed.  With a limited or no bench, you are also adding more pressure to your existing roster to always show up, which burns out the average player. The raiding population needs a constant influx of players, and the attunement doesn't help with that.  
 
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I guess my point is that I don't see how this last change fits in with the ideal of making attunement both easier and take less time.  Which is what all of these changes will do to the process.
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Ah, I see. So your definition of raid-readiness is: ready to defeat the raid before you ever set foot in it. Knowing exactly what to expect before you ever get there. The only thing missing is muscle-memory.
 
Well then, I think I see our problem. By that definition, the first time the game's raiding instance is revealed, the people who successfully learned to beat it never should have been allowed in at all because they went in without already knowing everything they needed to know to beat it in advance. They weren't raid-ready. What a conundrum!
 
No wonder no game in the history of ever has used a definition like that. The more conventional definition of raid-readiness outside of the hallowed halls of the hardcore is: being ready to enter the raid and make a credible attempt to learn and beat at least the first miniboss, which will then serve as the basis for the progressive improvements required to continue through the raid. 
 
That's why to me, the repeated use of the phrase "transition from group content to raids" that was used in that video link is so meaningful and to you it isn't. The devs are using a sane definition of raid-readiness, in which you do not already know everything about what you're about to experience but DO know how to spot mechanics, learn them, and master them. But to you, that's not raid-readiness.
 
Your definition of raid-readiness is not a tenable gate for raid entry. If it were put in place then nobody would be able to ever enter a raid instance in the first place--unless the developers released a video walkthrough, I suppose, and then required watching it as a precondition for entry. How you decided that silvers for attunement would have been OK but bronze isn't is beyond me. Neither is a demonstration of raid-readiness by your definition.
 
So I think we've actually reached agreement! I agree with you 100%, attunement clearly isn't about raid-readiness as you have defined it. 
For the obvious reason that your definition of raid-readiness isn't actually a viable definition of the term.
Wow, this definition you're using really makes every post you've ever written about raid-readiness pretty difficult to incorporate into a useful discussion of raids, doesn't it. I find that really interesting.
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That's because the point here is not just to make attunement easier and quicker. 
 
The point here is to make attunement easier and quicker while retaining its actual purpose. That purpose--despite continuing insistence to the contrary elsewhere in this thread--is to demonstrate raid readiness.
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A couple things here:
 
We're making the assumption that raid attunement is aimed at someone who is fresh to 50.  Those people are not walking into raiding regardless.  At the very least, raid attunement is going to make them either take the time to get ready for raids (or, as yasfan commented, have someone with them who can independently judge their progress).  At the best, they'll have seen all the mechanics of vet adventures, dungeons, and world bosses (for what the latter are worth).  Removing attunement means fresh 50s can immediately raid, which doesn't necessarily raise the number of raiders who can actually help with the raiding situation.
 
I think there are points this becomes a conversation, but they're related to whether we really need elements of attunement or, if we do need them for something, if they can be made to actually serve their purpose.  I think there's less conversation about vet adventures and dungeons for that reason.  The reputation stage is probably the least useful, as the argument for keeping it seems to be that it's so easy that it should be done before you get there.  It probably wouldn't be a problem if PVP players raised rep as they leveled (or if PVP players were still leveling via PVP).  It only seems to be a completion check to make sure you've played "enough" Wildstar.  I'll also throw the attunement for Datascape in there under the same header.  Those don't seem to be as controversial as being pointless time sinks, they're just often argued to not be very hard time sinks.
 
It seems to be world bosses, in particular, that seem the most controversial.  This is based around a paradox in the above ideas.  World bosses are, ostensibly, meant to serve a purpose.  They're meant to be a first crack at a 20-man raid doing content.  However, there are several issues in the way that make them not serve that actual purpose.  The issues with the world boss stage are:
 
1.  Because the world bosses are scaled to the zone they're in, some can be done with just a few people at the level 50 stage where these are being done.  This means it actually isn't teaching the 50s attuning to work in a raid.
 
2.  Because world bosses are not always up, you need to put together a team to do them without knowing they are up.  This makes them something of a logistical issue for guilds trying to make attunement part of the process.
 
3.  Because world bosses award gear at their level, they are not worth doing for any other reason.  This is opposed to vet adventures and vet dungeons, which award gear you can actually use.  This means that world bosses serve no other purpose.
 
Earlier, it was brought up that this particular stage should be removed in the interest of brevity, which I don't like as an idea, but which I can completely understand for the above reasons.  It might be worth doing temporarily.  I brought up that they should include summonable veteran versions of the world bosses for level 50s that give you worthwhile gear as a longer term solution, because this makes the step actually fulfill its purpose (and gives people who don't want to really raid a bunch of "raid bosses" to do.
 
I think it's better to aim at specifics in this conversation.  I think people do see the value in attunement.  I think we all also agree that there are portions of it that can be made a lot more useful as a tool for bringing people up to raid speed, if not entirely eliminated.
 
Honestly, I think that it would actually make raiding a lot MORE easy to get into if we instead removed raid lockouts and simply loot-locked raiders, allowing them to only get loot from a boss once and then gives a sizeable chunk of money afterwards.  Then, people could raid with more than one team, so we wouldn't be dealing with raid exclusivity.  That's more of the root of the problem.
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As someone who left the game ~ two months after launch, I have to ask...
 
Why not just have an easier mode of the current raids? One of the major reasons the population of this game isn't as high as everyone would like is because it's friggin hard. Some of this stuff is stupid hard. I know this game prided itself on its hardcore mentality, but thats exactly what put it where it is today. Keep your hard normal raids, just have other options. WoW is still so successful because they figured out options for different playerbases is what keeps subscribers. You have adventures - dungeons - vet dungeons (which some are still hard as crap) - very difficult raids. There's no options. There's nowhere for the vast majority of players to play this game. It is currently existing on the very, very small percentage of hardcore raiders and the average raider that refuses to "go back to wow" and just makes very slow tedious progress.
 
You HAVE to make easier content for this game to survive. And that honestly shouldn't ruffle anyone's feathers. If you're a guild doing current raids with no issues, good for you, you've lost nothing. If you're one of these hardcore folks, well you still have your hardcore loot dontcha? What about the giant population of mmo players that either can't devote that time or just aren't that good? Should they not be sullying your game with their 'scrubbiness'? That mentality is nothing short of silly. The mass exodus from Wildstar spoke to this. It wasn't because movement wasn't fun, or combat wasn't great or lack of good story. It is harder than it needs to be for the average player. Plain and simple. Sure there are other reasons, like bugs and pvp and such, but I know a lot of people, oddly enough many of them currently raiding heroic highmaul, left because the game was too punishing and there were no options. Also, what do you do with alts? Say you're in a 3 night a week progression guild raiding GA. Say you have time on the off nights, there's no LFR for you, nothing to do in the downtime between raid nights. Another reason a lot of people left, nothing to do on non-raid nights. What are people doing in other games? Progression on their mains, LFR on their alts, or the first few turns in coil as other jobs, or whatever. Or maybe they aren't in a serious guild and all they do is LFR. Still something for them.
 
Point is, OP's general idea is solid. There needs to be options and levels of difficulty for different players. I think attunement in general is silly. Just have an easier mode that anyone can walk into and have that be attunement for normal in my mind but that's neither here nor there. 	
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I have already done the attunement, and I am working on it on my alt, but I am getting tired of the "you just don't like the game if you don't like all of the attunement steps" argument. I don't like wasting time on meaningless crap (I dislike leveling as well) to get to what I really want to do, which is end-game raiding, which is only found in MMORPGs. It is absurd, regardless of dev communication/intentions (especially considering that they have changed over time), that the attunement is just a checklist forcing you to do PVE content you may or may not enjoy, before being able to raid. 
 
The only thing that is interesting and somewhat enjoyable to me, and also relevant to raid prep, is the dungeon requirement (and to a lesser extent the adventures), which should have been kept silver, especially with the time and other changes made. People would be better prepared with quests/encounters that forces you to learn to "Stop moving with Purge!", "Spread the F out!", "Stop DPS!" or "Learn to interrupt!". I honestly can't see how any other part of the attunement prepares you for raiding, nor should you be prevented from raiding just so that you can do everything Carbine created, while they failed to provide intrinsic value or reward for that content.
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The whole point should be threefold:
 
1.  Make that stage of attunement worthwhile for teaching people to operate in large groups
 
2.  To make doing world bosses worthwhile in terms of gear progression so it isn't just "empty calories"
 
3.  To make doing world bosses worthwhile and fun even for people who aren't attuning.
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As someone who left the game ~ two months after launch, I have to ask...
 
Why not just have an easier mode of the current raids? One of the major reasons the population of this game isn't as high as everyone would like is because it's friggin hard. Some of this stuff is stupid hard. I know this game prided itself on its hardcore mentality, but thats exactly what put it where it is today. Keep your hard normal raids, just have other options. WoW is still so successful because they figured out options for different playerbases is what keeps subscribers. You have adventures - dungeons - vet dungeons (which some are still hard as crap) - very difficult raids. There's no options. There's nowhere for the vast majority of players to play this game. It is currently existing on the very, very small percentage of hardcore raiders and the average raider that refuses to "go back to wow" and just makes very slow tedious progress.
 
You HAVE to make easier content for this game to survive. And that honestly shouldn't ruffle anyone's feathers. If you're a guild doing current raids with no issues, good for you, you've lost nothing. If you're one of these hardcore folks, well you still have your hardcore loot dontcha? What about the giant population of mmo players that either can't devote that time or just aren't that good? Should they not be sullying your game with their 'scrubbiness'? That mentality is nothing short of silly. The mass exodus from Wildstar spoke to this. It wasn't because movement wasn't fun, or combat wasn't great or lack of good story. It is harder than it needs to be for the average player. Plain and simple. Sure there are other reasons, like bugs and pvp and such, but I know a lot of people, oddly enough many of them currently raiding heroic highmaul, left because the game was too punishing and there were no options. Also, what do you do with alts? Say you're in a 3 night a week progression guild raiding GA. Say you have time on the off nights, there's no LFR for you, nothing to do in the downtime between raid nights. Another reason a lot of people left, nothing to do on non-raid nights. What are people doing in other games? Progression on their mains, LFR on their alts, or the first few turns in coil as other jobs, or whatever. Or maybe they aren't in a serious guild and all they do is LFR. Still something for them.
 
Point is, OP's general idea is solid. There needs to be options and levels of difficulty for different players. I think attunement in general is silly. Just have an easier mode that anyone can walk into and have that be attunement for normal in my mind but that's neither here nor there. 
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As someone who left the game ~ two months after launch, I have to ask...
 
Why not just have an easier mode of the current raids? One of the major reasons the population of this game isn't as high as everyone would like is because it's friggin hard. 
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I'm pretty sure half of Yasfan's points have been that the current Attunement is not a good practice for raids at all because it doesn't actually make sure you know squat about raiding or that you can learn mechanics.
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The raids were advertised as hardcore.
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Yup, and we're talking about raids are we not?
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It's a clarification worth making, because so many people think the whole game is supposed to be hardcore, and it isn't.
 
TT has said that they are considering easier raids (not easier versions of the raids)- if there's a market, then I can certainly see them doing that. Only issue is if it delays the creation of more challenging raids. Because I'd think Avatus is going down soon and I don't know how long DS folks are going to be satisfied without a new raid to work on.
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How long do you think they have before enough guilds have enough of DS on farm that they'll absolutely need another upper-end raid?
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It's a clarification worth making, because so many people think the whole game is supposed to be hardcore, and it isn't.
 
TT has said that they are considering easier raids (not easier versions of the raids)- if there's a market, then I can certainly see them doing that. Only issue is if it delays the creation of more challenging raids. Because I'd think Avatus is going down soon and I don't know how long DS folks are going to be satisfied without a new raid to work on.
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Well, it seems like DS40 is going into the MMO history books the same way Naxx40 did, in that very few people completed it, and will be repurposed again later - which will probably be its real spot in progression.
 
So a new challenging raid after that is probably a ways off... but I agree that I hope time isn't taken away from that for easier raids.
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Carbine may get more mileage out of building more 5 man dungeons and adventures for future play that sort of build on the other dungeons and adventures.  A new tier of 5 man content, essentially.  They already seem to know that the people complaining most about this are probably best served with smaller-ball game like vet shiphands and new dungeons.
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Maybe some kind of imbuements using world bosses would be nice as well on top of developing harder versions, I wouldn't mind if more things similar to legendary gauntlets made an appearance personally via world bosses that are tuned up.
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This seems pretty reasonable and, from my perspective where even 20 people seems like maybe a bit too much at once for me (though it doesn't keep me from wanting to try it xD), definitely a-okay. I just hope that vet shiphands don't get completely slotted in the easier-than-vet-dungeons-and-adventures role. I want some ultra challenging 1-2 man content on top of the challenging dungeons and raids we have.
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Odds are they'll focus more on 5 mans.  The problem with "easier raids" is that a lot of the people complaining about not being able to raid would probably hate even easy raids.  One of the ways the easier tiers of WoW raiding works is by essentially turning a raid into a party by severely detuning the difficulty.  LFR is, essentially, not raiding, it's literally just people being slotted in to do what they'd normally do in parties.
 
Carbine may get more mileage out of building more 5 man dungeons and adventures for future play that sort of build on the other dungeons and adventures.  A new tier of 5 man content, essentially.  They already seem to know that the people complaining most about this are probably best served with smaller-ball game like vet shiphands and new dungeons.
 
Again, I would like to bring up that removing raid lockouts on players and just making sure they're rewarded with money if they kill the same boss twice in a week would be a VASTLY more effective way to loosen up the raider shortage.  As long as you need a certain number of exclusive people to raid, even in flex, you'll have that problem because you need to count on those specific people to be there.
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This seems pretty reasonable and, from my perspective where even 20 people seems like maybe a bit too much at once for me (though it doesn't keep me from wanting to try it xD), definitely a-okay. I just hope that vet shiphands don't get completely slotted in the easier-than-vet-dungeons-and-adventures role. I want some ultra challenging 1-2 man content on top of the challenging dungeons and raids we have.
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That's a neat idea.
 
IMO, I think the upcoming boss-in-a-box Aggregor 20 would be an appropriate replacement for the WB step.  Depending on how it's tuned of course.
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And there's always the question of whether 10 tuned up vet world bosses would be what you'd need for attunement.  Do you need more than one?  Three?  Five?  Ten even now seems a bit much, and that's considering they're a cakewalk at 50.  If we're talking world bosses having veteran components to actually help do a sort of test check for raiding, and they're not a glorified pokemon quest, should there be a limit?
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I was thinking the single A20 instance which is supposedly a raid tuned boss would replace the entirety of doing 10 WB kills.
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Story Time! :lol:
 
So there was this gamer ( :ph34r:) who recently got their first character to level 50, and (to their knowledge) has completed the Vanilla Wildstar Pre-attunement Content. Now this gamer ( :ph34r:), has no interest in raids or ranks or gold stars in dungeon runs, simply wants to continue the story as they have been doing so for the entirety of the game so far. This gamer ( :ph34r:) receives the World Story Letter about the Genesis Key Attunement Thingy (raid content stuff, if the forums are to go by) and puts that to the side because, as stated above has no interest in raid content. Has gotten the other letters about Badlands (rep grind area, ok with that) and a vague letter about something happening in the level 50 area in Malgrave.
 
So rep grind some in Badlands. 
Go to Malgrave.
Look around confused for quests.
Notice an event.
Joins in on event.
Runs around lost trying to complete event.
Completes event (woot! but still confused on what exactly was happening, and where the hell are those quests that have been in every other part of the game?).
Goes to the forums.
Notices three drops of content supposedly continuing the story of Dru 'n' Friends.
Sweet!
How do I... er... this gamer I know ( :ph34r:), get there?
Scratches head.
Looks at World Story Letter about the Genesis Key Attunement Thingy.
Crap.
 
With the information the player is supplied with in game at this point, they are now under the impression that they must attend Pre Raid Raiding Classes and then Raid, in order to get to enjoy the next part of the story of the game. This may be true or untrue, but no information in game is clearly given on this.
 
So at this point how many people are trying to attune because they are under the impression (right or wrong ) that this is what they must do in order to continue the game? How many people are under the impression that they must Raid in order to experience the world story of the game, a vastly different experience then what they where doing for the first 50 levels? How many of these people are demanding more simple Pre Raid content so they can do something they didn't want to do in the first place? And How many people just said *cupcake* this and just unsubbed?	
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Story Time! :lol:
 
So there was this gamer ( :ph34r:) who recently got their first character to level 50, and (to their knowledge) has completed the Vanilla Wildstar Pre-attunement Content. Now this gamer ( :ph34r:), has no interest in raids or ranks or gold stars in dungeon runs, simply wants to continue the story as they have been doing so for the entirety of the game so far. This gamer ( :ph34r:) receives the World Story Letter about the Genesis Key Attunement Thingy (raid content stuff, if the forums are to go by) and puts that to the side because, as stated above has no interest in raid content. Has gotten the other letters about Badlands (rep grind area, ok with that) and a vague letter about something happening in the level 50 area in Malgrave.
 
So rep grind some in Badlands. 
Go to Malgrave.
Look around confused for quests.
Notice an event.
Joins in on event.
Runs around lost trying to complete event.
Completes event (woot! but still confused on what exactly was happening, and where the hell are those quests that have been in every other part of the game?).
Goes to the forums.
Notices three drops of content supposedly continuing the story of Dru 'n' Friends.
Sweet!
How do I... er... this gamer I know ( :ph34r:), get there?
Scratches head.
Looks at World Story Letter about the Genesis Key Attunement Thingy.
Crap.
 
With the information the player is supplied with in game at this point, they are now under the impression that they must attend Pre Raid Raiding Classes and then Raid, in order to get to enjoy the next part of the story of the game. This may be true or untrue, but no information in game is clearly given on this.
 
So at this point how many people are trying to attune because they are under the impression (right or wrong ) that this is what they must do in order to continue the game? How many people are under the impression that they must Raid in order to experience the world story of the game, a vastly different experience then what they where doing for the first 50 levels? How many of these people are demanding more simple Pre Raid content so they can do something they didn't want to do in the first place? And How many people just said *cupcake* this and just unsubbed?
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The Genesis Key should not be labeled as the World Story, It just confuses people. World Story is something completely different for the first 50 levels. Call it attunement story or something and breadcrumbs should be given clearly leading people to this kind of content (much earlier in game I might add).
 
There does need to be a breadcrumb quest given to you for the Blighthaven stuff as soon as you complete Vanilla Wildstar, otherwise new players, or flu induced older players, are going to be easily confused on what they need to be doing next. You shouldn't have to browse the forums, hoping you don't stumble upon a spoiler, to find out where you storyline continues.
 
 
 
 Optional raid attunement should be also happening during the first 50. It would help to make the game feel smoother, and help us understand our characters and encourage us to play them in different ways earlier instead of just throwing us in the deep end at 50.  
			
				
	Edited January 9, 2015 by BrotherNumsie	
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Because this isn't true.
 
The game was advertised as hardcore, so it shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone that the raids were tough.
 
But the real fact is, many players didn't even experience the raiding... so why make the raids easier?  *Maybe* make them easier to get to, but the raid content itself should absolutely not be easier - that wouldn't solve anything, and take away one of the unique differentiators of WildStar.
 
There should be one difficulty for raids - freaking hard. Don't let what WoW did to raiding cloud the view of how they should be.
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The Genesis Key should not be labeled as the World Story, It just confuses people. World Story is something completely different for the first 50 levels. Call it attunement story or something and breadcrumbs should be given clearly leading people to this kind of content (much earlier in game I might add).
 
There does need to be a breadcrumb quest given to you for the Blighthaven stuff as soon as you complete Vanilla Wildstar, otherwise new players, or flu induced older players, are going to be easily confused on what they need to be doing next. You shouldn't have to browse the forums, hoping you don't stumble upon a spoiler, to find out where you storyline continues.
 
 
 
 Optional raid attunement should be also happening during the first 50. It would help to make the game feel smoother, and help us understand our characters and encourage us to play them in different ways earlier instead of just throwing us in the deep end at 50.  
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Yes, what you touched on is correct, that there isn't a lot of things to do for players at 50 outside of raiding, which is a problem. It would be nice to have more things to do in the game.
 
By your same logic though, of what's the point in it if it doesn't teach you how to raid, what's the point of the leveling process? People seem to have no problem with going from 1-50 before attunement, but really, there isn't a point to going from 1-50 if all you want to do is raid, it's blocking you from doing attunement and getting in raid. The only class I've played from 1-50 where the rotation id basically always the same even after hitting 50, is stalkers. Every other class has a different rotation and set of skills when you hit 50, so literally none of the leveling process is relevant for teaching you to be in raid. Why aren't you made about that too?
 
I'm just curious though what information or past experience from other games people are drawing from that suggests a game will magically have a stronger raiding population if attunement were to be removed. I'm considering the the impact going into a GA raid in quest gear would have on a player, because if you struggle with veteran content, then getting through raid bosses will be impossible, and it would seem that would drive the same people away from the game.
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So you're telling me the reason I left and why a lot of my friends left isn't true? 
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Why not? It'll only get people into the content they want to do at end game faster (if they want to raid), and if the vet level dungeon and adventures are to level as they are doing it, why should it matter?
 
And there should be mini-raids along as you level up. They don't have to be a part of the attunement process, just there so people get used to working together in a raid environment and as optional leveling content. Best way to teach someone about raids is to raid. Helps newcomers if it's a stress free, you don't need this but you can try it out first sort of content. Hook em' when they're young.	
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I loved STL. I quit because at the time, every queue for attunement was gold or nothing and the content was too difficult and buggy to get gold reliably. I got fed up and realized raids are going to be a lot harder than this, all the while everyone is yelling 'omg so hardcore' everytime I look on social media. And if I didn't want to do the 3 or 4 night a week progression like I used to, what could I do? There's no casual option. I can only mess around on my housing plot so much until my sub isn't worth it. 
 
I did use a trial key to get back in and see whats going on now. I queued up for a vet dungeon to see what it was like and it was relatively enjoyable until I got 1 shot by a single telegraph and I got a "gg gold dumbass" in chat. It just feels far too punishing for the average mmo player. Difficult content is enjoyable, brutally punishing content just isn't fun. 
 
An addendum: I was the vanilla wow raider. I raided 4 nights a week on medivh. I was 3rd on my server with sulfuras. I played 12 hours straight working with the rest of the server to get the AQ gates open and I was there when Kalahad rang the gong. I raided from vanilla - wotlk, quit for college in cata and came back in mop. And mop was great, because when I had the time to raid with my guild I had a spot in flex. When I had time to play and it wasn't a raid night or they were doing hardcore progression, I could LFR and still have some fun. I'm 30 and a parent now. There are a lot of me type players out there. The vanilla crowd has grown up, a lot of them still want to raid but can't devote the schedule we used to. 	
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This "gold or nothing " attitude mystifies me. I have YET to experience it (and I pug a lot) in a dungeon.
 
Most people just seem to want a clean, fun run- the only gold runs I hear about are ones put together in LFG chat, and I don't participate in those.
 
I do agree that long queues are problematic for the game.	
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So you're telling me the reason I left and why a lot of my friends left isn't true? Don't know how to tell you this any clearer, but yes, a lot of people left because the baseline difficulty was too high. Now, I understand that some people love that, but plain and simple number crunching will tell you the majority of the mmo population doesn't. And the current numbers show that yes? I strongly believe if the population agreed with the base difficulty of content there would be far more numbers. Sure, tons of people haven't experienced raiding because they quit beforehand. I know people that quit at lvl 20 the first time they did STL because it was confusing, frustrating and hard. Granted they are taking steps to solve the initial learning phase but it's still Carbine's fault that mechanics weren't clearer and are as punishing as they are. And people spoke with their money. 
 
By saying There should be one difficulty for raids - freaking hard, you are accepting that the end game population of Wildstar will be a very small community. It's so incredibly narrow minded to think WoW raiding is the worst thing in the world. You've got your hardcore there. Mythic is certainly harder than any Wildstar raid, but you've also got something for everybody else. Lets say WoW only had what Wildstar has and its only level of raiding is heroic highmaul atm. It would bleed subs. Absolutely bleed them. What makes the strongest and most active end-game community? Options. Wildstar has none. What feeds hardcore raider numbers? Casual raiders that become hardcore. What would be so terribly wrong with have an easier mode of GA/DS (keeping what is already there, you lose nothing, they don't get gear as good as yours, you're still #hardcore), having another couple hundred thousand people doing that content and having all those people adding to the population pool. 
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As a note, I believe it's already been confirmed that they're changing the medal system in the next drop. Hopefully this will help remove some of the more toxic "Thx 4 losin gold nub" attitude that is poisoning the pug dungeon scene. As it is now, I hardly even think of the idea of pugging a vet dungeon, imo its too stressful to do when I don't have people on TS who are 1) Forgiving when someone derps, 2) Can communicate when something goes wrong.
 
 
I agree with Kjersgaard here though. I love vet dungeons (with my guild) and I love the raiding in this game. However, it does feel like the transition to raiding from leveling is very shoddy. I've already brought up the idea of "trainer" raids, or varying difficulty levels, and I still stand by that. I enjoy the more punishing raids, but not everyone does. A more gradual slope into the harder raid content that we already have (such as easymode raid/hardmode raid/OMGWTFBBQ raid) would work a lot better imo.
 
As an example, SWTOR's raids aren't the best or hardest, but the progression to get to them was quite well done when I was playing. One of the daily zones gave you most of your basic purple gear, and you could do storymode raids with it. The storymode raids gave you gear for the hardmode raids, the hardmode raids gave you gear for the nightmare raids. On top of that, there were like 4 level 55 raids of varying difficulty, so that you could run different ones depending on your skill level, or run several raids a week. And each raid had a story behind it, some of which the plot storylines fed into. Doing the raid quest in any difficulty usually got you a couple really nice items (mounts/gear/etc) and, imo, seemed like a really good incentive for storyquesters curious about raiding to get their feet wet without getting stonewalled.	
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I loved STL. I quit because at the time, every queue for attunement was gold or nothing and the content was too difficult and buggy to get gold reliably. I got fed up and realized raids are going to be a lot harder than this, all the while everyone is yelling 'omg so hardcore' everytime I look on social media. And if I didn't want to do the 3 or 4 night a week progression like I used to, what could I do? There's no casual option. I can only mess around on my housing plot so much until my sub isn't worth it. 
 
I did use a trial key to get back in and see whats going on now. I queued up for a vet dungeon to see what it was like and it was relatively enjoyable until I got 1 shot by a single telegraph and I got a "gg gold dumbass" in chat. It just feels far too punishing for the average mmo player. Difficult content is enjoyable, brutally punishing content just isn't fun. 
 
An addendum: I was the vanilla wow raider. I raided 4 nights a week on medivh. I was 3rd on my server with sulfuras. I played 12 hours straight working with the rest of the server to get the AQ gates open and I was there when Kalahad rang the gong. I raided from vanilla - wotlk, quit for college in cata and came back in mop. And mop was great, because when I had the time to raid with my guild I had a spot in flex. When I had time to play and it wasn't a raid night or they were doing hardcore progression, I could LFR and still have some fun. I'm 30 and a parent now. There are a lot of me type players out there. The vanilla crowd has grown up, a lot of still want to raid, but a lot can't devote the schedule we used to. 
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Kjersgaard, on 09 Jan 2015 - 12:29 PM, said:
I loved STL. I quit because at the time, every queue for attunement was gold or nothing and the content was too difficult and buggy to get gold reliably. I got fed up and realized raids are going to be a lot harder than this, all the while everyone is yelling 'omg so hardcore' everytime I look on social media. And if I didn't want to do the 3 or 4 night a week progression like I used to, what could I do? There's no casual option. I can only mess around on my housing plot so much until my sub isn't worth it. 
 
I did use a trial key to get back in and see whats going on now. I queued up for a vet dungeon to see what it was like and it was relatively enjoyable until I got 1 shot by a single telegraph and I got a "gg gold dumbass" in chat. It just feels far too punishing for the average mmo player. Difficult content is enjoyable, brutally punishing content just isn't fun. 
 
An addendum: I was the vanilla wow raider. I raided 4 nights a week on medivh. I was 3rd on my server with sulfuras. I played 12 hours straight working with the rest of the server to get the AQ gates open and I was there when Kalahad rang the gong. I raided from vanilla - wotlk, quit for college in cata and came back in mop. And mop was great, because when I had the time to raid with my guild I had a spot in flex. When I had time to play and it wasn't a raid night or they were doing hardcore progression, I could LFR and still have some fun. I'm 30 and a parent now. There are a lot of me type players out there. The vanilla crowd has grown up, a lot of them still want to raid but can't devote the schedule we used to.
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This seems pretty reasonable and, from my perspective where even 20 people seems like maybe a bit too much at once for me (though it doesn't keep me from wanting to try it xD), definitely a-okay. I just hope that vet shiphands don't get completely slotted in the easier-than-vet-dungeons-and-adventures role. I want some ultra challenging 1-2 man content on top of the challenging dungeons and raids we have.
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Both developer commentary on these and the Itemization for them on the PTR suggests that is exactly the role they are intended to play. If you're level 50 and haven't slotted a gadget yet, Vet Shiphands are for you. Both they and Veteran Adventures generate gear that can be purchased with elder gems and unlocked in Veteran Shiphands and Veteran Adventures.
 
Veteran Dungeons and Raids will have a completely different currency called Glory.
 
So the progression very clearly is intended to be Crafting < Veteran Shiphands ~< Veteran Adventures << Veteran Dungeons < Raids. 
 
Nice to know the Devs Are Listening.TM
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Please consult a dictionary. The common definition for readiness being used is "the state of being fully prepared for something." In this case the something is raiding.
 
The other common use of the world is "willingness to do something." which doesn't apply to the context we are using it in, as regardless of how willing you are to do something, you may not be raid ready, so that's why we're using the first definition provided. (See? reading comprehension).
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Well, they call it a transition from grouped content to raids in the link quoted below:
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I'm glad you found the link where they call it a level 50 quest chain to transition from solo questing to group play. Now if you could please provide a link where the Dev's have said that the purpose of attunement is to prepare you for raids?
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Both developer commentary on these and the Itemization for them on the PTR suggests that is exactly the role they are intended to play. If you're level 50 and haven't slotted a gadget yet, Vet Shiphands are for you. Both they and Veteran Adventures generate gear that can be purchased with elder gems and unlocked in Veteran Shiphands and Veteran Adventures.
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Reading comprehension is indeed the issue here, but not in the way you seem to think. You can look up "man" and "of" and "war" in the dictionary, but if you use them to guess what "man-of-war" means, you will be entirely wrong. That's why "comprehension" is more complicated than owning a dictionary. If it wasn't, any computer with a dictionary could read. "Raid readiness" does not mean "ready to successfully complete a raid". If it did, people who entered GA and only got through X-89 on their very first attempt but were stopped by Kuralak would not be raid-ready.
 
Gee, that's funny. And here I thought a part of the game that I enjoy is going in without knowing everything I'm going to see in advance and figuring it out. Pretty sure many of my friends like that part too. For the most part, we view going to a game guide before ever entering the game as something that profoundly cheapens the experience of playing the game. We may not be world firsts, but we still do basically the same thing. Only slower.
 
The fact that you don't means we wouldn't enjoy raiding together very much, I suppose. Which pretty much makes what you expect me to do in a raid group completely irrelevant.
 
Since just about every trash mob in GA drops gear that's as good or better than the stuff in Veteran Dungeons, the gear that you're intended to have to succeed in clearing GA isn't actually relevant to the content you're intended to do to enter GA. I'm pretty sure J-Tal knows this. I'm pretty sure you know it too. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that if you had any experience at all in the raids, you would see this as evident.
 
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