[quote]Countless raid groups ive been in, the weakest player is usually the guy that WANTS to kill adds because they cant handle a more responsible role. Throne room Calus, Defnder on Argos, initial defender on SOS.[/quote] And what's wrong with that? Some of my best friends are that guy. Hell, I was that guy and I think most of us were the first few times we raided in D1. Don't get me wrong, I like the direction Bungie took with KF and WotM with a progressively heavier emphasis on full team mechanics and bosses that required mostly complete teams in order to output enough damage, but they left plenty of room in Normal difficulty to bring along new friends and give them easier roles at least until Aksis Phase 2. They took it overboard in D2 especially with the revive tokens and wipe-on-death timer. I'd really like to see them dial back the mechanics a bit and allow more revives in Normal mode again to allow a place for teams to bring along new players who can learn in a more forgiving environment. I'm all for them dialing up the difficulty and requiring full team mechanics and flawless execution for Prestige and Challenges respectively with all the loot that goes along with those modes, but Normal mode needs room for a way to bring someone new without punishing the whole team while they learn the basics.

[quote]With the new raids, now everyone must participate and take a key role. No longer do you have that 1 guy managing the big role with 5 guys supporting. What this does is make you a better player. Everyone learns each role that is required to finish an encounter. It will also give you confidence to take a more active role instead of the "LFg spot, just kill adds" guy. Youll never learn anything if all you do is kill ads. [/quote] I think that "key role" is the issue here. And I TOTALLY disagree that it "makes you a better player" overall in the raids. Oh heck no. Do you know how many people you come across that only know ONE single job in the Raid because of these mechanics??? It happens ALL the time, where you ask someone to fill something and they're like "uhm...sorry, I've only ever done x thing..." and then you attempt to quickly field train them, and end up getting wiped over and over and over again until they finally catch on. That's NOT my idea of fun, and no, that definitely does NOT foster growth and knowledge. They learn 1 role just enough to do it and then continue to do that 1 role for months. At some point, they are forced into a second role, and learn to do just those two roles for months. There are 6 KEY roles to fill in every Raid! If we go by this current system, it's literally a year before the average player has any clue about how to complete the Raid in all the Key Roles. That's crap. And that's bad mechanics. There should be 4 Key Roles, with 2 "less" key roles, i.e. slaying/floating roles that are not heavily dependent on mechanics. This way, you can eventually spread new players into one of the 4 Key Roles and have them actually learn them, without there needing to be dozens of Team Wipes while they learn. Team Wipes causes frustration, they cause anxiety for the player learning, and they cause teams to disband and never clear. I've seen this far too many times. I've never seen such a huge amount of "arguing" in Raids in any game as I've seen in D2. I think that's a problem, and it definitely takes away from the fun of the game. Raids, currently, are a chore. They are not fun, they are a chore. And all it takes is ONE single person on your Raid team, to make it a chore. That's not fun. You don't feel powerful or heroic in this case. Raids = mission failed by the devs, and I hope they can learn from their mistakes with the new raids. Only time will tell.

"There should be 4 Key Roles, with 2 "less" key roles, i.e. slaying/floating roles that are not heavily dependent on mechanics" What you say here basically further supports my argument. That is how the current raid system is set up. Chances are, youll just throw the inexperienced player into the "lesser" key roles because you fear hell cause you a wipe. Hell never learn anything about the other raid and continue the spiral of players who can only do 1 job: ad clearing. As for teams giving up, this sense of struggle is human error. The struggle is what makes a raid. Fun comes from the accomplishment of defeating the boss. Its clear that even you dont have the grasp to sherpa a raid correctly if everyone is wiping. The arguing comes from less experienced players who refuse adapt and learn different strategies. And if your raid groups are failing because 1 person, adapt. Give that person your so called "lesser" role to prevent him from dying.

[quote]Your concept of "fun" is basically a stroll in the park hard carry. VOG and Crota are only fun when you have a person willing to run the relics. I remember the countless posts of "Need relic holder, Need Sword bearer". It was a struggle to finish those raids in the first month or so because people lacked the confidence and skill to bear such weight. Your raids practically failed or succeeded by the decision of your relic man.[/quote] The D1Y1 raids could be run with 4 experienced raiders and with 2 noobs tagging along. (I've been a part of a 3-man hard mode VoG and Crota.) Running relics and swords are important, but RNG was in favor of completion even if a couple of the team members wouldn't touch them. I'm living proof of that, in that I didn't know how to run them, but we still got dozens of hard mode completions. Eventually, I used save points to go in solo, to learn the relic and sword - and the jump puzzle and the Gorgon maze. I eventually led teams through. Being carried through a few times was a tremendous advantage to my learning the harder parts - even getting really good at it. With the current raid.... If you didn't get in early with a dedicated raid team, you're screwed. Five players looking to have a relaxing time, aren't interested in wipe after wipe after wipe after wipe and on and on and on...…because a noob doesn't know the dance steps. The 6-player mechanics absolutely positively ruined it.

Atleast you took the initiative to go back to the old raid and learn the relics. However, I cant say the same for other players. Chances are, theyll never go back to the raid because its "mechanic heavy." This is usually an unwillingness from new players to learn roles outside of killing ads. Most of them just want to go in, kill ads and let the team carry them for an easy clear. The 6 player mechanics is more of a forced deterrent away from the traditional "carry me-raiders." I can understand the hate for it, but its necessary for developing better and more active raiders.

[quote]but its necessary for developing better and more active raiders.[/quote] If that was their intention, that's an epic fail. Truly, truly epic... We had an active clan in D1 that raided every week - dozens of combined completions. We took new people through each and every week. We loved Destiny.... That all evaporated with D2. The way it is now.... a year out, and many in our original clan have not completed a single D2 raid. What's that mean? Why did all that go away? I believe the 6-player mechanics absolutely positively ruined it. How can Bungie fix it? 1- Raids should be designed to be completed by a team of 4 or 5 good/experienced players. Bungie should play-test all of their new raids before releasing them using just 5 players running the same gear and light level as game players. 2- Building light level should mean something. Average and below players might not be able to complete a raid during its first couple months, but with a higher light level, it should become at least possible for them. That was VoG/Crota. Scaling difficulty means a noob will never catch up. Simply create a "Prestige/Heroic/HM/ChallengeMode/whatever" level to keep the ninjas entertained. I LOL now when I think about Bungie in D1Y1 expressing anguish over the fact that some players couldn't get into an LFG Crota raid because they didn't have a Gjallarhorn. I have a hard time finding the words to describe how much harder it is now for a first-timer to get into/through a D2 raid. It's tearfully laughable.

Eh. imho Only crota really required a hard carry. VoG was rather reasonable as far as relic usage goes. Wrath of the machine iirc took a step away from the "hero" moment that you're describing. As more than one person would have to slam the final boss.

I didnt play Destiny after House of Wolves due to a raid drought. But from the description youre saying about Wrath, its clear they took inspirations from the encounter. Sort of encouraging/forcing more players to take active roles.

You missed out. Kings fall and wrath of the machine were both very good experiences. Kings fall was basically execution to a T. Very mechanic heavy. Wrath of the machine was some where between vog and crota. Like vog in the sense that it was mechanically intense but crota in terms of the hectic pacing of combat. I like the idea of calus's raid. of the 3 layers the first one seems the best imho. But I haven't done a single raid in D2.

Mechanic heavy yes but they went overly complicated and didn't require every player to be a superstar... I was usually the runner in Oryx and that was really the hardest mechanic... War priest was a little just because of having to rotate plates... Golgoroth was pretty easy... Pop a snot bubble stand in its goo shoot crib spot.. Sisters was the hardest encounter to me till everyone got spindle and touch then It was a breeze