Enforced Raid Rotations Come to an End

Marthisdil, Ragefire is not 3 month expansion unlocks. The vote was only for classic and it was stated that the other unlocks were unaffected. Which, depending on who you listen to, means we have 6 or 9 months of Kunark. They did say another vote would come up in Kunark to see if we wanted to continue doing early unlocks, but I don't see that winning as people want to be in Velious - PoP as long as possible.

No. Instanced raids lowers the ability of large zerg guilds to stay on top. And once a guild isn't on top, people quit, and leave.

The reason most people quit after pop is because that is when they quit playing on live. And most people don't want to learn a 16 year old game.

From my experience, a lot of raiders that come back to TLP's do so to see the raid content they missed. TL/Citizen/EOE had no problem staying on top after instancing, but eventually membership dropped enough that none of them could raid. And it's the casuals that leave after POP, not the hardcore raiders. It got to the point where basically the only people on the server were the high end raiders.

GoD is amazing for raiding and even has some open-world contested bosses/zones left, but the day it hits the server pop is like halved.

There's an incredibly massive reason people quit, and it has nothing to do with their player ability:

Color.

It's something we all pick up on, and that everyone has strong subconscious feelings over even if we never become fully conscious of it. So, even for the most concrete number minded people out there, the world of color rarely becomes more substantial than just a feeling.

Consider GoD. what kind of color palate dominates? It's meant to give uncomfortable chaotic feelings, to be unnerving.

Now, something also seemed to happen with the art team at this point. Lots of stuff was still evolving with the luclin graphics in terms of how they applied not only the style of their textures, but the type of architecture it was being applied too. Everything started getting bigger and grander.

So, consider freeport for a second. This zone gets a lot of complains from people, but most can't put their finger on why. Next time you guys go there take a real close look at the balance of contrast and saturation. Back away and look at the same part as a whole and the highlight-midlevel-darkness balance starts to blend together.

The city would be great as flat art especially as some kind of vignette where the edges bleed in to shadowy darkness (think about almost every Game of Throne image), but as a city a persons eye mostly wants to unfocus as they wander through it.

But it's apparently much more fun to think it has something to do with ability or instancing.

Feels like philosophy class.

Not surprising. Few can understand color as more than an abstract concept.

I'll make some pictures later so you can better comprehend it. <3

I don't disagree. But I think after 2-3 years people just burn out of eq.

I also think most of the people that are playing now aren't that good. The amount of mask clicks that people miss on something like OMM is outrageous.

Raiding becomes instanced, your flaws are more easily discovered due to a smaller amount of players... People just quit.

I mean almost every raid before pop you can literally faceroll across the keyboard and succeed.

I love the GoD themes.

I disagree with you but approve of you taking the time to psychologically assess the situation.

http://www.colour-affects.co.uk/psychological-properties-of-colours

It's a fun read!

Not suggesting it's wrong to enjoy it, not at all. Just that the graphics themselves are going to turn off a lot of people, and they wouldn't even really have a sense of why.

Because it's not just progression raiders that start to poof at this point, it's something else.

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And Almar,

Psychological color theory has nothing to do with how people react to a combination of color, light, and motion. It's the issue of readability to the human eye as applied to movies and other motion entertainment like video games. To give an example from movies, think of 3D films:

A certain portion of the populace is always going to respond poorly, but there are things that can be done to mitigate this (knowing how to frame, when, and how often + much more technical stuff that's not worth detailing). Now newer eq graphics, they aren't set up in a way that can physically nauseate players, but it does tend to physically unfocus the eye.

Played landmark at all? You'd know what I mean if you tried to light certain textures without washing out other details from distances of more than a couple meters.

So it's far more formulaic than psychological color theory, but aspects do dovetail I guess.

Or to put it simply, for some the highlights are too desaturated, shadows too black and mid-level just kinda floats in an above between the two in an uncohesive blur.

kinda like holding two fingers infront of your eye to make a floating finger sausage. That's neither psychology or philosophy.

I see the problem. That was from the uk. We're America here

http://sites.sinauer.com/wolfe4e/essay05.01.html

Visual opponant process and afterimage burn, it's just the neurological reactions to visual technology. No matter what is made, someones going to have a reaction. All visual entertainment is made by hacking those reactions. Every effect, mood, or even creating a quality of motion in a still image.

I tried to keep it as un-science-y as possible cause explaining color channels is a pain. Oh well, people will think what they want.

edit: also, not in the states <3

Citizen is still raiding and progressing, thanks. Our population has never dropped to the point where we couldn't raid.

I did play landmark but never suffered from what you're speaking about.

Are you talking about CVS or a version of it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_vision_syndrome

You'd be on to something if you hadn't completely ignored the tuning history of GoD.

It is still the single hardest expansion in EQ. Only five guilds have ever beaten it in era, even tuned as it currently is.

Underfoot may seem harder but there were a whole lot less players around, both on live and on Fippy/Vulak, plus a much longer keying process. Granted the broken LC and Creation raids didn't help any... But all other things being equal, with a skilled 54 man raid team, my money is still on Gates for the overall most difficult content.

I'll grant the color scheme didn't help -- I hate the color in GoD, almost any other expansion is preferable. But I don't think color alone is the reason people quit in GoD, or even the biggest influence. LDoN is pretty similar to GoD color-wise and it is a popular expansion with a lot of people.

I don't agree with your cause and effect. Instancing is in plenty of games I still play today. I also play EQ past PoP and full raid instancing. Competition is extremely important, I agree with you there, I just think the competition can be had in other forms. For instance (teehee) Top guilds can compete with server first kills, amount of clears, best gear on core members, ect ect. They don't need to directly compete with eachother in the open field for there to be competition.

High end guilds have competed for years in EQ and other MMOs with full raid instancing. The only argument I have for these early expansions is that the difficulty level is so low, competition for the targets via race mean very little. Which guild kills instanced Nagafen means nothing to me and prob most people. Maybe if the raid mobs were in their buffed state, but definitely not the classic versions. This holds true for all of classic and Kunark excluding VP.

I think the number of players on Ragefire that are here for the competition is probably less than 1% of the playerbase. Instancing this content will certainly not decrease the likelihood they will stay subscribed and will likely increase it.

It's not something to be suffered from, It's more like the opposite/cousin of uncanny valley.

Look at the wall, there are thin sort-of columns placed at intervals throughout the wall.

Check out the left side of the wall, if your eyes are unfocused it picks up a lot of blue from the sky, now look at the color of the same columns on the other side. They're a completely different color, and barely read as extending from the main bulk of the wall.



The wonky looking image is what happens when you use an embossing filter. Strong well-readable images tend show their own kind of architecture in this view.

See how much emphasis the blue bands representing shadow on the left have than the light yellow representing highlight on the right?

So the colors players are seeing appear not as they were designed, but as the in game lighting systems affect them. And it alters the colours just enough to start warping the shapes people perceive as their point of reference (their charecter) moves throughout the game. It's the colour balance that lets you know a certain 3d object from another, but it's getting thrown off a bit by the different types of lighting in game.

Interesting. I was one of the people who enjoyed GoD and Underfoot for that matter, but in the case of GoD I have always felt something was off about it. Your theory about it being the color is probably it.

I have always had this sense that GoD doesn't look like EQ.

I don't think people left during GoD because of that though. They left because it was too difficult to progress and easier games like WoW were released around that same time. They leave on TLP when we hit GoD because that is where their nostalgia ends and even with proper tuning GoD seems alien compared to the rest of EQ (Luclin suffers the same thing).