Elite raids - should they release with an episode, or a week or two later?

Well, my example was a bit harsh, wasn't it? Ooops!

I do like the idea of a difficulty slider even though it may cause issues as you alluded to. An issue I can see with a raid slider is pugging raids; how much longer would it take to pug a raid with a raid slider, as there is no way to know what others are choosing? A raid slider may have to be disabled for blind queues so players don't wait any longer than they do now.

I am not sure I agree with the first stage of elite being "easy-ish"; but then again, I don't have much experience with Elite-type raids, either. From my experiences, going from Normal raids to Elite raids is like taking an egg from the refrigerator and breaking it into a pan that is too hot; my character gets krispy-burnt from Elite raids at the start. Following the mechanics is one thing, but the damage difference is far off the charts from Normal and it can be overwhelming, even when mechanics are followed.

Most Elite raids, if not all where its taken seriously are formed in LFG or amongst friends, outside of dated content pugging elite would be arguably a little crazy if your intention is to regularly, if at all succeed.

The solution however is simple and is basically how it already operates, a player presses the terminal and instigates a vote, you can only select the highest checkpoint of the lowest player in there, if no checkpoint is selected, it simply selects the bottom level and proceeds.

i.e. if you blind queue unless someone initiates a vote the very bottom difficulty is played, it's up to the players to select a difference.

• They'll never do it, because directing players in a particular direction undermines their vision of perceived flexibility. I don't disagree in terms of the fact the game could certainly use some more meaningful tutorials, I just don't think it'll happen and certainly not to the level you're suggesting for this reason. Again I'm not against players being directed a particular way per se.

• The other thing I would say too though is it's probably quite difficult to explain within an in game tutorial why to choose a particular artifact and on the counter why you wouldn't choose another, it starts to get quite convoluted. evident-ally as well as you'll know take a look at numerous Youtube videos out there as well made by players, they also at times lack details, don't explain things properly, especially when it comes to negative things or even and moreso especially niche circumstantial benefits. A great example of an artifact that has circumstantial benefit where it's worth for example leveling it to 80, possible 160 in circumstances is the "lasso" artifact, yet numerous people will say it's trash and don't even consider it, when objectively that for example couldn't be more misleading. That's the extent of course of how far you'd have to take an in game tutorial because if you didn't, it wouldn't necessarily be entirely helpful.

• Again I don't disagree with your idea in principle, it just requires more work than probably the game can allow, to flesh the idea out more though, how exactly would you go about implementing it? in what format and in what way? Would it be like the current tool tips that appear once, is it some kind of instance, what is the actual format of it and to what extent, given what I've said above would you capture a holistic picture rather than a potentially errant selective one, it would likely require extensive development to provide any meaningful assistance, especially if we're trying to continue to develop players to more experienced levels.

• When I talk about multiple boss raids/alerts my vision would be Origin Crisis like, despite the fact I don't think they necessarily have always posed a greater level of difficulty in this games history in comparison to some other content, a point I know is subjectively debatable, they are without question some of the very best pieces of content in terms of story telling and player engagement. Brother in Arms and Family Reunion have to be without a doubt potentially the best alerts this game has produced if I'm being perfectly honest from my perspective, again not necessarily from a difficulty perspective, although they did provide a decent challenge they simply were better alerts development wise. When I say 5 bosses, there are the types of content I mean, Nexus as well as a raid example.

• I do agree with you that it gets to a point where in order to get the content we're talking about here and I assume you're possibly at least somewhat in agreement, you either need more time to develop it or more resources. I'm not going to get in to a discussion about which developers are more capable of pulling this off, but do acknowledge more development resources are obviously going to be better and I think I even said that during a thread a few months back that better content is probably only ever going to come if they can get more development resources i.e. employ more developers, no one can force DI to do that though.

• In terms of your bakery analogy, lol, not to nitpick, but at the same time as I agree with you that you wouldn't go buy a cake and help put the icing on, you equally so wouldn't stand outside the bakery screaming baking instructions or even moreso go in and help bake it, which is effectively what "test" as a concept even is lol again coming back to my earlier point that in an ideal world players would only be testing content in a cursory manner and certainly not ever relied upon to give meaningful feedback in terms of quality because of the biases they possess as players.

• I wouldn't say players log on "just" to run old elite raids for money, it's certainly incorporated in to their weekly play schedules and although I'm sure there's players that might do this I wouldn't say it's "many" either, but we're playing semantics based on limited personal interactions and observations within our own limited sphere's

• I'll take your word for it that your elite friends didn't like the idea of removing elite gear, I do know there's people out there as well that do support ideas like that and they're just ideas, like I said earlier too it was just an idea in passing and they're always worth kicking around and discussing

• We probably largely seem agreed on the feat front and I've discussed the whole 5 boss raid thing further up.

• Haha, I do agree with you that the developers could always do with caring about the quality of gameplay, I probably wouldn't assert that they don't because it implies that's an existing systemic issue implying they currently don't care about content quality and I would assert that's probably not the case, despite what we as players might believe, I think they do care greatly. Unfortunately the desire to make money, given they're a company is also in their interests so expecting them not to persist in that motivation is probably unrealistic even if its perceived as coming up in direct conflict with where you feel quality should rest. The trouble is no matter what you or I think about the artifact system I'm struggling to see them meaningfully changing it unless they are prepared to shrink, somewhat that revenue stream. Perhaps of course we'll both be surprised when we see the membership re-work in the next month or two and we'll see some improvements in that front, we can hope.

• I am curious about one other thing though you mention "division within the community", what do you mean by that division, do you mean casuals vs elites? further divisions within the elite community? cosplayers vs players? There's numerous divisions within the community that I'm not sure you'll ever eliminate, I'm just wondering which division it is you're trying to reduce?

Sorry, another busy day but will come back to you later

It's fine We have a lot to say and discuss so I will be patient

• I understand your position with regard to "pushing" players in a direction of an artifact meta that provides optimal results, I stand by my position though that the developers simply aren't going to force people down the track though, so have no interest in development of a tutorial that does this, no matter what either of us think. Rightly or wrongly, they're never going to put an artifact in their game then also actively tell their players 'not too use it', because that's what we're basically asking them to do, is it not? If it's anything other than that they're going to have to create something much more convoluted in terms of delving into the nuances. I would assert to you that they're clearly quite conten to let players do that in YouTube videos where a player seeking information on it will actively seek it out, irrespective of the quality of the YouTube video in question of course.

• I understand that some developers have different flavors in terms of their development, I do not however endorse or support any view that other certain developers should adopt the flavor of another or change to please the subjective views of what content some players see as more personally desirable. I'm not saying this is you specifically, but I am well aware there are members in this community that only ever want certain developers involved. I know you didn't specifically mention this but since it's somewhat of a 'living discussion' going on between you and I what you did raise was a bit of a segue in to this thought.

• It's obvious the developers share around the content and at times different content is created by different people resulting in variations within content. I would 100% stand behind a view actually that this 'variety' is a good thing and should be encouraged, even if it results in some people complaining about content either from a difficulty perspective or mechanical perspective, this is simply variation in practice and people need to learn to deal. For every person upset, there is another fine with it. For every 5 people crying on the forums, there's another 5 in game content with it, something we all need to remember.

• I agreed with you then that they could have subtle mechanical tutorials throughout smaller content leading in to mechanics within larger content, a position I remain in agreement with.

• I do agree that perhaps sometimes there could be less content per year, but better content. It's not an issue I have, personally, but there would no doubt be kickback from the community though, from people, who insist on fresh new content very rapidly. Probably what it would require is a fundamental shift in terms of progression, pricing, longevity of grind etc. i.e. you would have to extend the grind for example to motivate people to continue logging in and playing the same content over, or find a way to make other areas of the game relevant again while not compromising over all progression i.e. You can't make older content relevant by stat clamping at a mandatory level, but could perhaps make it an option with some kind of additional reward system.

• I agree Charon does a good job, but as I alluded to in my second and third point, my position is that overall they all do just with slight variations in flavor and vision, nothing a developer does works for everyone, but always works for someone.

• Haha, hopefully the DCUO bakery does not close, on that analogy we agree

• My comment was largely around your use of words involving "absolutes" it was perhaps pedantic, but nevertheless it is more appropriate not to use absolutes in that circumstance. What I meant is there are few people that would log in "solely" to run what is commonly termed "money runs", they of course incorporate them in to their week but obviously play the game and other content throughout any given week.

• You have to remember that it probably isn't the "casual" players running elite content period, it's "elite players doing it". The trouble with this though is no one has willingly put a definition on what makes an "elite player" or even a "casual player". I have no issue with making elite harder if it is done right, I have no issues for example actually with here the lower ends of the FFE difficulty slider sits for example but do agree that the upper critical levels need to be much more difficult.

• Again to repeat a previous point though we do need to remember that unfortunately FFE has been undermined on this occasion because of bugs with first attempting the system and next time it should hopefully be better balanced, we need to give the devs a reasonable chance to get this right, without losing our minds

• This still all just comes back to our previous points though, yes artifacts could be easier to obtain, especially easier to convert, I think that'a a massive factor, players are over penalised for choosing to switch artifacts, it even prevents players from switching powers and roles as freely as they once could, but it's whether the developers will cut in to what has clearly become a extensive source of revenue.

• No worries with going off on a tangent, again this is a living discussion between us, I see no issues we're not derailing each other

• I have about 9 artifacts leveled to rank 200 and I also have converted a few at times, including the occasional one at the penalty of 50% xp, although admit I don't frequently tend to do that. Although I appreciate again, your viewpoint that artifacts could be easier to acquire and as said earlier today especially easier to convert, I'm not sure I'm quite in absolute agreement with you in terms of quite how hard you currently perceive them to be, if that were as extreme as you suggest I certainly wouldn't have 9+ maxed out. There are three things you should be doing to obtain artifacts. 1. Spend time playing, obviously. 2. Constantly run Nth Metal Detectors, 3. Take maximum advantage of double artifact and double drop weekends, 3.Make sure you're farming Nth metal at the appropriate drop times, the drops are on a timer.

• I should say the above opinion is reinforced by the fact I've bought next to absolute zero nth metal on the marketplace, (I'm trying to actually recall if I ever have, but I'm struggling, so it's clearly as close to zero as possible). The only money I've spent on the 9+ artifacts I've ever maxed are on seals of completion, which I try to keep to 4 seals per artifact if not less, it will only ever be seals of completion for levels 140-200.

• The point people continually raise that artifacts from 0-200 costs around $250USD couldn't be more factually incorrect, people splash this statement around while ignoring entirely naturally farmed Nth Metal, it assumes a player will buy 1.6mil xp off the marketplace and seals, it's horribly misleading. - I know you didn't specifically say this, I'm just conveniently raising it as a point.

• My view on improving the ease of artifacts would be to provide members with zero penalty for converting artifacts, improve members nth metal drops and provide members with a way to get at least seals of preservation as drops in game. I know everything I've outlined above is for "members" and I know some premium players might not like that, but hey membership perks are a good thing.

• With those three things implemented I think artifacts would be sitting in a far better place, outside of my view of course that numerous artifacts are entirely redundant or pose more limited circumstantial value.

• I do not agree with your view that raids should be a mnimum of 20 - 30 minutes. I actually find quick raids, at times preferable, this is again a subjective view the two of us hold in opposite directions. I agree some long raids are good, but it also nice to have some quick ones, it's another element where I think variety needs to win out. This was actually true though going as far back as Nexus/Paradox. Paradox could take a long time at first closing tunnels etc. But once you were doing EO it was over in 10-15 minutes as even evidenced by the inclusion of a speed feat, where as of course Nexus was generally speaking more readily longer because of its structure. This is why having 2 raids will always be better than having the 1 raid in Legion/Wonderverse, because having 2 raids allows you to have that distinctive level of variety.

• I'm not sure I agree with what you're saying about artifacts and what I would term "hard mechanics" I believe you're advocating for mechanics that must be complied with rather than a circumstance where things can be ignored and thrust through. The part I don't agree with is the relevance that has to artifacts at all and perhaps that's me just not quite understanding your point, but for me I don't associate either a soft mechanic or hard mechanic even with the existence of artifacts. I mean H.I.V.E was an example of where they changed that up you'll probably remember to start with you could keep burning Terra and didn't even need to comply with plugging the Volcanoes, but then they changed that and forced you to have to play the phase out properly, i.e. soft mechanic v.s. hard mechanic. I don't think that had anything to do with artifact it was simply a decision by the developers to force a mechanic to be played, personally I had no problem with either.

• I'm neutral on this point, I really don't mind if players find some sort of way to overcome something outside of strict compliance ( I should say this doesn't extend to "glitching" or "cheating", this is also why for example I was not opposed to fliers in ZOOe flying during the second boss fight or even a tank positioning themselves to fight Ultimate Solider in USE by standing on a tank, which was perfectly in the battle and not out of bounds.. Another example actually of this was TTBE, some groups of people were shielding against the tentacles, where as some other damage purist groups were insisting the "shield users" were pieces of unskilled **** and insisted that "damage start going through shields" and that's when all that sort of thing started coming in. I'm of the view of course that both methods were equally viable and valid despite being entirely different ways of overcoming the mechanic but only one seemed to be viewed as such by some players. I mean developer prerogative of course but when you start having damage go through shields one does have to start to wonder why shields are a thing in the first place and the impact even such a thing has on the likes of tanking and the way such a mechanic can actually impact certain tank powers more than others.

• I don't agree nor disagree with your view about 2019 (Metal and JLD), I actually really liked JLD, I'm not a massive fan of metal particularly but also don't have any massive complaints. Also ironically, people use the JLD and Metal raids as examples of "good elite content" but I honestly find this confusing because they weren't really that particularly difficult, so what was it that you liked about them, was it more the mechanics? Because This is something that comes up from time to time, but people often cite for example COUE as being "super easy" as well, but realistically I think the first Trigon fight in COUE is just as challenging as any of those JLD and Metal fights. I appreciate that the Trigon fight is a bit of a tank and spank, but there are still things that require observance and if we're being honest, the Trigon fight wasn't exactly a easy time as a tank when tanking all the eyes, especially at the start of the DLC and dependent on what power you were. Obviously too, the final boss of COUE was entirely undermined by the "glitch" which I won't discuss in detail, but still persists to this day, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about which probably largely undermines the true challenge that last boss fight has entirely. But coming back a little more to JLD and Metal, was it the external mechanics you're enjoying? i.e. the Books in the Fate fight, the Poison Ivy control mechanics etc,, or say the the magic corruption stuff in the last fight with Klarion if you don't pull the adds? Curiously did you like the elite raid from the anniversary event? If so what did you like about it?

• I know we're moving through topics here, but again living discussion

• I accept your point that they could have red text or use the new notification system to help provide players with mechanic tutorial points.

• I don't disagree with having less content but better quality content, it's not really an area we disagree on, just likely one where you'll find others disagree

• I agree the development team could be bigger, one day hopefully, but we're pretty much at the mercy of the company with this one, we just have to make the best of what we've got at the moment.

• I appreciate your view on the different game title, what I would say though is FF14 is also not perfect, I have friends and relatives that play it, I've even dabbled with it myself and it's not the bastion of perfection, it has some good things, it also has some bad things, probably not fair to this discussion to go in to details though so I'll just say I appreciate your view

• As pointed out earlier, there's a risk that raids will be bugged regardless, irrespective of the difficulty slider, the bugs in FFE undermined the experience, the bugs in COUE probably equally so ruined that experience, it kind of just happens and it's obviously important to keep it to a minimum. I agree in that sense that ensuring quality control is important and perhaps keeping things on test a bit longer would be beneficial but it still comes down to a balancing act, like I said earlier there's not a lot of point keeping things on test too long only to see the "gloss" come off by the time you actually release and you've lost all your hype, that can undermine the content in an equal regard to having it release with some bugs. But then again that's why perhaps as the title of this thread suggests, it would be useful to "delay" the elite content, so we realistically agree on that, because if the pinnacle of your experience is being found in elite content then releasing the other stuff earlier hopefully gives you the necessary extra time needed to also assist with ironing out any bugs.

• I don't agree with ditching the difficulty slider, I think it's a good tool that if done correctly allows the developers to better please what is obviously a wide range of paying customers of varying desires and even skill levels. Without the difficulty slider you're stuck setting the difficulty of elite in a static position less desirable to wider ranges of players, those just starting off on elite, not so skilled and those that find even elite, quite easy. The difficulty slider allows them to craft the content with those varying levels more readily in mind.

• I think we need to probably make a distinction here, what you're talking about with artifacts is wanting players new or returning to have an easier ride to get the artifacts necessary to run relevant elite content, because I'm sure we can both agree, it's quite easy to get some level 80 artifacts quite rapidly and there isn't a single piece of normal content in this game that requires you to have an artifact beyond that point, if even have an artifact at all. So with that distinction in mind. I agree, I'm not sure I agree with exactly how easy you perhaps envision this to be, Perhaps I've missed your suggestions in the discussion, but how do you want to make them easier, what are you steps? Apologies if I've missed these previously.

• I agree with altering the breakthrough chances for members, however, unless you make the breakthrough chance 100% you'll always be stuck with using seals, I would have thought the better solution to eliminate the pay wall behind artifacts (at least in so far as seals) would be to provide players with a meaningful way to obtain seals through playing the game. Including your solution as well as seal drops would of course reduce, statistically the number of seals required. I'm neutral, it's not a bad idea.

• Yes, my explanation of obtaining artifacts assumes the players, play DCUO and the more continually they do so the easier that artifact building becomes. I'm not convinced that's a an unreasonable expectation. I appreciate that people at times want to play other games and also have real life stuff going on at times, we all do, no doubt including both you and I. However, I'm a little hesitant to give a leg up, so to speak, to players who are actively choosing not to play for whatever reason that might be, probably even moreso, simply just to play other games than having something going on in their life (of which I'm certainly more sympathetic). At that point a player is actively choosing 'not to play DCUO' and instead play something else, why should they have it easier to obtain an artifact? I'm genuinely a little surprised as to why you think that's reasonable? In any case, for the purpose of this discussion possibly what we're really talking about here is more along the lines of "is the Nth Metal in the marketplace, reasonably priced".

• I'd assert the reason the devs make the artifacts such a grind is 1. purely economic, it tempts players to buy Nth Metal or 2. It keeps people logged in to this game, they want players in this game, not provide them with means under which they can abandon this title for other ones, as a side note replay badges themselves are already somewhat guilty of doing this. You'll probably find the artifact grind is a hook they're keeping in place to attempt to keep the players here regardless.

• I agree that having a functional PVP system would also keep players around longer in the gaps between DLC, this is also why the developers add additional rewards to the vendors, it keeps people playing the relevant DLC past their gear grind so that they have marks available to buy new rewards. Basically you abandon the content after gearing up at your own peril (notwithstanding the fact the bonus mark weeks kind of make this pretty easy and allow you to do it rather casually in any case).

• I agree as well that having engaging content will keep people around longer, I always felt that having the open world bounties in ever DLC would be a good idea, but not at the expense of on duty content, they need to find a way to have open world bounties in additional to all the usual on duty content. In my view the open world bounties then need to be ramped up in terms of difficulty, have an additional mark system and all the rewards in the open world bounty vendor are purely cosmetic, no progress. The reason I say no progress is because when you include progress you take players away from on duty content, instead of effectively off in to a casual side mission, which I believe you don't want. What you want is a system of bosses that give the players just something extra to do when they choose or if they choose, hell just to chuck the idea out there, why not have all the bounties in the game, even these reward qwarks for example, just an idea, while we're chucking them around.

• I'm personally of the view and this is just me, but I think it's time to merge EU server with US, there's too many complaints about population levels and I think the issue of latency is so largely non existent it's just not an issue. The economic issues would quickly level out and then latency would be the only other factor, but given I've been playing with somewhat equal latency on US for the past 10 years, it's actually not as much of a big deal as some suggest it would be, in fact numerous EU players already play on US.

• I agree in so far as there being a clearer tutorial with regard to how you construct an artifact, even if it doesn't go as far as suggesting which ones to actually level. I would suggest something similar to one of those cartoon type that existed in base games, perhaps. It could come up when you interact with John Constantine when running that very first artifact mission.

• I'm not sure we disagree as much as perhaps it seemed with hard mechanics, I'm all for hard mechanics that must be complied with, absolutely, I just don't think they're necessary in every fight of course, but generally speaking actually most mechanics in elite (at level) are hard anyway if we think about it. If anything there's sometimes a few ways to deal with them is all. This is evident in things like some groups 2 tanking stuff, others solo tanking it, dual healing v.s solo healing, differing positioning, perhaps timed shields v.s burn depending on what it is. Seperation of adds v.s kiting.The mechanics obviously become less rigid when we return to the content more powerful, which isn't a bad thing either I'd suggest, that is after all the point of becoming more powerful, as long as of course thrusting through the mechanic doesn't break things lol.

• Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like what you're really asking for are the more engaging mechanics, rather than over the top difficulty. I think there's obviously a place for both and I think that can be easily done in both the fact there are two raids to achieve that and there is also now the difficulty slider. I agree I liked a lot of those raids as well but moreso for the engaging mechanics. Once you know the mechanics though things will always become easier, as discussed in another thread on elite content it cannot really be avoided that content will become easier through reptition but I do agree with you that t least if the mechanics are engaging then you're having to at the very least think about it each time.

• I think the reason some mechanics sometimes get nerfed is because, it seems this way at least, the developers can't entirely keep on top of preventing mechanics, even hard ones, from over lapping. The moment you then get over lapping mechanics things start to get really frustrating even from a player perspective.

• I think the reason people liked the anniversary event is because it offered some decent mechanics and was probably perceived as being less broken than COUE (which was the other raid at the time) it was probably also because there had only been one raid for a long time, people were probably thirsty for it. I will admit that I think the mechanics in the anniversary raid were relatively well done, I would say though that it really was only third boss where groups largely got stuck and I've never been a fan of a boss fight where by and large the difficulty being applied is more about overwhelming a room with adds, I've never particularly been a fan of this type of thing, just subjectively speaking. It probably can't be understated how much I dislike kiting, but that's just a personal dislike, I'm sure there's those tanks that find it more fun.

• Don't disagree with less but better quality content, perhaps the third piece of content could be event like, like Death of Superman that is more event like, takes less development time and is less focused on progression. It could be something that even slots in around Christmas each year, or as another idea, run the anniversary event longer each year, like what happened this year and greatly expand it each time, with more duos and alerts as well.

The times it's really boggled my mind is this: When they announce a release month without a specific date, the expectation that it creates is that it could launch ANY week of that month. Players should be mentally well prepared to wait until that last week. So if there's no risk of falling short of expectations and disappointing the player base, why release a DLC in the first week of the month that they know is still bugged??? Finishing early only holds value if the job is complete. It's like if you just skipped an entire section of a test just so your classmates see that you're the first to finish. NO, you won't be seen as the smart kid who finished first, you'll be the dumb kid who got a C-. Results>Timing