What about BUFF Elite content?

There's another Video of doing The Throne Elite with 4 ppl and every role was there.

We can also try the Crown of Thorns Elite 4 man with all roles soon, we just havent tried it yet.

People are coming up with threads claiming elites arent as hard as they should be weekly.
How is this 1%?
Do I have to name every person I know that actually cares about difficulty in this game?

Look forward to seeing it, can you make sure to include the scorecard at the end

I don't think it fundamentally changes the issue i have though as you've already shown you don't need the troll

The trouble in my view is the ever changing goal posts as well, people were raving about how great hive and machine were, then they went and made the atlantis easier and everyone seems riled up about it.

Only the developers can tell us why they appear to have been made easier, they're the ones that have completion data etc.

For every person/group you know finishing it, there could be 5 others not doing so which makes the developers think the difficulty is fine.

Reality is the forums are a small segment of the community so even if everyone here is saying it's too easy doesn't make that factually correct.

Even in game theres no way to ascertain completion rates etc.

until i see waves of vids of people 4 manning it, then its fine as is. can YOU 4 man it op?

I don't think it's important to get too hung up on who gets to decide. What's important is that it's more to the playerbase than a straight up, casual crowd. It's important to cater to all parts of the playerbase, which is why we now have Event, Normal and Elite-content. I just simply want the developers to truly cater to all categories if we are going to have this category-structure present in the game.

If it's hard enough for the average pug group, the average pug group won't be able to spam it the way they do now. That's "hard enough" to solve that problem, then we can go from there.

I'm not saying or necessarily agree with players that think Elite content should be so difficult that only their own, private groups and their few likeminded friends of the same level will be able to beat it, but Elite should offer enough of a challenge to cater above the average player, because the average player already have the majority of the game's content catered to them. The average player can always practice to get good enough if they so absolutely wish to beat Elite content. How can players become better if we are always going to lower the bar to where they barely have to try, especially in content that's supposed to be the most difficult?

Why are some players hellbent on making Elite-raids easier to fit their playstyle rather than trying to overcome the obstacles to get what they want? Because like mentioned before, those players are ONLY interested and/or somewhat feeling entitled to get all of the best rewards but possibly couldn't care less about overcoming the challenge to get said rewards. Those players IMO shouldn't have an easy time getting their hands on said gear because don't deserve it.

As for how to tackle the "spam the easy for renown"-issue, another way would be using the two boss fight-concept they made in Throne E for example. First boss gives you 200, last boss gives you 400. It makes you feel truly rewarded for beating the whole thing and will make it really expensive and possibly discourage you in wanting to spam just the first boss.

Another concept, one which I'd love to see again would be the Arena type-concept in an Elite raid, much like how Prime works. You get the full renown & rewards upon completion of the instance. The "easier Elite-raid" if need be, could be developed in this type of way especially, where you are highly encouraged to want to beat the raid in order to feel properly rewarded.

The problems arise when both raids are not only too easy but also as I mentioned in my first post in here, both raids being too similar to the normal version in terms of mechanics. The developers need to spend more time on the Elite-instances developing different mechanics, objects and elements that separates them from the normal versions as much as possible in terms of delivering a challenge.

I will try this weekend to form a group in CoTn with 2 tanks and no troll and let's see what will happens.

I agree, but the reason I stress the difficulty spectrum is because, that's my primary question who gets to where the cut off is in terms of "whose worthy"? Because isn't that what dictates whether the content is too easy or too hard?

As I said you're never going to please everyone, there's always going to be some people that find the content too easy and like you say some people that find it too difficult and still can't really complete it.

The truth is none of us know that number, only the developers, they're the ones setting the difficulty of the content based on the completion rates, I can only assume its being based on the completion rates and/or potential revenue because what else could it possibly be based upon, feel free to enlighten me, I'd be curious as to your thoughts?

Also the only reason throne has more renown on the final boss is because there's only two drops, the 400 renown on last boss is to make up for the absent renown drop because of the lack of a third drop.

Personally I'd like to see elite content removed entirely and the game returned to raids like FOS, Paradox, Nexus etc that we all work up to as a normality, no excuses anymore, just "event content" for the casuals and hard content for everyone else with nothing in between, with a real challenge being presented to all players.

The one's worthy are the ones who want to overcome the challenge. Elite content, much like SM was made to those who want more of a challenge in content than what the usually mediocre level of difficulty offers in normal.

"Never going to please anyone" is a bad excuse to not try IMO. You're pleasing the ones you're targeting in that very category if you are actually trying to deliver within said parameters rather than making it an "enhanced Normal"-type of category to appease to the crowds who are already getting catered to within the majority of the other content.

This is not just a question of numbers and math unless you actually look at the numbers just to monetize it as much as possible, which is what is going on and that is obviously what I want changed. As mentioned earlier they have enough aspects of the game being montized for max revenue, when treating all pieces of content like that before trying to cater to the selected playstyles, then you neglect players that would spend money. Let's not act as if players wouldn't keep replaying normal content because Elite-content was to be brought up to its intended purpose in difficulty. The average player would replay normal, the "Elites" would replay Elite.

That's what I am saying in regards to the Throne raid, that setup works in terms of spamming the easy vs. completing the raid and feeling rewarded. That type of setup with 2 bosses rewarding loot/renown works, since the last boss rewards twice as much as the first boss and thus make you feel properly rewarded for beating it.

As for Elite content removed i'd love more challenge but not everyone wants it. There's a reason these categories have come to place so why not use them? Instead of doing another "revamp", lol, they simply have to deliver proper difficulty in Elite-content and keep Event the easiest category with normal in between for the average, casual playerbase and then everyone is being catered to. The problem is again that the average, casual playerbase gets catered to even in the Elite content-category. Fix that and you don't actually have to remove Elite-content. If they don't have any intentions of fixing it, then yeah, Elite content existing feels kind of moot if they aren't going to give the content its intended purpose.

I think perhaps we're on different wave lengths and not fundamentally disagreeing, it's just appearing that way.

I agree that the people worthy are the ones wanting to overcome the challenge, what I'm saying though is how is the difficulty of that challenge set at an acceptable level, when 1% of players can complete it (as evidenced by completion rates) or when 5% complete it? 25% - that's what I'm saying.

What I mean when I say "never going to please everyone" isn't to provide an excuse for easy content it's to point out that there are 'always going to be players that find content too easy regardless of how difficult you make it', that's just a fact.

Unfortunately all areas of the game are monetized, this includes elite, so the reality is they're going to monetize it and maximise the target audience, the larger the audience the larger the revenue collection.

This is the immovable wall elite players are coming up against, they want the challenge to be put forward irrespective of the cost to the overall game i.e. who cares if people can't complete it become disengaged as a result they have normal content.

Unfortunately that approach clearly conflicted with Daybreak's business model and is that gap that SM filled, unfortunately as evidenced by the state of PVP anything that can't be monetized is simply getting ignored.

You say they should leave elite alone because they have "enough aspects" being monetized, unfortunately that's not how a business wanting to maximise revenue works. They maximize revenue from 'all' aspects, not just some.

I believe Daybreak will continue to work on elite difficulty, I think it's just never going to hit a spot that please everyone because there's always going to be someone upset about its difficulty level.

How do you know that 1% completion rate is evidenced lol? Or am I misunderstanding what you are saying here. It's definately way, way, wayyyyyyyy more than that in terms of completion rates to current Elite content.

It's not just something you can answer with a straight percentage, you need to develop and test the content with the right experienced group in mind to fully see and understand how the content fares. Straight up saying that 5, 10 or 25% "should/can" complete it is not the one and only way to tackle it.

But in terms of "never going to please anyone" you are using one extreme, very low minority as an excuse not to provide overall difficulty that reflects what Elite content should have. Never the less, that very low minority still spend money so not taking their feedback into account in regards to a category of content that's supposed to deliver difficulty to them once again deminish the whole point of the categories, thus it needs to be fixed. The problem is that suggestions to adjustments to bring the content down a level is being listened to more than suggestions to bring said content up a notch.

This whole "max revenue"-thing, you make it sound like the average player will stop spending money on normal content if Elite content was to be brought up to reflect the level of difficult that a minority of players can handle compared to the casual majority, that's where we are in disagreement.

With the categories in place, players would spend money and generate revenue on their respective categories of content just like now, and maybe they would keep some players longer than usual while doing their best to cater toward the different crowds. Are you telling me that the vocal minority of skilled players you want to speak of doesn't spend money? I think you know as well as me that they spend tons, they would more likely continue to spend tons if the content they asked for kept being up to par. They would replay normal content and get normal gear so they can get geared enough to beat Elite content and then replay even more to keep unlocking Elite-gear. If anything the devs could be missing out on revenue by not giving each category the intended purpose of difficulty.

"maximize to get revenue" sounds really intelligent and business-related on paper, but you need to actually appeal to your customers with your product in order to sell said product. But let's not talk about how much the population have kept declining now, I'm in such a good mood this morning.

I don't think just becase there were players who can beat the elite raids with less than 8 so the devs have to raise the difficulty of the mechanics. This is some sort of challenge run that make the game more interesting, also not all of players can finish the raids with that setup so why do we need some buffs for elite contents? I know the players in the video (I'm part of that league ), they're very skilled, I'm not really surprised at all that they're able to do some crazy stuff .

No, the very heart of my point is that no one knows the numbers of the completion rates, only the developers know. People are asserting that the raids are too easy, but they're making that assertion from their limited personal experience. It's based upon their experience and the experience of those they surround themselves with whether that be league runs or even LFG. The number of runs a player undertakes within LFG is still only going to be a limited sample size

The developers see the bigger picture, they see the overall completion rates of content and they see the overall amount of revenue, two factors no end user has.

The premise of my point is that I'm not prepared to side either way. I'm not prepared to make a judgement call on the content being too easy or too hard because I don't have the facts necessary to provide feedback to the developers in a manner that includes the necessary context, I can only provide feedback based on my personal experience. I'm just attempting to approach the topic with a little more reasoning rather than subjective opinion.

When I talk about completion rates determining the difficulty as well I'm talking about where the developers might choose to set it, we don't know what the rates are, nor what the developers set as targets.

The target for example could be 25% of end game players over CR243 can complete elite content, if less than this are doing it, perhaps it's too hard, if more than this are doing it then perhaps it's too easy. whatever that target might be is what we don't know and wherever that target is set is going to create some unhappy outliers because if you set it at say 25% the 25-30% of players that still find it impossible will express discontent, but at least have normal content to fall back to. On the flip side however you have the 5-1% at the top who find the content far too easy, but have no where to go, this creates a very vocal minority at the top who end up getting shafted by the system because you can't make it too hard, but can't make it too easy at the same time.

These players are always going to get screwed unless you start deciding to screw more of the players beneath them, you start shrinking the spectrum so that only 5% of players over CR243 can complete elite content. The only other alternative is that you provide them the challenge they crave by other means i.e. what SM was.

This is what I mean when I say "not going to please everyone" again, it's not an excuse just a factual reality. there's going to to always be this vocal minority unhappy, the vocal minority at the top unhappy is usually more appetising then going the other way because the more you shrink the spectrum the more you shrink your ability to monetize it.

I'm also not asserting that the players will stop spending money, I worry about them quitting the game entirely. Despite the fact I'd personally like the game to revert to standard harder raids, like nexus and paradox, that DLC and difficulty level was also extremely divisive at the time and caused a large population shrink, people left the game entirely.

I'm also not asserting the vocal minority don't spend money I'm asserting that when you create a business model you maximise your potential pool of customers, elite gear is more desirable, it's also more expensive, the extra marks don't really equate to the extra grind. They also entice players to buy the elite gear by making it shiny, therefore people "like birds" are enticed to spend more money on the latest and greatest shiny. They then place this next to the "duller" normal gear to market elite. This is marketing 101.

I've never really supported easy elite content, but I do admire the business model because it's clearly got people spending money and if they're trying to maximise that profit margin they certainly appear to be doing a great job at doing it.

Appreciating the simplicity and effectiveness of the business model isn't the same as supporting it or even supporting the easy elite content.

Hell I hate, if not despise the time capsules, I find them abhorrent in terms of the gambling aspect, but at the same time I admire the way it just so simplistically gets people to part with their money in such abudance.

Looks like two Rage tanks in this video. Revamp may have smoothed a few things out but tanking just got totally messed up. Taking Fire and Rage as a comparison, how can it be right that Rage has a power that grants 10% crowd control restistance added to part of its main mitigation mechanic, other powersets don’t get this. Rage’s one immunity power gets a 12 second cooldown, other powersets, including Fire, get 18 seconds. These things add up in tough content. I don’t blame people for gravitating towards stronger tanking powersets.

The problem with turning this into a "completion rate-decision only" is that the entire majority becomes involved and adjustments are made to increase completion rates that iaccounts for crowds of players of which the content wasn't originally intended for, rather than judging based on WHO can complete it. It needs to be tested and judged around the parameters of the crowd it's supposed to cater to, or else you're left with Normal Content 2.0 with a falsely advertised "Elite"-label to it.

You can't tell me that we don't know whether it's too easy or not when you know aswell as me that groups have had an easier time getting through Elite-raids today as compared to other cases in the past. Your feedback back then didn't go passed me, your feedback defending the Elite-raid difficulty model of PanE didn't go passed me. It's easier to get through Elite's now to get your hands on the new shinies, it's understandable to me that people do defend it so that they can have it all without having to struggle too much to get it, but that is exactly the problem with it. It's not intended for the majority to "just" get. Elite content shouldn't be built so that the average Joe can spam a couple of easy bosses that are almost the same difficulty as the normal version, just to get their hands on rewards that are NOT meant to be so easily acquired.

Point is, Elite-content is not supposed to cater to the majority, because the vast majority of other content in the game already does and that's also where the majority of revenue comes from. Do you somehow think that people are now replaying normal and Elite hence giving them an immensely larger amount of revenue as compared to when people replayed normal? Elite has now gotten so easy that you see more groups forming for Elite in LFG during a new Episode than you see groups forming for the normal version, people choose to replay Elite for the renown because it's easy enough to do so. As soon as players are done with the renown, they replay normal.

Buffing the overall difficulty-standard of Elite-raids will not take the toll on revenue that you make it out to be, that's my point. Not doing anything about however will just like you mentioned increase the risk of players quitting, more likely resulting in loss of revenue.

If the difficulty was actually in place, a lot of players would probably have to replay both normal and Elite-content in order to gear up enough to successfully run and beat it consistently, precious revenue missed to account for a majority that are already being catered the majority of content.

Content being kept easy enough to accord for "completion rates and revenue" have taken enough of a toll on the population, not to mention other cashgrabs that severely added to the population declining. Not sure how it's brilliant business to get rid of customers. So yes, as mentioned before, they don't have to "maximize revenue" in every piece of content, especially not when it diminishes the point of said content while also risking sending more players out the door.

As for having hard content within an episode and not having Elite-specified content, I don't understand how you come to the conclusion that it would be any better than actually having set categories that caters to specific crowds, especially when you make your case refering to maximizing revenue and completion rates.

Casual, average players run normal, below average run Events until they can step up to normal and skilled, experienced players feeling that normal is way too easy gets a varied challenge in a couple of Elite-instances. Everyone is gets happy in terms of actually catering to the crowd. Of course people won't be happy when the difficulty is not set within the paremeters of which the content is supposed to be intended for. You will never hear the end of it as long as Elite is treated like "Normal content 2.0" rather than giving an actual challenge with mechanics that differentiate it from normal content.

Other MMO's have gotten rich using this kind of formula that caters to different categories of players, I don't see why DCUO must be an exception. Short term decisions with max-revenue as the only primary goal hasn't been proven to be a winning formula.

Edit: I also want to add that I do aknowledge where you are coming from with all of this, my point is just that the game could be in a better place and could keep more players around if long term-decisions in regards to content were in place rather than just thinking about what on paper could be "the best plan to maximize revenue" in every single aspect of the game, no matter if it sends a bunch players out the door while depending on whales to pay the cost for those leaving.

To the OP’s question, it would be nice if the game would promote the use of different roles before any content buff was established. I really miss the days of generally requiring two trolls for a raid.

Devs, as a side note, I always liked the elite alerts when we had them. Again it goes back to when having a troll in the alert was almost always a necessity.

The aforementioned 4 man Throne Elite run is in my signature currently. Alas yes I forgot to include the scorecard at the end, but its an operation where it doesn't pop up automatically.

Its the case of whether its possible to solo tank Murk in Cot E. Would be pretty amazing if it can be done.

I just wanted to address this part at the start reason being is because whenever I talk about elite content it's something that continually just keeps coming up over and over.

When I spoke about PAN-E I said it was a good model in terms of "gating elite" I felt it struck a good balance between preventing the absolute casual from completing content (and that's a subjective view you're entitled to disagree with) and differentiating that content from normal by being "technically harder".

I was slammed by members of the elite community as advocating for easy content, that assertion was, is and remains 100% false.

In saying that I wasn't talking about what difficulty the content should have been set at I was talking about where the developers might want to set the difficulty of the content while keeping the content technically more difficult than normal while maintaining an ability to maximise their revenue. When you make the elite content easier you 100% increase your revenue from it because you immediately have more people spamming it.

This wasn't so much an advocating for easier content as it was "admiring their business model to maximise revenue". These Atlantis raids probably fall in that same category, absolutely pissing off the best of the elite community, by being too easy, but maximising the revenue from a DLC that is being hyped and driven by the impending release of an Aquaman movie.

They want as many people as possible to be as engaged as possible, while making as much money as possible from the hype surrounding the movie, creating too much of a division within the community on this particular occasion defets that purpose. This is more about money than people probably want to acknowledge or admit.

How can it be anything but completion based, perhaps I'm missing your point, but I'm yet to clearly see it. Who gets to define the difficulty level, it sounds like you're suggesting a select small portion of community testers should dictate the difficulty level of elite content? I see numerous flaws in that because instead of using "community wide completion data" as I suggest you're suggesting that a small number, I'm suspecting the best of the best dictate the difficulty.

I agree that yes this is going to increase the challenge, but it's also going to skew the difficulty all the way up because they're going to approach it with wanting a challenge that only the top 1% of players can overcome. As I've suggested that's going to start to affect the game in more ways because it's going to mean that the best gear and items in the game start to elude a greater portion of the community. You are correct that elite content is for "elite players" but those elite players aren't just the top 1% they're the top % the developers decide are their best players and they balance the difficulty around that expectation, not the expectation of the very best. The reason I'm against this proposal is because although elite content is too easy right now, this approach would skew it to the extreme in the opposite direction.

Now again I'm not saying this to diminish the desire for there to be a challenge nor am I suggesting that players avoid the challenge by only doing first two bosses I'm just being somewhat realistic or trying to explain to you that, perhaps I'm not being clear in this regard I'm not saying "casual players should pass elite" I'm saying that a player who isn't quite as good as you at healing, makes a few more mistakes but isn't absolutely horrible shouldn't be gated from completing elite simply because they're not quite as good, does that make sense?

Take yourself as an example, you know how good you are, if you came across someone who was only slightly less competent as you, would you gate them from elite content because they weren't as good as you? Where would you draw in the line, how more useless would they have to be before you said "you don't even deserve to be running this content"?

I've often talked about this as well, the gear model currently being used is counter intuitive to progression, it expects a player to go from top to bottom rather than bottom to top.

The game encourages you to grind out a full set of elite gear because it offers a 50% gear discount on all inferior gear as a result when transferring the feat. I agree with your assertion that content should be made more difficult but I'd also assert that the developers should change their approach to gear distribution. People should have to move "up to elite" by buying normal vendor gear and if you complete the full normal vendor gear then you can buy elite gear for 50% off rather than the other way around.

At the moment like you say people are just smashing out the required renown and then doing whatever. At the moment the whole system is just very unnatural.

For what its worth I appreciate the civility of the conversation, I want to say I do honestly believe that elite content is currently too easy, when I talk about it though I separate my personal view from that of the observed business model and what might be going on, rather than getting hung up on the emotion of what I subjectively want. If I got what I subjectively wanted the content would be harder and the progression model would be what I've described above in terms of gear, either that or elite content would be scrapped like I say and people would gear up using trash gear, eventually getting vendor gear by completing the raid or you add something unique to the raids that people running small content don't get etc.

So please don't take me the wrong way,

Rage's immunity duration is very short compared to other tank powers, its made that way to assure u have a possibility to not get CCed at the very moment when rage crash needs to be cancelled, something other powers dont need to think about in addition to tanking and mechanics hence the 10% additional crowd control resistance.

This is what I do disagree with. Look at the LFG at the usual, more populated time during Thursday-Sunday for the latest episode in particular, and you'll find groups for normal content to be very scarce as compared to the groups forming for Elites. Throne being the only exception of the two latest raids, but not completely as a lot of players are also running that Elite-version. This many players forming for Elite as a standard is not because all those players are looking for the difficulty, they are looking for the gear because they CAN. They chose to grind the Elite-gear because they are all allowed to without too much struggle.

The difference between what we have now and drawing the line as far as to cater toward that 1% you want to talk about is a big stretch, you know as well as I do that you can meet somewhere closer to the middle than what we currently have to try and establish difficulty that would be more suitable for Elite content and the crowd they are supposed to be catering to.

I also think you are severely exaggerating the impact it would have if Elite raids were to be brought up to a level where the casual majority would severely struggle to get their hands on the precious, shiny Elite-gear. Right now, there is barely a point in getting it other than just maximize your stats/Cr, you can still beat the Elite-raids in last episode's gear and you can definately beat them consistently without even maxing out on normal gear, all you need is really the gear drops available. Gear progression hardly matter because of things being easy enough to generate max revenue and to give the casual majority content that's not intended to be designed for them.

Why is it a bad idea if skilled players wanting a challenge above the limits of normal content got compensated with gear that should be needed in order to consistently be able to progress in said Elite raids? To me it just comes down to entitlement from the "must haves" and it's a very dangerous thing to cater to, because it will never be enough no matter how much they adjust and nerf content, as evidenced by people who still complain about the difficulty of various normal content and those demanding Elite content to be brought down to their level, hence getting us stuck with "Normal Content 2.0" even though they already have the vast majority of content catered to them.

It's not about somebody being just a "little" less good than "me", it's simply about putting the difficulty to a point where the majority will in fact struggle, as opposed to now, and then it's up to the players themselves to practice and get better. That's how you create a strong playerbase, you're probably not unfamiliar with other successful MMO's and their Content structure. If the majority of the players just can't keep up with the difficulty of the Elite content, then they have to swallow their pride and stick to content that's actually catering to them. Elite content can and will have varied difficulty, one elite raid can in fact be easier than the other to in that way include more players than the most Hardcore players you can find, the problem is that it's currently catering more to the casual majority than anything else.

The big problem I see is that a majority of casual, average players wanting to get their hands on the rewards and not take part of the intended challenge are voicing feedback that often results in the need of wanting the content adjusted down to their level, rather than being willing to rise to the occation and get good enough to beat it, while experienced players actually testing and progressing through it get most of their feedback ignored when it comes to adjusting things upward or even keeping something as is. THAT is where listening to what you want to call 1, 5 or 10 percent is important. Nobody is saying they should dictate the entire difficulty, but as of right now their feedback and input are barely even looked at even though they are the type of crowd they are supposed to be catering to in terms of Elite content, more so than the causal, average majority that already has the majority of content catered to them.

In terms of the gear distribution, I highly doubt that people would grind the Elite-gear mainly for that, the main reason people grind for it is because it's the BEST gear and people always want the best no matter if they are necessarily eligible to get it or not. But I do agree with the backwards order, it should move upward thus increasing some kind of point in Gear progression.

The previous model of DLC's that you keep bringing up is one I really liked, but it got to the point where content just got nerfed and replaced with the current Categories because of the average majority of players. Their reactions would be no different than what it currently is with content that's not even supposed to be catering to them, but with an actual category for Elite along with Event and Normal you do have the potential to create different content and progression for all, that still generate desired revenue and keep "everyone" happy. They just need to actually cater to said category for it all to actually have a meaning.