For me there are 2 main problems... a) not enough raids, 5 + 1 (can we really count the burn emote-mob?) well shrug. b) they are all in the same zone. And that is almost worse, as is using group missions for raid event copies. Give us something fun again, pretty please. Raiders are a stable stream of income for you... it's really about time you care a bit more about them again. They deserve better than being perched into 1 zone, which really hurts the eyes and imagination after a few weeks. I freaking hate Arx Mentis by now, especially since it has jack in common with classic fantasy.
IF some members of mid-tier and casual guilds are going to complain that PoWar was too hard, the one offs are too hard/getting to practice them a dozen times plus is not enough, etc. then IMO Daybreak should stop with the extremely generous to the mid-tier content and return to strict progression with increasing event difficulty, and improving rewards. as you move through it. At least that way all raid content is progression relevant. OP asks for "Easy chest could have fewer items if needed as a penalty." which is bad and wrong. But what the heck do people think PoWar group content is (or rather was) or the one offs - they are EZMode with bells, ribbons and trumpets. Toooo haaaard. More pinata/best loot kplsthnx~ /giggle.
I think of it this way, back in the day I logged in 5 - 6 times a week to play and mostly raid and I was pretty addicted. Now I log in 1 day a week and kill all raids, not that addicted anymore. I believe they are making it easer for the player base to kick the habit of playing this game. Now I hear "campaigns" so the next release will still leave us with 1 day or raiding.
Blame slot machine events where you zone in and see the boss mob right in front of you rather than needing to dungeon crawl/kill yard trash for 20 minutes to even get to the next boss mob.. Casuals and some mid tier people aren't the only ones who've requested EZMode.
I loved the "raid like" group missions in RoF. And if you meant that the raids were copies of group missions, well, I'm pretty sure the truth is the reverse.
If your guild struggles on these raids then you need to identify the weaker members and train them up or replace them. If you are unwilling to do that, such as in a casual guild, then you have to accept the casual results. I dont remember there being any disclaimer that everyone was going to be given a gold star simply for showing up. You have to earn the wins. I created ROTE on March 2nd and began heavily recruiting. We did our first raids on March 29th. We were 15th serverwide to beat Lanys/Callix (Arx5) on May 25th. Good communication on raids, the right attitude, effort and leadership is what it takes to be successful. I will throw my chip into the "need more raids" hat though.
What's the answer? Quit sucking at EQ. Recruit better players. The high end game has never been for the casual player.
"You asked for Easy AND Hard? Well, with our new campaigns, you can do JUST THAT! -Solo -Solo (group) -Group -Advanced Group -Raid -Hard Raid" This is our future. They better do it right.
that sounds right, as long as the difference in Hard Raid and Raid isn't "annoying as *** Pita, one person can kill all, one shot " raids. in other words, Raids that have stuff thrown in just to make it hard.. these aren't any fun. I would rather see. Raid. Challenging Raid They both drop the same quality of loot, the second just more of it. (and gives a lockout on both, come to think of it, they both do. pick one, not both each week)
I think the basic problem is lack of content. They need raids of varying difficulties, but it's hard to do that with only 5 raids + 2 one shots (one shots are a terrible mechanic by the way). What we needed was something like a NToV remake again to have more content - maybe ssra or VT or PoTime. Even Anguish. Corrupted NToV didn't drop a lot of loot per mob, but it was a great way to ease into early ROF raids.
Some of you should to listen to what you are saying. "The two ones offs are very easy and reward you with more fantastic gear". If these raids are so easy and 40/50 of you are beating the raid cos it's easy, then what is the harm is removing the one off restriction? - more casual guilds getting a chance at repeating the event for the same loot that you have just strolled through. omg /the shame, Omani Winter has the same uber belt as me. The other restriction I would like to see looked into and this could depend on the flagging requirement for each expansion but to adjust the number of non-flagged to flagged you can get in. Guilds like mine have a range of players who have restricted play time - we don't have 50 odd 80% + raiders, as I'm sure a lot of other casual guilds also do not. It took us 8x Arx 1 wins to be able to get in enough people to even attempt Arx 2A. We have currently 16 T2 wins and less than half are flagged for T3 (we'll get there - just will takes us a bit longer - also it's only 1 event in T3 - so we are not "missing" out on that much of content) I would however like to see a 66% flagged-unflagged ratio. So 36 flagged raid folks would allow in an extra 18 unflagged, however I'd take anything more than the current. This expansion it's not *that* big a problem because of the linear nature, but other expansions we have had a very high attrition rate just due to having to reflag. I don't think that is that big an ask - it's not changing any event. it's still requiring the majority of your raid to have the flags and it doesn't change the rate of progression for the leaders.
nm, was responding to a poster who doesn't understand that gear rewards should be based on performance and withheld when there's a failure to perform. All guilds have a chance to obtain items and beat events - all they have to do is perform. Some guilds don't perform. The bar shouldn't be lowered if dozens of guilds clear it. Casual effort/casual result.
There is no way a raid leader in any guild would just flat out not be able to figure out an event. Maybe not figure out a way for that specific raid force to beat it, but to just not "get it" isn't even possible. Also, I assume people that complain about the one off timers are the same people that said "make raids that everyone can do, then add one or two hard optional events for the 1%". They took your advice, you don't have to do them. They are extra. The same thing will happen if they make a "normal" and "hard" versions of an event.
The 1% in this case is the vast majority of historically successful raiding guilds. This is people from casual/family/historicaly not very sucessful raiding guilds salivating over non-progression raids that drop good raid loot for events they also can't beat. Daybreak should have enabled the one offs after a guild beat the last event. It would end all the "Bbbut :we paid $19.95 too, where's our phat l3wt5 00011111100" stuff.
I play in 2 guild and 1 is a lower tier and the other is higher tier. I know what it is like in both worlds and I can say they are scaled right. I wouldn't change a thing but add more raid content to it. Raid content is suppose to be challenging. You are suppose to think and be strategic and try to find the best way to beat a raid with your guild and mold the strat to what they are strong on. DBG has already made majority of the raids easy by making the group mission mock the raid. They have taken the thinking out of it and just beefed up the mobs. If your having issue with dps/healing/tanking then you need to pinpoint the weak players and train and mold them. That is what this game is about. I can't tell you how many weak players I have brought into this guild and I've had to offer suggestions and techniques even when it wasnt my class and they improved 300% which they feel they are putting more into the guild to grow. Just because your in a guild and 50 some people login does not mean your a raiding guild that can beat endgame content in the drop of a hat. I welcome the challenge for stuff to be harder and if it makes us wipe 30-40 times then you revise and keep going.
Wait, so is this confirmed what campaigns are going to be like? So, kind of like Depths of Darkhollow?
No, it's just babble. We have no idea what kind of raid content and amount we're getting with campaigns. During one of the streams a few months ago they acknowledged the raid amount in TDS was not enough. But it wasn't a strong, confident statement if I recall correctly. We're probably not going to find out anything until the beta forums are up, like we did with TDS. I remember seeing the thread for each raid, and everyone collectively saying "That's it?"
So the one off raids are designed to be easier? We'll probably never know as we can't get thru the first raid... which of course reminds us of ROT. For that expansion our guild luckily had friends who could get us the raids past the "entry" raid which we enjoyed, beat and helped us progress till we finally beat Rot. Which always seemed backwards to us but o well. Would it hurt the game if those raids ( the one offs ) became available without any pre-reqs? At this point half the endgame guilds that have beat the first three raids ( 8?ish months into the expansion) have finished TDS. Seems to be plenty for half of the endgame raid guilds just most of them are stuck with 3 + 2? I don't know they got removed from the tracking site so no idea who's beat those. Do we need more raid content for that I wholeheartedly agree, designing all of it to be bleeding edge and only seen by 25 or so guilds ( being hopeful the 17 number will creep up) seems an odd use of resources. Designing raids that scale in difficulty, easy /hard switch, or that ramp up as you progress further into a expansion seems a very good compromise. But alas that might mean some rotten casual guild might have some fun in the big playground...
The problem there is that would require making things even easier and making those wanting challenges even more starved for content. To be honest, none of the 7 TDS raids are all that difficult. There is some learning involved for some, but once figured out, you can beat them without flawless fights. It just takes some resemblance of class balance (doesn't need to be perfect), people that pay attention (most of the time) and people that actually try to play their classes beyond /attack and mashing a multibind nuke/heal. The real issue is probably attrition. The top guilds are replacing their ranks from the mid tier guilds. The mid tier guilds are no longer as healthy as they used to be. Where they could once hobble through some more current content, they're struggling because they have fewer and fewer good players to carry the mediocre ones through raids. I'm not a fan of the locked raids/flagging nor of the one off concept. But that's the only real barrier they have to keep all the content from being defeated quickly. It used to be that you needed to beat easier raids to gear up for the later ones. Now you can beat all the raids with the previous expansion's gear. You're pretty much just farming one expansion to be able to do the next expansion. Either way, there's a barrier in place. Just different.
