Looking in RoS raids halfway into expansion year

Pardon, I don't follow. Could you explain why my post reads like that to you?

In SoD they did it the wrong way round, they made the 36 man raids harder and with better loot than the 54 man raids.
We need the 2 raid similar difficulty but completable with less players.

I was kind of under the assumption they had gotten better at this stuff after 15 years :>. They've already done the heavy lifting by unifying the group and raid mission. Simply having two setups of numbers that they tune constituting what is 'normal' and what is 'epic' for the varying DZ shouldn't be hard at this point in development.

I also noted that someone mentioned the Normal and Hard SoD raids. The flaw there being that it was the same mission iirc, but you were simply limited to 36 people. This, in turn, led to people riding the bench for those raids, which is what led to the angst, not the concept of hard raids themselves. I'm suggesting the same 54, only they tune the numbers/abilities for the mobs and lower the margin for error in order to achieve the difficulty. In normal, Drusella is rooted, in epic... she moves and you dance the disco floor once more.

Whatever is easiest to implement. They now have a lot more technology at their disposal to help make it happen.

Absolutely. If only because that's the single easiest way to give bumps via Hero AA and what not. You want there to be incentive, just not so much that it has to be done. Also keep in mind it should be expected that some guilds come back and clear the epic version that they couldn't kill when current for the stat bumps when its no longer current. As such, you get replayability.

I kind of like the 2 stage evolving item idea. The raid items you get are stage 1, and then as you clear epic raids you get a cursor item to click that evolves them(example would be say 25% a raid finish, so 4 cleared raids = 1 level 2 item). When they hit 2, they're like 5 or 10% better in stats, a couple heroic points here and there... like 10-20 AC, etc). Nothing earth-shattering, but nice to show off.

Heck... if you really wanted to get saucy you could have them go purple and become non-prestige if it hits level 2 when the expansion is current.

That’s a great idea.
The guilds that can beat the epic content will still have to farm the dumbed down versions to get the item to upgrade.
It may work for people that can’t beat current tuning but will be boring as hell to those that can.
Not to mention having to do the same raid twice a week

This is a no win argument. If you want a give me game I recommend going to WOW. EQ has always been about taking the hard road. Back in the day people were happy to get a full set of steel plate. When epic came out some people got them others it took YEARS not days or months but YEARS to complete. With Gates of Discord, chanters had to charm mobs to Tank because very few people could tank the trash mobs. Most people didn't even raid GOD until OOW came out. With PoP raids dropped from 72 man to 54 to progress and unlock the content again was a long process most didn't get into the elemental plans for 6 months and most didn't reach Time until over a year had passed. When underfoot hit again most people struggled with the group content. Why does everyone expect to complete an expansion in 3-6 months? This has never been a hand out game. The reward for pushing your self to be the best is what EQ has always been about. Doing a lot of work for a Small upgrade / advantage.

Those that did Epic quest were respected for the effort they put in to complete it. Same could be said about the BIC, Shawl quest / aug. The effort to get fully raid gear was not something that everyone would complete each year most "raiders" would have gear from 2-3 expansions very few would get best in slot full complete. It is symbolic of all of the work that went into getting there. The Gear in EQ is the Reward but it NOT what makes the events doable.

Go to beta with your Full Raid force get the Fish and Fully gear your toon and try the events. Without Skill you will not beat them.

Gear adds a small factor to what your able to do.
AA's Add a factor to what you can do. This includes the hero AA that you earn from completing /ach. If your trying to compare some one that MAX aa to some one that got a few more then the auto grant then your not comparing apples to apples. Yes getting MAX aa takes time and effort but again this is what EQ is about the effort you put into the game.
Spells/ Focus also effect your game play if you got a people using the older spells, lower rank spells or not using the focus aug then they are not adding their full effect to the event. This means you will not be doing as well as a raid team that has Min/max their force.

Gear / AA's / Spells / Focus are all things that you can work on and improve until they are maxed. But even a maxed out toon means little is their no skill. As an example I had a friend that was a maxed out SK. He was able to do a lot of stuff solo that impressed me. One day when he was visiting I asked to try playing the SK. coming from a Healer / DPS clas and never having played a tank before. I ended up killing his toon 20+ times. He had the gear he had the AA he had the spells but my lack of skill on his toon meant I was better off using a tank merc. The other side of the coin is I know a Few players that DO NOT RAID. have no raid gear and have completed every /ach in the group game. They also gone back to old content and completed some of the /ach for raids. and before you think they just mass box it. their is a monk on povar doesn't box that has completed the /ach. What makes these group only people different is rather then expecting hand out they have put in the time and effort to Learn their toons and play them with a high skill level.

It sad that people that are Lazy and don't want to put any effort into getting better come and ask for things to be make easy for them. The truth is if everything is made easy then EQ will lose people. If it hard then people will go as well. No matter what they can't make everyone happy. Most the people I know that tell stories about EQ are telling about the time that they were able to over come something and that is what makes the lasting memory. Be it gaining and epic or being #1 on the server, or being the 1st to beat x event are all memories. Like when Brotherhood of the Spider killed a dragon that was said to be unkillable. http://wikibin.org/articles/kerafyrm.html Please note that the dragon was killed a year after it came out and on some server had not even been awaken for 7 years. Point being stories are made from people pushing them self not from hand out and EQ was never a game of hand out so please stop asking for nerf and find another way to earn what you seek. in the end it will be more rewarding for you to say we beat it. rather then after 5 nerfs we beat it.

It's a shame that you have put in that much effort for that post, based on a mostly wrong assumption/arguing from an angle that's not your's alone, but still the wrong one.
What had been suggested - and had you read the posts you'd know that - hasn't really got anything to do with "making things easier".
Instead, it's all about "making things accessible for lower number (and suboptimal composition) raid forces.

You pretty much say it yourself: No matter what they do, EQ is loosing people.
So opening the eyes to this reality and cater to the changed reality is a must.
They did so after PoP by going from 72 to 54 char raids, they can do so again.
Only this time, to avoid the bad side-effefcts the reduction post-PoP had on some guilds, I think that both variants (54 char events and any lower number version of the same event) should be pursued. And that, as was said above, in such a way that the lower-number event is actually beatable by that number and not turning out to actually be harder.

There were some variants brought up to still give incentives to maintain a 54man roster and do 54man events, but the overall goal is to "open up" raiding for lower-number (30-40 active raider) guilds TOO, so they do not have to dissolve as they do now, to the cannibalistic "nature" of the recruiting game.
Heck, these lower-number events MIGHT (depending on how "progression is done then) even do something against those events that frustrate people for half a year or more and only speed up the folding of guilds.

If you look above, there's guilds that are still working on last year's content.
That alone invalidates this statement of yours, and tells me you've based your post on an entirely off preception of the situation.

And yes, people naturally expect to beat an expansion until the next one's released, at the very max during the next one's current cycle. This is very different to the old times you report about and seem to cling to, because well... times have changed?! If you still raid TBM (other than for achievements or fun) today, you are dead as a guild, if you realize it or not - it is as simple as that.
The times were being 3-4years "behind" was "ok" for a guild are long over.

Yet another misconception.
Given the same "skill", gear adds a significant factor to what you are able to do - rivaled only by AAs.
Hero AAs in contrast are widely overrated and while "nice to have" are in no way required nor do they add much of significance if the other two are lacking.
Some achievements (like the completed 10% healing/DPS-eyes from TBM) add much more than others, yes. but even so: Everything else being the same, 10% less DPS should not let you fail, so you should be able to go and beat current content even without them.

The over-used word "skill" again, meh...
What's needed most is to know your raidforce's strengths and weaknesses and how to cope with them.
Throw together a bunch of top-raiders from different guilds used to do things in a different way and you have some wipes too, even though everyone seems to think they are the "pro's" of their chars.
Raiding is a teamwork effort and much like soccer that needs a team, not an assortment of top-egos.

And one of the problem for "live" imo is exactly what you suggest: that everyone and their grandmother "fully gear and try the events".
Because that way, is tuned for people in that expansion's gear and not for people in gear that they can realistically be supposed to have at release or during progression.

MS required everyone in EoK beta to not gear and AA with the new gear. Some of the raids we helped tune are some of the ones people complain about.

Skill is always downplayed on these boards because everyone has to be good. So it must be something else. I know let’s blame it on gear, should I show you the parses of my character in full conflagrant gear verse full RoS gear. PST it’s not that different, so it has to be something else. Try again with the gear argument though. Should I show you the parses on a 10% to healing dmg aug equating to about 1% for most classes?

It’s skill / personal drive bottom line

We've tended to win most of them. Lets go through some, shall we!

And that design philosophy was roundly fixed on TLP to thunderous applause. You lost that one.

None other than Smedley himself declared GoD was their biggest error, and the TIPT and GoD trials were nerfed into the ground because it was an admitted mistake. You lost that one too.

Once again... they readily admitted not only was GoD mistuned, but the endgame raids like Tacvi were broken and unfinished. Those mistakes have all since been fixed.

Bad game design doesn't make a game 'hard'. It just means it was poorly designed. And all the bad game design you spot check as being great and good has been fixed along the way.

Wrong. You clearly weren't around then. The elemental planes were broken into within weeks of expansion release on all servers, and the flagging was a work in progress by the devs until we have what we have now. The Rathe Council, as has been noted, was mistuned and wasn't fixed until May, approximately 6 months after release. Time was then fixed during that month, and it was rolled hard from then on by everyone who could get there. 54-man raiding wouldn't come around until later.

Haha... what? Raid content.. somewhat if you weren't 1%... GROUP CONTENT? Lol. Convorteum was not hard.

Because there are only like a handful of events in an expansion now? Pretty soon they'll give us half an event and a mob to be named later. And you'll be crying that mob should last a year, maybe ten!

Funny... that's exactly what i'm suggesting. But having the ballbuster be a c-block to progression is pointless. It has never worked at anything except encouraging people to retire and guilds to implode. Any game that encourages people to retire rather than play deserves the death its got coming and the devs certainly will have earned that unemployment check if that's their philsophy. Hope your LinkedIn is up to date pals.

And you're the guy who will wax poetic about the god ol days on some subreddit when its gone.

The simple facts are these. Every step of the way both Daybreak and SoE have taken steps to fix a lot of the broken and bad game development that you hold as sacred to make for a better game play experience. If you constantly and clearly have two levels of raiding.. one which can coordinate intimately and put max damage on target, and one which is not so good... simply tweak the numbers for each level... with the main gear available for clearing the first and second, and the gear going max stats only if you can clear everything(i.e. lots of work).

Some will do it, some won't, but it'll give both groups of people something to do and reason to keep paying the sub. Which.. lets be honest... is what really matters and what keeps us gabbing back and forth.

I disagree that adjusting a raid that was made for 54 down to 42 or 36 will solve anything.
Making gear that evolves based on the content you beat again I feel wont solve the issues.

In both cases it is what blizzard has done with WoW. They dropped their 48 man raids because ppl said it was to hard to get that many ppl so now it 24 man raids. Shortly after doing so most raid forces split into two and over time guilds dropped in size. over time ppl were not able to do the 24 man so they man it easy mode and dropped the stats on the gear for easy mode. in the end they have different level of raid and they had to revamp their gear system to adjust. So now you have the same item with a different item level that is better based on how hard of raid you beat was.

This let everyone see all the events yes. but a lot of their players once the content is beat go play another game until the next expansion comes out. everything is hand to you and their very little feel of accomplishment.

I returned to EQ because of the work that required and the feeling of accomplishment in completing different /ach. The last thing I want is to EQ to become like wow. and that what I feel this whole post is about.

If something is broken then fix it but fixing it is not dumbing it down. Their a number of guilds out their that simply don't try and expect to win. When an open raid can beat Queen and vault but other guild struggle then I don't believe that it the event that needs to be fixed. Raid take good leadership and people that are willing to focus. I been on plenty of raid where I felt my time was wasted because people could not follow simple emotes.

a week before ROS came out I had return from 3 year off. I was able to get all of Eok done using my gear / AA from CoTF. Moving into ROS I was able to complete all but the Skyfire group mission to get VP flagged. I then spent time gearing up to ROS group gear and I turned to the forms here and was able to beat Skyfire. I not saying it was cake but putting effort in I was able to progress. As for raids Yes the guild I was in struggled they were progressing slowly. I moved on to another guild that in many ways pushed me to improve. The 1st week in the new guild my DPS doubled. and it was not because of loot. I got no raid loot the 1st week. What changed was the class lead reviewed my aa / spell line up and made some suggestions. That was all it took. to change a few spell cast order and aa order and I double my dps. From their I went and farmed aa, augs and /ach on old content and the 2nd week my dps again took a jump. I then started getting gear. So yes gear helps but it not everything. My growth was because I went from a guild that ok letting me do things my way to a guild that set a bar and expected more from me. They help push me and guided me to be better. That what it takes if you want to raid. you have to work as a team and push each other to be better.

If an events broke then adjust it but don't dumb it down just because people can't beat it. I bet most ppl that are not beating stuff if they were to take a step back and look at what going on could find ways to improve. Be it doing a few more lower events to gear up / pushing ppl to up their AA counts. or simply looking at DPS / Healing levels and pushing people to improve. Some times it only a matter of asking the right person and being open to change that could help one to improve.

You are saying that because your guild can kill everything, it should be easy for everyone else, ignoring the fact that many guilds don't have the numbers or necessarily the best players on the server.

It is that kind of arrogance and inability to understand that other guilds have different capabilities and available resources that gets people riled up. It is not helpful, and certainly adds nothing to the discussion about the shortage of reasonably doable and meaningful content for half the raiding guilds in the game.

The simple fact is that just because you bought the expansion doesn’t mean your guild is entitled to beat it.

You might want to take 30 seconds to look at the guild in his Magelo signature and then at EGL. I'm in his guild. We've been stuck on ST2. Having 45 people login within an hour of raid start time is a good night for us. We don't have elite players from top to bottom. We do value that people showing up and putting up 40k dps is better than 0 dps. I think he does speak from the perspective of guilds lacking the resources of the big boys. We've learned to make do with what we have and slowly, but surely progress.

The entitlement is strong in this thread...

I was just thinking this thread makes it easy to determine political affiliations.

Right?!

Save up your station cash and server transfer... could use a few good people over on BB still!

The T2.2 NerfQuest will probably allow the other 5 guilds in T2 to progress this coming raid week and so that means about a total of 20+ guilds will be in T3 pretty soon with 12 already having the expansion won.

For an expansion releasing in December everything is pretty on par with the past bazillion(?) years now.

This thread is a lil early this year. I'd try again in July.

Edit: As a side note, of the 47 guilds registered to EGL... just around 40ish (at best) actually try to do modern content and so if almost 1/2 are through the expansion at the half way point... hmm...

Fixed that for you.
If a guild is struggling with T2.2 then T2.3 is going to be hard for them and then T3.1 Hoskar even more so

Yeah... sorry, disagree with that there easily. T2.2 took us a few weeks? T2.3 and T3.1 took a week each maybe? T2.3 is a 'fake' DPS check provided you prioritize adds. T3.1, while a harder DPS check, can be handled by intelligent positioning if you lack Top 10 guild DPS.

If they’re fielding 40 and happy with 40K dps....we’ll soon hear the nerf T2-3 calls.

Our pallies put up bigger numbers than that on live targets.

no, we need to get that up to 50!

according to some anyway

I applaud that, but not everyone did that, in fact from my own experience with beta testing (nothing recent) i'm willing to bet it's a minority - behavior patterns persist.

Meh...
You might want to re-read my post above.
I wasn't denying or even downplaying "skill" - i just think there isn't much "skill" involved in the first place for pressing buttons. It is my belief(!) that the "skill" you need for EQ is only a rather good memory and some time for research. And then: practice, practice, practice to implement that knowledge with your teammates.

Same with gear: you - and others - are making it an XOR thing, when it isn't; it's not even an OR thing, it's an AND one.
See above, i specifically wrote "Given the same "skill", gear adds a significant factor..." and that was in reply to someone who claimed that "Gear adds a small factor to what your able to do".
A small factor?
When i gain around 100raw AC per piece from EoK to RoS and i don't remember how many HPs, i call that certainly more than "a small factor", all in all. Was i able to tank RoS in EoK gear? certainly. Is it noticeably easier in RoS gear? hell yeah. Some people just forget that all too quickly.
And now apply that to guilds doing EoK3.1 still - which would you rather have if you haven't won that event yet: All Hero AAs up to and including EoK or rather all RoS raid visibles for your tanks? Which do you think would have a bigger impact on the chances of success?

And another indicator for that you might in the future perhaps read a bit closer what you comment on.
Because that part was about stuff from achievements - namely Hero AAs that were mentioned and i brought the TBM eyes up to give an example for one that mattered more while my point was that the overplayed Hero AAs mattered even less, in the grand scheme of things.
Do Hero AAs and such matter to "separate the better from the good"? certainly, but that wasn't the question at hand.
The poster i replied to claimed that Hero AAs and such mattered MORE than gear, and that i outright call a blatant lie.
Why? Because one or two gear upgrades (out of how many again?) more than make up for missed Hero AAs (unless you miss them ALL, then the threshold becomes somewhat larger, but still: Gear > Hero AAs anytime - well, until you're talking maxed gear anyways!)...