Just going to say it, you are killing the game.

I do like the repeated assertion that someone doesn't know how to play their class to maximum efficiency must be either lazy or incompetent.

Small wonder some of you can't find enough people to raid with.

I feel there are many true statements in this post.

I wanted to highlight the smaller raid force idea though because outside of the obvious drama to the 12 guilds that field full raids, and the sudden distinction in numbers going from larger to smaller, there are some positives that could be gleaned.

1. Easier to balance, with 36 (or other number) elites versus *some number of average Joe's, over 54 elites versus *whatever number most mid end guilds run with. Also balancing for 2 per class instead of 3 with an extra bard per group or flavor of the month etc etc. Min max differential differences are lower.

2. Lower resource consumption. Remove or at least reduce debuff slot issues, less lag, less taxing on the server etc.

3. Easier for guild leadership to manage lower numbers, easier to maintain lower numbers as a guild.

I do think the massively large raid roster requirement, that also needs to be talented and high raid attendance gets harder over time with the player base slowly shrinking. At some point this will need to be a serious consideration.

Even my top 10 guild could cut a ton of mediocre players and end up even better versus a lot of the drama we seen over trying to improve performance.

Fair points.

I admit my goal is not to get you to agree with me or the OP as we all have our own prospective. I personally didn't like GoD and have played EQ since probably mid Kunark, Velious and Kunark being my favorite times in EQ.

This brings up an interesting point of discussion and maybe Devs could address this by actually working with players on creating a better "starter UI" or rather a series of UI's that also have a brief description of how to use that UI.

Basically you have the standard UI so no tweaking on customization but all the AA are in place (most aa are given per level now at lower levels and they are in a series) as well as spells and even hotkeys. This would have to be made per class obviously.


This way as you level you simply "update" your UI and BAM! you are ready to go and it comes down to you holding down a button, spamming it and learning timing on /disc rotations and so on... covered in the simply explanation of how to use the UI.

I would be shocked if someone could argue against something this but maybe I'm way off base.

Sadly there is a lot of truth to this though. While yes there are many great casual players reality is there are far more that simply don't care to endure the process of knowing every inch of their class because it spans over many expansions.

I for one believe I do very well when I want to, raids or group... In fact I have been told many times I'm one of the best rangers people have ever grouped with while also been made fun of for wiping raids or groups in a non playful manner. Honestly this is true for just about everyone I have played with but some ignore the criticisms and allow their ego to dominate their game play, I personally allow their behavior while embracing my faults when I fail because I have no interest in being the best at all times in a video game or real life...

I have played with many casual players that have played for years and I'm almost shocked they understand how to properly log into the game. Likewise I find some casual players to be unable to join my guild simply because of time constraints despite the fact that they would easily be a great asset to my guild if they could join.

If would could get templates in more people hands on how to better play their toons on a burn/tank/heals I believe the game would be far more competitive.

I'd support the idea for mid level players to have a way to obtain better gear that is less than a T1 raid gear, but that's it. Gearing would happen at an incredible speed and in the end as many have pointed out the problem would be better players in a end game guilds would dominate and then log in alts and re dominate... It would be 2/3 months before you needed vastly more content while lower skilled players still struggle.

As for gear, this could be solved in a variety of ways.

I've always felt that if you have tiers that look like this:

1) group - tier 1
2) group - tier 2
3) tradeskill - tier 3
4) raid - tier 4
5) raid - tier 5

The next expansion gear should look like this:

1) group - tier 4
2) group - tier 5
3) tradeskill - tier 6
4) raid - tier 7
5) raid - tier 8

Then the following expansion would look like:

1) group - tier 7
2) group - tier 8
3) tradeskill - tier 9
4) raid - tier 10
5) raid - tier 11

In this way, the previous raid content is about on par with the new group content, and provided upgradability for all characters, without making previous gear obsolete. (previous expansion raid gear would still have raid bonuses and be somewhat superior to current content group gear, while still allowing progression, and keeping old raids relevant for 2 expansions).

Also, you keep stat creep somewhat in check, by limiting yourself so there aren't huge gaps between expansions, which has become an issue I think. If you're group geared from The current expansion, you should be able to walk into the new expansion and be able to participate in group content. It shouldn't be nearly impossible to jump in, and get things done. (Also assuming you're mostly current on AAs).

I think a bigger problem, is the disparity of players who have done previous content and have obtained the "bonuses" it provides (heroic stats, free AA's etc). A newer player can't hope to compete or even catch up as most of these older bonuses require raiding to do. So unless you can solo/box the raid, you're out of luck. Forget about those awesome achievement only augs that you will never see. Forget about the 50 free over-cap stats you might have earned, because you skipped a couple expansions.

Then there's AAs. The difference in players withmax AAs vs a fresh heroic auto-granted AAs is considerable. As someone who mains a monk, and plays casually, most raiding guilds wouldn't even look at me. (No, I'm not applying currently), just stating a fact. Many want MAX AAs, with few (or no) exceptions. It's fine, but I would have to play for a year or more hardcore to even catch up to the starting point.

My point is just that there is a huge gap between those players who have played consistently, and have done all the things over the course of years, and the players just joining playing catchup. The bigger this gap grows, the bigger the problems become. Perhaps consider giving everyone the perks of 2-3 expansions previously, or removing/altering certain requirements to obtain certain items, or introducing current versions of those items, so that old content isn't required for current progression.

Who wants to go back to TBM to get a relife adornment, even tho it's still one of the only pieces of gear with endurance regen on it, and is still relevant as a really good aug with 60AC.

DB need to do raid contents for all kind of raid forces

TIER one to be much easier than last tier raids. our guild have one decent target we can kill ( gorowyn) ,due to our low raiding number ( 38 to 40 ), , I know some can do more with less, with some said, there are a big difference on some player skills , and in our guild we can see this a lot.

easy to say learn to play better , easy to say, not that easy for some players it seem, even if we trying to help them the best we can .

we doing 2 days of joint raid : we are stuck at sathir # 2 , and we killed only one TBL raid ( general ).

*** tier one raids should be easier , specially for mid-range guilds , and being much harder as we progress .
see how MEARATAS being the hardest raid and last one seem to be a real challenge for higher end guild.

possible to lower the difficulty of some raids ( specially tier one ) several months before the next expansion? so lower and mid-range guild could have a chance to get some raid upgrade armors and spells.

we are loosing some players atm in raids, and summer is not even there yet , we are stuck in raids, as a mid-range guild , i guess being stuck don't help.

our schedule look like ( kill gorowyn on our own ), prince and droga in eok..............yes EOK and being sick of these raids ....

then joint raid, we can kill one TBL target ( general ), then killing sathir #1 and veeshan peek # 1
then trying to kill our second TBL raid for a 1st win.

** here and there we get a new recruit ( hard to get ) , with zero progression done, and with the need to have EOTD progression for them ( bad design ) ....

The basic problem is that mid tier guilds can't field full raids, and most raids that drop anything useful to them require a full roster to have a reasonable chance of winning. If your guild can field low to mid 40s consistently, there are almost no relevant raids you can do and stand a reasonable chance of beating (although you can with some if you are lucky and don't make ANY errors). That is the issue. It is fine for the top one or two guilds on the server, who can fill up their rosters with people they leech off the mid tier guilds, but that leaves those mid tier guilds in a constant recruiting cycle without ever getting enough numbers (let alone class balance) to do much that is relevant.

The problem with current raiding from a mid tier guild perspective is the 54 man format and very little tolerance for anything less than that.

The time has come (actually it came quite a few expansions ago) to have smaller event sizes, or at least implement "hard mode" raids that have reduced damage output/hp/adds etc, but have a lower max limit on attendees (say, 36 or 42). That would open content up for a lot more guilds that are basically dead in the water at the moment because they don't have the numbers or class balance to do 54 person raids.

It is killing mid tier guilds, that is what the OP is talking about. He isn't asking for everything to be easier, just that there be SOME content that is doable by those guilds, otherwise why should they bother raiding at all?

Ultimately that will affect the high end guilds as well, since they rely on leeching raid-trained players off the mid tier guilds in order to maintain their own raid capabilities. Maybe not right now, but if all the mid tier guilds stop raiding, the flow of experienced recruits to high end guilds will dry up as well. They will have to start recruiting group people who lack raiding experience, lack flags, lack gear, all the issues mid tier guilds face now. Then the high end guilds will become like todays mid tier guilds and they in turn will collapse.

In order to keep the player base ecosystem healthy the devs have to provide meaningful content for all levels of the game, and right now they are failing miserably when it comes to the mid tier guilds. There just simply is no content for these guilds in TBL, basically only one raid in RoS, and three raids in EoK. With that kind of neglect the long term effect on the health of the game is grim.

The solution to this problem would have been to institute a general policy of reducing raid size by one group with each level increase expansion. This should have been started years ago, if they had done that we would still have a dynamic raiding guild environment, instead of a situation where there are only one or two guilds per server capable of doing meaningful raiding alone.

This is exactly what happened to 90pct of the player-base. This is what killed all the low and mid-tier guilds. The classification of "low" and "mid-tier" guild has been redefined a few times since. For a long, long, time it was done with spell focus degradation. When every caster and priest and many hybrids were looking at downgrade drops from every old raid.

The melee and tanks kept showing up and trying to do the raids with no casters and priests, under the promise that they would be able to do current content once they had the AC and weapons from old content. Of course that was a lie. Those guilds folded and many of their melee and tanks didn't stick around to try and start over. It took a decade to convince the one person responsible for this stupidity to, not re-cant, but lessen the damage he was doing to the game. If it was not for that one person, we would still have WoW numbers.

So multiply every major problem with the game by 10 years, and see how many lifetimes it will take for EQ to "catch up." No matter the number of problems you put into the calculation, there will be no one left alive to see it.

Lotta calamity on here about reducing raid sizes...SoD anyone? It didn’t work then and please don’t speak for everyone about guilds wanting less in their raids....

MS ran a 12 man bench this last raid cycle.

66 online, to massacre content....that’s raiding ya? Otherwise you’re talking about grouping...

Don’t make this WoW.

Not all guilds want to run with less. What’s the phrase, cream rises?

I think this is the one major design flaw of games like EQ when you consider player power progressively increases every year and we are now in year 20. It doesn't fair well for raiders or group players who don't have the time to stay current. It only takes a short break or RL interruption to put someone way behind. I suggested different difficulty modes for the group game and I think it would work well for the raid game too. There is the whole developer time thing but if we are at a point of lost revenue maybe adding more developers should be considered at least until they can streamline the system. Just a thought which I am sure will never happen but worth throwing out there.

Or at least more options for catching up, without being forced to do old content.
(Edit: Especially old raid content)

You have no clue what sort of issues mid tier guilds face then. Try raiding with 40-45 per night, short dps/healing/and/or tanks, little chance of recruiting anyone, with about a group in your raid lacking experience/gear/flags etc. Then talk about how easy it all is. Talk is cheap. Try doing those raids with 42 and see how they become exponentially more difficult as numbers decrease.

Then you won't massacre much. Not anything that drops anything people want anyway.

It is all good and well if you can field full raids, good for you, if we could field full raids of experienced people we would crush content as well, all of it. In the old days we did just that, the guild I am in was once one of the top 6 server wide. But then we lost numbers at the start of one expansion (UF if memory serves me correctly), quality recruits on the server dried up, we could no longer field anything close to full raids and beating current content became virtually impossible in most cases. Then more people left because stuff wasn't being beaten and so on. It is a vicious cycle, and if you can't beat at least some content it goes on until the guild collapses. There are a lot of other guilds in the same boat. Where is the content for them? If guilds that lack the numbers to field 54 then they are going to fade away, because no one wants to bash their head against content that is virtually unbeatable if you don't have 54 or close to that.

Make 36 or 42 man raids. It is not like it has not been done before or did not work.

What.? All people do is say stuff is too hard. They even nerfed the TBL mobs, because so many people complained they were too hard. There is also no way that the majority of EQ players are hardcore raiders and their Alts.

I have never seen any one quit, because the game was too easy, but I have seen droves of people quit, because it was too hard. People quit from frustration and that's is caused by overturned content. Most people want to be god like and stomp content, that's why people raid, to get gear to make everything easier, not harder. Having a zone that is elite is fine, but making beginning raids tough is just stupid and frustrating,

I think they should go back to like it was, a raid was just getting a bunch of people together to kill dragons and end game boss mobs. Not these crazy musical chair raids. Killing nafagen was a fun raid, that's when EQ was great. Even raiding plane of fear or hate or time, those were fun and doable.

It's not simply numbers, its raid class balance. I see the problem as current (any era) raids that require not only 54 raiders, but a balance of classes within that attendance.

As soon as your raid force is light on dps, healers, tanks, CC, ... events become impossible. Lack of ideal raid makeup happens always to mid tier guilds. It's killed low tier guilds already. Mid tier guilds are surviving on new raid recruits who hope to enjoy raid content (for the first time) on a casual basis. Top tier guilds recruit from mid tier guilds.

The Devs need to allow for more then one way to skin each cat. Failure mechanics are terrible design.

I think about all the old raids I have solo'd that once seemed impossible (like The Brothers Zek in SoD). I think about the current raids and how/when/if I can ever solo them based on their mechanics. The outlook is gloomy.

I'm not saying that every raid should be solo-able someday. I am saying that the mechanics that prevent that eventuality also define a lower limit (1 group-able or solo) on the event.

I'm describing content that has a long replay lifetime within the game. Content that is valuable.

If a raid mechanic prevents it from ever being 1 group-able with 6 real players then I think the devs should reconsider because that event is dead on arrival.

Only one event in TBL needs basically a full raid. You can be short one to two groups for all the others and still not have much trouble. If you're missing some important classes then it's time to ask people to main change if you're not getting any apps. That's just what you have to do sometimes if you want to raid.

... and then 3+ years later Kizant, I want to experience that old "raid" content without much fuss. If the mechanics prevent me from ever soloing or bringing 5 friends to win it, I think it's poorly done content. The whole idea of "raid" is simply content that scales up socially. If that very same content doesn't age well, doesn't scale downwards, then it's not serving DBG business.

DBG is creating cookie-cutter content that has no value after it's not current. One example of excellent raid content is (unlocked) Vex Thal because we all still go back there for the unique clickie or skill mod item. VT has aged well and Fabled just help that outcome. There are whole expansions worth of raid content that are simply dead because they offer nothing of value to current players and/or the mechanics prevent them from being won with an adventure party of 1 to 6 players. The passive item AA changes were great for many reasons and one of them was to inspire players to go after old raids in Fear, SoF, and SoD, without much fuss. Unique Rank 3 spells are another inspiration for old raids. OoW and DoN have unique AA as well.

I guess I'm saying that creative unique items and item/achievement AA are good designs vs cookie cutter, level capped upgrades that can be skipped because they have built in obsolescence after 5 levels. That hints to why the classic TLP servers are still good business because those first 50 to 60 levels were unique class designs that mostly died with the 5 level capped cookie cutter upgrade templates since then. DBG is living off of 20 year old creativity. Create Anew.

response like that won't help those guilds who are struggling ...., when we doing joint raid of 54 players ( we only killed one TBL raid yet ( general ) and it is not from lacking ** important class **.

too bad we can't clone some of us , is there a problem with the best guilds to have tier one zones raid to be easier??? so everyone could get some raid armors and spells ? and something to do in new expansions.

several high end guild tried to * recruit me * and from different servers as well , it is maybe my fault too but I am loyal to a guild usually and leaving them would increase the problem they already have .

lower end guild just asking to have tier one raid zones to be easier { not all raids } .

playing EQ is not hard for many ( including me ) many times I am wondering why some players just can't seem to be able to perform better .................

easy to say to ask a player to main change ,but a good player who main change will still be a good player , asking a mediocre player to main change will still be a mediocre player.......

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