Raid content for the non 1%

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Windance, Sep 11, 2019.

  1. Vumad Cape Wearer

    The issue with raiding for the non-elite is poor game design and mechanics. I can handle them, so I am not complaining, but I'm a supporter of "the under dog" in a fight and good design.

    For instance...

    The auras for Dance Dance Revolution are on an environmental or NPC spell effect. You can have this on and still miss it in the same room if you affect distance is set to closest. Despite having a 8700k, 32gb ddr4, a gtx1060 6gb and a 100mbs internet, I still only pulled 12 FPS in Ellishai the other night on raids. This lag is server side and game engine based. Not my computer or internet.

    I'm not complaining about the game engine however. I simply should not have to mess with my graphical settings for raids. Raid event auras should not be on the same graphical setting as ANY spell. Auras on a safe spot, around a players feet, or anything else of that matter should be lock on and at max. End of story.

    Emotes are also poorly designed. The idea that a 3rd party program is necessary to not miss a massive amount of spam is ridiculous. Even the on screen displays are often poorly designed. Look at the group event relic raiders. The room is a bright white, and the overlay is yellow. Who designed that and why? I mean the room being that bright in itself, but to make the overly yellow?

    No raid mechanic should depend on "so and so identifies such and such about to happen to player" in the emote filter. Many events do have overlays, like cacktitti, but ALL of them should have an overlay and a chat filter.

    It shouldn't be hard for open raiders to just randomly invite people. They shouldn't need 3rd party programs to know when something is happening. They shouldn't need to struggle with contrast issues or poorly tuned graphical settings to see event mechanics. Yes, the game engine is old and limited, but raids can work much better for these people within the confines of the existing system.

    I love the raid banner suggestion. I started raiding in open raids and was recruited to a raiding guild from it. That's why I am so supportive of better optimization of the interface for these players.
  2. Mintalie Augur

    No. This does not happen. Repeat offenders *sometimes* get called out. If someone was a repeat offender and missed the first emote on a new raid night, sure, maybe they'd get the boot (and rightly so) but this blanket statement is categorically false. No guilds have the luxury of being that perfect, not even RoI.
  3. Sancus Augur

    Plenty of people in RoI don't use GINA at all. Every modern raid filters emotes into "Event Messages"; if you filter that to a separate window it won't get lost in spam. The color of the overlay is dependent on the color you have Event Messages set to. Yellow may not be the most sensible default (although I imagine they thought it was a sufficiently bright color), but you are able to change it.
    Zunnoab, Vumad, Metapsyche and 3 others like this.
  4. Laronk Augur


    I don't think any guild does do this. Unless someone keeps failing emotes and wiping the raid then maybe but generally emotes are easy to follow. If filtering events to a window doesn't work, try gina
  5. Sathayorn Augur

    Naw, this is urban legend. In the real world we just make fun of people who fail emotes, and only take action against those who consistently fail. Also, any guild worth their salt gives DKP to the benched players, as any guild worth their salt forces them to raid if they're online.
    Zunnoab likes this.
  6. Natal Augur



    The difference is mostly due to mid tier guilds having to play with whoever they can find as opposed to an optimised guild roster that high tier guilds have. It is easy to max dps/tanking/healing or whatever when you have groups designed with that in mind and don't have to compromise one or the other because the raid is lacking in some other functionality. Having an optimized raid team is not the same thing as skill.

    Skill comes largely in the form of reaction times and initiative when the wheels come off, working as a team rather than as an individual. If you are in a well balanced raiding party (which high tier guilds almost always are), you are not tested to anywhere the same extent as you might be in a mid tier raiding party.

    Basically what I am saying is that it is easy to be "good" if you have the resources, less so if you don't. People who play routinely in high tier guilds have no idea about what challenges mid tier guilds have to face, and should not be commented about it from their position of ignorance since they literally do not know what they are talking about.

    In my experience, btw, usually when a raider from a top end guild raids with us, they are very often arrogant ***** that charge around with no consideration of what other players are doing, then blame the ensuing chaos on the general "lack of skill" when in fact they were the ones who messed up. In short they are incompetent as team players. So please, don't talk about their superior "skills".
  7. Mintalie Augur

    I'd love to see the number of high end players who have never been in a mid tier or low tier guild. My guess would be ZERO.
    What a load of bollocks. Most of the top tier raids lead open raids on a weekly basis. I've personally participated in several top tier guilds' open raids--who, by the way, lead the raids solely to benefit the people not in their guild--and know from first hand experience that your assertion is simply untrue.

    I'll be AFK playing the world's tiniest violin for you.
    Warpeace, Cadira, Sancus and 2 others like this.
  8. Metapsyche Augur

    Yep, in my experience most of the top guilds are doing so well because they have perfect group compositions. Working together is never a factor.

    I’m actually curious if anyone runs as many Tanks as Valhallah, lmao. We’re like Oprah Winfrey with tanks. You get a tank! And you get a tank!
  9. Windance Augur

    We normally have 12-13. If only we could get 3-4 of them to switch to healers raids would go so much smoother.
  10. Veritas New Member

    "Mintalie, post: 3820429, member: 276"]I'd love to see the number of high end players who have never been in a mid tier or low tier guild. My guess would be ZERO.
    What a load of bollocks. Most of the top tier raids lead open raids on a weekly basis. I've personally participated in several top tier guilds' open raids--who, by the way, lead the raids solely to benefit the people not in their guild--and know from first hand experience that your assertion is simply untrue.

    I'll be AFK playing the world's tiniest violin for you.[/quote]

    Of course the top raiding guilds run open raids out of the goodness of their hearts, wow i couldn't even type that with a straight face.
  11. LizardHealin New Member

    Its a good recruiting method as well as gearing alts. Also a good chance for people to try raiding after a long break since there aren't any real mid tier left.
  12. Tucoh Augur

    There's potatoes everywhere, and often potatoes can perform at a high level when they have a narrowly focused job, leadership to keep them in check and a team to do their job around them. They might be valuable members too if they have good attendance and don't cause drama. But take them out of their environment and they'll be unable to adapt and won't even know why they are doing so poorly.

    But make no mistake, the higher you go up the ladder, the better the average player is going to be. And to p2aa's point the superstar in a mid-tier guild may look really great, but they may be merely average when compared to a top-tier guild's roster. Beyond that, being in an environment of other top-tier players helps you become the best version of yourself, where as you'll stagnate if you're constantly surrounded by people just cruising through the game.
  13. Bamboompow Augur

    Well, based on comments, its pretty fair to say that some servers are VASTLY more healthy than others. I am not on a healthy server.
    Zunnoab likes this.
  14. Zunnoab Augur

    It's not only that though.

    The raid tuning is bonkers the last two expansions. There would be at least two more active raid guilds on Luclin-Stromm right now, and the tuning and design decisions of RoS and TBL are directly responsible for the raid viability situation in the game. TBL gets the dishonorable mention of being the next GoD/Underfoot.

    I want to be clear my observations are my own, and I'm not speaking as a member of my guild's leadership. We are doing well, actually, but this kind of design isn't sustainable in the least.

    I don't know of any six second emote, but the harshness of design is what is bonkers.
    1.) The 20 minute event timers are just plain horrible. The game didn't need "enrage" timers for most events in its history and it certainly doesn't need timers that make even trying not even worth it for anyone but the strongest raid forces. The strict time elements in Sathir's Tomb likely made RoS the end of the line for multiple raid forces. If the specific raid composition needed to beat the wave timers on the second event isn't the end of the road, the ridiculous 20 min timer on the last would finish the job.

    2.) Event design should keep in mind that the game doesn't always run perfectly. See the pathing issues and ghosting issues for Conflagration Generals. Positioning can mitigate that, and the event in fact does give more time for the double emotes later in the fight, but such a level of randomness in combination with raid bugs probably makes the event extremely difficult for people not fielding ideal forces. Randomness in general seems more common lately, and when certain elements of fights are wildly more difficult than others sometimes, that's a bad thing.

    3.) Mechanics should be fun, not ridiculous. Some examples: The comet/meteor mechanic in End of Empire is ridiculous due to the number of them and the way it works. If the shields provided an area of protection it would be more reasonable. I am convinced the balance mechanic on Conflagration Generals has to be broken. A 1% balance, with a harsher mana/end drain if they are "hugely" out of balance, which isn't really possible to gauge anyway considering the balance is required to be so tight to begin with? 1% out of balance is enough to trigger an emote for them healing. 1% out of balance (?) triggers the mana/end drain sometimes it seems? We regularly farm this event and haven't wiped to it in weeks, but the balance mechanic is bonkers. We do not get the mana/end drain often, but I have to wonder is 1% balance seriously intended? The boss mobs for Prince Ralaifin stopping to cast while spamming their AEs if they are out of position seems like a pretty severe oversight as well.

    The T1 events are "easy" compared to the rest of TBL, yet are still tuned very difficultly compared to past expansions. Past that, it just gets worse.

    This tuning is unsustainable for the future of the raid game.

    In the past events didn't often combine harsh tanking requirements, harsh DPS requirements, splitting the raid, and strict mechanics all simultaneously. That is the norm now, and that is a huge problem.

    I will say one thing: Even though an event like Mearatas is absolutely unreasonable, it is good it's the final boss.

    When Underfoot was retuned, there was pretty much an apology post saying they tuned for it to be difficult for a force entirely geared in SoD gear. They learned that is not realistic, and there was a comment to the effect that they want people to desire to do their events rather than avoiding the ones that are unpleasant to deal with.

    The devs do amazing for what they have, but I really hope they know/care how damaging RoS and TBL have been to the raid game.
  15. Brohg Augur

    raid progression was uneven as regarded the "difficulty curve", but I didn't find any mechanic in RoS to be overly restrictive or outlandish. Rise of Smoke's simultaneous tanking arrangement is much more strenuous in that regard. The Sathir Family Line did offer a test that's been… fairly uncommon in EQ's raid history, vis a vis the quality of a raid's average dps players. "All it takes" to beat Sathir Line handily is for the raid's median to be "good" across 15 minutes.
  16. Metapsyche Augur

    I have to agree with the enrage timers and DPs checks. Maybe let people drag a fight out as long as required to succeed? If a guild wants to spend an hour killing a single mob, let them! Add a reward (extra “muhbis” quality item?) if a raid is beaten in a specific amount of time. Rather than ending the attempt, how about end the bonus loot?
    Zunnoab and Yinla like this.
  17. Brohg Augur

    raid fails if tanking/healing is done badly

    raid fails if CC/mechanics is done badly

    ... why do people think DPS being shouldn't matter?

    besides anything else, it's the part *everyone* can contribute to.
    Sancus likes this.
  18. Metapsyche Augur

    Because all DPS checks do is limit the amount you have to succeed at the mechanics. 100% of raids (maybe not princes, lol) are easier with MASSIVE dps.

    I don’t see a huge problem with letting a raid “do it the hard way” and complete an event considerably slower.
    Zunnoab likes this.
  19. Brohg Augur

    raids are easier with MASSIVE healing and tanking, too - it's just common to consider being MASSIVE on those fronts the default or even required.
    Sancus likes this.
  20. Raccoo Augur

    ROS requiring flagging and gear to from EOK sounds quite similar to what they expected during Underfoot. There is a lot of turn-over in EQ, people leave, people come back after years and need to be caught up. At least RoS has the phlogiston as a gimme for helping to gear up a bit, but the flagging required from tier 3 EOK is ridiculous. After next expansion, if it is decent on raid and group gear, hopefully raid forces who were struggling in ROS/TBL can just skip the rest of ROS and dive into TBL/insert Velious sounding name here.
    Zunnoab likes this.