Time to rethink "timed raid unlocking"?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Findawenye, Apr 17, 2020.

  1. Ryino Elder

    Yeah I rallied against this in beta thinking it would be bad but it exceeded even my expectations. This was supposed to save people from the horrors of lockout raiding but instead led to 3 vacation days and a raid on Valentines weekend. Thanks but no thanks for this system.
    Xeladom, Elyssanda, Koryu and 2 others like this.
  2. Zunnoab Augur

    Mearatas? It was more than Mearatas. Try the brick wall that was 2/3 of the events in Sathir's Tomb in RoS. The unfun poorly-implemented comet mechanic on End of Empire didn't help some I'm sure (those shields should protect areas, not need to instantly placed at the exact center of giant circles). I still think End of Empire wasn't that bad, but my goodness people I talked to hated that event.

    But even T1 of TBL being harder than most content in the past decade of expansions after Underfoot was a problem. Empyr wasn't a joke either but I can't say how it felt in a more moderate force.

    I have always spoken out against ridiculously tough tuning, and the "stomp on the fingers of the mid/low tier guilds" habit the devs have part way into expansions. But, here is the thing. We're strong. I haven't gone into an expansion as part of a seriously strong raid force before.

    The point of that wall of text? As part of IL, I have no idea what ToV feels like to mid/low tier guilds. I can see a change and think "oh dear, I hope that doesn't kill any guilds," but I can never know for sure what it feels like.
  3. Barraind Grumpy Old Bastage

    Flags/Keys were historically a way to BS us that content was ready.

    I figured everyone knew that was a garbage excuse after VT and Elemental Planes, where we got inside and stuff didnt really work right until a patch a couple weeks later that removes loot drops (still have no idea why the knight shield got yanked from VT in that patch since our emp 'shield' was more useful as a cloak due to the ac, but its fun to have one of the 3 or 4 that exist) , fixes bosses, implements the thing that lets you get to the last part of the zone, and so on.
  4. Allayna Augur

    There was so much wrong with how this change was handled.

    There was public outcry to delaying raid launch a month after the actual expansion launch. Raiders care about raids, telling us “not yet” and making the excuse about not raiding holidays is a cop out. People who enjoy the thrill of the race took off 3 separate weekdays from work (T1, T3 twice), something that took a bit of choice away from guilds. For instance, after the double lockout fiasco of TBM, Machin Shin decided we would not raid every 4.5 days but every 5 for progression flagging.

    There was also a public out cry to leave in some degree of group flagging to request the raids. This has been done various different ways over the years and was completely taken away this year. I personally think they did this related to another moment of bad PR, a progression mission that was bugged requiring the dps to kill a named in less than a server tick, 3 times, and this was required to request raids.

    The communication. If you have a catastrophic failure, server crashes, script issues, whatever that makes the content unavailable when it was said it would be unavailable, have a protocol in place, a plan. Either force repop the NPC, take the NPC out of game, or some other fair play. This goes along the lines of content should never be released on Tuesday at 9a PST. Sitting for hours with “we’re working on a fix” leaves much to be desired.

    The content. Other top 5 guilds, hell all other guilds correct me if I’m wrong. We’re tired of artificial constraints on the raid. A boss that flies away at 72% every time, no matter how hard you burn. A mob that spawns adds every 5% and then locks at 2% with adds up. I would far rather have a boss spawn those adds and they stay up after the boss death than the current system. Aalishai raid is like that, burn it if you have the dps, you still have adds to deal with before you get the win.

    This expansion fell flat imo on actual mechanics. A sacrifice is required or 5 die? That’s percent based on the boss hp. How about rewarding players for not dying. I love death adds, you die needlessly and your punishment is now you have to deal with “Allayna’s rotting corpse” add. Mearatas was a good ruler for skill. 3 guilds beat it before the first nerf, we’re 9 nerfs in and there are still guilds who haven’t beaten it with more levels, gear, aa etc. That’s a strong indicator of a raids difficulty being related to skill.

    So yes, bring back flagging. But also take notice of how incredibly disenfranchised your player base is with how you’ve handled ToV. Learn from mistakes without ego, I know Machin Shin will.
    Remien, Chopin.Xegony and dreadlord like this.
  5. Zunnoab Augur

    I don't think it's fair to say flags/keys were mostly about content not being ready though, even if there are examples.

    Having seen every event except Tserrina for ToV in beta, I can say with confidence the staggered release had nothing to do with finishing making the events.

    Edit:
    I'm a fan of mechanics that don't reduce the game to DPSQuest. I for one am happy to see the percentage mechanics in the ToV raids.
  6. MyShadower All-natural Intelligence

    I think if the devs wanted more paid subs they might look to expanding the replayability of the raids beyond farming gear and getting the challenge achievements. Friendly competition among players helps the community aspect of the game. Beating the events and/or order of it is only the beginning.

    If they wanted to stimulate more interest in raids they could get creative and probably provide a way to monitor more on raids. Help guilds track some things that matter beyond the order. Who beat it with the fewest deaths, highest damage output on a DPS check, least amount of healing required, fewest deaths before win, fewest emote fails before win, etc, etc. Provide enough information and people will figure out how they want to compete.

    All the data that hits the servers could provide a lot of entertainment for competitive play if they provided it. The community might even organize the information on their own if it were just made available via an API. I understand their is limited dev time but their is an audience that will help if allowed to. Of course, you could even charge for access to the data.

    The success of the TLPs, altmania, purchasing expansions and subbing to play recycled content proves their is interest in playing the same things with/without variation. This does not have to be limited to raids.
  7. MyShadower All-natural Intelligence

    DPG could even award prizes...like Krono or a trophy in the Guild Lobby. Bring back that feeling you got when you participated in a truly unique moment.
  8. Zunnoab Augur

    I don't remember the name of them off hand, but those clockwork bosses that gave increasing rewards for performance were interesting. That's a lot of new items added though come to think of it, unless it's done somehow with an evolving item that's set only by facets of various raid settings.

    So many ideas might not be feasible though. And then there's the "this is an RPG" factor, where how much do you expose the inner workings of an event to players to tweak? That's like an advanced version of difficulty levels, which if I recall isn't feasible.

    I think such variance is pretty much the only thing that could please the most people, because I don't think it's possible to provide something genuinely challenging for the strongest without locking most people out of it entirely, unless they just abandon their guild mates to hop to a strong guild. Plenty of strong players just outright quit when their guild dies though. I don't want to get into the "bad" player debate. It's interesting how relative that is. One guild's moderate is another's terrible. One guild's exceptional is another guild's "competent." By guild I mean raid force in general, of course, since not all raid forces are made of one guild.
  9. Barraind Grumpy Old Bastage

    I cannot think of a single use of Keys or Flags from the era I was racing for world firsts that they werent put into place because the last tier of content wasnt ready, with the exception of Tacvi, which we found out later we werent expected to make any progress in pre-Omens.

    Actually, I think sleepers might have been? Paladins werent in the first few sets of keys for that one.

    VP wasnt ready at launch, VT wasnt ready at launch (it existed but several mechanics just didnt work and you couldnt progress past a few points), EP's and time werent ready at launch, Anguish was a repeat of VT. I guess if we count Inktuta, that was alllllmost ready that first zone-in? but not really since half the scripts didnt work.

    The nest was absolutely borked beyond belief; when we unlocked it they made an announcement at a press conference they were in the middle of that it was opened it before they expected and we had an emergency patch that suddenly didnt disconnect us and punt us to the safe zone in broodlands when we tried to zone in, but tasks didnt work the way they were supposed to for another week (so no Vishimtar for a bit).



    It was all nonsense, and nonsense they could have just said "this will be ready in X time".

    Its like the "Automatic raid unlock feature we cant adjust" that gave you all a month of derdling, that, oh look at that, didnt unlock the raids on the server that was up the entire time live was down until live came back up.
  10. Maedhros High King

    Maybe try to let go of the raids from 15+ years ago bro, this isnt TLP.
    Also, take off the tin foil hat.
  11. Zunnoab Augur

    The raids were operational even in December though, so I'm not following your point here even if it was true every time in the past. I'm not defending the fiasco with the T3 unlock situation, but I'm fairly confident it had nothing to do with the events not being ready. A simple delay would be better PR than such a conspiracy.
    Allayna and Maedhros like this.
  12. Maedhros High King

    Time released raids would be much better than flagging if they got it right.
    Open on weekends, away from any patch to ensure server stability.
    Make sure each tier of raids had a necessary increase in difficulty that could be scaled down later.
    Flags are obviously going to be a point of contention, because eliminating them changes the status quo security blanket that some high end guilds have relied upon to stay relevant for years.
    Remien, Yinla, Jhenna_BB and 4 others like this.
  13. enclee Augur

    They won’t listen to your feedback.
  14. Windance Augur

    Not having flags is HUGE for those of us in guilds who haven't managed to beat ToFS.

    It means we can try T3 and avoid the ToFS 1 <insert foul language>

    As far as the staggered release. I don't mind that either, expect it should not be '30/60/90 days' it should be the 'First Sunday at noon PST after 30/60/90' days.

    Everyone who scheduled to take time off work to be first have a right to be pretty ticked off.
    Zunnoab and Allayna like this.
  15. Vicus Augur

    I see how you came to this but when they say they regret they made it to easy before they release it, then it is their fault. They knew it was an issue and instead of fixing or delaying it so they could fix it, they released it. They choose to meet deadlines vice give the expansion the best experience possible to the players.

    This make it sound like people on the forums have this huge amount of power that it actually effects DPG's. The forums want a TLP now. The forums want PVP/FV (I don't). The forums wanted the T3 raids last month and wanted this large patch not to happen a day before T3 raid opening. They haven't been swayed by any of that, but somehow magically the forums said TBL wasn't what we wanted so please make TOV so simple that there is no challenge to anyone with some raiding experience....and they said sure only because we asked? I hope the devs can process feedback much better then that.


    This was a clear failure to act on a known issue to meet a deadline.

    I agree with everything else you said x1000 though.
  16. Maedhros High King

    I think you would be surprised by how much feedback they do take, not only from me but from a whole lot of other people. Thats not to say that they will always do what the feedback says, but I know that they see a whole lot of it, and I like to believe that some of it is considered.
    How else do you think the opposite end of things happen? Someone complains about a certain ability that is overpowered and the next patch it gets nerfed. You think thats a coincidence?
  17. enclee Augur

    No, I think they look at usage metrics on their end to determine accessibility/difficulty that fits within in their vision. In my opinion, the development team has log of things to knockout based on how it fits within their scope of EQ. Obviously, they do take in some feedback but mostly I think they prefer to let things unfold and tune out the forums.
  18. Jhenna_BB Proudly Prestigious Pointed Purveyor of Pincusions

    Unfold and tune out on the forums. Which is the worst idea, but I fear you are correct. Such a microcosm of the player base even come to these boards, never mind participate in the conversation.
  19. Zarzac Augur

    I didn't think I would, but I like the concept.

    I'd change:
    • Open T2 raids on the first Sunday of the month after a full month + of T1.
    • Open T3 on the first Sunday of the next month after that.
    • Keep patch dates the same which gives 2 weeks to bake in stability.
    • Make T1 a little harder than you should - then nerf to easy mode after T2 goes live
    • Make T2 harder than you should - then nerf it down after T3 goes live
    • Make T3 way harder than you think you should - Nerf every patch after that until you think it's "right"
    Maedhros likes this.
  20. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    I think this idea has merit. I am still a fan of the timed release of raids. But the top guilds absolutely smashed through the raids in less than an hour. Wow!

    Now, I am not indifferent to the effort and logistics involved in making sure the several hundred people concerned with this race avail themselves to it. And I honestly think not enough developer attention was paid to ensuring this event went off without a hitch (again). To wit, scheduling a HUGE patch the day before the [final] raids were due to go live was a colossal mistake. And, sadly, one that's been made several times before.

    While the race impacts a small portion of the customer base, they are the halo customers. The ones the rest of the players (like me) look at to see what's possible. Many of them spend significant amounts of money in the game, as well as spend time beta testing and sharing sage advice on the forums and in-game. They have earned their moment

    Devs, artists, coders, leaders, and JChan, please know that I APPRECIATE all the work you put into this game that so many of us are deeply passionate about. I am confident in your ability to evaluate what's happened so we can all move forward as a community.

    Thank you for what you do!