raid flagging suggestion

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by svann, Aug 22, 2020.

  1. svann Augur

    Instead of no flagging or participant flagging, just give the guild itself the flag for the event kill. This way all 3 tiers still matter, and you dont incentivize guilds to keep the same people in every week and bench the same people every week until flagging is done.
  2. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    How would you determine which guild gets the flag if there are multiple guilds in an open raid?
    Zunnoab, Yinla and GNOME_POWER like this.
  3. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    Make the raids challenging and flagging is irrelevant.
    Proximoe likes this.
  4. svann Augur

    Could be a chest item clickie just like the extra flags clicks used to be. Then there could be an option on it to flag either entire guild or entire raid.
  5. Cicelee Augur


    Can there, or will there, ever be a raid that is challenging enough for you though? I don't say it with disrespect, but sometimes someone is so good at something that there is simply never a challenge for them. And if something is devised that finally meets/exceeds the expectation of a "challenge" then it becomes impossible for the remainder of the player base.

    I don't know if that is such a good thing. Trust me, I like challenging content as much as the next person. But I also have to think of the majority and not just the top guild in the game...
    Skuz likes this.
  6. theonepercent Augur

    Require beating lower tier raids to request the next tier like most expansions do anyway. No flags for participating in raids.
    Boom solved.
    Proximoe, Allayna and Elyssanda like this.
  7. StiTch.ed Journeyman


    I've always been an advocate of having different difficulties made available for a given challenge. Have the standard raid, have the increased difficulty raid...hell have one that we aren't even supposed to be able to kill, and as we've proved in the past, we'll still kill it.

    Yeah we need to remember the littler players - but I don't see why that means we have to forget the bigger ones, and sometimes, a good challenge is what you need to bring peeps together. It's gotta be more than just one player looking for challenge, or we wouldn't go around killing unkillable dragons on PvP servers.

    RIP Kerafyrm <3
  8. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    What happens to a persons flags when they leave the guild? Wouldn't this just allow people to sell guild memberships for flagging? I don't see anything but problems if you put flagging at the guild level.
  9. svann Augur

    I think flagging is mostly intended for the race at beginning, even if they leave it in after. And it doesnt bother me a bit if guilds use flagging to recruit members, or that the person would need to reflag if he switches guilds. I actually enjoy that last thought.

    IMO the bigger problem is that we need 18 kills to flag for next tier and they are assigned to individuals rather than to the team. It puts incentive to keep benching anyone that misses first night since you want to give your flags to the people that would give you a quicker path to next tier.
  10. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Depends on how they make it challenging.

    They need to remember EQ is an aging game as is many of their players. We have a few members over 70 in the guild and as you can imagine their reaction times are not as fast as younger players.

    I don't mind a challenge, but I'd prefer raids to be fun.
    Skuz likes this.
  11. Pawtato Augur

    I don’t like the idea. No flagging has been very healthy for the raid game with the easier raids. Plus, it lets guilds pick and choose their events because the tiers are never balanced in regards to difficulty. How many times have T3/4 been easier than events in T1/2. Also, I’ve never been a fan of the multiple tiers concept just leads to more mudflation and obsoleting content within its own expansion.
    Skuz likes this.
  12. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    I think you are missing my point which is a guild could sell/give away membership in the guild in order for someone to get flagged. That person turns around and returns to their original guild which is now also flagged. And if you are saying that the flag stays with the guild tag it you can still do it by just inviting someone from another guild along. In the end it seems like a method that you can easily get guilds flagged for and the time unlocks do that without having to worry about adding flagging mechanics at all.
    Yinla likes this.
  13. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    No flags is fine. Just make the final tier of raids somewhat challenging and the final raid very challenging.
  14. svann Augur

    If someone in guild A clicks it, then guild A is flagged. Not the members but the guild itself. If you invite someone from guild B then they cant take it back with them because its the guild that gets flagged.
    Skuz likes this.
  15. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    This becomes a problem if guild merge and become a new guild. As the game ages more and more guilds are going to merge/create new guilds.

    I rather like the ToV approach with no flags, but I wish there was a way to do ToFS without having to do the first raid and EW without having to do the first one. We don't need anymore range items so would be nice to be able to drop that raid, pet ears are still in demand so we have to do the first to get that item from the 2nd. :rolleyes:

    The gear is all the same level so if a guild can beat a raid in T3 but not T2, what difference does it make to anyone other than the guild itself?

    But then I'd like to see all raids released at the same time and not staggered.
    svann likes this.
  16. Maedhros High King

    I prefer to never have flagging again but if they were ever going to return to a flagging system I'd like to see it only be required for one person to request and not necessary for anyone else to participate.
    Meaning as long as one person in the guild is there for every raid they can request the raid and anyone even Kyle with 25% attendance could still participate.
    Yinla, Syylke_EMarr and svann like this.
  17. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    Sounds like a lot of work to rewrite the system to allow guilds to have flags and for the flag system to accept that.
  18. Zunnoab Augur

    This creates horrific gatekeeper situations that prevent huge swaths of the game's player base from doing things all because an event or two is drastically over-tuned compared to others (inevitably resulting in a handful of people from guilds past the content sneering down their noses screaming "git gud" while swaths of the game stagnate).

    Forgetting TBL and its nightmarish tuning of the likes not seen since Underfoot, Drusella's Vault in EoK is an excellent example of where this design falls flat. There is no way I will accept that it was acceptable for two events with strict timed components to present a brick wall for a significant portion of the game's raid player base. The tuning gap between Crypt Robbers and the last two events in that zone is astronomical. I've always disliked "enrage" timer mechanics, especially considering the vast majority of the game's events don't shoehorn them in. At least there's a lore reason for Drusella's Vault though, even if I think the event could have benefited from an increase in the minimum time between waves or a reduction in HP of the elemental bane mobs. Design like ToV mitigates a tuning catastrophe like that.

    A great example is The Broken Mirror. That expansion would have looked very different for game wide progression if Damsel of Decay was a gatekeeper. Thankfully, it didn't have to be done to continue. Several events in that expansion can be taken on a number of different ways too. Did the developers intend that? Maybe, maybe not, but I think it's good design when an event can be approached a number of different ways and I cringe when any creativity is deemed an exploit. Plane of Health raids are a good example of that, with enormous room (quite literally) for different strats. As an aside, I also love the top down style of tuning for Enslaver of Souls. The latter parts of that event being more forgiving allows the insanity of the pool emotes and harsher DPS requirement at the start to be less frustrating overall. I think it's a good final boss for an expansion. I will credit Mearatas being at the end of TBL too, even if I think the random number generator silliness at 25% is unfortunate design. A raid force may either get one wave of mephits before the hall emotes with plenty of time to clean up, or two with one wave directly before the hall emotes. The latter is dramatically more challenging, and yes I know it was nerfed and they used to never pause for the halls. I'm not a fan of a single random component at one point late in the fight having an enormous impact on an event's difficulty. I actually love the mechanics of the raid, aside from the borderline unreasonable enrage timer (for when it was current).

    One size fits all tuning will never work. Difficulty levels would be ideal, but "everything must be completed to proceed" invites catastrophic effects on the game progression and (some) of the people on the top dancing around screaming "git gud" as the overall raid player base evaporates helps no one.

    I've rambled insanely here, but they must not design too specifically for the top, and ToV or at least TBM style progression mitigates gatekeeper problems that do nothing but prevent minor speed bumps if any to the strongest guilds while trapping mid/lower tier guilds into just a handful of events for most/all of an expansion.

    Also, I absolutely adore the flagging/loot changes over time that have been implemented. More flags wouldn't fix the problem of zones like Sathir's Tomb, but they will help raid forces with less consistent attendance. I feel they are going for a gear reset. That basically happened before Underfoot due to Seeds of Destruction's ease, so I hope the next expansion won't see another wave of crazy tuning.

    Lastly as a random comment, in my opinion Seeking the Sorcerer is an amazing example of a well-designed event that can be tackled in many different ways. It's brilliant, and I love when an event allows for tons of different viable positions and strategy quirks. I wasn't aware of whatever strat used the basement that they nerfed, but the viable play area for that event is still enormous. It's easily my favorite raid of ToV. Major kudos for the wedding raid operating pretty much exactly as designed from the get go too aside from the multicast quirk that was fixed.
    Skuz and Monkman like this.
  19. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    This is the best suggestion if we have to return to flagging. It also solves any flagging issues when TLP servers unlock the expansion. Many old expansions were changed to use this system, rather than the 85/15 rule
  20. Vrinda Augur

    I don't know why OP is even talking about this. Please do not bring back raid flagging. If a guild or open raid force has hit a brick wall on ToFS 1, but would like to try Kael 1, how does it hurt the game to allow them to do so?

    On a related note, giving the player base roughly a month from release to the introduction of the first tier raids to get through group content and level up was great! Kudos to the devs for doing it that way. A month between tier 1 raid introduction and tier 2 may have been more than what the players wanted to see, but it gave the devs time to review the t1 events to see if modifications needed to be made rather than being slammed with fires that needed to be put out from multiple events all at once.

    The two things that stand out in my mind as massive successes in handling of ToV are the preplanned and preannounced staggering of raid tier introduction and the elimination of ranked group buffs like Righteousness. Let's not backtrack on either, please.
    Skuz, Bigstomp and Yinla like this.