My brother in Christ, breakfast has the greatest of proteins. For EQ (and any game), difficult content should build on "core mechanics". Which means it should build on the abilities and statistics characters have and require players to maximize those stats and use those abilities correctly. This can be achieved by estimate a base level of DPS, non-tank effective health and tank effective health and use that as a metric for what is achievable by a reasonably geared/skilled group with reasonable composition. An easy mission should not require much, and should be achievable with a modestly skilled/geared group of awkward composition. The hardest achievements in the group game should require more even composition (where the tanking, healing DPS and utility roles are well-covered) and require the members to execute their roles well. To be more specific, it means the mobs need to hit harder, they need to spawn more, be more difficult to kill, AE harder and there should be a mix of "challenge mechanics" where players have to respond appropriately. This isn't far from what we typically get, but all too often the "challenge mechanics" are the only difficult part, and it just requires you to play in awkward ways to beat. ToL and Cut off the Head is one such example where typical challenge mechanics are to off-tank mobs for a bit while the rest of the group fights trivial mobs.
The only problem with this model is that only a niche group of players will be able to put together a consistent group to do the harder mechanics. This would be great, but often times if it is not a raid night, I am sitting in the guild hall because people have raid burnout and don't want to log in, or they have their own box teams to work on getting AAs back from a raid.
Correct. We're talking about the hardest 0.1% of content in an expansion. A few special configurations of already existing fights. It should only be done (in era) by dedicated players who step up more than usual. Without a challenging goal to shoot for, EQ is a casual bowling league full of old people that get together, throw some balls down the lane, eat stale nachos and have a good time playing a shallow game.
Well, considering the average age of the EQ player base getting older, yeah, we are getting to be a bowling league full of old people. However, I see your point that if we want to bring in younger people who are quick on the buttons, movement, etc., then there needs to be more of a challenge for them. Its why WoW is still as popular today as it was when it was launched, different tiers of raids and mythic tournaments.
Im up there and I hardly think anything in eq requires young reflexes. Just need to turn the netflix off and play the game.
Yeah, preferring EQ be a casual bowling league type game is a totally valid position to have, even if it's not one I share. It saves me quite a bit of $ though! I'll probably only need one month of subs for the 2023's expansion. No need to stay subbed to get all the AAs, do hunter/collectors if I'll be able to steamroll 2024's toughest content expansion in the first week. It's the same for raiding forces. There's no reason for folks to stay subbed throughout the year to maintain a competitive raiding force to beat the next expansion. They can drop their subs, go play other games and if they come back to EQ for a new expansion whatever they throw together will work out, maybe a day or two after the most dedicated of raiding forces!
I think perhaps that is one reason why they went to the loot system they are using now: to keep people in the game chasing after elusive, random drops. For instance, we have only seen one shield ore drop the entire expansion. With that being said, it will probably go to rot rolls by the time it does drop because the mains will have bought their ore. I know that raid guilds are trying to suggest things that will keep them interested in the game after they beat the raids, but I am not sure DPG could handle doing it with 23-year-old code and a limited staff. It seems the DPG, and the parent company DBG, are only interested in keeping the lights on in EQ, not really do any development to get newer players in the game, and their main revenue sources seem to be tied to TLPs for people who are stuck in this endless loop of reliving their golden years.
Good thing about easy content is you can just slum it with last year's shield or use the non-tank one and it won't change your ability to overcome the content. No need for grinding ores all year either, just use whatever you get while subbed and when you beat the expansion's vanquisher content you'll pretty much be ready for the next expansion.
Just some food for thought: while current raids may not be challenging or an accomplishment for you, they are absolutely challenging and full of accomplishment for others. The question then becomes: who deserves the challenge and the sense of accomplishment? (The obvious answer being "everyone," but is that possible? Maybe.)
The way I look at it is: How long should it take for your top ~5 raid forces to beat the toughest content? EQ's way of releasing raids adds some context to this question because by the time the third tier of raids have been released, the top 5 raid forces have gotten a substantial amount of raid gear and have completed the rest of the content, so you can't rely on time-locked gearing to answer this question as much as other games where the top raiding forces will defeat the content with more pitiable characters. In other raid content releases the elite raiding forces win their victories in different conditions than other forces, which adds to the challenge for the elites and makes their victories all the more impressive. Much like pre-nerf Mearatas or PoW victories. A good target for EQ, in my opinion, is 10 raiding nights to figure out and beat the toughest content for the top 5 raiding forces. This provides a reasonable challenge, a way to compare the elite of EQ and still provides an assailable goal for the top 20 raiding forces throughout the year. This gives all parties a reason to stay subbed throughout the year to prepare for the next expansion of challenges. Disclaimer: I don't raid in EQ and don't have a stake, so take my musings with a grain of salt. I only really care about difficult group content and view it as being adjacent enough to this thread to post in it.
The main problem with that is in order to minimize the broken raid content that gets to live all of those guilds have them figured out during beta and when they hit live there is nothing to do but get the walk up wins.
Well hell, they literally tell us how the raids work in the beta forums. Just pre-order and you get the info.
True, and that is the only way we can report if something is broken versus us not understanding it. Though just because you know exactly how a raid works doesn't mean you are able to execute a strategy to beat it right away.
During beta they really should just be testing their scripts and making sure the right debuffs are landing and whatever mechanics they have are working. Then before the raid is live they can tweak all the numbers and even change what the spells are doing if they wanted to. There's also been plenty of ideas on the forums so not sure what some folks are on about.
Ask yourself if EQ raiding would be a thing if there were only 10-12 guilds left... if T3 was hard enough that only the top 10 guilds had any chance of beating it, T2 hard enough that some guilds wouldn't beat it... an awful lot of guilds would fold. I would bet they did a bit of analytics on how many people that raided quit during the harder expansions vs. how many played all the way through during the easier ones.
I keep hearing people talk about all these people won't be able to do the event etc. I think this is the problem with EQ. Raids should scale to the point of where only 1-2 guilds are able to beat the hardest raid of an expansion. Then when the next expansion comes out the weaker guilds will be able to beat it. This should be the way it works. If you make content that everyone can beat the best guilds will get bored very fast with the content. I am not saying put every raid as super hard but have the normal achievement raids go up to tier say 3. So 90%% of the guilds can only do T1, 75% can do T2, 50% can do T3, 25% can do achievements for T3, 5% can do T4 (no achievements for T4 just a bonus super hard raid).
We seem to be at the same conversation that comes about every year about this time: Top 10 raid guilds are bored, so let's see what ideas they can toss out at DPG to keep them engaged. Doing a tiered raid system would be good, but again, there isn't the manpower at DPG to design them.
They could try something different... similar to what other MMOs have done. Reduce the raid size for new raids. Make raids only take 24 people but designed to be beat with 18. This wouldn't be a totally bad thing. Raids used to be 72 and were reduced to 54. I don't know how current raids are designed and if the are made for 48 raiders but allow 54 meaning they are easier for 54 man raid but still designed for 48 elite to beat them? If you drop raid size to 24 max but design for 18 that would allow less skilled people to use 24 people to beat the raids or really good raiders to beat them with 18 (yes I know everyone will use 24 instead of 18 because this type of balancing doesn't work if there is no reward for less people, which is what we talked about earlier). You could have 24 rewards normal loot, 18 gives 1 bonus aug loot, 12 give 2x bonus aug loot, and if you can beat it with 6 people the content was too easy. Then when the next expansion comes out older raids slowly get turned into group or 2 group content for those who couldn't beat them in era to work at farming the bonus augs for doing it with less people.
What is the point of developing content that most people can't beat? All it would do is drive more players away from the game over the frustration of not being able to complete the content. Once the next expansion comes out there is little point in completing old content unless you are a completionist.
