how can people sit here and complain taht theyll ONLY have 2-3 months to farm t4 when theyre ALREDY complianing..hell were ocmplaining the next week..that htey were bored with t3? no one's fault but yall's that you rush. stop thinking of the curent content as t3 and think of it as best in game. then when the next tier comes out yo ucan think of it same way: best in game. if you sit htere and think of it all as not the best yet so not worth bothering with..you're goingo t =o get bored faster than you need to. and yes, the bulk of the raiding population did NOT beat the 2 new raids the night they were released, so sorry to break it to thogse that think so . sure, by now, 30 of the 65 that have beaten ANYthing in teh expac, have beaten t1 2 3..but you know what's funny? only 20 have beaten vulak, and til t3 was released vulak had quite a ew best in slots in the game so wasnt like it wasnt worth doing for those at the "top of their game" either. what i do find sad though is that that list of guilds used to be over 80, back before hte last server merge that killed so many off (not SoD boredom or UF difficulty, IMO, but from server merges) and retreival's right: the gap is ever increasing the top end gets bored bc they rush and grind, people quit, and they suck up more players from the midtier. now, the midtier has very little to recruit from in comparison. top end has 3-5times the guilds to recruit from while the midtier taht those topend are recruiting from, have no one. those that want ot raid are already raiding, somewehre, and not lookign ot move from one midtier to another, but from midtier ot top tier, and those that dont want to raid arent going ot start. raid recruiting is one gigantic pyramid scheme only ones getting right are at the top while people are quitting at both ends, with nothing to feed the bottom only the top. the raids themselves though, imo, dont need more or less in number but more in variety. variety of mechanics and requirements of classes, strengths and weaknesses etc, isntead theyre all thesame deal: soemoen screws up you just wasted 2 hours and have to start back from the very start, not at the last "stage"..etc. just ..something that hurts those midtiers. if it takes 2 hours to get 1 attempt at a mechanic later in an event, and somethign goes wrong the last minute, you now haveot go through those 2 hours all over again to get another run at that one minute that needs work. this has ALWAYS been a bad idea in raids. in the past they would lock raid phases at least on long events, for this purpose, whatever happened to that?
I won't dwell on whether SoD helped out a couple of guilds that caught up and geared up becoming early completers when they were not previously. Nor will I dwell on UF which even devs acknowledged was overtuned and ultimately acknowledged was not good for the game. (John Smedley said GoD was SoE's biggest mistake in it's first 5 years. He did not say content tuned for level 70's when the level cap was 65 was good for the game). Instead, I'll answer the OP's question. For the entire time I've played EQ it's been 3-5 days a week until you got to an expansion's end zone at which time you entered farm mode and it was 1-2 days a week until the next expansion launched. I did PoHate, ToV, and PoTime lots. Unbelievable lots. Thank goodness SOE went to staggered release. Now instead of burning through early tiers we get to farm awhile knowing there's no new content for a few months, but at the same time there will be new content in a few months. 1. Become better server citizens. Get a sign up for Solteris to get alts and pickup raiders level 75 gear and the better orbs. Do the same for ToV. Maybe even consider T1. People don't have alts, outside of the guild friends, everyone on your server says things like "<YourGuild> is so cool. They helped me get <an_uber_item_01)."? I did dozens and dozens of by invitation and full public PoTime (and other) raids. AND I had fun doing them. 2. Perfect everyone's gear in your guild. I don't care what guild you are in. I've seen the Magelo's and every guild has a disparity between it's best geared and not best geared players. Stuff is rotting? Ummm do not charge DKP for the rest of the expansion - stuff will stop rotting. 3. Start attacking group upgrades in a more organized manner. Schedule a Let's Get Group Stuff Done event once a week. I doubt that everyone has their shawl, got the aug from Collections, and has every aug they can use. Sure, they're slackers and you are not - they are also guildmates. In my 14+ years I've seen guilds that made their own fun when they reached low days per week farm mode and I've got to say doing open raids for example only lasted a month or month and a half - new content was always right around the corner. Rather than be idle for that month to month and a half some of us had fun playing EQ and those that didn't find such activities fun....well I hope they enjoyed themselves not playing EQ much for a bit.
The problem with today's trend is forcing guilds to sit on tiers. This causes guilds to over-farm these tiers and stay around in them a lot longer than they normally would. This causes monotony and boredom. Before, when they released the full expansion, a lot of the raiding guilds would have finished the expansion long ago and they'd be enjoying their end game raid gear for a longer period. You wasnt forced to sit on tiers and over-farm them. You could beat them and move on. You could also customize your raiding schedule around your guild a lot easier when a full expansion was released. Now, when T4 comes out staggered style, yeah, you'll have something new to do, however, if you want to stay busy your going to have to go back and farm T3 and and depending on the guild, good ole T2 still (which is going to alts in a lot of guilds) - Farming raid loot for alts is fun, dont get me wrong, but doing it for THIS long is asinine. So what I am saying here is simple. If RoF was released all at once, all of the top 10-15 or so guilds serverwide would have finished it long ago. Also, ToV, T1 and T2 etc would ALL be off the schedule by now for a lot of guilds and they'd only be farming T4 and T3. But as it is, to keep a guild active and busy, they HAVE to continually raid ToV, T1 and T2 (depending on the guild) or they'll only be raiding 1-2 nights a week max. But now? When T4 launches, its going to be the ONLY content that a lot of guilds are going to want to do. Mainly due to the fact that we were all forced to over-farm and sit on T3 longer than we should have. So lets all hope and pray that T4 has several raids in it. I just feel like we have entered the realm of being forced to do things a certain way. Yeah, you could say well, dont raid it. But i'll tell you that if a lot of guilds go dark, meaning close up shop after gear saturation with a certain tier waiting until the next batch of content to launch, that some of these guilds may never raid again. Its a dangerous approach to take for some guilds. Its like closing the curtains and then opening them up again two months later hoping that everyone is still around. Its risky. Its especially risky when a lot of raiders only play to raid. If these folks see something like that start to happen, they'll just retire. By the way, when I say trend, I mean it too. I dont see this current trend stopping. Nothing is telling me otherwise. So yes, this current staggered content trend that we are seeing, if it continues like it did in RoF, will eventually kill off the raiding game. Its bad for EverQuest's raiding game, period. There WILL be some guilds within the current top 20 that will be dead by this time next year, I guarantee that. Just pray it isnt yours.
I wouldn't expect it to stop. Staggered release mixed with some non-progression activities and making content less exclusive has been good for the game. I spent probably a year farming PoTime. I'll spend a whole lot less time farming T3. Making people linger in tiers rather than just jet through them on the way to the next 4tw.
Good for the game in your opinion, for us melee waiting to get top tier weapons due to staggered release it has sucked.
If the game evolves and those guilds and in particular their leadership does not evolve they will eventually fold. Old school like way back in Thule you "had" to farm the top tier and maybe even some specific raids for clicks because 25 people didn't have a BP, 45 people didn't have the good charm and so on after 6 months of farming. Let alone turnover and "needing" another top tier pet focus, ranger bow or whatever with really low drop rates. Even with perfect slot distribution and low turnover 8 pieces of armor x 80 raiders / 14 pieces of armor per Sanctum clear = 46 clears or nearly 8 months even if you cleared the zone every 5 days. 7 guilds did clear Sanctum 8+ months before Alaris launch and a lot of rot/alt loot for a few guilds by the time Alaris Beta started. But out of the 55 raiding guilds to report atleast an Upper House win by Alaris launch around 50 of those had a reasonable amount of loot to chase the whole expansion, high attendance raiders with 17 different weapons but some bad slots. Alaris was the transition expansion, difficulty obscures the changes to some extent as at this time last year only 14 guilds have 0-3 raids left to beat but a massive change to the loot paradigm when someone knows that beating 100 T4 events means they are guaranteed to get a BP, pet ear and the good charm. Instead of raid as much as you possibly can to pile up enough dkp/merit and pray to the RNG someone can take a look at the official attendance requirements and realize attending 3/4, 2/3 or even 1/2 of all the raids will get them the items they want the most thanks to currency and can loot up enough low dkp/demand items to ensure their gear is good enough for whatever they want to raid, group or solo even if 2/3 attendance means they won't be Top 50 serverwide on Magelo. Now when you combine easier raids and currency in Fear you have a Brave New World and old school guild leadership needs to adapt or die. Everyone is going to have the gear, you have Burden of Truth, some clicks and some Vulak drops as chase items and a bunch of stuff that people know as long as they don't get booted from the guild for low attendance they will eventually get the items. The days of someone in the #40 guild dreaming of joining a Top 10 guild to be led by some whiny halfling because that was the only way to get high end items from the current expansion is over. Someone in guild #40 can see a clear path to beating T2 and then T3 and knows even if they don't farm Xorbb or Vulak each week that 20 Shadowstones, 50 C-Fear and 0-40 V-Shards each week as well as a bunch of drops means all their gear will be from the current expansion and whatever items they want the most they will eventually get without having to leave their current guild. If you can't handle the Brave New World step aside, it's not hard to lead a guild. If people have fun they will show up, if people show up you will win raids. If you're chasing down the dying breed of hardcore players you better step up your game D'Pikey style to attract those players, "wah wah achievements are too hard" is not the recruiting pitch that works on the most motivated players.
The question was posed probably 1-3 years ago... As a raider, which do you prefer: A) Farming 6-8 T4 events for 8-10 months B) Farming 2-4 T2 events for 2-3 months, then 2-4 T3 events for 2-3 months, then 2-8 T4 events for 2-3 months RoF obviously chose option B. I personally would be bored out of my mind farming the same six events for nine months each week... But that is me. Apparently there are many who think like that, and/or communicated those thoughts to EQ developers 1-3 years ago. As far as guilds motivating raiders, I personally think DKP, raid currency, helping guild mates/friends get gear, and maintaining your guild's minimum raid attendance policy is all the motivation someone would need. If you are full T3/T2 raid gear and you choose not to log in and help your guild members then it should be questioned what your guild priorities really are. Cause it would seem to me you are more a *me* person than a *we* person.
B. sounds good in theory but in reality it has been, C. Farming 4 ea. T1 raids, 7 ea. T2 raids then farming those 7 ea. T2 raids for 5 months (November thru April). Clearing NTOV every week with eight billion T1 legs for chance at drops better than T2 from Vuulak. Then Farming 2 ea. T3 raids (released in April-June) , occasionally going back to T1 for achievements, still doing all T2 raids for achievements and currency until they actually release how many T4 raids for how many months before next expansion?
The way content is trickling out is extremely frustrating. If we knew the timetable it may help, but i doubt it. I've lost interested in RoF both raids and group content, I'm looking forward to the next expansion with level increases and new AAs to get. Exp has been far too easy, there is nothing to work for anymore no flags, no real quest with proper rewards, just achievements with yet more exp and AA. I never moved to WoW or EQ2, friends decided we would be done within a month, shame EQ has gone the same way now.
What challenging raids? Miragul - http://www.elitegamerslounge.com/home/progress/encounter.php?id=135 Resolution of E-Marr beat it in 2012 so the average time for the Top 10 guilds is 15.1 days to solve combines and clicks with little apparent in-game clues. I did the combines and clicks for my guild and followed a detailed spoiler for our first attempt so never had to try to find clues so maybe it is solvable by means other than brute force attempts or betas/spoiler infoz but only one event has been "harder" since this raid in terms of average time to complete for the top 10 guilds once they are keyed/flagged and the event is working as intended. Sep3 is 8.1 days a hard as in challenging raid with nothing complicated in terms of solving mechanics. Air2 in Crystallos is 25.8 days back in the "glory days" of 10 guilds beating an expansion before a new one launches and UF is a mess of bugged and broken but even Machin Shin's 49 days only pushes CV7 up to a 12.2 day average. Sep5 is the one longer average time to complete for the Top 10 guilds since Miragul at 25.1 days for the Top 10 and if you think what EQ needs is 2-4 raids like Sep5 every 2-3 months I simply have to disagree. Miragul/Creation and Sep5. You can make all sorts of mechanics that will slow down first wins, a mob that does a 1mil AE DD once it takes 1mil pierce damage, woo hoo, you can die a few times before trial and error says we got him past 95% with just caster/ranger damage and eventually isolate that pierce is what triggers the AE. And of course the beta guilds get their Day0 wins. Woo hoo, you can make events really long with a bunch of things that can go wrong and no save point at the time and the 4th fastest guild took 15 days to beat it. "Great" use of Dev time to make an event that only 25 guilds have reported a kill to this day. Anytime a Dev can spend a ?month? making a raid only 2500 or so players will ever beat they couldn't possibly find a better use of their time. Can go with Pillars which is hard on the mid-tier with 2 guilds winning in under 40 days outside of the Top 15. But you're still getting fast wins on raids like that with the top guilds doing the 3 non-Sep T4 raids in about a week. Genuinely hard at top end and doable at mid-tier simply can't happen. You either need to provide enough incentive so that top end guilds guess 5 wrong murderers since they don't really want challenge, they just want rewards. Check out those achievement dates and the date of the test notes that attached the reward. Challenge is not enough. Or you can take that a step further and the first month a raid is live you can only beat it hard mode, all the mechanics are in place so only need the Dev time to make sure a chest doesn't spawn if players kill the frightened slave, only if the NPC kills the frightened slave do you get a chest and currency. Of course at this point you should hopefully realize the silliness. Guilds can be as challenged as they desire. Maybe RoI lets the NPC kill the frightened slave because that is a shorter raid and still an easy win but atleast the rest of the guilds would have a hard time winning the raid that way. Challenge available - check Raids feasible for enough guilds to make it worth the dev time - check Complaints by people who avoid the challenge and complain they are so bored - check Don't worry about fixing the 3rd thing since the problem exists between keyboard and chair and even SKlug can't fix that. Work on the first two and possibly increase the reward for the taking on a bigger challenge. Thanks to the RNG you could just make a patch note "Burden of Truth is more likely to drop if the raid completes: <list the hardest achievements> on that win" and no one would even really know if it was true or not.
(Small error there - Reso isn't a top 10 guild and they beat it in 2012, not 2011 - progress forum shows 2011 but it should be 2012.)
Re: Challenge I know devs are hesitant to overtune raids since the past, every expansion would have raids that needed to be tuned down later on (ironically, ROF wasn't even immune to that.) But "assuming" any game breaking raid bugs will be fixed within a week, I think it'd be better for devs to overtune than undertune. I know there is often forum whining about overtuned raids, and whining from high end guilds about how they had to beat it before the nerf, but without artificial mechanics to slow guilds down aka strict flag/key requirements, devs should be less worried about overtuning when their content being consumed in a matter of days.
There are many things guilds can do to challenge themselves. Just because a special chieve isn't in the achievements window doesn't mean it can not be self made to add challenge. Try to kill 2 dragons in Ntov at once or maybe use a ranger to tank an entire event. Maybe give warriors and knights a dps group and let them try to best each in a different role. Or set time trials for yourself and try to beat your record every week. Achievements sometimes change the event entirely and make it a completely new encounter and can be good way to mix up a boring farm encounter.
Simple. Join another guild. You are in a guild that wants nothing more than to crush any and all content as soon as possible. You beta everything and then destroy it all asap. Members of your guild multiple times have said all they want is to win and there is not a thing wrong with that. However, you cant have your cake and eat it too. You either want to thump your epeen chest by saying look how good and fast we are at beating pixels or you join a lesser guild and grind it out like the rest of us who have not yet beaten the expansion (s). There will always be parity in the content, you choose which side you want to be a part of when playing. My point is that if you were in a guild that is still in T1 RoF or kiling ToV dragons. You would never ever care that there was a C option.
We split T2/T3 into 3 nights, ending raids early. That proved to be more interesting for the guildees than raiding only 2 nights a week. Also throwing in a random T1 event here and there - nobody wants to farm T1 regularly, but it's fun on rare occassions. And there are fun ways to do T3 raids for achievements too - just don't push yourself too hard, the rewards are not really worth the effort, and you won't be able to afford those prices any time soon anyway.
I never thought I'd be the one saying this but, the solution is the return of artificial time-sinks like the VoA book clicks. You can't simply sprint through the entire new content release in 3 hours if you have to flag up in multiple stages and tiers first. Now, AFK to punch myself for posting that.
Do you mean with content releases still staggered(RoF) or all at once(VoA)? Books would be fine if they keep trickling out content I guess, but they were pretty bad to deal with during the VoA era. I'd much rather see them combine the best of keys(fixed number of flags per kill) and books(great for backflagging). This would be in keys that drop a set number and can be clicked to flag for the next tier or clicked to backflag for the current tier. As to the actual topic, I don't think anyone is really keeping raiders entertained this expansion.
For me, the raid currency screwed up the raid scene a lot. There is very little disparity between top raiders these days, at the end of VoA everyone had basically exactly the same gear. This also totally takes away the incentive to raid lower tiers since everyone will be in full t2/t3 gear anyway due to currency. The concept is fine in itself, give people a chance to not get screwed by the randomness of some classdefining drops. But it's just too much imo. I take very little pride in my gear anymore since everyone will have the same stuff anyway. 6-7 weeks to save up for one item would have been way better imo.
I'd rather they nerf all gear, get rid of emote and script based raid gimmicks, and introduce serious dps gatekeepers that requires regearing in new tier of gear before you have a good chance of beating. Oh, and open raids up to 72 max but balanced for 54.
