Before I really get stressed out.....I hate The Darkened Sea raids and the writers who came up with it. I know I sound like a game wimp but this expansion is just beyond my comprehension. Just wish there was more than ONE EXACT DEMANDING way to beat a raid besides having exact class's needed and peeps who play on crack and Mt Dew. It gets tiring when if even ONE player misses an emote or is a little slower than "pro" players, its game over and thank you very much for the invested hours your guild wasted on an entire raid night. Been involved with hard raids before that's stumped us, but friggen Arx raids seems to beat us before we even get started. Raid completion time limits like Arx 1 raid? (like we REALLY want to extend a raid anyway for the fun of it?), and "One off" crap is total BS to boot and just adds insult to injury. How can a guild practice at a raid when you get a timer even on failure? Do the game writers really think they've got to restrict guilds from farming? I challenge them to see how many guilds and players actually GET to see end game raids. The game proprietors are wasting a lot of hours paying the writers to make up some of these raids for a very select few to benefit from. Does anyone realize that besides player loss and guild loss....there's even fewer raid leaders who can figure out some of the raids let alone lead and have the exact classes needed? Some will say that if the game is too easy, people will complete stuff too quickly and then quit playing. Well.....I haven't heard about too many people quitting EQ because it was too easy but Iv'e seen tons leave because of frustration. Frustration leads to boredom, and boredom leads to player loss as well. I've been in 2 raid guilds and believe me, frustration is THE biggest reason why we've lost people. When a guild dies not everyone moves on to another guild....several just quit period. hint hint....less subscriptions. Even the top guilds constantly lose people and if there are no other halfway decent guilds to select from, the decent player pool drops as well because those "other" guilds cannot get anywhere which leaves finding players from the "general" pool. What's the answer? Have future raids that have a easy or hard option. The easy option reduces adds or AE strength. Easy chest could have fewer items if needed as a penalty. Possibly tweak down future raids after a 3 to 6 month run. This way the top guilds can still lay claim they beat it first with all the brouhaha. Then maybe the "other" guilds can have a chance before skipping an entire expansion or dieing off. I agreed with the historical response to these type complaints that if you make EQ too easy you might as well call it WoW. I don't wish it to be too easy either but theres got to be a way around this. A challenge is great when you beat something finally but there IS such a thing as the fun factor too and its not fun losing all the time nor spending 4 hours on a raid night and logging off with nothing. Somebody said go join a better top end guild? Why? then you lose your friends you've been with for so long and thus start the chain reaction when friends start dropping, so do you. Plus it would make more sense if those "other" guilds could stay "raid current", there could be better interchange between all guilds. sigh...Maybe I should cancel EQ and go back to checkers. <rant off>
TDS raids were designed in a time crunch we all know it. But one request stop punishing 53 people because 1 person is too stupid to follow an emote. Kill that person so everyone knows who the bad players are instead of killing a dozen random people because one guy cant play. Having a mechanic kill people just to kill people is ANNOYING even more so for tanks. A tank playing right being healed properly should not be one shorted that is not a mechanic that is just poor design. Oh and get rid of rez effects why are melee still punished harsher for dieing ? Casters die get up click mana regen ability and instantly become useful again. Melee die and we might as well afk the entire time we're useless.
I don't like the (semi, or real) hard time limits on raids. That really hurts raid teams with a lack of dps but more of a support crew. For the one offs, one used to be brutal, the second was and still is easy, but they nerfed the hell out of the first, could probably have monks tank it all now. If it wasn't for the flagging to get to them. if the bossman would let me I'd drag casual/pickup raids to them. For raid leaders. Maybe among your ranks you have some people who would be willing to give it a shot. I know in RoV we run with a few, and are always on the lookout for others who prove themselves as interested and competent so someone can take a day off if needed without wasting a bunch of peoples time logging in. For a player pool, I know RoV and I believe other guilds on our server are generally on board, we refer people we can't fit to others. Some we'll get back, some we'll lose to more key roles in other guilds. For the most part the various raid guilds get along on bristle even though we compete.
At least one of the raids has more than one way of beating it. More than one contains emotes that are not game over - they are pay attention. There have been raids with time limits before. 57 guilds beat CoF T1A. 43 guilds have beaten Defense of the City - TDS looks on track to me. What's the answer? Certainly NOT hardmode and easymode with easy dropping fewer items. Easy should drop inferior items - you want better you take on harder content/RvR. Seriously, what is the answer?? Hey, traditionally some of the early raids are easier. Look it up on the Guild Progression List. Now with 85ish guilds listed as progression guilds and only 60ish beating the first event in each expansion it should be abundantly clear that some guilds who advertise themselves as raid guilds are not progression raid guilds. In fact some never have been progression while content was current raid guilds. What's a player to do? With a spectrum ranging from family -> casual -> do some raiding of older content -> do the progression at their own pace -> at least do some current raid events every expansion -> do most -> beat the whole shebang -> beat it all and farm it you see what's a good fit for you. If you play well, are aggressive about doing your lvls, AA, and group stuff, can raid 7 days a week at expansion release, have 90% attendance you head in one direction. If you like raiding one day each weekend and all you want is a few items that are better than you can obtain in group content you head in another direction. It ain't a puzzle. EQ has been like this for...well since there was raiding really. Prolly the biggest changes are expansion reset/episodic content, the periodic appearance of catchup content like SoD and less exclusive content post UF. All of which made the game a bit easier for mid-tier actual progression raid guilds. Guilds that say they are progression raid guilds but aren't due to skill, attendance, leadership, or some other factors have almost never fared well (SoD being an exception). Hahaha EZbutton, same loot just less of it - I love it!! Wheeeeee!
Mostly agree with your post, once you remove the rhetoric. But this comment makes me sad, because that is generally the case. How do we do that hashtag thing that's so fashionable now? #MoreContent
Sounds to me, all your guildies are playing on the new TLP servers and abandoned your guild, so you can't seem to fill raids. That's the gist of what I gathered from your whining. Wouldn't be surprised if this is happening to other guilds though, but it won't last long. Don't worry people will come back when the new "campaign" rolls around in about 4-5 months.
Hey, good writing contains metaphors, figures of speech, and storytelling designed to lead the reader down the primrose path to your point of view. #MoreContent? Well given that I'm in favor of: 1. A bell shaped curve skewed toward half expansion completion or better for the vast majority of progression guilds (content less exclusive). 2. Staggered release. 3. Farm mode long enough that guild members reap the rewards for winning. I'll grit my teeth during the Feats of Strength, but after we've won I want presents, Others really don't want to see events again once they've beaten them. Takes all kinds. early finishers are going to run out of content. I'd recommend not turning one's nose up at doing PoWar, ToFS, Cache of the Fire Lord, gearing up new undergeared players in older content and alts/pickup raids if a guild is bored. Sure, #MoreContent. In November. OK, October.
I'm a 12 year veteran. I have raided for 11 years. I refuse to raid TDS. Uninspired, lackluster, boring, rote, un fun.
If you'd done the events you'd know, they're actually pretty decent. The only problem is there are not enough of them.
I disagree about them being decent. They aren't West Karana 1 or 2 bad, but they just... don't seem inspired. The oneoffs had potential, but Tita's Ghost got nerfed into oblivion, and Praetor Vitio has a small amount of hit points that the emotes aren't too threatening. He's dead before it matters. We've come a long way [down] since Gates of Discord as far as raiding is concerned.
I agree that they are pretty decent. Actually I was a bit surprised at the variety. A Simon says, a balance one, half with big time CC requirements, Everybody Tank Now, ... But to be totally honest that revamp of ToV made me almost tremble with joy. We've come a long way (down) since original ToV 8P (and EQ is going to die any day now - GoD only half killed it).
Event 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 are all decent. The one offs, agreed. Some of them annoy me as a tank, but that's the nature of the game, I expect some events will every expansion. I won't compare it to gates of discord, I wasn't even playing back then. I thought the events weren't bad, but we're missing about 10 events.
My question to the Devs: You are the only ones who really know how many have have progressed how far in TDS. It is now seven months after release. Are the numbers what you wanted? With all the attention to TLP servers, you should not forget those of us who have been working on our characters for a decade or more. On Bertoxx server, it seems one guild has beaten TDS. And one guild has all but Calix Quirinus. The rest of the guilds are stuck. Meanwhile, the One Off raids simply do not give regular guilds the ability to learn from them. I'm a member of a "more casual" guild. We just don't have 5 bards, 5 enchanters, and 5 berserkers per raid to pump out massive dps and mez everything to win these things. We have progressed for years now by doing raids over and over and losing constantly until we finally get it together enough to win. And we have done very well. But raids designed for the "perfect" balance of classes with massive dps just don't work for the rest of us. Simply put, we all know there are too few raids out there. TDS is seven raids with two of them One Off. I think it is time to either make the One Off raids normal raids (where no lockout if you lose) or reduce the timer on them. Frankly, the real answer is more raids. But we aren't going to see that until the next "Campaign" comes out. In the meantime, if you want to keep the players, you need to think about making TDS raids more friendly to non uber guilds. And the next campaign isn't going to help if the raids are, as usual, harder than the last set. We aren't asking for an Easy Button. We just want a chance to do the content. Accept the fact that there is less content and less players than there should be and realize that the majority of your player base just needs some raids to do that are not the same old raids we've done 1000 times. The raids that actually give us gear and spell upgrades are very few. By locking them behind "One Off" and massive dps / mezzing or you fail, you give us little to work with.
Fanra: The only event I can think of that has any sort of close to hard dps check this expansion is event 1 (and with some pain you could still beat it, it's not a hard timer like 4.2 in heart of fear - just the boss activates before you're dealt with trash). It certainly helps on event 4 but isn't required I believe. If you can beat event 1, I believe you can beat everything, with some practice.
I agree with Fanra they need some sort of Easy/Hard mechanic, and/or have the raids get easy as time passes. The truth is there is a large disparity between top guilds and the more casual ones. It's the same story over and over again.
While I definitely am not going to reveal any strategy, 2 Enchanters and 3ish bards (4 of course is better) can suffice to beat the expansion. Atm being very melee DPS heavy is a disadvange - it requires more DPS support classes. There is another approach. While I'm pretty sure there is at least one and perhaps two "DPS tests", guilds beat them for the first time with previous expansion gear. Finally, while I favor a bell shaped curve skewed toward half expansion completion or better for the vast majority of progression guilds (content less exclusive) I don't favor "everybody wins". Usually servers have 2-4 endgame guilds and 3 or more guilds that typically beat half of the events. Several servers already have 3 or more guilds that have beaten the expansion or are 1 event from it.The "problem" does not appear to be content that is too exclusive. It's not SoD but post many adjustments its close to SoD. There's a wide gap between some casual/family/aspire to be progression raid guilds and actual progression raid guilds (including the midtier). There always has been. I agree that learning the one offs is made more difficult because you get one shot at them a week. However, they drop random gear that's often far better than they should drop given their difficulty. One is dead easy and the other - well the needed strategy should be pretty obvious after 4 or 5 tries. Besides, they don't drop keys and aren't needed to progress. They're a bonus that frankly favors those having progression issues.
Just a random thought, what would be really cool would be an extra hail option to do them with no lockout and no loot if you win. So you could practice, but still hold the spirit of the one REAL try a week. Although after the nerfs it's not needed.
We've beaten event one 14 times now. We just lost tonight because we needed an extra 2 minutes that the raid did not give us. I'm not sure why you are saying just the boss activates. If you fail to kill all of the mobs within the timer, you get ported to the zone in and the event ends in a loss. It does seem to us tonight that event one is bugged somehow with the mobs waking up from mez. This has not happened before. Regardless, the idea of "One Off" raids makes sense only if you have plenty of other raids you can do. To fail and then have a lockout for 5 days is ridiculous. It punishes any guild that doesn't do things perfectly. The "with some practice" you are saying doesn't work for One Off raids, you don't get to practice. If there were plenty of other raids and DGC wanted to make some super hard raids for the uber set and make them One Off to give them a challenge, that would be great. The Plane of War raid comes to mind. Our guild tried it a few times, decided it was not worth it and moved on. Meanwhile the "uber" guilds got to play with it and prove they were superior to the rest of us Easy Button types. But with so few raids out in TDS, to make 2 out of 7 One Off is not cool. And by the way, while I call my guild a more "casual" raiding guild, we happen to have done very well throughout the past few expansions. If you look here: http://www.enceladusguild.com/page/show/37918 you will see that we have nothing to be ashamed of and we can sit at the table with the big boys (well, at least the next table over. We are Omani Winter, by the way.
Fair enough, I've never seen it happen. I did mention in another post they should give us a practice mode for it, that doesn't drop a chest and also doesn't give a lockout. I have never been a fan of one-offs. I think the whole idea is stupid. More just commenting on living with what we have.
Yep, those events expect you to perform decently without mulligans each week if you want the rewards. Not perfectly, you can make errors galore. You just can't make fatal errors. They are not especially hard. In fact one is a gimmie and the other... Well, according to the Raid Guild progression chart 43 guilds have beaten AM1 and 35 AM2. I'd expect the first one off to be somewhere between those two numbers. IF it is not, and its something like 10 (Daybreak knows such things) THEN I'd say add something like the practice mode Bigstomp suggests. But if it is something like 35-43 I can only say figure it out and perform decently like other guilds are performing. They (and you) get to practice the event once each week and it sufficed for them. BTW having beaten AM1 only is not a strong argument that the first one off should fall over for a guild. Beat the first 3 events and get hung up on the one off and I'd (others are welcome to disagree with me) argue that's a strong case that the event is overtuned. (I protested GoD raid, Solteris event 1 DPS check, and UF raid difficulty along with suggesting content should not be too exclusive - without creating an everybody wins game out of EQ.) With the 2 one offs dropping random gear, especially the uber belts, they are a huge bonus and extremely cool. The grapes Mr, Fox are schweeeeet as honey (see the Fox zand the Grapes Aesop's Fable). These events do not block the ability to move forward in the progression - a bonus/mid tier friendly/extremely cool. I could argue that they shouldn't unlock until a guild has beaten the last event and demonstrated that they deserve bonus events that can drop anything - that would be uber guild gear acceleration. As they stand they help mid tier guilds out. I knew who you were and what you've historically accomplished. While my opinion would hold true for any guild, I would leap to my feet with pitchfork and protest sign in hand were you in a usually gets to the endgame before the next expansion guild. I still believe Daybreak should see how many guilds have beaten the first one off and make some kind of adjusment if the number is unusually low. But I ain't leaping to my feet - I'm sitting. (<- not intended to be insulting - casual guilds don't often have the same people in their lineup every week to practice and retain and focus required to do events that are complex. EQ operates like a giant sorting mechanism. Not everyone gets the same outcomes.).
