Unrewarding and not challenging trash makes these unfun. I quite enjoyed ToV, PoHate, and PoFear back in the day. Their trash was both challenging and rewarding.
I'd be down for a raid style instance of sebilis, been wanting this for years, where like pofear raids, the entire dungeon is filled with raid mobs, trakanon would drop tbm tier 2 loot, and various minis would drop 1 vis + a tier 1 item.
also the minis in pohate and pofear should be harder and drop 2 random tds powersources per. I am sure most of you hate having to go back to tds to go farm more raid powersources.
Should be removed, no one wants to clear it anyhow. It also bad as silv, said, to have the bosses invulnerable when you have no more trash to clear... If we have to have trash make it drop the type 5 augs common and tds powersources etc, so we got something to aim for in a clear. Or have a mechanic where you can group the trash, and still have raid force available to kill the named without them being invulnerable.
the most likely fix for the hate and fear raids zones is probably just reducing the overall trash mob count. but having 6 hours to kill maestro and inny is more than enough. The most recent open hate raid i lead killed inny with just 33 people. cazic on the otherhand I could see them removing his invul status to allow raiders more time another day to complete him without having to reclear.
Mostly likely change is : no change. Too much effort for something that won't matter after the next expansion. EQ just does not fix old mistakes. Move on to newer things and let the old ones decay to nothing.
Because boxers and those with longstanding groups should have a nice raid zone they can farm for necessities. Account Main - let's camp me some raid power sources! Boxed1 - I'm Game!! Boxed2 - Count me in!!! Merc1, Merc2, Merc3 - We wanna go too!! Single account owner's main - /lfg Complete Solteris and you could buy Elite Energians and even that was pretty uneven handed. Making the powers sources TSed was a lot fairer. Type 5 augs common for "groups" killing yardtrash? Lololol! The made an error not making yardtrash capable of wiping full raids at break in. Let's not compound it by making it loot pinatas for those who finesse single account disadvantage, kk? Boxers have enough sweet camps. Buff up the yardtrash. Make it capable of wiping raids, and THEN have it drop such items. Raid zones should not be for 6 people (or less) in a Wagon Queen Family Truckster vacation spots. Not ever. (Alternately have the yardtrash drop an extremely modest amount of group currency (doing group missions being a much better source for group currency) and enlarge the list of items group currency can buy once you've beaten the raids.)
I agree that going in with a raid, and clearing a bunch of annoying group trash, is just well.... annoying. We tend to send a DPS group or two in an hour before raid time to clear. -Rat
Let's see how I can dissect this. 1) Raid loot is much different than it was during Vanilla EQ. Raid loot wasn't hands down superior to group gear for many cases. You could be very competitive while in group gear. a. Raid zones were all open zones - not instances like they are now. You cannot compare the two. Naggy and Vox were in exp zones. The trash in those zones didn't drop raid gear. ToV trash did not drop raid gear, either if you want to bring up ToV. 2) ToV remake was widely popular for many people. I find it hard to call it a fail. Just because it wasn't exclusive to high end guilds maybe you think it wasn't good? That's pretty arrogant and self-centered. It didn't have long trash clears, which were the bane of old raids. Looking back on it, I hated old raids and never want to go back to them again. Clearing for hours in ToV, PoHate, Fear, VT, ST, etc were not my idea of fun. End zones with less trash and more raid mobs were fun - CoA, Tacvi, DPoB, etc. There should be a middle ground and they found it about 5 years into the game. 3) Nor should they be end game. They had their time as end game and they should not be that again. Move on from the past. 4) All the gear is one tier. PoHate and Fear drop the same visible armor as Enslaver. I guess that's end game, is it not? PoHate also has the best melee/tank ring available. That's pretty exciting. 5) Why should yard trash drop raid loot? So mini raids of 12-18 players can just sit there carefully killing trash and get gear equal to what full forces work to get? There hasn't been yard trash dropping raid loot for quite some time. It stopped in '00 during Velious. I'm glad it did. If it were aug mobs like CoA, then sure, have mini names drop something unique. But to drop full fledged raid loot? I don't think so. You criticize people for wanting easy mode, but then you turn around and suggest trash to have end game raid gear. What's your idea of being able to wipe a raid? Getting too many in camp? What made PoHate and Fear dangerous was the possibility of a train. That's not a hard mechanic anymore. Single pull, problem solved. People can now bring 2-4 groups in there and just kill for the hopes of raid gear. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.
Actually NToV had random rare raid drops, as well as elemental raid gear in the planes of power, but I don't think the new Hate/Fear trash should drop raid loot. A plane of war type aug would be neat, or i like the idea of powersources dropping. Same with ghoul Illusions or other minor things that would be a rare drop from trash.
My idea of able to wipe a raid is PoHate break in where the tinniest amount of movement when you zoned in could easily kill 2-3 break in groups. PoFear break in where uber guilds often had to come to the rescue of full sized pickup/lower level raid forces who wiped trying to establish the initial West Camp. ToV where breakin was difficult enough many guilds resorted to Necro stealth/summon in the hallway where the mini-chickens were near. You know - the smaller mobs that EASILY could wipe a full raid should anyone be inclined to wander in the least. Trains? It was not just bad pulling. It was bad mobs. Mobs that stunned, knockedback, gated then summoned, ran and then summoned, wandered, Drakws that pounded you to dust, tricksie aggro, ... Break it down all you want. Vox and Naggy did not define EQ raiding. They were the first go round. Open zone, droppable loot, no flag or level requirements, ... The initial developer team fixed al that and PoHate, PoFear, PoSky, etc. became EQ raiding - not the previous sandboxy bull. PoFear/PoHate not endgame? Ah, there's the error. 1. Not raid capable guilds have PLENTY of content. I spend months helping out pickup raids where they enjoy their so much content they aren't even capable of making a dent in it on their own or working together. They have too much content. 2. It was progression raid guilds that did not have sufficient content. And what we got was group content unrewarding yardtrash in a raid zone. Looks to me like someone didn't understand why PoHate, PoFear, and ToV worked and therefore were incapable of replicating the success fo those zones. Period. Happy to break it down for you. MAYBE if you read another dozen players agreeinig with those general points you'll take up another hobby other than dogging me and suggesting someone enthusiastic about EQ would want to witness its (obvious and UNNECESSARY) decay.
I would love to see some random group content stuff added in here, such as the type 5s, or even 30 purity augments thrown in. i dont think there should be full fledged raid stuff dropping off the trash, but i dont see any harm in giving more opportunities for other items that can be sourced elsewhere.
EQ just does not fix old mistakes, they just make brand new mistakes. "I never pay old bills" "What about new bills?" "I let 'em get old!" -Rat
Again, your idea of trash wiping isn't because of mob difficulty. It's just bad mechanics. Being able to wipe a raid because somebody take 2 steps over and half the zone aggros is not fun, it's actually stupid. Very stupid. People want events with mechanies that that more than 3 brain cells. They don't want mindless trash clears, being mushed together like sardines and if one person goes astray, they wipe half the raid. That's just a senseless waste of time now. Mobs do have all those abilities you just listed. It's just raids are now more complex with more abilities. We aren't taunt smashers anymore with no defensive abilities. We can go over half a minute without taking a single point of melee damage. Your idea of 50 mobs running train to a raid doesn't work anymore, nor should it ever. It may have been thrilling and exciting back then, but it's just not anymore. The game changed, the players changed...except you . Nostaglia should stay where it is. The memory bank. Don't try to replicate it, because you can't. The game changed too much, the classes changed to much, the gameplay changed too much. According to this thread, people want less trash and less hassle. Based on what you want, you want to bring in more hassle and more annoyance. You're doing the exact opposite of what people are saying and yet somehow, you think people are agreeing with you? The old raids worked because nobody knew any better. The only mechanics in vanilla-luclin were hard hitting mobs, lots of trash, and unavoidable DTs. All three are just terrible game design and luckily they got rid of 2 of them. In hind sight, trash clearing and long hours accomplishing nothing but killing junk is not fun and should not be brought back.
Revamped TOV was a huge success and provided raid content for a lot of players for 2+ years. No, it didn't do much for top end guilds but mid tier and family guilds and pick up raids got a lot of use out of it for a long time. During CoTF when I was in a top guild, a couple guildmates and I would still go raid TOV with family guilds and pickup raids just because it was fun.
Because putting an emote on a fixed timer and making people run to a spot every 43 seconds every single time they do an event is so much better design. Current raids are pretty much an orchestration. Get your strat and triggers, then endlessly do the exact same thing every single time. No randomization or surprises. The order I use my discs even becomes fixed around the timers for the "mechanics" to maximize their use.
I think the folks that wanted to see a return to the clear fear/hate zones come from a time where they were rewarded for their time and efforts put in on the clear. Gear that dropped from the trash was great upgrades for most raiders. You had a sense of accomplishment when wiping for a day then coming back in with summoned gear/ wipe back up gear and retook the zone etc.. Even thou those are not the mechanics now... I think (if a dev is even reading this post this far) is that we like the zone just wish it could be tweaked to make it viable. I personally like the old map of fear and the act of coming together with friends for awhile to clear a zone is fun but its not the same feeling as it used to be. Not complaining or criticizing here. I try to stay away from these forms but this issue i kinda of agree with needs to be looked at... thanks guys.
I think we've seen that the November 18, 2015 release date was just a "Shove this Alpha / Beta out the door" date. With today's patch, items have now reached late Beta or possibly even (for SOE/Daybreak) release status. Hopefully, the February or March patches will bring Hate and Fear to late Beta or release status. Because I can forgive shoveling junk out the door if that's all you've got but I can't forgive not fixing it ASAP and then claiming it is "working as intended".
