Just going to say it, you are killing the game.

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by InnerDruid, May 6, 2019.

  1. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    This should have been done the other way round, smaller raid size = easier not harder.

    The guilds that are beating content do not need any changes to raid sizes, the mid guilds that are stuggling to field a full raid to beat raids could do with being thrown a bone of a chance at beating the raid in an easier form with less numbers.

    Doing away with some of the DPS checks would also help the mid tier guild who are struggling with numbers, being able to kill 1 mob at a time instead of balancing everything would help them as well. Having mobs spawn with less HP, less mobs, reduced AES, would all help these smaller guilds do these raids on easy modes,

    Easier raids could drop less loot, less currancy, less flags.

    Giving the mid tier guilds something to raid, would help more of them survive, IF the mid tier guilds continue to keep losing players there will come a time when the high tier guilds run out of players to recruit as all those who would normally be recruited from the lower tier guilds would have all quit. There are already a couple of servers who no longer have a raid guild raiding current content.

    The mid tier guilds need raids too! TBL seems to have got the curve better this time round, Generals & Princes could do with being switched over as Generals is the easier of the 2 raids, Meatras still only a handful have guilds have beaten it so at least the hardest raid is at the end!

    27 guilds have beaten a raid in TBL, 35 guilds beat a raid in RoS, that is 8 guilds less than last year? Are those 8 guilds still raiding or have the players quit or have they lost too many players to continue raiding?


    How many guilds will be raiding in the next expansion if we continue with all raids being difficult?
    Arraden likes this.
  2. BlueberryWerewolf Augur

    There needs to be a progression system that makes older content completely unnecessary after two or three years if a player's goal is to engage current content. If you continue to lock more casual players entirely out of current content because it's too difficult to keep up, you're going to stop selling expansions except to the those at the leading edge.

    One way to do that is to tier raid content difficulty such that there is still a challenge at the highest levels but the lowest levels are entirely accessible by smaller and less knowledgeable forces. Tier group content such that it overlaps with the raid content, so you end up with a progression along the lines of G1 > G2 > R1 > G3 > R2 > R3 (as an example).

    This game's design philosophy has always been pretty terrible about catering to only the top end and it just creates power bloat and content gulfs that grow wider with every expansion such that now it is becoming entirely pointless for more casual players to even consider engaging current content. That is a problem that needs to be addressed and it can be done without throwing anyone under the bus and disregarding their perspectives.
  3. ShadowMan Augur

    We have come full circle!

    Way back during SoD many people explained that by forcing everyone into current content with gear resets and making most raids easy you were in fact cheating the mid to low tiered guilds because it couldn't last forever. So while great for one expansion you were in fact stealing "content" or their niche in the long run. Because these peoples play style, RL commitments, guild synergy, whatever did not work in current content unless stuff was fall down easy. Prior models always had them able to farm as far back as 3 expansions worth of stuff for viable gear, not group gear making that pointless, allowing natural character growth to start let them beating stuff with lower numbers or weird raid makeups. There was no shame at all in your 32 person raid force with 7 hours a week play tackling 2 expansions ago raids for upgrades unless you put it there.

    The masses at large for the most part called us crazy and said we were just trying to keep them down and because they paid a sub they demanded it was their right to be in current content when it was current exclusively and it was in fact better for them to just have group gear resets negate all prior content. No more "let them raid tower" I believe was the catch phrase many liked to tout.

    Here we are and it looks like people are now realizing that gear resets and current content isn't all its cracked up to be and the old model when group gear was multiple expansions behind was a good thing allowing people access to content all over if you were not bleeding edge. Every playstyle, time commitment and skill level had options. Now we don't or we do but in some cases that means you win 1 or 2 raids and thats it for a year.
    Arraden and lagkills like this.
  4. smash Augur

    And then have more people sitting out due to smallet raidsize, NO already been through it earlier when some dev suggested it and the players rejected it.

    Now your 27 vs 35. Maybe remember that the tbl is an expansion later, so the number is lower IS expected to be lower, otherwise the devd have made mistake.
  5. Sancus Augur

    34 guilds beat a raid in RoS by May 8th, 2018. 38 guilds beat at least one raid during the entirety of RoS. So there is definitely a difference in completion rates (20% fewer guilds over the same time period).
    Arraden likes this.
  6. smash Augur

    I guess I stand corrected there, as I took the number of guilds completed to be those of today, not what it was 1 year ago.

    But at same time, does the number include GMM ? Because if I take the TBL, I would say GMM = tier 0 but with better none visible items than the 3 other tiers, beside TS items there..

    What is the number completed 1 raid in TBL, if you include GMM ?
  7. Sancus Augur

    GMM isn't tracked on EGL, so we don't have completion rates. That said, I am not aware of any guilds that have beat a GMM raid without beating a TBL raid, and I know a number that have beaten multiple TBL raids that can't beat anything in GMM. In its current state Rustbottom is significantly harder for many guilds than Fire/Stratos because of the DPS requirement. As such, I am highly skeptical including GMM would materially change TBL completion rates.
  8. kizant Augur

    I don't really see why that should be a thing and I'd prefer it if one group could never do a 'raid' because then it isn't a raid. As far as the items go I don't have too strong an opinion. The big problem I had with TBL is that the stats increased way too much for no good reason for both raid and group gear. Plus I'm kind of glad I don't want anything from VT because I don't feel like trying to race people to killing named.

    Making some raids easier is fine. Doesn't matter to me. I'm just saying that the idea that you need 54 people to beat most the content is flawed so I don't think it should be used as an excuse.
    Sancus and Yinla like this.
  9. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    If you remember SOD it wasn't a drop in raid partisipants to 36 from 54 it was both, if they did that with the 36 man raid being easier than the 54 man raid, it would go a long way in helping the mid tier guilds which are struggling.
  10. Tappin Augur

    Yinla, you are incorrect about a smaller raid force making the content easier. It will actual make the content harder is most cases. With a smaller raid force, the devs have less wiggle room when it comes to DPS requirements. This translates into the impossible scenario of everyone having the best possible gear and max AAs (Mitigation/DPS) in some cases.

    I do believe that this game would benefit from a smaller force, but it will NOT help the casual raid force. The problem with casual raid force is not mediocre players, its the lack of consistency with AA/Gear. The only way to make the content doable for them, is to tone down the DPS requirements and make adjustments to emote timers. Anything else is just fail.
  11. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    This is also my concern, with the increases in stats for everything, I am a little worried as to the difficulty of the next expansion.

    The less of a perfect set up you have the more you need in the raid, lacking key ADPS can cause alsorts of problems especially with all the DPS checks. A lot of mid guilds are missing, Bards, Shaman and zerkers, but have an abundance of rangers!

    Yes you can ask members to change classes, but in my experience it tends to be those members playing a different class to the one they wish to play that quit a few months after switching which leaves the guild in a worse position than they were in before.

    Having been in a guild which was forced to merge with another last year to progress after both guilds got stuck on the vault, I can fully appreciate how many mid tier guilds are in the position we were in back then.

    Maybe the raids should all be in a reasonable form for completion, with more of a focus on the raid achievements being hard versions of the raid. The achievements would give the best of the best something of a challenge without making the raids overly difficult for the mid tier guilds. Maybe each achievement beaten gives a bonus item in the chest or a quest piece for a special item.

    There are ways to give the best of the best a challenge but still allow other guilds with a less perfect setup a way to progress.

    *wanders off muttering about Convorteum achievements......"
  12. Tappin Augur

    You are missing the point. The problem with casual guilds is the lack of consistency with AA/Gear. The 54 man raid size allows for some wiggle room (in most cases) with class makeup.

    The problem here isn't raid size, mediocre players, or class makeup - it's the lack of consistency with AA/Gear.

    I think the devs hands are tied to make any major changes, because the lack of raids. The cannot afford to make the few raids we have easier, or the hardcore guilds would just chew through the content to fast.

    If we had a few more raids, we could have a few easier raids (at the start) that would doable by the casual guilds. That solves the problem.
  13. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    I my experience the mid tier guilds aren't lacking in much other than numbers. Retuning 54 man raids for lower numbers should mean that less healers, dps and support classes are required. Less players in a raid should also mean mobs have less HP, less adds and less people being emoted.

    I'm not saying get rid of 54 man raids, I'm saying have 2 versions of the same raid, similar to SOD but instead of having the 36 man raid as a hard version of the 54 man raid have it as an easier version.
    Arraden likes this.
  14. smash Augur

    You wrong there, the difficulty was the same, but you did it with less people. However with 36 or 42 persons, there would be some classes who will be doomed to sit out, which was what was in focus then.

    Beside making raids in 2 versions is like making 2 raids. Would you be glad if TBL was 4 raids instead of 8 ? I would not.

    Beside I know guilds with a 70-80 person roster who is not yet through T2, so it is not the numbers that do it, but the quality there is in the guilds that does it. Those FAT guilds who have too big rosters, should go on a diet, and remove the excess fat. Why because they weaken themselves, by splitting the loot over more people than is necessary.

    Such guilds should remove their weakest links, and fire those people who under perform.

    So basically officers make 2 extra raid days for 3 weeks, do in RoS, tell guildmembers you not participate in those and you cannot bid/get dkp in the month. Evaluate the total roster, as people hopefully have participated in them. Then say you for last few weeks been evaluating people and there some who under perform. And you will have a time to improve their play or they out the door.

    And yes, I am old fasioned and favor of hard leadership where the weakest are history.
  15. BlueberryWerewolf Augur


    This is very much a problem of managing expectations and demanding the game be one-size-fits-all.

    You can't tune a raid such that everyone who wants to participate can do so successfully. You just can't.

    There is a limited amount of resources allocated for designing new content, so a choice has to be made with who doesn't get what they want.

    This game has long had a problem of tuning everything so that the newest content is challenging for the hardcore set. I think that is a mistake and the hardcore set needs to accept that not everything in the game will be a challenge for them.

    The casual set needs to accept that the newest raid content will probably be too challenging for them.

    And these things need to be balanced in such a way as to minimize the number of players who decide this is unacceptable and stop playing.

    Is that possible? I have no idea. It seems like a non-trivial challenge and the idea that any one idea is going to solve all of these competing problems is, at best, naïve.
  16. Silver-Crow Augur

    To be honest I think this is all down to a calculated DBG business model.

    New content takes effort to produce and lets be fair, I suspect there's not actually that many people buying it, since the main EQ population now seems to be following the TLP servers where there's no need to buy the latest expac. The new expansions are really just rehashes of old zones anyway with a few twiddly bits, so to make it last a long time they make the raids really hard. Hard raids are nothing new... heck look back to gates of discord when it first released. In the end people beat it, strats are leaked and eventually nearly everyone can do it. It's really a case of wringing maximum longevity out of minimal content.

    Instead they've come to realise that the 'live' game isn't the one making them money.... It's the TLP servers. Release a new TLP, folk buy bags, xp potions and buy mounts... and it costs next to nothing as it's all old content. I do wonder if this was the driver behind releasing 2 servers this year.

    I do wonder (and worry) about the future of EQ, as TLP's do nothing to develop the game and the new expansions are underwhelming in scope compared to the oldies like kunark, velious etc. 'lifetime' memberships, 2 x new TLP servers... it all strikes me as wringing out as much cash from the game as they can with minimal investment.

    I think this is the new reality sadly as DBG are in the business of making money, not investment.
  17. kizant Augur

    That would be a nice thing to have.
  18. gotwar Gotcharms

    As someone who has worked hard to bring more than one casual guild online during TBL and prior expansions, I can say with 100% certainty this is not the case.

    I can provide countless examples of players given all the tools to succeed but who still failed because they couldn't change the way they played their character.

    The number one thing blocking casual guilds from progressing is the idea that they're doing "ok" performance wise and its everything else holding them back.
    Brohg, Ssdar, Mintalie and 5 others like this.
  19. BadPallyGuildLeader Augur

    If you want a group of people to perform better somone has to lead with an eye towards teaching...without the perjorative overtones of it being "handholding" or what not(at the worst it's the "just git gud" mindset). If AA's and gear are not a primary performance factor (I agree and I don't think they are), then it boils down to showing people what to do so that they feel the 'game' is still a game and what they are going through learning to be better is fun.

    I have heard that some guilds are booting or disallowing on raids on FV because of a blown trigger or two. It's either an excuse or other issues with a set of players OR it's a leadership crutch.

    Consider if ROI /guildremoves after 20 fails at mearatas? Silly right? But how many would be left?
  20. Xorsazis Augur

    My opinion, but Rain of Fear seemed like the best expansion model. Release 2 tiers at expansion drop, and release a few others over time. Most people hated this, but to me it feels like that was when things progressed from easy to difficult as the expansion progressed.

    Each tier had its set of items, which meant clearing a tier made all items available. Each tier was doable, especially once geared up from the previous tier. T1 < T2 < T3 < T4 in terms of difficulty (raids and base zones). No artificial wall on event clickies (this made it an actual race vs. who was riding lockouts). I think each raid had a valuable rare click item which was (and some still are) useful. And the biggest thing that made it fun was the final tier had class weapons available (within the first raid).

    T1 had I think 4 raid events, T2 had I think 8 or so raid events (multiple events in some zones), T3 had 2 raid events, and T4 had 3 raid events. The it even had a tier 0 raid event in ToV to help some catch up to T1.

    I had a lot of fun then. There was so much to do and everything felt rewarding. Would love another expansion just like that.
    Moldar, Caell and Annastasya like this.