ToFS Raid 1 Difficulty / Mechanics concerns

It's impressive to beat a raid Tuesday, April 14th AFTER the change that occurred on Wednesday, April 15th.

Ahh True .. Sorry fella's mixxed days up. Tonight we see it after its change. (depending on Guild leaders choice of raids)

We changed our raid days from just Tuesday lately to Tuesdays / Thursdays .. So again I mixed up the days my bad.

And once you see it, you'll never forget it ..... the light-switch will click on, and this entire thread will make sense lol

I'm VERY excited to see it !

Patch notes from Wednesday April 15th (last Tuesday was the 14th):

Are you time travelling into the future to beat these raids?

I will also like a unbias member of your guild report how much of a "not a problem" this raid was if you do attempt it tonight. Because I believe the things that come out of your mouth about as much as I'd believe Charles Ponzi offering me a great deal.

Just a friendly reminder to everyone that I made a post months ago asking for ToFS #2 and ToFS #3 to NOT be locked behind this raid. It was met with a lot of pushback, especially from Whulfgar. While I know that ToFS #1 is going to eventually be changed, this is what guilds deal with when they have raids they can’t beat blocking access to raids they can beat.

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/tov-tofs-raids.262938/

I'm not sure what beating it after the change shows. Just because something is beatable doesn't mean it is designed well. If you aren't one of (or the) force that took 90 minutes or whatever, then you got lucky on mob pops.

It was already somewhat of a random number generator event, but now it's a complete and total random number generator event. Random increase/decrease on the DoT and combining random mob spawns with capped limits on what counts, without those limits influencing what can spawn, is terrible. It's not even a tuning thing for the latter. The randomness in its original form was only a moderate annoyance if restless were stingy on spawning. The randomness in its current form is unreasonable.

Also, combining immunity to movement spells with extremely bad pathing is annoying and not challenging. Those mobs shouldn't be immune to push abilities. That's another example of beatable or tolerable not meaning it's fine. That wasn't something I figured it was worth bringing up, until this debacle.

Already addressed this .. perhaps you ought to work on reading comprehension lil fella..

Pot .. meet kettle..

And I stand by my logic. Tier'ed raid format raid 3 should be locked behind both raid 1 and 2, and raid 2 should be locked behind raid 1.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with this.

You do not see how this was a disaster in Sathir's Tomb? (Edit: Actually, that's more a tier discussion than single-zone discussion I concede.) In my opinion, the progression rankings show how broken RoS progression was. If they do that, they need to be very careful.

The problem that happens with that kind of design is if the earlier events are disproportionately tuned in relation to the others, it gates off the entire thing from weaker/moderate forces. Contrast that with many historic raid zones that have branching paths or the ability to do fights outside of a specific order. Tacvi, Citadel of Anguish, Demi-plane of Blood (though tiered) and more all have a non-linear progression. It's also a potential pain for raid forces with very limited play time. Granted three events isn't nearly as punishing to those as something like Solteris, Sepulcher, etc. If I recall supposedly, and I'm not sure if this is true, historical events of equal tier were supposed to be similar in difficulty. That, of course, is far from reality and a choice in direction avoids roadblocks. TBM did that well, I think.

That said, I agree it makes sense in ToFS, though it means they need to be very careful with the tuning. If there were more events in the zone, I'd suggest keying it so raids can be done out of order after a first win, since that would go along with the way the zone works in general with its keys.

If it turns into a gatekeeper situation, that is dangerous for raid force stability.

There are ways to combat weak raid force / turn out / poor performance of raids .

Its called recruitment. Putting BETTER leadership in position. Start a bench, an place the poor performer's on it until they shape up to at least a minimum standard for each individual class player.

How are you going to insult people, after being called out for lying and then calling your guild mate a liar?

It's not hardest by any means. Just the longest, most boring and annoying. Telling your guildees that some of them will have to spend the next 40 min doing nothing but dying and getting rezzed is not something a raid leader ever wants to do.

Because the person you took my quote from (to whom it was addressing actually) has it out for certain other posters .

And has been caught lie'ing before and unlike myself (to which I admit I was wrong, an even apologize for it) They simply stop posting on the thread when they get caught.

Pot meet kettle .. in this very particular instance .. That poster said they dont trust my words, which is their choice.. however neither do I trust theirs .. hence the saying.

That makes one of us.

Whaddap boss

What you describe isn't realistic for every force.

My guild is quite strong, but I've been there before, where pretty much any app that isn't rock bottom terrible with a bad attitude is a welcome slot to so much as fill the roster, and filling the roster at all is a luxury. And as far as putting "BETTER" leadership in position, you can't just magic that kind of thing into existence. The human factor is probably the single biggest factor in guild stability.

Years ago, there were times I was leading raids, helping with loot, managing the raid roster (which I never even considered being separate from leading the raid until not-so-long ago), entering the attendance, and entering the loot. Class leads? Sometimes people would step up, but good players don't always make good leaders, and some of them can do little more than stomp their feet in frustration (or worse, sow malcontent and instability). Even in prosperous times, I was sometimes doubling as both heal and tank lead for assignments. Don't get me wrong, my fellow leadership at the time put a ton of effort into our guild's operation at the time too, but what I did then is done by 5+ people in a more efficient force.

Seeing how smooth things can run with many people doing different duties was absolutely mind blowing to me. "Prepare to have your mind blown," someone I knew told me. It was. I had no conception of the luxury of consistently having a full raid ready to engage on raid time, the raid lead giving an exact engage time after a move and exactly following it, the raid lead giving constant real-time direction while someone else handled the roster, etc.

For a mid/low tier guild, it's often "let's see who shows up and what roster we can build, and what events are viable today." People boxing other characters or outright playing alts isn't a favor to them in such a guild; it's a favor to the guild to so much as function. That is the status quo, and only prosperous times allow what you describe. You see for a guild like that, the medium players help to survive lower summer numbers, for example. They aren't as strong, but they are necessary to keep going, and not all strong players want to abandon their friends because they don't play as well as they do

A mid or low tier guild takes focus to so much as survive, much less magically field numbers to bench poorer players. It takes the leadership mental effort to stay dedicated and not just give up, much less get everyone on their "A" game. Tuning around that simple outline in the message I quoted at the exclusion of everyone else will just evaporate the raid player base more quickly. And, frankly, I find the notion that people who are only so-so players having no place in the raid game after playing for well over a decade to be outright disgusting. With that kind of design, there are no mid or low tier guilds anymore. That isn't something only ranking determines; it is a level of operational efficiency many raid forces could only dream of.

Don't get me wrong: I play the part and agree to the policy in my guild. We can and do exactly as you are talking about. That isn't a luxury all guilds have though. Without a mid or low tier raid force, I know darn well some of the people I have known over the years would have no room, and I find it disgusting some people insult them by saying they "just show up." Yes, they "just show up" consistently for thousands of hours over many years to be part of a team, and they may never be good enough to be with the top and they may never learn everything they should, but they do show up, and their time does mean something.

I don't want to nor would I remotely dream of trying to lower the standards of my guild. It's very nice to be in a stronger force, and to be able to field a wait list every night. But the idea that there should be no place for those weaker players disgusts me utterly.

I want to bring up a very well-designed raid, and I don't know if the person that designed it is still around at Darkpaw but I felt they "got" the mid/low tier raiding experience. I felt the way they designed it, they must have understood:
Zalikor in Rain of Fear. During that event, there are phases in which he takes flight and the raid must flee to high ground to avoid dying. There are three egg platforms with adds that spawn as he flies around. The thing is one of those three platforms, I want to say NE but memory may fail me, has significantly weaker adds than the other two. This meant the people I knew that (frankly) were terrible at platforming and tended to fall in the lava, or were weaker in general overall for their class, were people I could put on that platform. Their job was still important! The adds still needed to die, but that small part of the raid, that one assignment was something they could do even if they could not be trusted on the other two egg locations. I'd put one medium to strong player with them to back them up. Some of them noticed the pattern and asked me if I thought they were weak, so I just told them what I just said, that they were the backup if that platform did particularly horrible that night.

If that weaker platform on Zalikor was only a mistake, well I didn't take it that way. (Never mind the awful geometry issues with his "summon to the middle" mechanic.)

That is what designing a raid roster is like for a mid/low tier guild. You have dedicated strong players, but you also can't fill out the raid without the other players dedicating themselves to showing up for hours every week. When tuning is too harsh, those players have no place. And that's understandable for a force that maintains such standards, but that doesn't mean no force should be able to exist that doesn't have such strength all the time. Nor should that mean the slightest dent in attendance suddenly makes raids completely impossible.

And yes, of course even in very strong forces it's likely some players are still stronger than others. The difference, however, is absolutely night and day. This is why I feel the only way of designing for the bulk of the raid player base as a whole is difficulty levels. Mearatas as the final event was good, if most of the rest of the expansion weren't so highly tuned as well. That said, I think Mearatas has quite fun mechanics! Mearatas 1.0 hard mode plus a more sanely tuned version for everyone else is the ideal situation.

And I've said it before, but glyphs are a problem in my opinion. If people think things are too easy, they shouldn't use them. Raids actually giving AA experience mitigates that somewhat, but it's so early on that change was made I don't have an opinion on it.

As that may be, I still dont see how you could make that mistake. If you read what changed how could you not realize that those things did not occur during your raid - at all? That your raid was nothing like this? And then claim it was no problem. I guess nothing is a problem if you arent even knowing what is going on. Carried much?

TOFS1 Changes are on Test