Do we really need emotes on raids?

This is a fair question. Do we really need emotes on game design for raids? Do we really need failure mechanics based on one person? Are there other areas of game design that can be used more for raids rather than using complex series of emotes?

One of the areas with recent era of game design I question with raiding, is whether moving towards more simplified design would allow for better server stability and increased fun factor.

For the most part, at least in my experience, people do not find simple raids fun.

Aradune/Rizlona are -----> that way if you enjoy tank and spank raids with little to no mechanics to worry about. Imo the game becoming generally more complex as we level up is a good thing. More buttons to hit, more complex mechanics to be aware of and respond appropriately. Server stability is a worthy subject to discuss, but neutering raid mechanics is a bad solution.

Outside of making raids have more HP, DPS and adds how do you expect to up the difficulty and challenge of a raid? Emotes are a great way to add to the difficulty of a raid without making it impossible for some guilds to do dps/healing limits.

We need individual emotes/achievements on raids, so that the whole raid doesn't fail because of just one clown. I like the Kael 2 mechanic of punishing the player who missed the emote (death) but then forcing the other 53 to not get the /ach is painful.

Maybe individual punishments could be more severe: punting them to Plane of Sky or something fun.

Back in original OOW it took us many, many tries to beat the Simon Says MPG trial (whatever it's called). It was always that one halfling ranger that missed an emote.

The emotes that bug me are the 'flavor' emotes that say that the mob's appearance is changing while not actually doing anything visually.

e.g.
"Klandicar begins to grow in apparent size and ferocity. The dragon shows its true, terrible form."

And the mob doesn't look any different.

either actually make the mob change it's appearance or say something different in the emote.

There was an old raid in blackburrow I think that had a bunch of these.
Things like "mob sprouts tentacles", "mob looks more scary", etc.

Consider the alternatives:
1 tank and spank. boring
2. Some games dont give any emotes at all. You just have to memorize the event. Sucks imo, but some like it like that.
3. Graphics revamp so instead of saying the dragon is about to breath it actually looks like he is getting ready to breath. This would be ideal, but dont hold your breath for graphics revamp!

I remember how quickly my guild got sick of Corrupted Temple of Veeshan, despite it giving good loot at the time. Everything except Vulak was a tank and spank, and it was utterly braindead to run. So, no, we need to do more things that just autoattack and cast spells in order to beat raids.

Fair questions. I'll try my best to answer in order form my perspective:

1. Yes. We need text-based alerts on raids because graphical or auditory alerts would be insufficient given our diverse computer specifications of the EQ population as well as due to the limitations of the EQ engine. If your game is built to show something is about to happen, then you don't really need text emotes. But the game is so old and so complex that local graphics lag is a genuine issue. It's why there are so many settings to reduce graphical effects.

I'm running a 7th Gen i5 w/16 GB RAM, M.2 SSD, and a GTX 1060 (weak, but should be enough for EQ, right?). I still turn off characters, pets, and most spell effects during raids. I turn off sound so I can communicate in Teamspeak with maximum clarity.

2. We don't need failure mechanics at all, but we do need difficulty and complexity. In particular, we need to make raids of sufficient difficulty that their completion feels like an accomplishment, not just going through the motions. There are very few events where a single person can fail the event for everyone without question. Most can be recovered from (depending on gearing, levels, AAs, etc.). I know this because my raid org has made MANY ridiculously low-probability recoveries. Each one felt amazing if still frustrating.

3. Of course. But beware that there is a momentum behind emote-based raids that when disrupted will bring massive ire. Want to integrate tradeskills to the raid? Platform jumping? Pick-lock as a must-have? Checkpoints in a race? (Actually, that one sounds good. A proper dungeon crawl with a raid where you must get to certain checkpoints within a certain amount of time or receive a penalty... a penalty, not a fail.)

Simplified design can be fun for many. But given just how disciplined and skilled the top 25 or so raiding guilds/orgs are, they just might see them as loot pinatas.

Adding to this, if too much noise is going on during raids causing lag - can the Devs maybe stop with the loud as hell auras? Baby Mammoths are cancer. Let's all hunt them to extinction and make 10lb Halas Meat Pies out of them!

I've felt this way for a long, but emotes are dumb. The game (any game, not just EQ) should visually show the player what is happening. I hate that I spend more time buried in a chat window waiting for the next event messages filter to show up than I do actually watching the raid event unfolding in front of me. This has lead to a 3rd party crutch program like gina being nearly mandatory for raiding. And while it's entirely doable to raid without it, why would you take the chance that you miss some innocuous emote instead of having gina visually and audibly alert you to what you need to do?

There should be decals that show you where AOEs are about to land with some indication of how much time before they land. Auras should have uniform color coding indicating what they do: Red=bad, green=good, blue=ice, black=disease just to give some examples. I just think you should be able to go into an event blind and figure it out with visual cues. Not necessarily any easier nor harder than current content, just different.

Not only do we need emotes on raids. We need emotes in regular zones. The problem on raids only exists because players aren't given opportunity to practice. Every tier 2+ group content zone should have emotes to avoid and wandering encounters like the drakes in Skyfire.

You shut your filthy mouth!

It would be fun!

Minimind covered most of your "should be" with this nugget of wisdom:

As Absor said:

Therefore emotes are a "tool" used by the devs when they are designing raids, they can be used for many purposes, signalling action cues, warnings, telling you who actually messed up so that you can try & fix why that went wrong for examples.

I've a kid who plays FFXIV, I've seen what their "dance dance revolution" raids look like, and EQ simply could not pull off half of that with its engine, and most of that content always takes place on a disc....EQ has far more interesting & a much greater variety of geometry involved with most of its raids even if it has a far lower variety of visual cues possible with its engine.

The devs do an admirable job in creating fun raids and the last thing we should be doing as players is taking away any of the very limited number of tools available to them to create content, scripting by itself is not going to be enough, I know raid design is HARD as it is.

What does the perfectly designed encounters look like?

If encounter mechanics could be repeated, which ones show the most positive excellence?

If we consider the limitations on technology and the last few years of server lag, what designs should be used to move beyond Corrupted NToV yet not have the massive lag problems yet still have interesting raids?

Absor also creates some of the most complicated raids. I believe it was stated he designed the first Velkeltor raid. I don't like that raid, because I have to keep moving around on ice and my cleric isn't designed like a bard to keep healing and moving.

The game rewards casters staying in one area, not always moving around. This is in part what creates the frustration in keeping track of increasing complexity. Simplifying raids down to specific teams that have different functions instead of having raids where you are made to play a way your class was not designed to function at all is not fun.

Streamlining raids seems to be the direction to go right now to decrease lag and scripting if the servers cannot handle a lot of scripting for an event.

Too bad applicant you failed and cannot raid anymore you are colorblind.
Yes a fair number of people actually has color problems.