Do we really need emotes on raids?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Gnomereaper, Feb 24, 2021.

  1. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    So first off, players never played the way developers thought they would anyway, that's why they coined the term "emergent gameplay", then secondly the devs have teams beta test raids so that they can gain an understanding of how players DO actually tackle raids.

    I also think that asking players to do things that they consider to be "non-standard" is part of how you challenge players, how you keep them on their toes & not get bored of doing the same things over & over.

    Maybe you're just getting old & you don't like change, a hardening of the neurons to match what is going on in your arteries perhaps. I'm 50 and I love all the new challenges the devs come up with, plenty of things are just stuff we have seen before in a different order or in combination with other things.

    I don't know what you think is "the way your class was designed to function" but I play a pure DPS, I have not seen an event where I get to not do that, but plenty where I am challenged to do that & a whole bunch of other stuff too, like Mearatas recently - now that event has everything you seem to hate but I found that event to be seriously good fun. The only event I have really ever hated over the years was Ayonae Ro because it was just plain boring as hell.

    Healing (or casting in general) while sliding around on ice, yeah that's going to be a challenge for sure, but expecting to get to sit & just spam buttons is not going to be a challenge for any healer/caster.
    FawnTemplar and Sancus like this.
  2. Svann2 The Magnificent

    I think lag generally comes from 3 things
    1. pathing
    2. too many trash mobs populating the zone (adds to #1)
    3. when burn is called and everyone hits everything all at once
    Otherwise lag usually isnt an issue
    Yinla likes this.
  3. Elyssanda Bardbrain

    yep, one of our top officers is color blind.
  4. Jennre Band Leader

    They should make a raid where everyone that does damage to the mob gets loot! Hit the mob, BAM, a breastplate falls out, hit it again, BAM, new sword! YEAH
    Metanis and Elyssanda like this.
  5. Sancus Augur

    Unfettered Emerald Excellence.
    Leap abilities and "stutter-stepping" during global cooldowns make moving a non-issue for casters in most modern raids. One of the main issues with Torment of Velious raids that made them boring and uninteresting is that most of the mechanics (with a few exceptions) did not require the entire raid to react/move. Instead, most people could stand in the same spot doing nothing other than playing their class as normal most of the time.
  6. Rolaque Ancient

    Cannon fodder has to protect the artillery and the medics.
  7. Elyssanda Bardbrain

    this is my favorite raid in probably the last 5 years.
  8. Jhenna_BB Proudly Prestigious Pointed Purveyor of Pincusions

    That's pretty much what you do when you play looter shooters or Diablo style games. :D
    Jennre likes this.
  9. Jhenna_BB Proudly Prestigious Pointed Purveyor of Pincusions

    LOOTSPLOSION

  10. Froglok Augur



    Yes, we do.

    Raids aren't supposed to be easy.

    I know some people don't like them, primarily because they can be hard to catch and react to, in one chat window or another, as they scroll by in the spam.

    One in-game solution is to set up Audio Triggers for the emotes. Even better if you create your own sound files that speak words to tell you what to do.
    Yinla likes this.
  11. Windance Augur

    Are they needed? Yes.

    But like all things, in moderation.

    The emotes should have a good visual indicator, give names of who needs to run if single, give failure messages for those who missed them.

    The emotes should also give enough time to react. 8-10s minimum so factors like server side lag, and client side lag don't cause one to miss the emote. It would be nice if the casters have time to finish that 3s cast then move but I understand why they are making the reaction times shorter to make raids harder.
    Skuz likes this.
  12. Windance Augur

    Examples of a good visual indicators:

    Griklor fire aura

    Example of bad visual indicators:

    Tantorlings flashing decal.
    Skyfire meteor decals.
    Metanis, Raccoo, Yinla and 3 others like this.
  13. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    I have my own ATs set up, nothing beats DPS off than having Jack Sparrow shouting "Stop blowing holes in my ship!" or Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny arguing over rabbit season or duck season when I need to duck/bend the knee. Runaway is a Dr Who one "Run for your life". All of them are things which amuse me while doing boring repetative raids.

    I'd like to see emotes reduced, and in return see a return of smaller teams having to do other things, for example clicking stuff, making items, killing other mobs, breaking crates to free people. Many of the raids these days are extremely repetative, run here, run there, avoid this aura, bla, bla, bla. Raids need more of a variety.

    I'd also like to see the same amount of adds spawning for each and every guild, those who kill slower have more time to kill the adds, those who burn through the named have to deal with all the adds before being able to complete the raid. NO despawning of adds at the end, no chest until all dead.

    I am against adding raid mechanics to the group game, group players tend to want a more relaxed game. There is a reason they don't raid.
    Skuz likes this.
  14. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Definitely some want that.

    However there was for a long time a number of players who were saying that by not being raiders they only got to see a part of the content of each expansion, only half the story, so the devs created those group-level missions that were scaled-down versions of the raid events as much to give group players the "full story" of the expansion as to also give them some challenging content to try.

    The other way to look at it is cross-pollinating ideas/mechanics & gaining feedback from the group players about event mechanics they normally would never get to see - in doing that the devs might get some suggestions/feedback from players who don't normally raid that may be insightful or inspirational - and after 200 plus raids the devs have crafted over the years I imagine they need all the inspiration, ideas & suggestions for new things to try on raids that they can possibly get.
    Elyssanda likes this.
  15. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    You can have the story without having the emotes. Grilok as a missions is a waste of time, 2 minute burn and its all over, same can be said with Zlandicar. Some "full story missions" have been well done with very little to no need for any audio triggers, others are over complicated. IMHO the best mission in ToV was GD, but then I loved the original ring war, personally I dislike all 4 of the CoV missions.

    I find the non raid missions more entertaining, moving through places like Droga and Chardok rather staying in one place and avoiding auras is rather boring.
  16. Svann2 The Magnificent

    Thats because those are Heroic Adventures, not missions.
  17. KrakenReality Augur


    They could split the trash and group version raid boss into separate missions, and double the group content available. Some groups would be better with a straight kill task like "The Darkness Howls," while others can handle the single NPC event style missions better.
  18. Bigstomp Augur


    When the event says you've failed and the reset mechanic makes a chest full of loot pop.
    That is a wonderful mechanic.
  19. Cannikin Elder

    IMO, mini-raid style missions are actually more unforgiving than actual raids.

    In many if not most raids, if things are going bad and a lot of people are dead, it is often possible to "pause" the raid by simply pulling everyone off the boss except the MT and healers. By holding it in a spot to avoid spawning more adds, or advancing to a harder stage, you can take a few minutes to rez people, throw around some buffs and get back on track. It doesn't take too many healers to keep the MT up, while the rest rez and recover, and even if he/she goes down, another tank can pick it up.

    Group missions don't have such luxuries. In the vast majority of pickup groups there is no backup or contingency plan if pretty much anyone dies in your group. If the tank dies, your group usually wipes in seconds. If the healer goes down, you're screwed. If other group members go splat, it is unlikely you will have the opportunity to rez them unless you have multiple healers.

    This is exacerbated by the devs' recent love affair with very short engage timers in group content. This is a totally artificial instant-failure mechanic that has no lore or logical reason to exist (you didn't fail any objective, the boss didn't accomplish anything, it gets "bored" after 30 seconds and disappears off to who-knows-where).

    The difference this mechanic makes is on full display in, for instance, the Trials of Smoke: Trial of Three. Not only did you have only a few seconds to figure out the riddles, and then fight (what at the time was) a punishing boss, then have no time whatsoever to recover before remembering which the next guy was, racing your whole group over (anyone even slightly slower was punished by the darkness) and repeating the process for another 2 bosses.

    Contrast this with the Wending Ways, which also had some punishing bosses, but you could take time to recover (and navigate the maze) between them, meaning even if you didn't have the sheer endurance to marathon all 4 bosses in one go, or even wiped in the middle, a less than ideal group could push through (slowly) with sheer persistence.

    I feel like the best compromise design was GD Restless Assault. Yes, technically there was a time limit, in that if you took way too long, the next boss would spawn before the current was dead. However, there were some buffer mechanics: the bosses spawned some distance away and slowly walked over, and the Coldain could hold them off for a few minutes on their own. That way, your group could take a little bit to recover between bosses, while still having an overall lore-logical failure condition/timer (giants wipe out the Coldain) pushing you along.
  20. Waring_McMarrin Augur

    The difference is you can retry a group event several times in the timeframe it would take to complete the raid once.