Outside the Box Raid Ideas

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by Shakara, Jul 24, 2021.

  1. Shakara Augur

    When looking at EQ raids most of them seems to be; Here is a boss, he has some abilities, figure out how to beat him. I think there is a lot of design room for different types of raids that don't just involve killing a boss or some trash. Some of my ideas are

    Expedition: The first part of the raid could involve a mission where the raid has to travers a difficult zone(s) to get to the castle or lair of the boss. This type of raid you would be tasked to get across the zone while dealing with obstacles along the way in a certain time limit. An example would be you have to trudge though a swampy marsh where random creatures ambush the raid. The marsh has a snare aura that slows progress and random emotes could go out that cause a few players in the raid to become sick with difficult to cure ailments (200-300 counters) and you only have 10-15 minutes to get across. Or another example is a rocky mountain pass that splits into multiple paths where each path can only have so many players in it so you much split your raid while dealing with trash and rockfall auras in a very tight corridor. The idea behind these types of raids would be to test the raids ability's to manage their resources, organization and pacing. You could even have different sets of loot depending on how fast the raid made it through

    Defend the Castle: This type of raid would be where the raid is tasked to defend a structure from multiple points of attack. There could be different types of enemies that would require different types of responses. The enemies could bring in siege equipment and you could decide to try and run out and destroy it taking a lot of damage in the process or sit behind your walls and try and range DPS it down. The enemies could also try and dig under or scale the wall and it would be up to your raid on how to respond to the threats.

    The point of these different types of raids is to get people to think differently and come up with new strategies they had not normally thought of before and to challenge raiders in a different way.
  2. Shakara Augur

    Oopes ment to post this is Vet lounge if someone could move it that would be great.
    minimind likes this.
  3. Machen New Member

    You just described Uqua, among others.


    You just described the Argath raid and the Valley of Lunanyn raid, among others.
    Tweakfour17 likes this.
  4. FranktheBank Augur

    Stop fixed time raids.
  5. theonepercent Augur

    Nah I enjoy going back to Anguish for a 2.0 orb and Hanvar still taking 20 or whatever minutes. Gives me a lot of time to think about why I'm still playing this game.
    Roxas MM likes this.
  6. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    I think the point went over your head.
  7. Tweakfour17 Augur

    DK would probably be viewed in a better light if you could go faster but 3/4 of the events are timed snooze fests.
    Machen likes this.
  8. Machen New Member


    With the final fight being by far the most egregious example in the history of eq.
    Demetri likes this.
  9. FranktheBank Augur

    Isn't it great that the speed in which you clear DK now is the same speed in which it was cleared in PoR?
    Demetri likes this.
  10. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Well, Ayonae got a tweak back in May this year, no idea whether it was a decent improvement or not as I haven't been back at all.

    *** Quests & Events ***

    - Modified the fourth event in Deathknell. Ayonae Ro will now become "vulnerable" over time (and health) rather than all at once.
  11. minimind The Village Idiot

    I have massive nostalgia for GoD raids. Maybe it's because that's when I became a competent raider, but I thought they were great. I *loved* Tacvi.

    Also, Uqua and Tacvi whooped our so many times. It was HARD. I didn't like it because it was hard, though. I liked it because there were so many varied individual events as opposed to the modern mega events where it's like playing half of the Tacvi events all at once.
    Machen likes this.
  12. minimind The Village Idiot

    I'll often describe my casual raid org on Luclin (Norrathian Council of Guilds) as "plucky". We'll be in over our heads sometimes headed directly for a wipe, when our leader will refuse to relent by saying, "Click in the dead. Get those DPS up! Tokens, Click sticks, Calls!"

    There have been MANY raids where I thought to myself, "Damn it, Fez! Let me die in peace..." only for him to be too damn stubborn to lose. And then we win with screams in Teamspeak. 10% experience lost in a single raid night, no loot for me, and it's just the best.

    Fixed time raids kill that potential. There is no opportunity to be plucky. It's a "You must be this tall to raid this raid." test. I don't like it.
  13. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    For quite a while we had just 2 devs actually building raids, that has changed but it did mean that ideas were asomewhat limited, now raids are spread around the team a bit more, and we have some freah faces on the team so that's more braincells thinking up new stuff.

    Making new raids isn't easy though, there are all sorts of limitations in play even for a top-drawer designer and skilled scripter.

    The OP has the right kind of idea though, open up a "design a raid" dialogue and some player ideas may have some nuggets the devs can actually plagiarise and impliment.

    Someone else came up with a raid idea inspired by the boulder-chase sequence from Raiders of the Lost Ark, after some back & forth it went in some interesting directions.

    What kinds of raid events would be fun?
    What kinds of things can EQ mechanically do that maybe have not been tried as a component of a raid event?

    OP has some interesting ideas that don't sit within the "typical" raid design of a boss plus waves of things happening, they seem more player versus environment, versus hazards and more "journey themed", that's actually very appealing to me and these type of events could be fairly cinematic in style and design - especially the mountain pass avoiding rocks, navigating narrow paths with falls/slips, not sure EQ could really create that sense of walking along the edge of a mountain precipice or the drama of almost slipping off and needing to be pulled back up by your buddies, but maybe it can try.

    I liked the "Castle Defense" idea, could have some players operating ballistae, pouring boiling water/oil over the invaders, defeat enough invaders and some huge demon appears to smash the door in then you have to repel it and the minions flooding in behind it, once into the centre of your castle you can then have teams shoring up the castle gates, holding back the crowd of invaders while your dps attempst to kill the demon before it destroys all your mechanical defenses mounted on the walls.

    I liked the swamp-crawl ambush idea too, we've had ambushes like Stitch in TSS but something a little more open-world where you are trudging through the swamp on the way to something, snared, while being attacked by waves of crocodiles, mangrove-men and fungus dudes and maybe some nasty evil frogloks who are a bit more than mere cannon fodder and will launch attacks from behind rocks and above you from the trees.

    An alternative could be a shifting maze like we had in Frostcrypt only now you have waves of Yeti attacking you while you navigate it.

    Or more "environmental" ambushes like a desert traverse with a huge sandstorm that is actually a swarm of deranged "mad-snacks: beyond the thunder-gnome" post-apocalyptic biker gnomes on steam-jet bikes, some of them will be fighters, some will be suicide bombers, some will plant parts of a giant alarm clock on the sand the more gnome bikers you kill the fewer alarm clock parts they drop each part will summon big worms you have to fight that can attack you from below, if you manage to kill enough gnome bikers their boss emerges from the sandstorm on a flying garage/fortress, if you defeat him slowly you only get big worms but if you can burn him fast he explodes and that summons the daddy worm which is a really huge worm that will after a while eat your whole raid & you have to fight big worms in his belly, as he carries them through the desert, if you beat all the worms he spits you out at your destination.

    And of course there could be actual "ship to ship combat", or "ship to sea monster combat" maybe, I am sure Tom Tobey would be all over the idea of animating the GIANT TENTACLES of a huge octopus/squid that attacks your ship on its scripted journey across a sea between event 1 & 3 of a raid DZ with multiple events in it, and picks up a few players that you have to beat the tentacles hard enough to make it let them go, or they get eaten, you'll soon find out who your friends really are...

    Maybe a Castle Attack event, with some players given help from some flying creatures and they get to fly over the castle dropping bombs on the enemy and weakening the door, while some players push towers towards the walls that they can then climb up to climb up onto the walls and destroy the enemy archers/ballistae while others launch trebuchet at the walls/gates.

    Or even something a bit smaller scale involving having one team attacking the castle through a network of tunnels dug underneath the walls and then they have to get into the castle's inner sanctum to steal the gold from the king's vault without alerting the gaurds. Another team creating a diversion elsewhere to draw some of the guards away, and a third team stealing horses and carts to allow the vault robbing team to make an escape with all that stolen gold. Make it a night event and use searchlights/shadows and your robber team ahs to creep in, maybe a few skirmishes with powerful guards, golem guardians along the route, maybe a few different routes some with mobs suited to a caster-heavy team others with mobs suited to a melee heavy team so repeated play can be mixed up a bit.
  14. Tweakfour17 Augur

    I also have not gone back but I took this statement to mean instead of everyone standing around doing 1 fetters click at a time until she went active and you burned her down, you would do a couple clicks, burn 10%, a couple clicks, 10%, etc. Still takes just as long but slightly more active engagement from the rest of the raid.
    Demetri and Skuz like this.
  15. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Maybe one day we could get some events that worked like W.A.R.'s "Public Event" system or RIFT's rifts, those were some very cool ideas, EQ wasn't ever built to do those kinds of things but they were a lot of fun, though I wouldn't have quite as many of those events in as those games had, too much of a good thing can spoil it - looks at funky ice shader over-used in ToV/CoV and the "push you away" mechanic over-used in HoT.
  16. Grouchy-Phini New Member

    It takes the same amount of time to kill A.Ro, you just can't range tank her until you get all your clicks in then burn her down. You just sit a tank on her the entire event instead.
  17. Machen New Member

    Even on Fippy, Uqua was still pretty hard. First event that gave us a challenge.

    Sadly, by the time Phinny rolled through it was trivial like everything else.
    minimind likes this.
  18. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    Txevu Zun was quite challenging on Quarm when we had everyone still in intricate defiant gear. We never did beat it, we killed OMM before breaking into Tacvi.

    If they wanted events to be more difficult on TLPs they really should disable Glyphs until SoD and add mighty buff through to around SoD as well. The innate melee AAs, DoT revamps and general game improvements over the years make people do 2-3x more DPS than they did in era, spread over an entire raid it becomes ridiculous.

    For new raids I've always been fond of "weakest link" raids where you need everyone to perform. I think a raid that puts everyone in the raid in their own room by themselves and each class has a different challenge in their room. Or one that puts everyone from each class in a room. Then after each room is completed you merge into another room. All the archetypes are in a new room like Dru/Cler/Shm and Ench/Wiz/Mag/Necro etc. Then at the end you merge up for a final boss. Admittedly it sounds a bit like the Pillar raid, which I think was probably the most difficult raid we faced on TLP servers, and on live when VoA was current it was pretty rough too.
    minimind likes this.
  19. Machen New Member


    Sadly people enjoy ezmode raiding. The easier they make it, the more popular the TLP's become.

    I am all for removing glyphs until the appropriate eras, removing innate dps aa's until the appropriate eras, and removing the massive tank mitigation changes they have added in the last five years until the appropriate eras. Those three changes would put us at least close to the ballpark of difficulty we were at before the start of the aoc tlp era. Could probably even tone down motm significantly if they did those 3 things and classic->pop would still be net harder.

    I doubt they will do that though, because easy seems to be selling.
  20. Roxas MM Augur

    i still think the pillars raid was really awesome, having clerics dps, rangers and beastlords heal, raid split up in seperate parts, etc. just awesome and quite fun
    Skuz likes this.