I want a raid that challenges my character and skill set as an EQ player. Not a raid that limits me because my name doesn't start with E or whatever. Feels like the ideas in the original post (name starts with same letter, group has to have same classes) does more limiting than it does advancing and promoting skill. One or my favorite raids in the past several expansions was the House of Thule raid where you had to guess the killer. It used deductive reasoning, it got harder the longer you waited to answer, etc. Challenged both the physical reaction time and mental aptitude of the player. Take that raid concept and expound on it. If I had an idea... Raid attacks boss. At some point random messages get sent to random players telling them to go somewhere. Only there is a trap there, there are mobs in the way, they have to get to that point by a certain time, etc. If you bring too many people it gets more difficult. That challenges the raid on paying attention, quick decision making, reactionary skill, stuff like that.
Limiting the raid. While one could argue that it places a strategic element on the raid, that only applies pre event. And it probably forces raids to either have more healers, or have classes that normally are not healers on raids (such as rangers) become such. I guess for some that would be fun? But it feels limiting more than fun IMHO
Smaller raid groups for an event could be fun its just an idea. try something different you know? If it takes a guild 12 hours of raiding time to clear it once. and it takes another guild 8 hours to clear it twice. Who has more exp doing it? Silence makes you not cast and use discs right? Well the beauty of disabling keys is it might think you are losing a step. Like i clicked that didnt i? This could make you not move in the right direction not be able to chat not be able to click buttons disable your mash key the possiblities are endless. The best part is you dont even know which one it is until its too late. Heck you could take it one step further and make it push a button for you automaticly 1st person and your veiw slowly looks to the ceiling. What im getting at is there is a Time in minutes where a raid is enjoyable then there is a time its too long. I'm curious what that number is for everyone. Increasing HP decreasing DPS and non optimal groups are all pretty similar at the end. The 1st one always happens though. The 2nd happens sometimes. and the 3rd only happens for smaller guilds. most the time. Anyhow i appreicate your reply =)
Limit it to 3 per group? Ignoring the fact that they would have to update the raid tool to support 18 groups so that a full raid could be made with 3 players per group? Sounds like this is something that would hurt guilds with less dps as a lot of players would lose out on a lot of support they get which would massively hurt dps. I am sure the top end groups wouldn't be as impacted by this as others outside of having the annoyance of redoing groups. 1 night versus 3 nights? I am not sure what your obsession is about this but I think it is better to look at total time spent doing the raids versus raid nights. If both guilds spend the same amount of time but one guild does it all at once and another spreads it over 3 days does it really matter? Disabling buttons? Seems like a silly ability that can be countered by mapping keys and doing something like a silence would be much better. If you disable the left mouse button but the player doesn't use the left mouse button much does it really matter? Seems like it would be totally random if it has any impact or not. How long should a raid be? I would like to think that a lot of raids should be cut down in time and made shorter. Halve dps/double hp? Not sure what this would do other than make a raid take longer and as I already said raids could be shorter already. Non-optimal groups can make a massive difference in DPS which can cause a big difference in raid performance. In the end it just isn't putting the right classes together in a group in calling it good but making sure they work well together to maximize their abilities. I am not sure I understand the obsession with trying to change things that are really outside of the scope of a raid.
Has anything ever been done that includes a type of 'negative energy field' or reverse-polarity, etc, to where healing causes damage, and magic-damage recieves healing? I could see some issues come about due to various AA's or spells that are unfamiliar to me (like, anything post-PoP...) Though it could make for an interesting encounter to have wizards be healers and clerics DD with CH or other healing types of spells. Hehe it would also f' up a number of melee due to weapon augmentations...
You keep putting ideas out there with seemingly no understanding of the limitations of the raid tool. You can not form a raid with a HARD limit of 12 groups to fit 26 letters of the alphabet. You can not form a raid with a HARD limit of 12 groups to fit 16 classes in the game. You can not form a raid with a HARD limit of 12 groups to organize 54 people into 3 person groups, that would take 18 groups, which the raid tool does not allow. You want to discredit Biltene's comments, but he has been a raid leader and knows what he is talking about, while you seem to live in this magical fairy land where wishes and dreams become reality. If you want to post an idea, at least give it enough thought to see if it could work within the HARD limits of the game before you vomit it all over your keyboard. Your guild is tank heavy, so perhaps you do not understand the ridiculous amount of lag that happens when a high end guild unloads their dps machine, but its pretty incredible. Complex. Mechanics. Break. Under. Heavy. DPS. The things you're advocating for, complex raids, would be hard for low and middle tier guilds but high end guilds would blow through them without experiencing the challenges. Ex. Klandicar, Zlandicar, Sontalak lol Events like Pillars of Alra are awesome, if your guild has the required class make up. There were nights that we couldn't field enough of the right classes and it was absolutely a bottle neck for the rest of the expansion. Mearatas was another raid that your roster had a profound effect on the difficulties of bane mobs. Heavy on warrior but light on knights? Heavy on melee but light on casters? That raid more than any other recently punished non-spell caster heavy guilds and awarded guilds with high amounts of knights, hybrids and casters. Your best bet to achieve your goals of breaking up typical group makeups would be to require 9 groups within a raid event that would most likely include a tank, a healer and 4 dps and they all have to defeat mobs and a mini boss or something at 9 different locations simultaneously to spawn a final boss. You could take it a step further by having bane dmg from certain classes or spell lines(stun, root, snare, charm, mez has been popular), at each different location.. something that would help but not limit like Pillars of Alra did if a class wasn't well represented. That would actually be pretty fun to set up. You need to understand that limits exist within the game, and there are compounding factors like lag that mean the devs have to build raids with things like that in mind. Its not as easy as you think to come up with new raid ideas. On the other hand there are 22 years of raid history to borrow from...
There have been times (TDS event 2 or 3) where you had to heal things to death. Not sure about the other way around.
Instead of shutting down idea's based on 'this would be hard for devs' it would be more useful to keep it at just idea's/desires. I work in software. Some stuff is so (un)complicated I have a fix/implementation mid meeting to decide if it's worth doing it or not and when. Other stuff sounds simple but could be a nightmare. Only the people actually writing that software know what is actually easy or hard.
Your guild had problems with ToV? ToV was the easiest expansion since SoD. And the second thing is the problem. Your guild members need to rethink things. Roll some DPS characters to play in raids. The game doesn't need to change to suit your wonky guild makeup. You can also have some pretty good DPS out of tank classes if you have the aDPS support. But you do need that support or you're not going to do well.
Honestly it sounds like OPs issue is not actually raids as they exist, but his guild's issues. I would say don't blame the events for your guilds issues. Every guild goes through tough times some make it, some don't, if you need DPS partner with another guild, lead open raids, heavily recruit DPS, encourage main changes. But don't blame the events because your guild decided to go one direction, and it struggles with raids.
Sure they can expand the raid tool to allow for more groups but is that something they want? Expanding the number of groups would expand the number of players allowed in a raid unless they also added a hard cap which could be confusing. From my perspective outside of a few gimmick raids this would not add any long term value to the game.
More raids like Aaryonar where an entire class gets to do pretty much nothing the whole time and 70% of the rest of the raid gets to wait around for the next wave of AE damage and/or adds which live for 2.5 seconds, for the majority of the event.
We beat everything. The raids are just the same kinda thing over and over. We are bleeding people because of bad expansions.
