I currently raid across multiple guilds/raid forces on a few servers. The raids for NOS are at best underwhelming to at worst super easy. For context, an open raid force (2nd time this year forming a raid) beat under siege on the first attempt with 46 toons in zone. I am not sure but perhaps it is the direction the devs are going for; which is the ability for basically any group of 40+ people to be able to beat the expansion. Furthermore, guilds that in the past never completed vanquisher are able to for the last two expansions. It seems kind of out of balance to me that the difficulty level to complete these achievements are as easy as they are considering the reward involved. I would venture to guess more guilds completed vanquisher in tol then in cov (where the reward was ornaments- really cool ones at that) and I again would venture to guess the completion rate being tied specifically to the difficulty level of the events and achievements. I am hopeful that next expansion will at minimum involve a few challenging events and t3 events that are harder in difficulty than what nos offered. As in my opinion, gumdrop and firefall are closer to difficult t1 or easy t2 events. I'm not sure what the answer is specific to increasing the difficulty on events but am sure others have ideas that could be shared that perhaps catch the attention of the devs working on next expansion raids now. I'll offer one thought for increasing the difficulty on raids. A proper tuning for what mobs are hitting for (increase it 15-35% from current levels). I can give an example of doing a pit fight where I took 1300+ hits that were 43k on average. Especially when taking into account most tanks have the aa to dragon glyph. With how low the average hit is; it is not uncommon for tanks to be able to tank multiple adds with little risk of death. The two events at greatest risk of death in this expansion for add tanks is most likely demiurge/door and that is mostly due to the pbaoe/stun/aoe going off and taking a bad melee round simultaneously. When taking into account the amount of over heal; increasing the melee hits might still not be enough to add enough to make an event more difficult. However, it would certainly change the tanking strategies that are currently employed (a few tanks dragon glyph and tank everything. when it fades other tanks dragon glyph and tank everything) and create a situation where if a tank misses their assignment it most likely will result in a death for the tank with multiples on them. Perhaps also certain phases of an event can increase the npc dps (similar to if they were burning) which would employ some actual tactical strategy to get through said phases (this could be an area for the warrior to shine with their ability to stack multiple levels of mitigation). To summarize, I am not trying to come off as elitist and say only x amount of guilds should beat the expansion on day one or x amount should get vanquisher. However, I would like to see event difficulty be relevant to their corresponding tier and more so (especially if the reward is not something cosmetic, and most likely next expac will be a replacement of the type 3 aug from tov) the achievements involved add a real layer of difficulty and not just achievements awarded for basically beating the event or achievements that just add time duration to the event with no real challenge other than falling asleep. My hot take: release all tiers at once and that will change the concept of the current race/rankings. Zoning times or who gets the dz quickest would be less important if all 9 events were available at once. I know it would have unintended consequences for things like currency but that could easily be accounted for.
You and I have very different experiences with tanking current events. My guild's experience is that, for the most part, multiple mobs on one tank is typically a guaranteed tank death, especially with the adds on most events hitting for as much (or more) than the main "bosses." Increasing the mob's damage is not a solution to making raids more challenging, just a way to artificially raise the bar for entry. (And is part of the reason why EQ2 went the, ill-fated, route of massive stat inflation)
My previous point being said, I do agree that the difficulty (particularly of some of the later tier events *coughDarklightcough*) could do with some changes, or a more "expected" difficulty progression. (well, not this expansion's events, but for next expansion.)
What exactly is the problem with making raid content more accessible to everyone on the server? If you make it challenging to the top raid guilds it will quickly become impossible for the lower raid guilds. Overall as the player/raiding population decreases in the game it needs to be made more accessible to everyone otherwise you will drive off players because of the difficulty.
If you find the raid content super easy, then just split your raid force into two and do the content twice with the same number of people to double loot intake.
The world is easy when you have all knowledge and resources you could imagine. If you want challenge, go play with some casual raiders who play without max gear or max AA.
Sure, it would theoretically be more difficult with half of a raid. Better yet, tune content for a raid of high 40's/low 50's. worth of players. As for loot, outside of weapons and a few focii the rest is just fluff. So doubling the intake of loot would honestly just assure more people are fully bis earlier in the expac and fully checked out until beta rolls around. I do, I raid in freelance that doesn't do any beta nor allows anyone with knowledge of the event to help, explain, or offer strategy ideas. I don't raid there so much for a challenege more so that I enjoy raiding multiple classes. I raid in another guild that beat close the gate event once very late in the expansion; but has already beaten nos weeks ago. Again not so much for a challenge but I enjoy helping a friend out and because I have decent knowledge of the events; I can help explain and go over things for people the first time they are seeing the event. I am speaking asking for at least the tiers but mainly t3 to be tuned for an end of expac event. I can't compare firefall or gumdrop to a t3 event like defenders in terms of difficulty and the achievements involved. Basically what I'm getting at is they have the a bility to make properly tuned events with solid mechanics.
Raids being easy nowadays is just a consequence of the type of players who now raid. Raiding is now something anyone can do, even with a 40-man guild. This audience is not made up of hardcore players who play 24/7. EQ's raiding audience is now mostly people who raid a few hours, maybe 4 days a week, and log off. If you give this audience Tunat raids where it takes months to beat a single event, most raiders would just quit EQ. Daybreak knows this, they know the audience changed, and that's why today's raids are "accommodating". Not sure there's anything wrong with these easier raids. EQ's population is declining, most guilds struggle to find enough players to fill their ranks. If you make raids more difficult, these guilds would just instantly fold overnight.
My guild just got under siege this week. We squeaked demiurge and still hit enrage timer about half the time. We did NOT finish close the gate or 4x of the CoV raids due to hard DPS checks. We generally field 48 to 52 with anywhere from 4-6 of those as boxes. At the moment it is nearly impossible to find returning players who want to commit to raiding so its not just 'recruit' some more to fill in the slots.
Meh, it's not elitist to say you want more difficult content. It's an opinion. I just don't understand why someone would play up to this point and now suddenly argue they want difficult raids. Whoever wants brutally difficult content is playing other MMO or Elden Ring or Darkest Dungeon. EQ has been making raids more accessible for the last decade. It would be a slap in the face for the casual audience and guilds who now raid to argue they are no longer welcome. Partially restricting content is also not feasable. The amount of content is too shallow for that. You could do that at lvl 65-75 because EQ had so much overlapping content that you could heave both easy and difficult raids. But with how little content EQ produces nowadays, you can't further split this up.
I've brought this up many times in the past. They need to make raids in easy and hard modes. I feel this can be done simply. Easy Mode... A zone wide Aura increased DPS by %, reduces incoming damage by % and increases healing by %. You get 1 chest. It has no T2 armor and no spells. Hard mode. A raid tuned for top players. You get that 1 chest but also get a bonus chest that has T2 drops and spells. To tune easy mode, just adjust the zone wide aura %s until the desired groups can beat it.
I enjoy challenges. Seems like you do too. Here is the thing- IMHO we are the minority. Players who want to play a game, for the most part, want to feel a sense of accomplishment. Wiping to Mearatas for three weeks, seven months... to many, that is not their idea of accomplishment. It only leads to frustration, resentment of the game, and leaves you with a negative feeling when you log off. If a player is repeatedly logging off after another 8 wipes on Mearatas in a night for the third straight month angry and upset, they are either going to leave the guild or leave the game. While a dev may not care if Joe Schmo leaves his guild for ROI or whatever, they will care if the guild they leave loses a dozen Joe Schmos and cannot replace them. Now that guild is no longer a raid guild, and that may lead to lost accounts. And we all know DBG doesn't want to lose money and income, which happens when people leave. So unfortunately we are in EQ raiding 2023, which appeals to the masses. The difficulty is tuned down so that the masses can win. Challenges are now individually created, not game created. Maybe using spells and gear from 3 expansions ago. Doing the raid with 27, not 54. Not participating in Beta raids and not reading strats and concepts given by devs on beta forums. If ROI (as an example because they have finished first for the past 364,982,092 expansions on Live) legit did not participate in any Beta raid, and legit had zero knowledge of any raid mechanics at all... would they still finish first? Maybe? Maybe not? Would they be "challenged"? Maybe, maybe not. The point is if guilds/members like ROI want to be challenged, I feel those days of challenging raids by devs are over. So either accept, or formulate your own challenges.
Could also make the raids a hair easier, and the ACH / Vanq harder. Add in extra loot based on how many ach you get per raid.
Dynamic difficulty scaling has been suggested many times, it just seems like EQ was never designed to accommodate this feature. Developers have said several times they can't easily do this. Most games have difficulty settings nowadays, many are "roguelike" where they can actually produce endless dynamic content based on just a few parameters, including difficulty. But to do this trick, your game has to be designed like this from the ground-up, old games were not designed like this, they have 1 difficulty. If EQ could do it, I'm pretty sure they would. Dynamically scaling all their mobs and content, would greatly increase the replayability of the content.
Or they could increase the refresh / reuse timer to 4 hours. --- As for a raid idea, they could create coding for select events/mobs which will only allow 1 NPC per PC. Think of all the fun devs could have with that code on raids. Say for some examples... you have 10 adds, your raid is going to need 10 tank classes. Then maybe those 10 adds are better off tanked by certain class types (sk, pal, war) and in order to get them aligned correctly, you need an available tank to pull off agro from a different player class. Or maybe flip agro around to free up off-tanking correctly using ranger weaponshield or bard defdance type abilities if your raid is low on off-tanks. The other challenging thing would be no longer can one add tank get AE agro and use deflection. That would only end up bouncing the adds back to their previous high-agro list person. Every tank on the event would need to be aware of what they were doing and what needed to be accomplished and use their abilities in a more defined way.
What reason is there to prevent raiders from getting their spells or tradeskill armor? There is no reason to make extra work for the developers as those raids will still be "too easy" for the top end guilds. Even if you do make separate difficulty modes it will still be easy for a chunk of raiders if you want to make them accessible to a decent number of the guilds.
As long as the rewards are worth the work and they don't become impossible to all but the top guilds.
How many guilds stopped making attempts on it due to the difficulty level? Sure some guilds love it but others would rather spend their time on other things that they can actually achieve.
