Offering up my own opinion on raid sizes. I like the epic nature of so many contributing members. The synergy and energy that comes from the larger groups. Being in a top 10 guild beating mearatas while it was current was awesome. Being in a well run large guild can be awesome and it offers an increased pool of people to group with outside of raids. I even loved the epic 72+ raids from back in PoP times. We had something like 92 people on a Mithaniel Marr raid. For the top end guilds that have the player dedication and recruitment pull to keep full raids, I can totally see why people love the larger raid format and would balk at any attempt to change it. (And complain at the pain of cutting down). However, having been both a raid leader and guild officer, I'm a little over the 54 man raid. Here are my arguments for a smaller raid size (I specifically advocate for 36 man for a couple key reasons but it's somewhat arbitrary) In every guild i have been in, there is a 20% + portion of the raid that are essentially satellite players that we are constantly recruiting to replace, especially over the summer. But that number is like 12+ people. That is alot of people to try to constantly replace to keep full raids. Sure if we scale back we will likely still have a proportional burden that is the same, but it will easier to compensate as the shear numbers are lower. Even when I was in a guild successful enough have to cross server recruitment, I always felt like it was a solid core that made us successful, and we would have been even more competitive and impressive had we been able to cull the 'window licker' tier. It's very hard for new guilds to gain a foot hold. I have been part of 2 attempts at starting new raid forces. One was successful, the other wasn't (and both were associated with another guild death). The successful version basically started as an Alt guild from core members of an existing raiding guild that had a pretty good member core and close ties to another struggling guild that ultimately fell apart, and had the advantage of the Corrupted Temple of Veeshan to help them establish numbers with desirable content that was doable at the lower numbers. The second time was during TBM and the mid tier guilds were all getting face smashed with the content, one struggling guild basically has a do or die attempt at reforming. Was able to beat content with the same content as the mid tier with lower numbers, but wasn't able to beat anything more than the other struggling options, and a few months in threw in the towel. Basically... the entrance cost to go from some core members with connections to a viable raid force is too large. I think raids would be easier to balance assuming 2 of each class (32 and 36 as full raid), there is less chance massive stacking of over powered classes, and less possible synergy. So the variability between a top 5 guild versus a lower guild would be less likely to be 3-4x stronger. If there are more guilds that can handle harder content, we can make a larger range of difficulty. There would be less raid lag. Fewer people mass spamming means less taxing on the instance. Game performs better is a good perk. We could make an occasional final event be muiti guild events for mid tier folks... a 72 man raid again (fun concept to me at least hah), and drop 2 chests (red and blue for example for easy division). If smaller raids were announced for next expansion now... I suspect the shrinking pains for the "have's" wouldn't be very severe. Right now on my server the 3 raiding guild are high 30' to mid 40's. The more viable raiding options would give players more options and could include a larger portion of the player base.
Lowering raid size would do the same thing that happened with SoD Hard modes back in the day in that Bad classes would have no spots in any raid force, because EQ has no class balance, basically if you picked or played a certain class you would never get to Raid in current EQ with a shrunk raid size It would be better if raids were tuned for less then 54 and 54 just made it easier/faster, or something like the new Banner is attempting to do to make it easier after the halfway mark, maybe its boosts aren't enough though, would have to see
36 man raids would be GREAT short term fix. No more recruiting! You now have ~3x groups who are forced to sit out so what happens? They get tired of being benched, you don't recruit as hard, etc. We see a couple new guilds pop up fighting for raiders and after a few months or a year maybe two you are at 36 peak but find your core size is down around 24 during the summer and ... With a lower player base you have single points of failure. Maybe you only have ONE druid / chanter because they've rerolled to be mages or necros.
I'd rather they open the gap between raid and group gear stat wise. Then introduce 12 person fellowship content to fill the gap between raid and group gear.
I agree, or even go lower to 18 or 24. The guilds that have large forces could just split the material. Trying to get together a force of 54 mains to do live material is a difficult thing given the lower population of this MMO compared to others. The fact that a lot of the raids are a bit over tuned for boss hitpoints so you need a fuller raid to put out the dps required to finish it in a reasonable amount of time makes it worse.
While that sounds great people already complain about the limited amount of group and raid content that they develop and this would just reduce that content even more.
My hot take: more/greater solutions like easy mode banner! These allow mid/low-tier raid guilds with a solid core to complete content with little change management or developer time.
The fact that Vox only has one raiding guild after existing for years and receiving several merges with TLPs is a sign that making raid guilds is not easy. To me, it is a sign that there isn't enough demand for raid guilds at the level at which we are trying to balance. We have a distinct imbalance in the raider availability and the raid guild need. I actually think server populations are not so bad. When it comes to grouping I don't have issues getting one, or making or boxing my own. Raid guilds are currently only valuable if they can complete all the content. Servers, at most, only have 4 options. Several only have one and several more only have 2. Depending on what study you reference, between 3 and 9 options is what people need in order to feel satisfied with a choice. I would venture to say raiders really drive alot of profit and draw for the game. It is in the games benefit to make raiding as approachable as possible. I contend that if players can't fairly readily make viable raids, the threshold is too high. One of those other games has cross server raiding, and can make a viable raid in roughly 20 minutes during prime time if I recall correctly (and this was a few years ago), and those raids were I believe 25 person raids. Eq does not have huge total player numbers, or such easy access to each other, but raiding is one of the big perks for Eq. Cross server open raiding would probably be a gold standard option in my opinion. But really, current content raiding should be more accessible than it is now, and the fact that so many casuals don't do any raiding and that open raiding is too hard a feat for any random weekday on any random server is probably a sign it is too exclusive.
This would work fine it just has to happen slowly. I'd just do 48 max for a couple years and see how rosters adjust. Recruiting would be easy for one year at least. Most guilds would do better and the few with too many people just gets to have a bigger bench. Sounds like a win/win to me.
Make it easier for casuals to raid. Add a Raid skill that increments by successful raid completions. Then factor the player's Raid skill into event mechanics. If I have zero skill then I get to ignore all mechanics. As my skill increases my need to "get good" increases. Learn by doing with little penalty during early phases.
I'd prefer they added 2-3 "small raids" in addition to the regular 9 we get on a new exspac, 18-36 person max. Drops I would expect to be previous expac T1, still very solid, but not so good that high end raid guilds are going to perma farm them. However, I would add in an aug that drops 1/event or aug ingredient more appropriately that will make a genuinely amazing aug. Somewhere between top end drop for the expac, and Artisan's Prize. Something in line with 3rd Coldain Shawl aug, with updated stats, clicks. Make 3-4 versions each geared to a archtype Tank/Priest/Caster/Melee, give them a unique click(ideally) or proc. For example, the Caster click might be 2 ticks of Twincast,
The guild has been pretty stable for the last 5 years since it was formed and I think we have only activley recruited once. I really don't want to be benching any more players than we already do. If people are benched too often they quit. 54 man raids are fine now they have added a banner to help those who need at the 6 month mark.
You make it sound like Vox just recently got a raiding guild. They had a raiding guild since TBL. Just some funky stuff went down with the last server merge, and two became one.
Personally I think many of the problems stem from too little content, and a lack of class-development. The game is bleeding out dedicated & consistent players due to boredom & frustration, hard to get excited about the trend for half-sized or less expansions the past 10 years and playing classes that only get copy-pasta updates for several years at a time. The inability to attract much in the way of new players isn't exactly helping things either, but hopefully the modernisation efforts help some on that front. I think that the scope-narrowing that has resulted from the "progression system" devolution of what EQ offers players has been hurting the game's player-retention for years & that scope needs to broaden, however this will mean the game needs to invest in more staff to make that happen & justifying that on a dwindling player base is a hard sell. That's why the game needs new blood, monetizing the crap out of the few players left is not gonna cut it if the game is looking to continue development and avoid being put into maintenance mode.
Elite Gamer Lounge numbers show more guilds completing NoS than the last umpteen expansions. Perhaps people should not assume their experiences are an accurate reflection of the EQ raiding scene as a whole.
I come to EQ for big raids. 54 is too small, IMO, but it was an acceptable compromise compared to rolling with 100+ when we had open world targets. If I wanted to raid with smaller numbers, I'd be playing other MMOs that do that type of content much better. You are always going to have to recruit no matter the size of the raid. I think it's a faulty assumption to think that your core group will always stick together such that if raid size = core group, bing bong, no recruiting needed! I would rather see the number of guilds consolidate as the player base continues to contract than lose the larger raid format trying to inflate the amount of active raid guilds.
In reality, they need to bring back 72 person raids that are tuned for 54 for those who have difficulty in completing targets. Gives them more average players earning coin and gear. I don't care which way they go, I really just want to see improvements to lag, class balance, and some improvements to functionality (raid tool improvements)
I think 24-man raids would've been ideal, but I really doubt changing raid sizes is on the table at this point. Then again who knows, they're doing all kinds of stuff to try to improve raid lag lately
Just because Vox gets merged with a TLP doesn't mean they stick arounds. Many TLPers will restart from scratch on another TLP or they are already playing on another and stop playing on a server when they have completed all raids in the latest expansion. AB got a new raid guild 5 years ago, this year has been the first time they have completed all current raids. I was looking for the post where they announced it but I cannot find it. So the smallest population of players (Euro) are still successfully creating new raid guilds. But that is likely down to more Euro players finding it too hard to play on US servers. I think the problem you may be seeing on Vox is that those players not in that 1 raid guild do not want to raid. There are a lot of casual players on all servers who aren't interested in raiding or don't have the time to commit to raiding. Creating a new guild out of an old guild failing doesn't mean all those left will join the new guild, some will quit, some will go to a different guild, some will quit raiding, some with go to another server, and of course some will join that guild. But you are still short of finding new guild mates that want to raid with an unknown guild. You also need to consider the EQ population is aging and people reactions are not what they used to be, to be able to raid effectivly. I'd be happy to see an extra server tick or 2 to help those who are in their declining years. Smaller raids doesn't mean more raid guilds, it means more bored players on a bench, which leads to more players quiting.
