Currently raids are limited to 54 players in an instance. It is not unusual to have more than 54 players while the raid expedition supports 72. Could we please increase the expedition back to 72 players base please?
For the majority of raid guilds.. not the super large raid guilds on every server, just getting 45 players on a raid night would be considered a decent showing. The other thing, is even the largest raid guilds are often raiding on a less than ideal raid makeup. There are a lot of warriors in EQ, but even large raid guilds can have a tough time getting enough warriors on a given night. And that's just warriors. With all the different types of raids, any single class or archtype might be in short supply on any given night. I think Sony/Daybreak for the most part, dealt with the log jam by introducing alt currencies, including raid currencies, many years ago. It's purposeful that not every raid drop can be bought by raid currencies. It makes some items actually hard to come by and players have to spend actual DKP to get those rare things, like mounts or an entire suit of gear ornaments, or other rare items, clickies, etc. In any event, raids are tuned to a maximum of 54 players, and have been for so many years, there is no reason to bump it up to 72. Originally, the raid window didn't exist and was introduced in either Luclin or Planes of Power, so Sony had to pick an arbitrary number, and at the time, the largest raids (Sleeper) was over 400 I think, that had players from at least 3 guilds, and an insane strategy to win. But the lag was way too much for the server equipment back then, so Sony had to pick some number, so 72 seemed like a reasonable number. But it wasn't long before it was realized when you can create a zone for a raid, and all the dynamics for that raid, it could reduced to 54 players, something far more attainable by guilds on a regular basis. Plus it also allowed the creation of mini raids, which are tuned to 18 players, which is exactly 1/3 of 54 players.
There are players on the TLP side who have been advocating going in the opposite direction, and decreasing the default raid size to something like 24. They also seem to believe the dev team has infinite resources and can stop whatever htey're doing in order to re-tune every single raid in the game to suit a head count that low. My head comes close to bursting at some of the crazy ideas people post on here.
Dropping to less than 54 will only make it harder due to raid lockouts to get people who want to participate into events. If parties want a challenge, they can always form a raid of 24 in your example and have at it. My interest is in limiting players on sit out due to the expedition limit being 54. Increasing expedition size to 72 should be fairly easy since raids already are designed for maximum of 72. It is the expedition that is limited to 54. To me it seems easy to raise that number which is probably one variable in the programing.
Seems like adding 3 groups capacity will force the racers to recruit 3 more groups of dps to be competitive. Beyond those 3 pointless days a year, +18 alts will get chieves for cloak, neck, type 5 achievement augs, etc. Adding 3 low powered groups to 9 low powered groups to try to help win raids will just mean more missed run calls and more under geared corpses due to aoes. The bar is low these days, if current raids are a struggle use the mega banner to gear up in old content with accelerated loot rates instead of punishing your force with content they can’t handle. Some Top 10 guilds are split raiding the new raids for more chests per week, if anything it appears the bar should be raised rather than lowered.
We can handle the events. All the previous exp events have been won.... Id care about who is "forced" to recruit to be competitive. I am interested in the players who come to our events not setting out and missing out on raid money and fun. We have players setting out every day we do events because of the 54 player limit on expeditions while raids are designed for 72.
The "raid" window/tool is designed to handle a maximum of 72 players. The "raid" instances have all been limited to 54 players. The "raids" themselves are TUNED to a raid force of up to 54 players. The raids that include any kind of "DPS" check, timed adds, etc, would be unbalanced if they were to modify the player limit from 54 to 72.
You are in a good spot. It means when the summer slump happens you'll still be at full strength. Many smaller guilds struggle to field 54. You keep repeating this phase and it just isn't true. All modern raids are designed for 54 people. The raid tool predates the modern raids.
I agree with everything except raids need warriors. There's not a single event that requires a warrior let alone multiple warriors to tank it, knights do just fine.
That's just asking for lag to get even worse in a single raid instance. If anything they should lower the number. Raids are clearly designed for a lot less than 54 players as it is.
If 72 were allowed, 72 would be the meta. Your raid roster would be 80+ if you were interested in consistently having a full staffed raid. With everyone online, you would still have a bench with 72, just as you do now with 54.
72 vs 54 would probably be MUCH worse lag; unplayable. right now the server has to tell 54 people what 53 other people are doing, that's 2862 connections. if it had to tell 72 people what 71 other people are doing, that would be 5112 connections, nearly double the communications load. and that's not like Lobby/PoK where most characters are afk.
Just triple split the raid targets. Then you have plenty of DZ room for the > 54 players that show up....and their alts.
PoP was the end of 72 player expeditions. The 54 player instanced expeditions was introduced to remove the guild fighting since before, all raid mobs was world spawns on timers and numerous issues came about among guilds fighting over raid mobs. You are all missing what I am saying. It is not about the raid getting too easy with up to 72 players in it. By your own account, it is more challenging due to the potential for more lag. I raided PoV dragon with about 200 players. Yes, it was laggy, but it was a lot of fun, very few got any loot; all who stayed to the end enjoyed it and had fun. The hardware at the time was able to accommodate it, no doubt it can accommodate a 72 player instance today. And if you want a challenge or to reduce lag, by all means form your own event with 18,24, 32, 40 or 48 characters, to your minds delight. This is about having fewer players on sit-out. We usually have 60-70 show up and with 72 (as it is max number for expeditions) it would accommodate our player base. As far as splitting the event force, we lack the proper classes for such an agenda. Furthermore, I seriously doubt, the lag would make expeditions unplayable. If Eve Online can support PvP of 8,825 players participating in total in one event (with a peak of 6,557 located in the system, one play zone) breaking two Guinness World Records, no doubt Everquest hardware does not suck this bad to not be able to accommodate a 72 player expedition. And honestly, they can easily tweak raid content a bit to accommodate a slightly larger raid force. It is all in the math, no doubt they go though a lot of it when they design raid expeditions for a 54 player force.
You obviously have no idea what goes on in Eve. The amount of damage calcs and procs in a 54man EQ raid probably exceed that of an Eve battle with 5000 people. Not to mention, those battles in Eve are miserable. They deal with connection issues, lag and above all.. Time Dilation (Tidi) which slows the game speed down to basically 10% (or less). The comparison of the two games is absolute lunacy and shows you have truly zero knowledge on the topic.
