Tedious and challenging are not the same thing. Examples of tedious: HoT Feerott raid where you had to kill hundreds of trash before the real event started - this was just generally annoying. Prince in EoK with the hard hp locks was also tedious - penalties for going too fast that could be overcome like extra adds or extra darkness would have been preferable once it was on farm and we could have adapted to change that. (Maximum anger is another story, but hey, it's an ach, I get it)
Honestly, I think every guild at every level can use a little tiny bit of a challenge. I raid with multiple forces, including 2 open raids and a late TLP. Every single person in all those raid forces is capable of learning whether or not to stand in an aura. (does everyone do it right every time? no...but that generally doesn't "fail" the raid) If you're referring to Ankexfen, ALL you have to do is follow the boss. That is not in any universe difficult once you know to do it. Knowing to do it isn't difficult to figure out...the boss goes there on it's own. You don't have a choice but to follow if you want to hit it. If we're talking about gatekeeping other raids behind Mearatas-level difficulty, there might be an argument. But as of today, 29 guilds have reported finishing T3, less than one week after its release. Many more raid forces who don't report the EGL have likely done the same (I was with one of these!). Videos are available of each event from the perspectives of a wide range of guilds, and I'm sure Freelance open raids has posted writeups on their website (if not, check back soon!). Having a little bit of struggle to get the best gear in the game (especially if you consider yourself a casual player) doesn't seem like a bug to me - it seems like a feature. Who derives satisfaction from getting things handed to you? Why not play one of those silly cell phone games if you just want to click mindlessly and get meaningless pixels? What is bringing your guild together if you're not working together toward a worthy goal? If a guild struggles with something basic like moving to auras, they should work on getting better at that thing, rather than avoiding it. What's the fun in never improving or progressing?
No I am refering to Unkempt Woods where half the decal is in the geometry. Where the videos show players moving to numbered spots to avoid them. Where it is difficult to see where one aura stops and the next one starts. Had the other T3 raids been locked behind this one, it would have been extremely frustrating as the other 2 are far easier and do not require any prior info from beta. Of all the LS raids I think the Unkempt Woods raid is the worse.
You said a lot. I think standardization would go a long way for "fairness" in the race more than "fixing the lag". They've been fixing lag for a decade now. Lag is a feature at this point. I will not diminish a guild's success. I will not contribute to the salty responses I've seen on here throwing shade. Where does it end, though? ...is what we should be asking ourselves. When I ran a guild, the commentary from our competition was something to the effect of "we didn't start this, you did..." with regard to waking up at 2am on a Tuesday morning to raid lockouts. The developers have stripped all flagging requirements...stripped all progression requirements...forced the tiered unlock of each tier on the "exact" time for all servers and all guilds, which clearly puts a strain on their hardware. I like the idea of each tier being on one DZ because it's less DZ pulling and zoning times in general. I could get behind some sort of FTK flag that removes the requirement to do them in order once they have been killed once, but on launch they should be done in a set order, rather than talking about all the ways we can skew the metrics to benefit the guild that didn't finish first this year. Without dev intervention like that, next year Pretty Pretty Ponies will sell DZ adds on launch for one toon to claim victory for their guild. Hyperbole aside, there will be guilds doing simultaneous races to "win" next race.
They just need to make T3 linear (and, preferably, in the same zone). T3 CoV and T3 ToL were linear, and it worked fine. While lag will never go away completely, over many trials, every zone box we've requested live raids on since the beginning of March has had little-to-no lag. There are additional improvements mentioned in the March patch notes. Raids unlocking at different times on different servers isn't related to lag, and manual unlocks (like they did for T1 LS and T1 ToL) happen at effectively the same time on all servers (LS T1 was a 15 second window).
I welcome you to test those boxes on Bristlebane. Whether it's on day one release or random Tuesday, the lag with 55 ping, is often atrocious as burns spin up, GCD becomes a non-existent spell bar, unable to click any discs/spells.
Number of guilds that beat all tiers opening day. TBL: tier 1- 3 tier 2- 0 (1st guild 28 days after release, 2nd guild 31 days) tier 3- 0 (1st guild 61 days after release, 2nd guild 104 days) ToV: tier 1- 12 tier 2- 10 tier 3- 6 COV: tier 1- 14 tier 2- 4 tier 3- 7 TOL tier 1- 17 tier 2- 13 tier 3- 9 NOS tier 1- 19 tier 2- 18 tier 3- 16 LS tier 1- 28 tier 2- 22 tier 3- 22
There was a change less than a week ago, so any data prior to last Friday should be thrown out. There are still other pc related things that can cause issues though.
https://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=4469 This was my favorite raid of all time (quit raiding in 2014) I was in a leading guild and this was hard, Everyone had to pay attention for the whole time. I also liked Tacvi raids, The highlight of my EQ career was being a newer SK, new to hardcore raiding guilds stepping in against one of the Zun after all 6 warriors were down and tanking it for the last 23%. The mobs hit so much harder then anything we had done before and had a ton of hps. In either case we didnt beat any of these on the first...or even third try.
If they do linear they need to make sure the easiest raid is first and the hardest raid is last. For those not in the race that is a must. The way it works now for other guilds is perfect, they can pick which order they do raids and do the one that suits their raid make up first. We knew Unkempt Woods would give us problems so left it till last. And in the end beat if the day after the other 2 raids. Linear is very bad for guilds not at the top, and should not suffer for the top 20 "race"
to be fair, I think more guilds are raiding at the exact earliest time possible now than they were in past expansions.
True, My guild does an unofficial bonus dkp raid on the saturday these drop. If I were able to list guilds that beat the whole tier on their "first raid day", these numbers would like be much higher, but the sharp jump from TBL to TOV, with a steady incline up towards LS as outlined in my post would be very similar. Highlighting the idea that raids are getting easier and easier. I dont think anyone can deny LS raids are not challenging in the slightest
The only real challenge is figuring out how to do the events in under 25 minutes, typically by kiting some of the final adds or skipping a step in the raid that isn't technically required.
T3 was not beaten day 1 because the unlocking of T3 raids is not day 1. They were on Beta for like 2 months before they were unlocked on live. So really they were beat on day 61. They were also beaten by the top performing guilds in EverQuest. I think I had beaten T3 like 5 times because T3 launched. People IRL don't understand why I need to be on for T3 launch and I explain it to them as the Superbowl of EverQuest. Imagine if you had a fitness compeition open to the general public and professional athletes. Then those athletes complained the course was too easy as Joe Schmo struggles through. There is a reason TLPs die with the launch of GoD and it's not just the lore. People don't want to beat their heads against the wall for months making no progress. It is demoralizing and people give up. This is a game, not a job, and there are already enough people that treat it like a job. I see 2 solutions to the difficulty complaints and neither of them include making raids much harder. 1) Make vanquisher hard and guilds start ranking themselves based on who finishes vanquisher first instead of who just finishes Conqurer first. 2) Make a hard mode on raids that adds zone wide debuffs but give more currency and a bonus chest. The raid difficulty and the rewards remain the same, but guilds may choose to attempt the higher risk for higher rewards. It's sort of strange to me that vanquisher isn't the baseline for ranking guilds anyway but really the whole race is about recruitment efforts recruitment is tied to loot which is tied to who can get into farm mode the faster. Still though, I'm surprised Vanqusiher isn't tracked for bragging rights. Also throwing out there the suggestion to add bonus currency for completing the ACH each run. Make it so none of them mutually exclusive. Step them based on how many you get. 1 ACH is +1 currency 2 ACH is +3 currency 3 ACH is +6 currency That's up to 46 extra currency per week.
Agree 100% All you'd really need to do is: Make one Vanquisher achievement per raid Make that achievement difficult in a classic EQ mechanics sense (As in, more mobs, tougher mobs, tighter timing on failure mechanics, and less mickey mouse nonsense or outright failing of mechanics). Bonus points if whatever makes it difficult is made easier through gearing and leveling in subsequent expansions. Make the reward for beating vanquisher more pronounced without making it feel required for preparing for next year. A currency buff for the characters like you said is a very good option. Other options include something visual to explicitly note which characters have completed all the achievements in the current expansion like a different nameplate color (that resets in the next expansion release). Push the completion of Vanquisher as the "true" ending of an expansion. Release the "hard mode" with the raid / expansion so guilds don't benefit (as much) from training in beta.
/petition to make EGL based on Vanquisher completion and not Day 1 Race But Oh The Raids All Unlock At Different Times On Different Servers.
Vanquisher was not completable on T3 availability for two of the past three expansions due to bugs. It's also very common that, even if completable, Vanquisher achievements often don't work correctly/as described and don't have success/fail messaging. Raid achievements would need much more development focus to be used as any kind of real metric.
