Call of the Forsaken - Raid difficulty

In RoF we saw several different methods used.

Easy non progression raids like NToV.

Medium progression raids like Xorbb 1

I think EQ would do themselves a big favor to add an overtuned, risk vs reward raid zone.

Something that was beyond what they would think we can handle for another 10 levels. Something that can truely challenge the top guilds. Something that gives pride to those who do beat them like the sleeper was in its day.

AND DON'T OPEN IT TO THE BETA COMMUNITY.

I want to clarify risk vs reward. This needs to be something considered really cool. Not like the "super uber" claim we got in regard to the T4 weapons. And yes some people will feel like they MUST do it. Which will only make the content more viable for years to come.

It doesn't have to be a ton of keys, and emotes. Make the raid itself insane.

Back in Velious I couldn't get to the AoW, but I thought it was damn cool when I heard the servers top guild had beaten him.

EQ players like the challenge. There are plenty of games offering carebear content.

Something like that has basically no chance of happening in today's EverQuest.

Tunat!

Not going to happen. It's been explained several times already that (since recently) they don't want to make content that only the top few bleeding edge guilds are going to experience while it's still current. As for keeping it secret... Let's just say it doesn't work.

We sure do. The only question is how many players like how much challenge. The devs' favorite example is Underfoot. That's exactly what you are asking for, isn't it? But we've been told that a whole bunch of players quit the game because it was too hard. Are you going to quit because it's too easy? Probably not. And even if you do - oh well, can't please everybody. But they won't choose to lose many players to please the few again.

Raiding is just becoming a means to an end these days to make group content trivial with raid gear. Raids are pretty much just huge loot pinata's these days. It doesnt even matter if your guild is ranked #1 or #15 anymore. We will all be geared the same in the end in todays cookie cutter loot assembly line.

I dont see why everyone doesnt try raiding or apping to the end game guilds these days either. None of us even raid full weeks anymore. We are all lucky if we can squeeze 2-3 nights a week max now. Raiding guilds across the board are raiding less than ever and its going to continue for the foreseeable future.

In fact, I guarantee you that raid guilds log less time a week raiding than a pure grouper does doing their thing.

There is nothing demanding about a raiding schedule anymore in todays EQ.

Its just a sign of the times, and the direction that this game is going.

More emphasis on the group game. Less emphasis on the raiding game. Its showing.

Less amount of raids will be complex -> more NToV style raids, lot of positive feedback on NToV

while some events I dislike as too heavy with scripting / mechanics that one little error can cause a wipe, I do enjoy events that require a bit of tactics.
I hope they do not make too many of the raids "ezbutton" , dps events.

24 man tier 1 non progression raid that drops one or two pieces with a rare spell drop chance. Make it happen sony!

People are doing Crushbone now since it's live and liking it, you're doing LDoN again, make it happen.

The problems with Underfoot were not that the higher tiers were to hard. It was that there were gateway mobs, tasks or missions in T1 and T2 that were to hard. All prior content was negated via focus decay and mudflation so guilds lost their old raids and then were forced into UF but the beginning of UF was tuned way to hard. This left most guilds with 1 or 2 raids to do at best or 1 or 2 zones that they could handle without a full group so they stop playing. T1 and T2 should have been beatable by just about anyone with T3 being a challenge and T4 being out right hard. Their also should have been more of a power increase in spells and AA even without a level increase. There is nothing wrong with T1 and T2 being like HoT or VoA and T3 and T4 being like UF and some later VoA raids if they are in the final tier of content. With or without level increases there should be some decent power boosts via spells and AA.

We have yet to see this type of design in the past 5 years. Something for all not something for one targeted group.

I don't have much to add to this thread overall, but was I the only player who gulped hearing someone thought Xorbb1 was a "medium" level of hardness? Definitely goes to show everyone has very differing opinions.

I stopped reading when I saw that tbh.

Was thinking that as well

Would like to see Sony do something like Blizzard did with Diablo 3 on the difficulty with the different versions [normal, nightmare, hell, inferno] Sony do something like that in the up coming expansion like they did back in SoD with the hard mode.

Basically each raid will have it own tiers in it. Course this would mean there be less raids but it will also allow just about everyone to be able to win the expansion and push for better goals.

Each raid would have 3 different version of the same instance where difficulty can be farmable or just about impossible to win by anyone... this is for example Tier 1 raids.

Normal - [For the lesser/top guilds difficutly anyone should be able to beat] 3-4 loots +3 spell runes
Example on base stats on items: 3300hp/m/end
item title [Runic] followed title of the item be as followed.

Runic Primal chest-guard of the animalist
Runic sword of dawn
Runic Spear of the fallen
Runic Helmet of the legionnaire

Hard - [Suited for above avg/top guilds] 3-4 loots +3 runes
Example on base stats on items: 3500hp/m/end
Item title [Ancient]

Ancient Primal chest-guard of the animalist
etc..

Death touch - [suited for top guilds] 3-4 loots +3 runes
Example on base stats: 4000hp/m/e
item title [Death infused]

Death infused primal chest-guard of the animalist

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Loot would be basically the same item just 1 to 2 words different... also each tier will have 2-3 items that there isn't any copy of in other tiers just made for that difficulty.

Normal - [pretty easy with little difficulty not as many emotes, AE, adds, mob hit kind of weak etc just str8 forward]
Tweak to make easier if too hard.

Hard - [Little harder then normal, more emotes, AE, adds, mob hits a little harder]
Tweak to make easier if too hard.

Death-touch [Impossible but possible to win for top tier guilds something that they aint going to beat in one day of release even if in learning the event in beta more adds, mob hitting harder, more AT, etc]
Tweak to make harder if too easy

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Tier 1 - 3 different raids [each will have 3 different teirs/difficulty ]
Tier 2-4 - 2 different raids [ each will have 3 different tiers/difficulty]

We got through Xorbb 1 far faster than we did xorbb 3. To be honest we did not find it all that bad. And we are not the top guild on our server.

A few mechanics to learn and getting people to follow emotes made it a win every time we have gone back.

Maybe they didn't engage Xorbb 1 until it was tuned down? Is it "medium" now? Depends on your raid force it seems. Probably closer to "high" on the level of hardness scale for many more folks even today. Shrug

So you mean to say the severly nerfed Xorbb 1 iteration you faced?

Xorbb1 prenerf was awful.

Pre-pre-nerf was worse.

I have to LOL every time I read about hard mode SoD raids. They were the exact same event no tuning or anything. The only change was the number of raiders for the event.

Blizzard had its Underfoot moment with Diablo 3. And ended up nerfing Inferno into the ground after a tsunami of complaints from frustrated players being unable to progress past Act I. It doesn't matter that the same content is available on lower difficulty levels. The highest level has the highest rewards, and therefore everybody will want to play there.

too wow like. I play less now then I use to because it is too easy. I prefered how it was up to DoN, you needed a decent group to take on reds succesfully, You actually needed to learn and know your class, and if you didnt, you got no where, was no sucha thing as real pling as players didnt wanna group with a level 65 pled player and die, you didnt get an auto pass on your corpse when you died, you had to run to get your corpse(or if you had plat summon it) back then it took weeks even months of casual playing to reach 60-65, now I can reach 75 in less then 8 hours of casual playing, 1-70 are the easiest with a j5 merc, especially a wizard merc on burn or burn AE and just mob

there are only a few true challenging mmos out there at this point, and most of them are 2d korean games(for instance ragnarok online, takes alot of skill in that game)

There was this event that was like all these old raids put together. I think it was a anniversary event, not sure. The folks would do one old raid event, beat it then zone into another old raid event but it was a bit harder, beat it, then zone into another one and it was harder than the second one...and so on. I think there was like 10 to 15 separate raid events in this one instance and each one was harder and higher the guild got in the event the better the augmentation (the reward) was.

They can maybe do something like that again but maybe make those last final events "beyond what they would think we can handle for another 10 levels" hehehehe You do realize OP that there will be folks who will complain about this though?....lol Folks do not like to lose and they do not want to beat their head against a wall....lol

I have to say it is fun to hear to if the top guilds have a difficult if not impossible challenge put to them and they beat it and to take more than 2 weeks to beat the content. If I remember correctly, back in the day with sleeper, guilds had to come together and beat him no? Was there guilds that beat him without help from others outside of the guild?