I've mentioned this before a while back and would like to hear DBG thoughts on it. One of the biggest disappointments for me from the last TLPs was that all the raid targets died w/o any effort at all. It's was pretty much everything up to Omens then finally guilds got a challenge with OMM. Seeing Classic & Kunark dragons instantly die and AOW fall the first hour of Velious, Rallos was a speed bump in PoP. Things like that where a huge disappointment. I have no idea on what they can do to correct it because I'm not a dev/coder but I know you can do something. Whether that be buff up the mobs, make a debuf on us players when we are w/in a certain radius of a raid mob, I don't know what you can as long as you do something. Some of this is because all the encounters are know and have been done a thousand times but even on the first TLP things didn't does so fast and so easily and the encounters where known then. A large part of this is because player base stats have been beefed up so much that it makes everything trivial now. So don't know what can be done but if you're taking time to read input from the community before launching this server(s) then I think everyone would agree that something needs to be done to make these raid bosses more than a speed bump.
It would probably be a lot of work to retune classic raid mobs, however, instancing would allow them to limit the player count to a number that makes the mob appropriately difficult without actually changing the mob itself. That's just a fact, and it's no coincidence that Omens is where things changed. Perhaps they could put a limit on the number of players that can enter the actual static raid zone itself. There has to be a frequent banish mechanic of some kind, however, otherwise players would just sit in a zone forever. And yes, it would ruin gameplay for exp groups in those zones. However, the hopeful result would be that, say a zone is capped at 42 - you'd like to see something like 25 from one guild and 17 from another - and they might not be able to do the mob if they don't work together.
I don't think it would be that much work for them to change the mobs they can do it one expansion at at time and Classic only has a hand full of raid mobs and we're still months away from a server anyway. I look at it this way, last TLP they where able to nerf sk HT w/o effecting all the other servers. They can definitely do something to make raid targets harder. Like I said I don't know what they can do as I'm not on their end but I hope they take notice of this and take it into consideration.
They can't do instancing, but you think they will be able to re-tune every raid event? I find it unlikely
redoing a raid event is probably a lot easier than trying to instance an entire raid zone. Even if it's something as simple as buffing hp/dmg of a boss.
Ooh! That's a good idea...don't instance the entire raid zone for any that they don't have to. You'd want to instance Hate/Fear/Sky, but they could instance SolB and Permafrost and limit it to the areas where naggy/vox are.
Alternatively : When the raid target spawns, have it despawn and respawn in a special (No bind) arena, port all socking guilds to the arena, last guild standing wins... Of course it will not happen, as it requires developer resources to do it...
Hmmm I know, another post where I did not start with a hmmm, obviously my standards are slipping as the alcohol takes it toll.
I have to disagree with this idea. If you want the raids to be a challenge, try raiding with less-than-full raids of people who didn't raid the content in the top guilds on whichever servers before. Or haven't seen the events in question ever before. Making the raid targets harder just reduces the ability of lower guilds to beat events, and it's already hard enough for them to get opportunities.
Unenforceable without instancing or some other form of player-count limiting mechanic. And with uberguilds looking to destroy content at all costs, including overpowering it, you can bet that showing up with a somewhat reduced raid force to prove you can do it, will result in being out-DPSed for the kill.
Uh... I wasn't suggesting anything to be enforced. The uberguilds are going to blow it up and or "chees it" no matter what. 300 pets jumping on a beefed up Nagafen or Trakanon or whatever might take 2 seconds instead of 1 second to kill it. Don't crank up the difficulty of old stuff just because of the uberguilds
It has nothing to do with the uber guilds. Even the average and causal guilds had no issues with the events on Fippy. It's the fact that player damage and mitigation has been beefed up so much over they years that even an average level 50 or 60 guild will have no issues with any of the content. It's more along the the lines of moving raid bosses in line to what has happened with the dps and mitigation increases.
Right. So when you walk in with a smaller raid force, you'll find a poop socking guild already there. So what will happen is, you either leave, or you're just going to add some free DPS to their efforts.
Talking about stuff dieing immediately after an expansion opens (in the OP) is about the uberguilds, not everyone else. Smaller/weaker guilds didn't just cakewalk through NToV. Or Elemental Gods. Or PoTime. If we're talking classic and Kunark dragons, I'm not sure we can claim anything about the smaller/weaker guilds, because they never got a shot in-era. It was always armies from the uberguilds sitting, waiting, and attacking in concert. THAT trivialized those events. 40-50 people doing an event is a different beast than 200 "doing" an event.
I have to go with Bandok on this. There is nothing wrong with the difficulty of the encounters. Besides, DBG has already said no tuning of encounters.
They wouldn't need to spend a lot of time on retuning, and it would only be a handful of mobs. Naggy, Vox, Trakanon are the only ones I remember lasting just seconds. Take those three and multiply their HP by 5x and I'd be happy. Or just set them to whatever Innoruuk and Cazic Thule have--the work's already been done on those two.
