DPS Checks are costing you money.

A few expansions back, the concept of the "DPS check" was not a "breaking" factor into raid progression. Lessor guilds would just progress a lot more SLOWLY, but could eventually slog through events - so long as people did the job and emotes were not missed etc.
As it stands now, the massive DPS checks and resulting boss power-ups are killing the lesser guilds. (Notably Attrieb's Vault sp ) etc. Server wide the lesser guilds are disintigrating and the "better" players are joining (or forming) "better" guilds. Guess where the "other half" goes? (hint: it's called "away")
EQ has a much older player base than most games. In my experience (a lot of - not all) players in their 60's and 70's do not adapt well to the never-ending changes in DPS strats and ever increasing "twitch factor".
Less DPS traditionally meant that you could not do raids as quickly, therefore were at risk of wiping longer, and had a greater risk of wiping due to other mechanics as well; and therefore would (by definition) progress much more slowly, but could eventually with discipline and resolve eventually move forward. These artificial power-ups were not part of EQ as designed - and are only costing you the accounts of the (mostly older) people left behind.
-Rat

Everyone should be able to read and ask questions though. Most of the population, young or old, choose to not do either of these in regards to their classes though. Every class has class channels and some form of Website or forum post here to help guide players to better understand their classes. This is a bigger problem for lower-end guilds, people choose to not put in the work required to play their class somewhat well.

By this point in the expansion cycle raids probably should be tuned down, but it isn't DBG's fault that people want things handed to them. Not saying this is you, but it sounds like most of your guild works this way where everyone wants a participation trophy for showing up and doing nothing. Best thing would be to use gamparse and help coach people on what they might be doing wrong.

This is the death cycle of every casual guild that has ever been in EQ. Either these guilds lack the needed numbers to do events or they don't do their homework to get their DPS high enough to do the events.

There are solutions to these problems. Some of those solutions Piemastaj pointed out. Most older guilds either ally with another guild to get the numbers they need or recruit the classes they need in order to do the event. On older servers with a smaller population this is an issue however as there isn't hardly anyone to recruit from and most guilds are so set in their ways, they aren't willing to merge into another guild.

The problem isn't the DPS checks - it's the required size of the raid force. For a true family guild, it's almost impossible to get enough players consistently to progress through the content. Until DB addresses this, EQs going to lose more subs.

QFT.

Planning all raids for 54 players is ridiculous. One of the best things WoW ever did was make scaled down raids for fewer players. Both for the scheduling aspect (if you play during non-peak times, that's a LOT of other peeps you need to find who also play your same non-peak time), and the skill aspect (You have to find a LOT of dedicated players).

Most of you are ignoring the fact that DPS checks are not native to EQ. They were added quite recently in term of the overall "EQ lifecycle". Organizations that are "tank and healer" heavy, coupled with a some old dogs that won't learn new tricks, can't pass some of these (totally artificial!) DPS checks.
No reason not to pull all the DPS checks out of TBM raids now - and EOK in December. None at all.
This assuming you actually want to retain those old dogs much longer. The top 10 server-wide raid guilds are NOT gonna keep the lights on by themselves.
-R

They have been in a lot longer than 'recent'. You couldn't even beat the first event in TBS w/o like 40k sustained DPS from your guild (which was a huge block considering weapon drop rates in TSS were really bad).

Like I said before, 1 or 2 months before the beta for a new expansion is reasonable to make some raids easier imho. Not that I feel it is necessary but it would be a helping hand to some struggling guilds. I am also a fan of less raid time considering we have been at it for a year.

They've been around since Seeds of Destruction at the very least. Though I do agree they're not really a needed thing.

I'm not sure why you say they're not "native to EQ". They were added to the game, therefore they are indeed native to EQ. Anything that's part of the game, is certainly native to the game. Unless you want all of the raids to simply be tank and spank with the mob fearing the entire raid once and a while.

Dps check power ups are fine , as long as they are beatable ... queen power up is insane and a bandaid for poor event design.

Being tank and healer heavy shouldn't be a problem unless they are also falling under the category of "old dogs that won't learn new tricks" as you define a portion of your raid force Ratbo. I don't mind raids getting tuned at this point of an expansions life span but I do mind participation trophies. If folks of your raid force are unwilling to play better, yet expecting the same results as those who do and refuse to admit their overall poor play is the #1 issue.... I hope you can understand it's hard to sympathize with that.

To clarify.... since you seem to have majored in "argumentation and debate theory".
The timer based "power-ups" were not native to Everquest. Better? They are quite recent additions.
We agree they are not a needed thing. I contend they hurt the game in the bigger picture.
These are not just boss power ups based on a timer. X many seconds to kill the coffins in Lady of Life; fail it, and you might as well reset the event because that add is very nasty. X many seconds to get to and kill the High Priest in Droga - or the Boss is powered up from the git-go? Adding more and more Golums to CC the longer it takes to down Droga at the end? 1-3 per round is quite sufficient to keep the CC on it's toes. There's nothing to be GAINED by pro-actively penalizing the slower guilds - they will progress far more SLOWLY already. But there is a lot to lose if this trend keeps up.
-R

PS: No, this is not about "a participation trophy".
Everquest was never as twitchy as it is now. There were / are plenty of twitchy games for the people that want that. These artificial timer based DPS checks are not really *good* for anyone - and eliminating them does not suddenly equal "free participation trophies".

They're all things to make the game different. Do you really think the game would be good if every mob was just damage it until it dies? I still disagree very much about this "not native to EverQuest" thing. Things added to the game are certainly "native" to the game. They were simply added later. LOTS of things have been added *AND* removed from the game over the last 18 years. It's what's kept the game alive.

DPS has always been king in EQ. The faster you can kill something, the less chance of people messing up and causing deaths and wipes as well as less time having to deal with event mechanics or just outright burning past and avoiding mechanics. This isn't recently new to EQ.

What you are arguing about though is raid events that have a time limit before they ramp up in difficulty or you outright fail. Again this isn't something recently new, as off the top of my head Sisters in Solteris comes to mind, the very first event in the end raid zone for that expansion, or Redfang in DoDH.

I personally do not have a problem with the mechanic of placing in a time limit as part of design. Being able to beat an event that requires a raid force to have communication, coordination, and knowledge of the game as well as ability should be rewarded. It takes more than just a numbers game to beat these DPS checks and you diminish the accomplishments of the hundreds or thousands of people who have taken the time and effort to be able to do this just because your raid team is unable to.

Now I will agree that there should be something done when an event is too difficult and only a select handful of guilds are able to beat an event, adjustments to said events should be made as I agree the overall health of the game does falter when the majority are unable to beat an event.

Now I know you are referring to the open raiding alliance team of Freelance in your frustration and reason for making this post. I could go into great detail as to why Freelance in particular is having problems in EoK, but I won't. Freelances issues aren't with a lack of bodies. All I will say is that like any raiding team in EQ, most of the issues can be traced back to its Leadership.

While I don't really disagree about DPS checks being kind of poor/lazy design, I disagree completely that it makes the game too twitchy. DPS in EQ is easily the least twitchy role in the game, and the least twitchy in any MMO I've played. The majority of classes have rotations that can be handled entirely with 1 or 2 multibinds. The rest is just knowledge of how to pair up your DPS discs and AAs. DPS in EQ requires knowledge and spamming, but very, very little in the way of twitch reactions.

Learning your class is very helpful. However, a lack of Wizards and Berserkers can be a real problem for guilds. Also, bards.

While I agree that "PowerUP/Enrage" mechanics haven't been around forever... they have existed for quite sometime.

HOWEVER, you know what has been around forever? DPS, and DPS increasing abilities.

If you expect to be able to complete every piece of raid content/event by simply throwing:
-Tanks
-Healers
-(Cruise control style DPS) AKA... people who just know how to turn autoattack on
I can without a doubt say that you will ALSO lose players due to how incredibly dull and repetitive that will become.

Most of these 'lesser' guilds you speak of are aware of this, and are content with farming the few entry level raid events to get gear, then going back to the previous expansion.


"Burning" has always been an aspect of this game. And knowing how to do so properly has always been what seperates the higher tier guilds from the lower. And, this doesn't even apply to just DPS classes, ALL classes in the game have been given things which provide short/long term effective DPS increases. If you expect the people who put in no effort to be awarded the same gear, what incentive is there to get better?

I know and am friends with plenty of these "Old Dogs", who simply are stuck in their old ways and either don't want to change, or enjoy the casualness of their gameplay. Many of them are aware that their style of gameplay is not up to par with what is the current standard of EQ, but also don't mind because they just enjoy playing the game.

In conclusion, I agree as stated above that "PowerUp/Enrage" have not always been native, HOWEVER I do think they are a great addition to EQ. Everybody were given "Burns", time to learn how to use them if you want to complete current content. We should not change "DPS Check" events due to the fact that it will encourage people to learn how to play their classes better.

I DO think that 'said' event should remain somewhere in the middle/end where raid progression is concerned, to at least give the 'lesser' guilds a chance at current content and the ability to farm raid gear. I disagree with the thought that we will lose these 'Old Dogs' because they can't compete/keep up with the new content, as I said many just enjoy playing EQ in whatever state they find it in.

Sincerely,

No this is not a problem, you're simply exaggerating the dps power of wizards and berserkers, are they high dps if played right ? Yes. But so is every other class played right with proper adps , so as long as you're fielding 54 people and 4-6 groups of dps you should be fine. As far as adps goes bards are overrated for casters and help melee more, but you'd be surprised how much of a sustained loss not having a beastlord keeping up DF on a melee group is over a bard these days.

DPS "checks" and placing hard timed limits before a "fail event" are two totally different things. And certainly don't belong in "last years content". As it is, the group gear in EOK got dangerously close to last years raid gear.
The higher end raid guilds have completely skewed the overall perception of what "normal" DPS by class is to begin with. In fact they've skewed the entire perception of raiding overall. GINA is no longer a luxury really. Having to use an outside game tool, just to be successful in a game, is a prima facie fail mark for the game design. And spam keys and gaming keyboards (or the ASUS key utility) have also become "normal" (though technically illegal). The monster guilds go to the Beta and the game gets tailored to fit THOSE players. Fine, but late expansion, and certainly at the launch of the NEXT expansion that stuff needs to get scaled WAY back. There's no reason NOT to let the poorer raid outfits beat last years stuff, so long as all 54 do all the right stuff, hit all the emotes, and in general "just don't screw up". Because by the SECOND year after - the newest group gear seems poised to pass it. Making the events totally worthless.
Yes, twitchy might have been a bad word - but DPS keeps getting increasingly "complex".
Just this year they added those damned "alliance spells" as opposed to just more passive AA to do the same overall DPS. Just _one_more_thing_ to keep track of.
-R
PS: This was not about Freelance. I was hearing this same chatter "server-wide" while all us "lesser guilds" were funneled into Quarm to get more TBM coins - because I guess everyone but the top guild per server now sucks. THAT is the bad design.
PPS: If you're in a top 20 server-wide guild - this thread can pretty much dismiss your comments out of hand. We're talking about aging or last years content. And the top guilds (like the US left and right at this time) exist in their own echo-chamber - and can't be expected to begin to comprehend how the "rest of the EQ world" faces things.

Post some parses of your top 10 players dps and classes and we'll help show you where the problem is if it isn't your healing and tanking. People should learn and adapt in this game, not become complacent enough that they think just turning on auto attack contributes to a raid and they "deserve" to win stuff for not trying. Alot of EoK/TBM events can be beaten with mediocre dps as long as the dps isn't dying to tank/healer failures or mechanic failures.

How many hot bars is enough. or too many?
-R