DPS Checks are costing you money.

Feel free to look back through EQ's history and see what player reactions were when we (when I was on the team) wanted to reduce raid size down from 54. The forums erupted into chaos claiming we were FORCING guilds to shrink.

Furthermore, throughout the game's history, there have been the top guilds who have been able to beat raids right away, and still countless more who couldn't. It's only in the last few years that those guilds who couldn't beat something stomped their feet and demanded that the game be changed for them.. In the past, guilds either got better, or waited, and put in their time until their capabilities caught up with the game, either through level increases or gear acquisition. The fact that the game is still going strong after nearly 2 decades suggests the devs are doing something right.

This observation is valid, but it's supporting a shaky premise due to context. Those raids you mention, that in the past were doodling along behind the leaders, were still upgrading their folks. There's not a lot of motivating difference between the current top non-raid gears (Selrach's set) and previous expansions' raid gears (Deathseeker's set). Deathseeker's is better, but not enough or in not the right ways to get a full force of casuals to spend a night on. This is the empirical truth that drives the complaints.

Speaking as a member of a group that usually does "last years raids" - I can't argue with that.
Raid gear used to be better than group for 2-3 years. Closing the gap (to pretty much one year) isn't helping matters at all regarding motivating people to raid older content more.
Waiting was always the more viable option for us. But the changes in relative value are hurting that.
I don't think asking for a timer relaxation on non-current content is "foot- stomping" LOL
-R

eh, kinda is.

Jeez. If you were in Ratbo's shoes, and hypothetically you'd tried as hard as you can to get past this without saying anything, would you say something, or just let it decay and slip away?

Oh like GoD and OoW?

BTW about these elite guilds and those two catastrophic xpaks, they were foot stomping throwing hissy fits and rage quitting left and right for the much the same reasons as people now are asking politely and civilly to look into this mechanic giving good evidence to do so.

Even Furor and FoH walked out sticking a knife in EQs back on the way out ala Blizzard after promoting much of the tripe that was in those disasters, so do not tell us of the superior ways of the elite (I have the urge to /spit) raiders.
When people hit a wall they raise hell, all the more so if it means something to them.
E-v-e-r-y-b-o-d-y

You are living in an alternate universe.

A COUPLE of guilds left a few months into GoD because the raids were BROKEN and nothing was being done about it. Oh, and one of them because their guild leader had been hired to help develop WoW.

Non-high end raiders were upset with ONE mission, that was later fixed.

A later expansion (LoY) was the highest selling expansion they ever had. Oh, and they also hit their peak of online players at once (100,000+) during that time.

So doesn't sound like people were leaving, maybe because most guilds were still working through PoP anyway.

Omens was, like SoD, a "gimme" expansion for raid guilds. It saw the rise of tons of guilds and tons of guilds working from being way behind to being right there with the top guilds. Other than ONE event (OMM), it was one of the most accessible raid expansions ever. Any drop in population over all in November of that year (guilds didn't suffer much as there was plenty of people to recruit) came because, oh, games like WoW and Everquest 2. Direct competitors that took people away to a new game.

What exactly does any of that have to do with now, or supports anything you just wrote? Hint: nothing.

Meh so you say

The point I will make simple so you can see it, those "elite" raiders did not just quietly "get better" as there was no practical path for them to do so YET the raids were indeed beatable as was proven by the devs. Of course you know devs... so the howling continued because the devs of course had a tremendous advantage there. May even equate to the advantage some of these guilds now wield.

I dunno how much twitch game play really effects EQ. A couple well thought out macros can exponentially lower the amount of buttons to mash at the right time.

I think the OP has real and important concerns but that they are misplaced. A smaller size raid mode option (as in choose a 54 person or 24 person raid) would help those smaller guilds more.

Either way, nobody leave, Skatter loves you all

I did not read this entire thread so this might have been covered already. But this is why the gear resets and forcing everyone into the current expansion was dumb. It took away options and now everyone who plays feels they should be able to finish it all regardless of numbers, performance, time, skill whatever. The game is still going and lots happily still play but this game was thriving the most when only elite guilds finished current content and everyone else had multiple expansions worth of viable gear to farm. They then tackled the current content they couldn't handle for whatever reason later down the road when power jumps allowed whatever their flaw(s) where to still win and it was worthwhile still. Thats gone now for the most part as next expansion the group gear or the chase loot makes it pointless for most.

EoK was the third expansion at 105. There has to be a reason to go and farm the group gear. My guess is RoS group gear won't be as good of an upgrade as EoK was. With level 110 and all the AAs, back farming EoK raids will make life easier.

I am a raid leader on the Cazic server. We have a lot of casual gamers playing. We are not elietes, which is what most of my people like about our raids, but with all the DPS checks, we simply cannot advance. It's a point where far too many raids have DPS checks, and this is so discurrating, that we are losing players, and thus DB is losing subscribers because many just turn to another game.

Tons of games are built around a basic ability synergizing to Something more powerful.

In Street Fighter the basic Attack turns into a combo combined with other attacks.

In Unreal Tournament the basic shotgun Attack turns into a combo if you fire at it again.

In Hearthstone a basic minion's Attack like Medivh’s Valet turns into a more powerful one if you combine it with a secret.

In EQ, a basic Attack turns into a more powerful one if you combine it with certain spell effects.


All of these games have the same problem, you have a part of the population who knows how to get the most out of the these synergies, and a part of the population who does not, at least not to the same extent.

Street Fighter has not solved this, fightnig games have become niches.

Hearthstone is a good example of a game that knows how to solve this problem. They solve this by removing expansions from the standard game format when new expansions come out. You get a soft reset, and those people who know far more about the game than others, and play far more, are forced to start from scratch again. They don't lose their value of the cards and Investment in the game, but all the synergies are broken from old expansions, the knowledge is undermined.

In games where this doesn't happen, like EQ, you get very different types of players, and balancing content becomes a nightmare.

The best example that shows this difference is the fact that more than half of the top Hearthstone players are new players each expansion. In EQ, the same guilds are the top guilds year after year.

Casual gamers can still be good gamers, time to git gud

If you don't have good teachers in guild, reach out. A ton can be taught even by folks who aren't there, if they get to look at log files

Instead of DPS checks they should just add random DTs at the 25 min mark...no boss power ups or anything...just any random person dies every 30 secs...I'd pay DBC for this.

I've always thought they should give raid leaders a button that DT's anyone with pet taunt on after the Nth time saying turn it off.

that's a DPS check. what do you think we're talking about these 19 pages?

Yeah I don't think one person getting dt'ed every 30 seconds was ever in the discussion until you two just posted.

It might do 95% of the people reading this thread some good to actually read and evaluate the original poster's threads and sentiments. Here's the original post, you can click the arrow to go to it.

Nah you guys are talking about how the event eaither ends or the boss becomes ungodly strong ( there's ACHs for that btw Prince and ancient dragon)...I simply suggested instead of an event ending or a boss one shotting tanks, just randomly kill someone every 30 secs or so, that's plenty of time for a rez.

And for what bigstomp said...I'm guilty of this very thing lol, but it doesn't take nine times to tell me, if the MT doesn't notice I notice shortly after when my pet is ganking agro. It's a nuisance but that's what happens when you grind for hours before raids and just simply forget.