All 7 raids take place in the same instance of Arx Mentis. The raid giver is Firiona Vie in Katta. The 5 normal raids are sequential: beat raid1 to spawn raid2, etc. The zone is divided into 3 areas: T1 2 3. You have to flag for access to T2 and T3 areas. Unflagged players entering the higher tier areas get kicked to the entrance area. Both one-off raids spawn when you beat raid1. However, Praetor Vitio spawns in the T2 part of the zone and not accessible without flagging.
I can see one-off raids maybe making some sense if they were relatively easy loot piñatas - and there wasn't a lack of other content. But making half of the T1 raids something you get a shot at only once a week? /boggle And Axxius and others are right - the dynamics of mid-tier guilds are going to make this a real hassle for mid-tier guilds with raid makeup often changing significantly based on the specific night of the week and players with widely disparate levels of raid experience. With one result being that these one-off raids will primarily benefit the high end guilds that are able to reliably beat them . . . further accelerating their gearing up . . . and hence the rate at which they consume the already thin content compared to other guilds. Wasn't the point of the whole exp nerf to try to make content last longer? Granted, the gear-up rate will be slower than if it was a normal raid they were farming twice a week, but I still find it a bit ironic. [And no, this isn't meant as a jab at high-end guilds, and I am not begrudging them their ability to slice though content my guild might well not see for a year - kudos to them. I am just in a state of cognitive dissonance at SOE deciding to deliberately slow the pace of leveling in an effort to have the make the grind replace the lack of content, and then deciding that it is also logical to put in a raid timer mechanism that will essentially only benefit those who already consume content the fastest.]
I get that they want to slow down raid progress, but this is basically telling anyone with more then 54 raiders. ohh if your guild want to do fast raid progress for more loot, anyone not in on the 1st win can come back next year. ( no hard feeling right! ) And dont even get me started on the one off thing, so I will just ask how will punishing failure with less raid time make it more fun/rewarding. The ones who can win every time wont see any change and anyone else will hate this after failing a few times learning the event.
I hope not. The idea behind them is fine but the implementation is poor, you get a lockout as soon as you start for any reason and if you fail you can't try again for a week. However the real problem is that they let Dzarn make them. That's not to say Dzarn is bad at making raids, in fact he's quite good at it. But with him things get complex, instead of a hard hitting mob that has a lot of hp that you just have to kill he'll add ae's, emotes, post effects, text on the screen, death touches, adds, scripts, power ups, immunities, etc. It then becomes basically a normal raid and there is nothing quick and simple about it.
@Hatsee: "Instead of a hard hitting mob..." I've seen reports that the average trash mobs in new raids are hitting well over 46k (granted, in cloth), so these new raids kind of include "hard hitting mobs", too.
What a "fun" idea... Seriously, how does something like this happen? It almost sounds like they intentionally made at least one of those raids intentionally punishing to play? Why? What's next, bringing back ridiculous time limits and "you lose if x number people die" mechanics as standard like with LDoN, where the raids were so unworth it I didn't even know of any or many guild(s) on our server that actively did them?
Having emote-flubbers banished makes a lot more sense and a lot less drama than having the raid fail because 2 people weren't paying attention. I approve of this change. Lee of Povar
What about when the 2 people not paying attention were the warriors, and moved the boss at the last second so the AE hit everyone.
Agree with this 100%. In this day and age with GINA and the like affording you the ability to have giant words on your screen or apps to create sound files of spoken words regarding how to react to an emote there's really no justification for messing them up. Certainly one has the option to forego either of those and rely on catching it as it scrolls by, but to each their own. It's a welcome change that the entire raid isn't punished, just those unable or unwilling to pay attention or react accordingly.
Doesn't change the general issue with those "one-off"-raids. With only 7 raids in total it should really not be that 2 of them will be hated by many of the not-perfect guilds. If we had 19 raids like in UF I could understand having 2 of them "special" to see how it works out. With 7 it is simply mindboggling to make content like this.
And that is exactly why I feel these raids are nothing but drama fodder. I hate rids that breed contempt, I truly do.
Yep, I have nothing but contempt for 95% of the CotF raids. I'm all for this though, if it's as hard to miss the emotes as I heard it was, the people that get banished don't need to be taking a raid slot anyways.
They added Audio Triggers directly into the game so you don't even have to use anything external. Failing emotes is just laziness at this point. Probably the ONLY reason to fail an emote is if you use in game ATs and get the "spacing" bug which inadvertently makes your triggers wrong. That's easily fixable though. Here, I'll make it easy for those of you who are worried about emotes: Google "Text to Voice". Make a WAV that actually tells you WHAT to do when you get the emote so you don't even have to remember what an emote means. Save file. Navigate to EQ folder. Dump file. Enter trigger text with corresponding logical WAV in game. Raid. You win. It took me 10X longer to write this post than it takes to make a raids worth of ATs for emotes. And if you don't like this method then you have other options. Personally, I don't like to use anything outside the game unless I have to (e.g. parsing). Failing emotes is just another example of raider complacency. Most people in charge though are scared to punish failures because they don't have anyone to replace them. I rather cut a weak link and go with the empty raid slot personally; maybe that's why I'm not in charge. ps. I still think the one-off raids are a horrible idea. They are in the same zone as the other raids so they're not really unique. They are supposed to be a "bonus"... so technically that means we actually only got 5 raids for TDS! It was a fun idea with poor implementation. I think a 1 day lockout would have made them a nice new concept without creating drama and artificially limiting the loot pinata.
And people that get important phone calls? People that have their kids suddenly need their attention? There are plenty of other reasons. I like knowing when someone messes up. That's important. I don't want the raid making my decisions for me as a raid leader however, not to mention the ridiculous one shot idea to begin with.
There are plenty of methods to leave a zone in short order for any class in the game. If Timmy gets stuck in a well, use one of them
Say it in guild chat, hit an instant gate pot and go deal with it. Think we haven't had people drop because their dorm had a fire drill, or a fire, or their dog was on fire, or their beer spilled on their keyboard, or the kid poo'd on the floor, or the kid is crying, or the kid is hungry, or the cat just puked out something they don't know what it is, or they think they are dying, or... If your guild can't understand emergencies then that's a problem with the guild. I think I have personally heard or seen all the ones I mention above. Although I really do hope that dog wasn't on fire and they just needed to leave.
Or tornado warning. A son who has seizures lives with me. I think it's great to have the raid autoboot me without any action on my part. I think a lot of you have a problem with this 'lock on entry' thing is because your alts can't save rots.
If your tanks can't follow simple emotes, how the heck do they manage to mash 82 hotkeys all the time? Good thing they didn't have to do Hachet or Performer or the Hokey Pokey raids.
