Raid and Group mission mechanic ideas

Do raiders even use the gear in the group missions? Other than their alts? I thought the only reason they did them was for coins for the augs. Just give me one tank and spank mission an expac. All the rest fine make them do the hokie pokie and run around in circles and clap their hands or all die.

Sancus mentioned Mearatas, which is a good one as far as how diverse raid mechanics contribte to a appealing and rewarding raid experience. I also think certain raids in ToV and CoV dont get enough acknowledement on how good they were (Velks, Crusaders, Defenders of the Tomb, Aary, Vulak come to mind). You also had to routinely have tanks use glyph back then in era before they were geared, which isnt the case the last 2 expansions at all (whether thays a good or bad thing is a seperate debate).

The biggest problem with raids right now are they are all premiced on stack and splash and dish out as much AE damage as you can. We've been in this rut since ToL.

Get back to some of the design mechanics we saw in Mearatas and moreso in ToV / CoV that has the raid handing multiple threats simultaneously and spread out to force raid strategy around positioning, kill order, and class defining roles (mez, charm, baning, etc.) Just never on ice. ToFS 1 can die in a fire.

You'll also get the added benefit of curbing the "for sale" raid gear market that has exploded since ToL when all the raids became a total joke. Its okay if 40 guilds dont beat the expansion on day 1 . (I.e. 1 challenging raid - But also it is important that they have them all beat by April based on current release schedule.)

DB likes to give us as little as possible for a reward as they believe it keeps us playing longer and I agree to an extent. But this case would require repeatedly good rewards for redoing the mission and I don't see that happening but I agree with your premise.

One of my favorite raids was Damsel of Decay! In era it was great that clerics had a real compelling role other than just mindlessly mashing their quick heals!

I still have the in-game email I used to send to new clerics that explained which cure to use for each of the dots.

I feel like the only way 40 guilds don't beat things on day 1 is if you don't let all 40 guilds practice the exact raid on beta, and then post the detailed strategies for all to read and prep. Its not really an achievement beating a raid "for the first time" when you've had weeks to practice it repeatedly and perfectly defined strategies you can read online. While raids need to be tested, things should be changed when they go live, otherwise whats the point? The real new expac play happens in beta.

As for CoV being tough enough to require glyphs - they should be removed from the game. The power increase is just broken. If your tank cannot do it without a glyph, maybe you should take more time to gear up and practice as a raid team? Glyphs dumb the game down.

any ideas now posted would be for 2025 Dec Expansion.

hmmm... I don't think so. All the raids are surely not done yet. They aren't even finished when beta begins normally.

But the design for them is likely done and it is just a matter of implementing what has already been designed.

The problem with making hard content is the player who doesn't do research on their class outside of the game. Some players at max level hardly know how to play their characters well where they can't out dps a merc.

Right now there's a lack of group content to do, it's boring when there's only two group missions that I can organize and do as a group. It would be really cool though if they made a bunch of different instances and tried out all the ideas and more ideas just to see how they play. Sure it might be boring to have 8 easy missions to do, but at least i have things to do now with my friends, then hopefully they add difficulty levels as well so we can request the different levels of difficulty, give achievement levels for highest difficulty level beat.

True, simply more content is better than less "harder" content. Especially since harder is rather loaded, as it needs to be gear agnostic and not require raid gear.

They had an abandoned tether click mechanic for Spindlecrank if I remember it's name right.

I think they could try all kinds of crazy things with doom and reactive spell effects. Using melee runes to cure sticky bombs was a great example of something new like that.

Just no twitchy mechanics, like the stupid Sontalak beam thing in CoV. They've been good about allowing reasonable reaction time lately though.

ToV were some of my favorite raid designs. I loved KD and ToFS 2 & 3. One thing I despise and it seems to have become more common with NoS and LS is using slows, fizzle effects and silences seemingly randomly. It would be understandable as a punishment for a mechanic I failed but its not really fun or interesting in anyway.

Make the group missions achievable by mediocre group, then make the challenger achievements for the group missions something that activates a change in the encounter to significantly increase adds, mob damage and mob health while conferring double chest loot, currency and XP.

Do it the hard way to get what you need and when you got that go back to the easy way for the quick xp and evolver experience?

Sure.

You form up a group and then decide whether you want to do it with hard mode activated based on the group. On one day you get a solid healer, a brick wall tank and some ridiculous monk DPS and double your gains, on another day you've got a less optimized and more boxed group and take the easier route.

If it just gave more loot/currency I would expect groups, especially raiders, to get what they need quickly enough and not need hard mode anymore. What I see more often is after raids groups will run through the missions quickly for glyph/evolver experience and the quicker they can do them the better. Unless hard mode also gave better xp and evolver xp rewards I don't see people choosing it just for the challenge.

Sure. Double evolver XP is probably irrelevant unless the mission had swarms since, unless I'm mistaken, evolver XP is only on mobs and is 100% con-based. So a mission with a single named mob to fight would be kinda silly to double the evolution XP of. Double mission XP and mob XP would be a fine motivator for most players to tackle more difficult content.

However, my opinion is that even if many players only did the challenge mode once to get the achievement, its existance would still add value because it'd give players a reason to build their characters. Same for group and raids.

It isn't just the mobs that give evolver xp as the missions themselves give 2% evolver xp upon completion which is why I saw many people doing them after raids.

You want more rewards, not harder missions. If that wasn't the case, then you wouldn't be asking for more loot etc.

That's the problem with the folks who are asking for more "hard stuff" ... almost to a person, they really just want a mechanism for more stuff, faster gains. If you just wanted harder content, ask for harder content. Don't mention any increase/new rewards.

Years and years of Everquest play have shown that all players gravitate towards easiest play, even top end raiders. Making hard content is likely to be ignored, or at best underutilized for the time spent developing. Everquest is not a linear game, especially with certain unbalanced effects (sk epic, shaman splash heals, dragon glyph, etc.). Just doubling mob hps, damage output, number of mobs, etc. does not necessarily make the content twice as hard.

At this point, players should just want more content.

I want hardmodes for missions and the chests drop t1 raid loot

this is because I like numbers going up but I don't want to raid