Raid content for the non 1%

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Windance, Sep 11, 2019.

  1. Voxynn Elder

    Why is this not a (in your words) some weird personal attack when you say it.

    But for what ever reason you want to assume when I say the exact same thing worded differently you think its (again your own words) some weird personal attack ?

    Why is it a personal attack if some one says a guild lacks the personal in class player skill to achive what top ten raid guilds can do if thats the very truth of the matter at hand ?

    Why is it a design game "flaw" when raiders in your guild lack the capability to move out of an aura that is a giant decal on the ground or a big ball that literally surrounds them blocking their line of sight in game ? Why is it game design "flaw" when people's names appear in big giant letters across the screen in an emot ?

    How is that game design flaw ? I'll wait cause THIS explanation of yours should be a doozy.
  2. Zunnoab Augur

    How on Earth is pointing out that not all players are equal equivalent to you assuming we are talking about our own guilds and then saying they "suck?" If you mean it's a personal attack suggesting teamwork means more than tooting your own horn, then perhaps in that context it could be taken that way.

    I'm not sure why you're fixated on emotes when the problems with TBL have little to do with emotes for the most part, anyway, and the devs have put clear effort into things like ground decals and emote filters to make things more clear.

    The bottom line simple answer is they must design around most players and not just a few. If the design direction continues the way it's been heading the last few expansions, the raid game will more rapidly disintegrate
  3. Voxynn Elder

    So whats your answer ?

    How are you going to keep the top 10 guilds happy. While trying to get the bottom tier guilds (who can't complete current expansions, prior to another being released) happy ?
  4. Veritas New Member

    So your saying keep the top raiders happy and who cares if the others still play? That it would be a good business decision to do this ? Or are you saying just let the game die ?
  5. Voxynn Elder

    I believe I asked a question.

    I pose the same to you.

    How are you going to keep the top t10 guilds happy, while making the casuals an bottom tier guilds happy?
  6. BadPallyGuildLeader Augur

    I don't see the problem with loots for pickup raids on FV. Just random loots and award that way. The raid currency would be a nice incentive and sufficient for most.
  7. BadPallyGuildLeader Augur

    I think gear checks are a good idea for tanks on a pickup raid situation. It will just determine who will pick up the adds and\or MT and who will DPS. I think one thing you can do that would help anyone is to walk them through installing gameparse. Some might say GINA is more important but there is nothing like parsing(I used to be against it but I have since seen the light) to shed light on whether you are playing your class well. The numbers don't lie and you can expect them to help you see whether changes you make in spell order or equipment\augs make the difference you expect.
  8. Windance Augur

    I beg to differ with you on that. We didn't win enough RoS to get our entire line up raid geared going into TBL so for us Glyphs are very much required. Which places an additional burden on returning players. They have to catch up on gear while spending 40-160 AA a raid night on Glyphs.
  9. Warpeace Augur



    Comments like this scream NERF ME!! like a giant flashing neon sign.
  10. Drpeppa Journeyman

    So why not farm more ros? Why must you go into TBL under geared as a raid force ?

    That makes no tactical or strategic sense at all.
  11. Raccoo Augur

    I'm thinking they couldn't farm enough out of ROS. Probably between losing people to RL, other games and other guilds they couldn't get enough that were flagged for tier 2, because of the awful requirement from EOK tier 3. I'm guessing many mid-tier raid forces are in the boat of not having farmed more than 3-4 raid events in ROS.
  12. Windance Augur

    Mainly because the group gear in TBL is as good as or better than the group gear. No one really wants to raid older content to gear up alts.

    Remember that on Bertox its hard to find active raiders. We are down to only having two active raiding guilds, most of which you would call low tier in that we struggle with the current raids. It took us until march of last year to get your first Gorwyn win. OT was in June and Skyfire in Aug.

    This year it wasn't until Aug that we got our first TBL raid win and that is only because we keep hammer players to be using glyph's for snails and the final boss in FF. And even then we've got 10+ that never do.

    Remember we're struggling to keep a full roster with enough healers to keep an effective raid force. We don't have a pool of people we can point at and say "get good" or we we're benching you. The people who are 100% raiders and on 20-40 hrs a week are fine. Its the returning players and those who don't/can't treat EQ as a 2nd job that struggle.

    The easiest answer is to be like the rest of the people who have given up and moved to other servers to keep raiding current content. Accept that we'll lose track of the friends who we've raided with for 10 - 15 years as they spread out or quit Eq.
  13. Zunnoab Augur

    There isn't an easy answer to that. I don't envy the developers.

    Difficulty modes are an idea, however it's amazing what they do with the developers they have as is, and that may not be feasible. I do love when events have multiple angles of approach, though sometimes they accidentally make the "hard way" easier. See: Just unbalancing and eating fire emotes being way easier for The Kar`Zok than keeping them balanced, which I highly doubt was the intent. Granted going for achievements might not be enough.

    I don't claim to have an answer, other than saying I think "one size fits all" harsh timers is probably one of the worst recent ideas they've had on this front.

    The developers outright admitted with Underfoot that designing for max gear in the prior expansion just plain doesn't work. End of Empire is a random number generator nightmare (due to the numbers of meteors - the clickies should protect an area not require precise placement), and (really stupidly) requires most progression in the prior expansion done, making it a nightmare for a force trying to add new recruits/rebuild. Drusella's Vault is pretty much a brick wall for all but the strongest forces too, specifically if lacking cold damage. Then the next event has a ridiculous timer.

    EoK, unfortunately, is obsolete with group gear. That's good for getting returning players back into the game, but leaves little option for guilds stuck due to TBL's ridiculous tuning. Pretty much, if they continue this way, it's either be strong or die out. Gorowyn and Crypt Robbers (at least before its adds felt like they got more frequent at the end this spring) are the only RoS raids I'd call easy recovery raids for a guild. Cactiikii has an asterisk: once you have a certain DPS level then it becomes easy. For a recovering guild, it's likely a "mess up and you're going to have a slog on your hands." I'm not criticizing Cactiikii's tuning, other than thinking enrage timers in general are stupid. It's just not as easy as Gorowyn or Crypt Robbers. I suppose a recovering guild with relatively strong DPS for the content and few support classes may have a harder time with Gorowyn, but the ghosts are mercifully tuned.

    Edit:
    Oh, on the Cactiikii front for reasons unrelated to tuning spawning all the pathing base pop was monumentally ill conceived. It's simultaneously an annoyance while putting pointless pathing calculation strain on the servers.
    Yinla likes this.
  14. Warpeace Augur


    I always though it was horrible to re copy the base zone and all the trash.
  15. Kleitus_Xegony Augur

    I don't think they need "difficulty" modes. They just need to stop putting the blocker raids in near the beginning of the progression. Putting one of the "hardest" raids in T1 just to make sure guilds "earn" their way into T2 is the real problem. Making a conscience effort to scale the difficulty as you go through the expansion's raids would help an enormous amount. It doesn't have to be perfect, but you shouldn't have the 2nd or 3rd raid be an 8 out of 10 in difficulty with two raids afterwards that are a 1 or 2 in difficulty as a reward for "proving" you belong in T2. All that does is lock a lot of raid forces into 1 or 2 raids only for an entire expansion with no hope of progressing any further.

    Barring that, some raids outside of progression that are in the same idea as NToV would work. Assuming there are 2 levels of gear, the non-progression raids can be easier and only drop T1 equivalent gear (can be the same or cut-n-paste with new names for lore reasons). Then scale back the mechanics in those. They shouldn't be dropping the spells or tradeskill items either. I would only drop the tradeskill items in T2 & T3 raids.

    Let's say that there were 2 tiers of visible gear and 2 tiers of non-vis / weapons / shields plus a 3rd tier of TS based gear that required it be combined with a T2 piece plus vendor sold item in a vendor sold container (because plat sinks). Tier 1 gear only dropped in the T1 raids and non-progression raids. T2 gear and the TS components only dropped in the T2 and T3 raids. If the T3 raids are actually the toughest raids with the most brutal mechanics, then have them drop extra spells and TS materials vs the T2 raids. You could add some achievements to the non-progression raids and give a reward for completing those too. Also add in something nice for doing the achievements on all of the raids as well as completing the progression raids + non-progression raids.


    To summarize, I'd have it setup as something like this:
    3 non-progression raids = 2 x T1 Gear (Visible / Non-vis) + 1-2 x Weapon each
    - 2 easy raids / 1 medium raid in difficulty
    4 T1 progression raids = 2 x T1 Visibles + 2 x Non-Vis + 2 x Weapon + 2-4 x spells each
    - 2 easy raids / 2 medium raids in difficulty
    4 T2 progression raids = 2 x T2 Visibles + 2 x T2 Non-Vis + 2 x Weapon + 1-2 x TS + 3-4 x spells each
    - 2 medium raids / 2 tough raids in difficulty
    3 T3 progression raids = 2 x T2 Visibles + 2 x T2 Non-Vis + 2 x Weapon + 2-3 x TS + 4-5 x spells each
    - 2 tough raids / 1 super tough raid in difficulty

    *** 1 special reward for completing all achievements in non-progression raids - high-end aug (ex. best aug for type 7/8 based on archetype)
    *** 1 special reward for completing all raids - title, ornaments, high-end aug (ex. best aug for type 18/19 based on archetype)
    *** 1 special reward for completing all achievements in progression raids - title, evolving weapon, high-end aug (ex. Eyes of Life and Decay - something which provides a power gain)

    note: recent flagging systems seem fine to me


    Doing something like that lets the low-tier / open raiders get their feet in the door with the non-progression and T1 raids. The mid-tier raiders would eventually get almost everything they want / need by farming the T2 raids and below. They might have to wait until the next expansion to get the fancy rewards once they are able to get through T3. The top end raiders would have the incentive to keep hitting the tougher T3 raids, get their fancy reward items, and be able to gear up any alts, friends, recruits, etc... easily with the T1 and non-progression raids. It also rewards them for doing the toughest raids consistently and getting all of the achievements.

    My apologies for the length of the post.
  16. Whulfgar Augur

    This.
    Duder likes this.
  17. Bigstomp Augur

    RoS - last expansion.

    All opinions based on a casual raid force which I raid with weekly.

    T1:
    Gorowyn: Almost a gimme
    Cactiki: Small dps check, more about co-ordinating.
    End of empires: Easier than Cactiki if people have done group progression. But yeah, that group content means we usually skip this.

    T2:
    Crypt robbers: Almost a gimme when flags work (flagging for T2 in RoS required T3 from EoK - this was painful)
    Vault: Not enough data to have a realistic idea yet.

    Random attendance due to casual nature of the raids impacts our ability. (exaggerations inc)
    Some days we have 12 tanks to work with and about 3 monks for dps.
    Other days we have 6 zerkers,2 rogues, 3 monks, 5 bards and 3 tanks - and all the events we can do with low tank count are down (this one is not an exaggeration)
    Whulfgar likes this.
  18. strongbus Augur


    this right here when group gear of a exp is as good as the last exp raid stuff.(i mean gmm non vis have almost as much hp/mana/ac as ROS raid. its just the hstats that are off) if you don't already have raid gear then most casual raiders don't see a reason to keep farming the old raids. I hear it all the time, once a new exp come out and the group stuff is that close to the raid stuff we are raiding you get a bunch of people who flat out say why are we raiding old raids when its easier to go kill group names for the same gear. and they push for getting into new raids when we are not ready for them.
    Warpeace likes this.
  19. Warpeace Augur



    And thats the problem they really don't understand how those stats effect their class / toon, or apparently care?
  20. CrazyLarth Augur

    I don't think any thing in my post is new to the OP but some might be info for others might use.

    The TBL raid game is not just raiding there was a lot of raid upgrades out side of any TBL raiding needed for Raiding.
    TBL group progression - Dissident spells - tbl Raid SPell Progression -was Group+RAID

    http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:The_Burning_Lands_Spells#Dissident_spells

    TBL - Luck Stat
    The "Luck" stat is a brand new player stat introduced in The Burning Lands expansion.

    This stat can have some very powerful effects, including random boosts to: Block, Dodge, Parry, Riposte, Melee Crit, Direct Damage Spell Crit,
    Damage Over Time Spell Crit, Direct Heal Spell Crit, Heal Over Time Spell Crit, Alchemy Success, Bandage, Disarm, Disarm Traps, Forage,
    Pick Locks, Steal, Fishing, Sense Trap, Begging, Intimidate, Taunt, and Coin.

    https://tbl.eqresource.com/luckstat.php
    http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:The_Burning_Lands_Overview#Luck_Stat

    TBL - Luck Stat -SLOT CHARM new slot Type 22 - can have LUCK on the Charm ITEM + can have a SLOT 22 - LUCK AUG (1 to 10 Max)
    TBL raid zone clears of raid mobs trash you cant win yet might get some augs - you need 10 Fate's Accumulator for each raider.

    Two of the same items can be merged together to increase the Luck stat. The result will be the greater of the two Luck stats + 1.

    TBL Challenger of The Burning Lands Ach (GROUP) - unlocked a upgrade on some TBL AUGS
    http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=9356

    COP4 - group now your lvl 115

    http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=116507

    Go back and raid EOK for the Raid ACH for the upgraded SLOT 5 AUG
    http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?item=128537