I think its fair to tune raids to 35-40 players showing good skill/attention. Requiring 45+ good players is probably too much though, that should be reserved for vanquisher-achievements.
only a couple of the raids in RoS require those kind of numbers, and only 1 in EOK that did really. there's plenty of content for those who can't field a full raid if they're "good".
I liked Tucohs mention of a hard mode, would like to see it for group content as well. It would allow for the introduction for more tiers of equipment for a givem expansion, which would render more game play pr dev hour invested in creatinf a quest, zone, mob, etc
I think that there should be a range of difficulty - which there is. Clearly vault 2 and vp 2 are harder than the rest. IDK, is cactus too hard for some guilds? I dont think it should be tuned for guilds that cant field 54. Is it too hard? As to comparison ros to eok, looking at the guild progression chart - 4 out of 5 guilds took longer to finish ros.
The only time I would object to this is if it takes time away from creating other content. I'm disappointed with the amount of content in ROS, watering that down by having different versions of the same raids/missions is not something I would want to see.
If I should remove something from expansions it would be collections. And i would change the spell names. So instead of a dev spending time on inventing spell names they would be: frozen XX rk. II. It would save a huge chunk of time which could be spend a lot better creating content. I never ever spend a second on saying to myself thats a nice name. A good example on optimizing spell names is the magician pet haste spell. Imo do this for all spells.
That is why my original proposal is to make some of the earlier raids easier for the weaker guilds. I would expect T2 and T3 to be untouched to keep the elite raiders happy.
Tier 1 Tier 2 - Sathir's Tomb Tier 3 - Veeshan's Peak 21 9 5 It's march and this is how little raid content is being beaten in Everquest, i'd say they made it a bit too hard for all but the extremely dedicated.
It's not even been a full month since the guild that raided every single lockout cleared the expansion. You need to give some time for the less hardcore (including firm weekly schedules, spotty attendance, and guilds that don't beat each event the first week they try them) to flag before you make such declarations.
Title of this thread is How hard should raids be, my opinion is they should be hard enough that most guilds fielding 54 people even with a high number of slackers could at least be thru tier 1 before 4 months have gone by in a expansion cycle. In two months numbers will drop as vacations and the summer drop off hits, while this doesn't do anything to top end guilds (they'll be in farm mode and passing gear to alts by this may) it means chances of midtier casual guilds getting into this content is even less likely. I'm sure the five guilds that have completed this years raids think they're too easy, or just right, that doesn't mean the rest of us don't get to state an opinion EOK: Before January 30 guilds had beaten tier 1 Including March of last year 33 guilds had beaten prince 22 had completed tier 2 before march. That's quite a bit more than this years expansion. 15 guilds had completed the expansion by the end of March Ros 26 guilds have beat at least one tier 1 raid, only 15 before January. 21 have completed it. 16 guilds have beaten at least 1 tier 2 raid, of those, ten have completed tier 2 and five went on to complete the expansion.
I'd agree with this if the expansion was at minimum 7 or 8 months old .. an those numbers held true. But being this young time wise its been how many months since launch ? I'd say that looks even as its been over the past how many expansions for the time given.
The Hard Mode in SoD was the same exact raid as normal version. The only difference was you could only bring 36 players instead of the normal 54. I wouldn't mind seeing hard modes again, but not in this format. It basically forced full raids to bench 1/3 of their players every week.
there should be a tier of raids that 30-40 people in the best group gear of that expansion can raid and be capable of winning the gear they obtain from those raids should be sufficient to get them to the next tier of raiding. This would allow mid tier guilds who are not on the final tier of raids of the previous expansion to raid current content while working the previous expansion. 1-3 raids every other expansion as a test doesn't cut it. it needs to be a whole tier of itemization and content. Content that isn't required by the higher tiers. tuned for those in the prior expansion top raid gear.
We have only just finished our T2 flags, having had our usual 2 weeks off to level and do progression, we raid once a week and with the server down times and lag interfering with our raid schedule are still pretty much where I would expect us to be at this point in the expansion. Needing 12 wins to complete T1 flags will mean a lot of guilds are in the same position as we are. I know SOD on AB is a couple of weeks ahead of us, but then they didn't have a raid break in December like we did.
and this is relevant why ? There is a lot fo factors that can contribute to a raids win or lose. its like saying you need more than a car to drive. WHERE IN MY POST DID I SAY GEAR ALONE WINS RAIDS so bob.. why don't you and your elitist crew. drop all your gear. put on EOK T2 group gear and see how far ya get in ros. with no upgrades. as a raider why would you be against a set of raids tuned for group geared folk? There are plenty of raid mechanics that are gear dependent and not skill required. non penalty AE's , Mob DPS, (add waves and named) etc AA's have an impact too. A lower geared raid force has two major issues they face before even dealing with Penalty raid mechanics. The first one is that their tanks aren't as durable so they require a bigger rotation. since they require a bigger rotation that ,eams they will be having lower dps ( dps that is already significantly lower as raid weapons can have a 5 point difference in weapon ratio. ) You cant say raid gear should be significantly better because of raid content and the minimize the impact on the raids tuned for this gear.
Gears not all, right. But some guilds, have only themselves to blame if they miss a bit of dps. With that I mean, some might have done various raid achievements, but if they have not done TBM raid achievements for the members in the guild, they will forever be behind the other guilds. I will say that the TBM type 3 aug is prob 1 or 2 levels worth. I Wonder if those guilds who are strugling on Queen (Eok), Vault (RoS), they lack dps because of not having done achievements on TBM raids.
The TBM Eye aug adds, at most, 10%. Realistically for most classes it's probably closer to 5% or less given there are so many things it doesn't affect. None of the guilds struggling with Queen or Vault are within 5/10% of their DPS potential as a guild.
