All the MORE .. reason to force those who can not down the last event .. to LEARN.. how to raid properly and correctly .. in order to get to the freebi's .. Thats my opinion..
My...so in the thread about needing more raids the elite come to the table 6 pages in and declare that the one off's shouldn't have even been available to anyone till they beat the entire expansion. So until about 3 weeks ago you'd have had 12 guilds with access to them, what a colossal waste of dev time to make content that 8 months into the expansion almost no one would have seen it but a few hundred players. And I'm guessing, a pure guess mind you, that the guilds that are just in the last few weeks completing tds have used those one off's to keep interest and gear flowing in there guilds. Some of you really want the entire raid scene to be so exclusive that there will be no reason to spend dev time on it at all let alone make a really extensive set of raids. They'll only be a couple dozen guilds that will have the force to do them left. Just my opinion
My big thing is it's only one raid zone.. kind of looses its luster to me anyway and how many times must we slap lany's around before we get something new lol
It's not atypical to have a dozen guilds beat the last event in an expansion toward the end of it followec by a surge raising the total to 40+ as the next expansion launches. (Sarcasm alert) What a colossal waste of time to launch TDS with a large portion of the playerbase complaining they wanted to continue doing DH HA's. What a colossal waste of time to offer PoWar when making a Stonwood Compound Bow is tooo hard. What a colossal waste of time putting a nice aug and a great damage shield clickie in a TDS zone you didn't even have to get flagged to enter when only the "ubers" entered it. IMO you just proved the point. Design EQ for lazy instant gratification players and we wouldn't even have Kunark yet. Trailing mid-tier needs the boost one offs offer? Trailing mid-tier needs to perform like progression guilds. On the other hand design it for players that want to face new challenges and the casuals will at least want the rewards without making the effort. In a character advancement game things are driven forward by wanting. Wanting enough to make the necessary effort it's true. But Daybreak can't make that effort for the player. All they can do is create a so-called artificial barrier and a reward for those that make it past that fair challenge (and man initial entry into PoWar was EASY, as was entry into initial TDS zones, as is the first one off post being nerfed to a fairtheewell). Can't handle a fair challenge? Target content at players who can. I hope any new campaign or DLC is targeted at the 10% (hardcore raiders and non-raiders). The 90% doesn't appear to be making a lot of effort in the content already released. Just don't raise max level and if they want to stay in TDS's equivilent to DH HA's for three years it won't matter.
Hm, wasn't BB (or Battleaxe as he is called now) for a time the "champion of the underprivileged masses" claiming in every thread that "content for 10 % is bad bad bad"? I guess that went down the drain when his current guild rose higher again . I think despite all the bickering and "elite" vs. "casual" we all agree that MORE content is needed and most people can also agree that said content should offer something to all levels of raiding. The lack of accessible raids for less powerful guilds is simply bad when the old raids are made obsolete via focus decay and mudflation - which is abad design and has been for quite some time imho.
More raids for everyone I can agree with. Having a small number of raids and making them easy, I cannot agree with. There needs to be challenges and stretch goals in a game for it to have reason to play regularly. I also agree that focus decay is silly. Beyond that, I don't see mudflation making gear from old raids obsolete. TDS group gear is about equivalent to RoF T1 (there are pluses between picking either). That makes upper tiers of RoF and both tiers of CotF raids relevant. Casters might choose TDS group gear for a couple slots for focus. Otherwise, there is plenty of reason for guilds to raid older content if they haven't farmed it to oblivion (in which case they should be able to handle TDS unless they've had lots of attrition).
think it was grelleths in rof that had a chance to drop a very nice clicky dps buff cotf raids that drop clicky shields (im sure the list goes on) aye there are reasons to still farm some older content =)
Seriously, the only thing that old content provides is tons of rotting loot or outdated gear for alts and bots. If you leveled up to 105 there is few reasons to do older content beyond the last expansion.
With the current raid structure guilds such as ours do farm the crud out of the raids we can win as its the best way to gear up to progress. And I've never said raid's should all be easy. I do think they should scale and the hardest raid should never be set up as a gatekeeper. Especially in the waning years of Eq when the reason to put content into play should be a incentive to keep players not drive them away. One or two raids this far into the content cycle would tickle us to no end to be completed in current content and if the rest were not in our ability's to do it would be fine and dandy. But with the declining numbers (especially with the summer lull and the progression servers colliding at once) I do not expect that to happen, hopefully all the family raiding guilds will survive. I totally expect to have to wait till a level increase to progress into TDS. I do have some hope the dev's do see the number or raids being won and the time it took and skew the next set of raids with an eye toward being more inclusive than less. Who knows maybe the campaign will not include any new raids at all. My hope would be they design either a raid set that increases in difficulty as you move thru it or has more than one "mode" with how quickly they came up with the que system and the Ha scaling to lower levels, who knows what the techie side of the EQ team has up there sleeves.
so a new abolish disease shield with actual good stats is rot loot? trust me i do think arx 1-5 in a single zone beating a boss we have beatin the last 10+ years is pretty dang stupid but to say there is nothing worth farming in older content is a bit extreme.
If you have full cotf t2/tds raid gear, yes most of the drops in old content have low value. If you don't, then the old content has upgrades galore even at 105. If you do have full cotf t2/tds, then you should be capable of tds raids. Not to say we don't need more, but you either have current content to do, or the old stuff has value. The people that can't commit to full time raiding any more, but were in a guild that completed cotf t2, are those that are in a bind. That's where raid gear not being replaced for 2+ years by group gear pushes people in to a no rewards zone.
More raids would be nice. What I would really like to see is more variety. Currently, raids are "events" in the same zone with no wandering trash to clear, nothing unexpected, no old-style pulls, just guild banner in, buff, stand in the same room and follow emotes, usually with audio triggers until the chest pops or we wipe. The only loot is in the chest and even if you can do 99% of the raid successfully, that last 1% determines if it was worth doing. When a raidforce of a lower tier guild spends 2-4 hours trying to beat an event only to wipe, and wipe again, night after night, there is nothing to show for their effort. People quit showing up as there is no reward for their efforts or move on to a guild that has the force to complete the event successfully. In the old days, there was a chance of getting small treasures to drop along the way off trash, quest pieces for gloves, wrists, and other odd bits specific to class. The quest pieces required a lot of faction work, so it wasn't like anyone was getting a trophy for nothing. The fun in ToV, VP, Kael, Icewell, Skyshrine, Fear, Hate, Sky, Growth, etc. was the random loot possibilities, as well as having to keep the raid force moving along and crazy Monk pulls while sorting out wandering mobs. One old style raid zone (like the revamped ToV was in Rain of Fear) per campaign would be very welcome. It was a great zone for lower tier guilds to cut their teeth upon. But along with it, add some odd but cool stuff that isn't created by the EQ cookie cutter.
Very much agree with this. Modern raids are bland. Follow a script for 15-30 minutes, then sit and safely divvy out loot, med up, let timers reset and refresh buffs (with the advantage of mass group buff). Then casually saunter to the next spot, get everyone in place and do a hail to kick off the next one. No real epic battles. No worrying about CR/fighting back in. No respawn threat. Banners letting people come back if healers are under pressure and can't rez. Having some stuff drop off trash was something that lesser forces could target if they couldn't kill the big targets. Also made every mob killed worth checking. The new way is a lot easier on people's bladders (especially as we're all getting old) and allows for more casual raid nights where you can take breaks every 15-30 minutes.
I did argue (and still do) that raid content only 10 guilds could beat before the next expansion was released wasn't good for the game..For the last couple of years I've argued that there should be a bell curve skewed for success (most players reach at least mid-content each expansion). But both attitudes are dependent on players trying to succeed. In a class eoom or in a game you present the material at a reasonable pace. CoTF Complete - 46 TDS AM1 - 44 looks legit TDS AM5 - 19 9 of whom were early finishers and likely to be nearly fully geared 9 A+'s 10 later finishers and farming everything 10 A's TDS AM4 - 6 B's TDS AM3 - 10 C's 35 guilds at mid-expansion out of ~50 who can be called bona fide progression raid guilds. TDS AM1+2 11 D's Looks to me like a bell curve skewed toward success. Do those guilds who have not yet reached AM3 need more content than they have in front of them? Nope. The 10 who've beaten AM5 and have nothing new in front of them? Yep. I'll leave group content alone except to point out lingeriing in DH HA's, the failure of casual guilfs to take on PoWar, and not aggressively hitting early TDS group content says a lot more about the effort and ambition of some players than indicating content is tooooo haaaard. Those players are uninspired, lackluster, and not fun. They don't need more content - they can't even handle the content that exists (well they probably could - they just refuse to). Can't design to them since doing so would result in content that was ludicrously easy (shrouded missions, LDoNs/DH HA's every expansion, etc.). We are after all level 105 and didn't just fall off a turnip truck. 'Sposed to know some EQ by now.
Because EGL is an all-inclusive list of raiding guilds in EQ. Couldn't possibly be guilds out there who, in the past, could do things like CToV or early CoTF who are up against a wall in TDS and who are not represented there, right? Or those subscriptions don't matter? Stop defending the pitiful amount of content which had to be made satisfactorily hard enough to delay some guilds while locking the "easy" raid(s) behind Arx1. It's only going to get worse from here with less dev resources. If they do have any free time leading up to the campaign they should look to VoA for proper raid difficulty progression.
Aggressivly hitting tds content for one member meant playing night and day and finishing it in two weeks. Now he just logs in for raids and he and his boxs have had nothing to do. For my group who schedule two hour sessions three night a week we finished last month. We did work on leveling for a few weeks before moving into tds, our own choice as our tank is a low aa sk. As we are all cotf raid geared the loot was mostly rot especially no drop items as I am the only one with alts and do not worry about flagging them as they are just alts Bb saying three raids was plenty for those beneath his skill level, and way above ours obviously, to me is entirely the reason we do only get lower and lower numbers of raids designed. If the devs see three as plenty as Bb does look forward to the next raid set All you low mid tier guilds.
For what it's worth, I'm the leader of a semi-casual raid guild that has yet to beat anything in TDS. Though we haven't pushed to finish Void in CoTF, we are decently geared to over 90% in CoTF raid equipment. Basically, unless we are flagging up there isn't a reason to do last expansion's raids because it will rot. Even T2 stuff receives a resounding "meh" when we try to award it. We field about 40-45 on a good night with about a third of those being bots. Due to the summer lull and a general abundance of apathy towards the raiding scene in game, we get maybe one good night of attempts a week at Arx 1 of our two night raid schedule. In that scant time, we have made good progress, consistently being able to clear up to the third group of mobs before the timer runs out and we get rolled. Really, we just need a bit more DPS to log in and I think we've got it down pat. The problem is, of course, that until said DPS decide to come back online or they magically appear from the fresh supply of customers (see what I did there?), we are stuck in a holding pattern. I recall we had a similar problem a few years back in VoA, which was the only expansion to date we hadn't fully cleared. The asinine flagging system plus a nasty zone crash prevented us from finishing T4. The events weren't hard or complex, but their mechanics always had something in them that kept us back, like passing books or DPS checks and balancing. In the end, I made the call to stop progressing and just gear everyone up as best I could and keep people entertained. The same holds true for our one and only raid target now, Arx 1. It's not that difficult or complex, but stupid things are getting in the way. Here's the thing though, I think there should be exclusive raids for the more hardcore guilds. When I mentioned ToV -> Demiplane of Blood earlier, I was hinting at something: a great range of difficulties and progressions all within a relatively small level range. ToV being where one gets ones feet wet with big roaring dragons and Demiplane having more mechanically intense (and skill required!) checks. I think it would be fantastic if we had some more raids that were mainstream in that fashion. Temple of Veeshan from RoF was one of the greatest implements in Everquest in years. RoF 1 + 2 were perfect in this manner. We need more of that.
I won't defend the lack of content in any way. 7 raids is just ... not enough. But Arx raids really weren't hard. If you aren't beating em, CoTF has plenty of content that drops decent loot to get you to arx level. And there is always plane of war, which drops cotf T2 type stuff. Now don't misunderstand me, by not hard I'm not saying they're gimme events. I'm just saying they aren't hard like say rubak or pillars was hard.
That's rough man, as a casual raid leader still playing in later cotf, I understand. The one thing I can say is blow up magio + vitali, then if you have CC you have some time to clean up the mess.
