T3 ToL Raids make them hard

How does making a guild repeat that same event 5 times change anything?

Because the events wouldn't be working properly and would be unbeatable. The elevator still doesn't work in mistmoore.

Because it flags the player instead of the guild. Changing the flagging to flag the guild tag for a number of players rather than the player themselves would fix the issue. Two guilds that had 30 flags each could joint venture T2. Don't know if the code would work with such a thing, but that is the problem and the solution.

Why would you even add flags then?

Just my opinion but seems to be shared by a lot of folks. There are lots of people who don't want to know what their Christmas presents are in July. One or two maybe but they like some element of surprise for the majority. There are lots who liked running a marathon which is what it was for decades. They don't care for the fact that they showed up to the Boston Marathon one expansion and suddenly the finish line was only 40 yards away. And not playing the new game is just death or quit unless its returned to what it was by limiting who sees what and the race being a marathon again with flagging making it matter what you do for months not a hr or 2 on one day.

There is no way to appease everyone and I know some people do like these changes. But they took what this game was and drastically altered it. Frankly there are a lot folks hanging it up because knowing everything months prior and racing for 1 hr on a Saturday exclusively is simply not fun and wasn't what this game was for decades.

Sitting at your computer once every 5 days isn’t some sort of marathon or feat of endurance.

But it is. I get some might not like a marathon with managing raid days, flags, etc over months of time but thats what the raid race was. Again folks showed up expecting the Boston Marathon and now its a 40 yrd dash which isn't fun for lots who want the marathon back.

The old, make things just hard enough so we can just do it, but not other people lol. JK, I get what you're saying, but making things too hard, at this point in EQ, is s surefire way for people to get frustrated and quit. EQ isn't about super challenge anymore. Not enough people for that now. I would imagine most players are now much older, with less time dedicated to playing EQ. I wish I could have even one night I could raid!! Last time I was able to really raid, was Plane of Time(best raids) lol. No idea how people find the time now. Work, wife, kids games, house etc., maybe when I retire lol.

This thread is meaningless.

"Make T3 raids hard."

In what context? For what raid makeup? In what target timeframe? Employing raid mechanics which punish whom, precisely? I could go on, and on, and on.

Making something "hard" doesn't make it more enjoyable. And making something difficult doesn't mean it's less enjoyable. And everyone has a differing opinion about where the balance should be.

I'm just happy we have someplace to gather and raid.

the game used to be hard because it was a new concept and everyone was 14yo-mid 20s, barely anyone was older than 30 when EQ first came out now everyone is 30-50. You have a bunch of highly evolved much more intelligent players than you did 20 years ago.

Theres also a balancing between events being soo complicated that only the top guild will ever experience t3 in expansion and most guild will. Its all just going to be loot fodder for top guilds anyway challenging or not.

DBG wants subscribers. You make raids too hard, you may lose subscribers. You make them too easy, you get forum threads from subscribers who are still subscribed.

I believe they care more about making raids accessible to players, not cause them to log in frustration.

Besides, what is too easy for the #1 guild is probably too hard for guild #33. So who do you cater to? Do you make it too easy and anger the #1 guild who will still subscribe and be grumpy about it? Or do you make it too hard and anger guild #33, who may get so frustrated with not being able to progress that they retire and unsubscribe?

So few people still play this game and once again some Elite wants to drive away even more. They will only be happy when there are only 70 toons on each server

What a ridiculous statement. I've been Beta raiding for more than a decade, it isn't new. It doesn't ruin anything. People aren't leaving in droves because of Beta. Wow, get a grip.

So, like 3 weeks before they go live, after already being tested and design locked for likely months, you want them to do what now? How could this process even possibly be changed at this point? Are you asking that someone go in and break something (assuming nothing is already) just to make it harder? Nah, go away with your silly idea of making changes at this point.

Plenty of people play this game. It's a social game. Many "Elite" players and guilds work hard to let less "Elite" players enjoy the game and raid with them and learn from them.

I've never seen a player I would consider "Elite" who would not bend over backwards to help another player out.

While everyone touts the challenge of probably one of the best raids in EQ (Mearatas), there was a pages long discussion, that started out as keep it how it is and don't nerf it, we want to beat it un-nerfed. 1-2 months later most people in the same thread were crying uncle and asking for them to nerf it because it was tearing their guilds apart.

There is no balance that will appease even 50% of the people.

That wouldn't help with the likes of Sarith 2. Putting in a hard T2 raid which blocks easier raids is bad. 8 guilds beat T3 last expansion before they completed T2. The longer it takes guilds to get raids down the further behind they get with gear, which in turn makes the next expansion even harder. Having more raids to choose from which suit your raid make up allows you to gear up. We have had nights when we have been low on tanks which makes Swarm Commander and Free Goranga a no go, but Zelniath, Doomshade, Shei and Aten have been doable. IF these had been linar, dependant on the order we could have had very little we were able to do. Linar progression is hard on the guilds who does not have the perfect raids set up all the time.

I see VT as being the tough raid this expansion, we didn't do much of T3 in beta other than the BoA raid so I can't comment on how difficult those are. But I expect to see some guilds not beat this raid before T3 goes active.

Everything still gets tested multiple times possibly by multiple guilds depending on how complex or long the raid is. They just exclusively test certain raids or parts with certain guilds. Guilds only see one raid or parts of multiple raids but not the entire event if testing multiple raids. No guild gets an entire picture of every raid before the expansion even launches. Like it was kinda done up until about ToV.

So have I and for most of those 12 betas raid content was not open to all. Most if not all raids could not be seen unless you saw them with a Dev. And even then every single raid detail wasn't spoon fed to you. And further still you often only saw parts of a raid and not entire events. That has all changed in the last 3ish years. Now any guild has access to every raid, overall and specific raid detail is laid out publicly on the forums and if you do that raid with a dev they spoon feed you every single minute detail for the entire raid. Every phase is broken down like adds pop every 2% and 90 seconds, this aura is good, this aura is bad, combine these things to make this for protection from that a few times, bane these using x y and z, track this and kill it and on and on and on. Zero mystery or figuring anything out by the time the expansion launches.

No more does farming 2 months of gear and handling flags and raid days well matter when you try and figure out raid 6 for the first time ever on live. Having only the achievement window, parsed out raid spell data and grapevine info to piece it together for the first time. At this point everything is so well mastered and known before the expansion even launches its not fun to many.

Gear, AA and spells almost don't even matter. Folks have everything so perfectly figured out before its even launched that I wouldn't be surprised if all of ToL could be beat by 115's in CoV gear and just well timed use of glyphs.

We don't have to agree on anything but can you at least consider the point that knowing every single Christmas present months beforehand drastically impacts how Christmas day is perceived for many? Knowing 1 or 2 presents or having an idea on a few isn't the same as knowing everything outright and its just a matter of who can unwrap faster.

Define 'hard'.

Difficult for top tier guilds that can cherrypick the perfect raid makup ?
Difficult for family guilds that have to go with whoever they get logging on ?
Somewhere in the middle ?

Take off some gear and it will be much harder, problem solved. People don't want difficult, they want just difficult enough for their guild to be able to do it. You can make this game as difficult as you want. Tell everyone in the guild to use level 110 spells or group gear weapons etc.. Why not do that? The whole point of getting better items, is to make the game easier. If people didn't want easy, they wouldn't care about getting more powerful. Challenge is good, but you can't balance a raid by the top guilds.

We are getting a new raid for anniversary, which afaik has not been seen by anyone. Maybe that will be a challenge.