TDS and COTF Rares - not implemented right imo

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Mookus, Apr 15, 2015.

  1. Mookus Augur

    Good ol days of lower guk, or Sebelis... people raided but also had reason to lust for group content. Mistmoore and SolB brought that feeling back for me for a while.These were relevant drops for even raiders and therefor were desired by all (good), unlike most group named drops.

    It was really fun to have a lot of people together in a zone again like Mistmoore and SolB.

    Why then, when similar 'rares' were added in CoTF and TDS did they make it completely random anywhere. They missed the boat on what I consider to be the success on those initial drops.

    IMO, please pick a couple old zones and put tds rares on random mobs again like you did with the CMM and COF with an appropriate droprate.
  2. segap Augur

    A couple things about the old days:

    1) The difference between raid gear and top group gear was not nearly as great as it is today
    2) Raid gear drops were much more rare. It was not expected that everyone in a guild get a complete set. Today with currency, instances for every guild, etc, the expectation is that everyone get every slot filled. There were people that raided constantly for a year and never got complete sets of their planar armor back in classic. Top group gear was relevant to those raid people.

    They have really split the game in two. Even if you stop raiding, you have to wait three expansions before group gear becomes a meaningful upgrade for you.

    As for the rares, I would prefer they dropped off hard encounters. Harder than anything we currently have. Or at least scale the odds of it dropping for more difficult content. T3 TDS zones should have better odds than T1. Named should have a slightly better chance than weak trash. Encourage people to take more risk for chances at better rewards.
  3. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    What I see here are people wanting the rares to be more common off harder mobs so its easier to get them. I doubt that is going to happen.

    Also the system suggested by the OP would just result in camps being held 24/7 by people wanting the drops while the current system avoids any bottlenecks like that.

    The whole purpose of Cotf and TDS rares was to create a market for items that required a lot of plat. That requirement generates kronos sales. Thats happeninbg with the current system and is another reason I don't see any change happening.
  4. Battleaxe Augur

    What I see is people wanting to be able to acquire near raid quality drops by camping group mobs or smaller group areas. That's exactly what Daybreak said it did not intend with the CoTF rares. It intended them to be a mater of luck. Not strategy. Not setting up in the right spot.

    Raiders "need" a reason to do group content?
    1. No they don't. Group content is a playstyle FORCED on raiders who may prefer all of their drops including augments and progression needed to raid to come from raiding. Are on-raiders forced to rai in order to pursue group content progression - no they are not.

    2. We have reasons to do group content. Clickies, trophies, augs, and often zone access needed to get to raids or other progression.

    It (overly good drops) was really fun in MM and LGuk? Not for me. I prefered PoP, the raid progression to PoTime, and Elemental Planes being closed to non-raiders.

    I had every slot filled post PoHate, post Kunark, post Toasties, ... and halfway filled currently. And that included time spent in the 4th or 5th most progressed guild on my server until GoD. Top group gear was beyond irrelevant.

    If you stop raiding you are advantaged in your effort to get spell runes, augments, new group gear and it's new focii in new expansions compared to other non-raiders- Advantaged, not disadvantaged and uable to use loot. And should you, a proven raider, be able to raid again in the near future your old raid gear will be good enough in most raids (provided you are not a Warrior - in which case you'll be leeching raid currency and gearing up in last expansion's endzone).

    Do PoWar, do the anniversary tasks, a few Hardcore Heritage camps, and get the best group armor and augments. You'll be much better rewarded and equipped than you need to be for the group content that you'll be doing.

    Want raid gear? Raid. Want some darned good group gear - you already got it. Near raid quality? 1:10,000 - too generous.
  5. segap Augur

    And how is that healthy for the overall game? Ultimately the game is glued together through social interactions. It's what keeps many playing. When you divide up the player base in to two distinct camps, people end up with fewer reasons to keep playing and paying.

    Grats on being top 5 on a server back then. Depending on who and when you asked, I was either #1, 2 or 3 on all servers. We had a lot of people that never got complete sets from Fear/Hate. And we were the ones that originally broke both planes and pretty much owned them on the server. There were pickup raids that sat on the wall in Hate to get scraps while we were not there. Chest slots were the most common to be missing. Although we did stop farming the planes after we had new content in Kunark. Only returned for epics and to help other guilds with cr. Not everyone had everything they wanted from Kunark either. Once Vellious came out, we never went back. And we were either first or second server wide on every Kunark kill. We had as many kills as anyone on any server to farm those dragons for loot. Even in the Vellious time frame, it was common for us to have monks wearing fungi tunics and have some low level classic .1 weight caster items. Our resist gear was a mix of all sorts of crap from all stages of the game. The modern game has changed a lot to provide more loot to more people. All/All drops, more items per kill, currency, etc. The spigot is wide open these days.


    Yes, you will have an advantage. But your reward and motivation to play will be much less. Just getting exp or an aug here and there is not that much fun. Part of the fun is in killing something and getting a reward you can wear. Improving your character through game play. If you have to wait three expansions to do so, are people really going to stick around to play? Sometimes not raiding any more has more to do with real life schedules than anything else.
  6. Laronk Augur

    Really rather than random rares I'd rather see difficult 12 man raids that drop stuff that is equal quality to last expansions raid gear.

    With raid length lockouts.
  7. Battleaxe Augur

    It's perfectly healthy for the game. My high school had probably 1000 students. My Freshman class 350. I socialized with maybe 15. Same thing in EQ. My guild 75ish. My usual group 4.

    My guild was 4ish. I had complete PoHate minus the BP (we had a rotating list - forget what they called it) and got the one with the invis clicky as soon as Kunark came out. And that's how things went until I joined the #1 guild on that sever and continued to be fully geared every expansion (didn't finish GoD until shortly after the next expansion was released but was VERY close to finishing it). I guess what's true on one server is not necessarily true on all of them.

    Yes, you will have an advantage AND a bunch of exciting new augs and clickies to acquire. AND you'll be a terrific candidate for a guild that does cherry picking raiding or focuses on group content. Kinda hard to make lemonade into lemons.

    PoWar group content is fairly close. You won't even have to deal with lockouts. Keep in mind that only 10ish guilds have even beaten the last raid in this expansion. Most raiders are wearing a minimum of 50% last expansion's raid gear. And our common augments reduces the group/raid gap even further. 12 man raids that drop gear that's as good as last expansion's raid gear is excessive.
  8. Vlerg Augur

    there's nothing remotly hard enough in arx mentis to justify CoTF T2 raid quality drop.

    The 12-man content (sepulcher, chelsith named, PoWar) proved to be , at best, only desired by an extremly small % of the population.
    Iila and Sheex like this.
  9. Mookus Augur

    Some may want that, but my point wasn't that at all. I already am getting raid gear. Because of that the entire group game is rendered mostly irrelevant beyond progression tasks for me. This is obviously a bad thing for the health of the game imo.

    furthermore, Mistmoore and SolB were just two slots, ring and back. I'm not advocating the replacement of raid gear here......phase 3: profit.


    Im MM and SolB it WAS camped a lot. I loved getting a camp when I could and joining groups when I could. Other people hated that and they sold kronos and bought the, Some people farmed the items to sell. Some insisted on obtaining their own loot for themselves. Some helped their friends get theirs in spite of the huge profit potential. IMO, MM and SolB was what this game needs more of.
  10. segap Augur


    It's not like getting cotf raid gear is all that difficult now. I recently got back in to raiding and it took two weeks to be fully geared. The only thing that is likely holding back the mid and lower tiers is getting sufficient number of people that both put forth effort and can pay attention on a regular basis.

    Having sufficiently difficult 12 or 18 man raids for T1 cotf gear is something I would find fun. The main problem with PoW was the tedious flagging/keying process as well as some other mechanics (ghost pathing, decreased range on spells/range, anti-pet, etc). I found it fun, but people were turned off by it.
  11. Battleaxe Augur

    At one time mid tier guilds were held back because they were 5 months to a year behind in content and new content was pretty exclusive. I think it's less exclusive now and with content being more episodic with gear resets guilds are either nearly in current content or not really progression guilds.

    I agree that a high attendance core and paying attention are two of the factors that differentiate successful raid guilds from guilds trying to become successful raid guilds.

    I was a lot easier with 20+ players who wanted to do it and helped each other to get flagged to do it. While I was only interested in a limited number of drops had I been in a lower tier guild I would have been beside myself with excitement.

    Yeah, it was challenging. OK it was intimidating. But if you took it on with a miniraid it was doable and if you were behind in the progression a lot of the drops were very good. I don't think people can reasonably expect near raid quality drops from a group content camp. But now and again they do get such items from 1/2 raid content.
  12. Ravengloome Augur

    CoTF t1 is already 2 or 3 groupable.
  13. Silv Augur

    By who? People already in top 10 guilds that don't need it aside from their 10th alt?
  14. Ravengloome Augur

    We 3 grouped WK1/DH2 and Neriak 1 in ROF t3/t4 at level 100... so..?
  15. Silv Augur

    You're still comparing a top 3 guild to... everyone else. Please don't try and tell me you're painting a realistic picture of the EQ raid landscape.
  16. Sancus Augur

    I'd have to agree. The people who would get an upgrade from CotF T1 are in lower-mid-tier raiding guilds and family guilds, and the likelihood that they have 2 to 3 groups of people with the skill level necessary to 2-3 group the raids is nonexistant.
  17. Amor Augur

    You do realize Battleaxe that your exclusive/inclusive argument is hippocritical. You sit back claiming raiding past expansions for a guild is exclusive yet sit here telling group players be happy with what they get calling it inclusive. The raiding was healthier when guilds were raiding multiple expansions. Your claiming inclusivity excluded all those players happy raiding with their friends in past expansions because maybe their skill level was lower or guild composition wasn't adequate enough to tackle current content but they were completely fine doing older stuff and having fun. Jump ahead and now that everyone is forced to raid current content pushed all those players away.

    If you truly wanted inclusivity you wouldn't care what group gear was because you enjoy raiding. You argue against it though behind some false notion you think you know what everyone's fun should be, so long it doesn't infringe on your epeen even though it shouldn't matter because you claim to want everyone in the same expansion as you so long as they know their place in the pecking order to be behind you because you raid. You are going to come here and claim RvR but in your grand scheme of inclusivity you should be arguing for things to be closer because after all you wouldn't want anyone excluded. Wait I'm wrong, you want inclusivity in raiding at the expense of excluding groupers. I see now
  18. Kellaer Augur

    He's talking about the now defunct raiding guild on Test, Legions of Blackburrow.
  19. Battleaxe Augur

    Forgive me for only responding to your comments that I see as thoughtful, even if I disagree with your opinion.

    Group players do not play the raid game. They play the group game.

    Dzarn once commented that the problem with 80/80/80 Last Blood armor was that it could be obtained without completing a level 80 raid accomplishment. The cultural armor was group level 80. The Last Blood augment was raid level 70. The problem was not primarily the group level 80 cultural armor. The problem was that for a tank by adding a level 70 aug obtained in Dreadspire keep you got armor as good or better than dropped armor obtain in Solteris. I'm the guy who raised a rukus about that discrepancy.

    Originally one could do the two shrouded raids and open up Old Man McKensie's raid loot. Do two shrouded missions/no real history of being a raider??!! I'm the guy who raised a rukus about that discrepancy.

    Groupers are entitled to rewards sufficient to beat group content that is inferior to rewards provided to those who do raid content.

    No it was not. Guilds were strewn along as much as two years of content with some of them doing old raid content for the sake of pride rather than upgrades. Further guilds who were as little as 6 months behind in the progression were perpetually 6 months behind in the progression. While some later guilds discovered you could skip Deathknell (primarily because Last Blood was OP) middle tier guilds did not progress faster than upper tier guilds and were trapped.

    Along came gear resets, catch up/episodic content. SoD. ROI went from being somewhat undergeared because it sped though content as fast as it could trying to catchup with the leaders to #1 thanks in part to gearing up completely in SoD. Ditto the new serverwide #2 Machin Shin which had trailed the former #1 guild on it's server for 6 months for as long as I could remember.

    Grade on a bell curve skewed toward success rather than creating highly exclusive content that leaves most guilds in old content dust and wonder of wonders more guilds are successful. Oh and more people are buying the new expansion.

    I realize seeing many guilds stranded in Tower while you are moving though UF makes one's victories that much sweeter - we not only won but they lost bad. But we all know overtuned exclusive content axemurdered this game. Heck even Ronak, the guildleader of Machin Shin posted that he did not want to be King of the Hill and see EQ destroyed through over exclusivity.

    I certainly care what group gear looks like. When I ride back to the Shire in my magic armor and elven cloak I want the stay at home Sackville-Baggin's to cluck disapprovingly. Thank you so much for doing so.

    There really should be a loud cheer and rose petals when an endgame raider enters the Guild Hall - just sayin'.
  20. Vlerg Augur


    Well, if the 'top' guild ( more like anyone currently raiding TDS: like 50+ of them) can 3 group CoTF T1 raid, then the mid guild should be able to 5 group them, and lower guild 8 group them?

    now if they don't have the numbers to tackle raids, or don't have 1/3 of the skill of top raiding guild , then they don't really deserve raid loot, right?

    And, worst case, they can go back to RoF! ToV dragon are really just a normal TDS T3 name with alot of HP now...

    Just go ahead and say it: you want raid loot without raiding... and because you're having a hard time 3-boxing your way through TDS group mission you believe they are a comparable challenge to current raid.