Your ideal raid.

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Velora, Nov 5, 2013.

  1. Velora Journeyman

    Lately I've been interested in looking into different MMORPGS. I've been looking into them not because I want to jump ship, or find a better game, but because I was interested in the differences between raiding in Everquest and other MMOs; mainly the difficulty and mechanics that separate raids between the games. So, I began searching the net (youtube :p) for videos that showed groups/guilds beat different raid encounters.

    One of the first things that I noticed was the difference in technology (as one might guess) between EQ and newer MMOs. I watched a video in Rift where a guild had to destroy lightning balls, in a chain lightning, so that they could create a hole, in the chain, that they could safely pull the boss through (if they hit it they would go splat). I watched some action MMOs like Vindictus, where the raid (6 people) had to kill a giant Polar Bear. I even watched a few videos of WoW's newest raids. The main consensus, that I found, on the forums I visited was that World of Warcraft and Rift have the best end game raiding. Now, this would make sense that this is the general consensus on forums, because Rift and WoW have a large player base. But, one thing that stuck in my mind was what makes these raids fun to their player base, and what do I feel is missing in EQ raiding today.

    One of the things that makes raids fun, for me, is the fact you have to figure out a strategy to beat it. You work together with your raid force to understand the mechanics, and then reap the benefits. Some raids might have one simple mechanic, while others might go through several stages with advanced mechanics. While watching these videos I had a nostalgic feeling for past EQ raiding. The raids today are simpler, in my opinion, than the used to be, and the top guilds burn through new content faster than I spend my money on payday (thank The Nameless for kronos). So, the thought came to mind, if you had to design your ideal raid, with the understand of the limitations inherent to EQ, what would you create? What level of difficulty would your raid posses?

    The idea that I thought of while driving home from class was of a raid that had several guardians protecting their "king". When entering the raid instance you would know you had to kill three guardians to move on, but you wouldn't know which ones you would face. There would be 9 in total, and the instance would randomly generate three each time. Each would have their own unique mechanics that might prevent the repetition of raiding, if just for a week or two.

    So, what would your perfect raid be like? What is your favorite raid in EQ history? How would your raid utilize all the classes in EQ? I really enjoyed the thread on creating your own dungeon experience, so I was wondering what people would think about creating their own raid experience.
  2. Son of a... Augur

    you will never have a great strategic raid in EQ because of Beta testing and whinny little girlboymen. However, I always wanted to see a raid based on the Plane of Knowledge coming under attack. Non instanced. :)

    PS: Please don't ever use "Rift" as an example. By far one of the most simplistic, cheese filled games out there.
    Moklianne likes this.
  3. Raptorjesus5 Augur

    I'm not sure how it would be designed, but some kind of raid versus Quellious where no combat allowed would be unique. Something that is pure strategy. I'm not a raider so there may already be something similar out there.
    Moklianne likes this.
  4. Tearsin Rain Augur

    one thing that is very true of WoW for example that you really can't get across in watching a video or the like, is that the raids are far less about how you approach your strat (like in EQ) and far more about properly executing an established and basically choreographed 'dance'.
    in EQ, there can be multiple ways of approaching an event and figuring out the best method for your raid make-up is part of the EQ raiding experience - in WoW, there is only one possible way to beat an event, and it's simply about mastering that one sequence of actions.

    that can make WoW raiding more difficult (or at least more intense in the moment) in certain circumstances due to the pressure of not having any room for error on a specific set of actions (in WoW, combat rezzing is extremely limited, basically if anyone in the raid dies, it's over) but it also makes it all very paint-by-numbers.
    overall i'd say i prefer EQ's model for raiding, though it really is comparing apples to oranges - they may both be MMOs, but EQ and WoW are completely different in terms of gaming experience.
  5. lagkills Slain by Fippy while guards stood and watched.

    Mind. Blown. Maybe EQ raids do have alot of CC in every one, and we are just doing it wrong.
  6. Tarrin Augur

    The Sisters event in Demiplane is *sorta* a no combat raid. There is trash you kill during the event because it is in the way..but the "event" itself is running around hailing and talking to NPCs..more or less..in a somewhat strategic way. That is the closest example I can think of.

    This mechanic does make it harder to go back when its old content and farm, unless all people really know whats going on. You can't brute force your way through it with gear/mudflation.

    I know I generalized the raid quite a bit. Please don't bite my head off.
  7. Tarrin Augur

    WoW raids are their own unique flavor.

    Recently had a romp through on WoW. Almost all the raids are done through a "LFR" option, and people just responding to their Add On telling them what to do. No one knowing anyone before hand, and hardly ever communicating throughout the raid.

    Maybe after a certain amount of experience, raiding just isn't very difficult period regardless of the game. I am not trying to say I am a raiding savant, just acknowledging that there is only so much you can do with game mechanics.

    My favorite raids are the ones that have a lot going on. Vishimtar is the one I remember the most as having a lot of fun on.
  8. Noirfu Augur

    Most of my best raiding memories are ones where it looked like a wipe, then we somehow managed to recover and win.

    Raid design which overly punishes individual errors and prevent that sort of thing give up at lot of the fun factor. This is especially true in EQ due to the way probabilities work when you have 54 players in the raid.
  9. Velora Journeyman

    Like a world event in other games? Would it be a one time thing, then done (since non instanced).
  10. Velora Journeyman

    I've always wondered, since people will usually say their game takes more skill, if WoW raids are harder than EQ raids (heroic WoW raids). I would say at the moment, though momentarily I don't/have not raided the new content, that WoW raids seem harder than EQ raids, since things are becoming more casual friendly. But I wonder if on average EQ raids have historically been more difficult than WoW raids, or vise versa. There have been extremely hard expansions/ events in both, so its interesting to ponder.

    One thing I do like about WoW raids, which is something you said, is that they seem more intense in the moment. One mess up, and its game over (at least heroic). In EQ if one person messes up an emote its also game over, but I can't help but feel its easier to mess up in WoW than current EQ. But looking back to expansions like GoD and UF (hardest expansions in EQ) I would think we have had our fair share of difficulty, though VoA might be better examples. I don't know if its possible, due to limitations, but I do wish I felt like I was doing more than mainly standing around in EQ unless an emote goes off. WoW, and other MMOs, seem like there is more action going on.
  11. Tearsin Rain Augur

    i think it really depends on how you define "difficult" because there are a lot of ways you can define that in the context of raiding, there's many different facets of what constitutes 'difficulty' and both games have high and low ends of that within their raiding.
    for example you have mob damage output vs. tank survivability (or even mob damage output vs non-tank survivability) - those are fairly equitable between the two games.
    another example is environmental interaction (aspects of a raid that aren't just tank/dps/heal) and while i'd say generally speaking WoW is 'harder' in that respect, it's only because the 10 or 25 person raid structure makes individual failures more punishing to the raid overall... but the flip side of that being that in WoW a fail will kill the person who failed, but in EQ a fail will kill the person who failed and a ton of other people around them.
    think of it this way, on an individual level and in terms of the consequences to the raid, what's more difficulty... dealing with an Iron Star, or dealing with the emotes on the Resplendent Temple raid?

    now i'll confess i've not done it on heroic, but i've done the garrosh raid and i've done for example bixie warfront... and i really couldn't say which one i'd classify as being 'harder', they were both very intense and difficult in different ways.

    i think that big difference comes in how EQ raids are a lot more fluid - it's almost like comparing a sandbox game to a tightly plotted linear progression game.
  12. mage101 Elder

    UF was alot more broken than hard.
  13. Iila Augur

    This is part why Pillars was such a brutal raid for a lot of guilds. Splitting the raid force into such small chunks made the impact of each player in each of the trials more meaningful. So there wasn't an easy way to cover for bad players, one bad person (or even a simple mistake) could cause the wipe of the 12-18 on their side. Then that one side failing causes the rest of the raid to fail. It was a way of keeping EQ's 54 person raid model, while making all of those people important to the success of the raid.

    The other reason Pillars was so hard is that it cared about classes instead of archetypes. You didn't just need a tank, or a knight, you needed paladins, etc. So some guilds were playing the hardmode version before the event even started.
  14. Tearsin Rain Augur

    i think this is inherently one of EQ's design principles that makes it very difficult to create raid content.
    it's simply not feasible in the overwhelming majority of cases to make a consistent raid roster of 'good' players that can stand up to a high level of design expectation - and randomly throwing out raids where suddenly that's required, and where failure can result in the whole raid wiping, just doesn't really work within the framework of EQ (see: pillars, RT, sepulcher 4, to a lesser extent chapterhouse and xorbb and dead hills and bixie warfront).

    i think EQ raids are at their best when there are difficult mechanics that can be dealt with by the 'good' players in a raid, thus giving them a challenge, but where those difficult mechanics are contained within a narrow portion of the raid's overall design and thus the rest of the chaff can be off doing whatever it is that DPS classes do that make them show up on parses lower than knights or bards.
  15. Langya Augur

    Raiding has never been about beating the content. Its been more about the organizational nightmare of getting 54 knuckleheads on the same sheet of music. In that context all raids are ideal.....until you add people.
  16. Loratex The Ridiculous Necro

    wow raids are more technically advanced strictly because it uses a small portion of players. In other words Everquest raids have more room for "user error" so the raids are made a little more simple. As for the "LFR" feature it has... well the LFR raids are more watered down for "mainstream" play. Those same raids are actually scaled and a lot harder if you have a dedicated raid core in that game.

    My Ideal raids or "favorites" if you will are things like Performer, Vishimtar, Fumerak (believe it or not) Tunat, and a lot of the the flagging raids in PoR. No one really got "bored" in these fights at least back when i remember.
  17. Naugrin Augur

    I had fun doing hatchett back when demiplane was current. On a side note I miss some raid zones....I thought that crystallos was a very cool design. I liked some of the god raid zones as well, though I didn't do those when current. Farmed the heck out of tacvi for the next two expansions though, was the way to gear up lol.
  18. Velora Journeyman

    I don't know exactly how Pillars worked out, but I do wish that more raids made me feel that I was more involved instead of just bashing a mobs face in. But, as people have said there are limitations. For example, many people consider Dark Souls a punishing single player game (especially if played online). It would be feasible to not expect 54 people to execute a fight at the same level as 1 person, therefore the difficulty would have to be toned down.
  19. Casidia Augur

    You either have a short memory, or are new to the game...
    in PoP or GoD i.e. you needed good strats and players to beat the "endgame", and only the best guilds did this before chars were boosted with the next release.

    Only in the newer Eq has much been simplified, now we have guilds farming Raids in Beta(!) and there is no excitement left in that department.

    Everquest was the ideal raid game.
    My favorite event was Overlord MM.
  20. strongbus Augur

    The best raids are the ones that while are not as easy as one named only that is just a simple tank and spank but is not a pita like Chapter house or BG2. I hate raids that have emotes that you have to run to x spot to not get hit or to remove a dot/emote. Palace in ROF or Oak are fun raids. you got a big named that is a pita and you have to deal with adds in one way or another. I even fine getting a dot or something that you have to cure via spell/aa to be fun. But having to run to a pool(CH) or jumping out a window(VOA temple raid). These things don't need to be in a raid ever.