2019 Raider's Digest

Discussion in 'Zones and Populations' started by Gninja, Jun 27, 2019.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Gninja Developer

    You've saved the elemental planes from Descending into Chaos. You’ve saved Norrath from certain devastation at the claws of the Prismatic Dragon, Kerafyrm. You’ve done it all! Haven’t you? Let’s chat a bit about things past and present in raiding.

    For Chaos Descending raids, we’ve seen a very strict resolve stat system as well as a progression system that left very little wiggle room for those not dedicating a large amount of effort toward progressing. This was purposely done in an attempt to make progression a bit more linear and easier to understand, as well as making it feel like more of a sense of accomplishment when reaching that next tier. We are aware this made things very difficult for those that entered the expansion cycle later, as well as gearing up alternate characters to fill in gaps in raid roles that needed filling. One of the reasons for having so many tiers was to open up the number of encounters that raiders, regardless of playstyle, have to engage. But with future content, we will likely scale back on the number of levels of difficulty to address having to gear up through so many difficulty levels of bosses. We will also balance encounters based on their difficulty as opposed to their resolve. This will keep the encounters from being easily first pulled once you hit the appropriate resolve amounts as was one of the issues we ran into in Chaos Descending.

    Entry-level requirements and alternate characters as well as catch up mechanics for players that enter the expansion late have been a pretty hot topic and we have been listening. There may not always be time to reply as much as some would like, but we’ve been listening to all the ideas out there and coming up with a few of our own and discussing the pros and cons of each. We haven’t quite honed in on the exact system we plan to go with but we are getting there and we plan to have something in place for next expansion.

    More changes we plan to make are adding the black adornment sets to the Panda merchant this summer that can be used as an alternate way to earn them for alts and characters that might not have started the expansion with everyone else. Speaking of black adornments, we’ve heard your concerns about the special celestial weapons needed to damage the gods being pretty difficult for entire raid forces to get, so we've added the flag to bypass their protection to the black adornment sets as well so that they can be used in place of the weapon should you choose to do so. However, they will not/did not gain the ability to buff someone else. This way, if you have a better weapon than the celestial weapons and you already have the black adornment set, then you are good to go to face the gods!

    Raiding in general has changed a lot over the years. In some ways for the better and some ways not so much. As the game expands and more systems put in place, the complexity grows and more moving parts introduced. One example of an added system are the Mythic raids. These did not turn out as well as we had hoped or intended. They were supposed to just be a tougher version of the encounters, but with the way the content played out, the stat bumps did not add a whole lot so it left the zones feeling a lot more of the same. We plan to go away from mythic zones in favor of normal/challenge mode content much like we had in the past where if you defeat the normal version, a challenge version may unlock and it would have new mechanics and truly be a more difficult encounter. This will allow challenge encounters to be a fresh new experience, as well as allow players of all difficulty styles the opportunity to see the content through normal mode. We want everyone to see the awesome art and sound and everything else our team works on! It truly is amazing! Some of the new art being worked on right now is mind-blowing!

    Let’s get talking about new content! While we do have at least one more piece of raid content coming your way between now and the expansion, we are all hard at work on the new expansion here at our offices. With that will come lots of beta testing for raids. While I don’t have a whole lot of details to share, I can say that there will be lots to beta test and that is where you all will come in. We will be doing another round of invites for the Raid Council as well as purging inactive members. (We do this once or twice a year.) Each raid guild or alliance is allowed to have two representatives to be an active member of the raid council. What is the raid council, you might ask? It is a private forum focused on raid discussion between members and developers. Everyone allowed in the forum is under a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so they are not allowed to share what is discussed in the forum with anyone outside of it. This allows the developers to share a little extra info on the reasoning behind any decisions. If interested, you can have your raid leader contact “Gninja” via private message on the official forums for information about the process of joining. Keep in mind we get a lot of request during this time so it may take a little time to get a reply back, so please be patient.

    So, what’s next? Well… I can’t really say, but what I can say is we are really excited to share it once we are able to. We can’t give you a peak of the raid stuff quite yet. However, if you want to be some of the first to get in there, see, and test the new encounters, shoot me a private message and sign up for the Raid Council as there are limited seats available.

    See you in Norrath!

    Gninja
    EverQuest II
    Sr. Game Designer


    NOTE: Last call for Raid Council sign ups will be Friday July 12th by end of day Pacific.
    Prox, Carynn, Feldon and 10 others like this.
  2. Azrael's Tear Active Member

  3. Zephanor Active Member

    This is all good news, thank you Gninja!
    Cyrrena and Dude like this.
  4. Chellema New Member

    Thank you Gninja. Most welcome news :)
    Cyrrena and Dude like this.
  5. Zeddicious Well-Known Member

    :eek::eek:
    dirgenoobforreal and Cyrrena like this.
  6. Khrawn New Member

    Good thing this issue has been RESOLVED.
    Cyrrena likes this.
  7. Gelenor Well-Known Member

    Thank you for that. One thing I would to see is better reasons to go to the last raid content you added... Mischief
    Cyrrena likes this.
  8. Ellimist Active Member

    Well written. Thanks for the post.
    Cyrrena and Dude like this.
  9. Dilon Active Member

    Thank you!
    Cyrrena and Dude like this.
  10. Gninja Developer

    :eek::eek::eek:
  11. semisus Does not play this game

    I hope as we go forwards there will be no need for short handed for achivements , seems silly to have to ask people to sit out cause we need short handed
    Flawless fine and i hope there will be a upgrade to the power raider buff
    Mermut, dirgenoobforreal and Cyrrena like this.
  12. Obano Well-Known Member

    Not mentioned in this letter but is a Big part of raiding is class balance. I know class balance is adjusted every expansion cycle but I think it really needs to be put under the mircoscope this time. Not all classes are equal and not all classes are equally desired in raids. It is a two way street really. Raiding affects the balance of classes and the class balance effects the raids. Neither exist in a vacuum or in isolation. When the classes are out of balance it leads to an out of balance raiding experience that can demoralize the player base.

    Raid leaders will always adjust their rosters to maximize their raid's efficiency at defeating the encounters. They will stack their raids with multiples of one class while cutting out others and leaving them on the bench. What happens to those players who get cut? Well they either have to reroll an alt to play what is in demand or find something else to do with their free time. In an idealized world everyone who wants to raid should be able to raid.

    What really happens is raiding becomes a privilege as players are slidelined and cut from rosters. It is not good enough to want to raid. You have to play the right class or you won't be raiding. Every guild is recruiting raiders but it is only a few key classes. This has the long term corrosive affect of slowly widdling down the playerbase by attrition. Guilds fold because they can't fill their rosters with the right classes and players stop playing because they don't play the right class that is in high demand. This has been going on for a long time. We all see this but rarely is it discussed openly or honestly.

    I just want you to consider that some have been sidelined completely by the mechanics of Chaos Descending. Certain classes have pretty much disappeared altogether (for example Bruisers). This deserves looking into. Not just my class but all classes deserve a through looking over balance wise.

    Submitted for your consideration.

    Thank you.
    dirgenoobforreal and Beee like this.
  13. Moss Well-Known Member

    If you ask around the top guilds you will find than most have a hard time getting more than 15 active players.

    Players stop raiding/playing because of mindless grinding, raid boss that takes hours to kill when you don't have the resolve or will get kill on first pull once you have it, broken class balance (thanks ascensions) and useless loots that decay the first time you loot them (belt and cloaks without doublecast.

    Take a look at class balance, improve loots desirability between each tier, makes sure that all classes does not wants the same items, and then stop making 30min-1h raid fights where you just play have to push 3 buttons repeatedly.

    This post seems to go in the right directions, but until we are able to ear from the person(s) who are responsible to fix game mechanisms and itemization the game will continue to go in the wrong direction no matter how good is the content.
    Beee and duckster like this.
  14. Dude Well-Known Member

    Who would that be, beside Gninja, EQ2 Sr. Game Designer?
  15. duckster Active Member

    Please take into account for future raiding elements, the burden of status. Gearing up through the different tiers was something around 20mil status prior to the unlockers being added and 90 res gear dropping in Experts.

    In addition, make the raiding currency more useful and utilising desirable items(that arent attached to status. I believe one good example were the Temp adorns in ToT).

    Other concerns have been raised and i understand other Devs have a hand in that(items/class balance).
  16. Dabb Active Member

    For the love of all thats good please bring back good ole raid loot without having all the tier/gem system. Just loot a piece and put it on. Like the old days there was nothing wrong with that system. Please. much love.
    Arclite, Tomshindo, Beee and 5 others like this.
  17. Azrael's Tear Active Member


    :eek::eek::eek::eek:
    Zeddicious likes this.
  18. Noctew Active Member

    Please, Gninja, when you decide on tiers, timers/lockouts, progression etc. also look into reducing the grinding aspect of raiding. I've been raiding in EQ2 for 14 years now, and I'm just burnt out. Current timers allow raiding zones twice a week plus myth/non-myth and I'm just tired of farming each zone over and over again. I'd rather have the raid leader say "Olay, we've raided all we can for this week, timer on everything - let's finish early!" than doing a zone once mythic from 8 pm to 9 pm, then again from 9 pm to 10 pm on a reset timer, and then the same zone in non-mythic from 10 pm to 11 pm just because we can and sobebody might still need a drop to unlock an item tier.

    Back in TSO we had one tier of raid items, and we liked it. We felt great when we finally had completed our one set of raid armor! (Okay, TSO raid armor was ugly AF compared to the non-raid tiers, but you get my point).
    Arclite and Beee like this.
  19. Tomshindo Active Member

    What I think it shows is they've made this game pretty easier to play than the previous expansions. That is not only about Raid contents, but Status we can gain from items, Heroic contents and even playing some of the classes.

    Even if we got amazing items, to be honest, it's pretty much worthless spending time on such straightforward and lackluster contents which got reduced its content. All we do is grinding and grinding for reaching the next requirement.

    As for Status, almost everything is saturated with inflated Status by items, but first of all, those Status have already lost its elements as ''attacking'' compared to the main elements such as Potency, Crit Bonus and Fervor.

    So I think it's important to change those ''dead'' Status to be effective attacking elements as '' Big 3''.
    But they should not be easily achieved with items, because that makes selectivity in strengthening player's characters.
    Selectivity is important when we make up their persona. Lacking is good and fine. But satiation leads to boring and is no good.

    I hope they can handle on these tasks.

    Thank you
  20. Beee Well-Known Member

    Whenever i have a whish for EQ2: Much less nortade shinies (rares and ultra rares are fine) and the metacollection item should be best in slot

    Things like CD - Runnyeye Collections are useless and not worth your coding time
    From the regular CD Collection only 2 players of my guild finnished it.. not using the reward
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.