Just wow....if this was someone's idea of "fixing" raids, please reset it back. Mobs damage is unbelievably amped in the wrong direction, curse bubble in Blinding isn't even showing. If this was tested, we need to have a conversation about what constitutes "testing." There's no way this should be this bad.
How can they test it? There's nobody on test to test it and they don't play their own game, at least not outside of a development server. Not that there is enough devs to form a raid either.
My point was there was two weeks to work on this "every other Tuesday" and to see what the results are disappointing to say the least. Damage was amped up, bosses are taking a long time to kill, and Rockjumper doesn't, the Praetorian's bubble isn't even visible. I don't know what was worked on, but if this represents "moderation," we need to discuss what that word means. And then..to see two pieces of loot...just disappointing.
Finished our 3 hour raid tonite. Here's my assessment for our raid force: *Blinding: Rockhopper and Praetorian: damage output clearly amped up. Rocky just stood around and never followed a script. Praetorian's cloud curse was there, but couldn't see it half the time. Horrorfiend: more mitigation against damage, but nothing jumped out at us. *AC: The Boss on the Isle never called for falling rocks. Just stood there and took damage and dished it out. The Rockcrusher had higher mit than we've seen, but we got him down. Was hoping we'd get a chance at the bug in cave, but ran out of time. Loot boxes for two bosses had 4 pieces, two bosses had two. A bit more consistency in raid and variation of loot would be nice. When two items show up, it's a wep and a red adorn (Blinding Gleam/Adamant resolve.) Overall: some scripting appears to be broken. Mobs clearly have higher mitigation against damage, raid loot could stand to be tweaked. Have to wait til this weekend for Big Bug report, unless someone else has written about their experience.
Please tell me you didn't buy into the two weeks actually making a difference in what they are going to give us. This is Next Generation Entertainment at its best!
Message for Dreamweaver to pass it on the development team: How did you manage to screw it all up again? I mean just how? Does Holly's statement in the interview about a 10+ year plan on the eq franchise (assuming it includes eq2) involves selling this new standard in mediocrity? People have and are paying for this content. Show us some respect.
I cant believe they charge money for this game this point. Its completely unacceptable to screw up a progression race like this. And all you see are devs joking around about it. They should in my opinion be embarrassed at this point.
Note to Dreamweaver for Gninja: Here's what Gninja posted on Tuesday: - All Blood of Luclin raid zones are once again open and all raid bosses have returned up to Ssyre in Ssraeshza's Harrowed Halls [Raid]. Bosses returning will likely not return in previously saved instances. The majority of raid targets will likely be less challenging than when previously fought. I can confirm as can the other 23 players in our raid that this wasn't accurate. In fact, we found quite the opposite to be true. We're almost 3 months since launch and these are still bugged in some fashion. Maybe it's time to throw in the towel on fixing the issues, give everyone tokens for gear they need and let players get to the next zone and press on.
I don't have any personal experience with devs joking about the current state of the game. That said, if it's accurate, it would be my observation that the only people I've ever seen joke about poor work performance are people who have no pride in their own work, which really boils down to an admission they lack the knowledge or skills to actually fix the problem. What's worse, if they're doing that in the presence of players, it speaks volumes about leadership. I'm retired after working for more than 40+ years in organizations, private and military, where I have some experience with making those observations. The few devs I've had contact with appear to be upright people who give a damn. Dreamweaver isn't a dev, but he fits this description.
I guess this is true, IF you consider a 40-minute fight with the scripts removed and some ridiculous amount of mob HP to be "less challenging". It was 100% more boring last night. Even the healers weren't having to work hard mostly (the Sambata Champion was blowing through two to three layers of death prevents and damage mitigation on our tanks with the rocks last night, even with the healers and tanks trying hard... we killed it, but it was ugly). There should be some happy middle ground for T1 raid mobs in which there is some scripting that requires jousts or heals etc., but where the mobs can be defeated following the script once you've figured it out, so long as most of the raid has the required Resolve. The Sambata Champion as a normal T1, for example, is a good challenge when he has the rocks and grime, but adding the crazed replicating reishi was too much for a normal T1, that was more like a challenge version should be, and he's boring as all get out with only the rocks.
Everything that raid bosses do that is called from a %health threshold call is not currently working. Instead of turning raiding off we left everything that has been killed available in the easier state, this gives players at least something to fight as well as some of those that got behind on kills from bosses being missing can get their kills and catch up in their progression if they so choose. We are working to get the issue corrected sooner rather than later. Stay tuned for details. If there are specific bosses doing too much damage or a specific boss has too many hp, please send me a private message with details. Those things can be adjusted without an update. If you look across the content you will see that the majority of the raid bosses in each tier had their health and damage output fairly standardized as in most t1s do about the same melee and surge dps. There very well might be some fights that are now harder in that aspect but considering a lot of the % health scripts are not being called the fights are definitely easier in their current state in terms of complexity and seen first hand. Being as transparent as possible so you guys aren't in the dark about what's happening.
As always, Gninja, appreciate the information. Not being a dev, I have no idea what the implications of something "...called from a %health threshold" would mean. What I do know is that in two cases last night, there were no scripts being followed. I can also unequivocally state that bosses definitely had more hps--or more accurately--took much longer to kill than normal. I think Sig's point was what we were driving at. In the eyes of the players, when we hear "something will be less challenging," that translates into "will take less time to kill." Clearly, what we are discussing here is a difference in how the word "less challenging" is being used. For us, especially when lack of scripting is included, less challenging mobs mean they go down more quickly. Clearly that wasn't what you were saying. I think we get it now. If there's anything else that might impact how we handle mobs stemming from what you did to keep raids going vs. shutting them down would be helpful. Not asking for trade secrets, haha, just want to know what we can expect. Again...thanks for being so quickly responsive.
When mob's health <= x%, start doing y. Pretty much the entire basis of enemy scripts and why so much stuff is busted.
Appreciate the transparency but surely you can understand the pitch of these posts and why people are rightfully upset about how it has all been handled. If this was a day 1, week 1 or even month 1 issue post launch of the expansion, we could have been patient (mind you we have been more than enough as of late) but we are coming up into the third month of this expansion and from what I understand from the mechanics involved it would appear to be a very basic issue that would not require this much time to fix properly? To be very frank, the excuse about letting people catch up on the kills while its been fixed is not very convincing in my humble opinion. Face rolling on keyboard on majority of turn and burn scripts in their current broken state is not something I would assume people would want to catch up on for achievement sake only for the fights to present a stiffer challenge when they are working as intended later on. Moreover, people who are gradually catching up on resolve requirements for raid will probably get a rude awakening once they are fighting the "fixed" content and may have a claim for being hard done by compared to those who can blast through the content at this moment in time. If anything you will create more imbalances in an already imbalanced state of the game. Unless you keep the current level of difficulty (or lack thereof) and let it be. If all this was indeed a pretext behind these issues, I'd rather see the raid armor being sold for standard Mark currency with the raids permamnently disabled until they are fixed instead because risk vs reward is literally non-existent (resolve checks notwithstanding). May be some folks will be expecting a "calmed-down" response now that we have some transparency on the issue but I am personally struggling to see the positives on the issue considering it all feels like bandadging a severed carotid artery.
I don't raid, so please forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn, but I do appreciate the devs giving the players the choice of whether to tackle the broken content or wait until it's fixed. In my mind it's similar to the situation with the Overseer. I chose to wait until most of the issues were fixed before doing any serious work with my Overseers. Others plunged right in, despite the issues, and they're probably ahead of the game in some ways, although at the expense of dealing with frustration. I am glad all of us had the choice to play Overseers or not while the issues were sorted. It seems to me that it would be the same with raiding - if the content is playable in some fashion, the decision to play now or wait until after fixes should rest with the raiding group. Since raiding is a social activity, all the more reason not to completely disable it.
Why don't they let us each copy one raid toon to Test? Or hand out heroic gear, adorns, and max level bumps on Test and give some fun incentive to test the raids for them? Some of us would. Honestly, why have a Test server at all if they don't have access to everything that clearly very desperately needs testing, and if trying to get a toon through the daunting slog of previous content needed to 'test' the current content would require an entire extra block of playtime to manage? Nobody in their right mind wants to level a toon in Plane of Magic just for fun. I think they should just hand Test the levels and gear and let them test it. Just don't let it count toward live server achievements and unlockings and there's no harm done.
