Explain to me please then how any of the current Avatar's are harder than anything instanced? That's part of the whole argument. Mobs that are that easy shouldn't drop best in slot end game loot. At a minimum they should be as difficult as Amalgamon/4SW Drinal. As people have already stated, they are easy and in some cases being single/two pulled by guilds on their first attempt. The Flames progression thread regarding Avatars considered them a joke from the start and the only reason they weren't completed with the top ten in the first week was due to having to wait for the correct versions to spawn to count.
If the challenge is getting the 1st pull yet most servers only have 1 guild that is actually willing to contest with call lists, then where exactly is the challenge? When there is only 1 end game guild for most servers and they are the only ones who use call lists, there is no challenge past waiting for them to get bored and stop focusing. That's exactly what happened to Shoukin. After 4 months, I believe they had only lost 1 avatar. It looks like they quit calling during off hours and now just wait for an hour before the other Americans normal raid times to kill the avatars and sell the loot to the American player base. If the Asian or Australian based guilds get the ones during the early A.M. hours, they don't seem to care. No one is challenging Revelations. No one is challenging Shoukin. No one is challenging Onyx. No one is challenging The Punished. Go look at the progression threads and open your eyes a little. We have multiple servers that haven't even managed to kill Pirate Kings. We have multiple servers that have only 1 guild that has completed Pirate Kings. You people act like there is still enough healthy population and active end game raiders that there is actually competition on each server which is what I find laughable about this whole discussion. If you want actual competition to justify the contested scene, then the only way to do that at this point is with server merges. Condense the current 10 American servers down to 3 or 4 then you might actually have a legitimate claim to warrant the quality of the loot. As it stands now, the 1 end game guild per server is pretty much given uncontested free reign to best in slot end game loot for 5 minutes worth of boredom.
Thought repost would make you read what i said - I never said they was not easy. At least some the old ones had scripts if you failed you would die giving others the chance to at least take a pull to find out Avatards / Contested script ....imagine trying that on contested mayong ...lol a wolf would of came and chewed your raid up.Matron / AoM .. you can see where am going with this They had scripts that you had to find out i don't look through rose tainted glasses - We pulled and killed one with out any previous pulling . That should never of happened nor should it happen again. So i may be saying there to easy . If they did not drop the loot they do well ...loot i mean a 0.01% scout/mage helm or ear chance... but that's another thread I would not waste my time to get ppl on for them and would just raid my/our normal raid times
I find it extremely entertaining and enlightening how when CoE first came out and the raid content was so easy and dropped loot like candy, there were dozens of posts talking about how everything needed to be made harder to justify the raiding scene and put difficulty back in game. Yet, when it comes to Avatars, everyone is nice and quiet and happy with the status quo of being able to farm easy mobs uncontested for end game loot. Buffrat's post and the attitude we've seen from Shoukin are the perfect examples of the current state of contested. Until the serious guilds willing to use call lists get bored and stop caring, there is no real challenge.
So tell me what changes if you put the gear on instance mobs worthy of the challenge? Nobody bothers to kill avatars and that loot goes to the same guilds it is now...Equil, Rev, Shoukin, Onyx, etc. The random guilds that pick off the occasional avatar now likely can't kill an instance mob worthy of the loot. So, yeah, the population isn't as healthy/driven for aggressive contesting at this point in the game. So your solution is to remove any reason for the contested content so that...what? I don't understand what your end result is? If you want the best drops on appropriate instance content then it should be on the hardest mobs, Pirate Kings and SG:HM. Or you think that the best Avatar loot, eth hats/ears, should drop off something killable by anyone?
Why should the guilds who mobilize at a camp when an avatar is up be punished because the rest of the population is too lazy/stupid/doesn't care enough to do it themselves?
No. What I think needs to happen is two fold. 1. Server merges need to happen first to get the contested population back up to where there is at a minimum 2 guilds that are capable of using call lists. Hopefully each server will have 3 to 4 when players from guilds 2 through 9 on each server that are interested in contested call lists and end game merge/siphon into more powerful guilds. 2. Avatars going forward (probably too late for current ones now) need to be designed and implemented at a difficulty level where they might actually be able to kill the guilds in step 1. They can't just be 5 minute pushover mobs that can be 2 grouped or single pulled by guilds on their first attempt. They need to be 20 minute fights requiring 24 players being on their toes and actually risking losing the mob to the next guild waiting if they wipe. Now, if the population continues to drop to where there isn't even enough of a contested player base left to support the style of content, then either server merge down to 1 super server or end the development time spent on the content. Creating content that ends up being exclusive to 1 guild purely by the nature of apathy isn't really something I see worthy of wasting time on.
Yes. I am crying a river for the punishment they are receiving for two grouping an Avatar for best in slot loot. I am crying a river for the punishment they are getting for single pulling and killing an Avatar in under 5 minutes. Please. Like Slippery and plenty of others have already so eloquently pointed out, the only challenging thing about the current Avatars is paying attention to the text message on your phone. That seems really punishing.
That would be ideal, but they're not gonna do server merges just to add competition for avatars. They're making too much off those 2500 sc server transfers to just move everyone for free. Right now if a server is hurting for population and you can't find groups you can pay 2500 sc for you and all your alts to try and go to one of the two populated servers. Or if a guild falls apart you're more likely to find a good raid fit on another server. There's another 2500 sc for you and for each alt once you settle into your new server. Bottom line is they make a lot of money on things you basically have to purchase (transfers, expansions, etc). That's why they hold the line and never let those things go on sale. Is it done in the best interest of the game? Clearly, not. But they're not gonna mess with the money until everyone has either quit or transferred off on their own.
On your first point, good luck getting servers "match merged" according to guild strength. You're asking for the impossible. On your second point, do you really think it's possible to create an encounter that is difficult for the top guilds but easy enough for the lowest guilds that want to compete for avatars? How does making a fight last 20 minutes make it any more fair for lower tiered guilds? Again, you're asking for the impossible. Apathy? It's not SOEs fault your guild isn't driven enough to step up. And if you're guild doesn't have enough folks that want to do something about it, then it sounds like you need to find a new guild. That's been happening for years, regardless of server population.
Someone had posted on a similar thread a few months ago about different difficulty levels for the avatars where the challenge mode version would drop the good loot at a higher rate. More casual guilds could go after the mob on an easy mode level and contest it vs a top guild that's after it with a reasonable expectation that they could get something out of it that isn't going to their 8th alt. Thought that was a solid idea. Would add more contest and provide rewards appropriate to the guild that kills it on their level.
This entire post is about "Unfair avatar monopolization." As it stands, only a handful of guilds bother with avatars because other guilds are too lazy/stupid/don't care. Yes, let's make the fights a lot harder. We'd still be discussing this topic regardless. The difficulty of these fights isn't the issue that was brought up. It's this notion that it is unfair for a handful of guilds to be "monopolizing" the avatar fights. Well, I don't see other guilds with as much dedication. If the fights really are as easy as posters here are saying, upping the ante won't bring new guilds in to kill them. They simply won't bother, the same way they aren't bothering to do it now.
And that was my point exactly. This is legacy game play that there simply isn't enough interest in. Time and resources should be spent on other types of competitive gameplay other than spawn contesting. I think people want to be competitive, they just don't want to adjust their schedule to do it. Providing you can make something competitive and give a sliding reward scale so there is reason enough for people to compete, then I think you'll find players will consume the content and in general be happier. There was a reason avatars died off before, we'll likely see it happen again for basically the exact same reasons. I'd just like to see SoE spend their efforts a bit more intelligently.
Mathrim.... Not quite sure where your concerns are based.. are you unhappy that Avatars on many servers are being dominated by the guild/s topping progression or do you feel they are too easy for those same guilds that are dominating? Or both? In my mind the reason why the Avatars are not a challenge for such guilds as Equilibrium/Shoukin/Revelations is for the same reasons why they top or lead progression. On my server, yes the top US guild has dominated the Avatars and its clear they have worked hard to do it. Two other guilds in different timezones on the same server have also killed all of the Avatars, including sometimes even in US play time. So some level of contesting Avatars does exist. Other guilds have to be prepared to make a similar level of effort to be able to have any level of success at contesting. For example, there is a US raiding guild on my server that appears to run more than one raid force. Yet even with the number of players they can muster, I have seen little evidence myself of them making the effort to camp the zones/spawns and implement a call list. They could do it easily, they could try contesting, and based on your assessment of how little of a challenge the Avatars are, they might even succeed.
They tried that with Ox in SF. It's a good idea on paper, but what's to stop a guild from killing it easy mode just to block another guild? To make it fair, the encounter would need to analyze the size, skill and gear of the raid force starting the encounter then adjust to that raids current "value".
How is the first point impossible? I can tell from guild progress and recruitment pages which servers to merge with 30 minutes of research. If the Developer in charge of such a process can't be bothered to take 30 minutes out of his planning to review guild strengths, then why should anyone even care about server based progression tracking any more. Like Twyxx has already pointed out, there are options available with just a little bit of thought and effort. It could be as simple as a text menu pop-up that says do you want to Challenge me in my Mortal Form? (Normal Mode difficulty and Normal Mode Gear) Do you want to challenge me as a Demi-God? (Hard Mode difficulty and Hard Mode Gear). Do you want to challenge me as a Supreme Being? (Nightmare Mode with Nightmare Gear). The scripts could be additive and once you've seen the Normal mode, you can prepare for the harder versions. Any guild that can form in time can stand a chance at learning the scripts and actually being successful without the end game guild breathing down their neck while they are fighting. Even guilds light on the roster at the time that is capable of Nightmare mode could back down to Demi God mode if they see another guild forming before their call list players arrive. It actually would add some spice into the mix and make the guilds weigh their options and desired attempt level. As far as your comment about apathy, sure. I could care less about call lists and will never be a member of a guild that requires them. My guild as a whole voted and chose not to implement call lists. That doesn't change the fact that almost every single end game guild is easily farming the avatars with almost zero contesting whatsoever. Whats the point of contested content if it isn't actually contested? You can spout crap about finding a new guild all you want, but when it is painfully obvious to anyone other than an idiot that there is no true contesting happening on the majority of the servers, then why should the content even exist?
You're on Unrest and so am I and I'm in the guild you are talking about of Inner Circle. We voted as a guild based on 70 active players and only have 14 or 15 willing to submit to a call list. As far as your comment about the other non American guilds getting kills, Red Welkin and VVV only got those kills after Shoukin decided to relax their call listing and stopped caring about contesting them full time. Shoukin doesn't even bother call listing during afternoon American spawn times anymore. They just wait until about an hour before the other Americans start and then sell the gear. My concern has nothing to do with my guilds desire or other guilds at our level to kill Avatars using call lists, it has to do with the fact that best in slot gear is dropping from easy mobs that have almost zero contestation whatsoever per server. Whether it's due to apathy, low populations, player skill, whatever. . If you want contested to be worthy of actually being called a challenge, then either fix the encounters to make them more challengeing/varied or fix the population issue to where there is actual competition.
I honestly wish Sony hadn't backed off on their attempt at implementing an Item Score/Gear Score. Done right and making it where encounters can scale based on the aggregate total Score could make varying encounters so much easier to implement. It would have also made it where Dungeon Finder might have actually been functional based on building groups with equal scores. Such a wasted chance. As far as stopping another guild from blocking? Absolutely nothing. That's part of the whole nature of contetested. Plenty of guilds in the old days continued keeping Avatars and contested locked down when they didn't need the gear any more. It was purely a status symbol and leads to more competition and forcing the other guilds to beat them at their own game. Like I've said repeatedly though, in it's current existence, most servers only have 1 guild playing the game and the rest don't care.
Nothing. That's the contest part. You still gotta get it dead first. I'm thinking easy mode being what they are now and challenge mode being something of Amalgamon difficulty I guess (something you can't 2 group). Easy mode can have the loot table it has now minus the eths and challenge mode has a much higher % chance at eth drop. Casual guilds might get more opportunity as top guilds will likely wait until they have a force they can kill it hm vs just killing it easy mode whenever they get 12 people online. Also, with higher eth drop % the top guilds are gonna get their fill quicker and care less about contesting them leaving, potentially, more opportunity for other guilds.
