Will there be more x2 raids in the future?

In other words, your rewards will always match your efforts.

I like the 2x zone, but the one thing about it that I have issue with: if someone has to drop from the raid (or goes LD) after the quest updates in the zone have started, then the person you get to fill-in doesn't get anything reward-wise for helping out the other 11 people who started the zone.

x4 raids are fine.. its the players and the arbitrary rules/requirements they make that kill the number of actually raiding players.

I saw a lot more than 5% of the server show up ever single hour for the pq raids in DoV.

Make raid zones accept the first 24 people that click the door.. stop letting 'raid leader' decide who gets to enter the zones.

If they made it so the raiding loot was best for raiding, but not as good as heroic loot for single group play, and neither of those were as good as solo loot for advanced soloing (the last is probably the easiest to achieve), I'd agree with you. But once raiders get the top loot traditionally they can steamroll heroic and solo content, giving them a huge economic edge over everyone else.

What "economic advantage" are you losing if you're only playing the solo/heroic game?

i'm not the person you asked but i can give a really easy example. Not many people playing the solo game can earn the 3k plat to buy krono because we don't spend 30hrs a week SLR. I'd venture to guess that not many solo/heroic players have 150k plat sitting in their bank.

Its true, even if you're an all access member, it would take awhile to get 3000p doing your loyalty stuff. 5 tokens is pretty much 3 days, and you'd need 40 bags of plat, so a little more than a month at least.

I haven't checked the broker prices for krono lately, but at 5k I'd be able to fund about another 6 months tops. And most of that is because I learned adorn recipes early in ToV and they sold.

If it takes me, in solo gear 1 hour to clear a zone, and a second person in raid gear can clear the zone in half that time, I've got a huge economic disadvantage. If raid gear could only be used in raid zones, or wasn't as effective for group or solo play, that disparity might not exist. It doesn't matter whether he 'earned' it or not - it's the effect it has on the game.

With the advanced solo gear now coming up since the last expansion that's becoming less of an issue. I hope that trend continues into the next expansion where all playstyles are challenged and rewarded.

There's a simple solution to your problem. Go raid. Come back and clear those solo zones all you want. You're the only one stopping yourself. As I said before, rewards match the efforts. Put in the many hours of raiding to earn all that gear and you'll earn that reward of becoming a beast that can pursue that "economic advantage". If you don't want to raid, the conversation ends there.

I would agree with you on this if Plat was a raid only currency lol. The problem is, prices go up because the people who have a severe advantage in the form of plat cause overall prices to go up. Most masters on AB for scouts and healers seem to be around 280~390 plat depending on usefulness (Some going even higher, this is the bare average though). Would take me roughly a month and a half to get enough plat to get my masters that are considered vital for my class by AB standards set by the amount of plat most "top players" are sitting on.

All raiders also want you to be geared and know the fights before entering, yet want us to have gear that is generally harder to come by unless you've raided somewhat already (A paradox created by the lack of PUGs due to a dislike of helping people who aren't learning their classes pre-95 due to no lower-end content practice, resulting in people sitting in gear tiers for ages unless they played @ the start of the expac), which again leads to the plat issue...if I had the kind of plat most people seem to be sitting on, I'd be able to afford a full-set of entry raid gear...however at 450~680 plat a piece that is not happening. Especially since even dungeon PUGs are getting pissy with people not knowing their class. Which loops back into the lower-end content issues again...

Its just one giant loop moving through the same three problems over and over. Economic advantage on a currency all players can factually make is kinda irritating, though tolerable if you don't want to participate in the playstyle. The playstyle is not easy to get into however, mid to late expansion, because of this.

True, I only have 42k and I don't raid...

Which I why I didn't bring up the question of "earned" as applied to the results. One can argue that back and forth forever.

You can look at SWG to see what happens when one group of players (Elder Jedi in this case) earned a privilege and fought tooth and nail to be sure no one else ever had it for the rest of the life of the game. In a game that centered around resources, they were able to generate 50% more than anyone else. The game suffered terribly for it (among many other things, I'm not saying that was the only problem).

Whether raiders "earn" their gear through more effort or better luck or the stars aligning is immaterial. The effects on the game economy and the rest of the playerbase is very real and easy to see. Telling people, "Hey, just play the game in a way that you hate for a few months and then you can go back to playing the way you want" isn't really helpful, though it may explain some of the attrition in raid guilds - once they have their gear, they have no more reason to raid and can just play the game.

Hopefully SOE continues the trend of giving a path for all players to get top tier gear. They took a lot of the right steps in the last expansions. What they do in the next one will really show the direction they want the game to take (if they have one - the ship may simply be adrift with no wind...)

And to bring this back around on topic: x2 is an interesting number. Is two groups really a "raid"? How will their content be tailored so they have roughly the same challenge as a x4 raid? Will there be any differentiation in loot at all since they're both "raids" (unless they mark some as "easy mode").

This is just completely false. The only raid guilds requiring raid gear to join would be the top 5. And even then, if there's an opening in their roster for a specific class odds are they'll take just about anyone because gear comes very quickly, what matters is that the player can handle the scripts. They only expect raid gear/knowledge if you're there to challenge the spot of their existing raiders, which is completely reasonable imo.

As far as 'economic advantage', the best zone to make money from (at least earlier this year, it's died down a lot now) was Fabled Sanctum of the Scaleborn. A couple hours with a pug and I was walking out with thousands of plat worth of brokerable loot.

HKC is not any harder than the hive (arguably the instance people find to be the easiest/fastest). I can handle at least 3 increments, i m not sure about more since when we got 5 and 9 I was the first target after aoe used got killed. I m very lazy there on the heals since i mostly attempt to do damage. It's not the case (yet) in the dmination in which the group HPS is usually 3 times larger.

My old guild that I was in from 7 years ago used to SLR in raid zones to people on the server. The guild I was in for 3 years after that guild broke up NEVER did SLR to the server, and only sold things to guildies for their alts (and they got stuff pretty cheap). The current guild that I've been in for a year never does SLR to the server, and again guildies buy stuff for their alts. There is a plat split each month, and that is based on the % of time you've shown up in the past month. If you're under a certain % (forget what it is ATM), you don't get anything. People who are there 100% of the time get more than people who were there 90% of the time. I think last month I got 1000p for the split, and I was there 100% of the time for the previous month.

I raid 9 hours a week (3 hours/3 nights) (around 12-15 days a month, just depending on how days land on the calendar). I would make more doing heroic instances and doing SLR on the gear that dropped that nobody in the group wanted during those 9 hours a week compared to what I make in a month raiding. More money is made SLR at the start of a new expansion compared to now.

It also depends on server population. Something could go up for sale on Unrest now for 100p, and nobody would bid. I'm sure the same item going up for sale in /auction would go for much higher on AB, just because there are more people wanting gear for their alts. That same item that nobody wanted on Unrest today would have easily sold for 750p+ at launch.

Since the launch of ToV, I've rarely seen anything sold from a raid zone in the /auction channel. Every once in blue moon, you'll see Inner Circle sell something from GE, but it's one of the "meh" charms (or the rogue neck from Grendish) that nobody really wants.

WRONG.

A friend quit due back during TSO days, due to a change in work schedule. She logs in after being gone all this time, and I instantly sent her a tell to /recruit her. A few of us helped PL her in Skyshrine, and got her the needed levels and AAs. We hauled her around all the heroic zones to get her Potent gear. We went back into AS to get her red gem raid gear. She wisely spent her limited number of etymas on getting red gems instead of getting green gems.

She is always playing now, and has leveled up her other healer and bard alts, and is getting Potent gear for them.

She is given instructions/strats on how to do a raid fight, and has quickly become an asset to the guild. She'll ask questions if she's not sure about something. There was a reason I got all giddy when I spotted her logging in after not hearing from her for all of these years. We had just recently lost a valued member of the guild the previous week, due to his work schedule changing, and as luck would have it, my friend played the same class that he did. Yay for us!

Same can be said for our other new members of the guild (tank, 2 other healers, and a DPS scout). Some were coming back to the game after taking a break. Others came from raid guilds that were folding. Others came wearing Potent gear. We got them geared up well enough to handle the first few wings in GE, and our raid force has gotten stronger because of them joining our ranks. They put in the effort that is needed from their characters, and they show up and are ready to raid.

So, tell me again on how "all" of us behave like what you think is happening in "all" of the raid guilds out there?

Actually, now that Sony has made shines able to be sold for status, which quickly has dried up the market for many shinies, the BEST zone to make money from is any zone that has shinies from a collection resulting in something desirable.

If you have a bruiser able to take a few hits and shiny-track, you can make ridiculous amounts of money FD-flopping your way to shiny prosperity.

Thanks, Sony!


Signed,
A Bruiser Who Can Take a Hit and FD-Flop

Aside from Krono, you're really not missing out on much at your chosen level of play. As others have said, there's money to be made elsewhere. It's not a matter of playing the game in a way you hate. It's a matter of accepting the consequences of setting that limit on yourself.

I used to raid. Now I solo a lot. I'm doing just fine. I don't need anything off the broker and have more than enough money to get by.

They're not about to change itemization in a way that doesn't make a lot of sense to begin with. How is that even supposed to work? Did you think about that? What if someone that raids wants to do a little grouping? They're supposed to get a whole new set of gear for that?

I've actually thought a lot about that and posted about it in the past.

They do a similar thing now with PvP and PvE sets of gear.