Little background on me. Hardcore raider on Eq1 for 3-3 1/2 years. (Filled some different guild management positions in Eq1.) Ran a HNM linkshell in FFXI when FFXI first came out. Eq2 experience: Started on server up which eventually lead me to lead Journeymen of the Overlord on AB. As many guild leaders have found in the past and will find in the future 24 people playing the ideal classes for a raid can be difficult to set up(how about difficult to get the right people on each night). Now I had some amazing individuals but still there were times I would be short on a particular support job. To my point: In Eq2 you(Sony) want to please your customer and give them options and you have given us some amazing options from character armor/weapon/mount appearance slots to multiple different races etc. Why not give us 3-4 X2 raids that we can obtain some lesser armor/itemization in the easier one and some high quality (x4 comparison) armor/itemization in the harder zones. WoE was such a popular zone that I can hardly believe you have not moved in this direction yet. I firmly believe that if you start Velious with more than 4 x2 raids along with the already planned x4 zones your subscription numbers will increase. I am really interested in player feedback!
I wish all x4 raids scaled to x2. Some fights would be very difficult without more than two groups (the sages in Palace for example), but it seems it would make it easier for guilds to keep people raiding. Sometimes, my guild for whatever reason doesn't have enough people on to do a x4 but we have people that are interested. I also wish raiding worked like Battlegrounds with a full set of gear available for token purchases. I'm still in Legendary pants despite killing the appropriate mob about 50 times.
Banditman wrote: This ^^^ Unlike TSO, almost all of the normal mode x4 raid content can be killed with 2 groups. No real dps checks, no 8 curses every 60s, etc, etc. Outside of underfoot, the only encounter that stands out is Sages, and that would be a stretch with 2 groups, but no problem with 3. Underfoot though recycles some of TSO's greatest hits and would not be condusive to 2 grouping the content.
Tootles@Unrest wrote: Now if only there was a dev that could come up with fun, unique encounters... Oh yea, they fired him
Coming from a smaller guild, I would love to see more x2 raid content available in the new expansion. WoE and Kurns were great challenges during TSO as the guild could usually get together a x2 but as a smaller guild struggled to gather a full x4. The challenge and feeling of success as we slowly( i.e once a week, maybe 2x if we were lucky) progressed through WoE was a great feeling for the not so hardcore. I'm hoping to see more zones and challenges like WOE with the T3 shard armor set rewards with Velious as I thought it was a great offering to more casual players who still wanted a challenge but were not quite to the organizational structure of consist x4 raids. Kaemyr
Banditman wrote: Genuine question: By whom? Are we talking about x4 raiders in T2/T3 SF raid gear? If so, sure, I belive you. But are you honestly saying that most of the normal mode x4 SF content can be 2 grouped by indiviguals with no raid gear? If so... I'm just not sure I buy it. While most folks agree the rewards for WoE were way out of line for the difficulty (sometimes better than TSO T4 raid gear), it was a nice, fun, progession area for large groups or small guilds. The idea of such an x2 fills a nice little progression hole for non-hardcores, and would be benificial if the rewards were kept in line with their difficulty. It's not as much that we want some overpowering new gear. (While it's always nice). We want somewhere new to go, somewhere new to progress through. (I know, large guilds and hardcore raiders commonly look down on such a request with the answers of "Just get more people", "Move to a larger guild", "Just find a flock of strangers" etc... - but those are fairly difficult or drastic solutions to the simpler problem of being bored with the instances, but not having enough folks to fill out a x4). WoE, despite it's faults, solved that problem nicely... -Ken
I certainly hope there are more than two places of the WoE/Kurns Tower type in the expansion. As was said by others, there are many smallish guilds who could put together two groups, possibly in conjunction with one other similar guild. Big four-group affairs with a bunch of strangers now and then is fine but doing it too often starts to feel like a job more than a game. As only half as many people are involved in a x2 raid, there should logically be twice as many of those as there are x4 ones.
Ynnek@Kithicor wrote: Stop complaining about what you can't do and go discover what you CAN. You'll find a lot more support from your fellow players when you come to the forums with something like "We're trying to do some old x4 content with two groups of players, any suggestions on how we can get by thusandso encounter?"
