A Much Needed Change to Emerald Halls

[Armill]

<p>I was thinking of how much that it stinks that to do this one raid zone you need to put in and stay in there for almost a day or two at a time for al lthe work. It seems to me that if SoE changed it to where you could clear out a level and than leave and than next time come to the next level and kinda wash and repeat the process that it would be more accomidating for guilds and people who just don't have the time to sit and do that whole zone in one go. </p><p> So all im asking for is the ability to clear out a level in eh and come back,  and once ya clear the zone repeat the process over again. Thank ya for ya time</p>

[Cassend]

The fact is, there are plenty of other places people who don't have the time to do Emerald Halls can go to raid. Is it so bad to have one zone that requires 24 people who are willing to dedicate a day to eq2? I understand the tedium involved in clearing it, but if you don't want to spend an entire day or two clearing it, then you can do MMiS, CMF, FTH, Labs, Lyceum, Hos, DT.

[Arvas]

<cite>Cassend wrote:</cite><blockquote>The fact is, there are plenty of other places people who don't have the time to do Emerald Halls can go to raid. <span style="color: #00cc00">Is it so bad to have one zone that requires 24 people who are willing to dedicate a day to eq2? </span> I understand the tedium involved in clearing it, but if you don't want to spend an entire day or two clearing it, then you can do MMiS, CMF, FTH, Labs, Lyceum, Hos, DT. </blockquote><p>          I dont know if I would call it ''bad'' as much as ''sad''....... </p>

[Cassend]

<cite>Arvas wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Cassend wrote:</cite><blockquote>The fact is, there are plenty of other places people who don't have the time to do Emerald Halls can go to raid. <span style="color: #00cc00">Is it so bad to have one zone that requires 24 people who are willing to dedicate a day to eq2? </span> I understand the tedium involved in clearing it, but if you don't want to spend an entire day or two clearing it, then you can do MMiS, CMF, FTH, Labs, Lyceum, Hos, DT. </blockquote><p>          I dont know if I would call it ''bad'' as much as ''sad''....... </p></blockquote> You're right, spending the day trolling on video game forums is much better. Get out of here if you have nothing good to add.

[BossCre]

<p>It would seem that it's okay to have a raid zone take this long to complete, however then it becomes a matter of how much time one is willing to waste on tedium rather than how much skill and previous raiding to gear up one applies toward that "challenge".  This could be considered "okay" by EQ1 standards or similar, however many come to EQ2 to avoid that same level of tedium and not over-shoot toward something like World of Warcraft, where the tedium lies mostly in the ease of doing anything.  It is a valid point made here that it should, perhaps, be changed to allow guilds to take a break and come back to it or even remove some unnecessary time sinks.</p><p>Certainly, there are other places guilds which cannot devote the time to this zone can go, but this really does limit the content that capable guilds can experience with an unnecessary factor.</p>

[sah]

I think a long time ago, a dev said that the way instances are implemented makes it very difficult to add this sort of feature and not really worth their effort so I doubt that this will be added any time in the near future...

[SpritRaja]

In my mind it seems it would be easy to implement this feature. Just divide the zone into 3 instance zones with a repeateable quest requiring you to kill the boss of the 1st zone to gain access to the 2nd, kill the boss of the 2nd zone to gain access to the 3rd zone. Don't see how that would be in anyways difficult to code.

[Tib]

<p>Well, I have to disagree with the OP 100%.  The entire mystique about that place is the fact that very very very few guilds can do it all.  Our guild has done it twice and both times we had over 2 weeks of warning (so ppl could arrange to be there) and we planned it on a Saturday starting at Noon EST.   Both times were in there over 9 hours.  It really isnt the type of zone you can just hop in real fast with a full raid and do like the other EOF zones.  It takes planning and preparation.  </p><p>Why would you want to turn EH into every other EOF and KoS zone?  Cmon now, seriously... what is wrong with a little diversity people my God?  If it isn't handed to you or made easy you want it dumbed down.  EH is a fantastic zone with many cool fights, beautiful scenery, amazing drops and it takes an entire guild to be focused and work together to achieve success.   Dumbing it down and making it easier cause it "takes too long" takes away the entire concept behind the zone..... in my opinion</p>

[Cassend]

Tibbz@The Bazaar wrote: <blockquote><p>Why would you want to turn EH into every other EOF and KoS zone?  Cmon now, seriously... what is wrong with a little diversity people my God?  If it isn't handed to you or made easy you want it dumbed down.  EH is a fantastic zone with many cool fights, beautiful scenery, amazing drops and it takes an entire guild to be focused and work together to achieve success.   Dumbing it down and making it easier cause it "takes too long" takes away the entire concept behind the zone..... in my opinion</p></blockquote>Unfortunately a lot of people who raid casually feel they are entitled to just the same amount of opportunity as those who raid constantly. It seems that the idea of you get out what you put in is lost to a lot of the community and sometimes this is reflected explicitly within the game. I understand people have their own lives, jobs, families, and what not, but to a certain degree you should see an adequate return of rewards based on what you can put into the game. It is unfortunate to those who want the utmost out of the game but cannot give it all their time, however I would love to be a master guitar player, but I know with only a couple hours practice a week due to time constraint, it wont happen. I expect to get out of it what I give it. The fact that we have essentially one raiding zone that is entirely too challenging, perhaps only in time consumption, for casual raiders seems to be unfair to some. I never understood why it is a problem to have a game where one's playing style governs the amount of content they are able to see. Is it unfair? Hardly, people who play countless hours don't want to feel that if they only played 1/3 as much they would get the same amount of experience out of the game. So to respond to the OP, please do not request any further modification to this zone with respect to making it easier. The zone has had it's named encounters butchered and trash mobs made easier, yet it is still the only zone worth considering the "higher end" of the expansion, and it should stay as such.

[liveja]

<p>I'm going to disagree with the OP, for one simple reason: if EH gets turned into something that even "casual raid" guilds can reasonably expect to do, the "hardcore raiders" would throw The Mother Of All Conniption Fits.</p><p>Besides, we all know that the single most important sign of a truly good player is that he/she has 9+ hours to spend, in one stretch, playing a computer game.</p>

[Armill]

I agree with Dahgoo 100%, the zone requiring so long just to finish does cut out a lot of capable guilds. Its unfair to not allow people a chance to complete the zone without them having to spend all day clearing trash just to get to some named mobs. This zone could be completed by many more guilds than it currently is I believe if they allowed for such a change to take place. Besides this is just a game and wheres the harm in allowing people who do have things outside of it the chance to finish a whole zone without having to throw away a whole day just for it.

[TuinalOfTheNexus]

<p>I agree that the zone needs splitting up really.</p><p>As people have pointed out, a 9+ hour raid zone is acceptable in something like EQ1, because it was the norm for people to play those kind of hours. Many people came to EQ2 to escape that mentality, and thus - imo - EH goes against the design philosophy of the whole game.</p><p>It would be fair if there was a significant volume of other raid content that offered similar upgrades; but it's rather silly to tell people to like it or lump it when 3/4 of the best drops in the game are in there, and 1/2 of the high end raid content. The challenge from raiding in EQ2 should be from beating encounters (MMIS is a decent example of this), not from grinding masses of trash. People are frequently leaving toons logged in overnight to hold this zone open, which is pretty ridiculous in itself.</p><p>The fix to me is simple - Tender and Gardener both dropping "keys" to the next floor, that can be used at the zone in to port the raid there and reset the revive point. The key could be consumed in the process so you need to kill Tender once for every visit to the 2nd floor etc. This would still give a benefit to people who want to kill every named and clear every floor each visit in terms of loot (because they'd get a full zone of loot every week), but would allow guilds to quit after killing Tender then come back the next week and attempt Gardener, then Wuoshi the next week.</p>

[simpwrx02]

Tibbz@The Bazaar wrote: <blockquote><p>Well, I have to disagree with the OP 100%.  The entire mystique about that place is the fact that very very very few guilds can do it all.  Our guild has done it twice and both times we had over 2 weeks of warning (so ppl could arrange to be there) and we planned it on a Saturday starting at Noon EST.   Both times were in there over 9 hours.  It really isnt the type of zone you can just hop in real fast with a full raid and do like the other EOF zones.  It takes planning and preparation.  </p><p>Why would you want to turn EH into every other EOF and KoS zone?  Cmon now, seriously... what is wrong with a little diversity people my God?  If it isn't handed to you or made easy you want it dumbed down.  EH is a fantastic zone with many cool fights, beautiful scenery, amazing drops and it takes an entire guild to be focused and work together to achieve success.   Dumbing it down and making it easier cause it "takes too long" takes away the entire concept behind the zone..... in my opinion</p></blockquote><p>I just want to know how spliting this into 3 instances with requirements to acess would be dumbing down the zone.  No one is asking to change the difficulty of the zone, just to split it up.  If guilds can go in and kill the first few names with the current trash level they still can, but many guilds have people who can not dedicate that much time to one zone straight aka they have jobs and family/friends. Granted you could set up a weekend a few weeks in advance to try to make sure that every one can be there, but I dont feel this should be a requirement to try a zone.</p><p> The fanatastic zone would still exist the cool fights would still be there the beautiful senery wouldnt change, would still have the fantastic drops and would still require an entire guild to be focused and work together.  From your post it appears that you think that overall lenght is a diffcultly factor, I got the hardest thing in the world to do...go sandblast the bottom of an aircraft carrier by yourself with out stopping,  Or we could break it up into segments and do portions that only take 8 hours at a time to do, which I guess would be making it too easy for you. </p><p>3 seperate zone would mean that more guilds would have a chance of actually seeing more than just the first floor.  My guild isnt a hardcore guild, but we do pretty well for ourselves we have went into EH and we tried a few things a few months ago. The zone was awesome looking and we heard had great encounters, but the shear volume of trash/ time sink  didnt seem worth it since we only got a few pulls on a named but were not able to kill it.  This will still mean that the zone will be for top raid guilds only as the difficulty of the fights is still more than 90% of raiding guild can kill. It would just mean that instead of having a few players keep the zone open over night that every one could zone out and could restart the zone at a later time, maybee do one floor per week assuming you can actually clear the floor.  I have no doubt that once my guild starts doing this zone we will be clearing the bottm floor after a few weeks of attempts.</p><p>And for Cassend about clearing the other raid zones, have you ever heard of progression, I want to progress to be able to kill something by getting better at my character and getting better gear, not pondering if I have 2 days to kill.  Are you really saying that because you dont have 2 days of your life to dedicate to one zone you should never be allowed to see it.  If you practice the guitar a few hours a week for a few years you should be pretty dam good at it or you could practice for 500 hours straight and get good really fast.  Both are means to an end, but this zone only rewards you for the straight effort. </p><p>As far as tryign to be seperate from the casual raider.. how many casual raid guilds can even get to the first named in EH let alone kill him or even clear the first floor, hell most casual raid guilds have yet to kill Chel'drake, Trey and beyond in FTH, Clockwork meanace, or come close to clearing MMiS all of those easier than EH with the exception of Maynog.  You can rest assured that you and people like you will still be the only ones killing Wousihi for the next few months.  Spliting the zone would just give the "pond scum" guild a chance to hopefully see the second floor in a few months and maybee the 3rd floor before the next expansion.</p>

[Ganlu]

How would it be dumbing something down if you allowed it to occur in 3 intervals of 3 hours each, rather than one 9 hour sitting?  It's not like the real "challenge" is getting enough people logged in for 9 hours straight.

[liveja]

<cite>simpwrx02 wrote:</cite><blockquote>Are you really saying that because you dont have 2 days of your life to dedicate to one zone you should never be allowed to see it. </blockquote><p>DING DING DING, we have a WINNER!</p>

[Krontak]

<p>Apparently, (and shame on you all for not knowing), there has been a shift in the hardcore community that  believes clearing hours of trash that pose no difficulty at all is what truly defines hard core.  What is even more interesting is even some of the hard core people that were previously against the endless mind numbing hours of clearing hours and hours of boring trash that truly pose no challenge except the possibility of running out of coffee have begun to accept the rhetoric of these hard core people.  They too now have jumped on the bandwagon that hours and hours and hours of game-play of clearing trash which poses no difficulty separates the true gamer from some casual customer.  I said it once and I'll say it again, birds of a feather flock together and become xenophobic.</p><p>Me?  I don't buy that [I cannot control my vocabulary] for one minute.  It's a stupid design and I'll sit here and say it till I'm blue in the face and nothing you people that are preaching about hours of killing trash will convince me that this is the way it should be.  I mean, if you want to sit around for hours on end and do nothing but kill trash then request soe create a zone with like 25 npcs with about 500,000,000 HP each with one super mob boss that is truly a GOD but don't waste everyone else's time with a freaking waste SOE resources to cater to such a group as yourselves that enjoy self inflicted pain.</p><p>One word describes the trash in EH......  <b><span style="font-size: xx-large; font-family: courier new,courier">BORING!!!</span></b></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: Courier New">But hey, if these people get their way, SOE will continue to bore the hell out of the rest of the community with boring content till everyone gets bored out of their minds.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: Courier New">As was pointed out though, splitting the zone into sections would be one possibility of making it more achievable for some guilds.  You know, I get the point of the zone I truely do.  You have to kill all the similar trash around a named so they don't come running.  Wait till you've gone in this zone 20+ times and see how much everyone continues to enjoy the hours of killing the same trash over and over.  I still can't understand why people would argue for such high hit point trivial trash.  What a bore.  I guess first time in, maybe even the second it seems kinda neat but I can imagine that either the trash gets cut down by a third or even a half over time. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: Courier New">I can understand why SOE would do something like this and also why they seem to "dumb" things down.  Its good business.  If they didn't put in the speedbump of difficulty and tedium, the hard core people would have ran out of things to do in short order and moved on.  With this zone in place it gave them something to work on and get a sense of satisfaction.  Well, now the rest of the population is beginning to venture into this zone and give it a try.  Fortunately, these new groups are not "hard core" and generally don't have endless hours of gametime.  I suppose it is a shame they "tune" down the named encounters because now they've just given the raiding babies fodder to justify thier greatness over the rest of the population.  On the contrary though, I'm sure you would have seen many of these guilds that don't have the time to invest completing the same dificult encounters as many of those that do have the time to invest.  Just a theory but it probably does apply in some cases.  I wonder also if SOE didn't address the lag issues created in this zone and a couple other encounters because it was affecting such a small population of each server.  Now that larger groups are /bug'ing and providing feedback, they can't do other but address the issue.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: Courier New">Not sure how soon but The Rise of Kunark is on the horizon.  I can't say for certain if this will introduce a level increase or not.  If it does introduce a level increase then this entire thread will be forgotten in short order.  If it doesn't then the discussion may go on for a bit, but slowely over time people will forget.  Everyone will be focused on the new content.  For instance, I hear Vyemm doesn't have an AOE anymore.  I can only imagine the heated discussions that would have taken place if after a month or two of release of KoS this would have happened.  I'm sure people would have been jumping off buildings and slitting thier throats but as it stands, most of the power players may say a thing or two about it then move on.  </span></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: Courier New">I suppose what I'm getting at is this seems to be a pattern that occurs in this game and you can either pull your hair out about it or learn to accept it as good economics for the game.  Without the masses enjoying content over time, you're Hard Core content would never have a chance to even exist.  There are pleanty of guilds that have enjoyed the race to defeat content.  The race is over for the most part.  Grats to those that won and grats to the bitter ones that got sloppy seconds.  Now, SOE is slightly tweaking things down a bit it seems to allow the next level to enjoy the content they took hours and hours to produce.  I'd imagine SOE programmers took quite a bit of time to program EH.  Its a fairly large zone.  Not only would they not want a large percentage of the population to enjoy it, it wouldn't make economical sense.  Anyways, I'm starting to babble and repeat myself.  See ya's.</span></p>

[Tib]

Really, I am not going to continue to back my point of view since it is never going to happen anyway <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> 

[liveja]

<p>The only GOOD argument against splitting up EH is technical feasibility.</p><p>Everything else is [Removed for Content].</p>

[KBern]

<cite>Krontak wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Apparently, (and shame on you all for not knowing), there has been a shift in the hardcore community that  believes clearing hours of trash that pose no difficulty at all is what truly defines hard core.  What is even more interesting is even some of the hard core people that were previously against the endless mind numbing hours of clearing hours and hours of boring trash that truly pose no challenge except the possibility of running out of coffee have begun to accept the rhetoric of these hard core people.  They too now have jumped on the bandwagon that hours and hours and hours of game-play of clearing trash which poses no difficulty separates the true gamer from some casual customer.  I said it once and I'll say it again, birds of a feather flock together and become xenophobic.</p><p>Me?  I don't buy that [I cannot control my vocabulary] for one minute.  It's a stupid design and I'll sit here and say it till I'm blue in the face and nothing you people that are preaching about hours of killing trash will convince me that this is the way it should be.  I mean, if you want to sit around for hours on end and do nothing but kill trash then request soe create a zone with like 25 npcs with about 500,000,000 HP each with one super mob boss that is truly a GOD but don't waste everyone else's time with a freaking waste SOE resources to cater to such a group as yourselves that enjoy self inflicted pain.</p><p>One word describes the trash in EH......  <b><span style="font-size: xx-large; font-family: courier new,courier">BORING!!!</span></b></p><p><span style="font-size: x-small; font-family: Courier New">But hey, if these people get their way, SOE will continue to bore the hell out of the rest of the community with boring content till everyone gets bored out of their minds.</span></p></blockquote><p>Well obviously they need something to seperate them from the masses.  Since guilds can raid successfully now, the only other factor some have is the amount of time they can spend sitting and staring at their screens.</p><p>Obviously being able to put up with tedium of useless trash clearing for hours on end is the mark of an uber guild. </p>

[Armill]

I would think that the greatest accomplishment a dev could get would be that someone could succesfully complete a thing that you make. That they rally up and beat a challenging encounter that you've made, because heck thats what this game is all about, rising up together to work as a team to defeat difficult and often challenging encounters. And I think that if a guild would be able to do that than you've done your job, and you've done it well. But currently the hardest mob to defeat in EH would be Time, and when you make that the hardest challenge someone has to face than you've screwed up. It shouldn't be about the time it takes to complete a zone but the amount of effort it takes to defeat the challenging encounters in the zone. And time shouldn't be the hardest one to beat.