Raiding

[Shotneedle]

le Rêveur wrote:

The game currently doesnt give any reward / motivation for clearing an expansion. There is no common goal for peoples to achieve.

Eitherway it has been made so hard to do so, that with the smaller population, even less peoples can actually clear content. I do not like that mindset some peoples did share earlier in this thread. There should NOT be content that only top guilds get a shot at. I agree tho that content needs to be balanced, easy stuff, and hard stuff.

But hard stuff should be about TEAMWORK, DEDICATION, not only gearchecks be them dps checks, heal/cure checks or whatever. Every decent guild should be able to clear content before next expansion release. I don't mean all of them, but with some time and effort it should not be unreachable to most as endgame is right now because of what game mechanics have turned into.

Concurring timers within different aoes / scripts are a major drawback in current raiding. There are unfair and punishing players for no reason.

This guy said it better than I did.

Akap@Nagafen wrote:

Buffrat@Antonia Bayle wrote:

The last mob in Sleeper's Unearthed on challenge was pretty alright, too. But I haven't done Altar yet.

I usually agree, but the challenge mode of that named was dead within maybe 30 minutes of pulls. I guess relative to other encounters where you just pull and it dies, then yes, it was alright.

Drinal, while completely broken when we tested a couple weeks ago, is vitually the only thing that was even remotely challenging and it's hard to say how much of that was due to it being broken and spamming an AE.

Overall, I understand the desire to make more content more readily available to new players. Perhaps it's selfish, but I'm frankly terrified that we'll have cleared all the content by next week and have 6 months of waiting before there's any content worth doing again. I'm sure there's many, many guilds that can't survive that at this stage.

Pretty much this. We expect that clearing the raid content as it is currently will take less time (for us) than people leveling their toons to 95.

[Malicorp]

Twyxx wrote:

With fights all that short it's hard to give any kind of feedback as you can just plow thru any of the scripts except the gorilla. 

I wanted to underscore this point because it was buried in a little bit longer of a post.

We went with a Gninja through a zone and generally found that providing meaningful feedback was made incredibly difficult because you couldn't even in many cases discern what the "strategy" was supposed to me because the consequences for failing were so unimpactful that it was impossible to distinguish them as failings.

In almost every named we tested, we were able to ignore the strat and burn and in the cases we were not (because the named acquired some sort of massive damage mitigation associated with a special add, etc), the strategy was readily adjustable mid-fight without doing much modification at all.

This was the prevailing characteristic for all but 1-2 nameds in the entire expansion, including the hardmode variants we tested. We basically felt like we had cleared 95% of the expansion in the beta.... troubling to say the least unless these nameds are getting considerable buff packages before Tuesday.....

[Gash]

Slippery hit a lot of nails on the head in his super-long post. I hope the right developers read it and took notes. I really enjoy raiding in this game, but it could be SO much better if a lot of the issues he mentioned were addressed appropriately.

As for Easymode vs. Hardmode -- I agree its great to have such varying degrees of difficulty so everyone can raid, but progressing past Easymode into HM shouldnt mean fighting ALL the same exact mobs all over again. There SHOULD, imo, be certain raid mobs that low to mid-range guilds just wont see. I agree with Maergoth that it just provides an incentive to continue to progress and it makes things feel a LOT more epic when you finally get there. SF did a great job in this respect (as it did with raiding as a whole imo) -- some HM's were the same mob, just harder, and some HM's were things like Waansu and Toxxulia where you got to fight something a lot cooler after moving past Easymode.

[Corydonn]

Gninja wrote:

I would absolutely love to use your feedback to develope more challenging raids however you need to give us some concrete feedback that has specific examples other than "Its all too easy, make it better plzkthx"

I look at the raid forums very often throughout the day looking for feedback in general and have been responding to nearly every post regarding raids in Harrow's End and Altar of Abhorrence.

Get me some constructive feedback on what needs changed and we can take a look. Feel free to email it to me if you don't want to post it here. The lines of communication have been open this entire time and its your choice to use it or ignore it.

This is so true and kind of ruined what could have possibly been 4+ encounters in Skyshrine/PoW. If you need any ideas Gninja feel free to PM/email me and I'll toss thoughts with ya!

[Maergoth]

I remember the first time they implemented hard mode content and thinking to myself "Oh man, now they can increase the amount of content for end game raiding simply by boosting up some lame mob and being able to skip redoing art or making entirely new zones." But deep down inside, I knew that ALL of raiding would be converted into this style, and instead of being a method of squeezing a few extra hard mobs out of lower end progression content, ALL hard mobs would simply be harder versions of easy content.

It went from being an additive concept to simply replacing the old methodology.

Maybe that's exaggerating, but I really feel like the whole "hard mode and easy mode" thing has subtracted from the total amount of content, not added to it.

[kcirrot]

slippery wrote:

Do you really believe it should be this easy? I mean, this is going to be record breaking clear time for the expansion. The stuff is too easy. It literally just falls over and dies. I don't even know what to say. There has to be some stuff that has some challenge for people to work on. I really hope you've got 2 more zones coming in 3 months, because people are going to be done with this content with nothing to do. If people have to wait 6 months for more to do beyond this I really can't see people sticking around.

Let me stroke your ego for a moment.  You appear to be a leader of a "top guild" that has cleared as much as any guild has.  I genuinely congratulate you for that.  But do you not realize that creating a game for the experts is about the dumbest thing one can do?

Most MMORPGs, hell most video games, have to shoot to hit a wider portion of the population.  What you think is easy is probably incredibly difficult for many players, probably impossible.  I have been amazed that SOE has allowed their flagship game to devolve into a game that so clearly is for the most skilled and hardcore of raiders.  I started with this game back in beta and raiding then was easy sure, but folks could realistically have a chance at doing the content.

Now?  It's literally a game they've made for you and those like you.  And it led to an exodus from the game.  I only play my silver account for nostalgia's sake since my guild disintergrated.  Frankly, SOE should have changed course three-four  expansions ago.   At this point they might as well give you what you want.  They've pushed away many others. 

[slippery]

kcirrot wrote:

slippery wrote:

Do you really believe it should be this easy? I mean, this is going to be record breaking clear time for the expansion. The stuff is too easy. It literally just falls over and dies. I don't even know what to say. There has to be some stuff that has some challenge for people to work on. I really hope you've got 2 more zones coming in 3 months, because people are going to be done with this content with nothing to do. If people have to wait 6 months for more to do beyond this I really can't see people sticking around.

Let me stroke your ego for a moment.  You appear to be a leader of a "top guild" that has cleared as much as any guild has.  I genuinely congratulate you for that.  But do you not realize that creating a game for the experts is about the dumbest thing one can do?

Most MMORPGs, hell most video games, have to shoot to hit a wider portion of the population.  What you think is easy is probably incredibly difficult for many players, probably impossible.  I have been amazed that SOE has allowed their flagship game to devolve into a game that so clearly is for the most skilled and hardcore of raiders.  I started with this game back in beta and raiding then was easy sure, but folks could realistically have a chance at doing the content.

Now?  It's literally a game they've made for you and those like you.  And it led to an exodus from the game.  I only play my silver account for nostalgia's sake since my guild disintergrated.  Frankly, SOE should have changed course three-four  expansions ago.   At this point they might as well give you what you want.  They've pushed away many others. 

You clearly have not raided on Beta. You can let me know when you've raided it on live in a week and killed everything but maybe 1 mob on hard.

Edit: Not only that, but I'm almost postivie I could clear all this raid content with the exception of the 2 mobs I wouldn't meet the dps check on with 2 groups, if not a single group.

[Chronus1]

Well kcirrot your point would be good if it wasn't for the stuff dieing way too quickly for even mid-tier guilds. 2:43 was our kill time for a mob in Harrow's (admittedly before the fixes that nerfed the wiz and lock prestige aoe) and it did... nothing. It was tank and spank. I didn't even notice an aoe, we all stood practically on the mob apart from the ranger with minimum range issues. We cleared all the easymode that wern't bugged in one night while figuring out strats.

I hope we just stay in PoW after clearing it once.

[slippery]

The problem with basically every single encounter (with the exception of the challenge mob at the end of Sleepers) is that there is nothing at all to actually engage the raid in the encounters. Most people with the exception of a tank or two can literally just stand there and pay 0 attention to what is going on and win. You can just sleep through it and it will be okay. This isn't a problem for some encounters, it is a problem when it is every encounter. It's like killing the Gardner in Emerald Halls and getting the Herald of Wuoshi, except there is no Gardner and only Herald of Wuoshi's.

[Davngr1]

i think adding in a few obstacle avoiding scripts and power management would be cool.    everyone should keep in mind that this is dumb down content that is still to be tuned so be specific on what you ask for or they might do a VP2.0 that no one will be able to kill. 

add in mini-games imo..  maybe like a simon says (like goblin minigame) sure it's trite when that's all you're paying attention to but in the middle of an encounter it's a a different story.    have it port the player to another room maybe and they have to kill mobs in a certain order while they all beat on him.    if he fails then it will be a huge penalty for the raid.  like damage reduction placed on the mob or hp boost.

 personally i'd like to see more mobs that require actual healing forcing healers to spec for every single healing AA possible and not be able to do a lick of damage.  all too often there are healers thinking their damage parse is impressive when in fact your group being alive is what is most impressive and what makes a good healer.   that's how i play my healers anyway.

 add in more tank jumping mobs like sisters that require 4 solid groups and stop the tanks are dps crap.

[Chronus1]

I wouldn't even mind seeing somthing like the HM kolsekegger (spelling wrong, HM shoulders mob from HoL) adds, forcing people not to move and adding a dps check that isn't an instant fail via the strikemages. That's sans co-op strike of course. That at least made it so you have to have an MA paying attention in addition to the tanks and healers.

[kalanon]

Has there been any consideration, with the push for player-made content from dungeon builder and PlayerStudio, to see about requisitioning some of the veteran raiding population in designing raid encounters?  Obviously you still have to put in programming resources, and you would have to match the script with an enemy that made sense lore-wise.  It seems, though, like there is a lot of opportunity for creating a much wider variety of more interesting scripts than what we are currently seeing.  

[Maergoth]

Most of the features added to this game will continue to be neglected to make way for new, expansion-selling features. So much stuff gets swept aside. I'm pretty sure the whole "reforge particle effects on weapons" thing is done with. We'll never see scrying stones used again. Arena Champions will never be rebalanced or dropped again. Vampire-only attacks from Bloodlines still hit for 500. There hasn't been any real improvement to dieties in the past couple expansions.

It's not that players dislike these features persay. It's that the features are never properly hashed out or polished.

The prospect of dungeon-maker stuff allowing for simple or complex scripting is close to non-existent.

Which is sad. If 14 year olds can grapple with Starcraft's StarEdit and come up with some of the most creative content I've ever seen, I'm sure a watered down script system would do wonders for dungeon maker.

But if you're talking about simply sitting down with people like Arabel and working on raid content.. that should be a given. If you're not going to play the game and experience the content at all levels first hand, the least you can do is listen to someone who does.

[kalanon]

That's what I had thought of when they first anounced dungeon maker, a (probably somewhat limited) scripting system so that players could design interesting encounters.  Maybe with the best ones a dev would see something they liked and incoperate it into a future enounter.  However, with the fanatical devotion to balancing the 'rewards' instead of making the experience interesting, the best a dungeon maker zone can get now is an interestingly decorated house that happens to have some solo trash in it, and its unlikely to get any better with the long list of dead features in EQ2's past.  

Realistically, they could do something like add a forum thread and let people post write ups of possible encounter scripts.  The problem with this is how to filter out all of the less than stellar ideas you would get if you threw it out to the community as a whole.  If you could identify people that could consistently come up with good ideas and communicate them well, that would be a great resource, but it would be tricky to do so

[westor]

+1 to the feedback from true "raiders".  Just because someone raids EM UDx4 once or twice a week on /follow behind a tank randomly pressing buttons does not make them a raider.

One thing really big issue I haven't seen mentioned is that, while Devs may "play" the game too, it appears that this expansion is being sabotaged by fools in suits that definitely DO NOT play this game.

"...YOU WILL LAUNCH THIS EXPANSION, READY OR NOT, ON NOV 13TH..."

Gninja, the best thing you could do for this raid content if it's anything like on Beta is hold off putting it live for another week or so.  Get it right man.  Hell, for your own satisfaction if not ours.  Don't let someone with a whip and stock-options cause further self-destruction of this game.

Finesse it.  Polish it.  Perfect it.  Be certain that it's work you can be proud of.  Then release it.

Until then, Sony as an organization is basically telling their customer base, "we think your suckers."

If you can't do something right, it was never worth doing at all.

Like any business, it is the customers that decide whether you are "right" or "wrong".  Feedback across the board at the moment, especially on this new stuff, is that it's not been/being done right.  That feedback matters.  Use it.

Ideas/feedback:

-Create more fun raid-wide movement.  Basic joust in/out isn't "fun" its just "'part of the job".  Potentially random movement like the boss of EoW heroic zone was always good.  Or fixed, pre-understood movement like Mario jumping skills from platform to platform, or thin walk-ways, etc, to stay with the named as it moves in a circle or down a hallway (for instance if you are outside of 10m from named for more than 5 seconds you die).  Keep people on their toes.  Involve more than just the tanks in the flow of an encounter.

-Create more interaction with your environment in general.  Clickies that make sense and add value to an encounter.  Random clickies on Commanders BARELY count.  Stuff like VallonsHM/Glokus where 3,2,1,click is alright but still meh.  You can do better.  At least you didn't know exactly where the idol would spawn on Vallon.  Glokus is just a boring routine.  As an idea of how to use environment, maybe an encounter with seige equipment that 1 or 2 people in the raid can use for instance (a catapault, etc) and the raid is actually setup to protect these people from death while they actually kill the named.  The attacking mobs would have weapons on their corpses that you could loot and use for 15-30seconds to help damage the named or be stronger against the trash or something till they "broke".  Be creative, dont just look down a list of mechanics you've added to a mob before and pick a few from the list.  That is very lazy and definitely not real development.

-Further, go completely beyond what you've done, to what you'd like to do.  Flying encounter?  PvP style encounter where your raid is locked in an arena (can/could-have used the lore of Rallos Zek or whatever) pitting guildies against guildies in a really fun way where everyone still gets rewarded.

-Twist old mechanics don't just stack the same old in different combos.  Have a reflect mechanic actually "reflect" the damage done when you're not supposed to onto the tank, or onto your groups priest(s).  More of a mob absorbs your energy and channels it onward.  At least it's slightly different.  Use special abilities for fights.  Tou want to use knockbacks?  Okay, as soon as the encounter goes live give the raid a new ability/button that ports you back to the mob and a detrimental that if you arent back there (and maybe cured or something) within 5 seconds, you're dead, and if you die far away rezzing you will suck so the penalties are obvious.  Enhance what you do well, dont just re-combine it and stack different combinations on an encounter to manufacture difficult like too much of PoW.

-The all or nothing fail conditions are lazy.  Yes, make serious detriments for failing a part of the script, give a long-shot way out.  Maybe not on every encounter, but definitely more of them.

-Randomness is bad if it means random wipes.  Its false challenge.  Occassional Charm is fine, but either create a way to identify the person going to be charmed 10sec ahead of time and give the raid a chance to react, or make a window of opportunity to stop it from happening all together.  Red Text saying "Main Tank is distracted by the siren's song and their mind is weakening." At the same time an npc (a siren in this example) appears and you can reasonably kill it in time to avoid the charm, or people must find the npc (in a crowded environment like a forest) and right-click "Interupt Song". There are ways to use current mechanics positively, rather than just tossed around cuz haha charm.

-Certain timer's should be designed so they don't line up, or don't line up until the encounter has dragged on too long beyond a reasonable kill time.  That is just simple addition to figure out.  Berik and Tagrin are the obvious examples, but its not just them.

-Stop making ACT/Guild-Connect/etc a required part of the game.  Much of the circumstances I consider those things to be required for could be avoided through a simple use of better event text/design.  Making people read red text, even if only in their chat window, to know what to do, isn't a bad thing.  Look at the get-out-or-explode-raid detrimental on Eriak.  The individual does get notified I think.  But there is no reason to not just make a raid wide red text, "Soandso is gunna explode, run away."  That allows raid leaders to help do their jobs, the individual to know they're up, and everything to happen basically the same way, without 3rd party software help.

....

I mean honestly, if keeping ego out of things, the Devs that work on ALLLLLLL instanced content, not just raids, could easily Private Message a few different people just in this thread alone and have a very honest, very valuable, round-table type discussion.  Someone like Slippery can give loads of good cause-effect type feed back.  Others are better suited to bring concept ideas to the table.  Devs are the one's that actually have to implement the scripts and know how difficult or not an idea would be to do so.  Do something pro-active though.  A real time, live discussion, rather than lets yap on forums, would do this situation good, if it went somewhere.  Otherwise talk is cheap.