Vorthanion said:I find it interesting that so many people harken back to old EQ, when raiding was rare and raid loot was barely better than most dungeon loot. Yet the raider in the end, completely dominated the game as they demanded more content, bragging rights and gear that made everyone who doesn't do that kind of content to feel inferior and second class. I was hoping for something different with this game, yet the raiders can't seem to help themselves. Most people seek to be rewarded for their efforts and it's unfair to see that skewed in favor of one play style over another, no matter the percieved difficulty. If you pick a target audience, such as core groups, then stick with it and make them the special flowers they deserve to be, don't turn around and give it to raiders instead. Any content can be made to be difficult, raiding does not have a stranglehold on that fact, developers have merely decided in the past to make it that way. What raiders want is no different than making a game about groupers then turning around and giving soloers the best rewards in game. It makes no sense and it insults the intended audience.
Many keep looking at raiding as item based, not in wealth based nature. The item u end up with, might not have much value to you, but to other it could be more than you imagine. U might be able to trade that worthless dirty bow you found, for a complete set of armor, because you didn't know it was magical... u had no way of unlocking it properties, etc..
Raiders in Pantheon will be WEALTHY.. they will have rare and hard to get minerals, herbs, gems, artifacts, etc.. in which to give to their guild crafters to make & experiement with making unique armors & weapoins for their guild mates. Or sell off to highest bidders for instant profit & funding of Guild internal projects.
If crafting becomes a major part of the revolving economy, then Wealth will have a meaning..!
Having rare inks & dyes.. and using your guild's smiths & grandmasters.. who know a rare form of making certain leather Cuirasses & armor.. only known to them. And that artform has a different look and many in your Guild sport them and known because of them. (These potential crafting bumps, are the small right of passages Brad discussed a long time ago.)
I imagine, certain quest or journeys will be kept secret. Well guarded...
Raiders will have the best crafters,
Example of idealogy:
You might be on a 5h raid and kill the last boss and behind him was a huge chest. That now needs your top wizrds & Rogues to disarm, or figure out how to unlock it, etc.
And when opened...
Reveals 5 Platnium bars, 9 rare gems, 3 glowing crystals... a sword and 5 parchements of paper (probably ancient spells, but undetermined because you have to put your grandmaster scribes on it, to dechipher the encantation, etc). So much wealth, so much unknown and guild discussion to take place.
Coincidentally, a Treasure find like that^ would be news across any server.
An unknown rare sword wold be great news and would bring glory to such a raiding party.
And then... OMFGBBQ 5 Platnium bars..? (Can a guild say... I AM RICH *****!)
And magical crystals.. the guild dude who sports some of that magic.. is going to have a crowd around him..
So, some of you really do have to broaden your sense of what a Raiding guild can be & can do. And that a real hard core RAIDING guild won't have to brag, they will have warez to prove it. Because other grown men will be in awe of you...!
Vanguard + EverQuest + 64bit = Pantheon
Katalyzt said:In a non-instanced game there can’t be scaled versions of the same content, since all the content is live and persistent, so how is the “hard” group content determined as such? Do you treat 6-8 man dungeon crawls as a raid by requiring a minimum character level, plus keying and/or faction work to gain admittance? Beyond that the dungeon is effectively just another dungeon, but one that is “hard mode” (higer tier)? I can see that working and allowing for some top level item drops, but my biggest concern is multiple groups of 6-8 meeting up and building a zerglike force to trivialize content. Now we have, essentially, a raid force exploiting the “non-raid” content and being rewarded with top tier itemization. Adding a total player cap per zone totally undermines the entire open persistent world Pantheon offers, so that’s not the answer. Without instancing I’m having a hard time figuring out how the concept of “hard mode” group content is going to work. Fundamentally, I think it’s a really cool idea, but the practicality of having this system gives me concerns.
In EQ we had "hard mode" content in the same dungeon as easier mode content. Don't see why there can't be both.
Dullahan said:Katalyzt said:In a non-instanced game there can’t be scaled versions of the same content, since all the content is live and persistent, so how is the “hard” group content determined as such? Do you treat 6-8 man dungeon crawls as a raid by requiring a minimum character level, plus keying and/or faction work to gain admittance? Beyond that the dungeon is effectively just another dungeon, but one that is “hard mode” (higer tier)? I can see that working and allowing for some top level item drops, but my biggest concern is multiple groups of 6-8 meeting up and building a zerglike force to trivialize content. Now we have, essentially, a raid force exploiting the “non-raid” content and being rewarded with top tier itemization. Adding a total player cap per zone totally undermines the entire open persistent world Pantheon offers, so that’s not the answer. Without instancing I’m having a hard time figuring out how the concept of “hard mode” group content is going to work. Fundamentally, I think it’s a really cool idea, but the practicality of having this system gives me concerns.
In EQ we had "hard mode" content in the same dungeon as easier mode content. Don't see why there can't be both.
Admittedly, I had very little experience with high end EQ content, but outside of LDoN (which was instanced) I’m struggling to remember content that was designed for strict group play but had consistent raid level drops. How did they handle high end hard mode group content in order to keep a single group from becoming three groups and trivializing the content? I’m not surprised if this issue has been tackled before, but I don’t have a comprehensive knowledge of the high end group content in games like EQ so I’m truly in the dark.
Or, did groups combine and it was not a problem? If that was the case it sounds a little like a low end raid, which I think is great. The folks that are anti-raid for good gear may not like it though.
@Katalyst,
In early EQ, it was as simple as a zone in EQ having a very wide level range. Example being Gukbuttom - you could level in the zone from 30-50+. So, by the nature of the wide level range, there were mobs with varying difficulty for groups across the zone. And, unlike instances, you didn't have to "run/crawl" through the dungeon, you "camped" the dungeon. So, groups camped in the level range that was appropriate to them. And, in original EQ, all group content could be considered "hard" especially as a new player with a less than ideal group.
In later more current EQ, there are various Tiered zones with obvious T1 zones being easier group content than T4.
I didn't do multi-grouping for mobs in EQ, and I never ran into the issue of multiple groups destroying content But, I see your fear, and I couldn't tell you why it never did occur except for the fact that people respected camps in EQ and wanted to have less competition for loot/exp (as loot could already be extremely rare and exp was slooooow). I'd be willing to take that risk in Pantheon though for no instancing.
VR has discussed the issue of multiple groups zerging single group content in a video or something, I don't remember where. What can happen is if too many players attack a mob he can run away or even call in adds to assist him. A really easy fix in my eyes is if anyone in a raid group attacks him he drops no loot.
TravisR said:VR has discussed the issue of multiple groups zerging single group content in a video or something, I don't remember where. What can happen is if too many players attack a mob he can run away or even call in adds to assist hime. A really easy fix in my eyes is if anyone in a raid group attacks him he drops no loot.
AI solving the problem makes a tremendous amount of since. Now that you mention it I'm pretty sure I remember hearing them answer something that way as well. Thanks for the reminder!
TravisR said:VR has discussed the issue of multiple groups zerging single group content in a video or something, I don't remember where. What can happen is if too many players attack a mob he can run away or even call in adds to assist him. A really easy fix in my eyes is if anyone in a raid group attacks him he drops no loot.
Its nice to have some mechanics to up the challenge, but honestly I think stuff like that handled itself.
Sure, people talk about how EQ was only about numbers because ultimately you could zerg everything down, but that was never the way it worked out in the long run. If you wanted a real shot at a rare item, going to a camp (or boss fight) with extra players only decreases your chances of actually getting the item. The same principle was what thinned out the ranks of many guilds. No one wants to casually raid in a hardcore guild if they know they'll never have the dkp to actually be awarded any items. Risk vs reward: Your chance of reward decreases as your risk decreases.
I don't think many mechanics need to be created for stuff like that, because if you have the wherewithal to take down content, that was an accomplishment in itself. After that, if you really want to take more people than are necessary, its not like its going to make that rare mob/item drop any faster, and now you have more people rolling dice.
I'd like to see a max # per raid. In EQ2, once you engage any mob, nobody outside the group can affect the mob or your group unless you yell for help, forfeiting the mob's loot exp etc. I agree with you Dullahan, more people means more people rolling and less likelihood you get a drop, but I don't think that collection of people is worthy for the reward if they have more than the intended # of people.
maslo said:I'd like to see a max # per raid. In EQ2, once you engage any mob, nobody outside the group can affect the mob or your group unless you yell for help, forfeiting the mob's loot exp etc. I agree with you Dullahan, more people means more people rolling and less likelihood you get a drop, but I don't think that collection of people is worthy for the reward if they have more than the intended # of people.
But they are worthy of the reward, because they killed it.
That policy of interference and hard coded restrictions are the reason I don't play MMOs. That is the same design philosophy that brought us instancing, fast travel and all of the other convenience that make MMOs feel like video games rather than virtual worlds.
Aradune said:As mentioned in other posts, the majority of Pantheon's content will be targeting groups. There will be solo content, and there will be raid content, but Pantheon's focus is all about the grouping experience (and by groups, I mean groups of people who interact with each other, who regularly group with the same people, who have formed real friendships, etc. We want to encourage and help people find friends online with whom they can enjoy the game). We don't feel mechanics that just bring together random people to 'do' a dungeon result in the community we are looking to support. Typically the 'group finder' gathers people together, they run through the dungeon, speak infrequently if at all, and then once done, the group members are scattered to the winds. Rarely does this result in lasting, real relationships.
In EQ, groups, community, and real friendships mostly formed organically (e.g. you needed other people, so you found them, and in many cases friendships, guilds, etc. arose from this). With Pantheon, however, we are going to include some features to assist and bolster this essential aspect of community building. In this day and age, especially with many players only experience being these 'dungeon finder' scenarios, we feel that just letting this happen organically isn't going to be enough.
I am all about this, as I have rarely raided in my time in most games. I feel this is directed at me and I am fairly encouraged by this as it was what made my experience during the first part of EQ so memorable.
My hope is this is recaptured as much as possible, as it was lost over time as the game was thinned from players either getting bored or just attempting to shoot through to get to go on and raid.
Aradune said:Now, back to loot. Our general philosophy is that people should be rewarded for taking chances and overcoming challenges. Basic risk vs. reward. So the more challenging and difficult the region or encounter, the beter the chance that you'll be rewarded with better loot.
Unfortunately, in the past, raiding has been considered the ultimate risk vs. reward scenario, or even the 'only' high risk vs. reward scenario. So the best loot has traditionally been obtained by raiding, and raiding only. We do feel that raiding is (or at least should be) challenging. Not only are the encounters more difficult, but bringing in and organizing large groups of players, orchestrating the battle, making sure people are doing what they are supposed to, etc. is challenging to manage. So we do think the rewards should reflect that.
That said, data says that only 10-15% of players actively raid. So while, as stated, we will have raid encounters, and we will reward players for beating raid encounters with some nice drops, if that was the only way to get the best loot we would be going against our vision of creating a game mostly about grouping, with solo and raid content secondary. So one of the many things we are thinking through and theory crafting about is how to create group encounters that drop great loot as well. Crafting will play a part, and we have other ideas too, many of which will need to be tested and tweaked with during alpha and beta.
Can you expand on any possible theory craft without actually giving away what you have come up with?
I think this will help spur on the conversation regarding your questioning below more and possibly spur better tangents and ideas than what most folks are talking about. Raiding and not risk vs. reward in groups or solo play. As I believe we all agree what raiding is and what it should accomplish.
Aradune said:We also want to avoid the perception that the 'real' game is only at the 'end game' (e.g. at or near the current level cap). When players perceive that to be the case, many choose to power level themselves or their friends. This results in bypassing low and mid level content, and power leveling is also typically repetative (and thefore often boring), but people will do it anyway if they feel they have to reach the 'end game' as quickly as possible (it's just human nature). They will even do it if they are having less fun in the process (which IMHO is just horrible -- creating a situation where players have to choose between fun and efficiency (perceived or true) is bad(TM)). So we want to make sure there is fun and plentiful content at all levels, including solo, group, and raid oriented content. Yes, we want to see raids in low and mid level zones.
So now you know our goals and our philosophy, but this is definitely an area where we'd love any and all feedback and ideas. If raiding isn't the only source of the 'best' gear, then how do we reward players for taking significant risks in a group setting? Likewise, if great loot can be obtained by grouping, will people still raid? I think this is a great thread, and would love to hear more from you guys.
thanks,
-Brad
Is there anything more you might add to spur on this debate as in and example or two of what are the possibilities and/or limitations? I would like to have more of a debate on these questions as a solo/group/non-raiding player. I think this is a crux of development that is not well explored in the thread as of yet..
Meaning your questions, “If raiding isn't the only source of the 'best' gear, then how do we reward players for taking significant risks in a group setting? Likewise, if great loot can be obtained by grouping, will people still raid?”, have not been fully explored and the thread is tapering off onto more end game talk and raiding.
My question are, what are the possibilities and/or limitations in deciding in a group, who gets the best loot and why? Outside of the 'rolling for it' bandaid
Or what are the possibilities of solo play turning up more reward vs risk as not all solo players really test the abilities they have and limit their own experiences because of this. Meaning a solo player make only take on blue mobs because they ‘know’ they stand a chance to ‘not die’ and suffer the penalties, but if there is a possibility that say after fighting a bunch of yellow/red mobs, dying and attempting different ways to use your class attr/abilities in a certain area, for a certain time did produce a truly nice item. Then would this be something said solo player would attempt? I know I would, but what are the parameters in allowing for this and not making it trivial??
And then, how is it best served to have crafting aid in all of this? I like the ideas you've mentioned in other threads as to having potions (et al) mean a lot more and the possiblity of having armor and weapons not craftable (though I feel sad about it as it is something I do like, but if done well, not sure I'd miss..beta test it! hehe)
I've tried to think of ways to attempt some solution in my time while grouping and or solo'ing, but it eludes me and being unsure what is and isn't possible in coding the group centric mob encounters has me intrigued :)
EQ evolved not from 1-50 but from 60+ the more content added brought new ideas together. Grouping was more a 1-50 level thing at the start, transformed to progression.
People still wanted to do something more then crafting, grouping... they wanted harder progression and big boss fights.
You can not slow the pace people want. As much as you fine tune the unity 5 settings and turn up the xp per kill people still will want to be in a higher enviroment.
The majority of people didnt play eq for the grouping aspects but raiding. It was essential to raiding guilds, to go forward, if that wasnt the case, no raiding guilds would have existed and everyone would be doing family guilds grouping.
am i really that far off?
people do want to raid with 50+ others all taking down a big boss mob and hanging that achievement from the the walls of thier website. Otherwise it will be just a sandbox and we have lots of those.
I know this is an old thread. *resurekt!* ..
And no, I didn't read every post ( I did read many of them though! ) to see if this was mentioned or not, so I'm just gonna throw in my 2 copper vote.
--
I loved EQ and it's loot system. Rarity / Scarcity made that game what it was. But one thing that really sucked about it was leaving the game. Wether it was needing to take a break from the game, or "quitting" (for the third time), as people left the guild, they took with them all the time and effort reflected in their loots, diminishing overall strength and often forcing guilds to re-recruit and usually at an overall power loss as recruits were rarely as geared as departing veterans.
I too have had to take breaks, and whether it was personal or job related or just needing a breather; It felt like I was letting a lot of people down by doing so. After accepting loots raid after raid, building your character into something that many other people come to rely on, it stings to remove yourself from the team. There's a personal guilt in doing so, and I also remember often feeling demoralized over losing fellow members over the years when they too had to leave for whatever reasons.
This is why I did come to appreciate WoW's current system in place, where everyone loots the mob, and and it is handled server side as to who gets what. Everyone gets a roll / chance just by looting the corpse. Sometimes you'd see 10+ people get something on a boss, sometimes 2-3, and if you DID get something, it is of course usable by the lootee.
This system takes the burden of loot decisions off the guild or individuals in charge of such things. And it takes much (not all) of that burden of guilt away from departing members.
....
..........
I know, I know, I know.. It's far more theme parky / easy / streamlining and takes a certain element away from what raids used to be, but I gotta say.. I'm kinda on the side of lessening stress of those who may not be able to stay around for very long after looting the best or most sought after peices. When people understand that everyone has the same chance to loot something per boss, the feeling of "that should have been mine" is greatly diminished - it's easier on the absentees and the remaining raiders when absences occur.
I won't be upset either way, and though I'm not a big fan of WoW and similar modern MMO's or the direction they've taken the genre, I do feel they've done well with some things.
Please don't burn me at the stake :)
So, that WoW loot system is pretty god awful unless your end goal is to completely demolish rarity of loot. The problem you describe (having to recruit people with less raid gear and thus invariably weaker) is solved in a much better way through making sure that raid gear does not compromise the entirety of good gear at max level. Let's say that a character has 16 item slots and for the purposes of this hypothetical is fighting a static monster (so that we don't have to discuss swapping in climate gear / different weapons, etc.): if each slot has 3-5 items that are about as strong as each other but one each comes from grouping content, a max level epic quest, crafted from rare materials, a high level named monster, and a raid then you have no problem. Especially if the "bis" for a given situation for a given slot is not always raid loot. If the other content have loot that is considered bis then people who are not in raid groups still have difficult content that feels rewarding.
By "as strong as each other" I mean that the difference is not like in WoW where the raid gear is obscenely better than anything, but instead a system wherein if a guy showed up to your pug and had one of those items but not the "best" for this static mob then it would make maybe a 1% difference. Obviously there would be some outliers to this system (probably and most notably weapons), but the point is that if you just keep power from creeping too much then you can have a pretty vibrant system. Include with this the truism that obtaining gear in older MMOs took considerably longer and was much harder and suddenly gear upgrades become goals for the truly motivated instead of a baseline requirement.
Apologies for possible hijack but in raid discussion loot, Horizontal progression is mentioned alot
So what does Horizontal progression really mean? No levels? Newb or experienced player are both stil the same level, con the same.
Experienced player however has - more skills (to wield the nice sword) Experienced player can give (sell?- for shame!) nice sword to newbie but newbie cant weild it 'cos newbie does not have the skillz (skills obtained only from using a sword- in adventuring)
Experienced player still wears bronze plate, newbie wears tin plate or beetle carapice (quested/fcrafted) Armor class for different metals only- both block the blow but one lasts longer than the other. Again Newbie cannot wear Bronze- newbie has not yet enough experience or history of wearing beetle carapice- learning the weight- to Tin, to Copper to... etc. However experienced player has alternate sets of armor to deal with different environments. Newbie cannot wear that armor because - not attuned. Attunment comes through adventuring.
Both have limited bank space, experienced player has extra armor- and, as if it were a new game- sells it to NPC merchant to make room- *poof* no discussion, no need, no AH. Let "emergent" happen as it does, coincidentally.
(Similar to Douglas Adams association in Hitchikers guide to babel fish- and those evil ebayers also read that at the time and thought themselves clever and still engaged in evil ebaying yet did not make the association. Perhaps with this realization they will shun themselves like how a mosquito must feel when sprayed with "Off")
Newbie may be able to buy it from NPC merchant, but cant wear it- no skillz.
Both players are forever the same level.
What can be shared is the ethereal and fleeting: Food, drink, Buffs, companionship, mentoring, adventure, friendship, community, scheduling.
Experienced player can slay the wisp 'cos she got skillz. Newbie player cannot slay the wisp because she hasn't worked up the skill- yet.
Skills cannot be bought.
-"Paying 500k for Powerlevel from ....oh, rite. nm can't use the item anyway until I kill those beetles in newbie area. WAIT! am I trying to buy friends? what sort of person am I?! (looks at mosquito) I mean - that is the sort of way my "character" is in game- yes that's it (tries to avoid looking at mosquito)"
"Selling stacks of....oh, rite. nm I dont need this, they dont need this because they've moved on and I need bank space for situational armor as it is TLC to them now"
"Hi (PC Name)! you might find a leather pelt handy!.....I will give you 2 copper per bone chips"
I Like the Way ToV did it, there were your raid drops for raid bosses and there were the CoV, Kael armor set that you had to gain a faction to one or another, and this is a grind, and also since they are inclementing weather and how they can damage you if you choose one armor set you can raid one area but not the other, so you have to get both to get the rewards from both raids or something like this, i know that would make it ruff when it comes to bag space, but im sure there won't be a ton of raids in weather harming areas maybe just the hardest ones which should be hard to get to and therefore i like this idea even more.
Pure horizontal progression is things that make you stronger by providing you with more options. Maybe it's a new abilities or items that aren't necessarily greater raw damage or healing, but a different kind giving more utility.
When people often talk about horizontal progression, they mean item progression aside from any level requirements or hard gating. It's purely item based. Like in EQ at level 60, there are progressively harder dungeons which drop great items, and then there are several tiers of raiding that you work your way through. You do so not by gaining more levels, but by gaining more tools and more powerful items which allow your group or raid to conquer content that wasn't previously possible. That is still technically "vertical progression", because you're gaining power through items, but people still refer to it as horizontal because levels are not involved in the process.
It'd probably be more accurate to call that sort of item progression diagonal progression.
Jimmayus said:So, that WoW loot system is pretty god awful unless your end goal is to completely demolish rarity of loot. The problem you describe (having to recruit people with less raid gear and thus invariably weaker) is solved in a much better way through making sure that raid gear does not compromise the entirety of good gear at max level. Let's say that a character has 16 item slots and for the purposes of this hypothetical is fighting a static monster (so that we don't have to discuss swapping in climate gear / different weapons, etc.): if each slot has 3-5 items that are about as strong as each other but one each comes from grouping content, a max level epic quest, crafted from rare materials, a high level named monster, and a raid then you have no problem. Especially if the "bis" for a given situation for a given slot is not always raid loot. If the other content have loot that is considered bis then people who are not in raid groups still have difficult content that feels rewarding.
By "as strong as each other" I mean that the difference is not like in WoW where the raid gear is obscenely better than anything, but instead a system wherein if a guy showed up to your pug and had one of those items but not the "best" for this static mob then it would make maybe a 1% difference. Obviously there would be some outliers to this system (probably and most notably weapons), but the point is that if you just keep power from creeping too much then you can have a pretty vibrant system. Include with this the truism that obtaining gear in older MMOs took considerably longer and was much harder and suddenly gear upgrades become goals for the truly motivated instead of a baseline requirement.
So, I'm curious, what would be the motivation to raid if there are more readily available ways to get BiS gear? I'm sure some people will enjoy the challenge of raiding, but for the most part people will be looking to upgrade items by following the path of least resistance. Seems like it would make more sense to just spend all your time grouping to get BiS as opposed to the time sink of raiding. Will raiding have higher drop chances, possibly? I'm thinking there will have to be some type of balance.
The motivation will be raiding for the sake of raiding. For the health of the game they cannot and should not have *all* best in slot gear only available from raiding. Then there becomes little to no motivation to participate in the group game in the long term. Most of the best in slot gear can come from raids, that would be fine and motivation in and of itself. I would say that 30-40% of the best stuff should come from groups. Not only gear, but spells/abilities, augments, or other things. For the health of the game there has to be a significant amount of valuable content outside of raids or the game and community suffers. You cannot and should not lock everything behind raids because one of two things happens: 1) You alienate the majority of the player base by keeping a significant amount of content out of reach from the average player (assuming raids are built to be very challenging) OR 2) you water down raiding so that it no longer has a sense of accomplish and everyone does raids for gear, making group content meaningless. There has to be balance, in difficulty and loot distribution. Sorry for all of the super hard core raiders, but designing it any other way is a barrier to success.
Katalyzt said:So, I'm curious, what would be the motivation to raid if there are more readily available ways to get BiS gear? I'm sure some people will enjoy the challenge of raiding, but for the most part people will be looking to upgrade items by following the path of least resistance. Seems like it would make more sense to just spend all your time grouping to get BiS as opposed to the time sink of raiding. Will raiding have higher drop chances, possibly? I'm thinking there will have to be some type of balance.
To add to the above, when you have items that are BiS, near BiS, or alternative BiS that don't come from raids you keep the economy booming. People will be farming for those items constantly because non-raid items are more often than not able to be traded around but raided gear tends to have a lot more no-drop items. If there isn't a good amount of very powerful and tradeable drops then currency loses it's value quite a bit at high levels because you make the most money up there but have nothing to spend it on.
Also as I have said many times before you can also appropraite different "BiS" gear to different types of content. It doesnt prevent each of the types of content from having gear for those other slot it just spreads them around a bit more.
Something like this (just an example):
Assume all types of content can drop gear for all slots but......
Raid
BiS Chest, Legs, and Head.
Dungeon
BiS Hands, Feet, and Belt
Epic Quest
BiS Weapons, Capes
Epic Crafts
BiS Jewelry
Now again its doesnt need to be that specific nor does it mean that if you havent upgraded your gauntlets lately that those Raid ones wouldnt be a sweet upgrade. And Just because you cant make or afford that ridiculously awesome caster ring, doesnt mean that the Dungeon caster ring that just dropped wouldnt be great to have. Like I said all it does is spread out the BiS gears, while still allowing for good alternatives.
And of course there is the situational gear idea. A very simple example of this is a Raid boss drops a sword that has best dps for a class, but then have a specific dungeon boss drop another sword that has the best class stats. For the sake or argument we could say Bard. The one sword might allow it to do better damage but the other would allow it to be more effective with buffs. Take it a step further and say there is a crafted sword that doesnt have the best raw damage but does have the best damage against fire based mobs.
I think this kind of approach would still create a need or desire even to go raid.
Iksar said:Katalyzt said:So, I'm curious, what would be the motivation to raid if there are more readily available ways to get BiS gear? I'm sure some people will enjoy the challenge of raiding, but for the most part people will be looking to upgrade items by following the path of least resistance. Seems like it would make more sense to just spend all your time grouping to get BiS as opposed to the time sink of raiding. Will raiding have higher drop chances, possibly? I'm thinking there will have to be some type of balance.
To add to the above, when you have items that are BiS, near BiS, or alternative BiS that don't come from raids you keep the economy booming. People will be farming for those items constantly because non-raid items are more often than not able to be traded around but raided gear tends to have a lot more no-drop items. If there isn't a good amount of very powerful and tradeable drops then currency loses it's value quite a bit at high levels because you make the most money up there but have nothing to spend it on.
But we don't want to see this become some Korean farm game, like Archeage and Black Desert online. Where you have to constantly farm because you can destroy your items upgrading it... but if we don't lose the items getting player crafted items will become to easy and readily available, as the players that focus on making/selling these items will flood the market with amazing armor they made without a chance to lose it. In AA the best gear is player made... in fact all the good gear is player made. I hate this and using a system that breaks the item to keep you farming is just lazy. But without it you could easily craft the best items.
I feel that raiding should always provide the best armor... a giant monster means giant rewards. If a 5-6man group can down something obviously it wouldn't have a much power to gather whatever powerful items it.
Even if you had like greater 5-6 man encounters where it's very hard for your group to finish it, a raid where 20+ people have a very hard time finishing should still give better loot. After all risking 20+ exp loss/item repair is a lot more than 5-6 people.
I Loved EQ and I loved grouping, in fact prolly 80% of my EQ time was just grouping with friends I had made. So it will be interesting to see what kinda lewt system they come up with.
BTW Brad, if you read this.... the best friends made in EQ were not the ones you made grouping... it was the ones you made on and the ones that show up to help on a CR at the bottom of a hard dungeon where you have zero chance to get it out solo.... Sooo please make Pain in the butt CR's a thing. ^_^