Vorthanion said:Chaj said:Well remember though that if you trivialize the risk you also trivialize the reward. If a boss intended for 30 players drops 3 pieces of loot then 10% of your raid gets loot. If 60 players kill it then 5% of your raid get loot. This means that team A that kills the boss with 30 players gears up more quickly and is able to advance to the more challenging bosses before group B that takes twice as long to gear. Now of course group B could double their raid size and keep up but then even less get loot. So with an uncapped raid there is essentially a stronger risk vs reward mechanic than if you have a certain number of people. Finally, the smaller team will have the advantage in most open world scenarios. If one team can kill with 30 and one team needs 60, the team that needs 30 can probably get a few pulls in before the team of 60 is even online. So while a large zerg may trivialize the risk of death it does not trivialize risk vs reward. It strengthens it.
The risk isn't about how many people in the raid get a reward, it's whether you win the fight or not. Your idea only addresses the quantity of the reward. Risk vs. Reward is suppose to be about the risk justifying the quality of the reward, not the number of pieces that drop. You might have a foot to stand on if you cannot repeat the raid, but since you can, the rate of drop is not a factor against the risk. If you want open raids and bring 60 for a 40 person raid, then the loot should drop in quality as well as in quantity commensurate with how much you cheat the system.
Sure you can. Especially in a game with open world, contested content. There are no guarantees. Just because you killed a particular raid mob one week, doesn't mean you will get it the following week. That means every time you raid with too many people, you are resigning your guild to progress slower as a whole (less reward).
Lets look at it from a math standpoint. If the raid is meant for 32 people and you receive 4 items, that is 13% of your raid being rewarded. If you bring 60 people, you still only receive 4 items, but now only 7% of your raid is rewarded.
Thus, with less risk, there is less reward (collectively).
So the guild of 60 logs on 60 people before the smaller guild logs on 30 and kills the boss. Gratz they deserve it. In fact if they are that organized I would say even if a raid was capped at 30 it would be a real challenge for anyone else to get it. The 60 man team would just form two groups and if one wiped the other would pull and they would just rotate. If anything it gives them more ability to lockdown a boss with a smaller raid. Which once again leads me to a point I have made at a much earlier time. Capped raids means instanced, instanced means less social, less social means this game has failed.
Rallyd said:Good lord don't bring WoW into the discussion in any way shape or form of how raiding is to be done, it was horrible in comparison to EQ1. And Diablo 3 is a lobby based hack and slash, we want none of this in a good community driven MMORPG.
diablo 3 is the only modern day game with AA's done right (like eq)
You all can argue about uncapped raids all day but in the end there is no way we are gonna get them so you might as well start talking about what size is good for raids.
Zerging content is boring... Lagging or turning your graphics all the way down will cause bad publicity... Less loot for 60 people is still some loot and eventually the zergs will gear up too(dumb)...
Lockouts and player caps are just necessary these days.
Vanguard was the evolution of EQ and Pantheon will evolve the vision even further... I highly doubt we will go back to the earliest mistakes to rehash them again.
What if groups didn't have a maximum size? Just put 10 people in your group and steamroll any dungeon... that doesn't sound like fun.
If you even think we will get 72 man raids like EQ1 you are crazy... I'm hoping that we will get at least 36 but even that is a stretch.
Kiz~
Taledar said:diablo 3 is the only modern day game with AA's done right (like eq)
Yep. D3 does a lot of stuff right that can be extended to the group-centric model of an MMO. Horizontal advancement at max level (gear sets, paragon levels, cube affixes, better gear rolls, enchantments, legendary gem leveling, etc), DPS and survival both VERY sensitive to the environment, tailored synergies for maximum group efficiency, brutally hard content on demand for those who dare, etc.
And to paraphrase the article about interviewing Brad et al, single player games like D3, the various FROM titles, Skyrim, Witcher, etc have moved the RPG forward the last 10 years, while MMOs have been stagnant and imho, devolving. Part of the thing that the single player titles have done is remember what makes a grindy game exciting and worth putting the hours into. Yeah, plenty of misses surrounding the few hits, but what makes a hit/miss in the single player RPG is as instructive as what makes a hit/miss in the MMOs.
Angrykiz said:You all can argue about uncapped raids all day but in the end there is no way we are gonna get them so you might as well start talking about what size is good for raids.
Zerging content is boring... Lagging or turning your graphics all the way down will cause bad publicity... Less loot for 60 people is still some loot and eventually the zergs will gear up too(dumb)...
Lockouts and player caps are just necessary these days.
Vanguard was the evolution of EQ and Pantheon will evolve the vision even further... I highly doubt we will go back to the earliest mistakes to rehash them again.
What if groups didn't have a maximum size? Just put 10 people in your group and steamroll any dungeon... that doesn't sound like fun.
If you even think we will get 72 man raids like EQ1 you are crazy... I'm hoping that we will get at least 36 but even that is a stretch.
Kiz~
I agree with all of this, except, I really like the 24 man raid format (at max 30).
Filzin said:Angrykiz said:You all can argue about uncapped raids all day but in the end there is no way we are gonna get them so you might as well start talking about what size is good for raids.
Zerging content is boring... Lagging or turning your graphics all the way down will cause bad publicity... Less loot for 60 people is still some loot and eventually the zergs will gear up too(dumb)...
Lockouts and player caps are just necessary these days.
Vanguard was the evolution of EQ and Pantheon will evolve the vision even further... I highly doubt we will go back to the earliest mistakes to rehash them again.
What if groups didn't have a maximum size? Just put 10 people in your group and steamroll any dungeon... that doesn't sound like fun.
If you even think we will get 72 man raids like EQ1 you are crazy... I'm hoping that we will get at least 36 but even that is a stretch.
Kiz~
I agree with all of this, except, I really like the 24 man raid format (at max 30).
why not just play WoW?
I'd like raids to generally be in the 30s-40s, but I don't think trying to create everything with such a sanitized approach is a good idea. There should be some smaller raid targets, some bigger and other massive. Maybe in a "raid dungeon" things should be a little more standardized, but otherwise I think things should just be a little more random.
So serious question, Ive said it before and i will say it again, EQOA was the best MMO experience i ever had. That being said, the games graphics (since it was on PS2) were lower end. But....this allowed all the open world raids to run a lot smoother. Now lets take a game that was thew total opposite, EQ2. When this game came out for years people could barley play it unless they had a super computer. It looked amazing on high settings, but was mostly unplaybable until the modern PC hardware caught up. So my question is...Would you be willing to have a game take a graphical hit if you were able to run open world raids with little to no performace loss? IMO, i would take the content anyday with lower level of detail over being able to make sure the water reflections "look really cool"...but there were no big open world raids....
Dullahan said:I'd like raids to generally be in the 30s-40s, but I don't think trying to create everything with such a sanitized approach is a good idea. There should be some smaller raid targets, some bigger and other massive. Maybe in a "raid dungeon" things should be a little more standardized, but otherwise I think things should just be a little more random.
love it
striderida1 said:So serious question, Ive said it before and i will say it again, EQOA was the best MMO experience i ever had. That being said, the games graphics (since it was on PS2) were lower end. But....this allowed all the open world raids to run a lot smoother. Now lets take a game that was thew total opposite, EQ2. When this game came out for years people could barley play it unless they had a super computer. It looked amazing on high settings, but was mostly unplaybable until the modern PC hardware caught up. So my question is...Would you be willing to have a game take a graphical hit if you were able to run open world raids with little to no performace loss? IMO, i would take the content anyday with lower level of detail over being able to make sure the water reflections "look really cool"...but there were no big open world raids....
I think that was just the nature of the beast back then. Today you don't really have to sacrifice in order to meet the minimum requirements. A mid-range (~$800) gaming computer's processing power is incredibly powerful and can honestly meet just about any game's basic requirements. I'm very optimistic that with all hardware advances and Brad's tick-tock (develop / optimize) routine that you won't have to sacrifice a graphical hit in order to run open world raids with little to no performance loss.
Anyone can be a pessimist. Dare to be an optimist! - Hank Moody :D
-Furor
striderida1 said:So serious question, Ive said it before and i will say it again, EQOA was the best MMO experience i ever had. That being said, the games graphics (since it was on PS2) were lower end. But....this allowed all the open world raids to run a lot smoother. Now lets take a game that was thew total opposite, EQ2. When this game came out for years people could barley play it unless they had a super computer. It looked amazing on high settings, but was mostly unplaybable until the modern PC hardware caught up. So my question is...Would you be willing to have a game take a graphical hit if you were able to run open world raids with little to no performace loss? IMO, i would take the content anyday with lower level of detail over being able to make sure the water reflections "look really cool"...but there were no big open world raids....
That will vary but I never try to max my graphics out. I am more concerned with performance. With a game like Pantheon that supports real raiding (you know, where its more people than you could pick up in 5 minutes with a dungeon finder), they should have preset graphic profiles for each scenario. Especially for raids, you can tweak it and then save that profile and use it when there are a lot of people around (like in town).
/agree Furor
I doubt performance will be an issue. Yeah, there will be the random forum folks who announce how bad the game sucks on their uber liquid nitrogen, 13 video card, infinite Gb of DDR4 system that exists only in their imagination, but every game forum has those folks.
In the real world, where an average computer is a few orders of magnitude more powerful than what was considered beefy in 2004, Pantheon should be just fine, and large body counts and lots of effects shouldn't really be too big a problem. Vanguard teaches many lessons, and tech improvements since then added to those lessons makes me very optimistic about performance & pretty.
I was thinking about this more on my drive home yesterday and i think i narrowed down for me why i like raids in EQOA vs modern day MMO's like wow....mechanics...or should i say...lack there of. In EQOA it could take you an hour to get to the spot the boss would be, and in most cases the boss wasn't even up. Some spots you would have to clear trash for 2 hours just to get to the boss as well even after that 1 hour journey there. The boss would pop, you would buff, see who was online which could be different everyday, coordinate and have at it, sometimes die a lot, sometimes keep your character parked in the same spot for days since it as such an adventure to get there.. The boss never had some crazy memory based "playing hop skotch" type mechanics minus a few things here and there. It came down to more gear, healers timing heals, tanks timing taunts, support keeping mana up and good dps. So even though there were no real "mechanics", between traveling there, killing the trash, coordinating and killing the boss...it made up for that...and in my eyes was better..the adventure to the boss was 3/4 of the battle.. My issue with games like WoW raids now are that they take place every week.... the same time...same boss is always up...you port right to the raid...trash lasted about 10 minutes. So what EQOA took you hours if not a day to do, you do in 20 minutes. But also, now these bosses are all gimics. Pages and pages of mechanics that are just not fun and actually just quite annoying. But also once you learned them.....that was it....you killed that boss..the same time...every week....within the same 2 hours...and loot just poured out all over the place. I guess my TL;DR here is: Bring back putting more time into the adventure getting to the raid rather than making it take 20 minutes to get there and having to read 40 different mechanics to a boss. Also, make the loot more rare, and don't make it crappy gear to have just after playing for 6 months. in EQOA i had gear for a year that was still great and i still could of had better without having to add new content every 4 months like wow does. Gear in games today like wow is good for about 4 months then useless.
striderida1 said:I was thinking about this more on my drive home yesterday and i think i narrowed down for me why i like raids in EQOA vs modern day MMO's like wow....mechanics...or should i say...lack there of. In EQOA it could take you an hour to get to the spot the boss would be, and in most cases the boss wasn't even up. Some spots you would have to clear trash for 2 hours just to get to the boss as well even after that 1 hour journey there. The boss would pop, you would buff, see who was online which could be different everyday, coordinate and have at it, sometimes die a lot, sometimes keep your character parked in the same spot for days since it as such an adventure to get there.. The boss never had some crazy memory based "playing hop skotch" type mechanics minus a few things here and there. It came down to more gear, healers timing heals, tanks timing taunts, support keeping mana up and good dps. So even though there were no real "mechanics", between traveling there, killing the trash, coordinating and killing the boss...it made up for that...and in my eyes was better..the adventure to the boss was 3/4 of the battle.. My issue with games like WoW raids now are that they take place every week.... the same time...same boss is always up...you port right to the raid...trash lasted about 10 minutes. So what EQOA took you hours if not a day to do, you do in 20 minutes. But also, now these bosses are all gimics. Pages and pages of mechanics that are just not fun and actually just quite annoying. But also once you learned them.....that was it....you killed that boss..the same time...every week....within the same 2 hours...and loot just poured out all over the place. I guess my TL;DR here is: Bring back putting more time into the adventure getting to the raid rather than making it take 20 minutes to get there and having to read 40 different mechanics to a boss. Also, make the loot more rare, and don't make it crappy gear to have just after playing for 6 months. in EQOA i had gear for a year that was still great and i still could of had better without having to add new content every 4 months like wow does. Gear in games today like wow is good for about 4 months then useless.
Well said. I have played extensively with both capped and uncapped raids. I do admit that it's easier to tune difficulty by imposing cap restrictions, but it comes at the cost of very important social interaction and world immersion. The idea of having to tell people in my guild that they can't partake in a planned adventure because of "caps" is extremely frustrating. Meaningful travel and overall world navigation could and should be a big part of the challenge in this game. When this happens, effective communication and player coordination become more prevalent. I don't mind seeing encounters that are extremely mechanical, but that shouldn't be the end all be all. Once you learn the mechanics it's just a matter of rinse and repeat and that ultimately grows stale and boring.
Terminus will be a living breathing world -- I want to interact with that world (strictly talking high-end raiding) in ways that extend far beyond ideal button mashing rotations and raid compositions. Being in the right place ... at the right time ... that should matter! It allows friends to spread around the world and go on adventures, and when they find something interesting they can band the troops together. If everything is predictable or broken down into an exact science in how you must overcome it, the world loses a sense of mystery and the idea of exploration is greatly diminished. I would love nothing more than to see a return to oldschool EQOA style raiding. That style of raiding is perfectly in line with the vision that has been described for Pantheon and that's a big part of the reason that I latched on.
Rallyd said:Good lord don't bring WoW into the discussion in any way shape or form of how raiding is to be done, it was horrible in comparison to EQ1.
Curious as to why you feel this way.
Looking at your previous post, id imagine something to do with smaller scale raids... but in not sure. Having been in guilds that have achieved many server firsts in both games, I can say with out a doubt that wow raiding (in its prime) is much better than eq raiding (in its prime).
Eq raiding didn't really start to get good until late pop and after (god being the single best expansion in eq when it comes to raid content) (and unfortunately many people consider this to be after eq prime)
Fulton said:After participating in the Raid Loot thread, I started thinking.
First, this is in no way saying I want one method over another, I am just curious as what people think regarding certain things.
What are raids, and why do we have/need them? Let me see if I can explain my thoughts here. In EQ1, and if I am wrong here maybe Brad can correct me, raids, as they have become, were not really a part of the plan. You had essentially 2 dragons initially, Naggy and Vox. It was obvious they had to make dragons, the mythical beast of lore. stronger than any mob in game.
In the early days there was no "raids", it was trully just 8 groups of 6 players, with no way to communicate other than /zone shout from the raid leader. It seemed that this play style was not trully planned as part of the game.
Now, I ask, Why do people raid?
Do you really enjoy running around with 50-60 other players killing stuff?
Is there something special in raids that is exciting that can't be had with a challenging group adventure?
Would you be just as happy if you could get the great gear without the need for such large raids, but rather, a well skilled, geared and cooperative group?
I had never been big into raiding, had done a few here and there, but aside from the lure of acquiring some awesome gear, and seeing a new zone, there was nothing else I enjoyed about raids. I hated the wasted time gathering, buffing, listening to instructions, the collasal mash of PCs on the screen where often you couldn't even see the MOB you were attacking.
Curious what all your opinions are. But please, please do not let this become an us vs them. I am just looking for perspective from those that enjoy and those that did not enjoy large raids.
For me its mroe about the experince of the community rather than gear. Those memorable times when the raids experince something unique or wipes out but everyone is still laughing that whats raiding fun. Sure there is the achievement aspect of it and getting those great gear pieces but its such a small portion of reward in comparsion to the experinces comradary and laughter of a good time.
Fulton said:After participating in the Raid Loot thread, I started thinking.
First, this is in no way saying I want one method over another, I am just curious as what people think regarding certain things.
What are raids, and why do we have/need them? Let me see if I can explain my thoughts here. In EQ1, and if I am wrong here maybe Brad can correct me, raids, as they have become, were not really a part of the plan. You had essentially 2 dragons initially, Naggy and Vox. It was obvious they had to make dragons, the mythical beast of lore. stronger than any mob in game.
In the early days there was no "raids", it was trully just 8 groups of 6 players, with no way to communicate other than /zone shout from the raid leader. It seemed that this play style was not trully planned as part of the game.
Now, I ask, Why do people raid?
Do you really enjoy running around with 50-60 other players killing stuff?
Is there something special in raids that is exciting that can't be had with a challenging group adventure?
Would you be just as happy if you could get the great gear without the need for such large raids, but rather, a well skilled, geared and cooperative group?
I had never been big into raiding, had done a few here and there, but aside from the lure of acquiring some awesome gear, and seeing a new zone, there was nothing else I enjoyed about raids. I hated the wasted time gathering, buffing, listening to instructions, the collasal mash of PCs on the screen where often you couldn't even see the MOB you were attacking.
Curious what all your opinions are. But please, please do not let this become an us vs them. I am just looking for perspective from those that enjoy and those that did not enjoy large raids.
I'm glad this thread got bumped back up because I had missed it before.
So, I remember raiding in early EQ - and back then I think for most of us, it was the thrill of taking down something HUGE. Of assembling a small army of players and killing a monster that honestly didn't feel like it was meant to be killed. Sure, the loot was nice, and definitely a factor, but we did it mostly because we could.
Somewhere along the way that changed. People started to accept raiding as a "thing", and devs started giving us more of it. we went from just the two dragons to having entire zones built for raids, quests that involved raiding, world bosses that would spawn and terrorize zones, and so on. We got a raid UI, raid chat, tools to handle loot distribution. All good stuff, mind you. But raiding wasn't emergent anymore. It was embraced.
The next generation of games after EQ tried to expand on that. They took the EQ formula for raiding and tried to polish and refine it. People speak in glowing terms about EQ2's raids and early WoW raids and so for the most part I think they were successful. Whereas before, it was really about overall numbers and tactics, these new games really introduced the idea of individual player skill being important to raids.
After those, however, the industry as a whole went the route of trying to make things more accessible. Easier for people to get into. One of the biggest challenges with old-school raiding was in assembling that raid force. When you needed 36-48 people, you could spend hours just trying to get everyone together. So, newer games cut raid sizes down, trying to make it easier for everyone to do, even if they couldn't invest a lot of time.
Some of the most recent games I played have had some seriously challenging raid content - for 8-10 people. While it's still individually challenging and fun, for me personally, the sizes have gotten so small that it is starting to not feel like raiding. Plus, the prevalence of queueing systems and instances have made players not respect it like they used to. The vast majority of players don't look at a raid boss any different than they do a standard piece of group content. Thus, I feel like something has been lost there in the quest for accessiblity.
What I want to get back to, when it comes to raiding, is that idea of raids feeling special. Not something you go do a few times a week, but something you think about and plan about. Something you get your whole guild and all your friends together to do. Something that really feels meaningful, like "OMG I can't believe we're actually doing this"
I don't know that we'll ever get all the way back there and I don't even know that we should. But I think I would prefer that raids be rare, special, and challenging to having them be commonplace and only mildly exhilerating. When it comes to raid sizes, I think there's a sweet spot in the 18-24 range. I like raids bigger than that, but I also know how hard it is to get 24 adults all online at the same time even once a week and despite appearances, I'm not the kind of person who enjoys sitting and waiting for hours for everyone to log in. I also don't think that numbers should reduce the need for individual player skill. Raids shouldn't be about "just do what the raid leader says and you'll win". Finally, I want to see raiding used to present unique situations and encounters.... not just bigger and bigger monsters.
I'll leave you with a thought: Star Wars Galaxies didn't have dungeons or raiding as we would think about them. It did however have story-driven missions, particularly in space sectors. There was one particular space mission that pitted you and your friends up against an entire fleet of enemy fighters and gunships. It was seriously, seriously hard, and it wasn't uncommon for us to take 2-3 groups to complete that mission. Because that mission was so hard, and so special, and because you really needed 10-15 pilots instead of the usual 3-4, it really hit the same buttons that raids in EQ and EQ2 did for those of us flying in that game. When someone had that mission we would get excited and *everyone* would show up. When someone beat it, half the server would stop to congratulate them. But in game terms there wasn't anything special about it. It was just a story mission.
Food for thought?
I enjoyed raiding for two reasons.
1) Loot. I won't lie. I wanted the best gear for my character and was always trying to get the best for all situations, not just for my main hat in raids but also for my various jobs in group content, which didn't always mean raiding to get it, but often did.
2) The challenge of working out mechanics and getting a huge force to coordinate and each to do their jobs and make an encounter go right where my job was only a small part but important and helping others to do their jobs and picking up slack when it was needed and having the whole thing go off even when someone screwed up. Sure, eventually encounters went into "farm mode" once we all had it figured out and knew what we were doing, and that was mostly about achieving #1 above; but I loved tackling new raids and figuring all out with our raid force. Sure, there was pride when we had a server first or some such, but even when that wasn't the case, there was the thrill and challenge of conquering something we hadn't killed before and coming up with tactics, etc. These were often not as simple as tank and spank and those were the ones that were most fun. Even when they were buggy and you had to figure out how to defeat it despite the bugs.
Having the rewards match the challenge was/is important, but the rewards without the challenge beyond tank and spank wasn't very fun. There were also plenty of raids that were just a tank and spank and as long as your tank could take the hits, and heals were sufficient and DPS adequate, they were overly easy and while one would do them if you needed the teir of gear, they just weren't as fun as those with at least unique, if not hard, mechanics. Something that made you feel as though you accomplished something and did so in coordination with others that were competent enough to pull it off.
As Brad would put it, it resulted in shared experiences.
I hate big raids. Been raiding in EQ for a couple of weeks now, and since I'm the "new guy" in the guild, I get nothing for hours and hours of raids except losing 9+ hours a week to raids and the gradual xp loss from dying and getting 96% rezzes. Established players will always have more dkp to spend, and since the drops are so few, there's never enough to go around.
Been there done it, would not ever miss it. I prefer small group content that lets you get great gear for being smart and able to coordinate well with that group. I'm pretty sure raiding is not going away though. Too many people out there who enjoy playing for months trying to get geared up to go to the next tier to repeat ad naseum.
DragonFist said:I enjoyed raiding for two reasons.
1) Loot. I won't lie. I wanted the best gear for my character and was always trying to get the best for all situations, not just for my main hat in raids but also for my various jobs in group content, which didn't always mean raiding to get it, but often did.
2) The challenge of working out mechanics and getting a huge force to coordinate and each to do their jobs and make an encounter go right where my job was only a small part but important and helping others to do their jobs and picking up slack when it was needed and having the whole thing go off even when someone screwed up. Sure, eventually encounters went into "farm mode" once we all had it figured out and knew what we were doing, and that was mostly about achieving #1 above; but I loved tackling new raids and figuring all out with our raid force. Sure, there was pride when we had a server first or some such, but even when that wasn't the case, there was the thrill and challenge of conquering something we hadn't killed before and coming up with tactics, etc. These were often not as simple as tank and spank and those were the ones that were most fun. Even when they were buggy and you had to figure out how to defeat it despite the bugs.
Having the rewards match the challenge was/is important, but the rewards without the challenge beyond tank and spank wasn't very fun. There were also plenty of raids that were just a tank and spank and as long as your tank could take the hits, and heals were sufficient and DPS adequate, they were overly easy and while one would do them if you needed the teir of gear, they just weren't as fun as those with at least unique, if not hard, mechanics. Something that made you feel as though you accomplished something and did so in coordination with others that were competent enough to pull it off.
As Brad would put it, it resulted in shared experiences.
Neither of your two points need to be exclusive to raids though, it's just that they have been and not many developers have stepped back to re-evaluate a system that's basically a giant 'dead end' sign for many players. Here's a chance to stop perpetuating that system and find the next creative step. Once raids are the only path forward in terms of progression, the game essentially ends fo some of us. I spent many, many years in EQ in a top end raiding guild and I will never go back to that trap. Most of the fun gear was behind the raid wall, so even though it wasn't fun for me compared to single group activities, I had to to stay current with the smaller groups I did enjoy playing with - and we'd spend many nights complaining about how requred raiding felt. If the best gear came from a single group encounter that very few could pull off successfully, even after working through the mechanics it would still satisfy both of your points. So if we set your two points aside for a moment, the 3rd runner up is usually 'I like doing things with a very large group', which could also easily be accomodated by large open world encounters that ideally would be inclusive and open for anyone present to take part in without the tedium of what raids have become: a scheduled and scripted nightly impersonal grind that many feel they have to tolerate to access the best gear.
I don't fully believe that the majority are in it because they like doing things with large groups, I think they've been conditioned over the years to associate raids with the best loot and have a hard time imagining that loot coming from any other scenario. If people truly just wanted a large group experience then multi group challenges devoid of loot but ripe with potential bragging rights could be introduced, but I'd bet if loot were removed we'd rarely see those utilized, if ever. Which brings us back to the loot as the likely driving motivation. I'm just convinced that there's a better way.
It might also be somewhat telling that MMOs/MUDS were an evolution of table top gaming for me and I've just always had more memorable and impactful experiences in a more intimate setting where my contributions were more apparent. I've probably said this a lot, but I do like the idea of raids as a rare occasion, a memorable *special* event, but despise them as the nightly grind they've devolved into in the post Naggy/Vox mmo landscape.
it's has been a very interesting read so far. lots of valueable opinions and some good memories. i might add some points:
1) i liked that in planes (= raiding in classic) also trashmobs were quite hard and also could drop very good items. I think raiding should already start beeing challenging and rewarding with the "trash". Even if guild might not have downed the raid-mob itself they could have some rewards at least.
2) for me raiding was about that big adventure. it wasn't all about loot. Finally some guild managed to down Vox/Naggy and i was happy for them, knowing that my guild probably would never be able to down it (in the actual expansion). when did it start that it was so self-evident to down raid bosses? those are the big evils, the big threats in the fantasyworld. dont they lose most of their magic if they are just rare spawns with very shot life spans? in my opinion downing a raid boss should be a great accomplishment, which not everybody is entitled to. and that's OK since their loot is not so much better that rare group-gear is worthless (look at naggy: ok cloak of flames was great, but you could also exists with an fbss, etc. there were lots of great items from other sources than raiding (GBS, golden effreti boots, etc.)). perhaps the loot system could be like: BiS bp/helmet/etc drops from raids, but BiS juweleries (rings, neck, mask, etc) comes from crafting, long quests, or rare spawns deep in dungeons?
3) i remember my first trakanon raid: dmn was i excited! not because of the loot, but it even was the first time every for me to go so deep into old sebilis! good times :).
Kyridel said:DragonFist said:I enjoyed raiding for two reasons.
1) Loot. I won't lie. I wanted the best gear for my character and was always trying to get the best for all situations, not just for my main hat in raids but also for my various jobs in group content, which didn't always mean raiding to get it, but often did.
2) The challenge of working out mechanics and getting a huge force to coordinate and each to do their jobs and make an encounter go right where my job was only a small part but important and helping others to do their jobs and picking up slack when it was needed and having the whole thing go off even when someone screwed up. Sure, eventually encounters went into "farm mode" once we all had it figured out and knew what we were doing, and that was mostly about achieving #1 above; but I loved tackling new raids and figuring all out with our raid force. Sure, there was pride when we had a server first or some such, but even when that wasn't the case, there was the thrill and challenge of conquering something we hadn't killed before and coming up with tactics, etc. These were often not as simple as tank and spank and those were the ones that were most fun. Even when they were buggy and you had to figure out how to defeat it despite the bugs.
Having the rewards match the challenge was/is important, but the rewards without the challenge beyond tank and spank wasn't very fun. There were also plenty of raids that were just a tank and spank and as long as your tank could take the hits, and heals were sufficient and DPS adequate, they were overly easy and while one would do them if you needed the teir of gear, they just weren't as fun as those with at least unique, if not hard, mechanics. Something that made you feel as though you accomplished something and did so in coordination with others that were competent enough to pull it off.
As Brad would put it, it resulted in shared experiences.
Neither of your two points need to be exclusive to raids though, it's just that they have been and not many developers have stepped back to re-evaluate a system that's basically a giant 'dead end' sign for many players. Here's a chance to stop perpetuating that system and find the next creative step. Once raids are the only path forward in terms of progression, the game essentially ends fo some of us. I spent many, many years in EQ in a top end raiding guild and I will never go back to that trap. Most of the fun gear was behind the raid wall, so even though it wasn't fun for me compared to single group activities, I had to to stay current with the smaller groups I did enjoy playing with - and we'd spend many nights complaining about how requred raiding felt. If the best gear came from a single group encounter that very few could pull off successfully, even after working through the mechanics it would still satisfy both of your points. So if we set your two points aside for a moment, the 3rd runner up is usually 'I like doing things with a very large group', which could also easily be accomodated by large open world encounters that ideally would be inclusive and open for anyone present to take part in without the tedium of what raids have become: a scheduled and scripted nightly impersonal grind that many feel they have to tolerate to access the best gear.
I don't fully believe that the majority are in it because they like doing things with large groups, I think they've been conditioned over the years to associate raids with the best loot and have a hard time imagining that loot coming from any other scenario. If people truly just wanted a large group experience then multi group challenges devoid of loot but ripe with potential bragging rights could be introduced, but I'd bet if loot were removed we'd rarely see those utilized, if ever. Which brings us back to the loot as the likely driving motivation. I'm just convinced that there's a better way.
It might also be somewhat telling that MMOs/MUDS were an evolution of table top gaming for me and I've just always had more memorable and impactful experiences in a more intimate setting where my contributions were more apparent. I've probably said this a lot, but I do like the idea of raids as a rare occasion, a memorable *special* event, but despise them as the nightly grind they've devolved into in the post Naggy/Vox mmo landscape.
I disagree. Sure, group content can certainly be made more challenging and smaller "raid" content has its place. But there is something to taking down an encounter that takes lots of people in coordinated efforts that is just a different experience and I for one enjoy it. That, for me is raiding, and I like it. The fact that things go into "farm mode" to gear up for other encounters is just another form of progression and I'm fine with it. It isn't the glamorous side of it, but it is no different than camping a named until your group gets what it needs from it. But while I greatly enjoy coming together with my relatively small group of friends and progressing through group content, I also enjoy, often with that group along with me, getting together with a large group of people that adds a whole other level of coordination to overcome the challenges of the encounter. It isn't the same thing. But that doesn't mean that everyone has to like it. I'm also not a fan of the drama that usually builds up in "raid" guilds. I much preferred raiding with Eci Public on my server. Got the fun side of it without the politics. But again, that's the social mechanics of people, not the game.
I agree with others that some things were lost over the years like having trash mobs in raid zones being part of the experience and the reward. I also like that Pantheon will focus more on the social aspects of group content over the raid side of things. It is the more important aspect in my book, but I do want to have raid targets that do actually take small armies and aren't easily beaten by zerg mechanics, because I do like that kind of content.