I could probably right a book on why raiding has merit to exist in an MMO. The main reason I hope to see raiding be an important aspect of Pantheon, however, is simple. Pantheon is going to be a deep social game that places extra emphasis on teamwork and player to player interaction. Personally, I am really looking forward to having an opportunity to playing with all of the friends that I have forged relationships with since joining the community. We already know that the majority of the game is going to be based around grouping, and I am perfectly okay with that. At the same time, it's been stated that the maximum amount of players for a group will be 6.
Again, no issue at all with that. 6 player groups have been tried and true and it's a nice number to build balanced encounters around. But what if I have 3 tank friends that I want to play with, or 3 clerics? There are only so many ways to skin a cat and one thing I have noticed in my nearly 15 years of MMO experience is that it's impossible to consistently play with certain people based on nothing more than their class. Raiding is a platform where guilds can pull together and the players can truly work in harmony with one another. It doesen't matter what class you play when the imposed max group restriction is eased up a bit.
That said, I have run into the same issue even with larger raid caps. Using 24 as an example, let's assume that each class has two specializations. That would be 28 classes total which means that a standard 24 man raid size wouldn't be large enough to support a balanced raid where every class and specialization can be accounted for. This is something I am hoping to avoid seeing in Pantheon. EQOA set the bar with their style of raiding because you could bring as many players as you wanted. I understand many people would say that something like this would encourage zerging, but please remember that bringing more players than necessary has it's own set of challenges that would need to be overcome.
I would much rather have the option to play with all of my friends who are willing to participate than need to sit people on the bench. I am hoping that encounters will be somewhat dynamic, and that if guilds attempt to throw masses of bodies at every mob, that the encounters can adapt and call extra adds or whatever else you can think of. When you are working with large scale raiding, it's also a challenge to try and keep everybody appeased because the loot density will be spread more thinly. I embrace that challenge and would much rather deal with that than trying to justify who gets action time and who rides the bench.
I want to be able to play with all of my friends. This is very important to me and thankfully it's been stated a few times that we may end up seeing some degree of uncapped raiding. I understand that nothing is set in stone, but I have seen first hand how raid content can still be challenging without an artificially imposed cap restriction. I genuinely hope to see a return to oldschool mechanics where the journey is a big part of the overall challenge. Imagine watching the Lord of the Rings and skipping through all of the adventure to get to the battle scenes. I want to climb the mountain, venture through caves and see a return to the sense of exploration that can only be had in a game that has meaningful travel.
Nothing can duplicate the satisfaction that can be had from large-scale raiding. Nothing can, and nothing ever will. That's just my opinion. I have played my fair share of games over the years and the majority of my favorite memories involved playing with my guild rather than any specific group. Raiding, for me, is the opportunity for a community to pull together for a greater cause. I'm not talking about events like FFXIV where everybody can jump in. Those felt extremely weak. I'm talking about going on an adventure with an army ... losing some people along the way, but still fighting through until the very end. Raiding is the pinnacle of social interaction and would ideally be an environment where we can look past what class someone is playing and instead focus on where people belong in the phalanx.
OneADseven did do a well written post, though my style is totally different and I am not someone that raids.
Phalanx, however, is a term that applied to certain Greek military formations although like the Greeks the Romans concentrated on infantry. Shortswords, shields and throwing weapons that stuck in enemy shields, mostly whereas the Greek mass formations used longer weapons as I recall.
As I recall from studying *history* I am not *that* old!!
oneADseven said:I would much rather have the option to play with all of my friends who are willing to participate than need to sit people on the bench. I am hoping that encounters will be somewhat dynamic, and that if guilds attempt to throw masses of bodies at every mob, that the encounters can adapt and call extra adds or whatever else you can think of. When you are working with large scale raiding, it's also a challenge to try and keep everybody appeased because the loot density will be spread more thinly. I embrace that challenge and would much rather deal with that than trying to justify who gets action time and who rides the bench.
I agree with you on uncapped raiding in general, though there may be encounter designs where a cap is needed. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think you'd be ok with caps for specific encounters as long as it wasn't *every* encounter.
I also agree with you on the desire to bring 1 of everything, or at least allow that situation to occur. I find that in practice that's rare - typically you have 1 of most things, 2/3 of others, and you're missing a few - which is probably why I'm not as concerned with a 24 person cap. But that doesn't make your point any less valid.
I think *my* concern is that there needs to be raid content that is achievable for smaller guilds. If a guild can only muster 18-20 people, there should be stuff they can do. Of course there's going to be a minimum size because if you drop below a certain point, the content can't really qualify as a "raid" in terms of challenge and difficulty. But that minimum needs to be low enough that people don't have to swell their guilds to monstrous size to be able to do some raids.
Over the years as a guild leader I have found that unless you build a guild specifically FOR raiding, it is *really* hard to get more then 40-45% of your guild online and available for the same piece of content at the same time. There's always someone who has to work, or has a family thing, or the baby is sick, or their wife wants to go out, or whatever. It's just reality. Thus, given 6 person groups, I think here is what I would like to see:
1) Entry grade raids (triggered/instanced) start off at 18 (3 groups), capped.
2) Mid-level open world raids start off *sized* for 24 people (4 groups), uncapped. A strong group could do them with less, others could bring more.
3) Mid-and high grade raids (triggered/instanced) are sized for either 18, 24, 30, or 36 people, capped. Multiple options should exist to support guilds of all sizes.
4) High-level open world raids are sized for 36 people (6 groups), uncapped. As before, a very strong group could do them with less, others could bring more.
5) Zonewide "world events" sport multiple raid targets sized for 36 people, uncapped. Basically, if Thronefast gets invaded by the Revenant, It *should* take tons of people to fight them off.
6) Maximum raid group size (for the raid UI) is capped at something like 48 or 60 people (8-10 groups). Basically, more than we'll ever need for a single open-world encounter, but enough that you should be able to either bring all your friends, or form two raids.
Just to add so that no one ratholes on this - nothing says that a "raid encounter" has to be a single giant mob, either. I'm a fan of giving every group in a large raid something to do other than "dps the thing"
How's that sound to you, 1AD7?
Sounds great Neph. I agree with basically everything you said. I am perfectly fine with seeing encounters with caps and I would like to see them mixed up for all sizes. A mixed bag would be ideal and I feel it's very important that large guilds have something they can raid together. I would love to see encounters where multiple raids could be utilized as well. Not everything needs to be a single encounter ... the idea of multiple small forces tackling something from different areas (but still working in tandem) would be appealing. At the end of the day, having massive scale raids would still allow (encourage, even) smaller guilds to form alliances and work together.
One comment I would like to add is that you are right in saying that raid compositions very rarely represent one of each class. I feel that actually contributes to part of the problem. It's very common for raids to see multiple players of the same exact class/specialization and that generally leads to other "less desirable" classes riding the bench. I have seen it in basically every game I played. I loved FFXI but the same issue existed ... you would see a bunch of black mages or summoners on the raid while the lone dragoon is sitting on the sidelines. As far as guilds not being able to muster a large enough force ... I look at that the same way as I do solo/grouping.
It's far easier to solo than it is to group but here we are in a game where everybody wants to see a return to the reliance of other players. It is definitely more difficult to put together a consistent raid force but that's something that I miss, big time! For any guild who isn't capable of fielding their own force for the really large encounters, they could always branch out and work with others. I think it would be healthy for the game. At any point in time, real players should be the most valuable asset in-game. They should be the difference maker when it comes to whether or not something can be achieved. I miss the idea of every player being valuable ... there is nothing else like it. It allows the role of being a guild leader / raid leader to be infinitely more rewarding rather than having to play the bad guy every night and pick who doesen't make the cut.
Nephele said:Basically, if Thronefast gets invaded by the Revenant, It *should* take tons of people to fight them off.
...
Just to add so that no one ratholes on this - nothing says that a "raid encounter" has to be a single giant mob, either. I'm a fan of giving every group in a large raid something to do other than "dps the thing"
This would be much more interesting to me... Players group together to fight off an invasion from a new enemy with fresh tactics, possibly even controlled or scripted by devs
Tactics would have to be developed on the fly, and each group of 6 would be important in the over all battle... much better than some big bad that triggers on a timer with no real purpose than to pop up and stay in a known place so it can be killed every Tuesday at 7pm EST
If no one shows up to kill the big bad raid boss, how is the world affected? Does anyone care?
Terminus is almost entirely populated with small portions of subraces from all over the multi-verse, brought together via collisions... Who is to say some of those collisions wouldn't bring us a huge group of raid content worthy invaders intent on conquering us all? Or that one hasn't already happened and we missed it?
While it might be cool for a failed defense to result in Thronefast, for example, being actually destroyed, I realize that may be a little ambitious and too taxing on the devs, so maybe the invaders could attack a continent searching for some MacGuffin... an item of immense power buried somewhere in the silent plains, possibly in an underground ruined city or dragon lair nobody knew about
If the raid were to fail, the invaders would gain that item of power that could be used against us in their next invasion, but were we to defeat them, we could use it for some world buff and then each member of the raid force would gain rewards from the leaders of the various factions plus any loot the were able to carry off from the battle
Filzin said:First and foremost, I hope raids will be capped for balancing purposes. After EQ1, Vanguard raids being capped had me a bit nervous, but it turned out great because you couldn't just overwhelm content. Execution became key to success. Challenge, that's why I am here supporting this game. While I do believe group content can be challenging, it is less rewarding to me because its much easier to put together 6-8 talented players who can execute a plan smoothly than it is to put together 24-30 and do the same. While my guildmates and I often times wanted to string one another up for making an error that wiped our raid (many of us earned the moniker "cocoon boy" for you Vanguard players), it made the celebration after a well executed raid all the more sweet.
I agree partly, but then you face the issue of... do you have multiple instances of the same raids for everyone to do, ala WoW / Agnarr, etc. Or do we stick with the idea of the persistent world, where players compete over raid encounters, like classic Everquest / Dark Age of Camelot?
I think this whole talk of "classic, hardcore MMORPG" is moot if we place all of the raids in instances.
The risk of some content being zerged is easier to swallow than the risk of another meaningless clone MMO with instanced raiding.
And let's not forget - zerging does have its own problems. Less loot, less happy players. If a raid boss drops 4 items and you brought 80 people to kill it... You're looking at 1/20 raid encounters getting loot for yourself on average. How long is an individual going to put up with that?
The key is to make it so that whoever gets the raid boss isn't simply whoever does the most damage - but add some other mechanic, so that smaller forces can compete with the zergs. First-to-engage style tagging?
Risk vs Reward, Highest teir with others to obtain a reward.
What makes it hard for some.
1. Repeative need from it. (outfitting the whole guild structure with the same gear)
2. Progression, to move into the next phase.
What turns off players.
1. GuildLeadership takes control, and rewards a small part of the raid first and formost.
2. Open raids takes loot and disbands.
What players love about raids.
1. Full raid stucture working together
2. Chance at higher teir items, loot
3. Working on stragities together.
What gets boring
1. Raids are beaten (rinse and repeat), and copy and pasted from others strats.
Otherwise i love to raid..... its fun the social aspect together.
Why do I raid...hmmm...usually it's because I've done all the other content and it's all that's left to do, my guild invited me, or there is a raid boss I want to kill for lore reasons. I am not a big fan of large raids for a number of reasons: 1) time consuming to organize 2) loot drama 3) cog in the wheel syndrome 4) very difficult to lead 5) wipe recovery takes a lot of time.
My favorite raids are 2-4 groups, small raids. Small raids tend to solve problems 1, 3, 4, and 5. I admit even in small raids there is loot drama. But even a single group gets loot drama sometimes it's just the nature of item focused MMORPGs.
If all the raids in Pantheon are designed for huge raid groups of 40+ players I probably won't be doing them very much.