I know that the game will be heavily based off group play with some raiding for people who like it. Seems like majority of players are thinking raiding at the end levels is going to be the way to get the best gear and loot. Is there something I missed where this is the case??
Raiding will (most likely) not be the best of the best, at least not for all or maybe even most slots for classes. Brad has stated over and over that they want group centric content to be king in this game, raiding as a side thing.
Aradune said: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.
When EQ2 first started they had raids for lower levels and my guild at the time was primed for being a top tier guild. We went to do some of these raids but they all had the problem of balance between its intended level and the raids average level. The one I remember was in a level 30 zone and we all stopped our power leveling to try to be the first on our server to beat this big blob in one of the dungeons. Our first couple attempts did not go great due to everyone being very new to their classes but as soon as we got a tank that was higher it was no longer even a challenge. The second thing that we realized was the loot system in EQ2 was such a way that even though the items that dropped were better for the level they would get upgraded in a couple days (or hours in our case) and we decided it was no longer worth our time to raid before max level. Soon EQ2 revamped all the mid-level raids to be group content.
So in a different world if you made the encounter so that higher levels did not trivialize the fight and kept the gear valuable to those that would go for it but not valuable enough to lure in overly higher players then maybe it might work. I can just see a raid made for level 30s being camped by a group for level 40 or 50 if what is dropped is really good. You could hard code a max level but that also gets tricky as you run into new problems.
Iksar said:Raiding will (most likely) not be the best of the best, at least not for all or maybe even most slots for classes. Brad has stated over and over that they want group centric content to be king in this game, raiding as a side thing.
Aradune said: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.
Thanks Iksar :)
What's better than hanging out with 5 of your friends ? ...Hanging out with your whole guild !
By the time I've gotten to max level I'm mostly ready to be done with group content and ready to focus more on the bigger picture. Like guild progression, raids, epics, etc...
For instance lets look at Vanguard. Shores of Darkness was the worst mmo content I have ever plugged my way through. It was a group based grind that would melt your brain for months on end.
Then we have Pantheon of the Ancients which was group content done right with the trials and the progression to the raids.
If there's not big raid zones like the Planes in EQ1 I really don't see myself sticking around just to grind out more group content at end game.
Guilds need a reason to hang out a few days a week and raid... Without big raid zones to conquer where will we get to hang out with all our friends at the same time. More group content just means more cliques of guildies that only hang out together because they are working on some group quest or zone.
My perfect balance would be something like 60% group / 40% raid content and if you are really good you might be able to solo some of the easier group areas.
Since one of the main things this game is bringing to the table is good complex, challenging content... How can that be realized without culminating in the ultimate form of this(raids).
Raiding is the carrot on the end of the stick... without a big juicy carrot I'm not sure how excited I can get about running up that big hill.
If there was something else to focus on besides just combat like politics, pvp, local economies, transfering goods between cities, large crafting projects, dynamic threats... then maybe I would be too busy doing other things to care as much about raiding.
Looking back in retrospect I honestly would not have been inclined to min max my characters or go through some of the crazy grinds if it wasn't to kill someone in pvp or some giant raid boss.
Another problem with making group content bleeding edge difficulty is that eventually the top people in your guild have to do the content multiple times to get everyone else through it. This problem really tanked the GoD expansion for me when you needed the top chanter in your guild to chauffer everyone else through those trials.
I totally understand that my opinion is fringe and most people could care less about raids but I would still like to hear what everyone thinks about this subject.
Thanks in advance,
Kiz~
Iksar said:Raiding will (most likely) not be the best of the best, at least not for all or maybe even most slots for classes. Brad has stated over and over that they want group centric content to be king in this game, raiding as a side thing.
Aradune said: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.
This is a subject that is very dear to me because I think every game since UO has blundered it.
I personally like to raid. I like the challenge and the feeling of progression when you finally beat a nightmarish encounter. That said, I am fully aware that (i) not everybody raids and (ii) gear drops always have an RNG factor to them, which makes gearing up through raiding a huge lottery and time sink. Additionally, end-game gear has worked as a kind of badge of honor, something through which you flaunt your achievements in clearing content. This means the gear is typically unobtainable if you don't do the content, whether because you don't like it particularly, or because you're not skilled at that type of content, or because you don't have a good enough group to play with. This seems to me unnecessary and frankly unfair. I don't really care if others can get end-game gear without doing the exact same thing I did. It takes nothing away from me. But to demand that gear be exclusive does take away from others who, for the reasons I've stated, can't or won't do the content.
I would much prefer to have a system where the best gear is crafted, resorting to crafting materials dropped from raid bosses OR other types of content. You would get the materials whichever way you feel suits your gameplay (preferably with some sort of balancing factor so that one way doesn't yield much more of the material than others) and either put them up for sale on the market, or find a crafter to make a piece of gear for you. To prevent gear from becoming excessively common - which IMO would be detrimental to the game at a certain point by removing the incentive to get the materials and craft the gear - it could be made bind-on-equip, or it could be bound if you apply an enchantment or other improvement.
Hopefully VR's vision will be something close to this, as indicated by Aradune's post you quoted.
Aradune said: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.
I'm not sure where this data comes from but the time that I spent on Phinigel recently speaks differently to me.
20+ guilds clearing all the raid content and another 10 guilds doing most of it. Everyone that I interacted with had one of those guild tags and participated in raids to some extent.
These are the people you would see in groups and out in zones before raid time. Then Sunday evening rolls around and all those zones go bare because everyone is at raid night.
I don't know that's just what I noticed on Phinny.
Thanks,
Kiz~
Angrykiz said:I'm not sure where this data comes from but the time that I spent on Phinigel recently speaks differently to me.
You are speaking from experience as a player. There is a high chance that you are selectively remembering things that confirm your personal experience. Mind you, I'm not criticizing you, it's just something that happens and is perfectly normal. You may not see people who don't use zone/global chat, and people who gather in small RP-groups in a tavern somewhere, and people who are slowly making their way through non-raid content in other zones...
If the devs say they have access to data that says otherwise, I have little reason to doubt them. And for what it's worth, a 10:1 non-raiders vs. raiders ratio seems about right for my own experience in ESO.
As you can see here http://phinnykills.com/progress.html there are 25 guilds clearing almost all of PoP on a weekly basis.
Some of these guilds are fielding 2 or more full raid forces to run multiple picks.
I'd say conservatively 2000 people are raiding on any given Sunday evening on Phinigel.
I wonder how much of the total server population this accounts for.
Thanks,
Kiz~
You are ignoring the fact the TLPs specifically cater to and are marketed for the people who never got to experience the content raid wise. That's not a blanket o yeh because Phinny is like this all games are
I played casually on Phinny myself till the end of Velious, II'll start raiding in GOD or Omens when content I care about comes out.
Sunmistress said:You are ignoring the fact the TLPs specifically cater to and are marketed for the people who never got to experience the content raid wise. That's not a blanket o yeh because Phinny is like this all games are
I played casually on Phinny myself till the end of Velious, II'll start raiding in GOD or Omens when content I care about comes out.
I'd say there is a lot of cross-over between the players on Phinigel and the players that would be interested in Pantheon.
Kiz~
I understand AngryKiz thoughts, because in the Guild Office Forum are 42 Posts from guilds
- 9 guilds did not mentioned the word "raid" or "raiding"
- 3 of those 9 guilds do raids after checking out their websites
- and the rest, 33 guilds (!!!), wanna do raids!
Kiz, I totally disagree with your math. I like that you admit to being on the "fringe" with your guestimations - I believe I really am on the fringe in the other way. I have been in a Raid guild - calls in the wee morning etc. to gnab a naughty before someone else gets to it etc. There are a lot of things that can not be mathematically or statistically represented when you start to apply social beliefes and norms (what IS norm anyway?) because of the simple fact that people are crazy. Only through testing mathematic scenarios are we able to show an active algorythm that would allow us the perfect values within the algorythm itself. So at this point I am at the point where i say - bring it on. Let's test this puppy together and we can determine the best ratio. But i also say, let's not nail this idea to the wall. Make it so the algorythm is easily changed when/if we notice a change in "public opinion (may the gods have mercy on us all)" or any other variable.
Mostly though i just wanna say thanks. I have come to really value your opinions here and appreciate the ways you articulate. You're definately my "Gold Star Hero" of the day! :)
I don't know, I am not too concerned either way as long as my class is viable in both sets of content.
You also could be correct that past #s are not valid, though we won't have EZmode raiding like Phinigel and that will absolutely affect the numbers willing to raid.
However, if they make a fair bit of raids or shift focus to that aspect when the numbers come back from Vanilla time.
I hope it doesn't create the massive disparity in itemization/difficulty in the 2 sets of content. I don't want to see high end group content get dumbed down just because "well there's raids do that instead". Or to the point it becomes detrimental to the majority of players and the content they want to see
I will be playing with my regular pen and paper gaming group (8 of us) and AFAIK I am the only one with intentions to raid.
Angrykiz said:
Aradune said: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.
I'm not sure where this data comes from but the time that I spent on Phinigel recently speaks differently to me.
20+ guilds clearing all the raid content and another 10 guilds doing most of it. Everyone that I interacted with had one of those guild tags and participated in raids to some extent.
These are the people you would see in groups and out in zones before raid time. Then Sunday evening rolls around and all those zones go bare because everyone is at raid night.
I don't know that's just what I noticed on Phinny.
Thanks,
Kiz~
Your on a progression server and on them the main point of it was to raid if you were on a live server there are a ton of people that dont raid at all and love doing grp content and grind with there friends. and do hard grp encounters all the time
Angrykiz said:
Aradune said: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.
I'm not sure where this data comes from but the time that I spent on Phinigel recently speaks differently to me.
20+ guilds clearing all the raid content and another 10 guilds doing most of it. Everyone that I interacted with had one of those guild tags and participated in raids to some extent.
These are the people you would see in groups and out in zones before raid time. Then Sunday evening rolls around and all those zones go bare because everyone is at raid night.
I don't know that's just what I noticed on Phinny.
Thanks,
Kiz~
That's anecdotal evidence of a special server on a 20 year old game reknown for heavy focus on raiding as the only end-game content. Specifically a special server for people who want to go back and relive that raid progression history.
As an industry as a whole the numbers would skew heavily in other directions. Hell, even if you looked at EQ in general you'd see a shift away from in what you're seeing on Phini.
[edit] When I think back to my personal experience on Prexus in the mid-2000's there were really 3 top raid guilds that were always tackling the highest tiers of raiding. There were about 4-6 more that were raiding consistently. I know this because we were allied with a couple and in direct competition with the rest. We were very familiar with what was happening in the raid-guild world. Thats around 10 guilds at the top end, and might have represented 15-20% of the server population. Maybe. On a really good day.
I think it's proof that if you make raiding available to more people they will come and they will enjoy it.
The atmosphere in my guild was always looking forward to raid nights and mostly just slogging along til then.
Back in the day raiding was considered an activity just attempted by elite poop-sockers that could camp the random spawns.
...but what if you could spawn a raid mob with the correct items once a week for your guild?
What if there were raid zones large enough to accommodate multiple guilds at once like APW ?
What if raid mobs had relatively short respawn timers with lockouts on kills(like Vanguard)?
I hope I'm not coming off combative because I really am enjoying the conversation here.
Thanks in advance,
Kiz~
Angrykiz said:
I think it's proof that if you make raiding available to more people they will come and they will enjoy it.
The atmosphere in my guild was always looking forward to raid nights and mostly just slogging along til then.
Back in the day raiding was considered an activity just attempted by elite poop-sockers that could camp the random spawns.
...but what if you could spawn a raid mob with the correct items once a week for your guild?
What if there were raid zones large enough to accommodate multiple guilds at once like APW ?
What if raid mobs had relatively short respawn timers with lockouts on kills(like Vanguard)?
I hope I'm not coming off combative because I really am enjoying the conversation here.
Thanks in advance,
Kiz~
You perosonally gravitate to games with a focus on raiding. Some other players do too. You find each other in those games, guild, and raid. That's perfectly logical and reasonable. But it's still annecdotal to suggest that all games would do better if they had equal levels of raiding to what you desire.
The vast majority of MMO players across all games do not raid. There are only so many MMO players across all games that want raiding. If every game had the same focus you wish to see on raiding, then the result would probably be one of two things, or some middleground between ; either all games would have a very small raiding population and it would be difficult to find a group you could stand being around to do it, or the games that had the best raiding would attract the raiders and the other games would have raid content that went largely unused.
Raiding is not unlike any other offering from a game. There are only so many people that want sci-fi as opposed to fantasy. There are only so many that want flashy, crazy effects going off all over the screen all the time as opposed to a more tame, realistic graphics approach. There are some that want cartoonish style as opposed to realism. There are some that want PVP as opposed to PVE. Slice all those categories down the middle, pick an audience, and make a game for them. Try to appease everyone from every category and it would be comparable to building a motorcycle with 3 wheels, a 500HP motor, a pink wicker basket on the front, skulls painted on the gastank, and a prostate ring as a seat.
The bottom line is the VR has chosen a pretty specific target audience, and they are trying to make the best game they can for that audience. Resources spent that are contrary to the focus of that audience would be designing the aforementioned motor-hog-kiddy-bike-retirement-thing.
I like where your head is at, as long as difficulty in raid content is not impacted. I am all for allowing more people to access content, however I am also in favor of skill and organizational based "checks" so to speak.
I do believe they said they had some plans along the lines of what you are mentioning as well. None of those things would negatively impact my personal enjoyment of pixelated adventures, so they sound good to me.
Angrykiz said:
I think it's proof that if you make raiding available to more people they will come and they will enjoy it.
The atmosphere in my guild was always looking forward to raid nights and mostly just slogging along til then.
The problem there being what you mean by making raiding "available" to more people. If raid content is indeed very challenging then you won't see more people raiding than usual by any stretch. Back in WoW raider numbers were very small before they added the casual "Looking for Raid" raid finder which gave a healthy boost to the easier raids, but they were otherwise always available to anyone no matter how many guilds ran them.
I think the issue with the second is your guild probably hasn't played a game that is focused on and designed for groups at the highest level. Hell I haven't either. But I know it is entirely possible to have engaging and difficult group based content and challenges. As far as I know no one is saying there won't be a handful of raids or that they won't have great loot, but they won't be the intended *main* end-game experience and they won't give out all the best stuff. So you can still look forward to raid nights.
Who in here thinks that casual gamers not able to get in to raids should settle for mediocrity?
I understand people want to come together for some epic encounters,doubt raids as we've known them in other games are the best solution
Casual gamers being left out if they refuse to comform to a meta build
Completely understand why some people despise being either excluded from raids
or forced into a meta build to do 0.03% maximum damage
Often in those raids,the interaction is not amical at all
You are seen as a number,easily disposable when the core members of the guild are online
I'd prefer an alignment-wide and public version of raids
revamped and renamed to something like Dynasty missions ,to avoid confusion
For the Elves it could be nurturing a tree,keeping it for harm.
If the alignment fails to keep the tree alive,every member of that alignment fails
If the tree survives ,everyone wins.That way real teamspirit is encouraged;you are all responsible for the success or failure while working towards a common goal.
As we say in our cooking course
One team,one family
It seems to me like casuals who solo have been the target audience for the majority of recent released MMOs
I think a solo-centric MMO is game designed that settles for mediocrity from the start.
The quality time in (and with) groups automatically becomes mediocre,as there is little to no incentive to group when a game like this is solo centric
You just happen to be several players playing along on the same fixed solo-content path planned from A-Z.
So I don't blame them that they can't get into groups(as long as they try and want it)
It doesn't matter if the player in question is hardcore,casual etc ;the game itself is in this case mediocre.
Also has been problematic I think in recent games:
During the level process ,a focus on solo content for the journey
at endgame loyalty,timeliness and meta is expected in order to be allowed in the largest (and to some most epic) group experience that is raiding
That is an enormous step from one extreme to the other;going from your solo from A-Z no-expectations-story to a story where they expect your timeless devotion and cooperation
Placed in a social perspective,that would be like running for President with no friends or social connections established at all.
It is not easy for players to cross that barrier ,especially for players with no guild.
Probably could start a long debate about the question asked above
You could also rephrase it like *if casual gamers can't get into raids is mediocre equipement the best they deserve?*
For casuals who solo and can't get into groups;are they trying?
With raids it is different;if all the *good stuff* is there, not being able to get in means being blocked out.Be it by not finding enough people to raid with,or some GM that deems you unready based on gearscore
When a casual can't get into a group,plenty of fish in the sea.