T5 Raid: It's coming.

[Vatoi]

That's the reason why im gonna end my adventure with AoC. It was a great game ,before AA ,kgitai etc ,and all these stupid class revamps... So what can i say... you've lost one more player. See you all people have fun in this game

[Shealeigh]

I agree.. Anything less than T4 will just push all the vets away.. And then the game will really die. Not having higher end raiding tears is akin to not having anything for the pvp'ers to do. Most of the pvp'ers already left, if Cetriss is not T4/T4.5/T5 most if not all of the raider will go also.

What about Erlik? It's there for years and few people do it because it's harder than t4, from what I heard. I don't want to speculate, but seems people don't do it because of the l00t. Like if they do content only for the sake of the rewards and not for the content itself. I guess many of these who want t5 never made Erlik, and if they did, well, that's the problem with PvE: once you memorize the tactics, it'll get way easier. Only way to make it fun again is relaxing or inviting inexperienced people to screw things up a little and make it challenging again (reason I'm always doing easier content with nabs).

About PvP, PvPers are happy as long they can kill each other, and it's always a new challenge, despite same maps and even same people. Just look at that bad, old Countrystrike game. There were thousands of maps, yet people just played Dust and Aztec.
In what I see, the immediate problem with PvP is, ironically, people who don't like this ever-changing balance in difficulty (the main fun in PvP). Some can't stand falling into the losing team, and complain about the (lack of) skills of their fellow players, instead of doing a "premade" or whatever. Usually these people do it during a match, from hide.
It's needless to say how stupid is to expect a random-generated team of players to be always perfect. New PvPers get discouraged by all the drama in these complaints, which is just made worse by the gear gap (they quit before getting the t1 set) allied with their inexperience, turns out as a huge blow to their humor. It's like going to a raid and being told that it wiped because you're bad and should quit the game, then hiding and complaining ad nauseam about you while this person refuses to leave the raid. In PvE you have the option to kick such person from raid. In PvP, you don't.

There are more things, but I think before talking about new content, these things should be adressed. Putting t1 gear from PvP5 to PvP4 help veterans but I don't think it makes much difference for new players.

[Mellaus]

About T3.5, people don't go there because only raiding guilds do that, and the weapons added last year which have T4 budget are unparalleled in the game.

That blunt with 80 constitution and that prot axe for conq are just sick. That alone should push people to go there and grab those weapons. But t3.5 is just harder than T4, that's it.

As for PvP, the issue is that, for all the years of AoC, Funcom has never understood the need to ease the first steps into PvP for newcomers. so for 6 years, most newbies would get destroyed in minis, get insulted for being useless, and then quit.
That translates into the PvP population getting thinner and thinner.

Now PvP is much better i believe, but it is still very painful for newcomers since the entry PvP set is between lvl 2 and 4, which is a rather long way to go for a newbie, so in the end, all the changes that Funcom brought are kind of a lost cause, because they do not change the fact that newcomers are not welcome into PvP, ensuring that no matter what happens, PvP population will never grow, just like it never did.

[AngryBarb]

About T3.5, people don't go there because only raiding guilds do that, and the weapons added last year which have T4 budget are unparalleled in the game.

That blunt with 80 constitution and that prot axe for conq are just sick. That alone should push people to go there and grab those weapons. But t3.5 is just harder than T4, that's it.

You'd be surprised at how hard it is to get 24 people together these days to do new raid content aka no loot guarantee, so putting 2 weapons for Conq/Bs/barb in 3.5 is certainly not changing anything. And 3.5 is not harder than anything else, it's just 3 bosses.

Everything becomes routine after having done whatever content a certain amount of times.

I don't know how you guys manage to keep a really steady raidforce together because It's almost impossible now in less hardcore guilds.

[slackjoint]

I'd love to go t3.5 , for the look of the gear and the atmosphere alone
And no : The vanity version from Fort ardashir is no valid argument

[Mellaus]

You'd be surprised at how hard it is to get 24 people together these days to do new raid content aka no loot guarantee, so putting 2 weapons for Conq/Bs/barb in 3.5 is certainly not changing anything. And 3.5 is not harder than anything else, it's just 3 bosses.

Everything becomes routine after having done whatever content a certain amount of times.

I don't know how you guys manage to keep a really steady raidforce together because It's almost impossible now in less hardcore guilds.

To be honest, at times we had a hard time getting people to go kill the lurker, but after so much time farming T4, it was actually very nice to go see him. And i feel like t3.5 was also something really important so people would not fall into the t4 farming routine and stay a bit sharp.
Such a routine insidiously weakens a raid force with most efficiency.

Even wiping in T5 against buggy/stupid mechanics was actually a nice change after 2 years with nothing new to chew on.

But it's not about us being hardcore, most of our raiders are raid loggers, they just don't play at all beside guild raids.

Anyway, overall, FC delivering no raiding content for 2 years is responsible for the current state of the raiding community. Too many old raiders just left, which effectively weakens old raiding guilds.

But with T5 there and the promise of T6, maybe some raiders will come back, and i say maybe, but it's already the case apparently, since i see from time to time old names that had disappeared long ago.

On a side note, i was pointing out 2 weapons from t3.5, but some of the armors are superb, there are also awesome accessories and weapons for other classes.
Like those ToS rings with 50 constitution on top of sweet dps, the ToS weapon with 70 constitution. The protection sword and shield with crazy stats for guard. The one-handed offhand sword, one of the very best in game, superior to pretty much anything for pure dps, except t3 crafted and the new T5 one.
Those weapons offer very nice upgrate that prove to be invaluable for progression raids, where an extra survival is always welcome while still keeping awesome fire power.

All in all, t3.5 does offer a lot, it's just that most people are not aware of it, or underestimate it, that's the only reason i can think of that would justify a raid force missing on all those crazy upgrates.

[AngryBarb]

To be honest, at times we had a hard time getting people to go kill the lurker, but after so much time farming T4, it was actually very nice to go see him. And i feel like t3.5 was also something really important so people would not fall into the t4 farming routine and stay a bit sharp.
Such a routine insidiously weakens a raid force with most efficiency.

Even wiping in T5 against buggy/stupid mechanics was actually a nice change after 2 years with nothing new to chew on.

But it's not about us being hardcore, most of our raiders are raid loggers, they just don't play at all beside guild raids.

Anyway, overall, FC delivering no raiding content for 2 years is responsible for the current state of the raiding community. Too many old raiders just left, which effectively weakens old raiding guilds.

But with T5 there and the promise of T6, maybe some raiders will come back, and i say maybe, but it's already the case apparently, since i see from time to time old names that had disappeared long ago.

On a side note, i was pointing out 2 weapons from t3.5, but some of the armors are superb, there are also awesome accessories and weapons for other classes.
Like those ToS rings with 50 constitution on top of sweet dps, the ToS weapon with 70 constitution. The protection sword and shield with crazy stats for guard. The one-handed offhand sword, one of the very best in game, superior to pretty much anything for pure dps, except t3 crafted and the new T5 one.
Those weapons offer very nice upgrate that prove to be invaluable for progression raids, where an extra survival is always welcome while still keeping awesome fire power.

All in all, t3.5 does offer a lot, it's just that most people are not aware of it, or underestimate it, that's the only reason i can think of that would justify a raid force missing on all those crazy upgrates.

I hear ya and I get what you say. But I think 3.5 has been handled so badly by Funcom and well, me and my raid group are now going through T5. We did have some nights in 3.5 and killed potato man a few times and some wipes on Zaal, but then T5 was released Would love to to try Lurker some day, but it's not gonna happen.

Basically, as I see it, one would have to jump ship and join one of the few top raid guilds to maybe see these "cool but not popular" bosses. And that's why I enjoy 6 mans more lately (it's just free of those practical problems that comes with relying on 24 people).

So far it's also fun doing T5 progression despite it being recycled content, but... I deffo don't feel like I did when we progressed through T4, now it's more like "yeah hopefully it dies at some point".

[sugarspice]

I think we should get away from total dps race bosses, and work out mechanics that are fun, not boring like imp, but not insane. I know a lot of folks have yet to kill Yak, but its a perfect fight. Once you see the issues they are easily solved. The active x component requires every single person to be paying attention, but it is
fast, attention required no carry fight.
The problem with T1/T2 is you could always carry half a raid of total fail and still get the job done. T3 required less fail in your raid force and T4 is even more unforgiving. T3.5 and lurker even more unforgiving.
The solution could be having more fights that offer interesting technical solutions as opposed to huge dps.
I want to see everyone get thru T3, T4. I believe that to have a healthy game these instances have to be open enough for most folks to get past. Sheng has always been the show stopper for T4 as it requires good coordination with the door groups, good tanks for sheng and folks "doing the sheng dance". I know in Prophets adding one or two new folks and teaching them T4 fights is easy, but starting from scratch with a raid force that has never been is very difficult without very good leadership, PEOPLE CAN LEARN technical fights much easier than technical fights that have huge DPS component. I know at this stage in the game people should know how to play and what their toon is capable of, but the fact of the matter we still have healers that don't understand how their heals work, tanks that cant tank and DPS that has no idea how to get DPS out of their toon. IT CAN BE SOLVED if folks want to learn and if others want to teach. But we as a community can't continue to leave folks stuck at the BRC level, even if it means each guild takes a couple newer players and mentors them.

[cins]

Why would you dredge this up? We don't need this stuff to resurface, let the sleeping ringofsets lie.
...
Gathering 24 people is still far too much bothersome work that no ingame reward could possibly justify, no matter the difficulty. Just remove the stupid raids already, population is too low to justify them anymore.

dps races are still bad too. The laziest way out for the designer and a crutch to maintain the ******** hamsterwheel of "progression" with arbitrarily increasing numbers. It is not cool(TM) .

[Shealeigh]

Gathering 24 people is still far too much bothersome work that no ingame reward could possibly justify, no matter the difficulty. Just remove the stupid raids already, population is too low to justify them anymore

This makes me wonder why I do raids. I think I just like to see the instances. At first I thought about the challenge (more people more chances of mistakes) but doing guard duty at t4 is dull, nowhere as fun as doing pagoda NM with nabs.

About the reward, I just want enough gear to allow me to get in the (AA, gear, XP) requirements of the fun, challenging places. Preferably one that save my inventory slots. Unfortunately, can't think of anything but t4.