Why no T3.5 raids?

[Bibik]

What do you think why so many more people do T4 than T3.5?

T4 is easier to do, to lead, esp. if you brings alts.
I don't try to say that t5 will come sooner, but i think you can bring all the loot you want with awesome drop rate, this kind of thread will rise again due to the nature and core issues of T3.5.

But as i said before, i wouldn't mind a little increase of % loot chance if you think it will encourage players to do Erlik. It will have a minimal impact for a minimal time, but maybe it will be enough to retain some players until next content ?

[Khaletohep]

Thank you for your answers!

OK, I understand now why ppl avoid T3.5 and preffer T4 instead, so naturally a new question arises:

Why ppl and guilds even bother to do T3? T3 gear is worse that T3.5 and lacks the critigation stat...

T3 is much older than T3.5. Back in the days, people had little choice than to learn how to do T3.

When T3.5 was opened, a lot of guilds were still busy with T3, and others started with T4 directly.

So, few people invested the time and sweat required to learn T3.5. Now, people are not trained (and not used) to raiding T3.5 - and have little incentive to change that.

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It seems most (or even all) players agree that the rewards for T3.5 are not appropriate for the time/effort required to a.) learn it and/or b.) raid it regularly. Some people like it for the challenge, but nobody here said (s)he really likes the loot.

There are two ways to change the incentive/effort ration: nerf the encounters or increase the rewards.

I've thought about the question what is better. Giving a definite answer to this ain't easy, and I don't claim to have it. But I wish to share this thought from a personal perspective:

If the instance was nerfed, personally, I don't think I'd start/join a T3.5 raid.
Why? I have 2-4 raids a week (T3 on 2-3 evenings and a T1/T2 raid each Saturday afternoon). Rest of the week is pretty filled with non-AoC-activity. It'd be quite a challenge to even fit another raid into that schedule.
May main is Full T4 by now, the most beloved twinks are slowly following. An "easy" T3.5 would thus be interesting mainly for "tertiary" twinks. I'm not sure I'd spend another evening for that.
I wouldn't say that was out of the question. If it was a really smooth raid with relatively new content, relatively uniquely looking gear, maybe I'd kiss the so called real life goodbye and throw my considerable body weight into yet another raid. But maybe not.

If Temple of Erlik was made even tougher, but dropped T5 gear... well... sooner or later I'd join it. Absolute certainty. Without a question. No doubt at all.

So, if the goal is to vitalize the content no matter what, the most certain way might be to do the opposite of what might seem prudent and make the dungeon the meanest, toughest pit of hell the community has ever seen, and make it drop loot appropriate to the challenge.

Just a thought.

But still... my way would be to nerf it to the ground. That would help to equip characters (twinks, newcomers, returning players etc.) for T5 and give something to do now.
For those players who need new challenges, release T5, or whatever is done in that direction. Or make some quick and dirty Hard Modes for existing raids.

[AngryBarb]

Soz if this is a bit offtopic, but since the progression was screwed up years ago by introducing offline lvls and removing certain gates and not closing powerlvl loopholes, we find ourselves in a situation where too many are bumping their heads against the ceiling content wise.

Imagine if we all had to progress from lvl 1 to full t4 without any offlines or powerlevel and had to do certain instances with quests that could not be shared.

But it's to late to fix that. Sadly a lot of content is sitting there being not used by many.

[Khaletohep]

Oh yes...

A fellow player had this suggestion last week: Raids don't give new loot, only the opportunity to upgrade loot you got at the earlier tier.

So, you do T1 to get your T1 gear, than go to T2 and trade in any T1 items into T2, then trade in T2 gear in T3 and so on.

That would make sure the lower tier raids stay populated and people don't jump into things they don't really understand yet.

Too late to implement this from T1 onwards now... but might still work for T3.5, T5 and so on. Might be another idea to use T3.5, but a heavy handed one.

[AngryBarb]

Oh yes...

A fellow player had this suggestion last week: Raids don't give new loot, only the opportunity to upgrade loot you got at the earlier tier.

So, you do T1 to get your T1 gear, than go to T2 and trade in any T1 items into T2, then trade in T2 gear in T3 and so on.

That would make sure the lower tier raids stay populated and people don't jump into things they don't really understand yet.

Too late to implement this from T1 onwards now... but might still work for T3.5, T5 and so on. Might be another idea to use T3.5, but a heavy handed one.

I was actually thinking about the pre 80 content as well. Atm that stuff is ignored by the majority I think but yes, you make sense

[sugarspice]

I see it in Prophets all the time, folks only want t4 gear and once they get full t4 they want the alt toon in t4. If allowed most folks would bypass every instance in the game and bring a blue/green geared toon into t4 and expect us to carry it thur.
I see folks that just won't log on unless we are running t4, no other loot or six man appeals to most folks in guild. (most have everything from all those anyway except those bypass toons mentioned) Getting folks to even show up for T3.5 is very difficult.
The game is done for most full T4 folks and they slowly just disappear if not allowed to bring alts into T4. Nothing else interests them. So hopefully the new 12 man and new T.5 will bring folks back.
I really do like the idea you guys posted of having to complete each tier before you can get the next set of tier gear. At least folks will have had to learn to play their class and be ready for high end raiding.

[Texan615]

I see it in Prophets all the time, folks only want t4 gear and once they get full t4 they want the alt toon in t4. If allowed most folks would bypass every instance in the game and bring a blue/green geared toon into t4 and expect us to carry it thur.
I see folks that just won't log on unless we are running t4, no other loot or six man appeals to most folks in guild. (most have everything from all those anyway except those bypass toons mentioned) Getting folks to even show up for T3.5 is very difficult.
The game is done for most full T4 folks and they slowly just disappear if not allowed to bring alts into T4. Nothing else interests them. So hopefully the new 12 man and new T.5 will bring folks back.
I really do like the idea you guys posted of having to complete each tier before you can get the next set of tier gear. At least folks will have had to learn to play their class and be ready for high end raiding.

^^ This.

I'm surprised as hell we in RA could herd cats to do T3.5 for a few weeks to allow us to finally kill the Bat. I'm honestly not sure how long we will be able to maintain interest in doing T3.5 before everyone wants to go back to T4 raids fulltime. There simply is no incentive to do T3.5 other than to kill the bosses to check them off a guildsite raid widget, which is the main reason we ended up going back and doing it.

[LunaticAsylumLA]

That is the only raid worth doing left in the game.

The loot is the best accessories for some classes.

[Mellaus]

Old t3.5 loot is unattractive in terms of stats, new t3.5 loot is nowhere to be seen thanks to yet another abysmal drop rate.

And still, T3.5 remains in my opinion the best training ground for raiders.
It's also the only place to go to keep a raid force in shape.

[-tomhet-]

Old t3.5 loot is unattractive in terms of stats, new t3.5 loot is nowhere to be seen thanks to yet another abysmal drop rate.

And still, T3.5 remains in my opinion the best training ground for raiders.
It's also the only place to go to keep a raid force in shape.

so true its best raid in aoc, pity gear is useless and new loot a bit shabby.