24 Player Raiding: A Relic of the past?

[Ahlayna]

"I guess what I'm trying to say without trying to be mean is that the game is poorly designed. From a marketing, gameplay, and overall design arc viewpoint. And well, the numbers show. But damn I believed in Gaute and his vision in the beginning months really showed promise and still some glimmers of it show even today through Joel and the new team. But more needs to be done to address this continuing population-driven problem."

Poorly designed is a good point. There would be a whole lot more raiding if people were forced to graduate to each tier or, at the least, put a counter of sorts into place where they would have to attempt a fight with each boss at least 10 times or so. Nothing annoys me more than to join in on a T3 raid and to have a brand new 80 that feels they are competent enough to raid with you. The world bosses have not helped the raiding situation out either. Why join in on Tier raids when you can just log on a few days a month and get some epic gear that way!!

[Rathothis]

Poorly designed is a good point. There would be a whole lot more raiding if people were forced to graduate to each tier or, at the least, put a counter of sorts into place where they would have to attempt a fight with each boss at least 10 times or so. Nothing annoys me more than to join in on a T3 raid and to have a brand new 80 that feels they are competent enough to raid with you. The world bosses have not helped the raiding situation out either. Why join in on Tier raids when you can just log on a few days a month and get some epic gear that way!!

I find it hard to believe that people have such a skewed perception of reality.

* How would there be more raiding if you broke down an already small population into different "tiers"? The only result you would get is that new players would find it even harder to play with veterans - which already is a big problem in AoC, as the AA and gear progression makes interaction rather difficult.

* What about alts? Many of the undergeared toons you see are alts of veteran players. In many cases, these alts will be less of a problem in your PUG than a genuinely new player.

What we really want for the lower tiers is some positive incentive for vets to do them (rather than the negative incentive proposed by you). The vanity items introduced some time ago are nice, but we probably need more. Hopefully, the new crafting and achievement systems will do the trick - though these look like they still might be some time in the making...

[sugarspice]

I find it hard to believe that people have such a skewed perception of reality.

* How would there be more raiding if you broke down an already small population into different "tiers"? The only result you would get is that new players would find it even harder to play with veterans - which already is a big problem in AoC, as the AA and gear progression makes interaction rather difficult.

* What about alts? Many of the undergeared toons you see are alts of veteran players. In many cases, these alts will be less of a problem in your PUG than a genuinely new player.

What we really want for the lower tiers is some positive incentive for vets to do them (rather than the negative incentive proposed by you). The vanity items introduced some time ago are nice, but we probably need more. Hopefully, the new crafting and achievement systems will do the trick - though these look like they still might be some time in the making...

I agree.
Side note on gear vs player, I recall one t3 raid where we needed a conq, our main conq had conq one and two already locked,so he brought his green geared third conq and held agro just fine, I would take player skill and knowledge over geared toon.

[sugarspice]

One reason a lot of guilds with good intentions have failed was because of players who didn't care about the game and their community. When a guild has a bunch of people who either dislike the game for what it is (an MMO), or think of only themselves, then the guild will eventually fall apart despite the best intentions of the leader/officers.


Looking at this thread in general, I see those exact two sides. We have the people who care about the game, knowing exactly what kind of game it is, who care about the community, who try and help others, offer solutions, and generally are nice people. On the other side, I see all the people who either don't like the game as it is (an MMO), who don't care about community, who don't want to help others, who don't offer solutions (aside from trying to change the game into something it is not), or who are generally just antagonizers.

I agree with everything you said, a lot of really good folks have offered help only to be told in an off hand manner that we are arrogant pigs who only think of ourselves.
Not one guild leader or even player for that matter has requested assistance.

[cins]

Not one guild leader or even player for that matter has requested assistance.

Because it's pointless. If those guild leaders you want to help so much had enough dedicated players to form raids in their guilds, they wouldn't need anyone's help in the first place. Pugging is horsecrap. Guild merges/alliances bring a whole set of other problems. The only way you could really help is to hand out your raidforce to them, which is obviously not gonna happen. Because large scale raiding is a supremely stupid thing to focus on a tiny MMO and all of this mess could've been avoided if FC hadn't been dumb.

I believe you're unaware since you keep doing it, but you're not merely "good folks offering to help only to be told in an off hand manner that you are arrogant pigs". Because what you really keep telling is that playerbase outside the raiding guilds should get their **** together and start helping themselves, at which point you'll magnanimously chip in (which is annoying). Except existing raider guilds have already gotten together all the **** that exists in AoC, there's no **** left for anyone on the lower rungs of the totem pole to get together, aka every single player who's dedicated enough to the idea of raiding is in your guild (and the one in a million newcomer who's gonna become a good raider will beeline for your guild without fail). There'll be no helping themselves for anyone outside today's raider guilds because there's none left who's capable, you gobbled all of those up.

That's how Crom stayed "healthy" all these years too, it was fed other servers until it was the only one left, and now it's starving (which is also FC's fault). Raider guilds are exactly the same; sure you're good now but how are you gonna replace any expert raider who stops logging? How many players have your raidforce siphoned off of less successful guilds? What happened to those guilds who lost their most talented raiders? Sure, it's not your fault other people failed, but your offer of help is worthless because there aren't any "potential raider guilds" to be helped. Current raider guilds are standing on a mountain of their corpses. What remains is a bunch of guilds that are barely able to field half of a consistent raider force (if that) and nothing short of actual raider players joining them will really "help".
...
Also, I've already offered the solution: get rid of it. In fact, no need to even get rid of it, just leave it hanging and don't waste any more manpower on it, leave it to die slowly and painfully as it deserves, use the meager resources FC still has to make something that has less of a ******** threshold to jump over before the average random player can start having fun. Clinging to the tentacle that's dragging you to depths won't get you anywhere but down.

[sugarspice]

I believe you're unaware since you keep doing it, but you're not merely "good folks offering to help only to be told in an off hand manner that you are arrogant pigs". Because what you really keep telling is that playerbase outside the raiding guilds should get their **** together and start helping themselves, at which point you'll magnanimously chip in (which is annoying). Except existing raider guilds have already gotten together all the **** that exists in AoC, there's no **** left for anyone on the lower rungs of the totem pole to get together, aka every single player who's dedicated enough to the idea of raiding is in your guild (and the one in a million newcomer who's gonna become a good raider will beeline for your guild without fail). There'll be no helping themselves for anyone outside today's raider guilds because there's none left who's capable, you gobbled all of those up.

That's how Crom stayed "healthy" all these years too, it was fed other servers until it was the only one left, and now it's starving (which is also FC's fault). Raider guilds are exactly the same; sure you're good now but how are you gonna replace any expert raider who stops logging? How many players have your raidforce siphoned off of less successful guilds? What happened to those guilds who lost their most talented raiders? Sure, it's not your fault other people failed, but your offer of help is worthless because there aren't any "potential raider guilds" to be helped. Current raider guilds are standing on a mountain of their corpses. What remains is a bunch of guilds that are barely able to field half of a consistent raider force (if that) and nothing short of actual raider players joining them will .

Your wrong, Prophets would bring half a raid force to help, even more if it were needed. We ran Coalition Raiders of Set for three years every Friday night, teaching everyone that we could reach how to clear T3, We did this with our full T3 mains and later our t4 toons, We trained tons of future raid leaders and raiders. We have never poached players from other guilds and rarely do we open up for new players. When we do pick up new players we tend to go for the underdog, a fresh player in shinny crap gear that we can help and mentor. Folks have even left this guild because of this. in Prophets we try to take the long term approach creating a raiding environment that respects and understands that family and real life issues mean more that pixel loot. Helping the game and community is a goal and desire.
Nothing really is left to be said on this subject, but the anger is sad to see. Small guilds can still succeed and train, but t3, t4 content will remain out of reach for a vast amount of the player base unless enough like minded folks ban together and go thru the painful process of progression raiding, there is no easy solution as its a game that requires you to kill x to get loot.

[Valicard]

Your wrong, Prophets would bring half a raid force to help, even more if it were needed. We ran Coalition Raiders of Set for three years every Friday night, teaching everyone that we could reach how to clear T3, We did this with our full T3 mains and later our t4 toons, We trained tons of future raid leaders and raiders. We have never poached players from other guilds and rarely do we open up for new players. When we do pick up new players we tend to go for the underdog, a fresh player in shinny crap gear that we can help and mentor. Folks have even left this guild because of this. in Prophets we try to take the long term approach creating a raiding environment that respects and understands that family and real life issues mean more that pixel loot. Helping the game and community is a goal and desire.
Nothing really is left to be said on this subject, but the anger is sad to see. Small guilds can still succeed and train, but t3, t4 content will remain out of reach for a vast amount of the player base unless enough like minded folks ban together and go thru the painful process of progression raiding, there is no easy solution as its a game that requires you to kill x to get loot.

It has nothing to do with "teaching" anyone anything about raid tactics. Believe me, when you wipe for 6 hours on the same boss the very simplistic tactics required in ANY tier raiding is emblazoned in their mind. What it has got to do with is teaching how to play the class their currently on...except with tanking and aggro (you can only get this down by actually doing the raid with the other tank, can't prepare for this, there is no aggro meter and different tanks develop weird quirks on how they get aggro and dish out certain aggro levels in certain intervals of a fight). DPS,Heals,Tank, is the order of importance for a "good" raid force if you MUST order them. Although, all are equally important (with any one being "bad" will lead to failure no matter what) you can still adjust DPS to accomodate tanks and heals can be increased in lieu of DPS in order to support weaker tanks. But DPS is DPS, and how the very un-imaginative way this game was setup, DPS is king. If your raidforce has enough DPS, you are basically 90% of the way there. Although, I have limited experience in T5, I'm willing to bet a ton of DPS is probably the most important component. In this regard, 90% of the players out there do not "maximize" their toon's DPS. In fact, it's usually as much as 65% below max potential DPS for their AA's and gear.

Also, there are a precious few good healers in the game anymore. I can name a few, Awuelo is an excellent healer, Frigg which I believe is in a U.S. guild is probably THE best BS on Crom server Euro or US side, Zavon on his ToS has the same output as 3 "standard" healers in the game currently, and maybe 5 more that are in various (mostly Euro side guilds). All other healers are total trash, I'm sorry if you're doing anything less then 450 hps (which is really really easy to do) you're failing at healing. Watch this slow train-wreck suddenly speed up when/if DT's get nerfed.. the QQs will be epic.

[Blows]

It has nothing to do with "teaching" anyone anything about raid tactics. Believe me, when you wipe for 6 hours on the same boss the very simplistic tactics required in ANY tier raiding is emblazoned in their mind. What it has got to do with is teaching how to play the class their currently on...except with tanking and aggro (you can only get this down by actually doing the raid with the other tank, can't prepare for this, there is no aggro meter and different tanks develop weird quirks on how they get aggro and dish out certain aggro levels in certain intervals of a fight). DPS,Heals,Tank, is the order of importance for a "good" raid force if you MUST order them. Although, all are equally important (with any one being "bad" will lead to failure no matter what) you can still adjust DPS to accomodate tanks and heals can be increased in lieu of DPS in order to support weaker tanks. But DPS is DPS, and how the very un-imaginative way this game was setup, DPS is king. If your raidforce has enough DPS, you are basically 90% of the way there. Although, I have limited experience in T5, I'm willing to bet a ton of DPS is probably the most important component. In this regard, 90% of the players out there do not "maximize" their toon's DPS. In fact, it's usually as much as 65% below max potential DPS for their AA's and gear.

Also, there are a precious few good healers in the game anymore. I can name a few, Awuelo is an excellent healer, Frigg which I believe is in a U.S. guild is probably THE best BS on Crom server Euro or US side, Zavon on his ToS has the same output as 3 "standard" healers in the game currently, and maybe 5 more that are in various (mostly Euro side guilds). All other healers are total trash, I'm sorry if you're doing anything less then 450 hps (which is really really easy to do) you're failing at healing. Watch this slow train-wreck suddenly speed up when/if DT's get nerfed.. the QQs will be epic.

Aaand we are back to the 'OH SEE EU FAIL AND US RULE', geez man, sure put some point, but cut that crap. You probably only know US players since most EU players will refuse to group with you.

If US raiders are that awesome, explain to me, why are the majority of kills done by EU guilds?

To your whole dps is more important than tanks conversation: No. You do need dps, but you need adaptivity of your tanks, high aggro levels to maintain aggro and knowledge of all 3 tankclasses to succesfully tank, more than you need dps.

[Maly]

hah, where you get all these %'s? And about healers, you know everyone or is that also based on some mysterious percentage calculator? also, where is that 450 hps awesomenessborder based on? healparse with blue spamming? Right on time healing worse than bumping heals into barely scratched tank? thx for this thread anyways, was good worktime reading

[Valicard]

Aaand we are back to the 'OH SEE EU FAIL AND US RULE', geez man, sure put some point, but cut that crap. You probably only know US players since most EU players will refuse to group with you.

If US raiders are that awesome, explain to me, why are the majority of kills done by EU guilds?

To your whole dps is more important than tanks conversation: No. You do need dps, but you need adaptivity of your tanks, high aggro levels to maintain aggro and knowledge of all 3 tankclasses to succesfully tank, more than you need dps.

No, it's DPS. But this is mainly because I play tanks when I come into a raid. DPS in this game is A.) Offense B.) Defense C.) Insurance against fails/people who don't know tactics. And in terms of your "EU Fail and US rule"; reading comprehension ftw. If you bothered to read that post it's probably exactly the opposite.