humble request on higher tier raids

[Wesell]

A year is waaaay too fast to be able to churn through that much raid content imo and shows something is wonky with the rate of progression. I am all for new/more content but when it gets to the point where somebody can progress to end game in a year from nothing, something is not right. I don't care how dedicated those players were, there should have been something preventing the ability to steamroll tiers like that. Considering this is an MMORPG it stands to reason that it should be more of a timesink (slower progression).

Well poking around on the forums, it looks like they were breaking into IP a little over a year ago. A year to go from getting in to IP to end game-ish for a pretty serious raid guild. I can't imagine what game you could be comparing SoD to if you think that's waaay too fast. In fact SoD takes an extremely long time to finish compared to other MMOs.

 

[Bud]

People always run out of things to do (or want to do) and people will always complain...especially at the high end. This is not new nor isolated to SoD. In theory would not slowing down progression in whatever manner keep people busy and help prevent players from reaching the point where there is nothing left to do? I agree there needs to be a balance in content/raiders but I also feel a reduction in drop rate is required. Allielyn also mentioned increasing spawn rate along with a reduction in loots per kill, that would give more folks an opportunity to raid something and it would do so without having to design/itemize/balance/babysit/re-balance/re-itemize new content.

This is not middle ground; there's still a rift being created between the hardcore and casual players. Your suggestion favors the casual mentality. There's a difference between "keeping people busy" and just slowing them down. The stigma every MMO faces is that it is simply impossible to cater to everyone's style of play.

Slowing down progression would only cause contempt among the hardcore raiders. Quite honestly, if you're willing to raid 30+ hours a week you'll earn the right to be top end way faster than any casual/semi-casual guild.

In the end, it's pure iron will that drives guilds to the top so quickly. All the guilds that have stomped their way to the top -- Exodus (pre dipshits), Steel, Ruin, Revelation, Phoenix Rising, etc -- would be there regardless of the variables. They are the dedicated, unstoppable force behind the crippling nature of every MMO: hardcore against casual; rich against poor; strength against weakness. Ever since they reached the top tiers they have become an umbrella flagship for the lower tier guilds. Honestly, how many guilds or players do you think currently move through the tiers without the help of members from one of these guilds? The answer is zero. And they're a big help.

Your posts are also completely disregarding the effects of tomes. They are much, much more decisive than gear from any tier.

Like I said, the only way to appease everyone is to add new content. A lot of it. Guess what... they're working on it!

 

[Rorne]

You need to maintain a certain amount of competition in a game and honestly people who play more will always have an advantage no matter what you do. I think the best thing to hope for at this point is that Ikisith will help relieve some of the tier congestion.

 

[Bud]

You need to maintain a certain amount of competition in a game and honestly people who play more will always have an advantage no matter what you do. I think the best thing to hope for at this point is that Ikisith will help relieve some of the tier congestion.

This is correct. Relieving the congestion currently on this tier by way of modifying it is a lost cause, one that should not even be considered. There's no amount of creativity that could salvage gold from the absolute clusterfuck shitpile at the current endgame.

Wait for new content.

 

[Pronger]

This is not middle ground; there's still a rift being created between the hardcore and casual players. Your suggestion favors the casual mentality. There's a difference between "keeping people busy" and just slowing them down. The stigma every MMO faces is that it is simply impossible to cater to everyone's style of play.

Slowing down progression would only cause contempt among the hardcore raiders. Quite honestly, if you're willing to raid 30+ hours a week you'll earn the right to be top end way faster than any casual/semi-casual guild.

In the end, it's pure iron will that drives guilds to the top so quickly. All the guilds that have stomped their way to the top -- Exodus (pre dipshits), Steel, Ruin, Revelation, Phoenix Rising, etc -- would be there regardless of the variables. They are the dedicated, unstoppable force behind the crippling nature of every MMO: hardcore against casual; rich against poor; strength against weakness. Ever since they reached the top tiers they have become an umbrella flagship for the lower tier guilds. Honestly, how many guilds or players do you think currently move through the tiers without the help of members from one of these guilds? The answer is zero. And they're a big help.

Your posts are also completely disregarding the effects of tomes. They are much, much more decisive than gear from any tier.

Like I said, the only way to appease everyone is to add new content. A lot of it. Guess what... they're working on it!

The hardcore still and always will have an advantage regardless on the number of drops per kill. That is not hard to comprehend, people who devote more time/energy into the game will reap more rewards. Yes, I have no doubt the content that Ikisith will bring will be a huge help in opening up congestion...but for how long. How long till it ends up being the same..

absolute clusterfuck shitpile

...regardless of the additional content unless something is done to slow down progression the clusterfuck as you put it will just move from raid tier A,B,C to X,Y,Z. Same as when 2.0 went in, the errors will not likely seen right away but they will be seen down the line. In this case though we have an opportunity to correct previous mistakes, one of which I think was the high percentage of drops per mob to bodies in a raid. Trying to appease everyone is a fool's game, it can not be done and attempting to do so is pure folly.

There should be a gap between hardcores and casuals, and a marked one at that. 2.0 has been a boon to everyone, casual and hardcore alike. Not everything is about hardcore vs casual.

I'll just repost what Allielyn said since it's worth restating.

Emphasis is mine...

Previously, in a 36-man raid you were rewarded with 3 loots/kill (1/13 men in your raid), and now you're rewarded with 2-3 loots/kill on 18 man raids (1/6-9 men in your raid). That's essentially double the progression rate, and yes, that has a lot to do with our current situation. Lowering the drop rate to 1 loot/kill with up to a 50% chance of 2 (depending on raid makeup) would slow progression on all levels - back to the original rate - without doing away with the close-knit guild setup that we like.

 

[Elysium]

What I wouldn't do to see 36-man raids again...

 

[Goldfolk]

There is one bottleneck that nobody has mentioned that is causing probelms for tier 4ish Guilds that of Quest farming.

There are quests such as Jayla which require items from lower tiered Raid zones. As a result places such as PoA and PoEarth are being farmed for various items. This is perfectly legitimate but whereas a tier 4 Guild needs to have all 18 players online, a tier 9 Guild takes these mobs down with 6-10 toons all of them boxed which means a lot of targets are taken before the lower Guilds have even gone on line.

Given that there are always some people from higher tiered guilds on it's a wonder that any targets are up sometimes. It's worth noting that when the established guilds were developing they didn't have these issues.

I don't see any easy solutions to the problems raised in this thread. SoD is like an ecosystem; you change the system in one place and have all sorts of unintended effects elsewhere.

It's all specualtive but 36 man raids would reduce the number of guilds but might also increase accessibility for less popular classes. Given the much larger number of people in a Guild it might also improve Guild stability which has been a major issue recently even in tier 9 guilds.

 

[gtoo]

pretty sure 36man raids is not going to happen. there is a reason why it was changed and it is working

 

[kibeth]

One of the main reasons we have a bunch of mid-low tier guilds is that 95% of them form and disband within 6 months, and then reform with some new members and have to start over. They rarely get to tier7, and then when they reform they start over in tier3-4 zones. Work up to tier 6ish, a bunch of people stop playing / start hating each other, they reform and start back at tier3-4 again.

Its happened so many countless times its sad. And REALLY is the biggest contributor to congestion in those tiers. The guilds simply have no longevity. If they did, you'd see more threads asking for tier 8-10 content. Honestly, with the amount of people in t8-10 right now, there is enough content for healthy competition AND everyone is able to stay relatively happy with the targets they get chances at. Any lower than 8 though, and your seeing a ton of people floating in that range that either haven't progressed in ages, or haven't been able to hold a guild together long enough to progress.

And I still think any suggestion made in this thread so far won't have any lasting effect on the raid situation. If you look at WoW, it takes roughly 3-4 months after an expansion comes out for everything in the game to have been killed. Then they patch in a new instance raid, with tons of reputation farming and whatnot, and within 2 months its all wiped out and almost completely farmed through. Another month or so after that, hello new content patch. The raid game in that game is so much more fast paced in terms of progression its just silly. As it stands, a guild could form in WoW today and finish its available content at max level (80 i think right now?) within 6 months, easily.

EDIT:: Numinous was in IP about a year ago, but we also broke up about 4 months ago..... so 8 months from IP to Sanctum isn't really fast at all. Progression even for the hardcore raiders once you get to t8 is a total snails pace, completely by design. And I like it that way.

 

[Shazam]

In addition, in the defense of progression here, the raid game became much much MUCH more accessible to a larger percentage of the population post-SoD 2.0, where loot rewards were effectively doubled and a smaller force was needed to progress. Prior to that change, few guilds made it past tier 4/5.

In fact, that's a big part of our problem. With so many mid-tier zones to choose from now, and the quicker loot return and ease of entering the raid game, there is very little competition in raiding coming up through the ranks - until you get to the 'bottleneck'. Which brings us to the second faulty assumption: that easing the bottleneck would fix the problem of having something to kill. It won't.

There are diminishing raid targets at the higher end, so pushing guilds now at tier 8 through to tier 9 would only move the bottleneck: AND make it worse.

This is all 100% true, glad someone said it. Its way to easy to box up to a current raid force, hence you can make a pick up raid in 30 minutes to kill farhags or UT or whatever X zone u want.

 

[Shazam]

Or switching back to 36 man raids.

As dirty as the staff seemed to have thought they were, they did wonders in keeping the amount of guilds on this server down. When 36 man raids were going on, there were about 375-400ish on at peaks, sometimes hitting 450 and beyond, yet there were only like, 5? major guilds at the time 2.0 went in.

Larger raid caps > less guilds > more content for all.

Good Idea also. Way harder to box 36 person raid.

 

[GuiardoTuneweaver]

There is one bottleneck that nobody has mentioned that is causing probelms for tier 4ish Guilds that of Quest farming.

There are quests such as Jayla which require items from lower tiered Raid zones. As a result places such as PoA and PoEarth are being farmed for various items. This is perfectly legitimate but whereas a tier 4 Guild needs to have all 18 players online, a tier 9 Guild takes these mobs down with 6-10 toons all of them boxed which means a lot of targets are taken before the lower Guilds have even gone on line.

Given that there are always some people from higher tiered guilds on it's a wonder that any targets are up sometimes. It's worth noting that when the established guilds were developing they didn't have these issues.

Not quite accurate... many of those zones did not exist when the established guilds were developing. PoEarth, PoEntropy, CoM were not around when most of those guilds were passing through. Even more of those mid tier zones were not around for the older guilds.

 

[Pronger]

Good Idea also. Way harder to box 36 person raid.

No, it really wasn't. It was much easier in fact. Keep in mind that in 1.0 the guilds were MUCH bigger. Ruin alone had 50+ raiders active to one extent or another at pretty much any given point, the actual roster was tremendous. It was not uncommon to start a raid with 20ish actual bodies to start a clear and hold the fort as more mains logged in.

The upside to 36 man raids was that more classes/players were able to join a raid. 3 enchanters? No problem. 4 shaman? Ok. 3 Beastlords? Fine. Generally, at least in my experience...if you logged in you raided, regardless of class, provided there was an open spot or a bot to dump. It allowed much more flexibility in comparison to the 18 man setup and many guilds recruited based more on the person and less on the class....but I may be looking back on ye olden days with rosy colored glasses a bit.

Not to go way off topic but 6 man raid quality content is/was a horrible idea since it excluded so many classes/players. I only bring this up to illustrate the issues with diminishing raid sizes. I was quite surprised when Emberflow went in to be honest, I expected the lessons from Cmal 4-2 would have been learned. Nobody likes being left out due to the class they chose and love to play and that is entirely understandable.

Either way, its completely moot. 36 man raids are not likely to make a return and 6 man raid content is here to stay.

 

[Nodnal]

I love six man content, and I know others do as well. For me, it is some of the most enjoyable things to do while you chill with your closest friends. The people who get left out are bad players, not bad classes.

 

[Allielyn]

One of the main reasons we have a bunch of mid-low tier guilds is that 95% of them form and disband within 6 months, and then reform with some new members and have to start over. They rarely get to tier7, and then when they reform they start over in tier3-4 zones. Work up to tier 6ish, a bunch of people stop playing / start hating each other, they reform and start back at tier3-4 again.

If indeed this is the case, we must ask ourselves is what is correlation, and what is causation? Do guilds which progress get to a spot where they hate each other, then reform over and over which leads to congestion, or maybe congestion leads to a lack of targets and guilds begin to hate raiding and hate each other, then break up and reform and try to bash their way through that crowded tier all over again.

 

[Ponden]

The upside to 36 man raids was that more classes/players were able to join a raid. 3 enchanters? No problem. 4 shaman? Ok. 3 Beastlords? Fine.

This is horribly untrue. The only condition that would make ANYONE welcome in a raid would be unlimited raid slots. 36 man raids force massive min-maxing when content is not trivial. Certain classes stack fine, others stack terribly. You'd never want 4 shaman or 3 beastlords. It's always the best of ability: (rogue/wizard/cleric) that over stack on 36 man raids.

Sure, when content is easy, you can have your 4 shaman, but whenever content is critical difficulty -- the same thing happens with 36 man raids as happens with cmal4-2 (min maxing.)

Sticking with 18 man raids is the best way to go. It allows small differences in raid configuration (which is vital for strategy) without leaving any single class out.

 

[Allielyn]

In any case, 36 man raids are not and never will be back. It's a waste of time to discuss them as a potential solution.

 

[kibeth]

If indeed this is the case, we must ask ourselves is what is correlation, and what is causation? Do guilds which progress get to a spot where they hate each other, then reform over and over which leads to congestion, or maybe congestion leads to a lack of targets and guilds begin to hate raiding and hate each other, then break up and reform and try to bash their way through that crowded tier all over again.

There are a few guilds that are based on a core group of friends that really like hanging with each other, and also happen to be raiding. They progress at whatever pace they can with their raid schedule, and it may be really slow or no progression one month, and next month every raid is a new target. They're just friends, and they hang out through raiding.

Then you have guilds that are there to get loot. Yeah, there might be some small relationships in them, a couple groups of friends, but there is no guild loyalty or desire to be there beyond getting the loot. You see these same 6-8 friend groups form a guild, recruit new people, get to the same slow point in progression their last guild got to, and the people there riding along for the loot (everyone that isnt those 6-8 people) start to fall off cause the loot and progression slowed down.

Then these 6-8 people reform again, and the reach their stagnation point in progression and their guild falls off.

That being said, I don't think getting rid of current congestion is a needed thing. Current congestion is player made, not because there isn't enough content. There is definitely tons of content to go around at this point.

The biggest problems I see in low-tier raiding is guild longevity, which the developers can do nothing about. The biggest problem with new High-tier raiding is that often it is too limiting (6 man content doesn't help guilds progress, it helps the "elite" 6 people in a guild progress, and maybe later once the content is trivial they can swap 1-2 of those elite out to gear up some of their guild mates, but at that point their regular 18 man raids are getting better gear anyway).

Emberflow and Cmal 4-2 are fun and all, but they don't help progression on an equal scale to say, the introduction of PoFrost did. They also lead to resentment between guild members. Oh, I totally love playing my enchanter, but until we've progressed to the point where Cmal 4-2 is basically not an upgrade anymore, nobody will even take me there because I can't contribute very much in the 6man setup. Its not a problem with enchanter who operate fine in a 18 man setup, its a problem with content being too limiting, with too narrow a scope. At that point you can't blame the players that want that awesome 6man loot and happened to enjoy playing one of the 6-8 awesomely useful grouping classes for doing the content, and excluding those other classes that just don't contribute as much. You have to look at the devs for making the content that by design excludes a significant part of a guilds raiding roster.

 

[Bud]

If indeed this is the case, we must ask ourselves is what is correlation, and what is causation? Do guilds which progress get to a spot where they hate each other, then reform over and over which leads to congestion, or maybe congestion leads to a lack of targets and guilds begin to hate raiding and hate each other, then break up and reform and try to bash their way through that crowded tier all over again.

MOST of those guilds start and end within 2-3 tiers. Why? Most of those developing guilds use a different variety of ringers that have been inherited (refer to my umbrella analogy). The realization that having bigboy ringers isn't going to automatically magick them to the top coupled with internal chaos is what rips a huge percentage of these guilds apart. No one wants to start at the beginning anymore, they just want to be at the top.

That being said, I don't think getting rid of current congestion is a needed thing. Current congestion is player made, not because there isn't enough content. There is definitely tons of content to go around at this point.

You are high out of your mind if you actually believe this...

The hardcore still and always will have an advantage regardless on the number of drops per kill. That is not hard to comprehend, people who devote more time/energy into the game will reap more rewards. Yes, I have no doubt the content that Ikisith will bring will be a huge help in opening up congestion...but for how long. How long till it ends up being the same.

...regardless of the additional content unless something is done to slow down progression the clusterfuck as you put it will just move from raid tier A,B,C to X,Y,Z. Same as when 2.0 went in, the errors will not likely seen right away but they will be seen down the line. In this case though we have an opportunity to correct previous mistakes, one of which I think was the high percentage of drops per mob to bodies in a raid. Trying to appease everyone is a fool's game, it can not be done and attempting to do so is pure folly.

You missed the point. You're erroneously implying that guilds are progressing superfuck fast because progression has become excessively easy one way or the other. False. Guilds are progressing rapidly because they are dedicated. What you're suggesting would create a rift among the hardcore players because they would not earn enough rewards for their efforts. I know, factually, how much time and patience it takes to progress in SoD. Read: the current amount of time and effort it takes to progress a guild is very fucking congruent with the current rate of return. Just because you think it's not doesn't mean it's not.

All of that is irrelevant; you're still wrong. What happens when you nerf the drop rates and increase the spawn timers? Progression doesn't slow down, nor does it ease the bottle neck. Why? Guilds start raiding twice a day, eight days a week. Eventually, after resentment burns deep, the hardcore players will migrate elsewhere because they aren't seeing enough return for their efforts.

Hardcore players keep SoD -- and every other game for that matter -- alive. Who the fuck do you think invests the largest stock in SoD? Not casual players. You need to start realizing that hardcore players drive and support every MMO ever.

 

[kibeth]

You are high out of your mind if you actually believe this...

I do, if people had a desire to progress themselves rather than be progressed, they would actually progress. There are going to be rough spots where it is hard to find targets, either from higher guilds doing PoLore stuff, or from other guilds just like you doing their best to progress. It is at the time when targets are scarce and raids might not be their optimum that guilds are truly tested. Not on their ability to kill targets, but on their ability to actually be a guild, and not just a glorified PuG.