More mid tier 6 and 12 man content

[Goldfolk]

I understand that Iki2 will have more 6 man and 12 man content but would make a plea that you consider setting quite a lot of this to fill the hole between Tier 3/4 and Tier 6/7.

My reason for suggesting this is that at the moment High Tier Guild raiding is in decline and many of the High Tier Guilds seem to have lost the will to continue as the effort in back-gearing is monumental. Similarly mid tier raiding seems to be almost non-existent apart form PuGs.

There is almost no mid tier content which gives progression. For example, Cmal 3.0 is for low level 65s with 3.1 and 3.2 (only 1 mob in each) jumping in difficulty and 4.0 requiring say Tier 4/5 and 4.1 being high tiered.

Emberflow really only starts at T6 ish and becomes very difficult very quickly.

Adding in some mid tier content would allow people to progress despite the relatively few mid tier Guilds and 12 man content would enable those same Guilds to continue raiding even when numbers were low.

The net effect hopefully would be to encourage people to continue playing even if they have difficulty finding a raiding guild and it would enhance the survival prospects of struggling guilds by allowing the dedicated to progress. This in turn would increase the supply of well geared active toons.

It may be my imagination but the number of active veteran players has shrunk and this cannot be a good thing longer term.

 

[Goldfolk]

I was just giving Cmal as an example.

The loot there is better but I was more concerned about giving people progression beyond 3.0. I love Cmal as a zone and found it a wonderful challenge as a newish 65.

What I am asking is that we have the equivalent of 3.1 as a whole zone where people can equip and a 3.2 level zone and a 4.0 zone.

Similarly we have a 12 man zone at Tier 3/4-6.

 

[metvayne1]

I don't think the lack of content is the problem, it's more of playerbase discretion.

 

[Tecnodoc]

I don't think the lack of content is the problem, it's more of playerbase discretion.

I agree. If you start out in the game now you are looking at atleast 1 year of hard grinding in order to get done with codex's, just so you can start the new iksith tomes. Although you can leapfrog most tiers by joining a higher tier guild (if you are, say, a cleric). You are still going to be feeling extremely behind.

 

[Boehm]

I agree. If you start out in the game now you are looking at atleast 1 year of hard grinding in order to get done with codex's, just so you can start the new iksith tomes. Although you can leapfrog most tiers by joining a higher tier guild (if you are, say, a cleric). You are still going to be feeling extremely behind.

With the addition of the Ikisith zones and the vastly increased xp there, this isn't true. Even prior, a casual player could easily solo grind the codexes in 3-5 months depending on playtime.

 

[Moraelintz]

I started my very first sod charchter in January, I am now 65 and about to start my codex's. I also play very casually and don't get to grind much esp compared to others.

 

[Goldfolk]

I'm a little puzzled at the direction of the thread. The point I'm making is that there are very few opportunities to gear up now because the Guild system is creaking.

Adding 6 and 12 man content that spanned the gap between the best buyable gear and the start of really serious raiding (T6/7) would allow some keen people to progress who may now be stymied by the collapse of many active guilds.

Unless you are a cleric, necro or possibly a rogue just what Guild opportunites are there?

 

[darksabbath]

Go to revamped Cmal, get phats to gear up with. I was there earlier today, the new gear is actually pretty nice.

Well done Dev team, well done. Get another dungeon similar to this in difficult/exp/cash, and those mid-tiers are good to go, imo. And maybe making the respawn a tad quicker (in cmal, and whatever new zone.)

 

[robopirateninja]

Unless you are a cleric, necro or possibly a rogue just what Guild opportunites are there?

guild raids are 18 members and at maximum you can only have three of each class so clerics necros and rogues can only make up half of a raid.

for a long time the only 6man zones in the game were in the low-mid range: cmal and cata. now there are emberflow, hmal and abyss as well.

6man and 12man content were never meant to replace or bypass raid progression, in the tiers you are complaining about standard xp into AAs tomes or codices provides more than enough progression imo

 

[metvayne1]

I'm a little puzzled at the direction of the thread. The point I'm making is that there are very few opportunities to gear up now because the Guild system is creaking.

Adding 6 and 12 man content that spanned the gap between the best buyable gear and the start of really serious raiding (T6/7) would allow some keen people to progress who may now be stymied by the collapse of many active guilds.

Unless you are a cleric, necro or possibly a rogue just what Guild opportunites are there?

im confused because there are many great tier 5 and under zones out there. PoWater has a ton of bosses and the loot is amazing. Torment + Event, Air, PoEntropy. Fire is amazing as well and overlooked.

 

[Goldfolk]

im confused because there are many great tier 5 and under zones out there. PoWater has a ton of bosses and the loot is amazing. Torment + Event, Air, PoEntropy. Fire is amazing as well and overlooked.

The point I was trying to make is that it is such a pain to backgear that high end guilds have reacted by merging and swallowing the best players from other guilds decimating the Guild structure.

There is now only 1 Euro raiding guild where once there were 3.

I don't play on US time but it was my impression that nearly all high end raiding was now done by one guild and that mid-tier raiding was severely curtailed as well. This seruously limits progression as Guild openings are few and far between except for a few favoured classes.

You can get great progression gear in all the planes you mention its just very very difficult to find a guild to raid with. Mid-tier guilds are inherently unstable at the best of times as the drop out rate is high and good players get stolen.

It may be that I have misunderstood the situation and that there are several active mid tier US guilds, if so I apologise but, if not, then the game will suffer if people don't have a method of progressing.

I am not suggesting making the game easier only, in the absence of many guild opportunities, allowing 6 and 12 man progression.

 

[Tarutao]

I would make a separate argument that the dearth of new lower-tier guilds is a result of "the level 55 crowd". At some point, they'll decide that 200 AAs is enough at level 55 and get to level 65... and they'll probably skip straight to Tier 5.

If that coding solution for only allowing you to loot a corpse of a mob up to 10 levels higher than you is found, then the rule change can be safely made and perhaps the level 55 crowd will get a couple levels and start raiding (which a lot of them will probably enjoy)

 

[jew_nose_it]

psh only 200AAs, dragov got like 350!

 

[knowom]

A reason starter guilds don't happen or only briefly on SoD is partly due to the vast amount of over tiered players hindering progression path to gear up alt's.

The other is the turnover rate is terrible trying to get 18 dedicated players particularly with not many new players around any longer.

The last part ties in with parts 1 & 2 it's just far easier to tier hop on the back of a more established guild than to deal with parts 1 & 2.

The problem is as the original poster said his guild isn't running on all cylinders yet which takes far more time than people might realize now for new guilds on the server than it did several years ago when SoD had a lot more people looking to join starter guilds around.

12 man content would help ease that transitional period for new guilds on the server as well as alts among other things it's a win win so long as the challenge to reward ratio is proper. I know from personal experience how irritating it is trying to run a new guild is on this server. I really don't see a good reason why it couldn't be a valid option.

 

[metvayne1]

A reason starter guilds don't happen or only briefly on SoD is partly due to the vast amount of over tiered players hindering progression path to gear up alt's.

This is a knee-jerk excuse used by many. It is untrue. I could list all the content that is currently unkilled but that would be a giant waste of my time.

 

[knowom]

This is a knee-jerk excuse used by many. It is untrue. I could list all the content that is currently unkilled but that would be a giant waste of my time.

Some are unkilled for good reason AWT is a prime example difficulty and loot aren't really on par.

Some guilds have a very limited amount of time to play to scout, pick a target new guilds are very fickle when it comes to this and may only have a few scouters.

Lastly some just needs a specific item drop or flag to progress to the next tier and when it's down it's FML sideways because they are SoL.



Part of the problem was like he mentioned not being able to get 18 people together for raids, but getting 12 people for raids would be much more easy to manage.

It's not hard to understand why 12 man raids would help and be useful. It's also less tedious setting up a 12 person raid.

Guilds don't always have the luxury of having 9-18 dedicated players with matching time schedules around.

It would help allow guilds to restructure as well as opposed to vanishing completely.

 

[Draeos]

As the leader of a guild that is less then a year old and started on about T3, I am gunna call BS on pretty much everything you said. We are breaking T9, And as we went through the tiers we never ran into any issues with lack of targets cuz people are gearing there alts on content, Try and get a guild to run a raid just to gear your alt. Do it, I dare you.

 

[darksabbath]

Well.. if you have only 9 people, how'd you make the guild???

Anyways, if you can get 12 people on a regular basis, you just need 6 of them to 2-box for now, and then find active people of those classes to fill in the gaps. Not really that hard, once you get the hang of things.

 

[knowom]

12 man content could fill or bridge a gap in the game that's currently nonexistent. Perhaps Goldfolk is only able to get 6 people 2 boxing. 12 man content available would probably be more favorable than trying to find 6 pickups every time he wants to raid might be what he's getting at with the topic.

 

[Rorne]

Perhaps Goldfolk is only able to get 6 people 2 boxing.

They can form two 6-man cmal groups. Really though either you put the effort into raiding or you don't. This is a game that can take a disgusting amount of time but that's basically what attracts people to the raiding game and what they thrive on and if you can't meet those standards of involvement you are better off playing a different game. I'm not saying that to be dismissive, I'm saying it because it's a core element that's not going to change.

Also I'd like to echo that there is a glut of content that doesn't get messed with aside from some occasional molestation for polore artifacts and if you are having trouble finding people to form a full raid JOIN A DIFFERENT GUILD OR RECRUIT MORE PEOPLE, I mean if this is such a pervasive and common problem you should have no shortage of people to shack up with.