Raid Accessibility & Content Relevance

Haenir

Haenir

Dalayan Master
Spin-off thread thinking about this:

Marza said:
The bottom line is we would love to see raiding become more accessible. But we have not come up with an elegant solution that doesn't just obsolete 70%+ of our raiding content.
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What is accessibility?

IMO accessibility is primarily a logistics problem. Every raid encounter requires a certain amount of player skill (button pressing, good leaders/strats, listening to instructions, etc.) and a certain amount of player time (time at the raid itself, time invested in character progression, finding appropriate targets up, etc.).

So the basic ways to increase accessibility are:
  1. Simplifying raid mechanics
  2. Increasing player skill
  3. Shortening the time it takes to raid
  4. Making character progression faster
 
getting mid tier (6-8) gear should be able to be done w/ 6 man progression imo. Considering how low population is these days and how a majority of the guilds are in spires/yclist most old world raids are kind of obsolete.
 
Keep in mind folks that it needs to be possible for newcomers to form a low-tier guild and move up through the tiers without the assistance of outsider/ringer help. If too much low tier content is removed or changed to only allow 6/12 man, then this would not be as feasible a task. The availability of low tier content should not suffer because higher tier content is needed. IMHO the real answer is new high tier content and new 6/12 man content on all tiers rather than sacrificing current content. That said, I think the staff are rather busy right now, but I am sure that once things have settled down there will be more new content added.
 
New players can form groups to do VE/Dmaps easily enough. They can also buy enough BoE equipment to help them get through the first 3-4 tiers imo if they form a brand new guild and do the two things I previously stated. However, I will say relic scroll drop rates for the first few tiers are definitely a bit low for how often low tier raids actually happen imo.
 
Haenir said:
So the basic ways to increase accessibility are:
  1. Simplifying raid mechanics
  2. Increasing player skill
  3. Shortening the time it takes to raid
  4. Making character progression faster
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4B. Gearing
You can be the most skilled player in the world with all day to press buttons, but if you character isn't geared you're dead weight. As it stands now Tmaps, Cmal, and BoE basically negate the need for t1-4ish 18man to exist in terms of gearing. Reappropriate all of this content to fleshing out the 12man, 6man, and leveling experience which isn't as monumental of a task as it would first seem, specifically:

Old World Bosses: Lenny, Torrents, Lavascale, Protoype, etc...(9ish)
Turn all this stuff into Adepts and segue Adepts right up to endgame.
ex: 55, 55, 59, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64 (for 55 locks, people stuck on simple tmaps for whatever reason, and then one per level right up to 65)
The fights would have to be retooled but the gear is, for the most part, so bad at 65 it would just need to be made xpable to be worth doing compared to BoE

Dreadfang, Halls of Misery, Stormkeep, Stormseye, DHK (4 zones) + open world Dragons/Giants
Reclassify as 12man content. Some tweaking as needed.
Improve the drops to be in line with t5-7 18 man stuff.
FoB could possibly be included on this list, but I don't know anything about the FoB mobs.

Low end Tower of Agony, Plane of Entropy, Plane of Earth, Plane of Water, City of Mercy, Plane of Nightmare (27ish encounters)
Tune up the fights and drops to be in line with T5 18man.
Devs could probably do very minimal changes to the T4 stuff (18 encounters) for it to be T5 since T4-6 are already a bit muddled on difficulty.

All that other stuff (dungeons mobs, misc ikisith mobs, freeport, etc...)
Call it 6 man content since most of it is killed by duos/groups looking for quest items or cash drops already.

Speaking of 6 man content...
Implement the new Blackburrow 2.0 and load it to the gills with lvl 61-65 spell drops, rare vanity clickies to entice leets to help out, and cmalish gear
Expand the Bounty System by adding more bounties and more pieces of gear similar to the belts
Make tmaps drop more stuff- items and plats. Make tmaps a real bridge between newbs needing gear and people plat farming for the charm plat sink (the system works!).

=No content is lost. As a matter of fact, largely forgotten content becomes much more relevant. The game is made MUCH more welcoming to people leveling up to 65. New 65s are more easily able to integrate into the raid endgame without being deadweight or needing Saint Irelc to gear them so much.
Added bonus: since the current T5-14 18man would be relabeled as T1-10 the eventual Kaezul fight would be turning things up to 11.

Also reduce the respawn rate on all raid content. More things up = more people killing them = more playing and less time loading increasingly unsatisfactory track bots. More room for competition on each tier. Less frustration when the #$%@ RNG #$@%@s you in the #$%@!%$ for the #%#$@@!% #%@^$$%#! @#%^%&#@! time over that #%@@^ #@%@#& hat. I just want a new hat /sob.
 
Speaking of relics and gear that are newbie accessible. There really should be something done regarding Tarlisha in catacombs and 3.2/4.1/4.2 in cmal. Mobs that were a source of new player relics got hit with the vah bomb. 4.1 is now an alternate for a swarm quest as well but that's not such a big issue as it needing to die to let somebody into 4.3. Unless I'm dumb and all this time we've been able to just walk right past the harvester. The vah really shit the bed on some low end player progression.
 
In a perfect world where there are tons of newbies this would work.

Shards of Dalaya in its current state is unfortunately too barren to warrant these changes. You want to make newbies feel welcomed and help them out? Then go out of your way and invite some into your group and or make a newbie yourself and level among them.

Want to help newbies even further? Then tell your friends / get people to start playing again. Content is not keeping newbies away from progressing... The lack of people together and the community is.

Why I think the ideas above are terrible - At the moment there is no low end guild. Putting in work to change the low tiers into adepts will basically waste a persons time (the dev). As it stands a lowbie is able to load a community grinkles bot and kill himself an adept. The same shit will happen with "higher adepts".

We need lowbie 12 man zones!!!!!!! - You dont even have enough to field this many currently. you would waste someones time just putting work into this.

We need more 6 man zones!!!!! - Cmal is already a zone and extremely under used. Dont forget you can get gear out of catacombs too. (i remember using gear out of this place and cmal when coming up).

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Sometime earlier in the year or last year or last 10 years ago I was speaking to Woldaff or Taryth and told them that the account drive was wasted. There was no influx of fresh flesh and literally it was empty. I bet them that I could sucker more old dudes into playing than what the account drive brought in. Enter GoonSquid 13.8 . https://shardsofdalaya.com/forum/threads/goon-squad.29161/

This guild went RINGERLESS during every single one of our raids until T5 / T6 . There was no lack of content up to that point. Eventually Thade took over and they powered up to killing 4.3. But we started from 0 and made it to T5 in a really short amount of time.

-=-=-=

Want to make the server better? Relics fucking suck. This was a huge bottleneck in both character and guild precision. This helps both casters and melee's out. This is something that really needs to be looked into.
 
Haenir said:
1. Simplifying raid mechanics
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I think most people will agree that making raids easier is a poor solution.

Haenir said:
2. Increasing player skill
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Obviously most of this is on players. However, there are a few things that could be done dev-side:
  • Better in-game guidance for players on progression. I know I spent a long time on the wiki when I first started getting a sense of character progression. Some alternate (in-game) ways for new people to actually know how to progress their characters would be useful I think. For example, an NPC that points players to tiered content appropriate for their gear/exp.
  • Adding mechanics that encourage people to lead guilds/raids. For example, xp bonus/alt currency/etc. granted to guild officers based on raid success. Or somehow rewarding raid leaders based on the number of players in raid (to encourage full raids).
  • GM events based on player skill. For example, a race through a maze of Prison-type eyeballs, a how-many-mobs-can-you-mez competition for enchanters, etc.
Haenir said:
3. Shortening the time it takes to raid
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  • Shortening wipe recovery -- mage pet summons with full summoned equipment, making buffs inherently soulbonded when a class is in raid, aoe rez (if new client could have the rez acceptance dialogue?), pre-relic placid focus line of buffs for enchanters
  • More content that is "instanced" -- that is, encounters like the Heli'ze fight and t-maps -- which don't depend on finding a target up at the right time (i.e., more friendly to casuals)
  • Paid NPC oracle-- i.e., you could spend X amount of plat to have an NPC track a given mob for Y amount of time -- bonus: this is a dynamic plat sink.
  • Paid NPC raid translocator -- i.e., you could spend X amount of plat to have an NPC teleport your raid close to a given encounter -- bonus: this is a dynamic plat sink.
Haenir said:
4. Making character progression faster
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  • Low-tier gearing IMO is problematic atm -- many BoEs have made low-end content feel irrelevant (because it is more efficient to farm some plat and buy your T4 equivalent gear than to raid low-tier) there is a whole chunk of content that already feels obsolete because of this. The issue isn't a lack of content at low tiers -- but rather a lack of interest in that content/lack of population at that tier. Maybe some kind of alt. currency with additional rewards (think lesser refuge augs, tomes, gear) would increase the relevance of T1 - T4 raid content.
 
Otcho said:
Unless I'm dumb and all this time we've been able to just walk right past the harvester. The vah really shit the bed on some low end player progression.
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pretty sure sometime this year jumbers made an update somewhere saying 4.1/2 have to be dead to get to 4.3. We were just walking by them for months
 
Obligatory post requesting a server wipe. Puts everyone on the same level, and content won't need to be tweaked.

Now that SOD is on EQEMU, if a server wipe is announced in say, 1 month from now to gain publicity, I'm sure it would attract a small crowd.

There is enough replay ability with this game in terms of quests/classes to keep most people playing I'd imagine as well.

Or we can let the server die a slow painful death.
 
Salarus said:
Obligatory post requesting a server wipe. Puts everyone on the same level, and content won't need to be tweaked.

Now that SOD is on EQEMU, if a server wipe is announced in say, 1 month from now to gain publicity, I'm sure it would attract a small crowd.

There is enough replay ability with this game in terms of quests/classes to keep most people playing I'd imagine as well.

Or we can let the server die a slow painful death.
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I like this post, a lot. Good for players, good for devs.
 
Haenir said:
  • Shortening wipe recovery -- mage pet summons with full summoned equipment, making buffs inherently soulbonded when a class is in raid, aoe rez (if new client could have the rez acceptance dialogue?), pre-relic placid focus line of buffs for enchanters
  • More content that is "instanced" -- that is, encounters like the Heli'ze fight and t-maps -- which don't depend on finding a target up at the right time (i.e., more friendly to casuals)
  • Paid NPC oracle-- i.e., you could spend X amount of plat to have an NPC track a given mob for Y amount of time -- bonus: this is a dynamic plat sink.
  • Paid NPC raid translocator -- i.e., you could spend X amount of plat to have an NPC teleport your raid close to a given encounter -- bonus: this is a dynamic plat sink.

[/LIST]
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Having persistent gear for pets would be cool, or at least a way to make it smoother for classes(cmd givemymagepethisclothes). Is it possible to have the spell give a character a no rent item that acts as a reagent for playing pet dress up via a command or something. You'd only have to cast it once per person(instead of per dead pet) that way but that might be a lot of work for such an arguably minor convenience. But at the same time reworking how this works could lead to cooler features or itemization for pet classes.

Also is it possible to get the auras to work? Spells like placid focus could just be a constant thing for enchanters if there was a way to disable it in combat but keep it readily available. queue argument about enchanter spell slots.
 
Salarus said:
Obligatory post requesting a server wipe. Puts everyone on the same level, and content won't need to be tweaked.

Now that SOD is on EQEMU, if a server wipe is announced in say, 1 month from now to gain publicity, I'm sure it would attract a small crowd.

There is enough replay ability with this game in terms of quests/classes to keep most people playing I'd imagine as well.

Or we can let the server die a slow painful death.
Click to expand...

As much as I think a reset would be fun, there are so many things that would need to be fixed before it would ever be feasible.
 
Salarus said:
Obligatory post requesting a server wipe. Puts everyone on the same level, and content won't need to be tweaked.

Now that SOD is on EQEMU, if a server wipe is announced in say, 1 month from now to gain publicity, I'm sure it would attract a small crowd.

There is enough replay ability with this game in terms of quests/classes to keep most people playing I'd imagine as well.

Or we can let the server die a slow painful death.
Click to expand...

My wife and I both play and have about 10 years invested into this game on our characters, mainly on our 4 main characters that we box frequently. We are both donators and have donated to this game as we could afford to do so over those 10 years. I simply don't want to do what I have already done over again, especially since my play time early on can't be repeated so it would take me longer to get back to where I am now. There's only a sliver of a chance that we'd come back and play after a wipe, but it's much more likely that we'd devote our current play time to something else. In fact, more I type on this post and think of all the quests, waiting on rare mob spawns, farming for faction, etc. ... the less I want to have to do that all over again. I know, we're only two people, but I have a feeling more current players would leave than you think.
 
Anyone thinking the community would survive a server wipe is either in denial or an idiot. Those with the most to lose are the ones most likely to not return. You lose your character as a high end raider, ok that is a disaster but mendable via your guildmates help. Everyone loses their characters and suddenly everyone has to do everything over again. Would you willingly subject yourself to it again knowing you can't get assistance from a higher character?
 
@Nebi
That is a wonderful rant wherein you fluctuate between telling me why I am dumb and providing perfect arguments for the kind of changes I suggested. Lay off the pipe.

@Ryst
Your argument against a server reset is eerily similar to the reasons I hear from people who don't want to play on this server. If established players could channel those feelings of "shit I don't want to do again" into "shit that needs to be fixed" the server would be much more appealing to new players.
 
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