Revisiting downtime

[Allielyn]

For those of you who don't have a sense of humor, that was mild teasing.

But seriously, 8 wipes in a night? You can't tell me that's the norm for your guild unless you're breaking into new content, and then you should be expecting a bit of a rough night. Your science has cherry-picked the sample night, and that's bad science at best, and intentional fraud at worst.

On topic, I still like the idea of meditative trance increasing each tick. Alternatively, you could remove the mana sink portion in exchange for being silenced (effectively unable to cast spells). I don't know if we can separate that from being actually silenced in game though, and that would be awkward.

 

[Marza]

But seriously, 8 wipes in a night? You can't tell me that's the norm for your guild unless you're breaking into new content, and then you should be expecting a bit of a rough night. Your science has cherry-picked the sample night, and that's bad science at best, and intentional fraud at worst.

I disagree with you NOT because of what you are pointing out, but because I do not think the amount of time wasted is acceptable no matter the circumstances.

 

[vistachiri]

Oh and

1) Like-ish.

2) Like a moderate amount. However by the time I catch a rez df is gone or close to gone anyways. So limited benefit really.

3) I like this best out of them. Though I do think some of the other ideas should be implemented even if this is. Provided of course we're still talking the same med rate as we get now and then gradually increasing. Intcasters other than necros already have to plant their asses on the ground long enough, which greatly decreases their desirability for grouping (i.e. why sit around waiting when you can just bring dps that doesn't need to, and also doesn't fall over in a strong breeze), I wouldn't like to see it go down any further.

4) Bleh

5) I guess, but see statement on #2. Would be more useful while being still alive, and in groups.

6) I like this too. But still not as much as 5 or 3, though I like both of those because they extend outside of just raids.


On another note, I'd rather have death fatigue stay as is than have a silence. I'd like to still be able to do things like, use gatenecks, use tboots, invis clickies, etc. For situations where one must do things like run back, get away from roaming mobs (Especially a consideration in newer content), get things from a bank, etc, etc, etc.

 

[Raralith]

For those of you who don't have a sense of humor, that was mild teasing.

But seriously, 8 wipes in a night? You can't tell me that's the norm for your guild unless you're breaking into new content, and then you should be expecting a bit of a rough night. Your science has cherry-picked the sample night, and that's bad science at best, and intentional fraud at worst.

On topic, I still like the idea of meditative trance increasing each tick. Alternatively, you could remove the mana sink portion in exchange for being silenced (effectively unable to cast spells). I don't know if we can separate that from being actually silenced in game though, and that would be awkward.

Unfortunately, the fastest you will go is your slowest character. If one person dies after a raid, it will take roughly 11+ minutes before that person is 100% ready. From the original thread, "This is a game. Waiting is not a feature, it's a pain." If everyone steamrolled content and no one died, this wouldn't be a problem.

I can pretty confidently say that TU has the best geared players, and every single one of us knows our class and what we are doing. If it were up to other guilds to figure out content (instead of it being provided or fed to them since it does happen), every guild that progress will be in this situation. Even when a guild has everything down, you still need to wait between fights and again, "this is a game. Waiting is not a feature, it's a pain."

 

[Manguadi]

I think 2-3 wipes per new strat is probably par for the course. Whatever the case, 14 minutes on the shortest wipe is clearly too long. Ask anyone about this night and they will probably tell you it was wildly successful and a lot of fun. Nobody has just sat down and calculated exactly how much time you waste. We did 1 totally new encounter and 2 previously broken mobs with new strats.

Also, the science pie is just a joke. The important part was the individual wipe times, which are obviously too long. If anyone brings it up again that 8 wipes is too many for a night I'll just delete the cumulative data.

Thade said the fastest he can get back to the zone is 7 minutes, and then he has to run through it. It's not going to be any faster porting to a zone like ToT, and only a couple minutes faster to port to prison. On top of that you have 8 minutes to med to full, and a few minutes on top of that for buffs. You also lose time from refreshing, keyboard bugs, random crashes, internet failures, etc, which essentially nothing can be done for, but still contribute to total time spent doing nothing and these weren't even tabulated.

 

[Boehm]

3) Make each tick of meditative trance do more than the previous one.

This is the most interesting of the choices, because it could potentially also redress mage and wizard group desirability as well. Though it might have to be front end loaded, with a max rate starting first and ticking down to the "normal" rate to help them with an eye to being fom in some specific time frame. Though I imagine this is tricky with the huge pools of higher tiers.

The weighting is suggested as groups don't med until the healer(s) needs to med and seldom get out of combat. And as aas and gear accumulate, healers eventually don't need to med, except in specialty content. But with weighting, the aforementioned classes might be able to gain usable mana regen in combat lulls.

 

[huey]

Maybe the downtime should just be made more fun. Install whack-a-mole machines at each boss or multipull set-up point for example.

 

[Temellin]

More like whack-a-troll amirite

 

[Cyzaine]

Haters hating on gems I see.

 

[Temellin]

Seriously though, half of a ~5.5hour raid spent to wipe recovery is riddic, not 'fun' at all, and does nothing to enhance the game play experience.

 

[Thade]

Seriously though, half of a ~5.5hour raid spent to wipe recovery is riddic, not 'fun' at all, and does nothing to enhance the game play experience.

I don't know temellin, having to spend like 30 minutes of the raid running back while half of our raid got to afk and wait for rezzes sure is fun!

But if it weren't for half our raid being down time, how would xach have time to send us all really creepy tells?

 

[Temellin]

Pwr Shrew Thade, Pwr Shrew

 

[Wiz]

If wiping wasn't a pain, raiding would be nothing but an endless string of successes. Don't want downtime, don't wipe. It encourages guilds to do their best instead of just lazing through content knowing they can try again five minutes later.

 

[huey]

If wiping wasn't a pain, raiding would be nothing but an endless string of successes. Don't want downtime, don't wipe. It encourages guilds to do their best instead of just lazing through content knowing they can try again five minutes later.

It's not so much that it's a pain. Folks understand that's necessary. It's more the wasted time. Two and a half hours of a five hour raid (while maybe an extreme case unless you're that guild at the front of content) is kinda crazy. It's sitting in front of a computer doing nothing. (or running off to do whatever) It's not so much a crutch is wanted, but when we're on we actually wanna be playing. My whack-a-mole comment was obviously in jest, but the only reason it even entered my head was thinking of something to fill all that wasted time.

 

[Wiz]

It's not so much that it's a pain. Folks understand that's necessary. It's more the wasted time. Two and a half hours of a five hour raid (while maybe an extreme case unless you're that guild at the front of content) is kinda crazy. It's sitting in front of a computer doing nothing. (or running off to do whatever) It's not so much a crutch is wanted, but when we're on we actually wanna be playing. My whack-a-mole comment was obviously in jest, but the only reason it even entered my head was thinking of something to fill all that wasted time.

Yeah, the time investment is what makes it a pain. SOD is a game about time investment, like it or not, and the only way to make a failure noticeable to the player is by making it cost time. This is part of why people like SOD - failure and death has actual consequenses - and I think you would find that if wiping and dying in general was to be reduced to a minimal time investment, nobody would have any incentive to do fights right anymore, it would be much easier to just zerg every five minutes.

 

[Miffy]

If wiping wasn't a pain, raiding would be nothing but an endless string of successes. Don't want downtime, don't wipe. It encourages guilds to do their best instead of just lazing through content knowing they can try again five minutes later.

If the downtime is truly meant to be a punishment it is still too harsh. The big problem with it is that it prevents guilds from wanting to try new harder raid mobs and especially mobs they do not know the strat for yet. It does not encourage guilds to do their best but instead dicourages them when they die to a new encounter becues there goes 25 mins of raid time. The agrument is not "hey after everyone dies lets just pop back up with full hp and mana at our last save point". The penalty for death will remain but the recovery period should be reduced to an average of 10 mins or so. It is still going to suck when you wipe, it is still going to take time out of the raid to recover but I agree with the OP that I do not play the game to sit and stare at my spell book for 2.5hrs a night.

If a guild ends up zerging they are still just going to die over and over if they cannot beat the encounter I don't see what the problem is with getting more tries at something a night, I am not going to play sloppy all of a sudden even if I know my downtime will be 10 mins instead of 20.

 

[Allielyn]

The big problem with it is that it prevents guilds from wanting to try new harder raid mobs and especially mobs they do not know the strat for yet. It does not encourage guilds to do their best but instead dicourages them when they die to a new encounter becues there goes 25 mins of raid time.

Not that I disagree with your overall premise, but this argument in particular is moot - you do encounters you don't know the strat for yet because there are upgrades to be had (and for the exploratory factor), and you break into new tiers because you are tired of doing the old stuff. You reach a point where scheduling a raid night to wipe a few times while learning content is preferable to raiding for rots. It may not be the funnest raid night while wiping, but it makes the success of the endeavor sweeter.

With the possible exception of The Custodian, I have never seen new content go ignored unless there was too much old content on the same tier that was relatively much easier (like Thaz). Even with the current penalties on wipe, I have never seen this be the problem you are presenting it to be.

 

[Dinadass]

With the possible exception of The Custodian, I have never seen new content go ignored unless there was too much old content on the same tier that was relatively much easier (like Thaz). Even with the current penalties on wipe, I have never seen this be the problem you are presenting it to be.

I think the fact that only 1 guild has done much of anything in Ikkisith, despite plenty of others being tiered for a lot of it, is evidence of the contrary.

 

[Thade]

I think the fact that only 1 guild has done much of anything in Ikkisith, despite plenty of others being tiered for a lot of it, is evidence of the contrary.

Except they're not. If you can't kill Thaz 1/2, ikisith progression raiding as we've experienced it really isn't at your tier.

Edit: That may not be it's intended design, but that's the reality of it. Hell, the entry boss to the first zone has a higher dps requirement than any other fight that we've come across far and away.

 

[Dinadass]

Except they're not. If you can't kill Thaz 1/2, ikisith as we've experienced it really isn't at your tier.

Meh I was under the impression that there were some tier 6-8 ish mobs that you guys have done and then moved on from since they weren't really worth it for TU. I'm not saying that the top 10 guilds could all steamroll through Yclist and Saitha, but when guilds have to call raid nights early or cancel raids alltogether due to lack of targets, you'd think they would do some Ikkisith content if they considered it at all worthwhile.

If the amount of time between attempts was reduced by 50% it would definitely encourage guilds to try new content or other mobs that are hard for their tier more often, which is a good thing.