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Raids
Adamantine
Member RarePosts: 5,094
An interesting discussion started in the official forum: https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2251/raids-what-and-why
As a rule, there seems to be at least 10 ex-EQ players for every single VG player ... so they all talked about EQ raids, exclusively. Which seemed to have been far, far inferior to VG raids.
Short oversight over VG raids:
- Initially VG raids was 3 groups (18 people), later they added 4 group raids (24 people)
- The main raid location was APW, the Ancient Port Warehouse, which was opened ca 1/2 year after game release. It was the only location of Vanguard with
(a) Instancing. There have been 6 copies of the dungeon. Every raid group had to descide in which copy they wanted to raid by themselves. More than 2 raid forces in any of these chunks was not possible - the lag would be too huge.
(b) steampunk Gnomes. Never saw steampunk in any other place of VG.
- APW was extremely hard in the beginning. Of course later maxlevel was raised to 55 and APW became the newbie raid dungeon. However, they never made another raid dungeon like this.
- Every raid boss, wether in APW or overland, required a specific strategy. Not following this strategy would cause the raid to wipe.
Examples for a strategy:
DRESLA
This was an important overland boss, a female dragon, that will drop the Wyven flying mount.
Two tanks required, one main that can take a beating, and a second that ideally should be a Paladin (best no-damage aggro)
Sorcerer or Shaman required; they need special ice damage spell macros.
First tank engages Dresla. Dresla gets turned away from the raid to avoid the AoE attacks.
Second tank handles Dreslas children, IIRC called "spawn". The goal is to get them damaged for aggro, but not too much so theres no danger of them dying.
Classes able to give aggro (Rogue Monk Disciple Psionicist) push that to the second tank.
Sorcerer/Shamans take care for pyres that pop ASAP because they have massive AoE attacks.
If any of Dreslas spawns die, Dresla would go into a rage that very likely will kill the main tank and wipe the raid. Of course a top geared and buffed tank could still survive this.
Once Dresla was dead, her children could be slaughtered saftely.
IIRC this was a 24 man raid, I dont remember clearly. Dresla would often (30% chance ?) drop a Wyven mount, the second best flying mount in the game (the best was Venerable Griffon, which was a raid update of the Young Griffon one would get from the Griffon questline. However, since the Griffon Questline also gave items that would speed up travel in general, getting the Griffon was kind of required either way). You needed also to have killed Kotasoth in order to unlock said mount.
There are bosses which required much more complex strategies, Dresla herself could just be killed from top to bottom, as long as the adds would be handled correctly.
What I loved about Vanguard was:
- Raids have been hard. REALLY hard. Especially if one didnt knew the strategy and/or was undergeared.
- A single person doing an error, like a melee attacking when they really shouldnt, or a mezzer not timing the mezz correctly, could cause a wipe.
- Really EVERY class was wanted and required. Lets see:
+ Tank: Well every raid force needed up to 3 tanks, depending upon boss. Possibly four with 24 man raid bosses.
* Warrior, well they could kick stances, and if you had too many tanks, they could deal quite some damage in offensive stance
* Paladin was basically required against certain bosses (Kotasoth), because of their fear immunity. Also in the late game they became high dps in raids. They had a great lower melee aggro buff, too (one you had to cancel on other tanks). In raids they could actually heal themselves, while DKs lifetaps became completely useless.
* Dread Knight could disenchant. Actually pretty well, since they had a reason for a high INT score (for example my Qaliathari DK was skilled +5 Str, +5 Con, +4 Int). In the late game, finally DKs could also keep just as good aggro as the other two; for the longest time however DK was the low aggro tank
+ Melee Damage Dealers
* Rogue was second highest dps and could feed aggro to the tank
* Ranger was the best stance kicker in the game, very important with some bosses; also some nice buffs
* Monk obviously was the ideal puller, they could feed aggro, and they could kick stances
* Bard gave a flat 60% increase in damage to their group - basically they've been REQUIRED. A good raid would have one bard per group. A weak disenchant, too. And a mezz.
+ Healers well duh, the ideal raid force needed 2 healers per group
* Cleric was the ideal tank healer for their instant massive heal (tank from near death to max, INSTANT, recast 8 secs). Best general buffs, but no nice extras like runspeed.
* Shaman had the most debuffs of any class in the game. They also had reactive heals and many desireable buffs. Bear Shaman for example had the strongest endurance buff, and it stacked with the Cleric one. Also of course their dps was far above that of Clerics.
* Disciple could kick stances. Their Fake Death was not useable in raids, though. However they could heal without mana, VERY important in some fights; Disc could for example keep healing the main tank against Kotasoth during the fear phase. Very good dps, too. Buffs was low, but they could put a nice HP buff on the main tank with a specific series of attacks.
* Blood Mage omg so much utility, will I even manage to remember everything ? They could cancel spells, I think also disenchant. They could share hitpoints with the tank (and BM has a ton of HP, thanks to selfbuffs). They had special buffs (symbiotes) that allowed spike damage. And of course they had massive dps, despite being a healer.
+ Magic Damage Dealers
* Sorcerer was most of the time just the glas cannon, but they could disenchant, dispel spells and as only class reflect spells, and they could mezz (sleep). Also had a shorttimed elemental immunity group buff, dont remember that one ever used for anything. Oh, and a couple resistance buffs that havent been bad at all for raids.
* Druid had best spike dps in the game, some emergency healing that sometimes really mattered in raid, another sometimes very important ability that allowed the whole raid to continue to function without mana for a while (on a long recast, so one even needed TWO druids in one fight)
* Psionicist was the best CC in the game, including mezz, and Bards could NOT substitute for them (we tried). Absolutely required for certain fights. Also wanted for pushing aggro to the tanks, feeding mana especially to Clerics, their great buffs (only class except Phoenix Shaman with energy buffs), and other trickery (only class except Paladin who could withstand Kotasoth fear)
* Necromancer. Required for ANY raid force due to their meat buff - trade INT and MP for STR and HP. That obviously made a huge difference for the tanks. The main issue was that really only one Necro was needed - since their damage over time spells wouldnt stack, etc.
As a rule, there seems to be at least 10 ex-EQ players for every single VG player ... so they all talked about EQ raids, exclusively. Which seemed to have been far, far inferior to VG raids.
Short oversight over VG raids:
- Initially VG raids was 3 groups (18 people), later they added 4 group raids (24 people)
- The main raid location was APW, the Ancient Port Warehouse, which was opened ca 1/2 year after game release. It was the only location of Vanguard with
(a) Instancing. There have been 6 copies of the dungeon. Every raid group had to descide in which copy they wanted to raid by themselves. More than 2 raid forces in any of these chunks was not possible - the lag would be too huge.
(b) steampunk Gnomes. Never saw steampunk in any other place of VG.
- APW was extremely hard in the beginning. Of course later maxlevel was raised to 55 and APW became the newbie raid dungeon. However, they never made another raid dungeon like this.
- Every raid boss, wether in APW or overland, required a specific strategy. Not following this strategy would cause the raid to wipe.
Examples for a strategy:
DRESLA
This was an important overland boss, a female dragon, that will drop the Wyven flying mount.
Two tanks required, one main that can take a beating, and a second that ideally should be a Paladin (best no-damage aggro)
Sorcerer or Shaman required; they need special ice damage spell macros.
First tank engages Dresla. Dresla gets turned away from the raid to avoid the AoE attacks.
Second tank handles Dreslas children, IIRC called "spawn". The goal is to get them damaged for aggro, but not too much so theres no danger of them dying.
Classes able to give aggro (Rogue Monk Disciple Psionicist) push that to the second tank.
Sorcerer/Shamans take care for pyres that pop ASAP because they have massive AoE attacks.
If any of Dreslas spawns die, Dresla would go into a rage that very likely will kill the main tank and wipe the raid. Of course a top geared and buffed tank could still survive this.
Once Dresla was dead, her children could be slaughtered saftely.
IIRC this was a 24 man raid, I dont remember clearly. Dresla would often (30% chance ?) drop a Wyven mount, the second best flying mount in the game (the best was Venerable Griffon, which was a raid update of the Young Griffon one would get from the Griffon questline. However, since the Griffon Questline also gave items that would speed up travel in general, getting the Griffon was kind of required either way). You needed also to have killed Kotasoth in order to unlock said mount.
There are bosses which required much more complex strategies, Dresla herself could just be killed from top to bottom, as long as the adds would be handled correctly.
What I loved about Vanguard was:
- Raids have been hard. REALLY hard. Especially if one didnt knew the strategy and/or was undergeared.
- A single person doing an error, like a melee attacking when they really shouldnt, or a mezzer not timing the mezz correctly, could cause a wipe.
- Really EVERY class was wanted and required. Lets see:
+ Tank: Well every raid force needed up to 3 tanks, depending upon boss. Possibly four with 24 man raid bosses.
* Warrior, well they could kick stances, and if you had too many tanks, they could deal quite some damage in offensive stance
* Paladin was basically required against certain bosses (Kotasoth), because of their fear immunity. Also in the late game they became high dps in raids. They had a great lower melee aggro buff, too (one you had to cancel on other tanks). In raids they could actually heal themselves, while DKs lifetaps became completely useless.
* Dread Knight could disenchant. Actually pretty well, since they had a reason for a high INT score (for example my Qaliathari DK was skilled +5 Str, +5 Con, +4 Int). In the late game, finally DKs could also keep just as good aggro as the other two; for the longest time however DK was the low aggro tank
+ Melee Damage Dealers
* Rogue was second highest dps and could feed aggro to the tank
* Ranger was the best stance kicker in the game, very important with some bosses; also some nice buffs
* Monk obviously was the ideal puller, they could feed aggro, and they could kick stances
* Bard gave a flat 60% increase in damage to their group - basically they've been REQUIRED. A good raid would have one bard per group. A weak disenchant, too. And a mezz.
+ Healers well duh, the ideal raid force needed 2 healers per group
* Cleric was the ideal tank healer for their instant massive heal (tank from near death to max, INSTANT, recast 8 secs). Best general buffs, but no nice extras like runspeed.
* Shaman had the most debuffs of any class in the game. They also had reactive heals and many desireable buffs. Bear Shaman for example had the strongest endurance buff, and it stacked with the Cleric one. Also of course their dps was far above that of Clerics.
* Disciple could kick stances. Their Fake Death was not useable in raids, though. However they could heal without mana, VERY important in some fights; Disc could for example keep healing the main tank against Kotasoth during the fear phase. Very good dps, too. Buffs was low, but they could put a nice HP buff on the main tank with a specific series of attacks.
* Blood Mage omg so much utility, will I even manage to remember everything ? They could cancel spells, I think also disenchant. They could share hitpoints with the tank (and BM has a ton of HP, thanks to selfbuffs). They had special buffs (symbiotes) that allowed spike damage. And of course they had massive dps, despite being a healer.
+ Magic Damage Dealers
* Sorcerer was most of the time just the glas cannon, but they could disenchant, dispel spells and as only class reflect spells, and they could mezz (sleep). Also had a shorttimed elemental immunity group buff, dont remember that one ever used for anything. Oh, and a couple resistance buffs that havent been bad at all for raids.
* Druid had best spike dps in the game, some emergency healing that sometimes really mattered in raid, another sometimes very important ability that allowed the whole raid to continue to function without mana for a while (on a long recast, so one even needed TWO druids in one fight)
* Psionicist was the best CC in the game, including mezz, and Bards could NOT substitute for them (we tried). Absolutely required for certain fights. Also wanted for pushing aggro to the tanks, feeding mana especially to Clerics, their great buffs (only class except Phoenix Shaman with energy buffs), and other trickery (only class except Paladin who could withstand Kotasoth fear)
* Necromancer. Required for ANY raid force due to their meat buff - trade INT and MP for STR and HP. That obviously made a huge difference for the tanks. The main issue was that really only one Necro was needed - since their damage over time spells wouldnt stack, etc.
Comments
If your concern is that raids won't be interesting if EQ is favored here, you have nothing to worry about. Nobody from EQ is saying they want boring tank and spank fights with no skill, etc... I think you are safe.
I think they will end up taking the good ideas from both games and making a solid raid system.
I hate hard player limits tho... it was fun doing a Dragon with 120 undergeared people to get it down for the first time. Then coming back a year later, geared up more and being able to do it with 60 people or even less. Leaving behind people due to a hard raid size cap has never been fun in any game i have played since they started this crap.
Sure enoucnter are easier to balance, yadda yadda. Tell that the healer that has to sit out due to harsh DPS requirements, or the DD that has to sit out next fight due to needing an additional offtank this time. Did i mention the offtank is only needed for 2 out of 9 bosses? Yes, but it is warm outsite the instance!....
Seriously, i hate it.
MMOs finally replaced social interaction, forced grouping and standing in a line while talking to eachother.
Now we have forced soloing, forced questing and everyone is the hero, without ever having to talk to anyone else. The evolution of multiplayer is here! We won,... right?
However, the biggest draw of EQ was that it wasn't always cut and dry. Some raids required only a few groups, some many, some an army. That was the beauty of it. They didn't try to fit everything inside of some box. It was raw.
Sanitized game design is boring. Trying to balance everything is boring. Creating rules that everything has to operate by sucks and stifles creativity. That is why EQ was so fun, because everything from the classes, to the abilities, to the items, to the content were loosely put together to give the player freedom. Players learned how to do all kinds of things that were never intended.
I believe they are currently estimating that only 15% of the content will be raid content. The rest will be small to large group content with probably some stuff in between.
Its really a wait and see, but the classic EQ/VG design that is being carried over into Pantheon is not one of raid importance first and foremost, regardless of what EQ turned into years later.
The real difference in EQ and game design today, is that it promoted freedom and the social factor above all else. It did not try to just create the hardest content and limit you to only X players and X classes. The content varied drastically, and some things you could kill, some you could not. Sometimes you even could do better with less people, as trying to keep undergeared players alive often meant creating other problems.
Its safe to say we just want them to stick with what worked. There are all kinds of other ways they can improve and expand upon that foundation.
Yes, naturally. It's logical that the target audience of a game, say core groups or casuals, get the typical bait and switch bullcrap. Game starts off group centric or casual, then becomes a raiding game, where raiders get the best rewards and to frakking hell with the intended audience, they should just shut the hell up and take it like a good carebear.
Maybe if a developer had the balls to follow through for their target audience, they might enjoy greater success and a significant increase in player retention.
I can understand objection to the "cater to the raid game" problems of MMOs. EQ is a key example where at a certain point all they did was cater to raids and dismissed non-raiders.
That said, if you are a small group player (ie you never raid) and group content progression is not designed around raid progression, then there is no argument. That is, if players who only group find that they can no longer do group content because they design new content based on the raid content, well... I will be right next to you throwing out an objection. If your complaint is that raiders will have better gear even though you can still do your group content, well... that I have a problem with.
We have patiently watched year after year where we were told by new players what would work, what was best, what is the "future" of MMOs. We have been there, done that, seen what those people wanted and found those games wanting.
Do you really think your ideas are new or special? Maybe the reason ideas are being squashed is because we have seen some variation of that idea before and it failed miserably?
Nah, we are just a bunch of outdated has beens who want a dead concept that is in the past, you know... like how turn based games are antiquated and a thing of the past... wait... hmmm.... No they aren't, but they were claimed such by mainstream kiddies for years.
How many MMOs out there have end game progression aside from raiding? I'm not just talking about best gear, but content that allows you to improve your character when at max level. Since most games depend on gear to do that, it makes the gear gap even worse. At least EQ eventually came up with Alternate Advancement, but it was always secondary to raid loot which had the greatest affect on character power. I prefer games with character progression, hence my dislike for games like GW2 and others similar to it, but I'd like to see progression style MMOs switch it up for once and give other play styles a chance to shine.
Are you trying to say that the raiding paradigm is what made old school games special? As an old school gamer, I completely disagree with that. There are plenty of other systems from the old days that I do think would apply today, such as complex class systems, stats, epic quests, open worlds, virtual worlds, worlds that warrant exploration, complex social systems, combat that is paced to allow for communication without having to use voice chat, public dungeons, reasonable ways to gain experience than just questing, live trading, droppable equipment, being able to cast buffs and heals outside of the group .... etc.
I also remember many people praising Vanguards dungeon design in much the same way.
I myself however have no reference. I can only repeat what other people told me.
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Small group content is great, I was always an advocate for it and I tend to prefer group play over raid play these days (I have led and run raids in many games). In fact, one of the things that caused me to move from EQ to WoW was their claim that it would be a small group focused game, not a heavy raid one that EQ had become. In fact WoW raid systems were initially slated to be a max of 25 man size. You had release Strathalome and Scholomance as 10 man raids as well.
At the end of the day, apples to apples, raid content will always be more difficult due to the added process of managing more people. Yes, that is essentially the only real difference (aside from minor aspects), but... it is an added difficulty requirement none the less and so the rewards for such should be appropriately balanced to that. Also keep in mind that raid drops if properly balanced, raids will provide limited rewards for the group. That is, more people means less items (and no, they should not allow raid drops to be proportionally rewarded based on increased size). So a 6 man group has a 1 in 6 chance (1 drop out of a 6 man group target) of the item, but the raid should have worse odds with maybe, 1 in 8 chance (3 drops out of 24).
I believe it has already been stated though that raid focus won't be like it was in EQ, that the game will be more small group based focus. That said, raids bring about an interesting mechanic that was a lot of fun at times, so while I agree the game shouldn't be entirely focused on it, I don't think it should dismiss it either.
Lastly, keep in mind that the reason that companies will often go raid focused isn't because it is the best, or because that is what players want, rather it is because it is the cheapest system to implement. Creating tons of group content is much more development intensive that creating a single raiding source. I am not saying that is good, just that is what happens. Pantheon has a chance to be strongly small group focused, but how successful that approach is will be extremely dependent on them putting in content that is slow as molasses to get through. If it is anything like the content progression speed we have today in games, raiding will be the only practical and economical solution, regardless if it is a good game play decision.
I think if they can keep up with the content and make the content hard as nails so it takes weeks and months for a group of 6 to get through and experience an entire dungeon in all its drops, rares, etc... Then the game will be doing well, even if raids are a small portion of the focus.