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Forced-Raiding: Worst MMORPG Feature? [POLL]
truenorthbg
Member Posts: 1,453
Forced-raiding is the most coercive feature in MMORPGs because it requires 1) joining a guild 2) to raid 3) to progress. Forced-raiding:
- Prevents you from joining a guild you want based on community, values, maturity, etc.;
- Prevents you from progression in solo and group content;
- Prevents you from playing when you want as you need to join raids at (a) scheduled times at (b) specific places;
- Frustrates many in non-raid guilds because they cannot participate in raid content; and
- Generates drama that is unnecessary within guilds and between other guilds.
It generates drama within guilds with loot systems, scheduling, raid leader frustration with inattentive members, etc. It generates drama that is unnecessary between guilds when access to the raid content can be sabotaged or the other guild gets there first.
Overall, it is often poorly designed as a timesink to keep people paying at the "end-game."
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
Comments
Yes, imho you're absolutely right!
About one and a half years ago I started thinking: "doesn't support groups of any kind with more than 8 members" would be a great mark of quality for a new mmorpg.
Of course: The "forced" raiding you describe is the problem. I don't think I'll ever again play a mmorpg that even slightly encourages players to participate in events with large player numbers on a regular basis.
LLAP!
Gethron
Are you guys serious at all? wth are you thinking? what does Massively Multiplayer mean to you? if you dont want to participate in things with 40 other people i think that is fine, but dont complain about it. its MASSIVE thats the whole freaking idea behind an MMO.
Why the hell would you play an mmo if you dont want to play with massive amounts of other people. I thought when blizzard cut down the raid number to 25 they were idiots. Playing with 40 other people in a game is AWESOME.
If you dont want to play with more then 8 people then you shouldnt even be on this site. Go write on a forum about halo, cause that is the kind of game you are talking about. They already have 4 vs 4 games.
And tell me you dont usually play at a pretty much constant certain time of the day. I know for sure i do. On weekdays i get home from work at pretty much the same time every day, and that is when i play my game. And if you only play on weekends, thats too bad, i dont usually play on weekends unless there is nothing else to do.
Dont complain about MMO's you guys. Come on. You should think wth playing an MMO is all about and play another type of game if you dont want to play with MASSIVE AMOUNTS of other people
I think Blizzard's decision to reduce the raid requirements from 40 to 25 was necessary, as the majority of players do not want to participate in zerg-raiding; it is too affected, disorganized, scheduled, predictable, and so forth.
I think you will find you are in the minority. As an aside, I enjoy raiding when it is not coerced but an optional part of gameplay and content.
Overall, from reading your post, I see you love WoW's raiding but you missed the point.
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.
I think the raiding is just badly executed.
To remove DKP, why not just add some points (might be reputation) that would be gained by boss kills in a raid, and that you could spend to buy a gear or any other reward (special mounts, special houses ..) Everyone would be getting it at the same rate, and everyone could spend it on any gear they want.
To remove long resting, and re-fightning the same mobs, why not remove all trash mob zones, put a couple of very challenging bosses, to reduce the time spent in it, but increase the challenge. Who wants to fight the same trash every day in the same graphical dungeon? The fun is in the challenge, and defeating hard bosses, not in the trash mobs timesink.
To remove the need for guilds of having 40 people or 30 people ready for raid, why not add scaling system that would have it's limits (20-50), and would change the difficulty of the bosses based on the number of players in raids (and also maybe the reputation gain that I mentioned at the beginning - bigger guilds more points -> yeh cause it's harder to manage).
REALITY CHECK
I enjoy playing with thousands of other people in a virtual world. I don't enjoy trying to convince 39 assholes to do what I want them to do.
Yup, they're almost as bad as camp-a-thons. I think those were a lot worse and encouraged a whole lot more drama as you don't always necessarily need to be in a guild to go camp a spawn, and the lack of instances encouraged a lot of foul play. I guess they're an improvement, in a way. It's kind of a necessary evil though. Hopefully these future MMO's will to iron out some more of the problems.
I think Blizzard's decision to reduce the raid requirements from 40 to 25 was necessary, as the majority of players do not want to participate in zerg-raiding; it is too affected, disorganized, scheduled, predictable, and so forth.
I think you will find you are in the minority. As an aside, I enjoy raiding when it is not coerced but an optional part of gameplay and content.
Overall, from reading your post, I see you love WoW's raiding but you missed the point.
Your absolutely right about forced raiding, but the OP makes a good point about raiding with 40 people. But trying to get 40 people and having 40 people through out the duration of the raid is a pain. Blizzard allows you to sign up for battle grounds so you can participate in that content with many people. I really see no reason why they or any other MMO shouldn't allow a person to use the same system as a means of participating in raiding content.
theres an easy adjustment that can be made in games so that raiding remains fun.
have the raid monsters come to you, not you go to them.
so for instance a dragon attacks the city, not go to the dragons lair
as long as the dragon or whatever mob attacks a specific area at random, then its more of a "fun if you were there" type of thing.
all the fun of the massive part with all the crap taken out.
Jeez, im glad someone finally said it lol.
"Do not fret! Your captain is about to enter Valhalla!" - General Beatrix of Alexandria
"The acquisition of knowledge is of use to the intellect, for nothing can be loved or hated without first being known." - Leo da Vinci
All it means is many many people can be logged into the saime world at once. ure just basicle makin up tha rest.
Hail Neo, full of pwnage, Morpheus is with thee
Blessed art thou among Zion, and blessed is the roundhouse against Smith.
Holy Neo, pray for us now, and at the hour of Victory, Amen.
To understand the raiders mentality is to look at the history of the MMO raider. Most of the people that I see complaining about the raiding aspect of a game their first experience with it was WoW. To those that understand and desire raids to be bigger and more challenging their experience may lie in older mmo's like Everquest. Kind of like myself.
I played EQ back before they made Time an instance for all guilds to enjoy on a 7 day cycle. It was setup for guilds to race to the zone to get in and be the first. As was the boss kills, you had to race other guilds to attempt killing a big boss, and those fights were epic beyond the scale of WoW bosses in my opinion. It's when clerics were healers...not dps, when Warriors were tanks, monks and bards the pullers. Yes you had to pull your mobs to you with skill rather than just letting the mobs "come to you".
MMO's now are just tailored to people to log in and quest and if that's what you want to get the gear then go for it, someone like myself who enjoys raiding won't stop that kind of fun. Why do you attempt to hinder ours? Is it because you want the same uber type of loot that we raiders get? Generation Y has basically taken the stand of "we want instant gratification", you want something for basically doing nothing that takes teamwork and skill to pull off. The fact that someone actually said they'd rather have the mobs come to them rather than the opposite is lazy and sad, however with that being said it could be a good idea if pulled off correctly.
Yes, at times even raiding can get boring and repetitive and that's where developer's adding content regularly comes into play. However an MMO that caters to both raiders and non-raiders is the only solution to this problem. Of course with that you will still have problems because people will still find something to complain about, they always will.
To the OP, you offer all these things that make raiding seem so bad but offer nothing in return for the raiders end game. IF mmo's did not have raiding what would you suggest people do at end game? Is it going to be enough to satisfy the raider mentality? Will we not be having this discussion again but with the raiders complaints?
the massive amount of crying and whining from nolifers would be endless.
many losers would rather stay behind their pc 8h/day for 3 months doing the same raid place over and over and over to get a drop,than to have it in random events.
I agree with all of your ideas except for the scaling system having limits.I dont think its fair that people who do not have time to raid shouldnt see content that they pay every month for. Let people solo a dungeon. Let them see it . They just shouldn't get the same reward as a raid party would. The instance scaling to the number of people should not only effect the bosses hit points and damage but it should change the bosses tactics as well. This way it would be a completely different fight if you solo it as compared to a raid group. With higher rewards and more challenging boss fights the raiders should be happy and with the ability to solo it the more casual gamer that may not have a huge interest in the loot or raiding will still get to see the dungeon. How many instances in WoW did casual players never even have a chance to see?
As far as the mentality of people thinking that MMO means raid thats just wrong. There are other advantages to having an online community other than raiding. Companies love the casual player. They hardly complain not to mention they pay the same as hardcore people and use the product less. Its time for developers to start trying to please all types of gamers not just people who will sit in front of their computer for 8 hours at a time doing the same boring thing day after day.
Oddly enough I am one of those people who most would consider hardcore but I do see the point of the casual player.
You are not forced to raid in any MMORPG that I am aware of. True, you may have to raid to get some items, but you are not forced to raid. You also do not need to belong to a raid guild to raid if you want to. Many raids will take on pick ups.
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It's just me, so open the door.
I agree with you. I remember back in the day how I thought it would be so cool to have almost like a small army to go and kill mobs. SWG had this where you could have groups of 20 and frankly it was one of the still missed features of that game. I agree that you shouldn't HAVE to raid, but you shouldn't condemn it altogether, I think the OP is trying to see things too black and white instead of trying to be fair minded (In other words, my way or the high way) which is kind of shallow. But then again, in this day and age, a lot of peopl think their right about everything without consideration for the rest of the people around them.
My raiding experience comes from EQ. I am pretty confident in saying that EQ is the source of all my raid hatred. I did a fair amount of old school EQ raiding, before all the instancing and such. Having played a shadow knight, I've done my share of pulling and offtanking on raids. The raids themselves were often interesting and fun, at least the first 20 times.
The thing is, I don't want any drama over loot or dkp or who is or isn't wearing the cloak they just looted. I didn't mind racing other guilds, but what about other places where it was guilds training other guilds? (Perhaps you played on a more civilized server; I hear that some servers actually had rotation schedules for contested spawns, but not where I came from.) What about all the guild hopping as people scramble to take care of their own gear without any regard for the people they use to get there? What happens when the guild leadership declares that it is done with a target while there are people who haven't had their chance at it yet?
It's not really a case of "let raiders do what they want and they'll leave you alone to do what you want." I hate to agree with Anofalye, who has posted multuple times all over this site on this topic, but when those raiders go back out into the rest of the game, they push out the people who don't raid. This is especially true among melee classes where you are your gear-- you just can't compete for spots in groups if you don't have the AC/HP that the top end gear offers, and people expect you to have that stuff or to be trying to get it. It's not really optional.
Working together is a good thing. Fights that require people to know their class and their role inside and out are a good thing too. All the personality conflicts, greed, and arrogance that come packaged with raiding made me not want to do it anymore, even when I wasn't directly suffering. It's the general attitude that I encountered that made me want to wretch.
What would I like to see at endgame? Options. I am not a fan of the infinite questing, myself, but quests don't have to be "instant gratification". Offer an alternative to raiding that is equal to raiding, and everyone should be happy, right? Make it difficult and extremely time-consuming, but make it an option.
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This is where I draw the line: __________________.
Raiding is both one of the best and one of the worst things in MMOG's, in my opinion.
Getting the guild together and keeping things organized and preventing drama and in-fighting and keeping good memebers and weeding out bad ones and recruiting and scheduling and DKP and....
are all horrible.... as a former class leader, main tank, guild leader, raid leader (i've done every job) I know how it is....
But when you get it right, and you have a successful raid, down some bosses, get some loot, have a good time....
It's simply amazing. I love it.
Is it worth all the drama and stress etc. etc. that comes with it? I dunno... it's hard to say.
I like to lead, I end up leading sometimes even when I'm suppose to just follow... so it's hard for me to take a back seat on raids and just go with the flow... i get antsy lol...
but at the same time, leading a guild / raid is not very fun.. it takes someone with a LOT of patience and understanding... I like to think I've been a good leader in the past, but I don't think I'll ever be a raid leader or in a position of leadership in a guild again....
lol @ this thread.
So you want unscheduled raids? With random bad players to constantly wipe you? And you want no drama with loot, but you're going to have random people ninjaing and whining when they don't get loot. You'd rather NOT raid with friends, but rather raid with a bunch of random people in crap gear riding the coat tails? HAHAHA! You know how much worse that would be? And you want some raid boss to randomly attack a city and drop the fat loots? Yeah you would get people really pissed because they were at work or whatever. There's a reason people schedule things, you know because they have other things going on in life.
If you can't get 25 people together one night a week to take down a raid boss, and even then can't do it consistantly enough to move on to new content (and in so not become bored of the same boss kills), you really need to rethink the type of guild you're joining. Secondly (or maybe this should be first), I'm just going to say it - You're a bad player. You need to be better. Spend more time reading about bosses, strats, your gear, consumables. Spend more time researching guilds to find a GOOD guild that has fun people AND competancy. Then you need to commit to raiding, because it's like a sport: you must commit to doing what it takes to be good, else sit the bench, you scrub.
And I'll second the previous poster about EQ. I guess you guys are glad you don't need 72 people like you used to in EQ. Hell there was a point in EQ where people had 100 man raids. You think it's tough coordinating 25 mans? LOL Oh and 4 or 5 items would drop for the entire 100 person raid. In Kara (10 man), a full clear generates about 40+ pieces of gear. Can't complain. Plus badges.
Also if you don't want to raid for uber gear, just PvP for it. It's actually easier to get even better gear through PvP in WoW, so I'm not sure where the complaining is coming from. And I'm so glad they added the PvP gear, so that raids are for people who actually like to raid, instead of not putting the time in and wiping the raid time after time because they can't concentrate long enough to become dependable and knowledgable.
Last but not least, bliz has appeased the faint of heart by extending the 10 man raid progression, which IMO is really laughable. What about a ten man is any harder than a five man? The only difficulty of raiding is not meant to be the boss or trash, but in coordinating and organizing a team to bring down 25+ man content. MOST of the challenge is in the organization. That's why its so fullfilling to us achievement oriented people, because anything worth doing is not easily done. If it's easy, I'll just hire a nobody to do it for me. I only take the hard stuff.
Every year it seems like the new MMOers get weaker and weaker. It's really sad. Degenerative, really. And so I guess that makes me one of the elite. lol I used to be average, but ever since WoW expanded the MMO player base, I'm like a god now in comparison.
Raiding is intended for people who want challenge not only in just killing something in the game, but more importantly challenge in organizing and being good as a team. Secondly, you don't have to raid. Do something else. I guess do whatever it is you think you would be doing if there was no raiding. lol
nethervoid - Est. '97
[UO|EQ|SB|SWG|PS|HZ|EVE|NWN|WoW|VG|DF|AQW|DN|SWTOR|Dofus|SotA|BDO|AO|NW|LA] - Currently Playing EQ1
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What bizarre definition of the word "forced" are you using? Unless you define "forced" as: a completely optional activity that is in no way required for you to enjoy the game.
Sometimes I enjoy raiding when it's done with a group of people I enjoy playing with. Sometimes I hate raiding when it becomes more of a second job. And I often thought it was a waste of content for so much of the important Warcraft lore to be tied up in massive raids that only a small percentage of the population would ever get to see, let alone finish (I use Warcraft only as an example most people will recognize). But at no time is any of it required or forced. There was a gear parity that affected PvP in the early days of WoW, but I'm pretty sure that's been balanced in the last 3 years. Unless you feel compelled to raid to experience the content, there's really no justifiable reason to call it "forced". Should these raids not exist at all even though there's obviously a percentage of the player base that enjoys them?
I do think that far too much development time is spent on raids and Blizzard seems particularly guilty of catering content to raiders. But I think future MMOs should keep that segment in mind without going overboard on it the way Blizzard has in WoW (where everything from Ragnaros to Illidan is only experienced through raiding).
EDIT: I should mention that you would be right about your dislike for raiding if it were the only endgame available. In that scenario it's totally unacceptable. The best part about sandbox games is that there is no real "endgame" other than the one you define for yourself. I also think raids should be included thorughout the game, not just at max level. So while I'm not in favor of removing raids from the MMORPG genre, I am in favor of having alternatives, especially at endgame.
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Life sucks, buy a helmet.
Massively Multiplayer, in its basic form means 'big place with many people' which to me means a huge freakin world that a lot of people can play in. It does not mean 'place where you have to group and do group things only things with many people' world.
You can be plenty social in chat channels. You don't have to be forced into grouping and raiding to be social as you can do plenty of that in chat and /say channels.
Thinking the only thing an MMO should offter is group content and that all MMO players should group or not play is an extremely antiquated(sp?) point of view, IMO and thank goodness devs seem to be understanding that as well because the new MMOs are focusing on ground content and solo content.
Just play the way you have fun and let others do the same. As long as that play isn't ruining someone elses fun (read: griefing style) then it's all good.
/agree with the OP for the reasons he sites. It's the worst.
I have been in some raids, and there were moments when I thought to myself, whoa, that was cool, or dang, that was pretty awesome. But those were small isolated moments. Mostly I'm thinking, yawn, so fun to hit same buttons for 3 hours. Can't wait to come here next week and hit same buttons for another 3 hours, and again the following week and again and about 20 to 40 more times till I build up my points and finally get the raid gear.
To me raiding is on the same level of just grinding. The only difference is if you are solo grinding you can quit and no problem. 3 hours into a raid when your mother unexpectedly shows up for a little visit or your kids need something and you have to drop you feel like you are letting your ingame friends down. That sucks but RL comes first.
I much prefer groups of 6 or so. You play a more active roll, and you are not just one little pixelated face out of 20 to 40 people.
Ahh raiding... I think the best times I had in WOW were 5-10 man raids. Small enough so all your friends could go, big enough to require some strategy and challenge. First, one of my big peeves is paying for content with my monthly fee that I will never see. Second, having a large raid party (25+) is a huge pain because I am grouping with complete strangers at times, and the strategy involved is so complex due to the number of people, that it's just an exercise in frustration. That being said, I wouldn't mind raiding so much if they changed the loot rules.
I always wondered why they didn't have some sort of in game loot point system. Where you get a point for killing a boss that you can use to trade for an item. This way, if the boss drops 3 items you want, you have to kill him 3 times. This would prevent the boredom of running an instance ad infinitum. It would also encourage you to help out your friends to get there itmes since you know how much effort is going to be involved.
[After receiving an unjust ban and a warning for flaming because I explained to some one what an "oxymoron" is, I started to lose faith again in MMORPG. I suspect MMORPG hired a new moderator. Nevertheless, the comments to this Topic remind me why I enjoy MMORPG, in spite of its moderators.]
Aanio, my first raid experience is with Everquest and not WoW. I really began to dislike raiding with WoW. WoW is actually a better model of repetitive, predictable, boring, and forced raiding than Everquest. Moreover, I understand WoW's end-game to be 1) forced-raiding or 2) faction-grinding.
Kasmar, I am forced to raid when my only option for progression is to raid. When I must raid to progress my character, I am forced to raid. Many people do not like to be forced; in fact, the majority of those reading this (as the poll indicates) and probably around the world dislike raiding. We even dislike raid guilds because we want to join guilds based on community, friendship, maturity, etc.
Bane82, nope, you and the person you quoted missed the point. I clearly said forced-raiding. I enjoy raiding and must have it as an option. When raiding is forced on me (and others) it prevents, frustrated, and generates drama I explained in the first post.
Paks, great post. People want 1) world immersion, 2) character customization, and 3) deep Questing. People obtain multi-player experience through a variety of means from crafting to grouping to simply socializing and doing fun-extras in the game like visiting taverns (or cantinas in SWG).
Terranah, I completely agree.
Verugan, I have been saying this!! Great point! Why not have 2 groups constitute a raid? People love 10 person raids. I think the developer often wants it 18+ because they can limit content that way.
Thank you for the wonderful comments and discussions. People have challenged my thinking, and others have introduced new concepts to raiding. I hope people post more comments.
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WoW and fast food = commercial successes.
I neither play WoW nor eat fast food.