24 Player Raiding: A Relic of the past?

[Boesch]

ha !

SURPRISE
Pve men : on Fury, , there are always some T4 raids... in the savage country of pvp men !
not very much ... but a few ones each week.

After a time, Crom, without pvp risk is boring... so players go out...
Kill a wb on Crom is not interesting .. just work chain in factory, no risk, no challenge.
Kill a wb of Fury is a real challenge.

T5 will not be a sufficient reason for come back to aoc, I think.

Funcom : work on pvp, again and again... you will have new players...
And you have to do something for young and new pvp players... the minigames are too unbalanced... when the Unchained minigames will arrive ? or split minis in R1-R5 and R6-R10...something like that...
Significant efforts on the pvp aspect of the game will attract new players, therefore there will be a new resource for pve, for raiding T3-T4.... and perhaps T5.

How many pve instances? how many pvp minigames ? and now the pve instances are empty....
Funcom has sacrificed the goose that lays golden eggs forgetting too long pvp ... the game pays the penalty now.

This is one of those neverending things both sides roll out all the time - that Funcom spent xyz time on this or that and not on them. PVE qq's about PVP balance changes and PVP qq's about... well everything. Both are justified because both have been largely abandoned.

The fact of the matter is Funcom have had this game on life support for literally years. Each of the raids have always come out in incomplete pieces; T3 then T4, often with unkillable bosses to hide the fact they hadn't actually made the whole zone. How long was T3 the highest tier? How long was T4? Both sides have sat and watched very little of any great substance roll out for so very long. There's no point blaming either side of the coin, the reality is Funcom just does not put resources into the game. Nor has balance ever appeared to be really on Funcoms radar which screws everyone; there hasn't been a day that's gone where Guardians or Demos for instance haven't been top of the tree in PVP. Gem exploits, one shot ********, nonsensical revamps such as the Ranger giving them the burst damage to kill anything under a soldier in 1 combo. DTs STILL after years having the potential to be best healer/DPS/tank all at once. PVP being outrageously gear dependant for the longest time, then with added AA grind on top. No wonder people just moved on. And the combat in this game is just incredible which is the biggest shame - nothing else I've played compares to the spirit and feel this game has.

Oh well... I could wax lyrical for a long time about what went wrong but if you blame the players you are blaming the wrong people.

[Ahlayna]

This is in response to Valicards comment:

"I don't know how it is for Euro players(u.s. morning times) but for U.S. players; Raiding. Is. Dead. There is only 1 maybe 2 Guilds that is active to any degree in the U.S. that can clear T3 and T4 with a reasonable chance of success (greater then 50%). The rest of the U.S. time guilds in Crom(very few remaining) have been doing T3 and T4 for ages and ages and are still nowhere close to even forming half an in-guild raid If these guilds do manage to spend the next hour trying to fill in global the raids have maybe a ~25% chance to full clear...and that's with several wipes and hours of hours wasted time. These "other" guilds are slowly fading away, mainly because people who do come on for raids wipe and wipe and wipe for 3 1/2 hours and have nothing to show for it in the end. 1 or 2 smart guys go "why the &#!$ am I wasting my time on this ?!" quit and don't show up for the next raid. In turn, raidleaders are forced to go to global where it could take up to another 1~2 hours to fill and/or not fill at all and just disband. This further debilitates the guild/raiding and the whole thing just ends up in a endless spiral of death until the guild and a whole bunch of players folds"

A lot of good guilds, including those that have been around a while, have been having difficulties forming raids. Someone brought up in my guild that it would be nice to have a website where other guilds could sign up for a raid to be planned in the future. We found a website called http://crompugs.guildlaunch.com/ It appears that they run on CST. This is what they have put on their mission statement:

"With this site we'd like to make a good pug-raid community on Age of Conan's Crom server. This is not a guild or an alliance, anyone can join with an easy signup method. This is about premade and organized pug T3 runs and high-end (Temple of Erlik and Jade Citadel) raids: if you can't raid with your guild where you want to, try it here. On this site you find weekly raids you can sign up and have fun with experienced players" Why is it good for you? You can plan your week, and can plan your fix raids. You don't have to wait till you see a forming pugraid on Global, instead you will know everything days earlier. Since our raids are pugs, there is no DKP system, and the loot rules are always free for all (within some correct restrictions), no reserved relics or shards"

I think its a great idea! They mention T3 and above but I would personally like to see T2's also scheduled...lots of peeps need to get their quests done! I would like to see what ya'll think about this and do ya'll think their would be much participation. I would like to hear from the person(s) that run this website too! I think this to be a good, viable solution for those guilds that want to join in on a raid but don't have the guildies to run one of their own. Lets hear from ya'll....

[Valicard]

This is one of those neverending things both sides roll out all the time - that Funcom spent xyz time on this or that and not on them. PVE qq's about PVP balance changes and PVP qq's about... well everything. Both are justified because both have been largely abandoned.

The fact of the matter is Funcom have had this game on life support for literally years. Each of the raids have always come out in incomplete pieces; T3 then T4, often with unkillable bosses to hide the fact they hadn't actually made the whole zone. How long was T3 the highest tier? How long was T4? Both sides have sat and watched very little of any great substance roll out for so very long. There's no point blaming either side of the coin, the reality is Funcom just does not put resources into the game. Nor has balance ever appeared to be really on Funcoms radar which screws everyone; there hasn't been a day that's gone where Guardians or Demos for instance haven't been top of the tree in PVP. Gem exploits, one shot ********, nonsensical revamps such as the Ranger giving them the burst damage to kill anything under a soldier in 1 combo. DTs STILL after years having the potential to be best healer/DPS/tank all at once. PVP being outrageously gear dependant for the longest time, then with added AA grind on top. No wonder people just moved on. And the combat in this game is just incredible which is the biggest shame - nothing else I've played compares to the spirit and feel this game has.

Oh well... I could wax lyrical for a long time about what went wrong but if you blame the players you are blaming the wrong people.

The blame rests squarely on this...



I heard it was REALLY OP...

[Valicard]

This is in response to Valicards comment:

"I don't know how it is for Euro players(u.s. morning times) but for U.S. players; Raiding. Is. Dead. There is only 1 maybe 2 Guilds that is active to any degree in the U.S. that can clear T3 and T4 with a reasonable chance of success (greater then 50%). The rest of the U.S. time guilds in Crom(very few remaining) have been doing T3 and T4 for ages and ages and are still nowhere close to even forming half an in-guild raid If these guilds do manage to spend the next hour trying to fill in global the raids have maybe a ~25% chance to full clear...and that's with several wipes and hours of hours wasted time. These "other" guilds are slowly fading away, mainly because people who do come on for raids wipe and wipe and wipe for 3 1/2 hours and have nothing to show for it in the end. 1 or 2 smart guys go "why the &#!$ am I wasting my time on this ?!" quit and don't show up for the next raid. In turn, raidleaders are forced to go to global where it could take up to another 1~2 hours to fill and/or not fill at all and just disband. This further debilitates the guild/raiding and the whole thing just ends up in a endless spiral of death until the guild and a whole bunch of players folds"

A lot of good guilds, including those that have been around a while, have been having difficulties forming raids. Someone brought up in my guild that it would be nice to have a website where other guilds could sign up for a raid to be planned in the future. We found a website called http://crompugs.guildlaunch.com/ It appears that they run on CST. This is what they have put on their mission statement:

"With this site we'd like to make a good pug-raid community on Age of Conan's Crom server. This is not a guild or an alliance, anyone can join with an easy signup method. This is about premade and organized pug T3 runs and high-end (Temple of Erlik and Jade Citadel) raids: if you can't raid with your guild where you want to, try it here. On this site you find weekly raids you can sign up and have fun with experienced players" Why is it good for you? You can plan your week, and can plan your fix raids. You don't have to wait till you see a forming pugraid on Global, instead you will know everything days earlier. Since our raids are pugs, there is no DKP system, and the loot rules are always free for all (within some correct restrictions), no reserved relics or shards"

I think its a great idea! They mention T3 and above but I would personally like to see T2's also scheduled...lots of peeps need to get their quests done! I would like to see what ya'll think about this and do ya'll think their would be much participation. I would like to hear from the person(s) that run this website too! I think this to be a good, viable solution for those guilds that want to join in on a raid but don't have the guildies to run one of their own. Lets hear from ya'll....

YES And frankly this is what the "community managers" need to focus on more (but they don't even play the game on a regular basis so how would they know?) A built-in signup sheet with the ability for raid leaders to accept/reject and in-game tutorials for each raid(if desired!) would be the next step. But all these things will fall on deaf ears because Funcom just doesn't care anymore.

[Rathothis]

The blame rests squarely on this...

$$$

I heard it was REALLY OP...

Actually, the blame rests on FC being over-ambitious in the creative department. The first thing they do after releasing a MMO is to move on to the next MMO. They never were short on good ideas - take AoC's combat system and TSW's investigation missions, for example. They are also really great at creating atmospheres that suck you in as a player. What they have been atrociously bad at is supporting their games after release.

The best FC could have done for themselves, financially, would have been to focus solely on AoC after its release. Had all the resources they wasted on TSW gone to AoC instead, we would have a much healthier game, and FC would have a lot more money in their pockets. Often, running a company more like a business (Blizzard) and less like an artists' commune (Funcom) works better for customers as well.

[Wulfgaarr]

Actually, the blame rests on FC being over-ambitious in the creative department. The first thing they do after releasing a MMO is to move on to the next MMO. They never were short on good ideas - take AoC's combat system and TSW's investigation missions, for example. They are also really great at creating atmospheres that suck you in as a player. What they have been atrociously bad at is supporting their games after release.

The best FC could have done for themselves, financially, would have been to focus solely on AoC after its release. Had all the resources they wasted on TSW gone to AoC instead, we would have a much healthier game, and FC would have a lot more money in their pockets. Often, running a company more like a business (Blizzard) and less like an artists' commune (Funcom) works better for customers as well.

This! Funcom didn't take proper care of its product. This is the end of all the QQ's and what the current state of game resumes to. Lack of investment, game direction and interest eventually led to the small population we have today. After khitai expansion and ever since game has been somewhat in maitanance mode, loosing subscribers consistantly over the years. They made huge $$ bet on TSW and will pay dearly for that (literally) for many years to come. Funcom doesn't care about AoC anymore. Devs may care and they sure try hard to do what they can. But with limited team of a few pleople there's little they can do to turn things around for this game. Even mass investment in AoC won't bring back enought subscribers to justify it, specially in a 6 years old game that is outdated in so many aspects. So, take it for what it is or join the hordes of players that have already left cuz you won't see any significant change in this game anymore.

[Touchii]

@ Valicard, what do you really want? make a list of what you want to see changed

[cynara]

He wants to complain in the forums, and that's exactly what he's doing, so I think everything is fine :P

[cins]

@ Valicard, what do you really want? make a list of what you want to see changed

I don't know what he wants, but what I want is the pixelwhores who should be playing Diablo to stop playing AoC and AoC to somehow not die from that. But you can't get what you want in life, so I'd settle with death of raiding to at least lower the bullshit threshold I need to jump over before I can do myself some group based high end pve. Remove all raiding, remake them into 6 dude affairs of varying difficulty and throw more easy world bosses for the people who absolutely cannot play without 20 other dudes running around them.

Sadly that's never gonna happen because FC's official policy is to insist that Eastasia has always been at war with Oceania. They sank far too much money and effort during previous headdude's reign to transform AoC into a wow camp follower on "endgame" front, so they won't shift their development focus elsewhere and cling to "hardcore raiding" until AoC dies.

I also want Xibaluku Unchained. One that does NOT require me to have farmed T7 raids until my brain oozed out of my nose.

[Thewarden]

I've seen this type of thread complaining in other games, and it's always fun to have a blast from the past!

You guys really think this is an AoC-spesific problem? Any MMO will at some point have this issue and while AoC have had these issues from the start due to the insanely poor launch, even WoW had these issues at some points in it's existence.

I'm not going to delve into the discussion spesific for this, as I'm EU and have no issues filling up the raids I lead from the guild I'm in. We even have an alliance with another guild for the less-prioritized raids so I've never had any issues filling up my raids, mostly t3 and the occational t4.

But a suggestion comes to mind for those from America that does the raidleading. Make contacts with the puggers you find to be a resource. Make them apply for the raids on your guilds website raidplanner. Have them in your friendslist. I have a rather big friendslist due to this and I actually get tells from some puggers if there are any spots avaiable. That is pretty amazing and it's about taking care of those puggers that contribute and make them remember you and your guilds raid, regardless if it's t1 or t4.

Make contacts ingame with people you trust to be good players and you should not have any issue filling up a raid.