24 Player Raiding: A Relic of the past?

[cins]

what have you done to improve this situation?

Nothing because this whole situation is stupid and needs to be eradicated, not encouraged further. I don't have a life long enough to waste waiting for 23 other people to finish their dinner, update video drivers, put their kids to sleep, reinstall ventrilo and whatever else they need to do before I can finally have some fun. It's usually all right waiting for 5 other people, it could possibly work for as many as 11, but 23 is ****ing ridiculous. Small groups require exponentially less time and effort to organize and lead, not to mention require less people in a game with as small a population as AoC (which is like the most important thing here).

Plus Valicard isn't wrong, you're too high up on the pixel totem to understand the plight of the filthy casuals at the bottom. Sure, they objectively suck at this game and couldn't fight their way out of Onyx Chambers, but their numbers are so much greater and it'd take a lot less time and money from FC to make them happy than making whole new raids to make inhabitants of higher rungs of the pixel totem happy.

[sugarspice]

Nothing because this whole situation is stupid and needs to be eradicated, not encouraged further. I don't have a life long enough to waste waiting for 23 other people to finish their dinner, update video drivers, put their kids to sleep, reinstall ventrilo and whatever else they need to do before I can finally have some fun. It's usually all right waiting for 5 other people, it could possibly work for as many as 11, but 23 is ****ing ridiculous. Small groups require exponentially less time and effort to organize and lead, not to mention require less people in a game with as small a population as AoC (which is like the most important thing here).

Plus Valicard isn't wrong, you're too high up on the pixel totem to understand the plight of the filthy casuals at the bottom. Sure, they objectively suck at this game and couldn't fight their way out of Onyx Chambers, but their numbers are so much greater and it'd take a lot less time and money from FC to make them happy than making whole new raids to make inhabitants of higher rungs of the pixel totem happy.

I think the casual player should be rewarded and I don't disagree that a huge amount of the player base is casual, but join a guild that encourages not punishes the casual player. In Prophets we have no compliance, if your there you get to go to T4 and roll on your gear, no DKP, no punishment for having a real life, seems like an easy concept that guilds could do, not idea how other guilds work.

[Texan615]

This thread is going full retard....

[Boesch]

I think the casual player should be rewarded and I don't disagree that a huge amount of the player base is casual, but join a guild that encourages not punishes the casual player. In Prophets we have no compliance, if your there you get to go to T4 and roll on your gear, no DKP, no punishment for having a real life, seems like an easy concept that guilds could do, not idea how other guilds work.

That's not the point that cins was making, at least not from where I see it. I have to agree with him/her too, I can't get back into 24 person raiding for all the same reasons they raised. Add to that the absolute repetitiveness of what you have to do, the loot bs that inevitably comes up and the 'joy' of killing the same boss for a year just to even see a drop you want. It really plays on the most primitive instincts we have.

[Texan615]

That's not the point that cins was making, at least not from where I see it. I have to agree with him/her too, I can't get back into 24 person raiding for all the same reasons they raised. Add to that the absolute repetitiveness of what you have to do, the loot bs that inevitably comes up and the 'joy' of killing the same boss for a year just to even see a drop you want. It really plays on the most primitive instincts we have.

That's true, but for people to make the insinuation that the game "ends" at t2/khitiai is just ridiculous. This is primarily prevalent for the US time zone raiders which I must say is a rather bleak raiding scene. Other than members of RA and Prophets, there's a real hit and miss on whether a t3 raid will be successful or a multihour failfest. And when some guilds decide to run a Memory Cloud and/or Entity, it's also a mess.

The game does not end at t2/khitai. If you insist on pugging t3+ raids week after week, it will be painful. My suggestion is to either merge with another guild in similar situation (I see multiple pug raids of same tier all the time) or suck up your pride and move to a guild more progressed. The constant fragmentation of an already weak raiding population makes the situation worse and worse.

Sugar has mentioned mentoring of other guild/raid leads and I'm all for it. I hear non stop about fail Memory Cloud raids (which is the easiest of T4), but maybe it's a training issue. I ran a MC/Ent pug raid just tonight and we had no issues clearing both MC and Entity. The raid was half RA/half randoms and we had no problem. So if other guild/raid leads need help on clearing this content, let me know, I'll invite you to our raid and you can see it for yourself. I am more than happy to explain strats/tactics, just send me a pm and I'll get you in our next run on Friday.

In summary, yes, the US raiding scene is rather bleak, but it can be resolved by minor guilds merging to form coherent, consistent raid groups and thus eliminating the random pug factor that inhibits raid progression. Otherwise another solution is to just move on to another more progressed raiding guild, which for US time zone players will mean either joining Rogue Angels or Prophets. The choice will be up to the various guild leaders of the minor guilds on which path they wish to choose, however in the meantime, I am available for T3/T4(even T3.5 lol) assistance on tactics and whatnot. Either send me a pm on these forums or in game on my main Zaldar.

[lmagowz]

Т4 is not THAT hard. Even if you help guild with tanks and may be 1-2 healer, all they need is DPS and don't die. Entity not such hard if TOSes have right build and understand tactic. They even can skip hard bosses (clear MC and don't go after 3rd boss in main part) and still get huge boost

[twinklez3]

, which for US time zone players will mean either joining Rogue Angels or Prophets.

All of your posts can be summed up like ^^

Seriously though, this thread is sad.

[Valicard]

That's true, but for people to make the insinuation that the game "ends" at t2/khitiai is just ridiculous. This is primarily prevalent for the US time zone raiders which I must say is a rather bleak raiding scene. Other than members of RA and Prophets, there's a real hit and miss on whether a t3 raid will be successful or a multihour failfest. And when some guilds decide to run a Memory Cloud and/or Entity, it's also a mess.

The game does not end at t2/khitai. If you insist on pugging t3+ raids week after week, it will be painful. My suggestion is to either merge with another guild in similar situation (I see multiple pug raids of same tier all the time) or suck up your pride and move to a guild more progressed. The constant fragmentation of an already weak raiding population makes the situation worse and worse.

Sugar has mentioned mentoring of other guild/raid leads and I'm all for it. I hear non stop about fail Memory Cloud raids (which is the easiest of T4), but maybe it's a training issue. I ran a MC/Ent pug raid just tonight and we had no issues clearing both MC and Entity. The raid was half RA/half randoms and we had no problem. So if other guild/raid leads need help on clearing this content, let me know, I'll invite you to our raid and you can see it for yourself. I am more than happy to explain strats/tactics, just send me a pm and I'll get you in our next run on Friday.

In summary, yes, the US raiding scene is rather bleak, but it can be resolved by minor guilds merging to form coherent, consistent raid groups and thus eliminating the random pug factor that inhibits raid progression. Otherwise another solution is to just move on to another more progressed raiding guild, which for US time zone players will mean either joining Rogue Angels or Prophets. The choice will be up to the various guild leaders of the minor guilds on which path they wish to choose, however in the meantime, I am available for T3/T4(even T3.5 lol) assistance on tactics and whatnot. Either send me a pm on these forums or in game on my main Zaldar.

Mentoring/Merging/holding hands and singing kumbaya it's all been done before. Come on guys, the population cratered for several years now server after server merge, guilds upon guilds merging with big dreams and nothing coming from it, pros and leaders that threw in the towel... I mean it's a nightmare.

Just yesterday I decided to investigate and joined a OD(not going to explicitly name the guild here but if you play with any frequency you would know which guild I'm talking about) raid, continuous wipe on Keeper for 3 hours straight. One boss. One Raid. 3 hours. The emotions I felt were: Pity; towards these what seemed like very nice people. Anger; towards the game, towards the game's leadership. Despair; that the game has fallen to this state, which was clearly evident last night. OD as you all probably know is an old and one of the most popular guilds in the game. Their leader has been MIA for the past few months, off to play another game due to extreme burnout. I dont blame him going through what I had to go through night after night for years and years.

In contrast, there was another U.S. guild, I'll call them RA, whom I did T3 upper with. They finished in under 38 minutes(the entire instance including toth). None of them were particularly skilled as individual players (to be fair though some of them might have been testing new specs, like their guard.) but they knew -exactly- what to do and knew each other's CC rotation with minimal voice interaction. Their DPS (which I discovered long ago is the key to all raids/dungeons) was about twice as higher then most PUG raids. This alone accounts for 90% of a raids success or failure. The fact they had a T4 DT, and other T4 toons didn't hurt either. Gear also tends to bandage over lack of personal skill. Overall, it comes down to getting the same 24 people to logon the same times every.single.night.again and again. This just can't happen anymore with the U.S. population.

[Rathothis]

Mentoring/Merging/holding hands and singing kumbaya it's all been done before. Come on guys, the population cratered for several years now server after server merge, guilds upon guilds merging with big dreams and nothing coming from it, pros and leaders that threw in the towel... I mean it's a nightmare.

Just yesterday I decided to investigate and joined a OD(not going to explicitly name the guild here but if you play with any frequency you would know which guild I'm talking about) raid, continuous wipe on Keeper for 3 hours straight. One boss. One Raid. 3 hours. The emotions I felt were: Pity; towards these what seemed like very nice people. Anger; towards the game, towards the game's leadership. Despair; that the game has fallen to this state, which was clearly evident last night. OD as you all probably know is an old and one of the most popular guilds in the game. Their leader has been MIA for the past few months, off to play another game due to extreme burnout. I dont blame him going through what I had to go through night after night for years and years.

In contrast, there was another U.S. guild, I'll call them RA, whom I did T3 upper with. They finished in under 38 minutes(the entire instance including toth). None of them were particularly skilled as individual players (to be fair though some of them might have been testing new specs, like their guard.) but they knew -exactly- what to do and knew each other's CC rotation with minimal voice interaction. Their DPS (which I discovered long ago is the key to all raids/dungeons) was about twice as higher then most PUG raids. This alone accounts for 90% of a raids success or failure. The fact they had a T4 DT, and other T4 toons didn't hurt either. Gear also tends to bandage over lack of personal skill. Overall, it comes down to getting the same 24 people to logon the same times every.single.night.again and again. This just can't happen anymore with the U.S. population.

How exactly do you define skill in PvE, if not by knowing exactly what to do, and when to do it, and doing a lot of dps while executing the aforementioned?

As regards people being locked out of content, the real issue isn't that raids are too hard. There are quite a few people who don't do higher tier raiding, but actively do hard modes which are much more demanding on the individual player than most raid encounters. The real issue is the effort involved in gathering 24 people who log on in time, listen to what is said on TS/vent, do not go afk other than during pre-announced breaks, and do not crash. All of that while staying positive if other raiders do not log on in time, do not listen to what is said on TS/vent, go "afk phone" in the middle of a boss fight, and crash all the time. Keeping 24 people happy is a really hard job, and not having a good raid leader is the most important "content blocker" of all.

[xBattleaxex]

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.