Vanguard Saga stuff at GU

[El Gallo]

I hear you on that, but there are raids that are designed better than the early EQ raids you know and love.  The key to making them interesting is to add a fair amount of randomness.  That way, the event isn't just a follow the formula, hold your complete heal chain together and you win kind of affair.  Bosses that are designed so they will have damage spikes at unpredictable times that kill tanks, encounters with lots of adds that cannot be easily CC'd, encounters with special abilities that fire off at various unpredictable intervals rather than always at x% of the boss mob's health, etc.  Things like that put the impetus on individual players to make the right decision, play well and hold the raid together or make the wrong decision, fuck up, and wipe the raid.

Later EQ expansions (which have many well-documented failings) and WoW (usually) have taken some big steps in this direction.  There's a lot more to do, but I think it is doable.  Now, you'll always have to be a team player and have some discipline (which is what I think a lot of people really don't like--they want to be the uberhero that does whatever they want and wins solo; that's fine, but because they won't say "I don't want to be a teammate because I want to be the star all the time" out loud, they say "being a teammate means you are a mindless, skilless drone" instead) demand skill and good decision making from every raid memeber are not only possible but, I think, not that far away.

[Yegolev]

Does the Deluxe Box come with an embroidered Vanguard poopsock ?

You win the thread!

[Toast]

This one is going to be fun to watch. People don't want this type of game any more. Any evidence of this just makes the developers more adamantly set on their initial design.

I can't wait until the one or two Vanguard fans on F13 clash with everyone else.

[Yegolev]

I can't wait until the one or two Vanguard fans on F13 clash with everyone else.

Me either, it will be awesome.  Merry Angermas!

[shiznitz]

Getting 70 people to move and act as one takes skill, a skill I sure as fuck don't have. 

Just use profanity and ALL CAPS in the raid channel and people will do what you say. Because if it is in ALL CAPS is must be important.

[Mesozoic]

Later EQ expansions (which have many well-documented failings) and WoW (usually) have taken some big steps in this direction.

I was just thinking about this the other day after a failed Gnomeregan run.  The healer - who had been warned to stay well back of the fighting - disregarded that wisdom and ran straight for the front line after getting aggro.  So we wiped.  But I had her soulstoned, so we should have been recoverable. 

But, being too close to the front, she immediately got aggro again and died.  A player who didn't understand her (his) class got us killed, specifically because they lacked the understanding of the ebb and flow of the game. 

Somehow I couldn't get angry about that.  I looked at our corpses and thought "Yeah, we deserved that."

[Strazos]

For the record, I like being a good teammate, both in EQ (At times) and in WoW.

Then again, in EQ, I played a rogue, and got a kick out of CR'ed an entire raid in 5 minutes.

Also, I was not a quiet cog.

[Stephen Zepp]

I want to be successful in a game Mostly because I am a superior player, not because I have the time to play umpteen hours a day.

There were many hundreds of players that put in more hours per week into EQ than the members of my server's uberguild did.  Yet the uberguild killed everything first.  There were lots and lots of uberguilds across servers who put in similar amounts of time, but the same 5 or so uberguilds almost always killed the big targets first. 

Now, EQ took way too much time.  But the "they only beat me because they spent more time" mantra is utter bullshit.  Getting 70 people to move and act as one takes skill, a skill I sure as fuck don't have.  Each person reacting instantly to changed circumstances and unexpected events where a one second delay will wipe the whole raid takes skill, a skill I sure as fuck don't have.  Now, the earlier EQ raids (e.g. Vox, Naggy, Velious) were pretty predictable and mindless, but some of the later raids made considerable demands on almost every player.  Some WoW raid bosses would be tricky if people didn't read the strategy from Conquest and download UI mods specifically designed to gimp the encounters.

It's called meta-gaming and organization. Sure it's a skill, but it's a skill that has very little to do with the individual player's contributions IN THE GAME. Most people, me included, who talk about player skill are talking about it because it means the player is more than an automaton pressing the correct button at the correct time. That's what I see wrong with raiding. It takes lots of discipline and patience, but to me, even as someone who has lead these raids before, it doesn't feel like it takes skill at the game. Most of the challenges I faced in EQ raids were overcoming the shit shit shitty shit chat interface issues to keep people from wandering around and getting themselves and the rest of us killed. Oh and removing the Leroy Jenkins's of the world before they got us killed as well.

I'm not going to say that metagaming to achieve raid success doesn't take effort, I just don't think it takes much individual player skill. It takes cogs in a wetmachine. As a player, I don't want to be those cogs.

While this may be true for some/many of the classes in MMOG's, it simply was completley untrue for the two classes I played--enchanter, and monk.

While playing my enchanter, I had to keep track of (in my head, I didn't use any gui mods):
-3-4 messed mobs (and in SoV and above, had to keep track of which mobs could be controlled with which spells)
-timed buffs on my assigned group (and/or other targets in the guild depending on the raid structure)
-debuffs on the primary target(s), if assigned that task

As a monk, it took a lot of teamwork and practice (as well as research and experience) to successfully pull mobs for the raid to progress successfully and in a timely manner. Vex Thal (especially before they removed the ae blind effects) was extremely difficult to do successfully, and some of the most "skill" I've ever had to use in any game was leading a guild as the only puller through VT. It only got more complex in PoP, and as El Gallo said, it takes a lot more than just tons of time...

[Murgos]

I was main tank for my guild through Plane of Fear/Hate era of EQ, I wouldn't say it was a job that required lots and lots of skill but you did have to stay on your toes and be aware of what the chanters were doing and how much mana the clerics had left.  It was generally my call on when to bail too.  I couldn't do planes level raids where I wasn't main or at least secondary tank, that shit was just crazy boring.

[Strazos]

Fear and Hate were some of the most fun raids I've ever done. The post-Velious stuff just became too formulaic, and hence, boring.

Fear was especially fun because of the number of agro mobs.

I was in a smaller guild, and I did Fear with them once. Just getting in was fun. Most of the people wiped from the crazy agro and DT's. Pretty much, only I survived to drag everyone to a safe spot, and a druid who was kiting about 30 mobs.

On this same raid, we cleared most of the zone, except for the Amy Temple. The same crazy druid goes and pulls the Entire thing.

In one pull.

Craziness ensued. At first I just stayed hidden, unsure if we were going to immediately wipe. After a bit, I joined in the fight, cutting down warriors one at a time, while the clerics were running away, dragging about 3-4 mobs each, doing drive-by heals when they could.

Chaos = Fun.

[Murgos]

We had a tactic for the Amy temple that was insane.

Main tank gets SoW, pulls everything and proceeds to run a huge circle (if he survives the HT's otherwise it could get hairy) while the guild picks off stuff one at a time from the train :-D  That was worth a smile everytime.

[HaemishM]

See, now you guys have hit on the problems I have with big raids. If you are the puller in a Fear Raid, you're probably having fun. The enchanter MIGHT be having fun, but I don't consider the type of things they had to watch out for much fun; different strokes and all. Monk pullers especially had fun. Main tank... bleh, been there done that. As I've said before, being a warrior doesn't mean my job should be getting bitchslapped. Raid leader had some ok fun beforehand, planning the raid, and an absolute hair-pulling PITA during the raid, as he tries to herd cats, deal with bitchy fucktards who didn't get to roll on the items they wanted, waaa waaaa waaaa, and keeping morale up when shit got boring or there was a setback.

The other 36 people on the raid? They are bored off of their asses waiting on their chance to roll for the one item they REALLY REALLY want. Maybe you have healers who actually like MMOG healing, maybe they are having fun until their 6th death of the day. But the rest? So long as they don't fuck up big time, they are interchangeable. Their jobs are fairly easy, just add DPS. Monkeys could do it. Macros could do it. And yet I've still seen people who could fuck this up.

It's virtually impossible to give 40 individuals a distinct role in a battle like this, which is why I really hate raiding. If you aren't one of the classes with an interesting job (puller being probably the most interesting), you are probably bored.

[Strazos]

Yup, I was bored on most of my raids if I wasn't actively doing something as a rogue.

And whenever I got bored, I would just yell at the people who were being fucktards.

[Nija]

Experience loss - Currently they have experience debt in the game instead of experience loss.  But the dev that stated that said he didn't like it and preferred loss.  I prefer loss too, hopefully that will change.

What fucking difference does it make? Either way, you have to do that much more killing to ding anyway....

Either I lose 100 xp when I die

or

For the next bit, half of my xp is basically thrown away, until that amounts to 100xp.

Fucktards.

They could mean exp debt like AC's vitae. You'd lower your chars max health/mana, or stats or something, until X exp is earned. I can't remember much from AC1, but I remember in AC2 you could die like 6 times and you'd be at 60% of your max health, making it just that much easier to die. So if you were far away from high level mobs, whacking newbies, you'd have to travel quite a bit to actually earn back some xp in order to whack newbies at your full potential. Or you'd just log in your vitae healer acct. Whichever.

[shiznitz]

See, now you guys have hit on the problems I have with big raids. If you are the puller in a Fear Raid, you're probably having fun. The enchanter MIGHT be having fun, but I don't consider the type of things they had to watch out for much fun; different strokes and all. Monk pullers especially had fun. Main tank... bleh, been there done that. As I've said before, being a warrior doesn't mean my job should be getting bitchslapped. Raid leader had some ok fun beforehand, planning the raid, and an absolute hair-pulling PITA during the raid, as he tries to herd cats, deal with bitchy fucktards who didn't get to roll on the items they wanted, waaa waaaa waaaa, and keeping morale up when shit got boring or there was a setback.

The other 36 people on the raid? They are bored off of their asses waiting on their chance to roll for the one item they REALLY REALLY want. Maybe you have healers who actually like MMOG healing, maybe they are having fun until their 6th death of the day. But the rest? So long as they don't fuck up big time, they are interchangeable. Their jobs are fairly easy, just add DPS. Monkeys could do it. Macros could do it. And yet I've still seen people who could fuck this up.

It's virtually impossible to give 40 individuals a distinct role in a battle like this, which is why I really hate raiding. If you aren't one of the classes with an interesting job (puller being probably the most interesting), you are probably bored.

Raids don't have to be boring. They only were in EQ because of hit point inflation. Hit point inflation exists because of levelling systems. Get rid of levelling systems and raids don't have to last 2 hours. The battle can be decided in 2 minutes and be fun, win or lose.

[Strazos]

That's a problem I've had with lots of RPG's since the beginning of time; Going up in level just makes the numbers bigger. No real change in gameplay.

One thing I liked about Gemstone III/IV and Guild Wars is the HP pools.

In GW, the pool increases per level, but it caps out and is standard for any class.

In GS3/4, your max hp is tied to your Physical Training skill and race, and it has a hard cap.

Such systems emphasize skill over time.

[HaemishM]

Raids also don't have to take 40 people. That's the other problem, there just isn't enough individual roles for individuals in a 40-man raid to feel useful. 10-20 man raids is really about the max there should be, unless each side of the "raid" has somewhere in the neightborhood of 200 a side.

[penfold]

We had a tactic for the Amy temple that was insane.

Main tank gets SoW, pulls everything and proceeds to run a huge circle (if he survives the HT's otherwise it could get hairy) while the guild picks off stuff one at a time from the train :-D  That was worth a smile everytime.

That was _the tactic for ages, but a pally did because of the 30 or so harm touches that started the pull.

By Kunark we were doing the same, but just AEing the lot.

Raids have changed quite alot since Plane of Fear days tbh, alot of the PoP raids involved multiple groups engaging multiple targets. Casters, tanks, dps, specialist roles, everyone has to do something.

Heres 3 of the 60-80 man raids i was doing/attempted before i quit.

Xegony (huge winged fairy queen godess of air)- 3 groups in a mini raid on each side of Xegony, out of visual range even. These engaged mobs that spawned at regular intervals an ran to assist Xegony who was fighting a tank and a group or 2 of clerics, healers and bards running a CHeal + booster heal chain on the tank. Enchanters and kiters will be off on the fringes with the 2 mini raids, but certain classes need to be able to run back to the main group and supply crucial buffs. Keep going, _perfectly, for 90 mins.

Council of Rathe (earth elementals) - 12 god level mobs, all of which have to die within (i think) 120 seconds of each other. Bascially you need multiple groups, engaging, herding and controlling all 12 all over the zone to one spot, where they are mesed or kept at 5% hp. Once all 12are together, you need maximum dps on all to kill simultaenously, spawning the real boss.

Rallos Zek (god of war) - Fight way upward to a throneroom, on the way making a named a pet, get to throneroom, un-pet the named and kill it, kill another named, spawning a simulcrum of a god (one of his sons), back him into a corner, cheal chain on MT, stay in a 30 degree angle behind him, kill, 2nd god (another son) spawns, fight him, he's tricky as he spawns mirrors of himself so you engage multiple gods. This spawns a simulcrum of Rallos Zek. Engage, get low hp and he disappears, and elsewhere in the zone the real god spawns.
All port back to bind spot, outside the zone. Regroup, zone in, run to big pit in centre of zone, Rallos is standing in middle. Make sure everyone carefully levitates and stands along one wall. Split the raid into 3 groups, the MT and healers, DPS, and kiters/crowd control. Kamikaze ranger pulls Rallos over to main tank, who carefully drags him so MT is in corner and Rallos's back points out into area, both embedded in the zone architecture (common EQ tactic, called "walling"). DPS guys head to Rallos back and moving forward _exact point you can hit his model, at which point they build DPS slowly. As Rallo's HP goes down, elsewhere in pit he spawns groups of mobs, which your kiters and crowd controllers deal with. One spot of lag for the healers, a missed heal, will involve the instant death of the MT followed a split second later by the clerics, then the DPS guys. If the DPS guys do too much damage in the initial stages, or move to close to Rallos's model, everyone dies. If the crowd control guys fail to control the 20-30 or so mobs spawned by Rallos, everyone dies.

Fun event that one.

Later expansions provide even more complex raids.

[HaemishM]

Those 3 examples you listed are perhaps even more retarded sounding than the original EQ raids I was talking about.

[Xilren's Twin]

Heres 3 of the 60-80 man raids i was doing/attempted before i quit.

snip lots of detail

Xegony...Keep going, _perfectly, for 90 mins.

Council of Rathe (earth elementals) - 12 god level mobs, all of which have to die within (i think) 120 seconds of each other.

Rallos Zek (god of war) - .... (common EQ tactic, called "walling"). DPS guys head to Rallos back and moving forward _exact point you can hit his model, at which point they build DPS slowly. As Rallo's HP goes down, elsewhere in pit he spawns groups of mobs, which your kiters and crowd controllers deal with. One spot of lag for the healers, a missed heal, will involve the instant death of the MT followed a split second later by the clerics, then the DPS guys. If the DPS guys do too much damage in the initial stages, or move to close to Rallos's model, everyone dies. If the crowd control guys fail to control the 20-30 or so mobs spawned by Rallos, everyone dies.

Fun event that one.

Rather than be snarky, let me just say you idea of what constitutes "fun" is very very different than mine...

Xilren

[Trippy]

Rallos Zek (god of war) - .... (common EQ tactic, called "walling"). DPS guys head to Rallos back and moving forward _exact point you can hit his model, at which point they build DPS slowly. As Rallo's HP goes down, elsewhere in pit he spawns groups of mobs, which your kiters and crowd controllers deal with. One spot of lag for the healers, a missed heal, will involve the instant death of the MT followed a split second later by the clerics, then the DPS guys. If the DPS guys do too much damage in the initial stages, or move to close to Rallos's model, everyone dies. If the crowd control guys fail to control the 20-30 or so mobs spawned by Rallos, everyone dies.

Rather than be snarky, let me just say you idea of what constitutes "fun" is very very different than mine...

It does give more people in the raid more things to do other than just sitting on their butts or standing around with autoattack turned on, though.

[Pococurante]

I like reading up on raid tactics but I doubt I'd ever join one.  I'm all for playing competently but Regimented is just too un-fun for me.

[penfold]

The complex events are fun as completing them is rewarding in its own right, and unlike EQs xp groups/normal gameplay, you dont have any time to get bored, your always doing something, and always on the move. So for EQ, its fun ;)