I hate raiding and won't play a game that forces you to raid in order to get the best items. If all the raid drop and quest items are fully tradeable, and I mean all of them, every single last one of them, none of this BoP soulbound bullshit, so I can trade ingame for those raid items, then I would consider playing.

There will be raiding, you will get better items for *pve* from raiding, but there will be items from PvP rewards / crafting that will be better for *pvp* but wont cut it in raiding.

I belive thats what AoC's going for. correct me if im wrong

Diablo II sounds like a game for you.

There all Raiding games kid...mores the pity.

City of Heroes/Villains is the only MMO out there not forcing you to PvP/Raid (you can earn everything GROUPING and most of it SOLO)

LotRO, you will be able to get maybe half the items without raiding, and maybe the other half you would need to trade with raiders...if I understand it well.  It was too nasty for me, waiting for games with more freedom.

i love raiding and can't wait for AoC's epic runs. nothing like being apart of a well-oiled raiding machine tearing threw bigger-than-life monsters.

A question to all raid haters. What would you have as a end-game instead of raiding? And if raiding is your answer, what rewards would you like if not good armor and weapons?

recipes maybe, a mother load of building mats could work too. a hardcore buff for the whole guild ur apart of...

Originally posted by Linuxxx

A question to all raid haters. What would you have as a end-game instead of raiding? And if raiding is your answer, what rewards would you like if not good armor and weapons?

I would have grouping PvE encounters(grouping = 6 or less players)...the same as I always did from level 1.  At least on some servers you could earn everything in 1 group tasks.

Originally posted by Anofalye

 

Originally posted by Linuxxx

A question to all raid haters. What would you have as a end-game instead of raiding? And if raiding is your answer, what rewards would you like if not good armor and weapons?

 

I would have grouping PvE encounters(grouping = 6 or less players)...the same as I always did from level 1.  At least on some servers you could earn everything in 1 group tasks.

Taking it further there will be raid dungeons and quite a few of them for those that like that sort of thing. There will also be social dungeons where groups of 6/8/12 people can go in amongst many dozens of similar sized groups of you like that too its there.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

 

Originally posted by Anofalye

I would have grouping PvE encounters(grouping = 6 or less players)...the same as I always did from level 1.  At least on some servers you could earn everything in 1 group tasks.

You can have that in AoC, there will be a lot of grouping content and solo from what I saw. Infact the one main zone I played through was a 6 man group, in a 90 min 'run thru'. Loot is based on a 'need' or 'greed' basis.

 

Taking it further there will be raid dungeons and quite a few of them for those that like that sort of thing. There will also be social dungeons where groups of 6/8/12 people can go in amongst many dozens of similar sized groups of you like that too its there.

Either you or Mulcher is lying.

You are saying that all the BEST item will all be available in GROUP?  Mulcher just said it was to be earned in raiding, at least some of them.  You cannot be both, you are either awarding everything in group, or not.

EDIT: Unless you have servers with different settings...but I am pretty sure it would be heavily advertised if it was the case....unless you have such servers, then you have either, not both.

Originally posted by Anofalye

 

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

 

Originally posted by Anofalye

I would have grouping PvE encounters(grouping = 6 or less players)...the same as I always did from level 1.  At least on some servers you could earn everything in 1 group tasks.

You can have that in AoC, there will be a lot of grouping content and solo from what I saw. Infact the one main zone I played through was a 6 man group, in a 90 min 'run thru'. Loot is based on a 'need' or 'greed' basis.

 

Taking it further there will be raid dungeons and quite a few of them for those that like that sort of thing. There will also be social dungeons where groups of 6/8/12 people can go in amongst many dozens of similar sized groups of you like that too its there.

Either you or Mulcher is lying.

 

 

You are saying that all the BEST item will all be available in GROUP?  Mulcher just said it was to be earned in raiding, at least some of them.  You cannot be both, you are either awarding everything in group, or not.

And that grouping scales upwards the further you get into the game. Yes raids will drop unique items, and the way the devs put it, BEST for doing raid situations. Groups in zoning can acomplish good gear too for the area your in, again dependant on level. Everything that drops from mobs in the game is relevant to that mob / monster. Eg. Chickens wont drop platemail, but some archeronian guard might. That gear scales with the hardness of the area. In raids mobs will drop gear relevant to that particular raid dungeon, if that raid dungeon your in has a boss that say very good at fire mage defense, there is a good chance he will drop stuff that is good in fire defense.

It scales on the situation your in and the mechanic of the drop is based on a need or greed type. If you want to take loot, you click "greed" and take it all, or you can individually select "need" for one item from many. That way gear can be spread out over your group of friends accordingly.

A high end Zone and not an instanced dungeon that resets, may have a few bosses in it. These bosses are relevant to the zone. They will drop good stuff, that will be benifical for your character tied into the level of the boss killed for your use. And maybe good for all high level zones. The raid drops on the whole will be geared for raiding, specifically for those that enjoy doing them over and over to get kitted out in that type of gear. There is also a chance that the raiders could get a nice piece of gear that would be good in regular PvE play too, but the way I read into what has been said is that Raid stuff is aimed for Raiders, and not neccessarily for things like PvP. Dropped items in the world cannot be improved upon with gems in the sockets. Only crafted items pertaining to the level of the crafter will offer the chance for more sockets.

You could easily go in an 6 or 8 man group in a high level zone and get very good gems for slots in a non raid environment that would be more than suitable for your non raiding needs.

How it plays out will have to wait till people get up that high and see the drops for comparison. One thing forsure is, you are most definately not forced to raid to get the best items, some of the best items that will be vaulable for raiding will come mainly from raiding. Your small man regular zone mob drops will be aimed at regular zone play pertaining to their level and rarity and difficulty of the area that your in.

I have some footage on tape of the raid designer talking, I'll see if I can re-upload it and it might clarify a few things, and it will leave a question mark over some things too. Everything above is my interpretation of whats been said over development time, as its still beta alot of things are still not finalised.

Originally posted by Linuxxx

A question to all raid haters. What would you have as a end-game instead of raiding? And if raiding is your answer, what rewards would you like if not good armor and weapons?

I wouldn't have an end-game, there is no point to an end game!  It should be all about the adventure contained within.  What is the point of getting to the cap as fast as possible then all u do is wait around for raids to collect gear, why not have that throughout the adventure instead of the best stuff always being at the lvl cap!

Now if the game has a lvl cap as most do, and you eventually get there....say do like FFXI does where all the previous content has lvl caps.  So if you have a friend that needs help, u can still go there on ur max lvl char,  although once u step into the instance ur char is temp reduced to the lvl cap of that area! 

Or like LOTRO has tons and tons of story-driven content throughout the adv and very little end-game BS.

....Or there is WAR coming soon, yeah its gonna have a huge focus on end-game city sieging, but the way its being designed requires a server wide effort, not just small to large raid groups.  Then have you looked at the Tome of Knowledge and everything that encompasses....thats just tons of content to go back too and try and find if u missed some which I'm sure everyone will.

As far as rewards for raids, instead of sets of armor, do something to the effect like WoW did when they opened up the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraj, which required a server wide effort for both sides.  Keep having the world change and new areas open or close based on the server wide efforts {ex. WAR cities}.  Maybe instead of having huge content updates every 3-4 months or more.  Have small updates become avail as the players of each server unlocks them through raid, group, collection, PvP, RvR, killing efforts.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

 

Sorry I meant mainly in response to this "I would have grouping PvE encounters(grouping = 6 or less players)...the same as I always did from level 1. "

 

And that grouping scales upwards the further you get into the game. Yes raids will drop unique items, and the way the devs put it, BEST for doing raid situations.

So it's a Kaplanesque Raid or die game?

PASS.

At this point in time it's hard for anyone to tell you with a straight face what this game will be on launch or what it'll be after X amount of time. Maybe the developers can shed some light about the launch but they will still follow their player base regardless.

Lets take WoW as an example of end game goal evolution.

1. The game started as a group based content. There were no raids at launch.
2. At some point it became raid oriented but light so to speak, half the people in MC could be strolling around.
3. Then it became more and more raid focused, pinnacle was Naxxramas.
4. Comming expansion they started killing raiding and focusing exclusively on group content and PvP.
5. Down some time they totally focused on PvP (the PvP WoW has anyway).

So you started from a group based PvE game, moved to casual raiding, heavy raiding, casual PvP, pro PvP.

So is AoC a raiding game? No clue and even the developers are not adamant about it. I'm sure they are waiting for the player base to dictate where the game will go. They just have all the bases covered and see which gets more attention once the crowd starts entering the theme park and playing with the toys.

Originally posted by AmazingAvery

You could easily go in an 6 or 8 man group in a high level zone and get very good gems for slots in a non raid environment that would be more than suitable for your non raiding needs.

Suitable for me is the BEST item.  And it isn't.

Let's review a little human psychology:  Jealousy.

A-  If I am jealous, I would hide it and pretend I am not until I figure out why.

B- I would try to rationalize it, if I can it would be something funny and joking about.  In the case of raiding gear been better than grouping gear, I can't rationalise that.  Best groupers have to be groupers.  You cannot expect a grouper to do anything but grouping in order to advance and become better.  It all has to do with the amount of time I invest in a game.  See, if I play a game 100 hours or more (can play much more than that in a month alone), the surrounding must be great and not prone to lead me to unsolving jealousy.

C- I would either have to solve this jealousy issue by joining in (raiding = something I dislike, so I would be unhappy in a game; and from there I can rationalise it much more easily, as I try at least), been ill and in physical pain (jealousy leads there eventually)...or just quit the game.

Now, why would I want either to raid or be in physical pain (due to jealousy)?  I don't claim to be perfect as a human beeing.  But I have a responsability to my well beeing, and if a game lead to physical pain and suffering, I won't play it.  See, I have 3 options with raiding been in game, I can join, be sick/ill or quit the game.  We can discard been ill right away; we are talking about a game here, something supposed to be fullfilling my free time, so I can either raid or quit.

I wonder when people like this will start realizing that NOBODY CARES if they play or not there are many other people, and i mean many more, that will play AoC whether it has BoP or not

Originally posted by link35

I wonder when people like this will start realizing that NOBODY CARES if they play or not there are many other people, and i mean many more, that will play AoC whether it has BoP or not

I don't recall the OP asking people to care if he plays AoC or not.  He was just asking a question about the type of game it's going to be so he can make an informed decision on whether or not he wants to spend time and money on it.

And yes, AoC is going to be one of those "raid or quit" type games.  Of course, people on this forum will try to spin it every which way to convince you that it won't be.  They'll say things like, "Nobody is going to FORCE you to raid", "If you don't raid you don't need gear progression", "This game won't be as item-centric as other games", and so on.

But don't be fooled by it.  When you get past all the raving of the fans the thing that really matters is what the devs think.  So what do they think?  Well, let me put it like this; have you ever read a heated argument between proponents of the "raid or quit" philosophy and people who want equal alternatives to raiding?  You know the arguments that the raiders use to support their position?  Yeah...well, the developers of AoC use the same arguments to defend raiding as the most important playstyle and the only playstlye that deserves to be rewarded.

I know this because when I used to be a fan of the game I participated in some of those discussions with the devs on the official forums.  But then I accepted that it was hopeless trying to talk sense to a raid fanatic who was also a developer so I stopped posting on the official forums.  Of course, the devs aren't stupid.  They don't want to scare people away so they became a lot more carefull about what they said as time went on.  And they'll tell you that you don't HAVE to raid (well of course nobody HAS to raid, nobody HAS to play at all).  But if you saw how adamant the devs were in insisting that raiding is the greatest thing ever and non-raiders aren't worthy to lick the boots of raiders then you would be as certain as I am what sort of game this is going to be. 

Originally posted by Neanderthal

 

Originally posted by link35

I wonder when people like this will start realizing that NOBODY CARES if they play or not there are many other people, and i mean many more, that will play AoC whether it has BoP or not

I don't recall the OP asking people to care if he plays AoC or not.  He was just asking a question about the type of game it's going to be so he can make an informed decision on whether or not he wants to spend time and money on it.

 

And yes, AoC is going to be one of those "raid or quit" type games.  Of course, people on this forum will try to spin it every which way to convince you that it won't be.  They'll say things like, "Nobody is going to FORCE you to raid", "If you don't raid you don't need gear progression", "This game won't be as item-centric as other games", and so on.

But don't be fooled by it.  When you get past all the raving of the fans the thing that really matters is what the devs think.  So what do they think?  Well, let me put it like this; have you ever read a heated argument between proponents of the "raid or quit" philosophy and people who want equal alternatives to raiding?  You know the arguments that the raiders use to support their position?  Yeah...well, the developers of AoC use the same arguments to defend raiding as the most important playstyle and the only playstlye that deserves to be rewarded.

I know this because when I used to be a fan of the game I participated in some of those discussions with the devs on the official forums.  But then I accepted that it was hopeless trying to talk sense to a raid fanatic who was also a developer so I stopped posting on the official forums.  Of course, the devs aren't stupid.  They don't want to scare people away so they became a lot more carefull about what they said as time went on.  And they'll tell you that you don't HAVE to raid (well of course nobody HAS to raid, nobody HAS to play at all).  But if you saw how adamant the devs were in insisting that raiding is the greatest thing ever and non-raiders aren't worthy to lick the boots of raiders then you would be as certain as I am what sort of game this is going to be. 

you dont need to raid end game if you dont want to...ever hear of PvP?...its up to you

Originally posted by Kubush

Diablo II sounds like a game for you.

If you know anything about Diablo 2, it is a game that forces you to grind the same boss hundreds of times to finally get that certain drop that you wanted.  I really think it's where blizzard took it's WoW raiding ideas from.  I remember when I played D2 a while back, grinding meph on hell mode over and over and over again.  After a long hard road, I was finally able to beat Bhaal moderately easily... and even then, I was still grinding because I wanted some certain items..