I find raiding to be boring, repetitive, predictable and a non-stop drama festival. Every time I join a raid, I get about half way through and wish I could just leave because I'm bored out of my mind. To me, the only difference between killing Hogger and any end-game raid boss is the amount of time it takes and the level of pathetic-assed drama that ensues.

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by brostyn

Raiding is like voting. One person isn't going to make a difference.

I also find it very boring.

In a really hard RAID it does. One guy mess up and you die, EQ2 have a few raids like that. Of course the raid only have place for certain classes then.

But you have probably just played the easy ones or j8ust played Wow.

The boring part however is a different thing, that is a good reason not to play them.

Never raided in WoW. Learned my lesson long before that. Glad to see people are still taking the usual stabs at WoW, though.

I know how different EQ2 is from WoW. You must be proud to play such a radically different game.

Originally posted by mbd1968

I used too a couple of years ago but I now lack the patience. Getting 25-40 people through a raid is an act of futility. You always have 3-4 people afk without telling the raid leader - attending kids/babies, gone for a smoke or top up the Jack Danials - 2-4 other are constantly dueling and not paying attention and 3-4 more either can't follow simple instructions or don't know how to play there class. You always get people who turn up late which means the raid start late resulting in people who need to finsih by a certain time leave early. People never brings consumables (pootions/elixirs/buff food), rangers/hunters forget arrows or bullets or they have there pet on aggressive and agro the whole dungeon.

So, why don't you raid anymore?

For exactly the same reasons quoted

Originally posted by brostyn

Originally posted by Loke666

Originally posted by brostyn

Raiding is like voting. One person isn't going to make a difference.

I also find it very boring.

In a really hard RAID it does. One guy mess up and you die, EQ2 have a few raids like that. Of course the raid only have place for certain classes then.

But you have probably just played the easy ones or j8ust played Wow.

The boring part however is a different thing, that is a good reason not to play them.

 

Never raided in WoW. Learned my lesson long before that. Glad to see people are still taking the usual stabs at WoW, though.

I know how different EQ2 is from WoW. You must be proud to play such a radically different game.

It's ok, he's probably one of the scrub DPS players who is carried by good tanks and healers who has NO idea how hard raiding can be, because their guild/freinds do all the hard work for them, no instead they just have to sit there and pew pew fire!

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Originally posted by Nicksd

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Originally posted by mbd1968

I used too a couple of years ago but I now lack the patience. Getting 25-40 people through a raid is an act of futility. You always have 3-4 people afk without telling the raid leader - attending kids/babies, gone for a smoke or top up the Jack Danials - 2-4 other are constantly dueling and not paying attention and 3-4 more either can't follow simple instructions or don't know how to play there class. You always get people who turn up late which means the raid start late resulting in people who need to finsih by a certain time leave early. People never brings consumables (pootions/elixirs/buff food), rangers/hunters forget arrows or bullets or they have there pet on aggressive and agro the whole dungeon.
So, why don't you raid anymore?

---

 
I really just want to quote you and leave, but you forgot to add that it is boring as hell.

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A-freaking-men

Tho if you have strict raiding rules and make people stick to them then it is simply just boring... :P

Plus Raid encounters have a habit of bugging out (Have had this happen too frequently in every mmo I have ever played)

Originally posted by Vegetta

 

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Originally posted by Nicksd

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Originally posted by mbd1968

 

I used too a couple of years ago but I now lack the patience. Getting 25-40 people through a raid is an act of futility. You always have 3-4 people afk without telling the raid leader - attending kids/babies, gone for a smoke or top up the Jack Danials - 2-4 other are constantly dueling and not paying attention and 3-4 more either can't follow simple instructions or don't know how to play there class. You always get people who turn up late which means the raid start late resulting in people who need to finsih by a certain time leave early. People never brings consumables (pootions/elixirs/buff food), rangers/hunters forget arrows or bullets or they have there pet on aggressive and agro the whole dungeon.
So, why don't you raid anymore?

---

 
I really just want to quote you and leave, but you forgot to add that it is boring as hell.

---

 

A-freaking-men

Double A-freaking-men

Originally posted by Innoss

Just reading some of the replies here makes me wonder what guilds/games people come from. I have lead a raid guild in every game ive played as in eq/ eq2/wow etc. I cant help but think most of the replies here are from people in mid to low tier guilds.

In my opinion, I equate guilds to jobs. Sure if your in a 25k a year job washing dishes then yea, that sucks. If your in a 125k a year job working with a team and accomplishing goals then you will be more fulfilled there.

Each guild and its structure is different and all have different ways to accomplish goals. You just have to find the one best suited for you. I enjoy raiding and unlike some posters here, we dont read the strats after they are posted. We write them. Theres a difference in the game between being a leader and a follower. Followers tend to get bored easily and give up. Leaders keep slogging along and in the end usually get the job done.

In my experience, most people look up the farthest progressed guild on thier server and try to join it hoping for easy loots with little involvement or dedication. Those are the people that burn out quick and your always having to replace them. Dont do this and your raiding experience will be better not only for you but the guild.

In closing, its up to you to get the most out of raiding. You make it fun or not.

I respectfully disagree.   Read my post on why I dislike raiding (a page or two back) and the issues I mentioned have nothing to do with the people in the raid, but rather the mechanics of it.    With the way the raid encounters are designed, all the problems i listed still exist regardless of how nice a group you are in.

Originally posted by SwampRob

When I was raiding in Wow, most of the boss fights were like a bunch of people playing Dance Revolution.  Seriously.   "You stand here, and when this bar turns green, everyone move to the right.   And then when the boss flashes, everyone move to the edge of the room...."

The first time I saw this, I was like WTF?!   This is what qualifies for a boss encounter?    Where's the opportunity for on-your-feet thinking?   For different tactics to accomplish the same goal?    Nope.   It's all "Put your feet on the faded marks in the ground and step in exactly the same places that everyone else did".     My god, they couldn't have made it more boring it they'd tried.

Also, the trash mobs.   I remember going through so many raids where the plan was "OK, we have 20 minutes of trash to wade through, then we get to boss A.   Then another 15 minutes of trash to get to boss B."    Translation:  do a bunch of boring stuff that not one person in the group wants to do, to get to the Dance Revolution encounter.

Wow.   Just wow.  And raiders think that this stuff deserves top quality gear cause it's "hard".

Explain a better way to do a raid encounter in a MMORPG then. It's going to be fun to tear it apart.

I didn't raid because the reward of the raid was to get more gear to get in better raids to get more gear to get in better raids to get more gear to get in better raids . . . lol.

Completely retarded . . . I ran a few instances, did molten core once and i was like, please . . . this is some crappy BS. As i realized the only thing i liked doing in WoW was ganking people with my Horde hunter. Nothing as fulfilling as ganking an alliance hunter who can't even play their own character. I should have started a ganking guild and just f'd up people while they leveled.

Cryomatrix

 I use to be a 6 day raider, off on sundays. Then I got engaged and now i'm getting married. I just dont have the 3-5 hours to spend every night. Plus my girl is a recovered WoW addict so she doesnt like me doing all those things I used to. 

With that said I love raiding, especially the thrill of defeating something for the first time. What got me to go back and back and back for loot was the good times i had with people while raiding. But a second job that doesnt pay real money is not the direction im heading now.

Originally posted by heerobya

Originally posted by SwampRob

When I was raiding in Wow, most of the boss fights were like a bunch of people playing Dance Revolution.  Seriously.   "You stand here, and when this bar turns green, everyone move to the right.   And then when the boss flashes, everyone move to the edge of the room...."

The first time I saw this, I was like WTF?!   This is what qualifies for a boss encounter?    Where's the opportunity for on-your-feet thinking?   For different tactics to accomplish the same goal?    Nope.   It's all "Put your feet on the faded marks in the ground and step in exactly the same places that everyone else did".     My god, they couldn't have made it more boring it they'd tried.

Also, the trash mobs.   I remember going through so many raids where the plan was "OK, we have 20 minutes of trash to wade through, then we get to boss A.   Then another 15 minutes of trash to get to boss B."    Translation:  do a bunch of boring stuff that not one person in the group wants to do, to get to the Dance Revolution encounter.

Wow.   Just wow.  And raiders think that this stuff deserves top quality gear cause it's "hard".

Explain a better way to do a raid encounter in a MMORPG then. It's going to be fun to tear it apart.

Sorry SwampRob, but Heerobya does prove an excellent point here. I believe you're looking at this the wrong way.

Back when I played Silkroad Online (and before bots infested the game and destroyed it, along with non-existant GM support), I found structure in raiding to be extremely necessary. Think of it this way. Would you allow everyone to run around and do what they feel like, or would you set up a battleplan, everyone sticks to it, and the raid turns out successful? I'll even give an example from my time in Silkroad Online.

I was a lvl 90 wizard/warrior (mostly wizard, the warrior part I got no skills from and only worked on that mastery so I could wear heavy armor), and I was a thief. We camped out near a ferry that merchants needed to use to get to the other continent to reach their destination, and we had structured everything out. I hid in the bushes, and used the invisible spell to hide from any merchants. We had two rogues, a crossbow users and a dagger user, go on ahead in stealth mode to report if any merchants or hunters (the "police" of Silkroad Online that protected merchants and killed thieves) were coming. The tankers stood at the base of the stairs of the ferry to make sure no merchants or hunters could reach the ferryman. And further up the stairs, we had an archer and a cleric that would lend support to the tankers. Meanwhile, I hid in nearby bushes to ambush our enemies with AOE spells, and a bard stood next to me to make sure my mana was always topped off (and she also provided all teammates nearby with extra def. buffs as long as she wasn't attacked). It was beautiful how everything was set up, and we ambushed many merchants (and a few hunters to boot). The even better part was that this whole group (with the exception of me) belonged to the same guild, so they fairly distributed any of the loot we got with everyone involved in the raid.

That was a raid encounter in which we camped out and ambushed our enemies with strategic set-up and planning, and it worked out beautifully. Also, you hate how anything with boss encounters is structured with groups. Um, would you want to stay in the middle of the map if the boss was planning to use a powerful aoe spell and you could only avoid it if you were on the edge of the map? Knowing how to counter boss's moves is kinda helpful, and chances are you won't repeat the same steps all the time...

Also, I believe that raiding for loot isn't bad if the game is based on a player-controlled economy with heavy crafting elements. The bad part about loot raiding is if the group doesn't fairly distribute everyone's share of the bounty (considering everyone does their part). 

I also do have a thought on the gear, but since that would make my post even longer, I ask that you look up the thread that discusses the idea of item decay.

Originally posted by heerobya

Originally posted by SwampRob

When I was raiding in Wow, most of the boss fights were like a bunch of people playing Dance Revolution.  Seriously.   "You stand here, and when this bar turns green, everyone move to the right.   And then when the boss flashes, everyone move to the edge of the room...."

The first time I saw this, I was like WTF?!   This is what qualifies for a boss encounter?    Where's the opportunity for on-your-feet thinking?   For different tactics to accomplish the same goal?    Nope.   It's all "Put your feet on the faded marks in the ground and step in exactly the same places that everyone else did".     My god, they couldn't have made it more boring it they'd tried.

Also, the trash mobs.   I remember going through so many raids where the plan was "OK, we have 20 minutes of trash to wade through, then we get to boss A.   Then another 15 minutes of trash to get to boss B."    Translation:  do a bunch of boring stuff that not one person in the group wants to do, to get to the Dance Revolution encounter.

Wow.   Just wow.  And raiders think that this stuff deserves top quality gear cause it's "hard".

Explain a better way to do a raid encounter in a MMORPG then. It's going to be fun to tear it apart.

And why should we have to come up with a better way? That's the designer's job.

And while we're on the subject, since when did it take a small army OF HEROES to deafeat a dragon?

To each their own and what not, but I can totally understand why people are bored with this.

Because when i first started playing MMOs, there was no such thing as raiding.

MMOs then, seemed to be about a wide open online worlds, with lots of interactions, and building communities, that could include player towns. Towns that are probably going to get ransacked by a bunch of reds this Friday night, so you were going to need to call in some help (as a single example).

There were dungeons of course, but in my opinion, were more "epic" than todays, because you needed to watch your back. Kept your blood pumping while you were in there.

Raiding seems to be about you and your guild tucked away in some instance, so you can pop out the other end with purples, and hang by the bank. If you don't get them this week, wait for your lockout timers, and try again later..

 A bit generalized, I know.....but hey  :)

I guess like more than a few here, i find raiding really dull.

Originally posted by Marcus-

Because when i first started playing MMOs, there was no such thing as raiding.

MMOs then, seemed to be about a wide open online worlds, with lots of interactions, and building communities, that could include player towns. Towns that are probably going to get ransacked by a bunch of reds this Friday night, so you were going to need to call in some help (as a single example).

There were dungeons of course, but in my opinion, were more "epic" than todays, because you needed to watch your back. Kept your blood pumping while you were in there.

Raiding seems to be about you and your guild tucked away in some instance, so you can pop out the other end with purples, and hang by the bank. If you don't get them this week, wait for your lockout timers, and try again later..

 A bit generalized, I know.....but hey  :)

 

I guess like more than a few here, i find raiding really dull.

Also well said. Seems like us who started with older mmo's are at a loss lol.

Originally posted by heerobya

Originally posted by SwampRob

When I was raiding in Wow, most of the boss fights were like a bunch of people playing Dance Revolution.  Seriously.   "You stand here, and when this bar turns green, everyone move to the right.   And then when the boss flashes, everyone move to the edge of the room...."

The first time I saw this, I was like WTF?!   This is what qualifies for a boss encounter?    Where's the opportunity for on-your-feet thinking?   For different tactics to accomplish the same goal?    Nope.   It's all "Put your feet on the faded marks in the ground and step in exactly the same places that everyone else did".     My god, they couldn't have made it more boring it they'd tried.

Also, the trash mobs.   I remember going through so many raids where the plan was "OK, we have 20 minutes of trash to wade through, then we get to boss A.   Then another 15 minutes of trash to get to boss B."    Translation:  do a bunch of boring stuff that not one person in the group wants to do, to get to the Dance Revolution encounter.

Wow.   Just wow.  And raiders think that this stuff deserves top quality gear cause it's "hard".

Explain a better way to do a raid encounter in a MMORPG then. It's going to be fun to tear it apart.

Oh, I dunno.   How about....randomness?   How about you make a boss so that at a not-predictable time (like 40% of his health) he does something unexpected?    How about giving a boss a variety of abilities that he (semi-)randomly chooses from each time he is encountered?    The point is for the heroes not to be able to know the ideal and works-every-time strategy when entering the boss' lair.   

Stuff like: "After 22 or 23 ticks, the person in the red beam has to switch out..." is what makes the encounter dull.   It should be impossible to know this in advance, regardless of how many times a player may have done it.   At best, the person might know; "he could use this or this or this or this" but should still have no way of predicting when said mob will do that.

In PvP, how often do you just see someone stand still and let you whack at them?   Yet raid bosses do this all the time.   They could, I dunno, move around?   Place themselves in strategically advantageous locations?

Look, it's fine for typical trash mobs in the world to be this way, cause the programming to make them all that unpredictable would be insane, but for encounters that are supposed to be 'Epic' to be dumbed down to the point where any schmoe can just go look up what the Uber Boss is going to do at every stage of the fight and when is simply.... unimaginative.     The devs can and should be able to do better.

I tried it, 10 mans were close to pushing it for me, i don't really hate anyone just its really to hard to get people to listen etc etc.  i mean they want stuff but they don't really try.  Meh the whole thing just burned me out on it.

I enjoy 5 mans with friends and even then we don't push those very often.

Originally posted by SwampRob

Oh, I dunno.   How about....randomness?   How about you make a boss so that at a not-predictable time (like 40% of his health) he does something unexpected?    How about giving a boss a variety of abilities that he (semi-)randomly chooses from each time he is encountered?    The point is for the heroes not to be able to know the ideal and works-every-time strategy when entering the boss' lair.   

Stuff like: "After 22 or 23 ticks, the person in the red beam has to switch out..." is what makes the encounter dull.   It should be impossible to know this in advance, regardless of how many times a player may have done it.   At best, the person might know; "he could use this or this or this or this" but should still have no way of predicting when said mob will do that.

In PvP, how often do you just see someone stand still and let you whack at them?   Yet raid bosses do this all the time.   They could, I dunno, move around?   Place themselves in strategically advantageous locations?

Look, it's fine for typical trash mobs in the world to be this way, cause the programming to make them all that unpredictable would be insane, but for encounters that are supposed to be 'Epic' to be dumbed down to the point where any schmoe can just go look up what the Uber Boss is going to do at every stage of the fight and when is simply.... unimaginative.     The devs can and should be able to do better.

Ok ok... so why do YOU think that they haven't done this or tried this yet?
 

I used to raid hardcore back in Everquest days waking up at 3:00 am just to kill some boss for some stupid loot all the way to WoW but I think a lot of people's gaming habits has changed since then as game developers opt for more "casual" gaming. Nowadays (ever since I quit WoW back in early 2008) I no longer desire to play a game that requires a commitment of 6-8  hours of your time and my gaming sessions nowadays are cut down to 3-4 hour stints at most.

Originally posted by heerobya

Originally posted by SwampRob

Oh, I dunno.   How about....randomness?   How about you make a boss so that at a not-predictable time (like 40% of his health) he does something unexpected?    How about giving a boss a variety of abilities that he (semi-)randomly chooses from each time he is encountered?    The point is for the heroes not to be able to know the ideal and works-every-time strategy when entering the boss' lair.   

Stuff like: "After 22 or 23 ticks, the person in the red beam has to switch out..." is what makes the encounter dull.   It should be impossible to know this in advance, regardless of how many times a player may have done it.   At best, the person might know; "he could use this or this or this or this" but should still have no way of predicting when said mob will do that.

In PvP, how often do you just see someone stand still and let you whack at them?   Yet raid bosses do this all the time.   They could, I dunno, move around?   Place themselves in strategically advantageous locations?

Look, it's fine for typical trash mobs in the world to be this way, cause the programming to make them all that unpredictable would be insane, but for encounters that are supposed to be 'Epic' to be dumbed down to the point where any schmoe can just go look up what the Uber Boss is going to do at every stage of the fight and when is simply.... unimaginative.     The devs can and should be able to do better.

Ok ok... so why do YOU think that they haven't done this or tried this yet?
 

You know, you could just save us all a lot of time and irritation if you ditched the "smug professor" act and just made a reply. I realize that you get off on the whole "more uber than thou" posturing, but it really is irritating. Throw down or go home.

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

Originally posted by heerobya

Originally posted by SwampRob

Oh, I dunno.   How about....randomness?   How about you make a boss so that at a not-predictable time (like 40% of his health) he does something unexpected?    How about giving a boss a variety of abilities that he (semi-)randomly chooses from each time he is encountered?    The point is for the heroes not to be able to know the ideal and works-every-time strategy when entering the boss' lair.   

Stuff like: "After 22 or 23 ticks, the person in the red beam has to switch out..." is what makes the encounter dull.   It should be impossible to know this in advance, regardless of how many times a player may have done it.   At best, the person might know; "he could use this or this or this or this" but should still have no way of predicting when said mob will do that.

In PvP, how often do you just see someone stand still and let you whack at them?   Yet raid bosses do this all the time.   They could, I dunno, move around?   Place themselves in strategically advantageous locations?

Look, it's fine for typical trash mobs in the world to be this way, cause the programming to make them all that unpredictable would be insane, but for encounters that are supposed to be 'Epic' to be dumbed down to the point where any schmoe can just go look up what the Uber Boss is going to do at every stage of the fight and when is simply.... unimaginative.     The devs can and should be able to do better.

Ok ok... so why do YOU think that they haven't done this or tried this yet?
 

 

You know, you could just save us all a lot of time and irritation if you ditched the "smug professor" act and just made a reply. I realize that you get off on the whole "more uber than thou" posturing, but it really is irritating. Throw down or go home.

I'm just trying to provoke a good argument and discussion.

It's easy to say "I don't like this and here is why" but it is much harder to come up with something better most of the time.

And then if/when you think you have, you have to cut through the idealistic ideas and bring it back down to Earth and then you realize the limitations of the systems and everything else.

Calm down skippy.

It's how games are actually made. You start with high concept and flesh through the details until you end with something that works.
 

Why don't raid bosses have a lot more random variables and abilities and such so that you can't predict them and make it more then a dance? 

There are a lot of reasons. First and foremost because learning how an encounter works and then besting it and winning is the point of PvE. You are suppose to win. Second, 99% of gamers in PvE don't want something 100% random they want something they can learn and get better at and eventually beat.

Randomness is saved for PvP. Also no matter how "random" you make an encounter you are still limited by the AI and you can't make the AI too smart in a MMO because of technological limitations, huge complicated AI + online with thousands of people is a recipe for horrible performance. So you have to run things based off of scripts, and scripts can be learned and predicted.

Also you have to program in every single one of those "random" things a boss can do, and that takes time and money and when you have 14 other bosses to program and a deadline of 3 days you can only spend so much time on a single encounter.

Again, take the idealistic "big" ideas and break them down to the realistic and what you can actually do, and what players actualy want. In the end, you have a game.

Originally posted by Jenuviel

I like to take my time with things, go at my own pace, read quest text, change my plans in mid-stride if something else occurs to me, et cetera. Raid groups, even normal groups, tend to be very results-oriented; they want to get the prize as quickly as possible, with the fewest disruptions possible. Plus, while I'm almost always a member of a guild/kin/corp/organization in whatever MMO I play, and while I also tend to be very chatty on the guild channel, I prefer doing the combat stuff myself. My real life involves a lot of dependency on other people (I work in a hospital), and logging into an MMO gives me an opportunity to do things for myself, by myself, in a world that's always there and always changing.

 

Also, the older I get, the less I find I have in common with the majority of people I encounter in MMOs. I'm sort of old school, but not in the "I like hardcore pve/pvp!" way; I'm old school in the "Hey you kids, get off my lawn!!!" way. I appreciate good spelling, I frown upon excessive swearing, I expect a degree of courtesy, I dislike self-entitlement. Either the world has leapt beyond me socially, or I've aged beyond the point of being relevant. Either way, I'm usually happier when I'm just out and about, minding my own business, occasionally crafting stuff up for guildmates. Unfortunately, that means I'm pretty much relegated to being a virtual tourist (moving from one game to another), as there aren't many titles out there with solo-oriented endgames. That's the way the bee bumbles.

I like this answer right here.

Originally posted by Marcus-

Because when i first started playing MMOs, there was no such thing as raiding.

MMOs then, seemed to be about a wide open online worlds, with lots of interactions, and building communities, that could include player towns. Towns that are probably going to get ransacked by a bunch of reds this Friday night, so you were going to need to call in some help (as a single example).

There were dungeons of course, but in my opinion, were more "epic" than todays, because you needed to watch your back. Kept your blood pumping while you were in there.

Raiding seems to be about you and your guild tucked away in some instance, so you can pop out the other end with purples, and hang by the bank. If you don't get them this week, wait for your lockout timers, and try again later..

A bit generalized, I know.....but hey :)

I guess like more than a few here, i find raiding really dull.

As well as what Marcus- said.

Back when I first started playing mmo's 10 years ago, dungeons were different.  They did not lock people out so that you can have your own little play ground all safe and sterile for you flounder in.  I had to watch out for enemies that were coming to kill me and just about anybody else unfortunate to be caught in front of them.  I had to compete with other people and make sure I got to a specific mob before they did otherwise I'd have to come back later.  Because all of this I made good friends that would watch my back and I'd watch theirs and we'd help each other out WILLINGLY for NO PERSONAL GAIN on a regular basis.  Those days are gone however.  Now it's all about being fenced off in your own instance, fighting predictable encounters repeatedly ad nausiem, and then parading your new "epic" weapons that won't be so epic after next expansion infront of a bang untill your lockouts drop so you can do it all over again.

Originally posted by heerobya

I'm just trying to provoke a good argument and discussion.

It's easy to say "I don't like this and here is why" but it is much harder to come up with something better most of the time.

And then if/when you think you have, you have to cut through the idealistic ideas and bring it back down to Earth and then you realize the limitations of the systems and everything else.

Calm down skippy.

It's how games are actually made. You start with high concept and flesh through the details until you end with something that works.
 

Why don't raid bosses have a lot more random variables and abilities and such so that you can't predict them and make it more then a dance? 

There are a lot of reasons. First and foremost because learning how an encounter works and then besting it and winning is the point of PvE. You are suppose to win. Second, 99% of gamers in PvE don't want something 100% random they want something they can learn and get better at and eventually beat.

Randomness is saved for PvP. Also no matter how "random" you make an encounter you are still limited by the AI and you can't make the AI too smart in a MMO because of technological limitations, huge complicated AI + online with thousands of people is a recipe for horrible performance. So you have to run things based off of scripts, and scripts can be learned and predicted.

Also you have to program in every single one of those "random" things a boss can do, and that takes time and money and when you have 14 other bosses to program and a deadline of 3 days you can only spend so much time on a single encounter.

Again, take the idealistic "big" ideas and break them down to the realistic and what you can actually do, and what players actualy want. In the end, you have a game.

You're supposed to win?  So much for that whole "challenge" argument huh?

But you were right at least with that one line.  Raid fanatics don't really want challenge.  They don't want interesting content.  They don't even want it to be fun.  They just want to put in their time and get their loot.  Getting their loot is the fun part for them and getting it from content that is so horrifically tedious that only insane people will put up with it is the icing on the cake for them because then they get to stroke their oversized e-peens and feel all special about themselves.

And as for the randomoness in PvE I will say that one of the things that made normal exp. groups in EQ so much fun was all the random chaos that went on in the popular (non-instanced) areas.  It wasn't programmed in and it probably wasn't intended or even expected to be that way but it quite often was and it made it that much more fun.  Players pulling stuff this way and that, trains, wandering mobs argroing, bad pulls and so forth created a lot of chaos at times and, hell, that was half the fun of the game.  When everything was going smoothly and methodically those were the most boring times.

By the way, calling people "skippy" doesn't make you sound more intelligent.

Originally posted by mbd1968

I used too a couple of years ago but I now lack the patience. Getting 25-40 people through a raid is an act of futility. You always have 3-4 people afk without telling the raid leader - attending kids/babies, gone for a smoke or top up the Jack Danials - 2-4 other are constantly dueling and not paying attention and 3-4 more either can't follow simple instructions or don't know how to play there class. You always get people who turn up late which means the raid start late resulting in people who need to finsih by a certain time leave early. People never brings consumables (pootions/elixirs/buff food), rangers/hunters forget arrows or bullets or they have there pet on aggressive and agro the whole dungeon.

So, why don't you raid anymore?

You also forgot to mention that some of the end game raids are suppose to be challenging, not stupid hard/impossible. I really hate getting to an endboss only to wipe several times.Makes me feel like all was for nothing.

Originally posted by Neanderthal

You're supposed to win?  So much for that whole "challenge" argument huh?

But you were right at least with that one line.  Raid fanatics don't really want challenge.  They don't want interesting content.  They don't even want it to be fun.  They just want to put in their time and get their loot.  Getting their loot is the fun part for them and getting it from content that is so horrifically tedious that only insane people will put up with it is the icing on the cake for them because then they get to stroke their oversized e-peens and feel all special about themselves.

And as for the randomoness in PvE I will say that one of the things that made normal exp. groups in EQ so much fun was all the random chaos that went on in the popular (non-instanced) areas.  It wasn't programmed in and it probably wasn't intended or even expected to be that way but it quite often was and it made it that much more fun.  Players pulling stuff this way and that, trains, wandering mobs argroing, bad pulls and so forth created a lot of chaos at times and, hell, that was half the fun of the game.  When everything was going smoothly and methodically those were the most boring times.

So what you are suppose to lose at PvE? 

All games, every single one is designed so that you can and will eventually win if you learn the game and are skilled enough at playing it.

I don't understand you at all, stop spouting the popular catch phrases from your "forum posting 101" handbook please, and think about what you are saying.

Just because PvE, or players versus the computer is designed so the players can win doesn't mean it isn't challenging to win.

There is a LOT of randomness in most every group I have ever been in while playing a game like World of Warcraft. Sure it's a lot of fun when everything is perfect and you down the content like clockwork, at least to me, but also it's a lot of fun to mix things up and pull two groups at once instead of one or pull a boss before people are ready and all kinds of randomness.

It happens ALL the time. The absolutely pefect fight happens so rarely... unless you are at the level of Ensidia or one of the "world class" guilds I gaurantee you most of the time everything in a raid is less then 100% perfect.

I'd love to see you make a game where the player wasn't designed to win if they were skilled enough.

Where they were designed to lose and only through complete and total luck or cheating or a fluke or glitch would they win.

All the masochists would love to play it!

Talk to a real developer sometime and ask if PvE content is designed for the player to win or not.

Get a clue.