Originally posted by johnspartan

Originally posted by Mistmouse

I dont raid becuase of time, I dont enjoy sitting at my computer for hours on end doing any game be it online or offline. The most time I will send in game these days is 45 min to an hour and a half. Past that I have other things to do, play with my kids,read a book,work in my garden, go for a hike and so on.

There was a time a few years ago I did raid and I would stay up late after the family was asleep but after  not getting enough sleep the rest of my life began to suffer and games quickly lost thier shine  for me.

I dont envy raiders thier uber loot after all the cost they paid for it in time is way to costly for me.

 

What if you could break raiding up into smaller chunks, like an hour here and hour there, even extend the reset timers so that you could complete a single raid over multiple weeks and multiple but much shorter play sessions?

  That would be an idea I could go for

Originally posted by Mistmouse

Originally posted by johnspartan

Originally posted by Mistmouse

I dont raid becuase of time, I dont enjoy sitting at my computer for hours on end doing any game be it online or offline. The most time I will send in game these days is 45 min to an hour and a half. Past that I have other things to do, play with my kids,read a book,work in my garden, go for a hike and so on.

There was a time a few years ago I did raid and I would stay up late after the family was asleep but after  not getting enough sleep the rest of my life began to suffer and games quickly lost thier shine  for me.

I dont envy raiders thier uber loot after all the cost they paid for it in time is way to costly for me.

 

What if you could break raiding up into smaller chunks, like an hour here and hour there, even extend the reset timers so that you could complete a single raid over multiple weeks and multiple but much shorter play sessions?

  That would be an idea I could go for

You should check out patch 3.2 for WoW, they are offering exactly that.

And in 6 different Tiers of difficulty and group size.

You should check out patch 3.2 for WoW, they are offering exactly that.

And in 6 different Tiers of difficulty and group size.

I'm in the same boat as Mistmouse (maybe it's because of my choice of work and social life, but I don't understand how someone can finish their dinner then spend the rest of the evening staring at their computer or TV with minimal interaction with the rest of their home, much less the outside world.) and even with 3.2, WoW doesn't cure the raid scheduling problem. While raid extensions theoretically let players try the same raid for an indefinite period of time in shorter play sessions, the likelihood of finding 9 or 24 fellow players who are willing to have that same playstyle and being able to coordinate a raid schedule with these same people (who are as likely as me to only play when they feel like it, not when a calendar says they can) is miniscule.

Ultimately, I don't raid beyond VoA pugs (a short instance with 1-3 [with 3.2] quick raid bosses for non-WoW players) because raiding in WoW, probably the most casual PvE raid system I've seen, requires a player to fall into one of two categories any given week:

a) Raid with your guild which usually requires you to dedicate 3-4 hours a night for 2-3 nights a week on a set schedule. To me it feels like I'm not playing the game for fun anymore but simply sacrificing my time for others since I would rather be spending that time doing RL stuff after the first hour or two.

b) Join raids as a PuG and make sure they have a replacement for you (be it a late guildie or bored friend) when enough is enough. This doesn't seem to happen too often for me, so it's not a reliable option beyond the occassional saunter against the first boss of Ulduar.

Originally posted by johnspartan

Originally posted by Mistmouse

 

What if you could break raiding up into smaller chunks, like an hour here and hour there, even extend the reset timers so that you could complete a single raid over multiple weeks and multiple but much shorter play sessions?

City of Heroes has been doing that for years. I'm not sure what they call it though.

Originally posted by johnspartan

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

Again, you like raiding as it and that's fine. Most people do not. And many people who do raid would be doing something else if it wasn't for the reward. You are not right and they are not wrong. You simply have different tastes.

 

I agree with you there of course Jimmy, I am very much enjoying our back and forth debate.

But I think you are getting off topic.

You talk about complexity and the enemy reacting to the players actions and the players thus having to react to the enemy and I am trying to tell you that this is how raiding works. You can't look at it from the perspective of a single player or a single role as you HAVE to when watching a Youtube video. There is SO much more going on.

On the surface, yes it's a game of aggro management and numbers. Healing those who need healed, DPSing those who need to be damaged, tanking those that need to be tanked.

But it's what's under the hood, the complexities of every class and spec and the little details in a fight coming together and the coordination of it that brings the dynamic beyond the simple "push and kill" and into something that is really involving and requires talent, planning, and precise execution.

I'm not just a MMO gamer, I love single player RPG's and action games like the Zelda series (which I think has the best boss fights EVER of any games, period) and I know exactly what type and kind of boss fights you are talking about and what you are so eloquently describing...

But I tell you I see those kinds of fights and encounters every day in small-group dungeon and especially raid encounters in WoW. I have not raided in EQ or any other MMO, WoW is my first Raiding MMO, certainly not my first MMO lol but first one where I have raided and do raid.

I'd match the over-all complexity and challenge and fun that 10-25 people have to execute in a WoW raid to the over-all complexity and challenge and fun of a boss fight in a single player RPG or action game like Zelda.

If anything, the raid in WoW is MORE complex and challenging because you are NOT just relying on yourself, but also on 4-9-24-39 others to do their job as skillfully as you are doing yours.

Most raiders are so narrowly focused they don't understand the relationship between the roles and how deep it really goes.

The problem I see with raiding is that individual players do not feel any sense of contribution. Yes, the raid leader has to herd cats and everyone has to be on time with their skill spam, but the individual player doesn't contribute enough to the effort that they feel they can make a difference. Unless they fuck up that is, because you know that one person is going to be blamed for a raid wipe even if half the raid party was AFK.

How often in your raids has one person been able to turn a hopeless situation around with their own skill? MMORPGs are the only genre where this just doesn't seem to happen. Playing team based FPS and action games, I've seen plenty of times where one team or the other was on the ropes and some individual was able to turn the tide with skill and cunning. When is the last time you saw one guy save an entire raid party from being wiped?

An individual player can only significantly contribute to a raids failure and never to the group's success. This leads the individual player to feel a lack of involvment. Being in a marching band isn't for everyone.

1. Takes too long to get the group together
2. once there it is 30 minutes of button mashing and what appears to be no skill needed.
3. Loot is generally limited to a select few.
4. it is abso-freakin-lutely  bo  ring

If the RAID was to clear an area to get to an objective other than 1 boss mob that everyone focuses on it would be a different story.

I would prefer raids as needed to clear sections of content to open up a specific area for a set amount of time and another raid is requireds.  1 mob boss to take down is like watching grass grow.

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 said it, you listed lots of reasons I don't join raids anymore.  But I used to run raids, not only is it a thankless job to run raids, you gotta deal with drama.   There's always drama involved one way or another, somebody will get something to complain about, and it ruins the mood.  Running a raid guild is such a time consuming, tiring, thankless job that I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

I had a great time raiding before, in multiple MMO's.  But these days I stay far away from it if I can help it, and I don't even join guilds anymore.

One reason: I don't use voice apps.

That's actually been the biggest barrier for me as far as these games.  Too many people demand that everyone they group with have it and use it, and I just think it's more trouble than it's worth.

I think the only thing that could possibly tempt me to try rainding, is if it run mroe like multi front attack. Instead of getting 40 people to move in one large mass from room to room, make multiple entrances. Have one group that needs to go to the guard tower and take down the guard and keep taking out waves of soldiers as a distraction. Then send in another group somewhere else to engage the evil necro in the tower, while another group sneaks down into the treasure room to retrieve the artifact. Meanwhile another group or two attacks the front gate to keep reinforcements from running inside. Also have another group outside the main room to deal with waves of reinforcements trying to make it into the main room.

That's just a rough idea off the top of my head. But the basic concept is to have multiple groups with immediate goals that they have to continue to maintain in order to ensure the entire group's success. That way each group is contributing something vital to the raid as a whole. Instead of sitting on thier butts spamming one or 2 spells or shuffling their feet, sword in hand, waiting for the assist call to go out.

That would make a far more challenging and dynamic sort of raiding experience to me.

Well,

I seldom play long enough at a  tme to complete a raid, and the time waiting arround to organize is just about as bad as watching toons duel in WOW.

In a nutshell

Robet DeWalt

Don't like to schedule my life around a game.

I do not play games to make friends, do not like voice apps, etc. Most of the people that play games ( especially WoW) annoy me.

Raiding just isn't my thing.. repetitive and boring to me.

The problem with raiding is that most of these games' rewards are item based. And I often have to return to the same dungeon and run the same "raid" many, many times in order to complete the "set" that became the only reason anyone's running it.

Raiding because I want to be there is one thing -- raiding because I absolutely HAVE to have this set or that set in order to play in another dungeon or be competitive in PvP is stupid.

Plus: After a few runs, you learn the patterns that the mobs and bosses take, so it doesn't matter how "dynamic" the mob AI is -- it becomes a dungeon "run" at that point, and I don't know how anybody could find that fun.

I dont raid because....

1. Takes 2 hours to form a group for only 1 hour of raiding

2.  There is always an asshole...

3.  People are too greedy due to gear centric games.

4.  I get bored waiting forever.

5.  Being a WoW healer gets u yelled at if u mess up and then everyone gets pissed at u.

6.  Its expensive for no loot....

7.  DKP is stupid.

....Things to help fix #1 would be a raid "que" much like battlegrounds, doing cross server ques so u can find a group easier.  Hate spamming for classes "LF2M Good DPS, no scrubs!"

Due to people like you considering yourself better than the other 25-40 people in the raid and expecting them to supply all their own goods and what not