Originally posted by Insane666

being an old scholl mmo'er i was disgusted by what could pass for being a raid theese days,,, one team encounter? its a raid!! say the new school devs,,,

 

while 40 ppl raid is definately a step (back) in the right direction for mmo's i wont start gigglin like a japaneese schoolgirl until i see some 100-200 ppl raids we were used to back in the day,,, uninstanced ones,,,

The more players in raid the simplier are mechanics in boss fights. So ye.. 100-200 ppl raids are pure zergfests I personaly dont find  enjoyable. I cant say Im very excited too see a comback of 40man raids eighter. For the same reason.

The amount of people doesn't really matter. The quality of the raid encounters is far more important.

Well designed and executed 5-man content is better than poorly done 20-man content.

Usually when raid size increases the room for error increases as well.

That's why I like content for less players.

I have never done a 40 man raid but I to this day raid 24 man content in EQ2.  Keeping 24 people playing consistent days and focused for 3 hours at a time is a pain in the ass, I can't imagine what 40 would be like unless there was tons of redundancy at that point and it really didn't matter to much who you included after a point.

Do you have to fill all of those 40 slots with a specific class/build like we often have to in EQ2 or are 20+ of those slots filler where you can shove any body that can manage autoattack and joust when the red text tells them to?

I personally prefer dynamic scalling of raids.  From group size all the way up to whatever maxium the devs feel works but I also know that creates tons of loot issues and human ego's get bruised all so easy at the idea of "giving" good loot to people who don't "deserve" it.

all i remember of raiding  is

1/ the 1-2 hours waiting for people to turn up

2/the 3-4 hours of doing the raids

3/ the wipes and  doing the whole thing again

4/ the one drop you need which will double your dps/healing and somone else rolls  on it because it will impove there dps by 0.01 dps

5/getting kicked from a raid group because your dps is too low(because of above)

6/belonging  to guilds who helped tanks and  healers get there starting equipment only for them  to leave for bigger guilds

oh how much i love  doing raids

Originally posted by zimboy69

all i remember of raiding  is

 

1/ the 1-2 hours waiting for people to turn up

2/the 3-4 hours of doing the raids

3/ the wipes and  doing the whole thing again

4/ the one drop you need which will double your dps/healing and somone else rolls  on it because it will impove there dps by 0.01 dps

5/getting kicked from a raid group because your dps is too low(because of above)

6/belonging  to guilds who helped tanks and  healers get there starting equipment only for them  to leave for bigger guilds

oh how much i love  doing raids

Back in wow when there was 40 man raids, there really was no dps counter. It was just knowing the fights and being with a guild. I don't think there was pugs of 40 mans ever, it was always a guild thing.

Originally posted by Panther2103
The problem with 40 man raids was just managing to get 40 people on at the same time in a guild. Guilds are so diverse now, and there aren't as many people in a guild unless they invite everyone under the sun. I felt like I was in an awesome guild when there was 30 people online once. I feel like it would just be incredibly difficult to get everyone on at the same time, with nobody calling out because of some issue and then on top of that getting everyone to last the entire way through the raid which tends to be pretty long.

This is one issue with large raids my other reason for not liking them is unbelievability.

What I mean by this is MMO gaming is an extension of my love of RPG table top Pen & Paper from the early 80's.  For over 30 years I have had this fascination with small group settings because of my love of D&D, at no point did I ever sit around the kitchen table with 39 of my closest friends raiding a dungeon for its vast treasures.  It was always less then 8 people that did this and to me it kept personal and intuitive. 

Originally posted by Panther2103

Originally posted by zimboy69

all i remember of raiding  is

 

1/ the 1-2 hours waiting for people to turn up

2/the 3-4 hours of doing the raids

3/ the wipes and  doing the whole thing again

4/ the one drop you need which will double your dps/healing and somone else rolls  on it because it will impove there dps by 0.01 dps

5/getting kicked from a raid group because your dps is too low(because of above)

6/belonging  to guilds who helped tanks and  healers get there starting equipment only for them  to leave for bigger guilds

oh how much i love  doing raids

Back in wow when there was 40 man raids, there really was no dps counter. It was just knowing the fights and being with a guild. I don't think there was pugs of 40 mans ever, it was always a guild thing.

That would be nice, but WOW actually did have DPS counter add-ons quite early on in the raiding game, back in Molten Core. And if you were a DPS class, you did watch it closely. At least this was true for most raiding guilds I saw back then.

For what zimboy69 said, all of that did happen, but to me the fun parts far outweighed the annoying parts. Back in vanilla you had ZG which was 20-men, and even that felt too small-scale to me, though some encounters were arguably better.

What I'm thinking with WildStar is, as long as raiding is not "the" endgame, as long as there are other viable options with good fun and good rewards, great! Let's have big raids as well! But if raiding becomes the main form of endgame for all, that's going to turn off a lot of players as it did in vanilla WOW.

Originally posted by Roxtarr

I suppose with 17 ex-Blizzard employees on their team, it shouldn't be shocking that the game will have them.

In a recent interview with Curse, they asked Mike Donatelli (Wildstar Content Director) if they would include 40-man raids.  

His answer, "Love em or hate them ... we love them and YES we have every intention of putting them in our game".

Is the return of 40 man raids a good thing or not?  

I think, personally, that it helps guilds.  It seems as raids have gotten smaller and smaller, guild have had an increasingly difficut time sticking together.  I ran a 40 man guild and wouldn't mind seeing it comeback.

 

It depends on their definition of raiding. If you're talking about the 40 man cluster f*cks that I left behind in WoW then no. If you're talking about a raid of 40 split into squads of 10 storming like say a castle where the squads are tasked with bringing down their own mini boss in a wing of said castle to unlock a room for the final boss and then converging onto that final boss for the final showdown then that could be interesting. Especially if you make it dependent on how many players actually join the raid.

For instance 10 people enter the castle, then only the final boss and 1 mini boss generate. Twenty people enter, then the final boss and two mini bosses generate. The more people that enter the caslte then the more mini bosses that generate up to a max of four. And depending on the amount of players that actually finish the final battle it would move the raid to different loot tables.

Finish the final fight with 10-19  players in the raid and you get loot based off table D, finish with 20-29 move to table C, 30-39 table B and 40 table A. And like SWTOR everyone gets their own loot cache. Whether that's gear for their actual class, materials or tokens.

This way big guilds could continue to do their thing but it also gives smaller guilds and soloers a chance to experience raids. You know, actually promote socializing rather than elitism. You could have two guilds with 20 players each. Or 30 guildmates + a small 10 man guild. And you would see people inviting players from their friend's list or recruits since the final boss fight's difficulty would be adjusted for 10 people anyway. Only the loot table changes with the amount of raiders involved, thus making every person equally vital.

Originally posted by Insane666

being an old scholl mmo'er i was disgusted by what could pass for being a raid theese days,,, one team encounter? its a raid!! say the new school devs,,,

Waggle that phat cane with some mad menace, yo.

I hated 40 man raiding in WoW. It took forever to get everyone ready, to the dungeon, buffed up, directions told, then get moving for the few scraps of loot you'd get to try and roll on. Doing those raids over and over to get your full suits only to have them replaced soon after you finally got them all sucked.

I did raiding all throughout WoW, for me it was boring, and annoying. I'm glad they'll have them in WildStar for those that may want to do them, but more and more the game is looking like it's not the game for me to buy. Too bad, housing actually looked pretty neat.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Abdiell

Originally posted by Loktofeit

It will be interesting to see if they found a new way to approach the 40-man raid or if they are just going to repeat mistakes of the past. After all, there's reasons why raids have gone from 40 to 25 to 10 to 4-6.

The only reason they went away in WoW was greed. The game was wildy popular in vanilla, but they were able to add to their already staggering sub numbers by allowing more people to expierence raids. They carebeared their to hell for money, not because the 40 man raid didn't work.

No, the reason they went away was because people weren't doing them. They went away because people who wanted to do them couldn't get into them due to what was required to get 40 people at the same place at the same time on the same server. The rare drops, DKP and elitist pricks in raiding guilds didn't help either.

So, if a dev makes their content more accessible to the people that want to play it, that's greed?  Between the 'greed' and and the 'carebeared to hell for money' thing, it's obvious you're passionate about your beliefs here, so I won't waste much time explaining this.

It may have possibly worked for MMO gamers in 2000. It didn't work for most MMO gamers in 2003. It certainly didn't work for most MMO gamers in 2007, and it definitely won't work for most MMO gamers in 2012 unless they take a new approach to it. Better dungeonfinder, cross-server teaming, NPCs to fill empty slots, distributed drops, guaranteed rewards... there's a lot of ways to fix it, but the old system was not only broken, but does not fit the way most people play MMOs these days.

That's why not just WOW but almost every MMO has reduced the number of players necessary for raids over the past ten years.

 

Now that you say that, I think you are right. WoW wasn't popular at all in Vanilla. Hell, they were barely hanging on....

Dude, they had millions of subscribers when basically the ONLY thing to do endgame was raid or try for High Warlord. Both of those things were very time consuming.

I will be the first to admit that I was an "elitist prick," but hell if I didn't deserve to be. I played the game a lot, and I played it well. There was an art to being effective in a raid back then. It took 40 people working together flawlessly to kill C'thun, and the feeling of accomplishment at seeing him die is unmatched in gaming for me. I ran around in full T3, and was the only hunter on my server to do so. 

With that being said, I had no problem recruiting hunters who had skill and desire, but not gear. I would take them to Ony or something, and see if they were worth my time. Almos all officers/class leaders I spoke to in my guild and others felt the same way. That meant that anyone with a drive to raid, COULD.

There is this great illusion that only a select few could raid back then. I found that most people that didn't raid, chose not to. There were very few that applied to all raiding guilds and were consistantly denied. Those few were truly talentless, or complete asshats. In either case, why should a game shift so drastically to accomodate the unskilled masses? It is obvious; money.

They dumb down the raids, start handing out wellfare epics, remove the pvp grind and all of the sudden they get another couple million 12 year olds and soccer moms to start playing. Large scale raids work just fine if you are not tryinfg to be a wow killer. It will absoultely alienate a section of the population that wants everythng easy mode. They are the gamers that always say " I play games to have fun, not wipe for 4 hours." That is code for "I suck dunkey nuts, and I want to be carried to my epics."

Its simple. Make 40 man raids difficult and rewarding, and make 5-10 man dungeons simple and less rewarding. It makes sense that the more work you put in, the more rewards you get out.

Backlash incoming. Remember how they wanted to do anything but WoW? and before the inevitable "wow copied it from eq!", EQ didn't have 40/25/20/15/10 mans...it was open world and open structured.

just another example though. pick on whoever you want on this site, but big talk is almost always just that, and does not hold up for long.

Originally posted by Abdiell

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Abdiell

Originally posted by Loktofeit

It will be interesting to see if they found a new way to approach the 40-man raid or if they are just going to repeat mistakes of the past. After all, there's reasons why raids have gone from 40 to 25 to 10 to 4-6.

The only reason they went away in WoW was greed. The game was wildy popular in vanilla, but they were able to add to their already staggering sub numbers by allowing more people to expierence raids. They carebeared their to hell for money, not because the 40 man raid didn't work.

No, the reason they went away was because people weren't doing them. They went away because people who wanted to do them couldn't get into them due to what was required to get 40 people at the same place at the same time on the same server. The rare drops, DKP and elitist pricks in raiding guilds didn't help either.

So, if a dev makes their content more accessible to the people that want to play it, that's greed?  Between the 'greed' and and the 'carebeared to hell for money' thing, it's obvious you're passionate about your beliefs here, so I won't waste much time explaining this.

It may have possibly worked for MMO gamers in 2000. It didn't work for most MMO gamers in 2003. It certainly didn't work for most MMO gamers in 2007, and it definitely won't work for most MMO gamers in 2012 unless they take a new approach to it. Better dungeonfinder, cross-server teaming, NPCs to fill empty slots, distributed drops, guaranteed rewards... there's a lot of ways to fix it, but the old system was not only broken, but does not fit the way most people play MMOs these days.

That's why not just WOW but almost every MMO has reduced the number of players necessary for raids over the past ten years.

Now that you say that, I think you are right. WoW wasn't popular at all in Vanilla. Hell, they were barely hanging on....

Dude, they had millions of subscribers when basically the ONLY thing to do endgame was raid or try for High Warlord. Both of those things were very time consuming.

I will be the first to admit that I was an "elitist prick," but hell if I didn't deserve to be. I played the game a lot, and I played it well. There was an art to being effective in a raid back then. It took 40 people working together flawlessly to kill C'thun, and the feeling of accomplishment at seeing him die is unmatched in gaming for me. I ran around in full T3, and was the only hunter on my server to do so. 

With that being said, I had no problem recruiting hunters who had skill and desire, but not gear. I would take them to Ony or something, and see if they were worth my time. Almos all officers/class leaders I spoke to in my guild and others felt the same way. That meant that anyone with a drive to raid, COULD.

There is this great illusion that only a select few could raid back then. I found that most people that didn't raid, chose not to. There were very few that applied to all raiding guilds and were consistantly denied. Those few were truly talentless, or complete asshats. In either case, why should a game shift so drastically to accomodate the unskilled masses? It is obvious; money.

They dumb down the raids, start handing out wellfare epics, remove the pvp grind and all of the sudden they get another couple million 12 year olds and soccer moms to start playing. Large scale raids work just fine if you are not tryinfg to be a wow killer. It will absoultely alienate a section of the population that wants everythng easy mode. They are the gamers that always say " I play games to have fun, not wipe for 4 hours." That is code for "I suck dunkey nuts, and I want to be carried to my epics."

Its simple. Make 40 man raids difficult and rewarding, and make 5-10 man dungeons simple and less rewarding. It makes sense that the more work you put in, the more rewards you get out.

You're seeing what you want to see and not reading what's there. Either that or I've slighted your beloved game/gameplay and you're too affected to discuss this rationally. Your unrelated rant about welfare epics and your claim that the low raid participation is 'an illusion' are testament to that.

Nowhere did I say WOW wasn't doing well or didn't do well. People simply weren't doing raids, though. Only a small percentage of the playerbase had even seen raid content, which is why in TBC they introduced 25 and 10-man raids. Even then, they saw much higher participation in 10-man than in 25-man, which is why they have been constantly adjusting requirments and rewards for both ever since.

40-man raids went away because people simply weren't doing them.

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Abdiell

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Abdiell

Originally posted by Loktofeit

It will be interesting to see if they found a new way to approach the 40-man raid or if they are just going to repeat mistakes of the past. After all, there's reasons why raids have gone from 40 to 25 to 10 to 4-6.

The only reason they went away in WoW was greed. The game was wildy popular in vanilla, but they were able to add to their already staggering sub numbers by allowing more people to expierence raids. They carebeared their to hell for money, not because the 40 man raid didn't work.

No, the reason they went away was because people weren't doing them. They went away because people who wanted to do them couldn't get into them due to what was required to get 40 people at the same place at the same time on the same server. The rare drops, DKP and elitist pricks in raiding guilds didn't help either.

So, if a dev makes their content more accessible to the people that want to play it, that's greed?  Between the 'greed' and and the 'carebeared to hell for money' thing, it's obvious you're passionate about your beliefs here, so I won't waste much time explaining this.

It may have possibly worked for MMO gamers in 2000. It didn't work for most MMO gamers in 2003. It certainly didn't work for most MMO gamers in 2007, and it definitely won't work for most MMO gamers in 2012 unless they take a new approach to it. Better dungeonfinder, cross-server teaming, NPCs to fill empty slots, distributed drops, guaranteed rewards... there's a lot of ways to fix it, but the old system was not only broken, but does not fit the way most people play MMOs these days.

That's why not just WOW but almost every MMO has reduced the number of players necessary for raids over the past ten years.

Now that you say that, I think you are right. WoW wasn't popular at all in Vanilla. Hell, they were barely hanging on....

Dude, they had millions of subscribers when basically the ONLY thing to do endgame was raid or try for High Warlord. Both of those things were very time consuming.

I will be the first to admit that I was an "elitist prick," but hell if I didn't deserve to be. I played the game a lot, and I played it well. There was an art to being effective in a raid back then. It took 40 people working together flawlessly to kill C'thun, and the feeling of accomplishment at seeing him die is unmatched in gaming for me. I ran around in full T3, and was the only hunter on my server to do so. 

With that being said, I had no problem recruiting hunters who had skill and desire, but not gear. I would take them to Ony or something, and see if they were worth my time. Almos all officers/class leaders I spoke to in my guild and others felt the same way. That meant that anyone with a drive to raid, COULD.

There is this great illusion that only a select few could raid back then. I found that most people that didn't raid, chose not to. There were very few that applied to all raiding guilds and were consistantly denied. Those few were truly talentless, or complete asshats. In either case, why should a game shift so drastically to accomodate the unskilled masses? It is obvious; money.

They dumb down the raids, start handing out wellfare epics, remove the pvp grind and all of the sudden they get another couple million 12 year olds and soccer moms to start playing. Large scale raids work just fine if you are not tryinfg to be a wow killer. It will absoultely alienate a section of the population that wants everythng easy mode. They are the gamers that always say " I play games to have fun, not wipe for 4 hours." That is code for "I suck dunkey nuts, and I want to be carried to my epics."

Its simple. Make 40 man raids difficult and rewarding, and make 5-10 man dungeons simple and less rewarding. It makes sense that the more work you put in, the more rewards you get out.

You're seeing what you want to see and not reading what's there. Either that or I've slighted your beloved game/gameplay and you're too affected to discuss this rationally. Your unrelated rant about welfare epics and your claim that the low raid participation is 'an illusion' are testament to that.

Nowhere did I say WOW wasn't doing well or didn't do well. People simply weren't doing raids, though. Only a small percentage of the playerbase had even seen raid content, which is why in TBC they introduced 25 and 10-man raids. Even then, they saw much higher participation in 10-man than in 25-man, which is why they have been constantly adjusting requirments and rewards for both ever since.

40-man raids went away because people simply weren't doing them.

 

 

I agree that at the time that a very small percentage were doing raids (well, finishing them.)I'm not sure that dumbing them down was he answer.  Players consume content much faster now and it's much easier to communicate strategies these days.  Instead of making the challenge easier, I'm wondering if we all just needed to get better.  I was so new back then.  I, personally, am a much beter player now.  Maybe it's time to give it another shot.  

Originally posted by Roxtarr

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Abdiell

Originally posted by Loktofeit

Originally posted by Abdiell

Originally posted by Loktofeit

It will be interesting to see if they found a new way to approach the 40-man raid or if they are just going to repeat mistakes of the past. After all, there's reasons why raids have gone from 40 to 25 to 10 to 4-6.

The only reason they went away in WoW was greed. The game was wildy popular in vanilla, but they were able to add to their already staggering sub numbers by allowing more people to expierence raids. They carebeared their to hell for money, not because the 40 man raid didn't work.

No, the reason they went away was because people weren't doing them. They went away because people who wanted to do them couldn't get into them due to what was required to get 40 people at the same place at the same time on the same server. The rare drops, DKP and elitist pricks in raiding guilds didn't help either.

So, if a dev makes their content more accessible to the people that want to play it, that's greed?  Between the 'greed' and and the 'carebeared to hell for money' thing, it's obvious you're passionate about your beliefs here, so I won't waste much time explaining this.

It may have possibly worked for MMO gamers in 2000. It didn't work for most MMO gamers in 2003. It certainly didn't work for most MMO gamers in 2007, and it definitely won't work for most MMO gamers in 2012 unless they take a new approach to it. Better dungeonfinder, cross-server teaming, NPCs to fill empty slots, distributed drops, guaranteed rewards... there's a lot of ways to fix it, but the old system was not only broken, but does not fit the way most people play MMOs these days.

That's why not just WOW but almost every MMO has reduced the number of players necessary for raids over the past ten years.

Now that you say that, I think you are right. WoW wasn't popular at all in Vanilla. Hell, they were barely hanging on....

Dude, they had millions of subscribers when basically the ONLY thing to do endgame was raid or try for High Warlord. Both of those things were very time consuming.

I will be the first to admit that I was an "elitist prick," but hell if I didn't deserve to be. I played the game a lot, and I played it well. There was an art to being effective in a raid back then. It took 40 people working together flawlessly to kill C'thun, and the feeling of accomplishment at seeing him die is unmatched in gaming for me. I ran around in full T3, and was the only hunter on my server to do so. 

With that being said, I had no problem recruiting hunters who had skill and desire, but not gear. I would take them to Ony or something, and see if they were worth my time. Almos all officers/class leaders I spoke to in my guild and others felt the same way. That meant that anyone with a drive to raid, COULD.

There is this great illusion that only a select few could raid back then. I found that most people that didn't raid, chose not to. There were very few that applied to all raiding guilds and were consistantly denied. Those few were truly talentless, or complete asshats. In either case, why should a game shift so drastically to accomodate the unskilled masses? It is obvious; money.

They dumb down the raids, start handing out wellfare epics, remove the pvp grind and all of the sudden they get another couple million 12 year olds and soccer moms to start playing. Large scale raids work just fine if you are not tryinfg to be a wow killer. It will absoultely alienate a section of the population that wants everythng easy mode. They are the gamers that always say " I play games to have fun, not wipe for 4 hours." That is code for "I suck dunkey nuts, and I want to be carried to my epics."

Its simple. Make 40 man raids difficult and rewarding, and make 5-10 man dungeons simple and less rewarding. It makes sense that the more work you put in, the more rewards you get out.

You're seeing what you want to see and not reading what's there. Either that or I've slighted your beloved game/gameplay and you're too affected to discuss this rationally. Your unrelated rant about welfare epics and your claim that the low raid participation is 'an illusion' are testament to that.

Nowhere did I say WOW wasn't doing well or didn't do well. People simply weren't doing raids, though. Only a small percentage of the playerbase had even seen raid content, which is why in TBC they introduced 25 and 10-man raids. Even then, they saw much higher participation in 10-man than in 25-man, which is why they have been constantly adjusting requirments and rewards for both ever since.

40-man raids went away because people simply weren't doing them.

I agree that at the time that a very small percentage were doing raids (well, finishing them.)I'm not sure that dumbing them down was he answer.  Players consume content much faster now and it's much easier to communicate strategies these days.  Instead of making the challenge easier, I'm wondering if we all just needed to get better.  I was so new back then.  I, personally, am a much beter player now.  Maybe it's time to give it another shot.  

We're talking about the size not ease of content. 'Dumbing down' a raid is actually immaterial, though, as that is the inevitable path of all raid content if by nothing else other than the gear-based progression pushed forward through raiding itself.

Originally posted by Rthuth434

Backlash incoming. Remember how they wanted to do anything but WoW? and before the inevitable "wow copied it from eq!", EQ didn't have 40/25/20/15/10 mans...it was open world and open structured.

prior to WOW,

EQ did limit their raids to max size of 72 with planes of power (2002)

http://massively.joystiq.com/2008/07/23/everquest-slashing-raid-size-in-new-expansion/

will post more in a new topic