For me raiding sucks, but think you must have some form of raiding in an MMO. WOW raiding system was a nightmare as needing 40ppl to do a raid is a joke beyond belief in my eyes. This make the game very Guild orientated and for me thats wrong. Also making a dungeon thats takes hours and hours to complete is wrong. Making dungeons or mobs that only spawn every few days is also a joke. Basically thats why WOW sucked and also had no end game.

Raiding should be able to be done in 1grp or a max of 2grps. Dungeons shouldn't take longer than 3 hours to complete. Mobs should drop lots of  1337 lewt so not having to go back and do it 25000 times to get the 1 drop.

I'm a DAOC man and always will be until something better comes along. DAOC has had it's problems, but since the Classic servers have been out you can kit your char out within a week without playing 24/7.

For me this is what a game needs to be like. A perfect end game PvP and quick easy raiding for 1337 loot.

If you want the big Dungeon then loot should not be better , just maybe better looking.

i still beleive a casual player should not be as powerful as a full time gamer and this should be done through the end game PvP (like DAOC) and not through raiding ridiculous 12hour raids that only few ppl have the time to do.

The biggest problem have been mentioned with the business side of things playing a major part in game design and i'm afraid this will never change.

DOAC ftw  

Amen Derek.. Amen..

You aren't alone man.. me and my group of players have had the same feeling forever..

Though I think the main problem is the sheer SIZE of these things...

Take WoW for example (because it's just so good as a standard considering how many people have played it)

Everyone knew that you could get a group of 15 people together to do the 15 man raids... that was "do-able" .. it was gonna be tough to get organised enough not to wipe but at least you could get the people together..

Anything past that?? No chance... that's when the Uber Guild problems kick in... the kissing some kids ass who happens to be guild master and thinks he's some sort of leader and takes it way too seriously..  .. the leaving your real friends to try to join said Uber Guild because you want to .. essentially... play the game! .. etc.. etc.. etc..

So.. I think.. if you limit the max size of Raid content to 15 people ... you make it so a group of 15 players who otherwise play solo the entire time.. can ocassionaly get together a couple of groups worth of people and play the game they pay for every month..

So by making it accessable to the entire player base, you alleviate many of the problems you mentioned before.. because really it all stems from needing so many people to play the game's content!

You can make Raids epic and memorable in many ways other than making it take 40 people to do..

I mean .. even WoW learned that eventually when they reduced the number of people it took to do many of the Raids.. unfortunately they still have a ways to go on that front.. but they're learning

raiding should give raid class rewards, not player class rewards.

theres nothing wrong with raiding with your guild for an artifact that gives everyone in your guild (whether they show up or not) some sort of power that everyone can use.

there is something wrong with raiding with your guild to get a sword for ME.

the reward should match the activity.

raiding and grouping doesnt need to compete.

 

 

Originally posted by Neanderthal

The problem with raiding is that you can't have raiding AND have viable alternatives to raiding.  Because if there are viable alternatives then not enough people will be willing to do raids and then there won't be any raiding. 

Some people say they wouldn't mind if a game has raiding as long as there are alternatives.  Yeah, well, it doesn't work that way.  I mean it sounds nice, but you can't have it both ways.  If people don't have to raid for the best stuff then they won't.  Because, NEWSFLASH: very few people actually enjoy raiding.

Even the people who adamantly defend raiding...I don't beleive they really enjoy it.  For them it's not about having fun in the content it's about having a game design that shuts other people out of progression so that the raiders can have the edge.  So they can have the shiniest swords and strut around in the fanciest armor.  Provide a real alternative to raiding and the whole motivation for doing raids collapses. 

Game developers, for whatever reason, keep putting in raiding end-games.  Maybe just because it's easy content to design as some people say.  Anyway, they keep doing it.  They make vague promises that raiding won't be required ect., ect.  Which, while technically true, are certainly misleading when you reach high levels and find that there is no other way to progress.

What works in their favor is that people who don't want to raid keep falling for this.  The devs know that if they can sucker non-raiders into their game they can get their money up untill those people find out the awfull truth...and that's all that matters.  More and more I think that developers are looking at mmorpgs as a kind of disposable money-pump.  They probably figure that most people won't play longer than about one year anyway. 

So the devs make their promises.  Suck people in and get their money.  People get disgusted and leave.  A new game comes out with the same promises....and people fall for it all over again.

Originally posted by rungard

raiding should give raid class rewards, not player class rewards.

theres nothing wrong with raiding with your guild for an artifact that gives everyone in your guild (whether they show up or not) some sort of power that everyone can use.

there is something wrong with raiding with your guild to get a sword for ME.

the reward should match the activity.

raiding and grouping doesnt need to compete.

 

 

I have to agree, there is nothing worse then going through a raid for your 6th time, having your item drop only to suddently reilize there are about 5 other people who want the item as well. With the current raiding systems it often comes down to 1 or 2 people walking away happy and everyone else getting the shaft.

Why worry about the loot? If it is a good raid set up the challenge of pulling off the raid should be good enough. If it is one of the basic kill mob get loot type raids I can understand.  There are some real fun raids out there where you are constantly busy needing to do different roles to make it thru the raid, or puzzles to the raid that have to be solved.

Also for those that want no raiding. Ok so that mean you can grind thru the game get max lvl and all the gear then what? Also if it is all grouping it is really hard to make a real challenge that only takes 6 or so players. Unless you then make it in to forced groups of tank healer support/debuffer and dps. Which that whole plan is way to over used.

Only type of games that i see that this type of play would work well would be like WWII online, or other non level or gear centric games which developers are afraid to make for some reason. even tho they would be super easy to build.

Also to the whole why should i care about the longevite of a game... If the game has a burn out of a couple months to grind to max lvl get the loots and then thats it. people quit game loses money and they game dies. To many games die the company can't turn there profit and the market ends. Yes your basically chasing a carrot on a stick but if there is no reason to keep people playing or interested in the game why make or play the game.

Basically you don't want to raid for the best gear, and yet you don't want the best gear to be hard to get. You want everyone to be able to experience everything just cause they own the game.  Your basically looking at games with 2 months tops life span.  Because all off the players that you complain out gear/ lvl you will grind thru the game hit the end and all leave before you get there and the game will end due to lack of players. On average with a full time job at about 4 hours a day to play i have ground thru the groupable part of the game in 2 or 3 months and left the game due to the end game content was lacking or boring. I have done this on  12 mmo's and have only stuck with 1 of them. until i find something that is fun again.

Typical reply from a hardcore.  Always thinking that if loot isn't gotten from a raid, then there is no challenge.  Therefore, we casuals want free loot since we hate raids.   I can't believe how narrow minded and how unimaginative you people are.  How the heck do you people think players got loot before raids?  It wasn't considered trivial back then, so why the hell should it be considered that now?  As far as I'm concerned, you can make single group and solo content challenging enough to justify getting the best loot in the game.  You want to raid, then you have equal chance at that loot, but you also get the challenge of gathering 24 to 39 other people.  But hey, you guys say you like that kind of crap, so why the constant whines about casuals getting access to gear without raiding?  You do your thing, we do ours, we all get the loot we want and everyone should be happy.  The real problem is that raiders are greedy powermongers and they can't stand the thought of players getting access to loot without playing the game their way.  They don't believe in sharing content and if game mechanics allow it, they even try to block content from others, like they did in EverQuest.

I have no desire to spare your feelings, because when all is said and done, you could give a rat's ass about our desires and that is apparent from past games and its obvious from the posts you make.  Its not that the coding mechanics can't work together in a game that would cater to both play styles, its the incompatibility of hardcore vs. casual thought processes.  Hardcores expect a game to make them elite by shutting out any other play style that is not their own.  You people suck and I'll be dancing a jig when they finally come out with a game that doesn't cater to your every whim.

Blizzard realized 40-man raids were a miserable failure, that's why they only made 25-man raids in the Expansion.

In another two years the WoW designers will realize even these are a waste of developer resources which only to appeal to a tiny fraction of their playerbase. 

Raids will go the way of the dinosaur just like other lame hardcore mechanics like harsh death penalities and all the other useless timesinks that hardcores like to claim make games 'challenging'. 

Blizzard made 25 man raids because the servers could not handle the load produced by the 40 man content. All big instances were almost unplayble for months after their introduction due to severe lag and the need for massive tweaking.

I don't know how the 25 man raids will fair compared to the 40 ones. I do know that guilds will be more selective in the end in regards with the player skills and they will probably be more strict with invites. And selective can go to directions the close minded "casuals" cannot comprehend. Why people confuse the achiever mentality and the need for better tools to tackle with harder encounters with the lootwhore mentality? I've encountered myself this kind of perverted hardcore attitude in past years but some raiders have matured past that. Others didn't. How's fair to stereotype everyone?

One thing is certain, it's not easy to create a successful raiding guild. And by successful I mean a guild that has achieved some form of overlapping between the individual goals and the common goals. If it was half as easy to form such guilds, everyone would be in one. It doesn't have to be the "best guild on the server" either, casual raiding is not something unheard of.

The problem with raids is that they need people that are enjoying themselves and feel good about each other. You can't have that by inviting every "uber" player on the server. The best way is to start small and then add people that are mature, goal driven and respectful towards each other. Earlier posters pointed out their own experiences about perverted guilds with the sole purpose of looting. With such a goal, neither a group of 5 or a group of 40 would have fun in the end. How much do you like when somebody drops a group when he's done with his quests or when the x item didn't drop from him and doesn't need anything else from the instant?

And in the end, when you perhaps spent over a year looking for good people to play with, you achieve a higher guild status by forming a sense of community instead of a sum of individuals. The successes in the raid instances come as a natural extension of the guild's will to work together towards a common goal. Why do people feel that they have the right to shun all this effort, to render it meaningless or worse, to look down on people that participate on those activities?

Raiding in it's true form, the goal achieving, does take more effort than grouping. The only drawback is that occasionally, despite your best effort to surround yourself with the best people, you end up with some bad apples as well. But if you put all the effort to make the "perfect" guild, there is no way you're going to keep those bad apples.

Bottom line, raid is fun when done with the right people and for the right reasons. The goal is the progression, loot is a side effect.

Edit: typos

Unfortunately, raids are detrimental to the community aspect of guilds. Raid guilds can only afford to have people in the guild that can commit the time, energy, and resources needed to be able to participate in the raids. Only a small percentage of players can be raid type players. So, lots of drama insues when raid guilds fall apart due to the inevitable cycle of player turnover in games.

What if there was no need to push out old people that you enjoyed playing a game with just because of scheduling conflicts? What if you could have fun in a game without the game feeling like a job? What if guilds could be groups of people that could enjoy hanging out with each other online instead of some pseudo-business atmosphere that had rigorous rules and guidelines because the raid environment pushed on us by the devs causes this problem?

Raids, raid loot, and the time wasted in these endeavors needs to be re-thought or abolished. This needs to happen for the sake of online mmo community.

P.S. I don’t thing that having raid content in a game is evil. I think that the implementation of loot, rare drops, and massive time required, causes a negative atmosphere.

I have raided 5 times a week and I have mixed feelings about it. It was fun because we had TS. In the weekends some where drunk and that had its hillarious moments

But in the end I have done MC for almost a year and my druid still needs the boots. Problem is that players need to raid the first few times and get totaly nothing because you have to earn "DKP".

I like the move Blizzard made with the 25-man instances (and smaller). While people would argue they did it because the server could not handle it is just untrue. Just look at the huge ammount of people I saw running in the first area in TBC and the server could handle it. Also the hardware thats for sale now is far more faster then 3 years ago.

Blizzard made the first step in making epic 5-man instances. The next step would be to make the mobs inside a bit smarter and unpredictable. But the problem is that companies want certainty, and the raiding model works (for now) so why change it? If WoW is really that bad and raiding that dull, then why does the playerbase only increase in WoW?

Originally posted by hbosman

If WoW is really that bad and raiding that dull, then why does the playerbase only increase in WoW?

Wow is popular and has made lots of money.  All Blizzard games have.  Blizzard are masters at simplifying a game and a UI so that anyone can play it.

Blizzard did not invent the rts or the mmo.  They just dumbed them down (made them intuative) so that anyone could play them (mass market appeal).

It is not the raid content that atracts people to WoW.  Blizzard as a company and game designer are very skilled at making a game intuative and easy to use (point and click).  That is thier success.  The raid modle trancends Blizzard games.  That is the problem us players are voicing.  End game PvE content as most games implement them now is a negative to the game and mmos in general.

So the fact that popular games have end game raid content is irrelevant.  Our argument is that does PvE raid content make a game better?  I think not.

 

Wouldnt a better solution be no level or soft caps?  Another good solution would be an almost infinate crafting system.  Another good solution would be a PvP oriented end game.  Another solution would be a classless system where you could explore many skill trees.  There are many better solutions for end game content.  But if they made the game truely open ended.. how would they get you to buy expansions?

 

 

To be honnest, doing Scholomance for the 100x time for one item is also stupid and dull. It's all grinding, just like raiding. Thinking of it, MMO's are all about grinding. Grinding for gear, grinding for crafting, grinding for reputation, ginrding for quests, grinding for PVP.

I really think it doesn't matter how large a party needs to be to do a dungeon, people will still complain. Some are already complaining about the 5-man instances blizzard made, too difficult. Raiding is here to stay, there is always a target too large to kill alone. Grinding is also here to stay, no boat or house is build with one chopped down tree.

Just curious though, when is raiding called raiding? Doing some instance 100 times for one drop is called grinding and NOT raiding.

 

I had tons of fun running instances like Stratholme and Scholomance for first timers, despite me doing them for ever and my guild being deep in Naxxramas. There is fun learning new encounters and there is fun learning how to combat and outsmart the deficiences of your own team and make it through the instance. I must admit that when you raid with people (or group for that matter) for a long time, you learn to play with them. You learn to anticipate their actions and complement their moves. This is what mostly puts off experienced groupers-raiders-whatever. It's not that they are part of a guild and the others are not. It's because they spent all these months together learning to act as a team, that they find it hard to play with people they know little of. I could adjust better than most, but maybe it was the class that helped as well.

There are the elitists out there of course. Funnily enough, I've met such people outside what you'd consider "the best guilds in the server". They seem to think they were too good for them. It's a fine line between being proud for your achievements (no matter how shallow considering this is just an online game) and being arrogant and stiff-necked.

PS1: I thought I knew everything there was to being a good raid priest. Boy was I for a surprise when I entered the behemoth instance that Naxxramas was and needed to re-evaluation my own skills as well as the guild needed to evaluate their skills as a whole.

PS2: My guild stopped raiding 1 week before Christmas while the rest of the server stopped 1-2 months earlier. Everyone knew that the gear would be obsolete with the coming of the expansion. Noone cared. We wanted fun and we wanted progress. And it was all that mattered.

I have the feeling that the biggest handicap of a casual player is that he can not plan in the depth of time (RL interferes way too much ). To make a good raiding guild you need to have a collective goal, a vision, to plan ahead of time and to not panic when things don't go as planned. It does have it's frustrating moments but it also has it's rewarding moments. One thing is certain. When you manage to pull something like this, you do feel good about yourself and the people that surround you. And if people mistake that for arrogance, they just don't know the meaning of the word.

Originally posted by hbosman

To be honnest, doing Scholomance for the 100x time for one item is also stupid and dull.

 

But it's accessible. It doesn't take 6 hours a go. Fewer people needed means you are not at the mercy of uber guilds or uber guild alliances just to maximize your toon. No raids or no forced raiding means everybody will have a means of optimum character progression. What you are talking about is a different discussion altogether. A good discussion but nontheless different. This isn't so much a boredom issue as much as it's an accessibility issue.

I don't mind an occasional raid.  Once or twice a week, take down some Boss_Mob_01 and maybe get some nice goodie.  To me, it's seeing a rarely seen (cept in screenshots) area that I find more fun than the actual acquiring of Da Lewts.

However, too many games seem to have devs that feel raiding is The Fun Thing To Do at the level cap.  EQ1 was raid heavy, if you didn't or couldn't raid you were S.O.L. sorry to say.   WoW pre-BC was essentially PvP or Raid with no other options available.  That is what bothers me the most the fact that the devs are basically forcing me to raid to progress at all.  I don't mind doing a scholomance or such many times as it's a smaller instance, can get a group and get going much quicker than a raid.  Plus in the single group dungeons people are far less anal about loots.

Which brings up another point, too much raid content really begins separating the community.  The raiders begin to think themselves "better" than Those Other People.  Guilds which were helpful and friendly begin getting greedy when they see the first shiny bauble drop, as some people feel they "earned" more right to it than that other guy.  Heck you get someone that raids too much and they actually forget how to play in a single group (like that tier 2 warrrior that wouldn't stop pulling everything in strath that one time).  You don't have several healers to back you up here Mr Uber Dude. 

Finally some of Mr Fortier's comments seem to be either (1) clueless or (2) elitist to me.  I can't see how he thinks raiding will be a social outlet, as most of the time when you're raiding the leader wants chatter kept to minimum.  Hard to socialize when you're not allowed to talk to anyone.  Plus I fail to see how raiding and pvp are requirements for each other.  I've known people in full raid gear that couldn't pvp for diddly and on the other hand people in more common gear that really pvp well.  As I've always said, Sklll > Gear.

Back in my SWG days shortly after launch when it was still a mmoRPG and not a mmoFPS, great hunting parties were formed (guild or no guild) and we would tromp off into the wilderness in search of big game and massive exp. On one hand being a medic was great, I ran around and healed everyone with my then-original super buffs, was extremely vital to the group and monetarily well-rewarded, and I even took a few pot shots now and then at a very pissed off Krayt Dragon. Sure there were 30+ other people shooting, a hilarious Teras Kai martial artist trying to run up and kick the dragon then run away so he wouldn't get hit, and the invaluable bots and creatures tanking for us on the front line, but it WAS fun. You had the newbies panicking and running around trying not to get hit, afraid they would lose their then-rare "jedi robe" if they got killed, and then there were the hardcore gamers like myself who were calmer, thinking, and actually making progress. Laser blasts coming from every direction made it sound like you were in a Star Destroyer space battle, general chaos, and again... one very pissed off beast having done nothing more than killed a few of the group members when they attacked it first all by their lonely, supremely out-matched selves. Great fun!

The incredible charge I felt seeing a huge beast fall knowing I was a true part of the victory made me feel like I did when I first beat Koopa in the original Super Mario Brothers. That electric excitement and sense of true accomplishment rarely felt in real life. And then there were the rewards that poured in of exp that I couldn't hope to gain by myself in a month of grinding on lower beasts, and the jubliation of returning to a bar and collectively bragging about what bad-asses we all were and how that particular animal was unique within the game for one reason or another... fish stories exist even in cyberspace, too!

But soon I found myself logging on exclusively for those raiding parties. Looking for them, organizing them, watching most fall apart and everyone wondering what went wrong and the inevitable backlash of backbiting and finger-pointing. Being a medic usually saved me from said blame, but eventually I tired of the endless bickering, politicking, and lack of loyalty. I would say at the very most 10% of these raids were successful back then, but I have no idea what they would be now. My reason for being in SWG went from feeling like a part of the true Star Wars experience to making expensive, time-consuming medicines or raiding. That was the beginning of the end.

Take it or leave it, I believe raiding will always be a part of MMORPG's. Like everything else in life, there are always pros AND cons.

  

Originally posted by opusaug
I'd love to hear from someone who actually likes raiding.  Sometimes, I think they're more mythological than the dwarves and elves we pretend to be.

The hardcore raiders are too busy maintaing their websites where people have to fill out applications and actually setting up 20-40 main raids (well, no more 40s now, i guess!) where they spend two hours in prep, yelling at all the inexperienced players on Vent for failing to do things exactly as they are told, followed by 8-12 hours of running through the same dungeon over and over again hoping that staff that drops is specced for your druid and not the mage next to you, while trying to accumulate DKPs to even have a shot of earning it.....

So we won't see too many hardcore raiders defending themselves here, man! They've got an important job to do, you know.....?

Originally posted by hbosman

To be honnest, doing Scholomance for the 100x time for one item is also stupid and dull. It's all grinding, just like raiding. Thinking of it, MMO's are all about grinding. Grinding for gear, grinding for crafting, grinding for reputation, ginrding for quests, grinding for PVP.

I really think it doesn't matter how large a party needs to be to do a dungeon, people will still complain. Some are already complaining about the 5-man instances blizzard made, too difficult. Raiding is here to stay, there is always a target too large to kill alone. Grinding is also here to stay, no boat or house is build with one chopped down tree.

Just curious though, when is raiding called raiding? Doing some instance 100 times for one drop is called grinding and NOT raiding.

 

MMORPGS with hardcore raiding: The spiritual successors to Space Invaders!

Hell, what were all those great arcade games back in the eighties but eternal grind fests? I think I finally understand, now.....Scholo and other sites should have virtual quarter slots at their entrances; Blizzard might make even more money that way...