RK3 SpellsFollow

You know that this is a fan board right?

Specific feedback like this (if you want it to potentially be heeded) really should go on the official sony EQ boards (they have a section for feedback). Or you can try using the in-game feedback tool but don't stay up late waiting for that to accomplish something!


BTW, I don't see them ever making rankIII spells for current content accessable for non-raiders as that defeats the purpose of the system. Maybe they could do something for older content once it is clear that the content is not even on small guild radars (level 70s rank III come to mind here) but then again you don't need the rank III to outlevel that content... so I don't think it's a priority.

I am all for this, as long as it takes a raid drop from the same raid or higher as one of the ingredients.

Yeah. Not going to happen. As was mentioned above, it defeats the entire point of the ranking system. Rank I is the base spell. They are tradeable and can be purchased by vendors within the expansion the spells came from (and eventually in PoK depending on how old they are). The point of Rank I is to ensure that everyone can get their spells without having to deal with drops. Base spells are now considered part of leveling and not something special you have to earn. Rank II is the "earned" level. They're tradeable, but can't be bought off vendors, but have to be obtained via drops or made with tradeskills. Rank III is the raid level of the spell.

The whole point of the system is to balance difficulty to reward. Rank III has to be raid drop only or the system does not work.

As I said though, it's a balance issue. Put this another way: If there is no extra reward for spending all that time and effort raiding, then why would anyone do it? There have been a *ton* of concessions given to casual solo/group play in EQ. It's a matter of degrees IMO. Coming from a perspective of remembering a time when you could not access certain spells at all if you didn't raid, and you could not get certain gear at all if you didn't raid, I'm not really seeing the problem.

The system I'm speaking of is the tiered system. That system was put in place specifically so that those who didn't raid could still get the "top gear/spells" from a given expansion. So we went from a system where if you didn't raid, you simply could not get gearA, to one where you could buy a version of gearA in the market, you could obtain a middle tier gearA in groups, but the top tier of gearA still required raiding. I think that's an incredible gain for the non-raiding players, and I'm not seeing how it's reasonable to now say that it's unfair. Tier III gear literally exists so that non-raiders can get tier I and tier II gear. You're basically saying "thanks for giving us vastly better gear than we could get in the old system, now give us the last remaining concession to those who raid". I think that's unreasonable. Let the raiders have that last special thing. What does it cost you? Nothing.

Raiders would still raid because ultimately they prefer to acquire top-notch gear by participating in a raid over engaging in long drawn-out challenging quests. I never said the good stuff should just be HANDED to non-raiders. Heck, I'm OK with them having to work HARDER than raiders for the same end result.

It costs ME nothing, but that's NOT the point. And, BTW what does it cost raiders if non-raiders have access to raid gear via other still challenging game methods?

No offense, but this is the classic mindset of the devoted MMORPG guild raider. "We're special, and we don't want anyone else getting our stuff." I've played since 1999 and I've been on both sides of this issue. I've been a raid leader for a cutting edge guild, albeit "way back when." It never bothered ME to think my friends who didn't have the time or inclination to raid might have access to high-end gear if they're willing to devote time and effort through another path. The Epic 1.0 quests are a good example, in my mind. Remember the ridiculous amount of work to acquire what amounted to not-so-hot armor in the Plane of Fear in the original game? Epic 1.0 came along with Kunark and the epic weapons were miles ahead of whatever raiders could acquire. This was a move in the right direction but it didn't continue, probably because the epic quests required a ton of developer work. And, again, those quests did require full-blown raids for some steps, but not raids that required weeks of daily participation in raids that could run past midnight.

Look, anyone who has raided also knows that being in a raid doesn't necessarily mean you're contributing much more than the time to sit at a keyboard for several hours. We've all played with raiders who just fill a seat with their butt so they can earn dkp's and then bid on drops when they come around. (As a raid leader more than once I've had to wake up raiders who fell asleep at the keyboard. No surprise there!) Being a raider doesn't in any way mean you're more skilled or devoted to the game than a player who only solos or groups---unless you're the raid leader or assistant leader. Those guys work their butts off in most raiding guilds. I'd give them double dkp if it was up to me!

This is an endless debate and I doubt Sony would ever move away from their "raider-preferred" philosophy when it comes to game design. But I dispute that it HAS to be the that way and I'd contend today the game would be better off in terms of future survival if it was NOT that way. But don't accuse me of wanting to just hand out raid-level group to non-raiders, thus removing incentives for raiders to raid. I never said that. Although, frankly, it would be nice if it wasn't the case that a player's sole motivation to raid was acquiring gear. Would be nice if they were also motivated to see parts of Norrath not accessible without a raid-level guild effort. Dreamer that I am, eh?

As Yther said (quite well, in fact), the issue revolves around whether or not it will actually be "harder" (or how one even defines that). There's great potential for any quested stuff being loopholed, if not now then at some point in the future. The Devs have enough of a hard time not stepping on themselves right now. Adding additional paths to the same result significantly increases that complexity.



It devalues their efforts. Doubly so if "still challenging" isn't actually very challenging at all. Fair or not, the intent of EQ is for player interaction. They've made concessions to the solo/box players (significant ones IMO), but I don't think it's a bad thing that EQ still restricts the "very best stuff" to players who interact socially with other players to cooperatively achieve goals. I just fear that if you create alternative paths that allow solo/box players to just spend more time, but achieve the same rewards as raiders, then we'll have a game one day that's just a bunch of individuals all doing their own thing and no one working together. There's nothing inherently wrong with that sort of game, but that's not EQ.



Of course it would have. Because 80% of your raid force would stop raiding in favor of just spending their own time on their own schedule to achieve the same result. The difficulty of raiding isn't the raw amount of time (although there is quite a bit of that spent), but that you must coordinate with other players. If you offered most raid participants an alternative path to obtain the exact same gear that took 50% more time, but that time could be spent on their own schedule rather than on a raid schedule, I think that most would stop raiding in an instant.

Which would be kinda unfair to the players who like raiding. I guess I just see the current tiered process as a means of making everyone happy and maintaining interest for the maximum number of players. It's vastly better than it used to be, but I think eliminating the "special" gear that you can only get via raiding isn't a positive goal.




Epic raids were arguably the most difficult raids in the game at the time that content was current. In order to complete most epics you had to successfully raid in all three planes (and some dragons too!). When the planar armor was top dog, it was by far the best armor in the game (hardly "not so hot" by the standards of the day). Kunark introduced semi-equivalent armor with clicky effects (but slightly less stats), some of which were group obtainable, but most required raids. They actually made a mistake IMO making that armor tradeable for kinda the exact reason I'm talking about. Because people could just buy kunark armor, raiding for the old planar armor (even though it was still slightly better) suffered a hit.

If you provide a non-raidable way of obtaining raid equivalent gear, people will take it. Fair or not, raiding is considered to be the most difficult thing to succeed at in EQ. It has to provide the greatest rewards, or it's not balanced.



Sure. We've all encountered our fair share of worthless raid participants. But again, that's not the point. They spent their time coordinating with a large number of other players to achieve a common goal. If it were so easy to do this, then we would not be having this conversation. There's nothing preventing anyone from just sitting in a raid and not doing anything and reaping the benefits, right? Clearly, there's more to it than that. It's about the social aspect. And yes, it's flawed, but I don't blame the EQ dev team for sticking to the ideal of that social behavior in their game.



I disagree that it's "raider preferred". I think "raider acknowledged" is a more accurate way to put it. Allowing folks to gain the same rewards solo would effectively tell raiders that their game play isn't valuable at all. There's nothing at all about the current reward structure of EQ that should lead one to a "raid or bust" conclusion. There are plenty of rewards for the casual player. Heck. More than most casual players are going to have the time to experience. I just don't see how my enjoyment of the gear I can get with casual play is in any way diminished by the knowledge that raiders are getting better gear. I'm more than happy to just play with what I get for what I do without feeling the need to compare myself to those with a different playstyle.

Edited, Nov 19th 2014 2:23pm by gbaji

Why? Why should raid gear be attainable any other way but raiding? If I want that raid item, why should I be able to solo/molo/box it? Doesn't making raid gear available to group type players defeat the whole purpose of raiding?



It's funny you argue that SOE has a raider-preferred philosophy when the most recent expansion had the fewest raids I could recall. 7 total raids with 2 of them being "one-off" (meaning you get the lock out upon request, not completion, so you can try it only once, even if you fail.)

Edited, Nov 20th 2014 6:44am by amastropolo

Iron Wood Bulwark

They may already be starting to do what I suggest. Rumor has it the above item is a rare drop in the new xpac and it's tradeable. Notice it's marked attuneable. It's a Type 8 augment, which is usually restricted to raid loot.

This is the 3rd best shield available in the game, only slightly behind two raid shields.

Not enough info yet of WHERE it drops---it might only drop during raids. (Anyone here know? So early not even Magelo lists it and raidloot.com doesn't know the zone.) But the very fact that they made an item of this uber quality TRADEABLE on servers other than FV is a mark---to me at least---of moving toward offering access to raid loot to non-raiders.


Edited, Nov 26th 2014 8:17am by Sippin