In the days of EverQuest raiding progression was pretty straight forward. You knew at any given level what you were suppose to kill and what level of gear you should have. That was long before raids had specific caps and were offered in different flavors. The landscape we have today is quite different and leaves me wondering if it really is possible to achieve parallel raid games within the same title. For the sake of making this simple when I talk about “two group” raids I mean 10-12 players. “Four group” raids refers to 24-25, even if that isn’t four groups. I’m an EQ2 player!
This particular issue comes up because both EQ2 and WoW offer two group raids that basically require you to have four group raid gear to complete them effectively (or at all in some cases). This leaves guys like me, who don’t want to recruit enough players for four group content, rather out in the dark. That can be a frustrating situation and in some ways perplexing. Why would it take MORE people to do content that requires LESS? Is it possible to do design otherwise?
In my vision MMORPGs that involve different scale raiding should have parallel paths that are completely separate of each other. There should be an introductory raid for both two and four groups that virtually anyone who makes an effort should complete with single group earned gear. You would then have a medium difficulty tier and then a hard one, etc. Each tier would become increasingly more challenging until you ran out of content. Somewhere, on both the two and four group paths, you should have something that only a small fraction of players can complete.
The problem with this plan is that it is dependant on your two group difficulty being balanced against gear you get from other two group content. To complete the middle difficulty raid you’d gear out in the easy. To complete the hard you gear out in the middle. That is reasonable of course but how does that fit in when you have a parallel path? In our current system it doesn’t work out.
It is reasonable to assume that the rewards from the four group content would be superior. Based on that fact it makes it easy for four group raiders to come into the two group path and completely trivialize it. Developers frequently have an issue with that because they don’t want content to be “easy” or “fast.” It is a prevailing attitude that I think needs to change. Two group raiding isn’t treated with the same level of respect or competitiveness that four group is. They are almost the raids you do when you can’t do “real raids.”
In all honesty, if you’re designing parallel paths, who cares if one group can make something trivial? Four group raiders are interesting in four group content. If they cross into two group that is fine but they shouldn’t expect much as that content is not specific for their demographic. Group content is rarely balanced around raid gear. Neither is solo content. Why should two group content be different?
I think it is time to embrace parallel play styles and break up that dependency. I don’t think to raid the first 24/25 man content that you should have to complete the 10/12 man raids. Transitioning from one style to the other is increasingly a stopping point for a lot of guilds. Trying to gear out your entire four group raid force through smaller group content is frustrating and leads to you duplicating classes that you wouldn’t necessarily need. There just isn’t that big of an up side here for anyone. Why train players to raid in two groups and then force them to adapt to more?
Why worry that large group raiders will make small group raids trivial and make it so hard that those of us who just want to do small group stuff unable to do so? Segregation here might mean slightly less challenging content for the top end but it opens up a whole new world for the skilled but uneager to recruit. Two group raids are already wildly popular in both WoW and EQ2. Someone should really capitalize on that by bringing them into the mainstream instead of marginalizing the demographic.
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I would think of them as seperate paths too, but with the idea that players that run two group raids can only get two groups together. In that case they do want some challenging content to do, although they should be doing something different from 4 group raiders (if its in the same instance then they shouldn’t be just be killing an easy version of the same boss, that’s lame, lazy and uninspiring game design).
Gear is always a bit of a problem, raiders trivialise dungeons too easily just as 4 group raiders make 2 group raids simple when given better gear.
Personally I think a few special abilities from mobs that do % damage (maybe with the final dungeon in the progression being all %) would bring the difference between the best and worst geared a little closer together, in that world better gear=better chance to be successful, but not a cakewalk.
Above all, for a game that I pay ~ 120 ukp a year for I expect content to suit all ability levels and lots of it, so they should be able to provide two full paths of gameplay for raiders on top of one for dungeoneers.
I do like the idea of percentage based effects. That would have be be somewhat tempered though as it might be able to be gamed by intentionally wearing inferrior equipment. Still a great idea though if implimented intellegently.