Too many raiding end games out there as far as I'm concerned. If you want a second job that doesn't pay, join a raiding guild and go for it.
How about: WoW, Rift, SWTOR, Aion, etc. ad infinitum.
I don't get how OP can complain that there are not enough raiding games. Do you mean you want the 40-person or more raids? If so, good luck. I don't see how you can find that many people to be that organized and on schedule. Like I said, it seems like a second job that doesn't pay except in a small chance to get epic lootz.
I've already played that game and I don't need to keep playing it.
Raiding is still the mainstream endgame, the only difference is that people seems to be more and more tired of it.
But being in a slight decline is not the same thing as being dead, right now there is not a single large alternative. RvR is probably the largest of the smaller endgames at the moment but it is still nowhere near raiding in popularity.
Of course a lot of players doesn´t participate in any kind of endgame right now and if something can bring in them it might change the powerstructure but raiding wont die for many years even if it probably just will become one of several different endgames to choose from in the future.
Knowing all the major MMO's and what they offer, I was searching for a possibly unknown, perhaps Korean, MMO that offered end game raiding. I couldn't find much of anything, in fact most searches turned up posts by MMO players shouting their distaste for raiding in general. EQ Next seems to be my only hope on the horizon.
Having been introduced to MMO's through the raid-centric Everquest, I'm completely saddened by the core of what I loved most about MMO's being phased out in favor of barbie doll housing crap and dumbed down PvP. To me, if I wanted to build a house I'd play the Sims where it expands on that aspect in much more detail. Likewise, if I wanted to PvP I'd play one of any number of FPS, rather than being completely focused on the PvP aspect of MMO's - I've been there, done that, but the majority of pure PvP'ers I've been around in MMO's are mainly fueled by this ego trip that they can wipe the floor with other players due to advantages in gear progression. So to reiterate, 2 functions of MMO's that have been rising in popularity are both available, and in better form, in other genres.
For raiding this isn't true, there is nothing even remotely similar to it in any other game genre. Yet it's been a downward trend since EQ, which is still the king of raiding. EQ2 would fall right behind it in 2nd, where the vast majority of active players are only there for raiding. WoW and RIFT both have raids, but neither offer the same atmosphere, intensity, require the same level of skill, and because of these reasons don't have the same sense of accomplishment that you'll find in EQ. Vanguard it's an afterthought, I actually formed a hardcore raiding guild for Vanguard on it's release only to be completely disappointed by the lack of raiding, and lack of loot on existing raid mobs, so much so that the entire guild moved on to WoW.
So here we are, 14 years after Everquests release, and EQ is still on top of the food chain for hardcore raiding? Majority of MMORPG's coming out either don't offer raiding or offer it as a compensation prize in the form of 10 mans and other junk? The only possible savior being EQ Next which won't be out for years and I'm simply assuming it will have proper raids based on it's pedigree and nothing more?
It's a sad time to be a hardcore raider and seeing the genre you loved for so long is nearly extinguished.
Raiding dying or dead? Well depends on which kind of raiding really as you have true raiding or hardcore raiding (prior to wow like eq and eq2), and then you have casual raiding (basically post wow.). Saddly the difficult mass group raiding like eq 1/2 up to early wow (raids up tll bc even some bc raids to some raiders were difficult to do) are pretty well dying or dead, since not only was it very time consuming to do, it was also very restrictive with a large portion of the pop of games not seeing the entirity of the content. Where as with casual raiding like in wow it allows for more players (vast majorty of the playerbase) to get into the content, form grooups in short order (compared to the hours or days it took to originize prior raid groups.)to get to actually doing the raids. I am both happy that raiding content in games is not as restrictive of how many can see it, but yet also saddened by the fact that hard an large scale raiding is not even really supported in most games, yet i am hoping that some devs will see that making a hardcore raiding version of raid content would be worthwhile to catter somewhat to the playerbase that desire that style of play.
Raiding is dying out, here is 2 reasons Raiding is unpopular in most MMO's.
1) Developers of most AAA titles make little to no effort to introduce players to the concept of partying up and working together early, let alone co-operating to overcome anything more complicated than tank & spank which decent raid instances require. Soloing is the order of the day & while developers may think its what players want and a good way to go about designing the game they fail to see they repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot with this flawed design.
2) People who do Raid often carry themselves as elitist, driving away potential new raiders who they should be helping and encouraging to get onboard instead of telling them they are no good, noobs etc. because eventually Those same raiders see population decline & suddenly dont have enough players to make up a raid. So helping noobs stop being noobs and encouraging them to enjoy raiding is the order of the day.
Personally I like Raiding, however I think its too inaccessible or unpalatable to most players in newer titles for the reasons above & It wouldnt hurt developers to also include other endgame content with longevity for those players who really do hate Raiding &/or grouping up, as well as casual players. This also gives social MMO'ers something to do at endgame when their friends/guild arent online.
Large group dungeon run, typical numbers might be 4 to 8 groups of 5.
Extremely large slow dungeon, typical completion time of 6 hours... maybe more or less?
Heavily scripted boss fights requiring group coordination to avoid heavy burst damage.
Boss fights tend to be long to wear down character resources lowering damage/healing output toward the end.
Dungeon progress can be saved allowing for multiple sessions in the same dungeon without reset over the period of a week or so.
That's just from observing in the forums and reading game mechanics... I'm not a raider. Been in a few, didn't like it.
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
I remember the time when the word "raiding" was actually used in pvp. Raiding the other faction for example i.e. city or bases.
That's what I think it should be.
I remember this also. First time I heard about rading a dungeon I had no clue what was going on. Where there enemy faction players in there and we were going to go kill them?
Ken Fisher - Semi retired old fart Network Administrator, now working in Network Security. I don't Forum PVP. If you feel I've attacked you, it was probably by accident. When I don't understand, I ask. Such is not intended as criticism.
I remember the time when the word "raiding" was actually used in pvp. Raiding the other faction for example i.e. city or bases.
That's what I think it should be.
I remember this also. First time I heard about rading a dungeon I had no clue what was going on. Where there enemy faction players in there and we were going to go kill them?
THAT's what I'm talking about.
Let's go sack Stormwind, loot 'em dry and take all their women.*
*I know this part's controversial, but historically speaking, it is what it is.
raiding would not be dead so much in future if its not so much about the gear, real issue there is if you are not part in any guild and still want to raid you dont have gear for it , you never gona have change to raid until some nice guild lets you leech.
now looking for raid options increase this but mainly the same reason when people are new to raids and so on its quite often chaotic.
so what we need in future is find away to create a raids that sametime are fun and not so much dependale from gear
and experience and so on and so on in other words its impossible and waste of time creation.
my opinion is there is raid games out there you can get into and yet in future keep it balanced , you wanna raid? get into guild what raids and so on, you wanna solo? do solo stuff but rewars for that should be at same par with raiding maybe more time consuming to get and wanna pvp sure why not do it that way and again rewards same with all other aspects of the game.
freedom of choise for players to do what they enjoy and chose to do and get same results as rewards.
Well depends on which kind of raiding really as you have true raiding or hardcore raiding (prior to wow like eq and eq2), and then you have casual raiding (basically post wow.).
I agree that we have to distinguish between hardcore raiding and casual raiding post WoW (or call it semi-casual). And it all comes down to the fact, that they cater the casual masses, which makes a lot of sense from a business perspective. I would also like to add ultra-casual raiding, like we will see it most propably with GW2s and other games open world bosses. You even dont need a group to participate and we will see how much organization will be needed at all.
I wonder, if you could cater them all if just your architecture and design is prepared properly. You could have hardcore, casual and ultra-casual multi-group content in one dungeon. The question is, what are the additional costs and revenue for such a more flexible approach compared to cater just the biggest customer group. We already have group-dungeons in casual and hardmode today.
Of course you cannot support 2 philosophies in one game, e.g. endgame with item treadmill and slow vertical progression AND endgame without item treadmill and just lateral progression and cosmetics. Again i say, that raids aka multi-group content are not the subject of dispute. It is the way of endgame progression!
Ask yourself! Would a game work, where the most shiny cosmetic equipment comes from hardcore raiding and the casual, who never has the time or power, in order to participate, can buy it in the cash-shop alternatively? i hear the $hitstorm on the forums already.
And would pure cosmetic progression work for hardcore raiders at all? Are there enough users, that the effort is worth for the devs?
Sorry to say, but the majority of the population doesn't really have time to raid between, work, life, and or kids, so ya, it''s dying. 't Most people don't want to commit 2-4 hours of solid game time, or can't, to a raid because of life. 5 man instances are much more doable for the general population.
But being in a slight decline is not the same thing as being dead, right now there is not a single large alternative.
I fully agree to that statement. I wonder what the alternative should be, if we focus on PVE-only. what we see today as "pve-endgame" is:
1. repating some group dungeons
2. repeating daylies
3. levelling alts
4. repeating older content with mains (just possible in games with downscaling)
5. non-combat (more sandboxish) gameplay like crafting, RP and more.
6. metagaming
Option 5 and 6 mostly do not work very well in theme-parks due to limited versatility and missing features and tools. However they can work very well in player driven sandboxes. We do not know, how option 4 will work. Perhaps Arenanet can feed us with new and modified DEs fast enough. I see, how this could be easier than with effort-intensive high-quality-quests. However, in story-centric games, it never worked so far.
So there is just option 1-3 which becomes boring fast. I dont say, that raiding is less boring, but what the hell would be a true innovation for pve-endgame in theme-parks for an endless, challenging and fun endgame? I dont see it. All i can imagine is a sandboxish pve-endgame. But this would impact the theme-park design in the levelling phase heavily.
PS: and dont tell me: make games with no endgame. It is pretty clear, what GW2s endgame is about. Every game has an endgame, even sandboxes. Some games have no levelling phase or you can skip it and jump directly to endgame. But just levelling without endgame is called offline game and not MMO.
Raiding is dying out, here is 2 reasons Raiding is unpopular in most MMO's.
1) Developers of most AAA titles make little to no effort to introduce players to the concept of partying up and working together early, let alone co-operating to overcome anything more complicated than tank & spank which decent raid instances require. Soloing is the order of the day & while developers may think its what players want and a good way to go about designing the game they fail to see they repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot with this flawed design.
2) People who do Raid often carry themselves as elitist, driving away potential new raiders who they should be helping and encouraging to get onboard instead of telling them they are no good, noobs etc. because eventually Those same raiders see population decline & suddenly dont have enough players to make up a raid. So helping noobs stop being noobs and encouraging them to enjoy raiding is the order of the day.
Personally I like Raiding, however I think its too inaccessible or unpalatable to most players in newer titles for the reasons above & It wouldnt hurt developers to also include other endgame content with longevity for those players who really do hate Raiding &/or grouping up, as well as casual players. This also gives social MMO'ers something to do at endgame when their friends/guild arent online.
(1) is not even true. In WOW, early dungeons (after L10) gives MUCH better loot (in fact, you get a blue item just by completing) and faster xp. In DCUO, there are QUESTS in the quest chain that introduces you to dungeon runs. There are many examples like this.
(2) is true. I remember I have to file an application form, and an "interview" run, before i was let into this raiding guild.
I think casual raiding is what is needed to revitalize raiding. LFR is a step in the right direction. Less commitment, less time consuming, less exclusivity.
Of course the really hard core raiders don't like that .. but I don't suppose i would care about what they want.
(1) is not even true. In WOW, early dungeons (after L10) gives MUCH better loot (in fact, you get a blue item just by completing) and faster xp. In DCUO, there are QUESTS in the quest chain that introduces you to dungeon runs. There are many examples like this.
(2) is true. I remember I have to file an application form, and an "interview" run, before i was let into this raiding guild.
I think casual raiding is what is needed to revitalize raiding. LFR is a step in the right direction. Less commitment, less time consuming, less exclusivity.
Of course the really hard core raiders don't like that .. but I don't suppose i would care about what they want.
Well if you think raids should be public then raiding clearly isn't for you. You should stick to your candyland barbie house bs and leave the raiding to those who are skilled enough that they require an application process to weed out those that are idiots or those who aren't either skilled enough yet, or just don't have the mind capacity to follow simple instructions.
With those people in raids, a raid that could easily take 2 hours suddenly balloons to 7 hours of frustration.
Many of these comments regarding 'raiding' in games are simply instances requiring more than one group, to be a game with 'raiding' there needs to be enough content to actually have raid progression, not just a couple meaningless zones that /gasp/ require TWO groups instead of ONE! Oh my!
Without raiding, what is there that is seriously worth paying for an MMO? The sub par inbalanced PvP? The group content made so any adolescent can plow through it by just randomly clicking colors? Where is the difficulty? The sense of accomplishment?
Some talk about hardcore raiding like its a bunch of people with no lives, but the simple fact is the majority of MMO's content are nothing more than time sinks. I mean a game as new as RIFT and it doesn't have any functions to auto sort the inventory or any inventory management at all? Because they want you to pay for the hours you spend organizing it yourself.
So who is the person with no life? The person who plays 2 hours a day and spends maybe half of that time hurdling time sinks? Or the person who pays the same amount per month, but instead spends 4-5 hours a day running raids with a group of other highly skilled players who can cram 10 hours of content into that 4-5 hours?
Large scale raiding ala EQ1 has been dead for a long time, and sadly I don't think it will ever come back. People complain that it's too hard to organize ten people. I'd like to see them try to organize and run a 72 man Rathe Council raid in EQ1 with no voice chat.
(1) is not even true. In WOW, early dungeons (after L10) gives MUCH better loot (in fact, you get a blue item just by completing) and faster xp. In DCUO, there are QUESTS in the quest chain that introduces you to dungeon runs. There are many examples like this.
(2) is true. I remember I have to file an application form, and an "interview" run, before i was let into this raiding guild.
I think casual raiding is what is needed to revitalize raiding. LFR is a step in the right direction. Less commitment, less time consuming, less exclusivity.
Of course the really hard core raiders don't like that .. but I don't suppose i would care about what they want.
Well if you think raids should be public then raiding clearly isn't for you. You should stick to your candyland barbie house bs and leave the raiding to those who are skilled enough that they require an application process to weed out those that are idiots or those who aren't either skilled enough yet, or just don't have the mind capacity to follow simple instructions.
With those people in raids, a raid that could easily take 2 hours suddenly balloons to 7 hours of frustration.
Many of these comments regarding 'raiding' in games are simply instances requiring more than one group, to be a game with 'raiding' there needs to be enough content to actually have raid progression, not just a couple meaningless zones that /gasp/ require TWO groups instead of ONE! Oh my!
Without raiding, what is there that is seriously worth paying for an MMO? The sub par inbalanced PvP? The group content made so any adolescent can plow through it by just randomly clicking colors? Where is the difficulty? The sense of accomplishment?
Some talk about hardcore raiding like its a bunch of people with no lives, but the simple fact is the majority of MMO's content are nothing more than time sinks. I mean a game as new as RIFT and it doesn't have any functions to auto sort the inventory or any inventory management at all? Because they want you to pay for the hours you spend organizing it yourself.
So who is the person with no life? The person who plays 2 hours a day and spends maybe half of that time hurdling time sinks? Or the person who pays the same amount per month, but instead spends 4-5 hours a day running raids with a group of other highly skilled players who can cram 10 hours of content into that 4-5 hours?
Clearly me & millions are enjoying causl LFR raiding. If you don't like it, you don't have to participate. It is the trend and it is not going to go away.
I have done hard core raiding before. Hard mode raiding requires multiple days of commitment in a week, and practice maneuavering (and wiping) for hours. Thanks but no thanks. I would much rather run 5-man PUG dungeons.
Given your elitist attitude, thank god i don't have to raid with you. Spending 4-5 hours a day running raids *is* no life.
Knowing all the major MMO's and what they offer, I was searching for a possibly unknown, perhaps Korean, MMO that offered end game raiding. I couldn't find much of anything, in fact most searches turned up posts by MMO players shouting their distaste for raiding in general. EQ Next seems to be my only hope on the horizon.
Having been introduced to MMO's through the raid-centric Everquest, I'm completely saddened by the core of what I loved most about MMO's being phased out in favor of barbie doll housing crap and dumbed down PvP. To me, if I wanted to build a house I'd play the Sims where it expands on that aspect in much more detail. Likewise, if I wanted to PvP I'd play one of any number of FPS, rather than being completely focused on the PvP aspect of MMO's - I've been there, done that, but the majority of pure PvP'ers I've been around in MMO's are mainly fueled by this ego trip that they can wipe the floor with other players due to advantages in gear progression. So to reiterate, 2 functions of MMO's that have been rising in popularity are both available, and in better form, in other genres.
For raiding this isn't true, there is nothing even remotely similar to it in any other game genre. Yet it's been a downward trend since EQ, which is still the king of raiding. EQ2 would fall right behind it in 2nd, where the vast majority of active players are only there for raiding. WoW and RIFT both have raids, but neither offer the same atmosphere, intensity, require the same level of skill, and because of these reasons don't have the same sense of accomplishment that you'll find in EQ. Vanguard it's an afterthought, I actually formed a hardcore raiding guild for Vanguard on it's release only to be completely disappointed by the lack of raiding, and lack of loot on existing raid mobs, so much so that the entire guild moved on to WoW.
So here we are, 14 years after Everquests release, and EQ is still on top of the food chain for hardcore raiding? Majority of MMORPG's coming out either don't offer raiding or offer it as a compensation prize in the form of 10 mans and other junk? The only possible savior being EQ Next which won't be out for years and I'm simply assuming it will have proper raids based on it's pedigree and nothing more?
It's a sad time to be a hardcore raider and seeing the genre you loved for so long is nearly extinguished.
Prepare for disappointment then. Any company that wants to make money isn't going to have hardcore 40-man raids. You'll most likely never see those again. I promise yout that the next EQ won't either. You are setting yourself up for dissappointment. The whole MMO genre used to be pretty niche, but now it's almost as mainstream as any other genre. The old player mentality has been diluted by the masses, and the masses don't want 40-man raids. If companies want to make it financially, then they have to pay attention to what the market wants. Even in some wacky alternate dimension where they actually make one that's hardcore, it would either be indie, or it would collapse under its own budget due to a lock of revenue from the player-base. Sorry, dude; a hardcore AAA game is just not in the cards anymore.
Prepare for disappointment then. Any company that wants to make money isn't going to have hardcore 40-man raids. You'll most likely never see those again. I promise yout that the next EQ won't either. You are setting yourself up for dissappointment. The whole MMO genre used to be pretty niche, but now it's almost as mainstream as any other genre. The old player mentality has been diluted by the masses, and the masses don't want 40-man raids. If companies want to make it financially, then they have to pay attention to what the market wants. Even in some wacky alternate dimension where they actually make one that's hardcore, it would either be indie, or it would collapse under its own budget due to a lock of revenue from the player-base. Sorry, dude; a hardcore AAA game is just not in the cards anymore.
And there are good reasons.
Even getting 25 people commiting to a raiding schedule is a chore. 40 is almost impossible. And why would anyone want that? More people = more drama = more scheduling headaches.
A game is for entertainment and for fun. There is no reason why the game cannot be designed so that people can jump in at any time and play as a group. In fact, there are MMO features that accomplishes that.
In my mind, it is a GOOD thing that the old arcane 40+ man raids are no longer the focus of the industry.
A hardcore raiding game isn't really that hardcore. I was only raiding 3-4 nights a week for 3-4 hours in EQ (sometimes longer, but I just cut back the sleep, hehe), even WoW and had all the best stuff. Left plenty of time to go out, read, watch tv, work out, etc. I think a lot of people today watch more tv than what it takes to do a "hardcore" raid. It isn't a second job, or for no lifers.
People probably spend more time playing casually than it would take to raid, lol. I think I spent more hours leveling up each day than when I was raiding. Do people consider playing 9-16 hours a week in a MMO hardcore? I don't. When I was playing MMOs, I'm more of a casual player where I wouldn't even get to raiding and I probably put in more hours than that.
I think we will see in depth raiding still, but probably won't be the norm. Whatever game has it just has to make sure it gets people grouping from the beginning, so not everyone has to learn how to work together and others be alienated from the raiding scene because their learning curve is just a bit slower. That is what the leveling process should help with. Get people to know how to play their class with others, learn about what others can do.
On a side note, I rather just have a daoc 2 with awesome RvR instead, hehe.
A hardcore raiding game isn't really that hardcore. I was only raiding 3-4 nights a week for 3-4 hours in EQ (sometimes longer, but I just cut back the sleep, hehe), even WoW and had all the best stuff. Left plenty of time to go out, read, watch tv, work out, etc. I think a lot of people today watch more tv than what it takes to do a "hardcore" raid. It isn't a second job, or for no lifers.
3-4 nights for 3-4 hours = no life for me.
There are other games to play. Novels to read. Movies to watch. Spending time with wife & kids. WORK (yes, i like my job too and much of it is done at home).
In fact, i don't think i want any commited 3-4 hours gaming session. 1-2 is ok. Better yet, no commitment, just play a while and see what i feel like. And we have not even talked about scheduling yet. Do i really want to keep a raiding schedule? What about if my wife wants to eat out suddenly? It is not just the time, but the commitment.
A game should not be like that .. at least for me. I won't play/pay a game that needs me to schedule time with it anymore.
In my opinion, large raids can in a way be less hardcore than small raids.
When doing smaller raids, you generally have a set raid roster, and are often pressured to attend every raid or risk losing your raid spot. You are also pressured to be on time and stay the whole raid, as one person leaving often means the raid cannot continue.
On the other hand, in a game like EQ1, raids had a lot more flexibility. My EQ guild varied in size from probably 60 to 100 active "raiders" in the decade that I was playing. Once raids shifted to the instanced route, we had a set three night per week schedule. However, most of our people averaged about 75% attendance, with only some people being in the 90-100% range. Some people would miss the start of raids or have to leave early because of time differences, and this was for the most part, not a problem, because one person out of 50 leaving generally isn't going to make a huge difference (unless you are really short on a particular needed class that night).
Of course, the hardcore EQ raiding guilds had more intense schedules and requirements than the most hardcore guilds in WoW, RIFT, etc (there were guilds on my server that raided six nights a week, six hours a night), but in my opinion, large raids are more friendly to more casual raiders than small raids are.
MMOs are also not lasting as long. Playerbases might be large at the start but quickly shrivel up and game hop.
Others would see coincidence. I see correlation. If the endgame is not complex enough for me then its not worth investing time in. I quit raiding in WoW at the end of BC (and that was not my only raiding rodeo by any means).
However, raiding will never disappear. There has to be some long term PVE goals that keep older players playing beyond the leveling process. Small group content gets cleared incredibly fast and does not really serve this purpose. So what does the evolution point to? Zerg raiding! No organization required just hit a button to join with random players, have a pinata appear for your looting pleasures!
Which kinda defeats the purpose of raids in a general sense.
Comments
Too many raiding end games out there as far as I'm concerned. If you want a second job that doesn't pay, join a raiding guild and go for it.
How about: WoW, Rift, SWTOR, Aion, etc. ad infinitum.
I don't get how OP can complain that there are not enough raiding games. Do you mean you want the 40-person or more raids? If so, good luck. I don't see how you can find that many people to be that organized and on schedule. Like I said, it seems like a second job that doesn't pay except in a small chance to get epic lootz.
I've already played that game and I don't need to keep playing it.
Raiding is still the mainstream endgame, the only difference is that people seems to be more and more tired of it.
But being in a slight decline is not the same thing as being dead, right now there is not a single large alternative. RvR is probably the largest of the smaller endgames at the moment but it is still nowhere near raiding in popularity.
Of course a lot of players doesn´t participate in any kind of endgame right now and if something can bring in them it might change the powerstructure but raiding wont die for many years even if it probably just will become one of several different endgames to choose from in the future.
That's what I think it should be.
After 6 years of raiding on and off its dead to me.
Raiding dying or dead? Well depends on which kind of raiding really as you have true raiding or hardcore raiding (prior to wow like eq and eq2), and then you have casual raiding (basically post wow.). Saddly the difficult mass group raiding like eq 1/2 up to early wow (raids up tll bc even some bc raids to some raiders were difficult to do) are pretty well dying or dead, since not only was it very time consuming to do, it was also very restrictive with a large portion of the pop of games not seeing the entirity of the content. Where as with casual raiding like in wow it allows for more players (vast majorty of the playerbase) to get into the content, form grooups in short order (compared to the hours or days it took to originize prior raid groups.)to get to actually doing the raids. I am both happy that raiding content in games is not as restrictive of how many can see it, but yet also saddened by the fact that hard an large scale raiding is not even really supported in most games, yet i am hoping that some devs will see that making a hardcore raiding version of raid content would be worthwhile to catter somewhat to the playerbase that desire that style of play.
Raiding is dying out, here is 2 reasons Raiding is unpopular in most MMO's.
1) Developers of most AAA titles make little to no effort to introduce players to the concept of partying up and working together early, let alone co-operating to overcome anything more complicated than tank & spank which decent raid instances require. Soloing is the order of the day & while developers may think its what players want and a good way to go about designing the game they fail to see they repeatedly shoot themselves in the foot with this flawed design.
2) People who do Raid often carry themselves as elitist, driving away potential new raiders who they should be helping and encouraging to get onboard instead of telling them they are no good, noobs etc. because eventually Those same raiders see population decline & suddenly dont have enough players to make up a raid. So helping noobs stop being noobs and encouraging them to enjoy raiding is the order of the day.
Personally I like Raiding, however I think its too inaccessible or unpalatable to most players in newer titles for the reasons above & It wouldnt hurt developers to also include other endgame content with longevity for those players who really do hate Raiding &/or grouping up, as well as casual players. This also gives social MMO'ers something to do at endgame when their friends/guild arent online.
Here's how I define raiding:
That's just from observing in the forums and reading game mechanics... I'm not a raider. Been in a few, didn't like it.
I remember this also. First time I heard about rading a dungeon I had no clue what was going on. Where there enemy faction players in there and we were going to go kill them?
THAT's what I'm talking about.
Let's go sack Stormwind, loot 'em dry and take all their women.*
*I know this part's controversial, but historically speaking, it is what it is.
I miss raiding with 100+ ppl. Did it in Anarchy Online a lot. Most fun I ever had.
Nowdays, Raid = 8-16 ppl. IF
raiding would not be dead so much in future if its not so much about the gear, real issue there is if you are not part in any guild and still want to raid you dont have gear for it , you never gona have change to raid until some nice guild lets you leech.
now looking for raid options increase this but mainly the same reason when people are new to raids and so on its quite often chaotic.
so what we need in future is find away to create a raids that sametime are fun and not so much dependale from gear
and experience and so on and so on in other words its impossible and waste of time creation.
my opinion is there is raid games out there you can get into and yet in future keep it balanced , you wanna raid? get into guild what raids and so on, you wanna solo? do solo stuff but rewars for that should be at same par with raiding maybe more time consuming to get and wanna pvp sure why not do it that way and again rewards same with all other aspects of the game.
freedom of choise for players to do what they enjoy and chose to do and get same results as rewards.
peace.
I agree that we have to distinguish between hardcore raiding and casual raiding post WoW (or call it semi-casual). And it all comes down to the fact, that they cater the casual masses, which makes a lot of sense from a business perspective. I would also like to add ultra-casual raiding, like we will see it most propably with GW2s and other games open world bosses. You even dont need a group to participate and we will see how much organization will be needed at all.
I wonder, if you could cater them all if just your architecture and design is prepared properly. You could have hardcore, casual and ultra-casual multi-group content in one dungeon. The question is, what are the additional costs and revenue for such a more flexible approach compared to cater just the biggest customer group. We already have group-dungeons in casual and hardmode today.
Of course you cannot support 2 philosophies in one game, e.g. endgame with item treadmill and slow vertical progression AND endgame without item treadmill and just lateral progression and cosmetics. Again i say, that raids aka multi-group content are not the subject of dispute. It is the way of endgame progression!
Ask yourself! Would a game work, where the most shiny cosmetic equipment comes from hardcore raiding and the casual, who never has the time or power, in order to participate, can buy it in the cash-shop alternatively? i hear the $hitstorm on the forums already.
And would pure cosmetic progression work for hardcore raiders at all? Are there enough users, that the effort is worth for the devs?
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
Sorry to say, but the majority of the population doesn't really have time to raid between, work, life, and or kids, so ya, it''s dying. 't Most people don't want to commit 2-4 hours of solid game time, or can't, to a raid because of life. 5 man instances are much more doable for the general population.
I fully agree to that statement. I wonder what the alternative should be, if we focus on PVE-only. what we see today as "pve-endgame" is:
1. repating some group dungeons
2. repeating daylies
3. levelling alts
4. repeating older content with mains (just possible in games with downscaling)
5. non-combat (more sandboxish) gameplay like crafting, RP and more.
6. metagaming
Option 5 and 6 mostly do not work very well in theme-parks due to limited versatility and missing features and tools. However they can work very well in player driven sandboxes. We do not know, how option 4 will work. Perhaps Arenanet can feed us with new and modified DEs fast enough. I see, how this could be easier than with effort-intensive high-quality-quests. However, in story-centric games, it never worked so far.
So there is just option 1-3 which becomes boring fast. I dont say, that raiding is less boring, but what the hell would be a true innovation for pve-endgame in theme-parks for an endless, challenging and fun endgame? I dont see it. All i can imagine is a sandboxish pve-endgame. But this would impact the theme-park design in the levelling phase heavily.
PS: and dont tell me: make games with no endgame. It is pretty clear, what GW2s endgame is about. Every game has an endgame, even sandboxes. Some games have no levelling phase or you can skip it and jump directly to endgame. But just levelling without endgame is called offline game and not MMO.
played: Everquest I (6 years), EVE (3 years)
months: EQII, Vanguard, Siedler Online, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2
weeks: WoW, Shaiya, Darkfall, Florensia, Entropia, Aion, Lotro, Fallen Earth, Uncharted Waters
days: DDO, RoM, FFXIV, STO, Atlantica, PotBS, Maestia, WAR, AoC, Gods&Heroes, Cultures, RIFT, Forsaken World, Allodds
(1) is not even true. In WOW, early dungeons (after L10) gives MUCH better loot (in fact, you get a blue item just by completing) and faster xp. In DCUO, there are QUESTS in the quest chain that introduces you to dungeon runs. There are many examples like this.
(2) is true. I remember I have to file an application form, and an "interview" run, before i was let into this raiding guild.
I think casual raiding is what is needed to revitalize raiding. LFR is a step in the right direction. Less commitment, less time consuming, less exclusivity.
Of course the really hard core raiders don't like that .. but I don't suppose i would care about what they want.
Well if you think raids should be public then raiding clearly isn't for you. You should stick to your candyland barbie house bs and leave the raiding to those who are skilled enough that they require an application process to weed out those that are idiots or those who aren't either skilled enough yet, or just don't have the mind capacity to follow simple instructions.
With those people in raids, a raid that could easily take 2 hours suddenly balloons to 7 hours of frustration.
Many of these comments regarding 'raiding' in games are simply instances requiring more than one group, to be a game with 'raiding' there needs to be enough content to actually have raid progression, not just a couple meaningless zones that /gasp/ require TWO groups instead of ONE! Oh my!
Without raiding, what is there that is seriously worth paying for an MMO? The sub par inbalanced PvP? The group content made so any adolescent can plow through it by just randomly clicking colors? Where is the difficulty? The sense of accomplishment?
Some talk about hardcore raiding like its a bunch of people with no lives, but the simple fact is the majority of MMO's content are nothing more than time sinks. I mean a game as new as RIFT and it doesn't have any functions to auto sort the inventory or any inventory management at all? Because they want you to pay for the hours you spend organizing it yourself.
So who is the person with no life? The person who plays 2 hours a day and spends maybe half of that time hurdling time sinks? Or the person who pays the same amount per month, but instead spends 4-5 hours a day running raids with a group of other highly skilled players who can cram 10 hours of content into that 4-5 hours?
UO dungeon crawl > raiding. I guess if you could take the gear grind out of raiding I would like it just as much.
My theme song.
Large scale raiding ala EQ1 has been dead for a long time, and sadly I don't think it will ever come back. People complain that it's too hard to organize ten people. I'd like to see them try to organize and run a 72 man Rathe Council raid in EQ1 with no voice chat.
Clearly me & millions are enjoying causl LFR raiding. If you don't like it, you don't have to participate. It is the trend and it is not going to go away.
I have done hard core raiding before. Hard mode raiding requires multiple days of commitment in a week, and practice maneuavering (and wiping) for hours. Thanks but no thanks. I would much rather run 5-man PUG dungeons.
Given your elitist attitude, thank god i don't have to raid with you. Spending 4-5 hours a day running raids *is* no life.
Prepare for disappointment then. Any company that wants to make money isn't going to have hardcore 40-man raids. You'll most likely never see those again. I promise yout that the next EQ won't either. You are setting yourself up for dissappointment. The whole MMO genre used to be pretty niche, but now it's almost as mainstream as any other genre. The old player mentality has been diluted by the masses, and the masses don't want 40-man raids. If companies want to make it financially, then they have to pay attention to what the market wants. Even in some wacky alternate dimension where they actually make one that's hardcore, it would either be indie, or it would collapse under its own budget due to a lock of revenue from the player-base. Sorry, dude; a hardcore AAA game is just not in the cards anymore.
And there are good reasons.
Even getting 25 people commiting to a raiding schedule is a chore. 40 is almost impossible. And why would anyone want that? More people = more drama = more scheduling headaches.
A game is for entertainment and for fun. There is no reason why the game cannot be designed so that people can jump in at any time and play as a group. In fact, there are MMO features that accomplishes that.
In my mind, it is a GOOD thing that the old arcane 40+ man raids are no longer the focus of the industry.
A hardcore raiding game isn't really that hardcore. I was only raiding 3-4 nights a week for 3-4 hours in EQ (sometimes longer, but I just cut back the sleep, hehe), even WoW and had all the best stuff. Left plenty of time to go out, read, watch tv, work out, etc. I think a lot of people today watch more tv than what it takes to do a "hardcore" raid. It isn't a second job, or for no lifers.
People probably spend more time playing casually than it would take to raid, lol. I think I spent more hours leveling up each day than when I was raiding. Do people consider playing 9-16 hours a week in a MMO hardcore? I don't. When I was playing MMOs, I'm more of a casual player where I wouldn't even get to raiding and I probably put in more hours than that.
I think we will see in depth raiding still, but probably won't be the norm. Whatever game has it just has to make sure it gets people grouping from the beginning, so not everyone has to learn how to work together and others be alienated from the raiding scene because their learning curve is just a bit slower. That is what the leveling process should help with. Get people to know how to play their class with others, learn about what others can do.
On a side note, I rather just have a daoc 2 with awesome RvR instead, hehe.
3-4 nights for 3-4 hours = no life for me.
There are other games to play. Novels to read. Movies to watch. Spending time with wife & kids. WORK (yes, i like my job too and much of it is done at home).
In fact, i don't think i want any commited 3-4 hours gaming session. 1-2 is ok. Better yet, no commitment, just play a while and see what i feel like. And we have not even talked about scheduling yet. Do i really want to keep a raiding schedule? What about if my wife wants to eat out suddenly? It is not just the time, but the commitment.
A game should not be like that .. at least for me. I won't play/pay a game that needs me to schedule time with it anymore.
In my opinion, large raids can in a way be less hardcore than small raids.
When doing smaller raids, you generally have a set raid roster, and are often pressured to attend every raid or risk losing your raid spot. You are also pressured to be on time and stay the whole raid, as one person leaving often means the raid cannot continue.
On the other hand, in a game like EQ1, raids had a lot more flexibility. My EQ guild varied in size from probably 60 to 100 active "raiders" in the decade that I was playing. Once raids shifted to the instanced route, we had a set three night per week schedule. However, most of our people averaged about 75% attendance, with only some people being in the 90-100% range. Some people would miss the start of raids or have to leave early because of time differences, and this was for the most part, not a problem, because one person out of 50 leaving generally isn't going to make a huge difference (unless you are really short on a particular needed class that night).
Of course, the hardcore EQ raiding guilds had more intense schedules and requirements than the most hardcore guilds in WoW, RIFT, etc (there were guilds on my server that raided six nights a week, six hours a night), but in my opinion, large raids are more friendly to more casual raiders than small raids are.
MMOs are taking much less complexity to play now.
MMOs are also not lasting as long. Playerbases might be large at the start but quickly shrivel up and game hop.
Others would see coincidence. I see correlation. If the endgame is not complex enough for me then its not worth investing time in. I quit raiding in WoW at the end of BC (and that was not my only raiding rodeo by any means).
However, raiding will never disappear. There has to be some long term PVE goals that keep older players playing beyond the leveling process. Small group content gets cleared incredibly fast and does not really serve this purpose. So what does the evolution point to? Zerg raiding! No organization required just hit a button to join with random players, have a pinata appear for your looting pleasures!
Which kinda defeats the purpose of raids in a general sense.