Dear ZOS, Raiding is a Priority: Pt V : Othor Games

» Thu Mar 21, 2013 9:49 pm

This is the 5th thread about Raiding and it's priority in ESO. Some of the members of the MMO community are passionate about their desire to see scripted PvE raid encounters in ESO, much like those seen in EQ2, Rift, LOTRO, and WoW. To read the original article, click the link below. I will list all past threads and conversations on the topic below.

It's obvious others feel very strongly about the subject. Check out the threads below.
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1450632-dear-zos-raiding-is-a-priority/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1450651-why-no-raids-is-a-bad-thing/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1450601-poll-no-pve-raids-in-eso/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1450717-pve-content/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1450770-no-raids/
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1450960-ok-no-raids-but-what-will-we-do/

Before posting on this thread, try to refrain from trolling or flaming. Everyone has their own opinion.

Read the original thread below:
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1450632-dear-zos-raiding-is-a-priority/ - 1st Thread
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1450710-dear-zos-raiding-is-a-priority-pt-ii/ - 2nd Thread
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1450805-dear-zos-raiding-is-a-priority-pt-iii/ - 3rd Thread
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1450868-dear-zos-raiding-is-a-priority-iv/ - 4^th Thread

Here is a list of some of the features the ESO PvE raiding community would like to see when it comes to scripted encounters present in ESO:

Raids that are consistent with the lore and story to match the ES story line and IP. They need to feel appropriate to the Elder Scrolls universe.
Instanced PvE scripted encounter with moderately difficult bosses for groups to overcome.
Group sizes between 12 to 16 players.
Some sort of gear progression, but instead of being constantly a vertical progression, sometimes horizontal, so gear isn’t constantly being replaced and thrown away with each new content patch.
Gear obtained through raiding should be equivalent to what can be obtained through PvP, neither should be more powerful than the other.
Keep CC relevant. No tank and spank bosses.
Raids should have multiple difficulties, one normal mode and one hardmode. That way a much large group of people will have access to the raid content, and less people will be left out.

Community Submissions:

So first off, I am a fairly big fan of raiding and have done a fair amount over the years, but in all that time there's always been 2 things about raiding, and to a lesser extents general dungeons, that have bothered me:

1. Most are far too linear

2. Most are far too "The only way to progress is to kill everything" and like, purely combat orientated.

So personally, if ESO does end up having raids, or even just for future games here's a list of some stuff I'd like to see:

- Multiple ways to progress.

What I mean is that instead of just entering a room and then killing everything or completing some small but fairly insignificant objective, I'd like to see more of a focus on non-combat orientated progression methods. These could be simple things such as "having to sneak past some enemies as the room is full of death traps that they will active should they detect you" or "have someone go diving in a river to look for and activate a switch to continue while the rest of the group has to balance out a weight that is keeping a damn closed" or something like "Light all of the torches while fighting off the enemies looking to blow them out/block the air currents coming into the room" and so on.

I understand that as it's a game, and most importantly an MMO there will of course be limitations and restrictions, but I don't understand and won't hear any excuse for why we can't have more creative ways to progress within a raid/dungeon.

- Puzzles.

This is something that IMO the TES games and MMO's in general actually don't have ENOUGH of and should be a mandatory thing in most raids/dungeons. The beauty of puzzles is they can literally be ANYTHING so long as it requires you to think a bit, and having lots of them in raids/dungeons means that class and combat choice won't be everything, you'll actually need people who can think to move on as well.

- Multiple Paths.

This is fairly straightforward I think. Too many games these days don't provide enough paths and options on how to complete content, and even if they do they usually don't do much with them. I think it would be great for some raids/dungeons to have non-linear paths (that do all meet at the same end of course) so you aren't just walking in a straight line the whole time. Some great gameplay options could be made as well by deepening the system and say putting restrictions on how many people can all take one path. For instance, you might have a team of 8 that comes to 2 paths, both paths only allow 4 players to enter each one so the team has to decide on the best possible combat combinations for their group and how to divide themselves. Then both paths have objectives that correspond to the opposite path, so in order for team A to advance along path A, team B needs to complete some objectives on path B for that to happen, and vice versa.

I don't know, I just think that giving players more options in how to complete things, and deepening those systems by having a wide variety of objectives would add another more interesting layer to the gameplay rather than it just being a straightforward fighting affair.

- Make It Dynamic

What I mean by this should be pretty clear. Make the experience dynamic, whether that means the entire piece of content changes from run to run or there's simply random events or changes that occur. Just ensure that there's something in place so that every-time (to an extent of course, it might be difficult to provide a unique experience 30 or something times over) a group does that content, they notice something different and new.

Well that's basically all I can think of for right now. I'm sorry if any of these have already been suggested/talked about, or even if some of them exist in other games or I have just not yet experienced them, but there's my contributions to how things could be improved.

- Val

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 9:17 am

I want to take a second to talk about the common misconceptions about Raiding I seem comming up over and over again. The original post I had this on got locked so I guess this is the right place to disuss it.

A) As long as there is enough questing/dungeons/exploration/lore for PvE then an MMORPG is just as well off without Raiding

This is by far the most popular misconception I have seen about Raiding. It is a misconceptions that even the developers of ESO seem to have fallen for.

The truth is that while questing/dungeons/exploration/lore are indeed PvE content, they are not LONG LASTING PvE content. This type of content cannot engage players for, lets say, years to come. There is no reason to theorize about it, we can actually walk through the process of what happens when players get to endgame PvE:

So you hit 50, congratulations! Lets see what is there to do now in PvE.

You can do some more exploring. You can find a little better gear while exploring, find interesting and fun lore, find quests and fun scripted events. All that is great for the first couple of months or so after you hit 50. Relative soon you will be done with most of the exploring you want to do. I think it is safe to say that most people will rarely go exploring after they experienced enough of the world in the first couple of months.
You can do Dungeons, and "Heroic" Dungeons. Thats a lot of fun too. You will run them 20-30 times and get the gear you want and experience the fun content. That will last also for a couple of months. You can even queue for Dungeons while you do exploring. I think it is safe to say that most players will sparcely run Dungeons after the first couple of months of getting to 50.
You can do Dynamic Events like Rifts and Dark Anchors. That sounds fun for a while, but we know it gets old fast. I think it also safe to say that most people will spacerly do them after the first couple of months as well.
You can do Group Dungeons and Adventure-type Zones that some MMOs have. Thats a lot of fun, possibly meeting other people there and doing content together and building community. Thats something players can do 30-40-50 times. I think it is safe to say that once people have had their fill of Group Dungeons and Adventure Zones they will rarely do them anymore. That content seems to be VERY fast to complete and you can randomly join groups and take down stuff. Lets be generous and give that type of content three months lifetime.
You can do Quests and Dailies, but I think most people will agree that it gets boring fast.

Ok, thats about it. All these PvE activities are indeed great and fun.

The problem is that all these activities cannot keep people enganged for more than 2-4 months. Do you really want an MMO that thrives for 2-4 months and then burns out as people leave when they have nothing else to do because of the lack of serious progression PvE content? I

think the greatest example of this is GW2. GW2 is an excellent game, but with no serious progressions PvE content. (in fact endgame in ESO sounds exactly like everything that was in endgame in GW2, maybe with a little bit more focus in exploration). People in GW2 got to max level, then they toyed around with the content for a few months, including World Bosses, Exploration and Dungeons, and then they realised that they didnt have anything else to do. So they just moved on to other games. You certainly cant blame them.

Raiding adds longlivety to an MMORPG and this is how:

So you hit 50, congratulations! Lets see what is there to do now in PvE + Raiding .

You can do everything that was mentioned above.
Now, you while you are doing exploration, Dynamic Events, Adventure Zones etc., you are also getting your character ready for the first organized Raiding. You need to know how play encouters, know your character and gear up for character so you can down hard and challenging Bosses.
You enter your first Raid with your Guild. Finally you are at the first Boss. The encounter is a ton of fun and everyone plays and coordinates with each other. The Boss wipes the floor with you. In the next few weeks, slowly your guild gears up and learns the encounter. The encounter becomes easier and easier and finally you can your guild take that Boss down. Its time for the next Boss that will also take time to gear up and learn the encounter. All of that time you are having fun playing and coordinating with other people and builidng community and friendships, helping each other out to take down that challenge.
After months, you have finally cleared the Raid. Now its time to do it on Heroic Mode. In the meantime a new Raid opens up so you want to try that too.
This circle never stops, the game can last for as long as Developers are producing quality Raid content. People can play for years and years to come.

In short, Raiding not only adds community, guild pride and develops friendships and cooperation, it also helps the game last for years. Even if you dont like Raiding, it helps the game overall , which takes me to the next point.

If there is Raiding, then Developers will only focus on making Raid encounter which will destroy the rest of the game.

Raiding does not destroy other PvE content, it HELPS the creation of more Non-Raid PvE content.
You dont need to believe me. Just look at the facts. Games like Warcraft have thrived for years BECAUSE of Raiding. I think that reasonable people can agree that without Raiding, WoW would be dead today. Because WoW is thriving due to the Raiding, it can produce frequent quality non-Raid content. In WoW we constantly see new quests, new storylines, new World Bosses, new Factions, new or updated zones etc. etc. Blizzard NEVER stops creating quality Non-Raid PvE content.
On the other hand, lets look at GW2 which does not have raiding and is not thriving. It is no secret that ArenaNext has only been releasing a trinkle of new content when compared to WoW.

So Raiding actually helps an MMORPG thrive and it helps towards the creation on Non-Raid content. It is a win/win for everyone.
Personally, although I do Raid, even if I was not Raiding I will only play theme park games that have Raiding because it adds to quality content for everyone.

C) An MMORPG must have Raiding in order to thrive.

On the other side of scale that I have seen people insist that Raiding is important to all MMORPGs. Thats false. You can have games where players create the content and thus you dont need Raiding to keep players enganged. These Sandbox games live EVE are few in-between and we need more of them. But those game can completely thrive with no Raiding at all, and in fact are better without it.

Nevertheless, for Theme-Park games (like ESO, GW2, WoW etc.), Raiding is absolutely mandatory for the long term health of the MMORPG. Like I explained before in detail, players will run out of things to do in just a few months and move on.

D) An MMORPG will be fine as long as it focuses on good PvP.

Another widespread misconception.
Although there is a small niche of gamers who will play an MMORPG just for the PvP, there are other MMOs out there (not MMORPGs) that do PvP MUCH BETTER than an MMORPG will ever be able to do.
Games like PlanetSide 2, League fo Legends, MWO, the upcoming Defiance game etc. will always be able to do PvP better than MMORPGs which have a lot more baggage to carry and thus have to worry about server stability, balancing and other such MMORPGs issues.
For example, why would anyone play the softlock and hardlock targeting of ESO when they can play the amazing fuild and action combat of PlanetSide 2? In fact the whole concept of PlanetSIde 2 is basically Cyrodiil in space. I would not be suprized is Cyrodill was a copy of PS2.

The rise of PvP only MMOs is fairly recent so i think this misconceptions comes from people still remembering DAoC and other such games. I think even Developers have fallen for this misconception. After all, back then the only types of online PvP were games like Counterstrike and Team Fortress.
Modern MMO PvP games had not arrived yet. MMORPGs should never compete with modern MMO PvP games. Modern MMO PvP games are here to stay and MMORPGs should focus on what MMORPGs do best. The RPG portion. MMORPGs should have fun PvP but they need to complement it with good long term PvE.

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 12:48 pm

The reason people quit in Catacylsm wasn't because they got more hardcoe, if anything it was in the other direction. I know personally, my whole guild quit because 1) we were just sick of raiding in WoW and 2) getting the same gear from 10 and 25 man's was bogus.

Also if what you were saying was true, how do you explain the popularity of BC? Where people had to do attunements, and were gated by older raids before they could move on to harder stuff. I can't tell you how many times people have said BC was their favorite time in WoW, and the raids certainly weren't casual friendly.

Because BC isn't popular by the majority. It's just remembered with rose-colored glasses by the forum-going few because it was the first WoW expansion.

Hell man, look at the debacle with the Pandas. Prior to MoP's announcement people were clamoring for Pandaren. When it was announced, the rest came to the forums saying "WTF!? PANDAS!?!"

What you see on the forums do NOT represent an accurate picture of the whole.

Also - no, at the start Cataclysm went hardcoe. In fact, it was Ghostcrawler himself who said they modeled the difficulty of the Heroics off of Burning Crusade, and had to admit that was a mistake as it caused a massive bottleneck that was VERY unfun to play - which was amusing to me as not 2 months prior to that, he wrote a blog telling players to "Stop complaining about difficulty and get better!". They only changed BACK to Wrath/Casual when they lost 15% of their subscriber base, sacked 10% of their staff and canceled Blizzcon.

Did you get hit by an MIB memory-wipe wand, by any chance? :tongue:

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 9:18 am

Lol Ly, you're going tomake sure that gets in every raiding thread that ever pops up aren't you :tongue:

(not that I don't think it's a good post though)

And let the raiding novel continue to be written!

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 12:08 pm

Lol Ly, you're going tomake sure that gets in every raiding thread that ever pops up aren't you :tongue:

(not that I don't think it's a good post though)

And let the raiding novel continue to be written!

nah thats the last time I post this. It needed to appear properly somewhere at least once right - i still dont think the original thread should have been locked.

I think it deserves the discussion. :smile:

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 6:30 am

This is never going to stop, is it..? :meh:

The thread that never ends...~~~ YOU'LL NEVER LEAVE!

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 6:47 am

nah thats the last time I post this. It needed to appear properly somewhere at least once right - i still dont think the original thread should have been locked.

I think it deserves the discussion. :smile:

Oh I agree, but at the same time I can understand where the mods are coming from as the thread probably would just end up with the same sort of posts and discussions we're seeing here. At least now as the second post it should get some attention :tongue:

This is never going to stop, is it..? :meh:

The thread that never ends...~~~ YOU'LL NEVER LEAVE!

It's the never ending raiding story!

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 5:45 am

nah thats the last time I post this. It needed to appear properly somewhere at least once right - i still dont think the original thread should have been locked.

I think it deserves the discussion. :smile:

You must be really new here...

Beth/Zeni lock threads after 200 posts for some weird forum-management reason. (don't ask me why) Not because they're secretly trying to shut down a discussion they don't like. It's not like Blizzard where they allow threads to expand all the way several hundred pages.

This is why we are allowed to have "Pt V" right now.

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 3:52 am

You must be really new here...

Beth/Zeni lock threads after 200 posts for some weird forum-management reason. (don't ask me why) Not because they're secretly trying to shut down a discussion they don't like. It's not like Blizzard where they allow threads to expand all the way several hundred pages.

This is why we are allowed to have "Pt V" right now.

He wasn't talking about that, his thread never even got close to the post limit

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 5:40 am

He wasn't talking about that, his thread never even got close to the post limit :tongue:

....oh...THAT original thread he created is what he was talking about! Gotcha.

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:04 am

He wasn't talking about that, his thread never even got close to the post limit :tongue:

Yeah, it was locked because moderators wanted to focus all discussion about Raiding on a single thread. But enough about this. lets talk about Raiding.

» Thu Mar 21, 2013 11:54 pm

...

Yeah, it was locked because moderators wanted to focus all discussion about Raiding on a single thread. But enough about this. lets talk about Raiding.

Is there really any "more" to be discussed?

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 8:57 am

Please Zenimax announce that raids will be there during Pax East. Make raiders happy and neglect other more important things for us TES fans.
Oh wait TESO raiding is not like WoW . Please make wow-like raiding a priority part XXVI will come soon

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 5:23 am

We have 4 man raids, adventure zones (large group PvE), and quests. At end game we will also be able to open up the other two faction territories for their PvE content. There is additional PvE content in Cyrodiil.

Isn't this enough?

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 11:24 am

How about everyone take a step back and appreciate the tenacity of Entropy Rising (Tamriel Foundry) in staying up to date fighting for this topic. Impressive.

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 11:38 am

We have 4 man Dungeons, adventure zones (random large group PvE), and quests. At end game we will also be able to open up the other two faction territories for their PvE content. There is additional PvE content in Cyrodiil.

Isn't this enough?

Fixed it for you.

Sure, thats enough for 3 or 4 months. It will be basically like Skyrim with PvP and some group content.

What do we do after that? Do we expect developers to create another ESO worth of content in 4 months to keep players engaged after they clear the original content?

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 5:38 am

Fixed it for you.

Sure, thats enough for 3 or 4 months. It will be basically like Skyrim with PvP and some group content.

What do we do after that? Do we expect developers to create another ESO worth of content in 4 months to keep players engaged after they clear the original content?

Ummm... you didn't change anything he said...

Dude... you seriously gotta stop with this 3/4 month angle. You REALLY think a piddley little raid is going to last 3-4 months these days!? Hell, Blizz even admits it can't have them last that long...

What do we do after that? Many variety types of PVP, have fun gathering mats and tradeable gear in dungeons, Crafting up end-game stuff for people, helping other players with their content, collecting any collectibles we may want, doing Fighters guild, Doing Mage Guild book collecting...

You're also arrogantly assuming that Adventure Zones are not Raids. We don't know what those are yet...

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 2:52 am

Lycrates, you're putting forward a logical fallacy, in that: Progression raiding (a la World of Warcraft) is essential for PvE longevity.

At base, the requirement for longevity is engaging, FUN, replayability.

You are advocating that ZOS lock themselves into the endless content war with the progression raiders. This, as has been stated before, is a losing proposition and is, in fact, bad game design. The amount of man-hours required to produce content that will be consumed and become irrelevant could be better spent creating content that is constantly replayable. Again, content that "Beat and Complete" is a waste of resources. It can be challenging, but that challenge is finite, and in the Blizzard/WoW model, the developer has to recreate that experience constantly.

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:16 am

Well most of the world isn't even in at launch. Right now they have 1 dungeon per zone that can be replayed as a Heroic Dungeon at higher levels. If they keep the 1 dungeon per zone trend going as they add more zones, that will mean they add a dungeon every time they add a zone. If you have 16 zones per faction, that's 32 dungeons per faction. That's 96 dunegons at launch. Lets assume 1/3 of the world is currently rendered. That means that once everything gets added in we will have 288 dungeons.

Sure there's a lot of speculation going on in my post. But the point is, they have ample room to add content. And regular content updates should be something we expect from them anyway.

And lets not forget about PvP to keep us busy...

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 7:22 am

Traditional raiding is not the only way to have end game PvE... get over it, and thank god the devs were smart enough to put an end to traditional raiding as we know it.
Traditional raiding is where a group of players come together in an instance to fight 1-2 bosses at a time, as the difficulty of each encounter is slighlty increased until the end of the instance.

THERE ARE OTHER WAYS to bring PvE players together and have them enjoy PvE content.... PvE objective based instancing, PvE swarms, PvE questing.... all of these could be considered "raiding" if it pertains to a group of players working together to accomplish the same goal.

I could not be happier the devs are trying not to make traditional raiding all end-game PvE is about.

as for "PvE end game will get old" no it wont.. people still play Diablo 1 and Diablo II.... and explore the world.... and trust me, that content is more explored then any game content that has ever been created... considering it isnt always the same map, but it IS always the same group of maps, you make a game and get map 1-10... but whatever map you get our of 1-20, its gunna be the same as the last time you got that map... and there are thousands of other examples, but lets not make this text-wall any bigger.

» Thu Mar 21, 2013 9:47 pm

You are advocating that ZOS lock themselves into the endless content war with the progression raiders. This, as has been stated before, is a losing proposition and is, in fact, bad game design. The amount of man-hours required to produce content that will be consumed and become irrelevant could be better spent creating content that is constantly replayable. Again, content that "Beat and Complete" is a waste of resources. It can be challenging, but that challenge is finite, and in the Blizzard/WoW model, the developer has to recreate that experience constantly.

Interesting. I wonder if the developers/programmers get as bored creating the content as the players do consuming it?

» Thu Mar 21, 2013 10:04 pm

If you have 16 zones per faction, that's 32 dungeons per faction. That's 96 dunegons at launch.

Woah woah woah! Look - I like the dungeons too... but your math is a WEE bit off there son!

They only announced 16 instanced dungeons at launch - PERIOD. I'm not sure where you're getting this 16 ZONES per faction guff... nevermind the 32 dungeons per faction insanity...

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 6:59 am

Interesting. I wonder if the developers/programmers get as bored creating the content as the players do consuming it?

Possibly even more so.

I have many friends who are gaming developers for years. By the end of a dev cycle for a particular game they're SO sick of the game they don't want to see anything more from it ever again. I can't imagine it's different for perpetual content development. >_<

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 5:25 am

Woah woah woah! Look - I like the dungeons too... but your math is a WEE bit off there son! :tongue:

They only announced 16 instanced dungeons at launch - PERIOD. I'm not sure where you're getting this 16 ZONES per faction guff... nevermind the 32 dungeons per faction insanity...

16 dungeons. But each can be replayed as a Heroic Dungeon. That's why I doubled it. Most of the press people did the same stating that there were "about 30" dungeons.

I was assuming they meant per faction territory since they only got to play Daggerfall. Maybe I was wrong about that and its 32 for all three factions at launch. I'll look it up and get back to you.

» Fri Mar 22, 2013 12:09 am

16 dungeons. But each can be replayed as a Heroic Dungeon. That's why I doubled it. Most of the press people did the same stating that there were "about 30" dungeons.

I was assuming they meant per faction territory since they only got to play Daggerfall. Maybe I was wrong about that and its 32 for all three factions at launch. I'll look it up and get back to you.

If I had to guess there will be 4 instanced dungeons per region: 4 for each of the starting factions and 4 in Cyrodiil.