Raid gear set bonus

[Kaethra]

More evidence on why raiding was the biggest mistake of the genre.

More like the biggest mistake is allowing people to get past level 5 without a group. My evidence? The 800+ page thread about the duty finder.

Where's yours?

[Ririta]

More like the biggest mistake is allowing people to get past level 5 without a group. My evidence? The 800+ page thread about the duty finder.

Where's yours?

All the complaints over both Diadems. 2.0's Relic quest being as good as the raid weapon. Mythology offering good gear. Hunts offering items to upgrade your gear. Syrcus Tower offering items to upgrade your gear. i210 relic being such a ridiculous grind so "raiders aren't hurt". Diadem in 3.1 being murdered because raiders complained.

I don't even get the mentality. When I was raiding post 2.2 I was starved for other things to do, because way too often, other content was worthless to me. Why would you want that?

[Kaethra]

I don't even get the mentality. When I was raiding post 2.2 I was starved for other things to do, because way too often, other content was worthless to me. Why would you want that?

The amount of Raid content in modern day MMOs is abyssal. When ARR came out, there was.. not even a raid unless you want to count coil as a raid. Then it was one. WoW was the same way in 2004, you had like 2 places to go.

And there's no excuse for that. If you look at Everquest where the last 2 expansions along with the current one is relevant. They're on their 23rd expansion.. but the raids in the 22nd, 21st and for some people, the 20th are all relevant. Too often do you get into a situation (and all MMOs pretty much do this for some reason), where you raid, like once or twice a week and then for the other 5 or 6 days you're not doing anything but maybe leveling an alt.

But the reason is pretty easy to pick out. Way way too much focus on both solo and leveling content. That's the ONE thing EQ doesn't do. Every so often they'll do an expansion that raises the level cap, but you'll see 2-3 expansions inbetween. Think about that. Imagine if the level cap was still 50. And HW through 3.0 to 3.5 was all group/raid content. No solo or leveling stuff. Then they do the same with SB.

Open your duty finder and look at Heavensward dungeons. Imagine if about a sixth of them were new 4 man dungeons, another sixth were 8 man, and the last 2/3rds were raids. That'd be alot of content.

Instead, over 80% of the resources, time, and effort was spent into MSQ. Explain the reasoning for that in a Massive Multiplayer Online game? I still have yet to understand the error you get when you enter a quest area and it states "you must leave your group to perform this duty". That makes no sense whatsoever.

[Rongway]

Instead, over 80% of the resources, time, and effort was spent into MSQ. Explain the reasoning for that in a Massive Multiplayer Online game?

This might be an MMO, but it's still, first and foremost, a Final Fantasy.

[Ririta]

snip

I'm not familiar with Everquest, but, does that actually changes things and makes other content as good as raiding?

The problem that I have with raiding is when the whole game starts revolving around it, from job design and balance to content rewards and structure, which happens in almost every MMORPG nowadays.