Are static groups simply the now accepted reality for endgame progression?

[Murugan]

Apologies in advance for not reading the entire thread but...

To me, it seems like this entire issue could be solved in a very straightforward manner if the Development team were to introduce this measure:

You can only be eligible to lot on a particular boss's drops once per week. This way, guild members can go back and help their other guild members without getting a second crack at loot. This will make it much more PUGable, since you could technically join a group that's further behind if you had confidence they would go all the way. Finally, an entire guild won't find themselves suddenly stuck if a RL emergency claimed a member away from the game for an extended period of time.

Or am I missing something?

Yes you are missing Lucroarna's point that we should all should simply accept not being able to play with more than 7 other people per week in endgame content, and that if this is a problem for us then obviously we are terrible people.

I mean friends come in precise groups of eight, everyone knows this. Why would anyone want to play with anyone else ever, they wouldn't, it's perfect, learn to play WoW!

[Hechicera]

I see this as a problem in that it artificially fragments community, and forces me to snub my guildies! I am retired, and I play during the day randomly, and we have a contingent of Aussies. I can't run this with them. I run static with a family member in the same guild at night. In Rift I could juggle multiple lockouts and save some for the family group, but this is one big lock. I would be fine getting loot once .. but this system makes me chose between friends and family. Urgh.

Question for anyone who does: I don't have two characters, and certainly not two at 50 ... if you do:
Can you run it with one character, and then again with a second .. that character not jobs. Or is it an account wide lock?

[Cascade]

I see this as a problem in that it artificially fragments community, and forces me to snub my guildies! I am retired, and I play during the day randomly, and we have a contingent of Aussies. I can't run this with them. I run static with a family member in the same guild at night. In Rift I could juggle multiple lockouts and save some for the family group, but this is one big lock. I would be fine getting loot once .. but this system makes me chose between friends and family. Urgh.

Question for anyone who does: I don't have two characters, and certainly not two at 50 ... if you do:
Can you run it with one character, and then again with a second .. that character not jobs. Or is it an account wide lock?

nothing to do with your account, its a char thing
so yes you can do it with 2 diffrent chars

[Murugan]

I think a lot of people reading your post don't exactly get what you mean, based on many responses it seems they are assuming you want end game content to be easy enough for random duty finder to work. What you are talking about is old school mmo end game playing where you build an elite guild of like 100 players, which forms about 12 good parties and you easily can interchange core guildies with newer guildies in end game dungeons so that at the same time (roughly) everyone in your guild is completing the content together even when split into smaller parties. Heck games of the past you could just have your whole guild run into the dungeon at the same time and once inside the dungeon then form your parties out of the guildies that are there. With the way todays end game is you are saying that this style is not viable correct? In that way yeah we are probably living in the past and i feel you brother


*edit*
In other words a true end game guild in the past would have been when you had over 100 people who were all geared and experienced at the same time rather than todays end game guilds which can have 100 people but only 8-10 people who actually know what they are doing.

Basically yes, except 100 players is very large in MMORPG's where there is not even 40 man raids let alone 75+ like in the early days.

The point is not every endgame community likes the "Elite clique" and their groupies approach to endgame. Some have many members of equal skill, or even if not equal skill people we actually like and want to play with not just use for our own gear progression.

The way CoB is setup, you are just heavily restricted who in your guild/FC you can play with every week while doing the most challenging endgame content currently available (the focus of most endgame guilds). Despite what some are saying (maybe because they come only from WoW) this was not the norm. It snuck up on me. Lockouts on single group content? Absurd. How do they expect this not to hurt communities.

We will live and adapt just like we did in 1.0, but they are missing the mark on what a lot of us enjoy about MMORPG's. That is our communities, and SE is depriving us of the opportunity to enjoy the content we like "endgame" with the people we want to play with. They should find a better approach to their problem of not having people progress too fast.

There are lots of ideas, SE has even had many of them, they just need to get away from WoW and their ever shrinking group sizes with inexplicably ever increasing lockouts and restrictions and find something that doesn't have the side effect of punishing communities.

[Davos]

I think it would be great to be able to go back and run content you already did that lockout (minus any loot). What happens if your FC has more than 8 people show up to kill things? At the moment, 8 people get to play and the others get put on the bench.

It would be nice if those Bench-Warmers could progress too. Instead of being hooped for the week. Maybe SE thinks that if people go back to run friends through content that they will get burnt out more quickly? I don't know, but I think that should be up to the individual player.

[Xatsh]

Coil of Bahamut only works in a guild if you have an exact division of 8 people on every night, with the right jobs, with the right gear for said jobs.

It is almost if not impossible to schedule effectively as a guild.

Coil of Bahamut is forcing us to either leave people out completely or it is forcing us to take the first capable 8 people but then large amounts of people miss out on turns. Either way it is horrible results. Have to choose to screw guild members over or give up progression and loot.

Already getting drama over this. It is a problem with no solution that SE has given guilds atm. Any guild that does not want to static on this is screwed atm. SE needs to lower the drop rate on items and simply remove the weekly lockout on completed tiers. This game design is simply horrific for any organized guild.SE needs to add content that drop BIS gear without forced 8man statics (need guild based content) or better yet simply stop designing content like this.

[jojober]

Murugan, while I 100% understand and agree with your stance on this, for someone who is so concerned about the decline of community, you are an angry angry (bordering abusive) member of that community. As a healer in my company, I am now kind of forced to pick 7 other people to go with. And for the next week, I can't help anyone else in my company. I am on your side here, that isn't a very fun thing to face. It does make people feel left out and emphasize the cliques within companies. But take a breath, sir, and remember your concern is for the community you so readily bash.