Sippin wrote:
I'm going to post here knowing the risk I run for an endless back-and-forth on the never-to-be-resolved topic known as SHOULD RAID-LEVEL STUFF ONLY BE AVAILABLE TO RAIDERS. But what the heck:
Haha! Risk it! Risk it!
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First, in what EQ Bible is it stated that:
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Rank 3 spells are raid spells. If you aren't raiding you don't need them. Rank 2s are more than sufficient.
Nobody NEEDS Rank III spells. They're just slightly/somewhat improved versions of the Rank II spells. Like with everything else on the endless treadmill of the game known as Everquest, it's not NEED that's involved here, it's DESIRE.
Sure. Perhaps a bit poorly worded on my part. Obviously, Rank III spells aren't "needed" to raid, else no one could successfully raid. I guess the point I was making is that as you progress into tougher content, the value of higher rank spells (and tiers of gear for that matter) has more impact. Normal solo/group content is balanced to characters with solo/group obtainable gear and spells. So that content is difficult when first attempting it sans such gear, but gets progressively more manageable as you improve your gear. Would even better gear make that content easier? Absolutely. But the point is about ranks/tiers. Raids are balanced to raid forces with raid level gear (of varying levels even). Thus, it's nearly impossible for a group of folks in purchased/solo obtained gear to raid successfully. They must first outfit themselves (or a sufficient quantity of themselves) in group gear to improve their odds to "difficult". But they can now obtain raid level gear/spells, which over time, will make things easier.
I just see it as a difficulty scale issue. So no so much "need" as "makes life much less difficult". There's a reason why previous expansion raid gear is usually roughly equivalent to the next expansions solo (and sometimes even group) gear. It's to allow that progression to happen from one set of content to the next. Folks who aren't already in raid gear typically have to work their way through solo/group content in the new expansion, but because that's pretty much the end of that content for them, it's no more steep a climb than the raiders have. So it's somewhat balanced.
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No raid ever failed for want of a Rank III spell so they clearly aren't a NEED for raiders. They're a CARROT to encourage players to put in the time and effort required to raid.
Exactly. If you make it possible for folks to obtain it without raiding, many players will do just that. And I'm not even saying that this might not be "fair". I totally get that a ton of players are like me and are willing to put lots of hours into their characters, but can't necessarily put those hours in at specific time periods and/or for long enough at a single sitting, to be able to raid successfully. The problem is that, rightly or wrongly, a significant portion of dev time is spent on raid level content. And the carrot you speak of is what's dangled in front of the raiding community to basically fund that stuff in the first place. Could they make changes to the game to focus more on dedicated players doing casual group/solo content while using their trade skills to obtain gear and spells? Sure. And they could probably make money doing this. But for whatever reason, they've chosen otherwise.
My comments are based on the reality of the game as it is now. Obviously, they could change this, but it would not be as simple as just making rankIII and raid gear obtainable via trade skills. They'd have to radically change the focus of future expansions to the game to account for this shift. Heck. It might even result in a better game. I'd certainly be happier with more solo/group content, and more paths of advancement that don't revolve around raiding. I don't take my position because I love the raid game. However, I recognize that for many players this *is* why they play. And if they don't feel like they're getting something special that can only be obtained by players like them, they might just leave for greener pastures.
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Now this same time and investment could be put into tradeskills, quests or other ways to acquire Rank III spells as well as raid-quality gear and weapons.
Yup. I agree. But you'd have to switch your content focus and dev time to do that. I'm not saying this isn't a bad idea, but that it would require more of a change to the core of the game than most people suspect.
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I'm not sure you could price the mats high enough to make it competitive, especially to someone that much into trade skills in the first place
Of course you could!! The game coders can make mats as rare and valuable as they want! They already do this with the super-rare zone-wide GROUP-ACCESSIBLE "rares" and why couldn't they do this with a mat required to make a Rank III spell or for tradeskills to construct a raid-quality piece of armor or jewelry?? Personally I have NEVER looted any of those tradeable super-sized bags which are said to drop VERY RARELY from trash mobs in some expansions. And I've killed thousands of such mobs throughout every zone in those expansions. Just my bad luck---the game RNG just doesn't like me, I guess. But they DO drop because I see them on rare occasion offered in the Bazaar for big plats.
Ok. But if you make it that rare/expensive, then you're still basically back to square one. But now, instead of the route to the best gear being "spend the time/effort raiding", it's "spend the time/effort leaning trade skills, then hope to get really really lucky".
I'm assuming, btw, that for raid equivalent spells and gear, the rare mats would have to be no-trade, and the resulting gear/spells would be no-trade as well. So this isn't about rare drops providing cash for the tradeskiller as he sells of rank III spells, or raid gear (or the super rare mats for such). He'd be making this stuff only for himself (and anyone else wanting to follow this route would as well). This is the only way to balance this out for raid level stuff, and I suspect that most people arguing for a trade skill route wouldn't be too happy with it either.
And frankly, the biggest problem is time. Raids take time in terms of commitment at a specific time/place. To balance that with a trade skill approach that would acquire the same gear, you'd eliminate the "must be here for X hours to get a shot at a drop" element, but replace it with "must spend many many times more hours on your own schedule to obtain the drops to get this". Which puts us in the situation of expansions out leveling that gear faster than a trade skill route could feasibly obtain it. This is kinda what I was getting at with the cost/rarity thing. If you make it too easy/fast, then the raiders will scream bloody murder. But to make it take longer and be harder (or more super rare), you would have a hard time making it workable.
I'm not sure how you can balance that. Not saying it's not possible, but again, pointing out that it's not as simple a prospect as some might think. I also don't think most folks asking for this realize how many more people will start doing tradeskills specifically to follow that alternate route. Most players don't bother with tradeskills at all. Doing only those necessary for various quests (apparently, for paladins, this means fishing and brewing, but YMMV). Imagine how much more competition for farming spots and how much more expensive many mats will become if literally everyone starts doing trade skilling full time as a means of obtaining gear.
That's yet another thing about the game that would have to be changed to account for this. To do this right, you really have to start fresh going forward, introducing new expansions with far less of the content dedicated to raiding, and far more of it dedicated to casual solo/group content, so that folks can obtain sufficient mats and whatnot to obtain gear beyond the normal solo/group level. Heck. This might even result in greater player interest over time. Then again, it might result in more players actively playing at any given time, but not necessarily more subscriptions involved (which is a bad thing from a game design point of view). If the raid players get bored and play less often, but still maintain their accounts and log on occasionally to fool around, that's ideal from the game owner's perspective. Paying customers who aren't consuming as much of the game resources. Change from that model to one that focuses on tons of players spending many times more total hours in the game (but on their own schedule), and you might find yourself going negative in terms of cost/benefit. From a game resource point of view, you'd much rather have players who play hard for 6 hours a couple times a week, than players who play casually for 20+ hours a week. The compute resources to manage a character in the game are the same pretty much regardless of what that player is doing (although I suppose sitting idle in a zone is less than actively fighting, but let's assume you're spending most of your time farming mobs for mats).
Again, I'm not saying that this isn't a good idea from a player perspective. I'm just saying that the way the current game is structured, it would be difficult to implement in a balanced way. And the changes they'd have to make to make this balanced would be greater than the devs are likely to want to do.
Edited, Feb 29th 2016 2:57pm by gbaji