Solution to Raid Frustration

[Maxson]

So far as I can See, DDO's epic quest/raid system essentially allows you to gather tokens to further customise your epic upgraded items, this is a good idea as it allows you to both get what you want, and not rely on your drop chance, vs your party's drop chance vs them sharing with their guild and you losing the roll if they offer it up.

I know there's a really good chance you can get your raid loot on your 20th run, but that's actually incredibly lame, if you run your aids back to back you can have your item in 60 days. Sixty, DAYS. Not even old school WoW was that Draconian.

I'd suggest removing at least some of that randomisation with this:

A token buy system for raid loot:
*All prequests of a raid (including things like twilight forge and VoN 5) have either their treasure bags converted to tokens, or tokens dropped from chests within. Your item is buyable with a certain number of these.

*To counter the possibility of people getting raid loot without ever doing the final part of the raid a certain number of tokens that only drop from the end chest would also be required (and everyone gets one) Realistically I would say 2-4 of these (maybe higher amounts if you add new raids, to save people tapping out all the worthwhile gear in a new raid too quickly).

Once a person has mastered a raid, it's really only a matter of time till they get their gear. But 60 days is a ludicrous amount of time. That's 2 months of turning up every 3 days on the dot to run it. I know pro CS players who're less dedicated. (I know it's 2 days 18 hours, but go figure, doing it every 2 days 18 hours is going to mean finding 12 people who will ruin their body clocks by arranging to sleep 6 hours earlier every 3 days)


edit: I just realised the title is a misnomer, this idea cannot solve raid frustration caused by people who get lost, killed, lag out, noob out or just vanish.

[Beld]

You are asking them to instead run the content multiple times...

Additionally, if you take out some of this style of play, you are going to lose customers....what do you do when you have every item ?? Part of the reason some play is just to acquire all/most of the items.

[Drakos]

/Signed

This is an excelent Idea. It would cut back on player frustration. It would also aleviate player vs. player hate due to coveting one anothers loot. If everyone just got tokens and were allowed to buy the reward they got then Win-Win for the player base.

Although I think this is a good Idea, I really don't see them doing it unfortunatly. Turbin's approach, to date, for end-game content (this phrase always bugged me, "end-game" means the game ends, you start over) is raids. If people only had to run the individual raids x number of times to acquire the uber-loot they need then the cries for "More End-Game Content" will double or triple at the least. They want people grinding those raids 40, 50, 60 times or more, in the non-grind MMO BTW, to placate them.

[Maxson]

You are asking them to instead run the content multiple times...

Additionally, if you take out some of this style of play, you are going to lose customers....what do you do when you have every item ?? Part of the reason some play is just to acquire all/most of the items.

Multiple times instead of 20 times.

I'm not suggesting so little effort as running the chain and the raid once will get you there, to do that the entire game would have to be rebalanced when people got ****y about being able to run a raid once but still never getting that fecking bloodstone. ;p

Every item? Christ you can already see people with /every item/ look at some of the people who've gotten lucky on epics, running round with red Dragonscale armour and epic SoS.

I wasn't even suggesting doing this with epics. But this system would allow more people to gear up adequately for epics.

So to answer your question, after you get every item you need from normal raids. Then you go do epics and stay as a customer.

edit: As a final addendum, I'd like to bring up WoW.

WoW has recently introduced a system where you can gear up for end game raiding by running heroics - Harder difficulty dungeons but considerably easier than raids.

In this case, epics are the best example of endgame because they're all adjusted to be applicable to the max level, whereas older raids are so not endgame content because max levels can walk them

I don't like WoW's system of queuing for a random heroic dungeon and getting magically teleported there, but the notion of being able to buy gear with a bit of perseverance rather than relying on all of the following generally lowers frustration amongst players who're unlucky (myself included, though I don't necessarily believe luck exists):

*Getting a good ENDGAME group
*Having the gear to really do Endgame
*Getting lucky drops
*Getting the item you want in a roll system

All of the above are obstacles that may prevent you getting what you want out of your game play, regardless of how good you are and how dedicated you are. These obstacles apply to both DDO and WoW. I know I'm going to turn people off by using WoW as an example, but sometimes blizzard gets it right.

[Pyromaniac]

The problem is there isn't enough end game content without the current raid loot grind.

[Impaqt]

I'd like to see the first "Semi-Static" raid reward list moved from 20 Completions to 5 or even 10. Then 20 each time after that. I think that would alleviate a TON of the "Grind" feel without seriously disrupting the system.

[Schwarzie]

I know there's a really good chance you can get your raid loot on your 20th run, but that's actually incredibly lame, if you run your aids back to back you can have your item in 60 days. Sixty, DAYS. Not even old school WoW was that Draconian.
You cant stress the CAN enough...

For my first Torc i had 40 runs on my Cleric, and 98 runs in Total... (all Chars i run through DQ only for the Torc)

Apart from that:

/signed

the Loot system for Raids right now is not very satisfactory and far far to much grindy for a "non-grind" MMO.

@Pyromanic
I agree. So far there wasnt an "endgame" since we didnt Cap our Chars at 20, it was only a semicap. Right now with 20, which seems to be the final cap for now, we need far more to do for our chars. This includes more Raids.
But Turbine cant go and say this is a grindfree MMO and then bring a 08/15 standard MMO Grindgame.

[LunaCee]

Though in reality they really should even out acquisition time on items from OLDER raids. Sure let it take a good long time for the actual end game stuff of Shroud (greensteel), Tower of Despair (rings), and Epic DQ/VoN (epic upgrades). Some places like Titan Raid however really are in need of a boost. Not enough people running them and those that are almost invariably looking for the two to three pieces of loot that aren't outdated. And yet are some of the most elusive pieces of gear in the game.

My wizard on Orien has been looking for that Torc... for at least four months.

[Greydeath]

Solution = Leader Loot

[Calebro]

Solution = Leader Loot

Yeah, so the people that aren't in a guild NEVER get their loot.
No thank you.
It used to be leader loot by default. There's a reason they stopped running it this way.

[Lorz]

Grey should know better than to ask for leader loot. Makes me think he hasn't played the game at all.

Terrible that a 2006 vet doesn't know why/what's up. Guess newbs come in all ages.

Oh wait I see his rep....another clueless sole.

[Noctus]

For my first Torc i had 40 runs on my Cleric,


NoooOOoOooooooOOOooOoOOoOOoOOOOOOoooooOOOOoOOO! :eek::eek::eek:


You really, definitely, absolutely surely pulled it?!?!


But now i cant make fun of your pulling-luck any more.

Baaargh!



:rolleyes:






Grats, man!

[Wyrmnax]

The problem is there isn't enough end game content without the current raid loot grind.

This.

If i had to run each end-game quest ~10 times for a item i want from it, i would be running all of them ~30 times and be done.

Right now there is the possibility that you are still needing a green blade after 80 runs.


If they do what is suggested, they shorten the lifespan of all the game raids. And the game doesnt have enough raids to have their lifespan shortened.

[Arctigis]

This.

If i had to run each end-game quest ~10 times for a item i want from it, i would be running all of them ~30 times and be done.

Right now there is the possibility that you are still needing a green blade after 80 runs.


If they do what is suggested, they shorten the lifespan of all the game raids. And the game doesnt have enough raids to have their lifespan shortened.

Yes, but as a counterbalance, there of plenty of people who have ran raids umpteen times to NOT get what they
want and thought f*** this and left. That's what's neat about shroud loot - although the ingredients are random
drops, they can sold/traded with the end results being entirely deterministic. Determinism is good as it provides
a reasonable scope to your endeavour.

[mws2970]

There is no ONE solution to the issue with raid loot. This is because you simply cannot please everyone all the time.

That being said, this is Turbine's (WB's?) game and they will do what they think is best. All we can do is play by their rules. And that's all I got to say 'bout that!

[vVAnjilaVv]

I still think a great implementation would be a full list at your first 20th, then no more raid loot lists for anymore x20's after that...at this point all raid loot must be obtained INSIDE raide at the warded chest.

I think this would compel a lot more people to run all of the raid knowing they will be GUARANTEED at least one piece of loot they truely want by thier 20th run.

As it stands now, you can run a raid 300x's and still never get the piece of loot you want, that is discouraging and I think is ruining the whole raid system as a whole.

It would be nice if they did this as well as made a change to DT armor, but Turbine has not really done anything to make either of them better at all, and this over a persiod of years....so I would not hold your breath.

You would think obvious changes that would make the game more popular would happen....and don't even go to it would be to hard to code...because it WOULDN'T be.

On the same token, I really believe aside maybe from EPIC content, if u have to have certain pieces of raid loot to be succesful at this game, your probably not a very good player and the raid loot really isn't going to help anyways.

[Chai]

Solution = Leader Loot

No.

[Drakos]

Solution = Leader Loot

Nope, caused me to quit once and it will again. Leader loot is a very arbitrary system and only works if the leader is fair and impartial.

Edit: I take it back, it doesn't even work then. Everyone participarted in the raid, they sould all get at least a chance of a drop. Or a guarenteed token which would allow then to eventually buy what they are looking for.

[Thrudh]

Nope, caused me to quit once and it will again. Leader loot is a very arbitrary system and only works if the leader is fair and impartial.


Besides what if Drakos was the leader!! He'd just loot all and move on to the next quest!

:)

(I couldn't resist)

[Drakos]

Besides what if Drakos was the leader!! He'd just loot all and move on to the next quest!

:)

(I couldn't resist)
:)

[Ralmeth]

I'd like to see the first "Semi-Static" raid reward list moved from 20 Completions to 5 or even 10. Then 20 each time after that. I think that would alleviate a TON of the "Grind" feel without seriously disrupting the system.

Agreed! And I was about to suggest this same thing myself. From a long-time casual player's perspective, the "grind" at end-game to get to 20 runs feels like an eternity:( After running the same quest a handful of times (even every 3 days) I get rather bored and will switch to a lowbie. Impaqt's solution would, I would think:

1) Be easy to implement,
2) Would allow a casual player to get an item they are interested in within a reasonable period of time.
3) Would still let anyone who's interested to run the raid as much as they like.

[AylinIsAwesome]

I'd like to see the first "Semi-Static" raid reward list moved from 20 Completions to 5 or even 10. Then 20 each time after that. I think that would alleviate a TON of the "Grind" feel without seriously disrupting the system.

I like this!