Raid difficulty - A history lesson

[sirgog]

This one goes out to everyone saying that the new raids, and/or the modified pre-U11 raids, are too mana potion intensive.


Did you know:

- All U11 raids (revised old raids and new releases) were beaten on every difficulty within 48 hours of live server release.
- All content in U11, except Elite and Epic Lord of Blades, has been run without mana potions. (The higher difficulties of LOB may have been as well, but AFAIK noone has bragged about it on the forums). Yes, that includes Epic Master Artificer.


For comparison:

Old-school raids:

Vault of Night wasn't downed on Elite or even Hard within the first week of release. Elite took some time to be downed at all.
The Titan Awakes was only ever beaten once while the level cap was 10, in a period of months. The guild that beat it had made over one hundred attempts. (The raid was later nerfed into the widely PUGgable and widely hated thing it is now).
Zawabi's Revenge was not downed on Elite for over a month after release.
After initial patches to remove exploits and to bring the raid up to its initially intended difficulty level, the Accursed Ascension raid was so difficult that only one group defeated it in a period of months. (After that, the puzzles were made significantly more forgiving, and players were given some control over which puzzles they were sent to, making the raid PUGgable but still challenging).


The Shroud:

In the first two weeks after the Shroud launched, standard resources used in Normal runs were around the vicinity of 150-250 Heal scrolls and 3-4 mana potions per healer. Did I mention groups usually took 4 healers at the time? Most groups baulked at that, and recalled after part 3, assuming they didn't wipe in part 2.
In the next month of Shrouding, groups only completed due to extremely widespread use of exploits. Once the cheaters got Greensteel weapons made, the raid started to become easier, and resource usage dropped after the exploits were finally fixed.
Still, zero mana potion Shrouds were considered somewhat impressive for a good three months after release.
Standard Elite resource usage while the level cap remained 16 was 15-30 mana potions raidwide. As such, Elite was very, very seldom run. Perhaps 10% of players with multiple level 16s had ever completed Elite Shroud in the first six months.


Vision of Destruction:

Initially considered un-PUGgable, standard resource usage stabilized in PUGs at around 20-30 mana potions per Normal completion after a fortnight or so. Mana potion buy-ins were the norm for PUG groups, as without them you just couldn't find people to heal the raid.
Hard and Elite were only attempted by the very top guilds for a good 3 months - perhaps 3-5% of players with level 16s completed Elite VoD within the first 6 months.


... and now U11:

Master Artificer: Widely PUGged on Normal, without resources unless something goes wrong, and this is within 2 weeks of release. Run in half-guild, half-PUG groups even on higher difficulties.
Lord of Blades: PUGged on Normal, usually with light resource usage (0-6 raidwide mana potions, possibly a couple hundred Heal scrolls raidwide). Half-guild, half-PUG groups beat Normal and Hard without mana potions regularly - my last Hard completion, the three divines had over 2500SP left between them.
Epic Chronoscope: Very widely PUGged, most groups are back to no resources other than a few Heal scrolls.
Epic VON6, DQ2: Still PUGged, resource usage is light or nil. Run less than pre-U11 because the people and guilds that led PUGs on these raids are prioritising the new content more.
Tower of Despair: Regularly run on Hard in half-guild, half-PUG groups with no resources used or light resource use.

- In short, two weeks after release, wide swathes of the server have most of the endgame raids 'on farm'. Really the only things NOT being widely completed are the two new raids on Elite and Epic, but even those are being completed much more than, say, DQ2 was when the cap was 12.

[Templarion]

Thank you for the lesson. I read the whole post. If those are the fact, then it is very interesting.

Yeah, when I started playing DDO it was already little too casual for my taste. :(

[Angelus_dead]

Zawabi's Revenge was not downed on Elite for over a month after release.
That is most probably incorrect, as the people who beat Elite would not have wanted to reveal the method. (Some of the original exploits were comical to watch them go)

Also, an important factor for the Velah through Stormreaver raids was that their original versions had no loot pressure to fill the group all the way to 12 people. Savy players would do them with 4-7 members, which had the major side effect of slowing the spread of information to others.

In addition, there was absolutely ZERO meaningful benefit to beating the original Velah through Stormreaver raids on anything higher than Normal, which greatly lowered the incentive for people to try solving Elite. The named loot was exactly as common on Normal... so to take time trying Elite instead of winning Normal and starting the timer would've actually reduced your overall loot income.


After initial patches to remove exploits and to bring the raid up to its initially intended difficulty level, the
Accursed Ascension raid was so difficult that only one group defeated it in a period of months.
Note that "difficult" and "broken" aren't identical concepts.


In the first two weeks after the Shroud launched, standard resources used in Normal runs were around the vicinity of 150-250 Heal scrolls and 3-4 mana potions per healer.
However, there were zero-potion Shroud runs in under a week.


In the next month of Shrouding, groups only completed due to extremely widespread use of exploits.
That's false. Many people did exploit three bugs for phase 2, but tons of groups could've won anyway (especially if they reformed upon Sagrata).



Initially considered un-PUGgable, standard resource usage stabilized in PUGs at around 20-30 mana potions per Normal completion after a fortnight or so.
20 potions was considered an unusually bad run by a week after VOD's release, although the majority of groups playing it wouldn't be strongly called "PUG". The player population at the time didn't make a heavy use of LFM windows. Guilds were bigger at that time (no renown decay to keep it small), so it was typical to recruit 11-12 guild members almost instantly.



In short, two weeks after release, wide swathes of the server have most of the endgame raids 'on farm'. Really the only things NOT being widely completed are the two new raids on Elite and Epic, but even those are being completed much more than, say, DQ2 was when the cap was 12.
It's a real shame that the devs didn't take the opportunity of the U11 release of new natively high-level raids to do something about the mana potion situation. It could've been as simple as a debuff that prohibits mana potions in those two instances for the first 10 days after release.

That way, at least the initial elite/epic wins could've been based more on players who'd found out how to be the best at playing those raids, instead of being the best at bringing hundreds of potions.

[Rdonaccount]

Out of curiosity, was lammania around back with all those old raids? We could find entire walkthrus for the u11 raids before they even went live.

[sirgog]

Angelus - the exploits in Shroud were in part 4/5, not 2. The part 2 ones, like you say, were minor.

The ones that made Harry not attack? They were not minor.


Your memory is just wrong re. VOD. 3-5 mana potion buyins were common, even in guild runs. (Some guilds handled healer reimbursement differently, but it was a fair while until anyone discovered strategies that made the encounter easy, or if they did discover them early, they didn't brag about them).

On DQ2 etc: The reason people ran Hard/Elite was mainly bragging rights, and there were significant 'server first' threads back in the day. If people beat them earlier than I stated, they didn't boast at all, nor did they even reply to others boasting.

[Lyniaer]

The ones that made Harry not attack? They were not minor.

I remember those days...

I remember shield-walling the lesser 2 in part 2 and holding them with fire wall while someone with Freedom or Evasion took the elemental to a corner and a healer and DPSer took the cat or devil to another corner... Trees were actually used back then.

I also remember when the pools in part 5 were 1 person only and would vanish after a set amount of time...

Ah, those were the days... Long before Korthos Island...

[Angelus_dead]

Angelus - the exploits in Shroud were in part 4/5, not 2. The part 2 ones, like you say, were minor.

The ones that made Harry not attack? They were not minor.
And they were also not common or necessary. Your timeframe for the popularity of freezing Arraetrikos is very far off.



Your memory is just wrong re. VOD. 3-5 mana potion buyins were common, even in guild runs.
No, my memory and observations are accurate. Certainly there were some people who needed a lot of potions, more who used a lot, and even more who demanded a lot (so as to squeeze high buy-ins from puggers). But 20-30 mana potions was considered to be worse than expected.

[Angelus_dead]

Out of curiosity, was lammania around back with all those old raids? We could find entire walkthrus for the u11 raids before they even went live.
That's an interesting question... some yes, some no. Although the public test servers had other names back then, such as Risia before Lamannia.

Let's see which specific ones I can recall... Black Abbot was not beaten on test, and hardly even attempted. The dragon quiz in the preraid was not accepting the correct answers, so barely anyone could get flagged. (Ironically, the low number of testers flagged would actually have been helpful if they'd worked at it more. The developers at the time were claiming that it required a minimum of 6 players to beat the raid, but the reality was backwards and having over 5 players made it almost impossibly harder)

Reaver's Fate was attempted on test, but not beaten. The people who had tried it did think they got useful clues, though. In particular, they knew that there were a bunch of Air Elementals so that the otherwise-popular melee warriors should not be the first ones to get flagged.

I think Velah and Titan weren't presented for preview like that.

[grandeibra]

Excellent thread sirgog. I miss the dags of real challenge and sense of achievement when being in Ã* group tjat beat the other euro server to some completion ^^ it's simply way way to ez on leet/epic now imho (at least for the ubers in which i wouldnt include My toons). One reason why I wish epic drops were even rarer ;)

and i agree with all ur time/potion estimates except vod. Maybe euro was so late on that mod that we heard from us about tactics earlier.

As for shroud the noattack was used for months on devourer

[LolWutRoflstomped]

For realz sirgog. People don't realize what it was like. I for one am glad to see it going back to how it was... Game has been getting too easy. Maybe healers will actually learn to heal now instead of just faceroll their biggest spell...

[SilkofDrasnia]

That is most probably incorrect, as the people who beat Elite would not have wanted to reveal the method. (Some of the original exploits were comical to watch them go)

Also, an important factor for the Velah through Stormreaver raids was that their original versions had no loot pressure to fill the group all the way to 12 people. Savy players would do them with 4-7 members, which had the major side effect of slowing the spread of information to others.

In addition, there was absolutely ZERO meaningful benefit to beating the original Velah through Stormreaver raids on anything higher than Normal, which greatly lowered the incentive for people to try solving Elite. The named loot was exactly as common on Normal... so to take time trying Elite instead of winning Normal and starting the timer would've actually reduced your overall loot income.


Note that "difficult" and "broken" aren't identical concepts.


However, there were zero-potion Shroud runs in under a week.


That's false. Many people did exploit three bugs for phase 2, but tons of groups could've won anyway (especially if they reformed upon Sagrata).



20 potions was considered an unusually bad run by a week after VOD's release, although the majority of groups playing it wouldn't be strongly called "PUG". The player population at the time didn't make a heavy use of LFM windows. Guilds were bigger at that time (no renown decay to keep it small), so it was typical to recruit 11-12 guild members almost instantly.



It's a real shame that the devs didn't take the opportunity of the U11 release of new natively high-level raids to do something about the mana potion situation. It could've been as simple as a debuff that prohibits mana potions in those two instances for the first 10 days after release.

That way, at least the initial elite/epic wins could've been based more on players who'd found out how to be the best at playing those raids, instead of being the best at bringing hundreds of potions.

ah ty is nice to get a more neutrally objective summary

[nivarch]

Game changed, players changed.
Game was hardcore. Game is now much more casual.

Do you think changing the way the game work now that most people playing DDO are used to content being doable with PUGs ? They risk losing players ...

Also I love harder content, but if it's grindless, doesn't cost resources to the healers only, can't be "easy buttoned" with potions only and require you to play better. Making old raids harder is just making grinding harder and less funs. On Sarlona PUGs for eDQ, eVoN6 and eChrono are getting rarer ... And often fail.

I love PUGs (cause I cannot play enough to be in a regular raiding guild) and this update is just making my game less fun because I cannot find PUGs.

[AMDarkwolf]

A lot of those examples were raids that required solving puzzles or otherwise figuring out 'how' to beat the raid.

Not a 'oh we wuz so strong, had so much hps, and healed so good'

So sorry, amping up the raids was not really a good way, the new raids were solved right away(on lam) because there ARE no 'puzzles' to solve, nothing to figure out.

Want old school difficulty back, give us some nice, long, complicated 'puzzle' raids, or something it takes some thinking, rather than just brute forcing, to solve.

No offense, but your post op, at least to me, carries little weight.

[vittordevittor]

On G-LAND this is nto what is going on. PUGs for EChrono are dead.

[sirgog]

A lot of those examples were raids that required solving puzzles or otherwise figuring out 'how' to beat the raid.

Not a 'oh we wuz so strong, had so much hps, and healed so good'

So sorry, amping up the raids was not really a good way, the new raids were solved right away(on lam) because there ARE no 'puzzles' to solve, nothing to figure out.

Want old school difficulty back, give us some nice, long, complicated 'puzzle' raids, or something it takes some thinking, rather than just brute forcing, to solve.

No offense, but your post op, at least to me, carries little weight.

DQ2 and VON6 had no puzzles (their preraids did, but the puzzles weren't major barriers to beating them). They were seriously difficult combat encounters in the day.

Like Lord of Blades, but harder. And less brute forceable, as you didn't have any way to put out massive AoE healing like you do now. Max-empped Mass Cure Light cost 120 SP back then (150 Quickened), and so was never used.

[Tinco]

Game was hardcore. Game is now much more casual.


Gamers were casual. Gamers are now much more hardcore (or think they are, what's happening now on epic is nothing but brute forcing overtuned content). The game always walks the wire rope of balance.

[Ew_vastano]

I dont know what server you are on but on argo at eu evenings there have been exactly 0 master arti raids pugged since release of u11

[AMDarkwolf]

DQ2 and VON6 had no puzzles (their preraids did, but the puzzles weren't major barriers to beating them). They were seriously difficult combat encounters in the day.

Like Lord of Blades, but harder. And less brute forceable, as you didn't have any way to put out massive AoE healing like you do now. Max-empped Mass Cure Light cost 120 SP back then (150 Quickened), and so was never used.

Have to agree with von and dq(Although I never got von till late, was way beyond other stuff) but for the others, many of them the thing that held back completions, was the puzzles, NOT the challenge. Not a 'can we do x' but 'how do we do x'

I want to see more of that. I want to see puzzles that change as u go, but not just straight up rips from a well known puzzle(IE reavers fate and that 'puzzle') but not so over the top complicated puzzles that stump the population for months(Wheres the fun in that)

Titan is my fav raid(the pre) and it always has been, because while I KNOW it now,when I did not know, each section was a nice mind stumper, to get it right, and I also very much like how all people in the raid party worked towards the end, while not being near the others. (Although now u can 3 man it in under 10 min if u know what to do, sad really)

[Maugrim101]

Here's another history lesson.

When this game was more hardcore, it almost died. Most people enjoy a gaming challenge from time to time, the problem is that when the game is designed around raids that need to be completed 20,40 or even 100's of times, the novelty of challenge wears off and peoples priorities generally alter to making it as smooth and with any luck, fun as possible.

If they continue with the trend that you have to both grind and complete "Difficult" content and bring your A game all the time, some people will find a more relaxing gaming experience. It really is that simple.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Here's another history lesson.

When this game was more hardcore, it almost died. Most people enjoy a gaming challenge from time to time, the problem is that when the game is designed around raids that need to be completed 20,40 or even 100's of times, the novelty of challenge wears off and peoples priorities generally alter to making it as smooth and with any luck, fun as possible.

If they continue with the trend that you have to both grind and complete "Difficult" content and bring your A game all the time, some people will find a more relaxing gaming experience. It really is that simple.
I'd echo this.

I had initially been quite eager to give DDO a whirl, back about when it was released. But, when I found out that the game would be essentially for hardcore players, designed to all but force teaming (especially for my favorite character types, which are rogues and arcanes), I found other things to do with my time for many years.

What brought me to the game was how the ability to solo has gotten much better, over time, and how I can often complete a mission or two in a half hour time frame--without using a lot of resources to do it. I sometimes fail missions, in part because I'm not as hardcore as some of the more experienced players, and therefore not as knowledgeable (and not as well geared, of course). So, there is still challenge in the game, for a newbie like me. But, it doesn't take 5 or 10 or 20 tries to complete any of the missions that I've done thus far. When I do fail, I can generally figure out what I did wrong and correct that in the very next run; that helps to avoid a feeling of "banging one's head against a wall", which would produce frustration, rather than a sense of having had fun.

I would guess that many gamers apply a not-too-wildly-dissimilar set of measuring sticks when figuring out if they'd like to spend time and money on a game.

Therein lies the difficulty for DDO, as a return to "the old days" could lead to a mass exodus of players, particularly those who are more casual in how they approach the game. Therein also lies the difficulty in suggesting that "In the old days, we had to climb mountains while walking backward uphill in the snow, wearing only a loin cloth"; while quite interesting to read about (and I definitely found the OP engaging), it can't be a measuring stick for what constitutes an appropriate level of raid difficulty, going forward, with a larger and markedly different customer base now playing the game.

[Bufo_Alvarius]

Guilds were bigger at that time (no renown decay to keep it small), so it was typical to recruit 11-12 guild members almost instantly.


I miss this so much.

[Xenostrata]

This one goes out to everyone saying that the new raids, and/or the modified pre-U11 raids, are too mana potion intensive.


Did you know:

- All U11 raids (revised old raids and new releases) were beaten on every difficulty within 48 hours of live server release.
- All content in U11, except Elite and Epic Lord of Blades, has been run without mana potions. (The higher difficulties of LOB may have been as well, but AFAIK noone has bragged about it on the forums). Yes, that includes Epic Master Artificer.


For comparison:

Old-school raids:

Vault of Night wasn't downed on Elite or even Hard within the first week of release. Elite took some time to be downed at all.
The Titan Awakes was only ever beaten once while the level cap was 10, in a period of months. The guild that beat it had made over one hundred attempts. (The raid was later nerfed into the widely PUGgable and widely hated thing it is now).
Zawabi's Revenge was not downed on Elite for over a month after release.
After initial patches to remove exploits and to bring the raid up to its initially intended difficulty level, the Accursed Ascension raid was so difficult that only one group defeated it in a period of months. (After that, the puzzles were made significantly more forgiving, and players were given some control over which puzzles they were sent to, making the raid PUGgable but still challenging).


The Shroud:

In the first two weeks after the Shroud launched, standard resources used in Normal runs were around the vicinity of 150-250 Heal scrolls and 3-4 mana potions per healer. Did I mention groups usually took 4 healers at the time? Most groups baulked at that, and recalled after part 3, assuming they didn't wipe in part 2.
In the next month of Shrouding, groups only completed due to extremely widespread use of exploits. Once the cheaters got Greensteel weapons made, the raid started to become easier, and resource usage dropped after the exploits were finally fixed.
Still, zero mana potion Shrouds were considered somewhat impressive for a good three months after release.
Standard Elite resource usage while the level cap remained 16 was 15-30 mana potions raidwide. As such, Elite was very, very seldom run. Perhaps 10% of players with multiple level 16s had ever completed Elite Shroud in the first six months.


Vision of Destruction:

Initially considered un-PUGgable, standard resource usage stabilized in PUGs at around 20-30 mana potions per Normal completion after a fortnight or so. Mana potion buy-ins were the norm for PUG groups, as without them you just couldn't find people to heal the raid.
Hard and Elite were only attempted by the very top guilds for a good 3 months - perhaps 3-5% of players with level 16s completed Elite VoD within the first 6 months.


... and now U11:

Master Artificer: Widely PUGged on Normal, without resources unless something goes wrong, and this is within 2 weeks of release. Run in half-guild, half-PUG groups even on higher difficulties.
Lord of Blades: PUGged on Normal, usually with light resource usage (0-6 raidwide mana potions, possibly a couple hundred Heal scrolls raidwide). Half-guild, half-PUG groups beat Normal and Hard without mana potions regularly - my last Hard completion, the three divines had over 2500SP left between them.
Epic Chronoscope: Very widely PUGged, most groups are back to no resources other than a few Heal scrolls.
Epic VON6, DQ2: Still PUGged, resource usage is light or nil. Run less than pre-U11 because the people and guilds that led PUGs on these raids are prioritising the new content more.
Tower of Despair: Regularly run on Hard in half-guild, half-PUG groups with no resources used or light resource use.

- In short, two weeks after release, wide swathes of the server have most of the endgame raids 'on farm'. Really the only things NOT being widely completed are the two new raids on Elite and Epic, but even those are being completed much more than, say, DQ2 was when the cap was 12.

Congratulations Sirgog, you've officially pointed out what was probably the main reason DDO was dying before F2P went live.

Reading through this doesn't make me think "wow, raids were harder back then" so much as "yeah, no one had any good gear".

What was the average health for a melee? SP for a healer? How many people had DR breakers?

[Angelus_dead]

DQ2 and VON6 had no puzzles (their preraids did, but the puzzles weren't major barriers to beating them). They were seriously difficult combat encounters in the day.
Well that's incorrect, because the three pillars in VON6 are a puzzle, even if you think it's a pretty simple one. But even aside from that, the VON6 zone was not a difficult combat for the majority of the time it was active before the level cap increase. Velah was different when initially released, but there were adjustments fairly quickly.

For the large majority of the time that non-Epic Velah was an endgame boss, the primary obstacles to VON6 completion were actually the puzzles (and battles) of VON5. Then when you reached Velah, you elected 1-2 people to go melee while 3-11 stand behind and heal them. The dragon battle was simple under that "hero method". (Note that you couldn't cast Fire Resist 30 with a level 10 cap, so the only way to obtain better than 20 was to store up an uncommon random armor)

As for Laliat... well, it was a prohibitively difficult combat encounter for most characters, but easy (although slow) for others. So the normal way it was beaten was to focus on recruiting one Ranger who could kite Lalait to death (and without breaking DR), while the other players stand clear and watch him go (while providing buffs, heals, or fighting gnolls/efreets for him).

In the original Laliat version, the other players didn't even have to stay on the platform to help... guys would draw aggro from gnolls + efreet and then jump down to the pit to wait, which had lava in only a few small puddles. That was something they changed within a couple weeks, however.

EDIT:
More detail on Velah history. For about 1-2 weeks after release, Velah was powerful but easy, since you could just stand back and throw axes from safety. Not many players got in to experience that version before it was changed. Then next version had all kinds of extreme punishment for players who were out of reach, making it an excessively difficult fight.

What you did was collect up at the Velah door, and when it was open the group collected on one spot and then moved in together to a position behind a rock, without aggroing. Then cast buffs, and everyone who's doing damage runs out to under the belly and starts attacking. And they keep attacking, and they die. Then the ghosts run back to the rock to rez up and try again. If a live player ran away from Velah then she'd explode you all. If someone tried to heal someone from within Velah's reach then he'd die, or from out of reach then everyone would die. And of course people who were hit with a wing attack were dumped to market, so you had to select one "volunteer" to run first and face that risk.

At that time it was crucial to have a bunch of Raise Dead scrolls to do this, and that was a serious obstacle: given how long the game had been out and how much level 10 vendor trash was worth, the total net worth of an average player would only have gotten you under 50 Raise scrolls. So to kill that Velah was a painful exercise in resource-farming and then silly rez-lemming battle of attrition. Not many people were willing to play it.

That bad Velah version lasted 4 months, until the devs elected to majorly nerf much of Velah's damage and scripting, which enabled the hero method and caused VON6 to become a substantial part of endgame play for the first time.


EDIT:
For anyone who doesn't know, it's also amusing to look at the way the VON6 pillar puzzle was done in the old days. With the limitations on group movement (breaking bridges and dragon fire), plus with no way to buff against Earthgrab, it was too tough to actually split up and fight the pillar mobs in multiple groups. Even if you could accomplish that, it would be counterproductive to try, because it would cost spellpoints you'd need later. So instead, the technique during the level cap 10-12 period was to select one non-spellpoint player as the Puller, who runs to each pillar base to aggro the mobs and lead them back to the entry point. Then he intentionally gets killed by them, and runs away as a ghost to get rezzed.

In that way, the three pillars were cleared of all defenders, who don't respawn since they're standing elsewhere. Then you sent the 3 breakers around to the pillars and proceed from there. Super note: Obviously the puller guy died several times in the standard technique. That didn't especially damage his gear, but it did give him XP penalties. Collect enough of those negative XPs and you'd get an actual negative level debuff, which remained until you earned enough XP to recover.

Although the Puller player was dying a lot, he was actually having more fun in VON6 than the rest, who were mostly sitting at the door posing for Velah screenshots while they waited.

[redspecter23]

Lord of Blades: PUGged on Normal, usually with light resource usage (0-6 raidwide mana potions, possibly a couple hundred Heal scrolls raidwide). Half-guild, half-PUG groups beat Normal and Hard without mana potions regularly - my last Hard completion, the three divines had over 2500SP left between them.


Though I believe what you're saying here may be true for you, this is not my experience on my server. Normal pug LoB are currently lucky to complete, let alone do it with 0 pots. Some probably don't even make it to the quest. I can't think of any half guild/half pug that can do hard with 0 mana pots used. In time of course this raid will get easier as more people know their specific roles and the tells from the lord himself.

I'm assuming by pug you mean it in the traditional sense. A complete unknown player from LFM and not someone from out of guild that you pick up from a channel. Channel runs will be much less resource intensive than traditional pugs.

[maddmatt70]

Another big factor in time frames is you had to complete normal and then hard and then elite. I remember completing Vod on normal and then 3 days later on hard and then three days later on elite. The first elite vod cost about 20-30 mana pots, but after that resources went way down. It was pretty obvious you could mitigate alot of damage in vod by positioning and spells like displacement. Eventually the ac main tank came into being and it was easy.

The shroud was not that expensive for alot of groups really there was some mana pots on elite for sure as well as scrolls, but normal/hard do not recall ever being really expensive. I remember doing alot of shroud 1-4 farming. I do not remember ever having lfms up for 4 healers other then when doing elite, but for hard or normal never.

I do not recall elite dq taking people very long to complete to be honest. I think your way off on your month thing with that one.

You left off reaver which was completed same day basically, 3 days later on hard and 3 days later on elite by somebody. I do not think any real resources were used on that raid.

Abbot was also completed same day it came out, 3 days later, and 3 days after that although that raid did take a number of resources due to healing through inferno style of it in the old days.

Epic dragon was completed within a day or two and never took any resources really although you could drink pots in there especially if bases had issues. Epic DQ2 always had potential to take pots even now in a pug, but for the most part relatively resource free in past.

The new raids on elite/epic are most definitely a bear although I agree MA Epic has the potential to be fairly resource free for the very strong groups out there. LOB Epic well do not know if that will ever be super low on resources..

[Samadhi]

I appreciate your point, I really do, but some of your points are either grossly wrong - or there is (or was) a much bigger server disparity than I realize.

[sirgog]

Here's another history lesson.

When this game was more hardcore, it almost died. Most people enjoy a gaming challenge from time to time, the problem is that when the game is designed around raids that need to be completed 20,40 or even 100's of times, the novelty of challenge wears off and peoples priorities generally alter to making it as smooth and with any luck, fun as possible.

If they continue with the trend that you have to both grind and complete "Difficult" content and bring your A game all the time, some people will find a more relaxing gaming experience. It really is that simple.

This is why the Devs made Lord of Blades so much easier on Normal than most raids of recent years have been at first. A good decision too.

Every quest in the game save 2 or 3, including raids, has one difficulty setting (at least) that caters to the more casual players.

And the raid that's most popular with the casual players - the Shroud - is the most grindy raid in DDO's history.

[sirgog]

Another big factor in time frames is you had to complete normal and then hard and then elite. I remember completing Vod on normal and then 3 days later on hard and then three days later on elite. The first elite vod cost about 20-30 mana pots, but after that resources went way down. It was pretty obvious you could mitigate alot of damage in vod by positioning and spells like displacement. Eventually the ac main tank came into being and it was easy.

The shroud was not that expensive for alot of groups really there was some mana pots on elite for sure as well as scrolls, but normal/hard do not recall ever being really expensive. I remember doing alot of shroud 1-4 farming. I do not remember ever having lfms up for 4 healers other then when doing elite, but for hard or normal never.

I do not recall elite dq taking people very long to complete to be honest. I think your way off on your month thing with that one.

You left off reaver which was completed same day basically, 3 days later on hard and 3 days later on elite by somebody. I do not think any real resources were used on that raid.

Abbot was also completed same day it came out, 3 days later, and 3 days after that although that raid did take a number of resources due to healing through inferno style of it in the old days.

Epic dragon was completed within a day or two and never took any resources really although you could drink pots in there especially if bases had issues. Epic DQ2 always had potential to take pots even now in a pug, but for the most part relatively resource free in past.

The new raids on elite/epic are most definitely a bear although I agree MA Epic has the potential to be fairly resource free for the very strong groups out there. LOB Epic well do not know if that will ever be super low on resources..

The DQ2 times come from a post of compiled server firsts that was on the forums long ago. Noone posted in that thread (which was pretty widely read at the time) 'hey, we got that week 1'.

VOD was indeed beaten on Elite within a week of being opened on Live, which was quite an accomplishment back when you couldn't attempt Elite without having beaten Hard, and the same for Hard. But it was only a few guild runs that were using light resources for quite a while, even on Normal, until AC tanks became widespread.

[Invalid_50]

Congratulations Sirgog, you've officially pointed out what was probably the main reason DDO was dying before F2P went live.



Bingo.



Which is what was wrong with the game. This is the game that a good deal of people play because they don't want their video game to be "challenging". (you can substitute the world generic MMO for challenging).

The video games where all the nerds like to brag about their gear and *lol* video game accomplishments is over there. *Points to those other MMO's*

[lugoman]

Here's another history lesson.

When this game was more hardcore, it almost died. Most people enjoy a gaming challenge from time to time, the problem is that when the game is designed around raids that need to be completed 20,40 or even 100's of times, the novelty of challenge wears off and peoples priorities generally alter to making it as smooth and with any luck, fun as possible.

If they continue with the trend that you have to both grind and complete "Difficult" content and bring your A game all the time, some people will find a more relaxing gaming experience. It really is that simple.

The new content will definitely test this out. The new raids have a reputation of being difficult. If the pack sells and the raids are run a lot then I would think Turbine will continue with this level of difficulty. If no one buys the pack and the raids arent run very often I think they will dial them back.

They arent being pugged very often on Cannith yet. More pug TMA's than LotB and most LotB lfms are mainly guild runs looking to fill just a few spots. Maybe it is too early yet.

[Maugrim101]

The new content will definitely test this out. The new raids have a reputation of being difficult. If the pack sells and the raids are run a lot then I would think Turbine will continue with this level of difficulty. If no one buys the pack and the raids arent run very often I think they will dial them back.

They arent being pugged very often on Cannith yet. More pug TMA's than LotB and most LotB lfms are mainly guild runs looking to fill just a few spots. Maybe it is too early yet.

Yes, it probably is still to early to judge the long term effects of U11. I've run the raids a few times on norm. Challenging at first having to learn them, but I know once most know whats what in each run and the first timers are in the minority, it will get to be more straightforward and more PUGable.

The main differance with the new content isn't the normal difficulty setting, but the Elite/Epic. From the limited reports of these difficulties (havn't tried harder than normal myslef yet), it appears to be very heavy on resources no matter how geared/skilled you are. We're not talking about 5 or 10 pots here, more in the region of 100+.

This would be fine I think in most peoples view if the same formula of say Shroud and TOD were adopted where this crazy setting was there as a once in a while thing for a sense of achivment (With added chance of the loot) rather than being a necessity (If you like gearing your toons).

This setting needs to be farmed to a degree if you want to complete the items from the quest. I just don't think that content that will be fairly exclusive should be required to be farmed like shroud on norm and I doubt many will enjoy that either. Whether that will be enough to see people be cheesed off enough to move onto other games, only time will tell.