Why is flagging even still a thing?

[tralfaz81]

If you're not going to combine servers, we really need to do away with the whole flagging mechanism. I'm tired of missing raids that are only run every few days because I'm not flagged at the time or waiting forever to even get a shroud run filled because no one else is flagged at the time.

It wasn't a great mechanism to begin with and at this point it's nothing but additional, unnecessary sand in already drying gears. It's past time to let it go and give people the chance to jump into raid groups when they come up.

To the paladins - let me save your time. I know: "blah blah blah in my day", "blah blah blah tradition", "blah blah blah guild runs", "blah blah blah I can flag in two minutes, so should you."

Get over yourselves.

Seriously.

Get.

Over.

Yourselves.

If you want the game to survive, let people play. Stop holding us back.

To SSG - more raids means more people buying raid by-pass timers. You're not going to make any more money protecting this dinosaur; you'll only lose money you could be making.

[nokowi]

If you're not going to combine servers, we really need to do away with the whole flagging mechanism. I'm tired of missing raids that are only run every few days because I'm not flagged at the time or waiting forever to even get a shroud run filled because no one else is flagged at the time.

Yes, asking players to cooperate and plan does seem ludicrous.

I also demand other players be available at my whim, even though I won't take the simple step of flagging myself to make this happen.

I certainly won't post a flagging LFM and gather interested players for the raid. Standing at the raid, not playing, and waiting on an LFM is much more enjoyable than gathering players in flagging quests and actually playing the game.

[Enerdhil]

I certainly won't post a flagging LFM and gather interested players for the raid. Standing at the raid, not playing, and waiting on an LFM is much more enjoyable than gathering players in flagging quests and actually playing the game.

Now i'm pretty sure you're describing yourself, cause you're showing no basic knowledge how dragging party through entire flag works.

I'm from europe. Yeah, it's american game, everyone else shouldn't play it. Sorry, my fault. I should move to US to be able to play it.

Meanwhile in my playing time it's extremly difficult to fill raids. If you're hosting flagging quests you should know they take at least 1h to do. For example i doubt it's possible to do entire vale flag in less than 1.5h. Have you never seen people leaving party after one, two, three quests? It's rare if someone stays for all of them. So even if you'll host flagging quests maybe 3-4 players will do entire flag with you (i'm not saying always). Does it mean all of them want to run a raid? Nope. Sometimes after doing entire flag people are leaving cause "i would like to run it with you, but it won't fill anyway, waiting entire day is waste of time".

I like flagging mechanism, i really do. But on the other hand - if i have a choice: cool mechanic that makes filling raids impossible and no flagging and ability to run raids from time to time - i choose the second. Usually when i log in (late afternoon/evening (basicaly US time +6hrs)) there's maybe 5 people in my lvl range (in my lvl range, not at my lvl!). Even if all of them will join we'll have half of party. Now how many of them are flagged? How many of them are interested in running selected raid? How many of them play right now (being logged in doesn't mean you're interested in questing)? Trust me, i tried. In my playing time it's not easy to fill normal chains. I belive on the way from lvl 1 to 20 i got full party maybe for 10-20% of time spend in game. And trust me, i never play without lfms. For raids i tried hosting lfms like "flagging+raid, join for all or for none". Not only once, sometimes for few days in row. And noone even hit lfm.

Yeah, probably i got a-hole reputation. Yeah, probably i don't know how to host encouraging lfms. Yeah, i don't play in peak hours. Deepest apologies for still being here.

[JOTMON]

If you're not going to combine servers, we really need to do away with the whole flagging mechanism. I'm tired of missing raids that are only run every few days because I'm not flagged at the time or waiting forever to even get a shroud run filled because no one else is flagged at the time.

It wasn't a great mechanism to begin with and at this point it's nothing but additional, unnecessary sand in already drying gears. It's past time to let it go and give people the chance to jump into raid groups when they come up.

To the paladins - let me save your time. I know: "blah blah blah in my day", "blah blah blah tradition", "blah blah blah guild runs", "blah blah blah I can flag in two minutes, so should you."

Get over yourselves.

Seriously.

Get.

Over.

Yourselves.

If you want the game to survive, let people play. Stop holding us back.

To SSG - more raids means more people buying raid by-pass timers. You're not going to make any more money protecting this dinosaur; you'll only lose money you could be making.

well, if you cant be bothered to put up a group for higher level difficulty flagging.. flag yourself on casual.

There was talk by devs of modifying some of the raids to a permanent sigil that keeps you flagged through TR lives and such.. This way you would only ever 'have to' flag once.

DDO could speed up the process in the interim by selling Flagging bypasses in the store.

[Saekee]

well, if you cant be bothered to put up a group for higher level difficulty flagging.. flag yourself on casual.

There was talk by devs of modifying some of the raids to a permanent sigil that keeps you flagged through TR lives and such.. This way you would only ever 'have to' flag once.

DDO could speed up the process in the interim by selling Flagging bypasses in the store.

That seems like a great solution--like a sigil.

'Flagging bypass:' coffee

[Enoach]

Just going to point out that one of the advantages of having multiple characters to pick from is that you have a higher likelihood to have a character "flagged and ready" when an LFM is put up.

[Morroiel]

Flagging all raids (even titan included) takes ~ 2.5-3 hours of playing (assuming von / gh / vale / necro 4 done - as those are standard leveling quests that almost everybody runs). If you are just going for high impacts (doj, leg shroud, MoD, deathwyrm, fire peaks, and Riding the Storm Out) it takes literally less than an hour and a half:

These are my recent times flagging an old alt(2 of them are approx):
1) Leg Shroud Flag - Creeping Death (21 min and change), to curse the sky (9 min and change)
2) Deathwyrm and Fire Peaks Flag (~4-6 minutes; can be faster if you have monk speed/recall)
3) MoD flag - w/ guildies/friends (<8 min counting running to quest time) pre-completing each quests so all you have to do is step in, w/o guildies (~20 minutes total for all of them not counting running time)
4) DoJ Flag - Trials (6 min and change), Assault (9 min and change), Details (12 min and change), could be cut down to ~8 min total with guildie precompletion method used in necro
5) Riding the Storm Out - newcomers (11 min and change), black and blue (12 min and change) {on a side note there's a chance these don't even need to be done for the flag, I've never checked}

In short, if you are going to do lots of endgame raiding there are hardly any roadblocks big enough to prevent you in the form of flagging mechanics. (necro 4 heroic is the possible exception)

The only flagging mechanic I'd personally want done away is the requirement of creeping death, as that quest is literally one of the worst quests ever made in ddo for lack of creativity and forced clearing mechanics with time gating.

[Yamani]

If you're not going to combine servers, we really need to do away with the whole flagging mechanism. I'm tired of missing raids that are only run every few days because I'm not flagged at the time or waiting forever to even get a shroud run filled because no one else is flagged at the time.

It wasn't a great mechanism to begin with and at this point it's nothing but additional, unnecessary sand in already drying gears. It's past time to let it go and give people the chance to jump into raid groups when they come up.

To the paladins - let me save your time. I know: "blah blah blah in my day", "blah blah blah tradition", "blah blah blah guild runs", "blah blah blah I can flag in two minutes, so should you."

Get over yourselves.

Seriously.

Get.

Over.

Yourselves.

If you want the game to survive, let people play. Stop holding us back.

To SSG - more raids means more people buying raid by-pass timers. You're not going to make any more money protecting this dinosaur; you'll only lose money you could be making.

Flagging is still a thing because technically it is a story line. It's like reading a book. You don't just skip to the end knowing everything in the middle and beginning. I could agree with permanent flagging over TR lives but all new characters should have to run the flagging at least once as in role play terms they wouldn't know why they where doing the raid in the first place. As this game is loosely based off of DnD it is a good mechanic, it is the player base that is so old and used to it they got tired of rerunning flagging quests.

P.S. The game won't die if you don't get your way.

[tralfaz81]

P.S. I need to get over myself.

Changing to fit the needs of the 2017 game by dumping some of the 2007 mechanisms isn't "my way," it's good business sense.

P.S. I don't think we have 25% of the population now as we did when I started playing. The game ain't dead, but it's not exactly going to get up and dance a little jig anytime soon...without some serious changes.

[Mandelia]

Flagging and completion numbers should survive past reincarnations. As long as we are all on the hamster wheel, raids will be a curiosity rather than a mainstay. No one has any impetus to flag every single life for every raid since no one runs them with any regularity and they soon lose their completions towards the magic 20 anyways.

[PermaBanned]

If you want the game to survive...

If the game started out looking like a Mack truck, but ends up looking like a Volkswagen bug...
did it really survive?

[Yamani]

Changing to fit the needs of the 2017 game by dumping some of the 2007 mechanisms isn't "my way," it's good business sense.

P.S. I don't think we have 25% of the population now as we did when I started playing. The game ain't dead, but it's not exactly going to get up and dance a little jig anytime soon...without some serious changes.

Telling me to get over myself is just proof of ignorance. Dropping the mechanic isn't good business sense. Selling items to bypass raid flagging is. But like I said, this is a role playing game based around DnD which is essentially story telling. As others have stated it takes no time at all to run something on casual/normal to quickly flag.

Here is the business model you are proposing:
Skip button so I dont have to play(which defeats the point of a video game)
You've now run the raid. now you have nothing to do.
Move onto new game.

Most of the 75% (you claim) have left because they have nothing left to do. To them there is no challenge for them. Look at what happened when reaper came out, quite a few players came back just to check out the new difficulty. Then leveled back down as they figured it out and returned to the state of having nothing to do. Adding a "skip" raid flagging just increases the rate of leaving with nothing left to do.

[C-Dog]

I'm from europe. Yeah, it's american game, everyone else shouldn't play it. Sorry, my fault. I should move to US to be able to play it.

Whoever, ever, says something like this is not worth the time to consider them. Scrape them off your heel and walk on.

(But you ~should~ visit.)

[nokowi]

Now i'm pretty sure you're describing yourself, cause you're showing no basic knowledge how dragging party through entire flag works.

I'm from europe. Yeah, it's american game, everyone else shouldn't play it. Sorry, my fault. I should move to US to be able to play it.

The idea that the OP has to stand at a raid because people need to flag is a logic failure. If those players exist, posting a flagging quest solves the problem. If they don't exist, removing flagging won't help.

The solution is to flag on your own if you intend to join a raid, and to post a flagging LFM before a raid if you plan to lead one and want additional players.

What we have is some players that can't be bothered to flag for a raid as part of their normal leveling process. Catering to this crowd will be a downward spiral for DDO, as it won't stop with flagging quests.

Better game design would get more people interested in raiding - a much better solution than catering to those not willing to make any effort.


Then we have the group that thinks there is a huge group of people wanting to flag that haven't. I find this to be unlikely, as people know how to post an LFM if there is a group of people wanting to flag.

[tralfaz81]

The idea that the OP has to stand at a raid because people need to flag is a logic failure. If those players exist, posting a flagging quest solves the problem. If they don't exist, removing flagging won't help.

The solution is to flag on your own if you intend to join a raid, and to post a flagging LFM before a raid if you plan to lead one and want additional players.

What we have is some players that can't be bothered to flag for a raid as part of their normal leveling process. Catering to this crowd will be a downward spiral for DDO, as it won't stop with flagging quests.

Better game design would get more people interested in raiding - a much better solution than catering to those not willing to make any effort.


Then we have the group that thinks there is a huge group of people wanting to flag that haven't. I find this to be unlikely, as people know how to post an LFM if there is a group of people wanting to flag.

No offense meant on this one, but thinking people won't run quests any more because they don't have to flag for raids is (your words) a logic failure. Without a stack of raid by pass timers, we still need quests to advance, level up and TR.

This may come off as sarcastic, but it's honestly not meant to be. You have to consider the following facts:

Not everybody is you.
Not everybody is on a well populated server.
Not everybody is in the same time zones.
Not everybody has hours and hours to play every day.
Not everybody is uber.
Not everybody can run the flagging quests in minutes.
Not everybody is at the same level at the same time.

I have put up at least a dozen raid LFMs in the past two months and only two of them have filled; and those two took at least an hour to get the bare minimum of people to run the raid. I've gone as far as not leveling up for a day just to try and run a raid and still never got to run it.

Many (if not most) of us only have an hour or two to play a day. More often than not, you have enough time to run the raid and not much of anything else. Let alone helping someone else run all the flagging quests you've already run, let alone helping two groups of other people run the flagging quests to fill out the raid.

So I ask my guild members if they want to run - answer is pretty much always the same (as well as when they ask me the same question) "would love to, not flagged."

You pull up the "who" list, there's maybe two dozen people in your level range if you're lucky. You start hitting up the people who aren't in the middle of quests - "you want to run this raid?" "I would love to...but not flagged."

And that's the cold, hard bottom line that defenders need to accept. There are no longer hundreds of people on line in the same level range as there were in the golden age. If you're lucky (very lucky), you might find two dozen people in your level range (less so if they want reaper because not everyone is flagging at level, they're still flagging at BB levels).

Stop blaming the victim. Dropping flagging wouldn't hurt the game in the slightest. We're still going to turn around and run the other quests anyways, we need the XP. If they're not going to merge servers, getting rid of flagging would make the game more accessible to the widest range of players and playing styles instead of catering to the snobs.

[nokowi]

I have put up at least a dozen raid LFMs in the past two months and only two of them have filled; and those two took at least an hour to get the bare minimum of people to run the raid. I've gone as far as not leveling up for a day just to try and run a raid and still never got to run it.

And yet you think it is because of flagging. Flagging did not change between the time you could find raids and not find them.

What did change?

I hear your issue, but I think you haven't thought this one through very well - and have leapt to your own preconceived notion.

What do you believe is the cause of the CHANGE? (hint: pick something that changed)

[nokowi]

Dropping flagging wouldn't hurt the game in the slightest. We're still going to turn around and run the other quests anyways, we need the XP. If they're not going to merge servers, getting rid of flagging would make the game more accessible to the widest range of players and playing styles instead of catering to the snobs.

Or they could just give people reasons to raid again.

The racial reincarnation, RXP rewards, and loot rewards just don't give people good reasons to raid right now.

I remember when the game was so trivial that having to stop and open doors was the big problem on the forums. Removing them wouldn't have harmed anything, of course, according to players. The fix was a simple as making the quests challenging enough that waiting on doors was far less of a priority. It's called cause and effect.

The cause was not flagging, it was a change in rewards that pushed people out of raids. Giving people more reasons to run raids is the best solution.

[JOTMON]

Just going to point out that one of the advantages of having multiple characters to pick from is that you have a higher likelihood to have a character "flagged and ready" when an LFM is put up.

problem here is our alts have been converted into pack mules since the grind between the 'xxx' completionists and the alts is getting to be too big of a divide that its not feasible to play alts anymore.
Playing alts is a waste of time effort and resources with the game direction that the Dev's have decided to take with heavy per character XP requirements for things like Reaper and the maxed out past lives..
Players that used to play alts and had multiple TR's, store, pot and time ivnested on alts are now regretting their decisions to spread their money and time across multiple toons instead of focussed attention on their main toons.

If these had of been account based then players could have viable alts to invest in.

[Jasparion]

If you're not going to combine servers, we really need to do away with the whole flagging mechanism. I'm tired of missing raids that are only run every few days because I'm not flagged at the time or waiting forever to even get a shroud run filled because no one else is flagged at the time.

It wasn't a great mechanism to begin with and at this point it's nothing but additional, unnecessary sand in already drying gears. It's past time to let it go and give people the chance to jump into raid groups when they come up.

To the paladins - let me save your time. I know: "blah blah blah in my day", "blah blah blah tradition", "blah blah blah guild runs", "blah blah blah I can flag in two minutes, so should you."

Get over yourselves.

Seriously.

Get.

Over.

Yourselves.

If you want the game to survive, let people play. Stop holding us back.

To SSG - more raids means more people buying raid by-pass timers. You're not going to make any more money protecting this dinosaur; you'll only lose money you could be making.

TLDR; Im lazy and I wants my free stuffz nwo !!!111

[SerPounce]

Agree with most of the responses. I don't have a problem with simplifying or removing flagging, but I hardly think that flagging is what is holding people back from running raids.

I think keeping raid completions though TR would do more to encourage raiding than reducing flagging. Running a raid a few times a life for that .5% chance of the item you want dropping in your name feels pretty hopeless. If you could move towards a 20th list through TR I'd feel a lot more incentive to tack on completions