Eliminate Raid Prerequisites for DQ and VON

[Catlyn]

A few quick comments.

I like loot. Freely admit it. I have 8 Toons that I use to raid. All that is left for me is to gather loot.

That being said, I also enjoy running quests with friends and guildies. There has been plenty of times I run raids to help others, with no need of any of the loot that drops in the raid.

I would love to see the pre reqs dropped (or some system of perma flagging, whether run them all on all difficulties or 400 faction favor, or whatever) so I can take any character I want on the raid whenever I want. I hate having to dedicate time and regiment my playing so I am ready on the right roon on the right night.

I play to have fun. I like spontaneous activites. The pre reqs plain and simple prevent that. There has been times where I plan on bring one character on a raid, only to have someone be a no show or have to cancel. Then we are scrambling to find a second cleric or fighter, or a rogue or whatever.

No pre-reqs means no worry about which character is ready. No pre-reqs means balancing parties easier.

I would like to see a pre-raid (ala the Titan) added to all raids. I know this has been said already, but I just want to voice that I am in favor of it.

Dragon Raid - Von 5 & 6 every time
Titan Raid - Forge & Core every time
Queen Raid - ADQ1 and ADQ2 every time
Reaver - Tor (Gatekeeper only, dragons would only be for first time flagging) and Sanctum every time
Abbot - Litany (to Black dragon only, rest for flagging) and chamber everytime.

While I freely admit to farming the reaver every 3 days, usually with all my character (6 runs on thrusdays and saturdays), It has always seemed wrong to be able to step right in.

Anyways, I am sure I just repeated what has been said already, but I felt it was important to add my voice to the clamor.

[LargusMeans]

A few quick comments.

I like loot. Freely admit it. I have 8 Toons that I use to raid. All that is left for me is to gather loot.

That being said, I also enjoy running quests with friends and guildies. There has been plenty of times I run raids to help others, with no need of any of the loot that drops in the raid.

I would love to see the pre reqs dropped (or some system of perma flagging, whether run them all on all difficulties or 400 faction favor, or whatever) so I can take any character I want on the raid whenever I want. I hate having to dedicate time and regiment my playing so I am ready on the right roon on the right night.

I play to have fun. I like spontaneous activites. The pre reqs plain and simple prevent that. There has been times where I plan on bring one character on a raid, only to have someone be a no show or have to cancel. Then we are scrambling to find a second cleric or fighter, or a rogue or whatever.

No pre-reqs means no worry about which character is ready. No pre-reqs means balancing parties easier.

I would like to see a pre-raid (ala the Titan) added to all raids. I know this has been said already, but I just want to voice that I am in favor of it.

Dragon Raid - Von 5 & 6 every time
Titan Raid - Forge & Core every time
Queen Raid - ADQ1 and ADQ2 every time
Reaver - Tor (Gatekeeper only, dragons would only be for first time flagging) and Sanctum every time
Abbot - Litany (to Black dragon only, rest for flagging) and chamber everytime.

While I freely admit to farming the reaver every 3 days, usually with all my character (6 runs on thrusdays and saturdays), It has always seemed wrong to be able to step right in.

Anyways, I am sure I just repeated what has been said already, but I felt it was important to add my voice to the clamor.

I completely agree with this post, think just walking in to raids is not right, and having to do Tor or Litany first is a great idea. But then I also think that we shouldnt have to do VoNs 1-4 or the 3 desert quests once your flagged.

Cheers

[Cold_Stele]

Von 1 to 4 IMO are some of the finest quests ever created in DDO.

It's a pleasure for me when creating new toons to get high enough level to run them, and then rerun them for favor and xp.

I hate that this pleasure is then spoiled by having to regrind them over and over to get flagged for raids.

It's nothing but an inconvenience when me and a buddy duo zerg on our mains...

[Knightrose]

lol

They need to nuke the repitition man. It was out of style on the second run.

[winsom]

On low level raid/content and why greatly over-leveled characters will still do them.

As MT points out, the raid loot is often superior to what is generated by random chests, even much higher level random chests. This makes raiding too attractive. This should change. There should be randomly generated versions of raid loot that appear in much higher levels chests. They would have slightly different names and in some cases very slightly different stats, but for the most part they need to be essentially identical, and NON-tradable, such that a higher level player does not feel he needs to repeat low level raid content dozens of times. By making these higher-level duplicate items non-tradable, the player still needs to do lots of content to get the item, rather than farm or purchase gold. When these items appear for a character that does not need the item he can pass loot-rights to someone else that might want it.

Tomes drop in raids long before they can be found in chests. This needs to be changed back to how it used to be. For example, Tome +1 could be very rarely available in any quest where +4 weapons might be found. +4 weapons are actually a lot more valuable on the D&D DMG price list. Perhaps in quests where +6 weapons are available we should have a chance at randomly finding +2 tomes. By reintroducing tomes to the loot tables of adventures less-than-15th level there will be less reason for lower-level raids to be repeated dozens of times -- when such a character should be working on higher level goals/content. These tomes could be made non-tradable so they have no impact on the enconomy. Tradable tomes could should drop from higher level chest treasure tables.

What if a raid (and its prereqs) are no longer fun for the player involved?

In conventional D&D a player can hope his DM will seed attractive loot in future adventures. In DDO you know you have to grind away at a certain raid if you want the "best-of" in a certain category of item. That is big problem. I saw this problem appear when static rewards were introduced to Splinterskull fortress. The Splinterskull rewards can serve all but the most-twinked character for quite a few of the mid-levels. Even a twinked player may still want the 50 spell point trinket or +3 stat item or several Death Ward goggles because of the relatively low level requirement or that these items are very expansive or unavailable at the auction house.

I think part of the solution to lessen the repetitive grind of static reward and raid locations is to utilize the Favor System:

Once a player has earned enough favor (and character levels, perhaps) with a certain organization he should be able to request that static and raid loots by crafted/collected for him by the organization.

A 14th level character should not need to re-run Splinterskulll 2 or 3 times if he wants a pair of Goggles of Deathward (x1). That character will eventually be seen as hero in the eyes of House Philaran. He should be able to purchase them with non-tradable Favor Credits in addition to platinum costs.

Perhaps after completing VON 1-4 a number of times the gratitude of House Kundarak will be such that a character can purchase a Pass into Vault of Night. They no longer need to prove themselves to the NPCs in VON 1 to 4. After the character has defeated Velah a number of times, and advanced sufficiently in level, he could earn special House Kundarak favor credits such that he no longer needs to defeat Velah to in order to access the VON 6 raid loot. He can request that House K release the loot for him, for a large fee in both platinum and accumulated favor credits.

House K Favor credits could also be earned from certain future quest that higher-than-VON6-level characters might participate in. Such a character might want to re-raid VON5-6 (he no longer needs to do VON 1-4) to help other players and to have a chance at the loot tables, but he will more frequently do NON-RAID content that is more appropriate for his level and this content will give him credit he can spend on VON5-6 loots.

Yeah the loot is overpowered.

You shouldn't even want something out of a level 10 quest at 16th. Even raid loot.

But that's, as they say, a whole different can of worms.

[Zergling]

This post has been some great late night/early morning reading. Let's try to sum up the postage so far, and i know i'm gonna make it super simple but that's the way i like it. Short sweet and to the ****ing point. And for those of you reading this while your at work, I tell my boss to get to the point and stop wasting my time with chit chat atlest 6 times a day. We've got Dave and people that think like he does that the quests were put in to the game and should remain the way they are. And we got people that agree with the Poster of this thread and think we need to trim the fat out of the raiding of DQ and Von. Bobbryan2 had a good idea in his post #110, his approach would cut down on the programming code and time invested in a patch to "fix" the raids. Let's gather what we can from the effects of this kind of revamp. One once you get your one time flag, all you have to do is wait out your timer like on the stormreaver. Two your charactors will pick up more binded raid loot. Three everyone will still have the option of having to do all the quests over again, it's called abandon, i did it with the reaver a couple of nights ago, it resets everything including the getting blooded, which only took 15 mins to get reaver ready again. Let's count out the pros and cons of this.
Pros.
Your get more raid loot. Your get to spend more time in 12 person groups. You get to add more quests to the raid chart each week.

Cons.
Your miss out on the 4 1/2 hour Von3 pug run that everyone seems to hear about but only i get to run . You don'thave to sweat threw 7 quests which to me AND I MEAN TO ME WHEN I TYPE THIS have become a general nuience. You gather the elite end raid gear faster and have less to play for, unless your the kind of person that blows up capped lvl 14's and rebuilds because it's fun( i do this alot :P).

Now i'm kinda on the fence about this, i'm ready to do the first part of the DQ series but i have never done it. I'm currently Velah ready with all my lvl 10 and up toons. I like running the von series until von3 goes wrong and i spend all night trying to finish it. I haven't done much desert hunting so i don't really know nor care for the quests out there. I play within a guild of funny people who screw around and have fun more than grinding out raid loot( but we do that too sometimes). I could honestly careless if they remove the flagging effects from these quests. would it be nice yes, yes it would, i would love to get my barb a hammer of life, but i'd rather not spend 3 months of solid quest running to get it for him. But who knows, maybe the devs will see this post one day and go ahead and make a change, maybe we're just ****ing in the wind.

Ok i'm done, Flame me if you want, quote me if you want, all i know is this post is great for insomia, i think i might beable to go to sleep now.

[Molotov]

i read some of the posts here but not all, i hate flagging for raids as much as the next guy, all the raids should follow the way the titan raid is flagged for, its perfect.

[sirgog]

I wouldn't mind taking out the pre-reqs being needed, but the only problem I see is for new players trying to get a group for those.

I mean, you take out all pre-reqs, and once everybody's done them. . . How would a new player PuG them? Join a guild, I suppose, but what if none will take them?

Rare example, I know, but it's still an example.

I also don't like the idea that, once everyone flags for them, the effort that the developers did on those quests just kind of goes down the drain. Yes, you can run them again if you want, but when everyone's flagged. . . Is anyone going to want to? Example: Shrieking Mines. When a friend needs to do that, I have a hard time trying to help him find more people that want to go through that again.

Just my opinion, though. I guess I wouldn't be against them being set like the Titan and Reaver.

-D

Never found Shrieking Mines hard to get a group for, I just make a PUG levels 7-10 "Get Titan Ready -HIPS then Slavers Then Fan" - usually fills quickly. Or if you are 14th and want to run it, try making a PUG 10-14 "Favor Run - Slavers Elite, Opener Needed" - that'll fill fast too, although be warned, that quest is still a tad tough on elite if you don't know it.

[rockcrown]

Don't show up on raid day saying I need to get flagged first. Let your members be responsible for themselves.

This is NOT a reason to remove the flagging for vons and dq. Just because your guildies are lazy or don't play as often and need officers to hold their hands, is a lame reason.

Seriously, the last thing we need is another 15 minute raid (ala reaver).

[Mhykke]

Seriously, the last thing we need is another 15 minute raid (ala reaver).

Seems to me the majority of folks are asking for a raid like the titan, where there's a preraid to do before going into the raid portion, and not for a reaver raid, where you just step in and complete.

[Grimtooth333]

I am in favor of eliminating the von 1-4 and the 3 DQ pre-requisites. Run once on elite and never need them again is fine with me.

I am not in favor of changing the Reaver or Abbot at all as those quests have already tedious tasks you must do to get flagged (collectables, 3 dragons blooding, 4 bosses, etc.) that makes up for the pre-raid quest.

My 2 cents.

[Hakushi]

I definitely agree with the removal of reflagging for VoNs and DQ, I posted a nice and complete idea on how I think these 2 quests should be changed, but a forum error when I tried to post made that it was completely lost, and I'm not in the mood to rewrite it again.

[herobloodlin]

Agreed, nuke the pre-reqs for lev 14's, stupid.... we power the lowbies through von 1-4 anyway and also cof, aob, adq, cor and take all of their fun out of it, no one was there when we learned them to speed run us through... will make it better for all.

[bobbryan2]

Don't show up on raid day saying I need to get flagged first. Let your members be responsible for themselves.

This is NOT a reason to remove the flagging for vons and dq. Just because your guildies are lazy or don't play as often and need officers to hold their hands, is a lame reason.

Seriously, the last thing we need is another 15 minute raid (ala reaver).

It IS a reason, actually. Maybe not a 'good' reason standing alone, but it becomes a good reason when you also consider that running the VONs is a lesson in uselessness and futility.

As far as the reaver goes... I actually think the Reaver is kinda nice, personally. It kinda bugs me that +3 tomes drop out of there and not in the harder raids... but I can get over that. I like the Reaver because it's easy, available, and has pretty crappy loot. But, 4 chests at lvl 16 in just 10 minutes or so is hard to pass up. Add in the chance to get a newer guildie a piece of raid loot they'll use for a while, and it's a fun run.

Under the most liberal method of changing, the DQ would become very reaverish, but the dragon never would, and the DQ would not if we still had to run DQ1 (which I'm still personally leaning against doing). DQ1 is just as useless and easy as the other 3 prereqs... not sure why anyone wants to keep that as a preraid, except, of course, to slow down people running the raids.... which is the very reason we want to get RID of the others.

[Grimmlock]

Don't show up on raid day saying I need to get flagged first. Let your members be responsible for themselves.

This is NOT a reason to remove the flagging for vons and dq. Just because your guildies are lazy or don't play as often and need officers to hold their hands, is a lame reason.

Seriously, the last thing we need is another 15 minute raid (ala reaver).

So you don't run the Reaver? Yeah I buy that. The main reason is for players who have more than 1 capped toon that still run these quests. So it takes 1-2 hours to run the vons and say 1-2 for the dq's. 3 capped toons = 4-7 hours of flagging just to do them every week or every 3 days. Or how about some people who have 5 or more capped toons, 12-16 hrs of flagging time. If some have only 1 capped then I can see not fussing about this. For the power gamers to put 20-30 hours into the game a week this is a non issue. But for somebody like me with only on average of 12 hours a week and 3 capped guys its tough.

[juniorpfactors]

So you don't run the Reaver? Yeah I buy that. The main reason is for players who have more than 1 capped toon that still run these quests. So it takes 1-2 hours to run the vons and say 1-2 for the dq's. 3 capped toons = 4-7 hours of flagging just to do them every week or every 3 days. Or how about some people who have 5 or more capped toons, 12-16 hrs of flagging time. If some have only 1 capped then I can see not fussing about this. For the power gamers to put 20-30 hours into the game a week this is a non issue. But for somebody like me with only on average of 12 hours a week and 3 capped guys its tough.

agreed thats why i stopped running DQ ...just sick of running those 3 quests...i think just doing DQ1 as a prereq is enough after you have flagged it on elite at least once

[Grimmlock]

agreed thats why i stopped running DQ ...just sick of running those 3 quests...i think just doing DQ1 as a prereq is enough after you have flagged it on elite at least once

Exactly... here is an example of a player who has (How many you have now JRP 8 or 9 caped guys lost count). The point is for him to get all his toons ready it would take him 22-26 hours of playing time to be flagged. I could not fathom running the same quests for that amount of time in a week just to run 2 raids when I can run a Titan or Reaver without the hassle

[GATORZ]

dont mind doin vons 1-4 we run it at least 4 times a month as a guild trying to get the not so high levels involved running alot of 8-11 through its a welcome break from gh and necro and once a week isnt bad desert i just hate ...only because i have no sense of direction but gimme a guide and ill run it all day so the pre reqs for those raids are fine with more and more choices you'll keep cyclin through them so when you get bored with reaver run tempest bored with that run vons so on and so forth...the difference tween them allows them to be fresh again after couple months off of lets say reaver

[aldarr67]

I am a late reader to this, but i do agree with this idea of eliminating pre-reqs. The DEVS had a good thing going with the titan, Reaver and the abbot in having us get relics and sigil pieces to have access to the raids.. Why cant we have this done as well with the DQ and Velah. I love to run the Von series, because i think it is funny as hell seeing a lvl 8 char go up against the beholders in Von 3 and having fun in doing it. DQ on the other hand, I hate. I hate it because I dont see the purpose of doing them to do a 6 man than a 12 man. I think to do this raid (DQ) the DEVs should have us go out and collect relics or something. This would make it worth it for me. Maybe the DEVs can throw in one of the mariliths weapons in the chest And if they will have us collet items than they should upgrade VON 5 & 6 to make it a bit more challenging. Me personally, i dont think it should be so easy as to run up to velahs left foor, smack it in the rearend and take the loot. No fun in that.

[rockcrown]

So you don't run the Reaver? Yeah I buy that. The main reason is for players who have more than 1 capped toon that still run these quests. So it takes 1-2 hours to run the vons and say 1-2 for the dq's. 3 capped toons = 4-7 hours of flagging just to do them every week or every 3 days. Or how about some people who have 5 or more capped toons, 12-16 hrs of flagging time. If some have only 1 capped then I can see not fussing about this. For the power gamers to put 20-30 hours into the game a week this is a non issue. But for somebody like me with only on average of 12 hours a week and 3 capped guys its tough.

at no point did i say i do not run the reaver. My point is that its a raid, raids are supposed to take time. As in any other MMO, no raid is 15 minutes.

If you noticed that my response was towards someone who says they have to get their guildies ready which means he has to run the pre-reqs 3-4 times for every raid. this is not a "good" reason to change DQ and VON.

Since you feel the need to respond to me with your "oh we have too many capped toons excuse". Then I will respond. I have no sympathy for you. If a player feels the need to run all of their cap'd toons every 3 days through all 5 raids, be my guest, its gonna take time, so suck it up and do it. Just because you are off timer, doesn't mean you have to raid.

I mean, what else would you be doing instead of prep??? running pop till your eyes bleed? roll up that 8th toon, so you can add more raiding to your already to busy schedule?