Yes the new epics are easy - still not an excuse

[TrinityTurtle]

Aside from the listening issue, which we all know is pretty unsolvable after banging our heads on the wall all our lives from grade school group projects to ddo pugs, there is also a perspective issue. I've noticed a lot of players screaming how easy epic hards are. And they are...for me. But I've been playing for three years, struggled to develope skills to do the old epics, and generally read the forums, wiki, talked to other players, and constantly tried to learn to do better so I die less. The hards are not so intrinsically easy that I could sleepwalk without having done all that learning curve.

But everyone assumes that what is easy for them is easy to others. And they mock or ignore the newer players who honestly don't understand how we think it's so easy, because they are still struggling, need the tactics, and are failing. And in a lot of cases instead of helping them understand what is going wrong, or how to improve their skills, those players choose to ignore them or mock them for being gimp instead of possibly stopping to ask themselves "is this player news? Do they need some help?".

Epic hard is not easy for everyone. We tell new players constantly to not worry about elite streaks, learn the game, play normal, normal is good. And then...in the epics...a lot of those same players suddenly forget there are a lot of new first life players still trying to learn and for some reason insist on bragging about thier skills instead of really showing how awesome they are by taking the time to work out a plan, explain the logic (so that the new players can apply the new tactics in other areas with similar problems) and really show off thier knowledge and skills in a way that is not only appropriate, but honestly, backs up and conveys the image of awesome player a lot more than some random dude spouting off how awesome he is while the quest is failing. If he's so awesome, no reason for the quest to fail then really, is there?

[Shmuel]

The problem is NOT difficulty level, it is the ability of people to communicate.

I still think that where it ,matters, most raid leaders I know still do give basic instructions. If they don't, yes they are part of the problem.

In most raids, one individual who is not listening to the party leader, or is willfully ignoring them and refusing to cooperate with the group is the problem. Any quest on any difficulty that requires coordination between people would probably be impossible for these people.

There does seem to be a huge influx of these people lately, especially to epic normal and epic hard raids. Some examples:

1. I was recently in a pug hard ev6 which I joined thinking 'ev6 is so easy now how could we really fail it, besides, not much else is going on'. Well, We failed it. Because ONE and I stress only ONE person was hitting fascinated mobs with AOE effects from the start, killing the base 1 genie over and over and over without paying apparently any attention at all to what was going on on other bases. People tried to adjust several times, but after about the 3rd attempt resources were significantly depleted by everyone and the group wiped.

2. Recently in a mostly guild/channel raid for CITW and we picked up a few pugs to round things out. Raid goes fine up until the end, when ONE, and I again stress only ONE, individual was spending time indiscriminately killing portal keepers without waiting for the rest of the group to prep the other ones, attacking non-portal keeper mistresses which would then sacrifice random portal keepers and become such themselves, running off by himself to aggro mobs when the rest of the group was doing something else and generally making any attempt to end the end fight in an ordered way such that it actually ends impossible. The guild leader in this case was a person I have played a long time with, so I was really enjoying hearing his voice get louder and louder, his tone angrier and angrier, and generally sounding more and more like a crazy person trying to get people to finish the raid properly. Eventually I maxed out on my "hearing G*****e go nuts" fun factor and we decided to intentionally have everyone agree that we would just let the mobs kill this guy (he was a barbarian so it was easy) and not rez him until the raid was complete. less than 1 minute later we were looting our chests.

Honestly It has always been the case that one person can ruin a raid. It is true for many raids:
Velah- messing up bases
Titan - knocking down pillars
Reaver- killing him before someone flies
Abbott- in so so many ways
Shroud- not coordinating part 2
TOD: messing with that tanks ability to manage aggro, repeatedly drawing aggro you cant handle and dieing during the end fight
Hound: killing the pups, or taking the crystals and not using them
MA: Killing a titan before the other is prepped
LOB: Messing with the aggro management of the tank, or much worse, the person in charge of the dogs.
CITW: not coordinating end fight

I really think that if these *********s are going to become a regular feature of raids that don't consist of 100% people who know each other, then
"LET THE ***HOLE DIE AND DO NOT REZ THEM UNTIL WE COMPLETE THE RAID"
is going to have to become more and more a part of every raid leader's box of tools.

[Hendrik]

there is a simple answer i always have even in eh at least 3 or 4 channel guild members, easy they are the only people sent to bases everyone else pikes at home base

on a side note you still fascinate bases?

Only in EE.

[Daitengu]

Besides all this not everyone knows what base1 etc. means.

[Raithe]

yes evon5 and 6 on epic hard is easy (now) but that is no excuse.

You are correct in your assertion that the raids being easy is NOT an excuse for failing to complete them in their entirety. That would, in fact, be a reason that you should have been able to complete. Good detective work, realizing that fact.

if you are good enough that you can sleep walk through the quest - then do so and dont carp and critize everyone else in the raid.

Ok, now I am confused. You seem to be criticizing everyone else in the raid for criticizing everyone else in the raid. This is often known as being hypocritical, and is generally frowned upon. You were doing so well, I must have missed something...

On a serious note, all these complaints about raids being easy are laughable simply due to the fact that no one can really know how easy other people in the group are making them. You can't use your static guild raid as a basis for comparation, and if you aren't taking the first eleven uncoordinated PUGgers then your observations about the difficulty of the raid are being biased by people who may be able to solo them on epic elite...

[deahamlet]

The problem is NOT difficulty level, it is the ability of people to communicate.

I still think that where it ,matters, most raid leaders I know still do give basic instructions. If they don't, yes they are part of the problem.

In most raids, one individual who is not listening to the party leader, or is willfully ignoring them and refusing to cooperate with the group is the problem. Any quest on any difficulty that requires coordination between people would probably be impossible for these people.

There does seem to be a huge influx of these people lately, especially to epic normal and epic hard raids. Some examples:

1. I was recently in a pug hard ev6 which I joined thinking 'ev6 is so easy now how could we really fail it, besides, not much else is going on'. Well, We failed it. Because ONE and I stress only ONE person was hitting fascinated mobs with AOE effects from the start, killing the base 1 genie over and over and over without paying apparently any attention at all to what was going on on other bases. People tried to adjust several times, but after about the 3rd attempt resources were significantly depleted by everyone and the group wiped.

2. Recently in a mostly guild/channel raid for CITW and we picked up a few pugs to round things out. Raid goes fine up until the end, when ONE, and I again stress only ONE, individual was spending time indiscriminately killing portal keepers without waiting for the rest of the group to prep the other ones, attacking non-portal keeper mistresses which would then sacrifice random portal keepers and become such themselves, running off by himself to aggro mobs when the rest of the group was doing something else and generally making any attempt to end the end fight in an ordered way such that it actually ends impossible. The guild leader in this case was a person I have played a long time with, so I was really enjoying hearing his voice get louder and louder, his tone angrier and angrier, and generally sounding more and more like a crazy person trying to get people to finish the raid properly. Eventually I maxed out on my "hearing G*****e go nuts" fun factor and we decided to intentionally have everyone agree that we would just let the mobs kill this guy (he was a barbarian so it was easy) and not rez him until the raid was complete. less than 1 minute later we were looting our chests.

Honestly It has always been the case that one person can ruin a raid. It is true for many raids:
Velah- messing up bases
Titan - knocking down pillars
Reaver- killing him before someone flies
Abbott- in so so many ways
Shroud- not coordinating part 2
TOD: messing with that tanks ability to manage aggro, repeatedly drawing aggro you cant handle and dieing during the end fight
Hound: killing the pups, or taking the crystals and not using them
MA: Killing a titan before the other is prepped
LOB: Messing with the aggro management of the tank, or much worse, the person in charge of the dogs.
CITW: not coordinating end fight

I really think that if these *********s are going to become a regular feature of raids that don't consist of 100% people who know each other, then
"LET THE ***HOLE DIE AND DO NOT REZ THEM UNTIL WE COMPLETE THE RAID"
is going to have to become more and more a part of every raid leader's box of tools.

I've been called names over getting snippy with those kind of players. But I agree one guy can ruin things up big time. I call those people not worth the cost of a heal scroll or raise dead scroll.
And I've seen a lot of them... Just not sure I can say that there are more than before.

We had a guy in citw the other day who I was about to let die because he kept running off to sights unknown aggroing more portal keepers and the end fight was already taking crazy amounts of time and resources. I am bad with names but his toon name I remember.

[Ralmeth]

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LOL Even better...what if big yellow arrows would show up and point you on where to go and instructions would show up in big bold print on your screen on what you should do.

[Karavek]

This a not a new issue, it has nothing really to do with the new levels of power players can achieve nor the various attempts to balance content fairly for differing skill lvls to suit player comfort levels.

This has everything to do with drop rates vs time investment vs fun factor which is an issue we have dealt with since launch. Nor is it new to the MMO scene.

DDO devs over the years have said they wish to keep DDO true to the spirit of challenging and creative adventuring where thinking on our feet and having good friends to call upon can be the key to survival and success.

However many here I think agree that is often at war with certain MMO commonalities. One as brought up by our fellow forumite Ungood above is you cant make something truly challenging for a meager chance at a rare item that due to population numbers and time eventually becomes the standard rather then the rarity it was meant to be.

Some old MUDs I think when I recall those games we played before the age of MMORPG, usually seemed to avoid this by never having standardized NAMED items. Rather one of a kind items came during holiday events etc. Imagine if instead of the list of named items we got each crystal cove the main thing was those hidden buried treasures and they produced truly uniquely named items with a myriad of random effects to rival what we currently see on standard named loot( the actually useful ones I mean) Old diablo 1 and 2 had tons of replay value due to that mechanic.

The fact is DDO is a wierd hybrid MMO, one part fast paced action hack and slash, and one part story driven dungeon crawl. Some love one aspect while loathing the other hence the many different play styles that fall in between the extremes.

What some need to remember is that no one kind of content or playstyle is superior to another and that games are about casual fun, not competition. That is what professional sports are for. This creates an issue when those who crave and triumph through higher difficulty settings feel they should get better rewards from their efforts.

Instead of more powerful gear, I suggest armor and weapon kits to change appearances become the new end game reward grind. Appearance alone is more then enough to get players mouths drooling, especially if its truly pleasing to the eye.

If a reward is not a BS 1% drop but a certain reward, the challenge can be upped accordingly to fit the rewards value. However when this has to be factored against player meta knowledge and the vast difference in player gear and ability between casual and hardcore it becomes a problem more complex then I want to deal with and thankfully thats not my job.

Just my ranting ramblings on the topic

[Talon_Moonshadow]

While I cannot fathom why.... it is very obvious to me that a very large percentage of players do not know, how to NOT kill something.

[Thorzian]

all this whining about EH. I don't get it.

-yes it's easy, get over it. people farm hard because the xp and drop rates are both better then normal. the "challenge" is EE.... period. the OP talked about bragging rights. there are none in hard. normal is for absolute no-brain speed, elite is for an extremely difficult challenge..... hard is for everybody else.

i can't really explain it any better.

[Raithe]

Instead of more powerful gear, I suggest armor and weapon kits to change appearances become the new end game reward grind. Appearance alone is more then enough to get players mouths drooling, especially if its truly pleasing to the eye.

This is a great idea that probably would have worked best if it had been implemented from the beginning. Aesthetics are a very "eye of the beholder" type of thing, while numerical superiority is a thorn in the sides of both developers and casual gamers.

...hard is for everybody else.

I'm not really disagreeing with your post, but this is NOT the case. If it were, the complainers would have a leg to stand on. Hard is actually TOO DIFFICULT for some of the playerbase who are still learning how to play the game. That is why there is casual and normal as well (though personally I'm not sure casual difficulty is utilized enough to warrant its inclusion - it seems more like the result of somebody's temper tantrum response to not being able to make the game "difficult" for even veteran players).

[Hobgoblin]

You are correct in your assertion that the raids being easy is NOT an excuse for failing to complete them in their entirety. That would, in fact, be a reason that you should have been able to complete. Good detective work, realizing that fact.



Ok, now I am confused. You seem to be criticizing everyone else in the raid for criticizing everyone else in the raid. This is often known as being hypocritical, and is generally frowned upon. You were doing so well, I must have missed something...

On a serious note, all these complaints about raids being easy are laughable simply due to the fact that no one can really know how easy other people in the group are making them. You can't use your static guild raid as a basis for comparation, and if you aren't taking the first eleven uncoordinated PUGgers then your observations about the difficulty of the raid are being biased by people who may be able to solo them on epic elite...

sry man - maybe I worded it poorly - and I admitted that if i was leading better that it could have been prevented.

What I meant was that because the difficulty had been reduced so much - people are not working together and not listening to anyone.

O and @ ew vasteno - the only reason that I was facinating bases was that I had 2 bards in group. Again we should have just steamrolled the bases and killed everything but that was another mistake. I was just pointing out the level of not listening that was going on in here.

hob

[locksmith]

So much win in this thread. I will just say as far as new players go, it is not my job to seek them out and spoon feed them. However if I or my guild in general is leading a raid we always ask for first timers and/or someone that would like detailed instructions to send the raid leader a tell. This is done so the person doesn't have to feel like a noob. I would say 6 out of 10 times the noob wont send that tell and will fowl something up. This is when the verbal bashing comes. Not because they are a noob but because we gave them the chance to learn and the said screw it.

[Qhualor]

So much win in this thread. I will just say as far as new players go, it is not my job to seek them out and spoon feed them. However if I or my guild in general is leading a raid we always ask for first timers and/or someone that would like detailed instructions to send the raid leader a tell. This is done so the person doesn't have to feel like a noob. I would say 6 out of 10 times the noob wont send that tell and will fowl something up. This is when the verbal bashing comes. Not because they are a noob but because we gave them the chance to learn and the said screw it.

new players arent trying to be found. they find you when you post an lfm. in my experiences with more than i can count pug raids, new players just ask for simple instructions. thats all they ask for. beyond that it comes down to the party leader and the new player to know their role.

its the party leaders responsibility to make sure new players know what to do, where to stand and make sure they tell them what spells to mem and/or weapons to bring. many times ive seen party leaders not fully explain things, sometimes not at all and than get upset because the new guy wiped the raid or didnt bring what was needed. communication is key.

the last thing a new guy should be responsible for is anything important in the raid. they shouldnt be solo healing or tanking the boss. not saying they probably couldnt handle it, but its best not to take chances. leave important jobs for experienced players so the new guy can watch and see what to do for next time.

a lot of new players will say they are new or inexperienced with a raid, but not all. theres a lot of reasons why they wont speak up, but its their fault and nobody elses for not saying anything. i wouldnt necessarily blacklist pugs because of this, but i would make sure the new guy knew he needed to say something and be as polite about it as possible. if its obvious later during the raid, than tells should be sent. no need to escalate over voice or party chat where it becomes uncomfortable even for the experienced players in the group doing nothing wrong.

that leads to how do you know if there is a newb or a noob in your group? theres plenty of both around in the game but noobs can cleverly disguise themselves as a newb by saying "sorry, its my first time. guess i missed it in party chat" or "i was afk when you asked". before calling somebody a noob, make sure thats what they are before calling them a newb.

allowing pugs into a group is just like rolling a di. sometimes your roll is good and get a good player. sometimes your roll is low and get a bad player. this is why i hate when people generalize pugs as noobs. not all are and ive seen more successful pug groups pull off tough raids than what i read here on the forums. yeah, sometimes they arent smooth as silk, but pugs add flavor to the game.

[locksmith]

At first I thought you were trying to blast me, but ended up validating my point. Very well said. I don't agree with all points you made but bottom line is I can't help you if I don't know you need help. There is no shame in being new. All I ask is you let me know (in privet if need). But I'm not going to tell peole how to do roids if everyone in the raid knows.

[Eighnuss]

i ran an easy quest on a lower difficulty level, and people died alot. I then took them into a harder, but still lower difficulty quest, and we failed. Can you make the lower difficulties harder to prevent this issue in the future?

yes

[Hobgoblin]

yes

thats really not what i was saying, but thanks for misquoting me


hob

[Eighnuss]

The word you sought was "abridged"

[Hobgoblin]

The word you sought was "abridged"

i think you are missing a bridge somewhere. go away.

hob

[Brattyone]

So much win in this thread. I will just say as far as new players go, it is not my job to seek them out and spoon feed them. However if I or my guild in general is leading a raid we always ask for first timers and/or someone that would like detailed instructions to send the raid leader a tell. This is done so the person doesn't have to feel like a noob. I would say 6 out of 10 times the noob wont send that tell and will fowl something up. This is when the verbal bashing comes. Not because they are a noob but because we gave them the chance to learn and the said screw it.

Spoon feed new players? I doubt there are that many newer players that would like to be spoon fed through quests/raids.

Verbal bashing is never appropriate, even when you think they deserve it. Honestly, it's this kind of mentality that has kept me from joining groups. While I'm not exactly a new player anymore, I am still learning things. And sometimes I make really stupid mistakes, even though I know better. If I were in your group and made one of those really stupid mistakes and then was verbally bashed, I'd be really hurt. Oh...and btw, I always let the leader know if it's a quest/raid that I don't know well.