To ZOS, Raiding is a Priority

Hey, I’d first like to introduce myself as this is my first post on TESOF. I've been a lurker for awhile, but I'm very passionate about this subject so I wanted to spread the word. I’m known as Blade, and I am the Co-founder, Graphic Designer, and Community Manager at Tamriel Foundry. Tamriel Foundry is an ESO fan site dedicated to theorycrafting, and mechanics discussion in The Elder Scrolls Online.

(Note: I will use references to World of Warcraft in this article to back some of my claims; this doesn’t mean I want an Elder Scrolls WoW clone.)

With the recent influx of information released today, there was a quote from Matt Firor that concerned me for the games well-being, and that is about no raiding in ESO. In an interview with IGN, Firor was quoted, saying “I'm also happy to see that the design so far seems focused on exploration and questing rather than grinds. There are no raids, after all – "That's not Elder Scrolls," says Game Director Matt Firor – but there are four-man dungeons and three-faction open PvP with sieges in the beleaguered province of Cyrodiil.(1)” Some of you may be wondering why this is a big deal, and this article is directed to you.

MMO’s are split into different groups of players, easily separated by two groups of people. You’ve got PvP players, and PvE players. Let’s start with talking about the PvP players first. PvP’ers are gamers who enjoy the adrenaline rush from fast paced and intense combat against enemy players. In order for PvP to be successful in a mmo, there needs to be incentive to engage in combat with enemy players. The incentives normally come in the form of PvP ranks, and gear acquired through PvP. You also need to give players who enjoy PvP places to play, which normally involve instanced PvP, in the form of arena or battlegrounds, or open world PvP such as open world RvR. ESO is taking the route to stay away from instanced PvP, and instead focus all of their efforts on their open world RvR. Interviews in the past have confirmed the presence of Realm Ranks obtained through your effectiveness in PvP, as well as gear obtainable with Alliance points, but what does this mean for PvE players?

The term PvE player defines a much broader group of people than PvP player. You’ve got gamers who enjoy playing solo, and questing through the game content and crafting or rerolling at max level. Players who enjoy running in small groups, and completing smaller scale dungeons such as 4 man group dungeons in ESO. Lastly, you’ve got your PvE raider who enjoys large scale complex scripted encounters, and these are the players I am going to be focusing on. While I do understand that raiding is not absolutely essential, I do believe that it leads to the overall longevity and success of an mmo. Many of the comparisons I’m going to be making will be made to WoW because it is currently, and has been the most successful mmo to date.

World of Warcraft does many things right, but one aspect they’ve done better than the other mmo’s is how they’ve handled their raiding. While WoW does feature a plethora of other content to do, the primary reason people continue to sub is for their progression raiding. In WoW’s 7 years of existent Blizzard has released 41 different raids, in a series of 4 different expansions, an average of 10 raid encounters per expansion. Even now, WoWprogress records 15,532 raiding guilds are currently progressing through WoW’s scripted encounters. There is no surprise that even after 7 years, World of Warcraft maintained 10.3 million subscribers in the end of June, 2012 (2). Is it coincidence that the mmo that understands the importance of raiding also has been top dog for 7 long years? I don’t think so. I believe that if ZOS doesn’t seriously consider developing scripted raid encounters as a priority, and would rather release it after launch, they’re going to cause a large group of the mmo community to not even consider buying their game, and first impressions are everything. I’ve been an MMO and Elder Scrolls fan for many years. My first real RPG was Morrowind, and I was ecstatic when I heard the news about Elder Scrolls coming to the mmo scene. I want this game to succeed, and want it to be the best it possibly can. I hope some of you fellow raiders can stand behind me, and tell Zenimax Online that we want raiding to be more of a priority than it currently is in ESO.

Top MMO Subscriptions & Raid Numbers
World of Warcraft: 41 Raids
Lord of the Rings Online: 15 Raids
Rift: 13 Raids
Everquest 1: Too Many to Count http://everquest.allakhazam.com/wiki/eq:...sion_guide
Everquest 2: 22 Raids

Resources:
(1) http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/03/19/t...be-awesome
(2) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15672416

If you agree with me, please post on this thread and let Zenimax know.
http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/1450632...-priority/

While WoW may have 41 raids.... how many of them are relevant at level 90? .... Maybe a handful?

That is the problem with raids.... the next expansion makes the current set of raids, and gear, irrelevant.

While I concur that larger group encounters are fun, I want someone to break the mold and stop making endgame irrelevant in the long run.

I am afraid you are missing one important part of WoWs raid template. Early in the game evolution WoW did already have 10mil players, yet mere 1% of them experienced top tier vanilla raid due to difficultity of mechanics and managing 40 players simultaneously.

Once they realized their mistakes, in 1st expansion they moved to smaller group content in 1st expansion and created 25man and 10man raids, still available to the elite of playerbase only. In consequent expansions they took further steps in trivializing the encounters in order to allow more players actually experience the content.

How this is in any way relevant to TESO? Well, its not really. TESO isnt WoW clone and that is obvious. The design of combat itself is focused on small group content where you actually pay attention to enviroment, rather than 20+ players spamming screen with flashy effects. The focus is on the fight itself and coordination of the group. That is different from WoW where focus was on player health bars, buff durations and cooldowns of abilities.

With this combat design, I cannot but wonder, why you need so many players at all? I think its going to be very good fun in smaller group

All that being said. Sage did say there are no raids, at least not in WoW-fashion with boring trivialtrash/boss setup, yet there will be adventure zones with damn large bosses to satisfy your need of army vs poor one oversized mob. Also nothing has been said on dynamic events and world bosses yet. No one really knows how many players it will take to pluck out an Anchor but the name "Daedric Titan" imply more than 4man group can swallow

Personally I have no problem with raids being added to ESO as long as they don't become the only way to obtain the elite gear or weapons in the game , if they allow us to craft of buy elite gear with alliance points or whatever you gain by PvP then I don't see an issue , its only when non raiders become second class players due to their inability to get the best gear that I have any issues.

A lot of people really under estimate the importance of raids and what it brings to a game for the long term. I hope ZeniMax don't make the mistakes of by passing it, it would be a huge shame.

I like that the pve content will only require 4 people. They can still make it difficult and challenging you just wont need 9+ other people to be competent enough to complete a raid. You won't get cockblocked by an encounter because you have a healer that's fucking retarded. The encounters will be able to be completed as long as your group of 4 are competent and not idiots. Which is great for those solo pve players that like questing, they don't have to try and find a large group to get the cool gear, they only need 3 more.
I know the point of the OP was that raids encourage the longevity of a game, but, honestly, I'd rather have done all the raids I've done in multiple games with a smaller group. It would've created less headaches, less drama and made all the content accessible without dumbing it down.

There may not be any big raids, but you are still going to have dungeons, and if I recall some of those are public and massive. Given this, I'm a bit skeptical as to whether this is really going to mean there is nothing that can be done as a raid, or if they're just just going to provide content that meets this need in such a different way that they're not comfortable calling it such. Also, raids are traditionally how MMOs hold subscribers at endgame, but if ESO believes to have found a better, less formulaic way of holding interest, good for them for breaking the mold and truly not being just another WoW clone.

In ending, I also have to wonder how much of this is really ZOS turning their back to raids, and how much of it is media sensationalism.

In any case, I do hope they have some traditional raids, and cater to that audience more if people do gravitate more towards those traditional aspects than whatever innovative ideas they may have up their sleeves.

(March 19th 2013, 12:44 PM)Fractal Wrote: While WoW may have 41 raids.... how many of them are relevant at level 90? .... Maybe a handful?

That is the problem with raids.... the next expansion makes the current set of raids, and gear, irrelevant.

While I concur that larger group encounters are fun, I want someone to break the mold and stop making endgame irrelevant in the long run.

That's not a problem with raids, that's a problem with expansions - at best. A problem with non-scaling raids, maybe. Either way, your post is totally moronic and has nothing to do with whether or not raids should be included.

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/03/19/...paul-sage/

When I asked Sage about raiding, he said that ESO's adventure zones are designed for larger groups of PvE players. You can actually go into the adventure zones with a small group and accomplish some goals, but there are large areas in these maps dedicated to larger group experiences. There will be some warning when you're about to trigger one of these encounters (and they may even end up instanced), so a small group won't suddenly find itself face to face with a Daedric Prince!

The raiding content may appeal to some, but honestly it plagues MMOs in its own way. Raiding is a content that takes time to implement, and when developers focus shifts to creating raid content, other content usually suffers from this. Not to mention raids are typically created in the same pattern, you can complete the content once in a set period of time, and out of the whole raid group, only a few actually get rewarded during that week. Because of this, the rewards are required to be on a level that it is actually rewarding, which makes it compulsory to complete this content in order to remain competitive.

Raiding may appeal to some, but there are more than a few of us who do not want to scour through the same scripts week after week, in hopes the certain item drops, and that the artificial systems we have created offers me a chance to actually claim the item as my own. The adventure zones are in my opinion a ten times better way to do this. You can do adventure zones with your guild as well; it is already known we have content a 4-man group cannot beat. The difference here is that with these adventure zones, people have other things to do than for 5 nights to idle at the capital city of their faction, and for 2 nights they can actually enjoy the games PvE content. Not to mention since the groups are split, the content rewards them more. In addition to this crafting system is created to support the said content, and remaining competitive no longer requires weeks of scouring on a luck based environment.


OP mentioned World of Warcraft, which I found utterly disgusting during Vanilla. In order to maximize your efficiency at being capable of managing the content available. Item rewards had to go to certain persons. This meant that out of two first months, out of a group of 40 less than 5 people got rewards out of them, and the rest got the remains those who had the priorities did not need. The best part? Because the rewards were weekly lotteries, it was possible that you got nothing proper to progress your group with, and your performance suffered just because you had bad loot tables. I do not wish to see anything similar in TESO, and I sincerely hope developers ignore the wishes who want raiding similar to games like World of Warcraft.

I would lower the amount of people in raid groups like swtor did. Just have 8 man and 16 man raids. But I do agree that raiding is essential. Many dedicated PvErs would be very disappointed by this.

(March 20th 2013, 01:39 AM)Artarius Aetius Wrote: I would lower the amount of people in raid groups like swtor did. Just have 8 man and 16 man raids. But I do agree that raiding is essential. Many dedicated PvErs would be very disappointed by this.

In its typical form, essential? No. It creates a spin of everything else than raiding content being null, and the way OP described it "priority" is exactly what the game would turn out to be. Raids are always the priority #1 with PvE games, and everything else turns into lackluster. I'm sorry to say the this games endgame will be envisioned as RvR, and the PvE is just for those who do not enjoy PvP to roll in adventure zones, those zones have "raids" = content that a small group isn't going to get done. The difference being? They don't have 1 week long resets, you don't have to wait to complete the content again.

Even in early DAoC and its first expansion Shrouded Isles, besides the draw of RvR you had DF and Legion, outdoor dragon raids per faction, Galladoria and the other SI raids, and more.

This is not good news for those of us who are mature, organized and want ongoing goals. It is great news for antisocial children who can't handle the organization and discipline to raid in the first place.

I can't believe that Matt Firor doesn't understand the gravity of not having raid content. He was there, he saw what specific effects it had on how DAoC populations banded together. In Hibernia alone, Dragon raids in Sherroe Hills, DF Legion raids while simultaneously fending off incoming enemies once they took over DF, the epic dungeons like Galladoria were mainstays of what it meant to play DAoC long-term.

I smell another issue with this scary statement. I bet they go f2p to rake in the idiots and penis joke crowd as well, which would make perfect sense if they are omitting the kinds of features that the opposite sorts of players fundamentally expect to be in TESO.

(March 19th 2013, 09:24 PM)Isarii Wrote:

(March 19th 2013, 12:44 PM)Fractal Wrote: While WoW may have 41 raids.... how many of them are relevant at level 90? .... Maybe a handful?

That is the problem with raids.... the next expansion makes the current set of raids, and gear, irrelevant.

While I concur that larger group encounters are fun, I want someone to break the mold and stop making endgame irrelevant in the long run.

That's not a problem with raids, that's a problem with expansions - at best. A problem with non-scaling raids, maybe. Either way, your post is totally moronic and has nothing to do with whether or not raids should be included.

My post is not moronic, your comprehension of my post is your problem.

The OP used WoW raids as a basis, in doing so he set the standard of discussion that WoW raids as how it should be done in TESO.

The only reason WoW raids exist is to get the best gear in the game, and because of that... how many of the 41 raids matter at 90?

Raids for the best gear is not the best solution as the OP would like to think. Am I all for raids? Yes. DO I think raids should have access to the best gear? No. Raids should give you rarer cosmetic looks or something along those lines.

(March 19th 2013, 07:01 PM)Velaskae Wrote: I like that the pve content will only require 4 people. They can still make it difficult and challenging you just wont need 9+ other people to be competent enough to complete a raid.

I'm a hardcore raider and I have played in some of the top PvE raiding guilds across 3 games over the last few years. I can honestly tell you that 4 man dungeons will give the raiding community absolutely 0 satisfaction once they complete them, me getting 3 other top PvE's to complete a dungeon will not be challenging at all, regardless of it's difficulty, getting 15 or 20 people to complete a dungeon? Well that's completely different.

Another misconception of hardcore PvE players is that we just want to kill big monsters all day and it doesn't matter in what shape or form. This is incorrect, you know how the PvP players get a ranking system because they like to be competitive? Well a lot of PvE players like to be competitive as well. Instanced large scale raids are necessary for the top tier guilds so they can compete to clear the raids first and create competition...racing to clear a 4 man dungeon just doesn't provide that competition, anyone who has played an MMO with raiding content will have heard of the saying 'The race for world first' and they will know what that brings to an MMO.