sloppy

ok lets see.

-epicx4 mobs are harder than solo mobs, DUHH retard.

-raiding requires putting in more time than say logging in for 30 minutes a day and doing a couple solo quests.

-soloing is done ALONE raiding is done with 24 people.

-raiding requires a BRAIN, soloing doesnt.

-if you solo because youre too lazy to find a group or join a guild that has the ability to raid thats your own damn fault quit crying about your shitty gear.

gungo

Show me a program that can BOT a raid zone, because i can link you several programs that can bot any solo area. Soloing can quite litterally be done asleep.

Tab

Frankly I don't give a shit about loot. I want gear that is going to help me accomplish things in the game, that's it. I love to raid, I love running raids but I rarely EVER check what any mob's loot table is. If something I can use drops when we kill something I'll worry about it then. What's the point of having a hard on about a mob's loot table when you aren't even sure you can kill the thing yet? Focus on accomplishing the kill, worry about what it drops later.

In my opinion too many people are hooked on loot. The bottom line here is that better loot doesn't make you a better player. You could have the most amazing loot in the game and still be a horrible player. While it stands to reason that most people who have the best of the best have gotten there under their own power of being good players and have a reputation as such. However I am SURE that everyone here can think of ONE person they know or have known who has squeezed by as a barely adequate player and gotten upgrades they might not really be deserving of, it does happen.

Frankly if you put in the time and effort to work through the challenging raid encounters you should be rewarded as such so that you may take on the next challenge with slightly better gear. If all you ever plan on doing is running heroic and solo content though and not raiding much or at all then I don't see why you would need the raid gear. What would be the point? And to reflect back to my previous point, having all the best gear doesn't make you a better player. Having raid gear in a solo or heroic zone it just a crutch. Players who are worth a spit don't need the best for that, technically speaking you should be able to revert a good raiding player into heroic/solo gear and they should still be able to accomplish the solo/heroic content. Sure the fabled raid gear might allow them to take a little extra hits, do more dps and whatever else but in the end the zone would still be accomplished, maybe a little slower but still finished.

You want to show how big your e-peen is? Forget the fabled shit. Show other players you are a stand up person and know your shit. That's a reputation that will carry you regardless of what your character is wearing. I can't tell you how many times I've met some GREAT players who didn't have the best gear but knew their shit and ALWAYS tried their hardest. That to me is better than ANY amount of gear.

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Illuminator

All of these are arbitrary design choices. Soloing can be made harder than raiding, solo mobs can be made harder than epicx4's, how many people it takes to do each content type doesn't matter if the content is tuned appropriately, and finding a group or joining a guild are also arbitrary commitments demanded of a player (even good players waste time in LFG-mode). Raiding doesn't require fabled gear and master spells unless the devs say it does; they could just as easily tune raid mobs to handcrafted and apprentice 2 spells.

The argument in favor of raiding at this point is reduced to "just because". The problem with EQ2 right now is that it's too afraid to go gung-ho for either player pool and therefore it is wishy-washy and medicore on all game aspects.

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MaxxNosaj

The fact remains though that it does take more effort to focus and coordinate 24 individual players than one solo player. Yes, you could lower the complexity/difficulty of the tasks required for a raid, but then you end up not needing 24 players; you get a heroic instance; lower it more, you get a solo instance.

SOE has deemed that for the game's health, solo'ers only need such-and-such a level of gear, i.e. treasured/mastercrafted/app 4's, groupers get legendary/adept 3's, and raiders get fabled/masters. That's honestly a fair balance; speaking from personal experience, it was frankly boring carrying out solo tasks/instances with a fully fabled/mastered swashbuckler, too easy, and when you get bored with the game you end up looking elsewhere for entertainment.

That's why casual/solo players shouldn't be whining about how they don't have fabled/masters; you don't fucking need it. You might as well ask SOE to implement the I WIN button for you to press anytime you get agro'd.

For those who are willing to put in the time and effort (and honestly, the time required is the only true factor here; there is already such little effort required), you can group up with other players, knock out some instances, and net yourself a nice legendary set of gear; you won't be overpowered versus mobs you normally fight, but you'll get to enjoy having an advantage over them. The health of the game is still maintained, and you'll honestly have more fun than straight solo'ing. Same thing with notching it up to raiding.

For those of you just itching to reply to this and continue babbling about how you pay the same amount of money each month, therefore you're entitled to the same stuff as a raider even though you don't put in the time and effort, I fucking dare you to try that attitude irl, see how far it gets you.

Lillin

Yay my favorite debate.

As has been said here and many years ago, soloing is not being made difficult at the moment so i can see why a raider would be pissed to see a soloer get great gear. Also i see many people in RoK making groups to do solo content ......... wtf right? Path of least resistance comes into play there.

I gotta say I loved watching a well known raiding guild wipe in eq1 in CB when progression servers started. Why did they wipe? They had alot of the perfect strats for every raid in the game, why they wipe in a newb zone? Easy they under estimated the content becuase in thier usual raid gear most group content was trivial. So once they were back in crap gear they over looked the fact they could actually get hurt again.

People in eq2 like to solo, as they do in many MMO's. What if solo content was made challenging? I can tell you right now with RoK i've seen plenty of people with solo classes get owned by some of the single ^ mobs. What do these people do, they trivialize it ......... they ask for help to kill it, they level over it. What if some solo content locked you to soloing it, no help what so ever? Lot of people probally wouldn't do well against it, their old tactics if at first ya dont succeed find a way to cheap it.

This is what is happening in raids in eq2, they lock you into a certain amount of players to tackle the mob and as you can see, some raids can do it, and some cant. I think thier need to be solo encounters like this that also progress in gear " awesomeness " becuase hey if ya progress it doesnt matter what kind of content, you fought through it and earn your reward.

Well 24 people deserve better loots for thier time, organization, skill ect over some one who solos. I have a problem with this theory becuase in a raid you have 7 to 24 people attacking one mob. If you cant beat this mob, you may change tactics, classes. When you solo a mob its all or nothing ........... the soloer can really only change tactics and these tactics are all on them.

I also saw the old raid gear should only work on raid encounters. I said this in that huge soloing thread on official forums becuase i knew it would have the effect i wanted. The raiders of course threw a hissy fit saying they earned the right to trivialize group and solo content with thier raid gear. No you didnt, you earned the right have an easier time with raid content .......... after all the number one excuse was " we need the stats on raid gear so we can raid ". You did not work through a solo progression in the same way and earn soloing rewards, so how did you earn the right to have an easier time with solo mobs?

Now this can go in circles all day, ive been there done that. What it boils down to is thier isnt a solo progressin of challenge so right now thier doesnt need to be great reward for solo content. But there needs to be a progression in solo challenge so soloers can be rewarded for thier skill/time/effort all the same stuff a raider feels they have over a soloer.

Cuz

These "I am raider hear me roar" threads are getting as stupid as the "I should get what I want soloing" threads.

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Caswydian

Writing a bot program to handle a raid zone would not be too difficult - parsers already do most of the work, in that they can tell you when major events will occur like AOEs or add-spawns. From there, you'd need to program the correct response, like cast this cure or move to this spot. Really, the biggest challenge in a raid is coordinating 24 people - a bot program doesn't have this issue, since all the characters automatically do what the program tells them to do and when.

Tater

Something tells me the MT would never keep aggro.

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Caswydian

Why's that?

If you work around a parser, you know how much DPS and healing is being done, and you can have your bot program throttle DPS if it gets beyond a certain point. What you'd really need is a single bot controlling 24 characters, not 24 bots acting together.

This would actually be a really interesting programming excercise. If I were to ever delve into writing bots, this is something I'd try, just to see if it could be done.