I've been raiding in this game for three years now.
In my time I've seen some great encounters, some of them simple encounters and some I consider pretty complex. The ones that stand out are the Djinn Master, Pedestal of Sky(with a lethal supernova), the Three Princes, Chel'drak(for the time), Gardener Thirgen(without giant amounts of lag in place), and Venril Sathir. I'll even give runner-up awards to Wuoshi, Hoshkar, Xygoz and Silverwing. Anyone can find that these encounters have a few things in common, but the ones I'm aiming to point out are their amount of raid-participation and general lack of random-chance failures(VS' Fatalisis and Silverwing's tendency to one-shot tanks excluded).
I've also seen some pretty horrible encounters. Horrible encounters, however, are unlike great encounters in that usage of existing scripts or abilities cannot, so to speak, 'bring back the magic' of great encounters, but they can totally fuck up a whole tier of raiding if you do it incorrectly. We got that with Wrath of Fury in T5, Mem-blurs in T6, Charming & Delevelling in EoF, and now the 'Roaming Gnome Syndrome' in RoK. I see these ideas reused, and I see their wide-spread usage, and I see the general trend failing over and over through the expansions. And what comes of it? Why are the developers repeating the mistake of putting all of their eggs in one basket?
Before I started writing this post, I was ready to break out the torches and pitchforks for Roger. I'm sorry to say I voted yes, he should stand down. But not too sorry. The root of the problem, from what I can tell, isn't Roger. There's something that's been festering in the development process of EQ2 raiding for years that has retarded the forward progress of raiding. I don't know what's festering, but I know of something that can help:
Check-lists.
That's right. Simple check-lists. Something I know for a fact is not in widespread use among the raid-encounter developers.I'll even start one, and I encourage crowd participation:
- *) Does the encounter have a degree of random-chance that can completely wipe the raid?
- *) Does the encounter have a script or ability that's been used heavily this tier and/or expansion pack?
- *) Is the encounter rooted?
- *) Is it Draggable?
- *) Is it Hook-Arrowable?
- *) Is it Peelable?
- *) Does the encounter punish people for doing their jobs?(See: Bonesnapper, Nexona)
- *) Does the raid incur a penalty for not-moving from the encounter?
- *) Does the encounter root?
- *) Does the encounter stun?
- *) Does the script bug out and cease working when a person dies and does not reengage the encounter?
- *) Does the script bug out on a character feigned-death?
- *) Does the encounter have adds?
- *) Are the adds able to be engaged from outside the raid?
- *) Do the adds path correctly?
- *) Will the adds leash before the primary mob?
- *) Do special and class abilities of adds interact with the primary mob's script?(See: the guardian with Pin on the Avatar of Growth fight, charming adds on Silverwing)
- *) Does the encounter remove a person or persons from combat to do menial tasks for a length of time?
- *) Is the encounter especially difficult?
- *) Are people likely to be disaffected by said role in this encounter?
- *) How do player pets interact with the script?
- *) Does the encounter prevent a certain archetype or role from being effective?
- *) Is this a recurring theme in the exp. / tier for the affected archetype / role?
- *) Is the encounter somewhat straightforward?(See: The Lyceum of Abhorrence and the invisible time-limit for the doors)
- *) Does the encounter knockback?
- *) Is there an appropriate place in which to place the encounter in order to mitigate the knockback?(See: TNT Mayong)
That's 20 minutes' worth of check-list. There you go, give me a job while I still have some passion left for this game. I need the money.
Re: Roger: It's time for you to step down.
