Quote:
Originally Posted by Virulence
Im not saying raiding should be retarded easy but eliminating any time sinks and simplifying the encounters would go a long way to bringing more players into the fold.
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Not saying you're wrong, in fact you're right, in one way... Having more people doing some things would get their focus on that, true, but by eliminating time sinks and simplifying encounters, the game itself would be utterly boring for the ones that today are classed "hardcore" or close to; i.e. those who have time to play close to 7 days a week and that already runs around just studying every corner of EFP/QH several days of the week because the only things that are challenging are things they're already locked out from.
It would just give those more time to get fed up with a game that already is either impossible (read unkillable mobs) or too easy when you actually bother maximizing you gaming skills and finding two dozen other players who do.
One thing I think actually fucked up the survivability of this expansion from a raider's PoV was the persistant zones in combination with the "tagging" for later tiers.
Let's just compare EH with VP for example.
Any guild could enter EH and get wtfpwn:ed as the went around the first corner, and slowly proceed up to the first nameds to be even more owned unless they actually knew what they were doing.
VP, heck I bet there are a crapload of raiding people out there who doesn't even know where VP is located, or at least wouldn't if it wasn't for being forced to run around every damn corner of RoK to hit lvl 80 by questing. Even less they know that they will get wtfpwned when they do their first pull not aware of roamers' pathing etc. Hence, nothing to even remotely strive to achieve apart from having a zone name on the map.
Let's then just pretend that you couldn't clear VP with all Ad3:s and mastercrafted gear (well, perhaps not anymore with the recent changes of Druushk and Nexona, but still). Would VP have been cleared by almost all semihardcore raid guilds and above within 1½ month or so after launch - with a long and boring questing based leveling and flagging through lower zones - without the persistant zones including the mandatory server crashes every now and then and people getting booted when the 25:th char enters the zone or those who camp the zone gets a power shortage during the night?
Of course it wouldn't!
Then of course there was other things like major lag issues with charm etc in EH with release, but still...
I think that just like you said, when you actually can reach the zones and see them, even if it's only the first room, then the interest for them will grow. Most of all if the zone has such a magnificent entrance scenery as VP does. But it doesn't necessarily have to be weaksauce enough for everyone to even kill trashmobs.
In the same way, time sinks are boring, but not something that can't be beaten by time even by casual guilds. It rather will force them more or less to focus more, learn more and do things better if they realize that "oh shit, we can't even remotely clear this thing in four hours if we do this dps or wait 3 min between each pull". Then they will strive to make it even further into the zone next time and one day by the end of the expansion they might even be up towards the end of the zone, feeling that they actually achieved something instead of grinding through the zone in slow motion clearing it in 9 days, and keep doing that throughout the expansion.
Just some thoughts this late evening.
Re: Just how many raiders are there?
