It is. It really is. And if you are offended by that statement, its because you don’t really care about raiding, but you see it as a way to keep the really good loot out of the hands of people not willing to put forth the effort. You aren’t raiding because its a good story.
The main reason I say that raiding is stupid is that the way current MMOs are designed, raid encounters just do not make any sense at all. Seriously. If I were a sixty foot tall winged god surrounded by eighty people, you can bet your ass that I would not waste my time beating on the glowing regenerating turtle in a hard shell while the remainder of them killed me. I’d use my wings to sweep aside my attackers, I’d divide them and step on them. I’d kill the healers first and pick the rest off at my leisure…. because… I. Am. A. GOD.
The idea of mere mortals, even equipped with super uber weapons of doom, ganging up to kill gods is just… stupid. Especially when the gods just stand there and take it like the two dollar whore they are coded to be. I could actually buy it if it was just a group of six or even ten people, with a use of strategy and tactics… but have you ever seen people work together in large groups? Either most of them turn off their brains, follow orders, and many of them lose/die, or they are complete and utter chaos.
Raid content is insulting in the basicness of its design.
Frankly, I don’t play games to be archer number seven in a war someone else is leading. I don’t play to be a part of healing bank two, or even to be the “main tank”. When I play a game, I’m looking for narrative, and I’m looking to be the hero, not to be fire support for the hero. No one in the history of fantasy has ever said “My favorite character in Lord of the Rings is Glormindar, which is the name I gave to the guy who was standing about twenty feet away from Aragorn and was killed when the Nazgul arrived. He was fuckin’ sweet!” If you play games to be a cog in someone else’s wheel, well… I feel sorry for you. I really do.
So.. what you’re saying is that you’re a shitty raider….
Hmmm… no. I believe you might have a reading problem though.
Raids, in the context of the lore and the world in which they are set, are arbitrary. Things that are minor flaws in small encounters are major failures in large ones. They just don’t make sense… except as a means with which to stall players and withhold the “best” rewards.
But clearly you enjoy the treadmill, so either you are a raid leader, one of the few actually making a difference in the raid, or you prefer other people to make your decisions for you.
Nah Viva is just a griefer, he lacks the communicational skills to be raid leader.
I think the problem comes with:
1.- The gameplay mechanics (why the heck most MMOs play like a RTS game??)
2.- The “strategy” of the game (what hardcore players refer as strategy, where there HAS to be one healer, one tank, one whatever or it is a “guetto group”)
Point two derivates from the point one I think.
You can’t address problem 1 without making a new game, but problem 2 has some possible solutions:
1.- Kickass AI, that learns and stuff.
2.- Your boss has several scripted AIs choosen at random during the beggining of the fight (include some several vicious ones, like kill all the healers first, specially useful if your game uses idiotic stuff like “classes” to define playable characters).
Seriously if you spent a menweek doing the boss artwork, another menweek in the sound design, another menweek in the level design, why can’t you just spend 30 minutes copy pasting some code to create at least 100 strategies?
I just hate the fact that bosses play the same way every single time, and i also hate the second class raiders, the ones that think they are pro, but only memorize strategies that OTHERS have developed.
My idea would be a direct benefit to raiding gameplay, it may not help the sucktastic small scale RTS gameplay, skindeep strategic mechanics of most MMOs but at least it would add replayability.
end rant, //goes back to own code.