Raid Mobs, Opinions Welcome

[*juggleblood*]

I'm looking at the raid mobs and so far this is what I find:
Kobolds - Sqipe - Urds
Westwood - Ughle - Troll Berserker and Troll Warrior
Witches - Natasha - Imps
Dragonmount - Brisch - Elite Draconian
Fairy Forest - Sluagh - Baen Sidhe
Upper MH - Mug - Bugbear Warrior
Drexel - Qutayl - Fury
Matternhorn - Gol - Elite Naka
Cholemry - Shire Reeve Greymander - Grey Raider


Then these defunct / inactive raids:
Sosih - gnoll warrior
Bohtk - Hobgoblin warr?
Tanra - elite pirate?

My feeling on the issue of raids is that this should be upper level content aimed at avatar level players or for small groups of smaller players.

I also feel the raids should be more dangerous and more rewarding. As a fan of Wheel of Time, it galls me that an invading horde of Trollocs in the westwood would be passive, not attacking npcs or players. You shouldn't be able to walk up to a hungry trolloc and take a selfie with it. But I also realize that we don't want to have deathtraps lurking about for unsuspecting adventurers. I'm wondering if we could make the raiders aggro, but them keep them off the main pathways that lead to other zones or if in some cases we could add rooms that the raiders load in and then make the raiders wandering aggro. So fight a dozen wandering aggro raiders in a 2x2 pen for example. Thoughts?

I plan to reinstall the 3 defunct raids, and then might entertain adding more. I'm thinking for these three that maybe the mobs could be larger and more dangerous than existing raids.

Feel free to make specific or non-specific suggestions or share random thoughts. Cheers.

[Teron]

I can only say that the low amount of honor on these don't motivate me hard enough to cycle these, so I'm not familiar with them. Since I can only clean 1 raid at a time, they don't provide me with enough rewards to be worth it.

I kind of like how they are scaled for areas - I have no idea if any non-avatars kill them - maybe you could add new raids for group or Lyme areas that'd be be hard enough for avatars.

[Gorka]

I'm probably in a minority on this... but never been much of a fan of the rewards of the epic system. There is certainly a place for it in the game, but it's just not really up my alley. I don't understand why or how it even motivates some players as I feel it offers the slowest rate of reward return in the game. Anyway...

My point is, to motivate me to run raid mobs, honour isn't going to do it, even if it was up to 5-10x more honor. I think I'd need to kill 50,000 raid mobs at 50 honor a piece to get next rank... heh, not just going to do it specifically for honour.

Xp, Coins, Gems, Items will incentivize me to kill an honour mob first, rest assured honour will be the last thing that factors into my desires. I've "accidentally" made hero, and I don't really have any priority for making the next rank... but I hope it comes with more xerxes... if you get my drift...

Also I'm not sure which imm implemented the new rank clasps... but can I point out the new ranks with Spell Bonus and Heal Bonus should in fact be "Bonus Spell Bonus" and "Bonus Heal Bonus." By the time anyone reaches these ranks, especially if they are a Cleric or Mage, I suspect they will already be well in truly at there caps and these stats will be for nothing.

So although I expect my opinion to be among the minority, my point is JB, if you are going to tweak raid mobs, I wouldn't do it with a specific focus around honour, some of us prefer any other reward first and consider honour simply as a bonus, but never the motivator. I'm worried your good work might go to waste, if these new ideas aren't really good xp and coins as well, or eq/gem poppers.

[Gorka]

Ok, Some constructive/creative ideas...

Address the gap in epic mobs between Uhhhl and an elemental fury size (2-4 man groups.) War/Taron types will solo (of course) but they should have more like 3-4k honor.

When a specifically harder small group raid is wiped out, why not aegis mud or toggle far gate or no lost con etc.

I Prefer the raids are off main roads if aggro... I don't want to get splorked running to dmount...

Maybe raid leaders could load a scalp or raid banner, scalp/banner can be turned into devry for a little more honor/coins. Suspect this item will be randomed in group as per "unspoken rules of player etiquette."

Can there actually be a raid that launches an attack on castle? Can they aggro the squires/fighters/guardsmen like the sashes and kobold mercs? Can we defend the king in his time of need?

How about a forge from the banners of the elite raids to create a metaphoric random gem?

http://www.mythicalcreaturesguide.com/page/Demon

The above link is a list of demon's according to cultural societies... (I realise now why Iblis is Iblis) but I see potential in this list to have raid mobs in greek forest based on greek mythology and raid mobs in slavers maybe based on slavic mythology. Maybe kroms temple could have a zen/hindu type raid. Hades needs the four horsemen of the apocalypse, for sure! Catacombs the wraiths (Nazgûl)

[*juggleblood*]

That's pretty much what I'm suggesting when I say I'd like the raids to be bigger and more rewarding. But they would not be flagged epic, they would be flagged raid, the difference being the honor calculation and gem calculations. Tripping configs for victory is possible like hades priest (anyone else think luci should be aggro?).

"I Prefer the raids are off main roads if aggro... I don't want to get splorked running to dmount..." Yes, but what do you think about them being aggro otherwise, i.e. not on the main path?

As to making the content more interesting, i.e. raiders killing villagers, threatening to storm the castle, etc... It's all possible. For example there could be some gate in the westwood that the trolls load on the other side of and there could be villager mobs that load along with the epic mob on village side of the gate and the villagers could be shouting and advising people not to open the gate, and then cheering on pcs when they do go thru gate, or getting devoured when troll enters room, etc...

The primary issue is that I'm worried about complaints that such and such zone is no longer playable because it's too dangerous when the raiders are there.

As to the incentive being too little, the xp would go up dramatically if I make the mobs bigger and aggro, that would also increase their honor and gempop rate and would justify a gold increase. Also remember this is now a way to obtain heavenly scrolls, goblets, and such.

[Filk]

Just a thought - if you wanna agro mobs, you cant let them wander and make groups of several mobs without any limits. Otherwise nobody will hunt them because of too high danger. Go and kill 3 furies at once if disagree.

[*juggleblood*]

Yes obviously it would have to be balanced out... The process would be to try something new with the 3 that are not in game....and then maybe work on the others, one at a time, making sure it was playable and enjoyable.

Another idea that I had today was that if you die to a raid mob, that Mathor announces it. "Fluffy has died at the hands of the furies in service to the kingdom! He must be avenged!"

[Filk]

Not like i do that often. I mean dying on them. But still think its too spammy
Though its innate corpse report for sure. Make it for every death, not only honor

[Teron]

It's been a while since I suggested an idea for a honor shop, where you can spend your honor for a suboptimal item in lue of a bis item for your levels.
eg:
-2.5 plate, wa prime, 25k honor
-1.6 greaves, 20k
-0.2 +7sb ring 20k
-0.5 +4hb helm +mr 20k
-1.4 +hd body 20k
-1.5 +hd body -dam reduction 30k
-0.1 +dam +2hit +5 circle gauntlets 25k
-0.2 shield, shiftable 20k
-0.7 +2charisma arms 20k.

Of course, if there are items that are as good as drachma or tri40 items, then they can be worth 150k.

If players can get these items for honor, I bet you high honor raid mobs and epics will be pretty popular. So far, epics have been more of an exp thing or a very distant promise of -0.1ac +2hit +mana...which isn't very promising. With decreasing scroll drops, epics are better be worth something better.

[*juggleblood*]

If you have all this equipment in mind, why don't you redo the drachma gear? It's hard enough keeping on top of that; I can't imagine having another equipment shop that uses yet another currency. The principles behind it would be very unclear. It's already unclear exactly what the purpose of the drachma gear is apart from having a lazy, easy way to add cool equipment to the game. I think it's a non-starter.

[Teron]

EQ through another currency is another way to get more powerful, which adds to the game variety and slightly power, if it is balanced.

For example, I could be cycling mobs or gold or doing quests...or I could be doing raid mobs.

If we compare an ingame bis forge that requires 10 hard pops on 50mil mobs, then that's 5-10 epic kills. So 20 epics could reward with a good, not necessarily the best, item.

I do have a drachma/forge system in mind, but I need to plan to do it. And I have other things to do right now.

JB, I understand that this sounds too useful, but tell me. My next rank is in 7.5mil honor. I need to kill 600-1500 epics to get +5hb/5sb. Why should I bother?

[*juggleblood*]

If I can't get someone to redo the drachma gear even, then why would I want to to have to develop a whole new store that would have to be balanced against existing forges, drachma gear, 3x40 gear, and autoquest gear. No thanks. It's a non-starter. I'd be more open to the idea of an armory or something where maybe you could draw out elite choppers or temp gear or something, but I'm not interested in coding such a thing at this time because I have other projects. I'm still not even that up to date with the existing honor stuff, I'm trying familiarize myself with what exists already, I have a package of Akasha's old files and stuff to help.

As to the question of why bother... Yes that's what I'm asking you, what do you want, what would it take. I'm sorry that I'm not open to your idea of using honor as a currency in a store. But I'm sure we can find sufficient rewards within the existing structure. That's why I'm opening it up to suggestion.

[Gorka]

I haven't forgotten about the drachma eq revamp... taron and I started.

Unfortunately no one besides Josiah has contributed. I am not concerned... when the rebirths run out of things to spend there drachma on in the next 6 months... it's going to come around again. Maybe there is a timing for this, cause I don't want to be the one pushing water up hill now, if all I had to do was wait 6 months. But I am very confident that thread will flare up again soon.

[Teron]

If honor items are weaker than even ingame items, the drachma shop isn't an issue.

The items are meant to last until a player gets a good item from an eq group or buys a drachma item.

You don't have to balance honor vs drachma in this case.

[*juggleblood*]

Of course it has to balanced. How else would I know if it supercedes anything or not. It's actually quite a bit of work to do such things, as you guys are realizing as you try to work on drachma eq.

I don't really think of Honor as a currency that can be spent and deducted from player. I would think of it more like holy item list where you are entitled to borrow items based on your rank. But I don't really want to work on a new slate of equipment like this. If we're going to do equipment updates, lets work on the drachma gear and possibly improve rank clasps (such as replacing spell/heal bonus with bonus bonus on the high clasps).

What are others thoughts on Taron's concept?