You're probably not going to like what I have to say about that.
First of all, I will say that it looks like fun, and there are some aspects of the encounter that I actually quite like (the soft enrage mechanic for one).
That said, the whole thing looks like it is aimed at children, with the visuals (but I can happily ignore this), but more specifically with the encounter tuning.
Needing to keep the two targets in the encounter to within a percentage of total HP is a good mechanic, but 0.5% should be the threshold there (I would even happily accept up to 2%), not the 5% that this encounter has.
Then you have the purge mechanic, another solid mechanic that has similar analogous mechanics in EQ2, and other games. Thing is, in this video, the player with purge on them has a telegraph on them - this makes the mechanic so blatantly obvious to all involved that it should never be an issue. In EQ2, mechanics like this are not represented in game at all - this makes the same mechanic several magnitudes of difficulty harder.
This is what I am talking about with action combat vs tab. Sure, if you list of the mechanics they may be almost comparible, but that doesn't mean the encounters as a whole are comparible.
What this looks like to me is if a developer from EQ2 made an encounter, released it, people liked it, and then mid tier players (not casual, not top end) complained that they couldn't participate in it - so the developers retuned it and made an easy version with softer encounter tuning.
First encounter in a raid... Find me a comparable video for a EQ2 first encounter. Outside of your prospective I was lead to believe the encounters in EQ2 were so easy no one bothered making guides for them. Like early WOW raids. Not saying you are wrong, just saying that has been my understanding up until encountering you.
Having more obvious tells on mechanics allows Devs to justify stacking more mechanics on top of each other at the same time. Allowing for more chaotic pulls that can make the boss have some teeth even once a raid gets the boss on farm, and it results in longer average prog times.
AoC will probably never have mechanics that in depth with open world bosses. I am pretty sure we both agree on that based on past discussions. AoC might only ever have open world raid bosses.
We don't know what the raiding scene will be like for AoC. Once again I am highly skeptical we will see encounters where you even need to prog on bosses. Pretty sure competent raid groups are going to be one-shotting bosses as they encounter them. Maybe two pulls if there is a wild surprise.
This is part of the reason I am cheering on AC for AoC. If the bosses are going to be shit. Lets at least have some fun ass PvP.
PvP has: Caravans, Node Sieges, Castle Sieges, Guild Wars, Ship PvP, Arena and Gankers on the PvP end of the spectrum.
PvE has: World Bosses, maybe some instanced dungeons? (maybe not?).
Reasons why I constantly joke that AoC is a PvP game.
First encounter in a raid... Find me a comparable video for a EQ2 first encounter. Outside of your prospective I was lead to believe the encounters in EQ2 were so easy no one bothered making guides for them.
No one made guides for them because the raid scene was quite competitive.
Raids didn't have single strategies to them like some games, and many encounters had what seemed like obvious strategies to them that didn't work, and you would need to notice a fairly small detail to understand why.
Many guilds had the policy where even sharing a parse of an encounter as a bootable offense, let alone sharing a strategy. The idea of making and sharing a video like this of a top end raid encounter would have been laughable back when I was playing EQ2.
To be clear, I am not saying that the encounter doesn't look fun - it does. I am also not saying that it doesn't look challenging - I'm sure it is.
What I am saying is that a good portion of that challenge is in the combat system rather than the encounter. The challenge that is present in the encounter is tuned to a lesser degree than similar mechanics are in a tab target game.
I'm not even saying this is a bad thing, just that it is a thing, and that a natural result of this is that an encounter in a tab target game is able to place more meaning in the mechanics in the encounter since the mechanics in the combat system are taking up less of the players attention. This manifests itself as tighter tuning (0.5% vs 5%, no telegraphs, etc).
If that exact encounter was taken out of Wildstar and ported to EQ2 (could even use the same graphics and call it a gnome tinkerers invention gone bad), it would be considered an enjoyable raid, but not overly hard in the state in which it was presented.
Tighten up some of the tuning on the encounter to compensate for the fact that players have a combat system that uses less of their attention in combat, and you have an EQ2 encounter.
This is the first action combat encounter I have been able to say that for, which in itself says something about Wildstar.
Again though, this is exactly what I have been saying.
We don't know what the raiding scene will be like for AoC. Once again I am highly skeptical we will see encounters where you even need to prog on bosses. Pretty sure competent raid groups are going to be one-shotting bosses as they encounter them. Maybe two pulls if there is a wild surprise.
The following are Stevens comments on raiding in Ashes
There will be some in-depth raiding that has multiple stages that will be extremely difficult and... It would definitely be in the single digits of population that will be capable of defeating certain content... It doesn't mean that there won't be content available for the larger percentages as well... There should be a tiered level of content that players can constantly strive to accomplish. If there is no ladder of progression and everything is flat and all content can be experienced, then there is no drive to excel.
Now, I don't see this happening in Ashes, but in my opinion Intrepid should be held to meet this as much as they are held to meet any other comments made by Steven - and I don't see these comments being met in a game that doesn't have some form of progression based raiding. It doesn't have to be the WoW model of progression raiding, but it does, imo, need to be progression raiding of some form to meet this comment.
Again I am at the mercy of taking your word here. As there is no evidence for what you are talking about. It does sound believable.
My only question at this point is: Why would you ever leave EQ2 if the raiding was so good? EQ2 is still going!
I left when they introduced Station Cash - their in game cash shop.
I wouldn't have cared if they discussed it with players, but it literally just appeared in game overnight. Me and my entire guild had unsubscribed by the end of that day. It probably would have been fine if it were cosmetic only -0 even if it just randomly showed up one day - but it wasn't. From day 1 there were things you could buy to assist you in game, and things you could buy that made entire professions worthless.
I left when they introduced Station Cash - their in game cash shop.
I wouldn't have cared if they discussed it with players, but it literally just appeared in game overnight. Me and my entire guild had unsubscribed by the end of that day. It probably would have been fine if it were cosmetic only -0 even if it just randomly showed up one day - but it wasn't. From day 1 there were things you could buy to assist you in game, and things you could buy that made entire professions worthless.
I left when they introduced Station Cash - their in game cash shop.
I wouldn't have cared if they discussed it with players, but it literally just appeared in game overnight. Me and my entire guild had unsubscribed by the end of that day. It probably would have been fine if it were cosmetic only -0 even if it just randomly showed up one day - but it wasn't. From day 1 there were things you could buy to assist you in game, and things you could buy that made entire professions worthless.
You voted with your wallet. I respect that.
You did the right thing.
Yeah, and then after a while I ended up in Archeage for several years.
Comments
First encounter in a raid... Find me a comparable video for a EQ2 first encounter. Outside of your prospective I was lead to believe the encounters in EQ2 were so easy no one bothered making guides for them. Like early WOW raids. Not saying you are wrong, just saying that has been my understanding up until encountering you.
Having more obvious tells on mechanics allows Devs to justify stacking more mechanics on top of each other at the same time. Allowing for more chaotic pulls that can make the boss have some teeth even once a raid gets the boss on farm, and it results in longer average prog times.
AoC will probably never have mechanics that in depth with open world bosses. I am pretty sure we both agree on that based on past discussions. AoC might only ever have open world raid bosses.
We don't know what the raiding scene will be like for AoC. Once again I am highly skeptical we will see encounters where you even need to prog on bosses. Pretty sure competent raid groups are going to be one-shotting bosses as they encounter them. Maybe two pulls if there is a wild surprise.
This is part of the reason I am cheering on AC for AoC. If the bosses are going to be shit. Lets at least have some fun ass PvP.
PvP has: Caravans, Node Sieges, Castle Sieges, Guild Wars, Ship PvP, Arena and Gankers on the PvP end of the spectrum.
PvE has: World Bosses, maybe some instanced dungeons? (maybe not?).
Reasons why I constantly joke that AoC is a PvP game.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Raids didn't have single strategies to them like some games, and many encounters had what seemed like obvious strategies to them that didn't work, and you would need to notice a fairly small detail to understand why.
Many guilds had the policy where even sharing a parse of an encounter as a bootable offense, let alone sharing a strategy. The idea of making and sharing a video like this of a top end raid encounter would have been laughable back when I was playing EQ2.
To be clear, I am not saying that the encounter doesn't look fun - it does. I am also not saying that it doesn't look challenging - I'm sure it is.
What I am saying is that a good portion of that challenge is in the combat system rather than the encounter. The challenge that is present in the encounter is tuned to a lesser degree than similar mechanics are in a tab target game.
I'm not even saying this is a bad thing, just that it is a thing, and that a natural result of this is that an encounter in a tab target game is able to place more meaning in the mechanics in the encounter since the mechanics in the combat system are taking up less of the players attention. This manifests itself as tighter tuning (0.5% vs 5%, no telegraphs, etc).
If that exact encounter was taken out of Wildstar and ported to EQ2 (could even use the same graphics and call it a gnome tinkerers invention gone bad), it would be considered an enjoyable raid, but not overly hard in the state in which it was presented.
Tighten up some of the tuning on the encounter to compensate for the fact that players have a combat system that uses less of their attention in combat, and you have an EQ2 encounter.
This is the first action combat encounter I have been able to say that for, which in itself says something about Wildstar.
Again though, this is exactly what I have been saying. The following are Stevens comments on raiding in Ashes Now, I don't see this happening in Ashes, but in my opinion Intrepid should be held to meet this as much as they are held to meet any other comments made by Steven - and I don't see these comments being met in a game that doesn't have some form of progression based raiding. It doesn't have to be the WoW model of progression raiding, but it does, imo, need to be progression raiding of some form to meet this comment.
Again I am at the mercy of taking your word here. As there is no evidence for what you are talking about. It does sound believable.
My only question at this point is: Why would you ever leave EQ2 if the raiding was so good? EQ2 is still going!
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
I left when they introduced Station Cash - their in game cash shop.
I wouldn't have cared if they discussed it with players, but it literally just appeared in game overnight. Me and my entire guild had unsubscribed by the end of that day. It probably would have been fine if it were cosmetic only -0 even if it just randomly showed up one day - but it wasn't. From day 1 there were things you could buy to assist you in game, and things you could buy that made entire professions worthless.
You voted with your wallet. I respect that.
You did the right thing.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Yeah, and then after a while I ended up in Archeage for several years.
The irony isn't lost on me.