Raid finder has destroyed this game

This.
AoC is a MMO, communication / social interaction (i.e. making friends in game) with other players is needed if you want to do the group stuff of the game.
And it’s not like AoC is the only game that needs this, Battlefield, Age of Empires, Stellaris, Supreme Commander, World of Warcraft, Overwatch - if you are playing a multiplayer game you will need to interact with other players to achieve “something bigger” in the game.

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Not that many raid leads demand that people using voice programs have a mic and use it. It’s usually acceptable to just be able to listen.

I’ve taught friends several raids by walking them through cleared instances and telling them what to expect…and it’s much much faster and easier to do that verbally than typing. As I’ve also sat and typed out instructions for new players for the same raid tiers …took a lot longer and I couldn’t cover as much in as much detail.

Two reasons that voice programs are used in raids are to:
A) not only to verbally explain the fight and answer questions for the new players before the fight starts but also to help teach new players how to do the fights WHILST the fight is happening.
You can learn the strats from a typed script that the raid lead puts up, but all the good raid leads that I’ve played with also ensure they support the new people in their raid by repeating the instructions or telling the new person directly WHAT they need to do during the fight. And to do this by typing whilst they are also doing their raid job and making sure it’s typed fast enough so the new person or people respond quick enough is extremely difficult… a new player who doesn’t really know what is happening can and will respond to voice commands such as “John stop hitting” or “John run behind wall NOW” whereas expecting them to just do it after reading the fight from a script before the fight starts is not very fair on them in my opinion

B) organise and co-ordinate the fight, especially to rescue the fight when things go wrong … eg instruct which conq is to Rez a dead player or instruct them not to. To tell the person receiving the Rez if it’s safe to get up or if they have to wait. To re-assign people during the fight. To keep track on percentages between bosses. To remind and coach their raid force to react to things.
Believe me stuff can all fall apart very quickly if you can’t issue split second commands. Also if your raid group is not very experienced and/or do not understand the mechanics very well … and I’ve raided with people who do not grasp the mechanics after dozens of raids and do need the raid lead to coach them along each time. (It doesn’t mean they are a sub-par player …they do just fine on the classes they play, they just do not remember all the details of all the fights.) Or they understand what to do on the first class they took to the raid and the first tasks they were assigned but need as much support as a new player when they switch classes or get a new job to do.

Sure the higher tiers are complex but they wouldn’t be much fun if they weren’t. When you really understand the mechanics of the fights you need much fewer instructions and could probably do them without voice if you had scripts like HenryX developed to click to put % numbers into the raid chat so long as nothing goes wrong …

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after last restart/update you can be sure who destroyed this game)

The answer to Raidfinder is simple. Funcom has to add an incentive to attract the player base back to T1 T2 T3 as well as the Old world & Khitai dungeons. I will provide an easy fix for this with minimal development time. I will use Tier 1 as an example.

  1. Weekly Quest to complete all Tier 1 Raid instances. Rewards a cache containing X amount of gold between 1 and 3 tier 1 tokens, 5% chance of Chillcrawler Champion pet and 100% chance of receiving between 5 and 15 Atlantean Shards.

  2. Additional personal loot each player gets for each Boss Kill as well as a new Raid/Dungeon wide Buff.

Tier 1 Kylikki`s Crypt

Upon entering the instance each player is buffed with Mark of the Crusader which gives a 250% increase to Mastery XP. ( Stacks with halloween Candy Max 300%)

Honorguard - Receive randomised amount of up to a max of 5 tier 1 tokens. 3% chance to receive cache of 5 Tier 1 tokens. 2% chance receive between 0 to 15 Atlantean Shards. 5% chance of receiving Champion of the Honourguard pet. 0.5% drop chance of Hyperborean warrior morph.

Kilikki - Receive randomised amount of up to a max of 5 tier 1 tokens. 100% chance receive between 0 to 15 Atlantean Shards. Reward player 3 mastery points & 1 expertise. 5% chance of receiving of ghostwolf pet. 5% chance to receive cache of 5 Tier 1 tokens. 0.25% chance to receive swift Hyperborean seige mamouth.

Tier 1 Yakhmar`s Cave

Upon entering the instance each player is buffed with Mark of the Crusader which gives a 250% increase to mastery XP.

Yakhmar - Receive randomised amount of up to a max of 5 tier 1 tokens. 15% chance to receive cache of 5 Tier 1 tokens. Reward player 3 mastery points & 1 expertise. 20% chance receive between 0 to 15 Atlantean Shards. 0.5% chance of mini Yakhmar.

Tier 1 Vistrix

Upon entering the instance each player is buffed with Mark of the Crusader which gives a 250% increase to mastery XP.

Vistrix - Receive randomised amount of up to a max of 5 tier 1 tokens. 15% chance to receive cache of 5 Tier 1 tokens. Reward player 3 mastery points & 1 expertise. 20% chance receive between 0 to 15 Atlantean Shards. 0.25% chance of receiving mini Vistrix pet.

The main reward would come from AA advancement allowing players to progress much faster. If this formula was applied through tier 1,2 and 3 players would be prepared to take on the much harder raids of T4 T5 T6

Adding the Mark of the Crusader buff allowing the 250% increase in Mastery XP to all existing Dungeons from the old world to K6`s in Khitai would give an incentive to play these wonderful dungeons more frequently.

Too avoid people farming the same dungeons or K6s ie flame vortex palace. The crusader buff would be on a daily lockout or have diminishing returns on the buff for same dungeon completion. Giving the incentive to the player to do other dungeons in the game to get further AA advancement.

Note : The Mark of the Crusader Buff which would increase 250% Mastery XP is just a place holder amount. The real buff would have to reflect an amount that would not allow a player to max out AA advancement within a week of farming every dungeon and raid in game. The Buff would likely be somewhere between 100% to 250%. Alternatively the Buff could have diminishing returns i.e. for every death the player incurs a 50 point penalty on the buff scaling down to a minimum of 50% down from 250%.

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The shards everyone has been asking for years… Mastery?? Not sure many care about that, unless you have a fresh toon… Most vets have many many toons full AA and some have thousands of unspent AA pts, so just adding more isnt much incentive.

Love your ideas Jonnyx! :slight_smile:

Your right of course admittedly these changes are targeted towards new players and to encourage existing players to max out there AA advancement a lot quicker by doing normal raids and dungeons again.

Officially large content development has stopped in AOC only small changes seem to be the way forward for this game and this would be at least a good start to counter the raidfinder issue. Changes i suggest would take minimal development time to implement but would re balance the end game content in a way that would make raidfinder less attractive to a player when logging on.

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Thanks Chanya :smile: AOC is such an amazing game with all its content and unique gameplay which is not found in any other mmo. I just find it a real shame that once people reach level 80 now that the fastest progression route Funcom has layed out ,is to do raidfinder 24/7 and then farm world boss every month for a week. There is no incentive to do anything else, that is almost 90% of the game not seen by the casual player. Funcom really need to re balance the scales when it comes to level 80 and beyond.

And i have yet to find another MMORPG with such an engaging combat-system as AOC :slight_smile:

Love the combo-systems and the fatalities!

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The low tier raids require practically no more organization than that of a raid finder, they just aren’t automated. Giving incentive to T1, T2, T3 while everyone is max AA and using T4 gear is just replacing one raid finder with something requiring the same level of teamwork and brain power - when you’re so overgeared, it’s still just a braindead loot pinata.

The only way to overhaul the RF plague is to rework the obsolete raids, even if all that’s done is making T2 and T3 something relevant for the power items available now. Which works both ways, armor quality better than RF gear, which is T4. And encounters that are tuned up for that gear, remember that T2 is tuned for T1 gear and no AA, and T3 was originally tuned for T2 gear and no AA (overtuned though it was, 5 bosses were completed by many guilds before the launch of Khitai).

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Just add 25 Shards per Raidboss and people will raid lower tiers again.

Add T2 Unchained as T7. So Veterans have to do something else than equipping there XX toon with T6. Nerf T5 and T6 a bit for the casuals, so they have something to raid after RF.

25 per raidboss? So 475 shards weekly from t1+t2+t3 dont u think thats abit generous lol

Or 500 if you count champ :stuck_out_tongue:

25 per boss would be awesome. That way we could all get fully gemmed out rings in a matter of weeks and not have to bother with raid finder at all!

thats what we veterans want, but if you want the game to change, make realistic suggestions or its a waste of time and exposure for funcom to read. :roll_eyes:

Just put a weekly quest that rotates complete X raid bosses/instances ,imo t3 and above and make it reward same shards as rf without the extra boxes or the double chance.Do the same for half amount for a dungeon quest.The solo crowd can stick to rf ,those who wish to play with their friends can do everything ,content gets recycled ,something for everyone …who knows ,maybe some players will find out that playing with others and communicating is also fun :stuck_out_tongue:

I think its safe to say funcom doesnt want to increase the pase of obtaining shards. And frankly, I dont think we want that either. What will funcom add as reward in raidfinder once everyone has full t4 + two decked out rings? (something many players already have)? Cosmetics wont be enough, so new strong powergear will be added that make further parts of the game obsolete.

you said it yourself, many players have it already the only ones who dont are new players. They’re so far behind the power curve because they have to sit in raid finder for months on end.

The community calls these RF peoples noobs but do you blame them when its the only way to get the best rings?

RF should help players get into content and experience true raiding (t5/t6)


Khitai 6 mans should drop shards as well as unchained dungeons. That would increase the content being ran other than just RF. Thats what we want right? people actually learning their classes not afking in a raid finder group

first of all, you dont have to do raidfinder to get gear good enough for high tier raiding. And getting the raidfinder rings have no impact on you being able to do t5 and t6 raids. And most raidfinder exlusive players with t4 gear doesnt even know the strats so why should we make the road to full gear shorter?

Secondly, raidfinder rewards started so high in quality that going forward from here they would need to add something thats either same level as t6 or stronger. Thus, increasing the pase of obtaining shards also just increase the pase in which they need to add more rewards thats better then t6. It would kill high tier raiding.

Im all for alternatives in obtaining shards, but not increasing the pase of getting em.

Even tho I dont see the point adding more power to characters in this game, I think its gonna come at some point. So A suggestion that could solve the issue of upcoming RF gear competing with T6 gear, is that they add sockets that you buy from the NPC for shards, to put on your existing armor pieces. Then you buy gems specific to these sockets.

Raidfinder only people, put their socket in their t4 armor, T6 raiders put it in their t6 armor. Good incentive to start t6 raiding.

they need to give an option of obtaining the same ammount of weekly shards as in RF some other place in the game (rotating weekly hardmode). doing this would put RF quest on cooldown, so you can’t do both.

doing RF is absolutely dreadful and not what I want to spend my gaming hours on.

I respect some people enjoy it. But let’s face it, for a seasoned player it’s a disaster in a the games artistic(gameplay) POV.
Also a disaster for new aspiring players who have learn the game through RF instead of 6mans and real raids.

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