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Joined: Jun 15, 2006 Posts: 30 Location: North Carolina
Posted: Thu Nov 02, 2006 5:08 pm Post subject:
I have been on a bad attendance for a while due to RL issues,work schedule and fixxing to be out of a job has physically,emotionally kept me from playing and at the same time enjoy it.I have also had surgery performed on my right wrist other day which is not helping due to being 1 handed and useing my left which is rough to even peck type atm lol...
I have also had surgery performed on my right wrist other day which is not helping due to being 1 handed and useing my left which is rough to even peck type atm lol...
I told you that all that self abuse was going to come back to haunt you.
;p
Hope you recover quickly - the game is somehow less abusive in your absence...
D. _________________ --
Decimator Genome Reseekwensed , Warrior
Joined: Jun 05, 2006 Posts: 42 Location: South Florida
Posted: Fri Nov 03, 2006 11:17 am Post subject:
I would be up to doing some of the easier content once in awhile. Let's face it, people like to win stuff, and doing raids in Time, for example, is great because a lot of loot drops there. There is one other thing that I was looking at, and I don't know how much of an impact it makes. In fact, this could probably be better served in the thread that dealt with dkp and loots, but here goes. I was playing with some of the numbers on the dkp page. On the average, and this is pretty consistent throughout, a raid nets a person 0.4 dkp. However, starting cost for an item is 5 dkp. That means that you have to attend an average of 12.5 raids to recoup the points spent on one item. I know this may sound bad, and i dont mean it to be, but maybe there is a way to play with the numbers so that it changes the perception a little bit, even if the overall effect has a minimal impact. Unfortunately, for many, perception is reality. =/
/stirs the pot
Anyway, no matter what is decided, I will always make every attempt to be on as often as I can. cya tonight. _________________ Mercenarie - 74 Warrior
We now have over 1,000 views on this thread. Everyone's opinion is important, but I see responders Guessing as to why we've had attendance drop recently. What I would like to see here are the people who are Not attending atm to please explain why/why not.
Joined: Oct 27, 2005 Posts: 457 Location: Oklahoma
Posted: Fri Nov 03, 2006 3:34 pm Post subject:
refer to my posts on DKP debates merc
my own position, i found myself in a guild that has some conflicting times.
i will raid what i can when i can with AH regardless, upgrades for any are upgrades for all if you look at the big picture
The ultimate motivator for most people in EQ is loot, hands down. While we all enjoy each others company and raiding together, the sole purpose for raiding is to get loot that you could not otherwise obtain, and also to see zones that you would otherwise not be in.
In that regards, there is no interest to do PoTime anymore as the single group gear from TSS is equal or better. And even GoD gear in gvic is not as good. Only until we get to Tacvi would we see any significant upgrades from GoD progression. So that means that any drive to do Time and GoD will not get a lot of support.
What we need to motivate people is a clearly defined goal, and plan to accomplish that goal, which will lead to significant loot upgrades to all members. With each expansion, the single group gear that is available is getting better and better. We need to raise the bar on what we consider a worthy raid target in order to get and keep the attention of current and prospective AH raid members. If we consistently start linking 300+ hp/mana items into our respective guild chats, I am sure we will get a lot more interest from people wanting to join us.
The recent loot targets that include Devestation and higher end content in DoN are a great step in that direction. The current push to get to CoA and raid there is also the correct direction to be going.
However, if we do finally get all 6 MPG trials done, and we geto to CoA only to find that the raid targets are down, then what...
I would like to see AH put some effort into progressing into the raid content of some of the later expansions such as Demiplane for DoDh, and Deathknell for PoR. Along with the loot targets in Dev and DoN raids, we could put in the Deathknell and Demiplane access targets as alternates to CoA. Even a ToB clearing just like the old PoHate and PoFear raids would likley generate a fair amount of upgrades, but this would of course require a concerted effort to get everyone ToB flagged (and eventually Deathknell also).
One last point is the weekly raid target announcements. In order for members and apps to get the feeling that our leadership has a plan to get us where we want to go, we need to have clearly defined targets and alternate targets. Those who can raid every night will be there every night. But those of us such as myself who can only make it 1 or 2 nights a week have to pick and choose which nights to be there. And then there are those who can only raid specific nights, which means that the AH leadership has to plan to mix up the nights which we do certain targets in order to eventually include everyone. Unless those targets are specifically posted each week, then there is no perception that we have and are following the "Master Plan". Like Merc said.. for many, perception is reality.
So, to summarize, my take on what we need to increase the raid attendance is focus on content that is clear upgrades beyond what is single group obtainable and clear planning on the course of action to get us where we want to be. And then of course the execution to accomplish those plans and goals.
edit after reading Lacombs post:
The reason I have been missing some recent raids is primarly work and family obligations, but secondly because I don't know which nights we are doing what, so I don't know which two nights out of the week to place as a priority to log in and be there to help make sure we are successful.
For me, one of the most frustrating things is going OTM, taking an hour to prep, and just hitting one target in the zone, then going OTM for another hour, to hit someone else's target. And if we fail one of those, well, it sucks :[. Spend almost 2 hours doing absolutely nothing, and maybe 30 mins actually playing/killing.
I would much rather hit a raiding area such as Time where there's many nameds to kill without going OTM and prepping for what seems the entire raid.
Same thing applies to MPG trials: it takes us a bit to gather, we then have to re-gather in MPG, we then have to go OTM to the trial, and it's 9pm PST before we even start the trial. Then if we fail, we spent 15-20 mins playing, for 1 hour of prep. Then instead of doing something relatively close by, we go do something COMPLETELY different rather than attempting another trial (is lockout universal?) or doing something in RSS or whatnot.
I like killing, and the more killing, the better. I don't even mind clearing mobs, as long as there's lots of killing involved. And lots of killing generally = more fun, more loot, even if it's not so uber. So far the only thing I've seen 'rot' is a 1.5 chest loot which is understandable because you can BUY it in the bazaar :p.
Lastly, it seems like we're not focused. I feel like we just "generally" have the goal of hitting Anguish rather than every single night doing an MPG trial and really heading full steam towards it. There's very little sense of accomplishment in hitting what seems like random stuff half the time, and the other half "sort of" working towards progression.
For what it's worth, I think the main reason we don't attempt MPG trials every evening is because some evenings we just don't have the numbers or a good mix of classes to have a good shot at winning. Not to mention the times we do attempt something with less-than-optimal-numbers, there's the risk of losing - then people get annoyed because they think we're wasting time when we could be hitting a target that we can win with the people we do have.
The more random stuff like the Devastation mobs, etc. are there because they drop stuff that many people still consider to be upgrades - AH has always hit random targets for the sheer purpose of getting a few pieces of loot, even if there's no progression involved in doing so. Generally our policy is to try and balance between targets that we're just learning (and expect to maybe lose on a few times) and targets that we're able to drop without any real problems, so we don't end up spending 2 or 3 hours raiding with nothing to show for it.
Oops, one more thing. As far as OTM time and such, there's only so much that we can do - it's up to each individual to make sure that they read the boards, know where to be, and get there on time (or preferably 10-15 minutes early). However, not everyone is able to be online early and sometimes the exact meeting locations aren't posted for each week(/bonks for the SLs). I would say that unless a RL tells you otherwise (Vudu, Shie, Sul, Olidan), then meet in the PoTranq library if there is no specific meeting spot posted.
On our end of things, sometimes delays occur because due to turnout or other factors, we can't hit the target(s) we'd planned on and have to reassess what we can take out with what we have. Sometimes this takes a bit since we need to go out and scout other potential targets. For what it's worth, we used to do more extensive scouting when we were still actively working on PoP progression and we'd scout for about anything that we thought we could take. Taking this approach again will probably help, but it's a question of having people on early enough to go scouting - usually some of our SLs will go do this, but we've also been known to ask regular members to go scouting for us as well.
*edit* I stand corrected on the MPG lockout thingy, thanks Sue
Last edited by Ladile on Fri Nov 03, 2006 4:19 pm; edited 2 times in total
Losing an mpg raid trial only locks you out of the trial you just attempted. But then people tend to bail, so we no longer have the numbers for even an attempt at others. /shrug
Tetra - As far as levels go for applicant requirements, that is kinda set in stone right now. I don't think that asking people to reach level 70 is too much. It's below the level cap right now, and I even have alts at that level. For the AA, I am up for suggestions if someone wants to give them. Most classes have a requirement between 100-200 aa. Again, I don't see that as very many aa, but if you have a specific suggestion on how to streamline it I am all ears.
As far as the applicant process goes, it was broken for a long time. My understanding is that it is now fixed, but to be honest with you I don't actually know how it works. That pretty much was all Kor's area. I'm no good with social stuff and I always let her handle anything to do with applicants. I'll be talking to her and Vudu and see if I can confirm that everything is working and updated. If not, we may have to look into alternatives. I have a few in mind.
One thing everyone has to realize about this web page is that it's origonal creators no longer play EQ. As far as I know, none of us in the leadership position really know much about programming and some of the web page modules we can't even access to edit. It's very hard to make changes on the site for us. I had an entire applicant module written and ready to go, only to realize that there was no way to actually add it. That's one reason I had contemplated actually hiring a professional web page designer to make us a page that works. But then I came to my senses when I realized how much that costs.
Merc - Some of the loot issues may be my fault. I've been specifically targeting mobs in the 250+ hp range, and some of them are new. Because the quality is pretty good, win ratio has been decent (I had one night of failures, so sue me), and a lot of the loot pieces are new, most has been claimed by higher tier folks.
Honestly I wasn't sure what quality loot AH was doing when I decided to go for the DoN dragons and stuff. Elg gave me the idea to kill them, and after looking at them as targets my thought was that they dropped decent loot, were relatively fast so we could do both and maybe a third target in one night, and could be done with 35-40 people. So far they seem to be a decent choice to me, and if we keep repeating them the dkp price should drop. The trick is doing them enough that all the loot is claimed without having much rot.
Really though 12 targets is not that long. Assuming you attend all the raids and we hit an average of 3 targets per night, you should only take a week to have enough to purchase an item. Though really, applicants in theory should be going for items that cost between 1-3 points so it takes them even less time. We just have to make sure we are hitting targets where loot actually goes for that.
Okay long-winded post, but my thoughts in the few weeks I have been back are this. I think attendance issues are due to three things. First is the new expansion. I have seen people dodging raids to go exp. Of course, we don't require our members to raid and I have no issues with people wanting to exp. I think that this will ease up once people have maxed their levels and gotten most of their rank 2 spells.
The second thing is our win ratio. From talking to people, it apparently hasn't been too hot. We need to be more careful to pick targets that we actually have a good chance at beating. It's discouraging to lose night after night. Noone wants to waste three hours of their time for nothing.
The third thing is that we are getting into some issues with other guilds. There are a lot of guilds that still farm the Anguish trials and even some of our other content. This causes timer and lockout issues for people trying to raid with us, not to mention that some of our non-instanced content is downed by other guilds. There are also time conflicts to consider. Some guilds raid at the same hours as us, or they are not done when we are starting. I know several of our regular healers have joined bigger guilds. This is not a slam against them. I think that you should join whatever guild you have the most fun with, and guild > AH always. It's just a statement that losing several healers at once did hurt us and the content we can do.
And now I will shut up cause we are going out again. Keep the ideas and opinions coming.
I am one of those raiders that tries to show up for every single raid. However due to my RL, I dont get to make every raid, I have young children that tend to want to hear a bed time story from thier papa, and of course this is always priority over any AH raid, and managment wants it that way, as much as you may like to play this game, it should never get in the way with your personal relationships at home. I log in when all else is done and see where the raid is at, yes I have been known to catch up to an MPG trial at the last second, and bug people for buffs after they are well past the buff stage, annoying more than one person I am sure. This is not a malicious act, merely me trying to enjoy the raiding with my friends.
The difficult thing however is logging on, joining the raid of 30 people with 1-2 clerics and 2-3 druids, 1 chanter and a mix of plate class and DPS, there are a limited number of targets available to a group like that. As Shieara mentioned loosing a healer or 2 is a big blow, and takes time to fill in the gaps. By getting our numbers up of total raid force, we will be able to target our desired raids and hit them fairly quickly. There is no way to catalog the entire raid target list every night to know what is available for that evening and hit the target we feel is the best risk/reward ratio for the group on hand. So I suggestthis: If you are on and playing anywhere between 10 min and an hour before raid time, ask your local tracker to track any known raid mobs in the zone you happen to be in, or going through, and send a /tell to an officer or SL, this way we have a wider range to pick from.
Apps/ new members do not get discouraged, yes the higher tiers will get the 300 hp/mana gear first, but we rarely hit a target once and only once if it drops decent stuff, we will be back, and stuff will drop in value. I remember when I first started in AH, i was picking up upgrades the first several months at 1 and 2 points (because it was all I had to spend) my tier never rose, I would spend it as fast as I earned it, but after a little while you are in decent stuff, you dont spend any DKP for a little while and all of a sudden you are up to tier 10, then 15, thne 21 and so on. Yes I still get frustrated when Vudu claims something I want, but you know - he earned it, by showing up every day and plugging away at it, I just raise the value on him so his tier drops a little faster, not that I will ever catch him, but it sometimes he doesnt feel like spending 8 dkp on a 50hp upgrade with +5 avoidance, where I see it as a 100 hp +10 avoid upgrade - and the value is worth it to me.
umm, oh yeah - drop in attendance, yes our group is a non mandatory attendance, but please - if you are not going to raid, dont recruit people from channel during raid times, it is un-cool and a little akward for managment to ask you to not do so. We would of course preffer you to /lfg at raid instead.
Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2006 4:08 pm Post subject: Reasons not reason.
Well finally decided I would post too state my reasons. It's not a single one reason but many tht add up..Foremost reason is I'm back in school and that leaves me little time, secondly I have more then one toon yes mac is my main, but LFG doesn't work well for him so I box a 74 dru, 70 shm, and 71 war...all of which I would like to get to 75 also..so yes new exspansion has torn me between what to do at times...Like Elrico and others have said 200 hp gear is attainable by one group mobs now.. Also if I have to choose between raiding and personal goals on others toons some times that wins out now for the reasoning behind why it wins out....I don't mind loosing raids if we are learning a new target or anything, but to go to a raid where the RL does not explain an encounter well enough to where we have a chance to win or half hearted explaining things or just gives up way before it over does frustrate me. Especially when they are getting extra DKP to do so. So I show up on the nights I can first of all, but secondly it does depend on who is leading also too some degree..Well hope that explains a little. I do read up on some encounters I can, but not always do I know them.
Just to clarify, squad leaders gain an extra 1.0 dkp every...15 raids I think it is. They only gain credit towards it if they actually are in the raid dump as having led a group. I had thought it was broken, but maybe it is fixed again.
Anyways, there is no additional dkp on top of that for the raid leader, and if the raid leader is not leading a group they don't get any credit for squad leader points. Also if they are not playing their main they don't get credit. For example, my net gain of dkp this week has been 0 because I played Naylyn on the night I was able to raid.
Well, I just wanted to clarify that so that any new people knew what Mac was talking about. Gotta get ready for work now.
Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2006 1:18 am Post subject: my turn
I don't care what we raid what target we hit wether we win or lose or even wether my tier goes up or not. I also don't care about the gear if i like something i bid even if a tier 44 is gonna win it most times i am at a raid i have only missed them for personal reasons. One i have had two surgeries in the past two months and sometimes can't handle sitting up for the raid or two a friend needs my help on something and it happens at a raid time. My friends and my health will always come before a raid. But i do love raiding with all of you. So i try to attend when i can. The next thing is i notice there is a lot of discontent and bitching going on about dkp points and raid attendance yet people keep saying its not mandatory. Ya all need to lighten up EQ is a game and is supposed to be fun. Bitching whining and moaning take the fun away. Yes people have been doing lfg in channel at raid times and yes they should knock that off but also I have noticed that some ah people sit 2-3 hours a day doing the lfg thing before raids too. We need to all start playing as friends and having fun again and knock off the but so and so said this before raid if you have a problem with something someone says in channel at a raid time send them a tell such as /t Ninini hey don't be lfg at raid time in channel its not cool. and be done with it all this reading the whiny comments is killing my eyesight.
Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2006 7:38 am Post subject: Re: my turn
ninini wrote:
there is a lot of discontent and bitching going on about dkp points and raid attendance yet people keep saying its not mandatory. Ya all need to lighten up EQ is a game and is supposed to be fun. Bitching whining and moaning take the fun away.
Hmm I can see your point of view on this, but the point of the thread is just to try to figure out if there are things we can do to make AH more fun. When folks who used to show up regularly stop coming, we want to know why. Not because we want to call them out or lay a guilt trip on them, but just because we want to know if there are things we can change to make our raids more appealing (more fun).
In this thread a couple things have been brought to our attention such as cutting down the travel times and making sure to give sufficient explanation of an encounter before we attack it. I PROMISE you this stuff is not falling on deaf ears - each of the raid leaders will make a conscious effort to improve in these areas.
Joined: Mar 19, 2004 Posts: 1184 Location: San Jose, CA
Posted: Sun Nov 05, 2006 1:49 pm Post subject:
In reference to the application process....
The application hasn't been broken in a long time. Recently since I have not been raiding with AH, the application process was at a standstill since I was the only one that was able to add or approve app's and I had to go to Vudu for him to let me know who to approve etc. I believe that is all fixed and he has full and complete control of that as of today. I worked for several hours fixing some things on the website.
Also, you can now update your character level to the appropriate level. I will work on adding the AAs but please understand that will be a long and involved process that won't be done for several months. I am not a programmer so I have to be careful about what I change or it might break the whole thing.
Anyways, I think this thread is great and I am impressed with what you have recently accomplished. I may not be raiding with you all but I am still around. If you need me, you know I am only a /tell away. _________________ It takes talent to lose oneself. Now where was I?
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