First, I would like to apologize for my upcoming long winded post, and prematurely apologize for I'm sure of the ensuing immature comments that will come from this post by people that can only offer criticism with four letter words, or just flat out obscenity.
Second, I would like to take a chance to thank you for what appears to be listening to the "community" to some capacity. I can only imagine the annoying task of having to pilfer through all of the negativity to get to very few informative posts, complaints, or suggestions. I don't envy that position.
I come here today to respectfully offer some suggestions, some have been said on the forum, some haven't, and I welcome my fellow guardian to please [b]respectfully[/b] add their input as well, as there are some great minds that do play this game, and do come up with great ideas.
I have a 9 man clan on here, and we discusses theses changes regularly, and we feel we generally have some good ideas, so I'm here to share some of them. We play on PS3, just for a console reference.
First I will start with the most recent announcement of upcoming changes to the raid.
We understand the desire to add complexity to the raid, and we respect that, and look forward to that. We have become very efficient at doing the raid in normal, and we enjoy our time in the vault most of the time. Nevertheless, there are many bugs that need worked out.
A)During the Templar fight, there are instant sacrificing goblins on the left side (when facing the templar). A goblin will try to turn the corner in the little pathway area and get hung on the edge, and he glitches out and instant sacrifices, EVERY time. It took us a long time to figure out how and where we were getting sacrifices when we were literally killing everything in sight. This happens on all 3 stages of defending the confluxes as well.
B)Gatekeeper fight - getting suck behind the portal when you have the relic and having to wipe is a real annoyance. Granted it only adds a few minutes to wipe and do it all over again, but the real annoyance comes with ammo, especially when you HAVE to wipe due to mysteriously no being able to teleport with the relic.[b] It takes over 1 minute just to get the menu to load so you can even use ammo synthesis. [/b]
C-1)Atheon - We as a group honestly don't care about the baby bumpers. We also honestly feel though, that if we as Guardians can fall to our doom, then so should any enemies we are tasked in killing. We have never tried to push Atheon off, but I think it should be a viable option in normal mode. The largest issue with fighting Atheon is once again being stuck behind the portal, sometimes having to teleport up to 5 times to get back to put damage on Atheon. As relic runner, when I get stuck behind, when that happens, my other 2 guys with me are blind by the time I finally do make it though the portal.
C-2) Atheon - Teleportation selection - My group also has no issue with random selection as all of our players are well versed in what to do at all positions during all segments of the Raid, there are a few concerns though, especially in statements made on the purpose intended behind the raid. It is supposed to be required to know your roles. That poses some difficulties to team dynamics. We understand wanting to add in the added difficulty, and we welcome it, but we also feel there are better ways of going about it. Maybe the randomness should come from teleporting the 3 individuals that do that highest damage during that span of Time of Vengeance. Then almost by default, you would be guaranteed at least 1 different person being sent each time.
We try and bring new people through the Raid weekly, mostly ones that have never seen the inside of the vault. With a random teleport, I fear it will really decrease the amount of VOG virgins that will ever get the chance to even experience the Raid. The easiest part of the Atheon fight is sitting on top of the portal pillar and popping Supplicants, and is always how we break in a new guy. It gives him experience on what portal is what, what exactly the ToV is, and if he goes down, he can be revived easily enough. So, there has to be some way to give some sort of "known randomness", like the above suggestion of the 3 players that inflict the most damage to Atheon are sent every time.
(had to break it into 2 as original post was too long)
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Edited by excat_56: 10/20/2014 12:00:25 AM(continued...) D) Raid RNG - Awesome, I love it. We don't think you should get the best gear every time. We also don't think you should be limited to doing the Raid once a week. Some suggestions we have come up with 1 - A ticket system, like the Queen's Bounties. Possibly make the tickets a reward from doing the Nightfall, the Weekly, or this may even be a chance to add in some addition content. Honestly though, players that can not complete the Nightfall, really do not need to be in the Raid. The Raid should be earned, as Guardians should have to prove their self to get rewards from the VOG. Also, it gives players a chance to run a "mini" Raid as a 3 man group, and it gives further incentive to do the Nightfall, and you never know, new clan members may be made, new friendships, whatever, it adds to the social aspect. Whatever means though, it should be difficult, but there should be a way to do the Raid more than once. Each ticket expires upon completion of the, and each ticket is broke down like a bounty. There are 4 "boss fights", so each ticket starts out 4/4, and upon completion of each, the count is reduced until the ticket is expired. You can then do the raid without a ticket to further help your fellow Guardians, and you will not get rewards for it, but possibly at the end you get points for 1/2 a ticket. So for every 2 times you help a group through that you don't get rewards, you are then rewarded with an additional chance yourself, this would once again give more incentives to help out your fellow Guardians. Example: First Nightfall run yields standard reward + 1 ticket to Raid, then each Nightfall completion after that only gives an additional ticket. This would further give incentives for players to help out the fellow Guardians in completing the Nightfall. I've ran across so many people that have never completed the Nightfall. I try to always help them through if I have the time. So you are rewarding the Guardians that are going above and beyond to help out their peers. It builds on the social experience and the community experience. There should be a max set though, and it should be different for both Normal and Hard modes. Say each Guardian is eligible to go though Normal 5 times, and Hard twice in a week. You then give players that are helping out others more incentive to keep doing so. 2) Ticket & point system - Takes it one step farther. Instead of giving rewards from the bosses, give points, that are then redeemable at Raid shops in the vast emptiness of the Tower. Chests should remain the same, as you should have complete RNG from the chests. I imagine in the coming months/years the Tower will be a booming place, but this is just another thing that could be added in. Example - Each boss is worth 15 points - so 60 pts per raid. A piece of gear is 50 points, and vary weapon prices based upon rarity. Get creative in how you charge for the gear and guns in the shop, and make Guardians make tough decisions on what they need or what. Do they want to buy a piece of gear, a gun, or a 2 lower quality raid guns? 3)Entire team RNG - All members of the fire team receive the same loot. After all, it is TEAM, so the work is, or should, be shared evenly, why not reward everyone the same? As always the chests should remain RNG. Everyone gets the same armor piece (but for their specific class), or everyone gets the same weapon, or everyone gets shards, etc... Equal responsibility = equal rewards ?? E) Raid difficulty - There should be distinct differences in the raid between Normal and Hard mode. There should be differences in the boss fights, differences in the enemies you face, not just over powered the enemies. I also don't think the no revive thing works out very well. With constant connectivity issues, enemies that glitch, and server lag, respawns should be available. Instead of no respawns, when a player dies, a Praetorian (inset any enemy) is spawned. After he is killed, then he gets a 1 minute respawn timer. This allows when a player is dropped (connectivity issues), and comes back in, a chance to get them back in the game. It would also prevent abuse of the respawn system, as an enemy spawns when they die, and if they bail and try to come back to exploit a respawn, a second enemy is spawned, so you are actually hurting your team by trying to exploit. F) Voice communication errors - Past 2 weeks, when you join in with your fireteam, random players can not hear each other. Example, 3 people join me getting ready to do the raid. 1 player can hear everyone and everyone can hear him, 2 players can hear 2 others, 1 player can hear no one, but everyone can hear them. Everyone has to reboot systems, as backing out of the game doesn't fix it, only PS reboot. Is this something that can be addressed? We are all "Open" NAT types, and after the reboot, sometimes 2, everything is fine, so it seems more on the server end. H) Weapon vault - For 3 characters, the weapon vault is actually pretty small. As you play though raids, strikes, nightfalls, get rewards from pvp, etc., you start to get quite the collection of gear, and while it may not be practical to keep a large amount of weapons on you at one time, it's also not practical to break down weapons you've worked hard to get. A lot of Guardians are like us, we have our "go to" weapons for doing the VOG, or different go to weapons for for different element buffs, but we don't want them on us at all times, and we like to experiment with other guns when we get the chance, but don't have room to keep them in the vault. Sincerely 3 Way Super