34.1. Someone said most of your content is going to be for groups? Does that mean there's no raiding?
Vanguard is targeting the 'core' gamer. It will have three types of content: casual, group, and raid. Casual and raid will be the minority, with most content group oriented.
I know some people accuse EQ of being too raid oriented. I would say Vanguard will be less so. But we also think raiding is very important and fun. Our goal from the beginning was to create a world that would support core gamers, as well as more casual or people with less time, as well as those crazy raiders you refer to
Aside from that, well, Vanguard is a new game with a lot of new features and a whole new world to explore. I don't think we'll have any problem enticing hard core raiders to migrate over.
Source: Aradune Mithara
34.2.1. What about Zerging?
Obviously there is no 'official' definition of zerging, but to me it can mean two different things (though they can be combined):
1. Bringing more people to an encounter than the encounter was designer for, making the encounter therefore trivial, bypassing or minimizing the risk that was supposed to be present to justify the reward of beating that encounter. We hope to minimize this through dynamic threat assessment systems and some other ideas, where if too many people are brought to an encounter either the encounter changes in difficulty, or the reward doesn't drop, etc.
2. Defeating an encounter by just throwing people at it instead of employing other tactics. As long as this doesn't also involve #1 above, I don't have a problem with it. If the encounter can be beat using some tricky tactics involving certain classes or a unique or clever approach, that's cool emergent behavior. If it can also be beat by a more simple approach, sheer DPS, I'm cool with this too. Ideally the former would mitigate more risk and while the same loot dropped, because less risk was involved by use of better planning and tactics, the group is additionally rewarded.
Source: Aradune Mithara
34.3. What kind of Raid Loot/Rewards will you offer?
We are not yet ready to comment on the types of rewards you will receive from the raid encounters in Vanguard.
Source: Tagad
34.4. Can we have 'short' raids for players who are time starved?
Hrm... the primary goal of a raid or any other task that takes a lot of time, contiguous or not, should usually be an item. But as I've mentioned elsewhere, we can reward players with exp, knowledge (waypoints), flags, faction, titles, in-game recognition, etc. Nor do I have any problem mixing up the rewards.
Source: Aradune Mithara
Without digging deeper there is one simple definition of a high end Vanguard raid: Long contiguous period of time that requires a large organized group.
I wouldn't assume that's the only type of raid. In context I was referring to the assertion that splitting up a raid or some such into smaller segments, still requiring as much time in total, but not requiring one to do it all in one sitting, should yield the same rewards.
I don't think they necessarily should, but I want to stress that long contiguous raids are not going to be the only, nor preferred, way of earning high end rewards. I think splitting sojourns like this into segments is a great idea. Nothing's mutually exclusive.
Source: Aradune Mithara
34.5. Are you saying Raid Rewards won't necessarily be better than Group Rewards?
What I'm getting at is that there should be multiple routes to accomplishing goals in these games, including the acquisition of powerful items. The more variety the better in a general sense, but specifically if we can find multiple routes that appeal to players with different play styles or contiguous amounts of time to devote to playing, the more appealing the game will be to more people. And the more variety that will exist even for the same people who are simply in a different mood and want to try out different parts of the gameworld. -
Source: Aradune Mithara
Some powerful items will only be obtained by raiding, and by raiding I mean a contiguous amount of time spent involving significant risk and reward.
But please don't stop reading there. I think there are many other ways to create challenge and therefore reward than just a long contiguous raid. You can have a very long quest, but one that you can complete in short segments. In that case, you're able to spread the 20 hours out over days as opposed to having to commit to it in one session. You can involve extreme skill in an area, or extreme luck (just a super rare drop). You can do thinks like reward the player with an item, but then require that item in order to complete another series of quests, etc. So you can stop at anytime with an item that is X good, or keep going, eventually giving up that item, but hopefully earning an item that is Y (even better) good.
Anyway, lots of ways to keep things rare, exotic, intriguing, sought after without using only one or a few ways to obtain rare items. This allows players with different play styles, skills, etc. to obtain powerful items, although the extra effort to make the items distinct is worth it.
All that said, and here's where I risk some wrath, the most powerful items will likely require skill, challenge, risk, and contiguous time commitments involving a lot of people. The reason is that by putting all of those challenges together, you get a bigger challenge. The additional commitment to stay on those extra hours, the organizational skills necessary to lead and organize a large group of people, etc. There's still something to be said about all of that, even though it will be the minority of content, as per what I've commented on in the past.
Source: Aradune Mithara
34.6. What's your rationale behind making raid rewards better than most party rewards?
I probably should have been more clear and detailed. If one assumes a death penalty like Vanguard's, the deeper into a dungeon you go, the more risk you are taking on. If there are no safe places to break, or really log off, or pick up later the next day and continue on, you are risking a CR probably just as long and potentially more difficult. Likewise, you are involved in what is hopefully challenging combat involving a relatively large group of individuals who each have their own roles and responsibilities. People have jobs to do. There are leaders, sub leaders. Communication is key. There should be lots of opportunity to screw up, and the farther the group goes, the more painful screwing up ought to be.
So that's why I think, if accomplished, it should be thusly rewarded.
Source: Aradune Mithara