reasons for the raid changes

[Possessed_Mithrid]

Mclovin,
I'm not even certain we disagree on principle. We both recognize the importance of having the caps, and the challenges they bring.
I think we both are looking at the same boundary debating how far in the G-S-B ratio the line should be.
My perspective is gold should be extremely tough, make it rare... Yours is that it shouldn't be so rare as to make it impossible for the majority of the players.
The challenge is defining what level of difficulty gold should be... How rare should it be?

Also, as far as the cap limiting guild members from participating... I think its plausible/designed for instance that a full top guild could easily run and overlapping VG, GK and SP raids... I suspect this is one reason for reduced cool down times as well. A thought anyway.

[Fizz_JohnJSal]

Venan needs to be able to find a middle ground where all players can be happy and still enjoy a challenge.

Maybe, maybe not. I am a casual player and don't care one bit about the leaderboards. However, it's already hard enough to earn all the valor you need to get a full set of gear (and then gems after that!), and to make it even harder to get Gold (and therefore get less valor per raid) is very disheartening. Even playing casually with the goal of getting valor to get gear (to then move on to get more valor and more gear), the prospect of no longer getting Gold very often isn't any fun.

Playing devil's advocate...if you're casual, why do you expect the same amount of payout as a hardcore gamer from a raid? Doesn't make sense to invest less time than a hardcore gamer, but still get same payout as him.

Why not think of gold timing as a privilege and silver as the standard?

Because I don't really consider it "hardcore" to simply want to get the only gear available to me in the game. You HAVE to earn valor to get the higher tier gear, and it seems silly to just stay in T7 or whatever gear when you're level 30.

[Fizz_JohnJSal]

I can respect that John, however the numbers are indicating that with Guild Loyalty maxed...Silver rewards now are equivalent to 1.5 Gold (possibly even better..I still need to fine tune my estimates)..in which case your difficulty level of earning gear/gems hasn't changed if a good casual guild hits silver every time, in fact it got a tad easier. Personally I think Venan did it on purpose. The new Gold is actually a bonus over anything available in 1.5..so why not make it harder to achieve.

I've been trying to get this question answered for days. Are you saying that the +10% guild rewards (from loyalty) applies to valor and hero score? I didn't know whether it only applied to guild-specific rewards like power and prestige.

Also, only 10% more on Silver isn't the same as Gold, so does that mean the valor rewards have been increased for the raids?

[CrackaG]

Lets do the math on this. Lets say a 1200 wave raid with 30 people at say 18 stam. That is 270 attacks. 45 min to refill. Another 270 attacks. Total at 540. Another 45 min. Guild raid time at 1 hour and a half. 810 attacks. That time frame is way past gold. So silver is the norm now. Now say 30 people at 50 stam. Thats 750 attacks. About 2 hours to full. So 1 hour and thrity min for gold you would have to attack again with everyone again with 30stam. 15 attacks each person 450 attacks. Raid was at 1200 waves. No way get gold unless everyone spent gs. Oh and 30 stam is 1.25 hours. Well it will be close. Check my math on that.

[Talizorah]

I would like to see the cooldown shortened considerably for goblins since the cap is only 10. It is a raid most guilds like to train our newest members on. The way it is now, only ten people get to run it every two hours. It's hard to get our low lvl members used to raids if they aren't on to make the 10 card team.

[Marconious]

Here's what Venan doesn't seem to get...failed raids dont get people excited to play this game more...successful raids do! Players are happier, so they stick around longer and play more. The raids were perfect in 1.5. Challenging and rewarding at the same time. Now they are longer, tedious, boring, and a diminished sense of comradely. It's simply less fun to play now.

[Darkhorse]

Here's what Venan doesn't seem to get...failed raids dont get people excited to play this game more...successful raids do! Players are happier, so they stick around longer and play more. The raids were perfect in 1.5. Challenging and rewarding at the same time. Now they are longer, tedious, boring, and a diminished sense of comradely. It's simply less fun to play now.

After implementing our changes on Thursday our failure rates are WAY down in most raids. There are still a few that are higher than we would like, and we will continue to tweak those as we have more data. We'll continue to re-evaluate after this weekend.

[Possessed_Mithrid]

Lets do the math on this. Lets say a 1200 wave raid with 30 people at say 18 stam. That is 270 attacks. 45 min to refill. Another 270 attacks. Total at 540. Another 45 min. Guild raid time at 1 hour and a half. 810 attacks. That time frame is way past gold. So silver is the norm now. Now say 30 people at 50 stam. Thats 750 attacks. About 2 hours to full. So 1 hour and thrity min for gold you would have to attack again with everyone again with 30stam. 15 attacks each person 450 attacks. Raid was at 1200 waves. No way get gold unless everyone spent gs. Oh and 30 stam is 1.25 hours. Well it will be close. Check my math on that.

Cracka,
I'm not certain which raid you are referring too, also the 18 stam is low for every toon to begin with, but here is a specific example:

VG currently has ~2010 waves (it could be a bit more but I have been unable to pin down the exact number--stop dying or leaving the raid people..especially when you do it in combinations that allow for 2 or 3 wave scenarios!! )

40 Toons allowed
Gold is 2:20 minutes or 140 minutes

To Hit gold the Guild needs to burn 4020e in 140 minutes or roughly 28.71 e/min
There are several ways to do this, by e/unit time or by total E generated. Ill use total e as its conceptually easier.
(sorry guys, you all know how much I love equations)

E per toon: Etoon = Estart + Ereg where Ereg = 2* (140/5) : 140 minutes to gold / 5 minutes per 2e

Etoon = Estart + 56 (NOTE: ignoring E Regn enchant or elixirs...assuming all standard E regen rate)

Full 40 toons = 40*Estart + 2240 = 4020 e for gold in nick of time.
(Solve for Estart)

So the amount of E each of the full 40 toons needs at the beginning to hit Gold without burning:

Gold: Estart = 44.5e
Silver (40 minutes more): = 28.5e

To Hit Gold without burning, with no time margin, requires the Guild to fill all 40 spots with max e toons, with at least 26 of them Lvl 4 loyalty toons, who contribute e the whole time. Assuming a guild has 80 -100 members, and many Lvl4 or Lvl5 loyal members...this should be feasible.
Is it difficult: Hell yeah...impossible...nope, especially if you have 100 toons in a guild to choose from, to fill the raid.

Note Silver is quite reasonable.

Granted every Raid needs an analysis, but this is VG. Gold is feasible without burning, yes Gold is a challenge...I think its about right. (My opinion on this last statement)

[Myainsel]

I have no problem with the idea that Gold should be a challenge, and not for everyone. My problem is with the idea that a raid cap means casual raiders are penalized. I enjoyed this game because it let me have fun raiding even on a busy schedule. I could grab my phone for ten minutes between classes, dump energy into a raid that was halfway over and finish last on RPP, and still be a worthwhile help to my guild. This is true whether my guild was full of hardcore 25k might players or a group of friends who enjoyed a game together. Not anymore. If I wanted a game that required me to sit and raid for hours at a stretch I would still be playing WoW.

[Oda_Sadaar]

After implementing our changes on Thursday our failure rates are WAY down in most raids. There are still a few that are higher than we would like, and we will continue to tweak those as we have more data. We'll continue to re-evaluate after this weekend.

I appreciate the tweaks Darkhorse, but reevaluating using this weekend's data will skew your data horribly because 1) it is a double valor weekend and 2) a lot of people received 5 free energy potions to burn. This weekend's data should NOT be considered representative as to tweaks already made nor used as a basis to make more.