RPG Transfer

When raiding, I often use the analogy that learning an encounter is like dancing, only with 24 people instead of 2.  Learning the steps can be a migraine inducing experience, but once everyone finds their rhythm, the fight becomes several minutes of effortless bliss.

So far, raiding in Sentinel’s Fate has been a refreshing change from The Shadow Odyssey and Kunark.  If I had to sum up the difference, I’d say that in many of those raid encounters, everyone’s main focus was to not be the goat.  But in Sentinel’s Fate, everyone’s focused on being the hero.  The way the fights reward and penalize you is very different, and from a raid leader’s perspective, I much prefer the latter.

Above:  The only way I like to see Venril Sathir. 

There are several examples of raid encounters that make raiders cower in fear, and turn raid leaders into bellicose tyrants.  The best one, by far, is the pre-nerf Venril Sathir encounter.  There were fail conditions upon fail conditions in that fight:

-  If your power falls below a certain percentage, adds spawn and the raid wipes.

-  If your power goes too high, you die.

-  If you don’t cure yourself of the noxious AE in time, you get hit for a ton of damage and huge power drain.  If you actually do live, you end up spawning adds and the raid wipes.

-  If you don’t have someone clicking the statues in the back of his room, adds spawn and the raid wipes.

-  If you don’t click the soulcube at 65% when he emotes, the raid wipes.

In addition, there’s the lovely fear proc, along with the random selection of people on the raid to be hit with a mana tap or power surge if they do so much as sneeze.

And just in case you weren’t sure who it was that screwed up, the person’s name would be plastered in big bright red letters across the screen to the entire raid.

This was a raid where I had to tell people that when in doubt, do nothing.  This was a raid where I had to ask people to not rez back in if they died.  There was nothing enjoyable about this encounter at all, and people had good reason to loathe it. 

Venril Sathir was about not being the goat.  People often held back out of fear of making a mistake, and costing the raid an important victory.  I joke with the guild that we’re probably the only ones who got through that encounter without anyone raising their voices at each other (at least when the mic was open).  But I don’t doubt that many guilds were strained to the breaking point over raiders losing trust in each other.  It’s one thing to have a challenging raid encounter, but the Venril Sathir fight actually encouraged guildmates to resent each other.

What I like about the Sentinel’s Fate raid content is that it focuses on giving a few people the opportunity on the raid to be a hero.  So instead of people raiding in fear of being the goat, everyone now is eager to push themselves more and be the one that really steps it up.

The very first fight in the Lair of the Dragon Queen is a great example of that.  Wyvernlord Tuluun does the usual stuff to hamper a raid, but his trick is that he will randomly blind one person, causing them to absorb a lot of damage until they either cure themselves at a nearby pool, or die.

Another person on the raid can help them out though, by right clicking their name and leading them to the pool.  It’s become almost a game within a game for our raid, as everyone tries to outclick each other in helping cure the blind people.  And in contrast to the Venril Sathir “JoeRaider has screwed up, everyone hate on him” message, the person who successfully leads the blind gets to see their name in nice, bright red letters for all the raid to see.  (For us it’s always “Draxer clicked the fastest, try again punks!”)

Raiding should be about being the hero.  I still remember my favorite raiding moment in Everquest, during the 10th ring war.  Up on that snow-capped, sharp edged, pixelated mountaintop, I was one of the lookouts for the legions of giants charging towards Thurgadin.  At one point, a few giants had slipped past our raid’s defenses and was getting very close towards the little dwarves that we had to protect.  I had to decide whether or not to abandon my scouting post, engage the giants, and risk missing a call of another wave of giants.  I decided to take the gamble, and I was able to snare them long enough for the reinforcements to come in and finish them off.  Luckily, I made it back to my post in time to scout my designated area and keep making calls to the raid.

The 10th ring war was one of the best encounters, because there were dozens of moments in the battle where individuals had to take risks, roll the dice, and possibly become a hero.  I get that same feeling from Sentinel’s Fate raids so far, and it’s a refreshing change from Kunark and The Shadow Odyssey.