Tell me how it was grandpa...

That encompasses every part of the old raids that might even now make someone still appear bitter about them.


On the other hand, having myself been part of the cool kids, on the lead team during champions first hami win, I can say along with everyone else of that point of view, that while lagtastic and some times very messy, they were the most fun social encounters for the lvl 50 club the game has still ever delivered.

I think I now recall that. Was this the super-secret "use 24 rad defenders with 6-slotted snipe" strategy? That wasn't really all that secret.

In fact, it was the fact that Hamidon seemed to be vulnerable to such hyper-optimized strategies that caused me to step down from leading the raids on Triumph. Back then, I only told two people why: that's why. I was a strong proponent of open raiding, and I did not want to be a part of any strategy that excluded people from the raid. But those were the only kinds of strategies I could think of, which made me an impediment to my own strategic thinking. When I couldn't resolve that conflict, I stepped down.

I'm happy that when Hami finally went down on Triumph, it was in a 100% open raid. In fact, we might have been just the second or third successful open-to-all raid.

Agreed with most of your post, especially, "the Major Event status of the old raid".



Like you and tons of other people who led literally hundreds of old raids, I just don't find the new encounter being able to reach the level of fun that was possible with the old one.
I've been to one villain and one hero raid since the changes, and that's likely to be it, for me anyway.

You may have hit the nail on the head here; I'm certainly in the hundred plus old school raids attended group and I think you're right with this. Technically the new Hami probably is better, but the zone cap causes it to loose the special-ness that old Hami had.

I've been to I think 4 new Hami raids including the first successful test server one. Admittedly all of them were early in the process so they were rather disorganized but it was an overall disappointing experience. Now with the zone cap many don't bother trying anymore... and that same zone cap causes problems since you need specific AT combinations, or at least the earlier strategies did. I'll admit I haven't paid any attention to Hami since probably issue 10 so I imagine strategies have evolved. If you end up with lots of scrappers and no controllers you'd have to try and get people to leave so you'd have room for the AT's you need.

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

I don't understand where people are picking up this notion. I see all AT's welcomed at Hami raids. Somethings are always favored, but I haven't seen a raid where they say "We don't have X, so we'll call the whole thing off."

I know Virtue has pulled off a raid with somewhere around 30 people before as well. I'm sure with some planning some lower population servers would be able to pull it off. You might have to nit-pick a little bit at what AT's to bring though.

It is like a lot of the changes that have been made though the years...

I can look at it from all sides, look at it objectively, and say.

"Well, yeah...
I guess it is fairer, and
technically, this or that change is indeed better . . . "

But dang if I don't feel less SUPER after that change...

.

This pretty much sums up my experiences with the Virtue Raids. i remember we started a raid with about 30 people and were on the second round by the time we hit 40 in the Hive. It was a bit tough, but doable. Keep in mind this was using whatever AT's showed up for the raid, not optimized teams.

i recall one Virtue Hami raid where a few in the peanut gallery were expressing doubts about whether we could succeed because there were (OMG) only two Empaths at the raid. The raid was completed successfully.

i'd wager that a fairly active SG with skilled leaders, a reasonable mix of AT's and mostly competent players could run successful raids with no help.

Now here's an interesting challenge: running a Hami raid using no more than 3 teams. i'm pretty sure it would be quite doable.

Justice raiding is nothing like that. We post it in the two most widely known general-purpose global channels on the server (both of which people try to actively advertise to new players so they can find out about events.) It is usually posted at least one day in advance, and 3 days in advance is quite common. Often, but not always, a post is made on the forums. All these things are given extra advance notice for villain raids, because the lower population means that less notice may cause insufficient attendance.

Absolutely no preparation or planning is required for the vast majority of attendees. Instructions about how the leaders are planning the tactics are given at the beginning of every raid. (Most of the leaders have macros for this and they are readily passed around.) The instructions are terribly simple if you just focus on the instructions for your team.

The zone size limit is and remains a problem. Sadly, I just don't see what can be done about it with respect to getting significantly more people involved in a given raid.

Virtue is basically the same, besides the fact that our raid days are set and tend to alternate sides every other day. (makes it easy for most people to attend at least one of each raid a week)

Virtue does evac-less on both sides very smoothly (redside went even quicker than blue). Redside we also now rejoined the Masterminds with the raid, and brute/stalker-tank Hami.

The 'run faster' bit was held over from the Test Server practices, but some experimentation on early Virtue raids showed that if the raiders could get some support and cover right at the bloom from the alpha strike of blooming yellows, there'd be no need to evac. Stacked RA's blueside and the Warburg nukes redside provide this margin of safety. Plus we have a solid number of experienced melees (scrappers/tanks, brutes) who know the routine and can quickly grab the yellows as soon as they bloom. The two nuke raids were demonstration of this. They seemed to shake us out of our rut so as to try variations to 'the strategy'.

The last redside no-evac raid ran 22 mins from the start of the first countdown to Hami defeat, and it wasn't rushed at all for time. That shaves the raid duration to around half as long as an evac raid, depending how fast everyone regrouped after evac'ing.

I'd still recommend doing an evac raid to servers starting out. Once you have a core of experienced raiders who know what to expect, start running no-evac raids to make the whole thing run smoother and like clockwork.

I've visited several other servers to assist in starting Hami raids, as has Andra from the Angels. We learned early on that it takes a dedicated core group of leaders/raiders to get the ball rolling, who are willing to practice and understand the strategies needed. Once this group is trained, they can become the raid/team leaders and spread their knowledge and experience to whole teams of players and get the job done much smoother. This way, successful raids are created and participants won't go away discouraged or unwilling to try again (nothing kills raiding on a server faster than 8-hour failed attempts).

Kudos to all the Virtue raiders and leaders for making the Hami raid such fun. And thank you devs for a fun game element; it's greatly appreciated. (Now how about some more? )

Virtue Raids are scheduled:
Blue- Sat 6pm, Mon 8pm, Wed 8pm
Red- Sun 6pm, Tues 8pm.
Second runs are usually done immediately after the first if there is sufficient participation, which allows people who didn't get in to the first run to join in on the second. Best to arrive 30 mins early for a spot.

Test - Trying to figure out how First Son thumbnailed that picture above. Figured it out.

Just add th_ to the beginning of the .jpg file name.

Just a clarification: All times given are Eastern.

There are situations in CoH, typically related to large numbers of entities on a map (be it a zone or a mission), where the server is "lagging". That's why people experience it even when playing on good gaming PCs.

Think about the server as having book keeping to do, where it has to look at every player and NPC and update where they are and what their powers are doing. It has to do this in an eternal loop, checking constantly to update everything fast enough that the players experience a "smooth" reality. But in situations like old Hami raids, there is too much book keeping to do, and the server starts having to take longer on each update pass than it's supposed to. Players experience this as a dilation of "game time" - things move around slower than normal, and powers take longer than they're supposed to to recharge.

Our game clients don't seem to deal with this very well - they tell us our powers are recharged, but the server disagrees. The client tell us something has moved somewhere based on a prediction for smooth movement, but then the server tells it that it's actually back somewhere else, and we see things warping around or fading out of existence.

All 3 of my first lvl 50 heroes went to Hami raids, but it quickly became obvious my Grav Controller was the best choice. In fact, he always logged out in Eden atop one of the stone pillars.

First thing was that he got a snappy black tux with sunglasses to wear to raids, even though he is a blue-skinned alien with glowy eyes, because Capes+Auras=Lag. So his Raiding Attire was bemusing.

Second thing was that he had a Pet to target through. In the final phase, everyone with a hold went into the goo and spammed Holds on Hami. But most rigs could not render all the graphics, and frequently, Hami just disappeared from view and you could not see him to target him. So the preferred solution was to target a Pet, who could always see Hami and would attack. Singy was probably the best overall pet to Raid with because of his holds and extreme toughness. In fact, that toughness leads to the

Third thing, which was that during the Hold Phase at the end, I was in the goo, spamming Holds but keeping an eye on Singy's health. If it dropped ANY AT ALL, I immediately hit Fly and ran for the exit. Singy always lived just long enough to take all my aggro and get me close to the exit before I would take a single hit. I thus survived 3 Yellow Dawns!




As you can see from the Black Hole of Purple Names, my rig could not render all of the yellow mitos at the core of the disaster. You can pretty well figure that each Purple Name had a dead hero on the turf. And I see that we had not gotten to the Call For Vanguards and Geas yet when this Yellow Dawn popped.

This Yellow Dawn had had a particularly vocal griefer as I recall, and the broadcast had gotten pretty testy, whereas it was usually pretty funny. (At one of the last Raids, a tank named Yeti had the Lead Taunt duty, and someone hollered out to "Shave the Yeti!" so I responded, "Shave the Yeti, Shave the World!" to much loling. I think this sort of silliness was an endearing aspect that gets fondly remembered. The jocularity, that is, not my particular lame joke. )

The griefing did get old, though. Folks dragging monsters, triggering Rain of Fire on Hami, running a Fire Aura with a Cape on non-fire heroes, etc. And upon occasion, as you see, the griefing worked, and Mr. Vocal was extremely pleased.

As a result of my many, many Hamis, my 4th lvl 50 was totally Hami'd out the moment he hit lvl 47. But then IOs showed up, and I have not been to any of the new Raids.

Ah, well, Them's Was The Days.

FYI, things disappearing has nothing to do with someone's rig. It's a hard coded limit on the server side as to how many objects can be sent at one time. It's part of the reason the zone cap was lowered.

I log into the game to play a game. If I want to socialise online, I come to the forums. I am highly intolerant of in-game gameplay that has me sitting on my hands with nothing to do BUT make lemonade an socialise. Socialization in the old raid wasn't the intended activity. It was the consequence of a LACK of activity.

Put it this way - reward notwithstanding (I didn't care about Hamidon enhancements anyway), the old Hamidon raid was just a lot of standing around even at the BEST of times. And I'd rather kill stuff than stand around.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I'm not sure if this is throwing BaBs under the bus (again) or giving him credit...

It's credit. BaB did yeoman's work on the new raid. Not his fault most of the people who really like organizing raids were gone to a game that let them do that by that time.

Also: BaB jumped under that bus himself during Issue 9 beta by admitting the design was significantly his idea, which is also why he was monitoring the beta test attempts. This is public, if not common, knowledge.

Yea - talking about the Hami raid from back in the days of Hami Buds - ugh! As someone whose only 50 back then was a scrapper, I was DEFINATELY pleased when the Buds were removed.

As for the difference between pre- and post-i9 raiding, I'm one of those people whose never done a Hami raid post-i9, so I can't really identify a preference. However, I WAS one of the people who always felt a revision of the Hami experience would be desirable - the old experience was a little too autopilot for my tastes.

So, why have I never participated in raids post-i9? Well, I keep meaning to, just to try out the experience, but there's no real compelling reason to do it anymore! Tangential changes to the game have, I think, had a much bigger impact on Hami raids, than changes to the raids themselves! Back in the day, stocking characters with Hami-O's was the way to tweak their efficiency - post-i9, IO's generally offer much more. Most builds these days need, at most, a few Hami-O's to be at peak efficiency, and you can just buy the few you need, or get Synthetics.

As much as I felt that a revision was needed, therefore, I DO kinda miss Hami raids being a compelling end-game thing to do. I'd like to see something change (not necessarily to the raid experience, mind you - since I have yet to experience it ) to make running Hami raids more important, or more rewarding. Perhaps they could be the ONE thing in the game that offers both merits AND a drop? Obviously, the number of merits rewarded would have to be lowered if that were implemented - just spitballing, here.

I have often wondered if one way to encourage more raiding and also bring some of the server-wide community aspect back into Hamidon raiding would be to add server-wide rewards to the encounter. Suppose that every time Hamidon is defeated on a server, that server gets a server-wide -5% debt reduction, or something like that, for 48 hours. Something similar to the zone-wide buffs in the PvP zones, but across the entire server.

Perhaps the bragging rights of being able to say that you helped reduce debt across your entire server for a couple days would add sweetener to the encounter. Maybe the buff could be randomized and include interesting but not game-breaking buffs. Things like 10% movement buff, 1% recovery, 2% accuracy, 0.5% damage, stuff like that. Just thinking out loud.