Sentinel’s Fate Preview – Raids!

[Rjack]

http://eq2players.station.sony.com/news/read/current/3439

How many -

We have three instances launching with Sentinel’s Fate: Lair of the Dragon Queen; Perah'Celsis' Abominable Laboratory; and The Palace of Roehn Theer. Each of these has multiple encounters, and a challenge mode for one or more encounters within the zone. This should allow a large amount of replayability as players initially work their way through the instances and then can return later and work to defeat the challenge-mode versions of the fights within.

In addition, there are three contested raid mobs (and several more x2) encounters that will be available at launch. Each of the four-group encounters also has a normal and challenge mode.

Finally, there will also be a large two-group raid instance based in The Vigilant that takes players throughout the large, deadly ship.

(emphasis mine)

Does anyone else think that's a bit.. umm.. thin. Sure, if the 3 instances are massive with lots of Named (and not just a plethora of 'trash') it might be.. okay.. but.. umm.. I hope more is going to be launched after release.

[Keyh]

Well. It really depends on what all is there. One of those dungeons could be like VP.

[Rjack]

If -each- is like VP and EH, then.. well.. it's the same scenery for how many days, weeks, in a row?

The only thing I liked about the TSO raiding kill named here, kill named there, is that there was a variety of scenery. We weren't stuck in the exact same location for several weeks killing the exact same thing over and over and over and ov... with only one or two places we could go at all for those weeks and weeks and wee...

But, in comparison to the amount of content intended for small groups and below level cap (which becomes content for small groups at cap, especially the stuff 'rated' easy), the actual group content (i.e. full groups at cap) and the raid content (2x as well as 4x) looks.. really really thin, in my opinion.

Feldon has a break down by zone:
http://eq2wire.feldoncentral.com/2010/02/04/sentinels-fate-group-dungeon-raid-zone-list-by-difficulty/

This, coupled with other things I'm not sure are under NDA still (so I can't talk about them directly), I'm feeling like SF is designed expressly for the self-proclaimed casual with penalties for other gameplay styles. Not a solo-fest like RoK, but small groups of 'whatever' is the target audience.

[Keyh]

Well, TSO was a horizontal expansion, so comparing to that may not be fair. RoK had a bunch of different raids, but sans VP/OK, it was basically a room, or a few rooms, maybe some trash, and the mob.

TSO was also made specifically to make up for the lack of raid/group content in RoK from what I understand.

Maybe, the next expansion will also be a horizontal expansion (Velious) that will supplement the lack of high end group/raid content.

I understand what you're saying though. Looking at the same stuff over and over again does get boring. I just hope that they don't reuse heroic zones for their raid zones again like they did in TSO, that pissed me off more than having one unique zone ala VP ever would.

[Salurto]

3 Instances with 6 named each is 18 Raid Encounters to test/pull/learn. Another 3 contested, plus The battle on the Blackjack...sorry, the Strahl...erm, the Highwind...I think it will be interesting enough. They're also not counting Munzok, which has a ton of Lv 91 stuff and will take on the role SoH filled at the start of TSO.

[Glyphryk]

Three epic x4 instances is all TSO launched with, along with Shard of Hate as a bonus round leftover from the Kunark era.

I'll have to see what raid-quality gear looks like before I say anything about Munzok's Material Bastion serving as the bonus round this expansion. If the entry-level raid gear is ridiculous, it wouldn't be remotely worth the time required to do MMB every 3 days. Have to remember that the level cap didn't increase between RoK and TSO, so the level spread between the raid and the encounters was still the same for Shard of Hate. When the expansion launches and everyone hits 90, the encounters will be even-con to the raidforce. Maybe the gear will be worth chasing down still, who knows? But I have a feeling that we'd just be suckin' wind by even looking at MMB in the expansion.

So, three raid instances to start off with. Linear progression, from everything that has been said so far about the raid content. And a couple of contested raid mobs. I would have liked to have seen more contested epic x4 encounters (and no, NOT the exact same goddamned avatars that have been in the game since Echoes of Faydwer). But there's always room to throw more content in later on.