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Question - What is the purpose of having your own raid-boxes? (1 Viewer)

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Kimia

Level 2
Joined
Dec 17, 2023
RedCents
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I've seen some people that list their characters in their signature and some even have 20-54 char raids they box. So I've been wondering "to what end?".
I can't imagine they sub all of them, but how much use would F2P chars be in current or last year raid content, since they can't use the gear. I thought maybe they use them to farm raid gear for their mains, but I doubt a raid composed of F2P can tackle targets that yield gear as good as current top tier group gear.

Is anyone willing to enlighten this noob?
 
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Kimia said:
I've seen some people that list their characters in their signature and some even have 20-54 char raids they box. So I've been wondering "to what end?".
I can't imagine they sub all of them, but how much use would F2P chars be in current or last year raid content, since they can't use the gear. I thought maybe they use them to farm raid gear for their mains, but I doubt a raid composed of F2P can tackle targets that yield gear as good as current top tier group gear.

Is anyone willing to enlighten this noob?
Click to expand...
for many - this is a much cheaper (and despite the lack of movement, healthier) hobby than alternatives
 
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Kimia said:
I've seen some people that list their characters in their signature and some even have 20-54 char raids they box. So I've been wondering "to what end?".
I can't imagine they sub all of them, but how much use would F2P chars be in current or last year raid content, since they can't use the gear. I thought maybe they use them to farm raid gear for their mains, but I doubt a raid composed of F2P can tackle targets that yield gear as good as current top tier group gear.

Is anyone willing to enlighten this noob?
Click to expand...
@Kimia I agree with @Sic, and yes we use them to farm raid gear for our mains. You'd be surprised how much dps ftp boxes can output once they're fully geared in the best ftp stuff, with progression, bp's and clickies. My FTP 115 sk's and zerkers (using CWTN0) usually stand toe-to-toe or outdps regularly group geared 120ish chars...but you've got put some time and configure each group well ensuring they've all gotten all the necessary stuff.

It's also a different play style...you can't think the same way or force your way through things with gear. You've got to get creative and figure out how to get it done without that...

ferris buellers day off movie quotes GIF
 
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Time. Yes it takes a while to gear and play that many, but I can raid on my time. I don’t have to be held hostage to a guilds schedule, don’t have to wait for others if they’re taking a break, and I’m not holding others up if the wife wants to go out tonight. I can raid and play on my schedule when it suits me
 
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There are many spectrums of personal and professional fulfillment.... the ability to herd cats is something I admire, whether those cats are 54 humans, or 54 CWTN bots. For anyone aspiring to be a leader/manager in professional life, leading a guild on a raid is great practice for dealing with various personalities and drama. For anyone aspiring for a career in devops, coding, or automation... orchestrating a cluster of CWTN bots is great practice.
 
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Other players. Simple answer.

Other players leaving in the middle, going afk, not listening to directions, having pets up, having familiars showing and taking up space and the best one of all is when they take 15 minutes just to get to the zone. Like wth are you doing? Driving with Ms Daisy?

And then when they do get there, they still don't know how to operate these easy programs. I have raided with good and bad and believe me, I see why players compose their own raid force.

And sometimes you don't know who the other player is....they could be totally against the way your set up so to speak.
:)
 
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Redmonkey said:
Other players. Simple answer.

Other players leaving in the middle, going afk, not listening to directions, having pets up, having familiars showing and taking up space and the best one of all is when they take 15 minutes just to get to the zone. Like wth are you doing? Driving with Ms Daisy?

And then when they do get there, they still don't know how to operate these easy programs. I have raided with good and bad and believe me, I see why players compose their own raid force.

And sometimes you don't know who the other player is....they could be totally against the way your set up so to speak.
:)
Click to expand...
@Redmonkey ... just say it ... we're all OCD during raids ... whooozaaa

max greenfield fox GIF by New Girl
 
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Thank you all for your insights.

an_image said:
and yes we use them to farm raid gear for our mains. You'd be surprised how much dps ftp boxes can output once they're fully geared in the best ftp stuff, with progression, bp's and clickies. My FTP 115 sk's and zerkers (using CWTN0) usually stand toe-to-toe or outdps regularly group geared 120ish chars...but you've got put some time and configure each group well ensuring they've all gotten all the necessary stuff.

It's also a different play style...you can't think the same way or force your way through things with gear. You've got to get creative and figure out how to get it done without that...
Click to expand...

I understand wanting to raid on your own "terms and conditions", free from the hassle of raiding with a guild/other players. But I don't see how you could gear your mains with it. Assuming your mains have the latest expansion, they would have access to group gear that is better than previous expansions raid gear (iirc in ftp you are missing the last 3 expansions). Unless someone that returns to the game after a longer hiatus and isn't in a rush to lvl 125, but instead wants to see the content from the expansions they missed, including raids.
 
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I suspect the people who are boxing their own raids also enjoy the challenge/reward of figuring out how to make their team do the various emotes that are required by the raid scripts.

A few are also likely motivated to then turn around and sell the fruits of their labor to support the habit.
 
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Kimia said:
Thank you all for your insights.



I understand wanting to raid on your own "terms and conditions", free from the hassle of raiding with a guild/other players. But I don't see how you could gear your mains with it. Assuming your mains have the latest expansion, they would have access to group gear that is better than previous expansions raid gear (iirc in ftp you are missing the last 3 expansions). Unless someone that returns to the game after a longer hiatus and isn't in a rush to lvl 125, but instead wants to see the content from the expansions they missed, including raids.
Click to expand...

100% this. ITs a full-time job gearing a 54 man raid. Ive taken a break now and will be back in a couple of months. However, When i do come back i will be doing older raids and working on strats for each. Anything Pre-ToV exp is fun to do with 2x 30 man raids at lvl 120 or above. Its not too much DPS but is enough to still zerg it if needed
 
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For me it is a number of factors:
1) Complete schedule freedom, if I want to take my girl out for a date night or my work schedule has me zonked from a 10/12/14 hr day can take a night away from it and just push it to another day when I have the time/desire to go after it.
2) don’t have to deal with 53 other people on a regular basis under performing, being zoned out, missing emotes, lacking understanding. If some code doesn’t work or is buggy that is on me and nobody else. It also means that there’s no arguments about gear allocation, dkp, time spent bidding and distributing loot, etc. This also means that every character has 100% raid attendance in the raid, optimal gear placement (best bang for the buck on foci placement, weapon improvements, etc), etc.
3) I enjoy the puzzle of solving raid events for this format (coding emote responses, working with the mechanic limitations, etc)
4) It gives me a sense of challenge that the group game doesn’t provide for me, it also feels good making adjustments and banging down events all on my own.
5) Relatively low cost entertainment for the year after factoring in plat/krono accumulation from activities with my army, selling services, etc.
 
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I raided with a Box friendly guild on Bertox until the Great Banning wave of a few years ago - and lots quit after that. I had about 24 toons at that point and 6 Gold but FTP wasn't cutting the mustard.

I have never sold anything for real world $$ and I have a normal 9-5 job - so I could never afford to play 54 Gold accounts, so I transferred everyone over to play on Test where Gold is free. There are definitely some downsides to test - but those who play on test learn to deal with those.

The real surprise came when I leveled up 54 toons and I found I could beat current era stuff, and OMG what a rush when you beat something for the first time.

I am not doing LS raids yet. I didn't buy NOS for everyone when it first came out - so I am only TOL/COV raid geared - but I have also realized in my old age - its not a race.
There is an incredible amount of work that goes into gearing up 54 toons, Getting Max AA, Getting Type 5's and making sure everyone has their Badger and T3 Weapons. There are notebooks and spreadsheets everywhere - and it can become a real chore when you realize you have about 30 pieces of TS armor you need to make.

I'm not sure if it is OCD, but it is certainly a lot of work that you either love or you hate. You develop an affinity for your toons and you can see the improvements little things make.

Doing raids by myself has opened up a whole new world and given EQ a new lease of life. I don't think I could go back to raiding with just a few toons.

Now we have to get 54 toons through the Tower quest - because at the end of it all we will have a 16K Charm.
 
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Kimia said:
Thank you all for your insights.



I understand wanting to raid on your own "terms and conditions", free from the hassle of raiding with a guild/other players. But I don't see how you could gear your mains with it. Assuming your mains have the latest expansion, they would have access to group gear that is better than previous expansions raid gear (iirc in ftp you are missing the last 3 expansions). Unless someone that returns to the game after a longer hiatus and isn't in a rush to lvl 125, but instead wants to see the content from the expansions they missed, including raids.
Click to expand...
Spreadsheets are Awesome.
 
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Szazor said:
I have never sold anything for real world $$ and I have a normal 9-5 job - so I could never afford to play 54 Gold accounts, so I transferred everyone over to play on Test where Gold is free. There are definitely some downsides to test - but those who play on test learn to deal with those.
Click to expand...
The thought of raiding to see the older expansions is starting to appeal to me, since I missed everything after TBM. My main is lvl'ing to 125 and will get LS gear so he won't need any gear from older raids.
Would it be feasible to start building a raid on test for this purpose? How would I best go about doing that?
Things I start to wonder about:
-how many pc do you use to run 54 chars
-do you build your first group and lvl them before starting another group, or all at once

or maybe we can make a separate thread about the how of building a boxed raid force?
 
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Some people aren’t social. Some have weird schedules. Some don’t like relying on others. Some like the automation side more than the playing side.

In the end it’s sort of the natural evolution of “I box a character so I can accomplish more.”

I don’t like inventory management, so to me, managing the inventory of a raid would be torture.
 
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Mentis said:
Spreadsheets are Awesome.
Click to expand...
They really are….so many sheets make my tracking and streamlining so much more efficient

Kimia said:
The thought of raiding to see the older expansions is starting to appeal to me, since I missed everything after TBM. My main is lvl'ing to 125 and will get LS gear so he won't need any gear from older raids.
Would it be feasible to start building a raid on test for this purpose? How would I best go about doing that?
Things I start to wonder about:
-how many pc do you use to run 54 chars
-do you build your first group and lvl them before starting another group, or all at once

or maybe we can make a separate thread about the how of building a boxed raid force?
Click to expand...
Years ago I leveraged a raid gear tank and a cpl bers into 54 max aa and level toons at the time, then pimped them in cov, skipped tol era and attacked tol/nos in March of last year and had all 54 nos raid geared before Sept, with work I’ve been fairly buried but have been working on getting a second entire army setup, getting things setup to swiftly level/aa on way to 125, cleaning up bags/banks etc
 
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Kimia said:
-how many pc do you use to run 54 chars
-do you build your first group and lvl them before starting another group, or all at once

or maybe we can make a separate thread about the how of building a boxed raid force?
Click to expand...
I did a little writeup a few years ago - see my signature.
It is a little outdated - I have since added a 4th PC, and Unfortunately, I have given up on ISBOXER - because of performance issues, and of course I use LEM instead of Mq2Events.

I started with one group....Added a second group...then said WHY NOT add another 7 groups..and here we are.
I have also gone right back to square one - and started 54 toons and have gone through progression - currently they are lvl 65 and only allowed to wear what they loot!

Just do what is fun - it's not a race, and not a competition.
 
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I run 54 toons all gold subbed all have evolves. What I love is no one tells me I can’t have loot . No one to app to because let’s be real who the f cares what they think….. I am in current content with 54 toons and have the same amount of coin as any raid guild out there lol it’s my fun time..
 
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athor said:
How many toons can you play on a normal computer? 16 GB RAM, 4 GZ CPU... With the graphics options at minimum, of course.
Click to expand...

Before the latest patch the primary requirement was ~ 1 GB / ram per client + 4 GB for the OS. +/- depending on options.

With 16 GB of ram that's anywhere from 12-18 depending on how aggressive you are on the optimizations.
The frame limiter does a great job of dropping CPU usage down to almost nothing so I'm not sure what the current cpu core requirements are. Maybe 1x for which ever one(s) you have running 100% and maybe 3-4 background clients per core.

I have an old i7-6700k OC'ed to 4Ghz all core - but - its only 4 core / 8 thread. It has a NVidia 1070 GPU and 32 GB of ram. It boxes 12 before I start to notice much of an impact, and I can push it to 18 depending on what I'm doing.

I'm 100% CPU limited on this machine.

I have an AMD 3950x running stock speeds - its 16 core/32 thread, with a NVidia 2070 GPU and 64 GB of ram that I've run ~40 on. I hit about 60% CPU utilization and ~ 95%+ GPU. That was a couple years ago though before the switch to the new 64 bit client and the new frame limiter so I could probably load more.

These days I find 2x-3x groups more than enough for what I want to do.
 
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it is easy to understand when you chage your perspective from a Main and Alts, to I have 12 mains. Treat them as such - raid gear them, evolvers, APs, progression etc. Do as much as you can with as few as you have. Because once your automation is ironed out, command and control of multiple groups scales easily - come to me, all pause, all yes, all door etc.

The fun becomes solving the raid mechanics - its just like group missions on 'Mein Leben' difficulty, and you get 8-9 raids per expac rather than a parsimonious 2 group missions. The things that don't scale are easily are expac and monthly subscriptions costs, progression (but MQ2Status is your friend), gearing (spreadsheeting and MQ2Status is your friend), the neural plasticity run all this stuff, and your sense of humour when shit hits the fan.
 
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I assume there is either a darkweb versa or this site with raid macros for sale, or you only run that many if you can code yourself.

I'm not interested in boxing more than a group, but I've always wondered haha
 
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I started with 1 group, then it evolved to two groups, and now I want a third. I've enjoyed being able to tank/spank (zerg rush) some of the lower tier raid targets. For the achievements, fun, and nostalgia. Have had my eyes set on doing some of the newer expansion raids. Having a friend that likes to box 1-2 groups has lessen the burden of me needing to build up several more teams :)
As what others have said already. It's all for fun. Many of us are older, have RL time constraints, and being able to do stuff on our own without having to schedule RL around raid times makes going this route all the better.
 
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As they age, some people want less and less to do with other people as they just create more problems in their lives. There is an extraordinary amount of hermits in EQ playing Solitaire.

Same things go with change. If you hang around you'll notice that some people like less and less of a challenge over time and complain when EQ is hard or unpredictable as well.
 
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I get a lot of satisfaction from getting all my characters built up, improving their automation, working out solutions for raid mechanics. All of the ability usage is completely in my control, so I can min/max ADPS and burn rotations far beyond what a solo player can do.

Currently raiding with a few other players who box at least 6, up to 18, to form our raid force and it's the most fun I've had raiding in EQ so far. I used to get really annoyed with all the clashing personalities, slacking, etc that happened in a normal raid force. Just doesn't happen with a much smaller group of like-minded individuals. We're always on the same page and share improvements between us.
 
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Rusang said:
I assume there is either a darkweb versa or this site with raid macros for sale, or you only run that many if you can code yourself.

I'm not interested in boxing more than a group, but I've always wondered haha
Click to expand...

I don't think there are any dark web / raid macros being solid, but I could be wrong.

I expect that the people who are boxing several groups and doing raids are also writing their own scripts. It takes a fair amount of trial and error to get even simple raids down to the point where you can box them effectively. Unless you are just way over powered for the event and you can just brute force the mechanics through DPS.

The SV raid is perfect example. You can practice the raid mechanics in the group mission. If you do the emotes 100% you only really need ~ 2-4 groups of characters ( talking when the expansion was current ). I spent ~ 20 hrs to get my first "working" prototype, then another 100-200 hours tweaking it until I'd found all the "edge cases" that would cause it to fail.

If you want to box raids, you kind of need to like problem solving, and coding. Or make friends with those who do.
 
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Kimia said:
I've seen some people that list their characters in their signature and some even have 20-54 char raids they box. So I've been wondering "to what end?".
I can't imagine they sub all of them, but how much use would F2P chars be in current or last year raid content, since they can't use the gear. I thought maybe they use them to farm raid gear for their mains, but I doubt a raid composed of F2P can tackle targets that yield gear as good as current top tier group gear.

Is anyone willing to enlighten this noob?
Click to expand...
I am small in comparison to what you are referring, but I have 8 accounts, all krono'ed so I don't pay monthly for any of them. Just farm enough stuff to sell in bazaar and make sure to keep 2 months worth of krono's at all times. What many are doing is probably the same, just on a larger scale. Some probably pay for some, if not all. The only time it hurts, is when you must buy all the expansions, but you can krono those as well!
 
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Most can usually get away with using F2P DPS and Support classes. However, you'll definitely want a paid/krono'd account for your tanks if they're going to survive raid targets. They'll need the AC/HP boost from prestige gear and augs.
 
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Question - What is the purpose of having your own raid-boxes?
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