[FEEDBACK] Levels 95 - 110 and catching up

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Yinla, Sep 22, 2019.

  1. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Having recently considered changing my main here are a few of the pit falls I have found.

    Hot Zones – Levels 100 & 105 have no hot zones instead they have daily HAs, some of these require you to do previous HAs in the quest line to be able to obtain them, not always possible if you only have an hour to play. Some of the TDS ones are locked behind progression and a group of level 100s may have issue completing progression to be able to get the Combine Dredge HA.

    Possible solutions – Add 100 & 105 hot zones, and soon a 110 hot zone, remove the need for progression at the same time that expansion AA is auto granted. Could even restrict it that the HAs only give the first HA in the line or level 100s only get Call of the Forsaken HAs.

    Levels 95 to 100 – I found Shards Landing quests to be very good for exp at level 95 and you get a good chunk of exp for completing the partisan and mercenary lines. I also did the mirror quest in The Broken Mirror expansion so I could complete the HAs, the quest for the mirror had a good chunk of exp too. Greleth quest lines are pretty easy too, Eastern Waste is too much running around and one of the Kael quests is very annoying! So skipped those zones.

    Levels 100 - 105 – I mainly did Call of the Forsaken progression. Nice exp from doing the HAs and completing the Partisan and Mercenary achievements, the quest lines were interesting so the levels seemed to fly by until I got to Tower of Rot, the progression in there was a bit of a pain having to run up and down the ramps all the time. Exp dropped off at level 106. Did do a bit of The Buried Sea and The Broken Mirror but the exp wasn’t so good.

    106 onward is a bit of a slog – Empires of Kunark progression isn’t too bad but I did need to get a level 110 SK to help me out in the spider caves, the quest where 4 mobs spawn at once and a couple of other minor points, but I always got to a point where I was stuck before dragging someone to help rather than them doing it all for me, it was pretty easy to find somone to help me out for 5 minutes as aposed to a whole evening. Frontier Mountains was good exp, but not being able to do the progression there until Lceanium progression was done was a bit of a pain due to having to find help to do the spiders. Scorched Woods was a pain having to do the faction. Ring of Scale expansion was a bit of a right off for me, tried The Overthere and Skyfire Mountains got killed by AEs or died to drakes! Not good entry zones. The Burning Lands was just as bad if not worse! Gnome Mountain worked well, had a little help to be able to request the 1st mission and did a lot of levelling there, haven’t tried it since the recent changes so won’t comment on difficulty.

    Conclusion levelling isn’t too bad, but levelling from 106 – 110 could use some more friendlier content.

    Suggestions for improvement – remove the need for faction for quests & unlocked zones at the same time the autogrant is done for that expansion. Award the Dragon AA from EOK to completing Skyfire Partisan quest so players don’t have to go back an extra expansion to be able to get access to Veeshans Peak and complete progression. Remove the exp nerfs on doing older content at the same time as the autogrant, for expample their was a restriction put on ROF for those over level 100, give returning players a few more options on where to level. GMM would make a great 110 hot zone. :)

    AA auto grant – This works well right up until you hit level 105 with 5 levels still to go you have a mountain of AAs still to gain at that level. The main issue seems to be Empires of Kunark a lot of the AA lines have been back filled, so the auto grant doesn’t give them as they are connected to EoK and could really do with being redistributed to expansion more relevant to their level. The number of AAs in EoK was nice for those who were max when it went first went live, but trying to catch up it is a major hurdle.
    Auto grant currently gives all AAs up to and including TDS (level increase) this went live with TBL
    TBM AAs will go live with Velious 2 (need a name :p)
    EoK – Dec 2020
    RoS – Dec 2021 – Level increase
    TBL – Dec 2022
    Going forward it would be nice if you could decide if we are getting a level increase every 2 or 3 expansions and not keep changing it! And adjust the autogrant accordingly.
    Had we had another expansion at level 110 then by the time the level increase came out all AAs would have been granted for level 105 so players playing catch up only ever have to worry about having 5 levels of AAs to catch up as it is now they will still have EOK 105 AAs to do when we increase the level to 115.

    As a beastlord when the autogrant ended I had 19K AA, AAs max out at 47K, yes a few of those are unneeded tradeskill AAs but we are still probably still looking at needing around 20K.
    Possible solutions -
    1. Redistribute the AAs with a lower level requirement than the expansion they are released in.
    2. Add a bonus for those with a lower AA count. We had one years ago for those with less than 4K AA but with the autogrant that is now redundant. Add a higher one which increases each expansion.

    Before deciding on a bonus for the low AA count decide how many AAs you realistically expect an average player to gain over the course of a year and adjust accordingly. It really shouldn’t take longer than a year to get max AA and levels for the average player.

    The aim of my feedback is to hopefully have more players capable of doing end game zones and to make it easier to balance and have less of the “this zone is too hard” and “this zone is too easy” arguments. Players I have spoken to don’t want a free ride but they do want a viable path to catch up without having to play 24/7, some of the content is just too time consuming, getting faction to do the mission/raids in DoN for example.

    I know there will be a few who want to see everyone doing it the hard way as they had to, but this isn't about them, this is about giving those who are way behind a helping hand and hopefully retaining them as EQ players.
    Icaen, Spellfire and Duder like this.
  2. Tanise Elder

    Hmmm. My beast lord didnt have 19k AA from autogrant.

    Also the 95-105 hot zone is fm.
  3. Raccoo Augur

    Velious: The Winds of Winter!
    Not like anyone will ever get around to using that name for a book or something.
  4. Tappin Augur

    I wouldn’t do anymore hot zone quest even if it was the only way to level.
  5. Morigaine Elder

    One minor thing I would like to add in the event the devs read this.

    Would it be possible to add a charm augment that is not tied to an anniversary? If you create a new character immediately after anniversary season your choices are the heroic jewel of self or the progression augment from RoF. It doesn’t need to compare with the anniversary pearls but having some choice other than completing an entire expansion knowing you will just upgrade it during anniversary season would be nice.

    Like I said, it’s minor but I have a couple toons in this scenario.
    Coagagin and Duder like this.
  6. Dahaman Augur


    This is similar to the same situation that people are reporting on the Phinny TLP starting in the SOF era. There is a potential solution that will address the live server issue you address and the TLP issue.

    3. Increase the base XP rate (this was last done with the TSS expansion). Set TSS XP rate as the "1.0x XP Rate". Every level expansion (level 80, level 85, etc.) bump this base XP rate by 10% or something.

    That means at the level 110 expansion (7 level bumps -> 7 linear XP bumps), the XP rate would be 170% of what it is now. This would back fill people playing catch-up. I would suggest these be set manually though instead of 10% per. That would allow the XP rate to boost faster at higher levels as need.

    IF the faster XP rate causes an issue with leveling too fast, the extra XP can be funneled directly to AAs, toggled on/off by the same toggle that turns on AA Autogrant.
  7. BadPallyGuildLeader Augur

    FM makes 100 to 105 trivial. If you want to go faster grind in Chardok during that range.

    106 to 110 is HS and Sathirs Tomb, both of course the ROS variety.

    I would characterize as 100 to 110 as trivial and 90 to 99 as the real slog...
  8. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    The leveling isn't the problem it's the AA mountain that comes afterwards.

    I personally prefer doing progression as I level rather than go back and do it later for minimal exp, I find overall I get things done quicker that way. So while leveling I have completed the Heroic vitalty etc in CotF, I've done the same in TDS upto Endless Song (but not including) I have a dislike for water zones and progression there is a pain. Also done some in TBM & EoK. Early RoS zones are tougher than the later ones, but sadly you can't do the later zones progression without doing progression in Overthere and Skyfire, so for the moment I have skipped that expansion and TBL and opted for Gnome Mountain, guild mate had booties rotting in Fight Fire so I'm currently leveling them up having run all around the world!

    She is as good as I can get her at the moment until she earns a few more AAs to survive the AEs in OT, I need to find some patience to go back and finishTDS & TBM. EoK I'm just missing Lab partisan and mercenary all the others are done.

    I've put a lot of work in but I am still looking at a 25K AA mountain which while I am able to chip away at it I can't really put a big dent in it and don't see me finishing needed AAs for a very, very long time. I'm starting to feel like giving up and if I feel that way how many others who return feel the same way and quit again?
  9. Dahaman Augur


    Curious, how many AA/hour can you get at your state of AA at that level? I'm not talking about extreme methodologies, just with a typical lesson burn.
  10. Tucoh Augur

    Would not mind at all if they cut the cost of AAs from previous expansions in half. Such that RoS and prior expansions were half the cost they are now, and TBL was cut in half come next expansion.
  11. Bamboompow Augur

    Great idea with one minor caveat:

    You get the reduced cost if you complete a tutorial on how the abilities actually work. Granted, that's more dev time. The GMM mission was a fast AA builder....but we all know how that panned out. So its back to Square One. That being grinding out the AA.

    Even the most vocal adherents to the methodology of advancing in this game might be sympathetic to a faster Level/AA acquisition IF the end result was not a flood of bad players. That is what the umbrage is about really. Sure, some are of the "I put in X effort and some casual getting it fast degrades the prestige of my achievements" ilk and will bemoan anything less than uphill both ways in the snow.

    Heh, get over it.

    All raid leaders (or folks running group missions) want is someone they can plug into a raid/group that can survive, follow instructions and contribute at a reasonable skill level at their assigned task. How they got to that point is irrelevant. If it took 2-3 years or a couple of months...it doesn't matter.
  12. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    You could say this is needed with everyone as they gain those AA not just those playing catch up.

    Majority of the AAs we are talking about are a continuation of AA lines that have been in the game for years, many of which are passive so it doesn't really matter how they work it's not like they change once they get a few new ranks, work a little better and refresh a little faster usually.
  13. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    For the AA mountain change autogrants.

    Currently it works on expansions except the most recent 4. So for example TBL, RoS, EoK, TBM are not autogranted.

    Change it so that it’s everything except the most recent 2. This would add EoK and TBM to the autogrants. I’d even argue that in the midpoint of the expansion cycle, IE 6 months after TBL launched so around the June/July patch earlier this year, they should’ve added RoS to the autogrants as well. So that for the last 6 months of an expansions life the only non-autogranted AAs are those from the current expansion.
  14. Laronk Augur


    A focused group of level 100's can get a ton of aa in a lesson burn but... I think a more casual player is probably earning like 100aa throughout the course of their normal play session of a few hours. Every group and player is different, just because SuperAwesomePlayer01 can get 200 aa in an awesome lesson burn doesn't mean others are getting close to that.
  15. Dahaman Augur

    I was just curious on what was a more casual player gets these days. My highest character ever was a level 90 SK on FV. Getting 100 AA in one session would have been a lot to me. However, the "mountain of AA" is a LOT bigger at 110 than it was at level 90. I definitely can see the issue.

    They implemented a really, really nice solution to the "mountain of AAs" problem with Autogrant AAs. However, there is obviously another issue that is there as pointed out by the OP and the people on Phinny TLP citing the same thing at VOA era.

    It's the nature of the genre that XP gets faster as you level while the XP per level grows even faster. It's a balancing narrative at that point to help people catch up to each other. EQ chose to do this with XP/mob increases with mob level (just like every other genre game) as well as base XP rate increases did this up thru TSS. It's just really surprising that they stopped that base XP rate increase action that long ago.

    Boosting the base XP rate seems like it solves (or at least diminishes) this latest issue on live servers as well as on TLPs once they get far enough past TSS.

    Another thought would be to implement decreased costs for older expansion AAs.

    25% less AA cost for 1 expansion old
    50% less AA cost for 2 expansions old
    75% less AA cost for 3 expansions old
    100% less AA cost for 4 expansions old (AKA Autogrant AAs)

    This warps AA counts, etc. so might not even be possible as direct discounts. However, they could implement this by granting AAs as a refund for older expansion AAs.

    Example: An AA costs 12 AA on release. If the AA is two expansions old, then buying it for 12 AA would get the AA plus an instant granting of 6 AA (effecting the 50% cost decrease).

    That should be simple to code and not mess with AA counts and what not.
  16. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    I don’t think they need code changes or weird solutions to this.

    Just push up the expansion that autogrant works on from everything older than the most recent 4 expansions to everything but the most recent 2 expansions. That will cut out a huge amount of AAing, considering how much is tied up with the Focus lines and EoK in general.
  17. Tucoh Augur

    Someone spending weeks grinding in GMM/FM or whatever probably won't move the needle much in terms of player skill.

    I'd rather that devs make an instanced monster mission for every class that requires you to git gud to beat it. There is something like this in Vanilla WoW to get a priest item, Benediction, that required you to beat this quest:
    https://wowwiki.fandom.com/wiki/Quest:The_Balance_of_Light_and_Shadow

    Which was set up to be solo only. It was hilarious watching all the potato-priests who always get carried have to beg skilled players to help them beat it. There was something like this for a hunter bow too.

    It wouldn't even be that hard really. Just make a monster mission for every archetype (tank, healer, melee DPS, ranged DPS) with a few abilities and tune it so it's comfortably hard for a good player and see what happens.

    I'm also a fan of GW2's jumping puzzles that I could ace and watch potatoes fail repeatedly.