Proving Grounds first impressions

They're giving double tokens for PGs starting tomorrow.. BEFORE they fix them

Yea, tbh I'm not happy about the double tokens before the fixes come in. It's encouraging people to farm a broken system, creating frustration and a lot of negative experiences. Please for the love of cheesus wait until after you get the kinks worked out.

They already said, either in livestream or amas(don't quite remember which), that there won't be any fableds this year due to the "repetitiveness" of doing them the past few years

First impressions... well negative to say the least, frustating, discouraging, hate for this broken system that nobody that I know wants or like. BG were supposed to be killed years back, for those who ever wonder why they now have some reasons.

First I try the solo system. 9/10 groups are broken, no tank, no heal, full group were your arrive in raid, empty groups where everyone is leaving, the only things left to do is leave the group and get a 5min ban. After one hour of repeating the same schema you just want to fire anyone who work of that thing.

Finally you are able to enter a group thats seems viable, but you realize that the class blanace is fully broken. After some painfull wiped, very long trash cleaning, the groups finally gave up after 30min at the second named. While the other group has finished the instance in less than 15min, when it's not in less than 10.

Finally after 2 hours of gameplay you exit with 8 currency and realize you will need 5000 tokens to buy all those BIS items and adorns that are impossible to obtain anywhere else.

Then sometime you are able to group with the best classes, in a full optimized group, mostly by playing with your guildmate or a very good PU group and it goes well.

Just tell us that eveything will be obtainable with the Ethereal event so we could forget about all this mess.

I could also mentioned the really nasty bug where I loss my character but at least there are some very nice and helpfull people trying to help me restore it.

My first impressions so far:
1. solo queue - got placed into a group that had already finished their part. So there was nothing to do, I didn't get any rewards, and after zoning out, my hotkeys, my chat channel were borked and several buffs were cancelled.

2. solo queue - got a group without a healer. So we died over and over again to the first named, waited for the other group to finish and got kicked from the PG for having only 2 people left in our group. Once again no rewards, since we couldn't kill any named. What a fantastic experience...

3. solo queue - almost a full group, just without a chanter. It took us about 30 minutes to finish, since we didn't have any power feed. Did you know that the Conjuror's power shards cannot be used in the PG? One DPS logged out mid-zone, because we had THAT guy with us that managed to trip over every single root in the zone. We didn't get a replacement for him, so the rest of the zone took even longer.
In the end I got 2 marks for finishing the zone. 2 bloody marks.


If this is what we're supposed to waste our time with during the summer, in order to obtain BiS gear - no, thank you.

I heard about you, did you recover your char, and house and all inside it yet?

So last night was able to do PG for the first time. this is my observation. Your mileage may very.

The first time I solo queued up, and ended in a group that had 3 people in it, they were already running the zone, and guess what the other team had already finished the zone. so the instance timed out and was kicked out after 2 mins and had nothing for it.

From there on ran with my friends a group of six, we ran 4 runs and won 3 lost 1 (the very first run) got 10 coins per run average. Plus did the weekly run and got the extra tokens. for a total of 60 for the night. While not perfect it is kind of fun, but I can see this getting old very fast. It is only really fun if you have a pre-made group, Zone into the lobby and make your group before you queue up for the instance.

The winning tynonium (sp?) chest you get for winning, has a random token count in it, ZERO to 5, yes that is a zero. That needs to be fix,

The achievements are not updating, I did 4 and only got credited for 2, and did not get the achievement for winning a Proving Ground.

Its really sad, that zoning in and map still say Battle Grounds. Also it is sad that all the good new adorns and gear is locked behind doing PG over and over. Especially because the Ascension Xp is really not that great, so have to run else where to burn the Ascension XP. Maybe put a token when finishing the KA Heroics?

Anyway, its not bad, but by the time I have enough tokens, I can see myself logging out for a while or stabbing a sharp stick in my eyes. Please give more tokens per run. Thanks

i love they didnt put anything in the notes about totally destroying lifeburn now it jus kills you and does no dmg lol

Houses are still missing, they are looking into it,guild data are lost forever from what I was told

Another notes, I've never received any of the currency that you are supposed to get from winning, on two different characters, and on multiple match.

My 1st impression is this sucks! I was in a group that we formed in guild but when we tried to zone I got randomly tossed into a group with no healer even though I was already in our own player made group with guildies. So I tried to stick it out....but a complete waste of time with no healer and everyone dying over and over in this random group. I finally exited and went back to running KS solos/adv solos for hopes to get a familiar to drop which I didn't get either. So for me...last night was a major bust IMO.

- Broken abilities(there are several ascension/classes that are more beneficial to have in group)
- Different instances of proving grounds making it difficult to get group(pg2 - 4 players in it)
- No means to see damage (incoming/outgoing) , making it difficult to gauge what abilities are working and which arent.
- Auto attacking bugging out
- Need a motd when zoning into PG to alert folks to turn up graphics. This would aid successful runs where folks dont see the roots until they have gone over them.
- Group match making is horrible, yes im aware they are looking into fixing this. Still worth mentioning(see point regarding PG2 instances).
- Dbl currency whilst all these bugs are ingame - boggles to think why they didnt just take it down until tuesday and ensure it was working.
- There are a few others that could be worth mentioning but in current state those leaderboards probably need reset again once this battlegrounds is actually working as expected.Next event is 4days away?

Overall its pretty frustrating to have to get around all of the above in order to add more grinding for tokens!

Let me put it like this; I love the Everquest franchise, but Im also realistic about my expectations with things such as the proving grounds. Quite frankly its sad that ive just come to expect major issues whenever something new comes along. Ive seen a lot over the years playing all 3 Everquest titles, but these proving grounds have got to be some of the most poorly inplemented stuff ive ever seen.

The devs truly should be ashamed of themselves having such a buggy update on the live servers. I hate to call out any devs of any game, since i do understand how things go in the development side, but there has to be some sort of standard and even at the lowest end the proving grounds does not meet mine or anyone elses standards, not even close.

My first experience, the very first day went like this: zone in with friend, get put into zone already 45 minutes running. I was totally confused and so we zoned out and now had a truancy tag. We both were so frustrated by just that event that we decided to try again once they fix it.

Next attempt after so called fixes. They now have dev text advising groups to have a tank and healer before joining, even tho sending ppl messages and setting up groups is a total pain in the butt. Anyways I managed to setup a nice group, which took awhile, we zone in and poof were magically split up all in different groups/zones. ALL of us ended up in already finished zones. If they cant even get the matchmaking and all that to prioritize new zones then they shouldnt even have it on live.

And now double coins, what a joke, as if we should suffer through this mess they created because well there are some awesome items up for grabs on the merchants and that should be enough for us paying/loyal customers. Total slap in the face.

It feels like Battlegrounds is an entirely different game that's being play-tested in alpha, and just happens to be connected to EQ2 somehow. There's absolutely no information on what to do at all, except figure out how to "win".

I haven't joined a session that wasn't either broken out of its cotton-pickin' mind or the group make-up was so poor I was tank and healer (and thus, we never got by the first named). Other times I join and it already started and there's no one else.

I see the rewards and I'm amazed at how good they are, but at this point I'd be amazed if I can get any currency at all. Double currency event means nothing if I can't finish.

actually mystic does quite well. I cant complain. I've had no issues whatsoever in the new PG system easily keeping heals up and health stable 100%

My advice to the developers-just close those proving grounds, remove them from the game. Do not forget to delete BG sytem code as well and lose it somewhere, forever. In the curent state the new "content" brings only frustration.

If you want us to grind the new items mindlessly for hours just add the gear for the existing curency, like you did with the green adorments last expansion. If you insist on competition, add 6-men zone on our servers, make laderboards. Anything realy besides the broken and usless BG system.

As much as I want the new gear, I'd rather save my nerves. The new expansion will have yellow slot on every item for sure. Don't mind to wait half a year.

How is it some people already have the ring with a Tier 3 orange gem in it??

Why, exactly are there no threat meters in PGs? No way to see incoming or outgoing damage? Tells don't work?

On a side note, alt Z is not default to the proving grounds tab.. no matter that I always swap it to instances....

Oh, even better.. I didn't auto-join voice.. and it's not on my list.. and nobody can invite me to group chat....

Maybe the whole point of double tokens right now was so we'd find ALL the bugs for them to list

This has been just about my experience so far also, except for the part where you got a group and finished the zone, I been on rinse / repeat with 1 and 2.

Exploit: One player can peel off from the group and specifically head towards brownie spawns to grief the other team. There's no time delay other than running the distance to trigger them.

Result: Spawning brownies on the other team up to three times before they can even kill the first named up the ramp. Best results in the team being spawn-killed.