So I get that the lock out is 6 hours per individual HA and that won't preclude me from grinding other HA back to back. I don't agree that it's not fun for me at least to grind the same HA. That said I run them with friends to gear up my toon and because it's fun. We're not power gamers and there are some HA we have issues finishing. I truly believe we will end up cutting back on HA , meaning I am back to camping augs hours on end board out of my mind for lousy xp. We all know 6+ hour augs camps are the best part of EQ and who doesn't love forming up a group so one player can get an aug over god knows how many hours. The idea is grinding HA is boring not what's intended, but aren't daily quest a grind they need a 1 week lockout by that logic. I have loved the HA style content since LoY that's fun stuff to me. What will the new expansion offer post 101 (85-99ish crowd) that will help us catch up to our friends while acquiring decent gear? Although HA isn't the only thing we do this still hurts my group play somewhat, but it doesn't have too. Would you consider the following? A: award more HA currency post expansion. B: lower price of purchased items post expansion. C: allow HA currency to be exchanged at a lesser value for cotf raid currency. Any one of those things would make me feel a bit more easy about the change. Just my thought wrong or right. I do understand that post 101 that HA could detract from the current content but believe me if the content is good people will do it. If it's not good well maybe that's really the issue at hand
It will be interesting to see where the tasktimer lockout comes into play. This will basically determine the Dev's actual true intentions. If the lockout is at the end of the task. Then I would believe them that they do indeed want folks to move around and try different adventures. However if the lockout is at the beginning of the task, then I think we all know that they are doing it to prevent levelling up within the HA. Latent prices are going to increase.
SO now instead of grinding in an HA we will all just go back to grinding in a static zone, bring on the kill stealing and camp stealing! People who have to GRIND want to do it as efficiently as possible so they get it over with! Let me expain it in a more simpler term... to kill stuff you need a tank, a healer and a dps as a minimum..... Now imagine if you will that you took all the healers out of the game? How much fun would it be? What you are doing to the HAs and the EXP from grouping with anyone not in the new content is basically as game breaking as taking healers out of the game would do..... It is a major problem! So I pledge and my friends and family pledge to not buy your expansion and we are all reverting to a new free to play style so until you fix this game breaking issue you will not get your paycheck, you work for us, please don't forget that....
They pretty much said they want people to lvl in new content not grinding HA. So instead of grinding the way you choose they choose for you. It's all a grind there are Korean mmos with less grind. Not intended as an insult to Koreans they just have a lot of good but grind centric games. It just seems crazy to take one of the shinning valued parts of an expansion that was by all accounts poor and hamstring it. If this was an issue why did they not catch it early on. We're talking about people who make their livelihood in the video gaming industry. No ones perfect I'm all kinds of silly, but by god I try to learn from my mistakes. I just made a heroic toon he is 92 I know I can still run HA and get the augs I'm after but it just got a lot more time consuming. The best part of cotf from my prospective was grinding HA and catching my toons up on augs Ect. Cotf was a golden catch up expansion that said hey gear up this is the expansion for that. There are still much better augs to chase that are in rof cotf but now that's old content so maybe the drop rate on them should be .000000001%. I mean hey if it's not from new content why are we doing it in fact lets just remove all of the pre 85 zone and only allow heroic characters. Maybe I'm overreacting prolly am but that's just how I feel.
This sounds strangely similar to some of the arguments presented when monster missions and brews were changed. Really, it won't be that bad. Breath. Relax. Look out the window and enjoy the idea of waking up on the right side of the earth.
Vtull must not actually play EQ, lets take a regular post expac day... player 1: looking for group HA please.... player 2: oh I have 2 more hours on my lockout sorry player 1: I guess I will sit right here for 4 hours then so we can form a friendship forged in group level play! Thanks SOE, we were doing this all wrong before! lets troll chat while we wait!
I do play. My wife and I either multi-account or use mercenaries to complete progression. On the off chance an event is beyond our ability, we call up some of our other friends who play and schedule a time to manage the event. I have never farmed a Heroic Adventure mission for experience or item and recently have never had an issue with acquiring enough experience to level and AA cap all while playing maybe 6 dedicated days out of the month. No, it won't be that bad. I also have never raged on the boards threatening to cancel my subscription primarily due to the fact is serves no point than to make the instigator look silly.
SO glad you posted this. I had not done pre-orders yet and only came here to see if they were available. I saw this post and wondered WTF? Went and read what you are talking about, ridiculous. The good news is you just saved me $240 so thanks for that! I just came back to EQ and spent money to move toons, glad I didn't waste more money on a game that will not be worth playing. Good job SOE.
I'm just glad they announced this before I spent $600 on expacs for me and my peeps! Whew feels like I dodged a bullet on that one!
14 years I have played this game and bought every expansion for all 6 accounts except for one time. Odds are you are talking like a total fan boi and have no idea who I am or how much money and time I have spent on this game.
At the end of the day, it does not matter how long any of us have played or paid. It is their game and we pay to enjoy the ability to play within. We are not entitled to anything other than what they determine to give us. In your 14+ year tenure here I am sure you have seen debate after debate resulting in the same idle threats of account canceling and its just silly.
I do not agree with you that these threats are silly nor are they all idle. I think it is a heart breaking shame. I lost a lot of friends when GOD came out, they never came back. This is the only game I have ever played and they are changing something that is not broken. You are 100% correct that this is their game. I just fear enough people are finally going to be gone over this one, and I have NEVER said or even feared that before.
Really, for just going to be entering the HA arena (the SO is waiting on TDS to catch up on getting the last 2 xps), I think it is BS. Personally, I could care less about the XP. The XP comes. If you can't get it one way, you have to find another. No biggie. EQ has always been that way. What does hit home, is the currency gain nerf. Instead of doing a few HA's efficiently, we'll have to run around grabbing ones that are "unlocked" and doable with our group make up. Something no one else had to bother with for the past year. I won't be so bold as to say it will take 6 times longer to acquire currency and gear. It will, however, significantly increase the amount of time to collect both. Sorry devs, but I'm not going to hop into TDS right away. Nerfing old content isn't the way to funnel players into new content. Making quality new content will funnel players into new content.
So let's not derail the issue at hand here. We're all entitled to out opinions and we don't have to agree. I for one am not enraged over this issue. Thank you Vtull for sharing your opinions. While we don't agree I do like your laid back attitude. This is about how people feel about a change made to a game we choose to play no ones making us play. Some people feel it's disruptive enough that they may choose not to buy, they are speaking their mind with their wallets. That's ok if that's what they feel best voices their opinions. Often when people are upset they speak out in the most extreme of ways and don't always follow threw. I'm feeling that something I enjoyed is being limited and I don't want to support that. I'm hoping that voicing my opinion might help them reconsider the direction they are heading or find what in in my opinion would be a reasonable solution. I didn't just post in rage and threaten I tried to give some options. Sheex felt option c. Was not good. I don't agree what's wrong with people catching up to raid quality gear from a previous expansions it can only help the dwindling raid population. How about an exchange for rof currency t4 quality? However I'm not going to step all over sheex he is allowed his opinion and I value that. Sheex thanks for posting why do you dislike option c, do you have any suggestions? Vtull other than your opinion that we may be over reacting do you have any suggestions on a fix for what we feel is an issue? Please share if you do. Thanks. I'm on the fence about the expansion there are more than likely things I do not know that Might sway me the other direction about how I am feeling. No insult is intended to anyone whom I named in this post. Let's discus and listen. I believe SoE has set a precedence for open discussion of the direction they choose to take EQ in and they often do listen.
And who exactly are you to tell people that their complaints arent valid just because you dont agree with them?
If they implement it to where one person gets locked out but can still be task added to others who are doing the HA that was just completed it might not be so bad but not holding out much hope that a sensible option like that would fly, not even sure the code would allow it. The main trouble I see is friends who get on at different times and then can't complete the same HA's together due to lockout timers. I really feel bad for the folks who come up after us having had it so easy the last year. Usually its the opposite easy mode gets implemented later on instead of hard mode getting pushed to the masses.
