Radical Solution To EXP Nerfs

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Croak, Feb 26, 2015.

  1. Croak Augur

    The exp nerfs in lower tier content are at least partially due to gear, especially raid gear.

    One maybe partial solution worth considering is to decrease the effectiveness of raid gear when using it in lower tier content.

    It would work something like this

    Raid gear would have full stats within the expansion it originated and higher tier content.
    In lower expansion content it would drop in effectiveness to approximately the highest tier of the expansion it originated in, group gear.

    So for example raid gear from CotF used in the RoF expansion would drop down to CotF group gear equivalence.

    This could be achieved by adding for instance a hidden aug that activates based on the zone it is used in applying negative stats.

    A lv105 character in RoF content is still going to be significantly more powerful than an in-era level/gear toon.

    An alternative might be to drop from CotF raid tier 2 > RoF Raid tier 4

    Longer term, it might be worth looking at reducing the effectiveness of raid gear in group content overall.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  2. Warpeace Augur

    You realize raiders also do group progression right? That's an extreme penalty for the efforts they made to get their raid gear.
    Hiladdar, Sancus, Yinla and 1 other person like this.
  3. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    Terrible idea, especially given the current simplistic content we're now getting and the reasonably small gap between group/raid gear these days. Then there's the fact that it would be incredibly difficult and time consuming for a dev team without any resources to actually implement it, let alone make it retroactive for 20ish expansions.

    Why stop there, let's just make all content monster missions so everyone is "equal"?
    Hiladdar, Sancus and Yinla like this.
  4. Whosurdaddy Journeyman

  5. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Why just raid gear, this should apply to group gear as well, if it came from a higher tier content it should also be reduced in power. Otherwise a raider dropping down a couple of expansions would have worse gear than a grouper in gear from the same expansion as the raider had raid gear from.

    Lets not make this raider V Grouper.

    That said I do not agree with this concept at all.
  6. Croak Augur


    I am not saying raid gear should drop down below group gear from the same expansion - maybe it could still have a slight advantage.
    I even suggested a drop down 1 expansion in raid gear, as raid gear from previous expansion, certainly the higher tiers are still better than top tier of current, maybe not so much in HP/AC but certainly in Mod2s etc
    That way you would be in raid gear for the expansion, plus 5 levels higher.

    Surely that is enough of an advantage?


    The gap seems smaller percentage wise, but with the way relative AC/Atk is calculated, in many ways the gap is still extremely large.

    Everyone keeps accusing the devs of just using a spreadsheet to power up gear. This isn't rocket science, just reversing the numbers in the spreadsheet. They have hidden augs already from power sources, this is just an invisible aug or power source.

    This won't ever affect current content, just when people want to drop down to older content with lower level toons.
    Current content raiders will still be able to waltz through group content with significantly less challenge than groupers.
  7. Kaenneth [You require Gold access to view this title]

    At that point, they might as well stop making raids at all, because all raiders would quit the game; since there would be effectively zero reward for raiding.
    Hiladdar likes this.
  8. Ruven_BB Augur

    Horrid idea.

    Ruven
    Hiladdar likes this.
  9. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    The level of lack of your understanding of how content is created, changed and managed in EQ is pretty staggering. Not rocket science? There are hundreds of decisions needed with such a drastic change and it would require time, money, thought, testing, and numerous resources, all for little to no benefit to the playerbase, other than artificially forcing an attempt at a "level playing field" so that devs would have an easier time tuning content. It wouldn't even be remotely worth it.
    Hiladdar and Iila like this.
  10. Croak Augur

    The reward would be in the current expansion, and the next expansion being able to waltz through all the group content.
    You would still have higher tier spells & abilities (rkIII), and shared with groupers a higher level / AAs

    Surely if you have CotF raid gear, it dropping down to RoF raid gear equivalent when you are in a RoF zone isn't going to be such a huge penalty as losing all exp from that expansion?
  11. Tyraxor Augur

    The reward for raiding is being with your guild, fighting along people you like and getting a good feeling out of beating stuff together.
    Gear is mostly unimportant for these feelings, it just exists to justify farming.
    No real Raider would quit if his stuff would be less powerful in group play, just saying (i don't care about the suggestions etc. in this thread, it's prolly a waste of time and i didn't read it all...but the comment that Raiders would quit because of gear is 100% false).
    Meatball likes this.
  12. Sancus Augur

    This idea is awful, and the premise is wrong. Never has a dev even implied that raid gear was the cause of the nerfs, and the changes did nothing to prevent raiders getting to max XP within a few days of the expansion release. Drastically nerfing raid gear doesn't fix the issue in the slightest.
    Hiladdar and Sheex like this.
  13. Croak Augur


    -15% to all stats round up ... test
    -20% to all stats round up ... test

    I agree spell focus would be a little more tricky and can probably be left alone

    Compared to how things are currently there is significant advantage to the player base - raiders would still experience the content with overpowered gear... just not as overpowered.
  14. Noirfu Augur

    I completely disagree with the premise of this thread. It's way off base.

    They wanted people to use the new expansion to level up, rather than mindlessly slaughter easier mobs from older expansions.

    I believe they chose a terrible way to do that, when they could have just used the old tried-and-true model of making the experience required to level from 101-105 much higher and then boosting the ZEMs way up in the new zones.

    The whole point of EQ is to improve your characters' abilities (IMO). I view things like monster missions etc as terrible design because they remove the rewards you've worked for years to achieve by levelling, gearing and AAing your characters.

    As far as why people raid, you beat a raid once for the good feeling. You then have to farm it 50 more times to gear your raid force up to improve all of the characters in your guild. People would do raids a couple of times if the gear was not useful but they wouldn't farm them all year for sure.

    In my particular case I have 4 gold accounts which had not been logged on since before Christmas since the T3 visible gear drop rates were so low I viewed it as not worth my time to play them. Since they fixed the briny and visible drops in the last patch, I started playing them again today.
  15. smash Augur

    BAD idea!
    Hiladdar likes this.
  16. Croak Augur


    Are you saying that raid gear doesn't help you slaughter lower tier content faster than a group geared player?

    What I suggested wouldn't have affected levelling to 105 in CotF, but it would improve the situation for a lv105 player going to RoF zones with lower level friends.
  17. Kaenneth [You require Gold access to view this title]

    Except the paying customers would leave EQ and do that in another game.
  18. Sheex Goodnight, Springton. There will be no encores.

    Thanks for the Thursday chuckle. I wonder if JChan, the items/spell/aa devs know how easy their jobs actually are, or are they just doing them wrong?
  19. Tyraxor Augur

    lol why do you think there are still so many raiding guilds in Eq?
    Because there STILL is no other game with large raids like that.
  20. Noirfu Augur

    No it wouldn't. The gear nerf you're proposing (I'm guessing you chose to only play part of the game and not raid btw. Tell me if I'm wrong) is completely irrelevant to how the experience function is implemented in the game code.

    The developers would have to change how experience is rewarded to solve the issue of grouping in lower-level zones with lower-level players. Your nerf proposal is 100% tangential to that.
    Sheex likes this.