Test Update 07/11/17 - Patch Notes and Discussion

The darkened blood ember arms originally showed a aggro reduction clickie, while the paladin ones showed the spike of anger effect they still have. I assumed that it was a mistake and the blood ember would be fixed. Well I was right, it was fixed to have a crap might of stone clickie that completely useless. Now I am assuming this is another mistake since pal and war still have their spike of anger clickie item, just hoping the next fix is better. But looks like all the gear needs a little balancing anyways, like the pally helm has a form of defense click, while the blood ember does not, although I don't care about that one just pointing it out.

This patch won't really hit the day GoD is planned to release on Phinny right?

The power source/purity aug thing is stupid.

Even if you spend the time to farm a new power source from TDS every time your current one expires (when you could be after other gear upgrades that give more stats), you are fussing over a few hundred HP when the new gear is easily more than the loss.

One piece of gear with 50 purity:
Combine Power Shard 0 150 0 250 2 -250 0 0 0 -1 -1 1 -1 1 0 7 -5 7

That's End, HSta, HDex, HAgi, And Hwis being subtracted there, as well as heal amount, which every lifetapper or recipient of self heals misses. But still, it's a measly 150 HP and 250 HP per slot.

Now with the drop everywhere like water Stone of Tranquility, 75 purity:
Combine Power Shard 0 225 0 375 3 -375 0 0 0 -1 -1 1 -1 2 0 11 -7 11

Oh look, you gained a massive 75 HP and 125 mana, lost more heal power and endurance. Still haven't come close to the HP/Mana your new gear increased your stats by, but the 25 purity augs drop constantly. I've replaced the purity augs on all 4 of my boxed characters in the 3 months I've been back in the game.

But wait, what about with a 35 purity aug? Then you'll be uber right?
Combine Power Shard 0 255 0 425 3 -425 0 0 0 -1 -1 1 -1 2 0 12 -8 12

Nope. That's why, when new expansions come out or you find better gear, the purity aug isn't worth spending real money to save, not when you can get new ones in normal game play going after that NEXT gear upgrade.

You'd have to be a super OCD min/maxxer to spend real life money on 30 HP and 75 mana, when 4 weeks of playing gets you a perfected distiller free, or a 4 pack for DBG cash, and during that 4 weeks your gear upgrades should have been for way more than 30/75/-75.

And no, my Magelo is definitely not up to date.

For a wizard it is over 5k mana maximized total, and enough HP's to keep you up at a raid when the guy next to you misses an emote and blows up.

EQ is a series of small upgrades that add up .

The storage space and time investment to keep these current is a very unneeded hassle that can easily be rectified by leaving things as they are .

For those who have purity augs on a half dozen or more characters the hassle becomes almost not worth dealing with so.....loss of considerable mana / HP's / and or AC depending on the power source used.

the real question is, do you want the game you love and in which you have invested years and years of money to be shut down due to lack of profit, or be funded and profitable enough to justify its further existance?

This isn't a charity, this isn't some dev's project. It is a for-profit game that was bought by a large investment company (Columbus Nova). If the returns on the investment are not sufficient, they will just shut it all down.

Purity is definitely something you think about if you want to be the best.

But some classes don't need/benefit from purity, or gear in general, nearly as much as others do. Tanks rely on gear and need purity maxed, hands down. Melee also want it maxed (but the group may not notice when it's not, like they will with tanks). Casters, only if they need extra hps or spell damage (haha). Healers...nope. Healers get very little benefit from gear (outside of focuses).

Yes, everybody benefits from a bigger HP pool, and in an emergency, extra mana may be relevant. And solo, everything counts. But if you are coming at this from a group healer's perspective, I can understand finding the purity discussion irrelevant.

I'm glad you mentioned " project", because I think /p99 servers show that EQ will not die when DBG/CN stops running it.

You are right that "this isn't a charity". Ironically, in the face of almost no new content for my $15/month, barely re-touched "revamps" and re-run TLP servers, it actually feels like I'm donating my money to DBG/Columbus Nova. And it sounds like you are asking us to accept that, for fear of them turning off the servers. Then they start charging for content that they originally offered as free/included in my subscription/included in my exansion purchase?

Shrug - I'm still fine with the change

Why would you ever believe EQ is not profitable....

What EQ does have is a sliver of integrity, a little challenge and some great things other MMO's that are in slow decline don't have which make it a viable alternative for gamers,

These are the things that need to be capitalized on, not cheesy tactics that will offend and alienate the hardcore and loyal audience.

Anyone else remember that Sci Fi show from the 60's that got cancelled only later to come back as one of the most successful and enduring phenomena in it's genre?

EQ can be that for MMORPG's

For some people sure. For other people the power sources are relevant. I'd love if you could point me to these other gear upgrades.

Absor,

I understand the patch is tomorrow so even if there is a problem, it's probably too late to take care of. However, I have two questions on this Zun'Muram fix:

1. Is this change part of the July patch? Other posts in this thread indicate that 'fixed internally' is part of the August patch instead.

2. Has it been verified that this sends people to the jails in the instance they're in, rather than open world? I don't intend rudeness, but it seems like every time a teleport mechanic has been used in the past using AoC instances (Trakanon 'shrooming' mechanic in Kunark, Praesertum 'In Irons' spell in Luclin, etc) it's always ported them to the open world instead of the instance until we've run into the problem and reported it, then had to wait till the next patch to fix, and with how significantly more difficult this could make the fight, it would be a shame to lose half of our time in Gates of Discord to a broken Zun.

You and everyone else that's thinks $20 is an acceptable cost to remove purity augs need to have your heads examined. This is *NOT* in any way close to how EQ should be asking us for money. Players tell this company REPEATEDLY how they can take our money. More Hero's Forge, more illusions, more mounts. Sell us card game items - the ACTUAL item - not RNG buy this chance that you may get an item from the card game you may want. This is the laziest implementation for a cash grab you could possibly ever see. Shame on the Dev team, 1000x over. You should be beyond this.

Someone at Columbus Nova needs to GROW A BRAIN and ask the Devs of this game to do a little work to make these kinds of things happen. Non-Pay to Win, cosmetic type things. $20 to remove 8 purity augs is *NOT* the right way to go about this, not even close.

Some of you are as short sighted as the Devs on this issue and you are doing nothing but hurt the issue for others that don't want this change. You're going along for the ride makes you as responsible for ridiculous measures like this that seem acceptable. Well, only 8 players came to board to complain and a handful didn't speak negatively so we're going to go ahead with this awful change anyway.

Thanks for that, really...

I hope Im not speaking out of turn but..
Purity augs get handed out like candy in our guild.
Ive even seen them given away occasionally in the open server casual raid.
The good ones.
And as to the tds purity augs which are almost as good - I destroyed a bunch out of my bank to make room for TS mats.

Now they may become less common with this change, but up to now they really were too easy.

Perfected Augmentation Distillers can be bought singly in PoK for 432 Loyalty Tokens.
A 5-pack can be gained virtually free at the beginning of every single month in /market when you claim your free 500 DBG cash.
They can also be bought from /market singly for 250 DBG cash minus whatever discount you get.

8 distillers would be required for the 8 pieces of gear you would potentially use them for. You essential can get 6 free per month. Hardly the end of the world.

Virtually free is not free and 5 does not cover it, the odd number makes it even more irritating and does not even cover a single set.

using all those resources provided they are even available at the time does not cover even a single character without putting forth real money.

Purity Augments will now be yet another incentive for scripted box mess groups to tie up zones and make the game generally less fun for the other players.

True but how often are you going to upgrade an entire visual set within 1 month? How often are you going to upgrade your set in 12 months? 2 months and you can have at least 10 or 11 distillers. 12 months and you could have 60-70 dependent upon what you use loyalty tokens for.

When you believe you have your complete set and they're easily transferable, it's easy to be generous. Not knowing if they (or an equivalent) will drop in future expansions will make people hoard them more. Who's going to want to go back to EoK in the future to farm purity augs when there's new content to stay busy in?

Add in type 3 augs (some classes use many more than others and not everyone is swimming in plat to keep paying 15k on every gear upgrade) and alts on the same account also needing 8+ distillers. That does add up.

Luckily it's actually a 4-pack

No one is forcing anyone to use 35 purity augments or TDS power sources. We do so because we want to min/max our characters and that is part of it. And if you are willing to go all out with min/max then you should accept the fact that you buy/camp/get two 4 packs of augment removers each year for the 35 purity augments.

If this is the biggest gripe right now, then I think the game is doing OK...

I've never paid for any of that crap. Not every player spends their money like you do.

You should know what to expect at this stage of the game before you let your money go every month. A lot of people like the revamps and new tlp servers.