Group Gear in New Expansion vs EoK

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Wizlard, Oct 9, 2017.

  1. Wizlard Augur

    Here's to hoping they don't make group visibles better than previous expansion's raid gear again. I know you guys will say it should be that way if it benefits you, but it's silly that on day one of release you can replace your visible raid gear like you could in EoK. Even the T1 group gear had more ac, ridiculous. People worked hard for that raid gear throughout the year.
    Ratbo Peep likes this.
  2. kinadafz Augur

    I completely agree. Although I didn't experience the TBM to EOK transition, I did have one really fun idea in mind. Level characters from 1 to max. And, during that time, every 5 levels, destroy the relevant raid content with my mains and twink the crap out of the alts.

    But, what I quickly found is, why even bother. I can kill a named in a lvl 71 zone and get better gear than the previous raid. What's the point?

    It should take 10 levels to outgrow raid gear. Not an expansion, 2 expansions, levels. Otherwise, what will happen is people will completely skip expansions while leveling.

    I will probably never step foot in TBM. It is a level 105 expansion, has better gear then the current lvl 105 TDS gear I have, but not as good as the EoK gear. So, why bother? Why waste the time?

    Sure progression and augs are relevant to some extent, but once you get the one or two pieces, you are done.

    For this reason each expansion should have either a level increase, or, a significant mob difficult increase to force you to progress through the previous expansion.
    Wizlard likes this.
  3. Aurastrider Augur



    Actually depending on what kind of aug slots the new expansion has you will probably want to do TBM for the currency to buy your augs or as an alternative buy them in the bazaar. Either way TBM still has a lot of value in terms of making EOK good. Also doing 2 of the first HA's in TBM and one task (my mind is tired or I would list them) will get you enough currency and a lot of upgrades from TDS so you can take on EOK mobs. Keep in mind trying to go from TDS to EOK with TDS gear might prove to be a challenge.
  4. kinadafz Augur

    I thought the same thing, so I tried tanking a couple mobs with just a merc. I tanked 3 different named for a full Final Stand discipline. Of course I couldn't kill them in the allotted time due to gear, but if I can tank them for 4 minutes or however long it is and get them to 70% solo, i'm sure I will have no problem with my box crew. I was happy and sad at the same time to find that out.
  5. Jumbur Improved Familiar

    Before TBM, I liked that open raids in RoF was a viable alternative gear-path to TdS group-gear(even when focus decay was taken into account).
    On the other hand, it made gearing up new raid-recruits easier, when they could get very good gear from group nameds.

    All in all, Im not a fan of gear-resets, so I hope DBG hold back a bit with itemization this time. :)
    Ratbo Peep and Wizlard like this.
  6. Treiln Augur

    Gear in new expansions is used as a reset.

    Whether you raided, went as far as groups would allow you, or just played casually, the new expansion is meant to put everyone back on the same level. Those who raid will, surpass the groupers, and groupers will surpass the casual players. It's how it always is.

    If it didn't work this way, the margin between the set of players would grow more and more distant. The middle ground would end up bare.
  7. roth Augur

    While it does not address your second, and instead exemplifies it, your first is addressed by the three Hero AA’s : Hero’s Vitality, Hero’s Fortitude, Hero’s Resolution.

    There’s no place to get those but expansion achievements. If you want those, you will need to do the content, possibly several times if its a challenge that’s difficult to obtain.
  8. smash Augur

    Would say if you apply to guild and not having tbm prog done most of the way to be able to farm the ps i would have hard time taking you serious.


    Tank 1 is rather powerfull. And achievements for vitality and more also something to get.
  9. Scorrpio Augur

    TBM raid stuff is quite good. I.e. my chanter wrists are a Selrach (T2 EoK) and a Deathseeker (TBM raid). The TBM piece has about 10-15% better stats all around and the focus is 65-100%, not 57-75% like on EoK piece. And this is the case with most items. So if your guild can raid TBM, that gear is bested only by raid EoK.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  10. Wizlard Augur

    I should have clarified that I was speaking to tank gear specifically. Warriors could leave TBM go grab a set of gear in Droga without any flagging and replace all their TBM raid gear.
  11. Wizlard Augur

    TBM raid gear visables that is :)
  12. Gnomeland Augur


    "People should play through each expansion. They shouldn't be allowed to skip any expansion."

    "But hey, I totally planned to twink all my characters with raid gear, so that they could skip every expansion."

    It should only be hard for other people.
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Flatchy like this.
  13. Gnomeland Augur


    The fundamental problem with requiring each expansion to be done before going to the next expansion, is that Everquest is a group game, and groups become increasingly hard to find, the further back you go. Thus, people who fall behind - work, school, vacation, returning players, new players, skill, etc. - will eventually be in a situation where they cannot progress because of a lack of other players doing the same content. Once that happens, the game loses its most basic attraction as a social game, since for all practical purpose, it becomes a single player game.

    Developers didn't use to understand this problem because they thought players would have a permanent group of friends who they ran with all the time, together, like they did in pen and paper games. It turns out it never worked that way - friends quit, groups break up, etc., and they had to find a way to make people stay. Worse, people who didn't have immediate use for an expansion, didn't buy it, so requiring each expansion to be finished before the next one, led to only a small group of people buying new expansions at release, which was bad for business since the company needed everyone to buy the new expansion every year in order to survive.

    To fix the problem, there was only one solution: there has to be a catch up mechanic that placed everyone, even casual players, within an expansion or two of each other. Only then could players experience the social aspect of the game, and be motivated to buy expansions as they release.

    Could this have been done better than it's currently been done? Yes, it could have. The ideal would have been to implement a catch up mechanic that would speed up, rather than do away with, progress through previous expansions. For example, by providing a large increase in basic character power, each expansion, at little to no cost, while increasing the rate of drops in old expansions, so that a player can make it through previous expansions with only half the effort. That would guarantee all the content would eventually be used.

    But that would take a lot of work and design, to make sure each expansion has to be completed before the next one becomes possible, and yet at the same time, to make sure that there is enough of a basic character power increase each expansion, to make past expansions take much less effort.

    So the easy answer is to just give people the end game equipment of the previous expansion in the introduction area of each expansion, so that all you end up having to do is, is the introduction area of each expansion, in order to catch up.
    Tatanka and IblisTheMage like this.
  14. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    It all comes down to this. Limited resources to create new expansions. Group gear has to stay within a certain range of raid gear so that people in raid gear get some sort of challenge from group content but it is still doable by group geared folk. Daybreak cannot afford to lose any players and as they strive to hold on to both groups they have to walk a fine line of balancing the gap between group and raid gear more so then in the past.

    And the previous post makes the excellent point that with so few players we can't have them strung out over multiple expansions UNLESS that is their preference. Some people love to go through old content and will continue to do so. Others want to be able to play and group with the main player population and as Gnomeland mentioned the easiest way to do this is with the group gear being near equivalent of the previous expansion end game gear.

    This also encourages more people to buy the current expansion because it will actually be useful to them. It may take an expansion or two for people to catch on but I do think it will encourage more casuals to keep up with expansions. More expansions sales good! Less expansion sales bad!
  15. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    Educate me please!
    Which PS's are to be had from TBM?
    Those i use come from TDS...

    That being said, gear resets are simply bad.
    How much WoW do we want, really?
    I've had enough of that in EoK already, thank you.
    svann likes this.
  16. segap Augur


    I'd call it less of a reset than a fix for the mess that was TBM group gear. With the stat augs pretty much making every single slot identical in TBM, they needed to make sure every EoK group gear slot was an upgrade from TBM while restoring the concept of premier slots like the chest. TBM bracers were way too good while chests were often worse than TDS T3 ones.

    EoK raid gear got really nice boosts from TBM. I'd expect things to return more to normal now that they've fixed the TBM problem. The gap is still there and has enough padding to upgrade EoK2 group gear without surpassing EoK1 raid gear.
  17. Sancus Augur

    [IMG]

    Guess I'm failing my app :(
  18. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    "the gap" is one of the inherent problems EQ has.
    Not because it is there, but because it is far too big.
    People complain that group content is trivial, even "demand" like "elite zones" so they can find a challenge.
    This is because devs cannot cater to both the overpowered raid geared crowd and to the "normal" group geared folks at the same time.
    While on the other end of the spectrum, people complain - and not totally unjustified - that raids are not doable for the more casual people.
    Which is exactly also "the reason" for no "gear resets" - these casuals need the extra power-ups to raid past content.
    But they also need an incentive to do so.
    TBM raids vs. EoK group isn't worthwhile to raid.

    If the gap were smaller, with a "plan" to outdate/be on par with raidgear two expansions ago, about, both these issues would perhaps not go away but be significantly less noticeable.
    And open raids would be viable...
  19. svann Augur

    If you want hero's vitality, hero's fortitude, and relife adornment you will have to do quite a lot of TBM
  20. Wizlard Augur

    I'm not totally sure what point you are making. This thread isn't about a gap. All I'm asking is that tanks can keep the raid gear they earned for longer than the first day of Ring of Scale. If this is by 10ac, that's fine with me. I just don't think we should be dumping our raid gear we worked 12 months to earn in the trash can the minute we shell out 30 bucks, and kill a few easy named mobs.