Making Progression Not Required On Release Then REQUIRING It?

I know this (except for the strikethrough), and so does everyone else. I was poking fun at the statement, though, because of the fact that it has "progression" in it. But here are two things to consider...

First, this is no longer the original dev team. It isn't even the original company. And because of that, visions, mission statements, and intent on what "progression" means can, and has, changed over the past 18 years. It will continue to evolve. Same holds true with anything in life.

Second, because of the first, you can use today's standard-progression tasks in the definition because that is the intent today. Next expansion, that all could change. Progression could mean an epic 3.0, or epic AAs, etc (just tossing these out there). But for now, the progression model we have is how the current devs see it happening.

As for winning the argument, I say that to myself every time I have one with my wife. But I am not really sure it is actually true.

After ignoring this thread for two weeks, I got bored and caught up. Here's the two sides:

Those that don't see a problem:
1) I enjoy progression. I don't understand why anyone would not. There is no way that anyone would ever find this boring or tedious because I sure don't. Therefore, everyone should be happy and be enjoying this requirement.
2) I raid and maximize everything I can. I cannot comprehend anyone not wanting to get every little gain they can for casually played group mains/alts. Doing progression will make them better players and more like me. They should have to do it.
3) There's checkboxes! How could you possibly not want to click every checkbox?
4) You'll miss the lore. How could anyone possibly not want to know all the lore?
5) The way I play the game is the only way to play it.

Those that think it's an unnecessary road block:
1) Some expansions have more enticing rewards than others for progression. If one expansion's rewards were meh to me, I should be able to do the next expansion's that might not be so meh. This includes now having a zone completely locked behind progression whereas last year you were only restricted from a small portion of one zone.
2) People who took time off or had little time to play last year should be able to play unfettered in current content with friends this year
3) Progression is boring. Just let me play.
4) This game has lore?

There seems to be one side of the argument that wants to force their way on everyone and another side that wants more freedom. One side is very narrow minded and the other able to understand there is a diverse player base with diverse ideas of what they want out of the game. People would rather look down their nose at people that have different preferences. It's very smug and elitist.


Since I saw some people a week or so back questioning how anyone would actually find progression boring or tedious, here are some of my examples:

1) Going back in time... I spent eight or so hours on Brother Island trying to forage a quest item. This task was eventually patched to a ground spawn, but many of us suffered through the original iteration. Clicking forage every minute for eight hours is the very definition of tedious. How anyone could possibly argue otherwise is bewildering. Forward later to dino island, and the merc tasks require yet more foraging for several hours. That was never patched, but at least had droppable items in case you could find a friendly foraging class with extras.
2) Hail quest giver in Lceanium. Zone several times to Katta. Hail npc. Zone several times back to Lceanium. I've just spent more time looking at "loading, please wait" than actually playing the game. That's not boring? Yes, this is a bit less tedious if you happen to have a druid or wizard grouped with you. Not all do.
3) Hail npc in northern part of SW. Run back to Lceanium. Hail npc. Run back to far north part of SW and hail an npc. Yay! I just spent 5 minutes running back and forth and zoning two times. That's entertaining.
4) Ground spawns. Nothing more fun than wandering around looking for tiny things on the ground. At least the sawdust piles in SW were easy to find. But if you have a group of six all doing it, there's not enough. The burning wood was nearly non-existent the first couple times I ran progression. The last time I did, it seemed really plentiful. Not sure if there was a change or why the bad/good luck difference. Vegetables in Lceanium were a pain too.
5) Let's buy two scrolls from a merchant, then have to click/duck/click/duck 10 times each (I feel sorry for those that didn't figure out the duck shortcut). That's not tedious.
6) Location updates that require standing in the same place for six updates every six seconds. Yep, that's fun.
7) Things that change depending on time of day. Brother Island was another example. Just happen to get to the Siren step at 8am game time. Sit and wait until night comes. Real fun sitting and doing nothing. In Lceanium, on at least two different groups going through, I just happened to time it so that when I was either requesting or turning in the collect a bunch of crap from seven merchant tasks, that in the middle of either requesting or giving things, the time change made them all run off. Since they just scatter and stand somewhere else, it's not even like they've gone to bed. This is just an annoyance.
8) I've just finished SW and want to move on to Chardok progression. Oh, wait, I need to run to Lceanium. Zoning needlessly is so much fun.
9) I'm doing Droga. Why is the quest giver/updater about as far away from the zone as possible? Running across zones and zoning is so much fun.
10) At some point in EQ history, a developer decided to make questing a bit easier by making clickable text to respond with. In EoK, some dev decided people would rather read a word in brackets in the quest window and type that in. Because, that is more interactive and fun.
11) Why not randomly add having to go to Brell's Temple to get a ground spawn. Yay, more zoning for no good reason. I love zoning.
12) Anything that involves being drunk in EQ. Just what I want. To spend 30 seconds doing something, then have to wait 30 minutes until my character is playable again.
13) Trade skills. Need I say more about something that's not fun?
14) Everyone's favorite from TDS. Hail 50 times, get update, and need to hail 20 more times! Yes, everyone found that fun.

So, if the point of progression is to make your character stronger and make you a better player, why does doing it rarely require you know anything about playing your character or even needing your character to be strong? Running around zones not killing anything. Picking up ground spawns. Foraging. Trade skilling. Hailing. Zoning. None of that is actually playing your character. It's all busy work. I have a job and a wife that give me enough busy work tasks. I game to have fun.

I enjoy playing all the classes I have characters of. I enjoy improving how I play them through actually playing them. I prefer the combat side of EQ over the busy work. Hitting numlock and going to the fridge for a snack while my character runs across a zone is not playing the game. Yes, I find most progression tasks to be tedious and boring. It's not my style of play. I do respect that others enjoy it. Why can't those people understand that I and others don't? Yes, I prefer finding a good camp and grinding for several hours. I just wish they'd make base pop more challenging. Perhaps the heroic AA would actually be useful if they beefed up the base pop. That's my preference. You have yours.

I think I got everything from that post.

Oh, I'm well aware of that. I'm just hoping Ngreth's post is still true. Would love some confirmation one way or the other.

Hell, I recently finished farming multiple sets of T2 since some of my crew were in Seb pieces. I really have absolutely zero desire to farm any sets of T1.

Read this thread: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/eok-loot-drop-rate-from-nameds.237951

It doesn't actually matter whether players aren't caught up due to drop or spawn rates, or the hundreds of other reasons that might explain them being behind. What matters is how a game proposes to deal with people who are behind. Requiring a player to finish ANY expansion before going to the next is going to have consequences for catch up time and player freedom, the end result of which is not necessarily positive for the game, since it prevents people from skipping expansions that they don't like, and it prevents people from coming back to the game at their own time and speed.

Is it such a big deal to have one expansion require another, once in a while? No. People can just treat the two expansions as one expansion.

Is it the potential start of a bad trend, which could become much, much worse in the future? Yes, and that's why it needs to be discussed.

If you didn't do progression in EoK then you are probably not going to do it in RoS anyway. Just do what you did in EoK and camp the named for hours on end and call it good. You'll still enjoy RoS as much as you did EoK because you'll have the same experience in both.

If you are concerned with maximizing your character to the best of your ability then you might as well go back to TDS and start the progression there, then hit TBM, EoK, and RoS. That's what I'm doing, because I missed VoA through TBM. I've worked on progression as far back as Seeds of Destruction, have done some in Veil of Alaris, and TDS. All of that since I came back earlier this year.

The point is that you either don't need to do progression at all, or you need to go back farther than EoK progression anyway. While they may not have hard-coded the requirement, there are reasons to do the previous progression arcs, and the reasons are the same as the ones for doing RoS... character advancement.

The reasoning from noobs that hardly even play the game are hilarious imo. So the mutant sarnak have capabilities beyond other sarnak. During the quests you learn about how to get around their special ability and overcome it, with science. How in your mind would you get around their ability, without finding out in game how to overcome and do it? I agree that if there is content you haven't done, it's extra content that you should complete before moving on to RoS. It's so much easier to form a group than to join one that's already working on something you might happen to need, keep that in mind. How can you rescue the princess if you haven't made it to the castle? With the way some of you complete content, the princess is long dead and body was thrown into the pit with mushroom's. Why do you want more content without completing the limited content that was created for you?

In a world where other adventurers exist, maybe, just maybe, they figured it out and gave that solution to the Combine, which then used it to create a device so new adventurers don't have to invent the wheel again...?



It makes more sense for story lines to resolve themselves over time, than for the world to pretend that they weren't resolved until you came along, even though everyone around you has already moved on.

I did not ignore the arguments. I asked a question about the single unique thing you posted. Everything else has been talked round and round.


If you guys were honest about things you could succeed. Getting defensive and posting hyperbole on a daily basis is not the path to success. I know this from experience.

This bothers me a lot and I hope that ROS group game is geared for group geared players and not raiders.

I really dislike the huge HP/Mana jumps in gear upgrades we have been having.

It makes more sense for story lines to resolve themselves over time, than for the world to pretend that they weren't resolved until you came along, even though everyone around you has already moved on.

No man. It makes more sense to do it the real way rather than focus on using more dev time to make it easier because you can't do it because (???)
I also advise folks to go back and do your hero aa from CoTF and beyond. It's part of the game, stop skipping steps and wanting to be even near the same level of folks that actually achieve things in game. You can play the game how you want, but know your role. Face the task at hand and succeed or falter. Your choice. You act like they are requiring all raid achieves done before you can step into RoS, lol.

Another side of this argiment is that RoS/EoK dependency may not be that high. The Kar'Zok aura is nasty, but it ain't no death touch. You can outheal it. Sure nice to be immune, but plenty of mobs have nasty AE effects that you just have to deal with.
There is crafted gear that only needs RoS materials. If you just want non-stop killing, you should accumulate those at a fair clip.
I hear Cohort and Selrach stuff is alt.currency buyable. So no need to go back to EoK to farm it. Just grind RoS HAs instead of Gribbles. Though if your group can do RoS HAs, you probably should check out EoK hero missions. Get a few real nice augs and chests drop a fair amount of Selrach's.
For raids, not sure. But if early RoS raids drop backflags and Velazul's can be bought for alt.ccy, raiders might not have to go back for apps.

I did win. You cannot use the game’s title justify current game mechanics - it’s completely outside the scope of the original developers reasoning behind the name of the game.

So you gave up on being right and declared victory based on semantics. What a win, indeed.

So she won one. Let them have it. They get so few and need to make the most of them.

I already did!!

There’s no justification for using the previous expansion’s progression system (that was not required) to block people from consuming the new content. It’s bad game design and simply locks out potential paying customers.

TBH yes i think that is an expectation by some of those that haven't finished EoK yet.
And i further think that, when we look at the term "expansion" it not completely unjustified either.
We've ALWAYS been able to skip content and at least try the new one.
Until now that is. But raids are covered in the other thread really, this one in my understanding was more about the individual/group progression.

I think there's a "not" missing or one too many in that quote above, as the sentence as it stands does not make much sense to me.
But yes: The expectation of a new expansion is that one gets new raids to throw oneself at, even when you didn't beat the previous expansion's one. As you say, do not expect to survive - not until you've gotten new max level, some AAs and at least the current expansion's group gear (which should be enough to enter raids of the same expansion with).
And yes, going back and doing "old content" might and perhaps should help you beat the new one.
But the "required" thing...
That's what's being opposed here and in the other, more raid-oriented thread.
I think it's not a good idea, that's why i post to that effect.

The expectation is, i think, to level up and start NEW progression, see NEW things.
And when you have some leisure time, go back and mop up what you've missed, in either group or raid content.
The reality is still forming, so not set in stone yet. But it looks as if the "go back and mop up" might HAVE TO come sooner than some people care for.
Railroading was the term that has escaped me in my post above, but that's what this is or at least looks like. Reasons for that, yes - Thrillho gave the ONE that counts. Not good ones, nor healthy ones imo. With beta going as it seems to be going (from reading the beta forum) it doesn't look as if the base we're talking about here will change for the RoS release. So all we (as a whole) have is the faint hope for this one being a one-of and for a brighter future.
IF the more casual lower third of the population survives, that is.


And since you talk about the raiding here:
With the nerfs i have my doubts, but it COULD well be that the levels will enable "all the stragglers" to get into and complete EoK (raid) T3. As i say, i have my doubts but it's not impossible yet - we'll see.
If however that turns out not to be the case, then those raid guilds stand to gain not much from the new expansion but the levels/AAs themselves. No new gear to help them in old content for sure, as group gear is (and hopefully remains) lower than EoK raid gear. And no new events either, since they're locked behind the seals - i.e. 18 EoK T3 wins.
Those that haven't beaten T3.1 yet, must rely on the level increase and RoS group spells giving them the edge they need to win the old stuff in order to see ANY of the new (raid) stuff.
That's a first and not a good one imo.

Because you know...
I can still remember when we raided back in the time, with me on my ENC.
Luclin was out and we, having been the more "casual raiders", did anything from Doomshade to Chardok Royals for actual upgrades. That was variety and fun. Some upgrades were better than others, but all were worthwhile getting - the activity was able to be spread out over MANY expansions.
Over time, the variance or "worthwhile" expansions to raid have been narrowed to maximum 3, usually only two - the current and the last one.
EoK more or less forced everyone into EoK raiding and obsoleted everything before it. RoS keeps EoK raiders in EoK until they can accumulate 18 T3 wins, however long that'll take them.
There is not much new stuff they can throw themselves at, and the old stuff (TBM) that they might not have completed either is obsolete - so they have even less variation than we who saw and beat all of EoK. And it's not totally unthinkable that we'll see some guilds still stuck in EoK next year, when the NEXT expansion after RoS is released.

That's a string of bad "design" decisions there and RoS compounds them (with exactly what we talk about in here and the more raid-oriented thread) while also offering a very slight silver lining on the horizon that this development might be further reverted in the coming expansions.
But right now i feel like the Babylon5-writers+cast must've felt when they didn't know if they'd get a 4th year or not: I feel like Devs are surprised themselves that this is still giving them revenue and in order to ride it as long as possible they give it some half-hearted effort and attention while their "real" interest and future is elsewhere already. A catch-22 that only the producers/Devs can break by long-term commitment.

Wait... what?
You don't make people go back to Underfoot and before as well?
Why not?
Isn't that "part of the game" as well and "skipping steps"?
With this kind of reasoning, powerleveling should be a bannable offense and wearing defiant gear frowned upon!
"you are not allowed to reach level 20 before you have seen Befallen, Runnyeye AND Unrest, because they are there!"

And when you advise them to go back, do you also enforce that they do it in the order of releases?
I'd bet that the answer to that is "no" - because it'd make no sense.
No sense, you know, like this this whole continuation across expansion when it comes to requirements and immunities.
RoS as presented should just never have been declared nor sold as a stand-alone expansion, that's where all the griping comes from.

For some, beating any EoK T3 is an achievement they have yet to make. 18 times.
Bad enough already.

Does DBG provide parachutes with an expansion purchase? I’d rather jump off a second floor than grind anymore HAs. Why would anyone choose crafted gear? That’s essentially agreeing to another dead end.