Are ALL Heroic Adventures Affected by the Recent Change?

Howdy all --

My wife and I are getting back into EQ by doing The Broken Mirror progression. We have a level 101 berserker, 105 berserker, and a 104 shaman (plus 2x healer merc, 1x tank merc). We've failed the Handmaiden Heroic Adventure a couple times and were planning to go back to try it again, but then there's all this uproar about HAs being overtuned because some were farming specific HAs for easy experience/AAs.

Are ALL HAs overtuned and thus should we not bother attempting TBM HAs even for progression or was it only specific HAs that have been affected?

As far as I know it affects all HAs. From posts I have read difficulty levels went up some for those under level 105 but much more so after level 105. Your best bet might be to max aa's and stat at level 105 as long as possible as the scaling gets worse past that.

From some posts in the Re - tuned HA's thread it looks like they are so over-tuned some people don't want to do them anymore.

I plan to poke around on a TLP server until my subs run out in a few months. I'm finished with live servers.

Confirmed. And I'm not talking Gribbles. What used to be a reasonable HA for me to do with my 1.5ish hours of playtime (the daily HA's at 103 and 104 since I came back a few weeks ago) now the first mobs/pull will shred my pet or healer merc will OOM on first pull every time. I tried multiples.

Following up, I tried to get through the Handmaiden T1 Progression HA in TBM with the following group.

• 105 zerk (played actively)
• 104 sham (boxed)
• 101 zerk (doing nothing)
• 105 tank merc (assist)
• 104 healer merc (reactive)
• 101 healer merc (reactive)

I logged a few kills. Here's what they look like:

An Honored Citizen/Resident (yellow con to 105)
Total HP: 4.9 million to 5.6 million
PC DPS (105 zerk): 46k - 77k

A terrible monster (story-based, non-loot-dropping pseudo-named)
Total HP: 31 million
PC DPS (105 zerk, disc'ing): 103k

After the terrible monster ate my merc tank and 105 zerk, I decided to call it. The end event in the mission requires VERY quick killing of 10 mobs and if it took 1-1.5 minutes to kill each trash mob here, then I'm not going to make it through that event.

Well, as unhappy as I am at the current state of HAs (particularly progression-required ones), I'm happy to know the full state of them. It looks like the wife and I will have to put progression on hold and just do some open-zone grind/loot camps.

Or let the corporate execs know how you feel and vote with your feet. Find a different game, if DBG starts hemorrhaging subs then someone should reverse course.

Nah... I've been playing on and off since 2000. My wife likes the game. I like the game. My guildies and alliance members are literally the oldest friends I have. I've been a class correspondent (Lilbraen Nothinky, Berserker) and, honestly, the analytical and diplomacy skills I learned via EQ have directly contributed to my career. I'm not going anywhere. I'll be a subscriber until the servers are shut down.

Here are the things I've learned in my years playing EQ and working directly with the Devs.

1. They juggle a massive number of responsibilities. Not only in EQ, but often with other games in the Verant/SOE/Daybreak catalog.
2. They actually love the game and wholeheartedly appreciate the players. They love making the game work well.
3. In accepting #1 and #2, you can only derive that when something doesn't work well, it's not because they're being malicious, but because there were some unforeseen effects.
4. When nerfs happen, it's for the long-term balance for the game.
   1. This was very hard to accept when they nerfed the Berserker Epic 1.5/2.0 epic clicky which used to re-proc itself in perpetuity if you could continually hit a target. Then again, the devs responded and accepted that berserkers loved the mechanic, so they added new disciplines that use that re-proc mechanic that give Berserkers that simulated urgency to SMASH MOAR!
5. If they're not responding to inquiries, they're either
   1. Trying to understand the problem before they respond
   2. Have way too much on their plates to respond to a specific inquiry
   3. Not in the office and attempting to have an appropriate work/life balance.
6. They respond really, really well to simple, well-researched input absent of hyperbole, threats, insults, and the like.

This post, for example, was simple research. "Is the problem restricted only to post-105 HAs or does it affect level 105 and lower-tuned HAs?" My research shows that the problem affects at least HAs in The Broken Mirror tuned for 100-105 groups (even without RoS purchased) in addition to the well-known issue of HAs tuned for level 106+ groups. Moreover, it shows that such low-tier HAs as T1 TBM progression-required HAs are affected.

Now, I don't expect one of the Devs to jump on this thread and bask in the glow of my 45 minutes of effort and cite this research as the savior of all modern instanced Everquest content. But, if the Devs still onboard recognize my name and recall my history for level-headed decision-making, good research, and reasonable advising, they may just say, "Yep, the problem goes all the way down," without having to run any tests themselves. And hopefully that helps them implement a solution just a little bit quicker once they're in the office.

I just did some open zone killing in Demi-Plane of Life (instead of trying to do more progression). Here's what was measured by the exact same group:

A (favored) functionary (yellow con to 105)
Total HP: 3.7 million 3.8 million
PC DPS (105 zerk): 60k - 130k

So it looks like TBM's T1 HA mobs have been tuned to increase HP by around 33% and AC about the same. The effect is a doubling to tripling of trash kill time. Particularly considering the extremely difficult final script from the HA "The Handmaiden", this will make progression all but impossible for level-appropriate or even advanced groups.

Your best bet is not to try and kill the 10 mobs really fast. Instead, get on the rock in the corner and carefully pull each one off. Also, the High bokon will drain most of your mana at the 1 minute mark, so switch out the healer merc with a DPS melee.

In this video I did it before the nerf, but doing the same thing should work if you can single pull. Finally, try and get the 101 BER up to 105 with AA's.

Eepok - first, thanks for solid data points. I appreciate the time you spent looking at the issue, particularly since you are adventuring at the (expected) level of the expansion when released. I cannot really do that without piling up a lot of corpses first. This seems to indicate that more has been changed that we were told initially.

Second, you make a lot of valid points about the development process. I think you are a little too rosy, but I don't think in general the developers are out to hurt the game or get anyone. But the HA change isn't a nerf, isn't an intentional roadblock (ie Rathe Council before Time was ready), isn't a mistake...it is a fundamental change in how past content is delivered to players.

Except to fix clear bugs or the effects of new abilities in old content, this is the first time I can remember in the history of modern EQ where the developers have decided to make the difficulty level of past content harder. And the player base is struggling to understand why because there has been zero official communication on the issue. And even today with a few posts by Absor and Prathun in another thread, they still have not communicated any clear picture of what they are trying to do...in fact probably confused the issue even more.

This is the worst change in the history of modern EQ.

The person who really needs to be under the microscope here is the producer. Because if this change was done without her knowledge, then she needs to take charge. And if this was done with her knowledge, then she should be the one the pitchforks and torches should be heading towards. But in either case, she needs to be communicating to the player base what the intention was and what the fix will be (or if there will not be one).

Like you, I'm here until they turn the lights off. But whether I'm here as a paid subscriber, or mooching off the past...for the first time, that's a serious question for me. I have 4 months before my first decision needs to be made. I hope we are not still asking the same questions then.

The exact same thing occurred when TDS launched and CotF HAs were harder at the new max level.

Just curious, was the difficulty increase % vs player power gain % the same each time they were increased? Because the difficulty now seems way out of balance vs what it's always been.

^ Which were not even comparable to what occured with the Lv 110 scaling so that argument is like holding water.

(response to dev, not above poster)

I'm going to try to be respectful here. I work in customer resource management, and let me tell you, when my company makes a mistake or something happens that's detrimental to the customers or their products, the first thing we do is issue a full apology, admitting that we were wrong and detailing how we will fix it.

All I can see from the snippet comments from the devs seems to be "we see you commenting about this haha nanana-boo-boo" and "we don't care" and "this happened before get over it" and "if you don't like it play something else." Now, as I've stated numerous times in other threads, my subscription ends in 3 days, and I'm not renewing until the HAs are changed. If they aren't, WoW is calling my name. I've been a subscriber since 1999. (Check my profile! Please, I beg you.)

My brother is a game developer who used to enjoy playing this game until this patch. He is aghast at the response and is mortified (and he also quit).

I don't get it. Do you guys want this game to die? Do you want us to quit? That's what you are doing. If you're not going to change the HAs. I want a long, detailed written response (just like I do on a daily basis) as to why there will be no changes, why the current system is "better," why this benefits the customers and the game quality and how much you guys care and appreciate us.

I spend my hard earned money I sweat for every day working to pay for this game. It just seems like you guys want this game to die. If you do, then please just tell us that and give us free coupons for Pantheon.

Understood that you can change the nature of the game. As levels have increased, older content became trivialized.
People could blow through the new AAs in CotF HAs, essentially frustrating the developers ‘ intent.

That makes sense.

The consequence, intended or not, is that progression for Expacs that use HAs in the progression are now effectively
closed to a large swath of 100+ characters. Is that a good change or a necessary one?

Our raid group thought the increased player power would let us finish off a few achievements in the (now 2 year old) Plane of Fear. To our surprise even THAT instance was "buffed". (sigh)
The raid logged. People are re-evaluating EQ as we speak.
@Slayerwolf: There is a "theory" that the Dev's want subs to drop fast so that the "Russian Overlords" will dump this game off on someone else who might actually want to keep it healthy. IMHO that's the only logical thing that makes any sense now. I think the Dev's are giving the overloads EXACTLY what they want - in spades - so that it backfires faster and perhaps leads to a "better home" for EQ.
-R

TBM 110 instance MOBs > ROS The scaling is too high as the instance mobs hit harder and have more hp and give 10% of the XP you would get from just going to ROS zone.

Risk vs Reward if you're making people fight harder mobs they should get more xp for doing it.

And that is completely the right thing to do. But could we roll back the change for level 105 and lower HAs? If even just for the progression ones?

but these are harder at the lower levels. this isn't just the ROS spells alone. Ive done all The TBM Ha's up to Crypt since ROS release. This is specifically related to the mob scaling change applied on the patch.