Re-tuned HAs

Group missions are not that hard, period. Know how to play your class and problem solved.

Yes Daybreak needs to still scale it back a bit but its still doable if you know what your doing.

Actually, the content can’t be completed as it was designed originally. I just finished progression through RoF and at 106 I can’t finish CotF HAs, I can’t overcome the numbers RoS tuned mobs > RoF gear.

You don't get it I have done this on a 3rd alt and with mixed groups.

Its not that hard. Push more than auto attack.

If people don't play on FV, some of it can't be done by non-raiders. Playing on FV is easy mode, which most people don't have the option to. Trash mobs should not hit for 46k in old expansions. Period. Killing in RoS is easier than some of these HAs.

Sure try and dumb it down. Your still talking about a massive skill gap.

Side note: Civilization VI + 2 DLCs is only $12 this week on Humble Bundle. All this extra money from not subscribing accounts is gonna end up somewhere. One left all-access between 4 played accounts and 2 traders.

Warpeace, your gear may be better, and your raid achievements. But I've played continuously since 12/25/2001. The skill gap you like to think exists is a lot smaller than you think it is.

FV is easy mode, I know it. Raid alts know it. Is what it is.

I have been constantly impressed with the time, effort and skill DBG's has used in game development, They have elevated customer support to the best it has every been, since the days of calling on the phone.

That being said, I can't imagine a worse decision than to make RETROACTIVE Change to the HA's. One of the constant joys of EQ has always been to go back to an earlier zone with newer equipment and skills. It can be such great fun to tackle Raid Mobs that were so very challenging years ago. I began EQ 9/01 and have evolved into having 23 accounts spanning all servers and all but 2 classes. The very Notion of Making changes, part and parcel to the fiber of the game is a display of Hubris.

Nothing irritates a long time player more than having the games fundamentals ripped out and altered! We play this game because we like it. Player enjoyment of the the flavor of EQ is part of what I expect every time I load on. I understand DBG's putting reason into long overlooked flaws in parts of the game. But this move is the most player unfriendly thing I can possibly think of. Who's idea was it to go back several expansions and change one of the most often used features of the game?? What did you expect the reaction to be?? Was that even considered ??

After all the good work that DBG's has done, the improvements they have brought to the game and the attempts to create interaction between developers and heavy EQ players, this is a HUGE step backward!! Capricious immediately comes to mind. I can't begin to express how insulting and angry this change makes me.

It HA's were thought to need a scaling change then it needed to begin with RoS not all the way back to TBM. You don't fundamentally change a hugely popular function of the game, which has been ingrained for many years and expect anyone not feel like it was shoved down their throat! Again I ask DBG's, to ask themselves: Who's idea was this??? It is a 180 degree change form the forward thinking, player friendly, team-spirit that DBG's has constantly shown.

This is exactly the type of move that will BURN all the Good Will created to date. Fix flaws but DO NOT change the flavor and enjoyment of EQ. The HA's were not flawed or broken! They were attended to with more anticipation for most, than any other feature of the game. To BLOW IT UP is just so self destructive in terms of Customer Service and Goodwill. I couldn't be more disappointed with DBG
Archery

I don't think anyone even knows wtf you are even trying to discuss. You keep going back to Gribble and people wanting things handed to them and making generalized statements despite the fact that most people are simply asking for gaming mechanics to function how they have always functioned. You talk about going back to old school EQ when in reality if you believed in this philosophy you should be in favor of the mechanics reverting back to the way they have always worked and that is older content should become easier as you level not more difficult. Since you are one of the few people on here advocating for people who are behind in progression to have to spend even more time trying to progress through that content and basically forever being way behind I have to ask whats in it for you? For someone to have such a strong stance on something that clearly will have no impact on them there is usually some form of incentive unless you are just trolling here. I mean lets be honest are you actually going to go through all that progression again now that it scales to your current level knowing there is no reward in it for you? I am going to make a strong assumption that the answer is no. If for some reason you do decide to do it how about you take that raid gear off and throw on some group gear. You will still have an advantage over the people trying to progress through the content with having prior knowledge of the events, the progression AA's and rank III spells. If you want to be hardcore show all of us how its done. Post some videos in your new found crap gear about all the fun you are having getting owned in 5 year old content.

Enjoy that though considering FV is still a top 10 server wide raid guild owner.

FYI I don't use Magelo that's a pos stat padding site now.

Why should I care when you played continuously since? You should see apps trying to make it into actual raid guilds, they tend to be very bad.

I am one of those raiders who "take it slow". Even so, as you say, i have completed progression outside VP so far. And once i have gathered the key pieces finally, i will go on with the VP stuff.
But i also do not log off and concentrate on other chars on my Main's account either - i just drag things out a bit, and then fill up my fellowship's vitality with my main.

"Never" is a bit much, like any extreme.
But yes i've seen raiders log off and not worry about (group) progression - someone is always there to request the raids.
I've been seeing people who did not care at all about EoK progression, not even when we were getting ready for T3 - but seemingly expected others to drag them through.
And recently i even saw people being "there" for TBM listed as unflagged in the expedition window.
It's not as cohesive as you paint it as - there's "slack raiders" (of every level) and there are also what i call "hardcore casuals" - those with a high playtime (just outside of raids) and that know their class and such you don't give them credit for.

What *is* being talked about in this thread is the change to HAs in GENERAL.
As in: Affecting each and EVERY HA.
Someone then brought up the XP thing, as if that had anything to do with it (by what they said it didn't even!), as someone invariably does because they are somehow "envious" or whatever.

So, while the problem with this change is far, FAR bigger than you give it credit for, because it goes FAR beyond the 3 "problematic" missions, here's yet once more something on that matter:
The XP reward is fixed per mission. it has given that XP since inception. The only thing that has changed is how fast they could be done.
But even during TBM, we were able to chain 3HAs. it was somewhat closer than at RoS release, but it was doable. We even managed to chain 4 back then already a few times. Noone complained back then about it, so why now? What has changed?
I tell you what has changed: they have reduced XP in EoK and made RoS XP absolutely (risk vs. rewards). And now we've seen raiders in there again, in ADDITION to the "normal crowd" doing them - and now, for some it is suddenly a problem?
Because people were perhaps grinding level109 out in Gribbles, using XPpotions in addition to lesson?
Or because (raiding) people were cutting short their own fun by grinding the new AAs out there in - by comparison - a flash?
And therefore it needs to be nerfed?
Shouldn't rather the design of a hell level be "nerfed" instead? Or the XP in RoS be scaled accordingly to the risk the mobs pose?
Wouldn't that be a better way - the carrot-and-stick one - rather than the (at gunpoint) "get out of here, this shop's closed now!" one to get people "herded" into the new places as some people here claim was the goal behind all of this (i don't think it was, but well...)?

Regarding the mission's XP i think that - when we look at ALL HAs - it wasn't even that great.
Noone doing Bixies, Neriak and such was likely doing them for XP - but they were done. For Hunters, Collectibles, progression and, yes, for diversity!
Gribbles were mostly done for XP, yes. But people seem to overlook that Gribble's aren't all HAs affected by this. And they were done (recently again) by especially the very same people you say don't need it. And those people don't need them - anymore, at least for the moment until the next hell level comes along. So now it can be nerfed, right?
Just like making raid events progressively harder over time, to make it even harder for ppl to beat them if they weren't "the best" (read: the first).
Now THAT is BS in my eyes!

And yes, XP has nothing to do with this change to ALL HAs.
IF - and that is a big if - XP of specific missions would have been an issue, then those specific missions would have been addressed - not the whole mechanic.
So can we now stop talking about XP, whether it's regular XP or AAXP and go back to the topic of 5year old using current mob's templates and how that's so not welcome a change?


And finally on the XP in the hopes that ppl stop bringing this BS up again in THIS thread's context:
I don't even think that (x+16+17+19AAs + 5AAs from a daily ) times whatever potion/lesson you and XP bonus applies in 30minutes once a day (or in case of potion-use every 3hrs) is a bad thing.
(x in the above being the reward of the 4th HA you did before Gribbles, whatever that gives - let's say 20 for now for the sake of the discussion)
That's roughly the 150AAs mentioned above, some managed to get more out of this but i don't think it got as high as 300.
For the sake of the discussion, let's go with 200AAs then per run - and one such run happen every day (lesson use).
That's a whooping "synergy" level. or two spell foci that cost a ridiculous 100AAs per.
Raiders hell-bent on getting their AAs maxed asap have done that, and are now - just a little over a month after release - out of things to do, outside of collections and hunters. YAY they can go hibernate again for the rest of the year!
But if you were bringing up an ALT or - god forbid - you were a reurnee after some years of absence (as i was):
Wouldn't you be HAPPY to be able to get this kind of AAXP boost every now and then?
I know i was!
That's why i do not see an issue with the XP at all.
None is FORCED to do Gribbles over and over, and if you do not like them to, offer them a viable alternative - if you can!

Reading comprehension may be a stretch. FV is far easier than a normal server to gear as a non-raider. Most servers do not have the luxury of gearing their characters. So not raiding on a normal server puts non-raiders at a huge disadvantage. My gear is excellent, due to providing dozens of artisan prize kits to raiders too lazy to do it themselves.

Most people in EQ have no desire to raid. There's all sorts of things to do instead of tie yourself down rather than living life on your own terms. To each their own, I'd rather take advantage of laziness, while you'd rather raid.

Not sure where Magelo came from. Not raiding does not equal to having a skill gap. Non-raiders supporting the game for 16+ years keeps you having a game to keep talking non-raiders about.

"Not that hard", yes. Even less "hard" with raid gear of that expansion or newer, yes.
"Know how to play your class and problem solved.", no - that statement is absolutely, completely wrong.

But that is not the question nor the problem.
"still doable" should NEVER be even in question for 5year old stuff.
Fell Foliage in it's current form is also "still doable" - yet far from ok, is it? Same thing here!
"Still doable" doesn't cut it, period.
"Still doable" is perhaps an "argument" you can bring on with reference to RoS-only issues. But certainly not for CotH and the HAs in expansions since.

Must have some keen observation skills to watch a group wipe on one (current) named and know their skill level. People leveling on Gribbles did not then magically jump to RoS.

Gear is 100% the issue now with the re-tuning, you don't have the skills you think you have without it.

Is this a canned response? Sure seems like it.

I don't think you get it either. First off for those where this is easy, be it it mad skillz, raid gear etc.....at this point WHY would you bother doing these? If the mobs are as hard as RoS then might as well go to RoS. Then there is reward commiserate with the difficulty. For those that can no longer handle them, than best hope you can find a social arrangement where you can achieve what you want to do. Otherwise, here is a rock. Go kick it down that alleyway. Take this straw too.

Its just a really passive aggressive, sneaky way of pulling off a crappy nerf while still being able to argue that the intention of the HA's have remained intact.

More or less saying that "We would you rather not do HA's but we are not going to remove them from the game as much as we would like to. We will just render them something that is more of a waste of your time."

People are not quitting over just this. Its the aggregate of stupidity, incompetence and BS those that run this game consistently perpetrate. Whether its the suits, the dev team or the bunch of shady Russians signing the checks.

You hit the nail right on the head. Daybreak does all this work only to ruin it by moves like the HA returning that piss everyone off.

I do appreciate your answer Chokal but that gear up route is unacceptable. I'm supposed to go to static zones where everyone else in the game has been herded. An entire zone cannot be owned, there will be other players around to play nice with. Where every farmer in the game wants the same named. Where I will be rolling against 5 other players IF something I need comes available. I'm supposed to do that to upgrade 22 slots of gear. Not to mention hoping for augs to drop to put in that gear.

I did that once in a while as a break to HA's. I preferred HA gearing over the above because I got currency at the end. Currency I took to a vendor and bought the gear upgrade I needed the most. That is why the current state of HA's is such a staggering loss.

Not to defend Warpeace in any way, but I read him responding to someone claiming everyone needs raid gear now. That is far from the truth. Group gear is more than adequate for any of the content in the game. I've done it in group gear on alts and seen plenty of others do so as well. There are people in raid gear failing to beat things now. Raid geared does not equate to having a clue how to play just as group gear does not mean that someone somehow sucks. Some of the best players in the game don't have schedules conducive to raiding or just don't enjoy it. They're doing fine. Let's stop the raider vs. grouper bs.

Anyone that takes a little time to learn what buttons to press and when can beat this content. Certain classes depend on more balanced groups than others. Some people that add more boxes beyond their capability to box will get smothered. More is not always better. This really isn't a difficult game to play if you either experiment or do some research to get better. Raid gear is just an excuse from people that won't bother.

I'm all for older content being accessable to those that want to molo, muck around with inefficient box setups or who are just less proficient/don't care about playing to their potential. I see no good from buffing the old HAs. However, trying to argue the content is only doable by those in raid gear is flat out wrong.

The risk/reward is so far off on many HAs, that it's not worth doing in any gear. I just see a lot of privileged FV raiders running their mouths like every server has it as easy.

Group gear from 105 to 110 gets buffed from 4000-4200hp to 4800-5000hp... 20% increase. HA mobs went from nameds hitting 33k to trash hitting 46k with 250% the hp. Can it only be done in raid gear? Maybe not. Is it worth doing in group gear? No. The time and effort don't line up with loot.

I just want to know thought process behind this change or lack there of.