Re-tuned HAs

I never get why anyone gets bothered that other players are doing older content over and over (usually not the case btw its returning players doing it not the same person) I don't know anyone that has been living in Gribbles since it came out. I know a lot of people that ground there way through it but they get tired of it and move on. Thats cool and cool if they want to play their entire life in eq in gribbles. Hard for me to imagine but nothing wrong with it simply because I prefer otherwise for myself.

Let people do whatever content causes them to have fun and enjoy the game. If some guy wants to do tradeskills all day more power to him. I never do tradeskills. I am just happy there are a variety of ways to play the game and that means we can hold on to more players.

What this all still comes down to though is that older content should become easier.

Also bugs me that one of the reasons for some of the achievements were so difficult "well, when you level up they'll be able to be done, you don't need to beat everything on day 1". Well, if the HA's are going to keep scaling up, some of those achievements are always going to be out of sight for some players.

Ok, i can follow this.
One can argue though, that ANY task is "linear", be it in the form of an Ha or an "unlimited" task in open worlds etc. It's part of the game - not meaning to say you HAVE to do them (outside of progression).
But there is also the other crowd which enjoys HAs and such, exactly BECAUSE they are "limited" and "straightforward"/linear.
It's a plannable way to spend an evening with a more or less foreseeable reward.
(think of the chardok ones for example: easy to get to, easy to do - in the original form - and giving a set reward in the form of currency that helps buying at least type5 augments. So not "wasted" time for ANYONE involved, be it a raiding character or a grouping one; they were a nice way to top off an evening of killing giants in scorched, for example.)

Now, with this change though, they aren't that anymore.
They aren't really all THAT plannable, and they certainly aren't the "limited time" missions they used to be.
That's my problem, besides the added overall difficulty that STILL prevents me from completing my CotF progression with just my main WAR (i am sure he can tank all in there, but numbers killed him even back in TBM times, thinking of "The Doomscale Horde" ) and a box of mine and perhaps a (group+EoK rares geared) friend.
When in fact those 3characters and their mercs should, by original definition, be enough to beat all HA content, regardless of the expansion a particular HA came with.

That was the definition for cotf HAs. The game evolves. Just because they originally designed HAs with that goal does not mean they should stick with that definition forever. They should leave the old ones alone and maintain the original goal for the content when released, but newer expansions' use of their technology should not be limited to the scope of 5 year-old decisions.

Hmm.
If i am writing "DIN 9001" on something, i very much expect that something to fulfill the criteria of "DIN 9001". Surpasssing those criteria is np, but "undercutting" them certainly is and changing them is... out of the question; in that case, a new DIN norm would be published.

I think if something uses a certain mechanic, it should also use that mechanic in the "spirit" said mechanic was originally incepted. And it used to be the case up to this change too - i could beat EoK HAs (in EoK gear) with a group or molo or any number in between, the only thing that varied was the completion time. With the mentioned group of 3characters, one of them boxed, each and every EoK HA didn't last longer than an hour, some were certainly much faster even.
TBM and CotF HAs were done even quicker, as one should expect from old stuff.
So prior to this change, i would say they used the same definition.

Now, with that patch, they changed that definition. If that's fine for you, it certainly isn't for me.
And i see no valid point in your dividing HAs up between "original" and "newer".
RoS doesn't even have HAs (see the Dev's post on their definition of "mission" ).
IF RoS had HAs, then i would expect RoS-type of mobs THERE; but certainly not in EoK or any previous still.

And if they want to change the way HAs are supposed to work or the crowd to which they are supposed to cater, then that's one thing. But certainly not without looking at the sideeffects that has, or?
And i think noone can deny that the side-effects that we currently see are rather huge, when compared to the "before".

If they want to change the direction that’s fine, just put out a production letter stating the concept for HAs and how it’ll allow the developers to add more content and enrich our gaming experience. However I disagree strongly with the idea of updating past content to newer difficulty that’s contrary to 19 years of EQ. The old philosophy is what people like and kept doing. They should be happy they make content and 5 years later players are still using it.

It’s never going to happen. They designed RoS to be a boring grind to encourage micro transactions. If you’re busy with in another expansion, their scheme doesn’t work as well.

Silence from the devs over this will not be forgotten. Any future game this team works on I will refuse to play out of protest. Whatever their agenda or reasoning to not even have the courtesy to explain to players why you are doing something is abhorrent.

In the patch notes they explained:

Heroic adventure NPCs will now scale more appropriately at higher levels instead of being drastically easier than similarly leveled content.

Mr. and/or Ms. Hardcase decided they were too easy. It doesn't matter that people were having fun.

He is taking about the time between the original dev post and the current one and the lack of direction provided

in comparison to static content?
... scripted linear gameplay...lending to a lazy gameplay.. wow that sounds a lot like raiding.

I tend to to encourage lower levels to do ha's specifically because they have to deal with mechanics. of a dungeon crawl that is often lacking in the static zones.

sure they don't have the added element of respawns to contend with but neither do you need to deal with that in static spawns where you have a safe spot lined up before you even pull your first mob.

Ha's add to the game they don't detract from it.

Raid gear goes a long way into minimizing Group content mechanics so its not surprising that people in raid gear tend to be dismissive of those mechanics.

You take 2 groups of nineties. send one to Ha's and one to Hot. Not only will the HA group level and gear up faster but they will be just as if not more so prepared for 105 or 110 .
One group is dealing with game mechanics 80% of the time whereas the other is spending 80% of their time farming 4 tiers of gear to move onto voa and farm another 4 tiers of gear.

I don't mean to be coming across as anti static content. repetitive static zone grinding for xp isn't my thing. I don't mind spending a night killing 400 mobs in somnium to try get a quiver(still haven't got it) or a couple days in grelleths mansion camping a slow stick. I also enjoy things like unlocking content like in TDS but ha's enhance the game

On a side note
Doom scale Horde is a group progression mission. Not an HA. I don't believe it scales.

I think I mentioned before that it took me 25 attempts to win this mission.

The key here is having good ae support and using a mixture of assist and offtankng to keep the wardens off the Commander.

take out the wardens then the Nukers and that should get you through the 5 waves.

I think I was able to complete with a low nineties Druid,Necro,Beastlord and a high eighties enchanter with a 102 tank.

even that was dramatic as the last warden took me out with him on the 4th wave but I was able to get a battle rez . hit staunch and take out the 5th wave.

I don't disagree with anything you, or anyone else, has said. I was just clarifying why I don't like running HA's over and over. I just wasn't clear from the first posting about the lack of variety was something that was how I felt personally, and not how I felt others should feel in their gameplay.

I still need to finish off some stuff in TDS, CotF, and TBM myself, and honestly, haven't been back to finish them since the release of RoS because I have been busy with RoS. And, with this current retune, I am waiting things out to see how DBG is going to handle this before moving forward with that stuff again. I am sure things won't go back to how they once were, but hopefully, they will become manageable again.

THIS ISN'T ABOUT CONTENT BEING TOO EASY! THIS IS ABOUT NEW PLAYERS AND RETURNING PLAYERS BEING ABLE TO GET PROGRESION AAs MOLO!

And I think that's the point a lot of people are trying to make, that if something isn't done - then they simply won't go back and do any of it. Which is a shame, because there's a lot of content that increases replay value and longevity for the game. If I want to go back and get Relife Adornments or Hero's AAs, it was manageable before but currently not worth it unless you can find a solid 3-4 other people who also want to (which is unlikely).

It would make sense to revert the change while they explore other options to "fix" HAs but leaving the broken state now is terrible for business.

That also typically leads to more player interaction than not, at least in my experience. A lot of static zone groups tend to be box/bot heavy while instanced groups for me have been more warm bodies.

Thanks - if true then i have one problem less, hopefully.
But that mission stopped my progression as i'd have needed it to request some more, so i'm still affected.

I think that's the situation many are in atm - i for my part am too.

I totally expect things to return to the way they were.
"Manageable" depends (we had this sidetrack already above) on your gear etc - for some the current situation is quite "manageable" - just still too much of a bother. So "manageable" doesn't really cut it in this case - to me.

From a programmers stand-point, I can see this as "We did what we wanted to do. We are working on the best way to scale them from *within* this change rather than remove it. This is a mechanism we want to use going forward." I agree with this stance. What I don't agree with is using a broken mechanism (as it is not scaled properly) on LIVE servers. If you agree that it needs to be tweaked (as your quote above implies), roll it back and work on your dev/test instance to make the tweaks you think are necessary. Not doing so is just poor programming/implementation. You have rendered a part of the game nearly unplayable for many people (for example, someone working through progression on Fippy server...where 105 is max level, but CotF/TDS HAs are tweaked thru RoS...and there is no TBM/EoK/ROS content available).

Progression difficulty at 110.

Before Change: RoS > EoK > TBM > TDS > CotF

After Change: RoS > TBM > CotF > TDS > EoK

It might even be RoS = TBM or TBM > RoS at this point, or worse.

It needs to go back to having increased difficulty in the order the expansions were released. There is no reason I shouldn't be able to do ALL of CotF progression with 2 players and 2 mercs at 110.

It sounds like management has a hands off approach when it comes to decisions being made for the game. It's like they are just there for the ride. I would think management would get involved and let their team members know when a decision is a bad idea as it will have a negative impact on their customers.

Perhaps their management team doesn't know the game as much as they should and that's why they have a hands off approach on design decisions.

This whole nerfing past expansions in order to force people into the new expansion for sales is just horrible design. Give people incentives to buy the new expansion. I know development schedules are very tight for coming up with incentives but I would think keeping customers would be the top priority of a company in it for money.