Re-tuned HAs

I read this on the Allakhazam site: They are designed for groups of 2-3 players and their mercenaries, and shouldn't take an average group any longer than 45-60 minutes to complete.

Perhaps that is not correct, but that is the reason I mentioned it.

Allakhazam usually takes that info from the expansion reveal or subsequent dev interviews/chats.

I agree we have to discuss things in a calm and reasonable manner and also that the likelihood of that is remote. That being said I do think the devs need to communicate more on this even while I agree there are good reasons they can't say a lot. I just hope that eventually they do communicate.

This is a sticky situation though. Regardless of how things are received by the players the devs couldn't say much until the had things nailed down. Now that they seem to have an answer to the issue they should be communicating. They respond to many other threads this one should be no different.

They obviously see some advantage in not communicating what changes they have planned for next patch or they still haven't nailed it down and the announcement that something will happen in the February patch is all they could say. The thing is they could just say that "We are making a tuning change for the February patch but have not finalized exactly what the change is but once we do we will let you all know.".

If game devs don't communicate in games because they fear irate customers then that is the end of dev communications for any game.

All that being said I agree discussing things in a calm and friendly manner works best and doing otherwise won't help things.

I evaluated this perspective but I don't agree with it based on how gameplay has been established since day one and that is as players grow in power older content becomes more trivial and should become easier to take on. As far as not working as intended when COTF was released the level cap was 100 not 105 or 110 for current purposes. I would not expect to level up a toon to 100 and molo COTF HA's and for the most part it would be difficult if not impossible to do so which is working as intended.

Out leveling an expansion, AA grinding, and gearing up should allow someone who has out leveled and out powered these HA's the ability to excel in this content and not get beaten down. I don't expect to spend the rest of my EQ life farming the naughty gnome and keeping up with those who have moved on but I do expect to be able to get past that dirty ankle biter and actually stand a chance in more current content without having to skip several expansions worth of progression and upgrades that give me a leg to stand on in said new content.

The mere notion that gaining power is an issue really goes against all logic in game. Not to say that players cant be over powered or content be under powered when talking about current content but the whole reason anyone left the newbie yard was to tackle new adventures, explore new lands, and acquire new loot resulting in increased power. If power gains were not important we would still be yielding rusting swords and showing our bare backside to Fippy as he chases after us and those filthy human's who have ruined his lands.

Where the rub is people are wanting to over power the content AND have good/great rewards and this has never been the intent. Yes, I can go back to lower Guk and face roll all those frog that tormented me for years but I know the reward is going to be ZERO. Asking for the HA's to be molo/solo and great experience? Why not just ask for a mob to hail for free AA's and loot?

If they are going to make the HA's easier I think the reward should be adjusted. It would be great if they created a sliding scale so that the first time you do an HA's you get 100% experience, the next time and ever subsequent time it's only 90% of the previous experience compounding. After doing the mission for example 10 times it will only be resulting in about 47% of the original experience. This allows people to farm if they want/need the currency while still not actively promoting people to avoid/bypass current content. I suppose you could put a lower end cap on it but I wouldn't.

I agree reward and difficulty levels should be reasonable. I am not sure the devs do a good job of balancing the two though. Partly because most of their interactions are likely with raiders or groupers at the high end of the game. Interactions with and metrics on players beating raids prior to an expansion going live probably isn't the best measuring stick for the average player though.

To be fair, the HAs people are soloing for XP don't really give great loot anymore, but I do agree that the XP scaled way too well. It's one thing for the achievements to give XP, another for the mission itself to reward such substantial amounts. Either way, I think the whole XP excuse is blown out of proportion, it isn't the best XP in the game like some people think and adding the timers only shut it down further. It was decent XP for very little cost/effort (in time gated chunks).

And while I like your idea about diminishing returns, I definitely think having those diminishing returns decay over time would be better than permanently lowering them. Maybe say after a week it resets or something.

I think reducing the experience given higher levels is acceptable, not that way though. I do believe a high level who is helping someone through progression should at least get an experience reward, after all they are giving their time and effort and likely paying merc costs, etc. as well. Phase out the experience for non progression instances, but toss a few crumbs to those helping lower levels through, just not as much experience as they would get in current expansions. My 2cp.

The 'Devs' might not be at liberty to divulge the future plans until they have been finalized, but there have been numerous requests to provide reasoning behind the change that has taken place.
The software developer in me says: someone had to present the idea at a meeting, along with details and reasoning, and others had to agree to it in order for it to have been allowed to go live.

And I think that everyone who posted in this thread would very much like to know that reasoning. And the real scary thought is I suspect *EVERYONE* who posted in this thread would like to know that reasoning.

Yes. The scaling of the mission completely threw this out of balance...when it was in favor of the players as well as now. If the mission scales, killing x number of mobs in the HA should yield the same reward (so, 10 even cons should yield the same xp). Scaling one without the other creates imbalance. And the rate of scale needs to be in proportion as well. The only caveat that I have here is that power needs to scale within era (CotF to CotF). Scaling CotF to RoS as it does now creates a tremendous imbalance in power. Unfortunately, scaling from RoS to CotF would similarly shift the imbalance to the player (as it did before, as someone pointed out to me earlier). This is the challenge that the "tweak" is trying to address.

Rofl 59 pages of salt? keep it going!

The NGE killed SWG in one fell swoop. BAM! *DEAD*

• Game companies do kill games with bad design decisions.
• It's not a conspiracy.
• There are no tinfoil hats with this one.
• It's a fact.
• Bad decisions kill good games.

Many, many years later, the then president of Sony Online Entertainment, John Smedley, was quoted in an interview saying,

Now since then, Sony sold Sony Online Entertainment to Columbus Nova who renamed it Daybreak Games, and John Smedley now works for Amazon's games development division.

I'm hopeful that "it's not a mistake we're going to make again" didn't leave with John.

I remember that quite vividly. As I recall, they did listen to the small group of people who were dissatisfied with not being able to easy street roll up a Jedi, and ignored the rest of the player base. I am not sure who the DBG devs are listening to in this case to make the changes that they made. As with the long history of SOE then DBG, when they wanted to change something, they often took a sledgehammer to kill a fly approach. I am wondering if they overtuned it to the point that they can only untune it so far without breaking a lot of things in the process.

Excellent post.

Are you equating this change to HAs to the NGE in SWG? Or is this just a history lesson?

I'm pointing out that bad design decisions can and sometimes do have negative affects on games.

The changes to the way that Heroic Adventures work is a pretty big change in my opinion. It's not clearly as big of a change as NGE was for SWG. They would have to remove a player class from EQ to be on the same level as the NGE. But, you knew that already when you made your snarky reply.

The point is that not all changes that people complain about are things you can just laugh about and sweep under the rug. Sometimes the people's complaints have justifiable warrant for being heard.

Heroic Adventures were designed for a set level range to fluctuate between. They were based on the expansion for which they were released with on each expansion.

Changing them to scale up to beyond the level of the highest mob from that expansion *IS* a major change in design. It has ramifications that go beyond just being annoying.

People in this thread can white knight this until their face turns blue, but the reality is that this was a major design change.

Simple scenario to show just how broke the design really is:

1. You want to complete the achievements in an expansion that has level 85-90 content
2. You are level 110
3. The content in the heroic adventures to complete the achievements for that level 85-90 content is scaled up to level 110 just because you are level 110.

You are completing level 85-90 achievements by having to complete level 110 content. That's broke. There's no other way to put it. It's broke. You should never have to complete content above the level range of the expansion for which the content was released.

The thought process that you should not be able to face roll older content is bogus.

You earned those levels and gear. You earned the right to face roll lower level content.
Scaled content is a bad game design. Content should not scale up to your level.

Anytime a game designer puts code in that makes content scale up to the players level, that makes all of the work the player put in to level up meaningless. You are no better at level 100 killing a bug that hits like a mac truck for a level 100 player than you are at level 1 killing a bug that hits like a mac truck for a level 1 player.

You never progressed beyond level 1. You're level on your character sheet says you leveled up to 100, but if that same bug is hitting you as if it was a level 100 mob, then you didn't ever really level up. You're still level 1.

Scaling content is bad game design. It always has been, and it always will be.

This game is not hard. I am not saying that you should play it, but the game used to be a lot harder and more unforgiving. Having stuff in the game that you cannot do yet, because of toon choices, playstyle choices, etc. does not mean that it is hard. Wait long enough, and that content will be trivial for you. It has been that way always, and it will probably be like that for decades to come.

If you can’t do EoK progression with 4 paid toons, with raid/group mix tbm gear, then you are doing it wrong. Not saying that you are, but if I may be so bold as to challenge a fellow long time everquester in a bit rude manner: stop whining. If the lot of us can do it in group gear, so can you. You do yourself a disservice by letting the thought, not the game, defeat you. Stop reading posts, and go get the gear and AA you lack, if any, adjust your playstyle, consider shifting a toon if you lack severily in a key area. You used to be a bad- online pioneer on a modem that made strange noises when you went linkdead during a corpse run. Xp rez? We had no stinking xp rez! Xp? If we had to camp the same 3 mobs for xp, spending most time looking into a book, and get half a bubble on a 12 hour session, then we did that, because that is what it took! Graaaaaaah!

Don’t take me seriously, but look if there is something for you in this...

Definitely no where close to the NGE in SWG in size and scope but I think it was similar in not reading the player base properly.

Absolutely, I agree on nearly all your points. Yes, I thought it was a bit of a stretch to equate it to the NGE. However, I was not trying to be snarky. The "history lesson" was for the Devs (imo)...to learn from previous mistakes. Apologies if that is snark.

The design change was not a major change as it impacted HAs only. Application, maybe, but not design. I know...distinction without a difference. The HAs hide collection items and progression steps. Therefore the application of scaling content across all HAs increased the difficulty past the intended level of the Era. I don't think that scaling currency/XP farming HAs is bad at all. It provides areas to get xp in a familiar environment for players with limited play time.

Face rolling past content because you leveled past it is something I completely agree with. You should be able to do that. And the HAs that are part of progression or achievement should be facerollable. I just don't think they should be part of progression or achievement. But the application of scalable content allows for a person to stay in one place and xp through the game without getting out of their comfort zone. Hardcore Heritage is nothing more than this. This mechanism would allow for Hardcore Heritage of any zone through nothing more than running it through this algorithm. Itemization would have to go through a similar algorithm, but this is a start!

But your example of still being level 1 is not accurate because mob scaling to PC scaling has not been equivalent. Power scaling is a parabolic function, so you would technically be below level 1. =)

I am not white knighting the change nor am I sweeping it under the rug. I am the one that got completely screwed over by it (Fippy). I don't have a means to increase my current power to get past them. My current understanding of how they want HAs to work is that they can be an alternative xp source to current zones and are always a viable alternative. I think that type of design can work...with the proper scaling of mob, gear and reward (though, give no reward and make it like Mech Guardian...your own instance of xp mobs that drop level appropriate items/money). I have posted many times that content (progression/tasks/missions) should never scale past their Era. I am in full agreement with you there, but having HAs scale (think of them as a reverse OMM mission) I think could be great...if the application is done correctly. Unfortunately, it was not...and it has soured the taste for many.

Gotta agree with Risiko, HA's should not scale higher than the level they were intended for, it's ok they can scale down. But if they cannot scale they would have a normal life cyclus instead of they be able to be done for ever to get xp.

If they had had a normal life cyclus like rest of CoTF, then they should now be down to give very little xp, for they very small effect there were required to do them.

Then people would still be able to do 5 of them during a lotd, but people would not be able to get 220+ AA during the 50% xp time at Christmas.

Something people should not be able to gain on such easy contend.

This just a guess, bad memory, but when corf got out Gibbles were also white/dblue, that meant that today Gibbles would have been green and we know xp for green is tiny.


Looking back in the mirror with todays eyes, CofF were a bad expansion, by having too many HA'. Any zone should max have 2 Ha top, 1 is best, then people would not be able to do tour de Dhills.