Everything is overtuned

If you're complaining about this here and weren't complaining about it in beta, it means YOU contributed nothing and you get what you deserve, IMO.

Plenty of people complained about the rough named, the smoke trials, and other things. You should have seen some of the things that DIDN'T make it out of beta.

Might want to let someone up the ladder know the patch server is borked and no one can log in at the moment.

To DB- Thanks for looking into this this issue.

I know there are a lot of people like me who play and others that raid, but I am a customer that is paying DB for a product that I, not some else, want to play. I don't think it is too much to ask that a group-geared 3-boxer who spent 90 bucks to get new content should be able to 3-box new content in multiple zones.

I just don't understand why a business would drive customers away. ROS followed by TBL sure gives the appearance that DB doesn't want people like me to give the company money.

Seems players are not happy these days unless they are able to kill everything first try and do all tasks/quests etc that an expansion has to offer with minimal effort. That is disappointing.

Not to sound like an old timer, but did ANY of you play when expansions like Gates of Discord/Solteris and so on were current? Guilds would go a month at a time or more wiping and figuring an extremely difficult event out for themselves. That was the fun of it. That was when EQ was at its best. Today, it seems like if people are dying or struggling at all with progression quests/named and so on, there is an absolute outrage. No persistence. Just an immediate knee-jerk response to flee to the forums to flood it with posts begging for an easy, creampuff game. Because who wants to be challenged anymore in EQ, am I right? Well, I do. Hope you're happy when it's tuned down to your soft, cozy comfort level.

Seriously, this linear progression bottleneck with required trials that require the perfect group to get through suck the fun right out of this game.
My first impression of this expansion is wishing i had not paid for it.
Tried the trial of three and the timers are wayyy too short and the mobs way too overpowered.
We were not casual players and all were raid geared.
Why do you guys keep doing this? Screw locked zones. Your design logic is sadistic crap.

Hey, Coas! I was there. And Gate of Discord was an overall mess in general, you really don't want to talk about it when you're criticizing group content being tuned versus raid gear, because absolutely everything was tuned vs. raid gear in that expansion, and group gear was absolutely nowhere as close to raid gear as it is now. Chaos Claw was tuned against people with the poison resists to shrug it off from time to time, not groupers who ate the full proc each and every time.

I was criticizing tuning vs. raid gear even back then. I'd see the top guilds then asking for things to be harder, while they were tuning it in gear that gave them double or triple what group only players could obtain in content that was intended for a group. It was a mistake then, it's still a mistake now. I love ROI, I have friends in ROI and Valhallah. ROI absolutely doesn't need to be taken into consideration when turning group content. They're going to steamroll it anyway.

You need to understand that the reason you see mostly raid geared players in beta is because they are the players that put the time etc into the game. Group gear players are normally more casual and dont have the time to put into beta which is usually why they are not in raid guilds. This doesn't mean that they should be overlooked when designing the game. I get that yes, it is much easier to miss things and harder to tune properly without larger numbers of group players in beta, but that doesn't make it less important.

Its very disappointing - RoS I felt I got little value out of as the missions were hard for my normal group, but at least I could try all but one of the zones, now I find I have thrown away money by buying TBL for an expansion my group will likely only get to see one zone in.

Did anyone beta test this using group gear at all? That and using the natural progression of doing smoke trials with T2 RoS group gear or maybe even just RoS group tier 1 as opposed to the TBL group stuff? Since VP is not really visited much?

Or was this all testcopy and straight to raid gear?

This expansion really looks like one to bang your head against for a while......

Group geared players like me have been simply ignored in beta. I have complained here and my post has been even deleted. So I didn't even got over the first zone because it was insanely hard.

Again:
I was in group gear, full AA and has been creamed in the first zone with EVERY mob

Changed to War and SK with full TBL ultrarare gear (GMM, the max available). I could molo a very small amount of trash mobs. If this is a challenge in raid gear then it is nearly unplayable in group gear.

My result: overtuned from the start - or better: tuned for raid gear

Now:
Group gear in full group:
- possible to kill trash
- possible to do Fight Fire (with much sweat)
- named are simply overtuned, has been one-rounded (tank and cleric with full discs up, DI/HoT/Retort/Divine running from start, max burn like for cactiicii)
- Trials: they are bugged - only got thrown out after killing the first mob - it seems I can not proceed with Trials of Smoke to advance at least beyond the first zone but I will try it again - some seemed to go beyond.

THIS EXPANSION IS BUGGY LIKE ONE YEAR BEFORE... and one year before... and one year before... and everything closed behind a trial row.... and partly overtuned... nice...

at least there is continuity in that...

And as always people who say it is easy have
a) been dragged through the missions by other players (who surely have the firepower in raid form)
b) been testing/trying not even the full first progression part with their real toons on "live" (but only with beta)
c) completely forgetting that they cannot raid anymore if no playerbase is there and most people will stay at RoS or EoK level - have fun if these people get one-rounded at a raid like paper-mercs...
d) may be running around with RoS/EoK but obviously mean Ultrarare weaponry or perhaps even gear

And btw... I don't believe anybody who tells me that he did that in EoK gear.... reminds me on Caccticci and some posters which had to step a bit back after testing it "for real" instead "virtual and theoretical".

TEST IT WITHOUT ANY SUPPORT FROM RAIDERS SIDE OR ULTRARARE.
or at least be so honest and precise to give exact information about your true layout.

It is a joke that RoS VP key is still not beaten by many players because it is locked behind insane hard missions. And if it is usable only, after getting "raid compared gear" in TBL then the items are mostly out-of-date if doing them afterwards.

Some don't really understand the BIG difference of raid gear. Tested that with EoK raid gear in TBM, did it with TBL raid gear in RoS. The only expansion which was good from start was EoK (except the mission tuning after 6 months which kicked EoK entry group players partly out again). That was the beta when devs really listened - at least to the most suggestions...

The problem is still gear (else we would not need an expansion - around this revolves the whole market), like always (else you can run around naked). Especially raid weaponry makes the difference to get a decent DPS boost which compensates much for bad armor. Because the gap between RoS T2/Conflagrant and TBL T1 is not big, everybody will surely struggle. Comparing TBL Tradeskill gear (T3) with their extraordinary stats I can imagine that this big gap makes a difference. And looking at the TBL raid gear then the gap is even extremely big. Nobody can really talk for other groups because of this discrepancy. Even if you run around in RoS conflagrant, but have your weaponry at bought ultrarare level, the expansion looks different again.

Think about that. And I - for my part - don't want to have an expansion which has in every bit cactiicii-style...

Casuals: The game is too hard! Why do you tune expansions for raiders?!
Raiders: Getgud.com
Developers: We're very sorry! Please feel free to help test stuff in beta and we'll keep your opinions for tuning in mind, as we'll have your viewpoint to go off of!
Casuals: But we don't want to.

Raiders, Developers, and God Almighty himself:

Ummm, in most cases casuals are casuals because they don't have the time to be hard core. This is also why they don't have the time to beta test. But they are spending money on buying expansions and supporting the game.

To be fair, having betaed as both a raider and a grouper, it's easy to feel ignored in Beta when raid issues are dominating the majority of the developers' time. Also, it's not a getgud.com issue. I've met highly accomplished raiders who couldn't group their way out a paper bag and amazing groupers who would be totally awful raiders. A lot of the time it's a gear issue. As I said, I've largely given up on testing since Underfoot. TBL doesn't feel overtuned in my raid gear, but put me and my monk and bard friend in Scaled with VP group gear and I guarantee you we'd be screaming for mercy.

if you go down and read the beta forums, you will see raiders saying over and over again, that the content was too hard for anyone BUT raiders.. even some ROI guys admitted it. (yes a few thought it was fine, but overall, we were always saying crank it down) and, believe it or not, they did.. it was easier yesterday and today than it was all weekend on Beta.. it just needs more help. Yes, we tested in ROS raid gear, and ROS group gear (conflagrant) But no one wants to hear that the raiders were on the casuals side.. they just wanna rant about raiders.

(you have to be logged in to read the beta forums)

Here is my honest report of what I said I was going to do in earlier post of this thread.

Ok, took my mage and ranger into the entry zone of TBL. Now that I am home I can describe to you how my mage is geared.

Mage's healer merc has 3AA. Mage is wearing some T1 EoK, some level 90 and level 100 gear. He has a shade over 16,900 AA. He has 132k HP. Has the EM19 focus earring. Using an Earth pet. Nothing on pet except what mage can give him with spells. Wearing group buffs from what he was able to get in PoK buff area.

Ranger is in better shape and the healer merc has about 260AA. Ranger has almost 29k AA. Has the gear I mentioned in earlier post.

Got task Soldier of Air and went to invaders area. Pulling was easy with ranger. Killed first invader and mage's gimpy healer merc died.

On second invader mob, no one died and things went ok.

On Third mob, mage and his healer merc died. Just didn't have the AA and HP to survive every attempt.

So what I am going to do is get my mage more AA and get him more developed. Same with his merc.

The way this mage/ranger sits now, they can do some of the stuff in the zone if I work at it and die a couple of times, about how I think it should be. It shouldn't be like going back to an EoK zone. I am sure if I took this duo into RoS, it would be about the same.

I don't see why a decently geared group with RoS group gear that hasn't just been freshly leveled to 110 with hardly anything other than autogrant AA counts can't progress and grow in this zone.

Pretty sure if mage had about 25k AA and some AA spent on merc and wearing some RoS group gear, this duo could hang.

I will be able to get into the next zone with this duo before you know it.

Yes, if some of the mobs hit the spells right, it is tough. Shouldn't it be a challenge a little bit? Should every encounter be 100% survivable?

Someone with 3 characters that have been developed and not PL'd last week should be able to do stuff and survive if they know how to play their guys.

I really suck playing a mage as I don't know it well and just above average with the ranger and I am gonna say, having taken these two in the zone and actually played in it, it is not over tuned.

I will keep playing and learning my mage and drinking milk so...

All y'alls want to listen to the negative people who may have or have not been in the expansion and may or may not know how to play their characters to determine if you should buy, go ahead. It is your loss.

Me? I am gonna gear mage up a little better and relish the challenge with this duo like I have done in EoK, TBM etc.

You all should be grateful for a little bit of a challenge and new content instead of all this wholesale negativity that goes on with every expansion release.

Those of you that live your lives in this game should be glad there is still stuff being developed in this game for you. Instead of non-constructive negative comments, go play and come back with some constructive ideas for the devs to make it better. They are not perfect and definitely look at reasonable suggestions for the content.

Some guys are really good at doing that and many people just want to girl dog about everything for no reason.

I have a raid geared mage. Cleric merc has over 400 aa's.My experience in TBL was ... errrr... unpleasant.

because you simply didn't tested the progression at live server and only assume?
Try a trial or a named and have fun with it

If a level 110 mage with full Conflagrant gears and a merc cannot access to at least 3 zones, it is overtuned.
I am 100% serious.

Otherwise, this game will get significant less subscription and expansion purchase from casual players next year.
I am 100% sure.

Really Coas?

"Seems players are not happy these days unless they are able to kill everything first try and do all tasks/quests etc that an expansion has to offer with minimal effort. That is disappointing."

Nice straw-man argument. No one is calling for "kill everything first try..." and no one is asking "to do all quests..." A lot of people are asking for content they would enjoy, in addition to having the content geared toward the high-end crowd. We are not telling you how to play. Perhaps you could consider doing the same.


"That was the fun of it. That was when EQ was at its best."

Who made you the only judge? The degree to which DB listens to you and people like you is the degree to which DB will run itself into the ground. Everquest was a great game because people with differing ideas of "fun" could find it. I like Tradeskills, others don't. I don 't care for the housing, others love it. The more the game appeals to a variety of interests, the more money DB will make and the longer it will be around.


"Today, it seems like if people are dying or struggling at all with progression quests/named and so on, there is an absolute outrage. No persistence. Just an immediate knee-jerk response to flee to the forums to flood it with posts begging for an easy, creampuff game. Because who wants to be challenged anymore in EQ, am I right? "

No, you are not right. You are taking reasonable points of view of other people to insane extremes to try to justify your argument that isn't intellectually sound.

In case you haven't noticed, Everquest needs all the paying customers it can get and gearing some content to casual players and boxers doesn't do anything to stop you from playing how you want to play. What harm does it do the raiders if the group-geared have a chance to defeat a Named or two in the first zone of an expansion?