TBL : the most stupid and absurd extension

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Merlein, Dec 26, 2018.

  1. segap Augur


    Expansions of years past were also much larger. It took a lot more time to complete them. Recent expansions are tiny. There is no excuse for people not completing levels and AA plus getting gear in a year's time with current expansions. My (raid) main was maxed out within a week of RoS launching and my group geared boxes were nearly fully geared in that time along with levels and AA. Yes, that's not typical, but spread it out for the full year, and you should expect the more casual to complete those levels and AA while picking up gear along the way. If you're so casual that you couldn't compete that in a year, then you're likely not the type that really needs to be in the latest expansion either. There has to be some minimal level of expectations for designing content.
  2. Endaar Augur

    IMO TBL has a few different mechanics, each of which would present a challenge on its own, but when combined they have the effect of making things rather difficult.

    AE damage - I've posted this before, as have others, but there's essentially a bare minimum of 170K HP necessary to survive many TBL encounters. Why? Because the AEs are so large that taking upwards of 140K damage in a very short period of time is not uncommon. And when you start hitting the entire group with large AE damage, it increases the need for healing and exacerbates the second problem, merc strength.

    There's a lengthy thread on it, but mercs are undeniably weaker than they need to be to survive in TBL. That may be a conscious decision on the part of the developers, but the net effect is that in many cases either a skilled human cleric or a second healer will be necessary. The merc cleric isn't enough.

    Likewise, merc tanks are completely outclassed. So you need a human tank, one who is pretty well-geared and competent.

    This means is that many groups are back to the age-old challenge of finding both a tank and a healer before they can do anything. Again, that may be by design, and I'm not necessarily even opposed to it, but it does pose a rather large stumbling block for those who don't have a regular group of friends that includes these necessary classes. Particularly because you can't just grab "any" tank and expect to survive.

    All of the above would be difficult, but then you add the locked progression and it shouldn't be a surprise that some people are really put off. Because now you've got to have a high minimum gear level, a full group of humans of the right classes, and people that are either at the same stage of progression or are willing to redo content they've already completed. Some of which is pretty tedious.

    The content encourages (or requires) grouping, yet the locked progression makes it harder to put those groups together, especially since there are rarely enough tanks and healers to go around.

    To echo segap's point, a few months from now, the group players who want to get through the expansion will, and the ones that aren't willing to make the extra effort won't. But if some of those people quit due to the perception of an unreasonable difficulty level, the game as a whole suffers.

    Personally I'm not sure the expansion as a whole is too difficult, but the curve is definitely off.
    So Happy, Pirlo and Zhaunil_AB like this.
  3. strongbus Augur

    I have a question for those who say its to hard.

    what is wrong with when making a new exp that the dervs design it around peoples toons being geared/aa out from the exp before hand done. such as having full ros gear(can be a mix of t1/t2/tradeskills), having all or close to all aa of your class type maxed out(tanking aa for tanks/healing for healers and dps for dps classes.) or that a class is going have at lest x hp/mana.

    as well as what wrong with the dervs designing stuff that requires a x level of skill with your toon.


    based on what i am hearing in here some people are saying the dervs should design stuff around people still having gear form 2 exp ago and the aa/hp/mana to match. and having a min level of skill with their toon.
    Belexes likes this.
  4. enclee Augur

    If you look at the feedback on the forums, it’s a debate over the difficulty of T1 zones. Entry zones should be the easy, you’re an expansion behind on gear. This way you keep a constant churn of players that can find some groups, rotting loot, and most importantly to DBG gets money. Every expansion the player base shifts forward, so DBG really needs these entry zones to concentrate the player base to maintain the health of the game.

    The end tier should be designed around current expansion gear, AA, spells, and 4-5 skilled players. It should be the goal to progress to that challenge and be rewarded.
    NeverPayForLag, Pirlo and Zhaunil_AB like this.
  5. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    Actually, dismissing an entire post based on one "misused" word, without looking at the points he's trying to make makes your reply quite worthless. He's (i can tell you from personal knowledge) not a native speaker, so give him a break for god's sake!

    Aren't they the reward for paragon of TBL? Yes of course they help, and yes of course once you have completed the expansion somehow, it's contents has - as Tucoh "proves" - become easier.

    "The message is clear"... "should"...
    Yes, one should assume that, shouldn't one?
    And that's exactly the OP's point: the assumption doesn't hold up to the test against reality.
    He's made that post several hours after he took part in a (more or less) pickupgroup.
    The group consisted for most of the evening of a live WAR (a guildie), a live CLR (my sometimes raiding ALT), the OP (a raiding ENC) and a raiding WIZ main and that one's MAG ALT as well as some non-raiding NEC iirc.
    Granted, it was my first go at it, still recoving from some injury so i am not very much able to compare but i DO speak from my personal experience:
    That group SHOULD not have suffered for DPS, but it did - and badly (neither the tanking nor the healing was a problem until some messages i took for power-ups).
    We tried two different trials several times and failed them, several times.
    We failed so badly that another live player (WIZ iirc, i might mistake the two pickups though as i am unfamiliar with either of them), who was originally part of the group, bugged out after like two fails or so.
    And while people's usual reply here on the forums to such issues is simply "git better" or stating the obvious, i DO trust each participating person (even the two i do not know) to "do their best" and "do better than a boxed char".
    But there is already one misconception: the use of that 3rd-party software (let alone the other one) allows for quite good setups so that Tucoh's "argument" of live players doing more DPS falls apart, unless he wants to say his setup is sub-optimal (which i doubt when he finished the expansion already by boxing it). And don't forget that when you are boxing, no matter how, you have complete control over the group-setup - the same is certainly not true about pickup groups.


    IMO the discussion in this thread is drifting away from the point(s) that were made:
    As i read it, the OP feels (rightly so, imo) frustrated by
    1) the fact that, in order to do the Stratos#2 partisan (Key to the kingdom) you HAVE to do stuff "out of that zone" FIRST.
    IMO that comes from Devs falsely placing that quest into the stratos partisan, probably simply because the NPC is there - EQResource has it listed quite a ways farther into the game, where it makes more sense.
    2a) the impression (that many here share in the replies above) that one SHOULD be able to beat the stuff with a group of "live players" or less than that (let's say 4?) if they're raid-equipped.
    And one possibly can - but it still requires special group setups.
    I was seriously shocked how slowly the mobs in that cyclone trial went down with that group or how fast they respawned, which gave precious little time to whittle down the boss.
    2b) How Dev's, when "designing" (i.e. cobbling together) these missions/trials seem to ignore the actual spread in the player-base, in terms of gear/AAs and playtime and "simply" seem to assume an all-round maxed character (and mostly raiding ones at that, groupers had issues in EVERY expansion at the start, until they took somebody's "advice" above of being piggied into somewhere and get rot-loot of the CURRENT expansion, when LAST expansion's gear should, as people generally agree even on these forums, be sufficient to "beat" at least the entry-level content but rarely actually is).
    3) locked-behind-progression zones are a BAD idea, and locking them this early into an expansion doesn't make it better at all.
    Whether in this thread or elsewhere, i saw people referencing VP - and that was a bad mechanism too; too much candy land until they "fixed" the faction and empty thereafter, leaving some people "stranded" with the tasks there if they were "too late" with getting the medaillons or doing the mini-raid when it was still "unlocked".
    I can only wholeheartedly agree with Merlein that this "entry" feels much, much worse than even RoS did - and in my eyes that's the worst "expansion" (overpriced add-on to EoK really imo) they churned out in the last decade.

    No matter what we think or expect:
    When i started to get into this expansion last weekend, already like two weeks after release, i saw (and still do see) MANY people struggling and complaining all over the place.
    And that is certainly NOT an AA-thing as even after just one day i had covered all my WAR's defensives again and can now already count the AAs i still need to buy the rest in 100's...
    THIS expansion's "bad point" seems (from what i have personally seen so far and heard from friends) to be the mob's HPs or regen-rate/mechanics and certainly the locking part, even if you beat one trial but (like so many of my raiding friends) not all yet.
    Only on the forums, as always, the same old same old are posting "it's all fine, not a single problem" or "the problem is in front of the computer, not in the game" and somesuch fanboi-. *shakes his head in disbelief*
    Graves likes this.
  6. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    Did you miss the people "suggesting" (and meaning it too, actually trying to be helpful) that they be piggied/fellowshipped into the zones beyond to gear up, just in order to "beat" the entry zone?
    Isn't that kind of ridiculing the idea behind "progression"?

    Granted, i have VERY limited personal experience to go by.
    But the little personal experience i DO have is putting me off, not turning me on.

    The issue i have at this point is essentially the very same one i had at RoS release with the Dotting mobs in the OT:
    It's "mistuned".
    There is a difference between, as you say, expecting toons to be geared in a certain way and the reality of a fully EoK raid-geared WAR having been reduced to less than 10health with magehunter on by just Needle and his cat-add. This was later "corrected", and so should these issues with TBL be. But not 4months into the expansion, instead at the start of the expansion.

    History shows that these "mistunes" occur habitually, with EVERY expansion (well, at least the ones since TBM and up to SoD that i have personally witnessed). This, to me, suggests that they base their assumptions on something that the cummunity as such simply does not give - i.e. they form their assumptions not on data but on "feelings" apparently. That's what's wrong, at the core.

    p.s.:
    You cannot measure or define "skill" (only compare it relative to somebody else's), so unless you specify your reference to that, it is... not applicable when we are talking design.
  7. strongbus Augur


    think you misunderstood me. I was saying what you said. Ie the t1 zones should be based on the gear/aa you can get in the exp behind(ie ros stuff). but what i said was that it seems some on here want the t1 zones based on having stuff form 2 exp ago(eok gear/aas). In other words some people want to be able to walk into the new exp not geared/aa up to the exp before hand(ros) and be find and able to handle anything in the new zones.
    code-zero likes this.
  8. strongbus Augur

    when I define skill in this context it in reference to how well someone know what the toon they are playing can do and how well they can use that toon.

    I use tanks and their agro stuff for example.

    at the top end of the skill scale you have the tanks who know what their stuff can do and use them to the max to hold agro so their groups members can use their stuff to the max to kill stuff asap.

    at the low end of the skill scale you have the tanks who for whatever reason use the min effort to keep agro forcing their group members to dps at a slower rate to not take agro and die all the time. i have group with tanks who only use taunt and that it for getting aggro.

    dervs should not have to design the game round the low end of the skill scale. They should beable to design a new exp based on what a toon with close to maxed out aa for the exp before it can do.

    nother good example is dps classes. If the dervs know that with maxed out ros aa a group geared dps class can max out at x dps for on mobs then they should be able to design the new exp round say give or take 10-15% of that max amount they should not have to design the new exp based around those who can only do say 50% of what the max amount it.
  9. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    Well, since i AM a tank, and one that does fare better than most in that regard, i think i can safely say i would fall into a "better" one of your categories.
    But since "skill" is relative - i.e. there is no objective way to "measure" it, you can only compare
    A's skill to B's skill - it is not applicable for a design decision. It is a "soft" criterium, not a "hard" one if you get what i mean.
    Dev's should, to loosely base it on your words, not "use skill" at all in their design decisions but base it on HARD FACTS only instead. And communicate that too, e.g. "THIS trial of smoke is intended to be won only by groups employing two tanks and using the following approach" or some other, clearly defined, constraints. Because only when that is communicated can then players during beta both follow and "properly" test the encounter as well as "break" the constraints in either direction and give feedback on that.

    It would be something else if you were to say "to beat this, the group consisting of compositionA has to use thisandthat ability of thisandthat character at thisandthat point in time to win. (i.e. if they were to define "models" in the physics sense, and do that for all possible group-makeups - which they do not ofc).

    As i said:
    The instance i am speaking of, and which preceded this very thread, we were not able to beat the trials we tried.
    With a full group, consisting of at least 4raidgeared and max-RoS-AA'd characters played by experienced raiders (and two "unknown" characters/players that PERHAPS fall into the "undergeared and underAA'd" category, but at least one of them was an ALT of again some raider by what he said in group, so to sum it up:
    While "group composition" and "missed mechanics" might have been, "skill" was certainly not an issue in the context of this thread - i can assure you that both the ENC and the WIZ are "better ones" when compared to their peers and that the MAG ALT that was used is also used regularly/"skillfull enough" by them, and that the live WARs (both my guildie and me) know their stuff, even if we both were a bit rusty. Me healing might have become a "skill issue" but hasn't - neither tanking nor healing was the issue, but our inability to significantly lower any bosses' health in a timely manner - hence, i think, the overtuned reference by the OP.
    And neither do i appreciate the constant reference to the soft criteria that "skill" is, much less in the context of "design". Do not forget that Dev's admittedly "cheat" with a /kill command (i think it was Rashere who mentioned that somewhere, but it might have been some other "bigshot") when they do , they hardly if at all actually play their own game like the rest of us do.


    I DO, however, agree with you in so far as Devs can "safely assume" (but it is still only an assumption, not a design criterum) that a player is able to use certain base abilities of his class.
    (to take your example of a tank: yes i would assume that the tank knows how to activate the defensive he has, how to "make them last" throughout the fight by rotating them and so on. but i would NOT agree with them baselining events on people having "power of ... IV" clickies or somesuch things that are considered "raiding basics" these days. Nor would i agree that all - grouping(!) since that is what we should be talking about in this context - players have MAXED AAs for example. At most i as a designer would expect my (casual) playerbase to have autogrant plus their classes' "basic" AAs maxed - defensives for the tank, DPS for casters and melee. Not both for all. But that is my opinion only.)


    What i would EXPECT, as a customer, is that stuff were actually TESTED (and in various group-makeups) prior to release, and that in such a way that for group stuff - at least at T1 level - is based on not 6 but more like 3 or 4 "live" characters with mercs AT RELEASE. Again, that's just my expectation and yours might differ greatly - but from reading the forums i feel that quite a few share this essentially.

    In theory Beta should be doing that, but as we know (and see, release after release) it isn't. That's - imo - because their "Beta-process-design" is lacking too - most notably in ways of direct feedback to the responsible Dev's and their leeway to make "design-related" changes.
    i.e. Devs during beta might be able and willing to "tune" some numbers, but not the mechanics anymore. And while there might be some helpful betaPLAYERS that actually do stuff the way it might more or less realistically be at release (e.g. by restraining themselves to the gear they actually have on live as some guilds stated), we know that a) feedback is mostly ignored (well, not acted upon for some uncommunicated reason or the other) and b) the playerbase on beta is hardly representative of the playerbase on live.
    So we are back to comparing apples to pears and "mistuned" content at release until several months into an expansion, when Dev's have worked through their backlogs and actually have their heads free to notice the they have done and act upon that relization.
    It's always the same story of bad design, followed by insufficient testing, followed by frustrated players (such as the OP and several others on the boards), followed by half-hearted and not much "thought-through" wanna-be remedies that are chosen only by the sole criterium of needing the least possible Dev-Action. At which point we are back to the frustration part, which some "manage" by playing only until their guild has "won" the expansion or by dropping RA to extremely low values or, or, or...
  10. Tappin Augur

    I think a lot of people got killed by the AAs in EoK. If fell behind in AAs during that expansion you likely did not catch up during RoS. They killed Gribbles during this expansion and a lot of used it to catch up.

    This expansion is just tiny... would it have killed them to copy and psste one more zone and design for people that are behind the curve?
  11. Tappin Augur

    I believe the design decisions were not erroneous. They didn’t have enough content to last long enough so they made the content over tuned as possible to make sure the content last (speed bump). They can always dial it back if necessary.
  12. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    You might be onto something there - i have to admit that the thought occured to me too, not only this time around.
    Yet i HOPE it's not the case (i am a hopeless optimist!) and maintain that it is a BAD move/situation nonetheless, since it creates frustrated players such as the one that created this thread.
    (he might be shown as a "new member" here but he is an experienced raider of many years, an example of i said many months ago that discounting people by their forum status is a bad move :) )

    Perhaps it is the german in me, but i expect better than they deliver on each release.
    And when i think back to their "fix" on VP for example, i repeat what i said then: that change made the zone what i personally expected it to be, but it also made it empty. If i take that "solution" and apply it (and the time it took them to do ANYTHING at all) to TBL now, then i am actually becoming afraid...
    we're not talking the last zone in the expansion this time, but the very first and 2nd after all!

    Vorsprung durch WISSEN!
  13. Schadenfreude Augur

    Off topic but FYI.

    Dev

    [IMG]

    Derv

    [IMG]

    The difference is subtle but key, one hates players and glares at them ready to attack and the other is a low level mob within Everquest.
    Belexes, Wuddane, Slippry and 6 others like this.
  14. Rayzen Elder

    I don't have a problem with tier 2 zones being locked, or the difficulty of missions to get to them. I haven't done hardly anything as of yet in the new expansion, but EQ resource says Esianti, and Plane of smoke are tier 1 zones. I don't think tier 1 zones should be locked. Maybe they should call them tier 2...or unlock them.
  15. lagkills Slain by Fippy while guards stood and watched.

    RIP Underfoot, best EQ expansion ever.
  16. NeverPayForLag Augur

    Yep, I remember.... did the first zone and the rest of the expansion many years later. I could have spared the money for a year with that...a real waste of money...
  17. Yimin Augur

    Sixteen guilds have beaten TBL T1 , so its not a hard expansion at all for raiders , now I do hear many group players complaining seems its over tuned for groupers at this time , this has not always been the case , on many new expansions it was raiders complaining it was to hard , so like in the past I am sure the dervs will tune it so more will enjoy it , give them time people !

    YiMin
  18. Shavin Journeyman

    all right with that, TBL sucks, waste time and money for me ....
    Need raid geared if u want to win all trials especially this with fireball aura ...
    No fun with TBL..
  19. Aurastrider Augur


    Personally I think this is a major design flaw within the game moving forward. I think they were onto something with COTF HA's and to a lessor extent TBM providing some scaling content to attract players 75+ to at least purchase the expansion and get some upgrades and better experience than they might expect doing in era content for their level. These types of features also filters a lot of these players into a centralized location making grouping easier for them. I agree that the open world stuff should be aimed at mostly maxed out characters with some effort placed on their gear but having content that provides little incentive for lower level players to purchase only hurts the bottom line and in the long run might push more players away rather than keep them here playing. The developers should have looked at what made gribbles so popular and built on that rather than just nerfing it into the ground and abandoning the entire concept because they wanted players in the newest zones.
    Jhenna_BB, So Happy and enclee like this.
  20. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer