Eh, ain't about heroics there he's talking about the /betabuff builds that are supposed to get people into content testing immediately, not developing a new character.
Needs to be 105 or 110, maybe get crazy and choose 108...I thought DBG had been honest about their marketing prioritizing returning players versus new players, so I don’t know how valuable a tutorial would be for them. Realistically speaking the heroic character needs to be within a narrow level range to facilitate getting those players into groups. Anything lower is going to lead to them never learning the game before disappearing. I understand the work required is equal to 1 new expansion zone, but we’re talking about keeping the game alive with fresh bodies and cash. Heroic characters are priced the same as expansions, so if you can make the character close enough to the newest expansion, you can more likely achieve an expansion sale. Also, throw in a FM style into that expansion so you have the de facto active zone in the game and you can better retain and monetize returning players.
Even heroic chars should not have everything served on a silver plate. Make new heroic to be level 105, give them all/all items no class clicks on bp/legs, no augs. No AA, they can use autogrant. Supply them with 8k currency from tbm. At same time remove the big bump that is eok when thinking on aa, and make autogrant cover it. For eok include new augs you get when doing tasks you get when you heroic char just like old HoT expansion, or change those augs from hot to have required lvl 85, recommended 105.
Type 5s are a non-issue. They are class neutral and non-lore... Resplendent Spitegem of Stability +15 to all stats Since TBM has type 5 augs from 85-105, you can literally just use that expansion to make 85, 90, 95, 100 and 105 heroics at stepping stone pricing. The type 7 augs are very simple... Stone of the (adjective) Hero No-trade (not heirloom, not lore) X, Y, Z stats. Generic, just like the balanced stat augs. Give the appropriate number of them. Every level gets the same bags. Everyone gets new character starting faction. Everyone gets the spells available on vendors. The only thing that needs to be decided is which items to use for the non-visible, but quite frankly you can copy the Type 7 aug suggestion above and make a generic Aura of the (noun) that fits into ear, shoulder, back, belt, finger and ranger (except for ranger) as well. Just do us all a solid and lower the price of the L85 heroics rather than charging more for the L90+ heroics. The Heroics have had diminishing value (level inflation) yet have remained unchanged in quality or price. That's just not right. The new heroics need to be at the current price, and justify the investment by more sales. It's the right thing to do.
Investing in heroics is a good investment. Once the initial coding is done, and the "heroic" armor is created, the team can just plug and play every time a level cap increase occurs. Change the adjective,adjust the stats ("New Delude"), launch a new heroic. Launch it with the expansion. Like right now the "Hero of 105" could launch with ToV.
I think Tucoh has the right of it. Start them in Plane of Health with TBM vendor bought armor equipped, enough currency and flags to buy types 5 and 9s off the vendor with a pop up explaining the pros and cons of each stat. Alternatively, populate them with EoK T1 armor in Plane of Health to skip over the type 9 shenanigans so they only have to puzzle out type 5s. Then send them to Feerott to do the heroic tasks for the J5 merc and type 7 augs that are already in game. At level 100 in TBM or 105 EOK gear minus type 7s with a J5 merc (from completing the task) they should be able to complete everything in Feerott and House of Thule Lower and be positioned to at least kill something in TBM or EOK. You can get the basic spell sets and AAs for the hotbars from forums here to populate them with. New players only need the basics anyways, not all the complicated button mashing that comes with experience and research. As for guides and what not, have Dreamweaver gather all that stuff up and pin it somewhere easily accessible like the new player forum. That all probably still a bunch of work on the team's side, but keeping it "simple" instead of going for the "best" product may be the way to go given time and resources available.
There would have to be some sort of blurb telling them what to do with the remnants on which npcs. True returning players may have no idea whatsoever so we can't expect them to know the remnants are there never mind what to do with them. This solutions really only works for more current players interested in making a heroic alt. I like the idea but it needs some work. Also augs are most of the gear in TBM so it would definitely need more the plopping the toons there with remnants.
Heroic players need to be 'battle ready' not provided expansion-specific currency that they need to do research on. Boot up, head out to killing and questing immediately. Not hours of questions and internet research. Many will be new and have to look up 20 things even with battle ready. An EoK entry point at lvl 100 makes a ton of sense. Put gear at 80% of EoK T1, and insert some generic, identical augs across all slots.
A brand new player to the game is not going to be "battle ready" even if they had a full set of TBL raid armor decked out in the best augs, level 115, all rank III spells, and max TOV AAs to start out with in EOK without doing a ton of additional research. The chances are good that even if they picked a random goblin alone in FM they would be reporting back to bind in relatively short order.
My issue with just giving augs, or money to buy augs, is: you now have a heroic character that needs additional hours of setup, AND if you are not an experienced player, you may have no idea what to buy. It would be much better if augments are already slotted. I'd also prefer not to create another set of items just for these characters. While for the type 5's I could use the balanced aug's, tell me in truth, would that be satisfactory? I feel I'd be in the same situation I was in for doing all h-sta augs.
well you can always skip the augs and default them that old TDS T1 Raid armor never used pushed to live https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/new-armor-set.227194/
I think they would be satisfactory but you know better then I someone will witch about it no matter what you do. I would frame it as "Balanced augs are provided with the character and may be customized through game play to suit the player". You are never going to please everyone. Besides which those that are in the know enough to complain are in the know enough to change it after they get the heroic made. No matter what you do someone is going to say "Blah blah I have to change augs on a heroic that should be good to go out of the box blah blah". My answer "You'll take a heroic with balanced augs AND YOU WILL LIKE IT!" but that's just me.
The people lambasting you on beta about HSTA augs are wrong. Heroic characters should probably all use HSTA to start out with because they need every bit of health they can get so they don't get one shot by random AE spells when riding coattails in some random group that doesn't know they're a heroic newbie until they show up. Berserkers and most other melee DPS will want to transition to hdex as they get more comfortable. Tanks will consternate about agi vs dex vs sta, but it doesn't really matter. Some INT/WIS casters may sometimes wish they had INT/WIS augs as they go OOM, but they'll survive with a lower mana pool until they get some AAs/gear to help them. But generally yeah, if you wanted to create an character that was ready to fight, just give them the TBM HSTA augs and tell them it's good for them.
I think a new player would likely not know the difference. While I personally wouldn’t use the balance augs, I don’t think the idea is a bad one. The experienced players will know how to get their own and the new players won’t know the difference. Alternatively: Everyone gets H-Dex augs except int casters and priests, who get H-Sta (or balanced). That said ... Type 5 augs don’t even get introduced until TBM at level 105. If you upgrade heroics to 100 and put them in CoTF gear, you don’t need to worry about selecting type 5s.
what bout just taking the template for each class from the beta server. just copy the template for say a beta buffed 100 toons and use them for the new HC?
