Expansions.. being salty or not..

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Whulfgar, Apr 18, 2020.

  1. Newbarific New Member

    TBL was a very decent expansion. The zones were a little plain but overall the group content was decently challenging. The raid content was the way raid content should be. Tier 1 was a challenge for alot.of guilds. But most got through them with ease. T2 had some beefed up mechanics to throw a challenge and made sure guilds wiped a few times before getting through it. Then tie 3 both events were a challenge. Especially mearatas! The destroyer of guilds. The evil gene with really nice shoes! This was the raid to really set guilds in their places of where they ranked when it comes to the top.

    Mearatas itself is Imho considered the biggest challenge in game of recent history. RoI raids lockouts. They was first upto bat with that raid and it swooped their butts for weeks. But they pulled it off. They was even rewarded with a nice praise from the dev who designed the raid. The dev didnt think it was possible to beat in the state of it at the time. Ms beat it next. Again it was not beaten in 1 night. 1 week. Or even 1 month. Again this earned praise from the Dev. Valhallah won 3rd and Triton came fourth Sr came 5th. (I believe that was the order) all these guilds got got a pre nerf win praise from the dev. The point is. Even the dev was proud of the accomplishments made by the top guilds who beat it pre nerf.

    This year there was no race at all. This expansion honestly lacks everything you need to make a decent expansion. Damn Even the anniversary GMM raids were harder. I really hope next year the expansion hits hard like tbl or it might be time for Dp to take the old dog out for a final walk in the woods. I think community feedback and suggestions could lead next expansion in the right direction. Instead of doing discord q&a with the dev's. Maybe Discord q&a with the dev's with expansion development as the topic might come up with a decent end result. But then again. The movie old yeller comes to mind
  2. Caeelar Journeyman

    Honestly, all expansions that included a level increase have been easier than the previous expansion.
  3. Vicus Augur

    Reactive as in the devs stated prior to the release of the T3 raids that they regretted how easy the raids were for ToV (in their discord AMA). Three days later they released the T3 raid to be beat in an hour. They knew the raid was easy, had 5 months (6 if you count the test server) to fix it since the launch of ToV. They even had an extended month due to their daylight savings time error to adjust the raids. There was nothing proactive going on.

    So I mean they are reactive by allowing TBL to be hard, not adjusting it at all (For many guilds this was perfect but once it was realized that the top tier guilds had beat it, maybe throw a bone to some of the guilds that were almost over the hump...but this is debatable). Many posted how hard it was on the forums. So they reacted by making this easy and didn't adjust anything at all. Now that people are angry again, next expansions will either be really hard again or somewhere in the middle.
    Whulfgar likes this.
  4. Whulfgar Augur

    I'm not upset its too easy, but neither am I happy in the least that its this easy. Its just .. I guess I can admit (due to the amount of posts) TBL was an above averaged expansion (difficulty wise) and ToV is literally not difficult by any metric .. (An yes that includes the earring quest, its literally a time sink nothing more .. nothing hard about that on any level)
  5. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    How many guilds that had know prior knowledge of the raids have beaten them so far? Sure they may be easier than they should have been but to ignore the risk free learning that was done on beta is just silly.

    Not to mention it makes it look a lot easier when raids open up for everyone at the same time so they are able to get in the kills rather than having to wait to key up and unlock the raids.
    Yinla, Remien, enclee and 1 other person like this.
  6. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    You mean 5 days, 4 of them raiding. Not weeks =P
    Sancus and Thoxsel like this.
  7. Thoxsel Djess' Pet Warrior

    Qft and also before several nerfs were rolled out.
  8. Zunnoab Augur

    They shouldn't design for the strongest guilds unless there is some kind of difficulty tier option like some MMORPGs have. The fact guilds saw the events in beta does scew things too. The strongest guilds will always have a super easy time though, if the content is in any way reasonable to most. ToV is less DPSQuest than some of the recent expansions too, which often had mechanics that disproportionately punish lower DPS. ToV events proportionately punish low DPS, and timed mechanics are slow enough to not overwhelm as easily. Despite the annoying relatively new addiction to enrage timers that the raid game did just fine without for the majority of its events, many of them are also soft timers which I don't find quite as annoying.

    I don't know what this expansion feels like to a mid/low tier guild. I do know, from the past, how awful it is to a low/mid tier guild when the developers make reactionary changes all based on topics like this, or feedback from only the strongest. The risk is making changes that are slightly annoying to the top, while stomping on the fingers of the weaker guilds that are slowly making progress with events. The only solution is difficulty modes, and that does not require some insane rebalance of gear. Just give a special aug slot with very, very marginal gains for the harder ones or something so people can have something to show for it. (I acknowledge I don't know the logistics of this, and that's more a random idea than claiming I know what's best.)

    Also, if you use any glyphs I don't think anyone has a right to complain about difficulty. Events should never be tuned with them in mind.

    I will say I find the Velketor's Labyrinth raid to be designed beautifully. Without spoiling our strat, it's very elegantly designed and provides multiple different options for a raid to use.
    roganemor and enclee like this.
  9. Tucoh Augur

    I'd be happy if they announced no level increases for the next five expansions. Knowing that so much of an expansion's budget is poured into making busy-work for me to level and upgrade spells is disappointing when the expansions as so thin.

    As far as difficulty, you guys have heard my opinion about auto-tuning raids. I know for the group game I lost interest in ToV when I defeated all the group missions on the first or second try on the first night of release. I could barely bring myself to do the quests and finish the achievements after finding out the expansion was so easy. I had forgotten about this chart I made back in beta where I was trying to convince devs to make easy AND hard content.

    After careful consideration I have updated it with ToV's difficulty curve.
    [IMG]

    At this point I have so little hope of seeing a sensible balancing strategy applied to the next expansion. The developers are so overworked and understaffed that they'll again just be happy to release mostly-working content and have no time to get a handle on determining its difficulty or adjusting it after players encounter it. The devs stated months before the T3 raid came out that it was too easy, but still didn't try to change it like it was a house of cards or something that would fall over if they increased some of the DI/DB values of the mobs, their HP pools or the #s on the spell effects.

    I guess the players and the developers will find out together if the next expansion is too hard, too easy or whatever when it comes out.
    enclee likes this.
  10. Drakang Augur

    If you have the perfect guild makeup with fully geared people from the last expansion and everybody is playing their A game this expansion may read as easy. From a guild where we beat all but Mearatas before TOV came out so are far from being fully geared up. And not having a perfect setup to maximize DPS and having people at different play levels.

    T1 is pretty easy. Sleeper can be a bit rough on tanks but otherwise its pretty easy

    T2 Okay the DPS required to beat the timer mechanics ramped up and they keep screwing with them making it harder. TOFS 3 is harder on tanking. But TOFS1 is the most painful of the events.

    T3 Kael we did have the advantage of seeing a twitch feed but got both down our first weekend. Although it was close on the timers. Velks is a big step up in DPS required, healing required, Coordination required. Back to that if your all playing at peak level some of that goes down. If your not its kind of sucky. Do I think we can get it long before we that 9 month point of where we beat the last event we won in TBL. Yes. Its not that much more painful But it is a DPS step up.

    Is TOV as hard as TBL. No. Is it a cake walk if your not at the top of the game. No.

    Is it much more difficult not having raided it in Beta to get the first few wins. Yes. Once you learn it things smooth out.

    Does not hurt to have a breather expansion tho that is less difficult. I would not be against the idea of starting T3 raids harder and slowly bringing them down over time. But the point to stop in tuning them down is not when the top 5 or 10 guilds beat them. Not and keep a big enough player base to keep the game going.
    Zunnoab likes this.
  11. Willowtree Journeyman

    You asked about other opinions. Here is an opinion WITHOUT other raiders or raid equipped or fully AA stuff in the group. I know you don't like answers which do not fit into yours. There are people who see it different. And if it would have been some levels harder then it would have been unplayable for casuals - the same like all the years before...you may not like to hear that...
    Zunnoab likes this.
  12. Leex Pewpewer

    Salty AF.

    IMO - ToV is the easiest & weakest expansion, period.

    Beating Mearatas was an accomplishment, there is no zone in ToV that comes close to that. Actual satisfaction with beating a challenging event is something that was denied to every single guild this year.
    Duder likes this.
  13. Whulfgar Augur

    Yes, thats the entire point...
  14. Whulfgar Augur

    Warrior
    Shaman
    Ber
    Ber
    Ber
    Bard

    All 110. All have zero raid gear / focus..

    No problem running threw the content of tov..

    Literally thee hardest part of this entire grp content was farming the type 18 aug ore.. and thats only due to it being a time sink.
  15. Whulfgar Augur

    I do play on the rathe.. and its vastly VASTLY.. low pop server.. so i am at times forced to box. This being 1 of those times.
  16. Maedhros High King

    But just when we thought it was most bleak, we are gifted Heart of Frozen shadows.
  17. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    I've quite enjoyed ToV raids, which is more than can be said for a lot of raids in the last couple of expansion. I prefer fun over difficulty. But I will admit what I have seen of T3 it is easier than I was expecting. We walked in to Kael last night for the first time having not tested the raid in beta and not having a clue what needed to be done. First try we got it to 44%, 2nd try we got it to 2%, 3rd try we failed completely due to LDs, until that happened we were on course for a win. So tonight, baring any internet/game issues it should go down, 2nd event I don't forsee any issues we did a bit of testing on that in early beta, I'm expecting Velks to be a bit harder due to the mechanics and not having huge DPS.

    T2 was a challenge for us dispite having raid tested all 3 events, hardest is and always has been the first ome, we always have bad luck these days with the number of shades available, I was hoping the last patch would fix that, but by the sound of it they just made it worse. Really hate having hard raids with easier raids locked behind it. ToFS2 still gives us problems trying to keep the zombies and mummies on their correct side, they seem to take off for no reason! But I do enjoy the event. ToFS3 is fun, and by far the easiest of the 3 raids here.

    T1, GD I really enjoy, but then I always enjoyed doing ring wars, EW1 we now have all 3 achievements and its a fun raid, dislike the change to the pathing, pathing is now annoying. EW2, personnally I don't fully understand all the mechanics on this one, but it is usually an easy win, but I'm sure we are missing something which would speed it up.

    For the guilds that can form near perfect raids with a balanced raid force, the right numbers of DPS, ADPS, heals, tanks etc I'm sure they are finding these raids extremely easy, for the guilds like us who don't have perfect setups and are missing support some of the raids are still a challenge.

    I do miss the days of being able to throw more people at a mob if we were struggling, I will never forget my first kill of the Avatar of War with a large number of players and over 100 players doing GD ring war, back when if anyone said a Ring War was going on the world and his wife would desend on GD to help out. In some ways it would be nice to throw more players at current raids, if we find them too tough, like the old days.

    My expectations for ToV was low, which I think is why I've enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I find rehash of old content gets old really fast. TBL I was still more than happy to go back and kill stuff even after the expansion had been out for 12 months. ToV I'm on my 6th earring and I'm struggling to get it evolved. I've completed all group content including all quests, missions, conquest achievements, collects and hunter and I just don't want to kill there anymore, some of the whiteness of the zones I find a bit harsh and it gives me headaches which really doesn't help.ToV would have benifited from Wakening Lands and some greenery!

    8 months to go and I'm in need of somewhere new to kill stuff. :( Fingers crossed for something not white!
  18. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    You still can't discount the fact that they where ran on beta to the point of beating them every time so of course the guilds are going to one shot them on live. Not to mention with the raids unlocking for everyone at the same time instead of staggering with keys more people are going to beat it in the same time.

    Just because more people are able to attempt it at the same time doesn't mean it is to easy and needs to be nerfed, just look at what they did with ToFS with the attempted fixes.
    Yinla likes this.
  19. Waring_McMarrin Augur


    A group with a lot of dps like that is unlikely to have problems in content you can burn through.
    NeverPayForLag, Yinla and Derka like this.
  20. Tucoh Augur

    I have a war/sha/brd/ber3x group that's also only group geared.



    It's way easier if I to swap a berserker with a cleric, lowering the DPS by like 20% and doubling the healing capability. It lets you plow through a lot of mechanics because the cleric's ability to group heal combined with their survivability buffs are just massive.