Review of TOL expansion

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Fian, Dec 11, 2021.

  1. Cicelee Augur

    Why would anyone want to repeat partisan quests, except to help someone out?

    The system is designed to run through mercenary, partisan and mission tasks (in other words, playing in the expansion that the devs and the team worked hard on to create) and that takes you close to level 120. I am almost halfway through 118, and all I have done in TOL is Umbral and Maiden merc/partisans, Vex Thal merc and the four missions (I did get a 60 percent ish start cause of overseer collects). I presume by the time I get through the remaining tasks and quests for the rest of the zones, I am going to be 120 or close to it. I can then go into sandbox mode and do whatever I want to do- grind, camp augs, kill named, repeat missions, help others with what they need, etc.

    Some people want to sandbox mode a new expansion. They can. No one is preventing them. You will get to 120 that way. It is going to take longer, and you may not experience the expansion. But that is OK, you have the choice to do that. Just like someone can ride a bicycle to work instead of driving a car.
  2. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Nobody cares if 90% of people take the train the devs built for teh 90% of players who were there on time waiting at the station and who were the correct level to board.

    The 10% were okay with not getting on the train.
    What the 10% were pissed about is that the devs deliberately & purposefully broke their car,
    Then they broke their motorbike, broke their bicycle too
    Then they told them they may as well stay at home & just open their front door once a day to do overseer, they may as well not even bother looking at the world anymore.
  3. Cicelee Augur

    This is a 22 year old game that is going to end at some point. Your overwhelmingly majority of your playerbase, your 60k accounts or whatever it is, falls into two categories- live players who are within five levels of the current max level, or TLP players. Devs and EG7 want to make those people happy for as long as they can until the game sunsets.

    You seem to be focused on 0.01 percent of the live population. I am focused on the current population. I feel if you want to bring in new players to live, you increase the max level of a heroic to 100/105 so they can group with a 120 and you advertise. Neither of which EG7 seems to want to do, because they probably realize people don't really want to join a 22 year old game regardless of what discounts or heroic character level you give them. So they focus on the now to lengthen the future for as long as they can milk this cow.
    Fenthen likes this.
  4. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    Group based progression games can’t survive on “toilet paper” content, i.e. single use and flush away. If, they worked so hard to create this content then they need to ensure people are going to want to repeat them. Underfoot and HoThule both had currency rewards for completing quests and missions.

    It’s why it is important that grinding be a viable progression path, because groups aren’t in abundance as people move on. Look at how little ToV is being used now. Who is going back for partisan and mercenary tasks?
  5. Vumad Cape Wearer


    My preferred way to level is by doing quests. I would rather repeat a quest for XP than grind on mobs. I simply do not enjoy the monotony of standing in one spot and mindlessly killing the same things over and over. The fact that doing the same quest again has such a poor time:XP ratio compared to grinding (after getting the ACH) is a problem in the design.

    and ironically...


    it goes completely against what you have said here. If your point were valid, wouldn't it make sense that the Devs would want to incentivize us to repeat them?

    I'm am absolutely not suggesting that repeating quests replace grinding and I am not supporting further nerfing grind XP. What I am saying is that repeat quest XP needs to be better tuned to the time it takes to complete them, because I enjoy doing tasks. That's all.
    Khalysta and Skuz like this.
  6. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    There are as many non-max level players on FV as raid members. Raids are overdeveloped in EQ, only like 2,000 players out of 82,000 complete T3 CoV.
  7. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I am not focused on current players at all, well done, you win a cookie.
    But the game can be tweaked to make it way more accessible to returning players & "shock horror" new players.

    64 bit is on the list of things the game needs to become attractive to new players
    UI overhaul
    Graphics overhaul
    Squire/sidekick system

    Why be satisfied with knowing that EQ is not currently designed to out-live it's original & ever-dwindling audience?
    EQ may not be the first game that has had to confront the mortality of it's creators, but it may be the first to have to think about the mortality of it's players, but as a business well all businesses have to make this step at some point, I think EQ should.

    How much better would the EQ experience be if it did begin to attract new players, it wouldn't even need a huge number of new players to make a massive difference.
  8. Fian Augur

    My take. Overseer is a bad thing, but currently the only viable method of getting to 120 once the quests are done. Quests/missions alone will probably get you to 119 with a full level to power level which is extremely slow. Game should not be designed so that the only way to level is quests/missions. Killing mobs should be an alternative path that is viable. Let players play the way that they want. With bonuses like new mounts, there is already sufficient motivation for players to complete quests. Overseer does unbalance it, though. As you can have a max level character who has barely played the game.
    Pleides, Scila, Khalysta and 2 others like this.
  9. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    Not even just new players, but returning players are important to long term viability. All the returning players are being told to basically go to a TLP. It’s some pretty dire consequences for any server other than FV.
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Skuz like this.
  10. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    This is true, although even "returning players" are a part of the original audience.
    Skrab likes this.
  11. Velisaris_MS Augur

    The most basic goal in this game, for most players, is simply to reach max level. That is a fairly straightforward, no frills, path. If people want to stand in the same spot for a couple of hours every night, killing mob after mob after mob in order to reach that goal, they should be able to do that. And prior to ToV, they could. Now, the devs have completely closed off that path for 111+. And no, Overseer is not an excuse for shutting down an established, 20+ year leveling path.

    With ToL, I think they've finally gotten quest/task xp rewards balanced to where they probably should have been years ago. Because of that, there's zero reason to make the levels require SO MUCH xp in order to get through them. Whether a level requires 100 xp points or 1 million xp points to get through it is completely irrelevant now...you'll still get the same percentage from the quests. Now it's time to go back to the pre-ToV leveling curve so that standing in the same spot for a couple of hours every night killing mobs is once again a path to reaching max level.

    The whole point is to allow people to play the game the way they want to play it. With the ToV xp model, the devs gave a giant middle finger to players...especially to returning players. It's time to fix that and make grinding a viable leveling path again.
  12. Cicelee Augur

    There is a fundamental difference between you and I.

    You think there are people out there (thousands, tens of thousands) who would sign up and play EQ without knowing anyone in game on a live server if EQ moved some of the task/quest/mission XP to mobs along with other graphical improvements.

    I think there is an extreme little demand of players (maybe dozens) who would sign up and play EQ because for everyone else... EQ is a 22 year old game. And no amount of XP or graphics is going to get people to devote their time to a 22 year old game

    I don't know who is right or wrong. Only time will tell. What I do know is that I am not going to convince you that no new players with no friends invested in 3Q is going to want to play this game. And you are not going to convince me that there are gamers out there with no friends in EQ who are going to want to give money to EQ that makes sense from a business model perspective to change the game for those new players.

    So we will agree to disagree.
  13. Smokezz The Bane Crew

    There are also collects which are autogranted when you claim them now and give the AA *AND* the xp reward with every set.
  14. Tappin Augur

    Cicelee, the problem with your shortsighted view is it go against how the majority people consume content. All it really does is incentivize people to head over Bluehides, DL a script to play a mini game. I’m not sure how ANYONE, would think this is healthy way to design a game they expect last for the long term.
  15. Vizier Augur

    Circ is asking for something the game desperately needs: repeatable content. I have no earthly idea why anyone would be opposed to that.
  16. Gnomeland Augur

    This is the wrong way to think about content.

    A quality game developer designs for the player, not for themselves. They don't think "I spent so much time on this, I need to get players to use it." Instead they think, "what do players want to spend their time on? I'll design that." This is a constant among great game studios - they care what players want to do.

    There is still a proper argument to be made about risk and effort vs. reward. But just because the conclusion might be the same, doesn't imply that the logic of "forcing people to play content because you spent so much effort on it" isn't off. To me, that implies you're not developing for the player, but for yourself, and that's entirely the wrong motivation for a game studio.
  17. Gnomeland Augur

    People still play RuneScape. They still play League of Legends. They still play Diablo 2. Judging by the number of "remastered" games that get released every year, there's definitely a market for old, classic games. Which makes sense, because people still play Chess, and that game has been selling for thousands of years.

    But you're right in the sense that, if the company itself doesn't believe in their game, then it's only a matter of time before it's dead. And that's what's happening with Everquest.
    Treage_Imminent and Skuz like this.
  18. Eaedyilye More stonehive bixies.

    For most part, this is a very enjoyable expansion. One issue I ran into was the Live as Brothers or Perish as Fools. (Partisan task) That task was the next one up. So I went to EQ Resource to check out the task steps. On the fifth step, you have to go to Bloodfalls for a drop. Well, this zone is locked. You have to complete a mission to unlock it.

    Going to a locked zone shouldn't ever be a requirement to complete a task. Especially when the task is for a different zone.

    I run a 2 mage box, so I don't know if the mission required is doable. I usually wait to the last stretch to deal with missions, which means when I'm level 119. Right now I'm level 117.5 on both mages. Most likely I'll need a group to beat this mission.
  19. Kazint Augur

    We got to see cat people sacrificed in this expansion. What more could you want? I give it a 10 out of 10.
  20. Act of Valor The Newest Member

    I call that a good start.
    IblisTheMage, Silvena and Nennius like this.