This. Having 4 Missions as the only source for group currency really annoys me. Not everybody can get a group together daily to farm these. Also, not everybody enjoys dealing with crappy emotes and weird mechanics. Sure, if I boxed tank/healer/bard/3xzerker assisted with 3rd party software, I would probably not complain, but I don't think it should be necessary to do this in order to equip my characters. More options to acquire coins would be great.
Solving the returning/new player problem is something better done through a different mechanism besides making it possible to grind out an entire expansion in under 6 hours. Like not for nothing, but they could just implement something like the AA bonus where you get bonus experience the further away from max level you are, which is actually a better solution than reducing the grind while ToL is still current era IMO. That allows you to have the time investment be higher when the bulk of the game is running through that content as the current era content, then let returning players catch up through it easier. It is incredibly silly to design the expansion that is in the current era, to cater to returning players, and it feels more like rationalization for someone who just wishes they could grind through the levels faster.
FWIW my alt monk made it to level 115.99 with only doing two merc achievements and one partisan achievement in all of TOV and COV. Also did not use overseer (that was for the magician on same acount) and I believe did 7 of the 8 missions. My point? The monk got the levels mostly from grinding mobs. It can be done. Just because it cannot be done within a month doesn't mean it cannot be done.
Then it sounds like it should be a pretty low priority. If new players don't even make it to that point then let's worry about the levels preceeding it first.
Who cares if it can be done. No one is literally arguing that point. The argument that is being made is that the current design purposely punishes the old method of exp grind in order to encourage players to use the new model. It also having a detrimental effect on the community as whole. Players are logging in for Overseers and logging out while waiting for a task add in discord.
In my opinion, the situation today is the result of oversized influence of raiders and auto-boxers on DPG devs. That crowd is vocal and active and their voices are heared louder than "minding their own business" casual players. It wasn't like that in the past expansions. Heroic adventures were more structured, paced, clearer. One mission step at a time, adds spawning at defined points and no hard-pressure of short timers. Not today, today missions are an arcade game. Not a challenge to raider and auto-boxers, but overtuned for a group of relaxing casuals. CoTF, TDS, TBM, EoK missions are quite group-friendly, while starting RoS they became a circus: miss a button push for 5 seconds and the mission is a failure. Not all, but increasingly many. I have a solution in mind about raiders - make raid gear variable in stats (like some charms are) depending on content - raid stats (what they are today) in raid zones, and just slightly better stats in group zones (like 1000 hme + minor stats better than group ts gear). You know, like those charms, which "get better" when conditions are met. This would force raiders to the ground from their high horses, and they would be more real when they evaluate group missions in beta to the scale of group gear, not raid gear. So DPG devs would get more realistic group feedback. And raiders would find group content worthy to share with just group-level players, and not just snub those and only join forces with raiders. The raiding scene would remain as challenging, demanding and competitive as it is today, while group content would expand its participants base.
Yes it can be done. But what's the point of spending a year to do it. Like other people said, today's game is becoming: log in for Overseer, log off.
Kill big stuff, get big prizes. That should not change. I don't think it would hurt anyone to boost up the regular exp killing/grinding mobs. AA exp on normal mobs is fine as is.
Scaling gear to zone would change nothing about mission difficulty. ToL missions are much more geared to group gear players than CoV or ToV. If you follow the mechanics and hit your buttons they're not difficult. No hard DPS checks, just need to slow/cc/move/cure as required. If you're struggling with them I posted a write up of my initial strats. I've refined/changed some since then but they all still work. I mean shoot, I'm pretty sure a mage or necro pet can tank every mission boss in this expansion. A group geared tank using defensives shouldn't have any difficulty.
EXP from grinding was MASSIVELY reduced. Many of us disagree with you. *shrugs* And if you haven't done a number of levels from 111 or 116 via grinding you really have zero room to talk. When they first did the changeover I did three levels via grind. The funny thing is no one who prefers to level via grind says the missions are a bad. They just want to be able to grind out exp similar to how they have for many many many expansions before this. Its the folks on the misison train that keep trying to tell them they are wrong.
Some folks just are not that into missions unfortunately. That wasn't as big a problem in the old days. Now... much more of an issue.
And did your alt monk have a group that whole time or most of it? And did the monk level with raid geared toons? Or did the monk grind all that exp alone?
No one wants an entire expansion to be ground out in six hours. That is a straw man argument and well just dumb.
It takes 30-40 hours of grinding to get to 120 in ToL, so if that's too much, and 6 hours is too little, than what do you think is the right number?
No. Mostly alone, although I did get into a strong guild GD group over a bonus xp weekend for about 6 hours total. And FYI monk does have COV raid 2hb, and EOK phlogiston raid gear everywhere else. And has like 1400 hDex. So is far from geared out. And around 22k AA so nowhere near the AA that monks get.
Actually a lot of people are saying that you cannot get to xyz level on just grinding mobs. I am saying it can be done- it is just going to take longer. But it can be done. If you want to experience 10 percent of the game, then expect 10 percent of the results.
It's basic math, you can get 10% an hour with a decent group in a T2 ToL zone, or 6-8% an hour in a CoV/ToV zone. You need 400% of a level to go from 115.9 to 120, a quick stop for 4 heros gets you 120% and take an hour or so to run through them, leaving 280% of a level that you need to grind through. At 10%/hr that's 28 hours, at the worst it's around 45 for 6% (but would be a bit less since you'd have multiple lessons in that time).
