Can we get a Hot *UN-Fix* on the Forced Progression?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Astefin, Dec 15, 2022.

  1. Buds Augur

    Not a fan of forcing progression missions AT ALL. Let people do missions for exp/loot etc rewards, don't lock zones. One zone, sure, if the access isn't too difficult.

    This expansion has ZERO that appeals to me. Not only is there no new AA, but they barely added any old AA extensions, just the ridiculous focus aas pretty much. I don't understand this expansion, it's the weakest one I can remeber in a long time. I usually get sucked in again with a new expansion release., shelling out money for my 7 accounts, but I'm not even remotely tempted to buy this for any of my accounts. Am I missing something? I'll save for nexts years level expansion.
  2. Astefin Journeyman


    When the developers put in mandated do these quests to do this mission, it is forced progression.

    I am complaining because the progression is being forced. I do not care that quests have always been part of the game, the quests were not necessary besides crappy raiding and flagging in PoP for the majority of the game.

    Let me get my grind on like I was always able to do in the past. They finally started taking progression locked zones back out of the game again and letting people go back to how they wanted to play. Hell, I don't really even care about a few zones being progression locked (if the expansions were still actually big enough).

    The expansions we get are so terrible on top of all of it. 7 zones. Do not even say at least we get expansions still or the development team is lower.

    This is like getting used to steak dinner with all the sides and some dessert for years, then all of a sudden you start getting a peanut butter sandwich and a bag of fritos.
    Yea, inflation hasn't made it cost more, but it should be costing 33% of what it was, because we are getting 33% of what we were getting and told to be happy we are even getting to pay them for that.
    Marton and Wyre Wintermute like this.
  3. Nudia Augur

    You don't have to do the mission either, in fairness. It's even possible to get into the "locked" zones without doing it if you solicit the help of others.

    Sorry this model doesn't work out for you. Some of us like/enjoy it, but I understand those that don't.
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  4. Wyre Wintermute I'm just a butterly dreaming I'm a man

    All arguments aside, I do agree that forced/required progression is poor design.

    The reward(s) for doing the progression should be the driving factor to complete progression. There's 100's if not 1000's of quests I've never done in EQ.. from Original through god knows when (VoA?) If the quest reward or achievement reward was "valuable" enough, to me, then I pursue it. If not, then whatever.. I've taken alts on routes that I've not taken on my main. For instance, I did TSS 100% within TSS.. just for giggles... but I'd have been put off, if you HAD TO complete everything in TSS just to progress. Same goes for a lot of expansions. It just feels like the recent equation is set due to overall lack of content? But I don't NEED TO be pushed to do the available content just to play EQ. It ought to be designed such that I WANT TO complete the content, and/or simply play "my way."

    One of my biggest gripes, since they added achievement rewards, was the challenges shifting from a "show off" item to a character improvement reward. I shouldn't be "forced" to complete every little odd method of doing something in a mission to get character improvements. It was nice to have a title/hat/illusion/whatever to "show off" that I did something above and beyond.
    tanith, eqgamer, Marton and 3 others like this.
  5. Alnitak Augur

    Yes, you are missing something.
    By not buying and playing through this expansion you are missing on improving of your characters. Group gear is notably superior to ToL gear. Better weapon dps, better stats/HME, better augs etc.
    AA's got improved too. A few percents here, a few percents there. Cumulatively the characters will be measureably better with NoS upgrades comparing to ToL.

    And when next expansion with level bump to 125 (as anticipated) will come live next year ToL geared people will struggle to fight through it and these forums will be flooded with posts about the expnsion being overtuned.

    In reality - it will be tuned for post-NoS characters, not post-ToL. Meanwhile, it's up to you if you want to take a sabbathical year off, keep grinding ToL for another year, or buy NoS and enjoy EVERquest. The choice is yours, of course.

    N.B. And the same can be said about raid game.
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  6. Alnitak Augur

    Do people whine about "Forced Progression" or are they whining about lack of instant gratification?
    Those who have TDS, TBL and a few others unlocked see the current NoS "progression lock" as an "easy-play" mode.
    EQ had access "locks" in place since original Kunark expansion (Trakanon's key, and Velious VT and SSra keys followed by PoP zone progression and so on). It was a part of the game for last 22 years.
    These days it's easy, just an extra day of questing.
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  7. Nightops Augur


    Verified yesterday the progression is required to request the mission, everyone else in the task can enter without.
    ---------

    For me, I have 2 major issues with this hotfix. The first issue is why the delay for 10 days? Once NoS went live this became an 'oversight'; no problem it happens. However, this should have been fixed on the 2nd day when the deepshade NPC was taken out of the game when he was giving out raid instances (or at least that's what I heard). I would think adding a requirement for the NPC to check against 3 progression tasks would be easy and quick since its the system already in place and was intended. The only explanation in my mind was that maybe they decided to hold off on the hot fix and just add it to the next patch because they deemed it to be not a big priority (which I agree) because most people already have the partisans done anyway or could do them within a couple hours. They just added it to the list of fixes like normal, which leads us to issue #2.

    I feel the major reason for the hotfix was to stop the Devotee's item from dropping in the Darklight group mission. Since it was never intended to drop there and it was to be part of the 'raid' side of the game, correcting this issue was worthy of a hotfix. However, for me, I would have again preferred immediate action instead of waiting 10 days. Again, removing an item from a drop table in an instance zone should be an easy fix. But do it fast, don't wait if it's a clear mistake. Waiting creates bigger issues as I'm sure more about this will come out over the next week or two.

    --------------
    On another side note, the Animalist in SH is not the only NPC in NoS to give out group missions without checking for the required partisans. If you know the key-words to request the mission, you can get the mission. Which this should be fixed also (and it should have been checked when SH was found to have the mistake).
  8. Astefin Journeyman

    Alnitak, there are NEVER new AAs. A few AAs get another rank, but all the content is centered around you already having those ranks. I cannot even remember the last time most classes got new actual AAs. Yes, I get there is already a bloat of too many abilities and AAs, that needs fixed and maybe those old AAs need replaced with new ones that share the same cooldown and can only be gotten once you max out the previous AA.
    Bard - Deadeye (a super version of fierce eye that lasts longer and affects MGB style)
    Mage - Push of the Hero- teleports targeted group member to succor location zone entrance.
    and random stuff like that would be NEW AAs.

    And there you go talking about the point of the expansion is to gear up for the next expansion.
    We play a game for heavens sake... If you can't think of another reason to play and buy an everquest expansion besides to gear up and "improve" your character for the expansion after, maybe we all need to stop playing.

    If the only reason to buy an expansion is to get ready for the next expansion, the developers have lost completely. It means the mini expansions they put out are worthless and not worth any of the money that we are giving them if the only reason to get this expansion is to be hopeful the next expansion isn't a steaming pile of dookey.
  9. Tucoh Augur

    This expansion's quests are so flawless it took ten days and a hot fix for folks to find something some of you are willing to whine about.

    Do the progression guys, you need to do the progression and a ton more to evolve your cloak beyond level 2 anyway, so getting a few quests done won't hurt you.

    The last partisan quest is not that hard if you get Goodurden's maps and follow the markers. https://nos.eqresource.com/powercorrupts.php
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  10. Astefin Journeyman

    You know what a lot of those zones have in common? They were raiding zones and a small portion of the game.
    I was on extended break from the game during TDS and I would have been just as irritated during that expansion. Forcing people to do something just to access what they paid for is not how a business should be ran.
    Back in even PoP where I did do some of the raids to get access to other zones, it was different because there were WAY more zones that you could access without doing trials/raids for.

    The "quests" they put in the game are worthless and tedious. As I said previously, I don't care if it takes me a few months to gear up to T3. My alts will probably never get out of T2 gear, but I can grind for that and while the T3 upgrading is annoying due to the change, it is what it is.

    I can find me a nice little corner and grind for upgrades when I was not grinding missions. Now being forced to do their god-awful progression quests just to be able to do their mission grind is what is annoying and frustrating. They hate grind and try and remove it from being a way to level only to force you to grind in other ways.

    "The players were gearing up in T3 gear too fast, lets slow it down and make them grind and grind more for it!"
  11. Nightops Augur


    It's impossible to create completely new AAs for every class for every expansion. By continuing to add new lines and make things more powerful, you ultimately get to a point which just makes something become 'too much' and a full nerf or 're-visioning' is required. It took the developers several years to re-vamp dot changes. And honestly, they are not done because they are still readjusting dots with the NoS expansion. How many expansions has that been now; seven, eight; why? Because dots became too much of an issue in multiple ways. From debuff box space, to spell lvl stacking, to extreme clicking required, to too much dps because of focused additives.
    Astefin likes this.
  12. strongbus Augur

    They will never get rid of grinding. If they wanted to do that. they make mission not have lock out timers and normal zones would have no mobs to kill. it be like ldon was. But having quest chain you had to do in order to access other quest/missions/zones? that be in the game sense day one. Evey online game has them. They are a part of them. Its you chose if you want to do them and have access to what they give or just sit in a zone and slaughter names all day long and level/gear up that way.
    Paladin likes this.
  13. Tacoheals TACOBELL !!!!

    I mean the game is literally called EverQUEST.. I am a firm believer on ALL missions being locked behind the zone's progression. Why should some lousy lazy player be able to obtain a best in slot item with minimal to no effort. Yes, understand you have to do quest etc. to evolve it past level 1, but point is play the game and quit complaining. Before people got all soft since TLP launched. Everything was great. Raid progression races and had to do progression to unlock missions. Now it's too easy to be done in 24 hours.
    Paladin and Nennius like this.
  14. robber baron Journeyman

    I really hate the forced progression in God of War: Ragnarok.

    I want to pick my armor and bosses right away.
  15. Cadira Augur

    Imagine losing your mind over having to do three fairly easy quests to be able to request one of the four missions. A mission who's real treasure is useless without every achievement completed in the expansion.

    Imagine making that big of a deal out of this XD
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  16. Treiln Augur

    Is anyone going to mention the white elephant in the room?

    We HAVE to level up to get all of our spells and abilities /gasp

    How dare they make us play that way! It's poor design we don't have access to all spells and abilities and gear at level 1!

    We've been on a copy paste system for how many years now? TDS / EoK / RoS / ToV / CoV / ToL....

    You've been having your PB&J sammich for years and not complaining about it.
    Paladin and Duder like this.
  17. robber baron Journeyman

    Battle Royales and mobile games have changed consumers.

    Ashes of Creation is going to force PvP. Future MMOs will be closer to Battle Royales than linear quest and storyline progression.
  18. Zunnoab Augur

    That task is a catastrophe without going in with foreknowledge.

    Info that would have saved me 2+ hours:
    1.) It's possible the map has been updated, but "7" isn't where it is labeled on the southern part of her route. Instead stand at a distance from the start/the "door" to Deepshade, for example at one of the pillars diagonally from where she stands. I've been told the southern 7 label also works for 6, but that movement I believe is for the prior task.

    2.) It's set checks and you don't have to constantly avoid her. Wait at a number label (except the starting label -she banishes if standing there). You can stand on the 1 label even as she walks directly over you; same for 4. Once you have the update, move to the next label and wait, even if she walks directly over you, until the next update and then immediately move to the next again.

    3.) Spots 1-4 go fairly quickly, but she stands at the last three an absurd amount of time.
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  19. Marton Augur

    Me, personally, I whine about a lack of options.

    Norrath used to be a large open world for people to wander around. Not so much anymore. Want to sit in a corner and grind exp? Sucks to be you unless you want to wait 27 years to gain a level (kidding but you know very well how the experience is done after 110).

    I don't want items appearing magically in my inventory etc. But I want options. That's all.
  20. Treiln Augur

    While I’m not saying you’re wrong nor am I discrediting what you say…if we look back, when was the last time “wandering around” was an option? LoY? PoP? After that, once you were at a certain point, the game was pretty much on the rails of “next expansion zones”.

    When we were below level 70-75, a lot of the expansions catered to multiple level ranges, so we had options. But at some point, it’s not worth going back and adding lower level range options to make it so the “large open world for people to wander around and explore” is a viable thing. But, it still holds true from a newer player or newer characters stand point.

    I hit level 110. I’ve got 10 more levels before I max out. What are my options? higher tier TDS zones, higher tier TBM zones (to a lesser extent) EoK zones, RoS zones, TBL zones (GMM spans a good portion of this level range too), ToV, CoV, ToL, NoS. Lots of zones and places to go check out still

    We’re all wearing rose tinted glasses here from a nostalgia standpoint of the first decade of the game. At some point, our options went from anything and everything to the very next expansion….and I hate to be the bearer of bad news…but it wasn’t in the last few expansions.