I think they are. It's hard to get people to do the other heroic adventures in Dead Hills, let alone Bixie or Neriak because a large percentage of people only want to do Gribble missions (and even then, only scouting ahead or into the hills. It's even hard to get people to do disrupting the ritual). First off, let me state I'm not suggesting they remove or nerf Gribble missions completely....it's most likely too late for that and I can already hear the collective forum outrage over how Sony doesn't care about the players and EQ is dead and how they are going to cancel their 6 gold accounts and how they won't come back until SK's are useful again on a progression server with no pet tanking except where plane of war is accessible to casual players who all got red dragonscale augs as cursor loot off Nagafen. I ask this because in the last month I've met five or six people who literally didn't know that there were HAs in the game other than Gribble. They didn't know you could go to Bixie, Neriak, or WK or even that you could go to Russel Cooper. I do think there should be easier content in the game but not so easy that it discourages people trying or even knowing about any other feature in the game. I would support a lockout timer of say...4 hours of each HA so that you had to go and do different ones. The main downside to this that I can think of is people trying to do Hunter achievements or getting rare augs. Alternatively, I'd also be in favor of rebalancing the rewards so that the easier missions got less currency and the harder missions (hi, Descending the Tower!) got significantly more and/or had a higher named frequency with some sort of rare aug or click. Lastly, let's say Gribble was taken out of the game. Would any specific HA take over as the one that almost everyone does to the exclusion of any other? tl;dr - give people a reason to do HAs other than gribble
Anyone who didn't know there were other missions in game after this length of time is not anyone I want in the grouping pool anyway. Though I find this hard to believe. As in, I think you made them up as a way to try to get this style of game play nerfed for your own reasons.
Oh cool, this can be a thing they nerf when the next expansion comes, to push people into buying it cause their old exp spot got wrecked. Like OMM missions for HoT and Hot TAs for VoA. Was there anything good in VoA to nerf for RoF?
The answer truly lies in who your friends are. My friends will do any mission I need, and often we do some of the others whenever we get bored. But if you're just after marks, why would you do anything but the fastest? There will always be power gamers. If you can't find people to do them, box it. But I imagine that your post is a bit of hyperbole because I see people looking for groups all the time in bixie etc.
It's the same thing that happened with DoN and creator missions, people flock to the one with the most reward for the least risk. I can 3-box into the hills/scouting ahead in about 45 mins (and i know people can do them a lot faster) whereas the cooper ones took me about 3 hours a piece to box. Granted some of that was learning the mission, but i can't see me getting them done anywhere near as fast as 45 mins. Whilst the cooper ones were fun to do once and i had to do them to be able to request the DE Illusion task I doubt i will do them again unless a guildy wants to do them. If i'm looking for some xp to make up that i've lost from raiding or whatever, a quick gribble works out well. Or on double xp weekends they provide even better rewards for the same risk. Not much can be done about it, really
If people haven't figured out how to use the extremely user-friendly Achievements feature yet, then there is probably little hope for them anyway.
Gribble missions aren't bad for the game.. you have to at least play your toon somewhat to move through them at a decent pace.. Dain missions produced more max level characters who knew absolutely nothing,than anything in eq.
They actually already did rebalance the rewards for HAs. The longer ones should give more Marks and have a higher likelyhood of named spawns. Most people are either unaware of that, or they believe that the rebalance failed, and continue to do Gribble. I would say that even if the rebalance was perfect, or if other missions were actually better, players are stuck in their ways, and will continue Gribble's easy, quick missions anyway. I think the game is to the point where everyone getting to max level/AA via Heroic Characters, Teek tasks, and Gribble HAs is actually a good thing. Once the majority of players are max level/AA, more resources can be devoted to the "end game" and players will find PUGs more easily. I never had more fun in EQ than the time when we were level 60 which was max level at the time, and AAs didn't exist, and we had all the gear we could get. It was fun just to mess around in places like Dragon Necropolis standing on the rat superhighway and seeing how long we could last against the spawns and roamers before we got overrun, etc. So, no, I wouldn't change Gribble a bit even though I avoid those HAs personally just because I'm bored of them.
Gribble Missions are the main reason I play these days. I can get an hour in per day if lucky. It's also the reason I finally purchased 4 copies of the latest expansion. Finding groups via /LFG has been very hard for many years. Boxing is the only way that I can enjoy the game these days plus I love keeping all of the Loot, LOL . So YAY! Gribble I say!
Good news, they already said moving forward that HA's aren't going to be a big part of the game. Rejoice. Your friends who don't know there's anything else will have to do something else.
I'm betting XP will be horrid in the next expansion compared to these HA. But that's not necessarily a bad thing
Gribble's missions are a lot harder than Creator was back in the day. A good bard could pull the mobs you needed to update Creator, and only those mobs, to zonein. At least Gribble has a minimum killcount.
neriak II and WK II heroics reward pale in comparaison of gribble... sk-wiz-wiz + 3 healer merc, i can do into the hill in Under 10 minute....
I think everyone is forgetting another string of missions that got nerfed really hard in the past... Those being the Darkhollow Monster Missions. Anyways, I don't know what the OP is worried about, they have a pretty good sense about what is making the game enjoyable, and nerfing it terribly in favor of everything taking longer. I personally really disliked the HoT mission nerfs, I thought those were terrific, I could box by myself w/ 3, and gift 3 random strangers in general with TAs just because. I'd do some silly trivia to win a spot, was pretty fun stuff.
