The basis of EQ from day one involved killing mobs, getting exp, and looting your prizes. The decision to violate the very basic tenet of a gameplay mechanic that should be inviolable is unacceptable. No reasoning, perceived problems, future fears, or complications on the Development side should ever encroach upon such seminal mechanics. To face a monster that we have earned the right to kill knowing we will be severely penalized for <insert reason here> makes EQ not even a game anymore, because it no longer has any basic rules governing it. We can no longer trust that anything we do will be rewarded. Our efforts mean nothing. Our progress means nothing. YOU (Devs), the masters of spin involving the INTENT of the game designers and your own created expansions, cannot look us in the face and tell us the intent of the game ever equated to: killing dangerous foes does not equal compensatory gains. Let me give you some unacceptable reasons to highly penalize experience rewards: --High HP mob is quest related --Mob is in an instance --Player power (earned) is too great --Player is over level 100 --Rate of exp gain makes the new expansion look bad .... shall I go on? ~~~TOTALLY CONSTRUCTIVE PART OF THE POST~~~ Simple solution: Stop violating basic, intended mechanics to solve perceived problems on the design side of the game. --Remove this absurd over level 100 experience penalization. --Ensure that all mobs in all instances give equivalent reward value as all similarly difficult mobs outside of the instances. --Bring experience rewards for quest-related mobs in line with similar mobs in the same zones. Show the players that they can trust you not to desecrate the legacy of Everquest since its inception. As it stands, if players cannot trust you to give experience for killing mobs, what can they trust? Spells will no longer function? Mobs won't drop loot? Or looting them makes you explode and die? Experience is a reward for our efforts. Are you truly asking us to continue our efforts (and our financial support) when intrinsic game rules no longer apply? This is a mess right now and we can all see you struggling to make it work through convoluted new rules. We chose this game with these rules. Board games need boards. Card games need cards. Football needs a ball (and a field with lines and rules). Some things you can't just skirt around without destabilizing the foundations its built upon. Players getting experience and having fun will not ruin the game. Lack of trust in the basic, underlying principles creates a game with no players. Some of us are willing to be wooed back the game we loved (when it existed) and renew lapsed accounts, but it will require fixing this mess, undoing completely these recent violations, and some new attractive incentives. Forgive me for this incoming harshness, but it needs to be said-- Devs, I don't trust you anymore. It was difficult to trust you through all the years of nerfs, but I stuck it out. It was difficult to justify the cost at times, but I stuck it out. It was difficult to PUG, corpserun, lose everything in Fear, /q in frustration, but I stuck it out. It was difficult when my favorite characters were near useless for years without hope of change, but I stuck it out. It is impossible to trust you when you invalidate legacy mechanics for convenience... or money... or whatever excuse you tell yourselves makes it all right to do this. To those of you who would say, "It's no big deal. People will be maxed soon anyway and there are other places to experience." -- I agree. The changes themselves may not be a 'big deal', but a game without rules, structure, and trust is a big deal. /drama off I had tons of fun, but you've driven off all of my friends, my fellowships, my guilds, my casual acquaintances, my potential groupmates, and a lifelong fan of what Everquest was when it had some simple rules upon which it was founded and prospered from the first gnoll pup through endgame bosses. /split Cheers
1) You're half right. The RvR for HAs was way off, they were way too easy and gave way too much XP, but they should have just dropped the overall XP, not set some weird level cap like they did. 2) You could not, from day one, get an instance, mass kill inside it while avoiding getting a lockout by finishing, and then drop it and get a new instance. To think that was ever intended is dumb. Taking the xp off the mobs and placing it on the mission completion should have been done a long time ago. 3) Removing experience from quest related mobs prevents people from farming them and blocking other people from doing quests.
You are a raider. As a wizard you probably can kill HA's like gribbles 8-12 X faster than most (if you wanted to). Alll the change is doing is encouraging MASS kill isn't it? I also have extreme doubts about the "it willl be the same xp" formula that they have devised. That is a promise by the Dev's. I have my own figures here. I hope that they are correct. I notice that in the latest patch they are decreasing the ground spawn in Dredge HA. What on earth is the reason for this? There's really no reason from the mission point of view. So I'm guessing some person has discovered a way to gain a massive advantage somehow. Hmmm.. I wonder wot.....I'm sure Pwning is still exploiting the out of it. PS: OMG I just zoned into Dredge HA and a named is up without having to do ANYTHING. Has that been fixed yet?...it's only been a few weeks or have the raiding guilds not got all their spells yet?
I somehow remember Rangers flipping instances for headshotting since DODH (resolved by changing how headshot worked - not nerfing the instances). There have also been other cases where people have farmed instances repeatedly, one of the more recent examples coming to mind being one of the VOA missions with a lot of Alarans that some farmed for tablets. I'm not a big fan of flipping instances, and there were only two times after I found out that HAs did not have a lockout that did the same one twice within six hours. On the other hand, with COTF being focused on HA's, and the mind-boggling decision to nerf all experience from ROF (as opposed to, say, just task reward experience), options for hunting are pretty limited this expansion compared to past ones. * * * I wouldn't use the same words that Casia does, but he has a point - SOE has done "a heck of a job, Brownie!" in terms of changing the rules regarding experience and leveling. That by itself isn't necessarily bad, but doing so with essentially no notice creates a situation of moral hazard. People plan based on expectations, and a perfectly reasonable expectation for this expansion was that experience and leveling would work largely like it has for the last 19 expansions. Instead, several options that have been available in past expansions are suddenly far, far less worthwhile. It would have been nice, for example, for SOE to have let people know this summer about the coming experience nerfs for ROF and below. Then I could have used my time a bit better, whereby instead of d!cking around in COTF I would have been working on 'bucket list' content in ROF that I put off until after TDS release. Now, because of something that SOE slipped into TDS beta unannounced just before design lock, I find that stuff I have to do in ROF - stuff that I could have done before TDS was released - is not going to be far, far less rewarding. Yup, zone is still there, but SOE is doing its darnedest to reduce the incentives for going there. If they are going to make major changes like this, it would be nice to have consideration for their player base by letting them know far in advance. These are decisions 'painstakingly made,' right? And then doubling down on the EXP nerfs - three weeks after release - makes a lot more stuff less worthwhile to do, but only after a fair portion of the population has already availed themselves of those many holes. So yet again, the implicit lesson SOE is sending is "if you find a hole, exploit the everloving bejeezus out of it before it is closed, because however SOE 'fixes' it, you can be assured that it will make things harder and less enjoyable for those who didn't use that hole." Note: this is NOT meant as criticism of those who did hit 105 in extremely short order - some of the methods were very creative, and they put in the time; I found some of the methods pretty darn impressive, and it is no skin off my back who hits 105 when. And what is more, if anyone does call what they did 'cheesy' - I am NOT - they are simply doing what SOE has taught them to do time, and time, and time again. As parent of a six-year old, I am trying to be a lot more mindful about my actions. Taking a riff from a meme popular 6-8 years ago, I often ask 'WSSD' (What Should Sophie Do), and ask if my actions would encourage my daughter to act the way I want her to. I am sure that individually the developers are great people and parents, but I look at 'lessons' that SOE is repeatedly sending out - it's ok change important long-standing rules in what looks like a random, haphazard manner without warning; it is OK to change rules while still leaving lots of holes, so that the changes don't even seem to meet the desired ends, despite inconveniencing masses of people; don't bother trying to look at your actions and see their impact on the entire system, looking at the tree and ignoring the forest is just fine; don't explain your thinking if others don't understand why the heck things are happening/being done - good communication is bad; exploit the heck out of holes before they get closed . . . again, I am sure that the devs are great parents and people individually, but I'm glad that, collectively, SOE is not in the parenting business. It is SOE's world - it is just making a lot of folks less eager to be part of it.
I dont get it : / And no, not done...the reward isnt worth the time required to complete, compared to other stuff I need to do, so it's fallen by the wayside.
Excellent point(s). The new rules idea is the biggest mistake they've made in awhile. Forget nerfs - they justify that with honorable intentions, whether we like them or not.. But... The simplest answer is usually the best. Occam, anyone? Convoluted new rules doesn't meet that simple concept, said concept I'm sure they're aware of. The devs have done brilliant things with this game over the years, and are generally admirable ladies and gentlemen, I think. But every time they pull this hypocritical and contradicting nonsense and back-pedaling, they lose a part of that Soul of Norrath which was shining bright in each of them, and lose our trust moving forward. Think about it, devs. Darkness is falling. On you. Take back our game. Your game. Do the right thing. Baramos
Exactly. The 'OMG get to 105' crowd is done, is my observation. (For the most part.) Many are raiders and they'll be done and sitting on their thumbs in a few months, anyway. Penalizing those remaining, many of whom are casual and want a rewarding grind isn't a good idea, considering the context of years of content, and Sony's own (recent and past) comments over the years This is nothing less than a sea change in the mechanics of this game, and it seems spawned by wrong-headed thinking, panic, and flailing to find the right way to do it. Hint: Use the simplest answer you can think of. You know what that is. Maybe not? Just leave it alone. I really can't understand how you can't see something so obvious. You're too close to your jobs, and out of touch with the playerbase. The casual folks are a good part of the population of this game, by the way. They're the ones who will grind in old expansions for the fun and quests of it. Often multiple times. Alienating these players in such a dishonest, hypocritical way is such a bad idea I can't say it enough, even knowing the devs seem to be standing steadfast with bottom lips pouting defiance. Good devs. Doing a rotten thing. A wrong thing. A cynical thing. A dishonest thing. Baramos
I am left to wonder if this experience nerf is going to be a rolling effect? When we go to 110 does CoTF exp get nerfed? Or is this going to be a 1-time hidden mechanic just to nerf RoF partisan rewards experience? Also, since they're so confident in the merits of this nerf, they should make a loading splash screen for it or a level 101 pop-up so people aren't left puzzled over why a mob they just killed is now giving 35-75% less experience simply because they dinged 1 level; something unprecedented in their leveling experience up to that point.
Only a small percent of the player population ever reads or posts on the forums. The exp nerf was on the forums for days before it went live, so everyone knew it was coming and it didn't need to be in the patch notes.
IMO, nothing that was changed was anything close to being a 'Legacy mechanic.' RoF was only 2 expansions ago hardly legacy. When they go back and change things that have been around for 5+ years, that would be a 'legacy mechanic.' And even a smaller percent of people even read the patch notes. However, most of the time their are those of us who do frequent the forums and let everyone who doesn't know what is coming; but there are still people surprised when it happens.
Whats there to be puzzled about unless you are a person who is severely developmentally delayed? I hit 101 and the stuff here is giving me junk exp EEK, I try another zone in newer content omg this zone is giving me good exp yay. Really something was wrong with the way it was where you would see 100's trying to exp in crappy zones like valley of L and garden. If they didn't nerf this then great places to duo would of actually been like the top of the tree in evantil but to me that's dumb. They want people to group together, they dont want us out there soloing light blue mobs playing alone. That right there is the reality, many people get very good experience playing alone or just duoing old content and they are not being part of the community.In an online multiplayer game people should be encouraged to group to get the best experience, you're not going to ever get 3+ people who are 105 grinding in ROF, it doesn't create community. So what about the people who like to solo? You are not the people they're trying to keep, they want to keep the people who only play because they log on to hang out with their friends.
The point is still the same. Why do they care and why do you care where people spend their time in Everquest? Isn't the point that they're paying and playing?
As I stated though, it won't happen like that. People either A) will all gather in the easiest new zone to kill in for reasonable xp or B) will masskill and make it even harder for lower level players to find anything up.
A) good they're in new content, goal achieved. B) If they were going to be in that zone anyways they would be mass killing if they could, if you nerf the exp by 75% people are not just going to stay in the same zone and kill 4 times faster to make up for it. If they could kill 4 times faster in the first place then they would of. The ONLY times I have seen people say "I could kill faster but im not going to" is when they're sharing an area with someone else. There's enough zones where if you're farming exp and you have to share an area with someone which is netting you less exp you can just move. If some 105 goes well grounds gives me 1/4 the exp it used to, I guess ill just kill everything now: that player is slow in the head.
