Test Update 12/2/2014

Group A thinks the raid is too hard, and want it tuned down
Group B thinks it's hard, but they like it (and thus do not want it tuned down)
Group C thinks there were too few raids in the expansion, so they should be easier
Group D thinks there were too few raids in the expansion, so they should remain hard in order to promote longevity of the content

And between those four stones are the devs... being ground to dust.

I'm not in any of those four groups, but, if I was... I would be in group B or D. I've always come back to EQ because it was always the most challenging game. I tried a couple other online games over the years, and I was max level in one month... including all the tradeskills I had available to me. I usually quit playing those games about a week later.

Easy mode sucks monkey butt.

The limited content in TDS, such as it is, has to last the entire year. I think it's silly to have any expectation that the content is so easy that a majority of the guilds will have beat the content inside of 30 days.

Yes, it's a brick wall that has defeated many guilds thus far, but I know you are all capable of rising to this challenge. Maybe it will take 60 days. Maybe 90... but you will beat it.

What's the point of gearing up guilds from raids if you can beat all the raids in your current gear? Why should all raids be winnable within a month of an expansion? Shouldn't there be long term targets to shoot for? That's how EQ was way back when. There were raids we had no chance of beating until we had sufficiently farmed the easier ones to get geared up. It looks like the current mentality is that guilds should be able to almost instantly farm an expansion's raids to gear up for the next expansion rather than use them to advance to tougher raids in the current one.

That's a problem with itemization mostly. Yes, you needed to farm the hell out of Vex Thal to make a swift entry into Elemental Planes because the gear was exponentially better than you could get elsewhere. Right now there is very little difference between the gear people have from raiding CotF T1/T2 and TDS.

So there is an expectation that your gear isn't going to get any better, realistically, so you should be able to beat the raids with the right tactics and strong enough players. When that doesn't happen, then players start letting the devs know that they perceive a problem.

EDIT: Also, the dev notes on these raids said they were tuned for people in CotF raid gear

the cost of balance group mission has no chest pop in it once you finish, and the tds global raid rare freebooters black pearl necklace didnt get a focus upgrade, still 103

- It is no longer possible to trigger event success before achieving actual success when fighting Principal Vicarum Nomia.


this should have been hotfixed as soon as it was reported. and the flags / loot removed.

Group E thinks there is no problem having a hard raid, but the lockout is stupid, you cannot learn enough in 1 shot to make progress.

All raids are beatable within a month of the expansion, the only day "lost" by RoI was from flagging. Since they did a pre-dawn raid on a Saturday to beat TDS before Thanksgiving there is a pretty good chance that they would have raided Sunday morning if only flagging to request Arx Mentis exped had taken less time.

Without flagging to request Arx Mentis and flagging to advance deeper into the zone there is a very good chance RoI would have beaten it Day 1. Last night they were 1h 45m into the raid and had 5 raids beaten so at a guess 2.5 hours to beat all 7 raids, maybe they slowed down after that point and took 3 hours.

Gearing up will not put guilds at that level. You can't slap some gear on some Rogue and presto they are Ayvan, to have a Rogue with that skill level on your raids you need to be extremely fortunate and it's not something you can find in Arx Mentis raid chests over the course of a year.

Difficult? Not a problem it and of itself, not having any content tuned for the bottom 1/3 or 1/2 of guilds that had a high level of raiding success in CotF is a problem but you can have content for those guilds and still have difficult content as well.

If you didn't beat Defense during the half week of launch and "only" repeat content every week instead of every 5 days, not a problem. You would still have 5 wins on Defense by now and that "should" be enough to get a decent sized force to attempt Arx2 (takes 4 wins) and only 7 guilds have beaten Arx2 to date and reported it to EGL.

The current version of Tita's Ghost isn't remotely similar to Arx2, can look up the fastest non-RoI time to beat Arx2 while you're at it and it won't raise the obvious red flags that looking at Tita's Ghost times will. Guilds need repetitions, gear, AA, possibly still levels in order to eventually beat Arx2, difficult. Working as intended. Tita's Ghost not working as intended unless "unconventional tactics" are intended.

I logged in here to report the issue with no chest on The Cost of Balance as well!

You both are on test server correct? The patch notes did say that most (not all) got chests - we'd need a list of which do and don't have chests in order to determine if this is a bug or not.

I logged in to also report this!

Give Crystilla her list!

Did this get hotfixed on live servers?

Please check AM4 (Lucia) as well. Apparently the same thing that's been triggering the false win on AM3 can happen in AM4 too (ask Insaneox for details):
https://forums.station.sony.com/eq/...icarum-nomia-progression.215601/#post-3152055

And probably in any of the main progression AM raids that use the same or similar win/fail conditions.

Yes, there was, Ngreth. Please read the beta thread, which is hidden from normal accounts now. It was specifically stated by Dzarn that the damage the adds would do would be lower, since they were no longer easily kitable.

However, they hit for 45k before that change, and still hit for 45k. Please check with Dzarn about this.

I've passed on this info to the designer of the raid. Thanks for the feedback.

If you patch your client again, that should solve the problem with missing water volumes in Caverns of Endless Song.

why are you removing the requirements to get to brothers Island? What is the good of making people do progression to get to upper zones if you going remove that requirement a month later? This is one thing on this patch that makes no sense at all.

Yeah why remove the requirements for brothers? I don't understand .. =( Specially after ALOT of people had to do the progression to get there..

methinks a squeaky wheel was greased

You will still have to do the progression quests to get to higher zones, come on user your brain! You still had to do Katta and Tempest to get to brother they are just opening T2 to groupers that didn't do progression.

Thank you, Prathun. We have numerous names for this raid not suitable for the boards, but we can definitely call it atrociously overtuned in its current state.