In the developer talk today they mentioned the RoF change and seemed to indicate the crux of the issue. To an extent I agree with it. What I see as a further issue though is that the current way it is coded, a person who may not have outgrown the content can still only get essentially 0 exp. I agree that a person who is 105, with 10k aa should not b receiving a great deal of exp in RoF. What about the person who is 105 and 5k? 6k? Now we know that you can scale the amount of exp you get based on kills up to 4000, we've seen that speed on the lower AA etc. What if we were to create that sort of curve for exp period in older content. That way if I'm trying to work on an alt with 6k aa, he's not getting 0% exp per kill, but when I play my enchanter with nearly 13k he would get very little if any exp. Then if we could actually get the con system to reflect that. If I am in an area that the mob is not going to give me any exp (or minor exp) they shouldn't con white to me or even yellow. The con system should con light blue or green to me in that case. Where as to the other who is going to get exp from it, should get the proper con.
I don't know why it's a problem either. But the indication of the chat seemed to be they felt it was a problem... I'd be more for simply reversing it so that a yellow mob.. gives you good xp, just like it always has. I do understand in a way that we should out grow content.. but isn't that what happens when you max AA and xp? Eventually you move on.
Their affraid a group will clear out entire RoF zones the same way they cleared out HAs is my guess. Assuming that happens and causes the supposed server instability, we're right back where we were with solo mass killing and egg on face.
I believe if they had allowed level cap increase to level 105 for players who did not purchase the newer expansions, this might have been a motivator for players to purchase them. The combination of these decisions has definitely cost SOE/DBG subscription sales, as players who have dinged 101 ultimately have fewer options for worthwhile experience/group combinations than those who have not. Either way, the decision to implement the 'nerf' and subsequent decisions to stick with it have been one of this team's biggest management/PR blunders.
EQ has had a system for out growing content forever! From my first day in Gfay, having my bats KS'd, till mid-way through TDS beta, I've been able to con a mob and see roughly how much EXP it would give. Now that 15 year old rule doesn't work. In fact, it just lies to me in most of the game world. If they had actually wanted people to willingly move into TDS, why were all the rewards so bad? I did flagging to get into arx on the first day, and it took us till Thulisaur's HA to find anything that gave worthwhile exp. No spells all day and by far most of my exp came from the 3-4% stored exp glyphs. The exp nerf wasn't a stick to along with a TDS carrot. It was a stick to go along with the stick of TDS.
Here's how i see it. Having an expansion with two tiers of power increase on top of a four tier expansion without a level increase meant that player power went way up without mob con going down. Lower tiers of ROF had the opportunity to give way too much exp for the effort. I do contend that upper tier ROF is more difficult than cotf though and nerfing it made no sense. Had they thought about it earlier, they should have made TDS ten levels to make the older content degrade in con faster. Or just increase levels every expansion to prevent getting in this place again.
The other thing too is that people already bought TDS, if they want to spend their time in RoF first, who cares? They paid full price for the Expansion, it just means they play in TDS later, which might give you more LFG bodies to do stuff from the people who are now entering the expansion when faster progression people fall out from being done with it. TDS still has the better gear so they will still have to play in it, it isn't like CotF where you can skip 70% of the content and just do HA and be fine.
Just because something was done a particular way for a long time, does not necessarily mean that it is good. They are trying to get people into the newer content. Just like every other MMO does. They probably should've just raised the amount of exp necessary to level from 100-105 exponentially and relatively raised the amount of exp TDS mobs give. Instead, they went this route. It achieved the exact same goal, but people view it as a nerf which attaches negative connotations. I still think the best solution is to reverse the nerf and increase the required exp/amount of exp TDS mobs will give. People will still cry about it though, because that's what people do. A lot of the people complaining (read: not all) are f2p players. Why are they complaining? Because they didn't buy TDS and RoF was the last expansion with decent content. Outside of the spam hailing for task updates, TDS actually has some really enjoyable group content. The amount of content is only sufficient for a 6 month expansion, but there is still some good stuff. I have no sympathy for f2p players. Buy the expansion and enjoy TDS' limited content with the rest of us. The real crux of the issue is that CotF was a horrible expansion and TDS does not have enough content. From listening to the first five minutes of the Twitch stream, it seems that the devs realize this. Hopefully, we will have better content moving forward. Though, the f2p players will still probably want an AA per kill in Shard's Landing.
The nerf doesn't hit f2p players who don't own TDS. It's for 101+ players. You can only get 101+ if you buy TDS. It's literally a bonus nerf for the people who DO buy the expansion. I guess f2p gets hurt a bit because no one will go back to rof to group with them.
No. EQ has had ZEMs since, well, forever! Killing a blue con in one zone does not mean you are going to receive the same amount of experience for killing a blue con in another zone. Copied from a particular 's wiki: "If all things were equal, you would receive an equal amount of XP for killing equivalent mobs in different zones. This is not the case. Some zones give a higher amount of experience than others. Some zones actually give a significantly lower amount of experience. ZEMs were put in place to encourage places to adventure in less frequented zones, as well as reward those adventuring in significantly more difficult areas."
True! However, I sure do see a lot of, "Now I can't go back to RoF and get good experience with my f2p box crew and/or f2p friends." I do agree with this part x 100000 though. This is what happens when you rush an expansion out to meet some arbitrary SoE deadline. Hopefully, this won't happen in the future.
The real problem is this change has split their subscribers and is going to lose them revenue. (remember a lot of subs are paid long term, so they will not realize their losses until they are lapsed) In other words, its cost them subs. I expect nothing less than a full reversal of the exp nerf, I don't care one bit about the HA changes. No reversal of the nerf = no renewal of subscriptions and never purchasing another daybreak game EVER. Once this road is crossed, they may do it in another game in the future. And yes, we are punished for purchasing the expansion, not rewarded.
The same exact thing was said about the proposed pet changes, the nerfs to beaming, swarming, and HS/Decap/Assassinate. But yeah, you guys REALLY mean it this time. After 16 years of playing EQ, you are going to quit because you can't grind exp in two year old content. I honestly could not care less what they do in regards to the RoF exp nerf. If they leave it, that's fine. If they revert the nerf, that's okay too. I'm more concerned about the content going forward and ensuring we don't receive expansions like CoTF or TDS ever again. If unnerfing three expansion old content means taking manpower away from working on future content, then I'm against that. If the next expansion comes out, and it's awesome, people will completely forget about RoF. If the next expansion comes out, and it's another dud, then people will quit because the last three expansions have failed.
I thought they addressed that idea in the original threads. Something along the lines of they couldn't just keep kicking the can down the road exponentially and needed to do something different. My guess is tds was so small, they needed cotf content for people to level up. Bumping the exp per level and the zem for tds would have killed cotf for exp as well. Could you imagine everyone needing to fit in to tds zones for leveling up? Neither T1 zone gives any exp and are tiny. Brother's Island can support maybe 3 group geared groups at a time. If people were grinding in Caverns, no one would be able to do progression as progression uses 90% of the zone. Degmar could probably hold about 6 groups, but they'd be in the way of progression tasks. People would have to get to dino and dredge before there was any room to breathe for exp. But the average group geared group might struggle in those zones without being 103+. Named popping in their camp would wipe sub par groups. I don't like the nerf at all, but I think I can somewhat understand the corner they painted themselves in to. I do hope they roll it back to some degree. Getting nearly zero exp in rof (and anyone grouped under 101 thus getting nearly zero aa if grouped with 101+) was way too extreme.
One of the problems I've encountered in game is that if someone doesn't have the last two expansions I haven't found anywhere I can group with them that grants any reasonable amount of xp. Clicking collection items you bought in the bazaar shouldn't see faster progress than killing mobs.
Comments like this are exactly what I directed my above posts at. Daybreak/Columbus Nova is a for profit corporation. Crazy thought: maybe they should buy an expansion. RoF was released in 2012. It's now 2015. Everquest is not a "freemium" game. Never has been. The f2p model is designed so that players get a taste, get hooked on "Evercrack", and become subscribers. Unfortunately, the f2p model has opened up a can of worms and there is an unwarranted sense of entitlement. If you want your character to receive a benefit for playing with your friends that haven't bought an expansion in 2.5 years (if ever), maybe consider starting an alt. The fact that you receive diminished experience from 3 expansion old content is neither extraordinary nor revolutionary. I guarantee that if you had a level 65 character in the PoP era and went to help your level 55-60 friends grind exp in Velks or Seb, the amount of experience your level 65 character received was nominal.
Also, the only thing you don't get from that content is exp. There's still a bunch of top flight augs and achievement rewards to collect from RoF. Less from VoA, but - again - as it should be.
/chuckle It's one of my alt accounts that doesn't have the last two expansions but is All Access for almost a year so that's the most expensive "freemium" method ever. I already have TDS on three accounts just not this one and in the past I would invite random people I see in older zones (Valley, Shard's Landing and the like) while getting alts like this up to speed but as things stand the character in question has stagnated at 95 and is almost exclusively a bazaar trader.
This is NOT just an issue for folks 101+. This is more of an issue for folks in lower levels such as myself that returned and can barely level up. For the last two weeks I've had to solo everything with claw tooth and blood and sweat to get two levels. The only tasks I get any real xp from are the hot zone tasks. I get the same xp from cotf ha as doing 85, 90, 90 tasks in 1/3 of the time and I don't have to spend as much time in game. None of my friends really want to group as they're in TDS. I haven't bought TDS because I'm not caught up on levels so I'm not useful at all in a higher expansion. HUGE oversight IMO. If I'm missing something let me know but this Nerf is a huge impact on folks trying to catch up. Those in lower levels can't just march into TDS and level as the content is too high.
