Re-tuned HAs

Did COTF get more difficult for 75-100 when TDS came out? or Rain of Fear?

The COTF missions and the TBM missions are now more difficult for the levels they are intended and TDS I believe has a few pinch points on scaling missions that are impacted.

When TDS came out and increased the level to 105 the COTF missions scaling did not impact the 95-100 doing the content.

I wasn't playing when COTF on were released but I did do the COTF,TBM missions as the main tank for levels 90-100. I am glad I did those mostly before the ROS expansion was released and this patch because it is certainly more difficult to get them down.

Increasing the difficulty only lessens my chance of getting people to join me because those missions for the lower levels can take over an hour.


I have also seen other players level up on ha's grouping with higher levels.which is great for DPS and utility toons.

However now a 106 + is gonna be more judicious about who they add because now they need those spots to be able to do the mission.
These COTF missions were changed from 85 scale to 95 scale.
Nothing like that happened with TDS release

Also TDS went away from scaling missions. TBM scaled for moloing and small groups, EOK scales for full groups. ROS doesn't scale at all.

This change just doesn't impact level 106+ players. The overtuning scales backwards and impacts levels 85+

As a guild leader I used those missions to help new recruits and returning players. People don't have time to crank out 30-35k AA's anymore.

This change is just mean and a slap in the face to the casual player who can only play for a lesson burn. Its going to be so much harder to get people to return now too.

Change it back please.

DB, for small amount of $50,000 a month i can actually test your patches before you loose more players and even give advice on what real players wont like. I can even give you free advice now as a sign on bonus.
READY?
DO NOT ever nerf things that went life!!! Makes people feel like you taking good things away. We don't like that.........

Take your first pay cheque and buy yourself some spelling and grammar lessons.

I totally agree that nerfs and these changes are a senseless requirement for EQ by the Devs. The game is for the players. The Devs develop a game for the players. The players accept it and love it and play it. The Devs take away from the players. The players leave. There is no game left for the Devs to develop.

You get a shiny toy truck at Christmas, the one you have been waiting for all year. You love it, you play with it, and your excited about it and you tell all your friends. A month later your parents take it away from you and give you a wooden block with square wheels. Parents eventually file a missing persons report because you ran away feeling betrayed, hurt and disillusioned on the intent of the parent.

I am not sure why this is so hard of a concept to understand in such a personal game as EQ is. There is a very important emotional factor the Devs must consider. The time you take to develop your character and the time that is required by the game for game play makes this a very personal game, it becomes a part of your life (~20 years for some). Players will naturally evolve away from something that doesn't make them feel good and roasting HAs and class nerfs that have been in game for a decade just isn't good for business. This is a business and the player is a customer. Don't forget that, because if we do, hello Sunset and off to another game the player goes--one that makes the player feel good.

Part of that attachment is a sense of accomplishment. Make things too easy, no sense of accomplishment, no sense of engagement and people leave after weeks instead of years. It's their job to maintain a resemblance of balance to maintain the game's integrity. Sometimes they just really overshoot (in both directions) with their fixes.

personal I think they should have left cotf ha alone at 100 and never even had the ha scale with level increases. A exp stuff should not level up so people wanted to or saw it as the easy way to do stuff(and ya i did pl toons up in cotf dh ha to 110.) But when it the easy way to do something while not. But it should have never happened.

Understood and I appreciate that as I can also recount vivid memories of camping Stormfeather on a pvp server. Imagine the excitement when Stormfeather pops after sitting there for three days and seeing snare land on you followed by a barrage of dots....

Accomplishment is a personal and proud emotion. Nerfing gameplay to restrict progression is senseless in 2018. Having voluntary quests which can be extremely difficult to complete that reward epic abilities and loots is Everquest. Grand loots and abilities admired by Firiona Vie herself.

Everquest is about the excitement and adventure you can discover and yes the accomplishment that comes with that. It's not about making gameplay so difficult no one wants to play anymore. Its not about making missions so the common boxer can't complete. That is just senseless and bad, bad, bad for business.

They should change so HA keeps the levels they were intended for when they got out.

Would probably have solved the thing about people going there for xp.

Present state gives problems, as now some of the missions now have become a lot harder than when then expansion came out, while just
2 months ago, they were a lot easier. Thinking here exp on TBM missions.

I get that things should pose a semblance of a challenge according to the theory the developers are operating under (presumably). I think the real crux of the problem (as I see it) is that this is impacting progression/completion of older quests.

As has been stated numerous times in this thread, whether it be raids or missions or simply quests in an evil part of a zone (I am looking at you, hive in Arthicrex), there should be a decay of difficulty over time as player power increases due to levels.

This is very disheartening because I have been putting off TBM missions until my levels (done) and aa (not done) were complete in the first level-cap raise expansion post-TBM. I could not complete any of the final missions in TBM when it was current, nor at any point after that when the expansions/power increases have been introduced (tried each time to no avail). I had to wait a while to do the Tower of Rot second mission for the same reason (though a level raise was not necessary in that case, just a bit more oomph).

Some nice items are only obtainable by completing some of this content (relife adornment, for example, or the Qeynos claymore trophy); being effectively blocked from this indefinitely makes me really question why I bother to do the progression at all. I know the most powerful items are not intended for everyone to just waltz in and acquire, but waiting a year (or two+, in the case of TBM) should be sufficient, should it not? Maybe I just got unlucky and the dichotomic spells were intended as a bridge between too hard and just right in the TBM missions; I'm a paladin, and we got the short end of the stick on that spell type. Guess what, given the scaling that just got introduced, the spell will be ineffective from the stun perspective, to boot, since the level cap on the spell effect has not been altered (not a factor in most classes' spell/disc).

At a very minimum, perhaps there can be some sort of option that caps the mission npcs to their in-era levels/abilities/spells and their respective values. I don't use the combat dummies, but my rudimentary understanding of those is that players are able to alter their ac/hp/etc. values with text commands; I would envision something similar with the quest-giving npc. This might come in the form of a slight increase in challenge, but not the inflation that comes with subsequent expansions (example: that option in the West Karana mission that has the guards coming one at a time or all at once based on your decision).

The recent changes to the HA's will have the consequence of fewer people doing the HA missions, perhaps at all. There is a lot of noise right now about this. The customers are speaking. Is ANYONE LISTENING? The fact is that the customers who are doing the HA missions are spending time in the EQ world, advancing their toons, enjoying some time with online friends, and paying their membership fees. If the customer wants to do HA missions, why discourage that? In my view, if somebody wants to sit in Qeynos watching Fippy Darkpaw, its their choice. With the recent changes, the HA's effectively gone, and some more of the fun of the game is also gone. This is not the way to go, for in Everquest, as in any business, a loyal customer base is not a given. It has to be earned.

I logged in today to do my normal Saturday morning routine of doing some daily's and HA's and was very much discouraged. I'm very casual and have limited playtime. I cant see me continuing my subscription, sadly. I'm shocked this is what they wanted. I was trying to catch up with friends after a long layoff. Cant see that happening now.

this was me, casual limited playtime. I now really feel no way to progress (or really even play if I just have an hour or so) much less catch up to friends after a long layoff

Wow, still no official response to this. I at least expected for it to be closed by now. Maybe DB actually doesn't give a damn about it's casual player base.

They have time warped back to the year 2004.

Oh 2004, that's around the time-frame I quit for 7 years or so before coming back.

It's just sad this this was done....why not just slash the percentage of experience the higher levels receive from these, all returning players and new players are NO longer able to do these, so can NO longer catch up to others. I just want to throw out there that I was NOT doing these HAs for exp but was doing it for the progression, this is how you achieve things like heros resolution and special mounts and gems, on top of that they were ACTUALLY FUN..... I would suggest having your testers/devs attempt this in BOTH forms of a top tier player(even tho they have ALREADY done here and most likely wouldNOT be doing them) as well as a lower level player in weak gear... then maybe you will see why this was NOT a good thing to do to your community of players that are PAYING you....

Also it would take me 2-3 hours to complete most of them, and it was ALREADY a struggle, not sure what was "easy" about them to why they needed to become stronger... Come on DB we deserve a reaponse at least before even more players quit... we JUST started getting players numbers back up in the game, and to see it drop again because of something like this is just sad, and will indeed lose a lot of money for your company/the game. Fix what was not broken, please make the broken the mirror broken mirror again not the impossible mirror... I have canceled my accounts and will NOT reactive till this is fixed. Defending Norrath since 99 on quellious and will have much more evil in your world without me that I promise.

I recently returned after a several year hiatus.

I am trying to do TBM progression since the patch and am getting absolutely run-over by the mobs. Trash mobs in the task 'In Defense of Health' have 12.5 Million HP. Yikes. Please tell me this is supposed to be a joke?

Can we get this fixed, please?

/conspiracy hat on

Servers were lagging and being stressed out due to the number of zones that were being occupied. Since each instance in a heroic adventure is its own zone, there were probably thousands and thousands and thousands of zones being used at any given time.

In order to reduce the amount of instances out there, developers scaled the HA to level 110, making them much harder to accomplish. Players get upset and cannot use the older HA anymore, which means less instances, which means less stress on servers.

/conspiracy hat off

Now do I believe what I just typed? No. But it was fun to put on a tin foil hat and experience the silliness and ludicriousness that is generally associated with tin foil hats and conspiracies...