Re-tuned HAs

And still no response from any devs on this....

I think it is great that they make old expansions obsolete, preferably by removing incentives. Lowering xp seems like a good choice. Now it also seems like an option that will be well recieved by the community. Well played :-D

However, I can’t really say I care much for the volumes of drama and possible astroturfing from “new member” accounts. It seems undignified.

People are upset that the only content they can molo efficiently has been removed. They have every right be upset.

No feedback on weekends, and I guess they would prefer some time for a meeting on the subject, before making any statements.

That's generally called "outleveling it".
When mobs turn grey, it's "obsolete", except for the occasional TS-farming or foraging.
It happens naturally, there is no Dev-action required nor wanted at all.

The greater the distance in levels between the character and the mob, the less XP one gets from it.
Again, a "natural" and established development.
Now, the issue MIGHT be with missions that give fixed XP-rewards.
(i say "might" because even though it sounds likely, we are still only speculating since we were - once more - not given any explanation whatsoever)
If that were the case, then establishing a similar outleveling mechanism as for regular mobs would be acceptable.
BUT not like this, not after 5years and "suddenly" without any communication whatever besides a patch-note that it happened.

But i honestly don't get where the real problem is - the reward is fixed.
So apparently it has been regarded "appropriate" or at least "acceptable, if a bit too much" since inception.
Except of course, when they lower regular XP from current content then things like this stand out a bit more perhaps.
So again, a home-made issue by the Dev's that we suffer for - yay!?!
I wonder, where is the vision, the "great plan"? Is there one? Or are they merely reacting to their own short-term decisions made with a tunnel view?
It seems they need to take several steps back because they miss the forest for the trees!

A lot on the boards is "undignified" because the social control you have iRL is missing (accountability).
But don't discount "new member" accounts just because of that;
when i became active on the boards again because of the AB chat-lag (wanna get rid of me here? fix that or close the game finally!!!), i was a "new member" again too, because they apparently had some reset - back in my time, before my break, i had posted already too for several years (my forum name doesn't reflect my in-game main because of that anymore). And i've played for almost a year again before i even turned to official forums the first time last year.

From what I've seen the majority of people who use the 3rd party software are 110 and done with the HAs. They are busy farming items to sell. Besides DB does everything they can to ignore it's use as it helps sell krono. If anything, the change made me consider getting the software to see if it would help me box the new version HA's. Not going down that road as I think my biggest issue is I use a tank and cleric merc combo that cant handle the instances now.

Double post server lag.

Back to LotRO. My lvl 108 Elf Warden is having some fun in Gondor. Gotta say that game might have problems in end-game but the ride through lvl 1-105 content is a lot of fun and I saw a fair number of other players at about any level.

I think this has probably done for me too. I only came back a few months before Christmas, I used Gribbles to do low 90s till 103 or so, until the boredom became too much. Got to 110 with more traditional grinding and was using lessons to grab a few AA every day whilst going back and doing all the progression from the expansions I missed. I guess I'm not the target audience so I've cancelled, for now at least.

Just one thing to consider. If you feel like too many people are doing the same thing over and over, maybe that's the bit you got right rather than the bit you got wrong. Perhaps you should look at changing the stuff they're ignoring than taking away what they're not.

Since recently returning after 4 years away, I leveled to 110. After the patch, I attempted to go back and start doing progression I had missed. It's nearly impossible. Mobs hit so hard and have so many HP I am unable to kill them before they kill me.

This is really discouraging me from even continuing in EQ. I want to go back and complete older content, but it's impossible for me to do.

I don't mind older content being challenging to a higher level. But it's just bonkers difficult now. I don't even care about the XP or item rewards. I just want the progression done. I really feel that the HA changes to progression tasks is a huge step in the wrong direction.

I doubt these people are doing HA's using scripts but maybe I am wrong. The incentive of doing this is for loot not xp. I am sure the xp gained in the open world is far superior since it is only limited by how fast the mobs respawn and the chance at rare drops is better in the open world than it is in an HA which is one of the main focuses of people running scripts I am sure.

In terms of the boxing software itself when used within the scope of the EULA it is a great boxing tool. I have used it for years within the scope of the EULA. I don't have deep pockets filled with endless krono's and rares overflowing my bags. I have serval 105ish toons that would be considered subpar by most high end account holders standards.

The most likely reason for these changes is the fact that your average joe player is able to level to end game without actually doing any killing in the most current expansion. To the developers this is not acceptable as they want end game toons in end game for experience purposes I am sure. This encourages more expansion sales as more players move out of older content forcing those on the fence about ROS into buying it if they want a remote chance at a group as more players move into newer content. This justifies on their end further development of the game to the suits upstairs and bean counters who determine if this is a viable investment to retain or something they need to dump.

Allow them to scale to level 120. Give us the option to choose what version or level we want. Offer a flat percent exp reward for HA's completed for the same level of the highest member of the group. Have the reward scale down the further lower lvl HA you select compared to the highest level in group. Offer a increased exp reward for the higher the HA is above your highest group member.

Folks whom want or need the easier stuff have that option with a reduced reward. People who want to challenge themselves and try HA that are scaled above their own level can while receiving an exp reward appropriate for doing so.

In Lord of the Rings Online, when I get a skirmish (HA equivalent) or an instanced task, I can specify the exact level I want as well as difficulty tier. The xp/currency payout scales sharply with level. The reward chest at the end also really makes sense only on-level. But if I want to go back and finish my deeds (progression) by stomping content 50 levels below me, thats up to me.

I was looking at gribble and pondering my existence when suddenly a group of casuals hailed and entered a gribble task, a 110 paladin, 107 beastlord, 104 druid, 105 ranger and a 109 shaman having prob a dps merc with them, they all had casual guild tags and they were energetic, happy, and full of love for everquest.

4 minutes later the shaman showed up at gribble with 20 pct health and mistyped in say “gu omg the beastlord got one rounded after yhe paladin pulled 2 and died before a heal landed, the ranger ran the wrong way and died around the corner and the druid was used as a toilet”

Then the shaman logged off

My first experience was, this isn't so bad, then I pulled two white cons and the tank merc got rick-rolled before the cleric merc could heal him. I found that I could get through one of the Marla HAs if I am extremely careful with pulls, but it takes 2 to 3 times longer. Wont say which one as I don't want it nerfed also. Not really worth the effort anymore. Maybe I will bother with an HA, if the one I can complete happens to be a bonus HA, but other than that I haven't been playing and just log on to talk to friends. Still have some prepaid time to waste, so I just BS in game and complain here.

Preemptive apologies for the length, but I wanted to give my (perhaps uncommon) experience with old HAs, and how the change has affected me.

I am guessing I am in the minority, because I do not usually use old HAs for exp. I have occasionally hit lessons at end of one task, then did a single quick Gribbles to get "two HAs in one", but that was it. In general, my continued use of old HAs is to finish old Hunter achievements. I have played The Descending #@($*% Tower about 20 times, and I still am missing a certain named, because one of three different nameds can spawn.

Anyhow, I thought the common mobs were reasonably scaled. The HP were much higher, but honestly, they should have been. They hit harder, but my merc tank could take two when necessary. [Group 110 rogue, 110 shaman, healer + tank mercs] Someone complained that their tank would get clobbered when tanking three mobs... respectfully, I'd submit that tanking three mobs at a time is not a thing I would expect to be able to do with current content. If I pull three mobs into camp, I feel like I have done a poor job.

However, the red-con encounters that spawned yellow-con adds were ROUGH. I got the version of the quest in which the last step is to kill the "evil spirit" that spawns mini-spirits at ~20% intervals. Embarrassingly, I had to wipe, pull spawn single (named rooted), kill, engage big mob until new spawn, wipe, etc. I got to the point I only had one mini-spawn to go and just got too tired. [There was a previous portion of the task that was like this, but I was able to do it successfully w/o death. It was a surprisingly long fight, though.]

Now, here's the thing. For me, going after the named, I technically did not have to finish that last portion. The named spawns before it (and, of course, I got the wrong one). However, due to how exp is apportioned in those AAs, I have to beat it to get any real credit, so missing out on the win sucked. Had I gotten the version where I had to kill the powered up little dude and then the four helpers that spawn around the site, it would not have been a big deal.

tl;dr: The trash seems about right. Yeah, you have to do 1-2 mobs at a time, but really I think that should be expected. The "boss"-like encounters, however, seem rather harder than they were at scaled-105, and even scaled-100.

Five days since patch day and the lack of an official response to all of these pages of complaints suggests an ostrich with its head in the sand. This is not the way to handle customer concerns, at least by any organization that wants to stay in the marketplace.

The root cause of the issue is the decision taken long ago to make scalable content, so that it would be unusable across many levels (and hence be cheap content to develop). But, as is the case with so many shortcut ideas, they did not give much thought as to how this would scale into the future and what impact that would have, so what we now have is a clumsy attempt at addressing that.

Personally I didn't spend a lot of time doing HA's for experience. For the most part it has been redoing them to finish old hunter/collection/mission achievements, which become more practical as you level up and the content becomes obsolete. Scalable content throws a wrench into that, IMO these instances are tied to a particular expansion, and the mobs should therefore be at fixed levels. Doing so would solve the whole xp farming issue, since once the content goes light blue it would be inefficient to do that.

We don't need scalable content. It was always a bad idea. Get rid of it and make the mobs in the HAs fixed at a level appropriate for the expansion the content was from.

The irony of all of this is that far from increasing content for people, it is effectively reducing it.

It would be nice to see a response. Ideally an admission they made a big mistake and will reverse it.

I'm starting to entertain the idea that this is some kind of "internal revolt" against the new masters.
Perhaps the objective IS to drop the revenue stream to the point where EQ gets "resold" to an entity that might actually care about gaming and gamers. Of course no one can articulate this aloud - but it's the only thought process that makes any of the recent stuff make any sense at all.
-R