so after the shock TBL.. what is playerbase thoughts?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by ptah, Dec 30, 2018.

  1. Mintalie Augur

    A million times this. Maybe the top percentile are happy, but the majority of the player base is not.
    It's like you're in my head or something. Raiding is my passion. Grouping is a painful necessity in order to raid. I prefer to play alone. Why is it that people with a particular play style that doesn't match the mindset of a few elite continuously get lambasted and told they are wrong?
    Graves, Zhaunil_AB and ForumBoss like this.
  2. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    I doubt Absor is the only one, but I also feel that the EQ team has been seeking like-minded developers. The complexity and non-linear nature of progression in TBL has reached fever-pitch. This tells us that much of the team is in agreement.

    Regardless, TBL will come and go. I hold hope that this year's expansion follows the Velious formula.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  3. Natal Augur

    Trials and missions are fine, but they should have been limited to loot, not progression. If you don't have access to solid full groups you are not going to be able to do them, which means that you will not be able to use the expansion.

    In PoP most zones were locked like that too, and eventually they had to put in solo quests that unlocked zones but did not give you progression flags because many casual players got stuck in the entry zones. You would think that the devs would have learned from that, but apparently not. Maybe none of the current devs were around then, so they are just repeating the mistake.

    An example of issues that come from poor flagging design is VP - even now there are quite a few people who do not have access to the zone because the SF mission is simply too difficult. They have everything else done, but the last wave of the SF mission is too much so they are stuck.

    Progression and unlocking zones should have come through the solo task line, not the missions. I don't know what the devs were thinking when they did it, but it was a huge blunder IMO.
    ForumBoss likes this.
  4. Whulfgar Augur

    Why not ?

    Whats not to like ?
  5. Spellfire Augur

    What's to like?
    Vdidar and Zhaunil_AB like this.
  6. Whulfgar Augur

    almost every aspect of the past few expansions that the player base always B#tched am moaned about.. things like copy pasted entire zones .. Sorry not this time..

    This is everquest .. its kinda in the name .. that we do quests here an that mean's and I hope it never changes that zones are locked behind progression at times (no not all the time but yes at times it is)

    Guess what dont be lazy .. get a real grp together an get out there an kick its a$$ an progress man. Thats what this game is all about brutha!

    Zones are not locked behind anything .. You can literally camp fire into ANY zone .. that not good enough for ya ? Do Chamber of Tear's grp mission an get the lamp zone clicky, an BAM .. with out having anything done what so ever you now have instant clickable access to any zone in TBL ..

    If that is too much work for ya .. go play wow .. they let you have so many addon's that the game plays it self for you .. Here / now this be everquest an I for one say this is the best expansion in recent memory.

    Yes there are some aspect's of the expanion that are hard (as it should be) And there is stuff thats so trivial yall would not even believe it .. Tyrant of Fire ?? Ring a bell ? ? Bring in absolutely ANY CC ability what so ever an that entire mission's now boxable by anyone / any time .. Matter of fact 95% of this entire expansions grp missions are exact copies there of .. You handle the CC aspect of it an it becomes trivial ..

    As some one who has literally boxed the entire expansion now personally .. to me thee hardest mission is Relic Raider , not due to the Golem's .. nor the 3 mephits not even the single earth elemental or the final boss .. but that dang boulder .. it gets me every time.

    Am I on here complaining about how hard it is ? Nope, I'm here passing on info I learned as I progressed to help others. I am in game getting help if / when I needed by also helping those who need it in missions they themselves need.

    Key to success in an MMO .. HELPING OTHERS HELP THEMSELVES ..

    Live it .. Learn it .. love it ..

    Or move to wow. /shrug. Thats my 2cp's.. about whats to love about this expansion an game we all pay to play our own way.
    Conq, code-zero and Allayna like this.
  7. Spellfire Augur

    Nice try. I completed progression with my guild group few days after TBL release.

    I have a feeling this campfire deal is not going to last very long.

    Our own way indeed. You like this expansion since it suits to your playstyle. It does not fit my playstyle, and I do not like it.
  8. segap Augur


    Except, the original game did not use the current progression model of questing. The "quest" part was more about finding your own path. Yes, there were lots and lots of quests, but none required. The real quest was a journey of discovery and building your character based on the path you chose. You chose if you wanted to be a trade skiller, merchant, traveller, mercenary, dungeon crawler, etc. It was your personal quest to choose your adventure in the vast world. There was no effort by the developers to force everyone down the same path.

    Somewhere along the line, new devs came on board and hijacked the quest bit to turn EQ in to a linear model that just becomes the same merc/partisan thing every expansion. It's like they had no idea about the game and just saw "quest" in the name. Sometimes they're stricter with what you can do before you do it, sometimes not. But in the end, it becomes the same routine year after year. There is only one path to take. Everyone is prodded to do the same menial things. It's no longer about your quest, it's now about the one and only quest line.
    Graves, MasterMagnus, Pirlo and 5 others like this.
  9. Whulfgar Augur

    Wrong..

    Anyone can still be a Trade skiller .. a merchant .. mercenary or dungeon crawler. (Albeit I'll give you the traveler deal as there are some progression required to reach some zones)

    But no there is not 1 path now for all.

    And again it was not dev's who hijacked anything. The game needed to grow. Had it not grown it would in fact not have survived for how long as it has. You are implying that everything after original EQ .. every single expansion since only original zones is a bad thing.

    I completely disagree. I enjoy the game thats why I stay. I do not understand yall that dont like something. Why stay ? Why pay to stay an play a game you do not like ?
  10. Aurastrider Augur


    I get what you are saying and agree with some of the things you have said but I think you are missing the point. Some people just wont even buy the expansion if they know certain designs such as forced progression are in place. Not everyone is at end game progression wise but they are willing to buy a new expansion for the opportunity to catch some of those gear rots and such a couple months after an expansion release to help speed up the progression they are currently in. Having an expansion that is locked from the start is a little off putting for individuals like this and leaves little incentive to even buy the expansion.

    You have mentioned the campfire trick more than once but again this wont cut it for these individuals either. If all they are doing is wanting to come for some rots they will have to drop their own fellowship, join someone else's assuming they have room and then they are locked out of their own fellowship for 24 hours. If they decide to leave TBL expansion to continue their normal gameplay they are SOL for more rots should the campfire go away. Its just not a realistic method to bypass the progression a lot of the time.

    If you are someone who is caught up with everything and TBL is all you need to do its still fair to say "I don't like the design" without wanting to quit the game and move to WOW. Not everyone is going to agree with the developers decisions 100% of the time and its a good thing for people to voice their concerns. As long as they are doing it in a constructive manner this is healthy for the game in the long run as hopefully the developers take the negative aspects of an expansion into account and try to make the next expansion more well rounded with less of these negative features in them. At the end of the day its impossible to please 100% of the customer base but its important for the company to still shoot for 100% approval ratings.
    Zhaunil_AB likes this.
  11. segap Augur


    Tradeskills have been infiltrating progression tasks. You need tradeskills to maximize some of the most powerful items in the game. Increasingly large plat sinks require you farm and sell stuff (or buy and sell a krono). Travelling achievements are becoming part of evolving items. Recent design is trying to pull in every aspect of the game which were the types of things which you chose to differentiate yourself with as being needed by everyone but the most casual.

    Picking and choosing the things you find fun and ignoring the things you don't is becoming harder. Different parts of the game appeal to different types of people. A more flexible design broadens the target audience. When you start making a one size fits all game and people need to do the things they find tedious, you start shrinking that audience. When people feel like they can ignore certain things and just do what they find fun, you have more people playing and paying. This game has always revolved around time sinks and effort. That should not change. The key is giving people choice. Completionists will do everything if they get an over powered reward or not. Catering to them just drives others away.
    Graves and Vdidar like this.
  12. Whulfgar Augur

    I completely understand ya. But .. 1 question..

    Why blame the dev's ? Are they not employee's there of .. a company ? Do they actually get free reign over what exactly goes into an expansion or .. are they told what the company wants to be done an put into an expansion ?

    I am no dev, so this is something that I prolly should ask a dev haha
  13. Whulfgar Augur

    So basically your whole side of the convo is all about choice.

    Choice A you absolutely can be a Trade skiller ..

    Secondary choice of being that trade skiller .. SOME .. of the (as you said) most powerful items in the game being locked behind progression in order to TS .. I see not a single thing wrong with that .

    I feel that in order to get some of thee most powerful items in game there should NEVER be a free gimme in that catagory .. (best in slot items, and or but not limited to best / most powerful items available such as DA clickies an what not ) I do not feel a Trade skiller should get as much "Power" with out progression or in other words "some effort" as it takes a full time raider to get the same effect.

    I personally believe this is where you and I differ .. I think raiders should get more powerful items then those who simply trade skill an don't want to do anything outside of that to obtain the best in game / most powerful per slot items..
  14. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    Your BST could have learned that in expansions past too, and better :)
    They can have a ball in every expansion, you only took a while to discover that! :p

    Contrary to you, i enjoyed Kunark back in the time (even though i promptly died once i was in FV and had to take the journey again...).
    EoK i think was ok if not well done - from a lore and mob perspective. It was, to me, Kunark reborn. But i missed Kaesora and other dungeons very much.
    The start was a bit rocky too, with spiders blocking many but it was way less serious than the trials in TBL or the VP flagging/candyland-gone-empty-zone in RoS imo.

    RoS i truly have an issue with, mostly because of the locked zone (something carried into TBL and made even worse) but no less because it was really only an add-on to EoK but marketed for full price as an "expansion" - it was simply not worth the money.


    TBL (speaking static zones only here) is, aside from the points mentioned in the "worst expansion" thread, not too bad.
    The static zone's mob's AEs are mostly bearable, nameds.. can be quite challenging but that is mostly ok too. The push-back AE on Stratos and falling for 200k to many character's death is a bit much imo, especially since the islands are rather small, but that is borderline not over the top imo.
    The points that ARE listed in that thread though make it to me the biggest failure in among the last 4expansions (all i can personally speak for within the last decade). There are very unnecessary design decisions and all that which is covered elsewhere, no need to name it again here. They are though what makes this expansion the most unbearable one for me so far - something that will go away when i have finished all progression (i.e. all trials, missing one yet) but also something i will hve to face again and again with every char i play.

    The positive about TBL that i have seen so far is the lore+factions that after some work and care allow you great freedom in movement.
    While i agree with yuo that AAs were somewhat disappointing, i have to give it to them too that they have found a way to keep players well.. playing for quite some time, if they want their stuff maxed. So perhaps we will see less of the "i log only on for raids" type of players this year.
    I also have to commend them for the way they slowly but surely re-introduced tradeskilling into the game since mid-EoK (artisan's prize) and making it viable again (or really for the first time). It is somewhat disappointing though that so far i have only seen 3 tradeskill items dropping, the radiance being needed in quantities in every recipe and the diminished muhbis.. well... but overall those are, i think the good points for me.

    Sadly, the negative points overshadow the good for me, by a large margin.
  15. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    While i do not quite agree with the second half of that post, the quoted part lets me wish i could like posts more than once - like REALLY like them :)
    Jhenna has put in nice words there!


    I do not mind the trials to be there either. But i DO mind them blocking progression, especialyl this early into the expansion. Progression that does not make much sense to me, in the way it's tasks are odered and placed.
    I have yet to see "T3", but T2 seems (except when i have to tank multiples without CC) easier than trials blocking entry to T2. So trials should, imo, have been placed somewhere later into the progression path at least.
    I am not so sure about the "loot only" part though, but well... i am flexible there.
  16. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    What you call "growth" others, like the guy you answered to there (or me) are calling "shrinking".
    The zones per expansion has shrunk ever since Luclin, the playerbase certainly is only a fraction of what it once was. The game has not grown at all. Except perhaps if you regard higher levels and AA counts as "growth".

    What the game has done is changed.
    If that is for the bette ror worse depends on your point of view. Obviously the guy you responded to there thinks that overall the game has lost appeal to him, wher eyou seem to think it has grown appeal for you.
    Overall, who is "right"? Can there be a "i am right" in this? Or is it so that both hae their "right of opinion" and that perhaps the numbers of shrunk player-base, these lower player numbers spread out across more servers and so on do deliver a loud enough message for even the most die-hard fanboi to understand?

    The game is more than one or 4 expansions.
    To people like me, it is mainly defined by the friends we make - and that is your answer, right there:
    Some of us do not stay BECAUSE of the expansions, but DESPITE them - because our friends keep us here, because with our friends we enjoy parts of the game while staying as clear as possible of the parts that alienate us.
    Speaking only for myself: I enjoy being with my friends. I enjoy doing stuff with them. And then there's the raids and the teamwork there. THAT is what keeps me playing, even if i strongly dislike certain parts of it. And as long as that weighs more heavily than the bad points, i will probably keep on playing. But with the same breath i can also tell you that if i had a viable alternative, me and my friends would be gone already. So it is a combination of raids, friends and their enjoyable copmpany and a lack of viable (for me/us) competition that keeps us here.
    The WoW you mentioned is no competition in my /our eyes, but it does a lot of things "more right" than EQ, as their numbers vs. EQ-numbers tell us.
  17. Aurastrider Augur


    I imagine the producer has the final say and is generally responsible for the direction of the game. I doubt the corporate overhead gives much input outside of "make money". With that said a smart boss is going to at least take input from those with boots on the ground. It does not mean they have to take their advice but I imagine the developers have a fairly strong influence over at least some aspects of the game. They most likely are given conditions that they are suppose to try to meet such as so many zones, so many new streams of income (see luck stat), something that will keep people engaged for the greater part of a year so they will continue to buy subs (forced progression is the attempt here imo). Most likely they are given creative freedom to an extent but have to incorporate a business model into that creativity which I cant imagine is always easy (hence the threads with complaints). I think things will get tuned a bit better and most of these issues are just artificial roadblocks to keep subs coming in and then later the concern will be more about selling more expansions which in turn will keep the subs coming in.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  18. Zhaunil_AB Augur

    I agree with the freebie part of this post of yours.
    But you go on saying
    As if it were totally ok with you that the "some effort" a tradeskiller has to put in is to complete the exact same progression as a slayer-type of player (which he currently has to).
    Other games have different skill and progression paths for different types of players.
    EQ forces each player to complete the same progression path, regardless of their favorite "occupation" in the game.
    Where you see no issue with this apparently, the people you quote and reply to seem to do.
    Can you take a step back and try to put yourself in their shoes for a minute? Since i do not know what you like and dislike: Think of the thing you dislike the most and imagine being forced to do it just so you can do the things you WANT to do - wouldn't you be dissatisfied too?

    And about tradeskilling:
    Back in the time, this was a "give and take", e.g. mob-bashing people gave or sold their TS stuff to people who spent their online time doing those gruesome combines that gave them carpal tunnel syndrome on a regular basis. Prior to Aid Grimel and level-locked PoP zones, it did not even matter which level you were at, you could be a good tradeskiller at level 1 (yes i know, needed a higher level and "progression" to enter VT for the TS mods, but going without was viable).

    They have changed that, and are now instead requiring people to go back to grey mob areas and finish quests or achievements in order to max current expansion's stuff. That is imo more lure than railroading, but still leaves me with mixed feelings.
  19. Lianeb Augur

    "Requiring" is a heavy word used here
    Whulfgar likes this.
  20. Vdidar Augur

    They whiffed big time on the evolving items as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t do RoS stuff because of the skyfire mission. I’m not going back to do old content I did long ago either because it wants me to do mind numbing old content grey kills.