Two Tiers of Group mission difficulty system

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Corwyhn Lionheart, May 1, 2019.

  1. CrazyLarth Augur

    it takes to much time to make tiers of loot the hard events can just drop more loot the same tier that way their is a better reward for the effort.
  2. Jhenna_BB Proudly Prestigious Pointed Purveyor of Pincusions

    And btw, I'd like to throw it out there that on paper this whole tiered missions idea is great - I just think people need to temper their expectations given recent game content. For example: It took until April for rare TBL aug drops balancing to be implemented, now we can't kill two raids partly because of it.

    Tempered expectations... :)
  3. svann Augur

    augs broke raids?
  4. Jhenna_BB Proudly Prestigious Pointed Purveyor of Pincusions

    I mean, put 2 + 2 together. What did they do in that zone last patch? They fixed augs dropping.

    It's not that shocking. They once broke an enchanter spell fixing a wizard spell. The devs aren't bad - the code is.
    Yinla likes this.
  5. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    They once fixed the doors in Kedge (which never worked) and broke the bridges in Sol A..... EQ code is evil!
  6. svann Augur

    No, Im fairly sure it was this change:
    Ssdar, IblisTheMage and Sancus like this.
  7. Tucoh Augur

    If DBG gave out even mildly decent rewards for beta testing, you know everybody would show up to do it.
  8. Tucoh Augur

    If this was true we'd all be hanging out in Crescent Reach, and raids would never be beaten. A huge part of the EQ community loves a challenge.
  9. BlueberryWerewolf Augur


    This isn't exactly what I'm referring to.

    People will do the endgame content and they will grind for their levels and AAs, but they will find the maximally efficient means of accomplishing this and do it that one single way regardless of what other options you make available to them.

    And often then, quite ironically, complain about how boring and repetitive the game is.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  10. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    The biggest thing I need to stress is in such a two tier system you can't lock any group gear or progression behind the harder tier. The harder tier should drop the same group gear as the regular tier.

    The second tier should involve achievement based rewards, big bags, evolving certain raid gear, maybe mounts whatever. But nothing core to the group player experience. Lots of ideas there to make it worthwhile for hardcore players to do them.

    With the tier one missions able to be done by the majority of group players we should hopefully see more group players buying expansions as they come out. Its not just about the gear it's about the feeling of being able to play through the expansion.

    Done right it gives those who want to do hardcore stuff a reason to do it, some rewards to make them feel set apart from the average player etc. But it also gives the group players a feeling that they can actually do all of an expansion.

    Keeping better gear out of the second tier helps minimize the gear quality between the top players and the average players. With more gear equality it is easier to balance missions and have their difficulty levels appeal to a wider group. If done right I think it could work. If done wrong it could just make the existing problems worse.
    BlueberryWerewolf likes this.
  11. Voxynn Elder

    As a casual. I can say I would absolutely love the challange of a third tier of hard group stuff for an actual better gear pay off.

    I have friends who raid that I know would help me and once I learned the strategy and all that I have no doubt myself along with other casuals could do the job as well as raiders.
    Yendar likes this.
  12. Voxynn Elder

    I also believe that it would be perfectly acceptable to lock thee absolute last expansion group zone behind "hard mode" progression. Some thing that would be absolutely worth it.
  13. Tucoh Augur

    I agree, and if you put the best group gear behind tougher-than-normal dungeons, the player-base will do them.
    svann likes this.
  14. BlueberryWerewolf Augur


    But you already have the problem of group-game players not being able to complete current content. What purpose does it serve making that worse? People already are disincentivized from buying the newest expansion because they know they won't be able to engage with it.

    Not every aspect of the game needs to have a hard mode in order to fully complete it. That's the entire purpose of raids.
  15. svann Augur

    No you misrepresent the problem.
    The problem with this expac was that some of the initial progression was too hard for some people so it blocked them from the majority of the content. If there was two tiered content casual players could happily progress through the easy content all the way to the end. Then after they geared up they could attempt the harder tier if they liked. That would make casuals more likely to buy the expac - not less.
    Yendar and Daedly like this.
  16. BlueberryWerewolf Augur

    So you want a status quo mode and an easy mode?
  17. Tucoh Augur

    I want content for everybody, not content that is too hard for a chunk of the max-level playerbase and too easy for another chunk of the playerbase.

    I boxed TBL progression in one weekend with zero raid-gear without even pushing that hard. I didn't wipe more than a few times combined on the missions before beating them all. While I was breezing through it, the forums will filled with people who were stuck on the first level ( https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...-the-most-stupid-and-absurd-extension.253500/ ).

    There were a number of reasons for this dichotomy, but having two tiers of difficulty, one easy and one hard, would answer some of them.
    Yendar likes this.
  18. Allayna Augur

    Make the missions all 12 man. Done.

    Grouping "casuals" can bring 12 to do the same content that the "hardcore" raiders will do with 6.

    We have already seen loot dilution with GMM and TBL TS gear being BiS for group content and aside from focus, better than RoS raid.
    We have seen 4 group drop items, that require arguably solo/groupable old content that can be evolved to raid quality without ever raiding.
    We have seen rares that mimic RoS raid from group random drops.
    We have seen very nice augmentation for 2 expansions now that are TS made.
    There is 0 reason to make a tiered group mission with different/the same/special evolving/rare drops etc....
    Those that want a challenge will push the limits by limiting how many they bring.

    I think the development team has done a good job in bridging the gap between group and raid gear.

    There are literally hundreds of other issues the devs could be working on...

    Honestly, talking about difficulty of raid content, I'd love to see a return to DSK style zonewide debuff.

    In DSK it was ranks of 2 debuffs on YOU that slowed your run speed and decreased your stats. Each raid you beat you'd get an item to turn in to negate a portion of the debuff until the expansion was beaten by your force....

    I'd almost like to see it work the opposite. As you zone into new content you get a 10% restriction....let's say melee speed, snare, spell haste and capped @ 90% health. Once you beat tier 1, it ticks up to tier 2....20% restriction.....tier 3....30% restriction. When you finally beat the boss, you now have blockers and immune making the raids easy again. This method offers a progressive challenge and then auto resets or "tunes" once you beat it.
  19. Tutunka Journeyman

    Tier 1 - casual group level that keys for next zone. And has casual group players bis items.

    Tier 2 - Hardcore group level. Beating this grants titles and or unlocks the ability to farm hardcore missions for evolving rare items that take months to finish ..

    This way both casuals and hardcore can get what they like.
  20. Tutunka Journeyman

    What I find rather amusing is the simple fact..

    Everquesr casual players.. in most other games would be considered hardcore gamers..

    That's the difference of eq vs all other mmo's out there.. Our truly hardcore gamers..

    Verses other mmo's hardcore gamers..

    It's not even close our hardcore is vastly more hardcore then other mmo's..
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.