Parrot would make a good trophy though, if they do want to add stats. If making older currency any more accessible, remember Mckenzie's brews please. Those were a pain to get with the long lockouts, it would excellent to have another way to obtain them. Specific to shaman, would be nice to have our adps help the shaman's dps more. Shaman suffer from being the only adps that can only very minimally use their own adps. They could make some shaman adps like some classes that give one buff to group members, and gives a more useful buff to the player casting the ability. Maybe make Dissident's Roar (and Sabretooth) proc off of DD & dots, even if only for the shaman. Would be nice if they reverted the change to duration on Fleeting Spirit back to 5 minutes. Add something more substantial to Ancestral Aid, seems lackluster currently.
How about rather then Rog having to do X to open the gate. why not have the raid kill mobs in the field to collect parts to build a siege tower, or a catapult to break down the wall. This way you get you raid force to kill lesser mobs get the parts. then you could have those with TS build the stuff to reward TSer with a raid task. Then once built you could use the catapult to destroy the wall and move in or the siege tower to climb on top of the wall. So now you have different options. 1 Rogue sneaks in and opens. 2 Siege tower lets raid move in with less commotion. 3 Catapult lets raid move in faster but the wall being destroyed alerts more mobs to rush the raid. Based on raid tact you have different options for speed vs stealth. Then based on how the raid enter the boss could have different effects based on how well he was able to prepare.
I also like the quantity of missions in TBL that award coin for type 5s vs the 4 from RoS. Another perk this year was the coin type 5s themselves being dropped in chests.
This was great, but the whole system was subverted to a large degree by needing to run FF 50+ times for evo items (+/-, obviously, depending on RNG). I did a few full clears of the missions in the first week of TBL, but after that I had enough currency that I was able to finish Type 5's before I got all four items just from running FF. I loved that the missions existed and that there was a good reward for challenger. Overall, though, I felt like they were underutilized relative to RoS's missions (where there was a heavy incentive to run all four once a day or w/e).
As someone who has gone from playing 40+ hours a week down to 30, 20, 10...… I am that filthy casual player now that still loves the game, am willing to spend money on the product but I don't have countless hours to kill 50000 mobs to evolve one item. At this point all I want is the first two zones to be casual friendly. You got it right with EOK and FM. Something with wide open spaces with lots of camps where I can park my guys on a hillside invis if I have to step away for 10 minutes to take care of the kids on demand and not come back to a rez fest. I don't have the time or energy for overly complicated mechanics and itemization. Just tank and spank content for part of the expansion. Put the complex roadblock progression stuff at the end or leave it out entirely which would be preferable. A return of HA style missions would also be nice even if they don't level scale but can realistically be done in 30ish minutes. There is a reason why both casuals and even hardcore players flooded gribble. For casuals it was something they could do and still feel productive with a tight schedule and limited time. For hardcore players it was a fast xp grab to start the day before moving onto more challenging content.
Yes I am looking forward to buying back the abilities that I bought years ago but then had stolen away by DBG. Its an excellent marketing strategy.
I Liked the following about TBL. 1. Original difficulty. I actually love hard content in the fact that it actually makes me take pride in the fact I was able to do the content when it is harder then it has to be. 2. Locked zones, yet open if you had the ability to fire over to them. This is pure genius! 3. No copy'ed over xp zones.. no copy / paste zones LOVE IT ! ! 4. Rare evolution. Who says Evolution is dead ? Seriously .. the addition of the evolving items was absolutely G E N I U S ! ! - Farming them - Evolving them - Farming the evolution related Aug's (both group and raid) - 4 BETTER THEN RAID ITEMS .. for literally farming them and evolving them in grp content ! ! My entire guilds STILL login in on the regular to farm these or 1 of the aspects of them .. for either their main's or their alts. Normally this time of the year, people stagnatedly login only to raid.. But with the addition of these bad boys .. ERRBODY .. still playing that I know of lmao ! ! 5. New Dissident abilities !! 6. Trash mobs, that have abilities that you have to figure a way to over come. This is normally reserved for Boss mobs .. (nameds) This expansion .. the trash actually have abilities THIS IS AWESOME ! ! 7. Group named are actually pretty bad @$$ this expansion and I love that too ! ! 8. GMM was a godsend to soo many people as well BEST in slot gear from easy mobbles.. people love that. 9. Actual Dev participation in EQ forums.. Never in my entire time playing EQ have I seen soo many responces by dev's to people who post questions an the like .. More of that please !
Is that a typo? If you really meant ADPS then, no. If anything they should reduce our ADPS by making Mana Burn just a big nuke again. There's no reason why wizards should have adps.
I have some raid ideas, but I'll post them separately. One thing I haven't really seen mention here is that most of the raids are the basis for group missions. The locked zone/progression model was poor in TBL, but one of the saving graces was that all of the missions (the hero stuff) are pretty well balanced AND are for the most part divided well into parts so those with lower dps can do in stages while high dps groups can blow through it. Expansions live on group missions now. GMM was well received and is going strong because the missions are doable by a huge portion of the population. TBL has a strong mission following (yes, I know about FF .. but I see a lot of calls for other missions as well). It would be great if the next expansion really continued with the idea that group missions should be doable by pretty much anyone. I am not sure how the planning goes … whether together or raids first, then figure out how to dumb down for groups … but making sure the group missions are doable by different types of groups goes a long way in keeping folks interested in content. As an example of what not do to - a lot of the RoF missions were wastelands once completed because of overly complicated mechanics that tried too hard to mimic the raids. I've always thought you should center mission difficulty around a hypothetical group of 6 players playing clerics (well geared and aaed). If 6 clerics (no boxing) cannot get through a mission at some point, then the mission probably needs a down tune or rethink.
As EQs population dwindles on Live, then so should the number required to complete a raid. Make raids balanced around 36. Better yet, make it so the raids can self balance based on your number of raiders with a minimum number of raiders like 24 required. The more people, the more loot, the better the loot.
I would like... No level cap increase. A teleport lamp like the one we got from strange magic. At least 10 different missions, like TBL. Mercenary/Partisan not required for progression, or to unlock zones. A new story, not dependent on previous expansions. New zones, not revisiting previous expansions. That's about it. TBL hit the mark on a lot of stuff, and it missed the mark on a couple things too. For next expansion though, I think a nice story and no level cap increase are the biggest selling points for me.
Maybe a ginormous dragon that has different parts become vulnerable at different times, even cooler if it was so big that players had to climb it to damage certain parts (or, get higher than the dragon in order to damage it, a la castle or something). Could be a part where underside was vulnerable, part where wings, part where part of the spine, etc.... With some tank and spank mechanics, but also with some logical requirements. Maybe even some DT or Fear/mez(Dragon awe) Mechanics. Something to make fighting a dragon feel a little more epic. Could also incorporate the mount idea here, griffons or something that have to be ridden to attack the wings to ground it, or some such.
I also really liked easy/hard balancing back in the LDoN days, for group content. This kind of thing made for group game instancing could be cool. Obviously once it gets powercrept everyone will do hard, but during it first arriving until a subsequent expansion, it would be split based on player decisions/capabilities/power.
Oh that's a great idea, and the system for normal/hard is already in game.. (heck if they redo another expansion, I vote for LDoN anyway.. was always my favorite.)
That comes up now & then, the "LDoN's my fave" thing, not just you. And it's always super weird for me to read, since LDoN wasn't even an expansion. The "content" was skeletal at best, it was just a monetized, public beta for MMO tech development (dynamically created zones + instancing, alternate currencies mostly. also augments). One I was happy to support, and sure I had fun, but to call it an expansion is pret-ty weird, and to call it a favorite is even weirder to me since its whole being is present in practically every expansion since.
. Ez content at the start of an expansion, ex GMM style. . Hard content at the end of an expansion . Chase item that requires effort in current content and old content, and is useful for several expansions. Id love a cool type five aug that motivated me to do the Breakdown in communication quest. . Reuse a bunch of velious zones, especially tower of frozen shadow, temple of veeshan, velkators library. No skyshrine or siren's grotto . Give us a pass on collectibles this expansion.
Nimbus Key-ring. Flag TS items for the TS they are used in. (Maybe after learning the recipe). Increase Bazaar Price Limit. (Ive seen all the reasons why not posts, Find a way. or make a new merchant acceptable currency.) Link items from House/property in chat channels. Charm/ability/boost based on total Acheivment points.... artisan prize style.
