I'll say it again. Do not raise level caps. 1) Good old content becomes worthless. 2) Too much time is wasted by the devs on giving us old spells with new names and new armor with a stat buff when there is so damn much that needs to be done. 3) Heroic characters wont be able to group with 115s 4) I'm not going to be forced to buy the expac or be left behind by raiders. I'm on the fence about the new expac as it is after that giant hairball called TBL, an expansion so bad people here were demanding their money back. raise caps and six accounts will be cancelled. I'm tired of your sorry excuses for creativity while neglecting long-term issues. How long has the berserker 1.5 epic been broken? Years? I've /bugged the broken Relv the Mysterious mission in POStorms for months, no response. We've had the same ugly player models for 15 years. The guild lobby is a laggy mess and hard to navigate. And what are you doing? Going through a thesaurus to find a new name for Voice of Perspecacity and Hand of Assurance. That's not content.
TBL was fine. The only people whining were the noobs who don't know how to play this game. TBL is easy. Epic 1.5 broken? no. I literally did it 3 days ago. All people do is and whine now-a-days.
Am I seriously the only person maxing out buffs in a raid setting? Next raid I'll get a screenshot of my buff window.
What's to stop someone from equipping group gear, spawning instance, then switching back to raid gear? I don't know of any mechanics that would change mob difficulty without zoning.
1. Eye of the Beholder I suppose, I'm currently working on maxing my Tear of Alaris from...VoA? Sure the exp gains in older content diminish...but that's because at max level, you should be progressing to the newer content. 2. In your opinion, ANY time is too much time apparently, Ngreth said it isn't NO time spent but that he does get assistance from non-developers in the actual naming process, that he has to compile a list and vet those names. 3. I anticipate a higher tier of heroic toon, perhaps level 100 for a bit more $$$, seems appropriate since it has been a while since the inception of heroic toons. I could see them coming with more than DoN/MPG/Skills near max as well. 4. So don't buy it. It doesn't sound like you're ready for new content and that's your choice, but there are MANY who are. TBL was probably the most friendly expansion I've seen in a while: Rotating clicky that takes you within 1 zone of every zone in the expansion. Campfire into "locked" zones. Task adds that are available after the content is beaten but before the chest is open...ie group missions that don't lock, like many older expansions. Evolving gear that amounts to 4 BiS raid items for groupers from the starting zone in the expansion....that get you to go back to all that "good old content" that "becomes worthless". Continuation of player made augmentations, making farming augments to catch up far easier. Continuation of current expansion viable gear made from tradeskills. Unique zones. New models. PoS and epic 1.5? What decade are you living in? The guild lobby is laggy only due to your server's decision to use the lobby as a buff pile, Xegony made the conjoined effort to move it and it's behind the big bank. I hope you find your happiness, apparently it's not in EQ anymore.
My wish for next expansion need illusion reverse centaur human with horse head and put instrument ornaments for weapons back in store.... I have a dream to one day go El Kabong on my bard .... everyone should have a dream....
Have you maxed out your evolving items? Did you get all the best type 18/19 augs for them? That's your 'advanced' timesink for this expansion.
Group level spread is 30 levels if memory serves me correctly so heroics would still be able to group with max level. Sure they wont provide much but that's no different than the current situation really.
When all things are said: I am for level increase by far. 3: New tier of Heroic characters, I do not expect there to come any, because devs said, that the cost of them is as expensive as an expansion. I do not see the TBL as most friendly expansion, quite the most unfriendly, because of zones behind locked, sure you can use campfire to there, but zones should not be behind locked, only for the final zone, IF there is a good reason, otherwise not. Taskadds, except that is not possible in PoSmoke missions. Player made aug, bad thing is that it require muhbis, compared to RoS, where it was general TS items from the zones. Too few zones, sure they were unique, but could have used more zones. Basically the content had too hard mobs, which really could use some toning down in powers, something like 10-15%. For me personally I have completed the expansion, also the raids, but I know a lot are strugling too much, imo the best expansion for long time in regard to balancing was EoK. Now RoS expansion, the 2 T1 zones, were bad, OT the effects the mobs had was way too hard, Skyfire, the flying drakes, an absolute bad effect having them there, the number of them should have been lowered by 3/4. Then the reintroduction of hell level at 109 was bad. I hope there none in next expansion.
For all the spells that is coming, they could cut down those a lot. Why do we actually need new spell names each time ? Instead I would really like how magician pet haste is made: Burnout X, Burnout XI......Burnout XIII, next expansion it will be Burnout XIV. Why is it not like that for ALL spells/tomes. Instead of spending time inventing those names, just standardize those: Dich Fury XX, Dich Fury XXI. Or even make so that instead there higher ranks than III. So if there is a level 84: Frigid lance rank 1-3, today for level TBL there should be Frigid lance rank XVI-XVIII, and next expansion it would be XIX-XXI. It would decrease number of spells in spell books by a lot, making a simpler spell book by far. Already today, except for necro/sk dots do not stack, so a lesser version of a dot, does not stack. Now people would say: focuses, well today the focus works on the next 5 levels. So focus on TBL items go to level 115, so that is not a problem.
your gonna have to cave and add another NToV, Plane of Fear, Plane of Hate, GMM like revamp of optional Tank/spank very minimal mechanic Raids outside of progression to cater to the casual raid teams. starter option ideas (just make it drop 1 lesser raid item, 1 spell etc) Plane of Sky revamp Plane of Mischief revamp plane of Growth revamp The Hole - just a big clear the zone for beefed up named Karnors castle - same as the hole
Maybe he thinks raid players want more challenge in the group game? Sounds kind of extreme to though.
Agree with almost everything in the rest of your post. TBL the most friendly expansion? For a raider maybe. But to be clear I exclude GMM that was a 20th anniversary super loot pinata giveaway. AND it did help make the rest of TBL less unforgiving. So yes TBL probably was the most friendly expansion to raiders you have seen in a while. To the general player base less so. For a long time gen chat was full of people buying spots to get the zone clicky because they weren't able to group to get it. Overall for players who don't run beta into the ground and work up all their own strats for group content as well as raid it was a bit less friendly of an expansion. I don't know how to give you the ability to put yourself in the average group players shoes. You are either the sort of person who can get it or not. The majority of casual group players are looking for and wanting to play a different EQ. They aren't out to win EQ each expansion. They really just want a decent level of challenge to play the game with friends and feel some accomplishment. They don't want crazy hard or super easy. They want a middle ground. And what they want as a challenge isn't what a top raid guild in the game wants as a challenge. TBL was not super friendly to everyone. But I agree they way it was made was great for top raid guild players. Lots of short cuts and a zone clicky they could easily get to save them time and effort. And if you had written out strats and guides for all your members so they knew the work arounds on TBL progression it was great. Even though being such top grade players I would doubt any members of a top raid guild had problems with doing the full progression. That is what being the best means, things will be easier for you. In a perfect world Everquest have two versions. One for the super competitive folks where everything was tuned to be a challenge for the best of the best players. Stuff would require the top notch playing and planning skills of the top raid guilds to get things done. Thing is there would not enough peeps paying money and the game would sunset. The other would be for the more casual players who aren't out there to win EQ each expansion. These folks want third party sites for maps and progression and all the other info out there in EQ. They play the game to relax and take it easy with enough challenge to feel good about beating it. They like some extra challenging stuff but on the periphery not as road blocks. Thing is there would not be enough peeps paying money and the game would sunset. As distasteful as it is for some the game has to support both these populations to ensure they have the income coming in to make for a profitable game.
A dichotomy is always your viewpoint. Do casual players not benefit from group acquired raid gear, the 4 evolving pieces that are BiS? Does the lamp not make travel easy for both casual or raider alike? Or campfires for that matter? Getting taskadds to missions benefits casuals and raiders, EoK was riddled with solo tasks and partisans that required being in the zone to get coin or even a check mark. No locked zones, but Korsha might as well have been with EoTD. Type 5 augmentation missions were a PiTA to get finished as well. RoS had 4 missions for type 5s. The drakes you all hate so much. Mixed see invis, undead mobs in a zone. A locked zone that required a lot of pieces that were dropped from a single name with a single PH....9 of them or from the missions. But TBL, not even names see invis. Easy transport around the expansion. 3 PoF, 1 stratos based, 1 Aalishai based, 1 esianti based, 1 mearatas based, 1 relic based missions, totaling 8 missions that give coin for type 5s, that give augments that are harder to obtain by killing the named in the static zones. Missions that you can TA all the way up to the chest, missions that are trivialized by ANY CC.... Muhbis gear, augmentations, etc... But you’re the champion of the casuals....how would you improve on the ease of all that. My guess is you’ll just crow about the smoke trials... IMO TBL has improved on the previous 3 years by far.
I found EoK more enjoyable personally. Friendly starting zones and difficulty progressed as you got further into the expansion. Thank you for the title of champion of the casuals. I do try to speak up for the group side of the game because I feel the competitive players by the nature of being competitive in Everquest have the louder voice overall. But I can't speak for all casuals I do try to be as objective as I can but I also realize my viewpoint is just that. My viewpoint. Improving TBL is easy. They just had to keep progression following the standard players have been used to for many years which was much more straight forward. Or ensured the fan sites highlighted the differences and work arounds to that progression. Since with campfires and work arounds to doing only partial early progression and such was new the casual players didn't know they would have to search through the beta forums for info. This was why TBL was badly received. They changed the standard progression approach and expected third party sites to carry word of it. DBG made the early part of TBL the roadblock (MISTAKE). They left in campfire workarounds and never insured that info got out to those who didn't do beta (MISTAKE). I also appreciate that you are trying to keep this a respectful discussion. I think we will get far more achieved that way then by trying to paint each other as the bad guy.
It is not the developers responsibility to ensure third party sites do anything. The original TBL, every zone was locked, truly locked behind the smoke trials. The original smoke trials had 30 minutes to finish or you’d fail. So the TBL as released was far more friendly to casuals....as raiders would have gotten through that original nightmare.
Yes it sounds like it was friendlier then they first made it. That does not make it friendly. Just friendlier. And I can't imagine how that would have been received. Thank you for that info though.
