That is pretty much how I feel about it. If they changed it to 90 without any other change, it would be fine. Same armor and AAs. In fact, if a player would need to do All Access to get the auto-granted AAs to 90, that would be fine too. So they could give you the five extra levels for no extra cost, but you will pay for the AAs.
Leave the heroics alone and stop whining. Level up yourselves or get PL'd. Way too many heroics permacamping old raid mobs as it is from past free heroics, they're a blight on servers as it stands. 1-85 can be done in a day on a live server no problem.
Camping old world raid mobs wouldn't change with an increase to the level, in my opinion it would just be a faster kill however without a PL their is no way you can get 85 in a day solo...
Paerza said: ↑ “Business wise, I think raising the heroic level optionally in a very simple way for current content access makes a lot of sense. Current content player population can currently only slowly drop through attrition. The only way to skip the wasteland of 85-100 in a game which should be played with multiple people but there are no groups in that level range, is to go to a progression server. When adding the heroic level increase in the following way, you have a way to re-fill the number of players that are at the active content level and thus increase the health of the game: Keep the current heroic intact but Once they complete a certain quest (for example the no heroism without fear) they get a requester: do you want to increase to 100 now? If you click yes, you get only the levels but nothing else. The AA is gained through autogrant. This makes the current heroics attractive, makes the game healthy and has a minimal dev effort required.” Cool idea. The starting level could be raised to 95 or 100 and it would incentivize returning players to try out new content and buy new expansions.
While hesitant to jump in.. just .02 from someone that has hero'd a few characters (upgraded old, and started new). On the level topic: 85 is a great place to start if you are returning to EQ or starting fresh for a number of solid reasons. House of Thule is one of the most cohesive and well-designed "modern" expansions that maintains some of the classic lore (Thule family). The two following, may be a bit strange with the alien-like Alarans. The gear provided and augments available in the first two zones' quests provide a great baseline to take on the challenges to come. CotF would be another great starting point, but I won't promote starting at level 100 or 95 - you'd be potentially "skipping" a lot of content. This is, of course, if you aren't planning to PL your characters. And yes, I have hero'd a lot of characters and have zero issue starting at 85 each time - I love the era, zones, and potential content ahead. And yes, I have also PL'd some to "skip" to EoK. Let's be a little more honest here. At level 100, or worse, 105, you are seeing "less" content since you'd be passing into the DBG era. If you are trying to lure more players, you want to put them into the best environment possible to keep them coming back. If your first experience was TBM, you may get turned off. It's relatively tough for its level, has only a few new zones, and a confusing story and lore. After that, it's EoK and RoS, both familiar to those from the original Kunark era, but again, relatively small in new content. I'm not bagging on DBG here, just stating the obvious - smaller teams produce lesser content. I realize the crux of the discussion deals with "I don't want to HAVE to grind through all those levels" but you need to look at it from a little bit of the business perspective. 85 is a solid place to start. Giving someone an option for 100+ may be feasible (at a higher cost - likely something only veterans will pay), but I wouldn't want that to the the only option.
Yep that’s the idea: the start of the heroic is the same as currently, at level 85, but you get the option (which you do not need to take, you can do the leveling still if you want to) to invoke a command that increases the level once, to a fixed number either 100 or 105 (updated if the level cap increases). The new level puts you right before the paid content: those who invoke the command will want to go gold (for autogrant) and buy the expansion (to level higher than 105). This creates three revenue streams to DBG (third stream is the heroic sales which will be more attractive) thus improving the financial health of the live servers and adding people to the active player base that may not be box crews or powerlevelees. The player ends up in a range where they can actually group up at the level where the real game is (though they might have to do some equipment farming to be effective for some classes). So it offers an alternative to solo grind / box grind / powerlevel to put you at group play.
The joke is how little effort it takes to actually get to 100. I just did this in November 2018. With a merc, it took my Heroic Character Warrior literally four days to get to lvl 100 from 85. I didn't even upgrade gear. lol.
For some it is little effort, but this *solo* grind would deter many possible returnees before they experience the actual fun part of the *multiplayer* game, which happens much later (100-105). The best time to introduce this would be right at the anniversary, when a lot of potential returnees come peeking at the game. If they end up at zones for their level that are empty of players, they feel too far below the curve and are likely not to invest their time. Whereas if thet jump right in, they might enjoy the multiplayer aspect and keep playing. If the implementation is as I suggested, (/maxheroic command that only gives xp once, if the conditions of the checks/flags are met) then the developer time devoted to it would be minimal so you get a very large return on invested time. It would also be an option, so if a player would like to stay 85 and play in HoT they can still do so. They get a choice which was not there before.
You know, there are many people offering powerleveling and gearing services that seem to take care of all the stuff people complain here about. I've done awesome business leveling and gearing people for krono, and I've talked with many others who offer the same services on many other servers. Heck, I've spoken with a guy on Firiona vie who offers the best price serverwide for powerleveling, obviously having a permanent double exp compared to base server helps, but he does it for half the price. And if you have deep pockets, Firiona vie has the best economy for you. Top end raid gear available for a couple dozen millions pp!! Or a lot of krono, your call.
Level 115 is on the horizon. When the new expansion launches go ahead and offer 105 Heroic Characters. It’s about time for another template of characters to work with.
Not sure why it has to be an either/or. Simply add the ability to raise to 100 and sell it as a different service(say 500 SC more?). That leaves the 85 heroic intact for TLP's like the one in November. Even better would be a routine that allows you to pick which level you want to start at, and you get a set of gear/spells/skills for that level. If you want to start at 37 for some freaking reason, its just a programmatic routine to slap something together that probably isn't far off what already exists for the 85 heroics. But either way, putting forth a 100 heroic character to go along with the 85 heroic should be doable without upsetting the apple cart. Even funner would be the ability to generate heroic gear on a TLP at the level of the last expac's(only at the start) raid gear. So with that HoT-shot server, it would give you all UF T4 gear. It would put you at a much better starting place than group gearing that's for sure, and it'll all go downhill fast on a TLP as expacs roll out every 2-3 months and pretty much kill that gear.
You have no real information here and you're not helping at all. You say Literally 4 days so that could mean 4 days /played or your 4 days could be you playing 2 hours a day. You said you didn't even upgrade gear which could mean you took the route lots of terrible players take, did you go to FM and sit in someone else's group in FM. Did you box 1-5 characters and drag your warrior around? I wouldn't want to be in gribbles at level 98 on that warrior tanking it in heroic gear so you likely either did crap content or you were carried. This does not represent what everyone else has to go through on their ride from 85 to 100. This is like me saying I can take a level 85 character and have it level 110 Max aa in one month without giving my playtime or including the fact that I have a full team of characters that I'm boxing to level the character. If it's so "easy" what's the problem with letting other people start there? I have 12 or 15 characters sitting at 110 right now, this isn't something I need
I don't care so much what level heroics are. What I do care about is how to engage and keep returning players when they come back to the game. If that is increasing heroics so be it. But if there are any other ideas for holding on to returning players on the Live servers I would love to hear them.
Honestly, if account to account transfers are not coming back, a slightly higher cost option, level 100 heroic toon with a new gearing set, previous expansion heroic AAs completed, and something like the tear of Alaris at least part way completed would be an incentive to both returning players and those who pay for heroics to skip content they’ve completed 15 times already.
As I think I mentioned last year in this thread, after the 115 expansion comes out then they will likely come out with something like Legendary Characters or something like that; which will work the same as HC currently do only everything about them will go to level 100. That is the same level difference that existed between the level cap and HCs when HCs were introduced. Also, they won't simply upgrade HCs to go to 100, because that would remove something which they could sell to TLP players as well as people who want to play in that level range. Additionally, they can resell this to people who had previously HC'd to 85.
