Looking in hindsight the flagging of TBL could have been different. There 5 smoke trials and there 5 zones, which means that trial 1 could have opened zone 1, trial 2 could have opened zone 2, and so on, and for meratas, you should have had trial 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5. This would likely have made people more satisfied, as there big difference between the trials difficulty and would have opened more zones faster for people. And then have skipped the campfire thing of allowing people into zone they actually did not have flag for.
You can get full TBL gear without ever moving past one smoke trial. GMM stuff is better than the tier 2 and tradeskill gear for non vis slots and weapons. For visible armor, do Wending Ways until enough muhbis have dropped, use them to make armor (which is the top group stuff in TBL). They need to get rid of base pop mechanics like knockback, spin stun and mezzing of the main tank. Those are just annoying or make encounters way harder than they need to be.
No, that is not how it "originally was in beta". The progression lockouts were put in place only a couple weeks before release. We had a massive thread on it, I believe it was Axxius that pointed it out, when it was patched in. The fact it was more broken when they first put in the progression locks doesn't make the fact of how it is now somehow a "gift". The fact that after they put in these blocks you originally could do one task then not be allowed to leave stratos until finishing all smoke trials was dumb, but what we ended up with is just as dumb. I find it amazing that you keep defending this garbage with things like "you can avoid this by doing this other thing that if you can do this you could have just done the progression."
The basic problem with the smoke trials is that all of them other than wending ways are simply too hard for the place they occupy in the expansion. They should be a lot easier than they are, and they should not be dropping the trade skill muhbis (those should only drop off tier 2 nameds).
I think people want to 2/3 box them and use mercenaries rather than making friends. Fight Fire is too hard because <reasons>, yet I did it with my cleric, grouped with a warrior and a rogue, no mercenaries - Bam. TBL named are too hard because <reasons>, I regularly kill these with pick up groups. Everything's "too hard" because people treat this like it's not a MMO. Group up!
The problem with TBL in general is that it (intended or not) tries to force everyone to play like a good player. And let's be honest, most people are terrible, but they are just as much a paying customer. Not saying give everything away GMM style (I don't mind one zone like that an expansion), but the amount of hitpoints on this stuff is so high that doing them with good players, it is a joke (when the expansion was new we would always have 2-4 groups going outside of raids chaining every single currency yielding mission so people could max their type 5 augs, and that only took a few hours to do every mission), but with players that aren't good (or people boxing without i s box er), it is just awful. Even wending ways, man doing that without raid dps? Its an hour long boring slog (easy, sure, but shoot me please). But the other missions besides the 3 one you can't even generally complete without competent dps. So what is the REAL casual player to do. Those without guilds. Those without guilds of competent people. Those without regular play groups. Its easy for us to say, "join a guild", or "make friends", but these people are paying customers too, and there is nothing wrong with them wanting to be able to do something. Maybe it would be less an issue if it was consistent. Every expansion is a crapshoot. Either you can incompetently box everything, or you're mostly spinning your wheels if you're the average bad player. Very little in between.
This is exactly the problem attitude. Maybe they don't want to? Maybe they want to just group with random people (and every person needs something different so good luck with that)? This game has never forced you to group if you didn't want to, unless you wanted to raid or get the best gear in the best zones. There is nothing wrong with if they had locked mearatas behind a bunch of trials, then made the mobs in there hit 2x as hard, give 3x as much exp, and have GMM level loot. But practically blocking people to 1 zone is the kind of garbage that made the first TBS a failure. And like it or not, the "challenging" stuff is not the barometer of "best" when it comes to the average player. Underfoot was my favorite expansion in the "current era", I felt it was well-balanced and deep, but it was mostly hated outside of raiders and the best casuals. Convorteum was great to me, and probably you. Casual people hated it.
Yes, the problem with MMO's is that people are expected to actually treat them like multiplayer games. Bravo, you've cracked the code.
And that will help us out a lot when the game dies out because all those sad pathetic casuals quit paying for something that isn't fun to them and doesn't have room for them, right? And no, the problem is that the goal posts move on people. Bob can log in and play 30 minutes and accomplish something in expansion 1, plays and pays for a year, then expansion 2 comes and he can't get a single mission accomplished in his sub max level character with 30 days played, and gets frustrated and quits. Why should someone with 1500 days played and multiple accounts and raiding in RoI care? Because I don't want the game to die just so some lame people that get some personal ego trip over being better than other people can make a bunch of average joes get frustrated and quit.
It's a multiplayer game, it's a MASSIVELY multiplayer game, there's a ton of people to group with. I group with anyone who will group and is willing to leave the safety of GMM. As a group, we can handle anything TBL has to throw at us. Explain to me, with your endless intellect, why everything in a MMO should be easily solo'd because Bob only has 30 minutes a day?
Not inclined to read threadnaught. Smoke cawkblock needs to go. So aburdly anti-boxer for most non-ISbXxor roxxors. Trials be like, "take 13 seconds to scratch yer nutz" before moving your box characters to where they need to be inside of 5 seconds.. you die, end...fail. False difficulty....that is all.
that 1 statement shows... if they want to get to the other zones.. group up with people, ask for help... get to that next zone that you want gear from or just want to explore or whatever.... idk how other servers are.. but a lot of people (myself included) on xegony from raiding guilds MS, RoI, IL, etc etc. help the more casual people all the time with different progression/random named or whatever else. but as for the smoke trials...again... they really aren't that hard.
I tell you what, how about tomorrow night, after, say 8pm when my kids are in bed, me and you meet up and grab some real lfg casuals while playing on an alt that is NOT RAID GEARED and without much more than the AA total of someone that did auto grant, and we'll do it together. With a real random casual tank, healer, cc, and we can let us both see how the other half lives. I know I have a couple terrible geared alts somewhere. We can do the group together. Abazzagorath is my main. I do stuff for casuals, definitely. I've even regretting gearing and leveling people that became personal projects, for them to flake out on me. If I bother logging in to general and see someone asking for something, I'll help if I have time. And that's why I know how terrible the average player is. Heck, think about some people that APPLY to our guilds. How bad some are. Then think that they were a big dog in the casual game.
I think some of the problem here is that different players play differently. I am super lazy about gearing my box, my zerker box is running around in TBM gear with a TBL weapon. (he even has the containers to go upgrade his gear, I'm that lazy) Yet he still survives killing nameds in TBL because I have a secret. Dragon glyph. That's right, in my group on nameds that have big AEs I glyph. For other nameds I have no problem blowing the glyph on my tank too. Between nameds I will try to kill as much trash as possible to keep the AA up. My zerker isn't maxxed out on AA either and randomly blowing glyphs doesn't help. If you're having a problem with a smoke trial but you're close to beating it, try glyphing if you're not. If you're having problems with a named, try glyphing get your group to glyph. There's more than just glyphing too! Make sure you're burning well, you might think you know how to burn but you might not. Start parsing get a couple of your best parses and post them in the class section, see what other people think of your parse with your group make up at that time. Everything is easier if you do more dps. If you're a tank make sure you're hitting all the buttons that keep you alive, if you save the things that keep you alive maybe that's what's killing you. If something is destroying you, get a parse post the information in the class section with what abilities you used. Maybe you're doing it wrong If you're a healer, use your heal burns! Even though I box, I try to group with randos from general chat all the time. I find people don't take feedback well so if someone is doing terrible dps I don't say anything, if someone isn't doing a great job healing it probably doesn't matter, I'm a Paladin. When I play a Cleric or a Shaman I see knights that don't even use spurn( block next 2? hits 9: Mitigate Melee Damage by 90%, 44490 total 10: Mitigate Spell Damage by 90%, 44490 total) There's people who save their defensives or DPS burns during normal exp groups who are not hunting nameds and never click their buttons
I can't even get my wife to start playing again (she raided up into Underfoot), because of the time investment and catching up. As much as people I know that have never played are fascinated by the concept, I can't get them to play it, and they are gamers. They will play fortnite or red dead redemption 2 online, or they played skyrim, or other online games that people put a lot of time in, but this game has such a huge mountain to climb and I don't see any point in making things harder. We should get ONE hard raid zone with 3 raids in it, and a group version of that zone that is locked behind progression that gives good experience, the best group gear, and is challenging. The rest of the game should be simple, straightforward, and casual player friendly.
I like how the same people (NOT Everyone OK!!!) who say group up are the same people that say they never group with randoms because -- reasons
Heck, I would do that with you. I probably help create "hollow" 110 toons on Xegony and I do PL those mains returning to the game after a long absence to at least get them to where they can play with others. I do this for free so these people don't have to go pay some greedy fatherless person for it. I do this on Pungas mostly. But I do ask if they need help with how to play with the new abilities or get caught up with UI. I also ask them if they want help with dps or tanking. I am no super great player, but I know enough to be competent. Most appreciate the help, but some just want you to do everything for them. Those, I don't continue to help if they won't help themselves. I parse every single group I am in and the average dps players in a pickup group from my experience is about 30k - 60k dps. If I am tanking, it can be tough to get through stuff. If I am dps with a tank that can at least stay alive, we can kill stuff fast enough to progress. It is shocking how many people don't understand stuff a lot of us take for granted. If you parse your pickup groups, you will really notice there is a skill gap and it isn't something that is synonymous with the term "casual" Lots of great, skilled casuals out there, but there are vast amounts of unskilled players from the casual and the RAIDING ranks. I would rank myself as a slightly above average raider. I am no hotshot raider for sure. I can group like crazy though. I am no longer a raider other than doing the circus that is Saturday Open Raids. You want to help learn some people how to play and get them some progression done, I will help. I have an SK, Ranger, Rogue I can use for the cause. Baree is SK, Belexes is a ranger, Pungas is a rogue. It is very fulfilling to help players and they come back later to say thanks for everything. That feels good and I am so happy for them that they are now able to enjoy the game as a casual or a raider. I know I have gotten a lot of help from people over the years from all over and I am a better player for it. I don't mind asking how to do stuff if I don't know. There are lots of people who will help if they can. The game is fun AND challenging if you have some level of skill. If you have no skill, you come to the forums to say stuff can't be done. I have tried to help all I can when I am on, but it is tough to balance my personal progression vs. helping others with my limited time. I am glad people are finally starting to get away from the casual vs raider thing. Again, the gap is and has always been skilled vs. non-skilled I don't play a lot of PC games, only this one, but I have never seen a player base want to game changed to make it easier to play when they don't know how to play the game...like I do here. I am big into sports and sporting games. I don't hear any complaining about golf being too hard and they need to make it easier by changing rules or sizes. Most are concerned with the integrity of the game. I probably will never be a 1 or 2 handicap, but I still have a blast at a 10 handicap and had a blast when I was even a higher handicap. I play a lot of basketball at lunch with the young guns who are my kid's age, but I don't ask for the basket to be lowered since I can't jump as high as I used to. I don't ask them when guarding me to not force me to go left. I just learned to dribble with the left hand and now I can finish at the basket with either hand. I practiced and worked hard as a 55 year old, who only had a j, to be better so I can play with them and pull my weight. I didn't ask for concessions to the game to allow me to be on an equal footing as these young hotshot ex-college players. I always thought if I did something and sucked, I tried to do what I could to get better. It never occurred to me to have the game changed for me or my level of play. I don't see why this game is or should be any different. Balanced, fair and challenging for all who play it. I don't want to change Chess into Checkers cause I suck at Chess. I would just switch to Checkers. I rock at Checkers.
