Dear DBG: Upgrade Heroics to make them Relevant in Modern EQ

Its not "help". I am fully capable, and have done, on my own. That isn't fun, its hard to motivate myself to do it for myself. When I can find other people, I choose to do that. Play 1 char, help others and gain what I want as well. Quite often I take my shaman out (3rd string alt), who is max aa and bank aa, and heal for others' groups for hours. I don't need augs, I don't need the loot, but just group to hang out, meet new folks. And then one day, what do you know, they want to quest, or want to camp something Im interested in. So we go do it for us both, or everyone. Believe it or not, the MMORPG spirit still exists, but wanting something to happen immediately is a mistake.

FIND people, start doing the progression on your own, tell people yer doing it. Expand your network. Catch people up to where you are. I just did RoS completely on my alt (who only needed mercenary tasks) with 5 random people I didn't know before the 2 weeks it took us to do it and keep people caught up. You act as if no one else wants to do it. Work with them, offer help.

If your server is dead dead, like Zek, use a transfer token.

And please excuse me if I seem preachy, I just don't know how else to say it. I'm sure you've read or heard it all before and you are right, I don't know the situation of your server. However, your server being dead is not a real reason that they should autogrant heroic chars everything that might take some time and effort in the game. Doing that would 100% destroy any reason to try and progress, would become like a console 1 player game, play it till the fun is wore out and never play it again. Progressing gives us something to work for. Especially those who care to be good. If you don't care to be good then why do you even need the extras? But to me it sounds like people just want to be given the ability to perform well without actually doing any of the things that allow the people who do perform well have done. You absolutely can get by in this game without progression aa's.

Also, Ive played with tons of people with next to no heroic AA that have absolutely amazed me. In their GMM gear, and T2 TBL armor, heck, even some in conflagrant... Their excellent play had nothing to do with their lack of gear, lack of augs, and lack of progression. Im not sure why people continue to lump this kind of stuff together. It was said earlier that heroics overwhelm folks and allow them to miss abilities and aa lines that matter. Its true, and that makes for poor development of skill. (And don't mistake this for saying "git gud"). But no amount of gear/aa/progression aa/augs will make you innately good at playing any character or class.

Some missions people don't want to redo a bunch of times it's true. A lot of them can be done with 2 characters and 2 mercs though

In this thread:

People who apparently don't want new blood in this game playing CURRENT content, and instead want people to suffer through servers that have DEAD populations in the 85-105 range.

Some of you are so entitled it's ridiculous. I can't think of a single guild in the top 10 that isn't recruiting for at least 5-10 slots. Doesn't that tell you guys something? Don't you want more people playing the game? This is a perfectly reasonable thing to try and do.

You threw aside the entire spirit of this post to argue semantics of what to include (even when I said "This isn't meant to be an exhaustive list or even anything set in stone, just things I personally feel would make buying a heroic worth it and ACTUALLY have some relevance for a starting point."

You people are so petty that you're spending time arguing with each other over semantics instead of trying to discuss ways we can inject life into the game (while also bringing heroics in line with the current state of the game).

Heroics, like it or not, exist. So let's find ways to make them better because $35 dollars for a useless character is B.S..

Oh people do want higher level heroics like 95 or 100 but I think the main problem people had with your post was the idea that they should get all progression done. People who are 110 should not feel the need to go spend 50$ to get caught up progression wise. If the content for the progression aa's is worth it then people are going to go back and do it.

I agree with you that they need an upgrading, but not in the ways that would make it worth buying for you. Better? That's not much a discussion...

I'm talking about autogranting 3-6 year old progression and you people are having mental breakdowns like I'm saying autogrant current progression. Let me reiterate... some of the stuff I'm asking to autogrant is 6 years old... I don't think that's unreasonable at all.

I think the problem is, you people are unable to see this from the perspective of new players because you've been playing nonstop for decades... Not everyone is like you. The argument that heroic character players are somehow going to be generally worse than a person that leveled 1-85 solo is a joke. Let's not pretend that this game is mechanically complicated up to that point. Let's not pretend that the mercenary won't essentially trivialize leveling to level 70.

It's time for some of you to acknowledge this game is absolute cancer to approach as a returning or new player. There is no one to play with if you're just starting off on live servers, and the leveling experience is NOT enjoyable when you're alone for essentially the entire journey. This is an MMO, and an MMO that has little to no leveling population under level 105. This isn't some millennial entitlement request... the current implementation of heroics is OBJECTIVELY terrible - especially when they're marketed as a way to "jump right into playing with high level people". Good luck getting a group on a heroic, hell good luck getting a group from 1-105.

To people arguing against progression, let me remind you heroics have DoN progression 4/5 and MPG trials completed so it's not unprecedented.

Maybe better heroics can help your guild finally clear mearatas.

Nor here nor there.

What you say is true. I acknowledge these things. However, the gains from progression AAs are so great that autogranting them is excessive and uneeded imo. The rest of what you say in this post here is 100% true and I agree with it. And as for DoN progression and MPG trials, you have a point. Your original post said "

Autogrant ALL PROGRESSION starting from CoTF through EoK".

EoK is still pretty current, but if you had said maybe cotf-tds and maybe tbm, it wouldn't have stood out so much, there HAS to be something worth working for as well, and progression AAs don't make or break a returning player in any way, so the argument for returning players to have autogranted progression is rather moot. Otherwise, you have very good and very valid points that I agree with.

We did this tonight. Had people from 6-7 different guilds show up to help.
Didn't get all the achievements we wanted, but it was pretty decent.

There are a lot of missions that can be solo/molo'd, that's true. But there are also a lot of missions that are so scripted that there is no way to do that (hence my Anashti reference). It doesn't matter how good you are, there just isn't a way to do it alone. Maybe, if you're stunningly good at boxing, you can do it - but you shouldn't need to have to box to get through old content.

You say "FIND" people. Sometimes it isn't that easy. There are events people just don't want to do (again, Anashti comes to mind). Now, I've got a good guild on a solid server. With a little work, I just might be able to find people. So can you (and likely more easily than I can). Great. But we are NOT every player. I would put real money down that we aren't even the majority. That's the problem.

I'm going to guess that we both love this game. Clearly, we care about it enough to spend time on the forums trying to make our point and get the devs (and each other) to listen. We want EQ to succeed. Right now, the game has a dangerous road block for new and returning players that is only going to get worse. The problem NEEDS to be addressed or attrition will end up killing the game.

Truth be told, I have made a suggestion to the dev team that I think would both fix the issue and generate revenue for DBG. Whether or not they decide to go with it is, frankly, anyone's guess. I hope that they do.

Do a few heroic AAs really make a difference? No. Not really. Your ability as a player does. BUT, and this is important, human psychology is a factor. If people see something that they just can't get to with out crazy amounts of frustration, they're just going to go someplace else.

Yes, but a lot of them can't.

It certainly would be beneficial to new and returning players for things to be more streamlined and a bit of a leg up to get them going and I agree that it would be beneficial for the community at whole. Heroics do need an upgrade. Though I just don't see where progression fits into any of that.

Social network. It's still a group game. Ask someone for help. You'd be amazed how well that works.

"Hey buddy. On Tuesday I'd like to do this. Up for helping me?"

I'd be on board with gifting new heroics Essence of the Dragon 1. (eok progression that makes some RoS stuff painful if you don't have it)

Not the progression to get there just the safety from the kar'zok.

It is a bit harsh that one RoS group mission almost requires you to have completed EoK.

Yeah, not the progression but giving heroics EoD is a good idea. A returning player deciding to do RoS progression only to get to End of Empires and discover that they must go back and do 95% of EoK progression is quite a set back. How were they to know? Things like this, streamlining questing so that a little less monkeying around was required. A bit clearer instruction from the task steps (not giveaways, but not complete nonsense like a fair amount of task stage descriptors). People motivating themselves to do a quest, let alone old quests, and then find other people and trying to motivate them is already a large ask. Further dissuasion by inability to play the game and perform a quest without a quest summary walkthrough from websites that new/returning players aren't familiar with because the step is unclear or almost non-existent as to what to do is not good design.

To reiterate that last statement:

Its beyond "not good", its not even poor. Poor would be a compliment compared to where that falls. In fact, I cant even think of a descriptor to adequately describe it.

DBG - Please stop making tasks that you don't have the time to ensure clear direction for.

We don't need more and more Planes of Power like progression.

Obscurity and riddles are great, and fine, when theyre designed. Progression should be clear enough that a group of casuals can interpret the steps they need to complete from within the game without referring to outside resources.

Given how popular analytics are today they probably studied this and found out it would not be a profitable investment otherwise it would already be done. Look at EQ2 heroics they have been getting upgrades for years.

If AA rewards from progression or stuff like EOD (its a ton of work and I need to do it for my boxes =( ) are deemed too hard so we need to give them to heroics, they should just be autogranted for everyone at that point.

If heroics get any bit of progression, that progression should be autogranted to normal characters. In no way should person a get a few hp and AC because they pulled out their credit card when person B didn't. Really the stuff current heroics get should also be auto granted, even though its minor.

Now that you bring it up as auto-granting the progression aa from like COTF or TDS I don't think that's a bad idea, maybe unpopular but not bad. My problem with it was placing it behind a paywall, while I don't think heroic characters are pay to win since its just levels and gear plus people go on about "it's so easy to level" its not a big deal. But if you let people pay 50$ to get all those progression aa then you'll have a bunch of people pay and it's not very cool.

Returning player . . . multiple accounts . . .
***Rant on***

People who suggest going to an in-game social network and/or guild or even open cry in chat for "help" may not appreciate the magnitude of the problem facing returning players, especially non-raiding ones. There is an immense difference between needing some help (e.g., LC Spider cave, blob dps, etc.) and the all too familiar type of help facing a multi-year returning player.

Begin with: No CotF progression, no TDS progression (still locked behind Bros. Island), no TBM progression, no EOK progression, no ROS progression, no TBL at all. Yes, CotF was six years ago. While one can, if there is a supply, look for conflagrant gear (none on server I checked for warrior, bard, ranger or chanter), it still requires quite a lot of platinum to purchase. But even with the gear, think about the time sink involved to "catch up." There is requiring help and there is being extremely needy. Unfortunately, the returning player may well fall into the latter camp without much difficulty. What guild is going to shepherd the new guild member through all that? What nice, open chat person? Can someone just skip all those previous expacs and the combination of gear and EoE and just head for the next expac and be fine? Perhaps, but that would be a surprising turn for developers. Very surprising.

So what is the solution? I'm facing this now. Come back (sure, if I leave you can all my stuff . . . who would want it?) and face the daunting task of moving through progression so that my character can progress and handle new content? Not an attractive option. Wait for the new expac and hope that developers make proceeding through the last six years unimportant? The only solutions to being able to acquire new or returning players are: 1) TLP servers, and 2) increase the boost from an heroic character substantially from the present. The company undoubtedly understands this and for now has opted for the TLP servers instead of increasing the boost on the heroic character. It will be interesting to see what happens in December.

***Rant off***