Last time I checked, XP Pots are boosting Mob exp, which is plenty. You just dont blow through these levels by grinding. We got too used to fast swarm exp, or mission runs for AA. Now, its pretty fun to grind AA while chatting with friends, or people you met through general chat, or other things (hunter raids, for example). Turn or Shared Exp, and kill spawn while named camping and the %s will come. The missions themselves give a huge boost to get you through the tough stuff, after that, about a week (or less) will have you at 115. Honestly, I play the game, don't worry about levels so much, and enjoy the journey, updated zones, new items, etc. The less you care about the endgame, the sooner it comes to you. Cheers!
XP pots are far from useless. They increase the XP of killing mobs. So whats the problem ? So many good XP spots in ToV it is crazy, Fast respawn rates & lots of mobs reduce contention, pick numbers are low for dungeons. (num players to spawn a pick). One example, Coldain in GD Caves are on a SIX minute spawn timer and one room has 20 something mobs in it. Never Mind velks which has at least 5 or 6 major camp spots with enough mobs to satisfy the most voracious groups (and is much better XP than GD). For raiders, It takes two hours, tops, (prob less) in a decent group, with lesson, to regain the XP lost on a raid INCLUDING refilling AA bar for used Glyphs. Whine less, feel 'entitled' less, play more.
One thing that the devs do not consider is that Everquest is a social game. When the game heavily favors content for raiders, bots, and boxers, those players will jump far ahead and leave casual players and small guild group players behind. Casual group geared players who are 110 can LFG all day and not get a bite because they are of little use to the bot team and are not geared well enough to create a group themselves in ToV. Yes, it was similar in recent expansions, but it just gets worse and worse. TBL was awful for casual players, and the big changes to GMM was crushing. ToV may beat them both. LFG doesn't work because it is basically a real life Begging skill. That isn't fun.
I really want to know how often some of you are dieing each night that xp is such an issue. Figuring out an event or mob (group or raid) might take a few runs, but if you're racking up 20 deaths a night; perhaps its time to rethink your "xp" spot. I raid in a couple guilds, and even early on in an expansion a 3-5 death night is a bit abnormal for anyone in my group(s). With all there is left to do in ToV (hunter, collects, type 5 farming, type 7 farming, and TS Ear grind), anyone who cares about completion will be so maxed out on regular and AA xp that they should be glyphing and shooting fireworks all over the place. Now if you're a casual player who logs in once a week, once a month, yeah that 1-2 deaths in a pick up group is going to sting.
I think it's funny that people are talking about how boxers have some kind of advantage in ToV. My preferred playstyle is to 5-6 box depending on the difficulty. I've been back about a year after about 6 years off, in my previous EQ life I was a hardcore raider but I don't particularly want that kind of commitment again. In my experience, boxing always provides me something to do because I never have to sit LFG, but it also has limitations. I was looking forward to ToV's level increase because it would hopefully let me overpower some of the missions and things holding me up in old content where the mechanics are too complicated for me to manage. Unfortunately devs have made the choice over the years to put complicated mini raid mechanics into progression limiting and gear limiting missions. Maybe that's what people want, but the idea that this expansion somehow favors boxers is quite frankly ridiculous. I'd argue it does exactly the opposite because I'll never be able to box these missions for the huge xp rewards or the gear. Give me missions like Darkness Howls where I don't have to watch 5 screens for DT auras or dots etc., that I can just power through with pulling, tanking, and DPS, the core components of what has always been the group experience.
I agree with Endorek on the anti-boxer mechanics that seem to be at every corner. The last couple expansions have definitely NOT favored boxers. If the devs wanted to appeal to this audience, there are a ton of things that wouldn’t have been implemented. 1) Stratos zone layout. Do you know how god awful it is running through this zone as a boxer? 2) Smoke Trials. (A) Wending Ways. Enjoy running your boxes through this. (B) Ashes trial. A fireball appears every minute and you need to run away or be blown up. Meanwhile the final boss does a knock back and it is possible to fall off the edge of the island. (C) Speaker’s Amphitheater. Half of the group ports up to kill one mini-boss while the other half engages a different mini-boss. Need to time the kills. 3) ToV Kael Mission. Random character has to duck or gets death touched. Halfway through the fight the entire group needs to sprint around corners and up a ramp and engage the boss. 4) Velks Mission. If you don’t have the DPS to just burn through it, compliance with all the nonsense going on is very challenging. I could go on for quite awhile, but these events are definitely NOT box friendly at all. Finally, take a look at these forums. There is a TON of praise for DBG that they got it right with ToV, that people are really enjoying the expansion and folks are coming back because they don’t get incinerated by Tier 1 mobs. All this anti-casual talk blows my mind.
I agree with the notion that anti-box design elements and mission mechanics are on the uptick. As a boxer I adapt/overcome. Find the weak spots in the mission/task/mob and put my resources there. I boxed all progression for TBL and ToV. I am not as effective as Tucoh at boxing, but I do okay. I don't think your four examples hold much water though. It just takes longer to learn the mission - they are all box-able. As far as anti-casual talk, I 100% agree. I feel that people are whining because they want to get their cake and eat it, too. ToV is the most casual-friendly expansion to happen since ... I don't know when.
I don’t view my examples as blocks — I too have boxed all of them and did all of the TBL Challenger Achievements (except Three at Once — needed help). However, they are examples of design decisions that are specifically challenging for boxers but significantly less so for non-boxers.
Just for my own curiousity, did you box all that via alt-tabbing, or by using 3rd party programs? And how many boxes?
What are you talking about? Let me clue you in on how devs account for boxers: they don't. They create content meant to be completed by a group (balanced to group gear and 4 real players and 2 mercs usually) of people. They create content meant to be completed by a raid of people. The only content they make for solo people are things like tradeskills, some quests (most "solo" quests are only solo so they can be unlimited time and not using the shared task slot and are meant to be done with other people), and the dailies they created. Nothing is made for boxers, and they don't pay any attention to boxers. They create content as it is meant to be done, and some of it will be boxer friendly and some of it won't be. Boxing is something players do because its cheap and technologically easy now, and allows us to do things by ourselves that we couldn't before. It is NOT what this game is about. Be grateful for what content you can box, and accept the content you can't.
You really should pay more attention to the whole conversation. I was making the same point that you just made — that the devs are NOT catering to boxers as evidenced by the fact that a lot of the content is not box friendly.
Point was, there is no such thing as "anti-boxing" mechanics, which you noted were "on the upswing" (which is definitely NOT true, VoA for example was very boxer unfriendly, especially resplendent temple mission). Anything that seems as such is simply a consequence of the content created unintentionally.
The whole lemming thing is a terrible myth https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=wildlifenews.view_article&articles_id=56
Both things can be true. Missions can be more enjoyable & casual friendly while mob kill xp can be casual hostile. It is not an either or situation here.
The more I think about the issue with the imbalance between experience off kill versus achievements, I keep arriving at the conclusion that it was their only solution. It got mentioned earlier, but it's not the experience value per kill that is low, it's the total experience required per level. I think this was an issue, they faced in development with the current code for experience on kill. If, they made it higher it would reward more AA than intended. So, the solution they arrived at was to place significant experience gain on achievements, which as we all know are once per lifetime. If, this really was the case then I commend the developers on a really solid solution, which I think works really well and makes the leveling process smooth. I feel the only downside to this solution is that now the developers are locked into content tuned for leveling as opposed to content for difficulty.
I think the fact is that it is just out of whack. They need to rebalance it so kill exp is a bit higher in my opinion. Others think its fine and that is okay too I am fully confident that if they want to increase grind exp they can do it without messing with aa exp.
Raiders have the same LFG problems as casual groupers, if you're unwilling to go to the zone and start with one other person, if you're unwilling to form the group... you're not going to get anything done. TOV doesn't have the same problems as TBL, in TBL you needed to do progression to get around the expansion, in TOV you can get to any zone. In TOFS other people can click you up the floors. Just like a raider if you wanna do stuff you need to: Make friends Be the leader Be willing to go out with a sub optimal group to get started on your goal Having goals will also make you stand around less If you are a ranger and there's a rogue LFG you can do tier 1 trash while you try to find more people. Those "Bot/Box" teams wouldn't magically be grouping with you if they couldn't box they probably just wouldn't be playing. They're playing the game the way they like it and are buying expansions.
Sorry for not posting sooner, this issue seems to have been tossed about until tempers have gotten too hot. About 5 years ago or so, some posters complained that there was not enough content, and they were finished an expansion within a few months, and what was the point of subscribing any longer when they had nothing to do til the next expansion came out. Well be careful what you wish for, because we now have the current incarnation of the game, where soloing is not supported. Officially it next was, but previously it was possible even preferable to grouping for some. If you have a regular group - all logging in at a pre-arranged time, you may be scratching your head as to what all the fuss is about. But spare a thought for the casual player who logs in for an hour, of which 30-45 mins is spent LFG. Boxing and rare drops have made it so many players, don't want to share the spoils and go it alone. The way the game is now set up is to slow the average player down, to ensure they cant complete the expansion in a month. Raiders on the whole will move through the expansion faster due to better gear and possibly better organisation than group players. More and more if you don't want to group you are not going to get a lot done (I recognise that some truly talented people can six box the content, where the rest of us have a hard enough time with one). With all that said I think the xp per kill is too low. It's understandable now why the xp bar goes to the third decimal place or there would have been uproar! You can make more xp going back a few expansions and killing there (not going to specify ) than in the current expansion. On one level it is just makes the grind more boring. Also I'm not sure too much thought has gone into returning players (imagine coming back at lvl 110 when max level was 125, how much help could you get trying to level up). I would disagree with the OP when they say they cant expect guildies to go back over content they have already completed. This is exactly one if the reasons to be in a guild. If you cant ask your guild mates who can you ask?
