What do you prefer: Grinding or the new Meta of Completion?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Xerzist, Jul 11, 2020.

  1. Xerzist Augur

    I'm torn.

    Do we prefer the long, random, but beneficial aspect of grinding to max level? Nay, even the capability to do so like in previous expansions? It's really not feasible to grind mobs from 110 to 115 in this expansion, as it wasn't designed in such a way.

    Or do we prefer this new system? I think the new system personally hurts new players, smaller groups, and boxers who only use one or two toons. Traditionally in the past, you could simply grind away doing what you want and eventually hit max level as a solo, duo, trio, etc.

    This expansion forces you to find adequate means to complete the heros, partisans, and mercs if you want efficiency on any scale. Personally, I enjoy doing random camps in EQ, hunting drops, exploring, and earning my experience that way. The forced quest design in my opinion really kind of takes away from that and instead puts a list of homework in front of you.

    Thoughts?
  2. code-zero Augur

    I have always hated grinding
  3. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I think there are 2 very clear camps of players on this topic.

    Half of them are totally on-board with putting the vast majority of the levelling XP & a large chunk of AAXP into the progression system.

    The other half hate it.

    I like the progression system, I like that it is very rewarding & that it provides a clear path on what to do.

    What I do NOT like is not having a reasonable choice.

    Old School EverQuest felt more "sandboxish" because you could viably XP & quest open world & the exploration of that world felt much more organic, and it was rewarding to do that.
    The new progression system being made to be the ONLY game in town and the open world mob-grind being almost completely non-viable to level in feels like a massively retrograde step in the wrong direction to me, I like choices I hate being railroaded into making them though.

    If I want to take a different path through the game on my second play-through with an alt - it shouldn't be so painful as to be almost completely not worth the effort and I don;t want to have to go through the same progression system for every, single, alt to have meaningful progress - it's boring, it's restrictive & it feels like the devs lost sight of what the "feel" of EverQuest used to be about somewhere along the way. I feel like the "world building" that Brad & the original team did has been left by the wayside far too much & EverQuest has become less of a world & too much of a game.

    TL: DR - I like progression, but please don't turn EverQuest into something it wasn't supposed to be, let it be a world, let it breathe outside of the Progression system too.
  4. bigpapa Augur

    well in TOV ,we kinda need to do both, progressions and the evolving earring need a lot of grinding.

    in the future , returning or new players who get to level 111 and can 't have help to do the 4 TOV missions ,{ since we would have done them a lot of times } will find the grinding to 115 painfuf....
    Skuz likes this.
  5. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    That's the very valid point, if the open world grind is not at all viable like ToV makes it then bypassing the progression on your way to catching up to the rest of the player base will absolutely be a pain in the backside & probably cause anyone following "behind the curve" to quit the game at that point.

    The devs have take a view that focuses far too much on the here & now of the game & ignores the vast gap behind that is very much damaged by this change of direction.

    There is no way anyone is going to be molo-ing through the progression system at Level 110

    This means they will not be able to make it through ToV or any successive expansions that use this XP paradigm under their own steam, it will be a case of them requiring higher level players to repeat content they are probably already sick to death of repeating yet again to help some catcher-upper & the reality is nobody wants them to have to do that, not the catcher upper & not the players who are long past the content.

    It's removing the only viable alternate path, sure once the player has managed to OUT-LEVEL the ToV progression content they may be able to go back to it & solo it with the benefit of some additional levels over 115 & a merc to hit some of the achieves contained in it but how are they going to reach that point with so much of the XP tied up into ToV's progression system to begin with, it's like slamming the door shut on anyone not currently playing.

    In my opinion this change of direction in the XP paradigm is short-sightedness for the longevity & health of the game as a whole, anyone not playing the live game right now or who has taken a break will be facing a brick wall to their character development in ToV once the game moves one or two expansions beyond it, this essentially burns bridges with lapsed players and makes the game no longer welcoming for their return & punishes anyone who needs to take time away from the game making it much more final when they do leave.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  6. Tucoh Augur

    I might be alone here but if it were up to me, in the next expansion:
    1. Merc/partisan quests would not exist.
    2. Collections would not exist.
    3. Hunter would give the benefits that merc/partisan/collection achievements traditionally give in an incremental way (in that completing the hunter achievements in 100% of the zones gives only modest benefit over completing hunter achievements in 90% of the zones)
    4. Quests would be key and item focused, ex: ToFS key / earring from ToV
    5. Lore in an expansion would be communicated through NPC text, non-quest based scripts, named mobs and small, optional quests that are more similar to deathfist slashed belts than rigidly defined partisan/merc quests.
    6. The game would have a range from extremely easy starting areas that people of modest gear can play in casually to at least one very difficult ending area that requires a coordinate and well-group-geared group to survive in.
    7. The missions would have easy modes that were doable with casual groups and hard modes that had the same difficulty as the toughest open world area.
    8. Raids would have easy modes that could all be done by pickup/casual raids and hard modes that would only be expected to be completed by the toughest handful of raid forces in the game.

    That's basically my ideal expansion with (probably?) the same budget as ToV.
  7. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Some well thought out suggestions there.

    I will dissent on the two tiers of group & raid tasks though, that essentially doubles the workload & while that is the "ideal" suggestion I don't think DPG could deliver it with current resources.

    If the content raids instead scales up in difficulty from Tier 1 to tier 3 so that at least Tier 1 raids are accessible by most guilds & only Tier 3 will challenge the most high end guilds early on - the gear doubling after 6 months should then ensure all guilds can gear up enough to beat the expansion before the next one launches then we have a working system for all types of guilds.

    The way I would do this is that rather than certain standard gear items being locked to certain tiers the increase of the tier you beat increases the loot you gain.

    So Tier 1 events may drop 4 gear items each, Tier 2 x6 & tier 3 x8 - or something like that, with the more "rare" or "iconic" items being restricted to Tiers 2 or 3 or being locked behind specific achievements as has been the case for several expansions.

    Group content I feel should essentially follow the same difficulty pattern though with group visible gears having an upgrade progression through the tiers, maybe even the off-slots could be upgraded in a similar way.
  8. Tucoh Augur

    I dispute that for two reasons:

    1. I'd bet that creating the mechanics and validating the non-tunable components makes up the bulk of the effort of content creation. Creating different spell effects for the hard-mode that have +50% damage or failure debuffs that are a tick less in duration isn't that difficult.

    2. Trying to create group and raid content whose difficulty is balanced between hardcore and casual forces is so difficult that creating two versions, one of which is lazily balanced until it can be easily beaten and the other one is just juiced a bunch and then nerfed if not enough guilds beat it, wouldn't be that much effort.
    Coagagin and Skuz like this.
  9. Tucoh Augur

    Oh, and to add to the above: even if it was more work and resulted in fewer raids/missions, I'd argue it'd be worth it because:

    1. It'd allow casual players to see all the content. A lot of players will never see all the raids in an expansion because T3 is tuned to be difficult, as one of those players that truth divests me of concern about much of the lore in an expansion because I'm never going to see the storyline be finished anyway. Like, I spent so much time going through TDS' progression, but I will probably NEVER see the final raids in it. It's like being a 11 year old kid again watching WWE every week and then not getting to see the PPV because you're a broke 11 year old kid :D

    2. It'd give more meaningful content to hardcore players. Instead of hardcore players blowing through these weak raids / missions to grind away for *maybe* one difficult raid at the end, they'd have meaningful content throughout. Without hard content, all the grinding players do to build up their characters and the tremendous effort that guilds make to bring players together in a cohesive force is a waste of time and makes EQ into a joke.

    For me the model of casual players doing T1 content and not seeing T3 and hardcore players being bored until T3 is a waste of content.
  10. winspearean New Member

    As it stands now, my 111 Mage and chanter will remain that level for some time to come. I don’t think they’ll reach 115 for a year, if not more. They aren’t geared to handle ToV (I’ve tried), nor do they have the AAs. That said, I’m not a huge fan of grinding except during xp bonus periods. I was doing EoK progression but the xp has been abysmal since about 109. I’m not going to quit because I do still enjoy the game and I find things to do that don’t bore me to death. However, if future expansions do follow the ToV model for xp, then I don’t see myself continuing.
    Skuz and Corwyhn Lionheart like this.
  11. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I get where you are coming from.

    All depends on how well it is iterated & executed upon.

    SoD was the only time I saw them try that approach & I thought it was very poorly executed all around, the T1 raids were so laughably easy and the "Hard" versions were exactly the same difficulty they just capped how many players the raid was for so instead of a 54 person easy raid & a 54 person hard raid it was the exact same raid with 54 players to make it a joke & 36 players to make it a little more of a challenge.

    So SoD was kind of a great example....of how NOT to do a hard mode.

    So I guess my reluctance & lack of faith is based upon what I saw in SoD, now the dev team as a whole may very well have learned important lessons from that, but they are also just as likely not to have.
    Some of their recent changes of direction and decisions as a team have left me doubting they think things through with the big picture in mind & that they are once again drifting too far away from knowing what the players really enjoy & find fun in this game. Indeed I have serious concerns that they are losing touch with what makes EverQuest the game it should be and not all of that can be blamed on lack of resources, I feel they have narrowed their vision too much & have concentrated too hard on gaming, too little on world-building & maintaining the world building mindset that was held in the past.
  12. Tucoh Augur

    It's funny that they did this because of what happened when they tried the same garbage years prior in PoP.

    https://www.firesofheaven.org/threads/furors-14-days-rant-first-look-at-wow.353/
  13. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Was that in reference to the Plane of Time trials?

    I don't recall the whole raid being 18, just individual trials so you split the raid into teams, I do recall the raid we did only having 3 teams of 18 though, one took Undead, another did air/water & the other earth/fire if we had any more than the 54 players needed for those teams they got to slack but at least my guild rarely did have much more than 60 players online for raids during PoP.

    That's a little different to how SoD's Hard mode DZ capped you to 36 total for the whole raid & every event, at least in Time once past the trials the whole raid of 72 (if you had 72) could then participate.

    Events that split the raid force into separate teams (within the same DZ) are often fairly interesting, one I recall vividly being the Pillars of Alra from VoA, quite enjoyed that one.
  14. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    100% wrong. I know at least 10 people in my guild who haven't done any progression and are max level. Several of them leveraged Overseer to do this, the others just geared up in Snowbound, killed named to gear up, and are 115 through mob XP alone. Most of them are solo players. So, your statement holds no water. At all.

    Hurts? I think it's TOO good. Anyone able to scrape a group together can kill Griklor and Great Divide and complete all the T1 Partisan and Merc tasks. This is half the progression and easily lands a lvl 110 player in lvl 112 to 113 territory with ZERO grinding. For those not able or not willing to group up, see my statement above.

    EverQuest invented this formula. You expect them to abandon it? The best rewards are achieved through cooperation with fellow players. Every EverQuest release has been like this. EVERY.SINGLE.ONE.


    Forced? Like someone holding you hostage or holding you down and rubbing your face in the dirt? No one is forcing you to do anything. And nothing is preventing you from doing random camps in EQ, hunting drops, exploring, and earning your experience that way. And before you retort that you get less XP per kill I would encourage you to look at how many days of bonus XP we've gotten this expansion so far. Look at how many people are max level and max AA.

    And homework? Yep. You want the best rewards, you need to work for them. The earring quest is brilliant. More people in EQ are maxing their tradeskills than ever, due solely to the earring quest. That's a good thing.

    I personally enjoyed ToV so much I hope they continue this trend of reward for cooperation. It's the best way forward.
    Rolaque, Nennius and Yinla like this.
  15. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    On my main it made very little difference to her, she always does the quests and missions as soon as they are available. Personally I'd like to see more quests added with cool toy rewards and exp returned to doing mercenary quests.

    With the new way of gaining large chunks of exp from achievements, I'd like the choice of gaining AAs instead of Exp. With the alts I have done a lot of Overseer and grinding so the exp from doing quests and missions now will be wasted.

    Not sure how the new way will work next expansion if it is not a level expansion. I guess it will have to give AA for achievments not Exp as like many I'm 99.999% in level.
  16. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    Wrong. Grinding levels and grinding levels in a reasonable amount of time are two different things. And if you leveraged Overseer then you didn't grind all the way through.

    I did the the grind for 3 and a half levels or so and it was a unreasonably long process. There should be no need to leverage overseer to grind your way through levels.

    So in summary his statement holds all kinds of water. I use his statement to take water to and from my aquarium because it is so good at holding water.
  17. ptah Augur

    choice.

    We all have a choice, and that is beauty of EQ imho. Repeat Choice.

    Some paths are more ideal than others, but still you the user have a choice, Yes im using the word choice like AA point, fast and often.

    If the end user loves a guided path via cheevement, questing etc that path is choosen. If the end user does like it, but feels he or she must do it to get results, well they make that choice. Now if end user makes the choice to not use questing path, in game called everQUEST, they grind mobs.

    Overseer is odd is sense that its a choice, very passive one, that built to exploit speed results for added money. No matter if dislike or enjoy it its an option. And a freewill choice to use or not too.

    In the end, do what works for you, and for me that means having fun. Reguardless of your path, just have fun and answer is clear. Make the choice to have fun.

    Now I think the deves use the merc/parts, hunter etc system to outline content. At worst it lead to cut and paste non creative system that has grown old over the years. At best is saves time and money recreating the game lore and play we play.

    If EQ was BurgerKing and I would get my way, I love to see instance system that review your gear, AA, past cheevement to create an adventure path trailor to you. Build in some safe guards to remove exploit uses. Now is raising the bar too high or just asking for content?

    Have a nice day.
    Skuz likes this.
  18. code-zero Augur

    I believe that we have a certain segment of grinders who are responsible for the meta-completion model. You know who they are, the guys who make posted titled "Where will you go to grind to 115?" then discuss some zones where they can EZ mode slaughter lot's of blues both dark and light. Typically they'll have raid gear from the last expansion and are really risk averse.

    I know that there are people who say they're casual who profess to like the grind but most of those aren't making post essentially detailing how they'll bypass everything that the devs worked on in the new expansion so they can get to the good stuff.
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Skuz like this.
  19. Cicelee Augur

    I hate grinding with a complete and unbridled passion. To sit in one spot for 2-6 hours pulling random mobs for no point other than to see your XP bar move? No thank you.

    I much prefer accomplishments, achievements, different things to do to see my XP bar move.
  20. Windance Augur

    This has got to be the #1 reason folks turn to automating their game play for auto XP.

    The time sinks in this expansion are going above and beyond.

    I understand there needs to be something to chase after to keep people in the game. But after a while it just gets to the point where the effort no longer justifies the 0.0001% step