No actually, I play on a low pop and heavily boxed server. I would be lucky to complete 4 CoV missions in a day for currency. There might be 2 zlandicar runs available in my playtime and maybe I can coax some to do all 4. Expansion has been out for a month and a half so pretty on par for 12 months of content
Classes received something known as "progressive" spells & abilities in TBM, the expansion after TDS - see a good guide on them here: https://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Progressive_spells These abilities provided many classes with considerable additional DPS potential, hence the rise of Mob HP that was evident in TBM & the even greater rise of mob HP in EoK, if your group has DPS classes that have done progression through TBM the EoK zones & mobs do not have ridiculously over inflated HP pools. In addition to that TBM introduced "Type 5" augment slots on gear, this slot is where you can place augments that carry an array of just Heroic Stats - the boosts to dps & tanking from them alone are substantial, I am not entirely sure to what degree they help casters & priests beyond boosting mana regen & mana pools. Rogues compete with Berserkers just fine if they are gearing correctly & utilizing their skillsets well, if as a Rogue vs a similarly geared & AA'd Berserker you are miles behind them you should talk to experienced Rogues for guidance on how to play rather than assuming your old & likely outdated knowledge is adequate, every month the game gets an update, every month you don't play your knowledge is falling behind. Rangers do not compete with Rogues & Berserkers by design as they are very flexible hybrid classes with far more utility & have heals, CC, curing & other very useful skills Rogues & Berserkers don't have, they can on occasion parse well enough to sit very close behind Rogues & Berserkers on parse though you really have to know the class well to do so regularly. You can choose to do that, or you can choose not too. XP potions in ToV+ are largely a waste of money in my opinion, mob kill XP is so bad because you are expected to level up from running progression tasks not mob killing in vast numbers. Have you joined an active guild? IF you can't find one on your native server you could consider a server move to a more active one.. /shrug I can't help you here, I haven't played a pet class beyond CoTF No clue, Decapitation works on everything - which is why it does FAR less damage than the Humanoid only Assassinate & Headshot (any so-called "Zerkers" asking for it to do the same damage really don't know what the hell they are talking about). You are entitled to your opinion, but as Cicelee aptly points out, you came back for a month, so your view is limited. You seemingly have not done TBM Progression or you would have the Dichotomic abilities at the least, or if you do have them then perhaps you haven't been using them correctly and have jumped to an ill-informed conclusion based on a limited experience & knowledge of the content hamstrung by a lack of essential character progression you likely have skipped. Oh & very minor point but the word you wanted was Mediocrity. The other points you raised had some value, this last part I quote here was when you devolved into drama-llama mode. I like the nod to Nine Inch Nails "Hurt" though, great band & amazing song.
The "XP paradigm" / "XP Model" was indeed changed for ToV - quite possibly this was done with Overseer in mind so you aren't imagining that the XP feels slow, it is, and you are probably 100% correct that Overseer is why, or at least it had a major role to play in the decision. What the devs did was hugely increase the amount of XP each level takes 111-115, the mobs still give relatively the same XP, while AA are capped at a max of five granted per kill since EoK. Even if you had a SK & zerker box crew; mob kill xp grinding would still suck. This has one big overriding design philosophy at the root of it, forcefully making the progression through content (AKA tasks that reward mercenary, partisan & hero achievements) the preferable way to gain levels. Side-stepping the progression, even as a returning player, by just killing mobs has been made far more onerous and time-consuming as a result of that shift, grinding XP the way you used to is possible, but it is from ToV onwards FAR slower on purpose, this is not a one off change of direction either, this is something the entire dev team agreed on being better for the game, whether players agree or not so we are stuck with that new paradigm/model for XP for at least the forseeable future. I don't like it either & I think it will make catching up to live way more difficult in the future when we are 5 or 6 expansion in with this new XP model, oh sure Overseer will "help" but logging in just to do overseer to level through a bunch of expansions rather than try and grind out a bajillion mobs for enough level XP seems a very poor design, the devs have completely ignored the fact that a single player trying to catch up is not going to be able to do the progression content while level appropriate, they would have to do it once they level beyond it, but the new GRIND with ToV+ makes levelling prior to doing that progression while over-levelled for it entirely more unpleasant. The dev team seem to think there are a massive number of charitable players who will be more than happy to baby-sit returning players through multiple expansions of progression tasks to catch up to to the current live expansion level.
That's why I dissected his post the way I did, rather than discount the entire thing out of hand over the last part of it I broke it down into parts & addressed his individual points as best as I could. Sometimes people, even mad ones, have a valid argument or point so long as you can see through the red mist of their anger & that's when you can partially agree with them, help them or constructively criticise & dismantle their arguments, fighting fire with fire just gets you a bigger fire. And I'm not perfect, I do my fair share of trolling at times too.
Its ok to be terrible at a game, and a quitter, and a person that sees injustice in everything, and lives their life as a perpetual victim. At some point when you have exhausted all your sources to point fingers at, you will find that there is a common denominator and finally say "maybe its me".
True, but sometimes all they needed was a friendly but firm elbow in the ribs that pointed them in the right direction after they finished their tantrum, rather than a collective punch on the nose.
There is no debating someone that comes on full lunatic like you did. You already said you quit, so what's the point?
If you have this much hate for the game, why do you play? In fact, why don't you go write a better expansion, because you can't.
I completely agree. We've had a few players who have returned to the game after 3-10 years away. Invariable they end up running the ToV missions early and are stuck trying to get through 113-114 with none of the big XP bonuses left and are stuck grinding out those huge XP levels with mind boggling boring XP grinds. They should have continued the big one time XP boosts in CoV and each expansion after it so we have more options to help those returning players instead of saying: "do overseer every day" or sign up with one of the "XP services" that just auto kill 24/7.
So I agree fully that long term the TOV model can hurt returning players. My thought is there is no way the dev leave this 100% the way it is after the next expansion. If they do I agree with you that it will hurt leveling long term. Right now TOV changes have been nice for leveling up alts or even friends. I can box all 4 missions in an hour basically means you only need to grind to 113.75 (which doesn’t take to long in GMM to be honest) and I’ve given away quite a few task adds when I‘m leveling an alt. But as the bulk of population moves into whatever the next expansion is I think this could hurt f they don’t change it. Changing it there are a few ideas that come to mind: 1) add XP to newer missions. FRanly they should duplicate xp experience in COV just to help some of those returning players. 2) Increase the solo quests to equal out what the missions do with the next expansion. not a huge fan of this though because some of those quests require a group and the existing problem will remain. Frankly I think the changes in short term have been good for the game - long term I hold similar concerns. It feels like the devs backed themselves into a corner unless they just plan to remove the xp required to level dramatically.
Terrific, thoughtful post as usual Skuz. I like this particular point the best. EQ has never had a good mechanism for catching players up to current content. Content is developed around groups of 4-6 players with each subsequent expansion leaving behind a figurative wasteland that returning players have to navigate solo. It's best to just go the TLP route and have fun. Otherwise, returning players just burn out on Live while they're stuck playing with their mercenary.
Have to admit this is funny. The OP seems to be arguing against himself across several years. I also happen to remember doing TDS progression myself for leveling. Sure it could have been faster going to 105 in old content but then I’d still have to do progression. I leveled while doing progression and got there overall faster. EOK/ROS were great expansions so I don’t quite get the hate there. Yes ber are powerful but frankly my rogue, necros, and monks do just fine in keeping up for dps as well. Mage could use a bit of help and poor wizzies - I’m not even sure they are on life support. I agree though with some of the other posters there’s some elements of truth in the OP post but its hard ot find it in the ranting and lack of understanding of the reality of the expansions.
