ToV changed the way leveling is accomplished, shifting it away from grinding to quest and achievement completion. ToL looks to continue this same concept moving forward. However, it presents problems with the way EQ is designed and played. Leveling through ToV is very quick with the achievement experience for completing a zone, but grinding is very, very slow. The problem with this design is that once players complete content that they don’t revisit it, except for missions to grind currency. Quest based leveling works fine in solo based MMOs, but not for EQ as it’s group based. Leveling from 110-120 will be a major pain point for any returning players as the population will be moved on to ToL for currency grinding, and later in ToL's lifecycle that content will become empty. Mercenary and partisan tasks are already a struggle, because there’s no incentive to repeat any those missions. These tasks need a currency reward like they did back in Underfoot and House of Thule. Please, take a second look at this design. It’s going to negatively impact on the community.
I repeated all of the content in ToV numerous times. Helping guildies, strangers, alts, whatever. I have more max level alts now than I ever have previously.
From all what I had red about the ToV leveling process the quest rewards there are way to high. It is good to put the focus more one quests but the rewards should not be that high. Basically the rewards from quests should be as high as grinding experience in a group of 4 PCs (including mercs) during the same amount of time. So players can decide which playstyle option they do prefer. I always did hate the existence of manipulative experience path presets that are more rewarding as other things: Hot zones, heroic adventures (especially when being combined with LotD), daily tasks, overseer quests and unbalanced zone experience modifiers. In the old days a big part of EverQuests success was the open world experience and not to be manipulated into a specific direction. Grinding mobs was always a huge part of the typical EQ experience. Maybe a bit to much for many players.
It’s there to promote Overseers - A P2W cash grab. Anyone who says anything else is delusional at this point.
I've never spent a penny on overseers. I seem to have managed to be max xp, max aa despite not being a huge fan of CoV so I logged in less.
EQ was a social game. Even, at it’s peak popularity lack of groups for progressing was a major complaint. If, EQ was so social people wouldn’t need to box, bot, or run mercenaries.
More fire and brimstone with no supporting evidence and no facts. Just conjecture and opinion to be found here. In fact, most of the evidence I've seen is that CoV's departure from the grindy grindy XP methods is hugely successful. Anyone that thinks otherwise can join Tappin in thier factless, baseless sorrowland.
I was helping a friend complete some stuff today. All that had to happen was they bothered to reach out and ask and we figured out a time slot that worked for us both. I've boxed some progression, but it is so crazy easy if you just reach out and find a friend.
So, you believe expansion progression gets more popular over time? Leveling 110-115 is going to be a limiter on getting people back. Just is going to be a slow choke on raid guilds. In 2 years, there’s going a terrible stretch of 110-120 as people have abandoned ToV and ToL for expansion 30, levels 120-125.
It's a fair point. Especially if heroics stay at level 85. In a few more years it'll be way too much work unless you're playing an SK or something. EQ really needs a way to keep older content worthwhile for longer. Start giving new currency for completing old missions if you're at a certain level or something.
What’s your friend, do when you’re not online? Grind mobs in FM? Let’s say you run your friend through the missions, and then another friend comes online after you complete it or you see a random LFG. You’re locked out and can’t help run them through it again. Not everyone is like you or willing to go back for the 20th time for someone who loses interest in the game in a couple weeks anyways. Most people focus on their own goals within their playtime. Group and solo progression can coexist and should exist.
Not sure about when I'm not online, everyone has their own playtimes. In our specific get things done case. We talk to each other, and work out a time we can play together.
From what I've seen so far ToL quest and mission achievements are giving half the exp they did in ToV. Welcome to the grind.
I use Overseer all the time without paying a penny. Can you pay Daybreak Cash to complete quests sooner and buy agent packs? Yes. Do you need to spend Daybreak Cash to do well with Overseer? No. I did complain quite firmly before Overseer was added that the ToV regular experience gains were way too low. Once Overseer was added, it became apparent that you could use it to get regular experience and that would compensate for ToV's lack. It does "require" that you use Overseer unless you wish to grind forever in ToV. However, you do not need to spend any money to do so.
The leveling model introduced in ToV (needing to do progression in order to get any meaningful xp) is just an awful, awful design choice. The problem isn't less xp from grinding, it's the decision to make every new level a hell level with absurdly high xp requirements. Whichever dev came up with this idea really deserves to be fired. If the leveling curve remained the same, people could still grind out xp if they chose to. Then, you could still have the progression tasks reward slightly more xp so people could level up a bit faster. Putting hell levels back into the game was COMPLETELY unnecessary. This new xp model, which completely destorys the way the game was played for the last 2 decades for the vast majority of players, is going to bite them in the backside in the long run. Being forced to do progression to level is going to alienate new and returning players. The only way they would be able to level is to rely on max level players to go back and do years old trivial content to help them out.
At release you could finish all the quests/round with DBC, but they changed that with a cap of 10 quests/round ages ago. That cap is reachable without DBC by the way. There is no in-game advantage by spending DBC on overseer anymore, afaik. I think the only cash they earn from overseer, is from people who wants to collect all the agents for completenes sake. Edit: I was wrong, if you get a round with many 24h quests you will get a slight advantage by finishing those with DBC...
Here, I've fixed it for you: The leveling mode introduced in ToV is the best choice DPG has made in a long while! Whichever dev came up with this idea really deserves to be praised and promoted! So people started whining about ToV experience balance for no reason other than their own bubble of thoughts they live in. For them killing 2000 mobs per level is a major disaster, but not a word is said about needing to kill 8000 to 12000 mobs (class dependant) to earn all ranks of newest AA's. And those ToV progression awards give you almost nothing to aid in your AA grind. But somehow it is not a problem for those whiners. It's the level experience they cry about. Well, it is the best decision ToV made about game experience balance: if you are in a relatively weaker group you can level up by doing ToV progression, if you are one of those overpowered automated groups - go back to your mindless grind, which you need to do for AA's anyway, it will just take a bit longer to level comparing to previous expansions. I truly hope DPG will use this model as a pattern: level increase expansions should have progression leveling path available to an average player, and follow-up same-level expansions may be tougher, more complex and more difficult for people already at max level and AA's.
Yes, without a doubt it has its benefits but the flaw is it requires a constant community in those areas. It’s really going to hurt the game as levels 110-115 this year are going to be an absolute slog for returning players. Now, imagine in 2 years when ToV and ToL are empty it’s just going to be even more of an anomaly for people catching up. There just needs to be some way to either get people to want to dive back into old expansion content or bumping the experience modifiers for the regular xp.
