Review of TOL expansion

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Fian, Dec 11, 2021.

  1. sieger Augur

    The game is a group game, moloing is not a preferred way to level up. The min-maxers are important because they tell you the speed limit, you may drive at a slower speed. I don't imagine any significant portion of raiding guild raiders won't be 120 by the time the first raid tier opens in January. That seems like things are going fine for me. Now someone who casually molos a few hours a day is probably going to take a really long time to hit 120, but I also think that person has no real reason to rush to 120. If that sort of casual play is your standard then you should not expect to finish out the content quickly. If casual play can finish the content quickly, those of us who are willing to play more end up with almost no content because we'll finish it so quickly.
  2. zarcal Elder

    Well, inspired by DBG's response I will throw my two cents about the current paradigm as well:

    Please keep in mind casual/slow players and make the beginning missions in progression a little more forgiving and less of a DPS check.

    Real Life example: I play with 2 others regularly, so our group is 3 players 3 merc and we still cannot get Before the Siege done from EOK yet we are done with hunter / patisan/ merc in EOK, ROS and started some in TBL. This type of missions should be at the end of progression not in the beginning.

    And yes we have tried, the is never anyone in the zone and Global chat is met with silence (or snark)
  3. sieger Augur


    I generally don't like the Focus AA lines which actually make new spells perform worse than old spells until you've ground AA, and think that should be looked at, but that doesn't have anything to do with whether or not grinding EXP is fast enough.
  4. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor


    It all drives into frustration with the leveling process. Get groups, box, or don't play.
    Windance and Skuz like this.
  5. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    Oh grouping. the lack of availability of opportunities to group is absolutely the root issue so I think I understand it very well.

    My disdain for the XP model of ToV + is from an understanding of how players cannot access that progression system without a group, they cannot solo it, they cannot get groups, so all they have is grinding & overseer.

    It's why I have been banging the drum of EQ needs a "side-kick system" and supporting the "Squire" system other players have suggested which is very similar.

    Were EQ to create a Side-Kick or squire system grouping would be available no matter what level anyone was, everyone in fact would be able to play in the most recent expansion.
    Shindius likes this.
  6. ArtremasEQ Augur


    Not a good representation, but a guild Shaman soloed the whole expansion, with the exception of the Hero Missions obviously, they need a group.

    He was 120, and finished all Hero, Merc and Partisans by Saturday.

    I'd Imagine a Necro or a mage could do the same. An SK could too, just take longer.
    Non soloing classes will obviously have it harder.
    Shindius likes this.
  7. Fian Augur

    And did he use overseers, and collections to boost his level?
  8. demi Augur

    was this guild shaman raid gear'd ? just curious ..
  9. I_Love_My_Bandwidth Mercslayer

    I have never understood the player group that prefers to grind in a game called EverQuest.

    My take, ToL is the stepping stone for what EverQuest is about to become. A new generation of artists, coders, designers, etc are cutting their teeth on our great game. Be patient, Norrath. Better things are-a-coming.
    Shindius and Meeko like this.
  10. Skrab East Cabilis #1 Realtor

    It’s not like the quests are innovative or engaging with cinematics building up the story. They’re kill, fetch, location update, hail, and repeat. Open world questing is pretty cumbersome to deal with multiple people and even boxes.

    Grinding is easier to just add people and begin playing, but instanced missions are the easiest to coordinate and provide a more engaging gameplay experience.

    I’d prefer to level through missions and wish they had more experience offered repeating them. It’s the only group content that requires coordination and some sort of mechanics.
  11. Fian Augur

    First off, 20 years of grinding is going to attract a certain type of player. Leveling via questing is not new. Elder Scrolls Online has made that the primary way, and to be honest, you burn through the quests, not really enjoying them, and after a while get sick of questing, and would just rather sit in a group for a couple of hours in one spot killing mobs. To be honest, group quests don't really encourage people to read the quest text, as you have a group waiting for you, and you don't want to waste a lot of time reading the text. Anyway, this thread isn't about whether quest exp should be nerfed, but whether grinding should be more productive. No one is asking for a quest nerf. IMO, quest rewards are reasonable this expansion, unlike the excessive rewards of TOV. If they improve the grinding exp, then players can choose how they want to play the game, and not being forced to playing the game one way or another.
    Vizier likes this.
  12. Qimble Augur


    You may not have grinded, but unless I'm misreading your write up you also started the expansion at 118. If you had wanted to you could've easily hit 120 day 2 and fallen into that category. And when I said overseers, I meant having 15x banked 24 hour crit successes (10 in rewards tab, 5 pending in overseers) not paying to speed them up.


    Regarding the grind, I'm not gonna say where they're doing it but it's all humanoids and a 120 rogue with full t2 raid gear / BiS augs can easily sustain 1.7m DPS over an hour straight if they're cycling burns properly, not afking, and have decent ADPS. Single mob Peak DPS during burns is hitting almost 4m DPS per rogue.

    Ninja edit: FWIW I just hit 120 last night, finished all but KV progression, have run the missions a ton, helped guildies through progression I already finished, completed 2 collections, and did overseers daily. I don't think it's terribly difficult to hit max level this expansion if you're in a guild or have a group to run with. Did it all with full groups of humans.
    Shindius likes this.
  13. ArtremasEQ Augur

    He was, hence why I said prob not a good representation. That said, I suspect it's more skill than gear in his case, though gear will make it quicker.

    Some classes can solo quite well, others, no chance even with a merc.
  14. ArtremasEQ Augur

    Nope on Collects, all XP done in the Expansion. NFI on Oversees, but that is a trivial amount in 2 days, and everyone has access to that with zero effort.

    Neither did the group of 5 other real people I leveled with. All were 120 in 2 - 2 1/2 days, Hunter finished in 4, with the only XP coming from the Expansion itself / overseers (which is minor, maybe 15% or so of 1 level).

    We are an outlier, yes. But my point, is that it isn't THAT hard. We are 1 week into the expansion, most people shouldn't be 120 for weeks yet if you think about it.

    Also, remember there are two types of XP.
    LEVEL XP is best got from doing Quests
    AA XP is best gotten from grinding, and ToL is just find for grinding out AA's.

    I feel that is a fairly reasonable balance for the game.
    Shindius likes this.
  15. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    What quests can you do without access to a group?

    The answer is only those you have already out-levelled.

    How do you out-level the progression system in order to go back & do those quests solo/molo.....

    Your lack of understanding is common, endemic even, but try & put yourself in someone else's shoes for a moment & maybe the lights will go on.
  16. Kazint Augur

    Is it really that hard to understand? For the first like 19 years of the game there was no other way to level. People kinda got used to it. Even if you did the handful of quests that were actually worth doing you still spent 95% of your time not doing quests.
  17. Alnitak Augur

    I would argue about 19 years. In my personal experience, starting in RoF it was possible to gain experience by doing quests and not just grinding. (Even in TSS questing for experience became a thing, but in RoF quest experience surpassed grinding, in my opinion). And Teek brothers' experience and CoTF Gribble grinding was definitely a more efficient way to level up.
    In TDS and TBM is was about equal (doing progression vs just trash grinding), and in EoK and RoS it reverted back to grind. TBL was a disaster until GMM release, in which Howling mission became a new Gribble run (I level up my alts in GMM to 110 by taskadding, and leveled my mains to 113 before went to ToV by grinding orcs in the mission)
    ToV is questing heaven, CoV is same level expansion, so it's kinda experience dud, and ToL is back to questing. So, I don't think it's 19 years, I'd cut it in half.
  18. Tarvas Redwall of Coirnav, now Drinal

    Before ToV, questing for experience was always in addition to grinding, not a substitute for. Task adding someone I think is a bit different than actually getting out there and playing. As for Gribbles and the like, they just moved the mob xp to the quest competition. I guess you can call it questing in lieu of grinding, but I think that is just splitting hairs because you grind out HAs.
    Treage_Imminent and Kazint like this.
  19. Alnitak Augur

    I never said that questing was a replacement fro grinding, especially not a forced replacement. I just compared experience earned via questing vs grinding per unit of time.

    I mentioned taskadds to illustrate that even taskadds were so lucrative that my alts actually got leveled up in addition to my main team, which actually did the quest.

    Of course you have to do mob killing in task or outside. It's just amount of experience that matter. For example - modern Mercenary tasks typically require killing so many of monsters. And the Mercenary reward in ToV and ToL is far more than experience earned by killing those monsters without the quest.
    Same is in task by Gribble - experience for the task far outweights the kill experience (in task and in static zones) of the same number of mobs. Hence - it's leveling up by questing, vs. leveling up by grinding, when kill experience is more than quest reward experience.
    Up-to VoA questing experience was supplimental to grinding, and in RoF it became about equal, and in CoTF the quest-awarded experience became far bigger than mob-killing experience (grinding).
    For comparison - mob grinding experience in TDS and TBM is more than quest reward experience, but when you add achievement rewards (Hero, Merc, Partisan etc) then it becomes about equal, so doing TDS and TBM progression is worth the time with a cherry on top in form of Heroic AA's and some currency rewards.
  20. code-zero Augur

    I believe that the catalyst for the increased XP requirements starting with CoV was the threads that began to show up as soon as the level 115 increase was announced with titles like, "Where are you going to grind out to level 115?" with very well thought out analysis of mob spawn rates, difficulty, and density with GMM winning the vote for best grinding zone. Of course that had been going on long before so CoV threw cold water on the process

    People making public their min/max strategies is just asking for the devs to make things more challending