tol is a dissapointment

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by mblache, Dec 12, 2021.

  1. Gorg00 Augur

    I think my XP/hour in BF was lower than it was in VT FWIW. I didn't stay in BF very long so i didn't science it very hard.
  2. Micker Augur

    What zone/zones do you suggest to kill in, for the best exp?
  3. Gorg00 Augur


    I preferred leveling in VT, in the upper floors there are a lot of areas where you can get a pack of like 10ish mobs that are spaced far enough apart that you'll only get 1, maybe 2 at a time (my favorite was right after the first port up) and with respawn rate being high you won't run out of mobs. Watch out as these mobs are rogues and will backstab you.

    If you have a ranger that's high enough level and AA'd enough to headshot stuff, I think KV would be a better zone even though it's lower level, just because I think you can only HS the shades in VT, but you can HS everything in KV.

    Rogues are big money DPS in ToL for grinding as soon as they're able to get the assassinate AAs for ToL level mobs. High end rogues can easily sustain like 1.5m dps with those AAs just constantly proc'ing on ToL mobs.

    I didn't have any rogues or rangers in any of my groups, so they just hunkered down in VT for the most part and just pulled as fast as possible.
    Shindius likes this.
  4. Micker Augur


    Thanks! I have a 118 rogue and ranger with CoV raid weapons, so sounds like KV is the place to be lol. They can /HS up to 117 now and 119 at 120. Looks like most mobs there are 118+, so probably be really good at 120.
    Shindius likes this.
  5. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    You & others keep asking this same question despite having been told by a few people what the answer is, maybe you are ignoring them?

    FWIW the answer was, to paraphrase, "roughly equivalent to how long it took to grind a level prior to ToV" you know, like players were doing so for roughly 18 years.

    And also, before you jump on the same bandwagon a few have in reference to early EQ's "Hell Levels" those early levels/expansions did not have the thousands of AA to grind out after hitting the level cap the game now has.
  6. Micker Augur

    I just don't like leveling up through overseer, seems so cheesy. Like just free exp for not even playing the game. The game is about killing things. You can dress it up, with some hailing of people or delivery of packages and call it a quest, but the real meat of the game is simply killing mobs. That's what I like to do in EQ and that's how I would like to level, not through some in game mini game that I click a couple mins a day or forced to do a mission. I'm not in a rush to hit 120, but they make it so that 120 is where the expansion really shines and begins. All the good AA, spells, equipment etc, are all 120. So you kinda feel rushed to get there and it's frustrating to have it be so slow.
  7. Gorg00 Augur


    No, that's not an answer, because this *is* about how long it took prior to level like, 105? 110?. This isn't a new amount of grind for 90% of EQ's history. It's only been the last few level increases prior to ToV that didn't take 40-50 hours outside of specific cheese mechanics.
    Szilent likes this.
  8. dwish Augur

    The "bad actors" are the players that run around with full box groups or full raid guild optimized groups and then say exp is fine.

    There are people in this game that still don't box regardless of how hard that is to believe. There are players that log in and don't instantly have a full group of players ready to join with optimized DPS setups at hand so they can grind that supposed 30-40% or whatever the number was you said you did. For a lot of these players trying to grind is like banging their head against the wall with little progress.

    I'm in raid guild with full raid gear, so I was 120 within a week, this task/mission system actually favors my playstyle. But, I still realize that arbitrarily making it much harder to grind exp is not good for the game, and is just going to accelerate the bleed of players which I'm already seeing in game with my dwindling friends list.
    Shindius, Skuz, Eldur and 1 other person like this.
  9. Gorg00 Augur

    To be honest, grinding favors raiders with optimized DPS, quests favor casual players.

    How fast you're able to grind through a level is a function on how quickly you're able to kill mobs, which the more stacked your group is, the more mobs you're going to kill per hour and thus the more XP. There is no situation where grinding is not better for raiders than it is for casual players.

    Now to some degree quests have this same effect, since quests typically involve killing things. However killing things is rarely the part of questing that takes the most time. Running around, talking to people, making sure everyone is on the same step, back tracking and redoing parts for missed people, etc. These things are going to narrow the gap between casual and raiders ability to complete the same quest, and in many cases a casual player could be faster than a raider if they had spent time learning the quests ahead of time and the raider did not.

    The other way in that quest driven systems are actually better for casual players than grinding is that as mentioned above, grinding is purely a function of how many mobs you kill in a set period of time. If you have 3 hours to log in, find a group, and play EQ, then some non trivial portion of that is likely going to be taken up in the preparatory phases (getting buffs, getting a group, getting to where you're going to grind, breaking the camp etc). All things that drastically reduce the amount of XP you're going to gain that day.

    However, with a quest based system, particularly solo quests, not so much group quests, is that your progress gets saved each day, and in many cases some parts of those quest can be done solo (at least 3 of the quests in this expansion are able to do completely solo since they're just running around talking/turning things in). You can also shift some of the time mentioned above like getting the quests, making sure people are on the quests, etc to take place in parallel with the finding of a group, for more optimization. The big thing here is that since progress gets saved and you can move some of the dead time in questing to coincide with dead time in getting a group, you actually get much more efficiency out of this than someone who logs on with a preset static ready to go or someoen who sits and grinds for hours on end.
    Shindius, code-zero and FranktheBank like this.
  10. Qelil Augur

    You sir are correct.

    After a year back this is not the game I loved for so long anymore. It's very similar but the core way of playing that everything else is built on top of has been pulled out from under it. That's why I took a pass on this expansion and the three annual subscriptions I had which would renew this month are all cancelled.

    I am not angry nor pitching a fit here. Actually, I am sad that I no longer have options I had fun with anymore unless I want to level yet another class to 70 or 75. That still plays like it ever did. I honestly don't care whatever other options exist but I miss the one that worked for me and I know I am not alone there reading this thread. I am not into boxing. It kills immersion for me. It adds complexity (yes not rocket science, yes I could and have tried it) that I don't want. I just want to be whatever single character I am in the world at any given time. Once upon a time that was not a problem.
    Shindius, Skuz and Eldur like this.
  11. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    There isn't an issue earning AA, you gain an AA every 1 or 2 kills in ToL, I think I gained 4 AA with no lesson or potions when we killed a named in AoB.

    The slower leveling doesn't bother me, the only ones who really need to level quickly are the raiders and they seem to be doing alright in that department.

    Players complained once upon a time about level increases and players getting max level the day the expansion was introduced, now players have to gain more exp to level they are complaing about that also.

    We have a whole year to get levels, AA, gear, hunter, collects, achievements. Everyone in such a rush to get everything done in the first couple of months they miss the fun of playing the game. Enjoy the journey.
    Tegila and Shindius like this.
  12. sieger Augur


    This isn't a good response because leveling wasn't done at a fixed speed for the 18 years prior to ToV. The base XP rate for example was increased in I believe Gates of Discord and later Depths of Darkhollow, higher ZEM zones were added. Going 1-60 in Luclin for example was much, much faster than going 1-60 in era in Kunark, due to the addition of strong leveling zones and other factors. Going 1-70 in PoR was faster than going 1-65 in PoP era. Then TSS came and dramatically increased leveling speed.

    Some expansions had fast leveling and slow leveling going forward from there, SoF was sometimes noted as being slow XP, as was VoA. Most expansions considered "slow" the problem was usually not anything to do with the XP curve, it was usually more an issue with mob HP and player ability to kill X mobs in Y hours going in the wrong direction. By 105 things shifted to being able to level quite quickly at the max level. If you want to go back to where anyone serious will be max level a few hours after launch--that's fine, but you don't get to pretend that norm is based on 18 years of EQ history, it just isn't.
    Shindius and Szilent like this.
  13. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I don't recall any point prior to ToV where a kill of a white con got you such a low fraction of a percentage point for XP, they had to add that fractional system in beforehand to even allow for it, in retrospect that was foreshadowing.
  14. Tappin Augur

    They added a blue line for one orange bubble back in the day because of level 59. However, level 59 being slow was the result of bad programming or the inability to do it and they just did not have fix for it until later on (hell levels were never intended).

    I do agree with you though, they added the extra decimal place because of ToV.
  15. Tappin Augur

    I am not complaining about slow exp. I am complain about the designed discrepancy between different methods of leveling in which one method was more recently added to the game. It's not good for the community to reward people for not actually playing - logging in and clicking a few boxes, then accepting a few task adds, then log off.
  16. Szilent Augur

    That hypothetical scenario wouldn't be good, but that is not rewarded. People who do that level many times slower than those who play.
  17. Stewgottz Augur


    Sometimes, that's all the time people have for EQ today.

    I agree with your overall sentiment.
  18. Tappin Augur


    People who used the play the game (for a more significant time), no longer do so. They log on, click boxes while they wait for task adds. If they fail to get enough AA for raids, there is always the loyalty vendor. It's much harder to find groups for anything at all, but more particular the non mission parts of progression. It also has a negative impact on current raids, since people are not logging in for them, because of the slow exp. So don't tell me it has no impact on the community, your not telling the truth.
  19. Szilent Augur

    You're just piling baseless assertions on red herrings on attribution errors, higher and higher and higher.

    which people? no one I know. Sounds like lazy a-holes. Anyone doing this is not being rewarded by game systems for this; they are being left in the dust by players that actually play.

    much harder for who? not for me, not for anyone in my guild, nor any of the half dozen populous guilds on Cazic server. If anyone who wants to play is having trouble progressing, they just need to hook up with other players that also want to progress. There's no suffering for lack of company from those that don't.

    I've no idea what this means.
    People you know are not logging in for raids that don't exist till this Saturday?

    Or they're not logging on for…something else(?)… and you attribute this to the existence of routes other than brainless grinding for days to get levels? Faster routes that require engagement with expansion content, and much slower routes that don't? Even though these mystery folks totally can still do their brainless exp grind & get there.
    Yinla likes this.
  20. Tappin Augur

    Hmmm, there 4 threads (currently running), and you don't know it hurts? I guess ignorance is bliss.