Suggestion for Live Servers Levels ~60-75

I think the TLP's are a tremendous catch up mechanic. The best thing they did was make them a yearly event.

The complexity of EQ is what I find interesting and frankly challenged me to leave Fippy TLP and hop into LIVE. I kept looking at my warriors aa's and being like those seem awesome but I dont feel like waiting.. EQ isn't for everyone, and thats cool. Not everything is for everyone.

As far as the user experience from 60-80 or whatever. What if a TLP player had a one time redeemable FREE button press. They could make their toon a heroic toon (yes level and gear) on a live server.

Gotta do it right though.

The character just gets all the crap a heroic toon gets, that TLP toon keeps everything it already has (clickies, epics achieves etc)

One time use

Yes this is essentially what wow does on their servers (they copy everything from EQ, copy this from them Lol)

No this doesn't fix anything about lvl 60-80.

Yes it would be cooler to transfer a toon to live with clickies and fun things you get in era, actually in era and may use into live still (bp clickies etc) vs leveling a toon and going back to get them.

You make several valid points, and I agree with most of it, but I disagree that the XP rate is wrong. The biggest problem I keep seeing demonstrated over and over is that returning players not familiar with this content are putting everything they get into their XP bar and ignoring their AAs. Combat-related AAs make things a lot easier for pretty much every class, and once you have those, you'll be killing more things solo and killing them faster. The net result is an improvement in time taken to reach 75. There are those who will say just ignore AAs for the time being and wait for the autogrant to kick in and backfill what you're missing, but that is never how I've done it. When this level range was in-era, it was tuned to encourage players to think of levelling as XP and AA all mixed together.

A subscribed player will soon (next week) be able to hire a J5 merc at level 1, and that will make a big difference. You're still going to hit the well-known tank merc wall, but it won't happen until after 75 and not at 60 as you've already seen with the lower-tier mercs. Once you're at 75 you have HAs available, and once at 85 you have the Overseer.

The hot zone tasks have been neglected for years, and there are other recent threads specifically on this point. If any development time at all was available to work on lower-level player experience, my vote would go to a revamp of this system. More zones used in the rotation (or just eliminate the rotation and let players choose from a list) and additional quests for the higher level ranges. The hot zone XP bonus gets you what you're looking for, if only they could make that system more versatile.

Defiant gear, as you've already observed, is only designed to get you to the 75-80 range. At that point you have two options: 1) raid, or 2) start doing group progression quest lines for T1-4 group gear, which begins at SoF. There will also be some crafted armor options along the way if you want to make a TS player's life more worthwhile.

IMHO they nailed it with the Hero's Journey, and that's always been the first-go-round path I've recommended to a brand new player, or a long-absent player who has never seen this content before. A second levelling path set up like the Hero's Journey but using different zones would be a nice addition, but I would be floored if they ever budgeted the dev time to create it.

That wouldn't hurt either.

I agree with just about all of the points made in this post, however my reasoning for an xp rate boost is I figured it would take the least amount of resources to achieve. Obviously there should be a major overhaul to the game to attract new subscribers, and right now I guess the TLPs are the answer.

I also agree that the subset of players who are new/returning that come to live to start from scratch is probably pretty low, but it does exist as I have helped out these players in the past also:


Knowing that the subset of players who this will help is probably on the low end of the scale, and assuming DPG doesn't have the time or interest in revamping a large portion of the game for new/returning players to live I was hoping that an xp rate fix would be something very quick and easy to program, even for a new member of the programming team. (full disclosure I am not a programmer so I have no idea what this entails)

The levelling journey in this game can be fun, and I find the 1-60 path (on live) one of the best parts of this game likely due to a combination of Nostalgia and simplicity. The timesink after 60 though is disproportionately punishing. It isn't really a slow down of xp rate, you essentially hit a brick wall.

For the record I tried the Hero's Journey path back in 2016ish and the xp rate and progression speed in Oceangreen Hills was so painfully slow it drove me to quit.

Maybe even lowering Overseer requirements to level 60-70 would help, at least it gives the casual player a chance to earn xp passively and assist in catching up.

I am really glad to see the Merc changes that are on Test, I think this is a big step in the right direction and will help even if nothing else is done.

You realize the complete and utter irony of this right? Like.. do you even EQ? Seriously?

This HAS to be one of those moments in history where God himself reaches down from the heavens, and slaps you with one of those gigantic iron skillets... just to complete the term "Irony."

Cause you literally just explained EQ's ENTIRE HISTORY without even realizing you were doing it.

They spent the better part of 20 years doing absolutely nothing BUT catering to the top 1% of the servers.

So complaining about them "doing something for 1% of the population" is hands down the most laughable thing Ive read on this forum in 20 years. Thanks for that.

I don't agree with this conclusion at all.

Content is developed & tuned with 2 specific populations in mind.

Groupers.
Raiders.

That's going to be a lot more than 1% of anything.