Developer mistakes that drove away casual players.

Have you tried the missions in current content? It in fact does rain loot and most of it goes to tribute because nobody actually wants it. That's how much of it there is.

Yeah a lot of the time our guild groups invite LFG casuals from general chat to fill the last group slot, then assign the whole chest to them after we beat the missions. They're typically ecstatic.

OMG, this x 1000!

I played WoW until they did this nonsense after Legion. No lie, after several TRILLION, with a T Artifact Points farmed and level gains to suddenly have it all just taken away like.....start a whole new game. I never even logged in again.

World of Tanks did something similar with update 6.0 on console, just substituted a whole new game pretending to be the same title.

I rather like that an AoN or CoS looted 20 years ago is exactly the same on new TLPs. People LIKE knowing what to expect and all have their own ways of developing new characters. Change that and you'll kill EQ dead.

It would also KILL TLPing and force EQ to HAVE to run 2 sets of code and geometry or lose the TLP surfers who all have their ways and rhythms from level 1+

the dependence on triggers and whatnot is meh. HAVING to use 3rd party ANYTHING in order to meet raid requirements to me is fail game design. If most raid guilds REQUIRE GINA etc, then it should have been baked in to begin with, or eliminated. Let the game BE the game and not sketchy 3rd party warez.

I completely agree. The numerous quality of life improvements which game developers have consistently failed to meet demands on are why we are in this current state of the game. DBG's reaction to programmatic usage to function this game at a high level is why EverQuest is in terminal decline.

one thing that hurts this game is live human players being compared unfavorably to the parses of botted by 3rd party software characters. Robots never miss casts, humans do. AI parses serve to discourage real players, but AI doesn't PAY for EQ.


Edited to add

The exponentially increasing AA counts totally skew toward 3rd party helpers. 65K AAs is a long road to hoe to a new / returning player wanting to join the raiding scene before a full expansion runs out.

If a new or returning player has such a hard time, without "directional aids" like PLing and AFK guild groups, reaching relevant raiding in less than the duration of an expansion, abandonment is huge. In light of this, they NERF per kill XP, which is dreadfully counterintuitive, but I believe decisions like this are made to engender sales on new level 100 heroics and XP potions, rather than to foster player retention.


In the last 11 expansions, any character I had in any raid guild directly saw these groups. Why do so many feel it necessary?

THAT is a design failure. (but will sell more heroics)

Their messaging is clear, buy or die.

(or bot...shh

All i get from the post is you don't really like Everquest. Maybe try wow, and leave the game as it is for those of us who actually enjoy the challenge.

It is not only the disproportionate power of raid gear, it is the disproportionate power of and between everything. This does include expansions, AllAccess, stats bloat, skills/AA bloat, progression power, augs, focus items, and many more including player skills and knowledge. EQ is far beyond only two different playerbase demographics (raiders vs. non raiders). For the devs that does make it nearly impossible to hit the content sweet spot between hard and easy. It will be perfect for only about 20% players. For 80% it will always be to hard or to easy. That is a structural problem which had grown year by year.

In the first few years EQ was an easy, clearly structured and thereby controlable and enjoyable game. It still was challenging and hardly soloable for many melee classes. Green con mobs were pretty safe to solo but everything else was a risk. This got changed by boxing and later by mercs and now everyone can level up his lvl 85+ toons by just playing Overseer without any risk, gear and skills. That made all other content obsolete.

There are signs that the raid system is only receiving that much attention and rewards because a few devs are hardcore raiders who think that this should be the best playstyle for everyone. They ignore the facts that players no longer want or can invest massive amounts of time into raiding and that there are big barriers for taking part in raids. Many players do not like raids at all. Most players only do raid BECAUSE it does offer the best gear, not because it is fun. From a risk vs reward view raids are not always the most challenging content so why should they always offer the best rewards ? It can be very unchallenging when 50 players do zerg a raid boss and most raid guilds do farm raid loot easily with proven routines. Of course it can be time consuming but it does not always have to.

And to say that TLP's are the reason why EQ is surviving, is a large misconception, it has a big push at the start of a TLP but then it slowly becomes less of the reason, the raiders that pay to raid on every live server are the people that are continuing to fund EQ. I don't know the exact numbers but I'd guess a 60/40, 60% live 40% tlp.

Sounds like a skill issue TBH. If you're getting beat by a bot it's because you're not playing well in some way. (assuming same class, similar gear/aa/trophy/etc)

I returned well over 6 months into ToV I was in my 80s with an AA count that would've been great in OoW but was terribly otherwise. Found a nightly group to play with and just works up in levels, ground missions, and did 100% of the hunters/etc. By the end of the expansion I was level cap, max AA, and with a mix of t1 and t2 raid geared. Didn't have all my trophys / heroic AA / perfect augs but got most of the way there.

Grouping for 2-3 hours a night 5-7 nights a week makes it fairly easy to catch up if you're playing smart w/r/t what content you do. Blindly sitting in guild lobby spamming LFG in general chat will not. It's a social game. The concerns I see about raid gear being too powerful, or that they need to give everyone their owns drops is kinda laughable to me. Hitting content repeatedly to get everyone what they want *is the game*. If everyone got their own special loot table and got what they wanted on the first run then people would stop logging in 2 days after an expansion drops instead of several months.

Please never, ever design a game. Please. Never. Ever. What you describe above sounds like the pinnacle of blasé gaming - a triumph of the middling, a nod to mediocrity, rebuke to the exemplary.

Oh, Iven. You're so misled. Raiding isn't fun? You're either twisting your own opinions to suit your argument or you've never raided. Raiding is MAJOR fun!!!

The reason raid gear is best is because raiding should yield the best gear. Risk v Reward is the very premise EverQuest is based upon. It's right there in the name: RAID GEAR. I don't hear causals complaining any time raiding guilds host pickup raids and random the loot. Or give away raid nuggets to the server. But when someone who has major FOMO starts whining about the gear divide gets bent out of shape the mad hatters come out of the woodwork.

Want the best gear? Go after it. No one is stopping you. You could form your own raiding guild and do it. But instead you're here, woe is me.

And here I am, responding to yet another one of Iven's posts of insanity. Woe, indeed.

I mean...I personally play a lot more than that (which I'm not overly proud of). But 2-3 hours a night 5-7 days a week? I dunno man. I don't think people should be expected to do that. An hour a night seems more reasonable for the average well-adjusted adult with family/responsibilities.

Group loot is not even in the top 5, if I made a list of why I box. Not having to group with other people is at least reasons 1-4.

I agree with Strawberry, stop making new content, lets just focus on TLPs. For what it's worth to ears that don't want to hear it, eyes that refuse to read it, and a mind that can not understand it - Raid gear does not make the difference that you think it does. And modern times vs time of release demonstrates quite the opposite in reality. Where earlier expansions is where raid gear gaps were truly large and impactful. Over the years they have vastly decreased the stat gap between raid and group. Your 'facts' don't align with reality in this case but that's not to say that you haven't made valid points elsewhere within. But you should have just left this morsel out, your post was fine without the lies.

The reason GINA is required is that the average EQ player is really really bad and they need GINA telling them what to do or their raid leader yelling at them constantly. Can't really blame the devs for that.

That's me. I'm the average EQ player.

Oh and you forgot lazy and easily distracted

Neither of it. I were active in raid guilds for a few years and it nearly ruined my life. I know exactly how much fun it can be but think about why it can be so fun. Is it the loot, is it the socializing and the illusion of not being alone anymore, or even both ? However I knew players who absolutely hated raids because they don't wanted to be commanded like little kids and did not wanted to join a kindergarten. This might be different today but the players back in the old days were young and many raids had their own dramas.

Loot greed brought out the worst of young players including a (fake ?) suicide attempt. Players took the game much to serious and it had replaced their RL. It was a very chaotic and crazy social experience. I do remember that many of the first EQ players did quit during TSoV when all that hardcore raiding was pulling more and more players into raid guilds and it mostly was because of loot greed and the illusionary wish of becoming powerfull and famous. They did quit because raiding was destroying the activity in group content and those players were unhappy with the direction that the game took.

This is a (closed) circular argument. You added at least "Risk vs. Reward" and I already gave an argument in my last post that this is not always the case. It is a myth that raids are generally more challenging, it is just a different play style and gaming experience and there are so many different personalities. Playing solo or in an experience group can be MUCH more challenging than a raid even that a single raid mob is much more powerfull than a random named mob.

Lets say there is a solo player who plays 2,000 hours a year and a raider who does also play 2,000 hours a year. Both do face challenges, some harder than others but all in all it will be even. Why should the raider get better gear than the solo player ? Does he invest more time or risk ? No. There is just no logical reason. It is just that the devs decided to do so. If they would focus more on group content and better group loot there would be much less raiders. It would make group content more FUN, maybe even MAJOR FUN !!! See what I mean ? It does depend on the rewards and where the devs do put the focus on. They do drive the car, the players are only the co-drivers.

Yeah, they are everywhere lurking in the shadows.

I think that your discussion style could need a revamp but I can live with that. I don't want the best gear and I think that gear is overrrated. My play style for sure is different to yours, young one, and I currently focus on Overseer as everything else is not time efficient. Old ppl don't have much time to play. Getting old and cold.. *croaaak*

We should form a club.

It is different today. On live it's much less "hardcore" than TLPs because of the duration of events and no need to clear trash. Lots of guilds can clear content in 2-3 days a week raiding 2-3 hours per evening. But could also depends on the guild you join.

The logical reason is all of the work that goes into maintaining the organization that is a raiding guild. Balancing rules, policies, strats, execution, class balance, personalities, schedules, and doing it all while maintaining constructive leadership and followership that makes people WANT to show up every day and raid with YOUR guild.

If you can't see the monumental undertaking that is, and why it deserves better loot than a small handful of people jumping online and doing group stuff, then I don't know what else to tell you.