I suspect that it is. I remember having a harder time at 120 with my bst pet tanking in Dragon Necropolis than he did in TOL BOA, and NOS difficulty seems to be the same as TOL. I love all the people on this thread trying to make this into a raid versus group issue. They obviously didn't comprehend what I wrote at the start, and are beating a strawman to make themselves feel good. No one is asking for group game to be challenging to raiders. The expectation, though, is that NOS difficulty should be greater than TOL which is greater than COV. That isn't true. Which indicates a lack of balancing in the design.
CoV was over-tuned. NoS is fine, slightly easier tuning is more conducive to socializing in a game built on socializing.
That's your opinion and my opinion is 100% opposite of yours. If content were more difficult, it would force people to come together and play their class to accomplish goals. Instead, when people find it too easy, they do it themselves. When its easier; such as a TON of AAs on rewards, named mobs without abilities, or partisan tasks which are glorified merc kill lists with hails; people tend to run through content and not stick around for more then two months. Not to mention... easier content leads to upset classes of players due to balance issues. I'm sure lots of old timers here can remember times in the past when monks were the preferred solo class because they could tank on easy content. Or mage beam kiting because trash mobs were just lazy and didn't like to summon, cast, or regen. Or zerkers before decap was rebalanced. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to see every zone in an expansion stacked with beat-stick wielding mobs. I'm all for seeing a T1 zone on the same level as a T2 in the previous expansion (think FireFall Pass). In general, every expansion should be harder then the previous. It's easier to see / feel a difficulty increase with lvl increase expansions. But on these follow-up expansions, mob difficulty should be harder; not the same and not easier. Oh and when I say add difficulty, it doesn't mean just let them put more hps on a mob so we have to fight it longer. The Majority of named mobs should still have abilities like AEs, or mini emotes to follow like run for a cure / avoid the target ring, or fizzle debuffs or stuns. Maybe one which mitigates melee but takes extra spell damage (and vise versa or a different named). An easy example is the ShadowHaven mission. The guy you fight changes forms and has different abilities depending on which form is up. What would be tooo difficult if normal named mobs had -1- of those abilities on a smaller scale? The code is already in the game, and its already in the group content. It's not an issue of raid vs group players. It's been done before with named mobs and it was better. And imo, they should de-couple the merc & partisan task achievements from other achievements. Merc tasks should be a true hunting list and not a kill 7-15 and return. Put them up there like... kill 50, kill 75, and kill 100 of a mob type in each zone. But doing this, don't link the merc ach to the first rank of an evolving item. Partisan tasks should be more then running around for hails and go kill 10 and return with 5 drops. Again.. imo, they could scale the difficulty of these tasks too; partisan 1 being basic while partisan 3 being harder. Make some part within the task require more then just kill and return. They could easily put in non-active mobs similar to the shroom in PC partisan #3 for each zone. Making partisan 3 for each zone a task which needs other live players to handle.
Early PoP, GoD, Underfoot, TBL disprove your own statement. Harder content requires more ideal group setups and more restrictive grouping. It’s easier to get people together with easier content.
Funny how you picked those examples. GoD was a bad expansion. Nothing was good about it. The art, the zone design, the concept, all yuck. Had OoW came before GoD, GoD would have been a better expansion. PoP is likely the most loved expansion of all times. Opinions aside, PoP was likely the longest living expansion in all of EQ history. People were still going back to these zones 2, 3, and 4 years later. Yes, raiding with 72 sucked and raid flagging was horrible. But the content lasted without question. People had to work together to get flagged or grouping for xp. Content wasn't a run through for anyone and even xp camps needed live people and not full of afk boxers. There was a lot of players then, but the expansion had content with multiple zones at different difficulties. TBL wasn't horrible, but it was different. Bad idea to put a flagging system in the 2nd zone; not to mention a series of missions to get the flag. Bad idea to make sky islands and bridges in non-lev zones and as the only non-keyed zones. If they had Esianti opened and GMM open on expansion release, the expansion would have been a lot better received by the player community.
You can make all the excuses for it you want, but the fact is people don't want group content to be extremely difficult. That's why player numbers were better 8 months into ToV (where it was extremely accessible to new player / players in group gear with nothing but autogrant AA) than they were in TBL. I'm all for having challenging ZONES inside an expansion, but requiring ideal or near-ideal group comps just to get content done will just make people quit. As it turns out, the playerbase isn't 18 anymore. We don't have the time or patience to spent 45 minutes (let alone multiple hours) trying to scrounge up a full / perfect group to do group level content. It's bad enough that they keep throwing in all these "Tank can't get it" achieves that require specific groups, if an entire expansion or even the majority of it had that kind of nonsense built in I would just skip that one. And I imagine most of my group would as well and we've got more patience and love the grind more than most. Last xpac I wound up with enough mission currency to purchase 3 full sets of type 5s.
You need both easy and hard content. Some people get together for the easy stuff. Other people get together for the hard stuff. They're different types of people. NOS could use a greater spread. Easier stuff could be a tad easier so that the molo rogues, clerics, etc., can tackle some stuff. The harder stuff could be a bit harder IMO so that people need to team up. This expansion feels pretty lonely.
I do agree that COV was overtuned, which is why I didn't complain about TOL being so easy. I was just expecting NOS to be a bump up in difficulty over TOL, which doesn't appear to be the case. To be honest, though, they have a problem with increasing difficulty in non-level expansions. Not all pets have access to power increases, namely the lesser pets like enchanter and shaman. What they should do is not give pet archetype increases on level expansions, but reserve those for non level expansions instead.
Level expansions are where you would need the increases for players/pets the most. You are going from fighting level 120 mobs to 125 mobs, who will obviously be much stronger. A non level increase will have the same level mobs and should be similar in difficulty. They need to give you something to do, so they give you some AA and make gear better, so you will want to play. Honestly, the only time I see people really get upset and quit, is when the game is too hard. That's why they need to make tier 1 easy zones to exp in, tier 2 moderate difficulty and maybe a couple higher end tier 3 zones that are challenging. Original EQ did that perfectly, from freeport to lower guk. Even lower guk had stages of difficulty, within the zone itself, the deeper you went in. That is how the expansions should be.
I don't think AA's and gear are deciding factors. After first couple of months of CoV I went back to replay ToV and TBL sevral times over - reason is simple, the unique and useful rewards for my alts. TBL Jann's veil and RZ earring advanced stages, which provide unique augments and RZ earring itself being decent (stat-wise and aug slow-wise). My lvl 120 alts do not wear single gear item from ToV or TBL (even augs were mostly upgraded by now), but I am yet to do some more ToV RZ earring progression for some of them (done all TBL progression for the veil already). And CoV - after collecting 4 restless ores for augments by abusing Zlandikar none have done anyting in CoV yet. RoS was a place to visit for Emperor familiar, but it was upgraded since then and now my alts visit RoS on rare occasions for Heroic AA's. EoK is visited more often - AA rewards for Paragon missions is outstanding for the effort. I think all my alts will do some NoS progression due to those awesome clickie rewards in Deepshade, meanwhile I doubt they'll go back to CoV, because "AA and gear" is not a factor, just unique lasting rewards are, imho. ToV and ToL will be reused in time due to leveleing rewards, TBL and NoS will be revisited for unique item rewards. CoV will not - nothing in there worth seeing. And it is not related to era gear or difficulty of the expansion at the time. Just lasting rewards matter. Imho.
I was talking about a new expansion, without levels. They give you AA and gear upgrades, so you buy it and have something new to do and incentive to buy it. Doing old content is fun, but you still want the new AA and gear for your toons. I exp in old expansions mostly, but buy the newest ones, to unlock levels and AA.
I recently pulled 8 mobs by accident on my paladin in mearates (also forgot to have a merc up). It was more of a challenge to stay alive through the various punts, stuns, and melee slow than any content i've encountered in nos or tol. I do hope the next expansion at least has a zone or two that has some trash and all named with decent abilities. With the majority being just tank and spank there isn't a lot of challenge. With little challenge the need to group with others diminishes to accomplish stuff. Not to mention with how augments drop this expansion, if I don't want to roll on anything; I'll just 2 box a name in firefall (sk/bst or paladin/ranger) Only name I can recall being annoying was the gargoyle in basilica in the last two expansions. Point I'm getting at is that at level 120 the difficulty for an expansion made 4+ years ago should not be harder than current content.
Every expansion has a wide variety difficult to easy mobs. Or one zone is easy and another is so hard everyone stays away. That's why there's always 50 people in sathirs tomb, and only a few in gorowyn. Gorowyn isn't even difficult, and the mob density is probably greater. But still, the lower hp of mobs and slightly better exp in Sathirs tomb means everything. Of course, that's just one example. In any case, no expansion will be as bad as TOV. Where the difficulty spike makes zero sense at all. I can't imagine trying to do EW in t2 burning lands group gear. The mobs in Mearatas aren't a joke, but come on. It's like right when we all started handling the AOE's and DD mob procs from previous expansions they were well like clearly that isn't hard enough. Cue TOV where every mob has a DD proc that also slaps a 60k a tick dot on you. Giants in EW quadding for 70k a hit is just us getting trolled.
That does add more variety. In about all past expansions most mobs had pretty equal HP which was a bit boring. Tons of HP could also be intended to make some mobs uninteresting for farmers. Like for quest and population flavor mobs. Golems and other gigantic/massive creatures definetly should have many HP.
This is fake news. That's exactly what people did in era: progress through EW in TBL T2 gear. I certainly did it myself, tankless, group TBL T2 gear, GMM invisibles, at level 113. Once my primary beastlord's new warder got summoned at level 113, my group of BST, MAG, RNG went to EW and did the Partisan and Mercenary progression (well, except Griklor, missions is the whole diffrent ballgame). And then went to GD and did the same, all while wearing TBL T2 gear, no raid pets or weapons, just lvl 113, in-era. And my group wasn't even the race winner in my non-raiding guild. ToV was and still is awesome.
My recent experience, since I get to content several years late Been doing T1 ToV recently, and it's pretty much on auto-pilot. Went to T2 zones, and it's no joke WAY more challenging. Mobs hit for a lot more, and with multi-pulls hard to avoid, so it's very careful, slow going. Not sure if the big increase in damage is the mobs themselves, or that my tank had enough AC in T1 to yawn through encounters, and now in T2 the mob ATK is much higher. Either way, it was a much bigger difference than I was expecting.
Let me see if I get this straight. TOV zones on FV being like a ghost town is a figment of my imagination because you were forced to go through TOV with garbage gear? Maybe you missed my comment about how there's always 5 groups in Sathir's Tomb. Why are they not in Tower Of Frozen Shadows? According to you, TOV rocks because you owned it burning lands gear. Thanks for your contribution, though. Yeah, my bard with over 8k ac can roll most of T1 TOV now. But I was getting wrecked there untill well after 115 and t1 Tol group gear. Velks isn't terrible, nor is CC, or rygor mines. TOFS is a nightmare, I got to floor 4 or 5 and was like you know what. I'm done. I feel the same about kael, or really any zone where 1 bad pull is garaunteed to leave you with 5 minutes of merc revive time. My maxed out 120 healer merc should not get shredded by mobs that came out 4 expansions ago. The other poster replying brought up the Griklor mission, like it's some complex dive into game mechancis. Yeah, the mission is literally a stupid DPS check, that's all it is.
No, you did not get this traight. You got it all twisted up. "ToV zones on FV being like a ghost town" is a figment of FV being FV, a server with special ruleset. On other live servers ToV is still quite visited expansion. And I was not forced to go through ToV. I was eager to go through ToV, in a very adequate TBL T2 gear, which you for some snobish reason claim to be "garbage". And groups at the time overpopulated Sathir Tomb because is is much easier zone than ToFS and many people chose "a path of least resistance" or "low hanging fruit", meanwhile some other people like to enjoy different things in games. And in-era ToFS of BristleBane was quite crowded and occupied zone. Again, FV - a special server with special ruleset. And according to me, if you happened to read my posts, ToV rocks because it was a great design, which succeeded to be enjoyable in-era for people wearing TBL gear, as a playground during CoV era, a great revisiting place for leveling alts since ToL era, excellent starting point for new level 100 Heroic PL path, place to come back, hone the skills for new classes while mastering RZ earring and in general - worthy playtime. You are welcome. Every time you need words of wisdom and sacred knowledge of EQ play come and ask - I'll enlighten you. Perhaps playing a bard is not your thing. Griklor mission is indeed a simple 2mil dps check, at which point it becomes a 20-40 second trivial fight. But wasn't it mentioned in a context of lvl 113 group in TBL gear doing it in-era? Yeah, back then it was "some complex dive into game mechanics". Some people do not play on FV, where owning raid gear is a must otherwise you are looked down upon. On other live servers there is plenty of people playing in group gear and enjoying the game from a whole different prospective. You should try it one day - do the progression wearing in-era group gear. you may even enjoy it, if you manage to succeed.
