Ditch Overseer and just make exp better

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by hein, Jan 18, 2023.

  1. robber baron Journeyman

    Per the patch notes and other threads, they added an auto-fill function which makes Overseer less annoying to use.

    That said, they ought to increase xp rates by 50%.
    Windance likes this.
  2. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    Doubt overseer is there for something to do when you are LFG I mean it takes a couple minutes at most then you wait for hours.

    I suspect it it may encourage some folks to keep accounts active when they take breaks since logging in for a few minutes a day nets them some exp.

    I hate overseer but I use it for the exp.
  3. Dharken Elder

    Lets consider something right quick. And the numbers I am using are from a 113.
    This level 113 is in a group with 120s, slaughtering everything in their path.

    The mob levels are 114 and 115, so Yellow+
    The 113 is getting:
    0.064% per kill for a 115
    0.056% per kill for a 114.

    Now... Lets do a 30 minute LoTD, The numbers would be 0.128 and 0.112.
    If this group can 100% slaughter, non stop for the entire 30 minutes at 3 kills per minute, that LoTD (using all level 115 mobs) would net 11.52% experience.

    Now... Lets also consider this. That group still doesnt kill that fast, they are not the greatest geared. They average 2 kills per minute. That turns that lesson grind in to 7.68% experience on a Lesson burn.
    So on a non lesson burn, 7.68% per HOUR on a 2 kill per minute group. Thats 13 hours of grinding to get to level 114, where the experience tanks again.

    Is Overseer the best source of Experience in EQ? Not 1-111, But it sure does make a close argument for it at 112+. And remember, that will get even worse by 118, where a character is getting 0.03% per kill, grinding wise, thats 3,333 kills. How many kills does your group do in a night? Because 9-10% exp from Overseer is going to be better.
  4. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    It doesn't matter which one is better, because (here's the kicker) you can do both ;)
    Roxas MM, Laronk, Rijacki and 2 others like this.
  5. Windance Augur

    I agree with the making XP better.

    I think they have a formula to calculate how much XP you get based on the expected DPS for the expansion.

    My group gets 80-100 AA/hr. That has been fairly consistent since around EoK. My DPS goes up but the mobs HP go up so the time to kill is mob is about the same as well.

    The major difference is the XP required for each level has gone up about 10% PER LEVEL. With that compound interest levels are now taking ~10x times as long to complete just doing the daily go cycle mobs in zone and maybe kill a named or two.

    Bottom line XP per kill has stagnated while the XP per level has ballooned, kind of like wages vs costs of goods post pandemic.
    Ileasa likes this.
  6. Dharken Elder

    Sure! Absolutely! Go find the group, get the kills in and do your overseer. But I think if you can read the other posts, you will definitely see that the whole.. Group Aspect... of things Sucks more than a Hoover.

    Despite what the keyboard warriors want to spout, the group aspect of this game is dying. Its getting worse and worse with every expansion. If you dont get your mercs and partisans done at the drop of the expansion, you are going to be on an uphill battle, or getting them done with people who take pitty on you. On my server, People have sat for DAYS in general looking for groups for them. By the end of the day the only EXP they pulled in was the overseer exp they completed.

    And yeah, we have the people who continue to try to solo through their LFG experience to earn a bit more EXP. 1 death even with a 96% rez, is very impacting when mobs give 0.03% per kill.
    Try to depend on mercenaries? Have you had one tank for you recently? Speed bumps.

    One of our guild tanks advertised for OoL. Looked for all players, Advertised in General, pulled from the guild. Even with their advertisements, that was 3 hours of looking for people.
    How many people can play for long duration? Because most of my guild plays in bursts. If it took 3 hours with a well geared tank to get the mission even started, they yet again would net nothing from the evening except Overseer experience.
    The model is broken. The group experience is broken. Mob bloat and damage is broken.

    ~When someone is saying that Overseer is the best experience, it is a truth. Because for them, that was the best opportunity for them when nothing else was there.
    Eldur and Ileasa like this.
  7. Iven Antonius Bayle

    It is a small improvement but for uncommon, rare and elite quests it can be even more annoying as the player does not want to use elite agents for all agent slots. Generally the overseer lag does minimize the time advantage and the potential of the new auto-fill function but it added more comfort.

    In addition to the auto-fill function there ought be major improvements instead since years. Overseer has still a clunky and laggy UI that does not show the mission categories (as icons) and their duration and it does also not sort the missions by them so that the player has to search for the wanted missions inbeteen a wall of text.

    From the eleven Overseer suggestions that I had posted more than a year ago, not a single one had been implemented. Some of them were around since 2-3 years, spreaded over different Overseer threads, like that one:
    That would be so much more QoL than auto-fill.


    Instead of auto-fill and now as an addition I would like to see:

    Very important would be also an agent mass conversion and to cap and structurize the amount of agents. The game does need a much better mechanic to gather non-collected agents than the pure random generator. When having 3,000 agents it does take about one minute for each conversion quest on a modern desktop CPU ! The more agents, the more lag: That is a serious construction flaw. The whole package of my Overseer suggestions can be found here:

    The big Overseer revamp
    Andarriel likes this.
  8. FYAD Augur

    Pickup-grouping is dead, there just aren't enough players at all level ranges to support the sort of gameplay where you log in and announce in general chat that you're LFG. People play with their established circles of friends and guilds that have large numbers of players online during the day. Changing ogreseer vs kill xp is not going to change that part of the equation. They could make kill xp fantastic, you're still not going to get invited to group with randos in general chat.

    IMO, they should tune all static zone content around soloing (kills, merc/part, rares, etc.). Any class, cleric included, should be able to solo/molo effectively for XP and rare named mobs in static and pick zones. Then create more mission type content tuned for groups and remove lockout timers to give people the incentive to group.
    Andarriel, Ileasa and Genoane like this.
  9. Iven Antonius Bayle

    It would be to harsh to tune all static zone content for moloing. The game does need molo, group and raid content for being able to offer better rewards for more challenging mobs and a pure molo game would be just boring. It won't hurt to increase the percentual size of molo content at the cost of group content. Progression tasks are often a huge barrier for single players and could be made easier without having bottlenecks that do require a group.

    Basically that would be the way to go and the game is being set similiar to this already:

    Molo content: T1 gear
    Group content: T2 gear
    Hard group content (for partially raid geared PCs): T3 gear
    Raid content: T4 gear

    As far as I can see the game is going into the direction of a final level cap. That would explain why mobs in new expansions do reward such small amounts of experience. The devs might try to accustom the players to that. PCs won't need much xp when reaching that point. It does not mean that the game would close its doors, instead it would be a huge but necessary concept change that might bring back the experience group but instead of farming experience such groups would farm other stuff like gear and trophies. However many older players might be alienated by that as they do expect that mobs do reward a good amount of experience and not just 0.01% per kill (=1/10,000 level) or whatever it is atm.
  10. Strawberry Augur

    EQ developers: "Monster missions will be nerfed because we don't want people playing in isolated instances."

    Also EQ developers: "Here you go, this is Overseer. You can just play it in the guild lobby and you never have to interact with anything in the game."
    Iven likes this.
  11. Iven Antonius Bayle

    PoK and Guild Lobby do have the function of a Potemkin village. The afk player characters are the façade.

    Since the release of Overseer in 2019, Antonius Bayle had turned from a low populated server into a dead one. So many guilds and players had vanished and the remaining ones do stand around afk.
    Eldur and Strawberry like this.
  12. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Leave overseer as it is and just remove the option to gain exp from doing it.

    Overseer is so much more than exp.
    Wyre Wintermute likes this.
  13. code-zero Augur

    Let's be honest, the OP is just more whining about people not having fun the right way and a call to force the player base to sit in endless grind camps with people they don't know for some imaginary "social aspect" of the game.

    If you actually think that endlessly grinding in static camps is fun then you're really not the sort of person I want to socialize with anyway. I'd rather do missions with friends and guildmates and play games like overseer in the game
    Celephane, FYAD and Wyre Wintermute like this.
  14. Flatchy Court Jester

    Get a second computer run two more accounts. 3 accounts 3 mercs. I found this to be one of the most grouper friendly merc and partisan runs every. I was done before Christmas break from work. (jan 3rd) I ran them 95% myself. Overseer is not the best option for exp those tasks are. There is a big difference between " I cant" and "I dont want to". I don't wanna take out the trash to the road either but I gotta do it once a week.
    Yinla likes this.
  15. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    And yet 3 guilds on AB have beaten at least 1 raid in NoS, amazing they can do that while standing around afk in the Guild Lobby.
  16. Velisaris_MS Augur

    My alts on 3 accounts that I almost never play and only get xp via Overseer during bonus xp periods would like a word.
    Yinla likes this.
  17. hein Augur

    I can tell by many of the responses, as I expected would be the case, that few understand my main point and the root of my argument or complaint. Allow me to explain my position a little further If I may.

    For me, most days, the 2-5% exp from Overseer is going to be the best exp I get for that day. I wish this wasn't the case, and yes, I have my suspicions about why Overseer exist in the first place as I said in my opening post.

    What I wish, as I tried to put forth initially, but apparently failed to do so, is that instead I could simply do the Mercenary quest, or Partisan quest in slightly weaker content, such as EoK or RoS which I could molo or even box and get that type of exp. I believe completing those quest should render me that 5% exp. Then I'm actually getting exp from playing the actual game! While I'm working on that content, I can interact with guild and see about joining a group in ME or doing ToV missions ect.. But some days, friends and guildies that can are willing wont be on, and therefore my options for decent exp and progression are pretty limited. For the record, I OFTEN invite level 80's-100 who are looking for exp to join me, and I go and help them in FM ect.. This is my point and I don't understand why there are those raging against it, as if my position is so unreasonable lol. Some people just like to rage and argue and hate discourse and conversation that interrupts their small minded views. I find it astonishing but such is the world we live in today.

    Anyway, that's my issue and my overall complaint, and I make no apologies about it. The game is set up now to force purchases from the store in order to make meaningful progress, in the form of exp pots and krono, but it's done subtly by nerfing real exp. Gone are the days when companies set out to make an amazing product in hopes that the consumer will love it and respond by supporting it. Now the name of the game is cash grab. That's not just in gaming, its everywhere, but I digress.
  18. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Players are never going to ditch Overseer and calling for them to do so isn't going to happen. Many these days don't need exp so until they give AA from doing Overseer players use it for collects and TS materials. Sometimes a title can rub people up the wrong way.

    Personally I don't thing there is anything wrong with the exp gains in EoK and RoS if you are at the level the content is aimed it. If you have out leveled it of course it is going to be the same amount of exp gained, you just need more killks per % as each level increase requires more exp to level up. Which is why when you take lower level chars to higher level content they earn mountains of exp.

    Think of it the other way without Overseer you would have even less exp than you have now. Overseer you can get 3-5% exp in minutes but you have to wait 6 - 24 hours before you can do it again. Which means you could gain more exp killing in EQ than over those 6 - 24 hours than you do doing Overseer.

    I've never paid for anything to do Overseer and I'm now maxed out in all, missing a few agents but nothing that stops me from doing the quests I want. So I'm not sure where you get the idea from that it is a cash cow.

    I'd rather they introduced Hot Zones for level 100+ chars, than mess with exp from quests.

    Have you tried the weak con mobs in Firefall after yesterdays patch? They would net you more exp than killing in lower zones.

    You don't need to purchase exp pots or Krono, just make sure you use lesson which costs you nothing.
    Wyre Wintermute likes this.
  19. hein Augur

    [quote="Yinla, post:

    I'd rather they introduced Hot Zones for level 100+ chars, than mess with exp from quests.

    Have you tried the weak con mobs in Firefall after yesterdays patch? They would net you more exp than killing in lower zones.

    You don't need to purchase exp pots or Krono, just make sure you use lesson which costs you nothing.[/quote]

    I could get onboard for the 100+ hotzones. Just need some options. BTW at 110, RoS is the proper level content, and yet the exp from completing those quest is dismal.
  20. Alnitak Augur

    You are doing something wrong with it, evidently.
    By doing 5 12-hour quests twice daily you earn 10-12% of the level experience. If you lucky on a particular day and get more than 2-3 "green" quests or "critical success", than even 15% on that day is realistic.
    Set up Overseer in the morning before going to work, and do 5 more after dinner in the evening. And in a week (or week-and-a-half) you gain a level, and several mercenary AA's on top of that.

    Overseer is not a problem. In my opinion - the problem is shortcomings of gameplay design. In particular - task timeout duration. Many times my guildmates would log in and ask about what's happening lately and the response is "did the mission run, sitting in a timer lock-out".
    6 hours (or 5 for some) is just too long. A decent group can usually do all 4 mission in under 2 hours (or under 1 hour for a really good group), and then there is nothing else to do with a decent efford/reward ratio. I simply have no interest in mob grinding for experience. Not for myself, not for "social aspect" of the game.
    Meanwhile, if not for timers, those guildmates would get a response like "doing missions, wanna join?". And ta-daa, groupping happens.
    With current path of nerfing mission rewards keeping timers 5-6 hour long is simply pointless and cruel. Reduce those to 2 hours. It would prevent some people from non-stop repeating of the same mission, but would allow groups to actualy do mission runs in more steady manner. And yes, many would invite guildies or even strangers to a mission group, but with timers locked out, there is no mission to run.
    Wyre Wintermute likes this.