Ok so I've returned for a week and I've experienced quite a few problems with this game. Now I'm sure plenty of people will reply with snarky answers or workarounds for things but at the end of this day this post isn't for players its for the devs so feel free to waste your time typing replies players. 1. Solo tasks are not soloable. I challenge any developer to create a level 1 character in this game and try to progress from 1-105 and then try to complete progression in the last 6 expansions. The only expansion that makes any sense to me is TBM, cause every step is a shared task so that when you ask for help everyone benefits. Every other expansion you do these solo tasks that the rest of the group is oblivious to. 1a. It is virtually impossible to get help to complete previous expansion progression. I play on Bristlebane, one of the oldest and most populated servers. I'm in one of the top 3 guilds. If you are not up to date on progression through the last 3 expansions you are virtually excluded from ever doing them. Hell I'm only a few weeks behind in EoK and the most I can get out of progression is hunter and named killing. I can't even complete the first step in Lceanium cause 2 guards are not molo'able. 2. Why...the......are wizard mercs specifically excluded from having a target? This specifically nerfs and destroys players who main a cleric cause we can't use interventions to heal wizard mercs to molo with, instead we have to use a tank merc or contras which are far less effective at healing. It just purely does not make any sense why wizard mercs ToT window is always blank. 3. Theres no manual for previous expansions. Everything is google. Hell I have spells that have no description in game period. Scribe Divine Response and tell me thats proper game design. Right click the spell gem, no info, right click the buff, no info. Google answered that issue, and it wasn't a daybreak site that answered it. 4. From what I have seen since returning, the only way to actually play and enjoy this game is to pay for atleast 3 accounts, use third party software to control said accounts, and pay for 3 expansion unlocks. That is a ridiculous amount of money for an 18 year old game with really really graphics and game mechanics. I want to stay in this game but this is a huge HUGE deal breaker for me. Why on earth must I pay atleast 45 more dollars so that I can log in during off hours on my server and work on progression in EoK? My suggestions: Fix wizard mercs target. They are casting on mobs therefore they should have a ToT. Why make things so much harder for cleric mains who don't box? Make "solo" tasks shared tasks, cause lets be 100% clear here, nobody is solo'ing "solo" tasks unless they are fully raid geared and have every single previous expansion advantage. Even then only specific classes could solo said tasks. Give an incentive to player groups over merc groups. And further along that note, knock cleric mercs down a notch so that player clerics have a chance at being needed again. Make cleric mercs cast rank 1 spells or make them cast the previous era's buffs and current era heals. Improve Server Stability please, Guildhalls are repeatedly down, servers constantly crash each day, its like a wack a mole game and its not very enjoyable to have to have multiple servers to play on cause your main server has stability issues. Make previous expansions progression easier to solo or provide incentives to do them over for others.
Why do you say Contra's are less effective at healing than Interventions? Seems strange, especially if you are using Contra's following Glorious? But to be honest I don't understand why you would be having your Wizard Merc tank in a Molo situation instead of self tanking as a cleric?
Self tanking kills me. Contra's can't be twinned on both sides. Interventions can be twin healed and twin nuked with the glorious nuke. To elaborate further I feel you are making your judgement on this from your own perspective having already been an established player with perfect gear and many aa's. Self tanking as a cleric in any of the 105 eras without having raid gear is near impossible especially if you accidentally pull 2, or in the case of the first Lceanium "solo" task, the 2 guards that spawn literally on top of you at the pillars. Where no merc can save you cause both mobs will round me when they pop on me.
Also I would like to point out another obvious point as to how broken the gap is between new and setup players are. You look at the heroic character zone of Feerrot the Dream. All of the tasks have easy weak con mobs cause the tasks are solo, and the only tasks that are hard are the group shared tasks. Then you leave that zone and it just snowballs so badly where you need a group or a box for everything. How on earth are you going to get new players if everyone faces this steep learning curve? Solo tasks should have weak cons or these "solo" tasks should be made like TBM where every task is a shared task.
When I molo'd, I always used contraventions and stuns, never had, and still don't have issues with that. I've done it in TBM. Just slow, annoying, and disturbing watching my caster get smacked all over the place. As far as clerics tanking, it's possible, however it's not really effective. In TBM as a raid geared cleric, I was still finding myself randomly killed in a bad couple rounds due to our inability to cast while being beat on, and don't get me started on our inability to pull now, making a lot of pulls multiple. The answer has always been "we aren't supposed to be solo/molo, we are supposed to find groups". I've long since given up on grouping, people always say they'd rather have a real cleric, yet I never see anyone asking for one, and lfg chats go unanswered. You are correct on many of your points, I've often argued about mobs being too hard, but keep getting the same answer "it's easy if your in a group....too easy". The same can't get a group spiral. I 4 box now, and have made so many 105s on those 4 accounts that I can choose almost any combination. That's a lot of money I spend on this game simply to have support for my main toon.......a cleric. Maybe change servers Maybe find a large family guild
Solo tasks have rarely ever been soloable, aside from classes they can solo well obviously. I know it has solo in the name, but that's not exactly what it means. Think of them less as "I can do this by myself" and more of "Only I will get credit for this, unless other people have this task as well." Doing older content, or even new content but a few weeks behind, can sometimes be challenging. Assuming you're in a guild with a decent population the best bet is to help others with things and they in turn will help you. Not only does that allow them to get to know you better, and how good you are as a player, it does create that social sense of them "owing" you something for having helped them out. Some of those things you may not get credit for (see: solo tasks as mentioned above), however there are still a good amount of group partisan tasks, group heroic adventures, and group missions that not only do you get to help your fellow guild members with, you also benefit from it directly as well. And try and be proactive about grouping. Chances are good there is at least one other person who guild who is LFG too. Don't be afraid to send out tells and just ask people directly if they want to join you, or if you could help them, etc. And if you see a group using a healer merc, or even a boxed healer, ask them if they want a real healer. A fair amount will be glad to have a real person. And if you like raids, show up to BB's open raids, if you don't already. Not only could you get some raid loot, you meet new people who could potentially group with you. A lot of the game info comes from outside the game. That could be forums like this, your guild's forum, EQ Resource, Raid Loot, etc. It would be nice if a lot of that info was in game, but rather than bemoan the lack of manuals and such which I can see how it makes things harder for new players, enjoy that the game has a community that has and is willing to share that knowledge base. Divine Response is a good example as you brought up. Yeah, the game should tell you what the hell it does. But the community is such that you could ask and get an answer real fast. Yeah, the merc target is annoying. Far easier to group, or if you really want to solo, just tank yourself and add either a clr or dps depending merc depending on how safe you feel. Adds can be tough, but that's why we have stuns, roots, fades, and the ever underutilized pacify. But really getting a group should be your focus. What guild are you in on BB?
1. I agree. Solo means solo. If anything give us a way to share these quests so we can do them with a group. 1a. Don't sit around waiting for a group. Get one together. Find people that play your regular time and make friends. Ask guildies for help. 2. I don't know what you're talking about here. I don't have a problem with any of that as long as i set myself main assist. If you're soloing you might wanna make a /mercassist hotkey and turn off auto assist so it doesn't cast on everything until you want it to. 3. There a few manuals in the EQ folder, but it's not everything it seems. Spell descriptions should be there, but just like every other MMO most of your information is going to be from external sources. 4.I know many that have just one account. I have 4 accounts because I like to play them. I usually only have 2 All Access at a time though. While it's not top DPS i can box my 4 accounts pretty well through the use of macros instead of using a 3rd party software. I think a full player group should get an experience bonus, but I also think that healer mercs are good as they are. 105 Tank mercs are in a dire need of a boost though. They have been broken for a long time.
He's right on almost every point. for #2 set your tank as main assist and even main tank helps here. This is found under ROLES when you right click a group member as the group leader. Everything else is spot on. This game is not solo past about 40. You are right that is made for at least 3, hopefully you dont have to pay for all 3 because you can meet friends, not GUILDIES but friends. That cannot be overstated. They should change the name of those tasks away from 'solo' tasks, but it refers to the reward given not the force necessary to complete. Information on recent content is woefully lacking. Try eq alla or eq resources dot com for quest and spells info as well. This isnt an easy game in any sense including good UI desgin but its a good game a great one of you ask me.
Making progression tasks group instead of solo wouldn't mean you actually played the game, it would mean you got task add's and sat in guild lobby or hall. It wouldn't change your ability to get groups. Information lacking? you can look up every recent task on EQR and even get guided with pictures.
These are all valid complaints, IMO it's partially adjusting form other games and coming into EQ. In EQ, there's stuff you simply can't do alone. Sometimes group progression (partisan quests) are group tasks, sometimes they're not. In EoK certain zones are group tasks, and others (such as Lceanium) aren't. It's something that does sometimes frustrate me, that I can't take 1 character and work on progression and make any meaningful progress. And, if you complain here, usually the response is similar to "I soloed it, get good." At this point, I've just accepted it as how EQ is; that I can't really solo stuff on my bard or cleric and after so many years, I never expect to any more. For wizard mercs, this is something that has frustrated me too. My honest advice is that you should fire up another account. I know you probably don't want to, but it will save you a lot of grief. When I came back to live servers, I had only a 90 bard and barely remembered how to play. I eventually gave in to the difficulty I was facing on my own, and resubscribed my cleric's account. I boxed 85-100, made friends, made progress in group content. I could do most/all mercenary/partisan quests with CLR/BRD, with a tank and wiz merc. I would wait till friends got on to do group missions that I got stuck on. We were able to do every RoF mission with 4 group geared characters, CLR/BRD and MAG/SHD boxing. (Not so in EoK, the missions are quite a bit more difficult). If you want a game you can solo your way through, EQ is not for you, although you could try playing a more solo-oriented class instead.
All of your points are valid, but this one is especially true. I know there are some people who play only one account, but almost all of them either have a dedicated group of friends that play consistently at the same exact time OR they are constantly LFG. I was part of our guild conversation this morning, and although I'm not particularly sympathetic (because I'm a boxer and pay the extra costs), I am most certainly empathetic towards your situation.
I'm in Circle of Legends. They are about 50/50 on quality socialized guild and meta players, meta players being those people who grind with 4-9 accounts for rare drops in EoK to sell for kronos to keep their box accounts and expansions up to date. I really don't think its the guild cause I was in RA during the summer and they were even worse with almost every single person being a Meta player. Is this what this game is now? Where you literally have to of played this game since the beginning or be willing to dump an assload into the game just to get caught up? This seems like such a horrible model for game design. I'm paying a subscription and I paid for their expansion. Why must I do this all over again just to complete the first step? How is this a good sales model? How is this even sustaining where is the value that makes a person pay for all these expansions on each of these accounts? I'm just not seeing why people play if the game literally gouges you for money. I'm sure someone will reply that they survive off kronos but how the hell do you pay for the expansions on each account and the third party software to run all the accounts? Is this game worth that? I don't think it is. Someone please tell me theres some giant part of this game I'm not seeing cause playing with a bunch of boxed characters does not sound like fun to me.
To answer your point about wizard mercs, even though they engage mobs they report no target in the ToT window so that clerics can't utilize their intervention spell line, which are heals that nuke their heal recipients target. Instead they turn into just slightly longer cast time, expensive heals. The alternative is to melee the mobs, and use the contra line which heals the target of whomever I nuke. But the problem with this method is that nukes don't twin, only heals twin on clerics. So while we could bet twinning interventions with properly coded merc wizards, instead we're stuck single nuking with contras, and btw sometimes contras don't heal the right targets, cause a wizard merc will move out of melee range and a cleric pet or the cleric themselves become the target's target. Contras are very ineffective. Contras are also evocation while Interventions are Alteration. Contras only twin the heal half, inters will twin both.
Everyone's game experience is going to be different. But I would say that yes you're missing a giant box-free part of it. Now, granted, I do mostly raiding on BB, so boxing doesn't really apply. But even with the group game I don't see boxing as being a requirement. Yes, I see lots with boxes but that is largely for convenience. It's an option they have, but not their only way of playing. I would not say it's needed. I see plenty of groups w/o boxes and lots of people helping other guildees out with past progression, quests, etc. Again, I can only speak to my experience but I never felt I had to box. I won't deny its a great option to have, but one should not feel they have to.
While I agree that a huge portion of players (in the game, not just CoL) are boxers, I don't think it is correct to make assumptions about their motives. You can't even legally buy the expansion with kronos. I'm going to hate myself for this, but let's break down the cost of EQ: One account with 12 months All Access ($9.99-$14.99 depending on how you pay) + 1 expansion ($31.50) = $151.38 to 211.38 per year. Some people spend that much in a restaurant (or bar) in one night. 3 accounts will cost between $454.14 and $634.14 per year. Every krono you earn in-game reduces those numbers by $9.99 or $14.99 respectively. Sell a chase loot for 20 kronos, play eq for free for 20 months. Other things that cost about $450: An xbox, with one game Half of my annual Internet bill 2 beers per week for a whole year
This sounds like the worst Ponzi scheme ever. if you all are feeding on people who buy and sell krono's for loot, then where are the krono's coming from? Why would anybody spend that much money for an ingame item that has a shelflife of at max 12 months. All you managed to do by sharing this model is scare away atleast 1 paying customer. I hope to god this is just some guy making up cause this is disgusting. 20 kronos for an ingame item? How has everquest become this disgusting? You want to know why new players don't come to this game, its because the actual game is much MUCH different than the tutorial and the Heroic character zone. This is just awful.
I wanted to subscribe to a game and enjoy all its contents, or atleast most of it. It would seem that everquest is a really bad pay to win system. I think I will move on to a better more modern game then.
That's the minority. In both those that box and in those that use krono. Most get their loot by going out and killing stuff. Not like it is hard to get. In a short while gear from chests will be going to alts, or alts of alts.
When was the last time you had so much fun discussing economics in a video game? And I really would love to know if you find any fun games that AREN'T on a pay-2-win system. It makes a ton of cash for game companies, so why would they stop it? I suspect that you are suffering from sticker shock more than anything else. A lot of people have been playing EQ for a lot longer than you, and they have stockpiles of pp (and even kronos) that make Scrooge McDuck look like a bum. I'm actually not one of those people (not exactly). I don't farm anything. Heck, I was complaining in guild about how I can't even be troubled to farm named mobs that would give me minor upgrades. I don't use automated software to farm anything. But, after just few years in game, I have managed to accumulate more pp than I could spend. You might not find this all so shocking if you stick around for a while. But again, I agree with almost all of your points. I was a "new returnee" a few years ago, too. I don't see anything changing any time soon, but I empathize.
