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Any classes still not happy on Live at 125?

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Cicelee, Jul 17, 2024.

  1. Laronk Augur

    Personally for me the height of everquest pug grouping was LDON. It was easy to get a group, you knew how long it was going to take, you had the currency reward.

    Honestly the team seems to punish some of the stuff that makes pugging really easy though like nerfing doogle missions in COTF or GMM. Instead of looking at it from the other side "hey players really like to do this content, maybe we should make more of the stuff these players are actually choosing to do"

    I know Everquest was "You're in our world now" but that was back when they were top dog or one of the top MMO's. I think the team really needs to understand the video game player of today, there's a lot more options out there it's hard to get my friends to like Everquest because if they log on and I am not online then it's rough because players don't pug. The game isn't meant for you to solo your way to max level, there's a TON of stuff to do in the game but you often need another player to do it or you need to box.

    I love that Everquest is a group game, I want to play with other players when I get online but camping a rare spawn mob somewhere isn't really group game content now a days. Yeah sure I need the AA or I need the EXP. For a loot to time ratio raiding isn't as bad most raid guilds have a good loot system and it's a set play time, you know if you win your guild is going to get stuff. In the group game you're not guaranteed to get stuff except from the 2 group missions that you can't repeat in the same play session, if you have friends or a box you might have a big checklist of things you can do in previous expansions for Hero's Vitality/fortitude etc.

    I know plenty of players who will do lots of instances, even if they gave us low quality instances where you kill 50 trash then the named pops and you kill the named. It would be nice if it was more creative than that but a great start would be giving us 10 missions like that then players will know what they want to do because there's more options then we could make harder stuff from there.
    Svann2 and Fenthen like this.
  2. Cadira Augur

    Just to prove you wrong. It's fun. Mostly, cause it gives me something to do at work, though.
    Hoss Mage and KushallaFV like this.
  3. KushallaFV Playing EverQuest

    +1 Forum Fridays.
    Cadira likes this.
  4. Tuco Augur

    Yeah i sell any ultra rares i get for krono.

    I have chase items but never level them that high. I will only sub one month a year until they make group content worth preparing for.
    Cadira likes this.
  5. Cicelee Augur

    And you like to believe that having raid gear means auto win in the group game, regardless of class.

    But you are wrong in the first part. Raid gear helps. It helps kill a mob faster. It allows you to play longer before you go OOM. It allows a heal to land on you when you are at 65 health, whereas if you are in group gear that heal might land when you are at 45 health.

    So yes. Raid gear makes things easier. And I said that earlier. You keep on saying I feel Raid gear is irrelevant. Which is 100% false. It helps.

    However, a group geared person can also do all content in current expansion. Tuco, a group geared player, is living proof. Other characters in group gear also believe that. My group geared characters also agree as well.

    LS was a stupidly easy expansion. Whether it was group content or raids, it was easy. A raid geared character of mine is able to kill every named in this expansion. I think that is dumb. Of the entire progression, there were only two parts where I was challenged. Two. That is dumb. This expansion is way too easy, and I hope that the next expansion is more challenging.

    I hope some of the named would require 2-3 raid geared toons to win. I hope the missions challenge a raid characters like it would a group character. I hope that there are some tricky parts during progression. I hope the last expansion requires 6 competent group geared players to succeed.

    IIRC I was responding earlier about solo capabilities and lack of groups. I never brought gear into it, because gear is not the be all/end all you believe it to be. When the content is so easy that everyone can solo/box two characters, that is a problem. And the game has that problem. I don't want group content to require six max AA/max raid level/BoTB characters to have a chance. That group should blitz through group content because of their skill. I just want group content to be more challenging than what it currently it is, regardless of class or gear.

    What is wrong with that?
  6. KushallaFV Playing EverQuest


    What will make the game more challenging for you?
  7. Tuco Augur

    I can't speak for Cicelee's position on group content being challenging regardless of class or gear (which I interpret as turning the game into a hokey mechanics fight), but my opinion is all you'd have to do is make the challenger achievements more conventionally challenging and less gimmicky, and sprinkle some difficult named mobs in the later zones. Bonus if those named mobs wander and cause trouble like Sergeant Slate or Dragoon Zytl.

    By conventionally challenging, just increase or add AEs, mobs, buffs to the enemy, etc, to challenge groups in ways that the extra effort they put into their characters matter. This will result in the content being fairly easy for raid-geared characters and that's OK.
    KushallaFV likes this.
  8. Randomized Augur

    But this doesn't really challenge anyone. It challenges people running with mercs. But your typical boxer running 3-4-5 characters, this will not affect them.

    Extra AEs just means more group heals from the group healer on their broadcasted spam key
    More mobs also isn't an issue when a typical group has a plate tank and can handle multiple mobs at once - especially with a full team and constant spam heals.
    Buffs to the enemy would depend on the buff. But also seems minor in the grand scope of things.

    This wouldn't affect the people who breeze through group content on their fully fleshed out box team running a bard and shaman. It would affect those who run 1-2 characters. And, since the conventionally challenging additions wouldn't affect those running their 4-6 man box groups, it wouldn't incentivize grouping as they're already their own group and still able to handle these "new challenges" without an issue, meaning no reason to focus on one character and invite 3-4 others who are also only focusing on 1 character.

    This is one of those slippery slopes. I'm afraid we're past the point of being able to make things challenging without doing an TBL copy paste and making things overpowered for what they are. Which again, only affects the people who do not have a full box crew at their disposal.

    We almost need a soft reset of sorts, so we can kind of start over and then implement the changes going forward. But i doubt they have the staff/resources to try to pull that off
  9. Tuco Augur

    Maybe I'm misunderstanding your position, but I totally dispute this.

    For example, I was unable to beat the Crusader's mission until I geared up and AA'd my team a bit more in CoV, and additionally learn how to use my new paladin's Group Armor of the Inquisitor along with improving my group healing with my shaman.



    If the hard mode involved toggling something that caused the AE damage to increase by 25%, the melee damage of the dragons to increase by 25%, the effective health of the mobs by 25% and increased the rate that adds spawned by 25%, it would require me to improve and gear further. That video showed a fairly smooth kill but even that modest increase of 25% in AE damage could have killed my bard 30 seconds in, which would have failed the encounter.
    [IMG]

    If those numbers above were increased by 50%, I would have had to change things up even further to beat it. Swapping either the shaman or paladin for a cleric would help against the AE, but would reduce DPS. Swapping the bard for an enchanter would offer some spell protection, but would reduce ADPS for the melee-centric group. Likely I would have had to use Glyph of Dragon Scales (which I generally don't use because I'm almost never AA capped and I think should be removed from the game or heavily nerfed) or DPS glyphs, or something else.

    If the hard mode increased those numbers by 100%, it would have been impossible for me to beat and I would have had to come back at level 120. I'd also expect that groups with raid gear would need to try hard to beat it and would require decent compositions.

    Most missions in the last handful of years of expansions could be scaled in the same way. The Crusader's was a particularly challenging mission, and if it included hard mode that scaled the damage / adds I would recommend a modest value of 25%.

    Challenging rare mobs shouldn't be as difficult as missions, but should be a step beyond most rare mobs that low-lethality groups can typically streamroll. Their abilities can easily be scaled to provide a challenge to the typical groups forming in those zones.
  10. Randomized Augur

    Well let's establish a baseline.

    At what point should group content be hard?
    1) Prior expansions max level + end group gear?
    2) Max level current expansion + fully group geared?
    3) Max level current expansion + raid gear?

    Like at what point is it supposed to show it's challenge/difficulty? Because currently, it's part of the gearing and leveling process. Meaning that they're not meant to be a challenge once you gear up. Let's use your example real quick:

    Is this not the ideal way? You weren't able to roll in and steamroll it. You had to gear up somewhat and get some AAs. Now with the way they're designed, as part of the gearing/leveling process, they fall somewhere between points 1 and 2. And they're meant to be easier/not challenging once you're fully geared. If it required gear beyond what it drops, it no longer becomes "group" content and becomes "mini raid content". And that's an issue in and on itself. If they were to add that 25% increase that you mentioned, that mission no longer becomes part of the "progression" and becomes strictly end game only.

    Now they could make the baseline at point 2. And that wouldn't hurt my feelings. But if they did that, they'd have to move loot tables around, and put the current currency gear on random drops from named mobs, or have named mobs drop currency themselves. Then give missions something special on their own that's worth getting after you're fully geared up.
  11. Laronk Augur

    I don't think just one level of challenge really works if you want to appease the people that want a challenge because of skill gap. Also I don't think we need specific anti-boxer mechanics

    For hard modes there's a few things they could do, one thing would be make it infinite scaling kinda like mythic+ that way if people want more challenge they can keep going into harder and harder modes like hard+1 hard+2 where it's just a direct % boost to damage. Maybe every few levels of difficulty add affixes where everything in the instance gets a special bonus of some kind or maybe there's one that reduces healing. To get into the next level of hardness you need to beat the previous version, if you lose at a level of hardness you get down graded in what you can access. If difficulty could scale indefinitely then players and the devs could better learn the limits of what players can actually do and there'd be more learning.

    Then they could add stuff we have to react to, which might suck with the UI we have but trash mobs with abilities that need to be stunned, linked packs that can't be separated or CC'd. Directional AE's that are too strong to heal thru, multiple characters getting emotes at the same time. Things like the argath cart that you need to move around to get stuff but make it so you have to protect the cart at the same time so the group has to split or just so that there's more actions that need to be done at the same time. Also you can add timers to the instance so you have to do it in a certain amount of time, limit the number of deaths you can have in the instance. People getting emotes where they have to separate or they have to come together. Don't stand in the fire mechanics and or mix this mechanic with some debuff someone gets where they need to stand in the fire so again different characters have to do different things. There's also balance mechanics and you can combine some of this stuff or make it again so the harder the difficulty you get to the more of the abilities the named has access to.

    Marking stuff harder is easy, the hard part is making it so different group comps and different types of players can still do it. Content that can scale in difficulty solves this a bit but if content was actually difficult in Everquest then people would complain about balance a lot more.
  12. Tuco Augur

    My position is that the hardest group content (preferably an optional hard mode in a few missions) should remain challenging to a group that has received much of the levels, AAs and group gear from that expansion. The Crusaders mission is a good example of that. The last three expansions did not have that, and that's the #1 reason I only subbed for a month in LS.
    Lodestar likes this.
  13. Randomized Augur

    No anti-boxer mechanics and then everything you list is anti-boxer lol

    I don't think the WoW M+ (a mode i rather enjoy) approach would work with EQ to be honest.

    So, from the aforementioned points, we're looking at #2 for a baseline? That's fine by me. But how are we going to be working the rewards into that? Like I said, currently the design is that these missions and what have you's are part of the progression. They're meant to help us get our levels and AAs and gear.

    How would we remedy that?
  14. Tuco Augur

    The historical example of rewards from challenger providing a somewhat unique augment are fine.

    From my perspective all rewards in EQ are largely meaningless if there is no content that justifies them.
  15. Randomized Augur

    But that makes it a one and done scenario though. Again, i'm fine with that being a reward, it's in line. But how can we make it worthwhile to repeat them and not just do it once and then spam the easy missions for currency
  16. Tuco Augur

    You don't need to. You could scale the repeated rewards, but you don't need to. The existence of the challenge and promise of the next expansion having a challenging event worth doing is enough.

    A one-time reward that every committed player would want would encourage players to regularly execute the challenge for new folks, giving a reason for player cooperation and lethality that currently doesn't exist.
  17. KushallaFV Playing EverQuest


    Thanks for actually replying with your perspective of challenge. I agree that gearing is important to establishing difficulty, and through gear comes a sense of progression for players. I think that dialing up the damage of NPCs through AoEs or melee isn't something I really view as a challenge. It's just getting your stats right on the stat sheet. Plus, people have thousands of hours with that type of content that it won't be a challenge after solving the stat check.

    I would really like to see EQ go back to mobs having abilities. Players should be want to think about setting a kill order, interrupting NPC abilities, crowd control, etc. Classes have so many tools now, but some use for them would be great. WoW M+ and old school EQ really nailed the concept of dangerous trash pack encounters.

    When's the last time a mob gated? PoP? A simple mob gate used to cause so much havoc for groups.

    The dev team would have to actually put some thought into the open-world encounters, and that seems to be too much for them to do.
    Tuco likes this.
  18. Randomized Augur

    But this doesn't happen as is. People do not like going back and re-doing content they've already done when they get nothing from it.

    Case and point: ToV and onward Hero Achievements. There's not many that are going to go back and do it for no reason. And this isn't going to give reason for player cooperation...it's going to be the same groups and same box groups completing it for the aug and then never doing it again.

    In order to encourage players to regularly execute the challenge for "new folks" would require they get something out of it. Why would i bother carrying dead weight that'll almost guarantee i fail when I already completed it for its only reward with my own box crew?

    There has to be incentive to want to run it again. It being a challenge is not reason enough for most folks, as once you've gotten it down and figured out, and you're geared enough for it, the challenge ceases to exist.
  19. kizant Augur

    Anti-boxer mechanics are what this game desperately needs for the most difficult content. Even if it's just one mission a year. I'd actually like to see some extremely difficult mission with a reward useful for raiders like a unique aug but also for obtaining at least some T1 raid items.

    Give those who can't raid a chance to get raid gear as long as they can find some real people to play with and the difficulty should be based on responding to mechanics and working together. Over gearing 3 years later should only make the missions a little bit easier but still difficult.
    Darkhain and bortage like this.
  20. bortage spammin lifetaps


    I really like this idea
    kizant likes this.