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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. KushallaFV Playing EverQuest

    You can already solo with the Beastlord, anyone extra you add just makes it faster. People are more likely to join a group with a class that can solo, especially tank, than one that can’t.

    This already gets played out on a larger scale in WoW, where Tanks starting groups fill out faster than DPS starting groups.
    Kalipto likes this.
  2. fransisco Augur

    tell me you don't play on live without saying you don't play on live
  3. KushallaFV Playing EverQuest

    Come on buddy, explain your point.
    Kalipto likes this.
  4. Randomized Augur

    And that's a me benefit. Not an anyone else benefit. A rogue joining me is no different than a rogue joining a Berserker. Same end result. Same purpose, same point. Any 2 people can make it work.

    It doesn't matter if I join a necromancer who can solo, the end result is the same: 2 player characters with the option to add 2 of any role they desire, which can/will result in a full group composition

    Just like a Rogue joining a Rogue. 2 player characters with the option to add 2 of any role they desire which can/will result in a full group composition.

    No matter what, regardless of being able to solo or not, when one person joins another, they have the option of making a group with a tank a healer and dps. No amount of illusion of "this class can solo so it makes it a better group" will change that.

    Entirely different circumstances. In WoW, all 3 roles have to be covered by player characters (and requires 5). And due to the huge population disparity between roles (tanks being so far below DPS), it's about the time it takes to form a group. So it's faster to join a group that already has the hardest role to fill, filled.

    EQ doesn't have that since just 2 players makes a tank a healer and dps.
  5. Randomized Augur

    The last 5 going on to 6 years have been designed around "GROUP" content.
    Boxing 3-6 characters yourself is still grouping
    fransisco likes this.
  6. fransisco Augur

    you so focused on who can solo well. Either you haven't played in 20 years or you only play on tlp/private servers
  7. KushallaFV Playing EverQuest


    Huh?


    It's huge factor in people deciding, whether joining you will either waste their time or be productive. Starting a group as Beastlord or Mage will get people to join you alot easier than if you were a Rogue or Berserker.


    Not really different, you're starting a group with a class that can handle multiple roles. It's just easier, and people will always gravitate towards the easiest route.


    Being designed for group content doesn't mean the game is good at supporting group content. The game has a lot of poor design elements that prevent grouping including mission lockouts, lack of rewards for replaying quests, etc.
    Kalipto likes this.
  8. Randomized Augur

    Doesn't matter what 2 classes you have, you'll always have a tank a healer and dps. Just like joining a Mage, you'll end up with a tank a healer and dps

    A PC + a merc = multiple roles. I don't know how to dumb this down any more. If I'm a rogue with a tank merc, im covering the roles of tanking and DPS. If I'm a rogue and I have a healer merc, I'm covering the roles of healing and dps.

    Mission lockouts do not stop me from forming groups...and the current group game is designed around replaying content. Group content offers rewards in a deterministic fashion: I have to do X 5 timed in order to get my Y or Z reward. Loot/gear/spells are still RNG which will have you killing the same camp on repeat to get what you need.

    The game is designed around and supports grouping more than anything else in the game. Otherwise everyone would be able to solo outside of instanced content like in WoW. And as a regular WoW player, I can day with certainty the community at large does not want that.

    Soloing options are limited and do not appeal to everyone.
  9. Tuco Augur

    EQ should continue to motivate players to group by increasing the contribution of group buffs, increasing group XP and EQ should start motivating players to group by adding harder content in the mid and end of the group game.

    There are a lot of MMOs games where you can see 90% of the content solo, EQ pursuing the group MMO market makes sense to carve a niche. This is even true if you count box groups as group content because EQ is the best multi-box game by a lot.
  10. Randomized Augur

    While i'm not against this, would it really change anything? Most groups are just boxes anyway - is there a way to incentivize grouping outside of your own computer that wouldn't be benefitted by boxing yourself as well?
  11. Cicelee Augur

    This.

    Most groups nowadays are one person playing 2-6 characters, or a clique group that will not invite anyone else outside of their circle. The random pick up group isn't there, mostly IMHO because the content itself is so easy that it can be done by one person (playing 1-3 characters).

    Content needs to be harder. It needs to reward six individuals working together. It needs to be anti boxer so that those six boxers would need to play with others. How you do that, I don't know. But as long as one player can play one 1-2 characters with mercs and do all non mission content in game... it is going to continue to be a problem.

    There is just no incentive for many to group.
  12. KushallaFV Playing EverQuest

    We already had TBL as a recent example, and it wasn't well received. Harder content just rewards cliques, while easier content promotes pick-up grouping.

    Harder content requires good players and good class composition for groups, which makes people less likely to pick-up randoms. Easier content allows people to be more flexible with their groups.

    The problem is that Live doesn't have much social energy left in it. People have settled into cliques, box groups and routines.
  13. fransisco Augur

    There isn't really. Over the history of the game, most people quit due to lack of groups. Log on for an hour or 2, sit unable to play because you cant get a healer or a tank or both. Log off having wasted your afternoon. Repeat this a few times and ask why you're playing a game you literally cannot play.
    That was back when the game had FAR more players than it does today. Now pickup groups don't really exist on live.
    If you give to many bonuses to full groups, the game adjusts to assuming/requiring you have a full group, which will just drive more people away who don't 6 box or have a strong raiding guild.

    As far as content difficulty, how can it be addressed? For anyone in raid gear, all non-raid content is trivial, and as it should be. Any group content that is a challenge for those in raid gear would be impossible for those in group gear. Making "group" content for those in raid gear is basically just making more raid content - aka content available for only a subsection of the population. Theres already precious little content, and decreasing the content available to all players will only drive more players away. Note this is with the assumption (99.9% certainty) that the overall amount of content will not increase, only how much dev time is spent in each bucket will change.
    KushallaFV likes this.
  14. Laronk Augur


    I actually disagree about it needing to be harder, but it would be nice to have an equivalent of heroic/mythic+ (as in wow) . The real problem in my view is there's not enough group instanced content and the content we do have has long lockouts. So if I play just my Paladin with a clique well i gotta wait for them to login and go do it with them, if I go do it with a pug or add other people in then I am locked out of doing it with my regular group. We also need to keep the current difficulty level for some people though because there's lots of players who just are not good at all from my experience pugging. Examples there's plenty of dps players that outside of burns do less dps than a dps merc, there's healers that are only good at rezzing and there's tanks that don't press any of their tanking buttons.

    Another thing that would help with pugs is dungeon finder with cross server instancing. Well there was more instanced group content (like TBM or COTF)/ Disable trading/dropping if that is actually a real concern. Being able to press a button and be placed with a group and have it just form the groups as tank+healer+4 other slots or tank+healer+support+3. Dungeon finder in WOW or FF14 is great because you generally know how long it's going to take, you can crank one out after the kids go to bed if you have a limited amount of time.

    I think a lot of players would use a dungeon finder, also make hard versions of dungeons give us special currency and place neat chase items in that currency like a couple cool mounts and some hero's forge armor make them cost a lot of currency also add a full set of gear on them and people will go grind missions and press this magic button that gives them a group.

    With the heroic / hard versions add bad that you have to move out of, directional ae's, mobs that are meant to be kited by someone, more adds, more damage so that you have to move more and that will reduce boxing in the harder content. Maybe special rewards and or tier 3 group gear is locked behind the hard versions to give people a reason to do them.

    To me the real reason there's not more pugging is in non-instanced content you have to share what you get with the other players so if they're not your friends and you don't need them; it's detrimental to have them with you. Why invite a random when I am camping a specific piece of gear, if I box I don't have to share. If more of the rewards were behind quests instead of camping a static mob and everyone got the reward I think we'd see more pugging because then you're not sharing the reward. Make the quests repeatable give currency and repeatable exp people will let others join them. Camping rare spawn mobs for a not 100% drop on an item you want isn't a good feeling if you group with a rando and they get it then they scoot. Camping static spawns isn't really something that helps pugging even if it's how EQ has almost always been, it's not how modern gaming works if I have 45-60 minutes to play tonight there's a good chance that camping a static spawn could result in near 0 character advancement.

    In instanced content we have prohibitively long lockouts and we don't have enough content. When there's 10+ group instances a 6 hour lockout makes some sense but really anything more than 3 hours is excessive. When there's only 2 or 4 group instances, well the thing I am doing tonight is those 4 instances. If I want to do them with my friends or my box I can't go do them with you because then I'm locked out and can't do the things that my friends are going to be doing, the only group content that really makes sense doing as a group.
    Metanis, fransisco and KushallaFV like this.
  15. Cicelee Augur

    My raid geared magician and prior expansion raid geared bard should not be able to duo FF mission, which is supposed to be designed for six unique players. But I can.

    My raid geared magician should not be able to solo a T2 named, a mob supposedly designed to be defeated by a group of six unique players. But I can.

    Now, you can say magicians are OP. Sure, go for it. But if you are going to tell me that raid gear is equal to SIX players... well I am going to get a chuckle out of that. Raid gear may help kill a named faster, but it is not the difference between success and fail. That falls on the skill of the player, and the difficulty of the content. And while I like to think I am a decent magician, I am definitely not BoTB.

    Raid gear is not as critical as non raiders make it out to be. I would be fine if the game mechanics changed to where group gear was required for group content, and raid gear for raids. And then when a group geared player is soloing a T2 named, maybe we can start to have the discussion that this content is just too halfling easy.
  16. fransisco Augur

    your comparing 2 op classes in raid gear to a mission you have memorized due to running countless times. however the idea that raid gear makes no difference is pretty missleading. Tell that to the groups who swarm 50+ mobs in LS.
    KushallaFV likes this.
  17. fransisco Augur


    You make a great point here. Its fair to say that leveling content is not group content. Its just the stuff EVERYONE has to go through to level, once your done leveling you no longer touch it.
    Thus there is SIGNIFICANTLY less group content than raid content. There are 2 missions with lockouts. Then what? I guess you can camp a named and spend 3-4 hours to hopfully it pop?
  18. KushallaFV Playing EverQuest


    What content would be difficult for you? What does difficulty look like in your mind?
  19. KushallaFV Playing EverQuest


    This is a good point that people seem to forget with the missions. If the designed leveling path is through quest and mission completion, then that content can't be tuned as end game content.
    fransisco likes this.
  20. Laronk Augur


    Well I think the solution on the leveling content is to make it repeatable (this is where lockout can work) but give currency also have it still give decent xp/aa on a redo. Then add the chase rewards like a mount + hero's forge or also maybe a bis aug ontop of the heroic stat augs you buy with currency. It would give some options other then the missions, give players stuff to do and actually give something to pug.

    This way if two poorly geared low skill players see each other LFG there's at least something of value they can do.

    If DBG wants to increase player retention then average players need to feel like they're able to accomplish things when they log in. It's why I started boxing, so I could log in and if my friends or brother wasn't on I could get things done. If I am camping a boring named for 4 hours I can clear just the PH's and watch TV or come here and waste time reading the forums.
    KushallaFV and fransisco like this.