Changes coming in next patch that will affect TLPs

Again, What is stopping the people who want their content to be harder from changing how they raid? Why does their wish for more tediousness count for more than others wanting to keep it as is?

I cancelled all but one account after I saw their nerf to xp gained in instanced raids. It seemed like a fun option to do a small team dungeon crawl if you aren't a raider and didn't need to save your lockout. Their priorities seem to be really unclear and unfocused, oh well.

They never nerfed the exp in instances. They tried. It was that horribad patch a few weeks ago that had the servers down for hours on end. Pretty sure they rolled back the nerfs and never bothered to try it again because you still get decent exp in instances.

The only other MMO I've played seriously was WoW. The completion rate is less than 1% of all players. But that's fine, because you had multiple levels of difficulty. LFR, Normal, Heroic and Mythic. Doesn't matter if you don't clear Mythic or even Heroic. At least you get to see and complete the raid zones.

Guess what happens on Phinny if you can't complete the raid zone? Your guild disbands and people leave the game.

Devs are trying to tune EQ like it's a real MMO such as WoW. It's not. If you make high end raiding completable by 5%, you'll quickly end up with 5% of the population left, because there's nothing else to do.

The raids are Normal difficulty, if you want them harder, make harder tiers, don't buff Normal into Heroic or Mythic.

Don't make me laugh with splitting. Guilds boast about splitting, then you find out their splits have more players than a normal raiding guild. Splitting with 35 per raid isn't an achievement.

They don't have the resources to make different difficulty raids. This is how it has been for a very long time so that's not going to happen. If you can't complete raids, it's because of several factors which boils down to your guild sucks.

Everquest isn't a real MMO? Wow, that's news to me. Just because the raid scene isn't accessible to everyone doesn't mean the game isn't a MMO lol.

What they can do and what they will do are interesting to speculate on.

Some exclusivity and challenge benefits the casual population. But then again some people think the under level 70 defiant gear is good for the game (a total overcompensation, especially in contrast to what one can easily quest in TSS). Too easy = no reason to play.

For some time I have been posting that loot is too easy to get, particularly via EC Commons. Much loot original to Luclin needs to be made nodrop. This benefits tradeskilling, re-orients the loot-rights & farmer economy and adds appropriate challenge to the game. Make tradeskilled equippable items attunable and you've really put this back in line... without removing a single item.

Picks are over-loved. Some of the evil of picks is lessened if the loot is nodrop though. AoC I am fine with, but raiding does need tuning. This is accepting more loot dropping in the shorter progression timeframes vs. original eras. Melee DPS was fun in isolation as-was on early progression, but it isn't acknowledging the content to keep progression as steamrollerquest. Caster DPS, foci and probably pets will likely get tweaked down the line --otherwise why bother with melee?

Tuning raids to era should be relatively easy once DPS is more in line with the era. It's also easier to detune DPS then adjust every single NPC by era to be harder. An elite raid force of ___ should be able to defeat Naggy in era. A casual, but organized and knowledgeable despite not being as well geared raid force of ____ should also be able to defeat Naggy in era.

In an AoC auto unlock world, as per the original vision of said eras... only strong guilds should be completing all of the later expansions in era. The organized, knowledgeable casual guild by design isn't supposed to finish Luclin in era for sure (but they should be able to get reasonably far into it). Historically this design failed with PoP blocking as previously strong guilds got shut out by the top dog or two on a server, but AoC solves that.

There is nothing wrong with 30 guilds beating an expac in era, as long as they meet a minimum standard for beating the content (i.e., if they are all Time Geared to some % then sure they should handle GoD). Think of it like a qualifier for a track and field event. If a specific era or raid in an era is too easy then it needs specific retuning.

A real MMO had resources to create tiers of raid content. EQ does not. If you have 1 tier, that must be Normal difficulty. Or people won't play.

Fun thread full of odd opinions. A guy that wants content to be made more difficult but then makes sure his guild is over-prepared so that it can not be difficult definitely takes the cake.

Have you done Lethar 2.0 with 28 toons? Or 35 for that matter?

Being an older game with less resources and players doesn't change the fact that EQ is a real MMO. I guess by your logic they should just turn off the game because they can't make enough content for you.

Every week. We're almost always in the 30s, including boxes. He's probably talking about CoC? They have like 90+ raiders right now and bench people regularly.

Pretty simple, class balance. I never thought they'd go back and do it for TLPs but I was wrong. My guess is they wanted a quick and easy fix for this because they presumably don't want to open up that can of worms and have to constantly be tuning classes for balance on TLPs. I doubt they are gonna touch caster DPS next unless something crops up that is blatantly out-of-era.

what stops them?

Its quite simple.

Raids designed to handle up to 72 will fill that. And when you prefer to raid with 35 and a key member cant make that raid your guild fails that night. Meanwhile the people who mau not really care about the size of the guild and just want pixels leave your guild. Then the guild suffers even more. Its a perpetual problem on agnarr.

Even if you want to be in a smaller community based guild, the deck is heavily stacked against you. This is one reason. Id love to see raids capped at 40 to 50 people. Tune the mobs if you must, but that probably doesnt entail anything other than an hp mod to motm.

The vast majority of raids are capped at 54.

That only applies once you have opened up enough expansions which does not impact the earlier stages of progression servers.

Obviously. The earliest stages of progression are a pretty tiny part of the progression server journey though, unless you play on Agnarr.

Class balance matters so little in a non-pvp game though. Rogues are low DPS in original so don't play a rogue... Clerics are lousy at killing but like to heal so decide what role you want to play --this blocks you from doing what content? (Couple of locked doors... you need a partner or group to efficiently progress a cleric...). Class balance in PVE is either to try and get people playing an unpopular class (traditionally rogues and paladins in EQ) or to make the content challenging.

There is no lack of people playing casters on progression, nor has there ever been in EQ. If the change was making rogue DPS higher in classic then one could argue that type of balance was the goal. Casters continue to benefit from out of era spells and foci. Pet classes... well let's just say it is a sum of changes for them that make it a totally different game. Mechanics of resists changes also hugely favor casters, particularly anyone with a basic understanding of charm.

I don't buy the idea that melee is getting DPS reduced because of raid parses and wizards complaining (though many of such posts exist) about early TLP. The fact that melee DPS is being reduced for early progression seems to me like the beginning of an overall smoothing of DPS to make the content at least as hard as it was originally supposed to be (when in truth current player knowledge/skill could push the argument it should actually be harder than it was).

Well, thats one way to see it... its the overdue long fix to the quick fix that was motm.

I think raid cap size is an important discussion in itself, arguably one that would need to happen after it became clear if all DPS was being reduced for early progression or what.

Is there a point in the content as presently tuned that 54 isn't enough? (I doubt it)

Step back from it, 72 man raid size seems kind of ridiculous, especially considering the content this applies to (that people are presently beating in-era with 30ish people and not feeling it was a big accomplishment to succeed).

At what point in progression would a 40 player raid cap prevent to top strong guilds doing content in era? At what point would casual guilds be really jammed by a 40 player cap? [I just picked 40 for discussion purposes and assuming DPS is tuned down more for early progression]

On Agent of Change servers it isn't like we all need to be in the top guild to do the content (a traditional argument I see for the larger raid size)

Underfoot+ would be pretty rough with 40 player cap, the last time through. Not sure now with the dps increases and the ac/tanking improvements--note that this change only is a nerf for levels 50-80, at 85+ they are actually increasing the innate aa boost over where it currently is. And there was a recent AC boost to 85+ as well. SO it is quite possible underfoot (and most of the later content) will now be doable with 30.