DBG and how they design things

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Corwyhn Lionheart, Mar 20, 2018.

  1. Fohpo Augur

    I don't really struggle with the group missions, but some of the named are just brutal for melee groups.

    So not technically group geared* - which I don't have anything against I just was curious.
  2. fransisco Augur

    Ya, I've noticed that the damage of DDs vs Dots is very similar, which is total BS. Example, in skyfire Muwmun has a dot that is 123k per tick. There aren't really any DDs that hit for much more than that in the group game (he also casts another 90k dot too).So your tank can have 210k per tick in dots in him. In group gear? VS a T1 named. Seriously? (insert pointless comments by people saying 210k/tick is no problem newb).

    A "less" extreme example (now looking at T2 mobs instead of T1 mobs which alot of people ignored).
    In Gorowyn, High Acron has a 123k DD, most other named in the zone have a DoT that is 123k per tick.
    Honestly, this is stupid. Dots for as much as DDs?
    A 120k dd is fine on a named fight, but 120k dots for people in group gear (Who when fighting it are not in full current gear otherwise they wouldn't need to fight the named).
    There was ZERO thought given to how people in group gear (not chase gear/raid gear) would handle this expansion.
    Its basically like gates of discord all over again.
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  3. Raptour_MT Elder

    The current game is not designed for people that:

    A). Don't raid current content to gear up.
    B). Don't have multiple accounts to run their own box crew,
    C). Run some form of 3rd party cheat program to trivialize gameplay.

    99% of the people that say nothing is wrong or that they don't have a problem or EQ is not the game for 'you' fall into 1 or more of those 3 categories. Why does every design decision have to be a knife fight for the players, even if you complete it you are left bruised, bloody and drained.
    Bidaum_TR and Metanis like this.
  4. Vaeeldar Augur

    Would love to hear how your doing empire. And yeah I have no melee really (bard) as I play casters.

    As to grup gear - eh chase loots to me are the pinnacle of group but yeah I get the point. Even prior to chase though I didn't have much problem with nameds but caster/pet classes give me a lot of options in my approach to fighting named.
  5. Vdidar Augur

    It seems to me like every time the devs do something good they do 3 things bad to mitigate it. I could be wrong though because my play time has decreased to almost nothing. That probably has more to do with the fact that I don’t enjoy RoS at all and feel almost swindled for buying it but that’s just me. I’m sure the vast majority don’t agree and that’s fine with me.
    Yinla, Slippry and Metanis like this.
  6. Smokezz The Bane Crew

    A) Nope... Yes, I'm in a raiding guild but our guild has a huge number of casual members with no raid gear at all. Lots of them are in VP, lots of them have done it with little help from the raiding crew.
    B) Tons of people don't box at all.
    C) Some people certainly do use automation by the software that is not allowed, starts with an M. ISB is allowed, and is certainly not cheating. Maybe it is in your head, but it's not. It's been specifically said by the devs that it's not. It doesn't automate anything. It only eliminates the alt tab.

    Resume FQ.
  7. slayerofbats Augur

    Why would you think I am not good at it based on what I said? I am a great raider and have been doing it since before you were born. You should probably read the post again, slowly. And also remember that you are defending a game and idea that at one point had Necros do nothing but spam all their mana onto a Cleric.
  8. Eanelder Augur

    I have to admit it was pretty sad during the Anniversary stream to see that none of the 3 hosts (2 devs & community manger?) knew how to assign master looter in the game. It was a bit eye opening, and gave perspective as to why key functionality in something like the Potion belt would be overlooked in recent decisions.
  9. Darchon_Xegony Augur

    Large DoTs in the group game is completely fine if they are curable.

    Priests get 2-3 spell lines for curing single or group targets, each has Radiant cure and usually an additional self or single target cure AA.

    Those cure abilities should be useful to mitigate the impact of 120k DoTs. You should only be eating the first round on the DoTs and then curing it off. But unfortunately they seem to love debuffs that have no cure counters and cannot be removed with remove detrimental abilities.

    I saw Ngreth post in a previous thread in regards to OT trash mobs something to the effect of "why gives these mobs abilities if players just Cure them off?". Because it forces you to pay attention while playing, gives value to these classes and these abilities beyond just popping a merc Healer, and it makes the game more interesting and less of a faceroll where the only things that matter are red bars.

    Almost no detrimental effects should be flagged "No Cure". Some that are intended to be environmental effects or things that are core to the functionality of the encounter I understand. However regular DoTs or Snare/Root/Slow type debuffs should all be curable through either counters or remove detrimental abilities. Especially in the group game.
    jiri_ and Corwyhn Lionheart like this.
  10. fransisco Augur

    Not only that, some PoWar code has made it into this expansion. No mob will cast anything on a pet. It always targets the pets owner now too.
  11. Sancus Augur

    It was interesting to me that in EoK beta the mobs were very undertuned for a lot of it, which people noted on the beta forums. Augur (he was a dev at the time) actually asked to join group geared groups in General chat during beta, and a few days later EoK mobs were re-tuned. I think EoK could've used challenging missions or something, but overall the tuning/questing/etc was very good.

    I don't think anything like that happened in RoS. Part of the issue is EQ has hired quite a few more coders over the last few years, but has fewer and fewer designers. That's probably a good thing for the game in some ways because it needs a lot of work on the code side, but it also means there are very few devs designing content. I think there are quite literally 3 devs (Prathun, Absor, and Ngreth) that actually design content at this point. There's not really much time for them to do play testing as well, and none of them have really taken the initiative to test tuning with group geared groups.

    I don't think RoS is that hard, but I think the outdoor zones specifically are too annoying/overtuned. The indoor zones might have a few poorly tuned named or something, but I think it would be less of an issue if the outdoor zones didn't give terrible XP and make you want to hang yourself. I don't think having a Frontier Mountains-esque zone in an expansion is bad for the game as long as it doesn't scale (hello Gribbles).
    fransisco, Yinla, Fohpo and 3 others like this.
  12. Slippry Augur

    RoS lacks the fun design from EoK. In the outdoor zones specifically, it's like someone slapped in a bunch of extra abilities and mechanics without thinking about how they would feel to play through. Instead of the additions being interesting and engaging, they're tedious and annoying.
    fransisco, Dart, Yinla and 2 others like this.
  13. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    Yeah and I don't think DBG gets this. What may seem like interesting mechanics on one play through becomes tedious and irritating when you are spending a lot of time in a zone. No open zone should be a play through once then never go back type of zone.
    Slippry and Yinla like this.
  14. Fohpo Augur

    Well said, it's also pretty obnoxious that the indoor zones only have a few really solid camps and because of such, never really get the population required to get a /pick (at least on FV). The population for us (on FV, this is from personal experience) is heavily slanted towards the group game and a lot are flocking back to FM rather than venturing into RoS zones. Once I got comfortable in RoS indoor zones, I actually started to prefer them - especially right now with the XP bonus because it isn't bad to grind. As long as you have moderate DPS, the indoor zones certainly feel better than FM for grinding. I don't often see people in most of those zones though because like a number of people have stated, they were either turned off by dumb mechanics (re: overly punishing for groupers) or some of the named just steamroll for a variety of reasons.
  15. Vaeeldar Augur


    ROS as a whole seems to punishing for the average grouper. I have to admit i liked the random named in OT being too hard for most because it's netted me a lot of free drops for 15 box army (all group gear btw) but it makes me wonder why I can usually run to OT each day and pick off 2-3 named for free.

    As to the indoor zones - I agree always empty but I do all my grinding in them -HS and Sathir in particular - because they are always empty and good XP. Gorowyn is a nightmare setup though even I only go there for specific items.

    So yes they missed the boat for groupers. Don't even get me started on progression...
  16. Fohpo Augur

    I actually didn't find the progression to be too bad, outside of a few buggy quests or the fact that the missions were required and could have been tuned better for group geared players. I did have the advantage of being in a raiding guild and having at least one raid geared toon to either do the mission with, or to have people help carry alts through. It's a shame the average grouper probably hasn't broken into VP yet, because I feel that could be really rewarding and a great place for 1-2 groups of players to go together.
  17. Niskin Clockwork Arguer

    I got the chance to go to OT a few weeks ago. Group was a 110 Paladin in RoS tradeskill gear, 110 Monk in TBM/EoK Raid gear, and my 108 Monk in a mix of EoK group and RoS tradeskill gear. We used 2-3 Healer mercs to fill out the group.

    Did the first progression quest and it went ok. Had a few deaths, somehow I wasn't one of them, which is a new thing for me. We fought a variety of mobs and it was definitely easier than I expected, until we fought a named mob. The named mob dropped the tank in seconds, both tries. Then the raid geared Monk informed us that the best tank in our guild (group geared but really decked out) had the same experience there with that mob.

    I think that's unreasonable. A 110 tank should be able to tank any named mob (that isn't a raid mob) in the early zones of RoS. And our tank had full RoS tradeskill armor, which is better than RoS T1. Maybe I'm missing something, or maybe this named mob was special, but it definitely didn't feel right.

    Now I've heard a lot of complaints about mobs dotting players in OT, which I didn't really notice. If it was happening it wasn't hitting me, but that could have explained some of the deaths. EoK started off easier, even though Lceanium, where you start, is tougher than Frontier Mountains. But as I understand it, Skyfire and OT are the early zones, and we're not 105. I can only imagine what it would be like if the group wasn't two 110's and a 108.
  18. shruggz Elder

    here is my take on ot tuning,
    ive been wtf facerolled by every name ive tried, but to be fair I started trying at level 107 with mix of partial eok and ros tradeskill gear.

    ive since made it to 110, and the tank is completely geared in ros tradeskill gear, with what I think is a fair to middlin aug set. over 5400 ac and 200k hp his weak points atm is he's an sk without his 2.0
    and still working on 110 aa's

    he's also the puller, and most named ive tried so far he doesn't even get back to camp with it.
    dotted and snared out of range of heals = dead, dead before I can tab to the mage to coth em
    dead before I can tab to the shaman to heal em, if I fd I'm still dead. try to fight em in place?
    adds = dead

    one of the named I actually got back to camp I wished I didn't, lol buff golem ae silence in camp = dead

    iron sentinel dropped me so fast I still don't know what happened then walked around one shotting the rest of the group.

    keep in mind, I still have some work to do I can still improve the tank with some better heroic augs and maybe an ac aug or two and more of the aa's that can help. and his 2.0
    shaman and mage both need some non visibles and 110 aa's

    I'm of the opinion that in the entry zone to an expansion.. that is where you start gearing up,

    by killing named, getting gear, augs, aa's, rk 2's

    speaking of rk 2's ive seen 3 drop since expansion release, crazy rare, and because they are..
    there was one in baz this morning. and I mean there was only one ros rk 2 spell for sale in the baz and it was selling for 300k.

    kinda makes it a bit tougher to power up

    I'm not *itching here I'm just simply stating my observations. and my opinions.

    ive finally figured out some of my computer issues causing 2-3 seconds of black screen every time I tried to tab to another toon so that helps a lot.

    ive redesigned my ui's on all 3 and that's already helping, and when my muscle memory catches back up will help considerably more.

    and ive joined the whack a mole club (moved all the aa's to kept on cooldown to the same location on all toons) I haven't parsed yet to see what difference that makes but I can tell already it will be sizeable and changed up my mage's spell order (thanks to those in the mage class forums big difference)

    so I still have some hope, however the named in ot seem a bit overtuned for an entry zone in my opinion.
  19. Vaeeldar Augur

    Shruggz post is a perfect example to me of the problem with ROS. Too many groupers are suffering that way and the amusing part are the named are relatively easy compared to End of Empire.

    Guaranteed Daybreak tunes down EE sometime this summer. Why play that game is the question.
  20. IblisTheMage Augur

    Or maybe we get a payed DLC with 3k more aa, an additional armor tier, a new zone, and a new spell :)

    Joking aside: those struggling in RoS, where you more or less AA capped in EoK before you leveled up?