EQ2 Basic Edition: Djinn Illusion (10% XP buff) + 110 Heroic Character.

I just bought two heroic characters over this weekend. Why? Because it saves me TIME. I don't have run all over Neddy's Norrath gathering spells, armor, skilling up. Then there's the menial items like bags, food, mount. I think I spent all of 20 mins apiece getting them 'set up', and then it was off to level. In one day they are both lvl 93 and climbing nicely. Heroic Chars don't need to be improved. Would it be nice to have a 100 or 105 HC available? Yes. But not at the expense of new content

If its not selling on its own then give it free and add value to a lackluster expansion announcement or lower the price. Please forward this to the marketing team. Also, consider doing less nerfs and hiring more devs who aren't close minded.

This idea sounds reasonable, but it's poor for a "new" player. Having a weird thing to click to get stuff from, and not really know what to do with this large amount of things adding to your cursor is not a good experience. It's overwhelming and another good way to send a new player running away.
Sure. An experienced player can easily figure it out, but Heroics are not ONLY about experienced players.

Heroic characters are a total waste on brand new players no matter what you do, they will not have a clue about where to go get exp, what gear to use, or even what spells to mem... or even how to mem spells for that matter!

A good example is myself, a while ago I saw that EQ2 had updated heroics you just had to log in to claim one, so I did and got myself a level 100 ... then i sat there because I have not played EQ2 for well over 10 years I had zero knowledge of even where to go or what I should hunt. or even what spells i should use....after about 10 minutes of poking though my new level 100's inventory I logged off and came back over to EQ.

Giving someone lots of power but no knowledge about how to play the game will always end up in disaster.

WoW's Expansion+Character boost combo deal has gotten me a few times, I am surprised EQ1 has not done something similar even if it was just a lvl 85 heroic included.

There isn't a need for a new tier of HC yet honestly. When they were introduced there was a 15 level gap between the HC and the cap; I do not see any reason for the next set to have any less of a separation.

At that point in time, I would do something similar to what was suggested earlier, I would make the new verision be a normal HC + Upgrade Flag. The Upgrade Flag would grant you an additional Reward which grants you a reward which when claimed would grant you the XP difference between 85 and whatever 15 levels less than the cap at that time is; as well as CotF's alt currency that is sufficient to purchase upgraded gear for your character. But the CotF's alt currency would only be rewarded the first time you claim it, like how the plat and Bayle marks are currently.

I have tried many times to catch up on live servers, I always hit a wall around 80-85, give up and quit. I have never bought a heroic toon because getting to 85 is the easy part, and generally fun to solo.

Give the level 85 heroic toons a cookie to eat that makes them level 100, or whatever. Give them the levels, the spells and a decent set of gear. I'll figure the rest out.

Pop up a confirmation box that suggests they play for a while at 85 to learn the class if you want, or make the cookie require level 86. I think most of us know what we're doing at this point. The number of true newbs that would be too confused to figure things out is likely so small as to not warrant consideration, when compared with how many people will quit because there is no one to group with.

Soo.... since it is "your fault" that the flagging issues for TLP servers post UF have not been commented on.... can we get a comment PLEASE!!!! ;-)

See https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/change-keying-for-3-month-servers.251901/ for more reading, though I am SURE you have already read it all.....

I like the Heroic Fish idea. I'd also be willing to take a flat out naked 100/105 for a reasonable cost, though that'll probably never be in the cards.

I get that it's not a great way to go about it and it's poor for new players, but it can't possibly be any more difficult to figure out than it is to figure out a way to trudge through the 85-100 range as a new/returning player. We see these come through the forums pretty regularly - both returners and Heroic Characters. That range is just abysmal to get through now without other people, save for a few classes or those with extreme patience. Even explaining it out, it doesn't sound any better. I'd imagine that's still more off-putting than having to figure out a bit of an odd gearing situation.

This is the first expac since joining this game in year dot I have not pre-ordered, either the marketing people have been instructed to big up the colour beige and make water sound like wine or it really is a pile of MEH.

Talking of year dot.............Lacklustre xpac pushed with a bleeding snail....2 years and counting overdue on Necro DoT revamp, maybe just maybe having very limited resources is really starting to bite, because it sure as heck looks like it from here.

Plus the Dev's comments all appear to keep going back to the same theme, "Oh to much work", can we also take that as the eventual tone taken if and when the heck there ever is any stated progress report on the DoT revamp...

But in the mean time do please rush out more mounts, we really really need more mounts and merc skins....All fluff and no substance.

but where is the revenue? I mean lets be honest, EQ is not and has not been a game marketed or geared towards attracting "new players". It attracts existing players to spend more money and old player to come back and play once again, both of which can handle what happens with a /herobuff to 100/105 and go buy gear in the bazaar with the krono they also purchased from you and sold for plat. I think this would RETAIN and attract more old players and its a whole new revenue stream, and you can keep the heroic characters in with all the percs and bonuses that come with them.

I think the term "new" does not always mean that they log in for the first time, buy a HC and then start playing. At least for me new just means they have not been playing EQ very long. I agree for someone on their first day this would probably be confusing but I also doubt there are many new players who log in for the first time, drop money on a sub, expansions, and buy a HC without testing the game out for free first but again you have more data than I do on these matters.

I think this would work out well for people that are newish to the game that want to upgrade if the community put together some class guides and tutorials. Said guides could be pinned to the top of the class section of the forums and an alert when someone makes a new HC encouraging them to check out the class guides to assist them with the new power gains they have obtained. This would have to be a joint effort from players and developers to make this work. We have seen the player side of the community come together with things like tradeskills helping even veteran players so its not unreasonable to think the same thing could be possible with class guides. Obviously there will be some disagreement even from top players of the same class on certain aspects of a guide but if the guides are generally seen as good by their respective class masters it should be sufficient.

At the end of the day I think both developers and players want the same thing and that's player retention which means jobs for you guys and EQ for us. Getting more players to end game on live servers is an important step imo but maybe I am wrong? Again you guys have the data to support everything you do or don't do with the resources you have available to you.

When they were released, Heroic characters were 15 levels lower than the cap, but levels aren't everything. Heroic characters are geared in House of Thule-equivalent gear, and that was only 3 expansions behind the cap at the time. That meant that Heroic toons still had to trudge through three expansions' worth of content before they could play with their friends and experience the current expac.

Today's equivalent (3 expansions back) would be The Broken Mirror, which is only 5 levels behind the current level cap.

But my personal preference would still be to upgrade them all the way to RoS conflagrant gear. This let's people play in current content (with other people!) immediately, and it helps to "future proof" the Heroic toons.

nvm

There is a reward for completing an achievement in TBL which rewards an illusion, Djinn if I remember correctly.

Might want to hop on to beta and take a look for yourself.

Then why not add them. This would make the rewards look better and no cost to EQ (since no one wants them).

Option 1 (the best if your truly gonna spend time on this): keeping free to play in mind for New/returning players so they can get a feel for the game. and to secure another 9+ years out of this heroic option. making all the following armor No drop / no sell obviously.
Include 1 heroic with all 3 expansion options going into the future
Marketplace Price $75 or 7500 DBG cash
-Level 106, this makes it so they have to go out and experience the content, as well as allowing them to wear the following armor
-Full Conflagrant Armor/weapons for your class (non prestige)
-full set of Type 5 Resplendent sulstone of Resilience (Heroic Stamina) from TBM (non prestige) just give everyone type 5 Hstamina augs, allows the new/returning player to survive and learn.
-full set of Type 7/8 group augments from TBM (non prestige).
-update the Discipline and spell book
-could more then likely just copy paste the current hotbuttons from the heroic 85 character. this would allow the new player to be able to start bashing mobs, but also let them kinda learn and figure the vast well of AA's/Spell/Disc stacking on their own.
-Spawn them in PoK by the Teek brothers, PoK is a Safe zone, Gives 2 Quest givers (the teek brothers) who give some ideas on what a new/returning player can do for starters (kill mobs or form groups with other heroic players to do heroic adventures) and allows them to go out and do some trivial stuff to learn the game without getting absolutely destroyed and turned off.
-toss in all the other standard heroic stuff (2 bags, food, drink, silly mount, cheap powersource, 15k plat, MPG trials, DoN progression, Apprentice T4 merc ect.)
-all the above allows a new player to join other players and be useful, and with the rest of the server population, and not all alone off in some desolate zone with nobody to talk to (current L85 heroic)


Option 2: $35 or 3500 DBG cash and include 1 heroic with each of the 3 expansion options going into the future
Make the heroic Character Level 100 - This is a a compromise to the character boost. they are high enough to group with others and be useful (Dmg, Spells, buffs) rather then a level 85 who gets absolutely destroyed and resisted by everything from the past 7 expansions and immediately turned off by the game. Also, the option you could just make it level 105, to extend the longevity of the work you would have to put in rather then having this very same conversation come up x years from now Like Yinla mentioned above.

Starting Point - Ethernere Tainted West Karana, this is a suitable starting zone for what would be a new player. as the local animal's and mobs are pretty trivial to a Level 100 player in T1 group gear from CoTF. and it also has the added excitement of the roaming named cyclops to add that level of fear and excitement and "what the F*(&( just happen" moment =D. its also a decent size zone with many different kinds of mobs and static roaming named (example: those pesky named cyclops!). you could add a PoK stone to that camp if yuo truly wanted to, and just have that window prompt if you want to enter Qeynos or ethernere tainted west karana when you click on the Qeynos Stone in PoK (similar to how the Feerrot PoK stone works currently). Ethernere Tainted West Karana is also continuing the theme of old world zones as familiarity to returning and nostalgic players it also has the zoneline to the original west karana right by the camp so if said returning/nostalgic player feels overwhelmed they could pop over for some grounding =P.

Gear - put it in full T1 CoTF group gear, the latent etheric armor of ___ (non-Prestige) so they can try the game out as a silver in level appropriate gear to get a feel. this armor is decent enough and isn't to complex with the added type 5/9/6 augment stuff that appears in TBM+

Augments - Similar to how you did it in House of Thule for the level 85 heroics, you could just move those same augs over to the Tainted West Karana quests and tack them on as a reward. giving new players incentive to do the CoTF quests to earn currency to upgrade to the better augments from the multiple vendors in the camp. this would also encourage them to want to subscribe to use the option of the better Prestige armor/weapons/augments from said vendors using said currency.

Premade Hotbuttons - pretty sure you could just copy paste the current L85 ones over to the Level 100 heroic, but upgrade the discs / spells to level 100 instead =P

Starting Apprentice, Tier V mercenary - Again with Free to play in mind and to minimize work, just leave this how it is maybe add that once they complete all the Mercenary/Partisan quests inside Ethernere tainted west karana it upgrades their merc to Journeyman

I vote to test this out by putting “Hero Fish” on the loyalty vendors. It will be used by experienced players first who will then spread the news to older players with idle accounts.

Prime way to test a new idea.

Except that Levels, and AAs, are the main thing. The claim that anyone had to trudge through 3 expansions worth of content before their HC could play with their friends in current content when HC were first released is simply false. 85 with that gear was more than high enough to group with a level 100 character and get xp as well as participate in all of the missions. They might not have been as helpful as a level 100 would be but nothing prevented them from playing in that current content short of them having simply not bought that content at the time. Also, Heroic Gear is more in line with T4 UF than it is with any tier of HoT; which again falls in line with the HC's being based on level not anything to do with a set number of expansions back. HC's are 15 levels back using gear that is the equivalent of the most recent expansion in which that level was the cap; in this case UF.

You're second statement is based on a false assumption that the Dev's decided they wanted HCs X number of expansions back and from that established the level they would be. In reality, The Dev's decided how many Levels back they wanted HCs to be; the number of expansions back was simply a side effect of that as well as the fact that at the time there was a level increase every expansion. If the Dev's ever decide it is worth the time and resources to introduce another round of HCs or provide something similar, then you can bet that that the level difference will be the same, with the HCs being geared being on par with whatever was the last expansion in which that was the level cap; regardless of how many expansions have passed since then.

Let's not pretend, we care about new players. Have you started a new character? The ui is awful and there's so many pop-up windows.

Why don't you just look at the straight business facts.

There’s the new expansion buzz, some returning players are going to be looking at the game, to check it out. In less than 6 months will be the 20th anniversary, which will get some more looks at the game.

A heroic character is 3500 SC, an expansion is almost the same price. So, why wouldn’t Daybreak be thinking that now is the time to adjust the heroic character level. People will be more likely to buy a 100+ character than a 85 character, because they can more quickly access the newest expansion.

So, why don't you capitalize on the natural publicity that you're going to get from gaming websites for hitting your 20 year anniversary? Adjust the heroic characters to level 110 and make $$$.