Future Content: A Letter from Director of Development Dave Georgeson

nope never said anything needed nerfing... would never use the "N" word... but yes the difference between raid and group doesnt need to be as big as it is...

do u need to have gear as inflated as it is to do group content... i certainly dont

Raid gear is tuned for Raid Content. There has to be a reason to upgrade your gear in raids. You can't merely make the raids easy enough to always do in group gear.

Raid gear should NEVER be balanced around group content.

You aren't using the "n" word, but you are basically asking for the same thing in practice.

Nor should group content be tuned to make it a challenge for those who are raid equipped. If a max aa/fully kitted in the latest tier/raids with a top guild finds group content boring...well duh. it should be easy because of the company you keep and the gear you have to a certain degree. Being in a raid org is not just about gear. Its also about the people you know and what they know and how they motivate their guildmates to play better than they otherwise would.

The flip side of that is raids being tuned to be won by people who do not put in the necessary effort to win when compared to past releases. That is as much a problem as making group content be a challenge for raiders. Yes, there is a want to make content accessible, but it is not unreasonable to expect people to step it up a notch. Not be superior but at least competent and attentive.

I don't see this as a Gear issue. The disparity in power between Group and Raid is like 20% gear at best. You can talk about gear inflation between the two but its a good bet RoI could clear all their events in CotF and RoF even if their raid force was kitted all in group stuff other than their tank classes. The difference is skill, peers, and attitude. THAT is what makes the yawning chasm between groupers and raiders. Group content should be a challenge for casual groupers but if it is a snooze for raiders? Oh well. Too bad so sad. Load a group alt and take it from there. Most raider alts are better played than most casual group mains, so even then....

In summary, the two games are almost different animals apart from the social aspect which is why I posted the bit about the split. It really shouldn't happen, but the way that people crysack about the opposing faction, it gets to be a "screw it why not separate the two factions into two games?" kind of question. Groupers need to let it roll off that a raid guild member can steamroll their camp, their neighbor's camp and their neighbor's neighbor's camp if they so chose. Yah, jerk move, but they can and some will. You can't stop it. Get over it. Raiders need to stop thinking that every aspect of the game has to provide a non-stop challenge and reward. It shouldn't. Period. Raids should be more challenging and the progression should take longer, that is true. Maybe that alone will keep bored raiders from drawing the ire of the group game but no raider with a few ounces of common sense should expect the group game design and balance to bow to their wishes.

So we should all be expecting a reimbursement for the second half of CoTF which is going to have to be scrapped in order to have the dev resources to release weekly/monthly content AND move back to a yearly expansion?

A lot of people have said a lot of things about the death of EQ over the years but a bait and switch of expansion price-tag magnitude is going to be the last a lot of us care to endure.

What ARE you going on about?Nothing of what what you're implying jives with what Piestro said.

I strongly dislike the thought of weekly Things, even the monthly things.

As I see it, the only result can be tiny parts released that is lacking in quality.

Also you going to do your devs a big misfavor and putting big preasure on them.

They will have to work on small things and they will have to be able to put out something every week or so.

They will not time to work on big things, because they will have the deadline hanging over their head, saying
you have to have that done for next week as that has higher priority.

That kind of preasure can only result in sloppy works.

There is a reason you hear people say Velious or TSS were great xpacs. They delivered massive content. So a big yes to big xpacs.

This is basically asking for a nerf to raid gear. Considering you don't raid and have no idea how hard these mobs hit you should just keep quiet about this unless you are trolling raiders. Current raid bosses can hit for 100k a swing so no we should get better gear imho not a nerf. The damage output for some of this stuff is ridiculous and a grouper like you will never have to deal with stuff like that. Raids are hard mode at this time despite what RoI members will tell you and group gear has been some of the easiest content in years. I would say group is too good if ya ask me if anyone can steamroll it. Raiding is not that way, not even close to steamrollable.

just have one question about all this will thees weekly updates mean downtime every week?? id rather not miss out on playtime every week for some little new adventure that prolly wont mater

Well most players dont raid to get gear in order to be able to raid Players raid for the reward and if the reward isnt worth raiding for noone would raid Its that simple.

. This expansion has provided no level increase and a bare minimum amount of aa's. 1 aug upgrade, 3 spells from the first part of CotF.

Hates Rising is a joke, no new spells or aa's. 1 or 2 aug upgrades/sidegrades.

Getting experience yields me nothing more than a spam message about being max aa's and level.

To stay on point.

I like this idea. I thought I would like quarterly updates, I pre purchase expansions for my accounts, have barely touched RoF.

Sounds great to me.
Gendor

first i am sorry that i got us off topic... but i hate it when my intentions are being misunderstood... i have never stated that raiders needed to be "N" worded...nor have i said that they need to have less stats... what i said was that if they had less then the raids would be tuned down to reflect that.. but all i have been trying to say is that the gap bridge between the two should be smaller than it is...

i wont post any more in this thread since i see that most of you that are commenting on me arent paying attention to what i am saying and thus we got way off topic...

but on topic... i still think that whole expansion with locked zones like HoT would be better than weekly and monthly updates... throw in anniversary stuff and hard core heritage and frostfell and any other special events in there but then that would be it

OK, let me start this by saying that I totally appreciate the fact that SOE realizes there is discontent with CotF, and they recognize that - Yay, thanks for paying attention to your customers.

That being said, this board gives you *ONLY* the opinions of a minority of your player base, and never has done more than that. We are supposedly in YOUR world now, that means that SOE needs to make more effort to understand the game, and to react accordingly. The game is just a big database, get some of your programmers to run some queries. I bet (but could be wrong) you will find 80-90% of the people that log in routinely have at least one character level 100 >5k AA - now think about that fact, and decide what players like that would want. It's fairly obvious to me - more content, more gear, more levels, and more AA. Now maybe I am wrong, and that number is only like 30% of the paying base, and 70% of the people are between 60-95, only 1k AA, etc - think about what that means, and you get a different answer - you get people who don't care about raids, who want more group content, who want more fun events, tuned down, and not just insta-death for their toons. SOE needs to know this, and act upon this for their own interest.

Now for some ideas. I have always been in favor of a broader spectrum of releases - something for everyone, and I realize its hard to account for everyone, but SOE definitely can do better.

Understand - ROI (just picking on them, I have nothing against them, but what I have to say is true) is a type-A personality expressed in a guild, they will *ALWAYS* devour content at a rate faster than you give them credit for being able to, because that's just the nature of the beast. You will struggle to provide enough content for them, just accept it, because there is no economically viable way to provide them enough content. But when you look at the guild progression site, and see 24 guilds completing the expansion this soon after release, you have to think to yourself that content was a little bit thin. Even with 8-12 raids in an expansion, ROI (there I go again, /apo) would *STILL* have beaten it week 1, but there might only be 10 other guilds that have beaten the content by now, and therefore there would still be a sense of more to do, for a vast majority of the guilds that raid. Take-away from this, you definitely need more content that CotF has delivered. Think VoA/HoF levels of raids to keep people busy with stuff to beat, even knowing some will still beat it all fast, but others will not, and that is a good thing for the health of EQ.

Groupers are the same way. There are raiders that group for augs or progression or whatever - they will beat content faster, but that's expected. Then there are groupers that have depth of knowledge in their classes, and they too will progress faster. Finally there will be groupers that belong to the stop and smell the roses type, that will take a leisurely progression. I don't have access to SOE databases, but my feeling is that if you look, almost every grouper has completed at least 1 or 2 of the 4 zone achievements by now. That again is way to little content, to keep the groupers happy long term. Again, maybe I am wrong and only 2% of groupers have completed any 1 zone in CotF, then you're doing it too hard maybe (but I doubt this!)

Itemization. This is perhaps the weakest portion of the CotF model - everything is All/All which is diluting the meaning of loot, and further exposing how little choice in loot there really is. The one nice point was the chase items - well done, keeps it interesting, they are rare, require work to evolve, all around solid idea.

The real failing is this. As a raider, in top level raid gear, resists maxxed, I resist next to nothing in a raid. Further, I cannot be different than Player X, or else I cripple myself, because in reality there is one and only one way to apply gear in the "best" way to do what my class does. One way or the highway, basically, Meh. There could and should be VIABLE choices, not just best gear. If a cleric could collect gear which might lower their mana pool significantly (say 33%) but mean you resist fully 1/3 of AOE attacks, it might actually be worth considering. Or I might end up needing multiple sets of gear, resist gear for heavy AoE raids, melee gear for raids with lots of adds, and +mana regen gear for endurance type raids. Note I say viable, giving up 10% of my mana pool to reduce fireball damage from a certain brownie from 65k to 64,591, um, don't even bother, thanks. Likewise for melee, having gear that sacrifices HP for AC is an interesting choice. One is good in pure melee, with relatively stable incoming dps, while the other might be better for a heavy AoE environment. But again, bold thought is needed. Knowing that Raid X might be trivialized because a certain guild is geared a certain way, well, true, but if that makes Raid Y almost undoable, then yes, its valid and viable.

Finally, with respect to Class Balance/Envy type stuff, remember that a lot of people have serious amounts of time invested in their main character, and it is definitely not fun to be sidelined because someone didn't think about something in designing an expansion. If something strongly favors an archetype, that's OK, if a zone is set up so that 1 of 14 classes can monopolize it, can you at least see the potential for class envy from the other 13 classes? Using the example of original EQ, druids and necros ruled for solo experience, but generally didn't group a lot because people thought they did better on their own. Clerics, Warriors and chanters couldn't solo a green, but grouped together, and they were actually in easy-mode. As long as there are tradeoffs, life is good. When there is a huge gap in power - either lacking or possession, it is bad.

To SOE, thanks for listening to the discontent from your customers. Those long-term loyal players appreciate the notice, believe me. But at the same time, you have work to do, don't just listen to vocal minorities, do some digging on your own, figure out what you want to do, and KEEP COMMUNICATING with us, that is actually quite refreshing and helps us feel like valued customers.

not trying to be an XXX but how are you gonna do weekly/monthly updates and yall cant even keep the universal chat going day to day or log in servers .

fix the mass killing / beaming / swarming problems 1st please

No, I don't want anyone to move anywhere.

I want variety in low level zones, just like the high end raid guilds want variety in the raid zones.

And I'm not asking for hundreds of new zones, not even thousands of new low level zones.

Just 1 or 2 new low level zones, or small changes to current low level zones.

CR is a good example of a low level zone. I can get a toon to 10th there rather well by using the variety of mobs. Variety. I have noticed that if more than 15 characters, and that has happened recently, go into CR to kill mobs and level up, the mobs run out quickly.

Lesser Feydark, as an example, was good for low level half-elves and others. But it is a huge zone, but not many mobs. Adding more mobs, and a few low level quests could make it interesting for low level characters. This could be part of the next expansion.

Another could be Qeynos Hills. Mostly empty terrain. Add a few more mobs, a couple of quests.

These quests could be doable by any character class. Experience, and some plat. Maybe a small number of healing pots. This is for new characters anyway.

Next expansion, or even the monthly changes mentioned, another low level zone could under go the same changes.

Not a complete rewrite of newbie yards, just some small additions.

Add dev time to design and create an area that takes you 5 minutes to out level?

There is already a newbie yard for every single starting city. There is your variety.

I can't see how this is possibly worth the time investment, sorry.

I don't zoom through content. It takes me longer than 5 minutes. I think my idea is a good idea. Its not a major redo, just small changes. And I have a 4-year degree in programming. So no, I don't think it would be a major problem.