It's time to remove group xp penalties.

umm... I don't think any class can outsolo a bard (except maybe raid geared SKs).
Charm kiting they kill a Dark Blue every 10 seconds. Their biggest limit is not enough mobs.

Lol "having your characters long enough" and knowing how to play them properly are two entirely different things Oranges. I wouldn't dare for one minute assert that warriors can solo worth a hoot. But a druid in good group gear can quint kite VERY effectively and that's still nowhere as good as charm kiting. With a full mana bar I can drop 15 mobs in Beast's domain before a short med break and then drop another 10 before repops start happening. By then, my cooldowns are back up and I can rinse and repeat. That's 25 mobs per repop. We know that in a full group each player gets 36% per kill of each mob - a group of 6 would have to kill 75 in the same time frame just to break even.

My group geared necromancer can kill one mob in Evantil with ~20-24 secs cast time. The kill takes about 2 minutes, but the beauty of the necro is that you've already dotted up the 2nd mob completely - maybe the third even before the first dies. Never stop moving and all the sudden you're getting a kill message every 30-35 seconds on average once you factor in fizzles, miss-casts and pull time. I pulled up a parse of one of my lazy kite sessions from a few days ago where I dropped 38 mobs in 30 minutes solo (lesson burn) with a GROUP GEARED necromancer. 62.6 million damage over a 30 minute session. Entire sustained dps including fizzles, misscasts cause i didn't stop moving - laziness because I usually forget to spire etc - and the fact that i was constantly moving and pulling was still 33103 sustained dps. I never run out of mana - ever. To match that xp rate a group would have to chain pull and sustain approximately 99,000 dps. But please understand this - we're not talking 100k dps just when you look at the fight time. That means you averaged 100k dps over the entire 30 minute time block - you'd need at least 1 mob in camp at all times with full dps rolling in at full capacity without any pee breaks, pull breaks, or med breaks. This scenario plays to the biggest strength of the class, but the point stands. A group geared necro played well will beat the heck out of every group every time.

Here's some parse data from my sk - swarming Kaesora.
Repop time: 17 minutes.
Kills per pull: 160-180
Pull time: 3 minutes
Engage to death: 3 minutes
Average time between completions: ~25 minutes
Average thumb twiddle time (aka loot it all): 10 minutes
Total damage dealt: 23 million = about 1 million damage per minute over time = 16,666 sustained dps over the 25 minute kill "cycle"
DPS during the actual kill = over 127,000dps during engaged time only.

For a full group of 6 to match the above, they would have to sustain triple my dps over time and kill continuously for the entire 25 minutes. Easy enough you might say - but I get to spend 10 minutes of that 25 minutes afk for whatever reason while the group has to push hard - pull hard - and not take a break. Corner to kill is just under 3 minutes and it's where 99.99% of the actual damage is done - 23 million dmg. Pulling kaesora is so easy I could probably sleep through it at this point. Viva la swarm?

These are just 2 examples. One of these is an anomaly because of the borderline abusive way it is capable of earning xp. The other is just a plain jane well played dot kiting class. It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out just how 1 solo toon can xp faster than a group. Any character who, by any means, is capable of delivering 1/3 of the total damage per unit block of time that an xp group can deliver can match the xp rate of a fully filled 6 man group without mercs. On top of this, the more efficient and faster a group is, the more time it will spend pulling vs killing. A fast but stationary group might spend 1/4, 1/3, or even 1/2 it's time waiting around in camp for the next pull. A solo person rarely runs out of mobs to kill and will have a proportionally greater time spent dpsing vs finding it's next mob. Any toon that can sustain it's dps for any length of time without breaks will quickly pass a group.

So Oranges ... I'm not lying. I just know how to use my brain and play my characters.

My Druid, my Warrior, my Necro, my characters....

Some posters are merely pointing out that some classes solo too good.

Single account owners that play a soloing capable class are still (mostly) reliant on others for group progression and killing named mobs (even raiders like augs which are only available in group content). But boxers level/AA as many characters as they can manage and they do that in a group, not up to 6x soloing characters getting solo experience and enjoy the up side of always having a group for progression and named mobs <- QUITE the advantage.

Killing a mob entitles each player in a 6 toon group to 1/6th the experience that the mob provides, SOE is far more generous than that - there is already experience improvement for being in a group. Your Druid can solo faster than that?

Can your Druid, Cleric, Warrior, Necro, Rogue, and Wizard played without a group at the same time get better exp than that?

Your bot army can't? Seems to me then that encouraging people to play with others/discouraging botting (not very darned much) is working and this incredibly generous to boxers idea shouldn't see the light of day.

A player focusing all of their energy on one toon can outpace you experiencing up to 6 toons at once while having /lfg issues when grouping is required? Good.

None of my posts have been to brag or encourage soloing for xp - simply to highlight the truth. When I join a group I get a lot less xp on pretty much every character I own. If this is true for me, it's true for anyone who knows how to play these classes well.

Grouping with 5 other people SHOULD always be more xp. It isn't. I would actually welcome any change that would bring this back into more of a balance.

I miss grouping.
I miss it being productive.
These days it isn't.
Until it's productive, there won't be nearly as many people willing to group.

If you want loot, your best bet is to 2 box + 2 mercs - the loot all goes to you.
If you want to xp, your best bet is to solo/molo - or at best duo.

Fix the imbalance and groups might come back into vogue.

Would you want group content to award currency like raid conent? like a token for every named kill for each group member?

Simply having it be unilaterally better experience than soloing would be enough. If grouping were actually better xp, most who solo'd would probably only do so while lfg. Having a greater availability of functioning groups would likewise increase the influx of loot into the grouping game (that other *incentive* to grouping).

In an MMO, anything that promotes going out and playing with others will directly improve the health of the game - which benefits EVERYONE. A healthy game = stronger population - in turn stronger raiding guilds ... you name it.

In an MMO, anything that promotes being a hermit, soloing, and not playing with others .... well that niche can be better filled by any number of games designed for single players and without a monthly subscription cost (ie Skyrim).

There's a bit of a difference between dividing a group name's drops among 6 players and a raid name's drops among 54 players.

The raid name is always up/you don't have to kill placeholders to get him to pop? You also can't kill the same raid event several times a dat and for several days in a row.

Um there are group geared players that are entirely endtier geared within 2-3 months of release consistently (as in for the last 5 years or so).

"If you want loot, your best bet is to 2 box + 2 mercs - the loot all goes to you.
If you want to xp, your best bet is to solo/molo - or at best duo."

If you want loot box and exclude others. If you want exp grind exp, box generous with exp group progression accomplishments, and box drop from mob collection items. Given that box is the answer to so many things at an obvious cost to single account owners making changes so that up to 6 box toons get the full experience from a kill each rather than dividing an already increased because you are grouping experience pool is not group building, it boxing building.

In an MMO things that encourage excluding others and instead encourage boxing are bad for the game. This suggestion is a bonanza for boxers.

Well then, Battleblade, (yes I have known you for almost a decade from TSW - we used to go back and forth forever about ac vs hp, raider vs casual ad infinitum {hundreds of posts}) ... how then do you suggest to balance the disparity between reclusive vs inclusive playstyles?

In my opinion, if you make grouping for xp always more valuable than soloing - you will have more xp groups. If you encourage all soloers to group, the rewards for grouping will make collective play a preference to mercs etc.

You can not ever nor will not ever be able to effectively discourage "boxing" ... so it's impact on this discussion is really a moot point. Though many consider boxing an evil of sorts, understand that the practice of boxing plays no small part in keeping the game you love alive. 1 person boxing 4-6 accounts = 4-6x 1 person's monthly revenue to the company that supports your game. Like it or not, boxing represents a HUGE source of revenue for the parent company and is likely the only thing that has kept this game alive in it's twilight years. If boxing were actively discriminated against, not only would you lose many box'd accounts, you'd lose all those primary accounts as well. So ... how do YOU propose to increase the incentive for people to band together knowing that any changes to both experience or loot will also reward the boxer as well? Unfortunately, boxing is here to stay and will benefit from any attempt to encourage a traditional grouping playstyle. My preferred approach is to increase rewards aimed at inviting any actually paid for account as compared to mercs. Mercs come with too small an upkeep price and too great a benefit (no afk ... will go anywhere) to effectively overcome whatever measly impact they have on xp rate in the current system.

Mercs play a critical role in today's game in allowing people to function with an incomplete or inadequate available community. I do not wish to punish anyone for merc use for this reason, but there needs to be much greater relative incentive to invite a random lfg person (even if they are worthless, stupid etc) as opposed to a merc who fills the same role.

Yes, your random PUG person who's lfg may suck ... just know that the more community friendly this game is in general - the better off we all are. We were all once newbs who sucked and were clueless. In helping the those amongst us who suck and/or are clueless ... who knows - we might actually start to shift back towards what used to make this game so awesome in the beginning.

Disparity? Well you certainly don't go about easing any perceived disparity by flying under false colors. The proposals are incredible boosts for boxers. Look at those posting in favor of it - they know it and you know it.

Disparity? When doing experience producing group progression tasks people group. When after named mobs most people group, When after experience producing dropped by yardtrash collection mobs most people group. Want fast exp? SK, Bard, Ranger, Rogue, Cleric, and maybe an Enchanter. And may I point out that such a group is effective vs group progression and group named mobs.

As a Warrior I've been in a regular meeting Cleric, Druid, Enchanter, Paladin, Warrior, Wizard group most of this expansion. Slow exp? Don't make me laugh - I'll be throwing away on the order of 1000AA's this expansion. I was max months ago and am max again now.

Solo? Solo? Well sir:
1. My solo exp is roughly half of my grouping exp and accomplishment based exp makes grouping even sweeter.

2. I solo when I'm unlikely to be able to talk a group, any group, into doing something I want done - the kind of situation y'all boxers finesse completely., You're advantaged too much already.

3. I solo when members of my regular group aren't available and I'm just killing time. Nothing would encourage me to join some random pickup group (that's why ya'll box right? Right.)

What would I do? Nothing needs to be done. Grouping is sufficiently advantageous that boxers are willing to spend extra money to simulate it at will. (Boxers don't get to play the "community" card btw.)

If you've chatted with me on TSW then you understand the futility of arguing with me over my thoroughly considered and internally consistent point of view. You can disagree and explain your disagreement but you are unlikely to "catch me out".

Any proposal to increase experience associated with grouping is going to affect everyone equally - boxers or single toon players alike. To be honest, the only thing I truly care about is making a greater incentive to invite random people who are lfg to your group and holstering your mercenary. Mercs are dandy and all that jazz - they serve a needed role in today's EQ, but there should be palpable benefits to replace said merc with someone random that you've never met.

I've chatted with you and known you long enough to know that you are beyond reasoning with. You always have been be it raider vs casual or ... your favorite topic "spellbook superiority" as it pertains to knight/warrior tanking parity. You always have been and always will be (apparently) frankly oppositional and vehemently looking to argue with the *other*. The *other* in this scenario is the person who chooses to play more than one character vs the one who chooses to play just one character. I prefer to play one character. Out of necessity I created secondary accounts that I'd be happy to ditch at a moment's notice in lieu of real people to play with.

My old TSW user handle: Bedavir. Remember me? I was that guy who used to champion the whole concept of ac > all back in the day when everyone was head over heels in love with hp augments. Funny how things come around full circle. It's nice to know that the community at large eventually comes around to logic and reason. Back then, though ... there weren't pesky "heroic" stats to toss into the balance mix.

All good augments these days have ac on them - thus making the decision moot.

My old posts are all still there.

Very few suggestions for EQ affect everyone equally..

I, for example, am a single account owner who focuses all his effort on one main character that gets all of my attention when it's campaigning in the game.

Fred over there boxes. He has several toons on each of multiple accounts. Not all of them are max experience and max AA'd. He'd sure love getting solo kill experience for killed by 6 toons mobs. This is addition to his use of the Refer Yourself initiative and his proclivity for saying "My nameaclass could use that! Let me log him in." whenever anything dropped.

Yep, group experience is just fine. We already get a grouping bonus and it's plenty. I say this as someone who regularly groups, is at max AA and max saved AA, and will likely throw away 1000 AA this expansion.

Nothing will prevent corner cutters and gray area players from (example) boxing a Bard, playing melody, and getting those advantages without having to touch the toon again. <- already gets exp credit/does nothing.

"Need" to play multiple characters? Be satisfied with perfectly adequate group experience (I know since I'm a Warrior and I HAVE to be satisfied with that when I can get it).

One Necro or Mage or ... can get faster experience played with 100% of your attention molo? Do that then - I'm sure you peeps have a toon that is that class. You can't molo 6 toons at once? You aren't 6 people. You're 1 person with a bagful of not very good puppet strings.

Lol lol lol. Boxers who say they'd include others more often if SOE would just give them the moon and the stars. Um you don't lose anything right now if you have a pickup guy in slot #6. Slot #6 is a freebie.

Timmy the Warrior might choose to solo rather than let Billy Boxer dictate where the group is hunting and who gets the loot? Good for Timmy. Experience should not be changed to give y'all boxers more leverage on his arm.

Btw I'm the guy who suggested AC AND HP. All the best augs (IMO) have both.

Yep I regularly oppose things that are unfair - like exceeding Solteris armor values without ever doing Solteris difficulty content. Like one human plumping up 2-5 characters when in truth only one is being played to standard and the rest are driven by macros if they are being played at all.

i believe its time to remove the xp bonus for fighting green, light blue, and dark blue mobs as well... lets get rid of the power level sellers by forcing them in to the newer content where their broken abilities are useless. i'm requesting cutting the xp by at least 75% for anything less than an even con mob.

i also have a decent fix for the headshot debacle... lets make it more realisitc by requiring time to aim at the head... make head shot an activated ability... with lets say a 3 second cast time... maybe 15 to 30 minute recast time... and have it just do massive % damage to a non named non raid mobs... and have it do fixed massive damage to raid mobs. make it even easier on the coders and just copy paste from harm touch for all i care.

i dont play rog, zerk,or sk with broken abilities so i'm gonna have to rely on other experts to come up with fixes for those decapitate / assassinate / swarming pl problems. its rediculous when 15 out of 20 lines in general chat is some scrub selling pls to other scrubs..

every xpac the devs put in several "features" that are there so encourage players to give up the old content and venture in to the new... degrading foci... tradeskill bag combine weirdness that prevents even tradable stuff from being aquired by someone who doesnt own the expac... level caps on old spells, spells being too strong for lower level stuff etc... its contrary to the primary vision to continue to allow the best path to gaining xp being slumming it in content that's 3years while they afk.

thank you and good day

~b

Back then, there were no augs that "had both". You suggested to have some of each, which mathematically (then and now) was incorrect.

I'm all for any change that moves EQ back towards a game where group play is encouraged - however that is achieved.

I gotta say is kinda disgusting to read a post from a guy who wants to box a headshot group complaining about another guy who regularly runs a headshot group in Ferott.

Oh please - 25AC 25HP. The first augs with both had been out for years. I suggested one should not entirely sacrifice AC or entirely sacrifice HP in the name of being AC or HP preferring. Given that today the best augs (IMO) generally have both (and there're Heroics to consider as well) the AC>all/HP>all extremist positions are moot.

I'm all in favor of EQ suporting soloers, groupers, and even 16 players treating an open zone mob like they are in a mini-raid if that's what they want to do. Just like it did from the very beginning when the game was more fun. As long as the maximum number of humans are having fun I'm glad to see it (which explains why I dislike seeing boxing and the comparative Single Account Owner Disadvantage).

One ought not have one's arm twisted to be the single account owner lacky of boxers - which is pretty much what OP's suggestion would accomplish along with giving his boxed alts Rocket Powered Experience Skates. IF you can solo and get reasonable exp good for you. There are plenty of reasons to group outside of kill mob/exp grinding and even plenty of other ways to get experience.

The old days are long gone. While I tend to agree with battleblade on the boxing aspect, your not gonna change how people choose to spend their time playing the game. If a person chooses to pay for more than one account I don't think I'm in any position to tell them how they should spend their money or their time. The game is to far gone in that direction to change how someone wants to play the game. Every server has their helpers and every server has their takers. No matter what you try to implement people are gonna choose to play how they want to play and your not gonna force anyone to play beyond the style they choose to play. It's kind of a pointless debate if you ask me.

Amorcen

Ummm ... whut?

Ah so as irony would have it, the infamous Battleblade's actual point here is the same old song and dance he's always had - he's a'feared that any increase to group xp bonuses will make his life's investment even more meaningless. I mean ... isn't what this has always been about BBlade? 7 years ago it was a persistent fear that escalating values on group gear would de-value your time investment being a hardcore raider. Escalating knight abilities would de-value your choice to be the best meat shield in the game.

Here's a hint: it's a game. Anything that is healthy for the game population is healthy for the game. It's unhealthy for this game to not have a vibrant pickup group atmosphere. Though mercenaries play a critical role in filling population gaps and the ongoing survival of this dusty old game, anything that would encourage the replacement of real accounts in the places of mercenaries is a good thing. If those are paid alternate accounts ... who cares. More revenue for Sony = this game lives longer.

If replacing someone's wizard dps merc (25k+ dps sustained on burn) with an undergeared slightly lower level dps toon (under 7k dps) who's lfg results in lower xp via lower kill rate, that dps merc is going to occupy that group slot. If escalating bonuses reverse that trend and allow for equivalent or more xp gain by dropping the mercenary - all the sudden some random <lfg> person is going to end up having the kind of positive gameplay experience that keeps him interested.

You're more than welcome to pay SoE 45$ a month instead of 15$ a month for all the advantages that 3 half-pint (pseudo-played) toons and there mercenaries give you over 1 very well played toon (+/- your merc). Money makes the world go 'round, and you'd effectively be tripling your contribution to the perpetuation of this game.
.

I could care less if boxers get more exp, as long as more real people group, and thus got more exp too. However, simply making the exp you get in a group be better than solo exp would not change much of anything. You'd still get less loot if you group up with 5 other real players, you'd still take longer to do solo tasks with loot steps, you'd still be bound to the pace of the slowest/most afk member of your group. I think that's a larger stumbling block to most than EXP rate is.

I care if boxers get more experience.

To the extent that high play time single account owners and selected great soloing classes can outrun developing box teams (people who got started with the boxed alts late and the alts are still low AA) there are currently grouping opportunities for humans rather than just bots. The same is true when groups must flag each toon in the group individually rather than all at once. It's also true in accomplishments where you have to attend to every character and play them well (it's kind of funny to see a boxer who's excluded others for 6 months ask for help on an event).

SOE can nudge trends for good or ill in the game. OP's suggestion is a nudge in the ill direction.

In contrast, people complained about sitting in camps and grinding exp endlessly. And now there's Merc, Partisan, and Collections flooding us with experience. Yes, it's still moving an experience bar but there's the illusion that you are doing something at least a little bit different constantly. <- positive change to the game that's somewhat grouping with others encouraging.

With the new sources of experience one can hardly claim there's a need to radically increase group grind experience because some hypothetical soloer is going to wreck himself by not doing progression tasks and collections.

With multiple headshot box teams looking to AA underdeveloped alts yelling at each other on the forums over who's monopolizing what content it kinda sweet savoring the irrelevance since real players can get plenty of experience now progressing through expansions by grouping. Plenty. More than plenty. Throwing 100's of AA's away plenty.

Pro Tip - To the extent EQ is Buy Two (or More) Accounts/Enjoy Once there's a huge disincentive to play it. EQ? Don't bother. You have to pay for two accounts to just keep pace with others. Tough to market a game with that as a features bullet.

(Subscribers make the world go round and the prevalence of boxing turns off potential subscribers).

There's plenty of AA without giving box teams Rocket Powered AA Grind Skates. Do the progression and collections with others - you'll get plenty of AA.

I tend to stay out of conversations like this, duo to me not wanting to get in a discussion with the arrogant elitists, but this triggered me.

So Piestro, the new guy, the returnee, the average or the casual player does not meet the requirements for getting half decent exp, or how is that statement understood?

I don't know how long since you last played your own game, but the players who typicaly join random groups, does not have the resources to load up 3 or 4 accounts to bot an entire army to do group stuff or molo. Yet all of the above mentioned are perfectly able to solo and get a ton of exp if they just roll a certain class.


But yeah, guess it's obvious that EverQuest is on its 14th year. No noobs excists in this game anymore. Only hardcore players.

Anyways, THAT particular statement would have gotten you fired pre-luclin, or atleast it should have.

The new guy and the long departed returnee have OP for the content gear (Defiant which is dropped by yardtrash is often as good as drops that normally come from named mobs), mercs, and AA acceleration. They can molo exp quite effectively.

Casual players are casual - they are casual with their effort investment and get casual results. Being casual about the game why should they care??

As was the case in the very beginning, when you make the social connections to group regularly the already good situation you find yourself in gets even better. Or you can Buy Power.

I';ve known numerous returness. Almost to a man the issue they faced was not getting experience. It was establishing social connections in a world where they had become strangers. (Those that bought power progressed more quickly but they still didn't know anybody. Being alone in a multiplayer game isn't a lot of fun).

People do benefit by finding better groups. They just have to overcome fear, greed, selfishness, ego, etc. and defer some of what they'd like to do to group agreed goals.