Incorrect, I don't box, or bot, I play single char at a time, have three 120's and leveling up a paladin now. I don't just play this game, and buying the 85 HC or the 100 HC saves me a TON of time. I play other games, and have characters in other games as well. You later replied to people about being toxic back to you because they had to reply and disagree with you on something. It's actually you that caused this. Look at the tone, feel, general mood of your statement that you said above. You said it with such arrogance, so sure of your opinion, you had slight mood or anger in your words too. THIS is exactly the reason why people come back at you and feel the need to correct someone who's wrong. Because they went about it in an arrogant/moody way. So you added to the toxicity first. If people in general talked to folks in a nicer, more mature and peaceful way in general, then they would be met with the same. If you want toxicity to change, then it has to start in the mirror, in how you start to converse to people.
I'll say that the new heroics are extremely underwhelming. When Heroics first came out they were 15 levels and 4 expansions behind on gear. And now, 9 years later, they are 20 levels behind and 8 expansions behind on gear.
The idiom "a day late & a dollar short" seems appropriate here, waste of effort to be that far behind, probably due to the anxiety around making a Heroic that was "too overwhelming" when anything over level 70 is going to be that for anyone but a current or recently current player.
New and returning players might be totally lost in Shard's Landing just like it was in HoT. A perfect opportunity has been left out to bind the new heroic toons to a new expansion and a real well known city like Shadow Haven and/or Shar Vahl with lvl 110 newbie areas.
These new Heroics show just how tone deaf the devs are about their own game. The devs need to wake up to reality and just admit that Heroic toons are not for "new" players...they're for long time, experienced players looking to try a new class, add a box character for a specific need, or add more boxes to bot groups. New players aren't jumping into EQ and immediatly spending...what are the new Heroics...$40? HC's are there to make life easier for veteran players, not new players. As such, the new Heroics should have been designed for ToV onwards...meaning level 110...because that's when the leveling dynamics completely change.
New players are almost always never better off buying an advanced toon in an MMO as they miss out on a lot of knowledge from leveling a toon up.
You guys are never happy. All these posts over the past few years about raising the level of the heroics so new players could catch up and group with higher level then they go and do that and no one is happy its only level 100 and now everyone saying returning players wouldn't use it anyway. And this is why they seldom incorporate our wants/needs. They know best it appears and I am content to let them drive THEIR game where they want it to go. Be happy with what we got.
I strongly disagree. This community has pushed this game forward for nearly 25 years, despite the massive mismanagement. Level 100 just doesn't add enough value to the community. These complaints/feedback are justified. They're losing money offering level 100s.
Many returning players do buy Heroic Characters because they want to catch up fast. Especially those that do want to raid and do hate grinding experience. I have no clue about the numbers but quite a few new players might also buy them. Maybe not so much right from the start but if they get bored after a few days or weeks. On the other side DBG and its investors have a big interest in bringing new players quickly to the top levels so that they can sell more expansions and AllAccess. That is a typical win-win scenario where DBG and players do benefit from either. The portals in Shard's Landing are unlocked for them already.
If these Heroic Characters were level 110-120, some would complain: 1. They are Pay-to-Win. 2. Since they are Pay-to-Win, they should be free for all players. Shard's Landing is far easier than Katta Castrum: Deluge, Lceanium, or Overthere 2. Based on the rapid increase in difficulty from TBL to ToL, even a newbie area in ToL 2 wouldn't be conducive for new players in the long term.
I agree with this statement. They should be highly motivated to do just that. Heroic boosts are evidence of trying to create a catchup mechanism, for a somewhat nominal fee. However, I believe that if they truly cared about bringing in new players, along with their money, they would do something about the abysmal 70+ solo leveling experience on the live servers as well. There just aren't any groups in this range, and even molo can be difficult for certain classes.The damage and hit points of mobs after that point goes up inproportionate to the experience gained per kill. The latest expansion models exasperate the issue further for reasons that I'm unable to comprehend. In my opinion, without mercenaries the game would most likely only exist on private servers by now, but they need to do more. The information overload of boosting to 100, or even 85, is daunting for many people. Even a returning player will take quite a bit of time getting it all sorted out, or just quit out of frustration. I can just imagine what a new player on modern equipment thinks, especially given the turn of the millennium UI and graphics.
As much as many people agree with the issue of soloing especially 70+ that is not an easy thing to fix/change with the way that the game has been designed over the years. The focus has always been more on a group/raid game them a solo game and that is going to be hard to change at this point.
It takes longer than that for most people that already know all of the zones. For someone new to the expansion or even game, that's way more than 30 minutes saved. They should have replaced the awful attunement quests with the way CotF did it, too. Maybe require carrying a shard or something if they want the lore, rather than having to sit there with a huge cast time and having to run all the way back if accidentally using the portal back before attuning.
I highly doubt that it is the best choice for all. The design team is not there to represent the interests of the players, it does represent the interests of the design team and those of the company. The interests of the players do basically have a low priority there. There is a firm hierarchy of the interests. So from a design perspective lvl 100 is first the best choice for Team Darkpaw, secondary that of DBG, third that of the investors (EG7), and the interests of the players do not matter much, they just do get served the bread crumbs that are left over from the interests representations. The result is not even a compromise as about no player voted for as low as lvl 100. This can be approved by the massive dissenting voices from the players against the level 100 value in the forums right from the new heroic characters announcement including this thread. The vast majority of the forum users (the players) were recommending a much higher level; 105, 110 and even more. Once again it became sharply visible how disconnected EG7/DBG/Darkpaw is from their substance (their money source) which are the players.
