Level and stat caps.

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Evertrek, Aug 11, 2021.

  1. Cicelee Augur

    I think you missed the sarcasm of the post...
  2. Evertrek Augur

    considering all that has been posted i can see a pattern.

    maybe sell a starter pack with a 110 boost. do a final spell set for 120 and that would be the final level cap. vault most of the old content and leave a clear path from 110 to 120 via story, quests, dungeons, and raids on live... TLP would be the only way to experience old content.

    AAs would need to be redone (look to ESO and many other MMOs to see what the best would be). gear is a big part of the fun so gear stats are tricky, but again, other MMOs have managed to address this issue.

    sometimes code cleanup is a good way to get a new batch of dev started. a f2p TLP that wipes every few months maybe something to consider as a demo option.
  3. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    It sounds like you want to play a different game.
    Sancus, Nennius, Coagagin and 2 others like this.
  4. Rauven Augur

    I have a question for those of you active in this thread, are any of you currently raiding endgame content? And if so, what exactly in detail would a new player, fresh level one rolled on your server, would have to do in order to join your guild and go on raids? Please list the steps needed (we know its not simply get to max level).
  5. Jimmy2times Elder

    EQ has more stat bloat and inflation then Uncle Sam’s current economy lol. I also enjoy getting hit for 9 billion points of damage from a rat and snake now these days. Not sure what, but it would be cool if something was done about it.
    Barraind likes this.
  6. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Lol EQ is so much more than end game.

    What do you plan on doing with those chars lower than level 110?
    What do you plan on doing with AAs that have only been partially purchased?

    Going back to do old quests, old raids and collect old tradeskill items. I've spent the last couple of months messing around in at least 10 different expansions, I hope we never get limited to just 4 on live. I've paid out for 25 expansions and the other 2 were free with my first I should be able to play in all of those expansions on the servers I can now.
  7. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Most classes are closed and have been for the last 3 years when we were formed, unless it is an exceptional player. Exceptional players include but are not limited to, current max level, all relevant AAs, high RA, doesn't fail emotes, knows how to play their class.

    Most apps fail on the last 2 requirements, level and AAs is the easiest to achieve.

    With 80ish raiders we don't have the room to add inexperienced raiders at the cost of out current members. Being benched is never fun.
  8. Evertrek Augur

    above post is sad but i have confirmed it is the case with all the TLPs. i guess this post is related to the rework i suggested.

    i used to at least buy a 3 month sub and the expansion for both EQ and EQ2 every year, but not this year. i am afraid to even add my credit card info on to the website now. i sub'ed for 1 month via steam, checked the TLPs and see they are past the rush to endgame and locked guilds now.

    i have not seen any word on roadmap to attract new players for ages (cov is not needed for new or returning players). at least the other MMOs act like they are here to stay by adjusting things like level cap and stats.
  9. Dharken Elder

    Ivan, your Idea was going to be attempted in Pantheon, Rise of the Fallen. Sprouted by old EQ creators. From my last look at them, they have stalled out. But it could be cool.

    The problem I encounter is I get bored with either being a powerleveler, or doing the struggle bus run through content no one is in. I would like to see the rework of shrouds to become the character and not the goblin. Heck, even if we needed to farm gear for that shroud level range, I would love it.

    For new content, I think the inflation on NPCs needs to be controlled. There are a great number of classes that can be trashed in a round because the mob hits for insane damage. The amount of hit points the mobs increase by each expansion is also (imo) too high. It gets harder for duos and even merc heavy groups. I feel like scaling back the inflation of Mobs would make for faster kill rates and easier smaller group content.

    The other side of my thoughts (and is likely to never happen) is to give all zones the option to scale to your current level. If a 110 wants to go rumble in Dawnshroud, let them have challenging kills and loot that allows those challenges to be worth while. This would be an insane re-work, but it'd revitalize pretty much all content.

    Other ideas include an NPC we can summon to do quests for. The NPC can check the zone we are in when it is summoned and give us something to do. This would more interesting than Teek telling us to go kill something in the same 3 zones over and over each level range.

    Some things I have considered that would help with the grind and help keep content in place. I dont plan on going anywhere, other games just lack what EQ provides.
    Tucoh and Coagagin like this.
  10. Rauven Augur


    So you don't require any of the achievement based stat/resist increases? That's new.

    But the funny thing is, you said most fail at the last two. I'd argue the reason for this is over 100 levels of soloing, moloing, and boxing. How do you learn your class's role if you never have to perform it? The current system does not produce new exceptional players by any means.

    If it did work to produce better players, then you would be splitting raids, not benching.
    Stymie likes this.
  11. Iven Antonius Bayle

    Ivan an me got inspired by the Chronicles of Elyria I think. This project is not dead yet even that it was stated so a year ago but they have a new investor it seems and had just entered early alpha. Pantheon is pretty dead after 7 years dev time imo even that that it got funded by more than 1 mio dollars recently.. Still would need another seven years and more millions of cash. Its sad to see that EQ is getting further and further into an impasse by bloating up and that the devs do not realize how fatal exponential increases are and that it is already to late when the glass is half full which is soon.

    But its definetly an interesting thing if 80% of the dev time could be saved with a locked max level cap which should be the easiest solution. It would bring the player crowd alot more together again. Free, silver and All Access players. So it would be wise for the EG7 shareholders and DBG to invest this time into content, bug fixes and revamps instead of narrowing the dev team and game expansions more and more as in the past century.
  12. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I don't know about anyone else but there are things you can teach a new player academically, some you can help them to understand through in-game demonstration and multiple things they have to bring in order to make best use of that mentoring.

    Things I can teach a fairly new and very inexperienced player:
    With a forum post I can walk them through how to set up a basic Berserker hotkey layout, how and what to put on a spam bar, what to create macros for and a basic "burn order". None of that is tremendously hard to follow for anyone with the ability to follow simple instruction and within an hour or so of tweaking their UI they are basically equipped with the same sort of toolset any other raiding zerker will have.


    Things I can show them:
    Demonstrate "intelligent positioning" - i.e. some mob is smacking you it's likely due to local aggro, move and it will hit a tank that's tanking something nearby and you make it easier to spot for any tanks not currently engaged with a mob. Hit stuff from the side or rear wherever possible paying attention to positional emotes, eating riposte is for Tanks and idiots.

    Things they need to bring:
    Aside from the ability to follow instructions, to carry out the required reactions to emotes, the ability to intelligently adapt to the situation is highly prized, if you kite a mob to avoid taking damage kite it near to tanks rather than running it miles away, if you cannot change location due to mechanics think about what survival tools you have and can use, click a healing potion, turn off attack to reduce riposte damage and reduce your threat, fire a defensive ability/rune/glyph, bandolier a shield in if it has decent AC, make sure it doesn't hit you in the back, use a stun if it will buy you a second or two of not getting hit or letting you get a heal when you are low.

    EQ is a game where knowledge is power, situational awareness is the difference between adequate and useless, and where understanding what is going on when is more valuable than raw skill.

    But even a complete noob that only molo'd so far can be a great asset so long as they have that key quality of attentiveness and willingness to learn.
  13. Rauven Augur


    Could and would are two different things.

    The precedent was already set at being 'an exceptional player'. So the reality is that these guilds expect the players to already know these things without the need of instruction. Which is a paradox.
  14. Metanis Bad Company

    Been playing for 20+ years. I hope they'll keep experimenting with new things. I also hope that a worthy successor to EQ will finally arrive before I die....
    Stymie and Elyssanda like this.
  15. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I guess it depends on what a guild would consider "exceptional" but if you are hoping to raid current expansion content there are ways to develop yourself as a player if you are motivated & determined to make yourself into a desirable asset and eventually be considered as such.

    I think most live servers have guilds you can join which do raids casually, or servers that have open-raiding, those are places that offer opportunities to develop your raiding experience and actually get your name out there as someone interested in raiding.

    Ask around whether a discord chat for your class exists & join it, ask questions.

    There is Beta, a lot of players may not think of Beta as a place to learn raiding but if you offer to help out with beta testing raids you can learn a lot.
    Having the desire to go spend a significant amount of time in beta learning the events....well most guilds will love that in a player.

    And if you just so happen to be on a server where there are no places to develop as a raider you can also consider opting to play on the TLP servers a few days a week maybe to help pick stuff up, sure a few TLP guilds are not interested in teaching newbs but many are.
    2-3 years on a TLP can be like a decade on a Live server in terms of fast-tracking your raiding experience if you have none or very little so far, or took a long break and are rusty.
  16. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    We have a class forum which pretty much gives you the information to set up and be effective on raids. We have a months trial to see how the app fits in and if there app is a true representation of them.
    While they may not be exceptional at the start of their trial, they have the information to become that with a little effort.

    I went back to a level 92 rogue last year levelled her up with friends and boxing (when I had to, far more fun with friends), followed the rogue guide we had on the guild site and she is now on open raids doing similar damage to the main rogues in the guild.

    Not every player is willing/able to follow a simple guide to improve themselves and if they cannot follow emotes....well there is no helping them.
    code-zero and Elyssanda like this.
  17. Rauven Augur

    But here comes the issue. How long does all that take? There are plenty of potential good raiders that will not see the benefit of going 1-115, doing the achievement based progression, and the training wheel guilds, and taking months and in the example you all gave up to a year, when it takes weeks and not months to do the same in many other games. With far more complexity involved.

    Those players are moving on and performing well where they end up (I would know, I've played in other games with said people). They could be performing well here. They could be joining everyone here. But its a hard pill to swallow when you have a fresh level one being told "you can play the real game in about 9-12 months from now."
    NameAlreadyInUse and Stymie like this.
  18. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    It depends on how much time they have to dedicate to getting themselves up to speed and that has far less to do with gaining levels, AA and gear and more to do with learning how the game works now.

    They could look at it as having 22 years of EverQuest to try and cram inside their skull if they wanted to be "knowledgeable" and "experienced" EverQuest raiders but spending 5 years raiding from level 50-115 on a TLP to become that is not going to be for everyone.

    Those prior 20 ish years of expansions and knowledge is going to be largely irrelevant (though never useless or pointless) to a new Live server player set on raiding end game anyway, as it bears little relation to the current game.

    For a player starting on a Live Server they are better off focusing on just the last expansion or 2 and the current one, an average intelligence person of 40-50 years old is still going to take a while to pick up just that because there's still a lot of information which needs to absorbed.

    I reckon a new player could pick up enough knowledge to be somewhere near ready - after levelling - within 3 months. But that's putting in 3 months of 4 hours a day weekdays and weedend days of 8 hours, raiding wherever & whenever they can, at the point where they really start to feel they have outgrown the casual/family/alliance raiding scene and have grown in confidence as a player that's when they should start to look at applying to what are primarily raiding guilds.

    "Other games with more complexity" taking a few weeks to learn while EQ takes longer is a lot less to do with the game and a lot more to do with the other players and what they expect from you.

    You could totally pick up EverQuest playing skills in a single day, and be as skilled as anyone else in the game.

    What you won't have is knowledge of the game, the raids, the different things you need to react to, the ways you need to react, the way to use your skills to get the most out of them, it's that EQ knowledge base which take a lot longer to build and there's just no short-cut to that, it's only gained through time spent playing, raiding the past 1 or 2 expansions and becoming proficient in them with your class is what you need to be prepared for the current expansion's raids, and raiding those then playing in the new expansion beta prepares you for what comes next.

    "EQ knowledge" is like an ancient river-bed and each year another layer (sometimes two) was deposited and the silt of each expansion became bedrock, compressed by the weight of the layers above it.
    You can safely swim in the river knowing just the top couple of layers, though the best swimmers will know all of them.
    Stymie and Elyssanda like this.
  19. Elyssanda Bardbrain

    Most servers have open raids, or raid alliances. Start raiding there, one does not need to be top of the game, those are like training wheel raids. get in, learn how to follow directions, emotes, triggers (GINA or ingame) parse yourself. if your parses improve as you go along, and you are doing everything else right, then you know you might be ready to move up.

    As for all of the filler stuff, Max AA, Epic, class specific recommended items, the Hero's fortitude/vitality/resolution, how much time do you have to dedicate to getting it done? couple hours a week will take you longer than 3 hours a night on non-raid nights, and only working on it once a month will never get you there.

    People whine and complain that they can't get groups to do stuff in current content every night, so ok, you don't get a group, are you then going hey, I can work on COTF progression, or TDS, or TBM, etc, or are you sitting in the buff pile in POK or the lobby or wherever your server congregates spamming gen chat every 5 minutes going buffs for the pile, <insert class> LFG please?? Are you being proactive about your skills and abilities and everything you CAN control? Are you doing everything you can to search out information about your class and how it performs on raids? Are you always trying to get better?

    Being PROACTIVE about being better than you were last week, last month, last year, is what sets exceptional players apart.

    I know crappy players that will never get better because they just don't CARE to be better than they are, they are happy with what they can do, but may like to whine and complain about what they can't, because they aren't "elite snobs with the best gear out there". Never looking at what it took to get to that point for someone.

    I am not the best raid bard out there, I am good though I think. I am in a top 5 raid guild, I started raiding with alliance raids 6 years ago, joined two different raid guilds on my way to where I am now, but didn't join my current guild until 3 years ago. I know what level of raiding guild I am comfortable with too. I would not be comfortable in ROI or MS. But I talk with people in those guilds regularly. I worked my way up. I talk to better raid bards all of the time. I READ my song information every time I get new songs, I READ my AA information, I ask questions on stuff I don't quite understand. I've been raiding 6 years now, I know I still have room for improvement.

    (btw I know Luclin has both o-raids, and alliance raids, as does Cazic, both of which are raiding current content, I know Xegony is doing o-raids hosted by ROI. I'm sure most servers do, I just happen to know those 3 servers)
  20. Cicelee Augur

    My mentor!