You should read what I wrote and think about it again.. take some time if it doesnt come to you immediately.Here's a hint...your comparing my use of the word -Expansions- to your use of -Players-Expansions are just the game content. With a small dev force, expansions are not going to focus on content for younger players when they already have content for younger players rolled up into previous expansions which younger players have not touched yet due to things like level restrictions. ***IE the person in question said he is only lvl 75... how many tasks in the HOT expansion has he done... ZERO because you need to be lvl 80 to request. Its a whole expansion of unexplored tasks and zones waiting for him to hit lvl 80.Players on the other hand always want the latest and greatest, thats true, but again, the latest and greatest in this case (not saying I agree with it... as I posted before) is for only the higher end players. Which has been this way for several expansions.
2 regen when they're already in the realm of 300+. That's a real small small eeny tiny bitty lil boost.
Unless HP Regen 2 should be HP Regen II and that stands for some huge HP regen mercs can get... It really, really, is silly.
Rest assured, I'd be willing to bet, some lower level Merc Gear, will end up in the Marketplace at one point or another. So if you can't get it now, chances are pretty good in the near future you will be able to buy some with Station Cash...
You don't NEED merc gear. The boosts it provides are so very minuscule. I purchased AC/HP gear (a shield so far) for my merc, but compared to what they have it's almost worthless.
I am starting to feel suckered into just giving SOE money for just about nothing with this merc gear, AAs, and spells.
I had some slight hope for the merc armor when I thought maybe the vendor stuff leveled up like the vestments. Now? Well I suppose pure AC gear for all slots might make them last 1 more hit, every other or third time. I think allowing ornaments and allowing people to play dress up with their mercs would be more useful than this stuff.
(disclaimer: this is not a class envy post!) Some classes actually got pretty nice stuff. Ex: warriors, enchanters. Consider this SoF part 2. In SoF some classes got nice stuff too, others - not so much.
Here is a quote from the CotF expansion features page on Everquest.com "Mercenary Gear — The ability for player to manage Mercenary equipment and provide them with powerful weapons and armor." So what happened to the powerful weapons and armor? They are now only a small boost? This reeks of false advertising.
Well, it is advertising, and it does give you another 800 HP, no? Joking aside, this is more like putting it out there for the people who "must" have every top gears, top augs, top weapons. Now, they can add top merc gears to their to-do list.
Merc gear is completely worthless. If you have the points or whatever to buy them, I guess why not, but there is zero reason to waste your time worrying about them unless they change the stats. Pro tip for the devs: Use whoever among you "balances" weapon procs for determining appropriate merc equipment stats and the players are going to have a bad time.
I was keying more off this part of your post: "Expansions by design are there so the game can move forward and not there so players can skip several previous expansions." But, I went more in the direction of using the expansion Merc perks to encourage players to play a bit in the older areas and expansions is all. IMHO opinion too many players feel they have to "rush to the endgame" and vie for the "real" cheese even though that target always moves outward a bit. Putting Merc gear in earlier expansions on a vendor that deals only in the expansion currency would be a cool way to encourage players to try the older content for real. (you gotta do the quests to get the money). -W
As CaptnAmazing already noted - the above statement is totally at odds with the following advertising hype: "Mercenary Gear — The ability for player to manage Mercenary equipment and provide them with powerful weapons and armor." It's just plain good business to make sure that the marketing boys don't over-hype the developers intended design. This can only lead to disappointment, bad feelings, etc. -W
Sony delivered on their promise of mercenary gear. However, the word "powerful" is not a word I would use. I would use the word "insignificant." 800 hp, on mercenaries that have 80,000? 2 hp regen on a level 100 hat where mercs have a base hp regen of over 2,000 at the same level? Some of this might be okay if they had 21 inventory slots to manage, but they only get four. I really hope mercenary gear is looked at and tweaked, so they are a bit noticeable. Like giving shielding, spell shielding, ~5000 hp instead of 800, etc. Nothing that would make them more powerful than a decent player, but at least noticeable. Right now, the gear just does not change the game at all.
