I have noticed that my lower level characters don't earn as much alternate currency for each step of the HA's. Presumably that also applies to experience. It's actually kind of silly. I guess that's another bad side-effect of moving experience from npcs to the step completions that I get to look forward to the next time I start running HA's.
Daily Adventure assigned me The Descending Tower. I think to myself, "Oh, that one is a pain, but it should be good XP, right?" Me and a couple of recent returnees to the guild head over to do the mission, so they can get XP to catch up and currency for gear. After about an hour and a half of clearing everything, including the quest named who summons adds, we got to the step where you use the Divining Stone to attempt curing the Gnome's madness. "Your spell did not take hold." We couldn't get the Stone clicky to activate, no matter how we tried. We even made sure nobody over 100 was in the zone just in case the mission scaled the Gnome too high for the spell effect, but that didn't make a difference. With the changes to how HA XP is earned, all of that kill XP is hiding behind mission completion, which is now bugged. Time wasted not actually earning XP in recent, challenging content just the way you wanted me to do it, Sony. It also showcased for those returnees that even recent content which has been out for a significant amount of time will still not work properly.
Measured in calendar time HA's were an exp windfall just as long for casuals as non-casuals. With non-casuals having maxed their AA 8 months before TDS, maxed it again two months after TDS was released, and many of us hitting10-11K AA on group geared alts played casually in pickup groups and not boxed just how massive are the leg irons proposed to be for those who succeed vs. those who can't be bothered to? SOE already provides 6 to 8x more calendar time than is needed to be max AA'd.- non casuals spend all the excess time throwing away AA. BTW the game is tuned around group geared players and I'd venture to guess SOE knows what the average player's AA is and whether they are spending their time in easy instances or the larger game they spend a pile of money and effort developing. If extreme casuals can't keep up with average players I can't see SOE being required to tune the game down to their level. Its rather disconcerting to see this particular argument made which sideways suggests that HA's are overtuned for the group geared. They are far from overtuned. BTW, ubers earned Sting, Excalibur, Grasscutter ,etc. by going off and killing dragons rather than staying in Hobbiton. If the Sackville-Baggines get indigestion over us showing off and using our dragon loot and looking like Elven princes...the dragons are still there. Go get 'em.
SOME HAs are overtuned for the average group player. Being insulting won't change that. This happens because SOE is trying to keep the interest of raiders in the group game. But the fact is that even the so called UBER players only do the harder HA as few times as they have to. Your arrogance is amusing though. And btw Sting, Excalibur etc were parts of works of fiction. There was no more difficulty in obtaining them then their authors intended. And you miss the fact that any MMO that wants to have market appeal can't appeal to just the UBER players. Wizardry tried to go hardcore and do that.. Its gone. Think about that.
People finally started to group again I saw lots of people grouping again to max out level! So, solution that SOE comes up with is nerf experience on HA kills and add lockout timers. Brilliant!!! As for TDS I did notice last night regular mob kills is little better in TDS now. But TDS has 7 total HA's and the reward for completion is very low for 3 hour timers. I feel bad for the groupers with these changes. Not sure on math but it's going to take forever to gear up with new TDS group gear via HA. Also, add in fact no chest on regular missions and farming some names is long road for groupers. I love EQ and always adapt to the silly changes made as jump to judgement. Forcing people to play new content is bad idea when it's so limited in content. CoTF ha experience is borderline joke for time now and zero value for lessons. That being said I'm max level now just hurts the more casuals overall. Grats if that was the motivation!
Yep. This is absolutely true. Had we done nothing, the Heroic Adventure with the most favorable xp/time ratio would be the best way to gain experience forever. The comprehensive Heroic Adventure changes that released in our November update took three designers the better part of a month. This wasn't something the team had the bandwidth for while we were working on TDS.
Hey Prathun, are you in throwing range of aristo's desk? If so please write "ethereal fuse cast time issues" on a piece of paper, crumple it into a ball and beam him. Thank you kindly. I guess it could fall on Elidroth as well but I think he might throw something heavy back.
I know how you feel ! Bug reported this one numerous times and, so far, no acknowledgement let alone a fix.
The Descending Tower - I had the same issue last week of sorts. We clicked the divining stone on him, wiped when we didn't realize all these mobs were going to aggro us (so we weren't ready/hadn't read ahead to next step) and then when we got back in zone all the mobs were no longer scows and had changed their faction to apprehensive .. and we got the same spell did not take hold. - the thing I can't confirm because a ranger who managed not to die was in zone but didn't have logs on (she says the mobs scowled after we wiped but then switched to apprehensive after a period of time) 1.5 hours wasted to get to that part. Had to go back the next day and lucky we were prepared and didn't wipe and it worked.
Yeah, a lot of us who max out fast every time still find it concerning, either for alts or the state of the game itself. Btw +1 on your name sir. Reminds me of that guy who after beating 2gods rocked Daybringer Daybringer Daybringer of the Daybringers. A true inspiration!
Yep. This is absolutely true. Had we done nothing, ~7aa in ~30min from Old Man Monster Missions would be the best way to gain experience forever.
Instead of finding creative ways to make other content equal or to make a nerf not look like a nerf you just do whatever you want. How about you tell everyone here the truth ? You increased the hp of mobs in TDS to slow down kill rates. You added lockouts to heroics to slow down gear acquisition and you nerfed XP across the board to slow down Leveling/AAs. You could of taken heroics and made them balance better for 101-105 like actually give them the HP ratio of TDS trash when they scale past 100 that way no one would be clearing them in 15m. Instead you just continue to do bad things like nerfing 90% of the kill rate XP for trash mobs in them. That's the real truth here people. They want to slow down the kill rate. No more 20 second kills they want trash to take 60-90s each.
Slasher, you're acting like you have some grand epiphany that is being hidden from the world here. Sony doesn't need to send a developer here to tell everyone the very obvious. Yes, we all know hp increased and thus the time it takes to kill things increased. Guess what - that's what happens when things have more life! The best places to grind a lesson now are still widely considered to be Thuliasaur mission or Combine. This actually seems to be superior to Gribble when it was able to be abused. Yeah, maybe it sucks that you need to flag to get to the prime xp spots, but they exist and are great. Xp isn't nerfed across the board - I'm getting more xp than I ever did in CoTF. Some of you may enjoy the higher hp mobs. Some of you may hate it. Personally, I like that giant T-Rex mobs can't be dropped in less than ten seconds. That feels a little more legit to me, but I might be in the minority there. Regardless of that, I simply assume the developers don't need to come spell this out for you like a child watching Reading Rainbow. More hp = longer time to kill. Longer time to kill = slower pace. Brilliant. Its intended. Drawing conclusions off of that information alone shouldn't take too much brain power. Its not exactly a puzzle.
Instead of spending all that time to rework the entire HA system, why didn't you just cap them at 100? Many people had already assumed that would be the case. It would've avoided a lot of negative PR.
Agree with that I always expected that at 101 the mobs would start to lose color, so the top mobs would be dblue. and at 106 they would become lblue
They would still be really good exp for level 105s if Gribbles capped at 100. At 110 they will probably stop being worth it.
Are you telling us that it took nearly a year for the development team to discover an issue and determine that changes were necessary for Heroic Adventures? So you got TeDiouS done THEN began working on changes to Heroic Adventures or was it the other way around? Either way you then decided it would be a good move to release TeDiouS AND the "comprehensive changes" to Heroic Adventures simultaneously? You will have to pardon me while I look around for a shovel.
Was there any way to set a per-HA level cap on mobs? Right now they auto-scale, but there is no specific reason they *must* also scale indefinitely. If, for example, the CotF HAs levelled up to 102 then they'd still gain a bit, but after a while you'd fine the lvl 105 HAs in TDS become better XP. This is good and proper. It is also a better solution than a blanket nerf to XP which will inevitable be applied once we get level 110 a year or two down the line (compare it to the nerf to XP in older zones that arrived with TDS). If needed, make it so that fighting yellow cons is slightly more XP than it is now, meaning that farming hard mobs rather than mass slaughtering dark blues becomes more worthwhile too. This further reinforces the idea that full group of players taking on hard mobs yield better xp. Personally I don't find the TDS HAs to be particularly bad. I like them and the XP is actually OK per mob. I don't understand though the way that CotF ones were modified. It seemed to me like there were several better choices out there.
Thanks And yeah the big concern should be more for the casual player not those like myself. I did the full progression on day 1 and was pretty much to level 105 from that! It's the everyday working players that have limited time that get hit worst. The hardcore players are limited on the effect of these changes. No chest on new missions= bad, lowers motivation to redo them once beat and achievements are done. Lock out timers CoTF and TDS = to long when a few of new TDS give such low # of pieces of 8! Plus fact only 7 new play lands and 7 new HA's. If you include Caverns which is a train mess and water fighting. The players more hurt by all this isn't the ones with big guild tags it's the more family style and casuals which pretty sure out number the hardcore.
I would have adjusted the scaling algorithm. If 105 Scouting Ahead mobs had 10% more HPs than Dredge mobs, they wouldn't be as appealing to plow through forever. Keep it viable, but they don't need to be better than the new mobs. Isn't the whole point of making an infinitely scaling expansion to HAVE an infinitely scaling expansion? Put in a bunch of work making a new system that will keep itself updated for future levels?
