Considering all the balance adjustments (aka nerfs) and mob HP/DPS choices made with CotF, it seems SOE has made the design decision to make EQ a bit more challenging this time around. We have had hard expansions before. Is it really a bad thing to have a bit of a reset to make EQ harder? It is too soon to tell how this all plays out, but I am cautiously optimistic that the new difficulty level could promote more grouping of 5-6 real players to grind through the heroic adventures. We have needed something to make grouping more attractive than boxing with mercs. I say this as someone who 3 boxes by myself 90% of the time, because the incentives have been so great to do so for advancement. I am ok with EQ getting harder, if it moves the incentives more towards grouping and introduces more feeling of challenge and accomplishment. When you are starting the expansion with well geared and AA'ed level 100 characters, it seems ok to slow down and try some challenging content. I can see how things would look different if you are still making the long grind to higher levels.
I don't mind EQ getting "harder"...but I really wish they would be smarter about making it "harder"...
Making it harder would be a great way to drive many people away. I wouldn't mind "harder" since EQ isn't hard and never really has been, but if they made it harder they would need to make it much less monotonous and much, much, much less tedious. This whole game has been designed from the ground up to find the most terrible parts of game playing and focusing almost entirely on them.
Did the difficulty in the group game change (serious question, I won't have time to try it for a while)? The raids certainly got much easier - they almost seem tuned to be of medium difficulty to a raid of ~42, not 54. If the difficulty outside of raids has increased, that would certainly make me feel a bit better about the $$ paid out for this expansion!
EQ's expansion difficulty pattern is consistent and so blatantly obvious it never ceases to completely blow my mind that people don't get it and expect it and anticipate it. it goes: easy, hard, easy, hard, repeat. TBS: easy SOF: hard SOD: easy UF: hard HOT: easy VOA: hard HOF: easy COTF: should in theory be hard, but that remains to be seen.
Hard and annoying are 2 very separate things, this expansion seems more annoying since we're having to do more then we did last year with less then what we had. I'd of much preferred a UF style expansion, even though that expansion broke any desire for me to play for a while simply due to my play style at the time.
Giving mobs x-times more hp, and making people take breaks while they med does not present any challenge, it just makes the game more annoying.
Yes, tedious does not equal challenge contrary to how the game was and continues in many ways to be developed.
I don't mind "harder", but I do mind being pushed into grouping with real players. I'm in the GMT+12 time zone. I play when most people are asleep. So 2 boxing with mercs made EQ a great game for me. When I have taken on real players, I've almost always ended up with people who got my characters killed - either by being stupid or deliberately malicious. Imo, grouping should always be the players choice, not something SOE pushes us into doing. Who is SOE to make my choices for me?
