People showing up to get on a high horse about people asking for clear oversights to be corrected is baffling to me.
I think 2 expansions old zones should be unlocked. TDS is a standout because it's ages ago. But TBL plane of smoke also should be unlocked.
[quote="MacDubh, post: 4152822, member: 457539" I am pretty sure you still need to do the 6x each of the 4 HA's in TBM to complete Crypt of Sul progression as well which is tedium for no reason. [/quote] This is a bit annoying, but it doesn't prevent you from getting to the zone. You can still enter the zone and group with your friends who want to do things there.
I think this is a waste of Dev time and effort when there is so much more they could focus on. Players will spend hours / days grinding somewhere, so why not doing this? In the time of one grind session somewhere, one could knock out a pile of old school progression requirements / achievements. There is far more to this game than redundant XP grinding.
A reason for doing this is to keep a healthy playerbase. Although it's true that anyone can unlock content on their own, it can be boring and a hassle. Forcing people to do it may have worked when EQ and Ultima were densely populated and were the only games available, but now there are many other ways for players to spend their game time. When faced with doing grinds for alts or build up boxes to get through 3+ player content unlocks, people may instead decide to log out, uninstall, and play something else. It's certainly a valid position to say that they should remain as they are, but the reality is that these kinds of roadblocks lead to population decline. The majority of gamers don't want to jump through these kinds of hoops while soloing deserted zones to get to whatever level the population bubble is at. Removing the content locks in these older, deserted expansions would mean players would have more fun, not quit, and keep playing as they leveled up to the point where they could play with the rest of the server.
I do shake my head about younger generations with the egomaniac "I want everything for free, because I am important and do deserve it !" attitude. They even do think that unlocking content would evolve a game. "Unlock AllAccess and everything else for free, the game must evolve !" The opposite is true. TDS is nearly irrelevant content today on live servers but It does keep the players busy. Unlocking the zones would make players quit much more likely, because they would have much less to do and there is no fun in free rewards as they do not count as achievements. Those are worthless crap. There might be even players that would rage quit when TDS would be unlocked because they would feel betrayed about their hard work and achievements and would loose their trust for the game. TDS is totally irrelevant for leveling up because there is other content like CotF HAs, daily tasks and Overseer, which do grant way better exp than TDS for very small effort. Removing the locks from TDS zones would only make some sense on progression servers, however the whole expansion and its lore is centered about zone progression. The best zone unlock should be still by doing the progression quests. Arx Mentis and the other pre-final prog zones would loose their elitist nimbus without the locked progression. They were not made for noobs and spoled kids and never should be. You want access to Arx Mentis ? Work for it and stop begging like a little kid ! It now is easier than ever.
Zone unlocking is the standard. This is a clear oversight. I'm not sure why some people are acting as if this is people asking for something special when it's the intended standard procedure and has been for years.
Now that makes me wonder why people do ask for standard routines at all. Maybe it just isn't a standard and just a bad habit instead.
TDS HAs are part of the rotation for the daily tasks from Teek, at this stage of the game they should be accessable to all. There is no reason to keep these zones locked other than to stop players behind the curve from doing tasks to help them catch up.
In the past they've unlocked it. Think of it from a raid leader point of view. I can field a raid force that can beat it. But my raid force cannot get there due to locks. So the answer is ignore that older content, and move to stuff the raid force can actually get to which is in modern expansions where they have not repeated the mistakes. So anyone with old checkmarks they would like basically is waiting for the point they can group it since I'm not wasting 54 peoples time on things half the raid can't get to.
Once again, nobody does need TDS to catch up, so please stop with spreading cunning lies as a trick to enforce zone unlocks for lazy amusement. Overseer is everything that players with PCs at lvl 105 and above do need to reach the level maximum and HAs are still rewarding at this point. As a bonus, three out of eight TDS zones are unlocked to everyone and there are also TBM and EoK on live servers with the easier zones which are Plane of Growth and Frontier Mountains. RoF and even VoA are also still options at lvl 105 and higher, which all in all is plenty of content for even the weakest PCs and bad players. Always unlocked TDS zones: Tempest Temple (Tier 1) Katta Castrum: Deluge (Tier 1) Brother Island (Tier 2)
As a moloer I don't really mind old zones being locked. It just means I have to do the quests in an order that forms a coherent storyline. It just makes the "key"-achievements more meaningful. I do understand multiboxers that wants their secondary alts to follow their main, without the hassle of repeating quests you have already completed. However, for TdS there are not really any slow camps needed, unlike Veeshan's Peak(RoS) where there are lots of timesinks(optional nameds or being slowed down by mission-lockouts). If it is just about the daily HA's they could unlock the instances, and keep the base zones locked. Although I do wonder, if TdS still being locked is intentional.
It's almost certainly not intentional I would guess, considering delayed unlocking has been standard procedure for years. The internal keys in Arx also instantly flag for the next tier now.
Where is everyone's sense of achievement? That is what the game is about. Achieving goals, be they getting to top level or top tradeskill skills or killing that certain mob, completing progressions, decorating extravagant houses, getting the best guild, best armor, augs, snazzy mounts etc. Instead everyone just wants to race thru the game to where? Guess what - there is no end. Its ok if you have to do progression. At the recommended level it can be challenge, above that it is a cake walk. Unlike a root canal there is no pain after.
This isn't an outlandish request, it's literally how they have done things for years. The pushback is so bizarre.
I don't get it either. Modern expansions don't even use locked zones. Locked zones just suck. It's supposed to be a social game. Invite someone to group, and they can't show up to the zone without doing hours and hours of progression. It's not fun. Yes, progression towards a reward (mounts, titles, augs, armor, etc) should be in place. Progression towards zone access is a bad design.
I've taken 4 toons through TDS progression. I can say in all honesty that my feelings would not be hurt in the least if they unlocked those zones for everyone. I would actually welcome it. The same goes for things like Plane of Smoke in TBL. I did the trials on two of my toons to get full access, but I would jump for joy if they opened it up so other players didn't have to go through that pointless misery. The idea that everyone should have to do it because YOU had to do it is just as idiotic as "The Vision" was. It's time to stop treating the players like they're the enemy and just let people enjoy the game and play it the way they want to, instead of forcing them to follow a certain path.
What's funny for me is TDS is the expansion I slacked most on. I fully intend on doing the progression within the next few weeks/months. I still support them unlocking the zones, despite planning to do the progression anyway. Bloodfalls is locked but the requirement is much more forgiving. So much so you forgot about it. But I also support the restrictions going away after a delay like they've been doing.
100% agree on TBL as well. I have that progression done on my toons and no one should have to deal with it especially that it isn't populated. The Smoke Trials should have only been a requirement for Meartas. The entire time doing the Smoke Trials I was wondering how anyone could have done that in Era with a pickup group. Extremely buggy, everyone needs to know what the process is, and unless helping a friend or guildie there is 0 incentive to repeat as they were all awful.
