Re-tuned HAs

Are you serious? First off unless your in raid gear each Gribbles took between 8-12 minutes maybe more if you were unlucky on a pull as a duo with mercs. Secondly, without lesson the whole lot of em (all 3) gives around 45 AA. They then have a 3 hour CD. Maybe increase the CD if thats what the devs dont like.

My necro can solo for more AA in the same amount of time (if the right camp is open). A SK can swarm for God knows how much. My point is its not that much so who cares. This change ruins a decent part of the recent expansions, and has caused a lot of casuals to quit.

Not everyone plays during peak times or has time to sit around lfg. Every try playing at 2am trying to lfg? I have and did for a full year when I came back to this game after taking a break for college and I can count on one hand the number of groups I was able to obtain. So tell me how this change is going to magically create more grouping opportunities especially for people playing during non peak hours.

What exactly are these handouts you are talking about. You mean the hundreds of dollars and even well over a thousand dollars some years I have spent and others have spent on this game was a donation with no expectation for services and entertainment? A handout implies receiving something while giving nothing in return which this is far from.

You are entitled to your opinion just like everyone else but as paying customers who dislike these changes the forums are literally the only place to communicate to the company that we pay. There is no manager we can talk to or 24 hour customer service hotline we can call to voice our opinions or concerns. In the end everyone should be concerned with people canceling their subs related to changes in this game as it only brings things closer to an end for everyone. As an alternative to hating on others maybe come up with something creative or constructive because while changes like these might not effect you now eventually things like this do add up and effect us all.

I'm not kidding, I was taken to DH the night before the nerfs, hadn't done CotF on my main for years (I currently have a level 100 just starting them) to see what all the fuss was about. Group was, SK, cleric, druid, 2 mages and me a wizzy, all in EOK raid gear. We did all 3 Gribbles and 1 from Axeman.

Did Axeman first triggered lesson before hail, then went though and did all 3 Gribbles in less than 25 minutes. The final mission we did was the one with Bloodsucker as the named, I think its the 1st one of the set. SK pulled all the mobs, the rest of us AEd, beginning to end 2 minutes. AA reward was 30. The other missions ranged from between 30 & 45 AAs per completion.

The changes weren't done to harm the group casual game, but to address things like the above. But the consequences of fixing the above have had an adverse effect on the group game.

Changing the cooldown won't help, raiders only did this mission once a day, why would they do it more? lesson is only up once every 22 hours.

I don't know the solution to fixing the mass kill & quick AA gain without hurting the casual grouper who is doing it as expected. Maybe a longer timer between completing HAs and requesting a new one. Who knows?

l have then and always since .. considered DH HA the type of stuff that is wrong with EQ. Why should ANY content be better then new content in any aspect what so ever?

Absolutely I get it .. Almost everyone posting on this an other threads want thee MOST you can get for your buck, and you think content that was released October 2013 .. could an SHOULD (more importantly) be JUST as good or BETTER now in 2018 .. then the new content.

Simply cause you say so. The fact that the game inevitably always moves forward and ya's precious little DH HA is now gonzo in the form you an the majority of people know an love .. has the community up in arms. I've never seen such entitlement from a grp of people ..

And yes .. I grp when ever I get the chance no matter the time of day or anything of that nature.

You got that right, ONE .. of us is acting like its a life an death situation .. But its not the guy who quoted your post ..

Way I see it like it or not .. Anyone who cancel's their subs over the DH HA getting "Fixed" to scale properly .. EQ as a game is better off with out them self entitled people. Got tons of games out there later tator .. everyone knows you will eventually be back .. go quit play what ever for a while .. see you in a few months.. (Same goes to all yall who "Cancelled" )

so break multiple expansions worth of content because of essentially one set of HA's?

fix the gribbles. I have done those gribble missions once each . they can get rid of them for all I care .
from a design point these changes are short sighted.

I cam back in October as a level 90 . I can level to 95 and get the majority of my aa's autogranted.
with the release of ROS I got a substantial amount of aa's to level 100 autogranted.
Now I'm vested and caust up . In order to stay caught up and be correctly tuned to 105 I need about 750 aa's a level thn at 106 I can start grouping with the main player base and hold my own.

however at 105 I haven't set foot in EOK. but I also haven't done the static content in TBM so there is two expansion I will need to work progression before even thinking about ROS.

yet now its supposed to be hard for me to do so than just 2 months ago?

I don't get the logic

If all you think people are upset about is gribble than you are dead wrong. You are cool with that same content being upscaled so people who reach 110 and could not do some of those missions when they were current level now have no better chance of completing the content than they did when it was current. That is a huge oversight on the part of the developers especially considering the vast majority of COTF progression revolves around HA's. Basically anyone who bought ROS and gained levels is less powerful now than they were before they bought it unless they managed to get enough gear upgrades to offset things. The new AA's from what I am seeing have not made any significant difference in my sk's ability to tank or my mages dps at 106 vs 105 with all but a couple fluff AA's left to buy for 106. So that's basically 180ish bucks spent to become weaker doing content I was doing before ROS which seems a little backwards.

If you fail to see the importance of having missions like gribble for this game I guess you don't see how these retain players and allow people to at least stay relevant in terms of levels and AA's so they might actually have a shot of doing more difficult content. Things like Gribble are important for the casuals and for those that for what ever reason have difficulty progressing. Forcing everyone into current content is a poor design because it just pushes the weaker players and those with less playing time away from the game which is bad for everyone. It has nothing to do with feeling entitled and more about wanting to actually feel like there is a slim chance of doing something more eventful in the future. In terms of better experience it simply is not true if you have the perfect group setup you can get way better experience in EOK than you could ever dream of getting from a gribble run. I don't know anyone who has taken a heroic character to 105 and max AA doing gribbles in a month but I know more than one person who has done this in T2 EOK zones. Add to that the rares they obtained and rank II spells its far more rewarding but they have the perfect group setup to do this which not everyone does.

You say you group when ever you can but lets be honest unless you are a regular during non peak hours in a large guild where groups are possible the group game in the middle of the night is absent at best. Scrolling through general chat tonight there have been zero people lfg on my server and that is pretty much the standard.

On a final note I really don't know why you care so much that other players are upset. Is it because you think you are entitled to this amazing experience you speak of from gribble but cant stand doing them? Are you upset that some people are lfg and want to do gribble and that's your only option or you have to go solo thinking this will increase your odds of more groups. Rarely does anyone care about something in life unless there is something in it for themselves or you are just trolling on here.

I can tell the N00bZ on this thread by those who whine that Gribbles are too easy. EQ's greatest moment was the Fairy MM's, or sitting around in general chat whining "WoW easy mode button bleh" while awaiting a /taskadd from someone for your 30 AAs.

Your post is full of hypocrisy. Let me give you some examples. All of my examples will be of non current content that is still BiS gear or used in main rotations.

Dicho, TDS proc Augs, CotF twin cast spell, Dragon AA, Epics, countless clickies, etc.

So what say you? Why are these things better than current content? Why have they not been phased out, updated, or replaced?

I've still have yet to see an intelligent comment from a proponent of these HA changes that impact so much more than the exp gains in DH.

I didn't say I agreed with the changes, just why they happened.

Personally I think it was Gribbles and maybe a couple of other HAs in CotF that needed a retune. Each one should have been considered individually, some had scaled correctly others like Gribbles hadn't.

If you are still under level 106 you shouldn't not have been affected. I've not had much time since the patch to test the level 100 HAs. I'm about halfway through CotF progression, Just 2 deadhills HAs to go followed by Neriak, Argin Hiz & Tower of Rot to finish before I move on to TDS. I'd been toying with the idea myself of leveling up to 110 and then doing the progression, but seeing what they have done, I'm glad that I didn't.

I'm hoping they re-evaluate all the HAs and correct the over tuning or do what they possible should have done in the start and return them to how they were and reduced the AA/EXP.

On my main I'm still missing a few collectables (which refuse to drop) and a few Hunters in CotF, TDS & TBM so these changes really hurt her.

If I was you i'd start dong TDS static zones and hope that this mess is cleaned up quickly.

sheex, you are my spirit animal.

Prime example here where elite gamers who are raid geared are able to destroy missions much faster and more efficient than a group geared crew......and the casuals get the short end of the stick.

Who cares if player X can do a mission faster ? How would I even know their completion rate? And do I even care how many AA's they get? A casual player does not know these things and enjoys getting the missions done at the best rate they can muster with the group they have. This absurd scaling on 5 year old content hurts the average player.

But the exp was the problem and as far as I can see the only problem.

Everything else you mention yes they are good in the current game and you can do without them, but while acquiring them you are not getting current level of exp.

I do wonder how the community would have reacted had they just reduced the level of exp received at levels 106 - 110.

If they really want to re-tune HA's they should bring gribbles more in line with the other HA's, there is so much more to HA's than just gribbles...

And however they re-tune it, make the risk vs reward reasonable.

He/she didn't say that exp was the problem. He/she stated that NO older content should be better than current tier, under no circumstance, which is counter to the design of the last 18 years of content.

Also, how are you assuming that DBG made this changed solely based on exp gains? They've yet to comment as to why these changes were made.

Ha, self-entitled because I don't want to pay for a leisure subscription, for a game, I am not enjoying. Of course I will be back, if it becomes fun to play again, I made that perfectly clear. I may even play on test for a while and will certainly check in to see if any revisions have been made. The problem is that when DB drives enough people away, there may not be an Everquest to check back in to. Take shots at people and throw around terms like self entitled all you want, you must be the God of the EQ forums and know all, I guess.

Call it female intuition. The last time CotF HAs got changed it was over exp and Gribbles, that time they added the replay timer. The compromise when players kicked off that they could no longer do back to back missions and gain collectables was to be able to drop the mission and gain no exp or coins. This time they have re-tuned everything. While possibly bringing Gribles to the difficulty it should be (not for me to judge). I'm disappointed to see the other HAs which scaled better and were always more of a challenge have now been overturned. I hope to see a fix in the not too distant future.

Nerfs like this are always down to exp gains or too much gear or currency - as there is no use for currency or gear from 5 expansions for level 110 players the Sherlock Holmes in me tells me these changes are all about exp gains.

They can fix experience gain easily by simply doing what they did in the past - changing the amount of experience people gain from < 106 tasks, after 106. The issue is they don't want to do this because they want to keep their level scale instances system going. Well, in this case you can't have your cake and eat it, because the level scale instances system was never designed for going past their specific expansions. The reward for effort is completely out of order. Again, World of Warcraft is doing this but they have a working level scale system for both experience and loot, and their level scale system has no sudden jumps in difficulty due to expansions with no level gain.

This game does not have those benefits. What is currently happening is that people are being punished for going to level 106, which never happens in World of Warcraft, since the difficulty jump for one level is never that large and the game rains level appropriate equipment on you - the opposite of Everquest.

For wizards there are at least 2 items, that are locked behind older HA's that are worth getting: The spec evo aug(a very rare drop in EWK HA's) and a symp-proc aug for TDS-currency(DBG has refused to introduce new symp-proc augs since then ).

I assume other classes can also find a few useful items in older HA's too?

And then there are the usual hero-AAs that are also now made much harder to get.

It is very possible that DBG simply forgot about those "secondary" rewards and were focusing on XP-rewards though.

Wooot 4.5% - 6.0% between 110 and 109 every 3 hours is soooo much exp. Not sure what people are smoking, but can I buy some of that?