Revert Innate Melee Changes

Allow me to back this up a bit. Again, I understand what the intent here was, my question was simply, why? When it clearly doesn't impact every player/class/server the same and as a whole for most TLP's its simply a setback that is completely unnecessary. Will it prevent current guilds from clearing content, maybe not, however does it have even the slightest chance to prevent a guild that is not or hardly clearing to not be able to do so? perhaps.

Plus, as others have stated, it just upsets people. There was not an extensive testing period or supporting argument from the dev team other than what seem "lets try this". Content that has gone from challenging to trivial due to gear etc shouldn't be rolled back, at all, per say due to a flat nerf.

Regarding a bard, I am not of the dps mindset for myself personally, that is not to say I try and do what I can to the best of my ability and it is nice when there is some gain. The bigger concern for me was logging into tons of upset guildies that got a new weapon recently or planned gear accordingly to now do noticeably less damage simply due to the patch.

Dumb metaphor, but its like getting promoted, start making more money, but then be told you will make less money but keep the promotion. If that makes any sense towards my opinion.

Let me zero in on this for a minute. Why should every guild have an unassailable right to clear all content? Or, to put it another way, why should the devs not be allowed to create at least some content that is difficult enough that it requires a high level of coordination, skill, gear AND numbers to defeat?

For 16 of the last 19 years, the devs have made content that could not be defeated by any 30 toons that showed up. It is only for the last two years that this has changed, with changes like the innate aa's to begin with.

This is a TINY step back the other direction. You can still clear all raids with 30 people on all current progression servers. You are still more powerful than you were three years ago before they introduced these aa's in the first place.

I think we all wish (or at least think we wish) more things could be communicated more clearly.

If the dev belief is that content is trivialized and this hurts progression appeal/retention (I could agree with that statement, but keep in mind that I believe in significantly higher progression XP rates than we have seen due to the shorter timeframes we play in)...

...the it would be reasonable for the stated direction to be something like this:

"We will be tuning progression to ensure content is appropriately challenging in era. Our to-do list is long and finicky and different people are responsible for different parts of it. In no particular order or promise of happening quickly, we shall be adjusting: melee DPS, Caster spell DPS, focus effects pre-Luclin, charm pets preOoW, charm flagging and other resists for specific named NPC, spawn timers, keys, groundspawns, ZEM, removing specific drops in some revamped zones to allow access to the revamps sooner than presently appropriate due to the items, restoring missing/incomplete quests and items, specifically tuning rogues up in original era, specifically smoothing monk DPS across numerous eras, and so on."


However, if they said this it would it really help or would the collective we just complain more?

I would be fine with either way as long as we got ANY communication from them on which direction they are going.

Right now it seems like that changes monthly and that is what makes me angry is that there is no consistency or direction for these changes.

People will always complain no matter what you do. But you have to look at it from a different perspective then them complaining about things. They care about the product you produce. They are invested and they are expressing themselves.

Over the years being engaged in software development, product management, and IT in general I've learned it is always better to communicate changes and the vision/direction of things. Even if people will not believe in it or agree with it.

Nerfs, they happen and they will happen again in the future. This is normal for EQ. You should play on the live servers as they have been getting the nerf bat for quite some time now.

Does this even need to be said? It’s an MMO, they will always be tinkering with every aspect of the game in order to try to make it better. That’s what devs do in an MMO. The EULA even states that gameplay will change. People make like the changes or they may not, but it will always change. The reason they don’t post a list like the one above is that commits them. People then expect those things will be changed, but maybe hey change the first 2 or 3 then decide they don’t really need to do more, or that other things are more pressing, then, for years on, people will be quoting the post they made about what they wanted to change and using it against them.

Basically, they can’t win, which is why they err on the side of not saying anything. I mean... we are still waiting on, and holding against them, the necro dot changes we were promised once upon a time.

What you say is true to a degree, the flip side is the people they are making angry are paying customers who can and often do take their ball and go home...Ask Blizzard how smart it was to ignore their players they went from 11 millions to under 5 because they can't seem to understand that we don't HAVE to buy their product when it's junk.

DBG doesn't have near that cushion and what do they do, lock threads with legitimate questions and comments without a word, implement goofy nerfs when there are other things more blaringly broken and try to tune 18 year old content to to make it more "challenging" news flash it will never be challenging unless you change the game mechanics completely, and they can't do that because that would require actual development....

Why would you do this...you are really just removing reasons to continue to pay and play eq...

They don't have much cushion, but they also have a problem. I can definitely see the appeal of EZMode Everquest -- espeicially for players that either never saw the raids on live, or weren't in one of the top guilds clearing everything. Now you can do everything you couldn't do before. But the problem is that at some point, just having everything handed to you will becomes unsatisfying. It already has for a lot of players, who have gone on to other things, and I'd guess for most people, a year or two of ezmode is enough for things to get stale. I know I've been borderline on continuing--up to the last year, I thought things would eventually get hard and we would get a challenge, but now that we are into some of the expansions that I thought would be difficult, and the difficulty hasn't arrived, I'm wondering if it is going to be ezmode the whole way to live.

The only remedy to this problem is to reintroduce challenge and difficulty. If they don't do that, at some point they will lose their entire TLP population to lethargy.

Thats a good point... winning, whatever that means, has become so unsatisfying on eq. The most fun was never beating encounters they way they are intended. Its usually something extra such as some added adversity that actually made the game satisfying.

Most of eq, for raiding, is closer to playing a slot machine than an actual rpg.

For live I agree. Most enjoyable time I had was the struggle. Now though, I have a lot of fun in the games current state.

Maybe what they should have actually done is up caster damage like 10-20 percent. Then just increase all mob HPs and AC prior to whatever expansion those AAs were introduced. Same result, similar outrage and way more work. Or do people really feel like casters shouldn't belong on raids outside of gimmick fights that specifically require some number of casters?

A little motm buff oughta set em straight!

^I said the same thing somewhere else, though you probably said it clearer with less words.

I think the outrage is misplaced. Big picture EZmode is not a good default status for progression. It might make an amazing single server or Quarm event though.

Default progression, taking the less-work for same result means needing to tune down DPS. This % off the melee AA is only a part of that process if they actually want to accomplish this.

Once group content is non-trivial above level 40 (it would be nice for overall content, but it is 40+ that really needs it. One could argue that keeping 1-30s easy is the classic pusher trick to hook us in, and is justified) then you deal with the raids. This could be more of the MoTM approach, though if this process is done well you would need to era-retune some events (maybe not many) and shouldn't really need era-added debuffs/conditions that go away later.

I'll also restate that I strongly believe all progression should start with a much higher XP rate. Do a Phinny server for the 20th anny with double TSS level XP from the start and it will be high population even if all DPS is down, Focus are gone until Luclin, charmed pets do 66% damage prior to OoW too and all PoP-earlier droppable gear is nodrop.

When there is 1 version of a raid, it has to be 'normal' difficulty level. Sure, create harder versions of the same zone, but always leave a normal version so people can farm content.

People may quit because it's too easy. But everyone will quit if it's too hard.

I do think this is going to be the case.... I dont ever recall enchanters running around back in the day charming mobs..... if you revert spells / AA changes and the over all HP/mana/AC! Mobs will actually be able murder groups and 1 charm pet break could spell disaster! But watching this thread it seems if this truly was like p99 or how things were most people would not play... I would play because its different and i would actually like to be challenged... I honestly have enjoyed seeing all the raid content but everything is a cake walk... I think a lot of people like the fact that EQ is easy mode and they can enjoy a game that they have sucked @ for the majority of 1999-2018....

The simple solution is to buff raid mob hp across the board so you can't burn through it and trivialize the encounter. This is a very simple solution and should not take long to implement.

This game is only fun when it is played as intended and these recent changes make the game like a Disney ride, you show up wait in line and enjoy the attraction with hardly any input. That is how I spell b o r i n g.

That's cool you don't find it fun. But that's a broad statement. There are plenty of people who enjoy it in EZmode.

You must have missed classic to now.

Increasing hp and resists does absolutely nothing other than require a decent rotation of clerics. It draws out a fight but surely does not add to the challenging factor.