Reviewing Torment of Velious expansion

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Fian, May 19, 2020.

  1. Fian Augur

    The expansion has been out for a while now, all raids are unlocked, and many players are now max level/AA. I think now would be a good time to revisit the notable decisions of this expansion and see what the player base thinks.

    1. Implementation of 5 truly hellish levels to earn experience. If you are grinding your way to 115, expect to take a very long time to get there.
    2. Massive experience bonuses for completing missions, partisan, and merc quest achievements. While grinding is hard, if you can get the right groups, you can get to 115 extremely fast. A newly dinged 111 can get to about 114.5 just from quests and missions.
    3. No flags in group game (although TOFS does have keys).
    4. No flags for raid game.
    5. Overseer feature.

    My review:
    1. I am not a fan of this. Grinding should still be a viable way of gaining levels. If I wanted to play a game that pushed questing to gain levels, I would be playing Elder Scrolls Online instead.
    2. This caused a big gap between the connected and the casual player. I powered my way to 115 in a little over 3 days after expansion release. I am in a large raid guild, and could easily find groups to complete everything I needed quickly. To be honest, I gained 115 too quickly, and I would have leveled much slower over the traditional experience design. For casuals (or those just now playing TOV), it is very hard to find groups doing quests or missions. As a result, leveling is glacial.
    3. I loved the fact that whatever zone I am in, I can see a person saying they are LFG and I can tell them that they can join me. I don't mind a single locked zone, like ROS, but having almost every zone locked in TBL really hurt grouping. I also appreciated in TOFS that one person with flagging could move an entire group to other floors of the tower. It is nice when you can be the big man in a group that helps the others get where they need to go based off of the work you did earlier on flagging.
    4. This has been a great boon for my raid force. My raid force didn't do any TBL raids for like the first 6 months, and we were farming 3 by the end of the expansion. For TOV, we beat all of the T1 raids in about the first week we tried (2nd week the T1 raids were available), were able to beat the first T2 wave until the nerf, and are currently farming the T3 raids as well. We have never been able to progress so far in raiding an expansion as this one.
    5. Overseer feature is fun, but I wonder where it will be long term. 6 months from now, I will probably have close to most of the agents that are available, all of the categories will be max rank, etc. One drawback of Overseer is it gives max level players less incentive to actually go out and hunt. I am not sure if that is a good thing as it might be hurting the group game.
    Maedhros, Aenvar, lockjaws and 3 others like this.
  2. Yendar Augur

    People complained all TBL about how difficult it was..

    Now we have ToV where you can complete just about everything (except maybe the earring) in a couple weeks. I’m not surprised this is what people wanted, but it makes the game boring as there isn’t much to do other than TS’ing alts for the Earring and then grinding exp to level the ear..

    It’s not very exciting.. there isn’t any major obstacle to overcome.. that’s where the joy of EQ comes from for me. Getting more powerful and then being able to beat things we weren’t able too before.. this expansion doesn’t have much to beat..

    Way too easy for me.. I’d guess a lot more people quit early this expansion. The Coronavirus is probably helping their subs significantly though.
    Krazzi, Colt4954 and Duder like this.
  3. Fuddlebutts New Member


    The literal name of this game is everQUEST and you are shocked that they want you to actually quest.
    Coagagin, CatsPaws and Andarriel like this.
  4. Cuuthbert Augur

    I would agree with Yendar in the fact a lot of people felt TBL was a bit rough. I also think after the amount of resources the poured into the 20th Anniversary expac {TBL} that Daybreak/Darkpaw did not have the same amount of resources due to the previous years expenditures. Funny how each expansion is a bit different in the way it operates or how the flagging goes or does not go.

    From the last 2 expansions, I love the evolve items though, I think the presents both casuals and raiders a goal to accomplish and the ability to get a best in slot item and especially for the casual the ability to get raid level loot through grinding it out and working the item.
  5. Ryanxp Augur

    After returning since the TLP's opened for everyone, I'm debating buying the latest xpac for my raiding zerk.
    Haven't played for the past 2 years, into actually retiring these accounts, but for no better reason than to just pick up playing another 40 hours/week, is the latest and greatest xpac worth buying for 1 of my 4 accounts, or would it be best to just buy the next latest?


    Velious seems fun! Faydwer seems darling. Waiting it out might be the best option; unsure.
  6. Pawtato Augur

    It’s worth the buy, you’ll get a good month out of it. It’s a really good casual expansion, and will allow a lot of people to catch up.

    My opinion though is it’s a very bad and uninspired expansion. Regardless of difficulty, there’s no real depth to ToV. It’s very copy and paste with low effort, so they could work on Overseer. The delayed raid release schedule for raids that were just copies of the group missions was beyond disappointing.
  7. Vumad Cape Wearer

    TBL should have been nerfed in era. All of the zones should have been unlocked within months from the beginning into the expansion except Mearatas. The zone progression in TBL was horrific.

    TBL has possibly been the worst expansion in EverQuest...
    It's full of AEs that slaughter returning players
    The only zone everyone has access too is also genocide to anyone with lags/low frame rate.
    Stratos knockbacks also made it very anti-box, which at this point in the game anti-box is very bad.
    Smoke, a T1 zone, was the hardest zone to get into.
    Progression took players to T2 (Allishai) before T1 (Esianti)
    TBL was the most linear expansion and the most inaccessible expansion in EverQuest history

    The only saving grace in TBL was the lamp from Strange magic which allows players to circumvent the entire progression. That made the expansion more accessible, but mostly to alts, boxes and friends who could get task adds.

    There were just so many things wrong with the tuning of TBL.

    It makes sense that ToV was tuned much easier after what happened with TBL. It's just unfortunate that, rather than saying TBL was a mistake and altering the progression / locked zones, we swung the completely opposite end with ToV being an expansion that is too easy.

    ToV...

    ToV all the zones are unlocked, which is great.
    ToV maintains a good locked (inaccessible) format with the TOFS key progression (like EoK etod in korsha, locked VP, etc)
    After what happened with TBL, having an expansion as accessible as ToV is necessary.

    But ToV also has tuning mistakes. The primary being that Challenger is too easy and so are the raids. The T1 raids should be as easy though, because casual guilds should have something they can do in era.

    My biggest complaint with ToV is the snow. The ice shader is not an issue, but the snow is. I have to turn off my 2.0 shaders in Kael.

    As for questing, having meaningful quests rewards is a great thing, but again they do need some more balance. Grind XP should have been better, while the ACH should have given much less XP. The merc quests should be repeatable for XP, all quests should be. I should be able to redo a quest when I help someone who hasn't done it and get a reward. I believe this, because it incentives people to help others.

    Things like the TBL evolvers are great, but since I can't get XP for them in RoS, I dont really feel motivated to go back, there despite returning players being there LFG.
    Velisaris_MS likes this.
  8. Tuco Augur

    I cancelled my subs a couple weeks after ToV came out because if there is no hard content, why bother doing hunter, collections or chase gear? No endgame means I can just see the content and go play a different game.

    I cant even imagine spending a year raiding TBL to fight raids in ToV that could be beaten in RoS gear or ToV t1 group gear.

    If the next expansion is the same I'll still play it, but will probably just 2 or 3box it to artificially raise the difficulty and save some $$$
    Pano and Whulfgar like this.
  9. Nadisia Augur

    After one relatively hard expansion (RoS) followed by a hard one (TBL), ToV is a catch up extension.
    At least, this is how I feel it.
    It's maybe boring for the high end players (full AA and max gear), and for raiders, but for the rest of the population (probably the vast majority) it's fine, and from time to time, it's healthy.

    Sure, if you're raider, you can burn any mission in no time.
    But for returnees, in snowbound & T1 tradable gear, it's not that easy.

    It's group content after all, designed also (and mainly) for groupers.

    If raids are too easy, it's another issue.

    My biggest issue with ToV? The graphics : too much ice, snow, and shiny effects.
    After 2 hours in Kael or Velk. Lab. , I'm literally blind.
  10. Yendar Augur


    You can’t make a game for old players to “catch up” the current players will get bored & quit. If you want to catch up.. you do that in the expansions built for those AA’s and levels until you are ready. There are TONS of people “catching up” doing EoK/RoS stuff. The new expansion has to be exciting for the current players. ToV isn’t at all.

    I’m not a raider. I don’t have raid gear. I have a 115 charger, mage, monk, & cleric. They’re all basically max AA. I started ToV late April during the corona virus shut down and finished quickly after. I 2-Box... the cleric merc tank has zero ranks in steadfast resolve and can rather easily tank 2 trash T2
    Mobs or 4-5 trash T1 Mobs. I’ve never even been able to use a tank merc in any expansion prior to this.. in TBL for instance it couldn’t tank one trash mob even as good as my monk. The enchanter and mage.. I’ve gone to a water pet, the enchanter pet main tanks (especially in T1). I use 1 healer and Toss a wiz on burn. In RoS/TBL I often found myself needing to use earth pet & 2 healer mercs as one healer wasn’t enough to keep the pet up consistently.

    There aren’t ANY groupers that finished TBL/RoS when they were live that are having ANY trouble in ToV.. and plenty of groupers complete these expansions.. it’s not only raid geared players.
  11. Schadenfreude Augur

    Or you could stop using 3rd party tools? Save some $$$ by not paying for those and experience the content closer to what the devs intended.
  12. Schadenfreude Augur

    I should resist but what is a "level 115 charger" and a "cleric merc tank"?
  13. Yendar Augur

    Charger = enchanter I guess chanter got autocorrected.

    I have a toon that’s a cleric and he uses a tank merc with zero steadfast resolve AA and it’s not even maxed out on the General melee defense yet. “Cleric merc tank” still able to tank 4-5 trash T1 mobs.. 3 trash T2 mobs fairly easily.
  14. atchoom Lorekeeper

    tuco , come on, you are the best at using is_boxer you can do things full real group could struggle , stop to say EQ is so easy while using that 3rd party software...................... but yes TOV is a pretty easy expansion.
  15. Windance Augur

    Unlike most of you I thought ToV was pretty well balanced. The T1 zones were fairly easy, but jumping into the T2 zones before getting 115 was fairly challenging. ToFS and Velks both had areas that were death traps.

    Like most I still find the XP grind from 111 to 115 to be painful. We've had a lot of returning guild members and it takes a significant amount of work to get the raid ready.

    I liked the phased approach to releasing the raids. They should have planned for the raids to open Sunday at noon PST instead of mid week. I love the fact that we can skip the ToFS hell hole raid and have the option of working on Kael / Velks raids.
  16. Yendar Augur

    Id assume that prior to being 115, you also haven’t been working on many ToV AA’s. So prior to 115 and having the new AA’s you’re able to do T2.. meaning that after you get 115 and accumulate the AA’s T2 has become just as trivial as T1 was.. and T1 now has become a total joke. Since it only takes a couple weeks to reach 115 and get the major AA’s from ToV (assuming you had TBL) after those couple weeks the entire expansion is basically trivial.. & this is for people in group gear. If you started out in raid gear.. it’s trivial even sooner.
  17. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    I do enjoy progression, at least once.

    When I get to playing alts I don't necessarily want to repeat that progression path again & again & again for each & every expansion.

    Pretty much forcing the progression path due to just how utterly pathetic mob kill xp is really destroys my interest in playing alts, I am just going to go play another game rather than bother with grinding on such abysmally lousy kill xp or putting myself through progression all over again for alts, which means I will be spending less time on EQ & more time elsewhere.
    Annastasya, Vumad and enclee like this.
  18. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    I've enjoyed ToV more than I expected, I'm not a great fan of rehashed content and was disapointed to find ToV didn't have any new zones for me to die in. :( The harshness of the snow gives me headaches, so I'm hoping next expansion the snow has melted some and we have some greenery.

    5 months in and I have more max level chars than during any other expansion after 12 months. ToV has had some replayability, many of the other expansions have been a case of go there do progression/hunter once and never go back. The earring coming a little bit later has ment a lot of things need to be repeated. I still feel merc quests should give exp otherwiese I don't see the point of them just to get a tick in a box, it's not like they have a story to them.

    Raids have once again been fun! I loved the original ring war in GD so it is great to be doing that once again, ToFS are by far my favourite especially the wedding/divorce. Velks difficulty gives me the feel that is should have been the final zone, the mechanics to me are harder than both the Kael raids, and we found it harder to learn than Kael. I personally liked the staggered release rather than having to flag everyone and I'm sure when/if any of the progression servers get this far they will appreciate not having to do flags, just need to make sure next time they kick off when they should.

    I do feel this expansion has had a bit too much focus on completing the earring. The guild has got to the stage where no one really needs anything other than evolving exp for their earring! :rolleyes:
  19. feeltheburn Augur

    some folks just not happy it seems unless they are complaining....don't play, after this many years, be happy there is still content and things to do...come a day might not be a EQ and then what will they have to complain about? astounding to me really.
  20. Whulfgar Augur

    TBL was the best expansion in a very long time.

    TBL had original zones .. original content .. (usual people complain bout copy pasted maps an yadda yadda yadda .. they could not say 1 word about TBL being copy pasted)

    TBL gave grp level players 4 item's that were (and still are) Best in slot better then raid quality gear items for doing grp content..

    TBL had more then 4 Grp missions for the whole expansion .. offered up a really sweet mount and a really cool illusion both of which were best of their types..

    ToV .. offered none of this .. and is the overall weakest expansion of recent memory.. to the point that the population replay ability of this expansion vs that of TBL is a literal joke.

    TBL had MAINS on their main toons doing TBL stuff almost up until this ToV release ..

    ToV has mains done on their 3rd an 4th level (or more) alt's with the entire expansion .. and now not login in to play outside of raids.

    ToV overall was / is a poorly designed expansion.