Sense Heading - Progression Server Changes

It's being discussed a little bit in the sticky thread but the main conversation point seems to revolve around the GoD-OoW bundle release so I feel the need to create a new thread to discuss this further.

Please do not release Ldon 12 weeks after PoP release, extending PoP by an additional 3 months. A lot of people rerolled or started playing on Phinnigel because of the 3 months unlock. Extending PoP by 3 months is as bad as deciding to not instance any raids beyond Velious. In all iteration of previous TLPs, Ldon has never been treated as it's own expansion and always released automatically a little bit after PoP was unlocked.

It makes no sense that Phinnigel started as a faster unlock server and now we're being told we're going to be spending as much time as Ragefire and Lockjaw in the PoP Era? Why? You provided reasons for all the other "sense heading" decisions that you announced recently, except for this one. Luclin and Velious are being extended because you need more time to prepare the PoP expeditions. It sucks but I can understand. You want to bundle GoD-OoW together because you feel GoD is too hard of an expansion and the difficulty needs to be alleviated by allowing players to level up to 70. I strongly disagree, but again at least you provided a reason for this decision. So why is it that you want the Phinnigel player base to spend 12 weeks in a very short expansion? Following that logic, Ragefire and Lockjaw should be having 6 months of Ldon, right? There is no reason whatsoever to extend PoP. GoD is already 90% instanced and OoW is pretty much fully instanced. You will have 0 work to do after PoP is over. No need to delay anything.

Also here is a direct quote from the sense heading annoucement:

Ldon provides no new AA's, no level cap increase and a handful of raids. If you don't want the population to spend too much time without level increase, don't make us spend 3 months in Ldon.

6 months is WAY too much time to spend in ANY expansion, ever. Ldon is not an expansion on it's own and should not be lasting 12 weeks. It seriously needs to be reconsidered at the risk of killing your playerbase with boredom.



Planes of Power, Legacy of Ykesha and Lost Dungeons of Norrath should all be released together on Phinnigel.

Discuss.

Agree.

Make it 18 weeks total if absolutely necessary.

Yeah do this

2 weeks velious 10 weeks luclin is also acceptable

Agreed 6 months in any expac is too long. Also feel extended time in Velious is very bad, and extended time in Luclin is also not desirable but easier to deal with since AA's come out.

Thank you for the info, very interesting. This shows that a bad/not transparent vote is worse than no vote at all, I agree of course on that. Maybe DBG holds here a chance to make it better than SoE and to take it seriously when they say they wish to listen to their customers, which would also request offering real garanties that votes and polls are transparent and legit.

Sorry for my English, 'legit' seems to be the wrong word, I meant 'genuine' (authentic and uncontested).

Thanks for the response Prathun. Is it fair to say the only reason the extension is being included on both Velious and Luclin, instead of all in Luclin, is to verify the Luclin instances on test are working to prevent any launch issues on Luclin similar to what was experienced with Velious on Ragefire recently? It seems it would be much preferable for any extra time to get PoP right should be spent in Luclin and not split between extra time in both Velious & Luclin.

If that is the case, I think you just motivated most of the server to get on test and verify this content to get Luclin released on time. We as a community can verify content for Luclin on Test server, point out any issues, and allow time for them to be fixed without compromising the original release of Luclin: August 17th.

If we verify the test content with you for Luclin, can the developers commit to releasing Luclin on time? I think it is clear in this thread, and other threads on the forums, the overwhelming majority of the server wants AA's and beastlords and not to be trapped in Velious for extra time.

Everyone I've talked to in my guild is against the GoD/OoW bundle. Keep them separate and just keep us in Luclin longer instead of prolonging Velious.

I agree with the more time in luclin. Realistically when luclin opens the devs need to adjust the AA exp to accommodate the release schedule. Tanks will need a fair amount of aa's from each expansion to live through the damage.

I've been saying this as well. LDoN is a very small expansion that adds a bit of content designed to supplement the meat that is the full raid expansions. There is zero precedent for even doing this. I think people were honestly relieved that it was at least bundled with PoP last time I played on Fippy.

I agree about LDoN not deserving it's own timer, but my compromise (on the Sense Heading thread) was to release LDoN alongside of GoD. Thus providing guilds who don't think they'll have the firepower to complete GoD another area they can gear up for the encounters and also providing this [imagined] much needed space to "spread out" that Roshen says is one of the main reasons for releasing GoD/OoW together.

Either way I'm cool with, I just figured the GoD thing gave DBG some room to backpedal on their Sense Heading snafu.

Perhaps instead of using Sense Heading you should have just dropped a rusty dagger on the ground.

Agreed with the sentiment here. because really when it comes down to it, 12 more weeks of Luclin *IS* 12 more weeks of Velious. people will still do velious content, people will still do ring wars and shawl quests and faction grind and armor quest. They just also will have the ability to level a beastlord, get AAs, and do Luclin content as well. Then, when theyre ready to move on from velious raids, theres a whole moon's worth of raids ready for them.

I'm on the more Luclin > more Velious train myself. Also, it may not count for much but there are quite a few people on p99 who wish they'd release Luclin over there (despite being told "no" in some very creative ways) - Being as Phinny will be the first TLP to hit Luclin out of the 3 TLP's this time around.. you might get some new subs from some of the guys who are bored after a year of Velious on their server.

Granted, if they are interested they'll just hop on whenever Luclin is released.. but that's potentially 3 more months worth of subs (and pots, etc) if you do it earlier.

Also agree with keeping Velious as planned and extending Luclin. Just seems so logical, I can't see any major downside at all.

I'd like to second (third, fourth, or whatever) for more time in Luclin than in Velious.

Velious gives us plenty to raid, but a substantial amount of time not raiding will be invested into grinding out AA in Luclin which is not available in Velious. I mean, how many instances of Velks will be up as people farm the named as one of the only places worth going to get items to sell on the market? SCHW will be going for 500p- 1k simply due to the lack of anything else to farm.

For the health of a server's population and it's economy, more time spent grouping / AAing will pay bigger dividends than logging in for extra weeks in Velious hoping Mob X drops Rare_Loot_Y and seeing all the common drops being sent to alts or auctioned for sale to the community; or worse, rotting. Especially as you destroyed any small man / groupable farm content in Velious with motm on basically EVERYTHING that might have been done with small numbers.

If I had a choice, 18 Weeks in Luclin > 18 weeks in Velious.

And lets be realistic here, for the raid guilds in Velious they will end up ignoring a substantial amount of raid content in Velious rather quickly and focus solely on mobs that have BiS items (AoW, Tunare, CT, Vulak and the death of his Lords and Ladies, Velious Kings). As itemization for BiS in Velious is fairly concentrated to a handful of mobs or triggering Vulak you can expect the raiding community to become significantly bored and populations dwindle with additional weeks added to Velious when the raid guilds hit critical mass of gear vs characters.

In Luclin, BiS requires full clears of VT on top of Seru, Emp and Cursed (HP maybe too?). That is basically the entirety of the raid content available in Luclin that will be cleared the second the timer is up or open world repops. Throw in AA requirements for both mains, alts and boxed characters and you're looking at both a competitive and vibrant raid community with a healthy grouping environment seeking to grind AA.

If anything, the whole, "gear up for the (GoD) encounters" argument you made suggests LDoN should get out asap, so guilds can be ready for GoD. Not to mention it would go doubly so for non-raiders. Moving LDoN back weakens that stance. Release it sooner so people in PoP will have something to do.

Oh, I concur.

However, my experience in trying to get DBG to renege on an internal decision has been to throw smaller suggestions, closer to their original stance, at them. Even though I can only hope this time around, with the amount of unified negative feedback on their decisions; they'll take a more community-inclusive approach to modifying their initial sense heading decisions.

I agree with redik2 if you ask too much of daybreak nothing gonna change putting ldon with god into 3rd months after PoP got better chance of succeeding then saying put ldon with loy and PoP and u gonna be stuck with GoD/OoW releasing together.Small steps got better chance of changing their minds then changing the whole thing not to mention another thread about releasing Luclin on the same timeline as previously.

IMHO, it seems pretty obvious the extra time should be spent in Luclin where there is a new class and AA. Given the exp rate, people who plan on maining BST's deserve the time to catch up.