Sense Heading - Progression Server Changes

Uh also doesn't help that RadarX is merging threads that even remotely has to do with the new timeline and the people I'm quoting are complaining about the extended expansion times because of the PoP instancing delay and nothing to do with GoD and OoW bundling and is simply AoS complaining about the expansions no longer being 83 days or whatever... Since the devs while they might no back on the whole GoD&OoW thing, its almost a guarentee they ain't backing out of the increased expansion time... So why quote me again?

Bear in mind that a lot of those "New Members" are long time players who don't usually play forum quest, but came here specifically to post on this one issue because someone in their guild informed them of this post and they feel that strongly about it.

That should not invalidate their posts, but serves as an indication of how strongly they feel. Especially since they did it largely politely, and in the right place, without making a new thread each.

To be fair, I can 100% guarantee the people who came here to Phinny for instancing, such as yourself, would completely lose their mind if they came and said they are removing raid instancing "because we couldn't get it to work right". Just because you don't care about keeping the schedule they promised, doesn't mean the people that do are not justified in their complaints.

That being said, while there are a few complaints about the extended unlocks, the general consensus by those complaining, is that "Well, it sucks that DBG is too inept to stick to their original promise/timeline, but it is what it is. If they need time to fix things, so be it". We certainly aren't thrilled to have to be stuck in Velious/Luclin expansion for 6 extra weeks, but the true main concern is the bundling of GoD/OoW combined with the PoP/LDoN/LoY duration.

I am just glad to be out of classic and kunark, I few more weeks of velious/luclin is great!

This is entirely my point. The chosen duration of PoP/LDoN has nothing to do with whether they can "get the instances ready". And while instancing a bunch of one and done flagging raids while pushing back the promised timeline is already a dubious use of resources, at least there is some debate to be made about doing it. They are choosing to have an expansion effectively last half a year on its own even though past progression servers bundled them for a very good reason and its already been stated why that was a good idea. Is there anyone out there that has played on Fippy that actually thinks PoP for half a year while having to wait 3 months just to touch LDoN is actually intelligent or healthy for the server? Anyone at all?

I'm pretty sure most everyone is on the same page as to why the GoD/OoW bundling is awful so I'll leave that alone.

Indeed Stark - I'd almost rather see PoP w/o LDoN done in 3 months, then GoD + LDoN bundled for the start (since it seems they're worried about GoD turning off some people would give casual LDoN for them, GoD for the more hardcore) w/ GoD + OoW levels/AA at the halfway point or so - to give the bleeding edge "want it hard" folks a challenge to try to accomplish before toning it down for everyone.

[And for the love of God not releasing GoD and OoW content together where almost the entire expansion's gearing would go to waste - unhinging OoWs levels/AA so they can release earlier is the appropriate "difficulty fix" if they feel it's necessary, not a content release that invalidates GoD]

Some key points that have not been discussed yet.

1. Player attrition due to needing large amounts of AA's in later expansions.
2. Experience rate adjustment starting in Planes of Power and later expansions.
3. The offering of recruit a friend or similar xp boost program in later expansions.
4. Instancing and pick-zones up to which expansion?
5. Unlock rate of content that requires more time to defeat in era.
6. Future progression servers.

1. One of the biggest differences in the raiding/grouping game up to Velious is the level cap and lack of AA's. When AA's are introduced into the game it creates a disparity between a casual and a raider. Not only will they have to raid, but now spend off hours grinding xp for abilities that are a must have to class development. Currently the endgame is lockout timers of instances, epics, trade-skills, or alts. AA grinding will be a huge deal breaker for most that want to continue progression in order to be successful.

2. Lets talk some numbers. What kind of hard AA xp cap will there be in the Planes of Power and beyond expansions? Going back to fippy as a reference in Luclin we had a hard cap of 1% a kill meaning 100 kills per AA point. In the Planes of Power it was raised to 2-1/2-3% grouped and 4-6% solo respectively based on the xp spots. The only thing that has been mentioned are the new hot-zones that will not be active till The Serpent's Spine expansion.

3. Recruit a friend program was a huge deal-breaker in the Planes of Power. This program allowed the grinding of AA at a rate that was almost several times the rate of the average person. AA are a pretty big thing to class development and progression rate. The amount of AA that a character has will be some of the biggest reasons for attrition and burnout. Many will quit for this reason alone. Combined with having to raid and need gear for progression this will define the casual from the raider. Can we please have some confirmation if this program or any other form of xp boost program will be offered at a later time?

4. What can we expect in Gates of Discord and beyond as far as the outdoor stuff goes? Will the rest of the expansions have all outdoor content instanced? Will there be pick-zones for the top contested xp spots specifically Plane of Fire, Riftseekers Sanctum, and Dreadspire Keep?

5. Everything has been defeated in 10 days or less up to the Secrets of Faydwer expansion on Fippy. Assuming that unlock timers continue in the format that was advertised this will be a problem for the Underfoot expansion in regards to finishing it in era before House of Thule is released. Without a voting or completing all the content to unlock the next expansion mechanism, this will trivialize that content as its more fun to defeat at the level cap of 85. This will only matter for a few top guilds that end up making the long 3 year trek to even care. The most effected crowd will be the casual that will not get to finish all the content in era. Specific examples include: Omens of War - Overlord Mata Muram , Dragons of Norrath - Vishimitar the Fallen, Depths of Darkhollow - Sendaii, Demiplane, Prophecy of Ro - Deathknell. These specific fights or zones are not designed with the word casual in mind. They will require specific classes and mechanics to be followed. Can we get some clarity as to which of these level 65 and 70 expansions will be bundled together and the unlock timers for them? Defeating each of the level 65 and 70 content expansions separate is pretty game changing even if they are all farmed in succession.

6. It has been mentioned a few times now that there is a possibility of another progression server type in the works. Can we get some information as to what type of projected rule-set this or these servers will have? Why is there a proposed future progression server when there is currently 5 in play? 1 being dead locked in Seeds of Destruction, 1 about to catch up to live in another year, 1 with a 3 month unlock timer , 1 with a 6 month unlock timer, and 1 with 3 month unlock timer with content being defeated or not. This entire post reads as if it was a decision that came from the top to maximize profits even it means breaking the game, changing core functions of classes to force grouping, and releasing and changing what was a given content unlock schedule so people could plan their progression. Can we get some more information as to the future of the servers and its content regarding all of these points so that we can make a better choice of time investment? Wasting 6 months to a year of playtime on a character to just throw it in the garbage and start over again is very aggravating to those that actually want to do progression. Can we stop making pointless multiple servers and breaking game content on a whim trying to recreate a new experience for a game that is outplayed and known already? These are supposedly progression servers for nostalgia. They seem to be turning out to be let's do whatever we can to hope more people decide to keep playing even if it means trivializing it so bad as it is already easy enough without the developer's interventions.

If i am reading the latest post about stat changes right, we will now be getting Heroic Stats in the Planes of Power instead of many expansions later.. this boost of power further makes the combination of GoD and OOW pointless as level 65 players will be much more powerful now.

It looks like it's going to be a pretty small amount of heroics added to items. I doubt it will be a significant amount of increased player power. Certainly not as much as many of the other changes.

I just want to post to add another vote to a few points which seem like a strong consensus on this thread scanning through it:

(1) Releasing GoD with LDoN would be much preferable to releasing it with OOW. - This doesn't even necessarily have to have any inpact on your internal time frames since GoD probably doesn't need any additional work to be put out. This will allow those people who want to experience the content to do so while allowing those who prefer not to experience the content until OOW comes out to just wait a short 3 months and still have the LDoN content they were going to have access to anyways.

(2) Extra time in Luclin would be preferable to extra time in Velious - Given the date for PoP has to be pushed back, which your justification for is perfectly reasonable, Luclin just provides more content to keep everybody busy and happy. I think it would be better to add maybe 2/3 of the extra time to Luclin and 1/3 of the extra time to Velious. This still provides people more time than expected in Velious while also allowing people to not get completely bored with the lack of AAs and the additional content provided by Luclin, plus the ability to now level a beastlord alt or new main.

I'm not so sure about that, since it makes some Mod2's effectively multiplicative in what they offer - and for some of the specialty augs that used to be completely god awful from LDoN raids (Strikethrough +5% anyone?!) will suddenly be quite appealing with a pretty broad range of classes.

I won't say it will be hugely impactful player power wise (zero experience with Heroics personally) - but it's certainly going to be weird....

If I recall the discussions before they were implemented, heroic's should have more bang for the buck at the lower point values than one you get a ton. Maddoc was always fond of diminishing returns in his formulas.

Yes, they're doing that if you read the dev post. Up to 400 or something then diminishing returns for up to 4000 or something similar.

Here is another vote to NOT release GoD and OoW at once.

I already played 4 years on Fippy TLP, and we had a great time in GoD as well as in OoW. Merging the release basically kills any ambition to experience the GoD content.

If at all, I could imagine to cut down the GoD timeframe to 8 weeks and extend OoW to 16 weeks to ensure that those who feel that GoD is too hard (it feels already much easier than in the old days) don't need to wait long to get more powerful by levels. Maybe that is a compromise people can live with.

It depends on the stat, some of them are just a flat bonus for every 10 or 25 heroic points you have with no diminishing returns.

That might be the case until May 16th - but doesn't sound like it will post-May 16th

Only the mod2's are changing. So yes, you will have diminishing returns on the mod2's for heroics over 400, allowing you to go over the previous mod2 caps. But the normal heroic stat effects aren't changing at all as far as they've posted so far. So for instance the bonus damage from heroic strength will be exactly the same as it was before, and it's not a diminishing return--hasn't been to this point, and still won't be after the patch.

So heroic stats besides their future mod2 properties rolled in...what do each of them do at their core..there a list posted anywhere?

My voice probably doesn't matter, as I'm just a casual player who saw the instancing as an attractive feature to me. The time needed to make right the instancing is unavoidable, I get that, but I'd like to see the balance of the time extending velious and luclin loaded into the luclin instead of pushing it back. Reason for this, we have AAs to grind, keys to obtain, and many people will probably main change to a beastlord, which will esentially be starting from scratch. I'm just an average player who played everquest and switched to wow in late 2004, like everyone else did. Even though beginning in 1999 I started really enjoying the game in luclin all the way up to omens of war in a guild that allowed me to raid, and would like to experience that again. My goal playing here is not accumulate kronos, I have a paid yearly subscription that auto renews. It is to experience the same era i played in before i switched to world of warcraft, luclin - Gates of discord and possibly further in a raid environment.

The absolutely simplest change to enact is to just prevent PoP from being launched until the instancing code is done. Keep people in Luclin. It's a huge expansion for raiding and leveling. Yeah people will say you promosed 84 days but that was always a "best effort" promise. Writing new code is always suspect. I know, I'm in the software business.

So DBG keep it simple: Keep everyone in Luclin until the PoP instancing code is done and then move forward.

Don't change anything else. So we'll all get sick of Luclin at some point. But that seems to be the best and easiest compromise to all this.