It is all very subjective. Today, some will argue about mob XP levels. Tomorrow, those same people will argue about mob HP levels. (Mob HP debates have recurred until the new XP mechanisms). What's great about Overseer XP and Achievement XP is that they give you flat XP percentages. There's no hidden math about level pools and mob XP rates. The current system is very transparent (for the present and the future). There's no artificially extending content by some hidden grind barrier. Unfortunately, Tappin's grind crusade will give devs cover to nerf Overseer and Achievement XP. ("We listened to Tappin's feedback: we are decreasing Overseer XP by x percentage but increasing mob XP by y percentage").
Then use the next level expansion down RoF. Now don’t tell me anything but new approach is atypical, because the opposite is true.
I’m ok with mob HPs as long as they are line with previous content. No TDS inflated HPs that have the same exp as non inflated HPs.
Easy for you to say. You are raid geared. You probably kill T1 ToL mobs in under 1 minute. Casual, new, and returning players are probably spending >2 minutes per T1 ToL mob. You will move from this debate in your raid gear but casual players are left to grind in your wake.
Also, some veterans want to play alts or dabble in other classes. Grind is fine for people who want to solely main 1 character and feel extra special on the pinnacle of power. Trust me, I used to be a min-max elitist ensuring that the grind barriers behind me would be insurmountable. That’s not healthy for an old game.
The funny thing about RoF, is if you search for it, you can find almost this same thread being made about it. How grinding is too slow and how you're being forced to level using the Partisan quest or to chain run HAs over and over and over again (for people who still haven't been able to reach 100 by the time COTF had come out). If you go back even further, you find people in HoT complaining that they're only able to get 3%/hour grinding experience at level 85. I think you just honestly have no idea and/or are misremembering how long it took to level back then and just assume it must have been better.
Questing works. Collections & Overseer work. despite the repeated, baseless claims by one forum denizen to the contrary - grinding works. Folks are getting to the new level cap with what I'd characterize as between reasonable and extraordinary alacrity. I try to think of what might be less rewarding than folks are used to - what I come up with is "automating in the back room of Sathir's Tomb" and I'm challenged to feel sympathy. The folks for whom that is EverQuest will eventually acquire new scripts to pull netherbians for them and they too will get 120 thereby, in due time.
The big take away from actually searching the forums for topics like this, is I'm pretty sure at no point was there ever not a vocal minority of users crying that it takes too long to level, and if anyone had happened to find or if they devs had included some additional, slightly faster way to level you got another vocal minority crying that their preferred way to level wasn't ideal. You can find these threads complaining about: - How they feel enchanters are "mandatory" in an early era EQ group for charm. - How they feel "raid geared" melee DPS is mandatory to kill quickly enough to grind. - How they feel <random overpowered caster> DPS is mandatory. - How AE groups with Enchanter/Wizard/Mages are mandatory. - How they feel swarming is mandatory. - How they feel HAs to gain XP is mandatory. - How they feel questing is mandatory. The core theme among all of these complaints is that at no point were they ever actually mandatory, including now in ToL. At worst (other than swarming I believe, which there was a reason it was nerfed) those did not represent massively faster experience gain. The truth is that there is sort of two distinct camps of people in games like this. The first group will be doing as much as they can to be efficient and speed through the content. They might take days off from work, they might pre-plan a static group to go through the content with, they'll figure out ahead of time what the meta is and determine if they can utilize it, and if not they'll figure out a best way for them. Even while actually killing these folks tend to just spend more time actually progressing their goals in the fastest way possible, they might pull multiple mobs and let AE damages and ripostes work down the extras while focusing the first one. They'll be regularly rolling their burns to keep their DPS high, they'll often take few breaks, and if possible will coordinate their breaks. All things of that nature. The second group will take a much more casual approach to the game. They might log on and not really have a set plan for what they're going to do. They'll sit around LFG and trying to form a group and once that group is formed then try to figure out something they all want to do. When pulling they'll take time to split out singles, maybe they'll utilize crowd control which means they're getting less total DPS going. They'll take more breaks, and their might be less coordination in their breaks. Even while doing quests the "fast" way to level, they'll be significantly slower than the first group just from taking a more casual pace through trying to get the quests done. Neither one of these groups are right or wrong, good or bad, and there of course isn't some hard and fast line between them, it'll be more of a spectrum and groups will trend towards closer to one side or another. However the first group is always going to far outpace the second ground, and what we have here is the second group noticing they're being outpaced, and incorrectly attributing that to quest vs grind, when in reality it's just different play styles.
Yes, you can level to 120 reasonably quick, but you have to do it with missions/overseer. Trying to kill mobs for level exp is so frustrating. All some people are asking for, is to allow people who want to kill mobs to level, instead of doing missions etc., to get exp that isn't insulting. EQ was like that for the majority of expansions. I like being able to get decent exp from some missions or quests, but I also like to log in, kill some mobs and get exp too. Give us the option. Missions don't add anything to the game to me.
It takes 40ish hours of decent grinding to go from 116.0 to 120. I posted my numbers before, one of my characters killed something like 4300 mobs, did 35 total overseers (like 10 of those were right at the end just cuz he was close and I wanted to push him over the edge so I fast completed some, and the 4 group missions. That same character got his level 120 achievement at 19:22 on 12/9. Given the expansion launched at 15:00 on 12/7, there was only 52.25 total possible hours for him to have played to get level 120. He had no banked overseers, no bank collections, nothing banked at all other than I hit lesson on him the day before so that I could double lesson. During those 52.25 hours of elapsed time, I also slept, so during that time he obviously wasn't getting XP when I was sleeping. His overseer is also not leveled up, so he's only getting 5% xp per round of 5 quests on average, so that was maybe 35% total xp from those overseer (other than the one round at the end I fast completed, I otherwise spent $0 on overseer).I also had about 5 hours of meetings during those 2 days that couldn't be rescheduled, so no XP during those meetings either. Judging by the timestamps on my mission awards, it took about 2 hours to get through the 4 missions. So of that 52.25 of elapsed time, something like 8ish hours was spent sleeping, 5 doing meetings, and 2 doing missions, or 37ish hours to grind from 117.6% (4 missions + overseers) to 120, which averages out to something like 6.5%/hour. to get the needed 240%.
Congratulations! Instead AFK botting in the back of ST, there’s AFK botting overseers. That’s an absolute improvement. Botting isn’t the reason for this change.
There are so many admissions in this statement. 1. You want grind xp to be the province of AFK botters - ala ST (largely out of the reach of most, legitimate players). 2. You are blatantly misrepresenting Overseer to get your end. Who the heck needs a 3rd party program to click up to 10 quests a day?
That would be SO much slower than killing mobs. LOL. You need to stop trying to speak for the population of EverQuest, you're getting so much wrong.
We might as well have some fun since the majority of this thread is filled with a bunch of raiders who want nothing more than to steamroll progression to max level, and then log on and afk overseers until raids are finished. How about we leave T1 raid as it is, a slight upgrade to last expansion final tier, and require all raids in the expansion to be complete prior to allowing you to wear any other raid gear. Then you'll be in the same boat as groupers. Enjoy!
Listening isn't your strong suite is it? I'm pretty sure that those raiders who "steamroll to max and then afk overseers until raids are finished", will be able to do that regardless of how XP is gained. If anything, grinding benefits them more than a quest system since grinding tends to favor people who can kill large quantities of mobs in a short period of time and raiders are better at doing that simply due to better gear available to them. Quests benefit people who are best able to coordinate a group of 6 people to achieve the quest objectives-- now again raiders have a leg up here due to gearing, but the difference is blunted a lot here. You do realize that for a 54 man raid, prior to T3 releasing there's a maximum of 36 total bricks? Most serious guilds have been going through the fights on beta, often times at level 115 with their CoV gear. It wouldn't meaningfully change anything, but in any case you're presenting a weird straw man here. I think it would be perfectly fine, good even if the group gear had a required level of 115 or lower even.
I am done with this thread and people who care about themselves only. I am sure if raiders have beat the raid content prior to any meaningful gear upgrades they’d be raising more of stink than groupers in general. I am not misrepresenting facts like you guys did. For example… like DP did this to stop AFKs botters when you can literally walk over to the “…EC Tunnel” and buy a max level character, Kronos, chase loot, and whatever else with dozens in stock. That worked well didn’t? I’m done here. Enjoy your log on raids/overseers and log off.
