ToV Review Change My Mind

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Pawtato, Jun 16, 2020.

  1. Pawtato Augur

    It’s incredibly accessible, but I can’t help but place it in my Top 5 Worst Expansions. It’s like LoY, but lazier.
    Ssdar and Duder like this.
  2. Tucoh Augur

    I unsubbed a few days after ToV release because i waltzed in the first night, beat all the group missions with my TBL group geared team and didn't even know the mechanics. The raids were just as easy, I hear.

    What is the point of building up your character if there isn't anything worth fighting?
    Ssdar and Duder like this.
  3. Szilent Augur

    Man where's that Holly interview bit when you need it? Where she's all (I paraphrase) "players are okay at identifying where problems are, but are basically never right about what the problem actually is or how to solve it"

    That's a good (almost) quote.

    I've enjoyed Torment of Velious. It was pretty short other than the earring evolve. I've had time to build some alts I've been meaning to have in my stable.
    Sancus, eqgamer, Yinla and 3 others like this.
  4. Pawtato Augur

    Basically, how I felt what’s the point in getting any new levels, spells, AAs, gear, etc for content I’m already beating?

    Fair point, but that’s why there’s a Lead Designer to make these decisions based off feedback. Obviously, TBL was lamented and ToV represents all the opposite design decisions.

    I’m thinking there was in house turmoil with Holly heading out the door, which resulted in quite possibly the laziest, uninspired expansion designed to date.
  5. Endorek Lorekeeper

    I love it, it's a great chance to get caught up. I came back after a 5-6 year break, didn't know anyone, couldn't find groups, so I kept adding boxes until I was running my whole team. Even then, I hit a wall with RoS, I was never beating cactus by myself, so never getting into VP, etc. TBL was completely inaccessible to me, it was basically farm the darkness howls mission until a level increase. ToV has let me gain some of the thousands of AA's I still needed after autogrant, and the T1 gear was a great way to fill out my team. Now I'm able to do all content including T2, although I can't do the heroic missions by myself, luckily I've joined a guild and a raiding alliance and having a lot of fun, and most importantly, I think by the time the next expansion arrives I'll be more ready Day 1 to jump right in.

    You've gotta think about designing the game, how can you balance a 115 raid geared max aa player with a 115 wearing group gear from the previous expansion if not two expansions ago that's thousands of AA's away from max? The answer is you can't, so this is a bit of a balance reset, it's not going to keep the hardest of hardcore players entertained, but those people aren't going anywhere in mass quantities after 21 years anyway, this is their drug of choice. Not that they should be taken for granted, but for the health of the game long term, you can't design for the bleeding edge, you design for the middle, every so often you give the people lagging behind a hand up, and you throw in some limited things that are really hard to keep the badass elite feeling superior.

    I expect the next expansion to probably be harder, but I hope they learned something from TBL about locking away all of the content. Another Velious themed expansion which brings back the harder areas of the original velious; DN, Siren's Grotto, WW, and maybe some version of ToV or Sleeper's Tomb would be perfect. Key one of the zones and require full progression to get in like VP in RoS and call it a win.

    If I have one major complaint about ToV it's the lack of Lord Bob, I don't know if he exists in a Velk's raid I will probably never see, but not having him as a hit-like-a-truck group named is a travesty.
  6. yepmetoo Abazzagorath

    If Sleepers Tomb had been released as a zone that was HARD and had some zone wide rare chase rewards, and with a HARD final raid, the expansion would have been good.

    Boring and easy is the problem.
    Ssdar, Szilent, Sancus and 1 other person like this.
  7. Xyphen Maximum Augur

    I mean, you're exaggerating a bit here -- you didn't haphazardly clear every encounter on the 1st attempt. It takes a fair bit of luck to beat Icebound Avatar consistently at 110 w/ group gear unless your tank is incredibly polished (e.g, chase items) and/or you're popping glyphs. Also, running a Berserker kill-squad group isn't pragmatic (read: interesting) for a majority of players :cool: .

    ToV 1.0 is tuned so that the other 90% have a fighting chance of progressing in ToV 2.0, which I'd guess will be quite a bit harder. Most raid guilds couldn't clear TBL -- it makes no sense to then drop another over-tuned xpac afterwards.

    Coming back from a few year break, it gave me plenty of relief to catch up and max everything out (AA, TBL chase items, prior Paragons, Artisan's Prize, etc). As well as max and try out new classes in my line-up.

    So yeah, I bet it's a bit boring for people that were maxed before launch. But TBL built a pretty big ditch for returning players to dig out of. I'm sure they will tune ToV 2.0 to compensate.
    Coagagin likes this.
  8. Nniki Augur

    He's not in the raid either. The raid is very similar to the group mission, so you're not missing anything there.
  9. Tatanka Joe Schmo

    (pre-supplied huge grain of salt: I have neither TBL nor ToV):

    People complained A LOT last year about TBL. So, maybe they made the next one, which had a new level cap, easier on purpose?

    Wouldn't be much different than UF/HoT, or GoD/OoW. A particularly hard expac, which has to be, because there's no level increase, and then the next one, an increase, and a breather for people to catch up.
  10. IblisTheMage Augur

    I do believe it is an active design decision to vary dificulty, to give the different segments of players something to do.

    EoK stands for me as the best expansion in newer times.
  11. Bigstomp Augur

    They chose to take an extra month to release the final tier due to a 1 day miscalculation.
    I would have liked to have T3 a day later rather than wait another month.
  12. Tucoh Augur

    Did it my second attempt, no glyphs, didn't use my zerker kill squad.
  13. Andarriel Everquest player since 2000

    yea im sure his tbl group gear team is kick azz so not everyone is gonna be breezing through tov.

    Andarriel
  14. kiwi New Member

    those using is_boxer will find most expansions to be easy , TBL was hard ? seeing tucoh video murdering TBL expansion is a good example of how easy EQ can be with that 3rd party software , no wonder he find tov to be too easy , ( and yes tov is a pretty easy expansion ).

    huge diff using alt tab VS clicking once to get all actions done...........
    sorry to hear that , but EQ is not centered at those players who are very good ( the best ) at using is_boxer,............. ** i hope not **
    eqgamer likes this.
  15. Tucoh Augur

    This is reasonable and I think most people believe this, but I don't really think this is true.

    I think the current EQ devs are just trying to get a technically working expansion out before fall and considerations around balance aren't accounted for. Instead they generate the mobs and if people can get through the content without getting stuck on bugs they move onto the next content patch / expansion. That's why TBL was too difficult in the T1 zones (and too easy in Mearatas) and why ToV was too easy in Kael/Velks.

    I tried really hard in beta to convince the developers to make the intro areas in ToV easy and the final areas challenging. You don't need or want the entire expansion to be difficult, just a portion of it that gives meaning to building up your character in the myriad ways EQ offers.
    Ssdar likes this.
  16. dubblestack Elder

    Well, questing and group missions in tov are catered to groups, not too many classes are going to be doing these solo, so who can field a group easier, 1 person with 6 accounts or 6 people with 1 account.

    I know of only a few people that do not box, sometimes I don't if I get bored of my caster or melee group, but it's fun to be able to tackle content by myself without waiting for 5 people to log on with different schedules, jobs , families, etc. This is just the reality of the eq world. 20 years ago when it first came out I was living with my parents. Now I am an adult, and most of the games population are my age or older, many of us have multiple accounts, why am I going to log on and be lfg for many hours and get nothing done.
  17. Tarvas Redwall of Coirnav, now Drinal

    For me, I was able to do TOV T1 mercs and partisans with the ranger below (minus a few upgrades), a 20k SK in starting in conflagrant and moving to snowbound through the baz, shaman with slightly less AAs in conflagrant, and three dps mercs. I am not coordinated enough even with is_boxer to do missions. I got Kael and TFoS (and GD derves, but lets not talk about that) left to finish up the expansion. T2 should have been more difficult I think.
  18. Pawtato Augur


    Just brainstorming here, but what if they had a Tower type zone with like 7 levels. You can enter the zone without a key, but your group needs to obtain a key to unlock each floor. You could even design each floor to be progressively more difficult.
  19. Tucoh Augur

    Now that's a great idea! But instead of that, let's just make the mobs in each floor be of arbitrary difficulty that isn't really much harder than the rest of the stuff in the expansion.
    Ssdar and Pawtato like this.
  20. Whulfgar Augur

    TBL .. Was the best expansion I've seen in a VERY VERY long time.
    Ssdar likes this.