Two populations playing the same game

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Corwyhn Lionheart, Jul 14, 2019.

  1. Whulfgar Augur

    Wrong.
  2. Bottle Journeyman

    Wrong too. If you have no proof then your opinion is guessing. And if it is the question about financing then the number of players is not the issue, the number of gold accounts is. What is the use of this thread?

    Hey Devs - the new expansion is coming - please don't mess it up again and think about people having no raid gear and a life!.....(?)

    If that is the point then I support it. I paid EOK with many accounts in Gold including all with the EOK expansion. RoS was a mess in difficulty (at missions side). I have done it without the missions until the next expansion gear came out and I paid only half of my toons for it. So only the quests were left. TBL was a complete mess. Locked behind stupid hard trials. No real line. Stupid mechanics. Only some quests with fun and humor. Without the last trial no chance to do the mercenary and partisan complete. I sadly paid more then a group in Gold. But only a fraction got the expansion. The next expansion will be solely my tank with a new expansion. Then I have a good tank for old content. If that expansion is the next step of hitting another difficulty level then my money will go elsewhere instead of another year looking at a game finding "3rd party tool users" botting to get more AA or gear or content for "ubah players". For somebody who paid a 4-digit-number a year when EOK came out and I know that I am not the only one - DGB will loose that money.

    There are people who have 50+ accounts and paying. They only do it if the game stays playable without the need to waste there life in it (at least for the basic partisan, mercenary and mission achievements).

    The ubah have the conquest-line. The ubah-ubah have the raid-line. And the more ubah-ubah-ubah have the raid-conquest-achievements.

    So everybody would be happy if DGB cares for that and I am sure that DGB tries this - at least for the incomes' sake. And everybody has his advantage. The raiders because a big group of people are still paying for that game and the "casuals" who don't need this competition and want to have a relaxed time with some friends or a fun time without the need to be at the top but having a fun experience in the basement of a new expansion.

    Keep it that way instead of fighting it. If the game has the status of only a small amount of players left then the same people complaining about non-competitive players (so-called "casuals") will whine again that the game is dying.

    We have a cool game. It has everything inside. The only thing which is needed, is a bit more of a balance.
    Duder likes this.
  3. Tucoh Augur

    It's not even that hard to provide content for the continuous spectrum of EverQuest player's difficulty aspirations. Every expansion should open up with a loot pinata, open world t1 zone and end in a punishing, mechanic-rich challenging zone with everything in between scaling in difficulty. Same with raids.
    I_Love_My_Bandwidth, Caell and Graves like this.
  4. Bigstomp Augur

    I want a slightly increasing progression of difficulty of the content.

    I'd love if they started in the end zone for tuning named/mobs.
    How often have we seen the end zone be trivial, yet the entry zone has all the interesting effects on mobs and things.
    They run out of time, so the end zone mobs are pushovers.
    Let T1 be the pushovers, move the fancy mob effects to the end zone.
    Caell, Corwyhn Lionheart and Yinla like this.
  5. Flatchy Court Jester



    I think that is more a product of the circles you run in. We all tend to think "Our" group is the biggest and most important. I would really like to see some kind of survey by DBG to answer this. You would think that would help them in their decisions about game direction.
    Duder likes this.
  6. Graves Elder

    If I classify my pets into the groups of dogs and parrots am I causing division or describing reality?
    Corwyhn Lionheart likes this.
  7. Truklin Elder

    I see plenty of casual players on Bristlebane that aren't alts/boxes of raiders. I play pretty casually myself now so I'm inclined to agree with Flatchy's above post that it mostly has to do with the circles you run in.

    Agreed. Also throw in a Tier 0 raid on level increase expansions to help mid/low end guilds play catch up if they struggled in the last expansion and you have a consistent model for a product your customers will want to purchase imo.
  8. Corwyhn Lionheart Guild Leader, Lions of the Heart

    How many people believe there is little or no group player participation in beta. Raid players have implied this and I am willing to accept that as group players are generally not so competitive BUT it might not be true. Group players doing beta aren't going to do it as a guild they will just do it as individuals for the most part.

    Any group peeps out there do beta?

    If there are not many in beta, which is my guess, I accept the fact that the first month or so of a new expansion is the beta for group players and should see work at adjusting things for the group game. This probably already happens but maybe it is something the devs need to formally recognize if they don't already and plan for it.
    Duder likes this.
  9. Elyssanda Bardbrain

    I have really tried to stay out of this discussion because there are too many forumquesters with PhDs ready to attack. Corwyhn and I have chatted for 4+ years, beginning back when I was one of the co-leaders of Black Dragon Legion on Luclin, arguably the other biggest family/casual guild in the game.

    I am now a raider, but my husband is still in that guild, and I have an alt group geared bard there still. These players still live in FM, OT, and GMM. Few have done TBL progression at all , and less with completion. Most of them avoid it. TBL is just too hard for them to have fun there. They play to have fun. Their idea of fun is not spending hours and hours or weeks and weeks trying something that is too hard. They don't want to be the best of the best, they want to have fun, and hang out with friends.

    I loved Beta, learning new things, figuring out puzzles, working out what the Devs were thinking when they set things up.

    I, and other raiders, did spend TBL Beta telling the devs it was too hard for casuals. We were voices for the ones who don't post. it wasn't enough. Beta is coming again in a few months, PLEASE talk to casual players you know, have them Beta test so there are more voices fighting for everyone.
    Caell, Spellfire, Lubianx and 5 others like this.
  10. Sissruukk Rogue One

    I think that is pretty much the crux of his whole comment. Some people play for the parse, some don't. Those that do are considered "hardcore" and those that don't are considered "casual."

    There are hardcore players that look down their noses at casuals, and casuals that look down their noses at hardcore. But I think for the most part, most people don't care.

    Play the game how you want to. DBG just has to keep in mind the wide range of their player base when creating content is all.
  11. Flatchy Court Jester

    I have played since 2003 with no breaks at all. I have raided some but for the most part am a casual grouper. I have never been involved in Beta.
  12. Whulfgar Augur

    The posters on this very thread are proving my point.. one raider on this very page .. plays casually 100% on another server.. which only validates what I said.

    Now about having casuals in beta.. I've been in the last 14 straight betas and every group I've been in in those betas was 99.9% raiders from other servers or my server. I have grouped with less then 5 casual players in that same amount of time that showed up on beta just to in their words.. check things out.

    And ironically it's been only since the last 2 betas that I seen casuals in beta.. only after they made beta available to anyone ..instead of having to purchase the expansion in order to get into beta.
  13. CrazyLarth Augur

    so the two groups are who plays beta and not beta -weird thread.
  14. Qbert Gallifreyan

    You have it backwards. Beta testing used to be open on a selection basis, where the raiders could get their whole raid force flagged, but others could get in by "applying" and hoping to get in. I know, as I am a grouper and applied for every beta that had the option (and was not selected every time). Only in recent expansions (at least as far back as TBM, my memory fades past then) has purchasing the expansion been a requirement to participate in beta (and a guaranteed access pass thereto).

    I beta tested TBL but was almost immediately put off because my feedback was met with a developer reply that the mobs were not even tuned yet (I was testing Stratos named/trash at the time).
  15. Drayman Elder

    Raiders seem to go on and on about how they tell the Devs during beta that the content is over tuned and the Devs ignore this. I don't know why then anyone would think that if casuals started to beta en masse, Devs would have an epiphany and start listening to complaints about the tuning of content.

    In other words, is it possible that they just don't care what we think?
    Caell and Corwyhn Lionheart like this.
  16. Mazame Augur

  17. Bottle Journeyman

    They cared in EoK. I remember that some Named I have feedbacked as completely overtuned were tuned down a good deal. Also mobs like Bridgekeeper which made me sleep on the keyboard because the HP were too high and it was so boring looking 15min on the screen and hitting the same buttons - they moved the insane hitpoints down. I even tried to 6-box a named while a dev was present to get feedback. Preparation took forever. So yes, they cared. And there was success from the start. Even solo play was possible to a certain degree.

    RoS and TBL was different. It was from the start so crazy at that time - trash mobs with insane Dots and mobs hitting like a truck - that even exploring the zones didn't even made me think about buying that expansion for more to "test" it. If a test is there to sell the expansion rather then letting people "really" beta test and the first contact is a blood bath - who will really buy that crap?

    TBL was a mess from the start. The first visit in Stratos was a row of AEs which blew you from the islands. Nothing was really testable even in full raid gear and merc. TBL was not even the slightest a reason to "waste time in a beta" while buying that.

    IT IS A SERVICE THAT WE BETA-TEST SOMETHING!

    Normally DGB should pay us for this beta test instead of letting us buy an expansion to do their work. If they mess up even the first experience who will really buy it and test everything?

    So if you want casuals to test it then make an expansion with an entry zone, that will give fun and success from the start and increase difficulty with progression. It is that easy....
    Caell, Corwyhn Lionheart and Graves like this.
  18. Elyssanda Bardbrain

    Whulf, I am 1 and only 1 person who is a top 10 raid guild person who groups casually in BDL on luclin.. BDL has over 5000 Toons.. let's say if even 2/3 are alts (I don't think so but possible) that still leaves what 1600ish people versus my 1? and I only go play on that server on non-raid nights where I am also not working. which means maybe 2-3 times a month if I'm lucky. I'm not sure I've made it there in the last month at all.
    Now, with the folks on Xegony, that may be a different matter.. the #1 & #2 raid guilds are there, the other largest guild in the game is there, I can see them helping people there as a kind of low-key thing.
    But as you said, you were on Luclin, (I sorta think I remember you for a short time) so you should know that casuals there are more laid back and don't really care about hardcore parse-the-crap-outta-life gaming. It's a great family guild style that works for many people, and they are the ones TBL did nothing for.
    Which is why I say casuals need to do beta. they need to test things, they need to make themselves heard. Yes, I do /betacopy my casual bard over too (after changing her name) but again, it's getting enough voices heard to make them get heard.
  19. Elyssanda Bardbrain

    At times like this I wish the old beta forums could still be accessed so you could see we aren't lying. it's not an Us vs. You. We did try. Many times.. if you think TBL is hard now , you shoulda have seen it the first week or 2 of Beta, it was MUCH worse. They did tune it down, true not enough, but even at release it was easier than it had been, and it's been retuned again since then a couple of times iirc.
    Heck, even raiders want some content that is just fun and not a hassle to deal with to goof off in.
    Corwyhn Lionheart and Yinla like this.
  20. Drayman Elder


    I don't doubt you. I was just pointing out that if the Devs aren't listening to you, why would anyone assume they would listen to me?