Too Little Carrot, Far Too Much Grind

The issue isn't the grind. Its the fact that most of us have been playing the game for years. We have multiple max level toons & crafters. Not even counting the myriad started / completed / deleted toons we've all made for one reason or another. We've quested, fought, raided, dungeoned our way through Norrath so much that now anything we do just seems like a grind. And now we wait around for new content every year.

If you are feeling like this...take a break for awhile. Does wonders for your attitude when you do come back.

Not disagreeing with you entirely, but if all of us that feel burned out from grinding took a break, there wouldn't be any one left playing the game lol .

I think it's great you are enjoying TLE. It's not for me. I leveled almost every new toon by level locking and questing out the tiers. Been there done that. It's a really great thing is some people found something special there. Just please don't assume it's a good fit for all. It just isn't.

Please speak for yourself, thank you.

I took an extensive break, came back, & discovered that EQ2 is now even more grindy than it's ever been before. Indeed, that did such wonders for my attitude that now I log in long enough to check my harvest beasties for rares, & have no interest whatsoever in the next expansion.

As usual...you just come back to gripe. Its' okay though, we're used to you by now.

Nope, Livejazz's right. It's not that everything's a grind, it's that everything's the same, it isn't fresh, and worse, there are more and more barriers being put up to advancement (tithe and the new spell/ability advancement mechanism being only two of the more egregious). There's a lot of us having difficulty recognizing the game we once loved. You can't just come in fresh, learn the ropes, get a little help, and join the top based on your ability to play the game--you're always behind the folks who had years to grind or who could just open their wallets. This is not EQ2. This has never been EQ2. It feels wrong to those of us who've been around a decade or more, and the odds of that reverting seem slim.

I'm here for my friends, but the rest...

I am actually glad I came back from my extended break during ToT. Had I returned during KA, I would have most certainly taken a pass and moved on completely. But because I was in a position to take on the overwhelming endeavor I stuck it out. But then came the PG's, a great concept I thought at first until I learned it was all BiS items being given out. Being that it had gear better than raid I even saw raid forces passing on a couple of raids here and there to give raiders ample opportunity to "GRIND" the coins! Rediculous! Now raid forces fully geared are still having issues with the last couple of raid bosses due to bugs and a time gate that was in place on earlier mobs. Not to mention the useless nonsense of panic scripts. What a horrible design and a waste of the player bases time. No consideration is being given to the players. If I was a betting man, I would say it has been developed this way as a form of payback to us for complaining on the forums and speaking our minds. It could be a great big experiment to see how much we will take. Who knows anymore. All I know is I will check the ethereal's out today and see how that fairs, but I fear the population will be so low we will not care to grind those out either.

Just Sayin...

what is this grind you speak of....i play a game.

For you perhaps ... but I enjoy the thrill of levelling with difficulty, fear of death and chance of upgrades in any chest or quest reward....thats fun to me personaly.
Whats not fun is the ridiculous low drop rate on fragments and need to grind out boring pg's to get tokens and the ethereals sound like they are a grind again for tokens, at this rate im going to give up on live and just play on FG tbh.

I'm not assuming that it's a great fit for everyone. I'm saying that the fun of this game is not purely in the content.

and now new grind.

I don't think that ethereal event will motivate people. Why grinding if u already wonder if you'll stay on the game or not ?

and since ethereal event won't be fun either ... people will go look for fun elsewhere ... and we all spread out .. to different games or FG or just stop playing.
So the community is just torn appart. Sob

Like everything else, "grind" can be a burden or it can be a blessing depending on your mindset.
If your goal is to get to the top as soon as possible and grind is in your way then the grind is a curse.
But if you ask yourself what is going to happen when I get to the top, then you'll quickly see the answer: start looking elsewhere for a new challenge and if you have found one get to the top as soon as possible again and again and again until you have played all first rate MMO's and start to play second rate MMO's and even underdeveloped ones.

If you really like world of Norrath and complexity and richness of Everquest 2 then the grind is a blessing which keeps you from reaching your goal because you always have something to do to get to the top. From year to year.

.... if you're a raider, you're almost asked to grind, coz raid gear isn't as good.

PG runs, u need 950 for ring + orange adorn, legs and gloves it's 900
+160 per white adorn (let's say 18 coz for me gloves and wrists are +hate)
so u need 5630 for 1 toon .. just for ONE toon to get the best adorns and the BIS gears right now.

230 ethereal coins now for the cloak plus rune

I don't know how many runs for the pages

I don't know how many runs for the fragments


MMOs are about .. exploration, lore, completion, discovery, improvement, community

when you're level 100 on multiple toons, exploration, discovery, lore .. u know t all .. or almost and what u don't know .. u may not care.

so what's left ? making your toon better ... so u farm heroic zones, u grind. and community .. u play and have fun with others.

u can also make alts .. but I'm not a alt-holic .. I have 3 toons I love and that's enough for me. I have 3 other lvl 100s I don't play and other classes don't interest me.


but right now ... to me and to many, all is left is community (that leaves or go to FG or other games) and getting better gear (which is now capped by non stop grinding) .. and even the cloak .. it's not that an improvement, and for some classes the orange rune is just meh ... so what is the meaning of playing if and grinding if too much work for too little reward that will be changed too fast ?



many said it .. grind isn't a problem ... there is grind and it's ok, it keeps u having stuff to do. But right now ... it's only grind. Nothing else. And with little to no improvement (I repeat myself I know) .. and OF isn't as rich as other zones. EoF, RoK, TSO .. KoS .. yeah .; they were rich in content, ... KA isn't. Lackluster in lore, in exploration, in content. The only way they keep us busy is to gate the little content there is.

there was not any new content at all .. for the whole xpac. So yeah people are bored

Expert GU --> just make same zones with same strats and same loots .. just harder
PG GU --> felwithe, boat, nexus .. all are old content zone, no new mods and no new enemies, the same old stuff and we only went there for loot then ... byebye coz it's not EQ2
ehtereal event --> now need to grind expert zones we know by heart 3 times a day/toon for the whole summer to get the improvement

where is the fun ? where is the blessing ? just to make your toon a bit better

Yes! And that's why it is extremely important not to rush to the end of the game.
If your level is low enough, then you still have the most challenging zones, monsters, quests, ahead of you.

The other option is to keep waiting until developers can come up with expansion full of new content that can keep you occupied for months of exploration, lore, etc... but let's ask ourselves what's going to happen in this case? The answer is simple. Majority of people would skip all exploration, lore, etc of the new pack and rush to the top level of the new expansion using all possible and impossible options and will end up in the same situation just about 2 or 4 weeks after expansion has been released.

If "Kunark Ascending" had looked more like "Terrors of Thalumbra," or even "Tears of Veeshan," I wouldn't be complaining at all. Those were quite good expacs, whereas "Altars of Malice" was just a railroad with a few stops, & "Kunark Ascending" is all about grinding your face off.

You can, of course, think what you like.

Ethreals are not a grind, they are simply time gated. If it was merely a grind, I would be logged in right now working them. Instead, all I can do is grind PG, go over to fallen gate, or grind tithe. None of which sound fun, therefore here I sit on the forums and headed to play a different game until I drum up the wear-with-all to do one of the three or go do my daily run for ethreals that will take me all of 20 minutes.

Just sayin...

some want to raid some don't

I want to raid and the only way is to be max level and get good gear

it's gated grind. and yeah ... I'm reinstalling ESO right now and play a bit on TLE and rift also ...

trying to see if another MMo could fit me better right now

Eeeep,

looked at the new ethereal wave and just .... /facepalm

More mindnumblingly stupid grindy grind for last expac's cloaks, some of which were U-S-E-L-E-S-S even back then; and this time they've kicked out all the weaker toons by locking the no-trade coins to expert only

Honestly starting to think that the EQ2 development team at this stage are either a) Un-budgetted; b) Have already all been sacked and one brave intern is trying to hold down the fort; or c) Are trying to close down the live servers by emptying them of players

Time to change my yearly subscription to monthly for when this really does all go down in flames!

D) All the above

I present to you, a ray of hope

Kander - "We'll be doing a lot of things with exp14 to make getting alts leveled, geared, etc a lot easier. Yes. We will not be doing anything to make getting Epics any easier."
http://imgur.com/a/WDqj4

If alts are easier to level gear etc/ Id assume it would be a lot less grindy