More Joy? Leveling Mounts? Geeze guys...

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Katzandra, Sep 3, 2019.

  1. Katzandra Well-Known Member

    While it is both amusing (and somewhat confusing) to combine bits of tack from Kael into better bits of tack, unless I choose to pay for leveling the mount up, the bits mostly are cluttering up my bags for the foreseeable future. And the marketing plan for us to PAY for the leveling is unabashed. Leveling the mounts is ON SALE for -- 20% off!!!

    After spending the greater part of this expansion leveling up a mount so it can use maximum tack, the thought of a new expansion with a new mount in the collector's edition no longer evokes happy anticipation, but rather a feeling of exhaustion and disappointment. Start over? Level a new mount? Pay DB to level the mount I paid for by shelling out the bucks for a new collectors edition? Although I am sure enough players will shell out the extra bucks to make the CFO at DB smile, I can't see this as an effective marketing plan for the game long term.
    If you enjoy alts (that we bought slots and houses and mercs and outfits for), you have the joy of having to level up all their mercs and mounts and find gear for them as well. Busy work upon busy work upon depressing busy work.

    Having spent albeit a brief time with an actual horse, I can assure you that you can put all kinds of tack on a completely untrained horse (presuming it is tame enough to stand still while you equip it). I was musing with ideas on how to get out of this black hole of leveling up a mount to level 20 every time you get a new "upgrade" and was wondering if it made more sense to be training the owner to use the tack. This means once we level up the tack slots to level 20, all our mounts would have the slots unlocked. This is the only way I can see looking forward to replacing a fully leveled mount with one that DB hopes I pay a fortune to unlock slots on again.

    On a similar note, I used to enjoy collecting a variety of mercs and paid to have "hire anywhere" mercs for lots of mercs on many toons (even at roughly a buck a piece this adds up!)........... That is spoiled as well....... New merc??? Why bother --- why buy??? To relevel????? Some will choose to pay DB to level up new mercs and gear them up immediately. For many of us -- its just depressing.
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  2. Zule Member

    seems you are the person that would support my ideas in the other thread about upgradeable stuff :p
  3. Rotchi Active Member

    Welcome to EQ2 2019, where every new mechanic introduced is tailored around micro transactions. o_O
  4. NrthnStar5 Well-Known Member

    I agree with all of your points. It's a huge part of why EQ2 is nothing more than a solo game for me. It's been a problem for a while now and is only getting worse. They are monetizing the wrong stuff to keep players around.
    Mizgamer62, Lateana, Tkia and 2 others like this.
  5. Mermut Well-Known Member

    Except there is nothing 'micro' about the transactions involved with leveling mounts
    Mizgamer62, Juraiya, Tkia and 6 others like this.
  6. Raff Well-Known Member

    Patience, Grasshoppers. If you play the game at all, that mount will level itself eventually and you'll be able to use all those Kael goodies .

    For them that can't wait...pull out da' plastic. ((shrug))
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  7. Mermut Well-Known Member

    By the time those slots are unlocked it will be time for new mounts ;)
    Mizgamer62, Juraiya, Pixistik and 3 others like this.
  8. Katzandra Well-Known Member

    Precise summary of my complaint!
  9. Beyoncia Well-Known Member

    I pretty much stopped care about upgrading things in the game.
    1) Why bother upgrading heals if level 70 apprentice spell still heals everyone to maximum hitpoints?
    2) Why upgrade combat arts and spells if they do almost no damage?
    3) Why upgrade buffs and debuffs if the difference is 20-30 haste/dps/wisdom/200 mitigation and so on.
    4) I'm a Geomancer, it was probabbly not the wisest choice back in the day, but it was needed for the raid, and it felt fine fore a mele Inquisitor. Turned out to be the worst Ascension class in terms of dps. Only Mudslide and Terrene Destruction do something. But even if I wanted to switch the class, it would take me 3-4 years to get the new spells to the same level. So I just stoped bother with ascension class and once in 2-3 months put the next spell on research.
    5) Mercanaries are useless for me, so I do not even upgrade and equip them.
    6) Mount training requires so much time and one will get a new mount before the curent one is fully upgraded.Besides upgrades are so minor, I think my mount is level 6, or 7 and has only one two gathering items equiped.
    7) Etherial event-there is literally nothing worth getting. Even experts drop better gear. I also refuse grinding something untill I know the exact rewards.
    8) Familiars-who cares about 20 more cb or potecny?
    9) But the main issue is there is no feeling of progression. Evey piece of gear is just a bit of the same. 90, 100,105 resolve items...once again, who cares about 10-20 more potency? And resolve is an artificial characteristic needed for the roadblock.

    And so on and so forth. More and more I question myself why I still here, why I still pay it? But speakign frankly, I almost do not play- I log in once-twice per week to raid, might log in to run a couple of solos once in a while, and that is it. Decorating houses is probabbly the only thing worth doing in everquest nowdays.
    Mizgamer62, Arclite, Kilar and 4 others like this.
  10. Obano Well-Known Member

    The solution I have proposed is to offer higher tiers of Subscriptions that give instant access to max level mounts, familiars, and mercenaries. The subscription is a rentier model of monetization as opposed to outright buying. The monetization of the game should encourage players to run out and get the newest and best equipment. The current method of pay to upgrade only locks players into their previous purchase making them reluctant to upgrade again. The ability to rent content via a subscription makes much more sense in a game like EQ2.

    Proposed new subscription tiers:

    Platinum sub ($24.99/month)
    - Instant access to max level mounts, familiars, and mercenaries
    - All barding and equipment slots unlocked (goes back to being locked if the sub lapses)
    - Double currency and status for duration of subscription

    Double Platinum sub ($34.99/month)
    - Instant access to max level mounts, familiars, and mercenaries
    - All barding and equipment slots unlocked (goes back to being locked if the sub lapses)
    - Double research speed on upgrading spells and research assistants
    - Triple currency and status for duration of subscription

    Triple Platinum sub ($49.99/month)
    - Instant access to max level mounts, familiars, and mercenaries
    - All barding and equipment slots unlocked (goes back to being locked if the sub lapses)
    - Triple research speed on upgrading spells and research assistants
    - Can research to celestial tier
    - Triple currency and status for duration of subscription
    - Instant Beta access (when available)
    - Access to special "influencers" forum with greater dev interaction

    Lifetime "GOLD" members would get a $10 discount on these higher tier subscriptions.
  11. MightyMeaghan Well-Known Member

    I would never play a game that had a subscription model like this. But then again, it's not far off from what's accomplished via micro-transactions already, it's just honest in it's excessive capitalist greed, so it gets points for that.

    The fun thing about EQ2 is, ever since they started pushing micro-transactions as the most efficient means of character progression I haven't spent a dime more than my sub on the game. I used to blow tons of extra cash on mounts, outfits, prestige houses and assorted house items. I justified it as, "Hey, this is my hobby and it's fluff." Now I spend those dollars elsewhere.
    Hartsmith, Mizgamer62, Tkia and 5 others like this.
  12. Cravaro Active Member

    Changing subscription models and pricing at this point probably wont work. Someone else suggested mount training should be a character ability, not the mount. It could be a skill that is used regardless of mount. Once you unlock saddle, reins, hackamore etc. the first time then you can pass along each item as you upgrade to your new mount.

    To keep the carrot dangling on a stick, make Barding unlocks per mount.

    I have the premium edition mount on my main account toons. I finally unlocked the combined mount from the 4 heroic drops on my Coercer two days before the last update that increased mount training level. I will not use that new mount and will keep the premium edition mount because going from 10-20 makes more sense than starting at 1 to get to 20.
    Hartsmith likes this.
  13. semisus Does not play this game

    Give us xp transference potions so we can transfer experience from familiar/mounts/mercenarys to new ones
    Lateana, Korochun and Pixistik like this.
  14. Laaw Well-Known Member



    if this was done then there would be a reason to get the higher new xpac lvl's otherwise not. paying for a higher sub rate not
  15. Character Member

    Just to lvl 10. Here is an actual example. Buy the premium edition, get the mount, pay to level it up and 6 months later you get the "raid" version and are expected to do the exact same thing. Let us not forget that there is a 2nd version of the "raid" mounts as well. IF you go the training route, the next xpack will be out for release before you hit level 20. The problem with this is that we, the players are already paying a monthly subscription on top of paying for each xpack. We should not need to open our wallets again, multiple times during the year, in order to stay current with regard to raid stats. The math is easy and some folks over in the boardroom need to take a hard look at what they're doing. They need to stop poking holes in their own boat. I for one am about to ditch this sinking ship.

    lvl 1 = Saddle, lvl 2 = 3 days Barding, lvl 3 = 5 days nothing, lvl 4 = 7 days Hackamore, lvl 5 = 9 days nothing, lvl 6 = 11 days Barding, lvl 7 = 13 days nothing, lvl 8 = 15 days Reins, lvl 9 = 17 days nothing, lvl 10 = 19 days Barding.

    3+5+7+9+11+13+15+17+19 = 99 days to level a mount to lvl 10. Just over 3 months.

    \aITEM 1642937609 -1774925439:Typhos, Colossus of Chaos\/a Colossus = all 4 raid mounts
    \aITEM 189145774 -1574781983:Czernobog, Goliath of Chaos\/a Goliath = all 4 heroic mounts

    \aITEM 202037051 -350371862:Angra, Titan of Chaos\/a Titan = all 4 solo mounts

    \aITEM 1734948250 450910445:Nakar, Lord of Still Waters\/a = Finish all 10 overland drop quest achievements

    \aITEM 1856650349 238554283:Tinshau, Prince of Water\/a = Finish all 10 overland PQ's
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  16. Melt Actually plays the game

    I have a couple responses to this, some positive and some not.
    1) In Kael raids as a templar my level 100+ heals at expert-grandmaster don't always fully heal the group because the debuff is so heavy in there. My ancient shield of faith is doing 100m at the most, so for higher end content it is definitely worth upgrading them.

    2) It kinda depends on the class for this one, but for dps classes ascensions are not the highest parts of their parse. As well as that, even the hybrid utlity-dps classes like rogues still parse very well and have extra things added onto their abilities like mitigation debuffs etc.

    3) Everything is something.

    4) As a geomancer templar... I agree. This ascension class is primarily utility. And it is REALLY good utility. Obsidian Mind 2 is one of the best buffs in the game and gets even better with the rune. My Erosion II is grandmaster and with the Despoil rune it applies a 2000 combat mitigation debuff. Yeah the DPS isn't great, but looking at *effective* DPS, it definitely helps make the overall DPS of the group higher. Another point is that it doesn't take several years to level up ascensions. With no money spent outside of the game I have all grandmaster ascensions on my templar and on my brigand alt most of the etherealist stuff is master or higher and he's been a pet project. Ascensions are a lot easier to get nowadays.

    5) Yeah

    6) I agree that mount training takes awhile, but the upgrades are substantial. Full potency bardings is something like 2k more potency at least.

    7) The main allure of the ethereal event this time around is the 110-120 spell crate. If you look at the celestial spells, they don't need the previous tier to scribe, so whichever you pick will be easy and future proof.

    8) The difference between my familiar and my guild leaders is like 700 potency and a ton of CB overcap. It isn't negligible.

    9) There always has to be some kind of progression and honestly resolve isn't a terrible way to go about it. I much prefer the resolve system to crit mit, and the resolve to me feels better than PoP for sure. If you look at the potency difference between 95 resolve gear and 110 resolve gear, it's like 400 potency per piece when fully infused and that comes out to nearly 8000 potency between all the gear, sans weapons.

    ETF: Formatting
  17. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    Scholars can craft Ascension upgrades. They can make Journeyman, Expert, and Grandmaster versions with normal raws and using Planar Energy as fuel. You do have to get Illegible Scroll Pages for Adept, Master, and Ancient versions, but these do drop (solos drop Adept pages, for example) and with those Illegible Scroll Pages and some Planar Energy, your scholar can craft those upgrades as well. And you can often purchase the Illegible Scroll Pages on the broker, some of them surprisingly affordably.

    Sages can craft Elementalist and Etherealist spells as well as ALL Adept Ascension spells. Jewelers make Geomancer spells, and Alchemists craft Thaumaturgist spells.
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  18. Vasciagio Well-Known Member



    It's a good thing that the best ideas in the world come from the wealthiest people. ;)
    Juraiya likes this.
  19. ConcealFate Well-Known Member

    yeah, lets make that end game gap even bigger than it already is. o_O
  20. Pixistik Don't like it? You're not alone!

    They had that or something like that long ago, but that wasnt good enough so they added the marketplace and now cant afford to hire more devs to put out fresh content.

    "Lifetime "GOLD" members would get a $10 discount on these higher tier subscriptions."?? really?
    This would immediately slam the lid on the coffin for EQ2
    Lifetime membership without monthly fees is just that...membership without fees.Trying to milk more from those who paid for it would most certainly be a nono.

    And
    This membership influencers thing you talk about could certainly use some fresh blood, cause what they got now sure aint cutting it judging by the number of servers and population left, not to mention all the gimmicks to give it one more try while at the same time removing content with nothing but a one day warning.

    Oh, and on a personal note of changes I would like to see.. Where are the Battlegrounds?
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