As the original TLE server Stormhold reached the SF expansion and died I wrote a post. Unfortunately, because we can't have nice things, it was eventually locked. However as I've had to come onto the forum again to try and PM developers I'll throw it up again as I still think it's valid. This is from the summer of 2017; It's a bit of rant, but I wanted to highlight these issues in the hope that the new server Fallen Gate will benefit. Trying to be constructive in my criticism but i may ramble. Experience - Low rates, that never changed as we moved through expansions, followed by nerfs to mob experience. Fallen Gate needs to have higher rates to remain accessible to new players to the server and retain players through encouraging alts. Itemisation - Was a huge flaw initially on Stormhold. Improved a great deal as the server progressed through EoF but this was too late. My concern though remains that the work done is not part of a coordinated ideal, stat caps are still at the launch levels, familiars being used to break progression, drops from SF are at best minor improvements on items from 10 levels previously. For Fallen Gate we need to have a clear curve planned. Gameplay - Vanilla and DoF, which had a huge population are not at all challenging. KoS launched and the difficulty hit the ceiling, players left in droves. This was adjusted later, but the delay and lack of communication on it essentially killed the population. EoF to SF I feel was actually pretty solid, if we could have offered 'catch up' baubles or veteran bonuses to players to draw them back I think the server could have been pretty healthy still. Unfortunately with the recent release of SF the decision was made to implement nerfs to autoattack, again much like the errors of KoS without communication and with delays in obvious issues of balance, this has disenfranchised a great many of the remaining players. If Fallen Gate is to be successful then these changes have to be subtler and more consistent, or kill it as the other TLE servers have been. So currently I think several points are related to our experiences on Kaladim and I'll attempt to revisit the main areas. It's still as much of a rant though. Experience - Is much improved now I think, while many might complain that experience rates are too fast I think many more will argue that they are not. Newer players can swiftly level up as people actually now do make alt characters due to a less punishing pathway to level 60. However as the server now migrates into the next expansion KoS and increased level cap with AA now added I think the boost bauble that we've seen on PVP event server needs to be provided, boosting characters to 60. This would allow players to make a choice on how they reach their content, the mentoring mechanic already in place would still allow them to experience lower tiers. Itemisation - We've definitely benefited from the removal of familiars to these TLE servers. I can see some progression from the launch to our position now in DoF. I would like to see a greater amount of progression in terms of heroic zones > entry level raid zones > end game zones but this is very much subjective as I do consider raiding to be my primary reason to play the game. Though I would add that the introduction of mounts, or other desirable items in heroic zones is welcome. Gameplay - Vanilla raiding and DoF raiding are symptomatic of the game play mechanics in the earlier iterations of the game, 'tank and spank'. This personally is fine, to expect new raid mechanics is not feasible, as we progress we'll see more mechanics involved. Though it is only beneficial for the longevity of each expansion to see an increase in difficulty through the tiers of raiding, if supported by itemisation. No huge difficulty curve roller coaster for the first couple of weeks. In closing I'd touched on subtler and more consistent updates to the server. In the most recent instance this would be the Hunter's Union. We've highlighted how uninspiring the previous items, the two of them, were and gotten no feedback. Now, they're undoubtedly out of any progression and represent a very real barrier to any balance moving forward. The nerf to auto attack we saw way back in 2017 was a reduction in weapon damage rating, these items don't have that applied. Much like the shard weapons from TSO were for a brief time. However these sweeping changes have also disenfranchised players, I certainly include myself in this. Because if you bought the least worst item, shoulders, you've essentially wasted a month. No refunds, no trade in, no responses from Dev's and no support from the GM's. Changes and updates are positive, but it shouldn't be punitive for those players who have completed that content. TLDR: We're still making some mistakes with how TLE is curated, we have seen some improvements and could introduce more updates for added finesse. Also I want a bloody refund on these terrible shoulders.
I suggested that one should be able to sell back hunter items, at 2/3 of their price (20 coins refund). I feel sorry for those who bougth the shoulder or the ring. DoF was so bad that people left in drove, Issues are : - Dof itself is the worst expansion we ever got (before the ascencion disaster) - Difficulty is way too low, my conjurer can solo almost anything but cazel, so wtih a full group it is ridiculous, you never need a tank, you don t need a healer either, all content can be duoed. - Itemization is terrible, i just looted a fabled lvl 60 ring which is worst than a legendary 50. - No attempt to remove time-sink that we all hate have been made : allow people to open poet palace doors (after running the access once), remove the statue horror (once you did it once), make the monk faction faster or less grindy. - Lack of solo quest-line rewarding best in slot items. - No attempt to improve harvesting experience (adding more node somewhere would have been so easy). - Refusal to make healer better solo (with more Amod or more casting speed), my fury solo ok now with her prisma 2 and one hunter item, but it's still night and day if compared to a summoner in treasured gear. - No attemp to make the triple faction grind (3 courts) for the main quest any faster, doubling the faction gain from quest, kills or coins would have taken 5mn. Nothing above (except itemization) required more than a few minutes and itemi would have taken half a day or a day of dev time.
Their are 2 primary issues: 1) While itemized, the content wasn't tuned. Net result, the content is way too easy. Soloing heroic zones, clearing raids with one group, clearing contested x4's with 4 people. 2) The vanilla and DoF content is not exactly inspiring and as the OP stated 'Tank & Spank'. The real issue here is the decision for the TLE to spend 8 months of its life cycle in this 'basic' content. Tune the stat packages on content and think of DoF as the mid point content for Vanilla from a timeline perspective, and you'd have alot more people still playing your TLE.
yea Kalica I got several healers and often enough I have to ask others for help to do parts of my quests that I was easily able to do solo on other classes . I feel like I am taking advantage of others having. And other times they tell me " I just soloed that " well good for you , I am sure but I can't . often enough I run out of power and die because I simply can't hit hard enough.
They almost got it right with Fallen Gate. Had there not been familiars, grandmaster spell research, and channelers, it could have been decent. XP was about right, the content was somewhat challenging. With Kaladim, they addressed the first few concerns, but then do a complete 180 on others. One step forward, and three steps back. Just take Fallen Gate's ruleset, remove/lock the P2W stuff, and open DoF at week 6 and then KoS at week 12. Then go to 12 week unlocks. Yes, the content will need to be re-tuned, but you'll be tuning it down, not opening with content so easy that the top guilds clear it in 3 days, then buffing it weeks later while giving more casual guilds the middle finger. Regardless, 4 months for DoF when it was only out 5 months when it released back in 2005, was always going to be a problem. I wouldn't mind at least trying to server out again for KoS, but even that is still over a month away.
of all the TLE servers I played on , and I was on all including Deathtoll and the event server Race to Trakanon, I had the most fun on FG. but even a relentless supporter of TLE servers is getting tired of doing this over and over . It might be helpful if some of those grind quests get simplified , so if we are given less time for each expansion than it should be easier to do the quests not by giving us more xp but making the contest easier to do . right now I am still working on some of those time consuming quest lines I honestly have never ever finished , because I always ran out of time . Now here is an idea to bad it means to split the TLE community in half but on EQ1 they opened up 2 servers one server had more xp gain and a new expansion came out every month wile the other had much slower leveling as in less xp gain and every expansion came out after 3 months.
DoF is too long. Even if it wasn't for itemization/difficulty, over the years, SOE/DBG have destroyed this Xpack. Cleft and SS are neutered vs what they once were and Arena was scrapped. That's ~20% missing from a 6 months Xpack… To make things worst, on TLE pretty much everybody have 1 or 10 lvl 50 when DoF "launch".
It does make me wonder who are making the decisions on these things. They have a pretty loyal contingent of experienced players to draw from, who, whilst maybe differing in some aspects on certain things, are broadly in consensus when it comes to what would make a decent TLE server. Are we expecting WoW Classic levels of authenticity? Not really. We'd like it, sure, but the next best thing would be to take our concerns seriously enough to at least say "hey, we hear what you're saying, and we agree, and we're doing our best to give it to you". Rather than right now which is more "hey, here is what you are going to get, whether you like it or not". Judging by a lot of the threads here, "or not" seems to be the prevailing choice. I don't blame the devs, that is, the guys in the trenches, working day in and day out to pump stuff out the best they can. I have a great deal of sympathy for them - it ain't easy trying to bust your butt with a fraction of the budget you'd like or even need.
Yes FG would have been nice without a) the massive p2win features (i saw fabled +level 10 familliar on the day they started to drop , illusion buffs from buying live extension, raider on eq2u with full ancient spell books ..) b) channeler madness , they made any other healer (esp. defilers, mystic) miserable. From what i saw inspecting people bufs they made lot of money from p2w. The first TLE was by far the best, no channeler, very limited p2w, decent difficulty and itemisation that was not yet destroyed by automation. About the current TLE< server health was getting better thanks to the new hunter items, but the recent massive nerf (a 90% nerf) is going to hurt a lot. Any dev team doing a 90% nerf is either just incompetent or did something that was not intended and revert the change quickly.
Stormhold's itemization was significantly worse than the other TLEs. If they want to replicate any of the TLE's, I would start with Fallen Gate, lose the pay to win and Channelers, and then re-tune for the absence of the Channeler.
Start with all level 1-70 content open (SL-EoF, including Unrest). Do four months per. Remove all blue stats completely. Win!
I think they have been experimenting a lot and I don't know if our ideas would work any better than theirs I noticed they did try out some of our ideas like the idea of running each expansion for 4 months , but if the original expansion only ran for 6 months that should be shorten down to 2 months on a TLE server . In any case any TLE server on EQ2 will never be the same as the game when it first came out , so within some borders let's get creative well I hope they fixed this one up so people come back for the next expansion .
It's nice to see that they tuned up a lot of the fights and are at least trying with the hunter gear. I know it's not perfect, but it's something to do. I see a lot of people complaining that things are too easy, then they complain when the gear rewards aren't super insane, which would make content even easier... I think that makes it a bit difficult for the devs to balance what people want. I know there are a lot of super capable raiders and dedicated TLE players, but they also have to balance it for the pub raiders. I think they're doing a good job of trying to handle that based on feedback. I came into this expac after it had been out for over a month and I'm already quite ready for KoS, so I have to agree with everyone that this expac needs to have a much shorter live time. I know a lot of us are quite excited for KoS, but this next month is going to be a little lame waiting through for a lot of people.
