Why make it so hard on returning players?

Discussion in 'General Gameplay Discussion' started by Vuetee, Dec 18, 2018.

  1. Vuetee Member

    I've played this game on and off for 15 years now.

    In the past, I've been able to return and simply slip into an expansion without too much of a tax for not having played the previous expansion. However, now it would appear that any content necessary to make me as useful as the next player requires I've played for the past 2 expansion?

    Let me explain... Epic 2.0. Sure, you now offer these abilities at apprentice level, but I have to re-run Kunark ascending expansion raid content in order to get them upgraded to a decent level?

    Power raider buff... so I basically lose out on a chunk of potency and fervour simply because I haven't raided in PoP.

    Divine STA/POT/CB - in order to boost these to an "ok" level (which is almost necessary for this xpac), I need to run a series of exploration quests from a panda?

    In addition to this, there are so many different ways of "progressing" that getting any grasp of actual progress in an absurd concept. Why add so many different adornment types, 7 different AA trees, ascension, tithe, additional spell tiers, 3 different types of infusion... it's adding barriers to entry on any new expansion rather than a "fun" way of progressing through content. Maybe I'm alone in this opinion, but I much preferred this game when you had your main class, improved your gear and spells, placed 1 adorn in each item and ran quests to get better gear.

    There are a lot of things you've got right and I love about the game, which is why I'm not unsubscribing, but these are the things I think you should give some serious attention. Perhaps you'll be able to increase your player base again if you make it easier for them to experience the content.

    As an outro, my dad has been playing too, and he's taking 30 minutes to kill difficult solo mobs in the new solo zones. He's in a similar position to me where he hasn't got all this previous xpac content stuff done, and he is thinking of jacking it in simply because he can't even get into the solo quest line without it taking 3+ hours to clear a zone that takes me 10 minutes to clear.
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  2. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    It does seem like the difficulty/complexity goes up exponentially, rather like the Richter scale for earthquakes, or the F scale for tornadoes. Ostensibly, it's a way to make people get the previous expacs, but if we get all that content anyway when we get the latest/greatest, what's the point? :-/

    It could be that too many loudly vocal individuals were all racing to be "the first" to "win" the game (get to the level cap) in like a week, or 24 hours, and then complaining about how it was too "easy" to do and that they were bored now, and leaving. Maybe this is a way to at least slow folks like that down? :-/

    Uwk
    Breanna likes this.
  3. Dilon Active Member

    You do not need to do KA raids. The shards can be received as rewards for completing heroic and raid weeklies in Chaos Descending.

    Yes, you will be behind those who earned the Power Raider buff. This is one of the few mechanics I don't have a problem with to be honest with you.

    These quests take minutes each and will set each of your deity bonuses to 85 after you finish all of them. That's really not bad.


    These are fair points. The game could really, really use an overhaul of the AA system in particular.


    The difficulty curve for new/returning players in Chaos Descending is very high and it is the subject of much discussion. My raiding wizard had a rough go of it even in T1 with other raid-level players for a good while until we figured out what gear changes needed to be made. Even now I don't run T2 unless with a very small set of players whom I know are very very top end.

    For fun I used the Level 110 bauble on a new toon and have tried to play him without any gearing help. It's been a big challenge even with the solo zones. I believe the starting gear should be significantly better than it is, and more adornments should be given as well.
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  4. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    I have played continuously, not on and off. I do not have Epic 2.0 and I do not raid. I am a troubie and I use Evania as a merc, it does not take me 30 minutes to kill anything in the new expansion. If you want honesty, I got my equipment by running the Guk solo instance in PoM and I have swapped out very little of it so far for things from CD.

    Additionally, I do not spend money to buy spell upgrades from the marketplace or any other upgrades. I train my merc, do my spells, etc all by researching it, no matter how long it takes.
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  5. Arclite Well-Known Member

    It is what it is. Just like many other AAA game publishers today, any and all chance to milk more cash is the name of the game today. We have collectively voiced our concerns since the downward spiral started at the back end of Terrors of Thalumbra, no one asked for the game breaking changes that were introduced and crippled the stats as they are today.

    They neutered all melee classes and left them stranded without auto attack (once a shinning stat in the game) and made it ineffective. Every class is essentially a hybrid mage now with spell double cast and pigeon holed into ascension mages.

    I will end with what i started with. It is what it is.
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  6. Vuetee Member

    I haven't seen these yet, but I'll take your word for it for now.

    I don't have a problem with it other than the fact that there's no way to get it in the current xpac. There's no way I'm going to convince my guild to go back and clear T1 of a previous xpac for me when they all need to spend time getting their resolve up

    True, but do you really think that should be necessary to play the new content? This doesn't add anything to the game for me, except another tick box to complete.
  7. CoLD MeTaL Well-Known Member

    I bought the expac, played some of the sig.Figured out how much cash etc it was going to take to be 'viable'. logged off. Still hope this game becomes different, but it isn't now. all subs stopped from renewing.

    Good hunting to those that are loving it.
    Thalador, Soara2, Kheldar and 3 others like this.
  8. Tharrakor Well-Known Member

    Yeah I wouldn't even consider playing on live ever again. My wallet do do not allow me to play on the level I enjoy to play. Getting carried by the wealthy is not my thing lol
  9. Dead Alt Account Well-Known Member

    Same.
  10. Dilon Active Member

    I think in time players may go back for the PoP achievements, certainly not now and most players couldn't even clear PoP raids right now with the way they changed gear stats for CD. Also, I wouldn't be surprised to find that the Power Raider buff for CD is even better, once unlocked, and the PoP one becomes obsolete.

    I mean, it's a game and the game is supposed to provide the player with things to do. In a sense, everything is tick-the-box. Pew pew, get loot, pew pew stronger enemies, get stronger loot, pew pew even stronger enemies. So I think that, in the spectrum of just handing players everything and making something nearly impossible to get, what they did with the Panda Quests is fine.
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone and Dude like this.
  11. Thrundaloo Member

    This game sucks for a returning player. I was out of the game for 2 years.
    I knew i'd be a bit behind, but wow.
    I purchased premium edition. Spent a large amount of cash on skill upgrades (epic pet to max once completed to sig), i'm as well geared as other player but do half to a third of the damage they do. Why? Fervor & Ethereal stuff, i'm missing a whole bunch of fervor. I agree longterm players should have a reasonable edge but wow, i've had to leave groups because my dps is just too low.

    I'm really struggling to get Tier 2 groups as I just don't do the dps I should.
    (i've now completed pop, so have the fervor charm, i've done panda quests too, i'm fully tier 1 or visionary crafter geared and spend millions infusing, i've played with spell rotations - but still i suck)

    You can just blame the player - but I know it's more.
    I used to be lead DPS in raid force for many years.
    Having ploughed cash in my ascensions aren't bad at all.

    The solution simple, more blue adorns should have been made available in the chest at the start of the expac, not as good as longterm players have but enough to dull the sting. It isn't too late to rectify.

    I nearly quit because of the difference, I know others have quit over it. I played into daybreaks hands by spending a lot of cash - but still i feel massively let down. Others will not be able to spend the cash i've spent, making it even tougher for them to return.
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  12. Vuetee Member

    I'm in a very similar position to you. Thankfully the T1 fervor rune goes some way but doesn't completely close the gap as it stacks with the PoP buff & charm & epic etc.

    I used to play a dirge and come in just behind the T1 dps on raids. So I know it's not me, it's simply stuff my character is missing due to it being hidden in previous content.

    My beef isn't that it's a lot of things to check off. It's knowing what those things are, having to ask question after question, and when you think it's all figured out there's still more missing, and that missing stuff isn't stuff you can 'just do' outside of raid times. For my dad, it's unlikely he will continue to sub because he's struggling to even get 60k potency without dumping a load of plat into the game, which he doesn't have since he last played before the plat dupe exploit so the exploded economy now works against returning players too...

    /rant

    #pleasedosomething
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  13. Uwkete-of-Crushbone Well-Known Member

    HA! I knew that plat dupe exploit (which took WAY too long to find and fix by the techs and devs...for pity's sake, we don't have The Bazaar or Vox any more) was bad news! I've been sneered at severely for bringing it up and saying it destroyed the Broker economy, probably by speculators who're billionaires of plat now because of it. X-P

    And the LAST things the Powers should have done to "fix" the whole "there's now too much money in circulation in the economy" problem was something like increasing the sell point ("But I wanna sell something for over 999,999,999 plat! If I can't, I'm gonna rage-quit! Waahhh!") and increase the plat given by the Small Bag of Platinum Coins from 75 (which I thought was reasonable; what do I know?) to 500, which now seems to be necessary. :rolleyes:

    If they did bite the bullet and crank the sell points back down to a reasonable level, there would be much howling. X-P Maybe if they point out that it's across the board and affects everyone on the high ends equally... :-/

    Uwk
    who, yeah, completely agrees on the whole "the end game is dang near impossible now if you didn't buy the last 2-3 expacs" bit...good thing I'm not anywhere near it, nor will be in the near future, but I know a lot of others are counting on being able to participate at any level :(
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  14. Meneltel Well-Known Member

    500 plat per bag just means I have enough to pay the rent on my free rent mansion and being able to go out to eat at a restaurant... instead of eating behind the restaurant! Doesn't let me buy anything useful like MC gear (over 30k each slot, which means 60 bags!)
  15. Sigrdrifa EQ2 Wiki Author

    You should never buy MC gear. I really recommend getting out and harvesting your own rares, refining your ores, then craft it or hire the crafting done. The prices people charge on the broker are for the fat cats sitting on loads of plat. In general, you can hire a crafter to make stuff for you for the price of the fuel and a nice tip, which is way cheaper.
  16. Cyrrena Well-Known Member

    Even adding a higher value coin or rolling the plat everybody has back by factors of ten is not going to help. Those that benefitted by the duping will still have ^^ magnitudes of order of plat more than anyone else.

    Example (not real numbers):

    Introduction of Celestial Coin where 1000 plat = 1 celestial

    I have 2 million plat (again not real numbers), I would have 2000 celestial (no dupe benefit)

    Bob has 20 billion plat, Bob has 20 million celestial (duper benefit)

    Example (not real numbers):

    Rolling back plat by making 100,000 g = 1 plat

    I have 2 million plat, I would have 20 plat (no dupe benefit)

    Bob has 20 billion plat, Bob has 200,000 plat (duper benefit)

    As you can see, either way, Bob the Duper has much more plat or new celestial than a non-duper.

    The only way to combat this, is to delete Bob the Duper's plat and make him start over with 0 plat. But all that duped plat has been washed with high value broker purchases and SLR purchases so there is no way to really know who Bob the Duper is. Well there is I suppose, but it would require that someone at DBG look at all high value broker purchases and SLR purchases and trace all of those backwards to see where the plat came from and see if they can nab Bob the Duper that way and that is not going to happen. The only other way would be to set every single account and every single character at 0 money, no money in bank, guild bank, shared bank, none on character etc, and that punishes everybody whether they duped or not.

    There is no win-win for this situation. More people that never duped will be punished than the ones that did dupe.

    I would even go so far as to suggest that all plat transfers whether they were by mail, trade, or broker could be traced backward to find origination. DBG could assign every character on an account an separate ID number based upon a main ID number for the account, and then print out those logs using the separate ID numbers as reference. For example Bob the Duper gets an account ID XXXXXXXX, each of the characters on Bob the Duper's account will have an ID XXXXXXXXY where Y is different for every character on the account. Then have some volunteers, I would volunteer, do a line item audit of every account and character ID and find where tons of plat has been traded, mailed, used on broker, notate all of this and compile a list of the total amount of plat spent by account XXXXXXXX and characters XXXXXXXXY for every account on record. Give the findings to DB and they could look into these audits and see where that amount of plat came from. Nobody volunteering would have any information to identify anybody other than the new, separate ID generated solely for the purpose of these audits. None of the DB workforce would have to spend valuable time doing the line item audits, they would only need to investigate the origin of the plat for account XXXXXXXX and characters XXXXXXXXY. The only people that should have an issue with this being done is those that have benefitted from duping. Did the duped plat get traded to another account Bob the Duper owns or several accounts, did Bob the Duper buy 200 kronos? It would all come out in the wash from a line item audit but I highly doubt DBG will accept any volunteer assistance other than the guide program, even if it would take care of the duped plat issue once and for all.
  17. CoLD MeTaL Well-Known Member

  18. Ra'Gruzgob Well-Known Member

    nice idea :cool: , less people more oxygen (question of the theme headline will become big importance).. and Bob not really will be upset..
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  19. Thrundaloo Member

    The plat issue is something different.

    Possible fix that just came to me, not thought through.

    A new currency, with it's own broker. Leave plat in the game, but players can choose which broker they sell on.
    Call it the black market
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.
  20. Ra'Gruzgob Well-Known Member

    don't worry (already and it's impossible to joke). Even case of global natural disaster is provided (i hope) - ours data are reserved, even to other countries, on other continent? Death of the third part of mankind will not damage ours toons. No zeroing of ours game currency will never happen. EQii will be to last to the last player (i hope). But also great grandchildren (if they are will live) from today's playing children, will run their toons here :)
    Uwkete-of-Crushbone likes this.