Long term fully supported TLE. Instead of killling them at DoV the team will spend some times to make them fun and attractive , all the content is here and it is massive. On the way the team should limit : - massive stat and number inflation (regulating as example with fervor), so doing at level 100 you may still consider 15% haste as a lot or 100% crit chance as very hard to achieve. - Remove ranking, mecenaries, mecenary training, - Revert the deity change but add 80+ miracles. - Totally remove ascension. - Keep familiars (cute) but limit their level to something low. The other goals are : - Keep solo solo friendly, even bard or guardians should be able to do solo content fast. - Make instances attractive enough but keep the gear scaling undercontrol. - Let easy raiding accessible to non optimized/ non full teams (or PUR) , signatures quest shall be completed doing this easy version. - Make hard raid version quite harder . In parallel do a massive " we want you back " campaign toward fromer player, and of course allow some vet reward to be used on those TLE. Remove the 500 plat bags and the fidelity tokens. Keep Platinum inflation low (just le money drop be linear in the level). The amount of work is not that big till AoM, to push those TLE further one will need to tune post AoM content a lot. Within 1-2 year the live servers will be ghosts and the heroic TLE will never work.
100% agree with all of this. They seem intent on killing off EQ2 with horrible design and bad game mechanics though. So this seems to logical for them to do.
cross server rewarded LFG tool, all they need. TLE would be a patch at most, the server pop is shrinking and shrinking. They already put Planetside 2 to bed, I wouldn't be surprised if they consolidate down to one or just shutter the game by end of the year. They really need to take a look at EQ1 and WHY it still is ok, they decided not to change much and that sits better with players. They won't be bringing new people in and the idea of players gone for more than 5+ years returning is crazy, those people are most likely playing WoW or quit MMOs all together.
You're asking for a server that removes a large amount of the income from it? A lot of what you're asking apart from that would involve probably reworking every single bit of content this game has. There is no way that it could ever happen without stopping all current development for like 2+ years and launching as EQ2 Remastered...
You do realize Cross-server dungeon finder was actually in the works right? They flaunted it years and years ago but in the end decided on opening up a new server. Nice try trying to call me out though, I appreciate it. I've not asked for stuff that was once talked about. Cross-server dungeons honestly would of kept the game much healthier than it is. I will use WoW once again, that practically saved the game when dungeons groups started to dry up. I hate wow, but it works. Good chat, for reference this was June 15th 2015. From Holly “Windstalker” Longdale on the EQ2 Forums: Greetings Norrath! I want to address questions around concerns with lower-population servers. First, as a community-focused team, we’re listening to feedback and we want to tackle population health issues on some servers. After we launch the two new Time-Locked Expansion (TLE) servers, we will proceed with creating a merge process for the US servers that need it most. We hope to start doing merges within the next few months. We’ll give you specific dates as we get closer. This is very challenging work that will branch off from our Cross-Server Dungeon work. Luckily, what we plan to do for true Cross-Server Dungeons & Battlegrounds logically helps us merge characters to new servers. We’ve already had our incredible coders working on the foundation of cross-server processes for a few months already. Our database changes earlier this year were the first step. Once we’ve addressed server populations for the US, we are going to work on some options for our international servers which is an even bigger challenge given the multiple languages, but we’ll be sharing news on that as we get closer. What does this mean for you and our plans for the year? We are working in writing a merge process ahead of creating Cross-Server Dungeons. This effort will delay that somewhat, but it’s still on our calendar for this year along with the campaign content release and live content. We want to do the work that is needed to ensure a rewarding and fun stay in Norrath. Sincerely, as always, Holly “Windstalker” Longdale
You mean the two developers on planetside are still actively developing the game? This information of two devs comes from one of your companies prior devs who got laid off, and relayed how grim the situation is over at that game to me.
My post was directed at OP. Cross Server Dungeon Finder only works if the content around it is suitable to it as well. Which in the past few expacs has not been viable. Even server wide dungeon finder never worked properly, so I never held out much hope for a cross server one.
Content suitable? Back when the idea came to be the landscape was much different and it would of worked just fine, now?.. maybe not, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be changed to work. The reason it works in every other game it has ever been implemented in is easy, access and reward. There are tons of people and servers that people do not get the chance to run dungeons either because of pop, class, or time. Adding the ability to que with others at least gives more access to those people and those who just want a quick pop in and out. Server wide doesn't work because of pop and lack of a reward structure. Just my two cents
Server wide was introduced back in like DoV, when populated servers probably had more population than all servers combined now. Look at PUG'ing, past 5+ years it's been dying, if not dead. People only really tend to group with guildies and their cliques. There are many reasons for it, and yes they can be fixed, but haven't been, even though the issues pointed out for a long time; No real entry level heroic zones. Zones that don't require huge stat checks, or 2 healers, bard/chanter/tank + 1 dps. Heroic zones having little/no incentive to run them apart from grinds. Heroic zones requiring complex scripts that puts off casual players. Gear/Stat checks that make your presence completely worthless if not met. See Potency mitigation. Implementing Cross Server grouping will not fix any of this, and until the basics are resolved, it's a pointless idea.
The problem with Dungeon Finder is that its AI was.... inferior when it came to building a group. Also, it didn't actually screen to see if the people queuing had the stats necessary to be successful in the content, so if you got into a group with a tank with no health, or a group with six people and no healer, people would just quit.
Not no, but hell no...I hate TLE mechanics. Slow, no AA...ugh...rather get a root canal. Don't like the OP's vision of EQ2 at all. And, there is the rub....opinions are like...well we all got em'
