My Thoughts On state of the game

Hi everyone, first off I'd like to introduce myself. I've been playing eq, eq2 and many other MMO's for the last 25 or so years. I am trying to make a constructive post that I hope the devs will read and take action on to get this train back on track as its my opinion that is going the wrong way. As a returning player view point.
1- EQ used to have some of the best dungeons in the MMO's. They were well thought out and were just done well. Coming back playing thru planes and blood I love the nostalgia from EQ1 but the zones and dungeons fall flat on being done adventure like. The designers you have working on these are falling short of expectations of making dungeons adventure like. (examples each zone is small and instanced, where is the open dungeons you can go in and maybe run into other players where u can make new friends or rivals which make an MMO an MMO?
2- Solo's I understand that need for solo zones, with the small player base it makes sense, however they should scale with how many you want to bring with you. 3 of us restarted playing EQ2, its down to 2 of us now because we could not bring the 3rd in. There is no normal content, its either do it with 2 or 6.
3- Scaling.. New players wanting to actually run a heroic have such hoops to get thru to be able to do them, Understandable but there is no path to progression, its run solo's till you get gear, etc. There needs to be a middle ground here, so people can enjoy running dungeons together like solos but with groups.. You really failed to deliver on that kind of content in the latest expansions. which is an issue if you want to keep this train picking up new customers..
4- Bosses- From what I can tell, each boss has a mana drain of some sort, or at 20% health you have to do something, That is very very far from actually being creative.. The mana drain this is ridiculous I should not have to hope I can find a mana feed to do a heroic.. Bad design..
5- EQ2 has potential to grow, I know numbers increased during the pandemic and it would have been great if yas had it together enough to have kept most of them.. Its fun to come back and play a game you have such fond memories of and was hoping to make more, but when a game used to be a way and its way way way away from that you have to speak up and say hey, do better, you can do better..
6- My friends and I joke about the state of EQ2 how far it has fallen. We laugh at Diaku Coral, whomever let that go through to be live must have been desperate or watched to many westerns. I'm not sure how many agree or disagree with me, but if you want to continue to keep this game alive you need to tie more people together into open content, you need to bring the game to them not them to the game, you need to merge more servers together so the player base is together not seperate. I hope my thoughts help you to make choices in this game that keep it alive... Do better and be more open minded.. Use better judgement when allowing zones to be added to the game. This is EQ2 not the wild west. This an MMO not a Co-Op adventure.. Bring it back to an MMO..
Thanks for your time and hope to see what others might say..

I'd also like to add, that if you want to generate more $ maybe add some stuff to the market place. A Lot of retired items not available at current, maybe add an item to change mercs into different things. Like the pet illusions but this one would be for mercs, and don't put in the stupid crap put in cool stuff that would actually sell...

I like the Diaku Corral personally. But I still retain a sense of humor about gaming in general.

A sense of humor is ok, but an instance in a fantasy MMO about cowboys just dont make sense, we joke someone had made the instance as a joke and when they found out how screwed up the instances were for loot they asked everyone if they had anything and someone said well we made this as a joke and they said finish it up and itemize it and send it, just lets get something out there ... Really if you were a Dev would you ever let something like this pass your desk? Its like watching lord of the rings, and in the back ground they run you thru a cowboy and indians movie. I can get a sense of humor by it but I dont really think it fits, but that is only one thing as a returning players impression. I mean I respect they gave it a shot, but really the instance don't fit. And how lazy can you be that most mobs in there at 20% they are unattackable until you do something, its copy and paste lol

lol, i agree the humor is definitely there but it doesn't really fit, does it?

Those Charms though...

those charms are great...

To each their own then. I like the quirkiness of it. Its fun. In the end though, it is all fantasy. So it is relegated to your opinion of what high fantasy is. And many other games care don't either....you know..the ones that allow repeating firearms along with magic, bows and arrows & swords? When all those anachronistic weapons would be vastly inferior to firearms...just like in real life.

I'm confused with every game update released this year has nothing to do with the latest expansion, should of worked on a new playable race the Vah Shir.

Odd things pop up every so often, like that hidden cat room a couple of expansions back. Or the Shard of Hate being "cow level".

i like diaku, it's inventive and fun
heroic is loaded with mechanics you have to figure out

i liked fabled kael too, it was dangerous

I don't think EQ2 has ever done that and if they have, it's been minimal. I wish that Game Updates after an expansion were linked to current expansion. Instead, they are just random game updates.

EQ is a special franchise. I've tried other games myself but I can't get over their idiosyncrasies and quirks such as Japan-based FFXIV and European-based strategy simulators.

I don't think it will be possible to go back to the "glory days." At one point, EQ1 was churning out an expansion every 6 months. You won't have the mega EQ2 expansions like Desert of Flames. Jennifer Chan, during her interview with Shawn Lord, said the Darkpaw team is too small to do many things such as /testcopy and account-to-account transfers (much less address every little critique). However, JChan said she works closely with Ji Ham (CEO of Darkpaw) to ensure the franchise's success.

I would be concerned less with "wants, what ifs, or imperfections" but to appreciate the effort by the team now and to play in the moment. Ultimately, the players also need to put their money where their mouth is so that the lights stay on.

There is true that, that mobs strats are quite repetitive while there are quite of lot of old raid mechanics which can be used in new content with small modification and make scripts more complex.
What I see as a problematic point is exponential strength growth unbalanced with dungeon requirements.
Let say, if you get fully infused 155 gear from solo instances, which I see as extreme waste of energy, you are still not considered as strong enough for easy heroics, by most of playerbase. If you get full 165 gear, fully infused and adorned, you are way too low to get expert group, if not friendly guildies.
In other hand with fully infused/adorned 165 gear you can run just easy heroics, which gives you literally 0 of useful loot.

OK, this is not true, at beginning of expansion ppl had to run through it, to get were are thery now, but now nobody wants to repeate it.
I am also speaking as returning player, and without helpful guild I will get stack on infinite amount of solo instances or simple heroics forever.

I was reading post from dev, asking for feedback on LFG system, and my opinion is, that small amount of resources team has right now is not used correctly.
What I see quite important is to keep an eye on global game mechanisms based on classes ability vs. combat mechanics.
There exist quite a lot of fails, like 1-button-trouba powerfeed to 100%. Bruisers broken DPS, Useless enchanters (see 1-button-trouba-powerfeed) and there will be few more.

I will resume this to one single example based on various actual discussions on forum:
Coercer got dumped to be just battery, while trouba can do powerfeed to 100% by one fast recast skill.

I will try to give my subjective point of view of features which attracted me in EQ2:

- classes:
for example I like melee classes due to casting in movement and especially I love trouba/dirge visual and sounds effects
I like tanking and I have always seen as most funny to tank with Bruiser as he was considered as tank-outsider.
Appearance of my bruiser is pink sweatpants and Katana.

- Game mechanics:
timing of skills to get maximum effect in Powerfeed/dps/hate/survive/heals.

- DPS (parsing competition)
each class got some chance to show up close to top of parser in some fight,
If you roll enchanter or Bard, you do not expect to be topping parse, but its nice to show in top 3 in some situational fight suitable for your class.


Now look at current situation.
Chanters can be reaplaced with trouba/BL to do power feed easily, while theirs parses are dumped close to nul.
Bruiser can not spec to dps in any scenario, because there calculation of skills are done incorrectly.
Game mechanics are dumped to ... do something on 20% of boss or keep hitting power feed button.

From what I see for few classes game losing its attraction, so I think its important to focus on making it attractive to keep all the intresting features for everyone.

Go to Wracklands: Diaku Corral [Solo] -- gear drops there are 170 Resolve, while the Heroic version of the zone drops 180 Resolve gear with a piece or two at 185 Resolve.

Also note that right now, running easy heroic weekly quests is giving you coin to use for Ethereal gear, so they're really worth doing. Even someone who solos only can get the weekly Overland Solos and Big Baddies (lots of PUGs for BB) to get Ethereal gear.

But you don't get by with just ONE power feed spell. You have to have chanters, because you need power feed for your group, other groups in a raid, and you need several ways of feeding power. And even with all of that, every player really needs to be carrying a stack of Overclocked Manastones, power potions, and Superior Signet of Replenishment for those Oh Sh*t! moments. And chanter buffs!

This has NEVER been true. There has always been T1 DPS and T2 DPS, then everyone else. In a group, players sacrifice DPS to provide buffs and heals and power to the top DPS, and everybody wins.

This is where I say "learn to play any class to maximize its best potential". Yes, your class may not be the Flavor of the Month. Wait six months, the FOTM changes. I would much rather have one of the classes that you claim are hopelessly useless with a player who knows how to really play that class well than a FOTM class that phones it in.

Let's see, a group zone and only 3 of ya. How about you filling in with 3 other players or 3 mercs. Solves THAT problem. Better than leaving your friend out.

Umm, mercs will get dusted. If you do not get lucky to get 3 other toons to join you, you may sit there /lfg for hours, or until people drop grp.

I like the suggestion that the OP stated about the scaling issue with the game. My suggestion would be to make the solo zones "scale" up if you have more than 2 friends in this game. That way it will not leave your friends behind, scale up to make it a bit challenging for new and returning players.
When you click on the door to the zone have it ask you how many players or to choose your difficulty. 1-2 players, 3-5players, if you are a full grp it will give you the Heroic version. If you go in as Heroic ..Your options would be how they are now .. Normal, Challenge or Expert.

Mercs won't do it. But you can totally run heroics with no tanks as long as you have good DPS and two good healers.

according to what I read and hear, some classes can maximize theirs potential with no significant outcome...

I wsnt to state, that I do not see it critical in most cases, but important. eaxh xpac which dump some class probably causes someone to leave game and thats even more important in BoL where everyone twink just one char and no whole lot of alts

Nowhere was he saying anything about heroics in that. It was in #3 he started discussing heroics. IN that case, mercs will not work.