It was mentioned, in another thread, that a player had little to nothing to do in the game. That got me thinking and I came up with a solution: come over to Public Test and help test new and existing content. Your characters aren't wiped on Public Test, so you actually can progress just as you do on Live--you just can't brag about your uberness on the Leaderboard. Of course this assumes that you aren't just playing to show off how uber you are. Everyone gripes about the bugs in the program but only a few people actually do regular testing. Consider your testing as pro bono playing lol. If enough people would actually donate a little time to testing we might actually have a less buggy game to play. Isn't that something we all want?
Finding bugs isn't the problem, plenty are found. Getting them fixed IS the problem. See every Beta for past 10 years, and Bug forum...
How is that possible, not having any thing to do? I have bookmarks for old quests, appearance items, house items, etc... that I want to do when I have time, and that folder of bookmarks just keeps scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. 0.o And then there's the stuff I still haven't done on alts, like epic weapons, bag quests, etc... I have to admit though. Most of what keeps me busy is the houseing, and not every one is into that. This game has the absolute best houseing system, in my opinion. Not just the way you can tilt and float things (which is pretty freaking awesome since a lot of games are snap-to-grid crap), but having instanced houses that never disappear is the best! Nothing more aggravating than putting hours to months worth or work in on a house, get busy with IRL and find out your rent ran out and you don't have the house/plot any more. The utility of houses for travel, crafting, and depot storage is also pretty sweet.
While this tends to be an overstatement, I've generally found there are two different types of people playing EQ2: adventurers and crafters, or more accurately house decorators. There are always exceptions, ofc, but you typically find the majority of the player base fits into one or the other categories. I tend to lean towards the adventuring side, but have decorated a few prestige homes for my toons. I don't consider myself to be a home decorator nor would I claim to be. I do TSing as a means to an end. Decorators don't need content per se, to do something every day. They complete the TS timeline and yes, you can run the crafting stuff daily to get the coins to buy the house items for sale. You can also earn the harvesting achievements if you spend sufficient amount of time harvesting. Fact is, as an adventurer, you can only run so many solo dungeons before you begin to get bored. There's simply no reward for doing so after a period of time. I know some might disagree, but relentless repetition gets really old, really fast when there's no reward. How long do you think the pigeon pecking the bar for food keeps pecking the bar when there's no pellets?
When people complain about having nothing to do, they generally mean that they have nothing to do that will progress their character in a meaningful way. I mean, there are always things you can do, but there's usually no point other than doing them for the sake of doing them.
I so agree with you Griffon Lady .. HOUSING is the best in EQ2 that I've ever seen in any game and Home Decorating, Home Visiting of Others and Rating (which is a lost art as far as I'm concerned that most ppl overlook .. do you know the new ideas you can get for your own housing when you tour around @ others' homes?) and Crafting I reckon are what keep me the most busy in EQ2. I do like to do Questing too and have a back log of Status Quests for each of my 20 Skyfire girls that I particularly like to do because with high status you buy more pretties for your home! Solo Questing is pretty easy usually with your Familiar and your Mercenary by your side which most Questing Areas allow for. EQ2 is my absolute favorite game because it has so much of every aspect to offer. Other faves are DAOC and SWTOR .. Dark Age of Camelot and Star Wars the Old Republic but they feature more the questing/fighting aspects. There is housing on SWTOR but nothing to compare with EQ2.
Basically, I think it all depends on your "style" of play. If you like PVP... that is happening now. If you like crafting/decorating that is all ongoing and with the new houses, etc... its just a massive world to play in. For questing... the name says it all. I'm a completionist. Trying to do every single quest that I can eventually and just fill in the undecided times as they come up. I have never not had things to do, but that's simply because of how I play. Now... if I was a person that played solely to Raid and build my character... there is a quick peak that you will hit where the only way to get higher is basically... a ton of real life cash... or... grinding. I think for a almost 20 year old game, it has weathered very very well, although, it would be nice to see a bit higher population counts.
Because you can now finish all of the quests in an xpac in 2 weeks due to them shrinking them year after year. New house items are the same. Then you grind solos and heroics for 2 months. Then unless you raid, there's nothing to do. Overall a new xpac has about 2-3 months of content before you start scraping the barrel. Unless the new ownership bulks up xpacs to the level of the last good one (sentinel's fate) there's just not enough content.
Nothing left to do? - Collections - Everything on the achievements tab - All the raid boss heads - All the sig/HQ/ time line quests - All the crafting lines If none of that seems fun, then you might want to figure out what your friends are doing.
That's why I never liked Raiding. >.> At least heroics I can do on my own time, even if they are repetitive. Raiding was like a boring unpaid job. I also have one of each class, and that keeps me busy when I feel like taking a break from decorating. Maybe the Devs should add character slots as a high end drop? XD Make it tradeable so people will also farm for it to sell. IMHO, they should work on the Dungeon Maker so players can make content. That would keep decorators AND adventurers busy! ^_^ Maybe add a player-offered prize pool slot to DMs so we can put amounts of DBC or no-trade (even marketplace) items as prizes? (Which would add money to DBCs resources to make more content). (As in, a slot on the DM window for the publisher to add items to without unpublishing). The DM would need a lot of work though, like giving the player more control over the difficulty level so it doesn't get outdated as gear levels up each year, a standard reward for when the big bought prize is gone (or some sort of banked prize pool? Oh! an option to make a randomizer on the prize pool!) Lot's more they could do with the DMs.
I don't mind raiding at all. For me, heroics and solos are about the same. Limited number of them and rewards aren't worth it unless you're gearing for some alt. Truthfully, depending on what you're doing in raid zones as far as progression, the same rules apply to raids. Adventuring content is finite at best. Other stuff that comprises "content" like familiars is boring and the rewards basically suck. I'm not clear on who dreamed up this game mechanic; the idea is fine--it's the application that's been seriously flawed for years. You have a celestial familiar that literally takes millions of xp to level. And DPG's idea of a reward is 99% drop rate for treasured that give 100 xp for "using" the familiar instead of adding it to the collection? Once in while, you might actually see a legendary. No offense, but do the math, people. As someone laughingly said in raid last nite, at that rate, it's going to take 472 years. That's just mind numbing painful. I don't have an issue with a company needing to make money. But literally, every aspect of this game has turned into a "pay us moar money," to actually get anything done. How many people you know go to a car lot to buy a car and then are expected, in separate purchases, to buy an engine, tires, radio, to actually use the car? And then, on top of it, after you've spent all that money, it fails to actually run half the time. Sorry for the frustration, but there are times when I wonder if anyone is left there with a working intellect and a grasp of basic business knowledge.
I think maybe the problem has been (for a while) that the people calling the shots (or at least, the final word) are more business minded than gamer minded. Business/math wise, it makes more sense to gave RNG and nickle and diming people for every little thing makes sense. They don't take into consideration that there are fewer and fewer new players because there isn't much good word-of-mouth going around. I'm not even sure it's in the budget any more to do something wild and crazy, but I do know that, for example, the "What, you expect us to give you free stuff?" attitude I bumped into when asking why they weren't upgrading harvest ponies seems to ignore the fact that this is digital, and what they are really providing is escape from reality, not running a market with limited shelf space and supply. The only limits and supplies are the Devs imaginations and programing skills (And the artist's/animators! Frosting, whip cream, and cherries on the cake!). When time sinks, gates, and cutting off exp, materials, etc... is what's keeping the game running, it's time to get some fresh material. Then again, I thought that ship a few years ago where you hide in the box and sneak around, and zipline over and boot baddies off into the sea... I thought that zone was GREAT! I've never laughed so much about a zone or quest! But seems like a majority thought it was too hard and complained a lot, to the point it's optional in the questline... So who knows. Maybe the Devs just got burnt out on people being pissy no matter what they try?
I was at the Sony life event in Vegas when they first announce Kronos. John introduced a guy that has his own video game company. I think his game was a pay to win style. After that guy was introduced Everquest had Kronos, free to play, and marketplace. Not sure if he is still with Daybreak. Anyone remember the guy or his video game?
I'm not discounting any of your points. That said, do you want to have a few transactions that cost $100 or 100 $5 ones? There's a price point at which people will not simply throw money at pixels for large prices. Yeah, raiders will drop money hand over fist, but a reality check is in order when a lot of your "wallet warriors" have left or are leaving the game. Most people will spend 5-20 dollars and not give it much thought. When you're asking them to chunk down $100 bucks for items that will be obsolete in less than 6 months, guess again. Fun is individually defined and what's fun for some isn't fun for others. When your game 'expanse' begins to dwindle, you limit the possibilities. And fix stuff on a priority basis. I'm still seeing spelling errors fixed, etc., but just today, dragged my necro out to run RoS TS sigline for flight and Guide's Guide. Imagine my astonishment that the scout pet is still tagged as "undead knight." Maybe we're all burnt out at "pissy attitudes" haha, because there's plenty of it going around.
Agree completely.... especially when a competitor is running a 60% off sale, where you can get the base game plus every expansion for less than $30. I'm probably biased though, since I spend far more time in Eorzea these days... and when I do visit Norrath, it tends to be in the original EQ. When I do log into SkyFire, I rarely find anything that tempts me to leave either my house or the guild hall.
Let me guess, you played FF14 also and were ALSO disappointed in the housing system? That was the one thing about that game I hate, it didn't have EQ2's system. I feel your pain.
