A letter to SOE from a Medium-Core Raider

Spritelady wrote:

First we can't forget that raid guilds ALWAYS implode at some point. Its high pressure, lots of egos usually and what determines if a guild is going to survive is as much about reputation to attract new recruits and the long term planning to have such people in an existing pipe line as it is about trying to stop the implosion. It WILL happen 9x out of 10.
Also I have a question as to how much of this is due to fewer healers and how much of this is due to more raid guilds.
Since the idea that mythicals are NECESSARY and the great explosion of the sales of raid items in level chat (I don't
remember like 1/100th of that during RoK) more people have seen the loot, think they need the loot and so want a way to get it. This has caused an explosion in raid guilds, alliances etc forming. Just go to the "other" web site. If you were there a year or 2 ago, just remember how many guilds were on the raid progression list then. Look at the ones on the list now AND add on all of the "looking for x to fill our raid force" on the recruit lists or even just in level chat in game.
I am not saying that healer burn out has not contributed to it. Heck we are 5 years in, if you have been playing any class for more than a year or 2 you may well suffer burn out. There are SO MANY dynamics at play here its not even funny and to blame it on scripts is more than a little over blown. For every healer that complains of the scripts to a "burn out" degree I can find one maybe even 2 that say "hey its more challenging and challenging is more fun." I'll be honest I fall into the 2nd categorey. AT first I hated them. Then after getting used to them I went back to VP in order to get some people trak flagged and myth hits with my guild and helping out PUGS etc. VP was BORING. I could basically spam wards and the occassion spot heal while surfing these forums. Without a raise in the level cap how was SOE going to make the fights more challenging without upping the scripts a bit?
Heck I actually could foresee that we may see more scripts in SF. Brenlo is clearly pretty fixated on the difference between the gear of hard core and those of non-hardcore. I could see him reducing the difference but keeping the scripts. This way he can tell the hard core "hey the encounters are still challenging" while telling the less hard core "hey you don't need to feel like you need gear x and y to get in the door.
As I said on the other thread addressing this dealing with the scripts is easy. I screwed up in the beginning too because I was like "OMG OMG OMG I can wipe the raid. Everyone will know I wiped the raid. OMG OMG." Then I said, "its a video game wth cares?" No pressure, no panic, no wiping the raid. Also if you are putting all the pressure on the healers thats just darn silly. There are so many scripts that are either by design dealt with by the target by an in game gimick, or efficiently dealt with by assigning a specific detrimental to the target to pot it themselves. I think this contributes to the few healer burn outs I have seen (other than the frustrated druids who have more problems than scripts). Raid forces expecting the healers to cure EVERYTHING. Not so. Part of raiding is pots and signets. If you don't use them really, not trying to sound like a jerk, you probably shouldn;t be raiding.

Malaqai wrote:

More randomness and less staring at timers in ACT is good, but the encounters need to be based on skill and not luck or twitch reactions. With skill I mean knowing your class and having a grasp of tactics, reacting to things that happen but still being able to cover for your fellow group/raid members in case someone screws up.

Bravo OP. You have stated succinctly exactly my feelings and view of the game.
Also, kudos to Rothgar for attaching your name. Hopefully the Dev Tracker will stop this thread being successfully hidden by the "powers that be".
Possibly the most important thread this year (assuming SOE reads it).

Crismorn wrote:

I don't think you got the point of the thread.
Most of people who posted in here, me included, cleared most of the instanced content (at least) in TSO.
Once you learn the encounters, they're not too hard.
They're frustrating, annoying, boring and repetative, with too many CCs on raiders and too many reactives that can't be self-cured.
(also, fights like Anashti self-curing is impossible, other reactives mostly just land straight back on you if you're meleeing and then your pot's down... enter healers and whack-a-moling again...
....Signets also only help so much, most instanced guilds kill Anashti at 70-90k DPS, even with Signets, fight lasts too long and it's back to healers)

But again, the point is... Just like mobs in KoS, EoF and RoK... once you know the encounters, they're not hard.
They're just not fun.

Crismorn wrote:

You're an inquisitor. Curing is trivial for you, but it's not for other priests, particularly druids. That's kind of the problem. Obviously potions help (except that they needed to change encounters in MMB so they could be used, which suggests the devs themselves don't realize the extent to which they're relied upon), but there's an enormous difference in being able to click a no-interrupt fast-casting clicky and cure people who have 5 arcanes and a noxious on them, and doing it manually at 1 second at a time, no?
I like the fact that curing and dps is tied together, because it provides a strong role for priests. The problem is that it's nowhere near balanced between priests, it's heavily affected by lag, and people tend to find the role of just single-curing repetitively to be tedious. I think itemization is the solution, with more things like the wrist from mynzak, or clickies like that charm from kurns or cloak from MPS, but they could solve a lot by just altering some AA in the druid tree to duplicate the shaman cure AA and be done with it.

I am on a pvp server and I have to say I wouldn't be playing this game during this xpac if it wasn't for pvp. The shard system makes me want to die slowly. Ohh I ran an instance i get a pattern, then i have to get another pattern and 50 shards to use the first pattern i got.. ughhh. I don't even do instances anymore, because I can't stand the shard system. Lets go back to I ran this instance, so real items drop.I thought the shard system was supposed to be a backup for people not getting gear drops for them in certain instances after months of running an instance. Not a be all end all farm shards to get gear, real gear doesnt drop anymore in instances anymore bs..

Also, with the cures fail system in raiding, I have a very hard time keeping up because I use a wireless aircard.. so my ping will usually range form 80ms to 150ms. So me getting 2 secon cures in is chancey at best. And being a druid just plain sucks with hard raids.. we have tons of healing power.. but its just not the same as wards.

Other than that, and maybe some other stuff i forgot :/.. Keep up the good work!! Great game!!

Pervis wrote:

This.
I truly believe I am still here in this game because of the prismatic 1 line finishing with Darathar. A quest with a good storyline completely revolving around raiding, with a meaningful end reward that you were proud to wear. It got me hooked on raiding and helped me gel with my guild.
Since then the whole thing has gone horribly downhill. The DoF line wasn't bad apart from the god-awful eye farming. The Claymore line was ok but I didn't enjoy it. It continued to deteriorate until now we have no endline raid quest to speak of at all. I long for something similar to prismatic 1, a questline that effectively a whole guild can progress through together, instead of in fits and starts as you plod through group zones. I'm not saying lose the group questline, just make a raid one.
The bottom line is that when a character reaches max level, progression relies on itemisation. It is the key element to holding people in game, the carrot that keeps bringing us back. When there is no clear progression, when killing the easiest nameds and completing easy quests gives you the best loot, then who gives a damn about getting to the end.
I'll not kill an avatar but nerfing that loot was ridiculous and the way it was handled a joke. Mage itemisation from start to finish in this expansion has been pretty awful. The items in and of themselves weren't bad, they were just all in the wrong place. Good loot on **** mobs. Great loot in easy instances. Dreadful loot on some of the hardest x4's in the game. It all smacks of not understanding what it is that makes something better than another. You may as well design the loot and place it by flipping a coin.

I just read through this whole thread and cannot agree any more.
I'm gonna say this right here and now: I'm not gonna last in this game much longer. Sentinal's Fate will probably be the last expansion for me. I need to move on in my life.
Even right now, I'm playing the free-to-play MMO "Dungeon Fighter Online" from Korean-based developers Nexon. It's something different since its like playing Final Fight or Streets of Rage with hundreds of other players. I can even tolerate the dozens of spam bots advertising gold selling sites in the cities because the gameplay is something different. it's challenging, it's twitch-based, so there's no just hitting a key and waiting for the spell to go off. IT'S FUN!

Back here in EQ2, I'm enjoying the content of GU 53. The Chronomage feature lets me go wrack up more quests by doing a good 30-40 writs I've missed out on. I enjoy Shard of Love, but I've only been inside once so far.
I put up with the fact that the Monk class is not wanted in this game because the way the developers have made this game, with the mobs constantly hitting harder and harder by magnitudes greater than the last expansion, you have to have absolute perfect defense through Mitigation. We don't do enough DPS than a scout or mage either, so we really have no purpose or definition. We never had much to begin with. The player community has been taught to think that you have to wear plate to actually play this game. Why even have an avoidance system in the game if you arn't going to make the best of it?
But all that aside, I still enjoy groups when someone out there will take me, but all my friends have long since left this game.

The way the community has been treated lately has really upset us as well. Station Marketplace. Those two words are the most hated words us players hear these days. In a search to find more money, the marketplace gets more importance over the game itself. Adding new features that have completely changed the very fundementals that this game was built on.
The concept that once you choose a race, name, gender, and class, you had to live with that choice. That was the concequence for thinking that you wanted to play that back when you made that character. Now, you can change *ALL* of them. It has been confirmed that class-change features are quickly on the horizon. I cannot think of any other games that lets you change your race after you've picked it unless it's part of the background of the game for your character to physically evolve into something new.


The lore of this game keeps me here. I've lived in Norrath for far too long to just forget it's history and locations. What I find in Sentinal's Fate will determine if it's time for me to head on or to keep hanging on a little longer. The day will come, and until it does, it would be so nice to feel wanted for once. To feel important and powerful for once. Letting a player actually feel like he has power helps them enjoy the game more. Right now, everyone is just so... powerless.

Thank you to the OP, i have to agree with all points.

Anduri wrote:

My point exactly, and I've been making it (on various accounts) since TSO launched.
I'm going to put my hand up now to volunteer to look over all mage items for the next expansion. PM me screenshots of them all, every since legendary or fabled item that is usable by a mage, and I'll rate them best to worst based on slot. I'll point out what slots are missing items in each particular point in progression, so we no longer have an entire expansion launch with no valid upgrades to some slots at all.
I'll even do it for free.
Unfortunatly, I know SoE would not take me up on that, because as far as they are concerned, their developers are able to do that better than any player is able. I mean, history has proven that to be totally true...

/Agree with OP here

Game feels as though its dying atm , myself and others are pretty much only logging for raids these days as they are the last bit of inguild community we see.

Really hope the Devs take note and have a major brainstorm session over the current situation and hopefully do something about it.

No more cure wack-a-mole detrimental or the whole raid dies in SoF please. Staring at your detrimental window is not fun for raiding. Let's please get away from this.

Wilin wrote:

I don't post very often, but I had to pipe in on this topic. I'm also at work, so my apologies in advance for any fractured thoughts .

I mostly agree with Wilin's post, esepcially as far as folks growing bored with the expansion over the summer. In the past, I've always looked forward to having the new expansion being released in Nov, around the time that the holidays began. Given that the expansion is not due until February, who knows how many folks will still be interested then? I have talked to a few people who have said that they'll probably take a break between now and Feb, which doesn't bode well for guilds who have problems recruiting in the present time.

In the past few months I've experienced first-hand the issues of being in a guild that was making good progress, and then gradually the progression had ground to a halt due to losing folks to real life or whatever other reason. At first I atriibuted this to the normal summer time lull, but the problem appears to be deeper than that. Last week I joined a guild as an applicant, a guild that was doing great progression-wise. The guild decided to disband

On the healer subject, I raided with my fury for a bit during late EoF and RoK, up through the summer of 08. The whack-a-mole curing, which from my observation is much more intense in TSO than it was in RoK, cannot be entirely fun for healers. The feeling of being responsible for your group and your raid, of being needed, now appears to be full of stress, especially for healers new to raiding. Coupled with the fact that the new expansion will not be released until February, again I have to agree with Wilin.

Thanks to the OP for starting this topic, and to Rothgar for acknowledging it.

Thank you OP for starting this topic.
TSO has lead to more apathy towards EQ2 than at any other time that I've ever seen. My guild on Nektulos has seen more people leave in the last few months than in the 2 years we've been together, mostly due to absolute boredom. I myself, as the raid leader and guild leader, have taken to only logging in to EQ2 for raids and then logging off right after - there is no point in jumping around in the guild hall for hours on end. The instanced heroic content is played out, there is NOTHING to do in EQ2 at the moment except raid.
We've had multiple guilds fail here on Nektulos, some change from raid guilds to casual simply because they lack members and cannot replace them. Casual or semi-casual raiding guilds that during ROK were able to eventually take down VP and drop their entire guild's mythicals cannot get past certain mobs in TSO, and are falling apart due to the boredom of killing the same 4 or 5 mobs every single week. Our guild is killing most instanced TSO content, but we've been doing the same stuff for so long that people are dropping like flies from boredom. And when someone leaves we have to cross our fingers and hope for any willing app, let alone a good one, and then deal with the above mentioned gear issue.
The worst thing for me is having our hopes raised by SOE with two new x4 raid instances, only to be horribly disappointed by the unimaginative, healer/cure intensive, frustrating crap that is most of TSO. And then, when you work on a mob and FINALLY bring it down, you pop that chest and find...... muteables. Well, at least we have a good stock of mana in the guild bank for when that under geared applicant needs to get a new adornment... But what it does for me most is make me not even want to try new content.
Now we have nothing to look forward to until next year. Many guilds may not survive next month. I cannot blame my guildies for quitting EQ2, I can't blame them for being bored, I can't blame them for not wanting to log in. I do hope, however, for those that WANT to be there and WANT to continue to raid, that SOE does SOMETHING to give us a reason to log in. No more fluff garbage that next to nobody cares about, no more content you can only access through LON, enough of the crap encounters that drop crap loot. Curefests/statue clicking/multiple raid wiping dets are NOT FUN, they simply piss people off.
What actually prompted me to speak up on this is the fact that someone tried to bury this topic. If this stuff isn't heard and actually listened to by the development team, there will be nobody around to raid SF.

While I am hesitant to say so I have to agree with the OP completely. I have read through the entire thread and I also agree with you Cusashorn on several of your points. For me though, the Station Marketplace does not bother me half as much as the proposed LoN player "access to an instance" that is on the way. That has REALLY made me think twice about why I continue to pay for several accounts to play this game after all of these years. I've been playing and paying since November 2004.
You mentioned "the way the community has been treated" ... I feel torn on this. On one hand there are a lot of folks that post here on the forums, myself included, that do not like certain features being introduced but then again we are just a handful of the Everquest II populace. On the second hand I have been noticing a ramped up attempt at Guide Events on the Antonia Bayle server lately and the Rat Race that took place this week was a fun treat.
I have noticed that even on the Antonia Bayle server there seems to be a lot less out and about at any given time when I'm playing. I play daily, usually from 3pm until about 10pm eastern, and now I'm doing a / check in many zones and contested areas such as Klakanon and I'm finding myself to be the only one there. Our guild, while not a raiding guild, has had several people either quit the game for other games or have decided to take a break from playing and suspended their accounts until Febuary and Sentinel's Fate to see what that expansion holds. I log in, do a few solo shard runs, run a few writ-runs in Jarsath Wastes, chat with a few friends and then log off most days. I play daily but like others have said beforer me, my continued interest is begining to slowly grind to a halt.

While there are definitely some issues to address, the timing of the next expansion quite frankly is good.
While past expansions have suffered greatly due to their release timing, this one will not have that problem.
Consider: November release means that it is released just before a MAJOR holiday season, one in which many devs actually take vacations. Because of this, prior expansions had bugs and issues linger for six to eight weeks because the right people were simply not available to get things corrected.
SF will have no such excuse. If there are issues, they should be available to fix / address them quickly.

Banditman wrote:

And if they dont such as current in game issues that have been around for years.....then what?
I guess go to 6 month updates should fix that heh.

Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:

Bullcrap.
Thats a horrible generalization that simply isn't true.
I've been raiding with some of the same people going on 8 years, no egos, no drama.
Now, everything eventually has an end, but not every raiding guild is going to implode.

Defenitly agree with op. My raiding guild on kithicor feel apart and those that didnt go find another guild more or less quit the game all together. I let my subscription expire the other day but decided to renew it for some reason. I dont think there is anything i can really say that the op hasnt already.

Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I have been consistently raising this issue. I've raised it face-to-face with devs, I've raised in PM's, the forums, and elsewhere.
I've also followed up that is inexcusable to wait this long to fix the issue.
But, here's what happens from my vantage point.
Aeralik will see it as a class issue and add it to the list of things to fix with the next expansion. The raid designer is impossible to provide feedback to or discuss these points with, but my guess is he also see's this as something to fix with class ballance. The problem is thier boss doesn't sit the two of them down and say, fix it now.
Yes, druids need to be changed if they need to be on a level playing field vs these raid mechanics. If you can't find time to change the class issues, you've certainly had ample time to adjust the raids to be more reasonably played by druids.
But, look, here we are with this thread in the expansions forum. We have tacid acknowledgement from a lead developer that there is some agreement on the issue, they've known about it for 8+ months, yet, what exactly has been done to date to solve the problem with TSO?
You can blow smoke up my rear on how you're going to fix it for the next expansion, but what have you done for this one? Why is it taking so long to get any adjustments?
I don't see how its hard to adjust trauma aoe's to have a max hit of 10k hp with reasonable crit mit. Kultek as an example shouldn't be hitting mages in full t3 gear for over 10k. The fact that he does, as well as all the other trauma aoe gear checks does clearly illustrate how you've failed at ballancing gear / detrimentals / class buffs.
You know druids need more hp buffing to be on par with all other healers, you know they need more benficial cast time options from AA in order to be as functional in TSO raids as thier counterparts. Why in 8+ months has nothing been done about it?
You honestly feel your players are content waiting an entire expansion for things to be fixed for their class?