Disagree/Agree, I appreciate the feedback either way. There are lots of ways to play the game. I appreciate your opinion and am glad you posted something. That being said... My first question is do you raid end game? Are you shooting for WW firsts? What is your playtime like day to day? How many Alts do you ACTUALLY play (Run heroics, Raid, make attempts on the H3) I'm ok with different types of currency for different things, I actually prefer it. I just believe there should be a way to obtain them simultaneously and not be forced to run the same old zone 3-5 times a week for very little return in the case of chrono dungeons and the adornments cost being set as high as they are, where those coins are used. There is only one path for each type of currency. Your thought process here is wrong imo. There are no options, especially for those playing end game. No amount of Chrono coin is going to help a new/returning player get caught up with the amount of time investment required. Players who have been here for a minimum of 3 x-packs have an advantage over those with less unless someone dumps a ton of cash into the game, and even then some skill and knowlege is still required. Any thought otherwise is delulu. (Speaking in terms when comparing a good player to a relatively new or returning player) It's not the harvesting, it's the double the cost as compared to the last few x-packs and getting only half the supplies from the double cost recipes. I'm not going to lie, this comment erkked me a little as it means your not paying attention to what is happening with recipies or don't care cause your sitting on a ton of plat or work at home or are retired and you time is not a problem as you can play 24/7. PUG's have been super easy this x-pack, there are even three PUG Raids on HoF right now, so I'm not sure where your grouping or why you would say this. I have zero problem forming or recruiting to run heroics and have many choices if I wanted to take the time to raid an alt. BUT HOW, with "All the Things" we have to do. There is no time for all that if you are trying to get things done. (Casually, with no care for min-maxing, no need for wanting the Master crafted vs. Hand crafted, then sure. But I specifically discussing, if you want to have the nicer things, all the things, there is just not enough time for a regular player, everything piled up on top of each other it's just too much. I have taken breaks from EQ2 before, one of them for 2 years. Maybe that time has come again. I just can't keep up at the this level. I want to play at the end game, and if I can't with the time I have to invest, what's the point. EDIT: TO BE FAIR! I don't want to run a million alts to do what is needed for my main. I don't have the damn time. I want to be able to get done what I need to play end game on my main with my main. More power to those who love alts. But why should I be FORCED to run alts to keep up. And this is not alt friendly, it's alt forced play.
Not gonna argue the points, I just don't care that much. But will answer this line of questions: Of course and yes on the guild progression rankings. If the chips fall that way all the better! I rotate 3, almost 4 (woot!) in to help with guild raids anytime needed. So yes, need to run heroics, chrono, diety stuffs for 500R weaps, etc.. on all the alts. Ima call shenanigans on this one.... why've I not seen "Jrox tells LFG(1)" LFM once in this xpac or last... I can literally login to a very similar game and SS LFG/LFMs happening left and right.... LFM on HoF are near non-existent. I know I know, you have groups all the time... yes, static groups with the same people. I'm sure I prolly have more time right now to play, but its normally after 6pmEST until midnightish... Ima only commenting cause J asked, not gonna argue my points.
World First raiding in any game require no life 24/7 game time, from my experience. Ever played WoW or FF14 end game? those guys pull bosses 300+ times just to get it killed using tons of resources. Good luck doing end game World first there without spending 27 hours a day playing to stay on top. Trust me eq2 is a cake walk compared to those 2 games (end game). I agree on both points here, yes it is grindyer to play end game due to the amount of coins/rares needed per toon so more time is needed to farm said coins/rares on alts/ponies to feed your main to stay relevant in end game progression BUT it does provide ALL players with more options to catch up and or stay relevant in casual heroics and or mid lvl raiding. Should they reduce coin requirements and or hand out more coins? Sure but as we have seen in the past the devs are continuously trying their hardest to time gate us at every turn making stale content last as long as possible, boring and or burning us all out rather then making "good" long lasting content we can all enjoy for months (this isnt the only game that does this). No one is "forcing" you to do anything. Its your choice what you do and how you do it in the game. It just seems your current playtime isn't enough to play end game right now as you mentioned? Playing hard core is stressful and very time consuming, take a break from time to time.
Completely agree with OP. Alt friendly, sure if you just do the sig line, reach max level, aspire to get into heroics and then start a new toon. End game raiding is a chore and a half, more so if you do not play alts. This is not a dig at having alts or being able to have multiple alts. You should not be punished for not having alts (to transfer coins as one person put it). The grind should be manageable on one toon should you just want to play one. As it currently stands, not having alts is making you lag behind, specifically those gearing towards raid/end game content. It appears the grind is the main attraction of this expansion because raid content has been very very subpar so far. Reminds me of another monstrosity from the past, that was the KA expansion, when you had to log on daily to get scrolls or ascension or whatever it was. Not sure the OP mentioned but you also need to keep up with the no-trade collection research. Outside of raids, I log on just to keep up. It is not fun at all. Then you factor in the absurd level of repetition in doing the same content over and over again 2 months into the expansion, it becomes another job for which you are not really rewarded much by way of risk vs reward.
Content is super grindy. Good quests and zones. The fact that most groups of six can grind through an H1 is good. Making us have to grind out zone after zone and quest after quest to chase an item that increases our resolve by 5... that's crazy. And then... do it all over again for another item that increases 5 more.. eventually, you'll be a great player because you have the good gear, but basically it means you've had the time and friends, like OP stated he has a static group that help him grind through the content every day, but for us that just log on for a few hours each day and not every single day.. it means that we can't get groups because we are not strong enough, or we can't get nice upgrades because we're not grindy enough. Make this content a little more achievable and let the gameplay speak for itself. Taking down Heroics and Raids with average players makes average players want to play more. The "elite" players are still going to play because they sit on top the parses and still overachieve, but then more people get to EXPERIENCE the content. How many players with solo level gear never get to run T1-T3 zones because they can't grind out enough resolve / gear / coins... that's a big part of the player base that is not seeing the content Daybreak is developing....
Chronos: Don't auto complete the quests when the player leaves, allow the player to go to other zones to rack up more kills and max the quest. Allow some method to turn in the quest when the player is ready (Perhaps a secondary function built into the chrono coin itself when it is used outside of an instance, it triggers the quest to complete)
Just a reminder for everyone, don't forget to like the OP if you agree with some or all of these concerns...
I agree, as someone that works full time I am struggling to find time to complete most things a week. Sometimes its the chrono weekly that didn't get done, or sometimes its the overland heroic that doesn't get finished, I now do not do the H1 weekly at all and only the H2 weekly. I burned out in the last expansion by mid January as I just could not keep up no matter how hard I tried, I have alts but its impossible to maintain them as I can't even complete a full weekly schedule on my main toon. However, like Jrox said. The content this year has been superior, its enjoyable again. I've loved everything about this expansion I think with tweaks here and there you could really nail it for players who can only log on for a few hours a day.
Been playing since launch day. I think this xpac is actually compelling in a lot of ways that RoR wasn't. But then they couldn't help themselves and added in so many more layers of grind. So I stopped playing as of 2 weeks ago. I can't do it anymore. Basically all the comments in this thread about the unfun grind of the content as well as all the population related issues of the game. I love(ed) the game. I want to like it. I want to play, but it's broken and it doesn't seem like the devs are listening or care. Since I don't actually believe they don't care I endlessly ponder what the motivations of the content are. Is it to slow raiders down? Is it the combination they've identified that brings in the most money from a sinking ship to milk as much as they can from the IP before they are forced to shut it down? Is there no thought put into it at all? (there's evidence of that based on things like chrono and status requirements. Population related issues are there as well, all related. 1. You can't play end-game without a tank and there aren't enough tanks to go around. 2. #1 leads to.. you can't play end-game without a static group. 3. LFG is dead (at least on Live Servers) 4. Many classes have been rendered irrelevant and can't find a group because of #1-3 Devs, just study this thread, seriously. And for crying out loud.. do some basic napkin math on time requirements before you add more systems and content. I'll continue to check and see if anything changes but at this point I'm enjoying my gaming time much more elsewhere than when I would log into eq2. Sorry.
I haven't been able to participate in Frostfell pretty much since I returned 3 years ago because they always release the GD expansion right at the same time. Between catching up to get current for raiding, my own holiday schedule, and all the millions of timesinks every expansion seems to come with - particularly RoR and BoZ - and this little thing called WORK I haven't been able to do it for literally years. I can take off one of my jobs, but not the other, as I have clients that require care and holidays don't make them stop requiring care. But I also shouldn't have to. It's such a silly little thing you'd think a raider shouldn't care about but I do care. All I freaking have time for is raiding and all the hundreds of trillions of things I have to spend all my time on to stay current.
Hey people, we re playing an MMORPG, it's already by definition a waste of time. Whether live or on Tle, There is and always will be this type of mechanism . But I think I understand you, I stopped the live after vov, I couldn't stand this routine anymore which pushes you to do this to have these 5 resolves to go here, etc. in short you know , No need to make the entire list. Live mecha is a completely different game, another vision of the mmo that we knew in its beginnings. In my opinion, they cannot create a real project, progress, innovation and are there only to drown you in this system, hoping to see you log often, hoping to see you frustrated, hoping finally go to the checkout to buy this or that item to save time or something else . Attention ! Not that they cannot or could not, but specifications, objectives are given and the team works with them. Do you remember this key project to buy at the shop to increase the % chance of chests, aborted ? So what will be the solutions now that they have 'frustration ally' on their side , an in-game purchase? Or a real investment in your requests?
No, actually, it's not. This is supposed to be a game and a game is supposed to be 'play'. Play is necessary to relieve the various stresses of work and life in general to preserve human health and sanity. As it stands this game is currently causing more stress than it is relieving and that needs to be addressed while there are still enough players here fo make it worth the effort.
From a player perspective, it is all about playing and having fun. From a designer perspective, it is about wasting your time to keep you playing. They should find a nice balance between fun and time consuming to keep players going as long as they can while having fun. Sadly, that's what most people are complaining about. There are too many time sinks(wastes of time) and not enough fun. They need to dial back some as they went a little overboard. They seem to forget, if it is enough fun, the player will create their own time sinks in the form of extra characters.
Completely agree, hence the departure of many live players. The devs are surely bogged down in this creative meander without being able to offer a more flexible alternative, despite their efforts on. And I would really like to know if any of them play the game, like we do, it would surprise me given the time we have to spend there. If that were the case, there is no doubt that they would do otherwise, but do they really have the choice to do so?
Yes. Exactly. A game exists to be fun to do. There are fewer and fewer people everyday, myself included and you have to find a way to keep those people in game without making them angry and worn out by the sheer volume of work (that's what it is) involved just to be able to play with friends and have fun. It has all gotten ridiculous. Make EQ2 Fun Again.
It's really stupit to do Chrono Weekly or waiting for researching my missing 10 !!! Notrade shinies (at least 20 days) Just say NO to Chrono weekies they are not fun not having the possibility to finnish weekly with all nameds
I think THIS is their fundamental failing. I suspect TPTB demand X hours of new content are produced and the new stuff is evaluated and added up to produce the magic number. It doesn't look as though anyone bothers to add in any of the hours still required for players to do stuff already there which bloats the magic number out of all proportion. And they're obsessed with making you rinse and repeat the small chunk of current content, on their timetable, to keep you logged in. If they just made the content more fun and engaging people would stay logged in longer because they would WANT to do the fun stuff over and over. In the last year I've levelled 5 toons from somewhere between 89-94 up to level 100 by mentoring them down and running through some or all of the content in Kunark up to Velious. I've got another one that needs to do 95 to 100 and I'm going to do the same thing again. Should only need Kunark and SF to clear those levels. I love the content in those expansions. I could (and do!) happily spend hours running around those zones over and over again. No deadlines or clock-watching required. No endlessly grindng something to acquire silly tokens. I can just putter around and do as much or as little as I want in the time I have available. Blissfully stress free gaming, which is how it should be.
I agree with everything you said about making it fun so people want to do the content over and over. I think it has to be noted that the Live servers are filled with end-game raiders. Most only do content to further advance them in raiding. It sounds like you play older content which is great and fantastic but unfortunately the devs have to make current content fun for raiders. I believe the only way to do that is by making it easier to run alts through the content without falling behind on their mains. That means more account wide flags for many things. This has the added benefit of making grouping and alt raiding much easier. I don't know what it means for the money printing machine at DBG, but the current situation is going to end up at $0 sooner or later.
Our guild is pretty much boycotting the Chronos. Just too much other stuff to do right now with masks dropping at such an abysmal rate, all of our efforts are focused on that currently in trying to get masks. Such a shame, because all of it is fun, it's just too spread out and the ROI is entirely way too low for all of it.
yes, but most likely your mains were able to get chrono fast and easy before they changed the zones and the worst issue now is having to move critical runes from toon to toon if necessary. At least that is the situation many find themselves. They can afford to skip chrono because the hassle of moving runes is less than the hassle of grinding chrono.
