Dungeon Maker Changes Coming Dec. 16

I do think those who made recent purchases for this item should be refunded the station cash spent.

Doubtful anyone who made recent purchases for the dungeon maker will get a refund. You'll still have had (insert time when purchased) worth of that particular purchase. Especially as it is 3 years old. Its a frustrating experience.
Games Workshop did the same trick with the codex releases.

However, SoE. You've had 3 years of experience of how us the playerbase are using the dungeon maker. Why now? Because of a few threads complaining? Or the bug squash? Roughly now the sig line gets you to 98 1/2 depending on bonuses etc, everyones a little different.

So that usually is fine, we had other avenues to grind up that last bit of xp, SS for example. Except now, hardly anyone knows or is confident enough to run the contested zone in AoM, leaving the playerbase with a tedious solo grind. Up the xp for the quest lines to actually hit us at level 100.

Such a heavy handed approach for something you could have clipped in the bud a year or two ago.

Also rip easy repair kits </3

Holly claims that this change is being made for the health of the game to end an exploit that allows too many players to bypass content. Her entire post is nothing more than weasel words. The only reason that DM is essentially being removed from the game is that some exec believes removing it will increase sales in the Marketplace. It is all about the cash.

"some players also found that Dungeon Maker could be used to bypass adventuring and quickly gain experience without risk."

What is the difference between using the Dungeons to gain experience quickly and purchasing a Heroic Token? Where are the updates to existing low-level content so players don't feel a need to bypass those levels? Where are the new zones for lower level players? Basically, a new player to EQ2 must get the impression that the game starts at 85 and one must spend $35 to start playing the game.

"Dungeon Mark rewards will be removed"

How do the DM rewards competing with any content items? The simple answer is that DM items only compete with other Marketplace items so that is the real reason for removing them. Just like the Goblin Games, DM marks must be removed because the bean counters do not want any way for players to be able to obtain fluff items without using real currency to purchase station cash.

What is sad is that Sony is paying SOE executives money to sit around thinking up ways to milk more money out of EQ2 players by removing aspects of the game yet they absolutely refuse to spend a dime advertising the game. World of Warcraft, a game I thought irrelevant long ago, still has an advertising campaign that is running commercials during prime time events like college sports.

Holly, instead of looking for new things to nerf in the game, why not actually advertise the game on television to get new revenue?

After reading a lot of this I finally feel the need to weigh in with my opinion.

OK, folks complained that others were levelling too fast so this should be forbidden to all. Typical.

I have alts, a lot of them. After grinding the first few to max level I don't want to run the same boring overland stuff other than the sig lines with each toon. I have used DM to PL alts so I can get to heroic content with them using the spare gear I picked up with my main few toons. If someone plays only one toon, great. I don't. I have a level 95 of everything. There is a reason for this. The experience changes every expansion and some toons are suddenly more fun to play while others are less. How many of you enjoyed really your shamans last xpac?

The solution I would like to suggest is to NOT take the XP out of DM, but make it something along the lines of the veteran bonus system. With no toon maxxed, almost no DM XP awarded. With say 5 or more, enough to start using it to bypass content that you will have obviously already played over and over. Seriously, other than a guild group when was the last time you saw a shout in LFG for folks to do overland zones or work through the sig? All of the grouping is in heroic content or above. Most if not all of the overland content is solo or solo/merc anyway where a group is overkill.

Then you have the situation where SOE has bowed to the squeaky wheels and nerfed XP for anything other than the new content for 95+ toons, driving us to it with goads and whips. It is indeed well done content but it gets very boring the nth time through. As far as the other zone nerfs go, not blaming the devs here as they're doing what they are told to do.

Bottom line for this rant is that if you want to make us run the new content fine, but let us level our various alts a little faster or folks like me may finally just say we're done. DM was a great tool for that, and still could be without allowing people to PL their primary toon.

Is anyone else able to buy the 48 slot box with marks or was this removed and if it was removed why because I thought the changes do not take place until the 16th.

Please read that again, slowly and carefully. There is no point in my postings (in this thread or anywhere else) where I cite beta testers as the reason for a problem. I'm referring to the clamoring that took place AFTER dungeon maker's release on these forums from ANYONE and EVERYONE that didn't like the idea of playing with something that wasn't their actual character. If people had simply accepted it as it was and not tried to make it more appealing to themselves, I don't believe we would be having this discussion right now. It was a kneejerk reaction on everyone's part, both SOE and the players. A lot of money had been lost with the triple cash event that preceded the expansion release and listening to the players sounded like a good idea at the time.

You're making a lot of assumptions about SOE and their knowledge about DM being set up for correction before the last big SC sale. I believe this has only come up more recently and this quick & dirty method is the quickest solution they came up with. The funny thing is the DM xp nerf had already occured BEFORE the sale, so why would people even buy the feature then? I'm not saying you should have seen this coming, but you should have seen something wrong with the idea of picking this up.

They were there last night when I checked.

I think there is a hidden limit to how many boxes you can buy. I haven't bought any and can see the boxes in the market place. My husband bought 12 and can no longer see them. I brought up his account on my computer and still couldn't see them. They remain visible on my accounts though. He changed from the US to the EU and could see the boxes. Since the US and the EU are different game sets with different counts for things like veteran's bonuses it would further imply a hidden purchase limit.

One thing about this change, and I still think it is a ridiculous change, is that DM was part of the 4000 SC adventure feature pack bundle (still is listed as of this morning). However, DM was a 1000 SC feature prior to 12/11/2014 and now free. The 4000 SC really should be adjusted down to maintain the original value (really should have been done when DM went free).

Prior to DM going free, all of the features of AoD al a carte totaled 7000 SC if bought separately. The 4000 SC bundle amounted to a 42.86% discount over buying them separately. Now that DM is free, the actual discount for the bundle is 33.33%. In order to retain the discount value of the remaining components, the bundle price needs to be reduced to 3428 SC (6000 SC al a carte total - 42.86%).

Also FYI, if you pick up DM for free this weekend, it will remove the discount bundle as an option to purchase once you log out and log back in.

Are you sure this isn't just because the box is lore, so if you have one already you can't see it in the marketplace?
https://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/index.php?threads/box-of-endless-usefullness.525093/

The box isn't lore it is just heirloom, I just checked it in game. They might be hidden for characters below level 20 however, I noticed that the mount can only be seen/purchased if you are 85+. The minimum level for DM is 20..

actually, you have to untick the box "Hide unusable items" ... then you can see the mount for example ... you can even buy it - did it on my lvl 65 Ranger ... and you can even ride your horse, but put the Pegasus into the appearance slot.

On the one hand, this doesn't affect me personally because I just don't have the fortitude to grind out levels, aa, or anything. I just level things slowly. Also, I think it is cool that it can be used for creative story dungeons.

I just wish there would be some sort of reward for completing dungeons. Can't you come up with something, perhaps a list of achievements, or titles, or something. Just fluff rewards that won't hurt anything but satisfies our collector and achievement wants?

My husband was looking for the boxes on his level 100 character, so I don't think that is the reason the boxes dissappeared after he bought 12.

Yep, that works, thanks Caranthir!

To get back on topic, I do wonder if DM was such an "exploit" that it was having a negative impact on the health of the game, why not make the change immediately? So, basically they are giving everyone that wants to the whole weekend to use this "exploit". To me, that takes a lot of steam out of their argument.

SOE is really missing an opportunity here. The player base in EQ2 really has some very creative people. Player made dungeons/zones, quests, etc. could really benefit the game in terms of replayability. It would also remove some of the burden from the devs to create all the world content and therefore allow them time to fix current content, bugs and so forth. If you look at the "New" tab in the SC store in game, 20 out of the 26 items there are Player Studio items. So, there is definitely precedent, and even reliance, for player made content. It is just now, outside of DM, it is all fluff.

If DM was so over powered, then make the fixes to it. Cap the number of mobs in the dungeon based on the size. They should be able to easily figure out caps based upon their own mob densities in the parent dungeons of the DM layouts. This could then be used as the frame work for player made instances throughout the world.

Playable player made content that has a story and not full of stacked mobs might just get more people interested in this game. You could do some really neat things in DM, it actually made things more challenging than SOE zones of that era and older.

I bought some the other night, and it was behaving a bit buggy. The box used to disappear on the marketplace if you had one anywhere in your inventory, bank, house vault, etc. Now it seems to let you keep buying them (for some reason you have to buy them one at a time), but at some point it still randomly disappears on the marketplace. After it disappears in the marketplace, you have to move all of the boxes you have into the shared bank, alt over to another character, then take them out of the shared bank and into the other character's inventory, then alt back to the original character and you will be able to buy them again. If you have an alt that doesn't have any yet, just make sure there are none in the shared bank, and alt over to that character to do the purchasing.

Don't forget to buy a few extra Dimensional Quivers and Pouches if you want them in the future.

To those arguing that SOE should fix DM rather than killing it, I must ask you, how ? Every MMO I have ever heard of that had experimented with player-made content has failed for precisely the same reasons. The bottom line is that players have totally different, conflicting motivations for content creation compared to developers. Players are conditioned to find the fastest, easiest, most efficient means to achieve their goals, as that is evidence of their mastery of the game. The job of the developer is to keep providing additional, more difficult goals to achieve and progressively more challenging and demanding obstacles the player must overcome to reach them. If player-made content can't provide any valuable rewards more quickly or efficiently than existing content, players have no motivation to consume that content, and the feature fails. If player-made content has the potential to generate rewards more efficiently than existing content, it will obsolete said existing content.

It's impossible to balance player-generated content without having to get each new creation reviewed by the developers, which is generally not feasible. Add that to the fact that game design is actually pretty difficult, and thus 99% of player generated content is terrible, unfinished, or a combination of both, and you see why DM was doomed before it even launched.

I have left all SOE games due to decisions and have removed all SOE games from my pc. This was after buying the CE and a year sub. Sorry but I feel that SOE is out of touch with the player base and keeps pigeon holing them into where to play. Sorry but that is pure poor decisions, I use to keyword USE to raid, group, craft and putz about my IoR home to decorate.

I find it offensive that Holly, who I have a ton of expletives for, slaps the player base in the face then stabs them in the heart with no remorse and says "We don't want you skipping content" lie. Sorry but if that was the case, the level 85 token needs to go from market place and so does the AA Bauble. You want folks to enjoy the game but only on your terms. They want the player base at the top end because of the double/bonus xp weekends. If they wanted us to enjoy the game at all levels they would get rid of the bonus/double xp perks.

I know the EQ2 is a skeleton crew and on life support, hence if it wasn't they wouldn't of pulled dev's from other games to get out the latest expansion. Seems to be about every 2-3 years SOE does something dirty and low handed and people leave the game again and move on.

If they went to a mob level system based on the party level/player level like oh Diablo series there would be no reason to slap your player base in the face with constant nerfs! But of course this makes sense!

Keeping up with this logic the next thing to go must be exp awarded from shiny collections!

Sorry to break it to you but you're wrong. 10 year vet with two accounts and 20+ characters.

I've never set foot in a DM dungeon and have absolutely no intention of ever doing so.

I suspect I'm not unique either...