End game unfriendly to returning player

I totally agree !

I post again hère !!

New extension = New game !

I do not understand your choices, strategy for this new expansion.
I am a former player I quit in 2010 and resumed in December 2021.
your concept of shadow etheral token is very unfair because it restricts the dps ... and prevents to play in group heroic 1 and 2. I can understand that you reserve the heroic 2 for old players of previous expansions (even if new expansion = we start from zero)

In MMORPG : playing in a group is basic.
when Sony was in charge it didn't turn out like that and it's sad that you don't take care of the new and old players who want to come back.
Why not make an etheral coin shadow pack in the market place to catch up? or just remove this stupidity and just be smart? the Pantheon mmo is coming ... pamper your players!


to continue in the inconsistencies:
-the drop rate of adept books is too low, we are all full experts before ... stupid
-the recipes ... similar we can do mastercrated when it will be useless ... since we will be full stuff before
- the currency! not to create a new metal above the decks? so simple ... rather to speak in billions and millions!
- you have block all New zone for each characrter under 120...

please make extensions intelligently.

good year !

continuation and end: I remember a time when we were all max in bonus crit, luck crit ... with the new extension of the time they released us the potency which was THE new strat to be mounted. no clamping which requires tokens from a past extension. More than I came back I see a lot of group pickup looking for tanks, heal ... there are players but they are not powerful enough to play in group .... a highlight for a multiplayer game

Responding to new players without knowing things like the characters name or if they are in a guild just makes many of the comments in this thread pretty much a waste. Knowing the character name could allow people to look up what your character is actually in need of. Seeing if you are in a guild will allow players to see the status of that guild and if the guild is equipped to get you where you want to go in the game. This is an MMO and it requires the help from other players to quickly get your character better and better.

Just making threads complaining to the Devs, "I dont have as much stuff as other players do", is like saying you were supposed to go with your friends to the grocery and get some food...you showed up an hour late and your friends were all done shopping and leaving the store as you were arriving...then you got pissed at the STORE for your friends having all this food already.

Man up, walk into the grocery and get your damn food. You might be a bit behind your friends but if want to catch up you WILL.


OMG this thread has reduced me to wierd storytelling analogies... heheh (and i just realized this whole Grocery store..new player thing could really take on a life of its own...we need a fan fiction forum for this...)

new players don't want straight passes, they just want shadow etheral coins removed because those are the problem areas. the rest is fine. I have some good gear that I went to get, I did the quests, I caught all my AA, I go up my merc and my mount at my own pace, but the developers block the players with their shadow etheral coin.

If you give new players all the weeks' worth of work that the existing playerbase did over the summer, there really will be crowds with pitchforks and torches. In the past, if you failed to get the Summer Ethereals, you were just S.O.L. Instead of complaining because you can't have everything at once, perhaps you should be thankful that you can get these upgrades at all.

Since Darkzero is posting the same post all over the place, let me reprise part of what I already responded to him with elsewhere:

All you have to do to earn Ethereal Trackers is to run weekly missions, including the Solo Weekly, which anyone who can get through the VoV sig line will be able to manage. (For those new to the Ethereals, you can also get the Ethereal Trackers doing weekly Heroic I and Heroic II missions, but for our purposes here, the solo weeklies are the most accessible).

I was out due to illness this summer for five long weeks, meaning I was waaayyy behind on Ethereal Trackers. I caught up before VoV launched simply by getting all my baby alts up to level 120, equipping them from the RoS Tishan's Lockbox, and running them through the Solo weeklies. You can do the exact same thing in VoV to shorten the amount of time it takes to get caught up, since the Ethereal Trackers are account-wide.

It's literally possible to grind a brand new alt to end game in a fairly short amount of time by doing the Agnostic Dungeons (levels 10-95), then refer to the wiki's Solo Timelines guide and do quest lines in Vesspyr Isles and up until you're high enough level to move on to a higher level zone, then do quests there, etc. until you're 120. This is what I did, so I know it can be done. Once that alt is 120, go to the OP here and gear them, then run them through the weekly solo adventure mission every week. The more alts you can do this with, the faster you will catch up on the Summer Ethereals.

The Ethereal Merchant is Kelaci Vol'Luissa, who you will find on a cliffside in Savage Weald (Reign of Shadows) at (16.07, 110.05, -719.27).

The game has never allowed you to just buy Ethereal coinage. Unless, of course, you went to a Free Trade server such as Isle of Refuge, bought the coins there, waited 30 days then paid for a Server Transfer, and brought the coins back to your regular server. Sorry, there's no instant gratification on this.

I get the impression there will be no ethereals going forward. There's some pain to go through this year, but going forward it's stopping.. Or so I'm led to believe.

Kander did say in discord that the summer event as it stands now is going away. They plan to add "live events" or something but I remain to be seen how that will play out.

The issue with live events that impact game character performance are a plague on all games.

I played the game from the start (pretty much) and have left and returned a few times since then and each time it got harder and took longer to get on parity with the veterans. Each time I returned I accepted that I had to put in the hours to do it, but until recently there was no PTW option to upgrade what appear to be essential items in the current game. I got back to the game 3 days ago, bought the basic game and hope to try to catch up again without being forced to invest cold hard cash. It is going to take time and effort and I accept that, but there does need to be the mechanic in the game to attract new people or old players back.

I see the age old arguments being talked about again - why should new players be given handouts that negate the time and effort that veterans have put in? My take on it is that those Vets got what they got through time and effort, and got it without dipping into their wallets (subscriptions and expansion costs aside). New players can get it by either stumping up for it, or by putting in the time. I don't care either way. The fact that DBG gets bonus cash from those willing to pay and as a result keeps the game running has to be a good thing, right?

What shouldn't exist is a PTW option that is not achievable through normal gameplay. I know it is hard to accept that it can take months of hard slog to train up mounts and mercs and such like, and because of the timescales involved these gameplay mechanics should not preclude anyone from doing some of the basic (H1 and lower) content. If I get to the point where I want to be hitting H2s and find I still need to invest money to buy a mount or merc or familiar from the Store I am not going to be happy. I would like to think that in the time it takes for me to get competent in H1s that I could reasonably expect to have earned or had a drop of sufficiently good versions to get me through.

What I also resent is legacy items or abilities in the game from previous expansions that are seen as 'must have'. I don't have a problem with people earning them in one expansion that gives those players an advantage in the early days of a new expansion, but they should become defunct at some point in the cycle of a new expansion, maybe at H1/H2 level.

When all is said and done, those who put the time and effort into the game will learn more about their class and will usually be better players than people new to the game. Experience makes a difference.

Let me preface this by saying I'm one of those who has an issue with the advantage that p2w items give a player when combat/potency mitigation is factored in.

However, I do want you to realize that the P2W option came *first* then the "attainable by the peasants" version was added last summer. It was even worse before that was added. At least now you can earn a comparable buff for two of the areas.

I understand people grinded... ground? For the ethereal trackers but they get wild for the returning/more casual players. And then you have LESS people for heroics. This is worse on servers with ailing populations.

the problem is that you don't understand or don't want to understand.

on ROS the etheral shadow trackers have been implemented. OK, no worries.
and I would have agreed with you as long as the ROS extension was still the last active extension.

but keeping it on VoV is nonsense. Otherwise why not keep the advantages acquired at the beginning of the game when the max level was 50? each extension must reset previous extensions.

how many players can't find a pick-up group because people don't have etheral...? this system penalizes everyone.

Every game on the planet, with the exception of this one (maybe eq1??) has a total reset. It is HOW those companies keep people coming back. I don't understand why this game insists on legacy bullcrap.

Maybe go play those games if thats what you want. I like this system.knowing that what ive done historically can add to my ability to play, thats what keeps me coming back

meh nobody cares (clearly from your interactions on the forums) what you thing. You're an elitist pig and everyone knows it.

Heres a crazy thought: Im not concerned with you liking me.

May strike you as odd, given your Gen Z attitude of "I deserve it because I showed up once". Do some work, take some pride, stop asking for handouts. Theyre called achievements because you actually have to do them to get them. Wild, right?

Ive never said spend a year farming/grinding. What I have said is you dont just deserve items because you logged in for 3 hours in the last month.

We actually don’t have less for heroics lol, because we have the same people we did then with. Retuning players have huge handouts this year. If you max everything from solos and POIs and other things you will be able to do heroics. Your pot with maxxed basic mount and bardings will still put you around 505k pot. Easy to do H1s. Will you burn through in 15 mins, no, but you will be able to do it and get gear to make it faster next time.

Why do you phrase it as "handouts?" are you suggesting that returning players in a new expansion should acquire all gear and items from old contents in order to effectively do quests? As someone above sarcastically suggested, why stop at RoS contents, why not require returning players finish lvl 50, lvl 70, levle 80 etc contents. DayBreak would make so much money with their old contents when they publish new expansion, lol

How long do you think new or returning players need spend time on old contents? a year? half a year? why would any sensible persons even buy this new expansion if they have to spend huge amount of time on old contents?

When they finally finish all old contents, they start playing this expansion and Daybreak will have new contents as veteran players will start crying about no contents for them, so new/returning players will be perpetually playing old contents?

Please see this for more information on why I posted what I uh, posted.

I have to admit that the terms "end game" and "returning player" sound odd to me when put together. My first assumption with this or any game would be that end game is going to take quite some time to achieve for someone who hasn't been playing continuously. The fact that there is an ocean of content after 15 years of expansions would only make it more so.

I will freely admit that I enjoy the questing and the content, and that my goal was never to ignore all that came before in order to go straight to the latest and greatest Heroics and raiding. I think if there is a mistake I would identify it's that there is no facilitation and encouragement to form groups to go through low level heroic instances. A player shouldn't have to be level 125 to find a pickup group and go into a heroic instance.

Realistically, though, that is up to the players as much as the game designers. I've noticed that even on the Time Locked Expansion (TLE) servers, everyone is trying to level up as quickly as possible, which boggles me.