GU100: The (Good?), the Bad, and the Ugly

Asking for enlightenment... be careful what you wish for, sir! If there's one thing we gamers have in abundance, it's spare time and you never know when you might get a wall of text like this one!

First off, I'll start by saying that what you call "...wanting db to force my opinions on everyone else..." I would call providing focused feedback on mechanics and itemization. Since there isn't much of a beta process for updates anymore, it's kind of super important.

What is wrong with handing out OP buffs and abilities and leaving it down to each player to decide whether to use them? Well... developers have to basically pick a threshold for timed quest objectives, dps checks, heal checks, etc. where those things feel both challenging and rewarding for as many people as possible. If the game isn't well balanced, with sensible item progression and sound mechanics, that becomes impossible to do. If they design heroic zones to be doable by a solo geared party with no heartbound buffs, with say a Paladin tank and a Warden healer(Disclaimer! I'm not trying to incur the wrath of anyone who plays those classes, just saying in terms of class skills they have the short end of the stick with current mechanics)... I will probably be able to solo those zones. That's not balanced. If I joined that solo geared party, I'd likely be more of a nuisance than a help, since I'd throw things out of whack and pull agro. Can I handicap myself to make it work? Sure. Is that fun gameplay? No.

What keeps me interested in this game is coming up against something with a well-prepared group or a raid that just destroys us on our first try. We pick ourselves up and start brainstorming how we could optimize special class abilities, temporary buffs, consumable items, or whatever... wracking our brains for every advantage to be successful against a big heal check, dps check, timed objective, or whatever the situation calls for. There's a real sense of teamwork and awesomeness when every single player has to pull out all the stops to win the fight.

With raid content there is another aspect, which is competition between guilds to see who can clear content first. If you want to put your best foot forward as a guild, every member needs to make full use of the tools available to them. If that means clicking an item in the guild hall every half hour for THE BIGGEST BUFF IN THE GAME BY FAR, you better believe we will do it.

Is clicking it every half hour a pain for "quality of life" reasons? Yes. Is it happenstance that you can avoid a lot of that headache by using a second paid account rather than an actual in game friend to heartbound? Maybe. This is the first of my two main points of constructive criticism for the current implementation.

My second point is actually a broader concern about fervor in general, but since Heartbound is the single biggest potential source of fervor for all players across all playstyles, it's very relevant to this dialog.

I've already broken it down on another thread, so I will quote it here:

My example oversimplifies it some, the real math actually has worse implications for class balance when you consider the fact that auto attack damage isn't increased by fervor, priests without wards get extremely minimal defensive benefit from fervor, and certain classes now have personal and group fervor buffs that lose relative value to some extent the more it becomes possible to get significant fervor from other sources.

The more fervor gets thrown around, the worse it will be for class balance AND player power curve across all playstyles. Is fervor fun to have? Absolutely. So is cake. People love things that are bad for them.

So my feedback is, Heartbound is too much cake. Not only on an individual player level, but for the game as a whole. It is a detriment to the game's health both short term and long term.

Not to mention that, as with all things inflation, the more of something players have now, the more they will want from future rewards in order to feel satisfied. Fervor is already enough trouble as it is, it's going to be bad times as it gets further inflated.

At this point I hate GU100. They could roll the server back tomorrow and scrap the whole damn thing and I would be happy. Solve alot of issues.

Decided to poke around zek solo for a bit to collect shinies. All was happy go lucky until 8 heroics steam rolled me... Glad these are solo mobs /eyeroll

I vehemently concur. The trivialization of content and confusing/myopic itemization decisions by DBG has taken away about 80% of my (remaining and already low) desire to play this game. I'm going to be fair and give them a little bit of time to fix this disaster, but I'm not far away from just unsubscribing and walking away. Family, job, social activities... I don't have time in my life to play games that aren't challenging and fun. I make time for games like EQ2 for precisely that reason.

Seventeen years of Everquesting and I've never been as frustrated with any dev team as I am with the one responsible for the last two major content releases in EQ2. If EQ2Flames was still an active community, I would be lighting up the general forum with the most epic rant I've ever written in my 25 years of online gaming... and I've authored more than a few. My true feelings can't be expressed here, because they contain words and sentiments unfit for the polite company that we are required to keep around here.

No challenge to kill or be killed. Instant death whether its you or the mob sucks. And there seems to be alot of sucking going on in game lately.

what in the world are you blaring about. your high-pitched whiny noises is what influences devs to produce trivial content and ruin this once-long-ago interesting game.

stop and examine the situation. congratulations! you got rolled by 8 solo mobs. you're all too common of a combination of a) doesn't know the class, b) how to gear and c) being not self-aware about a & b. at least focus on c) and don't pull 8 mobs.

but no, it's way easier to come here and complain how game's too hard.

Agreed.

These heroic groups did kill me once my first time through as i was watchin tv and running through blowing everything up. I'm glad they did, it caught me off guard and forced me to actually pay attention for a minute and kill them after reviving.

I don't like clearing the adv solo in 5 minutes and have no interest in visiting solo zek again.

I'd have to think it'd be easy to simply up the resolve and loot on the adv solo and offer it alongside a regular solo version like they did in aom.

Read it again. I said ya either instantly kill them or they instantly kill you. And you think that's fun?

But you're right. I should just stick to the heroic instance if I want a challenge oh wait I do and it's the same story their. The whining as you put it is the power gap that's sort of the highlight of this entire thread.

Union Captain of eq2 at the Bridge: [to his surgeon] Can you help me live a little more? I expect good news.

You not paying to play for BL - but you do paying to unlock this class - amen on that. Plus I am not against BL having front raw sit this x-pack .... If you can't beat system - join system thus as I said I have both warlock (playing it since 2004) and beastlord (about 3 days total played time).. Instead of ******** I simply enjoy steamrolling of new flavor of the year

Surgeon: Dammit jim I'm a key farmer not a healer.