In Response to Mint's Question as pertains to many things

So, the Devs have been asking, a little bit at a time, about our opinions on various aspects of the game. Here are some things I think are worthy of consideration, and I'm going to critically poke at a little bit of everything.

1) Itemization: First and foremost. While I don't mind getting a nice variety of gear (plate, chain, leather, cloth) within the zones, when it comes to class-specific mission rewards, I would like to be offered a selection of my available sets of gear. We have been RNG dependent for quite a number of years, and quite frankly, getting the same mitigation/block chain sets four weeks in a row is maddening. I would much rather prefer to pick one out from any of the sets' pieces with different stats. I know they exist. I have seen them on other people. (I.E., if the mission reward is going to offer me pants, show me all the available sets for that type of gear and tier, and let me choose which I would prefer.) I would really, really like to see RNG go the way of the dodo, as it pertains to loot rewards.

Also, in reference to itemization, please consider the classes you're building gear for. Scouts don't really tank much of anything anymore since Bulwark has been necessitated among zones. Mages don't wear shields, and cannot use block gear. The only healer that can make use of block on anything is clerics. It's simply not useful, and is quite annoying to get something that is so badly, blatantly, terrible.

2) Shinies: These used to be quite a joy to find, and collect. With every single collection having a no-trade, it's become tedious. However, I do really like the addition of the heirloom no-trade bags of collectibles. If you are adamant on maintaining the very unpopular notion of no-trade shinies, please consider retaining this system in the future. It won't completely quell the tides of complaints about no-trades, but it is a viable solution to maintaining some exclusivity to the collectibles.

Also, there are quite a few shinies that have been underground just enough to not be trackable because the ? or ! icon does not show up, but can still be collected, and there are quite a few shinies that are still within scenery, most namely the blue shinies on (inside) the wall of Shar Vhal in Savage Weald. They cannot be gathered at all. I would suggest a double, and triple check next launch or shortly thereafter to check your "scenery net" of harvests.

3) The In-Game Economy: Apologies for blatancy, but you've damn near completely killed it. Making recipes that prioritize one or two harvests above all else (and books that are maddeningly common and completely untradeable to another account), makes for an extremely bloated harvest selection on the broker, many that will never be used up. You started off great with adding a merchant in the Blinding to accept harvests to create Artisan Amalgamations. You butchered the choice though, by only having her accept one type of harvest. In order to help with broker bloat, IMO, she should be accepting harvests of everything of that tier, not just one type, both commons and rares.

Having no-trade shinies ruins the cost of the other shinies because it makes it that much harder to sell as a set. It was much more preferable to have a semi-rare shiny (read *SEMI-*, not uber-sell-10-children,-OMG-I-just-fell-out-of-my-chair-and-died-because-I-found-this-rare-shiny) to trade on the broker than to have all the other ones become so common that it is a bore to get them.

Having luxury goods such as kronos and cobalt crates makes for an extremely inflated economy as well, and makes it difficult for the average joe who depends on kronos to play, or the returning player who wants to sub for a month to try out again, to keep up with buying because the plat runs out much more quickly than the inflation rises can keep up.

Also, considered limiting or removing use of heirloom tags and no-trade tags on jewelry and gear that comes from dungeons. Part of this reasoning ties into my next point.

4) Alts: People, in general, like variety. We get stale and bored working up just one toon to have stats comparable enough to complete the dungeons. We like alts. We miss alts. We miss being able to share the wealth among our accounts to make alts passable to great. Being able to buy gear and jewelry from someone else would give us a nice boost to being able to just jump right in and play again. It would also go a long ways towards supporting player economy.

5) Adornments: These have become tedious and quite obnoxious to get with their rarity, too. Most of the Void Etched red adorns I've never seen this entire year, and I've been all over the content pretty much every single day this year. The very best system I've seen you implement and then totally disregard was Planes of Prophecy, where you required at least a single loot on one alt, and then the account was flagged with the capability to buy these for alts with current tier currency. This went a very long way towards allowing a variety of characters to be played more often, and groups were pretty much continuous all day long that year, because people were more easily able to fill in the gaps with at least semi-viable alts.

6) Gear, again: The raid merchant key ring system. If an alt has completed a certain tier within a raid setting, allowing that account to purchase that tier of raid gear, goes a long way towards allowing more variety (also ties into the Alts keypoint.)

7) Quests: You've done better this year. There were definitely more quests. I know many folks will disagree with me here, but the new mission style you've adopted with Vasty Deep that requires finding items in zones makes me happy, especially since I can go back after I've finished the zone and hunt for them without an issue. However, joining a group late and not being able to complete a quest is kinda a buzzkill with this style of quest, since it requires the first named killed to see the items. I think it should be altered so that any named killed will allow the player to see the quest requirements in the zone. But it is a very nice change of pace from 'kill all these nameds'. However, I don't think that quest style should go away either. Perhaps a mix of the two to oscillate between would be nice, but would require a little more work on your end to create workable versions of these.

However, trying to pass off the Overseer system as "Quests"...please...no. Just make actual quests. These feel like a 5 minute daily phone app.

8) The Familiar NPC Quest Giver in SQ/FP: Please, please, please, please, please. Consider giving us a list of options to choose from, instead of receive mystery quest, notice no mobs fit that quest of this tier or the last, or maybe even the one before it, delete, re-take, loop. I sat one day, and took, deleted, and retook the quest over 45 times to get something that wasn't mystical, dire, or bovid. This is frustratingly painful, and time-consuming in a way I would definitely not prefer, and I would much prefer to have an extended list of his mob type offerings to choose from and go on my way quickly.

9) Crafting: I see what you were doing with the patterns. It's an okay implementation, but not particularly useful. Quite frankly, most people I know just toss the patterns out. There are only a handful that actually sell. Maybe consider making the patterns sellable on a merchant for that tier's currency instead of putting them in the dungeon boxes. I like the idea you were going after, but I really would prefer not to have so much craftable junk in my bags. Even the raid patterns, if I examine 99% of folks who run even just heroics, no one is wearing these pieces. The stats are just not impressive (or attractive as appearance gear) enough to warrant having the amount of patterns drop as they do.

Honestly, I would much prefer to see things like new poisons for my scouts, new mana totems that actually work (like the old Holgresh totems, cause that's the only one I can think of off the top of my head, even though previously there was one for each tier...), new health and power replenishment pots that actually work, because, for real, the percentage-based stuff just doesn't work well (it's sooo very terrible). I also liked the "build a mount" that was in PoP. I still use it for appearance on one of my alts.

Also terrible are 3-charge or single-use recipe books. Please stop doing this. It's annoying and there's not a reason for it other than RNG gating, which only makes me more angry, because RNG. I think the most succinctly-put comment I've read that pertains to this is "Instruction manuals don't go *poof* when you've finished building your IKEA furniture. This tactic makes it difficult for crafters to contribute to their guild or to the community when even the recipe book is a limited resource." Also, getting a chest in raid content with crafting books in it makes for really unenthusiastic looting. Please, limit those to solo or heroic content.

10) Reforging: Sorry, but the player base got the short end on this one. This is something that should have been left in the game. It made icky gear much more palatable with the ability to customize it, and now we're left with several gaps in desirable stats, and many pieces of gear with stats that are just as undesirable. This ties into itemization in the first point, and that if you are going to truly leave it out of the game, please, reconsider your stat buckets when creating gear for players. We miss recovery, accuracy, casting speed, strikethrough, and hate gain. There's probably one or two I'm missing, but I'm pretty tired right now and I'm sure someone could fill in the blanks if I am. Another option would be to create adornments that are actually viable stat boosts to the ones we are missing from gear and AA.

11) Bulwark, and other "broken" spells. Bulwark simply does not work as it's intended to work at least a quarter of the time. There have been times where I have seen multiple tanks cast a bulwark in raid, and none of them worked. Bulwark not consistently working causes quite a bit of frustration and strife when it fails (mechanical, not human error, though that does account for the other quarter of failures.) Also, there are spells that simply are just not worth the hotbar space for many classes, or don't quite work as they should. There are many forum threads on those though, so I'm going to save the space here.

12) Zone gear progression: This was kind of difficult to evaluate this year. Usual rule of thumb was mastercrafted to do solos, solo gear to do heroics, and heroic gear to do raid. Throwing crafted gear into heroic dungeons was confusing, and ended up being pretty blasé to see in the box over and over again. Generally though, the tier of gear was...okay. But just okay. Since I raid, I really don't remember wearing any of the heroic gear at all because I started picking up raid pieces more quickly than I did heroic pieces to start, because the heroics this year were so tangled and messy at launch that I saw more raids than heroic groups at the beginning of the expansion, which of course, rendered heroic gear pretty obsolete to my character.

13) Zone difficulty: It was nice to see a bit of challenge in figuring out the solos. There were some interesting mobs this year. However, some of the heroics were very over-tuned when they first launched. The Expert versions of the harder zones are loathsome enough the no one runs experts this year. Most folks ran them once and said no to a second go. The Challenge version of Vex Thal is non-existent on the grouping front, both for PUGS and in guilds. It's such a pain to do that I've never seen a group advertise for it, and I've never seen a guild group yet enthusiastic about the idea of going there. I love to delve into content, and usually devour it whole. However, I've never seen a completion of this zone yet from anyone. It needs toned down if you truly intended for people to do it, much less "enjoy" it. This also applies to any mob you apply strats that involve quick mathematics (looking at you VD2 Abomination) or any mobs that are so overloaded with strats that they could easily qualify as raid mobs instead of heroics (eyeing VT Challenge here). I understand there is supposed to be challenge, but to be frank, I can't sit here for 10 hours trying to complete one zone. It's physically unhealthy to do so, and I have other things in my life I have to do.

14) Zone art: It's getting better. We've seen more colors this year in some places. The color pallet still feels muted though in lots of places (so much brown, and many grey undertones, like grey was the base with just a wash of color). I miss the brightness of Antonica, and the colors of Faydwer and Vesspyr Isles (ah, for a true green and some rich embellishments!) I also miss things like time of day applying to cause a clear day and night.

This year though, though a lot of the zones were quite large and had much more color, they had some places that were difficult to navigate. This could use a bit of attention next expansion to avoid player frustration. Things like the ramp up to Shadowphage is built rather sloppily, and players tend to get stuck in many places going up to it. Places in Savage Weald, getting stuck between a tree and hillside because the slope was too small and deep to prevent me getting out of a falling motion by myself. I had to be called out. Things like falling off the cliff in Shadeweaver's Thicket and having to go all the way to Vex Thal and around to get back up top unless you had an evac handy made for a tedious run. A path up near the front of the zone would have been a nice zone addition to player travel.

15) Zone density: In regards to raid, is both overbearing and underwhelming. It's easy to handle, but there's sooooo much of it that the inclusion of the whistle to be rid of it was a relief, and also could have been totally unnecessary. There lacked a good balance between the distance between each named, and the amount of time it took to get to them. Ideally, one would only want 5-8 minutes of clearable trash between raid bosses to allow a mental reset and preparation between each in spell timers, having to go pee, putting on temps, changing to a new piece of gear, or whatever else players do between nameds. This year, Vex Thal took an upwards of an entire raid night *just for trash*. That's both unacceptable and fatiguing to the raid force. No one was enthusiastic to stay one night out of three just for trash clearing. Please, keep this in mind next time you build a zone. It is more desirable to have a smaller zone with less trash and travel, or if you feel the need to keep such large zones, add more mini-bosses, that drop some sort of 'cookie of appeasement'. Something not quite so difficult, but something of interest and fun. Please, keep in mind a little bit of psychology when zone-building: while a dungeon may be large and pretty, if there is nothing in it but space and trash, it creates a feeling of nothingness, that leads to a feeling of unimportance. IE, players will get bored and shrug off the content simply because the space created was filled with nothing of value for the time spent there. Simply a suggestion.

16) Staff follow-through: You've gotten better about asking what players would like to see, and transparency on the forums and communication in Discord. However, some of the things you say and do, are different that what you say, or are forgotten. Like a complete revamp of AA charts, or rebalancing melee with casters. In April of Blood of Luclin's expansion, you gave a significant boost to caster classes, with a promise that melee classes had their rebalance coming the next month, in May. That never happened. Melee auto-attack is in the pot, and it's frustrating. The class rebalance that has been promised to the player base has been lackluster at best. Also, AA trees have not been completed with their overhauls. Only 2 trees per class were done, and while I understand that this is quite literally thousands of spells and re-wordings that must take place, it is very badly needed, and has been very largely ignored. Though I would rather have waited to see the implementation of the revamp until it was completed for all charts at once, I really hope to see a completion of this in the coming expansion, with perhaps the addition of a new chart and/or more points to earn for all charts across the board.

17) Overseers: Is an uninspiring system akin to a "check in everyday" phone app. It's boring, uninspiring, and quite frankly, I get sooooooo many potions, harvests, and temporary adornments that I, and many others, just chuck them out of our bags unless they're "the really good ones". Getting something useful off overseers is rare enough that I might get a familiar pot once or twice a week, but I'm pretty overloaded with mercenary and mount pots, and spell timer reductions? Laughable at best. I may have pulled 4 of these total since the system has been implemented. I've never seen a "big ticket item" like the familiar reward (Again, RNG swear words inserted here) or any of that kind of stuff that was offered in past years. I really wish that this system were removed and these items placed on a merchant and given a way to be earned in the game (perhaps something with the daily mission currencies, that we tend to have thousands of by the end of the expansion?)

18) Item Availability: We don't have good ways to earn the really good things that we would like to see, and sometimes never do. (Just examples as applies to current expansion, but will likely apply to future expansions...) The super rare mount out of VT, or the really nice charm from Labomination or the adornment set/shinies out of Brawl. Familiar/mount/ spell/mercenary pots...etc. It'd be nice to see a way to buy these things via the thousands of currency we earn from these weekly/daily missions. And please, don't set them to something that's ungodly high in price, like anything bought with Jadeite Medallions. (Side note, I don't have the income to buy into cobalt crates. As much as I would like to, I just can't. So the Jadeite Medallions I have, I've earned from the daily overseer quest. I did the math one day, and it will take me something like 4 years to be able to buy just one thing priced at 7000 tokens. This is highly discouraging and pretty gross to see, and makes me not even care that these things could eventually be bought, because it's so far down the road that it likely won't be useful anymore when I *can* buy it.) I would suggest a re-evaluation of the prices of things like this. I don't mind a little bit expensive in-game, but there's pricey, and then there's downright ridiculous (like old-school Alberich the Wise @300M status? Maybe not so much now, but back then, totally crazy.)

19) Expansion Pricing: This is probably gonna get eye rolls, however, I feel that the prices of the expansions should be much lower. You'd be way more likely to bring back players, or gain more who would play multiple accounts, if they weren't priced so ridiculously high. The basic package used to get us the game plus at least a painting or mount for $30. Collector's edition used to be $40, and would get us basic package, plus a house item or two and something extra that pertained to gameplay, like a vitality pot or something like that. Useful, without being overpowered. Premium edition used to be $60, and always had all the goods of the previous expansion, plus a mount (or the really, really cool one from the past, that I still keep was a pewter dire-bear figurine). While I do understand that having a fully digitized game means that tangible playthings are no longer an option, I also realize having a fully digitized game means that there are no packaging costs, no installation discs or interior player packaging (like printed guides or maps) to pay for, and no physical distribution costs of actually putting the product on a truck and sending it somewhere. I.E.: There's no reason for the game's premium editions to cost more than my cable bill. IMO, you'd get more players and sell more copies of the expansions simply by lowering prices.

Overall, I really love the game, but I feel it's being hamstringed in quite a few places. I would love to see a return of players, and the continuation of the game. We can work together to make a better EQ2, the players and Devs. This has been a second home to me for over 15 years now, and I'd like to continue that. Keep EQ2 Great Always. <3

I just have one question: why didn't you put it in the thread where the Dev asked people to respond? Or did I miss something?

I'd really recommend moving this commentary to the main thread. It's hard enough to keep track of all the responses to a question like this without also having to hunt down alternate threads.

Because I couldn't remember where it was

https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq2/index.php?threads/new-expansion-itemization-and-rewards.600736/

this one?

On a side note, I sometimes wonder if putting something in different spots will actually get it read and looked at. Mercy has compiled an excellent summary of many of the things that were said in the other thread. The problem with having it all in one location is that the person who's actually supposed to read it gets bored after a while and starts skimming rather than actively reading every word in every post. Excellent suggestions or information gets missed that way. I'm sure Mint's a great person, but let's face it--how many of you actually read every line in every post on that thread that's now 8 pages long?

I don't, but then, it's not my job to. Mint's job as part of the developer team is to take all the info in. You do have I point, i'm not saying that. I just think if it's your job and you get income to do it, you will.

LOL. Thanks, I needed that laugh. No reflection on Mint, but this game is full of "we're gonna do this," which included a scout AA redesign last year and yet to occur. And don't even get me started on real life work examples.

So when is Everquest 2 getting the 2.99 monthly perk's like the original game?

Even though that’s probably true, I standby my comment, it’s not my job - it’s theirs.

I cant believe people still take the time to write these feedback threads with their track record of actually listening the last 15 years. Good on you for having faith I guess.

Have you ever explored Luclin in EQ1? The lore of the game states that the moon is locked into a permanent position where it's only daytime on one half of the moon and night time on the other. The lack of a day/night cycle in the Luclin content was very much intentional.

Blood of Luclin covered the areas known as Marus Seru, Mons Letalis, The Grey, the Scarlet Desert, Sanctus Seru, Dawnshroud Peaks, and a little bit of Maiden's Eye.

Marus Seru was a bleached white desert of nothingness and overwhelming heat, and Mons Letalis was just barren rocky canyons with barely anything but the wizard spire and the Shiknar hive meteor to distinguish it. The Grey is specifically named as such because the Shissar set up a magical vacuum around the area that would prevent the Greenmist from seeping into their temple and killing them. As a result, the color from the surrounding area was bleached away until it resembled Earth's own moon. Scarlet Desert had lot of colors, if you didn't mind orange. Dawnshround Peaks was a fairly thriving forest because it's explained that the Combine Empire that traveled up to Luclin brought numerous flora from Kunark and it took hold in the new area. They did a good job of representing Dawnshroud Peaks with Aurelian Coast, where they also included bits of the twilight area known as Maiden's Eye.

The developers were only designing the zones in the way they interpreted them from how they were in EQ1, and they did a good job. it's supposed to look bleak, washed out, and devoid of colors because that's how Luclin looked like in EQ1.

They did a better job with Reign of Shadows because the zones being represented were far more varied on Luclin's dark side of the moon. Echo Caverns in EQ1 wasn't anything special-- just a series of mostly nondescript caverns that players had to run through to get to the surface. In EQ2 they turned it into a full quarry, limestone caverns, and a giant thriving fungus patch (something that wasn't represented in EQ1 but there were lots of Reishi fungus enemies to kill.)

Savage Weald represents the outer parts of Tenebrous Mountains, the lower half of Grimling Forest, and Hollowshade Moor. In EQ1, Holoshade Moor was a newbie zone to the Vah Shir starting city of Shar Vahl. It had a tropical setting to it, but after the story of Luclin's destruction and reformation in EQ2, now is full of undead and decay. Grimling Forest is.. admittedly a bit of a disappointment because I was expecting it to be the giant mushroom forest it was in EQ1 (Think Lesser Faydark in EQ2), but I also know that this is only one part of the forest, and the main section still hasn't been introduced to the game.

Shadeweaver Thicket was a newbie zone in EQ1, but the art team really put the emphasis on "Thicket" in EQ2 by ramping up the sheer volume of trees. I don't mind that one bit.

No argument there. But just because someone is getting paid to do something, doesn't mean it's going to happen. There's a huge difference between having the responsibility and being accountable.

True enough. I try to see the lighter outcome of things, I suppose. Plus, I did take a long break from the game, so I don't know what all they really respond to and don't. If that's really the case though, it's too bad. It's an old game and a lot of people try pointing that out to me sometimes, but I would still think they would try a little.

I'm not talking specifically about Luclin in the day/night cycle. It's been missing for several expansions. Thalumbra was underground so excusable. But the rest of the expansions, even back to Sony, were missing the cycle, as if they simply forgot to coordinate time with circadian rhythm. It's one of my favorite things to go back to Antonica or some other super early zone, and just stand there and watch the sun set or rise.

The art team has done an incredible job with the scenery these last few expansions for the most part. I'd give it Luclin a 90 outta 100. But my critiques are listed above, and I'll stick to them. No need to rehash.

Well, two expansions also took place in the literal afterlife, so it's understandable that there wouldn't be a day night cycle in Obol Plains or Eidolon Jungle. There is one in Obulous Frontier (Kunark Ascending) and the shattered seas (Altar of Malice), because they take place on Norrath. It sounds like we're going to be exploring more of Norrath's seas in the next expansion, so I would expect a day/night cycle because we're back on Norrath.

This a great post!! Unfortunately, as some other have pointed out, I'm jaded. I saw a lot of effort, beta-testing, commentary and suggestions put forth in the last class balance effort; specifically Ingerimm/Paladins and it was all but ignored. Nice job and glad you have hope....

Thanks for taking the time to write this all out! You raise some interesting points and echo many of the sentiments found in the big Itemization thread. I definitely have lots to think about!

Bulwark works fine, exspecialy after the last changes, but it also worked before. If it does not work it is in any case a fail of the tank. If the tank know what he does there is no problem with barrage and bulwark, at the moment.

People don't like it as they have to focus on where else they would focus on dps and other things.If the tank sets its priorities correctly and in this case bulwark is one of them, there is no problem. Everyone clicks or forgets to press when necessary, here and there. It takes a great deal of timing and care to be used correctly. But that doesn't mean it won't work.

You clearly haven't experienced then the very rare but very real times you cast bulwark, it greys out as used and on cooldown, but it doesn't actually apply and your group takes the barrage? Survivable in all but challenge raid, but frustrating and clearly not fine.