insteaded of adding loot to zones, the just added upgraded drinal gear, that requires the original stuff. Now there is t1 and t2. bravo SoE...
It is good to hear that at least SOE is aware of the issues. There will never be a perfect system - if there was there would be no diversity (but then it would not be perfect... ). I am sure that the players can come up with a lot of good ideas, but only SOE really knows how much dev and recoding time it would take to make such changes. I am sure there is more to it than just changing stats on itemization - it also has to scale correctly for mentoring and such for one example. When this game first went live, the "guy in charge" at that time said he expected a lifespan of 3-4 years for the game - it has obviously gone far beyond that, and some of the things done in the early days have come back to haunt us. Just one example of what I would like to see is more randomization between the same items, perhaps via some kind of random purple adorn that could range from steenking awful to godlike, but I am sure others can come up a better way to implement something like that. Experimentation was a step in the right direction.
doesn't matter how things scale for mentoring really, its already out of whack and you 1 shot everything no matter what class you are. It can't possibly get any worse in that department.
I know exactly why and the same reason was touched on several times. Ease of balance. The person doing itemization at the time didn't like that melee's needed several extra stats for auto attack that pure casters (ones that melee'd very little or not at all) didn't. This was apparently causing some sort of problem for said dev when making items and then they decided to fundamentally change the game. As for items, EQ2 can take a note (or 5) from EQ1. they have items that grow similar to green adornments and even grow based on specific kills. So imagine you loot an item off MobX and every subsequent time you kill MobX it gets stronger. Not like ill will or the new wrist though where you have to loot and combine, just having it on you makes it stronger and for everyone else who has one as well. This is kind of like what Twyxx said when it came to mob or zone specific drops but works for all content. Also EQ1 recently made it so all 'appearanceless' gear is classless. So for EQ2 that would basically make all of the right side and top of the character screen slots 'classless' except for cloak and helm. Rings, wrists, neck, ears, belt, charms all classless
snip.. Random +1's or +2's on items could be interesting, and harkens back to the DnD/PnP era. Each item is an instance of an item template, so it might be remotely feasible to add an item 'grade' within each tier. I would imagine that some of the mechanics that make experimentation possible, would/could work here too, for adventure dropped gear.
Nice to see you guys are still putting energy and thought into an eight year old game instead of just hitting cruise control until EQNext. Looking forward to what you come up with this summer.
If you take nothing else from this post, please put insanely good items back into heroic content. There's nothing wrong with a couple pieces of best in slot (or close to it) gear coming from heroic zones each expansion/update. I really like running heroic zones, but I just don't see the point in the current system. I know a lot of raiders feel the same way. Also, I kinda hope this goes without saying, but they need to be extremely rare drops. One percent chance at the most imo.
To comment a little more on recent itemization things that have seemingly been to try to make it more interesting. Greed Adorns aren't that interesting, probably because it's just another problem. It's effectively another gear slot, but one that basically all give the same result (much like the rest of itemization). While they all give the same result, they all level at vastly different speeds. The pace of how they level really hasn't even kind of been evened out at all. For example the healer ones that level on cures, you can literally level them in two nights raiding. The ones that take xp to level? They take forever regardless of playstyle. The ones that level on damage taken still don't account for wards and lose all that xp, and they still take a ton of damage to level. It's like this across the board, all for the same basic thing. Not to mention that the vast majority of green adorns while pretty rare (even raid ones) are pretty useless because the heroic crafted ones are better. Interesting? Potentially, but really not at all right now. More just frustrating because of the pace at which most of them level. Made even worse by the fact that say you get a slightly better one, you actually lose out for that long time it takes to level most of them. Combine items like the old Ill Will. Especially not interesting because they all favor scouts, much like all the mythicals lately. Wouldn't even be interesting normally. Why isn't it interesting? It is basically a token system to guarantee a piece of loot after doing something so many times. It's still a generic item, it just takes you running the zone 4 times to get it. If the item itself isn't interesting the fact that you have to combine it 3 times isn't going to make it anymore interesting. Adorns in gear. Something that probably would have gone over a whole lot better if there was some logical thought applied to what adorns went in what gear. The idea behind it of less gear going to waste is decent. However, again, it doesn't matter when nothing is interesting. The slightly more powerful adorn thing worked slightly well in Guk Spire, because it gave you a reason to run that zone (except the drop rate was atrocious so no one did anyways). When it is every single zone and every single item, it isn't interest, it is just a chore trying to get the non bad adorns to drop. The pool of adorns is too large while the actual used adorn list is incredibly small. It also really doesn't matter when every adorn in game is effectively permanent now. All of this stuff, it's just upgrading my Sword of Ogre Slaying from +8 to +9, it's just doing it with a different skin while the end result is the same. So yes, I'm skeptical to say the least.
I found the uninteresting items at least tolerable when there were level cap movements. At least then the numbers jumped up quite a bit. But with no level cap movement and uninteresting items upgrades are literally tenths of a percent at this point. If items don't allow players to some how shift how they are played its pointless to make stats less uniform or bland. All that does it make it less apparent which items are best, which can be easily remedied by some tests, simple math or just asking the community. Even before stat consolidation EQ2's stat system wasn't very robust compared to other MMO's, even EQ1. Since the general stats seem to be handled, specialized stats could be added. Such as potency that only affects heals. Since its only heals it could be significantly more than 'general' potency. Even classes that aren't priests but have heals could pile this stat on and become viable back up or secondary healers (in theory).
Interesting idea...I'll leave out the general borked mechanics on reactives from triggers getting triggered for no heal when tandem with a shaman or not being triggered by flurry/ma/etc. I doubt they will do it no matter how well you state it Slip.... As for spell weapon stats aka ranged focused items...on paper this is a great idea problem is they didn't follow through on live with working the mechanics very well focus as its prime stat is a bit weird when it should have been disruption...but at least they reforge pretty well.
This stuff is really bugging me. I can confidently say this is one of my biggest problems if not THE biggest problem I have with EQ2 right now. When items are sharing a chance to drop something needs to be put in where it can't drop multiple times in a row. It can be tracked by player, combined and averaged out when in groups or raids. For example there are 6 players running a zone and they kill the end boss. When these players last ran this zone in different groups 5 of these players they saw ItemA drop while the 6th did not. This would make it so ItemA has a very low chance (about 1 in 6) of dropping but not impossible. They ALL saw ItemB drop last time they killed this boss so it has ZERO chance of dropping even though the last time they ran the zone they were all in different groups. i'm not talking about a super low chance or unlikely chance, IT WILL NOT DROP unless there are no other options. If not this then something else. In any case the end result should be where each individual player sees the item drop close to its set frequency. When an item has a 25% chance to drop it should appear that way for each individual player, not averaged out over the entire playerbase. When one person sees it half the time and another hasn't it seen it at all this is not an acceptable version of a 25% drop rate.
I think that could be 'expensive' to implement at least if left open ended and tied to exclusive, individual player data, from a resource utilization standpoint. If open ended, it would be a lot of new information to track, check, and cross-check, if it was to track of every significant mob and significant mob loot every individual player encountered. It might be somewhat feasible if they creatively used 'recent' timers to help track that information. Everyone in a raid inherits the same timer and so they often have a common 'memory' of the loot that dropped. Composition changes from week to week and even fight to fight, but a prevailing common most recent timer would probably be most applicable. Everyone that ran a heroic dungeon shares the same timer. Everyone that may have duo'd an AS zone would also share timer. And by recent, anything older than the last non-current timer would be discarded. No deep memory, but even still that slight adjustment would bring some things much more in favor. Any raid timer older than two weeks would be discarded. Any heroic timer older than a week would be discarded. Any solo timer older than three days would be discarded. Sorry, no long term memory.
I agree, a total memory would be pretty ridiculous. Considering how looting/item driven the game is that would quickly result in a lot of data even if restricted to 'named' mobs. If chests themselves were 'pre-packaged' the data could be lessened. Instead of a dynamic set of loot from a chest in your log it could simply be a 'true' for chest package 'B' for the third from last time you killed a mob. It would be no more data than an achievement takes up. But that would require quite an overhaul on the way loot drops. Short term memory like you say but basing it on the last timer seems a little strict. Theoretically this could result in two items taking turns when potentially more could be gotten but it is a lot better than just one over and over I suppose, and not as likely as current streaking. I think multiple iterations of the same kills could be kept if it was time limited since unplayed characters would eventually lose that data. If it was tracked for each named killed each one wouldn't need that much of a back log to keep a decent rotation of loot, 2 or 3 would easily be enough. Or you could put an overall 'cap' on how many overall loot iterations are stored per character which would make the amount of data each character would need much more predictable. If the overall cap wasn't large though it could backfire though. For example after the last raid of the week I ran a bunch of heroics and solos all those iterations could 'push' what I saw looted on raids out of the log before I raided again. EQ1's solution is less elegant and more heavy handed but clearly works. All raid content drops 'tokens' and all raid loot that is dropped can be bought with these tokens but at a high price. So while it may still take a while if the RNG is being streaky, you know that you will get what you want after 15-20 kills even if it never drops. EQ2 kind of had this during TSO, I remember my brother buying the drum for his dirge before it ever dropped in his MANY dungeon runs. And if all this is too much trouble they could just flip on smart loot but make it less than 100%. When players can come up with ideas left and right to fix/change something with almost all of them being viable and liked by the community to some degree you know there is a problem.
snip.. They wouldn't have to change or create 'loot packages', at least not in a way that would change how that part probably works right now. There are only so many items, and thus only so many combinations of loot from each chest. There are no 'randomly' inserted items, meaning its a closed, known set. They could 'hash' all possible combinations and achieve the same result as if they had instead created packaged loot combinations up front. It's a bit of a kludge, but on the surface not a terribly unreasonable one. If it came down to capping iterations, and they take advantage of using shared timers, I don't know how much issue it really would work out to be. Even if you pushed your 'important' timers out of 'memory', enough others probably didn't. At worst, perhaps providing temporary lock that could be applied to say 10, maybe 15 or 20, mobs of your own choosing. That way if you run a few heroics between the raid memories you wanted to save, the next raid would push those heroics out instead of the raid memories that were at the top of the list. The same principle would work in the same regard if you run a bunch of heroics you wanted to save between running a few AS.
Just increase the gaps between solo-itemization / grp-itemization and raid-itemization by quite a huge slice and you did the first step in the right direction. +0,4cb/pot wont do it, +4cb/pot will do - plus add class specific set-bonuses to armor and other stuff again which offer really good stuff, and I am not talking about +650abmod +3cb and +3flurry - I am talking about powerful class specific enhancements of certain abilities, e.g. if full armor set obtained you double your damage on your heat based spells (as a wizard) or you get the ability to singlewield dualhanders (as a tank) etc. I know people will scream "OP", but lets face it, no matter how "OP" you would players make, you can always adapt content to be this hard you actually need your "OP"-stuff - the challenge of this is to create a content curve where you actually really have quite a smooth challenge the more leet stuff you obtain.
No. No because then the only content raiders effectively have to do is raiding. No because then the only content heroic players have to do is heroic. No because solo players will be unable to transition to heroic. No because heroic players will be unable to transition to raiding. The spectrum of power is already far too wide. That's no one's fault who plays. And largely not the fault of the designers and developers. Some of it is by consequences that probably could not be foreseen. For more accessible, competitive, and still challenging content to be available, the spectrum must shrunk.
Since you can kill x4 content with a single group in fabled solo-gear I dont have any idea what you are about.
That's probably the most realistic at this point since the coding exists. Something has to be done though. I agree that this is one of the biggest things ruining the raiding experience for me. Also, I miss the item data being out there. We used to be able to go to Zam and see the drop rates and loot tables, but for some reason during Skyshrine Zam wasn't getting the data anymore. Drop %'s help w/ expectations. In looking at the Pirate Kings drops, for example, you have 9 weapons on the loot table. A natural assumption would be that all the drops would have the same rate except maybe the two brawler weaps since they are only useful for 1-2 people in a raid. Between Validus, Equilibrium and Revelations they have discovered all the weapons and the majority are going to alts now. ...except none of the three have seen the bow yet. Collectively that's likely 45+ kills without the bow on a drop rate that intuitively should be no less than 20%. Now something clearly is wrong here, but we don't bring it up cause we just assume small sample size. Then it's not until months later that we realize it's likely more than just rng and the drop rate is bugged. If one item like this out of the group is intended to have a really low drop rate then that's something that needs to be communicated. Free loot data 2013! Also, brawler 2h's need to go the way of the scout shield.
