Kander's Candor: What's Going on with TLE?

Dear Kander:
I think maybe you miss understood us the whole time about raid gear needs to get buffed. It needs to be buffed in the sense of treasured and legendary gear have 3-4 blue stats and most raid gear has 1. I do not know why this can not be fixed.

Thank you for this post.

Beyond everything that Onra, Poofe, and Seifer have stated in this thread, I would be open to an overall nerf to all treasured and legendary pieces instead of buffing fabled stuff, sadly that is more work.

Thank you Kander for some feedback that is something we have been waiting for a long time. It's better to hear something then nothing that is for sure

This is just such a ridiculous situation, and the response is even worse man. You know what's worse then being told that all of these items are "working as intended" and that all the loot has been looked at and updated when it clearly wasn't, and clearly still hasn't been since every time we loot a new item, such as Gnorbl's Earring then WE have to make a post to YOU in order to get it updated, since you can't just look at the loot yourself, and do your job yourself to fix the items with no stats like that?

It's even worse that we take all the time for you, do your job for you, go through all the items, spend hours going through stats and items from each zone and giving feedback for them and updates that need to change for each item, basically everything you should be doing on your own as part of your job, and then be told that none of that is going to change, after we were told you were going to update it and working hard to fix it.

Been playing MMOs for the past 16 years, many different ones, even EQ2 in the past, and never seen this complete disregard for the players and their experience with the game, the feedback we give you is not "these things need some tweaking" the feedback we are giving you is "these are the bare minimum things that need some changing, or we are all going to stop playing here". As it is right now on TLE, almost all the players that haven't quit yet are only the ones in the few guilds that have stuck through the raiding and are trying to wait for some type of update, some change to the loot to make the raiding worthwhile at all, and by not addressing it, you are going to lose those players, and saying "it will be different in EoF and RoK and later" doesn't mean anything to us when we have been paying for the experience of grouping and raiding and getting better items with each kill and progressing through the content, and we haven't been getting that.

I'm done with this server, I'm done with this game, you had 5000-6000+ people come back to play on this server when it launched, and the mix of OP updated loot and old loot that never got updated from raids, along with how ridiculously easy the content was with the new loot and stats made about 50% of those quit before DoF came out, and having DoF get no attention at all the entire 3 months it was out (which was 2 months too long, due to you pushing back the release of KoS because of the new expansion). We went 3 months in DoF with 0 updates to any items, and 0 fixes to any bosses, despite things like the AE from Barakah in PoS still being broken to this day and doing way more then is intended. That's how we ended up with sub-1000 numbers going into KoS, and pretty much Vanguard type numbers on the server at the moment, with less then 200-500 players most times.

It's obvious that none of you play this game, and if you do, it's certainly not on the TLE server, but I want you to look at it from our point of view, put yourself in our shoes. In KoS, there is very little content outside of the raiding, and most of the content leads directly into raids. What is the point of doing your Claymore quest line? Spending all those hours and all that time for a weapon with the same stats or worse stats as a fabled that drops from Halls of Fate, or for mages, that is just completely useless and worse then DoF items.

What is the point of raiding at all on this server, when almost every item we get gets stuck in the bank hoping for an update (which apparently will never come now). Tanks are the only archetype that is getting any noticeable increases from raid loot right now on TLE. Everyone else is using items that are crafted, or from DoF, or the Legendary gear from heroic names/group zones, and have almost nothing to look forward to in the way of loot from the raids.

We have been banging our heads away at these unkillable encounters daily for the past month and a half, picking up raid loot that no one wants and sticking it in the bank, we have gone over every single piece of raid loot, provided feedback on the loot, shown side by side comparisons of treasured quest items and fabled raid items, we have done what even your own developers haven't, and looked through each item and pointed out the ones that needed changes, and been completely ignored with that.

What would keep each of you personally logging in and paying to login every month, to raid, knowing that even if you kill a mob that has not been killed by anyone else on the server yet, that the items they drop won't be used? That you have previous expansions gear and heroic items in every slot almost and that those won't be getting replaced no matter how hard the fights are or how many nights you spend raiding?

Making the fights easier because there is 0 gear progression to help with getting through the harder fights doesn't solve the problem of the raiding being pointless with no new items to look forward to or to upgrade with.

Like other people said, the server is already dead now because of the lack of updates, fixes, or even caring at all about it, I mean really how can it be your job to fix these things, and then rely on players killing a mob, getting the loot, and then posting it for you on forums, to be able to know that the items are messed up? As a developer of the game, you can't even go look at the items and fix the ones that don't have any stats added at all?

With this news now that there won't be any more changes, I really don't imagine there will be hardly any left to see any of your EoF updates, there's just no reason to keep playing here, to be paying for this each month, when there are so many better options out there, where problems do get addressed and changes do get made.

I just really hope this new lack of caring and communication and effort is limited to the current EQ2 team and TLE specifically and not just how Daybreak operates in general now, because I was really looking forward to EQN eventually.

What is the point of raiding when you can purchase your best in slot (treasured) gear directly from the broker?

Instead of sweeping this expansion under the rug, and moving on with a new expansion, I'd like to be able to enjoy KoS as it was back in the day.

KoS was one of the best expansions, TLE is entirely about nostalgia and it's so sad to see it relived like this.

Kander,

We are excited to get to test out the difficulty changes that you posted about previously in this thread. Our guild will give Labs a go tonight and compare our success in there on trash to our success on previous attempts prior to us pulling named on our regularly scheduled raid night. I think the magnitude of the changes to overall mob difficulty will dictate how satisfied we are with the loot tables. While it is frustrating that the majority of the loot in the raids is not an upgrade over what we can find in the heroic instances, there is satisfaction to be gained by actually killing named mobs and progressing through the zones. For many of us, this is our first opportunity to raid this content and that's a major draw for the TLE server. We're willing to make due with sub-par loot for now so as long as we get to actually experience all of the content from the expansion. It sounds like you have a solid plan going forward for itemization for EoF onwards.

If the vote to unlock EoF fails, will the team consider using some of the extra KoS time to further adjust loot progression? Is there a way that we players can give you feedback on specific items in a way that is convenient for the team to review and implement if found worthy? Perhaps there's a gear template that we can fill out with fields in the correct order to make the process easier.

Thanks for keeping us in the loop!

Are we to assume you and the gang are trying to devise a plan that will re-populate the server?

That ring is actually a best in slot PVP item (well if that cast time was 2 seconds heh). My head exploded when I saw it.

That being said, I think I can read between the lines here. I think the issue for the developers is that they face three choices:

1. Drop the stats from treasured items and then buff the raid drops so there's a sense of progression. That's going to salt people off even more as the gear they've worked hard to get is nerfed in to oblivion.

2. Make the raid gear better than the treasured gear and ruin progression for EoF because things are going to need to be pushed higher.

3. Mulligan and work on EoF.

Not an ideal situation. I'm not sure what the best solution is. I would vote for 'not 3' though.

I saw the message that Abilities have been tuned down, but trash is Ascent is still auto-attacking our tank for 20,000. Full raid just wiped to 2 mobs. Keep tuning....

Thank you Kander for taking the time to address our concerns about TLE and opening a line of communication with us. When we don't have any answers it is really easy to start thinking the worst things. I really look forward to hearing more in the future, specifically about Deathtoll/PvP.

True dat.

Another suggestion...how about fixing the level 70 recipes to use T7 materials? That's the way it was originally and even it the change affects both TLE and live, people on live aren't going to care. Heck, I'd be happy to do the edits myself just to get it fixed.

I appreciate what appears to be an honest reply, Kandor.
Please keep us updated, any honest answer is better than no answer.

I guess what's done is done at this point, and lamenting over missed opportunities for both devs and players when KoS launched is pointless now.
Instead, let us know how our feedback can help you make the necessary changes in order to make KoS at least somewhat fun until EoF comes out.

KoS questions:
- if I understood correctly, we can expect raid content to be re-balanced somewhat. Does this mean not only damage/CAs are getting changed, but HP as well? 5 min trash encounters are NOT fun.
- as Onra said, even making KoS fabled loot slightly better than solo/heroic gear will make most people happy at this point. I'll spend DKP on a fabled item with minor upgrades just because it's fabled and it's nice to have... But having it have 2% potency and nothing else is simply not worth it.

EoF question:
- does FD/Nek:Trib getting released with EoF mean that they're balanced for EoF progress or in between KoS and EoF? (with or without EoF AAs?)
Honestly, I'm scared that probably the best adventure pack (Nizara, Chel'drak, etc.) will get lost amidst too much content when launched with a new expansion, but if that's the case, at least let's all try to make the best out of it.

Things are definitely easier in Deathtoll.

Good. Any details?

emphasis mine.

I've noticed quite a few poeple complaining that KOS itemization is not being fixed if you continue to bring the pieces that missed the global adjustment to the devs attention they will work on getting it fixed at least that is how I read what I bolded, italized and underlined.

Would you be willing to provide us with an ACT file so we can look it over? cmora@daybreakgames.com

Honestly too little too late for me to resub. Can't even find a group on death toll let alone a raid guild to check out the gear/mob changes.

See [TLE] XFER/MERGE post regarding the 'Can't even find a group on death toll'.....
So true.