Min Number of Players Needed for Heroics now?

I'm not sure about that, gninja said the comment that most don't is incorrect so that means most do. So more people were solo or duoing heroics than full groups were. Gninja has the info, he wouldn't lie to us, right?

The developers do have the facts and his answer above to your statement implies that your experience is not correct.

Anyway the fact that they are spending dev hours on this script alone implies that its more of problem than you think.

There are some people here who thinks this is another way for DBG to make money since this will force people to buy second or third account hence Gninja is liar

My guess is that the people 'who can actually do the heroics', are so geared they can duo them and sell the gear/drops for plat and buy krono, and since they are the 'the wales', it's eating into profits. hence the change.

I have to say the minimum number of players plus the tank thing has become the last straw for me. I have a tank and a troub, both of whom could tank last xpac. This change has put me in a position of running zones over and over on my tank...doing the same weekly up to 5 times a week to help get people through on my tank, while my troub languishes.

Seriously, what can you be thinking imposing even more restrictions when so many of us are on servers with diminishing populations? These changes are becoming tiresome. I'm sorry, Devs, but when your game stops being fun, I stop paying money. I'll see this xpack though, and then I will be relieved to finally set my EQ days aside.

Go back and read what Gninja wrote. The dev. I would say he knows exactly.

I'm sure he does... doesn't mean that what I think is "a lot" or you think is "a lot" are the same.

It's just a bunch of generalizations. He doesn't have to provide stats to prove it - that's not part of his job requirement.

But it doesn't mean anyone has to except things as "facts" without any measurable evidence.

Just because "someone said so"

People were duoing/trioing some of the heroics for months now. Some soloing them, or at least some parts of them. Tower Breach in particular was one people could run through fairly easy as a small group.

Many times on these forums, people said they did so, and I don't recall a single time someone saying, "Hey, we really don't want you doing that." I'm not saying it didn't happen, I'm saying I never saw it.

If this was so much of an issue and worth locking down - why wait this long into the expansion to do it?

People on the discord, in game, and on the forums give the opinion of, 'cut them some slack, they are a small development team doing the best they can with a game they love." I believe that. There are only so many hours in a day, only so much development time that can be given. I get that.

...and that is why this leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Why spend the hours forcing a minimum number of players in a zone - with fighter checks - 5 months into an expac?

Is it to stop the SLR for orange adorns and ts mats? Because stopping it now, 5 months in, is a little on the nose.

Hey, people don't play swashbucklers enough. You going to make the zones require a swash?

Why aren't you requiring a mage? Or a scout? Or a priest, actually, considering Beastlords get some heals.

Why not require 6 to zone in at all?

And you're absolutely right, Gninja - I never saw a dev say "like it or lump it." But from the players' point of view, it does feel that way when offered constructive criticism and advice and thoughts and such go unacknowledged.

Hey, maybe something someone said in this very thread sparked an in house debate for the devs for a solid three hours, which led to a lot of EXCELLENT, thought proving discussion. Maybe it was thought out already that there is a good reason NOT to do what was suggested, because you, the devs, have more information that we do. Maybe you even stewed about it and talked to your family about it - AGAIN! - that night when you finally got to make it home. Maybe you dream about it, maybe you lose sleep over it.

What WE see - is silence, until 5 months later a change goes in that no one expected and just causes angry people to post on a web forum about it, which starts the wheel turning again.

It's because its not really up to the Devs.. it's why it appears so random.

But ill go put on my tinfoil hat!

You are correct in that this check should have been in there from the start. Five months down the line is bit too late now and it allowed some people to make lot of money and other can't join in the fun!

However fighter is an archetype and swashbuckler are a class. The way things stand right now, an entire archetype has become redundant. Its the devs fault for not balancing the classes but the fighter check is supposed to be a band aid fix. A swashbuckler can at least betray to Brigand but what can a fighter betray to other than another fighter who is also redundant ?

I don't appreciate the requirement needing 3 people just to even run the heroic zones to begin with. Since the start of the game, it's always been the mark of a good player to be able to go run a heroic or contested zone by his/herself, minus the obvious scripts involved (flipping levers, keeping some mobs separate, etc). Needing others to tag along just to get past nameds that have no script except merely to block progression is a huge annoyance and a big turn off. Who cares that these people are selling stuff in chat or that they did it by themselves? Never before in the history of the game have we had gates on the zones requiring a certain number of people to even be successful in getting past the door, unless it were a raid zone.

Please, stop penalizing the advanced players for not needing others to follow behind if they just want to spend time to themselves.

Agreed. I was just making the point of where is the line? The next sentence from my post breaks it down by archetypes as well - mage / priest / scout for another attempt to make a point, with more relevant examples.

For me, this is too much and too far. I feel like the powers that be that have control over these types of decisions have either lost their way or are walking a new path. It's unfair to lump it all onto one person who had the decency to respond to it in this thread - there is ALWAYS more going on behind the scenes we are unaware of. Always.

But that doesn't change that this is too much, too far.

Maybe I'm only part of a small handful of players that even care. Honestly, I'm not even sure that I do anymore, which makes me sad more than anything else. I know when my membership expires, I'll continue to raid as free to play as long as I can stay viable with the restrictions I will be contending with.

My (likely last) feedback to the devs: get a handle on the stats - the heals, the dps, the scale, all of it. Get it under control. Because that lack of control has trickled down to every other aspect of the game.

Healing is broken. Burst DPS is broken. The Divine Stats are broken. The Potency Gap is broken.

• You are punishing players for caring enough about your game to take the time to squeeze out everything they can to be the best that they can.
• You are punishing players for being too strong.
• You are punishing players for playing the game you have given them with the mechanics you have designed.

People play games for fun.
It's not fun to be punished for doing nothing wrong.

We've been discussing this topic over the last week or two and we will have something in place soon(tm) Until it is ready we will likely be removing these restrictions temporarily while we work on it.

Just to be clear, we aren't removing them because we think players should be soloing/duoing heroic zones, but we think the current implementation was too heavy-handed and infringes too much on normal gameplay in these zones, more specifically pulling aggro and/or different classes having advantages over others. Keep an eye on patch notes for this coming week.

I do want to give a thanks to those in this thread (and a couple others) that have been constructive versus destructive about the topic.

I will say that in my own guild the amount of groups running 2-4 players have skyrocketed this xpansion. Why? Imho opinion the implementation of items like the crafting components mount and meta neck, both of which includes no trade components and the effect of having said items in a raid environment being rather extreme. As others have pointed out in discord and on various threads the difference in parse potential between those that have some of these items and those that dont are glaringly obvious. And for players that want to maximize their potential, the time invested to get those items for 2-3 static people in a group is vastly more reasonable than for 5-6. I know..i've done it on two different raid toons..one each way. The sticking point is the tank requirement then for guilds like ours. Not enough tanks to support the number of dedicated players wanting to farm out these items in the time efficient way (2-4 players) and once the tanks we do have complete their items they are so burned out on heroic they dont want to login outside of a raid.
Its a stcky dilemma for devs. If overall number of players enjoying your group content is the goal then either the fighter requirement needs to go so that the current content can support more 3-4 man groups ...or the power level of group obtainable items needs to diminish so that a set of players says to themselves when forming a group "Lets just go ahead and fill this group.. Ill get x-item eventually."

I mean for me at least, I rarely play my main character in heroics and I basically only run pug groups..., I run my monk...and I have a zerker that is basically a tank check bc he doesn’t have his epic...my monks fine without it... it’s not fun playing a tank when u can’t hold agro...and with the potency gap it’s just dumb...they really need to remove the pre-req for fighter 2.0.that is such a time sink and just who has time for that... I’m sure I and others would love to play these other alt tanks more so and then your farm groups that you tank u can swap to get said no trade items or whatever...

The last 2 expacs have punished 'alts' so much there just isn't enough to go around.

If you want full groups in those zones - either incentivize having a full group of 6, or incur a small penalty on smaller groups. The rest will work itself out.

By human count:
Group of 6 = 2 TS items drops (as is + bonus)
Group of 4-5 = 1 TS item drops (as is now)
Group of 2-3 or fewer in zone = Reduce chance of TS item from 100% to 75%
Solo = Reduce chance of TS item from 100% to 50%.

PUG groups will go up, solo'ers will go down. You can still go with short groups, you can still do content.

Will still be some solo'ers with people who like to challenge themselves. Will be some duo'ers as well. At the very least, they can still DO the zones, and they can get some fabled items to at least mute into infusions or manas. No guarantee of a TS item, so will take them longer overall, but they can still actively progress.


Alternatively, you could award bonus gems or something instead of TS items. But, I guarantee you will get more of what you are after doing it this way, by putting a bonus in with a second TS item.

With that thinking they should just make it so 3 people or less and no drops occur. You can run it for quests XP, but not to sell loot rights.

If they would get rid of "loot rights", it would solve ALL OF THIS.

getting rid of loot rights.... yeah that's not it. Come to AB... no one sells or buys much - I'm sure you will find a vibrant community.

Just let people play their own way and have fun, so long in to the Xpac and more changes? I suspect its to do with the new summer Ethereals coming and stretching that out for aslong as possible.