Hey, at the beginning of this addon, Kunark Ascending, i was really amazed. It looked like a really nice and huge xpac with many instances and raid encounters and as someone not really enjoying all the quest stuff, i even read through both signature timelines and enjoyed it. Of course, it was not perfect, but i am not expecting wonders, as an information scientist with a bit game developing experience and much as a consumer, i have a good idea of the tasks and problems to solve and i know of the small team behind EQ2 at these days. Over the last weeks, my view has totally changed. The current game design is so bad - and becomes worse every patch - that it is not possible for me to have fun anymore, subscription cancelled yesterday. A few more days to allow my force to find a replacement and thats it. So why am i writing a feedback thread then? Because some are remaining and in hope for something to change, i try to help my friends with a feedback thread for the last time (hope dies last. . .). At the moment, the decision makers (devs?) optimize these things in EQ2: Money Blockings / Restrictions requiring frequent / long / time-precise (Asc. Scrolls, see my feedback thread above - thanks for implementing the vitality system in response, but scrolls remained as the same problem . . .) logging in and waiting I am fine with the first point. Game studios usually are buisness concerns that have to make profit. But the second point should be fun!!! I want to log in because of desire and i want to have fun playing. Not because i am forced to grind old content for hundreds of hours or because i have to pick up a scroll as soon as possible. . . By the way, fun boosts money because players pay more willingly / longer / often if they have fun, while your way scares players away . . . The following list is a list of things which mainly contributed to my decision (and i know, i am not alone with my opinions). As written above, most of these problems are game design problems and therefore easy to change (or prevented in the first place) and don't require huge manpower, if just fun would be an optimization goal. I know that i write some harsh words here. However i hope that both, the devs and the players can be helped a bit, if at least about some of the points there is a second or third thought and maybe something is changed. . . Epic 2.0 Weapons: Feldon has wrote an article about the required old content so far (and of course, it is still not over!). While the article as well as some other sources show, that some players actually have fun with this questlines, the comments below the article show the opposite to be widely present. Far more than hundred hours are required for these for "new" characters / players and ~99% is absolutely not challanging and interesting. I know that we are talking about Everquest 2 here, and nothing against a questline or two as a requirement or something like that, if it really fits in the lore part. But hundreds of quests and especially mindless faction grinding is just poor and boring. Such an epic quest should bring a majority of challenges instead of boredom and waste of time! Experience Gain and Tithe Points: I wrote a long thread about this with all the technical details and suggestions, so only a few short words here. Tithe points are one of the main sources to become more powerful at the moment. To max out even one stat, more than 1400 hours of active, efficient playing are required and to reach that, many, many experience potions / tithe coins are necessary. In addition, old content gives something between 50 to 100 times more experience per time than new content, which is the content most players want to play (at least most of the time). Nothing more to say about that . . . Artificial Progression Block: We killed everything which is killable so far several weeks ago. In the past, there were such situations, but the remaining encounters were just to hard, but not technically unkillable. Kraletus was not killed before Zek was released, that was okay, we had a goal and it was possible, just an enormous hard challenge. That was motivation and progression. In KA, we have one enemy (Shanaira the Prestigious), which requires the level debuff from the elementalist class of level 8 at least on master/grandmaster (on several players). Many months of waiting and/or pay-to-win it just to be able to fight it? Are you kidding? All T4 encounters require the Epic-2.0-Fail weapons which requires . . . wait for it . . . wait for it . . . legen. . . no! months of waiting until we are allowed to finish the prerequisite to be able to fight it. That's not fun, that's not progression, that's harassment. Ascension Classes: These sounded very nice and interesting in the beginning. New tactical options and combinations were promised. State of affairs is we have single spells which are - depending on class, spell, spelllevel and bugged-status - either too powerful or useless and for many classes devaluation of their own class abilities. Have i mentioned? No combinations, no synergies, . . . Balancing and Item Design: First option: useless, Second option: overpowered. Thats a good summary of 90%+ of all the items. Did you know, there is something in between!? Thalumbra needed a total revision, in KA there was a huge revision necessary, and always the same mistakes. In addition, the devs obviously have no real idea of the stats & mechanics of their game. We receive questions / statements like "do you really have so much potency? That was not intended!" and And because it is not intended to kill the enemies too fast, we get patches bringing something like this: Damaging Vhaksiz the Shade too quickly has caused them to panic, releasing a massive shockwave through your raid party! For which we receive statements like: "Gninja - Last Monday at 8:10 PM yes its a failsafe. In order to trigger that message you have to be doing WAY more dps that should be possible." We die here everytime we do a proper incoming without bugged ascension spells . . . Nerf Design You do not steal such important things after such a time from a majority of the players as the reset effects . . . Bugs and Priorities: I am accustomed to bugs and lags. Back on Valor, it was nearly unplayable the last year. We had a saying back on valor: "Werde eins mit dem Lag!" which means roughly "Unite with the lags!". My motivation survived every such problem in the past. But at the moment, even these are on a new level. Not the lags, but the bugs. Several weeks ago, we reportet major bugs for wards and bleedthrough at the moment. Some wards are too powerful, some reduce the amount of damage without being touched and others are reduced without reducing the damage. And there is a huge bleedthrough bug which results in different behaviour for divverent wards/classes. Just an example from todays raid: Reading the logs resulted in Soulshackle being applied to a damage with the following calculation: 10.989.160 - 6.770.742 = 10.156.113. Answer to our online report: "Not my responsibility, i will pass that to the correct position." Do you know the story around Passierschein A38. But maybe it's not about bureaucracy, maybe it's about priority here? And how many adjustments to the public event health were necessary until now? Have stopped counting. Is there anything calculated and/or tested before it comes life? Summing up, playing more than one character for non-casuals is not really possible anymore. Switching main char is dead. New players: dead. Returning players: dead. Old content is far more rewarding than new content (except for raids). And to be able to play in a raidforce, one is forced to play far more than hundred hours old content in preparation, thats a whole playthrough of Skyrim with all quests and some content mods, with the difference that skyrim is fun, grey content not for most players!
Just to add, even raids are not fun anymore. I think being casual, and not trying to min/max things is the way to go in this game anymore, maxing out characters and logging in to get ascension scrolls, I am now about a week behind on scrolls to get next level, is now turning this into a job. I am getting to the point of just saying no, and playing casual again.
For all those who think its cool to put in a TLDR, here is a short version: - In X-Men: Days of Future Past, Wolverine said he never had experienced so hard times - he was right. - Here veterans tell you the same - they are right. I am no programer, but every patch seems being applied like a fix Homer Simpson would do upon a nuclear reactor, turning around wandering away whistling in hopes noone took notice. If you want to keep that hard tempered playerbase that endured anything else that was broken during the past decade and that brings you money, I suggest to reforge out of discord chat hours into bugfixing for a while. I doubt anyone will quit this game if you would step up, admit that you need time to balance/fix stuff first and that this next mini-xpac will be delayed by a month. This would be the kind of communication we all seek, not that trololol about golden toilets in Rivervale. Might sound harsh, but we feel like being thrown in a blender atm.
Sad but true. I'm going to hope people at Daybreak Games read this and think about it. There is still time to change the direction and there are lot of points above that could be easily fixed. So let's wait a month and see what happens. Hoping for the best, ...
i agree to 100% with yahku atm we lost yahku as a player and as one of the best tanks ever at the risk of that I'll get banned ahhh never mind **** the matrix who bother is a whistle!!!
yep, i'd add to the dev responses as one of my favored, being called sheep is not a way of persuading us to help you continue to "beta testing" read as playing the game while telling us how much fun it is when we are telling you it is not
Very well put, and on point. I unsubbed last week for many of the same reasons. I think the most frustrating part for me, is despite the pages and pages of feedback and suggestions, there have yet to be any meaningful official replies to anything. This tells me that the devs aren't at all interested in our feedback or suggestion, and in my opinion, it's exactly that kind of ego and arrogance that's pushing people out the door. I raid, so I'll buy krono until the plat runs out. After that, well, if nothing is addressed that prevents me from enjoying this game, that'll be it for me. I've fired cable companies for less... Also, I might suggest that the final reward be a complete refund of the purchase price of this xpac, since 90% of the 100+ hours I've spent on all that 'content' I could have done without buying the xpac. I've been playing for 2 years, so most of this content was around long before I was. I'm just not interested in that amount of backtracking, for no real reason other than you tell me I have to for end game progression. That = BS, and a lack of any real new content that I paid for. Just my last 2 cents. -Nice post Yahku; you're on point
One bug that I finally experienced but people have commented about for a bit is losing connection, returning to the game and the scroll of ascension exp you just used, well, all of the experience to be earned is set to 0... I had just used a million exp scroll, and earned about 100k and lost connection, got back on about 10 minutes later and it was set to 0. I had just finally got my ascension class tonight. *sighs* I thought that bug was fixed, but I was wrong. Good thing I still have 3 more scrolls to use and go linkdead when I do so...
I agree with Yahku also, and if the devs want this game to continue, they might want to read this also. But their egos won't let them. Stach
I don't blame the devs at all, I blame the higher ups, either in DBG or even higher in the corporate hierarchy. Especially the bean counters, making sure there is more than enough profit.
Its like they are almost there. Like another 3-6 more months of testing would have squashed a bunch of what we are dealing with right now. Questlines could be extended to give some more current content to the player and classes could have seen more testing with ascension spells. I know people don't want to hear it but they need more time between expansions. If you have to scratch your neck like a dope fiend then you got problems not the devs or anyone else. - end scene-
Simply leave the project and will not cry for the mages. I did it immediately after the first edits of the summoners. Nerves spared and I feel great. Unfortunately EQ2 has slipped to the worst MMO where there is no at least some sane balance classes. Very sorry about the loss of money and time for a new addon.
Yahku made a very good list of arguements, why people surrender and leave. They "SURRENDER". which means, they have been fighting to stay, but now gave up. We ( especally a player like Yahku who was is one of your core input sources on bug reporting) have given you so much input on how we think you could improve things, to make the game fun again, but we feel to be talking to a brick wall. Whoever is responsible for this new strategie should seriously reconsider if is "working as intended". And I hope you will do this soon, before the community looses more dedicated players like Yahku. And yes, it would help if you would give the community an official comment on all these postings, just to let us know if you plan to change things, or not. I am sure the community would give daybreak enough time to fix things, If they just knew, that you really wanted to do that.
For me the bottom line in any game is this: It must be fun. Right now, EQ2 isn't fun. For the last month I've logged in almost daily, but I'm not really doing anything. I'm logging in because I paid for a year subscription when it was on sale and I feel like I should play because I already spent the money. I do the adventure and crafting weeklies to do something. That takes a few hours. After that, I find myself just sort of wandering around because I don't have any interest in all the grinding associated with deity points and Epic 2.0. I get that some grinding is always going to be part of MMOs, but the current grinding requirements are just too much. Combine that with the mind boggling mentality of Industrial Age mechanics like "exactly 24 hours" or "exactly one week" and it's all just not fun. What would make it more fun? I don't know. A great start would be to change any exactly 24 hour or exactly one week mechanics and replace them with the normal daily and weekly resets. That would decrease the feel of punching in on a time clock. Unfortunately, that's about where my ideas stop. Anything I can think of to help out new or returning players would likely aggravate the people that worked for those things.
The yearly expansions probably also have to do with the team needing that annual injection of cash, too, though.
Well with people paying $140 for expacs, signing up for the year sub during the sale, and these ascension/infusers purchases we should be close to jumping that hurdle.
