When they choose to gate content via stats, it's not particularly intelligent to put those stats on pre-order rewards. That is literally making a two-tier system, and even worse, it's removing choice from the players. Hear me out... You know what you're going to get here, you know no expansion is released well or plain sailing in general. There will be issues. Sometimes those issues will be game-ruining for you personally. Like for me, what they did to assassin. That was it for me, I was done. But not before I'd paid to pre-order the expansion. Had I not pre-ordered and waited to see whether I actually wanted to invest in what they'd done this time, I would have missed out on extremely important stats and as a T1 (lol) dps, I would have been one step behind the curve for the entire expansion. So your choice if you raid at a high level and intend to keep up with current content, is blindly invest by preordering the expansion knowing it's a big gamble as they might just ruin your class this time round, or you can just be second rate for the year - which depending on how high up the food chain your guild is, might just mean being benched if you can't keep up. It also makes people think twice about returning. You know you'll be hamstrung until the next expansion so why bother? EQ2 has an air of misplaced arrogance about it. That a second rate MMO with so few players feel they can afford to gate content the way they do makes you wonder if the lead devs are turning up at strategy meetings with notes written out for a different game.
This year is different though. I think most guilds can feel the player population is at its lowest point ever, player engagement outside of raiding is almost zero and recruitment issues seems rampant.
This kind of statement requires justification, especially if you're trying to rebutt someone else's statement. If you're rebutting mine... I never said free. I said fee. I suggested selling the stuff that came with old expacs. If the price point is right, that would definitely entice returning players to come back, I know several who tried to come back, but they were between expacs and couldnt get the buffs. They said they'd try again when the next expac came out. One did, the rest never bothered.
See, you just jousted back in. This statement has been said every single year, multiple times each year and will continue to joust out and back in every year from now till this forum/site is shut down with the game....
Not sure if this was meant for someone else or you didnt understand my comment? Population has been decreasing since 2008 and will continue till they get new staff that will listen to player feedback constantly complaining about the stupid changes year after year.
Here's my opinion on it. This addon is really the worst addon ever released for EQ2. This begins with the group setup requirements at dungeon content. The ramped up requirements, starting with the simplest group content, simply no longer match the amount of existing player base. The resolve requirements are completely ok. What I'm talking about are the absolutely necessary group set-up requirements in order to make any reasonable progress, or even progress at all. As you say yourself, 45 minute fights are not ok. You already have that with heroic 1 nameds if you can't work out the correct group setup. For raids, on the other hand, 45-minute fights are actually ok, as long as it's not every fight that lasts that long. - Groups with fewer people are no longer "sensibly" possible. - Groups without T1 / T2 DD's are no longer "reasonably" possible. - Groups that do not use all possible consumables are no longer "sensibly" possible, each group is completely dependent on it. What is the point of completely excluding about 80% of the community from the progress in the game or the group play itself? About 50% of my acquaintances from my environment have now turned their backs on the game, because their time is too good to just sit around and hope that you will find a willing T1/T2 DD, which is absolutely necessary for group play in this addon is. The pointless addition of loot without any real use, like heirloom potions from the overseers and non-stackable short-time adornments which flood the inventory with each one is the crowning glory of the whole thing. Just like the exorbitantly high requirements of the amount of resources to craft all the absolutely necessary consumables. This is how you completely destroy a game that has been able to assert itself in the market for 19 years. Without going into the details of the gear requirements and the like, this will now be said briefly. There are also mercs, which unfortunately have 0 relevance in group content and which were never required in solo content. What good are mercs that do a hundredth of a player's damage, that don't heal groups and can't cure them. If these are to apply to a player, they would also need to have similar abilities in DPS, as well as curse cures etc. They would also need to replace the group buffs with consumables like painlinks or field medic. As it is, mercs will never be useful in group content again. What a pity, a sad year for EQ2. .... as it looks at the moment, one of the last years if it goes on like this. Because players who have left the game rarely come back and with this addon many players have lost in the long run.
What do you suggest they give as a reward for pre-ordering/beta testing. Anything they give needs to be worth our time, and I’m sorry but fluff pets with nothing is not an answer. You beta/test and pre-order then you should get something that boosts you a little. Maybe not as much but it should be better than what you get to wait. You order a month ahead and then test the game. Now whether they listen to that feedback is another story and nothing I can input for there. It has to be something worthwhile or we would all just sit around waiting and hoping it turns out okay lol.
45 mins raid encounters are not fine lol… I mean using consumables for you down…it helps tradeskillers or uses those coins that we always have stacks of every expac. You should always need a T1 DPS in a group, maybe even more since all healers can solo heal. Did you want to take a tank/3 healers/bard/chanter. Every expac always has the need for at least one DPS. The resolve requirement were obtainable but simply a bit high. They should set H1 resolve based off T5 max gear raid resolve. Ie. 385 resolve and 390 was max last year so H1 should’ve been set around 8085 plus the heroic mount of 280 resolve I believe it was. 8365 being close to starting. They could’ve boosted to 8600 and that would’ve made h1 very doable out the gate and not needing max 415 resolve items to then make an attempt to H2. At the end of the year they need to see max resolve items in every slot and what it adds up to. Maybe boost that number by 300 and that’s your number for H1s in next expac. Then base the gear you get from solos off that to add to it.
Truthfully, I'd rather NOT receive a special buff for preordering/beta testing. Same goes for these familiar/merc/mount buffs. All they do is serve as a barrier to entry for new/returning players and alts. Its a poor business model that further reduces player retention and longevity.
Lol then you get limited testers….just like beta raid tests used to be. Give out a celestial spell then or celestial ascension. Something to make it worth the time to test. But…you get so much griping then about how celestial spells out you above now just because you tested. Everyone will never be happy lol. Do you think celestial spells would be worthwhile over fluff pets. An additional one to what they give everyone already that is.
I personally think the reward from beta testing should be the advantage you get on that encounter for having seen it before others. Some fights thats a BIG advantage when you can already have a strategy for a difficult encounter that others will have to work through when points are on the line. Im also not a fan of requiring a nonrefundable preorder to beta test their regularly unplayable content so they can fix a couple spelling errors before launch.
The root cause of all these problems is stat inflation. It is impossible to balance content or do class balance when stats are out of control. Fights last 45 minutes because the devs cannot predict how much dps raids are capable of so the err on the side of caution and pump mobs with an excess of HP to prevent them from dying in 30sec. Then they nerf it after the fact to make kill times reasonable.This nonsense is slowly killing the game though. Stats should not increase drastically from one expansion to the next. This way the devs can make predictions of what kinds of dps players are capable of and balance content around those predictions.
Everyone does that anyway. When you give feedback in beta, if it isn't about a broken encounter, incorrect icon or a mis-spelled quest dialogue, it's going in the "might look at this later" pile, where it inevitably will not be looked at later. Ask yourself why they incentivise pre-ordering so aggressively. It's because they know what they're going to release will be incomplete, riddled with bugs and will make large sections of their loyal player base unhappy. They also know the won't be able to respond to the entirety of the deluge of perfectly valid beta feedback because they don't have the resources. So frankly, they know the feedback after release is going to be garbage, so they rely very heavily on pre-orders to shift units. Also if you think what you're taking part in when you preorder amounts to real beta testing, sorry but you're very much mistaken. You're stress-testing a few bits here and there, testing a few encounters or dungeons for balance and checking the signature quests work. The vast majority of your feedback isn't wanted, responded to or probably even read at all. Bearing in mind the general health of the game and the alarming decline in activity both in and around it, I'd say anything at all which puts new and returning players at this kind of demoralising disadvantage should be reacted to with disapproval by those who still care about its future. The mentality of 'I should have an advantage because I've been here a long time' really needs to go, it's not helping you or anyone else.
Only people who don't care how the game continues and whether it survives can make such meaningless statements. But everyone has their own opinion. For the first time only for you, so that you can start thinking a little. 1. The game is meant to be fun for all players in some way, sitting silly looking for people to make a perfect group setup is no fun. It's stupid boring and often enough completely unsuccessful. 2. In a perfect group setup, everyone can play well, you don't need skill, experience or intelligence for that. Or flexibility and adaptability. This does not represent any performance, especially if you exclude all others and then make a comparison. If you exclude everything else through the game mechanics, only boredom remains. Up to this addon, it worked according to a different concept, so far much better than this time and far fewer people were pissed off, the mass of players had a lot more fun. 3. What do you mean, who pays for the game and keeps it running? The 300 people who are still making good progress worldwide? Or can it be 10,000 other people who are currently somewhere close to the quit of the game because they are just bored and almost never get ahead or have already completed this quit? Ask yourself how useful your own postings and the representation of your opinion is. I consider my opinion to be much more substantial and much more meaningful for the continuation of my actually beloved game... I have the highest online time on a char worldwide with almost 7 years and certainly not without reason. My time here is only slowly coming to an end with the current politics if it continues like this.... ... The stupidity of some people is infinite ...
It's bizarre that stat inflation is handled the way it is. It's like it's driven by a kind of zealous determination to funnel every player down the same path rather than letting people just play the game and actually have fun. And if anything, it feels like they've dialed it up this year.
Dont worry guys dont worry. Its only taken 1½ month and we still dont have this class balance forum opened, but rest asure, once it opens feedback will be listened to this time, for sure. As we all know it takes more than an hour to open a new sub forum and we for sure cant use the current class forums. Nono.
