Personal Loot Reward Update in Renewal of Ro [Heroic III] zones

What was the reasoning behind serializing Heirloom items on servers where they remain account locked? Because those non-stacking items are a massive QOL reduction for what appears to be zero gain from the player perspective

The loot change on its own is good. Without the keys/unlockers we saw more good loot in one night than all our prior runs put together(which I mean was not a high bar - we saw 2 pieces of 445 gear last night, one overcap one not), plus more recipe books, plus more decent adorns. My group did not see any keys or resetters in 2 zones. So the change was a positive for loot from h3's overall it seems.

However I do not understand why the keys were made ptw, especially since they seem to atleast be uncommon if not rare from running the zones, but easily obtainable in mass quantities from the crates.

Problems:

Personal loot for things like immunity runes, raid mount etc. means that group members that NEED those things have to hope for the RNG to get them, while one person might get four stifle runes from the same zone. One guy also got only a transmutation stone for killing one of the mobs. Really? lol You also can't pass the stupid 440 plate pants to the groupmate that actually needed them because they are heirloom. It's dumb loot.

The loot famine that was apparently designed into RoR now has a work-around for actual cash money though buying heritage crates. (One guy bought 20 bucks worth of crates and ended up with 440 plate pants he couldn't use on the last boss...so this whole thing would cost an absolute fortune if you are really expecting us to attain needed upgrades with cash. Getting any piece of gear is a low percent gamble, and having it be something you need is an even lower percent gamble.) So, let me see if I understand...for this expac you created a lack of upgrades and viable ways to get them, and now you're asking us to burn hundreds of dollars to get gear that we should have gotten by running heroics and raiding? Do you think people are going to find that acceptable? It's a huge money grab in a game where we are already pretty much obligated to buy the expensive expac or be 'behind' all year, we need the things from gamble crates to maintain viability, and most still pay a monthly fee to play etc. No thanks, Daybreak

And before you say 'but you get keys and unlockers for running H3'...no, we didn't. We had a group of six and not one of us got either item for finishing the H3 final boss. So...that's not going to work either.

The raid forces that are competitive will have to resort to burning actual money to succeed, and it takes away the whole meaning of raid accomplishments and achievements. Just spend enough money and you win. Why would people stick around for that? We've all seen enough rich people buying whatever they want and then pretending it's an achievement, and we've all seen enough non-rich people in financial trouble because they want to keep being functional in a game. Yuck. Not fun at all.

This is a big mess. I seriously hope this isn't a taste of the future, because most people aren't going to stick around for it.

I didn’t run zones last night as I raided but if they only drop from H3, this is why they made them P2W so those that we were supposed to “help” could just buy as well. It’s all a mess honestly and what Caith said on the previous page is just no beuno. He said it was this way to help others get through H3, but we all know it was/is a big money grab lol

What i said.
This could be understood, and we could accept it. It's the way it's hidden, behind an idea made for the player, that doesn't pass .

You hit it with this one, this is how the majority of us feel. We were starved for loot early on only to now have a market place solution to making it rain gear. Its wild, i know many players who just wont accept this.

GG To the players who stick around for this and think this is ok.

I think the goblin tickets 'game' was more fun. Or how about make the zone grinds much more fun? add loot drops. Most people call the filler/no loot mobs trash & many use the word 'bored' to much.

Caith, certainly you don't believe that by answering the question that wasn't being asked, the majority of people will go "oh, ok then, that make sense" and forget about the actual question?

The only burning question on everyone's mind, which remains without response, is why did the doohickey moving parts (all 3 of them) of this new system that allow an explosion of loot to enter the game unchecked end up on the DBG store. With all the talk about importance of controlling loot inflow into the game in order for an xpac to maintain structural integrity, this decision couldn't go more directly against that. How does this contradiction fit into the game design philosophy at DBG? How does this bode well for EQ2's longevity as a game? Let's please skip talking about why the skeleton for this system was created, as it blatantly has the feel of diverting attention from the only real issue at hand: why are critical pieces of this system sold for Daybreak Cash.

Can we get an official statement from you, or JChan if you dont feel comfortable releasing one personally, explaining this part of decision. It doesn't have to make logical sense from player perspective, I just want to hear what you, or whoever was in the meeting that green-lit this decision, uttered as justification of it being a good idea to sell these uncontrolled loot chances for Daybreak Cash.

-sincerely confused

While i appreciate the post from the devs as if they are actively wanting feedback and listening to the players... how this made it into actual game before any communication or survey is beyond me. Doing a massive overhaul to anything should be tested surveyed and communicated especially when it involves real world money. This game is like 2 decades old. There has been successful loot methods in the past. Why are we trying to invent the wheel. You cant roll a cart with square wheels when you know round works better. But in order to have round wheels you must pay cash for it.

Theres also no way the reaction from the community was a shock to any dev. As soon as you had a company wide meeting where someone said you know what "WE SHOULOD ADD A CRATE PEOPLE PAY REAL MONEY FOR TO GET GEAR" thats what the people want. lets give the people what they want.

I feel we are kind of frustrated having to repeat ourselves so many times. And we had a huge debate, fight, conversation, constructive, non constructive, and yes even some trolling happen over on discord as soon as it went live.



People are frustrated and people are hurt that a good game is going so heavy towards pay to win again. It started years ago with a mount, merc, familiar .... causing a massive imbalance between good players and those with deep pockets.. after enough time had passed (or enough complaints from the community) eventually a weaker version of those same pay to win buffs appeared to help fill the gap that had been slammed into the population.

The massive blow up on discord with everyone screaming cussing and being banned/put into timeout could have been easily avoided if it didnt feel like the devs/game was trying to squeeze every bit of juice out of the already low population.



I understand why it was done, there are plenty of players who have deep enough pockets they dont care and will pay whatever. But that does nothing but kill the game. It takes away all progression all care, all skill and turns it into a "class contest" of who can dish out this months paycheck the fastest.
And those that speak out about it are made to feel like we are the enemy, people get frustrated and dont know how to express themselves correctly because they feel they are being ignored and not communicated too. So then Bans and timeout corners start to happen.

Ever since resolve became the thing.... content has been locked behind resolve. This expac has been a higher resolve jump between tiers than years past. It was due to slow down progression. But super rough grind due to the higher resolve jump between tiers just burns people out.
We went from roughly 100 resolve between tiers of heroics to a whopping 300 or so. that literally means you have to run 3x the zones for the same content jump.. That means 3x faster burnout.



I mostly raid these days because I am already burned out from heroics... and its only been 2 months...give or take...
6 months of grinding happened in 2 months due to the grind in numbers.

We are all for heroic III and its difficulty. People are grinding them out as its faster way to get gear than raid. Considering t1 and t2 raid gear is really no better than what you can get out of h2 zones...... Gearing all around has been slowed to a halt this expansion. And its really the only thing stopping progression right now.

The weekly reward provides no gear, no daily box to buy (granted i absolutely hated that concept of RNG as it never felt earned it just felt like a chore)

I think with this change the big thing to me and sounds like alot of people was the new Marketplace crate.. There should never be any method of obtaining gear from a real world cash scenario. Gear is earned not bought. Let there be a personal loot box earned in game from killing zone bosses. Or achievements. Even raid trash loot becoming BiS but is RNG is silly. 99% of the adorns are completely useless... they shouldnt even exist in game.
Immunity runes being changed to tiers is fine but they should be locked behind achievements. you clear solo's, you geta reward that helps with clearing h1/2,, then h2 helps with h3/t1... h3/t1 then helps up to t3.. so on and so forth

Raids are locked behind resolve... content cant be cleared until enough people have a minimum resolve. If people spend the time to grind it out and earn it that's one thing... but Having a system that allows you to pay real money to get gear faster than earned that just removes all competitiveness in the game.
Someone in discord mentioned the 80/20 rule... 20% of the population brings in 80% of the revenue. so i understand why you would want to implement more things to buy with real world cash. but isnt there enough between subscription, spell tiers,merc,mount,familair, merc buff, mount buff, familiar buff? So this implementation could easily cause a loss in players that are only on a sub because they cant afford to be competitive. But losing a simple sub player doesnt matter because theres people who are willing to drop more money to offset the small loss of a sub. But the game is a business.... businesses have to make money... so i get it...

enough did buy it... there was people spending 1000s of dollars.... then the boxes were canceled and loot was deleted out of peoples inventories mid fight. And i know they are BIG mad

This is true. The focus def seems like it was designed to slow the top guilds. And the casual guilds are falling apart faster than ever, recruitment seems to be a nightmare. The grind was too much for them, and having such few t1 to kill just means the casuals are burnt out on killing the same 3 mobs over and over.... dont get me started on trash. having a name pull all the trash that is up to them is just lazy way of slowing down even more... forcing a guild to spend all their time clearing trash. basically 1 full raid night is spent clearing trash only... then the other 2 assuming its 3night raiding guild are spent only only 3 name (yeah theres 4 t1 mobs but 2 are the exact same mob.

The thing i don't understand is why there's never any consideration for what people WOULD happily pay for. No one likes p2w but if it is necessary can we at least have some input on the things we would like to buy, even if the price is steep based on how much of a "boost" it is?

IMO, leveling a spell is a big incentive, so why not sell "potions" in the DBC store that would auto-ancient a single spell? Or just sell the celestial spell case (single spell use) from the DBC store at a premium? Why not sell a Potions that auto max level a mount? Or a familiar? We all love this game, and many people pay additional money to play it beyond a standard sub- but what feels really bad is paying for RNG.

Give me the option of "i'm lazy, here's money, max this spell/mount/familiar/merc" etc!

Give me a Premium level sub at a crazy premium cost where every spell/mount/familiar/merc is auto max level, take advantage of people who don't want to micromanage some aspects of the game.

Or just any kind of additional subscription tiers! There are so many ways that i would rather invest my money into this game.

We don't mind spending money, we've proved that time and time again, but can we at least have some feedback on how and when and where we would MOST invest into the game?

We have had bad pay to win stuff that just sucked before. These additions seem simply game breaking and have no part in this style of game.

If we HAVE to keep this system

The loot caches should be on a 1 or 2 week reuse timer per account but, function like Extra Life.

The H3 system should still reward players who grind the zones and dont pay into it. Yes we requested a system where folks could help people without a lockout and this accomplished that there is never a time you cant help a guild mate with an h3 due to a lockout with the new system. However, you have introduced two things here, that makes it so one group can keep rolling it getting 4 crates per on people with money per run and 1 crate PERIOD for the people who dont. That is just outright broken and devastating.... Quite frankly those players not spending the money wont keep coming back. Who wants to play a game where you put in equal effort and get 25% OR 0% of the reward of those next to you.

And quite frankly.... It should not be as rewarding as it is. For folks that dont want to miss out it feels like you need to pay 5 dollars per zone to maximize your rewards and that feels SOOOOOO wrong.

You still didnt answer my question Caith =/

Furthermore on this subject the system as it is being presented is being touted as a way to bring players together yet behind that smile and sincerity is another person behind our back whispering in our ear saying...

There are so many other better ways that you could have implemented this than it has been. Its so IN YOUR FACE and INVASIVE... There was no community input asked and it wasnt in the Roadmap either. Which also says alot to the fact of how under the radar everyone wanted this to go.

I think we all have no problem with a new system coming, but why a system like this has come now. It feels like we're playing some kind of Battlepass now pay and you loot the best item. Many are more familiar with this from Warzone / COD or Overwatch or Fortnide.

Let people honestly learn their loot in a normal way, why always this pay to win thing. This is still an MMO and not a China product. In addition, the addon with this turn is further proof of how you can drive a game to the wall and further annoy your existing community, i.e. lose in the end.

I think some have already suffered a loss of reality when programming and creating the current content, we already have a small base of players who can just run Heroic 1, let alone just manage Heroic 2, in addition to the addon where you have to buy it also represents a disadvantage for newcomers because without a new Mount Familair or Merc you cannot reach the maximum values where they are needed more or less no idea what you already had for a wrong calculation on the beta server because you from the Top Gear + Buffs have run out, the chain of errors runs through the whole addon. But the Pay to Win in Heroic 3 only tops it all off.


I ask for your understanding, sleep on it for a night, think about it and sit down and work out a decent concept, something like that can't be a solution. In 18 years of Eq2 I've never seen so much incompetence in one person, it's actually sometimes embarrassing and a slap in the face for every player. Unfortunately, we no longer live in the time when money hangs on the window or grows on trees. Thank you.

Developer decisions with RoR caused me to stop spending money on this game. This change did nothing but solidify my decision to do so.

I don't like these mechanics because of not only the reasons listed, and for example it's hard to get into Heroic 1 Renewal of Ro groups without enough resolve from a mount, but some things like the special tier preorder mount Kalista will get you there easily. This is tough for returning or newer players who don't have access to Kalista. Add that onto how many things can be hard to catch up on and how things require a lot of grinding, it can be overwhelming! Ethereal trackers, remember those?

But also the payment of real money is an issue. More and more, people are getting upset with cash shops and live service games, so many live service games even from franchises way, way bigger than this one have closed this year and it's mid-March. More here, one involves MARVEL and another is a Final Fantasy spinoff. MMORPGs are by default in this category. If enough people decide they don't want this, and leave the game, I worry for this one's future. I've already posted about server population issues as is on another thread.

I'm adding my input out of care and concern of this 18+ year old game with a niche, tight-knit community.

I fell at this point the game is no longer about THE GAME. Nothing about fixing the gear issues, class balances, spell issues. This is now just a cash grab to get the final money out people who will pay extra on top of subs and expansions.

My two cents as a non live person. I quit live due to nickle and dime micro transactions and tedious systems like these that add nothing but extra layers of nonsense. While not directly effected by this as a TLE player (other then the bonus loot chance boxes which are also meh), I can say I wouldn't want to deal with this on live nor would I want to see anything like this come to TLE.