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

NEIN.

This system is nonsense and unnecessary and pay to win. Since the beginning of this expansion everybody has been howling about how there is not enough gear dropping per boss kill, itemization and resolve tiers are all over the place. What's the solution? Introduce a pay to win system to drive gambling crate sales back up, as a supremely flimsy bandaid to the issues with itemization - and put the "this is so everyone can run more H3s for their guildmates!" blanket over top to fool the sheep. This is wrong. Mark my words people, this will set the worst precedent of them all. Mark my words, this system will touch every single heroic and raid mob/boss next expansion. 1 item will drop per chest, the rest is up to your Amex.

What you did not seem to realize is that this completely invalidates (again) competitive raiding progression. Did you not learn the first 3 times you've allowed pay to win to touch hard gating mechanics?

And furthermore, we don't need to run more H3s. You are so out of touch it is no longer comedy.

The game has less and less content each year and every year we pay more and more to just clear the content.

Its an issue and at some time someone at the company needs to listen to the playerbase before the game bleeds too many players. We are already on most servers at a critical point when it comes to raid recruitment and being able to do heroic content.

The player council was created for a reason, I believe, and either big changes like this needs to go by them first or the public or we need someone who still plays and raids in this game to be part of the developer team and the lead designer(s) needs to listen to him/her or the players.

Daybreak have managed to add a lot of p2w options that also caused a big uproar, but was eventually accepted by the community as needed for the game to survive, but I feel like this one is taking it a step too far.

You already have to pay a minimum fee of $393 yearly to even be able to do content at a reasonable speed in the game. When its fresh and new and people are exited. And that is the bare minimum, just the sub fee and expansion with the items you need to do content without slamming your head onto your desk.

My two cents.

I'm not sure trying to milk more and more dollars from a smaller and smaller playerbase is a very healthy idea. Trying to advertise your game might be better.

That being said, if you really need cash and don't plan to cancel this new blatent PTW system, maybe you could introduce a tradeoff as you did with heritage crates.

Maybe a free key per account that logs in and per 24h ?

There comes a time every single year where a "crate" is released and the entire player base flocks to these forums demanding answers. This time though, it feels different. I think this is the one release of the crate that will most likely be their last as the lasting effects from this crate drop will be fatal to the game.

Let us be frank about what really occurred here - Under the guise of a system, supposedly released to help players join their friends on H3 runs, came about a revamp of the entire loot system. Now, you can run these zones as many times as you want (Every 30 minutes) without any chance at loot unless you utilize the items present in the crates. Not only do you get extra rolls at gear, you can quite literally farm H3's every 30 minutes and probably squeeze out the entire loot table within a few days of serious spending.

The entire purpose of raiding/grouping and quite literally, playing the game, is to gain loot to build out your character. With loot being monetized, the entire point of Everquest is.... gone. You can call it doom and gloom but, in the long term this will be catastrophic for group balance/raid balance and quite honestly, the game as a whole.

How do you balance raids for players that spend vs players that dont? How does balance work for guilds that have 24 people with multiple CBOC/best in slot pieces 2-3 days after a game update/expansion drop while other guilds, that refuse to spend, will have far less gear?

It is really really scary because for the first time in many years, instead of being excited for the upcoming game update, we are having talks about the current state of the game and how we might have to influence DKP changes as a result of this crate release. We are worried because we do not know what this means for Forces of Evil as a guild because we will NEVER....EVER force people to spend real life dollars in order to continue raiding.

I suggest this crate item is removed from the marketplace, refunded in full and we all, as a community, get together to help find a happy balance between monetization and progression because this change will ruin the game in the long term as the "system" spreads into raids and becomes the norm. The quick money that is being made in the short term is NOT worth the lasting effects this will have on the game as a whole.

Just remember - The sales right now won't mean much when the players that don't buy end up quitting within a few months. Use the time that is being spent on these crates to actually fix a lot of the archaic and broken abilities that STILL exist in the game.

#SaveNorrath2023

Welcome to Everquest 2 Immortal.

Personal loot on top of shared loot is fine but personal loot only is antithesis of MMO games. This is tantamount turning the game in single player. P2W crates on top of that is called taking the p***.

Please undo ALL the changes.

Just increase the standard mob drop by 200% if you want more people to run H3 and if you want people to help others, then reduce the lockout. EQ2 did not need these changes for 15+ yes and we don't need them now.

So I had 1 key in my bags when we did h3 last night. Confirmed, the keys are only usable on the last boss. After the boss dies and someone pops the chest, everyone gets a personal loot cache. If you have a key(s) you will also get a pop-up window asking you if you want to use a key. My first cache was red & blue (useless blue) adorns and temp adorns, so I opted to use the key. My extra cash was a duplicate red adorn and more temp adorns. TWO CACHES OF COMPLETE GARBAGE!!

After running the zones last night, I just feel that you need to do away with all the personal keys and heritage loot boxes. The personal loot itself wasn't bad. I didn't gain anything crazy after running three H3's, but I did get one useful item. I did get adorns that weren't useful and I did get gear that went to my alts, but walking into a zone knowing I would leave with 5 items honestly wasn't bad, no matter what those items were.


HOWEVER, do away with loot keys and heritage boxes. They absolutely are not needed. If your intent @caith, was to allow others to help with the zones, then lower the lock-out, leave the personal loot in place, but remove keys and heritage loot boxes. Actually,even the loot un-lockers need to go. If people really want to help as much as they say they did to even have gotten this implemented, then they won't mind getting no loot when "helping" their friends through the zone.

I ran 8 H3s last night (2 on an alt), 6 of them with Tam. Zero keys used, none received, one group member did receive a key, from a zone boss, that's confirmed.
Zero usable loot, one usable red adorn on an alt. Which by itself is fine.
Why I believe this loot system is not appropriate for EQ2 (not even considering Marketplace PTW aspect)?
Our group has handed out (not sold) more loot this expansion that all others combined (30x more maybe?). You can't just "run H3s" with whoever to help people. For anyone that has been doing H3s since we were 95 below resolve knows this.
The way it can be done is to gear up one group, hand out unused loot until people can be contributing member of the group themselves. Then, if you have enough DPS/heals/power maybe you can swap players in, or they can, make groups themselves. I have made hundreds of groups this expac, we have helped more people than ever before. It can be done, but ability to bring people in and hand out loot is absolutely mandatory.
I have told Kander before, we'll be 80, playing EQ2... I'm worried, given decisions made in RoR, that might not be the case.

So.....MUCH......THIS

One simply cannot complete top-tier group content in this game with just any group of 6, even if you presume the appropriate mix of roles and you presume content-appropriate gear. Preferred classes matter at least until you way overpower the content. That's been the case for a while now.

Add to this the substantial ratcheting-up of the grind this expac- the slowness of the gear progression and the result is the work-around that Tamila describes so well.

It used to be that to help guildies and others, you got 3 or 4 relatively solid toons, and 'dragged' 2 or 3 newer people through to get them up to speed.

You just cant do that anymore, because : mechanics.

Instead, you have to make those people sit outside whatever zone you're doing, and pass them loot until they are solid enough to help inside.

This new system stops that workaround cold. In addition to slowing the loot progression even further.

This new system makes everyone worse off, with two exceptions:
1) players who could already do this content reliably and are willing to pay for more RNG chances (which is a small group and a small time window when those people want that gear, however much they spend during that time window)
2) the people who receive that spend.

This expac has been an apparent MVP experiment in finding out what it actually takes to drive people away. Congratulations on another milestone in that search.

I'm exactly the same, stop before ROR launch, feeling a redundancy wrapped in new graphics. I didn't play live again at all but, as already said elsewhere, these negative messages comfort me all the same.
I sympathize for all of you, only one solution is necessary: ​​come to the tle

Our raid guild have already lost many players since the begining of the year because of the stupid grind, itemization and all the broken class.

Last night 6 raiders did not show up after all the talk on those p2w crates. Today, on weekly reset day, I'm the only one connected in our guild at 6PM.

If those are not red flags I don't know what they need more.

I know they probably made more money in two days than our whole guild will spend in the next two years so it is probably fine.

I already canceled my subscription renewal some weeks ago for the same reason of everyone leaving the game, it only comforts me in my decision.

Honestly, *before* the crates and paid keys/resetters, people were complaining that this expac turned the game into more of a job than a game due to how much time is required to be an active, useful member of a real raid force. Moreso for active, half-decent tanks because there are so few and you legitimately can't run without a tank any more. (Which is good and bad)

Adding in the paid keys and resetters just makes it even worse. Now, not only is it a job keeping up with everything, but if you want to make it to T3+ raid resolve, you also *have* to PAY for the chance to actually get something meaningful (but probably still not) out of your personal loot crare, and no more being 'given' loot that the faster/more capable groups can't use.

Sure, you MIGHT get lucky eventually, but watching the people who are willing to and can afford to pay for crates to get keys and reaetters while you basically do the work for nothing is going to be extremely disheartening for folks who run H3s.


I'm not going to pretend my personal contributions/playtime are more important than others, but I will say the fact that even I am *heavily* debating completely quitting the game over this says a lot about the problem.

I gotta be honest, I'm pretty ticked off about the new loot box system. The ability to buy keys with real money to get rare and valuable items just takes away from the fun and challenge of the game. It's making it harder for players who don't want to spend extra money to keep up with the requirements and work together towards a common goal. I'm concerned that this new system is going to drive players away from the game. I hope you'll consider how this is affecting the game's overall balance and player satisfaction and make some changes.

I cannot understand why such an idea was implemented. If the idea was to give players an incentive to help other players, the introduction of P2W items would not have been necessary. As an incentive, it would have been sufficient to let the items drop randomly. Otherwise, DB has no problem with using an RNG loot system everywhere. Or you could have introduced an additional currency that players get if they play through the instances several times a day. If you had enough in-game currency, you could have just bought the items. So many other solutions would have been possible than the implented variant.

This system is only there to further milk its customers. Without taking into account how this destroys the entire balancing. I don't know anyone who has asked for this solution. You act like you have millions of customers, where a few disgruntled players don't count. The community is extremely small compared to the big players on the market. Actually, I would think that a developer in this situation would try to bind the community more strongly to itself. DB is doing exactly the opposite. Instead of addressing issues that are really important to the players, we are just finding another way to take more out of the players' pockets. I don't understand this way of thinking.

TLE is the other half of the issue because staff being spread thin. They have to do live servers, TLE, GU, EXPAC etc. but that’s a different conversation. Just remove the keys/loot unlocker/heritage loot cache and the personal loot thing is fine.

PTW loot keys are bad enough. PTW loot keys that only give a random chance of loot? Time DBG was made to apply for a gambling licence.

Let me start off by saying that I love the game, I've been playing it for 15 years now and most of those as an end game raider. I play the game because of the friends I've made but as a T1 DPS, also to be competitive and try to push myself to do the best numbers I can. I understand that Daybreak/Darkpaw is a business and as such wants to make money. This is fine and expected, but it shouldn't be done at the cost of creating imbalances or unlevel playing fields.

A person who is more wealthy doesn't necessarily have more skill or mental aptitude as someone who is lower or middle class. When you put things like this in so people can just spend money and appear to be better than everyone else regardless of skill level because their gear is way stronger, it makes the rest of us not care or even want to try because we know we will not win.

This expansion has been bad enough with so much stuff relying on RNG, very low amounts of drops in chests, and unreasonably high resolve expectations for raiding.

Most of us want to work in game to earn the best rewards, not hope to get lucky on some random drop that is a .0001% chance but I understand that's always been part of the game, it just seems even more the last few expansions with all the runes, adornments, whatever else.

My point is, people are already fairly burnt out and irritated in not being able to work with a coin based system or something similar to get adorns/runes/recipes/gear that they need other than the 3-4 things you have with Miracula. Now you're telling all of us who have spent a lot of time hoping to get lucky just to throw money at you and we MIGHT get those things that we need to stay competitive.

These personal loot rolls in H3 are not a good system, at least before when we got a normal chest, we could share something we need with a guild member or friend and it actually gave at least 1 resolve item of some sort. The pace is already way behind previous expansions, you really don't need to slow us down more. If you want us to help our friends, set the H3 zones to a 1.5 hour timer like the rest, it takes almost that long to clear one anyway.

We're tired of being gated to death and already have had multiple guild members leave because of the grind this expansion. This is just another slap in the face/step backward in building trust in your player base who already thinks that you're trying to make things miserable for them instead of fun like a game should be.

IMO, take out the pay to win and personal loot cache stuff UNLESS you are going to have a normal chest drop as well for every name, then I could at least live with it because we could continue to get usable gear that can go to someone at least. I'm not sure whose idea this whole system was, but it wasn't well thought out at all. I understand you want to keep people playing for longer and that's fine, but I feel like this isn't the right way to do it. People just get burned out and quit and then when the expansion rolls around, you won't have people paying for subs or the expansions which will likely result in a net loss of profit.

Consider adding more usable loot to the Miracula or even normal heroic instance merchant, or throw some of the good runes on there like Vampiric Requiem, Gleeful Ire, the crit bonus overcap ear one, etc. This gives players a reason to get coins and do instances and actually feels rewarding to them when they have a set goal they can accomplish without feeling like they have to get lucky to get what they need or seeing someone run a zone once and get the item they've been trying to get for a month now.

Here's an idea if you want to make money...
Alts have been very difficult to gear up the last 3-4 expansions since you did away with armor unlocks and there are so many different runes, adorns, and flagging things required to be up to par for the high resolve requirements. Maybe put a really rare item in the crates that can "mirror" a slot on a character's account. For instance, say a character has a 440 ring, if they get lucky enough to get a "mirror" item then they can use it to add that jewelry item to their one per player claim window and unlock it for every character on their account. You could keep raid items out of the mix if you think it's too overpowered or celestial/mythical items. The thing about it is, a person's account can only play 1 player at a time so it really wouldn't break anything in raids or whatever else because that person can still only take up 1 slot so it really shouldn't matter which character they play. It will add more fun and excitement to alts again and give people a reason to play their alts which could mean spending more money as well as time. It's food for thought and I think it would likely be accepted as a positive thing instead of the negativity you're currently dealing with.

Anyway, I wrote a lot and I hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears.

-Seb

What I'm hearing is that instead of working on class balance, stat bloat or the plethora of useless stats associated with a defunct autoattack system, you've been working on THIS?

This is probably the worst idea I've ever seen come out of the Everquest franchise, and I'm not exaggerating.

Have you devs had any positive feedback on this poorly made decision???? I hope you rethink this and scrap it before this puts the final nail in the EQ2 coffin.