Using the vocal minority to justify your claims, nice! I'm not sure how many times I have to explain this. If you expect PvP in this game to be balanced you're playing the wrong game. This isn't a game balanced around PvP and it never will be. Deathtoll was **** because of how the content was adjusted. Also I played in one of the top DT guilds, had 2nd most kills on the server and was almost always BiS in terms of items and I can't recall a single item that was OP and frankly the raid gear was pretty sub par so not sure what item you could even be referring to. If you want to have a discussion about EQ2's problems that's cool but at least have an idea of what direction the server should be going so it can be successful before you try to implement some garbage BR that won't attract anybody.
-I doubt they'll do another Nagafen. -I doubt they'll do another Deathtoll. -I doubt they'll do another Battlegrounds. -They may just create a new server and allow people to opt-in for PVP, a check box on character screen like allowing requests for duels that can only "update" and be effective after you zone. No new gear, no separate stats, minor tweaks to class abilities/item procs and just an opt-in free for all slaughter. And, sadly, that would probably be more successful if marketed properly than spending huge amounts of time for epic fails like all the previous attempts. It'll be broken, but honest.
I feel like I'm being trolled here. MMO's and BR's are two separate genres and attempting to combine the two only takes away the aspects people love about MMO's. I'm starting to sound like a broken record at this point but the only way world PvP is successful in an MMO is if it is a standard PvE MMO with PvP enabled. Anything else is a waste of not only our time but their time as well. Now I by no means think a cross genre game is impossible, but at that point just develop a new game because it's no longer Everquest 2. Also please keep all subsequent terrible ideas to yourself, the last thing I need is these dev's thinking they struck gold on some crazy bullsh
One person doesn't equal an entire server. The class related issues on the server were: 1. Brigands in no gear could one shot the best geared tank on the server (which was me) in 3 hits unless they can LoH. 2. Healer differentiation pre-AA 3. Paladins outhealing healers because of % based heals 4. For no reason in particular when KoS dropped they broke all ranged weapons in PVP. This was a bug not a balance issue which was corrected when they did the battlegrounds thing but refused to fix in KoS (and made every scout except brigands quit). PVP ranged DR went down to 4 for all ranged weapons. Everything else was PVE related, and granted a lot of the commentary came from Deathtoll until Onra's guild formed up and tried to drive improvements on Stormhold.
I actually think that's where a lot of modern MMOs where 'PVP is the end game' fail. They have no real end game content and therefore no interest that's actually creating a server community and driving interactions between players. The open world bosses in early EQ2 expansions were amazing, and if they can get those working, will create an awesome server. For me, EQ2 is always a PVE game first, but you better believe I'll always roll on a PVP to make my housing items and raid. Personally I think if there was to be a Deathtoll 2 the 'easy' fixes to improve the player experience would be to: 1. Make sure double up/dispatch is not over-turned when DoF drops. 2. Consider bringing AA forward in to Shattered Lands to allow for differentiation between classes. 3. Ensure that world bosses are sufficiently challenging and drop appropriate loot to keep interest (loot has been fixed, so this mostly shouldn't be an issue provided they aren't under-tuned). How they were on SH launch would be ideal. 4. When bugs do pop up (like all ranged weapons breaking) just acknowledge it and let people know there's a fix incoming. I think the team is experienced enough to know the difference between one person whining and an issue that needs attention like nobody's ranged weapon working in PVP. More controversial/much less likely to happen 1. The factions need to be semi-eliminated. This game can't support 3 factions who can't communicate with each other in game. DBG should allow inter-faction grouping (that works like how it works for Exiles) and cross faction chat. This will allow people to still form groups and build relationships where necessary with the other side to get stuff done. I think this is critical to make the server successful. The other option is to just start people as Exiles and allow them to move to cities to complete quests, but I think that would eventually partition the server anyway. 2. A rework of some of the awful AAs and class specialties so that actually provide the bonuses the tooltips say they do and a rework of spell tiers to make master books meaningful. 3. Difficulty. This is probably something that needs to stay the same in raids, we all remember what happened last time - scripted increase in hit points and base outgoing damage with scripts that could just be ignored. But the KoS changes to heroic content were amazing and made grinding meaningful.
The dispatch double up thing was crazy. Shouldn't reduce mitigation twice in PvP realistically. Dispatch, Debilitate, and Murderous rake are more than enough mitigation reduction. The damage however should be applied twice. I disagree with the faction thing though, Byron. I don't think exile cant really be considered a faction given the things you give up to play there. You don't have access to these faction merchants, a guild or player must be completely self sufficient in exile otherwise they lose too much. Exile never holds two guilds for very long, one always leaves for faction eventually because its simply easier to play from. Also if you allow inter faction grouping how are you going to PvP? At that point its a whole new game and people are going to struggle even more. I don't think its worth the time only to have 90% of people complain that everyone is forced into exile practically. Only way it could work is if they used the old mentor system in PvP. If a Q and a Freep grouped, and were attacked by a group of Q's. Only the Freep should be allowed to attack back.
doesnt even need to be TLE just open a pvp server period, balancing is not to hard to do, i know this for a fact ive seen it done.
Apparently, balancing is the world's hardest thing to do, because in 15 years, EQ2 has never had good class balance. Ever.
hot take: MMO's will never be balanced due to how they're designed and I think that is part of their charm. Sometimes you just get lucky when it comes to loot and that 1 piece was game changing
you all really think they will make a pvp server for the few handful of people always screaming and whining for it? “Member when PvP was… this… or that… “If PvP was so great it would still be here. But it’s not. Because well, internet people are predictable. A bunch of unpleasant and rude players on EQ2 PvP.
They making a beta server to test its viability. A bunch of people will login tomorrow. How many people will still log in on 3/12? That is the real question. The nostalgia value is high for those that played EQ2 pvp, and whether they can create the same play experience again is a big question mark, but an even bigger question mark is will these folks really enjoy the same experience again, or is reminiscing some glory days more fun than actually reliving them. This whole thing to me feels like deciding to date an ex-girlfriend. It will be fun for a little while, but you'll quickly realize the reasons why it didn't work out before. Much as it is with FG TLE, there is a timeslice of the game I enjoyed most and I'm interested in replaying some of that. But now that I'm here dealing with the same failures on DBG to deliver (itemization yet again), she just isn't looking all that attractive anymore.
I'm highly skeptical that anything will be able to capture how amazing PvP was in the Nagafen glory days. Personally I'll be waiting to see what the new PvE TLE will look like. Hopefully it'll also restrict familiars and other P2W bs like the discount merchant box. Hopefully they release some info on it soon.
