Questions Regarding Future Content

Hello,

I have a few questions regarding the upcoming expansion and the future of this game in general.

Will there be actual changes that allow players to return to the game without having to invest huge amounts of real time money or having to quit their job in order to play 14 hours a day, if their goal is to be a high end raider?
To be more specific about this, I am referring to:
1. Ability upgrades (Profession and Ascension)
2. Items that you will only obtain through spending plat or "boxing", such as the red adornments on the launch of BoL

Is there any thought about not creating meta collections that are only available to players who "box" six accounts within the first half year of the expansion when the meta reward is most relevant?

What about itemization? There weren't any interesting items this expansion, which is tedious. Just like how 2019's summer ethereals are STILL best in slot, over a year later. Those, of course, haven't been available since the summer ethereal event of 2019 ended, which removed the possibility for competitive players to return. So, I am wondering, has the daybreak team the intentions to make the game fun to play? There is no point in forcing players to do the summer events because it removes the chance of being a relevant raider during the next expansion.

Will there be any new and possibly fun combat mechanic added? I personally liked the 100 fervor for 12 seconds ethereal adornment for example because it created a skill gap. Clicking the same button order a billion times gets boring, having to time your abilities makes it a lot more interesting.

Thanks for your time and have a wonderful day,

Redlight

there usually is a gear up level up event before an expac launches which has drops of spell research reducers, familiar xp potions, mercenary and mount training reducers

so get in now for that, also do the panda quests for 170 resolve gear with great potency

also they are moving away from infusing and weapon leveling so new gear can be slotted in immediately (some best in slot stuff may still be infusable and levelable)

I'm talking about being a performing raider. Not a casual pleb.

opsee nvm

Under normal circumstances, Redlight, I think you would have a very valid complaint. But I think you have to cut DP some slack as they are working with a small staff plus we are in the middle of a pandemic and financial depression. We have to be grateful people are still willing to invest in a game that is over 15 years old and that the staff can mainly work from home.

With a few notable exceptions, I think DP has done a good job of keeping us occupied while we've been isolated. For example, right now there are three events going plus the city festival begins in a few days.

I'm not saying we haven't had a rough time of it but if you can still afford a computer and Internet access you are way ahead of millions of people today who are out of work and losing their health care, homes, and sometimes lives or loved ones.

I'm just trying to put the game issues, we've all been having to deal with this year, in perspective. It's almost a mantra I keep saying to prevent myself from getting banned from the forums lol.

While I am hopeful that we will see some positive changes to the game, with the new expansion, I think we will just have to wait and see what they are able to accomplish in the time left before the expansion needs to go live for the holidays. Meanwhile, I think I'd better stock up on Valium.

I'm a free to play in a top raid guild, it's doable.

well EXCUSE ME mr hoity toity ill go away then

A pandemic and financial depression have nothing to do with this; for the past couple of years the game has gone downhill so extremely fast. Many people (with more game knowledge than the devs) volunteer in assisting the DP team by providing logs on items/spells/etc that aren't functioning properly. The amount of time it takes to fix very basic issues takes forever. Half the classes being insane and the other half being worthless also has been going on for several expansions, and all they do is nerf the absolutely OP class of the year, and buff the one that was OP the year before that. Look at beastlords for example, or assassins.

People playing this game are customers, they are paying for the service. Any personal issues of the DP team are non of my concern. They show what they want to sell to you, they sell it, but don't deliver. Even the podcasts are terrible. Kander constantly evading topics and such is just incompetence.

I would love to return to EQ2 in ToT without the silly mythical hammer. The game was already going downhill, but at least it was still fun and not a massive time and money sink. Being surrounded by likeminded people would result in to you being able to build your character efficiently. Now you are stuck with silly RNG and you are almost forced to use software that people tend to ALWAYS get away with to farm solo zones for silly red adornments that are way overpowered.

And no, I am not looking for your empathy. I am just saying what has to be done in order to make this end game fun for the players who once ruled the top guilds, by using knowledge and creativity. And if you are an Outlaws raider, sorry, but your character is probably having the potency of a BoL month 1 Resistance player.

This game has always been a time sink but it is only since DB took over that it also became a money sink. I know nothing of the financial side of the game, and their business model defies everything I know about business, so it is hard to speculate about what the goals of the investors are and how much that plays out in game-development decisions.

But the truth is there is no perfect game out there. Each game has its own strengths and weaknesses and those change with each new expansion. Changes in investors, staff, player demographics, and management make it challenging to come up with a fresh, new look for the game each year. And unlike many games, EQ2 tries to appeal to a wide range of players rather than just "performing raiders." "Casual plebs" also pay to play this game.

I fully agree with you that some awful mistakes have been made in the past few years and heaven knows I've been very vocal about them. And there are devs that seem oblivious to player complaints due to tunnel vision or maybe unseen pressure from investors.

But the game has a new leader, now, and I think we need to give her time to settle into her position. There is little point, meanwhile, in haranguing the new leader about mistakes made in the past. The new expansion will give us a good idea about how well DP is listening to our suggestions and complaints under its new leadership. However, we also have to remember that a good deal of the new expansion was developed under the old leadership, so we need to take that into consideration. I also understand that the game has a new investor and that may have a major impact on the game. We will just have to hope for the best and wait and see what happens.

This is unbecoming of your elite status! Chill bruh...

Buy a time machine, because times they do change... duh

Since you mentioned us and gave the free pub! I would just like to piggy back on that and leave a wonderful warm THANK YOU!! WE WELCOME OVERPOWERED, SELF ORDAINED GREAT PLAYERS from guilds like Resistance who want to ENJOY the game again!! We don't know much about Potency, but we sure do have a lot of fun with 100-120 members online during peak hours to grp with and dig into content. While we could take our 5 Raid teams and pull the best of the best into one team and compete with anyone on the server, our goal is to...

1. have fun
2. help our guildies
3. Explore the game content with people we enjoy hanging out with
4. .......wait I think that's really all you need for this GAME right?

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Thanks for the plug REDLIGHT!! Back at'chya buddy!!

The last couple of expansions have been complete gear resets. For people raiding, we were soon getting gear that was much better than CD gear.

Getting red adorns was a PITA at first, but with the Overseer feature, now it's fairly simple. Run Legendary or better Overseer Missions, both Season 2 and the charged Season 1, and you get the recipes for the adorns you need.

As far as I am concerned, it was dead simple to upgrade abilities in BoL. My raid group worked cooperatively to get the scholar books to one person so they'd have them all. Other members went and harvested their keisters off to get Lantern Hogfish and Shrieking Mushrooms etc. Still others donated fuel and/or cash. We all had Expert spells almost immediately. An Expert was an improvement over higher level previous tier spells, simply because they were resisted less.

As for Ascensions, pretty much they are old spells dating from level 100, KA and PoP, that have not been updated in BoL. Even for people who have all of them at Celestial now (which you can still do and will almost certainly continue to be able to do) are finding that Ascensions get resisted more than you'd expect. Because they're essentially level 100-110 spells.
So, unless they give us Ascension upgrades, Ascension spells will become less and less relevant.

That wasn't true even at the start of BoL. The adorns and the 2-charge recipes for adorns were available from the start, they just weren't plentiful. Heck, they do occasionally drop even in Solos. Raiders were very successful in getting the red runes because it was pretty easy for them to get into Heroics quickly. Even people with crap gear or new to the game were getting some very nice stuff from soloable Achievements, right off the bat. That made the step from Solo to Heroics much easier in BoL than it was in CD.

Now that there are Overseer Missions dropping the recipes, it's a LOT easier. I'm pretty sure they aren't going to axe Overseers soon.

Now that they're removing the need to go insane trying to infuse every piece of gear and weapon infuse all weapons, things should be less tedious.

Really? Vyzh'dra's Ruby-Adorned Clasp is 195 Resolve. I think better belts have been dropping in raids for some time. The only reason I would consider it would be for the Ability Doublecast, and even then you can only do it once every 10 minutes, and it lasts for what, 30 seconds?

Don't get me wrong, I think the whole idea of NO-TRADE shinies is a crock, and I wish DBG would remove the NO-TRADE tags from all collectables. I still need 8 NO-TRADEs from Fabled Guk, 7 NO-TRADEs from CD, and 9 NO-TRADEs from BoL. Not for the belt, but because I am OCD about finishing collections.

I actually disagree with you on this one. I'd like to see someone post the Examine window for fully-imbued CD Ethereals next to the 195-200 Resolve gear from Challenge Raids, not even to mention Sol Eye or Fabled PoW, and explain why it's better.

If you look back through these forums, and the forum archives, you will see raiders have been sneering at casuals for their "overentitled" attitude that they "need" gear that's as good as raiders get, without being willing to do the "work" (time, effort, whatever) to get them.

I think that a skilled player can be just as competitive if they accidentally miss Summer Ethereals, because raid gear is going to be as good or better along the way in the new expansion, as it has been since they invented the Summer Ethereals. I won't argue your belief that CD Ethereal armor is "best in slot", but even if it is, it's not much better than current raid gear. Moar mad skillz, less overpowered gear crutches would probably be good for people.

I think combat mechanics are so hosed up now that they should wipe the slate clean, stat squish, and simplify. And if a raider isn't timing combat chains now for best use with Resets, assorted buffs from bards, enchanters, and even healers, I wouldn't call them "skilled".

That's a little disingenuous. - A month 1 Resistance player

Jrox best post I've read all day!

Way to ignore problems that are killing the player base even further. Have fun playing EQ2 in a few years when they close down the servers because the stubborn people still dumping a lot of usd in to the game realize it is not worth it.

Can I have your stuff?

To come to your first point, I haven't seen a top end raider (who you don't talk to because you are a casual pleb) outperform another top tier raider WITH last expansions ethereal armor, given that they are equally skilled. It is basic math that 50% more ability doublecast, when the standard is 50%, equals 25% more outgoing ability damage. Which means that two equally skilled players have a 25% outgoing ability damage gap, because of gear that is no longer available.

To come to your second point, expert tier abilities are **** tier. Please talk about ancient or celestial tier and explain how you can acquire those in a rather normal fashion.

You are somewhat right on the ascension abilities, I believe they will become less and less relevant. They are still relevant however.

Coming to your fourth point, I am referring to the red adornments that were sold for over 5 krono a piece. Values were so high because they were so rare that they were only obtainable by bott- err... boxers!

If you do not understand why itemization is crap, you clearly haven't played a good mmorpg in it's prime; when thought about items had more meaning than for example comparing potency, or in some cases ability doublecast vs flurry.

And if you think that one year old ethereal armor isn't still way too good, explain to me why most top parsing raiders are wearing it.

I quit live a while ago. I just stay up to date by talking to the players who dominate the raid progression.
It would be nice if darkpaw would make some changes that would make the game fun again, because I am sure people would start playing live again if it wasn't such a disgusting mess.

Why don't you just use your knowledge and creativity to be better?

We're not.

Because with my knowledge, I would have to be absolutely insane to start playing live again.