Repopulate zones

By the way, this was supposed to be thread suggesting that they unlink groups and repopulate zones, but I'm still glad it turned into a "where to solo" thread. I appreciate the suggestions.

Wahh, there isn't enough solo content in Antonica for my level 60 wizard! /sob

/sarcasm off

Seriously lol, TS is in your level range, not Antonica. And trust me, there's PLENTY of solo content in this game. Especially as a wizard...we can solo anything.

Unlinking them would turn them all into solo encounters...

Your level 22 and have completed all of the solo quests in Antonica. Good, now your ready to move onto TS where new content awaits. You also can start exploring the Splitpaw dungeons, which are extremely solo friendly.
Antonica is completely fine the way it is, I rather have more group content with some solo content mixed in. Not everyone likes to play single player. You should be happy the way it is now. At the very beginning hardly any mobs were considered solo mobs, most were heroic. Then the devs went to the other extreme and made everything mostly solo. Right now, we have a decent mix between solo and heroic mobs, lets keep it that way.
You also might want to check out the beach area quests in Nek Forest for some decent solo content. There are many places where you can be by yourself, just gotta find them!

People abuse and liberally flaunt the term "solo-friendly". Solo friendly doesn't mean 80% of the game is solo because you can't handle the combat and social machinations of a group.

Sage, by grouped heroics, I mean linked heroics. Sorry if I was using the wrong term.

If mobs inside quest areas have been demoted, I'll find that out when I get there. I'm only playing a level 11 conjurer right now. But when I cancelled before, my level 21 wizard's quest areas were filled with linked heroics even though the quests were not marked as heroic.

Regardless, I wasn't talking about quest areas. I was talking about places like Antonica, where huge areas are covered with groups of 6 or more linked heroic mobs. My suggestions are:

1. Unlink them.

2. Demote them to non-heroic status.




Message Edited by MuscularBeaver on 12-18-2005 10:29 PM

"Unlinking them would turn them all into solo encounters..."

No, it would turn them into potentially soloable encounters. You still have to worry about adds due to aggro range, but it would be possible (if SOE took my advice, anyway) to pull a single mob at a time if you worked at it and knew what you were doing. That would take strategy and patience, but that's cool with me.
A group could just charge in and let the aggro do its work, not worrying about pulling single mobs. They'd aggro the whole cluster, which would make it a group encounter.

You are right that this would be a neat thing to do but it causes another problem that happened in EQ1. You would get a group together and have one person "the puller" pull one mob at a time and then the group would jump on it and take it down. It was boring waiting around for the puller to do his work. The way it is now works much better in my opinion that what you are suggesting.

So what if some groups do that? In EQ1, some groups also aggroed a train (on purpose or by accident) and then ran away. The train kept going and killed everyone in its path, usually including my toon. Bottom line: People play different ways, some good, some bad.

So what if a group pulls a mob at a time and pounces it? How does that affect your gameplay if they do that? It certainly doesn't affect mine. What DOES affect my gameplay is when SOE repopulates Antonica with linked groups of heroics that I can't touch solo even if I wanted to -- groups that I *used* to be able to tackle with strategy. I'd prefer to have them unlinked, but at least I could tackle them before and have a chance because they weren't heroic.

Personally, I don't think you'd see the situation you're describing. Player groups don't seem to have any interest in fighting those linked groups of heroic mobs standing around in Antonica. I don't blame them. If you have a good group of players, why bother with street trash when you can do a dungeon instead? That's where the fun action is, and probably better loot, too.

So what we have now is a zone populated with groups of linked heroics that nobody fights. They're real pretty. Fun to look at as you sneak past them trying not to aggro one of them. But otherwise a total waste of real estate.

As someone new to EQ2, but not new to MMORPG, I find the vast areas of heroic Gnolls in Antonica to be a dissapointing suprise. They dont seem to get fought on Befallen, they just sit there.

I have this spiffy new Gnoll-killin' backstab thinger, but cant seem to find cause to use it.

I have no problem with there being some heroic spawns, but the idea is to give people a reward for grouping, not punish soloers and leave huge populations of unused mobs in your game.

They should have some unlinked, or non-heroic linked ones about to allow SOME soloing, withough making the whole derned thing just a waste of space.

Waste of space is right. They seem to have no other reason to exist than to scare anyone who happens to be passing by, because I never see anyone actually fighting them.

Because 95% of people already leveled past that. There's large amounts of space because its an overland zone, for one, and also in anticipation of the zone's target number of players. Yes, its a newb zone and so most people don't go there anymore. So yes, things will seem abandoned.

I just have to throw something in here, because it's basically what I have been thinking about for a while. It seems to be 'wasted space' to me as well. As far back as beta I remember wondering what the point of outdoor groups of 6 or 7 linked heroic mobs were. It makes the world seem a lot "smaller" - because there are areas that I never even go into because I know there are so many linked mobs and I have no chance against them.

As a previous poster stated, a full group is probably not going to spend time in an outdoor zone killing these random groups of linked heroics. They'll move on to 'greener' pastures in an indoor dungeon or to do some major quest. It's always seemed to me that most of Antonica, and a lot of the Thundering Steppes is just 'window dressing'... these gnolls/bandits/animals have been standing in the same spot since beta, and have never died or given up their loot because rarely does anyone bother with them. Shoot, I even saw a group of 9 or 10 grouped heroic deer in TS!! What the... ??? What group would put the time or effort into killing this large group of heroic deer? So the deer never die, they just wander around taking up space looking pretty (I guess). And the exp or the loot from these mobs is never realized.

Another example are those scarecrows in Antonica that were updated to heroic not long ago. Prior to that I often saw solos or duos out there hunting them. Since the update, whenever I pass them, there is never anyone out there. I'm not sure what the point of upgrading this particular mob was... where before it was a source of exp (not a lot of loot) and a place to go hunt, now it's just a place to run by on your way somewhere else (if you are solo'ing) and they are standing out there as 'wasted' space.

I'm not really an advocate of a totally solo game, but I do think there are some things that don't make a lot of sense in this regard (like the deer, or the upgraded scarecrows) and contribute to the feeling that 'there is no solo content'... because people pass these same groups of mobs over and over day after day, maybe on quests or writs or whatever, and think to themselves, "if only I could kill that one gnoll I could finish this quest and move on - no one else kills them and I just wave at them every day on my run past them...'

When the game was first released, most of the overworld zones were heroic encounters. Scarecrows used to be a prime target for xp groups (as were giants in TS.) Then they changed most of the overland content to solo mobs. There were of course unhappy people with this change, so they decided to change the encounters that people enjoyed heroic back to heroic (along with what they thought should be heroic too.)

I see. So what you're saying is that SOE can't attract any new players to this game. Everyone who's every going to subscribe to EQ2 has already done so, and they've leveled up out of Antonica which is why it's deserted. And nobody who has been a subscriber for any length of time ever creates alts, so they aren't generating any new players, either.

Let's assume you're right, and that SOE has ruined this game so much that it no longer attracts new players. So what's the point of populating Antonica with linked groups of heroics that nobody will ever fight? What's the point of having Antonica exist at all? After all, everyone's leveled out of it, why waste resources in the game holding up an area that's of no use any longer? Just make places like TS and SH accessible directly using the mariner's bells. Since no new players are entering the game, that should suffice.

What a crock.

Apparently all those complainers never came back to enjoy the changes they wanted, because I never see anyone fighting all these linked groups of heroics they begged for.

Quote: So what you're saying is that SOE can't attract any new players to this game. Everyone who's every going to subscribe to EQ2 has already done so, and they've leveled up out of Antonica which is why it's deserted.

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Well this couldn't be further from the truth if one only looks at the newbie forums here or at the WoW forums... World of Warcraft is rapidly bleeding players and guess where they are going? May want to link that with recent patch changes that has made the game more friendly for casual gamers and you'll see what is happening. SOE is catching all these new MMOers from WoW with a huge butterfly net... forget not being able to attract new players, thats ALL it is doing at present, and looking at server numbers, they are ont he rise. Perfect timing as always, new expansion soon to be announced for Spring 2006... I think whatever they are doing, theya re doing 'just right. If it isnt broken...

And it 'isn't' broken... at least from the majority standpoint, not the vocal forum minority (make it very minor voice lol).

I don't know if new players are coming in or not. I was just pointing out how silly the argument was that 95% of the players levelled out of Antonica, which explains why it's empty. If it's empty (and I happen to think it is VERY empty compared to when I played back in August), then the only way it could be empty because people levelled out if it is if very few new players have joined the game since then.

In other words, the argument is one of the stupidest ways to defend the game, because it implies that there are no new players coming in.

How do I explain how it's so empty in Antonica? I think there ARE new players coming in, but I don't think new players like the game well enough to stick with it past Oakmyst for very long. Just my theory. No data to back it up. But I don't know of any other good theories as to why Antonica is deserted these days compared to August (which is just coincidentally before the LU13 massive change to the game).

Oh, and if the game isn't broken, then why does SOE make so many frequent and significant changes to the game to fix it? Too bad they just break it more.


Message Edited by MuscularBeaver on 12-21-2005 05:09 PM

And you play on the Bazaar, a Station Exchange Enabled server. The attraction of SE servers are far less than the regular servers. You can't even compare SE server populations to regular server populations. Most of the new players coming in won't even touch the Bazaar or Shadowhaven. Do you have characters outside of the Station Exchange enabled servers? On my server, Antonica has at least 40+ people during my play time...
Oakmyst Forest, The Caves, etc are not applicable to "new player" populations since most players can easily move into deeper content with in the first few days of playing the game.

Well *I* play on a regular server, and going back to the original thought.. I never see groups at the heroic scarecrows, nor do I see them fighting the groups of 11 heroic deer in TS.

It's too bad there is no way for the people who design these zones or make these changes to check back later to see if what they changed or designed is 'working' -- and by working, what I mean is doing what they changed it to do. This was to add group content to the overland zones, even though singles and duos were enjoying them. So are groups now out there taking advantage of the changes? Or are they in dungeons with their groups? If the designer could run some sort of report to see how many times those scarecrows have died since implementing the change, then decide if this was a good or needed change - or just another change that made the world seem smaller because it's one less place to go and hunt. I am willing to bet that that linked group of heroic deer have NEVER died from the day the game went live

I know there is solo content out there, but the overwhelming number of linked heroics in Antonica and TS just seem to stand there day in and day out not getting used (I'm still too low to hunt in any higher zones). It seems to be such a waste and I think that is what the original poster had in mind when he/she started this thread.