Sentinel's Fate- Item degradation as you outlevel it.

Please just scrap this concept. It's just a bad idea. If anything, at the very least you'll be killing a huge aspect of tradeskilling, as alot of this gear is used when leveling alts. Why buy a suit of MC armor at 32 when by the time you hit 42 it's absolutely worthless? Just buy some cheap treasured crap from the broker at that point and tough it through.
I'm not a huge fan of my current armor, not to say the armor I'll raid for between now and SF becoming useless as I level through new content. I should get new armor naturally as it gradually becomes better, not as my old armor loses power.

Exactly, do they really believe players will pay 40$ to nerf themselves come next expansion?

Morghus wrote:

Kinda like any expansion where the level cap gets raised and you replace your gear......so yes people will pay for it.

From what I've read the gear sarts to de-grade lvl 60+. So buy your MC at 62 lvl to 70 then quest for better or buy the next tier. I don't understand, with an expansion that's 7 months away, people are already getting worked up about everything.

Bigron@Unrest wrote:

Some people will pay for it. I for one will not, and I suspect there will be many others who won't either. Item degradation would essentially kill my preferred play style.
Although I play a significant number of hour per week, I am still a casual player in most ways. I have no interest in raiding. I don't need the best gear, so I upgrade when I feel the need for a little extra offense or defense. If I'm doing fine on the content I'm currently exploring, I don't upgrade. If my equipment is meeting my needs, then why should I?
I will not subject myself to forced equipment upgrades that serve no real purpose other than forcing me to play the game in one certain way. I left DAOC when the devs made it obvious that they wanted people to play their way, which was to raid high end content as far as the PvE end of the game was concerned. I left behind 3 accounts with several max level characters on each account. I had much more time and effort invested in DAOC at that point than I have in EQ2 at this point and I did leave. They made it so I wasn't enjoying myself that much any more, so why stay? This change would add a substantial amount of additional grind to EQ2 that serves no real purpose other than just being a time and money sink. If this change goes live, I will be finding a new game.
In addition to players who will leave before subjecting themselves to this, how many more casual players will give up in the following months when they are forced to grind to keep their equipment remotely competitive. The last expansion already offered much less for the casual player than the raider. At this point EQ2 seriously needs more players, but the last expansion offered essentially nothing to attract anyone new. The steadily increasing time between updates and expansions is not a good sign no matter how much of a positive spin they try to put on it. Therefore, the devs need to being doing all that they can to be retaining all existing players, not just those who play a certain way.
DAOC's last expansion was the second one in a row that focused primarily on the hardcore player. (And I want to stress that this was their LAST expansion. It's been nearly three year ago now, and the last few times I checked, the current total number of active players was less than the number who used to play on single servers so I doubt they are hard at work on anything new.) Focusing on one portion of their playerbase was a serious mistake on Mythic's part as it led to a steady reduction in the overall number of players. The reduced playerbase meant that there was no longer enough money coming in to justify new expansions which led to even more people leaving.
I don't want to see EQ2 follow this same road. (If you don't think it could happen here, I encourage you to look at what was being said on the DAOC forums four years ago. I'll give you a hint . . . many people thought it could never happen there either.) Focusing primarily on hardcore players is a mistake. If hardcore players paid more to play then this would be justified, but they don't. Losing a casual player hurts the bottom line just as much as losing a hardcore one. Losing even one player is too much if it is due to an unnecessary change that brings no real benefit to the game.

So that means if I make something at 52 for someone they would have to change at 62? Won't that cost lots of money for players who not come in much?

BabyAngel wrote:

I think it's more of an effect at the lower tiers, where itemization is screwy, ya. That and the length of time you remain at those levels. So you're alot more likly to use off-tier equipment.
At the higher tiers, well just consider Kunark, you could item progress fairly easily with the solo quest rewards. While we're pretty sure they are doing different advancement pathes to 90 this go around, I suspect that relevant gear upgrades will continue to occur as your leveling.

I just so happened to click on this link because I was curious. If Sony goes through with this then they're going to piss a lot of people off. I thought they wanted people to come and play this game? This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. I hope someone over there is pessimistic. If that's how you spell it.

Isnt this how it USED to work?

Item scaling will not begin until you are level 60. The concept of players needing to buy level 32 gear and it being useless by level 42 simply won't happen.
By the time a player is level 60, they should have enough coin to make replacing an item or two every level a non issue.
It will not make any item "useless". There will be a cap to how much degidation an item will sustain if you keep wearing it well past its level.
The game has a lot of things live now that are worse than this will be, all it does is force players above ~level 65 to upgrade their gear a little more often.

Noaani wrote:

The game has a lot of things live now that are worse than this will be, all it does is force players above ~level 65 to upgrade their gear a little more often.

Force . . . that one word is the real heart of the problem. Why should you force players to do this?
Furthermore, good equipment is not cheap and time-limited casual players are rarely wealthy. (I think some people forget that much of the solo content doesn't pay that well and the drops rarely sell for that much. The other good ways to make money, crafting and harvesting, take lots of time which is the thing that a time-limited player already doesn't have enough of.) A lucky find of really good lower-level equipment may actually be better than what is reasonably priced or reasonably available with a limited time commitment. In this instance, what is gained by making a player's piece of equipment functionally, if not literally, useless.
Resistance to this horrible idea is not players asking for a boost. It's players asking not to be put at an even greater disadvantage. Why not just accept that, even if this doesn't hurt you in the least, it will hurt others and it will cause some (many? Who know, so why take the chance.) to leave the game.

Sharakari@Unrest wrote:

yeah. Sort of. Back when the game first came out, players would have to use weapons that were appropriate to thier level. A player could use an orange weapon, but once he started to level up and the weapon's level turned blue, the weapon started doing less damage than what it original stated. If it reached green or grey, you would do barely any damage with it.
Same with armor. If a piece of armor greyed out, it's AC value protected you less than what was stated.

This idea was quickly scrapped within a couple months after release. The idea was to make sure that player-made equipment continued to get used, but they soon found that not all classes had appropriate weapons and armor to switch to every 3-4 levels. Jewelry as another problem altogether, as there was barely none anyway.

I for one am actually for this. I believe it will actually make raiding and grouping easier for the majority of the players. Think about it this way... they've been steadily increasing stats to a ridiculous amount as of late, and each time they release a new expansion, they have to top those stats, or else people have no room to grow. That screws a lot of things up. Those who aren't "fortunate" enough to dedicate 40 hour's worth of play time to raid nonstop will not have the overinflated stats of the current expansion, and when the new one comes out, they'll find themselves even further behind as that expansion will take those stats for the norm. Every expansion people find themselves further behind unless they are in the hardcore group. Believe it or not, this change will actually somewhat level the playing field as the previous gear from 70-80 won't have much bearing on current content as it will lose much of its effectiveness. Because of this, they will be setting group and raid zones at a better entry level based on what everyone has access to, not just what a selected few have access to. That means more people can get into these zones as they can progress a little easier from start to finish. Yeah, it kinda sucks in a way that you have to find new stuff, but that's how most mmo's are to begin with anyways. But for the overall health of the game, I think it's a good idea.

Fayle@Mistmoore wrote:

I think you have missed something. The hardcore raiders with the "overinflated stats of the current expansion" will be going into the new content much more powerful than casual players so I don't see them being that much more likely to invite along players who will contribute much less to their groups. Therefore, they do the hard versions, they keep better equipment and things move along much as they do now. Top tier raid gear that is weakened is still going to be dramatically better than the gear of casual players. You are also discounting the effect of having more AAs and more master level spells.
Yes, casual players will be able to be successful in the new raid zones, but this will be the less difficult versions with less powerful rewards. (Furthermore, having different difficulty version of some content has nothing to do with whether item degradation is a good or a bad idea.) On the other hand, players in current raid gear will be going straight into the hard versions so they will quickly get even better equipment and everything will stay pretty much the same.
It would be nice for casual players if what you envision could actually happen, but I am afraid it is very likely to be wishful thinking. Since you don't account for AAs and masters, what you are envisioning would still only be marginally true if all outleveled gear (no matter what the quality) was going to be lowered to the same arbitrarily assigned level as soon as it was outleveled by even one level. This isn't going to be the case. If both are reduced by 25% of their maximum, top tier raid gear will still be dramatically better than mastercrafted or the equivalent.
I for one don't want to gamble my current enjoyment of the game on the off chance that what you hope for might actually occur. Because, for the reasons given above, it probably won't.

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10 dollars to use an item an extra 5 levels?

Felicite wrote:

Do you realize mitigation and resists already have been using this same mechanic since the games inception. Nope?
Now you do. A lvl 70 suit of armour w 800 mitigation gives less physical absorbtion then a lvl 80 armour w 800 mitigation. Where were your tears about that for the last 4 years.

I think Legion11 was being sarcastic, Katanallama...

I cant believe some of the things im reading.

1. Many of you are carrying on about mechanic changes that cannot in anyway be quantified or proven one way or another. Look at how they will work first.
2. What the hell is this whining about not wanting to replace gear? Its an expansion for gods sake. What does an expansion offer if all this new content comes along with no way of building on what you have? This is at the core of ALL MMO's. If you have issue with this perhaps single player RPG's are your better option.
3. Raiders start an expansion with a leg up.... well duh! So they should. Theyve achieved more in the game than what others may have, better gear is their reward for it.
4. Gear "soft resets" are absolutely nessecary for each expansion. They re-energise game economies, bring the playing field back down to even, allow people to re-enter the game on close to even terms, allow guilds to consider new players that a pervious expansion may not have allowed, and simply reset player, group, and guild based goals. All of it very very healthy for an MMO and honestly, i dont know how a playerbase can be expected to grow and mature without any of these aspects.

Honestly some of what im reading is so incredibly short sited and just not practical in MMO genre.... a genre where the game world continually evolves, goals are cast aside, beaten down, overcome, and new ones continually set.
Quit the QQ, wait and see what happens first.

Gungo wrote:

If you had actually stopped to think about it, you would have realized that, if the mechanic has always been that way, nothing was actually being taken away from anyone. It was just the way it was. Although the level 70 800 mit armor was not as good as the level 80 800 mit armor it was still just as good as it had been at level 70. If it was still meeting a player's needs then everything was fine. If it wasn't then the player could choose to upgrade. So, no need for tears.
However, this change would take something away that players do currently have. This is a very big and very significant difference. This change would make the level 70 item even weaker in comparison. In fact, it would probably be so much weaker at a loss of 25% of its original protection, that it would no longer be effectively useable. So, if what you say is true, you have just given an even stronger reason why this change should never take place. Thank you for you unintended support.