So, yay, raid armor itemization

As someone who was hoping for a Dev response, I'm starting to think it's not going to happen. Yes, some of you think it's fine, and yay we get to run zones again, and others are thinking about headdesking because of all the plat/infusers ppl have spent to be left with worse gear, but the name calling and the bickering that this thread is devolving into is going to get it locked, and no devs will bother responding. So thanks for that I guess.

Exactly. This is a sham. They should have given a lot of forewarning to this-and not hide behind the EULA.
Bait and switch is going to enrage the bulk of your players who wasted hours running zones, crafting for plat, gathering/looting, real cash to obtain needed gear for their endgame. We expect this at fabled zone release and when the new xpac is on the horizon, but not like this.
This reinforces the concept of multi-boxing zones and SLR'ing for plat. Then profiting from the abundant plat in one of a few ways; all of which diminish/distort the integrity and objectives of the game. This may also encourage players to gamble with exploits where they otherwise wouldn't. This is fact. It's already happened and will continue to get worse as decisions like this continue.

People's opinions of whether they should express outrage or be submissive to this development decision stand apart and are based on the above.

Personally, I'm sick of seeing all of this take place. I can't get my head around why one would just smile and support it and say "if you don't like it, leave." I think whether or not you want to continue playing should not get in the way of expressing outrage at the tremendous lack of effort, and the continued shoddy workmanship; considering what people pay. People should be screaming to not only the devs, but more importantly, the execs that fund development. Rationalizing it is naive considering consumers hold the power.

I believe that players generally measure themselves against the content they endeavor to complete. Some take the next step into competing with their own past performance, and for them, this set of changes will naturally lead to new personal bests.

You're perfectly aware that speedrunners like yourself are a niche audience, at best. If you're going to play strictly to perfect your skill, and challenge theoretical limits, then I would suggest you might as well subject yourself to other arbitrary rules at the same time, such as only using Mastercrafted gear, or some other limitations that might better isolate you and yours from the cruel vagaries of the game's itemization.

As long as you choose to measure yourself against the Best Possible Version of yourself, instead of on a pass/fail basis against the content itself, you have implicitly submitted to these perpetually moving goalposts, whether they migrate on an annual basis, monthly, or even weekly.

kono

Koko's ideal here is far from what is currently considered speedrunning as a general term, and is instead him looking at a slightly different min-max of each encounter relative to how he perceives guilds at the top of the progression rankings to be. Regardless of that fact though, it is still ridiculous that DBG thinks their customers will continue to pay if they continue to shaft us in this manner.

Even more ridiculous is that we can't get a response from DBG anywhere (here, twitter, the facebook page which we can only reply to posts on).

No sorry, not an idiot, however I do feel that someone who got something for free... shouldn't be upset about it. Because anyway you look at it, the only people who got a raw deal are those who spent thousands of plat infusing their gear, the rest of you, don't really have anything to complain about.

You have to decide either you want DEVs to reply to each post or want them to find other jobs. If they do the later you definitely won't get any replies.

I am pretty sure that those programmers who still work in DBG are the ones who love their job and love this game. Otherwise they would long be gone to greener pastures. Considering how they been treated by you and like you and how they been treated by Sony before and now DBG it's amazing they are still here. Be careful what you wish for or you will see this game goes for sunset no matter you pay subscription or not.

So those of us who raid and didn't spend unbelievable amounts of plat to infuse our gear (raiding 3+ nights a week) can't consider our time as "spent" even though each raid mob only drops one piece of armor and one piece of other gear per kill?

I don't want to see of any of the devs leave, but Laiina trying to defend the inability of the devs to make small changes to gear without screwing over the playerbase because "they might not like their jobs" is ********. And I entirely agree with you that the remaining devs are probably the ones who enjoy working on an MMO and specifically EQ2.

Rather, what I want is the devs to take a few minutes and consider how the changes they're pushing to live will affect the players instead of just deciding that something is better than nothing even though in order to be the best we can, we must still go farm for new armor. Even worse is that the new heroic armor is significantly better than the improved old raid gear, so all the time (~200 hours) that I've spent in a raid guild working on farm kills to get gear so we can push to the next progression mob has been wasted.

As to others. Yes it sucks that bonus infusers are used and gone.

But I do have a question to Darkon for example. If we didn't get this gear update would your guild stop raiding starting Tuesday or would you continue to run the same content till new expac?

Our guild runs the same raid zones and let me tell you for long weeks folks stopped bidding dkps on anything for mains. Only plat for infusers with pitiful 25% chance and some things for alts. Since Wednesday patch there is renewed purpose to go back to the same zones which we all do anyway. I am curious now to see those new loot tables.
I apparently see the glass half full others here except for few see the glass half empty. Pity.

Strangely, I don't feel shafted in the slightest. I'm now stronger against the content I engage in, and I have the opportunity to get stronger still, and perhaps tackle content that might have been out of reach. To me, this is a gift, not a burden.

Frankly, I'm far more bothered by this thread than by any of the changes that prompted it. Some of the petulance and egomania on display is embarrassing.

Actually, I received a response on the subject, but I approached from a position of curiosity, rather than entitlement. Best of luck to the rest of you.

kono

Technically it's not "wasted", considering that the gear you farmed is better than it was yesterday.

Other than that technicality I feel everyone's pain and would like to add my name to the list of people that think that this was a poor decision from their part.

So all the bads think it's a good idea cause "free cb/pot! Yay!" While the people who actually dominate for top position in WW rankings are like "wtf just happened?!"
Just lol.

To me it seems that DBG has lost touch with it's customer base who treat EQ2 as more of a hobby and than simply a game, discussions with people who actively play at all levels before these type of changes are implemented would go a long way to make people more involved and actually help improve what so many people invest so much time in. I have played EQ2 since release and rarely post on the forums unless it is to help someone with a specific problem that I know the answer to,unfortunately most forum discussions rapidly degenerate to name calling and outright hostility which does nothing but derail the whole topic I fear this thread is reaching such a stage,respect is something that costs nothing and something we should show to each other everyday.
Faint

Not everyone can be that good. Some have to be bad for those to keep top positions. Otherwise there won't be any ratings. It's like in this game not all classes are tier1 in damage. Some have to be utility.

Nothing wrong with being less skilled as you called them bad. Because there is always a room for improvement.

So show me where your gear got worse due to the patch and maybe I'll understand your rage, since you can't,don't mind me not caring.

The facts are as follows.

1) All heroic and raid gear was made better with yesterday's patch.

2) Content was not made harder to compensate.

3) New content that will make your now improved gear obsolete is coming out soon.

So show me where your gear got worse due to the patch and maybe I'll understand your rage, since you can't,don't mind me not caring.

The facts are as follows.

1) All heroic and raid gear was made better with yesterday's patch.

2) Content was not made harder to compensate.

3) New content that will make your now improved gear obsolete is coming out soon.

Some relic items were undesirable and rarely worn, they upped the stats on them to make them worth wearing. Makes them worthy of the Relic tag, good move.

People rightly complained the sig ring should not be Relic because it overpowered most other Relic choices. They removed the Relic tag, another good move.

Seems as though mythical items did not receive similar boosts, Umbrite ranged weps, Duck hat. If they still remain bis then so be it, but I still feel there is a deficiency now with the 100mil Relic items. I do feel they should either have their Relic tags removed, or stats boosted similar to the other Relic items. We only get to wear one.

Yes they are artificially stretching the current content with some of the other changes, until new Fabled zones can add something new. I won't call this a "good" move but if the alternative is people not logging in until new content is added (which can't be as soon as people would like) then I will call this an ok move.

We all have to regear with new content, this is mid-cycle and not the same I agree but to feel cheated is somewhat of a stretch. The wasted infusers and plat spent does really suck. Though there was too much in the economy (for crappy reasons I know, but still a basic fact that it was there).

There were/are issues. Yes some were preventable, many were feedback'd and carried on longer than they should have. But these changes are addressing a multitude of issues at once.

Most of these issues were not caused by the loyal players so we are rightfully upset but I do see that the current state of things somewhat needed the bandaid to be ripped off.

Another huge problem of mine Koko is that already all encounters sans the 2 unkilled are trivial.

Literally trivial, in that we will first pull them every time raiding with 21 people, short of someone simply ignoring the fail conditions.

For example, Psionicists. The DPS required to kill the encounter within the time limit is about 1.2b~ sustained. Currently we're around 2.5 on the encounter, raiding shorthanded.

The frog has a 12 minute enrage, we're slaying it in ~6:30.

Now all of our gear gets 50% better? It makes the game fully Hello Kitty Online Adventure mode.

I do think there should have been a stat difference in heroic/em/hm gear at the start of the expansion. I think that a longer beta would have been great. WoW is keeping Legion (their next expansion) in beta for a full 12 months.

Massively enhancing gear NOW and NOT retroactively enhancing the items that people have been working to obtain for months however has so many negative impacts it boggles the mind.

It makes already easy content easier, it devalues the work we've done, it means the plat we've spent infusing our 'hm x4 BIS gear' is now worthless, it makes the DKP we've spent on 'HM x4 BIS gear' worthless as heroic gear is now better, and it extends how long we have to farm this trivial content.

The goal of all the top guilds and their players is to get full best in slot gear. Once they reach that plateau, they get to throw down their best possible parses on all the encounters. That is what the min/maxers enjoy doing. This just takes that away from them.

I realize that the gear should have been changed. Look, you can assault all but the 'make easy content easier' point by just boosting the gear we have been farming to the new enhanced tier. There's ten or twenty reasons TO DO IT, with the only reason against it being you don't get to artificially lengthen the duration of time spent farming this content.

Please, it's the right move. It's obviously the right move. Your customers overwhelming outcry should leave no doubt.