Tears of Ascension and Ascension gating new players.

That's what I implied when I said "taking time". It's something that cannot be controlled by the player, it's basically a lockout timer... But just to pick up a scroll.

Malleria...about no one getting 1 lvl 10 class in a weekend; when they had the broken ascension xp i did 16 levels in 30 hours and got my tome..and if i kept going i could have done another 14 that weekend (friday to sunday). So the truth is people like me would have had 4 level 10s done in about 4 or 5 days at the most. That would not be good for business or for the game.

I actually dont disagree with people who say it should be made a bit easier now for new and returning players, but they cant just give it away it would still have to be a difficult task.

But how many people really ARE like you? Most people paying for subs have lives and what not and can't put 30 hours over their weekend into a game. Most people won't be able to do those ascension levels that quickly. The hardcore players only think about what they can do, not what's realistic for everybody else.

All I'm seeing here is "Waa waaa waaa I had to be gated when I did it at the beginning of the expac, so everyone else should have to do it too!!"

I'm glad you have enough time to log in and get your alts all geared out. I used to goof around on 3-4 toons an expac just for a change of pace. This expac I've been able to work on a single alt, and he's not even half of what my main is, because I already have to spend 3-4 hours a day grinding on my main for PGs, or tithe, or whatever, I don't have 3-4 more hours to grind my alt too. But you're missing the point. If someone comes back to this game after a 2-4 year break and wants to get started raiding again, they're 2-3 months away from being able to participate. Not because they can't get the gear, not because they can't get the group to help them get the gear, but because they need to spend 5-8 hours a day grinding tithe to catch up, and they're gated from being able to grind ascension to gear up. (You need your epic to participate in T4 raids, or your character plain sucks without the Epic anyway).

How about this compromise; you can use the 7 million bauble on your first ascension to level it to 10 in order to be able to get your epic and "catch up" enough to participate in raiding and not wait 2 months. After that, the bauble doesn't give exp to your 2nd-4th ascension, so you still have to "Work hard" as you put it, being gated to get the charm? (Fyi, not sure what you thought was so hard about logging in every day and talking to a guy to get a scroll.. maybe we play different games with different difficulty settings, and what's super simple and easy to me is super hard to you)

Remember though, that weekend was also double ascension exp So what you did in 30 hours actually would have taken 60. I suppose it's likely you still would have gotten 10 levels in the weekend, but it would've taken very close to that whole weekend to do it.

If they give it all to me at the end of the expansion, then I could just skip the months of work I put into it for next time.

I got one character through the entire painful process and I decided that I don't care if they give me enough baubles to make a necklace with, I have no desire to ever do that again!

hahahaha same mizgamer62

You can always skip the expansion to catch up, its giving it to people mid expansion that breaks things, at least it did for me in a previous game as the useful content shrinks rapidly long before the next expansion comes out and it feels like treadmilling with no feeling of accomplishment. In that respect EQ2 does it very well here.

My main bugbears with this expansion have been the unfriendliness to alts such as requiring everything to be repeated on the alt and no token system for loot. And the decision to add too many group requirements to quests that are something specific to one person, rather than another reason to go to that dungeon you don't normally visit.

To be fair I generally only post on the forums when I have a problem. So to set the record straight, other than that there is a lot that EQ2 does well for me, as a game it is far better then when I first started playing (around RoK), far more polished, there is less content today per an expansion than back then, but what is there is much higher quality and at no point am I sitting around wondering what to do, if anything the opposite is the problem since players will want:

Epic 2.0. Tradeskill cloak (best in slot), Signature quest line including previous expansion, 4 ascension levels, PQ's, proving grounds, multiple dungeons and multiple tiers of raids.

If people are finishing all that early then all I can comment is that they have gotten their money's worth, to do it on alts would require giving the job up and playing 24/7.

but .. didn't see the issue being corrected in today's update ? or can we now place the tear in shared bank ?

I didn't see anything about it in today's update .notes..

Well damn, I didn't even know there was a Tears of Ascension LOL

Bad design when it launched, terrible design now this late in the expansion. Double scrolls should be the norm for the rest of the xpac, as well as doubling the xp gained. They should have NEVER taken away the contest grind without putting a new contested into KA.

Well about the comment about having no life. I personally work fulltime doing construction, so even though im able to push myself to achieve a goal with the time i do have, thats far from having no life. I understand what your saying Malleria but try not to be so judgemental. Im just able to grind things out harder then most. And when i say 30 hours thats total, so slept for ,7 hours, ate full meals, cleaned up around the house. When i was in game though I wasnt messing around i was efficient. But the fact remains even if most players arent me, many do have the drive to get the best gear and therefore would still get their tome in a very short timeframe. If its to short a time then theres literally no one logging in after a couple months of xpac being out, kind of like what were seeing now with low numbers in game.

Now to the topic at hand; i will say it again, they should make it easier on new or returning players, but the question is how much easier? If its to easy then you got all the loyal vets upset at the fact they had to do it the hard way, which frankly i can also see those players point of view. So really, if they were to do it they would have to tread carefully and make sure that both sides of the fence are at least some what satisfied. Im smart enough to realize that we need as many players as we can get so our favorite game can continue to release new content. So heres to hoping the devs do somthing to make it easier on the new and returning players, because the more of them that stay the better it is for all of us.

we need more double xp events, we got a long weekend coming up!

wow I log back in after a long time to 8 notifications, glad to see people are still stating there opinions here =)

I tend to agree with Rainmare mostly. I also come from ye olde EQ1 days of yore.

I would hate to see the PG gear I'm grinding daily to be completely eclipsed by some random intro quest done in the next expansion. Likewise for ascensions, 2.0, tithe, whatever players also spent a crazy amount of time doing.

But since it seems everyone at Daybreak minus some developers values complete silence over the game's success, I won't bother buying into a game that may not be "fun".

So Triplesix lets breakdown how quickly you could do this since you are the model of efficiency when it comes to grinding ascension levels. Took you approx 30hrs to grind 16 levels or 1.875 hrs per level * 40 levels = 75 hrs on a double crazy xp weekend. Now lets say you spend 8hrs a day playing at that pace it would take you a little over 9 1/3 days of playing to complete your ascension training and get your tome. I don't know many people that could play at that pace or that would some how have the 20m in ascension xp available every day to grind.

Now take away the double xp and you are looking at 150hrs and almost 19 days of grinding 8hrs a day to get 1 toon through this and that is at your perfected efficiency. Imagine how long it would take joe schmo that does not have access to a high powered grind group and does not have luxury to spending 8 hrs a day playing the game. This gating mechanic serves no purpose now except to force people to spend months grinding on toon to get it ready to be an effective contributing member of a raid force.

This mindset is driving people from the game, I've had many friends look into coming back in the game and once the realize that they will not be able to join/be an effective raider for months they leave the game.

Why? That's MMO 101 -- next expac always invalidates the gear that came before. That is just one more reason I refuse to grind PG or anything else.

I'd say the best thing they could do is not introduce stupid grinds in the first place.