So far, going into this expansion, itemization has been incredibly lacking. I don't want to be all gloom about it, and I know not many people will agree with what i'm about to say, but things have changed considerably, and I don't believe it's for the good of this game. What used to be the biggest draw for Raiding Players in this game has been taken away almost completely, and this was end-game itemization. Last expansion we saw end-game gear go down to about a 10% increase in stats going from one set of gear to the next. This expansion, the gap has become extensively smaller. Here's an example of how minimal gear upgrades have been going from the easiest content to what is some of the hardest encounters this game has ever seen. Here you can see the the minimal upgrades we see in gear. Starting from Warsmith armor we get in Heroics, to the Clockwork set we get in Bhoughbh's Folly (the x2 raid zone) to Ashenfell armor we get in Tier 1 and 2 raid zones, and Ancient Captain's Shoulderguards we get from Captain Graybeard/Ashenfell raid encounter (which is a Tier 3 raid encounter, and very difficult to beat) Even with the Infusion system you guys have designed for this expansion, and something that has failed to gain my attention to begin with due to overwhelmingly complicated mechanics involved with the Infusion system, I personally see no reason to upgrade my gear past what I get from the x2 or Tier 1/2 raid zones. Looking back in history and raid itemization, there is nothing that foreshadows that you have added some other magnificent shoulder armor piece in a currently unbeaten encounter (which 3 of them remains in the current expansion after 1 week of the expansion coming out). So those Ancient Captain's Shoulderguards are the best shoulderguards we will be able to get, and they are about a 2% stat upgrade to what you can get from the previous easier raid bosses. This problem can also be seen in other items as well, like jewelry. Here we can see what is hands-down the best earring for all classes to wear. Gives 660 potency to an entire group when 6 people are wearing them at the same time. Yet, the stats are almost minimal upgrades going from one end of the spectrum to the other. Upgrading from the Event Heroic Furious Barrage to the Tier 3 raid earrings is around a 2-3% stat upgrade. The only thing that's a considerable upgrade are the resists, and honestly, if you already have the Resists to get the Tier 3 raid jewelry you won't need to get anymore. Any resists you get over the resist check amount just gives your healers a more comfortable time in raiding. So, to me, there is honestly no retention rate of raiders with the current form of itemization due to the underwhelming upgrade rate we're currently seeing in game. If you can clear the game with x2/Heroic gear, there's no reason to continue doing the raid encounters because it won't increase your potential by a considerable amount. And with the infusion system, you can make x2 gear become so much better than the Tier 3 raid gear, and seeing as how much money and resources are required in investment on any particular piece of armor/jewelry, you would not want to upgrade new pieces of gear when the ones you already have are maxed out already and better than anything you can pick up. What truly has made a difference so far in this expansion, are the procs we've seen that increase a raid's potential DPS by exceeding margins. So any items any player will want to get would be Furious Barrage, Early Advantage and Brotherhood of the Underfoot proc items among a couple select others. Anything else is salvage fodder or temporary items until you get the items that are desired by every single class in a raid. In summary, I don't see a big reason to continue raiding past getting geared out from x2 and tier 1 and tier 2 raid gear. Once you complete the Tier 3 encounters, you can easily call it a day and cancel our subscription until new content eventually gets released. The way we've always had it before in the past is that end-game gear is a big gap in stat upgrades that will make EVERYBODY want to get and will be necessary for future content. I just don't see this happening with how current itemization is being handled, specially since last expansion's end-game gear was quickly replaced by the first pieces of gear from entry-level questing in this current expansion. Keep us interested, keep us coming back for more, and keep us continually wanting to upgrade our characters and it will make this game much more enjoyable and healthier. Also, not sure if this is a bug or not, but the Armor Crates we've been seeing that are dropping from Raid Mobs are missing 1 of the three choices of armor we get. We have three choices for gloves, and this crate is clearly missing the third glove choice, which is the WDB/DPS glove. Also, saw the same thing with pants last night: Missing the AE Auto and DPS pants on that crate.
Also, Relic items don't count. Personally, Relic items completely take away from this game what was once what made this game so great. So far, the relic items we are seeing are copy/pastes of jewelry with procs or armor with no procs and just increasing the stats on these items by about 10-15%. Relic items have the stats that any EQ2 player would want to wear in any and all slots of their Character Sheet, yet being restricted to only 1 of these items means you're taking the carrot on a stick away from players to continue wanting to play as we've had in the past. If you remove the Relic Tag and shuffle those relic items into progression, then this game, in my opinion, will go back to being as awesome as it was in the past. And if you want to keep the Relic tag around, then make Relic items with truly unique procs that only the Relic item has. If you just copy/paste procs from other items and just increase the base stats on the item, then it just makes the item uninspiring and bland and you are just better off wearing the same item with lower stats and exactly the same proc.
Why switch one passive dps mechanic for another time after time? ToV-dmg procs and autoattack. AoM-poison dmg and autoattack. ToT-insane dmg procs to compensate the nerf in autoattack.. Why? Passive dps is plain boring!! Please stop doing it!
Those Captain Faction relic charms are so terrible as well...We don't want fear barrage clickies! They should have been deathtouch charms or something else.
I don't see this expansion lasting very long for raiders. There's a guild that's 3 bosses away from completing the expansion in it's entirety and i'm sure they will be able to clear it in less than a month since this expansion has been released, and soon after that other guilds will follow. If you want those players to continue playing, there needs to be something that will keep them around. Itemization was that reason in previous expansions, that has been taken away from this one. During Tears of Veeshan we had Wing 3 which was an amazing raid zone that had the absolutely best raiding gear. And the items acquired throughout that raid zone lasted deep into Altar of Malice and made the previous raiding items got from Wing 1 and 2 even more powerful by turning the 1/1 armor into 2/2. This system was extremely effective as it did not diminish or made useless previous gear picked up. Altar of Malice had some amazing items at the end-game, with the 2/2 purple raid gear and the Avatar gear, sadly that gear was quickly replaced when Terrors of Thalumbra came out, but at least Altar of Malice kept us interested in playing the game far longer after content was complete. We even saw the amazing Brell mythical hat that everyone would want to wear, but sadly the way to acquire such mythical helmet came from combining the helmet Brell dropped and a extremely rare mythical helmet that came from Construct of Malice, so not many people were able to acquire such a helmet and the amount of time between Brell's release, fixes, then consequently kill didn't last long enough for people to gear themselves up before ToT came out. On to Terrors of Thalumbra, i no longer see a reason to continue being able to play. I would have though the Deity system was this reason, but the Deity system has become a Tedious and Repetitive system that requires too much time investment for minimal gains, which i can quickly discard as a reason to continue playing. All that is left is being able to gear my character with upgrades from Tier 3 raids and they are nothing that would make me say "I want to get this and wear it now" like i've felt from previous expansions. I hope this is something that gets looked at asap.
If anyone has any other constructive feedback about current itemization and what would you believe will move it into the right direction, please post your opinions.
I dislike that we still have incredibly amazing procs on jewelry. I like that they are now mostly - equivalent across gear tiers. I understand I'm not the targeted demographic for itemization, but I don't understand "excitement" over items. Similarly I don't understand the desire for a tier to be drastically superior to another. Gear based thresholds, separating players or content, have never been interesting.
You have to have gear tiers. Right now there is no gear tiers and raid loot is the same as heroic loot. To some this might seem like not a bad idea however with all the gear being relatively the same is the sole reason why every raid mob is going to be killed in the first month. Raid progression and gear progression go hand and hand.
Wing 3 wasnt released until a few months after ToV was launched. So I mean, *maybe* they'll add content? Only thing I have to say about itemization is that the Relic tag is overused. There are a ton of things tagged relic that shouldn't be.
I'm pretty sure they will add content, but it's not going to come until after february. That's why it's necessary to try and make the current content worthwhile, fun and most of all, rewarding. If there is nothing to fight for, there is no reason to fight in the first place.
Which is why I'm still shocked they removed the previous tiered gear that we had. We had a great system in place in previous expansions, although it was a bit convoluted with all the different tiers. (Blue, yellow, green, red and finally purple) we could have easily kept three tiers of gear just to make Caith life easier and then improve upon those tiers until you upgraded to the next tier. Also, it is extremely important to have content and itemization go hand in hand. And so far that hasn't been the case in this expansion. They appear so out of sync. Gear you get from the overland quests should help you be able to take on advertising solos, solos help you in heroics and heroics help you in raids. But so far you can do raids in overland quest gear and that is a big problem, because you're removing the need to do the content in between, and if you have the gear from the content in between overland and raids, there is no real desire to progress your character because of how similar the stats and procs are.
While skill based treshold are fun and compelling, they don't gate content properly because the overly skilled are able to clear the content fast enough and then are able leave the game. While on the other side of the coin, itemization gating and tresholds don't really mean that content will requiere a high level of skill but it will ensure that players will have something to continue playing for. That's why having the best of both worlds is better for everyone involved. To appease those who are looking for more challenge and to appease those who are more interested in progressing their characters in every possible manner. Obviously this sounds like a pretty impossible task, but it can work if content and itemization work closely together.
? If the only obstacle is an artificial one, there wasn't a reason to play to begin with. Historically, scripts have been "binary" with respect to failure conditions. "Event A" happens, or you all die. "A" can be casting a temp, curing a curse, jousting a spell, etc. Gear doesn't influence the success or failure of these scripts. Alternatively there are "gradient" scripts, where there are multiple approaches. Absolute DPS thresholds are the most common, but ramping health/power drains have been used as well. These scripts can, and frequently are, more difficult but they tend to be trivialized by equipment. Consider routinely being 5% "short" of a DPS threshold encounter, how do you proceed? "gaining" 5% damage through skill improvement alone is incredibly difficult if you're at the higher end of the spectrum, so what do you do? Do you look internally at your class/abilities or externally at the group/raid composition a whole? Do you aim to further improve the mages/scouts or to have fighters/priests pick up the slack? Do you forgo a permanent stat increase in favor of short lived deity power? etc. None of these situations exist when a single item can "answer" the problem for you. The answer is always "farm that item" as it takes less skill, time, and effort than improving. That said, under the current system you can still farm more gear to win. It'll just take longer.
This whole way of thinking is completely wrong and just plain stupid. Think of any game you have ever played. Lets take any final fantasy rpg. Did u just start the game and get the best possible loot right in the beginning of the game? No you didn't you had to progress through the game and actually go through the progression that was set. The way ToT is currently set up you can do some solo zones and a few heroic zones and be good to go to clear the entire expansion. The way it is right now I feel like I got robbed for the money I spent on the expansion. The itemization is so bad I'm not even sure it is possible to recover from it this expansion and eq2 is probably going to lose at least 20% of its player base. But I congratulate Koko for being the all knowing of absolutely nothing.
and you don't here either, the upgrades are just smaller and scattered across multiple components (e.g. infusions/diety traits) instead of an upfront power spike. Not that that matters, as it doesn't address my argument that item based gating isn't interesting. If a few heroics is all it takes, so be it. However there is plenty of design space such that this shouldn't be the case. Even if it was cleared tomorrow, I'd prefer it to a "filler encounter" based expansion with loot tables solely for an "item based progression" experience.
Every game ever made has been made for progression. The first level of the game is easy and you progress to the 2nd level etc. The only exception to this rule is this games expansion where u can start out and do a couple of solo zones and heroic zones and be ready to fight the last raid boss in the expansion. If you think this is how a video game should be, hats off to you sir. I will leave you to your window licking.
Eh, no... but I will concede the majority of games are skill progression based. Usually games have a 'skip' mechanic that allows players to skip the introductory portions provided they are sufficiently skilled. To name a few popular examples: warp zones, passwords, level select, new game+, etc. I don't see the harm in EQII allowing for a similar shortcut for skilled players. No one is interested in doing the beginner stuff, that is why the skips exist. The exception where they don't is when a game needs filler in an otherwise exciting season. e.g. there isn't a lot of content and player progress must be fatigued to ensure a healthy game lifespan.
I actualy like the new gear system. Yes it reminds me of WoW and there is nothing wrong in it. Two percent increase is still increase and with t3 items in every slot it makes 42% stats increase over t2. As long as there is something better I don't care much. Though I agree that relics should be unic items. Just copy paste the regular proc is bad. If I were a developer, I would make relics purely class focused with some significant effect. Inquisitor cloak is a good example, or could be such should the heal ammount be meaningful. I would also add 2-3 class focused rare non-relic items that might slightly increase/change the existing mechanic of the class. Let's say add 6 triggers to the group reactive, or reduce the base recast time of the group heal, or remove trashhold from Interrogation( ) As for clearing the content in a month, I see nothing wrong in it either, as long as the new content will provide harder challenge. I believe that difficulty of heroic and raid zones should progress from one update to another. There should be no The Rum Cellar like raids after The Altar of Malice. Stright increase only.
Im assuming they want you to use the infusers to bump up stats. I do not clearly understand infusing either I havent used any of the massive amount I have gotten so far yet but can X2 or heroic fabled be stat increased as high as a tier 2 raid piece can?
You can increase those four stats (stamina, ability mod, cb and potency) by 1/3 of the initial value, If i'm not mistaken. So fully infused heroic item will be better then fresh t3 raid item. But you can infuse the last one as well
