During beta I thought I can smell DoV itemization fiasco. I remember when you stated you're going away from 1-2% gear upgrades cause people hated it and here we're again. You devs change your mind like girl changes her clothes.
The biggest difference between Wow and EQ2 is that while gear differences between content tiers are between 5 and 10%, getting that gear from the previous tier actually means something because dps checks are balanced with consideration of a certain dps treshold that is only reached via getting the stat upgrades from that gear. That has never been the case in EQ2 for the longest time due to procs heavily affecting the balance of this games itemization. Encounters in EQ2 are rarely well balanced. Either they are too hard and impossible to kill unless you have farmed enough early advantages and furious barrage items, or are on the other side of the balance and are extremely easy that can be done in overland quested gear. If eq2 raiding and itemization devs got together and actually talked about how much dps is required to be able to defeat an encounter and what amount of items and raid composition allowed you to get to that treshold, then I can totally see that minimal upgrade tier system actually working. This would also have to take into consideration the overall dps raid increase by amassing certain procs, which hasn't been done at all so far.
To be honest, It doesn't realy matter if you wear solo, heroic or raid stuff, infused or not, with 2 or 10 percent difference between tiers. Potency and damage procs are insane. I have over 3 thousand potency during a raid fight. Does 5 more potency mean anything? Or 50? - Almost nothing. The game needs the total reload ot the combat system. Reduce every number at least by 100, remove most procs, get rid of 100% crits, cast speed, reuse, flurry, multiattack etc. RoK was the golden age of the game imo because we had started to recieve powerful abilities and meanigful stats increase, but they were not gamebreaking and trivial. Fifteen percent benificial cast speed bonus on the Inquisitor mythic was amaising, now you might as well remove it from the buff, as well as 90% of AA since they are useless
Agreed. It needs a the WoW reset for combat stats and itemization to balance this game entirely. But I doubt they will ever do this for this expansion. So for this expansion they HAVE to do something immediate to salvage it before we all get bored for having nothing to do and nothing to upgrade our characters with. There is no retention.
i did the quests ran the solos for a few days and now the only major upgrades i can get are from insanely rare events (mythical helm from portal and ranged slot from plat/umbrit chests). those are both solo and insanely luck based. half of our guild (and server) is doing key quests instead of running heroic dungeons because they want the bigger upgrade... and when in an instance there is no chance to get the duck portal so why even bother... i may sound like a broken record but i have to say it again: itemisation this expansion is killing this game
This is exactly right. Comparing the itemization this xpac to wow is an absolute joke. All of their content is balanced in tiers of extreme dps and heal checks with the gear from the previous tier giving you just enough power to get through the fight. In eq2 a guild could clear everything that my guild has killed in gear from advanced solos. That is ridiculous.
I completely agree with the current itemization being not in line with what would keep a lot of people happy or content. I also completely agree that RoK was the golden age of this game. Not entirely sure what happened, may be some devs started playing another mmo in that time or there was a serious communication gap between combat/script devs and the item devs. It has been a steady but a marked decline since then. Regardless, the incredible inflation of blue stats plus needless procs just to fill in the void for dps heavy scripts is killing the current expansion and affirms the fact that you guys have not thought this through.The infusion system perhaps may seem compelling at some point when people have had the chance to max out stats on top end stuff but for now it just feels like a tacked on concept rather than a fully realised one. Deity/tithe system is laborious to say the least and is hardly something anybody would consider using except for the fact you have to spend points on something when the meter reaches 10 and/or some fights requiring specific resists. These two systems may appear to hide the badly done itemization and the item tiers but they don't I am afraid to say. There seems to be no clear pathway. Just put things in to perspective, i do not see the itemisation done right since RoK days, where solo quest gear prepared you for heroic zones which in turn readied you for tier 1 zones like PR etc and so on. Right now a mythical item from a "DUCK ZONE" outshines a raid item, yes it is rare and not many would get it but that is exactly the missed point. If i put in the effort to raid and go all way to the most difficult boss then i expect to be rewarded for that effort because not many others could do it. That is not the case right now. You should seriously consider lopping off some blue stats that would allow you to be done with stat over cap bonuses altogether -- which would help you fix the insane dps procs currently in game and bring them back in line with the level of content you have designed. Never been the fan of reaching caps like it is for a lot of people these days. I just do not see a trade-off on certain items where i know i have to make a choice between one item over the other because i cannot have both effects high at the same time (NOT talking about relic items which frankly are over used right now). Of course this all needs to be done if you (Script/combat designer and item guys) sit together and map this out.
Yeah, pretty much everything we've been complaining about. Itemization and current content are out of sync. Deity system is tedious and boring. Infusion system is interesting yet completely unnecessary. There is not one single item I have yet to infuse so far and I haven't needed to yet. Playing solo rewards better items than getting 6, 12 or 24 people together. Same concern was brought up for Ethereals last expansion and our concerns were quickly dismissed. There is a clear lack of communication between developers themselves and between developers and their playerbase. And frankly they do not want to do anything about it.
the timed key quests are destroying any need to group and why would anyone when they can log in run timed quests and get mythical/heroic gear which is as good as raid gear. Absolutely idiotic decision by the devs.
Perhaps there is some method in this madness (excuse my coarse tone). I can understand one or two items that favor the solo play which can be wielded by people who will eventually get in to raiding but not making an entire tier of loot (which is better than raid loot) around it...
I can't really add anything that hasn't already been mentioned, it's all been laid out in this thread. A response from a dev outlining what their goals or intentions were for implementing this type of itemization would help to at least understand what they were going for. The timed quests are fun side content but the itemization for them is completely out of line. A random duck zone, really, why? Instead of including an interesting HQ or something that rewards a nice item you put in a duck zone? Infusion and deity don't feel meaningful at all, just adds something additional to micromanage. Would really like to hear the devs thoughts on what was behind these new systems and itemization. Then we could at least start proposing specific revisions.
If there is a method to the madness that is this itemization system, no one from DBG has openly talked about it. It would be 100% better of DBG at least made some attempt to try and communicate with us but they haven't.
Yeah communication or at least acknowledgement would be nice but these threads seem to be more of something they just read than reply to. I just hope something will be changed before too many raiders stop playing. The super casual guilds that just raid to hang out with friends will probably keep playing no matter what but I don't know how long progression guilds are going to last with the current state of things. They are either going to clear the content and be done with it or hit a roadblock in the content that they don't think is worth the grind anymore due to the lack of rewards and payoffs for their invested time.
Would have to be SUPER casual... even those of us who raid non-hardcore, raid at least in part to improve our toons through gear. If we just want to play with friends, heroics are easier for that...
This game needs a serious "NGE" balancing of stats. I left the game in 2011 and came back recently to spells hitting for millions of damage, 1000%+ crit chance etc. They need to shave off a few decimal places and make caps 100% for all abilities. You shouldn't need Excel sheets and advanced math skills to build your character. I'm not opposed to "dumbing down" abilites/AA either. I went from 1 hotbar in Elder Scrolls Online to 5 hotbars in EQ2. They could consolidate some skills and buffs and overhaul the AAs, racials and mythical weapons as a start. That would be a good base to build from to help character balance etc. It won't happen though because it'd probably drive away more subs than bringing in new ones. Can't upset the old blood, but perhaps a vote from the community would help? If they can do TLE servers couldn't they make "NGE" servers as well?
