The idea behind this server is actually pretty cool. Being able to do any content any time and get scaled while doing it making it a bit more challenging. It's also cool that the leveling process is taken out so you have to worry about one less things. There are some big issues though that keep this server from actually being fun and worth while. 1) The lore and legends tokens are pretty worthless. What is the point in having a special currency and merchant that gets you nothing of note? There currently isn't any items that give valuable stats, that you can send to live servers, or that is an item of recognition. On top of that, the appearance gear the merchant has on are cooler than the things he offers. 2) The scaling doesn't seem to have much rhyme or reason. People don't typically go to fallen gate at level 10, but you are scaled to level 10. In Commonlands and Antonica, you're also scaled to level 10, and you will find orange mobs. I understand that you're 90 mentoring down so you're a lot stronger than you would be otherwise, but why then can I attack a white ^ non heroic mob, and it will hit me for half my health bar? Content is either scaled and is way too strong, or scaled and way too weak. There have been a hand full of zones I've done where I felt like the scaling was appropriate. On top of that, the scaling seems to be sorta random. You can have different enemies in the same encounter present at different levels. 3) Lots of mechanics are broken due to the scaling. Some fight mechanics either don't happen, summon multiples of something that should only have 1 (I know there were patch notes mentioning a fix), and some fights where mechanics only half work, I.E the last fight in Cella. The buff you get should increase your health and mana by 640%, on top of giving you a damage shield, health and mana regen. Right now it seems like only the damage shield portion of that buff works. The fight is still doable, but if that mechanic is broken there are sure to be others that are broken as well. 4) The way you scale up the rewards from killing named enemies makes doing hard content pointless. You could farm the named mobs in darklight woods over and over and over until you get capped out. If the optimal way to gear up is doing easy level 10 content that doesn't require grouping, then what is the purpose of grouping? And what is the point of doing harder content? For the achievements? The leaderboard, for all i know, doesn't come with any inherent rewards other than having your name in lights on a server no many people are attracted to playing on. 5) Proc items from TSO+ expansion aren't scaling properly. Meaning, you get a few aoe damage proc items or ward proc items, and you can go do low level content solo with no risk of dying and being scale means little. I think this is probably still a problem that exists in the live servers, so maybe that can't even be fixed, but what is the purpose behind scaling if items basically negate that? This is where I get to my solutions portion of the post, because I don't want to be someone that points out issues without solutions. #1) Give the lore and legends tokens more value. Put items on there for a large amount of tokens that give access to meaningful gear choices, mounts with stats, or even things you can send to your /claim so you can obtain things on the live server that you wouldn't be able to normally. The point of the server is to go and get achievements from playing the game, but there's not sense of accomplishment if all I can get out of it is a house item. #2) Change the way gear upgrading works. Each tier should be locked behind a certain number of achievement points you have. I shouldn't be rewarded for flying around darklight woods for 3 hours just because its easy to get potential gear upgrades that way. There should be an incentive to group and do difficult content. I shouldn't be looking for a group for an hour on a brand new server with a unique premise behind it while there are 10 people running around the lowbie zones. #3) Disable the proc items that aren't scaling properly or figure out how to properly scale them. It takes away a lot of the challenge from low level content when I can have a heal proc on my weapons that will heal me for 50% of my health each time it procs, or an AOE proc that deals 70% damage to enemies around me. Being level 90 and scaled to 10 doesn't present the hardest of challenges because access to skills you wouldn't normally have, but that's where proper scaling comes in. #4) I can't offer a solution on how to program the scaling because I don't know anything about programming, but I can offer that a good starting place is to just look at the average level of enemies in a particular zone and then scale based off of that. For example, in normal Fallen Gate, players go there from about level 15-25. Mobs in there being typically 13-28 or so. I think us being scaled to 10, and then enemies scaled to match that is making them a lot less strong than they would be normally. Its the opposite problem for instance with some raid zones. Tomb of the mad crusader is a level 80 dungeon, but you are scaled to level 85, and then the mobs are scaled to 89. They double attack for 20k dmg each swing, and at that level you're only sitting at 20-30k hp. Ultimately, there needs to be an incentive to play, and an incentive to group. Right now it feels like both are lacking. This could be a really great server, but the rewards just aren't there. I think if some improvement is made in those areas, people who've been gone away for a long time and come back to play as well as current players might be found on this server, and there would be a healthy player base.
Well said. The only thing I would add is that there was a comment made by a dev that most procs 60+ would no longer work after a future patch, because the crate gear and future upgrades put on the L&L token merchant are intended to be the best gear on the server. I can't seem to find that post/comment, so that's actually kind of alarming, because it did go into many other things addressed here. /shrug
I asked about "disabling procs in a future patch" on EQ2's Discord: Denmum didn't know, and no one else was answering. Hmmmm.
No disabling the procs, pleeeeeeaasse. This isn't just from me, it's from a lot of people. EQ2 has such a wealth of interesting gear, procs, adorns, etc. Making it all worthless would be a massive loss if intrigue to the game. As it is, none of it is relevant in DoV anyway... If the devs feel absolutely intent on forcing this crate system to be the only thing that matters, they'll have to change how it interacts with the stat caps. Or at least give it yellow, red, and turq adorn slots and let use use the adornments we can fine for those slots...
