Time to start feedback for the next expac (2009). Ideas needed!

This game is very hard and very complicated currently.
TSO instances are very hard and very painful.
WoE is too hard.
TSO raids with Venril Sathil's Lair script is too hard and too extraordinary.
No more "Cure Curse Online".
This difficulty is what devs consider as normal difficulty?
I would like next expansion to be much easier and much more simple.

Nero wrote:

I kinda like the challange, but mobs like Venril Jerk-face take the fun out of the game. One person messes up, even a small amount, and it's wham bam thank you ma'm. It's funny... whenever I ask someone what they're lockout timer is on that mob, they're always locked out for 365 days...

I think that TSO was a failure.
Just my opinion.
Reflections of TSO
1) Class balance. Every classes should be desired in a raid.
No more 3 Dirges nor 3 Illusionists.
But class balance should not erase the identities, uniqueness, and diversity of classes.
No more "Tank is merely meat shield and taunt bot".
Class balance and class diversity are needed at the same time.
2) No more heavily AE biased instances. Instance which has proper single-target and AE contents is needed.
3) No more very ridiculous Venril Sathir's Lair script, that is to say, the script that even if only one player fails all raid members will die.
No fun.
Do devs consider such a script as enjoyable?
I can't understand devs' feelings.
4) TSO is very hard entirely.
Almost instances are very hard and very complicated, sometimes too hard(for example, Palace of Ferzul, Guk zones and so on).
TSO raids are too hard because of #3. No more "Cure Curse Online".
And Ward of Elements, which USA players consider it as easy or normal, is too hard for Japanese players. It is frequently reported that many groups with only mythical, T2 void shard armors, more than 180 AAs can not clear WoE in Japanese server. USA players are skillful. But remember that there are always not-skillfull players.
Make next expansion properly easy, more simple and properly quick so that casual players can enjoy.
5) Add fascinating items/gear for each archtype in all instances.
Because of lack of healer items, pick up group can hardly find healer. For example, Befallen: Necrotic Asylum.
6) No more ridiculously low drop rate of gear in instances.
For example, Signet of Vampire Kind in Evernight Abbey and Mistmoore Battle Drums in Mystmyr Manor has too low drop rate.
It is very ridiculous that devs make players run too long marathon to get item.
7) TSO hardly has the ways to reach 200 AAs.
Devs will agree with it.
Why couldn't devs know that TSO hardly has the ways to reach 200 AAs before TSO launched?

Nero wrote:

I hear ya man.
1. Classes aren't the only thing thats unbalanced either. many other aspects of the game such as player cities are unbalanced since the release of kunark. Some people want a new good city to even it out, while some just want the player cities to go away for good. When EoF came out it released a good city, then a few months later they evened it out with a evil city addition to it. I kinda figured that was SOE's plan all along. To keep good and evil balanced. But then RoK came out...
2. Definitely. us healers have a terrible time because of the amount of AEing. It seems like as of the past 2 expansions almost every encounter does AEs, so us healers who only have 2 group heals have to time them just right to correct this problem. As a warden i have a large fraction of a hotbar full of single target heals and only 2 group heals to compensate this. The devs either need to lay back on the AEs or give us more group heal spells. And people wonder why most groups need 2 healers...
3. Venril is a pain. I liked it back when if 1 player screws up, they alone take the fall. Introducing a system where 1 players bad move punishes everyone reminds me of when the game first came out and a group shared the same XP dept. It discouraged people from grouping.
4. Every LU or EXP it seems things get harder and harder, yet all this stuff is for the same level (80). I wonder whats gonna happen when the level cap raises. Look at all the level 80 content in the game we have now. Difficult stuff that people are just going to completely skip by and never use.

Thunndar316 wrote:

100% agreed. I'll probably get flamed for this and it's definitely not something to base your expac around. However....
This is a social game and I don't always have the time or the energy to run an instance or a raid. Actually sitting in a chair (like 10 other people have pointed out) instead of kneeling on one and playing a casual game (NOT LoN) would be tremendously welcome. This isn't something that would necessarily get me to buy an expac on day one, but I guarantee it would prevent me from taking one of the eventual breaks I take when it all gets to be too much.
Fable II actually had an original card game called Tower that was fun and challenging. Coming up with a totally new game that fits the genre of EQ2 (or a few) along with traditional card and dice games that can be played (and bet upon) by players ideally with other players being able to see high stakes games would be an amazing addition to the next expac.

Aye, minigames would be pretty nice. I'll probably hate myself later for saying this, but Free Realms actually hit on something good. The way they implemented mini games into their system (while very childish) was actually very fun. Hell, even something as simple as foraging and cooking was turned into a game of its own, and I would kinda like to see something similar make its way into this game. Maybe not to the extent that it is in that game... I don't think demolition races quite fit the world of norrath, but seeing things like a playable chess game or seeing tradeskills actually become more interactive past simple button-clicking could do a lot of good for the game.

Fayle@Mistmoore wrote:

Been in FreeRealms since early in the Beta and it is a fun game, as a break from EQ2 and something to play with my kids. They did some nice things with the minigames there.

Jovie@Guk wrote:

Rok gave us 1-20 and 70-80.
LU between Rok and TSO gave us the revamp of Everfrost providing a ton of new questings for the 40-50 tier.
TSO gave us primarily 75-80 heroic content geared towards raiding scripts and around 120 total quest in the expansion (less than 2 weeks of content excluding the repeatables)

I haven't read the entire thread but going on what i have seen over last 2 expansions that need improvement badly.

Items
While i play a healer and cant comment mostly on fighter/scout and most of mage gear quality, I am not seeing a lot of upgrades from RoK to TsO gear in certain slots (not counting avatar loot), I have seen some items that drop from the Tso instances that aren't better than the RoK quests.
Set progession needs to be proofread i.e currently the tier 3 shard shoulders for Mystic/defilers are missing the % to healing when equipped , there is also pieces of tier 2 gear that has less stats then the tier 1 shard gear.
Zones
The Tso instance zones have been fun and different degrees of challenge vs aa/group etc, still needs massive improvement for example,
Nu roga- Way Way too much Trash making this a very long zone to run (think lower corriders is the same).
Items(Fabled mostly) in zone should be distributed equally across the archetypes, Some zones have zero real upgrades for healers so why would healers really run it often if nothing for them drop that they want for upgrade(aside from aa). If there is no tank gear in a zone would a tank really want to run the zone everyday?
Harvesting
Since EoF Harvesting has been horrible in some regards.
EoF-not enough nodes.
RoK- A player capped on harvesting skill with tinker or ww tools could clear all the wood, shrubs, roots from howling stone and up the hill a bit and still wait on respawns. If one person is waiting on respawns in current expansion then it would be worse when the ww/tinker tools or harvesting speed increases still or what is worse is when u have more than one person trying to harvest in the same area.
Next Level based expansion Please add in grey places/safe places to harvest that have good respawn for at least 2 players harvesting the same area.

there's a moon in the sky...its called luclin 2

Exdamage@Butcherblock wrote:

Actually its called Drinal...so im guessing you practically want another Luclin expansion, which would just be a rip off of EQ1...making it kinda...

I would like to them Bring Kithicor Forrest in.. What memories ahhh..... Night time was such an evil scary time to be there hehe... A higher 50-80 overland zone dedicated to the undead at night.. and less risky during the day to get your questing done but soon as night falls much more harder to complete em til dawn breaks

Khatiru@Butcherblock wrote:

What a unique and interesting idea!

Exdamage@Butcherblock wrote:

It's called Drinal and it's as dead as the moon above our heads IRL.

Nero wrote:

This is right on the money. Notably the whack-a-mole curing.
Cure curse/pot/click off some effect should NEVER have been a recurring theme through every single encounter. Raids in TSO are simply just not fun.

What I would enjoy seeing!

• Shared Dungons - at least three since TSO had no additional shared dungons and RoK only had two with one being very small. I like grabbing people chilling at the entrance of a shared and run thru... Easy way to meet people, and also the race to get to the named is exciting!
  
• Race change - Now this can be a pre-order goodie from your site and/or the box, but people have been wanting to race swap since racial attributes have been introduced. When it was just base stats upon making your character you went more for the class that you thought looked cool vs. the one with the most of the base stat you would like to have when starting.
  
• Cap AA will provide AA bonuses to your other alternate players. (you have 2 80/200's you would recieve a 20% bonus to your AA XP) Since reaching 200 requires time and patience those that have one or multipule toons would benefit. I know the cap will be higher then, but you get where I am going with this.
  
• Raid progression! TSO has a kind of progression, but it's really not all that laid out as it was with RoK. I enjoyed the fact that guilds had to work on the content from the various tiers and clear it before progressing.
  
• Not requiring guilds to come stacked with healers! This is why some classes are not getting spots right now. They may very well be an exceptional player of their class, but when you need room for 7-9 healers, 4 bards, and 4 chanters to get a solid force there is not a ton of room for those other classes to get spots. 14-17 spots from a 24 man force slims it down quick.
  • Suggestion: Less detriments! All of the detriments are the primary reason we need to have this large number of healers. Granted with low critical mitigation you will be around 9 heals in a raid, and with the current number of ailments you still want to go in with 7 even with the crit mit since you need to be Johnny on the spot with some of the ailments. I would prefer to have 6 to be honest to give more room for those other classes to get in. As a healer TSO raids are not fun in the least.
• New innovative adornments for some of the slots that are lacking decent adorns. Chest, Pants, Ears, Symbols, and Fingers come to mind right off hand.
  
• BLEND the content! KoS imo was a good example of not too much or too little for the various play styles. There was a blend of solo/small group/full group/raid content to keep people going. RoK way too solo oriented, and TSO way too instanced oriented.
  
• Cure pots - 1 pot cures them all. You blended the healers cure ability, and now it's time to blend the cure pots into a cure all solution. Mastercrafted cure curse pots w/ a 1 min recast would be a nice touch as well.
  
• Upgrading the engine would be a heck of an upgrade and well worth the bang for the buck!

New race - no
New starter city - no (the home citys are waste lands at the moment with the introduction of Guild Halls)

i defer to this post for ideas...

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=451649

Alaocia@Guk wrote:

I still hope the Domino will make a master crafted cure potion that works this way.

You know, this thread was started around the time TSO launched. That was probably already way too late to give feedback as to the setting of the expansion since it had probably been in the works for at least a year by that point.

i'd like to see the next expansion have tons more contested raid content, like have an overland zone full of contested epics with only % chance to spawn with placeholder epics having a lesser loot quality. or maybe having all raid zones in the expansion contested. maybe have some raid content that requires 2 or more raid forces to work togther to defeat a number of enemys encouraging alliances' between guilds.
size of the expansion isnt nearly as important as ther content within it right now most servers have no competition within guild to guild other then who cleared what instance first and mainly 1 or 2 guilds per server locking down all contested content. i think having all zones contested with just the bosses of the zones dropping the extreme uber loot from current avatars and make it so they have to get to the mob in clear progression rather then its popped and everyone just ganks it immediatly. put in some mechanic to prevent leapfrogging like mob x drops item y to defeat mob y and have it no rent so it will expire after a period of being logged out. i think that would bring alot of intesity back to the game.