TSO Stinks

"Excellent!"
"Great Plan. Thanks Kander for looking at the solo players as well. "
"Kander (and other developers),
I can only say: Thank you guys. I know I will enjoy his. As I said earlier, I don't expect to get as many shards as group/raid players but having the knowledge that I will eventually be able to get one or two shard items makes me happy!"
"Well I'm personally happy that GU 52 is adding a daily solo shard quest."
I'd like to add my 2 cents, "Ditto"

Annara@Najena wrote:

Well to a degree.....
To kill avatars you need Mythical and crit mit armor and actually the fabled crit mit armor.
If you dont have these items you can not kill avatars.....

Flaye@Mistmoore wrote:

As far as missing the point goes, you're doing very well with that.
The point is not about whether soloers need shard armor.
It's about the fact that TSO offers no progression for soloers at level 80. Adding a means to obtain shards via a solo quest adds in the solo progression that is currently lacking.
I don't need solo quests. I've finished the first set and have half the second set of armor, so it doesn't matter to me. I'll probably have finished the second set by the time GU52 gets here.
But I'm not a jerk, so I'm not about to try and argue that people who solo should be excluded from armor progression until the next expansion (which is exactly the current state of things without solo shard acquisition - this subset of the population is completely excluded from equipment progression, barring a few random items that can be crafted from instance drops. That's not an ideal state of affairs from the perspective of those players, or from the perspective of the people making the game, who have the task of ensuring people of all playstyles continue to play it).
But regardless of any other factors, I do find it a bit stupid that people are all up in arms over one solo shard a day.

Bigron@Unrest wrote:

But not every single piece of gear has crit mit. So swap out a piece of gear that doesn't have it and you can still kill anything. There, that proves you don't need that piece of gear so you don't "deserve" to have it.
(Yes, I know you aren't one of the ones using the lame "you don't need it" argument, but I'm just making the point.)

So the solo quest is for 1 shard/day? You know, if someone solos excusively, I have no problem with them getting shard armor this way. Honestly, it'll be the next expac before they get close to a full set of T2 armor and jewelry. And thats if they do the quest everyday. It'll take the solo player close to a year to accomplish what I did in the matter of a month-month and a half.

SOE doesn't grant gear upgrades based on the need of the playstyle. SOE itemizes the game in order for there to always be one more carrot, bigger than the last, dangling in front of you to keep you playing. Itemization has almost nothing to do with who needs what. It exists solely to motivate you to keep playing. Raiders expect the best gear, so that's what gets dangled in front of them. Heroic players generally expect solid gear with the rare possibility of something really awesome falling into their lap. Most solo players realistically do not expect to have the best of the best gear in the game, but to consign them solely to treasured crap because that's all they need to survive in their playstyle will not motivate many to continue. SOE itemizes according the the generalized expectations of each playstyle they choose to support while attempting to motivate players to expand their interests and experience a multitude of playstyles to extend their interest in subscribing to the game. Mythicals exist not only to encourage and enable raiders to keep raiding, but also to encourage non-raiders to give that particular playstyle a try as well. Shard gear was initially intended to give the heroic player something to work for. With daily singles, it can give solo players the same objective, but over a MUCH longer time frame so that it might possibly motivate some soloers to attemt to group more to obtain shards faster.

Meaghan@Lucan DLere wrote:

It's generally considered bad form on these boards to calmly and rationally express a sensible and almost certainly true opinion. MOAR ranting and drama next time plz.

I really believe that TSO is a horrible expansion pack and that SOE needs to make up it's mind on what kind of game EQ2 is.

The total solo content in TSO (135) is less than 1/3 of what was in RoK (330+).
But they make up for it with qaulity group content right? Wrong.
Every since launch I've seen guildmates, hour after hour, night after night, day after day, gathering Void shards. Remember when high levels used to help low levels? Now it's all about getting yourself T2 VS armor. Heck with the exception of Legendary item quests I don't see our high levels doing ANY quests.

And as for raids, I'd love to tell you about them but we continue to loss 1 or 2 80's a month who leave for established raiding guilds. We can't get a large enough player base to raid, and if we don't raid we can't keep the highlevel players. Catch-22.

You cut the leveling time down, given account exp bonuses and allow people to buy XP poitions so that can hurry up and get to 80. For what? So people can join a uber DKP raid guild?


To fix the mess the TSO left
1) Reduce the reqs for void shard by 50%. Get the people out of the caves and back into the world.
2) Scale down all raids to 2x
3) Allow people to mentor up in levels.
4) Server merges

I know what the response are goiong to be
1) No! If I've spent months, so should you.
Sorry SOE disagress. People who create new chars now will take less time to level than characters that were made at launch

2) No We are a raid based game!
Wrong. EQ2 is a solo/group game. First everfrost and now lavastorm are going to be solo zones.

3) No way. I 'worked' hard to get that fabled item.
Relax sparky. Allow the poeple to roll on it, but not be able to use it until thier natural level meets the level requirements.

4) Great job with the living leechers promo. I see just tons of people pouring in.
There are times when I will be in a zone and see not 1 other level appropriate character in it.
They follow up the award winning RoK with TSO which has won how many awards?
Hey mabye the producer can right another one of his Snafu letters and tell everyone how great it was!

No you can't have my stuff.
I'll be back when SOE does the Living Leechers 2 and I get a few free months.

Meaghan@Lucan DLere wrote:

Truer words have seldom been expressed so well.
Related...yet unrelated...
For the longest time I had no patience at all to craft. I made a sage simply because we solo/duo play all the time and the ability to make the Adept III spells outweighed the boredom (for me) to craft.
Then came TSO. The ability to craft purely out of the Guild Hall that we aquired was a huge plus, but still little motivation to push forward for me. Then came the daily missions that I started to enjoy in Mara. But that meant earning better gear to make the missions easier. Might as well go for the crafting Epic while I'm at it. You know, that Harvesting cloak is worth having. Hey, did they always have that crafting quest in the Vilage of Shin? (ummm...seems they did). A month later, I finished my second crafter, got his Epic yesterday, I'm in full Far Seas Gear, with a Unicorn. All because some carrots were dangled over my head that got me into something I never enjoyed much before.
The solo shard missions could do the same. Hey, I need 18 shards, that's only 18 days to make this item. Then a few weeks later, you have a taste for the better shard gear and start thinking. Hey, I could do this a lot faster if I did Shard Groups. BAM! Your hooked.

Meaghan@Lucan DLere wrote:

Hear Hear!
This is the point that some of us solo players have been trying to make. You sir/madam, have expressed it very nicely.

This seems pretty exciting to me, possibly enough to get me to come back, but only if it's done right. I dont want some wussy instance or a quest where I'm running all over norrath. I would like a highly challenging solo instance. Kander is referring to a solo quest. I hope he means a quested instance. Running just another lengthy quest doesnt interest me, and neither does a solo instance that is so freakin easy that I can do it half asleep. It needs to be challenging!

One person's challenging is another person's punching bag. For example, a couple of my friends a low core 80's. They have a few nice RoK quested items and 77 MC armor. But they haven't bought all of the useful Attuneable items off of the broker. Nor are they remarkably skilled at playing their classes. In the end, they're good enough to get by solo on their own and simply play to have fun.
It's those kinds of people that the T1 shard armor is targeted towards. For them, each piece is a dynamic upgrade to what they were previously wearing. Both of them are also excited about the new Imbued shard jewelry. But their issue is that they're just not up to snuff for your average TSO instance. They may be able to slowly limp through DF or Scion, but it won't be quickly or gracefully in their groups. As a result, they haven't gained many void shards. For them to get their shard gear, they have to wait for the occassional mentoring gray zones romps as my brigand mows things down for them. But even at a rate of one run like this every 2-3 weeks (which is based on their own interest in the matter), it will take forever for them to get their desired items. And unless they do have them, then they won't be able to start holding their own weight in the easier TSO instances.
My friends are the people who want / need these solo quests. To be more specific, the quest will hopefully be easy enough for the to slowly progress through on their own. If the solo quest is actually challenging to decently geared characters (or aggressive soloing classes), then that will inherently defeat the purpose of these quests in the first place. For if the solo quests are trivial for a character, then that character would be better suited to running some of the standard TSO group zones.

Dareena@Lucan DLere wrote:

Sadly, what you say makes a lot of sense.

I would imagine the quests go from easy to hard like the heroic instances. I bide my time with the dailies because if its one of the harder zones I know I cannot do it so I wait till the easier ones arrive. I suspect that will change once my shard armour is close to complete.
I believe the greying out exploit should be removed as it cheapens the whole idea. If you truly want to earn the shards you should be expected to gain them when the instances are actually a challenge or at least not greyed out. Sadly its already too late for that as the people who have exploited this already have all their tier 2 and a stack of shards in the bank.

Greenwood@Permafrost wrote:

Most of your rant (and that's all it is) simply blames SOE for things out of their control. You can't blame SOE that your "friends" no longer quest with you. What's stopping YOU from running instances with them? Besides, if they want AA (which everyone needs to not be a half-***** player), they should be questing. The fact that they don't has nothing to do with SOE.
You can't blame SOE that people leave your guild. It's not SOE's fault that your guild lacks whatever other guids offer.
It seems that what you really want is an EASY mode button. 2x Raids? Half cost for shards? Seriously, put some work into improving your social skills and get groups, instead of using that energy to whine about irrlevant issues.
The only thing I agree with you about is Server merges. It's always great to have more people available to quest/do instances with.

Greenwood@Permafrost wrote:

Well I really hope that no one listens to you. Why would you want it dumbed down more? Enough has been dumbed down already.
Yours would have to be the most negative post I've read. I think you've made the right choice by leaving the game tbh.

EoF expansion did win some awards and personally I also think that's been the best expansion so far. SOE needs to make another expansion like EoF.

Dimhammer wrote:

I agree EOF was a great expansion - TSO sucks.

Maroger wrote:

Agreed. TSO was mostly ignored by the press this year. Worst expansion to date.

EoF was well recieved by the press because they don't play the game.
EoF was an expansion designed for new players, not for the existing.
In the time between when the game launched and they started work on EoF, the development team had learnt a lot about the game, the tools they use to make the game, and what content they should be providing for the game.
A simple look at the zone art assests created from KoS onwards is a clear indication that the art team gained a focus for the visual look of the game (which has remained consistant since then). EoF was the introduction of solo quest lines designed specifically for leveling, and tailored 100% to that end. It was the first case of this game spoon feeding players experiance via quests, as well as providing them with equipment the telling of a story, all while guiding them along a very specific path.
They seem like a guided tour through 80s Moscow (or North Korea for that matter), where if you stay on track where your supposed to, you get an absolutly fabulous view of the surrounding. The second you step off that guided path, things start falling apart, and the true colour of your surroundings start to show through.
Leveling up in EoF did not provide enough option, enough uniqueness, enough diversity. It was like a factory floor of characters starting at one end, following a conveyor belt and dropping off the other end at level 70.
In short, it was absolutly disgusting as a supposidly repeatable entertainment form.
The press loved it because it was well polished, well thought out, and had a good story. You did not hear of a single journalist talking about a second character, or starting at a different town, you heard only about Fae characters from Kelethin, whom were taken on an automated guided tour of Gfay and Butcherblock.
Making another EoF factory would be pointless for this game. The press will not give EQ2 a second "first time played" review, and if EoF had the lasting appeal to those in the press that people seem to want to think it did, do you not thing they would have mentioned RoK and TSO more than they did?
EoF was designed with the fact that it was this games last real chance at decient numbers of new players in. What advantage would trying to do that again serve this game now that a simple (propper) revamp and recalibration of the existing starting areas would not provide?

Noaani wrote:

One would think that is what we should be looking for in an expansion. Your quip that it isn't repeatable is laughable. EoF is entirely fun when considered in the context of the larger game. New content paths like Neriaik, Everfrost, and soon Lavastorm provide repeatability enough for several characters.
Grinding out skeeball tickets to buy gear to grind out more stuff, seems entirely pointless IMO. TSO masquarades as content. And does a poor job of it.