The Return of Neriak

[Noah EQ2]

Originally Posted by Kirun

Since my experience is somewhat limited and I've never played EQ2 more than about 3 months at a time, how are expansions handled in terms of gear? Does the gear essentially "reset" every expansion like it did with Burning Crusade in WoW and likely will for their next expansion, or does it take a while for expansion gear to "surpass" the previous expansions' gear? I ask because that's the thing I'm pretty sure is going to drive me away from WoW.

Yes.

[lumberjack]

gallenite probably owes this thread some kickbacks, it seems there have been quite a few new accounts opened up as a result of it

[Kirun]

Originally Posted by Noah EQ2

Yes.

Yes gear resets or yes it takes a while for the new expansion to out-pace the old?

[Eshelon]

Originally Posted by Kirun

Yes gear resets or yes it takes a while for the new expansion to out-pace the old?

That's correct.

[Noah EQ2]

Originally Posted by Eshelon

That's correct.

Signed


- For real though, yes the expansions basically trumps all prior to it. Generally the expansions that add "another tier" - basically 10 levels - make a large portion of the raiding population rather upset. Nothing like busting ass for 6-10 months gearing up only to see a metal chest on a "group" mob drop 8 levels higher and you start to drool / and cry because of the dkp you wasted/or whatever. Very few games seem to have good progression from expansion to expansion anymore. EQ1 seemed to have decent progression/gearing up - but once again - EQ1 was perfect and all bad things in that game never happened.

[Jait]

By and large (like 99%) of all items are upgraded each expansion. There are exceptions. Plenty of Healers still use their Godking sceptres for example. Some gear is out of whack too (darkened gauntlets, proc gear)

For raiding you go through several mini-tiers at 70 however.
Relic Gear->
Random better gear->
EoF class gear->
Random endgame gear (Avatars, contested Mayong, Pumpkin, rare drops from Wuoshi/Mayong and others)

This is what to expect when you start raiding at 70 unless you join a guild that's already progressed through EoF. In which case you'll be pretty much handed EoF class gear.

However.....Kunark has a level increase, so it's safe to assume everything you're wearing at 70 will be outdated at 80.

[Jysin-DW]

Originally Posted by Noah EQ2

Signed


- For real though, yes the expansions basically trumps all prior to it. Generally the expansions that add "another tier" - basically 10 levels - make a large portion of the raiding population rather upset. Nothing like busting ass for 6-10 months gearing up only to see a metal chest on a "group" mob drop 8 levels higher and you start to drool / and cry because of the dkp you wasted/or whatever. Very few games seem to have good progression from expansion to expansion anymore. EQ1 seemed to have decent progression/gearing up - but once again - EQ1 was perfect and all bad things in that game never happened.

This is pretty much what made me quit "hardcore raiding" in Xanadu. We busted our asses gearing up and making a significant equipment / progression gap between the #2 on the server and when the new expansion with 10 levels rolled out, all of our gear was virtually trivial. Noah is right about EQ1 though, in most cases you couldnt essentially "skip" an expansion. You would have to get some basic gear for resists / manaregen before having a realistic shot at new expansion content. EQ2... nope... you can take your Treasured armored character and come out on par with single group content relatively quickly.

It's just a kick in the face to the people who have spent so much time gearing up. It trivializes the accomplishments in a huge way.

[Dendory]

Ya I don't like the concept of reseting everything at each expansion. People did PoTime at the end of PoP. But even after LDoN, God, OoW and even DoD was released, 3 years later, people were still raiding PoTime. Same thing with Anguish, which many guilds still raid to this day, years after it's been released. A new guild leveling up has a reason to go through the raiding content, at least the past 3-4 expansions, if not all of it. I remember during PoP times when people on forums were debating if Kunark and Velious content was required before going through PoP progression, and most people did it because it made things easier. With WoW, you can level straight up to 70, not step a single foot into any 60 instance and be the at exact same point as someone who's been raiding for 2 years. I think they do it to make it easier for new players but it makes it lame for your current raiders. I don't know what EQ2 will do with Kunark, but I do hope they go for the EQ1 model and at least makes the EoF stuff remain meaningful.

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Jysin-DW

This is pretty much what made me quit "hardcore raiding" in Xanadu. We busted our asses gearing up and making a significant equipment / progression gap between the #2 on the server and when the new expansion with 10 levels rolled out, all of our gear was virtually trivial. Noah is right about EQ1 though, in most cases you couldnt essentially "skip" an expansion. You would have to get some basic gear for resists / manaregen before having a realistic shot at new expansion content. EQ2... nope... you can take your Treasured armored character and come out on par with single group content relatively quickly.

It's just a kick in the face to the people who have spent so much time gearing up. It trivializes the accomplishments in a huge way.

I don't honestly know what people do expect: gear up once and forever? That would be fucking boring. What EQ2 lacks are maybe some evergreen items, even if they are fluff stuff or mantain a low degree of usefulness or cool factor (think of EQ1 clickies), but claiming you shouldn't have to gear up "cause it's wasted effort" has a quite comical value to it.

Your KoS raid gear helps you doing EoF raids, there is in fact someone stating that it may even be needed to start raiding EoF and many guilds still do raid KoS.
Of course when you raise the level cap the previous gear will fade away as you level up, but I seriously doubt people replaced KoS raid gear with handcrafted or treasured drops in EoF.

These games are a constant "upgrade what you have" race, how would you handle an item-centric game then? I'm curious.

[Noah EQ2]

Originally Posted by Miele

I don't honestly know what people do expect: gear up once and forever? That would be fucking boring. What EQ2 lacks are maybe some evergreen items, even if they are fluff stuff or mantain a low degree of usefulness or cool factor (think of EQ1 clickies), but claiming you shouldn't have to gear up "cause it's wasted effort" has a quite comical value to it.

Your KoS raid gear helps you doing EoF raids, there is in fact someone stating that it may even be needed to start raiding EoF and many guilds still do raid KoS.
Of course when you raise the level cap the previous gear will fade away as you level up, but I seriously doubt people replaced KoS raid gear with handcrafted or treasured drops in EoF.

These games are a constant "upgrade what you have" race, how would you handle an item-centric game then? I'm curious.

You don't get it. Raid gear should be upgraded by raid mobs on the next tier - not some fuckin 4 man group named mob that anyone can camp. If you want that "uber gear" - raid the tier before and get it if you think you need the extra stats.

In this case - Items have lvls on them. A lvl 69 item "Fabled" / raid will be artificially shit compared to a lvl 75 Legenary/TS item. Personally, who cares if a raider doesnt get upgrades from 71-80 while exping in groups... they could give a shit as they plow ass thru 10 lvls and go for what they like - Raid content.

[Denonia2]

- For real though, yes the expansions basically trumps all prior to it. Generally the expansions that add "another tier" - basically 10 levels - make a large portion of the raiding population rather upset. Nothing like busting ass for 6-10 months gearing up only to see a metal chest on a "group" mob drop 8 levels higher and you start to drool / and cry because of the dkp you wasted/or whatever. Very few games seem to have good progression from expansion to expansion anymore. EQ1 seemed to have decent progression/gearing up - but once again - EQ1 was perfect and all bad things in that game never happened.

We had ppl quitting on the spot when another +10 expansion was announced. Maybe Scoott got hew crew playing the early eq2 game but clearly they still lack some raid game experiense before they realy understands mechanics. The +10 expansion idea is simply so dumb that it hurts.

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Noah EQ2

You don't get it. Raid gear should be upgraded by raid mobs on the next tier - not some fuckin 4 man group named mob that anyone can camp. If you want that "uber gear" - raid the tier before and get it if you think you need the extra stats.

In this case - Items have lvls on them. A lvl 69 item "Fabled" / raid will be artificially shit compared to a lvl 75 Legenary/TS item. Personally, who cares if a raider doesnt get upgrades from 71-80 while exping in groups... they could give a shit as they plow ass thru 10 lvls and go for what they like - Raid content.

This is valid when you don't add a new tier, so yeah, raid gear of KoS for example shouldn't be worse than legendary groupable gear from EoF (and I don't know if it's true or not honestly, never compared them), but you know better than me how level fits into these equations.

Today saying you need to raid DoF in order to to raid KoS would be ridicolous.
KoS is being raided by guilds still, before they tackle EoF raids. Whether this is a skippable step or not, I'll leave it to more experienced people to judge, but the content is still heavily used.

The same will apply for Kunark with 10 extra levels, t7 stuff out of the window, welcome t8 stuff. Raiders won't touch a piece of gear till the next raid content. Will EoF raid gear be needed to raid Kunark? Unlikely, but I may be wrong, for sure it will be a good starting point.

Does that suck? Tell devs to stop adding levels, honestly it's not really encouraging for a new player having 80 levels to grind. It's the new tiers the problem, not the new gear.

[Dendory]

The problem isn't adding levels. You can do proper raid itemization regardless if you have levels or not. Take a random EQ expansion, say Omens, which did add 5 levels. People in crap gear could exp in 80% of the exp zones, but they had a hard time still in the highest level exp zones. And there's just no way they could walk into the trial zones, much less Anguish, without getting their ass handed to them. The vast majority of guilds at that point still worked on Time, on most GoD content (which says something, since most people seemed to hate GoD) and then worked on Anguish keying.

Noah said it best, when a new expansion gets released, you should expect group players to upgrade their gear with new group content, and raid players who raided the previous raid zones to upgrade their gear in new raid content. You should NOT be able to upgrade your raid gear you just got in new group content, same as you should not be able to go straight from group content to high end raiding skipping all previous raiding zones. A typical PoTime item would not be upgraded by group content in LDoN, GoD or OoW. It could be upgraded by DoD group content. That's 4 expansions, the way it should be.

It's not rocket science. Let's say your PoTime BP has +250 hp, while your typical group player playing in PoValor has +150 hp BPs. Well your next expansion should provide +190 hp group content, and +290 hp raid content. The one after that +230 hp group content, +330 hp raid content, and the next one +260 hp group and +375 hp raiding. That's how you do it and keep both casuals and raiders happy, yet don't make raiding previous tiers meaningless for 3-4 expansions at least.

[Miele]

Originally Posted by Dendory

The problem isn't adding levels. You can do proper raid itemization regardless if you have levels or not. Take a random EQ expansion, say Omens, which did add 5 levels. People in crap gear could exp in 80% of the exp zones, but they had a hard time still in the highest level exp zones. And there's just no way they could walk into the trial zones, much less Anguish, without getting their ass handed to them. The vast majority of guilds at that point still worked on Time, on most GoD content (which says something, since most people seemed to hate GoD) and then worked on Anguish keying.

Noah said it best, when a new expansion gets released, you should expect group players to upgrade their gear with new group content, and raid players who raided the previous raid zones to upgrade their gear in new raid content. You should NOT be able to upgrade your raid gear you just got in new group content, same as you should not be able to go straight from group content to high end raiding skipping all previous raiding zones. A typical PoTime item would not be upgraded by group content in LDoN, GoD or OoW. It could be upgraded by DoD group content. That's 4 expansions, the way it should be.

It's not rocket science. Let's say your PoTime BP has +250 hp, while your typical group player playing in PoValor has +150 hp BPs. Well your next expansion should provide +190 hp group content, and +290 hp raid content. The one after that +230 hp group content, +330 hp raid content, and the next one +260 hp group and +375 hp raiding. That's how you do it and keep both casuals and raiders happy, yet don't make raiding previous tiers meaningless for 3-4 expansions at least.

I agree for the most part, but in EQ2 10 levels are such a huge bump in power that it's not even remotely comparable to gear differences. A lvl 80 in mastercrafted gear is going to be a fucking monster compared to a 70 in raid gear vs the same mob, just because of new spells/ca (which EQ didn't have) and level difference with mobs.

Anyway, if they can pull out something like you and others wish, I'd be even more happy, because when I'll get back to raiding, I'll have a clear and long progression in front of me and not just a couple zones because all the old content is wasted.