Timesinks vs Char Progression

[Riddick]

There are basically two ways to keep people playing a game like everquest, keep them busy with character progression, or give them long complicted timesinks which can give the illusion of progression but in reality add no value.

In Kunark/Velious days character progression was clear. Each expansion greatly increased the power of EQ toons. Lvl 60 from lvl 50 was absolutely huge, and velious (read ToV/Kael) was basically the birthplace of modern EQ armor and bomb ass raids. Not that VP wasnt fun but it didnt hold a candle to pulling off a good Vulak/AoW/Statue etc etc raid.

Luclin was a bit more mixed with lots of insane timesinks, but it had the goods to back it up. VT & FT/Vengeance items were nice, and AA was very nice, but on the whole it involved far more timesinks for the rewards than pretty much anything else seen before minus epics.

But recently it seems that the flow at Sony has changed from trying to keep people involved in EQ with good character progression to just keeping them busy with timesinks/keys/flags and anything that will keep them playing without changing the characters too much. The upgrade to 65 is.... decent, but I really havent seen that much difference. Sure the DD/dots spells do more damage, the buffs add a few more Hp/Str/Dex, but I havent seen a single spell that broke ground or changed ANY game mechanics (minus possibly CoD being used in raids, but I wont open that can of worms).

Kreugen wrote an excellent post recently about how the gameplay of being a melee on current day high end raids has lost much/all of its magic that it had before. I have to agree and say that casters, while having a little more variety, no longer really contribute individually what they used to. Whether I play on my main (shammy) or I bot a cleric/ranger, I never feel like the raid would effected if I just /follow and went out to dinner.

I dont write this because I am tired of EQ, because I still enjoy the game somewhat. I just want to see what what the general opinion of the game is beyond myself and my own guild. Maybe it is just natural, I mean when you have built on a character for 3 years, its going to take a LOT to make a noticeable difference in any aspect. And the same with a guild of 50+ pimp toons. 1 more or less doesnt change much.

Ah well sorry for the long post, but any thoughts anyone?

Riddick

[Loyang]

yes

[Jaytee Bushwacker]

As to what Kreugen wrote about melee's place in today's raids, he was right on. In terms of a caster, as you mentioned you do have a slight bit more variety, however were essentially all in the same boat. Short of the MT and the CH rotation everyone is essentially expendable these days.

I guess in a sense they have achieved class balance in the revelation that you can replace nearly any class with another class (again minus the MT and CH rotation) and not really effect the outcome.

This effect really isnt due to direct intervention by sony but the fact that as raids on average tend to be 60-70-80 people events these days one more or less of any class wont really matter as long as there is one in the raid.

When raids used to be 3-4 groups, an extra wizard or extra cleric or whatever (or lack of) really impacted the outcome. This was the case with just about every class back in the pre-luclin days. Although some classes were useless (like mine for example in the ToV days).

[FuckYou]

I hate it when people say "toon". Fucking hate it.

Anyway, you are correct in your assesment of the game. Since they can't really increase players power in giant chunks anymore without trivializing even more content, they have to keep us busy with gay puzzles. Flagging in it's conceptual form is kinda fun: you must defeat enemies to progress. Seperates the cans from the can'ts. Implementation was a little shitty, but it's (somewhat) better than camping shards.

[Attrib]

I think there are actually two major reasons for the slow down.

The 1st one is the fact that the dev. team is shrinking. You can't expect a complet revolution of the game mechanism or even part of it with the lastest incoming expansions when you have maybe 1 or 2 two people working on them full-time. Great expansions (read expansions that introduce a real change) requires from the dev. team 1) a bunch of neurons to avoid the stupid ideas 2) a bunch of people to handle the feedback and make the adjustments.

Which leads to the 2nd idea. I think VI is taking less and less risks to introduce major change in the game because they have now more or less a stable game and don't to face major bad feedbacks because whatever happens it will occur because 1) it's Vi 2) EQ players or part of them like to whine when something changes (because some class is getting more powerful or is nerfed).

Overall, this is typical. we are entering the middle-age of the product, they just try to let the things go, puting live some light expansions and earn the max $$ before it's the end, while they are already working on new wave of games like EQ2.

[Drave]

Of all expansions, Velious "felt" the best for exploring, seeing new things, dungeon crawling, etc. You didn't need to kill Tormax, or AoW, for the WL "flag" for example, but killing said mobs were big, and worthwhile.

I think the Sleeper's "flag" (getting everyone in the guild a key) is an interesting comparison... people did it (and still do it), killing the same mobs over and over, just to get one person "flagged", one at a time.

[Sentient]

This is one of the problems with large raid guilds, the ones who bring 50-70 people on raids. Sure you feel useless, there are 3-4 of every class on the raid.

Try doing these encounters with half that, yes it is possible. You may wipe more ... and you may not be able to be the uber guild of the server, but the game is a lot more fun.

When the ubers say, "You are really good, why are you in guild xxxx?" ... "Well, because I'm important here."

[FuckYou]

Which leads to the 2nd idea. I think VI is taking less and less risks to introduce major change in the game because they have now more or less a stable game and don't to face major bad feedbacks because whatever happens it will occur because 1) it's Vi 2) EQ players or part of them like to whine when something changes (because some class is getting more powerful or is nerfed).

I'd say fucking with the Hate list and agro is a pretty major change.

[kasey]

Anyway, you are correct in your assesment of the game. Since they can't really increase players power in giant chunks anymore without trivializing even more content, they have to keep us busy with gay puzzles

I disagree with that.You could increase the power of the items endlessly and use the mobs damage as *flag* and *key* just like velius did it.
Yes you would trivialize old content, so what.I was hoping planes of POWER giving us endless streams of loot and mobs and nonstop action.Tier1 could start where VT stopped,every single tier 1 plane with at least equally the quantity of a full vt clearing.
Planes of disease , plane of innovation pojustice and so on, deserted beside some xp spots.
You should be able to zone into tier2 or tier 3/4 right away, the mobs will just be soo powerful, you have to gear up.
You have to raid and you have to get loot.
What if crypt of disease would have a zonewide neg mana regen and hp dot making it inefficient to operate without having 200 DR unbuffed.
That way you make gear required,that works fine as key and makes everquest and people who raid rarely much more flexible, less painful and less possibilities to implement bugs.
Then you would have the same effects of flaggs and such but not the incredible pain of flagging up your whole guild.
Take Temple of veeshan when it came out or Kael drakkel with velius, did guilds go there right away and owned it all cause there was no flag?
No
They had to gear up, recruit up and built strats.Thats how i want everquest to be.They drowned power increase in timesinks such as flags and not in very similar timesink of gearing up.
What do we have instead, tier 1/2 mobs dropping totally worthless loot, making the whole flagging process even more tedious cause we dont get any nice reward beside may be applicants.
You didnt need a flag for Aow when you came right from Phara dar raiding..
It should be same for planes of POWER.
New members would have it hard in the elemental planes at the start but they would catch up fast cause the gear is so good and plenty , it will powerup them and applicants will be able to operate very fast in the last planes when the guild they try to join is raiding alot in the high end.
Screw flags and the bugs and the pain.
You can just keep the damage and the hitpoints/ac proportional and add new abilities and required strats.
Know what, Avatar of war killed your tanks as fast as the highend bosses kill the tanks these days with double the hp.
Its always the same game,you cant go over a certain limit of damage, the mob has to stay killable in some way.
Of course there are mobs that arent supposed to be tanked, but the mobs that are supposed to be maintanked cant hit for much more, it all stays in a certain percentual limit so it stays doable.
They have to add new abilities , making us do other stuff.
Just think of all the attempts, like giving the mobs 39802175483758493 hitpoints or make our paladins and Sk mezz tank for 1 hour or hard hitting mobs that add or huge timeable damage spikes such as emperror in ssra had.
I think they went the flag route instead of the huge powerup route and making everything else obsolete and loot worthless because of AA points and the way you gain them.
Lets just say we would have 1 group with a 20k hp tank, uber heal spells and uber damage dealer,they usually keep the xp proportional to the power of the mob(well somewhat, a level 1 hitter doesnt give as much xp as a level 5 hitter, you know what i mean , talking in general here.Of course there are exceptions).
That would mean they *should* get alot more xp then a level 60 group with luclin gear and skills.
They could max their aa within days, instead they somewhat kept the speed you gain aa points at a sane rate.Planes of power xp is fast no question, its really fast and you kill hard mobs for xp at a decent rate.
You already xp easy as fast as an AE group in luclin with a simple group in plane of valor.
SO WHAT, they should have scaled up the aa points required as well.
So we gain now too fast xp with our insane gear?increase aa points required proportional
So we have now 20k hp tanks against Fennin ro?increase his damage in a way so the fight will be exact the same.
You just have to play with the numbers, numbers are the background.The gameplay and playability should stay at first place.
My suggestions would remove alot of pain from the game, still the difficulty of the mobs can easily stay the same.
We could play the exact game, need the exact same numbers.Need exact same strategies but we wouldnt have cockblocking because of bottlenecks and important flag mobs, we wouldnt have to go back to gimpy mobs to reflag.We would have to raid mobs balanced for the powerlevel of our guild.
And they didnt balance xping, it was a tad to fast.I was maxed with Planes of power aa within 1/2months, that is to fast if you take as scale the last years of everquest.

Just my opinion and something to think about

PS,oh and throw in Qhue's ideas too, they are great.

[Attrib]

I'd say fucking with the Hate list and agro is a pretty major change.

Well I was mainly talking about LoY when VI is taking less risks in changing gameplay.
What they are doing atm is dealing with the shit that came along with PoP and get ready to face the wrath of the players who are going to beta-test PoTime.

[Evan Nash]

Agreed.

I, and I think most classes don't feel like we do jack shit some of the time in raids.

PoP IS a very very nice expansion. One of the best, but maybe I'm just saying that because Luclin was total ass.

[sadre spinegnawer]

As far as timesinks go, I would take shard camping over flag raids anyday.

Reason being: as Jaytee said, as raid numbers go up, the sense of individual player value goes down. 3-4 grp raids are a nice amount to keep "close unit" gameplay still somewhat intact, but by the time you get up to 50+ people, forget about any sense of close unit cohesion. It's a zerg fest in nature, if not in effect.

So with PoP, we got timesinks that are large-scaled anonymous raids, and then boss mobs that are large-scaled anonymous raids.

But with luclin, what was nice was the mix. You could do small group goal-oriented gameplay on your shards and emp key parts, and then switch to raid mode for when the guild was going for a boss mob. This mix is GONE in PoP. It's all raid, all the time. There is no room (in terms of the timesink aspects of the game) for any variety and individualization in approach to goals.

For example, when I was camping my shards, I purposely scheduled my play time for late late night. With flags, no such individual flexibility is possible, since the flags require full raids.

I don't mind a timesink, except when the gameplay they require becomes uniform and same same same. Flags in PoP require the same gameplay scale for each damn mob. With Luclin, you had a choice of solo, grp, or 2-3 grp models of gameplay for the timesinks. Added variety. Something the progression scheme in PoP absolutely and irredeemably sucks at.


Sadre
Guild Juice Box
Quellious

[Affinity]

Kreugen did hit it right on the head. As a melee, right now I dont fight for a spot to hit a mob.. ever anymore. As a paladin, I know my melee wont be missed too much, and im not going to go through the trouble to stay in range and trying to fit into the mass of people doing the same. I do however feel important on mobs with AE's with dmg or stuff I can cure. The agnarr fight for example.. have a great time doing him.

[TownPillager]

I feel that there is no reason why they shouldn't increase player power even further if they wish. "But is trivializes old world mobs...", well put a level cap on certain older zones so high level people/groups can't go there to farm for the loot or just because. Like Hate and Fear could have a level 60 limit, same with NToV and what not.

I feel they are just running out of ideas for new abilities and all they can do is increase the ones we have currently. Ok, I can buff for 800 hp, new spell is Marr's Legendary Blessing (or whatever) can buff for 1100 hp. Ok wizards now have a nuke Breathe of Veeshan that is area effect for 3K damage, stuns, snares, is lure and reduces their aggro. Clerics now have a new 110% rez. I mean come on, you can only increase the abilities so much before it is just pointless.

I mean I would much rather see my time spent on getting new strengths/abilities/loot rather than using the same time getting a flag to a zone that I am going to beta test for them. But that is just me .

[VelMonk]

Locking people out of content makes sense on paper, but it's EXTREMELY retarded in practice.

For example, Vox and Nag being 52 under, and the pal epic requiring those books. Sure, Kunark dragons have em, but Mr. 53 Paladin can't get in a guild half-decent enough to kill them, and once they're high enough to get in a guild that can, who the fuck cares about a 35/40 +stat +insaneaggroproc 2hs that sort of looks cool? MQ is an option, but when Kunark dragons are killed, it's for a)money b)twinks c) some war wants his red epic, but the book that drops will go to Random60Pal in the guild anyway, because he wants a weapon he probably won't use, since he can buy a Persuader or Corpse Fork for some ridiculously low amount of money and do more damage.

ToV locked to 60+, yeah, that'd go over well...as well as getting fucked in the ass without lube. You'd have mid-end guilds deleveling to 60 just so they could all go through the ToV (HoT, and W/NToV named) part of progression, which is still more or less required, if not extremely desirable.