SOE to own VG - Sigil fires employees

[tad10]

Tomodachi: Nope no merge as yet. I would expect them but I guess they're still figuring out the logistics--obviously they have to code something to deal with player housing.

Elsebet I have the same concern with raiding -- I guess we'll see. My guess is that they'll have some contested and some summoned raid bosses (e.g. all signs point to the Rahz boss being summoned right now). I like contested content -- I don't like 20 guilds all going for say only 3 raid mobs all with 18-hour respawn timers. We'll see what happens.

Seths don't know what to say I didn't think 30-40 was a huge grind. I've though 40+ has been pretty grindy but I just take a few days off and do something else if it gets to me. Matter of preference I suppose. Strangely I find LOTRO more grindy than I like right now.

Originally Posted by tomodachi

Back when the initial rumor of an SoE acquisition leaked, LFG (the source)
also leaked SoE would announce a server merge the week following the
acquisition announcement.

Did this ever come to pass?

I was initially waiting to hear this before resubbing, but I frankly look less
and less positively toward resubbing the longer I'm not playing.

[Seths]

Originally Posted by tad10

Seths don't know what to say I didn't think 30-40 was a huge grind. I've though 40+ has been pretty grindy but I just take a few days off and do something else if it gets to me. Matter of preference I suppose. Strangely I find LOTRO more grindy than I like right now.

Ya I haven't and most likely won't play LOTRO. I guess if you avoid Cragwind and Vol Tun then you can avoid the grind from 30-40. 40-50 there is no way to escape it, it is a part of every dungeon or zone. If you want to get 1 of the best weapons in the game then you have to start your grind at 30 in Cragwind, and there are arguably some of the top armor items coming out of Vol Tun even for level 50 players so it becomes hard to avoid that place if you are looking to get the best stuff for your character.

While you "can" avoid the grind 30-40 it causes you to miss out on some of the better stuff in the game. So realistically you're going to be grinding from 30-50.

I remember now that aside from Pantheon there was the Hunter quests in Strandan that I really enjoyed. The lore was funny at times, especially with the Jhonny 5 references out of Short Circuit. What I want to see is the majority of quests like that, except much more difficult. Heck even stretched out so it takes a small chain of events to complete instead of a single encounter. That way you have your difficulty, you have your fun and creativity, you have your time invested to a reasonable point by stacking events in a chain before giving the reward, and you are able to do this all without eye-gouging grinding on mobs for your 12000'th faction pt or your 140th random drop.

[Nairbog]

This is one of the main problems with VG in general. I have no clue why they decided to make quested items the best items in the game. Ideally, I would like the quest lines to give out high-end uncommons, and in some cases rares. That way, players can do the questlines to get satisfactory equipment for their level, but if they want the best items, they'll have to spend time at dungeons all over Telon to find the best named drops for their level. Whilst doing these questlines you're generally going to be killing lots of named along the way anyhow, instead of having them drop heads or what not to advance the quest, how about having them drop some nice loot? Most players who want to have the best gear at any level feel like they are on rails, going from questline to questline. This is exactly what VG gameplay should not be like, the best items should be rare drops from named mobs in my opinion.

[kcxiv]

yeah, i dont mind doing quests, but some of them high end quets are just insane grindage. Faction for the NN weapons quest is not a bad grind, if more shit was like that, it would make world of difference. I just started on the Shadowhound quest, while its long, bieng level 46, its kind of a breeze so far.

[Ayeshala]

Them Vanguard designers have some very good ideas despite all the bad, but they more often than not forget to look over their content with the lenses labeled "fun?" "exciting?" "fresh?" before pushing it live.

[Twobit Whore]

Originally Posted by Ayeshala

Them Vanguard designers have some very good ideas despite all the bad, but they more often than not forget to look over their content with the lenses labeled "fun?" "exciting?" "fresh?" before pushing it live.

With as much grinding as many quests entail with the vastly understaffed testing staff, I am 99% positive that most stuff that has gone post release has recieved zero testing. When a bug goes live and the response is 'oops, I made a late night math error, i'll fix it next patch', then shit is not going right at all.

[Xaxius]

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

With as much grinding as many quests entail with the vastly understaffed testing staff, I am 99% positive that most stuff that has gone post release has recieved zero testing. When a bug goes live and the response is 'oops, I made a late night math error, i'll fix it next patch', then shit is not going right at all.

Kind of makes you appreciate Turbine's patching philosophy.

[tad10]

Seths: agree that 40+ is pretty grindy but 30-40 did Pantheon (pretty good), RP (blah), Zossyr (better than RP but not great), Karrus (great. hi2u Hruk), Tar Jan (okay not great). Can't say I missed out on best stuff: had some good areas some okay and one blah -- I figure that's average.

Nair/Kc: Yeah -- this is one of my main issues too. Completely agree that we need better loot from the bosses and the game is too quest focused right now (see grind comments). I really believe that killing bosses for great loot is much less grindy psychologically whereas running quests all the time is (not a professional psychologist I just play one on this board in this thread at this post)-- its the off wheels v. on wheels feeling.

Originally Posted by Nairbog

This is one of the main problems with VG in general. I have no clue why they decided to make quested items the best items in the game. Ideally, I would like the quest lines to give out high-end uncommons, and in some cases rares. That way, players can do the questlines to get satisfactory equipment for their level, but if they want the best items, they'll have to spend time at dungeons all over Telon to find the best named drops for their level. Whilst doing these questlines you're generally going to be killing lots of named along the way anyhow, instead of having them drop heads or what not to advance the quest, how about having them drop some nice loot? Most players who want to have the best gear at any level feel like they are on rails, going from questline to questline. This is exactly how what VG gameplay should not be like, the best items should be rare drops from named mobs in my opinion.

[Neric]

Originally Posted by Nairbog

I have no clue why they decided to make quested items the best items in the game.

This is exactly how what VG gameplay should not be like, the best items should be rare drops from named mobs in my opinion.

In the end it's all about timesinks and what people do while waiting for things to happen. Looks like Sigil decided it's better to run around over the whole world being busy with countless sub-quests than sitting in one room for days waiting for the named to spawn. In a way this follows the same school of thought that started back when they switched Jboots from Drelzna to the quest.

Personally, very much like you, I prefer the named mob rare drop shopping list approach to gear up, but I can't blame them for making a different choice. It's really just a matter of taste and you will find a lot of people who like to quest their stuff.

[Nairbog]

The thing is, the questlines tend to span several levels so you're stuck in one area/dungeon for a few levels trying to get that uber item. That's boring, I don't think anyone should be stuck in one area for that long, especially given the breadth of content in VG for most level ranges. I'd much prefer spend my time crawling dungeons, figure out how to spawn the nameds, and clearing them until it gets stale, then moving onto another dungeon. Before the riftways this was not as viable for most players who didn't want to put up with the insane travel times necessary. With the addition of riftways, you now have a choice between 2-3 premier dungeons and a boatload of other ones, some of which are cool, many of which are mediocre/bad. Regardless, it's new content and mobs, and most are worth a run through once at least.

I think the key thing most people are missing in VG is variety, though they might not realize it. There's nothing compelling about spending your time in a single area for 5+ levels, but that's what the majority of the playerbase does and it's a shame. That being said, I can't really blame them, it's the fault of the designers for making these items better than anything you can get from named mobs in dungeons in most cases. Ideally, questlines would be integrated with the premier dungeons and could be completed in a few hours of playtime, and would give you a shopping list for items/heads throughout the dungeon. The reward would be appropriate for the time spend (high end blue and sometimes yellow items), but since players would be killing nameds while going through the questline they'd realize that there's some really nice stuff to be found, and would be compelled to revisit the dungeon in the future to crawl through and hope for more phat loots. Some people might say, well that's just tedious grinding. I disagree, I'm entertained as long as my group is dropping nameds with some consistency, because you're constantly seeing new items which is content in itself.

Admittedly, there is a lack of creativity in VG encounters outside the questlines, which may be why they went with this design decision. There has to be some middle ground though, too much content goes unused by a majority of the playerbase and is one of the fundemental problems that I hope SOE addresses in the coming months.

BTW I cringed when I saw that "how what" quoted heh, my brain has not been working well lately, way too little sleep and way too much caffeine. I'm sure this last post was just as abysmal syntactically/grammatically, but fuck it, I think I got my basic point across. Don't hate.

[AngryGerbil]

Am I high or is this last page consistent of VG people wanting their game to be more like WoW? Maybe even without their knowing?

I must be high.

[Miele]

All non raiders cried for years because they wanted top quality gear obtainable through long and "hard" quests. That's what they got, at least it's how I see it.

I don't think a quest can be "hard" enough to be truly challenging and not alienating most of the playerbase, otherwise you'd see calls for nerfs.
Basically a lot of people want the top stuff by doing mindless tasks.

I don't play VG and I don't raid since EQ1 days, with only a couple attempts in WoW worth talking about, but I'm totally against this line of thinking. Big mofos mobs should drop the good stuff, after all, if I don't engage myself in the raiding progression, why should I care? As long as I can get good and interesting gear for the content I'm tackling I'm perfectly fine with raid drops being better.

[tad10]

Originally Posted by AngryGerbil

Am I high or is this last page consistent of VG people wanting their game to be more like WoW? Maybe even without their knowing?

I must be high.

You are high. It is VG peple wanting their game to be more like EQ.

I'm not quite at Nairbog's position where quests should only drop blues/yellows. I don't mind a mix of say the CIS questline (ends with a heroic item and a legendary weapon) and mobs like Hruk (drops heroics). The problem is the balance is like 80% quest for the best loot and 20% kill mobs for the best loot. 50/50 would be a better split for me and something like 30/70 the ideal split.

[Zerai]

Originally Posted by Miele

I don't play VG and I don't raid since EQ1 days, with only a couple attempts in WoW worth talking about, but I'm totally against this line of thinking. Big mofos mobs should drop the good stuff, after all, if I don't engage myself in the raiding progression, why should I care? As long as I can get good and interesting gear for the content I'm tackling I'm perfectly fine with raid drops being better.

This only ever really came up from WoW. And the reason it did was simple. PVE and PVP were not seperate. Therefore the PVE rewards from raiding helped you win in PVP and therefore became required. So people who didn't want to raid got fucked.

In a pure PVE game it is irrelevant. Though, it came up in GoD in EQ. Those trials without an time geared/great elemental tank were pain. I remember doing one with a semi elemental paladin and we did fine..until the last boss. Who would just 2 shot the paladin. But overall, it was the rules. You raided to get the best gear, if you didn't raid, well, don't complain.

[I'm Rich Bitch]

Any word on the flying mounts VG added today? I might re-sub for a month just to fly one. The lack of flying mounts was a major reason for my discontent with the game (among the thousand of other reasons).

If flying mounts worked I could overlook maybe a hundred of the other problems.