http://eqforums.station.sony.com/eq/board/message?board.id=Veterans&message.id=145372&view=by_date_ascending&page=1

Thread in which the Orginal Poster pushes for unlocking every keyed zone 2 years after creation, ranging from VP - Txevu.

Personally, given the insane amount of ways to access 90 percent of that content now, I don't see the need and pretty much totally disagree.

I am totally of the mind the end zone for each expansion should stay keyed - if it was to begin with, gives you a sense of purpose for working in that expansion.

In Terms of a Key such as Vex Thal, you are forced to experiance ALOT of the content Luclin has to offers, that otherwise most people would probly ignore totally.

-Fenier

I always find it funny how people "just want to see VT." They want to see it because it's something special, but it's something special because not everyone can see it. So wouldn't opening it up defear the purpose anyways?

It's more of the attitude that makes me want to walk up to them and say in the most sarcastic voice ever "HEAVEN FORBID you ACTUALLY have to WORK to get into somewhere!" I like the idea behind keyed zones. If you can get the key, you're probably able to survive in the zone. If they ever opened up KT I'd bet all we'd hear is 'NERF KT! Mobs there hit too hard omg!' The old key quests are easy with the improved quality of gear thats in common use. The only real hard part is the time involved in doing them.

In Terms of a Key such as Vex Thal, you are forced to experiance ALOT of the content Luclin has to offers, that otherwise most people would probly ignore totally.
I really enjoyed the VT key quest for that reason. I can see how flagging multiple toons could be a hassle, but honestly, it's not that hard of a quest these days.

I've gonet back and got keys for zones just to see them a few times... ie old vp, howling stones, sleeper's. Few months after I got the vp key though some guildies and me started xping there (before revamp), I forget how the xp was, but it was almost comparable to POE or so.

agreed.

I got my vt key just last year. anything I could get there would be less than half as good as what I have now, but there was a certain fascination with not being able to enter the zone as a young druid and hearing about all the uber guilds raiding vt (I remember drooling over talisman of vah kerrath). I invested a lot of time along with a few other motivated guildees and we did the quests and emp, then raided vt beginning to end.

there's a certain mystique that would be comprimised if this were to happen.

Well lets look at differant Keys:

HS: You need to experiance, at minimum, Keasora, No Hope, and Ill Omen just to quest the key, then Overthere and HS itself.

Seb: Reguardless of the fact that the key parts are in the same zone, you are forced to experiance EJ/No Hope, then TT, and finally Sebilis

VP: Either HS (see above), Seb (see above) and Chardok + Skyfire, OR Trak's Teeth, Seb (see above), No Hope, FV, DL, Karnor, Ill Omen, Chardok, Warlisk's Woods, Skyfire and VP (IE, nearly everything in Kunark).

ST: You are require to visit either West Wastes/ToV/DN (Requiring at minimum CS, SG and WW) Kael (WL or GD/EW), or Velks (GD/Velks) for Keys. The Turn-in is in DN and then you need to travel to EW (GD/EW or IC/EW) to zone in - Again, a large portion of Velious.

Emporer: While Lame, you see most of Ssra Temple

Arx Key: Most of Seru and Katta

VT: Nearly every zone not previousy covered by the previous two keys and some that have been becuase you will travel through some zones to reach shard areas.

Time (non gimp), The Entire PoP Expansion

Txevu (non gimp), Excluding Sewers, you will probly see the vast majority of GoD even today. Zones like Uqua and Inktu'ta I think, where lots of fun.

Anguish: You will see most of Omens while camping Signets, the only zone I can think of you can avoid is Noble's Causway.

Dreadspire: You will see every non-instanced zone in DoDH while doing this key

I am not 100 percent positive of what is required for Demiplane access but since it builds on Dreadspire access, the same holds true.

LDoN/LoY and DoN didn't really have locked zones (Nest is open once Yar'Lir is killed on each server) The Raids to request various instances in DoN requires doing missions, but the static zones are open to all reguardless once Yar'Lir dies.

In each case the Key provides some sizable portion in either camps, travel or what have you, that the player will experiance by doing that key, which, I am assuming, is as much of a reason for making the key in the first place.

-Fenier

Keep the keys for keyed zones.

Make the keys gradually easier to get (have the component drop rate/quest mob spawn rate increase as the months and years pass).

Increase the rate at which obsolete content drops rewards (if not the quality).

The result is the "casual" raiders can consume the content quicker (in terms of in-game time), but not in terms of real-life time.

Voila. More people are encouraged to experience the content.

Alternatively, they could code the creatures to get weaker as time goes on, opening ancient content to smaller and smaller raids and eventually to single groups.

The goal here is content reuse -- rather than having SOE redesign new content, make old content consumeable by new players. This increases the number of subscription-weeks of entertainment the content produces, making SOE's content production more efficient, and giving every player more content to consume.

On the minus side, after a zone becomes obsolete to you, other people might be able to use it more.

To a certain extent, all of this happens with increased player power as expansions go by. Unfortunetally the increased player power also obsoletes the rewards from the zone. By increasing the rate at which items drop, the reward for people who haven't been there increases and encourages people who otherwise wouldn't bother with the keying up process to go for it.

Drop rates are fine considering how just baz gear these days is equal to Luclin raid gear. It's really easy to get more drops with better gear and faster killing. Most pre-PoP content is 1-groupable (or less for the raiding players). Demiplane access forces you to see raid instances and non-instanced Dreadspire.

Drop rates are fine considering how just baz gear these days is equal to Luclin raid gear. It's really easy to get more drops with better gear and faster killing. Most pre-PoP content is 1-groupable (or less for the raiding players). Demiplane access forces you to see raid instances and non-instanced Dreadspire.

I was more refering to the turning the orginal DS key into the Monacle of Blood. I know there are 4 tasks which result in the Lens of Eyeglass, or some such but the final turn-in I am not sure of at this point so thus left it out.

Blech. If people want to get awesome clicks (Bracelet of the Shadow Hive- Vex Thal, for example) then they should spend the time and effort to get keyed for the zone. If they want to see a zone, then join a guild that is raiding that content.

You could almost argue it's easier to backflag keys requiring camping drops later on since there is a lot less competition for the spawns. Who remembers 20+ people in maidens eye trying to get that 1 piece? Or 45+ people in Ssra temples with every inch near the ring and idol mobs camped and fighting for spawns? Signets are often rotting now as groups do XP in those zones.

That's stupid.

I avoid EQlive like the plague because of people like this.

Armguards of Piety > all! I'm glad I actually had some luck with them dropping on the VT raid I ran this month~

I have an opinion here somewhere.... ah yes here it is

Keys are a neat idea BUT here is my problem.

My main is Oyvay 70 necro Elemental flagged with Fro kill His gear is good but I couldn't stay with the guild that helped me get elemental. (CT server)

I recently completed the Emp key and have all 10 shards sitting in my bank. I have joined a "guild" that was created to give two of my tradeskilling friends access to the guild hall and guild bank for the first time.

How am I going to get an emp kill?
I'm sure there are several other problems with the flagging that is happening now but when the content is not revisited by the guilds able to do it...why shouldn't it be opened or changed in some way so that people like myself can finish a quest that was days in the completion and Years on hold?
My Chanter Trehbul got the Emp key back in the Day when Fenier was still active leading Raids, (oh goodness that's been years,and years) but never got the Emp kill done.

Asking me to do the work is fine and I will do it to see the (old)new zones BUT a stumbling block like the Emp will stop casual players like myself from ever completing the keys.

How am I going to get an emp kill?
I'm sure there are several other problems with the flagging that is happening now but when the content is not revisited by the guilds able to do it...

http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=26584
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=21809

Trust me, high end guilds still kill him.

You just need to find out when they're killing him. If you agree to pass on loot they want, I'm sure they'll have no problem allowing you to come. I have no doubt that people still kill it on your server, but it's not something that you'll really hear about without seeking the info.

It seems the main focus for alot of people, is much to my surpise, Vex Thal, even still today.

That said, Emporer no longer requires the 50+ Raids of yesteryear. Infact I am certain that anyone fimilar with the encounter could realisitcally complete it today with 12-18 people.

Emporer in perticular has *alot* of people with keys sitting in banks, just needing the Rift. I wouldn't think it would be hard to even make a pickup raid for it, esp since Emp drops 40 Rifts per event clear.

The Entire quest is so easy now. Infact I recently soloed the entire key - insigna and all 10 shards in less then 2 days time. None of the spawns are contested, and Emp is really the only thing you need more then a group to complete.

The real sad part is, however, even if you got into VT... you need a few groups to move around in there effectively. Even with todays DPS, the mobs AC and HP are so high, I could see small raids getting bogged down in respawn.

Finally, yes, it has been like 2-3 years since I ran raids =p

-Fenier

Clickies are the win. And VT has quite a few, some useless, others really fun. Who doesn't want to spam raids with AE food/drink?!

Fenier, respawn time in VT is an hour or so, so even the lowest dps raids don't have to worry about it really. However, there are still a lot of other risks to be faced.

Emporer in perticular has *alot* of people with keys sitting in banks, just needing the Rift.

Perhaps he could organize a public raid for emp off of his server's messege board so more people without emp rifts can hear about it.

Emp difficulty? Minimun needed classes, assuming time+ geared...

Unmezzable adds = 1 knight or ranger, 1 healer (reptile works great on these)
Mezzable adds = 1 enchanter
Emp tank = knight or warrior, 2 healers (1 or more a cleric)
Rogue for traps

I don't recall if emp is slowable, but if he is I believe you'll need a shaman to use DR slow on it. As far as dps on emp, necros are king.

/sigh
I want to be lazy I don't want to be a guild officer... I don't want to be epic coordinator... I don't want to lead raids.
I left the progression rush and the fast track before ever seeing time because I was becoming jaded and bitter dealing with the politics and people in guilds.
Yes I would love to help people do the Emp. I love helping people do epics and have enjoyed my time working with my former guild as epic coordinator. Someone invites me to an emp raid I can bring friends also, Druids, mage, ranger, another necro... only 2 of these individuals are not or have not been Raiders. If you need a hand with an epic encounter I'd help if I can.
If someone needs a hand or doesn't mind tagalongs send me a pm. My druid Partner is fully elemental and has Fro also.
In game I've usually got Oyvay going so feel free to drop me a line on the Cazic/Brell server

Fenier, respawn time in VT is an hour or so, so even the lowest dps raids don't have to worry about it really. However, there are still a lot of other risks to be faced.

I admit it has been a very long time since I walked in VT, but I seem to recall the respawn around 45 minutes. I can easily see a few of the larger rooms taking that long if you had the mobs respawn on death, etc.

Perhaps he could organize a public raid for emp off of his server's messege board so more people without emp rifts can hear about it.

Emp difficulty? Minimun needed classes, assuming time+ geared...

Unmezzable adds = 1 knight or ranger, 1 healer (reptile works great on these)
Mezzable adds = 1 enchanter
Emp tank = knight or warrior, 2 healers (1 or more a cleric)
Rogue for traps

I don't recall if emp is slowable, but if he is I believe you'll need a shaman to use DR slow on it. As far as dps on emp, necros are king.

Yea, Emp only hits just over 900 iirc, and is DR Slowable only.

4 Snakes to be offtanked, 1/2 Tanks
4 Snakes to be Mezzed, 1/2 Chanters
1 Healer for that 3-5 people.

Tank For Emp
Healers for Emp
DPS for Emp

After you get the ads locked down its kinda trival with todays gear.

-Fenier

Women who like clikies are yummy.

I want to MA emp ssra! Just to throw that out there :p Im pretty sure I can...even though my gear is by no means outstanding.

Alternatively, they could code the creatures to get weaker as time goes on, opening ancient content to smaller and smaller raids and eventually to single groups.
They don't have to do this, because players are constantly getting more powerful. With each expansion, the raider AND the casual grouper/soloer get new AA choices, new and better gear options, etc.

And to the people that claim they can't get an emp kill . . since you have no one that is willing to raid with you, what exactly were you planning on doing with that VT key once you got it, hmm?

For PoP, for example, it was a good idea to have some form of backflagging help because a guild doing poTime regularly doesn't want to go back and kill grummus and terris thule because one or two members need it.

But with Luclin it's different. If a guild wants gear upgrades from VT, then the gear from emp is still pretty good. And if it's just a few people going back for clickes, well the bridle from emp is a darn nice clicky too. I just don't see a compelling reason to take emp out of the equation.

Drop rates are fine considering how just baz gear these days is equal to Luclin raid gear. It's really easy to get more drops with better gear and faster killing. Most pre-PoP content is 1-groupable (or less for the raiding players). Demiplane access forces you to see raid instances and non-instanced Dreadspire.

If you are wearing VT quality gear, VT drops are garbage.

The quality of gear is determined not only by the stats on the gear, but what gear you have. As easy-to-get bazaar gear gets better, the quality of raid drops gets worse.

If we the investment developers make in raid gear to generate more entertainment (thus encouraging more time spent on raid content), having the raid content generate more entertainment is a good thing.

For a casual (lower hours-per-week player), the rising tide of "easy drop high quality gear" goes up every expansion. Suppose that player gets "easy drop high quality" gear enough to kill Emp and get into VT (ssra quality gear). They then have their guild key up for Emp and get into VT (this requires more time the more casual your guild is, because each player takes longer). They then start killing in VT (and take roughly the same amount of time as ssra geared players did in the day) and get upgrades.

By the time all this is done, a new expansion is out. Trash mobs now drop tradeable items that are better than anything they can get in VT.

The result? There is no point in them going to VT.

If, however, the key requirements and the rate of "old, obsolete" raid gear aquasition went up, those casual players could choose to raid and gear up on content that the hard core raiders don't care about anymore -- and do so faster than the baseline "tradeable trash" gear gains in quality.

VT is just an example of this.

Why does a raider want raid content to be consumed 2 years later by other people? Because it justifies the developers spending more time creating raid content now, and it helps with player retention. If there truely was a trickle-down raid system your raid content would actually be content for casual players later on.

Signets are often rotting now as groups do XP in those zones.

Only an idiot XPs in Ssra.

or PoP, for example, it was a good idea to have some form of backflagging help because a guild doing poTime regularly doesn't want to go back and kill grummus and terris thule because one or two members need it.

But with Luclin it's different. If a guild wants gear upgrades from VT, then the gear from emp is still pretty good. And if it's just a few people going back for clickes, well the bridle from emp is a darn nice clicky too. I just don't see a compelling reason to take emp out of the equation.

Leave emp in the equation. Weaken him.

Make bane weapons easier to make. Have signets drop faster. Increase the drop rate of shards. Lower the HP of VT trash. Increase the number of drops from SoL era raid mobs by a factor of 2 or 3.

Encourage casual players to consume and pass through raid content after the hard core raiders are long done with it.

This can't be just done through mudflation. I think we want the raid mobs to grow weaker faster than XP mobs get weaker -- raid content was designed to have a very slow progression, and take large numbers of hours to consume and upgrade past. Such a design for casual players is silly, because they have fewer hours to spend. If it takes a casual player the same number of man-hours to progress through a raid progression, the distance between the hard-core and the casual raider will grow without bounds, and you will end up with serious player stratification problems.

Player stratification leads to expansions where the hard-core player gets little to nothing, or the casual player gets little to nothing. Keeping the two groups within sight of each other is important to efficiently being able to produce content.

This means that the casual player has to be able to progress at a faster rate, in terms of upgrade/hour, than the hard-core. Currently this is done by having "Free junk tradeable drops" with insanely higher quality, and not encouraging casual players to raid at all. The result is that all the raid content is being developed only for the hard core raiders. Casual players start raiding, and notice that the "background" gear level of free junk drops advances faster than they can advance through raid content, because of the reward scheduals.

Have obsolete content be tuned for casual players. Allow casual players who choose to raid stay ahead of the 'free junk drop' gear curve by making the ancient creatures far easier to kill, increasing item drop rates, and in general reusing the hard-core content as entertainment for the casuals.

If you are wearing VT quality gear, VT drops are garbage.

Not true, several VT items have hard or impossiable to replace Mods or Clicks.

The result? There is no point in them going to VT.

Click IvU Earring, Click Group shrink bracers.. Smithing Gloves..Yep, no point.

Only an idiot XPs in Ssra.

Unless of course, you want Primal Essence, Voice of the Serpent, Acumen of Dar Khura, Illusion Var Shir, or a Vah Shir illusion Mask.

Leave emp in the equation. Weaken him.

Becuase him hitting for 900 clearly isn't weak enough. The entire encounter can be 2-3 grouped.


Make bane weapons easier to make.

Becuase 1 No Drop part and a BUYABLE Shissar Weapon is to difficult.


Have signets drop faster.

Signets drop from the mob in Question EVERY TIME - how much faster do you really want?

Increase the number of drops from SoL era raid mobs by a factor of 2 or 3.

Luclin Era Raid mobs drop between 2 and 4 items. By your logic they should drop between 6 and 12.

Encourage casual players to consume and pass through raid content after the hard core raiders are long done with it.

Again, some clicks and effects not found anywhere else. Cursed BPs are a good example, so is the Necklace off Emporer, not to mention the Bone Earring of Evasion or Click Invis Mask off Mini Athen.

This can't be just done through mudflation. I think we want the raid mobs to grow weaker faster than XP mobs get weaker -- raid content was designed to have a very slow progression, and take large numbers of hours to consume and upgrade past. Such a design for casual players is silly, because they have fewer hours to spend. If it takes a casual player the same number of man-hours to progress through a raid progression, the distance between the hard-core and the casual raider will grow without bounds, and you will end up with serious player stratification problems

False. Former Emporer Kills: 50+ Players.
Current Emproer Kills: 18 Players.

Then Grummus: 72 Man Raids
Now Grummus: 1/2 Groups.

More levels, More AA = Less People. The mobs ALREADY get weaker becuase the people fighting them are much more capable.

Player stratification leads to expansions where the hard-core player gets little to nothing, or the casual player gets little to nothing. Keeping the two groups within sight of each other is important to efficiently being able to produce content.


DoN, when compared to other expansions, was very light on raid content. You had the few progression raids + 5 Dragons. You also had like 30+ single group missions and buyable armor.

Have obsolete content be tuned for casual players. Allow casual players who choose to raid stay ahead of the 'free junk drop' gear curve by making the ancient creatures far easier to kill, increasing item drop rates, and in general reusing the hard-core content as entertainment for the casuals.

It is tuned. Thats the issue. Its tuned for X People are Y power level.

If you have power level Z, then you can have X be a lower number.

As is most raid mobs in Luclin hit 600-900, and if it is slowable at all, its FULLY slowable. Current Exp Named in RS hit 1500 and some of the DoD Yard Trash in exp missions is over 1800. How much weaker do you want stuff to get?

Sorry, things should not be handed to people becuase they don't want to do the work.

-Fenier

For PoP, for example, it was a good idea to have some form of backflagging help because a guild doing poTime regularly doesn't want to go back and kill grummus and terris thule because one or two members need it.


Well if they invite some new people that are not flagged for PoTime and they raid it regularly. I would think all they have to do is raid the Final Bosses for PoFire, PoWater, PoEarth, and PoAir. and let those new playes Hail the PP to be flaged for each and that would flag them for PoTime if I remember correctly. and because those Bosses still give some PoTime guilds a challenge and good drops I don't see it being a problem for a PoTime Guild to get a few members flagged and skip all the small stuff that they had to do.

Anyone see a problem in that statement please correct me, for I am not mean's an expert on this game even though I like it a lot.

Killing the Elemental god flags you for the Elemental Plane in Question

You can Sidequest Sol Ro Tower

Basically, currently a player does not easily have access to 2 zones in PoP.

Halls of Honor B - The Temple of Marr
And the Lair of Terris-Thule.

Everything and I mean EVERYTHING else can be sidequested in or obtained via a hail.

If you have a link for these side quests please link it cause we have a few people that joined us and we don't want to do all that back flagging again.

So Killing the 4 boss mobs does not flag you for time is that True. Saying a visa'd toon comes in with raid and they kill Fire Boss. everyone hails pp. Then the other three is that visa'd toon not flagged for each of those zones. and if they are flagged for each of those zones aren't they flagged for time also?

If you have a link for these side quests please link it cause we have a few people that joined us and we don't want to do all that back flagging again.

Side Quests do not could for Elemental Progression, they just unlock the zone quested.

So Killing the 4 boss mobs does not flag you for time is that True. Saying a visa'd toon comes in with raid and they kill Fire Boss. everyone hails pp. Then the other three is that visa'd toon not flagged for each of those zones. and if they are flagged for each of those zones aren't they flagged for time also?

Killing a Elemental God Gives you a Shield and Flags you for that Plane.
Killing all 4 Elemental Gods gives you 4 Shields.
Shields are combined in a Vial (Tradable container) to make a Time Key.

Time is a Keyed zone, not a flagged zone. So someone who kills all 4 Elemental Gods will have access to Time once they do the proper combine and zone in from Innovention.

-Fenier

Quote:
Signets are often rotting now as groups do XP in those zones.


Only an idiot XPs in Ssra.

Signets = Ability to zone into Anguish. It's not as old of content, but it's still a key people need to do since they cannot even be gimped in without this step.

Ssra is the pouch, idol, ring, and um..the thingy from the mobs near emp portal I can't remember the name of and am too lazy to look up.

Ssra is the pouch, idol, ring, and um..the thingy from the mobs near emp portal I can't remember the name of and am too lazy to look up.

The item in Question, is the Insignia

Not true, several VT items have hard or impossiable to replace Mods or Clicks.

Click IvU Earring, Click Group shrink bracers.. Smithing Gloves..Yep, no point.

None of these help you progress through later content. You can go to VT for toys, but it doesn't help you consume the content after VT to any extent.

Unless of course, you want Primal Essence, Voice of the Serpent, Acumen of Dar Khura, Illusion Var Shir, or a Vah Shir illusion Mask.

All toys.

Becuase him hitting for 900 clearly isn't weak enough. The entire encounter can be 2-3 grouped.

Can it be 2-3 grouped by people in 75 hp/slot gear, and worse?

Becuase 1 No Drop part and a BUYABLE Shissar Weapon is to difficult.

Yes. Endless camping of the basement, for casual players, is idiotic.

Signets drop from the mob in Question EVERY TIME - how much faster do you really want?

Sorry -- I meant emp key parts.

Luclin Era Raid mobs drop between 2 and 4 items. By your logic they should drop between 6 and 12.

Sure. Hell, "interesting and useful clickies" can keep their old drop rate (ie, they take up 3 slot in the drop table). I'm talking about people trying to use the content to gear up to fight the next teir of content. Raid progression.

Again, some clicks and effects not found anywhere else. Cursed BPs are a good example, so is the Necklace off Emporer, not to mention the Bone Earring of Evasion or Click Invis Mask off Mini Athen.

Cursed BP and Neck of Emp do not stack with standard group of PoK buffs.

Which leaves click IVU and Invis. Currently you can get instant cast 10 stack invis potions. Neither is a power upgrade -- they are both toys.

False. Former Emporer Kills: 50+ Players.
Current Emproer Kills: 18 Players.

18 players in gear that gets real progression upgrades from emperor?

Then Grummus: 72 Man Raids
Now Grummus: 1/2 Groups.

Pre-elemental pop gods had, for the most part, crap drops for their difficulty even back in the day. Now they are just silly.

Admittedly there is one item (sword from RZtW), and a few others (clicky orb from TT, etc) that are worthwhile. But a casual guild cannot gear up in VT/Emp/PoP faster than the tradeable gear inflates.

More levels, More AA = Less People. The mobs ALREADY get weaker becuase the people fighting them are much more capable.

And their drops are already trash. Single group events on the lowest difficulty in DoDh are dropping 150 to 200 HP items -- better than any pre-time loot.

It is tuned. Thats the issue. Its tuned for X People are Y power level.

Doing the encounter (and other "same teir encounters") K times before they progress to doing the next encounter, with a power upgrade of P/K per encounter, where P is the increase in power required to do the "next teir" of encounters.

I want casual raiders to be able to consume ancient, obsolete content and progress faster than the rate trash drops mudflate.

If you have power level Z, then you can have X be a lower number.

The reward for the content is purportional to the difference between the quality of the drops and the quality of the gear, divided by how hard it is to get items. With easier to get upgrades elsewhere, and a higher gear level, the reward stinks.

As is most raid mobs in Luclin hit 600-900, and if it is slowable at all, its FULLY slowable. Current Exp Named in RS hit 1500 and some of the DoD Yard Trash in exp missions is over 1800. How much weaker do you want stuff to get?

Lower the HPs so they don't take a year and a day to kill?

Sorry, things should not be handed to people becuase they don't want to do the work.

Raid content should be designed so that it's reward schedual isn't locked into what the bleeding edge raiders are aiming for.

Gear is already being given away for free. You do notice that there is tradeable gear with far better stats than emp drops right? Do you understand why this gear exists? Do you understand why it is benefitial?

Using old raid content as a means of entertaining people who like to casually raid is an efficient form of entertainment. This isn't about "deserving" the content -- it is just old, obsolete raid content.

Would you prefer if SOE halved the amount of bleeding edge raid content and generated new casual raid content in every expansion? Or would you prefer more content designed for the bleeding edge raider, designed so that long after the bleeding edge raider is gone the content "decays" to being more ameniable to other players?

Raid content becomes accessable to casual raiders about the time when the content is worthless -- when the casual player can get as good or better gear in by buying it in the bazaar. The rate at which a casual raider can advance through raid content is determined not by items got via raiding, but rather by the baseline gear level increasing.

This means that casual raid progression is non-functional. Which means that raid content is poor content for a casual player, even ages after the hard-core have finished consuming it.

Should SOE spend design resources making completely new casual raiding content, or should they reuse old hard-core raiding content, tuned for the casual raider?

Hard-core raiders don't want to be able to "finish" an expansion before the next one comes out. Casual raiders don't want the baseline tradeable gear level to outpace their ability to advance through raid content. Both of these can be satisifed, but not with the same reward schedual.

Quote:
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=6 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR><TD class=alt2 style="BORDER-RIGHT: 1px inset; BORDER-TOP: 1px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 1px inset; BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px inset">Originally Posted by Fenier
Not true, several VT items have hard or impossiable to replace Mods or Clicks.

Click IvU Earring, Click Group shrink bracers.. Smithing Gloves..Yep, no point.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

None of these help you progress through later content. You can go to VT for toys, but it doesn't help you consume the content after VT to any extent.

Best clicky from VT = Armguards of Piety (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=28925) (...which for some reason Fenier didn't even mention)

Unless your guild has a shaman (who has blood of nadox) for every group every raid, I think this item will help your guild in the upper end of GoD.

For warriors, aten gloves (and orb of sky) are still a kick ass item. The only substitute for those items is Symbol of the Planesmaster from PoTime, which is basically a lateral upgrade from aten gloves clicky. Not to count some druids who read this forum will be inclined to gank them ;p.

--------

But a casual guild cannot gear up in VT/Emp/PoP faster than the tradeable gear inflates.

Can it be 2-3 grouped by people in 75 hp/slot gear, and worse?


Don't you kind of contradict yourself there? Anyways, yes - with ldon points, don crystals, and attunable gear you could get VT / elem level loot easy. But the thing is, each slot takes a LOT of resources to get. Very few 'causual' players have the plat to dump into 100+ hp items (or crystals) for 21 slots of gear.

When my old guild was coming up through VT / early PoP lots of people complained about LDoN gear was almost up to par statswise. But the thing is, it took so much time to get that stuff that at max each person could only buy a few pieces. But ethierway, it worked out far better to get gear from raids and use those points for augs instead.

Also keep in mind, Vex Thal loot is good for casters because of large amounts of Flowing Thought (however FT is easier to get outside raids today.) Many VT items still have great AC for melees too. For tanks, AC is very valuable - on my warrior I'ld equate 1 ac to 4 or 5 hp. So your tanks will be better off using VT gear than most attunable / don stuff out there, even though it mau have lower hp - the ac will most likely make up for it than some.

Above all else, a guild going to zone like VT -without many great upgrades- is mostly about having FUN, raiding.

Also keep in mind, there's raids of PoP level in all OoW and DoDH. I see guilds that raid in VT and elems planes raiding in WoS all the time.

Best clicky from VT = Armguards of Piety (...which for some reason Fenier didn't even mention)

Unless your guild has a shaman (who has blood of nadox) for every group every raid, I think this item will help your guild in the upper end of GoD.


These are also on caster arms that I would have killed for when I didn't have the resists to be in Time, particularly fighting Saryrn. They are also stupidly nice to have in GoD, as Kamion has mentioned.

Is it a make or break item? No. Will it help a ****load? Hell yes.

I was suprised at this as well.

None of these help you progress through later content. You can go to VT for toys, but it doesn't help you consume the content after VT to any extent.

See Kaimon's post. There are still items within VT, which are not toys, which help a guild even after they leave VT.

All toys.

I seriously doubt any Realisitc Bard would count a Voice of the Serpent as a Toy, unless of course, they have a Cloak from Shei.


Primal Essence, which you dismissed as a toy, would still help people who are not max stamina. I know several casters ask for it until they maxit, becuase they are not apt to be hit with Avatar or Champion.

Can it be 2-3 grouped by people in 75 hp/slot gear, and worse?

If they know what they are doing, I bet you they could. Nothing up there hits all that hard. New spells alone would trivialize a large part of that enounter.

Yes. Endless camping of the basement, for casual players, is idiotic.

The Green Metal, the no drop part to the weapons, is not that bad if your not gearing a etire guild's worth of people. Lets take into acount that you want lets say 6 melee weapons for your 18 person raid. That is FAR easier then the 54/72 person raid with 30-50 pieces of ore which guilds used to strive for.

So, camping isn't Endless becuase you require a smaller quanity.


Sorry -- I meant emp key parts.

Only the taskmaster's pouch is random. The Commanders ALWAYS drop the key part and the named ALWAYS drop the Insigna. If you have been paying attention to anything tradeskill related, Shissar Scales are currently a pretty hot item for people who do DoN armor.


Sure. Hell, "interesting and useful clickies" can keep their old drop rate (ie, they take up 3 slot in the drop table). I'm talking about people trying to use the content to gear up to fight the next teir of content. Raid progression.


Seru Sword, Rune 3 Proc, BloodFrezy, Hategiver all still useful.
FT 3/4/5 Drops from Various Ssra Named - Still useful.
41 percent haste items - still useful
Bps which allow you to still gain hp as well as 40 mr/cr - still useful
+Clicky DS Items - Still useful.
Seru BP - High AC, decent HP - still useful.

Perhaps my concept of use differs from yours however. I actually think some of that stuff is a tad Handy.


Cursed BP and Neck of Emp do not stack with standard group of PoK buffs.


No, but depending on the situation they may be better then the current spell version available. Not to mention you can not ALWAYS count on various classes to be there.

Which leaves click IVU and Invis. Currently you can get instant cast 10 stack invis potions. Neither is a power upgrade -- they are both toys.

Your right, you can but that ties you to a source for them, and the ability to purchase them.

18 players in gear that gets real progression upgrades from emperor?

Lets be Realisitc:
Casters - Robe +manaregen clicky
Priests - shoulders +manaregen clicky
Knights - Shield +mana clicky

That is 3 items, which are fairly difficult to replace. I am not mentioning the necklace, anything whicih has high amounts of FT on it, or any of the melee weapons. Those are direct, semi-hard to replace Raid Progression Items.

Pre-elemental pop gods had, for the most part, crap drops for their difficulty even back in the day. Now they are just silly.

VT gear stille xceeds most drops from preElemental Mobs. Did then, does now. That arguement is kinda pointless no?

Admittedly there is one item (sword from RZtW), and a few others (clicky orb from TT, etc) that are worthwhile. But a casual guild cannot gear up in VT/Emp/PoP faster than the tradeable gear inflates.

I think your looking at gearing up in direct number terms. There are alot of things from Ssra, VT, etc which are used for a LONG time and are simply difficult to replace. These items, those which are used for a LONG time to help the guild progress - will beat anything from the bazaar flat out.

+Mana items and +mana regen items in perticular I don't recall ever being sold, and there are a few of them in Ssra/VT and you won't see upgrades to them till Plane of Time.


And their drops are already trash. Single group events on the lowest difficulty in DoDh are dropping 150 to 200 HP items -- better than any pre-time loot.

Your also not looking at the slots used. Most of it is non vis stuff. The Visable stuff is typically the lower quaility and is random / rare as opposed to assured.


Doing the encounter (and other "same teir encounters") K times before they progress to doing the next encounter, with a power upgrade of P/K per encounter, where P is the increase in power required to do the "next teir" of encounters.

I want casual raiders to be able to consume ancient, obsolete content and progress faster than the rate trash drops mudflate.


The thing is, they already do if the people are moitivated to do so. I am not going to argue that lazy people should be rewarded, Sorry. The work is ALREADY easier, you just need to do it.

Lower the HPs so they don't take a year and a day to kill?

Seru - 15 Minutes, 1 group, 1 Bane Weapon, 2 of which are bots.
Cursed - 23 minutes, 1 Group, 4 Melee, 1 Druid, 1 Cleric

Comapred to old days when both of those fights would easily be a half hour + with 6 times the number of people.

Gear is already being given away for free. You do notice that there is tradeable gear with far better stats than emp drops right? Do you understand why this gear exists? Do you understand why it is benefitial?

You do understand that +manaregen Clickes and +manaclicks as well as gear which has semi/useful clicks is not given away Right? You do understand that it will probly be soime time before such gear exists, if ever, as tradeable right? You do understand that just becuaes something has more mana and hp doesn't nessercarily make it the better, or more useful, item right?

Using old raid content as a means of entertaining people who like to casually raid is an efficient form of entertainment. This isn't about "deserving" the content -- it is just old, obsolete raid content.


It is about deseving the content. I would rather see a zone unused them access to somewhere like VT just unlocked. VT, the zone design, the encounters inside, and even today, still some of hte loot from it, is the reward for doing the key. If you do not do (the already easier work) You don't get to go, no soup for you.

Would you prefer if SOE halved the amount of bleeding edge raid content and generated new casual raid content in every expansion? Or would you prefer more content designed for the bleeding edge raider, designed so that long after the bleeding edge raider is gone the content "decays" to being more ameniable to other players?


You do Realize that DoDh Has content ranging from Time Level to Anguish + level right? They already DO add stuff for Casual players but people seldom point out anything but the current top end.


-Fenier

I just looted a BP from cursed a few weeks ago. I use it ALL the time. Its useful soloing, grouping, and especially in pvp. Ever grouped with no shaman? Yay free clicky hp!

I just looted a BP from cursed a few weeks ago. I use it ALL the time. Its useful soloing, grouping, and especially in pvp. Ever grouped with no shaman? Yay free clicky hp!

One of the Best Items ever, I love mine, farmed Cursed for several cycles for this loot alone.

Wistful Tunic of the Void (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=30563) rocks. Basically, the people who are asking for casual raid content aren't looking for it. I once was in a small family-type guild that had great ambitions and worked at things. We found targets to hit the 1-2 times a week we raided with our uber 30hp geared 12 people. There's small-raid content that casual players can do in every expansion currently. PoHate, PoSky, Epic 1.0 raids, ToV, Ssra, VT (assuming you're willing to do the key), lesser pre-elemental stuff from PoP like BoT access quest in PoStorms, LDoN has raids for guilds at approximately geared for VT (which is about where the average player is geared at), Broodmother in Nadox, named mobs in Ferubi, Riwwi, Qinimi BiC quest raid, named mobs (yellow to 70) in RCoD, some progression raids in DoN, there's a few raids like the one in stoneroot from one of the guys who also gives group missions.

The content is there, if as a casual player you want to see progressive raid drops there's some content abeit limited. For those who want to progress raid wise, there's vast amount of content. The content that is currently in the game imo, justifies not unlocking zones. If you want to run through VT a few times as a guild in gear from MMs then you'll more than likely find a few slots you can upgrade there in addition to the clickies

Lets be Realisitc:
Casters - Robe +manaregen clicky
Priests - shoulders +manaregen clicky
Knights - Shield +mana clicky

That is 3 items, which are fairly difficult to replace. I am not mentioning the necklace, anything whicih has high amounts of FT on it, or any of the melee weapons. Those are direct, semi-hard to replace Raid Progression Items.[/quote]

Emp has a 13 item drop table.

3/13 is 23% of the items aid in progression.



VT gear stille xceeds most drops from preElemental Mobs. Did then, does now. That arguement is kinda pointless no?

*nod*, preElemental gods where poorly designed with a horrible RvR.

I think your looking at gearing up in direct number terms. There are alot of things from Ssra, VT, etc which are used for a LONG time and are simply difficult to replace. These items, those which are used for a LONG time to help the guild progress - will beat anything from the bazaar flat out.

+Mana items and +mana regen items in perticular I don't recall ever being sold, and there are a few of them in Ssra/VT and you won't see upgrades to them till Plane of Time.

I'm talking about progressing as a guild. Mana regen items are nice, but you can get lots of mana regen nowadays without ever doing more than single group content.

Your also not looking at the slots used. Most of it is non vis stuff. The Visable stuff is typically the lower quaility and is random / rare as opposed to assured.

If it is covering the non-visible slots, then we have half of the drops being obsolete. Halving the reward for the old content.

Seru - 15 Minutes, 1 group, 1 Bane Weapon, 2 of which are bots.
Cursed - 23 minutes, 1 Group, 4 Melee, 1 Druid, 1 Cleric

Comapred to old days when both of those fights would easily be a half hour + with 6 times the number of people.

1 group in pre-VT quality gear doing the entire cursed cycle in 23 minutes? Wow, that's some DPS!

You do understand that +manaregen Clickes and +manaclicks as well as gear which has semi/useful clicks is not given away Right? You do understand that it will probly be soime time before such gear exists, if ever, as tradeable right? You do understand that just becuaes something has more mana and hp doesn't nessercarily make it the better, or more useful, item right?

The +mana cap and +mana regen gear is not enough to make that content progression content.

A guild with +400 mana cap and +5 mana/tick clickies ... is at most 5% more powerful. And those are the largest improvements from doing everything from pre-Emp to Elemental planes raids.

It is about deseving the content. I would rather see a zone unused them access to somewhere like VT just unlocked. VT, the zone design, the encounters inside, and even today, still some of hte loot from it, is the reward for doing the key. If you do not do (the already easier work) You don't get to go, no soup for you.

Do endgame raiders deserve to have content designed for them that nobody except for them will want to use?

Suppose an "endgame raider" consists of 33% of EQ's population. The content designed for endgame raiders is only usable by equally hardcore players. So, 33% of content design should be around the endgame raiders.

67% of the content should be designed for other people.

Now suppose that "endgame raider" content could be juryrigged to entertain other people after the endgame raiders are done with it. Another 33% of the population.

Now 66% of designed content can be content for the endgame raider.

Is keeping other people out of your playground, 3 to 5 years after you are finished with it, worth halving the amount of content designed for you?


----------------------------------------------------------


All of this "there are useful items there" is cute -- but the useful items are the exception and not the rule.

If a player casually raiding cannot gear up faster than the next expansion will make his progression obsolete with tradeable/easy items that blow his away, the progression path is broken.

The casual raiding path is broken.

That is why increasing the number of drops is more important than increasing the quality.

Weakening some of the time sinks (shard/emp key component drop/spawn rates), including the assloads of HP VT mobs have, also helps.

In EQ right now, it doesn't make sense for people to casually raid. You will end up treading water -- single group and tradeable gear will almost always be better, progression wise, than the gear you are trying to raid for.

Raid content is designed so that players who hard-core raid for 5 months can progress from the "entry" to the "top" of the expansion. Most of this progression consists of gearing up your guild.

Suppose that means 20 raids per week for 20 weeks, or 400 raids to gear up your guild and progress from the entry to the top of the expansion.

Now take a guild that raids 4 times per week. 100 weeks to progress through the same expansion, even assuming they are just as skilled and practiced and suffer no more player-turnover over that time. What are the odds that the stats on the end-game gear will be an upgrade anymore?

Not gonna quote your entire post again, not worth the trouble.

Your logic is: Old expansion, open it up, make it easier.

My Logic is: Each expansion should be able to be enjoyed, and in most cases, the end zone of an expansion exposes the player to most of the zones within that expansion.

Thus: I am not going to be for making things easier as far as access goes. People should stop being in such a freaking hurry and ENJOY the game. From your perspective, the end game IS the game, and casuals should be able to progress there quickly.

No. As as much as you want to argue otherwise, some stuff from every expansion is still useful, and in todays game I personally feal hunting down those rare items from zones people avoid is kinda cool.

One thing I am gonna mention, is your claim that at most a guilds power is increased 5 percent. Even if that was true - that is still progression no? Even if it was ONE percent, its still improvement. Your logic is casuals should be able to improve faster then raiders in the raiding path who have done the SAME EXACT content.

No, Sorry.

Go do something else. You want better gear, its out there. Some of it is from raid encounters.

We do NOT need to be unlocking every raid zones and making mobs weaker just becuase thier old. If that was the case, remove the level cap from Vox and Nagafen and upgrade their entire loot tables.

And here we are, 6 years later - and I can not recall a recent change to either dragon with the SOLE exception of the White Dragon Hide being added.

Your argument may have vaild points, but I disagree Everquest should be even EASIER for people then it is now. God, work for your gear and stop asking for stuff to be handed to you.

-Fenier

I am just wondering, where is it written that to be able to raid in Time/EPs that you ahve to go through VT.

I know a guild that did casual raiding of nToV, and lower level PoP and Luclin mobs. They worked on the PoP pre-EP mobs instead of going to SSRA/VT. They are now just needing TRC for Time access. They skipped almost an entire expansion with of raiding because of 2 reasons, the time sink to key everyone for Emp SSRA and then VT was not worth it.

Casual raiders have a TON of content that is not cutting edge but is available to them to raid. They do not need to progress faster. They do not need to have everything handed to them on a silver platter. They do not need to get more than normal drop rates. If they want the items, they will farm them like the high end raiders did when the content was "cutting edge".

If you have problems with actually having to raid and work to earn the "uber" loots you seem to seek. If we fast tracked casual raiders, then wouldn't casual raiders eventually phase out into only hard core raiders? Then what is the point?

If you are wearing VT quality gear, VT drops are garbage.

The quality of gear is determined not only by the stats on the gear, but what gear you have. As easy-to-get bazaar gear gets better, the quality of raid drops gets worse.

Dark Mace of Thought will never be garbage. 400 mana proc? Yes please. It's worth the PITA VT key quest and all the boring VT raids by itself. Even with my epic 2.0 I'm still pulling this and my HoH out of the bandolier all the time.

The casual raiding path is not broken. You can follow the same path that hardcore raiders did years ago or you can find the encounters here and there that you can take. As far as group upgrades being greater than old raid stuff... maybe now you see what the term "mudflation" means. There's plenty of content around if you look for it.

1> The more people consume content, the more development resources should be spent on that content.

If fewer people raid, less resources should be spent on raid content. If more people raid, more resources should be spent on raid content.

This is true of every piece of content. The more months people raid a zone in it's lifetime, the more resources should be spent on it.



2> Divering Gear disparity cannot be maintained. The most hard-core raider and most casual player cannot have an unbounded difference in gear levels. If they do, the range of content in each new expansion keeps on growing until there isn't enough content for both the raider and the casual.


SOE cannot afford to write a complete set of content for 3000 HP L 70 warriors and 15000 HP L 70 warriors every expansion. So they have to provide even the gimpiest warrior with gear that gets them somewhat near the hard-core in order to reduce the amount of gear levels they have to write content for.

You may not like this, but practically it has to happen.


The casual raiding path is not broken. You can follow the same path that hardcore raiders did years ago or you can find the encounters here and there that you can take.

If by the time you defeat the hardest content you can get ahold of, there is gear in the bazaar better than the reward for the content, the reward mechanism for the path is broken.

Take a dungeon. Imagine if XPing in the dungeon would earn you 1 level in 1 week. However, if you just stood outside the dungeon, after 6 days someone would hand you the level for free.

Would the XP reward of that dungeon be broken?

One thing I am gonna mention, is your claim that at most a guilds power is increased 5 percent. Even if that was true - that is still progression no?

Progression is when you progress on to new content. A progression step is when you do task "X" in order to access content "Y". A progression path is a series of progression steps.

Following the hard-core raid progression path, it takes, say, 400 hours of Ssra raiding in order to get into VT. It then takes 400 hours of VT raiding to get into Elementals. It then takes 400 hours of Elemental raiding in order to get into Time. Etc. (all of these values are per person)

The reward scheduals of this raid content (the rate at which you gain power) is designed so that the hard-core raiders have something to do. They progress at roughly the speed at which new content is released and difficulty is improved.

This is a functioning raid progression path.

Because unbounded gear diversity cannot be maintained, the rate at which raid gear improves determines the rate at which "free tradeable junk gear" improves. This is why there are 150 HP/mana attunable items out there.

So, the casual item mudflation will happen.

A viable casual raid progression path is a path in which casual players can raid, and their ability and success at the raiding is the main determinate to how they progress through the raid content. If raiding doesn't determine your raid progression, that isn't a progression path.

For a casual raiding path to exist, the rate at which casual raiders upgrade their gear must be faster than the rate at which "free tradeable junk gear" improves. Otherwise this isn't a raiding progression path.

If we know how many hours a week the "casual raiders" raid, we can then work out how many man-hours per unit gear upgrade they need to spend.

Can we reuse the old hard-core raid content? It has the advantage of not requiring as much developer resources -- it was already written.

The largest issue here is the reward schedual of that old content. It was designed to keep hard-core raiders busy before the next expansion came out. Casual raiders, meanwhile, have to be upgraded at a completely different schedual. So the existing reward schedual doesn't provide the correct rate of gear upgrade.

Now, you can disagree with me on many points. You can say
"A casual raid progression path is not a good idea. Casual players should not expect to be able to progress by raiding."
"Unbounded gear diversity should happen! Economics be damned!"
"A seperate, custom-built, raid progression should be written for casual raiders."


Dayuna, if hard-core raiders took 2 expansions to beat every expansion, would the hard-core raid progression path be broken?

If the day after the next expansion opened, an NPC spawned who handed out gear better than the boss from the last expansion, would hard-core raid progression be broken?

The problem is mudflation -- it outpaces raid progression for casuals. One fix is to take ancient content and up the reward rate so casuals can keep ahead of the background mudflation.

You can even take the "forever useful items" and have them take up more slots in the drop table. Clickies and the like that haven't been and won't be mudflated into general use.


There are rare items in ancient content that are still useful, but those raid items to not a raid progression make.

Your logic is: Old expansion, open it up, make it easier.

That isn't my logic. That is some of my conclusions to pages of logic I have written.

We have a pre-built raid progression path. The problem is that in the time it takes for a casual player to walk that path, the bazaar-trash passes the power of the items along the path.

We could neglect casual raiding. Currently, a casual player doesn't get upgrades by their own effort -- their main source of upgrade is bazaar trickle-me-down from new expansions, and the common NO DROP items in the new expansion. Their progression path is "wait for the next expansion", not "the sweat of their brow".

We could build a small-raid casual raid progression path with gear between the hard-core content and the "bazaar trash" and common named drops. It would have to have a reward rate designed for the people who are consuming it (in terms of items/man hour) that allows the small-raid casual to gear up for the next expansion's gear.

We could jury-rig old content and build a casual raid progression out of it. This has the advantage of using less developer resources. It has the disadvantage that people get insanly jealous, as demonstrated in this thread, that the poor people with crappy gear would get any advantage in content that they don't even want to consume anymore. @_@ Averice is great.

Do you disagree with the premise, that a casual raid progression needs a faster reward schedual than a hard-core raid progression?

Remember, I don't want the casual raid progression to keep up with the hard-core. I want it to lag behind the hard-core raid progression, by multiple expansions. It simply slides in between the "bazaar junk" and the "hard-core" gear levels of each era.

The game has always been that way. Casual payers get..... casual loot...
Hard core players get hard core loot.

It's not the gear you need to worry about it's having fun. Gear comes with work. Sony has made several ways for a player to become decently geared with out spending time banging your gead against the wall with encounters like OMM and Vish.

Why open VT up. You can take 2 lvl 70's with crappy gear and get almost every single part of the VT Key. One group can get the orb... and a few groups can kill the emp. It's not about the loot it's about acomplishing the goal of reaching the end of an expansion.

The game has always been that way. Casual payers get..... casual loot...
Hard core players get hard core loot.

This is utterly irrelivent as far as I can tell.

Hard core players should have better loot and gear than casuals. Not a problem.

It's not the gear you need to worry about it's having fun. Gear comes with work. Sony has made several ways for a player to become decently geared with out spending time banging your gead against the wall with encounters like OMM and Vish.

Also not anything that disagrees with what I am saying.

Right now, the optimal way for a casual player to gear up for encounters like OMM and Vish is to wait for mudflation to hand them the gear and then try the encounter -- with the note that killing OMM or Vish won't really aid their progression by any real amount. Their progression will still be determined by the free-gear mudflation, because free-gear mudflation outpaces raid loot growth below a certain number of played raiding hours/week.

Why open VT up. You can take 2 lvl 70's with crappy gear and get almost every single part of the VT Key. One group can get the orb... and a few groups can kill the emp. It's not about the loot it's about acomplishing the goal of reaching the end of an expansion.

You'd lower restrictions to VT and remove other timesinks in order to increase the rate of gear aquisition of casual raiders and keep them ahead of the "free bazaar loot" curve, recycling the content and providing entertainment for a new set of players.

I repeat my question.

If the day after the next expansion, an NPC where to give out gear better than the previous expansion's boss, would that break hard-core raiding progression? I mean, it is about beating the expansion and getting to the end of it, not about the gear, right?

I claim it would break hard-core progression.

For someone who casually raids, that is what happens all the time. Free bazaar gear mudflation outpaces the rate at which they can gear up -- which means that their own achievements are not the important factor in their gear level.

The "free gear mudflation" occurs for economic reasons out of the casual player's control -- even outside of SOE's control. The rate is determined by economic factors and the rate of hard-core gear mudflation, because designing content for L 70 20,000 HP warriors and L 70 3,000 HP warriors, and everything in between, in every expansion, is not viable. Expansions need to provide content for the low end warriors because SOE needs to sell those expansions to the low end warriors to pay for the development of the expansion.

You decry casual players wanting something for nothing. But at the number of hours they have per week, there is no gearing up they can do that won't be overwealmed by mudflation. Having gear that is below hard-core raiding but above the free bazaar gear availiable in a casual raiding progression path would provide the incentive to work for their gear.

Such a path needs a reward schedual that lines up with the number of hours the target audience wants to spend on it.

One cheap way of producing such a progression path is to up the drop rates and reduce time sinks on old hard-core raiding content. Timesinks such as the mass HP of SoL raid bosses and trash mobs (the HP does not significantly add to the difficulty) and flagging mechanisms that are designed for hard-core play*. Remember, the goal is to allow people to progress through this ancient content using fewer player-hours.

* Backflagging is harder, in terms of hours per player, for a casual guild than for a hard-core guild. A guild with 90% raid attendence requires at most 2 backflag runs to flag the entire guild -- a guild with 30% raid attendence requires 20 backflag runs to flag with the same amount of reliability.

3 raids * 90% attendence = 2.7 average raids per target for the hardcore.
20 raids * 30% attendence = 6 average raids per target for the casuals.

This is a justification for the "backflag quests" that reduce the amount of backflagging non-hardcore raiders have to do -- because backflagging is harder for the casual player, in terms of hours played per person, than it is for the hardcore.

(
number of raids to flag 99.9% of raid force
= ln(acceptable_flag_missing_rate)/ln(absentee_rate)
=~ 7 / -ln(absentee_rate)
)

For someone who casually raids, that is what happens all the time. Free bazaar gear mudflation outpaces the rate at which they can gear up -- which means that their own achievements are not the important factor in their gear level.

I call myself a casual raider (while I was raiding) doing 3 days a week seeing a new guildmate go from no flags to elemental flagged with Fro kill in a month. My necro (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=1093799)did not buy any gear. He earned every item and as a "casual" toon who no longer raids he ranks around 60th on the CT server. Bazaar is an option but not a viable one for "casual" players who can't farm the Plat needed to make some of the purchases that are elemental or better.

because designing content for L 70 20,000 HP warriors and L 70 3,000 HP warriors, and everything in between, in every expansion, is not viable. Expansions need to provide content for the low end warriors because SOE needs to sell those expansions to the low end warriors to pay for the development of the expansion.

Yakk sorry but you are being silly and if you want to be taken seriously perhaps the bolded type above should be corrected. Level 70 non raiding non elemental warrior can hit 9k without DoN gear. I do admit a warrior geared at this level does not tank a 68 creator easily but with patience and a good cleric it can be done.


You decry casual players wanting something for nothing. But at the number of hours they have per week, there is no gearing up they can do that won't be overwealmed by mudflation. Having gear that is below hard-core raiding but above the free bazaar gear availiable in a casual raiding progression path would provide the incentive to work for their gear.


I believe your definition of casual and mine might be different but there was another discussion here (http://eq.forums.thedruidsgrove.org/showthread.php?t=12681) (started by Fenier) about how far a group of 18 could get in the eq progression pathways. This group of 18 could with a schedule of 3 days per week obtain elemental access (there are a couple of encounters they would have to ally with someone to complete (RZTW as an example) but with elemental access the upgrades available will take most of the guild into the top 70 for the server in their classes. DoDh spell progression also is a viable path for upgrades in some cases.


* Backflagging is harder, in terms of hours per player, for a casual guild than for a hard-core guild. A guild with 90% raid attendence requires at most 2 backflag runs to flag the entire guild -- a guild with 30% raid attendence requires 20 backflag runs to flag with the same amount of reliability.


Yuppers it's tougher, but in your example I believe you are actually talking about a family style guild rather than a casual raiding guild. I do not know of very many family style guilds that raid or are really interested in Progression as a goal. I believe any guild that has 30% attendance for a raid is doomed to raid leader burnout and explosion rather than any viable target completion. Using your 30% to make the numbers your guild would have to have 60 members to field 18.

I believe that a casual raiding guild with an attendance of 75% with the same base number of 60 would be able to obtain full elemental status and get their tanks to 12k hps and the majority of their guild to the top 100 in their classes on the server.

I'm sorry for further derailing the purpose of this thread Fenier


Thread in which the Orginal Poster pushes for unlocking every keyed zone 2 years after creation, ranging from VP - Txevu.



Making it easier would be nice but in the end would not populate those zones. It would make it easier for twinking/farming of items which would not utilize the zones/encounters in the way they were created.
Yes it is hard for some steps (Emp being one) but it is doable. Finding people with the same interest and goals willing to work is going to be the key.

The completion of the quest and earning the way into the zone means a great deal and gives me a sense of satisfaction and is one of the things that keeps me playing.

Lowerth

So, basically you're saying that because players aren't willing/able to put in the time to come to flagging raids we should just make it easier to get into the keyed/flagged zones. It's already getting progressively easier to get into those zones with the mudflation. Honestly, with the gear available today, a casual guild could have quite a bit of fun and find plenty of upgrades in the PoP progression, thus skipping VT entirely. Quality of gear in most slots would let you progress rapidly through the content as well.

Their progression will still be determined by the free-gear mudflation, because free-gear mudflation outpaces raid loot growth below a certain number of played raiding hours/week.
If a guild would like to progress raidwise, then there's a certain amount of time you have to put into it. That's just a simple truth of the game, the more time you put in, the more you get back from it. If you're complaining about timesinks, then EQ is the wrong game for you. >< You can raid two nights a week and still progress abeit slowly. There's a guild on Luclin that does just that, they're in tacvi atm.

A question for you that I don't understand your connection with yet... how will opening up old content give casual players viable gear upgrades? You want raid progression, but also want to open old content that won't give upgrades? Gear in the bazaar is at or slightly above VT quality. This puts players in a great position to skip the VT timesink entirely and jump into PoP stuff for viable upgrades with simply buyables. There have been mechanisms put in to allow players to raid even if they aren't flagged (85% rule) and augment backflagging (drops flag for zone, hail projection).

There's an old saying that says 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' and this would be an applicable issue. The way things work isn't broken, it's the same as it's been for years. Casuals who want to get VT gear are required to go through the same camps as the raiders did years ago. If that's unfair to have to go through, ask yourself who is it more unfair to... the players who did those encounters and exact same camps with end-game gear that's worse than the current average bazaar loot, or the casuals who start out with better gear and can do the camps faster and with fewer people?

Seems simple really. If you want access to a keyed zone, WORK for it and get the key/flag. If you don't want to work for it, don't go. Simple.

Nowhere is it written that anyone is owed access to any zone. You are owed access to the game. What you get out of this game is related to what you are willing to put into it. And nowhere is it written that you MUST have VT access (or VP or ST or PoTime or.....) in order to progress. There are plenty of options in Omens and DoN and DoDH expansions to upgrade your gear, explore zones and stretch your abilities without demanding free access to keyed zones be handed over to you without working for them.

Yakk sorry but you are being silly and if you want to be taken seriously perhaps the bolded type above should be corrected. Level 70 non raiding non elemental warrior can hit 9k without DoN gear. I do admit a warrior geared at this level does not tank a 68 creator easily but with patience and a good cleric it can be done.

The reason why random warriors hit 9k is because of 'free gear mudflation'. The reason why there is 'free gear mudflation' is to keep the range of player gear levels tighter.

I know there is 'free gear mudflation'.

I believe your definition of casual and mine might be different but there was another discussion here (http://eq.forums.thedruidsgrove.org/showthread.php?t=12681) (started by Fenier) about how far a group of 18 could get in the eq progression pathways. This group of 18 could with a schedule of 3 days per week obtain elemental access (there are a couple of encounters they would have to ally with someone to complete (RZTW as an example) but with elemental access the upgrades available will take most of the guild into the top 70 for the server in their classes. DoDh spell progression also is a viable path for upgrades in some cases.

From your link:
They should, best I figure be between 175 hp/mana and 200+ in every slot. Assume for sake of arguement they average around 400-500 AA.
But the real question is - would any of that upgrade such a group?

Someone with 175 hp to 200 hp per slot is not going to get any significant upgrades along the entire PoP progression until they hit Quarm.

Yes, there are single group upgrade paths. I was speaking about a raid upgrade path.

Yuppers it's tougher, but in your example I believe you are actually talking about a family style guild rather than a casual raiding guild. I do not know of very many family style guilds that raid or are really interested in Progression as a goal. I believe any guild that has 30% attendance for a raid is doomed to raid leader burnout and explosion rather than any viable target completion. Using your 30% to make the numbers your guild would have to have 60 members to field 18.

I've seen such guilds try to progress through elementals. In general, they end up hitting their head against a brick wall until ambiant gear upgrades reach the point of providing the required gear.

I believe that a casual raiding guild with an attendance of 75% with the same base number of 60 would be able to obtain full elemental status and get their tanks to 12k hps and the majority of their guild to the top 100 in their classes on the server.

Hard core = 90% raid attendence
Casual = 75% raid attendence

...

That is Hard core and "not quite as hard core", not casual.

So, basically you're saying that because players aren't willing/able to put in the time to come to flagging raids we should just make it easier to get into the keyed/flagged zones. It's already getting progressively easier to get into those zones with the mudflation. Honestly, with the gear available today, a casual guild could have quite a bit of fun and find plenty of upgrades in the PoP progression, thus skipping VT entirely. Quality of gear in most slots would let you progress rapidly through the content as well.

But the content you can reach does not give significant upgrades, and content that does give upgrades will become obsolete the moment you reach it.

If a guild would like to progress raidwise, then there's a certain amount of time you have to put into it.

Yes. The variables, in this case, are completely controllable by developers. The amount of time to progress and gear up via raiding is controllable by developers. They can change the amount of time at any gear level by simply increasing the rate of reward for targets appropriate for that gear level.

That's just a simple truth of the game, the more time you put in, the more you get back from it.

This is irrelivent. I do not believe I have said anything that contradicts this.

If you're complaining about timesinks, then EQ is the wrong game for you. >< You can raid two nights a week and still progress abeit slowly. There's a guild on Luclin that does just that, they're in tacvi atm.

Congrats for them. I presume that they have some rather hard-core people playing tanks that gear up in single group content.

A question for you that I don't understand your connection with yet... how will opening up old content give casual players viable gear upgrades? You want raid progression, but also want to open old content that won't give upgrades? Gear in the bazaar is at or slightly above VT quality. This puts players in a great position to skip the VT timesink entirely and jump into PoP stuff for viable upgrades with simply buyables. There have been mechanisms put in to allow players to raid even if they aren't flagged (85% rule) and augment backflagging (drops flag for zone, hail projection).

At this point?

First, keep the expected drop rate of "kick ass useful clickes" and "tradeables" relatively constant. If a mob drops 20 different items and 2 useful clickies (5% chance of any one item on the drop table), lower the useful clicky chance as you increase the drop rate.

Up Pre-VT drops of NO TRADE items by a factor of 8.

Up VT drops by a factor of 5. Which means if you manage to get into VT, you can gear up your guild in VT gear in 1 or two clearings.

Up pre-PoP elemental god drop rates by a factor of 5 (they had abysmal drop rates). Change the 85% rule to (4/6 in a group, or 50% of a raid of size 18 or larger). Up elemental drops by 4, and up the elemental spawn rates by a factor of 2.

Up the drop rates in time by a factor of 3.

Up the drop rates of pre-endgame GoD by a factor of 2.

Up the drop rates of endgame GoD by a factor of 50%.

Mobs in other expansions with drop comparable loot get a simular drop rate increase. Attuneable items are treated like tradeables, and their drop rate is kept constant.

In this plan, every encounter is exactly the same as it was before. You just get more gear from beating any one encounter -- helping people who have less than the required gear gear up quicker.

As new expansions come out, the "increased drop rate multipliers" are moved up.

The point is that the rate of aquiring gear and the rate at which you progress are tied. If you don't progress through new gear fast enough to stay ahead of mudflation, you aren't progressing -- you are treading water.

There's an old saying that says 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' and this would be an applicable issue. The way things work isn't broken, it's the same as it's been for years. Casuals who want to get VT gear are required to go through the same camps as the raiders did years ago. If that's unfair to have to go through, ask yourself who is it more unfair to... the players who did those encounters and exact same camps with end-game gear that's worse than the current average bazaar loot, or the casuals who start out with better gear and can do the camps faster and with fewer people?

The gear reward from content is purportional to the difference in gear quality between entry and exit. If their gear is better before going into VT, the rewards from VT are less. If the gear they gain while raiding becomes weaker than bazaar gear in 4 months, that gear is worse than if it beats free gear for 2 years.

If you enter VT with VT quality gear, the reward from VT is nearly zip -- just some cute clickies. If you enter VT with worse than VT gear, the reward from VT is large.

I know there is 'free gear mudflation'.

If I know they are out to get me am I still paranoid?

Someone with 175 hp to 200 hp per slot is not going to get any significant upgrades along the entire PoP progression until they hit Quarm.
Yes, there are single group upgrade paths. I was speaking about a raid upgrade path
Yes but actually that group of 18 can go from the 50-60 to the 175/200hp per slot in the pop/don/dodh progression path it builds and gives upgrades and a sense of accomplishment in completing the "tasks" given to advance to earn better gear.
That's earned gear most no drop not purchased but bought with time effort and teamwork.

Hard core = 90% raid attendence
Casual = 75% raid attendence
That is Hard core and "not quite as hard core", not casual.

One thing you have forgotten in my statements is the comments 3 days a week raid schedule.
This means 12 raids a month.
75% is 9 raids a month.
If that's not casual then I'm sorry I don't know what you expect or how you ever expect to get anywhere.
Oh yes you want SoE to allow people that can't attend 9 raids a month access to the end zones eventually.

But the content you can reach does not give significant upgrades, and content that does give upgrades will become obsolete the moment you reach it.

If you are playing for items and gear only you are keeping track or trying to keep score in a game that has no method to say "I WIN"

Earn your upgrades. Fight for them.
If you want a piece of gear you must, kill the mob, camp the spawn, earn the plat, but you must DO something to deserve that item.

Be willing to follow the path set out by the Designers for there is NO free will in their world.

Lowerth

Congrats for them. I presume that they have some rather hard-core people playing tanks that gear up in single group content.
Actually, they're qvic, inktuta, and epic 1.5 geared for the most part. All of which require raids. If they can do it, so can you... it takes them a lot longer to progress, but with 2 days a week I'd hardly call them hardcore, and I'd say tacvi is above the average gear from your mudflation. No doubt they find an upgrade here and there from DoD stuff, but most everybody has one or more weak spots compared to the rest of their gear.

But the content you can reach does not give significant upgrades, and content that does give upgrades will become obsolete the moment you reach it.
Of course not, unless you keep progressing! Potime gear is still superior to DoD loot due to the foci and other effects on the items, and you could feasibly make it to potime in a couple months casually raiding.

Yes. The variables, in this case, are completely controllable by developers. The amount of time to progress and gear up via raiding is controllable by developers. They can change the amount of time at any gear level by simply increasing the rate of reward for targets appropriate for that gear level.

It's up to the guild to outdo the progression of group gear, not the game to give you some easy path with uber gear to beat casual group mudflation. Just keep in mind, one solution to your problem is to freeze all gear at the current quality so you can raid casually and see the upgrades... is that something you'd be willing to consider?

You haven't answered my question though, how will opening up old content give casual players viable gear upgrades? Open up VT and you'll find that since it's below the mudflation level currently it won't produce viable upgrades. Changing how much loot drops from these will not improve anything if the loot isn't an upgrade. Something I'm not sure if you've seen frequently on raids, loot rots a lot once you've been farming something for a little while, increasing the number of drops will mean rot loot really fast. More importantly, adding to the number of drops as you're suggesting ruins the risk vs. reward ratio that is in place currently. Too much reward for not enough risk is stupid and makes that part of the game not worth playing. Think monster missions, 120hp items for 0 risk save wasting time.

To conclude, the current system works just fine if you step into the right stage and keep working your way up at a decent rate. If you can't maintain that rate then enjoy farming the things you can for whatever upgrades they might be

Actually, they're qvic, inktuta, and epic 1.5 geared for the most part. All of which require raids. If they can do it, so can you... it takes them a lot longer to progress, but with 2 days a week I'd hardly call them hardcore, and I'd say tacvi is above the average gear from your mudflation. No doubt they find an upgrade here and there from DoD stuff, but most everybody has one or more weak spots compared to the rest of their gear.

I'd expect the tanks would have a good chunk of MPG, single-group DoN, DoN augments, and now single-group DoDH gear.

It's up to the guild to outdo the progression of group gear, not the game to give you some easy path with uber gear to beat casual group mudflation. Just keep in mind, one solution to your problem is to freeze all gear at the current quality so you can raid casually and see the upgrades... is that something you'd be willing to consider?

I'm willing to consider it. There are negative consequences to it.

Raiders prefer advancement that is keyed on item growth. Is end game loot frozen as well? I personally don't think that is wise. So lets assume the end game loot keeps growing at the current pace.

Remember my "3 k warrior and 20 k warrior" point? As endgame loot grows, the disparity in loot between the low end and the top end max level warrior grows without bound. This means that SOE is forced to design more levels content difficulty at the high end in order to provide for all of these gear levels. This means the amount of content produced for any one gear level is reduced. Instead of getting 3 or 5 new, neat XP zones per expansion, people will end up getting 1 XP zone appropriate to their gear level per expansion... Eventually it will get even worse than this, and players will start not wanting to buy expansions and quitting EQ, because most expansions won't have any content for them.

...

Hmm, this doesn't seem optimal.

You haven't answered my question though, how will opening up old content give casual players viable gear upgrades? Open up VT and you'll find that since it's below the mudflation level currently it won't produce viable upgrades.

Sure, it is probably too late for VT. It isn't too late for time, elementals, GoD, etc.

It wasn't too late for VT before OOW launched.

Changing how much loot drops from these will not improve anything if the loot isn't an upgrade.

Agreed.

Something I'm not sure if you've seen frequently on raids, loot rots a lot once you've been farming something for a little while, increasing the number of drops will mean rot loot really fast.

Yes. Your guild is gear-capable of doing the next progression content by that point.

More importantly, adding to the number of drops as you're suggesting ruins the risk vs. reward ratio that is in place currently.

The current reward schedual of the raid content in EQ assumes you are an end-game raider getting gear that has no peer in the game. The relative quality of the gear -- the size of the reward -- is purportional to the difference between the quality of the gear and the "baseline" free loot.

As the free loot gets better, the reward for the content drops.

When time was first cleared, baseline free loot was about 25 p/slot. Time has 210 HP/slot gear. So the HP differential was up to 185 HP/slot.

Now, the baseline gear is 100 to 135 HP/slot. The HP differential for time gear is 85 to 110 HP/slot. Time gear is between 45% and 60% as good (in terms of HPs) as it was when it was first farmed, simply because the baseline gear level has gone up.

Alternatively, you could look at time gear as a ratio -- back in the day, people who could beat time had 200% to 250% of the HP of the "free gear baseline". Now they have 125% to 150%.

The reward for getting to time is less today than it was then.

Too much reward for not enough risk is stupid and makes that part of the game not worth playing. Think monster missions, 120hp items for 0 risk save wasting time.

Those 120 HP items exist in order to increase the "free gear baseline". I have explained the economic reason why the free gear baseline exists. Do you disagree with that reasoning?

As items approach the free gear baseline, they become less valueable. Up the drop rate on items as they approach it, and more players are encouraged to work for their gear instead of waiting for 0 effort gear to be handed to them.

I'd rather have players getting to time 4 times faster and gearing up 4 times faster, accomplishing something, than waiting around for the next expansion which gives out gear with 25% better stats for no effort.

To conclude, the current system works just fine if you step into the right stage and keep working your way up at a decent rate.

Yes, the current system works fine if you are a hard core raider. The current system relies far too much on the "free gear baseline" for the non-hard-core raider.

Be willing to follow the path set out by the Designers for there is NO free will in their world.

I don't understand how to take this, other than "do not discuss EQ". I'm talking about EQ and MMORGP design and the implications of changing a portion of EQ. I am trying to determine if changing something would be benefitial or not. Doing so without discussing changing EQ is not reasonable.

Yes but actually that group of 18 can go from the 50-60 to the 175/200hp per slot in the pop/don/dodh progression path it builds and gives upgrades and a sense of accomplishment in completing the "tasks" given to advance to earn better gear.
That's earned gear most no drop not purchased but bought with time effort and teamwork.

There is a PoP/DoN/DoDh progression path that involves 3 nights/week of EQ playing that starts at 50 hp/slot and can get to 200 HP/slot reasonably quickly?

If you are playing for items and gear only you are keeping track or trying to keep score in a game that has no method to say "I WIN"

*sigh*

Progression in a game like EQ is teired. One of the more enjoyable forms of teired progression is the "gearing up" game. Each teir of content drops items that you gather and allows you to beat the next teir of content.

The rate at which you advance is determined by
1> Your ability to do a teir with weaker gear than the developers intended
2> The amount of gear upgrade you get per successful raid
3> The rate at which you do successful raids
4> Loss of gear due to player churn or other reasons
5> External factors, like "free gear mudflation".

Changing the rate mobs drop gear results in you getting throught the content faster.

If this results in you running out of content to consume, it is a bad thing.

Earn your upgrades. Fight for them.

Yes, I want to give more people the ability to outpace free gear mudflation, and fight for their gear.

This requires content that gives gear better than "free gear mudflation", but still requires effort.

Currently, it is bad that a good chunk of the player base gets their upgrades via "free gear mudflation". Having content that is challenging, yet gives rewards fast enough that casual players can keep ahead of "free gear mudflation" is something I want.

Ideally this content would be a teired progression path (because teired progression paths are fun), ideally teired based on gear quality (because the "gear up" game is one of the best forms of teired progression (as compared to the "backflag" and "key up" games that EQ has tried int he past)). I am trying to argue that retrofitting old raid content for this, by simply reducing some of the logistical difficulties and increasing the rate and not quality of the drops, might serve.

I don't want to give out gear for free.

I want to make gear that is closer to "free gear mudflation" to be given out cheaper than gear that is far away from "free gear mudflation".

This has nothing to do with "deserving" it.

Maybe my problem is EQ has created "faith in the value of gear", and people are all upset that the gear is really just an arbitrary, EQ-determined reward system? EQ, by having "free gear mudflation" violates the "faith in the value of gear", and upsets the believers. The faith in the value of gear is important to the reward mechanism of EQ -- much like the faith in currency is in real life economies...

Hmm... That would argue that a seperate reward path would be a better idea. People who have the "faith" want to believe that the effort they put into getting into VT and getting VT gear is somehow sancrosanct -- and thus the effort they are spending now on end-game gear is sancrosanct. The mere idea that waiting for a few years and being able to get the gear easier might shake their faith and question the very foundations of the EQ reward mechanism...

Hmm...

I'd expect the tanks would have a good chunk of MPG, single-group DoN, DoN augments, and now single-group DoDH gear.

Almost all players have pieces of gear that are 1-group items, be it augs or otherwise. I fail to see how this makes any difference. The guild I refer to has stayed well ahead of the curve for gear.


I'm willing to consider it. There are negative consequences to it.

Raiders prefer advancement that is keyed on item growth. Is end game loot frozen as well? I personally don't think that is wise. So lets assume the end game loot keeps growing at the current pace.
That was meant to be a rhetorical question ><

Sure, it is probably too late for VT. It isn't too late for time, elementals, GoD, etc.

It wasn't too late for VT before OOW launched.
If your guild can take stuff in the elemental planes, then the rest of the progression up to that point should take a month or two at the most.


The current reward schedual of the raid content in EQ assumes you are an end-game raider getting gear that has no peer in the game. The relative quality of the gear -- the size of the reward -- is purportional to the difference between the quality of the gear and the "baseline" free loot.
I'm not just talking about end-game raiding here. I'm talking about every single named in the game and what's on their loot table. The items are meant to be balanced as a decent reward for the risk involved in killing the mob. That's risk vs reward. When risk and reward are balanced there is progression at a healthy level for the game. When reward escalates to what you propose as 4x the current, the risk vs reward is out of balance by a huge margin.


Yes, the current system works fine if you are a hard core raider. The current system relies far too much on the "free gear baseline" for the non-hard-core raider.
This is untrue as well. It's possible to go casually through all of the raid content in the game up till whenever starting from newbie armor quest gear. It'll take a lot of time, a bit of skill, and a lot of determination, but you can go from newbie quest armor to tacvi+ gear if you want to. In fact, I believe there was a guild trying to find some members recently that was going to do exactly that, just not in a casual manner.


There is a PoP/DoN/DoDh progression path that involves 3 nights/week of EQ playing that starts at 50 hp/slot and can get to 200 HP/slot reasonably quickly?
It's this attitude that's keeping you from seeing what we're trying to tell you. I've said it before and here it is again... If you want better loot, you will have to spend time getting it. If you want a casual progression it will take time. If all you want is for Sony to unlock zones so you can get at the phat lewts and are trying to use mudflation to justify it, it's not working very well.


Yes, I want to give more people the ability to outpace free gear mudflation, and fight for their gear.
Then you're gonna have to fight faster. Sony will keep inflating the quality of gear, it's not up to Sony to outpace this raidwise, it's up to the players.

I am trying to argue that retrofitting old raid content for this, by simply reducing some of the logistical difficulties and increasing the rate and not quality of the drops, might serve.
The only thing increasing the rate of drops will do is speed up progression that doesn't need to be sped up. All speeding up progression does is de-value old content even further. Casual players have plenty of stuff to do in-game, be it soloing, grouping, or raiding. There are a lot of raids you can run as a casual guild even if you don't have the ability to work on progression. There's a whole list of ideas earlier in this thread I believe.


Basically, I'm seeing you say you think old content should drop 4x the loot and zones should be opened to the public. The reasoning behind this being that mudflation is drowning the common player and there is no raid upgrade path for casual players.

Recap:
I) Loot dropping at 4x rate would make progression far faster than intended at a rate unhealthy to the game, regardless of how fun it would be to give out that much loot.
II) Old zones being opened up would increase the farming being done, you would see more competition and probably less loot tbh. In addition, removing requirements is unfair to those who camped the needed camps, killed the right mobs, and did the quest(s).
III) There are plenty of casual raids to do, just have to look for them!

Almost all players have pieces of gear that are 1-group items, be it augs or otherwise. I fail to see how this makes any difference. The guild I refer to has stayed well ahead of the curve for gear.

Because the players in question are not "casual". I'm betting a good chunk of the guild plays 6 to 7 nights/week.


That was meant to be a rhetorical question ><

I assumed you didn't understand the implications of stopping mudflation.

If your guild can take stuff in the elemental planes, then the rest of the progression up to that point should take a month or two at the most.

I do not understand what you mean by "the rest of the progression up to that point". You mean if people have above-elemental quality gear, getting to the elementals would only take a few months?

I'm not just talking about end-game raiding here. I'm talking about every single named in the game and what's on their loot table. The items are meant to be balanced as a decent reward for the risk involved in killing the mob. That's risk vs reward. When risk and reward are balanced there is progression at a healthy level for the game. When reward escalates to what you propose as 4x the current, the risk vs reward is out of balance by a huge margin.

Risk vs Reward is a relative measure. If one encounter has way more risk vs reward than other encounters, it causes game imbalance.

The reward schedual of a sequence of content determines how fast, in terms of game hours, it takes to consume and (ideally) surpass that content.

There is no "ultimate balance" that EQ is in. The consequences of increasing drop rates can be negative, and they can be positive.

I am trying to communicate that the progression at a "healthy level" for people who raid 7 nights a week, in terms of power-upgrades per hour raiding, and the progression rate for people who play 3 nights a week, is different. Right now, the 3 night-a-week crew rides mudflation -- they already progress way way way faster than the 7 night a week crew, in terms of power upgrade per hour played. But they do so in a very passive manner -- there is little to nothing they can do to impact their rate of progression.

If a player raids 3 nights a week and plays the other 4 gathering yet more single-group gear, they can indeed keep ahead of free mudflation. However, this player is not casual -- he plays nearly as much as the hard-core raider, he just doesn't spend all that time raiding. I know these players -- hell, I know hard-core people who don't raid at all.

Having a significant subset of the game incapable of outpacing "free gear mudflation" is unhealthy.

So, I ask you, other than your pseudo-religions objections, what would the horrible result of lower-teir raid content having increased drop rates be? I'm talking about doing this on purpose -- so the "intended" rate of drops is changed.

I can explain why increasing the drop rate at the top end would be a bad idea:

Players at the top end would gain loot faster, progress quicker, and run out of content to consume in the expansion before the next expansion came out. They would get bored and upset and not have fun.

SOE would either have to accept these upset players, or slow down the rate of progression some other way (make raid mobs grow in power faster), or create more content than they currently do for the top end raiders per expansion.

Making raid mobs grow in power quicker implies players grow in power quicker. This means the top-end raiders gain more power in the expansion. The gear power of the top-end raiders determines the global mudflation of EQ for practical economic reasons -- so this makes global mudflation worse. Faster global mudflation results in the achievements of less than hard-core raiders goes obsolete faster -- the "free gear" problem overwealms lower end players even faster.

Making more content (more teirs of raids in the expansion) not only implies the faster power growth per expansion above, it also requires more developer resources.

These are the negative consequences to a large increase in raid mob drop rates at the high end. I didn't refer to "balance" once -- I explained the concrete consequences of increasing the drop rate.

"Balance" isn't a magic word that justifies things. It is an abstraction that implies that breaking it has negative consequences.

Tell me the actual consequences that make my solution damaging.

This is untrue as well. It's possible to go casually through all of the raid content in the game up till whenever starting from newbie armor quest gear. It'll take a lot of time, a bit of skill, and a lot of determination, but you can go from newbie quest armor to tacvi+ gear if you want to. In fact, I believe there was a guild trying to find some members recently that was going to do exactly that, just not in a casual manner.

It is possible. Your gear will be less than bazaar gear after only a handful of expansions, unless you give up progressing via raids and switch to buying gear in the bazaar.

There is a PoP/DoN/DoDh progression path that involves 3 nights/week of EQ playing that starts at 50 hp/slot and can get to 200 HP/slot reasonably quickly?

It's this attitude that's keeping you from seeing what we're trying to tell you. I've said it before and here it is again...

I asked a question. You then invented a position (attitude) and attacked it. Ever try answering questions?

If you want clarification, "reasonably quickly" means "faster than free gear mudflation by some margin".


If you want better loot, you will have to spend time getting it.

This is not true. If a 3 night/week player wants better loot, they can go AFK for 6 months and log in again and find better loot dropping like candy.

Or they could spend 6 months gathering better loot -- and still find better loot in 6 months being given away for free.

If you want a casual progression it will take time.

Casual progression that is "wait for the next expansion and the free loot in it" already exists. This is not a healthy casual progression.

If all you want is for Sony to unlock zones so you can get at the phat lewts and are trying to use mudflation to justify it, it's not working very well.

No. I have described my desires. You seem to be inventing a position for me then attacking it.

Then you're gonna have to fight faster. Sony will keep inflating the quality of gear, it's not up to Sony to outpace this raidwise, it's up to the players.

I ask again. If every new expansion had a NPC that handed out gear better than the previous expansion's raid boss, would that be acceptable to hard-core raiders?

When I ask questions, I actually ask questions.

Given a play rate, a reward schedual, and a rate of free gear mudflation, you can determine if someone can outpace free gear mudflation using that reward schedual. The free variable on the part of the player is the play rate.

Expecting free gear in the future devalues current gear. If every expansion had free better-than-last-expansion's boss gear, the raid progression of the last expansion would be devalued.

Do you understand how "free gear mudflation" devalues raid gear?

The only thing increasing the rate of drops will do is speed up progression that doesn't need to be sped up.

Yes, increasing the rate of drops will speed up progression. If you increase the rate of drops at the low end, it will mean that casual players can raid to get drops that don't become worse than "free gear" the moment the next expansion comes out.

All speeding up progression does is de-value old content even further.

Please justify this sentence.

Casual players have plenty of stuff to do in-game, be it soloing, grouping, or raiding.

Anyone can have tonnes of stuff to do in game. Hell, you can run in circles forever in EQ.

The difficult part is finding content that progresses your character. In particular, content that progresses your character faster than the "free gear mudflation" rate between expansions.

There are a lot of raids you can run as a casual guild even if you don't have the ability to work on progression. There's a whole list of ideas earlier in this thread I believe.

Those raids will not provide power upgrades sufficient to reach a new "teir" of content for a casual guild. Raiding without progression is lacking one of the main fun parts of raiding.

Basically, I'm seeing you say you think old content should drop 4x the loot and zones should be opened to the public. The reasoning behind this being that mudflation is drowning the common player and there is no raid upgrade path for casual players.

Yes.

Recap:
I) Loot dropping at 4x rate would make progression far faster than intended at a rate unhealthy to the game, regardless of how fun it would be to give out that much loot.

Please describe how it would be unhealthy.

II) Old zones being opened up would increase the farming being done, you would see more competition and probably less loot tbh. In addition, removing requirements is unfair to those who camped the needed camps, killed the right mobs, and did the quest(s).

How is it fair to give out 150 hp/mana items for trivial adventures, when people worked really hard to get 100 hp/mana items ... 5 years ago?

Making old, no-longer-cutting-edge-quality gear easier to get happens in EQ.


III) There are plenty of casual raids to do, just have to look for them!

Are there plenty of casual raids that provide a progression?

I'm Rick James Bitch!

Up Pre-VT drops of NO TRADE items by a factor of 8.

Up VT drops by a factor of 5. Which means if you manage to get into VT, you can gear up your guild in VT gear in 1 or two clearings.

Up pre-PoP elemental god drop rates by a factor of 5 (they had abysmal drop rates). Change the 85% rule to (4/6 in a group, or 50% of a raid of size 18 or larger). Up elemental drops by 4, and up the elemental spawn rates by a factor of 2.

Up the drop rates in time by a factor of 3.

Up the drop rates of pre-endgame GoD by a factor of 2.

Up the drop rates of endgame GoD by a factor of 50%.

The main disadvantage that I can see with increasing the drop rates so drastically is that it will affect the preceived difficulty of raids as you progress.

Your 'casual' guild moves into VT and each named will drop 10 - 15 items each (been a couple of years since I did VT so assume it is 2 - 3 drops normally). Yes you could gear up in a few raids but how often will the rare items drop ? How many people will not bid on drops because they know that the next tier is close and it drops better quality gear at slightly lower frequency ?

Next you move into EPs & Time and the drop rates are still nice. Each God in time is dropping 9 items due to the new increased drop rates. You get a good turnout on raids as people know that they stand a good chance of getting some loot. I can imagine that P1-3 gear will rot as people know that so much gear will be dropping from the higher tiers. Why waste your rolls / dkp on the lesser quality stuff.

You move into GoD and suddenly the raids are a little more involved, no more stick the MT on the named and chain CH him. People start complaining that Time was so nice and the effort involved with GoD & beyond is just not worth it. Perhaps raid attendance suffers as some people do not log in as they think their effort is not rewarded and it takes longer for a person to get a drop.

You hit Uqua and if you are lucky you may get 12 - 20 drops for the whole event. People are complaining that Time was so nice and the effort involved with Uqua & beyond is just not worth it.

On come Inkuta, MPG Trials, DoN dragons. Each requires more effort than Time with people having to actually pay attention to the scripts and emotes. You'll spend more time learning the events and the only reward is the satisfaction that you moved a little further than before.

So your casual guild progresses from fairly simple events with 100 - 200 items dropping (VT / Time) to more complicated scripts with 1/10 of the drops, each increase in tier would seem less rewarding. It just seems that you are been rushed into the higher level raids.

I remember the progression from Time to GoD and beyond was painful. Getting sufficient people on raids to progress in GoD was a challenge, people were complaining about the rewards (or lack of) and the effort.

Slightly off track but can you imagine any DKP / Loot council system that could handle that many drops in a single night :)

This arguement is quite frankly, stupid.

Are there progression raids for Casual People?

Yes.

Examples?

Practically any non Dragon encounter in Dragons of Norrath.
The Dragon of Veksar.
Various 1.5 Epic Raids (not all epics can be done by a casual guild, but several can be).
Various 2.0 Epic Raids (as an example - our WoS fight can be done by 2-3 groups easily, and drops a chest, this is not the only encounter like this.)
Bastion of Thunder Tower Bosses.
Xanamech (aggro weapon for warriors)
Various Static Zone mobs from Omens of War
The Basilsk in Stoneroot.

These can be done by a Casual Guild - most of them on demand, or within a 2 hour respawn.

These can be done by anyone with roughly VT / Elemental Gear and the AA apporitate to the encounter. As of the DoD Beta, Sony geared those who used test characters, with appox 200 AA and Elemental-ish level armor.

I can thus, only assume that they feel the average level 70 player after Omens of War would have appox that level of stats *on average*. Obviously those with very high play times will exceed this, and those with lower, or who not exp as much, will have lower. Reguardless of Raiding or Casual.

Now, does ST, VT, Elementals Serve a Purpose in reguards to todays content? Yes.

ST is probly the least valued in terms of endzone, but Avatar weapons are still decent to have. This is esp true if you do not have Avatar or better handy often.

VT provides several VISABLE armor slot upgrades, often heavy with attack or flowing thought, often with focus effects, or rare clicks. This is perfectly acceptable for the level of content.

Take Great Shadow Platemail (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=26770) and compare it to the best bazaar Plate BP I know of atm - a Charged Magnetic Breastplate (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=72113) The Shadow Breastplate is STILL better then the current easily obtainable, droppable, bazaar item.

Now, assuming you want to argue that DoN Grandmaster's is better - it has to be fully augged to become so. If you just have The GM bp and GM Aug, the Shadow Platemail still has a slight edge in some areas, while losing just a touch in others. Even if you consider the Warrior Ornate BP (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=15119) the Shadowmail is still better AC wise, with extra attack etc - at the minor cost of the click from Ornate, which does not stack with Focus, or the Heart of the Void click from Breastplate of the Void (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=7825).

I am even going to give you the chance to add a dropped single group BP for comparison, Celestial Lorica (http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=70299) Which is till, as far as the warrior is concerned - a worse bp AC wise and attack wise over the Shadowed Platemail. You can totally ignore the fact you must be level 69 to zone into Riftseeker's.

Now then - Argue the Shadow Platemail is useless.

Can you get better? Yea, does it take as much, if not more work for the Casual Player to get a GM BP (120k+), GM Aug (70k+), DOD Aug (No clue what these go for) and a Type 7 Aug to exceed the stats of a Piece of Armor from 7 expansions ago? You could argue they could make it on their own. But then you would have to factor in all the time needed to raise skill to a level capable of doing the combine, accounting for at least 1 failure per item, and the componants nessercary to attempt it.

Argue that a FT VII Breastplate or Robe from VT is going to exceed ANY Droppable BP, Grandmaster's with High End DoD augs excluded.

If you mange to make that arguement, explain to me why Items such as AHR's BPs should drop 4 times as often, considering they STILL exceed what the average player is apt to have.

One of your basic arguements is - Bazaar gear is better. Sure, it may be in some cases, or it may be just a tad lower - but honestly do you feel the typical casual player will be able to afford something with a 70-100k+ price tag in a short amount of time without purchasing the plat for it online?

My arguement, as explained in this post - is progression still serves its purpose. Loot does not need to be increased 4 times over.

Certain slots may be easily filled with one group gear (non vis slots from DoD missions come to mind) but will a totally casusal group be able to defeat one? Certainly missions like 68.1 and 69.1, but how about missions such as 68.5 or 70.1 where the average hit jumps to over 1500, and upwards of 1875+.

They will need to do at least some of the older progression to hit that level.

It more then still serves it's purpose and should remain as is.

If you don't argee, thats fine. But your arguement that Bazaar gear is still better then old end game content is a tad unfounded, at least in terms of the Shadow Platemail. Sure you can BUY better, but it is apt ot take you just as long to save up the money (if you are turely casual, with low play time). Increase the time 3 fold if your looking at GM BP + Augs.

So while mudflation has impacted the game, it has still yet to make the top end loot of Luclin easily replacable for the casual player. These are progression items and would serve the guild well till Elementals or Time, at which point they would gear for Ikkinz and the end of GoD.

As far as time verus reward, you are hard pressed - reguardless of who you are, to find better ratios then Vex Thal, Fire Minibosses and Plane of Time untill you gain access to Inktu'ta, Txevu, Tacvi, Anguish or are able to kill several DoN dragons in one evening. The Sheer Volume of upgrades for a casual guild exceeds the *slightly* lower quailty.

-Fenier

All this talk about casual players and the assumption that you can't accomplish anything playing only 2 or 3 nights a week is pretty ignorant. My guild raids 3 nights a week for 3.5-5 hours a night (was longer raids when we were hitting VT and Time in one-nighters). We are not on the cutting edge of content, but we're doing fine. We are in Anguish and regularly hitting Yah'Lir and Kess for gear as well. By your standards, Yakk, that would be called casual. I have never expected anything to be handed to me without earning it and in fact would NOT like that. The very idea of a guild hitting VT and gearing up the entire guild in one or two runs is ludicous. You remind me of the person standing on the corner with a "will work for food" sign and then when you tell them "Ok, I have a job for you" they reply with "OMG I just meant I wanted you to give me money-I don't want to WORK!".

Anyone who wants to focus and work for it can get decent upgrades. If you think should be able to play one day a week for an hour or two and stay ahead of the gear curve, you're sadly mistaken and lazy. Don't expect the general core of players to support that stand. EQ is supposed to a challenge and a way to test your skill and learning abilities. If people are behind the curve it is because they have chosen a playstyle different than that of a raider. My guild isn't the only one that raids just 3 nights a week. Poison Arrow is a "casual" guild and they are progressing quite nicely. I don't see them coming here and crying that they want more uber drops more often so they can gear up in less time and effort. It is called REWARD for a reason, Yakk.

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reasonably quickly



It's this attitude that's keeping you from seeing what we're trying to tell you. I've said it before and here it is again...

I asked a question. You then invented a position (attitude) and attacked it. Ever try answering questions?

My goodness Yakk, Day, Myself and no one else have "attacked" anyone.
We have been discussing a post that you sidetracked from the Original purpose with your talk of mudflation.

You appear to be living in a world where you want things handed quickly and easily to you. You do not wish to follow the quest or progression pathways as put forth in the game.
Perhaps EQ is not the game for you.
In my 5.8 years playing this game I have rebelled against the firm pathways, Tradeskilling, and Horrid Evercamp style quests. I don't do them.
EQ is a timesink, a way to escape from the world and my life for a bit. I am in "their" world with "their" rules and I have accepted the fact that I will never really ever change the way the game works. I have to adapt to the game because it will never conform to me.

I do have a few questions for you Yakk if you wish to continue this discussion on the future pathways for the development of EQ. (in another thread please)
1) What is your definition of Casual
2) In which order should the EQ development/fixing teams do things?
a) fix things that are broken now (creators respawning etc)
b) fix class concerns
c) fix class 'balancing' issues
d) fix 'casual' player issues
e) fix 'hardcore' player issues
f) fix 'soloer' issues
g) fix 'raider' issues
h) fix 'tradeskill' issues
i) create content to keep people playing the game

You appear to be living in a world where you want things handed quickly and easily to you. You do not wish to follow the quest or progression pathways as put forth in the game.
This describes what you appear to be asking for perfectly. Casual players have many options available to them that are well within reason for upgrade. Raiding 2-3 days a week in multiple cases, both Poison Arrow and the guild I mentioned (Only the Brave) are well above the bazaar level of gear. You ask for more drops to prevent time spent on progression, you also ask for content to be opened up. The reason that you cite is that 1-group gear is easy to aquire (which in many cases is not true) and the mudflation of the 1-group gear outpaces what a casual guild can get raiding, which in at least 2 cases has proven untrue.

Because the players in question are not "casual". I'm betting a good chunk of the guild plays 6 to 7 nights/week.
Show me proof that this must be the case. The 1-group gear might be stuff they spend an extra day on per week. They don't wear a lot of 1-group gear anyways tbh.

I do not understand what you mean by "the rest of the progression up to that point". You mean if people have above-elemental quality gear, getting to the elementals would only take a few months?
This was in response to you saying that zones should be opened up, not gearwise. If Elemental quality gear is available in the bazaar then can progress through the pre-elementals quickly and be at on-par encounters quickly. Once there it should be not a huge step to move on to killing the elemental gods and enter potime. Elemental gods could be done over the course of a month tbh, at a rate of 1 per week. Potime carries upgrades to the elemental bazaar loot.

So, I ask you, other than your pseudo-religions objections, what would the horrible result of lower-teir raid content having increased drop rates be? I'm talking about doing this on purpose -- so the "intended" rate of drops is changed.
Drop rates upped, casual guilds reap a lot of loot. What about the 7-day raiders that just started the progression. There's no extra reward for doing encounters more than a few times like the 7 day raiders will need to. Progression is fast until the accelerated progression ends, then you find roadblocks like the elementals and guild that are already there farming them. The way loot is given out right now are quite fair and gives fair progress (3-4 drops per raid kill). Let's take missions from DoD (an example of more loot), 7 loots per mission already (1 automatically for winning for each of 6 players, 1 chest drop). How many times do people do those missions for 6/7ths of the loot? Just 1.


I ask again. If every new expansion had a NPC that handed out gear better than the previous expansion's raid boss, would that be acceptable to hard-core raiders?
This is a rather loaded question. The answer: yes, but the reasoning is because it's an NPC you're hailing to get the gear... no work involved. There is no gear in the game you can say that there is 0 work done for, even if it's arranging for plat purchases or farming plat to buy baz upgrades. If you had said that you had to do an on-level encounter, then the answer is no, but it's a pretty big inflation.

Quote:
All speeding up progression does is de-value old content even further.

Please justify this sentence.

Faster progression = more players with better gear = more older content that becomes trivial.

Making old, no-longer-cutting-edge-quality gear easier to get happens in EQ.
Yes it does, but currently only through mudflation. The game doesn't need faster drops to make it easier, it needs players who are willing to spend time on the progression which is something you are proposing isn't worth it unless the drop rates are increased.

Do you understand how "free gear mudflation" devalues raid gear?
I understand what you're trying to say quite well, however there's no such thing as "free gear mudflation." Players may have worse than baz gear after 6 months, but they aren't given "free gear" to compensate. They must still farm the plat (or buy it) in order to purchase the gear, or they must accomplish the missions involved in giving the loot out. Does this work take time? Yes. Does this reinforce the point that more time put in = better loot? Yes. Should players who play less recieve more loot for the same encounters? No, not even if the content is old.

Balance is something you need to pay attention to when talking about progression, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be balanced. Risk vs. Reward, difficulty of an encounter, etc... being among those factors to be balanced. Risk vs. Reward in older content is entirely fair for the risk vs. reward and can be beaten by appropriately geared players. Increase drop rate = Risk < Reward, thus unbalancing the current ratio.