Well, I didn't have the time to log on for very long last night (only long enough to box my two char's in AR for an hour, and yes the exp is still *ass*), But for those who stayed on longer I'd like to hear your thoughts on the EXP part of the patch.

ost notably, I am interested to hear about the solo xp and how badly it was affected.. pls to share

Ok...

PoP launches...
typical forest giant in plane of storms coughs up 11-10% aa exp at level 65 solo with a charmed lorok.

Post charm nerf...
same giants (that summon and hit for 800) now cough up about 8-9% aa exp at level 65 with same charmed loroks.

Post zone exp modifier nerf...
same giants now cough up 4-5% alt exp per kill.


These are mobs that summon and hit for 800. I cannot fathom the need to nerf solo... RISKY solo to the point that it's not worth doing. These giants drop nothing other than BoT flag parts, commons at that.

I cannot possibly imagine root and rotting mobs with 20k +Hp for exp not worth even writing about.

So here's my question...

We are GIVEN a 63 charm... that eats 33% exp of the group if we use it, and offers less exp solo than if we grouped without it.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF THESE SPELLS THAT HAVE NO EFFECIENT USES. This is a horrid increasing trend.

To make the useage of this charm even remotely worth your while you have to force breaks so that your pet doesn't eat 33% of the exp. This means there is MORE reward for having two NON summoning frogs fight it out, by breaking charm intentionally and finishing each individually... Than there is reward for fighting a mob that SUMMONS and hits for 200 more dmg per hit. Two frogs =6% each if you force the charms to break with innate camo. While two giants is only 5% each AND THEY SUMMON AND REQUIRE MORE MANA.

SoE has lost complete control of the game, they have no idea what "The Vision" was or is, or should be. They do not have foresight of the effect of these drastic changes. How is it that risk versus reward is so skewed out of control. SoE is lost in the woods without a compass.

Each patch is a shiny inviting bone. Only after getting in reach do you realize the meat is @#%$. Said bone has a string tied around it with an SoE exec tugging it backwards just out of reach with one hand, while counting dollars with the other.

I hear the carrots are actually orange in Azeroth.

The point is to encourage/reward grouping over soloing. In the process they have altered the xp model of the game in a way that makes soloing less lucrative. Look at it this way, would you rather they nerfed the cr*p out of charm even more than they did?

OK, I know that doesn't make it any easier. As one soloing class to another though, it makes sense that in a MMOG you would want to reward/encourage grouping over soloing at all levels of the game. The problem is that after 3-4 years of the game being out, its going to be a mighty bitter pill to swallow.

Sal, this a really nice post you have here. Too bad it fell on deaf ears. :(

SoE just doesn't care how you feel and isn't even trying to hide it anymore. They could have chosen to use solo XP as a base and modified group XP accordingly but didn't. Too juicy in their minds, I supposed. You can quit as many have, or you can bitch about it, but since you aren't the masses, you're basically an unhappy screwed customer. Face it, the average unsoloer envies you, your talent, and your class. They secretly might even be gleeful that you're got screwed. In their mind they can go on and on why nerfing soloers was the best thing that's happened since /disc defensive or the removal of the manastone. /boggle.

Creative talented players aren't rewarded. Don't dare think outside their model and post about your success or it will be taken away. It's just the way things are.

Hey, Absor - sorry if you think this post too cynical, but you know every word is true. You took a really cool patch and wrapped in a horrible injustice to the soloing communitee knowing all the other good things would serve to deflect ire. It's how SoE has always done these things. We are vigilant. We know yours ways and we will call you on it.

~Loth

These frogs you speak of... are they the 7 frogs in PoS that are perma camped by bards, rangers, wizards and other druids? If that is truely the case then using 1 frog to kill other frogs must not get you very far.

5% for a solo giant kill now? lol. The druid problem is not Rez, better heals or other types of buffs. It is druids who have put so much time into their characters that they are unwilling to quit a character that Sony abandoned long ago. Any bone they throw druids at this point will become mute when the dungeons expansion comes out and you cant run to a friendly cleric on the other side of the zone for rezzes.

"If that is truely the case then using 1 frog to kill other frogs must not get you very far."

They respawn, don't they?
Unless they are somebody's pet, that is.

Zarros said: OK, I know that doesn't make it any easier. As one soloing class to another though, it makes sense that in a MMOG you would want to reward/encourage grouping over soloing at all levels of the game.

Why?
I mean honestly. Instead of worrying about all this group xp balancing garbage, all mobs should be worth a set amount of xp on a player by player basis. You kill a mushroom, it's 60xp. You kill a mushroom in a group of 6, it's still 60xp for you. By just looking at the generic kill ratio anyone'll be able to figure out that killing in a group will be faster than killing solo, but you still have a viable solution when soloing. Soloing you kill 1 mob per three minutes, 6 person group you kill 4 mobs per three minutes (example numbers).

Blah blah blah (insert other explanation here, going to lunch, bbl :P)

Grrr, nice risk vs. reward nerf there.

Sony screwed the pooch with PoStorms. Remember, they initially added an xp bonus in storms over valor cause no one was visiting the zone as its not as group friendly and has more difficult mobs. With the zone xp modifier nerfs, they forgot to keep the extra % for Storms so the XP is alot worse now. Totally bogus considering that the giants in PoStorms are alot harder than most mobs in Valor (well excluding the wimpy shaman giants heh). They really need to fix this.

In addition, druid charm is pretty much worthless nowdays with the charm nerf + xp nerf. Want to use a charm pet in an XP group and dont have a slower/tank? You cant unless you have 3 or less people in group since pet wont take aggro, and you have to deal with 33% less xp just due to the charm nerf. However, the charm nerf did nothing to stop enchanters from soloing loot dropping mobs they shouldnt be killing. Now, the extra xp nerf has hurt charming even further for druids, making it rather useless level 63 spell other than against 1 raid level mob.

As for fixes, Sony should raise the ZEMM of PoStorms up a little bit so it has a bonus over Valor again. Also, druid charm level limit should be increased so its useable in Halls of Honor - Postorms is basically worthless now for charm killing so we should have at least 1 zone where its useful. There's still some of the boars in Tactics, but Tactic groups arent going to want you to use a pet with the current nerfs, and soloing there isnt that viable, especially for multiple druids (yes it is possible).

As a casual player that enjoys a RUSH over mundane grouping, I am pretty much done with this game.

Each patch is a colored bandaid ... for a shotgun wound three expansions old.

But look! the bandaid glows in the dark!

Fayne---

While the first and last paragraphs of your post were thought provoking, the entire second paragraph is quite banal.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Want to use a charm pet in an XP group and dont have a slower/tank? You cant unless you have 3 or less people in group since pet wont take aggro[/quote]

Yes you can. The above statement is false. Either you don't understand how charming works, or you do and you're purposefully blowing things out of porportion in order to get your point across that you are upset about the solo nerf.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>you have to deal with 33% less xp just due to the charm nerf.[/quote]

That 33% scales accourding to how much dmg yourself or the rest of the group does. The 33% is a "worse case sceneraio" if the charmed pet does 100% of the dmg. How many groups are you in where you're DC pet is doing 100% of the dmg? Even solo charming I do enough dmg as to save my pet from gaining any significant amount of my exp. There's no need to compound your anger/frustration by posting innacurate information.

Um, I do understand how pet aggro works. The pet produces 0 aggro when 4 or more people have aggro on the mob - the 4 people dont even have to be in your group. I've experienced this first hand, and its been posted here - pub149.ezboard.com/fthedr...1211.topic (http://pub149.ezboard.com/fthedruidsgrovegeneral.showMessage?topicID=31211.t opic) . This makes non-traditional groups without slower/tank much less viable.

As for the xp nerf, yes it isnt 33% in all situations but if you are soloing its very likely to be 33% even with you nuking, and in groups a charmed pet will still take significant XP (especially if its hasted/equipped), not talking about dire charmed mobs. Plus, the thought of a pet taking any xp in a group will cause most people to not want any sort of pet there, period. Remember all the issues Magicians/Necros had even though pets generally took a miniscule amount of xp - people wouldnt want them in the group, and in the case of a charmed pet it wont be miniscule (yes it likely wont be 33% either unless no one did much damage).

I've never seen any hard data on this, namely how much the pet actually "steals" if you do 1% of damage vs. if you do, say 50%.

Anyone have any data?

Anecdotally, I can say that it "seemed" like the pet takes a pretty sizable chunk out of xp regardless of how much damage I did. On average mobs in PoD (rats, flies, malarians, etc.) I tried stacking 2-3 DoTs vs. just using root damage and in an hour of each method I saw no noticable difference (~2-3% variance) but that's not really hard data.

<img src="http://sun.he.net/~justin1/eq/sig4.jpg"/>
agelo Profile (http://www.magelo.com/eq_view_profile.html?num=562742)

Before yesterday's patch (at 90% going to AAXP) I was getting about 7.5% AAXP per lorok kill in Storms. If I charmed a frog and let it kill another frog I would get about 2% AAXP per kill. I really did not notice much difference if I laid on some dots or not, it was usually the same if my pet was still charmed when the other frog died.

I have not yet tried charm killing post patch but I am curious to see exactly how it's been changed.

Outside of storms, the solo XP nerf was not visible for me.

As for charmed pets not tanking when you have more than 3 people. Like was said, you are not trying hard enough.

As for them taking XP... I use charmed pets almost every XP grind we do, and it improves our XP gain by a large and obvious amount.

You want to gimp yourself, be my guest, but it is not necessary.

Cily

Well the day after for me consisted of getting a group in HoH and finding myself with a nice new shiny <a href="http://lucy.fnord.net/item.html?id=13683" target="top">Drape of the Proud</a>. Hopefully I can sell that for some PP or trade it for Po9.

Then I wandered over to BoT and got a very quick guild group there, XP gains are noticeable and stunning. I think I might become a druid who actually groups it up for XP instead of soloing everything. Although I am tempted to see how a group of 3 druids + 3 necros would do in HoH.

From yesterday's patch message:

<<We've made some improvements to the way experience is rewarded in EverQuest. These improvements are aimed at positively reinforcing the act of grouping. After all, this is a Massively Multiplayer game.>>

Huh? Who wrote that? Whoever did, failed to connect the dots between the first and second sentences.

I'm with Salacious here. Soloing, with the chance to be summoned and killed, is a RUSH and very fun as compared to the mundane group pulls... over and over and over again. There is no fun to that for me.

This game became less fun for me after yesterday's patch. When the fun is gone, so am I.

Giddo
<Cats in Hats>
Drinal

Hell, even planetside includes 'instant action' which allows you to go solo instead of joining a squad. That game is definatly massively multiplayer too so...

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Why?
I mean honestly. Instead of worrying about all this group xp balancing garbage, all mobs should be worth a set amount of xp on a player by player basis. You kill a mushroom, it's 60xp. You kill a mushroom in a group of 6, it's still 60xp for you. By just looking at the generic kill ratio anyone'll be able to figure out that killing in a group will be faster than killing solo, but you still have a viable solution when soloing. Soloing you kill 1 mob per three minutes, 6 person group you kill 4 mobs per three minutes (example numbers).[/quote]

Because this ignores the fact that groups are seriously hindered by afks, linkdeads, players dying, players getting lost, looking for group members, running to town and anything else that slows down the pace of a group.

And if all things are equal people will solo. With the simple system you propose (which was the original design of the game and was in place for a while), it didn't work. Soloing was much quicker than grouping. That is why they created a group bonus to begin with. And continue to move forward with it.

Just be aware I know of no MMOG in development right now that does not plan to significantly reward people who hunt in groups over people who solo. This is how things are going to be. You can solo, but it will most likely never be the best way to get experience in games moving forward.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I'm with Salacious here. Soloing, with the chance to be summoned and killed, is a RUSH and very fun as compared to the mundane group pulls... over and over and over again. There is no fun to that for me.
[/quote]

You misspoke. You meant soloing while making more experience than you can in a group is a RUSH. Soloing hasn't changed other than you get a little less experience than you did before in some cases. They didn't change the difficulty of the actual fight itself. I didn't see anything about them making mobs summon and kill you any more or less than before...

So your rush is still there...

I found their poll interesting. First they asked how you spend your time when playing EQ, I checked soloing.

That must not have been the results they wanted because next they ask how you would "prefer" your time spent....

I still checked soloing


I wonder if we'll ever know the results!

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The point is to encourage/reward grouping over soloing.[/quote]

I totally agree with this part... BUT...

They should not penalize soloing at the same time.

It would be one thing if a solo kill netted the same exp as it did pre patch while a group got double exp than prepatch... but they outright NERFED the exp for soloers. This is unacceptable. Add yet another reason why I am not coming back to this game.

I think one of the problems in content consumption. one skilled charm soloer can easily consume the content of a skilled group without charm.

With large populations on servers and limited zones for high level people, the more people that solo the less content overall there is per person.

This can be solved by increasing mob density so that there is enough to go around but if you do that in all zones the game just looks like a shooting gallery and looses its realism.

Having said that I checked solo for both but I don't know how they solve the problem explained in my post and keep the feel and look of the game good. I love grouping when I feel like being casual or when I feel like taking on tougher stuff. If I had my druthers, I'd only group with friends and ONLY solo when I'm extremely time constrained or when friends aren't on.

Unfortunately, my mage doesn't solo PoP except for the druid mobs in PoS (charming in BoT is just a death wish now solo with the resistance nerf). So I group with my mage and as of late usually get a group quickly through my friend's list (but remember I can only do this if I have a larger chunk of time or else there is nothing to do). When I play my druid I actually prefer to solo, but when he gets to the high end game it is my goal to equip him sufficiently and AA him correctly so that he can play main healer in all the zones, sans elementals (since I don't have the time to raid religiously anymore I'll never see those zones--another pet peeve of mine).

Everytime I create a cleric and play him a bit then play my druid I just can't continue on with the cleric and end up deleting him. I love clerics but it just doesn't do it for me. The druid and the mage just do. Even my chanter with his versatility doesn't do it for me like my druid and definitely not like my mage.

So long winded way of saying, I wish soloing was not penalized like it was from an exp perspective. I wish the game could accomodate it better but simple game dynamics in a MMORPG seem to make it very difficult. YOu can't instance everything so content is always going to be an issue if you create a game that accomodates 3000 soloers per server or whatever the number is Vs a small percentage.