I think revamps are great. I think it's something that SOE should do a lot of. With each new expansion more and more older content is becoming disused. Our dollars we pay each month are supporting that old, unused content and the servers they run on.

You know, if you spread around the population of most Everquest server through all the expansions and zones, it'd be like having Tier 2/3 zones before they unflagged them, even before flags started getting common. Yes, there's just TONS ofo content that isn't getting used.

But then, I am always kind of shocked at how many zones come out of the box unusable to groups and stay that way for months or years or eternity before they get revamped.

For instance, in Luclin there are some great zones just wasting away (some getting revamped now): The Deep, Grieg's End, Akheva, Acrylia Caverns. All were interestingly designed zones that just either had: Mobs that were underconned (i.e. too tough for the con and exp given), lousy or no loot.

Now in PoP there is: Torment

Not too bad. One zone of the pre-elemental ones that is just a very bad zone for groups. No loot that I'm aware of, but that's a theme echoed through most of PoP. But for the risk and difficulty of the zone, it really should be a pretty good place to exp. It's such a fine looking zone too. As an SoS rogue I had a blast roaming around looking at everything. Ton's of named creatures. This place just BEGS to be a dungeon crawling type of place.

It'd be nice if HoHB were retooled as well for groups. Lots of mobs here to keep people busy.

I really like the idea of zone revamps. It introduces new quests, new loot and new encounters all within the framework of a somewhat-familiar setting. My experience with the latest round of revamps has been uniformly positive and I'm really looking forward to the next set.

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more content for groups of 65's is great and needed, especially worthwhile content when compared to the planes.

Maybe they could even start getting really smart about it and designing dungeons that allow us druids to use our root/snare and stun spells without getting that dogged "immune" message.

I agree but i would also caution that it would not be a good thing to find that you can only level up by following a set path of zones because everything else is for lv 65 players.

As you revamp some zones you should probably also unvamp some of the revamped zones to make sure that you are not creating a top heavy zone list. While i doubt we are there yet nor should we be there any time soon with the pace that has been used for revamps.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I think revamps are great. I think it's something that SOE should do a lot of.[/quote]

In theory, I agree with you, but the devs history of revamped zones pretty much sucks. Every zone they have revamped, although most did need something done to them, was completely and utterly botched in my mind.

Take Paw. I agreed whole heatedly, that putting a low lvl zone out in the middle of sk, was a stupid mistake, and the zone needed to be upped. What they did though was put the zone up to the mid 30-45 lvl, and then added ch casting mobs, making it virtually unplayable, for the appropriate lvl once your past the double doors. Not to mention, one of the worst dungeon itemizations, to date.

Then there was Kerra. While yes the zone was a disaster originally. Turning it into a quest zone, made it even more useless then it already was.

The first and second revamps of Hate brought some of the worst pathing, and agro issues the game has ever seen. I haven't been up to hate since the third revamp so can't comment on it.

Many people liked the changes to kith, but to me they pretty much ruined a good mid teen's zone by making it 35+ at night, and under 20 during the day.

Runney Eye, I don't know what those guys where smoking when they took the best low lvl goblin dungeon in the game, and put such an insane lvl range on the place. You got mobs that are pre teens, all the way up to 40+.

Ct was probably there best attempt at a revamp, but even there they failed miserably. Mobs that hit for 200+ (As if there wasn't already a heavy need for the "Holy Trinity at the time of the revamp") in the confined spawn placement that was designed for a lvl 25 dungeon. Then making immune to harmony mobs, just ruined the zone for me.

I don't play on legends or test, so I have no clue what they have done to Dronga, but if all they did was up the lvl of the mobs, maybe adding some itemization. Then they will have failed miserably once again. The biggest problem with dronga was that it was a goblin dungeon, where mobs spawn points where closely put together, huge agro ranges, and way too many casters. If they didn't change some of those fundimental flaws with the zone, it will continue to be a useless zone.

In short, when the devs talk about zone revamps, I end up just asking, "What zone are they going to screw over this time?"

At least in the case of The Deep it still gets used for the Burrower, and to a lesser extent THO. Akheva still gets used for IV and Shei. Acrylia gets used for farming. The one you listed that has been an enigma from day one has been Grieg's End.

Grieg's End was badly implemented and has been a ghost town from the day Luclin was launched. It's a shame too because GE has a kind of 'ambience' to it that I always thought was cool. I also love the illusions that players get turned into by some of the mobs there. It's a lot of fun to be turned into a crocodile to one person's eyes, or a zelnithak to someone else, etc. But for some god awful reason it never seemed to get itemized. The drops are as non-existent(if not more so) than PoP and the mobs there are under-conned, or better yet, need their level raised. Grieg's could be a great high level zone if they do some work on it. Let's hope this revamp will be a shot in the arm for Grieg's and many more places that are under-used.

CT was a great revamp as it actually ended up a challenging zone for most with a nice variety of good loot that could be gotten by single groups. After some time learning the zone it certainly wasn't restricted to optimal groups.

Chardok was a good revamp adding a lot more variety of loot and mobs than the original. Some interesting story and mobs added a lot to the place.

Runnyeye the level range it is for doesn't really do dungeons anymore. Nice revamp but a bit of a waste.

Yeah, those zones are fine for raiding. But look at The Deep, it's an enormous zone, most of it has NOTHING to do with raids. Same with Akheve, probably the same with Torment. It just seems a shame that these beautifully laid out zones have to little to offer groups.

In defense of SOE's revamps, I think they did a great job revamping Hole (1st time), great job revamping CT (the loot is good, exp was good, pre-PoP), they did a fine job revamping Chardok. I think they have done a fairly good job with Hate, although pathing is STILL tricky. I wasn't terribly impressed with Acrylia Caverns revamp, but then when I went, everything was green (before the exp range changes).

As far as pre-level 60 content, there's so much of it and very few dungeons pre-60 even see much use because pre-60 most people are pretty chicken about venturing into dungeons. The stuff that currently runs up to level 60 should be revamped so it runs up slightly higher. People don't stay level 60 very long.

The problem with Torment is the exp is totally terrible.

Really does need a big heave in exp there.



Tils

As far as I know, no one knows what the "partial revamps" will turn out to be. I'm guessing that the loot will be upgraded and that some of the mobs will be raised in level. That would be welcome.

The catch is that most of the zones in question were not underutilized because of loot or mob level. For example, The Hole was underutilized even back when loam armor was considered to be decent and imbued granite spauldors were godly. The problem is that all of those zones are either hard to get to or a pain in the neck structurally, or both.

For example, how many people are going to hunt in Dragon Necropolis unless SOE puts a PoK book in Western Wastes? There's some pretty good loot in Siren's Grotto right now, but people don't go there because the zone is such a pain. The Hole is a great zone in the mid-50s, but it requires a porter to get you out once you go past the ledge.

A partial revamp will not solve those problems. People will go to those zones out of curiosity, or to farm new loot, but then the zones will be empty again.

Exactly, unless you make zones 2 steps from a portal, give them a graveyard, and make them rectangular boxes with easy, safe pulls, most of the players won't visit them.

And that's just fine with me. I'll take all the other ones. :)

Unfortunately, that's pretty much true, Panamah. My selfish side hopes that the partial revamps turn out to be a lot like Nadox. I'm made some good XP and a LOT of money hanging out in a zone that is just too inconvenient for most people.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>but the devs history of revamped zones pretty much sucks.[/quote]I have to disagree. I started playing EQ just before Luclin, so I wasn't around for some of the revamps you mentioned, but I think SOE's recent record is pretty good. CT, Hate (v.3) & AC are all very good zones now IMO and feature nice drops and solid xp for Old World crawls.

/shrug

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CT was a good revamp and I'd bet a buck that people that are exping in Valor that have never been to CT could easily take there group into CT and get wiped. Mobs cast away so you need resists. They summon and some can't be rooted or harmonied. It takes/took real skill to survive in the tougher places in that dungeon.

They could easily just increase the ZEM in CT and that's where you'd see me instead of most of the PoP zones. As it is now you can't get anyone to go there anymore.

I'm looking forward to the revamps (especially the Hole) always thought that was a cool romp. However, you really did prefer to have a wiz or druid with you for transport.............isn't that a shame.

So far I feel they have done a good job with zone revamping. Chardok, CT and Velks (remember that zone use to be full or green mobs when it went live) all were very popular after revamping. Sure some players may not visit zones that are more dangerous or difficult to traverse but then there are players that enjoy such challenges aswell. Personally I enjoyed DN and I can not wait to see what changes they have made.

Recycling content is a good idea, players progress thru the game quickly and as we all approach the upper levels we are being funneled into a limited number of zones. So revamping some of the many under used zones is a much quicker solution then completely creating a new one. Now the real issue is can they get people to leave the XP farm PoP to visit these new zones? Sure alot of people will poke around for a couple days but unless there is something to draw people away from PoP, they will eventually become unused zones once more.

Bril

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I don't play on legends or test, so I have no clue what they have done to Dronga, but if all they did was up the lvl of the mobs, maybe adding some itemization. Then they will have failed miserably once again. The biggest problem with dronga was that it was a goblin dungeon, where mobs spawn points where closely put together, huge agro ranges, and way too many casters. If they didn't change some of those fundimental flaws with the zone, it will continue to be a useless zone.[/quote]
Now, it sounds to me as if the only revamps you would like would be ones making the zone druid solo-able, but that aside:

Droga is currently one of the most entertaining zones in the game. PoP exp on a dungeon designed for crawling is simply fantastic.

The entrance mobs are 55-57, quickly becoming 58-62. There is mid-tier raiding content hidden away. There is excellent loot on relatively common named mobs, and nice money on everything else.

But can a druid solo it? I don't know. Nothing summons, but it's full of casters and lots of adds.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Now, it sounds to me as if the only revamps you would like would be ones making the zone druid solo-able, but that aside:[/quote]

Considering my main is a monk, and that I haven't truly played my druid in 2 years, wether or not a druid can solo there is of no concern to me. I was referring to the fundamental flaws in the zone design, that made the zone empty to begin with. If all they did was up the mobs, and not address those issues, I can not see the zone becoming popular.

as a player who lived in Droga and currently spends a fair deal of time in HS, i truly hope the changes will be rewarding. But, I am worried about Droga, as it is the greenie casters land a great deal on you despite 25 levels of difference and decent resists, the concept of single/double pulls does not exist. If they simply upped the mobs and did little to fix the swarming and tons of casters the zone will become even more of a ghost town. As well, it sounds like the Spirit Wracked Cord quest will become tremendously more difficult to ever achieve. Why? Well the average toon needs 3500 to 4000 faction hits, the angry goblin, goblin traitor from Droga and the urn from Druss in HS (the assumption here is Druss becomes a level 65 mob instead of 55). With the sound of the changes i doubt most people will ever get all that done if they have not started. We shall see

What they need to do is kill the outdoor PoP ZeM's to something the level of Velks and give all that nice XP/ZEM to dungeons.

There is nearly no reward for doing dungeons over sitting in a safe outdoor zone with a GY. Give dungeons the XP boost and let the soloers and the no risk types scrounge it out in a safe outdoor enviroment and give the real advantages and rewards in dungeons.

I seriously doubt revamped zones will ever make up for new content, new mobs, mobs variety in the same zone, original zone geometry, new texture, etc.

Most of the new zones are dull at best, revamped zone still have mostly the same graphics, same mobs in it. No soul.

Would you go back to a revamped Seb? Hell No I won't.

Variety, discovery, new geometry, decent RvR, give me that and I'll go.

And by the way don't forget to put a nearby telepod. People don't like hiking around at this point allthough it is very unimmersive to think like that.

Edit and PS: Rid luclin xp mobs from their ridiculous AC. It gets old real fast.

Oh yeah, that's what we need Naathan...more nerfs to soloing. Sorry but we have taken enough hits in that area recently, thanks anyways.

Some of the posters here seem to equate a good revamp with making it easier. Where's the fun in that? Some of these places could possibly be toned down a little but it sounds to me like some people want the mobs perfectly placed equidistantly to each other, no casters, hit for low damage, don't summon, and drop the best loot in the game. That's absurd. Most of the people I found that have a problem with CT are the soloers because they can't do that there(at least druids can't without a lot of grief). A good revamp makes the zone desirable for grouping and possibly even soloing too. You do this by making sure you itemize the place, give a good variety of mobs and make them of an appropriate level/con, allow for a good experience rate, and make it aesthetically pleasing with a good layout. Once you do that you have created the perfect dungeon.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Some of the posters here seem to equate a good revamp with making it easier. Where's the fun in that? Some of these places could possibly be toned down a little but it sounds to me like some people want the mobs perfectly placed equidistantly to each other, no casters, hit for low damage, don't summon, and drop the best loot in the game. That's absurd. Most of the people I found that have a problem with CT are the soloers because they can't do that there(at least druids can't without a lot of grief). A good revamp makes the zone desirable for grouping and possibly even soloing too. You do this by making sure you itemize the place, give a good variety of mobs and make them of an appropriate level/con, allow for a good experience rate, and make it aesthetically pleasing with a good layout. Once you do that you have created the perfect dungeon.[/quote]

It is all about risk vs reward. If the risk is too high for the reward you get for taking that risk, the revamp flops. That is why the zones where empty to begin with, and needed revamping. Even the most recent AC/Grimling revamps proved that, they are still empty, aside from the people who where already using them for acrylia, and shards.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>CT was probably their best attempt at a revamp, but even there they failed miserably. Mobs that hit for 200+ (As if there wasn't already a heavy need for the "Holy Trinity at the time of the revamp&quot;) in the confined spawn placement that was designed for a lvl 25 dungeon. Then making immune to harmony mobs, just ruined the zone for me.[/quote]

Sounds to me like you want want it easier. There's all kinds of rewards for the risks that you take in CT. I think they pretty much got that one right, although I would have liked to have seen it implemented in such a way so that soloers could hunt there too.

I hope for these re-vamped zones SoE actually looks at the popular 60+ zones we have now, that are ALWAYS crowed (BoT, PoV, Tactics, and even HoH) that have god exp, and nice random drops, along with named mobs. The combination of the chance of loot/spells is what keeps people going back to certain zones. And out of the way zones rarely work.

I always thought one of the best zone revamps was chardok. I absolutely LOVED that zone after they revamped it the first time. I lived there, solo, duo or groups. We would crawl for hours on end never running into another group. We even took 1 group into royals. The zone was fun with just the right level of difficulty. Good exp and decent loot. A fd puller was a necessity (none of that pacify crap that makes everything trivial), a snarer/evacer was also a must. Then your typical cleric, tank requirement. Druids, necro's enchanters could charm with the danger of having charm break and hoping you could channel through recharm.

I hate to see they're redoing it again :( Although nobody goes there anymore because of faction.

Good grief, the only thing about PoP zones I liked was the experience. One can always go to PoP for experience. I'd like to see them focus more on loot and fun factor. I don't know why the trend at SOE is to make zones now without loot or make all loot be only accessible with a raid. I think that's pretty un-fun. I hope they lose that idea before they release a bunch of new revamps without any loot.

One of the nice things about Chardok was that almost anything could drop certain types of loot, like the SBS and stuff. Then there were a LOT of named things that spawned. Plus it was a large, twisty dungeon with many areas that had their own feel. Like the Bank, the kennels, the fort, the mines, the palace, the Korocust area, the herbal essence area (YES, OH YES!), the graveyard and so on.

I think one thing that would make dungeons nicer for everyone was if you didn't have to fight through a bunch of green stuff to get to an area that is challenging for you.

I notice in Blackburrow now (I have a level 10 ranger for those times when I'm really bored) that green and even most light blue stuff will leave you alone or else the aggro radius on those mobs shrinks to be so small it's impossible to aggro them without whacking them atop the noggin. I think that's a great idea. (But I really think Blackburrow should have a GY! It's so easy to get your corpse left in a place you can't reach without a group)

Most people don't avoid the older zones because of the lack of loot Panamah, it's the craptastic experience. Of course it depends on what level of players you're talking about here. If you want a great zone for high levels then you should incorporate good experience AND good loot. But if you're trying to get high level people to spread out and relieve some of the stress on PoP and add variety to the available hunting grounds then you need to concentrate on the exp. The people wanting to use these zones again mostly have the loot already, they just want a change of venues for their experience grind. Besides, there's loot in those places, granted it might not be of any use to the real high level people that want to use these zones again but like I mentioned, that's probably not why they're there in the first place.

Also, if you're going to jack up the loot then you have to jack up the mobs, ergo you're going to raise the level of them and subsequently they should be made worth more experience anyway to keep everything in line. Now if you're talking just putting more or different loot in these zones that's different, you could do that without messing with the hardness or number of mobs too much, but it's going to be loot of the same caliber that already drops there. In other words, don't expect another type of haste item better than an FBSS in a place like Lower Guk(just as an example).

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Sounds to me like you want want it easier. There's all kinds of rewards for the risks that you take in CT. I think they pretty much got that one right, although I would have liked to have seen it implemented in such a way so that soloers could hunt there too.[/quote]

In the case of CT, that is a pretty fare statement. I consider the exp, and the loot that I can obtain in that zone to not be worth the risk in hunting in the zone. I can get both easier, in other zones, then I can in CT. Although if they upped the reward for hunting in that zone, I might revaluate it. So for me, CT revamp was a flop. Considering CT is on the perpetully empty list now, It is pretty safe to say I am not alone in this line of thinking for the zone.

btw.....if they revamp these zones. They seriously need to think about putting GY's in them.

People will still keep in pop zones because of GYs even if the exp is equal or even better.

Remeber these zones are harder to get to than PoP zones.


Tils

Or you can take along an SoS rogue with you and we'll get you out. :)

Another reason I think CT was mostly done well is because the loot was good and the experience was good. In fact, I think the loot is still good for many of us. I'd love to get a pair of FT3 booties for my cleric. I'm still using the dagger that drops from the RoS.

The way I look at dungeons is like this. You have Risk and you have Rewards.

Risk = Chance of dying, chance of wiping, difficulty in corpse retreival

Rewards = Loot, experience (and fun, though I don't think you can really quantify this)

You can quantify the risk and rewards. I wouldn't mind having a dungeon that was low on experience if the loot made up for it. There might well be times I'd be more than willing to give up making experience (i.e. like you do when you're raiding) to gain loot instead.

Sure, if you put good loot AND experience in a dungeon, I think you're going to have to amp up the Risk to make it balance. For instance, In PoP experience zones:

Risk of Dying = High
Chance of TPW = High (gets lower with experience and AA's)
Difficulty of CR = Low

Looking at the reward side of things:

Loot = Low
Experience = High

=====================================

CT:

Risk of Dying (pre-pop) = Very High
Chance of TWP = High
Difficulty of CR = High

Loot = Moderately High
Experience = High

====================================

Sebilis (pre-pop)

Risk of Dying = Low
Chance of TPW = Low
Difficulty of CR = Moderate

Loot = Moderate
Experience = Moderate


Howling Stones (pre-pop)
Risk of Dying = Moderate
Chance of TPW = Low
Difficulty of CR = Very High

Loot = Moderate
Experience = Moderately High


Anyway, those are my impressions. I truly would not mind having a dungeon that would be:

Panamah's Wet Dream
Risk of Dying = High
Chance of TPW = High
Difficulty of CR = High

Loot = Extremely High
Experience = Low

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The way I look at dungeons is like this. You have Risk and you have Rewards.

Risk = Chance of dying, chance of wiping, difficulty in corpse retreival

Rewards = Loot, experience (and fun, though I don't think you can really quantify this)[/quote]

The problem is that the best loot in the game is acquired by raiding rather than grouping and while in a few cases there is a chance of dying and wiping, there is no difficulty in corpse retrieval. Because PoP stimulated a migration to large raiding guilds that can acquire the "raid lewtz", players will not suffer greater risks than neccessary for lesser lewtz and comparable experience if they can get better lewtz on raids and gain less risky yet comparable or better experience grouping elsewhere. PoP (and to a lesser degree Luclin) <strong>largely</strong> relegated grouping to experience grinding for a community of players who acquire their lewtz in the comforts of a large raid force.

Your equation makes sense, but was abandoned in a game that now places the highest rewards where the encounter or the cumulative risk is trivial.

Well, Demasia, hopefully they will return to the older school of Risk VS Reward. I think PoP let a big, ugly Genie out of the bottle that a lot of people would like to see squeezed back inside. I am rooting for the Genie going back into the bottle, but I know that there's another camp that wants ever bigger Genies.

My biggest problem with the revamps is they roll them out to all servers. I play on FV and as servers go we are way behind where the normal blue servers are. The vast majority of the server is just now getting to the level where they can go hunt in the zones SOE is going to be revamping.

If by revamping they are increasing the level of difficulty like they did in Hate it will be terrible. I was on one of the last raids to hate before the revamp. Was one of the more fun things I had done in a long time. Now that same raid force would be lucky to tackle the maestro let alone do any of the higher mobs there.

Just to give you an example of how far behind the normal blues we are There are only 2 VT capable guilds on the server, Only 1 Guild has made it to elementals and at this point in time I doubt if they could redo the flags for new members with their current status.

If a revamp means higher level, all they would be doing would be forcing out a large segment of the population on our server to other zones for another 6 months to a year.

Which is why I absolutely loathe most of the revamps they have done. The only thing they have done recently that I thought was good was the revamp of veeshans peak in removing the porting restrictions other than that leave the zones alone.

Borblefoot Furtoe
61st season druid
Firiona Vie Server

CT gets some traffic on my server. Most people are so obsessed with PoP experience they don't even want to take the hit to get the kind of loot that drops in CT. SoE really screwed things up with the ZEMs in PoP to the point where it spolied players and now they are addicted to that level of experience.

The Zem for outdoor zones in most of the older content was 75, and most of the dungeons it was 85, compared to POP where its 119.. I'd like to see dungeons with around a 100 Zem

A lot of the time in dungeons yer "camping" that named for his craptacular drop so what are you doing while you wait? EXPing! if the exp is too slow then maybe its not worth the time to bother.

That's the case for me with CT and the boots of flowing slime. We went in sat down to "camp" em 4 hours later... Nadda and the exp was crap not to mention tedious. If the exp was worth while it wouldn't be so bad. I do know how the whole "Spawn table" bit works. I prefer the random rare chance to drop good loot off any mob to the "camp the named" bit. I'm sure most would agree.

I hate camps and camp checks.. FCC!

If given a choice why would you willingly choose low experience Panamah? I would set all those things you listed to high, then you would have a good zone/dungeon. I don't particularly want to sacrifice one for another. If you make the risk high enough then you should be able to include good loot AND good experience and still maintain a balance.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>If given a choice why would you willingly choose low experience Panamah?[/quote]
In past expansions, the various factors Panamah listed appear to be balanced in a zero sum way. If SOE knocks the exp way down then the other positive factor (loot) can be made significantly better in order to compensate. I'm all for adding a few zones like that. :-)

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>If given a choice why would you willingly choose low experience Panamah?[/quote]

For exactly the reason Klath said.

Players already trade experience for loot. i.e. they raid. You don't really get any significant experience on raids. You might even end up raiding dozens of times before you get a piece of loot, perhaps longer. So you're giving up a LOT of experience for loot.

If there's a trade-off between experience and loot as rewards, then I'd love to see it weighted to the loot side. This would allow people who don't/can't raid the opportunity to see some really decent upgrades.

But hey, if there is no trade-off, if I can have Pie and Cake, then by all means, bring it on!

I can understand that reasoning and if there has to be a trade-off I guess that's the way to go but I would still like to see it balanced evenly. Loot > experience once you get to a certain level and get most of the AA's that you want but loot can be a dead-end too. I mean what can they really do with loot now? There are only so many effects that any piece can have and stats are nondescript and hugely redundant at this point since there's only so much of a range they can run, especially given the level of the zone/dungeon. Maybe if items weren't done in such a cookie cutter way and SoE came up with some new stuff then I would totally agree with the trade off for experience.

What you seem to be saying is different people want different things, so no one zone can satisfy them all.

Surely that is good, oherwise SOE could save a lot of money on development of the next expansion by just releasing one very easy zone, with high exp and great loot?

Soru

Nurga was the best designed dungeon in the game for crawl purposes imho. Droga was good until you got to the city and aggro would would pretty much bring the entire zone on top of you.

Not exactly off topic... but I like the way the named mobs spawning upon the death of any certain type of mob in LoY zones was done. That was a great idea. No more "camping the named spawn". If revamps introduced this as well, it would be great. Only problem I've seen with LoY zones and now Veksar is that the zones seem to be itemized for the wrong level range; the Recommended Level requirements on items from these zones is proof enough. These zones were beautifully designed. LOTS of mobs. Great content. But the loot is just <em>not quite</em> geared for the level of the players that are hunting there.

I can only hope that LDoN has more thought put into experience, loot and Risk vs. Reward.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I can understand that reasoning and if there has to be a trade-off I guess that's the way to go but I would still like to see it balanced evenly. Loot > experience once you get to a certain level and get most of the AA's that you want but loot can be a dead-end too. I mean what can they really do with loot now? There are only so many effects that any piece can have and stats are nondescript and hugely redundant at this point since there's only so much of a range they can run, especially given the level of the zone/dungeon. Maybe if items weren't done in such a cookie cutter way and SoE came up with some new stuff then I would totally agree with the trade off for experience. [/quote]

Well, at some point you're going to max out in both loot and experience. Look at Scirocco, he's maxed out on experience, but he's still farming away, looking for loot goodies in PoS for tradeskills and bazaar fodder.

What I'd like to see is that single group encounters can earn nice loot that could upgrade me! I'm NToV, a bit of Ornate and a few PoP trinkets equipped. I'm sure better equipped people feel the same. I don't want single group stuff to always just be about experience grinding and the loot always to be not very good or only alt-worthy or bazaar fodder. I'm hoping that LDoN gives single groups a way to earn good loot that people will actually like. And it sounds like it might.

For instance, in Chardok B, the loot that is dropping isn't, for the most part (some exceptions), suitable for anyone that has done some raiding in Velious/PoP/Luclin.

The loot doesn't have to have new effects or some novel combination. There's a ton of old-effect loot out there I don't have and having an alternative way to earning it from raiding would be pretty acceptable to me.

Most stat items have a redundancy. I mean, what does it matter if there's a neck item with a certain range of stats and boots that are close to or the same, unless one of them will be a major upgrade? Stats become more or less a non-factor after you have gear with good stats in pretty much every slot. What use would you have for something that gives the same stats that you already have in a particular slot? Or even a different slot with the same stats? For the people still needing major upgrades it can be a good thing but I don't think experience would be a good trade off if the loot isn't going to make a difference.

By difference I mean either new effects or at least level IV effects. Anything under focus IV kind of sucks if you're above 60 and using mostly 60+ spells. A lot of the items that come out of every day dungeons fall into the stat category though, unless it's a boss or major named(of course there are exceptions). Besides, one groupable mobs will not be allowed to have real upgrades for people of your gear level(from what you listed and all of your slots being more or less equal), even at the expense of experience. That would unbalance things and give the game a Monty Haul feel, something SoE won't do.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Besides, one groupable mobs will not be allowed to have real upgrades for people of your gear level(from what you listed and all of your slots being more or less equal), even at the expense of experience. [/quote]

This is the status-quo now, for the most part. I'm hoping that won't be the case in LDoN.

There's no reason other than sheer stubborness that SOE has to make the game so raid dependent on gear upgrades.

What SOE has hinted at with marketing hype about the Wayland Bros. giving you stuff from their treasure horde as you do stuff for them is that it will be a way to earn upgrades, and decent ones, without the endless hours of dull raiding.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
There's no reason other than sheer stubborness that SOE has to make the game so raid dependent on gear upgrades.
[/quote]

While knocking SOE is always fun, there are real reasons for not doing that.

The defining feature of raid loot is that 40 or more people are prepared to spend time getting very little exp in order to have a chance of winning it.

You may not like raids, but would you really prefer the situation where 40 people are spending time trying to kill a mob without being organised into a raid?

This would come down to either marathon camps (48+ hours at a time) or rampant killstealing if those camps weren't respected. Look at Lodizal when his loot was state of the art, or Ragefire before the last change.

There are ways round that, like the requirement to farm drops before triggerring a mob, and there is certainly some room for upgrading a lot of drops without making them droolled after by elemental guild members, but simply putting raid-level loot on a single group named is not a good plan.

Soru

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>simply putting raid-level loot on a single group named is not a good plan.[/quote]

I agree that single-groupable mobs with raid quality loot should not be added to any of the current zones in EQ. However, why shouldn't/couldn't they be added to LDoN zones. These zones will be restricted to a single group and they can be tuned to be very challenging. Since the LDoN dungeons will be instanced and restricted to a single group there cannot be problems with camps, kill-stealing, ZERGs, or overcrowding.

LDoN dungeons can be made challenging, but how much so? I think you would end up either making it too hard for one group to do or the risk vs. reward would be out of balance.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>LDoN dungeons can be made challenging, but how much so? I think you would end up either making it too hard for one group to do or the risk vs. reward would be out of balance.[/quote]

They've been adjusting the challenge and rewards of raid encounters now for years. Why would tuning the risk/reward of customized single group encounters be more difficult? I would think it would be much easier since there are many fewer variables to contend with.

My point wasn't that they couldn't balance it but that they couldn't put raid type loot on one groupable bosses without either: 1. the bosses being too hard to compensate for the better loot or 2. the loot being too good for a one groupable boss.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The defining feature of raid loot is that 40 or more people are prepared to spend time getting very little exp in order to have a chance of winning it.[/quote]

There are other ways of doing it. It could be done in LDoN. Hope it is.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>You may not like raids, but would you really prefer the situation where 40 people are spending time trying to kill a mob without being organised into a raid?[/quote]

I don't really care about the other 34 people in instanced dungeons, other than to hope they're having a good time.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>This would come down to either marathon camps (48+ hours at a time) or rampant killstealing if those camps weren't respected. Look at Lodizal when his loot was state of the art, or Ragefire before the last change.[/quote]

No, no. You're not being very imaginative. You're thinking of EQ only in terms of what EQ has been like in the past.

Here's just a few scenario's:

You meet the Wayland Bros they send you off to clean the evil frogloks up.

You do, it takes you about 2 hours to get through the instanced dungeon. You get a small piece of loot.

Next time you meet them they send you to escort the princess through the fire swamp. You do it. You had them back the piece of loot from the last time, and they upgrade it to something nicer.

Rinse and Repeat

Once you've gotten the best they've got for that slot, they start you on something new.

That's a very active sort of way that gets you into dungeons and doing stuff, while improving your character in a significant way. Without the boredom and monotony of marshalling 40 people.

Without graveyards added to zones being revamped for 65s, noone will care about the revamps. (disclaimer: by "noone" I mean relatively few people)

I want a quest where the Marios Bros. send me off to kill Donkey Kong. :p

By the way, if people want a GY in every zone now then the player base has gotten WAY too lazy.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>1. the bosses being too hard to compensate for the better loot or 2. the loot being too good for a one groupable boss. [/quote]

If the LDoN bosses cause as much risk per person as a raid mob and they require the same time investment, I don't see why the chances of winning similar quality items shouldn't be the same.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Without graveyards added to zones being revamped for 65s, noone will care about the revamps. (disclaimer: by "noone" I mean relatively few people) [/quote]

Please explain that to all the people crowded into ChardokB!

Why would a LDoN boss cause as much risk as a normal raid boss? From what I've seen about LDoN the dungeons aren't going to contain much more risk than the average, every day type.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Why would a LDoN boss cause as much risk as a normal raid boss? From what I've seen about LDoN the dungeons aren't going to contain much more risk than the average, every day type. [/quote]

If you put 2 hours into fighting down to the boss and you lose with your single group. Total party wipe. No going back to recover and try again. Isn't that about on par to setting up for a boss encounter in PoP, like Behemoth? In fact, isn't it worse? It usually doesn't take 2 hours to set up for a raid encounter, unless you have a substantial lot of fighting to get there.

Think of Plane of Justice trials only lasting 2 hours long.

To me that seems like a fairly significant investment in time to earn a pretty nice reward should you succeed.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Why would a LDoN boss cause as much risk as a normal raid boss?[/quote]
Because you can't just throw more people at LDoN encounters. Currently, if you can't do an encounter with a single group, you have the option of adding a second or third group. In LDoN, you'll have to do every encounter with a maximum of six people. If the encounters are tough, you'd better know how to play your class well.

I think you need to distinguish between the total risk of an encounter and the risk per person. The fact that a particular boss mob is extremely powerful doesn't necessarily mean that the risk per person is very high when you throw 200 people at it. However, once the mob is down, it drops the same loot whether it was killed by 200 people or soloed.

There's no way a LDoN boss should give the same level of loot as a raid boss, that's just absurd. Raids are lot more work and hassle then one grouping through an instanced dungeon, not to mention the boss itself being a LOT harder. If you give the same loot as a raid boss to a one group boss that cheapens raids to the point of being a joke.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>If you give the same loot as a raid boss to a one group boss that cheapens raids to the point of being a joke.[/quote]

Sounds like a plan to me! Necessity of raiding in EQ has gotten way out of control. The game really needs to get back to it's roots, with more single group content. Contrary to some peoples beliefs, single group encounters can be incredibly more challenging then a raid can.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>There's no way a LDoN boss should give the same level of loot as a raid boss, that's just absurd.[/quote]

I don't see any compelling reason why similar risk should not earn similar reward.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>not to mention the boss itself being a LOT harder.[/quote]

Sure, the mob is a lot harder but you may well have 80 people there to help kill it. The fact that the mob is more powerful doesn't mean that the encounter is more difficult. It only means that it was tuned to require a raid rather than a group.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I don't see any compelling reason why similar risk should not earn similar reward.[/quote]

It's not similar risk and not even similar effort, that's the point. What level of items are we talking about here anyway? Don't say like FT5 or some of the other high end focus effects or I won't even be able to comment back except to laugh until I wet myself. :mad:

There's no doubt that one group encounters can be challenging but I think a lot more work goes into raids. You have to organize a lot of people and make sure they're all on the same page. Raids can also last as long as any LDoN romp will, so if you want to use a time factor to determine level of difficulty of raids compared to taking a group into a LDoN zone then consider that also.

I'm sorry but to me it's a kind of ridiculous to suggest that LDoN bosses should drop the same kind of loot as raid bosses. Sounds more like a case of casual gamers wanting the same rewards that raid guilds get only with less effort, and yes, I think that most LDoN zones will require less effort than a raid.

Zounds! Never thought I would side against casual gamers since I consider myself one. I guess there's a first time for everything. :mad:

<strong>You have to organize a lot of people and make sure they're all on the same page.</strong>

That takes care of one or two people out of 60. What about the other 58. Surely you're not contending that THEY'RE putting in anywhere near the same amount of effort? Or are you saying the raid organizers should get all the loot?

Comparable loot for comparable effort/risk, based on the average raid participant. The amount of risk to a single group from a doable but tough mob is more than the risk to the typical raid participant.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>What level of items are we talking about here anyway?[/quote]
If the difficulty/player of a single group encounter is identical to the difficulty/player of a raid encounter then the items should be comparable. However, the drop rate for the group encounter should be significantly lower since there are only six people. I am assuming that the level of the players in the raid/group are roughly equivalent and that the drops are geared to players of that level.

To give an extreme illustration, lets say there are two encounters. In one, a group limited to six has to take out a mob equivalent to Vindi. In the second, a raid with as many people who want to come has to take out a mob equivalent to Vindi. If you were in charge of itemizing the mobs in these encounters, would you itemize them identically?

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>It's not similar risk and not even similar effort, that's the point.[/quote]
You are making some big assumptions about how difficult single group encounters could be. Your entire argument seems to be that it is not possible to tune a single-group encounter such that the risk/player is equivalent to the risk/player on a large raid. That's absurd.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I think a lot more work goes into raids.[/quote]
Yeah, but most of that work is done by the raid leader(s), not by the average raider. The average raider does a heck of a lot less work.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Sounds more like a case of casual gamers wanting the same rewards that raid guilds get only with less effort[/quote]
/sigh

What is it that the average raider is doing that is demonstrative of their effort? How are you defining effort?

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>It's not similar risk and not even similar effort, that's the point.[/quote]

Since these instanced dungeons aren't live yet, we have no idea just how tough the encounters are, or will be. Also the tidbits that came out stated the rewards would be scaling, I got the impresion, that the instanced dungeons would be part of quests, going in do this dungeon, come back, given another task. Could be that you would have to do 20 or 30 tasks for this quest giver, before you get the prize. That kind of effort, depending on how hard each instance your asked to do, could easily, be more time consuming, and much riskier, then any raid enconter that is curantly live. As such, should be rewarded, on par, with a raid encounter.

Heh, Klath... I know exactly what you mean.

I have both lead raids and participated in them.

The effort in leading a raid can be fairly tremendous. There's a lot of research, thinking, planning, at least the way I did it. Organizing everyone... it's a lot to do.

The effort involved in attending a raid is enduring the monotony of waiting on everyone to show up, get buffed then follow orders and get to wherever you're going so you can either succeed or fail in the next few minutes. Some classes have a little more challenge in it, but there just isn't a whole lot other than having the ability to endure a lot of tedium.

No that's not absurd Klath. What's the risk to anyone if you want to split hairs? Death that can be res'ed? If you're going to argue there's equal risk to single group encounters as raids then I could just as easily argue there's no risk to anyone because ultimately we will always get our corpses back and usually the experience too. If you're going to accept the fact that there's indeed a risk factor at all it's going to weigh heavily on the raid side. One groupable mobs don't deserve to have raid type loot unless we're talking about very small raids. Try putting raid boss level loot on one groupable encounters and see how fast the economy takes a nosedive then. Besides the fact that it's just not logical since one group encounters can be challenging but they don't compare to a raid.

As far as how many people organize a raid...it's not just up to the leader. It's up to all the raiders to know their role and do what their supposed to do when they're suposed to do it. You don't see a cheal rotation in one group fights or most of the other strategic concerns that raids have. Everyone has to know their job and do it well.

Groups are pretty cut and dried. Especially for LDoN they will probably be constructed with the standard healer/tank/slower/crowd control. There's no guess work, no all encompassing strat to use. Everyone has a defined role and it's not going to vary a whole lot when you're going to try and take down a boss. Having lots of people and trying to organize them, as well as those people knowing their jobs and doing them correctly will always be > work and hassle involved with one group, if for no other reason than just sheer numbers.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Groups are pretty cut and dried.[/quote]

You're thinking of the typical experience grinding group. Pre-PoP, even Pre-Velious, people played much broader roles in groups. Clerics used their stuns extensively to prevent gating, they might even help with crowd control by rooting stuff. Rangers didn't just stand a football field away from the action plinking arrows, they were doing crowd control too, handling adds with root, snare, whatever.

Now people are so enmired in the typical experience grind they have absolutely no clue what fun a dungeon crawl can be. Where everyone has to be on their toes.

In a 60 person raid, you could have half your raid force watching TV while play, AFK, reading, whatever, and you'd probably never even be aware of it. In a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl, everyone has to be on their toes for every minute of it. Playing the full range of their character. Not a very narrow definition of their character's abilities that the game as been distilled into.

Maybe I'm spoiled, having played EQ for a lot of years before it turned into the Raid and Experience Grinding game. It used to involve fun dungeons and experiences that left you on the edge of your seat.

What is risk in the game? I think it's the same whether you're raiding or you're doing a dungeon. It's the risk of failing your goal at the expense of time spent getting to it. Obviously in PoP there is no risk of corpse loss or huge experience loss whether you're a raider or a grouper. It's just a loss of time.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Groups are pretty cut and dried. Especially for LDoN they will probably be constructed with the standard healer/tank/slower/crowd control.[/quote]

Once upon a time, groups were not as cut and dry as they are today. 90% of the time you didn't use a slower. Monks and rangers where tanks. And druids did crowd control, aswell as healing and nuking. That is something alot of people are hopeing the instanced dungeons will bring back, due to them being able to taylor the enconters to a groups lvl's and make up. Think outside of the box a bit, the possibilitys these instanced dungeons can bring, are endless.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Try putting raid boss level loot on one groupable encounters and see how fast the economy takes a nosedive then.[/quote]
There wouldn't be a flood of uber items because they would be NODROP and/or extremely rare.

In any case, we appear to be at an impasse here, Autumn, so it's probably best we just agree to disagree on this issue.

Panamah and Qwin -- I agree completely. I'd love it if there were more encounters where we'd actually get to play our classes to the hilt and live or die by how well we did it. All of the best times I've had in EQ have been in raids/groups of ten or fewer. I have very high hopes for LDoN and I'll be happy as a pig in feces if SOE delivers. :-)

After getting trained five times in 10 minutes in ChardokB tonight, instanced dungeons are looking better than ever.

To put it bluntly there is NO risk in raiding since there is ALWAYS a cleric and almost always a necro/SK if you need a summons. That is NOT the case with groups.

Klath and Panamah stated it perfectly. Raiding is about endurance and tedium. The game is set up to be one huge timesink and the designers decided near the end of Kunark that it would be easier to tie up 50 people raiding then single groups. They did that be requiring large amounts of people being thrown at targets and then itemized the game around those targets. So if you couldn't raid due to whatever reason you were SOL, with progressing in the game with items. This was truly came to a head in Luclin when the raid encounter mobs dropped significantly better items then single group content--same with Velious if you consider NTOV.

In any respect, that is how the game is designed. It is not about getting together with your mates and challenging yourself somewhere. It is about telling your mates (who are probably in different guilds) just how awesome you were killing RZ with 70 people.

Back in the pen and paper days when my D&D days came to an end because we all got married and moved to different places; we all said "wouldn't it be cool if some day we could all get together on the PC and play some." When I started EQ I thought that's how it would be, and it started out that way. Fast forward now to what we have. Can you imagine sitting down at the table with 70 of your best friends just to play--and then having to do it everyday for four hours or more a day? That's what the game has come to. That is neither challenging, intimate, gratifying or fun. Therefore, I don't play that way any longer (I used to be part of a raiding guild until I thought "what am I doing?"

Raid does not mean more risk more reward. It simply means timesinking more people concurrently thereby dragging out the game longer, creating longer term cash flow, utilizing less resources--by requiring less content creation.

If there's no risk to raids then there's no risk period Soulcraver. There's no ultimate risk in the game at all if you're going to argue that. You will always get your corpse back and most of the time your experience no matter what you're doing. That endurance and tedium(plus time) does indeed = risk, because if there's no real risk to our physical game bodies then those are the only factors left that could be regarded as risk.

If we say time = risk then raids are just as much if not more risk than an instanced dungeon. How much time will one of these dungeons take max? There are raids that last that long and if you fail on a raid then that's the same amount of time lost. Time = time, if you spend two hours on a raid and two hours in an instanced dungeon those two hours are the same time spent. But from what I read there will be dungeons that are shorter than that. In fact, in a lot of cases the time spent in a LDoN dungeon will be shorter than a raid. Less time spent should mean less risk and subsequently less reward if we go by time expenditure to determine risk.

In regards to having a summons and res on raids, you don't think you will have that in LDoN? Please. Nobody's corpse will rot, I guarantee it. The group will either have a res'er or someone that can summon corpse and if they don't then shame on you. That brings me to the point about group makeup. I don't see them breaking the standard group construction for LDoN. Even if you go in without one of those classes that can get your corpse back and/or res everyone knows someone that can come and perform those services for them, and if you don't then shame on you twice. That's if it's even necessary to do CR. I had heard talk about the dungeons maybe having GY's? If that's the case there would be absolutely NO risk to a LDoN dungeon.

I also doubt they will 'tailor' the experience as mush as people think. I don't think the technology will be there to make a dungoen THAT smart. I think you're blowing what they can or will do out of porportion. It's not a matter of being able to think out of the box, it's a matter of what they can physically code.

I didn't mean only experience groups when I said that Panamah but I do agree that groups can be challenging. Challenge and/or excitement doesn't necessarily equal risk though. I agree raids are a marathon of tedium a lot of times and not near as fun as old style grouping sometimes but that doesn't exactly translate into risk. If risk = time and effort than I don't see where an instanced dungeon would be any harder than a raid, or even as hard.

This isn't a matter of whether instanced dungeons are a good thing overall, there's no doubt that if they do it right LDoN will be great expansion. I love the concept and can't wait for it because I too long for a good old-fashioned dungeon crawl. But on the issue of items being included that are on the same level as raid stuff(depending on the type of raid) I just don't agree.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I'd love it if there were more encounters where we'd actually get to play our classes to the hilt and live or die by how well we did it.[/quote]

Singing to the choir now but yeah! In fact, I think a lot of the class imbalance issues we have are because there are so few instances any longer where we get to play our classes in a broad manner. The utility and swiss-knifeness of the Druids is pretty handy in dungeons. I remember a time when no one would venture to certain places without an evac'r, snarer. Having someone that can invis you too was pretty useful.

Imagine if in LDoN you have a TPW and that ends your instance. Yuck! No retries. But if you could evac to a safe point in your instance.... you might not want to venture to a dungeon without a druid or wizard!

Well, Autumn, I don't think you're gonna see our point of view any time soon and I know I won't be seeing yours. So we might as well call it an impasse. Some people just love raiding I guess, and dungeon crawling or grouping isn't going to be their cup of tea. Though you can try to explain to me how raiding the same stuff over and over and farming loot and keys is exciting. The only time I ever enjoyed raids much was if it was the first time or two raiding in a zone or if I was leading the raid. Even then, I didn't necessarily enjoy leading the raid, but it kept me from boredom which is infinitely worse.

Small scale raids I don't mind in fact I think they're fun, but the raiding scale has gotten all out of whack IMHO. Probably for exactly the reason Soulcarver said. It's a relatively cheap to keep dozens of people tied up raiding 1 mob, than entertaining them 6 at a time.

You'll notice how the bosses have gotten progressively stingier over each expansion. If a boss mob drops 2 pieces of loot and takes 70 people to kill, you can keep them repeating that content all that much longer. Ick! What a recipe for boredom. How do you do that without going unconscious?

Raid by Sealy(R) zzzZZZZzzzZZZZzzzzZZZ

THIS ISN'T ABOUT RAIDS VS. DUNGEONS CRAWLS! GAH! Look at my last paragraph please. I enjoy dungeon crawls a lot. I never said I was a big supporter of raids per se, I just don't think raid type loot should be gotten from a one groupable encounter.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>THIS ISN'T ABOUT RIADS VS. DUNGEONS CRAWLS! GAH! Look at my last paragraph please. I enjoy dungeon crawls a lot. I never said I was a big supporter of raids per se, I just don't think raid type loot should be gotten from a one groupable encounter.[/quote]

Ok. We've countered your every argument.

You said it wasn't the same risk vs reward. We pointed out there's the same risk, or greater, inherent in dungeon crawling as in raiding. The risk of death is not really a risk in EQ at high levels. I think we pretty much have a concensus there. It is more a risk of failure against investment of time. That holds true for raids and groups. The risk of failure in raids is certainly there, but if you fail, just recruit more people and try new tactics. Certainly in a dungeon setting, there's a large risk of failure. You don't have the luxury of recruiting more people. If you can't do it with 6, you can't do it.

Look how many people took dozens of times to succeed in the Plane of Justice trials. They couldn't just throw more people at it.

You sort of implied that raiding took more skill, but most of us are pretty unconvinced of that. Most of us raid too and I've been in darned few raids that took anywhere near the skill of being in a group challenged by their environment for 95% of the people attending the raid. I've done all the raids for PoP keys that let you into new tier 2-3 zones. In fact, I led them, organized them, etc.

If you think there should be a similar investment of time, well there's ways to do that with the loot trade-up scheme that I outlined. You don't necessarily walk away with the best loot in the game after completing one dungeon. That would be silly.

You argued that groups are cut and dried, meaning I think simple and easier than raiding. Well, that one got shot down pretty soundly. If you mean, formulaic as in:

1 tank, healer(s), crowd controllers, evac'r, others

Then yes. But that's a pretty generic recipe that we seem to have needed in dungeon settings since we all reached level 20 or so. But there's a lot of room there for variations.

Are you implying that raids don't have a formula of class make-up for success? I don't see many raids that don't have requirements for healers, defensive/evasive warriors, nukers, slowers, certain buffs, etc. Not quite sure how this argument really supports your case.

Finally, saying that Raid Loot should be greater than one group loot is such a huge blanket generalization. There's a lot of 1 group loot that is better than raid loot now. Is there anything in Velious or even before VT in Luclin that would replace the FT 3 boots for most casters found in CT? (Could be, in Luclin, but I'm no expert on Luclin loot).

Should epic weapons be one-groupable? They are now. We did my friend's beastlord epic with just 2 people playing 6 characters. :) There are old raid targets all over the place that are one-groupable now. Even soloable by some classes.

Should quest armor be one-groupable? It is. Got most of my shammies armor through one group Halls of Testing effort, even before PoP came out. There again, it was 2 people playing 6 characters. Was a lot of fun! Even the single-group wing bosses in BoT drop upgrades to what used to be raid armor.

I can't tell you how many slots on my person where I've changed out raid-acquired loot for single group loot.

So exactly what scale of loot are we talking about here?

Engarde! Defend your argument, Autumn! ;)

Time = risk then. I'll take that challenge up.

How much time are you actually fighting in a raid situation Vs. waiting for people, moving, prep? In that time that you are actually fighting are your skill sets that each class has diluted down by sheer numbers or not? Is clearing trash mobs in a raid setting challenging when 40 people are whacking it and you have NO chance of dying Vs. in a group setting when the same mob could result in death?

On the Afterlife board Thott talks about Luclin encounters and raids that are mind numbingly long and have NO chance of wiping your raid. It is just an excercise in stamina. Should that time invested yeild equal rewards as a single group that inherently does not have all the wear with all that a raid party has yield the same? If it takes my group party 4 hours to reach a boss mob in a dungeon and another 15 min to kill him and every member's abilities are stretched to the limit Vs a raid that takes the same amount of time to kill said boss mob who has more wear with all because of total numbers--should they receive the same reward as us?

Fact is I don't really care if the hard core raiders get the best items in the game. Due to RL I don't have the luxury of sitting and playing EQ 4 hours at a time. I have 2 hours at a time at most and many days squeeze in 4 hours a day -- just like the daily raiders.. However, their rewards are 5 times mine. Is that risk (i.e. time) invested by me any less than the 4 hour per day raider?

What most of us (us being people that would rather one group crawl Vs 50+ man raid) want loot that is 80% of what you raiders get. that makes us competitive and gives the raiders the title of having the best. In certain situations that is attainable, but the mobs that drop that are few and far between, drop rarely, and are competitively camped.

All in all it doesn't matter. I'll continue to have as much fun as I can squeeze out of this game until WoW comes out then hopefully Mythica is as good as it looks then I'll be moving on.

You got me so bent out of shape I spelled raids wrong in that quote. I went back and edited it to reflect the correct spelling, hehe.

I'm done arguing about this issue, it's a dead horse at this point. I will say that you indeed have NOT countered every point of mine, rather I have countered every one of yours Panamah. Nothing you or the others have said shot anything of mine down. You failed to prove that groupable mobs deserve to have the same loot as raid mobs. I can't believe it's even an argument. If you're going to put raid type loot on groupable mobs then why don't we just go ahead and put it on soloable mobs too, using your warped logic there's got to be soloable mobs that are as risky as a groupable mob. Hell, why not moss snakes too?

I'm done with the whole thing because you just don't get it and never will. A lot of people I know, and even SoE, agree with me though and that's what counts.

It must be great being you and always being right, Autumn.

Just because someone does something or someone agrees with you doesn't make it right. I dont even want full raid type loot on one or two groupable mobs. Although what took a raid force a year ago can now be done by one group and that is fun to me.

Most of us don't even want loot equal to what is gotten in a raid but want equipment that is a close percentage to what you could get for our long hours of play and trouble.

I guess that something you and your friends will never get and something me and those like me agree with so I guess I'm right and that's all that matters P

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I'm done with the whole thing because you just don't get it and never will. A lot of people I know, and even SoE, agree with me though and that's what counts. [/quote]

I guess if you just keep saying it over and over it must be true.

Autumn retires from the field in disarray. Panamah wins.

<em>end zone dance</em>

I could say the same thing back to you Soulcraver. Just because you think or say something doesn't make it right and because someone else doesn't agree with you doesn't make them wrong. But in this case I am indeed right because SoE agrees with me and it's their game(especially when you consider the popularity of Everquest). They must know a little bit about what they're doing.

Panamah's the only one leaving the field in disarray on this issue Scirocco. She failed miserably in proving that raid type loot should be on one groupable mobs so that means <strong>I WIN!</strong> *does the TRUE victory dance in the end zone*

<em>*ponders* I could let him have the last word, but that would be so unlike me</em>

Her? I'm not a her. :mad:

Oops, sorry. Only Autumn's I've ever known were females.

By the way, I posted in your other thread. Seems to me we might just be off on our degrees of 'effort erasure' but I don't know. Read it and maybe it will clarify my point a little more if I wasn't clear enough here. Or don't if it doesn't matter. *shrug* :p

There must be a lack of reading comprehension on both sides then because you don't seem to be reading and understanding what I'm writing.

1. You contended with me that the only risk to the game now is "time" and by that raid encounters deserve to have better loot.

2. I said if we both put in the same time to get to a boss mob that is equally hard for a single group or raid (comparatively speaking) that we should get similar rewards.

3. In fact I really said I don't want equal reward but something on the order of 75-80% of what the raider gets so no I don't want everything the hard core raider gets.

4. You can't set the playing field like you did and then when you are pounded with the gauntlet then just say, SOE agrees with me and it's their game so neaner neaner when we are in a debate of what is right and wrong and what is desired Vs what is reality. Conversely, I would say you've done nothing to prove your point succesfully given your criteria but to each his own.

You're right and its their game they can do what they want with it. DAoC can do the same but if you don't do it right and/or dont listen to your customer base you'll find yourself not making money. Up until this point this hasn't been a problem for EQ because of lack of competition but this is changing. Therefore, it is very important at this stage of the game to get it right.

IMO, by listening to the powergamers and producing ever rising, ever powerful boss mobs to contend with they have effectively put a cap and an end to the top tier game. What is beyond actually fighting the gods themselves that have created everything? What justification could there be to creating better loot than in the ultimate plane of existance? They'll probably do it but will be lame, IMO because there will be "truly" no justification for it.

Listen, that sound you hear is the vacuum created by 15% of their player base that is gonna leave very soon because they have "beat the game". Ooops and there is nothing for the other 50-60% of the game's population to do since they won't be going to elementals and definitely not Time in the first place. And with the crap itemization and the only goal for the game now is to take 60 people to kill a boss mob you see what being "right" is all about.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>By the way, I posted in your other thread. Seems to me we might just be off on our degrees of 'effort erasure' but I don't know. Read it and maybe it will clarify my point a little more if I wasn't clear enough here. Or don't if it doesn't matter. *shrug*[/quote]

Ok, just don't resort to pffft'ing otherwise I might have to neener.

Should be good for a laugh.. ;)

<a href="http://pub149.ezboard.com/fthedruidsgrovefrm22.showMessage?topicID=66.topic" target="top">Poll</a>

It's not just a matter of time, that's the point. There's also effort and difficulty of mob like I stated. If it was a matter of only time then you could make a case for raid type loot on mobs it takes a long time to solo also.

I also think I did prove my point and met the criteria but if you don't think so there's apparently nothing I can do to change your mind. Right or wrong you're in a corner and will fight your way out regardless. :p

Your side didn't bring any real proof to the table to justify giving raid type loot to one groupable mobs. I stated my views and if you choose to just summarily dimiss them then there's not much I can about that either.

SoE's say does matter though. It's their game and if they thought it wise and balancing to put raid type loot on one groupable mobs they would, or they would leave any mobs alone that were set up to do that instead of nerfing them, which they have done.

I think the time element negates itself because both types of encounters will use it and in some cases the same amount. I just think there's a difference in effort and difficulty between one group encounter mobs and raid mobs. I think it was you that mentioned the fact that it takes 70 people to do a raid(not really that many in most cases but I get your point). Why do you think it does? An encounter shouldn't be cheapened by that fact, just the opposite. There's a reason why it takes that many people because the mobs are indeed HARDER than one groupable ones. That's why I think raiders should get better loot for their efforts than a group, time investment being the same.

If you want to make a case for loot that's 75% to 80% comparable to raid stuff I could maybe see that but it better be a hell of a challenge. The PoJ trials were hard as hell(at least to me) but do I think that loot deserves to be as good as raid mob loot? Nope. I said in another thread that time was to me the biggest factor in risk BUT with it being the same in either a raid or one groupable encounter and thus cancelling itself out as a factor then I think you fall back on effort, and especially difficulty. That being said I think that's the sticking point here.

Going back to the PoJ trials. Would anyone here say those mobs(even the boss) were particularly hard? I should hope not. What made that hard was the speed/DPS factor needed. Remember it's the mob dropping the loot, not the encounter. To me harder mob > less hard mob(which would be how I would categorize a one groupable type), and since I believe that better loot should be handed out based on difficulty and effort with time commitment being the same(and thus negated) that's why I think that raid mobs should drop the better loot.

I responded in the other thread not about risk. I think it pretty clearly states what I think. But lets's take Behemoth encounter. When I was in my past guild we failed the first time. All subsequent times we kicked his ass.

What is tough is the encounter and NOT the mob. We kill behemoth in like 45 sec to min. It's the adds that make the encounter tough. So no I think you don't prove your point. Same with AD and Terris. Neither mob really tough but conquering the encounter is the challenge. Should killing behemoth in 45 sec yield the kind of loot that he does? Are the adds that crap out to be controlled in and of themselves tough? The answer to both are no but taken in total yes.

Thus you can create encounters that challenge without infinitely scaling mob HP and damage.........

Soulcraver out...................................

Well when I say mob that includes the other factors surrounding it but yes indeed a lot of it has to do with the mob itself and it's level. I do think I proved my point but we're just going round and round now so we might as well just agree to disagree.

I love dragons!

<em>Just thought I'd help you derail the thread further.</em>

This might be unfair but...


Given that you can scale effort, time and difficulty of acquiring raid level loot to groups, which I believe is possible;
I suspect the unspoken reason behind not wanting single groups acquiring raid level loot is that there's a certain cachet for being in an raiding guild. If just anyone could earn nice loot and not belong to a large raiding guild to get it, your status would take a tumble. You might not be the first to link your loot to serverwide.druids and hear all the grats.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I love dragons![/quote]

They wuv you too! 'specially with a little ketchup... bet you're crunchy.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>They wuv you too! 'specially with a little ketchup... bet you're crunchy.[/quote]

My Iksar is scaley/crunchy.

The halflings toe hair just gets stuck in their teeth, thus I take off my booties around dragons.

They don't bother with the enchanter.....High Elves aren't a meal.....too skinny.

So........watch out Iksars! Poor Yyevil....he' such dragon bait.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> I do think I proved my point but we're just going round and round now so we might as well just agree to disagree. [/quote]

I don't quite see it that way.

How about trying to answer this. Maybe we're just asking the wrong questions.

If you could scale an encounter or series of encounters for 6 people that was as time consuming and difficult to succeed at as a typical boss mob is for 60 people, would you agree that they should acquire equivalent loot at the same rate?

If not, why?

i'd say no, but i'm looking in terms of overall man hours.

lets just use a 3 hour raid as an example

60 people x 3 hours = 180 man hours
6 people x 3 hours = 18 man hours

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>60 people x 3 hours = 180 man hours
6 people x 3 hours = 18 man hours[/quote]

That makes no sense whatsoever.

Each person is still only putting in 3 hours!

The TIME of an individual in a 30 person raid is NO MORE valuable that the 6 people crawling together through a dungeon in the old world.

The "in game" risk is HIGHER in the old world if you wipe. No GY to recover your sorry corpse and who said your single 6 person group even has a cleric to rez?

This argues SO much for the instanced dungeons of LDoN.

My 3 hours are JUST as vaulable as yours, but I chose to live my time in Norrath among those who are like me. Mostly casual. I did spend 20 hours this weekend raiding various places with my guild and working on epic quests. My bet is that most people didn't spend much more than that raiding with their uber guilds. Is their time more valuable than mine or my guilds? The obvious answer is not only no, but HECK NO! It's just silly to suggest otherwise.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>60 people x 3 hours = 180 man hours
6 people x 3 hours = 18 man hours[/quote]

Bzzzt. Wrong. That's a horrible way of looking at it. The encounter took 3 hours. Period. The number of people thrown at the encounter is what you should really consider. I don't understand why you think that if a mob takes 60 people, you should get better loot than a mob that takes 6 people.

I've done large raids before and they are BORING. They are NOT that hard to do. More bodies thrown at the mob makes it easier, not harder. I think it's ridiculous the amoung of people that think they are better than everyone else because they're in a guild that throws 40+ people at encounters.

I have more respect for the people like Panamah that enjoy the single group content than those that worship and praise the uber goober raids of 40+ people. I think a group of six people that work their butts off for three hours should get more rewards than 60 people that sat on their butts for 2 hours and 45 minutes and spent 15 minutes actually doing something in the game to kill one mob.

I went to NToV recently... if they toned down the mobs and their AE's it'd be a great dungeon crawl. Instead it's a massive time sink of trash mobs and the occiasonal named mobs. The most fun I had there was Aary and only because we had something like eight or so chickens add halfway through. Was a blast fighting the smaller dragons in and around Aary, beneath his wings... charging to the rescue of the casters that got a couple chickens in their midst.

Now that was fun. Aary by himself? Long, boring fight where the tank constantly yells, "PUSH, PIN, PUSH, PIN, over and over". The most fun I've had with a single group... crawling Veksar for the first time and fighting four or five mobs at a time. I'm a rogue and not really used to tank mezzing but it was fun. And some of those mobs are near pop-level in difficulty.

LDoN sounds like the best thing ever to happen to EQ and I hope they add the so called "raid level" loot to the dungeons. Single group encounters that challenge the group are far harder than massive raid targets. Those are just a test of who has more time and organizational skills.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>LDoN sounds like the best thing ever to happen to EQ and I hope they add the so called "raid level" loot to the dungeons. Single group encounters that challenge the group are far harder than massive raid targets. Those are just a test of who has more time and organizational skills.[/quote]

Amen!

True!

Perfect!

Wish I had said it!

Feanan, your thinking seems flawed. If you throw 70 people at the same encounter then it's 210 hours... If you throw 200 people at it it's 600 man hours. I don't think that's a valid measure of difficulty.

Obviously not every person on the 60 person raid walks away with a piece of loot from that 3 hour encounter. Maybe you'll get what, 6 pieces? So over the course of a week and a half of raiding (lets say 30 hours of playing) you'll probably end up with a new piece of loot. Sound about right?

So, given that the difficulty of the encounter can be scaled to 6 people, and those 6 people put in 30 hours of work, should they not be rewarded loot-wise similarly to the 60 people?

Certainly in real life a poor person can buy a Beamer, it just takes them longer.

Swiftfox, that poll is just classic. =)

My hope for LDoN is very much in line with what Panamah, and Soulcraver, and many others have voiced.

I am a bit amazed at how entrenched some folks have become in the whole raiding with 80 is tougher than a 6 man group line of thought....and how wrong they really are.

PoJ trials in early PoP was an excellent example of this. Even a full group of level 60 players who brought their A game wound up sitting in the gy on occasion.

ok everybody jokes over now, you <strong>have</strong>got to be kidding. Lets put RAID level loot on a GROUPABLE mob? Sure, fine, maybe if the RAID is 3 or so groups of 50's, and the group is 6 65's. Oh wait that already happens (see velious content.) I figure thats what you mean, but no that already hapens. So what do you mean, do you mean things like ELEMENTAL loot, do you mean things that are currently on raids of 72 people ? Please, don't say thats what you mean. Please say you don't want a group of 6 people looting something like This (http://lucy.fnord.net/item.html?id=25989) little doozy.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>So what do you mean, do you mean things like ELEMENTAL loot, do you mean things that are currently on raids of 72 people ? Please, don't say thats what you mean. Please say you don't want a group of 6 people looting something like This little doozy.[/quote]

Please read this entire thread. Every single one of your questions is answered in earlier posts.

I saw 'items worth the time spent'.. i didn't see any specific level of loot, but like i said, it gave me a headache =(

Actually, I do think single groupable mobs should be capable of dropping Blade of War, Ifir, Dagger of Distraction, etc. quality loot. The sheer idiocy that you and your cronies are better than casual gamers because you can spend more time in the game throwing larger numbers of people at the content is ridiculous.

If a dungeon challenges a single group of the appropriate level and gear sufficiently, then yes, there should be the so called "raid quality" loot in that dungeon. Two hours of danger filled, adrenaline pumping dungeon crawling takes a helluva lot more skill than two hours of raiding. The only skills needed for raiding is the ability to show up on time, have the time available, and be able to listen. Oh, and push a few buttons every now and then.

Whereas in a challenging dungeon crawl you are forced to think on your feet and know your role in the group backwards and forwards. You have to know the capabilities of each person in your group and trust them to know what they're doing as well.

LDoN finally gives the developers the ability to restrict the content of entire dungeon to one group. This allows them to design them to be crawled. A lot of dungeons are horribly set up for the camping style of play and I hate that.

It sucks to go to a dungeon, to try and crawl it, but be forced to endure the cries of camp checks... and suffer the indignity and annoyance of your goal being pharmed by some lame ass uber that just wants to make some quick platinum.

lol, please, don't get me wrong, i'm not an advocate of large raiding. i definately think it takes more personal skill to do small group stuff, where larger raids are more leadership trials. And mostly boring too :) Its why my eq play time has collapsed since my guild hit PoT. *yawn*

The whole loot issue really depends on verant, and if they want to do away with raiding in general, and an awful lot of guilds in the process. Unfortunetly, its verant that keeps ramping up the ammount of people required for raids. Just look at all the time guilds recruiting, and saying you pretty much need a full raid for most of it. But pre-time, raid sizes tended to be in the 50's. I don't think i've ever met a single person who enjoys a 72 person raid.

I mean, really, why would i take 50 ppl to kill fennin over X ammount of hours to get a Ifir, if i could just go into a dungeon with 5 others and get the same?

It also has to do with the ammount of loot coming into the game. As it stands, there might be one Ifir entering a server per week, if fennin even drops it. What are you going to have if you can get one with a single group? 20 a day? 100 a day?

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
If a dungeon challenges a single group of the appropriate level and gear sufficiently, then yes, there should be the so called "raid quality" loot in that dungeon.
[/quote]

Are you aware of how things turned out when they did exactly this in Marauders Mire on Stormhammer?

SOE is, which is why that zone never made it to mainstream servers.

Soru

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I mean, really, why would i take 50 ppl to kill fennin over X ammount of hours to get a Ifir, if i could just go into a dungeon with 5 others and get the same?[/quote]
You're assuming you could just waltz in there, whack a few mobs, get your drop and leave. I don't think anyone has suggested that drops should be made that common or trivial to acquire -- I know I certainly didn't. If the chance that a particular person would get an item was identical whether they were on a raid or in a group on an instanced crawl, the person in the group might have to make quite a few trips before getting their drop. For example, if your chances of getting an uber-item on a raid are one in sixty (because of competition for the item from your fellow raiders) then it would make sense to make your chances of getting the drop in a one person group one in sixty. That would mean that the mob would only even drop the item one in ten times. If it takes two to three hours to make the crawl then that's a good chunk of time invested. Further, in order to get a key to the dungeon that drops the item, you may have to complete several other dungeon quests.

It would be really cool if the algorithms SOE used for populating the dungeon instances in LDoN would take into account the gear/inventory of the raiders. This would allow them to make the encounters more difficult for folks with better gear. It would also allow them to scale the drops accordingly. For example, if a group equipped in Time gear entered and was challenged to the limit of their abilities and gear, they might be awarded gear that was even better than what they had. I haven't considered the ramifications of this but, at least on the surface, it seems like scaling the drops along with the encounter would do a lot to appease the ubers who feel as though they are being left out of this expansion.

If in LDoN it takes 100 hours to get something equal to the Blade of War (and is lore No Drop) and the completion of 30 dungeons, then it should be available to anyone willing to spend the 100 hours getting it. Be those 100 hours spread over 3 months for a casual gamer or 5 days for the person who has the time to do nothing but play EQ.

YOUR time is no more valuable than mine in game!

We should have the same loot available to us over the same amount of hours spent to acquire the item!

YOUR time is no more valuable than mine!

Do I need to repeat it?

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Actually, I do think single groupable mobs should be capable of dropping Blade of War, Ifir, Dagger of Distraction, etc. quality loot. The sheer idiocy that you and your cronies are better than casual gamers because you can spend more time in the game throwing larger numbers of people at the content is ridiculous.
[/quote]
I'm a casual gamer, not a raider.

I cannot agree with your statement Stewwy and I'm sure most economists would agree with me.

Time now is worth more than time later. A person putting in 100 hours over 5 days has put in a greater investment than a person putting in 100 hours over 3 months. That's 20 hours a day vs. about 1 hour a day. The person doing it in 5 days has given up sleep, food, social life, greater stres etc... and deserves a greater reward.

I would certainly agree with you if there were an interest rate of sorts. A person doing 100 hours in 5 days would be equivalent of a person doing 130 hours in 3 months (I'm just making up these numbers).

This is coming from a casual 65 druid that rarely ever raids.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>A person putting in 100 hours over 5 days has put in a greater investment than a person putting in 100 hours over 3 months.[/quote]

A person putting in 100 hours over five days <em>definitely</em> needs to get out more.

I don't really think you can successfully build a game like EverQuest using RL models for the economy to measure things like what we call "risk" and "reward". It's a game and meant to stir up emotional responses, so people react to it emotionally rather than analytically. You need to study risk and reward in games by using sociological models. Like using a chimp, a bee-hive and a bunch of ripe bananas. Will the chimp risk getting stung to grab the bananas? What if the bee-hive is just a fake one? What if the bananas aren't real (but smell real)? Then measure the amount of pleasure the chimp gets from eating the banana. Did the banana taste better when he was stung by several bees? Or did the pleasure centers of his brain explode with delight when he eeked a banana past the bee-hive without getting stung? Or did getting stung cause the chimp to avoid bananas in the future? Did the chimp strangle a zookeeper when he finds out the fake-bananas are rubber? What will happen if a troop of Bonobos runs past the chimp, kills all the bees and takes the whole thing of bananas? If the chimp spends 10 minutes a day trying to get a banana and it takes him 10 days to get it, or if he spends 100 consecutive minutes trying to get a banana, which method of acquiring the banana, if any, will make the chimp feel more accomplishment?

Oops, wrong thread. But kind of going in the same direction as the other one.

Well, considering Stew's post up above. They kind of merged for a second.

I say leave it in both.

Yeah, this is not really economics but it still stands.

The interest rate thing was sort of a joke, but there are already inklings of that in the game (quest flags that take longer to do vs. a raid flag - and those quest flags SHOULD be equivalent to raid flags but that's for other threads, kinda like this discussion, haha).

What I was saying was that raid vs casual time isn't really a 1 to 1 ratio of effort and the rewards should not be equal (per time unit that is).

The problem with EQ for casuals is that the casual play person cannot get those raid level items no matter how much casual time they put in because those items are attainable by raid forces only (for the most part) that require raid time investments (which are in blocks).

Edit: Sorry for derailing :(

Umm, if nobody has said it yet, I think Emerald Jungle should be revamped. No loot on mobs - was empty even when Kunark was at it's peak. Only time I saw people there were people running to TT/COM or people on a Sev raid.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>You need to study risk and reward in games by using sociological models[/quote]
I agree. I recall in an earlier thread someone comparing EQ to a Skinner Box. I really can't think of a more apt analogy. EQ is frought with reinforcers and punishers. Edit: I found <a href="http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/skinner.html" target="top">this link</a> which sums this up quite nicely.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>What will happen if a troop of Bonobos runs past the chimp, kills all the bees and takes the whole thing of bananas? [/quote]
That's a trick question. Bonobos would be too tired from screwing to run past the chimp.

Ah ha! I see someone knows their primates! The chimp would PWN!!!!111! the troop of Bonobos because, as you said, they'd be too tired to fight back. Besides, they're lovers, not fighters.

<span style="color:yellow;font-family:century gothic;font-size:xx-small;">I hope I'm reincarnated as a Bobobo!</span>

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Besides, they're lovers, not fighters.[/quote]
SOE missed an opportunity for another tradeskill.

Well, this has been a lively debate!

<span style="color:#ddffdd;font-size:xx-small;">Raids suck! Uber guilds suck! Plane of Time loot on Orcs! Absor owns a ducking horse. Message to DUCK: We need more thought control sattelites. If this message doesn't actually appear invisible I'm going to look very silly.</span>

The analogy is wrong using time value.

You transposed it. The original was "the value of a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow", which is true. Therefore you lead to the inevitable conclusion that time is money.

This would be true if EQ involved money as it does in the work place. This is not work though and applying that analogy to it is faulty.

Most of what you're talking about is opportunity cost which isn't the same. If you choose not to sleep or eat that is the opportunity cost of playing for that period of time. If you go so far as to play in place of work, thereby deteriorating your economic stability then I guess your analogy would have some merit. However, I submit if that is case then there are greater problems then coming up with a definition like this.

The opportunity cost for the player that takes 30 days Vs the 5 days for the hardcore gamer is that he will not be adequately prepared for higher end content sooner. He will then fall further behind the power curve more and more thereby further increasing his time to acquire higher end pixel objects. That's his cost and he accepts that (i.e. in the same RL time you are wielding an emperor sword and he is wielding a lammy).

The problem is, how the game is designed if you can't sit your ass down for say 4+ hours per day in a single session you don't even have the opportunity to advance to the levels that the person who can does. Many times I play 3-4 hours per day but in two different sessions (very early and late). I log in the same kind of hours required to be in a high end guild, but simply because I can't concurrently sit for 4 hours I'm screwed out of the high end. That's where the chasm for many of us is. That's where you see people who put in great time and effort and are not getting rewarded for are bitching.

I put my play time in game terms and over RL days played next to many people I know yet they have WAY better equipment than me. Is that equitable? That's what we are talking about. Time in= effort rewarded correlated to mob encounters and party composition. When that is solved EVERYONE, the power gamer included will be happy. Instanciated dungeons measuring the PL of the party, puts out a challenge level and reward to meet that includes: (1) time to overcome (2) number of mobs (3) mob placement (4) mob strength (5) Unique abilities (6) and any quest related aspects that further increase the difficulty and time to acquire items of value.

That allows the ubers to become more uber and be more uber faster and longer than his less playing counter parts. AND allows that close knit group of friends who doesn't want to be have to log on at a specific time everyday, everday of the week to eventually (if diligent and skilled) have the same opportunity at loot as the uber. Everyone is happy or should be. If you contend that certain people should never have the opportunity of having very high end loot because they can not sit for long periods of time constantly; thereby aren't "paying" for their rewards--then I further submit you take this "game" and yourself and your fantasy accomplishments much too seriously.

Alyssia you can't even comment objectively because you are totally anti-raider. If you think that stuff like Ifir should drop off a one groupable mob then you're nuts. Let's keep this conversation based at least somewhere close to reality.

There are certain parameters that I have mentioned before where you might have a case of raid type loot in LDoN. Like if it took mutiple dungeon excursions, or a series of PoJ trial type encounters in one dungeon. But to say you deserve and Ifir just for marching through a 60-90 minute dungeon and killing the boss at the end with one group smacks of insanity.

I'm sorry but one group encounters in Everquest also get relegated to punching buttons, just like the encounters in ANY computer game, that's how you play them. But you do indeed have to know your role in a raid just like a one group encounter. In fact, at least in a one group encounter they're usually more well-defined and thus easier to grasp.

There's no idiocy here on the part of raiders(at least none that I have seen). Anybody that says ubers are better than casuals will have shown their ignorance and don't deserve to be heard anyway. I will defend any casual gamer's right to good items and experience in the game. But there comes a time when you have to balance things based on time, effort, and difficulty. In other words, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Sorry. :( I've seen it said before here and I'll say it again: if you're more into the roleplaying aspect then Everquest isn't the game for you Alyssia. You aren't going to get that feel of a pen and paper game, if you want that then you should go play an actual pen and paper game.

Nykor: you can't even have 80 people on a raid, and most guilds don't use anywhere near that many except for a few zerg ones. I'm also not entrenched in anything but you are when you say that raids are not harder than one group encounters. Oh how wrong you are. If you fail in a one group encounter that's six people's time lost. If you fail in a raid that's dozens.

Panamah: you are so off about me caring about status, I mean WAY OFF. LOL! I didn't even have a Magelo profile until a couple months ago, and that's just for my guild to keep track. I don't post my loot to anyone and haven't gotten a piece of loot in months(my guild uses an officer award system and I haven't put my name in to be considered for a LONG time).

<strong>Panamah: you are so off about me caring about status, I mean WAY OFF. LOL! I didn't even have a Magelo profile until a couple months ago, and that's just for my guild to keep track. I don't post my loot to anyone and haven't gotten a piece of loot in months(my guild uses an officer award system and I haven't put my name in to be considered for a LONG time). </strong>

I admit, your reasons might be different. You might actually just enjoy raids. I do too, on some occassions, like when an encounter is new to me.

But I think many people, even some of the ones here have admitted, the reason they're in raiding guilds is because that's the only way they can improve their characters at this point. They're stuck with it. It isn't the way they would prefer to play. I personally know there's a lot of people that enjoy having the best loot and getting it before their buddies do.

<strong>I'm sorry but one group encounters in Everquest also get relegated to punching buttons, just like the encounters in ANY computer game, that's how you play them. But you do indeed have to know your role in a raid just like a one group encounter. In fact, at least in a one group encounter they're usually more well-defined and thus easier to grasp.</strong>

I think that's your lack of experience with single group of encounters speaking. If you haven't done much dungeoning since your early levels, as you admitted before, then you really haven't spent much time in dungeons since before CT was revamped, then you can't be in a very good position to evaluate what such encounters can entail. Anyone that has been doing dungeon crawling throughout their EQ career can tell you the rolls you play are far broader in single-group dungeoning than raiding. Certainly if you're comparing dungeoning to the boring experience grinds that became standard faire in Luclin and PoP then you're really missing the background to evaluate what a single group experience is like.

Good heavens, talk to enchanters and clerics and shammies who have spent time in dungeons and ask them whether they're more challenged in single-group dungeon crawls or raiding. When my cleric was my main I was utterly bored to tears on raids. I know my friend hated playing his enchanter on raids. But we both enjoyed dungeon crawling because it was far more unpredictable and we both played much broader and more active roles in groups.

Anyway, I think you'll find yourself eating your words when LDoN comes out, unless they totally botch the expansion. If they learned anything from PoJ trials and successfully apply it to LDoN, then I think you're going to find that playing EQ in a group is a lot more difficult than raiding.

I have played since the game went live. The experience grind bores ME to tears so raids are where I get most of my enjoyment now. I still think it's an accomplishment to keep progressing through the tiers and kill more difficult mobs, even if it's with more than 6 people. :mad:

I never said I didn't have experience in dungeons, I just didn't care for them so I stayed away from them more than most people probably but that doesn't mean I still didn't adventure in them extensively given all the time I've been playing this game. If you wanted loot you pretty much HAD to do dungeons. So yes, I am in a position to evaluate what goes on in them, what they entail, and their potential. I really don't see this 'broader' role thing. Groups are more well-defined than raids even. I guarantee that I have had more roles in raids than any dungeon crawl.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Anyway, I think you'll find yourself eating your words when LDoN comes out, unless they totally botch the expansion. [/quote]

There's really no words to eat! I stated before that one group encounters can be challenging and I'm hoping that LDoN will live up to the hype. Taking out all the negatives like trains, ks'ing, etc. will be a huge boon for dungeon crawling. I can't wait to see it. :)

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Groups are more well-defined than raids even. I guarantee that I have had more roles in raids than any dungeon crawl.[/quote]

Would you like cream and sugar with your words? :)

I would say druids might not see that quite as much as other classes. Certainly being a cleric on a raid is a very, very narrowly defined role. You heal, that's all. Substantially narrower than in a group challenged by their environment. Same with being an enchanter or shammy. Enchanters are quite often bored out of their minds on raids. PoP made raids better for chanters. Shammies, with things being unslowable and completely resistant to poisons and often diseases, you're relegated to buffing primarily. Rangers are relegated to plinking arrows from a long distance versus doing some crowd control and pulling.

Agreed, experience grinding is usually boring. I'm as burnt out on that as I am on raids. But I'm not talking about experience grinding.

How so? What I meant was that single groups are cut and dried, a term I've used before. :p I think there's more roles in a raid and therefor I was debunking what you said about single group members having broader roles and thus groups being harder or more challenging. I think it's actually easier when you have a well-defined role like you do im most groups. Of course there will be exceptions. :)

I think I've already explained, but I'll do again.

Clerics role on raid: Heal the MT, maybe your group, if not a tight cheal chain.
Clerics role on dungeon crawl: Heal the MT and the off-tanks and your group, root park adds, stun casters, cure poisons and diseases and slow.

Shammies on raids: Buff, slow if things aren't unslowable, dot if they aren't totally resistant.
Shammies on dungeon crawl: Buff, slow, backup heals, root parking, cures, dots. Off-tank slowed adds.

Druids on raids: Heal or nuke. Debuff.
Druids on dungeon crawls: Heal and nuke and debuff maybe. Evac. Snare. Possibly kite around adds.

Enchanters on raids: Buffs. Mez yard trash.
Enchanters on dungeon crawls: Buff. Mez all the adds. Stun casters to interrupt them. Mana drain stuff, charm.

MT on raids: Tank.
MT on dungeon crawls: Tank. Taunt stuff off the cleric/enchanter/druid, pull maybe.

Other Meleers on raids: Assist the tank. Do CR.
Other Meleers on dungeon crawls: Assist the tank, off-tank the adds, root-park or snare kite adds, do CR, unlock doors, disarm traps, pull, scout ahead and see what's coming up next.

Necros on raids: Mana-pump the clerics, dot, nuke.
Necros on dungeon crawls: Handle undead adds, dot, nuke... and whatever the hell it is necros do.

Wizards raids: Nuke
Wizards dungeons: Nuke, snare, evac

There, that's not a great list because I didn't spend hours on it. It doesn't always apply, but I think across all the expansions most classes have their roles vastly narrowed when raiding.

I think this quote from LoS kind of sums it up:

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>A:'The Vision got watered down, made <em><strong>things require less skill and more numbers, diluted and marginalized many classes</strong></em>, and has largely lost it's mystery appeal that it had when it started. Some of it is natural progression from having such a large high end playerbase, but a lot of problems would never have happened with careful planning. Since latter half of luclin and PoP, there's no mystery to the game, no real risk. As for EQ2, I'm hoping they'll recognize mistakes they let happen, and incorporate ways of stopping that from happening. It should be better and more roboust than EQ - of course I hope WoW beats EQ2 into the ground, and have no intention of playing EQ2'
[/quote]

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Alyssia you can't even comment objectively because you are totally anti-raider. If you think that stuff like Ifir should drop off a one groupable mob then you're nuts. Let's keep this conversation based at least somewhere close to reality.

There are certain parameters that I have mentioned before where you might have a case of raid type loot in LDoN. Like if it took mutiple dungeon excursions, or a series of PoJ trial type encounters in one dungeon. But to say you deserve and Ifir just for marching through a 60-90 minute dungeon and killing the boss at the end with one group smacks of insanity.[/quote]

I am anti-raid, because it's a pathetic way to play this game. EQ would have been so much better if all the encounters and such had used instancing technology from the very beginning.

Being able to design encounters for specific numbers of people and only those numbers of people... would have changed the way this game evolved tremendously. We could have great loot dropping off challenging single group encounters. Personally, if MobX requires 12 people kill... there should be 12 pieces of great loot on that mob. Something for everyone.

And you're right. I don't want to work for my loot. I want to have FUN while getting my loot. Sitting on my ass, waiting for the pull, standing up and poking a mob in the back for 30 seconds is not my idea of fun. That's bull**** that to advance my rogue that that is what I have to do.

I don't log on to EverQuest to work. I log on to have fun. Raiding, grinding... that's not fun. Dungeon crawling... now that's a blast. I'd rather spend a single night a week tearing through a couple dungeons, then six nights a week grinding through mob after mob... just to "earn" an upgrade. Games are meant to be fun. Not a second job.

You're darn right it doesn't always apply. I offer that if you need your cleric to stun and root stuff(or the other classes to do off role actions) then it's not a very good group to begin with in regards to makeup and/or skill level. Everyone has a role in a group, it's usually when somebody screws up or falls asleep that other classes have to play other roles. I don't think that's proof that single groups are harder or have a broader ranges of roles because you have to consider exactly WHY other classes are having to fill other roles. If you have a well-rounded group that knows how to play their classes then the roles are going to be defined. It's only when they break down that there's any role changing going on and if they're doing that then maybe you should be learning more about grouping and your classes' role to begin with(not directed at you personally Panamah, just in general).

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>You're darn right it doesn't always apply. I offer that if you need your cleric to stun and root stuff(or the other classes to do off role actions) then it's not a very good group to begin with in regards to makeup and/or skill level.[/quote]

If the cleric is rooting and stunning, they're doing their job! Dungeon crawling is NOT sitting on your ass while the monk grabs a single mob. Dungeon crawling is a balls to the wall (if you have them.. and most likely don't since you prefer the "safe" way of pulling) quick rampage through the dungeon.

Nothing is more fun than suriving a massive encounter where the mobs just seem to never end... and suddenly finding yourself standing in the clear right in front of your goal. Contant action, pumping adrenaline... something out of a book or movie. Like the fight in Balin's Tomb in FotR.

I want something that makes me scared that we might not survive. Get the adrenaline going. Raids, they don't do that. Grinding XP. Nope. Dungeon crawling... most of the time if it's a good group and well designed dungeon.

I've not played the "end game" with my druid or monk. They're only levels 40 and 35. But even with my limited knowledge of raiding, I can use common sense and if given a level 65 druid or monk, perform almost as well as someone else would on a raid that had been playing said classes from the beginning and raided all the time.

I've never played an int caster past 10th... but it's pretty easy to see how they work on raids. Just have to have a little common sense really. However, stick me in a group with a class I've not played before in a tense, challenging situation... and yeah... the skilled player is gonna shine bright while I muddle around and get everyone killed.

Raids are not hard. And you should not be rewarded for just the time spent. The amount of skill and the challenge of the encounter should also be taken into account.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I offer that if you need your cleric to stun and root stuff(or the other classes to do off role actions) then it's not a very good group to begin with in regards to makeup and/or skill level. [/quote]

I think if any clerics read that they'd probably be coming after you with a skinning knife eyeballing a new wolf-hide fur trim for their winter armor. Clerics loved playing a more active role with their groups. When the enchanter is busy trying to remez something they're not going to be able to handle a new add right at the second or stun a gater. Clerics utterly loved helping the enchanter by stunning or root parking new adds giving the enchanter a few moments more to deal with whatever he's doing. That was the mark of a player that really knew their class was they could dig out some spell they didn't use very often and know when to use it.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Everyone has a role in a group, it's usually when somebody screws up or falls asleep that other classes have to play other roles.[/quote]

No wonder you think groups are boring. If "good groups" were that boring I think most of us would have quit playing EQ long ago. Fortunately SOE doesn't play along with your rules and gives most classes a wide variety of things to do and (well, they used to) and create some chaos and havoc where you least expect it, relying on the ingenuity and individual resources of each player to deal with them and the team as a whole to as well.

It's been one of the commoner complaints on this message forum, and others, that you seem to have to play EQ with a formula of "right classes". Well, you know, when you don't play by the forumula, when your enchanter takes the night off, you have to improvise a bit. What do you do, just log off and say it can't be done? Some of the most fun nights was when we didn't have the "right" group makeup and went ahead and did what we wanted to anyway. And we were damn good at it.

I'd say the poorer player is the one that can't handle the chaos.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>You're darn right it doesn't always apply. I offer that if you need your cleric to stun and root stuff(or the other classes to do off role actions) then it's not a very good group to begin with in regards to makeup and/or skill level. Everyone has a role in a group, it's usually when somebody screws up or falls asleep that other classes have to play other roles. I don't think that's proof that single groups are harder or have a broader ranges of roles because you have to consider exactly WHY other classes are having to fill other roles. If you have a well-rounded group that knows how to play their classes then the roles are going to be defined. It's only when they break down that there's any role changing going on and if they're doing that then maybe you should be learning more about grouping and your classes' role to begin with(not directed at you personally Panamah, just in general).[/quote]

Let me get this straight. Your actually advocating the "The holy Trinty" group make up, on a druid board?

LOL, don't envy you at all, let the flameing comense!

<strong>Not speaking to any one person here.....</strong>

Just because someone has no life and spends 10 straight hours every night raiding, DOES NOT make their time more valuable. It means they have nothing better to do or ignore those things better to do.

The the 10 hours I spend online over the next 5 days should provide me the same OPPORTUNITY for loot that your 10 straight hours got you in one night.

Just because someone plays 5 times more than me should ONLY mean they get things 5 times faster. That's it. Nothing else.

Someone explain to me why their time is more valuable than mine. No one has done it yet. The answer "Because I put more time into the game as a whole" does not answer the question and is unacceptable.

I don't know about making them 2 steps from a port stone, but I can see that putting in a graveyard might, MIGHT, help make them get a little more use.

Wandering down into an unknown area, unless you are SURE you have a necro or SK who can summon corpses, and dying makes CR a real pain in the arse. And sometimes I don't make those kinds of trips purely because of time restraints. Sure, I'd love to wander to Chardok B at 8pm at night, but if we all wipe, how long will a CR take? Will we have the resources to make it back to get corpses?

Call me chicken if you like, but I do like the idea of a graveyard in some of those deep dungeons or huge, dangerous zones (though other than PoP I can't think of any.

Alyssia: raids can be hard, trying going on one then comment.

A cleric's role isn't to stun root, not unless you don't have another class that can do that.

Panamah: this isn't a matter of what people can and can't do, or what they like to do. It's SHOULD they be doing and why? Also, how well?

I'm sorry but I don't see where I advocated the holy trinity. I said that classes usually have defined roles, I didn't say anything about certain classes being needed or that other classes couldn't fill that role. But if you have someone that can root/snare or a paladin that can stun they should be doing those things, not the cleric because his primary goal would be to heal and if it's so 'balls to the wall'(as Alyssia so eloquently put it) then he better stick mostly to healing or you're going to have one dead group. A group starts out with members that have base roles. Now those classes may be interchangeable or their roles may be interchangeable based on the rest of the group but they are going to have well-defined roles either way. Most groups aren't going to have someone doing fifty different things and if they do they're in for a long night.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>A cleric's role isn't to stun root, not unless you don't have another class that can do that.[/quote]
Wow, you have an extremely narrow view of class roles. When something needs to be stunned, it doesn't matter where the stun comes from as long as it's taken care of. The most fun I've had in a group is when the &#% hits the fan and classes need to things that are traditionally the role of another class. That's why druids are so cool, we can fill in for just about anyone.

And what if the paladin is already busy off-tanking something else? Should the cleric say "Not my job" and go back to sleep? You must be union. What if there is no paladin? Is that a poor group or bad group makeup? Should the cleric wait until the paladin sees the problem to handle it, meanwhile the enchanter is dying or dead? No, no... playing in a good group means you know when to step in and what to do. You handle it until someone else with better tools can get it. If people aren't adaptable and can't play outside their narrow roles then they aren't good players, IMHO. And if SOE can't design dungeons that don't tax you like this, then they've failed at the designing the encounters.

Good clerics back in Sebilis for instance, were always ready with a stun for when a mob was about to gate. If someone else had one ready too, great! Stuns get resisted a lot. Enchanters were often too busy to mez to stun. Warriors miss bashes, sometimes you don't have a pally.

Somehow clerics have managed to be able to do some crowd control, stunning gaters, and managed to heal their groups for a long time.

Lets take a case in point. Enchanter has a few mobs mezzed, some are starting to break mez. A roamer comes in just as a couple of mobs break mez. 2 mobs beating on the enchanter and a third one is zooming to the enchanter. You're a cleric, you can:

a) Start casting fast heals on the enchanter because he's going down REAL fast.

b) Cast a heal over time spell or a quick heal on the chanter. Follow up with a AE stun giving the chanter time to remez. Meanwhile follow up by rooting one or two of the mobs and telling the chanter to backup.

If you answered A) I would think you're not a very good player or didn't make the best choice. The incoming roamer has virtually no hate built up and the chain heals are going to make him want to keel the cleric a lot. It might even be enough to taunt the other two off the chanter. While the cleric is getting beaten on by 3 mobs now, the enchanter might be able to mez some before the cleric dies.... maybe. But perhaps low hitpoint aggro will cause the 4th mob to leave the warrior and pound the poor cleric into mush.

Now granted we have some new tools for dealing with things like the warrior could probably AE taunt if it were available. The cleric might be able to get divine off if it were available. I'd probably use DVA to rescue the enchanter before I resorted to fast heals and enchanters have tons of hit points nowadays. But in the pre-PoP days of dungeoning this is how you dealt with these things. We don't really know which of our tools is going to work in LDoN and which will be totally useless. Mobs might not gate, they might all resist stuns and some might be unmezzable. Hard to say.


<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I'm sorry but I don't see where I advocated the holy trinity[/quote]

Well could be...

<strong>If I offer that if you need your cleric to stun and root stuff(or the other classes to do off role actions) then it's not a very good group to begin with in regards to makeup and/or skill level. Everyone has a role in a group... </strong>

So you'd be sort of $hit-out-of-luck if you didn't have a paladin or an enchanter in your group that could stun gaters because a cleric shouldn't be doing anything except healing.

Gah! The cleric in me is outraged.

I didn't say roles didn't switch sometimes, but going INTO the group classes usually have defined roles. I said it's not about what a class can do what or when. What started this whole new argument was single group roles compared to raid roles and I think raids can make a class assume just as many roles as do groups.

I've taken these arguments as far as I want. Feel free to leave the field in disarray if you want Panamah. Hehe! ;) It's been fun to play devil's advocate but I'm plum tuckered out and need to get into the game. See you all later. :)

I played a cleric to 32 and deleted her unfortunately... really, really stupid of me. But ah well. I'll probably spend the next few months playing the froggy twink cleric I made to the 34-39 level for LDoN. That way I will have 3 35-40'ish characters for LDoN when it releases.

Now if you were in my group and told me to sit on my ass and heal. I'd disband you. No one tells me how to play my class. Playing my original cleric was a blast. I'd tank in LoIO using stuns and heals to generate aggro. Throw in a couple nukes here and there and it was a blast. If someone told me to sit down and heal, I would be one very pissed off cleric. And that's not a bright thing to do.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> Alyssia: raids can be hard, trying going on one then comment.[/quote]

Missed that the first time through... I have been on raids. Went to NToV. Fought Aary. Fought Lord Vyemm. All the trash mobs in the way and in between... BORING. That and the fact that I had zero chance of getting any loot at all? Why even bother sitting on my ass.. waiting for someone to tell me what to do?

It was fun watching everyone get smashed into the wall like skee balls at the carnival when we fought Lord Vyemm. But I never felt any real threat of danger there. No rush of adrenaline except for the small laughter driven bit. No danger. No sense of urgency. No risk. It was boring.

Aary? Long boring fight and he doesn't even do anything special to make the fight fun. The only reason the fight got the adrenaline going was the small swarm of chicken adds we got. You could tell that people were having more fun once the adds started pouring in. There was a sense of urgency to finish the fight. A sense of danger... the possibility of dying.

Most raids however... that never happens. Everyone in the raid has no balls. No courage. They just want safe, easy pulls and Avada Kedavra! they got loot. *yawns*

Ok, that was as graceful as any concession I've seen, Autumn. You may depart the battlefield, defeated but not humbled!

Besides, I run rings around you, logically.

<em>10 points to anyone that can identify that stolen quote</em>

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>10 points to anyone that can identify that stolen quote[/quote]
Oh, intercourse the penguin!

Klath wins!
www.humorlinks.com/python...Sketch.htm (http://www.humorlinks.com/python/sketches/ThePenguinSketch.htm)

I did Intercourse the penguin on google... the results were quite amusing.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>A cleric's role isn't to stun root, not unless you don't have another class that can do that.[/quote]

Clerics and paladins have the most number of 61+ stun spells. If it wasn't part of their role, they would not have them.

A cleric's job is to keep people alive. There is more than one way to do that, and healing is not always the best way. If you have enough mana for heals and refuse to use the other tools you have to their fullest ability because "a cleric only heals", then you are not being as effective as you could be.

hmmmm

i am to only heal?


darn, what am i going to do with the other spell gems?

oh i know!! i could mem some old outdated heal spell i have?

DOH

stun and root will ALWAYS be memed, well at least root.


www.magelo.com/eq_view_pr...num=621029 (~Keyera
65 epic cleric
Blood Honor
Drinal

Threads like this make baby jesus cry but I feel compelled to respond.

As a cleric we have quite a few tools at our disposal. Many of these can be utilised to save people's lives.

eg. Torment (yes the xp stinks but hey) and I'm the only person who can stun the mobs due to ghey level caps. If a mob gates we have guareenteed 4+ adds. Should I spend a tiny amount of mana preventing the gate or should I spend hideous amounts of mana healing people when the horde of adds jump them? You choose.

Saying a cleric should only heal is pretty damn stupid since even a druid should know by now that we have many more tools at our disposal.

Cheers.

FYI to the clerics responding to this thread. The person who said a cleric should only sit back and heal is the person the majority of the druids are disagreeing with. In other words most of hte people posting in this thread would agree that it is narrow minded that someone is saying "clerics should only heal".

Stuns and roots RULE!

Well as usual everyone has missed the point. I never said clerics should just sit back and heal, I said that in most cases that will be their primary defined role in groups(at least to start) in most cases. Learn how to read people.

I and everyone else can read just fine Autumn's.

The below statement is what the clerics are reacting too. I think you have chronic "Athlete's Tongue" from the constant foot in your mouth.

:)

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>You're darn right it doesn't always apply. I offer that if you need your cleric to stun and root stuff(or the other classes to do off role actions) then it's not a very good group to begin with in regards to makeup and/or skill level. Everyone has a role in a group, it's usually when somebody screws up or falls asleep that other classes have to play other roles.[/quote]

Oh what was this thread about again?

Oh yeah zone revamps.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Learn how to read people. [/quote]

Learn how to read what you didn't write?

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>If you have a well-rounded group that knows how to play their classes then the roles are going to be defined.

...

I offer that if you need your cleric to stun and root stuff(or the other classes to do off role actions) then it's not a very good group to begin with in regards to makeup and/or skill level. [/quote]

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I never said clerics should just sit back and heal[/quote]

But you did say if they need to stun and root stuff that either the group is no good

Or

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>only when they break down that there's any role changing going on and if they're doing that then maybe you should be learning more about grouping and your classes' role to begin with[/quote]

perhaps you meant that a rooting/stunning cleric doesn't know enough about their class?

So while you didn't say anything specifically about clerics only healing, you were quite critical of them rooting and stunning. Or actually, there is something wrong with the group if the cleric feels the need to root and stun.

So, if clerics shouldn't just sit back and heal, but they can also do something else, but that something else shouldn't be stunning or rooting, just what is it they can do that you feel is acceptable and within their primary role that wouldn't indicate there was something wrong with the group or the people in the group?

Maybe the clerics could knit him a sweater.

Panamah we seem to be on the same frequency lately. :P

Yeah, the root spell is for spellbook decoration!

I'm not the one with my foot in my mouth Stewwy. I said there will be exceptions. Don't leave stuff out to prove your points either(Stewwy and Panamah). Once again, learn to read what I did INDEED write(Panamah), which you so conveniently cut off in your quote.

Here's the whole quote:

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I never said clerics should just sit back and heal, I said that in most cases that will be their primary defined role in groups(at least to start) in most cases.[/quote]

Clerics don't get put into groups to root and stun. If you're putting a cleric in your group just to do those duties then yes, you're in sad shape. There are other classes that can fill this role better, allowing the cleric to concentrate on healing.

The whole point wasn't about clerics anyway so stop putting the focus just on that. It was about the primary role of ANY given class in a group.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>It was about the primary role of ANY given class in a group. [/quote]

/shrug

Well to refresh memories, it was about the role of classes and comparing them to raids vs groups. And I was pointing out to you how many classes, like clerics, play a much narrower role in raids than they do in groups and you responded by saying... whatever it is you said, which you aren't owning up to now, but it sounded to me, and pretty much everyone else like, clerics shouldn't be doing anything but healing.

Ah to hell with it. You say one thing then say you said something else later on. You planning a run for public office?

I didn't say one thing and then later change it, that was you warping what I said Panamah.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> Clerics don't get put into groups to root and stun. If you're putting a cleric in your group just to do those duties then yes, you're in sad shape. [/quote]Actually, I was in an extremely effective and entertaining group in Nadox a few days ago. I was 3-boxing 65 Druid/63 Enchanter/51 Pally and a friend was 2-boxing 61 BST/53 Cleric with an additional 1-box (heh) 53 Monk. We did some experimenting and ended up with the following method...

1) Druid pull with snare
2) Pally/Cleric assist chain stun
3) BST send pet while Druid/BST/Chanter chain nuke
4) Dead mob -- never touched anyone

Granted, this was against level 48-55 mobs in Nadox, so they only had 10-12K HPs, but as a method it was very effective and lots of fun for a change. If we'd have had a Wizzie or Mage instead of the Enchanter it would have been even more laughable.

The point here is that all classes have lots of tools at their disposal and just because they use them in non-traditional ways does not mean the group is necessarily "in sad shape."

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

<strong> Clerics don't get put into groups to root and stun. If you're putting a cleric in your group just to do those duties then yes, you're in sad shape.</strong>

There's a room in Nadox where 5 nasty luggalds spawn. 4 of us wanted to break the room, so I 2-boxed my Cleric.

Not to heal.

I give up trying to reason with you Autumn. My final words to YOU on this subject come from one of my favorite movies.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Talking to you is like masterbating with a cheese grader.......slightly amusing, but mostly painful.[/quote]

Concentrating on healing? Say what? That commment doesn't hold true at all. Concentrating on casting 2-3 different heal spells is not difficult, challenging, or entertaining. When grouping, I'm stunning as much as I am healing, if not rDS'ing/HS'ing.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I said that in most cases that will be their primary defined role in groups(at least to start) in most cases.[/quote]

I don't think you could have been more general, and your definition of "primary defined role in groups" is nonexistent to this thread and I suspect, warped. Overgeneralising with undefined phrases as a base is nonsense.

Oh, I think zone revamps are a great idea. They should have always been about improving existing content instead of expanding it. But that is both bad for profit margins and retaining the player structure, players want a sense of progression and a sense of newness with their content. Why recycle what is already there when we can be charged to buy more content?

ttfn.

woland tiggerific.
<a href="http://www.scienceofwar.net" target="top">scienceofwar.</a>

Pre-defined roles exist whether you want to admit it or not. It's what we do after the fact that are the straws people keep grasping at in this thread. Thanks for your input though. :p

Cute. You still seem to think that they are the end-all be-all however. Keep dancing, keep spinning, your point is almost completely blurred.

I didn't say they were the end all and be all, simply that they exist. Nothing blurring here.

There is plenty of blurring all over this entire thread. Why don't you just clarify what you're trying to say?

Why don't you define our role for us and everyone, since you seem to have a "firmer" grasp on it than anyone else in this thread?

You are being judgemental, set in the ways of prescribed classes. You continued to push but then backed off and tempered it with words like "usually" and "in most cases."

Please, enlighten us with your skewed perception of reality, I think everyone here will find it refreshing and somewhat intriguing.

Cheers.

woland.

I already did, not going to rehash it all. If you want to clarify anything then go back and read the previous posts because you really didn't get my point at all.

Autumn10 you have a really strange idea of what a dungeon crawl is actually like. On a real dungeon crawl if I and my group members are not constantly on our toes. Swapping out spells as needed. Doing things outside of what you seem to think of as these predefined roles. Our group is dead. Plain and simple no ifs and or buts about it.

A good dungeon crawl group is constantly communicationg information on adds, mob status, swapping out spells, switching roles around. Any dungeon crawling group that had any of its members limited in scope by some predifined role is doomed to fail. You have to trust in your abilities and that of your group mates to get what needs stunned stunned, what needs rooting rooted, what needs slowing slowed etc. And it needs to be done now. Not a minute from now when the person who migh normally handle it is done taking care of something else or otherwise incapacitated.

Dungeon crawling is not about nice safe easy pulling experience grinding where each member of the group can safely do only one or two things. You generally have multiple mobs in camp and one or more on the way.

A raid is boring I have one or two things I will do on a raid thats it nothing else the rest of the time is sitting on my tush waiting. Hardly exciting or challenging to me as an individual player.


Borblefoot Furtoe
62nd season Druid
Firioina Vie Server

"A raid is boring I have one or two things I will do on a raid thats it nothing else the rest of the time is sitting on my tush waiting. Hardly exciting or challenging to me as an individual player."

If you think raiding _necessarily_ implies that, then you haven't had a great raid leader. Raiding _can_ have everyone on their toes, taking on additional responsibilities as the situation changes, and not having a moment to rest. It's difficult to do but it can be done. Most of what you described as part of a good dungeon crawl group can apply equally to a raid.

Don't bother, seriously. You have totally missed the point like Woland. Go back and read what I posted and maybe it will clarify things for you.

Wow... been out of the loop for a while on the boards, only got to page 5 or 6 of this thread before going ugh... no more.

Anyway point being:

Was in Nurga today to do Trunt for a friend's monk epic. Over all, I couldn't really tell that they had done anything to it except adjust mob level. there were a few light blues at 65. We get to sleeping ogre and go to clear the gobos in there so we can do the fight and get out. Imagine my surprise when I wip out my uber Winter's Frost (hello lvl 65 best nuke in the game on a light blue - guessing 47ish - mob) which hits for full and does a whopping buble of damage to the mob who then begins casting (an annoyance) and then runs up and starts wacking for I believe 127.

To the Devs:

What in the hell are you smoking?

As the majority of mobs were still green (under 45) with a few light blues, I am only assuming that these mobs are 47ish, they can only be 49 max. That being said, what in the hell is a level 47 mob doing with roughly 8k hp? (1550 nuke does 20% damage roughly, math majors get back to me) Casting, and meleeing for over 100?

I do not think revamps need to be simple, but get your heads out of your ass. No one of a proper level to get decent xp here is going to put up with that garbage. You can easily have 3-4 of these beasts on a pull, give a resisted mez, bye bye chanter because they hit for 125ish and how many rounds of that do you think a level 50 chanter is going to take?

Upping mob stats does not = revamp. It equals stupid.

Yes there is better gear in game now than there was then, but guess what! It's not on the level 45-50 toons out there geniuses!

For a group of appropriate level, there is a high risk of biting it in the revamp Nurga. This will keep the place empty because people want xp when they want xp, they want adventure when they want adventure. Why? Because you freakin retards put so much damn xp time sinks in the game! 65 levels! 500 freaking AA! Of course people don't want to waste the down time of dungeon crawl CRs when so many countless hours of mindless xp are required to advance!

Up the xp, tone down the mob. A lvl 47 mob has no freaking business having as much hp as a PoP era tank. That's just ridiculous. Yes, I realize you nay sayers will say there are plenty of mobs in luclin/velious era that had more hp (kael giants anyone) to which I say the majority of those weren't position to pile up on you like a train wreck the way nurga/droga are set up. The sheer number of mobs justifies a little less difficulty because of the high risk of adds.

In other news:

Raid vs Single Encounter Loot War

Basically my understanding is that a few people think that it would totally quark up the game if single groups were able to get loot that currently takes a 60 man raid to secure. The obvious conclusion is that no one would raid anymore because they could get the same loot for less pita with a raid force elsewhere.

My comment to this is then maybe you should take a look at raiding. If raiding were large amounts of fun, people would do it no matter what the loot status in the game was. If the only reason people are raiding is because of the loot, then basically SoE has a bunch of dogs trained to do tricks for a treat. Retune raiding to where it is fun and people will raid regardless.

Fun encounters (imo you dag on post pickeraparter gooberwads):

Agnaar (or Agnarr or whatever the hell, freaking evil Karana)
Vallon Zek
Saryrn (the actual fight not the journey through torment to get to her)

Not so fun encounters:

RZ
Getting to Saryrn
Behemoth
Anything else that is blowable

Basically do a poll of what is a fun raid encounter and make all raids that way and people will raid regardless of the loot.

Then up the loot so that no hardcore raiders can get similar upgrades. "But they don't put in the same time or effort!" you cry? 'But they pay the same damn 12.95 a raider does' I retort. And frankly that should be the bottom line.

Sorry, had to be a little bitter there.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
Basically do a poll of what is a fun raid encounter and make all raids that way and people will raid regardless of the loot.

[/quote]

Alternatively, we could take a poll on what the most popular type of exp zone is, make all zones that way and everyone would hunt there regardless of exp. By that logic, Nurga would be a perfect level 65 zone - nice easy mobs, well spaced, with loot. Only a mindless exp addict would complain that the mobs are green.

I don't for a moment believe this is a serious proposal.

If you want to get back at some uberguild player that trained you/mocked you in ooc/rejected your app, train them back, or petition them or something, don't waste everybodys time on message boards demanding that SOE destroy their game instead.

soru

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Alternatively, we could take a poll on what the most popular type of exp zone is, make all zones that way and everyone would hunt there regardless of exp. By that logic, Nurga would be a perfect level 65 zone - nice easy mobs, well spaced, with loot. Only a mindless exp addict would complain that the mobs are green.[/quote]

Actually I love Veksar. I can get decent xp there on my level 63 rogue and decent aaxp just from crawling aroudnd exploring. If there were five more dungeons like Veksar, and I could drag people to those dungeons, even if I had to beat them senseless, I'd never grind for xp in one spot again.

I thought you said you weren't worried about experience Alyssia? Or maybe you didn't like it.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>If you want to get back at some uberguild player that trained you/mocked you in ooc/rejected your app, train them back, or petition them or something, don't waste everybodys time on message boards demanding that SOE destroy their game instead.[/quote]


Where the hell did this come from? You don't know me and obviously you swing at the hip rather than read posts.

Xp is fundamental to the game, naturally every single person is going to xp, thus spending less time hunting green mobs unless it is a necessity.

Raiding, however, used to be optional in the game and is now something that is becoming more and more mandatory. Quite frankly, if taking out the the mindlessly boring raid encounters that are required and then left alone (classic example, Torment) ruins the game for you, then you have my pity.

Itemizing some challenging one group encounters that dropped decent loot upgrades that were comparable to raid encounters where the risk per person was pretty comparable wouldn't ruin the game for anyone... Except maybe the guy from X guild in flagged zone1 (population 5) who gets the droppable loot there to sell to the bazaar at an inflated price because even though it's not good enough for his twink, just because it's 'rare' or has tough access requirements.

Frankly, it's everybody's game who is paying a monthly subscription fee. And far more who do not raid are paying than those who do. They should be able to get an equal share of the pie in some fashion.

Autumn, you have a serious lack of reading comprehension skills. I'd seriously consider going to a specialist and getting it checked out if I were you. Never, have I ever said I didn't like gaining experience. What I said was, <strong>I hate xp grinding</strong>. It's like hopping on an excercise bike trying to ride down the road.

You pedal and pedal and pedal and never really get anywhere. That's what I feel like I'm doing with my rogue right now. There's only 3 aa's really that would provide good upgrades. Ambidexterity, Lightning Reflexes, and Escape. Combat Agility and Combat Stability would be next.

After that... there's nothing else for me. Period. I guess I could grind and grind and grind out the aa to max my stat/resist bump aa's... but for what? I'm already hitting my stat caps with a good set of shammy/ranger buffs. Maybe some points in planar power would stop that... but that's yet again... more and more grinding.

I'd much rather have xp flow naturally as you explore, do quests, and have fun instead of sitting on my ass in the same spot four hours a night to grind out 2 or 3 aa if I'm lucky enough to find a group.

Actually it's everyone else that seems to have the problem with reading comprehension, including you Alyssia. It's a grind no matter how you do it. We all deal with it. It's the design of the game. Experience as a reward in of itself basically sucks either way, it's not going to get much better in a different setting.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Actually it's everyone else that seems to have the problem with reading comprehension, including you Alyssia. It's a grind no matter how you do it. We all deal with it. It's the design of the game. Experience as a reward in of itself basically sucks either way, it's not going to get much better in a different setting.[/quote]

<strong>Bull****. Bull****. Bull****.</strong> *sighs* IT IS NOT A GRIND TO ME IF I AM HAVING FUN. GOT IT? *hands Autumn some q-tips* Clean out your @#%$ ears already.

Grind = sitting in the same damn spot killing the same mobs over and over. I get xp and junk loot. *yawns and goes to play another game or reads a book*

Crawl = fun, fast paced, adrenaline pounding, tense atmosphere and more. Put good loot and xp as a reward for doing a <strong>CHALLENGING</strong> crawl and I'll have a blast with this game and never really consider playing another game.

EverQuest should be called EverGrind.

Crawls wiil get just as boring as anything else. Crawls over and over = grind. There's no escaping it because at some point it ALL gets old.

Somehow I doubt I will get bored of crawls as quickly as I got bored of raids. Epsecially considering what I have read about LDoN already. Autumn, I think you've lost all your little, petty arguments on the four or so threads you've been posting on. It might be a good idea to take a break from posting for awhile.

I haven't lost anything Alyssia. Some people here like to claim victory before the debate even starts. Also, you were the one people were calling for to get banned a few days ago so maybe you should be the one to take a break.

Shall we start another poll to see what the general consensus is about whether or not you are winning or losing your *ahem* debates? *smirks* Scirocco or someone else put it best... you deny, omit, and ignore other peoples posts just to twist things to your single minded point of view.

One of the pathetic internet argument tactics. I really have no desire to "win" this argument here. I'd much rather it win it in EverQuest when LDoN goes live and every single thing that you don't like in EQ, is in that expansion. Well, except for a lack of raid content.

I want <strong>zero</strong> multiple-group raid content in LDoN and so far it seems to be heading that way. *cheers*

Nope, it's you who are doing the omitting, warping, denying, and ignoring of posts Alyssia. You and a few others. You have to look no further than the one about Panamah's flag rebellion raids where people like you conveniently left a whole line out of my post so you could have a piss poor excuse to rip into me. Sorry but it failed miserably. The line was there for all to see and they just chose to ignore it so they could try to prove a point they never had. Sad really.

You won't win anything with LDoN coming out either. How about that? More proof you are the one that doesn't read posts! LOL! I have said more than once that I look forward to LDoN and think the whole dungeon crawl experience will be fun. Thanks for proving my point for me Alyssia! LOL!

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
I want zero multiple-group raid content in LDoN and so far it seems to be heading that way. *cheers*
[/quote]

Is zero good enough?

Why not ask for negative content?

Why not demand SOE hire large men in monkey suits to visit the houses of people playing the game in a way you don't like and slap them aroun a bit?

soru

<strong>Why not demand SOE hire large men in monkey suits to visit the houses of people playing the game in a way you don't like and slap them aroun a bit?</strong>


Still looking for a job, eh, Soru?

I felt no need to comment on Panamah's "Drinal Flag Rebellion". She's a big girl and can defend herself. *shrugs* I applaud her being able to even loosely organize such an event of 200+ people (and I believe that was for just one raid).

And if you knew Pana in any way at all and knew anything about the DFR... than you would know it was an attempt to help the people that did NOT want to join the uber goober guilds and piss away their life.

SoE kindly nerfed that wit hthe 72 flag max on the planar projections. But she got her point across. Which is a helluva lot more than I can say for you Autumn.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>what in the hell is a level 47 mob doing with roughly 8k hp? (1550 nuke does 20% damage roughly, math majors get back to me) Casting, and meleeing for over 100?[/quote]
That's pretty typical for mobs at that level.

<img src="http://nmcs.com/spawnweek/images/dfr.jpg"/>
<strong>The Drinal Flag Rebellion!</strong>

I really gotta plant a dark elf head on that lady and dye her a nice shade of blue.

<strong>I want zero multiple-group raid content in LDoN and so far it seems to be heading that way. *cheers*</strong>

What exactly are you shooting for here? You seem to forget you are arguing with real people, some of whom feel strongly about the exclusion of THEIR playstyle. Could you goad them a little more more blatantly?

I don't know what sort of catharsis you're getting from this, but frankly, it's disturbing. "casual gamer" is not synonymous with "hatred of those who play hardcore".

There are differences in playstyles, and opinions, but you are taking it to an entirely new level.

Relax.

What's wrong with wanting an expansion just for myself? PoP gave me two things. Easy transportation, which I could care less about anyway. I have zero problems paying druids for rides. I was well known in the port channels for my generosity when asking for ports and oftentimes would get ports free

And it gave me a <bleep> headache. I knew from the beginning as soon as I heard about that craptastic flagging bull**** that PoP was going to be yet another expansion heavily geared towards the uber goobers. Unlike other expansions, the bones tossed to the casuals are so pathetic PoP is barely worth the money spent on it.

So I don't really give a damn what you think about my desire for an expansion that caters to my needs.

Look at PoP realistically when it came out... I got 4 marginal xp zones that quickly died off once I got past 62... and a transportation zone. Great... just what I needed... MORE reasons to grind, grind, grind. *yawns*

The 4 zone argument really doesn't hold water. For someone who is looking for challenging encounters for a single group, you should have been all over the trials in PoJ, particularly the ones with no wait. Completing any one of them adds storm and valor. The crypt of decay side quest was ridiculously easy for anyone that could track or had access to a tracker. I'll leave out Bastion of Thunder even though that quest was easily done by a single group because you needed a spectral spell to do it that way, and spectrals were hard to come by initially. Really you had 7 zones, and potential access to more (I'll grant that some of the side quests were unnecessarily time consuming, like HoH and torment, but the tactics one really isn't bad at all.)

And then you had Legacy of Ykesha, which aside from a few features, WAS almost exclusively for casual players. You got nadox, torgiran and hate's fury. All three of them are great places to crawl with decent rewards.

Just because you don't agree with me or admit that I did doesn't mean I didn't get my point across Alyssia. I guess I will say it again: let it go.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Just because you don't agree with me or admit that I did doesn't mean I didn't get my point across Alyssia. I guess I will say it again: let it go.[/quote]

I've noticed a sudden trend almost all of your recent posts Autumn... they're all like one or two sentances, doing nothing but claiming your superiority that you "won" somehow.

Did you finally run out of lame arguments to throw at me? Or did you just get tired of getting shot down? Seems like you're just trying to get me to back out gracefully... so you can try to claim some kind of weak victory. Ah well... guess what... I am not gonna let it go.

Ubers did ruin this game. EverQuest should never have turned out the way it has. Hopefully LDoN is a step in the right direction. Finally the developers can create well balanced dungeons where the reward is compareable to the overall risk, instead of having to artificailly inflate the mob difficulty while lowering the drop rate of the rewards and making it a case of time spent camping vs. time spent having fun.

I think that sums it all up. So far every little petty disagreement you've had has held no water. So maybe you hsould just "let it go" and accept the fact that raiding and grinding should <strong>not</strong> be the the only ways to advance your character.

Seems odd to hear you calling someone elses arguments lame to be honest Miss Lamerose.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Finally the developers can create well balanced dungeons where the reward is compareable to the overall risk, instead of having to artificailly inflate the mob difficulty while lowering the drop rate of the rewards and making it a case of time spent camping vs. time spent having fun.[/quote]

Never gonna happen. You fail, or refuse to understand that SoE WANT THE TIMESINKS. There are 10s of thousands of raiders and 10s of thousands of non-raiders who play 20-30+ hours per week. How long would their game have lasted if everything could be done by someone who only plays a few hours a week when the majority play much more than that.

LDoN will prove that once and for all, 40 dungeons in the 90 min range will provide 60 hours of entertainment. Thats about 2 weeks for a LOT of people, barely 1 week for some. Even if they do every dungeon twice thats 1 month. Any more than twice and it'll become the same old grind.

When people blow your paper thin arguments apart you totally ignore their posts. Remember the buff stripping? When you started that thread I thought it was a good idea. Fortunately some people here saw the gaping flaw in it but you wouldnt accept it, right up to the last you were ranting about "levelling the playing field" when it was proven time and time again that it would actually do the exact opposite.

You're an annoyance here and you're not even a druid. Go back to the safehouse where you belong, or did they (as I suspect) kick your ass off their board as we should have here?

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>You're an annoyance here and you're not even a druid. Go back to the safehouse where you belong, or did they (as I suspect) kick your ass off their board as we should have here?[/quote]

Deneldor, @#%$. You. Ok? I do play a druid regularly. Pardon me for not wasting my life grinding cougars and raptors into piles of mushy goo just to be "uber" like you. *yawns*

I play the game to have <strong>fun</strong>. To explore and see new stuff. Right now, these artificial timesinks are preventing me from doing what I want to do. I pay the same amount of money per month for my 1 account that you pay for 1 account.

Just because you have no life and can play for 6 to 8 hours a day multiple days a week does not make you more deserving of better content. Nor does it make you more deserving of exclusive content. You want to exclude people? Go join Legends. Then you will have something to back up your paper thin arguments.

The only thing people who can play more often deserve, is to get there faster. *shrugs* That's it. The game would be just as strong, and most likely better quality if they stopped using artificial timesinks and opened the entire game up for all playstyles... and not just the one.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>LDoN will prove that once and for all, 40 dungeons in the 90 min range will provide 60 hours of entertainment. Thats about 2 weeks for a LOT of people, barely 1 week for some. Even if they do every dungeon twice thats 1 month. Any more than twice and it'll become the same old grind.[/quote]

Then quit playing if you feel it's a grind after that. But don't go trying to force your timesinks on to my playstyle. I don't have time for them. And they prevent me from fully enjoying a <strong>GAME</strong>. Again, this is a game, not a second job and many of the uber guilds treat it as a second job. There is no denying that. It's a cold, hard fact you can see for yourself just by browsing any uber guilds recruitment lists.

Den, chill out please.

We have several notable community members who are "other" classes, besides Druids here(or what most would consider such).

They add spice and zip to otherwise droll onesided discussions.

You do not have to agree with them to at least treat them with a modicum of hospitality.

I'm not trying to do anything of the sort Alyssia, that's your own paranoia working overtime. I seem to remember you asking me to stop posting in one of these threads so actually you're the one trying to get ME to back out gracefully so you can claim a false victory by default. Sorry, not going to happen. It's indeed you getting shot down here, you with the arguments that hold no water, and you with the petty arguments, as well as an unacceptable hatred towards certain types of players. Thanks for proving my points for me ONCE AGAIN. Continue to dig your own hole deeper and I will still be here to reap the benefits.

<img src="http://www.american-firefighter.com/photos/pics/239.jpg" style="border:0;"/>

It's getting hot in here.

I'm not the only one that has suggested you should stop posting as well. You keep trying to fall back on the same, lame, trite arguments that don't hold any water. You have yet to prove any single point of yours in any thread in which you've posted. Well, except that point that you're even more pigheaded and stubborn than I am. Your problem is that you are only looking at it from your point of view and that's it.

I on the other hand am looking at it from my point of view, a raiders point of view, and even a developers point of view. It's not that hard, but you seem to be unable to. Which is why your arguments just cannot stand up to scrutiny.

I think you are all pigheaded and stubborn.

So stop it already with the "stop posting here" chit.

Knock it off, Please.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Den, chill out please[/quote]


WTF?

You have got to be kidding me.

This idiot arrived and has done NOTHING but insult a large number of people from her first post onwards (I challenge you to check them and prove me wrong) who have contributed to this board and this class for a long time and you have the nerve to tell me to chill out?

Real mods would have booted her 50 posts ago.

She can call us pathetic, lame,pigheaded and stubborn without a word from you but god forbid anyone object.

Grats mods, nice work.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>She can call us pathetic, lame,pigheaded and stubborn without a word from you but god forbid anyone object.[/quote]

*rolls her eyes* I never said, "Deneldor is lame." Did I? Nope. I said ubers are lame, pathetic, etc. Not my fault you think you're uber. I've heard plenty of people who have bashed roleplayers...and it bothers me some, but oh well... it's not like they were talking about me personally, saying "Alyssia is Miss Lamerose" and what not. Like some have here.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I said ubers are lame, pathetic, etc. Not my fault you think you're uber[/quote]

Define "Uber" as you see it without it directly applying to anyone on this board.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
Real mods would have booted her 50 posts ago.

She can call us pathetic, lame,pigheaded and stubborn without a word from you but god forbid anyone object.

Grats mods, nice work.
[/quote]

I think it's a ruse in the PvV game. Make sure the Druid's Grove is a toxic wasteland of flame wars, so druids avoid it, and so end up less knowledgeable about their class. As a result, they don't get invited back to groups.

They quit out of boredom at soloing, and so Verant is forced to improve the druid class further to keep the population up.

soru

Blah blah blah Alyssia, same old detritus from you. You were too busy spewing hatred to make any good points, not that you had any. Remember you are the one people were calling to get banned, not me. You're not even worth the time anymore. *yawn*

You never had any good points either punkin, just narrow minded views as if you had just come out of the eq how-to manual.

And you were never worth the time, what you got was pro bona.

Soru: It's so diabolical it just might work!

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Just because someone plays 5 times more than me should ONLY mean they get things 5 times faster. That's it. Nothing else.
Someone explain to me why their time is more valuable than mine. No one has done it yet. The answer "Because I put more time into the game as a whole" does not answer the question and is unacceptable.[/quote]

The top 2% of Everquest players are in game "5 times more than you" to tackle the highest content so they can be the first to experience it and wear the spoils. Bragging rights and a few minutes of fame are more than enough reason to push to be the best.

If everyone has equal access to content and rewards then we've negated their main motivations for playing. Flattening out the power curve may not adversely affect you, but it will reduce someone else's enjoyment of Everquest.

As more expansions are released, yesterday's uber content becomes tomorrow's farming ground for mid-range guilds. You'll have access to those goodies eventually. Why do you have to obtain them <em>now</em> and devalue the effort someone else put forth to acquire them?

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Why do you have to obtain them now and devalue the effort someone else put forth to acquire them?[/quote]

Uh, he said in the very text you quoted that it should take him 5 times as long to acquire the items. How exactly does that devalue someone else's effort?

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The top 2% of Everquest players are in game "5 times more than you" to tackle the highest content so they can be the first to experience it and wear the spoils. Bragging rights and a few minutes of fame are more than enough reason to push to be the best.[/quote]

EverQuest is a <strong>GAME</strong>. however, from the way some of you people treat it, it's a second life for you. I don't want the bragging rights. I don't care about being the first. I just want to have fun and see everything I can see.

When a game is designed as EverQuest has been designed so far, it's <strong>flawed</strong>. Even if EQ was designed so that anyone could eventually at their own pace see everything, the pathetic ubers would still have their shot at being the first. It'd just give people that want to enjoy the game at their own pace a chance to <strong>fully</strong> what they paid for.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>If everyone has equal access to content and rewards then we've negated their main motivations for playing. Flattening out the power curve may not adversely affect you, but it will reduce someone else's enjoyment of Everquest.[/quote]

Well what about creating a power curve that is far too steep and thus reducing my enjoyment of the game? Hrm? Is that ok then?

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>As more expansions are released, yesterday's uber content becomes tomorrow's farming ground for mid-range guilds. You'll have access to those goodies eventually. Why do you have to obtain them now and devalue the effort someone else put forth to acquire them?[/quote]

I never asked for them <strong>now</strong>. I just want to be able to get to the same places given time. However, I do <strong>not</strong> want to be required to give up things in my real life outside of EverQuest to be able to fully enjoy the game. That is a decidedly flawed game design.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>the pathetic ubers[/quote]
Well it's good to know you aren't biased.

Just to put things in perspective, my main has acquired flags for Storms, Valor, BoT, and NightmareB. Extended work hours and real life commitments prevent me from playing as much as I'd like. I am a casual raider at best.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I do not want to be required to give up things in my real life outside of EverQuest to be able to fully enjoy the game.[/quote]
The zones you don't have access to are no different than the ones you do. They are composed of polygons. They have mobs. The mobs give experience. Loot drops and has numbers on it. If you aren't satisfied with the zones you can go to, you won't be magically any happier if you had access to them all. If the only way you will achieve enjoyment is by being handed content you haven't earned, then you are the one that's flawed.

Never claimed I wasn't biased. *shrugs* I have little to no respect for people that claim they are are uber and I do think it's pretty pathetic that people think they, and only they should have the best gear and access to all the zones, just because they can sit in front of a computer for longer stretches of time.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>The zones you don't have access to are no different than the ones you do. They are composed of polygons. They have mobs. The mobs give experience. Loot drops and has numbers on it. If you aren't satisfied with the zones you can go to, you won't be magically any happier if you had access to them all. If the only way you will achieve enjoyment is by being handed content you haven't earned, then you are the one that's flawed.[/quote]

Oh magic is in the formula now? Personally, I would be thrilled if I knew that eventually I could have access to every single zone in this game... even if I could only play for two hours here... or two hours there. As for <strong>earning</strong> content. That's ridiculous. I pay for my one account, the same amount you pay for one account so piss off.

When I buy a single player game, I pay the same amount relatively as other people do and the only restriction on how much of the game I get to enjoy is how long it will take me to get through it all, not how long I can play it at one sitting.

That's all I'm asking for, is to give even casual gamers a way to earn loot, experience, and such with our sporadic play times. Right now, after I ding 65, get about 40 more aa points... I'm done. Unless I sell my soul and give up my real life, I can't advance my character anymore. And even then... it is still a boring grind to get anywhere.

I have access to basically three good xp zones. Valor, HoH, and BoT. Zones where I can see some kind of gain for just an hour or two of playing.

<blockquote style="padding-left:0.5em; margin-left:0; margin-right:0; margin-top:0; margin-bottom:0; border-left:solid 2">That's all I'm asking for, is to give even casual gamers a way to earn loot, experience, and such with our sporadic play times. Right now, after I ding 65, get about 40 more aa points... I'm done. Unless I sell my soul and give up my real life, I can't advance my character anymore. And even then... it is still a boring grind to get anywhere.

I have access to basically three good xp zones. Valor, HoH, and BoT. Zones where I can see some kind of gain for just an hour or two of playing.</blockquote>

Where have you been? We argued back and forth on this board to get casual players who had a hard time with flags and quests the right to access zones. And it was done, and now it still isn't enough. Where were you then? I'm sorry, but there are plenty of possibilities outside those zones for real experience gain in a few hours. A quest that is very doable exists for tactics access, which is decent experience both solo and grouped. A new expansion is about to be released. We have gotten a lot of what was asked for, and players in general have been fairly gracious about the disturbance to the expansion that the changes have caused.

Your posts feel like my lesson. I argued for more access for people, took personal attacks to make my point and stepped over the line myself on occasion. In the end, only a few months later, these changes which were hard-fought mean nothing to newer players. Why did I bother?

Why did you bother indeed? There will always be people like Alyssia that are never happy. Give them an inch and they want a mile.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I have access to basically three good xp zones. Valor, HoH, and BoT. Zones where I can see some kind of gain for just an hour or two of playing[/quote]

Too funny that someone who isn't even 65 doesnt consider PoN/PoI/PoD to be good experience zones...god forbid you actually have to put any effort at all into the game.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Too funny that someone who isn't even 65 doesnt consider PoN/PoI/PoD to be good experience zones...god forbid you actually have to put any effort at all into the game.[/quote]

My rogue is level 64. Just dinged yesterday morning. I have <strong>zero</strong> chance of soloing any of the alternate quests and I don't agree with begging friends to camp in zones like PoStorms for hours upon hours just to get me a flag into Tactics and most people don't even want to bother with the Tactics flag quest anymore.

I've tried forming pick-up groups for it but most people just want to grind and grind and grind and grind in Valor/BoT/HoH.

As for putting effort into the game? Give me a break. It takes zero effort to sit in one spot and pull over and over and over. I was in BoT yesterday doing the flappies and even I could pull that place it was so simple. There's only like two spots in those four courtyards that require harmonizing or pacification.

And of course the only loot that drops are tradeskill drops that are so common it's not worth it to farm them to sell and parchments, which most groups don't even consider as greed loot for melee classes. It's ridiculous the way some people treat parchments.

One more thing about PoI/PoD/PoN --- no one looks for level 63+ people for those zones except for a couple camps. I know when I was 55 and looking for people to invite to the group, I ignored anyone that was 61+ unless there was no other option. Nine times out of ten, they wouldn't be interested at all.

You don't have to give up real life stuff to see more content and get better gear Alyssia. Your problem's that you have convinced yourself of that whether it's the true or not and by god no one will convince you otherwise! That would mean having to admit you're wrong and that maybe you are in fact motivated by greed and wanting things easy.

There are plenty of ways to advance your character without putting in tons of time. You even say you don't mind it taking longer. So what's the problem? You are making generalized statements and false assumptions about what it takes to advance. There are going to be lots of people that don't see 100% of the content, but many games are like that. If you don't mind things going slower than there's no barriers except ones you fabricate yourself. It's pretty damn naive to expect to see every nook and cranny and every iota of content. I don't expect to and I'm not flying off the handle about it.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Oh magic is in the formula now?[/quote]
If the word 'magically' distracted you from the meaning of my message, feel free to omit that and read it again. Having access to these zones you feel you deserve won't give you the enjoyment that you're expecting. Were you planning on soloing in Plane of Time for an hour or two?

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>My rogue is level 64. ... I have zero chance of soloing any of the alternate quests [/quote]
As rogues, you and I both know we have zero chance of reliably soloing anything of significance. I don't understand why you even brought this up.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
I have access to basically three good xp zones. Valor, HoH, and BoT.
[/quote]

Saying 'I told you so' is rude and low-class, but kinda fun.

I wonder how long it will be before the first 'As I have only 30 minutes to play every alternate Tuesday, I have access to only two exp zones, Plane of Fire and Plane of Earth' post.

soru

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>You don't have to give up real life stuff to see more content and get better gear Alyssia. Your problem's that you have convinced yourself of that whether it's the true or not and by god no one will convince you otherwise! That would mean having to admit you're wrong and that maybe you are in fact motivated by greed and wanting things easy.[/quote]

Oh yeah, I'm gonna really get a lot better gear by scrimping and scrounging for ever grubby platinum I can get my hands on. Just the way I want to earn my gear, farming greens for a small bit of coins over and over... what a heroic way of doing it. I should write a short story about it.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>There are plenty of ways to advance your character without putting in tons of time. You even say you don't mind it taking longer. So what's the problem?[/quote]

More AA's is not the way to advance characters. I thought we already covered that. Why add in another 500 aa's to grind for when most of the aa's I can buy are pretty worthless to me and just there to make people grind and grind and grind.

I want xp & loot to come naturally as you do quests and crawl dungeons. Not camp in one spot grinding through the same mobs over and over. That is @#%$ boring.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>'s pretty damn naive to expect to see every nook and cranny and every iota of content.[/quote]

I paid for the game. I expect to be able to access all the content at some point while I'm playing the game.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Having access to these zones you feel you deserve won't give you the enjoyment that you're expecting. Were you planning on soloing in Plane of Time for an hour or two?[/quote]

Solo'ing for xp, no. Solo'ing by exploring, yes. Being a rogue, there's lots of places I can go (even before SoS was introduced) that others could only see by crawling through the dungeon or something.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>As rogues, you and I both know we have zero chance of reliably soloing anything of significance. I don't understand why you even brought this up.[/quote]

I brought it up because someone mentioned solo'ing the alt.key quests in a few hours.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I wonder how long it will be before the first 'As I have only 30 minutes to play every alternate Tuesday, I have access to only two exp zones, Plane of Fire and Plane of Earth' post.[/quote]

Currently most people that have access to those zones are the ones in guilds where they're required to have no life pretty much. Unless someone was allowed to mooch and ride along for the flags.

You paid for the game and you expect to see everything? What kind of games do you play? There aren't many games where you will see everything. If you want that type of experience go play Myst or something.

You can advance your character in different ways other than AA. If you want more than levels, AA's, tradeskills, and gear then go design a game that includes more than that. I don't know of any RPG based on more than those things.

You also don't have to scrimp and scrounge for money to buy items. The items are right out there for the taking. You're letting your greed dictate what you think's worthy. I've mentioned a few times that there are very good items to be had by one group but you continue to ignore that so that's your problem, not the game's.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you're playing the WRONG GAME. You either accept things the way they are or move on. Don't give me the friends crap either because with your attitude I can't believe you have any. If you're that unhappy find another game for christ's sake. You will get bored with LDoN anyway, then you will be back here crying about something else. You're just never going to be happy so deal with it.

Yay! Unkempt Druids! *musses up her hair smears some dirt on her face*

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>You paid for the game and you expect to see everything? What kind of games do you play? There aren't many games where you will see everything. If you want that type of experience go play Myst or something.[/quote]

I have played Myst, and Riven. I even borrowed a copy of Pyst and Drivel for ****s n' giggles one time from a friend. I must've played through Myst/Riven five or six times each doing different things each time, but eventually I felt I had seen everything the game had to offer.

There's no reason for EverQuest to be any different. I should have every oppurtunity to see every single damn zone in this game at one point in time or another, at my own pace and without giving up things in real life to do so.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>You can advance your character in different ways other than AA. If you want more than levels, AA's, tradeskills, and gear then go design a game that includes more than that. I don't know of any RPG based on more than those things.[/quote]

Just tacking on a few more levels, adding some new aa, and more recipes for tradeskills is just a stopgap really. I want to feel like my character really is part of the story of EverQuest, but ubers and mindless masses that follow them have turned EverQuest into EverGrind.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>You also don't have to scrimp and scrounge for money to buy items. The items are right out there for the taking. You're letting your greed dictate what you think's worthy. I've mentioned a few times that there are very good items to be had by one group but you continue to ignore that so that's your problem, not the game's.[/quote]

Bull****. I have a whopping total of 1300 platinum. The most I've ever had at one time was 16k because I managed to cash in on the Tae Ew Blood Vials when that armor was the hot item. It was the one time my rogue skills actually earned me some decent upgrades.

I died five or six times in Cazic-Thule, while sneaking around and pickpocketing the blood, but it was a blast seeing how far I could get without getting caught. I didn't even have Shroud of Stealth at the time.

Almost every single item I have on me was bought by scrimping and saving little bits here and there. The only things I quested for were my Ragebringer (rogue epic), my Crown of Deceit (wood elf illusion), 8th Coldain Ring, and my Amulet of the Grey Wastes. I'm at the point that the only upgrades I can get would be buying ornate chain patterns.

I very rarely win rolls on greed drops in groups. Never. I have had perpetual bad luck since day one. And I play a rogue, so I can't go farm some green mob for a wanted item or solo in the planes for great xp and good gem drops. And if I do use my pickpocket skills, people get pissed because I'm "stealing" from the mobs and the people that later kill them.

I've killed some of the single group mobs you're talking about that drop Ornate. They don't drop it enough. Killed three named mobs in BoT yesterday and got one ornate mold and two of the Torden's Ring containers. At that rate I might be able to get a full set of ornate by the time WoW comes out, if then. And that's only if I get lucky on the rolls and get lucky on chain drops.

They're tradeable, so everyone's gonna want to roll just because they can sell them. That ornate mold that dropped? It went to a monk in an uber guild that had zero need for that drop. Maybe he has a friend that needs in his guild, but my guess is I could go sit in bazaar or check his vendor and there it would be.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Don't give me the friends crap either because with your attitude I can't believe you have any. If you're that unhappy find another game for christ's sake. You will get bored with LDoN anyway, then you will be back here crying about something else. You're just never going to be happy so deal with it.[/quote]

I do play the game because of my friends. I've made some great RL friends out of this game and I don't plan on quitting until I have lost all hope with this game or they move on to another game. I only have this attitude with dumb ass people that think they deserve all the best @#%$ in the world because they can sit in front of a computer more hours per day and more days per week. It's a god damned @#%$ ridiculous way to make a game.

Somehow I doubt I will get bored with LDoN. I have 3 characters that I plan on crawling the various dungeons and quests with. They're at relatively different levels, so it will be a different experience with each class. One's my rogue, who will be level 65 in about two or three hours from now. Another is my level 40 druid and the last is my 35 monk. I also have a 26 pally and 26 beastlord on a different server that I might also crawl LDoN with.

So once LDoN comes out, and if it turns out to be as good as it sounds like it's gonna be... I'm finally gonna have a way to have fun in this game again without sitting on my ass for six hours a night.

You just don't get it and you never will. There are ways to make money as any class and the bad rolling excuse has to be the oldest and lamest one in the book. You don't want to put forth the effort, period. Just admit it already so we can move on! Good lord.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>You just don't get it and you never will. There are ways to make money as any class and the bad rolling excuse has to be the oldest and lamest one in the book. You don't want to put forth the effort, period. Just admit it already so we can move on! Good lord.[/quote]

TIME != EFFORT Get that through your thick @#%$ skull. Time wasted in EverQuest is just that. Time wasted. There is zero challenge in sitting on your ass clicking little buttons for hours upon hours, making little trinkets to sell in bazaar.

I don't want to be forced to sit on my ass for hours upon hours trying to sell junk items to noobs so I can afford maybe one upgrade. I was listening to the shaman chat channel and some of them have upwards of 500k platinum sitting around because they are in guilds that are fully of greedy bastages that farm all the ornate dropping mobs almost every time they spawn.

If the mobs that drop the upgrades for me are always dead... and the greedy ubers come in and kill them despite the fact there's another group already there... what the @#%$ am I supposed to do? Run around picking the pockets of hill giants all the time? I might be able to afford one piece of ornate in a few months, maybe a year.

As a rogue, the only @#%$ ways I have to make money is to get lucky on drops (which rarely ever happens), get lucky and be able to pickpocket something that sells well, or loot everything I can in an FFA group and piss people off.

It's a pretty pathetic game design when I feel like I am being forced to level up a druid just so I can afford some upgrades for my rogue, since the only items I can camp are pretty much perma-killed during the times that I am online.

I can't believe I read the whole thing...from page one...

There are three basic playing styles in MMOGs: solo, group, raid, with solo/group basically being two sides of the same coin. Participating in raiding requires membership in guilds that do that sort of thing as a general rule and a fair number of the more successful of these guilds have requirements for minimum required on-line and raiding time, along with systems to reward those who put in the most time and effort (ie. DKP.)

There's nothing wrong with raiding, and people who enjoy raiding are not in the wrong for enjoying it.

The problem as I see it is that the only real method of progression in EverQuest beyond a certain point is to raid, and I see that as a flawed design. Progression in EverQuest is as much a matter of gear as it is levels and AAs. Limiting the gear to basically only being aquirable in raids, or by saving up scores of kplat is simply a bad design.

While loot can certainly be more reliably found on raid encounters, balanced by competition for the mobs, the necessity to gather a large force, and the various other details required for a successful raid, it should not be the only means of aquiring said loot. A raid boss mob might have a 100% chance to drop Uber_item_01, while a boss mob tuned for a single group might have a 10% chance of dropping it.

Put another way, given the same time invested, both a casual player and a raider aught to have the same chance to get equivilent loot. A boss mob drops a valuable item to a raid of 72 people that is useful to perhaps 6 of them would be balanced against an encounter tuned for 6 people that has a roughly 1 in 6 chance of dropping that said item, so long as the difficulty in getting to the mob was on par (per player) and the challenge (per player) was comparable.

Equal effort per-player, equal reward per-player. Not a difficult concept I would hope.

Would the number of people who raid drop if equivilent loot were possible outside of raiding? Probably, but mostly because raiding isn't fun for everyone. Nothing wrong with that, just as long as both methods of enjoying the game provide a balanced means of advancement/progression.

As an aside, had there really been a means of progression in PoP available to single groups, all the way through PoTime, I would have rated that expansion as being considerably better. The key is to balance per-player-time invested against per-player risk and effort involved. In order for this to be done, the casual/grouping method of advancement needs to not be dependant on rare and highly contested spawns, and should be doable in 2-3 hour increments of play time.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Equal effort per-player, equal reward per-player. Not a difficult concept I would hope[/quote]

Not a difficult concept but an almost impossible thing to implement. Using your own example..

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Put another way, given the same time invested, both a casual player and a raider aught to have the same chance to get equivilent loot. A boss mob drops a valuable item to a raid of 72 people that is useful to perhaps 6 of them would be balanced against an encounter tuned for 6 people that has a roughly 1 in 6 chance of dropping that said item, so long as the difficulty in getting to the mob was on par (per player) and the challenge (per player) was comparable[/quote]

..that wouldn't even come close to equal effort invested because it conveniently overlooks the massive ammount of time required to build a character that can even attempt that boss mob. To explain what I mean we'll use RZtW as an example.

Take the best 72 "casual" players you know in terms of skill and attempt the RZ script. You will fail and fail miserably because RZ requires 72 players with high end gear, massive HP tanks, massive mana pool casters. Pick up raids on my server are still regularly failing AD, not through lack of knowledge or skill but through lack of well equipped players.

Make your 1 in 6 chance a 1 in 60 chance and you might be nearer the mark.

Or leave it at 1 in 6 and design it so that the single group encounter requires the same sort of equipment, which theoretically could be obtained by doing easier versions of those single group encounters.

Of course it would take a massive time investment to get to that point, just like it does with raiding, just in slightly more manageable chunks.

Another thing to note is that if the 72 person raid encounter drops exactly 2 items every time (how many does RZ drop anyway?) then the comparable 6 person encounter would have to drop nothing 5 times out of 6. I think a better alternative would be to have an okay item drop 5 times out of 6, and 1 time out of 6 drop an item that's almost as nice as the loot from the raid encounter but not quite. Then the net value per kill per person is the same.

Or, better still, make the real rewards come from series of quests, so that each kill either takes one person 1/6 of the way to that really nice item, or everyone in the group 1/36 of the way there.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>(how many does RZ drop anyway?)[/quote]

2 as do all PoP bosses. Don't be fooled by the hype around here, loot is hard as hell to come by at ALL levels of the game.

2 as do all PoP bosses. Don't be fooled by the hype around here, loot is hard as hell to come by at ALL levels of the game.

Oh yeah, 20+ pieces a night in NToV? 16+ in clearing ancients in ST which takes about 1-2 hours. Ummm... Not sure about Luclin. What about VP?

Oops, forgot about VT, hear that's candy land once you finally get there.

I'm pretty sure the biggest grief non-raiders have is that they have always been limited in the gear available to them (in the past) by the raid guilds. Basicaly high end gear is metered out by long spawn times and loot tables. The raid guilds have had the upper hand because they made sure they were there to get that loot via scouts and having the numbers to do it on a whim. I think that is where the anti-raid attitude spawns.

They could put good loot on one groupable mobs. The loot tables actualy work fine for that , have a regular crappy drop 75% of the time, a decent drop about 20% of the time and the really good drop 5% of the time. could have named spawn with a 1% chance at a number of given points so yer not camping the named. and there you have yer random chance for good loot if you play enough. ChardokB is pretty close to that model IMO.

Not sure what your point is Panamah. NToV and ST are doable by absolutely anyone, no guild required.

VT candyland?

In your dreams it is. Vt clearing will net 30 ish drops for an average raid of 60 people and is teh most boring pain in the ass 6 hour grind ever. Thats 1 piece per person every 2 clearings of a zone that has a week long repop and is even now hugely contested. If you're on a server where you can get VT more than once per month I envy you. It only appeared to be good when guilds first got there and 1 guild had it to themselves to farm.

I would argue that its actually harder to get upgrades at the highest end than anywhere else. There's no mudflation, no trickle down and no gearing up with PoP bazaar gear and going and ganking ST with 1 group for high end guilds.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>They could put good loot on one groupable mobs. The loot tables actualy work fine for that , have a regular crappy drop 75% of the time, a decent drop about 20% of the time and the really good drop 5% of the time. could have named spawn with a 1% chance at a number of given points so yer not camping the named. and there you have yer random chance for good loot if you play enough. ChardokB is pretty close to that model IMO.[/quote]

This is nice but it still requires one of two things:

1) You get dern lucky on spawns and drops
or
2) You play hour after hour in one spot (AKA CAMP)

This is what we have now and is not an improvement on the camp camp camp system.


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To me the New Plane of Hate range items get close to doing things better. The final two items are extremely good, the the lower level version being a significant improve for the general casual player also. My monk uses the level 1 melee item version(Gem of War). The quest pieces for these items drop off regular mobs and involve progressive quests. The drops themselves are exceedingly rare, and probably should drop more often, but the preogressive quest is the way to do things because at least i know I am making progress.

Frankly I think the items that come out of LDoN should be all be No-Drop, required level 30, reccomended level 65 and with any effects not being activated until level 61. This way the <strong>final items</strong> of the LDoN dungeons could be the same whether you are level 65 or level 30, but they wouldn't have significant benefit until you got near level 60. With the final products at level 65 being equal to VT loot or better, but on a level 30 player the recomended level 65 item wouldn't be much better than old cultural. The final items acquired would take at least 10 trips into dungeons to acquire.

Just dreamin again I know.

I'll agree with ya there Stew, anything would be an improvement over Raiding being the only way to progress gear wise.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> loot is hard as hell to come by at ALL levels of the game. [/quote]

What you said and I pulled it apart and found some flaws with your logic.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>In your dreams it is. Vt clearing will net 30 ish drops for an average raid of 60 people and is teh most boring pain in the ass 6 hour grind ever[/quote]

Well, I interpreted your saying "hard as hell" to mean, it's not a free flowing tap. Which is true in most of the parts of PoP. But in other places the loot is fairly easy to get to and flows quite freely. VT, ST, and NToV are all examples of that. I didn't say the encounters were enjoyable or fun. Personally you pretty much summed up my opinion of raiding: "teh most boring pain in the ass". Couldn't have said it better.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Not sure what your point is Panamah. NToV and ST are doable by absolutely anyone, no guild required.[/quote]

What's a guild have to do with it? They still require a raid. I don't think I've heard of an ancient being taken down by a single group yet. But 30 drops for 6 hours? That's 5 drops an hour.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>I would argue that its actually harder to get upgrades at the highest end than anywhere else.[/quote]

Pardon but... duh! They generally design games that way. Something tells me if you're one-grouping ST then you probably don't need anything from ST.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>But 30 drops for 6 hours? That's 5 drops an hour. [/quote]

Umm, this discussion is running in circles.

Yes, VT offers nice loot in a small period of time. But:

a. you tend to forget the investments of time made before. A full guild has to be keyed and geared to beat Emperor Ssra AND keyed to VT by questing the Scepter. Thats ALOT of time before anyone is able to get anything.

b. VT is a once per week spawn. Instanced Dungeons are infinite spawns. Period.

c. VT is still on heavy competition on most servers. My guild is doing it for >10 month now and we have seen 4 (!) Aten Ha Ra. We still RACE for each and every damn named mob there. And once all named spawns are well split over the week, its more like moving 4 hours to get 2 items, and not: "hey lets do our daily 4 hour VT grind to get our daily 30 drops".

Its much harder (in terms of time to spend) to get Elder Armbands of Ro than to finish Shawl 8.

I wrote it earlier and i write it again: No worries on opening up upgrade paths for non-raiders to let them get equal gear. BUT bring it in line with time investments AND chances on Uber Loot. There is a rough chance of 5% on a Mail of Judgement or legs for Druids of VT Raiding Guilds per YEAR after they spent hundreds of hours on raiding (VT and Ssra) and camping (shards, green metal, empe key). Make it the same effort and chances for non raiders in LDoN and everyone is fine.

Shawl 8 is very much inline with this. Offer an upgrade for each class and each item slot which is inline with effort and quality of the shawl 8 and you won't see any "damn uber" complaining, but i doubt you will see much "casuals" drooling on it.

Time does not = effort Alyssia. Get THAT through YOUR thick skull. There are more factors than that even though you would like to boil it down to only that since then you would be getting the same loot in that same amount of time but for less effort.

My guild has started working towards Ssra/VT as an alternative option to Elementals(which we are aslo working towards). It might be boring and all but it does actually sound like a 'candyland'. If you indeed can get 30 drops for 60 people in one night how isn't that a candyland? That's a drop for every other person. What other kind of raid gives you that? In most raids you're lucky to get 2 or 3 items for that same number of people. That's a downside of raids that the so-called 'casuals' seem to conveniently forget. I'll take 30 drops for 6 hours of actual EFFORT any day.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr> Time does not = effort Alyssia.[/quote]

My god Autmun. How many @#%$ times are you going to change your @#%$ argument!? God damn. All along I have been saying TIME != EFFORT <em>(!= is the same as "does not equal&quot;) </em> I don't give a @#%$ if it takes ten, twenty, or thirty hours to get something. That is a WASTE of time in my opinion. Valuable time wasted on a game that's supposed to be fun.

If there's something I want, I want to be able to find out where it drops... and go get it. I don't want to sit on my @#%$ ass in one little spot in a dungeon, killing the same damn mob, over and over just to try and get the rare mob to spawn... that might drop the item I want.

So how long is it gonna be before you change your mind again and start saying that time does equal effort?

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>If there's something I want, I want to be able to find out where it drops... and go get it. I don't want to sit on my @#%$ ass in one little spot in a dungeon, killing the same damn mob, over and over just to try and get the rare mob to spawn... that might drop the item I want.[/quote]

..and has already been pointed out to you that will never happen in a subscription based game. The game wouldnt last more than a couple of months.

EQ may be a game to you but to the important people (the developers) it's a money making machine and timesinks are the cash cow.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>..and has already been pointed out to you that will never happen in a subscription based game. The game wouldnt last more than a couple of months.[/quote]

It wouldn't last a couple of months for the minority of the population, i.e. the hardcore goobers. And I could care less if they left the game. They've been the source of more frustration in this game than I care to comment on.

EverQuest would still be around even if I could take a group into a dungeon, crawl through the dungeon and get the item I want in a reasonable amount of time. Y'know what would be missing? The obscene, unreasonable prices you see in the bazaar. Just because you think everyone should be forced to sit on their ass for 10+ hours killing the same mobs repeatedly to "earn" their gear doesn't make it the right way.

That's not a challenge... that's just a huge waste of time.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
EverQuest would still be around even if I could take a group into a dungeon, crawl through the dungeon and get the item I want in a reasonable amount of time. Y'know what would be missing? The obscene, unreasonable prices you see in the bazaar.
[/quote]

Are you really that unaware of cause and effect?

If items in the bazaar didn't cost more than you can afford, you would already have bought them. Consequently, you would be unable to go crawl through a dungeon and get an upgrade, whether you had 1 hour or 8 available to play.

If anything, the high-end economy problem is that there isn't really enough liquidity to support prices of above 150k or so, so items that should really cost more always end up dropping to that price slot, deflating all lesser gear.

soru

I never changed my mind. I never said time = effort. You're as bad as Scirocco with your lame attempts at trying to warp reality Alyssia.

I've actually took the time to read each and every one of these posts. And now I'm going to chime in with my thoughts. Sorry I'm a bard, not a druid, but I won't let that stop me ;p

I've seen a lot of very strong-willed folks sticking to their "side" of things. And that's not a bad thing, I guess it's good to be passionate, but it's started to border on the ridiculous. To be steadfast in your ideals to the exclusion of all others is ignorance. Plain and simple.

Anyway, one things has confused me for a long time. It blows my mind to see how people have fallen so deeply into the mindset that good loot should require a raid. Now don't get me wrong, I enjoy raiding sometimes, but really only the first couple times I do an encounter. The truth is that for me (not you, ME), raiding is a pretty tedious experience in and of itself. Sure it feels nice when my guild would triumph over a new encounter. The exploration and the newness aspects of fresh encounters temper negatives for me, but it always becomes a PITA after that. Once the initial thrill is gone, the only thing that really motivates me is the hope of loot for myself or a couple of close friends. Hell I play a bard, which is by definition the most active class in any raid, yet I still get bored out of my skull.

So that is how it is for me. I know that some people really do enjoy the basic act of raiding. If someone really likes it, and isn't doing it just for the loot, but for the simple act of it and the emotional response it triggers, then that's great. More power to ya. I have no problems with that.

What I do have problems with is peeple that are only about the ego stroke that raiding grants them trying to cling to some divine (and wholely artificial) mandate that they are the only ones who should be entitled to nice loot. I mean for probably 80 percent of the people on any given raid, if the people had any chance whatsoever to get equal or even near equal loot through some other means, they would do it without hesistation. They aren't having fun, they are desperate clinging to the hope that they might get some loot sometime in the maybe not so nearish futute. I know I would sure as hell jump at a chance to do it all differently. And I know that my close friends would too. The comraderie that I feel when raiding is nothing compared to what I get when my buds and I do something that we didn't think was possible as a group.

So if anyone thinks that having nice loot available to so called casual players is going to marginalize anyone's experience, I'd think again. The ONLY thing that it would cut into is the ego stroke that some people get from looting the nice stuff. That whole elitist kick that it sends some folks on. And the reason that emotion gets stirred is because they know full well that there is ZERO chance of most people ever getting them. It's simply not an option for the majority of the playerbase who don't really enjoy raiding enough to go that hardcore. (remember that even for lots of people that DO raid, it's only out of necessity, so it only goes so far)

And speaking of elitism, it is far more 733t in my eyes to go do something amazing with 6 people than it is to do anything with 72 or even 40. Some facts to chew on: The smaller the group, the smaller the margin for error. The smaller the group, the less tools said group has to work with. Thus the ability to think and work outside the box is very important. A very large argument can be made that for any given encounter, if scaled to maintain the same level of challenge, it takes more actual skill and finesse for a smaller group to triumph.

So if you are a hardcore raider and want to continue to do the things you do because you really enjoy raiding, go for it. There's no one stopping you or telling you that it's wrong. The only thing wrong with it is the idea that it should be the only way.

Is EQ just not the game for me? Maybe. Infact I don't play actively anymore and haven't for a few months now. The long list of things I have written about contributed to my feeling that there wasn't much left for me to do. I got my epic, got 65, got all my songs, got all the alt flags, got some AAs. But there were just some things I was never going to see, do or get. So I said screw it, I'm done. And even if I'd continued to play, my toon would be relatively the same. Sure I might have some more AAs, but for the most part I'd still be the same pretty averagely equipped epic bard. I'd still be a damn good bard, but I wouldn't magically have VT or elemental gear because that is just not an option. I have neither the time nor patience to deal with the upper tiers guilds and thus I am absolutely shut out of everything beyond what I have now.

Just because something happens to be a certain way doesn't mean that it SHOULD be that way. And it looks like SOE is starting to realize that. We all know that they have no problems with changing their minds and totally switching gears from one expansion to the next. So given that track record, it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone if they do change something as big as the whole loot paradigm. I for one would not be upset. And I'm not the only one that feels that way.

*cheers Merrilon* Best post evar.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>It blows my mind to see how people have fallen so deeply into the mindset that good loot should require a raid. [/quote]

I wonder if SWG, EQ2 and all future MMORPG's are going to elvolve in an identical manner. Or will they discover that actually, playing with small groups of people is kind of fun.

Very well written post merrilon.

I dont agree with you at all but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good post.

Merrilon, it sounded like you'd quit the game for much the same reason I had. Does LDoN tempt you back?

"Merrilon, it sounded like you'd quit the game for much the same reason I had. Does LDoN tempt you back?"

Very much so. Even though I've quit playing daily or even weekly, I still have my account and I keep up on all the news. I just got totally dis-illusioned with where the game has gone. Just like a lot of you have surely found; once you get to a certain point you are forced into a particular style of gameplay if you have any hope of further character developement. I tried that and it just didn't work for me. But I'm holding out hope that LDoN can bring some of the magic back to the game for me. If it can provide meaningful content and real avenues for advancement without the need for a zerg then I'll be very happy.

I tried to get into the beta but since I'm usually a couple days out of the loop I missed the cutoff. NDA be damned I'm sure we will all begin to hear more about it soon. If it looks anything like what I'm hoping it will, I'm sure I'll start to play more often than I have been.

im an level 65 epic druid and quite honestly, the favoratism and elitism and DRAMA of these large raiding guilds is what puts me off them. i have been in a large raiding guild when velious came out, and honestly HATED EVERY SECOND OF IT. and what i found was that the people that like to raid just arent the kind of people i would be likely to go to the bar with and have a beer and laugh. so i had to ask myself, do i really want to be part of the same kind of group that i HATED in high school, and on top of that, do i really want to spend this much time with a group of people i can't stand?

but that leaves me in much the same place as Merrilon. im 65, have my epic and decent gear, a few good AAs, but thats it and thats about as far as ill ever go. the game has stopped being fun and i have less and less fun in the game cause as a non-raider, i have nothing else to gain. few more AAs, maybe one or two more pieces of gear i can buy, but thats about it.

outside of a few months where i did nothing but resell in the bazaar, i havent had fun playing the game in a LONG time. i already know i dont like raiding, i dont really enjoy the company of the people that DO like raiding, and quite honestly, there is nothing more in the game for me.

if SOE doesnt begin to allow for raid quality gear from single group play, their game is doomed. licking up the scraps that the heavy raiding guilds leave behind is going to get old. and even though you raiders THINK you have something coming to you, the truth of the matter is, you DON't. the other 80% of the playerbase is going to reach a point where they are sick and tired of having to follow 1, 2 or even 3 expansions behind you, and in some cases, NEVER get the opportunity to have access to those areas you have already chewed up and spit out. and all your 8+ hours a night every single night will be WASTED cause even though SOE seems to LOVE you raiders to the point of putting together an entire expansion JUST FOR YOU, when the 80% of the rest of the servers say, "screw this noise, i am SOOO outa here." i promise, SOE won't keep those servers plugged in just for you.

BTW, how in the world do these raiders have a life? i dont get it....


whatever. just ranting. if LDON doesnt allow me some gear progression, im done with SOE and Everquest. After 4+ years, i'll be skipping town to see what Blizzard can do with their Worlds of Warcraft.

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>and all your 8+ hours a night every single night[/quote]

Grats Sannen on winning the TDG pathetic and misinformed generalisation of the week award!!!

Even my servers resident Uber Guild..who I believe were 3rd to finish clearing PoTime serverwide, dont raid that much. That's 56 hours of raiding?? Last week my guild didn't even break 25 hours raiding and that included a return visit to VT. Judging from experience, not hearsay, I would say 20 hours per week was about the norm for an EP flagged guild.

Spewing your built up bile is what rants are about. Blatantly lying to further your point is the path of the weak.