YIkes! Why is SoE making the game easier and easier and easier with evey patch?

[Exibar]

<DIV>  Wow, there surely are some awesome changes in this HUGE patch, but I have a concern that a lot of the changes being introduced are starting to make the gam too easy to play....</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>   Am I the only one that is noticing this?  Ever since Smedly (I think that's his last name) left has the head developer or whatever his title was, the game is getting more and more geared for the player that can only play a couple hours a month it seems.  Really, was the harvesting skill going up that slow that it required to be bumped up over double?  Tradeskill reactions that instantly give you a rare harvest item and a pristine item?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>  Those are just two small examples, but I see the course of the game gearing up to be way too easy.  Hmmmm, WoW is a pretty easy, non-hardcore game to play, DAoC is the same....  I'm sure the other "major" games are the same....</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>   I've played DAoC for a couple years while playing EQ1 and after EQ1 started getting bothersome for me.  DAoC was a pretty easy game to play when compared to EQ1, I stil call it EverQuest lite......</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>   EverQuest was always for the hardcore gamer, sure the casual gamer would have lots of fun in there too, but just without the expectation of getting too high in level or too far in the game.  EverQuest 2 should also be the same, EQ2 is a vast improvement over EQ1 don't get me wrong.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>   There is a reason that these "easier" games are loosing players, because too many things are just too easy to attain and the games progresses too quickly.  I know it's not an easy balancing act to do, but it would appear that EQ2 is tipping the scales over on the easy side.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>   before I ramble on way too much (I know too late!), 'll leave the floor open for discussion.....   How does everyone else feel?  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Topiatic]

<P>Ikinda got the same feeling reading through this especially on the 2 points you made. I actually had the thought that it might be time to head back to EQLive... go figure.</P> <P>My play style is VERY casual yet I still have harvest skills maxed at 160... never was it a problem to skill up just supplying my own materials. The ability to play this game casually is important to me, but I really don't want a free ride.</P>

[Jyste]

<DIV>Im really starting to get [Removed for Content] of with the way this game is being dumbed down. Every patch these days is making something in the game easier to do.</DIV> <DIV>It gives you no sense of achievment anymore when reading whats coming up in future patches. Many off us have spent hours raising our various harvesting skills and then its being made easier..................again. This happened to me when they lowered the skills needed to harvest in Antonica. Spent ages raising my skills was pleased when I got them all to 40, only for the required skill to be lowered to 20 the next day.</DIV> <DIV>Now its happening again. Why?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Why not they just bring out a patch that levels everyone to 50 instantly and be done with it.</DIV>

[LadyEternity]

I don't feel they are making the game to easy. I see it as they are tweaking the game to a finished state that it should have been released in. Playing a game should never be a 'chore' or a 'job'. It should be fun. Pure fun. I think the original everquest set alot of bad things on impressionable people. People became accustom to being forced to do 'unpleasant' things, and put up with annoying, frustrating gameplay, to sit for an eternity to recover from battle to participate in more fun activities unless you had certain buffs...to have fun and experience the game you were paying to play. People learned to associate all this with 'achievment' and sense of accomplishment within the game enviorment. Somewhere along the way, the game became a job, instead of something one does to relax and have fun. And people learned to lump it all together into a twisted view of what really is fun and enjoyment..as well as personal accomplishment. Thus, to think of a game without all those unpleasant time-sinks and frustrations sends people into a frenzy of shock and bewilderment. They think without these things the game will be a hollow experience, and lacking in personal achievment. When I had to go out and harvest 6 hours straight to find one single rare in Antonica, just to make one single Adept 3, when I did find it I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment...I felt relieved it was over with. I think maybe gamers need to review what we think is fun, take stock of it..and ask ourselves....is this REALLY something we want to feel achievment over? That being said, I want to say I love this update. I love the fact I can solo/duo/small group and have FUN now. I like the fact I don't have to spend wasted boring hours now running around harvesting ( no loss of harvest potential on nodes cuts the time I have to harvest in-half). I love the new quests. And I really like the fact that quest items are no-trade for a majority of items. This gives me reason to redo quests for alts, and slows down alt leveling..as they will have to mature on their own now instead of being given everything, and it stops questing from being a 'trivial' by stopping the sale of quested items from player to player. Heck, personally I would even have them make alot of these 'raid' mob drops and big boss drops 'bind on pickup'. I think we just all need to take a deep breath and relax. SOE is doing their best to make the game into something we will all enjoy for a longtime to come...all walks of people, all kinds of players. Lets let them do it. Ellsa (Templar) - Test

[Proudfoot]

<span><blockquote><hr>Exibar wrote:<div>  Wow, there surely are some awesome changes in this HUGE patch, but I have a concern that a lot of the changes being introduced are starting to make the gam too easy to play....</div> <div> </div> <div>   Am I the only one that is noticing this?  Ever since Smedly (I think that's his last name) left has the head developer or whatever his title was, the game is getting more and more geared for the player that can only play a couple hours a month it seems.  Really, was the harvesting skill going up that slow that it required to be bumped up over double?  Tradeskill reactions that instantly give you a rare harvest item and a pristine item?</div> <div> </div> <div>  Those are just two small examples, but I see the course of the game gearing up to be way too easy.  Hmmmm, WoW is a pretty easy, non-hardcore game to play, DAoC is the same....  I'm sure the other "major" games are the same....</div> <div> </div> <div>   I've played DAoC for a couple years while playing EQ1 and after EQ1 started getting bothersome for me.  DAoC was a pretty easy game to play when compared to EQ1, I stil call it EverQuest lite......</div> <div> </div> <div>   EverQuest was always for the hardcore gamer, sure the casual gamer would have lots of fun in there too, but just without the expectation of getting too high in level or too far in the game.  EverQuest 2 should also be the same, EQ2 is a vast improvement over EQ1 don't get me wrong.  </div> <div> </div> <div>   There is a reason that these "easier" games are loosing players, because too many things are just too easy to attain and the games progresses too quickly.  I know it's not an easy balancing act to do, but it would appear that EQ2 is tipping the scales over on the easy side.</div> <div> </div> <div>   before I ramble on way too much (I know too late!), 'll leave the floor open for discussion.....   How does everyone else feel?  </div> <div> </div> <div> </div><hr></blockquote>EQ2 was never intended to be "EQ1 with better graphics". Tons, and I mean TONS of people think its going to be similar gameplay and mechanics as the first one simply because of the name. The only thing incommon with the first EQ is the game world mythos. EVERYTHING else is different/changed. EQ2 wasn't supposed to be a huge timesink/group only game. Just look at the magazine ads "soloable gameplay"... lol They seem to be working on their end of the bargain concerning those 'false' advertising pages. They are making it easier for the LARGER portion of their playerbase. If you are the elite faction and have oodles of time on your hand, well then you're in the minority. Complainers are a vocal majority on the boards, but then only about 5% of the playerbase actually post, so you can't base any real stats on what players posting have to say.</span><div></div>

[Olivexe]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Exibar wrote:<BR> <DIV>...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>  EverQuest was always for the hardcore gamer, sure the casual gamer would have lots of fun in there too, but just without the expectation of getting too high in level or too far in the game.  EverQuest 2 should also be the same, EQ2 is a vast improvement over EQ1 don't get me wrong. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>...</DIV> <P></P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>I've said it before, I'll say it again. This is not EQ1 if you want that type of gameplay then go play EQ1.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>EQ2 was meant from the get go to be a more engaging game for the common gamer not the hardcore gamer. Meaning, their intention from beta onward is that if you only have a few hours a month then you should be able to progress or advance in some fashion.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>And for the record, I do prefer more difficult challenges. But this game has to appeal to a wide sector of gamers not just me. This game was in no way marketed as niche game design for a select crowd.</DIV> <P>Message Edited by Mar_Trinity on <SPAN class=date_text>04-02-2005</SPAN><SPAN class=time_text>12:58 PM</SPAN></P><p>Message Edited by Mar_Trinity on <span class=date_text>04-02-2005</span> <span class=time_text>12:58 PM</span>

[Sorentio]

<DIV>Tradeskill reactions that give you an auto-pristine and a rare item:  These are ultra-rare, as in more than 10 times more rare than going out and harvesting a rare item directly.  It's not really making the game easier, just adding in a nice bonus to some crafters to help alleviate the grinding they have to do.  If it happens only 1/10000 times or less I really doubt it's all that game-altering.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Harvesting skill-ups at double the rate:  I don't know about you, but every time I've gone up to the next tier zone, at least one of my harvesting skills is always lagging behind.  So I go and spend some hours raising it up, harvesting everything to get the nodes to spawn that I need, and then destroy all the resources at the end since I don't need them and they're just taking up space that I'll be using for the higher tier of resources.  SOE apparently decided that a timesink like that wasn't necessary and certainly wasn't making the game any more fun or even helping anyone else out by making more resources available, so adjusted the numbers to reduce the need for it.</DIV>

[Lorrothm]

<DIV>i agree with this observation 100%. Cant get the pelt to make the manastone.... tough crap.... thats too bad. Cant get the opal.... once again though crap. Some things in a game you have to work for, and it seems to many people want to whine about working for it to SOE excessively, so SOE will nurf it and make it easier. I am ashamed. This game is looking more and more like WoW every patch. Its a sad thing.</DIV>

[Lorrothm]

<DIV>oh yea and one other thing. Whats the point in tradekilling with these new changes? Tailors dont get a lot of buisness.... and now they will get even less. And im sure Jewlers are probably feeling and seeing the same thing. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>SOE just need the quit nerfing.... and start shoveling content into the game. Everytime they nerf things like these heritage quests.... there taking thier content and reducing it exponentially. This change no only affects the quest itself.... but also the tradeskills that used to be needed.</DIV>

[Demothis]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> LadyEternity wrote:<BR><BR>I don't feel they are making the game to easy. I see it as they are tweaking the game to a finished state that it should have been released in. Playing a game should never be a 'chore' or a 'job'. It should be fun. Pure fun. I think the original everquest set alot of bad things on impressionable people. People became accustom to being forced to do 'unpleasant' things, and put up with annoying, frustrating gameplay, to sit for an eternity to recover from battle to participate in more fun activities unless you had certain buffs...to have fun and experience the game you were paying to play. People learned to associate all this with 'achievment' and sense of accomplishment within the game enviorment. Somewhere along the way, the game became a job, instead of something one does to relax and have fun. And people learned to lump it all together into a twisted view of what really is fun and enjoyment..as well as personal accomplishment. Thus, to think of a game without all those unpleasant time-sinks and frustrations sends people into a frenzy of shock and bewilderment. They think without these things the game will be a hollow experience, and lacking in personal achievment.<BR><BR>When I had to go out and harvest 6 hours straight to find one single rare in Antonica, just to make one single Adept 3, when I did find it I didn't feel a sense of accomplishment...I felt relieved it was over with.<BR><BR>I think maybe gamers need to review what we think is fun, take stock of it..and ask ourselves....is this REALLY something we want to feel achievment over?<BR><BR>That being said, I want to say I love this update. I love the fact I can solo/duo/small group and have FUN now. I like the fact I don't have to spend wasted boring hours now running around harvesting ( no loss of harvest potential on nodes cuts the time I have to harvest in-half). I love the new quests. And I really like the fact that quest items are no-trade for a majority of items. This gives me reason to redo quests for alts, and slows down alt leveling..as they will have to mature on their own now instead of being given everything, and it stops questing from being a 'trivial' by stopping the sale of quested items from player to player. Heck, personally I would even have them make alot of these 'raid' mob drops and big boss drops 'bind on pickup'.<BR><BR>I think we just all need to take a deep breath and relax. SOE is doing their best to make the game into something we will all enjoy for a longtime to come...all walks of people, all kinds of players. Lets let them do it.<BR><BR>Ellsa (Templar) - Test<BR><BR><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>I agree with this statment. EQ2 was not designed to be an upgrade from EQ1. EQ1 or EQLive if you perfer is still around for the hard nose gamer. This game was originally targeted to be a game anyone can get into, reguardless of your play style or life syle. They where not targeting EQ1 players for this game and the changes that seem to be coming around is gunning for what they promised the game would be at launch. Is the game being dumbed down, no it is becoming balanced. I played EQ1 for 4 years before I gave up on it, I got tired of the harsh commitment of the game, and simply put, it felt more like an obligation, then a game. If you feel you need to work your self to the bone, this isn't the game for you, thats what EQL is for. Dose this mean they are gona get it right 1st time, Heck no, they have proved it time and time again. Dose this mean there will be no content for the hard nose gamers, I think there will be, jusst like there is content for those who arn't. But as LE siad, all these changes they are doing now is to get the game where it should have originally been at launch, then they can start adding things for the serious gamers in mind, and the casual ones, and so on.

[Demothis]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Lorrothmos wrote:<BR> <DIV>oh yea and one other thing. Whats the point in tradekilling with these new changes? Tailors dont get a lot of buisness.... and now they will get even less. And im sure Jewlers are probably feeling and seeing the same thing. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>SOE just need the quit nerfing.... and start shoveling content into the game. Everytime they nerf things like these heritage quests.... there taking thier content and reducing it exponentially. This change no only affects the quest itself.... but also the tradeskills that used to be needed.</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>How will this hurt, I dont have to compete with the stupid green hood gear from the quests that have the market flooded?, and jewlers dont have topete with the quested gear either. This is a good patch for crafting, and possibly open up better quest rewards for adventurers since ithey cant be pawned off.

[Lorrothm]

<DIV>considering the fact that in 42 levels of tailoring i have sold maybe 30 peices of armor..... perhaps the "no tradeing" of adventuring drops will help a little in that field..... but the fact that they are making the manastone quest to where it requires nothing from a tailor neccessairly hurts my income immensly. Oh yea, i make nice bags, but those markets get flooded extremely fast on my server. (Mistmoore) But, i used to make 10-20 gold for a engraved hide plate combine. Not because i asked for it, but because its what people gave me. Now that major source of income is getting efficiently nuked. Now, here i am a tailor, my bag market is flooded, and no one buys the crafted armor. Where is my income? Its gone. Why? SOE decided to make a quest easier to do. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Now, you might think im making this out to be more then it is. There are other ways to make cash a tailor. But, when this change hits live, if it hits live, my income in tailoring is going to be reduced by at least 75% if not more. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Now, do you think i should be happy with that?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>____________________________________________</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>And no, i dont think a game should be a job or chore. Then it wouldnt be a game. But i do think a game should be difficult in some aspects, and not something thats easy all the time. </DIV><p>Message Edited by Lorrothmos on <span class=date_text>04-02-2005</span> <span class=time_text>07:06 PM</span>

[LadyEternity]

<div></div><span><blockquote><hr>Lorrothmos wrote:<div></div> <div>considering the fact that in 42 levels of tailoring i have sold maybe 30 peices of armor..... perhaps the "no tradeing" of adventuring drops will help a little in that field..... but the fact that they are making the manastone quest to where it requires nothing from a tailor neccessairly hurts my income immensly. Oh yea, i make nice bags, but those markets get flooded extremely fast on my server. (Mistmoore) But, i used to make 10-20 gold for a engraved hide plate combine. Not because i asked for it, but because its what people gave me. Now that major source of income is getting efficiently nuked. Now, here i am a tailor, my bag market is flooded, and no one buys the crafted armor. Where is my income? Its gone. Why? SOE decided to make a quest easier to do. </div> <div> </div> <div>Now, you might think im making this out to be more then it is. There are other ways to make cash a tailor. But, when this change hits live, if it hits live, my income in tailoring is going to be reduced by at least 75% if not more. </div> <div> </div> <div>Now, do you think i should be happy with that?</div> <div> </div> <div>____________________________________________</div> <div> </div> <div>And no, i dont think a game should be a job or chore. Then it wouldnt be a game. But i do think a game should be difficult in some aspects, and not something thats easy all the time. </div><p>Message Edited by Lorrothmos on <span class="date_text">04-02-2005</span> <span class="time_text">07:06 PM</span></p><hr></blockquote> If this indeed is 25%+ of your total crafting income, then there are some bigger issues then this. You should not be so reliant on a single quest item, or series of quest items to support your craft. Your products that are producable at your level should provide ample income for your crafting level. If it doesn't, or if the need is not there for your crafted items then that is a completely different matter, and I feel that the improvement of a quest or a series of quests should not be influenced by your income potential. No crafters income potential should be influenced in a major way by any quest requirement changes. And if they are then the problem needs to be analyzed and fixed. And that has nothing to do with the implied quest changes, but instead with the systems and merchandise surrounding the issue. Ellsa (Templar) - Test</span><div></div><p>Message Edited by LadyEternity on <span class=date_text>04-02-2005</span> <span class=time_text>07:15 PM</span>

[Demothis]

Havn't had an issue like that yet and can still make a small profit on tailor. Never had much luck on the leathers though AQs lead right into emerald gear so no market, mage gear and packs is what saves me, corse there just might be too many tailors on mistmoore which would cause the issue you are talking about though. Nice thing about being on 1 of the smallest servers takes a while for stuff like that to hit home. Not into tier 5 so I give ya the point on the manastone, mostly cause I cant speak for it 1 way or the other.

[Eisgeist]

I have to agree with the OP. Tweaking here and there is needed but these changes to make things easier is getting to be too much. Everyone is going to be able to run around with the Lore Seeker title on. I'm shocked there isn't something somewhere in the Update notes about a common drop wistle that you can blow anywhere and a Banker, Mender and Broker will come running to you. Perhaps I shouldn't have brought that up. <div></div>

[SlumLo]

<DIV>Yup the game is changing into what they finally intended it to be, an casual MMO.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>SOE got tired of listening to the "Hard Core" "Power Leveling" crowd they could never seem to please.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think they intended it to be as easy as WoW aiming more torwards the "Casual gamer" . But it was hard to convince the Droves of "Hard Core" gamers looking for the next EQ with better Graphics (EQ2) in the beginning phases.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>All in All I think it is a great Idea...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>All you power gamer complainers should go back to EQ.</DIV><p>Message Edited by SlumLord on <span class=date_text>04-03-2005</span> <span class=time_text>04:02 PM</span>

[Homesli]

I don't find that they are making it easier as much as they are taking some of the tidiousness out of it. It is going to look easier to the players that had to put up with all of it but I think the change is to make it more enjoyable for everyone and think of it this way when you make an alt now you will be able to get some things done faster.Personally, I have been all about every patch, I think they are making great changes and doing it quickly. I may hate one thing in each but there is ten other things I love in it. To me as long as the good outways the bad and I have fun, I am all for changes. I do think some seem to come fast and are a bit game altering but they need to do it to make it all better. I know people are like this isn't beta and I agree and they should of held back on releasing this but they didn't it is out there and we are paying to play. I think it is great getting to see everyone's opinions as I know how to look on both sides of an issue. I do also know every issue has always had a complaint. So many people complained about no offline selling, so we get offline selling coming and now so many people complain against it. There is no way to make everyone happy as much as I wish there was but overall I think the changes are great and happy to know what their overall plan is as well. And on one last side note, Smedley is gone?!?! :O

[Hadesknight]

<P>/Sigh it's turning in to everwow :smileysad: . You say go back and play eq, well eq is dead and buried the last xpac proved that one of the most lame xpacs ever, SoE is just waiting to flick the switch on that when enought people find someing else to replace what eq used to be. Hardcore gamers and semi hardcore gamers a minority? i think not, we make up atleast 50% or more if the acitve player bace and usaly have more than one account. looks like i'll be on the first ship off when a new game comes out that caters for us and not the whingers (the empty can rattles the most) that want the game handed to them on a silver platter.</P> <P> </P> <P>Hopefuly Vanguard will be our saviour from this BS ( <A href="http://www.vanguardsoh.com/" target=_blank>http://www.vanguardsoh.com/</A> &nbsp<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> or if we get lucky Bethesda will pull there finger out after finishing TES: Oblivion . They should make what i have been waiting for since TES: Daggerfall, an online TES game would see them the absolute king of RGPs offline and online. as nothing can compare to the offline RGPs thay make.</P>

[stoutbrewdrink]

<P>hes not saying in any way shape or form that eq1 is supposed to be the same as eq2. get that out of your head. Although i will say this, apparently something worked in eq1 that got all the subscribers....</P> <P>this game is getting way to easy i think its starting to turn into total crap if they keep going in this direction they will start to loose their long term hardcore people for the lack of challenge in the game. I plan to play this game for many many years but if i have nothing to play or do then by all means i will leave. i didnt read alot of what was said above, but lemme tell you why they are making it easier and easier. They gain those casual gamers and have more than they have of hardcore or more than casual people. More subscribers the more money, they make more money having those people than hardcore people. So why should they give a [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] about we want? because without the hardcore aspect in this game what is their to look up at or look forward to? there wouldnt be it. If they turn this game into such a push over like diablo2 or any other [Removed for Content] of a game, then ill probably reactivate my eq1 account and see if anyone is playing there still ( which i doubt there will be). </P> <P>it would be fine if they were making lower end easier while leaving the high end hard making a progressive scale up of difficulty... but in truth the high end is so small and weak and a thrown together hunk of junk that you can really just say high end is a joke. i mean seriously you are throwing us tiny bones with this BS of re using old nib zones for instanced raid zones. Seriously think about it, why the hell else would they do that? they are buying time for the high end folks so they hopefully dont loose them to quick until the next expansion or some "dynamic new content" that soe is going to pull out of their sleeve. Heh basically i had faith in soe from eq1 and its wearing down fast. i can stand to wait an expansion or two to see if they really do have what it takes to make this game good. Thats alot of faith considering you are running on fumes for a year or two of play. Thats what most hardcore high end people are running on right now. Faith in soe of making htis game actually interesting and fun. But once again our faith has its limits and it is already wearing fast. The state of the game from the lvl 50 view point is a sad thrown together toss up of overused zones with absolutely non interesting encounters. O and you might call the Zek mines encounter interesting and cool.... but its really just really really ... sigh nvm dont wanna get started on that.</P>

[VizP]

<div></div><div></div><div></div>You can complain all you want but the only way to fight against WoW is to take them on in the market they are dominating - the majority of players are 'not' hardcore.. have real life jobs, work or school and only put in a reasonable number of hours per week. With the amount of things one can do in the game from quest, to explore, to craft to whatever else, there is very little a casual gamer could do under old hardcore rules. If EQ 2 continued where EQ 1 was, EQ one would be the hardcore game nirvana while WoW would be the more casual gamer haven. And WoW would completely crush EQ in terms of numbers and really just why would SOE not only give up all that money for a group of gamers that not only provide them with 'less' but have also proven to give them incredible aggrevation over every little thing? By making the game more 'time' friendly, it can show WoW gamers that they are getting just as much of a 'casual' game here plus 'more' in terms of EQ 2s quality. NOT an opposite hardcore MMO.. that would be EQ 1 which is still there if you want to play it. Sorry times are changing, MMOs are growing in popularity and hardcore gamers are and will always be a minority. This idea by the way applies different to the East where there are far more hardcore gamers and one can push that sort of game mechanics - FFXI is an example of the first big MMO in Japan, has a huge grind and difficulty to match the original EQ and is very successful. But perhaps the next generation there will follow the same suit as the MMOs here. I guess the point is if you want hardcore, you may want to go to EQ 1 or some other niche MMO completely. This is EQ 2, its here to stay and I for one love it because I have no intention of spending all my time in a virtual life when I can have my cake and 'eat' it in EQ 2 (i,e enjoy real life and vritual life both). By the way you may be having an easy time but I know people in game that are new to MMOs and do 'not' find EQ 2 easy and dont even have time to craft because of the time they are spending questing and lvling. WIth more and more new players coiming into the genre, making it harder is definitely not the thing to do if you want more people playing this game. Watered down? I wouldn'y say so - that imples a deterioration in quality and this game is 'all' qualty. Reduction in difficulty? Yes because the original was way too difficult catering for the few rather than the masses. And you 'always' cater for the masses - why sacrifice a game for a minority (with arguably no lives lol <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ). To be honest this complaint looks like 'Look I have no life, all I have is this virtual one - I want to be able to look and feel special here at least, lets make it harder so only i and a few like me can achieve the most' - the answer being 'No you need to understand life is too short and you need to get out more'. And that 'is' the very brutal truth.<p>Message Edited by VizP on <span class=date_text>04-03-2005</span> <span class=time_text>08:47 AM</span>

[LadyEternity]

/turns on soapbox WoW shot the market square on. They built a game that...at the base, was accessible to EVERYONE. They built a big, colorful, well decorated and furnished house, that welcomed everyone. Then they put in additions for that house. "Elite" dungeons and Quests, and "Raid" dungeons and quests,  branching out their house to increase the fun and challenge for more advanced styles of play. They did not lock the baseline player from any of it. But the key factor is, they made the 'baseline' game fun and involving, which opened up almost the ENTIRE base game to everyone. Only the additions to the base game are 'niche' additions. And that imho is great. And people seem to really love it. They love the fact they can login and play...and it doesn't matter if they are solo/duo/small group/large group/raid. Everyone has fun. And it's all structured very nicely. You run around the WoW landscape, 'elite' mobs are not roaming freely..or standing..around solo mobs. Elite mobs guard elite places. So the less then full groupers can run around, play the game, do quests, have fun, progress their characters, craft, socialize, role play, without having to "look" for content...or play dodgeball with group content...just to experience the game. Core stuff is built accessible to all styles of play. There are tons of caves and small dungeons and lairs that give the non-big groupers things to explore. There are spawned treasure chests that randomly appear on the landscape amoungst mobs and in camps, that are lootable a variety of ways depending on the craftiness of the person playing the character. They really did it right....up till level 55 or so. That's when alot of the fun for less then big groupers starts to dry up. Things become boring and repetitive. Loot drops become non-exstistant for those that play outside of the elite dungeon area's. Groupers get bored, because..even though there is content there for them...it doesn't last long. Raid/Group play really eats up the content fast. So people left and are leaving when they hit 60ish. They just don't have the main-stays that are very important for keeping long term play: Engaging Tradeskills, Housing, ways the player can entertain themselves in a reasonable manner. When a car company comes up with a new 'feature' or a new way to build a car...and everyone digs it; all the other car companies follow suit...and add on their own 'flare'. This is what encourages growth and progress. If things were not this way, we would all still be using tape decks, watching black and white TV's and riding around in huge clunky old vehicles that chugged gas like it was water <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> The EQ demograph of everything being group...works for EQ. But EQ came out quite a longtime ago. People change and evolve. That demograph doesn't really sell very well now. People are wiser with their time. They want quality for their money...and enjoyment factor. Many old schoolers have gotten wiser. We don't want to sit to med for 10 minutes..staring at a spellbook. We don't want to have to camp a mob. We don't want to have to run around Antonica for 5 hours trying to get 5 skill points in trapping...just so we can trap in TS. We don't want to have to group up with multiple people everytime we login...just to have a goodtime. Admittedly there are some people that have not progressed passed the need for this, but there again...there are also people right now..that choose to drive antique cars. Are antique car enthusiasts the majority? No. Would car bussiness sell good if suddenly most of them started selling 1950's model cars in exculsion? HEH I doubt it <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Back in the day, the majority of players were college kids and upwards highschool students. Different age, different time available to play. Guess you could say...the MMORPG market has 'grown up'. And the great people behind EQ2, see this. And they are changing things to go with the times. This game was not suppose to be EQ1 rehashed. For them to do that would not make a bit of sense economically. /turns off soapbox Ellsa (Templar) - Test

[Shandael]

<P>I have to agree with the general consensus. EQ2 is NOT EQ1 with better graphics, nor is it a direct sequel, keeping the same gameplay and rules.</P> <P>What some people have to realize also is that if they were comparable then all SoE would be doing was canibalizing the subscribers of their own game, not the competition.</P> <P>EQ2 was made to attract the casual crowd, EQ1 remains for the hardcore powergamers. In the planning stages it was designed this way so that one would not overly strip the player base of the other. Each was to cater to a unique segment of the gamer market.</P> <P>I believe that the devs have finally gotten back on track and realized this, after the debacle of the Patch of Doom and Patch of Armeggedon which did start to trend EQ2 back into an EQ1 clone and the mass exoduses that ensued. They lost their vision and paid the price.</P> <P>Now they're trying to refocus the Vision (tm) for EQ2 and bring it back to what it was originally designed for, and I applaud it.</P> <P>EQ1 is already having to merge servers. Are the players all going to another hardcore powergamer game? No, they're going to the casual, relaxed, enjoyable games, because EQ1's player base is getting older, getting jobs, raising families, as is the make-up of the overall gamer population.</P> <P>SoE was right to move EQ2 into the casual realm so as to capture both segments of the gamer community. Both to protect EQ1's viability as well as EQ2's.</P> <P>I have a subscription to WoW too, and am finally thinking about cancelling it, since EQ2 is now moving into a more friendly, fun game, and has a lot more potential than WoW. And I have seen a large amount of new players on Butcherblock in the past week that are WoW refugee's after the latest debacle of lagged out, crashing servers and very slow updating of the game.</P> <P>SoE isn't stupid and is watching WoW as closely as any of us, and are doing their best to attract their player base over to EQ2. And kudo's for that.</P> <P>EQ1 is always there for the powergamers. But with EQ2, we're at war with WoW for the casual market, and I love what I'm seeing being done to make sure EQ2 provides the most enjoyable, friendly, and fun game on the market for the casual players. In the long term, I think it's going to prove successful if the devs can keep focused keeping the player markets for EQ1 and EQ2 seperated, and aggressively pursue those markets.</P> <P> </P>

[Lorrothm]

<DIV>With all due respet to the previous posters..... If SOE is making EQ2 more like WoW to compete with player base, what in the future is going to keep me(or anyone else for that matter) here? If i want to go play WoW ill quit EQ2 and go play WoW. BUt, i play EQ2 because its not WoW. Everything in the game is NOT handed to me. I have to put a little time an effort into the game to get many of the things i want to have. I think yall are wrong. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you want to attract the cassual player base.... go right ahead, put more content into the game for casual players. But, with this patch they are taking away hardcore gamer content to make more casual gamer content. That is a way to attract a more casual game player base, but also a way to repel the hardcore gamer base. You must have content for both to attract both bases, otherwise one will thrive and the other will linger. </DIV><p>Message Edited by Lorrothmos on <span class=date_text>04-03-2005</span> <span class=time_text>01:36 PM</span>

[DonSavan]

<DIV>I agree in that I think the harvesting skill gains are fine the way they are.  But I don't think there is any reason to complain about the new crafting opportunities.  Frizz even said that if two people, one a crafter and one a harvester, were to be in a race to get a rare harvest...the harvester would win, at least that is what they are shooting for atm.  The new crafting, rare item opportunities are ULTRA RARE.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I also want to add  that I agree with some of the posters above.  This is a game and games are played because they are fun, not because they are a chore.</DIV>

[Miral]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Topiatic wrote:<BR> <P> I actually had the thought that it might be time to head back to EQLive... go figure.</P> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>That's what I would suggest for all the people that keep wanting eq2 to be more like eq1. eq2 IS a different game, it was advertised as such. If you prefer eq1, play eq1. Its not going away anytime soon. In fact, new expansion for eq1 coming this month if my memory serves me right...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I personally couldn't stand base EQ1, but I'm loving EQ2 for the most part. So, I play eq2 and not eq1. If eq2 is changed to be like eq1, what's left for me and people like me? They're two different games, please keep it that way.</DIV><p>Message Edited by Miral on <span class=date_text>04-03-2005</span> <span class=time_text>02:24 PM</span>

[Lorrothm]

<P><A href="http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/view_profile?user.id=161003" target=_blank><SPAN>DonSavantx</SPAN></A>,</P> <P>I agree that a game should no be a chore. but lemme use your own words here.</P> <P>ULTRA RARE = this is not common, it takes time an effort to obtain an ULTRA RARE</P> <P>its not a chore, its a demand for effort. If you want it you got to get out there and put some time to it and go get it.</P> <P>No one said they you have to have a manstone, or a stein of maggok. Its a want, if yah want it, go do what must be done to go and get it.</P><p>Message Edited by Lorrothmos on <span class=date_text>04-03-2005</span> <span class=time_text>02:31 PM</span>

[SuzyQ100]

<DIV>I think 1.5 million players not playing EQ2 is the BIG reason <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></DIV>

[Demothis]

Ok guys, again they arnt duming it down, this game the one we are playing has to be balanced out in every detail befor they move on. Is anyone aware of where the devs intended to take this game from launch? I can't remember where it was exactly, think it was 1 of the IGN interviews with moorguard (by the way if this info is incorect moor please correct me where I saw it at), they intend to take this thing up to level 200. Thats 200 folks, if things arnt balanced here and now how off balance you think it's gona be at 150 where the real hardcore gaming is more then likly to be. Could things have changed since I read this, most deffenetly, there are alot of things that where suposed to be or was being thought about, but never happened. But like I said, if they are sticking to thier original plan as far as the levels go, fundamental things need to be put in place and some form of balance for anyone from casualplayers who will never atain that level to the hardchore players. Get your base procduct which is set up for everyone, then start tweeking zones, camping items and so forth for the diffrent ways people play. <p>Message Edited by Demothises on <span class=date_text>04-03-2005</span> <span class=time_text>06:38 PM</span>

[FitzChevalerie]

<DIV>I think a lot of people here have a misconception about one thing here.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>LESS TEDIOUS DOES NOT EQUAL TO EASIER, PERIOD!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>[expletive ninja'd by Faarbot]? People are always complaining because SOE seems to take "hard" for "tedious" concerning quests, and then when they change the tedious parts of the game, they come and say the game is now easier!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>You have to understand that removing worthless and dumb timesinks is not making the game easier, it's just making the game more fun.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Running hours and hours harvesting, trying to find that rare ebon for your EBBC is basicaly the same as camping a named mobs for hours like you did on EQ (think Raster or Ragefire)...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Tell us the truth, are you having fun camping/harvesting for days before getting the update for your quest? If you do, nice...But it's not the case for a majority of people...So bear with it...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Oh and concerning Vanguard...I sure hope you're a "hardcore gamer" as you claim you are....Because Brad is clearly saying that it will take almost years for the hardcore gamers to get to the highest level, and he's saying that camps and corpse runs will be even harder (understand worse) than in EQLive.</DIV>

[Rock]

<DIV>Quote:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>"There is a reason that these "easier" games are loosing players, because too many things are just too easy to attain and the games progresses too quickly.  I know it's not an easy balancing act to do, but it would appear that EQ2 is tipping the scales over on the easy side."</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Reason these other games are losing players is because they/ve been out many years and people are moving on. Nothing to do with original concept of the game. My favorite game was DAOC but like anything else it gets boring given enough time.</DIV>

[LadyEternity]

<span><blockquote><hr>Demothises wrote:Ok guys, again they arnt duming it down, this game the one we are blaying hase to be balanced out in every detail befor they move on. Is anyone aware of where the devs intended to take this game from launch? I can't remember where it was exactly, think it was 1 of the IGN interviews with moorguard (by the way if this info is incorect moor please correct me where I saw it at), they intend to take this thing up to level 200. Thats 200 folks, if things arnt balanced here and now how off balance you think it's gona be at 150 where the real hardcore gaming is more then likly to be. Could things have changed since I read this, most deffenetly, there are alot of things that where suposed to be or was being thought about, but never happened. But like I said, if they are sticking to thier original plan as far as the levels go, fundamental things need to be put in place and some form of balance for anyone from casualplayers who will never atain that level to the hardchore players. Get your base procduct which is set up for everyone, then start tweeking zones, camping items and so forth for the diffrent ways people play. <div></div><hr></blockquote> Exactly. Lets get the base game balanced for the entire population. Meaning: Lets get these outdoor zones tweaked so the baseline player (solo) can do quests, enjoy the game, have fun, and feel a sense of accomplishment in a meaningful way. It's very important that the baseline player can get involved in the lore and mystic of the world and feel as if they are a meaningful addition to it, as an individual. Once the base game is balanced, and enjoyable (fun) for the base player (remeber..everyone is a base player until they group up) then worry about putting in the fringe and tassels. I think the developers need to think about what they want the 'base player' to experience, or have the ability to experience, as a base player. Many people, including myself feel grouping should only occur if the player desires it. And the content that can be experienced in these 'advanced' modes of play should be completely optional to the fun and enjoyment filled experience that is the base game( kind of like an 'addition' to an already built and functioning (and comfortable) house. The base player should be able to experience the lore and mystic, and contribute to the game in what will feel like a meaningful manner without a requirment of play in the more advanced forms. Grouping or participating in "Advanced play" should never be 'forced' or 'shoved down the players throat'  and the game should never 'drive you with punishment' to 'encourage' you to participate. it should be left to the player to decide. Those that choose to engage in the more advanced play (Big Groups and Raids) should have material available to meet not only their needs of fun, but it should be in a manner that blends into the base game world and feels natural. And it should be rewarding in it's own right through exploration, loot aquisition, and achievment to participate in advanced play. However a base player should NEVER feel second rate, un-heroic, or as if they were a 'red headed step child' for not participating in the advanced play the game has to offer. If the base game is balanced to the base player, and the base game is the "main" playstyle, then ALL players reguardless of play style will be able to access the lore and mystic of the basic game world, and feel as if they have contributed to it in a meaningful and fun manner. If they want to go further then that, then that is the players choice to do so, and the game mechanics should never COMPEL a base player to do something they may not wish to do. The player should always retain full choice without game functionality effecting the decision. So in the end you will have a giant huge tree. The roots and huge trunk of the tree would be the 'base game' (solo/duo/small group) play-solo, and single arrow mobs, or groups of 3 normal mobs-.This would be the outdoor areas (Majority) and most 'stock' dungeons. Then you would have the branches (Full Group Play). This would be area's around or in Big Group Play dungeon area's and perhaps even a zone every Teir level (not as big ofcourse as the base game zones). Then the leaves (Raid Play). This would be raid dungeons, rare spawned mobs, and special guild/huge group encounter zones (like slaying a HUGE dragon). You could probably make dungeon instances that had the same lore, but were designed for solo/group/raid styles of play, and just allow the player to choose their challenge. (while having the game check for group memebers as to not have content end up being trivial..IE a group of 5 going into a solo instance of a dungeon). As this might save on development time in the long run. In the end if all balanced right, you will come out with a game everyone can enjoy...reguardless of playstyle. And further game content added in (levels or what have you) will have a firm foundation to be built upon. This will ofcourse create a happy player base for the most part, as well as one that is satisfied with the game for the most part (can't always please everyone all the time ;P ). Ellsa (Templar) - Test </span><div></div>

[SlumLo]

<P>For Christ's aches man come on this game is expected to stretch to the 200th level...</P> <P>The game WILL GET HARDER!!!</P> <P>All you power gamers need to get a real life.  </P>

[Ala]

<DIV>I would imagine a number of changes made to the game are designed to help create a thriving in-game economy.  Perhaps SOE never intended a Rough Opal to sell for 1.25 plat, or its price to be heavily influenced by a heritage quest rather than crafted items.   I would also think attuning was part of the plan from the start.  Lets face it, when the game began the market needed players to start buying and selling.  Now that there is more stuff to buy and sell, remove the items that were in place to help the market develop.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>These are just some thoughts.  But if you think about how some of these changes affect the game in the long-run, you might better understand that they are necessary. </DIV>

[Homesli]

I am totally on the less tedious does not equal easier equationAnd just curiously, someone back a page or two said that the hardcore players make up 50% of the playerbase?Does anyone else really think that is true?I was thinking more like the 10-20% number myself

[Tradeskill_Addict]

<DIV>Regarding the new crafting events I think they are just another small incentive to crafting.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The rare component part will allow to *harvest* rares for pure artisans to some extents which is nice but no big deal in my opinion.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>What I find unecessary is that the 3 new crafting events also give a bonus if NOT countered. I would rather like to see them giving uncountered -150 to -1000 to durability and progress probably eating up the components. Delivering enough damage to instantly kill most low to mid level crafters if uncountered would also punish the makro botters so PLEASE ad some pain appropriate to the gain!</DIV><p>Message Edited by Tradeskill_Addict on <span class=date_text>04-04-2005</span> <span class=time_text>07:48 AM</span>

[Malachi]

Sorry to break it to you Hadesknight, but you are dead wrong to think that 50% of more of MMOG gamers are hardcore. Its a much lower number than that, and you dont need to loook any further than WoW to see that. That game is the easiest, most casual friendly MMOG ever made and it has 5 times the subscribers of this game. The fact of the matter is that a great many of former hardcore players are no longer hardcore, we simply dont have the time anymore. The hardcore audience is getting smaller by the day and so games are going to change to appease the majority of their players....casual players. Personally as a former hardcore player, i think the majority of the changes to the game lately have been improvments. Most of the changes dont make the game easier, they make it less tedious, which for some reason you guys equate with difficult. tedious != difficult  I've already done plenty of heritage/access quests, i've put in the time camping rare mobs or buy that insanely overpriced rare(or even harvesting it), but i'm don't really think that what i did was hard work, but rather were mindnumbingly boring, annoyingly ridiculous, timesinks. I also don't want the people who come behind me to suffer through the same mess, just because i did, like many people do. IMO, anything that makes the game more fun and less tedious, is a great thing. If you want an agonizing game that you can suffer through just to say that you are being challenged, there are already a couple games out there that manage to pull this off quite well, Lineage 2 and Final Fantasy. <div></div>

[Syanis]

I gotta agree. SoE every major patch makes the game easier and easier. Our accomplishments mean less and less since the next guy can do it with alot less work. Tradeskill interdependancy being taken away instead of balanced. Harvesting skills being made easier.... 3 times. More solo mobs (this is a multiplayer game, a multiplayer adventure game).... access quests being made easier, heritages being made easier, vitality.... the list goes on and on. We want a fun and challenging game. Not one we can do everything solo and easy. Let the solo only minded players whine and quit for some single player game. This is a MMORPG.... meant for group+ content, not so one person can do everything eventually it takes 4 groups now for long as they keep whining.

[aeio]

I have concerns they are making things too easy, and I think part of it is a reaction to WOW which is a very easy game. My concern is that making the game too easy lessens its ability to maintain and hold player interest.  Which means players will stick around less amount of time. We shall see how it pans out... But I have always thought soloing was a viable gameplay mechanic before they made all the changes it to make it SIGNIFICANTLY easier and less challenging.  I know I was in a extreme minority in that one.. But sometimes the players really don't know what they want or what will be good for them in the long-term. I just hope things pan out.. but count me concerned. <div></div>

[Aegori]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Exibar wrote:<BR> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Really, was the harvesting skill going up that slow that it required to be bumped up over double?  Tradeskill reactions that instantly give you a rare harvest item and a pristine item?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> <HR> </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Well to be honest with you, the way i see it, neither of these play really anger me at all, nor do i find them to be great tidings of joy. The tradeskill bump is simply to make the process of raising the skills less tedious, not easier. The process is already easy... you click a node... you gather a resource... you move to next node. Rinse, repeat. You could teach a chimp to do this... but even a chimp wouldn't want to sit there for 10 hours just to raise the skill level to max. You cannot make this process EASIER... but it will surely be less tedious. That change combined with the fact that the node persists until you get 3 successful harvests will benefit all gatherers in that they will be able to achieve their goals in a shorter span of time. Less tedious = more time to be involved with the actual game and have FUN. I see this as a good thing for all players. </P> <P>As for the tradeskill rare reaction... it's gonna be more rare than a rare harvest, so i wouldn't expect too many of these. These will play very little of an impact upon the crafting community so to say it makes the crafting aspect of the game easier may be a bit of an overstatement. However, it may add incentive for non-crafters to take it up. The rare reaction along with the other new reactions may make crafting a bit easier and more desirable for the community such that more people are willing to take part in both aspects of the game. This is a good thing for the economy and the players as a whole. </P> <P>-Aeg</P><p>Message Edited by Aegorian on <span class=date_text>04-04-2005</span> <span class=time_text>04:44 PM</span>

[Anlari]

<P>Well sadly, the more solo friendly they make the game and the more timesink they take from it, the less socialization takes place.  I have played for like 7 days straight without talking to a single person, this should not be possible while playing an MMO.  This is quickly turning into a single player game in a big chat room.  </P> <P>I know this is not EQ1, if it were, maybe it would hold my interest and I'd like it.  No, I'm not a hardcore gamer, I only play maybe 4 hours a week anymore.  People just don't seem to understand what rare means.  Everyone thinks they should be able to get every item if its in the game, and I just don't think that should be the case.  Some itesm should be so rare that when you see one, you say "Wow, they actualy have that!".</P>

[FitzChevalerie]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Anlarius wrote:<BR> <P>Well sadly, the more solo friendly they make the game and the more timesink they take from it, the less socialization takes place.  I have played for like 7 days straight without talking to a single person, this should not be possible while playing an MMO.  This is quickly turning into a single player game in a big chat room.  </P> <P>I know this is not EQ1, if it were, maybe it would hold my interest and I'd like it.  No, I'm not a hardcore gamer, I only play maybe 4 hours a week anymore.  People just don't seem to understand what rare means.  Everyone thinks they should be able to get every item if its in the game, and I just don't think that should be the case.  Some itesm should be so rare that when you see one, you say "Wow, they actualy have that!".</P> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Once again, there are rare....Much more harder to get than heritage quests...</P> <P>Do you see a lot of Prismatic Weapons? Do you see a lot of people with lvl50 Master loot? I can assure you that these ones are not handed to you...</P> <P>Everyone is not entitled to have every item in the game as it stands, there is no need to worry about this... Heritage items are just not the end-all be-all items of the game...</P> <P>You could worry if everyone was running around with Prismatic, but it's not going to happen, I assure you...</P> <P><BR> </P>

[Moorgard]

<P>We will continue to work to make the game less tedious, and make the fun more accessible to everyone. We kinda think that makes sense in a big-picture kind of way. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <DIV>That doesn't mean we're making the game easier, because time is not a true measure of challenge: only of patience. That's not to say valuable items won't be rare and difficult to obtain, it's just that we don't want every single item of value to require the exact same investment. People who can't play for long stretches of time deserve nice stuff, too.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It's interesting, because some of the same people who complain about the game being too easy are the ones who complain most vocally when we change something (or fix something) that results in a greater level of challenge. If we make something easier we're dumbing it down, but if we make it more challenging then we're nerfing. Scylla and Charibdes, if you will.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For instance, there are high-level players who complain that raids are boring. Well, in some cases people have figured out ways to make them so, using buff combinations that make a tank invulnerable or that render a certain target impotent. Some folks are even now complaining about boring content in one breath while with the next farming at a rapid pace so that they can obtain the loot they desire before the level of challenge is changed when our balance pass goes live.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So do you want the game to be challenging or not?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There is no shortage of complaints on the boards when a spell or art is considered underpowered or broken, but threads are few when things are broken in a way that benefits certain players. GuildX complains about loot sucking or fights being boring, meanwhile they're farming the heck out of some zone that has a bugged reset timer or a mob that is obviously dropping better stuff than it should. But rarely does GuildX complain about the benefits they receive, only the negatives.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>You can't have it both ways. Either stuff works and it presents a challenge, or it's broken and it needs to be fixed. A challenging game is more fun for everyone in the long run, but if you want it to work, you can't be selective about the bugs you report. I grant you that it's probably human nature to keep the "too good to be true" stuff quiet, but I encourage you to look beyond self-gratification and think about the overall health of the game.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I'm not trying to avoid responsibility for bugs, whether they be detrimental to players or beneficial. Ultimately it falls on us to fix them, whichever way it causes us to be perceived. But you as players have the power to help influence that process, and I encourage you to use it both fairly and wisely.</DIV>

[Altoss]

<DIV>Not sure how to quote but...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>"For instance, there are high-level players who complain that raids are boring. Well, in some cases people have figured out ways to make them so, using buff combinations that make a tank invulnerable or that render a certain target impotent."</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Why would it be up the player to make an encounter harder or easier? That is not our job, that is the EQ2 teams job. We shouldn't have to limit ourselves because we get bored. This should not be a game where we can set our difficulty to easy, medium, and hard. In mmorpg's, everyone is pretty much on the same level. It destroy's the game when you allow people to choose their difficulty settings as almost everyone is going to pick the easiest setting and get the first kills, first game discoveries, etc... The few people who choose the challenge get none of these spoils.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There is also the fact of bragging rights too. Say if some guild killed Nagafen and they used all these buffs that would make the encounter trivial and easy. They got all this praise about being the first guild to kill Nagafen. Then some guild comes along after them and kills him without using the buffs. Would anyone care that the second guild did not use these buffs? Most likely, no.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I may have misunderstood you but, if I didn't, your thinking in regards to this seems way off.</DIV>

[Miral]

<P>Why do you even play? Would you like SOE to do that for you too? Different people have different tastes. By leaving it more open ended and up to the player, more people can leave the content offered with satisfaction. Part of playing the game is choosing an appropriate encounter, then just allowing oneself to enjoy it. Don't try too hard or it will just become another meaningless task.</P> <P>As for bragging rights, I couldn't give a flying fluffernutter about that. Being the first guild to defeat Nagafen.... Cool, Congradulations, Want a Cookie?</P> <P>Anyways, nicely put Moorgard, thats what I keep thinking reading all these whines... I figure they want it to be tedious, but not difficult. Screw player skill, all they want to matter is who can sit on their fat [Removed for Content] the longest.</P>

[Tatali]

<span><blockquote><hr>Moorgard wrote:<div></div> <div>For instance, there are high-level players who complain that raids are boring. Well, in some cases people have figured out ways to make them so, using buff combinations that make a tank invulnerable or that render a certain target impotent. Some folks are even now complaining about boring content in one breath while with the next farming at a rapid pace so that they can obtain the loot they desire before the level of challenge is changed when our balance pass goes live.</div> <div> </div><div> </div> <div>A challenging game is more fun for everyone in the long run, but if you want it to work, you can't be selective about the bugs you report. I grant you that it's probably human nature to keep the "too good to be true" stuff quiet, but I encourage you to look beyond self-gratification and think about the overall health of the game.</div> <hr></blockquote> With regard to the first statement, I think that in part comes from the "Us vs Them" mentality that appears to exist between players and developers. Players by nature look to find better and more efficent ways to kill mobs. Developers look to create a challange. When player tactics render an encounter trivial, developers change the encounter to compensate for new tactic they perhaps had not thought of. EQ2 has gone though this. Early on, NPCs all seemed "too easy" so the devs reacted to this by making mobs do more damage and giving them more hit points. Only recently was part of the reason for this discovered, that being, players could get much higher defense than expected rendering the mob "[Removed for Content]", so naturally this is likely to be adjusted as mentioned in the notes for live update 7. This is just one example of taking the easy way out of "We'll just make the mobs harder" instead of digging deeper to find out <i>why</i> the mobs were too "weak" to begin with and correcting the problem at its source. Its this feedback loop that causes players to dig deeper to break the game and their efforts are punished by making its more difficult on them. The problem isn't THAT issues are corrected, but rather HOW they are fixed. Bandaids of simply making mobs hit harder and nerfing agility, while perhaps both need to be part of the solution, don't fix the core problem. On the other side of the coin, some encounters really are too hard and it doesn't appear developers are willing to make changes to fix it forcing players to look for ways to "[Removed for Content]" the encounter so they can beat it. Look at what happened to NPC spellcasters. Now every warlock and wizard NPC comes equipped with a deathtouch after the sorc patch (around update #3?), but development hasn't appeared to lift a finger. How is it "fun" to be deathtouched for 2.5k by an even con mob when you've only got 2k hp? What about raid mobs casting their 14k nil distortion or 21k ice comets? Becuase this is harmful to the players, it doesn't appear to get solved. On the second issue, I don't believe those issues are so much kept a secret as much as they simply aren't posted on the board due to the reaction other players will take towards it. If a thread was posting saying, "Beserkers are overpowered! Look at this rampage log of 1700dps!" you better believe every berserker in the game is going to flock to that thread and bash and flame the poster, screaming and yelling about "how dare you try to nerf my class!" What good could come from someone posting that? Instead, issues like that probably are reported in other means, such as the /bug reports in the game. What happens to those bug reports? I know I've filled out some very detailed bug reports outlining exactly where particular quests are broken, paragraphs of dialog with typos, and what not, then two months later when I encounter the quest on a different character the bugs are still there. Now, when a broken quest is reported here on the board, we see devs like Owlchick come along and say, "You know, I worked on that quest, let me look into that and see what the problem is. Oh shoot, I make a small mistake here, I'll get that fixed and it should hit servers in the next big update, whenever that is. Sorry about that." Players see is like this: Post on boards = problems fixed. Bug reports = lost into the void. Now combine the two issues together, board posts being fixed, but unwilling to endure the firestorm of unhappy people seeing your asking for a broken skill to be "nerfed." Perhaps what is needed is a more interactive /bug reporting method? Sure, a lot of /bug reports probably don't provide enough information to be of any use and are discarded. Why can't a "ticket system" like for petitions be developed for bugs? A players puts in a bug ticket and once someone has read though it, the player is either sent an acknowledgement of the issue being filed or a request for better details about the issue. Little by little, players are better educated on how to properly submit a bug and less get bounced back asking for more details. I think there's room to make the game more of a challange without degerating it down to EQlive's system of players fighting the random number generator. Smarter mobs can provide more of a challange. Better scripted battles can provide more enjoyment as well. Lots of things can be done to make combat more fun and more of a challange without making it "harder", per se.</span><div></div>

[Zuuljin]

<DIV>I think one of the problems is that there is too big a gap in the 'hardcore' and 'non-hardcore' group.  IMO this game is becoming way to easy, and  EQ1 is the hardcore of the hardcore.  72 man raids? 8+ hour raids?  Many dont have time for that.  But lowering that to 24 man, hour or less raids is too much.  Wheres the middle ground?  The more they encourage soloing, the more it DISCOURAGES grouping.  But grouping and being social is what will keep this game alive. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>They are trying to take WoW's 1.5 million+ members obviously.  But I dont see WoW or EQ2 lasting long term with moves like this.   The point of the game is for it to last a long time.  For it to last a long time, there must be time sinks, or an extremely fast rate at which they put out content.  Both have their downside, although both have their positive side.  With time sinks, the game lasts longer by definition.  Sure it might be tedious and boring at times, but I really do believe that you feel a greater sense of accomplishment after spending alot of time getting something.   Sure you might not feel it at first, taking the "Phew, its over, and that sucked!" attitude.  But when your running around with your 1 of a kind sword, and have people oohing and ahhing at you, it makes you feel 'special'.  There really is no eqivilent in the game to say an athlete getting into shape.   The athlete works hard every day, doing the same reps ( tedium ) for long periods of time ( bordem ) and its not always fun, its work.  But when that athlete gets to perform and outdoes everyone else, theres a sense of accomplishment.   Now what exactly should that be in the game?  Only thing there, is from camping mobs and hoping for rares.  But most importantly, TIME commited.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>They are not taking out the tedium of things, they are reducing the time spent doing them.  Double the skill increase for harvesting?  That doesnt make it less tedious, it makes you gain skills 2x as fast and blow through content 2x as fast.  Doesnt that seem counter-productive for a game that is supposed to last a long time?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Option 2 is to pump out content to keep up with the fast pace of leveling.  This really seems like a good idea.  There will always be something new for people to do and see.  However the downside is that most of it seems rushed through, since, its being rushed out by demand.  This is why we get the so called 'new raid zones' which are nothing more then old newbie 1 room instances with really high level mobs with minimal a story and no real purpose except for 'new raid content!'.  A constant influx of new content also has the negative side of spliting the population even more.   Hardly anyone groups already with so much effort being put into solo content, and now your taking the groups that are out there, and splitting up the players between even more dungeons.  Add in the accelerated leveling pace and this new content is burned through in a day or 2.  Down the road youll end up with how EQ1 is at the moment.  With 90% of the zones in the game unutilized.   GL trying to find a group in 1 of the many zones you could possibly level in.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>God mode in games is really fun also.... for about 20 minuntes then your done and probably never want to play again.  I feel thats how EQ and WoW are getting people.   A long term game cannot have the intense 100% engaging ADD feel and hope to last.  Their going for a quick buck, and thats exactly what their going to get.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <P></P> <HR> LadyEternity wrote:<BR>They love the fact they can login and play...<BR> <HR> <P>The funny part is WoW has SEVERE server problems, and most of the time they cant log on, and if they do, they sit in que lines waiting to play. Their servers are down sometimes for days at a time, constant rollbacks and horrible lag.  I know thats not what you had in mind, but I thought i should point it out nonetheless. Which is why I find it funny that people complain about EQ2's downtime, and threaten to go to WoW. LOL</P></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Not to bring this to a WoW-EQ2 comparison, but anyone who thinks they have those numbers simply because they have a great game are kidding themselves.  They have that many people because their blizzard.   They could crap in a box and stamp a blizzard logo on it and half a million people worldwide would buy it and claim its the greatest product ever concieved.  Also if I'm not mistaken, WoW is available in more parts of the world then EQ2, thereby inflating their numbers.  Could be wrong though, someone check it out. =)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Zuuljin</DIV> <DIV>Befallen</DIV>

[Veto]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote:<BR> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For instance, there are high-level players who complain that raids are boring. Well, in some cases people have figured out ways to make them so, using buff combinations that make a tank invulnerable or that render a certain target impotent. Some folks are even now complaining about boring content in one breath while with the next farming at a rapid pace so that they can obtain the loot they desire before the level of challenge is changed when our balance pass goes live.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So do you want the game to be challenging or not?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV>Challenging has little to do with it.  Getting it nerfed after its been well farmed, allows the fruits of their farming to be more valuable on the Ebay market, not to mention it allows them to have the best upgrades first and thus less competition for current and future content, as the game advances in average level.</DIV>

[Zuuljin]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Miral wrote:<BR> <P>Why do you even play? Would you like SOE to do that for you too? Different people have different tastes. By leaving it more open ended and up to the player, more people can leave the content offered with satisfaction. Part of playing the game is choosing an appropriate encounter, then just allowing oneself to enjoy it. Don't try too hard or it will just become another meaningless task.</P> <P>...</P> <P>Anyways, nicely put Moorgard, thats what I keep thinking reading all these whines... I figure they want it to be tedious, but not difficult. Screw player skill, all they want to matter is who can sit on their fat [Removed for Content] the longest.<BR></P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>The thing is people want a challenge, but will always take the easier route.  Why should you have to dumb down yourself to make an encounter fun?  The 'fun' is trying your hardest to beat an encounter.  Not trying your hardest to not try and still beat an encounter.    Thats like putting the current gold medal runner in the special olympics and when he complains its not a challenge, you tell him not to try so hard, but still put an effort into it so its a challenge. Huh? Exactly.</P> <P>Maybe I misread you, since you contradict yourself.  You want player skill in the game, yet say "Don't try to hard.." I dont get it.</P> <P>Zuuljin<BR>Befallen<BR></P>

[Tradeskill_Addict]

<DIV>I find it fascinating how many players talk about the *end game* now when EQ2 is supposed to stretch to 150 or even 200 levels.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Zuuljin]

Thats because "end game" refers to the end of the current content.

[Altoss]

<P>" Anyways, nicely put Moorgard, thats what I keep thinking reading all these whines... I figure they want it to be tedious, but not difficult. Screw player skill, all they want to matter is who can sit on their fat [Removed for Content] the longest."</P> <P>Not even going to really comment on the rest of your post as it is very contradictory and hard to understand. However, what you just stated there is the complete opposite of what people have been saying.</P>

[thark]

<DIV><BR></DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Lorrothmos wrote:<BR> <DIV>With all due respet to the previous posters..... If SOE is making EQ2 more like WoW to compete with player base, what in the future is going to keep me(or anyone else for that matter) here? If i want to go play WoW ill quit EQ2 and go play WoW. BUt, i play EQ2 because its not WoW. Everything in the game is NOT handed to me. I have to put a little time an effort into the game to get many of the things i want to have. I think yall are wrong. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If you want to attract the cassual player base.... go right ahead, put more content into the game for casual players. But, with this patch they are taking away hardcore gamer content to make more casual gamer content. That is a way to attract a more casual game player base, but also a way to repel the hardcore gamer base. You must have content for both to attract both bases, otherwise one will thrive and the other will linger. </DIV> <P>Message Edited by Lorrothmos on <SPAN class=date_text>04-03-2005</SPAN> <SPAN class=time_text>01:36 PM</SPAN><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV><BR>I agree with this poster, but I also agree with several of the posters claiming this is the "casual mans EQ" but for me it seems that with each patch they look more and more of the success of WoW and copy more and more things from  there..</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Many of you claim this isn't EQ and never has been, well it's not and never will be altouhg it's easy to assume so due to the title EQ2, and also easy to assume players making this logical assumption. But hey..I think the majority knows this by now, as a matter of fact i'm certain 99% of the players is aware of this..</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I would be glad if this wasn't the case , if this game didnt turn up as the same game as WOW just for one single reason, the battle for the subscribers, and that SOE follows their heart instead of wallet when creating and altering this game..Many of you will ofcourse say that they are, but I would say are you absolutly sure of this ? I sence a certain panic when they see the huge subsriber base WoW has rendered.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Many recent patches has directly copied things that WoW has as features, and soon there isnt a single aspect in EQ2 that isnt co-existing in the other game aswell..The only thing that WoW has that EQ2 hasn't is PvP other then that and graphics..well they are basically the same game..And these things annoys me..</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>/Rigmor Antonia Bayle</DIV>

[Vertie_EQ2]

<span><blockquote><hr>Zuuljin wrote:<div></div> <p>The thing is people want a challenge, but will always take the easier route.  Why should you have to dumb down yourself to make an encounter fun?  The 'fun' is trying your hardest to beat an encounter.  Not trying your hardest to not try and still beat an encounter.    Thats like putting the current gold medal runner in the special olympics and when he complains its not a challenge, you tell him not to try so hard, but still put an effort into it so its a challenge. Huh? Exactly.</p> <p>Maybe I misread you, since you contradict yourself.  You want player skill in the game, yet say "Don't try to hard.." I dont get it.</p> <p>ZuuljinBefallen</p> <div></div><hr></blockquote>You nailed it. Hell of an illustration! Oh, and you get it. Mooregard is the one who doesn't get it.</span><div></div>

[Lon]

<BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote:<BR> <P>We will continue to work to make the game less tedious, and make the fun more accessible to everyone. We kinda think that makes sense in a big-picture kind of way. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <DIV>That doesn't mean we're making the game easier, because time is not a true measure of challenge: only of patience. That's not to say valuable items won't be rare and difficult to obtain, it's just that we don't want every single item of value to require the exact same investment. People who can't play for long stretches of time deserve nice stuff, too.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It's interesting, because some of the same people who complain about the game being too easy are the ones who complain most vocally when we change something (or fix something) that results in a greater level of challenge. If we make something easier we're dumbing it down, but if we make it more challenging then we're nerfing. Scylla and Charibdes, if you will.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For instance, there are high-level players who complain that raids are boring. Well, in some cases people have figured out ways to make them so, using buff combinations that make a tank invulnerable or that render a certain target impotent. Some folks are even now complaining about boring content in one breath while with the next farming at a rapid pace so that they can obtain the loot they desire before the level of challenge is changed when our balance pass goes live.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So do you want the game to be challenging or not?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There is no shortage of complaints on the boards when a spell or art is considered underpowered or broken, but threads are few when things are broken in a way that benefits certain players. GuildX complains about loot sucking or fights being boring, meanwhile they're farming the heck out of some zone that has a bugged reset timer or a mob that is obviously dropping better stuff than it should. But rarely does GuildX complain about the benefits they receive, only the negatives.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>You can't have it both ways. Either stuff works and it presents a challenge, or it's broken and it needs to be fixed. A challenging game is more fun for everyone in the long run, but if you want it to work, you can't be selective about the bugs you report. I grant you that it's probably human nature to keep the "too good to be true" stuff quiet, but I encourage you to look beyond self-gratification and think about the overall health of the game.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I'm not trying to avoid responsibility for bugs, whether they be detrimental to players or beneficial. Ultimately it falls on us to fix them, whichever way it causes us to be perceived. But you as players have the power to help influence that process, and I encourage you to use it both fairly and wisely.</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>That's one giant cop out Moorgard.</P> <P>You are basically blaming a portion of the player base ("high-level") for speaking out on content that is boring and/or not challenging and/or not worth the time. I'd venture to say few "high-level" players purposely go out and try to trivialize encounters with unintended mechanics/bugs. Of course, sometimes it happens mistakenly when certain tank positions are found, certain spell combinations are discovered, etc. Some guilds choose to utilize these mishaps, others don't. To invalidate any claim from those who do is childish. Afterall, if they are playing on a live server, content should be <STRONG>tested and complete</STRONG>. Please don't give me the "we can't catch everything" routine. While that statement is completely true and understandable, many epic encounters have been pushed to the live servers with obvious and glaring bugs or poorly realized mechanics.</P> <P>On the other side of the coin is the majority of "high-level" guilds who choose not to utilize unintended mechanics/bugs. However, like any smart group of people, they do attempt to find the most efficient way of defeating an encounter, to not do so would be ridiculous. Often times this leads to legitimately trivializing an encounter. Alternately, there are some encounters that could not be defeated without utilizing unintended mechanics/bugs. Venekor was a good example of this at one time. There was an issue with his encounter that would wipe a raid force entirely unless he was moved to a spot where he would not fight, a bug. Guilds were then left to either "exploit" this bug to kill him, or not kill him at all, taking out an epic encounter from the game. I know from personal experience this was /bug'd many times by many different people, and still was not fixed for a considerable amount of time.</P> <P>In addition to all of this, the raid forces taking out x4 encounters often end up getting loot that also drops off a 40+ single group mob in Runneye, Feerrott, CT, Permafrost, etc. How do you think an accomplished level 50 player feels when they find out their Master item off of an x4 not only isn't unique, but was also obtained by a level 35 in Runneye off a single group mob. Instances like that are rampant right now, and that is inexcusable under any circumstances.</P> <P>You can't have it both ways. Either stuff is implented working properly, complete, and challenging or people will "exploit," trivialize it, and complain. A challenging and complete game is more fun for everyone in the long run, but if you want it to work, you can't implement shoddy, untested, and easy content. I grant you it's probably human nature to finish the work as quick as possible and appease the masses, but I encourage you to look beyond the misinformed rabble that makes up 99% of these forums and think about the overall health of the game.</P> <P>You can't expect players to play a certain way. This preception seems to be virtually industry wide. Companies, SOE included, constantly underestimate the player base in multiple facets of gaming. There is a <EM>very fine </EM>line between challenging and impossible, but it isn't too much to ask for SOE, as an experienced MMORPG developer, to find that line and find it quickly. To blame the very players that play the game the most is not only short-sighted, but a poor judgement in general.</P><p>Message Edited by Lonin on <span class=date_text>04-05-2005</span> <span class=time_text>03:26 AM</span>

[Errie_Tholluxe]

<span><blockquote><hr>Moorgard wrote:<div></div> <div> Scylla and Charibdes, if you will.</div> <div> </div><hr></blockquote>Thats Charybdis...Coercer, Grobb <span>:smileyvery-happy:</span></span><div></div>

[jerich]

I agree for a challenge; but do you think that waiting for hours and hours that a npc/mob spawns is challenging ? <div></div>

[TheTravell]

<P>I whole-hartedly agree with those who said we play EQ2 because it is <U>NOT</U> WoW (which is not a true MMORPG anyway, just Diablo with more connections :smileyvery-happy: ).</P> <P>If I wanted an easy game I wouldn't play EQ2.</P> <P>Now about those who exploit any broken issue they fall upon, I'd say that when you play hard to get a bit farther every day and suddenly stumble upon some "horn of plenty" it can be just too hard to resist.</P> <P><FONT color=#ffff00>Once in a while people love to get some easier stuff too. Challenging stuff ALL the time is a bit much to sustain 24/7, I guess that's the reason why people loved those Halloween events on EQ1 so much !! (Kinda like a break from the hard adventurous life <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> )</FONT></P>

[SageMarrow]

<DIV>Personally Moorgard, the devs need to realize what equates to being **bored**.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Being bored in an MMO is not because the content stinks or because there is nothing to do, its because its the same thing with a little bit of a difference. A raid is basically a vertically scaled to the maximum extent named boss. Nothing too advanced about it. Nothing that cannot be worked around about it as well. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>In my honest opinion, boring in EQ2 stems from a number of things. That NEW AND DIFFERENT feeling just isnt there.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>That matters tons!!!!! If its the same thing that you saw for 6 years in EQ1, then you wont be entertained here. If its the same thing that you did for 50 levels straight, then throw a couple of 150k HP in the mobs back pocket and some high attack damage, and expect it to shine like a becon as FUN??? No its not going to. Its gonna be the same thing on a larger scale.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>While i will admit, some say that Eq2 is revolutionary and fantastic, i disagree. Its the same thing just polished and minus all the things the original game ended with. I wasnt an 6hr raider on all those super raids. I played through the core content for years and never quite got around to that because my patience wouldnt allow me to.. Thats not a comparison, its basically a statement to say that - that does not equate to fun.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Intensity is fun, not struggle. There is a difference. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>How about a raid with an evolving monster that once at 1/3 HP would use a really hard non damaging knockback and becomes invulnerable while it transforms with a really great animation of the transformation. Then the fight resumes with the mob at full health and the raid team licking thier wounds during the transformation and the mob has a totally new attack pattern and abilities but WAY <EM>less</EM> HP, maybe a charm spell that sends the afflicted characters to kill the other characters until healed or it wore off, and could reflect magical attacks back on casters. That would be FUN. it take <EM>TIMING</EM> not time. It takes thought and skill, not hack until its dead.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So things like that would increase the intensity and take the timesink mentality out of it. Its not the players jobs to keep fun in the game. Its the developers. I can guarantee if there were less money woes and timesinks and loot farming requirments and gear and equipment requirements and open ended diversity instead of this caged rat mentality with classes and balance, players wouldnt mind reporting and exploited bug. As of now, i know i would, i have 6 gold to my name at level 40 and on my server ALOT of items are rediculously over priced, and the freeport broker is all but useless because no one plays there.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The game also needs other things that add to that FUN factor. If this game is going to be strictly PvE, then make it heroic and special and not so linear. Its enough that i dont have any control over my characters development except to get the best gear every level so i can keep up with the jones'. Unless the system is made more dynamic, players will always walk that path of equipment farming and gear farming, which isnt fun. Knowing that i have to get x item to be geared well and effectively sucks and is BORING.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>AND just a FYI, there are a billion ways to make a game fun and stylish without twinking mobs and spells into high heavens to create a challenge, intensity and struggle are two different things. One gives a rush and the other pisses you off. Its like playing resident evil in the old days where they give you a box of bullets to play half the game. For the first hour or 3 it was fun, then it became annoying as hell because you run from room to room without bullets trying to solve 1 stupid puzzle. Thats how it feels when its TOO challenging.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>FUN is riding on a cool mount <EM>non horsie</EM> that you didnt have to bend over on street corners to get, and by the time you do its not even worth it because you are level 50 and dont have anything to do with it but show it off!!!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>FUN is walking around as a bruiser with spiked shoulder pads, <EM>leather-ish,</EM> pants and a set of boots that only your class can wear with several variations of it to add to the feeling of individuality and diversity.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Moorgard as you and i both know, this is not the release of Eq1 where there was NO competition except UO and EQ outclassed it easily. These are times where MMOS are like candy and people learn from YOUR GAMES mistakes and use them against you in full force. /panda anyone? It was a funny joke sure, but to players that arent so naive its a slap in the face with so many other things going on in game.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If this is going to be a strictly EVIRONMENTAL GAME, it needs to be a darn good one. With flying dragons, diversity and fantasy galore. Thats what will drive this game IMO. If at the least i could look the part and feel the part and live in this awesome fantasy world, i wouldnt care so much about being corralled into 4 MUST HAVE jobs called classes. I wouldnt care if a bug took a day or two too long. But right now its all that players have. Tradeskilling isnt fun, no matter what you do, unless players can do it on the move, it will never be fun Moorgard. Anything that involves sitting in a room to make a buck will never be fun and exciting. Maybe a bit more intuitive and involved, but fun no. Thats like saying work is fun. Not unless you work as a toy tester for toys R us at the age of 5.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So with that being said, ALL i have is my level40 bruiser. If a skill is broken, i care ALOT because its all that i have. I dont have enough money to do much in the way of transportation, and personally i dont want to see a monk on a horse. Its just not right. So whats your response? get a magic carpet? Sure ill do that as soon as i get my guild to level 30 and find or buy 60pp....righhht.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So smell the flowers Moor, Fun can be achieved for everyone and anyone, a game without PVP will have to compensate for the lack there of and then MUCH MUCH more in the way of a fantasy environment to compete. WoW, take the references as you will, is just the same as Eq2 but a tad bit better and more open ended in choices and character development. How could eq2 forget that those are the most important things imaginable in a fantasy MMO without PvP??? Does that make sense?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>same content, same gameplay styling, more custimization, more diversity, more involved fantasy, AND pvp...???!!!??!!!</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Where do you see a problem moorgard? or do you not see one at all? Or are you one of those gamers who comes home and just wants a quick fix after a long day at work with a glass of wine? Not meant to be a pot shot, but they exist.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So its not really about the comparison, because at some point i too will be able to overlook the graphics of WoW if the gap gets any larger than it is now. Not in numbers, but in sheer playability and fun factor.  I can live with a bug for forever and 3 days, they dont bother me much IF i have other things to focus on. And right now <FONT color=#ffff33>timesinks, tradeskilling, harvesting, and loot farming is not going to cut it....</FONT>look at that list one more time and see what it really says to you as far as your FUN options in game.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Thanks </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>*a tad bit long, sorry for that. *</DIV>

[Ishbu]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote: <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There is no shortage of complaints on the boards when a spell or art is considered underpowered or broken, but threads are few when things are broken in a way that benefits certain players. GuildX complains about loot sucking or fights being boring, meanwhile they're farming the heck out of some zone that has a bugged reset timer or a mob that is obviously dropping better stuff than it should. But rarely does GuildX complain about the benefits they receive, only the negatives.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>You can't have it both ways. Either stuff works and it presents a challenge, or it's broken and it needs to be fixed. A challenging game is more fun for everyone in the long run, but if you want it to work, you can't be selective about the bugs you report. I grant you that it's probably human nature to keep the "too good to be true" stuff quiet, but I encourage you to look beyond self-gratification and think about the overall health of the game.<BR> <HR> </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE> <P>I feel that I have sufficient experience in this matter to comment here.  I was one of the players that reaped the benefit of certain lock out timers that have been corrected.  I will use the maidens gulch one as an example later on in the post.</P> <P>The high end guilds are leaning towards the "it's broken and it needs to be fixed" side of the fence right now.  You say that GuildX is complaining about loot sucking so they farm the heck out of a bugged zone.  Well if the loot at the high end didnt suck compared to loot that 1 group can easily get from the bugged zone, why would they farm it?  The fact that it takes GuildX to form up and raid to kill a mob much harder than the one in the bugged zone should guarentee them better loot.  When the maidens gulch (MG) xp zone wouldnt properly set the re use timer if the Lava Born wasnt killed, it took my group 2minutes to zone in, kill the mob, and zone out.  1 out of about every 25-35 kills he was dropping a master chest for us with either a lvl 40+ master spell inside or a shield named Aegis of Alacrity that was a tower shield with 800+ mitigation and 20percent haste among other stats.  Why on earth would I not farm the living crap out of this zone for master spells and awesome shields to equip my entire guild?  The only other option when the contested raid mobs are down would be the instance zones, and 4 out of 5 times (feels like 9 out 10) those instances drop a plain old wooden chest.  About half the times a master chest does drop from those mobs it has the earring of disinigration in it, that is worn on the wrist (READ - fix the name of this becuase there is also an earring of disingration that is worn on the ear) and that really isnt that great of an item, especially with the lousy 5% chance to proc a whopping 28dmg.  Another reason to farm that zone is lvl 50 characters have very few ways of keeping up with repair costs.  Farming that zone and selling the trash items to other players and vendors netted me, and each of my guildmates doing it multiple platinum, enough to keep us buying the master spells that lucky lvl 40 characters would get and keep our guild repaired.</P> <P>My last statement there brings another major concern to surface.  Why does the fire toad drop lvl 40+ master spells more often than all raid mobs?  If you killed 100 contested raid mobs, so that you were gaurenteed to get 100 master chests, odds are you would get about 2 master spells.  You could take 12 hours sitting on the beach (much less time than it would take to kill 100 contested raid mobs) and kill all the drakes and fire toads and get probably around 4 master spells.  That is just plain ridiculous.</P> <P>While I agree that solo and small group players deserve to get some nice gear, the gear should not be as good as the gear dropping from the high end raid mobs.  Sure there is some real good loot out there from the raid mobs, but more often than not you never see it, and with such long respawns on the mobs (dont get me wrong, i think the way contested mobs spawn in this game is one of the best things Ive seen in a mmorpg) the chance of getting those drops is very small.  Making all the contested mobs drop the master chests was a real good step in the right direction, but much of the loot needs to be tweaked.  It is not a coincidence that when I look at my guild loot list I see melee classes with all the gear, and there are maybe 2 master items on a mage class.  The best gear for a mage class is the gear made from figwarts that any person can get a from a 40+ 1 group mob.</P> <P>In short, make the big mobs drop better loot and enough cash/vendor items to keep people repaired, and people will give up on farming zones with bugged reset timers.  I know Id rather spend my time doing other things, but becuase I would be dirt poor from repairs and forking over every last copper I had to a lucky lvl 41 warlock who solo'd some mob that dropped my lvl 47 master spell (hypothetical situation), I am forced to try and take advantage of bugged zones and mobs to keep up with my costs/needs at level 50 in a high end guild.  Right now the "over all" health of the game seems to be lending a hand to the casual, solo/small group player while simultaneously giving the finger to a high end raider with the other.</P> <P>Edit - BTW Moorgard, by adding these changes you may be lowering the amout of tedius work in the game, but the way most of the game works is that tedius = difficulty.  Most of the game revolves around some form of timesink and by removing it for 2 very nice items, you are sucking F*** You to the people who spent the time to get it already.  If you dont beleive me on the tedium of the game, explain to me why you have to kill 1000 sentient beings before being allowed into town for the BBC?  Or how about why you have to get all the way to the bottom of Sol Eye 4 times for the prismatic items?  The sol eye thing would have been a nice challenge for the quest if the flamestalkers still saw invis, but as soon as you removed that ability from them it became nothing more than a 16minute invisible run of boredom.<BR></P> <p>Message Edited by Ishboozor on <span class=date_text>04-05-2005</span> <span class=time_text>05:18 AM</span>

[ken]

<P>I have to agree 100% with this post.  They are trying to make the game too easy - removing harvesting skill rqmts for tier 2; doubling rare drop rates; increasing mob drops; increasing rare drops in newbie zones - a gradual dumbing down of the game.  </P> <P>I complain to my friend that the books we are doing are tedious (kill 10 of this, then kill 10 of that for 100 mobs total) but we still do them and we have a great deal of satisfaction having completed them.  Instead of 100 mobs they could make it 5 and we would still do them but have zero satisfication for completiing them.  I hope they are still reading this thread because making a game easy for even the person that plays a couple hours a week is just wrong and is ruining the game.</P>

[Ibis]

<span><blockquote><hr>Moorgard wrote:<div></div>  <div>There is no shortage of complaints on the boards when a spell or art is considered underpowered or broken, but threads are few when things are broken in a way that benefits certain players. GuildX complains about loot sucking or fights being boring, meanwhile they're farming the heck out of some zone that has a bugged reset timer or a mob that is obviously dropping better stuff than it should. But rarely does GuildX complain about the benefits they receive, only the negatives.</div> <hr></blockquote>Haha.  SOE is watching you!!  The only situation I'm aware of currently where mobs drop loot way better than they should is....those drakota during the deception quest.  They are weak.  The CT one...Niscanith?... could at least be made to use his knockback like 2-3 times a minute.  That would be rough.  Vedalazon(sp?) the Elusive and the other one are also walks in the park, and they all 3 drop metal every time.  Compared to Venekor and Vox which are difficult and STILL drop wooden.</span><div></div>

[Silversnow]

<blockquote><hr>kenih wrote:<P>I have to agree 100% with this post.  They are trying to make the game too easy - removing harvesting skill rqmts for tier 2; doubling rare drop rates; increasing mob drops; increasing rare drops in newbie zones - a gradual dumbing down of the game.  </P> <P>I complain to my friend that the books we are doing are tedious (kill 10 of this, then kill 10 of that for 100 mobs total) but we still do them and we have a great deal of satisfaction having completed them.  Instead of 100 mobs they could make it 5 and we would still do them but have zero satisfication for completiing them.  I hope they are still reading this thread because making a game easy for even the person that plays a couple hours a week is just wrong and is ruining the game.</P> <hr></blockquote>Have to disagree. Most of what i see is people saying that they dont want others to have bragging rights to quests items that are blocked by tedious requirments that casual players will never be able to complete. And Eq2 is supposed to be marketed to the casual player so it simply has to be changed. Saying that because you play XX amount of hours means joe average who plays on weekends shouldn't be allowed to attain the same rewards is a bit selfish and most definately unfun to casual players.And since you mentioned the books. Kill quests are fine for a causual player to a point. Make it even 200 kills to complete them i could care less. But spread those kills over content that for the quest level the person can get xp off of. Any casual person will grudgingly (if not gladly) put a dent in that figure if they are actually accomplishing something worth while. In reality though the majority of people can't get others to help with those type of things for a "insignificant" reward of a book that's placed in your house. Most of us (yes i do the book quests) need to wait for the mobs to grey out before soloing it. That's being changed as a result of the dev's finnaly realising the people even interested in them had to grey them out.PS: Those kill quests? If you put a # of something to kill then it should update 100% of the time. Example. Shiny Brass Halberd heritage. Please hit the dev in the head with a large rock that thought it funny to put 60 kills needed for owlbears/patchwork men but in reality its more like 200+ kills before you actually get all the updates for each.

[Pain Divine]

<div></div>Odyseus's homeland lay on the other side of Scylla and Charibdes, and there-for he was required to chose which Titan he wished to confront to get there. EQ2, however, has no such goal it's traveling twords. You are not required to chose one of these 2 evils to confront. In response, let me quote the great Willy Wonka: <font size="5"><b>STOP THE BOAT</b></font> <div></div><p>Message Edited by Pain Divine on <span class=date_text>04-05-2005</span> <span class=time_text>05:32 AM</span>

[aeio]

Moorgard, The problem is we as players are our own worst enemies.  While we want a challenging game, we will do everything within our power to make the game not so.  We look for path of least resistance at every turn and try to force your hand to make it even easier. You guys have to hold the line in some cases and take our bottle away, and tell us to stop crying. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> <div></div>

[blynchehaun]

< The thing is people want a challenge, but will always take the easier route.  Why should you have to dumb down yourself to make an encounter fun?  The 'fun' is trying your hardest to beat an encounter.  Not trying your hardest to not try and still beat an encounter.    Thats like putting the current gold medal runner in the special olympics and when he complains its not a challenge, you tell him not to try so hard, but still put an effort into it so its a challenge. Huh? Exactly. <p>Maybe I misread you, since you contradict yourself.  You want player skill in the game, yet say "Don't try to hard.." I dont get it. > </p> <p>You're right, you don't get it. </p> <p>Your analogy is flawed. Mainly because analogies are flawed by their nature, but your's is biased in such a way to be nonsensical. </p> <p>But let's extend it a little bit. </p> <p> If you're such a gold medal runner, why the *heck* are you gimping the encounter to the point where it's a special olympics race? </p> <p>Do you get off on beating 4yos in foot races? Do you have fun when you throw a ball further than a 6yo? </p> <p> If yes, well..... more power to you. </p> <p> I'm guessing the likely answer is: no, you *don't* have fun that way. </p> <p>Because it's <b>not</b> a <b>challenge</b>. </p> <p> </p> <p>Do players [Removed for Content] themselves down? </p> <p>Hell yeah. </p> <p> Prior to EQ2, I played a lot of SWG. </p> <p> One of the most fun sessions we had was: everyone starts with nothing but Newb armour and Newb weapons and we go on a Rancor hunt. </p> <p>Noramally, with full gear, killing 4 rancor simultaneausly for a Master Combat-Profession is *trivial*. But because the <b>players </b>decided to <b>change their playstyle to make the gimped combat system a challenge </b>it was <b>fun</b>. </p> <p> <b>You</b> are responsible for <b>your</b> fun. </p> <p>The Devs here have provided an environment that you can have fun in and with. </p> <p>If <b>you</b> are doing things so that <b>you</b> are <b>not having fun</b>, then <b>you</b> need to <b>stop doing those things</b>. </p> <p> Cappiche? </p> <p> (text emboldened for the hard of thinking) </p>

[Rizzen19]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> aeiouy wrote:<BR>Moorgard,<BR><BR>The problem is we as players are our own worst enemies.  While we want a challenging game, we will do everything within our power to make the game not so.  We look for path of least resistance at every turn and try to force your hand to make it even easier.<BR><BR>You guys have to hold the line in some cases and take our bottle away, and tell us to stop crying. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /><BR><BR><BR> <P><BR></P> <HR> <P> </P> <P>This is probably the best post in this thread.</P></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Vermilion]

<P>Moorgard said,   "People who can't play for long stretches of time deserve nice stuff, too".</P> <P>Let me jump right on this and say <STRONG>AMEN BROTHER</STRONG>!</P>

[Tradeskill_Addict]

<DIV>It all comes down to simple definitions of terms like challenging, hard, tedious, easy, grind, effort etc.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Since <FONT color=#ffff00>near to every poster defines each term a bit different</FONT> and there are obviously groups who share the same definition <EM><FONT color=#ffff00>on some but near to never all</FONT></EM> terms we can argue forever and never come an inch closer to each others point of view.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Its not sad, its not funny its just human. Regarding *unscientific*matters our advanced abilities to analyze and to express ourselfes sometimes just stand BIG in the way to accept even others interpretation of terms  (not to mention opinions) and there's seldom a way around it. Thats the curse of education and progress, the Cro-Magnon Men would have probably had it easier <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Saying that I enjoy posting/reading on this board nonetheless though <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></DIV><p>Message Edited by Tradeskill_Addict on <span class=date_text>04-05-2005</span> <span class=time_text>06:22 AM</span>

[Anlari]

Wow, so people think that they should get all the nice stuff too for not spending hours getting it.  I hate this mentality.  I play maybe 4-7 hours a week and I have a few nice things.  I pick and choose the ones to work towards and I get them.  The people saying they can't get anything nice cause they don't have the time, are the ones who never try because it seems to daunting to them.  Sure, everyone is entitled to nice things, if they work for them.  Work is not going and killing an NPC who instantly spawns cause you ahve the quest, work is patience and actualy doing something.  Every patch I feel more and more like I have the coice of playing WoW or SOE's version of WoW.  Can't wait till an MMO comes out.

[BostonFNO]

<BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote:<BR> <P>We will continue to work to make the game less tedious, and make the fun more accessible to everyone. We kinda think that makes sense in a big-picture kind of way. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <DIV>That doesn't mean we're making the game easier, because time is not a true measure of challenge: only of patience. That's not to say valuable items won't be rare and difficult to obtain, it's just that we don't want every single item of value to require the exact same investment. People who can't play for long stretches of time deserve nice stuff, too.</DIV> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><FONT color=#ff9900>Anything that makes the game more fun is good for the game in the long run. No doubt about it. Thank you and keep up the good work. </FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#ff9900><FONT size=2><FONT color=#ff9900>P.S. I think the guild system could use a little of your recent fun injections doctor.</FONT><BR></FONT></FONT></P>

[GoVo]

<P>The issue isn't what the people here say, it's the silent majority that counts.  If their subscriber numbers grow with the changes they make, then who do you think they will believe?  The 5% that post here?</P> <P>I can respect where you're coming from.  I used to game 'medium core' myself.  But here recently my wife gave birth to our first daughter.  My wife and I have adjusted our work schedules so she doesn't have to stay but a few hours a week in day care.  I believe that real life commitments trumps a video game every time.  My play time has shrunk to 1-2 hours a night and on the days we're both off 3-4 hours, but may have to get up at any minute and simply be afk for 1-10 mins.  Since this really isn't something most groups look for in a member, I dual box to get along.</P> <P>Recently the economy has gotten so bad items within my range cost so much that by the time I can afford them, they've gone blue to my level.  The good quests people want to do require groups if you want the reward within a usable time, otherwise you wait until you can solo (dual box in my case) ^^ mobs.  By then the reward is blue/green to you.</P> <P>I haven't done any harvesting because the time commitment to raise the skills was so high, it simply wasn't worth the effort (considering the time I have to play now).</P> <P>One poster above noted how if I wanted more, I should be willing to make the commitment.  Considering the limited time that I do have, it is a commitment to even logon and play.  My wife takes a little more on herself to allow me to play, so this isn't just a commitment from me, but one of my family.</P> <P>So for many of us who can no longer spend every free moment in a video game, I thank the developers and design staff of EQ2 for giving us consideration and being willing to recognize that our needs are just as important as the more 'hard core' gamers.</P>

[b3taha]

<span><blockquote><hr>Exibar wrote:<div>  Wow, there surely are some awesome changes in this HUGE patch, but I have a concern that a lot of the changes being introduced are starting to make the gam too easy to play....</div> <div> </div> <div>   Am I the only one that is noticing this?  Ever since Smedly (I think that's his last name) left has the head developer or whatever his title was, the game is getting more and more geared for the player that can only play a couple hours a month it seems.  Really, was the harvesting skill going up that slow that it required to be bumped up over double?  Tradeskill reactions that instantly give you a rare harvest item and a pristine item?</div> <div> </div> <div>  Those are just two small examples, but I see the course of the game gearing up to be way too easy.  Hmmmm, WoW is a pretty easy, non-hardcore game to play, DAoC is the same....  I'm sure the other "major" games are the same....</div> <div> </div> <div>   I've played DAoC for a couple years while playing EQ1 and after EQ1 started getting bothersome for me.  DAoC was a pretty easy game to play when compared to EQ1, I stil call it EverQuest lite......</div> <div> </div> <div>   EverQuest was always for the hardcore gamer, sure the casual gamer would have lots of fun in there too, but just without the expectation of getting too high in level or too far in the game.  EverQuest 2 should also be the same,  <b> EQ2 is a vast improvement over EQ1 don't get me wrong.< /b> </div> <div>  </div> <div>   There is a reason that these "easier" games are loosing players, because too many things are just too easy to attain and the games progresses too quickly.  I know it's not an easy balancing act to do, but it would appear that EQ2 is tipping the scales over on the easy side.</div> <div> </div> <div>   before I ramble on way too much (I know too late!), 'll leave the floor open for discussion.....   How does everyone else feel?  </div> <div> </div> <div> </div><hr></blockquote>I remember reading somewhere that EQ2 does follow the lore from EQ1, but it is not a duplicate with better graphics. EQ2 is different then EQ1 and was made to be that way.  EQ2 was made to be more casual player centric in some ways, but also have the possibility to provide a challenge to the harcore gamer. Unlike EQ1 which was for the Hardcore gamer. I</span><div></div>

[Tradeskill_Addict]

<DIV> <HR> Zuuljin wrote:<BR> Thats because "end game" refers to the end of the current content.<BR> <HR> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>thats the problem - if the devs treat it like *end game* content there wouldnt be much left for the remaining <STRONG><FONT size=4>3 quaters</FONT></STRONG> of the game.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Thats the reason EQL became a mudflated twinkers lounge. Because during the expansions and add-ons gear became immense powerfull very fast, calling for more powerfull oponents and onandonandon until there was NO OTHER WAY than to challenge the gods on their planes.....while the servers where flooded with mid-lvl gear that became as cheap as ordinary food.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I am glad to see that with EQ2 the devs dont fire everything they got in their quivers within the first 12 months. My guess is that I will become bored too before the next expansion allows us lvls beyond 50. so what the heck? I will just try other MMORPGS or play some offline-RPG (yes they DO still exist) in the meantime suspending my account and coming back to EQ2 eagerly once new content is added.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>EQ2 is not my life, thank godness.</DIV><p>Message Edited by Tradeskill_Addict on <span class=date_text>04-05-2005</span> <span class=time_text>07:25 AM</span>

[Gaige]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Ishboozor wrote:<BR> <P> <FONT color=#ffff00>When the maidens gulch (MG) xp zone wouldnt properly set the re use timer if the Lava Born wasnt killed, it took my group 2minutes to zone in, kill the mob, and zone out.  1 out of about every 25-35 kills he was dropping a master chest for us with either a lvl 40+ master spell inside or a shield named Aegis of Alacrity that was a tower shield with 800+ mitigation and 20percent haste among other stats.</FONT>  Why on earth would I not farm the living crap out of this zone for master spells and awesome shields to equip my entire guild?  The only other option when the contested raid mobs are down would be the instance zones, and 4 out of 5 times (feels like 9 out 10) those instances drop a plain old wooden chest.  About half the times a master chest does drop from those mobs it has the earring of disinigration in it, that is worn on the wrist (READ - fix the name of this becuase there is also an earring of disingration that is worn on the ear) and that really isnt that great of an item, especially with the lousy 5% chance to proc a whopping 28dmg.  Another reason to farm that zone is lvl 50 characters have very few ways of keeping up with repair costs.<FONT color=#ffff00>  Farming that zone and selling the trash items to other players and vendors netted me, and each of my guildmates doing it multiple platinum</FONT>, enough to keep us buying the master spells that lucky lvl 40 characters would get and keep our guild repaired.</P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Ha Ha.</P> <P>So sad.<BR></P>

[Vertie_EQ2]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> blynchehaun wrote:<BR> <P>You're right, you don't get it. Your analogy is flawed. Mainly because analogies are flawed by their nature, but your's is biased in such a way to be nonsensical.</P> <P>But let's extend it a little bit.If you're such a gold medal runner, why the *heck* are you gimping the encounter to the point where it's a special olympics race?Do you get off on beating 4yos in foot races? Do you have fun when you throw a ball further than a 6yo? If yes, well..... more power to you.</P> <P><FONT color=#ffff00>No you don't get it. His statement went totally over your head. He never suggested he was gimping the encounter to that point. I won't explain it, just go re-read it. It made perfect sense.<BR></FONT><BR>I'm guessing the likely answer is: no, you *don't* have fun that way. Because it's <B>not</B> a <B>challenge</B>. Do players [Removed for Content] themselves down? Hell yeah.<BR><BR>Prior to EQ2, I played a lot of SWG.<BR><BR><FONT color=#ffff00>Ah, now I understand where your coming from. You have been brainwashed by the devs of a game with absolutely 0 content. A game that is very close to dead. Great source to draw from.<BR></FONT><BR>One of the most fun sessions we had was: everyone starts with nothing but Newb armour and Newb weapons and we go on a Rancor hunt. Noramally, with full gear, killing 4 rancor simultaneausly for a Master Combat-Profession is *trivial*. But because the <B>players </B>decided to <B>change their playstyle to make the gimped combat system a challenge </B>it was <B>fun</B>.</P> <P><B>You</B> are responsible for <B>your</B> fun. The Devs here have provided an environment that you can have fun in and with.<BR><FONT color=#ffff00><BR>You can waste your 15 bucks a month for a sandbox. I want content. Fun, challenging content. That's what I am paying for. If you went to Disneyland and all the rides except the kiddy rides were broken, I wonder if you would feel the same way?<BR></FONT><BR></P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV> </DIV>

[Gaige]

<DIV><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Anlarius wrote:<BR>Wow, so people think that they should get all the nice stuff too for not spending hours getting it.  I hate this mentality.  I play maybe 4-7 hours a week and I have a few nice things.  I pick and choose the ones to work towards and I get them.  The people saying they can't get anything nice cause they don't have the time, are the ones who never try because it seems to daunting to them.  Sure, everyone is entitled to nice things, if they work for them.  Work is not going and killing an NPC who instantly spawns cause you ahve the quest, work is patience and actualy doing something.  Every patch I feel more and more like I have the coice of playing WoW or SOE's version of WoW.  Can't wait till an MMO comes out. <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>Waiting isn't work.  Sitting for 8 hours camping a spawn isn't work at all.  So I guess I don't understand your mentality either.<BR></DIV>

[Gaige]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <P></P> <HR> Exibar wrote: <P>EverQuest was always for the hardcore gamer, sure the casual gamer would have lots of fun in there too, but just without the expectation of getting too high in level or too far in the game.  EverQuest 2 should also be the same, EQ2 is a vast improvement over EQ1 don't get me wrong.</P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>If they were going to do that, why would they continue to run EQ1?</P> <P>This is mainly for casual players, this isn't a hardcore game.<BR></P>

[Bahlz]

<DIV>You guys are missing what Moorgard was trying to say by intentionally picking out only part of what he said.  Most of us could tell that from the post he was saying it was a balancing act, and that some of you were going to come out and yell nerf when they increase the challenge and some yell that the game is to easy, when they decrease the.. er tedium.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think he was mostly trying to point out the hypocricy in those who have done it both ways.  The old adage you can't please some of the people any of the time.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As to challenge, I think SOE has done a nice job with challenge.  I have played both wow and eq2 now, and I must say that there is a substantial difference in the way the 2 games even feel.  I always feel like I need to watch my step in EQ2.  I can tailor my challenge in EQ2.  I can solo blue solo encounters all day and get some small reward, or I can try a green heroic and get better, or even try to get a duo and go try some blue heroics, or a group and try some yellow heroics or whatever.  I haven't seen anywhere near high end yet, but from a design standpoint, what I have seen far outshines wow.  And some of what I think is actually better in WoW is what they are looking at tweaking in EQ2.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>One could argue that there isn't much skill required in an RPG at anytime, but I think it is obvious that the only real skill here is in defeating combat encounters, so if they want to make every other aspect of the game less tedius(medding, tradeskilling, harvesting, traveling) I don't see how that lessens the challenge at all.  It may lessen the time requirememnts but not the challenge.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As to long raids versus short raids, I think SOE recognizes the areas that a game should probably not challenge are outside the game.  The hardest thing about those encounters in EQ1 was managing your people not managing your toons.  And that is not a challenge that the vast majority of players are going to be comfortable with, because it is one that puts to much stress outside of gaming.  It is not a uber v casual debate either.  In EQ1 it was because the only way one could get the awesome stuff was to be willing to sacrifice things outside of gaming.  Personally I am 100 percent on board with no long raids and no crazy number requirements, because the encounter should be challenging in GAME, not the only challenge coming from managing 69 egos and schedules outside of the game.</DIV>

[Druzgotek]

<P>How about you just leave the old mobs like they are, and put in new mobs, even if it means you reuse the same models for the 10th time, that are harder.</P> <P>That way starting guilds will have fun defeating the easier mobs, and experienced guilds that are up to a challenge will have hard targets to play with?</P> <P>Most people who post mobs are to easy, are in top guilds, and wish to stop lesser guilds from having fun. When you make mobs harder you make your game not fun for many less-hardcore players. Less fun for them = less revenue for you.</P> <P>Some mobs got changed 3 times now, always for the worse.</P> <P>Ps.: The guild I am in has no problem defeating any target. I am not some noob whining to make stuff easier for my sake.</P>

[LadyEternity]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Gage-Mikel wrote:<BR> <BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <P></P> <HR> Exibar wrote: <P>EverQuest was always for the hardcore gamer, sure the casual gamer would have lots of fun in there too, but just without the expectation of getting too high in level or too far in the game.  EverQuest 2 should also be the same, EQ2 is a vast improvement over EQ1 don't get me wrong.</P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>If they were going to do that, why would they continue to run EQ1?</P> <P>This is mainly for casual players, this isn't a hardcore game.<BR></P> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>This is exactly the way I feel. If they made EQ2 into EQ1 with better graphics (and they came REALLY close to that..which is why so many people like me are now playing -other- games) then it would just not make any sense at all. Not only would they kill EQ1, but they wouldn't have the 'draw' a normal MMORPG would have...sense it would be a 'niche'.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think alot of the issue here is that they invited, and tempted EQ1 players to come beta EQ2. Well. Having Hardcore players participate in the building of a Casual game...really doesn't work right. What they ended up with was a half hearted group/guild/raid game that had limited casual/solo/small group play...that didn't really provided an engaging experience for the original targetted group (casual/semi-casual) or the players that came from EQ1.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I will say one thing though. If they choose to make things harder in the raid department, I really don't want to see trickle down from it onto the casual game. IMHO the casual game is difficult enough thank you very much, and I don't think it needs anymore obstacles. When they increased the hp/damage on mobs it effected everyone. I'd like to see the changes on the advanced styles of play to stay with the advanced styles of play, and not trickle down to effect the lower styles of play.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Alot of players are treating this game as if it's some big 'job' they have to complete...like it's a huge competition. I don't understand the reasoning behind why anyone would knowingly trivialize an encounter by exploiting some highend buff combinations (which should be fixed btw heh) then coming on the BB here and complaining about lack of difficulty. *boggle* Just don't use the buff combinations until they are fixed? Ya'll complain about things being easy, and things being trivial. Then come to find out you are trivializing the encounters yourself! I find that rather amusing. If you don't have the self control present, then I hardly think it's SOE's fault to be honest. Yes the BUG is their fault. But your lack of self control to not wack yourself in the head is definately NOT their fault. You know, sometimes when I would go out horseback riding as a child I would choose to 'go home' the long way. Not because I had to, not because someone was MAKING me. Not because the horse's pathing nodes only took him a certain way(joke). No because I wanted...to enjoy the ride. And other times I would go straight come the most direct route. But you know what? Not one single time did I complain to my parents about the speed of my mount just because I choose to take the long/short route home. It's all about choices and self control....and about the REAL reason behind your desire to do a specific activity. If you are blowing through content, using things like buff combinations to make the content easier then it should be, then perhaps instead of complaining to SOE about lack of challenge you should instead analyze in yourself why you feel the need in the first place to trivialize the encounter. Because isn't it all about the journey anyhow?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Lady Eternity</DIV>

[einar4]

<DIV> </DIV> <DIV> Well really, at first I have no sympathy for the 24/7 players that complain when the part time players.   I don't say casual players here, because most people call a casual player someone that plays maybe 3-4 hours a day.  But, brother, if you game 4 hours a day, you are a hardcore gamer, period. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> I suppose that it is something we should be sensitive to though.  These guys like the OP have little else to be proud of, so being the uberest EQ2 character problably means alot to them, so allowing the part time players to have even a slight chance at attaining their level, either in loot or power, can really destroy alot of their self actualization.   So be compassionate with these guys.  They only have their EQ uberness to get them through the night, and that sense of self worth probably gets dilluted if part time players can grow in power and wealth without the 24/7 time investment.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[BloodSmo]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote:<BR> <P>We will continue to work to make the game less tedious, and make the fun more accessible to everyone. We kinda think that makes sense in a big-picture kind of way. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <DIV>That doesn't mean we're making the game easier, because time is not a true measure of challenge: only of patience. That's not to say valuable items won't be rare and difficult to obtain, it's just that we don't want every single item of value to require the exact same investment. People who can't play for long stretches of time deserve nice stuff, too.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It's interesting, because some of the same people who complain about the game being too easy are the ones who complain most vocally when we change something (or fix something) that results in a greater level of challenge. If we make something easier we're dumbing it down, but if we make it more challenging then we're nerfing. Scylla and Charibdes, if you will.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For instance, there are high-level players who complain that raids are boring. Well, in some cases people have figured out ways to make them so, using buff combinations that make a tank invulnerable or that render a certain target impotent. Some folks are even now complaining about boring content in one breath while with the next farming at a rapid pace so that they can obtain the loot they desire before the level of challenge is changed when our balance pass goes live.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So do you want the game to be challenging or not?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There is no shortage of complaints on the boards when a spell or art is considered underpowered or broken, but threads are few when things are broken in a way that benefits certain players. GuildX complains about loot sucking or fights being boring, meanwhile they're farming the heck out of some zone that has a bugged reset timer or a mob that is obviously dropping better stuff than it should. But rarely does GuildX complain about the benefits they receive, only the negatives.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>You can't have it both ways. Either stuff works and it presents a challenge, or it's broken and it needs to be fixed. A challenging game is more fun for everyone in the long run, but if you want it to work, you can't be selective about the bugs you report. I grant you that it's probably human nature to keep the "too good to be true" stuff quiet, but I encourage you to look beyond self-gratification and think about the overall health of the game.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I'm not trying to avoid responsibility for bugs, whether they be detrimental to players or beneficial. Ultimately it falls on us to fix them, whichever way it causes us to be perceived. But you as players have the power to help influence that process, and I encourage you to use it both fairly and wisely.</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>Whenever you take something from someone they are going to say its a nerf.  Take harvesting for instance, i personally dont harvest at all so every patch that gets harvestables into the hands of crafters for a cheaper price im all for.  However alot of high end people harvest all day every day just hopeing for that rare.  It seems to me that maybe EQ2 should have never left the beta phase if all these patches were needed.  You can say all you want about "the game was ready for launch and it cant be in beta for ever", but the truth was you wanted the game out b4 Christmas and b4 WoW.  The crafting system has been nerfed several times, the whole ground breaking "Interdependency" has been basicaly done away with.  I call those nerfs, not fixes, all you did was make the game easier for those who couldnt handle it.  If the game wasnt working why were some people lvl 50? clearly they could handle it, but SOE took the normal way out and nerfed it to quell the kiddies complaints.  </DIV>

[bathory610]

The believe the biggest problem is there is nothing to do, except farm these raid zones.........the same ones, in the same order, every night or if u havent got guild 30 endlessly mindnumbingly do those..............both get old fast.

[Bahlz]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> BloodSmoke wrote:<BR><BR> <DIV>Whenever you take something from someone they are going to say its a nerf.  Take harvesting for instance, i personally dont harvest at all so every patch that gets harvestables into the hands of crafters for a cheaper price im all for.  However alot of high end people harvest all day every day just hopeing for that rare.  It seems to me that maybe EQ2 should have never left the beta phase if all these patches were needed.  You can say all you want about "the game was ready for launch and it cant be in beta for ever", but the truth was you wanted the game out b4 Christmas and b4 WoW.  The crafting system has been nerfed several times, the whole ground breaking "Interdependency" has been basicaly done away with.  I call those nerfs, not fixes, all you did was make the game easier for those who couldnt handle it.  If the game wasnt working why were some people lvl 50? clearly they could handle it, but SOE took the normal way out and nerfed it to quell the kiddies complaints.  </DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>I just wanted to quote this because I often heard this argument in regards to EQ1 and I always thought it was crazy.  The game evolves.  It evolves through number of people at each level.  It evolves through rate of equipment/spells coming into the game.  It evolves due to patching and expansions.  The experience one had getting from 1 to 50 at release, will be substantially different than that experience now.  So how is making the experience better all around bad?  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I understand what you are saying, but it just doesn't hold in a dynamic game.  If they didn't make these specific changes it still wouldn't be the same difficulty to get 1 to 50 now as then.  It may be harder in some ways(unavailability of items/spells/groups) it may be easier (less competition for mobs, greater rewards for encounters, changes in the environment that removes worthless timesinks.)  The fact of the matter is if you are taking advantage of a game mechinc then that is great, but if they decide to change the game mechanic for a good reason and you can no longer take advantage of it then that is great to.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There is no reason to feel entitled to have a monopoly on certain rares just because you have up until now.  A change as the game matures DOES NOT mean the original design was poor, or that it should have been tested better.  It just means that for the game in its current state it is a good change.  That's it.  I get so tired of the "If I had to go through it you should to" mentality, it has no place in a constantly evolving game.  I guess if you had 50 level 20s to group with when you were 20 SOE should hold 49 of you back till I hit 21.. otherwise it isn't fair cause it is harder for me to group.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>BTW usually people who complain about boredom/tedium are the opposite of kiddies, because it is directly proportional to how much people value their time.  That is why consoles where replaying the exact same map 500 times is considered excellent value are targeted at a younger demographic than computers where a game can be 12 hours long and still sell a million copies.  However, by your logic I am a kiddy, so I guess I am comfortable with that.  I can't "handle" doing boring things that have little relevance to the setting or my skill level.  </DIV>

[Erow]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote:<BR> <P>We will continue to work to make the game less tedious, and make the fun more accessible to everyone. We kinda think that makes sense in a big-picture kind of way. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <DIV>That doesn't mean we're making the game easier, because time is not a true measure of challenge: only of patience. That's not to say valuable items won't be rare and difficult to obtain, it's just that we don't want every single item of value to require the exact same investment. People who can't play for long stretches of time deserve nice stuff, too.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It's interesting, because some of the same people who complain about the game being too easy are the ones who complain most vocally when we change something (or fix something) that results in a greater level of challenge. If we make something easier we're dumbing it down, but if we make it more challenging then we're nerfing. Scylla and Charibdes, if you will.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For instance, there are high-level players who complain that raids are boring. Well, in some cases people have figured out ways to make them so, using buff combinations that make a tank invulnerable or that render a certain target impotent. Some folks are even now complaining about boring content in one breath while with the next farming at a rapid pace so that they can obtain the loot they desire before the level of challenge is changed when our balance pass goes live.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So do you want the game to be challenging or not?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There is no shortage of complaints on the boards when a spell or art is considered underpowered or broken, but threads are few when things are broken in a way that benefits certain players. GuildX complains about loot sucking or fights being boring, meanwhile they're farming the heck out of some zone that has a bugged reset timer or a mob that is obviously dropping better stuff than it should. But rarely does GuildX complain about the benefits they receive, only the negatives.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>You can't have it both ways. Either stuff works and it presents a challenge, or it's broken and it needs to be fixed. A challenging game is more fun for everyone in the long run, but if you want it to work, you can't be selective about the bugs you report. I grant you that it's probably human nature to keep the "too good to be true" stuff quiet, but I encourage you to look beyond self-gratification and think about the overall health of the game.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I'm not trying to avoid responsibility for bugs, whether they be detrimental to players or beneficial. Ultimately it falls on us to fix them, whichever way it causes us to be perceived. But you as players have the power to help influence that process, and I encourage you to use it both fairly and wisely.</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff>I said this in Beta, and I will say it again.... </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff>If you make a game for the "casual" player...   then you have a game that has "casual" players in it....!!  Problem is, that not many "casual" players pay $13/month on a hobbie...   thus you alienate your player base by catering to a phenominaly small group of players verses those who been with SOE since there were 989studio/Varent.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff>Players left in troves after a few months because SOE didn't look at EQ2 overall system.  Locked combat, "solo"/"group" mobs, flagged access everywhere, no solo content, zones, linear travel...etc.  For the last 2 years SOE been listening to newbies on the message boards while the rest of us were just playing our games... we had a few guildee/friends in beta and listened to their complaints or went over their houses to see how Fisher Price EQ2 was.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff>My point being... they have done ALOT to win back the many people that closed their accounts... and the many more that were contiplating it, but instead of being proactive they are REACTIVE.  How come a GM has just never arbitraily hails a played in game and asked them a few questions... why is it always HERE on the message boards ...?   Where, those "casual" players spend most of their time.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff>I am a busy person, but do everything I can do on certain days so I can have a bigger lump of time to play. Instead of playing 2 hours every night, I play 1 less night, but for 4 hours.  I usually play 3 nights a week.. sometimes more if I actually get the weekend off (60 hour work week).  I am a cusual gamer ...!!</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff>And this game is WAY too easy....  it just a matter of going threw the steps, no tricks, no traps, no arrows shooting threw the walls... no strategy against the DUNGEONS.  Thats what missing.  In Everquest you not only had to defeat the MOBs, but also the dungeons themselves... nothings trickly.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff><STRONG>I am lvl 39 and have 4 Heritage quests done... and I have accomplished NOTHING.  A monky could've done what I have !!</STRONG></FONT></DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT></STRONG> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT></STRONG> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff>-Erowid</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33ccff> </FONT></DIV>

[Zuuljin]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> blynchehaun wrote: <P><BR>If you're such a gold medal runner, why the *heck* are you gimping the encounter to the point where it's a special olympics race?<BR></P> <P>...</P> <P><BR><B>You</B> are responsible for <B>your</B> fun.<BR></P> <P>The Devs here have provided an environment that you can have fun in and with.<BR></P> <P>If <B>you</B> are doing things so that <B>you</B> are <B>not having fun</B>, then <B>you</B> need to <B>stop doing those things</B>.</P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>My point is we are not gimping it down to a special olypics race.  It already is!  And we have to dumb down ourselves to make it a challenge.  I want to run with the big boys, but there ARE no races for me.  There only is the special olympics and I have the choice to run in it or quit my carrier.   I do not enjoy it,  and neither do all the other runners with me.  But we have nowhere to go.  We like to run, so we cant just quit, but we need better races.  That better?</P> <P>While what you say makes perfect sense, it is not how many people feel.  People want a challenging game, not a game where you challenege yourself.  Im glad you have fun doing that, but like I said, many do not.  I like to take all the skills available to me, and try to beat an encounter.  If said encounter is too easy, then its boring.   I guess you could look at it as progression.  The goal of the game is to progress, in whatever shape you want.  Dumbing down yourself is doing the opposite.  Your going backwards.  People like to go forward, not backwards.  Would you think it was fun if when the next expansion hits, and levels are raised, that ALL gear past 50 gets progressivly worse, but you have to upgrade since most of your current gear is grey.  Till the gear you get at lvl 100 is the exact gear you had at level 10?  WOOO FUN!!!!<BR></P>

[Pain Divine]

You just have to do what I do... hury up and do quests before SOE nerfs the fun out of them.  Then people see your uber item... find out it took you a lot of work to get it, come here and complain, and then they nerf it. SOE makes a new, MORE uber item... you hurry and do the quest before they nerf it... and the cycle continues. I just hope I can do the draconic quests before they get to them. <div></div>

[a6eaq]

<P></P> <HR> Exibar wrote <P><FONT size=1>Wow, there surely are some awesome changes in this HUGE patch, but I have a concern that a lot of the changes being introduced are starting to make the gam too easy to play....</FONT></P> <DIV><FONT size=1></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=1>  Am I the only one that is noticing this?  Ever since Smedly (I think that's his last name) left has the head developer or whatever his title was, the game is getting more and more geared for the player that can only play a couple hours a month it seems.  Really, was the harvesting skill going up that slow that it required to be bumped up over double?  Tradeskill reactions that instantly give you a rare harvest item and a pristine item?</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=1></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=1> Those are just two small examples, but I see the course of the game gearing up to be way too easy.  Hmmmm, WoW is a pretty easy, non-hardcore game to play, DAoC is the same....  I'm sure the other "major" games are the same....</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=1></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=1>  I've played DAoC for a couple years while playing EQ1 and after EQ1 started getting bothersome for me.  DAoC was a pretty easy game to play when compared to EQ1, I stil call it EverQuest lite......</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=1></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=1>  EverQuest was always for the hardcore gamer, sure the casual gamer would have lots of fun in there too, but just without the expectation of getting too high in level or too far in the game.  EverQuest 2 should also be the same, EQ2 is a vast improvement over EQ1 don't get me wrong.  </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=1></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=1>  There is a reason that these "easier" games are loosing players, because too many things are just too easy to attain and the games progresses too quickly.  I know it's not an easy balancing act to do, but it would appear that EQ2 is tipping the scales over on the easy side.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=1></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=1>  before I ramble on way too much (I know too late!), 'll leave the floor open for discussion.....   How does everyone else feel?  </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=1></FONT> <HR> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3>Well Exibar, I think you are narrow minded!  Don't get mad you asked remember.  LOL just kidding.  Really lets think about this from the money point of view shall we.  You are a CEO of a big on-line gaming company named... SOE!  You are in the business of making what?  Oh yeah MONEY!  You have about 3-5% of the people that play your game crying that it is too easy and say 20-30% are what you refer to as those that "play a couple hours a month"  The rest are somewhere in the middle.  How are you going to shape your game?  If you picked your side you would be just as big of a looser as your post makes you sound.  Your company wound go bankrupt because the few players you cattered to could not keep you in business for long.  I would venture that most of the EQ2 players do not live, eat, breathe EQ like you.  Therefore making things a little easier will keep the majority of the people happy and playing; therefore, money keeps flowing in.  The company stays in business.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT size=3>If you liked EQlite as you called or EQ1 better then save yourself the heartache and go play them.  EQ2 is NOT EQ1 if you have not noticed.  There are a lot of changes in these updates that I do not like, and Sony is claiming they are for Tradeskillers to make money, yet they constantly kill Alchemists with every patch.  So it's easier to farm, big deal does it hurt you in anyway?  Did Sony break break your legs or something?  I think not.  If you cant stand the game, get out.  Other wise curl up under a blanket, turn out the lights, and snuggle up to your big teddy bear and play the game.</FONT></DIV>

[Exibar]

<P>Moorgard,</P> <P>     Very well said.  I do agree that there is a very very hard and fine line between too easy and too hard.  EQ2 is leaps and bounds beyond EQ1 in many ways.  One huge way is tht down time is very minimal in EQ2, no naked corpse runs to try and get your stuff back before the corpse dissapears, no more medding, etc.  Great changes from EQ1.</P> <P>     I think from my post that people automatically assume that I'm a "hardcore player", that "sleeps, eats, breathes" EQ2.  I'm not actually.  I have a familly with 2 wonderful young children and a wife that deserves my time.  My main playing time is on weekend nights.  I feel that there is a pretty good balance so far, as I'm in the catagory of a casual player (I wish I was a teenager with nothing but time on my hands again....).</P> <P>     I'm sure that you guys see the longterm picture and won't make the game too easy for those of us that like a challenge.  </P> <P> </P> <P>  I'm also honored that you posted on a thread that I started, thank you <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P> Mike b</P>

[nim]

Moorgard wrote:     So do you want the game to be challenging or not? --------------------------------------------------------------------- I think you and the clowns you are referring to all miss the point.  Why does it have to be "OR"?  Why can't there be content that is way too challenging for casual gamers and great content for casual gamers?  Why does every thread and response pertaining to this topic always have to be all or nothing.  It is a really ignorant and unproffesional way to appraoch the problems people feel they have. It seems to me that when you make it easier to get the rare to make an adept3 when it was implicity stated in the beginning that very few people should have adept3 skills that you are pandering and not really addressing challenge.  So many of the changes that are being made to make it "easier" seem to be a direct response to whining about not always having the best gear.  The best gear should be rare and hard to get but it should not be limited to raid drops because then the best gear is obtained only by raiding guilds which I believe to be a small and fairly unpopular portion of the community in general, that is an opinion and is based solely on my experience on my server so take it with a grain of salt please. I guess my real question is why does everybody have to have an opporunity to get everything in this game.  It may sound like a good idea at the start but when everyone I inspect has haddens earring it really takes the sense of accomplishment out of completing that quest.  I personally think that we need some quests that are massive in scale and require a huge undertaking to complete, quests that require skill, luck, and timing.  These quests should also be different in their requirements.  Some that can only be done solo, some only grouped, and some that are mixed.  I also think it would be great if these quests, especially the solo ones due to mentoring, be unfinishable if the mobs grey out.  How about quests that branch and can only be done once so you can only get one of five great rewards. EQ2 was never sold as the game that everyone gets everything in so why skew the updates in that direction?  I only see the updates making it so all players of a similar level will all have the same great gear with a few exceptions for raid drops.  I don't think anyone wants everyone to be so similar that they become indistinguishable from each other. So take your silly "So do you want the game to be challenging or not?" question and stick it somewhere more appropriate. What I want and so do so many others is a GREAT GODDAMNED GAME WITH CONTENT FOR HARDCORE/CASUAL/SOLO/GROUP/RAIDING players not stupid questions addressed to the forum crybabies. <div></div>

[SniperKitty]

"While I agree that solo and small group players deserve to get some nice gear, the gear should not be as good as the gear dropping from the high end raid mobs." Bullcrap.  We pay the same amount each month.  We deserve to have access to everything in the game in time.  I'm not saying, nor have I ever said, we should get everything right now, right this minute.  I'm saying everything should be accessible.  There should be zero content that is inaccessible because someone only plays 10 hours a week.  Whether it takes someone an evening or a week or a year, they should always be able to gain access to everything in game if they want to. Sitting on my [Removed for Content] for eight hours camping grey con mobs, just waiting for a named mob to spawn is BORING.  It's not work.  It's tedious tedium.  Boring crap. <div></div>

[EmeraldJay]

<DIV> <DIV>Moorgard, I find your comments very defensive. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>EQ2 has gotten far afield from what it was hyped up to be before release.  Massive changes have taken place. There have been complete 180s, some for the good and some not so good, imo.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I'm guild leader of a very successful guild on Innothule.  We have continued to play this game by all of your rules.  We have rolled with the punches, yet our guidelines as set out on our guild webpage have remained the same since release  It is because we set our goals and we haven't deviated from moving ahead in this game to achieve them. Where we've had to constantly change things is how we go about achieving them.  You really have to stop changing all of the basic rules and let the game stabilize.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>We are not hardcore by EQ1 standards.  We are just truly focused and dedicated. Forgive me for feeling that you have and continue to trivialize all the effort and hard work my guild has done so that others who are not as focused as we are can have what we have in half the amount of time it took for us to get them.</DIV> <DIV>Sure, everyone should have a fair shot at things.  The keyword there is "fair".  It will take a good group of consistent players a lot less time to attain certain things than the casual player or solo'er.  So, make it easier for the casual player and what will happen to people like me? </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The bottom line is that we all know there are quite a few different playstyles represented by the subscribers to EQ2. You can't take away from one group and give to another.  You must tweak the game equally for all groups never losing sight of the fact that each group is totally different. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Emeri - Guild Leader</DIV> <DIV>Bidean Caer of Innothule</DIV></DIV>

[Demothis]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <P></P> <HR> <P>nimjo wrote:<BR>Moorgard wrote:<BR><BR>   So do you want the game to be challenging or not?<BR>---------------------------------------------------------------------<BR><BR>I think you and the clowns you are referring to all miss the point.  Why does it have to be "OR"?  Why can't there be content that is way too challenging for casual gamers and great content for casual gamers?  Why does every thread and response pertaining to this topic always have to be all or nothing.  It is a really ignorant and unproffesional way to appraoch the problems people feel they have. <FONT color=#ffff00>People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.</FONT><BR><BR>It seems to me that when you make it easier to get the rare to make an adept3 when it was implicity stated in the beginning that very few people should have adept3 skills that you are pandering and not really addressing challenge.  So many of the changes that are being made to make it "easier" seem to be a direct response to whining about not always having the best gear.  The best gear should be rare and hard to get but it should not be limited to raid drops because then the best gear is obtained only by raiding guilds which I believe to be a small and fairly unpopular portion of the community in general, that is an opinion and is based solely on my experience on my server so take it with a grain of salt please. <FONT color=#ffff00>Sorry to break this to ya, but they arnt common enough. Masters are the onse that few people are supose to have. And why are the adept 1s so common and droping like candy then, specially since app 4s arn't that much worse. And also in this paragraph, there is the mentality that guilds and those in them should have all the fun in the game, well no they shouldn't. You are contradicting yourself with this paragraph and you 1st statment about casual players.</FONT><BR><BR>I guess my real question is why does everybody have to have an opporunity to get everything in this game.  It may sound like a good idea at the start but when everyone I inspect has haddens earring it really takes the sense of accomplishment out of completing that quest.  I personally think that we need some quests that are massive in scale and require a huge undertaking to complete, quests that require skill, luck, and timing.  These quests should also be different in their requirements.  Some that can only be done solo, some only grouped, and some that are mixed.  I also think it would be great if these quests, especially the solo ones due to mentoring, be unfinishable if the mobs grey out.  How about quests that branch and can only be done once so you can only get one of five great rewards. <FONT color=#ffff00>There are a ton of masive scale and branching quests, just cause you havn't found them or have neglected to do them, that is not the developers fault. I do agree there there are some quest that should be Heroc based as opposed to solo, but there is no reason it should not be completable solo if it is greyed out, this just isolates those who wish to solo, there is much reward to do them with a group as you get experience for it and the reward will be usable when you finnish it.</FONT><BR><BR>EQ2 was never sold as the game that everyone gets everything in so why skew the updates in that direction?  I only see the updates making it so all players of a similar level will all have the same great gear with a few exceptions for raid drops.  I don't think anyone wants everyone to be so similar that they become indistinguishable from each other. <FONT color=#ffff00>EQ2 was sold to be a game everyone can play, if you followed news and updates from its inception you would know this. And similar level of armor, Where you not just saying rewards for grouping? and what is the point of raiding, having differing gear from the norm. Player crafted gear at time of development was supposed to be the standard gear of adventurers, you want better, go quest for it.</FONT><BR><BR>So take your silly "So do you want the game to be challenging or not?" question and stick it somewhere more appropriate. <FONT color=#ffff00>Now who isn't acting profesional? If it isn't chalanging, quit playing with blue mobs and kick it up a noch, there are plenty of ways to increase the dificulty, it is not the developers job to follow you around and make sure you arn't pushing yourself to the limits, the content is there, you just arnt going for it.</FONT><BR><BR>What I want and so do so many others is a GREAT GODDAMNED GAME WITH CONTENT FOR HARDCORE/CASUAL/SOLO/GROUP/RAIDING players not stupid questions addressed to the forum crybabies.<FONT color=#ffff00> So let them make it and quit ACTING LIKE A GODDAMNED CRYBABY IN THE FEEDBACK FORUM and bring somthing constructive to the conversation.</FONT><BR></P> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P> </P><p>Message Edited by Demothises on <span class=date_text>04-06-2005</span> <span class=time_text>03:29 AM</span>

[Demothis]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> bathory610 wrote:<BR><BR>The believe the biggest problem is there is nothing to do, except farm these raid zones.........the same ones, in the same order, every night or if u havent got guild 30 endlessly mindnumbingly do those..............both get old fast.<BR><BR><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Pick up a new character, try somthing new for a bit. They just gave  2 new slots and I seriously doubt anyone has 6 level 50 characters, and if you do, go out and get some sun.

[Demothis]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <P></P> <HR> <P>Gage-Mikel wrote:</P> <P>Ha Ha.</P> <P>So sad.<BR></P> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>Oh dear God, Gage is on this thread, just feeding ya crap man. Even though I don't always agree with your point of view ( we seem to share it this time though), its nice to see another person in the thread who can debate a topic in a civil manner. <BR>

[Zuuljin]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> SniperKitty wrote:<BR>"While I agree that solo and small group players deserve to get some nice gear, the gear should not be as good as the gear dropping from the high end raid mobs."<BR><BR>Bullcrap.  We pay the same amount each month.  We deserve to have access to everything in the game in time.  I'm not saying, nor have I ever said, we should get everything right now, right this minute.  I'm saying everything should be accessible.  There should be zero content that is inaccessible because someone only plays 10 hours a week.  Whether it takes someone an evening or a week or a year, they should always be able to gain access to everything in game if they want to.<BR><BR>Sitting on my [Removed for Content] for eight hours camping grey con mobs, just waiting for a named mob to spawn is BORING.  It's not work.  It's tedious tedium.  Boring crap.<BR> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>I think you took the quote a bit out of context.  He's saying the loot dropped from solo and small group mobs should NOT be the same quality as the loot from raid mobs.  But just because you 'pay the same amount' as everyone else, doesnt mean you are entitled to everything because the game does not conform around your playing time.  Its not SOE"s fault you can only play 10 hours a week.  You have the abilty just like everyone else has the ability to play and raid.  If a solo player can get the same gear as a raider, then whats the point of raiding?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But either way, when they release an exapansion, it will make past things easier, so small group players can do em.  Sure you might need to be lvl 200 to solo venekor, which might take 4 years, but its still accessible right? <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></DIV>

[WhispersEdge]

<BR> <DIV>Delete double post</DIV><p>Message Edited by WhispersEdge on <span class=date_text>04-05-2005</span> <span class=time_text>11:12 PM</span>

[WhispersEdge]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote:<BR> <P>We will continue to work to make the game less tedious, and make the fun more accessible to everyone. We kinda think that makes sense in a big-picture kind of way. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <DIV>That doesn't mean we're making the game easier, because time is not a true measure of challenge: only of patience. That's not to say valuable items won't be rare and difficult to obtain, it's just that we don't want every single item of value to require the exact same investment. People who can't play for long stretches of time deserve nice stuff, too.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It's interesting, because some of the same people who complain about the game being too easy are the ones who complain most vocally when we change something (or fix something) that results in a greater level of challenge. If we make something easier we're dumbing it down, but if we make it more challenging then we're nerfing. Scylla and Charibdes, if you will.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For instance, there are high-level players who complain that raids are boring. Well, in some cases people have figured out ways to make them so, using buff combinations that make a tank invulnerable or that render a certain target impotent. Some folks are even now complaining about boring content in one breath while with the next farming at a rapid pace so that they can obtain the loot they desire before the level of challenge is changed when our balance pass goes live.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So do you want the game to be challenging or not?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There is no shortage of complaints on the boards when a spell or art is considered underpowered or broken, but threads are few when things are broken in a way that benefits certain players. GuildX complains about loot sucking or fights being boring, meanwhile they're farming the heck out of some zone that has a bugged reset timer or a mob that is obviously dropping better stuff than it should. But rarely does GuildX complain about the benefits they receive, only the negatives.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>You can't have it both ways. Either stuff works and it presents a challenge, or it's broken and it needs to be fixed. A challenging game is more fun for everyone in the long run, but if you want it to work, you can't be selective about the bugs you report. I grant you that it's probably human nature to keep the "too good to be true" stuff quiet, but I encourage you to look beyond self-gratification and think about the overall health of the game.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I'm not trying to avoid responsibility for bugs, whether they be detrimental to players or beneficial. Ultimately it falls on us to fix them, whichever way it causes us to be perceived. But you as players have the power to help influence that process, and I encourage you to use it both fairly and wisely.</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Whoa whoa whoa, stop the presses.</P> <P>Not everyone meets those guidelines, and in fact quite the opposite has happened from the experience of myself and my guild. I feel the need to respond to some of your points you make above.</P> <P>1. <EM><U>Using buffs and group makeup to the best of your advantage to defeat an encounter is somehow abusing the game?</U></EM> </P> <P>             I'm not talking about exploiting, but more on that later. The last I heard using all of your assets to their fullest in any given situation is what good players/guilds do to be successful. It's more of a problem with how overpowered certain classes and abilities are in contrast to the rest of the game. Its been posted many places on many occasions how overpowered and broken certain classes/abilities are. For instance......berserker rampage....good example of broken ability that you guys havent fixed. Our berserker can 1 shot every mob in the Lord Nagalik encounter (im talking about a level 55^^^ mob with four^^ adds) except the boss mob and takes him down like 5-10%. This happens in a matter of like 5 seconds and is about 100k+ points of damage in that time. Yea....that's balanced. How long have you guys known about this? Or do you not even read your own forums....</P> <P>2. <EM><U>Complaining over the challenge level of something?</U></EM> </P> <P>Please......we beg for more challenge in this game. There isn't really anything challenging so far now except seeing how few people my guild can own the x4 raid content with. This isn't made up, and I know we aren't alone in taking down these encounters with much less than what is <EM>supposed</EM> to be needed. Heres an example...just today we killed Vaz'Gok the Cursed in Feerott. Know how many it took? 7....prolly far more than we needed but we took everyone who happened to be on at the time. Oh, you will probably say we used some *broken* bard buff stacks or super avoidance buff. Bzzt, wrong. We straight up killed it with basically a boring xp group. It was...*drumroll*....prepare to be overwhelmed....</P> <P>Group1: 50 Guardian, Templar, Fury, Swashbuckler, Enchanter</P> <P>Group2: Me (50 Assassin) + 50 templar</P> <P>Nothing broken, we pulled the mobs, mez an add, kill the other, kill the mezzed, kill the cursed. No broken abilities, just tank+ heals. I wish it wasnt so easy, but considering these mobs are contested we want to kill them too so we go with what we have. Right now the raid mobs dont require a raid force, all extra people do is help to bring the inevitable about a little bit faster. <EM><STRONG>The fight is won in the first 30 seconds</STRONG></EM>. Every fight follows these same guidelines, pull mob, survive a few rounds till ridiculously overpowered debuffs+whatver land and then watch paint dry till mob is dead. Rinse and repeat for next raid mob etc. I know you guys are making these things harder but, I think blaming us for using our abilities to the best isnt the right way to go. We would love to get put facedown in the dirt several times before figuring out an encounter, it would be a heck of a lot more meaningful, We welcome death, sick but true :smileywink:</P> <P>3. <EM><U>Exploiting/Cheesing Your Content</U></EM></P> <P>Lets go back to I think January. </P> <P>Round 1 Ardent Legion vs Venekor.</P> <P>We find out the hard way he is broken, double aoeing in 1 second for 4-5k each time, insta wipes. We play around with him an entire night and same result, but guess what we find in our testing? Thats right, we find out by accident he is crazy exploitable...so....do we abuse it? No, quite the opposite. The guild leaders (me and a couple others) tell our tank to unstick his *$%#&! and move him. See to us, doing that kind of thing for a metal chest was just unacceptable and didnt mean we had any skill as a guild in our minds. Then we had everyone /feedback how easy he was to cheese using this tactic. Several other guilds post his corpse shots proudly on their front page, but you never saw us with that. After 2 months of feedback + talking to devs about this encounter, do you think it was ever fixed to prevent this from happening? We know you guys knew about it, but nothing was ever done. Seriously, if you guys really cared so much about that then you would have done something waaaaaay back when we informed you about it. </P> <P>It seems like you have an us vs them mentality but that's not how it goes. Lots of guilds/players will help you out, and do so when we can because we want to see your game become better. Sure a lot of people do the things you mention, but you guys need to shoulder the majority of the responsibility and fix these problems since you are the ones with the control to do so. If you leave them in the game for months on end people will abuse them, it stinks but thats how it goes I guess. I would stronly urge you to take our feedback seriously though when we do point these things out to you guys, it would save you a lot of trouble. </P> <P> </P> <P>And hey, we arent all bad =p</P> <P> </P> <P> </P><p>Message Edited by WhispersEdge on <span class=date_text>04-05-2005</span> <span class=time_text>11:11 PM</span>

[Bahlz]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> EmeraldJay wrote:<BR> <DIV> <DIV>Moorgard, I find your comments very defensive. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>EQ2 has gotten far afield from what it was hyped up to be before release.  Massive changes have taken place. There have been complete 180s, some for the good and some not so good, imo.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I'm guild leader of a very successful guild on Innothule.  We have continued to play this game by all of your rules.  We have rolled with the punches, yet our guidelines as set out on our guild webpage have remained the same since release  It is because we set our goals and we haven't deviated from moving ahead in this game to achieve them. Where we've had to constantly change things is how we go about achieving them.  You really have to stop changing all of the basic rules and let the game stabilize.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>We are not hardcore by EQ1 standards.  We are just truly focused and dedicated. Forgive me for feeling that you have and continue to trivialize all the effort and hard work my guild has done so that others who are not as focused as we are can have what we have in half the amount of time it took for us to get them.</DIV> <DIV>Sure, everyone should have a fair shot at things.  The keyword there is "fair".  It will take a good group of consistent players a lot less time to attain certain things than the casual player or solo'er.  So, make it easier for the casual player and what will happen to people like me? </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The bottom line is that we all know there are quite a few different playstyles represented by the subscribers to EQ2. You can't take away from one group and give to another.  You must tweak the game equally for all groups never losing sight of the fact that each group is totally different. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Emeri - Guild Leader</DIV> <DIV>Bidean Caer of Innothule</DIV></DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>That is a great post man.  If something is made easier than when you did it, how is it taking anything away from you?  I suppose it takes the APPEARANCE of your accomplishment down, but that is all I can imagine.  You still keep your loot you earned the "harder" way.  You still keep the satisfaction of knowing you defeated it the more time consuming, more tedius way.  I don't understand how making it less tedius or even "easier" for EVERYONE takes anything away from ANYONE. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Either way, I see your point, I just think you went way overboard in stating it.  I already pretty much answered it the only way I can imagine in my previous post.  It just always cracks me up how much ego some of you attach to a game... because the only thing possibly taken away from you by making things you have already done easier is EGO.  But don't worry you DESERVE to be the only ones with that loot or fighting that monster, because you work harder and are more dedicated... I bet you are also smarter and prettier to. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

[Khaali]

I just have to vent a comment after all this. As a vet of MMO's since EQ1 went live, and having played most of the major MMO releases over the years, I have one basic question to those who think that tedium and boredom should be the status quo of MMOs: What part of the term GAME is not understood? If I wanted to sit around for 6-8 hours doing some stupid and/or boring repetative task or be frustrated and stressed by the work I need to do in a game... I could go back and work overtime and get all that plus get paid for it. A Game is meant to be a fun pasttime. Something we do in our off time for a stress relief and to have some fun in the daily grind.  Everyone I know who plays are normal working folk with lives, families, jobs, etc.  MMOs arent their lives. I fully support the direction EQ2 is going, though I think they should seriously contemplate the separation of servers into casual and hardcore servers. Its really the only way to make both camps happy. Personally, while I truly enjoy EQ2, everyone I know left, and dragged me with them. However, I am finding that I actually have more fun in that other current MMO, right now. My schedule is very hectic and I have only a few hours (under 8 max) per week to play, but when I play EQ2 I feel I need to have large blocks of time to accomplish anything other than crafting. If I only have an hour, I feel I cant really accomplish anything other than some crafting which is why I am only 22 Adventure and nearly 30 Crafter.  In this other game, I can log in for an hour and actually feel like I accomplished something and had fun while doing it.  I am hoping that EQ2 continues to provide the casual player an outlet as its why I finally left EQ1. I didnt have the time to sit in front of the PC 20+ hours per week for a game.  It doesnt mean I dont want the fun and challenge of a good game, but I dont want my game to feel like work either. JMHO. YMMV. <div></div>

[nim]

Demothises, Can you even read above a third grade level, omg, pretty much nothing u said actually replied to, was relevent to, or understood what I said.  So let me explain clown shoes and just for the record Moorgard's juvenile question sets the tone for the debate.. <font color="#ffff00">People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.</font> I implied that there should be a range of quests that appeal to casual and hardcore gamers alike.  So your quip baffles me. <font color="#ffff00">Sorry to break this to ya, but they arnt common enough. <font color="#ffffff">(regarding adept3)</font> <font color="#ffffff">Like you say - player made supposed to be the standard. Stupid comment</font>. Masters are the onse that few people are supose to have. <font color="#ffffff">Um, obvious.  Stupid comment.</font> And why are the adept 1s so common and droping like candy then, specially since app 4s arn't that much worse. <font color="#ffffff">Irrelevant.  Stupid comment.</font> And here is the mentality that guilds and those in them should have all the fun in the game, well no they shouldn't. You are contradicting yourself with this paragraph and you 1st statment about casual players. <font color="#ffffff">Nowhere do i say guilds should get all the fun, in fact, I say the best drops shouldn't be limited to raiders.  Stupid comment. </font></font><font color="#ffff00">There are a ton of masive scale and branching quests, just cause you havn't found them or have neglected to do them, that is not the developers fault. <font color="#ffffff">A choice of rewards is not a branching quest and I am just shy of 500 on quest count which puts me above average on quests finished but by no means at the top of the list.  We must have different definitions of massive, I'm thinking something that takes weeks or months to complete.  Most time I've spent on a quest is 3weeks trying to get highland stalkers, i don't believe that was intended just a bad spawn rate.  Ignorant comment and lack of anything in this game IS most definately the developers fault, who elses could it be.</font>  I do agree there there are some quest that should be Heroc based as opposed to solo, but there is no reason it should not be completable solo if it is greyed out, this just isolates those who wish to solo, there is much reward to do them with a group as you get experience for it and the reward will be usable when you finnish it.</font> <font color="#ffff00"><font color="#ffffff">I am not trying to isolate soloers, majority of my time is spent solo.  I just think if there can be a time pressure on a some quests it increases the enjoyment of completion.  When u know u can finish any quest just by greying out the mobs it lessens the excitement of questing to me, maybe not you.  My fault for not being more clear on my reasoning. </font></font><font color="#ffff00">EQ2 was sold to be a game everyone can play, if you followed news and updates from its inception you would know this. <font color="#ffffff">It was not sold as the game where everyone gets everything all the time, being able to play and enjoy doesn't mean you are entitled to get every single piece of loot or finish every single quest.  Stupid comment.</font>  And similar level of armor, Where you not just saying rewards for grouping? <font color="#ffffff">I said rewards for and specifc to solo/group/mix questing.  Stupid comment.</font> and what is the point of raiding, having differing gear from the norm. Player crafted gear at time of development was supposed to be the standard gear of adventurers, you want better, go quest for it. <font color="#ffffff">So obvious its painful.  Stupid comment. </font></font><font color="#ffff00">Now who isn't acting profesional? <font color="#ffffff">See first section.</font> If it isn't chalanging, quit playing with blue mobs and kick it up a noch, there are plenty of ways to increase the dificulty, it is not the developers job to follow you around and make sure you arn't pushing yourself to the limits, the content is there, you just arnt going for it. <font color="#ffffff">The limits are very much set by level only so much you can "kick it up"  and is not really relevant to questing.  Most mobs I fight I can tell you ahead of time I whether I will win or lose, very few where I am not positve of this up front.  Poor assumptions.  Stupid comment.</font> </font><font color="#ffff00"><font color="#ffffff"> </font></font><font color="#ffff00">So let them make it and quit ACTING LIKE A GODDAMNED CRYBABY IN THE FEEDBACK FORUM and bring somthing constructive to the conversation. <font color="#ffffff">My only complaint was about an either/or mentality which I think is a very constructive point and obviously this statement proves that you live in glass house also.</font><font color="#ffffff"> </font><font color="#ffffff">Stupid comment.</font><font color="#ffffff"> </font><font color="#ffffff">Stupid post.</font><font color="#ffffff"> </font><font color="#ffffff">Do not waste anymore space not responding to you anymore clown shoes.</font> </font><font color="#ffff00"><font color="#ffffff"> </font></font><div></div>

[Zuuljin]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Bahlzaq wrote:<BR> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> If something is made easier than when you did it, how is it taking anything away from you?  I suppose it takes the APPEARANCE of your accomplishment down, but that is all I can imagine.  You still keep your loot you earned the "harder" way.  <BR> <HR> </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Its hard to explain, but it does.  I guess maybe because all you have in the game really is your appearance.  When you run through town, do you want to look like everyone else, or look like you accomplished something?  When your in a group, do you want to stand out as an awsome player, or just another xyz class.  Some people might not care, but id wager that more do infact care.  If tommorow Ferrari sold all their cars for $5k, and everyone went out and bought one, would that one guy in town who paid the original price still feel special?  Maybe, but I guarantee noone else would, in fact, it might have the opposite effect.  They'd call him a sucker for paying so much.  I know i would rather run down the docks with people oohing and ahhing then some guy telling me "LOLZ you spent 2 weeks on that quest last month, and I did it with a pickup group last night in 15 min!! LOL!!"</P> <P>Anyways, my feeble attempt to explain it...<BR></P>

[Zuuljin]

<DIV>I think what people are missing is that the best stuff that you have to camp for, you dont HAVE to do it.  The reward is great because you put up with alot of crap.  Noone is forcing you to sit in 1 spot for 8 hours to camp a really good item.  Did noone do this in any console RPG?  The uber bat from Earthbound for SNES comes to mind.  Something like 1/200 chance it drops from 4 non respawning mobs in the game.  I know I hit the reset button quite a few times trying to get it.  Was it fun? No.  Was it tedius?  Of course.  But was the reward good?  You betcha.  And most importantly, did I HAVE to do it? NO!  Im sure people can think of countless games with such items.  A challenge is not always fun, its hard, and its work.  And again, you put up with it, because the reward is great.  </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Some may say EQ1 has ruined my perception.  That may be, but I'll tell you what.  I felt more gratifcation in the first ten levels of EQ1 then my entire time thus far in EQ2. (lvl 40 now).  Not to say I dont enjoy this game.  I do.  It just doesnt have the sense of accomplishment that EQ1 held.  I'll just leave it at that.</DIV>

[Demothis]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <P>nimjo wrote:<BR>Demothises,<BR><BR>Can you even read above a third grade level, omg, pretty much nothing u said actually replied to, was relevent to, or understood what I said.  So let me explain clown shoes and just for the record Moorgard's juvenile question sets the tone for the debate..<BR><BR><FONT color=#ffff00><FONT color=#ffffff><FONT color=#ffff00>Yes, can you? , I highly doubt it since you can only read what want to see. When you retort to someons statments you usually respond to the hole thought instead of nitpicking each sentence. Your post 1st and 2nd was uninsightfull, baligerant, and broght nothing constructive. You act like you want argue for everyone while shoving your narrow view on things down everyones throat. And any high school drop out can see that every statment I made had a point and would more then likely retort my statment with facts and reason  other then stupid or clown shoes. Feel free to follow your own advice and quit wasting space for those who wish to bring improments to the game in a respecful civilized manner. Now if you can actually bring somthing to the board, I'll be happy to debate it.</FONT></FONT></FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#ffff00><FONT color=#ffffff><FONT color=#ffff00>Oh and you have done over 500 quests, here have a cookie, Why have you who have done 500, not found any where I who has completed a mere 240 have found a few, do collection quests too much? Maybe if you would educate yourself more on the subject you would know that they pushed the ques issue back, to make if fair for the adventures so they can revamp them, but then again, I guess those who are omnipotient dont need to do research.</FONT><BR></FONT></FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <P> </P> <P> </P> <P>Message Edited by Demothises on <SPAN class=date_text>04-06-2005</SPAN><SPAN class=time_text>03:14 AM</SPAN></P><p>Message Edited by Demothises on <span class=date_text>04-06-2005</span> <span class=time_text>03:14 AM</span>

[Tatali]

<span><blockquote><hr>WhispersEdge wrote:<div></div><span><em><strong>The fight is won in the first 30 seconds</strong></em>. Every fight follows these same guidelines, pull mob, survive a few rounds till ridiculously overpowered debuffs+whatver land and then watch paint dry till mob is dead. Rinse and repeat for next raid mob etc.</span><hr></blockquote>I would say more like a minute or two, but that's pretty much right. 2x, 3x, 4x... none of that matters. Most any mob can be killed with 4 people, the other 20 just make it less of waste of time. Mostly its survive till the mob is out of power, then wait for the chest to drop. That's not fun, nor a challange. Doesn't matter if the mob has 10k hit points or a million, player in-combat power regen and mobs having the most primitive attack algorythm imaginable mean if you survive the start, you've already beat the encounter. Other fights like Vision of Vox throw a <i>little</i> more risk into the situation but its amounts to the same thing, dragon mindlessly attacks some tank who hold agrolock while people kill it and sometimes fight adds that pop like clockwork. Then you get something like that Zek instanced raid... perfect example of an encounter that seems to be designed for no other reason that to punish players. Destroying armor causing major repair costs, very strict time limits which mean min-maxing your raid to the "ideal" classes, or perhaps to the least broken (or most overpowered) classes... and hey, lets top that off by adding excessive lag by using the absolute <i>WORST</i> model in the game, well known for causing excessive drops in framerates regardless if you've got a state of the art gaming rig running on maximum performance settings. Now that you've designed the most punishing encounter possible that no player in their right mind would ever consider doing, you bait the trap with the lure of "here's the only place to get the rare tradeskill books. Oooooh!" That entire encounter should be taken offline and redeveloped, even if it just replaces the lag elementals with some other creature model. Hell, it could be untextured, unanimated cubes for all I care, just so long as my system doesn't drop to 0.25 FPS when they spawn. </span><div></div>

[Miele]

<DIV> <DIV> <P>Ok, I feel like chiming in <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P>What has defined my almost 5 years in EQ1 is the "sense of accomplishment", which is present in EQ2, but in a way less satisfying form.</P> <P>Why? Easy: the "challenge" is hard to find because the progression of the character is not in line with the progression of the quests. Characters level fast, probably too fast to have the possibility of experiencing most of the content at the apropriate level range, which in essence makes the content you are normally tackling a tad too easy.</P> <P>I play a 36 assassin as main character, so I'm not going to tell you what I think about high end game, I played that kind of game for years, always raiding and had great fun out of it, but not (yet) in EQ2. I had combat exp turned off for a good portion of my late 20s and early 30s, for two reasons: let my friends keep the pace as they play less and do not outlevel content or making it trivial. Sadly the second goal is still hard to obtain: at level 36 I managed to step once in Runnyeye, only once and it wasn't really a challenge with a group of 6 ranging from 36 to 38. So I tried to create myself a challenge, doing a couple interesting quests and here there is a short recap of a night in Zek:</P> <P>36 assassin (me), 35 inquisitor and 29 coercer go to Zek, start the Operation Greenhood quest, do the first 4 or 5 steps of it with me tanking, during the quest we fought also a couple of those encounters labeled as Epicx2 (usually a ^^ mob with 2-3 friends). For a moment I thought I logged in EQ1: the 3 of us were having challenging fights, winning (sometimes very close fights), using all the tools we had. Then I realized that a scout (me) was tanking, that we had no real dps class doing damage besides what I could generate from the front of the mob and no real tank to control multi mobs encounters agro (relying on mezzing mainly). With a real tank in my place the whole night would have been way more boring, having played a guardian to about 30 I have an idea of how boring a fight can become with that class. Proof was presented the following night with a 36 SK tanking: the Inquisitor was reading a book and pressing the reactive hea button every 40ish seconds, she's sitting by me, so I was laughing a bit at her for being a slacker <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> but in all honesty there was no need to do anything else there as mobs were just.... trivial, despite being blue and white cons. Now that SK has over 650 quests too, he doesn't remember when he turned combat exp off as it was a long time ago. When another friend of us, 40 necromancer, joins us mobs become basically a joke, with the exceptionally rare semi hard encounter we find here and there, which is actually hard because we are half asleep and don't expect it or are too busy chatting instead of actually using our character abilities to the fullest. I said semi-hard, so far in 36 levels, following the quests flow, I have yet to find a hard fight, with the sole exception of the level 30 groupx2 final mob for the EL boat ride (was hard at 26 when we did it, I tanked it at 34 without a sweat).</P> <P>Now: should I have done the quest 3-5 levels earlier, with a full well balanced group? Probably yes. Why didn't I do that? Because for finishing my quests (over 320 now) I outlevelled the content. The inquisitor mentioned above, at level 35 has over 670 quests done and she has combat exp off since level 26. She also completed a bunch of these quests by killing grey mobs (mainly books). Now tell me how is possible with this fast paced levelling, to experience content to the fullest without trivializing it more and more as you advance. The other 2 friends of us, SK and necro are both competing for the top 10 of the quests completed on the server, so is the Inquisitor. </P> <P>Hummmm.... there is more to add: I find another point where EQ2 lacks a bit in the prevedibility of fights. The measure of our opponents strenght is too detailed, I can predict the exact outcome of a fight, for a solo, duo, trio up to 6 ppl group vs an encounter. Adds, as in other encounters adding to the current fight in progress are rarely if ever a nuisance, since it's perfectly predictable the number we can manage according to our group composition. </P> <P>Another point is that many class defining skills from EQ1 no longer exist in their original form, they allowed for "kiting" which for some reason is seen as the root of all evil, but I remember pretty well that some fights were doable in unconventional (and not risk free) way by a creative use of those skills. By removing those various snare spells, root spells, things like highsun, fear not broken on the 1st damage inflicted etc. they got rid of kiters, making maybe a few happy, annoying many, removing tools used in combat by groups (raids) to control the fight while retaining a good amount of imprevedibility. Nowadays with tanks holding up to 2-3 encounters with multiple mobs on them, mobs lasting from a dozen seconds up to 45 seconds and no real tool to peel agro off someone for 75% of the classes, you are basically forced into the "pack em all on one", heal him and assist strategy, with basically no variation.</P> <P>I think a lot of the problems are related to the overpowered tanks and the perception that has been given to the playerbase. It's common thinking that you should fight orange/red mobs past a certain level (in the 30s) and I always wondered .... why? You really can't fight a red in the teens or the 20s, but suddenly past 30 you can, you should and if you want a challenge... you have to. I don't want nerfs or boosts to any particular class, and I don't care much about anything that is not my fun and the fun of other players sticking around with me and in the current state, playing the game as it's meant to be played (questing a lot), most of the fun is in the lore and in the "let's see what's next" effect of some quests, not much in the mob-character interaction part.</P> <P>I could on detailing many more aspects that would need some tweaking, but that would start to become boring (if what I wrote already isn't <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ), so I'll just leave this post here as food for thought and if someone feels like discussing, I'm always up for it <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P> </P></DIV></DIV>

[Olivexe]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Zuuljin wrote:<BR><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Bahlzaq wrote:<BR> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> If something is made easier than when you did it, how is it taking anything away from you?  I suppose it takes the APPEARANCE of your accomplishment down, but that is all I can imagine.  You still keep your loot you earned the "harder" way. <BR> <HR> </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Its hard to explain, but it does.  I guess maybe because all you have in the game really is your appearance.  When you run through town, do you want to look like everyone else, or look like you accomplished something?  When your in a group, do you want to stand out as an awsome player, or just another xyz class.  Some people might not care, but id wager that more do infact care.  If tommorow Ferrari sold all their cars for $5k, and everyone went out and bought one, would that one guy in town who paid the original price still feel special?  Maybe, but I guarantee noone else would, in fact, it might have the opposite effect.  They'd call him a sucker for paying so much.  I know i would rather run down the docks with people oohing and ahhing then some guy telling me "LOLZ you spent 2 weeks on that quest last month, and I did it with a pickup group last night in 15 min!! LOL!!"</P> <P>Anyways, my feeble attempt to explain it...<BR></P> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>Not to pick on your comments by I think this is where many people differ. When I was younger I was concerned with the clothes that I wore, they had to be hip and fashionable, my hiarcut, had to be perfect, or the car I drove, it had to be different and unique. I wrapped those materialistic things around me so that I could show others around me that I accomplished something or had more money to burn.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I've grown older and wiser. When I recently finished remodeling the basement in my house (it was flooded from Hurricane Isabel) a few months ago, the sense of accomplishment was personal. I learned among others things that I didn't have to show off the basement or be better than the "Joneses." I put alot of hard work into it, everything was handcrafted from tearing out walls, installing new walls, new electical wiring, new plumbingm, installing the tile work, and other various things to essentially upgrade the basement. I didn't care that my next door neighbor had a contractor come in and do similar remodeling in her house in a fraction of the time.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>This is where the parallel comes in to EQ comes in. I did it the hard way and could tout the fact, if I wanted to, that my basement had a more personal touch, that my blood, sweat, and tears are in the walls. Though she had the ability to, she took the easy way out and had a contractor come in and do the work. She had other more important stuff to do and wanted the basement done fast. I prefer to do all my remodeling work by hand thereby taking more time, she prefers to have a contractor come in and get it done in a week or less (ie hardcore vs non-hardcore or tedium vs effort issues).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Back to the original point, my accomplishment was to myself that I accomplished this task. I don't need to show it off or flaunt the work or craftsmanship, I know inside myself that I did it correctly and did a good job to the best of my ability. That's all that matters, what other people think of me or my work doesn't matter (unless it's my wife :smileyhappy: ).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Sony is trying to the best of their ability to craft a game that is both appealing to me, the do-it-yourselfer, and her, the have-a-contractor come in. Decisions have to made to keep the balance and keep both types of people happy. Many decisions are only going to appeal to one type of person and may or may not unduly affect the other person. Some decisions are going to cause parts of the game to be easier that you or I have accomplished the hard way. But you know what? I know inside myself that I did it the hard way (or what I <EM>perceive</EM> to be the hard way).</DIV>

[eq2john]

<DIV> <P>Here's my thoughts, for what they are worth...</P> <P>EQ2 appeals to me.</P> <P>After each patch it becomes more of the the online game that I've been wanting to see for ages. Immediately playable either solo or grouped, with tons of doable quests and a viable tradeskill option, that even I, a non-tradeskiller at the best of times, find accessable and appealing. Harvesting is a necessity but not a chore...</P> <P>You can measure progress without getting out a magnifying glass to see if the XP reward has made a difference - the adventure vitality feature is a blinding piece of ingenuity in my view. Character defeats are handled sensibly with an eye on penalties but so much that you see yourself going backwards...and realising after all those hours, you're worse off than when you started...</P> <P>Mobs are available for soloists...and people can group for the big bad boses with massive rewards, that no soloist could touch. I don't think that is intended as easy, rather gauged to cater for varying tastes, which makes it fun and full of variety.</P> <P>Online gaming has progressed from the work ethics of EQ1; a pureist game, with a lot of romantic attachment - and fair play too if you've worked your way through it :smileyhappy:</P></DIV><p>Message Edited by eq2john on <span class=date_text>04-06-2005</span> <span class=time_text>07:02 AM</span>

[EmeraldJay]

<P>Bahlzaq, you are the one that has gone way overboard here and missed my point which is ok because that doesn't matter. </P> <P>There is nothing egotistical about my post.  It was made to explain to SOE how me and my guild play their game and to remind them, SOE; not you, Bahlzaq,  that there are more types of players than just the casual player and solo'er in EQ2.   When they make quests easier for one type of player, they also become easier for everyone else. (that's the giving and taking I was referring to, not anybody personally taking anything from me. ) I just don't want everything to be a walk in the park  just because I happen to like to adventure in a full group or raid with my guildees. If SOE comes out and says that EQ2 now is a game designed for the casual player and solo'er, fine, then I will know there is nothing here that would interest me.  But what sold me on the game in the first place was that they said it was geared towards groups and smaller guilds and that is what me and my guild are about..</P> <P>SOE, I dare you to challenge my guild!!  Give us a run for our money.  It's what we thrive on. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> </P> <P>Emeri - Guild Leader of Bidaen Caer of Innothule</P> <P>(and prettier than Bahlzaq) <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P> <P> </P> <P> </P>

[Ibis]

wondering why I got one-starred for saying that easy encounters dropping metal chests was bad and hard encounters dropping wooden chests was bad....seriously....i hate this rating system.  I should probably ignore it but I cant figure out how to turn it completely off.  always some stars show up somewhere <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> <div></div>

[Caeil]

<div></div><p>This is kind of half baked, but what if solo mobs dropped equipment that was more effective when soloing? Maybe effectiveness could shift somewhat based on what you killed while wearing that gear, but would never shift past being equally effective for both types. That way an exclusively solo player could still get great gear but would be effectively naked in a group. There are a million problems with this idea I’m sure, but aren’t there ways to make a game world that is inhabited by “casual” and “hardcore” players, but make the “game” that each one is playing a bit more exclusive.</p><p>If <span> </span>all a soloer wants is more effective equipment to make their soloing better, I can’t see why I would have a problem with that as long as these same soloers aren’t turning around and using this (what I, the less casual player, see as more easily won) equipment to compete with me in a group.</p><p>This is an overly simplistic solution, of course, as most players fall somewhere in between being soloers or groupish / raidish types so there would have to be a way for an “in-betweeny” type to really be effective at both, or perhaps a groupish type should be effective at both. I’m just suggesting the possibility of rewards that would let casual players get just as much enjoyment out of the game as non-casual players while not stepping on their toes so much.</p><div></div>

[Demothis]

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Ibishi wrote:<BR>wondering why I got one-starred for saying that easy encounters dropping metal chests was bad and hard encounters dropping wooden chests was bad....seriously....i hate this rating system.  I should probably ignore it but I cant figure out how to turn it completely off.  always some stars show up somewhere <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /><BR> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Dont worry about it man, people get too worried about the rating system, If you have a concern or opinion, express it, your entitled to an opinion reguardless of who disagrees with ya. Devs dont look at starts, they look at posts and most people dont worry about them either because there is always those who are willing to put stars as opposed to actualy contributing.

[Demothis]

<DIV><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Zuuljin wrote:<BR><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Bahlzaq wrote:<BR> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> If something is made easier than when you did it, how is it taking anything away from you?  I suppose it takes the APPEARANCE of your accomplishment down, but that is all I can imagine.  You still keep your loot you earned the "harder" way.  <BR> <HR> </DIV></BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Its hard to explain, but it does.  I guess maybe because all you have in the game really is your appearance.  When you run through town, do you want to look like everyone else, or look like you accomplished something?  When your in a group, do you want to stand out as an awsome player, or just another xyz class.  Some people might not care, but id wager that more do infact care.  If tommorow Ferrari sold all their cars for $5k, and everyone went out and bought one, would that one guy in town who paid the original price still feel special?  Maybe, but I guarantee noone else would, in fact, it might have the opposite effect.  They'd call him a sucker for paying so much.  I know i would rather run down the docks with people oohing and ahhing then some guy telling me "LOLZ you spent 2 weeks on that quest last month, and I did it with a pickup group last night in 15 min!! LOL!!"</P> <P>Anyways, my feeble attempt to explain it...<BR></P> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>I apriciate the spirit of the thought here, and understand it. Where balance should be broght to the quests, it should still be taken into concideration the dificulty  it took to get the items. Maybe they should reserve some of these types of rewards for drops in raids as opposed to quest rewards. I remember getting my singing shord sword on the old brell server, dear god I never want go through that again. I personaly feel to finnish quests, it should not take an emense amount of people. A hard task to complete is understandable by any tasks, that is what defines an epic journey, but waiting around for hours at a time has nothing to do with the dificulty of the puzzle or the fight at hand, nor should these fights require certain a certain type of class in order to finnish it ( belive you has made similar statments above).  Anything that you can consider personal glory should be a difficult task, agreed, but things like access quests, or unique items even like the fishbone earing, that can allowclasses better access to other areas of the game with water breathing should be designed to be taken solo, by making instanced solo zones and the like to force the person to do it on thier own. I hate refering to a game that IMO did so horrible, but in FF11, they came up with a good idea on that Maat fight, a real challenge that you had to overcome yourself.</DIV>

[Quasicroa]

<DIV><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote:<BR> <P>We will continue to work to make the game less tedious, and make the fun more accessible to everyone. We kinda think that makes sense in a big-picture kind of way. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /><BR> <HR> <P></P></BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Then start with the betrayel quests. </P> <P>(please read over the whole post before you comment so you can see where I am going with this)</P> <P>These are overly fustrating and tedious. Not with the issue's of waiting for the spawns, or the amount of tasks, but with the fact that every single kill mob is a level 17 ^ ^ + GROUP mob. Now in theory I have no issues with this at all as I would prefer to be in a group for this type of content anyway, but the major issue is that to few are doing them and there is no incentive for those who arn't to want to help those who are. </P> <P>That leaves the betrayers in a spot where they are at the sole mercy of the playerbase. Without the playerbases help I (we) cannot even have a hope to complete this quest. Should it be a challenge? Yes, but not at the cost of players having to take days to complete (Yes..Yes..we all know about guilds so I am not going there. All I will say is that up until recently even being in guild wasn't an exact answer, and while mentoring helps make it easier it is not foolproof).</P> <P>See quests like Heritage, or the access boat ride quests are simply amazing and awesome to do. Those also have far less issues as more people are willing to do them or help with them as it benifits them to do so. </P> <P>Betrayel quests have their issues, and needless to say this needs to be looked at. Now I am not saying water down the named mobs to be soloable, but something needs to be done to make it where people are not at such a loss getting help to complete. </P> <P>One solution may be to do something where the non-betrayers of say Freeport can go out to the contact in commonlands and get a quest like "New blood for Freeport". Make it repeatable, and worth while. Example they are told that they should seek out possible recruits(one or more betrayers) and help in testing their worth to the city, and that they shall recieve a finder's fee upon the person gaining citizenship. Once grouped with a betrayer(s) they would help untill the betrayer dinged for his citizenship at which point the non-betrayer gets and update and then gets say 2 gold and a plaque for his house showing his contribution to making the overlord's power grow. Upon other repeats they would get coin and when they click the plaque it would update how many people they helped bring into the city, and maybe just maybe make it where say they bring in 50(yes low, but not compared to normal hunter titles as the betrayel is much more involved) they get a title of some kind and maybe have version at 250 and 500. Just ideas, but better than not offering a solution.</P> <P>The point is that things can be done that don't exactly "dumb down" the quest(or game), but actualy make it so people can have the challenge and hardship of doing it, but actually have people willing to help. The above example is a solution that helps to solve something without watering it down. I am not saying it should be exactly that way, but at least its a constructive start.</P> <P>So as you see "Yikes! Why is SoE making the game easier and easier and easier with evey patch?" for the topic of the post. Simple answer - Human Nature, which by default is a "only if it benifits me" attitude. As long as it remains SOE will have no choice, but to do what it takes to make the game vastly playable(afterall it all boils down to keeping the money coming in) while those who don't want to see the "challenge dumbed down" will continue to be their own worst enemies.</P></DIV><p>Message Edited by Quasicroako on <span class=date_text>04-06-2005</span> <span class=time_text>01:36 PM</span>

[StoneyPen]

<div></div><span><blockquote><hr>Caeilie wrote:<div></div><p>This is kind of half baked, but what if solo mobs dropped equipment that was more effective when soloing? Maybe effectiveness could shift somewhat based on what you killed while wearing that gear, but would never shift past being equally effective for both types. That way an exclusively solo player could still get great gear but would be effectively naked in a group. There are a million problems with this idea I’m sure, but aren’t there ways to make a game world that is inhabited by “casual” and “hardcore” players, but make the “game” that each one is playing a bit more exclusive.</p><p>If <span> </span>all a soloer wants is more effective equipment to make their soloing better, I can’t see why I would have a problem with that as long as these same soloers aren’t turning around and using this (what I, the less casual player, see as more easily won) equipment to compete with me in a group.</p><p><b>This is an overly simplistic solution, of course, as most players fall somewhere in between being soloers or groupish / raidish types so there would have to be a way for an “in-betweeny” type to really be effective at both, or perhaps a groupish type should be effective at both. I’m just suggesting the possibility of rewards that would let casual players get just as much enjoyment out of the game as non-casual players while not stepping on their toes so much.</b></p><div></div><p><font color="#6633ff">Actually I am an "in-betweeny" type and have different armor I wear when soloing and grouping.  </font></p> <p><font color="#6633ff">When grouping, especially if I am the only or main healer, my fury wears her high wisdom and power pool pieces even if they are very green or have less ac (ex very light armor instead of light armor).  Since I need to keep my eye on group health and my power rather than wading in to melee, my melee stats and mitigation are less important.  </font><font color="#6633ff"></font><font color="#6633ff"></font><font color="#6633ff">When I solo or act as back-up healer, I balance wisdom and power against my melee stats and wear armor pieces that have higher ac and stamina, only wearing those wisdom giving items that also have good ac and stamina or agility.  This balances my casting with my melee, ideal for solo or back-up healing situations where I am close to the mob taking and giving hits.</font><font color="#6633ff"></font><font color="#6633ff"></font><font color="#6633ff"></font><font color="#6633ff">So I guess this would be one way to solve the problems raised by your ideas-- people could wear the armor they have that is best suited for each situation,.</font><span><font color="#6633ff"> </font> </span></p> <hr></blockquote></span><div></div>

[amccull]

<P>I played EQ for a couple of years.</P> <P>I played DAoC when that came out... for a couple of years.</P> <P>I beta-tested just about every other fantasy MMO.</P> <P>I played WoW and enjoyed it immensely... until I realized how shallow it was.</P> <P>And now? I'm playing EQ2 for the past 4-5 weeks.</P> <P>These patches are great... every single one of them.  I hope SOE keeps up the great work.  The game should be fun, not a job.</P> <P>There is a big difference between "challenging" and "tedious".  I think SOE realizes the difference and is getting rid of the mind-numbing aspects of this game and focusing on the good stuff.  Kudos to them.</P>

[Hadesknight]

<DIV>My bigest problem with makeing leveling easyer is.....</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Dam n00bs that lvl so fast they don't know what the hell there doing in groups. Lets face it if a tank (class used as an example applies to all classes) don't know what the #$%& there doing by 25+  let alone 40+ they should be taken out and shot. (not really but they should not be playing that class) EQ1 was so dam easy to lvl in at the end it wasn't funny, there making EQ2 even easyer than that. Do i want to see more people in the higher end of the game? Yes, but they had dam well have the skills that go with haveing that lvl. If there is to be solo content it should stop at 25ish it is a MMO after all, which means interacting with other people, ie. grouping and teamwork also makeing sure your gear is up to spec (which will be alot easyer to do if you quest and group) so you can play your role in the group effectively an not impact on the other people also eating and drinking the right food for your lvl. Personly i'll disband if a member askes for summoned food/drink (always have ever since 20 it didn't cut it then and it dont cut it in 45+ groups)... if you run out or are low DON'T go lfg till you buy some it's not that much of an ask.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>This is becomeing Everwow not EverQuest, please bring back preimum servers if you are going to make it so easy to lvl so we don't have to live with the results of crap players that the only reasion they are at lvl XX is becuase they soloed the whole way (or got tanken along for the ride) with out knowing how to play there class.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>P.S don't take it as i expect every one to know what to do when they start a new class but 25+ you ether know how to play your class to an aceptable degree or roll your toon or find another game to play.</DIV>

[TopHatJon]

<DIV>The only thing I find a little too easy about this game is the difficulty of the mobs.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>White conned mobs should give me a run for my money. Yellow conned mobs should take the vast majority of my resources and abilities, if not all, and I should not be able to win every single time. Orange conned mobs should take an amazing amount of skill and luck to defeat ever and reds should be unthinkable.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But atm, whites practically lay down and take a beating, yellows make me take a break every few fights for a regen, only once you hit orange do you start to get a significant challange, and only reds make me worry at all if I will survive or not...usually I do.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>This is true for fighting in groups as well as fighting solo.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>This is NOT how things should be if you ask me. But as far as difficulty of the game is concerned it is my only complaint. All the other "difficulty" changes have been balances or tedium removal...not a reduction in challange imo.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think the tradeskill system has got a pretty good hold on this con system...White recipies I can, for the most part, reliably make but it will take a bit of trouble. Yellow recipies will take a good bit of trouble to make and I cannot reliably make the highest qualities. Orange recipies (which you don't get very often) are VERY hard to make...to get a high quality version you need to be on the ball.....and be very lucky.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If the adventuring system worked in this fashion, I for one would be a happy adventurer.</DIV>

[TopHatJon]

<DIV>*Double post deleted*</DIV><p>Message Edited by TopHatJones on <span class=date_text>04-13-2005</span> <span class=time_text>03:11 AM</span>

[Drumstix]

Yeah, yeah, raising a topic from the dead.... but seriously.Current and upcoming patches have good and bad changes.Theyr'e gonna make it quicker to level up between level 20 and 70. And mentor xp is going way up, too almost rediculous in my opinion.Are they just done with mid game content now? They just want everyone to rush through this lush and interesting game?I don't wanna play something that gets easier as I go! Yeah some aspects of the game are already easy, but I think a lot of new changes in this late part of 2008 are for the worse in the long run.....Just my 2 little copper pieces.........

[Jovie]

<img src="http://www.freewebs.com/cortlesteeze/pix/ThreadNecro.jpg" alt="" border="0" />

[Spyderbite]

<cite>Drumstix wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yeah, yeah, raising a topic from the dead.... but seriously.</blockquote>Yeah, yeah.. but that's a breech of <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=411000" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">RoC</a>.. regardless of your point. Don't be a martyr just to make a point. Start a new thread.

[kling3r]

<p>i'll put it into simple words the average player will understand:</p><p>It's like in marriage... if everything is still as hard as it was when you first started, don't bother continuing... I like the fact that it's easyer to progress in the lower levels cause i've been playing from start now, and what keeps me playing are alts.  They provide some distraction that i find easyer then yet again another quest... i like to try my luck on an epicx2 (boxing) or see how many ^^^ i can kick in the nuts and survive.. I agree with the suggestion of not applying to xp changes to RP server... Go lick an elf on that server if you love your precious lore and xp delay so much...</p><p>The instream of new players is considerably lower, and what soe does now is maintain their playerbase. Progressing through lower tiers is what most players want, so live by it. Those complaining about it being to easy: play another game. </p><p> I for one would not have stayed for this long if it didn't gradualy got easyer to play... i've invested allot of time in the past doing things the hard way, that now - when i'm old - i deserve a nice and quiet pension!! </p>

[Gaealiege]

<p>Sadly it boils down that EQ2 is essentially a console game now.  If you want to play a game for the challenge, you'll have to go elsewhere.  I enjoy a challenge, and I'll agree that there is nearly none left in EQ2.  </p><p>The gaming business began catering to those of lesser intelligence, gaming skill, and just general ability about 5 years ago.  Since then the new model is to create a game with a very simple UI.  That UI contains a single button which reads "I win."  Even worse, there are people that gain endless enjoyment from mashing that button repeatedly.  The state of EQ2 is "I win."  If you want to lose, you'll have to play yourself in solitaire, because games that are difficult are not being produced any longer. </p>

[Jovie]

<cite>Gaealiege@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Sadly it boils down that EQ2 is essentially a console game now.  If you want to play a game for the challenge, you'll have to go elsewhere.  I enjoy a challenge, and I'll agree that there is nearly none left in EQ2.  </p><p>The gaming business began catering to those of lesser intelligence, gaming skill, and just general ability about 5 years ago.  Since then the new model is to create a game with a very simple UI.  That UI contains a single button which reads "I win."  Even worse, there are people that gain endless enjoyment from mashing that button repeatedly.  The state of EQ2 is "I win."  If you want to lose, you'll have to play yourself in solitaire, because games that are difficult are not being produced any longer. </p></blockquote><p>my god if you don't sound like napolean dynamite. "chicks want guys with video game skills!!"</p><p>Utter load of BS. </p><p>The mass majority of players does not want a second job when it comes to a video game. They want to have fun. To the ultra whiny vocal MINORITY hardcore players, please, code walk uphill both ways to the fbss camp in the next game over.</p><p>Yes, you hardcore content burning people are the minority. </p><p>As long as the game is fun and people are playing, then the decisions made are good and smart.</p><p>EQ2 in its current state is a blast. </p><p>Signed,</p><p>The majority.</p>

[Brook]

<p>What was wrong with the game as it was?</p><p>It looks to me like they have got plenty of new subscriptions but doesn't seem like it matches what they have lost.</p><p>I don't have hard numbers it just feels that way.</p>

[Jovie]

<p>In any game, the older and large it gets, the more empty it feels. The people are generally spread out thinner.</p>

[Liyle]

Compressing 0-70 will mean that 0-70 content will not have to be developed, and reducing items reduces the time and effort needed to revamp the game as a whole when that is needed. By making the game primarily 70 - 80 allows for most of the money/dev time to be spent at the top end instead of devoting resources to sprucing up the empty tiers and zones few are  playing seriously anymore. Personally I have played 0-70 so many times I wouldn't mind being able to level up a class for raiding in less time. After all, that is the place you end up spending your play time if you play a lot. I used to agree with a lot of this about making it too easy but these days I realize it's the opposite of what's being said here. The hardcore people have played EQ2 from every angle you can imagine... good, evil, fighter, mage, scout, healer, XP hound, quest hound, solo, group, raid, collection hound, mansion owner/interior decorator... and so on. You get the picture. I'd almost rather have hot pokers in my eyes that do Lost Legends of Lavastorm one more time. I don't even have to read the steps for half the quests, I have them memorized. The only thing that holds much interest for me these days is solving the raid puzzles from the point of view of a variety of classes, and you don't get the fully developed class until 80. From my perspective, 0 - 70 is just time spent learning the class, not discovering anything new or interesting.When I look around with a cold eye toward reality the people I see playing lower level content are a few running up alts for raiding (maxing XP, not "playing" lower level content more than is absolutley necessary) and the casual gamers who really don't play but once a month.

[Hirofortis]

Where are you seeing the znotes on this as I have not seen them yet. And as far as chat is concerned, you need to find a guild where peeps like to work together.

[Drakosani]

<cite>Liyle wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Compressing 0-70 will mean that 0-70 content will not have to be developed, and reducing items reduces the time and effort needed to revamp the game as a whole when that is needed. <b><span style="color: #ff0000;">By making the game primarily 70 - 80 allows for most of the money/dev time to be spent at the top end instead of devoting resources to sprucing up the empty tiers and zones few are  playing seriously anymore</span></b>.</p><p><span style="color: #008000;">So ,you personally have made a decision that the game does not need any new players.  How exactly do you think they will grow the game and get more players if levels 1 - 70 are not fun anymore? </span></p><p> Personally I have played 0-70 so many times <span style="color: #ff0000;"><b>I wouldn't mind being able to level up a class for raiding in less time.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000;">Not everyone plays this game in order to raid at the end game.  In fact, I bet the majority of players are not end game raiders.</span> </p><p> After all, that is the place you end up spending your play time if you play a lot. I used to agree with a lot of this about making it too easy but these days I realize it's the opposite of what's being said here. The hardcore people have played EQ2 from every angle you can imagine... good, evil, fighter, mage, scout, healer, XP hound, quest hound, solo, group, raid, collection hound, mansion owner/interior decorator... and so on. You get the picture. I'd almost rather have hot pokers in my eyes that do Lost Legends of Lavastorm one more time. I don't even have to read the steps for half the quests, I have them memorized. The only thing that holds much interest for me these days is solving the raid puzzles from the point of view of a variety of classes, and you don't get the fully developed class until 80. From my perspective, 0 - 70 is just time spent learning the class, not discovering anything new or interesting.When I look around with a cold eye toward reality the people I see playing lower level content are a few running up alts for raiding (maxing XP, not "playing" lower level content more than is absolutley necessary) and the casual gamers who really don't play but once a month. </p></blockquote>Basically, it sounds like you have completed every thing the game has to currently offer.  Take a break or wait for the next expansion?  No reason to cheapen the game for new players when they are the lifeblood of the future growth of the game.

[Hirofortis]

<cite>Drakosani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Liyle wrote:</cite><blockquote><p>Compressing 0-70 will mean that 0-70 content will not have to be developed, and reducing items reduces the time and effort needed to revamp the game as a whole when that is needed. <b><span style="color: #ff0000;">By making the game primarily 70 - 80 allows for most of the money/dev time to be spent at the top end instead of devoting resources to sprucing up the empty tiers and zones few are  playing seriously anymore</span></b>.</p><p><span style="color: #008000;">So ,you personally have made a decision that the game does not need any new players.  How exactly do you think they will grow the game and get more players if levels 1 - 70 are not fun anymore? </span></p><p> Personally I have played 0-70 so many times <span style="color: #ff0000;"><b>I wouldn't mind being able to level up a class for raiding in less time.</b></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000;">Not everyone plays this game in order to raid at the end game.  In fact, I bet the majority of players are not end game raiders.</span> </p><p> After all, that is the place you end up spending your play time if you play a lot. I used to agree with a lot of this about making it too easy but these days I realize it's the opposite of what's being said here. The hardcore people have played EQ2 from every angle you can imagine... good, evil, fighter, mage, scout, healer, XP hound, quest hound, solo, group, raid, collection hound, mansion owner/interior decorator... and so on. You get the picture. I'd almost rather have hot pokers in my eyes that do Lost Legends of Lavastorm one more time. I don't even have to read the steps for half the quests, I have them memorized. The only thing that holds much interest for me these days is solving the raid puzzles from the point of view of a variety of classes, and you don't get the fully developed class until 80. From my perspective, 0 - 70 is just time spent learning the class, not discovering anything new or interesting.When I look around with a cold eye toward reality the people I see playing lower level content are a few running up alts for raiding (maxing XP, not "playing" lower level content more than is absolutley necessary) and the casual gamers who really don't play but once a month. </p></blockquote>Basically, it sounds like you have completed every thing the game has to currently offer.  Take a break or wait for the next expansion?  No reason to cheapen the game for new players when they are the lifeblood of the future growth of the game.</blockquote><p>People may not have played this gamer to reach raid end game set up, but even when it was hard it did not take long to reach the end game and realize you needed something more challenging - EX: raiding.  </p><p>You should really stay away from bets.  They will get you into trouble. Look at how many raids are goin on as compared to other items. I am betting at least 1/3 of the server population is raiding at some point.  So although not a majority, there are a lot. Now lets look at those that wish they could raid. An even higher number.  I see peeps all the time wanting to reach higher content, but they can't do to scheduling, life, etc.  These people don't mind having a little easier time leveling as there life makes it hard to move forward.  The simple fact is, if it was a matter of raiding, raiders already know how to level there toons fast. I can go from 1 - 80 and 140 aa's in a month if I really want to, on any class.  They are trying to help those who are not radiers who would like to havve some casual time playing. Face it, EQ has a small share of the market in the hardcare peeps.  They are trying to reach a bit larger audience by letting xp be a little easier. big deal.  Are you really gonna complain when you can level just a hair faster. right. I can see it now. Dangit, I dinged all becasue SOE made this game to easy. haha, righttttt.</p>

[Kiara]

Three years is beyond necromancy...  I don't know what it is, but it's beyond.Putting this one back in the ground.