Should SOE introduce a new level of gear in the next expansion?

[MirageE]

<p>Ya know I've been thinking about the whole raiding progression thing alot lately.  I, as a semi-hardcore raider, but also a player of alts, am starting to see things from both the raiding perspective of separating yourself from others (as long as you do it without an attidude - its ok to brag but insulting others not acceptable).... as well as the casual players perspective of wanting to have fun and when you do get that piece of fabled gear having it be a big accomplishment.  I definitely don't envy SOE for keeping everyone happy but heck, thats what they get paid to do.</p><p>Anyway, while I won't go down the path in terms of pros and cons of hardcore vs. casual, one thing that I thought of was a way to help the hardcore raiders get some further progression in the game and to distinguish them further from the casual raiders, casual players, etc..... and something that I dont think would hurt anyone's feelings.</p><p>Hypotheitcally... let's say the next Kunark expansion is t7 and progresses on the EOF lines.  Hence Kunark Fabled Gear > EOF Fabled Gear > KOS Fabled Gear, etc. as we know it</p><p>To show further distinguishment and progression what if SOE introduced a completely new line of gear? Something between Fabled and Mythical that only drops off the t7 Kunark Raid mobs as well as the Avatars (yes I would restate the names on the Avatars from EOF to find similar title).  Thats right... get rid of the name "fabled" starting with Kunark and the Avatars... now I dont know what the name of this gear would be called (I am bad with assigning names to stuff), but there are a lot of Pros in my opinion:</p><p>Pros</p><ol><li>New Name, fresh, and lots of new exciting gear</li><li>Adds distinguishment that the hardcore raiders "earned" by being so hardcore</li><li>Leaves some serious gaps of distinguishment still for the semi-hardcore/casual raiders like myself versus the small group/solo players who go for legendary and the occasional piece of fabled and also from myself vs. the true hardcore every night raiders</li><li>Leaves mythical as truely just that - mythical and one per server</li><li>Gives the hardcore guys something to strive for - completely new named sets of this new armor, jewelery, weaponry, etc.</li></ol><p>Cons</p><ol><li>Lot of new loot to add for SOE - though thats also a Pro and plus how hard is it to really add new types of jewelery, etc when you can't even see them - just the weapons and armor have graphics</li><li>Might upset some semi-hardcore raiders and some that are very casual that have earned (or got lucky) on that piece or 2 of fabled gear</li><li>some people may think the fabled gear goes to waste that they earned.... but if you stick with progression doesn't it all get replaced anyway</li></ol>

[InsertNeko]

I'm one of the few who makes it a mission to collect any and all class related gear, and I'd liek to think i have that to look forward to any any new expansion/addon pack post-eof.

[DngrMou]

As long as none of the armor pieces match any other piece, all are of eye-wateringly ugly colors, and the wearers all look the they got dressed in the dark......I'm cool.

[Ganlu]

I'd be pretty surprised if we weren't going into T8 in the next expansion, because otherwise each expansion will have better and better gear that will make T8 gear godly when it's finally released.

[Frain]

You mean create an expansion only avaliable for the hardcore players? yeah that would be a success.... ...

[Hardain]

<cite>Narbuvold wrote:</cite><blockquote>You mean create an expansion only avaliable for the hardcore players? yeah that would be a success.... ... </blockquote>What makes you think that raising the level cap would bring only raiding content? I for one would hate new expansion without level cap rise, i want to build up my character, not to have dozens of alts. They can raise the cap without making expasnion obsolete to non-raiding players.

[quamdar]

<cite>Hardain wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Narbuvold wrote:</cite><blockquote>You mean create an expansion only avaliable for the hardcore players? yeah that would be a success.... ... </blockquote>What makes you think that raising the level cap would bring only raiding content? I for one would hate new expansion without level cap rise, i want to build up my character, not to have dozens of alts. They can raise the cap without making expasnion obsolete to non-raiding players. </blockquote>i would hope it would stick with a majority high level content which i would think they would be smart enough to do though.  trying to grind to 80 in 1 or 2 T8 zones would suck. would definitely like to see a lot of raiding content.  hopefully they make an expansion the size of EoF and make it all 65-80 then that would be a good amount of heroic AND epic content.

[Hadanelith]

<cite>quamdar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Hardain wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Narbuvold wrote:</cite><blockquote>You mean create an expansion only avaliable for the hardcore players? yeah that would be a success.... ... </blockquote>What makes you think that raising the level cap would bring only raiding content? I for one would hate new expansion without level cap rise, i want to build up my character, not to have dozens of alts. They can raise the cap without making expasnion obsolete to non-raiding players. </blockquote>i would hope it would stick with a majority high level content which i would think they would be smart enough to do though.  trying to grind to 80 in 1 or 2 T8 zones would suck. would definitely like to see a lot of raiding content.  hopefully they make an expansion the size of EoF and make it all 65-80 then that would be a good amount of heroic AND epic content. </blockquote><p> Change this to 55-80 and I'd agree. DoF was disappointingly small, and still is. EoF gave us one additional zone that is technically T6 (LFay), although if you leave Steamfont late or enter LP early you can argue that there are three "T6-Enabled" EoF zones.</p><p>Not only that, but how many T7 non-instanced dungeons are there? Hm. SoS & POA... MMC & CMM... and that's it. CMM being a debatable pre-generated T8 dungeon.</p><p>After playing EQ1 for 5 years, and then FFXI for almost two... honestly, I love having instances. But there's just something about an oldschool dungeon crawl where everything's contested and you're not screwed if someone leaves or goes LD halfway through your run (either because you can't get a replacement, or the replacement refuses to come b/c he's blowing half his lockout's worth) that I just find appealing.</p><p>-Hadanelith Raswrolski / Mossda Odis'Ossda, Kithicor Server</p>

[Gwen]

I dont think SoE is stupid enough to increase level cap ... why ? Simple, do you go to DoF beside your 45-60 leveling ? No, no one raid DoF Zone (Mabe only CoAA for sp farm), or farm for fabled in DoF, because 90% of the KoS legendary is way better. Same thing will happenn if Kunark introduce T8, KoS & EoF will become worthless, because most of the Kunark T8 legendaries will be better than fabled from Labs, HoS, DT, and even some EoF zones ... and for sure, SoE dont want to trash out 2 Expansions (KoS + EoF), that are 2 years of works. I really hope Kunark will be EoF like, but evil oriented <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />