Avatar gear nerfs [Archive] - Page 2 - EQ2 Forum Archive @ EQ2Wire

McKey

08-21-2009, 07:32 AM

As I can see, you just don't understand what it means - owerpowered. I'll help you a lil bit.GoodaITEM -2100346808 2125700213:[Belt of the Noble Warrior]/a - crapaITEM 255905934 -16057800:[Bracelet of Dark Energy]/a - not op thingaITEM 1776801693 2011444575:Breastplate of Valor/a - crappy trashaITEM -2019524924 -1715463342:[Charm of Mithaniel Marr]/a - good tank charm, not opaITEM 315491053 -1538748655:[Charm of Quellious]/a - same sh*taITEM 1909247058 -2122517544:[Charm of Rodcet Nife]/a - good heal charm, not opaITEM -1890157935 -841683885:[Charm of Tunare]/a - was op until you "fix" procs, now - "good heal charm, not op"aITEM -282877506 -1063259084:Cuirass of the High Priest/a - mt-templar chest, trash for everyone else, now crapaITEM 1412141532 1793770544:[Earring of the Enlightened One]/a- wizzy's manaburn thing, crap sh*taITEM 2092413663 1690432480:[Gussets of Marr's Chosen]/a - who's wear this?aITEM 1748845593 -439030809:[Pantaloons of the Peaceful Visionary]/a - same!aITEM -122436920 490662133:Ring of the Glade Protector/a - good tank ring, not opaITEM 748875194 -2040922407:Spirit Draining Wristguard/a - hmm, solofarm crapaITEM 1259636405 1967761045:[Symbol of the Faydark]/a - best "good avatar" loot, but not op, same things were in EoF & RoKaITEM 1318509152 1848372366:[Wu's Enlightened Chestwraps]/a - semish*tNeutralaITEM 1193605931 1023502953:[Ancient Tunic of the Oracle]/a - was the best cliric/shaman chest, a lil bit op, now - dunno, same sh*t as set bpaITEM 439476921 1091917455:Belt of Arcane Thoughts/a - if yoy're not a fury, Zarra's belt is better for you and your groupaITEM -955295821 -585661848:Blade Singer, Sword of the Maestro/a - one of the best example of avatar thing, not op, just fine...was, now - crapaITEM -1788946603 484155110:[Bracelet of the Trickster]/a - best melee wrist, but it was not op! now - crapall neutral charms - does anyone wear it?!aITEM 1149108052 1394895347:Fire Runed Robe of Summoning/a - i really think it was normal item for alts, now - "same sh*t as set bp"aITEM -395733030 1840142358:Fist of Judgement/a - alt's lootaITEM 1197294944 -1360603139:Merciful Legguards/a- crapaITEM 449178898 -2061036650:Shield of the Dwarven King/a - not a bad thing, but about the same as ykesha's shieldaITEM 1826133055 759649179:[Storm of Healing]/a - normal itemaITEM 672879876 1040986741:[Stormbringer, Bow of Thunder]/a - hmm, Zarra's bow is a lil betteraITEM -426636637 196026891:[Symbol of Arcane Mastery]/a - you create op cmm orb, and after two ears you realize it was op? now it's normal itemEvilaITEM 1687672842 1486648307:[Ancient Robe of the Disciple]/a - OP. Really op. Now it's normalaITEM 346304636 820850491:[Barbute of the Tactician]/a - the sameaITEM 1585021821 2028573673:Belt of Opportunity/a - it was trash, it becomes a lil more trashaITEM 1477297102 -1805258309:[Breastplate of Seething Hatred]/a - it was crusaders dps chest, now it's crapaITEM 1207095733 1469109378:[Chainlinks of Hatred]/a- hmm, it was not op comparing with set one, now I prefer to wear gozak's hat+6 set and forget about it, same sh*t as set bpaITEM -1852498576 -1316746000:[Charm of Anashti Sul]/a - it was trash, now it's... the same)aITEM 1770687408 1604501921:Charm of Bertoxxulous/a - the most OP item ingame, but his nerf... it's the worst evil charm on test now. 5-7 castspeed & reuse without proc chance increasing - that'll be fine.aITEM -2018684583 -1760024861:Charm of Cazic Thule/a - was good chanter's charm, now - best chanter's charmaITEM 1909680275 -1854690900:[Charm of Innoruuk]/a - normal after nerfaITEM 1253485700 -182820332:[Charm of Rallos Zek]/a - it was trash, but now it's an unbelieveble trashSmthing about "charm set" - forget about it. Dunno which mage or scout class will use it over mmb-set.aITEM 890003760 1364125776:[Enchanted Dagger of the Warmaster]/a - O.o, not the best offhand becomes... just forget about it)aITEM 2106968534 1170682374:[Enchanted Gi of War]/a - was op. Now - not a bad thing a guessaITEM -1400454930 -1955437942:Leggings of the Tier'dal Champion/a - my set pants are better)aITEM -1609625936 -1932342764:Necklace of the Plague/a - you are crazy, nobody willn't wear it after nerfaITEM -176394993 -1134799553:[Ring of Tormenting]/a - ok, normal nerfaITEM -76817535 -704800971:[Shifting Hatred Wristguard]/a - tanks wear it... sometimes)You want feedback - you got it. Take a pleasure.

Siddartus

08-21-2009, 09:57 AM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><blockquote>The NEW Anashti Sul charm have 15 % Trigger at spell and Equip and YOU nerf the 3 % from the Dieses Charm ???</blockquote>The Anashti trigger chance is actually much lower in most cases than the Disease charm was, but that is difficult to represent when dealing with %s. The Disease charm raised the base trigger chance by 3%, so a 1.8x.min proc (9%) went up to 2.4x/min (12%). With the new charm a 9% proc will increase by 15% of 9%, for a gain of 1.35%. The resulting proc will trigger 2.07x/min (10.35%).</blockquote>Better know your loot or learn to do math better! Probably working as intended (..) but base trigger doesn't go from 1.8 to 2.4 with Disease Charm it goes to 2.2

DerFunkBlaster

08-21-2009, 09:59 AM

Well.. at least we were able to see the best the EQ2 team had to offer with procs being broken and static modifiers out of control.

Amaitae

08-21-2009, 10:13 AM

Make encounters harder instead of nullifying the hard work players spent to get the best loot in the game. Nerfing the best loot is like a punishment for players doing your their best. You have the means to decide it and as you can see in all the posts in this forum thread that there is a significantly high number of feedback compared to other changes in the game. Think about it.

Bruener

08-21-2009, 10:27 AM

<cite>SantiagoDraco wrote:</cite><blockquote>Since, according to the "avatar" guilds, these mobs are the "hardest in the game" how about we resolve this issue by making the Avatars non-contested? Give guilds that have cores of people that work regular jobs a chance to "prove their mettle".Nah, I think that won't happen. We'd see too many "less capable" guilds in Avatar loot much faster than the current Avatar guilds would like to admit is possible <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>This made me LoL IRL because I could just picture it. Suddenly all instance gear would become almost useless because guilds that haven't even killed Gynok yet would be attaining Avatar gear even more easily.The gap between current Avatar gear and instance gear is just way too high. That being said I think the nerf did go too far because not being Avatar geared myself suddenly I don't find myself really even wanting any of the Avatar items because they either are blatantly not upgrades or really too close to say they are an upgrade. I can totally see SOE bringing the items on test up a little bit more and suddenly half the people even posting here will bite their tongue and take the nerf because it will seem so much better than "what it could have been."But for those that are Avatar geared and don't think SOE should nerf the items at all really need to wake up and realize never before has there been such a gap between instance gear and contested gear, and contesteds were never the loot pinatas they are today with shared loot tables. Sure you had an easy contested here and there but the gear dropped reflected it. Even in RoK Avatars were a lot harder than they are in TSO, they were not up as often, they did not have shared loot tables, and the gap between the VP gear to the Contested gear wasn't nearly as large.

EasternKing

08-21-2009, 10:40 AM

<cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SantiagoDraco wrote:</cite><blockquote>Since, according to the "avatar" guilds, these mobs are the "hardest in the game" how about we resolve this issue by making the Avatars non-contested? Give guilds that have cores of people that work regular jobs a chance to "prove their mettle".Nah, I think that won't happen. We'd see too many "less capable" guilds in Avatar loot much faster than the current Avatar guilds would like to admit is possible <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>This made me LoL IRL because I could just picture it. Suddenly all instance gear would become almost useless because guilds that haven't even killed Gynok yet would be attaining Avatar gear even more easily.The gap between current Avatar gear and instance gear is just way too high. That being said I think the nerf did go too far because not being Avatar geared myself suddenly I don't find myself really even wanting any of the Avatar items because they either are blatantly not upgrades or really too close to say they are an upgrade. I can totally see SOE bringing the items on test up a little bit more and suddenly half the people even posting here will bite their tongue and take the nerf because it will seem so much better than "what it could have been."But for those that are Avatar geared and don't think SOE should nerf the items at all really need to wake up and realize never before has there been such a gap between instance gear and contested gear, and contesteds were never the loot pinatas they are today with shared loot tables. Sure you had an easy contested here and there but the gear dropped reflected it. Even in RoK Avatars were a lot harder than they are in TSO, they were not up as often, they did not have shared loot tables, and the gap between the VP gear to the Contested gear wasn't nearly as large.</blockquote>what a load of rubbish, avatars were not harder in rok, and the gear from them was just aas massivley more powerful than the instance gear, avatar loot has always been head and shoulders above the instance loot for the tier, since they were added to eq2 in eof. grats again on talking about what you have not the first real clue about.yes avatar gear needed some nerfs, namley charms, when i first seen avatar charms i said they were almost like a mythical for your charm slot and you could have two of them, i think most HC raiders would accept that, and if Soe had nerfed the charms and not touched the rest of the drops, then you wouldnt be seeing such uproar over it all.

Noaani

08-21-2009, 10:50 AM

<cite>EasternKing wrote:</cite><blockquote>yes avatar gear needed some nerfs, namley charms, when i first seen avatar charms i said they were almost like a mythical for your charm slot and you could have two of them, i think most HC raiders would accept that, and if Soe had nerfed the charms and not touched the rest of the drops, then you wouldnt be seeing such uproar over it all.</blockquote>Thats entierly possible.The smart thing, IMO, would have been to nerf the hell out of avatar charms in GU#51/52, and then decide if the rest of the avatar loot needed to be looked at.There are some items that are without a doubt OP on live right now (evil robe), but it wouldn't have hurt to do it in two steps.

doyler2k

08-21-2009, 10:51 AM

<cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>SantiagoDraco wrote:</cite><blockquote>Since, according to the "avatar" guilds, these mobs are the "hardest in the game" how about we resolve this issue by making the Avatars non-contested? Give guilds that have cores of people that work regular jobs a chance to "prove their mettle".Nah, I think that won't happen. We'd see too many "less capable" guilds in Avatar loot much faster than the current Avatar guilds would like to admit is possible <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>This made me LoL IRL because I could just picture it. Suddenly all instance gear would become almost useless because guilds that haven't even killed Gynok yet would be attaining Avatar gear even more easily.The gap between current Avatar gear and instance gear is just way too high. That being said I think the nerf did go too far because not being Avatar geared myself suddenly I don't find myself really even wanting any of the Avatar items because they either are blatantly not upgrades or really too close to say they are an upgrade. I can totally see SOE bringing the items on test up a little bit more and suddenly half the people even posting here will bite their tongue and take the nerf because it will seem so much better than "what it could have been."But for those that are Avatar geared and don't think SOE should nerf the items at all really need to wake up and realize never before has there been such a gap between instance gear and contested gear, and contesteds were never the loot pinatas they are today with shared loot tables. Sure you had an easy contested here and there but the gear dropped reflected it. Even in RoK Avatars were a lot harder than they are in TSO, they were not up as often, they did not have shared loot tables, and the gap between the VP gear to the Contested gear wasn't nearly as large.</blockquote>Think you will find that as a whole avatars are harder than the ROK Versions.Simply because of the Critical Mitigation factor.Try killing the majority of those mobs without any instance gear(forced progression) and you will see soon enough that they arent pushovers.Add in the fact that TSO mobs have more fail scripts than ROK and then its clear the difficulty of each is established.As for the rest of the people who claim avatar guilds need avatar gear to progress.Well that only becomes evident in the few remaining mobs that require huge dps/healing.Gynok(Dec 0<img src="/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />/Tyrranus(Feb 09)/Mynzak(Dec 0<img src="/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> all died with only instanced gear and no avatar gear back before our guild got any tso Avatars.So from my experience this crutch of OP items is merely clouding the judgement of others who arent in the position to try contesteds wheter time constraints/real life commitments.Im just disappointed like many others who have invested significant amounts of time and DKP getting these 'Rare' drops only to be taken away in one update.The avatars should though like some have suggested have unique items attached to them,like originally was the case in T7.That way Risk Vs Reward would be implemented accordingly.Anyways constructive feedback is ongoing on test whether those people who want to listen are actually capable of taking it onboard.Especially since paying customers are doing QA for the same people who promised to listen to their playerbase.

DerFunkBlaster

08-21-2009, 10:56 AM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>EasternKing wrote:</cite><blockquote>yes avatar gear needed some nerfs, namley charms, when i first seen avatar charms i said they were almost like a mythical for your charm slot and you could have two of them, i think most HC raiders would accept that, and if Soe had nerfed the charms and not touched the rest of the drops, then you wouldnt be seeing such uproar over it all.</blockquote>Thats entierly possible.The smart thing, IMO, would have been to nerf the hell out of avatar charms in GU#51/52, and then decide if the rest of the avatar loot needed to be looked at.There are some items that are without a doubt OP on live right now (evil robe), but it wouldn't have hurt to do it in two steps.</blockquote>They need to shift around the items and have the avatars spawn in 3 new categories: Easy, Medium and Hard (rather than Evil Neutral and Good). With these new modifications, there are still some avatars out there that are pretty hard (Justice, Flame, Valor, and maybe Fear) and in those cases, the risk doesnt match the reward with the new gear. Why not just shift the better items over to the harder avatars and keep the lower quality ones on the easier ones?or...Nerf the avatars a little bit to match the nerf.

Gungo

08-21-2009, 11:30 AM

This is what needs to be done to fix the avatar gear nerfs.You can't ignore that these items overcap itemization.First make sure base damage is included in the gear degradation %'s such as crit/DA/etc. Thus when the expansion comes out and people hit 90 crit/da/base/cast haste/ reuse etc all get reduced to 30% effectiveness at level 90. This fixes the issue of capped stats for next expansion and problems with itemizing next expansion.second remove all the does not effect proc rate tags. Seriously you alreayd nerfed the damage on these procs. I am not 100% positive these are completely immune to proc increasers. I seem to remeber last time this was on test Aerilik said that proc increasers such as blessing, luck of dirge, propagation etc still worked.Third you need to go over many items base damage nerfs. You may need to nerf the instance anashti neck to 10 base damage, you may need to raise the contested neck to 12 base damage.fourth the damage rating on weapons are no were near what they should be. Seriously scout weapons should be better then the tangrin weapon damage rating at the bare minimum.

ShamusOB

08-21-2009, 11:36 AM

The Avatar BPs need to be fixed. In the state they are on test they are just going to be bagged as they are trash.The plate BP for example has a horrible proc that doesn't trigger. You want to take points off the item lose the lame proc and leave it alone.Going from 15 base to 7 crit bonus is horrid because the set BP gives 5 crit bonus and a focus. Not to mention I will put the 6 set back on and gain another 10 crit bonus.I have avatar gear, I don't want to and shouldnt have to wear the set gear every other person who doesnt go after contested have.Also the Good avatar healer symbol needs to be left alone. Nerf it any more then it is and Ill bag it for the Claymore again. I am really tired of wearing my claymore because you guys wont let me have a non suck healer symbol.Leave the tunare charms Crit Bonus alone and stop pretending that 5 crit bonus on an item is OP for healers. Anything less then 5 crit bonus and the item will probly rot in bags and ill take different charms from avatars geared more towards dps for spell cast/reuse junk, because the healer set bonus is just so awesomely bad I dont care to have it over the casting speed/reuse/dps on the other charms.

Quicksilver74

08-21-2009, 11:44 AM

In regards to the 3 new contested raids in the next expansion, How is that loot going to measure up to instanced loot?

ShamusOB

08-21-2009, 12:01 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>We want and need the feedback to tune these changes and find the middle ground where the game isn't broken and you aren't totally [Removed for Content] off at us.We cannot do that if all we get is a boat load of hate and nastiness from you guys.</blockquote>This thread has given you Devs your way out. Its been said alot in this thread that no one will care if you obliterate this gear when you push the next expac. We will have to regear anyways, so just push this same item set that you already tore down to degrade how you want it to when the expac goes live.I don't want to hear about broken PROGRESSION either because its been 9 months of broken progression. ALL OF THE MOBS HAVE DIED except Munzok is still a fight no one cares to do in its current state except the crazy kids who killed it once.Broken progression would have been fine and dandy excuse 9 months ago to nerf things and take away 40 crit mit chests and 25 crit mit hats handed out that broke your raid progression but it is a BS excuse now to try and get away with it. Seriously if you were so concerned with broken progression you should have pushed this nerf the first time you tried it not now. Its too late in the expac to be taking all of our hard work attaining gear. Had you done this months ago i wouldnt have wasted my time trying to fight for contested.Back when these mobs were rediculous and broken Avatar gear might have been a requirement to brute force thru scripts but they surely aren't even close to what they once were and instanced geared guilds are killing them. That means they are perfectly fine and tuned minus one mob(in a zone no one likes)!

Tehom

08-21-2009, 12:25 PM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Merovius@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote>thankyou for providing me and my guild with comic relief as we raid tonight, were having a lot of fun with this one ; )</blockquote>Technically, he's right.The number of guilds killing Umzok - but not killing avatars - is rediculously small.For a guild killing both, you get 5 - 6 avatar charms drop a week, but only 1 charm from Munzok. He didn't say anything about specific charms, he just said two avatar charms. When you look at how many avatar charms have dropped in the game vs how many charms from Umzok have dropped, you can't actually argue the point.</blockquote>They were directly comparing the base damage of Umzok (3 base damage) with avatar charms set bonuses, which means you need to have a set - so 2 of the same type, without neutrals. That means that you'd get 2 umzok kills in roughly the same period as 2 or 3 charms (3-6 days per charm), per guild. Then you also need to consider you need to get 2 of the same type of charm that works for your -class-, which is fairly specific. You can't have rangers or casters taking War charm, you know.There's at least 3 guilds on my server killing Umzok, and that number will of course rise over time. It's pretty obvious the number of Umzok charms entering the world will increase at a faster rate than charm sets. Even in my raid force alone we already have almost as many people with Umzok charms (at least among alts) as we do people who have evil charm sets. The biggest problem with Umzok is that they decided to divide the mage charm into normal mages then put in one that's summoner only, and make one for scouts then put one in that's effectively ranger only. So the number of charms/cloaks you'll trash is vastly greater than finding someone who can use a given avatar charm. They just need to merge the Accuracy/Blademaster items and their bonuses, and then merge the Control/Destruction sets and their bonuses, and then probably add priests to the merged Control/Destruction set for the 2 or 3 druids that still play the game. Otherwise you see an enormous amount of waste in a 5 day spawn, which is another reason why people detest the zone.But the big thing people are missing is that Umzok is a complete pushover now - the only reason more people don't kill him is just because they don't bother trying the zone. The first time one of our competitors zoned into MMB, they killed everything but Gozak on their first night.

Darq

08-21-2009, 12:43 PM

Damage rating + Stats?<img src="http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/2343/daggercrazy.png" width="1230" height="692" />

GangleG

08-21-2009, 12:46 PM

I don't even understand how they could nerf the avatar offhands, making them the worst offhands in this tier. You forgot to post the bard avatar weapon, which was nerfed to 104.00 damage rating, worse than the weapon off the snake from tombs.

Noaani

08-21-2009, 12:51 PM

<cite>Stivan@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>They need to shift around the items and have the avatars spawn in 3 new categories: Easy, Medium and Hard (rather than Evil Neutral and Good). With these new modifications, there are still some avatars out there that are pretty hard (Justice, Flame, Valor, and maybe Fear) and in those cases, the risk doesnt match the reward with the new gear. Why not just shift the better items over to the harder avatars and keep the lower quality ones on the easier ones.</blockquote>This wouldn't be a bad idea.Leave the spawn mechanics as they are, but alter the loot tables of avatars to reflect their difficulty. No one complains about the risk vs reward of Growth dropping the mage pants, but when you kill Justice and get the brawler weapon, followed by Disease dropping the robe, you can't help but wonder whats going on.

Noaani

08-21-2009, 12:55 PM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>You can't have rangers or casters taking War charm, you know.</blockquote>Your point would have a shread of validity to it (a very small shread, mind you), the day avatars drop summoner only charms.

Tehom

08-21-2009, 01:11 PM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>You can't have rangers or casters taking War charm, you know.</blockquote>Your point would have a shread of validity to it (a very small shread, mind you), the day avatars drop summoner only charms.</blockquote>He said that it was easier to get an evil avatar set for players than to get an umzok charm. There's already more people on our server with umzok charms than with evil avatar sets, so I don't really see how I'm wrong. There's a lot more summoners with umzok charms than with evil avatar sets (3-4 compared to, oh, zero) anyway. It's easier to get -one- evil avatar charm than to get one umzok charm if you're the raid force that's farming avatars. But that's not what he said.

judged_one

08-21-2009, 01:53 PM

I think there is a better way to address the current situation with out a massive loot nerf, it is not only a cause for concern for many hardcore raiders, it is also a drain in resources for the Dev to spend manyeth hours to deal with the raiding community and delicately balance the new nerfed loot.Basically from my observation we have 2 seperate problem with avatar gear:1- Due to the grossly overpowered loot from avatar, Dev team is having problem balancing future content and current content for avatar raider and non-avatar raiders.2- Due to some of the attribute on the loot from avatar such as base damage, Dev team is having problem balancing item in the next coming expansion.1- The real problem with avatar loot is not that they are overpowered, but that they are too exclusive. (This is my point of view from being an avatar dominating guild in EoF to being a secondary guild in TSO with a few avatar kills) Instead of nerfing the avatar loot, Dev should be encouraging other guild from trying to pull contested. This can be done be taking an existing Heretic idea, and expanding it to the whole raid force. At the moment if you kill an avatar that you worship, you will have a buff (Heretic) that prevents you from interacting with any diety. Why not extent that idea further.Heretic Buff:"You have been deemed an heretic by the diety of Norrath, your state of being is weaken by X% and avatar will be doing x% more damage to you"Make this buff an accumlative X day buff, meaning if you kill any additional avatar you will have 2 heretic buffs and reset the X day timer. It will make contested more interesting for the guild that are already killing avatar, and it will also encourage other guild to actually try them. Since at certain point it will almost be impossible for a guild to continue to lock down avatar, and they must have a X days cooling down period for the heretic buff to wear off.Suddenly it is a lot easier to balance the instanced content: Since the avatar killing guild will most likely have some heretic buffs on them, and other lesser guild will have some avatar gear.2- This one can be easily dealth with: Just write a lore that will either -nerf the hack out of the over power item next expansion, or write a lore that will turn avatar gear into i.e. xp potion, AA xp potion etc or some item that is an uber apparance item. I doubt too many people will complain in t9 about their avatar gear from t8.

Rageincarnate

08-21-2009, 02:02 PM

quit. go ahead. reason will not work, common sense will not work. Just going to throw out a guess here but i'd be willing to bet that they designed some new level 90 raid encounters and level 90 toons in 80 avatar gear owned the snot out of them.now if they make that level 90 mob super tuff to adjust to your difficulty great, but every other raiding guild needs to kill that mob too which equals sad panda.so, what are they to do. hmmm put all players on the same page at the beginning of a new game? yes. you know why its done now because you can't be overpowered coming into a new expansion or you will steamroll it like what happened in rok.this is not rocket science. I'm actually quite dumb and i figured it out. Just work with them and suggest changes that make sense.

slippery

08-21-2009, 02:22 PM

This post is going to be a very long essay, of which I apologize in advance for how long it is going to take to read. It also got split in two for how long it is. If a developer would like to contact me in a more private way I will gladly give you my MSN, get on IRC with you, give you my email, pm, or even my phone number. I'd like to start off by posing a question. What instance mobs that are harder than Avatars have loot that is not the best in the game? I would specific examples comparing the pieces of loot with reference to why you believe there is difference in encounter difficulty. It seems there is quite a lot of hyperbole flying around with no actual justification or well thought out reasoning that shows this. There are lots of absolute statements but no examples. There is a very vast amount of falsities coming about from people who really don't understand the mechanics behind the encounters or the gear. First off is the difficulty of encounters. Even the easiest Avatars need gear. Not only do they have a dps requirement, but you need the gear for survivability. People fail to consider the fact that an Avatar like Disease has a Trauma AE, a Trauma ae that even with 80 crit mit can still wipe the floor with a raid if there aren't other mitigation buffs flying around. If you don't have the crit mit, you quite simply do not survive these encounters. There is nothing else to it. Second. The difficulty of encounters perception is being very skewed. Are there some easy Avatars? Yes. Now I challenge you to go find a guild that is in the middle of progression (just killed Xebnok and Tythus for example). Copy all their characters to test. Spawn Disease. Ask them to spend 4 hours pulling it to see if they can kill it. I bet you suddenly the encounter seems a lot harder. Views of encounter difficulty are based on how encounters initially came into the game. Avatars have not been touched in a very long time at this point. Can the same be said of instanced Anashti or Ykesha? I wager not at all. Ykesha has been adjusted very recently. He has recently been changed to no longer port Fighters or Priests along with the AE being tuned to not just one shot everyone. The randomness has been taken out of this encounter which mages it a ton easier. It no longer requires overhealing it. It is not a difficult encounter at all. What does it require? A few things. First, your tank realizing touch is incoming and being able to do something about it. Then is your two tanks having crit mit. Also properly spec'ing to make the trauma AE not kill you. There is nothing there that makes this encounter harder than Avatars. Where is the opinion coming from? The opinions about the difficulty of this encounter are coming from before those adjustments. They are coming from when there was a lot of luck based on hoping your tanks and healers getting ported. Opinions based on the AE one-shotting your raid. Opinions based on the mobs in the encounter having more hp and porting more. The same can be said of Anashti, who is currently a fraction of the encounter it was. I've seen all play styles of this game over my years playing. I've gone from the casual crafter to the top end raider getting all meaningful World Wide First raid kills in an expansion. I've been at the top of my class for multiple classes. I've spent far more time learning and understanding the game mechanics and different encounters then I'm willing to admit. I can tell you the strategy for pretty much every encounter in the game. I left the extreme top end due to time constraints. I went to a guild doing the instance content. The reality is once you have done the top nothing else is the same. It is extremely hard to go back to doing less than that. The guild I joined stole an Avatar. People wanted more. We transferred our entire guild to Mistmoore in March having killed one Avatar this expansion. We had a capable raid force. Most Avatars wiped the floor with us. Why? Because you absolutely need gear to pull them. Not only did we struggle with dying to AE's, the Avatars hitting our tanks too hard, but we also struggled with having enough dps to kill it before battleweary. Why do they seem so easy now? People seem to have forgotten we are 9 months into this expansion. People have been farming instances for 9 months. 9 months of gear goes a very very long ways towards making encounters easier. The encounters seem so easy because we've had all this time and gotten all this gear. The same could not be said 6 months ago of these encounters. There are also a few problems that add to the complexity of this situation that are fairly unique to this expansion. This expansion has been the least consistent expansion in reference to game mechanics. There has been so many mechanic changes in the middle of the expansion that it is just painful. The proc changes where huge when it came to encounter difficulty. They are also very incomplete. Quite some time ago I made a list including very specific items that are still not working as they should. Personally I think this change was a mistake, a far easier way of addressing the problem would have been merging crit. It would have saved far more time and taken far far far less time to sort out all the problems and bugs arising from it. However it was done. Encounters had to be adjusted because of it. You had encounters that had to be adjusted because of the loss of healing, the loss of dps, the loss of damage shield proc's. You had the gear people wear change because suddenly the gear balance shifted. That was in the middle of the constant tuning of encounters this expansion. It has taken far longer to get the encounters this expansion into their proper balance. It makes me question if it is intentional to take certain amounts of time to balance encounters to make those encounters life last longer. Why is Munzok still not properly adjusted? Why did Ykesha just finished getting adjusted (or has it?) a few weeks ago? There was just so many encounters that had to have adjustments to them and it compounded so steeply that the true difficulty measures of the different encounters is so skewed because of when you actually killed the encounter and what impression it has left in your mind. With the constant tuning of instance content how can you truly really judge where encounters lie? While it seems that Field General is a hard encounter, that is quite simply not the truth. It died so late in the expansion because of all the bugs in the encounter, mainly related to being able to see and attack the sapper. Once the encounter was actually fixed and tuned it was not at all a difficult encounter and is truly pretty basic. However because of when it died and all the bugs related it appears to be a very difficult encounter. There is also the seemingly forgotten fact that Avatars are contested mobs. The difficulty does not just come from the encounter itself. Far more difficulty comes from a fact that you have to manage to field a raid when they spawn. If you don't or can't, then you aren't the guild that is going to kill that Avatar. This is the whole concept of contested raiding and is more the case today than it has been for years. This is why contested loot is better. It is one of the fundamental concepts of contested. The extreme control and limit of loot entering the game combined with the combination of the competition against other players to kill the encounter first is what has made the loot the best in the game. I just did a rough count on progression threads (of which there was not one for every server), the number of guilds killing instanced Anashti is 61 (a number that is always rising, might I remind you). That is across the 20 servers I found a progression list on. Now lets consider that Avatars have a 3-5 day spawn time, and the instances can be reset every 2 days 20 hours. Over the course of 3 clears of Palace of The Ancient One you will likely kill 2 of each Avatar Alignment. In this period of time you have seen 183 Set BP's from instanced Anashti and 183 items. Items that are going to alts, and items that are even beyond going to alts and getting sold to the server, and have been getting sold to the server for months now. In that time you have seen 40 of each alignment Avatar charms, likely very spread out on which charm it is (with never being able to get the same twice in a row), and very likely all still used with maybe only the tank ones going to alts. You have also only seen 40 of each alignment Avatar loot. Likely of which none of is going to alts, and all of which is still very needed and desired (except maybe brawler loot). I am going to give you a few statistics, and remember, this is just my guild. Items that we have seen since we started kill avatars include: 0 Breastplate of Seething Hatred.2 Breastplate of Valor. We have seen 2 ancient Tunic of the Oracle. 2 Fire Runed Robe of Summoning, 2 Ancient Robe of the Disciple, 3 Bracelet of the Trickster, 1 Shield of the Dwarven King. 3 Leggings of the Tier'Dal Champion, 1 Stormbringer, Bow of Thunder, 2 Merciful Legguards and 1 Barbute of the Tactician. 5 Earring of the Enlightened One, 8 Chainlinks of Hatred, 4 Symbol of the Faydark., 5 Enchanted Dagger of the Warmaster, 6 Belt of Arcane Thoughts, 7 Ring of Tormenting Take a close look at those numbers. Very close. It very well illustrates my point. This stuff is extremely rare. It is very likely that everyone in my guild if this change never goes through and we farm Avatars until the expansion comes out will never get all the gear they want. Not to mention all the other guilds who would try to steal Avatars from us. Now consider that everyone in my guild has almost every single item they want from instances, and so will every other guild that kills those instanced mobs. Instanced Anashti drops items that for the slot they are in are the best in the game. Everyone says she drops worse loot than Avatars, but no one can illustrate to me how. Each item is the best for its slot. Each item is also rotting or going to alts in my guild. We have sold more Set BP's to the server than I can keep track of, along with other drops from the table because even our alts don't need them anymore. A very large quantity of people will get all the loot they want from this encounter. Take for example one of the seemingly rarer drops and more desired drops on instanced Anashti's loot table, Belt of the Desolate One. My guild has seen 7 of them. Scout/Fighter earring (Hoop of Darkened Desolation) 9 that went to mains, that isn't counting any that went to alts. Jewel of Many Colors? 6 of them. Torque of Peaccock Feathers? This is one of our lower totals at 4, and still more then all but a few Avatar items. And that isn't considering the fact that other people on the server are killing instanced Anashti and getting those items. It doesn't show the fact of how many more of these are truly entering the world. Let me pose a question to you. Why are certain pieces of loot out of heroic instances so good, even to the point of being better than raid loot? I'm going to go ahead and answer that for you. Because they are extremely rare it is deemed they can be made more powerful because such a small quantity of them will enter the world. Why has this same logic all of a sudden stopped being applied to contested loot? Contested loot by far has the strictest controls on quantity entering the game. If we so desired we could clear the raid content twice every 3 days on our alts, however we don't desire because even our alts don't need the loot. The same can be said of Najena's Hollow Tower for example, and instance that drops the best Sorcerer ring in the game. An instance that I have farmed up to 4 times a day on different alts, as many others have also done. It is obvious that even from the developer perspective rarity plays a part in how good an item can be, please do not forget this when it comes to Avatar loot. How did we get here? I'm sure this is a question that has been posed many times, and received many different answers. Here are my answers. What is the main contributor? Set gear. Set bonuses have caused a far more massive inflation in stats then anything else in the game. You went from just have stats on gear to suddenly just getting stats because of having gear. The bonuses received from set gear are just way out of control. If you look at the Mage and Priest sets you can clearly see this in play. The set pieces themselves are generally the best for the slot regardless of anything else, but then suddenly you get all these other effects. A bonus to a spell for 2 and 4, 5 base for 5, 10 crit bonus for 6. This is a massive inflation. How should it have been? Set gear should never have been designed with the intent of being basically the best for the slot. It in no ways should have been the best for the slot. It should only have been the best for the slot in specific circumstances before you where able to obtain better gear. Sadly this is just not the case. However, this also answers your question on how do you itemize your raid zones for the rest of the expansion. Most of the problem doesn't come from Avatar gear, it comes from set gear and Mythicals. You've excluded yourself from being able to itemize those slots. Not to mention that you shouldn't be considering Avatar gear at all, because as everyone likes to point out there are a lot more raiders then just those killing Avatars. However, all is not lost. The trick? You don't have to make a single piece of gear better than what would be lost from the set bonus. I'm going to keep using mages for example because it is what I know best. Quite simply, you spread that bonus out over a few pieces. In this upcoming zone you could add mage gloves that have say 4 spell crit, 4 base damage, and 4 crit bonus along with a proc that adds some reuse and cast speed, say 5%. Is any mage going to out right equip those gloves? Not if it breaks their 6 set. But now you put pants on the last guy that have say 6 crit, 5 crit bonus, 3 reuse, and a proc that gives 8% base. This combined with the Mage hat from Gozak and suddenly mages have to make a choice. They have to sit down and compare gear. Suddenly if they get all these pieces that set bonus isn't such a big deal. Are there other problems? Yes, most certainly. What is one? There is a lack of developer understanding of the game mechanics involved. Part of this comes down to a lack of communication with the players who really do know this information. While certain players have a very good understanding of what any given effect is going to do, how it is going to effect their character, and what benefits it is going to give, it quite often seems that the development side of the table has very different views of these same things. This was very clear this expansion with base damage and how the development side just did not realize how strong of an effect this was even though the discussion had been had many times in the past with items like the Bloodthirsty choker and the Dark Orb of the Mind. What was seen is that players want base damage, and thus it was added in abundance. I would like to at this point also remind developers that base damage isn't just in the form of gear. There is a lot more base damage out there than people think about. Lots of achievements give specific abilities base damage. Also there are a number of enhancements to specific spells on gear for base damage. There are also pieces of gear that proc +damage for the group that comes in the form of base damage. Finally, certain combinations of effects had not been thought of by developers while they ran rampant among players. Situations like the Mortal Coil plus Dispersion style effects amounted to massive power regen for an entire group. Feedback absolutely must be solicited from players before things get as far as test. Their absolutely has to be a player based community more involved in design aspects of the game. The understanding that some players have of the game is not one of just looking at numbers and mechanics, it is one of years of experience at the extreme levels of the game. It is an understanding that should be harnessed and used for better. The people at the leading edge stick out; use that to your advantage. Find out what impact an effect players think is going to happen. There needs to be a round table where things can be discussed before they get implemented.

slippery

08-21-2009, 02:23 PM

Where do we go from here? Well earlier in this post I explained to you a good way to itemize out the rest of the expansion. If you ask around you will also find that each archetype has holes in itemization where equipment can be added. If you would like examples of where you can still add gear please ask and the information can be given. First, the actual drops from Avatars should not be changed in any way. The items are extremely rare, which absolutely must be considered in the quality of the items. Do not punish the time, effort, plat, cash, and dkp people have spent on these items. The rarity of these items justifies the quality of these items, however I will give you a few minor things that could be adjusted. All Avatar Breastplates can have reduced Critical Mitigation, however I do not believe that it should be equal to that of Set Breastplates which are extraordinarily more abundant. 40 is a bit much, but 30 should be a good compromise. In relation to this change the same can also be applied to aITEM 346304636 820850491:Barbute of the Tactician/a by reducing the critical mitigation on it to 20 with the same justifications as above. 15 might even be acceptable. The Mage pants in their current form are absolutely terrible. aITEM 1748845593 -439030809<img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />antaloons of the Peaceful Visionary/a They really need about 3 crit bonus added to them to even by viable. As it is they are worse then set pants. The aITEM -1788946603 484155110:[Bracelet of the Trickster]/a is an extremely powerful item. The proc on this can definitely be toned down some. I would bring the proc chance down to 1.5 and make the proc’s ¾ as effective as they currently are. The plate tank cuffs aITEM 2092413663 1690432480:Gussets of Marr's Chosen/a should probably have 10 critical mitigation. The item leaves a lot to be desired as it is, the critical mitigation boost would help. The Neutral Mage robe aITEM 1149108052 1394895347:Fire Runed Robe of Summoning/a still needs to be fixed. The second 7 spell crit chance should be 7 spell crit bonus. This doesn’t take it out of line because the wearer isn’t getting the proc from the evil robe. Also consider that a set Robe has 5 crit bonus, adds to the set bonus, and has a focus effect. This wrist aITEM -76817535 -704800971:Shifting Hatred Wristguar]/a is extremely lacking. It really needs something to make it desirable. A simple damage proc would probably do well. The Avatar charms are where you have a lot more leeway to do things. These are items that cannot so easily be justified. Yes, they are still rare, however they are guaranteed. There is still a limited quantity entering the game, however it is not as limited as the actual loot itself. The following are the changes I believe could be made, and this is also accounting for the difficulty of each specific Avatar for that specific charm. The main problem with the Avatar charms is the power of the 2 set bonus. I will start with the good Avatar charms. The set bonus can be cut in half to 5 of each thing. The Charm of Mithaniel Marr and the Charm of Quellious are fine as is and do not need to be adjusted. aITEM 1909247058 -2122517544:Charm of Rodcet Nife/a and aITEM -1890157935 -841683885:Charm of Tunare/a basically need to be switched. The effects on the Charm of Rodcet Nife should be on the Charm of Tunare and the effects on the Charm of Tunare should be on the Charm of Rodcet Nife. The Avatar of Health is a harder encounter, and as such should have the better of the 2 charms. It puts these charms very much in line with where they should be. The Neutral Avatar charms are a slightly tricky area. I’d start off by giving the 2 set 2 base everything including 2 deflection, block, etc. There should be a decent reward for wearing 2 Avatar charms, the proc by itself is very lacking. As far as the charms themselves go, I would leave them alone. As they are they are good, but none of them are overpowered. They are the middle ground charms. The Evil Avatar charms are basically the dps charms. This area is a little trickier. I would do the same as with the good set and cut the 2 set bonus in half to 5. The Charm of Rallos Zek and Charm of Cazic Thule should be left as is. The Disease charm aITEM 1770687408 1604501921:Charm of Bertoxxulous/a was right to lose the trigger chance on test. I agree with that. However the rest of the charm should be left as is, at the worst making the cast and reuse 7%. The cast and reuse should still effect everything. Do not punish scouts, healers, and fighters who have taken this charm by making it completely useless to them. Let them keep the cast speed and reuse. Also of note is that the dot proc on this charm still does not stack from multiple people having the charm. The Hate Charm aITEM 1909680275 -1854690900:Charm of Innoruuk/a is fine as is however it could stand to have the spell and combat art damage reduced to 100. The Anashti charm aITEM -1852498576 -1316746000:Charm of Anashti Sul/a was definitely right to receive the trigger chance. This would put it in line with being an Avatar that first had to be unlocked and is also the hardest Evil Avatar. Thank you for taking the time to read this post. For as long as it took you to read it it took me much much longer to type it.

Goradim

08-21-2009, 02:54 PM

Move the item/skill proc boost back to bertoxx charm from anashti one. They seem swapped for some reason, I'd assume it's by mistake.

arksun

08-21-2009, 02:59 PM

<cite>slippery wrote:</cite><blockquote>All Avatar Breastplates can have reduced Critical Mitigation, however I do not believe that it should be equal to that of Set Breastplates which are extraordinarily more abundant. 40 is a bit much, but 30 should be a good compromise.In relation to this change the same can also be applied to aITEM 346304636 820850491:Barbute of the Tactician/a by reducing the critical mitigation on it to 20 with the same justifications as above. 15 might even be acceptable.The plate tank cuffs aITEM 2092413663 1690432480:Gussets of Marr's Chosen/a should probably have 10 critical mitigation. The item leaves a lot to be desired as it is, the critical mitigation boost would help.This wrist aITEM -76817535 -704800971:Shifting Hatred Wristguard]/a is extremely lacking. It really needs something to make it desirable. A simple damage proc would probably do well.</blockquote>I totally agree, the Shifting Hatred and the Gussets are very lacking, I would rank the shifting hatred a bit higher on the needs some TLC chart.

Valanthe

08-21-2009, 03:01 PM

<cite>Goradim wrote:</cite><blockquote>Move the item/skill proc boost back to bertoxx charm from anashti one. They seem swapped for some reason, I'd assume it's by mistake.</blockquote>The proc boost should have been on Anashti before it was on Bertox anyways. Anashti should be easily the best avatar charm due to the fact that it was the one that had to be unlocked.

Ge'Sar

08-21-2009, 03:30 PM

A beautiful post Slippery. *applauds*

Hina

08-21-2009, 03:33 PM

<cite>Novusod wrote:</cite><blockquote>I am pretty sure Fyreflyte wants to create a tiered raiding system like we had in RoK. The problem in RoK was that EoF gear was so good high end guilds just jumped over the first tiers and went right into VP and cleared it with few RoK upgrades before getting into VP. It is bad when raid content is cleared a month into an expansion. These nerfs + the item decay coming should prevent that from happening again in TSF. You need to have massive nerfs to current gear for a tiered system to work. Say if TSF has three tiers of Raid gear, then T1 TSF should be better than current gear. But if T1 TSF is better than our best gear now where does T2 and T3 TSF going to going to go? Nerfs now and decay later are the only way to make this work. This is where I beleive SoE is coming from.</blockquote>Guilds, like mine, that jumped through RoK content quickly and cleared VP by january did not do so because their EOF gear was over powered. I was in a high end raid guild in EoF, we were not killing avatars until RoK, but cleared every instance in EoF and i can tell you now, that going into RoK i was upgrading my EoF FABLED gear for TREASURED simply because it was better. By the time i was 80 i remember thinking to myself how silly i felt cause all my gear was legendary and treasured, and the only piece of fabled raided gear i retained was my Dark Orb of the Mind. Everything else was replaced by quest rewards and crap drops from instances. It was not our "over powered EoF gear" that made us mow over that content. Gear doesnt make scripts easy to figure out or disciplined raid forces-- it just makes us perform better and your example does not apply as most my other guild mates were also upgrading to treasured and legendary as well.Hina80 Warlock

Bright_Morn

08-21-2009, 03:40 PM

Slippery, thank you for your very well thought out, presented and backup post.

Tehom

08-21-2009, 03:44 PM

Very well said, Slippery. I think a point that bears repeating, because few other people have mentioned it, is about the strength of the set gear. Players basically become about as strong as they'll get once they have all their set gear, and other items after that don't make nearly as much of an impact. I think the difference between an avatar-killing force and instance-only guilds that kill ykesha and anashti (admittedly, there's -very- few instance guilds of this caliber) are smaller than most people expect.

ShamusOB

08-21-2009, 03:47 PM

<cite>slippery wrote:</cite><blockquote>TL DR</blockquote>Not really, it was a good post and I like his point of stop making me wear the set gear! I mean really I used to like the game more when I had to think about what items to wear not this well nothing is better then the set gear. As a templar I only wear 4 pieces of set gear now because of the fact I have the Avatar BP to make up the crit mit and it has nice base on it to make up for the fact I'm not getting the 6 set bonus. Nerfing the Avatar BP to what you have planed for it will force me to wear the set gear that every single person who cares to raid or has enuff plat to buy is wearing.Also rebalancing charms based on encounter difficuly ACCORDING TO PEOPLE WHO KILL THEM would be a decent way to try and balance them instead of just nerfing them into the ground. Taking more then half of the set bonus away tho will just make it so no one cares about the set bonus of charms.Slippery is right on about the whole perceptions of instanced mob difficulty. Alot of mobs werent killed sooner because they were broken or absolutly rediculous. One of them still is absolutly rediculous and not worth my time but it gets pulled sometimes when everything is locked and empty.

Rageincarnate

08-21-2009, 03:56 PM

<cite>isis23 wrote:</cite><blockquote>ohh yea, i'm sure you would take off your avatar charms for quested ones. And yes it does apply, as it has set a precident that all encounters will be super tough and then toned down.work with them and make suggestions that make sense.<cite>Novusod wrote:</cite><blockquote>I am pretty sure Fyreflyte wants to create a tiered raiding system like we had in RoK. The problem in RoK was that EoF gear was so good high end guilds just jumped over the first tiers and went right into VP and cleared it with few RoK upgrades before getting into VP. It is bad when raid content is cleared a month into an expansion. These nerfs + the item decay coming should prevent that from happening again in TSF. You need to have massive nerfs to current gear for a tiered system to work. Say if TSF has three tiers of Raid gear, then T1 TSF should be better than current gear. But if T1 TSF is better than our best gear now where does T2 and T3 TSF going to going to go? Nerfs now and decay later are the only way to make this work. This is where I beleive SoE is coming from.</blockquote>Guilds, like mine, that jumped through RoK content quickly and cleared VP by january did not do so because their EOF gear was over powered. I was in a high end raid guild in EoF, we were not killing avatars until RoK, but cleared every instance in EoF and i can tell you now, that going into RoK i was upgrading my EoF FABLED gear for TREASURED simply because it was better. By the time i was 80 i remember thinking to myself how silly i felt cause all my gear was legendary and treasured, and the only piece of fabled raided gear i retained was my Dark Orb of the Mind. Everything else was replaced by quest rewards and crap drops from instances. It was not our "over powered EoF gear" that made us mow over that content. Gear doesnt make scripts easy to figure out or disciplined raid forces-- it just makes us perform better and your example does not apply as most my other guild mates were also upgrading to treasured and legendary as well.Hina80 Warlock</blockquote>

LardLord

08-21-2009, 04:29 PM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think the difference between an avatar-killing force and instance-only guilds that kill ykesha and anashti (admittedly, there's -very- few instance guilds of this caliber) are smaller than most people expect.</blockquote>There's a pretty big gap in both DPS and survivability areas in my opinion, but the gap is created mainly just by charms, crit mit, and a few select items (Evil robe, Symbol of the Faydark...a few others). The idea to just seemingly randomly nerf anything dropping from avatars was obviously not the best move, but hopefully they'll fix it.

UNTILitSLEEPS

08-21-2009, 05:02 PM

very nice post(s) slipi would like to ad my ideas about the two (plate)tank bpsaITEM 1776801693 2011444575:Breastplate of Valor/acomes of the good avatars and should be the best bp for tanking the hardest mobs (but it is not)its like much worse copy of the evil avatar bp and (even in its live version) worse than the set bpsthe proc~800-1kmit (much worse then the 5% reduced damage of the seething hatred bp and the set bps)15 se2.1k hateduration is only 10sec with a procrate of 1.8the hate proc is insignificant and could be removedthe se should be increased to 20%the mit increasing part of the proc should be changed to at least 5% reduced damage the duration upped to 20-25 secondsinstead of the 8da it should have 5% accuracy because hitrate is the thing a tank in defstance lacks most and high da can be found on various items a tank using ths bp would wear (ykesha shield(7), ykesha belt (7), anashti ear(7) -notice these are all instance dropped items being the best for their slot <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />&nbsp<img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />with these changes it may be viable for tanking the hard stuff while using the 6 remaining armor slots for 6 set bonusbut still not op compared to the set bps (having no static (blue)stats but hitrate and no specific bonus and the defensive capabilities as a proc compared to the static dmg reduce of the set bps)i would still only use it to tank munzok and prefer my set bp for everything else (since seething hatred wont f****** drop)aITEM 1477297102 -1805258309:[Breastplate of Seething Hatred]/athe proc of its current versions on live and testserver is defensivly and offensively better than the proc of the bp of valor and has a 50% longer durationi suggest to remove all defensive bonuses (hate proc, shield effectiveness, 5%reduced damage, 10 base taunt)keep the 7spell and melee critreduce the static basedmg to 5 (but spell and ca)for the proc:keep the 20% castspeed and the damage proc (procs got nerfed and cast speed is not op for tanks)either add 5 (ca and spell) basedmg and reduce the duration to 10 secor add 5 (melee and spell) crit bonus and increase the duration to 20 secthat would in my opinion be a very in line and not overpowered version of the offensive bp

Hina

08-21-2009, 05:18 PM

<cite>bluedego wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>ohh yea, i'm sure you would take off your avatar charms for quested ones. And yes it does apply, as it has set a precident that all encounters will be super tough and then toned down.work with them and make suggestions that make sense.</cite><blockquote><cite>Novusod wrote:</cite><blockquote>I am pretty sure Fyreflyte wants to create a tiered raiding system like we had in RoK. The problem in RoK was that EoF gear was so good high end guilds just jumped over the first tiers and went right into VP and cleared it with few RoK upgrades before getting into VP. It is bad when raid content is cleared a month into an expansion. These nerfs + the item decay coming should prevent that from happening again in TSF. You need to have massive nerfs to current gear for a tiered system to work. Say if TSF has three tiers of Raid gear, then T1 TSF should be better than current gear. But if T1 TSF is better than our best gear now where does T2 and T3 TSF going to going to go? Nerfs now and decay later are the only way to make this work. This is where I beleive SoE is coming from.</blockquote>isis23 wrote:Guilds, like mine, that jumped through RoK content quickly and cleared VP by january did not do so because their EOF gear was over powered. I was in a high end raid guild in EoF, we were not killing avatars until RoK, but cleared every instance in EoF and i can tell you now, that going into RoK i was upgrading my EoF FABLED gear for TREASURED simply because it was better. By the time i was 80 i remember thinking to myself how silly i felt cause all my gear was legendary and treasured, and the only piece of fabled raided gear i retained was my Dark Orb of the Mind. Everything else was replaced by quest rewards and crap drops from instances. It was not our "over powered EoF gear" that made us mow over that content. Gear doesnt make scripts easy to figure out or disciplined raid forces-- it just makes us perform better and your example does not apply as most my other guild mates were also upgrading to treasured and legendary as well.Hina80 Warlock</blockquote></blockquote>Im not sure i understand what your argument with my statement is. All I was stating was that it was not EoF gear that made RoK clearable in such short order. I was not referring to our current gear whatsoever and just correcting the misinformation in Novusod's post. Novusod was comparing what happened between EoF and RoK as justification for the proposed nerfs and the arguement has no validity whatsoever as EoF gear had nothing to do with RoK being cleared.Nice post on the whole slippery, thanks for taking the time to make a well thought out post that basically sums up every post i, and many of us, have made and then some. Hina80 Warlock

Tehom

08-21-2009, 05:24 PM

<cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think the difference between an avatar-killing force and instance-only guilds that kill ykesha and anashti (admittedly, there's -very- few instance guilds of this caliber) are smaller than most people expect.</blockquote>There's a pretty big gap in both DPS and survivability areas in my opinion, but the gap is created mainly just by charms, crit mit, and a few select items (Evil robe, Symbol of the Faydark...a few others). The idea to just seemingly randomly nerf anything dropping from avatars was obviously not the best move, but hopefully they'll fix it.</blockquote>I could agree with that. My feeling was the rarity of the overpowered items largely restricted how much stronger an avatar force is over an instanced one, once both begin to max out on set gear. The avatar geared force is definitely stronger, there's no denying that... but how much stronger is kind of based on luck. I don't think they get that yet, or at least don't grasp which items are the problem ones. Symbol of the Faydark is probably the strongest item on the good table by a mile, and they didn't touch its proc. I'm grateful for that, but it does seem to indicate they don't really realize which items are the strong ones, when you see the priest chests get the same nerfs as Robe of the Disciple.I think some of the problem could be erased by upgrading umzok's charms and merging the silly ones that clutter the loot table (accuracy with blademaster, control with destruction), making MMB a 3 day lockout, putting the symbol of the faydark proc on a new high end priest drop, and improving mage itemization so that so much doesn't depend on one robe.

Korrupt

08-21-2009, 05:32 PM

Why do people think the mage robe is some godmode dps machine? It is a nice robe, and in line as an upgrade over set robes(at least for sorcerors). The dps difference between an avatar robe wearing sorc and a set robe wearing sorc is maybe 2k, not the 10k people would have you believe. And that is a very generous estimation on sorcerors, summoners and chanters gain less. So even if all the mages in a raid had this "super robe", we're talking 4 chanters 3 sorces, you're gaining a little over 10k raid dps. This is not game breaking at all.If you want to question my numbers they come from experience. I have no avatar gear other than charms and raid with a warlock that does have the robe and a few other pieces of avatar gear. She is ahead of me in dps output but only by a couple thousand on average, not this MASSIVE jump people keep referring to.

Heelo

08-21-2009, 05:39 PM

These gear nerfs are frustrating to say the least. Even more so for us that play on a pvp server because the encounters are contested by pvp. We have fought over these mobs days at a time and believe me I wouldn't trade if for anything. It's just kind of disappointing that all this great gear we've fought so hard to get is getting nerfed down to instance loot quality. To sum it up most of you don't know what its like to be truly contested. But even with the nerfs on pvp it will always be contested > instance content.

Ge'Sar

08-21-2009, 05:47 PM

Quicksilver74

08-21-2009, 06:05 PM

Nice post slippery!

arant

08-21-2009, 06:22 PM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think the difference between an avatar-killing force and instance-only guilds that kill ykesha and anashti (admittedly, there's -very- few instance guilds of this caliber) are smaller than most people expect.</blockquote>There's a pretty big gap in both DPS and survivability areas in my opinion, but the gap is created mainly just by charms, crit mit, and a few select items (Evil robe, Symbol of the Faydark...a few others). The idea to just seemingly randomly nerf anything dropping from avatars was obviously not the best move, but hopefully they'll fix it.</blockquote>I could agree with that. My feeling was the rarity of the overpowered items largely restricted how much stronger an avatar force is over an instanced one, once both begin to max out on set gear. The avatar geared force is definitely stronger, there's no denying that... but how much stronger is kind of based on luck. I don't think they get that yet, or at least don't grasp which items are the problem ones. Symbol of the Faydark is probably the strongest item on the good table by a mile, and they didn't touch its proc. I'm grateful for that, but it does seem to indicate they don't really realize which items are the strong ones, when you see the priest chests get the same nerfs as Robe of the Disciple.I think some of the problem could be erased by upgrading umzok's charms and merging the silly ones that clutter the loot table (accuracy with blademaster, control with destruction), making MMB a 3 day lockout, putting the symbol of the faydark proc on a new high end priest drop, and improving mage itemization so that so much doesn't depend on one robe.</blockquote>The biggest difference between the avatar geared vs non-geared guilds for the purposes of dps and survivability is skill of the overall raid force more then anything. All the gear did was allow the top raid guilds to go from 8-9 healer stacked raids to 5-6 healers and clear content faster. The bulk of the content only required the raid needing about 4 pieces of crit mit to survive as dps, the tank 1-2 pieces more. The hardest aspect of the encounters was surviving 1-shot AE's especially combined with all the other affects mob got. Even in 7 piece crit mit a mage can get dropped if others aren't doing what they are supposed to. The gear helps but its not make or break.I wish SoE would make a different version of a raid zone when they implement mob nerfs so people have the opportunity to see how difficult some of these encounters were to begin with pre-nerf.

Pogopuschel

08-21-2009, 06:54 PM

Dumb changes for the most part.I'd elaborate why, but those who agree already know why, and those who could actually do anything about it would never get it anyway.

Coen

08-21-2009, 07:43 PM

what exactly did avatar capable guilds do to deserve this nerf? proc changes hurt us enough as is. stop the bleeding before its to late.

and0ra77

08-21-2009, 09:02 PM

Nice post Slippery!!! Hope all you devs take his post and work with the avatar killing community if you want to retain us all.

Gisallo

08-21-2009, 09:09 PM

<cite>Coen wrote:</cite><blockquote>what exactly did avatar capable guilds do to deserve this nerf? proc changes hurt us enough as is. stop the bleeding before its to late.</blockquote>Well, Kiara said she was going to find an answer to this, indirectly, when I asked why the Degredation system (as proposed) would not be adequete. I certainly am trying to wait patiently for the response to this query.Without such an answer though only one logical thought comes to mind. Avatar killing guilds are rare. I did some digging and found an approximately average of 13 guilds per server participating in TSO raid instance progression. This is using the raid progression lists from the "other" forum. Of those there is really only 1-3 guilds per server that are going after Avatars. This places the Avatar raiding guilds in a clear minority. If you have A LOT on your plate and a deadline to meet sometimes you need to take a short cut that does the least amount of damage in big picture terms. While this may do a lot of damage to those going after Avatars, it is doing so to a VERY small minority so Fyre may have simply said "I have enough headaches dealing with a degredation that is going to effect 98%+ of the player base, so that 1-2% is going to have to take a nerf bat."It also makes sense IF we take what was said at Fan Faire at face value regarding narrowing the gaps between the types of player. If the intent of the new expansion is to narrow the gaps between the various types of "player" this clearly has to involve gear, not just being able to get into the door of an instance. Sorry but when people say "I want to see the Anashti" what everyone knows they are really saying is "I want to kill him and get that uber loot drop because I am tired of so and so spamming level chat with something I can't get", they are NOT saying "I just want to immerse myself in the game." If they understood immersion in the context of the world they would know that running into Anashti wearing a mix of legendary and Mastercrafted is NOT the best idea, she is a Goddess after all. In order to do this "narrowing of the gap" some gear would have to be nerfed straight away, degredation would not take care of it in time. Now as I have said in the past this is just speculation. But what else do you have to go on when you don't have enough information to put changes into the correct context.

Ge'Sar

08-21-2009, 09:57 PM

<cite>Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Coen wrote:</cite><blockquote>what exactly did avatar capable guilds do to deserve this nerf? proc changes hurt us enough as is. stop the bleeding before its to late.</blockquote>Well, Kiara said she was going to find an answer to this, indirectly, when I asked why the Degredation system (as proposed) would not be adequete. I certainly am trying to wait patiently for the response to this query.Without such an answer though only one logical thought comes to mind. Avatar killing guilds are rare. I did some digging and found an approximately average of 13 guilds per server participating in TSO raid instance progression. This is using the raid progression lists from the "other" forum. Of those there is really only 1-3 guilds per server that are going after Avatars. This places the Avatar raiding guilds in a clear minority. If you have A LOT on your plate and a deadline to meet sometimes you need to take a short cut that does the least amount of damage in big picture terms. While this may do a lot of damage to those going after Avatars, it is doing so to a VERY small minority so Fyre may have simply said "I have enough headaches dealing with a degredation that is going to effect 98%+ of the player base, so that 1-2% is going to have to take a nerf bat."It also makes sense IF we take what was said at Fan Faire at face value regarding narrowing the gaps between the types of player. If the intent of the new expansion is to narrow the gaps between the various types of "player" this clearly has to involve gear, not just being able to get into the door of an instance. Sorry but when people say "I want to see the Anashti" what everyone knows they are really saying is "I want to kill him and get that uber loot drop because I am tired of so and so spamming level chat with something I can't get", they are NOT saying "I just want to immerse myself in the game." If they understood immersion in the context of the world they would know that running into Anashti wearing a mix of legendary and Mastercrafted is NOT the best idea, she is a Goddess after all. In order to do this "narrowing of the gap" some gear would have to be nerfed straight away, degredation would not take care of it in time. Now as I have said in the past this is just speculation. But what else do you have to go on when you don't have enough information to put changes into the correct context.</blockquote>See, i see this, and in my brain it translate to : They want noobs and unskilled idiots to get as much as the players who work hard. This is a ride at disney land, the roller coaster goes to the same places for everyone.

EQbluetalon

08-21-2009, 10:29 PM

Many posters have it right on with this untimely and unfortunate nerf..The avatar guilds, those that have put in the time and worked harder than anyone, see the hardest hit from this by far.SOE, well namely Brenlo and FF and Aeralik and so on, truly believe they can play percentages and dish out limited pain while catering to the casuals. Hence the bonus AA weekend, right after they went straight for the jugular to hardcore raiders. Naturally, they're looking to distract the "greater swath" of players with this bonus while the high-end still rightfully cries foul.So while the many high-enders from Avatar guilds, many of whom have spent an entire year chasing these upgrades and for valid reason, they were very, very powerful. THAT IS the whole idea! When you have 28, 30, even 36 man real avatar guild rosters, these items often don't get overly spread out. There's a prolonged DKP battle, or prolonged back-and-forth with leaders assigning this one here, that one there, and so on. It often takes a considerable, indeed meaningful amount of time just to get half that so-called overpowered.What SOE is missing here is what one poster on (that other site) said: the ripple effect. That means multiple accounts from high-end raiders, whole guilds collapsing because coreplayer_a and coreplayer_b left and suitable replacements couldn't be found. More players leaving for (new game) and feeling justified. That means many, many middle-tier guilds with plenty of awareness of what the avatar guys are doing, losing much hope for making that jump someday. And, let's be clear: a very healthy percentage of those players in the middle-tier guilds would like to make the switch to hardcore at some point, if time allows or they just get the itch. But as of now, that incentive is gone.We, they, I, you, we all know that the goals at the end of the rainbow are just mirages in the sand. It's an empty oasis. And even if these avatar nerfs are reversed or greatly mitigated because they are clearly horrific and counter-productive to expanding the player base, the intention is already out there. The attempts have already been made, Brenlo has been brought in to stamp it, and here we are facing down the barrel.It is an absolutely classic, timeless display of "moving the goalposts" just to try and fix an already failing endeavor. What they purposefully won't recognize is a true ripple effect of losing so many key people, so many pillars of so many servers, and disheartening those who would later be them, greatly shrinking and over-managing the concept of contested content and "to the victors go the spoils," and on and on. Where they think they can lop off this hangnail of avatar loot being so overpowered (hah!), they're actually cutting off their whole arm without realizing it. And given the incessant, irrepressible urge of Aeralik and the boys to swing the nerf bat in the name of some ambiguous future, the pain will probably spread far past the arm too.::smoke bomb hits:: Hey, enjoy the AA! ::dance music starts::

EQbluetalon

08-21-2009, 10:44 PM

And, let's also be perfectly clear about the future: the toothpaste is out of the tube, gentlemen.Even if you pull back on just how severe these nerfs are, which is clearly the only suitable move left for you to make in the face of a domino-style subscription blowback right at the time of (other new game), you've already let it be known how you deal with things. Future raiders of future expansions will not care nearly as much. Future guilds doing future content in competition while much of the casual population keeps tabs, feeling pride in their home server's dominant guild, cross-server competing and trash talk and comparisons, all of it takes a poison pill.Truly so, so much of this high-end lifeblood gets lopped off there in the future that you don't even realize. When you put in the new loot for Sentinel's, people will expect overpowered and expect a summer nerf. That will mean you're either already locked in, winter-spring, or you're SoL and shouldn't care. Oh, and the contested concept is getting a re-work with this whole "Hole" zone, which screams of further marginalization to avoid later manhours of work. Only because, of course, the only tool you're taking out of the toolbox is the trusty nerf bat.As we all know, naturally, item degradation could occur with the Sentinel's Fate expansion and the level cap raise. Even a moderate t8 Avatar gear nerf could be palatable here, as something expected in due course with a level raise. That's a concept that everyone could understand (compared to this current gear hit-piece) on their way outta the gates towards level 90. It's not the greatest thing in the world, but it would be a fair compromise. This wouldn't cause you to lose a great lot of high-enders and have the natural ripple effects which occur afterward, namely the rest of the playerbase (some of whom are your future high-enders) not feeling like it's even plausible anymore to care about going high-end. That causes an overall drop in the level of "pursuit"of that raid gear and an overall raise in the level of "pursuit" of instance gear already relying on an insidious, ridiculous jackpot lotto system (hey, i'm on my 128th run of Najena's, no ring yet!).That will be EQ2? Until it's time for a few "top" guilds to pick and choose people for some contested mob in The Hole?By moving the goalposts, you're just shrinking the whole playing field -- for the remaining 6 months, at the very least -- for no viable reason. See: gear degradation *80-90 above.

Valanthe

08-21-2009, 11:23 PM

<cite>EQbluetalon wrote:</cite><blockquote>And, let's also be perfectly clear about the future: the toothpaste is out of the tube, gentlemen.Even if you pull back on just how severe these nerfs are, which is clearly the only suitable move left for you to make in the face of a domino-style subscription blowback right at the time of (other new game), you've already let it be known how you deal with things. Future raiders of future expansions will not care nearly as much. Future guilds doing future content in competition while much of the casual population keeps tabs, feeling pride in their home server's dominant guild, cross-server competing and trash talk and comparisons, all of it takes a poison pill.Truly so, so much of this high-end lifeblood gets lopped off there in the future that you don't even realize. When you put in the new loot for Sentinel's, people will expect overpowered and expect a summer nerf. That will mean you're either already locked in, winter-spring, or you're SoL and shouldn't care. Oh, and the contested concept is getting a re-work with this whole "Hole" zone, which screams of further marginalization to avoid later manhours of work. Only because, of course, the only tool you're taking out of the toolbox is the trusty nerf bat.As we all know, naturally, item degradation could occur with the Sentinel's Fate expansion and the level cap raise. Even a moderate t8 Avatar gear nerf could be palatable here, as something expected in due course with a level raise. That's a concept that everyone could understand (compared to this current gear hit-piece) on their way outta the gates towards level 90. It's not the greatest thing in the world, but it would be a fair compromise. This wouldn't cause you to lose a great lot of high-enders and have the natural ripple effects which occur afterward, namely the rest of the playerbase (some of whom are your future high-enders) not feeling like it's even plausible anymore to care about going high-end. That causes an overall drop in the level of "pursuit"of that raid gear and an overall raise in the level of "pursuit" of instance gear already relying on an insidious, ridiculous jackpot lotto system (hey, i'm on my 128th run of Najena's, no ring yet!).That will be EQ2? Until it's time for a few "top" guilds to pick and choose people for some contested mob in The Hole?By moving the goalposts, you're just shrinking the whole playing field -- for the remaining 6 months, at the very least -- for no viable reason. See: gear degradation *80-90 above.</blockquote>Everyone keeps mentioning the Hole; From what I gathered at FanFaire isn't it going to be a Seb/Karnor's/Cardok type contested GROUP dungeon?

Gisallo

08-21-2009, 11:33 PM

<cite>EQbluetalon wrote:</cite><blockquote>It is an absolutely classic, timeless display of "moving the goalposts" just to try and fix an already failing endeavor. What they purposefully won't recognize is a true ripple effect of losing so many key people, so many pillars of so many servers, and disheartening those who would later be them, greatly shrinking and over-managing the concept of contested content and "to the victors go the spoils," and on and on. Where they think they can lop off this hangnail of avatar loot being so overpowered (hah!), they're actually cutting off their whole arm without realizing it. And given the incessant, irrepressible urge of Aeralik and the boys to swing the nerf bat in the name of some ambiguous future, the pain will probably spread far past the arm too.::smoke bomb hits:: Hey, enjoy the AA! ::dance music starts::</blockquote>Talon it could well be this. It could also simply be that Fyreflyte doesn't quite understand the effects of the changes either, thats the other half of the problem. He's already said that he thinks additional range is something uber (its not) to justify some nerfs. He also admitted a few months ago that he didn't realize that +spell damage would enhance the damage that poison wielding scouts do and so had to do quick changes when T3 came out so rogues and preds would wear the class specific sets he intended them to wear.The problem is we do not know. We don't know if some of these changes are being done because Fyre doesn't know what effects they ahve in real play, or if these changes are part of some other ambiguous agenda. To say its one or the other is little more than speculation. If SOE is serious about us providing input then they need to tell us what their goals are. They are making this game so if they say "our goal is to narrow the distance between hard core and casuals" and they are adamant, then all we can do is give our views on how to accomplish this with the least damage or take our subscription fees elsewhere, at least then we can make an informed decision and having informed consumers is always better for the long term health of a business isn't it Devs?

Gaige

08-21-2009, 11:50 PM

Sigh.

Gaige

08-22-2009, 12:06 AM

wingedwizard

08-22-2009, 02:08 AM

Would it be so hard to add different stats to the game such as spell double attack or increase base damage caps in the future. there is a better way to make the game fun and this is not it. if your doing this to get the best people out of the game then it looks like u have succeeded.Also instead of making Avatars pointless why not do Progression with avatars. why not spend some time revamping Avatar encounter to make them different and much harder. I mean we are six months out from sf. Give us a reason to stay and make it a challenge. if you want to make avatars available by more guilds make three avatars pop at once. Now that would be fun. As far as reducing crit mit on stuff like others have said we lose the ability to interchange gear.

Mordicus

08-22-2009, 02:21 AM

It is you should check out the <a href="http://sayasun502.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DF5D8DC071D53FEC!166.entry" target="_blank">chinese release</a>

Lizst

08-22-2009, 04:42 AM

Make the changes when the new expansion goes live in february or whenever its dueand you wont lose a ton of subscriptions.Adding these nerfs now is pure and simple a slap in the face to those that haveinvested a massive amount of time to aquire the items metioned.

krrr

08-22-2009, 08:27 AM

<cite>Gage wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote>Even with the rating system going in (I assume this is the "hammering" referred to in the first quote), many of these pieces would have been better than the top end loot at level 90. Certain stats like Base Damage were added in such large portions to the avatar gear that a player could max them out, when previously the highest they could hope to attain was ~10-15%. This increase was simply too large, and even cutting it by 3x (the decrease at level 90), certain avatar gear would remain the best piece in its slot.</blockquote>Thanks for confirming that lvl 90 raid loot will be worse than current raid gear is. I'm glad I saved months of subscription costs. Since we're obviously the best we can be right now, and come next GU and even all of SF we have nowhere to progress to.Great game design btw!</blockquote>QFE.With that answer you just told every hardcore raider that they will not get to same level of power they are now when they get to level 90 and also that there is really no point in playing for next 6 months (because there will be no upgrades to our gear or they will be minimal at best).As I said multiple times before (when same nerf was proposed earlier, and when proc nerf was rolled out): please wait for expansion release. Yes it will be bad for us too, yes there will be negetive things too, but not so much as right now. Or even better: make gear degradation system scale down every stat on item, and make curve much more steep.But then again, I don't expect any part of my post being read and considered. You already prooven how much you care about feedback.

Noaani

08-22-2009, 08:41 AM

<cite>Darlock@Runnyeye wrote:</cite><blockquote>But then again, I don't expect any part of my post being read and considered. You already prooven how much you care about feedback.</blockquote>When the feedback is a suggestion to do something they rejected before even proposing the idea to players, why would you expect them to consider it again?

Gaige

08-22-2009, 10:59 AM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote>When the feedback is a suggestion to do something they rejected before even proposing the idea to players, why would you expect them to consider it again?</blockquote>Intelligence. They need to make some sort of concentrated effort to show their playerbase that they a) know what they're doing and b) are doing it with foresight and c) the huge punishment the playerbase is going to experience won't be repeated multiple times in the future.These are all problems that itemization has had since launch, and they're all things that SOE has tried to address multiple times. First through diminishing returns, then through adding Fyreflyte to the team, etc etc.Has ANY of the numerous nerfs the players have had to deal with ever led to a fulfilling itemization system?NO.The players have dealt with nerf after nerf, mechanics change after mechanics change and for what? Nothing, because the EXACT SAME stuff happens every expansion.The problem is with the DESIGNERS not with the MECHANICS. The designers continue to make items that are irreplaceable they continue to make items that everyone knows are too good and they continue to show they have no idea how their game actually works.Take the base damage and the bloodthirsty choker for example: They didn't even realize why it was so good. They had no idea that base damage affected poisons and procs. They even went so far as to start adding base damage to LEGENDARY gear.Then, this:<div><cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote>Certain stats like Base Damage were added in such large portions to the avatar gear that a player could max them out, when previously the highest they could hope to attain was ~10-15%. This increase was simply too large, and even cutting it by 3x (the decrease at level 90), certain avatar gear would remain the best piece in its slot.</blockquote>I also like how he purposely forgets that base damage was added all over TSO, from legendary gear to avatar gear and portrays it as an avatar gear only problem. After TWO expansions of everyone wearing the choker and numerous posts about it, what do they do? They add MORE base damage items to the game. Even though Fyreflyte says himself "previously the highest you could hope to attain is 10% ~ 15%". He acts like the items made themselves. HE MADE THEM. The TEAM made them. Stuff like this isn't the player's fault. Its the team's fault. Continual design ignorance and a lack of the future of the game results in the mechanics changing every expansion and months of player's time wasted.I don't even care about the avatar gear nerfs. My main complaint is knowing that if I play for the next 6 months and then continue to play through all of SF I will never get any better than I am now. The only way that would be possible is for them to add a new series of bonuses, but if they do that they'll obviously go insane with it, adding it to everything, capping it and then realizing a year later that whoops we have nowhere to go with itemization we will need to be nerfing all of your stuff.I mean seriously, If avatar gear with 10% base damage decreased by THREE TIMES is still better than SF gear then uh? Woop ti do, really get me excited for SF.I'm simply TIRED of paying for their mistakes. I'm TIRED of months of work thrown away at a whim because of their continual inability to do their jobs.I've forgiven them more times than I care to remember for shoddy and lackluster itemization, I've grinned and beared it when they kicked me in my teeth with huge loot nerfs or new systems designed to reign me in and make sure that no matter how good I am I'm not too good. I'm getting tired of doing it.However, on top of all of that, for them to blatantly tell us that no matter how much we play SF we're never going to get better than we are now? Its like they don't even understand how MMOs work. The carrot. They're basically saying: Hey there is no carrot, you'll never be able to progress your character again, but at least you'll be a higher level and killing different mobs.PROGRESSION is the reason people play MMOs. If it wasn't we could all be level 1 forever and there would be no difference between killing a rat and killing a dragon. Players want to be heroes, they want to be legendary, they want to do things no one else can do. That is why we play these games.Its like SOE is saying "Hey, you guys won the game. There is still Miragul's Planar Shard, but we all know even if you waste hours and hours beating it the only gear worthwhile will be nerfed and you'll end up right where you are just with some more pixels dead. Thanks for playing EQ2!!"Instead of nerfing avatar gear remove them and retroactively remove their gear. Make everything instanced and by that I mean everything.That of course won't fix the horrid itemization, but it'll remove one more excuse from your vocabulary and I think that would be worth it.</div>

Pogopuschel

08-22-2009, 11:18 AM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote>Even with the rating system going in (I assume this is the "hammering" referred to in the first quote), many of these pieces would have been better than the top end loot at level 90. Certain stats like Base Damage were added in such large portions to the avatar gear that a player could max them out, when previously the highest they could hope to attain was ~10-15%. This increase was simply too large, and even cutting it by 3x (the decrease at level 90), certain avatar gear would remain the best piece in its slot.</blockquote>This is quite the jokeSince early RoK there has been an overabundance of stats like crit and DA. Before, in EoF, DA was something people drooled over which made the chain bracers from Contested Mayong an item to be desired by any class who could wear it. People have raised their concerns back then, about the plethora of DA/crit on everything. Uh oh, players could get to cap (depending on class) mid/late RoK.Well duh, instead of learning from that, same thing happened with +base this expansion. Oh no, players (depending on class) got to cap. SEEN THAT COMING.All you do with this nerf is throw the balance of risk vs. reward further out of whack than it is. Few pieces on the avatar table are overpowered and would need nerfing, and hey there's still all that T7 crap that was even more overpowered, but it never got addressed.What you are doing is too much, and too late. It is unnecessary mid-expansion, and the gear degradation next expac would fix it anyway for the most part. And worse, because these days eq2 development seems to be reactionary rather than planning ahead, I doubt this is the last gear design mistake we've seen. Wonder how many will stop to care watching. Few quitters suffice to make guilds and people whose main motivation to keep playing this game was the guild bond crumble.

Gaige

08-22-2009, 11:23 AM

Ya its weird they never nerfed things like the T7 stoneskin boots from avatars which are ridiculous and still the best but they feel the need to destroy TSO avatar gear.I also like how capping base damage is the fault of avatar gear and not legendary shoulders having 8% base damage or T4 shoulders having 12% base damage.Nope, only avatar gear is breaking the game!

Stonestrong

08-22-2009, 11:28 AM

Guys what are you getting so upset about? I mean we are only the people who play the game and pay the subs, it doesn't really matter what we want. I mean Brenlo and company have it all figured out and we should just let them do their thing and accept whatever terrible vision it is they have for the game.You guys act like they have ever actually told us they would listen to the playerbase or take feedback..........Oh wait

Tri-Ace

08-22-2009, 11:41 AM

At least put the +Combart Art Damage BACK on the Charm of Rallos Zek. Maybe not the full +175 (Beacause , you know, it's SO game breaking!) but +100 minimum. And bump the 2 set bonus up to 5-7%...

Homeskillet

08-22-2009, 12:47 PM

Stop Lack of Foresight, Poor Itemization Planning, and Predictable Backpeddling in 09'YES WE CAN.

Hypnottic

08-22-2009, 12:51 PM

Think of all the time you have wasted on this bogus nerf. You could have spent that time being creative with the new loot instead. This expac has gone from amazing to mediocre with the mechanics nerfs already put into place.I urge the development team to move on from TSO and look ahead to the expansion. Spend your time doing a good job on itemization for the next round.You honestly can't tell a level 80 player that his gear is gonna be better then level 90 gear. This just means you need to go back to the table and figure out a new game plan because the current one is obviously a joke.

ShamusOB

08-22-2009, 12:53 PM

<cite>Tri-Ace wrote:</cite><blockquote>At least put the +Combart Art Damage BACK on the Charm of Rallos Zek. Maybe not the full +175 (Beacause , you know, it's SO game breaking!) but +100 minimum. And bump the 2 set bonus up to 5-7%...</blockquote>If +100 CA damage is SO OP and couldnt be on the zek charm please explain to me why it can be on a charm from a [Removed for Content] x2 mob?? Its called Kurns Anger I believe.Your making the new kurns x2 loot better then avatar gear? or was that an oversite aswell because you didn't look at all items? You just assumed that Avatar gear is the problem when its maby only 1/3 of your actual problem with the game but your punishing the people who try harder to take avatars.When all of the talent is continually quitting the game (your fault) finding suitable replacements is [Removed for Content] near impossible youll have to make everything tank and spank. No strats or thinking or skill required. The good players are leaving this game so fast and guilds are forced to get mediocre players and hope they get good over time.

ShamusOB

08-22-2009, 01:00 PM

<cite>Gage wrote:</cite><blockquote>Ya its weird they never nerfed things like the T7 stoneskin boots from avatars which are ridiculous and still the best but they feel the need to destroy TSO avatar gear.I also like how capping base damage is the fault of avatar gear and not legendary shoulders having 8% base damage or T4 shoulders having 12% base damage.Nope, only avatar gear is breaking the game!</blockquote>Or how about they never nerfed the choker! Super great idea when everyone who knows the game better then you DEVs tells you it is rediculous OP and easy to get and almost impossible to replace.

Korrupt

08-22-2009, 02:19 PM

Ok you win soe. Avatar gear is overpowered and needs to be nerfed. I would like to take this time to point out a few things.Najena's ring of readiness and it's counterpart in kurns X2 are on par with avatar gear and needs to be nerfed. The set bonuses on T4 gear are on par with avatar gear and need to be nerfed. The shoulder items in specific for sorcerors are beyond avatar level and need to be nerfed. Same with the symbol from kurns X2. Lets see, the bangle of portals from PoF. The charm that gives anyone an evac, yeah thats OP too, lets nerf that too. Lets do a 33% nerf to every stat on every item in the game so that all this gear that threatens next expansion is put back in line.Now you can take that as a joke, but in all actuality, there are many items just as powerful as avatar gear in game and nobody is saying a word about them. If avatar gear is so OP how the heck can you justify the naj rings and other extreme items found in heroic instances. How can you justify the amazing set bonuses and set pieces that virtually anyone can get at a much faster rate than avatar gear. If gear is OP and threatens next expansion, then break out the bat and hit everything, dont be selective to 1 style of gameplay.

littlesalty

08-22-2009, 03:03 PM

Okay - This post took me some time to type, and has some specific examples in and statistics, so I hope it will attract the attention of Devs and other appropriate people.Avatar Loot NerfI'm going to be honest, this has been implimented on test quite poorly. By looking at the items it seems the changes havn't been thought through very well. I will show this by giving specific examples :aITEM 890003760 1364125776:[Enchanted Dagger of the Warmaster]/a - Drops off Evil avatars. On test it is changed so the top end damage is reduced to 370, the proc damage reduced, and the accuracy is changed from 5 to 2.Now, comparing this with other drops gives an obvious view of how unneccesary this change is.First - aITEM 1586908060 1407254121:[Empowered Talon of Milyex]/a - Drops off Tangrin, an contested mob from the previous expansion. When the nerf hits, the stats will be almost identical, except the Talon will have a BIGGER spread than the Dagger. Nerfing an item to the point where it is equal, or worse, than an item from an easier mob from the previous expansion really boggles my mind, it is unneccesary and the change needs to be reversed. A weapon from an RoK contested should NOT be hitting harder than a weapon off TSO evil avatars.Second - aITEM -675216989 1618480180:[Ethereal Sabre of the Voidbeast]/a - Drops off Absatalius, the third mob in Palace of the ancient one. The top end damage on this will be higher than the nerfed enchanted dagger. This goes compeltley against progression. Abstatalius is ALOT easier than ANY evil avatars, and has 5 items on his loot table vs 11 from evil avatars, and can be killed every 3 days, when evil avatars can only be killed on average every ~4 days.Third - aITEM 2128041592 630098302:[Strategist's Field Dagger]/a - Drops off Field General in Ykeshas Inner Stronghold. This mob is about as hard as evil avatars on average, perhaps slightly tougher, but generally for most classes, the Field Dagger is a better choice(slightly) than the Enchanted Dagger, from perhaps a slightly tougher mob. However, due to field general being able to be farmed more, and having a smaller loot table and being UNCONTESTED, you will see alot more of this dagger, than the avatar dagger.Overall - the Enchanted Dagger of the Warmaster was already balanced, and requires no change, especially as harsh as the propsed one.Extra information : My guild has been farming evil avatars for as long as just about every other avatar killing guild and our server has seen a total of ONE of these daggers, showing it to be extremley rare, and therefore deffinitley not in need of a nerf.Instance loot vs Avatar loot / Risk vs RewardI'm presuming that the majority of these changes were done because avatars are "easier" than instance mobs, therefore require lesser loot. Well this is completley innacurate. Lets see some more examples :"Harder" Instance mobsInstanced Anashti Sul :aITEM 1832562875 132799283:[Hoop of Darkened Desolation]/a - The best scout ear in the game.aITEM 1720964776 -1333938582:[Tainted Ring of Anashti's Will]/a - The best Tank ring in the game.aITEM -158818192 -1875782652:[Belt of the Desolate One]/a - The best mage belt in the game.This is 60% of Anashti's loot table, being the best loot in the game, while the other 40% argueabley have a place on that list too.Ykesha :aITEM 1236844284 554059110:Band of Mreeptahp's Fury/a - The best priest ring in the game.aITEM 1604283493 -762602609:[Brace of Ykeshan Dominance]/a - The best fighter wrist in the game.aITEM 2054040860 -558659447:[Girdle of Ykesha's Gold Lust]/a - The best scout belt in the game.aITEM 1382379950 2038430570:[Strapped Belt of Ykeshan Rage]/a - The best Fighter belt in the game.aITEM -1046576652 -2095354493:[Ykeshan Battle Guard]/a - The best Shield in the game.As you can see, Ykesha(being arguabley the second hardest mob this expansion) has 100% of his loot table being THE BEST possible loot you can obtain, better than anything an avatar (arguabley easier) drops. This shows no adjustment to avatar loot is required, because avatars don't actually have anything better to replace what Ykesha has.So all of this loot, which is the best for each slot, is off harder mobs than avatars, and is better loot than avatars. Unless you plan to put 20+ item drops one each of these harder mobs to fill every slot, then it will be 100% IMPOSSIBLE to make ALL the best gear drop off the HARDEST mobs.Looking at the other end of the spectrum - some easier mobs.Mynzak :aITEM 1845057975 361298211:[Blackened Pearlescent Bangle]/a - A substancially easier mob than any avatar, yet he drops the best priest wrist in the game. Why is he dropping this item if you plan to have everything fit in with progression? I'm not crying out for a nerf to it, I'm 100% happy and fine with Mynzak dropping this item. It is just to emphisize the point that avatar gear as it is NOW is FINE, you can't possibly make the hardest one or two mobs drop the best peice of loot for EVERY slot, you have to balance it out - like it is now.Even if you look at pattern dropping easy start of progression mobs such asStrange Stalker :He drops a glove pattern, the best thing you can get in that particular slot for 90%+ of classes. I have access to 99% of the loot in game right now. If I had in my inventory, every single peice of loot, I'd still use my class gloves from Stalker, because they are the BEST I can get, from an easy easy mob.I mean, imagine if you perfectly balanced the loot out among the nameds, easiest dropping the worse loot, and hardest dropping the best loot. Since each mob(other than avatars) only has 5-6 items on their loot table, meaning you can't fill every slot from the harder mobs. You'd be wearing a ring with like 4 double attack on from easiest mob and then wearing a ring with 80 double attack on from the hardest mob, at the same time. It just doesn't make any sense unless you want to give the hardest mob 20+ drops to fill every single slot with the best loot in the game.Rarity of ItemsInstances(other than MMB) can be reset every 3 days, while avatars spawn every 3-5 days(giving an average of 4).So that already makes item's off avatars more rare. Add in the fact that avatars have 11 drops per loot table and instance mobs have about 5-6 drops per loot table. It becomes quite clear that each avatar item is extremley rare. Add in the fact I can farm instances on my alts to get the item, and the fact that these mobs are CONTESTED, so you may not actually get the kill each spawn, it becomes very very apparent that the amount of these items entering the world is very controlled, making these items very valuable, and therefore they HAVE to be powerful items. Changing them to the degree they have been changes, especially NINE MONTHS, into the expansion is compeltley unnessecary. We have farmed instanced anashti less than we have farmed evil avatars, and every one of our mages, and loads of alts have the belt she drops. Yet only 3 of our mages have the robe that avatars drop. Notice a difference there? the robe is alot RARER and therefore is harder to obtain, and therefore SHOULD be very powerful, even if it is more powerful than intended to be nine months ago, people have planend their guilds, DKP, RL cash, around items such as this, and changing that nine months down the line is deffinitley not acceptable by any means.If the average spawn time of an evil avatar is 4 days, and you farm every single one every 4 days of a year, you end up with ~91 evil avatar kills. Now since they have 11 drops, on perfect average you will get ~8 robes per year. That isn't enough to cover all of the mages in a guild. This item(and all other avatar items) are just coming into the world at an extremley controlled rate, and don't need to be adjusted.Avatar CharmsThis is the only part of avatars I find overpowered and possible in need of a change. Not because of the stats and effects on them, but because of how many are coming into the world. They drop 100% of the time, while the other avatar items have a ~9% chance to drop. This is the overpowring aspect of it. I think, this far into an expansion, altering these charms would be unacceptable, considering the DKP / leadership assignment of guilds who have these charms, and gear planning specific players have done to obtain them. I did however think of a few fixes that could possible be considered.Charm FixesSimply lower the drop rate of the charms, make it not drop every single time, make it drop 1 in 2 times, or even 1 in 3, but don't edit the charm this far down the line.Create charms for the more difficult instanced mobs. For example:Ykesha could have three charms on his loot table. Offensive charm of Ykesha, Defensive charm of Ykesha and Neutral Charm of Ykesha. These will also have a set bonus and could be paired up with drops off say, Anashti, for example. Who would drop something like. Offensive charm of Anashti etc... This fix removes the need for the avatar charms to be adjusted, adds something for "instance players" to get, and gives something extra to the more difficult mobs in the expansion, rather than just tearing everything away from the "easier" ones 9 months later... Due to each mob having 3 charm drops, it would also take away it dropping everytime, making it not overpowered, and adding a rarity aspect to each charm. Each charm would of course be comparable to avatar charms.This next idea is my favourite idea, and one I really hope will be considered(and it would be nice to have feedback from other people on it!)Create Charm Patterns from mobs such as Munzok, Miragul, Ykesha and Anashti. These "charm patterns" would just be like the TSO set peice patterns only they are class specific charms. This allows some diversity to be brought into the game, aswell as boosting the reward from the harder mobs, and rejecting the need to adjust current avatar items.For example - Anashti and Miragul might drop Shadow Charm pattern and Munzok and Ykesha might drop Shadow Trinket Pattern. These would be the two patterns to create the charms(by void shards and plat aswell.)The charms would of course be class specific. Each charm would have a Focus effect on it, like the chest and legs, aswell as a 2 set bonus for getting 2 charms! I thought of a few specific examples.Warden :Trinket - would have similar resists, health and power to the avatar charms. 7 heal crit - 5 ability reuse - and a focus effect. Such as "Focus :Healstorm - grants a chance to cure a hostile effect when healstorm is cast"Charm - would have similar resists. health and power to the avatar charms. 150 heal amount - 3 heal crit bonus - and a focus effect. Such as "Focus :Essence of the Great Bear - Adds 700 health to Essence of the Great Bear"Then the 2 set bonus could be something like "Focus Instinct - Modifies instinct to make it groupwide!"Assassin :Trinket - would have similar resists, health and power to the avatar charms. 5 Melee crit chance - 5 Melee crit bonus - and a focus effect. Such as "Focus: Death mark - Adds three triggers to death mark"Charm - would have similar resists, health and power to the avatar charms. 5 Double attack chance - 5 Base CA damage - and a focus effect such as "Focus : Murderous Design - Adds 10% additional hate transfer to murderous design".Then the 2 set bonus could be something like "CA double attack 5! - Allows caster to double attack on 5% of combat arts"Things like this could add diversity to classes and also gives people something else to obtain in the charm slots instead of avatar charms.OverallI don't think avatar gear needs adjusted, for the reasons i've stated, especially this far into the expansion, except the charms could drop less often, and instanced charms could be added.Thanks alot for reading if you made it all the way through!

Necs

08-22-2009, 03:34 PM

I love how some people say if this nerf goes through that alot of the "high end" avatar killing people would leave. Do you really think SoE cares? There's 22 servers, on most servers there is one guild that has avatars on lock down. Lets be generous and say 40 people per server are the "high end" avatar killing guilds. If all those people quit thats around 880 people out of say 150,000 subscribed players. I doubt the "high end" people crying about these nerfs will do anything to change the minds of the dev's. Or maybe in some case they might not nerf but tweek. I am one of these "high end" raiders. I know whats it like to kill avatars, have all of them on lock down. I know what its like puting in countless hours. I know what its like waking up from a dead sleep in the middle of the night to take down any contested that pops. I know what its like of waiting and battleing with dkp for avatar loot for months and months. But we a just a very small pea in the pod.

Gaige

08-22-2009, 03:37 PM

<cite>Necs wrote:</cite><blockquote>I love how some people say if this nerf goes through that alot of the "high end" avatar killing people would leave. Do you really think SoE cares? There's 22 servers, on most servers there is one guild that has avatars on lock down. Lets be generous and say 40 people per server are the "high end" avatar killing guilds. If all those people quit thats around 880 people out of say 150,000 subscribed players.</blockquote>Right, so those 880 people quit and 880+ people move up to take their place and then they quit, etc etc.Trickle down effect, have you heard of it?SOE shouldn't want ANY EQ2 player to quit, they don't have that luxury, considering this game is super niche as is. I mean EVE has more subs than EQ2 does and they run a single server.

Korrupt

08-22-2009, 03:46 PM

For every one of the regular raiders that want avatar loot to be nerfed or easier to get, there's 10 non raiders saying the same thing about your set gear. Think about it.

Tehom

08-22-2009, 03:56 PM

<cite>Dyvyd wrote:</cite><blockquote>I appreciate your well thought out comments and I agree with almost all of what you are saying here. What should be done is an overhaul of the design structure of the game and probably the devs should have done this long ago instead of right now. I can't think of any reason why gear degradation shouldn't just say 'when an item is more than 4 or 7 or 9 levels below you it simply operates as zero' and we solve it completely, right? I agree the problem isn't a t8 creation by any stretch - it's been building for several years now. The heavy handed nature of the 'fix' means that sony was slow in reacting to the problem and it has really only become an issue for fix RIGHT NOW because t9 is hitting that stage of design and the basic game mechanics being tested show massive issues. If they fix the game, they fix t9 testing and so poof, do it NOW.</blockquote>I pretty much agree - I think the biggest thing they're failing to understand is that avatar gear is just a symptom of a bigger problem: players will want meaningful upgrades, and accomodating those upgrades in a system where the bonuses you're gaining rapidly approach hard caps leaves them no room to expand. Gear degradation can and should be used to completely resolve that by having any existing gear become basically worthless when you reach the new level cap. If they don't, they'll have the same problem with any -new- gear they'll create, and waste massive amounts of time trying to figure out the precise level where they can have gear still be a worthwhile reward for players while not restricting item design in the next teir.The biggest problem they have there is it's a fundamentally insoluable problem: there's no place for players to expand to except for these problematic base increases or for unique and creative procs which then become irreplaceable unless they're made to not function in the next tier or have upgraded items with a copy of the proc. We can already see that with previous tier avatar loot, with rune etched helm, and I feel symbol of the faydark will prove to be another example.If they don't do this, they're going to run into several problems. First, they may create loot that simply no one will want at all, representing extremely small upgrades that players see no visible gain from acquiring. Second, gear degradation not being thorough enough will mean problem items will persist despite the level cap increase, and further lock down slots as irreplaceable. Both are extremely damaging to the game's health in my opinion, and I think choosing to nerf avatar loot won't particularly solve anything except a short term reduction in the difference between avatar and instance guilds that'd have largely vanished within 2-3 months anyway as those instance guilds hit saturation point on set gear.

Necs

08-22-2009, 04:14 PM

<cite>Gage wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Necs wrote:</cite><blockquote>I love how some people say if this nerf goes through that alot of the "high end" avatar killing people would leave. Do you really think SoE cares? There's 22 servers, on most servers there is one guild that has avatars on lock down. Lets be generous and say 40 people per server are the "high end" avatar killing guilds. If all those people quit thats around 880 people out of say 150,000 subscribed players.</blockquote>Right, so those 880 people quit and 880+ people move up to take their place and then they quit, etc etc.Trickle down effect, have you heard of it?SOE shouldn't want ANY EQ2 player to quit, they don't have that luxury, considering this game is super niche as is. I mean EVE has more subs than EQ2 does and they run a single server.</blockquote>No, because when those 880 people quit it will be because SoE changed the loot they worked hard to get. So that means the next 880 people would never know what they never had. SoE just needs to get things straight and not have to nerf things.

Gaige

08-22-2009, 04:21 PM

<cite>Necs wrote:</cite><blockquote>SoE just needs to get things straight and not have to nerf things.</blockquote>4 years and 8 months says they will never do that.

ShamusOB

08-22-2009, 04:29 PM

<cite>Necs wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gage wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Necs wrote:</cite><blockquote>I love how some people say if this nerf goes through that alot of the "high end" avatar killing people would leave. Do you really think SoE cares? There's 22 servers, on most servers there is one guild that has avatars on lock down. Lets be generous and say 40 people per server are the "high end" avatar killing guilds. If all those people quit thats around 880 people out of say 150,000 subscribed players.</blockquote>Right, so those 880 people quit and 880+ people move up to take their place and then they quit, etc etc.Trickle down effect, have you heard of it?SOE shouldn't want ANY EQ2 player to quit, they don't have that luxury, considering this game is super niche as is. I mean EVE has more subs than EQ2 does and they run a single server.</blockquote>No, because when those 880 people quit it will be because SoE changed the loot they worked hard to get. So that means the next 880 people would never know what they never had. SoE just needs to get things straight and not have to nerf things.</blockquote>they will when it happens to them smart guy, oh and it will.

Morghus

08-22-2009, 04:32 PM

<cite>ShamusOB wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Necs wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gage wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Necs wrote:</cite><blockquote>I love how some people say if this nerf goes through that alot of the "high end" avatar killing people would leave. Do you really think SoE cares? There's 22 servers, on most servers there is one guild that has avatars on lock down. Lets be generous and say 40 people per server are the "high end" avatar killing guilds. If all those people quit thats around 880 people out of say 150,000 subscribed players.</blockquote>Right, so those 880 people quit and 880+ people move up to take their place and then they quit, etc etc.Trickle down effect, have you heard of it?SOE shouldn't want ANY EQ2 player to quit, they don't have that luxury, considering this game is super niche as is. I mean EVE has more subs than EQ2 does and they run a single server.</blockquote>No, because when those 880 people quit it will be because SoE changed the loot they worked hard to get. So that means the next 880 people would never know what they never had. SoE just needs to get things straight and not have to nerf things.</blockquote>they will when it happens to them smart guy, oh and it will.</blockquote>Yea, they honestly wont need to know what they never had. All they will need is to do the encounter, see the loot, and go "what the heck"!?

Kiara

08-22-2009, 07:40 PM

Alright all. I've removed (hopefully) all of the troll droppings. Please remember not to feed the trolls... It makes them fat and is bad for their health.In other news, to those taking a shot at the moderation... I have a life too folks. I do funny little things like eat, sleep, leave the house, step away from the computer...Let's try to keep things under control during those brief hours that I steal away to have a life <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Pretty please?As to the rest, there is some really excellent feedback in this thread and I want you to know how much I appreciate the well thought out and civilized conversation, overall.

kelesia

08-22-2009, 08:58 PM

Gear drops are entirely about luck, and for some reason the rng likes to sticky on the leader so that you get more of a certain item. You can say it doesn't, but I've been raiding since 2005 and it does tend to sticky. And I'm going to tell you, one of the things that keeps me coming back to this game and raiding is gear upgrades. I want two avatar charms, I want the plagued necklace off the evil avatars. I'd really like to get my templar the growth and rodcet nife charms. But after being at probably 70% of my raid force's avatar kills, I have a single charm for my coercer. And it's due to luck. Luck as to what avatars spawn, luck as to who is there and luck as to what drops. And lemme tell you I have terrible luck.I was extremely proud when my raid force rose to the level of attempting avatars. I was disappointed when we lost a couple in the beginning. I was over the top ecstatic when we started winning them. Yes, progression this expansion -is- messed up. That isn't our fault. Yes a few of the items are a little over the top. But that happens every expansion. However, there is a way to deal with that already in the game, and it's coming with the new expansion. And while I despise the idea of item degredation with a passion, it is a way to handle over the top items from this game.Some of the raid enounters right now, are made doable by avatar level gear. And some of the encounters are going to need some toning down after you mess with our gear. People who care slightly more than me will give you lists of how things stack against one another. They are the people I listen to about gear choices. I think you should listen to the too. This is just my plea for you not to ruin months of very hard work for no real reason. I know what SOE thinks the reason is and I disagree.

hugh1

08-22-2009, 09:10 PM

<cite>Lillya@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>This is just my plea for you not to ruin months of very hard work for no real reason. I know what SOE thinks the reason is and I disagree.</blockquote>QFE.

Tehom

08-22-2009, 09:24 PM

One of my posts was lost in the deletions, so I want to just summarize some of the key points that I think SOE is missing here.While progression may have been broken, the primary result of avatar gear was accelerating the rate at which people acquired instance gear, which represent the vast majority of player power increases this expansion. You can measure the strength of a raid force primarily by the amount of set gear they have in this expansion; avatar gear is definitely a bonus, but it's mostly served as a stepping stone to gearing up. Nerfing it now will have an effect, but it's temporary: players in instance-only guilds will saturate on set gear in a few months unless they have fundamental weaknesses they can't overcome (poor leadership, internal drama, weak class mix, etc) and then find their abilities reaching a very sudden plateau. In other words, once players get 7 pieces, they're basically as strong as they're going to get, and the drops in MMB don't really have a very large impact.What this means is that Fireflyte will need to create meaningful itemization paths for players who reach that point, and I think that's his intent with nerfing avatar gear - feeling that it's restricting the range he can give players modifiers before they reach the cap. The problem is that there really isn't a range in which he can offer players meaningful upgrades without compromising the next expansion's itemization in the current state; either he gives players too little, in which case they'll rapidly grow bored or frustrated at the slow pace of improving their raid force's capabilities, or he gives enough where it duplicates the current modifiers that players in avatar guilds enjoy, in which case he's looking at the same situation of itemization in the next expansion.I realize developers reading this might be skeptical that I'm presenting a false dichotomy, and that you're confident you can find some middle ground - I don't believe it's possible, and moreover, I think it's bother dangerous and unnecessary to try. The simplest solution is to recognize that you should only worry about how itemization affects -this- expansion, and to enforce draconian gear degredation in order to eliminate the effects of gear on the -next- expansion, at least as far as the strongest mods are concerned. Base damage mods, crit bonus mods, and so on are obviously stronger than other mods, and need to be handled as such. They should degrade at a much faster rate than other modifiers.The gist of it is that nerfing avatar gear will cause more harm than good - it'll alienate a segment of your player base and remove the motivation for going after contested spawns, which arguably eliminates an entire playstyle. In return, you achieve a very short term shrinking of the gap between avatar and instance players, a gap that will largely diminish in the next few months as instance players begin to saturate on set gear. The avatar-geared players will be disgusted with their wasted efforts and weakened capabilities, and instanced players will begin to become frustrated as they reach a plateau in their capabilities and look for significant upgrades that don't exist. If the upgrades are put in, you're faced with the expansion problem that needs to be answered by gear degradation. If they aren't, all raiders at that level will grow bored or frustrated.

Ge'Sar

08-22-2009, 11:32 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Alright all. I've removed (hopefully) all of the troll droppings. Please remember not to feed the trolls... It makes them fat and is bad for their health.In other news, to those taking a shot at the moderation... I have a life too folks. I do funny little things like eat, sleep, leave the house, step away from the computer...Let's try to keep things under control during those brief hours that I steal away to have a life <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> Pretty please?As to the rest, there is some really excellent feedback in this thread and I want you to know how much I appreciate the well thought out and civilized conversation, overall.</blockquote>To be fair, if only one person is trying to mod these boards by themselves you have my complete pity as that's a lifestyle not a job.But why leave the original post? Now it's like an Itch I can't scratch... want to reply to his ludricious statements <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> ahh well....

slippery

08-23-2009, 12:01 AM

I’m going to start off this post like I started off my last post, with the same question. It is a question based on one of the two primary reasons for this nerf, and a question that seems unable to be answered. It is a question that I will pose until I have seen an answer that I can be satisfied with. What instance mobs that are harder than Avatars have loot that is not the best in the game? I would specific examples comparing the pieces of loot with reference to why you believe there is difference in encounter difficulty. It seems there is quite a lot of hyperbole flying around with no actual justification or well thought out reasoning that shows this. There are lots of absolute statements but no examples. Now, to address the other issue posed. That issue specifically is the overabundance of base damage and the inability to create upgrades next expansion. I fail to see the problem here. In the past raid itemization has always been so that the top raid itemization will get you into the next expansions raids and probably not upgraded till the comparable mobs of that expansion. It seems like this has been forgotten, and that is where a lot of your problems come from. It looks to me like you are trying to create upgrades to Avatar gear from the early raid mobs next expansion which then causes the problem of too much of things on gear next expansion. Why are you basing instanced itemization on Avatar loot that is extremely limited in quantity? Avatar loot should have no bearing on instance loot next expansion until your knocking on the door of some of the final encounters for the expansion. You should not be trying to design around Avatar loot that is so limited, so non-existent, and that so few people actually have. The whole base of it being so limited is why it is allowed to be so good, because it has such a minimal impact on anything in the future. Every raid item does not need to be upgraded off the first encounters we kill in the expansion. Some of them most definitely should not be. This is called raid progression. This is how it was always meant to work, and it seems quite forgotten. Now for another point, why are we basing things that cannot be done on arbitrary numbers that could just be changed? Why should base damage cap at 100%? Why should cast speed or reuse cap at 100%? I see no reason, they are numbers that where arbitrarily set and can so be changed. Spell damage does have a good reason for capping at 50% for class balance. Is there really a lack of upgrade options? I don’t see it. I see plenty of ways to itemize things, especially when you take out set gear and get rid of that massive inflation from the bonuses on it. Just looking from a Mage’s perspective, there is plenty that can still be on items. Base damage is still needed for the vast majority, crit bonus, spell damage which was very absent this expansion, cast speed, reuse, recovery speed, things that increase trigger chance, survivability things like things that increase mitigation, give ae avoids, control effect immunity. Things currently in the game but not really itemized like spell double attack, although spell double attack needs to be reworked so that full dot’s also double before this gets largely implemented so that it doesn’t further mess up class balance. This isn’t to mention things like damage procs and procs that have meaningful deagros of the positional kind. This is before even touching any new effects you could add that aren’t currently in the game. I don’t even agree with Item Degradation. I think it is a cop out and bad for the game. I think it brings even less of a reason to go back and see old content and doesn’t truly address the issues it is being brought in to fix, it is a band aid meant for a minor cut being placed over the hole in your side your intestines are falling out of. It is an attempt to make everyone equal in a game based on itemized progression for your means of advancement. It makes your time and effort worthless, drives down desire to play the game when you know you are just going to lose everything, and means you can just as easily go do something else since you are going to have to start over if you stay anyways. It does not address that the underlying combat mechanics are at fault because of their lack at scaling. Combat mechanics need to be rising exponentially while resists and mitigation should be a pure comparison, not on diminishing returns and not based on percentages. The whole idea of making players closer and closing the gap is what causes 90% of the problems in the first place. While you try to make everyone equal it takes away all your options of making things harder. The underlying mechanics (namely mitigation and resists) absolutely have to change and then the band-aids like critical mitigation and item degradation can stop. When you change those mechanics it is far easier to tune the difficulty of encounters as you can look at how much mitigation a tank should have at that point, see how much damage a mob is going to do to that tank, see if it is something that is feasibly healable, do the same with the rest of the raid and resists, and then you can start to have fun with the script. You will know truly how much the raid needs to be geared up before having a shot at any given encounter, you won’t be spending the entire expansion tweaking encounters to try to get it right, because it will all be there mathematically and the differences don’t need to be so minor.

circusgirl

08-23-2009, 12:08 AM

I think the idea that its avatar gear that is the source of overpowered players is misguided. The truth of the matter is, player power has risen rather obscenely on all levels of play in this expansion. The actual progression from TSO T1 shard gear to avatar gear is incredibly smooth, with no huge power jumps at any point along the way. It's just that we started at such a powerful point that a smooth, linear progression in player power still means that at the end game we have very powerful players.T2 gear is as powerful as the most powerful gear of last expansion, moreso in many ways. On my server at least pick-up raids regularly visit VP for mythical updates, and T2/mythical has basically become the standard expectation for gear, even for casual players. Basically, a casual player this expansion is more powerful than the most hardcore raiders of the same level last expansion. Someone who does nothing more than group in the very easiest of dungeons is capable of aquiring up to +18 base damage increase (bloodthirsty choker/shoulders). The upgrade from T2 to T3 is a pretty big jump in power as well for many classes, and is a very clear increase in power (and ups the amount of base damage available to +22 for many classes). Progression from T3 to T4 is a big jump, but pretty incremental as it ends up working out do to the amount of time it takes to progress. Once you move to avatar gear, you're really not getting a huge upgrade over just instanced stuff...but the baseline was so powerful that you end up at a kind of ridiculous level. The reason why avatar geared people are too powerful for next expansion isn't because avatar gear is some huge jump in power...it's because casual players started off very powerful this expansion. I guess I don't see why this is the focus area, and not items like the Bloodthirsty choker and the T1/T2 set shoulders. Basically the devs are choosing between a healthy, smooth progression this expansion (which we really and truly have!) and a healthy/smooth progression next expansion. I'm okay with the idea of nerfs, but not to the point where items midway through the expansions progression--stuff dropping off mobs like Tythus and Abstallius-- are better than avatar gear. That's bad progression, and it really hurts more than just avatar geared people, it hurts everyone who wants to see steady improvement as a result of investing time and effort into this game. I think Chath is right that the better approach would be to tweak these items next expansion, either via a direct nerf or (better yet) harsh equipment decay.

Ge'Sar

08-23-2009, 01:57 AM

I'm curious about something here that I don't have enough experince in previous expansions to answer.What is the % based improvement of end game vs easy raids vs instanced now compared to then? That is I wonder if this is something that is seen as a problem now based meerly on the number inflaction but the gap has always been there.For example, I remember way beck when and my guildies saying no way could a wizard parse 1k in my little instances. what were the end game raiders doing?Say the gap has always been.. 30% (and yes I'm pulling these numbers out of my butt, just asking if this is true at all or false) <table style="width: 192pt; border-collapse: collapse;" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="256"><colgroup span="1"><col span="4" width="64"></col></colgroup><tbody><tr height="17"><td width="64" height="17"> </td><td width="64">Instance</td><td width="64">Raid </td><td width="64">Avatar</td></tr><tr height="17"><td height="17">EoF</td><td align="right">1.47</td><td align="right">2.1</td><td align="right">3</td></tr><tr height="17"><td height="17">Rok</td><td align="right">4.9</td><td align="right">7</td><td align="right">10</td></tr><tr height="17"><td height="17">TSO</td><td align="right">9.8</td><td align="right">14</td><td align="right">20</td></tr></tbody></table> that being, it's a situation we've always had, only now the larger numbers make it look worse.

Calyssia

08-23-2009, 04:38 AM

I've no doubt that I'll be flamed for this but... regardless.I can agree that a nerf -- any nerf -- will never be welcome, appreciated, or without complaint from those who feel they dedicated time and effort in acquiring those items which are getting changed. On the other hand, I have to ask this...Let us assume, hypothetically, that the Avatar items had started off with the stats and effects as are currently on Test (i.e. if the Avatar loot had always been "nerfed"). Are any of you who are now complaining honestly going to tell me that you'd not have gone after the Avatars and that loot? That you'd have said "Oh, this is junk and not worth having so we won't bother with killing the Avatars at all?"Can any of you honestly say that?Yes, the gear is getting nerfed. Surprise! It's happened before every expansion in one way or another -- whether it is gear, AAs, spells or other mechanics, they, with no exception, have gotten changed before every expansion.Again though, I say... would you really have said "I won't bother with the Avatars" if the gear had started off with the stats as they are now on Test? I think not. It is still better -- significantly so -- in most cases than any other loot available anywhere. And, admit it or not, killing Avatars (other than the loot) has also been about the [Removed for Content] status of "Yeah, I did it!".Are there now on Test Avatar items that you'd not use because there are some better ones out there for the given slot? Perhaps. Not everything has to be "the" best -- never is, on any loot table.So, ok... we're getting our awesome power notched back... It happens. Not such a big deal in the end.C.

Noaani

08-23-2009, 04:39 AM

<cite>slippery wrote:</cite><blockquote>I’m going to start off this post like I started off my last post, with the same question. It is a question based on one of the two primary reasons for this nerf, and a question that seems unable to be answered. It is a question that I will pose until I have seen an answer that I can be satisfied with.</blockquote>Don't hold your breath, I'm still waiting for answers about Research Assistants.

wingedwizard

08-23-2009, 06:53 AM

The thought that one avatar guild per server will be effected is completely erroneous. For those guilds that can only raid 3 nights a week such as my last guild it took us over 7 months to finally have enough upgrades to not only progress but almost run out of loot. we felt that one of the best ways to progress would be to get a few avatars down so we could use the gear to help us progress faster. We spent many hours on test killing avatars and learning the encounters so we could compete live without the huge learning curve. When avatars spawned we tried to form and go after them competing agains the existing avatar killing guild. Not only was that extrememly exciting for us but im sure that the guild that just made a habit out of killing them felt a thrill as well and let them know that they were not out there alone in the world. As more guilds that are a semi hardcore casual style are finally getting the end game items they look at avatar gear as the natural progression and are in a more viable position to actually kill a mob from a guild caught off guard.This is the Carrot. Not only for the existing dominate guild but for the players with less time but equal love of the game. This is why i still log on. Now if you remove this component guilds are going to look at heroic zones for upgrades? x2? No more times on test and dream that one day we will kill em or get some item lust after since tso hit?Please leave this intact. Many guilds just now comming of age are going to find that there is nothing at the end. Let us play this next half of TSO fighting over this loot. Degradation solves all your issues. and if not .. Nerf the gear on launch day of SF.

arant

08-23-2009, 07:16 AM

<cite>Calyssia wrote:</cite><blockquote>Are there now on Test Avatar items that you'd not use because there are some better ones out there for the given slot? Perhaps. Not everything has to be "the" best -- never is, on any loot table.So, ok... we're getting our awesome power notched back... It happens. Not such a big deal in the end.C.</blockquote>There's avatar gear in the game now that rots in bags and defaults to alts. The items on the rarest loot tables should be the best there is. Anything less was a waste of programming resources. Contested mob loot should not be mid-tier progression items. Also it's not really about the "nerf" itself. A nerf can happen when something completely unforeseen that could not have been predicted otherwise despite QA testing. The gear created for this expansion was at some point created, tested, and approved for release for this expansion. The game has had a new expansion every year so it's no surprise when TSO was being developed that another expansion was in its planning stages. Expansions progress the story line, the characters and the complexity of the game. What we're being fed as the reason is to bring gear in line with a "natural progression" with the reasoning that some of the gear in its current form will still be better then the best the new expansion will have to offer. This is a huge problem that was either a serious screw up on SoE's side on long term planning or there was a shift in the next expansion's direction mechanics wise that eliminated the planned gear itemization going forward. And my best guess would be alot of this came down to budget cuts and investment in the game that have now tied the current development team's hands to the point that they are left to repackage what we already know exists and try to pass it off as "new" and the only way to do that sadly is nerf to hell what we have so they can grow it back to what we all now know as the game cap. And if I had to guess further I'd say its a shift of those resources to what was mentioned somewhere I read in regards to EQ's 10th anniversary about Everquest 'Next' or any other secret titles in planning/early production stages.

Noaani

08-23-2009, 07:53 AM

<cite>arant wrote:</cite><blockquote>The items on the rarest loot tables should be the best there is.</blockquote>So, in your opinion, rare > difficult?If thats the case, it is perfectly justifiable to have the best cleric gloves in the game drop from a one groupable mob, as long as it is rare. It is perfectly justifiable to have the best sorcerer ring drop from a heroic mob, as long as it is rare. It is perfectly justfiable to have crap loot drop from teh hardest encounter in the game, because it is not rare.The difficulty of an encounter should determine 90% of the quality of a finished item, and the rarity of both the encounter and the item itself should dictate the last 10%.Anything less and we end up with, well, what we have.

Ebarel

08-23-2009, 09:03 AM

i wrote this before on all the previous nerfs and i only can repeat here.Dont nerf gear (especially not as huge as you plan now) because of one simple reason.you are taking away something from people who spent weeks or months to get that. what you do in a second by nerfing it is not only reducing some stats but taking from people something they worked for a long time and invested lot of their time. you take from them the the "feel-good" of something they finally achieved or got.in other words: you save some months for a brand new car. after you bought it you suddenly get a letter from the manufacturer saying: Hi valued customer - due to unforseen reasons we have to half the horsepower, take out 2 seats and remove the air conditioner. feel free to thank us for our improving customer satisfaction. if you dont like the changes, be assured that we have to do that for improving our future models.that frustrates so many people as you can see from the replies here. and that although a huge number of players is not even affected as they dont have access yet to these items. but even those who are nerfed so that their raid forces cant kill encounters they could before will be more than annoyed.

MalkorGodchyld

08-23-2009, 09:03 AM

<cite>slippery wrote:</cite><blockquote> Why should base damage cap at 100%? Why should cast speed or reuse cap at 100%? I see no reason, they are numbers that where arbitrarily set and can so be changed. Spell damage does have a good reason for capping at 50% for class balance. Is there really a lack of upgrade options? I don’t see it. I see plenty of ways to itemize things, especially when you take out set gear and get rid of that massive inflation from the bonuses on it. Just looking from a Mage’s perspective, there is plenty that can still be on items. Base damage is still needed for the vast majority, crit bonus, spell damage which was very absent this expansion, cast speed, reuse, recovery speed, things that increase trigger chance, survivability things like things that increase mitigation, give ae avoids, control effect immunity. Things currently in the game but not really itemized like spell double attack, although spell double attack needs to be reworked so that full dot’s also double before this gets largely implemented so that it doesn’t further mess up class balance. This isn’t to mention things like damage procs and procs that have meaningful deagros of the positional kind. This is before even touching any new effects you could add that aren’t currently in the game. I don’t even agree with Item Degradation. I think it is a cop out and bad for the game. I think it brings even less of a reason to go back and see old content and doesn’t truly address the issues it is being brought in to fix, it is a band aid meant for a minor cut being placed over the hole in your side your intestines are falling out of. It is an attempt to make everyone equal in a game based on itemized progression for your means of advancement. It makes your time and effort worthless, drives down desire to play the game when you know you are just going to lose everything, and means you can just as easily go do something else since you are going to have to start over if you stay anyways. It does not address that the underlying combat mechanics are at fault because of their lack at scaling. Combat mechanics need to be rising exponentially while resists and mitigation should be a pure comparison, not on diminishing returns and not based on percentages. The whole idea of making players closer and closing the gap is what causes 90% of the problems in the first place. While you try to make everyone equal it takes away all your options of making things harder. The underlying mechanics (namely mitigation and resists) absolutely have to change and then the band-aids like critical mitigation and item degradation can stop. When you change those mechanics it is far easier to tune the difficulty of encounters as you can look at how much mitigation a tank should have at that point, see how much damage a mob is going to do to that tank, see if it is something that is feasibly healable, do the same with the rest of the raid and resists, and then you can start to have fun with the script.</blockquote>Its obvious to me atleast that what you said is true & i totally agree. The problem is with the work that would be required to "get it right". My guess is that it isnt cost effective to re-work some of these things or....maybe it really is laziness? Heck if i know, but either way the point stands. If i have a valid coupon for an item at a department store that isnt actually on sale anymore...regardless of that item not being currently on sale, i still get the item at a reduced price, otherwise it would be false advertisement. Its just the right way to do business. As a consumer my primary responsibility lies with fulfilling my end of the bargain by paying for the product as its presented.Now i understand what the EULA is, etc. & so on...yeah i get that. Although, the EULA & agreeing to it isnt an open invitation to make sweeping game changes on a whim or to continually have your customers take the backlash from your mistakes at every turn. There's just something not right about that picture for me. There are other options & things to consider before the need arises to where you have "no other choice". Plenty of those options have been discussed in this thread. And to the people who continually miss the mark when referring to the Raid community & the importance of that community in regards to the health of this game. Its a fair bet to say that the top 1% of U.S society controls roughly 35% of the wealth. In other words, like it or not, they keep the wheels turning in our economy in multiple ways. Recently we all have seen what happens to the "whole" when that 1% is in trouble. Its a trickle down effect that screws everybody... EQ2 & MMO's are not real life & nowhere near...but there are similarities in terms of community. /shrugMariusxNagafen

EasternKing

08-23-2009, 09:05 AM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>arant wrote:</cite><blockquote>The items on the rarest loot tables should be the best there is.</blockquote>So, in your opinion, rare > difficult?If thats the case, it is perfectly justifiable to have the best cleric gloves in the game drop from a one groupable mob, as long as it is rare. It is perfectly justifiable to have the best sorcerer ring drop from a heroic mob, as long as it is rare. It is perfectly justfiable to have crap loot drop from teh hardest encounter in the game, because it is not rare.The difficulty of an encounter should determine 90% of the quality of a finished item, and the rarity of both the encounter and the item itself should dictate the last 10%.Anything less and we end up with, well, what we have.</blockquote>Yes, because we have all seen your rants across eq2players.forums about the best dps item ever added to eq2 dropping from a heroic mob right? oh wait we have not seen a single one where you have posted that it needs to be nerfed into oblivion because it drops off a 2 man killable mob, Hypocrite much?The amount of items entering a game world can quite rightly be used and has been used for most of the time eq2 has been running live, to determine item quality.

Dasein

08-23-2009, 10:36 AM

<cite>MalkorGodchyld wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>slippery wrote:</cite><blockquote> Why should base damage cap at 100%? Why should cast speed or reuse cap at 100%? I see no reason, they are numbers that where arbitrarily set and can so be changed. Spell damage does have a good reason for capping at 50% for class balance. Is there really a lack of upgrade options? I don’t see it. I see plenty of ways to itemize things, especially when you take out set gear and get rid of that massive inflation from the bonuses on it. Just looking from a Mage’s perspective, there is plenty that can still be on items. Base damage is still needed for the vast majority, crit bonus, spell damage which was very absent this expansion, cast speed, reuse, recovery speed, things that increase trigger chance, survivability things like things that increase mitigation, give ae avoids, control effect immunity. Things currently in the game but not really itemized like spell double attack, although spell double attack needs to be reworked so that full dot’s also double before this gets largely implemented so that it doesn’t further mess up class balance. This isn’t to mention things like damage procs and procs that have meaningful deagros of the positional kind. This is before even touching any new effects you could add that aren’t currently in the game. I don’t even agree with Item Degradation. I think it is a cop out and bad for the game. I think it brings even less of a reason to go back and see old content and doesn’t truly address the issues it is being brought in to fix, it is a band aid meant for a minor cut being placed over the hole in your side your intestines are falling out of. It is an attempt to make everyone equal in a game based on itemized progression for your means of advancement. It makes your time and effort worthless, drives down desire to play the game when you know you are just going to lose everything, and means you can just as easily go do something else since you are going to have to start over if you stay anyways. It does not address that the underlying combat mechanics are at fault because of their lack at scaling. Combat mechanics need to be rising exponentially while resists and mitigation should be a pure comparison, not on diminishing returns and not based on percentages. The whole idea of making players closer and closing the gap is what causes 90% of the problems in the first place. While you try to make everyone equal it takes away all your options of making things harder. The underlying mechanics (namely mitigation and resists) absolutely have to change and then the band-aids like critical mitigation and item degradation can stop. When you change those mechanics it is far easier to tune the difficulty of encounters as you can look at how much mitigation a tank should have at that point, see how much damage a mob is going to do to that tank, see if it is something that is feasibly healable, do the same with the rest of the raid and resists, and then you can start to have fun with the script.</blockquote>Its obvious to me atleast that what you said is true & i totally agree. The problem is with the work that would be required to "get it right". My guess is that it isnt cost effective to re-work some of these things or....maybe it really is laziness? Heck if i know, but either way the point stands. If i have a valid coupon for an item at a department store that isnt actually on sale anymore...regardless of that item not being currently on sale, i still get the item at a reduced price, otherwise it would be false advertisement. Its just the right way to do business. As a consumer my primary responsibility lies with fulfilling my end of the bargain by paying for the product as its presented.Now i understand what the EULA is, etc. & so on...yeah i get that. Although, the EULA & agreeing to it isnt an open invitation to make sweeping game changes on a whim or to continually have your customers take the backlash from your mistakes at every turn. There's just something not right about that picture for me. There are other options & things to consider before the need arises to where you have "no other choice". Plenty of those options have been discussed in this thread. And to the people who continually miss the mark when referring to the Raid community & the importance of that community in regards to the health of this game. Its a fair bet to say that the top 1% of U.S society controls roughly 35% of the wealth. In other words, like it or not, they keep the wheels turning in our economy in multiple ways. Recently we all have seen what happens to the "whole" when that 1% is in trouble. Its a trickle down effect that screws everybody... EQ2 & MMO's are not real life & nowhere near...but there are similarities in terms of community. /shrugMariusxNagafen</blockquote>The concentration of wealth in the hands of an ever-diminishing few is seen as a sign of an unhealthy society. In the context of EQ2, we should not allow a situation to arise where a few guilds or players obtain a stranglehold on the game.

Noaani

08-23-2009, 10:48 AM

<cite>EasternKing wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yes, because we have all seen your rants across eq2players.forums about the best dps item ever added to eq2 dropping from a heroic mob right? oh wait we have not seen a single one where you have posted that it needs to be nerfed into oblivion because it drops off a 2 man killable mob, Hypocrite much?</blockquote>Why nerf it? That would be counter productive, and essentially no better than what is happening with avatar items (though on a smaller scale, obviously)I posted several times that the effect on that ring needs to be added to a raid dropped item with otherwise better stats. I still think it should be added to the Zarrakon mage wrist, and have posted as much. The results of this (and other peoples comments) is the ring from Kurn's.Just because you havn't read a post from me about it, doesn't mean I have not done so.

littlesalty

08-23-2009, 11:01 AM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>erratic wrote:</cite><blockquote>Charm of Rallos Zek - this goes for all the charms, but it really seems like someone just took the approach of saying "take all charms and make them 40% of their old potential". Losing 2 DA, 2 Crit, and 175 CA Damage is huge. For the most part the avatar charms have all been massively nerfed like this. This doesn't even count the down to the 2 charm set bonuses.</blockquote>That is actually not far from how I tuned the charms. If you take a look at the current avatar charms, they're roughly 6x as powerful (or more) than anything else available in game. Even with the massive hit they're taking, they're still about twice as powerful as the next top charms you'll find. The set bonuses are still higher than I think they ought to be, but they'll now scale down in an acceptable manner as you levelk to 90.</blockquote>I know this was posted many pages back but I had to reply.You do realise that the only reason they are heads and shoulders above the next best charm in the game, is because you didn't actually impliment any other charms off x4 mobs until mmb?If you actually added charms, with similar stats to the current avatar ones(or the idea in my previous post), to instance mobs, then it would sort it all out. Instanced and Contested players would both have access to charms that were about on par with eachother, keeping both parties happy and giving players more content/loot to choose from, rather than taking the easy appraoch and just nerfing everybody by a 40% equation without any specific thought.

hellfire

08-23-2009, 11:58 AM

Instanced Anashti belt is gonna become a necklace and drop from her.Contested Anashti drops a necklace that is worse then the instanced necklace.Contested Anashti is a harder version of instanced Anashti but drops lesser quality loot for same slot.See the problem with that ...because i do.That is called deprogression...you are going backwards.

Gaige

08-23-2009, 12:55 PM

<cite>Calyssia wrote:</cite><blockquote>Again though, I say... would you really have said "I won't bother with the Avatars" if the gear had started off with the stats as they are now on Test? I think not. It is still better -- significantly so -- in most cases than any other loot available anywhere. And, admit it or not, killing Avatars (other than the loot) has also been about the [Removed for Content] status of "Yeah, I did it!".</blockquote>If TSO launched with gear like this I would've quit after seeing the first avatars die, knowing that stuff comes out of HT, Tomb, and Palace that are better.Also, on live - not to mention on test - avatar gear isn't "significantly" better than even some heroic gear. There are a handful of amazing items but just as many avatar items have went to alts every single drop.The overpowering gear this expansion is the set gear (T2, T3 and T4) and the insane heroic gear (Najena's Ring of Readiness) NOT avatar gear.

Gaige

08-23-2009, 12:58 PM

<cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote>The concentration of wealth in the hands of an ever-diminishing few is seen as a sign of an unhealthy society. In the context of EQ2, we should not allow a situation to arise where a few guilds or players obtain a stranglehold on the game.</blockquote>No worries, they made sure that wouldn't happen with T2 armor and amazing heroic drops. The fact that non-raiders are even or more powerful than avatar killing raiders at this point in RoK shows that SOE will certainly not place the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.If anything the issues we're experiencing are because EVERYONE is capping everything and becoming so powerful that its now a problem; it wouldn't be an issue at all if it was only 100 players per server affected.

Noaani

08-23-2009, 01:00 PM

<cite>Bigron@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Instanced Anashti belt is gonna become a necklace and drop from her.Contested Anashti drops a necklace that is worse then the instanced necklace.Contested Anashti is a harder version of instanced Anashti but drops lesser quality loot for same slot.See the problem with that ...because i do.That is called deprogression...you are going backwards.</blockquote>Sure, thats an issue.The problem is, if its fixed so that the avatar neck is clearly better than the new choker, we would end up with instanced Anushti dropping items that are worse than War or Hate. Looking over the difficulty of these encounters, this is as much of an issue as what you are talking about.What needs to happen to avatars, is either they are altered to all be the same difficulty (my vote), or they need to have seperate loot tables.Not doing that means they are never going to have an appropriate avatar loot table, and issues of either of the above will always turn up.

erratic

08-23-2009, 01:06 PM

Let me try to explain why this decision is so upsetting to myself and others.When it comes to eq2 4x raid zones drop better loot than 2x raid zones, which in turn drop better loot than heroic zones. Some people might disagree with this philosphy but that is how the game for the most part works (there are always a few items that are exceptions). The reason for this is not that a 4x encounter is inheritantly harder than a 2x encounter. It is because on the whole a 4x zone is harder to organize for than a 2x zone, and a 2x zone in turn is harder to organize than a heroic zone. This organizational difficulty is factored in to the rewards. So in essence the reward is equal to the difficulty of the encounter, which in turn includes not only the difficulty of the script but also the difficulty of any organization needed to even attempt the script.This is why many people myself included believe that in the order of progression, contested content is a notch above normal instanced content. Instanced content requires 24 people who are willing to schedule a time to get together, have learned to play together, and are able to follow directions well. Contested content adds a further hurdle in that it is often difficult to schedule a time as the contested spawn times are out of your control. Additionally even if you are willing to rally you have to rally better than any other guilds on your server. Many top end avatar killing guilds impliment call lists and other proceedures to try to rally for the avatars reguardless of when they spawn.So while the avatars themselves might not be the absolute hardest encounters in the game as far as the script goes, the organizational difficulties that accompany the scripts make them the most difficult fights in the game.As such it is our belief that avatars should drop the best loot in the game. With that said let me clarify that statement. We're not saying every item an avatars drop should be the best in slot item, however they should possess enough best in slot items to make the effort worthwhile. That is very much how the avatars are done now. For every best in slot item (avatar dagger) there is an item few would ever use (avatar bow).There is a whole different feeling rallying for a contested and pulling against other guilds who are doing the same. The feeling that if you mess up you might not get a second pull, and every pull must be your 'A' game. By nerfing the avatar loot guilds are going to stop rallying for the avatars that spawn at inconvenient times, the competition will be lessoned and what I enjoy about the game will essentially die.In essence to me it feels like sony has decided to effectively kill off the style of game I enjoy. To kill off the reason I log onto eq2 on a daily basis.To me the killing of the contested game affects me much like removing tradeskills would affect tradeskillers. Perhaps we are a niche part of the community however we are a part of the community you have nurturered over the years, and to suddenly see you turn your backs on us feels devestating.

littlesalty

08-23-2009, 01:07 PM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bigron@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Instanced Anashti belt is gonna become a necklace and drop from her.Contested Anashti drops a necklace that is worse then the instanced necklace.Contested Anashti is a harder version of instanced Anashti but drops lesser quality loot for same slot.See the problem with that ...because i do.That is called deprogression...you are going backwards.</blockquote>Sure, thats an issue.The problem is, if its fixed so that the avatar neck is clearly better than the new choker, we would end up with instanced Anushti dropping items that are worse than War or Hate. Looking over the difficulty of these encounters, this is as much of an issue as what you are talking about.What needs to happen to avatars, is either they are altered to all be the same difficulty (my vote), or they need to have seperate loot tables.Not doing that means they are never going to have an appropriate avatar loot table, and issues of either of the above will always turn up.</blockquote>Mynzak drops a better priest wrist than any avatar (and the neutral avatars actually have a priest wrist) does this mean that avatars have to be adjusted so that they are easier than mynzak? or mynzak has to be beefed to be comparable to avatars? no it doesn't. You can't perfectly balance it so that the hardest mobs have the best loot for every slot unless you give ykesha and munzok 20+ loot drops.He also has a better priest wrist than Ykesha. Is that because he's harder? no. It's because ykesha doesn't drop a priest wrist, but I bet if he did, it would be better than than Mynzak's one. That is the issue here, only a few items (from a giant loot table) fill each slot from avatars and they are some of the hardest mobs. The only reason charms and stuff are so overpowered, is because nobody else dropped them, if Ykesha actually DID drop a charm, then it would be like the disease charm, in terms of uberness. (or so I'd like to think).

Noaani

08-23-2009, 01:20 PM

<cite>littlesalty wrote:</cite><blockquote>You can't perfectly balance it so that the hardest mobs have the best loot for every slot unless you give ykesha and munzok 20+ loot drops.</blockquote>They don't need to have the best drops for every slot in the game (if they did they would need a lot more than 20 items each).What you do is, you give them an item, and then you don't make better items for that slot at all. Simple.I don't care if Switchmaster drops a wrist that is better than a ring that Ykesha drops, as long as that ring is the best ring in the game.

Ge'Sar

08-23-2009, 02:10 PM

<cite>Bigron@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>That is called deprogression...you are going backwards.</blockquote>I'm pretty sure nothing is called deprogression, what with it not being a word and all. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I say this with love, agree with the rest..

Tehom

08-23-2009, 02:21 PM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote>Sure, thats an issue.The problem is, if its fixed so that the avatar neck is clearly better than the new choker, we would end up with instanced Anushti dropping items that are worse than War or Hate. Looking over the difficulty of these encounters, this is as much of an issue as what you are talking about.What needs to happen to avatars, is either they are altered to all be the same difficulty (my vote), or they need to have seperate loot tables.Not doing that means they are never going to have an appropriate avatar loot table, and issues of either of the above will always turn up.</blockquote>Well, I think most of us would be delighted if the easier avatars would be made harder. I think War and especially Hate are already a lot harder than instanced Anashti, though I realize people's mileage will vary.The flaw in your argument about equating avatar's loot rarity to that of instanced items is that there's a limited number entering the world. Instanced loot doesn't follow the same restriction, and the number of any of those other items you listed that come into being is based on the amount of times people try.

abiwabi

08-23-2009, 02:26 PM

DONT PUT THESE CHANGES THROUGH TO THE LIVE SERVERSSOE! LISTEN! IF YOU DO THIS, THIS LATE INTO THE XPAC YOU'LL LOSE YOUR RAIDING BASE. PERIOD. IF YOU WANNA SHOOT YOURSELF, FINE. BUT YOU'LL BE THE ONE DOING IT**Giant red font != more important than anyone else. Thanks. ~k

Ahlana

08-23-2009, 02:49 PM

<cite>abiwabi wrote:</cite><blockquote>DONT PUT THESE CHANGES THROUGH TO THE LIVE SERVERSSOE! LISTEN! IF YOU DO THIS, THIS LATE INTO THE XPAC YOU'LL LOSE YOUR RAIDING BASE. PERIOD. IF YOU WANNA SHOOT YOURSELF, FINE. BUT YOU'LL BE THE ONE DOING IT</blockquote>Though I agree that they shouldn't make these changes this late in, I highly, highly doubt that they will even come close to losing a fraction of the raiding base. Call me optimistic

abiwabi

08-23-2009, 02:50 PM

if this was done at the start of expansion, sure, but now, some of EQ's best players will leave. That is reality.

Coen

08-23-2009, 02:51 PM

i just am boggled by the notion that nerfing contested loot half-way through the expansion is a good idea, especially when considering that there are mobs that guilds with contested loot still struggle with killing on a regular basis. in addition, there is a mob in this expansion that no one can kill (besides 1 exception). period.people dont considering quitting a game when encounters are made more challenging (besides Munzok, because lets face it, he sucks to pull already as it is), but it does cross their mind when extreme nerfing comes into play.just a thought.

Tehom

08-23-2009, 03:15 PM

Guys, I think these nerfs are unhealthy for the game, but I don't think saying how all avatar raiders will ragequit is a compelling argument to them. They don't believe you and more importantly they don't care.What I think should be a compelling argument is that both the premises for the nerf and their implementation are fatally flawed.They have a few premises:1) The gap between avatar raiders and those who don't kill avatars is too wide.2) Avatars being too easy ("pushovers") has broken progression, and would continue to do so.3) The power of avatar loot restricts their ability to itemize the next expansion.We need to answer those points and provide alternatives. I believe we can do so. For example.1) This gap is diminishing, and will eventually (and should) almost disappear entirely. The primary strength of avatar-geared players is that they accumulated loot from instances at a much, much faster rate than guilds without avatar loot, and completed their set gear faster. Once players in non-avatar killing guilds accumulate the same instance loot, their abilities will be -very- close to that of avatar killing guilds.2) This is the argument with the most fundamental truth to it, but it ignores the issue of time. Avatars -did- break progression. They did so -eight months ago-. At this point, -any- guild that is killing avatars is more than capable of killing all the instanced mobs in the game except munzok, and so are several non-avatar killing guilds. Avatar gear represents a small but measurable gain in capabilities, but it's largely dwarfed by the sheer volume of saturation of instanced loot that these guilds enjoy. And at this point, there is no server where avatars would be able to provide that same stepping stone to speeding along instanced content anymore, and many avatars have become far harder to kill by removing mechanics loopholes that did make them measurably easier. There's simply no way that some guild that's struggling in early tier instanced content could steal avatars at this point and enjoy some meteoric rise in power. It's not possible at this point unless every avatar guild, and guilds right behind them which would server transfer to any server that showed signs of vulnerability, were to simultaneously collapse.3) This is a far more fundamental problem than just concerning avatar loot, and I think deserves a more thorough solution than just doing across-the-board nerfs as a short term and highly sloppy fix. Players begin to cap out on their abilities when they begin to saturate on set gear. Avatar gear adds a bit onto that. But as players increase their crit bonus (6-set, for example) and base damage values and acquire various focus effects, they basically get largely as strong as they're going to get. Anything after, at this point, are strictly marginal gains. You can say how 'Munzok drops amazing loot!' or whatever, but players simply won't buy it, because most hardcore raiders who really care about their characters don't simply latch onto something because it's shiny - they can do math, and they know what represents serious gains to them. And those serious gains are from base increases, crit mit, some procs, some clicks, foci, and crit bonus. Those need to be continued after players kill Anashti and Ykesha to represent some form of progression for their characters, and the range available for you to do so without compromising the next expansion in the same fashion avatar gear simply won't exist. These modifiers all need to degrade at a draconian rate in order for you to provide for meaningful progression in this expansion without ruining your ability to itemize the next one.While you -could- nerf all avatar loot into the dirt and then accomplish the same thing by making Miragul's a virtual candyland of overpowered loot or revamping MMB and other drops, I feel nerfing avatar loot without some crucial and compelling reason will do a great deal of harm to the game, at least in terms of alienating a portion of your playerbase. Admittedly a small number, but why do so when you have other options?

slippery

08-23-2009, 03:37 PM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Guys, I think these nerfs are unhealthy for the game, but I don't think saying how all avatar raiders will ragequit is a compelling argument to them. They don't believe you and more importantly they don't care.What I think should be a compelling argument is that both the premises for the nerf and their implementation are fatally flawed.They have a few premises:1) The gap between avatar raiders and those who don't kill avatars is too wide.2) Avatars being too easy ("pushovers") has broken progression, and would continue to do so.3) The power of avatar loot restricts their ability to itemize the next expansion.We need to answer those points and provide alternatives. I believe we can do so. For example.1) This gap is diminishing, and will eventually (and should) almost disappear entirely. The primary strength of avatar-geared players is that they accumulated loot from instances at a much, much faster rate than guilds without avatar loot, and completed their set gear faster. Once players in non-avatar killing guilds accumulate the same instance loot, their abilities will be -very- close to that of avatar killing guilds.2) This is the argument with the most fundamental truth to it, but it ignores the issue of time. Avatars -did- break progression. They did so -eight months ago-. At this point, -any- guild that is killing avatars is more than capable of killing all the instanced mobs in the game except munzok, and so are several non-avatar killing guilds. Avatar gear represents a small but measurable gain in capabilities, but it's largely dwarfed by the sheer volume of saturation of instanced loot that these guilds enjoy. And at this point, there is no server where avatars would be able to provide that same stepping stone to speeding along instanced content anymore, and many avatars have become far harder to kill by removing mechanics loopholes that did make them measurably easier. There's simply no way that some guild that's struggling in early tier instanced content could steal avatars at this point and enjoy some meteoric rise in power. It's not possible at this point unless every avatar guild, and guilds right behind them which would server transfer to any server that showed signs of vulnerability, were to simultaneously collapse.3) This is a far more fundamental problem than just concerning avatar loot, and I think deserves a more thorough solution than just doing across-the-board nerfs as a short term and highly sloppy fix. Players begin to cap out on their abilities when they begin to saturate on set gear. Avatar gear adds a bit onto that. But as players increase their crit bonus (6-set, for example) and base damage values and acquire various focus effects, they basically get largely as strong as they're going to get. Anything after, at this point, are strictly marginal gains. You can say how 'Munzok drops amazing loot!' or whatever, but players simply won't buy it, because most hardcore raiders who really care about their characters don't simply latch onto something because it's shiny - they can do math, and they know what represents serious gains to them. And those serious gains are from base increases, crit mit, some procs, some clicks, foci, and crit bonus. Those need to be continued after players kill Anashti and Ykesha to represent some form of progression for their characters, and the range available for you to do so without compromising the next expansion in the same fashion avatar gear simply won't exist. These modifiers all need to degrade at a draconian rate in order for you to provide for meaningful progression in this expansion without ruining your ability to itemize the next one.While you -could- nerf all avatar loot into the dirt and then accomplish the same thing by making Miragul's a virtual candyland of overpowered loot or revamping MMB and other drops, I feel nerfing avatar loot without some crucial and compelling reason will do a great deal of harm to the game, at least in terms of alienating a portion of your playerbase. Admittedly a small number, but why do so when you have other options?</blockquote>The thing is though, you are wrong on almost everything about this. Even though you are trying to argue that nerf shouldn't happen, your points are still wrong.First off, in response to 1, the gap should never diminsh although it most definitely has. The fact that the gap is so close is what has caused the problems in the first place. Such a small gap makes it extremely hard to differntiate the difficulty of encounters. By and large the difference in the difficulty of encounters this expansion is crit mit.That brings me to the second point. You know what I can do? I can fight Instanced Anashti without crit mit on even my tank. We killed instanced Anashti with our tank in 4 pieces of set gear. You know what I can't do? Kill even Hate or War with my whole raid in only 4 pieces of set gear, let alone my tank. Why? The AE's hit too hard. To do this you have to massively stack on healers and hope you can still kill it fast enough. People have just completely failed to remember this because when they argue that this change should happen it goes against their point. The Avatars people are trying to Justify as being easier need more crit mit than any encounter they are trying to say is harder.As for the last point, the whole concept that there is nothing left to be itemized to increase the power of players is a Myth, overstatement, and completely beyond the truth.

Tehom

08-23-2009, 04:07 PM

<cite>slippery wrote:</cite><blockquote>The thing is though, you are wrong on almost everything about this. Even though you are trying to argue that nerf shouldn't happen, your points are still wrong.First off, in response to 1, the gap should never diminsh although it most definitely has. The fact that the gap is so close is what has caused the problems in the first place. Such a small gap makes it extremely hard to differntiate the difficulty of encounters. By and large the difference in the difficulty of encounters this expansion is crit mit.That brings me to the second point. You know what I can do? I can fight Instanced Anashti without crit mit on even my tank. We killed instanced Anashti with our tank in 4 pieces of set gear. You know what I can't do? Kill even Hate or War with my whole raid in only 4 pieces of set gear, let alone my tank. Why? The AE's hit too hard. To do this you have to massively stack on healers and hope you can still kill it fast enough. People have just completely failed to remember this because when they argue that this change should happen it goes against their point. The Avatars people are trying to Justify as being easier need more crit mit than any encounter they are trying to say is harder.As for the last point, the whole concept that there is nothing left to be itemized to increase the power of players is a Myth, overstatement, and completely beyond the truth.</blockquote>Honestly I'm largely indifferent to how big a difference there is between avatar and non-avatar geared players as long as there remains a compelling reason to kill them. My feeling about the gap shrinking was that it's inevitable - it'll already shrink just by instanced guilds catching up on set/instance gear, and if they itemize mobs after Ykesha and Anashti properly we'll have more parallel upgrades, since that represents post-avatar gear also. Anashti and Ykesha's loot tables are kind of examples of that; they're all best in slot, and begin to replace avatar gear anyway. My note about how the gap 'should' shrink was largely just about them catching up with set gear, not necessarily saying that there shouldn't be any difference at all.And yeah, I'll definitely agree with you about the crit mit. Trauma AEs with high crit modifiers are kind of the big gear check this expansion. I'm reluctant to make that argument too much though because Anashti is almost an aberration - Ykesha and Munzok have similar gear checks that require crit mit. Anyone who thinks that they can polish off Justice without crit mit is fooling themselves, though.I think you misunderstood my last point. I didn't mean to say that they couldn't, I said that they probably wouldn't feel comfortable giving upgrades to players going forward (stuff like the new miragul zone, etc) that we found meaningful without approaching the same caps which they felt made avatar gear a problem. They could give us alternatives, like interesting procs, but those are always considered a problem in itemization because of their tendency to be irreplaceable. I know you mentioned a solution of them simply removing the caps, but although it's a solution I personally would want to see, I think it's not one they'd ever go for; they'd be terrified of letting players run wild without anything to keep them in check beyond meticulously adding up the net effect of gear sets at different stages of progression, all the while keeping in mind the ever-changing modifiers of buffs and AA. A player like you can keep track of that stuff, but they'd just regard it as much too difficult, I think.Edit: I know that some raiders are not fans of gear degradation, but I honestly don't see an alternative to how they could make loot that would remain compelling this expansion without the same complaint that they can't itemize the next one as a result, and my feeling is that if they're going to go with gear degradation anyway, they might as well go full-bore and have it resolve all of their current problems.

abiwabi

08-23-2009, 04:45 PM

Simple solution. Dont Fix what isnt broken and dont go forward with these changes. Its simply not smart thing to do. Killing Avatars (some) are easy, fielding the force at different times (off your raidtimes) and organizing what you need is whats hard about them. If you cant do that, you shouldnt be killing avatars. The ones who can, should be rewarded. Its also a total joke that this is happening this far into the xpac.**Giant red font != more important than anyone else. Thanks. ~k

samejima

08-23-2009, 05:16 PM

<cite>abiwabi wrote:</cite><blockquote>Simple solution. Dont Fix what isnt broken and dont go forward with these changes. Its simply not smart thing to do. Killing Avatars (some) are easy, fielding the force at different times (off your raidtimes) and organizing what you need is whats hard about them. If you cant do that, you shouldnt be killing avatars. The ones who can, should be rewarded. Its also a total joke that this is happening this far into the xpac.**Giant red font != more important than anyone else. Thanks. ~k</blockquote>I am sure that your giant red text is really helping! Overall the gear needed to be adjusted, some of the items however are a bit extreme. The two set bonuses on charms should be brought up to 5% base and the breast plates need some base added to them again maybe five to seven? Other than that there are just minor things you should do, the gear really was very overpowered. The timing and how they are doing the gear adjustments however is poor.I am not against items being best in the next expansion but it can not be so wide spread. I have eight items from previous expansions that are still best in slot. So I basically walk into each expansion hoping oh gee, oh wow! I hope I can upgrade something other than my set gear this expansion! That is the case that old healers are facing, if this gear was not adjusted just add four more items to that list.I would love to get a few things clarifyed from a dev about gear degradation.A) Will it effect procs?B) How much is lost each level, 3.3%, 6.6% or something else?

xmorox33

08-23-2009, 05:25 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote>The Munzok charms are harder to attain. The majority of raiders will have easier access to 2 avatar charms than to an avatar and a Munzok charm.</blockquote>In other words: a number of avatars are easier than a number of instanced nameds, mid run nameds even, but they are gonna remain as they are.FEEDBACK - Make avatars harder, at least as hard as high end final bosses. They HAVE to be the hardest around and HAVE to drop the best loot, it's their nature and it's what you devs stated when avatars were put in game.<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote>I explicitly stated that one reason for the nerf was to allow for natural item progression into the next expansion</blockquote> In other words: next expansion will not introduce anything new, it will be so similar to TSO that even with 10 more levels and item degradation there is a risk that current gear will be the best in game unless you nerf it. New things coming in game will be the ones you are taking back now. (at this point I'm lead to think it will be the poorest release ever since every expansion introduced new elements and new mechanichs, see critical mitigation and critical damage bonus in TSO. But this is another matter)FEEDBACK - On test, instead of nerfing stuff why dont you simply introduce now the item degradation curve and start working on it, so that you have plenty of time to adjust its parameters in a manner that lvl 80 gear have to be replaced by lvl 90 toons in any case. Make it affect trigger chance too so that lvl 80 procs are triggered 1/10 the normalized chance or for 1/10 damage/ward/stats boost/whatever for lvl 90 toons. Let's see how degradation works on Bloodthirsty Choker, Dark Orb and all the tier 7 avatar drops still in game. There is people around (shamans and some sorcerer) using the Qeynos Claymore Timeline reward (Hand/Arm of Erollisi and Body Part of That Dude the other one, cant recall names right now) paired with avatar gear, and we are not speaking of the best contested items obtainable killing the ultimate mob, it just a QUEST REWARD, 3 expansions old and still worth using? If we players must accept item degradation as a needed mechanic then you devs must agree that it's needed now. At least, let's start testing it.Or introduce this nerf on the very same day that new expansion comes alive, i will be busy dicovering new zones and working my exp anyway. Then if you tell me that lvl 90 avatars will drop exactly the same stuff I am wearing now I can live with it, but in the while you are not putting us into the perception that your only way to fix broken content is wiping away months of our efforts/free time/ dkp planning etc.

Gaige

08-23-2009, 05:29 PM

<cite>Ahlana wrote:</cite><blockquote>Though I agree that they shouldn't make these changes this late in, I highly, highly doubt that they will even come close to losing a fraction of the raiding base. Call me optimistic</blockquote>They'll lose the avatar guild on every server, and maybe a few others since they've already posted that SF endgame gear isn't as good as current avatar gear. IE: People already geared out in TSO gear will at best be the same, at worst worse off in SF than they are now.

Gisallo

08-23-2009, 05:53 PM

In advance let me apologize for the length of this post.Okay, with no response to the questions even Kiara said were good ones I can only come to the following logical conclusions. Its not a matter of whether we agree with the changes but simply whether we will chose to put up with them. Kiara or any Dev I welcome you to PLEASE tell me that the 2nd goal I note here does not exist. If it does not then obviously my conclusions are in error and I would LOVE to be wrong. Also please note I have NO Avatar gear and have no intention of ever having any as I have no interest in being “on-call” as while I love this game and raiding, I have other interests and bonafide responsibilities that make it impossible. Now If I win the Power Ball… JI am just going to use generic % numbers here, to illustrate the point in terms of past history.From EOF to ROK there was lets say a 50% to 200% increase in the capability of gear (depending on the tier, treasured, instance, raid, avatar). This was to an extent the straw that broke the camels back. GOAL 1: SOE has determined, whether right or wrong, that this is an untenable degree of growth in the long term for the health of the game. I can see this point since this is a game of hardcaps, soft caps, diminishing returns etc instead of simple linear improvement. Bell Curves ALWAYS make things messy. Because this bell curve is a base mechanic you also need a mechanism in the game to prevent this from happening in the future after a “reset” and so we have degradation in some form. I agree with this theory though not necessarily with the implementation (as I said I think degradation by tier would be far more palatable than degradation via level). GOAL 2 (say hello to deductive reasoning): On top of this SOE, based on statements from fan faire; and other attempted, proposed, and current changes on test, has decided that the reason why other games are gaining/beating them in the market place (HELLO WOW) is because they cater to the casual player more than any other part of their demographic. These games are either a socialist utopia in terms of gear period (such as LOTRO) and/or make raiding itself more accessible to more casual players (such as WoW) or simply make the better gear accessible through perhaps longer, but still group only, content (such as WAR).Now SOE realizes that people talk about the “dumbing down” or WoWification of the game A LOT so they do not wish to over simplify raiding. If you are not going to over simplify raiding how do you cater to the casual? The only way is to basically reward mediocrity, at least in terms of the history of this game. How do you do this and still be able to say “your raid gear is better than his instance gear, and your avatar gear is better than his raid gear?” You do this by crushing the improvement not only between tiers (t-8 to t-9) but by also crushing the difference between the drops per content. In this way they can say to the raiders, “see the raids are still as challenging and not everyone can succeed in them and you get a better reward.” The can also say to the casuals “hey, yeah they have better gear but really look at the numbers, is the gear REALLY that much better than yours?” In neither case are they strictly lying and so they can sleep at night, even if they are being disingenuous with the initial execution. Basically it’s a modified form of a bait and switch.So you end up having something where you have instance gear maybe 20% better than master crafted, raid gear 20% better than instance gear etc. If you reduce gear progression for the sake of mudflation AND add an additional reduction to make a more socialized world in terms of gear value across all styles of play, then the stuff at the VERY top end MUST be pre-nerfed because it would then be better than the next encounter type, even if that type is 10 levels higher.Again with GOAL 2 being simply a deduction I could be wrong, and I welcome anyone from SOE to tell me my deduction is in error. However with this GOAL in mind we have to come to the following conclusion as to why SOE is doing this.I am sure SOE has thought this through, they are a business first, whether their thought process is right or wrong though is an interesting question and only history will show us. SOE has to know that since lauch this game has ALWAYS had have and have-nots. The difference between KOS, EOF and ROK gear has always been CLEARLY better than the rest of the gear from that tier/expansion. People have always complained about it BUT it has always been that way. EQ2 used to (and some of still do) take pride in the fact that this is a game where learning the class, putting in the time and making the social netwoeks that are the PURPOSE of MMO’s, provided you with a greater reward. If you wanted a game where you could just log in when ever, pick up a raid or instance whenever and get great loot and say “lookie what I got” there were games for that as well. The fact people have been complaining for 5 years instead of going to one of these other games simply amazes me. All that being said it appears that SOE, with EQ2, has decided to follow the herd. Just as Sony said Killzone was going to be the “Halo Killer” (lol) SOE is gambling that this change and the next expansion will be the WoW killer, ignoring the fact it is a 5 year old game with graphics to match, the fact that other more modern and decently designed MMO’s are scheduled for launch in the same time frame etc. So what logical result can we expect from this? Well if they insist with pushing these changes to Avatar loot and continuing this trend through t9 I think it safe to say that the guild killing Avatars will leave. These 900 odd players are some of the most influential on their servers. Contrary to the stereotypes they provide great advice and even on occasion assistance to those who are not at the same level as they are (bows to current and former members of Strike, Infamous, True Blood). When these people leave an excellent source of information is gone as is a goodly portion of the “energy” that exists within the raiding community. Now when this happen guilds that aspired to that level will likely eventually fold. There are guilds that are not killing Avatars simply because others already are, the competition is FIERCE. However, why should you step to the top of the podium when the prize no longer exists? When this happens the other raid guilds then start to fragment as well. There truly is a trickle down effect.Now what happens? Well I know casual guilds that cannot reliably clear many instances at level. That’s neither good or bad, its just the style they chose. They would rather be crafting or Rping, doing HQ’s whatever. Some of course are just stubborn and refuse to play by the games rules, expecting the game to conform to their desires but whatever, they are the minority and a non-entity to me. I and others who consider our self raiders have made friends with many of these people though because this is an MMO and good people are just good people. You help good people when they have problems. Now if this game becomes stagnant to raiding what happens to these sources of help? What do these people do? What happens to the game then?Well I think what SOE has done is say “yeah we will lose a people, perhaps a lot of people….BUT with these changes we will bring in new subscribers that don’t have the experience of the past and thus do not know what they are missing, and since we now cater to mediocrity there will be more of them.” Its kinda like the old neighborhood restaurant that gambles that yuppifying the menu and upping the prices will bring in more customers from further away because they are “trendy” now, even if it alienates the old neighborhood crowd.As I said I pray that I am wrong, but without the communication from the devs as to their goals, communication I might add we have been promised, the only conclusions I can come to is not whether or not we will like the changes coming, but whether or not we dislike them enough to make us cancel our subscriptions.

Korrupt

08-23-2009, 05:54 PM

There something in soe's logic I dont quite understand. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but sifting through all the bs posts about loot pinata's and mob difficulty the devs themselves stated their actual reasons for this particular nerf. They stated that 1) they are having a hard time making encounters to fit the avatar gear without making it impossible for average raiders. and 2) They are having a hard time making gear next expansion that can improve on the current avatar gear. Lets look at both of these for a second.1)Creating a zone based off what the elite players can and cannot do is flawed. The best players/guilds will drop this content way before average players regardless of gear, just like they do every launch of an expansion. Why care if the mob is too easy for avatar geared players, they are a tiny % of the total population as everyone loves to point out. It in no way shape or form affects the overall populations fun in this game. Why take away fun for 1 level of player when it doesnt affect anything else.2)So let me get this one straight. You are worried this small % of players will be upset next expansion by not having gear to work for. The solution to this is to upset them NOW by taking away gear they ALREADY worked for? This makes no sense at all. If we are currently capped at 100% base, what is your vision for next expansion? Is it to get us back to our current 100% base so we can tread water up until you guys decide we have the exact same problem next tier as this one and bring out the nerf bat again? Or is your vision thet next tier we'll top out at 40-50% base, well below where we are currently, so that not only do we not have progression, we have degression. The solution is fairly simple in most people eye's. Raise the caps or drop them completely. Then next expansion we can expand from our 100%, but dont put out gear that makes us hit the next cap. maybe we start with out current 100% and when all is said and done we finish at 140%, well below a new cap. This would give you not only a next tier of gear, but also room to improve in to another future expansion.

Gisallo

08-23-2009, 06:38 PM

<cite>Korrupt@Najena wrote:</cite><blockquote>2)So let me get this one straight. You are worried this small % of players will be upset next expansion by not having gear to work for. The solution to this is to upset them NOW by taking away gear they ALREADY worked for? This makes no sense at all. If we are currently capped at 100% base, what is your vision for next expansion? Is it to get us back to our current 100% base so we can tread water up until you guys decide we have the exact same problem next tier as this one and bring out the nerf bat again? Or is your vision thet next tier we'll top out at 40-50% base, well below where we are currently, so that not only do we not have progression, we have degression. The solution is fairly simple in most people eye's. Raise the caps or drop them completely. Then next expansion we can expand from our 100%, but dont put out gear that makes us hit the next cap. maybe we start with out current 100% and when all is said and done we finish at 140%, well below a new cap. This would give you not only a next tier of gear, but also room to improve in to another future expansion.</blockquote>Doing what you propose though ignores one of the other ideas, that the playing field has to be leveled to an extent. Instead of a meritocracy of gear they want it more socialist in nature. The only way to do this without simply handing great gear to everyone is to reduce the degree to which gear increases at each "level" of play. If you were right and this was JUST about Avatar gear, your plan would work. I agree. To me with my gear right now I run most instances for giggles or to just complete quest lines. Raiding is where my progression is. If I was in an Avatar guild Raid zones would be for giggles, and Avatars would be my progression. If I can blow through them who cares, I am just there for giggles, not a challenge. Ooops Flame is up? There is my challenge. Its not the only reason though. Its about making the people who feel butt hurt when they see someone with gear a lot better than theirs to feel better about themselves. They made choices to be in the position they are in but of course SOE isn't going to say that. As you said the Avatar guilds, and maybe even the hard core "raid guilds" are all in a minorty BUT this change is not simply about addressing a problem with any specific tier or tiers of gear. If it was simply greying out every 10 levels and a TWEEK not a nerf here and there, either to a mechanic or an item would be necessary. However when you are trying to address the enitre food chain and how each step in the chain relates to each other then you need drastic steps like this.

Korrupt

08-23-2009, 06:54 PM

But they arent addressing the entire food chain or they would have nerfed all the OP gear across the board, including set gear and their major bouses(the jump from t2 gear to t4 gear is larger than a jump from t4 to avatar gear). This nerf is targetted directly at avatar raiders and no other. The reasoning behind the disdain for this particular type of player is unclear. And again my points stand regardless, avatar players are such a small minority that nerfing them does not affect gameplay in any way to the regular raider, as mobs do not and should not be made according to what the absolute best players can do(with the exception of contesteds that should be made in exactly this way). Having a system where being the best gives you no reward over being mediocre is not healthy, and would deteriorate gameplay overall in the long run. This nerf does absolutely nothing except take away, it doesnt improve anything for anybody, now or in the future.

Gormak

08-23-2009, 07:02 PM

invariably whenever anything is nerfed, looses power or ceases to be the premier content, somthing replaces it.My thinking is in the greater scheme of things two things will/have happened:<ol><li>Avatar gear being brought (somewhat - the shared loot tables still cause problems) closer into line with where they stand on a difficulty basis.</li><li>Tuning is being done to allow for some new "uber level" gear to be introduced with upcoming raid zones to be released.</li></ol>Im not saying whats been done is right. Much like the proc changes i believe such things should be left to an expansion launch. Changing things as they are now IS changing the rules at half-time.But, looking at things from the sony side... Mygod they must be regretting many many many things over how avatars are handled.

Gisallo

08-23-2009, 07:43 PM

<cite>Korrupt@Najena wrote:</cite><blockquote>But they arent addressing the entire food chain or they would have nerfed all the OP gear across the board, including set gear and their major bouses(the jump from t2 gear to t4 gear is larger than a jump from t4 to avatar gear). This nerf is targetted directly at avatar raiders and no other. The reasoning behind the disdain for this particular type of player is unclear. And again my points stand regardless, avatar players are such a small minority that nerfing them does not affect gameplay in any way to the regular raider, as mobs do not and should not be made according to what the absolute best players can do(with the exception of contesteds that should be made in exactly this way). Having a system where being the best gives you no reward over being mediocre is not healthy, and would deteriorate gameplay overall in the long run. This nerf does absolutely nothing except take away, it doesnt improve anything for anybody, now or in the future.</blockquote>The thing is that they are NERFING everything, its just the other gear can be nerfed via degredation. The Avatar gear is so powerful that it needs to be nerfed now in their new plan. The rest of the gear can be nerfed through a system that say makes hear degrade by whatever% over the course of 10 lvls, the thing is though that even a nerf of this degree, according to Fyre himself, would still have the t8 avatar gear being the best in the game. The only way this is even remotely possible is if you were to put the t8 and t9 gear next to each other, either they are equal to each other when not degraded or, potentially worse, the t9 would actually be worse, if the degredation system was not engaged. You need to look at this nerf in context with the stuff going on with the degredation system. If you don't you miss half the picture.

Homeskillet

08-23-2009, 08:14 PM

The bigger problem is not this nerf, its the problem of the devs being unable to add anything without it breaking or throwing something they did before way out of whack.

Gaige

08-23-2009, 08:23 PM

<cite>Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>The rest of the gear can be nerfed through a system that say makes hear degrade by whatever% over the course of 10 lvls, the thing is though that even a nerf of this degree, according to Fyre himself, would still have the t8 avatar gear being the best in the game.You need to look at this nerf in context with the stuff going on with the degredation system. If you don't you miss half the picture. </blockquote>Right, and this is good how?All it shows is that current TSO avatar killing guilds have nowhere to go in this game but down. At BEST we'll be treading water after acquiring all of our SF gear at WORST we'll actually be less powerful as a lvl 90 in SF gear than we are at 80 in a mix of TSO instance/avatar gear.Looking at this nerf in context makes me not want to play this expansion for six more months, nor waste ANY of my time at all in Sentinel's Fate.

Korrupt

08-23-2009, 08:43 PM

This thread is about the nerf, not degradation. But since you wanna mix the two lets lets look at it. Now with degradation you have 2 nerfs hitting avatar gear, and 1 hitting all the other OP stuff. On top of that, since degradation is a % based nerf the best loot, which should be avatar loot, will get hit harder than everything else yet again. Take 10% from 10 you lose 1, take 10% from 100 you lose 10. Degradation is not a balanced nerf and it again hits the highest level of raiders harder than any other.Gage has the other point correct. If avatar gear is that powerful(if you purposefully ignore the instanced loot that shows otherwise) that it is too good for next tier then you have 1 of 2 problems. Either we will be working next tier to get to where we are, which would bring on another nerf for the very same reasons. Or we will be working to be behind where we are, which should be completely unacceptable to everyone, not just avatar raiders.The fact of the matter is, this nerf does nothing but [Removed for Content] off avatar raiders. It does not help the general population in any way, it's not gonna make mobs easier, not gonna make them better players, etc etc. Saying that this small fraction of the player base has gotten so powerful that it's ruining the game for everyone is ludacris, as these people have no negative impact on the general population. If anything these players are a major asset as they are the ones that figure out encounters and mechanics and send accurate feedback to the devs. They also are a major contributer in strats and overall game knowledge trickling down to the more casual player.

abiwabi

08-23-2009, 08:59 PM

Dont put in the change.**Giant red font != more important than anyone else. Thanks. ~k

hellfire

08-23-2009, 09:38 PM

<cite>Gage wrote:</cite><blockquote>Looking at this nerf in context makes me not want to play this expansion for six more months, nor waste ANY of my time at all in Sentinel's Fate.</blockquote>Preety much......Comeing back in 18 months maybe for velious.........maybe.

slippery

08-23-2009, 09:42 PM

Even if you ignore all the reasons this is wrong (which are plentiful), the fact that it doesn't solve anything doesn't magically disappear. This is the primary reason I'm against degradation too. It just delays the inevitable, because you are going to hit caps unless there are other forms of advancement on gear.

Korrupt

08-23-2009, 09:45 PM

Unless they remove caps and give us the options of what to raise instead of capping 1 stat and moving to the next. So many pieces of good gear are ignored simply because people are capped and have no use for them. Lowering stats is one way to solve this but it pisses people off, so drop the caps already or double them, then make sure the new gear doesnt hit that mark.

Gisallo

08-23-2009, 09:53 PM

<cite>Korrupt@Najena wrote:</cite><blockquote>This thread is about the nerf, not degradation. But since you wanna mix the two lets lets look at it. Now with degradation you have 2 nerfs hitting avatar gear, and 1 hitting all the other OP stuff. On top of that, since degradation is a % based nerf the best loot, which should be avatar loot, will get hit harder than everything else yet again. Take 10% from 10 you lose 1, take 10% from 100 you lose 10. Degradation is not a balanced nerf and it again hits the highest level of raiders harder than any other.Gage has the other point correct. If avatar gear is that powerful(if you purposefully ignore the instanced loot that shows otherwise) that it is too good for next tier then you have 1 of 2 problems. Either we will be working next tier to get to where we are, which would bring on another nerf for the very same reasons. Or we will be working to be behind where we are, which should be completely unacceptable to everyone, not just avatar raiders.The fact of the matter is, this nerf does nothing but [Removed for Content] off avatar raiders. It does not help the general population in any way, it's not gonna make mobs easier, not gonna make them better players, etc etc. Saying that this small fraction of the player base has gotten so powerful that it's ruining the game for everyone is ludacris, as these people have no negative impact on the general population. If anything these players are a major asset as they are the ones that figure out encounters and mechanics and send accurate feedback to the devs. They also are a major contributer in strats and overall game knowledge trickling down to the more casual player.</blockquote>To both you and Gage. Read my other posts, especially my long one where I think this is bad for the game and I may let my account expire. I speak about the trickle down effect the whole 9 yards. I think the Avatar nerf is borked and I think gradual degredation of gear is borked. I agree with everything you guys are saying. I think that at most the gear should just go POOF when you hit level 90, even then I only think that is correct because I do think it silly that people would potentially at 90 still be wearing lvl 70 pieces because itemization is so screwed up at this point.I was just trying to point the context out to someone who seemed to think "hey they are only messing with Avatar guilds." This is only part of a bigger picture that is going to mess with anyone who actually likes a challenge in this game.

Tehom

08-23-2009, 10:31 PM

<cite>slippery wrote:</cite><blockquote>Even if you ignore all the reasons this is wrong (which are plentiful), the fact that it doesn't solve anything doesn't magically disappear. This is the primary reason I'm against degradation too. It just delays the inevitable, because you are going to hit caps unless there are other forms of advancement on gear.</blockquote>Well, it depends. If gear degradation is harsh enough where it obliterates all previous gear at the new cap, then they could itemize where you could only gain 50% of mods that matter per expansion no matter what you do, so that you only reach caps by the time it comes to raise the level cap and enforce gear degradation again. One of the bigger downsides to that is that there's absolutely no reason to ever do old content anymore after a level cap is raised, which is a fairly significant long term problem. Alternatives to this are raising caps on various modifiers so that players can get more per expansion, with a careful watch for how this might affect game balance - for example, heals growing larger at a much faster rate than player health/mitigation obviously makes shamans far stronger than other priests. Another alternative is introducing new modifiers, hopefully ones which are largely class-neutral in how they'd benefit various archetypes. Easier said than done, but an example would be a modifier that just adds a flat +hp modifier to the priest hp/resist buff as a class-neutral but archetype-based item modification.Honestly, speaking just for myself, I don't really care which solution they choose provided progression is maintained - when doing difficult new content, I want to see player abilities continue to increase at a meaningful rate after we win. I'm largely indifferent to exactly what sort of hoops they need to jump through to make that happen since I don't have much interest in old content and I'm mostly fine with adjusting to whatever classes are currently overpowered or underpowered. I suspect the raising caps/new modifiers route would be the most popular and healthiest to the game overall since it doesn't negate old content, but it does require a great deal more implementation time and thought.

slippery

08-23-2009, 10:35 PM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>slippery wrote:</cite><blockquote>Even if you ignore all the reasons this is wrong (which are plentiful), the fact that it doesn't solve anything doesn't magically disappear. This is the primary reason I'm against degradation too. It just delays the inevitable, because you are going to hit caps unless there are other forms of advancement on gear.</blockquote>Well, it depends. If gear degradation is harsh enough where it obliterates all previous gear at the new cap, then they could itemize where you could only gain 50% of mods that matter per expansion no matter what you do, so that you only reach caps by the time it comes to raise the level cap and enforce gear degradation again. One of the bigger downsides to that is that there's absolutely no reason to ever do old content anymore after a level cap is raised, which is a fairly significant long term problem. Alternatives to this are raising caps on various modifiers so that players can get more per expansion, with a careful watch for how this might affect game balance - for example, heals growing larger at a much faster rate than player health/mitigation obviously makes shamans far stronger than other priests. Another alternative is introducing new modifiers, hopefully ones which are largely class-neutral in how they'd benefit various archetypes. Easier said than done, but an example would be a modifier that just adds a flat +hp modifier to the priest hp/resist buff as a class-neutral but archetype-based item modification.Honestly, speaking just for myself, I don't really care which solution they choose provided progression is maintained - when doing difficult new content, I want to see player abilities continue to increase at a meaningful rate after we win. I'm largely indifferent to exactly what sort of hoops they need to jump through to make that happen since I don't have much interest in old content and I'm mostly fine with adjusting to whatever classes are currently overpowered or underpowered. I suspect the raising caps/new modifiers route would be the most popular and healthiest to the game overall since it doesn't negate old content, but it does require a great deal more implementation time and thought.</blockquote>If you are never going to get better in a game based on itemized progression what is the point of playing?

Gisallo

08-24-2009, 12:10 AM

<cite>slippery wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>slippery wrote:</cite><blockquote>Even if you ignore all the reasons this is wrong (which are plentiful), the fact that it doesn't solve anything doesn't magically disappear. This is the primary reason I'm against degradation too. It just delays the inevitable, because you are going to hit caps unless there are other forms of advancement on gear.</blockquote>Well, it depends. If gear degradation is harsh enough where it obliterates all previous gear at the new cap, then they could itemize where you could only gain 50% of mods that matter per expansion no matter what you do, so that you only reach caps by the time it comes to raise the level cap and enforce gear degradation again. One of the bigger downsides to that is that there's absolutely no reason to ever do old content anymore after a level cap is raised, which is a fairly significant long term problem. Alternatives to this are raising caps on various modifiers so that players can get more per expansion, with a careful watch for how this might affect game balance - for example, heals growing larger at a much faster rate than player health/mitigation obviously makes shamans far stronger than other priests. Another alternative is introducing new modifiers, hopefully ones which are largely class-neutral in how they'd benefit various archetypes. Easier said than done, but an example would be a modifier that just adds a flat +hp modifier to the priest hp/resist buff as a class-neutral but archetype-based item modification.Honestly, speaking just for myself, I don't really care which solution they choose provided progression is maintained - when doing difficult new content, I want to see player abilities continue to increase at a meaningful rate after we win. I'm largely indifferent to exactly what sort of hoops they need to jump through to make that happen since I don't have much interest in old content and I'm mostly fine with adjusting to whatever classes are currently overpowered or underpowered. I suspect the raising caps/new modifiers route would be the most popular and healthiest to the game overall since it doesn't negate old content, but it does require a great deal more implementation time and thought.</blockquote>If you are never going to get better in a game based on itemized progression what is the point of playing?</blockquote>Exactly. Lets look at this like a job. Lets say you may 50k this year. The boss tells you, hey I am going to give you a raise, its going to be 15k. The job will of course require more work (leveling) and you will have to get new work supplies on your own dime (adept III's, masters, adornments etc) It doesn't sound too bad though because hey thats not going to cost that much and hey its more money 15k is a lot of money after all. HOWEVER first he says that he is reducing your current salary to 40k (initial nerf). Okay so you got a 5k raise....whatever, its still more money even though you do feel a litle bait and switched. Then he tells you "by the way over the course of a year you are now going to have to pay 5k for the same benefit's package."(pending item degredation) You have now broken even with your "raise" for doing more work. Now tell me would an employee accept this if there was another job to be had? Would anyone think that the employer was a good one?The entire point of game based on level and itemized progression is that as you go higher in level the gear gets obviously better. Since I and other have yet to be contradicted it seems that NOT only Avatar gear, but gear in all tiers is largely going to remain unchanged. Rather than doing a gradual cool down to find a happy medium between the acknowledged mudflation issue and keeping players feel like they are progressing, they appear to be, at least at the moment, planning on doing a massive reset in a single expansion which will basically mean the ONLY reason the new gear you are getting appears better is because your prior gear is either nerfed and/or degraded because do not forget, after this nerf Avatar gear is going to get degraded to boot, NOT because the gear is actually any improvement.No one said that this has too be done in one fell swoop. They could tone down the progression of the gear while still making an upgrade from the prior tier and force people out of the gear they do not intend to replace by simply having the prior tier stuff go poof at 90. People would then still feel the gear they got, Avatar, raid, instance whatever, was an improvement (for the most part) over their old stuff, even if it wasn't the massive degree of improvement we have seen between say EoF and RoK. Does it take more work by actually sitting down and looking at how self, group and raid wide buffs effect people in relation to the gear? Yeah it sure does, a lot more than just hitting a big red reset button, which is essentially what they are doing now to make it easy, BUT in the end what job that is actually well done is ever "easy".You do not work harder for even or less money, so why in the world should people play and pay for less?

arant

08-24-2009, 01:16 AM

Basically it was a 10 month Beta Test with the end result = FAIL that we paid for. They created an expansion with gear people were finally really excited about to turn around and tell us - we broke the game, time to rewind. And if they really want to try something to bring the avatar gear more in line with what they want. It has to be the best for its slot, and it'll have to be wanted (something that would make someone to consider breaking their set bonuses). As it stands now too much avatar gear really needed boosting so it doesnt automatically rot to alts or rot in bags.i.e. Adjust evil mage robe downwards..Boost the hell out of the worthless mage pants.To those saying that the loot is being adjusted to meet the difficulty level of the avatars is just wrong. The majority of the guilds capable of killing avatars wouldnt care if they boosted the difficulty of the encounters as it would make it that much easier for a guild to keep them on lock down. It was said, it's being done to try and allow for a better "natural progression". The problem with the reasoning however it was said that the gear in its current form would still be the most powerful gear for what they have planned with the next expansion. So all this time and effort to ultimately end up worse off then you were before.

Kindalar

08-24-2009, 01:53 AM

Kiara, I'm trying the post again, this time void of the "venom." It's important to get this message right for the sake and wellbeing of this game that so many of us have come to enjoy over the years:As our guild was discussing this proposed nerf, one of our guild mates made an observation that we seemed to be all going through the stages of grief: denial <span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">à anger <span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">à bargaining <span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">à depression <span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">à acceptance.And I think he was right. This post is about the fact that we as gamers feel like you are breaking an agreement with us. The central agreement being that if we endure the challenges of your content, we will be rewarded with items with specific stats. The nerf that happened a few months ago was painful. When TSO originally hit, we spent, weeks, months getting our butts handed to us on encounters. Wipe after wipe after wipe after wipe. Hour after countless hour, trying new things, switching players out, dealing with good players leaving because they were sick of the failures, dealing with buggy encounters that were technically impossible to beat when they were released to us (no developer is perfect, it happens, but it still was our experience that we were up against content that was technically not beatable with the gear/items given, and this was pre-nerf), etc.I could go on, but the point is that we endured that “suffering”, we stuck to the “good fight” because we all had a vision for our characters, and collectively as guilds. A vision that was based on the items that we saw dropping off of these encounters and the capability it would be accompanied with when said item was equipped. The items were so good, the fantasy of having them was so strong, that it drove us, motivated us to burn a lot of time and energy mastering difficult encounters. Basically, the equivalent of a part time job, around 24 hours per week or more.As we finally began to see the tables turn on the encounters and as we finally started reaping the rewards of months of effort, we began to enjoy the spoils. We were crushing the content that previously pwned us. And we loved it! People were excited. It was common to see folks log in a full hour before raids, just ecstatic to log in and see/chat about what was going to drop next. Partly this surge in energy was b/c we knew we could finally beat the encounters. We wouldn’t be spending hours wiping with no victory. Skill, experience with encounters and the items we had won off of previous kills were all contributing factors to success.Then something strange happened. Months after we were settling in nicely to clearing content, beginning to really examine the differences in gear, fine tuning our toons, you introduced an incredible nerf. It was like nothing we’d ever seen before, and it was extremely painful. You had your mountain of statistics and paperwork that clearly justified the nerf. Re-writes of this, endless revamps of that just weren’t worth the effort and the only viable solution was the nerf. At first, based upon the response, you called it off. We thought you heard how intrusive changing items were to the entire mindset of the gamer devoting their finite time to accomplishing victory against your encounters. When you stopped, you were winning respect b/c we felt our “investments of time and energy” were safe. Then, two months later, with swift and unflinching speed, you nerfed.This was painful because:1. Toons that we spent months on were now less effective than they had become.2. We had to now re-learn, and go through the wipe, wipe, wipe phase again to re-master the same content.3. Items that motivated us to work so hard were now less effective, and therefore less motivational to attain.4. We had to deal with another wave steady and good raiders quitting.The community spoke to you and delivered these messages to you in forums just like this one. Page after page after page. And yet, at the end of the festive posting, emotional outpouring, and technical analysis, it changed very little. The nerf happened.If there was one thing I assumed, it was that a nerf like that would never happen again. To me, when you put an item in the virtual world, you create a marker that people will use as a definition of success. It’s a marker that folks will use to endure the frustrations and challenges presented by your game. The item ultimately becomes more than just an item, it becomes a goal. In fact then, when you release an item to the virtual world, you are making an agreement with your gamers. If we agree to kill the mob, you agree to reward us with a series of items. It’s this core agreement that motivates many of your subscribers to devote large amounts of time to your game. And frankly, as you go up the scale of gamer capability, this agreement becomes more and more important. Folks that enjoy EQII for the social aspects probably don’t care as much about items. Folks that enjoy your game to dominate your most difficult encounters care more. So in this case, you’re speaking to a community of gamers that care deeply about the agreements made between you the creator, and us, the consumer.When people break their agreements, they usually offer concessions. This is one thing noticeably absent in this discussion.How are you making those of us that have spent the last 9 months focused on a series of goals, in the form of items, whole? As an example, how many students would return to enroll in a college that constantly changed its graduation requirements without considering those students that had already completed courses?I listened to a few folks talking about this year’s Fan Faire. One of the things mentioned was how it was an actual goal of the developers to shrink the gap between high end raiders and everyone else playing. Could someone speak to this and confirm or crush this rumor? Here’s what I do know. I’ve been on raids with guilds that will wipe twice to a mob and call it a day. Compare that with guilds that I’ve played in where we’ll wipe for 4 hours straight, literally, 0 kills, 0 loot, and still excitingly log in the next day willing to endure the same thing over for a chance to experience the win and to loot from the mobs loot table. Why should those two sets of individuals be brought closer together? If there was no tangible difference between attending a state college and going to Harvard, do you think people would be willing to pay 200K to attend Harvard? If there is no “wide” gap that is easily visible between the people that quit after 2 wipes and the people that will not quit after 8 hours of wipes, do you think people will “pay” the 8 hours?I mention this b/c if this is a catalyst of the nerf, you will be stripping a motivational factor that exists in folks that are extremely dedicated to beating the best you can throw at us. Part of the fun of enduring the “pain” is enjoying the things that a powerful toon can do.Our entire game revolves HEAVILY around items and their attributes. When you change item attributes, you’re effectively changing the rules of the game, during the game – your breaking your agreement with the gamer without negotiation or concession.If you at SOE do take the time to read this, understand that I am completely aware that you’re connected to Wall Street. Like it or not this does come down to a game of money. So you’ve got to use future revenues in your argument to support us. It's possible that subscriptions will drop, satisfaction will drop, and that will translate into a loss of revenue if you, by whatever constraints your being held to, are not permitted to hold yourself accountable to the items you released into this game. If the [Removed for Content] doesn’t break this time, it’s inevitable to break down the road. I certainly don’t wish that on EQII, that’s why I’m posting, yet again. Hoping that it will make some shred of difference to stop this incredibly destructive cycle of releasing and changing items.Please do the right thing here guys. Keep your agreement with your community, the agreement you established with us when you released these items into our world. Don’t leave the developer cove until you’ve come up with ANY other solution other than to break your agreement and change items out from under your players. Only one guild I know of has completely cleared TSO to date.With Respect,Kindalar

Quicksilver74

08-24-2009, 03:06 AM

I need some good news, like mythical nunchucks called "Crab-Chucks" are coming into the game next update or something to make this all easier for me to swallow.

Noaani

08-24-2009, 03:46 AM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>The flaw in your argument about equating avatar's loot rarity to that of instanced items is that there's a limited number entering the world. Instanced loot doesn't follow the same restriction, and the number of any of those other items you listed that come into being is based on the amount of times people try.</blockquote>If you have two identicle mobs, one is instanced the other contested, then the contested version should clearly have better loot. As soon as the instanced version gets made harder, the loot should be of equal quality (ie, harder instanced mob has equal loot to easier contested). If that gap gets large enough (as in the case with Munzok), then the instanced mob should have better loot.The issues with this come in when you have encounters of different difficulty, but shared loot tables. Evil avatars, as an example, need to have a loot table based on the difficulty of Disease. This change puts that in place, but unfortunatly means that Fear and Anushti have subpar loot for the challenge they provide.Good avatars need to have a loot table balanced around Growth, and neutral around Storms.Imagine if MMB was released with each mob sharing a large loot table. Should that loot table be based on how hard Munzok is, or how hard that first encounter is? Reguardless of which it is based on, there are going to be encounters in the instance that are not propperly balanced with reguards to effort vs reward.

Homeskillet

08-24-2009, 03:55 AM

<cite>Kindalar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Kiara, I'm trying the post again, this time void of the "venom." It's important to get this message right for the sake and wellbeing of this game that so many of us have come to enjoy over the years:As our guild was discussing this proposed nerf, one of our guild mates made an observation that we seemed to be all going through the stages of grief: denial <span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">à anger <span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">à bargaining <span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">à depression <span style="font-family: Wingdings; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-char-type: symbol; mso-symbol-font-family: Wingdings;">à acceptance.And I think he was right. This post is about the fact that we as gamers feel like you are breaking an agreement with us. The central agreement being that if we endure the challenges of your content, we will be rewarded with items with specific stats. The nerf that happened a few months ago was painful. When TSO originally hit, we spent, weeks, months getting our butts handed to us on encounters. Wipe after wipe after wipe after wipe. Hour after countless hour, trying new things, switching players out, dealing with good players leaving because they were sick of the failures, dealing with buggy encounters that were technically impossible to beat when they were released to us (no developer is perfect, it happens, but it still was our experience that we were up against content that was technically not beatable with the gear/items given, and this was pre-nerf), etc.I could go on, but the point is that we endured that “suffering”, we stuck to the “good fight” because we all had a vision for our characters, and collectively as guilds. A vision that was based on the items that we saw dropping off of these encounters and the capability it would be accompanied with when said item was equipped. The items were so good, the fantasy of having them was so strong, that it drove us, motivated us to burn a lot of time and energy mastering difficult encounters. Basically, the equivalent of a part time job, around 24 hours per week or more.As we finally began to see the tables turn on the encounters and as we finally started reaping the rewards of months of effort, we began to enjoy the spoils. We were crushing the content that previously pwned us. And we loved it! People were excited. It was common to see folks log in a full hour before raids, just ecstatic to log in and see/chat about what was going to drop next. Partly this surge in energy was b/c we knew we could finally beat the encounters. We wouldn’t be spending hours wiping with no victory. Skill, experience with encounters and the items we had won off of previous kills were all contributing factors to success.Then something strange happened. Months after we were settling in nicely to clearing content, beginning to really examine the differences in gear, fine tuning our toons, you introduced an incredible nerf. It was like nothing we’d ever seen before, and it was extremely painful. You had your mountain of statistics and paperwork that clearly justified the nerf. Re-writes of this, endless revamps of that just weren’t worth the effort and the only viable solution was the nerf. At first, based upon the response, you called it off. We thought you heard how intrusive changing items were to the entire mindset of the gamer devoting their finite time to accomplishing victory against your encounters. When you stopped, you were winning respect b/c we felt our “investments of time and energy” were safe. Then, two months later, with swift and unflinching speed, you nerfed.This was painful because:1. Toons that we spent months on were now less effective than they had become.2. We had to now re-learn, and go through the wipe, wipe, wipe phase again to re-master the same content.3. Items that motivated us to work so hard were now less effective, and therefore less motivational to attain.4. We had to deal with another wave steady and good raiders quitting.The community spoke to you and delivered these messages to you in forums just like this one. Page after page after page. And yet, at the end of the festive posting, emotional outpouring, and technical analysis, it changed very little. The nerf happened.If there was one thing I assumed, it was that a nerf like that would never happen again. To me, when you put an item in the virtual world, you create a marker that people will use as a definition of success. It’s a marker that folks will use to endure the frustrations and challenges presented by your game. The item ultimately becomes more than just an item, it becomes a goal. In fact then, when you release an item to the virtual world, you are making an agreement with your gamers. If we agree to kill the mob, you agree to reward us with a series of items. It’s this core agreement that motivates many of your subscribers to devote large amounts of time to your game. And frankly, as you go up the scale of gamer capability, this agreement becomes more and more important. Folks that enjoy EQII for the social aspects probably don’t care as much about items. Folks that enjoy your game to dominate your most difficult encounters care more. So in this case, you’re speaking to a community of gamers that care deeply about the agreements made between you the creator, and us, the consumer.When people break their agreements, they usually offer concessions. This is one thing noticeably absent in this discussion.How are you making those of us that have spent the last 9 months focused on a series of goals, in the form of items, whole? As an example, how many students would return to enroll in a college that constantly changed its graduation requirements without considering those students that had already completed courses?I listened to a few folks talking about this year’s Fan Faire. One of the things mentioned was how it was an actual goal of the developers to shrink the gap between high end raiders and everyone else playing. Could someone speak to this and confirm or crush this rumor? Here’s what I do know. I’ve been on raids with guilds that will wipe twice to a mob and call it a day. Compare that with guilds that I’ve played in where we’ll wipe for 4 hours straight, literally, 0 kills, 0 loot, and still excitingly log in the next day willing to endure the same thing over for a chance to experience the win and to loot from the mobs loot table. Why should those two sets of individuals be brought closer together? If there was no tangible difference between attending a state college and going to Harvard, do you think people would be willing to pay 200K to attend Harvard? If there is no “wide” gap that is easily visible between the people that quit after 2 wipes and the people that will not quit after 8 hours of wipes, do you think people will “pay” the 8 hours?I mention this b/c if this is a catalyst of the nerf, you will be stripping a motivational factor that exists in folks that are extremely dedicated to beating the best you can throw at us. Part of the fun of enduring the “pain” is enjoying the things that a powerful toon can do.Our entire game revolves HEAVILY around items and their attributes. When you change item attributes, you’re effectively changing the rules of the game, during the game – your breaking your agreement with the gamer without negotiation or concession.If you at SOE do take the time to read this, understand that I am completely aware that you’re connected to Wall Street. Like it or not this does come down to a game of money. So you’ve got to use future revenues in your argument to support us. It's possible that subscriptions will drop, satisfaction will drop, and that will translate into a loss of revenue if you, by whatever constraints your being held to, are not permitted to hold yourself accountable to the items you released into this game. If the [Removed for Content] doesn’t break this time, it’s inevitable to break down the road. I certainly don’t wish that on EQII, that’s why I’m posting, yet again. Hoping that it will make some shred of difference to stop this incredibly destructive cycle of releasing and changing items.Please do the right thing here guys. Keep your agreement with your community, the agreement you established with us when you released these items into our world. Don’t leave the developer cove until you’ve come up with ANY other solution other than to break your agreement and change items out from under your players. Only one guild I know of has completely cleared TSO to date.With Respect,Kindalar</blockquote>One of the best posts yet which properly expresses the sentiments felt by many.If you have truly pledged to listen to your players, you can prove it here and now.

abiwabi

08-24-2009, 04:05 AM

We are your customers.Do not put in this changeI want to hear from the devs that this change will not go through.your customers need to know.**Giant red font != more important than anyone else. Thanks. ~k

yadlajoi

08-24-2009, 04:33 AM

just cancel your accounts and let it run out. check the update note once every month or so. if the change is push dont bother with this game anymore.

UNTILitSLEEPS

08-24-2009, 09:14 AM

it has already been said several times but i think it cant be emphasized enough:postpone the nerf to the launch of the new expansion, noone will care than because they want to experience the new content and gain new items anyways!tso itemisation failed and its to late to fix thatall this nerf does is [Removed for Content] of hundreds of customers who already are very bored with the current expansion.

levlelfe

08-24-2009, 09:47 AM

We perhaps represent 2% of the total player base but those 2% represent like 50%+ of the beta and server-test testers. Just 'sayin ...

Oakum

08-24-2009, 11:38 AM

Hmm, seems to me that he definitely earned the right to state his opinion. Thanks for your service, friend. Those who have not risked making the ultimate sarcrafice for their freedoms and rights really have a hard time understanding and appreciating what so many have earned with real life blood, sweat, and tears in my observations.Now as far as the "nerfs" go. Why would the developers do something that they know the players would dislike except for the greater good of the game?My point is that most players, hardcore and casual although the hardcore are 1000 times more vocal on the forums whereas the casual will just leave the game when they have real problems with it, only look at the here and now as far as playing. The developers have to look at 1 to 2 years from now including how the next expansion fits with current itemization and HAVE to make it all work together without making players too overpowered.What was good a year ago when the expansion was not fleshed out with the "realities" of what could be/should be/wanted to be done yet are now overpowered in the big scheme of things that we, as players cant and shouldnt see. After all, what good would new content be if we new everything about it including how to beat it a year before it came out and didnt even have to gear up to do it. New tier of gear should equal new gearing up for new raid zones IMO. Not go from killing avatars and top ended contested in t8 to killing avatars and top end contested in t9 with T8 gear and with the gear reductions, it seems that it might be possible with the current itemization.Edit: I do not like nerfs any more then other players. That is why they are put on test. So the dev's can see the more results and get useful feedback they can compare to their larger goals and see if its a valid reason to either change a prososed change or forget it all together. Its not to "drive the player base which pays their salaries away" like a lot of the posters seem to be saying.Also they know that even with all the testing done, some things will come to light when changes go live and they will have to change the change again. That is why they have hot fixes.Yes they have changed quite a bit over the years that I didnt like such as the big crafting nerf where subcombines where removed and crafting lost most of its usefulness. But they decided that it was too hard due to all the HC raiders complaining at the time that it was too hard to learn to craft and even though it was too hard for them, the gear made was too good, lol.I remember putting out my own fair share of "dev hate" over that and other changes I really didnt like such as the fact that they have "forgotten" to keep druids equal but different in buffs and group survivability to other healers and above all other healers on the DPS side since druids traded heavier armor (survivablity when hit) for leather in order to do more DPS. Also druids have no "useful" raid utility compared to the buffs/debuffs that cleric and shaman have make druids non preferred healers for raid unless the MT group needs 3 healers due to tank/raid gear, make up, or fighting named not on farm status yet where more healing is required then a cleric and shaman can provide. Or if the other healers dont show up that night for raid, lol.See, I am definitely not a fanboi, lol, I do think they make changes with the best interests of the game in mind (in their opinion with their information) that some of us will never agree with, its no cause to disrespect them though. Just one of those agree to disagree and if I dont have fun anymore, I will stop playing.

Gaige

08-24-2009, 11:47 AM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote>The issues with this come in when you have encounters of different difficulty, but shared loot tables. Evil avatars, as an example, need to have a loot table based on the difficulty of Disease. This change puts that in place, but unfortunatly means that Fear and Anushti have subpar loot for the challenge they provide.Good avatars need to have a loot table balanced around Growth, and neutral around Storms.</blockquote>If that is the case they should just remove avatars and avatar gear imo, as they'd be like the Dominus which were never used outside of griefing and provided transmute fodder at best.As it currently stands on test you can kill contested Anashti and get a necklace that is subpar to the two necklaces the INSTANCED version of Anashti drops, even though she is an easier encounter.

Noaani

08-24-2009, 01:11 PM

<cite>Gage wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote>The issues with this come in when you have encounters of different difficulty, but shared loot tables. Evil avatars, as an example, need to have a loot table based on the difficulty of Disease. This change puts that in place, but unfortunatly means that Fear and Anushti have subpar loot for the challenge they provide.Good avatars need to have a loot table balanced around Growth, and neutral around Storms.</blockquote>If that is the case they should just remove avatars and avatar gear imo, as they'd be like the Dominus which were never used outside of griefing and provided transmute fodder at best.As it currently stands on test you can kill contested Anashti and get a necklace that is subpar to the two necklaces the INSTANCED version of Anashti drops, even though she is an easier encounter.</blockquote>See, my suggestion would be to bring all avatars up to the difficulty of Flame/Justice.This wouldn't make them the hardest mobs in the game, but would make them close enough for the fact that they are contested to put their loot in to the top spot.Doing this would actually warrent a small number of avatar items being boosted from what they are on live (though some would still warrent a slight nerf, the caster robes being one such example).

thajo

08-24-2009, 01:37 PM

Long post inc, I been thinking about all this for a while and am gonna post some thoughts.I would comment a lot of progression but I don't think thats where their intent for nerfing this gear comes from, I want to take it down to the reason they keep using over and over. How if its not nerfed it will be problematic in t9. Theres a few routes you can go about this.Wait until t9 to nerf it - honestly that idea is just as lame as this one but it stings way way way less. The fact is, no matter how you slice and dice it now, you are stinging hard, especially the people who put in time. Your avatars are not as casual as you think they are. People have called of dinner plans, left friends houses, fought to put aside free time - many times - to kill your avatars at odd hours. This is not just me but I hear this all the time "i hope we kill this fast, i just left so and so to come do this". Back in my guild I was in on Unrest, a few of the people who got the Disease charm looted it at nearly 12pm midnight because we were pulling the mob with a full raid for 4 hours. So you are going to flat out smack that sort of hard work in the face because people wake up at 4am, dropped their plans and worked on these mobs for several hours because we knew the loot was well worth it. So no matter what, if you nerf this stuff now or at t9, it doesn't change the fact you are going to sting your paying customers and for what? What exactly is going to be better about Everquest 2 because you nerfed avatar loot?Leave it as is - you could leave it the way it is now and still there would not be great harm. A great deal of the avatar items can be replaced, especially considering you'll be making level 90 loot, it wont be unreasonable to stretch the power a bit. Also, even a teir up, avatar loot should remain pretty good until you start seeing high end encounters. It was the same in t7 and nothing was drastically broken. Look at the way guilds disband, disperse and turnover members. Do you honestly think a bunch of guilds with "out of this world" avatar loot decked toons are going to stick together and violate and surpass the future t9 expansions in incredible ways? That is just outlandish but it sounds like the fear behind saying you must nerf this gear. This expansion has some good DPS gear, hardly some of the amazing survivability items you have introduced in past expansions like immunity items, aoe immune items and fighter stoneskin gear. There are tons of people on every server who are obvlious to avatar gear, and the loot is not as common as every guild would like it to be. I've been in a couple TSO avatar killing guilds and some items I have never seen drop for EITHER guild in my time! The dmg proc nerf was enough and took the excessive power out of avatar loot. The difference is, now they proc mild dmg and 100% stats/effects. Dmg procs are free dmg that you can gain by jamming *any* button, procing stats/effects still rely on player skill so its not like the free-dps ride they all used to be. Going to use an anology with mage loot to show base damage could be similar to cast speed, or how it once was...and nothing ever broke nor did every toon in norrath become capped on cast speed. In t7 there was little cast speed procs. Robe of Al'kabor was made and it was an amazing mage item as lots were not even close to capped casting. Instead of leaving it as an overpowered item you guys added cast speed, but in rather smaller chunks. So that closed the gap for casual players who made an effort to pick up decent gear and lessened the power of the robe as more other upgraded slots started containing cast speed. Top end RoK, non avatar geared, raiders could get very close to casting cap. Then in TsO of course you made shiny metallic robe to seal the deal that you'll allow anyone to get a lil max cast speed proc if they wish. You also lessened the power of an OP effect for its time, like Robe of Alkabor, by providing same slot items that contained a heavy amount of another very un-used stat. In RoK began when players could get their crit chance very very high. Robe of Dark Power made alot of mages with Robe of Al'kabor think about it because you were providing crit chance, something that showed lots of potential to stack up on, in a very attractive amount (9% on RoDP). This is no different than what is/can be happening now. In t9, it would not be painful if you provided minimal amounts of base dmg on several items so that mid-geared players could reach high amounts if they work for it as well. This would begin to...close the power gap base damage is *apparently* providing and if given in enough small amounts, viola, items like avatar 2 set bonuses and avatar mage robes begin to lose a bit of their power. The route though is not created yet and this is where you guys, the devs, need to be creative. You created crit bonus, that changed the gearing game up alot and made people do things like drop 10 crit from traks belt to wear crit bonus from Xebnoks belt. Implementing a new stat to build onto is perfect since, if you want it, you will have to grab new gear since it did not exist previously. There are alot of other stats that people are far from easily capping on that would become huge focuses on high end gear that would cause even avatar geared raiders now to think twice and probably upgrade.Reuse speed, recovery speed, crit bonus, spell double attack, things that proc temporary 100% dmg procs - the list could be infinite because its up to devs being creative and really thinking about what would shift desirability to newer items. To borrow an idea someone bounced off me, you could even change a mechanic so that excessive crit (>100% crit chance based on mob con maybe?) that having *so* much crit over the cap, for every X amount you could gain crit bonus. This is an example how a slightly mechanic change, or new stat can alter gear choices. So now an item that can give 15% crit might not be so trashy just cause your capped on crit - now there are gains to be had by going over your crit cap. My 2 second spell doesn't have to stop at 1s, what if it peaked out at .5s now. People wouldn't be throwing away cast speed gear for other stuff because what once capped then now wouldn't and it would change the playing field for gear choice because different item combos/selections would be giving new-found gains that were not to be had previously. Even spell damage, tons of your enchanters and summoners are throwing spell damage gear out because they cap it easily and have no gains - you have the power to raise the cap and then make new gear that will make them think etc etc. Contemplating all this, then returning to the original idea of just nerfing all the gear to lameness because you think it will reign supreme for all of t9 just feels lazy and unoriginal to me as a player. It feels like the game is just making less an effort and throwing in the towel. I can think of upgrades to this set of avatar loot without item degredation, with that included it really doesn't take more than some good constructive brainstorming.I also think you all seem to feel there is too much of the loot in game, but take a look on the servers. Its far from a majority of players on a server who have avatar geared out toons. I bet there is hardly anyone who has *every* peice they want as well. So t9 rolls around and on the server, 4 - 7 of the server top raid guild, avatar geared mages (ranging from sorcs to enchanters to summoners) are able to obtain 100% base damage. So is this somehow, less than 10 pack of mages per server with 100% base damage going to ruin the game? These are HC raiders, I am willing to be a decent chunk of the players with avatar gear wont even continue their gameplay through t9 - people burn out and take breaks. The way you guys say, you make it sound like each server is going to have 10+ avatar geared guilds stomping into t9 and have 0 upgrades in sight. It sounds exaggerated on your guys worrysome part. I used to be in HC raiding guilds now I have dispersed and am among a non avatar geared out guild. My base damage isn't carrying anyone to victory. The fact it is already limited as far as how much enters the game and WHO has access to it (opposed to heroic/raid loot that every guild has fair access to), coupled with the undeniable aspect that players quit/sell toons/xfer cannot be ignored when looking at how much of it really is in the game and how long its going to last. Just by announcing that you are going to nerf it to lameness has already removed a great number of avatar loot from the game, cause just stating you were doing it made several players with it quit - think about it. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />Another reason to leave gear alone is because it comes down to a fundamental of one adjustment is more fun for the players overall than another. We as players can only cap our available stats, wear so many pieces of gear and click buttons so quickly. The power a mob can have is infinite, they are under your control. The fact is, it is way more fun to have 30% extra power under my belt while dpsing a mob that has 30% extra hp, than to be 30% weaker while dps'ing a mob that is 20 - 30% weaker in turn due to me. By that I am saying if you give the players power, its a good thing you guys run the game because you devs control the mobs power capabilities. You have introduced DPS checks, every control effect one could think of - even ones you provide no immunity to - mobs that stoneskin themselves. You guys have the power, and have used it before, to make a mob something raw DPS will not solve. Nerfing this avatar loot basically does that, nerf raw dps for the most part. Don't be unoriginal and nerf the players when you can still make a mob challenging for us no matter what gear we have on. And think outside the box and remember what drew players away from really high powered, single stat focused items in the past. You will get a double whammy of happy players because1. we will be happy you are not nerfing our gear2. we will find upgrades to our lovly gear in high end raid encounters withing T9Think I got most my ideas out, will post more if I skipped anything I realize later.

Tehom

08-24-2009, 01:42 PM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gage wrote:</cite><blockquote>If that is the case they should just remove avatars and avatar gear imo, as they'd be like the Dominus which were never used outside of griefing and provided transmute fodder at best.As it currently stands on test you can kill contested Anashti and get a necklace that is subpar to the two necklaces the INSTANCED version of Anashti drops, even though she is an easier encounter.</blockquote>See, my suggestion would be to bring all avatars up to the difficulty of Flame/Justice.This wouldn't make them the hardest mobs in the game, but would make them close enough for the fact that they are contested to put their loot in to the top spot.Doing this would actually warrent a small number of avatar items being boosted from what they are on live (though some would still warrent a slight nerf, the caster robes being one such example).</blockquote>I think most of us would be delighted by that change. They could bump up all avatars but flame and justice to match the hp of anashti and grummus as a quick and dirty fix that'd help solve the problems of easier avatars; given that they have a time limit, doubling the health of the easiest ones would make it a lot harder to beat them before battleweary. Growth, Storms, Anashti, and Flame are the only avatars without a physical AE - the latter two are hard enough where it doesn't matter aside from mostly letting you mostly ignore crit mit as a consideration, but it does make the former two arguably the easiest also, and they should have had a physical AE from the get-go to match the gear checks of other avatars.I'm not sure if they'd go for that though - the impression I had was that the challenge of the avatars weren't the driving force behind the changes, it's the loot quality and how it impacted next expansion itemization. In other words, they don't seem to care too much about how hard the avatars are or whether the loot is justified, only about the quality of the items they drop.

Noaani

08-24-2009, 01:46 PM

<cite>Dakkota@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>People have called of dinner plans, left friends houses, fought to put aside free time - many times - to kill your avatars at odd hours. </blockquote>I'm actually wondering if their specific intention is for people to not do this.If thats the case, whats on test seems about right. If its not, whats on test needs a small boost, at the very least.

Kiara

08-24-2009, 01:57 PM

Once again, I've removed the flames and general nastiness.Please let's try to keep this as civil as possible.I haven't finished my tea just yet... so my brain is fuzzy. But to the gentleman to whom I specifically said I thought he had good questions and I would endeavour to find answers... I am still working on that. I simply haven't had a chance yet.To everyone else, thank you very much for all your feedback. Please keep it coming.

Hypnottic

08-24-2009, 02:00 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>I haven't finished my tea just yet... so my brain is fuzzy. </blockquote>Switch to coffee imo!!

Barx

08-24-2009, 02:06 PM

<cite>Hypnottic@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>I haven't finished my tea just yet... so my brain is fuzzy. </blockquote>Switch to coffee imo!!</blockquote>*Sidetrack*Did you know, Tea is the second most popular beverage in the world, second only to water? I never get why so many folks in the US live on coffee... blech. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />*End Sidetrack*

Kindalar

08-24-2009, 02:41 PM

<cite>Dakkota@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Long post inc, I been thinking about all this for a while and am gonna post some thoughts.I would comment a lot of progression but I don't think thats where their intent for nerfing this gear comes from, I want to take it down to the reason they keep using over and over. How if its not nerfed it will be problematic in t9. Theres a few routes you can go about this.Wait until t9 to nerf it - honestly that idea is just as lame as this one but it stings way way way less. The fact is, no matter how you slice and dice it now, you are stinging hard, especially the people who put in time. Your avatars are not as casual as you think they are. People have called of dinner plans, left friends houses, fought to put aside free time - many times - to kill your avatars at odd hours. This is not just me but I hear this all the time "i hope we kill this fast, i just left so and so to come do this". Back in my guild I was in on Unrest, a few of the people who got the Disease charm looted it at nearly 12pm midnight because we were pulling the mob with a full raid for 4 hours. So you are going to flat out smack that sort of hard work in the face because people wake up at 4am, dropped their plans and worked on these mobs for several hours because we knew the loot was well worth it. So no matter what, if you nerf this stuff now or at t9, it doesn't change the fact you are going to sting your paying customers and for what? What exactly is going to be better about Everquest 2 because you nerfed avatar loot?Leave it as is - you could leave it the way it is now and still there would not be great harm. A great deal of the avatar items can be replaced, especially considering you'll be making level 90 loot, it wont be unreasonable to stretch the power a bit. Also, even a teir up, avatar loot should remain pretty good until you start seeing high end encounters. It was the same in t7 and nothing was drastically broken. Look at the way guilds disband, disperse and turnover members. Do you honestly think a bunch of guilds with "out of this world" avatar loot decked toons are going to stick together and violate and surpass the future t9 expansions in incredible ways? That is just outlandish but it sounds like the fear behind saying you must nerf this gear. This expansion has some good DPS gear, hardly some of the amazing survivability items you have introduced in past expansions like immunity items, aoe immune items and fighter stoneskin gear. There are tons of people on every server who are obvlious to avatar gear, and the loot is not as common as every guild would like it to be. I've been in a couple TSO avatar killing guilds and some items I have never seen drop for EITHER guild in my time! The dmg proc nerf was enough and took the excessive power out of avatar loot. The difference is, now they proc mild dmg and 100% stats/effects. Dmg procs are free dmg that you can gain by jamming *any* button, procing stats/effects still rely on player skill so its not like the free-dps ride they all used to be. Going to use an anology with mage loot to show base damage could be similar to cast speed, or how it once was...and nothing ever broke nor did every toon in norrath become capped on cast speed. In t7 there was little cast speed procs. Robe of Al'kabor was made and it was an amazing mage item as lots were not even close to capped casting. Instead of leaving it as an overpowered item you guys added cast speed, but in rather smaller chunks. So that closed the gap for casual players who made an effort to pick up decent gear and lessened the power of the robe as more other upgraded slots started containing cast speed. Top end RoK, non avatar geared, raiders could get very close to casting cap. Then in TsO of course you made shiny metallic robe to seal the deal that you'll allow anyone to get a lil max cast speed proc if they wish. You also lessened the power of an OP effect for its time, like Robe of Alkabor, by providing same slot items that contained a heavy amount of another very un-used stat. In RoK began when players could get their crit chance very very high. Robe of Dark Power made alot of mages with Robe of Al'kabor think about it because you were providing crit chance, something that showed lots of potential to stack up on, in a very attractive amount (9% on RoDP). This is no different than what is/can be happening now. In t9, it would not be painful if you provided minimal amounts of base dmg on several items so that mid-geared players could reach high amounts if they work for it as well. This would begin to...close the power gap base damage is *apparently* providing and if given in enough small amounts, viola, items like avatar 2 set bonuses and avatar mage robes begin to lose a bit of their power. The route though is not created yet and this is where you guys, the devs, need to be creative. You created crit bonus, that changed the gearing game up alot and made people do things like drop 10 crit from traks belt to wear crit bonus from Xebnoks belt. Implementing a new stat to build onto is perfect since, if you want it, you will have to grab new gear since it did not exist previously. There are alot of other stats that people are far from easily capping on that would become huge focuses on high end gear that would cause even avatar geared raiders now to think twice and probably upgrade.Reuse speed, recovery speed, crit bonus, spell double attack, things that proc temporary 100% dmg procs - the list could be infinite because its up to devs being creative and really thinking about what would shift desirability to newer items. To borrow an idea someone bounced off me, you could even change a mechanic so that excessive crit (>100% crit chance based on mob con maybe?) that having *so* much crit over the cap, for every X amount you could gain crit bonus. This is an example how a slightly mechanic change, or new stat can alter gear choices. So now an item that can give 15% crit might not be so trashy just cause your capped on crit - now there are gains to be had by going over your crit cap. My 2 second spell doesn't have to stop at 1s, what if it peaked out at .5s now. People wouldn't be throwing away cast speed gear for other stuff because what once capped then now wouldn't and it would change the playing field for gear choice because different item combos/selections would be giving new-found gains that were not to be had previously. Even spell damage, tons of your enchanters and summoners are throwing spell damage gear out because they cap it easily and have no gains - you have the power to raise the cap and then make new gear that will make them think etc etc. Contemplating all this, then returning to the original idea of just nerfing all the gear to lameness because you think it will reign supreme for all of t9 just feels lazy and unoriginal to me as a player. It feels like the game is just making less an effort and throwing in the towel. I can think of upgrades to this set of avatar loot without item degredation, with that included it really doesn't take more than some good constructive brainstorming.I also think you all seem to feel there is too much of the loot in game, but take a look on the servers. Its far from a majority of players on a server who have avatar geared out toons. I bet there is hardly anyone who has *every* peice they want as well. So t9 rolls around and on the server, 4 - 7 of the server top raid guild, avatar geared mages (ranging from sorcs to enchanters to summoners) are able to obtain 100% base damage. So is this somehow, less than 10 pack of mages per server with 100% base damage going to ruin the game? These are HC raiders, I am willing to be a decent chunk of the players with avatar gear wont even continue their gameplay through t9 - people burn out and take breaks. The way you guys say, you make it sound like each server is going to have 10+ avatar geared guilds stomping into t9 and have 0 upgrades in sight. It sounds exaggerated on your guys worrysome part. I used to be in HC raiding guilds now I have dispersed and am among a non avatar geared out guild. My base damage isn't carrying anyone to victory. The fact it is already limited as far as how much enters the game and WHO has access to it (opposed to heroic/raid loot that every guild has fair access to), coupled with the undeniable aspect that players quit/sell toons/xfer cannot be ignored when looking at how much of it really is in the game and how long its going to last. Just by announcing that you are going to nerf it to lameness has already removed a great number of avatar loot from the game, cause just stating you were doing it made several players with it quit - think about it. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />Another reason to leave gear alone is because it comes down to a fundamental of one adjustment is more fun for the players overall than another. We as players can only cap our available stats, wear so many pieces of gear and click buttons so quickly. The power a mob can have is infinite, they are under your control. The fact is, it is way more fun to have 30% extra power under my belt while dpsing a mob that has 30% extra hp, than to be 30% weaker while dps'ing a mob that is 20 - 30% weaker in turn due to me. By that I am saying if you give the players power, its a good thing you guys run the game because you devs control the mobs power capabilities. You have introduced DPS checks, every control effect one could think of - even ones you provide no immunity to - mobs that stoneskin themselves. You guys have the power, and have used it before, to make a mob something raw DPS will not solve. Nerfing this avatar loot basically does that, nerf raw dps for the most part. Don't be unoriginal and nerf the players when you can still make a mob challenging for us no matter what gear we have on. And think outside the box and remember what drew players away from really high powered, single stat focused items in the past. You will get a double whammy of happy players because1. we will be happy you are not nerfing our gear2. we will find upgrades to our lovly gear in high end raid encounters withing T9Think I got most my ideas out, will post more if I skipped anything I realize later.</blockquote>Nicely stated. One point you made really resonated -- that its more fun to have a more powerful toon that has to fight a more powerful mob, than it is to have a less powerful toon fighting a less powerful mob -- that is right on.I want a toon whos capabilities I almost cannot humanly keep up with. That is to say, so many options always available that I have to think after almost every button click. My fast thinking now starts to equate to higher damage (or healing) rather than whether or not my buttons are re-usable, or whether or not I have enough mana. I think the fact that it takes months of raiding to attain items, that work should equate to us not having to worry about the basics of button availability or of mana to cast. It should be an extremely intellectual battle at the top, and one that requires reasonably quick reflexes (which I think is there now).Hopefully we are just getting started on page 27 of this thread. Your high end community is here, present, collaborating and hoping for the best.Kindalar

Kiara

08-24-2009, 03:00 PM

1) Coffee is sort of eww. Smells great, tastes horrid.2) Tea is done now <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Gotta fill up the water cup!!3) There will not be level 90 Avatars. Any further answers will be shared when I get them <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

renewedbullet

08-24-2009, 03:08 PM

So they will stay lvl 88? for 90s to farm if their bored? or will they be completely removed from game?

Agaxiq

08-24-2009, 03:10 PM

Ge'Sar

08-24-2009, 03:12 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>3) There will not be level 90 Avatars. Any further answers will be shared when I get them <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>May I offer a well thought out BOO to this <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" /> I have spoken. Now do as say SOE or the sun will darken, locusts shall swarm your crops, your wine shall turn to vinegear and your women will grow infertile.. (I thought I'd carry the threatening hyperboles to their limit)

Kiara

08-24-2009, 03:13 PM

I don't think they're being removed... I don't know what the plans are for them, yet. That may have to wait until the team is ready to talk about what they're doing with them.I don't think they're going to be level 99 <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />Oh and I like the locusts... that one was good <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Barx

08-24-2009, 03:13 PM

Based on what I've heard elsewhere, I think she means there will not be T9 avatars. Meaning if you have a burning desire to kill an avatar, get it in before SF comes out or you won't have any other avatars to kill.They have said there will be at least 3 contested raids. Exactly what that means and what point of the progression those will be they have not said.EDIT: Hmm, I stand corrected. Will be interesting to see what they have planned for them if they are to remain raid targets (or if they are changing them to something else perhaps?).

arksun

08-24-2009, 03:14 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>1) Coffee is sort of eww. Smells great, tastes horrid.2) Tea is done now <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> Gotta fill up the water cup!!3) There will not be level 90 Avatars. Any further answers will be shared when I get them <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Could you ask if the contested loot in T9 is going to be better than the instance loot (epic)?

renewedbullet

08-24-2009, 03:17 PM

It will be interesting Xpac for sure for the raiders, /pray its not all quest like rok was to lvl up

arksun

08-24-2009, 03:29 PM

circusgirl

08-24-2009, 03:34 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>I don't think they're being removed... I don't know what the plans are for them, yet. That may have to wait until the team is ready to talk about what they're doing with them.I don't think they're going to be level 99 <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />Oh and I like the locusts... that one was good <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Kiara, please get back to us as soon as possible by what the plans are exactly here. My concern, as a result both of these incoming nerfs and the ambiguity regarding what T9 has for us in terms of avatars is that an entire playstyle could potentially be removed from the game. Yes, the whole "racing for avatars" thing is a playstyle that some don't like and choose not to participate in (I know of several guilds that could kill avatars if they were willing to put in the extra time/flexibility to work for them but choose not to), however, many of us truly enjoy the added challenge and competition that going after avatars provides. Look, we don't want to break your itemization and we don't want you to have to design instanced content around us. What we DO want is extremely challenging mobs to face off against and compete with other guilds for, which provide a reward solid enough to be worth the trouble. There have been many suggestions here that could potentially solve the issues you've stated with avatar gear--please consider these alternatives.<ul><li>Progression--make all avatars as difficult as Flames/Justice/Anashti, placing them above everything in difficulty except for Munzok and Ykesha. If the avatars are hard enough, then you won't have them breaking instanced progression since anyone who can't already clear instances can't kill avatars. Now you don't have to design new content around avatar gear.</li><li>Breaking T9--weight gear degradation for those stats that are too powerful. If base damage is still too powerful after levelling to 90, then just make it so base damage degrades more than a less powerful stat, so that avatar gear degrades enough to allow for meaningful upgrades in T9.</li><li>Next expansion include avatars, but with all-new scripts instead of just scaling up the current encounter. That way we still have to input the time to learn them.</li></ul>

hugh1

08-24-2009, 03:36 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>I don't think they're being removed... I don't know what the plans are for them, yet. That may have to wait until the team is ready to talk about what they're doing with them</blockquote>Well its about time the dev team told us the plans because we as raiders deseave to know where this game is going, the majority of us only play this game to raid and since your "team" is destroying the constested scene and the whole point to even kill these mobs we need to know whats next and not wait 6months because im not willing to wait 6months.

Apos

08-24-2009, 03:42 PM

I think the thing that bothers me the most is the explaination that loot needs to be nerfed to make room for upgrades.Why? Are you thinking that players, once they reach a point, are going to want to try to progress again? That's... kind of against the entire point of MMOs for a lot of people. To see overall improvement in characters, not to rehash. It's not fun to try to reach the same point of strength again, and that is pretty much the basic incentive for playing. So I have a hard time believing that's what's intended, since avatar players are a heck of a lot happier getting sidegrades and marginal upgrades for 6 months than going back in power and trying to get to the exact same point as before.I mean, once you nerf 8 months worth of progression, why would anyone playing this game ever think it wouldn't happen again? Why would we ever take gearing seriously at all, or why would anyone ever play this game hardcore? Maybe those playstyles -shouldn't- exist, but right now eq2 had a niche audience just for that, and I don't mean just avatar players- I mean hard core raiders in general. By doing this, there's no reason anyone that doesn't play because they like seeing character improvement wouldn't think, 'Well, any very strong gear might be nerfed halfway through the expansion, so who cares?'. I really don't think this game can afford a 'who cares?' attitude, when keeping people's interest against other MMOs is so difficult to begin with.I mean, we all know deep down that someone could pull the plug on the servers and this would all be done with. What makes people enjoy playing for little virtual achievements in MMO is some measure of trust in devs that wouldn't happen. If something like this goes through, the first thing a lot of people will think whenever they see good new loot will be, 'I hope I get to keep it.'

Arno24

08-24-2009, 03:50 PM

Make avatars harder, keep the same loot. Done.

Gaige

08-24-2009, 03:53 PM

<cite>Onra@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote>Make avatars harder, keep the same loot. Done.</blockquote>Brenlo wants to move away from contested/challenging content being the most rewarding, he wants to open up the best items in game to everyone and keep the gaps between playstyles as small as possible.In other words: Not a chance of them doing that.

Kiara

08-24-2009, 03:54 PM

<cite>Digg@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>So there will not be lvl 90 avatars, and you do not think they will be lvl 99....Will there be Tier 9 avatars and will the Tier 8 avatars be upgraded to Tier9? Because according to the reply you have given all I see is there will not be level 90 avatars nor will there be level 99, kinda misleading on the point im assuming the original poster was asking.</blockquote>That's because you're trying to read into what I said. The avatars aren't going to be upgraded.Honestly, folks, I don't speak in code. Promise!To Hughbot... Please don't attack me. I don't appreciate it. I am doing my best to provide answers to some of the questions that I'm seeing here and trying to help the community. You don't have to like me, you don't have to like what I tell you. But you do have to remain civil and polite on the forums, if you please.Thank you.

Kiara

08-24-2009, 03:55 PM

<cite>Gage wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Onra@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote>Make avatars harder, keep the same loot. Done.</blockquote>Brenlo wants to move away from contested/challenging content being the most rewarding, he wants to open up the best items in game to everyone and keep the gaps between playstyles as small as possible.In other words: Not a chance of them doing that.</blockquote>Gage, hon. He didn't say that he wanted to move away from contested content being the most rewarding. Please don't put words in his mouth <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Or fingers as the case may be.

arksun

08-24-2009, 04:02 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Digg@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>So there will not be lvl 90 avatars, and you do not think they will be lvl 99....Will there be Tier 9 avatars and will the Tier 8 avatars be upgraded to Tier9? Because according to the reply you have given all I see is there will not be level 90 avatars nor will there be level 99, kinda misleading on the point im assuming the original poster was asking.</blockquote>That's because you're trying to read into what I said. The avatars aren't going to be upgraded.Honestly, folks, I don't speak in code. Promise!To Hughbot... Please don't attack me. I don't appreciate it. I am doing my best to provide answers to some of the questions that I'm seeing here and trying to help the community. You don't have to like me, you don't have to like what I tell you. But you do have to remain civil and polite on the forums, if you please.Thank you.</blockquote>Didn't say you were speaking in code, but a precise answer as "The avatars aren't going to be upgraded" is what I would call definitive.Thank you for the reply.

and0ra77

08-24-2009, 04:04 PM

So if no avatars in T9 can you find out approx number of contested we will see in new xpac? Please

hugh1

08-24-2009, 04:08 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Digg@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>So there will not be lvl 90 avatars, and you do not think they will be lvl 99....Will there be Tier 9 avatars and will the Tier 8 avatars be upgraded to Tier9? Because according to the reply you have given all I see is there will not be level 90 avatars nor will there be level 99, kinda misleading on the point im assuming the original poster was asking.</blockquote>To Hughbot... Please don't attack me. I don't appreciate it. I am doing my best to provide answers to some of the questions that I'm seeing here and trying to help the community. You don't have to like me, you don't have to like what I tell you. But you do have to remain civil and polite on the forums, if you please.</blockquote>I didnt attack you, i asked for the direction that the eq2 development team is going, I didnt say omg kiara this is your fault, I know fullwell your the messager here and im asking you to relay the message so we know whats next for eq2 as a raid game, cause myself and like others could care less about the group/solo scene and we play to kill the hardest content in eq2.Edit : did you even read my post? Wonders how i attacked you <img src="/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

samejima

08-24-2009, 04:20 PM

<cite>Hughbot@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Digg@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>So there will not be lvl 90 avatars, and you do not think they will be lvl 99....Will there be Tier 9 avatars and will the Tier 8 avatars be upgraded to Tier9? Because according to the reply you have given all I see is there will not be level 90 avatars nor will there be level 99, kinda misleading on the point im assuming the original poster was asking.</blockquote>To Hughbot... Please don't attack me. I don't appreciate it. I am doing my best to provide answers to some of the questions that I'm seeing here and trying to help the community. You don't have to like me, you don't have to like what I tell you. But you do have to remain civil and polite on the forums, if you please.</blockquote>I didnt attack you, i asked for the direction that the eq2 development team is going, I didnt say omg kiara this is your fault, I know fullwell your the messager here and im asking you to relay the message so we know whats next for eq2 as a raid game, cause myself and like others could care less about the group/solo scene and we play to kill the hardest content in eq2.Edit : did you even read my post? Wonders how i attacked you <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/283a16da79f3aa23fe1025c96295f04f.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Contested content does not have to be the most difficult, it is not even the hardest right now.

Ge'Sar

08-24-2009, 04:26 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>That's because you're trying to read into what I said. The avatars aren't going to be upgraded.Honestly, folks, I don't speak in code. Promise!</blockquote>Again I offer my BOO to whoever made that call.As for code, we could start one!Let's see...We could try a simple one over alpha cyper. Then if you wanted to say. "Help Blizzard has taken over the studio and is making us write crappy code." It would be.. "Ifmq Cmjaabse ibt ublfo pwfs uif tuvejp boe jt nbljoh vt xsjuf dsbqqx dpef."Or "Trust me, it's all a surprise, next expansion is really Velious, and it's awesome" it would be "Usvtu nf, ju't bmm b tvsqsjtf, mfyu fyqbotjpo jt sfbmmz Wjmjpvt, boe ju't bxftpnf."Simple really, no one will know, our little secret.

Kiara

08-24-2009, 04:58 PM

I'll do my best on answers... But some of that stuff just isn't ready to be talked about yet, and likely won't be until much closer to launch.Ge'Sar LOL. You keep working on that <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Barx

08-24-2009, 05:05 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'll do my best on answers... But some of that stuff just isn't ready to be talked about yet, and likely won't be until much closer to launch.Ge'Sar LOL. You keep working on that <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>*Pokes Kiara*Are those Q&A answers from last month ready to be posted yet, by chance?*Big puppy eyes*

Kiara

08-24-2009, 05:11 PM

<cite>Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'll do my best on answers... But some of that stuff just isn't ready to be talked about yet, and likely won't be until much closer to launch.Ge'Sar LOL. You keep working on that <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>*Pokes Kiara*Are those Q&A answers from last month ready to be posted yet, by chance?*Big puppy eyes*</blockquote>Today <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Working on something else right now. But definitely today as soon as I finish this other thing * kicks it *

Gungo

08-24-2009, 05:20 PM

I dont know if you people were sleeping during all the fan faire talks or what but this was discussed already.There are no t9 contestable avatars next expansion.There will be 3 contested raids.What we dont know is were in progression those 3 will be.Personally I do not expect the 3 contested pushed on release will be the most challenging and drop the best loot. For a few reasons.1) Expansions are 1+ year duration2) Additional raid content comes in during that 1 year cycle3) That content is meant to be progressivly harder.I hope that the new contested are at least semi challenging and not dominii level of difficulty, but it may be.I hope it drops some decent loot at least greater then the quality of the fabled rare heroic drops and x2 zones. Current eq2 raid design brought to you by the makers of Blizzard and WoW.

Mordicus

08-24-2009, 05:24 PM

<cite>renewedbullet wrote:</cite><blockquote>It will be interesting Xpac for sure for the raiders, /pray its not all quest like rok was to lvl up</blockquote>Yeah !! I totally cant wait to be doing less dps than I am now with 10 more levels !!Few things need to be clarified, the purpose of the nerf is itemization for future content and its balance; "Shards of Destiny" for example. Making the mobs harder doesnt fix the itemization dilemma. Delaying the nerf until SF does not allow them to create upgrades in SoD and any other future LU zones they plan on releasing before SF. Hence why we will see this nerf, and soon.I also think theyre afraid of the DPS/Healing well be doing at level 90 and causing lower tier content to become trivial, introducing a new mechanic like Super Crits or Quadruple Spell attacks will allow OP level 90 SKs (Onra) to auto mentor and solo t5 and t6 contested. May not seem like a big deal to you guys but I can see it being something in the back of their minds.Anyway I dont agree with the nerfs for the main reason that the system is completely broken, esentially what youre saying is "we need to nerf the current gear so we can create upgrades that we will have to nerf again". That and the fact that you are all of a sudden moving toward the casual spectrum after 4 years of doing it one way. The nerfs are tough to swallow, but Ive been nerfed before, its really nbd, I wont quit over nerfs. But I will quit over a lack of competent develpoment, Ive invested quite a bit of time but its just a game and really your encounters arent that exciting to begin with, no offense. Most nights Id rather be playing FIFA or w/e. So to the person that said HC players wont quit, you wanna bet?Recently Ive been through WoW, LoTRO and AoC. You know what all of those MMOs lacked? The hardcore, contested, competitive edge that I loved so much in eq2. Hell, one of my ex-guilds "Addiction" recently went back to eq when the Mayong 51/50 opened, you know why? Because its HC, its challenging. This is why I resubbed back in Feb. Not because I wanted to run instances and craft with my FnF. You remove this aspect from the game and you have effectively removed what sets you apart from most other MMOs. And as stated previously most MMOs do it better, but by all means feel free to shoot yourselves in the foot. I mean RoK was a solo fest to 80 and people touted that as the best expansion ever released right?

Korrupt

08-24-2009, 05:27 PM

You may not be speaking in code but your answers are very vague and make people read in to them. Saying there are no lvl 90 avatars is a politicians answer, when people want to know will there be T9 avatars or not, and if not, will there be contested mobs at all? I'm not talking about contested dungeons, if the hole is anything like temple of scale then it will be a dismal failure. Nobody has answered the question of what makes this avatar gear so problematic with next tier, and why the dev team would rather anger players now with a nerf than later with lesser upgrades. And why avatar gear in specific when instanced mobs and heroic mobs also have gear that is equally powerful?Also we dont have to put words in brenlo's mouth about moving away from contested mobs having the best loot in game. The dev team is making it painfully obvious with this nerf. These nerfs and the lack of explaination on why contested raiders are being targeted specifically pretty much assure gage's assumption. You have a whole tier of raiders with this assumption and it's growing.You can ignore all the comments from non contested raiders, this issue is between soe and the contested killers. We are getting nerfed, nobody else is. We are getting told there are no t9 contested avatars(if I read your vague statement correctly). Our loot is becoming obviously lesser than instanced mob regardless of uninformed people saying otherwise. I think it's time you communicated directly with the people this affects and ignore the people that only have opinions from the outside looking in. Tell us exactly what your intentions are for contested raiders right now, and in the future, before a good portion of us give up hope and move on.

and0ra77

08-24-2009, 05:44 PM

Well said Korrupt!!! SOE at this point you have all us wondering if the future will be worth it.

Hecula

08-24-2009, 05:46 PM

<cite>Merovius@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote>...causing lower tier content to become trivial, introducing a new mechanic like Super Crits or Quadruple Spell attacks will allow OP level 90 SKs (Onra) to auto mentor and solo t5 and t6 contested...</blockquote>At the same time, gear degredation will make killing all previous content trivial so it doesn't matter.As far as we've been told, this is being done because, on the spectrum of planned gear progression, the avatar loots reduced by 66% would, in some cases, be more powerful than the endgame loot of T9. I.E. - it doesn't matter right now how hard these encounters are versus instanced content - that's 100% off topic. The reason they're doing this is because of the stats on the gear, not the encounters that drop them.Gear-flation in RoK and TSO hit incredible magnitudes. Not so healthy in a system based on caps and percent-based skills. However, it doesn't matter so much in the long run.Encounters scale with gear. Who cares if we are all capped on Crit, Base, DA and Crit Bonus - there are more ways to expand gear than that. Ever more powerful procs or new attributes like flurry, quad attack, supercriticals, spell DA etc. I would rather have those introduced than see the devs continue trying to force gear into the current set of upgradeble stats by constant gear resets.

Hypnottic

08-24-2009, 05:51 PM

<cite>Hecula wrote:</cite><blockquote>As far as we've been told, this is being done because, on the spectrum of planned gear progression, the avatar loots reduced by 66% would, in some cases, be more powerful than the endgame loot of T9. I.E.</blockquote>I have seen alot of players post this. I have also heard rumour of this, but nothing concrete. Can anyone really come in to confirm that the loot we are seeing now is the best there is gonna be? That in 10 levels EQ2 will degrade?If this is the case then that would mean the height of my personal progression (player power, dps, ect) is right before this new GU. I guess I will have to hope that this is player speculation. I would hate to think I have been making a mistake paying ahead, when the quality of my gaming expieriance is goind to degrade.

Faithlight

08-24-2009, 06:02 PM

Politician answers happens a lot from SOE and I positively hate that.Also to note is that EXTREMLY bad habits of bundling as many nerfs/changes ect... they can until we choke on it so hard we can only puke even the parts we would have accepted and understood : Crit Mit gear change / TSO+VP Illy set not stacking / Disease charm losing its proc chance and a few more were acceptable and could have been done GU52 or earlier without causing such a ruckus, last time that Avatar gear change have been talked about they were also mostly ready but has then as now we couldn't bear such a nerf and the whole deal has been moved aside for later, well here we are and we still can't accept that stuff and why didn't those parts we could have go on with were not changed but keep with that big Avatar nerf we're still choking on?I've seen people leave who didn't had to hear yet of that nerf because about 6 months before next xpac is way too long and today I've seen some more leave because of that nerf, and yes it's just the beginning.Trying to do something the same way over and over and expecting a different result is the chinese definition of madeness, guess what?

arant

08-24-2009, 06:03 PM

<cite>Hypnottic@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Hecula wrote:</cite><blockquote>As far as we've been told, this is being done because, on the spectrum of planned gear progression, the avatar loots reduced by 66% would, in some cases, be more powerful than the endgame loot of T9. I.E.</blockquote>I have seen alot of players post this. I have also heard rumour of this, but nothing concrete. Can anyone really come in to confirm that the loot we are seeing now is the best there is gonna be? That in 10 levels EQ2 will degrade?If this is the case then that would mean the height of my personal progression (player power, dps, ect) is right before this new GU. I guess I will have to hope that this is player speculation. I would hate to think I have been making a mistake paying ahead, when the quality of my gaming expieriance is goind to degrade.</blockquote>Per FyreFlyte back on @ page 10 or so:"Even with the rating system going in (I assume this is the "hammering" referred to in the first quote), many of these pieces would have been better than the top end loot at level 90. Certain stats like Base Damage were added in such large portions to the avatar gear that a player could max them out, when previously the highest they could hope to attain was ~10-15%. This increase was simply too large, and even cutting it by 3x (the decrease at level 90), certain avatar gear would remain the best piece in its slot.We discussed releasing these changes with the expansion, but decided to put them out now for a number of reasons. First and foremost, these items were very literally breaking this expansion's progression, and the longer they were left untouched, the more that progression had to be designed around them. There are a number of instanced raid bosses that are very difficult to defeat without avatar gear, and these cannot be designed around the intended gear progression until the avatar gear is changed. Additionally, we're adding new raid content well before the expansion, and we wanted to include some item upgrades with it. In their former state, the avatar items made it all but impossible to offer any new loot that would be desirable for raiders."

Ge'Sar

08-24-2009, 06:05 PM

Do we know when this travesty is set to reach live servers?

arant

08-24-2009, 06:08 PM

<cite>Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Hypnottic@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>I haven't finished my tea just yet... so my brain is fuzzy. </blockquote>Switch to coffee imo!!</blockquote>*Sidetrack*Did you know, Tea is the second most popular beverage in the world, second only to water? I never get why so many folks in the US live on coffee... blech. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />*End Sidetrack*</blockquote>Some American history thing known as the Boston Tea Party...

Kiara

08-24-2009, 06:13 PM

Here's the question that was asked: Are there going to be level 90 Avatars?My answer. No.It doesn't get much more straight forward than that folks.However, if my attempts to help are so displeasing, I'm more than willing to attend to other matters and leave you to it.Ta!

Ge'Sar

08-24-2009, 06:21 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here's the question that was asked: Are there going to be level 90 Avatars?My answer. No.It doesn't get much more straight forward than that folks.However, if my attempts to help are so displeasing, I'm more than willing to attend to other matters and leave you to it.Ta!</blockquote>Not to mention she expanded and clairified the comment to no upgraded avatars! Don't scare the talking employees away, they are rare enough already!If you come back and answer other questions I'll call Korrupt bad names in guild chat for you Kiarra.

samejima

08-24-2009, 06:21 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here's the question that was asked: Are there going to be level 90 Avatars?My answer. No.It doesn't get much more straight forward than that folks.However, if my attempts to help are so displeasing, I'm more than willing to attend to other matters and leave you to it.Ta!</blockquote>HAHAHAHAHAHA, amazing! Touché ma'dam touché!

Thundy

08-24-2009, 06:22 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here's the question that was asked: Are there going to be level 90 Avatars?My answer. No.It doesn't get much more straight forward than that folks.However, if my attempts to help are so displeasing, I'm more than willing to attend to other matters and leave you to it.Ta!</blockquote>How do you get away with telling other people to cut the snarkiness yet you're allowed to give it in spades? Is this just a can-dish-it-out-but-can't-take-it thing?I don't understand the holier than thou attitude.

Stonestrong

08-24-2009, 06:25 PM

<cite>Korrupt@Najena wrote:</cite><blockquote>You may not be speaking in code but your answers are very vague and make people read in to them. Saying there are no lvl 90 avatars is a politicians answer, when people want to know will there be T9 avatars or not, and if not, will there be contested mobs at all? I'm not talking about contested dungeons, if the hole is anything like temple of scale then it will be a dismal failure. Nobody has answered the question of what makes this avatar gear so problematic with next tier, and why the dev team would rather anger players now with a nerf than later with lesser upgrades. And why avatar gear in specific when instanced mobs and heroic mobs also have gear that is equally powerful?Also we dont have to put words in brenlo's mouth about moving away from contested mobs having the best loot in game. The dev team is making it painfully obvious with this nerf. These nerfs and the lack of explaination on why contested raiders are being targeted specifically pretty much assure gage's assumption. You have a whole tier of raiders with this assumption and it's growing.You can ignore all the comments from non contested raiders, this issue is between soe and the contested killers. We are getting nerfed, nobody else is. We are getting told there are no t9 contested avatars(if I read your vague statement correctly). Our loot is becoming obviously lesser than instanced mob regardless of uninformed people saying otherwise. I think it's time you communicated directly with the people this affects and ignore the people that only have opinions from the outside looking in. Tell us exactly what your intentions are for contested raiders right now, and in the future, before a good portion of us give up hope and move on.</blockquote>This is the question that needs to be answered. Its pretty clear no matter what you are pushing this terrible changes through, you OWE it to us at the very least to tell us what the plans are so we can decide if we want to hang around for it.

circusgirl

08-24-2009, 06:34 PM

I don't think we're trying to attack you, Kiara. Most of us are quite grateful to have someone at SoE actually talking to us! That's fantastic, we love that we're being communicated with, even when we don't like what's being said.Sometimes, however, the brusqueness of your answers leaves room for a lot of interpretation, or you say something so entirely mindblowing that we don't quite believe it the first time (example: no T9 avatars). I know you've got a really hard job, we respect you for that--we've just kind of had a pretty extreme shock ourselves between being told that our avatar gear is going to get some hard nerfs, some of which are reasonable and some of which mean that avatar items will be worse than gear off easy encounters like Tythus and being told that next expansion one of our favorite pastimes is going to be gone entirely.In the meantime, it might be helpful if we have a better idea of how to communicate either alternate solutions to the whole idea of the avatar gear nerf, or ways to pull your attention to oversights, bugs, and/or problematic progression to things that are currently on test. For example, several avatar charms are now missing deflection chance, several weapons have been given damage spreads lower than items that drop off of very easy mobs, etc. It's very difficult to have those posts show through all the hatemail that's currently in this thread, and I'm fairly sure that what you're after is feedback, not hatemail. But with even reasoned, non-hateful posts being deleted quite regularly, it's very difficult to be sure that our feedback is reaching you.

Homeskillet

08-24-2009, 06:50 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here's the question that was asked: Are there going to be level 90 Avatars?My answer. No.It doesn't get much more straight forward than that folks.However, if my attempts to help are so displeasing, I'm more than willing to attend to other matters and leave you to it.Ta!</blockquote>I don't understand what is so hard about that question.We had launch, Desert of Flames, and Kingdom of Sky all Avatar free. We did have contested, but they were not Avatars.

scalzo

08-24-2009, 07:17 PM

WOOT! No lvl 90 Avatars! It's about time IMO. They have been around far too long. Guilds have been farming them way to long since EoF. Please remove them from the game. Make the new contesteds ultra hard. Twice as hard as any instance content please.

hellfire

08-24-2009, 07:21 PM

I asked these direct questions at panels at fan faire.And from what i remember avatars are going by-by as killable content..they may still be around for quest/lore content.There will be contested raid content... the number of targets i forget..the number 3 keeps coming to my mind tho.

Gisallo

08-24-2009, 07:47 PM

<cite>Hypnottic@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Hecula wrote:</cite><blockquote>As far as we've been told, this is being done because, on the spectrum of planned gear progression, the avatar loots reduced by 66% would, in some cases, be more powerful than the endgame loot of T9. I.E.</blockquote>I have seen alot of players post this. I have also heard rumour of this, but nothing concrete. Can anyone really come in to confirm that the loot we are seeing now is the best there is gonna be? That in 10 levels EQ2 will degrade?If this is the case then that would mean the height of my personal progression (player power, dps, ect) is right before this new GU. I guess I will have to hope that this is player speculation. I would hate to think I have been making a mistake paying ahead, when the quality of my gaming expieriance is goind to degrade.</blockquote>Fyreflyte said it himself<a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=457324&post_id=5101481#5101481">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...5101481#5101481</a>"Even with the rating system going in (I assume this is the "hammering" referred to in the first quote), many of these pieces would have been better than the top end loot at level 90. Certain stats like Base Damage were added in such large portions to the avatar gear that a player could max them out, when previously the highest they could hope to attain was ~10-15%. This increase was simply too large, and even cutting it by 3x (the decrease at level 90), certain avatar gear would remain the best piece in its slot."is the relevant portion to this argument.

EasternKing

08-24-2009, 07:53 PM

<cite>Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Hypnottic@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Hecula wrote:</cite><blockquote>As far as we've been told, this is being done because, on the spectrum of planned gear progression, the avatar loots reduced by 66% would, in some cases, be more powerful than the endgame loot of T9. I.E.</blockquote>I have seen alot of players post this. I have also heard rumour of this, but nothing concrete. Can anyone really come in to confirm that the loot we are seeing now is the best there is gonna be? That in 10 levels EQ2 will degrade?If this is the case then that would mean the height of my personal progression (player power, dps, ect) is right before this new GU. I guess I will have to hope that this is player speculation. I would hate to think I have been making a mistake paying ahead, when the quality of my gaming expieriance is goind to degrade.</blockquote>Fyreflyte said it himself<a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=457324&post_id=5101481#5101481">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...5101481#5101481</a>"Even with the rating system going in (I assume this is the "hammering" referred to in the first quote), many of these pieces would have been better than the top end loot at level 90. Certain stats like Base Damage were added in such large portions to the avatar gear that a player could max them out, when previously the highest they could hope to attain was ~10-15%. This increase was simply too large, and even cutting it by 3x (the decrease at level 90), certain avatar gear would remain the best piece in its slot."is the relevant portion to this argument.</blockquote>This is a pretty fail statment, there has always been items that lasted well beyond there Tier, quested, or raid dropped.why its such an issue now i have no idea.

Gisallo

08-24-2009, 07:57 PM

<cite>Thundy wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here's the question that was asked: Are there going to be level 90 Avatars?My answer. No.It doesn't get much more straight forward than that folks.However, if my attempts to help are so displeasing, I'm more than willing to attend to other matters and leave you to it.Ta!</blockquote>How do you get away with telling other people to cut the snarkiness yet you're allowed to give it in spades? Is this just a can-dish-it-out-but-can't-take-it thing?I don't understand the holier than thou attitude.</blockquote>She is giving us a fact actually, I am not one to defend the devs ever...but here kinda have to. Rule #1 of customer service employees in the real world "you are not required to deal with abuse, once you give them an answer even if they don't like it its the answer. If they keep hammering you on it feel free to hang up on them." Short form of training, you are paid to answer question not to put up with BS. That is pretty much the way most customer service people (those answering phones e-mails etc) are trained, least how I was trained 15 years ago when I worked for a fortune 500 company. Her first answer was pretty clear to my mind, and polite though perhaps NOT what some wanted to hear, NO T9 Avatars. She then went out of her way to say she would try to find out if/what was going to be implemented to replace this form of contested raid content. People somehow didn't get this, I don't know how, and went after her for it. They didn't hear what they wanted to hear and then went after her again. They then asked AGAIN. Well she gave the answer for the upmteeth time and was letting us know...she is under NO obligation to answer us. Her job is to give info to the devs, and to monitor forum conduct. She has posted more times on this thread than on any I can remember in recent memory. Yeah maybe she hasn't told us what some of us want to hear, but I would rather have someone say "I don't know" or say something that is true even if I don't like it, than get the sunshine pump or have nothing but silence.

EasternKing

08-24-2009, 08:03 PM

<cite>Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Thundy wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here's the question that was asked: Are there going to be level 90 Avatars?My answer. No.It doesn't get much more straight forward than that folks.However, if my attempts to help are so displeasing, I'm more than willing to attend to other matters and leave you to it.Ta!</blockquote>How do you get away with telling other people to cut the snarkiness yet you're allowed to give it in spades? Is this just a can-dish-it-out-but-can't-take-it thing?I don't understand the holier than thou attitude.</blockquote>She is giving us a fact actually, I am not one to defend the devs ever...but here kinda have to. Rule #1 of customer service employees in the real world "you are not required to deal with abuse, once you give them an answer even if they don't like it its the answer. If they keep hammering you on it feel free to hang up on them." Short form of training, you are paid to answer question not to put up with BS. That is pretty much the way most customer service people (those answering phones e-mails etc) are trained, least how I was trained 15 years ago when I worked for a fortune 500 company. Her first answer was pretty clear to my mind, and polite though perhaps NOT what some wanted to hear, NO T9 Avatars. She then went out of her way to say she would try to find out if/what was going to be implemented to replace this form of contested raid content. People somehow didn't get this, I don't know how, and went after her for it. They didn't hear what they wanted to hear and then went after her again. They then asked AGAIN. Well she gave the answer for the upmteeth time and was letting us know...she is under NO obligation to answer us. Her job is to give info to the devs, and to monitor forum conduct. She has posted more times on this thread than on any I can remember in recent memory. Yeah maybe she hasn't told us what some of us want to hear, but I would rather have someone say "I don't know" or say something that is true even if I don't like it, than get the sunshine pump or have nothing but silence.</blockquote>And unlike real life when you get poor service, or miss lead, such as we have been here, Soe have basically given us this gear to keep us paying our monthly subs, now they are taking it away, and telling us to suck it up.Where is the accountability? we cant ring Sony up and express our anger at our misstreatment, so it comes out the only place it can do, here.And of you are the only person from Sony answering and trying to calm irate customers down, well you can bet now and then you are going to get some honest stuff to read, saying they dont have to listen to it, and we have no right to express ourselves unless its all kiss kiss hug hug, is why things are the way they areSome one has to be there to take the punchs with the hugs, thats the whole point of customer service, it is if you want to retain customers anyway.Not every angry person is being irrational you know? sometimes there are dang good reasons, claiming they can walk away and ignore them, because they dont like your tone is crass at best.

Gisallo

08-24-2009, 08:26 PM

<cite>EasternKing wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Hypnottic@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Hecula wrote:</cite><blockquote>As far as we've been told, this is being done because, on the spectrum of planned gear progression, the avatar loots reduced by 66% would, in some cases, be more powerful than the endgame loot of T9. I.E.</blockquote>I have seen alot of players post this. I have also heard rumour of this, but nothing concrete. Can anyone really come in to confirm that the loot we are seeing now is the best there is gonna be? That in 10 levels EQ2 will degrade?If this is the case then that would mean the height of my personal progression (player power, dps, ect) is right before this new GU. I guess I will have to hope that this is player speculation. I would hate to think I have been making a mistake paying ahead, when the quality of my gaming expieriance is goind to degrade.</blockquote>Fyreflyte said it himself<a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?topic_id=457324&post_id=5101481#5101481">http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...5101481#5101481</a>"Even with the rating system going in (I assume this is the "hammering" referred to in the first quote), many of these pieces would have been better than the top end loot at level 90. Certain stats like Base Damage were added in such large portions to the avatar gear that a player could max them out, when previously the highest they could hope to attain was ~10-15%. This increase was simply too large, and even cutting it by 3x (the decrease at level 90), certain avatar gear would remain the best piece in its slot."is the relevant portion to this argument.</blockquote>This is a pretty fail statment, there has always been items that lasted well beyond there Tier, quested, or raid dropped.why its such an issue now i have no idea.</blockquote>It is indeed a fail statement. This has been going on for years. That particular genie should never have been let out of the bottle though imho. If they would not have stopped greying out gear it would never been allowed out. They let it out though for whatever reason. Here is the problem though. As I said I think part of the reason fo this statement being fact is that the "upgrades" are only really going to be upgrades when seen though the lense of degredation. Without degredation we would be saying "they call this an upgrade?" Since they are basically going to be reducing the degree which gear increases (an entirely seperate argument) the Devs now have a choice. Either NOT change the Avatar gear and have these Avatar killing guilds saying "what the heck am I running this raid one for it has nothing for me" or nerfing the gear in advance so that people say "okay that is an upgrade". Now we can argue of course whether the progression overall needs these overall downgrade. Personally i think it should never been allowed to go this far BUT since they let it get this far they should come up with alternative solutions. What they are doing right now is using a solution that is easiest for them to implement at the expense of their subscribers. But since the Avatar nerf clearly is a direct result of their planned gear progression for all the different types of content, is this rather the battle that should be fought. There appears to be NO sense is saying "don't nerf my Avatar gear" in light of everything else. Lets be honest if you look at everything in context do Avatar killing guilds want to be going through content for an entire expansion with no upgrades? I doubt it. So would it not be better for us to challenge the Devs on the proposed overall gear progression? Its this progression tied to upgrades that are predicated on degredation that is causing this problem. Eliminate this and the Avatar issue simply goes away, no nerf need because there are meaningful upgrades. Ignore this problem and we can all scream no nerf till we are blue in the face but it still happens. Of course this is only going to be possible if Brenlo decides that the idea of more egalitarian gear distribution is bad. I can't see how he thinks its good. I mean its a 5 year old game, the other games they are competeing against are already pretty entrenched, and the new games coming out with have a shwing factor graphics and style wise that EQ2 can only dream about. This game has been kept alive by people who could careless about gear and just love Norrath and the raiding community, the people in the middle are the ones who come and go. So if SOE continues on this course they are essentially saying that one of the groups that kept the game viable is not valued and that seems insane to me.

profe

08-25-2009, 12:19 AM

So was that a yay or nay to my legit question, contrary to all the other nonsensical, emotional ramblings that get vastly more attention for reasons unknown, 30 pages ago...?

Gisallo

08-25-2009, 12:46 AM

<cite>EasternKing wrote:</cite><blockquote>And unlike real life when you get poor service, or miss lead, such as we have been here, Soe have basically given us this gear to keep us paying our monthly subs, now they are taking it away, and telling us to suck it up.Where is the accountability? we cant ring Sony up and express our anger at our misstreatment, so it comes out the only place it can do, here.And of you are the only person from Sony answering and trying to calm irate customers down, well you can bet now and then you are going to get some honest stuff to read, saying they dont have to listen to it, and we have no right to express ourselves unless its all kiss kiss hug hug, is why things are the way they areSome one has to be there to take the punchs with the hugs, thats the whole point of customer service, it is if you want to retain customers anyway.Not every angry person is being irrational you know? sometimes there are dang good reasons, claiming they can walk away and ignore them, because they dont like your tone is crass at best.</blockquote>Not saying its right, not saying its cool, that SOE is basically telling people to suck it up in the least. Just saying that we have on member of the staff that actually tries on a regular basis to communicate with us. As I understand her job she is there to get information to the Devs and to tell us what the Dev's say. In the past though she has gone out of her way (at least it appears) to get us answers that the devs were not volunteering at the time. I would rather cut someone like that a little bit of slack, when in the end they are just the messenger, than kick them in the teeth and perhaps lose the "extra" tid bits she gives us when she goes out of her way.

Hypnottic

08-25-2009, 12:55 AM

I'm sorry, but I'm not buying the whole "We need to nerf because level 90 gear is not as good". I don't feel the slightest bit of sympathy for devolpers who simply say that there is no more good loot, it is too good now.Did your guys' imaginations run out of gas? Too much base? Too much Crit bonus? So what make up a new stat.You guys are developers.. So... Develope something!The more I hear about the new expansion both rumoured and in dev posts the more I wonder if I am going to maintain a sub with soe. I havent heard anything that says "YES I WANT THIS XPAC AND GU SO MUCH". Instead it is "<insert more bad news>".

Gisallo

08-25-2009, 12:56 AM

<cite>profe wrote:</cite><blockquote>So was that a yay or nay to my legit question, contrary to all the other nonsensical, emotional ramblings that get vastly more attention for reasons unknown, 30 pages ago...?</blockquote>LOL. Well Played Profe. That question you asked is excellent But I think from Fyre's response as to why Avatar gear needs nerfing now we see the answer. He stated the reason is because the Avatar gear as it exists is better than the best t9 raid gear EVEN with the degredation factor included. With this statement he appears to be content in having the rest of the t8 raid gear simply degrade in whatever system he is devleoping for the expansion, so I do not see any reduction in x4 5 piece set bonuses for healers. I also do not see any straight answer on this issue coming soon from the dev staff, but thats my interpretation at least.

Noaani

08-25-2009, 12:57 AM

<cite>Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>She is giving us a fact</blockquote>I have been given warnings for posting facts about the game, even ones that are later confirmed by developers. Being factually correct on these forums means nothing.She should have to abide by the same rules as everyone else.

Gungo

08-25-2009, 12:58 AM

Gungo

08-25-2009, 01:00 AM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>She is giving us a fact</blockquote>I have been given warnings for posting facts about the game, even ones that are later confirmed by developers. Being factually correct on these forums means nothing.She should have to abide by the same rules as everyone else.</blockquote>No, you have been givign warning for being a troll. Pretty much everyone on the forums know that about you. To say you were giving warning for providing facts is hilarious at best.

Tehom

08-25-2009, 01:11 AM

<cite>Gungo wrote:</cite><blockquote>Oddly enough most of the people posting here have complained about these items being un upgraded. The collection earrings from KOS.... yup complained, the t7 avatar boots not being upgraded... yup complainedThe bloodthirsty choker.... yup complained.Almost every item that wasnt upgraded during the next tiers raid content was complained about.</blockquote>That's true. But the complaint is more that a direct upgrade wasn't put in for an otherwise irreplaceable item. It's trivial to make something like that, since you just create something with more hp or whatever. It might not be a huge upgrade, but still.That's also why I'm not totally against gear degradation, since I tend to feel items sticking around indefinitely is unhealthy for the game. But I just can't buy that they can't itemize replacements to existing avatar gear items, considering that most are marginal upgrades or even sidegrades over set gear. The priest breastplates for example are small but respectable upgrades pre-nerf, and post-nerf will be absolute trash; the plate priest breastplate wasn't exactly our most high-demand item ever even in its unnerfed state. Even Robe of the Disciple doesn't represent some quantum leap in power; it's nice, sure, but I'd be extremely surprised if you couldn't create t9 set robes with foci that'd represent at least parity with it.Even disease charm won't be overpowered if they go the route of making practically everything unmodifiable. It'll no longer represent a huge dps increase, so why nerf it?

Noaani

08-25-2009, 01:31 AM

<cite>Gungo wrote:</cite><blockquote>No, you have been givign warning for being a troll. Pretty much everyone on the forums know that about you. To say you were giving warning for providing facts is hilarious at best.</blockquote>Strangly, the few posts I do make that could easily be considered trolling (like earlier today in this thread) don't get me in much trouble, they just get removed. Its the ones that provide facts (and to a lesser extent, opinions) that do.The main case I was refering to above was when someone in the tradeskill forum asked if Domino could make all old rares stack, as a few of them don't. I suggested (rather politely for me) that it is unlikely that Domino would spend the time to do this, and the player is better off simply using those items. Kiara gave me a warning later that day, Domino quoted me the next day saying this was the best thing to do.If a post is not made with an abundance of emoticons and contains information that players do not want to hear, it is grounds for a warning (or general non-warning telling off). Whether the information is correct or not is not the issue, its all about the emoticons.

Mordicus

08-25-2009, 03:27 AM

<cite>Hypnottic@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote>You guys are developers.. So... Develope something!</blockquote>Barry RoflsteinId love to see the parameters for their "gear rating system" and how certain items fall within the guidelines but others do not.

guillero

08-25-2009, 04:48 AM

<cite>Hypnottic@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm sorry, but I'm not buying the whole "We need to nerf because level 90 gear is not as good". I don't feel the slightest bit of sympathy for devolpers who simply say that there is no more good loot, it is too good now.Did your guys' imaginations run out of gas? Too much base? Too much Crit bonus? So what make up a new stat.You guys are developers.. So... Develope something!The more I hear about the new expansion both rumoured and in dev posts the more I wonder if I am going to maintain a sub with soe. I havent heard anything that says "YES I WANT THIS XPAC AND GU SO MUCH". Instead it is "".</blockquote>I am also baffled as well about the whole development philosophy at SOE.I mean. First off, they just need to get rid of percentages and convert everything back to number based. Problem about maxed stats solved!Second, if Turbine can come up with a Radiance system to created gated progression, without having problems of capped stats.Why is a company like SOE, that has pretty much the most experience in RAID content, have such difficulties with this game's progression??!! That before every Expac they just bluntly upset their customers with constant nerfs!!I don't know tho. But, is a healthy bussiness their goal not to retain their customers, instead of chasing them away before each Expac??I can't really say that the new player retention rate is good. Reality is, that it's horrible!I can't really say that players stick around and that the amount of subs have been growing the last 2 years.Echoes of Faydwar is pretty much the only Expansion that really brought players back in droves and saw a good influx of new players.There must be some light bulb at SOE HQ that is still working and lits up?? Or did they ran out of light bulbs long ago?Jer

Barx

08-25-2009, 10:33 AM

<cite>Jerokane@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>I am also baffled as well about the whole development philosophy at SOE.I mean. First off, they just need to get rid of percentages and convert everything back to number based. Problem about maxed stats solved!Second, if Turbine can come up with a Radiance system to created gated progression, without having problems of capped stats.Why is a company like SOE, that has pretty much the most experience in RAID content, have such difficulties with this game's progression??!! That before every Expac they just bluntly upset their customers with constant nerfs!!I don't know tho. But, is a healthy bussiness their goal not to retain their customers, instead of chasing them away before each Expac??I can't really say that the new player retention rate is good. Reality is, that it's horrible!I can't really say that players stick around and that the amount of subs have been growing the last 2 years.Echoes of Faydwar is pretty much the only Expansion that really brought players back in droves and saw a good influx of new players.There must be some light bulb at SOE HQ that is still working and lits up?? Or did they ran out of light bulbs long ago?Jer</blockquote>I'd love to know where you get all your magical statistics from. Do you have some magic tool that tells you every time a new player tries the game and whether they kept playing it or quit?I can tell you that AB has certainly not lost any population and new players join and stay all the time.

UNTILitSLEEPS

08-25-2009, 12:47 PM

1.no avatars in t9 is good because the shared loottables led to so much troubles concerning risk/difficulty vs. rewardwith every contested having a different loottable this will hopefully not happen againthey would not have time to rescript all avatars anyways and no hc raider wants to kill the same scripts for another expansion2.gear degradation generally is a good thing because it gives them the opportunity to better create a steady progression within the expansion from instances -> instanced raid tiers -> contesteds (at least thats what i wish for)3. the nerfs. if they are needed to make the "oh so well planned" item progression for the next expansion work it should be put in (as soon as the expansion actually launches!)nerfing it now will end up in a subscription lossnerfing it then will make noone quit because everyone wants to experience the new content and new items anyways

Darq

08-25-2009, 01:19 PM

What's the topic again?Avatar gear nerfs.Why, and why not also instance gear andTell us exactly what your intentions are for contested raiders right now, and in the future, before a good portion of us give up hope and move on.and alsowhen is this supposed to go live, if at all?And my fav why are you selling a downgrade as an upgrade or sidetracking with stuff that doesn't belong in this thread like this "The Hole" zone.I was already [Removed for Content] off enough reading the fanfaire blog and the dumbing down consolidation that's going to happen, however i thought ok, it doesn't concern me anymore as I've canceled my sub and was enjoying the state the game is right now. But oh no just when I thought "nice 2 other guilds are now trying to give us a fight over avatars" what actually motivated me to put more effort into playing this game BAM the thing that made the game fun and exciting is now going to be the thing that's going to be removed from the game, because why fight over contested mobs when there's no reward from doing so. I have all the gear from instances except 2 pieces and I will have them in a month at most, while there are more than 6 pieces of Avatar loot that I wanted to have. So once we down Ykesha and Munzok what's going to keep me motivated to play this game?By the way have you looked at the Warden BP from WoE x2? Why does a BP from a x2 zone have the exact same effect as the warden x4 5 piece set bonus? Yet you're going after Avatar gear which is oh too strong.Do you want this game to become as deserted as SWG is? Is that your plan? I've been told that there's gear degregation in SWG now too. So are you copying concepts from a dead game and putting them in a game that is alive? Are you really that out of ideas? Do you believe those people who played EQ2 will go and play one of your freebies with micropayments and not turn their back on your company forever? I bet you're laughing reading all this feedback Flyte is even making jokes that's how funny it is to him, and when you think about it, it is, it's just plain ridiculous - everything about it.

Bruener

08-25-2009, 02:00 PM

People need to stop being so emo about this and realize that it has been expected for a long time. You cannot have both challenging encounters and OP'd gear from loot pinatas in the game at the same time. Avatar gear has trivialized a lot of content...or in some cases the gear is so OP'd that SOE has had to design encounters with Avatar geared raids in mind. Munzok and Ykesha being great examples. Not to mention that the gear helped them steamroll all the other content. Guilds killing Avatars before they could even kill Gynok is sad.Avatars are too common now, the gap in gear is too large, they share loot tables, they are easier than instance mobs, and the same people complain that content is too easy and get bored and leave game because of it.What is it you want? To go into T10 and kill 90% of the content without having to gear up? Than you can get bored after a month, complain to SOE that stuff is too easy and quit the game? Or maybe you want even more instance mobs designed to have contested gear to kill, totally c*ck blocking the non-contested killing guilds...even though they are instances.SOE screwed up and made contested mobs way too easy this expansion and they should never have shared the loot tables. Well people got to enjoy the easy gear grab for way too long and should honestly be glad nerfs are going in....maybe it will give you more of a challenge to keep you involved in the game more. Sure, there will be those handful that just care about gear and get [Removed for Content] and quit because suddenly the instance mobs that are tougher than the contested mobs seem real tough...the way those not killing contested already know. But even more people will continue playing and probably enjoy the game more because skill will mean more. Wait till you get to play around with these DPS checks and everything on mobs without your Avatar gear.

Leovinus

08-25-2009, 02:10 PM

What baffles me is everyone is assuming that fyreflyte said that after degradation current avatar gear would still be better than the best raid gear obtainable. I have no better info than anyone else, but my assumption would be that they don't want current avatar raiders to have such a leg up that they can bypass all progression and skip directly to the toughest stuff and then start complaining that everything is too easy again.Hard to say whether progression will work this time, but I'm pretty sure it's the goal of the devs to make it so.I would like to see some alternative forms of advancement instead of degradation though. Flurry, double spell attack, max possible melee hit are all in the game now. Could even make it combo effects, such as >100 da and past max cast time and you start to develop flurry. Max spell (damage) crit and max recast and you start seeing double spell. Stuff like that. Would also like to see double ca. Maybe triple attack. Crit modifiers make super crits sort of obsolete, but I'm sure they could come up with other interesting stuff.

GangleG

08-25-2009, 02:12 PM

<cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote>Avatars are too common now, the gap in gear is too large, they share loot tables, they are easier than instance mobs, and the same people complain that content is too easy and get bored and leave game because of it.</blockquote>Which ones? More hyperbole and anecdotal evidence from people who don't even raid these encounters. Please, list which ones and explain why they are harder, because the only ones that are, are Ykesha and Munzok -- and their loot is better then avatar loot, so please, feel free to enlighten me with your grand wisdom of raiding.

Freliant

08-25-2009, 02:33 PM

Not to derail the thread, but this thread is the perfect example of why we have always said that the Minority of the game population is the most vocal about the game, and the one that is doing it the most harm through its feedback.How many Avatar killing guilds are there per server? Lets say 4... that is 96 people per server, and 10 servers for about 1k people killing Avatars... out of 230k subscribers and active players... that is less than 0.5% of the entire player base. 99.5% of the playing population doesn't kill Avatars, OR for the most part have ever seen one. The gear for that 0.5% of the gaming population is enough to overkill all the content coming in the next expansion, and they still complain and fight tooth and nails to keep their OP gear.IMHO, the changes should go through, and if that current 0.5% of the population wants to leave the game, more power to them, specially if the end result is a game that attracts more people instead of alienating more. The automentoring, thumbs up, makes more players go to the lower zones. The bonus and friend xp, also great things. In fact, anything that makes the newbies life easier, funner and better able to cope with the game is great, because, if we don't get a good flow of new players into the game, its just lights out overall.Who really cares if a few elitists get P'Oed that the gear they got (which was and is grossly overpowered) leave the game as a result of these changes. Obviously, encounters are going to be redesigned taking into concideration the lower overall power of the raiders, but at least new content coming out wont be so out of proportion as to alianate the rest of the playing population, as it is right now. Think about it, Munzok is made right now so that a FRACTION of the Avatar geared population can kill it... yeah, a fraction of 0.5%... terrible terrible use of massive developer resourses and time.More developing time for 99% of the population in 2010!

Hina

08-25-2009, 03:02 PM

<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>Not to derail the thread, but this thread is the perfect example of why we have always said that the Minority of the game population is the most vocal about the game, and the one that is doing it the most harm through its feedback.How many Avatar killing guilds are there per server? Lets say 4... that is 96 people per server, and 10 servers for about 1k people killing Avatars... out of 230k subscribers and active players... that is less than 0.5% of the entire player base. 99.5% of the playing population doesn't kill Avatars, OR for the most part have ever seen one. The gear for that 0.5% of the gaming population is enough to overkill all the content coming in the next expansion, and they still complain and fight tooth and nails to keep their OP gear.Who really cares if a few elitists get P'Oed that the gear they got (which was and is grossly overpowered) leave the game as a result of these changes. Obviously, encounters are going to be redesigned taking into concideration the lower overall power of the raiders, but at least new content coming out wont be so out of proportion as to alianate the rest of the playing population, as it is right now. Think about it, Munzok is made right now so that a FRACTION of the Avatar geared population can kill it... yeah, a fraction of 0.5%... terrible terrible use of massive developer resourses and time</blockquote>So what you are saying is that the people this nerf effects should not be able to feedback it? Just because a group is a minority, they lose their voting rights?What you're also saying is that somehow by degrading our gear, which we worked very hard for will improve your gaming experience? If anything, this nerf is actually TAKING away from the casual player and time that developers could be focusing on them, instead of ruining already developed content. In many ways gear degredation and nerfs actually end up hurting the casuals more than the HC raiders. Every expansion, the casual raiders have been an expansion behind. In EoF, the casuals raided KoS, in RoK, the casuals raided EoF and the teir 1 zones in RoK. In TSO, the casuals are now raiding RoK and, more specifically, VP. They are also making limited progress on the easiest of TSO mobs (the first 2 nameds in ToMC, first named in palace, etc). When gear degradation goes through, this means all the casuals will barely be raiding the limited entry raid content of the new expansion because, otherwise, they are raiding for degraded set pieces in an old expansion that are 33% effective.What many people are failing to see is that focusing on this small population of both gear and players, WILL NOT FIX whatever problem SOE is attempting to address. If you dont have it, go to the vendor near the mender in the Moors. Look at your T4 gear set. Look at the mountain of stats on that, and then look at some links to the nerfed avatar gear on test. If you can look at that and honestly say any of those pieces from avatars are actually worthwhile, please list which items and why you think they are upgrades to current set loot and jewelry from instanced content.The arguement that avatars are "too easy" is a tired and untrue argument. 9 months into any expansion, mobs are easy, and, believe it or not, some avatars still pose a challenge to contested raiders and their "Overpowered gear." I fail to see what implementing this this nerf now will do if next expansion the playing field will be leveled regardless. Why go through the headache of nerfing this gear and retuning already developed content now?

samejima

08-25-2009, 03:07 PM

<cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote>Avatars are too common now, the gap in gear is too large, they share loot tables, they are easier than instance mobs, and the same people complain that content is too easy and get bored and leave game because of it.</blockquote>Which ones? More hyperbole and anecdotal evidence from people who don't even raid these encounters. Please, list which ones and explain why they are harder, because the only ones that are, are Ykesha and Munzok -- and their loot is better then avatar loot, so please, feel free to enlighten me with your grand wisdom of raiding.</blockquote>Growth, Storms and Disease are around gynok level. Health, Bellow and Mischief are easier than Anashti. Just like instanced content there is a wide range of difficulty on contesteds.

arksun

08-25-2009, 03:12 PM

<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>Not to derail the thread, but this thread is the perfect example of why we have always said that the Minority of the game population is the most vocal about the game, and the one that is doing it the most harm through its feedback.How many Avatar killing guilds are there per server? Lets say 4... that is 96 people per server, and 10 servers for about 1k people killing Avatars... out of 230k subscribers and active players... that is less than 0.5% of the entire player base. 99.5% of the playing population doesn't kill Avatars, OR for the most part have ever seen one. The gear for that 0.5% of the gaming population is enough to overkill all the content coming in the next expansion, and they still complain and fight tooth and nails to keep their OP gear.IMHO, the changes should go through, and if that current 0.5% of the population wants to leave the game, more power to them, specially if the end result is a game that attracts more people instead of alienating more. The automentoring, thumbs up, makes more players go to the lower zones. The bonus and friend xp, also great things. In fact, anything that makes the newbies life easier, funner and better able to cope with the game is great, because, if we don't get a good flow of new players into the game, its just lights out overall.Who really cares if a few elitists get P'Oed that the gear they got (which was and is grossly overpowered) leave the game as a result of these changes. Obviously, encounters are going to be redesigned taking into concideration the lower overall power of the raiders, but at least new content coming out wont be so out of proportion as to alianate the rest of the playing population, as it is right now. Think about it, Munzok is made right now so that a FRACTION of the Avatar geared population can kill it... yeah, a fraction of 0.5%... terrible terrible use of massive developer resourses and time.More developing time for 99% of the population in 2010!</blockquote>You really think if avatars were not in game that munzok would be any easier to this day? Do you think Yekesha would be toned down to be any easier to this date?Heaven forbid we have to min/max our toons to beat the end mobs in this game, and if killing one (munzok) requires me to fight another guild for contested mobs to allow us to have gear to kill that mob, well pardon me for actually doing something challenging.TBH, I wouldn't quit over the gear, but once you dumb down the game and give no true challenge in content that will be the nail in the coffin for me.

Crismorn

08-25-2009, 03:13 PM

<cite>samejima wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote>Avatars are too common now, the gap in gear is too large, they share loot tables, they are easier than instance mobs, and the same people complain that content is too easy and get bored and leave game because of it.</blockquote>Which ones? More hyperbole and anecdotal evidence from people who don't even raid these encounters. Please, list which ones and explain why they are harder, because the only ones that are, are Ykesha and Munzok -- and their loot is better then avatar loot, so please, feel free to enlighten me with your grand wisdom of raiding.</blockquote>Growth, Storms and Disease are around gynok level. Health, Bellow and Mischief are easier than Anashti. Just like instanced content there is a wide range of difficulty on contesteds.</blockquote>What?Anashti and Gynok requires 2 people with crit mit, every single avatar in this game requires 24 people with crit mit.I can see how taking wild guesses could be entertaining, but lets keep this a little realistic

samejima

08-25-2009, 03:16 PM

<cite>isis23 wrote:</cite><blockquote>What many people are failing to see is that focusing on this small population of both gear and players, WILL NOT FIX whatever problem SOE is attempting to address. If you dont have it, go to the vendor near the mender in the Moors. Look at your T4 gear set. Look at the mountain of stats on that, and then look at some links to the nerfed avatar gear on test. If you can look at that and honestly say any of those pieces from avatars are actually worthwhile, please list which items and why you think they are upgrades to current set loot and jewelry from instanced content.</blockquote>Are you honestly saying that there will be NO gear after this nerf worth wearing?

samejima

08-25-2009, 03:18 PM

Bruener

08-25-2009, 03:29 PM

<cite>Crismorn wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>samejima wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote>Avatars are too common now, the gap in gear is too large, they share loot tables, they are easier than instance mobs, and the same people complain that content is too easy and get bored and leave game because of it.</blockquote>Which ones? More hyperbole and anecdotal evidence from people who don't even raid these encounters. Please, list which ones and explain why they are harder, because the only ones that are, are Ykesha and Munzok -- and their loot is better then avatar loot, so please, feel free to enlighten me with your grand wisdom of raiding.</blockquote>Growth, Storms and Disease are around gynok level. Health, Bellow and Mischief are easier than Anashti. Just like instanced content there is a wide range of difficulty on contesteds.</blockquote>What?Anashti and Gynok requires 2 people with crit mit, every single avatar in this game requires 24 people with crit mit.I can see how taking wild guesses could be entertaining, but lets keep this a little realistic</blockquote>Maybe T2 crit mit levels. Seriously, the fact is guilds were killing Avatars that hadn't even killed Gynok when the expansion came out. For those that keep trying to counter the fact Avatars are easy...wake up. Avatars are not the end mobs of the game like they were in the past. Avatars spawn a lot more often compared to the past and they share loot tables.The fact is 99% of the guilds that actually kill Ykesha have Avatar gear...how does that work out? You get to go gear up on mobs that are easier that drop just as good of gear, a lot of it better, than the 2nd toughest mob in the game....tougher than any of those mobs that drop grossly OP'd gear.Instead of crying about this nerf maybe a lot of you guys should take the lead that some of the smarter individuals in a similar sitaution are doing. Post about specific items and explain what they should be in relation to what drops in instances. Example, the fighter Avatar belt isn't even as good as the Byzola belt nor the Zarrakon belt. Some shield effectiveness on there or a descent proc would go a long ways for it. Make it better than the Zarrakon belt but not as good as the Ykesha belt.Avatar BP's. They need some uniqueness back to make them at least situationally worth using over class BPs.Charms....well honestly I don't feel pity for them because they were the most OP'd items from the loot lists. Even with the nerfs in any charm is going to be a good match to go with MMB charm+cloak combo.Or wait, I guess people could just keep crying about how "unfair" the nerf is...in hopes that it is reverted back...only to watch the same people cry next expansion that content is too easy.

GangleG

08-25-2009, 03:29 PM

And you've killed these mobs with an 18% crit mit raid have you? Unless you have, which you will probably say you have, you're just speaking nonsense.

samejima

08-25-2009, 03:31 PM

<cite>Digg@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>You really think if avatars were not in game that munzok would be any easier to this day? Do you think Yekesha would be toned down to be any easier to this date?</blockquote>No one knows this, not even you. So this is a terribly moot point.<div><cite>Digg@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>Heaven forbid we have to min/max our toons to beat the end mobs in this game, and if killing one (munzok) requires me to fight another guild for contested mobs to allow us to have gear to kill that mob, well pardon me for actually doing something challenging.</blockquote>WORST LOGIC EVER! If they ever make contested the mid ground for raid progression that will be the day I instantly quit. That will show me, more than they have shown me so far, that they have -- absolutly -- no clue on what they are doing.On another note why does everyone think that Avatars are the "HIGH END" or "END GAME" mobs? It was never really this way in tier five, six or seven. It was not until the implimentation of avatars in Echos of Faydwer did things get so out of whack.</div>

samejima

08-25-2009, 03:31 PM

<cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote>And you've killed these mobs with an 18% crit mit raid have you? Unless you have, which you will probably say you have, you're just speaking nonsense.</blockquote>I absolutly have, with a bruiser main tank.

GangleG

08-25-2009, 03:32 PM

<cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Crismorn wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>samejima wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote>Avatars are too common now, the gap in gear is too large, they share loot tables, they are easier than instance mobs, and the same people complain that content is too easy and get bored and leave game because of it.</blockquote>Which ones? More hyperbole and anecdotal evidence from people who don't even raid these encounters. Please, list which ones and explain why they are harder, because the only ones that are, are Ykesha and Munzok -- and their loot is better then avatar loot, so please, feel free to enlighten me with your grand wisdom of raiding.</blockquote>Growth, Storms and Disease are around gynok level. Health, Bellow and Mischief are easier than Anashti. Just like instanced content there is a wide range of difficulty on contesteds.</blockquote>What?Anashti and Gynok requires 2 people with crit mit, every single avatar in this game requires 24 people with crit mit.I can see how taking wild guesses could be entertaining, but lets keep this a little realistic</blockquote>Maybe T2 crit mit levels. Seriously, the fact is guilds were killing Avatars that hadn't even killed Gynok when the expansion came out. For those that keep trying to counter the fact Avatars are easy...wake up. Avatars are not the end mobs of the game like they were in the past. Avatars spawn a lot more often compared to the past and they share loot tables.The fact is 99% of the guilds that actually kill Ykesha have Avatar gear...how does that work out? You get to go gear up on mobs that are easier that drop just as good of gear, a lot of it better, than the 2nd toughest mob in the game....tougher than any of those mobs that drop grossly OP'd gear.Instead of crying about this nerf maybe a lot of you guys should take the lead that some of the smarter individuals in a similar sitaution are doing. Post about specific items and explain what they should be in relation to what drops in instances. Example, the fighter Avatar belt isn't even as good as the Byzola belt nor the Zarrakon belt. Some shield effectiveness on there or a descent proc would go a long ways for it. Make it better than the Zarrakon belt but not as good as the Ykesha belt.Avatar BP's. They need some uniqueness back to make them at least situationally worth using over class BPs.Charms....well honestly I don't feel pity for them because they were the most OP'd items from the loot lists. Even with the nerfs in any charm is going to be a good match to go with MMB charm+cloak combo.Or wait, I guess people could just keep crying about how "unfair" the nerf is...in hopes that it is reverted back...only to watch the same people cry next expansion that content is too easy.</blockquote>Guilds that were killing avatars when they first came out, was because they were bugged and the AEs were not critting properly. Seriously, do you people have ANY IDEA what you are talking about?If you think avatar gear is OP and not the gear from Ykesha, then you're seriously out of touch with reality, because Ykesha has better loot than any comparable avatar gear.

GangleG

08-25-2009, 03:33 PM

<cite>samejima wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote>And you've killed these mobs with an 18% crit mit raid have you? Unless you have, which you will probably say you have, you're just speaking nonsense.</blockquote>I absolutly have, with a bruiser main tank.</blockquote>I've killed Ykesha with a raid of naked toons that were all boxed.

samejima

08-25-2009, 03:39 PM

<cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote>Guilds that were killing avatars when they first came out, was because they were bugged and the AEs were not critting properly. Seriously, do you people have ANY IDEA what you are talking about?If you think avatar gear is OP and not the gear from Ykesha, then you're seriously out of touch with reality, because Ykesha has better loot than any comparable avatar gear.</blockquote>This is something that is true, however once they fixed them guilds continued to kill the same avatars. Did you forget to mention that? Avatar gear is overpowered, as is the gera from Ykesha, anyone who argues otherwise is uninformed.

GangleG

08-25-2009, 03:42 PM

<cite>samejima wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote>Guilds that were killing avatars when they first came out, was because they were bugged and the AEs were not critting properly. Seriously, do you people have ANY IDEA what you are talking about?If you think avatar gear is OP and not the gear from Ykesha, then you're seriously out of touch with reality, because Ykesha has better loot than any comparable avatar gear.</blockquote>This is something that is true, however once they fixed them guilds continued to kill the same avatars. Did you forget to mention that? Avatar gear is overpowered, as is the gera from Ykesha, anyone who argues otherwise is uninformed.</blockquote>Obviously they did because the strats were the same and were lucky enough to get tank BPs before the avatars were fixed. They should have been taken out of the game until they were fixed. You can blame this on the devs, which ultimately broke progression right from the start.

samejima

08-25-2009, 03:43 PM

<cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>samejima wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote>And you've killed these mobs with an 18% crit mit raid have you? Unless you have, which you will probably say you have, you're just speaking nonsense.</blockquote>I absolutly have, with a bruiser main tank.</blockquote>I've killed Ykesha with a raid of naked toons that were all boxed.</blockquote>Do you know who Trumak is? He was once upon a time a bruiser. He had 18% crit mit when we killed disease, growth and storms, this was AFTER they fixed the AoEs. (And added the new physical AoEs) I was the main tank healer on that fight, so please, go ahead, ask him if you do not believe me. Unlike you I am using logic and facts for my points instead of devolving into random giberish and sarcasem.

samejima

08-25-2009, 03:45 PM

<cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>samejima wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote>Guilds that were killing avatars when they first came out, was because they were bugged and the AEs were not critting properly. Seriously, do you people have ANY IDEA what you are talking about?If you think avatar gear is OP and not the gear from Ykesha, then you're seriously out of touch with reality, because Ykesha has better loot than any comparable avatar gear.</blockquote>This is something that is true, however once they fixed them guilds continued to kill the same avatars. Did you forget to mention that? Avatar gear is overpowered, as is the gera from Ykesha, anyone who argues otherwise is uninformed.</blockquote>Obviously they did because the strats were the same and were lucky enough to get tank BPs before the avatars were fixed. They should have been taken out of the game until they were fixed. You can blame this on the devs, which ultimately broke progression right from the start.</blockquote>AGAIN you use some insane argument which is simply false. Not every avatar guild got tank BPs or tank items, our tank could not even equip them being a Bruiser!!! (I should clarify this, at least any of them that actually helped you.) Also what strats have changed since EoF other than maybe placment? Again you are using such extreme fallacies.

Hina

08-25-2009, 03:57 PM

<cite>samejima wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>isis23 wrote:</cite><blockquote>What many people are failing to see is that focusing on this small population of both gear and players, WILL NOT FIX whatever problem SOE is attempting to address. If you dont have it, go to the vendor near the mender in the Moors. Look at your T4 gear set. Look at the mountain of stats on that, and then look at some links to the nerfed avatar gear on test. If you can look at that and honestly say any of those pieces from avatars are actually worthwhile, please list which items and why you think they are upgrades to current set loot and jewelry from instanced content.</blockquote>Are you honestly saying that there will be NO gear after this nerf worth wearing?</blockquote>You neither made the effort to take a look at test and compare it to set gear/current instance gear, nor did you attempt to answer my question. You must simply not like the existance of this "crowd" and are reacting without doing the research to support your beliefs. I'm asking for someone, who is not biased, meaning someone who does not kill these mobs, to look at the gear that exists now in instances (both set loot and jewelry/symbols/etc) and compare it to what is on test and actually compare the items. If you, or anyone, can logically argue that avatar gear is better than instanced loot, please do so, with specifics as to which pieces are better, and which you think are actually worse. My guess is that you will find a larger pile of items that are sidegrades or worse than instanced loot. What I will say for myself though, is that, with the exception of about two items, no I will not be wearing much avatar gear anymore if this goes through cause there is better in my bags from both heroic instances and instanced raids.

Landiin

08-25-2009, 03:59 PM

This thread is now dumb and becoming a [Removed for Content] contest.. For some reason it hasn't been locked.. I am shocked..

arksun

08-25-2009, 04:07 PM

<cite>samejima wrote:</cite><blockquote><div><blockquote>WORST LOGIC EVER! If they ever make contested the mid ground for raid progression that will be the day I instantly quit. That will show me, more than they have shown me so far, that they have -- absolutly -- no clue on what they are doing.On another note why does everyone think that Avatars are the "HIGH END" or "END GAME" mobs? It was never really this way in tier five, six or seven. It was not until the implimentation of avatars in Echos of Faydwer did things get so out of whack.</blockquote></div></blockquote>Avatars are a mid ground for progression right now... Munzok has been killed twice by a guild that has lead the way on farming avatars this expansion. It will only be killed by a guild of said caliber until the devs nerf 1, 2, 3, etc.. more times. Why is this? Because as you says they have no clue on what they are doing with design of the encounters. If they did guilds that do not kill avatars and even the ones that do would be able to kill it now, this is what happens when things are not tested and they go to live.I am pretty sure everyone is ready for the avatars to be gone from game, its been the same encounters now for too long, but just like I said regardless if avatars were in game or not, munzok (end boss mob) would not be killable by anyone and it would require nerf after nerf after nerf, furthing the point that all these encounters are poorly designed.And Kiara don't take that as me attacking the devs, its just bottom line the truth... If the encounters were designed properly why would we have to go through update after update before an encounter is working correctly?

Homeskillet

08-25-2009, 04:17 PM

Kiara,Something really needs to change, you know why? Why is it the players who end up doing the math to figure out exactly how things work? We sit here with log parses and min/max everything possible to tweak out the best result and figure out how things work because there is no clear explaination in most cases from the development. The devs have pidgeonholed themselves into this corner of constantly having to go back and bandaid things with nerfs because they have fostered this environment of soft caps, hard caps, diminishing returns in which the introduction of a new stat, or a new sort of item can become tremendously game breaking. The frightening part is that I think the system has been made so complex there is a large amount overlooked upon implementation. You could take hard caps, soft caps, and all of this math that gets bogged down to the point that sometimes Devs get caught flat footed with how their own items work and just focus on tuning a variety of encounters accordingly.If a player wants to get 1500 STR, let them, and let it affect their damage. If they can pile on that much base damage, let them. There is only so far a player can go in it as there are not unlimited gear slots and a set number of items in the game. Yes there has to be a set point of "this doesn't do any more for you", but get rid of this habit of creating things in so complex a manner that you don't even know how to handle it 6-8 months down the road. If this is not working for you devs, do away with it and make that part easy, then focus on tuning the content for that system. As others have stated repeatedly there have been a series of changes proposed, some implemented that amount to fundamental things being changed and Brenlo coming in to apologize and say, "We should have done this months ago, but it must be done, my bad". The fighter changes that were scrapped, the proc changes, and now this. If you cannot develop progressively without having to go back and change what you made again and again then your development strategy needs to change, plain and simple. I sincerely doubted that the developers forsaw the use of the Bloodthirsty Choker by nearly every class that does damage to continue this far. It almost feels like some dev thought it was cool, and added it in, now one tier and several content additions later it is still one of the most desired items. It is items like this and the Dark Orb of the Mind that the item degridation system is being added in. You had to do something to punch this in the proverbial gut swiftly rather than look at how you got to where you are.Take something else unmentioned in this thread thus far (that I have seen, pardon if I missed it); diety miracles. Now I know few here would care about miracles and their usefulness is debatable but it is a prime example of development's lack of perspective in their own actions. Compare Anashti Sul's miracles to Cazic Thule, I can make my mental dots last longer and therefore do less DPS or I can obtain spell double attack, flurry and a mess of crit in one temp buff? What the heck? Newer items get added in seeminly bereft of any amount of attention to what came before to see if it even makes sense. Instead the devs state they will look at previous items and bump them up. Now everything is matched up to miracles that are near equivalent to wearing the Death Chimes item from Maestro (but with crits!), and a super berzerk buff for crit, spell double attack etc from one God...how long until those have to be changed? Thank god they are miracles and are balanced by the fact of their short duration and long reuse, but its an example of the development strategy the developers have carried out. Why bother with another God's miracles when I can go with Anashti and get ridiculous buffs that benefit me in every way? Why wear current tier items when I can wear a neck from two expansions ago that will be better than everything I will see in all likelihood until I can get something from an Avatar? Why bother wearing my T4 set gloves when I can wear this heritage quest item that benefits me even more? Why is this helm that drops from a one groupable named in Hate better than everything else? There is currently little to no diversity outside of decided playstyles to determine what are the best items/AAs/specs for your class. The division between playstyles is very slim when factoring out PvP. Take the Illusionist class for example. There is zero reason to take some of our AAs, every Illusionist with half a brain takes nearly the same identicle AA spec, they go for the same items and end up being carbon copies of eachother down the road because there is no diversity or reason to diversify. There are no viable alternatives. Max your crit, max your spell damage, max your base damage, stack as much spell crit bonus as you can.The devs are apparently not asking themselves why this environment has been created, instead it is asked by the players when changes like this are just dropped on Test. Instead of making changes that you state are benefiting the long term but which are just cleaning up the mess already made, why not retune the entire strategy for adding in items, buffs and tweaking mechanics that you are currently using?

Bruener

08-25-2009, 04:32 PM

<cite>Digg@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>samejima wrote:</cite><blockquote><div><blockquote>WORST LOGIC EVER! If they ever make contested the mid ground for raid progression that will be the day I instantly quit. That will show me, more than they have shown me so far, that they have -- absolutly -- no clue on what they are doing.On another note why does everyone think that Avatars are the "HIGH END" or "END GAME" mobs? It was never really this way in tier five, six or seven. It was not until the implimentation of avatars in Echos of Faydwer did things get so out of whack.</blockquote></div></blockquote>Avatars are a mid ground for progression right now... Munzok has been killed twice by a guild that has lead the way on farming avatars this expansion. It will only be killed by a guild of said caliber until the devs nerf 1, 2, 3, etc.. more times. Why is this? Because as you says they have no clue on what they are doing with design of the encounters. If they did guilds that do not kill avatars and even the ones that do would be able to kill it now, this is what happens when things are not tested and they go to live.I am pretty sure everyone is ready for the avatars to be gone from game, its been the same encounters now for too long, but just like I said regardless if avatars were in game or not, munzok (end boss mob) would not be killable by anyone and it would require nerf after nerf after nerf, furthing the point that all these encounters are poorly designed.And Kiara don't take that as me attacking the devs, its just bottom line the truth... If the encounters were designed properly why would we have to go through update after update before an encounter is working correctly?</blockquote>Or maybe the problem is that SOE made Munzok incredibly hard because of how OP'd Avatar gear is. I mean 1 guild has killed it (yep thats right there is only 1 hardcore guild left it seems) and nobody can argue you have to be fully Avatar geared to do it. Ykesha, even though killable...how many guilds do you know that have no Avatar gear that can kill it...1 or 2? Why, well maybe because Avatar gear is so over the top that the encounter was balanced for the fact guilds trying to kill it were already farming Avatars for months before they could kill it. And its hilarious that people try to compare Ykesha gear to Avatar gear...when the fact is most of them wouldn't have a chance of seeing Ykesha gear without their Avatar gear already in place. Also, Ykesha is a significantly harder encounter than Avatars...especially when u consider Avatars like Storms, Growth, and Disease drop items just as good as Ykesha, some better.

arksun

08-25-2009, 04:38 PM

<cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Digg@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>samejima wrote:</cite><blockquote><div><blockquote>WORST LOGIC EVER! If they ever make contested the mid ground for raid progression that will be the day I instantly quit. That will show me, more than they have shown me so far, that they have -- absolutly -- no clue on what they are doing.On another note why does everyone think that Avatars are the "HIGH END" or "END GAME" mobs? It was never really this way in tier five, six or seven. It was not until the implimentation of avatars in Echos of Faydwer did things get so out of whack.</blockquote></div></blockquote>Avatars are a mid ground for progression right now... Munzok has been killed twice by a guild that has lead the way on farming avatars this expansion. It will only be killed by a guild of said caliber until the devs nerf 1, 2, 3, etc.. more times. Why is this? Because as you says they have no clue on what they are doing with design of the encounters. If they did guilds that do not kill avatars and even the ones that do would be able to kill it now, this is what happens when things are not tested and they go to live.I am pretty sure everyone is ready for the avatars to be gone from game, its been the same encounters now for too long, but just like I said regardless if avatars were in game or not, munzok (end boss mob) would not be killable by anyone and it would require nerf after nerf after nerf, furthing the point that all these encounters are poorly designed.And Kiara don't take that as me attacking the devs, its just bottom line the truth... If the encounters were designed properly why would we have to go through update after update before an encounter is working correctly?</blockquote>Or maybe the problem is that SOE made Munzok incredibly hard because of how OP'd Avatar gear is. I mean 1 guild has killed it (yep thats right there is only 1 hardcore guild left it seems) and nobody can argue you have to be fully Avatar geared to do it. Ykesha, even though killable...how many guilds do you know that have no Avatar gear that can kill it...1 or 2? Why, well maybe because Avatar gear is so over the top that the encounter was balanced for the fact guilds trying to kill it were already farming Avatars for months before they could kill it. And its hilarious that people try to compare Ykesha gear to Avatar gear...when the fact is most of them wouldn't have a chance of seeing Ykesha gear without their Avatar gear already in place. Also, Ykesha is a significantly harder encounter than Avatars...especially when u consider Avatars like Storms, Growth, and Disease drop items just as good as Ykesha, some better.</blockquote>The difficulty in Yekesha is killing 2 mobs fast, and keeping a tank alive through a DT. The guild that killed munzok has not killed it since the last fix to munzok either, and for tanking yekesha or munzok avatar gear armor right now (live) does not compare to the TSO set pieces, thus proving that even now the avatar armor is not as powerfull as everyone thinks. It was powerfull when you had tanks and dps, healers, etc... low on crit mit.Yes the charms and some of the jewelry needed to be toned down, not gonna argue about that. To say that avatar armor makes yekesha and munzok easier is wrong, because the bonus and stats you get on your TSO sets are OP, but you wont see them town that down will you?*edit* And i am talking from a tanking standpoint, not that of the healers and mages and scouts.

Bruener

08-25-2009, 04:56 PM

<cite>Digg@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Digg@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>samejima wrote:</cite><blockquote><div><blockquote>WORST LOGIC EVER! If they ever make contested the mid ground for raid progression that will be the day I instantly quit. That will show me, more than they have shown me so far, that they have -- absolutly -- no clue on what they are doing.On another note why does everyone think that Avatars are the "HIGH END" or "END GAME" mobs? It was never really this way in tier five, six or seven. It was not until the implimentation of avatars in Echos of Faydwer did things get so out of whack.</blockquote></div></blockquote>Avatars are a mid ground for progression right now... Munzok has been killed twice by a guild that has lead the way on farming avatars this expansion. It will only be killed by a guild of said caliber until the devs nerf 1, 2, 3, etc.. more times. Why is this? Because as you says they have no clue on what they are doing with design of the encounters. If they did guilds that do not kill avatars and even the ones that do would be able to kill it now, this is what happens when things are not tested and they go to live.I am pretty sure everyone is ready for the avatars to be gone from game, its been the same encounters now for too long, but just like I said regardless if avatars were in game or not, munzok (end boss mob) would not be killable by anyone and it would require nerf after nerf after nerf, furthing the point that all these encounters are poorly designed.And Kiara don't take that as me attacking the devs, its just bottom line the truth... If the encounters were designed properly why would we have to go through update after update before an encounter is working correctly?</blockquote>Or maybe the problem is that SOE made Munzok incredibly hard because of how OP'd Avatar gear is. I mean 1 guild has killed it (yep thats right there is only 1 hardcore guild left it seems) and nobody can argue you have to be fully Avatar geared to do it. Ykesha, even though killable...how many guilds do you know that have no Avatar gear that can kill it...1 or 2? Why, well maybe because Avatar gear is so over the top that the encounter was balanced for the fact guilds trying to kill it were already farming Avatars for months before they could kill it. And its hilarious that people try to compare Ykesha gear to Avatar gear...when the fact is most of them wouldn't have a chance of seeing Ykesha gear without their Avatar gear already in place. Also, Ykesha is a significantly harder encounter than Avatars...especially when u consider Avatars like Storms, Growth, and Disease drop items just as good as Ykesha, some better.</blockquote>The difficulty in Yekesha is killing 2 mobs fast, and keeping a tank alive through a DT. The guild that killed has not killed it since the last fix to munzok either, and for tanking yekesha or munzok avatar gear armor right now (live) does not compare to the TSO set pieces, thus proving that even now the avatar armor is not as powerfull as everyone thinks. It was powerfull when you had tanks and dps, healers, etc... low on crit mit.Yes the charms and some of the jewelry needed to be toned down, not gonna aruge about that. To say that avatar armor makes yekesha and munzok easier is wrong, because the bonus and stats you get on your TSO sets are OP, but you wont see them town that down will you?*edit* And i am talking from a tanking standpoint, not that of the healers and mages.</blockquote>Avatar gear equals more DPS and more crit mit. Right now on Live the BPs give 40 crit mit...insane. Class chest pieces are nice but they are not that good, not to mention you are killing mobs that are harder than some of the Avatars that drop the chest pieces. More crit mit means less healing needed, not to mention other healer gear from Avatars that help out. So from a defensive stand point Avatar gear allows for less healers to be taken which allows even more DPS. DPS, yes Ykesha is a DPS check. You burn 2 mbos down fast. Avatar gear gives a large increase to DPS over instance gear (minus Ykesha gear). So, you get more DPS to burn through the DPS check faster, which in turn means less healing. Seriously, you cannot honestly say you don't see the obvious benefits Avatar gear gave over the second toughest mob in the game. A guidl supporting all Avatar gear blows through the first mob in way less time than a guild without avatar gear which suddenly makes the fight exponentially easier. To prove it, go ahead and leave the Archmagus up for 1.5 minutes and see how well you do.Armor, well set armor itself is a problem imo and doesn't allow for much gear flavor. FF stated that they were not going to be doing class armor next expansion, so thankfully that would be solved. Instead I would much rather see bonuses from armor that multiple classes can wear, and have multiple pieces per slot able to give the bonuses. Example, there might be a 6 set plate armor set that gives a different bonus depending on if you are a fighter or a healer, and instead of there just being 1 chest piece that works to get the bonus, they might have 3 or 4 different chests that give you the bonus. Some better than others, but the point is you get bonuses for gathering gear and still allows for gear progression.BTW, I do feel that the gear nerf is too far in the other direction, and I gave specific examples in a previous post. But, people crying about a nerf period should wake up and realize this is coming and instead should focus on specific items and start threads on what they should be.