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

ShamusOB

08-20-2009, 03:23 AM

Why did you guys revert back to makeing the current avatar gear worthless???You just made most of it worthless and not as good as instanced gear. Sweet now people with avatar BPs will now go back to their instanced set BP because its now better. There are more examples so Im not even goign to get into all of them because you ruined every piece of gear.So is contested gear supposed to be terrible now so no one cares to kill them to give the casuals a chance?Avatar whatever is now up everyone...... yea who cares lets just stick with instances because I dont need any more crystalized manas in the GB.WHY ARE YOU EVEN PUTTING IN THE GEAR DEGREDATION? you didn't just crap on avatar gear enuff?? Its cool you wasted 8 months of farming gear for me. Im canceling my sub when this lame nerf that got shot down the first FOR GOOD REASON goes through.

ChrissyFaey

08-20-2009, 03:53 AM

Some of these are beyond terrible. Avatar loot should at least be a little better than instanced stuff. Needs to be balanced again. Too extreme.

Morghus

08-20-2009, 04:01 AM

Dont worry, the Anashti belt is going to become horrible but can be changed into a neck that is better than the Avatar one by 1% base damage! Nevermind that the other two current raid-dropped belts are horrible.

Apos

08-20-2009, 04:03 AM

You know, summer is kind of the time that's hard on a lot of guilds. Waning interest after long term farming, lack of new content, new games coming out, lack of time in game... and then seeing something like this. While I'm pretty sure we'd be okay, I think it would be a major kick in the stomach to a lot of server dominant guilds that are going through the usual summer issues. Absolutely terrible timing, would be a strong contributor to guild collapses and canceled subs.

Khurghan

08-20-2009, 05:10 AM

The extra crit mit on armour slots from avatars was nice as it gave people some choice in what gear they could wear, now everyone is going to be forced down a cookie-cutter route.The shared loot tables for this make it pretty rough, there is no way that mobs like storms and growth should be dropping the same quality loot as justice and CAS.

BroKenWingZ

08-20-2009, 05:13 AM

<cite>Khurghan wrote:</cite><blockquote>The shared loot tables for this make it pretty rough, there is no way that mobs like storms and growth should be dropping the same quality loot as justice and CAS.</blockquote>Agreed.Reorganizing the loot tables for difficulty would make much more sense than destroying them completely.

Noobolito

08-20-2009, 05:18 AM

Grats SOE on loosing another couple of players.....Making Avatar Gear on par with Instance Gear is awesome!YouGuys really know what to do!/sigh

and0ra77

08-20-2009, 05:35 AM

Gratz SOE loosing more player base if you let this hit live. This is way over kill for any nerf. Mages loose 37% base damage static and another 10% from procs. [Removed for Content] are you all thinking. Server populations are already way way low. Guess you all better start planning merging some servers top guilds wont have enough to fill raids after this.

Lizst

08-20-2009, 05:44 AM

You are actually punishing the players and guilds that are putting in the mosttime and effort to get sh*t killed.Any nerf this late in game and so far from the gear degradation expansion is closeto suicide from your part SoE.Highly dedicated players that spent loads of time,dkp and god knows what to get where they are nowwill get it all flushed down the drain and have nothing at all to look forward to if any nerfs goes thru.Pushing the "highend" guilds/players out from the game is what will happen as there are no way in hellanyone will be able to deal with beeing screwed like this.

profe

08-20-2009, 06:05 AM

I don't really care about how much of stat X I lose like these other people. It seems silly to me to place an imaginary value on having a specific amount of stats. But, what does bother me is that the drops don't make any sense anymore. For example, the chain BP for healers from neutral avatars is less desireable than any 6-set bonus. So, why would I get one now if it only hurts my output? Do you intend to lower the set bonuses as well?

andycunny

08-20-2009, 06:41 AM

in recent times i've been really upset? displeased? outraged? confused? with some of the changes that the powers that be have FORCED onto us. This time i'm none of those things, It is now completely obvious to me that the developers of this game, that i have invested so much time and effort into have absolutely no god [Removed for Content] clue what they are doing. there are to many nerfs here to talk about right now, but the whole ethos here seems to have been "grab a sledgehammer" and "beat the crap out of every item that drops from an avatar". these are the avatars that myself and my friends in my guild spent months learning then killing. now you are telling me i've wasted all that time? and effort? AND still to come we have item degregation!!!! i mean [Removed for Content]?? this loot is so bad now how the hell do you have the gonads to even degrade it further.Can the boss of whomever implemented these changes pls smack him round the head (gibbs from NCIS style) and say NO!!! are you crazy!!!! this crap better not make it live, i know you don't care but that'll be the end foe me and my 3 accounts <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

firza

08-20-2009, 06:51 AM

come to think of it this does have benefits.1 : because the loot is worse then instanced loot the best guilds will stop putting in the effort.2 : this gives guilds like ours a chance to try the avatars.3 : It will be a great challange to us.4 : Alas, the loot will be worse then many of the instance pieces we get....and we would have to put in less effort on the instanced loot.5 : So after a kill or two/three...and when the exhilleration slows down (this will be there) we will leave the avatars for even lesser organised guilds.6 : At this time SOE can nerf the actual Avatar encounters (again) so that they will become a walk through on the level of the snake in ToMC...you see....now no one will ever whine about Avatars again and SOE can focus their attention on parts of the game used by a larger amount of people......who have no clue how to play the game because there is no incentive to become better at all.There will be no more whining from all those terrible players on these boards.Forum MODS can all be fired.Gear upgrades can be on station access...And SOE will benefit greatly....this plan is pure awesomenes.

Crychtonn

08-20-2009, 06:59 AM

Nice to see SOE can find a way to kick every class in the gut and knock them to the ground. And still put in that little extra effort to walk through the bodies to find the rangers and kick an additional helping of dirt in their faces above and beyond what they did to everyone else. Nice to know that two out of the three items I spent the most on (BP and Bert charm) are now completely worthless to my class.Thanks it makes me feel all good and fuzzy inside.

Tehom

08-20-2009, 07:57 AM

<cite>Noobolito wrote:</cite><blockquote>Grats SOE on loosing another couple of players.....Making Avatar Gear on par with Instance Gear is awesome!YouGuys really know what to do!/sigh</blockquote>On par? They're a lot worse, dude. You'd be stupid to use most avatar drops over the instanced equivilents on test.

MalkorGodchyld

08-20-2009, 07:58 AM

I have just recently come back to the game & happen to be in an Avatar killing guild. I havent even seen the nerfs first hand on test but just knowing that there were significant nerfs across the board for gear that the most dedicated player base in EQ2 spent so much time on... well that definately makes me question why i came back. Efforts to force everyone to the same playing field shouldnt be exasperated. We are not all the same...we as players, dont all put in the same amount of time & effort. Nor are we all equally as dedicated or skilled. Strip away some of the incentives that help make this distinction & you strip away the incentive for beginners or intermediate players to reach a higher lvl or a sense of "in game accomplishment". etc. etc. etc. I try to stay positive but changes like this make it more difficult & frankly...its so obvious to me why a nerf on this scale does more harm than good, so i question the competence of those involved making the decisions. There HAS to be a better way...something that doesnt jade the most dedicated community in EQ2 any further. Im not even gonna suggest it for you....its your jobs to think of what & how. MariusxNagafen

Khurghan

08-20-2009, 08:12 AM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Noobolito wrote:</cite><blockquote>Grats SOE on loosing another couple of players.....Making Avatar Gear on par with Instance Gear is awesome!YouGuys really know what to do!/sigh</blockquote>On par? They're a lot worse, dude. You'd be stupid to use most avatar drops over the instanced equivilents on test.</blockquote>QFE

Salarionn

08-20-2009, 09:26 AM

Pretend to nerf them to death >>>>> People cry foul >>>>>> SOE puts them in as they actually intended>>>>> People say they can handle the actual nerfs based on the garbage they have added to test currently= Treating the player base like cattle because we obviously are to stupid to see past this ploy!!!

Vulkan_NTooki

08-20-2009, 09:28 AM

Hehe.. its hilarious reading some of the content in these posts.. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Particulary the elitist comments about high end raiders being so much better than casuals, skill, and dedication wise.. Someone even blamed 95% of the community for this nerf in another avatar nerf thread..Disclaimer: Im not saying the nerf is the way to go with avatar gear.. I dont really care if they are changed or not.. I also do understand why you make an uproar about this..But some of you high end raiders should really get off your high horse.. Usually the only thing that is better on your character than 95% of the other players is.. yes.. your gear.. Not time, effort, or skill..

Salarionn

08-20-2009, 09:32 AM

<cite>Akuu@Runnyeye wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hehe.. its hilarious reading some of the content in these posts.. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> Particulary the elitist comments about high end raiders being so much better than casuals, skill, and dedication wise.. Someone even blamed 95% of the community for this nerf in another avatar nerf thread..Disclaimer: Im not saying the nerf is the way to go with avatar gear.. I dont really care if they are changed or not.. I also do understand why you make an uproar about this..But some of you high end raiders should really get off your high horse.. Usually the only thing that is better on your character than 95% of the other players is.. yes.. your gear.. Not time, effort, or skill..</blockquote> Yes, because we certainly didnt earn that gear by killing the hardest encounters in the game. The mobs just see us coming and handed us the boxes. I know you just never walked up and asked for your share, so i understand why you would think that the gear is what makes most hardcore raiders better at the game then MOST (not all) casual players. I know, it had nothing to do with pushing buttons better then the average players. GO GO JOBLESS , BASEMENT LIVING COMMENTS !!!!

Novusod

08-20-2009, 09:41 AM

<cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote> Yes, because we certainly didnt earn that gear by killing the hardest encounters in the game. GO GO JOBLESS , BASEMENT LIVING COMMENTS !!!!</blockquote>Hate to break this to you but avatars are not the hardest mobs in the game. Anashti, Field General, Ykesha, Gozok, and Munzok are harder than many of the avatars this gear is dropping off of.WHY SO BASEMENT?

ShamusOB

08-20-2009, 09:42 AM

<cite>Akuu@Runnyeye wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hehe.. its hilarious reading some of the content in these posts.. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> Particulary the elitist comments about high end raiders being so much better than casuals, skill, and dedication wise.. Someone even blamed 95% of the community for this nerf in another avatar nerf thread..Disclaimer: Im not saying the nerf is the way to go with avatar gear.. I dont really care if they are changed or not.. I also do understand why you make an uproar about this..But some of you high end raiders should really get off your high horse.. Usually the only thing that is better on your character than 95% of the other players is.. yes.. your gear.. Not time, effort, or skill..</blockquote>Don't go trollin this into some stupid casual vs hardcore whinefest. This doesnt effect casuals at all. It is a nerf to gear that IS NOT NEEDED with the upcomming gear degredation.Seriously why nerf things that will be utterly useless at level 90? So you can make better gear? That excuse is BS, Legendary lvl 90 gear will be better then current avatar gear anyways problem solved.Who seriously thought 3 base would be a worthwhile 2 set bonus for the good charm set?? Or or maby you think that the 2 set bonus is now good? No it still sucks, and now having a set really doesn't matter. But but you put more casting haste on the health charm to make up for the suck right? Wrong you put it on everything and people don't even care to get any more.Also thanks, My claymore is once again my best option for a ranged item. You guys rock at itemization.

Vulkan_NTooki

08-20-2009, 09:45 AM

<cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Akuu@Runnyeye wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hehe.. its hilarious reading some of the content in these posts.. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> Particulary the elitist comments about high end raiders being so much better than casuals, skill, and dedication wise.. Someone even blamed 95% of the community for this nerf in another avatar nerf thread..Disclaimer: Im not saying the nerf is the way to go with avatar gear.. I dont really care if they are changed or not.. I also do understand why you make an uproar about this..But some of you high end raiders should really get off your high horse.. Usually the only thing that is better on your character than 95% of the other players is.. yes.. your gear.. Not time, effort, or skill..</blockquote> Yes, because we certainly didnt earn that gear by killing the hardest encounters in the game. The mobs just see us coming and handed us the boxes. I know you just never walked up and asked for your share, so i understand why you would think that the gear is what makes most hardcore raiders better at the game then MOST (not all) casual players. I know, it had nothing to do with pushing buttons better then the average players. GO GO JOBLESS , BASEMENT LIVING COMMENTS !!!!</blockquote>No1 said you didnt earn that gear.. But you assume effort/time/skill only has to be used to reach a certain goal.. killing the hardest encounters in game.. it doesnt.. Killing avatars have nor will most likely ever be one of my goals and Im sure many others feel the same way.I still spent more time ingame than quite a few wwf guildmembers, I'm pretty sure I've put in the same effort/dedication reaching my own goals as everyone else, and I do not doubt my skills playing my now ex-main. I consider myself still a noob on my wiz.. but on my paladin I know perfectly well how to play..Raiding is all about dedicating to that kind of game play.. but it doesnt make u a better player.. It makes u experienced in handling raid mobs.. sure.. but does it make you good at decorating houses? I'm pretty sure it doesnt..

EasternKing

08-20-2009, 09:45 AM

<cite>Novusod wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote> Yes, because we certainly didnt earn that gear by killing the hardest encounters in the game. GO GO JOBLESS , BASEMENT LIVING COMMENTS !!!!</blockquote>Hate to break this to you but avatars are not the hardest mobs in the game. Anashti, Field General, Ykesha, Gozok, and Munzok are harder than many of the avatars this gear is dropping off of.WHY SO BASEMENT?</blockquote>hate to break this to you, but instance mobs for 1 guild alone drop gear on a 5/1 ratio to contested mobs, never mind the myriad other guilds killing the same instance mobs.contested gear was supposed to be better because it comes in such minisucle amounts into the game world,T5 instance content was harder than contested - checkT6 instance content was harder than contested - checkT7 instance content was harder than contested - checkT8 instance content was harder than contested - checkso whats your point? contested was never EVER about its difficulty, the difficulty came from its content open to everyone on the server and there is only one of them per spawn, the loot was and still is super rare when compared to the drop rate of instanced gear.

Vulkan_NTooki

08-20-2009, 09:46 AM

<cite>ShamusOB wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Akuu@Runnyeye wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hehe.. its hilarious reading some of the content in these posts.. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /> Particulary the elitist comments about high end raiders being so much better than casuals, skill, and dedication wise.. Someone even blamed 95% of the community for this nerf in another avatar nerf thread..Disclaimer: Im not saying the nerf is the way to go with avatar gear.. I dont really care if they are changed or not.. I also do understand why you make an uproar about this..But some of you high end raiders should really get off your high horse.. Usually the only thing that is better on your character than 95% of the other players is.. yes.. your gear.. Not time, effort, or skill..</blockquote>Don't go trollin this into some stupid casual vs hardcore whinefest. This doesnt effect casuals at all. It is a nerf to gear that IS NOT NEEDED with the upcomming gear degredation.Seriously why nerf things that will be utterly useless at level 90? So you can make better gear? That excuse is BS, Legendary lvl 90 gear will be better then current avatar gear anyways problem solved.Who seriously thought 3 base would be a worthwhile 2 set bonus for the good charm set?? Or or maby you think that the 2 set bonus is now good? No it still sucks, and now having a set really doesn't matter. But but you put more casting haste on the health charm to make up for the suck right? Wrong you put it on everything and people don't even care to get any more.Also thanks, My claymore is once again my best option for a ranged item. You guys rock at itemization.</blockquote>Sorry.. thats excactly why I posted.. I didnt bring up the casuals vs raiders argument.. someone else did.. thats what I find hilarious... :p

Salarionn

08-20-2009, 09:47 AM

<cite>Novusod wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote> Yes, because we certainly didnt earn that gear by killing the hardest encounters in the game. GO GO JOBLESS , BASEMENT LIVING COMMENTS !!!!</blockquote>Hate to break this to you but avatars are not the hardest mobs in the game. Anashti, Field General, Ykesha, Gozok, and Munzok are harder than many of the avatars this gear is dropping off of.WHY SO BASEMENT?</blockquote> I didnt say they was the hardest mobs in the game, but how many of the people coming here making comments are actually killing those mobs and not getting Avatars? I would say very few. Gozak is a joke btw!!! I hardly think he is even close to the difficulty as many of the Avatars.

ShamusOB

08-20-2009, 09:48 AM

<cite>Novusod wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote> Yes, because we certainly didnt earn that gear by killing the hardest encounters in the game. GO GO JOBLESS , BASEMENT LIVING COMMENTS !!!!</blockquote>Hate to break this to you but avatars are not the hardest mobs in the game. Anashti, Field General, Ykesha, Gozok, and Munzok are harder than many of the avatars this gear is dropping off of.WHY SO BASEMENT?</blockquote>I hate to break it to you but those mobs still had and have better loot then avatars aswell so your point doesn't really mean anything.Munzok is also so stupid and not worth it no one cares to do it. GG soe, keep making the best of the current player base continue to quit and keep intoducing mobs that are so rediculous no one cares to fight them. Pretty soon no one will raid at all because youll have an expac thats all too difficult for the players you have left.

hugh1

08-20-2009, 09:50 AM

God soe, whats the point really? The nerf with the xpack in a few months WHICH will destroy the items anyhow, you feel the need to destory them and kill the raiders desire to raid 6months before the next expansion hits.Last time you tried this last time and the raid community went up in arms, do it again and 99% raid of community woudl likely quit, This is a insult for people who put the time into avatars since tso launch, howd you feel to work 8 months killing mobs on a 3 daily basis only for someone to come and destroy all the items?Really losing faith in SOE and as someone who only plays to raid im disappointed.Id suggest you totally rethink these changes because if you plan to roll this rubbish to live say goodbye to alot of EQ2's loyal player base.

Melendiil

08-20-2009, 10:00 AM

Amen to that Hugh.

Goradim

08-20-2009, 10:23 AM

I'm dropping my accounts immediately if this pile of junk goes live. There are other games out there that I'd enjoy more, like Hello Kitty and maybe even others that are about to be released *hint hint*. Perfect timing

andycunny

08-20-2009, 10:33 AM

surely this will hurt more than just the current crop of avatar killers out there? i mean once all those aspiring avatar killers see what the reward is, the will and effort just ain't gonna be there. sure maybe? kill it once to get it on the kill list for the xpac but after that? i foresee lots of current eq2 players with a lot of time on their hands soon. the instanced content won't fill that time so i guess some will log in less and less and less until finally the 50gzillion gb file formally known as eq2 is replaced by another equally as large but run by decision makers with more vision and foresight. you guys have sucked at itemization for quite sometime, you do know how many ppl laugh at you? right?

Geothe

08-20-2009, 10:41 AM

Yet another totally moronic move by SoE in this expansion.It would almost be funny... if it wasn't so pitiful.

Tuvogg

08-20-2009, 10:52 AM

I am fairly new to Avatar level raiding but due in no small part to the friendly nature of Hughbot and all the other members of Validus I am really enjoying myself. I can see this nerf bringing it all crashing down because even if I decide to stay on personally, I can see the guild losing so many active members that even instance raiding may well be beyond our abilities.Any loss of membership notwithstanding, just the proc nerfs have made Ykesha and Anashti much more challenging. I dread to see what this further enforced loss of dps might to a high end guilds capabilities.Tuvogg Troubadour of Validus, Splitpaw

Czarcon

08-20-2009, 10:59 AM

<cite>Apos wrote:</cite><blockquote>You know, summer is kind of the time that's hard on a lot of guilds. Waning interest after long term farming, lack of new content, new games coming out, lack of time in game... and then seeing something like this. While I'm pretty sure we'd be okay, I think it would be a major kick in the stomach to a lot of server dominant guilds that are going through the usual summer issues. Absolutely terrible timing, would be a strong contributor to guild collapses and canceled subs.</blockquote>My thoughts exactly...Now take into account that the Expansion isnt coming out until February... Most Higher end guilds already have all their TSO instance gear. Avatar gear will be useless. and MMB is the lamest zone ever.Death by nerf batEdit as i finished reading the rest of the posts: Although i totally agree with what one person said. They show the most rediculous garbage they can on test so people settle for the actual nerfs when they go in. Psyc 101

GangleG

08-20-2009, 11:21 AM

<cite>Novusod wrote:</cite><blockquote>Hate to break this to you but avatars are not the hardest mobs in the game. Anashti, Field General, Ykesha, Gozok, and Munzok are harder than many of the avatars this gear is dropping off of.WHY SO BASEMENT?</blockquote>Anashti contested is harder than instance anashti; the only avatars that FG is harder than are Storms and Growth; Ykesha's loot table is better than most comparable avatar gear; Gozak is not harder than any avatars, imo, and has gear that is better than most comparable avatar drops (helms). Have you even killed these mobs, or are just taking some anecdote from player xyz and pretending you think you know what you're talking about? Because from this post alone, it is quite obvious you have no idea what you are talking about.

Cusashorn

08-20-2009, 11:32 AM

It's probably already been mentioned in this thread, but SoE even stated the nerf is to make sure they can make the armor in the next expansion balanced for it's own content.If they didn't nerf the BPs, then you'd be looking at breastplates with +80 critical mitigation or whatever. Complete over-inflation.

andycunny

08-20-2009, 11:36 AM

<cite>Cusashorn wrote:</cite><blockquote>It's probably already been mentioned in this thread, but SoE even stated the nerf is to make sure they can make the armor in the next expansion balanced for it's own content.If they didn't nerf the BPs, then you'd be looking at breastplates with +80 critical mitigation or whatever. Complete over-inflation.</blockquote>I think most folks were expecting crit mit nerfs and had largly accepted it. However it seems the sledgehammer used to nerf that crit mit has proc'd a flurry and completely smashed almost every other avatar item. This is what is completely unacceptable.

GangleG

08-20-2009, 11:37 AM

<cite>Cusashorn wrote:</cite><blockquote>It's probably already been mentioned in this thread, but SoE even stated the nerf is to make sure they can make the armor in the next expansion balanced for it's own content.If they didn't nerf the BPs, then you'd be looking at breastplates with +80 critical mitigation or whatever. Complete over-inflation.</blockquote>Yeah, makes a lot of sense even though all of this tier's gear will be worthless with degredation; there would have been no over-inflation with degredation.

Stonestrong

08-20-2009, 11:37 AM

Didn't we go through this once before and people overwhelmingly hated the idea?DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO QUIT PLAYING ?

EasternKing

08-20-2009, 11:38 AM

<cite>Cusashorn wrote:</cite><blockquote>It's probably already been mentioned in this thread, but SoE even stated the nerf is to make sure they can make the armor in the next expansion balanced for it's own content.If they didn't nerf the BPs, then you'd be looking at breastplates with +80 critical mitigation or whatever. Complete over-inflation.</blockquote>no one is bothered with the crit mit changes,they are bothered becasue soe have completley destroyed avatar gear, and if this change goes live, you can watch every hc raid guild go poof, becuase no one will be bothered to log in and kill them mobs, and them mobs are pretty much the only reason people log in atm.

Khurghan

08-20-2009, 11:47 AM

<cite>Novusod wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote> Yes, because we certainly didnt earn that gear by killing the hardest encounters in the game. GO GO JOBLESS , BASEMENT LIVING COMMENTS !!!!</blockquote>Hate to break this to you but avatars are not the hardest mobs in the game. Anashti, Field General, Ykesha, Gozok, and Munzok are harder than many of the avatars this gear is dropping off of.WHY SO BASEMENT?</blockquote>LOL @ field general being harder than avatars (and to be honest anashti is probably only harder than 1 or 2 of then, the instance fight is a complete joke).

Barx

08-20-2009, 11:48 AM

I love all the generalizations in these threads. And the cliche of "X is coming out soon, we're all going there when it does because you've done Y so badly" that you see so very often in this kind of thread. That kind of stuff is useless to making a point about why the changes are good/bad/indifferent.Personally, I see the changes as being unnecessary and a bit much. Item degradation will already make it so that TSO avatar gear will be relatively worthless at L90, let folks that have it or that get it use it while they can, /shrug.

Bromir

08-20-2009, 11:52 AM

Considdering your own statements that legendary lvl 90 gear probably will be better than avatar gearthere really is no basis for this emo posts about quitting and bla bla."Alot of players will be lost"This is just empty talk. In reality how many players actually get to kill avatars on each server ? My estimated guess will be : 24. Perhaps two or three guilds on each server are actually able to do it and rounding up because i'm in my generous mood that leaves about 100 people on each server that should be in a position to complain about this. Applying completely useless statistics taken out of blue sky that leaves about 20 people on each server going EMO over some gear that will be useless at lvl 90.Honestly how will this impact server population ? Except that it might actually open up the avatars for other guilds to try. And actually leaving some of the current HC raiders with some otherwise lost sleep due to constant 24 hours avatar camping.Avatars are something normal guilds and even well off raiding guilds do not loose sleep over.And for once i have to actually defend SOE. I have NEVER EVER in any of the MMO's I have played over the years seen a better commitment to change and actual work to communicate with the playerbase as I have seen in the last year with EQ2. So much free stuff just handed over the counter to us, Raid zones, instances, quest revamps and ingame machanics, artwork even major engine changes. All for FREEEEEEEEE.. If you complain about that I dont even want to play with you.Just sit back, count slowly to 10 and rethink abit.Yours.

GangleG

08-20-2009, 11:57 AM

The people in this thread that are defending these changes have never killed avatars and have no idea what they are talking about.

hugh1

08-20-2009, 12:02 PM

<cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote>The people in this thread that are defending these changes have never killed avatars and have no idea what they are talking about.</blockquote>QFE.

Quicksilver74

08-20-2009, 12:02 PM

<cite>Stonestrong wrote:</cite><blockquote>DO YOU WANT PEOPLE TO QUIT PLAYING ?</blockquote>Yes I think thats exactly what they want. TEST UPDATE NOTES:EQ2 Subscription fees are now $200.00 a monthPlayers can no longer move or chatAll player gear will decay at the end of each dayAll players will revert to lvl 1 at the end of each dayAll players have had names changed to random letters, and names will scramble each day.

Stonestrong

08-20-2009, 12:05 PM

<cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote>The people in this thread that are defending these changes have never killed avatars and have no idea what they are talking about.</blockquote>FactI always said that people who can't kill the mobs shouldnt be allowed to have an opinion on them or the loot. They are just armchair QB's talking about something that they know nothing about. There should be a seperate forums for the real players who can actually kill content and the lemmings can stay here and get there fanboy faction up amongst themselves....

Noaani

08-20-2009, 12:07 PM

<cite>Khurghan wrote:</cite><blockquote>LOL @ field general being harder than avatars (and to be honest anashti is probably only harder than 1 or 2 of then, the instance fight is a complete joke).</blockquote>Storms, Growth, Below, Disease, Health, Tranquility and Valor are all easier than Field General. You could arguably add Mischief, War and Hate to that list as well.Not that Field General is hard. Get that first 30 seconds over with and he is about on par with the Stalker in terms of actual difficulty. The challenge of this mob is totally contained in taht first 30 seconds, but that 30 seconds is harder than most avatars.

Stonestrong

08-20-2009, 12:09 PM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Khurghan wrote:</cite><blockquote>LOL @ field general being harder than avatars (and to be honest anashti is probably only harder than 1 or 2 of then, the instance fight is a complete joke).</blockquote>Storms, Growth, Below, Disease, Health, Tranquility and Valor are all easier than Field General. You could arguably add Mischief, War and Hate to that list as well.Not that Field General is hard. Get that first 30 seconds over with and he is about on par with the Stalker in terms of actual difficulty. The challenge of this mob is totally contained in taht first 30 seconds, but that 30 seconds is harder than most avatars.</blockquote>You assesment of encounter difficulties could not be more wrong, just so you know.

Khurghan

08-20-2009, 12:10 PM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Khurghan wrote:</cite><blockquote>LOL @ field general being harder than avatars (and to be honest anashti is probably only harder than 1 or 2 of then, the instance fight is a complete joke).</blockquote>Storms, Growth, Below, Disease, Health, Tranquility and Valor are all easier than Field General. You could arguably add Mischief, War and Hate to that list as well.Not that Field General is hard. Get that first 30 seconds over with and he is about on par with the Stalker in terms of actual difficulty. The challenge of this mob is totally contained in taht first 30 seconds, but that 30 seconds is harder than most avatars.</blockquote>Really? field general is an absolute joke if you want some hints on the fight feel free to PM me.

Wrapye

08-20-2009, 12:12 PM

<cite>Crabbok@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote>All players have had names changed to random letters, and names will scramble each day. </blockquote>Nah, too much of a chance that something naughty will be generated randomly.The rest is plausible.

Hecula

08-20-2009, 12:13 PM

<cite>Crabbok@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yes I think thats exactly what they want. </blockquote>I feel for your guild man - paying $20 a member to transfer servers to get a shot at avatars and now they're not going to be worth getting except for that +1 on the progression list.

Stonestrong

08-20-2009, 12:20 PM

<cite>Hecula wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Crabbok@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote>Yes I think thats exactly what they want. </blockquote>I feel for your guild man - paying $20 a member to transfer servers to get a shot at avatars and now they're not going to be worth getting except for that +1 on the progression list.</blockquote>Nobody cares about the 20 bucks, its the whole "making terrible decisions and making the game less fun" thing that bothers us. Since the gear will be getting hammered in the next expansion anyway, why is this necessary? All its going to do is [Removed for Content] people off and make the time drag by even longer until SF....

GangleG

08-20-2009, 12:24 PM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Khurghan wrote:</cite><blockquote>LOL @ field general being harder than avatars (and to be honest anashti is probably only harder than 1 or 2 of then, the instance fight is a complete joke).</blockquote>Storms, Growth, Below, Disease, Health, Tranquility and Valor are all easier than Field General. You could arguably add Mischief, War and Hate to that list as well.Not that Field General is hard. Get that first 30 seconds over with and he is about on par with the Stalker in terms of actual difficulty. The challenge of this mob is totally contained in taht first 30 seconds, but that 30 seconds is harder than most avatars.</blockquote>Such BS. FG is a joke.

Avirodar

08-20-2009, 12:34 PM

If nerfing avatar loot has to happen, to make the next expansion more feasible for itemization purposes, the nerf should occur when the next expansion goes live, not before.A pre-expansion nerf is an ill-conceieved move, which does nothing but punish players who have invested months of effort, because of SOE Dev failure.

GangleG

08-20-2009, 12:48 PM

LOL at the Tangrin offhand having a higher damage rating then avatar weapons now. Really well thought out plan you had here, devs.

zormik

08-20-2009, 12:49 PM

We are a strong and stable avatar guild that's been dominating our server for a long time now.If this update goes trough, i'm pretty sure that more then half of the avatarguilds will collapse, if not more. I'm pretty sure mine will, i can't see how i have to motivate my members to log on if months and months of crazy farming, get up at crazy houres at night, ... gets throw out of the window and all the time invested, dkp earned, etc is rendered useless.You can reread my previous posts i don't say these thing hastily. So you can be sure this is not a threath or anything, it's pure reality.This is too much of a huge kick in the face of raidingguilds and as it's hard enough already to keep people motivated, this is just the big drop that is needed to make people quit.Also don't forget the fact that all these hc players are the ones who give a lot of return to SOE, we are the debuggers lol and i'm not only speaking of raidencounters. On top of that most of the hc players have several accounts, i don't know much who just have one tbh.

feldon30

08-20-2009, 12:51 PM

<cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote>The people in this thread that are defending these changes have never killed avatars and have no idea what they are talking about.</blockquote>QFE

Bruener

08-20-2009, 12:58 PM

Here is the problem....insanely better loot dropping from easier encounter than instance encounters with the same scripting as last x-pac and an increased number of them each week.Since the damage was already done and mass amount of loot already grabbed up it makes much more sense to nerf the loot instead of correcting the actual issue.Because, Avatars should not have been kept as easy as they are. Avatars should not have kept the same scripting that they did from last expansion. Avatars should not pop as often as they do. And they definitely should not have shared loot tables.SOE screwed up by allowing the above to happen, and it is too late to fix it since the pool of items is already out there. So nerf the gear is the way to go. It sucks, but its going to happen.

EasternKing

08-20-2009, 01:03 PM

<cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here is the problem....insanely better loot dropping from easier encounter than instance encounters with the same scripting as last x-pac and an increased number of them each week.Since the damage was already done and mass amount of loot already grabbed up it makes much more sense to nerf the loot instead of correcting the actual issue.Because, Avatars should not have been kept as easy as they are. Avatars should not have kept the same scripting that they did from last expansion. Avatars should not pop as often as they do. And they definitely should have shared loot tables.SOE screwed up by allowing the above to happen, and it is too late to fix it since the pool of items is already out there. So nerf the gear is the way to go. It sucks, but its going to happen.</blockquote>Do you kill avatars ? yes or no?im going to guess no, then not only do you have no clue what you are talking about, your opinion is invalid.The only mob that are as hard as avatars atm are ykesha, and ykesha drops avatar quality gear, Munzok is harder, but munzok is designed for guilds of people wearing FULL avatar gear to defeat, so kindly stf* with avatars are easier than instance mobs.

slippery

08-20-2009, 01:07 PM

I'm going to use this post to address all the very ill conceived posts about the difficulty of encounters that are complete myths. I'm basically even going to give you strats for all these. Field General. This mob is far far easier than Avatars. This mob is a complete and utter joke. What does it take to kill Field Geenral? Extraordinarily little. Kill the conscripts first (which don't have a lot of hp) and you have zero problems with the encounter. Oh no, there is a mob that you have 45 seconds to go find in an extremely small room, this must make it harder than Avatars.... The ae's are jokes. Oh no, one makes you drop your target and one knocks back that you can complete negate with positioning. Loot: Drops set pants that pretty much every single class uses over any other pants in game. Dagger that is just as good as the Dagger from harder and a far far far more rare drop then the Avatars. Anashti. Really? You stand next a portal, one person closes the portal, one group kills an add, and you keep your power up. What is hard about this? Because you have to pay attention to the fact that you get red text? Really? That is not difficulty, that is an attention check. Are you paying attention. Yes. Oh then you don't wipe. The damage shield? I'll give you a hint. Hexations. Sanctuary. Sanctuary. Hexations. Loot? All of Anashti's loot is the best for it's slot. Maybe I missed something here, but I could very easily argue instanced Anashti being easier than most Avatars. Yet the loot is better than anything in game? Where exactly is the complaint here? Ykesha. Also not remotely difficult anymore. For the record also being killed by guilds without Avatar gear. Tanks (and it seems like healers) no longer get ported. So you don't have to worry about that. The ae doesn't hit that hard (here is a hint, are your people spec'd right? I bet they aren't. Bards should have mit buff on defense/parry, if you have a Paladin they should have raid wide mit buff, now no one should die to his ae. People should also have mit adornments on wrists/cuffs). So now we have a standard ae. All you have to do is kill the Archmagus first so your dps isn't getting ported, keep the Assassin facing away from the raid, and kill 8 spawned adds with no hp every minute. Oh, touch, you know the ability that has a casting animation, can be blocked/tower of stone, death protects, you just start casting your cure curse when you see the animation and you have no problems. Loot? Best in game. Even the shield is better than the Avatar shield. Where exactly is the problem? Even if this mobs are harder (which really isn't the case for most), they are already dropping better loot. Is instanced loot getting nerfed too?

GangleG

08-20-2009, 01:07 PM

The instanced mobs that are harder than avatars have better loot on them. Ykesha: the belts are better than avatar belts.Gozak (easy mob, not harder than any avatars, imo): Helms are better than avatar helms (only one avatar helm).Munzok: not worth the pain of killing the encounter.Please explain to me any other encounters that are harder then avatars. Field General? He's a joke. Anashti? C. Anashti is harder, no debate.

Gungo

08-20-2009, 01:12 PM

I am guessing by the complaints mean the avatar gear nerf hit test. I thought it was just suppose to be crit mit standardized and the same adjustments from the first revamp that everyone pretty much accepted and not the second set of nerfs that everyone complained about like proc rates and stuff?

Bruener

08-20-2009, 01:14 PM

<cite>EasternKing wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here is the problem....insanely better loot dropping from easier encounter than instance encounters with the same scripting as last x-pac and an increased number of them each week.Since the damage was already done and mass amount of loot already grabbed up it makes much more sense to nerf the loot instead of correcting the actual issue.Because, Avatars should not have been kept as easy as they are. Avatars should not have kept the same scripting that they did from last expansion. Avatars should not pop as often as they do. And they definitely should have shared loot tables.SOE screwed up by allowing the above to happen, and it is too late to fix it since the pool of items is already out there. So nerf the gear is the way to go. It sucks, but its going to happen.</blockquote>Do you kill avatars ? yes or no?im going to guess no, then not only do you have no clue what you are talking about, your opinion is invalid.The only mob that are as hard as avatars atm are ykesha, and ykesha drops avatar quality gear, Munzok is harder, but munzok is designed for guilds of people wearing FULL avatar gear to defeat, so kindly stf* with avatars are easier than instance mobs.</blockquote>I have killed a couple of the easier Avatars and they are significantly easier than instance mobs, and yet they do drop gear BETTER than Ykesha for the most part. Why? Not only that but instance mobs should not "require" Avatar gear to defeat but because Avatar gear is so over-done and Munzok is supposed to be the toughest encounter in the game...it does "require" it. Guess what, my bets is that after the Avatar loot nerf Munzok gets nerfed to where he should be and people actually start killing him. Why don't you stop relying on your OP'd gear.People said the same thing about Ykesha not that long ago and the guild I roll with now has exactly 2 pieces of Avatar loot in the guild and we farm Ykesha. Oh, but wait...you got to have your OP'd Avatar gear that trivialized the encounter significantly with the mass DPS increase that the OP'd items gave you guys. How many Avatars did you kill before you killed Ykesha? Oh wait, guilds that couldn't even kill Gynok were killing Avatars...that is called loot pinatas.But, hey I guess it really doesn't matter what you keep saying. You knew this was coming. SOE said it was coming. Why do you act so suprised?

GangleG

08-20-2009, 01:17 PM

<cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have killed a couple of the easier Avatars and they are significantly easier than instance mobs, and yet they do drop gear BETTER than Ykesha for the most part. Why? Not only that but instance mobs should not "require" Avatar gear to defeat but because Avatar gear is so over-done and Munzok is supposed to be the toughest encounter in the game...it does "require" it. Guess what, my bets is that after the Avatar loot nerf Munzok gets nerfed to where he should be and people actually start killing him. Why don't you stop relying on your OP'd gear.People said the same thing about Ykesha not that long ago and the guild I roll with now has exactly 2 pieces of Avatar loot in the guild and we farm Ykesha. Oh, but wait...you got to have your OP'd Avatar gear that trivialized the encounter significantly with the mass DPS increase that the OP'd items gave you guys. How many Avatars did you kill before you killed Ykesha? Oh wait, guilds that couldn't even kill Gynok were killing Avatars...that is called loot pinatas.But, hey I guess it really doesn't matter what you keep saying. You knew this was coming. SOE said it was coming. Why do you act so suprised?</blockquote>Ykesha's loot isn't better than avatar gear? Are you drunk? Tell me which avatar belt is better than any Ykesha belt. The Ykesha shield is better than the avatar shield. You have no clue as to what you're talking about.

Lenne

08-20-2009, 01:21 PM

Ridiclous. Who at SOE thought this was a good idea? No really, I'd like to know which idiot at SOE actually thought anyone would want to keep playing after this change goes live. With Aion literally around the corner this is the stupidest thing you could do for your game, unless you are deliberately trying to drive people away (you're doing an excellent job if that's the case). You realize there really will be no point in killing contested with how huge this nerf is? I've basically wasted my time, money, dkp and all the effort I have put forth since my guild first started killing contested. So unless you find some magical way to reimburse me of all those things, don't destroy the only thing some people have spent months playing for just because you can't get it right the first time (as usual).

slippery

08-20-2009, 01:23 PM

<cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>EasternKing wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here is the problem....insanely better loot dropping from easier encounter than instance encounters with the same scripting as last x-pac and an increased number of them each week.Since the damage was already done and mass amount of loot already grabbed up it makes much more sense to nerf the loot instead of correcting the actual issue.Because, Avatars should not have been kept as easy as they are. Avatars should not have kept the same scripting that they did from last expansion. Avatars should not pop as often as they do. And they definitely should have shared loot tables.SOE screwed up by allowing the above to happen, and it is too late to fix it since the pool of items is already out there. So nerf the gear is the way to go. It sucks, but its going to happen.</blockquote>Do you kill avatars ? yes or no?im going to guess no, then not only do you have no clue what you are talking about, your opinion is invalid.The only mob that are as hard as avatars atm are ykesha, and ykesha drops avatar quality gear, Munzok is harder, but munzok is designed for guilds of people wearing FULL avatar gear to defeat, so kindly stf* with avatars are easier than instance mobs.</blockquote>I have killed a couple of the easier Avatars and they are significantly easier than instance mobs, and yet they do drop gear BETTER than Ykesha for the most part. Why? Not only that but instance mobs should not "require" Avatar gear to defeat but because Avatar gear is so over-done and Munzok is supposed to be the toughest encounter in the game...it does "require" it. Guess what, my bets is that after the Avatar loot nerf Munzok gets nerfed to where he should be and people actually start killing him. Why don't you stop relying on your OP'd gear.People said the same thing about Ykesha not that long ago and the guild I roll with now has exactly 2 pieces of Avatar loot in the guild and we farm Ykesha. Oh, but wait...you got to have your OP'd Avatar gear that trivialized the encounter significantly with the mass DPS increase that the OP'd items gave you guys. How many Avatars did you kill before you killed Ykesha? Oh wait, guilds that couldn't even kill Gynok were killing Avatars...that is called loot pinatas.But, hey I guess it really doesn't matter what you keep saying. You knew this was coming. SOE said it was coming. Why do you act so suprised?</blockquote>THE LOOT FROM ANASHTI AND YKESHA IS THE BEST IN THE GAME AND THEY ARE NOT EASIER THAN BUT A FEW AVATARS.Maybe you should go back and read my post about 4 before yours illustrating why.

Tri-Ace

08-20-2009, 01:26 PM

FOR GOD'S SAKE: NO!

ShamusOB

08-20-2009, 01:42 PM

<cite>Bruener wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have killed a couple of the easier Avatars and they are significantly easier than instance mobs, and yet they do drop gear BETTER than Ykesha for the most part. Why? Not only that but instance mobs should not "require" Avatar gear to defeat but because Avatar gear is so over-done and Munzok is supposed to be the toughest encounter in the game...it does "require" it. Guess what, my bets is that after the Avatar loot nerf Munzok gets nerfed to where he should be and people actually start killing him. Why don't you stop relying on your OP'd gear.People said the same thing about Ykesha not that long ago and the guild I roll with now has exactly 2 pieces of Avatar loot in the guild and we farm Ykesha. Oh, but wait...you got to have your OP'd Avatar gear that trivialized the encounter significantly with the mass DPS increase that the OP'd items gave you guys. How many Avatars did you kill before you killed Ykesha? Oh wait, guilds that couldn't even kill Gynok were killing Avatars...that is called loot pinatas.But, hey I guess it really doesn't matter what you keep saying. You knew this was coming. SOE said it was coming. Why do you act so suprised?</blockquote>All I see is blah blah blah. People needed the better gear before those mobs were nerfed enuff for you to kill them. How many times did ykesha get nerfed before you could kill him???

Quicksilver74

08-20-2009, 01:43 PM

I wish more of the devs actually played the game. I also wish that The peopel who decide Avatar gear gets nerfed were actually people who coudl kill avatars. The fact that this is even on test is terribly insane and just downright insulting. Regardless of the difficulty, regardless of harder instanced mobs, one thing holds true and I'm gonna say this in caps so people understand. YOU DON'T LET US HAVE LOOT THE WAY IT IS FOR ALMOST A WHOLE YEAR, THEN JUST SUDENLY DECIDE ON A RANDOM PATCH THAT IT'S NOT ALL GETTING TAKEN AWAY, JUST BECAUSE.

slippery

08-20-2009, 01:48 PM

I can't emphasize what Crabbok said enough. Even with all the other very good points I've made, you cannot just up and change something after people have put so much into it for so long. That is like saying hey guys, the level cap is raising to 90, ad we know you are level 80 now, but we are setting you back to level 70 when the expansion comes out so you have to get 20 levels... Sorry about all that time and work you put in.

Huntress Jellica

08-20-2009, 02:38 PM

Since there's soon to be no more point in killing avatars, maybe Infamous can go back to where the came from. Would "pretty please with sugar on top" help the chances of that happening?<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" />

Tehom

08-20-2009, 02:40 PM

To me, this isn't just nerfing loot, it's arguably killing a playstyle.You know, anyone who says stuff about 'contested mobs not really being contested' are completely full of it. We've seen two guilds who were killing avatars on our server collapse when they lost their hold on em. We've had a guild of tenacious go-getters who've been contesting every single avatar spawn for a few weeks - they haven't gotten any yet, but it's not through lack of trying - they certainly have the motivation for it. There's other guilds that have spotted the easier avatars just in the hopes they'd spawn when they're raiding and give it a whirl, and many others publically said they'd go after avatars if they ever saw them up. There's at least one guild that is nowhere near ready to take avatars, but announced their determination to get there. I can think of at least two guilds offhand that were destroyed when other guilds transferred across server specifically to take on a weak server. Dominating a server's progression -is- the endgame to a lot of players, regardless of the difficulty of the mobs themselves, and it's a form of passive pvp. Any weaker guild that holds on to avatars is in jeopardy of having a stronger guild struggling to compete for avatars transfer to their server and just take it away from them.Nerfing the bejesus out of avatar loot obliterates the motivation to do that - it removes the endgame for those players. Now, whether guilds actively (and occasionally viciously) competing for spawns is good or bad for the game is up to debate, but it's also there by -design-, it's what contesteds are for. Removing any incentive to go after contesteds eliminates that aspect of gameplay. If they're making a conscious choice to do that, I can understand that, but it should be done clearly and without prevarication - just make them instanced and adjust their loot tables as needed. I feel doing it this way is the worst of all possible worlds; it just creates completely wasted content and alienates a small but significant portion of the player base.An analogous situation would be deciding to disable pvp on pvp servers because the pvp loot might cause issues with itemization in the next expansion. While it solves a mechanical problem, it does remove the whole point of the game for a segment of players, and I think the situation needs to be handled far more delicately than the devs seem to believe.

Noaani

08-20-2009, 02:52 PM

<cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Khurghan wrote:</cite><blockquote>LOL @ field general being harder than avatars (and to be honest anashti is probably only harder than 1 or 2 of then, the instance fight is a complete joke).</blockquote>Storms, Growth, Below, Disease, Health, Tranquility and Valor are all easier than Field General. You could arguably add Mischief, War and Hate to that list as well.Not that Field General is hard. Get that first 30 seconds over with and he is about on par with the Stalker in terms of actual difficulty. The challenge of this mob is totally contained in taht first 30 seconds, but that 30 seconds is harder than most avatars.</blockquote>Such BS. FG is a joke.</blockquote>So are the avatars I listed. Whats your point?Tell you what, go two group Growth, then go two group Field General.

dr_essex

08-20-2009, 03:01 PM

This is the final admission that SOE broke this game so bad that they have no idea how to fix it. So in an act of desparation they nerf the everloving hell out of Avatar gear? If you knew way back when that Avatars were easier then some of the instance content then why didn't you make them harder? Instead you sat around, putting out more out-of-progression content that only people geared in avatar gear could kill, until you nerfed it half a dozen times and even then some are still unkillable without avatar gear. You've been making this game wreak of mediocrity since the launch of this expansion. Research assistants, continual nerfing of heroic instances, the beatings with the nerfbats you've given pretty much every instanced epic encounter...and now this.We had to farm crit mit while the encounters were still difficult (pre dozen nerfs) in order to even think about pulling avatars. Now you're punishing us for excelling in your broken content, content that we bugged and fedback to you only so you could nerf it for everyone else. Now that everyone else is stuck in progression again, your answer is to nerf avatar gear? To what end? People with avatar gear will still have everything on lockdown because their gear is better then everyone else's and they have the encounters down to a science because you've barely changed the scripts since EOF. Nerfing the snot out of avatar gear is not the answer. FIX YOUR BROKEN PROGRESSION! That is the answer. Avatars are the physical manifestation of a god's will on Norrath. They should [Removed for Content] well be the hardest things in the game. Not a 2-3 minute right of passage to killing whatever mortal mobs you throw at the @$$ end of an instanced dungeon.

ShamusOB

08-20-2009, 03:08 PM

<cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>GangleG wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Noaani wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Khurghan wrote:</cite><blockquote>LOL @ field general being harder than avatars (and to be honest anashti is probably only harder than 1 or 2 of then, the instance fight is a complete joke).</blockquote>Storms, Growth, Below, Disease, Health, Tranquility and Valor are all easier than Field General. You could arguably add Mischief, War and Hate to that list as well.Not that Field General is hard. Get that first 30 seconds over with and he is about on par with the Stalker in terms of actual difficulty. The challenge of this mob is totally contained in taht first 30 seconds, but that 30 seconds is harder than most avatars.</blockquote>Such BS. FG is a joke.</blockquote>So are the avatars I listed. Whats your point?Tell you what, go two group Growth, then go two group Field General.</blockquote>Just because you sir arent good at feild general doesnt mean other people are too. I have 2 grouped field general thank you go away.

Hina

08-20-2009, 03:08 PM

the proposed avatar loot changes are rediculous. We are 6 months out from the next expansion with NOTHING to upgrade to to make up for the proc changes that have already been made and screwed over some classes more than others, and now you are proposing to do it AGAIN-- still offering us nothing to upgrade to. Already you are working on a gear degredation system for gear, so there is NO need whatsoever for this nerf. I realize that SOE has come to the conclusion that their itimization is a bit "off' this expansion and some gear was made more powerful than intended, however it is absolutely a bad move to nerf the gear so long after the fact. With gear getting degraded next expansion we will be forced to upgrade either way, and gear can be put back in line with what you all would like it to be, but please dont punish your player base for their efforts. As developers you HAVE to know how loot systems work in guilds-- how DKP is spent and earned, or how items are assigned by leaders. If this change goes live it means i have spent my MAX dkp on an anashti belt and MAX dkp on necklace of the plague (this is over 4 months of raiding points) all for the items to be combined into one (belt is turning into a neck) and the instanced piece be better????? All you are doing is trivializing our efforts and turning good customers into potential cancelled accounts.Hina80 warlock, ShoukinNajena

1jesse1

08-20-2009, 03:11 PM

<cite>Huntress Jellica wrote:</cite><blockquote>Since there's soon to be no more point in killing avatars, maybe Infamous can go back to where the came from. Would "pretty please with sugar on top" help the chances of that happening?<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>What did this comment add to this thread? Nothing. Not even on topic. Perhaps you should learn to read. Until then grats on buying your mythical.On topic: I don't understand the point of having Avatars in the game if the loot they drop is not worth the effort to take down the encounter. Historicly SoE has put better loot on contested content, are they now switching to the WoW mantra of "contested mobs mean nothing"??I am of the belief that the majority of your player base enjoys EQ2 for it's unique qualities. Emulating WoW whenever a developer gets the chance is not a good way to maintain any type of mmo identity.

Noaani

08-20-2009, 03:12 PM

<cite>ShamusOB wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have 2 grouped field general thank you go away.</blockquote>Pics/logs.

Xan

08-20-2009, 03:15 PM

you just cannot be serious.if you really get this nerf to the live-servers, you can just erase the avatar content out of the game. because the high end raid guilds will find better loot in group instances as all TSO shard instances.avatar gear is supposed to be high end. in all manners.guild and players have fought hard to achieve these items as they are now. they deserve these items and they have to be better than any other loot in that game.if you nerf these items away. it will be worthless to kill these encounters at all.you will confuse the whole system of item quality and bring it to a new level of stupidity.in addition, you will lose lots of costumers who are tired of fighting for their "right" of being a superior raider if they are in a high end raiding guild.why you developer always try to bring a well established system to the death by punishing all who spent much time and effort in this game...

Cly

08-20-2009, 03:20 PM

Somebody can point me to a game that I can play, until February - because then I maybe can return for one month to eq2 for the whole content of t9...SOE, you surprise me more and more, whenever I think it can't become worse you find a way to drive more and more people away. Where is the point now in raiding at all?

Freeline

08-20-2009, 03:24 PM

The Nerf is a CRAP Now things of "HELLO Kitty online" are harder than Eq2 Items lol GOOD SOE! Further in such a way!

BleemTeam

08-20-2009, 03:30 PM

It's going to be very detrimental to change all of this gear months and months after its been obtained and furthermore, change it all months and months before the next expansion.

Kiara

08-20-2009, 03:30 PM

Guys, let's please keep this thread civil and productive.I understand that it's an emotionally charged adjustment, but I need you to give us information we can work with. Arguments and raging aren't going to do us nearly as much good as reasoned feedback with screenshots or other stats.Please lay off attacking each other and trolling the thread and focus on giving us the feedback we need to help the situation.Thanks.

Huntress Jellica

08-20-2009, 03:36 PM

<cite>Hypnottic@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Huntress Jellica wrote:</cite><blockquote>Since there's soon to be no more point in killing avatars, maybe Infamous can go back to where the came from. Would "pretty please with sugar on top" help the chances of that happening?<img src="/eq2/images/smilies/2786c5c8e1a8be796fb2f726cca5a0fe.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>What did this comment add to this thread? Nothing. Not even on topic. Perhaps you should learn to read. Until then grats on buying your mythical.On topic: I don't understand the point of having Avatars in the game if the loot they drop is not worth the effort to take down the encounter. Historicly SoE has put better loot on contested content, are they now switching to the WoW mantra of "contested mobs mean nothing"??I am of the belief that the majority of your player base enjoys EQ2 for it's unique qualities. Emulating WoW whenever a developer gets the chance is not a good way to maintain any type of mmo identity.</blockquote>Buying my mythical? Lawl. Ok, whatever you say, honey. Not sure how *that* comment has anything to do with this thread, or what I said. So, way to be a hypocrite (as well as false)! Congratz.But as to what I said not being on topic, fair enough.So to be on topic: I agree with those asking why the changes are being made after so long. There's no point.

Korrupt

08-20-2009, 03:43 PM

I think you already have your feedback. Within hours you have seen that this massive nerf to an entire playstyle is completely unacceptable to most. If gear is OP, then nerf the entire range of gear, everything from contested to solo mobs. At least you would keep the progression of loot somewhat in line. This nerf is like making plat no more valuable than gold.This goes beyond what is actually being done to avatar gear right now. This is showing a sense of disdain towards the high end content and the players that give the most back to the game in terms of feedback about mechanics and encounters. To me it shows that not only is a contested playstyle being destroyed right now, but that soe has no intention of having a contested level of loot/play/gear in the next expansion. Progression is a very important thing. Making encounters more difficult to progress through, and also having those encounters drop loot that also progresses.Contested mobs are the hardest to drop, and should have the best gear by far. It doesnt matter the difficulty of the mob(in which case the vast majority of avatars are more difficult than any instanced mob sans ykesha and munzok). The fact that they hold the rarest loot table to obtain should make it the top loot table.This nerf will do massive damage to raiding guilds on every server, and will take away one of the aspirations of every raider.

Kiara

08-20-2009, 03:49 PM

<cite>Korrupt@Najena wrote:</cite><blockquote>I think you already have your feedback. Within hours you have seen that this massive nerf to an entire playstyle is completely unacceptable to most. If gear is OP, then nerf the entire range of gear, everything from contested to solo mobs. At least you would keep the progression of loot somewhat in line. This nerf is like making plat no more valuable than gold.This goes beyond what is actually being done to avatar gear right now. This is showing a sense of disdain towards the high end content and the players that give the most back to the game in terms of feedback about mechanics and encounters. To me it shows that not only is a contested playstyle being destroyed right now, but that soe has no intention of having a contested level of loot/play/gear in the next expansion. Progression is a very important thing. Making encounters more difficult to progress through, and also having those encounters drop loot that also progresses.Contested mobs are the hardest to drop, and should have the best gear by far. It doesnt matter the difficulty of the mob(in which case the vast majority of avatars are more difficult than any instanced mob sans ykesha and munzok). The fact that they hold the rarest loot table to obtain should make it the top loot table.This nerf will do massive damage to raiding guilds on every server, and will take away one of the aspirations of every raider.</blockquote>That is the emotional reaction to the situation. Which is completely understandable. However it is not our intent to administer a "slap in the face" to the high end players.We are attempting to correct an imbalance. Please test the changes and provide us with your reasoned and substantiated feedback on the subject.

Somatic

08-20-2009, 03:50 PM

The old Bait and Switch.Get raiders to devote time and effort to kill Contested mobs. Then after they have already paid in time and effort, switch out all the stats/procs. Great model SOE. Even after this when the next xpac hits, all gear degrades. -- wow SOE. People play these games for persistance. Changing stats as you level and nerfing items that have been that way for months and months....ruins this idea. Why not just make a new game if your going to totally change the game?

Kiara

08-20-2009, 03:53 PM

That isn't helpful. That's a rant. Follow the rules or don't post. Thank you.Here is some info originally posted in <a href="http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/posts/list.m?start=90&topic_id=457323#5101109" target="_blank">this thread</a> that I wanted to make sure everyone saw.<cite>Brenlo wrote:</cite><blockquote>We plan to have a nice, rather large contested zone in the next expansion, The Hole. We are not doing away with contested content. We believe it is necessary and fun for many folks. It will continue. The issue we are running into with the Avatar pieces is future itemization. We found that we were giving the best gear in the game, from mobs that for many of the guilds in that tier, were push overs. We were left in a position where with the next expansion, we would have to up the item strength too far in order to allow for growth. Either that or people would continue wearing the avatar gear, and have no progression. Neither are suitable options.This should have happened many months ago. For that I am sorry it took so long. We should have cleaned this part of our house long ago, but we kept letting it sit there, now we have to deal with it and you folks have gotten used to it. So I understand the passion and anger. I would ask that if you have specific examples of gear that is better, post them. If you have specific examples where we have gone too far, please post them. Fireflyte is reading the feedback and has already made some modifications. That is why these are on Test, to let you play around with them and tell us where we might be wrong. Thanks all, for posting. I really appreciate you expressing your passion. I know you love this game and we want to keep it the game you love. Working with us on this, with specific feedback will help us acheive that goal.</blockquote>Please remember to keep your feedback civil and polite. It doesn't need to be positive, it just needs to be civil. Thank you.

1jesse1

08-20-2009, 03:56 PM

How about devolpers work to fix TSO instance loot and set bonuses that are currently broken. Unbreak all the Avatar loot, fix set pieces (like the illusionist robe for instance). Then when those fixes are on test I would be glad to provide feedback to the devolpment team.With regard to this latest debaucle, I don't feel inclined to waste my time and energy any further on loot that the development team can't make their mind up on.Here is a good fix for progression:Stop changing content.Stop giving things to the players only to take them away.Stop trying to make EQ2 into WoW.If people can't figure out how to implement interesting and rewarding loot to the game without having to trivialize current tier content then for once do somthing in the players best interest.Remove stat caps and buff mobs.Quit with the lazy and get to work.

Wrapye

08-20-2009, 03:57 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>We are attempting to correct an imbalance. Please test the changes and provide us with your reasoned and substantiated feedback on the subject.</blockquote>What you are then asking is (1) for those on the Test server to test these changes (not going to happen, no one there can kill avatars) or (2) for existing raid guilds on other servers to copy themselves over to Test_Copy server and spend time testing the changes on whatever few avatars that will be up for the next week or two, as well as run the harder instanced mobs (for which any loot obtained will be gone as soon as Test_Copy is next wiped).Not very reasonable scenarios. Regardless of what happens, these changes are going to go Live without any appreciable testing, unless you really are saying that it will be the fault of the raiding community for not copying themselves over and testing it themselves.

Agaxiq

08-20-2009, 04:02 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>That is the emotional reaction to the situation. Which is completely understandable. However it is not our intent to administer a "slap in the face" to the high end players.We are attempting to correct an imbalance. Please test the changes and provide us with your reasoned and substantiated feedback on the subject.</blockquote>Hello Kiara -Unfortunately every raider who kills Avatars will take it as a huge slap in the face, nothing you or any dev who would chime in would change that if it goes in as-is. You probably won't find one person who regularly kills avatars thats says "I'm cool with this change, it is much needed", or even one that says "I don't care"Really, there is nothing to test. I've seen the screenshots of the nerfs, that's really all that is needed. Most would probably agree with me. Most people who kill avatars have a pretty decent understanding of mechanics to know how bad these changes are.The only point in testing things is to see if they function or if they are broken. For now, we'll assume the items work as intended.If these changes go live, there will be a VERY large backlash that will serve no benefit.Asking a guild that has been killing avatars for 8 months to /testcopy and test the biggest nerf ever probably won't happen. Thats like asking an employee who just got canned to finish the project he was working on without pay.agressiv

Korrupt

08-20-2009, 04:02 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>We are attempting to correct an imbalance. Please test the changes and provide us with your reasoned and substantiated feedback on the subject.</blockquote>You are creating an imbalance by making contested mob loot less valuable than instanced mob loot. Whether you think this is an emotional response or not it is a fact that item progression is being destroyed by this nerf. All incentive to work for contested content is being taken away, and the avatars will go the way of the domini in RoK, completely ignored.

Quicksilver74

08-20-2009, 04:04 PM

Just remove all contesteds from the game. Make it all instanced. No point in ever doing a contested again ever.

Goonch

08-20-2009, 04:11 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>That is the emotional reaction to the situation. Which is completely understandable. However it is not our intent to administer a "slap in the face" to the high end players.We are attempting to correct an imbalance. Please test the changes and provide us with your reasoned and substantiated feedback on the subject.</blockquote>I have to say I disagree. *ducks*There is plenty of non-emotional feedback here. You will never get a full raid guild who knows what they are doing to test these changes on Test on the content that this effects.Non-Avatar killing guilds are killing Gozak and Ykesha. 1 guild is killing Munzok..The fact is we know that this imbalance is due to the gear in the next expansion. It was said in a dev chat by Brenlo. The expansion is 5-6 months away. There is no need to change this stuff now for something that is going to happen in 5-6 months... especially since there is going to be gear decay. No one can logically argue that we should be able to kill the new expansions stuff worth a darn with this tiers gear. However there is logic in arguing that you can not have something in game for 10 months and then just up and decide it is not balanced. Especially when the gear that drops off the hardest instanced content is just as good and sometimes better than the Avatar gear (ie field general dagger, belts, set bps for crusaders, etc).

sayam

08-20-2009, 04:12 PM

The part that I'm wondering about as a new player is about the timing. Why has the development team decided to do this now? I can see some of the arguments for not wanting contested loot to be at the top and for it to instead be instanced content to be the top. If nothing else, this helps create the illusion for all of us that if we just work hard enough we'll get to see everything just slower (even if it isn't really true due to skill limitations). With avatars it doesn't feel like that. Making things seem like that seems to be a step other games have figured out is working well because the design being one guild gets to block out others doesn't seem to work as well at getting more players. Right now though any damage from this has already been done for this expansion. Why not just wait for the next expansion to make contesteds middle of the road rather than the pinnacle of raiding loot distribution?

Freliant

08-20-2009, 04:19 PM

For those of you too blinded by your own "glory", here is a dumbed down explanation.1) Gear from avatar is at server side level 84+, so the new degredation will not affect it, since its based on a 10 level system.2) Avatar gear allowed players to reach unintended powers. A player that is avatar geared can perform 2-3 times better than an equal skilled player without Avatar gear. In all other expansions the difference between a fully fabled and regular player was roughly around 20-40% but in T8 there are cases of 1000% increase (as in the case of wizards doing 50,000 DPS during a named raid fight vs 5,000k dps from an equally skilled but not avatar geared wizard)3) Content being released cannot be realistically made challenging to the intended player base without making it completely trivial for avatar geared players, and so we get x2 instances which are supposed to be a "stepping stone" raid instance for those without a full group for raids, and yet, it cannot be completed except for those that are already heavily raid geared.As some people have already noted, the reason we got into this mess in the first place, is because itemization was skewed because stats were given out too liberally. % increases should NEVER or at best very very sporadically be introduced into a game. There should always be stats that increase certain effects, and there should be effects that increase through a random number while the actual percentage is calculated in the background factoring in level (so the higher your level, the less effective the armor is.) Having items with base damage/attack/protection/anything increase/decrease by a set percentage will always lead to this type of problem in the long run.I do hope alot of the raiders quit over this and makes SOE rethink the way they do itemizations, because until their pockets get hurt, I don't believe they will realize the basic fact that "PERCENT INCREASES ARE INCREADIBLY HARMFULL TO THE OVERALL HEALTH OF MMOs".With that said, all the raiders on this thread should quit their emo "female dog complaining" and like Kiara said, just focus on giving feedback on actual changes, not on comparitive complaints or the like. The devs will hopefully fix things moving forward that will still give avatar loot huge "relative" power to the rest of the loot in game, without making it something that 3 expansions from now, is still the best.

Evii

08-20-2009, 04:20 PM

<div>To quote the recently-deceased Paul Harvey... "And now, for the rest of the story": </div><div>What has been written here for the previous 7 pages is from the highly-vocal, substantial minority of players. You are seeing what happens every single time a nerf is announced - "If you do this, everyone will quit." I'm sure if I were bored enough to go back and look through the posts of many of the people posting here, they've made similar claims before.</div><div>I raid in a guild that has had some success, but is far from high level hardcore. We killed some avatars last xpac (just a couple) and so far this xpac we have 2 mobs left to kill in instances. As of right now, we basically have zero chance to kill any of the eurotars simply due to when they pop. Yes, de-emphasize the ridiculously OP items like avatar charms (are you kidding me, they are grossly overpowered and outrageous...). Yes, pull back some crit mit so that people don't simply put on one BP and have their needs covered... no single item should be so grossly better than raid instance attainable items either in stats, bonuses, procs or crit mit. Bring it all down to modestly better or equal.</div><div></div><div>One question that has not been raised here is:</div><div>Why did 19 of the last 20 avatars pop on my server between the hours of 3am and 5pm (perfectly placed for a euro guild to cover 2/3 of the day given normal US evening raiders can't cover those timeframes effectively). </div><div>Why would the respawn timer be so predictable as to promote eurotar dominance? This is distinctly un-American, even in this time of global outreach. If you simply randomized avatar pops perfectly you'd see at least 33% of those avatars spawn during the roughly 8 hour US timeframes instead of 5%. What a simple fix.</div><div></div><div>Finally, you need to ask yourselves if your purpose as game developers is to cater to the top end, massively addicted and vocally loud crowd who have already posted on this board or should you perhaps spread things out so that more guilds can enjoy the content you spend real money developing. For every "server dominant" guild screaming like stuck pigs on this board there are another 3-5 per server who can kill the same content if they have the chance. Letting another 100-150 people per server experience the encounters seems like a good win-win to me. Don't let the screeching hordes of 30 per server tell you the next 150 don't want to kill these mobs. Simply ain't true.</div><div>PLEASE randomize the spawn timers better AND nerf the avatar loot. Thank you, on behalf of the next 1% behind the 1/2 of 1% that scream like little babies. </div><div></div>

Novusod

08-20-2009, 04:25 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>That is the emotional reaction to the situation. Which is completely understandable. However it is not our intent to administer a "slap in the face" to the high end players.We are attempting to correct an imbalance. Please test the changes and provide us with your reasoned and substantiated feedback on the subject.</blockquote>I think this is the correct assessment. Players are reacting emotionally and in some cases taking this nerf personally and not seeing it for what it really is. There is a lot of imbalance in the game currently and hopefully this is a step in the right direction.

Freliant

08-20-2009, 04:27 PM

<cite>... deleted</cite>

Korrupt

08-20-2009, 04:27 PM

You seem to think that this nerf will make top guilds ignore the avatars and lower guilds get the chance for them. This is not how it's gonna go down. Lower guilds follow the top just at a slower pace. Take the rok domini for instance, top guilds killed them, realied they are worthless and ignored them. Then a few lower guilds killed them and realized the same thing. Now these domini sit there ignored by everyone. This is gonna happen to the avatars as well. The encounters that used to be the eventual goal of every raider will become a joke and completely ignored just like the domini. No longer will a guild killing an avatar have any significance at all, just like nobody feels any sense of accomplishment for killing a domini.

Santi Dominiti

08-20-2009, 04:30 PM

Aion Online anyone??? I am thinking its a perfect time for Aion to come out.

Tehom

08-20-2009, 04:32 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>That is the emotional reaction to the situation. Which is completely understandable. However it is not our intent to administer a "slap in the face" to the high end players.We are attempting to correct an imbalance. Please test the changes and provide us with your reasoned and substantiated feedback on the subject.</blockquote>Very well. Many of the changes to avatar loot appears to be done arbitrarily without consideration for how the end result compares to existing items. For example, avatar breastplates without any modifiers are considerably less desirable than set breastplates. Set breastplates have extremely high availability - for avatar-killing players, they are absolutely trivial to get compared to the extremely rare avatar breastplates. For this reason, having them be inferior to set breastplates is considered to be not merely a mistake, but frankly insulting to any player who has made a very great effort to acquire them. Essentially, items that may have only dropped once on a particular server, or even none at all, are suddenly worse than items we've been giving to alts. Examples are Chainlinks of Hatred no longer having any reason whatsoever for a ranger to wear it due to the removal of all mods that benefitted them and replaced with melee-specific mods, and Ancient Tunic of the Oracle becoming significantly worse than set breastplates due to the inability to get 6-set, the lack of a focus, and the mediocre group ward compared to the set-breastplate proc. Another example would be Necklace of the Plague being worse than the new Anashti neck, while the old belt is removed. This also seems arbitrary - players can change one slot for another, and get a proc belt in place of the old belt. It's an inferior mix ultimately, but it's not so much worse that it seems to correct any glaring imbalance, and merely forces players to hunt for gear in heroic or x2 zones to replace previous endgame gear.Further, some items that were -already- worse than instanced items have received additional nerfs. Since items that were regarded as 'trash' already were reduced, this does tend to reinforce the idea that these changes were largely arbitrary and done without a great deal of thought. Examples include the Pantaloons of the Visionary, which were already an inferior choice to set pants for people trying to get their set bonuses and use their free slot for something better. Other examples include the avatar belts, which were already inferior to mobs from instanced zones - which no one complained about, given the difficulty of Ykesha... but made the nerf seem unnecessary and arbitrary, since a readily available upgrade was on a more difficult mob. Another example includes Umzok's charms, with the sorceror charm being nerfed from what I heard, which seems wholly unnecessary. Keep in mind, mages were already complaining with no small justification about having limited x4 upgrade routes in this tier, so to answer their complaints with further limitations does seem very questionable.

Goonch

08-20-2009, 04:36 PM

<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>For those of you too blinded by your own "glory", here is a dumbed down explanation.1) Gear from avatar is at server side level 84+, so the new degredation will not affect it, since its based on a 10 level system.This is common knowledge to almost every emo raider here!! But thanks! What this means is they wait until the expansion is actually here and correct it.2) Avatar gear allowed players to reach unintended powers. A player that is avatar geared can perform 2-3 times better than an equal skilled player without Avatar gear. In all other expansions the difference between a fully fabled and regular player was roughly around 20-40% but in T8 there are cases of 1000% increase (as in the case of wizards doing 50,000 DPS during a named raid fight vs 5,000k dps from an equally skilled but not avatar geared wizard)What magical unintended powers would these be? And how would you know? I would like to see some parses and numbers to back up all of this data you are spitting out. You have no proof.3) Content being released cannot be realistically made challenging to the intended player base without making it completely trivial for avatar geared players, and so we get x2 instances which are supposed to be a "stepping stone" raid instance for those without a full group for raids, and yet, it cannot be completed except for those that are already heavily raid geared.Totally untrue. The hardcore raiders you are talking about don't waste their time with these zones unless its for AA one time because the gear is less than x4 instanced gear. I've run those instances on my non avatared geared alts in pick up raids.. they aren't difficult.As some people have already noted, the reason we got into this mess in the first place, is because itemization was skewed because stats were given out too liberally. % increases should NEVER or at best very very sporadically be introduced into a game. There should always be stats that increase certain effects, and there should be effects that increase through a random number while the actual percentage is calculated in the background factoring in level (so the higher your level, the less effective the armor is.) Having items with base damage/attack/protection/anything increase/decrease by a set percentage will always lead to this type of problem in the long run.I do hope alot of the raiders quit over this and makes SOE rethink the way they do itemizations, because until their pockets get hurt, I don't believe they will realize the basic fact that "PERCENT INCREASES ARE INCREADIBLY HARMFULL TO THE OVERALL HEALTH OF MMOs".With that said, all the raiders on this thread should quit their emo "female dog complaining" and like Kiara said, just focus on giving feedback on actual changes, not on comparitive complaints or the like. The devs will hopefully fix things moving forward that will still give avatar loot huge "relative" power to the rest of the loot in game, without making it something that 3 expansions from now, is still the best.These last few paragraphs just prove you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about, because if you did you would comprehend the feedback that is being said in this thread. You are picking out the OMG I QUIT posts. You act like this is something new.. the devs have been doing this since launch of the game. We are yet to have an expansion where gear has not been adjusted. This adjustment at this point in the game is not necessary. If the imbalance doesn't have to do with the next expansion, then I want to know what the imbalance is.</blockquote>

Kindalar

08-20-2009, 04:43 PM

Here are some specifics:When I examine loot and decide to commit months to raiding, and waiting, I want to know that I'm going to get exactly what it is I set out to get. A few months ago you proposed to nerf Avatar loot. This idea was met with an equally passionate, angered response. What did you do? You told us you were not going to do the nerf.Then you waited 2 months.Then you said, "Sorry guys, we have to nerf, nothing we can do.".This was, again, met by passion and anger about the nerfing.And now, after you went through that process of letting down your gamer community by nerfing loot that takes months to attain, what do you do with that knowledge? You AGAIN prepare do the exact same thing. You come to us and say "sorry, we can't give you better items" You say, "sorry, we have to nerf you again".I've played this game for over 5 years. Created my account the day EQII went live. I've played with the best guilds in the game, with the best players in the game.I will absolutely 100% cancel my account and never look back if you do this again. It shows you have no respect for players and that you do not learn from your own mistakes.It proves that in a position of leadership, you are leaderless.Maybe you read this and say, "oh more passion, no substance". And if you do, and you continue with this process of releasing items and then reducing their effectiveness, and then applying some look of confusion on your faces b/c people are sick of this process, well then, you've made me 100% right in my decision to never drop another second of my time into a game that has no effective leadership or direction.You guys had the MMO world in your hands. WOW has blown you away with over 10,000,00 subscriptions. You wonder why? The man in the mirror.You have some nerve telling people that pay subscriptions to run over to test and submit feedback. Jobs that you should be paying QA personnell to do. Jobs that your developers should be doing. Jobs that should be built in and supported by the subscription fees paid by your gaming community. I shouldn't have to justify to you why you should not take away something you've already given me.Really, your not in this cooperatively. If you were you would never put your high end community in the same situation that they were in just a few months ago when you saw how painful it was.Fact is, if the gear wasn't soooo much greater, why would we spend hours and hours trying to attain it? If avatar loot is going to net me +2 more crit, I won't play as much. Intersting how that will decrease your need to develop more content in that scenario, for the same subscription fee.We are a needy bunch at the top, but that's also what drives the "fantasy" of alot of other players that don't have the time or capability to achieve the pinical.Your absolute lack of respect that folks will spend this much time mastering what you put out, only to be rewarded by your repeated displays of lack of foresight should be intollerable to more than just the gamer community. They should be intolellerable to you at SOE.Seriously, step it up. Stop making planning mistakes. Stop spending way to little time testing the items your developing and how they interact with your encounters.Just like you suggest you "won't tell us a second time to keep it civil", this is your last time to show your community the respect it deserves. I'm done giving you second chances also.Kindalar -- Butcherblock -- DA

Ashmen_Skimmerhorn

08-20-2009, 04:55 PM

<cite>EasternKing wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Novusod wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote> Yes, because we certainly didnt earn that gear by killing the hardest encounters in the game. GO GO JOBLESS , BASEMENT LIVING COMMENTS !!!!</blockquote>Hate to break this to you but avatars are not the hardest mobs in the game. Anashti, Field General, Ykesha, Gozok, and Munzok are harder than many of the avatars this gear is dropping off of.WHY SO BASEMENT?</blockquote>hate to break this to you, but instance mobs for 1 guild alone drop gear on a 5/1 ratio to contested mobs, never mind the myriad other guilds killing the same instance mobs.contested gear was supposed to be better because it comes in such minisucle amounts into the game world,T5 instance content was harder than contested - checkT6 instance content was harder than contested - checkT7 instance content was harder than contested - checkT8 instance content was harder than contested - checkso whats your point? contested was never EVER about its difficulty, the difficulty came from its content open to everyone on the server and there is only one of them per spawn, the loot was and still is super rare when compared to the drop rate of instanced gear.</blockquote>To bad there is 6 avatars killed per week usually by the top guild, so your argument about the amount of avatar gear comming into the world is mute. Maybe in EoF and RoK where you had 1 per week but in TSO 3 avatar factions on a independant 3 (to 5) day respawn = 6 avatars a week usually.

Kiara

08-20-2009, 05:00 PM

<cite>Goonch wrote:</cite><blockquote>I have to say I disagree. *ducks*There is plenty of non-emotional feedback here. You will never get a full raid guild who knows what they are doing to test these changes on Test on the content that this effects.</blockquote>I was referring to a specific post, honey <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> There's a lot of useful info and some of it has already been used for modifications.Just trying to make sure people remember that we put stuff on test for a reason.

Freliant

08-20-2009, 05:00 PM

<cite>Goonch wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>For those of you too blinded by your own "glory", here is a dumbed down explanation.1) Gear from avatar is at server side level 84+, so the new degredation will not affect it, since its based on a 10 level system.This is common knowledge to almost every emo raider here!! But thanks! What this means is they wait until the expansion is actually here and correct it.If this was "common knowledge", you also would know that its not just something you can "correct". Their gear system doesn't allow them to put stats beyond a certain threshhold unless they increase that server side level. However, that is not the main focus of my response.2) Avatar gear allowed players to reach unintended powers. A player that is avatar geared can perform 2-3 times better than an equal skilled player without Avatar gear. In all other expansions the difference between a fully fabled and regular player was roughly around 20-40% but in T8 there are cases of 1000% increase (as in the case of wizards doing 50,000 DPS during a named raid fight vs 5,000k dps from an equally skilled but not avatar geared wizard)What magical unintended powers would these be? And how would you know? I would like to see some parses and numbers to back up all of this data you are spitting out. You have no proof.The "unintended powers" was my way of saying more DPS, UTILITY, HEALING and SURVIVABILITY. If I say "powers" all that is implied. And are you honestly asking me for parses of this? A parse is but one indicator of the effect the increases had overall. but if you want to see parses, go check out flames. The "data" I am spitting out come from parses I have seen in the made global channels. Believe it or not, one of the main reasons people join raid guilds, and specifically, avatar killing guilds, is to show off.. NOT because of lore, or quests or other gameplay issue. They enjoy the challenge and love to brag about what they do.3) Content being released cannot be realistically made challenging to the intended player base without making it completely trivial for avatar geared players, and so we get x2 instances which are supposed to be a "stepping stone" raid instance for those without a full group for raids, and yet, it cannot be completed except for those that are already heavily raid geared.Totally untrue. The hardcore raiders you are talking about don't waste their time with these zones unless its for AA one time because the gear is less than x4 instanced gear. I've run those instances on my non avatared geared alts in pick up raids.. they aren't difficult.You misunderstand my 3rd point. I never once mentioned that raiders go to x2 zones to gear up... I said that the new content being made is being done so with the intent of it being challenging to almost all the playerbase, and in doing so, the developers have made dungeons that go WAY beyond the capabilities of the playerbase intended for it, and WAY below what a raider would want. That middle ground is dead in EQ2 because the jump from a non-raid geared individual to a raid geared one is currently so drastic.As some people have already noted, the reason we got into this mess in the first place, is because itemization was skewed because stats were given out too liberally. % increases should NEVER or at best very very sporadically be introduced into a game. There should always be stats that increase certain effects, and there should be effects that increase through a random number while the actual percentage is calculated in the background factoring in level (so the higher your level, the less effective the armor is.) Having items with base damage/attack/protection/anything increase/decrease by a set percentage will always lead to this type of problem in the long run.I do hope alot of the raiders quit over this and makes SOE rethink the way they do itemizations, because until their pockets get hurt, I don't believe they will realize the basic fact that "PERCENT INCREASES ARE INCREADIBLY HARMFULL TO THE OVERALL HEALTH OF MMOs".With that said, all the raiders on this thread should quit their emo "female dog complaining" and like Kiara said, just focus on giving feedback on actual changes, not on comparitive complaints or the like. The devs will hopefully fix things moving forward that will still give avatar loot huge "relative" power to the rest of the loot in game, without making it something that 3 expansions from now, is still the best.These last few paragraphs just prove you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about, because if you did you would comprehend the feedback that is being said in this thread. You are picking out the OMG I QUIT posts. You act like this is something new.. the devs have been doing this since launch of the game. We are yet to have an expansion where gear has not been adjusted. This adjustment at this point in the game is not necessary. If the imbalance doesn't have to do with the next expansion, then I want to know what the imbalance is.You seem to be turned around. I have struck the "nail in the head" so to speak. While the ones behemently complaining are doing so because they are looking at their gear being nerfed and think its solely based on itemization for the next expansion, I am attempting to show that the REAL problem is the way that itemization is BEING done that is the problem. Re-read my post and you will notice that I say the problem is the use of percentage increases that is causing the problem. Reguardless of how they do the "fix" this time around... if next expansion they go back into using percent based growth, then the real underlying problem will persist once more. As for the OMG I QUIT posts that you think I am refering to, I only said that I really hope they do quit so that the developers have more incentive to fix the real situation.A little insult to add flavor: A little reading comprehension will do you loads of good. <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> (while you veil your insults within your paragraghs, I have no need to hide my disgust at your reply, and I will openly state it, but I will not overstate my insults either. Its just to get back at your "you have no clue what you are talking about).</blockquote></blockquote>My comments in red.

Freliant

08-20-2009, 05:06 PM

<cite>Kindalar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here are some specifics:When I examine loot and decide to commit months to raiding, and waiting, I want to know that I'm going to get exactly what it is I set out to get. A few months ago you proposed to nerf Avatar loot. This idea was met with an equally passionate, angered response. What did you do? You told us you were not going to do the nerf.Then you waited 2 months.Then you said, "Sorry guys, we have to nerf, nothing we can do.".This was, again, met by passion and anger about the nerfing.And now, after you went through that process of letting down your gamer community by nerfing loot that takes months to attain, what do you do with that knowledge? You AGAIN prepare do the exact same thing. You come to us and say "sorry, we can't give you better items" You say, "sorry, we have to nerf you again".I've played this game for over 5 years. Created my account the day EQII went live. I've played with the best guilds in the game, with the best players in the game.I will absolutely 100% cancel my account and never look back if you do this again. It shows you have no respect for players and that you do not learn from your own mistakes.It proves that in a position of leadership, you are leaderless.Maybe you read this and say, "oh more passion, no substance". And if you do, and you continue with this process of releasing items and then reducing their effectiveness, and then applying some look of confusion on your faces b/c people are sick of this process, well then, you've made me 100% right in my decision to never drop another second of my time into a game that has no effective leadership or direction.You guys had the MMO world in your hands. WOW has blown you away with over 10,000,00 subscriptions. You wonder why? The man in the mirror.You have some nerve telling people that pay subscriptions to run over to test and submit feedback. Jobs that you should be paying QA personnell to do. Jobs that your developers should be doing. Jobs that should be built in and supported by the subscription fees paid by your gaming community. I shouldn't have to justify to you why you should not take away something you've already given me.Really, your not in this cooperatively. If you were you would never put your high end community in the same situation that they were in just a few months ago when you saw how painful it was.Fact is, if the gear wasn't soooo much greater, why would we spend hours and hours trying to attain it? If avatar loot is going to net me +2 more crit, I won't play as much. Intersting how that will decrease your need to develop more content in that scenario, for the same subscription fee.We are a needy bunch at the top, but that's also what drives the "fantasy" of alot of other players that don't have the time or capability to achieve the pinical.Your absolute lack of respect that folks will spend this much time mastering what you put out, only to be rewarded by your repeated displays of lack of foresight should be intollerable to more than just the gamer community. They should be intolellerable to you at SOE.Seriously, step it up. Stop making planning mistakes. Stop spending way to little time testing the items your developing and how they interact with your encounters.Just like you suggest you "won't tell us a second time to keep it civil", this is your last time to show your community the respect it deserves. I'm done giving you second chances also.Kindalar -- Butcherblock -- DA</blockquote>ooo Well stated. I like this response. So much justified anger pointed at the right direction. ^_^The damage has been done, and the fix is in the way... unfortunately, the price is going to be paid in lost subscriptions.

Freeline

08-20-2009, 05:06 PM

<div>The NEW Anashti Sul charm have 15 % Trigger at spell andEquip and YOU nerf the 3 % from the Dieses Charm ??? LOL omg... <div>Originally Posted by Frogweiser <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.eq2flames.com/items-equipment/50684-more-nerfs-post1077012.html#post1077012"><img title="View Post" src="http://www.eq2flames.com/images/styles/eq2/buttons/viewpost.gif" border="0" /></a></div><div>lol<img src="http://www.djdig.com/EQ2/sul.jpg" border="0" /></div></div>

Tehom

08-20-2009, 05:10 PM

<cite>Freeline@Innovation wrote:</cite><blockquote><div>The NEW Anashti Sul charm have 15 % Trigger at spell andEquip and YOU nerf the 3 % from the Dieses Charm ??? <div>lol</div></div></blockquote>Haha, well, I think everyone assumed that was a bug, so it wasn't even worth mentioning. There's no chance that was intentional.I think.

ShamusOB

08-20-2009, 05:15 PM

<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>My comments in red.</blockquote>Your comments about how its not something they can fix are untrue. They can nerf the heck out of the gear when the expac hits and everyone has to regear anyways.There is no real reason to do it now. Since the put it off for so long whats it going to hurt to put it off til the expac.

Gungo

08-20-2009, 05:21 PM

<cite>Santi Dominiti wrote:</cite><blockquote>Aion Online anyone??? I am thinking its a perfect time for Aion to come out.</blockquote>Haha lets leave the silly new crappy games out of discussion. I have heard it all before when Conan, Warhammer, Darkfall, D&D, Vanguard and all the other crappy games were coming out. Hype does not equal good game. Most of those games have alot more going for it then Aion and most of those games are dead. I will let suckers like you buy the game and beta the game for ~3 months before I even consider wasting my time.

Freeline

08-20-2009, 05:21 PM

So quite simply I pay this play in """ therefore also your salary if her my one 15 EUROS furthermore want I advise to let you this Nerf since here, otherwise, I will stop you live ONLY on us and this is a FACT

Freliant

08-20-2009, 05:21 PM

<cite>ShamusOB wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>My comments in red.</blockquote>Your comments about how its not something they can fix are untrue. They can nerf the heck out of the gear when the expac hits and everyone has to regear anyways.There is no real reason to do it now. Since the put it off for so long whats it going to hurt to put it off til the expac.</blockquote>It is very hard to balance gear 2 tiers at a time. If they test it out now, they can iron out the flaws before the new one comes in.You have to realize that the prior tier doesn't just cease to exist only because is launch day. There are also probably some new dungeons they want to release before the next expac launches, which necesitates the altering of gear now, and not later. But this is just conjecture.

BChizzle

08-20-2009, 05:23 PM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Freeline@Innovation wrote:</cite><blockquote><div>The NEW Anashti Sul charm have 15 % Trigger at spell andEquip and YOU nerf the 3 % from the Dieses Charm ??? <div>lol</div></div></blockquote>Haha, well, I think everyone assumed that was a bug, so it wasn't even worth mentioning. There's no chance that was intentional.I think.</blockquote>It doesnt matter anyways since proc increasers aren't working on 90% of raid gear on test right now.

Freliant

08-20-2009, 05:24 PM

<cite>Freeline@Innovation wrote:</cite><blockquote>So quite simply I pay this play in """ therefore also your salary if her my one 15 EUROS furthermore want I advise to let you this Nerf since here, otherwise, I will stop you live ONLY on us and this is a FACT</blockquote>Word-processor upchuck? Gotta patch it dude...

Freeline

08-20-2009, 05:28 PM

<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Freeline@Innovation wrote:</cite><blockquote>So quite simply I pay this play in """ therefore also your salary if her my one 15 EUROS furthermore want I advise to let you this Nerf since here, otherwise, I will stop you live ONLY on us and this is a FACT</blockquote>Word-processor upchuck? Gotta patch it dude...</blockquote>Yes sorry my english is crap <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Valanthe

08-20-2009, 05:28 PM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Freeline@Innovation wrote:</cite><blockquote><div>The NEW Anashti Sul charm have 15 % Trigger at spell andEquip and YOU nerf the 3 % from the Dieses Charm ??? <div>lol</div></div></blockquote>Haha, well, I think everyone assumed that was a bug, so it wasn't even worth mentioning. There's no chance that was intentional.I think.</blockquote>It Works like Blessings and Luck of the Dirge.Regardless, since they made a lot of the avatar procs non-modifiable, it's moot. Grats on turning basically all of the Avatar gear into worthless garbage.

salty21db

08-20-2009, 05:28 PM

Soooo after reading all these pages lets see how this plays out...Nerf on test to avatar gear to make it below the instanced gear for the most part mainly due to the fact that avatars are entirely easier to down then what they had anticipated.Then posts by Kiara quoting a post from Brenlo about this situation stating that indeed the avatars were easier than they had thought and the gear shouldnt be that good and also admitting they screwed up and just realized it recently that if it goes on this way toward expansion that you guys wont ever upgrade your avatar gear with the new gear. Saying that they just realized it and should of saw it a few months ago and apologized.Yet i read on from that post and still see people asking why...still see people complaining. I understand that soe messed up, thats obvious, they even stated they did and apologized.But lets play you ranting guys scenario for once. Lets leave the gear as it is right now. The expansion comes out, you buy it, u lvl up and do instances, you go on your first new raid, gear drops...and guess what...it gets muted because you all are in avatar gear that is better. You instantly get set off and get mad like you are now and come on here raging about how youre gonna quit and soe is gonna lose tons of money because you quit. So basically either situation theyre gonna "loose" players because either way theyre gonna get mad, correct?But you wanna jump their case because they want to nerf gear from bosses that are easier to down then instance bosses who drop worse gear right? It would be better to buy a brand new expansion and down new bosses and get no new upgrades right? lol. Sometimes i feel you guys who come on here just like to come on here and complain because you can.Ill stick with my statement recently about MMO gamers and gamers in general. There is no pleasing them...at all....EVER.

Goonch

08-20-2009, 05:29 PM

<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Goonch wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>If this was "common knowledge", you also would know that its not just something you can "correct". Their gear system doesn't allow them to put stats beyond a certain threshhold unless they increase that server side level. However, that is not the main focus of my response.That's why they put this update in at the time of the expansion. This is what I mean by 'correct'.The "unintended powers" was my way of saying more DPS, UTILITY, HEALING and SURVIVABILITY. If I say "powers" all that is implied. And are you honestly asking me for parses of this? A parse is but one indicator of the effect the increases had overall. but if you want to see parses, go check out flames. The "data" I am spitting out come from parses I have seen in the made global channels. Believe it or not, one of the main reasons people join raid guilds, and specifically, avatar killing guilds, is to show off.. NOT because of lore, or quests or other gameplay issue. They enjoy the challenge and love to brag about what they do.I just want to know what specifically made you think this. When I pick up a wizard who doesn't have avatar gear and some top end instance gear(pants/bp/jewelry), and they parse 15-20% less than my wizard (who parses as well as the top WW wiz parses I have seen) it makes me wonder how you are coming up with some of these statistics. I really don't expect you to go digging but unless you see the difference on a regular basis like I do, I don't see how you can make such a bold statement. Most parses that get posted on Flames or in WW channels are pota trash or an occassional avatar in a god group.You misunderstand my 3rd point. I never once mentioned that raiders go to x2 zones to gear up... I said that the new content being made is being done so with the intent of it being challenging to almost all the playerbase, and in doing so, the developers have made dungeons that go WAY beyond the capabilities of the playerbase intended for it, and WAY below what a raider would want. That middle ground is dead in EQ2 because the jump from a non-raid geared individual to a raid geared one is currently so drastic.I guess I should have just said I disagree. Because I understood your point.You seem to be turned around. I have struck the "nail in the head" so to speak. While the ones behemently complaining are doing so because they are looking at their gear being nerfed and think its solely based on itemization for the next expansion, I am attempting to show that the REAL problem is the way that itemization is BEING done that is the problem. Re-read my post and you will notice that I say the problem is the use of percentage increases that is causing the problem. Reguardless of how they do the "fix" this time around... if next expansion they go back into using percent based growth, then the real underlying problem will persist once more. As for the OMG I QUIT posts that you think I am refering to, I only said that I really hope they do quit so that the developers have more incentive to fix the real situation.A little insult to add flavor: A little reading comprehension will do you loads of good. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" /> (while you veil your insults within your paragraghs, I have no need to hide my disgust at your reply, and I will openly state it, but I will not overstate my insults either. Its just to get back at your "you have no clue what you are talking about).Your holier than thou attitude in your original post and in this one because of your nail striking ability when it comes to this games itemization problems / mechanic knowledge is more veiled than my sarcasm? Hardly. The fact is itemization has always been a sore subject in this game. Always. At this point in the game this expansion there is no need to make changes for something they haven't even released yet. If they want to take the game in that direction in next expansion and fix their mistakes, great, but do not make a player base who is struggling as is right now due to a pushed expansion pay even more for their mistakes.edit: ps i <3 your disgust!</blockquote></blockquote>My comments in red.</blockquote>mine in blue <3

zormik

08-20-2009, 05:31 PM

QFE, Absolute, accurate qualitypost.<cite>Kindalar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here are some specifics:When I examine loot and decide to commit months to raiding, and waiting, I want to know that I'm going to get exactly what it is I set out to get. A few months ago you proposed to nerf Avatar loot. This idea was met with an equally passionate, angered response. What did you do? You told us you were not going to do the nerf.Then you waited 2 months.Then you said, "Sorry guys, we have to nerf, nothing we can do.".This was, again, met by passion and anger about the nerfing.And now, after you went through that process of letting down your gamer community by nerfing loot that takes months to attain, what do you do with that knowledge? You AGAIN prepare do the exact same thing. You come to us and say "sorry, we can't give you better items" You say, "sorry, we have to nerf you again".I've played this game for over 5 years. Created my account the day EQII went live. I've played with the best guilds in the game, with the best players in the game.I will absolutely 100% cancel my account and never look back if you do this again. It shows you have no respect for players and that you do not learn from your own mistakes.It proves that in a position of leadership, you are leaderless.Maybe you read this and say, "oh more passion, no substance". And if you do, and you continue with this process of releasing items and then reducing their effectiveness, and then applying some look of confusion on your faces b/c people are sick of this process, well then, you've made me 100% right in my decision to never drop another second of my time into a game that has no effective leadership or direction.You guys had the MMO world in your hands. WOW has blown you away with over 10,000,00 subscriptions. You wonder why? The man in the mirror.You have some nerve telling people that pay subscriptions to run over to test and submit feedback. Jobs that you should be paying QA personnell to do. Jobs that your developers should be doing. Jobs that should be built in and supported by the subscription fees paid by your gaming community. I shouldn't have to justify to you why you should not take away something you've already given me.Really, your not in this cooperatively. If you were you would never put your high end community in the same situation that they were in just a few months ago when you saw how painful it was.Fact is, if the gear wasn't soooo much greater, why would we spend hours and hours trying to attain it? If avatar loot is going to net me +2 more crit, I won't play as much. Intersting how that will decrease your need to develop more content in that scenario, for the same subscription fee.We are a needy bunch at the top, but that's also what drives the "fantasy" of alot of other players that don't have the time or capability to achieve the pinical.Your absolute lack of respect that folks will spend this much time mastering what you put out, only to be rewarded by your repeated displays of lack of foresight should be intollerable to more than just the gamer community. They should be intolellerable to you at SOE.Seriously, step it up. Stop making planning mistakes. Stop spending way to little time testing the items your developing and how they interact with your encounters.Just like you suggest you "won't tell us a second time to keep it civil", this is your last time to show your community the respect it deserves. I'm done giving you second chances also.Kindalar -- Butcherblock -- DA</blockquote>

GangleG

08-20-2009, 05:32 PM

<cite>salty21db wrote:</cite><blockquote>But you wanna jump their case because they want to nerf gear from bosses that are easier to down then instance bosses who drop worse gear right? It would be better to buy a brand new expansion and down new bosses and get no new upgrades right? lol. Sometimes i feel you guys who come on here just like to come on here and complain because you can.Ill stick with my statement recently about MMO gamers and gamers in general. There is no pleasing them...at all....EVER.</blockquote>Please tell me which instanced mobs are harder than avatars that drop worse gear.

Freeline

08-20-2009, 05:33 PM

<cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Freeline@Innovation wrote:</cite><blockquote><div>The NEW Anashti Sul charm have 15 % Trigger at spell andEquip and YOU nerf the 3 % from the Dieses Charm ??? <div>lol</div></div></blockquote>Haha, well, I think everyone assumed that was a bug, so it wasn't even worth mentioning. There's no chance that was intentional.I think.</blockquote>It Works like Blessings and Luck of the Dirge.Regardless, since they made a lot of the avatar procs non-modifiable, it's moot. Grats on turning basically all of the Avatar gear into worthless garbage.</blockquote>what does us this say? CRAAAAAAAAAAAAP <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

ShamusOB

08-20-2009, 05:35 PM

<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>ShamusOB wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>My comments in red.</blockquote>Your comments about how its not something they can fix are untrue. They can nerf the heck out of the gear when the expac hits and everyone has to regear anyways.There is no real reason to do it now. Since the put it off for so long whats it going to hurt to put it off til the expac.</blockquote>It is very hard to balance gear 2 tiers at a time. If they test it out now, they can iron out the flaws before the new one comes in.You have to realize that the prior tier doesn't just cease to exist only because is launch day. There are also probably some new dungeons they want to release before the next expac launches, which necesitates the altering of gear now, and not later. But this is just conjecture.</blockquote>Umm yes it does. Avatar loot from every tier has ceased to drop after an expac why would this one be different??

Kindalar

08-20-2009, 05:59 PM

<cite>salty21db wrote:</cite><blockquote>Soooo after reading all these pages lets see how this plays out...Nerf on test to avatar gear to make it below the instanced gear for the most part mainly due to the fact that avatars are entirely easier to down then what they had anticipated.Then posts by Kiara quoting a post from Brenlo about this situation stating that indeed the avatars were easier than they had thought and the gear shouldnt be that good and also admitting they screwed up and just realized it recently that if it goes on this way toward expansion that you guys wont ever upgrade your avatar gear with the new gear. Saying that they just realized it and should of saw it a few months ago and apologized.Yet i read on from that post and still see people asking why...still see people complaining. I understand that soe messed up, thats obvious, they even stated they did and apologized.But lets play you ranting guys scenario for once. Lets leave the gear as it is right now. The expansion comes out, you buy it, u lvl up and do instances, you go on your first new raid, gear drops...and guess what...it gets muted because you all are in avatar gear that is better. You instantly get set off and get mad like you are now and come on here raging about how youre gonna quit and soe is gonna lose tons of money because you quit. So basically either situation theyre gonna "loose" players because either way theyre gonna get mad, correct?But you wanna jump their case because they want to nerf gear from bosses that are easier to down then instance bosses who drop worse gear right? It would be better to buy a brand new expansion and down new bosses and get no new upgrades right? lol. Sometimes i feel you guys who come on here just like to come on here and complain because you can.Ill stick with my statement recently about MMO gamers and gamers in general. There is no pleasing them...at all....EVER.</blockquote>No, you forgot to apply some intelligence to our position. If no one was upgrading their avatar loot with instance gear not many would be suprised. See, avatar loot is supposed to be better than instanced loot. What usually happens is SOE buries 1 sweet item in an entire instance that takes hours to clear (at least at initial launch). And in fact, this maybe something that you were unaware of, but many high end guilds will spend countless hours and hours clearning entire instances for a single item. One thing high end guilds have, is patience.And wait, isn't that the point of getting awesome gear? To parse better, to do your job better, quicker, faster? Really, if what they want is scale difficulty then they should be basing the speed/damage of instance mobs with the collective raid-wide strength of the raid force zoning in. But that's not what SOE is doing, so obviously if you have better gear, encounters will be easier. This can't be a point of contention or we have all been following the wrong set of gaming developers.The point your missing, what we want salty, is stability. Is good planning. Is knowing that deciding to commit to months of raiding and waiting is not going to ultimately be a bad decision b/c of something "they should of seen months earlier". They already made this same mistake months ago and nothing changed to prevent this scenario from happening again. What they did was take a look at subscriptions and "stickyness" and they realized they got away with it. So, there's nothing in the outcome to make them SOE their behavior. This is going to continually happen until they recieve some signal that it's not OK to do this.It's just ridiculous to think that this cycle of "release and reduce" is somehow the best out there. It's not. It's sub-par effort. It's looking at dates and not considering the gaming community. It's looking at our online behaviors through the lense of profit margins and not being at all willing to take a loss when it's the right thing to do.I'm beginning to see my addiction to this game has left me vulnerable to exploitation. It's not being seen by SOE as something to treat and handle with respect, instead it's being seen as somethign that can be leveraged, something to attempt to control for the benefit of profit. The cold hard truth is, if we continually accept their constant shift in direction, we become part of the problem.

DaigleD

08-20-2009, 06:12 PM

<cite>Charmeur@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote>QFE, Absolute, accurate qualitypost.<cite>Kindalar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here are some specifics:When I examine loot and decide to commit months to raiding, and waiting, I want to know that I'm going to get exactly what it is I set out to get. A few months ago you proposed to nerf Avatar loot. This idea was met with an equally passionate, angered response. What did you do? You told us you were not going to do the nerf.Then you waited 2 months.Then you said, "Sorry guys, we have to nerf, nothing we can do.".This was, again, met by passion and anger about the nerfing.And now, after you went through that process of letting down your gamer community by nerfing loot that takes months to attain, what do you do with that knowledge? You AGAIN prepare do the exact same thing. You come to us and say "sorry, we can't give you better items" You say, "sorry, we have to nerf you again".I've played this game for over 5 years. Created my account the day EQII went live. I've played with the best guilds in the game, with the best players in the game.I will absolutely 100% cancel my account and never look back if you do this again. It shows you have no respect for players and that you do not learn from your own mistakes.It proves that in a position of leadership, you are leaderless.Maybe you read this and say, "oh more passion, no substance". And if you do, and you continue with this process of releasing items and then reducing their effectiveness, and then applying some look of confusion on your faces b/c people are sick of this process, well then, you've made me 100% right in my decision to never drop another second of my time into a game that has no effective leadership or direction.You guys had the MMO world in your hands. WOW has blown you away with over 10,000,00 subscriptions. You wonder why? The man in the mirror.You have some nerve telling people that pay subscriptions to run over to test and submit feedback. Jobs that you should be paying QA personnell to do. Jobs that your developers should be doing. Jobs that should be built in and supported by the subscription fees paid by your gaming community. I shouldn't have to justify to you why you should not take away something you've already given me.Really, your not in this cooperatively. If you were you would never put your high end community in the same situation that they were in just a few months ago when you saw how painful it was.Fact is, if the gear wasn't soooo much greater, why would we spend hours and hours trying to attain it? If avatar loot is going to net me +2 more crit, I won't play as much. Intersting how that will decrease your need to develop more content in that scenario, for the same subscription fee.We are a needy bunch at the top, but that's also what drives the "fantasy" of alot of other players that don't have the time or capability to achieve the pinical.Your absolute lack of respect that folks will spend this much time mastering what you put out, only to be rewarded by your repeated displays of lack of foresight should be intollerable to more than just the gamer community. They should be intolellerable to you at SOE.Seriously, step it up. Stop making planning mistakes. Stop spending way to little time testing the items your developing and how they interact with your encounters.Just like you suggest you "won't tell us a second time to keep it civil", this is your last time to show your community the respect it deserves. I'm done giving you second chances also.Kindalar -- Butcherblock -- DA</blockquote></blockquote>I couldn't agree with this post more. Thank you for putting into words all of the emotions I feel, without me having to get banned on these forums.I hope someone of importance decides to read this post and take it seriously.

Goradim

08-20-2009, 06:14 PM

+1

Asif

08-20-2009, 06:24 PM

<cite>Kindalar wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>salty21db wrote:</cite><blockquote>Soooo after reading all these pages lets see how this plays out...Nerf on test to avatar gear to make it below the instanced gear for the most part mainly due to the fact that avatars are entirely easier to down then what they had anticipated.Then posts by Kiara quoting a post from Brenlo about this situation stating that indeed the avatars were easier than they had thought and the gear shouldnt be that good and also admitting they screwed up and just realized it recently that if it goes on this way toward expansion that you guys wont ever upgrade your avatar gear with the new gear. Saying that they just realized it and should of saw it a few months ago and apologized.Yet i read on from that post and still see people asking why...still see people complaining. I understand that soe messed up, thats obvious, they even stated they did and apologized.But lets play you ranting guys scenario for once. Lets leave the gear as it is right now. The expansion comes out, you buy it, u lvl up and do instances, you go on your first new raid, gear drops...and guess what...it gets muted because you all are in avatar gear that is better. You instantly get set off and get mad like you are now and come on here raging about how youre gonna quit and soe is gonna lose tons of money because you quit. So basically either situation theyre gonna "loose" players because either way theyre gonna get mad, correct?But you wanna jump their case because they want to nerf gear from bosses that are easier to down then instance bosses who drop worse gear right? It would be better to buy a brand new expansion and down new bosses and get no new upgrades right? lol. Sometimes i feel you guys who come on here just like to come on here and complain because you can.Ill stick with my statement recently about MMO gamers and gamers in general. There is no pleasing them...at all....EVER.</blockquote>No, you forgot to apply some intelligence to our position. If no one was upgrading their avatar loot with instance gear not many would be suprised. See, avatar loot is supposed to be better than instanced loot. What usually happens is SOE buries 1 sweet item in an entire instance that takes hours to clear (at least at initial launch). And in fact, this maybe something that you were unaware of, but many high end guilds will spend countless hours and hours clearning entire instances for a single item. One thing high end guilds have, is patience.And wait, isn't that the point of getting awesome gear? To parse better, to do your job better, quicker, faster? Really, if what they want is scale difficulty then they should be basing the speed/damage of instance mobs with the collective raid-wide strength of the raid force zoning in. But that's not what SOE is doing, so obviously if you have better gear, encounters will be easier. This can't be a point of contention or we have all been following the wrong set of gaming developers.The point your missing, what we want salty, is stability. Is good planning. Is knowing that deciding to commit to months of raiding and waiting is not going to ultimately be a bad decision b/c of something "they should of seen months earlier". They already made this same mistake months ago and nothing changed to prevent this scenario from happening again. What they did was take a look at subscriptions and "stickyness" and they realized they got away with it. So, there's nothing in the outcome to make them SOE their behavior. This is going to continually happen until they recieve some signal that it's not OK to do this.It's just ridiculous to think that this cycle of "release and reduce" is somehow the best out there. It's not. It's sub-par effort. It's looking at dates and not considering the gaming community. It's looking at our online behaviors through the lense of profit margins and not being at all willing to take a loss when it's the right thing to do.I'm beginning to see my addiction to this game has left me vulnerable to exploitation. It's not being seen by SOE as something to treat and handle with respect, instead it's being seen as somethign that can be leveraged, something to attempt to control for the benefit of profit. The cold hard truth is, if we continually accept their constant shift in direction, we become part of the problem.</blockquote>Very well put Kindalar

and0ra77

08-20-2009, 06:26 PM

Thanks Kindalar agree completely.

EasternKing

08-20-2009, 06:37 PM

this guys sums it up for me, pretty much how i feel right now myself.So QFE and post of the thread so far. /clap<cite>Kindalar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here are some specifics:When I examine loot and decide to commit months to raiding, and waiting, I want to know that I'm going to get exactly what it is I set out to get. A few months ago you proposed to nerf Avatar loot. This idea was met with an equally passionate, angered response. What did you do? You told us you were not going to do the nerf.Then you waited 2 months.Then you said, "Sorry guys, we have to nerf, nothing we can do.".This was, again, met by passion and anger about the nerfing.And now, after you went through that process of letting down your gamer community by nerfing loot that takes months to attain, what do you do with that knowledge? You AGAIN prepare do the exact same thing. You come to us and say "sorry, we can't give you better items" You say, "sorry, we have to nerf you again".I've played this game for over 5 years. Created my account the day EQII went live. I've played with the best guilds in the game, with the best players in the game.I will absolutely 100% cancel my account and never look back if you do this again. It shows you have no respect for players and that you do not learn from your own mistakes.It proves that in a position of leadership, you are leaderless.Maybe you read this and say, "oh more passion, no substance". And if you do, and you continue with this process of releasing items and then reducing their effectiveness, and then applying some look of confusion on your faces b/c people are sick of this process, well then, you've made me 100% right in my decision to never drop another second of my time into a game that has no effective leadership or direction.You guys had the MMO world in your hands. WOW has blown you away with over 10,000,00 subscriptions. You wonder why? The man in the mirror.You have some nerve telling people that pay subscriptions to run over to test and submit feedback. Jobs that you should be paying QA personnell to do. Jobs that your developers should be doing. Jobs that should be built in and supported by the subscription fees paid by your gaming community. I shouldn't have to justify to you why you should not take away something you've already given me.Really, your not in this cooperatively. If you were you would never put your high end community in the same situation that they were in just a few months ago when you saw how painful it was.Fact is, if the gear wasn't soooo much greater, why would we spend hours and hours trying to attain it? If avatar loot is going to net me +2 more crit, I won't play as much. Intersting how that will decrease your need to develop more content in that scenario, for the same subscription fee.We are a needy bunch at the top, but that's also what drives the "fantasy" of alot of other players that don't have the time or capability to achieve the pinical.Your absolute lack of respect that folks will spend this much time mastering what you put out, only to be rewarded by your repeated displays of lack of foresight should be intollerable to more than just the gamer community. They should be intolellerable to you at SOE.Seriously, step it up. Stop making planning mistakes. Stop spending way to little time testing the items your developing and how they interact with your encounters.Just like you suggest you "won't tell us a second time to keep it civil", this is your last time to show your community the respect it deserves. I'm done giving you second chances also.Kindalar -- Butcherblock -- DA</blockquote>

Hina

08-20-2009, 06:37 PM

<cite>Brenlo wrote:</cite><blockquote>The issue we are running into with the Avatar pieces is future itemization. We found that we were giving the best gear in the game, from mobs that for many of the guilds in that tier, were push overs. We were left in a position where with the next expansion, we would have to up the item strength too far in order to allow for growth. Either that or people would continue wearing the avatar gear, and have no progression. Neither are suitable options.</blockquote>As players, it is not our fault that the mobs are "push overs" and naturally, with experience ALL mobs become push overs. Gynok was HARD back in december, and now, for some guilds is a 2 minute fight, does that mean his loot should get nerfed as well? At the time most of us were killing these contested for the first time we didnt have the gear we now have. Try surviving mischief's physical AE with 2 set pieces as a mage.. think our first kill was a push over? Now we have access to more gear, plus experience on top of that, so of course we find it a bit easier to survive and kill it, but it wasnt always that way. Think back to RoK. Many guilds were unable to kill avatars until shard of hate came out last summer, then suddenly, more guilds were contesting them cause they had "Over powered gear" like the rune etched helm and the hood of dark dealings. Should that gear have been nerfed too since the kills became easier?Back in january and feburary our guild, and many others spent HOURS AND HOURS wiping to all the contested. Just because we can kill it a bit easier now doesnt mean the gear wasnt earned at the time. In fact... we've spent hours and hours wiping to nearly every mob in the game as it stands, and now can clear every instance in 1 night of raiding... your reasoning for making the nerfs now hardly stands.Add in gear degridation NEXT expansion when we have items to upgrade to, not now, in the middle of an expansion where we are already bored and have nothing to upgrade to or look forward to.Hina, 80 warlockShoukin

Melendiil

08-20-2009, 06:38 PM

Well put Kindalar.

rhaviam

08-20-2009, 06:38 PM

<div>To quote the recently-deceased Paul Harvey... "And now, for the rest of the story": </div><div>What has been written here for the previous 7 pages is from the highly-vocal, substantial minority of players. You are seeing what happens every single time a nerf is announced - "If you do this, everyone will quit." I'm sure if I were bored enough to go back and look through the posts of many of the people posting here, they've made similar claims before.</div><div>I raid in a guild that has had some success, but is far from high level hardcore. We killed some avatars last xpac (just a couple) and so far this xpac we have 2 mobs left to kill in instances. As of right now, we basically have zero chance to kill any of the eurotars simply due to when they pop. Yes, de-emphasize the ridiculously OP items like avatar charms (are you kidding me, they are grossly overpowered and outrageous...). Yes, pull back some crit mit so that people don't simply put on one BP and have their needs covered... no single item should be so grossly better than raid instance attainable items either in stats, bonuses, procs or crit mit. Bring it all down to modestly better or equal.</div><div></div><div>One question that has not been raised here is:</div><div>Why did 19 of the last 20 avatars pop on my server between the hours of 3am and 5pm (perfectly placed for a euro guild to cover 2/3 of the day given normal US evening raiders can't cover those timeframes effectively). </div><div>Why would the respawn timer be so predictable as to promote eurotar dominance? This is distinctly un-American, even in this time of global outreach. If you simply randomized avatar pops perfectly you'd see at least 33% of those avatars spawn during the roughly 8 hour US timeframes instead of 5%. What a simple fix.</div><div></div><div>Finally, you need to ask yourselves if your purpose as game developers is to cater to the top end, massively addicted and vocally loud crowd who have already posted on this board or should you perhaps spread things out so that more guilds can enjoy the content you spend real money developing. For every "server dominant" guild screaming like stuck pigs on this board there are another 3-5 per server who can kill the same content if they have the chance. Letting another 100-150 people per server experience the encounters seems like a good win-win to me. Don't let the screeching hordes of 30 per server tell you the next 150 don't want to kill these mobs. Simply ain't true.</div><div>PLEASE randomize the spawn timers better AND nerf the avatar loot. Thank you, on behalf of the next 1% behind the 1/2 of 1% that scream like little babies.</div><div>*as stated by evii*</div><div> I, for one, completely agree. And, surprisingly, no one comments on the subject.</div>

Mordicus

08-20-2009, 06:55 PM

The Bottom Line : Ive killed all but one mob in the game, the only thing that kept me going were possible loot upgrades so I could improve my parses. Youve effectively taken that away. Why should I keep playing? Really Im looking for one good reason.

Lenne

08-20-2009, 06:57 PM

<cite>Kindalar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here are some specifics:When I examine loot and decide to commit months to raiding, and waiting, I want to know that I'm going to get exactly what it is I set out to get. A few months ago you proposed to nerf Avatar loot. This idea was met with an equally passionate, angered response. What did you do? You told us you were not going to do the nerf.Then you waited 2 months.Then you said, "Sorry guys, we have to nerf, nothing we can do.".This was, again, met by passion and anger about the nerfing.And now, after you went through that process of letting down your gamer community by nerfing loot that takes months to attain, what do you do with that knowledge? You AGAIN prepare do the exact same thing. You come to us and say "sorry, we can't give you better items" You say, "sorry, we have to nerf you again".I've played this game for over 5 years. Created my account the day EQII went live. I've played with the best guilds in the game, with the best players in the game.I will absolutely 100% cancel my account and never look back if you do this again. It shows you have no respect for players and that you do not learn from your own mistakes.It proves that in a position of leadership, you are leaderless.Maybe you read this and say, "oh more passion, no substance". And if you do, and you continue with this process of releasing items and then reducing their effectiveness, and then applying some look of confusion on your faces b/c people are sick of this process, well then, you've made me 100% right in my decision to never drop another second of my time into a game that has no effective leadership or direction.You guys had the MMO world in your hands. WOW has blown you away with over 10,000,00 subscriptions. You wonder why? The man in the mirror.You have some nerve telling people that pay subscriptions to run over to test and submit feedback. Jobs that you should be paying QA personnell to do. Jobs that your developers should be doing. Jobs that should be built in and supported by the subscription fees paid by your gaming community. I shouldn't have to justify to you why you should not take away something you've already given me.Really, your not in this cooperatively. If you were you would never put your high end community in the same situation that they were in just a few months ago when you saw how painful it was.Fact is, if the gear wasn't soooo much greater, why would we spend hours and hours trying to attain it? If avatar loot is going to net me +2 more crit, I won't play as much. Intersting how that will decrease your need to develop more content in that scenario, for the same subscription fee.We are a needy bunch at the top, but that's also what drives the "fantasy" of alot of other players that don't have the time or capability to achieve the pinical.Your absolute lack of respect that folks will spend this much time mastering what you put out, only to be rewarded by your repeated displays of lack of foresight should be intollerable to more than just the gamer community. They should be intolellerable to you at SOE.Seriously, step it up. Stop making planning mistakes. Stop spending way to little time testing the items your developing and how they interact with your encounters.Just like you suggest you "won't tell us a second time to keep it civil", this is your last time to show your community the respect it deserves. I'm done giving you second chances also.Kindalar -- Butcherblock -- DA</blockquote>Brilliant, thanks for summing up how just about everyone is feeling right now. Dev's could learn a thing or two from reading this.

circusgirl

08-20-2009, 06:58 PM

<cite>rhaviam wrote:</cite><blockquote> <div>To quote the recently-deceased Paul Harvey... "And now, for the rest of the story": </div><div>What has been written here for the previous 7 pages is from the highly-vocal, substantial minority of players. You are seeing what happens every single time a nerf is announced - "If you do this, everyone will quit." I'm sure if I were bored enough to go back and look through the posts of many of the people posting here, they've made similar claims before.</div><div>I raid in a guild that has had some success, but is far from high level hardcore. We killed some avatars last xpac (just a couple) and so far this xpac we have 2 mobs left to kill in instances. As of right now, we basically have zero chance to kill any of the eurotars simply due to when they pop. Yes, de-emphasize the ridiculously OP items like avatar charms (are you kidding me, they are grossly overpowered and outrageous...). Yes, pull back some crit mit so that people don't simply put on one BP and have their needs covered... no single item should be so grossly better than raid instance attainable items either in stats, bonuses, procs or crit mit. Bring it all down to modestly better or equal.</div><div></div><div>One question that has not been raised here is:</div><div>Why did 19 of the last 20 avatars pop on my server between the hours of 3am and 5pm (perfectly placed for a euro guild to cover 2/3 of the day given normal US evening raiders can't cover those timeframes effectively). </div><div>Why would the respawn timer be so predictable as to promote eurotar dominance? This is distinctly un-American, even in this time of global outreach. If you simply randomized avatar pops perfectly you'd see at least 33% of those avatars spawn during the roughly 8 hour US timeframes instead of 5%. What a simple fix.</div><div></div><div>Finally, you need to ask yourselves if your purpose as game developers is to cater to the top end, massively addicted and vocally loud crowd who have already posted on this board or should you perhaps spread things out so that more guilds can enjoy the content you spend real money developing. For every "server dominant" guild screaming like stuck pigs on this board there are another 3-5 per server who can kill the same content if they have the chance. Letting another 100-150 people per server experience the encounters seems like a good win-win to me. Don't let the screeching hordes of 30 per server tell you the next 150 don't want to kill these mobs. Simply ain't true.</div><div>PLEASE randomize the spawn timers better AND nerf the avatar loot. Thank you, on behalf of the next 1% behind the 1/2 of 1% that scream like little babies.</div><div>*as stated by evii*</div><div> I, for one, completely agree. And, surprisingly, no one comments on the subject.</div></blockquote>Personally, I have not seen these issues with spawn times. We've had very few avatars spawn between 2am and 10am eastern on our server, and spawn times seem to be fairly well randomized.Besides, shouldn't the difficulty of taking these mobs down (which seems to be your complaint) INCREASE the quality of loot rather than decrease it? Risk vs. Reward, difficulty vs. reward, time investment vs. reward, etc.?

Ge'Sar

08-20-2009, 07:06 PM

<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>For those of you too blinded by your own "glory", here is a dumbed down explanation.2) Avatar gear allowed players to reach unintended powers. A player that is avatar geared can perform 2-3 times better than an equal skilled player without Avatar gear. In all other expansions the difference between a fully fabled and regular player was roughly around 20-40% but in T8 there are cases of 1000% increase (as in the case of wizards doing 50,000 DPS during a named raid fight vs 5,000k dps from an equally skilled but not avatar geared wizard)</blockquote>You're right that was dumb. Shall we count the ways that was dumb? First it's a falsity that most players are equally skilled and it's only gear, I play my alts I see the 'pugs' wizards and cry at the stupid things they do and horrible parses. I'll strip down naked and beat some of the wizards I've grouped with.Second, please find me even ONE parse where a wizard pulled of 50k in any named fight, that's just a lie.Third 5000k = Crappy wizard and not skilled at all.

Mordicus

08-20-2009, 07:10 PM

<cite>Korrupt@Najena wrote:</cite><blockquote>You seem to think that this nerf will make top guilds ignore the avatars and lower guilds get the chance for them. This is not how it's gonna go down. Lower guilds follow the top just at a slower pace. Take the rok domini for instance, top guilds killed them, realied they are worthless and ignored them. Then a few lower guilds killed them and realized the same thing. Now these domini sit there ignored by everyone. This is gonna happen to the avatars as well. The encounters that used to be the eventual goal of every raider will become a joke and completely ignored just like the domini. No longer will a guild killing an avatar have any significance at all, just like nobody feels any sense of accomplishment for killing a domini.</blockquote>QFT and thats exactly how it is in WoW, some world mobs are placed at instance zone ins and they stay up for days on end because they arent worth the 10 minutes it takes to kill them. Theyre pointless.

Salarionn

08-20-2009, 07:14 PM

Dear Kiara, I am writing you this letter based on facts not passion or anger.Fact #1: Brenlo's great ideas and insight helped SWG go from 200k subs to about 20k in a few short months. I realize maybe my numbers are not 100% accurate, but that facts they discribe are, he killed SWG with his changes.Fact #2: You let the nerf/change monster loose on EQ2 and im afraid he is doing this ( KILLING IT) to our game as well. GRATZ, GG SOE!!!

Mordicus

08-20-2009, 07:17 PM

<cite>Gungo wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Santi Dominiti wrote:</cite><blockquote>Aion Online anyone??? I am thinking its a perfect time for Aion to come out.</blockquote>Haha lets leave the silly new crappy games out of discussion. I have heard it all before when Conan, Warhammer, Darkfall, D&D, Vanguard and all the other crappy games were coming out. Hype does not equal good game. Most of those games have alot more going for it then Aion and most of those games are dead. I will let suckers like you buy the game and beta the game for ~3 months before I even consider wasting my time.</blockquote>Except the fact that Aion has been live in Asian countries for months now and will be the most polished MMO ever to be released in North America, there wont be any beta testing.

Salarionn

08-20-2009, 07:31 PM

I dont think many I NEED IT NOW types will play that game for very long. I think its a well known fact that the Asian gamers seem to enjoy that EQ1 grind that is associated with Aion. I dont know that many people will like playing for thier 3-4 hours a night , looking down and seeing they only gained 5% XP.

Kiara

08-20-2009, 07:48 PM

<cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote>Dear Kiara, I am writing you this letter based on facts not passion or anger. Fact #1: Brenlo's great ideas and insight helped SWG go from 200k subs to about 20k in a few short months. I realize maybe my numbers are not 100% accurate, but that facts they discribe are, he killed SWG with his changes.Fact #2: You let the nerf/change monster loose on EQ2 and im afraid he is doing this ( KILLING IT) to our game as well. GRATZ, GG SOE!!!</blockquote>Your facts are incorrect. Brenlo was never in charge of SWG, my dear. I think it's great that you want to put him in positions that he never was in. He was in charge of Community Relations then... HE didn't make the decisions on SWG, nor did he implement them. All he did was tell you about them.Which leads me to seriously doubt your other "facts."Once again. Opinion and passion are lovely and great things which we encourage here. However, please have actual facts if you wish to attack any member of my team and retain your posting privileges.Thank you <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

1jesse1

08-20-2009, 07:50 PM

Nerfing the high end loot, the end game loot when we don't have an expansion for 6 months is just asking people to cancel. Why sit here and farm when after the new GU you wont want the loot that you have been trying to go after.In reality you should just close this thread, forget about nerfing the gear, post an apology to the community for your laziness, and go back to the drawing board.Present somthing to the community that is exciting instead of disapointing. I don't really care at all what your nerfs now are doing for an expansion that isn't going to be out for another 6 months. I believe you are setting a precedent for the next expansion by the way you are handling this expansion. Meaning... You can still stop now without loosing the subscriptions of some of your most loyal customers. If you continue with the nerfs and lack of originality in loot then I cannot even imagine the next expansion as being palatable. Even if there is a bunch of cool loot, we can rest assured that sony will destroy it. Is this the repoir that you want to have with your customers?

Salarionn

08-20-2009, 07:54 PM

OK, i was wrong. However threating to take away my posting ability is really a silly threat being you wont be getting my money anymore if these changes take place. I will have zero need to post a thing. I think you can see from how rare i actually post on these joke boards it wouldnt really effect me anyway.

1jesse1

08-20-2009, 07:55 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote></blockquote>Your facts are incorrect. Brenlo was never in charge of SWG, my dear. I think it's great that you want to put him in positions that he never was in. He was in charge of Community Relations then... HE didn't make the decisions on SWG, nor did he implement them. All he did was tell you about them.Which leads me to seriously doubt your other "facts."Once again. Opinion and passion are lovely and great things which we encourage here. However, please have actual facts if you wish to attack any member of my team and retain your posting privileges.Thank you <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>This would mean that YOU dont have any influence over these changes as well correct? Perhaps you should should stop patronizing your customers and get somone in here that actually has influence. I think you have already said enough by telling your paying customers to shut up and go test this change. As if I pay a subscription to have a forum mod tell me to go test some loot that they most likely have no idea about.Lets go with some more facts: If you believe or do not believe a post it means nothing because you are not a developer.Unless of course you do have some say in game development.

UNTILitSLEEPS

08-20-2009, 07:59 PM

if you need to nerf avatar gear (and i dont doubt you need to) to get itemisation right for the next expansion do it!not now but on the day the expansion comes out.its to late to change anything for tso. all a nerf coming nex gu does is [Removed for Content] off people who spent dkp worth hundreds of hours od raiding with their guild for items they dont need/want anymore or that are 0.1% better than a item they could have gotten for a fraction of the effort.i am a so called hc raider and nothing would please me more than to have a well thought out and working item and raidprogression for the next expansion.tso went badly wrong but that nerf wont fix that anymorefix it when sentinels fate goes livedo you really think i want to run the new expansion with my old gear?

IamEvilHomer137

08-20-2009, 08:01 PM

Im just gonna throw this out there, this change will no doubt destroy your entire base of world renowned players kiara, like pantz and most of saints of norrath will likely be gone from this... taking all the hard work we have done for 10+ months now and slapping us in the face is without a doubt the worst way to earn customer loyalty... once i saw these nerfs to all my gear i didnt even hesitate in canceling my account which ive been playing for since 2 weeks after this game came out....

UNTILitSLEEPS

08-20-2009, 08:03 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote>Dear Kiara, I am writing you this letter based on facts not passion or anger. Fact #1: Brenlo's great ideas and insight helped SWG go from 200k subs to about 20k in a few short months. I realize maybe my numbers are not 100% accurate, but that facts they discribe are, he killed SWG with his changes.Fact #2: You let the nerf/change monster loose on EQ2 and im afraid he is doing this ( KILLING IT) to our game as well. GRATZ, GG SOE!!!</blockquote>Your facts are incorrect. Brenlo was never in charge of SWG, my dear. I think it's great that you want to put him in positions that he never was in. He was in charge of Community Relations then... HE didn't make the decisions on SWG, nor did he implement them. All he did was tell you about them.Which leads me to seriously doubt your other "facts."Once again. Opinion and passion are lovely and great things which we encourage here. However, please have actual facts if you wish to attack any member of my team and retain your posting privileges.Thank you <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>your friendliness makes me eat little kittens

Evii

08-20-2009, 08:09 PM

<a></a>circusgirl wrote:Personally, I have not seen these issues with spawn times. We've had very few avatars spawn between 2am and 10am eastern on our server, and spawn times seem to be fairly well randomized.Well, we've been tracking them very closely on our server and 19/20 have popped when the U.S. is sleeping or at work/school (3am-5pm). Accepting that as true (if you will), couldn't we agree that circumstance is inequitable and should be addressed?And even if the gear was nerfed as indicated, it is still good gear and I would imagine many would want it. Moreover, many of the arguments in this thread are completely discounting that maybe some guilds who have not taken down avatars before would like to because it is...fun? Is that possible? Yeah, new fights are fun. Just wished we could see some of these eurotars of which you speak to fight them.

erratic

08-20-2009, 08:12 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote>Dear Kiara, I am writing you this letter based on facts not passion or anger. Fact #1: Brenlo's great ideas and insight helped SWG go from 200k subs to about 20k in a few short months. I realize maybe my numbers are not 100% accurate, but that facts they discribe are, he killed SWG with his changes.Fact #2: You let the nerf/change monster loose on EQ2 and im afraid he is doing this ( KILLING IT) to our game as well. GRATZ, GG SOE!!!</blockquote>Your facts are incorrect. Brenlo was never in charge of SWG, my dear. I think it's great that you want to put him in positions that he never was in. He was in charge of Community Relations then... HE didn't make the decisions on SWG, nor did he implement them. All he did was tell you about them.Which leads me to seriously doubt your other "facts."Once again. Opinion and passion are lovely and great things which we encourage here. However, please have actual facts if you wish to attack any member of my team and retain your posting privileges.Thank you <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>Fact:I've been playing EQ2 for a month and change (started July 4th holiday weekend in 2008 ). I hold no loyalty to soe, to ever quest or to any soe products. As such I play the games because I enjoy playing them.Fact:SOE has proposed a controversial method of degrading items to a fraction of their potential in the next expansion. As such it is doubtful that these items will still be in use at level 90.Fact:Nerfing items I have worked hard to acquire and essentially setting back my efforts several months is not fun. Doing so at this point in time when the supposed problem it addresses appears to be non-existant in the next expansion leaves me with little confidence in SOE's ability to continue to provide an entertaining experience.Fact:I consider myself a knowledgable and reasonable person. As such if SOE is insistent on this route I'd expect as a paying customer to at least have some detailed explanation of why this is being done. Give me the mathematical justification of why these items are being nerfed at this point in time.

Kiara

08-20-2009, 08:14 PM

Enforcing the rules doesn't make me unfriendly <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> You'll find that as long as the rules are followed, I'm all kinds of fun.My not being a developer on this game makes absolutely no difference in what I do and do not know. Brenlo has all sorts of influence over what happens in EQII. I think that those of you trying to start a fight should review posts before flinging poo at me, if you please.As for the rest... Guys. I understand that you're upset. Not for even a second am I telling you NOT to be. However, what I AM asking you to do is give me specifics so that we can work on getting to a place that DOESN'T break the game and doesn't [Removed for Content] you off.Work with us, if you please, not against us.Now, as a parting thought... I don't want to lock this thread or the one in the Items forum. The team needs this feedback. So, pretty please with fluffy little kittens on top, follow the rules so I don't have to shut it down. I won't allow people to break the rules, no matter HOW emotionally charged the situation is and no matter HOW much I can understand your position. It's nothing personal, but I'm going to do my job. Which, incidentally, is not to allow people to go nuts on the forums and abuse the people who spend significant portions of their lives working to make this game fun for you.Oh and to the folks about to scream at me about how you pay to use the forums and I can't stifle your freedom of speech... I politely remind you that these forums are offered as a free benefit apart from what your subscription pays for. They are privately owned by SOE and as such we reserve the right to make and enforce rules here and you agree to abide by them when you log in. Thank you guys. Let's please return to meaningful input and feedback, now rather than trying to start a [Removed for Content] match with the admin.

Ashmen_Skimmerhorn

08-20-2009, 08:17 PM

<cite>GeSar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Third 5000k = Crappy wizard and not skilled at all.</blockquote>5000kk = 1000so; 5000k = 5000 x 1000 = 5,000,000 DPSThat would be the best wizard anyone has ever seen!I'm just joking around of course, just trying to lighten the mood.

Bromir

08-20-2009, 08:18 PM

<cite>salty21db wrote:</cite><blockquote>Soooo after reading all these pages lets see how this plays out...Nerf on test to avatar gear to make it below the instanced gear for the most part mainly due to the fact that avatars are entirely easier to down then what they had anticipated.Then posts by Kiara quoting a post from Brenlo about this situation stating that indeed the avatars were easier than they had thought and the gear shouldnt be that good and also admitting they screwed up and just realized it recently that if it goes on this way toward expansion that you guys wont ever upgrade your avatar gear with the new gear. Saying that they just realized it and should of saw it a few months ago and apologized.Yet i read on from that post and still see people asking why...still see people complaining. I understand that soe messed up, thats obvious, they even stated they did and apologized.But lets play you ranting guys scenario for once. Lets leave the gear as it is right now. The expansion comes out, you buy it, u lvl up and do instances, you go on your first new raid, gear drops...and guess what...it gets muted because you all are in avatar gear that is better. You instantly get set off and get mad like you are now and come on here raging about how youre gonna quit and soe is gonna lose tons of money because you quit. So basically either situation theyre gonna "loose" players because either way theyre gonna get mad, correct?But you wanna jump their case because they want to nerf gear from bosses that are easier to down then instance bosses who drop worse gear right? It would be better to buy a brand new expansion and down new bosses and get no new upgrades right? lol. Sometimes i feel you guys who come on here just like to come on here and complain because you can.Ill stick with my statement recently about MMO gamers and gamers in general. There is no pleasing them...at all....EVER.</blockquote>

Bromir

08-20-2009, 08:18 PM

<cite>salty21db wrote:</cite><blockquote>Soooo after reading all these pages lets see how this plays out...Nerf on test to avatar gear to make it below the instanced gear for the most part mainly due to the fact that avatars are entirely easier to down then what they had anticipated.Then posts by Kiara quoting a post from Brenlo about this situation stating that indeed the avatars were easier than they had thought and the gear shouldnt be that good and also admitting they screwed up and just realized it recently that if it goes on this way toward expansion that you guys wont ever upgrade your avatar gear with the new gear. Saying that they just realized it and should of saw it a few months ago and apologized.Yet i read on from that post and still see people asking why...still see people complaining. I understand that soe messed up, thats obvious, they even stated they did and apologized.But lets play you ranting guys scenario for once. Lets leave the gear as it is right now. The expansion comes out, you buy it, u lvl up and do instances, you go on your first new raid, gear drops...and guess what...it gets muted because you all are in avatar gear that is better. You instantly get set off and get mad like you are now and come on here raging about how youre gonna quit and soe is gonna lose tons of money because you quit. So basically either situation theyre gonna "loose" players because either way theyre gonna get mad, correct?But you wanna jump their case because they want to nerf gear from bosses that are easier to down then instance bosses who drop worse gear right? It would be better to buy a brand new expansion and down new bosses and get no new upgrades right? lol. Sometimes i feel you guys who come on here just like to come on here and complain because you can.Ill stick with my statement recently about MMO gamers and gamers in general. There is no pleasing them...at all....EVER.</blockquote>you nail it

Fyreflyte

08-20-2009, 08:21 PM

Good afternoon. I've been digesting all the threads on the Avatar nerfs as quickly as possible, but there are a good number of them, and posts come almost faster than I can read. I've seen a few concerns expressed more often than others and I wanted to take a moment to address those. Additionally, I'd like to reiterate the point that specific item feedback has a much better chance of getting you results than simply stating that "all avatar gear is now useless". I'm keeping a list of individual item concerns, and will be reviewing their balance before these changes go live.So, on to the hot topics:<cite>Hecula wrote:</cite><blockquote>Since the gear will be getting hammered in the next expansion anyway, why is this [Avatar nerf] necessary? All its going to do is [Removed for Content] people off and make the time drag by even longer until SF.</blockquote> <cite>Shamus08 wrote:</cite><blockquote>They can nerf the heck out of the gear when the expac hits and everyone has to regear anyways. There is no real reason to do it now. Since the put it off for so long whats it going to hurt to put it off til the expac.</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.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.<cite>isis23 wrote:</cite><blockquote>We are 6 months out from the next expansion with NOTHING to upgrade to to make up for the proc changes that have already been made</blockquote> The very next game update is going to offer some new item upgrades you can work towards. Most guilds still have not defeated Munzok and obtained any of his upgrades, either. You have not yet won the game <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /><cite> Hypnotic wrote:</cite><blockquote>How about devolpers work to fix TSO instance loot and set bonuses that are currently broken. Unbreak all the Avatar loot, fix set pieces (like the illusionist robe for instance). Then when those fixes are on test I would be glad to provide feedback to the devolpment team.</blockquote>Tuning the avatar gear is not diverting my attention from other fixes. I made the changes months ago, so they haven't even constituted any extra work for me recently. We receieve a lot of bugs; many of those are not actually bugs (user error) or are difficult to reproduce. The filtering process for these is extensive, so as not to waste the limited time we have. This means that I don't always receive bugs right away, and I can only fix them as fast as I receive them. Sometimes new code changes will break older effects on items as well; because they're code issues, the fix is usually held off until the next GU, rather than hotfixed in. Unfortunately there's nothing I can do to speed up the fixes in those cases.<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>Having items with base damage/attack/protection/anything increase/decrease by a set percentage will always lead to this type of problem in the long run.</blockquote>The introduction of the rating system will address this. The avatar items were too far above the curve for it to fix them by itself, however.<cite> Freeline wrote:</cite><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%).<cite> Freeline wrote:</cite><blockquote>The Nerf is a CRAP Now things of "HELLO Kitty online" are harder than Eq2 Items lol GOOD SOE!</blockquote>So what class do you play in Hello Kitty Online?Edit: One typo... must... correct...

IamEvilHomer137

08-20-2009, 08:25 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Enforcing the rules doesn't make me unfriendly <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /> You'll find that as long as the rules are followed, I'm all kinds of fun.My not being a developer on this game makes absolutely no difference in what I do and do not know. Brenlo has all sorts of influence over what happens in EQII. I think that those of you trying to start a fight should review posts before flinging poo at me, if you please.As for the rest... Guys. I understand that you're upset. Not for even a second am I telling you NOT to be. However, what I AM asking you to do is give me specifics so that we can work on getting to a place that DOESN'T break the game and doesn't [Removed for Content] you off.Work with us, if you please, not against us.Now, as a parting thought... I don't want to lock this thread or the one in the Items forum. The team needs this feedback. So, pretty please with fluffy little kittens on top, follow the rules so I don't have to shut it down. I won't allow people to break the rules, no matter HOW emotionally charged the situation is and no matter HOW much I can understand your position. It's nothing personal, but I'm going to do my job. Which, incidentally, is not to allow people to go nuts on the forums and abuse the people who spend significant portions of their lives working to make this game fun for you.Oh and to the folks about to scream at me about how you pay to use the forums and I can't stifle your freedom of speech... I politely remind you that these forums are offered as a free benefit apart from what your subscription pays for. They are privately owned by SOE and as such we reserve the right to make and enforce rules here and you agree to abide by them when you log in. Thank you guys. Let's please return to meaningful input and feedback, now rather than trying to start a [Removed for Content] match with the admin.</blockquote>So what youre telling us is.... The dev team didnt think their item development and scaling through so they will penalize us and basically make the past 10 months of hard work worthless so we can then gain 10 more levels and farm up the same stuff all over again? dont you think we will have a SERIOUS loss of faith that you wont do this to us again in another years time?

Gungo

08-20-2009, 08:27 PM

<cite>Merovius@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gungo wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Santi Dominiti wrote:</cite><blockquote>Aion Online anyone??? I am thinking its a perfect time for Aion to come out.</blockquote>Haha lets leave the silly new crappy games out of discussion. I have heard it all before when Conan, Warhammer, Darkfall, D&D, Vanguard and all the other crappy games were coming out. Hype does not equal good game. Most of those games have alot more going for it then Aion and most of those games are dead. I will let suckers like you buy the game and beta the game for ~3 months before I even consider wasting my time.</blockquote>Except the fact that Aion has been live in Asian countries for months now and will be the most polished MMO ever to be released in North America, there wont be any beta testing.</blockquote>Lineage2 and Darkfall released in asia/europe repectfully a year before being released in north america.... Try again

erratic

08-20-2009, 08:29 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Work with us, if you please, not against us.Now, as a parting thought... I don't want to lock this thread or the one in the Items forum. The team needs this feedback. So, pretty please with fluffy little kittens on top, follow the rules so I don't have to shut it down. I won't allow people to break the rules, no matter HOW emotionally charged the situation is and no matter HOW much I can understand your position. It's nothing personal, but I'm going to do my job. Which, incidentally, is not to allow people to go nuts on the forums and abuse the people who spend significant portions of their lives working to make this game fun for you.</blockquote>The general feeling is that for many of us we have had these items for months. Nerfing them now when there is already an upcoming item degeneration on the horizon just feels insulting. Secondly for many of us we are in guilds that have most of the instances on farm status. We log on in a night and do Ykesha, Palace, and Zarrakon within 3 or so hours. We don't bother with Tombs as there is no loot in there anyone wants. This leaves us with several nights in a row with nothing to do while we wait on timers.MMB was a disappointment. For the most part the loot in there is nothing exciting, the fights are dull, and in the case of Munzok does not feeling balanced yet. We do run the zone, even spend an hour or two a week on Munzok but honestly the whole zone is a let down. For us the primary enjoyment comes from Avatars. The unpredictable nature of camping them, guessing which will spawn, racing the other Avatar guilds on the server. Getting the exciting loot that people have been hording DKP for. Nerfing the loot to be subpar really makes me wonder how many guilds will still bother rallying for the Avatars when the spawn outside of your designated raid times.In short you are essentially taking the majority of my fun out of the game for me.Now some specifics. Concentrating on the items I possess.Enchanted Dagger of the Warmaster - The major benefit to this was the 5 accuracy. Now that this is nerfed to 2 accuracy, the fact that raid buffed I cap Crit makes me wonder if the Strategists field dagger (with it's slightly higher spread, and better proc) wouldn't parse better. I should never have to weigh the benefits of a item that drops from a non-final instance mob to an Avatar drop.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. I understand the charms were powerful, and since they are guaranteed drops they are semi plentiful. I'd rather you change it so that avatars didn't have 100% drop rate on charms and they kept some of their power. The changes just feel insulting.Ring of Tormenting - for some reason this item gets much less of a nerfage than some of the other items. Despite the fact that the nerfage is smaller in quantity the item was less imbalancing than others and no longer a truly desired item for anyone.

arant

08-20-2009, 08:32 PM

The primary fact is this: The top tier raiding community takes pride in their ability to MAX out their toons capability. The hardwork, countless hours, debates on gear, breaking down of parses, etc to this community is what makes this FUN.Nerfing to oblivion the fruits of all this labor effectively lowering the capabilities of these players toons in upwards of 40% obliterates the FUN factor. There is nothing FUN about playing a game 1 year later where your toon was actually better 1 year ago.The community knows that this incoming nerf is to allow new item progression next expansion basically being the equivalent or even less of what we're become accustomed to playing with today. It's like getting the same toy for christmas this year that you got last year. There's no surprise and no incentive to keep playing.By alienating and abusing the community in this manner SoE will cause a reduction in subscriptions of their most skilled/knowledgeable player base. The recent nerf to procs did cause some top tier players to quit the game. Many top guilds today aren't as good now as they were a few months ago skill wise. These guilds will start to take that critical hit in skilled players that starts the snowball effect of more people quitting. The release of the upcoming and hyped "Aion" is already going to be a bitter pill for guilds to swallow. These nerfs are going to push it over the edge. And the worst part about all of this... no where is it stated that things need to be capped at "100% base" for instance or 100% crit mit, caps could be raised to 150, 200, etc..Once you lose your top tier community - you will lose the rest as they will follow. And given the history of subscriptions though people do return to the game...no where is it near enough to how many ultimately leave the game for good.

UNTILitSLEEPS

08-20-2009, 08:32 PM

the worst thing about it all is that they are not thought out at allmost prominent example:both avatar healer bps are way worse then the set bps in their current test statenot just a little worse but su much worse that i fail to understand how whoever made the change could not recognize they are.this leaves me with the assumption that the either whole nerf was done by someone without any clue about what effects are usefull and how they relate; by someone wo does not have the slightest overfiew about this tiers items or in such a hurry that it just "happened"options 1 and 2 are frightening #3 is just ...wow after what happened after the first try few months ago...

Valanthe

08-20-2009, 08:37 PM

<cite>My comments will be in red.</cite><cite></cite><cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote>Good afternoon. I've been digesting all the threads on the Avatar nerfs as quickly as possible, but there are a good number of them, and posts come almost faster than I can read. I've seen a few concerns expressed more often than others and I wanted to take a moment to address those. Additionally, I'd like to reiterate the point that specific item feedback has a much better chance of getting you results than simply staing that "all avatar gear is now useless". I'm keeping a list of individual item concerns, and will be reviewing their balance before these changes go live.So, on to the hot topics:<cite>Hecula wrote:</cite><blockquote>Since the gear will be getting hammered in the next expansion anyway, why is this [Avatar nerf] necessary? All its going to do is [Removed for Content] people off and make the time drag by even longer until SF.</blockquote><cite>Shamus08 wrote:</cite><blockquote>They can nerf the heck out of the gear when the expac hits and everyone has to regear anyways. There is no real reason to do it now. Since the put it off for so long whats it going to hurt to put it off til the expac.</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.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.There SHOULD be mobs that are difficult to defeat without Avatar gear. The Same mobs are still difficult to defeat WITH Avatar Gear. yes, the Avatar Gear is overpowered; however, the nerfs have gone too far, and there are no suitable replacements for some of the nerfs that are occurring.<cite>isis23 wrote:</cite><blockquote>We are 6 months out from the next expansion with NOTHING to upgrade to to make up for the proc changes that have already been made</blockquote>The very next game update is going to offer some new item upgrades you can work towards. Most guilds still have not defeated Munzok and obtained any of his upgrades, either. You have not yet won the game <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />Munzok, the way he is tuned now, will not be killable due to the changes going in. The top guilds are already having problems with the mob, and making the players weaker doesn't make this any better.<cite>Hypnotic wrote:</cite><blockquote>How about devolpers work to fix TSO instance loot and set bonuses that are currently broken. Unbreak all the Avatar loot, fix set pieces (like the illusionist robe for instance). Then when those fixes are on test I would be glad to provide feedback to the devolpment team.</blockquote>Tuning the avatar gear is not diverting my attention from other fixes. I made the changes months ago, so they haven't even constituted any extra work for me recently. We receieve a lot of bugs; many of those are not actually bugs (user error) or are difficult to reproduce. The filtering process for these is extensive, so as not to waste the limited time we have. This means that I don't always receive bugs right away, and I can only fix them as fast as I receive them. Sometimes new code changes will break older effects on items as well; because they're code issues, the fix is usually held off until the next GU, rather than hotfixed in. Unfortunately there's nothing I can do to speed up the fixes in those cases.Some of the changes that people have been clamoring for have been on the pile for months and months. Yes, I can understand there's a filtering process, but items like, for example, the Summoner 5 set bonus are clearly a server-side issue and STILL have not been dealt with. I mean, it took 9 months to fix the 2 Illy sets stacking...<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>Having items with base damage/attack/protection/anything increase/decrease by a set percentage will always lead to this type of problem in the long run.</blockquote>The introduction of the rating system will address this. The avatar items were too far above the curve for it to fix them by itself, however.Yes, the Avatar Gear was above the curve. However, you also have to consider the rate of gear that comes off those mobs compared to the amount of loot that comes off instances.<cite>Freeline wrote:</cite><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%).This is actually one of the nerfs I agree with, to be honest. However, the fact that you did this in ADDITION to making most of the proc gear from Avatars non-modifiable is a huge slap in the face.<cite>Freeline wrote:</cite><blockquote>The Nerf is a CRAP Now things of "HELLO Kitty online" are harder than Eq2 Items lol GOOD SOE!</blockquote>So what class do you play in Hello Kitty Online?OK, I LOLed.</blockquote>I know I talked with you extensively regarding itemization at FanFaire and I had a lot of opinions about this. However, some of these items went from useful to absolute trash. I can understand the reasoning of making the items worse, but there are other underlying problems with itemization (namely, mage itemization and complete lack of available options for slots) that make the way you did this seem heavy-handed.Mage itemization: For high-end mages, we already took a large nerf when base damage stopped affecting procs. Now, in addition to making most of the gear we prefer useless, we're taking another large step backwards with the nerfs to our charms and our wrists, as well as our belt. The only 2 belts we have left this expansion are the Xebnok proc belt and the Kultak pet belt (neither of which are good). Quite frankly, the staff screwed the pooch when it comes to mage itemization. (Mynzak, Field General, and Ykesha come to mind.)Slot Availability: As a mage, from TSO x4 raid instances, bar set gear, I can get 2 ears, 1 Wrist, 1 Cloak, 1 Charm and 2 Symbols (barely) worth wearing. No neck before the Anashti Neck, no second Charm. The best 2nd wrist comes from a heroic zone for all mage classes (whether it be Palace of Ferzhul's Chanter Wrist or the Bangle of Portals). I'm sure there are other slots that other classes just can't fill with a reasonably decent piece from the CURRENT expansion's x4 raid zones as well.Please think about fixing these two items BEFORE this nerf goes live.

Agaxiq

08-20-2009, 08:39 PM

Thanks for taking time to post Fyreflyte.Of course, as most people who kill Avatars would agree, we'd prefer you do this nerf when the expansion hits. I understand you are trying to balance the new raid zone but I still feel this will be more destructive of a change than a constructive one.However, I'm willing to bite. Without taking specific pieces of gear into consideration, why not:1) Make anything that was 15% instead 12%.2) Make anything that was 10% instead 8%This includes the two-set charm bonuses, procs, reuse etc. Then go forward with the full nerf when the expansion hits.Also, please revert the Anasti Belt to what it was before, or add a new mage belt with decent stats. There simply is nothing else available other than the Kurns/Veksar belt or the Trak belt which is worth wearing. We really didnt need this change.agressiv

Acknar-EF

08-20-2009, 08:40 PM

The main reasons people are angry, upset, and mystified at these broad based nerfs across the board is really due to a lack of communication. As we understood things, there would be a nerf to the existing crit mit which I think as a whole, the community was able and willing to accept. The changes currently on test are incredibly broad based and affect almost every avatar piece out there. People have spent the last months since the expansion trying to get the pieces they feel they need to maximise their characters abilities and as such feel incredibly upset when the pieces of gear they have gotten are rendered lower than some of the instance loot.Contested mobs are considered the pinnacle of raiding. Yes there are some avatar encounters in TSO that have not changed and are considered "easy mode" but you did a good thing before when revamping some of these encounters to ensure they were still harder than the instance content such as the Avatar of Flame. If you want to keep the contested mobs as the pinnacle of raiding content, then the onus is upon you to ensure they are the hardest encounters in the game. If your vision for contested is that it is a necessary part of EQ2, then you need to spend the time on the encounters to do so. The reasons people feel slighted when you do these "nerfs" is because hardcore raiders spend hours upon hours learning the new content. When something they strive this hard for is reduced, they feel extremely slighted and rightly so.Nerfs should ONLY be a last resort and not a tool that is used to balance on a whim. All to often Items are shown to be overpowered but yet they stay in game for long periods and then finally they get nerfed. This refers to my point about communication. When things of this nature happen, we NEED you to be open and upfront with the player base and tell us that "Yes indeed we made a mistake and this should not have made it into the game in its current form". Waiting several months only feeds the feeling of entitlement that we have towards some of the gear we worked so hard obtaining.I understand you are all busy trying to balance content, but that does not detract from your responsibility to ensure your playerbase is well informed about upcoming game changes that will drastically affect players. You have an immense resource at your disposal that you can tap to help you avoid these drastic changes from happening without warning. There are a number of raiders that have a wealth of knowledge that would be more than happy to assist in at least "Discussion" of balancing gear. Blindsiding us with a broad stroke of the "Nerf" bat does nothing more than alienate your most passionate customer base. Just discussing with us that you saw a real need to nerf more than just the crit mit of avatar peices and having "true and honest" discussion with us about the best way to go about some of these needed changes would have and could have prevented this backlash.We all care about this game or we would not waste our time here but Communication is key. ***Edited: Fyreflytes post is exactly my point. Information being relayed to the customer base needs to happen "Before" any changes are made. People are more often than not left scratching their heads.

Link27

08-20-2009, 08:43 PM

Thank you, SoE for the Avatar gear nerfs. I've been looking for a reason to leave this game behind for a while now. I've cancelled my 2 avatar camping accounts, and will be cancelling my main account when this hits live. I wish SoE and all its employees luck in their future endeavors.

LardLord

08-20-2009, 08:47 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote>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.</blockquote>Wow, that's a much better explanation than we were getting from Brenlo. If you can tweak the avatar items on test to be better than the pre-Ykesha instanced loot (while still not being quite so out of hand as a few of the items are on Live), I think people will be much more receptive of this changed.Based on the explanation you gave above, which seems pretty reasonable to me, there's still no reason for avatar BPs to be worse than set BPs or the avatar dagger to pale in comparison to the field general dagger, for example.

Fyreflyte

08-20-2009, 08:50 PM

<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.

Valanthe

08-20-2009, 08:53 PM

<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>If anything, the set bonuses are WAY too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus in addition to the Base Damage would make them balanced where they should be.Please keep in mind also, the reason that the charm situation is so dire is completely because of the bottom-up itemization approach that you and your staff took this expansion.

erratic

08-20-2009, 08:55 PM

<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>Sony controls the itemization if these items are not as good as the level 90 stuff even with degregation then make the level 90 stuff better. If the game mechanics aren't scaling to that level well lucky for you sony controls the game mechanics as well. Change the game mechanics so they scale better.The over all concept of overpowered can not exist in a sandbox, if someone does 10 dps and a mob has 200 hit points, mathematically it is the same as if someone does 1000 dps and a mob has 20,000 hit points. Computers are very good at numbers, and players enjoy big numbers. Players however do not feel like they have to devoute massive amounts of work and time to tread water.

arant

08-20-2009, 08:56 PM

<cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote>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.</blockquote>Wow, that's a much better explanation than we were getting from Brenlo. If you can tweak the avatar items on test to be better than the pre-Ykesha instanced loot (while still not being quite so out of hand as a few of the items are on Live), I think people will be much more receptive of this changed.Based on the explanation you gave above, which seems pretty reasonable to me, there's still no reason for avatar BPs to be worse than set BPs or the avatar dagger to pale in comparison to the field general dagger, for example.</blockquote>That truely is the best explanation I've gotten to cement quitting the game. I truely appreciate you letting us know that for the last 10 months we've gotten to enjoy the best the game has will have had to offer over the next couple years. There truely is no incentive to keep playing or even try out the expansion knowing that there is nothing better to come.

Gungo

08-20-2009, 08:59 PM

<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>Is there anyway you can remove the can not be effected by proc increasers tag. Its is beyond annoying to limit gear and class buffs this way unless of course that tag ignores buffs like blessings, luck of the dirge, propagation, ancestry, Bard bp, and the anashti 15% charm effect.Could you place a mage belt on ykesha because there really isn't anything on him for mages as well as upgrades for mages since belt of anashti has been nerfed.Could the avatar neck needs to be upgraded as posted alot. Also you might need to nerf the anashti base damage necks to 10% instead of 12 to balance them out for next expansion.Many of the avatar weapons are inferior (damage spread) to even last tiers avatar gear and tangrin weapon or even the easier tso named.

Fyreflyte

08-20-2009, 08:59 PM

<cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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.

Valanthe

08-20-2009, 09:02 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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>Disagree, for the simple fact that Munzok charms are off an instanced mob and Avatar Charms are not. Limited numbers vs. unlimited numbers. Most players will not get access to Avatar Charms, period.Everything that's been killed with Avatar gear bar MUNZOK has been killed without it as well, as a side-note.

Fyreflyte

08-20-2009, 09:02 PM

<cite>arant wrote:</cite><blockquote>That truely is the best explanation I've gotten to cement quitting the game. I truely appreciate you letting us know that for the last 10 months we've gotten to enjoy the best the game has will have had to offer over the next couple years. There truely is no incentive to keep playing or even try out the expansion knowing that there is nothing better to come.</blockquote>Somehow you managed to interpret what I said with the exact opposite meaning. I explicitly stated that one reason for the nerf was to allow for natural item progression into the next expansion.

Tutimin

08-20-2009, 09:04 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote>Good afternoon. I've been digesting all the threads on the Avatar nerfs as quickly as possible, but there are a good number of them, and posts come almost faster than I can read. I've seen a few concerns expressed more often than others and I wanted to take a moment to address those. Additionally, I'd like to reiterate the point that specific item feedback has a much better chance of getting you results than simply stating that "all avatar gear is now useless". I'm keeping a list of individual item concerns, and will be reviewing their balance before these changes go live.So, on to the hot topics:<cite>Hecula wrote:</cite><blockquote>Since the gear will be getting hammered in the next expansion anyway, why is this [Avatar nerf] necessary? All its going to do is [Removed for Content] people off and make the time drag by even longer until SF.</blockquote> <cite>Shamus08 wrote:</cite><blockquote>They can nerf the heck out of the gear when the expac hits and everyone has to regear anyways. There is no real reason to do it now. Since the put it off for so long whats it going to hurt to put it off til the expac.</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.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.<cite>isis23 wrote:</cite><blockquote>We are 6 months out from the next expansion with NOTHING to upgrade to to make up for the proc changes that have already been made</blockquote> The very next game update is going to offer some new item upgrades you can work towards. Most guilds still have not defeated Munzok and obtained any of his upgrades, either. You have not yet won the game <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /><cite> Hypnotic wrote:</cite><blockquote>How about devolpers work to fix TSO instance loot and set bonuses that are currently broken. Unbreak all the Avatar loot, fix set pieces (like the illusionist robe for instance). Then when those fixes are on test I would be glad to provide feedback to the devolpment team.</blockquote>Tuning the avatar gear is not diverting my attention from other fixes. I made the changes months ago, so they haven't even constituted any extra work for me recently. We receieve a lot of bugs; many of those are not actually bugs (user error) or are difficult to reproduce. The filtering process for these is extensive, so as not to waste the limited time we have. This means that I don't always receive bugs right away, and I can only fix them as fast as I receive them. Sometimes new code changes will break older effects on items as well; because they're code issues, the fix is usually held off until the next GU, rather than hotfixed in. Unfortunately there's nothing I can do to speed up the fixes in those cases.<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>Having items with base damage/attack/protection/anything increase/decrease by a set percentage will always lead to this type of problem in the long run.</blockquote>The introduction of the rating system will address this. The avatar items were too far above the curve for it to fix them by itself, however.<cite> Freeline wrote:</cite><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%).<cite> Freeline wrote:</cite><blockquote>The Nerf is a CRAP Now things of "HELLO Kitty online" are harder than Eq2 Items lol GOOD SOE!</blockquote>So what class do you play in Hello Kitty Online?Edit: One typo... must... correct...</blockquote>you realize that the new effect on the anashti charm is pretty much worthless with most top end gear because with this nerf you are locking down a majority of top end item's proc rates, so that they cannot be modified making that effect along with the desolate aria effect from bards and aa ability blessings pretty much worthless.this is an extremely heavy handed nerf on alot of these items, i knew a nerf to these items was coming along but i figured they would make most items about the equivalent to loot that the zone boss mobs drop. one of the largest reasons for this backlash is not only are you nerfing them, you're making extemely easy instanced loot, items that drop of mid zone nameds not zone bosses and in some cases previous expansion loot a better options.example, warmaster dagger now has a top end of 370, thats an prime example of an item nerf thats a slap in the face when the Field General drops the Strategist dagger that is now way better and he's just as easy if not easier than any avatar and only has like 4 items on his loot table, and you can kill him again in 3 days, where as the warmaster dagger is like an 11% chance to drop on a 3-5 day cycle, not to mention the tangrin dagger and the sabre that drops absailus in pota now have higher top end damgethere are plenty more that i could go into more detail about but its time go raid for loot thats going to be nerfed anyways

Valanthe

08-20-2009, 09:04 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>arant wrote:</cite><blockquote>That truely is the best explanation I've gotten to cement quitting the game. I truely appreciate you letting us know that for the last 10 months we've gotten to enjoy the best the game has will have had to offer over the next couple years. There truely is no incentive to keep playing or even try out the expansion knowing that there is nothing better to come.</blockquote>Somehow you managed to interpret what I said with the exact opposite meaning. I explicitly stated that one reason for the nerf was to allow for natural item progression into the next expansion.</blockquote>The problem is, natural item progression next tier is going to make us WEAKER than we are this tier, with the lack of any new spells and the enormous nerfs we've already taken.I still don't understand why base damage has to be capped in the first place at 100%.

erratic

08-20-2009, 09:05 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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>Munzok is a push over, we kill him every week that he is up. The only thing that is hard about it is that he always drops the stupid accuracy charm that only ranger's would want. The reason more guilds aren't killing him regularily is because the zone is a disappointment compared to every other TSO raid zone. It is no fun.Avatars on the other hand require effort to camp, to monitor. Many guilds adjust their play styles just to kill them. If the issue is the constant drop rate on the charms then change it so it is not 100% drop rate and keep some of their power.

Crychtonn

08-20-2009, 09:05 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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>I really hope your statement is based on the long lock out timer for Munzok and not on how hard the mob that drops charms in there is compared to Avatars.

Hina

08-20-2009, 09:05 PM

<cite><cite><cite><cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote>Good afternoon. I've been digesting all the threads on the Avatar nerfs as quickly as possible, but there are a good number of them, and posts come almost faster than I can read. I've seen a few concerns expressed more often than others and I wanted to take a moment to address those. Additionally, I'd like to reiterate the point that specific item feedback has a much better chance of getting you results than simply stating that "all avatar gear is now useless". I'm keeping a list of individual item concerns, and will be reviewing their balance before these changes go live.So, on to the hot topics:<cite>Hecula wrote:</cite><blockquote>Since the gear will be getting hammered in the next expansion anyway, why is this [Avatar nerf] necessary? All its going to do is [Removed for Content] people off and make the time drag by even longer until SF.</blockquote><cite>Shamus08 wrote:</cite><blockquote>They can nerf the heck out of the gear when the expac hits and everyone has to regear anyways. There is no real reason to do it now. Since the put it off for so long whats it going to hurt to put it off til the expac.</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.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.<cite>isis23 wrote:</cite><blockquote>We are 6 months out from the next expansion with NOTHING to upgrade to to make up for the proc changes that have already been made</blockquote>The very next game update is going to offer some new item upgrades you can work towards. Most guilds still have not defeated Munzok and obtained any of his upgrades, either. You have not yet won the game <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /><cite>Hypnotic wrote:</cite><blockquote>How about devolpers work to fix TSO instance loot and set bonuses that are currently broken. Unbreak all the Avatar loot, fix set pieces (like the illusionist robe for instance). Then when those fixes are on test I would be glad to provide feedback to the devolpment team.</blockquote>Tuning the avatar gear is not diverting my attention from other fixes. I made the changes months ago, so they haven't even constituted any extra work for me recently. We receieve a lot of bugs; many of those are not actually bugs (user error) or are difficult to reproduce. The filtering process for these is extensive, so as not to waste the limited time we have. This means that I don't always receive bugs right away, and I can only fix them as fast as I receive them. Sometimes new code changes will break older effects on items as well; because they're code issues, the fix is usually held off until the next GU, rather than hotfixed in. Unfortunately there's nothing I can do to speed up the fixes in those cases.<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>Having items with base damage/attack/protection/anything increase/decrease by a set percentage will always lead to this type of problem in the long run.</blockquote>The introduction of the rating system will address this. The avatar items were too far above the curve for it to fix them by itself, however.<cite>Freeline wrote:</cite><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%).<cite>Freeline wrote:</cite><blockquote>The Nerf is a CRAP Now things of "HELLO Kitty online" are harder than Eq2 Items lol GOOD SOE!</blockquote>So what class do you play in Hello Kitty Online?Edit: One typo... must... correct...</blockquote>In response to your response to me, are you serious?? have you fought munzok? think you can do it without the gear we currently wear? We cant even do it yet.Is the purpose of this to also nerf the hell out of encounters to so that my guild has no challange whatsoever and can just mow things down with the 2 groups we'll be left with after everyone else quits?And disease charm makes a 1.8 proc 2.2x a minute not 2.4... for the record.if you want specifics....the necklace of the plague is garbage now. I can farm Shard of fear solo on my alt bruiser and get an item with 10% base, or, i can kill an avatar and get an item with 11% base? My belt of the desolate one: also useless. i can change it into a neck, sure, to replace the necklace of the plague that i paid ALL my dkp for. There are NO belts in TSO for mages that are an upgrade to trakanon's belt other than anashti's. Ykesha drops no mage loot, field general, no mage loot. the list goes on. you cant tell me i should be ok with this because maybe you have an item with 11 crit instead of 10 crit somewhere on a mob that isnt out yet.Charm of Rallos Zek: I'm not a scout, but looking at it on test, id say id be better off farming a HEROIC instance daily for the essence of mastery or the one that drops in EA over it.Charm of Berotxxulus: How many raiders here paid all their dkp, or close to it for theres? you really want to tell each of us that we wasted all that time and effort building DKP for an item like that?Evil set bonus: Why kill avatars when you can get the cloak/charm set from MMB off two very easy encounters and get a better bonus?Hina 80 Warlock</cite></cite></cite>

Korrupt

08-20-2009, 09:06 PM

Is the intent of this nerf to make avatars as irrelevant as domini? If not does the dev team realize this is the inevitable result of making contested loot worse off than instanced? If the dev team disputes the fact that contested loot is no longer the best in game what are examples of avatar items that are the best with these current changes?

dr_essex

08-20-2009, 09:13 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>isis23 wrote:</cite><blockquote>We are 6 months out from the next expansion with NOTHING to upgrade to to make up for the proc changes that have already been made</blockquote>The very next game update is going to offer some new item upgrades you can work towards. Most guilds still have not defeated Munzok and obtained any of his upgrades, either. You have not yet won the game <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>1) They're only potential upgrades because you nerfed the snot out of everything else. What little we've seen of Munzok's gear, though good, is not stellar. 2) Have you fought Munzok? Do you guys actually test this stuff before you put it out? He is extremely difficult even decked out in the avatar gear we have now. Nobody is going to "win the game" after this nerf goes through. Unless you intend to beat Munzok to a bloody pulp with a nerf sledgehammer. In which case why not fix the problem that was addressed back in December and again in January after battleweary was added to Avatars, and the problem with the expansion in general. FIX PROGRESSION! I fail to see how nerfing avatar gear when some mobs may already be undoable without it fixes that problem. Encounters were nerfed across the board over the past 8 months to make them more doable to the average player but not once were avatars beefed up to be harder then instance content. Not once was there any real attempt to fix progression and the grand answer to everything now seems to be to undermine everything end game raiders have achieved and tell them its for their own good.I shudder to think of how bad the gear next expansion is going to be if avatar gear is still going to be better then anything out there even after a full 10 levels of degradation.

arant

08-20-2009, 09:18 PM

<cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>arant wrote:</cite><blockquote>That truely is the best explanation I've gotten to cement quitting the game. I truely appreciate you letting us know that for the last 10 months we've gotten to enjoy the best the game has will have had to offer over the next couple years. There truely is no incentive to keep playing or even try out the expansion knowing that there is nothing better to come.</blockquote>Somehow you managed to interpret what I said with the exact opposite meaning. I explicitly stated that one reason for the nerf was to allow for natural item progression into the next expansion.</blockquote>The problem is, natural item progression next tier is going to make us WEAKER than we are this tier, with the lack of any new spells and the enormous nerfs we've already taken.I still don't understand why base damage has to be capped in the first place at 100%.</blockquote>Agreed. There is NO progression in backwards. Items of the future are still "downgrades" of items of today.

Valanthe

08-20-2009, 09:26 PM

On a side note, with the base damage and crit bonus that made proc gear so good at the beginning of the expansion gone, why can't procs crit again? And if not, why are there any procs that are unable to be affected by proc increasers, considering how.. well, bad they are because of it?

physht

08-20-2009, 09:27 PM

What is the advantage that the scout is equipped with Disease charm?It had the trigger chance and the Reuse ability ahead . However, it is not now.It completely became garbage.

Hina

08-20-2009, 09:27 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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>WHAT? we have these going to ALTS whereas all avatar charms are still needed by main players. you've got to be kidding me...

GangleG

08-20-2009, 09:31 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>arant wrote:</cite><blockquote>That truely is the best explanation I've gotten to cement quitting the game. I truely appreciate you letting us know that for the last 10 months we've gotten to enjoy the best the game has will have had to offer over the next couple years. There truely is no incentive to keep playing or even try out the expansion knowing that there is nothing better to come.</blockquote>Somehow you managed to interpret what I said with the exact opposite meaning. I explicitly stated that one reason for the nerf was to allow for natural item progression into the next expansion.</blockquote>So the new natural progression is Instanced gear > some heroic gear > contested gear ?

zormik

08-20-2009, 09:32 PM

<cite>Crychtonn wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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>I really hope your statement is based on the long lock out timer for Munzok and not on how hard the mob that drops charms in there is compared to Avatars.</blockquote>What fyreflyte said is not correct imo. He forgets to mention that avatars are on a rotation (good/evil/neutral) So you don't get a shot at that specific charm every 3days. On top of that with avatars you have a risk too loose them to a competing guild. Only ONE guild can get ONE neutral/evil/good charm every 3 days. We lost one avatar this xpack and a some of our members still don't have their 2nd charm that completes the set.On top of that they forget to mention the fact the crazy times you have to invest to lock down avatars. We've had calls at night at 2 and 4 o'clock cause avatars spawned, if we don't do this, we might loose the avatar, that's the principle of contested, which on itself already makes it a LOT harder then any instanced content. People leave their work early, camp avatars day in day out, have several accounts doing that, ...With this change (i'm not saying that nothing has to change, but the timing and the extreme nerf are the things that make us angry), all that hard work of locking avatars down, leaving early from work, sacrificing an enourmous amount of time, dkp, organisation, structure, ... will be rendered useless.As a guildleader seeing my guild today was depressing, people were already loosing the motivation and i'm pretty sure when this update hits live that i'll loose about half of my guild (as a lot of them have already stated). Which will just make the other half quit aswell.And besides that, the whole idea of contested raiding is what makes a lot of raiders tick. Just taking that away will make us leave anyway.With hardcore gamers leaving you loose a lot more then just a certain %, trust me.I've been loyal to this game since 2005 with several accounts but since today i abruptly realise that this game is gonna die, at least for me, but i'm afraid loosing the majority of the top of the piramed will only cause a chaineffect.On top of that with the replies from the devs in this post i realise that they don't really understand how the endgame works/ what a chunk of their playerbase thicks. If you see the nerfs, it comes over like it hasn't been thought trough at all.And the worst thing is that they don't seem to grasp what people loose (the crazy amount of effort it took to acquire those items) but also the fact that the glimpse of the future they give makes it look like the hardcore playstyle won't have enough to play for anymore.I hope i don't have to say, ' i told you so ' in the near future and that you rethink your strategy of handling this and start talking to the people who are affected by these changes.

circusgirl

08-20-2009, 09:38 PM

First off let me state that I am not oppossed to the idea that gear must be nerfed to keep from breaking things sometimes. I think that keeping things balanced is important--sometimes more important than the screams of upset players. It is my fervant hope that this recent pattern of nerfing on test, removing the nerfs, and then coming back a few months later to reimplement them with a bit more thought(as occurred with procs and avatar gear) will continue to be applied to other controversial but imbalanced areas, such as the fighter revamp. However, I think there are a few flaws with an approach that is this heavyhanded. Avatars, as they currently stand (with the exception of a very small number of easier ones such as storms and growth) are harder than any content in terms of strategy than any mob except for Ykesha and Munzok. More importantly, they are more rare. Taking down avatars requires a huge amount of time and manpower--not just to kill the mob, but to get the opportunity to kill the mob. Rarity of an item has been used many times to justify the placement of an overpowered item on an underpowered boss. Primarily this approach has been used to justify the presence of items like Najena's Ring of Readiness in zones as easy as NHT. Rarity, in that case enforced by a low drop rate, allows overpowered gear to be implemented. The same approach, in my opinion, should apply to avatars--only here it is not drop rate but spawn rate and competition that control the introduction of items into the game. Is it so bad for one or two guilds per server to have an easier time taking down Ykesha as a result of avatar gear? Perhaps my view of the situation is slightly skewed by being on Antonia Bayle, where a large portion of the population raids at least casually, but even there where we have had 3 guilds in a dominant position at various points in time it is a tiny portion of the population that has access to these items. And that tiny proportion of the population puts in a huge amount of work to obtain them. My concern is that by reducing the quality of these items below that of mobs like Gozak, Anashti, Uktap, Ykesha, etc. it will simply not become worthwhile for many guilds to put int hte effort to break into the avatar game. What this really hurts is the second best guild on every server--the one that's posting watchers every day in a desperate attempt to get in a few pulls before their more experienced competitors make a kill. Why should they put in that effort if they're going to win a choker that's worse than what they can get off of the instanced version of Anashti?I think that nerfs are necessary, yes. But these are simply too extreme.

Santi Dominiti

08-20-2009, 09:43 PM

<cite>Charmeur@Splitpaw wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Crychtonn wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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>I really hope your statement is based on the long lock out timer for Munzok and not on how hard the mob that drops charms in there is compared to Avatars.</blockquote>What fyreflyte said is not correct imo. He forgets to mention that avatars are on a rotation (good/evil/neutral) So you don't get a shot at that specific charm every 3days. On top of that with avatars you have a risk too loose them to a competing guild. Only ONE guild can get ONE neutral/evil/good charm every 3 days. We lost one avatar this xpack and a some of our members still don't have their 2nd charm that completes the set.On top of that they forget to mention the fact the crazy times you have to invest to lock down avatars. We've had calls at night at 2 and 4 o'clock cause avatars spawned, if we don't do this, we might loose the avatar, that's the principle of contested, which on itself already makes it a LOT harder then any instanced content. People leave their work early, camp avatars day in day out, have several accounts doing that, ...With this change (i'm not saying that nothing has to change, but the timing and the extreme nerf are the things that make us angry), all that hard work of locking avatars down, leaving early from work, sacrificing an enourmous amount of time, dkp, organisation, structure, ... will be rendered useless.As a guildleader seeing my guild today was depressing, people were already loosing the motivation and i'm pretty sure when this update hits live that i'll loose about half of my guild (as a lot of them have already stated). Which will just make the other half quit aswell.And besides that, the whole idea of contested raiding is what makes a lot of raiders tick. Just taking that away will make us leave anyway.With hardcore gamers leaving you loose a lot more then just a certain %, trust me.I've been loyal to this game since 2005 with several accounts but since today i abruptly realise that this game is gonna die, at least for me, but i'm afraid loosing the majority of the top of the piramed will only cause a chaineffect.On top of that with the replies from the devs in this post i realise that they don't really understand how the endgame works/ what a chunk of their playerbase thicks. If you see the nerfs, it comes over like it hasn't been thought trough at all.And the worst thing is that they don't seem to grasp what people loose (the crazy amount of effort it took to acquire those items) but also the fact that the glimpse of the future they give makes it look like the hardcore playstyle won't have enough to play for anymore.I hope i don't have to say, ' i told you so ' in the near future and that you rethink your strategy of handling this and start talking to the people who are affected by these changes.</blockquote>Very well put. TBH I dont even dare try to explain my feelings anymore because this post pretty much captures what every HC raider is fearing atm. People have invested so much time in this game that losing what they have worked for all this time just makes them besides themselves.TBH I really hope SOE reconsiders what they are planning and takes a step back and to think if losing the majority of their HC players just to cover up SOE's mistake is worth.And oh btw if you think it is harder to ubtain 2 evil charms then it is to get 2 Munzok charms.... you really get your facts straight about the game you work for or should consider actually playing then game.

Avirodar

08-20-2009, 09:44 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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>You need to re-evaluate your statement Fyreflyte. You are painfully wrong.The majority of raiders do not even see Avatar charms. Even more still have Avatar charms they are pining for (eg: bertox charm).

Valanthe

08-20-2009, 09:46 PM

<cite>Avirodar@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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>You need to re-evaluate your statement Fyreflyte. You are painfully wrong.The majority of raiders do not even see Avatar charms. Even more still have Avatar charms they are pining for (eg: bertox charm).</blockquote>To put it simply,If you can kill Avatars, you can kill Umzok. The latter isn't true.

Crychtonn

08-20-2009, 09:49 PM

Feedback for Fyreflyte1) Stop hating on ranger already. Did one steal your girlfriend as a child or something?2) Add 7 ranged crit and 7 ranged crit bonus to avatar scout BP.3) Leave Necklace of the Plague as it currently is. Instance Anashti necks are at 12 base plus they have crit and crit bonus which Plague doesn't. Plague is also much rarer to get.4) Add an exchange broker for avatar charms like you're doing for Anashti's mage belt. Otherwise every scout that took a Bertoxx charm gets 100% screwed over.5) Tell Rallos Zek to stop hating on rangers.PS ~ If SOE didn't want so much of this gear in game why didn't they change contested spawn cycles back to 7-10 days when they trippled the number of avatars that could spawn.

Quicksilver74

08-20-2009, 09:53 PM

This is a fundamental change to the foundation of the game in 2 different ways:1) - you are drasticly nerfing alot of gear that players have been working toward, and sending us all a message that says "Anything we work towards will eventually be taken away at a moments notice, so just don't bother even playing anymore"2) you are making ALOT of Contested loot WOSRE than instanced loot. Everquest 2 has never been like that. The reason contested loot shoudl be the best is because I don't have to wake up at 3 AM to log on and do an instance... Contesteds you have to fight for. This is essentially the start of an NGE for eq2.

hugh1

08-20-2009, 09:55 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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>We playing the same game? Bastion is a joke and takes one hour to the last encouter in the zoneOnly took me 6months to get my evil combo I wanted. Wanna give me 6months of my raid time back?

Quicksilver74

08-20-2009, 09:55 PM

<cite>Crychtonn wrote:</cite><blockquote>3) Add an exchange broker for avatar charms like you're doing for Anashti's mage belt. Otherwise every scout that took a Bertoxx charm gets 100% screwed over.</blockquote>This idea honestly would be seriously a good idea. This will lessen the tremendous blow to raiders.

Fyreflyte

08-20-2009, 10:11 PM

<cite>Crychtonn wrote:</cite><blockquote>1) Stop hating on ranger already. Did one steal your girlfriend as a child or something?2) Add 7 ranged crit and 7 ranged crit bonus to avatar scout BP.3) Leave Necklace of the Plague as it currently is. Instance Anashti necks are at 12 base plus they have crit and crit bonus which Plague doesn't. Plague is also much rarer to get.4) Add an exchange broker for avatar charms like you're doing for Anashti's mage belt. Otherwise every scout that took a Bertoxx charm gets 100% screwed over.5) Tell Rallos Zek to stop hating on rangers.PS ~ If SOE didn't want so much of this gear in game why didn't they change contested spawn cycles back to 7-10 days when they trippled the number of avatars that could spawn.</blockquote>1) Rangers are [Removed for Content] homewreckers!2) Already in the works.3) Plague also increases CA damage (not just spell) and has a melee range increase (minor for some classes, but awesome for others). The two are still comparable in power.4) Which charms need this? Is it primarily Disease for scouts?

Valanthe

08-20-2009, 10:14 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Crychtonn wrote:</cite><blockquote>1) Stop hating on ranger already. Did one steal your girlfriend as a child or something?2) Add 7 ranged crit and 7 ranged crit bonus to avatar scout BP.3) Leave Necklace of the Plague as it currently is. Instance Anashti necks are at 12 base plus they have crit and crit bonus which Plague doesn't. Plague is also much rarer to get.4) Add an exchange broker for avatar charms like you're doing for Anashti's mage belt. Otherwise every scout that took a Bertoxx charm gets 100% screwed over.5) Tell Rallos Zek to stop hating on rangers.PS ~ If SOE didn't want so much of this gear in game why didn't they change contested spawn cycles back to 7-10 days when they trippled the number of avatars that could spawn.</blockquote>1) Rangers are [Removed for Content] homewreckers!2) Already in the works.3) Plague also increases CA damage (not just spell) and has a melee range increase (minor for some classes, but awesome for others). The two are still comparable in power.4) Which charms need this? Is it primarily Disease for scouts?</blockquote>1) Did Aeralik brainwash you?2) Good, at least it will be even for Predators and Rogues.3) The CA damage only affects Scouts and Fighters, and the Spell Damage only affects Mages, except for Bards. If anything, the Avatar Neck should be equal in base damage for the simple fact that Bards are completely getting shafted where no other class is because they require both.4) Disease for Scouts would be the primary one. However, if you're going to open that can of worms, anyone with an Avatar Charm before the nerfs of one type should be able to do a one-time switch for any other.5) would you consider Giving Anashti ranged Crit to go with the spell and melee crit instead of Rallos Zek?

GangleG

08-20-2009, 10:16 PM

Why would you nerf the avatar offhands? They were not even close to being overpowered, and now they're worse than some of the easiest instanced mobs in the game. I'd like to hear your logic behind this (if there is any).

Santi Dominiti

08-20-2009, 10:17 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Crychtonn wrote:</cite><blockquote>1) Stop hating on ranger already. Did one steal your girlfriend as a child or something?2) Add 7 ranged crit and 7 ranged crit bonus to avatar scout BP.3) Leave Necklace of the Plague as it currently is. Instance Anashti necks are at 12 base plus they have crit and crit bonus which Plague doesn't. Plague is also much rarer to get.4) Add an exchange broker for avatar charms like you're doing for Anashti's mage belt. Otherwise every scout that took a Bertoxx charm gets 100% screwed over.5) Tell Rallos Zek to stop hating on rangers.PS ~ If SOE didn't want so much of this gear in game why didn't they change contested spawn cycles back to 7-10 days when they trippled the number of avatars that could spawn.</blockquote>1) Rangers are [Removed for Content] homewreckers!2) Already in the works.3) Plague also increases CA damage (not just spell) and has a melee range increase (minor for some classes, but awesome for others). The two are still comparable in power.4) Which charms need this? Is it primarily Disease for scouts?</blockquote> Every Thing if your nerfing our gear that we have spent months trying to get. Then give us the option to exchange our gear to fit what we need now instead of waiting another 6 months to get everything back.

Agaxiq

08-20-2009, 10:17 PM

Bertoxx charm is currently the highest-sought after charm by just about ANY class. At first glance, it looks like primary a mage charm with scout as well, but we have healers and tanks who want it. Why? Healers love the +Ability Reuse and the +Casting Speed, and the tanks want the +Reuse and proc. Empyrean Recovery is only for spells, so scouts and fighters wouldnt get any benefit from it. agressiv

Leisu

08-20-2009, 10:18 PM

Fyreflyte.......... /sigh.....people don't have the munzok charms because no one wants to go into that zone. It's boring and the loot is disappointing (i guess not after the nerf..har har har). You saying 2 evil avatar charms are easier to obtain than the munzok charms is absolutely ignorant. Do you even play this game or are you just going off some adhoc report? Come to think of it....aren't you the one that made all this gear? Way to go champ! You guys already gave the middle finger to raiders (not even hc raiders) with the nerf proc...."oooooh, you spent six months saving up dkp so that you could get that specific item when/if it dropped? Sorry....but not really. I messed up and left it in game for 6 months". Now it's a "oh hey, yeaaaaa, we decided I didn't do a good enough job designing this in relation to everything, so we're going to just nerf the hell out of all of it...yeaaaaaaa". Also, part of the reasoning you guys are giving is that avatars aren't that hard....So please go ahead and nerf bloodthirsty chokers and mythicals. I mean seriously be consistent......oh wait, that'd [Removed for Content] off too many of the players. Weak. Did you even look at comparable items when you started nerfing? How in God's name could you think it's reasonable to nerf chest pieces to be less than instanced chest pieces? The avatar dagger is now less desireable than the one off Tangrin...ya know...that contested mob from last expansion....and less than the field general dagger....which that encounter is pathetic after all the nerfs that have been done. The fact we have to even make this thread makes me absolutely sick. There's no point in trying to obtain the best gear anymore. The standard has been set this expansion. It's just going to get nerfed every 3-6 months. /puke

circusgirl

08-20-2009, 10:23 PM

Now that I've actually had time to look at each piece, a few issues, mostly from a brawler's perspective. I'm not going to question the idea of why you're nerfing, just suggest fixes to a few oversights I see.Charm of Mithaniel MarrI actually like the change to this charm, with one slight problem--While this charm has shield effectiveness, it lacks deflection chance entirely, and as a result is useless to 33% of tanks (brawlers). Please add +3 deflection chance to match the +3 shield effectiveness on this item.Charm of the Tribunal Again, this charm offers shield effectiveness for plate tanks, but still lacks deflection chance. I'm really not sure how this happened, since the brawler community has been requesting a fix here for ages, but please add +5 deflection chance to match the +5 shield effectiveness on this item.Fist of JudgementOh, where to start on this item... This weapon was of questionable quality even before the nerfs, as the fact that void knuckles (a drop off of Pentaclypse who is far, far, FAR easier than even the easiest avatars and especially the neutral avatars) were slashing and as a result able to be adorned with something decent made this item arguably not an upgrade for many brawlers. Now with void knuckles made crushing, and as a result only able to receive a meager and useless +6 crushing or defense as an adornment, this item would be an upgrade...except that it does LESS damage than a mob only halfway through Palace's progression. Void knuckles have a damage rating of 111.9, while the avatar fist has an extremely meager rating of 105. That's abysmal. It has a lower damage rating than the hammer that drops off of TYTHUS. Tythus, a mob killed near the very beginning of progression in the expansion! That is just plain ridiculous. The proc is by no means exceptional either. Please, please, please fix this item. I know that it's become popular to say that avatar items are "trash" now, but this really is an example of an item that is easily outperformed by gear that is very, very early in instanced progression. It really needs a complete rework. I would suggest the following:<ul><li>Bump the damage rating up to or exceeding 111.9, so that it is not outdamaged by the void knuckles/coupled hammer of distrust.</li><li>Rework the proc entirely. I would suggest removing it entirely and simply replacing it with the clickable ability Ferocious Presence (the hate siphon present on the Trakanon Shield) since brawlers have such extreme difficulties with aggro and are the only tank classes that lack the option of using the Trakanon shield to mitigate this difficulty.</li></ul><div>Enchanted Gi of WarI'm not a fan of this nerf, of course, but it at least seems mostly in line with what you're trying to do. It seems a little extreme to both nerf it from base damage to melee crit bonus AND to drop it from 10 to 7, though. I would suggest either 7 base CA damage or 10 melee crit bonus.</div><div></div><div>Wu's Enlightened ChestwrapsWhile I think you have a strong argument that +base CA damage is an overpowered stat, and that it should never have been put on so many items, I don't think that +base taunt amount is particularly powerful at all. While base CA damage effects 20+ CAs, with Base taunt amount we're only really talking about 2-6 CAs that are effected. Perhaps if you go through with the original fighter revamp's plans to increase the value of our taunts it will make sense, but taunts are so underpowered right now that a 10% modification doesn't add much at all. I would leave +base taunt value unnerfed on all fighter items that use it.</div><div></div><div>Void Knuckles</div><div>Not avatar gear, but I noticed this change when I logged in to test as well. These items have been changed from slashing to crushing. While this is a slight boost in dps, since brawlers typically have a higher +crushing modifier than they do +slashing, this has one very serious side effect: crushing adornments are grossly and horrifically inferior to slashing ones. Slashing weapons have a +3% riposte adorn available, while crushing only has +6 defense (a tiny, tiny amount of CONTESTED avoidance) available as a defensive option. Please either return this item to slashing or release with THIS UPDATE (i.e., not in 6 months) a recipe for a 1-handed crushing adornment that offers either +3% riposte to match the slashing adorn or +3 mitigation increase (since plate tanks get an avoidance adornment, a mitigation adornment would be appropriate for leather tanks).</div>

Nakash

08-20-2009, 10:26 PM

aITEM 1477297102 -1805258309:[Breastplate of Seething Hatred]/aIs worse then all Set BPs for tanks after the change.Removing Base Damage and Base Taunt completely is a bad choice, Turning down as on all other items would have been more reasonable. Main reason for wearring this Item over set items was increase in Damage->Hate.Wearing the BP now is absolut not worth loosing the set boni anymore.But it dosnt really matter cause there is no other avatar item in amor slot left now worth wearing above the set. Sad but true.

hellfire

08-20-2009, 10:37 PM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote>Dear Kiara, I am writing you this letter based on facts not passion or anger. Fact #1: Brenlo's great ideas and insight helped SWG go from 200k subs to about 20k in a few short months. I realize maybe my numbers are not 100% accurate, but that facts they discribe are, he killed SWG with his changes.Fact #2: You let the nerf/change monster loose on EQ2 and im afraid he is doing this ( KILLING IT) to our game as well. GRATZ, GG SOE!!!</blockquote>Your facts are incorrect. Brenlo was never in charge of SWG, my dear. I think it's great that you want to put him in positions that he never was in. He was in charge of Community Relations then... HE didn't make the decisions on SWG, nor did he implement them. All he did was tell you about them.Which leads me to seriously doubt your other "facts."Once again. Opinion and passion are lovely and great things which we encourage here. However, please have actual facts if you wish to attack any member of my team and retain your posting privileges.Thank you <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>He thought NGE was a great idea.... nothing else to be said about that.He also said everyone should see everything in game and there should be very liitle gap between casuals and end gamers ......."because everyone pays the same amount".This was at panels at Fan Faire.....yeah makes tons of sense on that aspect also.Decisions being made now and the direction the game is making myself and guildmates ask our selfs...why bother to long in to play anymore.

Agaxiq

08-20-2009, 10:41 PM

<cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Charm of Mithaniel MarrI actually like the change to this charm, with one slight problem--While this charm has shield effectiveness, it lacks deflection chance entirely, and as a result is useless to 33% of tanks (brawlers). </blockquote>Considering most guilds which kill avatars dont even run with a brawler in raid, and the fact that over 33% of our loot seems to be brawler only loot, I'd disagree with this.If anything, make it smart loot and not drop anything brawler if not preset. Hell, we haven't even been killing Avatars for long and we're already about to start channel selling it because all of our alts already have most of the pieces.agressiv

Mordicus

08-20-2009, 10:42 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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>thankyou for providing me and my guild with comic relief as we raid tonight, were having a lot of fun with this one ; )cheers - Mero

ShamusOB

08-20-2009, 10:58 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote>Good afternoon. I've been digesting all the threads on the Avatar nerfs as quickly as possible, but there are a good number of them, and posts come almost faster than I can read. I've seen a few concerns expressed more often than others and I wanted to take a moment to address those. Additionally, I'd like to reiterate the point that specific item feedback has a much better chance of getting you results than simply stating that "all avatar gear is now useless". I'm keeping a list of individual item concerns, and will be reviewing their balance before these changes go live.So, on to the hot topics:Tune the instanced content to instanced gear like it should be. Seriously why would you tune mobs to the people who put in more time and take contesteds???? <cite>Shamus08 wrote:</cite><blockquote>They can nerf the heck out of the gear when the expac hits and everyone has to regear anyways. There is no real reason to do it now. Since the put it off for so long whats it going to hurt to put it off til the expac.</blockquote> 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.So stop balancing content around Avatar loot. You've never done it in the past why start now??? We work hard for rare loot who cares if we kill and plow through content faster then people who don't log in and put in the effort to kill contested mobs.And seriously progression was trashed the day that guilds got tank hats and BPs AT THE START OF EXPAC why are you trying to "FIX" that now? where were you 9 months ago????Also why are you DEVs trying to balance instance mobs around contested loot??? I mean seriously! <cite>isis23 wrote:</cite><blockquote>We are 6 months out from the next expansion with NOTHING to upgrade to to make up for the proc changes that have already been made</blockquote> The very next game update is going to offer some new item upgrades you can work towards. Most guilds still have not defeated Munzok and obtained any of his upgrades, either. You have not yet won the game <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" />Because the items from Munzok aren't worth putting time into that rediculous encounter. No one cares about that entire zone outside of maby healers and mages wanting gozak hats.<cite>Freliant wrote:</cite><blockquote>Having items with base damage/attack/protection/anything increase/decrease by a set percentage will always lead to this type of problem in the long run.</blockquote>The introduction of the rating system will address this. The avatar items were too far above the curve for it to fix them by itself, however.So make it all lvl 79 gear the day the xpac goes live. Problem solved. Your solution is terrible to make us all unhappy. Really i hope people actually clear your new zone. I wont be around to care and i think plenty of guilds wont clear that one either.</blockquote>

circusgirl

08-20-2009, 11:10 PM

<cite>Agaxal@Kithicor wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Vinka@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Charm of Mithaniel MarrI actually like the change to this charm, with one slight problem--While this charm has shield effectiveness, it lacks deflection chance entirely, and as a result is useless to 33% of tanks (brawlers). </blockquote>Considering most guilds which kill avatars dont even run with a brawler in raid, and the fact that over 33% of our loot seems to be brawler only loot, I'd disagree with this.If anything, make it smart loot and not drop anything brawler if not preset. Hell, we haven't even been killing Avatars for long and we're already about to start channel selling it because all of our alts already have most of the pieces.agressiv</blockquote>The current trend in itemization is to put deflection chance in equal quantity on each and every piece of gear that has shield effectiveness on it that is useable by all fighters. This is seen on the Tainted Ring of Anashti's Will, the Charm of Quellious, Ridged Dragonspine Girdle, avatar set bonuses, etc. It does NOT mean that this item will be any less valuable for plate tanks, and they have never removed anything from an item to my knowledge when they added deflection chance to it when shield effectiveness was already present. There is no actual reason to oppose this suggested change, as it harms no one and only benefits brawlers.As for brawler only loot, given that brawlers make up 2 in 24 classes (8.3% of classes) and there is only 1 brawler-only item on a loot table of 47 items (2.1% of loot) the level of brawler loot does not seem unreasonable. Even if you include brawler/druid loot and up that to 3 items, its still only 6.1% of the loot table, and then you're talking about 16.6% of classes. My guess is you just had an unlucky streak with the RNG.

TwistedFaith

08-20-2009, 11:17 PM

<cite>Kindalar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Here are some specifics:When I examine loot and decide to commit months to raiding, and waiting, I want to know that I'm going to get exactly what it is I set out to get. A few months ago you proposed to nerf Avatar loot. This idea was met with an equally passionate, angered response. What did you do? You told us you were not going to do the nerf.Then you waited 2 months.Then you said, "Sorry guys, we have to nerf, nothing we can do.".This was, again, met by passion and anger about the nerfing.And now, after you went through that process of letting down your gamer community by nerfing loot that takes months to attain, what do you do with that knowledge? You AGAIN prepare do the exact same thing. You come to us and say "sorry, we can't give you better items" You say, "sorry, we have to nerf you again".I've played this game for over 5 years. Created my account the day EQII went live. I've played with the best guilds in the game, with the best players in the game.I will absolutely 100% cancel my account and never look back if you do this again. It shows you have no respect for players and that you do not learn from your own mistakes.It proves that in a position of leadership, you are leaderless.Maybe you read this and say, "oh more passion, no substance". And if you do, and you continue with this process of releasing items and then reducing their effectiveness, and then applying some look of confusion on your faces b/c people are sick of this process, well then, you've made me 100% right in my decision to never drop another second of my time into a game that has no effective leadership or direction.You guys had the MMO world in your hands. WOW has blown you away with over 10,000,00 subscriptions. You wonder why? The man in the mirror.You have some nerve telling people that pay subscriptions to run over to test and submit feedback. Jobs that you should be paying QA personnell to do. Jobs that your developers should be doing. Jobs that should be built in and supported by the subscription fees paid by your gaming community. I shouldn't have to justify to you why you should not take away something you've already given me.Really, your not in this cooperatively. If you were you would never put your high end community in the same situation that they were in just a few months ago when you saw how painful it was.Fact is, if the gear wasn't soooo much greater, why would we spend hours and hours trying to attain it? If avatar loot is going to net me +2 more crit, I won't play as much. Intersting how that will decrease your need to develop more content in that scenario, for the same subscription fee.We are a needy bunch at the top, but that's also what drives the "fantasy" of alot of other players that don't have the time or capability to achieve the pinical.Your absolute lack of respect that folks will spend this much time mastering what you put out, only to be rewarded by your repeated displays of lack of foresight should be intollerable to more than just the gamer community. They should be intolellerable to you at SOE.Seriously, step it up. Stop making planning mistakes. Stop spending way to little time testing the items your developing and how they interact with your encounters.Just like you suggest you "won't tell us a second time to keep it civil", this is your last time to show your community the respect it deserves. I'm done giving you second chances also.Kindalar -- Butcherblock -- DA</blockquote>Hands down one of the best posts on these forums for many a year. Quoted in full.Read it. Understand it. Do something about it.

Agaxiq

08-20-2009, 11:20 PM

The Good Avatar Leather BP is usable by brawlers and druids, but is really only a brawler BP. No druid in their right mind would wear it.The neutral fists are brawler only.The Evil Avatar Leather BP is more offensive, and while its primarily a melee warden BP, its probably not good enough to offset the 6-set bonus druids would want since they'll want the Gozak hat. I will admit I don't see brawlers wearing it though.agressiv

SantiagoDraco

08-20-2009, 11:26 PM

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="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

arant

08-20-2009, 11:31 PM

<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>95% of the people not killing avatars still wouldnt be able to kill avatars.. this can easily be seen by looking at their current instance progression.

hugh1

08-20-2009, 11:39 PM

<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>Didnt see anyone on this thread come out and say omg avatars are badass or super hard, the thing with Avatar loot nerf is the time factor, People leave work, make sacrfices in real life to kill them putting over more important things at time or logging in at insane times at night / mornings to kill them. Unlike Instance content it doesnt sit there waiting for your raid to show up, YOU need to put effort into going to there, tracking them/camping and then killing the spawn.Id hate to know how much time ive spent camping 3 spawn windows in TSO.

Tehom

08-20-2009, 11:39 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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>This is simply not true from several perspectives. From a difficulty perspective, all the mobs up to and including Umzok, who drops the charms, are far easier than evil avatars, especially when you consider that evil avatar charms need to be combined in a fashion that make sense for specific classes. For example, War only benefits melee and doesn't do anything for rangers. If you ignore difficulty and go by -rarity-, it's much harder to get two charms (1 every 3-6 days) and contested (we routinely race for every avatar on our server), than for Umzok who is instanced to 1 per raid force every 5 days. Ultimately the number of Umzok charms will dwarf the number of evil charms on more populated servers. Frankly, the biggest problem with the Umzok charms is that one of them is dedicated to summoners, which was created a trash item in his loot table. Given how rare summoners already are, it pretty much guaranteed that the item would rot/go to alts almost immediately, which is what it did for us.Unless you were talking about 'Munzok charms' to refer to charms that drop from Munzok the Corrupter himself that we haven't seen yet. In that case you're certainly right about them being harder to obtain.As far as specific nerfs go, Necklace of the Plagues really is one of the most unreasonable ones. Players are comparing it to the new mage neck, and for that the range increase to spells is completely meaningless. There's not a fight in the game it matters for (did you know there's player abilities with 50 range if it ever came up? Well, now you do!), so it's not exactly a compelling stat to balance the two. And given how much more rare plague is (a handful on each server, compared to the anashti belts we toss to alts), it's pretty hard to imagine that they should only be 'arguably comparable'. Necklace should be flat-out better, so it should have at least equal the same mage stats and then have the silly range increase no one cares about anyway on it.

ShamusOB

08-20-2009, 11:41 PM

<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>Im suprised it took this long for someone to say omg I have a regular job and they don't.Also on a side note I could care less if you have the gear too if you stop crying about our loot because you wont get up at 3am to kill a mob. Or do you work your normal job at 3 am??

ShamusOB

08-20-2009, 11:42 PM

<cite></cite><blockquote><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></blockquote>Are you serious about harder to attain? There are just less of them because that zone is lame and people don't care to go in there and get it. Oh yea and they went to everyones alts or got melted for being the suck.

Ge'Sar

08-20-2009, 11:43 PM

So I left work today and my Mazda rx8 was gone, there was an old pinto in my parking spot. I noticed a note on the car, so I read it. Mazda had taken my car and left me this one. It seems that they felt this years model wasn't quite as good as last years and they were worried that I wouldn't go out and buy this years model if i still had my old Rx8. But this note explained how now I got to be excited about working towards a new rx8!Brillant business plan!

Quicksilver74

08-20-2009, 11:49 PM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Hecula wrote:</cite><blockquote>Since the gear will be getting hammered in the next expansion anyway, why is this [Avatar nerf] necessary? All its going to do is [Removed for Content] people off and make the time drag by even longer until SF.</blockquote><cite>Shamus08 wrote:</cite><blockquote>They can nerf the heck out of the gear when the expac hits and everyone has to regear anyways. There is no real reason to do it now. Since the put it off for so long whats it going to hurt to put it off til the expac.</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>So lemme get this perfectly sraight.... You are telling me, that Current raiders who are avatar geared.... Are so powerful, that if theyr gear was reduced to 33% effectiveness, it woudl STILL be more powerful than end-game lvl 90 gear? Sounds like you completely screwed up the lvl 90 gear. If we as a playerbase are at our "peak" right now... and can only go downhill from here, then EQ2 is dead.

Quicksilver74

08-20-2009, 11:58 PM

God you gusy screw up itemization so bad and then make us pay for your mistakes! News flash, WE PAY YOU, which means you WORK for US. Quit slacking, and just make better upgrades in T9 and you won't have this problem. Seriously your gonna punish us because you don't know how to itemize properly?

Gisallo

08-21-2009, 12:04 AM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Your facts are incorrect. Brenlo was never in charge of SWG, my dear. I think it's great that you want to put him in positions that he never was in. He was in charge of Community Relations then... HE didn't make the decisions on SWG, nor did he implement them. All he did was tell you about them.Which leads me to seriously doubt your other "facts."Once again. Opinion and passion are lovely and great things which we encourage here. However, please have actual facts if you wish to attack any member of my team and retain your posting privileges.Thank you <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" /></blockquote>One may well be correct in saying that Brenlo was just the messenger with SWG, but at Fan Faire he was pretty clear in saying that he thinks the huge differences between gear, casual vs hard core raider, is wrong and that also the fact that content is scaled along theses lines is also wrong.I am NOT going to argue whether he is right or wrong in regards to this. I will also honestly say I have never killed an Avatar so this particular nerf doesn't effect me in the least. The thing is though NO video game can be all things to all people. If people want little to no difference between crafted and even the hardest mob drops, they need but go to LOTRO. If people want easier access to great items (via various mechanics) or the chance to have really great items drop off of less than the hardest mobs they need but go to WoW, or even WAR. What is clear however is that MANY people play this game because it is not WoW, LOTRO, they play it because its EQ2.Now yes there are people who complain that there is too much difference between the gear an Avatar Killer has vs a VERY casual person. That being said if the gear from a VERY difficult CONTESTED mob is not going to be a clear upgrade over everything else in the game why bang you head on teh wall killing Avatars. If their is no logical reason (beyond saying "the Avatar died to us") then why have the Avatar in the first place? You can then apply this logic down through the foot chain, progression based x4 raid nameds, x2 raid names, tiered heroic instance nameds etc.This is a 5 year old game, with a clunky 5 year old graphics engine, BUT that has been one of the few that actually rewards those who put in the most time and effort. If you take this away, then one of the main things that makes this game stand out and thus still vital is eliminated. I do agree with one thing that has been said. Some of the end Names in the current raid zones are as difficult as some Avatars (this is told to me from members of a very good WW1st raid guild). Even with this though there is one IMPORTANT difference; should you not get clearly better loot from a mob that can be ganked from under your guild because they have a better war dialing network, and that you may not see for months, than one you have but to reset the zone timer on to go and kill again at your liesure? In so far as suggestions. I think ti needs to made clear if there are going to be T9 avatars. I ask this because with whatever gear degredation system that is incoming with the next update, isn't the nerf needless? The only thing that makes any sense with such a preemptive nerf, which really no other gear is getting, would be because there will simply be T8 Avatars again, else would the degredation system not be enough? If any proposed degredation system would not be adequete then I think we deserve to be told why. I recall a Producers letter that stated there would be better communication to prevent fighter 2.0 like debacles. Knowing these facts would certainly help us in giving some constructive feedback.

Hecula

08-21-2009, 12:07 AM

<cite>Crabbok@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote> If we as a playerbase are at our "peak" right now... and can only go downhill from here, then EQ2 is dead. </blockquote>It's what happens when a system that is based on hard caps, soft caps, diminishing returns and percentage-base skills gets close to the top of the curve. Everything flattens out. Interesting that when I proposed they work on doing away with this system in favor of a linear one, everyone seemed to think it was a bad idea. I guess these types of "resets" are better.

Gisallo

08-21-2009, 12:09 AM

<cite>ShamusOB 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>Im suprised it took this long for someone to say omg I have a regular job and they don't.Also on a side note I could care less if you have the gear too if you stop crying about our loot because you wont get up at 3am to kill a mob. Or do you work your normal job at 3 am??</blockquote>I'm on your side to an extent Shamus, even though I do not kill avatars, I do think the gear still needs to be better than the nerf on test. BUT my normal job has shifts for me that end anywhere from midnight to 8am for a total of 40-60 hours a week depending on current duties and assignments. Probably best to just focus on priorities than to get caught up in arguments that can be easily rebutted.

Novusod

08-21-2009, 12:13 AM

<cite>Crabbok@Befallen 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>So lemme get this perfectly sraight.... You are telling me, that Current raiders who are avatar geared.... Are so powerful, that if theyr gear was reduced to 33% effectiveness, it woudl STILL be more powerful than end-game lvl 90 gear? Sounds like you completely screwed up the lvl 90 gear. If we as a playerbase are at our "peak" right now... and can only go downhill from here, then EQ2 is dead. </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.

Tehom

08-21-2009, 12:21 AM

<cite>Crabbok@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote>God you gusy screw up itemization so bad and then make us pay for your mistakes! News flash, WE PAY YOU, which means you WORK for US. Quit slacking, and just make better upgrades in T9 and you won't have this problem. Seriously your gonna punish us because you don't know how to itemize properly? </blockquote>Well, this isn't a good argument - regardless of whose fault it is, it's their job to correct errors. Now, what we can argue, and what I argue, is that they're going about it in a bad way.To me, the simplest solution is to make the real problem stats - base damage/healing increases, degrade at a faster rate than other modifiers via gear degredation. If you do this, then the problem completely resolves itself with new gear. And why not make this part of the system? We know that all stats are not created equal. Some matter more than others. So why in the world would you have them degrade at the same rate? You want to get rid of the biggest and most disruptive modifiers first so they can't impact future itemization. Even if you nerf avatar gear -now-, you should still make base increases degrade faster to avoid any future problems anyway. Do the same with crit bonus, and you can then use both mods liberally through all current content.As far as designing new content this expansion, you have to be creative anyway. Do you really think most players will eagerly want to conquer new content just to regain ground they've already lost and erase the massive nerfs to their characters? There's dozens of ways you can make compelling gear to players who are already capped on base modifiers via interesting procs or clicks that we've seen examples of in previous expansions, or with gear designed to counter specific elements of current content. For example, there's no gear in the game that assists with disarms or target locks at present, and anti-status-effect gear for casters is extremely limited. There's very little gear that helps mages with survivability against ubiquitous trauma AEs, there's no gear specifically designed to act as a counter to being one-shotted, nothing to counteract casting speed slows or interrupts, and only two items with the Preparation effect so sought after by sorcerors (none of which are on x4 gear). If you just -asked- players what they specifically would want to see as valuable to them for current content for their given archetypes, players would cheerfully provide you with plenty of examples. They'd need to be designed to degrade as players level up (probably via them only applying to up to level 91 effects, say), but there's plenty of options.

Ge'Sar

08-21-2009, 12:25 AM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Valanthe wrote:</cite><blockquote>If anything, the set bonuses are too low. They don't encourage people to use the Avatar Charm 2 sets over the Munzok set. Adding Crit Bonus would make them much more desireable.</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>Do you play the same game the rest of us do?Do you play?Do you guys have a raid force of testers? I mean munzok is unkillable by people wearing this 'massively overpowered gear' and somehow that's not raising any attention at all.

Ge'Sar

08-21-2009, 12:29 AM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>arant wrote:</cite><blockquote>That truely is the best explanation I've gotten to cement quitting the game. I truely appreciate you letting us know that for the last 10 months we've gotten to enjoy the best the game has will have had to offer over the next couple years. There truely is no incentive to keep playing or even try out the expansion knowing that there is nothing better to come.</blockquote>Somehow you managed to interpret what I said with the exact opposite meaning. I explicitly stated that one reason for the nerf was to allow for natural item progression into the next expansion.</blockquote>No, he got it right on, just because he's not accepting your circular logic is frustrating you. You're setting people way behind what your new upgrades are going to be and then want people to be excited for an upgrade that is still behind what we have now. It's laughable that you even think anyone is going to be yay, great plan.It's like stealing ten thousand from my bank account so you can lend me a twenty. Thanks buddy!

Crychtonn

08-21-2009, 12:45 AM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Crychtonn wrote:</cite><blockquote>1) Stop hating on ranger already. Did one steal your girlfriend as a child or something?2) Add 7 ranged crit and 7 ranged crit bonus to avatar scout BP.3) Leave Necklace of the Plague as it currently is. Instance Anashti necks are at 12 base plus they have crit and crit bonus which Plague doesn't. Plague is also much rarer to get.4) Add an exchange broker for avatar charms like you're doing for Anashti's mage belt. Otherwise every scout that took a Bertoxx charm gets 100% screwed over.5) Tell Rallos Zek to stop hating on rangers.PS ~ If SOE didn't want so much of this gear in game why didn't they change contested spawn cycles back to 7-10 days when they trippled the number of avatars that could spawn.</blockquote>1) Rangers are [Removed for Content] homewreckers!2) Already in the works.3) Plague also increases CA damage (not just spell) and has a melee range increase (minor for some classes, but awesome for others). The two are still comparable in power.You can't forget that + base damage no longer effect proc's. So it your a scout you get the CA base and a mage you get the Spell base. It's not like they overlap anymore. And yes the increased range is nice but definitely not huge. And to get that you have to give up the crit from the Anashti necks. I think they're all pretty close to being on par with each other. With Plague being slightly better (current version) but also much rarer and harder to get. Which is why it should be slightly better.BTW why does the new mage neck get Crit and Crit Bonus while the melee version only gets to have Crit on it? If the melee one had the same 7 crit and 3 crit bonus the new mage one has it'd be as good if not better then the current version of the Plague neck.4) Which charms need this? Is it primarily Disease for scouts?Disease for scouts and tanks for sure. The new version would be useless to them. Rangers would swap to Anashti or Innorruk (sp?) since they'd be the only two evil charms useable by them. Other melee scouts and tanks could also switch to Rallos Zek as a third option.</blockquote>PS ~ Add a mage belt to Ykesha already. I'm tired of listening to them cry about it <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

ShamusOB

08-21-2009, 12:47 AM

I for one am pretty glad that he wants to nerf gear so the upcomming lame gear in the new x4 will be upgrades. I also hope that the new zone is super cool like MMB and totally worth it for people to run it. So super cool people run it once and dont bother again till they make it worth while.Im also pretty stoked he told us how lame the gear in the new expansion will be, so once again thanks for saving me the 50 bucks the expac woulda cost and the 15 monthly after the nerf.

Gisallo

08-21-2009, 12:52 AM

<cite>Hecula wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Crabbok@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote> If we as a playerbase are at our "peak" right now... and can only go downhill from here, then EQ2 is dead. </blockquote>It's what happens when a system that is based on hard caps, soft caps, diminishing returns and percentage-base skills gets close to the top of the curve. Everything flattens out. Interesting that when I proposed they work on doing away with this system in favor of a linear one, everyone seemed to think it was a bad idea. I guess these types of "resets" are better.</blockquote>The thing is though that the hard cap, soft cap and diminishing returns point goes UP with each level cap rise. With this in mind there doesn't appear to be a need for SWEEPING changes and over all nerfs. All that needs to happen is shorten the distance between the tiers (so you don't have people at the hard cap self buffed) of gear but to make sure when you are making the gear that the tiers are maintained. A raid instance named should NOT drop an item = or > as an Avatar period just as a legendary instance named should NOT drop items = > a Raid instance named. If you do this and just have the stuff grey out every 10 lvls the problem is pretty much solved.

circusgirl

08-21-2009, 12:53 AM

<cite>Chath@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Crabbok@Befallen wrote:</cite><blockquote>God you gusy screw up itemization so bad and then make us pay for your mistakes! News flash, WE PAY YOU, which means you WORK for US. Quit slacking, and just make better upgrades in T9 and you won't have this problem. Seriously your gonna punish us because you don't know how to itemize properly? </blockquote>Well, this isn't a good argument - regardless of whose fault it is, it's their job to correct errors. Now, what we can argue, and what I argue, is that they're going about it in a bad way.To me, the simplest solution is to make the real problem stats - base damage/healing increases, degrade at a faster rate than other modifiers via gear degredation. If you do this, then the problem completely resolves itself with new gear. And why not make this part of the system? We know that all stats are not created equal. Some matter more than others. So why in the world would you have them degrade at the same rate? You want to get rid of the biggest and most disruptive modifiers first so they can't impact future itemization. Even if you nerf avatar gear -now-, you should still make base increases degrade faster to avoid any future problems anyway. Do the same with crit bonus, and you can then use both mods liberally through all current content.As far as designing new content this expansion, you have to be creative anyway. Do you really think most players will eagerly want to conquer new content just to regain ground they've already lost and erase the massive nerfs to their characters? There's dozens of ways you can make compelling gear to players who are already capped on base modifiers via interesting procs or clicks that we've seen examples of in previous expansions, or with gear designed to counter specific elements of current content. For example, there's no gear in the game that assists with disarms or target locks at present, and anti-status-effect gear for casters is extremely limited. There's very little gear that helps mages with survivability against ubiquitous trauma AEs, there's no gear specifically designed to act as a counter to being one-shotted, nothing to counteract casting speed slows or interrupts, and only two items with the Preparation effect so sought after by sorcerors (none of which are on x4 gear). If you just -asked- players what they specifically would want to see as valuable to them for current content for their given archetypes, players would cheerfully provide you with plenty of examples. They'd need to be designed to degrade as players level up (probably via them only applying to up to level 91 effects, say), but there's plenty of options.</blockquote>Wow...I think Chath pretty much hit the nail on the head here, and has a solution that pretty much solves your problem. If the issue is that item decay alone is not enough to make T9 upgrades desireable, then simply adjust how decay works to affect high-impact stats like base damage and crit bonus more. I think the fact that stats are not created equal needs to be taken into account when rebalancing avatar gear as well. For example, just about every blue stat that previously was +10 on an avatar BP has been changed to +7. However, stats like +base CA damage are generally overpowered, wile things like +10 base taunt value are quite underpowered (since they're impacting underpowered abilities, and aren't raising the cap for another stat like base damage does for +CA damage). To nerf both by the same amount is wrongheaded. 10 base CA damage does not equal 10 base taunt value, why treat the two stats as if they're the same when reworking avatar gear?

Gisallo

08-21-2009, 01:03 AM

<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>You are giving them far more credit than many of us are. I remember hearing from Fan Faire things about "going after WoW" how some people not being able to have access to content and gear wasn't right etc. All of this makes me fear something, but its because I read WAY to much.There have been studies of the MMO industry that include raiding going back to 2006. All of these studies note that the reason that WoW does so much better than EQ and EQ2 in terms of subscribers is because while raiding is integral to both of them, WoW is simply eaiser. Getting the gear is easier because the raids are more about the strats. Progression isn't as important as knowing the particular line dance for a mob. Once you get the line dance down the mob dies. In EQ which is focused on "high end" raiding, you need to go through progression to get gear, then once you get the gear you learn the line dance, BUT you need to gear everyone out before you move on to your next dance instructor or your dead.When you take what has been pointed out in the industry as the thing that has ham strung EQ's subscriber base AND put that together with the statements from fan faire and the proposed actions for gear I am fearful this game is going the way of WoW. Aeralki himself said that its really only % based things, read procs, that w2ill decay, +CA will not according to a post about degredation on either the Itemization or Gamplay forum. You really only get heavily into procs at the higher end. So its the higher end that will take the lion share of the degredation system if its level by level. Its all well and good, if SOE thinks this will bring more subscribers (I doubt it because its a 5 year old game with graphics to match) but at least be honest about it then and say "we are trying to level the playing field across all tiers. as much as it stinks for our business model we think mediocrity is better for our cash flow."

Somatic

08-21-2009, 01:04 AM

<cite>Salarionn wrote:</cite><blockquote>Dear Kiara, I am writing you this letter based on facts not passion or anger.Fact #1: Brenlo's great ideas and insight helped SWG go from 200k subs to about 20k in a few short months. I realize maybe my numbers are not 100% accurate, but that facts they discribe are, he killed SWG with his changes.Fact #2: You let the nerf/change monster loose on EQ2 and im afraid he is doing this ( KILLING IT) to our game as well. GRATZ, GG SOE!!!</blockquote>Best post. It's almost like maybe they want it to die and they have called in the kill squad. I read Kira post also... i guess maybe he is not the squad he is just the messanger of the killer squad. What a interesting job position. Very clever killer squad to not show your face.

Ge'Sar

08-21-2009, 01:09 AM

<cite>Ashmen_Skimmerhorn wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>GeSar wrote:</cite><blockquote>Third 5000k = Crappy wizard and not skilled at all.</blockquote>5000kk = 1000so; 5000k = 5000 x 1000 = 5,000,000 DPSThat would be the best wizard anyone has ever seen!I'm just joking around of course, just trying to lighten the mood.</blockquote>ya, I just noticed that myself <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> the other guy started <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Kiara

08-21-2009, 01:14 AM

Folks. I recognize, better than you think, that this is not a happy situation. None of us likes having to nerf anything.However I will not permit people to break the rules. There is no excuse.Please get civil again and treat each other and us with respect.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.

Mordicus

08-21-2009, 01:19 AM

<cite>Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:</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>You are giving them far more credit than many of us are. I remember hearing from Fan Faire things about "going after WoW" how some people not being able to have access to content and gear wasn't right etc. All of this makes me fear something, but its because I read WAY to much.There have been studies of the MMO industry that include raiding going back to 2006. All of these studies note that the reason that WoW does so much better than EQ and EQ2 in terms of subscribers is because while raiding is integral to both of them, WoW is simply eaiser. Getting the gear is easier because the raids are more about the strats. Progression isn't as important as knowing the particular line dance for a mob. Once you get the line dance down the mob dies. In EQ which is focused on "high end" raiding, you need to go through progression to get gear, then once you get the gear you learn the line dance, BUT you need to gear everyone out before you move on to your next dance instructor or your dead.When you take what has been pointed out in the industry as the thing that has ham strung EQ's subscriber base AND put that together with the statements from fan faire and the proposed actions for gear I am fearful this game is going the way of WoW. Aeralki himself said that its really only % based things, read procs, that w2ill decay, +CA will not according to a post about degredation on either the Itemization or Gamplay forum. You really only get heavily into procs at the higher end. So its the higher end that will take the lion share of the degredation system if its level by level. Its all well and good, if SOE thinks this will bring more subscribers (I doubt it because its a 5 year old game with graphics to match) but at least be honest about it then and say "we are trying to level the playing field across all tiers. as much as it stinks for our business model we think mediocrity is better for our cash flow." </blockquote>WoW has plenty of encounters that are gear checks, i played all of the content through Sunwell.The one thing that makes WoW so much easier is DBM, a UI mod that tracks every mobs abilites and gives you on screen warnings as to whats going on in the raid. There are also a ton of How-To videos for all of the mobs so you dont need to spend a ton of time figuring strats out for yourself, you watch the video and know exactly what to do.Someone brought up the point of casual vs hardcore, LOTRO vs EQ, and really thats the best question of all. What is your vision? What do you want EQ2 to be? ATM it doesnt seem like you have any vision or mission at all. If you want to move toward the casual end of MMOs why are you doing it in your 5th expansion? You cant expect to pull a complete 180 and have your subscribers be happy with it.

Ge'Sar

08-21-2009, 01:21 AM

<cite>Fyreflyte wrote</cite><blockquote>) Plague also increases CA damage (not just spell) and has a melee range increase (minor for some classes, but awesome for others). The two are still comparable in power.</blockquote>But they shouldn't be! <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />And if they must be.. the edge should be the avatar one.. and it's not!

Gisallo

08-21-2009, 01:24 AM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Folks. I recognize, better than you think, that this is not a happy situation. None of us likes having to nerf anything.However I will not permit people to break the rules. There is no excuse.Please get civil again and treat each other and us with respect.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>Kiara I agree things need to remain civil and we need to give constructive ideas BUT when one doesn't even know what the problem is with Avatar gear we have to scratch our heads. Are there going to be level 90 Avatars? If yes then why was the proposed degredation system not seen as adequete and instead an immediate nerf put into place for the Avatar gear? Are there NOT going to be level 90 Avatars for whatever reason and so the gear had to be nerfed to give an incentive to go and contest them in the next expansion?We want to give all of the constructive ideas in the world. BUT without knowing all of the whys it really leaves WAY to much room for speculation AND means we really can't give constructive ideas for alternate solutions because to give a solution you need to understand the problems these solutions were address. I will keep harping on the Producer letter where it was not only stated our feedback would be taken more seriously but where there would be A LOT more information coming from the devs to us so we could give such feedback in an informed fashion. I really haven't seen much more in the way of information from the devs other than "well there are some generic problems due to the upcoming expansion so we made these changes." This is status quo and not the increased dialogue we were promised.

Kriptini

08-21-2009, 01:24 AM

Let's give all casuals their myths while we're at it! Waitta minute...

Gisallo

08-21-2009, 01:25 AM

<cite>Merovius@Butcherblock wrote:</cite><blockquote>Someone brought up the point of casual vs hardcore, LOTRO vs EQ, and really thats the best question of all. What is your vision? What do you want EQ2 to be? ATM it doesnt seem like you have any vision or mission at all. If you want to move toward the casual end of MMOs why are you doing it in your 5th expansion? You cant expect to pull a complete 180 and have your subscribers be happy with it.</blockquote>That was me too <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" />. I did btw over simplify the WoW comparison. Yes there are gear checks BUT you can heal a raid (10 or 25 man) with a level 80 restoration druid wearing heroic and faction drops. Eventually you will hit a gear check mobs, BUT its still not as hard as it is in EQ2 by a long shot imho.

Kiara

08-21-2009, 01:29 AM

<cite>Galibier@Lucan DLere wrote:</cite><blockquote>Are there going to be level 90 Avatars? If yes then why was the proposed degredation system not seen as adequete and instead an immediate nerf put into place for the Avatar gear? Are there NOT going to be level 90 Avatars for whatever reason and so the gear had to be nerfed to give an incentive to go and contest them in the next expansion?</blockquote>These are good questions and I'll try to get answers for them when I am back in the office tomorrow... Unless someone can post answers tonight.

arant

08-21-2009, 01:30 AM

<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.</blockquote>Years of feedback was given on itemization that it was broken. It was for the most part ignored. This was not a new topic. There are many broken elements of the game that truely need fixing that just keeps getting bandaid patched.It has been repeatedly asked that any major changes that will happen to happen at an expansion change. Progression this expansion was messed up when guilds acquired crit mit gear on the original broken avatars. You didn't fix it then when it really mattered to the community, why try to fix it now when all it does is make them truely upset.Also there just seems to be a waste of resources in the effort to implement these nerfs on what affects less then the supposed 1% of the population. Statistically speaking its insignificant.

Ge'Sar

08-21-2009, 02:04 AM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Folks. I recognize, better than you think, that this is not a happy situation. None of us likes having to nerf anything.However I will not permit people to break the rules. There is no excuse.Please get civil again and treat each other and us with respect.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>I think there is a basic disagrement as to what defines broken that is simply being ignored. So for many you're saying please help us fix what isn't broken. We say it's broken so just shut up and respect we're right.

Lader

08-21-2009, 02:06 AM

"Are there going to be level 90 Avatars? If yes then why was the proposed degredation system not seen as adequete and instead an immediate nerf put into place for the Avatar gear?" fyre said that even with degredation the items would be better than some stuff you can get at 90.

Gisallo

08-21-2009, 02:19 AM

<cite>Lader wrote:</cite><blockquote>"Are there going to be level 90 Avatars? If yes then why was the proposed degredation system not seen as adequete and instead an immediate nerf put into place for the Avatar gear?" fyre said that even with degredation the items would be better than some stuff you can get at 90.</blockquote>I find that hard to believe simply because with the proposed degredation system the stuff that makes this really different (all the procs) will literally be GONE when you hit 90. How is gear that has half of its value eliminated going to be better than something 10 levels higher from an end game raid zone mob? I simply can't see the logic in that unless one of two facts exists. A) Flyte is being so myopic that he doesn't realize that some extra + crit mit, or +crit isn't as hard to replace as a killer proc (even with the proc nerf). heck right now with NO Avatar gear I am running at 92% heal crit its not HARD to find decent subsitutes with procs that will work at level. I think anyone with half a braind will take something with a couple + lower if it has a fully functioning proc or am I being silly?Option B) is that the differences between the teirs of gear is going to be nerfed into oblivion and the difference in gear between the casual and end game raider will be but a shadow of what it once was so that the Level 80 Avatar gear would still be outshining the gear from the level 90 end name in a raid zone.But again all of this is pure speculation because SOE will not give us enough info to be able to make informed decisions.

Gothun

08-21-2009, 02:32 AM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Folks. I recognize, better than you think, that this is not a happy situation. None of us likes having to nerf anything.However I will not permit people to break the rules. There is no excuse.Please get civil again and treat each other and us with respect.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>I don't understand why you keep stating that you're not getting any promising feedback from people when that's all these threads have been full of. Most of the people that've posted do not like these changes and don't want to see them go live. They've all posted reasons why, what it will do to the game, and where they stand on this subject. I agree with about 99% of everything said here, except for most of the things I've seen you post. I understand you're the forum mod or whatever and need to keep order, and that's fine and dandy, but saying that all of this is angst and hate toward SoE is totally false. The only reason people are pointing the finger at you guys is because you're doing exactly what you said you were going to change before with the tank changes that never went in, and that was to listen more to the player base.So far, I haven't seen that. There was maybe two or three posts in this thread by Fireflyte explaining things and confirming different things on these changes, but other than that, everything else has mostly been ignored, at least, from what I've seen. I'm taking the time out of my day to post this because these changes affect me and my playstyle, and the people that I play with, as well. All I see is everything being swept under the rug because of how it is presented. I'm sure everyone that's posted so far has been 100% honest about how they feel and what they'd like to see, and so far, that hasn't been acknowledged, at all. Sure, there's going to be emotion and the like because people love this game. The aspect that's being nerfed is the best part of the game for the playerbase it's affecting, being rewarded with awesome gear for doing what most people can't.As it's been said many times, these changes are going to make avatars null and make farming instances for the better gear even more tedious than it already is. All it's really going to do is give those guilds that don't/can't kill avatars the chance to do so because they won't be worth it anymore for those that currently do.But anyway, back to my original point. I don't really think you're listening to what people are saying, and just playing babysitter on these threads, which, like I said earlier, is fine. I'm also sure that it could be a lot worse than what it is and people could be a lot more brutal than they are with how they feel. Yes, as I also said before, people are going to have emotion about this, but I also think you're over looking a lot of the facts presented and only seeing it as hatred towards SoE for trying to do what they think is right, which is also fine since it's their game and they can do as they see fit. But nobody is reading this, that I can see, and taking it with an open mind, whether it's generalized statements or actual ideas about the certain items that people want to see changed, or not changed, in this case. These changes are probably going to go through and it's going to be even worse than it is now because nobody was listened to when they expressed their opinion and how they felt about the proposed changes.I'm sure a lot of what I just typed in the past thirty minutes is really obvious, and not worth the time I put into this post, but I feel it needed to be said. Take from it what you will and know that I was being completely honest with everything I said.

Somatic

08-21-2009, 02:43 AM

A lot of guilds use dkp.Players tend to get maxed on most instance gear then save up their dkp to buy endgame loot.So basically players have already spent their hard earned dkp on these items. Then after we have purchased the items we find out that the gear is actually garbage. That's the position SOE is putting players in.It's bait and switch. You guys baited us into spending our time collecting these items, and now after that work/ effort your switching them out with lower quality replacement.MMOPGs are about persistance. Item degration, and esp front end nerfs are destroyers of persistance. These games should always progress forward. Not change the equation/graph mid-way through the game. It ruins any kind of persistance that existed, it forces the players to not focus on the game, but instead on the company that runs it, and what we see is something we don't like.

Tehom

08-21-2009, 02:45 AM

<cite>Kiara wrote:</cite><blockquote>Folks. I recognize, better than you think, that this is not a happy situation. None of us likes having to nerf anything.However I will not permit people to break the rules. There is no excuse.Please get civil again and treat each other and us with respect.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>There's a few big communication issues here, I think.One is that I don't think many people have found a satisfactory answer to why gear degradation can't be used to solve the avatar gear problem for future expansions. We all know the real issue with avatar gear is base increases/crit bonus modifiers. So why can't those mods degrade at a faster rate than other mods and solve the problem? If future itemization this expansion in new content (such as Miragul's Planar Realm) helps players regain lost ground from the avatar nerfs, won't the problem continue to exist unless it's addressed via gear degradation anyway?I think there's also a disconnect about the availability of avatar gear compared to instance drops. I see comparisons between instanced drops where we've given dozens to alts and avatar gear where there might be 1 or 2 on the server. There's literally orders of magnitude difference in how easy some are to obtain, but they're making impossibly rare items worse than items which are as common as dirt. A particularly outrageous statement was Fireflyte saying that it was easier to get 2 evil avatar charms than to get Umzok charm. That's completely and demonstrably untrue on my server, and betrays a shocking ignorance of the scarcity of resources that avatars represent over instanced content as well as the trivial difficulty of the instanced mobs involved compared to avatars.There's also a disconnect about the idea that nerfing avatar loot will allow them to fix progression -this- expansion. The question becomes, with what items? Players see the most gains from getting their set gear and minor gains from peripheral slots with a few notable exceptions. But those are essentially all done by the time players kill Ykesha. I'm unsure exactly with what items players are supposed to gear up on a pure instanced path for Munzok. So unless you're planning on massively revamping existing loot tables along with making Miragul's Planar Shard into a veritable candyland of overpowered items, I don't really see how progression is supported - are players supposed to somehow turn into supermen the moment they get a hat they might wear from Gozak if they're priests or mages and get a charm from Umzok? The items simply don't make enough of a difference in a system of incremental gains and diminishing returns to support the progression path you seem to indicate that you want. They don't even come close.Another part of the problem may be from a fundamental disconnect on what players and devs consider to be worthwhile stats. For example, Fireflyte posted that Necklace of the Plague was 'comparable' to the new anashti necks because it had a base CA modifier and range increase. To mages, that sort of statement is absurd when the item is demonstrably worse than the new anashti choker he created in every significant way (lower base damage, no spell crit bonus), because he may be incorrectly evaluating range increase as a good stat - he's said in the past in regards to a range increase on some trash drop from Shard of Hate that it was 'very powerful' or some such. This is nonsense, because range doesn't matter at all in current content (every significant AE goes to its minimum damage range well before unmodified max spell range) - and if raid gear isn't going to be usable in -future- expansions due to gear degradation, then current content is all that matters, doesn't it?

Noaani

08-21-2009, 03:11 AM

<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.

Mordicus

08-21-2009, 03:48 AM

Nice post Kind. That pretty much echoes what Ive said in my last few posts.Noani- Were lucky to get 3 charms a week let alone 6. More importantly were lucky to get one that we actually want in a week. Youre comparing one mob to 14. So lets even the playing field and use Bertox vs Umzok for this example.July kills tally for Dracos ArgentBertox - 1Umzok -7And we didnt even do the instance for the first week because its not worth it."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." - FyreflyteAdd the fact that Bertox is contested and only one guild kills it on Butcherblock, the chances that the "majority of raiders" will attain this charm are next to zero.

Kulaf

08-21-2009, 04:05 AM

First off let me say that I empathize with the folks who are facing gear changes. As a EQ1 player for 8 years I know how hard it was to gear up in guilds with 80-100 people. That said I think you all are really seeing the glass half empty.You folks are driven by challenge. Most of the posts in this thread have admited that avatar loot makes many of the toughest instanced content in the game trivial. Where is the challenge in that? Why would you ever want to obtain such an advantage that encounters become borring?I am pretty sure this change is going to go in in one form or another. I would encourage all of you to take a step back and look at why you play these games and rediscover the fun of being challenged at all levels......not just until you get fully geared and get bored.Have fun folks. <img src="/eq2/images/smilies/e8a506dc4ad763aca51bec4ca7dc8560.gif" border="0" />

SinIsLaw

08-21-2009, 05:31 AM

These changes are all terrible! Most charms are worse then to what was suggested back in Feb! Why are so many combart art modifiers take off and only "on spell" remains!?! Way to make instanced loot better then contested! Hey I know something, why don't you nerf also all x4 instance loot and boost the x2 even more!Guess it's time to re-think if I still want to be part of EQ2 after playing it since 04!!