WoE X2 VS Vigilant X2 [Archive] - EQ2 Forum Archive @ EQ2Wire

Titigabe

08-10-2010, 12:01 PM

As a casual player, I spent great times and verry marvelous memories of evening spent with my little Guild in Ward of Elements ... we've been working very hard on it, once or twice a week, during 5 months to manage making our way to Aiden ... This zone is verry cool, and really rewarding.We were very please to see that SOE started carying about small guilds, willing to gather more than 6 players, but not 24. 12, was a very good number.Then Kurn's Tower X2 was done, and it was verry too hard for us, but we kept training and enjoeyd the few tries we did there ... And we were still runing WoE because of the rewards, the challenge and the fun!When Sentinel's Fate came out, we were very impatient to try the new X2 zone, Vigilant ... But we quickly understood that we would never do our way into it ... Access quest is really hard, and the difficulty level of the zone is not set for casual gamers we are! I mean, wy have you made that direction change for S'F X2 difficulty? We don't even manage to finish the 3 Vigilant zone! And I've been told that the reward inside Vigilant X2 were really disapointing in comparison to the difficulty level and the variety of rewards we had in WoE.S'F launch is now 6 months away, and we have not seen any new content for casual HL gamers we are. Would you at least scale VigilantS difficulty down in order for us to have a chance to explore something else that easy dungeons?I'd like to understand why have you made this X2 zone so unpopular?

Barx

08-10-2010, 12:14 PM

<cite>Titigabe wrote:</cite><blockquote>As a casual player, I spent great times and verry marvelous memories of evening spent with my little Guild in Ward of Elements ... we've been working very hard on it, once or twice a week, during 5 months to manage making our way to Aiden ... This zone is verry cool, and really rewarding.We were very please to see that SOE started carying about small guilds, willing to gather more than 6 players, but not 24. 12, was a very good number.Then Kurn's Tower X2 was done, and it was verry too hard for us, but we kept training and enjoeyd the few tries we did there ... And we were still runing WoE because of the rewards, the challenge and the fun!When Sentinel's Fate came out, we were very impatient to try the new X2 zone, Vigilant ... But we quickly understood that we would never do our way into it ... Access quest is really hard, and the difficulty level of the zone is not set for casual gamers we are! I mean, wy have you made that direction change for S'F X2 difficulty? We don't even manage to finish the 3 Vigilant zone! And I've been told that the reward inside Vigilant X2 were really disapointing in comparison to the difficulty level and the variety of rewards we had in WoE.S'F launch is now 6 months away, and we have not seen any new content for casual HL gamers we are. Would you at least scale VigilantS difficulty down in order for us to have a chance to explore something else that easy dungeons?I'd like to understand why have you made this X2 zone so unpopular?</blockquote>The Vigilant: Final Destruction is not an unpopular zone in my expererience. The # of players required for a zone is independent of the difficulty of the zone.Vig x2 is a raid of similar difficulty to the progression of non-challenge mode encounters in SF. It is a x2 zone that gives non-armor loot to complement the armor loot that drops in SF; it's purpose is to complement x4 SF raiding, not serve as an upgraded Ward of Elements (which had a unbalanced reward vs difficulty). The rewards are not disappointing, there's some quite nice stuff that comes from Vig x2 that are balanced for reward vs difficulty.Yes SF lacks a x2 zone like WoE, but WoE was a bit of a one-off. It was relatively easy for the quality of loot that dropped, which is why it was so popular.

Banditman

08-10-2010, 12:27 PM

If the OP really feels the access quest is difficult, then the x2 is not the zone they should be focused on.Vig x2 is a good zone, the rewards are in line with the difficulty of the zone. KT x2 was also a good zone with appropriate rewards. WOE was a good zone, but the rewards were way out of line with the difficulty.

Yimway

08-10-2010, 01:00 PM

WoE was designed to be a bridge between heroic and x4 content for TSO. Because players weren't progressing TSO at the rate expected, and the lack of room between t2shard and t4 raid gear, the WoE rewards were argueably pretty high, but it was needed for casuals to break further into TSO raids.There really isn't a WoE/bridge zone for SF. Vigx2 is designed to compliment x4 content in SF, and doesn't provide any 'bridge' gear.Sadly, Icy Keep is your 'bridge' zone this xpac, and if it was tuned to a x2 zone and the HM dragon kicked out to a Halas contested, it would then be you're WoE alternative. It's itemization already reflects it, however its challenge is probably a bit high for 2 groups of very casual players.That being said, I'd still recomend trying 2 grouping IK over trying Vigx2 as the style of players I infer you are from the tone of your post I feel will have more success there. If you are having troubles with the access quest, the dogs in Vigx2 will eat your lunch.

CoLD MeTaL

08-10-2010, 01:00 PM

<cite>Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>...</cite>Yes SF lacks a x2 zone like WoE, but WoE was a bit of a one-off. It was relatively easy for the quality of loot that dropped, which is why it was so popular.</blockquote>You mean it was possible for normal people to aquire decent gear?

Dasein

08-10-2010, 02:12 PM

WoE is what the devs should be shooting for. Content like that is what keeps people playing - it was a fun zone with some reasonably challenging fights for it's time, but fights that your average guild could win. The rewards were solid upgrades for people, and offerred both a way for those looking to get into x4 raiding to gear up and for those more focused on heroic content to challenge themselves and get some nice gear.Vig x2 isn't a bad zone, but it doesn't really have a clear place in progression, nor does it really have an intended audience. If there were an easier x2 that dropped loot similar to the pattersn from Icy Keep, or if Icy Keep were reworked to be similar to WoE in difficulty, then Vig x2 would be a much better zone.

slippery

08-10-2010, 02:13 PM

Icy Keep should have been a x2.

Alfeo

08-10-2010, 02:29 PM

<cite>slippery wrote:</cite><blockquote>Icy Keep should have been a x2.</blockquote>Agreed, Icy Keep would have been much more successful if it would have been WoE to Vigilant's KT. It would have filled a niche that was missing and could have been fun for people. Yesterday, we cleared through on easy just to get the access quest so that we could work on HM Vrewwx. We got disco on a portion of the bp mold quest rewards (not talking about the bp but some of actual molds themselves) and Najena has at least 8 or so raiding guilds if not more that are capable of getting that far in the zone, and it's been out for over two months now. Just shows you how popular the place is.

EQPrime

08-10-2010, 03:02 PM

<cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>...</cite>Yes SF lacks a x2 zone like WoE, but WoE was a bit of a one-off. It was relatively easy for the quality of loot that dropped, which is why it was so popular.</blockquote>You mean it was possible for normal people to aquire decent gear?</blockquote>Pretty sure it was possible for comatose people to acquire decent gear.

Jonaroth

08-10-2010, 03:05 PM

They should make woe scale up to lvl 90 <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

Banditman

08-10-2010, 03:27 PM

<cite>Uguv@Mistmoore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>...</cite>Yes SF lacks a x2 zone like WoE, but WoE was a bit of a one-off. It was relatively easy for the quality of loot that dropped, which is why it was so popular.</blockquote>You mean it was possible for normal people to aquire decent gear?</blockquote>Pretty sure it was possible for comatose people to acquire decent really really good gear.</blockquote>Fixed it for you. <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />

LardLord

08-10-2010, 04:53 PM

PuG-able x2s with decent fabled would be wildly popular...I'm surprised they haven't expanded x2s into a playstyle. Granted, it would be redundant in SF with much of the ez-mode content being fairly easily 2-groupable, but if Velious x4s are more like Underfoot Depths, casual players are going to want new zones to try that don't require much gear/concentration.

Barx

08-10-2010, 04:58 PM

<cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>PuG-able x2s with decent fabled would be wildly popular...I'm surprised they haven't expanded x2s into a playstyle. Granted, it would be redundant in SF with much of the ez-mode content being fairly easily 2-groupable, but if Velious x4s are more like Underfoot Depths, casual players are going to want new zones to try that don't require much gear/concentration.</blockquote>I doubt UD is what all the Velious x4 is going to be like. UD starts off about the same level as the worst of original SF's non-challenge content and was added specifically as a new tough zone for people to progress through.A starter-raid x2 isn't a bad idea, the loot just needs to be tuned so that it's appropriate. WoE's loot was better than it should have been given the difficulty of the mobs; armor-wise that should be better than most instance gear but still a bit below full raid gear. They could do that easily enough by giving it the stats of SF T1 raid armor but a yellow slot instead of a red slot.Based on their DoV press release, there's going to be at least one x2 raid in Velious, so time will tell on whether it's a Vig x2 type zone (a x2 complement to x4 raiding) or more of a WoE-type beginner raid zone (hopefully with better reward-v-difficulty).

LardLord

08-10-2010, 05:04 PM

<cite>Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Based on their DoV press release, there's going to be at least one x2 raid in Velious, so time will tell on whether it's a Vig x2 type zone (a x2 complement to x4 raiding) or more of a WoE-type beginner raid zone (hopefully with better reward-v-difficulty).</blockquote>I think the biggest mistake with WoE was the quantity of loot. Yeah, the quality of loot was really good too, but even heroic zones drop some really nice items...just in low quantity.WoE was more like a heroic zone than a typical x4 raid zone, which would be true of any PuG-able x2. Those types of zones should be very accessible, so they can be run casually whenever, but you should have to run them a heck of a lot in order to get the all the gear you want from them.

Barx

08-10-2010, 05:15 PM

<cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Barx@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Based on their DoV press release, there's going to be at least one x2 raid in Velious, so time will tell on whether it's a Vig x2 type zone (a x2 complement to x4 raiding) or more of a WoE-type beginner raid zone (hopefully with better reward-v-difficulty).</blockquote>I think the biggest mistake with WoE was the quantity of loot. Yeah, the quality of loot was really good too, but even heroic zones drop some really nice items...just in low quantity.WoE was more like a heroic zone than a typical x4 raid zone, which would be true of any PuG-able x2. Those types of zones should be very accessible, so they can be run casually whenever, but you should have to run them a heck of a lot in order to get the all the gear you want from them.</blockquote>Yeah that's very true, the loot was good and it dropped in copious amounts. A x2 where each mob dropped a single piece of loot that was close to SF T1 raid loot (w/ yellow instead of red slot) would be a good addition for Velious. Then people that want to raid very casually have an easy raid to do that drops some decent loot, but it's not like the broken slot machine spewing gear that WoE was.

Yimway

08-10-2010, 05:27 PM

<cite>Quabi@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Granted, it would be redundant in SF with much of the ez-mode content being fairly easily 2-groupable</blockquote>I made the mistake of thinking this way as well.And while its 2 groupable by raiders. And 2 groupable by partially raid geared alts of raiders.However, it is by no means 2 groupable by pugs like WoE was. I've recently been leading some pug stuff on off nights, and its quite sobering. Wiping to Vuulan at 1% after healing him for more than 100% of his health was pure lawl.

Shareana

08-10-2010, 05:39 PM

This post has moved: <a href="/eq2/posts/preList.m?topic_id=445320&post_id=5386059" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">/eq2/posts/preList.m?topic_id=44532...post_id=5386059</a> No need for insults please....

Xill

08-10-2010, 06:16 PM

<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote>MMOs need to be designed from the top down. Period.</blockquote>Why? Considering most people cant play the game like that... either play enough to get to that point of skill/knowledge it takes to do the harder content. Or cant physically get it accomplished.

Gaige

08-10-2010, 06:19 PM

<cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote>You dont need to be going after top end content to utilize raid gear.</blockquote>...<div><cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote>Considering most people cant play the game like that... </blockquote>Who cares about who can't you balance and design for who can. You balance for the potential of the playerbase and what can be done and then everyone else behind those pushing the curve fall in line automatically.Designing for the bottom rung of players means the game is going to be boring, unrewarding and terrible for everyone else. If you design from the top down players who get better (which is very possible) have somewhere to go.</div>

Yimway

08-10-2010, 06:30 PM

I'm pretty sure its about designing towards what makes the most people the happiest with the least amount of work.WoE, for its faults, was that.

Xill

08-10-2010, 06:37 PM

<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote>You dont need to be going after top end content to utilize raid gear.</blockquote>...<div><cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote>Considering most people cant play the game like that... </blockquote>Who cares about who can't you balance and design for who can. You balance for the potential of the playerbase and what can be done and then everyone else behind those pushing the curve fall in line automatically.Designing for the bottom rung of players means the game is going to be boring, unrewarding and terrible for everyone else. If you design from the top down players who get better (which is very possible) have somewhere to go.</div></blockquote>1. Just becuase someone didnt kill Ykesha in TSO doesnt mean they were not clearing some of the raid content. And the WoE gear allowed more casual people to get into the more serious fights without wasting huge amounts of there obviously more important time. Some people have things going on outside of the game that prevent them from bieng HC. But can still get on once or twice a week to raid and would like something to do that isnt group content.2. This is a video game man. It shouldnt be elitist, and it shouldnt be designed to prevent people that arent extreme players from having fun or experiencing a good amount of content.3. The only thing that made TSO content hard were the individual fail effects. The raid was only as competent as its weakest link. And not all raids are setup around progression first, some actually are in it to have fun with friends. So as far as I could tell, the gear was in-line becuase the TSO x4 was not hard with a full raid of competent players.Get over yourself thinking you did some amazing thing... it was NOT that difficult.4. Current raid content proves its possible to design for both high end progresion raiding, and casual raiding. The gear just isnt balanced well and thats your issue.

Jesdyr

08-10-2010, 07:02 PM

<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm tired of spending 5 hours straight pulling Energized Construct, finally killing it and being part of a handful of players able to do so to be rewarded 1 ~ 5% more than a person who has never even seen a x4 much less killed one.</blockquote>You should just be proud to be part of the handlefull of players to kill it. It is always about having better stuff than someone else with you. There doesnt need to be some uber reward to get s sense of accomplishment from it.You are so whiney lately.

Gaige

08-10-2010, 07:43 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm pretty sure its about designing towards what makes the most people the happiest with the least amount of work.</blockquote>They could put a single hailable NPC in every zone that you hail and get whatever you want from and that would accomplish your goals, so I think you might be off base.

Gaige

08-10-2010, 07:48 PM

<cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote>1. Just becuase someone didnt kill Ykesha in TSO doesnt mean they were not clearing some of the raid content. And the WoE gear allowed more casual people to get into the more serious fights without wasting huge amounts of there obviously more important time. Some people have things going on outside of the game that prevent them from bieng HC. But can still get on once or twice a week to raid and would like something to do that isnt group content.2. This is a video game man. It shouldnt be elitist, and it shouldnt be designed to prevent people that arent extreme players from having fun or experiencing a good amount of content.3. The only thing that made TSO content hard were the individual fail effects. The raid was only as competent as its weakest link. And not all raids are setup around progression first, some actually are in it to have fun with friends. So as far as I could tell, the gear was in-line becuase the TSO x4 was not hard with a full raid of competent players.Get over yourself thinking you did some amazing thing... it was NOT that difficult.4. Current raid content proves its possible to design for both high end progresion raiding, and casual raiding. The gear just isnt balanced well and thats your issue.</blockquote>1. Like any other hobby its going to be more rewarding the more time you invest. Entitlement issues do not mean balancing from the top down isn't a good design.2. Its not a single player videogame, man. You don't have to reward players who are doing nothing with just about the best gear in the game for them to have fun.3. TSO wasn't hard? Tell that to all the guilds who couldn't kill Munzok. Tell that to all the guilds who never got their flawless charms until they outleveled the content. If TSO was so easy your first two points aren't valid, so which is it? I've killed mobs that only a handful of players have killed while it was current endgame content, if it isn't hard, why aren't more guilds doing it? Energized Construct is easy right, you just don't have time for it. Arkanthis? HM Vaclaz? All easy, you're just too busy. I get it.4. As long as some player who hardly does anything worthwhile as far as raiding goes is almost as good as someone who kills everything SOE offers in a given tier, I will always have an issue. I'm a better player, I should be rewarded better.<div><cite>Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>You should just be proud to be part of the handlefull of players to kill it. It is always about having better stuff than someone else with you. There doesnt need to be some uber reward to get s sense of accomplishment from it.</blockquote>If that was true no one would ever kill anything more than once.</div>

Crismorn

08-10-2010, 08:01 PM

<cite>Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm tired of spending 5 hours straight pulling Energized Construct, finally killing it and being part of a handful of players able to do so to be rewarded 1 ~ 5% more than a person who has never even seen a x4 much less killed one.</blockquote>You should just be proud to be part of the handlefull of players to kill it. It is always about having better stuff than someone else with you. There doesnt need to be some uber reward to get s sense of accomplishment from it.You are so whiney lately.</blockquote>Hmmm, gather 24+ people of certain classes who can perform well on that class + all play at the same time.ORCasually log in whenever, dont even try to make friends, play with random classes, with people who can not perform the most simple of tasks and yet they are rewarded almost as well as the first group.I wonder what route everyone will take, its such a tough choice.

Dasein

08-10-2010, 08:06 PM

<cite>Crismorn wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote>I'm tired of spending 5 hours straight pulling Energized Construct, finally killing it and being part of a handful of players able to do so to be rewarded 1 ~ 5% more than a person who has never even seen a x4 much less killed one.</blockquote>You should just be proud to be part of the handlefull of players to kill it. It is always about having better stuff than someone else with you. There doesnt need to be some uber reward to get s sense of accomplishment from it.You are so whiney lately.</blockquote>Hmmm, gather 24+ people of certain classes who can perform well on that class + all play at the same time.ORCasually log in whenever, dont even try to make friends, play with random classes, with people who can not perform the most simple of tasks and yet they are rewarded almost as well as the first group.I wonder what route everyone will take, its such a tough choice.</blockquote>How many raid guilds fell apart because of WoE? How many people used WoE as a jumping off point for x4 raiding?

Gaige

08-10-2010, 08:43 PM

<cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote>How many people used WoE as a jumping off point for x4 raiding?</blockquote>Probably none, at least none that are still around because WoE is nothing like x4 raiding so I'm sure they'd hit the brick wall and just give up, since WoE conditioned them with being rewarded for forming up and pulling which real x4 raiding doesn't do.

Dasein

08-10-2010, 08:52 PM

Gaige

08-10-2010, 09:17 PM

<cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote>fights like Digg and Aiden were not trivial for less well geared or less experienced raiders</blockquote>For what about a month until the nerfs began.

Titigabe

08-11-2010, 03:32 AM

WoE was by far my best raid experience in EQ2 and I hope SOE will consider this aspect of a game for Guild that can't organize X4 raids. I really like the porgression in this zone, and the equipment progression in general in TSO with T1-T2-T3 shard armor system, you could upgrade your fable loot in WoE by combining them with crafted gear!This was nice, really, and I still don't understant why the Mark system was rethink to do differently ... And why ho why isn't there no new X2 content in line with what WoE has given to us!

Banditman

08-11-2010, 10:12 AM

While I don't always agree with Gaige, in this case he has it right. Game design needs to be from the top down. It can be summed up quite simply like this:Where there is little or no chance to fail, there is also no chance to truly excel.

Terron

08-11-2010, 12:11 PM

WoE was good because it is fun.The gear seemed appropiate for the effort involved, excluding grey shard runs which I never did.It was not trivial - the first time I went there in a PUR wearing a mixture of T1 shard and RoK legendary gear just after it was added we did not get past the first trash. The last time I went we did not get Aiden killed.The gear is not as good as the T4 stuff. For at least one class there is big difference.But there is no reason why the top end gear should be much better that that just below it. A small gap is better top end content should be doable in less good armour and still challenging in the best.I mostly play after work, and WoE was more often suited to my mood than x4 raiding.

Yimway

08-11-2010, 12:54 PM

<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote>How many people used WoE as a jumping off point for x4 raiding?</blockquote>Probably none, at least none that are still around because WoE is nothing like x4 raiding so I'm sure they'd hit the brick wall and just give up, since WoE conditioned them with being rewarded for forming up and pulling which real x4 raiding doesn't do.</blockquote>Gaige, your off base, cause we certainly did.WoE allowed us to fill in CM requirements that were making some fights harder than they needed to be, particularly for recruits that weren't geared in previous tier sets.Running WoE for two weeks catapulted us thru several encounters we weren't killing before it. Given how slow progression was in TSO for most guilds, the additional gear had an impact, and it lowered the progressoin gap significantly.In essense, we farmed WoE for shoulder/chest/legs initially and ran mixed sets of the t4 gear we could get in the other slots off what we were already killing. And it was much faster to have these recruits focus on only these slots for t1/t2 farming to upgrade to the t3. In that it was doable at launch time with generally what ever 12 people we could round up on an off night, made it something for players to focus on to get geared up to do x4 content.IK, had it been x2 with the gear it has, would have provided basically the same jumping off point for this expansion. Personally though, I'd only have red slots on 3 of the pieces if that was what it was designed for.

Xill

08-11-2010, 01:02 PM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>While I don't always agree with Gaige, in this case he has it right. Game design needs to be from the top down. It can be summed up quite simply like this:Where there is little or no chance to fail, there is also no chance to truly excel.</blockquote>Actually, if you look at examples... doing the opposite seems to be better for the game. Just look at that "other" game... what 20? 30x more players?What you seem to fail to grasp is that most people simply dont want to try that hard. They dont see this as some competition that they must win, or some test they must pass. They try to have fun, and dont want to spend hours upon hours learning a complex dance some random guy thought would be good game design. Its a game regardless if its MMO or singleplayer.*edit And btw gaige... I thought you quit?

CoLD MeTaL

08-11-2010, 01:22 PM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>While I don't always agree with Gaige, in this case he has it right. Game design needs to be from the top down. It can be summed up quite simply like this:Where there is little or no chance to fail, there is also no chance to truly excel.</blockquote>And dev time (probably a lot of it) spent on things that around 300 (maybe 500?) people from all servers will ever see, is not profitable. And probably a good part of the problem of why we are where we are with EQ2X.I realize that for you (coming from x4 rraiding WoE was super simple)but for others coming from just grouping I assure you it was not insert char, and collect gear. Ive been with x4 raiders that blow through the zone in less than hour, and with a lot of 'normal' people that just can't get it done. whether its Digg, Aiden, the fire or water guy even.Some people do not want to play their game with a spreadsheet and slide rule and 3 3rd party apps running on their machine. A single zone for them should be acceptable, it's not like we are wading on your turf. We don't 'care' what you and other x4 raiders do, we just want to play the game we are paying to play each month.

Jesdyr

08-11-2010, 01:33 PM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>While I don't always agree with Gaige, in this case he has it right. Game design needs to be from the top down. It can be summed up quite simply like this:Where there is little or no chance to fail, there is also no chance to truly excel.</blockquote>Gaige only wants others to fail. He wants to better than everyone else because that is all that is really important to him.+1-5% upgrade on one peice of gear .. That would still make you 21% to 105% better (in gear) if it was true for all gear slots. Combine that with the different skill level of player and you will still be pwning the noobs on the parse by over 200%.I agree that SF loot is all over the place and some of the stuff I have heard dropping off some of the hard encounters is really weak. WoE gear was actually about what it should have been. It might have been a little better than the difficulty of the zone but not by much.

Draylore

08-11-2010, 01:45 PM

While, WoE allowed me and some of my friends to work our way into actual raiding but I never fooled myself into thinking WoE was anything more than an easy heroic dungeon for 12 that gave out of proportion rewards. I knew when I got my first piece of WoE gear that it was too good considering the effort to get it.It may have filled some "gap" but it also created unrealistic expectations for future x2 content. Case and point Vigx2....people were expecting a T9 WoE....what they found was an actual raid zone designed for 12.WoE also somehow has created the assumption that x2 equates to easier than x4. In truth there is no correlation between dificulty and # of raiders. In fact building a good 12man force able to clear Vigx2 is harder than building a 24man able to clear easymode Tox or Labs Or Palace. THere is less room for slack.....less room to carry tag-along non contributing players.So your scrubs went into Vig x2 and found that it was actualy a dificult raid zone, designed as such and rewarding appropriately.Oh and on this subject I also have to agree with Gaige.......MMO design needs to be from top to bottom.....if done well it helps everyone including the hardcore and the casual.....it encourages people to actually strive to get better and learn.

Zorastiz

08-11-2010, 01:53 PM

Not everyone raids.Not everyone cares about raiding.Raiders are a smaller percentage of the total playerbase.Why should the game be designed around those people?Isn't the idea that this appeal to as many segments of the gaming community as possible?I'd say if one wants nothing but raid content then EQ-1 might be for you.

Yimway

08-11-2010, 01:55 PM

<cite>Zorastiz@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Raiders are a smaller percentage of the total playerbase.</blockquote>You should probably be able to prove that before making that statement <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />Every observable indicator I can view points to the majority of players raid in some manner.

Xill

08-11-2010, 02:07 PM

<cite>Draylore wrote:</cite><blockquote>While, WoE allowed me and some of my friends to work our way into actual raiding but I never fooled myself into thinking WoE was anything more than an easy heroic dungeon for 12 that gave out of proportion rewards. I knew when I got my first piece of WoE gear that it was too good considering the effort to get it.It may have filled some "gap" but it also created unrealistic expectations for future x2 content. Case and point Vigx2....people were expecting a T9 WoE....what they found was an actual raid zone designed for 12.WoE also somehow has created the assumption that x2 equates to easier than x4. In truth there is no correlation between dificulty and # of raiders. In fact building a good 12man force able to clear Vigx2 is harder than building a 24man able to clear easymode Tox or Labs Or Palace. THere is less room for slack.....less room to carry tag-along non contributing players.So your scrubs went into Vig x2 and found that it was actualy a dificult raid zone, designed as such and rewarding appropriately.Oh and on this subject I also have to agree with Gaige.......MMO design needs to be from top to bottom.....if done well it helps everyone including the hardcore and the casual.....it encourages people to actually strive to get better and learn.</blockquote>Oh so you cleared that on your first run though? And every time with whatever random group of people that could roll their face across the keyboard? Or did you spend time working your way through the zone, getting more of the gear that allowed you to progress farther?Oh and the real reason x2 equates to easier then x4 is that most people have trouble finding even 12 decent players to do raid content. Much less 24. Nothing to do with WoE. And yeah its harder to organize around only having 12 slots, thats only if you have TOO MANY people. Which is the opposite of most peoples problems. Not everyone is willing to abandon people becuase they dont play 100% efficiently and they would rather enjoy easier content with friends, then harder content with a bunch of jerks that complain constantly about the game they are willingly playing = P

Banditman

08-11-2010, 02:11 PM

<cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote>And dev time (probably a lot of it) spent on things that around 300 (maybe 500?) people from all servers will ever see, is not profitable.</blockquote>I agree with you, it's not. And I think SOE has done an OUTSTANDING job in this expansion of correcting that problem. There is only a very, very small percentage of the available content that a fairly middle of the road raid guild will not see. Wing 3 of Underfoot, those guilds probably won't ever see it. That's it!You absolutely cannot argue that a middle of the road guild can't do the rest of the expansion. They are doing it. Right now! No, they are not doing it as quickly as those more hard core guilds, but they are doing it. No, they are NOT killing all the hard mode mobs, and that's ok too. They don't need to. They got to see and experience the content, they were simply less well rewarded for it since they did something that was not quite as hard.<cite>Jesdyr@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote>Gaige only wants others to fail. He wants to better than everyone else because that is all that is really important to him.</blockquote>I agree completely with your assessment of Gaige. That still doesn't preclude him being correct. I happen to think he's right in this case.

Zorastiz

08-11-2010, 02:17 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zorastiz@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Raiders are a smaller percentage of the total playerbase.</blockquote>You should probably be able to prove that before making that statementEvery observable indicator I can view points to the majority of players raid in some manner.</blockquote>Ok for arguments sake (for lack of a better term) lets say the percentage of (I hate to use the term) Hardcore raiders is far smaller than the average player base.Gaige seems to be or think he is HC so I'll go with that, does that work?

Draylore

08-11-2010, 02:17 PM

<cite>Zorastiz@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Not everyone raids.Not everyone cares about raiding.Raiders are a smaller percentage of the total playerbase.Why should the game be designed around those people?Isn't the idea that this appeal to as many segments of the gaming community as possible?I'd say if one wants nothing but raid content then EQ-1 might be for you.</blockquote>I can only speak for mysefl but when I say the game should be designed top down I am not at all referring to a tiering of players or even silly labels like casual or hardcore, etc. To me top down refers to designing around risk -vs- reward......the tougher the fight the better the rewards.......the easier the fight the lesser the rewards. Now tough and easy have many variables......including gear checks, etc. WoE was out of place......it allowed players in gear that was entirely possible to get via running grey shard zones to obtain close to top end raid level gear. The scripts in WoE were trivial compared to even some of the lower tier T4 mobs in TSO yet gave better gear. In terms of scripts and mob design WoE may have been just fine.......but the rewards were way out of line. In fact my little band of friends back in TSO were pretty much 8-9 manning WoE in our T2-T3 gear and carrying 3-4 people that did pretty much nothing. Thats how easy the zone was.Thank god ViG x2 wasnt like that when SF launched.

Draylore

08-11-2010, 02:27 PM

<cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Draylore wrote:</cite><blockquote>While, WoE allowed me and some of my friends to work our way into actual raiding but I never fooled myself into thinking WoE was anything more than an easy heroic dungeon for 12 that gave out of proportion rewards. I knew when I got my first piece of WoE gear that it was too good considering the effort to get it.It may have filled some "gap" but it also created unrealistic expectations for future x2 content. Case and point Vigx2....people were expecting a T9 WoE....what they found was an actual raid zone designed for 12.WoE also somehow has created the assumption that x2 equates to easier than x4. In truth there is no correlation between dificulty and # of raiders. In fact building a good 12man force able to clear Vigx2 is harder than building a 24man able to clear easymode Tox or Labs Or Palace. THere is less room for slack.....less room to carry tag-along non contributing players.So your scrubs went into Vig x2 and found that it was actualy a dificult raid zone, designed as such and rewarding appropriately.Oh and on this subject I also have to agree with Gaige.......MMO design needs to be from top to bottom.....if done well it helps everyone including the hardcore and the casual.....it encourages people to actually strive to get better and learn.</blockquote>Oh so you cleared that on your first run though? And every time with whatever random group of people that could roll their face across the keyboard?</blockquote>No we didnt clear it first run.....but that was because at the time there were only 4-6 of us that were remotely good at our classes and had interest in getting better so we often never could even put together 12.....once we got a core of 8-10 good players then yeah it was clear runs twice a week. Like I said and the time WoE was all we could do given our numbers but the loot was too good and given the gear we had and the number of good players we had it was gear we should not have been able to get.

Yimway

08-11-2010, 02:29 PM

<cite>Zorastiz@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Gaige seems to be or think he is HC so I'll go with that, does that work?</blockquote>Ok, sure HC raiders with Gaige's perspective represent a minority of the population. My guess <5%.People that engage in some raid content on a semi-regular basis seems to be atleast a majority (>50%) if not a sizeable majority (>70%).I just don't like people perpetuating the myth that raiding in anyform is some vocal minority of the game.

Zorastiz

08-11-2010, 02:42 PM

Xill

08-11-2010, 03:01 PM

<cite>Draylore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Draylore wrote:</cite><blockquote>While, WoE allowed me and some of my friends to work our way into actual raiding but I never fooled myself into thinking WoE was anything more than an easy heroic dungeon for 12 that gave out of proportion rewards. I knew when I got my first piece of WoE gear that it was too good considering the effort to get it.It may have filled some "gap" but it also created unrealistic expectations for future x2 content. Case and point Vigx2....people were expecting a T9 WoE....what they found was an actual raid zone designed for 12.WoE also somehow has created the assumption that x2 equates to easier than x4. In truth there is no correlation between dificulty and # of raiders. In fact building a good 12man force able to clear Vigx2 is harder than building a 24man able to clear easymode Tox or Labs Or Palace. THere is less room for slack.....less room to carry tag-along non contributing players.So your scrubs went into Vig x2 and found that it was actualy a dificult raid zone, designed as such and rewarding appropriately.Oh and on this subject I also have to agree with Gaige.......MMO design needs to be from top to bottom.....if done well it helps everyone including the hardcore and the casual.....it encourages people to actually strive to get better and learn.</blockquote>Oh so you cleared that on your first run though? And every time with whatever random group of people that could roll their face across the keyboard?</blockquote>No we didnt clear it first run.....but that was because at the time there were only 4-6 of us that were remotely good at our classes and had interest in getting better so we often never could even put together 12.....once we got a core of 8-10 good players then yeah it was clear runs twice a week. Like I said and the time WoE was all we could do given our numbers but the loot was too good and given the gear we had and the number of good players we had it was gear we should not have been able to get.</blockquote>So you had trouble fielding a full 12 man raid force? Much less a good 12 man force? And yet a x2 is not supposed to be any easier then a x4? So if WoE had been vigx2, you wouldnt have gotten anything at all out of it right? And how is that better? And the gear was not that great, i'm sorry but the cumulative effects of the T4 set gear and the jewlery was significantly better then WoE stuff hands down.I know becuase I went from WoE gear to T4 gear throughout TSO and it was a big upgrade after it was all said and done. Yeah you can point out individual pieces that were close, but not that close. And taken all together, put you 15, to 20% more effective then the T3. It was perfectly reasonable.Why do raids have to be all or nothing? Its either you have to be all in or just dont do it if you raid. No room for casual raiders even though its been shown through WoE that casuals can enjoy a raid zone, get some nice loot and have fun... I really dont see how that negatively impacted your gameplay and I think you are just [Removed for Content] that casuals were allowed to wear gear with a fabled tag on it.

Xill

08-11-2010, 03:14 PM

Though I do admit, they did a much better job with the x4 this expac. Its much more accessable then TSO was for most people. But thats the only reason its not as big of a deal that they dont have a WoE type raid zone. Well they didnt before IK.Other then WoE there was nothing for a casual raider to do in TSO, it killed them. You couldnt get anything done past the first few mobs in the x4 if anyone in your raid was slow to react, or didnt run ACT or couldnt play more then a few times a week. It required you to kick people out that were not able to keep up right from the beginning, and that killed friendships, guilds and caused drama...

CoLD MeTaL

08-11-2010, 03:15 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zorastiz@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>Gaige seems to be or think he is HC so I'll go with that, does that work?</blockquote>Ok, sure HC raiders with Gaige's perspective represent a minority of the population. My guess <5%.People that engage in some raid content on a semi-regular basis seems to be atleast a majority (>50%) if not a sizeable majority (>70%).I just don't like people perpetuating the myth that raiding in anyform is some vocal minority of the game.</blockquote>I don't think those numbers are that high, but only that <5% of the population will be the ones that care that WoE gear is 2% (5%, 10%, ?%) "more than it should be for the difficulty of that zone".A lot of people raid in some (any) form, yes.I play a MMORPG to be Heroic, no dragons to slay here in cube-ville. THIS is the message that $OE lost in an effort to please the 'uber raiders' who want more and more harder 'smash' content. IMO.

Xill

08-11-2010, 03:23 PM

All I have to say is look at the writing on the wall. Other games that cater to a casual crowd do significantly better, have more capital to put into the game and more polish along with more dev resources. Plus more people enjoying the game... honestly thats a win as far as I am concerned. Most people just do not care about the absurd high end that you guys seems to think the game should be centered around just becuase you decide to play harder. We all pay the same amount to play here, so you dont "deserve" anything more then anyone else just becuase you waste more time on it.There is no "risk" in this game btw. The whole risk vs. reward thing does not exist. Maybe risking your social life by playing too often. But other then that its all a matter of how much time you sink into it. Some people might be better then others, but most just dont care to try that hard.

Banditman

08-11-2010, 03:35 PM

Perhaps risk is the wrong word. If you substitute the phrase "Chance of failure" for "risk", the entire concept will make complete sense to you.

Xill

08-11-2010, 04:13 PM

I was being slightly sarcastic if that didnt translate well through text.I just laugh every time someone says risk like they actually have to worry about something other then lost time.

CoLD MeTaL

08-11-2010, 04:24 PM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>Perhaps risk is the wrong word. If you substitute the phrase "Chance of failure" for "risk", the entire concept will make complete sense to you.</blockquote>"Risk" vs watching the same people for 3 hours in level chat "Just need a bard to go"OR"Risk" where me and a bunch of my friends go in somewhere without spreadsheets and slide rules and 3rd party apps and not staring at that one spot on the screen that will light up and give me 1 second to do something or we all die but we have fun and win 'mostly'.I'll take option 2. Maybe we should all go play the other game, and you can see how that <5% supports a game like this $ wise.I honestly don't mind you having that one zone that I wont see for 2 expansions probably, but why do you begrudge us our WoEs etc. (I honestly haven't raided since SF went live because my guild imploded with TSO and i decided to pursue other hobbies). Now the server is a ghost town, I'm waiting on merges before i decide to drop or not.

Banditman

08-11-2010, 04:46 PM

<cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>Perhaps risk is the wrong word. If you substitute the phrase "Chance of failure" for "risk", the entire concept will make complete sense to you.</blockquote>"Risk" vs watching the same people for 3 hours in level chat "Just need a bard to go"I play on Kithicor. We are well known to be one of the bottom of the barrel population servers. I've never seen it take more than 10 minutes to pick up the last spot for a group. If you are not having that experience I leave it to you to figure out where the problem is. (Hint: It's not the server)OR"Risk" where me and a bunch of my friends go in somewhere without spreadsheets and slide rules and 3rd party apps and not staring at that one spot on the screen that will light up and give me 1 second to do something or we all die but we have fun and win 'mostly'.Sounds like there are "only" about 14 raid mobs in Sentinel's Fate for you then. (Tox Mound Easy, 3 . . Labs up to Pera, 6 . . Palace up to Maalus, 5). No 3rd party apps required. No instant curse cures to handle. Just get the right resists and spank the mobs for loot. You may have to joust a couple of those, but SOE thoughtfully put BIG RED LETTERS in the middle of the screen to let you know about it.I'll take option 2. Maybe we should all go play the other game, and you can see how that <5% supports a game like this $ wise.Can I have your stuff?I honestly don't mind you having that one zone that I wont see for 2 expansions probably, but why do you begrudge us our WoEs etc. (I honestly haven't raided since SF went live because my guild imploded with TSO and i decided to pursue other hobbies). Now the server is a ghost town, I'm waiting on merges before i decide to drop or not.This is exactly what most folks are trying to tell you. There is not a single area in this expansion that is not accessible to even the most casual player. You can see every art asset in the expansion with a very middle of the road raid guild.Incidentally, since you are (admittedly) "pursuing other hobbies", not in a guild and "haven't raided since SF went live", how in the world can you have any sort of informed opinion about Sentinel's Fate raid encounters? You are either spewing tripe or trolling . . . which is it?</blockquote>

CoLD MeTaL

08-11-2010, 05:14 PM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>...This is exactly what most folks are trying to tell you. There is not a single area in this expansion that is not accessible to even the most casual player. You can see every art asset in the expansion with a very middle of the road raid guild....</cite></blockquote>That statement is just pure bullox, nothing else can be said. I realize that in your x4 uberness you feel any scrub should be able to do any encounter, but well your wrong. On my server, yes there r raiders that get it done. The pick up groups on my server however consist of templars that don't know what reactives are, troubs that dont use aria of magic, rangers with no bows equipped, and the list goes on of people i have run into. Slam me if it makes you feel better. When I go with competent people we get the job done. I didn't fail to get it done when i went with the raid in TSO, but it wasn't fun, and the DKP system they had made sure i wouldn't get any gear.No you can't have my stuff, i'm leavin it in limbo if i go. (And since you are on Kithicor and not Nektulos, please don't assume you know what I see.)And I have been talking about WoE vs TSO raiding. Haven't seen inside of IK or vigx2. Went into tox mound with one attempt that didn't make it, no idea what 'mode' it was in.In my experience, the big red letters appear when it is too late to do anything, 1-2 seconds is not enough time for me. "Almost" getting to the right buttons on time doesn't get you invited back. Sorry I'm old. The detrimentals show up first. Maybe its my system or lag or whatever. "Mostly" I make it just fine through those, but not 100% and staring at that one spot to see whats going on for a 2+ hour raid is not fun to me. Raid in KoS was fun. /shrug you like the insta die effects kewl 4 u.

Crismorn

08-11-2010, 06:02 PM

I like how this game has most of its content geared towards casuals yet they cant even see it.

Gaige

08-11-2010, 06:08 PM

<cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote>Actually, if you look at examples... doing the opposite seems to be better for the game. Just look at that "other" game... what 20? 30x more players?</blockquote>WoW is as top heavy as is possible. Endgame WoW is almost entirely about raiding, with the boss mobs being super complicated encounters only a handful of guilds can kill while current.In fact in WoW once you hit level cap you either raid, pvp, or quit. They've tried to alleviate it some with the 5 and 10 mans but WoW is designed by HC EQ raiders and it has some of the most robust/difficult raiding in the genre.

Terron

08-12-2010, 09:52 AM

<cite>Draylore wrote:</cite><blockquote>Oh and on this subject I also have to agree with Gaige.......MMO design needs to be from top to bottom</blockquote>but what is the top? I think quests are the best thing about EQ2 and should be the top priority.I accept there are people who workhard at playing the game and want content that challenges their skills, but such content is not fiun for me. I am quite willing to work hard at work, but am not willing to do so for a game. I pay to have fun playing.

Banditman

08-12-2010, 09:52 AM

<cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>...This is exactly what most folks are trying to tell you. There is not a single area in this expansion that is not accessible to even the most casual player. You can see every art asset in the expansion with a very middle of the road raid guild....</cite></blockquote>That statement is just pure bullox, nothing else can be said.</blockquote>How do you know that? You have no way to make that statement and appear credible. You said earlier that you haven't raided in Sentinel's Fate, in fact you went so far as to say you are pursuing other hobbies. If you haven't played the game, you have absolutely no basis to make any sort of statement regarding the relative difficulty or accessibility of this expansion.On the other hand, I *have* been playing the game, and I can make those statements based on first hand experience.

CoLD MeTaL

08-12-2010, 10:55 AM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>...This is exactly what most folks are trying to tell you. There is not a single area in this expansion that is not accessible to even the most casual player. You can see every art asset in the expansion with a very middle of the road raid guild....</cite></blockquote>That statement is just pure bullox, nothing else can be said.</blockquote>How do you know that? You have no way to make that statement and appear credible. You said earlier that you haven't raided in Sentinel's Fate, in fact you went so far as to say you are pursuing other hobbies. If you haven't played the game, you have absolutely no basis to make any sort of statement regarding the relative difficulty or accessibility of this expansion.On the other hand, I *have* been playing the game, and I can make those statements based on first hand experience.</blockquote>I still play every day. I gave up trying to belong to a 'mediumcore' raid guild, for other hobbies. There are a lot of places a 'casual' will never ever see contrary to your statement. There are some of the single group instances that casuals will never be able to complete. IF you had said 'casual raider' instead of player I would have agreed with 'easy mode' making it possible. I would have to take your word for it since it won't be me, the raids I get into don't clear zones.You have no experience at being a casual, and no idea what casuals experience. There are parts of every expansion that casuals will never see. These are the people that have no idea what the God King is for instance. I know about the mob, tried to do the quests, and know that I will never ever see that mob now. There are group zones in TSO that I might never see, because when they were 'current' casuals couldn't do them, and now no one will want to go back and do 'old' content.I realize you don't understand this, you will call me a scrub whatever. You will say L2P. The point of me posting here, because I barely care at this point is that while you are bi%^&ing and moaning about WoE being too easy for the gear, it gave us something to work on even if we hardly ever got past the first 2 named. I haven't seen inside the vigilantx2. I have been in kurn's tower, but only a couple times past the guy on the circle platform. Quit being a $%^& and complaining about content you can do 'easily', that allows others to push their bounds, and go playing your own f-ing game. And yes, some casuals will not make it through the raid zones on 'easy mode'. Maybe a lot. maybe we do suck, so what.On my server there just are not people to group with, so you take whatever people you can find. These people will have the wrong buffs on people, the worst AA builds you can imagine, not even know some of the abilities they have. You would not play with these people. But for many its that or leave the game or do something solo for the upteenth time. these people will not complete WoE, but we might get something done. Yes, I've gone with the uber raiders who burn through zones and I feel bad because my gear sucks and my lock only did 20k zonewide and got beat by the raid tank and the raid assassin did 2 to 4 times that. I'm doing the best I can with what I have.Now, after this rant, I'm wondering why I even bother to write this. I hope you win and the game gets so hard your 5% are the only ones left in game and you can revel in your awesomeness. (will that finally make you happy)

Draylore

08-12-2010, 11:49 AM

Cake and pie.I know guild/alliances that the day before SF launched had barely been able to get past 3rd named in TMC or 2nd in Guk or 1st in Palace. THey got to 90 and that same group was perfectly capable of taking on several of the SF easy content...they had more targets available to them than they did at the end of TSO.SF is one of the most casual/pug-raid friendly expansions.Hell the game has far far far more content designed for the casual than anyone else.

Carthr

08-12-2010, 01:46 PM

It is not the designers fault that people are frickin stupid.. If a healer can't cure, a tank can't hold agro, dps forgets weapons, etc, there's nothing a dev can do.. Those people suck, and shouldn't have raid content catered to them until they learn the basics of the game.The first couple mobs in each zone(except maybe PoRT) are easily done with heroic(or BG) geared casuals, as long as they can cure or whatever... You talk so lovely dovey about WoE, but if you didn't interupt the guard dudes on pull, you had what, like 1-2 seconds before half the group went splat? Not really any of that this xpac..

Xill

08-12-2010, 01:55 PM

<cite>Carthrax wrote:</cite><blockquote> You talk so lovely dovey about WoE, but if you didn't interupt the guard dudes on pull, you had what, like 1-2 seconds before half the group went splat? Not really any of that this xpac..</blockquote>Oh but I thought it was doable with 1-group... in treasured gear... rolling there faces across the keyboard while still current content...Like I said, SF is different and much more casual friendly. Im merely annoyed at how upset people got about WoE. They act like it was some huge, game-breaking event that should never happen again becuase it somehow upset the balance.... right.

Barx

08-12-2010, 02:03 PM

<cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Carthrax wrote:</cite><blockquote> You talk so lovely dovey about WoE, but if you didn't interupt the guard dudes on pull, you had what, like 1-2 seconds before half the group went splat? Not really any of that this xpac..</blockquote>Oh but I thought it was doable with 1-group... in treasured gear... rolling there faces across the keyboard while still current content...Like I said, SF is different and much more casual friendly. Im merely annoyed at how upset people got about WoE. They act like it was some huge, game-breaking event that should never happen again becuase it somehow upset the balance.... right.</blockquote>It wasn't game breaking, but it was definately out of balance. There's nothing wrong with a relatively easy x2 raid, it just needs to be itemized as such.In any case, SF raiding is in general more casual-friendly by far. TSO zones you had fail conditions by the third mob in the zone at best, in SF the worst you get in the early stuff is jousting on red text, clicking on red text, or picking up and throwing books hinted by red text. None of those is an instant raid wipe like TSO was chock-full of. Most of the initial mobs don't have any kind of DPS check either, so two-grouping them in heroic gear is doable.

Zorastiz

08-12-2010, 02:11 PM

<cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>...This is exactly what most folks are trying to tell you. There is not a single area in this expansion that is not accessible to even the most casual player. You can see every art asset in the expansion with a very middle of the road raid guild....</cite></blockquote>That statement is just pure bullox, nothing else can be said.</blockquote>How do you know that? You have no way to make that statement and appear credible. You said earlier that you haven't raided in Sentinel's Fate, in fact you went so far as to say you are pursuing other hobbies. If you haven't played the game, you have absolutely no basis to make any sort of statement regarding the relative difficulty or accessibility of this expansion.On the other hand, I *have* been playing the game, and I can make those statements based on first hand experience.</blockquote>I still play every day. I gave up trying to belong to a 'mediumcore' raid guild, for other hobbies. There are a lot of places a 'casual' will never ever see contrary to your statement. There are some of the single group instances that casuals will never be able to complete. IF you had said 'casual raider' instead of player I would have agreed with 'easy mode' making it possible. I would have to take your word for it since it won't be me, the raids I get into don't clear zones.You have no experience at being a casual, and no idea what casuals experience. There are parts of every expansion that casuals will never see. These are the people that have no idea what the God King is for instance. I know about the mob, tried to do the quests, and know that I will never ever see that mob now. There are group zones in TSO that I might never see, because when they were 'current' casuals couldn't do them, and now no one will want to go back and do 'old' content.I realize you don't understand this, you will call me a scrub whatever. You will say L2P. The point of me posting here, because I barely care at this point is that while you are bi%^&ing and moaning about WoE being too easy for the gear, it gave us something to work on even if we hardly ever got past the first 2 named. I haven't seen inside the vigilantx2. I have been in kurn's tower, but only a couple times past the guy on the circle platform. Quit being a $%^& and complaining about content you can do 'easily', that allows others to push their bounds, and go playing your own f-ing game. And yes, some casuals will not make it through the raid zones on 'easy mode'. Maybe a lot. maybe we do suck, so what.On my server there just are not people to group with, so you take whatever people you can find. These people will have the wrong buffs on people, the worst AA builds you can imagine, not even know some of the abilities they have. You would not play with these people. But for many its that or leave the game or do something solo for the upteenth time. these people will not complete WoE, but we might get something done. Yes, I've gone with the uber raiders who burn through zones and I feel bad because my gear sucks and my lock only did 20k zonewide and got beat by the raid tank and the raid assassin did 2 to 4 times that. I'm doing the best I can with what I have.Now, after this rant, I'm wondering why I even bother to write this. I hope you win and the game gets so hard your 5% are the only ones left in game and you can revel in your awesomeness. (will that finally make you happy)</blockquote>/Applaud, dude you are right on the money they don't get it!

Pervis

08-12-2010, 02:21 PM

<cite>Zorastiz@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>/Applaud, dude you are right on the money they don't get it!</blockquote>He's actually not, you know.The advent of easymode encounters this expansion makes it possible for a player that raids one night a week to see everything in game, in terms of art assets. They will not see much in Underfoot Depths, but that is just The Hole.Now, a player that does not raid won't see that, but a casual player that does raid will. There is a difference here, it is definatly possible to be a casual player that still raids.As to the part he is wrong about... if the game was made harder to cater to raiders, there would be much more than 5% of the population left (assuming people don't leave due to EQ2X).

Banditman

08-12-2010, 02:29 PM

You want the game to be catered to the lowest common denominator, that much is clear.I can tell you there are at least two *very* casual guilds on my tiny server who are doing most of the easy mode raid content in this expansion. One of those guilds is a *startup* guild that did not even exist until May. They have no players from existing raid guilds. They've managed to kill *all* of the SF easymode content.So, if you can't do it, then I ask you to do the same that you seem to be asking those "hard core" raiders to do. Accept that there will be less content for you. Maybe you are a terrible player, I don't know, and I never said I did.The point here is that you need to understand not everyone has the same skills. Your skills may or may not be average. I don't know. If your skills don't allow you to experience the same things as more skilled players - TOO BAD. That's life! I'm a pretty average guitar player, I don't normally embarass myself, but I'm not Steve Vai or Joe Satriani. I don't expect to ever get a record deal, or play in front of 50,000 people. Sure, I'd love to do it, but I don't expect it. I enjoy playing and will continue to do so, with no expectations of anything more.Maybe EQ2 isn't the game for you. Find another. I've been through numerous games before EQ2, I'll probably be in numerous games after.

Gaige

08-12-2010, 02:29 PM

<cite>Zorastiz@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>...This is exactly what most folks are trying to tell you. There is not a single area in this expansion that is not accessible to even the most casual player. You can see every art asset in the expansion with a very middle of the road raid guild....</cite></blockquote>That statement is just pure bullox, nothing else can be said.</blockquote>How do you know that? You have no way to make that statement and appear credible. You said earlier that you haven't raided in Sentinel's Fate, in fact you went so far as to say you are pursuing other hobbies. If you haven't played the game, you have absolutely no basis to make any sort of statement regarding the relative difficulty or accessibility of this expansion.On the other hand, I *have* been playing the game, and I can make those statements based on first hand experience.</blockquote>I still play every day. I gave up trying to belong to a 'mediumcore' raid guild, for other hobbies. There are a lot of places a 'casual' will never ever see contrary to your statement. There are some of the single group instances that casuals will never be able to complete. IF you had said 'casual raider' instead of player I would have agreed with 'easy mode' making it possible. I would have to take your word for it since it won't be me, the raids I get into don't clear zones.You have no experience at being a casual, and no idea what casuals experience. There are parts of every expansion that casuals will never see. These are the people that have no idea what the God King is for instance. I know about the mob, tried to do the quests, and know that I will never ever see that mob now. There are group zones in TSO that I might never see, because when they were 'current' casuals couldn't do them, and now no one will want to go back and do 'old' content.I realize you don't understand this, you will call me a scrub whatever. You will say L2P. The point of me posting here, because I barely care at this point is that while you are bi%^&ing and moaning about WoE being too easy for the gear, it gave us something to work on even if we hardly ever got past the first 2 named. I haven't seen inside the vigilantx2. I have been in kurn's tower, but only a couple times past the guy on the circle platform. Quit being a $%^& and complaining about content you can do 'easily', that allows others to push their bounds, and go playing your own f-ing game. And yes, some casuals will not make it through the raid zones on 'easy mode'. Maybe a lot. maybe we do suck, so what.On my server there just are not people to group with, so you take whatever people you can find. These people will have the wrong buffs on people, the worst AA builds you can imagine, not even know some of the abilities they have. You would not play with these people. But for many its that or leave the game or do something solo for the upteenth time. these people will not complete WoE, but we might get something done. Yes, I've gone with the uber raiders who burn through zones and I feel bad because my gear sucks and my lock only did 20k zonewide and got beat by the raid tank and the raid assassin did 2 to 4 times that. I'm doing the best I can with what I have.Now, after this rant, I'm wondering why I even bother to write this. I hope you win and the game gets so hard your 5% are the only ones left in game and you can revel in your awesomeness. (will that finally make you happy)</blockquote>/Applaud, dude you are right on the money they don't get it!</blockquote>He isn't talking about casual players, he is talking about terrible players. Buffs on the wrong people, terrible AAs, not paying attention, can't play their class, have no idea what to do or how to do it or why?Those aren't casual traits they're horrible traits.I'm sorry but that, um, playerbase section should never be catered to. You can't design around apathy and stupidity.

Zorastiz

08-12-2010, 02:33 PM

I'm afraid he is right, there are a lot of people who will never see everything in this expansion, not everyone gives a flip about seeing all the instances, raid zones etc, I really think you should come play with us normal people sometime seriously.I started this game very casually after spending years in EQ1 raiding non-stop, I got very serious about the raiding here for a couple of years too but no longer.There are a lot of people who do not raid even casually, I am now one of those I have a lot more fun with my buds then I do in a raid it is just a more relaxed environment.I could care less about seeing everything per x-pac and there are a lot, I repeat a LOT of people who feel exactly the same way, and NO not every casual raider is going to see or clear everything, you simply do not know what you are talking about, you have no idea how this works for people who aren't serious about the GAME.I can't convince the hardcore types that any of the rest of us know what we are talking about but believe me a lot of us do.

Carthr

08-12-2010, 02:41 PM

Everyone SHOULDN'T see everything.. As far as the art assets and stuff, whoopty doo, the raid zones are just like the heroic ones(except for Theer since you get to play on the chessboard)..I'm sorry the game is too hard for you.. I'm sorry that you aren't good enough to complete everything in one pull.. I'm sorry you don't want to put in the required effort.. Oh wait... No I'm not sorry that you don't want to put in the required effort. If you wanna be lazy, you shouldn't reap the same rewards I do, since I put in more time and effort.. [Removed for Content] is up with these entitlement people these days..

Zorastiz

08-12-2010, 02:54 PM

Me personally I am not asking for anything, you do what you want I will do what I want, I get what I get you get what you get. I don't care how the game is desgined top to bottom, bottom to top as long as my buds and I can have some fun it's all good.If hardcore games were money makers wouldn't there be some of them out there?Didn't think so!

Gaige

08-12-2010, 02:58 PM

<cite>Zorastiz@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote>If hardcore games were money makers wouldn't there be some of them out there?</blockquote>Ya, not like EQ is releasing a 17th expansion, not like Eve Online is extremely popular (and extremely hardcore) not like WoW's endgame is 100% focused on hardcore raiding...Oh wait.

Draylore

08-12-2010, 05:32 PM

Casual DOES NOT mean crappy. And Hardcore CAN MEAN crappy.The game has alot of content for good players......both Casual and not-so casual.In fact Vig x2 is very doable with casual players.The game should NEVER cater to crappy players.

Xill

08-12-2010, 05:40 PM

<cite>Draylore wrote:</cite><blockquote>Casual DOES NOT mean crappy. And Hardcore CAN MEAN crappy.The game has alot of content for good players......both Casual and not-so casual.In fact Vig x2 is very doable with casual players.The game should NEVER cater to crappy players.</blockquote>This is what I mean. I do not share the opinion that terrible players should be catered to. Just that it shouldnt be expected that you MUST be hardcore in your playstyle to be given content to enjoy regularly. I do not think raiding 4-5 days a week is a good idea or healthy... and I think it shouldnt be expected that a game cater to THAT playstyle since it encourages that mentality. People have a hard time being rational when they are addicted to something.

Gaige

08-12-2010, 05:43 PM

<cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote>I do not think raiding 4-5 days a week is a good idea or healthy... and I think it shouldnt be expected that a game cater to THAT playstyle since it encourages that mentality. </blockquote>The average American watches 151 hours of TV a month. I raid about 88 hours per month. You need to calm down.

Geothe

08-12-2010, 05:45 PM

Some of the comments here are hilarious.I know "casuals" who can do the Vig x2 without any major issues, these are people that don't do x4 zones at all, and are able to do the x2 with no real issues.Likewise, non-raiders can easily do any of the current heroic zones as well, yes, it took them some time gearing up in the easier instances before they got the harder ones down, but that is called -gasp- progression!The game is very "casual" friendly, you dont have to raid in order to clear any heroic zone, nor even the x2. Yes, raid gear can make the other zones easier, but they are very much doable without it, many people do it routinely.If -you- cant, stop blaiming others, because its not their fault, it is entirely on your shoulders.A crappy player is still a crappy player even in raid gear./shrugs.

Xill

08-12-2010, 05:48 PM

<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote>I do not think raiding 4-5 days a week is a good idea or healthy... and I think it shouldnt be expected that a game cater to THAT playstyle since it encourages that mentality. </blockquote>The average American watches 151 hours of TV a month. I raid about 88 hours per month. You need to calm down.</blockquote>I would be rather hesitant to compare myself to the average American. Really hesitant. And thats also why I dont have cable.And with the amount of time I see you spend on the forums, and in the game not raiding, what does your average monthy game time come out to?Not trying to attack your or anything, honest question.

Dasein

08-12-2010, 05:52 PM

<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Zorastiz@Antonia Bayle wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>...This is exactly what most folks are trying to tell you. There is not a single area in this expansion that is not accessible to even the most casual player. You can see every art asset in the expansion with a very middle of the road raid guild....</cite></blockquote>That statement is just pure bullox, nothing else can be said.</blockquote>How do you know that? You have no way to make that statement and appear credible. You said earlier that you haven't raided in Sentinel's Fate, in fact you went so far as to say you are pursuing other hobbies. If you haven't played the game, you have absolutely no basis to make any sort of statement regarding the relative difficulty or accessibility of this expansion.On the other hand, I *have* been playing the game, and I can make those statements based on first hand experience.</blockquote>I still play every day. I gave up trying to belong to a 'mediumcore' raid guild, for other hobbies. There are a lot of places a 'casual' will never ever see contrary to your statement. There are some of the single group instances that casuals will never be able to complete. IF you had said 'casual raider' instead of player I would have agreed with 'easy mode' making it possible. I would have to take your word for it since it won't be me, the raids I get into don't clear zones.You have no experience at being a casual, and no idea what casuals experience. There are parts of every expansion that casuals will never see. These are the people that have no idea what the God King is for instance. I know about the mob, tried to do the quests, and know that I will never ever see that mob now. There are group zones in TSO that I might never see, because when they were 'current' casuals couldn't do them, and now no one will want to go back and do 'old' content.I realize you don't understand this, you will call me a scrub whatever. You will say L2P. The point of me posting here, because I barely care at this point is that while you are bi%^&ing and moaning about WoE being too easy for the gear, it gave us something to work on even if we hardly ever got past the first 2 named. I haven't seen inside the vigilantx2. I have been in kurn's tower, but only a couple times past the guy on the circle platform. Quit being a $%^& and complaining about content you can do 'easily', that allows others to push their bounds, and go playing your own f-ing game. And yes, some casuals will not make it through the raid zones on 'easy mode'. Maybe a lot. maybe we do suck, so what.On my server there just are not people to group with, so you take whatever people you can find. These people will have the wrong buffs on people, the worst AA builds you can imagine, not even know some of the abilities they have. You would not play with these people. But for many its that or leave the game or do something solo for the upteenth time. these people will not complete WoE, but we might get something done. Yes, I've gone with the uber raiders who burn through zones and I feel bad because my gear sucks and my lock only did 20k zonewide and got beat by the raid tank and the raid assassin did 2 to 4 times that. I'm doing the best I can with what I have.Now, after this rant, I'm wondering why I even bother to write this. I hope you win and the game gets so hard your 5% are the only ones left in game and you can revel in your awesomeness. (will that finally make you happy)</blockquote>/Applaud, dude you are right on the money they don't get it!</blockquote>He isn't talking about casual players, he is talking about terrible players. Buffs on the wrong people, terrible AAs, not paying attention, can't play their class, have no idea what to do or how to do it or why?Those aren't casual traits they're horrible traits.I'm sorry but that, um, playerbase section should never be catered to. You can't design around apathy and stupidity.</blockquote>Assuming these are reasonably intelligent people (and most likely, they are), then this is very much a failure of game design. If it is unclear who should get which buffs, what a class's role is in a group, or which AAs are good and which are bad (why are there any bad AAs?), then it means the game is not properly communicating these things to the players.

Crismorn

08-12-2010, 06:14 PM

No, it means those players dont care enough to find out.

Xill

08-12-2010, 06:15 PM

<cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote>I do not think raiding 4-5 days a week is a good idea or healthy... and I think it shouldnt be expected that a game cater to THAT playstyle since it encourages that mentality. </blockquote>The average American watches 151 hours of TV a month. I raid about 88 hours per month. You need to calm down.</blockquote>And where did you get the 151 hours a month? Most studies I see say about... 2.7 to 2.9 hours a day. So rounded to 3 hours a day, its 21 hours a week. So 84 hours a month... which is less time then you spend actively raiding. Much less lurking on forums or other time spent in the game. And the average american watches WAY too much TV even at that level. An entire world exists outside of these little boxes you know...

Draylore

08-12-2010, 06:24 PM

<cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote>I do not think raiding 4-5 days a week is a good idea or healthy... and I think it shouldnt be expected that a game cater to THAT playstyle since it encourages that mentality.</blockquote>The average American watches 151 hours of TV a month. I raid about 88 hours per month. You need to calm down.</blockquote>And where did you get the 151 hours a month? Most studies I see say about... 2.7 to 2.9 hours a day. So rounded to 3 hours a day, its 21 hours a week. So 84 hours a month... which is less time then you spend actively raiding. Much less lurking on forums or other time spent in the game. And the average american watches WAY too much TV even at that level. An entire world exists outside of these little boxes you know...</blockquote>Its not your business or mine or anyone elses to dictate what is too much or not.Not that it matters....ive met players that play the game just about every free hour they have from work that plain suckat their classes........while ive met players that raid once a week for a few hours that walk on water when it comes to playing their class well.

Dasein

08-12-2010, 06:26 PM

<cite>Crismorn wrote:</cite><blockquote>No, it means those players dont care enough to find out.</blockquote>If you have to go any further than reading the description provided by the game, there is a problem.

Yimway

08-12-2010, 06:32 PM

<cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote>Assuming these are reasonably intelligent people (and most likely, they are), then this is very much a failure of game design. If it is unclear who should get which buffs, what a class's role is in a group, or which AAs are good and which are bad (why are there any bad AAs?), then it means the game is not properly communicating these things to the players. </blockquote>Bleh, I hate agreeing with Dasien.You can in fact design around apathy and stupidity, I'm not sure its a goal of a game, but most software is designed around these two challenges.This game has elements that are poorly designed in how it communicates which choices impact a player and how. I think it is safe to say, that for the majority of players, they've learned more about game mechanics and good decision making about the game from external sources rather than from in-game feedback. There is a huge population of players that will never look past the positive/negative feedback the game itself provides. So they often make little progress in getting better.Here is a simple example. You could poll every mage in game if the DPS stat on gear/adornments is useful to them or not. I'm going to wager, aggregate accross the game the most common answer will be yes. They see +10 DPS and assume, hey thats something that will help my dps...The game fails to clearly communicate to them that is a melee based stat only. So we judge the player as bad? Or is the design?Maximizing any of my characters requires first sitting down with the game and excel open and creating a spreadsheet of spell/ca efficacy. Then reviewing gear choices and what if scenarios on Potency/CritBonus/Ability mod/Haste/Reuse variables and how they impact efficacy. Then further tuning and tweaking using a parser, and I better have some third party add-ons/tools installed to assist with the maximizing the mechanical portions.To the point, depending on how offensively or deffensively I need to gear myself for given content, the strategy on what cast order, aa selections, adornments/slot, and temp potions vary between those equipment builds, and without spending significant analysis time at the task, I wouldn't have maximized my potential. Is it a good game design that requires this much external analysis to be good at? Sure it adds depth. And I can clearly seperate myself from 'not as good players' who haven't/don't perform this task for themselves, but I'm not sure that equates to a 'good design'.

Xill

08-12-2010, 06:34 PM

<cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Crismorn wrote:</cite><blockquote>No, it means those players dont care enough to find out.</blockquote>If you have to go any further than reading the description provided by the game, there is a problem.</blockquote>No when you are nearly forced into using 3rd party programs to give you basic information on things that happen in the game then its a problem. Especially when its things that have huge impacts on a persons performance...

Xill

08-12-2010, 06:39 PM

<cite>Draylore wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Gaige wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote>I do not think raiding 4-5 days a week is a good idea or healthy... and I think it shouldnt be expected that a game cater to THAT playstyle since it encourages that mentality.</blockquote>The average American watches 151 hours of TV a month. I raid about 88 hours per month. You need to calm down.</blockquote>And where did you get the 151 hours a month? Most studies I see say about... 2.7 to 2.9 hours a day. So rounded to 3 hours a day, its 21 hours a week. So 84 hours a month... which is less time then you spend actively raiding. Much less lurking on forums or other time spent in the game. And the average american watches WAY too much TV even at that level. An entire world exists outside of these little boxes you know...</blockquote>Its not your business or mine or anyone elses to dictate what is too much or not.Not that it matters....ive met players that play the game just about every free hour they have from work that plain suckat their classes........while ive met players that raid once a week for a few hours that walk on water when it comes to playing their class well.</blockquote>You are right, I generally try to keep it to myself what think about that and I shouldnt really have said anything about it, but my point was not directed at gaige originally, I just got caught up. But I still dont think game design should encourage or even demand that kind of behavior to succeed even at the top end. IMHO obviously.

CoLD MeTaL

08-12-2010, 07:04 PM

<cite>Atan@Unrest wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Dasein wrote:</cite><blockquote>Assuming these are reasonably intelligent people (and most likely, they are), then this is very much a failure of game design. If it is unclear who should get which buffs, what a class's role is in a group, or which AAs are good and which are bad (why are there any bad AAs?), then it means the game is not properly communicating these things to the players. </blockquote>Bleh, I hate agreeing with Dasien.You can in fact design around apathy and stupidity, I'm not sure its a goal of a game, but most software is designed around these two challenges.This game has elements that are poorly designed in how it communicates which choices impact a player and how. I think it is safe to say, that for the majority of players, they've learned more about game mechanics and good decision making about the game from external sources rather than from in-game feedback. There is a huge population of players that will never look past the positive/negative feedback the game itself provides. So they often make little progress in getting better.Here is a simple example. You could poll every mage in game if the DPS stat on gear/adornments is useful to them or not. I'm going to wager, aggregate accross the game the most common answer will be yes. They see +10 DPS and assume, hey thats something that will help my dps...The game fails to clearly communicate to them that is a melee based stat only. So we judge the player as bad? Or is the design?Maximizing any of my characters requires first sitting down with the game and excel open and creating a spreadsheet of spell/ca efficacy. Then reviewing gear choices and what if scenarios on Potency/CritBonus/Ability mod/Haste/Reuse variables and how they impact efficacy. Then further tuning and tweaking using a parser, and I better have some third party add-ons/tools installed to assist with the maximizing the mechanical portions.To the point, depending on how offensively or deffensively I need to gear myself for given content, the strategy on what cast order, aa selections, adornments/slot, and temp potions vary between those equipment builds, and without spending significant analysis time at the task, I wouldn't have maximized my potential. Is it a good game design that requires this much external analysis to be good at? Sure it adds depth. And I can clearly seperate myself from 'not as good players' who haven't/don't perform this task for themselves, but I'm not sure that equates to a 'good design'.</blockquote>Actually Atan i think you just proved Dasein's point with a very good example and your own testimony of spreadsheets. The design is bad if ALL the informatin needed to make an informed decision about gear/class/spells/etc are not readily available in game. No, it should not come up with a big red arrow, "this is better", but the information should be available for you to make an intelligent decision, and it is flat not. Not to mention that once you have it somewhat figured out they change it with some Live nerf. You aren't a 'better player' for doing this, just more informed and willing to spend the time to reasearch your hobby/game. Wait game, i need to research [Removed for Content] this is for fun not work.not to mention that some of the spell descriptions seem to be in very broken english with extremely poor use of pronouns and only people who have spent hours at the training dummy can give you an intelligent answer on what it does. Your +DPS was a good example, mitigation would be another. And many of these things change slightly going from solo to group to raid.You wouldn't sit down and play monopoly with someone, if half the rules were on monpolyflames and coming from other players instead of from Hasbro.

Gaige

08-12-2010, 07:38 PM

<cite>Xill wrote:</cite><blockquote>And where did you get the 151 hours a month? Most studies I see say about... 2.7 to 2.9 hours a day. So rounded to 3 hours a day, its 21 hours a week. So 84 hours a month... which is less time then you spend actively raiding. Much less lurking on forums or other time spent in the game. And the average american watches WAY too much TV even at that level. An entire world exists outside of these little boxes you know...</blockquote><a href="http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/three-screen-report-media-consumption-and-multi-tasking-continue-to-increase/">http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire...ue-to-increase/</a>

Seiffil

08-13-2010, 01:11 PM

<cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote>Actually Atan i think you just proved Dasein's point with a very good example and your own testimony of spreadsheets. The design is bad if ALL the informatin needed to make an informed decision about gear/class/spells/etc are not readily available in game. No, it should not come up with a big red arrow, "this is better", but the information should be available for you to make an intelligent decision, and it is flat not. Not to mention that once you have it somewhat figured out they change it with some Live nerf. You aren't a 'better player' for doing this, just more informed and willing to spend the time to reasearch your hobby/game. Wait game, i need to research [Removed for Content] this is for fun not work.not to mention that some of the spell descriptions seem to be in very broken english with extremely poor use of pronouns and only people who have spent hours at the training dummy can give you an intelligent answer on what it does. Your +DPS was a good example, mitigation would be another. And many of these things change slightly going from solo to group to raid.You wouldn't sit down and play monopoly with someone, if half the rules were on monpolyflames and coming from other players instead of from Hasbro.</blockquote>First for Desain, assuming whether people are intelligent and then saying if it's unclear how to properly buff that it's a flaw in the game design is just taking an easy way out. Hooray for the 3k parsing dirge who feels him keeping battle cry on himself is the best use of the buff, instead of either the tank or scout dps who might be doing 4-5x his dps. You mention how why should their be any bad AA's, to be honest, with the classes I have play, I can't say any of the AA lines are worthless, but others are just obviously better. I've known people who because they failed to read an AA, CA, or Buff description have made really poor choices regarding those. Is it a flaw in the game they made those choices, or is it their choice that was flawed? In the vast majority of the situations, it's the own person's choice. A cleric who complains about constantly being stifled or interrupted for instance.Atan is right though, you can design a game around apathy and stupidity. The problem with that though is at some point you have to step up the content to keep those who just want more out of the game interested. And then you end up needing to find a way to make it so those who you designed the game around apathy and stupidity for, don't get completely left behind. Designing from the top end down isn't meant to be a slight towards casuals, it's meant to give everyone a goal to try to strive towards, room to keep improving.My guild during TSO, we had members who geared up in woe, we didn't have very many T4 raid pieces, usually most people didn't have more then 1 or 2. Now SF comes along this same guild, in a mix of woe gear and heroic instance gear from SF, manages to get through a decent amount of the easy mode content, without having to be fully raid geared, only raiding 2 days a week at most. There doesn't need to be a x2 zone that is the equivalent of WoE. If you aren't raiding, you honestly don't need the raid gear either for that matter. You aren't going to see people not getting invited to instance groups just because they only have legendary gear and no raid gear whatsoever.Now with regards to your comments regarding how everything should be clearly laid out, it is all there. As Atan mentioned, creating an excel spreadsheet to determine the best spell/ca order, none of that information is pulled from 3rd party sources, all of it is there in game on the spell/ca descriptions. I can look at my CA's and note these are my highest damaging abilities, maybe I should use them as soon as they're up, or if I choose to put in the extra work, I can use all the data I have access to and try to work out what might be the best CA/Spell rotation for instance. But it's a choice, and because someone chose to or didn't choose to make that choice, isn't going to interfere with their playstyle, unless maybe they are trying to get a spot into a more serious raid guild, otherwise, they will do well enough for most grouping situations.To say that the game is badly designed because analysis or research has to be done outside, to be able to make yourself a better player is also false. These are choices YOU have to make whether you are satisfied with where you currently are or can get in this game, or in any other game. I'd call it good design, because it does allow those who care to try work out those all those little details to keep trying to improve themselves. Saying that this doesn't make you a better player, just a more informed player is also false, not because you aren't informed, but because an informed player should be a better player. A player should be able to do well under most circumstances providing they understand their class, and the role defined for their class, and all of this can be easily learned from playing the game, or by asking another player for advice. As long as their are games out there, someone will always perform that extra analysis to try to find that little tidbit of knowledge to gain the edge on others. It's the competition, whether with the game itself, with those you play the game with, or yourself, and only the player is able to say when they're satisfied with where they are.

Yimway

08-13-2010, 01:41 PM

<cite>Seiffil@Permafrost wrote:</cite><blockquote>To say that the game is badly designed because analysis or research has to be done outside, to be able to make yourself a better player is also false. These are choices YOU have to make whether you are satisfied with where you currently are or can get in this game, or in any other game. I'd call it good design, because it does allow those who care to try work out those all those little details to keep trying to improve themselves. Saying that this doesn't make you a better player, just a more informed player is also false, not because you aren't informed, but because an informed player should be a better player. A player should be able to do well under most circumstances providing they understand their class, and the role defined for their class, and all of this can be easily learned from playing the game, or by asking another player for advice. As long as their are games out there, someone will always perform that extra analysis to try to find that little tidbit of knowledge to gain the edge on others. It's the competition, whether with the game itself, with those you play the game with, or yourself, and only the player is able to say when they're satisfied with where they are.</blockquote>I agree generally with where you are going, but other games provide more direct feedback with how well you are performing compaired to others. Other games have real checkpoints that indicate, hey, you've not really figured this part out well enough to proceed any further.To me, EQ2 doesn't do a very good job of it. There isn't really anything the game tells the pug wizard I was with lastnight that zw parsing 3k in a simple instance is performing at a level that is in the bottom 25% of your current potential. There isn't anything that communicates to them, that hey, with your current gear your potential output is X and your expected average contribution should be Y.There is nothing about leveling that wizard up to end game that checked the players skill at mastering it. There is no feedback from the game telling them, hey, you really haven't figured stuff out yet. Instead, the game is designed that this player will largely ride on the coat tails of others, and only other players can tell them they are failing at reaching even a reasonable understanding of how to play it.The problem there is, if I told her that, then I'm just some raid geared 'end-game' player and she'll dismiss it as I don't have the gear/time/whatever to be better, and it 'isn't anything *I* am doing wrong'. She doubtfully would not understand that she in fact was doing at most a 3rd of her actual potential with what she had to work with. I'm a nice person though, and said nothing to the player. It was clear she was having fun, and the rest of us there were capable of getting it done with or without reasonable performance from this player.A better game would give that feedback to the player from the game itself, either by failing to allow them to progress till they got better, or some other mechanism.I do believe some level of 'spell efficacy' could be added to the UI. You mention organizing your biggest hits first, but efficacy is more complicated than that. You've got to look at damage / (casting speed + reuse speed) then factor in the overtime damage as relevant.There should be a better way to determine the usefulness of procs and gear. Unfortunately often changing one piece is only a differential of ~150-300 dps. Can you actually observe this using only the game itself as feedback?

Xill

08-13-2010, 03:13 PM

Its hard for veterans of many MMO's and especially eq1 vets(in relation to eq2) to understand what a new player goes through leveling to cap the first time. You do not get much in terms of explanation at the appropriate time as to what mechanics do what, and why. And you dont learn most of it through simply playing the game becuase it doesnt give you feedback on whats happening.The game has changed dramatically since its creation, and alot of the information that it gives is not updated. Things like cure curse... at 80 you suddenly get this ability. If you have full hotbars you dont even see that you have recieved it. Or that it could be important to gameplay. Or what a curse will look like... or what it can possibly do.Or things like ability mod. Ok so you get an item with 25 AB... is that better then an item with 1.5% crit chance? What IS a crit?! What if that item with AB has more Int and your a caster... how much is that going to help? Most new people dont even know what ability mod does... because whats an ability? A combat art? A spell? Both? It doesnt really say. You can assume... but unless you test you dont really know. And does it just add that amount? Does it add that before or after something like potency? Or crit bonus if you are getting that far?What about double attack? How does that factor in? Can you proc off the second attack? Does it double attack for both 1-handers if duel wielding? And flurry... isnt that the same thing? How is it different and more importantly WHY. Does it work for spells? It just says "Attack" not double combat art, or double auto attack or anything. Can you double attack off an AoE attack? Or flurry? Can you proc off an AoE attack? How much does say 5% Dbl attack weigh in against 1.5% potency? Or CB, or attack speed?And attack speed... does that modify proc's? Whats the cap? Is there a cap? Or a reduced return after an amount?Or reuse time VS. casting speed? Which would be more usefull. And unless you individually inspect each spell/CA you dont see the details of it (unless you dig into the options and turn the extra details on mouse-over on, which is yet another thing that is never told exists unless you dig for it.) And then recovery speed on top of that.... recovery and reuse is different? How, and which is more effective for you? And this is all very common stuff after level 80, that is never even mentioned before hand nor explained after.And proc's... where do they tie into it, how much are they doing. Do they even WORK like described? Is the description accurate? Whats a "Combat hit"? Is it a combat art? An auto attack? A spell? All of those? How would you even find out?Or maybe "Riposte chance" and "Additional chance to riposte" being DIFFERENT mechanics 1 being completely useless and other incredibly usefull?! Can a proc crit? Some can some cant? How do you know? Are they effected by potency and CB? In what order is it applied?What about for melee. Whats better a 2.5, 4 or 6 second weapon? 2-hander or duel 1-handers? How much damage is my auto attack doing over time? You wouldnt know without alot of extra work unless you went 3rd party. And it also varies by class, but is never explained why 1 is superior over another. And do proc's work in your offhand? If so do they stack?How about debuffs? A VERY usefull mechanic. How much is my 26 str reduction doing to make that mob hit me for less? Is it doing anything? Most of the time the effect is so slight, you assume its worthless.And none of this is taking into account AA's which are incredibly complicated trying to balance around all of these other mechanics and very non-descript for the most part. Some even make them sound very usefull... but infact they are not. Are they effected by crit, bonus, potency, reuse/recast, casting speed?You can go on and on about the hundreds of little things the game does next to nothing to explain to you or even give you a hand in figuring out yourself, but have huge impacts on your overall effectiveness.And these are almost all base mechanics at this point. None of this directly takes into account abilities, and what is more effective for what class. We have 24 different classes, all with unique abilities.And the BIGGEST THING OF ALL, is that you wouldnt even know how much this stuff matters. NOWHERE does it tell you that all of these things have huge impacts, and that you need to learn them, learn how they work and why and balance them against all of the other things that can be used.I cant count the number of times I have been forced to play "teacher" doing PuGs in the old TSO instances, explaining even simple mechanics to an entire group of people. The first question I always get when they realize I know what I am talking about is "Whats ability mod do?" Every time. And then after a few minutes of random questions, they ask how you can figure this stuff out... in which case I direct them to the forums... and that other site not to be mentioned and eq2i and eq2maps. And then explain more about basic mechanics. I almost have a speech down pat, where to start and where to learn more for yourself. Some people get upset thinking I am talking down to them, but most take the advice and try to learn.From the sheer number of people I see that have trouble understanding/figuring out the simplest concepts in this game I can only come to the conclusion its POOR DESIGN as opposed to a massive number of stupid people that have managed to congregate and stick it out to be bad at this game. I understand that some people are willing to turn the hobby into work and spend countless hours testing theories to figure out what should be simple game mechanics and digging through forums to find little nuggets of information (myself being one actually). But most are trying to enjoy themsleves and thats not really that fun.If you have 2 complex puzzles sitting next to each other. 1 is half broken, missing pieces and doesnt have basic instructions... most people see that as silly and a waste of time. Sure its POSSIBLE to solve the puzzle, and Im sure you would feel good about it after... but wouldnt you rather the second one, which works, has a balanced learning curve and maybe some basic "getting started" tips on the box? And would you call people stupid, and pathetic for not wanting to go the extra mile to do the half broken one?

TuinalOfTheNexus

08-20-2010, 07:53 AM

I think it's pretty fair to say raid content is way too hard for casual - i.e unable to commit to any raid schedule - players.If they're not 1-shotted due to lack of crit mit, then the vast number of fights where a single person can easily wipe the raid means you really can't compensate for a loose cannon.I'm coming from the perspective of having been killing avatars in TSO, and gone to completely casual, unguilded, random login times (as a result of the general decline of EQ2 in many respects). I would love to be able to join, or form, a pickup raid, because imo the gameplay in EQ2 only really shines in raids. Single group instances are invariably trivial, which isn't really a problem (though it baffles me some people saying number of people required isn't linked to difficulty - when was the last time a heroic zone wasn't cleared the day it went live?), but the curve from a heroic instance to SF raid both in terms of class knowledge and gear is extremely sharp.I'd be happy to use the knowledge I have to form pickup raids, but in SF it's just not viable. I've always been one to push for more high-end raid content while I was a high-end raider, but I think in hindsight they got it right best with Shard of Hate - a zone that a pickup x2-3 raid could clear the trash for masters, low end-fabled, and maybe a few named, whereas high-end raiders had a couple of reasonably challenging encounters with high-end loot. I never really begrudged the SoH trash, although really wish they'd stuck an NPC at the zone in that let you switch to hardmode trash by linking the mobs in groups of 4.I'm sure a casual zone is what they'd hoped for with Icy Keep, but again, this is post-crit mit, and it's not straightforward enough for a pickup. I'd still love crit mit to be removed, because this is the main barrier to casual players joining and forming raids. It's a completely artificial block to progression that was put in with TSO for dubious reasons. If they're really worried about people getting to a gear level to kill the hardest mobs too fast, then this should be done through resist mechanics and dps/hps/mit/avoidance checks - i.e. the good old fashioned way - rather than a contrived 'you need x crit mit to avoid constant 1-shots'.

Shizune

08-20-2010, 08:47 AM

Crit mit doesn't matter at all for easy mode encounters. That includes all raid zones this expansion minus the hard mode encounters and scavantor in Labs. The only thing a raid would need to survive easy encounters would be resists and some knowledge of how the encounter is supposed to be done.

CoLD MeTaL

08-20-2010, 09:58 AM

<cite>Shizune@Nektulos wrote:</cite><blockquote>Crit mit doesn't matter at all for easy mode encounters. That includes all raid zones this expansion minus the hard mode encounters and scavantor in Labs. The only thing a raid would need to survive easy encounters would be resists and some knowledge of how the encounter is supposed to be done.</blockquote>I went with a 'easy mode' raid last night on my 90/208 fury with 27% crit mit (That's a mix of T3 and T2), and was utterly useless getting one shotted by every ae when i was the farthest from the mob, died over 30 times in theer. fortunately I didn't prevent them from succeeding in the raid. moving with the golden circle no problem, group curing no problem, 1 shotted from full health of 12k (yeah that might be low) with 12k ressits (a little low as well) just stinks, fortunately my group mostly survived but those guys were real nice and not slammin me continually.So i would say that's bologna.

Banditman

08-20-2010, 10:13 AM

And by "T2 and T3" you mean "last expansion armor" . . . which was your whole problem. It's a long running complaint that down level resists do not show up properly, as you yourself know and have commented on. Think about it a minute. You're fighting a level 96-98 mob in L80 gear . . . 16 - 18 levels worth of difference.So, you walk into a raid in last expansion's armor, running very low on mitigation already, and that mitigation is probably only 75% effective due to leveling. So, your 12k resists? Probably about 9k. Yea, you got pwned.You need about 17k in this expansion's gear to survive consistently.But never fear. EQ2 is not going to last much longer.

CoLD MeTaL

08-20-2010, 11:15 AM

<cite>Banditman wrote:</cite><blockquote>And by "T2 and T3" you mean "last expansion armor" . . . which was your whole problem. It's a long running complaint that down level resists do not show up properly, as you yourself know and have commented on. Think about it a minute. You're fighting a level 96-98 mob in L80 gear . . . 16 - 18 levels worth of difference.So, you walk into a raid in last expansion's armor, running very low on mitigation already, and that mitigation is probably only 75% effective due to leveling. So, your 12k resists? Probably about 9k. Yea, you got pwned.You need about 17k in this expansion's gear to survive consistently.But never fear. EQ2 is not going to last much longer.</blockquote>Ah yes, the 'hidden' stuff. that makes sense, now if the screen would just show us that mitigation is not mitigation etc. Unfortunately, i believe you are correct.My screen should somehow tell me that at 90 with WoE armor i am basically nekkid.

Shizune

08-20-2010, 12:15 PM

<cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Shizune@Nektulos wrote:</cite><blockquote>Crit mit doesn't matter at all for easy mode encounters. That includes all raid zones this expansion minus the hard mode encounters and scavantor in Labs. The only thing a raid would need to survive easy encounters would be resists and some knowledge of how the encounter is supposed to be done.</blockquote>I went with a 'easy mode' raid last night on my 90/208 fury with 27% crit mit (That's a mix of T3 and T2), and was utterly useless getting one shotted by every ae when i was the farthest from the mob, died over 30 times in theer. fortunately I didn't prevent them from succeeding in the raid. moving with the golden circle no problem, group curing no problem, 1 shotted from full health of 12k (yeah that might be low) with 12k ressits (a little low as well) just stinks, fortunately my group mostly survived but those guys were real nice and not slammin me continually.So i would say that's bologna. </blockquote>LOLZ! Seriously before you try to call someone out at least read over your post before pushing the "Submit" button.

CoLD MeTaL

08-20-2010, 12:29 PM

<cite>Shizune@Nektulos wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>CoLD MeTaL wrote:</cite><blockquote><cite>Shizune@Nektulos wrote:</cite><blockquote>Crit mit doesn't matter at all for easy mode encounters. That includes all raid zones this expansion minus the hard mode encounters and scavantor in Labs. The only thing a raid would need to survive easy encounters would be resists and some knowledge of how the encounter is supposed to be done.</blockquote>I went with a 'easy mode' raid last night on my 90/208 fury with 27% crit mit (That's a mix of T3 and T2), and was utterly useless getting one shotted by every ae when i was the farthest from the mob, died over 30 times in theer. fortunately I didn't prevent them from succeeding in the raid. moving with the golden circle no problem, group curing no problem, 1 shotted from full health of 12k (yeah that might be low) with 12k ressits (a little low as well) just stinks, fortunately my group mostly survived but those guys were real nice and not slammin me continually.So i would say that's bologna. </blockquote>LOLZ! Seriously before you try to call someone out at least read over your post before pushing the "Submit" button.</blockquote>just because I was under-geared, does not mean that crit mit is not at all required, and your post doesn't prove it either.