belated feedback: downtiering, combat mechanics revamp, and risk/reward

[Sebastien]

Returning player Sebastien here.. as I said in a previous post, I left EQ2 (and thus the test community) right around the time of the mass down-tiering of all outdoor zones.  I also mentioned I would have a keen eye on the risk/reward tradeoffs between solo and heroic content.

 

To recap, at the time the down-tiering first began, my guildmates and I were rather appalled with it all.  Solo mobs at that time were either a bore or a joke to fight, depending on whom you asked, and the rewards were equally dismal.  Having most of the game suddenly populated with such mobs was a huge downer for us, and we did leave shortly afterwards.  Ironicly, the next game we played together was WoW.  Meaning no disrespect to the EQ2 devteam, once I played WoW a huge lightbulb went off for me, and I said to myself: ah ha!  This is what SOE was trying to do.  Copying WoW is risky business, because when you are talking about the things WoW does well, it does them SO well that an immitation is likely to fail.  This is not to say that I think WoW is a perfect game (I did leave it and I didn't buy the expansion), but just to say that it's exceptional good in certain areas.

 

I mention this to put in perspective the kind of skepticism and "baggage" I had when returning to EQ2 to see the effect of these changes.

 

Now to my feedback:

 

I am truly amazed at how well these massive changes worked out, in the end.  Solo mobs are exactly where they should be, both in terms of difficulty and rewards.  I might say that the resist mechanics seem a bit brutal on soloing spellcasters, especially when interrupts are added atop this.  However I was pleased to see the control I had over resists via spell upgrades, ie to Adept, Master, etc.  Still, I think when interrupts are considered, it can be frustrating.

 

But overall, the balance is really right on the mark, and having played so many games, both good and bad, I can appreciate how difficult it is to get that risk/reward note at just the right pitch to make the game sing.  I am speaking only with experience into my 30's under the new game mechanics, but I am very pleased and offer my kudos.  At first the down-tiering was a nail in a coffin for me, but now that it's all working well, it makes the game so much more enjoyable.

 

I noticed early on that Heroic mobs were not what I remembered them to be!  Back in the day, my Inquisitor could solo most any heroic mob, named or no, up through orange, without too much difficulty.  Imagine my surprise when I tried to solo my first Blue-con ^^^ heroic named this time around.. ouch!  OK, I thought, Heroic mobs are serious business now.  Good.  I like a challenging game.  My concern was: how did SOE handle the risk/reward tradeoff between soloing through quests and a heroic dungeon crawl?

 

I considered my early forays into Stormhold to be the first acid test (for me) of EQ2's new landscape.  And once again, I offer my Kudos: you've got it spot on.  The rewards were generous, but in a way befitting the legacy of a good dungeon crawl.  They aren't overly indulgent, nor or they stingy.  My primary fear was that I'd feel no incentive to dungeon crawl as opposed to my solo questing.  But in fact, the rewards of a dungeon crawl really do justify the added efforts and risks involved.

 

Without meaning to brag, please know that I'm ridiculously critical of these sorts of points in the online games I play, so when I compliment this kind of balance, you are getting kudos from a harsh critic. :smileywink:

 

 

Now for a bit of constructive criticism -

 

- You do have a risk/reward imbalance between the old content (antonica, commonlands, et al) and the new (gfay, butcherblock, et al).  It may well be your intent to create excitement over the new zones, and also to give new players a healthy "boost" in their careers, so they can catch up to endgame.  Those are legitimate motivations, but I think right now my personal feeling is that the disparity is just too great.  It may not be worth the effort to review all these old quests, but I'd just ask that you keep this kind of thing in mind for the future.  You don't want zones that are so integral to the game as freeport and qeynos to become ghost towns.  So I think you want to make sure these zones stay reasonably fresh and current as well.

 

- I perceive a risk/reward imbalance also when it comes to Heroic quests.  Now, I've already said I think the tradeoffs between solo mobs and heroic mobs is spot on.  But I cannot say the same about solo quests and heroic quests.  The best example I can give is the venerable AQ series.. the class-specific armor quests that we all used to swear by from 20 to 30.  I did these quests, just out of habit I suppose.  It is a long quest chain, some of the steps are very tedious (might griffons, deathbone bersekers and some others come to mind), and it does require a lot of effort, with a full team for some steps.  Yet, the armor you get is really rubbish compared to what you might get from a simple 20-minute solo quest, or even just basic drops off mobs in the new EoF zones.  I was really disappointed.. at least the final piece, the chest piece, of this series is in bad need of an update.  While I speak about the AQ's in particular, it was a general pattern I observed as I leveled up to 30.  Heroic quests really didn't payoff at all.  The rewards need to be beefed up.

 

- You might need to relax on the midlevel Heritage Quests.  The fact is that we level SO fast in this game now.. I literally play with my combat exp turned off 100% of the time, and I still find that I cannot complete some of these HQ's in a reasonable timeframe (meaning that the reward is still relevant to me by the time I get it).  I think the Dwarven Ringmail HQ that you added for EoF is a good example of making the lower level HQ's fun and reasonable.  Just to be clear: I'm ALL FOR having some higher level HQ's that are massive in scope and effort.  I'm just saying, practically speaking, you just cannot make them take too long in the low-to-mid levels, because we level too fast.

 

- Heroic mobs maybe need a little more longevity as they turn blue and green.  I realize that, by intention, the game mechanics stringently encourage players to focus on a narrow level range of opponents, and I don't disagree with that.  But it seems to me that the efficacy of heroic mobs deteriorates SO rapidly as they turn blue.  To me, for a dungeon crawl to be fun and challenging, they really need to be yellow and orange under the current mechanics.  On the one hand, when I fight these things solo, I am really hesitant to say they should be any harder, because they are truly monsters!  But on the other hand, it just seems that you have a very narrow range of time to get into a dungeon and be challenged by it, and even during the course of a single dungeon crawl, you can level to the point where suddenly these foes becomes easy and trivial.  I don't have a specific suggestion, but perhaps you can think about this.

 

 

I have plenty of other feedback and comments, but on topic of risk/reward, that is what I have for you folks.  I hope it is helpful, and congrats on the good work.

Message Edited by Sebastien on 01-16-2007 05:40 PM

[Zindicatt]

As usual, your comments are spot-on and well made.  They are always a good read.  I'm wondering if you are posting this elsewhere as I suspect this forum does not get a lot of reads (though occasionally some designers and developers may reply to something which shows it does get read.).

As a feedback to what you wrote, I suspect if there was any marketing/product management techniques involved in leaving the original content alone.  For one, it takes additional resources to revamp these features such as AQ.  For two, the players are more likely to buy the new expansion if they realize that it offers better rewards.  Noone likes to miss anything good.