Monument and Might - General Feedback

[Tehom]

There's a lot of stuff I do like in this update. The order of Rime stuff and assosciated quests seem cool, something for me to do on alts and so on. I love the books, and don't mind the research assistants. I like the new instances that I've tried so far, with the exception to how their itemized.

The bad: Some of the raid mobs are flat-out harder to kill than they were pre-patch. It's not a huge deal, and not something people won't eventually be able to overcome with more gearing, but Uktap in particular is kind of out of whack for where he is in progression, frankly, and I'll cheerfully earn the mockery of people who are farming him with ease by suggesting he just be nerfed. I think his physical AE should be toned down some (along with all physical AEs and hard-hitting epic adds in the expansion, honestly - they're the root cause of all the healer stacking people feel compelled to do), and the health of the conscripts should be lowered a lot. Virtually every loss is somehow related to people getting target locked/wiped combined with his physical AEs and the add waves, with the sapper only being an issue due to target locks, massive number of adds, and people just being dead who get selected. Alternately, just make the target-lock cureable - it'd make the fight a lot easier than lowering the health of the conscripts, but target lock/wipes are such a maddening mechanic that I would happily never see them again, at least with no classes getting counters for em (give counters to druids, brawlers, other underpowered classes, please). Mostly I feel uktap is kind of an example of where encounters can sort of go wrong this expansion - really annoying mechanics combined with the very strong encouragement to healer stack, and his weird breastplates (the heal crit chain breastplate with a melee crit proc, huh?) just kinda emphasize that.

Kurn's Tower x2 itemization is just really, really weak for its difficulty. There's two issues here that I see - the first is they underestimated the difficulty, and the second is that they're stingy with itemization by failing to take into account zones that don't drop armor patterns offer less to players who do em. The individual items need to be non-armor slots/jewelry that meaningfully affect a character's abilities. What I would really like to see is most of the existing items spruced up with effects - runic cover, mana well, things like that for priests; base damage increases, spell crit bonus, high damage procs, and manadrain procs for mages; jewelry with strong avoidance, mitigation, or ward procs for fighters, etc. A logical thing would be to put a lot of slightly upgraded version of the super-rare fabled items from heroic zones in em, like Najena's Ring of Readiness, Essence of Mastery, and so on. I feel good charm slots is a great slot for chase items since you have a pretty huge gulf between things like Shard of Hate or Wicked Wand of Malice and Avatar charms - Munzok's Material Bastion provides something of a middle ground, but Munzok's itemization is -also- too weak anyway.

[backtostart]

mean they didnt work on test either?

[backtostart]

i seriously think the whole spell apprentice thing is a good idea but you need to rethink the length of time. 15 days for a adept1 is a bit much and 30 days for a master. Either up the number of spells that can be researched or decrease the time or i say the whole thing is a waste. With 6 chachters 1 spell every 15 to 30 days will take years so ill buy them and then there is another usless operation in the game i would like to use but is so dumb i wont. Waste of my time and a waste of your time. I dont you make it a function of master sages to update spells, dont have to make it easy, a 2 rares and 5 shards or something like that.

[Heinzrick]

Can't wait to see what this content is all about, Lucky non EU ppl.

We're still waiting.(Unless today was the patch day, I'm at work.)

[Cronqar]

UK officially will get GU52 Wednesday morning local time. DE/FR servers are not mentioned in the post! We might be piggybacking on the update since we are scheduled for a downtime according to eq2players but Kiaras post specifically addresses UK servers, not DE/FR servers. Can we get an official comment on that one? Or should we be looking to what server we are going to transfer?

http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...topic_id=453577

And bonus AA-XP? Who came up with that brilliant, outlandish idea of a "goody"? That is kind of unexpected, thank you!

[Whilhelmina]

There is an update listed on EQ2 Players for French, German and Japanese servers, but yes, FR/DE and Japanese servers are not mentioned in the post and no downtime is announced on the forums either. Well, it shouldn't be a surprise... (I wonder if we'll get a message in 6 hours or so telling us that it's delayed one more week).

[Cronqar]

just in on the german boards, I guess it applies to FR/DE for sure.

Soffrina wrote:

stayx wrote:

Any news Soffrina?

Will we get the LU52 tomorrow?

Yes, the GU 52 will be launched tomorrow! We are in the process of writing an announcement in German and I will be posting it on the forum and the eq2players site! Thanks again for your patience

[Whilhelmina]

Yep, she posted on both our forums an official announcement I was starting to wonder if we'll see this GU or not. Well, I'll still wait for tomorrow I wonder if part of the hotfixes where added to the update.

[Blu]

Good:

I was super impressed with the teaser of a storyline for the Order of Rime. The cut scene was also great and well placed. The story itself is not new ground, but it seemed implemented well enough to make me concerned for the future of Norrath. (And I'm not an RPer.) Seeing those two dragons hitched to an iceberg was quite an impressive site!

The research assistants are great! The length of time it takes is a bit longer that I'd like, but considering that I'd otherwise be unable to obtain some of those spells, I love it.

I'm a fan of the spell consolidation, in general. When I was a newer player, it always confused me which spells were replacements, and to be absolutely sure I would use it and make sure it used the same timer. My spell book is also nicely sorted when I use alphabetical... it's easy to pick out my best spell when making new hotbars or macros.

68% evil frost unicorn, woot!

Bad:

The spell/broker searching issue should definitely be looked at. It's annoying to search for "Spell II" and get "Spell II", "Spell III", etc. I do appreciate that we can use inexact searches, but it's annoying when I just want to do a quick search for a spell. An alternative is to be able to do an exact search, perhaps using quotes around the exact search term. Actually, I haven't tried that, maybe it's already there, lol.

Rime faction. I feel like every time I click on one of those containers to grind out a new quest, a kitten dies. It would have been much better (for future reference) to have an entire quest line or multiple parallel quest lines, rather than having to massacre a thousand sokokars with repeatables. You potentially could have made it just as long of a process, just with much less boring, unfun repetition. I know you'd have to make more content without repeatables, but your customers would enjoy it much more, so do it for us.

Necro/Conj pets, put them back.

Monk cool kick animation, put it back in.

[Noaani]

BlueX wrote:

The spell/broker searching issue should definitely be looked at. It's annoying to search for "Spell II" and get "Spell II", "Spell III", etc. I do appreciate that we can use inexact searches, but it's annoying when I just want to do a quick search for a spell. An alternative is to be able to do an exact search, perhaps using quotes around the exact search term. Actually, I haven't tried that, maybe it's already there, lol.

Set up and save a broker search for each of the classes you play, setting the item quality to fabled, the item type to spell scroll, the class to whatever class it is you are playing, and the level range to the range that specific character is in (71 - 80 for a level 80 toon).

Select each search from the drop down menu, and then you can procede to look at each and every master that is of interest to that character.

[Alienor]

Noaani wrote:

BlueX wrote:

The spell/broker searching issue should definitely be looked at. It's annoying to search for "Spell II" and get "Spell II", "Spell III", etc. I do appreciate that we can use inexact searches, but it's annoying when I just want to do a quick search for a spell. An alternative is to be able to do an exact search, perhaps using quotes around the exact search term. Actually, I haven't tried that, maybe it's already there, lol.

Highlighted the part which you seem to have missed.

For the general feedback:

As others too I am not able to start the game anymore since GU52. Well done, after a week delay.

[MonkeyBob]

I'd like to comment. I really would. But i cant get on at all since the GU52 patch. The client crashes on loading. Thanks a bunch for keeping your EU customers waiting a week, then giving them a broken patch and buggering off home. Oh, and starting the live event while 50% of the playing population cant access the game is a masterstroke.

[Doggi]

I'll see if I'm able to log in after I got home and patched... eventually, SOE fails again... after a one week delay. Starting the live event while not all servers were ready is one of the things where I ask myself... nevermind... it's not even worth asking

[BLIGHTBRINGER]

i logged in at 0645 this am (UK) and it all worked perfectly. all the spells i would want to upgrade are offered by research assistant.  thanks Devs for doing this - otherwise soloers like me could  never get necro pet spell masters as i will never be able to afford the 490 Plat that they cost on my server.  maybe price will come down now research assistants working!

the thing i would like most is an instance/dungeon that soloers can have a go at.  it can be very hard and have a learning curve, and maybe only possible to get as far as the first one or two named, but at least you have a chance at an ornate/immaculate chest and some decent gear.  the Arcadechism was one for example i could, with a lot of patience and deaths, get right to the end by myself.  it would be fun (and give us a small chance at some decent gear) if there was an equivalent in TSO - if there is one that i dont know about i'd be most grateful for a heads up!  i appreciate it is only fair for the gear to be not as good as the best stuff the raiders can get, but we all want to improve our toons over time.  otherwise in time, soloers wont be elligable to raid or group even if they want to,  because we wont have decent enough gear to qualify.  i found it really fun to work out how i could get further and further into an instance on my own by learning how to do it, just like raiding teams learn how to successfully plan a  raid. 

p.s. i only solo as family wont give me undisturbed time, not because i don't think grouping is fun! 

Hellstone

[ccarro]

Just wanted to leave some feedback that has to do with GU52 but also eq2 content since TSO went live.

The majority of people playing eq2 have been let down by the lack of content that was released with TSO. Then a lot of effort and time went into GU51 and most of it was flushed in the toilet. Then with GU52 we get a bunch of nerfs, a couple new zones that are broke, and a bunch of quests that require days of faction grinding (horrible implementation). EoF was an amazing expansion. I loved RoK as well, and the reason being was because of how BIG they were. There was a lot of content and it satisfied people far longer the TSO. SO, with such little TSO content and such a big deal of time between updates I really would like to suggest reverting to the old way of doing updates.

With GU52 if things were done the old way we would have had a new zone per month for the past 3 months. I think that would have made more people happy then getting 3 new ones at the same time after 3 months of zero new content.

PLEASE go back to the GU's being once a month!

P.S. The roman numerals on the spells = worst idea ever.

[DavidSachs]

The spell lists on eq2players have not yet been updated with the new names.

WHEN???

[Dasein]

Sidiac@Unrest wrote:

Just wanted to leave some feedback that has to do with GU52 but also eq2 content since TSO went live.

The majority of people playing eq2 have been let down by the lack of content that was released with TSO. Then a lot of effort and time went into GU51 and most of it was flushed in the toilet. Then with GU52 we get a bunch of nerfs, a couple new zones that are broke, and a bunch of quests that require days of faction grinding (horrible implementation). EoF was an amazing expansion. I loved RoK as well, and the reason being was because of how BIG they were. There was a lot of content and it satisfied people far longer the TSO. SO, with such little TSO content and such a big deal of time between updates I really would like to suggest reverting to the old way of doing updates.

With GU52 if things were done the old way we would have had a new zone per month for the past 3 months. I think that would have made more people happy then getting 3 new ones at the same time after 3 months of zero new content.

PLEASE go back to the GU's being once a month!

P.S. The roman numerals on the spells = worst idea ever.

I do not see how there was a lack of content in TSO. Perhaps the fact that TSO was primarily instanced content, and that these zones were spread out over existing zones contributes to the perception that TSO was light on content, but TSO offerred just as many, if not more, zones that previous expansions.

[Katanalla]

I  hate instance expansions as I learned just with TSO!

More shared zones please!

[rollandheat]

And again you made the same thing again. Nerf of procs etc. Casual players and hard core raid guilds are not afected by the change, since they have better gear already or dont need gear for raid progress. Semi HC guilds however are quite in setback by this change. Same as last year with shield nerf and OH heals nerf. If you have to make such fixes, make them with expansion, so everybody is affected in same way, not in the middle of the year.

[Rashaak]

DavidSachs wrote:

The spell lists on eq2players have not yet been updated with the new names.

WHEN???

Probaby better to ask that question here

[Kurindor_Mythecnea]

Dunno if it's just poor transitional integration, but voice chat still crashes when you change a lot of channels, an effect that can't be reversed unless you restart your computer, according to word on the street. Voice chat changes should be rolled back to the prior state IMMEDIATELY, as I wouldn't put much confidence in the usage rate on the new launcher, but I would implement it once it was testably reliable.

[Elendhelie]

Dear devs,

Since you are on a updating rampage, could we maybe have an actual sitting command for the fae/arasai? Right now we kneel when the /sit command is used. How about actual walking instead of this slow-motion running that the tiny races (ratonga, dwarf, halfling etc) have?

Thanks.

[Novusod]

I have held back my feedback on Monument and Might until after I had a chance to thuroughly play through it all. First the Might of Rime quests were pretty interesting I guess building up to the rediscovery of Halas. Only issue I had were the repeatables to get faction with them were a bit long. I would rather be mass killing Rimes then running fetch me "X" errends for them. The new Bellywumper solo questline was perfect on the other hand.

Moving on to the Monument part of the update Kurn's Tower. The heroic Kurn's instance wasn't bad with very nice zone design. The only thing off about the zone was the trash on the upper floors being harder than the actual named. The x2 Kurn's Tower on the other hand was complete let down. I do like that SoE is putting in more x2 content but the progression here off the success of Ward of Elements is completely off. I understand this zone was designed for the hard core player but coming from a semi hard core guild that has killed Anashti x4 this zone just does not feel right. If this zone was supposed to be for progression past Anashti then it should have been an x4 zone and not an x2. As an x2 it should be for progression past Aiden in WoE geared towards casual and semi casual guilds. The difficulty in completing this zone should definately be looked at and adjusted.

The last zone in the update Emperor's is nearly forgotten like the odd man out. Just feels like another TSO zone. It is not a bad zone just that there are 20 other zones just like it already in the game.

[backtostart]

Spell assistants. Why did the dev team waste their time? They are 99.9% useless. If you spent the time to update all your spells to master on all tour chachters, assumeing they are all lvl 80,  you would be done sometime next year. Most people i think would be working n that till 2011. With new spells comeing out in the expansion why waste that time on old spells? Is it because the new ones will take so long that another expansion will be out before you can finsh?

If it isnt broken don't fix it. Most of the items introduced in game updates are fine but this is one that probably should have been thought out better, for example turning in an equivalent lvl spell and getting the one you want the next day.

It is nice that it is free, and some can argue that it brought the cost of masters down, only to raise the cost of adept3 spells, but do the pros out weigh the cons? Do you intend on makeing the end game so difficult the master spells are needed? So far the game is so easy you can level through to 70 with appretise spells.

I know the cash store came out before this update but i feel i need to take the time to talk about this too.

Shame shame shame SOE. There is probably not 1 item you sell for real money that you couldnt have crafters make in the game. We pay a monthly fee to play the game and included in the game is crafting. Are you so desperate for money that you need to charge us more to buy items we can or should be able to make in the game? Why can't alchemist make experiance potions? Why can't tailors make funny outfits or cermonial outfits? Why can't carpenters make cherry book cases? I think the cash store makes people feel like you are ripping them off and not helping them.

I have said this before , I am very loyal to SOE and EQ games in particular. If you made EQ2 free for download and maybe 5 dollars for a hard copy of the game and charged 18 dollars a month but everything is free you have more people playing then you would know what to do with. You could even charge 18 dollars a month and for every anversery date of playing the game, as log as you havent stoped for more then 12 months, the monthly cost comes down a dollar every year to 12 dollars a month. This way people will play the game and have a reason to stay loyal. Don't expect us to stay loyal by telling us we can buy items that we should in the game anyways. Use your creativity to improve the game not put more bucks in you pocket. If you do that then you will find you will have more money anyways and a much more loyal customer base.

[baldwinboy3]

I agree with you on the subscribtion stuff and the SC store.  I am thinking of leaving eq2 becuase of the amount of money invested and continue to dumb money into the new expansions. Its hard finding a grp to do some of the stuff for tso then players dont even have access to it when you get in a grp. I pay for each one that comes out like shadows but find it hard to get a grp who all have access, not to meniton players who just came to the game get an all in one package for the same price as the orginal game. I am dedicated soe player on eq2 and account is well over the 2000 days mark under details. Why should i have to pay for the new stuff like shadwos when i am dedicated and others come into the game and get it free when they have not been dedicated.

[gnasty]

I agree about the cost being the same for expansion for new players as for someone that has played for 5 years. I now have my 5 year reward but still will pay the same for the next expansion as a new person just signing up. This is just not fair to loyal players. Come on SOE give your loyal players a break. If we sign up for the new expansion as a digital download reduce the price so much for every year played. I believe $5 break for every year played is not to much to ask or even just $1 would be nice.

[Rahatmattata]

gnasty wrote:

I believe $5 break for every year played is not to much to ask or even just $1 would be nice.

A one dollar discount would be a loss of thousands of dollars. Much less a 25 dollar discount for everyone that has been playing for 5 years.

[Tharis]

I don't know If anyone but players are gonna read this, because honestly I feel like SoE doesnt give a single shread of care as to what players want or feel might make the game more enjoyable. I dont envy the position of the developers however, and I will try to begrudge them as little as possible here because they are pretty much damned if they do and damned if they dont.

However I have had little to no interest in actually exploring, questing, raiding or doing anything with this content because, like Elements of Corruption and even The Shadow Oddessy, itself I dont want to have to do the instances 400 times to see anything decent as far as upgrades go. I used to have the opinion "those who tough it out get the loot." Litterally 100 Nejana's Hollow tower runs later... Im done, I cant stand it anymore.

Normally I grit my teeth and bare it, and as you can see I have very few posts on the forums for anything including complaints. So here is one of my first (in 5 years), because I see in game updates all over the place that include things like "Fabled Items dropped in Evernight Abbey and Mistmyr Manor will now drop with more frequency" well seeing as how there is only a single moderately good mage piece that drops in either zone, and one that I might add has no business being fabled in comparison to some of the scout charms that are out there (IE Essence of Mastery) it only does a few people any good.

I make this post here because I feel like I'm predisposed to being shafted because this isnt the frist and nor will it be the last item that sits in a mobs loot table and not in my character profile which after 100 zone runs is exactly where it should be (and this is 100 zone runs where I have seen every piece of fabled loot, multiple times, and never once the item I want).

I guess my suggestion is... Shards are worthless junk after you get your T3 armor, and people have enough shards to buy alts that arent even lvl 80 full sets of T2 armor, and T3 if they were able to get the patterns. So why not make these fabled drops from heroic zones only Merchant buyable (not player made). Im not talking make them cheep either I mean to say make them 200-300 shards a piece to get them. that way it gives shards some actual value again and makes people stop HAVING to experience the same zone over and over and over again to get one piece they want.

I like some of the other zones in TSO and Id like to see the insides of them again someday, Id like to run the new content but with no encouragment of reward why should I care? Its even to the point where other players like Tanks and healers are saying in groups... ok what zone are we going to do?... anything but NHT. well unless you want to make NHT and every other zone I can get decent loot in soloable I suggest you do something before you have enough people up and quit because the games "rewards" as it were are so sporadic that its not worth even worth spending the effort for.

[BLIGHTBRINGER]

i have to say i'm fed up with shards full stop.  who wants to collect the same thing time after time after time.  it means that few are interested in buying other armour etc off broker so  anything you get  you may as well transmute and sell the results as at least that sells.  it is just boring.  and for those of us who solo quite a bit, doing the solo shard quest time after time is really boring as there are no other drops or rewards for kills.

i look forward to when the game has moved on and shards are a distant memory.  if i want to something repetative i will play tetris or something!

Hellstone

[Barx]

gnasty wrote:

I agree about the cost being the same for expansion for new players as for someone that has played for 5 years. I now have my 5 year reward but still will pay the same for the next expansion as a new person just signing up. This is just not fair to loyal players. Come on SOE give your loyal players a break. If we sign up for the new expansion as a digital download reduce the price so much for every year played. I believe $5 break for every year played is not to much to ask or even just $1 would be nice.

You want the same content, you pay the same price. All of the old expansions aren't content you're paying for again... instead, it's content included "free" to those who did not have it so that you don't have to play catch-up and buy a bunch of old expansions (they saw how annoying that got to be in EQ1 and even here in EQ2, all-in-one expansions are the way to go).

Oh, and they DO give loyal players a break. Everyone that went to Fan Faire will get Sentinel's Fate for free as well as getting Beta access, I'd say that's rewarding your loyal players. But having an old account does not mean you are "loyal" to the game in any respect. My EQ1 account is coming up on 9 years old, but I haven't played the game for 5 years, for example. Then you have all the accounts that were cancelled and left the game for a time, only to return one or two years later.

What they should do is drop the price of the digital download as time passes after the expansion in order to keep up with retailers. But that would have nothing to do with SF until it's been out for about 3 months or so (which would be ~May 2010).