Effects on loot of the recent stats change

[espetado]

For some obscure reason, i fail to understand, stats were changed on the last major patch, and each archetype now only uses one stat plus stamina as his main stat.

Now I know SOE reserves the right to change anything on the multiplayer online games they publish/maintain, that is part of the EULA and it goes by something like “game experience might change during online play”, EQ2 is no exception to this.

I’m not going to even try to understand the implications of this last stats change, some classes benefit from it, others lost something, overall the game lost complexity and that for me is a bad thing, but that is not the point of this post.

The point of this post is to take a look at how this affects players indirectly by loot.

I don’t know how well the itemization was made on DoV, I don’t play a level 90 toon, I play a level 80 XP locked toon and currently I’m doing RoK content, when I finish there I will move to TSO and so on.

There are a few examples of loot on the screenshot above, from left to right

 

The hand of serenity

It has +24 AGI +20 WIS

AGI used to give avoidance for a monk, WIS used to give resists, on a monk which is a fighter archetype, now they give noting and still are there. I don’t know deeply the EQ2 loot rules on what is expected as stats on a given item on a given level, but the removal of the stats bonus from these two attributes made this item less powerful that it was before

Soulfire Kama

It has +18 AGI

Again an example of something that was left behind and has no meaning or use, again an example of an item that is less powerful today than it was before.

Ancient Tower shield of Vision

It has +32 INT

This one made me laugh, yeah I know it’s not a good item, but it have INT and can only be used by classes that don’t use INT anymore, so it’s less powerful than it used to be.

Dustdevil Jerkin

This one intrigues me, is this a scout, priest or fighter item?

Scouts don’t use crushing, only leather using fighters and priests, so it should have WIS not AGI, be as it may, it’s still a less powerful item that it was before.

Battlerager Hat

It has +35 AGI

Again AGI on an item used only by classes that don’t benefit from AGI anymore, another item that is less powerful that it was before.

Belt of Plunder

Not sure what item this anymore, it has a nice proc for tanking classes and + Defense, used by taking classes, yet its main stat is AGI that none of the tanking classes uses anymore so what it is then?

A scout item?

A mix of the two?

Then it should have +20 STG and +20 AGI.

 

I believe changing how the stats works calls for more than just doing it, like I said; I don’t know what was made in DoV itemization so all might be good there, but what about the other 6 years of EQ2?

Items need to be revised; you can’t just change the rules and forget about the cards the players already have on their hands.

Some will say, “Oh! But there are thousands of items out there; it will take forever to see them all”. Yeah, sure, it’s not easy, but it’s not the end of the world.

Items are stored in databases, and databases are nothing more than spreadsheets whit columns and values, so all it takes is smart filtering and readjusting the values.

Will take some time to do it properly, buts most of the work can be done easily. After all, the banner of all this stats changes was to simplify the game to new players.

How can you explain a new player that the shield he just got has only one stat and a stat he don’t use.

I can’t….

PS: I trust this will be thought over and not just limited to delete the stats those classes don’t use, all those items lost power relatively to what they had when they were created.

 

[Troubor]

As much as I agree, the unfortunate thing is I think the developers know exactly what you posted.

And without trying to insult them per-se, I honestly don't think they care.  They seem to think that the only content that matters is whatever the current expansion/end game happens to be.  Even if there's people on alts or even their mains that don't want to PL to 90th in a week or two.

[rattlebonz]

Troubor wrote:

As much as I agree, the unfortunate thing is I think the developers know exactly what you posted.

And without trying to insult them per-se, I honestly don't think they care.  They seem to think that the only content that matters is whatever the current expansion/end game happens to be.  Even if there's people on alts or even their mains that don't want to PL to 90th in a week or two.

This, pretty much. I have 4 lvl 90 characters but I also have several under cap ranging from 39 up. I like to run BGs and quest with them when the 90s start to bore me, which happened pretty fast with DoV as a non-raider. Now those pre-90 toons are just as boring.

[Dasein]

With the exception of the shield, they all have stats apprpriate for the class, they just have some vestigal stats that do nothing, but do not detract from the item, either. What benefit is gained from removing the unneeded stats over leaving them on? Is that benefit greater than the cost involved in making the changes?

[rattlebonz]

Dasein wrote:

With the exception of the shield, they all have stats apprpriate for the class, they just have some vestigal stats that do nothing, but do not detract from the item, either. What benefit is gained from removing the unneeded stats over leaving them on? Is that benefit greater than the cost involved in making the changes?

The main thing I have seen is that they took away the hps/power and didn't compensate with increased stats. They should have just left the t8 and under alone. I'll get over it as I use those characters of mine as a distraction and not a main stay but others that do use their lower tier alts as a main source of game play lost a lot of hps and power.

[Dasein]

Niayl@Blackburrow wrote:

Dasein wrote:

With the exception of the shield, they all have stats apprpriate for the class, they just have some vestigal stats that do nothing, but do not detract from the item, either. What benefit is gained from removing the unneeded stats over leaving them on? Is that benefit greater than the cost involved in making the changes?

The main thing I have seen is that they took away the hps/power and didn't compensate with increased stats. They should have just left the t8 and under alone. I'll get over it as I use those characters of mine as a distraction and not a main stay but others that do use their lower tier alts as a main source of game play lost a lot of hps and power.

How much HP/Power did each item provide before and after the change?

[rattlebonz]

Dasein wrote:

Niayl@Blackburrow wrote:

Dasein wrote:

With the exception of the shield, they all have stats apprpriate for the class, they just have some vestigal stats that do nothing, but do not detract from the item, either. What benefit is gained from removing the unneeded stats over leaving them on? Is that benefit greater than the cost involved in making the changes?

The main thing I have seen is that they took away the hps/power and didn't compensate with increased stats. They should have just left the t8 and under alone. I'll get over it as I use those characters of mine as a distraction and not a main stay but others that do use their lower tier alts as a main source of game play lost a lot of hps and power.

How much HP/Power did each item provide before and after the change?

No clue on those linked but the t5 BG gear lost 150 hps/power per slot if I remember correctly.

[Nagel]

Well it's not just the hp / power but the agi added avoid. and the wis added resists back then, items that were an upgrade back in the day are now useless because they dont add the stats that we need to truely gear ourselves.

So now we are extremly limited on the gear we need to have to go into these fights that were designed to be battled with certin gear / stats, and now we are very limited and do not have what was basiclly given when rok first came out.

It's very bothersome that we are revisiting all the hardwork SOE has put into this game for old players, and introducing the game to ALOT of new players to the game because they dont feel they have to grind to end game they can actually see what the whole game offers. Why can't the older gear just be updated to the stat change they are doing thruout the whole game, we work hard to hold true to the game as it was released, we do not enter any later expantions then what we are currently in, do use gear from it or anything, and do not use the way way way way overpowered gear from BG's. It just seems like were being punished or just ignored for trying to stay true to the game as it was released.

[Lethe5683]

Dasein wrote:

Niayl@Blackburrow wrote:

Dasein wrote:

With the exception of the shield, they all have stats apprpriate for the class, they just have some vestigal stats that do nothing, but do not detract from the item, either. What benefit is gained from removing the unneeded stats over leaving them on? Is that benefit greater than the cost involved in making the changes?

The main thing I have seen is that they took away the hps/power and didn't compensate with increased stats. They should have just left the t8 and under alone. I'll get over it as I use those characters of mine as a distraction and not a main stay but others that do use their lower tier alts as a main source of game play lost a lot of hps and power.

How much HP/Power did each item provide before and after the change?

I'm pretty sure it was 300 hp/power which is less than what the STR/STA on them currently gives.  The only thing that was lost on these is the small amount of avoidance and resistance from agility and wisdom respectivly.

[espetado]

Lethe5683 wrote:

Dasein wrote:

I'm pretty sure it was 300 hp/power which is less than what the STR/STA on them currently gives.  The only thing that was lost on these is the small amount of avoidance and resistance from agility and wisdom respectivly.

i dont have my spell checker on this computer so typos will happen, ignore them please, anyway

as for HP/Power noting changed or the change wasent important, was just silly

i had 12K Hp before teh patch and now i have 12K HP afther the patch, same gear same AA spec

i had 6K power before the patch adn i had 13K power afther the patch, since im a monk, this is silly, same gear same AA spec

now for the the small changes on resists and avoidance

i had 80% avoidance before the patch and 10% crit mitigation, afther the patch i had 50% avoidance and 0% crit mitigation, the smal amount of avoidane reduced here was just 37,5% of what i had before the patch, and 100% of the crit mitigation i had before the patch

as for resists i had around 12K unbuffed on all resists, now i have 8.5K, thats a smal reduction of 30% of what i had before.

so from one day to another, SOE took of

37,5% of my avoidance (and i relly on avoidance to avoid damage) 100% of my crit mitigation, and 30% of my resists, all this becouse no one took the time to check what will happen to the gear we alredy have in place

all i can say is..... keep it up, clearly youre going on the wrong way

PS: like i said before, no spell checker here and english is not my firts, so trie to ignore my typos

[Lethe5683]

Anicha@Antonia Bayle wrote:

i dont have my spell checker on this computer so typos will happen, ignore them please, anyway

as for HP/Power noting changed or the change wasent important, was just silly

i had 12K Hp before teh patch and now i have 12K HP afther the patch, same gear same AA spec

i had 6K power before the patch adn i had 13K power afther the patch, since im a monk, this is silly, same gear same AA spec

So you're complaining about having more power or am I missing something?

now for the the small changes on resists and avoidance

i had 80% avoidance before the patch and 10% crit mitigation, afther the patch i had 50% avoidance and 0% crit mitigation, the smal amount of avoidane reduced here was just 37,5% of what i had before the patch, and 100% of the crit mitigation i had before the patch

That just isn't possible.

as for resists i had around 12K unbuffed on all resists, now i have 8.5K, thats a smal reduction of 30% of what i had before.

Unless you had like 750+ WIS it's very unlikely that you lost that much resistances.

so from one day to another, SOE took of

37,5% of my avoidance (and i relly on avoidance to avoid damage) 100% of my crit mitigation, and 30% of my resists, all this becouse no one took the time to check what will happen to the gear we alredy have in place

There's no way you lost that much avoidance, it's unlikely you lost that much resistance and the crit mit lost is only significant because you have no crit mit from gear.  They should have just kept the 10% as default crit mit rather than reducting it to 0%, it really screwed up PvP too.

all i can say is..... keep it up, clearly youre going on the wrong way

PS: like i said before, no spell checker here and english is not my firts, so trie to ignore my typos

[espetado]

It is funny when you realize how many specialists are out there, people that know all, people that never have doubts; sadly most of them work on preconceived ideas, based only on there on experiences, and since they chose to hide on the anonymity we don’t know who they are, or even if they deserve any credit.

We are unable to proper discuss whit anonymous people, so I won’t even go there.

Now back to the topic.

Whit the Stats change, loot pre-DOV took a big change

We lost:

                Avoidance

                Resists

We gained

                Power (manna whatever you want to call it)

We keep:

                Health (it’s basically the same health we had before)

Now, for the power leveling player, this doesn’t matter at all, in fact whit lager power pools people have less downtime, and since all they kill is solo and occasionally heroics, avoidance resists don’t matter that much, for most of the time.

For people that enjoy eq2 as a hole, be them people that want to do all content (as we do), or people that like a slower pace of leveling.

THE LOOT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENCE.

We have brawler sets whit main stats distributed in, STA(ok), AGL(wrong), WIS(wrong).

We have bard sets whit main stats distributed in, AGL(ok), WIS(wrong), INT(wrong).

Most scout loot is full of INT, WIS.

Most mages loot is full of WIS, AGL.

And so on and so on.

There are hundreds of loot pieces which the only stats they have is stats that the classes that can equip them don’t use.

 

I don’t know who, or why these decisions are made, and as i stated before, SOE have the right to make them, what I know is that, or:

No one cares about what is being tossed away in the trash can.

No one really thought about it.

 

Do what you need to do SOE, but be weary of the past, this is looking more and more like a new NGE, and we all know how bad that was, for us and for SOE itself.

 

All in all

What I really want whit this is straight answer from someone inside SOE, I will even make it easier for you all you need to do is to pick the correct choice:

a)      We don’t care about anything but DoV so items will not be revised, players should power level to level 90 and forget about old content.

b)      We weren’t aware that the changes to stats would impact so much on pre DoV toons, some adjustments will be made to loot across all levels.

c)       We don’t really read the forums and we don’t have to explain our actions.

For now and due to the lack of any official response I will assume C is the right one, I do hope I’m wrong on this one.

PS: feel free to add more choces, these are the ones i can think off, but i cant asume i can see all the options here

[espetado]

After one week, and having seen yesterday “Omuogi” answering a series of posts it this forum, it is clear for me now that, everything before DoV doesn’t matter anymore.

It seems that the team developing the game as the majority of players that play the game only care about the last big thing.

It don’t matter anymore if it is good, or better or even worse than what we had, if it is new it is all that matter.

It’s sad the way what made this game what it is today is treated, just because it’s not new.

I can confirm now that option C) of the previous post is the wrong one, but A) is the right one.

It is time to add an auto level feature, so people can start the game at level 90, why waste our time running thru outdated, non-upgradable content.

[espetado]

Still waiting on some sort of official response, this is the start of the third week since it was posted.

[Valentina]

Anicha@Antonia Bayle wrote:

After one week, and having seen yesterday “Omuogi” answering a series of posts it this forum, it is clear for me now that, everything before DoV doesn’t matter anymore.

This.

[Morghus]

Valentina@Butcherblock wrote:

Anicha@Antonia Bayle wrote:

After one week, and having seen yesterday “Omuogi” answering a series of posts it this forum, it is clear for me now that, everything before DoV doesn’t matter anymore.

This.

Honestly, this is new....how? They historically  have never, ever gone back and changed any non-current loot outside of that one time they used a mass upscaling script years ago.

[espetado]

The lack of interest from whoever is in charge of the game for the non-current content is not new, it’s been a constant since EQ2 started, or any other MMO for that matter.

What´s new is a total revamp of how player should chose there equipment, how the stats work, and what is available to players.

What´s new is that even if it is the company right to change anything about the game we play, as they state on the EULA, changes, especially big ones need to be done whit care.

If you look around you, you see how much care was taken whit this changes.

Let me bring up an example of what SOE did whit the stats change.

Let’s say you are saving money (a hard thing to do on current days but, anyway… we will use money since it’s easy to understand), so you collect one Dollar bills, hundreds or even thousands of one dollar bills. Lest say you have collected 1.000.000 one dollar bills, so now you have 1.000.000 dollars’ worth of one dollar bills. Now, one day to the other without warning, the state change the value of one dollar bills and they now are worth ten cents.

You now have 100.000 dollars’ worth of one dollar bills,isn’t this nice?

This is exactly what SOE did whit the stats change.

All those things people were gathering, are now worthless, or worth a lot less than they used to.

On top of that is this silence,

moderators already seen this post, yet, not a comment… why is that?

Silent resignation, we know you’re right but we can’t do anything abut it?

 

Tunnel vision, what we did was right and we can’t even see why you wasting your time posting all these posts?

 

Lack of control, the marketing and sales departments took over the game, and if it doesn’t give more money we can’t do anything about it?

Whatever the reason is, one thing is certain, ignoring problems won’t make them go away.

[espetado]

Another week has past

This makes five since the first post, and seven since DoV release.

Still no official word on this.

So for seven weeks players have been playing a half made game.

It is absurd the amount of fixes that have been made to DoV items, and we not talking about some patch content items that needed balance, we talking about the expansion items.

These things are supposed to be fine-tuned in a controlled environment before release that is why expansions are paid.

Which brings the question, is anyone really looking at the gear?

[Wurm]

I completely agree with you that they need to go back and fix the old gear at the very least for new players.

however you have been told more than once its not going to happen.

So if I were you I'd just ignore it and play if the game is still fun to you.

[Loldawg]

Do you know how many items there are in game? Do you realize there is just a skeleton crew left maintaining this game? If you had your way, this game would cease to make any money at all and it'd just go under. All so that some very old gear - that most people don't care about - is adjusted a bit?

The game is still retardedly easy for anyone playing old tiers. New mechanics that were added later in the game trivialized earlier content. Don't try to tell me you can't handle yellow or orange con mobs. I see no point in going back to adjust old gear. 

You can still play, run through zones, and handle any content without any problems. Enjoy it and move on.

[Wyrmypops]

Sure would be a lot of work. Regardless of whatever possible ease there might be in databases, there's a whole lotta items. Still, they managed to yoink the hp/power/resists off items with a magic wand...

I'm still surprised some effort wasn't made. Knowing these changes were coming, knowing the ramifications it'd have on gear at lower tiers. I'd have thought some effort to introduce balance and a staple go-to source of items would have made sense. Just having the crafted stuff tweaked to provide newly appropriate stats.

Does seem magic wandable. Choose whatever stat amount is appropriate for the level and quality of the gear and get waving. With the right amount of single stat for the level/quality, still having multiple stats on them to cater for the different archetypes that use them. If, say, 5 is the appropriate number for level 12 stuff, then the old item that had a couple of 3's them used to be fine with how various stats affected us but now is clearly underpar with those additional stats becoming pointless and extranous, those items could have numbers tweaked to grant the characters the appropriate amount from the single stat they now use.  An item, say a plate breastplate, having sta, str and wis (for clerics) of properly apportioned numbers. Quite magic wand-worthy.

Shouldn't be a surprise though, considering they didn't even manage to get the contempary content balanced and cater to the archetypes and classes. Leaves a person rather incredulous, seeing gaps in itemisation and odd choices. Unless I missed a memo and scouts really should be getting hit and enjoy all the riposte gear.

[Sleap]

All of the old gear have useless stats since the second stat revamp. Im sure its ALOT of work to change stats on all gear prior to DoV. The only thing that bothers me is that for the 6 months i was raiding in SF to gear up, all that gear is now useless garbage with the exception of a couple red adorn's i refuse to give up. I was making sure that i didnt waste any AA spec or gear on crit since it didnt crit any higher than 100%, now i have 2 healers that cant keep up in DoV instances because they dont have 170%+ crit. I have not been fortunate to get that wpn from the PQ's for my healers, i have yet to see BP drop for me even though i run about 4 PQ's a day for the past 2-3 weeks.

Off topic.. is there anything better than T3 SF paints for healers? I really dont want to lose that ward proc.. or my red adornment. Im looking into gear from heroic instances since im on my raiding break hiatas.

[Raahl]

It's pretty much a script that could change the stats on older items.  

Use the class field to determine what the stats should be on the item.   Take any non-primary stat, that is not STA, and adding it to the primary stat and STA. 

It gets more difficult on items that don't have a class restriction or has multiple base class descriptions.  These could be left alone to avoid issues.

I suspect you won't hear too many complaints from lower level players.

[espetado]

The point is not how much work or time will take to change the old gear.

The point is they should have tough of that before changing the stats.

If the team is too small to re-invent the wheel then don’t do it.

What we left whit is half a change of a system that was working well, and yes I don’t mean the second change, this is wrong since the first change.

 

[Kaszan]

I don't want the dev team going back and working on the stats on old gear for months to satisfy 0.5% of the population.

I would like to see them work on new and exciting content, regardless of level range, that suits the needs of the majority of the playerbase.  

[feldon30]

And I guess you don't need any new players, since level 1-85 content now makes no sense with ANY of the gear available in those levels from treasured to mastercrafted to fabled.

Like others said, maybe they should have thought of the ramifications on the entire game before making these sweeping itemization changes and boiling the game down to 4 archetypes with 2 green stats and 4 blue stats.

[Odys]

feldon30 wrote:

And I guess you don't need any new players, since level 1-85 content now makes no sense with ANY of the gear available in those levels from treasured to mastercrafted to fabled.

Like others said, maybe they should have thought of the ramifications on the entire game before making these sweeping itemization changes and boiling the game down to 4 archetypes with 2 green stats and 4 blue stats.

I quite agree there. I know that some people say that achievments , high quality Mastercraft, research made 1-85 very easy. That's true but level lockers are free to deal with yellow/red opponents or to solo instances.

So difficulty is not an argument. The main issue for 1-85 is the total lack of incentive to get cool gear. Why would a fury bother to get her class gear when this gear provides lot of inteligence ?

Dov will remains as the expansion in which SOE said " We want no new players" , and " Please priests Go away". It seems like a deliberate choice to narrow down the population.

[Cocytus]

Morghus wrote:

Valentina@Butcherblock wrote:

Anicha@Antonia Bayle wrote:

After one week, and having seen yesterday “Omuogi” answering a series of posts it this forum, it is clear for me now that, everything before DoV doesn’t matter anymore.

This.

Honestly, this is new....how? They historically  have never, ever gone back and changed any non-current loot outside of that one time they used a mass upscaling script years ago.

Just because it's repeat behavior doesn't make it ok.

Also this changed things more than any stat change had before.

And it changed them for the worse. They were horrible dumb changes.

[Lathain_Sarathai]

Stats consolidation was badest thing that could happen to EQ2, even marketplace and EQ2X  was not that bad.

Dont feel so bad about bad itemization previous DoV

The itemization in DoV is not much better.

Lot of incoherance, lot of "bug"/mistake, wrong stats, wrong item

hundred of item with different name but exactly same stats.

Stats consolidation since SF is turning Everquest2 to consol game... simple, too simple. And they dont success to manage simple stats on items lol...

/pray

It look like they are busy working on part 2 of velious instead of fixing existing content

Lot of Nerf/fix done quickly to velious items, was really badly done. Item stats change from 25 of something to become 4 one other will got boost from 4 to 30... a bow got his damage rating increased from 200+ to more than 300, each time they touch something, they dont watch they do, everything is wrong. Full of mistake.

like they change thing without watching what they do

[espetado]

Another week have past, another week whit no answers.

Take a note, tough I want a fix, I am just asking for an answer, takes about 5 minutes to write a post, 10 if you´re careful whit what you write, unless… unless you don’t know what to say on the matter, then might take a while more.