"Ask Not What SoD Can Do for You ..."
- Thread starter Ryst
- Start date
What? Bounties keep me playing,what keeps me away is all that lame free xp like lately the 550 AAs from the tome changes,I still didnt
spent them.I have no reason to play my 65s anymore outside the occasional ride or helping friends/guildies or the odd newbie.
And strange enough Bounties succeeded where another system which most players
hate,namely old area xp penalties,failed badly.
I agree with what was said earlier about how SoE's greed corrupted EQ but what they didnt tolerate was afk playing,leeching
is rampart here and always was since i am here (end 2009),I think new players get a very bad impression of SoD when they see
all that "lf/open leech spot" in ooc,at least in my case it almost made me quit on day 1.
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Nothing more needs to be said.
Ludovician
Dalayan Elder
Zaela said:
Bad for PR?
How about
-Constantly nerfing and changing things in top tier because "new content" will be too hard to balance around those really good items, or because being top tier "shouldn't trivialize lower tier content".
-Turning earned gear into muffins in the middle of a guild's raid without saying a word to the guild because the zone that the gear was earned weeks ago from was deemed "unfinished" or "unbalanced".
-Adding traps to raid zones to the tune of moaning players. but hey, traps are fun to watch players fumble around. (Did this change happen / stay in game? I quit soon after it was discussed and implemented.)
-Never listening to player suggestions to help improve the health of the game they enjoy.
-Pushing out the community's favorite Dev by constantly changing and nerfing his content after he created it for the sake of "the next tier balance issues" even though he will likely be the only one who could have created that "next tier" the way it should be done. Hell, he even created part of that next tier but no other dev will touch it to balance it and the players won't try it because that dev is gone and they don't trust other devs to not waste their time.
The dev team does not weigh fun and convenience against "balance". Proof is in the multiple discussions about buffs, downtime, new player challenges, etc.
I enjoyed the game thoroughly when I played it, I really really did. But thinking back, I recall shaking my head at the way things were a lot of times but shrugging it off because "that's just how it is"... but those things you shake your head at will wear on you over time. Eventually you look at the game as a chore instead of a game, and that's when you lose players.
Game balance and "challenge" (read as time-sink) is harped on so much you'd think this was a multi-million dollar competitive MOBA and not a game emulator made for fun for people to enjoy.
Judging from the way the game is run I would have thought "PR" was at the bottom of the priority list.
The reality is you have a good game that could be great. You don't have thousands of players, you have dozens. You have an outstanding potential to growth by making the game more accessible to new players and less annoying for veteran players, but you really don't seem to get that.
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/thread
Ludovician
Dalayan Elder
Pretty sure most of the dudes with years under their belts would just quit
Dinadass
Dalayan Pious Diety
Some would, I would be very surprised if it resulted in a net gain in population though.
Daffie
Dalayan Pious Diety
I tend to agree with this. Even if it was a net gain at the beginning, I would wonder if people would play much past the initial 65 rush + AA and low level tiers. I just think people who have done it a few times might get to the point where they say, fuck the time investment for the 3rd or 4th time. (This could be especially true for farming the raid gear to enter higher tiers.)
I know many items I wouldn't camp again now that I have done them once or more. (or maybe I would try them when the mobs are not trivial and give up when they become trivial.)
Life tap mask
Idol of Joy
ToLL
Pal self heal (+48 hours no spell yet)
Cage
shaman mask stuff (so much trivial farming and still not done...)
Faction item farming for so much/many stuffs...
etc.
Nebi
Dalayan Pious Diety
that's you.. I have invested a lot more time into this game (100% sure i dont have the time to do it the same speed as last time) but that doesnt take away that i wouldnt do it again.
I cannot speak for everyone but i do believe a good portion of the game would start over IF they at one time in their "eq career" did it without ringers. this game is absolutely fun at the low end but the shit bags who rely 100% on ringers are the ones that ruined that for everyone else.
Daffie
Dalayan Pious Diety
Maybe a 'progression server' is an option. An identical server, but wiped. It would split the pop, but the people who wouldn't do it again will still have a place to play. Could even have a server global chat channel set on start up.
Pecannius
Dalayan Elder
I know several guilds have tried to start over from T1 saying that they won't use ringers but eventually they just cave in and use them. Why not just do it on this server with a group of like-minded people (supposedly a lot of people desire this) and you know... not use ringers?
Vitali
Dalayan Master
I saw a few guilds in just the last month or two try to start up and just flop. Titan, Imperial Empire (sp?), and something else I don't remember the name for now. Either way, the point is they end up flopping despite being "what everyone wants". It's more that people like the thought of themselves doing that, not the actual doing it in itself.
CharmCitysKing
Dalayan Elder
rip Titan 
Nebi
Dalayan Pious Diety
the temptation of having to start over with a main with everything is what ruins it. D3 seasons was good because you had no choice but to start off. There was hesitation at first from people but once you made it and started grouping with friends the game became even more fun.
Thade's old guild died because clerics didnt show up anymore.
Dinadass
Dalayan Pious Diety
More fun for some people. D2 had ladder resets, PoE and other similar games have had seasons/leagues/etc and plenty of people enjoy that, but lots of people also played the same characters forever on non-ladder or whatever.
Also, those types of games aren't the same as SoD where it takes years for most people to have an endgame character, let alone a "finished" one. When there's still a lot of content you haven't done and loot you still want, hitting the reset button isn't as appealing to many people.
frankzappayay
Dalayan Adventurer
The problem with all those camps/grinds is that people on this server are so used to doing them with 1 or 2 totally overpowered characters. If you go to the ToLL camp and one guy is there camping it, that removes that camp from the game for everyone else. No instancing, but no grouping either. You go to Velks (or whatever its called here) and one guy (with two characters) is pulling the entire zone. Try that ToLL camp with 'normal' characters, the named absolutely rips you to shreds. High raid tier characters do it with their eyes closed, but it is completely different experience with 'normal' characters. Not only that but it would satisfy a full group of 6 individuals, it would be challenging, they would have to split the room etc.. all stuff that made this game fun in the first place.
To me the biggest failure of this server is that best and most fun dungeons in this game are completely worthless once you join the l33t raid scene. So you get newbies join the server and have a lonely boring experience getting through the levels, and they remain a noob at 65 because the difference between 65 and a high tier 65 is gigantic. And there is no way for them to progress because that point in the game is empty. So as soon as possible they join a raid guild and get dragged along by the experienced players and become high tier douchebags in no time.
But the problem with that, is that it instantly ruins the majority of this game, and makes the most fun dungeons become worthless. Places like Cmal (whatever it's called here), Catacombs, even just Eldenals itself is really challenging with normal characters. But most people here have forgotten what normal characters feel like and what the base game even plays like. You stand next to one of those mobs with your 950 AC and 2000hp and the Hp just plummets as soon as you take a single round of damage. The wizards that use ice comet have one shotted some of my characters. That is what this game was supposed to be like. Splitting suddenly becomes important, and crowd control is important (does anyone even remember spells like mez?), and in places like that cmal you need to explain to each other how you are going to handle the next fight, who is going to mez what, which mob to focus first etc, then you rise up one of those pillars of water and the action happens. It is very exciting and very fun. I only did that place a few times but loved it every time. But last time I played it was impossible to find anyone to go there, because the whole place is made pointless and obsolete by the other content. Nobody wants those clicky heal gloves because the raid gear is so much better, and nobody wants the mediocre exp from a normal group when you can just afk in a group with whoever is doing the treants or get in a guild group with some old overpowered pally who pulls half of First Ruins in one pull and you watch all your AA's flood in.
This server has become raid obsessed and the problem is that it ruins the rest of the game. It's all business and very little talking anyway on a raid so you really don't get much of a different experience compared to a normal group of 6 individuals. But my favorite time in EQ was the Kunark/Velious era and grouping is mostly what people did. Sol b, Lower Guk, Karnor's, Seb, Howling Stones, Velks, Chardock, new players had an amazing journey but then newly high level players had a dozen or more dungeons to go to and they got your raid experience right there. Doing 'Disco' with a bunch of normal geared people, wizzy in an SMR etc.. it is no less challenging or interesting than you nerds doing an uber high tier raid. In fact most of the raids have known strats so there isn't even anything to work out most of the time. I spent my first week in Seb just doing the entrance and a few deadly excursions further inside. It was only a week or so later that I managed to get to 'Disco' and I had to go many times until I got my robe. I had been playing in there for ages but only managed to do the Hierophants Cloak camp a few times (and I never got the cloak). I could have spent a month or more in that one dungeon, same goes for all the dungeons. This game has all those dungeons but nobody goes, and if they do they are ruined by overpowered characters that trivialise the entire experience. It's annoying because the kind of people who raid tend to think they are the elite, and they are deserving of the best gear because it is raid gear and therefore the ultimate achievement. But in reality, the opposite is true. The ultimate achievement is the group of level 30 something noobs who go to Lower Guk with chainmail and cloth shit and the tank's weapon is some crappy 11/34 runed falchion with no other stats, and they spend a month in there getting geared enough to just to reach the other side of the dungeon and face the king or the GL. Put that group then in a kunark dungeon but with old world gear, that is a real achievement. And that is what made the game popular in the first place, and that is what got ruined by later expansions, and SoD is like a reproduction of what ruined EQ in a mini version.
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Dinadass
Dalayan Pious Diety
There are still group/6man zones that are fun and not trivial for high end people, and saying that doing seb or lguk "on tier" is as challenging as high end raids is ridiculous. You sound like you've never actually done most high end stuff here and are making assumptions.
I played on p99 and on two of the real progression servers and a whole lot of the nostalgia wears off when you do that stuff again compared to newer games with much more robust character design, combat mechanics, questing and tradeskill systems, etc. Some people genuinely feel that Kunark/Velious was the pinnacle of MMOs and that's fine, but there was a whole lot of awful shit from that era that I do not miss at all, and that's why I come back to this server every so often and not p99. There is no single game that satisfies every type of player, and there won't ever be, because different people prefer different mechanics, difficulty curves, time investments, lore, you name it.
I played on p99 and on two of the real progression servers and a whole lot of the nostalgia wears off when you do that stuff again compared to newer games with much more robust character design, combat mechanics, questing and tradeskill systems, etc. Some people genuinely feel that Kunark/Velious was the pinnacle of MMOs and that's fine, but there was a whole lot of awful shit from that era that I do not miss at all, and that's why I come back to this server every so often and not p99. There is no single game that satisfies every type of player, and there won't ever be, because different people prefer different mechanics, difficulty curves, time investments, lore, you name it.